U.S. Hedges on Syrian Peace Talks + Minsk Ceasefire Fiction Evaporates + Garrow Maligns Black Lives Matter & Occupy Wall Street

I took the three-day holiday weekend as an opportunity to catch up on sleep. That's why this page has had only two short posts since Saturday. I slept. I exercised. I watched the conference championships on Sunday. Yesterday, rather than participating in the annual Martin Luther King Day rally and march, I stayed home and cleaned. I find that since my place of employment moved out of the city, lengthening my daily commute from 35-minute walk each way to a 90-minute walk-train-&-bus-ride both to and from the office, that I need a holiday just to scrub my stove top, dust and whatnot. Pretty pathetic.

The holiday weekend turned out to be a good one to hibernate. Anne Barnard did report a lethal Israeli strike on Hezbollah forces in southern Syria, which also managed to kill an Iranian general. Interpreted as part of the March 17 Knesset election campaign, a way for Netanyahu to look tough, Iran and Hezbollah will not overtly respond.

"U.S. Signals Shift on How to End Syrian Civil War," by Anne Barnard and Somini Sengupta, prominently featured on the Gray Lady's web site for the better part of a day, is obviously intended to announce USG's retreat from its Geneva II diktat that "Assad Must Go." It strikes me as nothing more than rhetoric though, an adjustment in State Department public diplomacy in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. People are once again awake to the role of key U.S. ally Saudi Arabia in exporting Wahhabism. It is difficult for the Unites States to be seen as on the side of jihadis now when the United Nations is working on an Aleppo ceasefire and Russia is holding peace talks on Syria. As Barnard and Sengupta write,

Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for Mr. de Mistura [Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for the crisis in Syria], said that his plan would not resemble the past cease-fires, and that the United Nations, not the Syrian government, would be the guarantor. Yet even the modest Aleppo proposal is on shaky ground. While Mr. Assad has said he will consider it, his government has not signed off on the plan; Mr. de Mistura’s deputy arrived Sunday in Damascus for consultations. 

The Moscow talks are arguably in worse shape. While Mr. Kerry said he hoped the talks “could be helpful,” several crucial opposition groups have refused to attend and say the United States has not pressured them to go. 

That leaves American policy ambiguous, offering only modest verbal support to the new mediation efforts while continuing to finance some Syrian insurgents, yet not enough to seriously threaten Mr. Assad. Even a new program to train them to fight ISIS will not field fighters until May. 

Critics argue that Washington is simply trying to disengage and offload the Syria problem to Mr. Assad’s allies, Russia and Iran, even at the cost of empowering them. 

Still, any attempt to bring the parties to the table should be considered constructive, another Western diplomat said. “You can’t say to the Russians, ‘Go to hell.’ ”

Also in the news this weekend is increased fighting for the airport in Donetsk. Reports have gone back and forth. First, that DPR forces had finally gained control from the Ukrainian junta; then the junta counterattacked with tanks. An indication that the September Minsk ceasefire agreement is now largely worthless is that the Gray Lady is starting to report on the armed conflict in the Donbass again and doing so in terms found in Andrew Kramer's latest, "Ukraine Accuses Russia of Sending More Troops and Artillery to Aid Rebels":

MOSCOW — In as clear a sign as any of the unraveling peace process in eastern Ukraine, the authorities in Kiev accused Russia on Monday of again sending regular army soldiers into Ukraine to prop up pro-Russian separatists who were losing a battle. 

About 700 soldiers crossed Russia’s western border into the snowy war zone in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council said in a statement that was not possible to verify independently. 

They came armed with a wide array of heavy weapons, Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk told journalists in Kiev, the capital. The country’s intelligence agencies “confirm that men and equipment entered from Russia,” he said. Howitzers and other artillery and antiaircraft systems were said to have crossed the border.

This repeats a well-worn pattern from last summer's fighting: the junta suffers a setback, a military defeat, and immediately a keening that "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" commences in Kiev, in this case from the chief putschist and U.S. lackey, "Yats." I interpret this to mean that things are not going well for the Kiev junta.

Finally, a word about present-history and the Black Lives Matter protest movement. Tanzina Vega had a faintly praising, mostly critical assessment of the Mike Brown/Eric Garner police accountability/racial justice protests. One quote from her "Protesters Out to Reclaim King’s Legacy, but in Era That Defies Comparison" caught my eye; it was from David Garrow, establishment academic and Pulitzer-winning biographer of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

What is far less clear is whether today’s protesters have the ability, or even the intention, to build an organized movement capable of creating social change. 

David J. Garrow, a historian and the author of “Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,” said the impromptu protests that had erupted in recent months were not comparable to the strategies used by civil rights groups of the 1960s, which had clear goals such as winning the right to vote or the right to eat at a segregated lunch counter. 

“You could call it rebellious, or you could call it irrational,” Mr. Garrow said of the new waves of protests. “There has not been a rational analysis in how does A and B advance your policy change X and Y?” 

Mr. Garrow compared the protesters to those of Occupy Wall Street. “Occupy had a staying power of, what, six months?” Mr. Garrow said. “Three years later, is there any remaining footprint from Occupy? Not that I’m aware of.”

Remaining "footprint from Occupy?" What about Obama's second term? During my hibernating weekend I watched a couple Frontline documentaries from a few years back. One was "Cliffhanger," about how Obama's failed "Grand Bargain" negotiations with Boehner ended up creating the "fiscal cliff" trade-off that was supposed to be resolved by whomever won the 2012 presidential election. What the Frontline documentary skipped was how Occupy Wall Street sprang to life after the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff that created the "fiscal cliff," and how Occupy Wall Street completely changed the frame of reference from a preoccupation with "crippling debt" to income inequality and how the system is rigged by the 1% against the 99%. Obama appropriated the Occupy Wall Street message for his general election campaign, siphoned off some of its activist energy, and went on to win his second landslide.

So don't accept elite dismissals of Occupy or Black Lives Matter. They are movements that are here to stay and will continue to have an impact.

Putin Predicts Peace Deal to Emerge Tomorrow from Minsk Negotiations

Up here in the Pacific Northwest the autumn chill can already be felt in the mornings. With gas deliveries having been suspended for the entire summer while fighting has raged in the Donbass, I'm sure the change in weather can felt by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko.

Putin announced yesterday that a ceasefire agreement will be signed tomorrow in Minsk. Neil MacFarquhar describes what the deal would look like in today's "Putin Lays Out Proposal to End Ukraine Conflict":

In announcing the plan, Mr. Putin said he expected Ukraine and the separatists to wrap up an agreement after a new round of negotiations in Minsk, Belarus, on Friday. Ukraine, Russia and Europe are all party to the talks there, and they include representatives of the separatists. The two-day NATO summit meeting is also scheduled to end Friday. 

Aside from the cease-fire, the plan laid out by Mr. Putin called for Ukrainian artillery to pull back and out of range of the eastern separatists’ strongholds; an end to airstrikes; an exchange of all detainees; opening up humanitarian corridors for residents of the separatist areas; repairing damaged infrastructure; and deploying international observers to monitor the cease-fire. 

It made no mention of autonomy for the separatist eastern regions, the central political demand that Russia has emphasized since March. That is widely seen as critical to the Kremlin’s long-term goal of maintaining influence over Ukraine’s domestic affairs and blocking any future attempt to join NATO. 

Putin's plan made no mention of autonomy for Donetsk and Luhansk because it is unnecessary: a real ceasefire guarantees autonomy for the Donbass. It is the oft quoted "facts on the ground."

After a long phone call with Putin yesterday, Poroshenko declared that a lasting ceasefire agreement had been reached. He then walked it back, saying that the need for a ceasefire was agreed upon.

Likely what happened is that the U.S. nixed the deal. Obama, about to take his "great statesman" star turn at the Cardiff NATO summit, did not want to be upstaged yet again by Putin. A clue to this is the yapping of the neocon miniature terrier nonpareil, junta prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. According to MacFarquhar:

In Kiev, the idea of a cease-fire was received with mixed emotions. 

There is open hostility to the idea that Russia will be able to dictate terms to its weaker neighbor after already wrenching away the Crimean peninsula in March. Any compromise after months of condemning the separatists as “terrorists” risks weakening Mr. Poroshenko in central and western Ukraine. 

Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk called Mr. Putin’s proposal “an attempt to confuse the international community” before the NATO summit meeting and the expected announcement of new sanctions from the European Union. 

“Putin’s real plan is the destruction of Ukraine and the resumption of the U.S.S.R.,” Mr. Yatsenyuk said, according to a statement posted on a government website. Peace will come only once Russia withdraws its troops and proxy force, it said. 

But many Ukrainians, horrified by the mounting toll of more than 2,600 dead and uneasy about the economic costs for a country already on the edge of bankruptcy, want an end to the violence. Winter is approaching, and the other confrontation with Russia, over gas sales, seems unlikely to be resolved while fighting rages in the east. 

“We are in a situation where any kind of cease-fire would be progress,” said Olexander Scherba, an ambassador at large in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. “Last week was devastating after Russia started this open invasion of Ukraine.”

Even if a agreement is penned tomorrow in Minsk, it doesn't solve any of the problems of how to implement such a ceasefire:

There is a long road ahead before any real settlement can be reached, analysts noted. Moscow does not fully control the separatists; nor is it clear that Kiev can automatically rein in the armed militias it has unleashed alongside its military in the east. 

Vladislav Brig, a senior official in the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, said by telephone that the rebels expected Ukrainian forces to withdraw from the entire region as a condition for peace. “The negotiating side here is not Russia; it is the Donetsk People’s Republic,” he said. “We will stop the offensive when Ukrainian troops leave our territory.” 

Ukraine has said repeatedly that it will not contemplate a full withdrawal from the Donbass region. “It depends on Russia,” Mr. Scherba said. “Russia is the one that started this and can bring it to an end.”

In this analysis, MacFarquhar, a reliable USG voice, is not that far off from some of the more independent commentators of the blogosphere -- El Murid (as translated on Niqnaq's page), for instance.

What we know is this: Fall is approaching and Ukraine's standoff with Gazprom cannot be ignored for too much longer; Ukraine has been defeated militarily by the Novorossiya militias; and the political turmoil among the constituent junta parties is growing. A deal must be struck sooner rather than later.

Another hurdle to factor in for the junta is that as early as tomorrow the Dutch Safety Board is going to publish its report on the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Even if the report avoids an opinion as to who was responsible for shoot-down of the commercial airliner and the death of its 298 passengers and crew, Kiev could come in for some criticism. This is from Nicola Clark's "E.U. Urges Sharing Data to Avert Air Disasters":

European legislators at the hearing [of the European Parliament’s transportation committee] on Wednesday expressed consternation as to why Ukrainian officials did not close the airspace to civilian air traffic and why international safety regulators appeared not to have questioned Ukraine’s assessment of the threat to passenger traffic.

Maybe I was right a few weeks back when I saw a deal coming out of Minsk. I was just a couple weeks off.

With GWOT Back on the Front Page, U.S. Should Make Peace with Russia

What is going on in the Donbass is quite clear. One can even pick it up by reading the Gray Lady's reporter Andrew Kramer. In Donetsk Kramer writes in "Ukrainian Troops Press Rebels in Their Eastern Strongholds" of a junta military  terrorizing the civilian population prior to Putin's meeting in Minsk on Tuesday with Poroshenko. The idea is if Kiev can maximize the crisis Putin will make concessions to make the problem go away, the problem being a fundamental break down in Donbass society, a 21st-century version of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War:

DONETSK, Ukraine — With street fights and artillery barrages, the Ukrainian military pressed its advance on Wednesday on the two eastern provincial capitals held by pro-Russian separatists in a day of violence that killed 52 civilians and Ukrainian soldiers and an unknown number of rebels. 

In one of the heaviest artillery attacks yet on the center of Donetsk, the larger of the capitals, shells struck street kiosks and residential apartment buildings near the stadium of the Shatyorsk soccer club, in the city’s heart. Fighting on the outskirts, particularly around the strategic town of Ilovaysk, a transportation hub, has also flared in recent days. 

The fighting has intensified as the Ukrainian and Russian leaders prepare for a meeting in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday to explore a diplomatic solution to the conflict, suggesting the sides are maneuvering to achieve the strongest possible military position before then.

***

Shells landed for a second day in a neighborhood of Makiyivka, near Donetsk, about a mile from a separatist checkpoint. One blew out the windows in the bedroom of Anna Zyukova’s 2-year-old son, Vladislav, leaving pockmarks of shrapnel sprayed into the wallpaper behind his crib. “Thank God we got him out yesterday” to a relative’s home away from the shelling, Ms. Zyukova said. 

At the rebel checkpoint, a commander who offered only his nickname, Chaika, or the Seagull, said he was as baffled as anybody by the scattershot shelling into residential districts. His position was in a forest, away from homes. 

“We are soldiers and we are fighting,” he said. “We understand when they shoot at us. But why are they firing at the residential areas? We don’t know.”

As for Luhansk, Kramer casts doubt on junta reports that the Ukrainian military controls a big chunk of city real estate:

In Luhansk, the other remaining separatist stronghold, government forces have now gained control of “significant parts” of the city after days of street fighting, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security Council, told reporters in Kiev. 

Though block-to-block fighting began in Luhansk late last week, the government’s claim of controlling areas there could not be independently confirmed. In a brief telephone interview Wednesday morning, a human rights researcher in the city said he had seen no sign of the Ukrainian Army so far.

It is going to be a long weekend of terror for the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk. The rebel militia will not be broken in four-to-five days. Putin is ready to make a deal. The question is whether Kiev is. Maybe the junta cannot. Maybe all Kiev is able to do is wage war and commit atrocities. If this is the case, hopefully Washington has figured out by now where this is all heading, World War Three, and will force a deal down the throat of its ghastly offspring.

The Obama administration would be wise to settle things with Russia because it looks like the Global War on Terror is back on the front burner. Since last year it has become apparent that the U.S. had decided to go along with the Gulf monarchies in rolling back the Arab Spring. The Sisi coup which ousted the Muslim Brothers in Egypt last summer followed by the rise of Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq occurred with Saudi blessings. The U.S. assented, albeit meekly, but it assented nonetheless.

Now there is evidence -- we'll see, it is too early yet to tell -- of a division between the House of Saud and Uncle Sam (unless one believes that IS is a free actor, which I do not). And it looks like Kurdistan was the source of that division. Islamic State fighters battered the vaunted Kurdish pesh merga, took control of Mosul Dam and threatened Erbil. The U.S. responded with airstrikes coordinated with Iraqi special forces and the pesh merga and routed the jihadis. The jihadis answered with a "golden oldie," a snuff flick meant to sow terror in the Far Enemy.

The U.S. being the biggest bully on the block will need to respond in some fashion. The question is what IS does next. My sense is that the jihadis are too vulnerable, too spread out. If they were to go all in on a high-profile attack on the Far Enemy now they would pay dearly. So the Foley beheading is likely a one-off. Islamic State will turn its attention back to Syria, which is what they have been trying to do since the U.S. military asserted itself on behalf of the Kurds.

****

I'll be out of town the next few days. Back on Sunday.

Expect a Donbass Deal Next Week

Usually I scan the news before going to bed. I'll read quickly a full article if I think is important, like I did last night with "Ukrainian and Russian Leaders Will Meet as Rebels Continue to Falter," by Andrew Higgins and Andrew Kramer:

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces pushed deeper into territory controlled by pro-Russian rebels on Tuesday, fighting street battles in the besieged city of Luhansk and pressuring the outer defenses of Donetsk in a further blow to the separatists’ crumbling virtual state. 

While continuing its offensive, the Ukrainian government said it saw a chance for a peaceful settlement after an announcement that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would meet next Tuesday with his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro O. Poroshenko, and European Union leaders in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

Things are not going particularly well for Novorossiya.  While the dispatches from Colonel Cassad list plenty of junta losses, they also frequently mention a "crisis" atmosphere for a rebel militia attempting to cover the entire theater of the Ukrainian military offensive. Then there is the issue of the LPR/DPR's loss of leadership. Andrew Kramer reports in "Plenty of Room at the Top of Ukraine’s Fading Rebellion" that it has had an immediate adverse impact on the rebellion:

. . . President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appears to be maneuvering for a face-saving settlement, analysts say, a way to escape a losing situation without puncturing his strongman image or antagonizing the ultranationalists at home who were expecting him to follow up his annexation of Crimea with an invasion of Ukraine. 

Step 1 has been a change in leadership. In recent weeks, in what separatist officials hopefully call the “Ukrainianization” of the leadership, almost all the original Russian leaders of the rebellion have resigned and gone home, replaced by Ukrainians of dubious qualifications. 

Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen, stepped down as prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, to make way for a Ukrainian, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, who had led a police advocacy group before the war. In the Luhansk region, Valery Bolotov, a Russian citizen, announced last week he had “temporarily resigned” as prime minister and left for Russia for medical treatment. He was replaced by Igor Plotnitskiy, a former public health inspector in Ukraine. 

Igor Girkin, who uses the nickname Igor Strelkov, or Igor the Shooter, a former colonel in the Federal Security Service who led the Russian military takeover of Crimea before arriving in eastern Ukraine, resigned as defense minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Vladimir Kononov, a local resident and former judo instructor, took his place. 

The shuffle also removed those in charge when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down on July 17, including Igor Bezler, who used the nickname Bes, or the Demon. Mr. Bezler, a native of Crimea, appeared in a video in April identifying himself as a lieutenant colonel in the Russian Army. His location is unknown. 

The only remaining senior Russian here is Vladimir Antyufeyev, a reputed spy who lived under an assumed name for a decade and is now the first deputy prime minister. 

For the pro-Russian enterprise, the change of leadership was a gamble. While opening the prospect of peace talks, as the authorities in Kiev have refused to negotiate with Russian citizens, it has also left the rebel military ranks adrift, with control in the hands of local Ukrainians with modest résumés.

Kramer goes on to play up the loss of leadership as feeding the drunken anarchy that rules the streets of Donetsk without exploring the possibility that the excessive alcohol consumption might be a reaction to the junta's shelling of the city, a war crime.

In any event, something is in the works. Merkel will be in Kiev on Saturday; Putin in Minsk with Poroshenko on Tuesday. A deal has to get done for the simple reason that when the Ukie military enters Luhansk and Donetsk, the "Aleppo" phase of urban combat will commence and the humanitarian crisis will expand exponentially. While an argument could be made that the United States has been angling for such an outcome all along, the hope for Putin and Merkel is that the junta can see clearly enough to realize that by turning Donetsk and Luhansk into Aleppo it is destroying the future viability of the Ukraine. Also, I am sure that Merkel and Putin come with purses filled. Putin has Gazprom; Merkel has the European Central Bank.

So I think a deal will be done. I hope a deal will be done. But last night I dreamed a disturbing dream. I boarded a train. The train was waiting on the platform, and I walked in the open doors. Others waited on the platform. For some reason when I entered the train I decided to leave my shoulder bag/brief case on the platform. I think my thought was that I wanted to check out to make sure the train was headed in the right direction. There were a few riders who were already sitting down inside.

Shortly after I entered the train, the conductor announced the train was leaving and then the doors shut. I got up to leave, but it was too late. I looked at my bag sitting on the platform where a few commuters milled about waiting for the next train.

Immediately I became panicked. My wallet, with all my credit cards and identification and $100 cash, was in the bag. The amount of time to replace all that stuff was too staggering to comprehend. I had to get off the train. But how to do that? The next stop -- when was the next stop?

The rest of the dream was like a Steve McQueen action movie. I think I actually pried the doors of the train car open and jumped out, leaving me in an industrial rail yard with new stubbly spring grass on the surrounding hills. I took off running, calculating the entire time the probability that my bag would still be there when I finally arrived back at the platform.

The point? Don't get on the train. Get off the train. And that is what I think Putin does.

Gray Lady's Info War Against Novorossiya

For the most part the Gray Lady's reporting on the battle for Novorossiya has been adequate. If a person is willing to read the dispatches every day from start to finish, while maintaining an eye on other sources available on the Internet, then one can basically figure out what is going on.

The problem is in what the Gray Lady chooses to emphasize. Take the story by Andrew Kramer, "Ukraine Says Army Controls Center of a Rebel City," which I spied on the newspaper of record's web site last night before going to bed:

DONETSK, Ukraine — The Ukrainian military on Sunday moved into the heart of the separatist hub of Luhansk for the first time, officials said, chipping at one of the cornerstones of the pro-Russia rebels’ disintegrating virtual state. 

Ukrainian officials said army units had raised the national flag over a police station in central Luhansk, the eastern city that, along with Donetsk, has been a center of rebel activity and an important destination for Russian fighters and aid. Other parts of Luhansk, however, were still said to be under rebel control. 

The claim could not be independently confirmed, though a photograph of the flag and police station was circulating on social media, and the report was consistent with the progress of fighting there going into the weekend.

There is a tendency in the Western press to "stovepipe" or "front load" all bogus junta claims to the top of the story, usually constructing the headline out of said claims, and then append a demur, parenthetical "could not be independently verified." With that disclaimer the Gray Lady can argue, in a legal sense, that she is objective and neutral, when clearly she is waging an information war.

The objective is to create the impression that for Novorossiya all is lost. And I must admit it had an impact on me. I went to bed and dreamed disturbed, harrowing dreams. But all is not as the Gray Lady would have us believe. For instance, Kramer says that "Besides the advance in Luhansk, the Ukrainian military made another critical move, capturing the town of Yasinovataya, a strategic railway hub north of Donetsk." But according to a report by the reliable Colonel Cassad, Yasinovataya has not been captured by the junta:

Yasinovataya is currently not captured by the junta. As stated at the beginning of the offensive, Yasinovataya is a key goal for the junta in the battle for Donetsk. So when junta tanks rolled into Yasinovataya, Poroshenko’s Twitter reported it captured, although there is a difference between entering a city and capturing a city. Similarly, claims about the taking of Lugansk were untrue, when a couple of days ago junta’s infantry entered to the West of Hriaschevaty suburbs. Yasinovataya is now under fighting, both sides have been amassing reserves, with extensive use of tanks and artillery.

So there you have it. A night filled with nightmares for nothing. But that is the point of disinformation.

In his story Andrew Kramer paints a picture of drunken and unruly rebels at the point of collapse:

The army has tightened its siege on Donetsk in recent weeks, and inside, a breakdown in discipline among the hard-pressed rebel fighters had locals on edge. Residents said rebel fighters had taken to carousing drunkenly at night and wearing civilian clothes at checkpoints, a change that would allow them, at a moment’s notice, to throw down their weapons and blend in with the population.

Kramer also speculates that the large number of empty trucks in the humanitarian aid convoy, still idling at the border where they have been since Friday, are meant to transport the routed rebels back to Russia:

The seemingly imminent defeat of the rebels also raised the possibility that the huge convoy of trucks waiting to bring aid from Russian to civilians in Luhansk and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine might also be used to carry fighters and weapons out of the country. During random inspections by journalists, a number of the trucks have turned out to be mostly empty, and Russian officials have not offered much explanation other than to say they were trying to account for the possibility that some trucks might break down.

Kramer could just as easily talk about the rebel victories in, as Colonel Cassad says, "Ilovajsk, Miusinsk and Krasny Luch," or the fact that the junta cannot use air power without it being shot down:

Today self-defence shot down 3 aircraft: one MiG-29 and two Su-25. Regarding the MiG, there’s confirmation from the junta. A video already appeared about Su-25 (although the video is confusing, a fuller version actually shows visible characteristic of the wreckage of a MiG-29, so this may be one and the same aircraft). So, confirmed 2, and 1 unconfirmed. In general, we can say that junta’s attempts to use aviation in the zone of punitive operation has always ended with losses, because of no opportunity to crush even such old air defence systems, as ADMS and MANPADS.

Why doesn't the Gray Lady report any of the turmoil emanating from Kiev? The sanctified space of the Maidan has finally been cleared by skinheads. Where is the outrage? Where is the unsigned editorial inveighing against the use of violence on peaceful protesters? Also, an internal power struggle has broken out into the open between Dmytro Yarosh of Right Sector and junta interior minister Arsen Avakov. Yarosh is threatening a march on Kiev to be staged by Right Sector's volunteer paramilitary unit unless the interior ministry rescinds all charges against the group's members.

But for all the exigencies of the information war -- what trifling anecdotes get emphasized at the expense of real newsworthy events like the forced clearing of the Maidan, the epicenter of the February coup which brought us where we are today -- the Gray Lady's Kramer concludes by pointing the informed reader in the correct direction:

In the past week, three senior rebel leaders have left the war zone, in moves seen as setting the stage for a possible negotiated settlement by removing contentious personalities or Russian citizens from top positions. 

In Luhansk last week, the prime minister and military commander of the Luhansk People’s Republic, Valery Bolotov, announced in a recorded video address his “temporary resignation” as leader and departure for Russia for medical treatment. 

Aleksandr Borodai, a Russian citizen, stepped down and was replaced by Mr. Zakharchenko. Mr. Borodai later announced that a fellow Russian who had been the military commander, Igor Girkin, who uses the nickname Igor Strelkov, or Igor the Shooter, had also resigned and a Ukrainian citizen appointed in his place. 

Mr. Borodai said Mr. Strelkov had left the eastern Ukrainian war zone for a “vacation,” and would return. 

Something is definitely in the works. The aid convoy is a distraction meant to buy time. In Berlin there is a powwow between the foreign ministers of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine who are trying to hammer out a deal. It doesn't look like we are there yet.

Ceasefire Goal of Russian Aid Convoy

I haven't posted on Ukraine since the end of last month when the United States successfully herded, thanks to unsupported allegations that rebels were responsible for downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the European Union into sanctioning Russia. Since then MH17 has been discarded down the memory hole, its task accomplished, and the rebels, despite a number of impressive battlefield victories, have gradually been pushed back into the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Ukrainian military has not punched through to the centers of the cities; the rebels still largely control the outskirts. But the junta is indiscriminately shelling the urban core of both Donetsk and Luhansk, a war crime, and in this the United States has been complicit.

Then early this week the junta shelled a hospital in Donetsk, a war crime, and narrowly missed slaughtering a maternity ward filled with expecting mothers and newborns. Andrew Kramer reported on August 10 that

In the previous strike on the hospital, on [last] Thursday, shells hit the dental ward, killing one patient, destroying a pediatric wing and sending people running into the street midway through their dental work. 

On Sunday, the explosions and flying shrapnel blew out windows in the maternity ward. Tragedy was averted only because the deputy head doctor, Marina Ovsyanik, had evacuated 52 new and expecting mothers into the basement the night before, even though one woman was already in labor. She gave birth to a healthy boy in the basement, Dr. Ovsyanik said.

At this point Putin had to act. If he did nothing the huge popular support that he has received since February's coup in Kiev would curdle on him and he would be faced with a volatile, unpredictable domestic political situation. And what should be obvious by now is that Putin doesn't like volatility and unpredictability.

Putin's solution to the problem of inaction in the face of a weaker opponent's atrocities was to send from Moscow a large aid convoy comprised of some 260 trucks loaded with food and sleeping bags and generators bound for Luhansk.

This sent the junta and its Western allies into conniptions. Since Tuesday there has a been a constant back and forth between the parties -- the International Red Cross in Geneva, Moscow, Kiev, the United States -- about which border crossing the trucks will travel to, whether the trucks will be offloaded into new vehicles, whether they will be accepted into Ukraine at all.

Once again it appears that Russia has made a shrewd move. At the very least the aid convoy has revealed that the U.S. does in fact issue diktats to the Kiev junta. According to a story, "A Russian Convoy Carrying Aid to Ukraine Is Dogged by Suspicion," by Neil MacFarquhar in yesterday's paper:

Mr. Chaly [who is Poroshenko’s deputy chief of staff] also said outright that Ukraine had accepted the aid because of pressure from its Western allies.

In initially saying that Ukraine would accept the aid, the office of President Petro O. Poroshenko announced that President Obama had supported the move and offered American aid as well. Later, the Ukrainian president’s office amended the statement to note that the United States had endorsed the plan but not offered aid. 

Not everyone agreed to acceptance. 

At a morning session of Parliament, Oleh Lyashko, a nationalist politician who has helped form several paramilitary battalions, called for Ukraine to turn back the convoy and seal the border.

In today's paper MacFarquhar updates the aid convoy situation:

The dispute over the convoy comes as Kiev is bearing down militarily on the separatist rebels, forcing many of them to retreat into the region’s two major cities, Donetsk and Luhansk, which they control. 

Shelling there and elsewhere in the region by the Ukrainian forces has taken a heavy toll on civilians, with the death toll in the war doubling in the last week to more than 2,000, the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights reported on Wednesday. 

Conditions in Luhansk, under siege by Ukrainian government forces, are particularly dire. City officials said Tuesday that its 250,000 residents had been living without power, water or a sewage system since Aug. 3, and that only essential food was available.

Nevertheless, both Kiev and its Western allies have warned that the Russian aid convoy was either a cynical ploy to get much-needed military assistance to rebel fighters in Luhansk, who are running low on ammunition, or, in the worst case, the first step in an invasion of southeastern Ukraine. 

***

Presuming the convoy does end up at the Shebekino crossing in Kharkiv, there were still issues to be resolved. Both Russia and Ukraine said they were expecting the Red Cross to handle the logistics of the delivery, but officials from the group said that the two governments had to agree first on the inspection of the goods and their transfer — if indeed they are transferred — to other vehicles for transport to Luhansk. 

“The Russians and the Ukrainians have not agreed on the first step,” Pascal Cuttat, the head of the Red Cross delegation in Moscow, said in an interview. Once the aid material had been inspected and cleared for entry into Ukraine, the Red Cross could take responsibility for it, he said. 

That could take time, depending on whether the inspection was by X-ray or by hand. Agreement had to be reached on questions like whether in a grain shipment every bag would be inspected, he said. 

But the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, had already rejected the idea of unloading the goods as impractical and too costly.

Now, according to a story filed today by Andrew Roth, "Russian Convoy Rolling Again Toward Ukraine," the aid caravan appears to be headed to the rebel-held crossing at Izvarino:

The convoy itself was headed to the border post at the Ukrainian town of Izvarino, just southeast of the beleaguered eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk, diplomats said. A New York Times reporter following the long line of vehicles said they had turned off the main north-south highway in Russia toward that crossing, which is not under Ukrainian government control. 

Initially the two sides had agreed that the goods would cross farther north in a location fully under the control of Ukraine. But the apparent change of destination, said one diplomat, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to comment publicly, meant that the previous agreement would have to be reworked. 

That is only one of the outstanding issues, diplomats said. It appeared that the Russian trucks would be allowed to cross into Ukraine, for example, but it was not clear who would drive them and where exactly they would go in or around Luhansk.

This prompted threats threats threats from the junta that force would be used to stop the convoy if it attempted to enter Ukraine:

Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said on Thursday that Kiev had no precise information on the current whereabouts of the Russian aid convoy or where it might try to enter Ukraine. 

He warned that Ukraine would use “all forces available” to block the Russian trucks if they tried to enter Ukrainian territory without being checked first by border guards and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross. 

“This convoy has to be checked to see what cargo it is carrying. This has to be controlled by Ukrainian border guards,” Mr. Lysenko told a news conference in Kiev. Red Cross representatives, he added, also “need to learn the exact contents of this cargo.” 

He said Ukraine hoped that Russia “will adhere to all these requests and will not violate Ukrainian law.” Asked what would happen if it did not, he said: “In this case the movement of the convoy will be blocked with all the forces available.”

So there you have it. The junta is on record. All available force will be used against the humanitarian aid convoy if it crosses the rebel-held border. This will give Putin the casus belli he seems to need. The U.S. and its feckless European allies are in a difficult spot. They can't crank up their shrill media monopoly smoke-screen machine over Russia providing relief for civilians in obvious crisis; the West's partisan prestige press organs acknowledge the perilous situation for residents who have not been able to flee Donetsk and Luhansk.

If and when the junta attacks the Russian aid convoy, the thinking in Moscow must be, the West will realize the dangerous offspring they have spawned in Kiev and press for a ceasefire. Even the force-addicted Israelis have agreed to a ceasefire.

HRW vs. Sisi

With so many significant events happening in the Middle East, it is easy to skip over a story like the one that appeared yesterday, "‘Systematic’ Killings in Egypt Are Tied to Leader, Group Says," by Kareem Fahim. I did in the morning. But failing to board a train right as it was about to depart the station in the evening led to additional idle time to read. Subsequently, I thoroughly scrubbed the front section of the paper.

Fahim's story about the Human Rights Watch report is an important reminder of what a pivotal event the Sisi coup was last summer:

CAIRO — A day after Egypt barred representatives of Human Rights Watch from entering the country, the group disclosed the source of the government’s alarm: a report implicating senior officials, including Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, in what it called the “widespread and systematic” killings of protesters. 

Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said Monday that it had conducted a yearlong investigation into violence that followed the military’s ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi, and found that the killings of demonstrators by the police and army forces “likely amounted to crimes against humanity.” Official statements during the killings made clear that the attacks “were ordered by the government,” the group said.

The report, which was released Tuesday, was the latest of several independent attempts by human rights workers and journalists to document a series of mass killings last summer that Egyptian authorities have failed to meaningfully investigate, and that government officials seem determined to help the country forget. 

The worst of the violence occurred on Aug. 14, 2013, when the security forces used force to disperse a large sit-in of Mr. Morsi’s supporters near the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Cairo, killing more than 800 people, and possibly more than 1,000, according to Human Rights Watch. It called the episode “one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history.” 

No security or government officials have been prosecuted in the killings, which set off a period of civil conflict and government repression that included the arrests of tens of thousands of people, including Islamists, journalists and leftist political activists. 

The report calls for an investigation of Mr. Sisi, who was commander of the armed forces at the time, and several other sitting government officials, including Egypt’s interior minister. The Obama administration has signaled its intention to return full American support for Egypt under Mr. Sisi, despite scant evidence that Egypt is becoming more democratic or inclusive. 

Human rights workers and civil society advocates have described an atmosphere that is more stifling and perilous than life under President Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in a popular uprising in 2011.

On Monday, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, and the director of the Middle East division, Sarah Leah Whitson, were deported from Egypt after being stopped at the airport on Sunday. 

It was the first time Egypt had denied entry to employees of Human Rights Watch, Ms. Whitson said. Airport officials wrapped a form around Ms. Whitson’s passport and checked a box that said, “For security reasons.”

David Kirkpatrick follows up this morning with "After Human Rights Watch Report, Egypt Says Group Broke Law":

Human Rights Watch “does not enjoy any legal status that may allow it to operate in Egypt,” the government said in a statement responding to the report. “Conducting investigations, collecting evidence and interviewing witnesses without any legal backing are activities that constitute a flagrant violation of state sovereignty under international law,” the statement added. It called the report a “flagrant intervention in the work of the national investigative and judicial authorities, and an attempt to impinge upon the independence and integrity of the Egyptian judiciary.”

The government also said that Human Rights Watch had issued the report “in parallel with dubious moves by the terrorist organization and its supporters” — a reference to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that sponsored Mohamed Morsi, the ousted Egyptian president — “with a view to carrying out further acts of violence and terrorism against the Egyptian state and innocent civilians.”

 ***

“The government seems to be suggesting that H.R.W.’s investigation and visit to Egypt is part of a Muslim Brotherhood terrorist plot, which is farcical on its face,” Sarah Leah Whitson, the group’s executive director for the region, said in an email. She called the charges “absurd, unsubstantiated allegations, and a naked effort to intimidate us.”

Human Rights Watch is generally a close ally of the U.S. government. Maybe this report, along with one published in July about the Ukrainian junta slaughtering civilians in Donetsk with Grad rockets, is proof of pockets of discontent within the Obama administration: in the case of Egypt, the discontent would be with the way in which the U.S. has meekly swallowed its soaring rhetoric of democracy and human rights and lined up with the Saudis behind Sisi's military dictatorship; in the Ukraine, the complaint would be with the neocon's rapacious embrace of the fascist coup government and its criminal assault on the civilian population of Donbass.

Government is not a monolith. There are always opposing camps struggling for advantage over one another. Sisi's conflict with HRW reminds us of this; but, more importantly, it reminds us that the "Sisi trend" -- totalitarianism -- to roll back the Arab Spring is still being contested, albeit obliquely, within the established power structure.

Novorossiya is Being Born + Netanyahu in Trouble

It is is easy to get discouraged nowadays. Global order, what of it that there was, is coming undone. Regardless of who is to blame for blasting Malaysia Airlines MH17 out of the air -- and I am not convinced that Russia's guilt is a foregone conclusion, which is the position espoused in the main American news organs as they parrot the Obama administration -- it seems to me unbalanced, dangerously divisive, and potentially catastrophic to pin the whole thing on Moscow as part of a strategy to commit Europe to tougher sanctions.

The hope that more and greater sanctions will somehow lead to the Kiev junta's victory seems to me an illusion. If anything, generalized sanctions could have the opposite effect -- committing the Kremlin to go all in and wipe out the fascists once and for all. And there is much to the idea that planners in Washington see this as the ultimate jackpot: dividing Europe from Russia, keeping the military North Atlantic alliance firmly in control.

I think Germany is mindful of this, as is France. Trade with Russia and China represents the future. The United States is the past. That is why it is a safe prediction that no new sanctions will be immediately levied at the outcome of the meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels today. There will be a reprise of last month's performance where tough new sanctions will be threatened in order to appease the U.S. warpig but nothing will actually be done.

In the meantime, the U.S. will have to cast about for new targets of its over-the-top invective. The black box is in possession of Malaysia. The bodies are in transit, allowing for another ghoulish lede in the Gray Lady. But already the story of junta military excess in Donetsk is surfacing. The headlines obscure the real import of the reports, which is that the junta is indiscriminately slaughtering its own civilians.

There is a price to pay for such atrocities. Novorossiya is being born out of all that innocent blood. It is hard to see how Donetsk and Luhansk can ever be reintegrated into the Ukraine other than as a territory subjected to open-ended occupation like Palestine.

It appears that Israel is looking at another failed operation. Each day that passes -- particularly now that Hamas has taken an Israeli soldier prisoner -- Israel's invasion of Gaza is looking more like its botched war with Hezbollah in 2006.

Netanyahu has overreached. How will he get out of the box he has created? The Israelis talk of a deal the likes of which Assad signed in giving up Syria's chemical weapons. They want international inspectors to search out and confiscate Hamas' rockets and close down the tunnels. This is not going to happen. Hamas fighters are proving more worthy adversaries than the IDF anticipated. Western governments are broadcasting their duplicity, constantly hectoring China and Russia and other official enemies about human rights while they defend Israel's slaughter of innocent women and children. Now Kerry, a clown out of Hogarth print, is in Cairo trying to get the Egyptians to craft a ceasefire. But the Sisi dictatorship is a sworn enemy of Hamas. Why would Hamas trust anything that Sisi comes up with? No, Netanyahu is in trouble. His only way out is to yield ground; something he better do quickly because the earth is shifting under his feet. It might be another tunnel.

Robert Parry's Bombshell: CIA Has Proof Junta Brought Down MH17

The place to begin this morning, if you missed it yesterday as did I, is Robert Parry's "What Did US Spy Satellites See in Ukraine?" The story contains the following bombshell:

What I’ve been told by one source, who has provided accurate information on similar matters in the past, is that U.S. intelligence agencies do have detailed satellite images of the likely missile battery that launched the fateful missile, but the battery appears to have been under the control of Ukrainian government troops dressed in what look like Ukrainian uniforms. 

The source said CIA analysts were still not ruling out the possibility that the troops were actually eastern Ukrainian rebels in similar uniforms but the initial assessment was that the troops were Ukrainian soldiers. There also was the suggestion that the soldiers involved were undisciplined and possibly drunk, since the imagery showed what looked like beer bottles scattered around the site, the source said. 

Instead of pressing for these kinds of details, the U.S. mainstream press has simply passed on the propaganda coming from the Ukrainian government and the U.S. State Department, including hyping the fact that the Buk system is “Russian-made,” a rather meaningless fact that gets endlessly repeated. 

However, to use the “Russian-made” point to suggest that the Russians must have been involved in the shoot-down is misleading at best and clearly designed to influence ill-informed Americans. As the Post and other news outlets surely know, the Ukrainian military also operates Russian-made military systems, including Buk anti-aircraft batteries, so the manufacturing origin has no probative value here.

What we know is that as soon as the Malaysia Airlines Boeing went down last Thursday the junta began shrieking that it was the "terrorists" who did it. These assertions were backed up by unnamed USG officials. Since then we have been treated to a steady stream of junta supplied telephone intercepts of gloating militiamen and photographs of missile batteries purportedly being moved across the border into Russia. All this material is passed through to the front pages of the U.S. prestige press without any caveats.

So what we have here is full-blown propaganda campaign, the kind of which we are by now very familiar with. The Ghouta sarin attack of last August comes to mind.

Novorossiyan militia control of the crash site has been one of the main pillars of the Kiev/U.S. propaganda onslaught. From Friday onward the refrain has been that the militia is destroying evidence, desecrating the bodies of passengers, refusing access to OSCE monitors, refusing to release the bodies, etc. Basically, a word picture has been painted depicting the Novorossiyan militia as pirates.

But when you actually move beyond the scare headlines and read these stories in their entirety -- say, for instance, the one by Sabrine Tavernise and Noah Sneider filed yesterday -- a different image emerges. The crash site is in the middle of territory where a war is going on. The Novorossiyans are not refusing to release the bodies; they are waiting for the Dutch to arrive to claim them (which apparently they have just done). There is not a professional crime scene investigation complete with yellow caution tape because there are no police. There is civil war. Instead, you have volunteers doing the work. Where is the evidence, besides the shrill allegations of the junta, that something malign is happening at the crash site? Poroshenko even went as far to blame the Novorossiyans for looting. According to Tavernise and Sneider:

President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine has claimed that rebels stole credit cards from the wreckage. One villager, Elena, who declined to give her last name, strongly disputed that. 

“That is a sin, a big sin in our faith,” she said. “This is a cemetery. Who would take from it?”

So be wary of the headlines, like the latest about Putin being forced under pressure of new sanctions to allow for an international investigation. Putin has never been opposed to an international investigation. He has been the one saying let's not rush to judgment as the U.S. and Kiev are doing; let's wait to see what a proper investigation reveals.

And the whole time Kiev's assault on Donetsk and Luhanks continues.

In Donetsk, a thick plume of dark smoke could be seen rising into the bright blue afternoon sky. One man, a passenger in a blue car that was stopped at a red light, said two people in his building were killed in the fighting. He said he ran out of his house in nothing but his slippers. 

The fighting in Donetsk killed a woman in the Kuibysheva neighborhood, which was hit in the morning, as she walked through a wooded courtyard near a small child’s playground, and two men were found dead nearby. A piece of clothing had been placed over her body, and pools of blood were drying in the sun. A grocery discount card was on the ground near the bloody outline where her body had been.

“They are trying to push the D.N.R. back but they end up hitting us,” said Yevgeny Zhitnikov, a 17-year old resident of the city. “Victory is more important to them than than human life.” 

Said his father, who was arranging bags on the ground for the family to leave to a nearby bomb shelter: “Animals.” 

A series of booms thumped through the courtyard consistent with the sound of a grad rocket. The rockets hit near dentist office complex and a library. 

“Why are people suffering, for what?” said Galina Afrina, a 60-year old retired financial worker who was holding some compote she had made. “We are being told to evacuate.” 

By 2:30 p.m., residents were leaving the nighborood. A woman carrying a large gray cat rushed by. A man carrying a kitten walked a bicycle. 

The rocket that killed the woman had punched a deep hole into the courtyard. Its shape indicated it had been come from the northwest, the area that the Ukrainian government controls. 

There will be a price for the U.S. backing this murderous campaign. Putin's relative silence is not a sign of guilt but of strength. Like Parry's bombshell, the truth is starting to emerge about MH17. And when it does, the fallout will be immense, hopefully great enough to topple Kiev and hopefully to permanently tarnish a warmongering Nobel Peace Prize winning POTUS.

Obama's Legacy: the President Who Lost Germany

The future is opaque but not entirely. One thing we can say for certain: Obama is smoked, cooked, finished, well-done. His foreign policy initiatives in the Middle East are being led by uber-Qaeda group Islamic State; USG has been actively fomenting a state of war in the China Sea; AfPak is about to blow sky high. Then there is what could be the administration's greatest blunder of all, the estrangement of Germany, Europe's leading state.

An excellent overview of the espionage scandal rocking the U.S.-German relationship is "Germany Demands Top U.S. Intelligence Officer Be Expelled," written by Alison Smale, Mark Mazzetti and David Sanger. I was struck by the story's concluding paragraphs:

Both Thomas de Maizière, the interior minister, and Wolfgang Schäuble, the finance minister and a close ally of Ms. Merkel, suggested that the material handed to the Americans from the German intelligence employee arrested last week was nothing important. The Americans, Mr. Schäuble said, had simply proved to be stupid. 

“With so much stupidity, you can only weep,” he said. “And that is why the chancellor is ‘not amused.’ ”

That pretty well sums it up. USG is fat, stupid and out of touch, an aging bully that still waddles around the neighborhood intimidating and abusing friend and foe alike. The bully has little support at home and few allies among his neighbors. The time is ripe for a fall. Merkel's public announcement that the CIA station chief is being expelled augurs ill for the bully:

The decision by Chancellor Angela Merkel to publicly announce the expulsion of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Berlin station chief was seen as a highly symbolic expression of the deep anger and hurt that German officials have felt since the exposure of the American espionage operations.

It is likely to force another reassessment inside the C.I.A. and other spy agencies about whether provocative espionage operations in friendly nations are worth the risk to broader foreign policy goals. One such assessment was conducted last summer, when President Obama ordered a halt to the tapping of Ms. Merkel’s phone after it came to light because of the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden.

*** 

Despite the apparent effort to keep relations on an even keel, the development marked a low point in relations with a critical ally just as Mr. Obama needs stronger cooperation on issues including Iran’s nuclear program, the stability of Ukraine and forging a broad trans-Atlantic trade agreement. 

As Ms. Merkel put it on Thursday, the two countries have better things to do than “waste energy spying” on each other. 

Ms. Merkel’s comments seemed similar to what Mr. Obama said early last summer, after the first of the Snowden revelations. “I’m the end user of this kind of intelligence,” Obama said. “If I want to know what Chancellor Merkel is thinking, I will call Chancellor Merkel,” he said, suggesting it was not necessary to spy on close friends. 

But in the year since, the evidence of American spying operations in Germany has grown so steadily that it called into question whether the intelligence agencies listened to the president that day, or whether the White House had failed to do a complete review of the spying operations against those allies.

Obama was elected as a "change agent." By now it should be obvious to the voters who put him in the White House that he has ushered in no change. The Deep State -- the fat, aging bully -- waddles on.

The comments that accompany the Smale et al. piece are overwhelmingly anti-USG. The one, from Franz in Aachen, that received the most recommendations is refreshingly sensible:

Ms. Merkel has done a lot so far to calm down the growing resentment against the digital US violence. But now she is under political pressure to show her teeth. This means, the buffer of good will has been used up. This is a bad day for US-German relationships.

Why are the USA so stupid to snub their closest partners with such silly behavior? Cynicism is a slow acting but devastating poison for a relationship. Following the Middle East disaster the USA are risking to loose the hearts and minds of Europeans for nothing. Events like this one result in distance and reduced empathy to support US politics. Instead, many Germans will vote for closer relationships to China and Russia, as we have already seen during the Ukraine crisis. The USA are giving their soft power away for small coin. We urgently need some robust actions from their side to repair the substantial damage and stabilize the slide of trust.

Those "robust actions" that Franz calls for should start with USG immediately concluding a "no-spy" agreement with Germany. After the Snowden revelations, Germany wanted Five Eyes status, but the Obama administration tossed up a bunch of hurdles:

When the Snowden revelations emerged last year, German officials suggested that they wanted a “no spy” agreement similar to the one the United States has with the English-speaking victors of World War II: Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But the negotiations only frayed relations even more. 

The way German officials tell the story, they were promised those negotiations by Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, and other American intelligence officials. But the American officials say there was never such a promise, and that German officials blanched when they heard what kind of responsibilities they would have for intelligence collection and cyberoperations around the world if they ever joined that elite club. 

The discussions went nowhere, and the public collapse of the talks left Ms. Merkel’s top aides embittered. Politicians, including Ms. Merkel, began talking about creating a “Germany only” segment of the Internet, to keep German emails and web searches from going across American-owned wires and networks.

If USG is not merely a giant zombie run amok, it will bend over backward giving Germany what it wants in the way of a "no spy" agreement. But even if such a deal is concluded, I think the damage has been done. Germany's realignment to the East with Russia and China will proceed apace. Merkel's call to Ukrainian President Poroshenko, warning him about committing atrocities in attacking Donetsk and Luhansk, is a welcome aspect of this realignment.

The U.S. and Kiev Have Lost

Though it might not look it, the American project in Kiev is in serious trouble. The victories in Slovyansk and Kamatorsk ended up costing far more than they were worth because they exposed the brutality of the junta -- so much so that reliable coup scribe David Herszenhorn poetically assessed that "Control came at the expense of untold destruction" -- and the spottiness of the rationale of the Anti-Terrorist Operation -- purported Russian supply and control of the rebels.

That is why NATO general secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in D.C. yesterday, to blow life back into the corpse that Russia is to blame for everything going wrong in Ukraine. No proof is supplied. In fact, U.S. reporters on the ground regularly write about the anger of Donetsk People's Republic fighters because Russia is not doing anything to help them. The only proof Rasmussen provided was the imploring question, "Who else could supply anti-aircraft batteries?" Well, for one, I would think Ukraine herself. Why is it so hard to think that the freedom fighters of Novorossiya could liberate some heavy weapons from the feckless junta military?

Sabrina Tavernise and David Herszenhorn are reporting from Donetsk, "With Talks Uncertain, Ukrainian Rebels Cling to Hope in Strongholds," that

In Donetsk, at least for now, the rebels were confident enough to saunter around the city as if they owned it. With a population of one million, the city is outwardly affluent, with an Infiniti car dealership, a fancy sports stadium and several luxury hotels. Any bombing would seem likely to inflict severe civilian casualties as well as property damage, and the rebels may be counting on the government trying to avoid that.

Poroshenko made another phony overture for negotiations, insisting that the rebels must first lay their weapons down and turn themselves in. The chocolate king said he would talk " 'with the authentic owners' of this part of Ukraine, such as steelmakers and miners."

At this point the Obama administration must know that the game is up. Any assault from the air on a metropolis with all the trappings of Western prosperity will be impossible to justify. The optics will be irrefutable. State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki will have to be furloughed due to nervous exhaustion brought on by her "spectacular feats" of propaganda.

The city seemed as if it was waiting for something. Streets were empty. Many stores were closed. And rebels were building barricades on some of the smaller outer roads. A giant pile of gravel had been dumped across one access road in the Petrovsky neighborhood in the southwest of the city, and workers were moving large concrete barricades into place nearby. 

The quiet was broken around 1 p.m., when a fighter jet fired at an abandoned coal mine that had served as a makeshift base for some of the rebels. Local news agencies quoted Ukrainian forces as saying that fighter jets had not been flying Tuesday. But the sound was clear, prompting dozens of pedestrians to look skyward. No one was hurt, but residents were shaken. 

“I never thought I’d see such a thing in Donetsk,” said Alexander, 17, who was standing with his mother at a bus stop near the explosion. He said that his bus, No. 42, arrived with several broken windows just minutes later, and that people at the bus stop were panicking, with “tears and hysterics.” 

He had been trying to persuade his parents to let him join the rebels, he said, and now he would redouble his efforts. 

“If everyone here sits around with their hands crossed, who will protect our land?” he said.

Proof that Obama has bungled again is Germany. Germany has always been the linchpin in Ukraine. And Germany has now been lost by the administration. Merkel is gone. When Obama called the German chancellor last Thursday to jawbone her on ratcheting up another round of sanctions on Russia apparently he was clueless that a CIA spy who worked at the BND, the German federal intelligence service, had been arrested. Mark Mazzetti and Mark Landler have the story, "Spying Case Left Obama in Dark, U.S. Officials Say":

When President Obama placed a call to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last Thursday, he had a busy agenda: to consult with a close ally and to mobilize wavering Europeans to put more pressure on Russia to end its covert incursions in Ukraine.

What Mr. Obama did not know was that a day earlier, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency.

While Ms. Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the fact that the president was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany has led frustrated White House officials to question who in the C.I.A.’s chain of command was aware of the case — and why that information did not make it to the Oval Office before the call.

I think it is clear that at this point Germany is moving briskly to reorient itself toward the BRICS. Merkel's trip to China on a day when the Chinese commemorated the 77th anniversary of the start of the Sino-Japanese War is a strong tell. No, I don't think there is any question of the U.S.-German estrangement:

Last week’s disclosure came at a delicate moment: Mr. Obama needs Ms. Merkel’s support to impose additional sanctions against Russia for its role in the Ukraine crisis. Germany, with extensive energy ties to Russia, has many reasons to resist, though Ms. Merkel has signaled she is running out of patience with President Vladimir V. Putin. 

The American authorities are also pursuing heavy financial penalties from German banks, including Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank, for dealing with Iran and other countries that are blacklisted by the United States. The German government owns 17 percent of Commerzbank, raising the prospect of further tensions. 

The prospect of new strains between the United States and Germany drew an expression of concern from the secretary general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who met with Mr. Obama at the White House on Tuesday. 

“I encourage them to sort this out as quickly as possible,” Mr. Rasmussen said in an interview after his meeting, adding, “All NATO allies profit from an intensive exchange of information and intelligence, so that’s also part of the whole equation.”

The U.S. and Kiev have lost. Will Donetsk and Luhansk be made to needlessly suffer? The answer at this point is yes.

Iraq's Parliamentary Standoff + Avakov Parades in Slovyansk

Yesterday an announcement was made that the Iraqi Council of Representatives would not meet for another five weeks, delaying the formation of a new government until August. After an outcry from Iraq's allies and its religious establishment a new statement was made. Parliament will convene this Sunday. According to the Alissa Rubin and Suadad al-Salhy, reporting in "Iraqi Parliament Wobbles Over Forming Government," the "Maliki Must Go" motto is a facade masking Sunni and Kurdish backroom demands -- Kirkuk for the Kurds and control of the defense ministry for the Sunnis -- that if acquiesced to by the Shiite majority will amount to the de facto partition of Iraq:

“The session was postponed until Aug. 12 because of the disagreement and the conflict between the blocs,” said Aboud al-Essawi, a member of Mr. Maliki’s predominantly Shiite State of Law party, referring to other political parties.

The Sunnis said they were ready to proceed, but wanted the Shiites to make the first move. “We are still saying that we are ready to present our candidate for speaker whenever the National Alliance presents its candidate for prime minister, and it can be anyone else but not Maliki,” said Dafar al-Ani, a spokesman for the main Sunni bloc, referring to a coalition of Shiite parties.

“The National Alliance asked for more time to make their final decision,” he added.

Beneath the blame game are real differences in what is acceptable to different groups. For instance, a large number of Shiites now want to remove Mr. Maliki, but his party won the most parliamentary seats, so he cannot be summarily kicked aside. And there are differences of opinion about who might be an acceptable successor, first to all the Shiite blocs, but then also to the Sunnis and the Kurds.

Mr. Maliki says that removing him just as Iraq is trying to reconstitute its demoralized army would undermine those in the fight. While that might seem a convenient argument to prolong his time in power, at least some lawmakers appear to agree.

Even a senior leader in the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a Shiite party that now opposes Mr. Maliki, said that “replacing Maliki now could be seen as a victory for the terrorists, and it also could adversely reflect the security leadership’s morale because if Maliki is not there anymore, they could be dismissed or accused of corruption.”

The Sunnis are demanding an amnesty for the tens of thousands of Sunni imprisoned — unjustly, they say, in most cases — by the Maliki government and a bigger say in how the country is run, including its security services. While some Shiites might be willing to give that to them, others are adamantly opposed.

The Kurds believe they have an absolute right to include Kirkuk and some surrounding disputed villages in the autonomous Kurdish region, but neither the Sunnis nor the Shiites want to cede that ground, especially since the Kurds have made it plain that their ultimate goal is independence.

While each group has defensible reasons for its views, taken together they amount to stasis.

I think Maliki is gone. The only way that he stays is if the Shiite National Alliance bloc agrees to all the demands of the Sunnis and Kurds. Then all the fulminating about the menace, the corruption of Maliki will disappear overnight and he will be touted as a singularly necessary statesman. But majority of the Shiites that constitute the National Alliance are not going to go for this. The next largest Shiite political formation to Maliki's State of Law coalition is the Sadrist Al-Ahrar Bloc whose raison d'etre is dump Maliki. Then there is the clerical establishment's willingness to part ways with the prime minister. Granted, Sistani has not come right out and said "Maliki must go," but this is only because the Grand Ayatollah does not believe it is his role to publicly dictate the official composition of parliamentary government.

My understanding last week was that the National Alliance had its PM lined up, and it wasn't Maliki. Realizing this and not wanting the Shiites to succeed so quickly in forming a new government the Kurds and Sunnis walked out. Now the Kurds and Sunnis want the Shiites to "show" their candidate for prime minister before they "show" their candidates for speaker (Sunnis) and president (Kurds). The Shiites are loath to do this because once they name Maliki's replacement, if the Sunnis and Kurds continue to delay, Maliki will be the lamest of lame ducks; his authority will be gone, and his ability to actively prosecute the war against Islamic State will be nil.

Absent complete capitulation by the National Alliance to Sunni and Kurdish demands, expect the stasis to continue.

Some words about Ukraine this morning. David Herszenhorn writes from Kiev, "Ukraine Rebels Are Retreating for Last Stand," about Strelkov's forces, retreating from Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, blowing up bridges leading to Donetsk and erecting barricades around that city as well as Luhansk. The junta military is establishing a blockade.

Two things. First, a passage reaffirming the position that Russia has already won the conflict, if one believes, as I do, that this conflict has always been about Germany's economic alignment with Russia. The United States wants to block that, wants to keep the European Union under the sway exclusively of the military North Atlantic alliance. The U.S has failed.

Negotiations have faltered since Mr. Poroshenko called off the cease-fire, saying it was playing into the rebels’ hands. An abridged session in Kiev on Sunday involved representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, but Mr. Lavrov described it as pointless without the participation of militants, who he noted could not travel to the capital “for obvious reasons.” 

Echoing Mr. Lavrov, the German government on Monday issued an urgent plea, calling for a rapid, unconditional and mutual cessation of hostilities, and said it was urgent to organize talks that included the separatists. However, in a television interview, the deputy chief of staff of Mr. Poroshenko’s administration, Valeriy Chaly, said Ukraine would follow its own course.

Finally, I am very critical of the Gray Lady and the reporters who labor for her. Yes, these reporters are careerists; but even when they are scribbling the party line, they often find ways to subvert the official narrative. Occasionally, they are even brilliant, as is Herszenhorn at the end of his story when he describes the Goebbelsian junta interior minister Arsen Avakov taking a victory lap in a shattered, terrorized, bomb-strewn Slovyansk:

On Monday afternoon in Slovyansk, Ukraine’s interior minister, Arsen Avakov, stood under a statue of Lenin, promising to bring the “terrorists” to justice and restore basic services to the city by the end of the day.

Residents greeted him with questions about reconstruction and compensation for damage as a light mist coated the central square. Some shed tears at the mere mention of running water.

“What kind of future is there for Ukraine?” one elderly woman in a blue plastic poncho asked the minister.

“A beautiful one,” Mr. Avakov said, flashing a smile.

But beauty was nowhere to be found in Slovyansk, where broken glass, severed electrical cables and a wasteland of unexploded mortar shells define the landscape. Control came at the expense of untold destruction.

Outside a gold-domed church on the northern edge of the square, Ukrainian soldiers distributed water from the back of a truck. While thirsty residents accepted the aid, their attitudes toward the new armed arrivals were decidedly mixed.

Sveta Zinovyeva, 17, spent the end of her school year holed up in a basement with her family. She said she had read romance novels to distract from the “horrible fear.”

Donbass Bloodletting to Continue

From the outset, when the Euromaidan protests broke out in November 2013, the New York Times has been an indispensable ally of the Obama administration in shaping perceptions of the revolution underway in Ukraine. First, rather than labeling the February ouster of the president, Viktor Yanukovych, what everyone could plainly see it was, a coup d'état spearheaded by neo-Nazi street fighters, the Gray Lady reported, and continues to report to this day, that Yanukovych fled a popular uprising of young parents pushing infants in perambulators alongside babushka-clad pensioners.

Yanukovych was depicted as a bloodthirsty, venal, weak toady of Russia. There was ample coverage of his abandoned manor house. The Gray Lady relished his demise.

That was phase one. Phase two was the high-decibel wailing that commenced when Crimea joined the Russian Federation.

Phase three, which is a phase that we're presently still locked in, is the presentation of the uprising in Novorossiya, which began in earnest in April, as illegitimate, and this despite a successful autonomy referendum conducted in both Luhansk and Donetsk that exceeded everyone's expectations. Euromaidan was democratic, while Donbass was nothing more than the evil Vlad Putin pulling the wires on his secret special forces who were crossing the porous border to terrorize and sow havoc.

This is the story that the New York Times has stuck with through one retraction and months of shelling of civilians in cities and towns of the southeast. Russia has pulled backed its military from the border and Putin requested from the Russian parliament that it rescind its authorization for the use of military force, which parliament did; yet despite all this the Gray Lady persists, absent any proof, that the Donbass uprising is merely the work of Putin.

It is an embarrassment for the "newspaper of record," one that Robert Parry has been regularly drawing attention to at Consortiumnews. This morning it is on display with David Herszenhorn's puff piece on the newly effective Ukrainian military, "Ukraine Military Finds Its Footing Against Pro-Russian Rebels." With the canard that the Donbass uprising is due to Putin's belligerence in tatters, Herszenhorn has to admit that it is the Russian president who is the one actively trying to bring an end to hostilities:

Officials and experts agreed that the most urgent task facing the Ukrainian government was sealing its border with Russia to prevent any further influx of fighters or weapons, and the military has made progress doing so. And though he is hardly trusted by Ukrainians, Mr. Putin also sent signals that he would not order a full-scale invasion, announcing, for instance, that Parliament had withdrawn formal authorization for him to use military force in Ukraine. 

It is not clear why Mr. Putin eased some of the military pressure, but it appears as if he has decided to put his emphasis on peace talks being coordinated by a close friend of his, Viktor V. Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian businessman and political operative. Although similarly supported by the leaders of Germany and France, the talks have sputtered.

Herszenhorn does not continue on to describe why the talks have been unsuccessful to date -- the Kiev junta believes that using terror against a civilian population is a replacement for bargaining on federalization issues.

Herszenhorn's piece is noteworthy for its celebration of the Ukrainian military's clearing the hurdle of butchering its own population:

But even more important, experts said, was a reorganization of the chain of command and a crucial psychological shift: Soldiers surmounted a reluctance to open fire on their own countrymen, a serious issue after riot police officers killed about 100 protesters last winter during civil unrest centered on Maidan, the main square in Kiev. 

“They have overcome that psychological barrier in which the military were afraid to shoot living people,” Mr. Sungurovskyi [director of military programs at the Razumkov Center in Kiev] said. “They had this barrier after Maidan, after the death of that hundred — not simply to shoot living people, but their own people. After the forces were restructured a bit, and it became clear who were our people, who were foes, the operations became more effective.”

But as Herszenhorn acknowledges, the capture of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk by the junta is peanuts. The real challenge awaits in Donetsk:

The biggest test is just ahead. 

After fleeing south from Slovyansk, large numbers of rebels appeared Sunday to be regrouping in Donetsk, a city of one million, where any push to contain them will involve dangerous urban warfare. Signaling resilience, insurgents on Sunday seized a building belonging to the state penitentiary service.

In Luhansk, the region’s second-largest city after Donetsk, other rebels attacked a jail, allowing eight prisoners to escape. In each case, officials said the rebels, after suffering losses, appeared to be searching for weapons. In recent days, rebel leaders have pleaded with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to send additional aid.

Is Donetsk going to go the way of Aleppo? I think if it were up to junta officials like Banderist Andriy Parubiy, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, and his U.S. backers the answer would be "Absolutely." If Russia is waiting for Europe to come down forcefully to end the violence it might be waiting in vain.

I think Russia has been successful in winning Germany over. But whether this is enough to bring the mad dogs in Kiev to heel is unclear. Kiev answers to Langley and Foggy Bottom. So the bloodletting will probably continue for some time.