RUTHFULLY YOURS

We do not know just who detonated the two bombs that killed 95 Kurdish and allied activists in Ankara Saturday, but the least likely conjecture is that President Erdogan’s government is guiltless in the matter. As Turkish member of parliamentLutfu Turkkan, tweeted after the bombing, the attack “was either a failure by the intelligence service, or it was done by the intelligence service.”

Betrayed by both the United States and Russia, and faced with the emergence of a Kurdish state on its borders and the rise of Kurdish parties in the parliamentary opposition, Erdogan is cornered. At risk in the short-term is the ability of his AKP party to govern after the upcoming November elections. At risk in the medium term is the cohesion of the Turkish state itself.

China has completed the construction of two lighthouses in the disputed South China Sea, the official Xinhua news agency reported, as tensions in the region mount over Beijing’s maritime ambitions.
A completion ceremony was held for the lighthouses on Cuateron Reef and Johnson South Reef in the Spratly islands, Xinhua said late on Friday. The United States and the Philippines have opposed the construction.

China claims most of the energy-rich South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year, and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.
China said on Friday it would not stand for violations of its territorial waters in the name of freedom of navigation, as the United States considers sailing warships to waters inside the 12-nautical-mile zones around islands it has built in the Spratly chain.

“After his speech, thousands of soldiers held up colored cards to spell out “Songun politics” and “Defending our homeland.”
“Our revolutionary force is ready to respond to any kind of war the American imperialists want.”

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un declared Saturday that his country was ready to stand up to any threat posed by the United States as he spoke at a lavish military parade to mark the 70th anniversary of the North’s ruling party and trumpet his third-generation leadership.
The parade, which featured thousands of goose-stepping soldiers and military hardware including missiles and drones mounted on trucks, kicked off what is expected to be one of the North’s biggest celebrations ever — an attention-getting event that is the government’s way of showing the world and its own people that the Kim dynasty is firmly in control and its military a power to be reckoned with.
Kim, clad in black, walked down a red carpet and saluted his honor guard. He then walked up to a podium and waved to the troops taking part in the parade in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung Square. Visiting Chinese official Liu Yunshan stood clapping to Kim’s left, with senior North Korean officials on Kim’s right. Kim smiled as he spoke with Liu through an interpreter.

Kim then delivered a speech in which he said North Korea would stand up to the U.S., issuing the type of fiery rhetoric that is commonly used by the North.
“Our revolutionary force is ready to respond to any kind of war the American imperialists want,” said Kim, whose speech was interrupted by applause several times.
“Through the line of Songun (military-first) politics, our Korean People’s Army has become the strongest revolutionary force and our country has become an impenetrable fortress and a global military power,” he said.

The man who failed at revolution is now seen as a revolutionary icon!
Che Guevarra was captured and executed 48 years ago.

As Humberto Fontova wrote, Che’s revolution had been floundering down in Bolivia. He was a beaten man by the time that they caught up with him:

Had Ernesto Guevara not linked up with Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico city that fateful summer of 1955 – had he not linked up with a Cuban exile named Nico Lopez in Guatemala the year before who later introduced him to Raul and Fidel Castro in Mexico city – everything points to Ernesto continuing his life of a traveling hobo, panhandling, mooching off women, staying in flophouses and scribbling unreadable poetry.

Although a fixture on modern college campuses, Che was no hero. It is thus fitting that when death came for him, on Oct. 8 1967, Che went not with a bang but with a whimper. “Don’t shoot!” I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” he pleaded when approached by two Bolivian soldiers, dropping the fully loaded weapons he had not hesitated to discharge against unarmed victims. To the very end, Che Guevara remained a coward.

We will never know for sure why Che ended up in Bolivia. Maybe someday Fidel and Raul Castro will clear it up in a memoir.

Syrian rebels with ties to al-Qaida are crediting a recent military victory to American missiles which were supposed to aid “moderate” forces fighting dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Anti-tank TOW missiles gave the rebels a vital edge in fighting in the Syrian city of Idlib and surrounding areas during the past six months.
“Nobody can deny the big effectiveness of the TOW missiles on the ground. These missiles are one of the main factors that led to the successes of the rebels,” former Syrian army colonel Ahmed Al Soud, who works with a battalion of the free Syrian army, told a pro-rebel news outlet.
On Sept. 9, a coalition of Islamic Jihadi groups led by the Al Nusra Front and calling itself the Army of Conquest, crowned themselves victorious and the rulers of the city. Al Nusra is al-Qaida’s official branch in Syria.

The Russian military intervention in Syria, and the creation of a new regional alliance which includes Iran and Iraq, removes one undesirable outcome from the complex equation. The collapse of the government in Damascus, and its replacement by some form of jihadist-dominated Sharia regime which would spell the end of the non-Sunni minorities (including Christians), is no longer on the cards.

It does not herald the advent of a new era of moderation and realism among the key players, however, which would lead to a political settlement in the near future. Even if Moscow and Washington could agree on the broad outline of a new political framework—from which the old upfront demand for Bashar al-Assad’s immediate ouster would be removed—it is doubtful that they could impose on their regional allies a blueprint which is at odds with their strategic ambitions. Those ambitions remain fundamentally incompatible.

In the “American” camp, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Oman would be loath to accept the end of their plan to turn Syria into a permanent Sunni Muslim wedge dividing what they see as a putative Shiite-dominated crescent extending from Iran across Iraq and Syria into northern Lebanon. For all of them the issue is eminently geopolitical, and it is not at all compatible with the stated primary U.S. objective of defeating ISIS (the rhetoric of removing “Assad’s murderous regime” notwithstanding). They do not care who does the stopping.

The Russian state-controlled propaganda machine has been working around the clock to promote the success of Russia’s aerial bombing campaign in Syria, which began on September 30, to a reluctant domestic public. According to the independent pollster Levada-Tsenter, the propaganda has been effective: Over 70 percent of the Russian population supports the bombing of Islamic State (IS—also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS) targets in Syria; and about half believe Russia must support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against the IS and the Syrian opposition. At the same time, half of the Russian population fears Syria may turn into a “new Afghanistan”—a costly and deadly long-term commitment that may end in defeat and humiliation, like the Soviet Afghan invasion in the 1980s, which lasted almost ten years and is still remembered with dread (Interfax, October 8).

The Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) daily briefings in Moscow show footage of airstrikes, allegedly killing “ISIS terrorists” in droves and destroying their weapons and infrastructure. The Russian defense and foreign ministries have been adamantly denying as “information warfare” claims that Russian bombs are mostly hitting not the IS, but the Syrian opposition and the civilian population. Foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called on the United States to use a channel of communication between the Pentagon and the Russian MoD to clarify reports of alleged attacks on the Syrian opposition and resolve disagreements, instead of going public and discussing differences in the press (Kommersant, October 6)

WASHINGTON — As many as four of the 26 long-range cruise missiles that Russia said it fired at Syrian targets landed instead in Iran, U.S. defense officials said Thursday.

The officials said it’s unclear whether the errant missiles, launched from Russian ships in the Caspian Sea, caused any significant damage in Iran. Both the Russian government and state-run Iranian media accused the United States of inaccurate or deliberately deceptive statements.

Three U.S. officials said four missiles went off course. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Russian line is that they’re in Syria to fight ISIS. But the Russians, like the Turks, Iranians and Europeans, don’t care about ISIS. By declaring itself a Caliphate, ISIS made itself non-aligned. The fighting in Syria isn’t about ISIS. It predated the rise of ISIS as a major player. It’s about Syria.

ISIS has become a convenient excuse for converging on Syria. But no one is there because of ISIS.

The Turks are bombing Syria for their old hobby of killing Kurds. Turkey will occasionally bomb supposed ISIS targets for propaganda purposes, but mostly its air force bombs the Kurdish enemies of ISIS. Russia will do the same thing, hitting ISIS for propaganda purposes, but focusing on Sunni anti-Assad groups.

Pravda is the most abused word in the Russian language. Though it means “truth,” we learned it as the name of a Soviet-era, government-controlled newspaper that printed everything except the truth. That same newspaper has returned to its old habits, telling the world that President Vladimir Putin is taking over the war against terrorism that President Obama has abandoned.

It doesn’t take much to parse this one out. Mr. Putin’s direct military intervention in the Syrian conflict is: (a) undertaken to defend the Bashar Assad regime, which we have declared a state sponsor of terrorism since 1979 when Bashar’s daddy ran the show; (b) in partnership with Iran’s kakistocracy, which is the most powerful and dedicated sponsor of terrorism on earth; and (c) isn’t aimed at defeating the nominal terrorist enemy, the Islamic State, or ISIS, but rather is designed to consolidate and grow Russia’s influence in the Middle East at America’s expense.