Just has I had been predicting for a couple of weeks, Russia did dramatically increase the pace of her anti-Daesh operations.
First, Russia has used all her most powerful long-range aviation bombers (Tu-22M3, Tu-95MC and even Tu-160) to strike Daesh targets with cruise missiles and gravity bombs. Look at this footage which really says it all:
Second, Russia has announced that 25 long range bombers will be fully allocated to the anti-Daesh campaign.
Third, the Russian military has announced that another 37 aircraft will be send to reinforce the Russian contingent in Syria (including the most advanced aircraft in the Russian inventory, the SU-34).
The combination of these long-range bombers from Russia and additional 37 aircraft in Syria will more than double the strike potential of the Russian military against Daesh. Thus, this is a major expansion of Russian operations against Daesh.
Finally, Putin has declared that he has ordered the Russian naval task force to ‘cooperate’ with the French naval task force lead by the aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle. What better way to make sure that he French don’t “accidentally” strike the “wrong” targets than to fully “cooperate” with them?
Smart move!
The Saker
@redadare
“If France is striking Syrian targets, not ISIS,
Daesh, or whatever the current vogue name is,
either Russia has been duped, or something
much more worrying is going on here.”
How about ‘keep your friends close but your enemies even closer?’
The Paris attacks have given the French (NATO) an excuse to go into Syria. (Not a reason – that’s important. The attacks were by terrorists, not the Syrian government (who are in fact fighting those same terrorists. Even Hollande has had to publicly concede the point.)
Russia is forcing them to co-ordinate or risk a serious open confrontation. Somehow I don’t think even the witless and venal Hollande wants to be the spark to ignite WWIII.
He has huge problems now on the home-front. With any luck Le Pen will be able to capitalize on it. Not even the faux ‘Gauche’ can spin this disaster.
Meanwhile, Russia is causing mayhem for the huge illegal oil trade.
We’ll see how long Hollande manages to survive – particularly as more news emerges of French support in Syria for the very terrorists who have attacked Paris.
Oh, my. See what the Saker was saying on November 9th by searching for “reality-based.”
I would paraphrase it “Russia is not doing enough to change the game, but she is too weak and never meant her intervention to be game-changing, as some people thought who were not as smart as I am. I think Russia is doing all she can do and should continue as she has been doing. It is her pitiful best. Nobody should think Russia is strong enough to make any response to the bombing of her airliner.”
I am really hard put to interpret this as equivalent to “Just has I had been predicting for a couple of weeks, Russia did dramatically increase the pace of her anti-Daesh operations.”
At least one of us who thought this was going to be game-changing, me, relied on two judgements: one, Putin doesn’t bluff, and two, Shoigu knows how.
@Anonymous 3:02
‘Kurdistan’ is a long way from demonstrable ‘fact on the ground.’ There are too many regional differences, politically opposed factions and constant opposition from Turkey’s Erdogan.
Even if the Barzani clan (Iraq) manage to increase US/Israel financial /military support, they are not likely to be accepted by the Turkish Kurds, especially the PKK.
The Syrian Kurds are not likely to accept him either, and appear to be more inclined to regional autonomy within Syria than the potential of ‘Kurdistan.’
And whatever alliance Erdogan has – Barzani himself has a Turkish passport – on the oil revenues, he won’t give up the ‘safe zone’ that would see ‘Kurdistan’ stretch along the entire border. He must also realise Assad has no territorial expansionist ambition into Turkey, while Kurd groups do. And NATO will support them..covertly of course.
The KRG in Iraq is currently in disarray anyway, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Turkey and Iraq have some ‘arrangements’ to prevent a border country ‘Kurdistan
from emerging.
In my view, the Syrian Kurds would be ultimately better off within a Russian- Iran – allied Assad-led Syria. The US-Israel axis is not to be trusted to deliver on promises, other than buying off leadership and leaving the rank-and-file/general population even worse off than before.
They have opened an office in Russia so they seem to have made their political decision.
Interesting article here (2011) from an Iranian Kurd on the internal rivalries of the Kurd groups:
http://ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2011/1/state4498.htm
Little or no mention of Russian action in Syria, since it began, in Canadian media!! I wonder why :-)
When I was a natural gas processing instructor in Iran in the mid 70s, some trainees once asked me if it wasn’t true that our “leader” took much of his decisions from Washington. I replied, in the affirmative.
America’s Awesome Corruption — Especially in Military
Eric ZUESSE | 24.11.2015 | 00:00
” U.S. military official as saying that Russia’s technologies for disabling U.S. weapons are so shocking that it almost makes him cry…”
On November 16th, the great journalist on international strategic and military issues, F. William Engdahl, headlined at journal-neo, «Do We Really Want a New World War With Russia?» and he documented that, with military expenditures one-tenth of America’s, Russia achieves at least parity with the U.S. in terms of war-fighting capability. It’s a remarkable article, even though it actually brings together into one place the recent disclosures in many media, regarding vital technologies where Russia far outpaces American capabilities. Of course, that’s what’s necessary to do in order to document the extent of Russia’s areas of clear military superiority.
As to the question of whether the areas where the U.S. surpasses Russia’s military technologies might be more or fewer than Russia’s, the key point to consider is, I think, that Russia has now (as Engdahl makes clear) so greatly exceeded U.S. capabilities in certain vitally important respects, so that, at the very most, the U.S., even with all of its alliances etc., would be merely equal to Russia — the Russian military’s areas of excellence are that crucial.
Engdahl quotes one high U.S. military official as saying that Russia’s technologies for disabling U.S. weapons are so shocking that it almost makes him cry. A recent article in Defense News went into even more depth about Russia’s superiority in that particular area — and this was published before the subsequent embarrassing U.S. military back-downs in Syria and elsewhere, which have more recently (especially since 30 September 2015) been necessitated by the uncompetitive U.S. position regarding those vitally important technologies.(con’t) http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2015/11/24/america-awesome-corruption-especially-military.html
Home / Breaking News / Understanding the Power-Contest Between Aristocracies
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Understanding the Power-Contest Between Aristocracies
Nov 17, 2015 What’s your thoughts?
The last U.S. President before 1981, Jimmy Carter, said recently that the United States is “just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president.” Changing this will be difficult if not impossible. The global aristocracies might not ‘win,’ but dislodging them from power is extremely unlikely. Their wars will continue to be our wars.
The world’s 80 wealthiest individuals own half of the world’s wealth, and the way that this was calculated ignored the very wealthiest people entirely, including the wealthiest of all, King Salman of Saudi Arabia, whose actual wealth is certainly well in excess of a trillion dollars. So, the true number there wouldn’t be 80 individuals, but perhaps more like only 40, many of whose personal fortunes aren’t even calculated by Forbes, etc. But regardless of whether it’s instead as large as, say, 70, the wealthiest people need to grab wealth from some of the other wealthiest people in order to raise their respective rank, as studies indicate to be the main motivation for the super-rich — rank instead of money per se. For example, “the richest 8.6% own $224.5T (trillion), while the poorest 91.4% own only $38.7T.” So, stealing from even a large number of individuals in the poorest 91.4% won’t likely increase the rank of a person who is in the top 100 worldwide — they’ve got to steal from each other, in order to raise their rank. Wars are the way that’s done. It’s an essential business for the global aristocracy, especially at the global top; and, so, as the world’s wealth becomes more and more concentrated, more and more weapons will be sold. There’s just no other way for it to happen. Whether any of them are willing to go so far as nuclear war is another question. Bluffing is one thing; willingness to follow through with it, is something very different…..http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/understanding-the-power-contest-between-aristocracies/
I just heard now that Turkey shot down a Russian su 24 jet alledged to have violated its airspace. What should we be expecting from the Russians now, @saker?
Imperialist countries GB, Fr, US of A have been waging wars (now proxy wars cause they are cordially hated all over the world, especially the US of A) and subversion worldwide for more than 200 years. Russia annoys them, see what George Friedmann and Zbignew Brzezinski have to say on the subject. Both have written their “Mein Kampf”. For ZB it’s called “The grand Chessboard”. 9/11 hoax was part of the plan to allow to wage eternal “War On Terror” (with no winner except arms builders). and for GF you just have to listen to that conference (among others) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emCEfEYom4A
You’ll see that those guys are psychopaths, in a normal world they should be hung high. But in this world they are calling the shots.