The U.S.-led coalition bombed an area near the Deir al-Zor airport in eastern Syria on Saturday, killing between 62 and 90 Syrian army soldiers, with over 100 wounded.  Washington claims it bombed the Syrian army by mistake, but as some analysts have pointed out, although circumstances on the ground in other parts of Syria are complicated with many different players active, this area of Syria only consisted of ISIS fighters and members of the Syrian army who had kept ISIS at bay near the airport.  Given the detailed level of surveillance that the U.S. government is capable of, it strains credulity to think that they could make this kind of blunder.

In any event, the bombing of the Syrian army has had an effect that ISIS has been unable to achieve with offensive actions in the area over an extended period of time – strengthening their position around the airport.

Furthermore, the recent diplomatic deal reached by the U.S. and Russia required the grounding of the Syrian air force.  If this is what the Syrian government gets for grounding its own air force in its own country – only to be bombed by a nation that is violating its sovereignty to begin with – it does not bode well for the overall deal.

Common Dreams News provided the following details on this latest crisis:

Early reporting indicated that between 62 and 90 Syrian troops may have been killed in the U.S.-led airstrikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group with contacts across Syria, cited sources at the airport saying at least 90 Syrian soldiers had been killed and 120 wounded. Meanwhile, Anti-War.com‘s Jason Ditz described the massacre as perhaps “the single biggest blunder of the entire US war in Syria.”

A statement released by U.S. Central Command acknowledged that airstrikes had been carried out in the area claiming coalition aircraft believed they were targeting ISIS units, but said the bombing was “halted immediately when coalition officials were informed by Russian officials that it was possible the personnel and vehicles targeted were part of the Syrian military.”

The mass-casualty bombing comes less than a week after the start of a cease fire brokered by the U.S. and Russia whose stated purpose was to allow aid convoys to reach besieged areas while also separating various rebel factions in hopes that further progress could be made towards longer-term political negotiations.

According to Ditz’s analysis, the errant bombing and killing of 90 soldiers “during a ceasefire may not be the worst of the story, incredibly enough”—explaining:

Those troops had been defending the area from ISIS, who quickly overran what was left of the base’s defenses, and are now even closer to the Deir [Al-Zor] airport.

The airport has been one of the last major government holdouts in the Deir Ezzor capital, and at times the Syrian warplanes flying out of the airport were the only thing keeping ISIS from overrunning the entire eastern half of the country. The US airstrikes seriously softened up the defenses in the area, and might finally do what years of ISIS offensives couldn’t, put ISIS in control of the airport.

Experts who spoke to the New York Times also expressed worry about the diplomatic and on-the-ground implications of the attack:

Aaron David Miller, a Middle East analyst at the Wilson Center, said the episode was certain to make “an already complex situation more byzantine.”  He said the strikes would “feed conspiracy theories that Washington is in league with ISIS,” as well as create a pretext for Mr. Assad to avoid his commitments under the cease-fire deal.

Mr. Miller added that the episode would create opportunities for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “to blast the U.S. on the eve of the U.N. General Assembly,” the global meeting in New York starting this week.

In a statement from its foreign office, the Russian government reacted harshly to the U.S. attack, saying the airstrikes were “on the boundary between criminal negligence and direct connivance with Islamic State terrorists.”

The statement continued, “If this air strike was the result of a targeting error, it is a direct consequence of the U.S. side’s stubborn unwillingness to coordinate its action against terrorist groups on Syrian territory with Russia.

Russia called for an emergency closed session of the UN Security Council in response to the bombing.  The Guardian reported the following on the meeting as well as the heated exchange of barbs by U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power and the Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin:

The US and Russia on Saturday clashed at the United Nations over the bombing when the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, described Russia’s call for an emergency closed-door security council meeting over the incident a “stunt” that was “uniquely cynical and hypocritical”. She said Russia had for years blocked UN punitive measures against the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad for the barrel bombing of civilian populations in rebel-held cities.

“Since 2011, the Assad regime has been intentionally striking civilian targets with horrifying, predictable regularity … And yet in the face of none of these atrocities has Russia expressed outrage, nor has it demanded investigations, nor has it ever called for a Saturday night emergency consultation in the Security Council,” she said.

After the meeting went ahead, the Russian envoy to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, declared that in his decades as a diplomat he had “never seen such an extraordinary display of American heavy-handedness as we are witnessing today” after the meeting went ahead.

He said that if Power’s actions were any indication of Washington’s possible reaction then the cease-fire agreement is “in serious trouble” but expressed hope the US would convince Moscow it was serious about finding a political solution in Syria and fighting terrorism.

Churkin said the timing of the US airstrike was “frankly suspicious” as it came two days before the US and Russia were supposed under the ceasefire agreement to begin joint planning for air operations against Isis and the former Nusra front, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham, deemed to be terrorist groups by both states.

In another incident exposing Washington’s ludicrous policy in Syria, American special forces were chased out of a northern Syrian town by member of the so-called “Free Syria Army” – keep in mind, these are supposed to be the good guys according to Washington bobble-heads.

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In Ukraine, a band of hooligans attacked the Russian embassy in an effort to prevent any Russian citizens from entering the embassy to cast votes for the parliamentary elections that were scheduled in Russia on Sunday.   No one was hurt and there was no major damage as a result of the incident.

More from Press TV:

About 20 unidentified Ukrainians, wearing balaclavas, lobbed scores of fireworks at the embassy building during the early hours of Saturday. They chanted, “There will be no elections,” while holding a banner reading, “Fireworks today, Grad (multiple rocket launchers) tomorrow.”

No arrests or damage have been reported.

On Sunday, polling stations will open across Russia for local parliamentary elections, which are held every five years. Russia previously announced that its citizens in Kiev would also be able to cast their ballots at a polling station at its embassy as well as other diplomatic missions in Ukraine.

However, what most of all has angered the government in Kiev is Moscow’s decision to open polling stations in the Crimean Peninsula for the first time since it rejoined the Russian Federation in 2014. Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly rejected Moscow’s plan, saying they would not recognize such elections in Crimea.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the deal reached by the U.S. and Russia on Syria last week, appears to be faltering.  Russian media, quoting the Russian military, reports that the U.S. is still not following through on its promises to separate out the “moderate” opposition from Al-Nusra (which has recently changed its name).  RT reported the following on September 15th:

Russia says the U.S. is not keeping its end of the bargain on the Syrian ceasefire and has continued its calls for Washington to make public all documents relating to the deal. The Russian military says Damascus is the only party observing the agreement.

“On the third day of the ceasefire only the Syrian Army is observing it. Meanwhile, the U.S.-led ‘moderate rebels’ are intensifying the shelling of residential areas,” Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Thursday.

The ministry said in a press briefing that “new conflict flashpoints are appearing” and that government forces and civilians had been shot at 45 times over the past 24 hours, without firing back.

The military added that the U.S. failed to deliver on its promise to separate truce-observing moderates and truce-violating terrorists and is now “apparently trying to use a smoke-screen to cover up the violations of their part of the deal.”

The ministry called on the Pentagon to hand over up-to-date and detailed information about the location of the various factions in the conflict.

….Earlier, the U.S. said that both Damascus and the rebels were reported as violating the ceasefire, which began on Monday. Washington acknowledges its responsibility to stop violations committed by the anti-government forces.

“We’ve always been clear, just as we have said that Russia’s responsibility is to exert influence or put pressure – however you want to put it – on the regime to abide by the cessation of hostilities, it is incumbent on us to persuade, convince the moderate opposition to also abide by the cessation of hostilities, and ultimately, that’s a decision they’re going to have to make,” U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday.

“We’re continuing our outreach to the Syrian moderate opposition – that’s been ongoing – and trying to explain the arrangement to them, answer their questions. And again, we’ve seen, as I said, sporadic reports of violence, but in large part we think [the ceasefire] is holding,” he added.

Alexander Mercouris writes over at The Duran:

Various Jihadi groups are refusing to dissociate themselves from Jabhat Al-Nusra.  Though there appears to have been a falling off in the fighting, some fighting is still taking place, and Russian troops on the Castello road have been caught on film coming under fire.  [Russia’s TASS news agency had reported on the 13th that Russian marines had taken up positions on Castello Road – the supply route used by the rebels/terrorists from the north – which had recently been taken by the Syrian army, in an effort to implement the apparent ceasefire terms requiring Damascus to pull back and allow the set up of humanitarian corridors enabling the exit of civilians and rebels willing to lay down their arms – NB]

The Russians are complaining that the US is still not providing information on Jabhat Al-Nusra that it promised, and has failed to force the Jihadi groups it sponsors to dissociate themselves from Jabhat Al-Nusra and to observe the ceasefire.

Meanwhile the air is thick with arguments about the provision of humanitarian aid to Jihadi controlled eastern Aleppo.  Jihadi groups are blocking the aid the UN is providing, complaining that it is not what they want, and because they say they reject the US – Russian agreement under which it is being provided, whilst the UN – entirely predictably – is blaming the Syrian government.  Needless to say there is no sign of any withdrawal of Jihadi fighters from eastern Aleppo by way of the Castello road.

In the midst of all these charges and counter charges the Russians are calling for the text of the agreement with the US to be published whilst the US is saying no – a fact which incidentally all but confirms that it was the US that made the major concessions in order to reach the agreement. 

Not only is Russia now requesting that the terms of the Syria deal be made public so as to subject it to better accountability, but Moscow is also moving to have it officially backed by a UN Security Council resolution, according to Reuters:

UNITED NATIONS- Russia is pushing for the United Nations Security Council to adopt a draft resolution next week endorsing a Syria ceasefire deal agreed by Moscow and Washington, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said on Thursday.

The deal reached on Saturday, September 10 aims to put Syria’s peace process back on track. It includes a nationwide truce that started at sundown on Monday, improved humanitarian aid access and joint military targeting of banned Islamist groups.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry agreed on five documents, which they said would not be publicly released. However, on Thursday, France called on Washington to share details of the deal.

Churkin said Russia was working on a draft Security Council resolution that would endorse the deal. When asked if the deal would need to be annexed to such a resolution, he said: “We don’t know yet.”

“We’re working on it … I think we need to adopt it on the 21st (of September), this would make sense,” Churkin told reporters.

The 15-member Security Council is due to hold a high-level meeting on Syria next Wednesday during the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations. Kerry and Lavrov are expected to attend, diplomats said.

Note that France has now joined in the call for the terms of the deal to be made public.   On that note, some more details have come out about the deal, including some of the concessions made by each side and what steps Washington has made to attempt to separate the “moderates” from Al-Nusra (whatever name the Al Qaeda backed organization is going by nowadays).  Gareth Porter, an independent journalist and expert on the Middle East, who has done some excellent reporting on both Syria and Iran over the past few years, has reported the following:

The new bargain is actually a variant of a provision in the Feb. 27 ceasefire agreement: in return for Russian and Syrian restraints on bombing operations, the United States would prevail on its clients to separate themselves from their erstwhile Al Qaeda allies.

But that never happened. Instead the U.S.-supported groups not only declared publicly that they would not honor a “partial ceasefire” that excluded areas controlled by Al Qaeda’s affiliate, then known as Nusra Front, but joined with Nusra Front and its close ally, Ahrar al Sham, in a major open violation of the ceasefire by seizing strategic terrain south of Aleppo in early April.

….As the Kerry-Lavrov negotiations on a ceasefire continued, Kerry’s State Department hinted that the U.S. was linking its willingness to pressure its Syrian military clients to separate themselves from Al Qaeda’s forces in the northwest to an unspecified Russian concession on the ceasefire that was still being negotiated.

It is now clear that what Kerry was pushing for was what the Obama administration characterized as the “grounding” of the Syrian air force in the current agreement.

Now that it has gotten that concession from the Russians, the crucial question is what the Obama administration intends to do about the ties between its own military clients and Al Qaeda in Aleppo and elsewhere in the northwest.

Thus far the primary evidence available for answering that question is two letters from U.S. envoy to the Syrian opposition Michael Ratney to opposition groups backed by the United States. The first letter, sent on Sept. 3, after most of the Kerry-Lavrov agreement had already been hammered out, appears to have been aimed primarily at reassuring those Syrian armed groups.

As translated by al-Monitor, it asserted, “Russia will prevent regime planes from flying, and this means there will not be bombing by the regime of areas controlled by the opposition, regardless of who is present in the area, including areas in which Jabhat Fateh al Sham [the new name adopted by Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front] has a presence alongside other opposition factions.”

Ratney confirmed that the U.S. would in return “offer Russia coordination from our side to weaken al Qaeda.” But he also assured U.S. clients that their interests would be protected under the new agreement.

“[W]e believe this ceasefire should be stronger,” he wrote, “because it should prevent Russia and the regime from bombing the opposition and civilians under the pretext that its striking Jabhat al Nusra.”

The Ratney letter makes no reference to any requirement for the armed opposition to move away from their Al Qaeda allies or even terminate their military relationships, and thus implied that they need not do so.

But in a follow-up letter, undated but apparently sent on Sept. 10, following the completion of the new Kerry-Lavrov agreement, Ratney wrote, “We urge the rebels to distance themselves and cut all ties with Fateh of Sham, formerly Nusra Front, or there will be severe consequences.”

The difference between the two messages is obviously dramatic. That suggests that one of the last concessions made by Kerry in the Sept. 9 meeting with Lavrov may have been that a message would be sent to U.S. military clients with precisely such language.

The totality of the two letters from Ratney underlines the reluctance of the United States to present an ultimatum to its Syrian clients, no matter how clearly they are implicated in Al Qaeda operations against the ceasefire. Last spring, the State Department never publicly commented on the participation by the U.S.-supported armed groups in the Nusra Front offensive in violation of the ceasefire agreement, effectively providing political cover for it.

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(Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi shortly before he was murdered on Oct. 20, 2011.)

Robert Parry at Consortium News has written another critical piece, this time discussing a little-talked about report undertaken by Britain’s Foreign Affairs Committee, which exposes the lies and exaggerations about Qaddafi’s actions used to justify NATO’s regime change in Libya in 2011:

The report from the U.K.’s Foreign Affairs Committee confirms that the U.S. and other Western governments exaggerated the human rights threat posed by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and then quickly morphed the “humanitarian” mission into a military invasion that overthrew and killed Gaddafi, leaving behind political and social chaos.

The report’s significance is that it shows how little was learned from the Iraq War fiasco in which George W. Bush’s administration hyped and falsified intelligence to justify invading Iraq and killing its leader, Saddam Hussein. In both cases, U.K. leaders tagged along and the West’s mainstream news media mostly served as unprofessional propaganda conduits, not as diligent watchdogs for the public.

….According to the new U.K. report on Libya, Britain’s military intervention – alongside the U.S. and France – was based on “erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding” of the reality inside Libya, which included a lack of appreciation about the role of Islamic extremists in spearheading the opposition to Gaddafi.

In other words, Gaddafi was telling the truth when he accused the rebels around Benghazi of being penetrated by Islamic terrorists. The West, including the U.S. news media, took Gaddafi’s vow to wipe out this element and distorted it into a claim that he intended to slaughter the region’s civilians, thus stampeding the United Nations Security Council into approving an operation to protect them.

That mandate was then twisted into an excuse to decimate Libya’s army and clear the way for anti-Gaddafi rebels to seize the capital of Tripoli and eventually hunt down, torture and murder Gaddafi.

Yet, there was evidence before this “regime change” occurred regarding the extremist nature of the anti-Gaddafi rebels as well as those seeking to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria. As analysts Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman wrote in a pre-Libya-war report for West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, “the Syrian and Libyan governments share the United States’ concerns about violent salafist/jihadi ideology and the violence perpetrated by its adherents.”

In the report entitled “Al-Qaeda’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” Felter and Fishman also analyzed Al Qaeda’s documents captured in 2007 showing personnel records of militants who flocked to Iraq for the war. The documents revealed that eastern Libya (the base of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion) was a hotbed for suicide bombers traveling to Iraq to kill American troops.

….This reality was known by U.S. officials prior to the West’s military intervention in Libya in 2011, yet opportunistic politicians, including Secretary of State Clinton, saw Libya as a stage to play out their desires to create muscular foreign policy legacies or achieve other aims.

Some of Clinton’s now-public emails show that France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy appeared to be more interested in protecting France’s financial dominance of its former African colonies as well as getting a bigger stake in Libya’s oil wealth than in the well-being of the Libyan people.

An April 2, 2011 email from Clinton’s personal adviser Sidney Blumenthal explained that Gaddafi had plans to use his stockpile of gold “to establish a pan-African currency” and thus “to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French franc.”

Blumenthal added, “French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.” Another key factor, according to the email, was Sarkozy’s “desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production.”

For Clinton, a prime motive for pushing the Libyan “regime change” was to demonstrate her mastery of what she and her advisers called “smart power,” i.e., the use of U.S. aerial bombing and other coercive means, such as economic and legal sanctions, to impose U.S. dictates on other nations.

Parry goes on to explain how Washington policymakers have apparently learned nothing from the chaos and humanitarian disasters they have created with their regime change operations, continuing with a reckless propaganda campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin – part of the pattern in the run-ups to regime change operations against foreign governments that do not bow to Washington’s dictates.   The fact that Russia represents the world’s other nuclear super-power is not serving as a deterrent in this regard.

For more on the lies and propaganda peddled by the western corporate media and certain mainstream human rights organizations, which enabled the war against Libya, please see the Harvard Belfer Center’s report, Lessons from Libya: How Not to Intervene.

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/23387/lessons_from_libya.html

Finally, military analyst and blogger, Moon of Alabama, has exposed the New York Times‘ pathetic lack of knowledge on a war and country they are tasked with informing Americans about when they wrote a piece attempting to mock Libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson’s ignorance when asked about the siege of Aleppo in Syria (Johnson answered “What is Aleppo?”).  It took several corrections of the original piece before the Times gave an accurate characterization of the city of Aleppo.

Read it here.

It never fails to amaze me how intelligent people I talk to still give the NYT credibility and think they are well-informed if they read this outlet which has allowed itself to become a rag.

Although renowned political scientist John Mearsheimer does not consider himself to be an isolationist – a term which has acquired a negative connotation since WWII – his definition is illuminating as much for clarifying what the term does not mean as for what it does.

In America Unhinged, Mearsheimer writes: “Isolationism rests on the assumption that no region of the world outside of the Western Hemisphere is of vital strategic importance to the United States. Isolationists do not argue that America has no interests in the wider world, just that they are not important enough to justify deploying military force to defend them. They are fully in favor of engaging with the rest of the world economically as well as diplomatically, but they view all foreign wars as unnecessary.”

As Mearsheimer makes plain, isolationism does not constitute a lack of constructive engagement with the outside world, but a judicious engagement that eschews military action outside of defending the homeland.

At a time when Washington is experiencing the hubris of imperial overreach and the prospect of the eventual collapse that history shows is the inevitable endgame of all empires, it is time for concerned Americans across the political spectrum to begin to seriously consider what a new paradigm and policy platform representing sanity might look like.

It is in the U.S.’s long-term interests (as well as the rest of the world’s) to have stability. The bare minimum for stability is a lack of war.

As science writer John Horgan concluded in his book The End of War in which he undertook a scientific analysis of war via the study of history, anthropology, psychology and sociology, the old adage about justice being a prerequisite for peace is wrong. It is peace that is necessary for justice to take root. The violent, chaotic and wasteful conditions of modern war are not conducive to the pursuit of justice or human development.

Most Americans do not share the Neoliberal, Neoconservative, or Responsibility to Protect club’s messianic vision of an America that needs to recreate the world to fit some bastardized idea of imperial “democracy” that requires a Year Zero program to destroy the social, cultural and political foundations of target countries (see Iraq, Libya, and Syria).

The restoration of our democratic republic and the revitalization of our economy and society are intimately connected to pulling out of the militarist/imperialist projects that are killing our country, along with the casualties it is responsible for around the world. It was estimated last year by physicians’ groups that deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan from the U.S. “war on terror” (USWOT) are 1.3 million at the conservative end.

The predictable blowback from friends and family members of those decapitated and blown apart by drone strikes and indiscriminate bombings, as well as shootings by soldiers whose psyches have been warped by immersion in the hellhole of counter-insurgency wars that are unwinnable, should give all Americans serious pause in terms of rational problem-solving toward the goal of increasing the conditions for peace and stability.

The casualties from the physicians’ groups does not even count the thousands dead in the Libyan civil war, precipitated by the US/NATO toppling of the Gaddafi government – a stable, secular government that had attained the highest standard of living in all of Africa – or our attempts to similarly support nihilistic jihadists who want to topple the Assad regime in Syria and the killing frenzy that has resulted in that country.

Other historians and political scientists, going further back in the American Empire’s reign, have estimated 20 million to 30 million people have perished as a result of Washington’s covert operations and overt military interventions that have occurred almost continuously since 1945.

Take a moment to let that really sink in. Each of those 20 million to 30 million was a living, breathing person who – like you and me – had hopes, dreams, fears and other people who loved them. With this track record, is it any wonder that the world views the U.S. as the biggest threat to world peace by a wide margin?

Click here to continue reading this article.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have finally hammered out a ceasefire agreement for Syria, but according to both Russian and Western media reports, many important details are not being made public.   RT reports the following:

Russia and the U.S. have agreed on a new ceasefire plan on Syria that includes a ban on government airstrikes in certain areas and cooperation on strikes against jihadists, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov announced on September 9 after the marathon talks with the U.S.’s John Kerry.

Opening the much-awaited press conference after some 13 hours of talks, Kerry said that the two have agreed on a comprehensive approach to Syrian reconciliation. He called “on every Syrian stakeholder to support the plan that the United States and Russia have reached, to … bring this catastrophic conflict to the quickest possible end through a political process.”

According to Kerry, the plan is to ensure that Syrian government forces will not carry out combat missions where the so-called moderate opposition is present.

Speaking of fight against Al-Nusra and its efforts to blend with moderate rebels, Kerry stressed “going on Al-Nusra is not a concession to anybody” but “is profoundly in the interests of the U.S.”

Kerry also outlined an establishment of the Russian-U.S. Joint Implementation Centre (JIG) that would serve the purpose of “delineation of territories controlled by Al-Nusra and opposition groups in the area of active hostilities.”

Taking the floor, the Russian FM confirmed that Russia and U.S. had agreed to coordinate airstrikes in Syria, “provided there is a sustained period of reduced violence.” The first step toward the implementation of this clause will be a 48-hour ceasefire in Syria, Lavrov said.

Lavrov elaborated that the ceasefire comes into effect on September 12 and should last for at least seven days. “After the ceasefire regime will be in effect for seven days, we will establish an implementation centre, in which the military and the representatives of Russian and U.S. intelligence will handle practical issues, separating terrorists and opposition,” he added.

The Russian FM said that the diplomats have negotiated on five separate documents at the talks. “Despite the mistrust and attempt to disrupt what we have agreed upon, we managed to work out a package of documents, there are five of them. It allows us to set an effective coordination in the fight against terrorism, to expand the humanitarian access to distressed population, first and foremost in Aleppo,” Lavrov said.

Due to the sensitive nature of the information contained in the agreements, they will not be made available to general public, Lavrov said. “We cannot make these documents public. They contain rather serious, sensitive information. We don’t want it to fall into hands of those who would surely try to disrupt the implementation of the measures stipulated within in the framework of humanitarian delivery supplies and in other parts of our agreements.”

Analyst and international law expert, Alexander Mercouris, has speculated that keeping many of the details secret likely means that it was Washington that made significant concessions:

Essentially, on a preliminary and strictly provisional view, the new agreement is simply a reworking of the previous agreement the US and Russia agreed with each other in February, whilst taking into account the changes in the front lines that have taken place since then.

The February agreement failed to work, leading to more fighting, which resulted in the Syrian army gaining much more ground than it controlled in February, so that it is now in a much stronger position in Damascus and Aleppo than it was in February.

Presumably there is something in the new agreement which the US and the Russians think will make it succeed where the February agreement failed.  A reasonable guess is that it is this, whatever it is, which is so embarrassing to one side or the other that it is why the agreement cannot be made public.

At the risk of making a very big guess that may be completely wrong, if it is true as the Russians say that the Syrians and the Iranians have approved the agreement then the major concession – whatever it is – which is being kept secret has most probably been made by the US.

The fact that it took the US more than 9 hours (not 5 hours as some reports say) to agree to the plan after Kerry referred it to Washington for approval also suggests that it is the US which has made the major concessions, and that the terms of the agreement – whatever they are – ran into strong criticism and opposition in Washington from the hardliners.

Time will tell if the ceasefire is indeed successful.  Meanwhile, the U.S. Peace Council recently held a press conference in which they reported on the results of their fact-finding mission to Syria in which they spoke to a cross-section of Syrians as well as president Assad.

I encourage everyone to watch the 49 minute press conference here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc-RmAVK8Pg

For those who don’t have the time, I will sum up the main points of what the member of the delegation found out:

• Syrians are united and will not accept being divided up by religion or other criteria;

• The US has sanctions in place against Syria similar to the ones against Iraq in the 1990’s, which were responsible for much humanitarian suffering; consequently, Syrians are unable to obtain important medicines and parts to repair infrastructure;

• this is not a civil war, but a war of Syrians and the Syrian government against outside mercenaries and terrorist organizations supported by the U.S., Gulf states (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Qatar), Turkey and Israel;

• the delegation spoke to average Syrians, leaders of NGO’s, civil society, the non-violent opposition, business leaders, and president Assad, who granted a 2-hour meeting with members of the delegation;

• there exists a Ministry of Reconciliation – the ministry’s mission includes re-integration for those members of the violent opposition who are willing to lay down their arms;

• as far as the delegation members can ascertain, the motive for Washington’s actions in Syria appears to be to destroy the last independent secular government in the Middle East;

• there is a pernicious western MSM propaganda campaign – Assad is genuinely popular and has been elected in monitored elections, he is recognized by UN/international community as legitimate leader of Syria, there is a parliament with opposition parties

-members of the delegation included males and females and peace activists, including those with backgrounds in trade union movements and restorative justice

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Several dozen people in a Roma community in southern Ukraine were forced to flee their homes after a mob tore through their neighborhood over the weekend, breaking windows, tearing down fences and even setting a house on fire while the heavily outnumbered police stood by and watched.

The violence in the small town, Loshchynivka, was touched off after a local man was arrested on Saturday in connection with the rape and killing of a 9-year-old girl. A Ukrainian rights organization, the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, noted that the man was not Roma.

Nicolai Petro, an academic expert on Russia and Eastern Europe, has written an article at The National Interest, detailing surveys among Ukrainians in which they express the sense of the country being “tense” and even “explosive.”

The survey, which was conducted in Odessa, Ukraine’s third-largest city, suggests that over half of Odessans describe their city as “tense,” while nearly ten percent say it is “explosive.” But even more interesting is that Odessans view the situation in Ukraine overall as much worse, with over ninety percent describing it as either “tense” or “explosive”!

Lest readers think that Odessa is an anomaly, I should point out that these results do not differ substantively from surveys conducted in February or June2016, which show a steady decline in public trust in government since the 2014 Maidan uprising.

How did things get so bad? Part of the fault certainly lies with the IMF’s austerity recommendations, which the vast majority of Ukrainians view as both harmful and pointless. But no downward spiral in public confidence could ever be so complete without the connivance of government officials. To put it bluntly, government policies have seemed, at times, almost intentionally designed to fuel public anger.

What’s that about being isolated and the economy being in tatters?

(http://russia-insider.com/en/putin-new-stalin/ri16240)

Putin has been a busy bee the past few weeks, finalizing an oil rig deal with Iran worth $1 billion, which will see Russian companies building 5 off-shore rigs to facilitate oil and gas exploration by Iran in the Persian Gulf, as well as signing 20 agreements worth approximately $1.3 billion with Japan at the Eastern Economic Forum.

And as Alexander Mercouris writes of the recent G20 summit in China, Putin was a man in demand:

It is the Russians who despite the odd setbacks are increasingly making the weather in the Middle East, with Putin at the G20 summit having intense and substantive talks with Erdogan, Egypt’s General Sisi, and the Saudis, even as Russia continues to develop its relations with Iran.

Even the Europeans are talking to the Russians.  Putin made it clear before the G20 summit that following the Crimean incident he would not meet with Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko in the Normandy Four format in Hangzhou.  The result?  Merkel and Hollandestill met with him – though separately (as Putin probably wanted) – with Poroshenko nowhere to be seen.

Of the Europeans, it was not just Merkel and Hollande who met with Putin in Hangzhou.  Britain’s Theresa May met with him as well, in a somewhat stiff “get-to-know-you” meeting marking her first proper foray into international diplomacy.

Putin of course also met in Hangzhou with the leaders of Russia’s other BRICS partners apart from China: Modi of India, Zuma of South Africa and the new Brazilian President Michel Temer.  The meeting with Temer will have been particularly interesting, with Putin seeking – and apparently receiving – assurances that despite the recent change of government in Brazil the country remains committed to the BRICS.

Balancing the meeting with Brazil’s Temer, Putin however also met in Hangzhou with the other newly installed leader of the other Latin American giant: President Macri of Argentina.

Both Temer and Macri – unlike their predecessors – are conservative right wingers who will unquestionably tilt their two countries back towards their historically close relations with the US.  By continuing to talk with them and to engage with them Putin and the Russians however keep them engaged and keep the doors for future cooperation open.

Professor Stephen F. Cohen said the same in his most recent weekly interview with John Batchelor.

The Chinese even literally rolled out the red carpet for Putin’s arrival at the airport, while Obama was subjected to a decidedly different reception.

(Putin’s arrival in China for the G20; http://theduran.com/china-rolls-out-red-carpet-vladimir-putin-g20-obama-forced-exit-air-force-one-emergency-door/)

(Obama’s arrival in China at the G20; http://theduran.com/china-rolls-out-red-carpet-vladimir-putin-g20-obama-forced-exit-air-force-one-emergency-door/)

Bloomberg has reported that Igor Sechin, CEO of Russian oil company, Rosneft, has offered to buy the Russian state’s stake in the smaller Bashneft company worth $16 billion, which would provide a huge windfall for the Russian budget: