Do You Remember Yanis Varoufakis and MH17? Two Huge Hurdles for New Italian Government

Yes, Italy's M5S-League Government = Reprise of Greece 2015. The issue is basically the same. Can a sovereign government engage in deficit spending to stimulate its economy without the eurocrats in Brussels and Frankfurt vetoing it by means of engineering a punishing banking crisis? And if the answer is no, then will the new government be brought to heel or, mixing metaphors, will it collapse in the crib?

Italy is much larger than Greece (like a cruiserweight vs. a middleweight). So it has more punching power at its disposal. Also, France has been allowed to run deficits without punishment. But the problem is that the marriage of the Five Star Movement and the League is one that M5S party fathers appear to have embraced out of fear that their electoral mandate is fast fading. A little counter-punching from Brussels and Luigi Di Maio might very well go down.

When in Doubt, Poke the Bear. Now that Giuseppe Conte has survived Jason Horowitz's smear and been asked by president Sergio Mattarella to form a government, and that government is firmly opposed to continuing EU sanctions on Russia, sanctions that were put in place following the media firestorm that accompanied the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 and the death of all 296 passengers, it is no coincidence that the kangaroo "Joint Investigative Team" would hold a press conference to announce that Russia was responsible.

There is absolutely no new evidence provided.

"Prosecutors showed photos and videos of a truck convoy carrying the system as it crossed the border from Russia to Ukraine. It crossed back several days later with one missile missing. The vehicles had serial numbers and other markings that were unique to the 53rd brigade, an anti-aircraft unit based in the western Russian city of Kursk, they said.

It's the same several-years-old Eliot Higgins chicanery repeatedly debunked by the late Robert Parry. But it needs to be dusted off and spotlighted anew because Italy now poses a threat to continuing EU sanctions on Russia.

Here We Go Again: Fabricating a Casus Belli with Syria

Last week it was Amnesty International's "HUMAN SLAUGHTERHOUSE: MASS HANGINGS AND EXTERMINATION AT SAYDNAYA PRISON, SYRIA," thoroughly demolished by Rick Sterling in his "Amnesty International Stokes Syrian War."

Then yesterday it was the Atlantic Council's "Breaking Aleppo," which, according to The New York Times' Michael Gordon, the man who helped bring us the 2003 invasion of Iraq, "The analysis shows that the hospital, contrary to claims by a Russian general, was bombed multiple times. It indicates that Russian aircraft used incendiary munitions and cluster bombs, despite the Kremlin’s denials, and concludes that Syrian forces used chlorine gas on a far greater scale than is commonly believed."

But all one needs to know about "Breaking Aleppo" comes midway through the article: "Much of the analysis of the photos and social media was done by [Eliot] Higgins, a Britain-based researcher who founded the investigative website bellingcat.com." To mention that Eliot Higgins is a principal author of the report (a guy who is clearly a government agent) without mentioning his role in using spurious arguments and bogus evidence to blame the Syrian government for the 2013 chemical attack in East Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, or his role in arguing for Russian complicity in the downing of MH17 in Eastern Ukraine is clearly misleading to the Gray Lady's readers. Once again with The New York Times we are in the realm of crass banana-fingered propaganda.

Now comes the absurd "Syria: Coordinated Chemical Attacks on Aleppo," released yesterday by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Rick Gladstone, like his colleague Michael Gordon, another spook posing as a reporter, writes breathlessly in "Syria Used Chlorine Bombs Systematically in Aleppo, Report Says" -- the opening paragraph -- that

Syrian military helicopters systematically dumped canisters of chlorine gas, a banned weapon, on residential areas of Aleppo at least eight times late last year in the final weeks of the battle to retake the city from rebels, Human Rights Watch said in a detailed study released Monday.

But skim through the report --  it is not hard to do -- and for all the video links and purported photographic evidence there is not one image of a Syrian helicopter dumping chlorine canisters! An example of the willful suspension of disbelief that Human Rights Watch is asking of us can be found below:

Omar Arnaout, a photographer, said that he saw a helicopter drop an object near a cemetery in Qadi Askar at about 3 p.m. on November 28:

"Suddenly, yellow smoke started spreading followed by the smell of chlorine a few minutes later. It’s the smell of the liquid that we use to clean toilet, but more intense, much more intense. People were unable to breathe, they are coughing. Some children were throwing up. The smell was everywhere."

Arnaout said that about 20 civilians were injured in the attack and taken to hospitals for treatment.

If he is a photographer, why didn't he take a picture of the helicopter? I guess he didn't have his camera with him. Then why in this instance, which is supposed to document a Syrian helicopter dropping a chlorine bomb, mention that he is a photographer? Clearly it is a rhetorical sleight of hand meant to convey to the reader photographic evidence where there is none.

The HRW report is chock full of everything we've seen plenty of times before -- pictures of spent shell casings, eyewitness testimony from jihadis posing as citizen activists, photos of babies in emergency rooms receiving oxygen.

The overall idea is to reboot the Western war on Syria now that the Syrian-Russian-Iranian coalition is about to conquer the Western-backed jihadis; that, and block the Trump administration from working with Russia. With Flynn out it looks like the U.S. posture to Syria will be identical to the one during Obamatime.

Europe on Brink of Trade War with Russia

I think we're headed for another significant shift in Ukraine. The present ceasefire was agreed to by the junta because of the success of the Novorrosiya Armed Forces (NAF) in creating a southern front and threatening the large industrial seaside city of Mariupol, where Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko was yesterday proclaiming solidarity with residents and vowing that the city would never be yielded to the NAF.

The preliminary report on the crash of flight MH17 was released this morning, and it cautiously reaffirms conventional wisdom, namely, that shrapnel coming from NAF-controlled territory or western Russia was responsible for the midair breakup of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777. While the report doesn't say a BUK missile was the source of that shrapnel, a.k.a., high-energy objects, it doesn't have to. Western reporters and government spokespersons will color in the missing parts based on what they already accept as fact. The Russians did it.

As the ceasefire disintegrates -- I don't see how it can hold for too much longer -- and the Dutch MH17 report gets spun according to the current Russophobia, Europe is going to be in for some pain. The EU has voted on a new round of Russian sanctions that target financing for Rosneft and Transneft and Russia has threatened to prohibit European commercial airlines from using its airspace. Andrew Higgins has an informative story this morning, "Brushing Off Threats, E.U. Votes to Toughen Its Sanctions on Russia," which offers the reader a glimpse of the mess Europe has got itself in by supporting the U.S.-backed coup-makers in Kiev:

The European Union has given strong support to the cease-fire but, skeptical about Russia’s intentions after the swift collapse of previous efforts at a settlement, decided on Monday to expand existing economic sanctions. Diplomats say the measures include tight restrictions on access to capital in Europe by the two state-controlled Russian energy giants, Rosneft and Gazprom’s oil affiliate, and the state pipeline operator, Transneft. 

“The sanctions aim at promoting a change of course in Russia’s actions destabilizing eastern Ukraine,” Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, which represents member states, said in a statement. He said the measures would go into effect “in the next few days.” 

There was no immediate reaction from Moscow, which responded to an earlier round of European sanctions by banning a broad range of dairy, meat, fruit and vegetable exports from Europe. 

Russia has worked hard to fan divisions within the European Union, and Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev warned in an interview published early on Monday in Moscow that his government would “have to respond asymmetrically” to any new sanctions, perhaps by banning Western airlines from flying through Russian airspace, as many do on long-haul flights to Asia. 

“If Western carriers have to bypass our airspace, this could drive many struggling airlines into bankruptcy,” Mr. Medvedev said in a lengthy interview in the Russian newspaper Vedomosti. “This is not the way to go. We just hope our partners realize this at some point.”

Measures endorsed by leaders of the European Union’s 28 member states normally go into effect within hours. But Finland, hard hit by the Russian ban on food imports, and some other countries anxious to see whether the cease-fire holds in coming days, appealed for a slower schedule.

***

Some smaller European countries, notably Slovakia, had argued strongly against new sanctions, warning that they would only hurt Europe’s anemic economic recovery and were “meaningless.” But bigger countries, particularly Germany, which was itself initially hostile to sanctions, have increasingly lost faith in Russia’s trustworthiness and been exasperated by Moscow’s insistence, despite strong evidence to the contrary, that it has not sent soldiers or weapons into eastern Ukraine.

It was the downing of MH17 which buffaloed Merkel into accepting the U.S. position on sanctioning Russia. Up until that point I was under the impression that Merkel would not be bumrushed into a trade war with Russia. But that is where we are now.

I don't think that there is a way to avoid a trade war, absent a coup in Moscow by a U.S.-friendly oligarch. Medvedev is on record saying Western commercial air carriers are in the crosshairs. Russians believe more in honor and personal integrity and standing by what you say than Western politicians. When Russia responds, if the European Union doesn't publicly fray, then at least there will be those member nations who tacitly flout the trade restrictions, setting up secret bilateral agreements with Moscow.

And then the United States, losing the main weapon in its arsenal -- having the Europeans restrict economic relations with Russia -- will be left with increasing military support for an incompetent, mendacious junta as its remaining option (one that is sure to fail).

Before signing off this morning, there are a few good stories to inspect today. First, Rod Nordland reports on the acrimony at the annual ceremony honoring Ahmed Shah Massoud, leader of the Northern Alliance whose assassination by Al Qaeda two days prior to 9/11 prefigured the attack on the U.S. homeland.  Abdullah Abdullah has said that he will not acknowledge the results of the Afghan presidential recount, which apparently will declare Ashraf Ghani the victor.

Next, check out Tim Arango's Q.&A.-session. Arango is the Baghdad bureau chief for the Gray Lady, and over the years I have found him to be the best reporter, along with David Kirkpatrick, that "the newspaper of record" has to offer. Here is an example:

Q. How do you rate the Obama administration’s actions in Iraq?— eragon38 

It’s not my job to rate the Obama administration’s actions in Iraq. But I will tell you that after 2011, the administration basically ignored the country. And when officials spoke about what was happening there, they were often ignorant of the reality. They did not want to see what was really happening because it conflicted with their narrative that they left Iraq in reasonably good shape. In 2012, as violence was escalating, I wrote a story, citing U.N. statistics, that showed how civilian deaths from attacks were rising. Tony Blinken, who was then Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s national security guy, pushed back, even wrote a letter to the editor saying that violence was near historic lows. That was not true. Even after Falluja fell to ISIS at the end of last year, the administration would push back on stories about Mr. Maliki’s sectarian tendencies, saying they didn’t see it that way. So there was a concerted effort by the administration to not acknowledge the obvious until it became so apparent — with the fall of Mosul — that Iraq was collapsing.

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.

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.

The Caliphate Grows, as Does the Case Against Kiev in the Downing of MH17

Islamic State was on the march over the weekend. The jihadis routed the vaunted pesh merga in three Iraqi cities north of Mosul: Zumar, Wana and Sinjar. Tim Arango reports from Baghdad in "Sunni Extremists in Iraq Seize 3 Towns From Kurds and Threaten Major Dam" that

In a statement, ISIS boasted of conquering “more important areas which were controlled by the pesh merga and the secular militias.” With the new territory, which the group described as “the border triangle of Iraq, Syria and Turkey,” ISIS strengthened its hold on territory that traverses the frontiers of Iraq and Syria, giving it an even greater ability to move fighters and weapons between the front lines of the civil wars in both countries. 

According to security officials and residents in the area, the Kurdish forces were routed from Zumar, a town on the road from the Syrian border that also sits on oil fields, and then Sinjar. Sinjar, an isolated city in northwestern Iraq, has been home to a sizable community of Yazidis, Kurdish speakers who ascribe to a religion that combines elements of Islam and ancient Persian religions and who are considered apostates by Muslim extremists. 

Later on Sunday, the militants captured Wana, a strategic town near the Tigris River — putting them within striking distance of the Mosul Dam, the country’s largest and an important supplier of electricity and water. The dam is on the Tigris River about 30 miles northwest of Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, which fell to ISIS on June 10. 

Yazidi residents of Sinjar, who were reached by phone, were terrified. They told of kidnappings and executions of members of their sect. One resident, Sami Hassan, said he was at work at a hospital on Sunday when an injured ISIS fighter arrived and demanded to know the sect to which Mr. Hassan belonged.

Mr. Hassan said he had escaped from a window while being shot at. 

Another local, Khudhur Rasho, said he had seen two Yazidi men executed and the members of 10 families, their hands bound behind their back, being led away by militants. 

A State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said Sunday that ISIS posed “a dire threat to all Iraqis, the entire region and the international community” and that the United States would continue to seek ways to support the Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish pesh merga. 

The seizing of the three towns in a triangle that stretches north and west from Mosul to the borders of Syria and Turkey allowed the extremists to expand their territory, but the capture of the Mosul Dam would be a bigger prize, and could give the militants the ability to unleash a deadly flood on large populations.

Also over the weekend, Islamic State, operating with Nusra and Free Syrian Army fighters, took the Lebanese border town of Arsal. Hwaida Saad reports in "Fighters From Syria Kill 10 Lebanese Soldiers in Battle Over Border Town" that

Islamist fighters from Syria killed 10 Lebanese soldiers and appeared to have captured more than a dozen others in an armed offensive that left them in a tense battle for control of a Lebanese border town, Lebanon’s army chief said Sunday. 

The new toll was reported one day after fighters from Syria — who included members of rebel brigades, an affiliate of Al Qaeda and the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — carried out a series of attacks on army checkpoints that left them largely in control of the town of Arsal. 

The two-day clash was the most recent spillover into Lebanon from the civil war in neighboring Syria. The two countries share a complex web of political and sectarian ties that have made the violence in Syria resonate in its smaller neighbor, where street clashes, car bombs and political deadlock related to the war in Syria have been common.

Residents, aid workers and Syrian rebels reached in Arsal on Sunday said that insurgents had seized the town but that it was surrounded by the Lebanese Army, which was shelling it.

The weekend gains by Islamic State represent acute problems for U.S. policy in the region. First, while publicly opposed to IS, as the Jan Psaki quote in the Arango story makes clear, the United States has actual done nothing to stem the caliphate's growth. In fact, overwhelming, the Obama administration's reaction to the Salafis military advance on June 10, which led to the capture of Mosul, has been to blame Iraq's Shiite prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. Now that IS has turned its aggression on the Kurds, trusted American allies, and the Kurds are crying out for military assistance, it is going to be interesting to see how the U.S. manages its allegiance to both the House of Saud, the main benefactor of Islamic State, and Kurdistan, where the United States is expanding a drone facility at Erbil.

Patrick Cockburn, who has a new book out on Islamic State, had a piece over the weekend on the Counterpunch web site that is quite bullish on the prospects of continued success for the caliphate. He sees IS as shrewd and disciplined, consolidating its territorial gains while always on the look-out to pluck low-hanging fruit. Cockburn does not have many good things to say about the Shia leadership of Iraq. He predicts a jihadi encirclement and prolonged siege of Baghdad. Things are going to go from bad to worse.

The attack on Lebanon, no favorite of the U.S. because of Hezbollah, represents trouble for Obama due to the presence of Free Syrian Army fighters among the jihadis. The FSA, presumably, remains the United States principal Syrian ally in the battle against the Assad government. Getting the FSA weapons, training and hundreds of millions of dollars is going to be difficult if it is operating in open alliance with, as State Department spokeswoman Psaki says, “a dire threat to all Iraqis, the entire region and the international community.”

So the difficulties mount for Team Obama. The presidential recount that Kerry negotiated in Afghanistan is tottering. Carlotta Gall reports in "Disputes Threaten to Derail Audit of Afghanistan Vote" that an argument between the Adbullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani camps as to what counts as an invalidated ballot brought the recount to a halt over the weekend, necessitating direct intervention by the U.S. State Departmant. The Abdullah camp revealed tape of a telephone conversation which seems to show that there was a criminal conspiracy by the Karzai government and international community to swing the runoff to Ghani:

Also on Sunday, Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager released an audiotape on which he said Vice President Karim Khalili could be heard directing his followers to support Mr. Ghani in the runoff. An aide to Mr. Khalili has denounced the tape as fake, according to the independent television news channel Tolo TV. 

In the tape the speaker, who sounded like Mr. Khalili but had not been independently verified as such, said that the international community, the election commission and the president all supported Mr. Ghani for president. He even suggested that Afghanistan’s allies would tolerate the use of any means to achieve such a result. 

“Our international friends have promised us that by using any means and using any opportunity, the election outcome must turn in favor of this team, even if these opportunities, even if these means are against electoral mechanisms,” the voice said.

Mr. Abdullah’s campaign manager, Baryalai Arsalai, said the tape proved that the election fraud had been planned to return a victory for Mr. Ghani. 

“This evidence was released today to inform our countrymen that our president, other government elders and the so-called election commission are instruments,” Mr. Arsalai said. The election was a public process, he said, calling it the right of the Afghan people, not the president or the commission chief. “We have a responsibility to let people know that their rights are being violated,” he said.  

Mr. Arsalai vouched for the tape’s authenticity and said details proving that would be released later.

Afghanistan is not going to make it. Thus, with Lebanese territory now under jihadi control and the Taliban soon to be back in power, the caliphate rises, from the Mediterranean to the Durand Line.

Before signing off for the day, it is worth mentioning that the U.S. control of the MH17 narrative is slipping fast. Two good articles over the weekend -- Mike Whitney's "The Unanswered Questions of MH17" and Robert Parry's "Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts" -- marshal the evidence and clarify the events since July 17, and everything points to the Kiev junta. The arguments that Whitney and Parry present are compelling. There is even a possibility that their line of thinking will find its way to the mainstream.

Chalk Up a 'W' for Great Satan and Expect the Fighting to Rage On

Before getting to the Russian sanctions postmortem, the shape of a future geopolitical order is becoming discernible. The world is to be divided between the United States on the one hand and the Saudis, as the principal Gulf Sheikhdom controlling Islamic State as it stretches from the Mediterranean to Pakistan, on the other. A Greater Israel will be part of the mix. The chief adversaries to be twisted and broken will be the BRICS.

As for the sanctions that Europe approved yesterday, Obama took to the airwaves to announce Russia's isolation from the international community. Certainly Europe pressed harder than in the past. Russian majority-owned banks will be cut off from Western medium- and long-term loans. But the Chinese have plenty of capital. The dual-use technology ban that Europe put into place is being touted on the front page of the Gray Lady as damaging to Russia's ability to tap its Arctic fossil fuel reserves. No one but the West apparently has the know-how and tools to deal with drilling in shale or at deep sea or in the Arctic.

But it seems to me that the technology moratorium is largely a public relations stunt. The big BP and ExxonMobil deals appear to be untouched, and Europe included an exemption for any items that pertain to the gas industry. This is from "Coordinated Sanctions Aim at Russia’s Ability to Tap Its Oil Reserves," by Peter Baker, Alan Cowell and James Kanter:

The American and European actions were intended to largely, though not precisely, match each other. The United States cut off three more Russian banks, including the giant VTB Bank, from medium- and long-term capital markets and barred Americans from doing business with the United Shipbuilding Corporation, a large state-owned firm created by Mr. Putin. The Obama administration also formally suspended export credit and development finance to Russia. 

The European Union adopted similar restrictions on capital markets and applied them to Russian state-owned banks. It imposed an embargo on new arms sales to Russia and limited sales of equipment with both civilian and military uses to Russian military buyers. Europe also approved new sanctions against at least three close Putin associates, but did not identify them publicly.

European governments moved ahead despite concerns that Europe would pay an economic price for confronting the Kremlin more aggressively. While their actions went far beyond any previously taken against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, they were tailored to minimize their own costs. The arms embargo, for instance, applies only to future sales, not to the much-debated delivery by France of Mistral-class helicopter carriers that resemble bigger aircraft carriers. And the energy technology restrictions do not apply to Russian natural gas, on which Europe relies heavily.

Still, Great Satan has to be given his due. The United States was able to stampede Europe, notably Germany's Angela Merkel, into adopting its position. I didn't think this possible. I thought Germany's economic interests were too great and the U.S. too heavy handed, but I was wrong. The only thing that I can hang my hat at the end of the day is that Germany did not go "all in." Gazprom has been shielded.

What was critical in shifting Europe was MH17. Even though as the crash date of July 17 recedes it appears that the Kiev junta was certainly responsible, the traumatic event is what pitched the EU into the U.S. camp. Neil MacFarquhar, the Gray Lady's minister of propaganda stationed in Moscow, reports today in "As Sanctions Pile Up, Russians’ Alarm Grows Over Putin's Tactics" that

“They were not anticipating the West to make radical moves, costly moves,” said Nikolai Petrov, an independent political analyst. “What is happening is different from what they wanted and what they expected.” 

He and others pointed to the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 over embattled southeastern Ukraine on July 17 as upsetting the balancing act that Mr. Putin had managed to pull off to maintain support from the public, hard-line nationalists, the security services, the oligarchs and the more liberal business community. 

“Until this catastrophe, Putin’s calculations were pretty good in terms of being able to win any tactical battle,” Mr. Petrov said.

***

“In my opinion, we face a critical situation today,” Lev Gudkov, the director of the Levada Center, an independent polling organization, told a weekend seminar audience. “But our society does not realize it against a backdrop of patriotic and chauvinistic euphoria.” 

That euphoria was rooted in the relatively bloodless, seemingly costless annexation of Crimea in March. The public expected that the rest of the crisis in Ukraine would be resolved with similar ease. 

“The situation began changing dramatically after the crash of the Boeing,” Mr. Gudkov said. “According to our research, reaction inside the country was quite weak, but the Western European public has drastically changed its attitude towards Russia.”

Indeed, poll results released Tuesday by the Levada Center showed the Russian public barely concerned about sanctions. More than 60 percent of respondents thought they would have little or no impact on them. Mr. Putin remains hugely popular.

Note that the content of MacFarquhar's reporting actually refutes the headline to his story. Russians are unperturbed about the possibility of greater sanctions. This happens more often than you would expect at "the newspaper of record," a sure sign of propaganda.

As fighting rages around the wreckage of MH17, and the junta baldly lies that it is not violating the ceasefire governing the crash site, word is that Kiev has given carte blanche to a contingent of armed Dutch and Australian military personnel to roam the crash site war zone. Niqnaq has the story, "this is the scenario i have in mind":

… ITAR-TASS is reporting that Kiev has cut a deal with the Dutch to allow them to mount a 700-member armed investigation force of military and non-military specialists, and allow them free rein to move through Ukraine. The Ukrainians don’t even need to send a sniper to deliberately shoot at the investigators on-site. Just the fact that 700 angry and armed Australians and Netherlanders marching into a war zone from the enemy side will inevitably provoke a violent response from the rebels. As soon as blood hits the ground, an ‘outraged’ NATO will come charging in, and total war will erupt. It’s pretty clear now why Poroshenko didn’t stick to the ceasefire. Who needs a false flag operation when you have such compliant pawns to sacrifice …

So while Great Satan can celebrate a victory, his work of despoliation is not yet through. Novorossiya still has to be smashed to pulp. Here is where the United States best proceed with caution, something that MH17 proves it is not prone to do. Russia will not accept a Western military garrison or an ascendant Nazi junta on its border. So expect the fight to continue.

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.