For today's dose of fakenews we trustfully direct you to this New York Times item:

U.N. Peacekeepers in Lebanon Get Stronger Inspection Powers for Hezbollah Arms

The headline is 100% wrong. The U.N. troops in Lebanon (UNIFIL) did not get one iota of stronger inspection powers.

Yesterday the UN Security Council had to decide about the yearly renewal of the mandate of UNIFIL. The current U.S. bitch at the UNSC, Nikki R. Haley, had order from her overlord Benjamin Netanyahoo to press for more control over Hizbullah's weapons in Lebanon.

Last week Haley already clashed with the commanding general of the UNIFIL forces and with the UN Secretary General:

"What I find totally baffling is the view of the UNIFIL commander General Beary," Haley told reporters, accusing him of ignoring Hezbollah's arms dumps.

"He seems to be the only person in south Lebanon who is blind. That's an embarrassing lack of understanding on what's going on around him," she said.

The UN and the Irish government gave full backing to General Beary. The Irish Independent noted:

Ms Haley said there was no shortage of evidence about the large caches of Hezbollah weapons buried in south Lebanon.

However, neither she nor the Israelis have produced any evidence to back up their claims.
…
General Beary said his troops had not come across any major weapons cache in the UNIFIL-controlled area. He said if there was hard evidence of a cache of weapons, his force would assist the Lebanese armed forces (LAF) in removing them.

UNIFIL's mandate is limited:

It is tasked with ensuring that the area between the so-called 'Blue Line' – separating Israel and Lebanon – and the Litani River is free of unauthorized weapons, personnel and assets. It also cooperates with the Lebanese Armed Forces so they can fulfil their security responsibilities.

UNIFIL does not have sovereign or executive rights. It is mostly restricted to reporting and depends on the government of Lebanon for further measures.

Nikki Haley was tasked to change that – and failed:

Cont. reading: Nikki Haley Fails In Amateurish Attempt To Change UNIFIL Mandate

Last week the Lebanese Army and Hizbullah defeated ISIS in the Lebanese-Syrian border area of Qalamun. A ceasefire was announced and a deal was made. Lebanon received the bodies of its army fighters earlier captured and killed by ISIS. The remaining ISIS fighter and their families would disarm and receive free passage to ISIS held areas in east Syria.

The U.S. has now launched a media campaign against this deal. The Iraqi government has joined in.

As noted in the last Syria Summary here:

In the Qalamun area at the Lebanese border the Lebanese army and Hizbullah attacked the last ISIS enclave along that border. Today the remaining 200 ISIS fighters in the area agreed to lay down arms in exchange for an evacuation towards east-Syria.

The later announced total of evacuees was higher with 308 ISIS fighters and about 500 of their relatives including kids. These are transported in 17 buses and several ambulances across Syria towards the Syrian city of Abu Kamal (Bukamal) at the Iraqi border.

The overall military motive is sound. In the end ISIS will be concentrated and surrounded in the desert along the Syrian-Iraqi border. Removing ISIS outposts throughout the country frees up lots of soldiers for the big fight. Its concentration in one place also allows to concentrate forces to fight it.  Just like al-Qaeda in Idleb governate ISIS will have no way out to leave and can be killed from the air and from the ground.

The U.S. military threatens to bomb the convoy:

Cont. reading: After Making Ceasefire Deal With ISIS U.S. Condemns Lebanon For Making Similar One

Some rain pours down on south Texas. Media panic ensues. Poor planing and building codes will take their toll.

More severe and more deadly flooding though is happening in Nepal, Bangladesh and India. People in those countries are the most affected by climate change.

But why not make a good business out of events in Houston and elsewhere. Sell the very same stuff that pours down, packed in a material which causes climate change, to the people fleeing its effects.

On offer at Best Buy on Highway 290 in Cypress, TX.

bigger – source

The use, waste and commodification of water is one of the biggest issues "western" societies need to tackle.

Here is serious evidence that the so called "Syrian rebels" systematically trained children to play "chemical attack" victims.

The evidence was found by Partisangirl who today tweeted:

Partisangirl 🇸🇾 @Partisangirl 11:20 PM – 27 Aug 2017

DAMNING VIDEO: Terrorists make #Syria-n children rehearse false flag chemical attack. youtu.be/S95bR1s_d0Y

Partisangirl links to a video on her videopage on Youtube. The annotations say:

Published on Aug 27, 2017

The original video was published in September 2013 on this channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_co… . This is a shortened version of that video. It shows children being instructed by terrorists to act like they have been hit with Sarin gas, they convulse, they're eyes blink and they froth at the mouth with fake foam applied to their faces by terrorists. A of children applaud. A man in a Mickey mouse costume tells them it's all fun.

Here is the screenshot of the original Youtube video page of اعلامي ريف دمشق:

bigger

A commentator remarked: "The headline for the video says: 'A children play, the chemical and the world' and that it was part of a children carnival organized by a group of volunteers."

(I have downloaded and saved the original full length (6:23m) video as well as the various screenshots below.)

Cont. reading: Syria – Rebel Trained Children Perform “Chemical Attack” (Video)

This map from the last Syria summary shows the forming of two cauldrons north and north-west of Palmyra. ISIS forces there were enclosed by the Syrian army progressing eastwards on several axes.

Map by Weekend Warrior – bigger

Ten days later the most eastward of those cauldrons has been eliminated.

Map by Islamic World News – bigger

The Syrian army progresses further east and continues to move onto Deir Ezzor on three axes.

ISIS attempted counterattacks towards the supply line to Aleppo and along the Euphrates southeast of Raqqa. Both were defeated within a day or two and the attacking ISIS forces were eliminated. There is clearly a change in the pattern of ISIS deployment. It is now lacking manpower and is giving up in outlining areas. Its counterattacks use swarming tactics and lack the command and force of monolithic military units. In Iraq the army and the popular militia units took just 10 days to liberate the ISIS held city of Tal Afar. Of the estimated 2,000 ISIS forces there only some 200 non-locals had remained. 1,800 had been evacuated towards east-Syria, In the Qalamun area at the Lebanese border the Lebanese army and Hizbullah attacked the last ISIS enclave along that border. Today the remaining 200 ISIS fighters in the area agreed to lay down arms in exchange for an evacuation towards east-Syria.

Cont. reading: Syria Summary – Towards The End Of The Caliphate

News & views …

A month ago we warned of the upcoming war on Venezuela. Such a war could blow up huge in many nations of the region.

The U.S. trained and financed opposition has tried to create violent chaos in the streets but failed to gain traction with the majority of the people. The only support it has inside the country is from the richer bourgeois in the major cities which despises the government's social justice program. Workers and farmers are better off under the social-democratic policies of first Hugo Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro. The coup attempt as step one of a U.S. takeover of Venezuela has failed.

Last month a new constitutional assembly was voted in and it is ready to defend the state. The opposition boycotted the election to the assembly but is now complaining that it has no seats in it. One of the assemblies first moves was to fire the renegade General Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz. She had condemned the government for its resistance to the coup attempts. She now has fled the country together with her husband. The Miami Herald admits that she is on the U.S. payroll:

Ortega, a longtime government insider who became chief prosecutor in 2007, is likely safeguarding some of the administration’s most damning legal secrets. And she’s thought to be working with U.S. law enforcement at a time when Washington is ratcheting up sanctions on Caracas.

Word is that Ortega's husband was blackmailed by the U.S. after he was involved in large illegal transactions.

U.S. President Trump threatened to use military force should the dully elected President Maduro not give up his position. The CIA head Pompeo recently visited countries neighboring Venezuela "trying to help them understand the things they might do". Did he suggest weapon supplies to some proxy forces or an outright invasion?

Today the Trump administration imposed severe sanctions on Venezuela:

The sanctions Trump signed by executive order prohibit financial institutions from providing new money to the government or state oil company PDVSA. It would also restrict PDVSA's U.S. subsidiary, Citgo, from sending dividends back to Venezuela as well as ban trading in two bonds the government recently issued to circumvent its increasing isolation from western financial markets.

Venezuela was prepared for at least some of these sanctions. A few moth ago the Russian oil giant Rosneft acquired a share of PDVSA and at least some oil sales are routed through that company:

Russian oil firm Rosneft has struck deals with several buyers for almost its entire quota of Venezuelan crude for the remainder of the year, traders told Reuters on Wednesday, the first time it has conducted such a large sale of the OPEC member’s oil.
…
Venezuela's oil deliveries to the United States have declined in recent years amid falling production, commercial issues, and sanctions on Venezuelan officials.

The White House statement calls Maduro a "dictator" and his Presidency "illegitimate". Both descriptions are laughable. Maduro was elected in free and fair elections. The former U.S. president Jimmy Carter called the election system in Venezuela the best in the world. The new sanctions will likely increase the support for the current government. 

The White House hinted at further economic measures:

In a call to brief reporters on the measures, the [senior Trump] official said the United States has significant influence over Venezuela's economy but does not want to wield it in an irresponsible manner that could further burden the already-struggling Venezuelan people.

Venezuela will now have some troubling times. But unless the U.S. launches an outright military attack on the country -by proxy of its neighbors, through mercenaries or by itself- the country will easily survive the unjust onslaught.

With 300 billion barrels the proven oil-reserves of Venezuela are the largest of the world. They are the reason why the U.S. wants to subjugate the country. But neither Russia nor China nor anyone else wants to see those reserves under U.S. control.

According to a 1950s political theory The Structure of Power in American Society is mainly build on three elite groups, the high military, the corporation executives and the political directorate. (The "political directorate" can best be described as the bureaucracy, the CIA and their proxies within Congress.)

On election day I noted that only the military had supported The Not-Hillary President. The corporate and executive corners of the triangle had pushed for Hillary Clinton and continued to do so even after Trump had won. (Only recently did the "collusion with Russia" nonsense suddenly die down.) I wrote:

The military will demand its due beyond the three generals now in Trump's cabinet.

That turned out to be right. A military junta is now ruling the United States:

Inside the White House, meanwhile, generals manage Trump’s hour-by-hour interactions and whisper in his ear — and those whispers, as with the decision this week to expand U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, often become policy.

At the core of Trump’s circle is a seasoned trio of generals with experience as battlefield commanders: White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. The three men have carefully cultivated personal relationships with the president and gained his trust.
…
Kelly, Mattis and McMaster are not the only military figures serving at high levels in the Trump administration. CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke each served in various branches of the military, and Trump recently tapped former Army general Mark S. Inch to lead the Federal Bureau of Prisons. […] the National Security Council [..] counts two other generals on the senior staff.

With the firing of the renegade Flynn and various other Trump advisors, the Junta has already removed all independent voices in the White House. It is now  attaching more control wires to its "salesperson" marionette:

The new system, laid out in two memos co-authored by [General] Kelly and Porter and distributed to Cabinet members and White House staffers in recent days, is designed to ensure that the president won’t see any external policy documents, internal policy memos, agency reports, and even news articles that haven’t been vetted.

Trump has a weakness for the military since he attended a New York military academy during his youth.

But he does not like to be controlled. I expect him to revolt one day. He will then find that it is too late and that he is actually powerless.

—

The Zionist propaganda is claiming that Iran is taking over Syria and that its sole concern is to create a land-corridor between Iran and Lebanon. The AP is now reporting this myth as if it were fact. The argument the AP writers make is illogical and fails:

The land-route would be the biggest prize yet for Iran in its involvement in Syria's six-year-old civil war. […] It would facilitate movement of Iranian-backed fighters between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as well as the flow of weapons to Damascus and Lebanon's Hezbollah, Iran's main proxy group.

That landline would facilitate something that, according to further AP "reporting", has already been achieved without it:

The route is largely being carved out by Iran's allies and proxies, a mix of forces including troops of Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hezbollah fighters and Shiite militias on both sides of the border aiming to link up. Iran also has forces of its own Revolutionary Guard directly involved in the campaign on the Syrian side.

So, apparently, Iran needs a land corridor to move weapons and fighters to Syria and Lebanon. To open that currently closed-off land corridor it has moved weapons and fighters to Syria and Lebanon. Somehow that argument is not convincing at all.

—

The usual NATO propaganda outlets are retching up fear over an upcoming Russian maneuver:

Russia is preparing to mount what could be one of its biggest military exercises since the cold war, a display of power that will be watched warily by Nato against a backdrop of east-west tensions.

Western officials and analysts estimate up to 100,000 military personnel and logistical support could participate in the Zapad (West) 17 exercise, which will take place next month in Belarus, Kaliningrad and Russia itself.

It follows a lot of speculation and obvious bullshit. In reality Zaphad is a series of smaller maneuvers taking place over some six month. It includes local police and civil defense agencies which lets the numbers look big. Each year such maneuvers take place in one of the four military districts of Russia. The number of soldiers at the core of the exercise will amount to about a division size force of 13,000-15,000 troops. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is unusual with that maneuver but the NATO propaganda attempts to make it look like an imminent Russian invasion of western Europe.

During the ramp up to new UN sanctions on North Korea the Trump administration threaten to sanction China if it would not commit to further pressure. Trade measures against China were held back while the discussions about the resolution were ongoing:

An opportunity to hit North Korea with new United Nations sanctions has sidelined President Donald Trump’s bid to punish China for its alleged unfair trade practice.
…
[O]n Thursday afternoon, senior administration aides postponed the announcement [of trade measures against China] at the urging of United Nations and State Department officials, who are in the sensitive final stages of convincing China to sign on to a U.N. resolution that would impose new sanctions on North Korea. U.N. and State Department officials warned that the trade announcement could kill their chances of winning Beijing’s buy-in, according to the officials.

Trump himself implied that he was willing to go for a quid pro quo:

While past presidents have tried at least ostensibly to keep security and economic issues on separate tracks in their dealings with China, Mr. Trump has explicitly linked the two, suggesting he would back off from a trade war against Beijing if it does more to pressure North Korea. “If China helps us, I feel a lot differently toward trade, a lot differently toward trade,” he told reporters…

A deal was made and the UN Resolution 2371 passed. China immediately implemented the relevant measures:

In an unprecedented move against North Korea, China on Monday issued an order to carry out the United Nations sanctions imposed on the rogue regime earlier this month.

China did its part of the deal. It helped pass the UN resolution against North Korea and it immediately implemented it even while that causes a significant loss for Chinese companies which trade with North Korea.

Now Trump is back at sanctioning Chinese (and Russian) companies:

The Trump administration on Tuesday imposed sanctions on 16 mainly Chinese and Russian companies and people for assisting North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and helping the North make money to support those programs.
…
Among those sanctioned are six Chinese companies, including three coal companies; two Singapore-based companies that sell oil to North Korea and three Russians that work with them; a Russian company that deals in North Korean metals and its Russian director; a construction company based in Namibia; a second Namibia-based company, and its North Korean director, that supplies North Korean workers to build statues overseas to generate income for the North.

These are "secondary sanctions" which block  financial transactions and make it nearly impossible for those companies and people to run an international business. Moreover – China had already banned all coal imports from North Korea. It had sent back North Korean coal ships and instead bought coal from the United States. Now Chinese companies get sanctioned over North Korean coal they no longer buy? Furthermore selling fuel oil to North Korea is explicitly allowed under the new UN sanctions. There is no reason to sanction any company over it.

The Chinese feel cheated:

Reuters World @ReutersWorld – 7:12pm · 22 Aug 2017

JUST IN: China urges U.S. to 'immediately correct its mistake' of sanctioning Chinese firms over North Korea – embassy spokesman

If the Trump administration insist of holding up these sanction China and Russia will obviously become negligent in controlling the sanctions imposed on North Korea. Why should they hold to their side of the deal, at great costs, when the U.S. does not hold up its side?

They will also stop at making any further deals with the Trump administration. It has now proven to be just as lying and cheating as the Obama administration has been. The U.S. can forget about ANY further action or sanctions at the UN.

This as extremely shortsighted and stupid way of handling international relations.

How does the U.S. hope to win anything in the long run when it behaves in such untrustworthy ways?

Updated below
—

This evening Trump will announce a new "path forward" in the occupation of Afghanistan. According to the usual leaks it will be very same path the U.S. has taken for 16 years.

Several thousands soldiers from the U.S. and various NATO countries will (in vane) train the Afghan army. Special Forces and CIA goons will raid this or that family compound on someone's say-so. Bombs will be dropped on whatever is considered a target.

Trump will announce that 1,000 or so troops will be added to the current contingent. About 15,000 foreign troops will be in Afghanistan. About three contractors per each soldier will be additionally deployed.

Trump knows that this "path forward" is nonsense that leads nowhere, that the best option for all foreign troops in Afghanistan is to simply leave:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump – 21 Nov 2013

We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Their government has zero appreciation. Let's get out!

But neither the military nor the CIA nor the local Afghan government will let the U.S. leave. Fear mongering is abound: "What happens if Afghanistan becomes a hotbed for international terrorists?" But few if any international terrorist incident in the "west" were ever organized in Afghanistan. In all recent incidents the culprits were locals.

For the military it is all about optics. The generals do not want to concede that they lost another war. The CIA wants to keep is militarized forces and drones which it justifies through its engagement in Afghanistan. The drug production in Afghanistan, which the U.S. never really tried to suppress, is rumored to finance "black" CIA operations just like it did during the Vietnam war and throughout various South American conflicts. The members of the Afghan government all live off U.S. largess. The war in Afghanistan is a racket paid for with the lives of countless Afghans and U.S. taxpayer money.

Now tightly under control of neo-conservative leaning generals Trump had little chance to make a different decision. He had asked his team for alternatives but none were given to him:

The president told McMaster “to go back to the drawing board,” the official said. “But he just kept coming back with the same thing.”

Trump's former strategic advisor Steve Bannon promoted an idea of Eric Prince, a shady provider of international mercenaries. Afghanistan would be given to a private for-profit entity comparable to the Brutish East-India Company. That company, with its own large army, robbed India of all possible valuables and nearly became a state of its own. But Prince and Bannon forgot to tell the end of that company's story. It came down after a large mutiny in India defeated its armed forces and had to be bailed out by the government. The end state of an East India Company like entity in Afghanistan would the same as it is now.

Then there is the fairy tale of the mineral rich Afghanistan. $1 trillion of iron, copper, rare-metals and other nice stuff could be picked out of the ground. But in reality the costs of picking minerals in Afghanistan is, for various reasons, prohibitive.

The Bannon/Prince plan was lunatic but it was at least somewhat different than the never changing ideas of the military:

The Defense Secretary [Mattis] has been using this line in meetings: "Mr. President, we haven't fought a 16-year war so much as we have fought a one-year war, 16 times."

That line has already been used five years ago to describe the war on Afghanistan. (It originally describes the 10 year war in Vietnam.) Mattis did not explain why or how that repetitive one year rhythm would now change.

A "new" part of the plan is to put pressure on Pakistan to stop the financing and supplying of Taliban groups. That is not in Pakistan's interest and is not going to happen. The Trump administration wants to hold back the yearly cash payment to the Pakistani military. This has been tried before and the Pakistani response was to close down the U.S. supply route to Afghanistan. An alternative supply route through Russia had been developed but has now been shut down over U.S. hostilities towards that country. The U.S. can not sustain a deployment in Afghanistan without a sea-land route into the country.

The Afghan army is, like the government, utterly corrupt and filled with people who do not want to engage in fighting. More "training" will not change that. The U.S. proxy government is limited to a few larger cities. It claims to control many districts but its forces are often constricted to central compounds while the Taliban rule the countryside. In total the Taliban and associated local war lords hold more than half of the country and continue to gain support. The alleged ISIS derivative in Afghanistan was originally formed out of Pakistani Taliban by the Afghan National Directorate of Security which is under the control of the CIA:

In Nangarhar, over a year ago, the vanguard of the movement was a group of Pakistani militants who had lived there for years as ‘guests’ of the Afghan government and local people. While initially avoiding attacks on Afghan forces, they made their new allegiances known by attacking the Taleban and taking their territory.

ISIS in Afghanistan, founded as an anti-Taliban force, is just another form of the usual Afghan warlordism.

During 16 years the U.S. failed to set a realistic strategic aim for the occupation of Afghanistan. It still has none. Without political aim the military is deployed in tactical engagements that make no long lasting differences. Any attempts to negotiate some peace in Afghanistan requires extensive engagement with the Taliban, Pakistan, China, Russia and Iran. No one in Washington is willing to commit to that.

Trump's likely decision means that the story of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will continue throughout the next years exactly as it happened during the last 16 years. The decision, once made, is unlikely to change until the next presidential election. The 16 one-year-wars in Afghanistan will become 20 one-year-wars for no perceivable gain.

The only conceivable event that could change the situation is an incident with a large number of U.S. military casualties. That could lead to a groundswell of anti-war sentiment which could press Congress into legislating an end of the war. But are the Taliban interested in achieving that?

Update (Aug 22 2017):

Trump announced exactly what we predicted above. The military dictated the plan to him just like it did to Obama. Here is the transcript of Trump's speech. It is no different form the one Obama held in 2009: Undefined aims, undefined troop numbers, undefined time limits – bashing Pakistan (which will bash back) and no new idea at all. As long as the U.S. does not pull out the war will continue without any end in sight:

TOLOnews @TOLOnews – 4:43 AM – 22 Aug 2017

Taliban respond to US President #Trump’s announcement, claim to continue fighting “as long as US troops remain in #Afghanistan".

News & views …

“The Trump presidency that we fought for, and won, is over,” Bannon said Friday, shortly after confirming his departure. “We still have a huge movement, and we will make something of this Trump presidency. But that presidency is over.”

Bannon was the "Make America Great Again" guy in the White House. The strategist who had the populist ideas that brought the votes for Trump. Jobs, jobs, jobs,  infrastructure investments, immigration limits, taxing globalists were his issue.

Dropping the pilot – Punch 1890

Trump is no young German Emperor and Bannon is no chancellor Bismark. (Both would probably have liked those roles.) But with Bannon leaving, the Trump presidency is losing its chief strategist, the one person which set priorities and could set an alternative course for the ship of state under Trump's command.

The racist Huffington Post headline implies that Bannon prioritized the wrong country.

Cont. reading: Ship Rudderless After Trump Drops Its Pilot

The last three weeks in Syria were marked by further consolidation of the Syrian government positions. While this will likely continue, a new front of contention with the U.S. occupation force in north-east Syria is building up over Deir Ezzor city and the oil-rich rural areas east of it.

Map by Weekend Warrior – bigger

Last week the Syrian army liberated Sukhnah east of Palmyra from the Islamic State occupation. The fighting was less severe than anticipated. After nearly surrounding the city and the killing of the local ISIS commander the enemy forces mostly fled towards the Euphrates and Deir Ezzor.

Two large ISIS held pockets are forming in the east-Hama area. The 3,000 square-kilometer western encirclement is by now complete and remaining ISIS forces within the pocket are hunted down by Russian helicopters and Syrian army commandos. This will eliminate any danger for the narrow supply route to Aleppo city. The second pocket will soon close too. Within the next week the Syrian army will have consolidated the whole area. Troops currently concerned with surrounding the pockets will be freed for the push further east towards Deir Ezzor. There will be no more danger of large surprise attacks in the back of advancing forces.

One such attack recently overran a desert outpost and killed 18 fighters from an Iran-supported group on the Syrian government side. These lost units were replaced by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The injection of IRGC units is a new phenomenon. So far IRGC involvement was restricted to commanders of irregular units recruited from Iraq or Afghanistan or as advisors to Syrian army units, While Iran adds forces to the Syrian government side the Lebanese Hizbullah has reportedly reduced its involvement from a peak 20,000 forces to about 5,000. This was possible after several "rebel" held areas in west-Syria and near the Lebanese border were pacified and consolidated. The only area in the western part of Syria with active fighting is now the east-Ghouta enclave to the east of Damascus. A mix of fighters from al-Qaeda (Jabhat al-Nusra) and Salafists of the Faylaq Al-Rahman continued to reject ceasefire offers. After increasing losses over the past weeks and a difficult supply situation Faylaq Al-Rahman today gave up its resistance. It is only a question of time until the al-Qaeda elements will also agree to give up their fight and accept offers for an evacuation to Idleb province.

After the total defeat of Ahrar al-Sham Salafist groups Idleb has become the al-Qaeda refuge and stronghold in Syria. Turkey has limited supplies to the area to humanitarian goods and infighting between various local groups and al-Qaeda is causing daily carnage. For now no party – Syria, Turkey or the U.S. and its Kurdish proxies – is interested in the costly venture of liberating the area. It will be left to rot until spring.

Strategically the U.S. has lost the war it waged against Syria. All that is left is to defeat ISIS at Raqqa and to leave. But the imperial U.S. military, the neoconservatives and the liberal interventionists will not be happy with that outcome. They attempt to resist the inevitable.

Cont. reading: Syria Summary – Crossing The Euphrates At Deir Ezzor

Updated below (Aug 19 2017)

The Democrats and the media love the Pentagon generals in the White House. They are the "grown ups":

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., had words of praise for Donald Trump's new pick for national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster — calling the respected military officer a "certified, card-carrying grown-up,"

According to the main-stream narrative the "grown ups" are opposed by "ideologues" around Trump's senior advisor Steve Bannon. Bannon is even infectious, according to Jeet Heer, as he is Turning Trump Into an Ethno-Nationalist Ideologue. A recent short interview with Bannon dispels that narrative.

Who is really the sane person on, say, North Korea?

The "grown-up" General McMaster, Trump's National Security Advisor, is not one of them. He claims North Korea is not deterrable from doing something insane.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But your predecessor Susan Rice wrote this week that the U.S. could tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea the same way we tolerated nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union far more during the Cold War. Is she right?

MCMASTER: No, she’s not right. And I think the reason she’s not right is that the classical deterrence theory, how does that apply to a regime like the regime in North Korea? A regime that engages in unspeakable brutality against its own people? A regime that poses a continuous threat to the its neighbors in the region and now may pose a threat, direct threat, to the United States with weapons of mass destruction?

McMaster's was spewing nonsense. The same was said about the Soviet Union and China when they became nuclear weapons states. North Korea just became one. Conventional deterrence of both sides has worked with North Korea for decades. Nuclear deterrence with North Korea will work just as well as it did with the Soviet and Chinese communists. If North Korea were really not deterrable the U.S. should have nuked it yesterday to minimize the overall risk and damage. It is the McMaster position that is ideological and not rational or "grown up" at all.

Compare that to Steve Bannon's take on the issue:

“There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”

It was indeed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which "got" the United States and stopped the U.S. escalation game. It is wrong to think that North Korea "backed off" in the recent upheaval about a missile test targeted next to Guam. It was the U.S. that pulled back from threatening behavior.

Since the end of May the U.S. military trained extensively for decapitation and "preemptive" strikes on North Korea:

Two senior military officials — and two senior retired officers — told NBC News that key to the plan would be a B-1B heavy bomber attack originating from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam.
…
Of the 11 B-1 practice runs since the end of May, four have also involved practice bombing at military ranges in South Korea and Australia.

In response to the B-1B flights North Korea published plans to launch a missile salvo next to the U.S. island of Guam from where those planes started. The announcement included a hidden offer to stop the test if the U.S. would refrain from further B-1B flights. A deal was made during secret negotiations. Since then no more B-1B flights took place and North Korea suspended its Guam test plans. McMaster lost and the sane people, including Steve Bannon, won.

But what about Bannon's "ethno-nationalist" ideology? Isn't he responsible for the right-wing nutters of Charlottesville conflict? Isn't he one of them?

He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “Ethno-nationalism—it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”

“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

Bannon sees China as an economic enemy and wants to escalate an economic conflict with it. He is said to be against the nuclear deal with Iran. The generals in Trump's cabinet are all anti-Iran hawks. As Bannon now turns out to be a realist on North Korea, I am not sure what real position on Iran is.

Domestically Bannon is pulling the Democrats into the very trap I had several times warned against:

“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

This worked well during the presidential election and might continue to work for Trump. As long as the Democrats do not come up with, and fight for, sane economic polices they will continue to lose elections. The people are not interested in LGBT access to this or that bathroom. They are interested in universal healthcare, in personal and economic security. They are unlikely to get such under Bannon and Trump.  But, unlike the Democrats, the current White House crew at least claim to have plans to achieve it.

Update (Aug 19 2017)

UPI reports:

Strategic assets of the U.S. military, including an aircraft carrier and a nuclear-powered submarine, may not be deployed during the upcoming joint exercises on the Korean peninsula.

South Korean television network SBS reported Friday the United States canceled plans to deploy the strategic assets during the drill set to begin next week, and the move is taking place a week after tensions spiked between Washington and Pyongyang.
…
The exercises known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian came under verbal attack from North Korea this week, when Pyongyang warned of a "second Korean War" should Seoul and Washington go ahead with the drills.

After a week of high tensions, Pyongyang also stated leader Kim Jong Un would "monitor" the United States before taking unprecedented measures against Guam, the location of a key U.S. air force base.

The U.S. not only held back the B-1B flights out of Guam but also scaled back on other strategic assets in its yearly training for a war on North Korea. The investment North Korea made with its nuclear and missile weapons is paying off.

In the aftermath of competing protests in Charlottesville a wave of dismantling of Confederate statues is on the rise. Overnight Baltimore took down four Confederate statues. One of these honored Confederate soldiers and sailors, another one Confederate women. Elsewhere statues were toppled or defiled.

The Charlottesville conflict itself was about the intent to dismantle a statue of General Robert E. Lee, a commander of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The activist part of the political right protested against the take down, the activist part of the political left protested against those protests. According to a number of witnesses quoted in the LA Times sub-groups on both sides came prepared for and readily engaged in violence.

In 2003 a U.S. military tank pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein on Firdos Square in Baghdad. Narrowly shot TV picture made it look as if a group of Iraqis were doing this. But they were mere actors within a U.S. propaganda show. Pulling down the statue demonstrated a lack of respect towards those who had fought under, worked for or somewhat supported Saddam Hussein. It helped to incite the resistance against the U.S. occupation.

The right-wing nutters who, under U.S. direction, forcefully toppled the legitimate government of Ukraine pulled down hundreds of the remaining Lenin statues in the country. Veterans who fought under the Soviets in the second world war took this as a sign of disrespect. Others saw this as an attack on their fond memories of better times and protected them. The forceful erasement of history further split the country:

“It’s not like if you go east they want Lenin but if you go west they want to destroy him,” Mr. Gobert said. “These differences don’t only go through geography, they go through generations, through social criteria and economic criteria, through the urban and the rural.”

Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or group. They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories:

“One guy said he didn’t really care about Lenin, but the statue was at the center of the village and it was the place he kissed his wife for the first time,” Mr. Gobert said. “When the statue went down it was part of his personal history that went away.”

(People had better sex under socialism. Does not Lenin deserves statues if only for helping that along?)

Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery. But there are few historic figures without fail. Did not George Washington "own" slaves? Did not Lyndon B. Johnson lie about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and launched an unjust huge war against non-white people under false pretense? At least some people will think of that when they see their statues. Should those also be taken down?

As time passes the meaning of a monument changes. While it may have been erected with a certain ideology or concept in mind, the view on it will change over time:

[The Charlottesville statue] was unveiled by Lee’s great-granddaughter at a ceremony in May 1924. As was the custom on these occasions it was accompanied by a parade and speeches. In the dedication address, Lee was celebrated as a hero, who embodied “the moral greatness of the Old South”, and as a proponent of reconciliation between the two sections. The war itself was remembered as a conflict between “interpretations of our Constitution” and between “ideals of democracy.”

The white racists who came to "protect" the statue in Charlottesville will hardly have done so in the name of reconciliation. Nor will those who had come to violently oppose them. Lee was a racist. Those who came to "defend" the statue were mostly "white supremacy" racists. I am all for protesting against them.

But the issue here is bigger. We must not forget that statues have multiple meanings and messages. Lee was also the man who wrote:

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down. The park in Charlottesville, in which the statue stands, was recently renamed from Lee Park into Emancipation Park. It makes sense to keep the statue there to reflect on the contrast between it and the new park name. 

Old monuments and statues must not (only) be seen as glorifications within their time. They are reminders of history. With a bit of education they can become valuable occasions of reflection.

George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” People do not want to be destroyed. They will fight against attempts to do so. Taking down monuments or statues without a very wide consent will split a society. A large part of the U.S. people voted for Trump. One gets the impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved "punishment" for those who voted wrongly – i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump voters will dislike statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign to take them down even more. 

That may be the intend of some people behind the current quarrel. The radicalization on opposing sides may have a purpose. The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further disenfranchise they people. The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans.

Anyone who wants to stoke the fires with this issue should be careful what they wish for.

Since Trump issued "fire and fury" threats against North Korea (the DPRK), sanity has taken over among serious people. The talk of preventive strikes on North Korea within the expert community has largely ended. It was never a seriously possibility. North Korea has many options to retaliate to any strike and all would come with catastrophic damage to South Korea and Japan and thereby to U.S. interests in Asia.

North Korea can be successfully deterred in the same way that all other nuclear weapon states are deterred from using their weapons. Unfortunately the National Security Advisor McMaster has not yet received that message:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But your predecessor Susan Rice wrote this week that the U.S. could tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea the same way we tolerated nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union far more during the Cold War. Is she right?

MCMASTER: No, she’s not right. And I think the reason she’s not right is that the classical deterrence theory, how does that apply to a regime like the regime in North Korea? A regime that engages in unspeakable brutality against its own people? A regime that poses a continuous threat to the its neighbors in the region and now may pose a threat, direct threat, to the United States with weapons of mass destruction? A regime that imprisons and murders anyone who seems to oppose that regime, including members of his own family, using sarin nerve gase (sic) — gas in a public airport?

Classical deterrence worked against the Soviet Union as well as against Mao's China. (Vice versa it also worked against the United States.) Both were arguably, like North Korea, brutal against internal dissidents, threatening to their neighbors and military opponents of the United States. If they could be deterred than North Korea can also be deterred.

To set the Trump crew straight. China re-issued its guarantee for North Korea's security. The Global Times, a party owned but unofficial mouthpiece, wrote in an editorial:

"China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten U.S. soil first and the U.S. retaliates, China will stay neutral," [..].

"If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so."

Any unprovoked war against North Korea would thereby escalate into a war with China and no one is seriously interested in that adventure. The only reasonable course is to negotiate some new level of balance between North Korean and U.S. interests.

The U.S. continues to run large scale maneuver together in South Korea and to fly nuclear capable strategic bombers near the North Korean borders. These actions necessitate that North Korea's military stays in expensive high alert against potential surprises. One aim of North Korea's nuclear armament is to lessen the necessity for such conventional preparedness.

North Korea has offered several times to stop all missile and nuclear testing if the U.S. stops its large maneuvers near its borders. The Trump administration rejected that offer but North Korea increased the pressure with its recent tests.

Last week North Korea again offered to decrease its own actions if the U.S. stops some of its provocations. It announced a possible test of four missiles targeted into the vicinity of the U.S. base on Guam. The strategic U.S. bombers flying near North Korea usually take off from Guam. Few noticed that the announcement was conditional and came with an offer:

Cont. reading: Hyping North Korea To Relaunch Reagan’s Star Wars?

U.S. "liberals" cuddle fascists and right-wing religious extremists in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela and elsewhere.

But when similar movements appear on their own streets they are outraged.

The person in the center on the above picture drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters in Charlottesville killing one and wounding several.

Politicians and media hail such persons when they appear, often hired by the CIA, to overthrow the government of some foreign country. They condemn the same mindset and actions at home. But glorification of right-wing violence elsewhere hands justification to right-wing groups at home.

Cont. reading: Charlottesville: What You Wish Upon Others, You Wish Upon Yourself

Shireen Al-Adeimi (@shireen818) was born in Aden, south Yemen. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The text below was copied from Shireen Al-Adeimi's Twitter thread published on August 11 2017.

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Has the war in Yemen become a spectator sport?

My thread may be long, but I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read it.

The war on Yemen rages, yet, Yemenis' plight is STILL not receiving the attention it deserves – not from the media, nor from politicians. When Yemen's not totally ignored, facts are obscured because confronting our countries' active participation in destroying Yemen is inconvenient. While rich Arab states bombard Yemen with fancy (Western-purchased) weapons and hire mercenaries as ground troops, many are afraid to confront the Saudis and face financial consequences (e.g. the UN) or are themselves implicated and/or profiteering (e.g. the U.S./UK). So United Nations offers "concerns” and UK expresses its desire to "find a political solution" while they fill their pockets at the expense of Yemeni lives. And while citizens are often oblivious to their governments' crimes, many know about #Yemen but are not doing enough with this knowledge.

Has Yemen become a spectator sport? For two and a half years, Yemeni children’s dead or emaciated bodies have been splattered all across our screens. Some shed tears, others donate, few hold politicians accountable, but most just turn away. Is it helplessness or indifference? I can't tell. Yemenis are not knocking on Europe’s door because we are trapped by a land/air/sea blockade. Are we 'out of sight out of mind'? I can’t tell. Someone once told me Yemeni children are not ‘photogenic’ enough to draw emphatic responses. Is racism/discrimination at play? I can’t tell. Or are Yemeni wallets not heavy enough to purchase or at least demand international attention, condemnation, and action? I also can’t tell.

What I can tell is that the world is watching. They watch our kids die of curable diseases like cholera because they have no access clean water. They watch our children die of hunger in a time of immense global wealth because their parents can not afford what little food is available. They watch as our children, women and men are killed by U.S.-supported, Saudi airstrikes that target homes, schools, and hospitals alike. When people are asked to engage with elected officials (even by simply signing a petition like: Save Yemen) only a few engage. Even when we ask for our stories to be shared with wider audiences, we're ignored (I was told that readership on Yemen news is in the tens).

I and other Yemenis not only have our families in mind, but millions who ca not access the most basic of needs: safety, shelter, food, and water. I feel totally and utterly helpless. I struggle with sharing stories of dying Yemeni children when I know that no one will come to their rescue. I cry, from the depths of my soul, for a nation that suffers in silence all the while exemplifying the true meaning of faith and resistance. I mourn the children whose little bodies gave up fighting in the time it took you to read this thread. And I pray for Yemen.

Earlier Moon of Alabama coverage of Yemen:

• Its Foreign Greed And Delusion That Kills Yemeni Children – Feb 09
• Which "War Torn" Country? – U.S. Slaughter In Somalia, Yemen And Syria – March 17
• U.S. To Escalate Its Two Years War On Starving Yemen – March 27
• "If You Take East-Syria, I'll Take That Yemeni Port" – April 29
• Yemeni Forces Create Heat Wave In Saudi Arabia – July 24

News & views …

Russia is BAD we are told on a daily base. It is hacking U.S. elections it is claimed, even when the evidence says it did not do so. The public is only mildly convinced by the anti-Russian propaganda campaign.

The attempt of the borg to reignite a cold war and to vilify Russia is hampered by that fact that Russia is no longer an ideological enemy of the "west". Russia is no longer communist and there are no soviets ruling it. Today's Russia is indeed capitalist and even neo-liberal.

The new way to vilify Russia must then proceed on a different route. "Yes, Russia is capitalist, but it is capitalist in a bad way." Thus we get this NYT headline and story: Russia Wants Innovation, but It’s Arresting Its Innovators:

AKADEMGORODOK, Russia — Dmitri Trubitsyn is a young physicist-entrepreneur with a patriotic reputation, seen in this part of Siberia as an exemplar of the talents, dedication and enterprise that President Vladimir V. Putin has hailed as vital for Russia’s future economic health.

Yet Mr. Trubitsyn faces up to eight years in jail after a recent raid on his home and office here in Akademgorodok, a Soviet-era sanctuary of scientific research that was supposed to showcase how Mr. Putin’s Russia can harness its abundance of talent to create a modern economy.

A court last Thursday extended Mr. Trubitsyn’s house arrest until at least October, which bars him from leaving his apartment or communicating with anyone other than his immediate family.

Noticed how bad Putin is? How very authoritarian his government thugs are? They even arrest an "entrepreneur with a patriotic reputation"!

But why is the man in front of a court?

Mr. Trubitsyn, 36, whose company, Tion, manufactures high-tech air-purification systems for homes and hospitals, is accused of risking the lives of hospital patients, and trying to lift profits, by upgrading the purifiers so they would consume less electricity.

Most important, he is accused of doing this without state regulators certifying the changes.

"Upgrading" something so "it consumes less electricity" is of course good. We all know this.

Ten paragraphs follow to further convince us that the guy is really on the good side and that Putin led Russia is bad, bad, bad.

Only then do we learn what Trubitsyn's company really did:

[Chief technical officer] Amelkin said the company was approached by the regulatory agency and said that it had changed its design and removed a supplementary filtering device that laboratory tests had shown was redundant and wasted electricity. The company then amended its registration documents and thought the matter was over, Mr. Amelkin said.

So here is what really happened. The company produces licensed medical filter equipment. It eliminated one stage of the expensive filters and sold the degraded equipment without telling anyone about the change.

Yes, the modified equipment does "consume less electricity". It does so because it filters less than it is supposed to do. The degraded and cheaper produced medical product was sold without a valid license. Finally some of the companies competitors noticed this and informed the regulators about the dangerous fraud. The "Innovator" CEO of the company was arrested for fraud and will have to go to jail.

That all seems very normal to me and the way product regulation should work. When some German car manufacturers cheated with diesel emission tests their U.S. competitors complained and the regulator put some company officials to jail. That was lauded, even in the NYT, as good regulation. But when Russia does the very same it is defamed as stifling innovation.

Propaganda works. The author of the NYT piece managed to convince his readers. Of the current 29 "Reader recommended" comments 28 are negative towards Russia. Only one commentator, from Vancouver, points out that the system worked as it is supposed to work everywhere. That the company was penalized for a fraudulent product and the responsible manager punished.

One wonders how the author of the piece, and his Russia bashing readers, would feel about insufficiently filtered air when they lie in intensive care.