woah.

listen.....

what the russians want is clear enough: they want to return territorial sovereignty to syria, to recreate the sykes-picot lines and return the map to what it was before the mess started. the americans are obviously arming the kurds because they don't want to do that, they want the map erased and redrawn, to reflect what their arab allies believe is a better understanding of demography and history. for, the sykes-picot lines were clearly arbitrary.

lets try a thought experiment: what if the americans had succeeded in using these extremists to overthrow assad? the kurds would have been abandoned immediately, or at least expelled to an enclave in the north. the whole point of this was to back saudi ambitions for a pan-arabic, fundamentalist state; the kurds would not be welcome in such a hypothetical society. it's not the middle ages, any more. the end result would have been the abolition of national boundaries in the region, and perhaps a kurdish state centred around mosul. certainly, the americans never planned for the kurds to move into syria, it's just something that kind of happened, largely in reaction to the russians setting up. the americans found themselves in a race to occupy as much of the country as possible.

so, when the russians told the kurdish militants "hand the region back to assad or be driven out.", it was done with the intent to re-establish the international rule of law, and reconstruct the nation state of syria, with a capital in damascus.

the russians are up against a wall in terms of what they can actually do. if the status quo persists, there is a real threat of syria fracturing like korea and vietnam did in the cold war, and the kurdish enclave becoming an american military base, like south korea is. notwithstanding the fact that this would be bad for syria, it is not in russian interests to split syria down the middle like this. but, they can't act directly against america, either.

the turks are in charge of doing this precisely because it won't set off a world war, due to the close alliance with washington; ankara can get away with things that moscow cannot. and, their task appears to be to set up a buffer zone separating russian and american forces, thereby allowing the regime to consolidate the regions behind the buffer zone, and ultimately prepare to reunite the country.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard

my initial reaction to trump skipping out on the tpp was something like:

he has no understanding of what he's doing, but if he wants to go ahead and accelerate the decline of america as an empire, i'm not going to put up much of a fight.

this reaction is repeating itself around the world.

and, as i predicted in 2016, trump is, indeed, in the process of unravelling this empire.

it's not entirely his fault. all of these things were put in motion under obama. but, he is an example of the perils of electing exactly the wrong leader at exactly the wrong time. and, the results will reverberate across the centuries.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

For his part, Aldar Khalil, the co-chair of the Movement of a Democratic Society in Afrin, has been quite vocal about Moscow’s strategy. “Syrian Kurdish forces were given an ultimatum over the weekend,” Khalil said.  “[We were told] leave your positions to the Syrian regime or face the wrath of Ankara. They chose to stay." 

activists on the ground: yes, turkey is still in nato. but, it's a formality, at this point.

the turks are currently actively acting against american interests, and actively aligning with the russians.

i know that you're used to seeing nato as this monolithic thing, where orders are barked from washington. but, this started to break down in the bush administration, was band-aid-ed over by obama, even as he put events in motion that would ultimately weaken american leadership, and has now completely imploded, fairly quickly, under trump. the return of russian power is a consequence of a lack of american leadership, more so than it is a complicating factor.

a return to a multipolar world doesn't and shouldn't change basic political allegiances, and the rojava are certainly worth standing in solidarity with, whatever their flaws. but, it calls for a sharper analysis and a more careful attention to details.

the old alliances are just that, now: old alliances. and, turkey's re-alignment is likely the beginning of things, rather than an isolated happening.

the turks have reason to align with the persian empire - and the kurds are likely the power that will return the persians to empire, one day. but, the russians cannot align with the persians, these are historically competitive empires. they can dominate the persians, they can act as a counter-balance to american interests, and etc. but, the russians must ultimately seek to reduce persian power, and are already opening up a potential pandora's box in doing what they're already doing. when america is gone, the byzantine-persian conflict will persist. the russians have an existential stake in ensuring that they remain the dominant power in that relationship.

i'm just requesting that people be careful enough in their analysis to adjust to the shifting realities, as this is a real thing that is happening, and is likely to accelerate.

so, could we lose america before we lose capitalism? is that what is ruffling these old leftists, who have identified the two things as the same thing? how is this possible?

i will tell you, authoritatively: we will lose america before we lose capitalism, america will not be where the revolution takes place and america will not be the society that leads us into socialism, or into communism. capitalism will not be the same, without america. but, america only has itself to blame for it's decline. and, that decline has been apparent, for decades.

so, this should not shock any old leftists at all. it's just a question of realizing what's happening.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

the evidence *is* fairly clear that stimulus works, and tax cuts don't. i mean, this shouldn't be an ideological debate. and, it is trump that is living in the world of economic unicorns, holding to ideas that don't just lack empirical support, but have been demonstrably proven as ineffective - while trudeau is really holding to the textbook on economics, here: growth is driven by increases in aggregate demand. wage increases are far more effective than tax cuts in increasing this.

trudeau is right, here. trump isn't.

but, there was a poll that said that the conservative party propaganda - and that is what it is - about harper being a strong economic leader has had some kind of brainwashing effect, so here comes good old lorne hunter to enforce the lies. this isn't actually news, though. harper was outpolling trudeau on the economy right up to the election, remember, and still lost. you started seeing the numbers diverge when the ndp was leading: harper consistently did the best on the economy, but was still losing in every poll. how do you explain that? my analysis of this at the time is that people didn't really understand what they were telling pollsters, they were just repeating the marketing. the tv says harper is better on the economy, so he must be, right? but, if you try and ask them to explain *why*, you're not even going to get a coherent answer at all, let alone a confused one. they've never really thought about it, they're just taking the commercials on tv as an authority. because the tv doesn't lie, right?

i actually think that the oversaturation to economic messaging from the conservatives has probably led to a kind of ultra-paradoxical phase: they may accept that the conservatives are better on the economy without knowing what that means, they might obediently repeat the propaganda, but that doesn't appear to be affecting voting decisions, at this point, because they don't actually understand what the conservative party means when they say they're best on the economy. so, they take it as a given, but they don't understand what it actually means. i mean, this isn't an accident: the party obscures bad policies with vague messaging that obscures what they're actually doing. so, voters seem to be having difficulty tying the propaganda to actual policies, and then realize they don't support the policies that are apparently so good for the economy when presented with them. but, they repeat it, when polled on it, anyways.

i would suggest that the effects of this are going to be that the younger generation is not going to put the economy at the top of their voting priorities, and that's a deep social change. but, it's a reaction to the conservative propaganda. and, the country could very well end up economically better off as a consequence of it.

i kept asking steve if his economic action plan was a four-year plan or a five-year plan, and i never got an answer. but, i guess he had a majority for four years, right?

 http://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/gunter-trudeau-stakes-our-future-on-hipster-economics

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.

it's starting to look like the aristocrat swooping in is caroline mulroney.

that's a dramatic entrance to high level politics, for somebody that one might assume ought to run in quebec.

it will be interesting to see how this unfolds. i do believe that she has an existing media footprint, and would no doubt be used by the tory elites as a front, managed through that media image - you could call it the trudeau model. but, i have my doubts about the applicability of the trudeau model to provincial politics, where turnout is lower and voters tend to be more informed.

i'd like to see them try this, really - because i don't think it will work. not a mulroney. not in ontario. but, what an experiment...

to be clear: who knows if what happened will ever come out in the form of actual evidence, but a little deductive reasoning is suggesting that the way has been paved for mulroney to move in, as the preferred option of the party executive, which wants to manage the office ceremonially and pull actual decision making into the party executive. well, the liberals just did it, federally. and, it's working.

it's of course going to be the excuse to wipe patrick brown's platform away, as well. new leader, new ideas. if the tories veer right and lose the election, as they always do, this is going to be a question that people will ask: might they had won with patrick brown and his platform? if they hadn't got cocky...

i dunno. i'm a logician, not a clairvoyant. and, we're going to need to wait for the dust to settle before we even look for a signal. but, if what appears to be happening is what is happening, i think it's going to backfire: i think the mulroney name is going to backfire, and i think people aren't going to take her seriously as an applicant to the premier's office.

jagmeet singh must cut his beard.