Just when it seems the Syrian war cannot get more complex, it does. In the skies above the Mediterranean, Syrian missiles shoot down an allied Russian surveillance plane after mistaking it for an Israeli bomber. In the Black Sea resort of Sochi, the Russian and Turkish presidents produce a plan for Turkey to use its control of part of Idlib province to disarm the worst jihadi extremists, including Chechens, Uighurs and other foreigners, as well as homegrown Syrian fanatics.

Two points stand out. One is the proliferation of outside interference in what began in 2011 as a purely Syrian campaign for reform. The other is the central and indispensable role that Russia now plays. On Syria's south-western flank, it deploys military police near the Israeli-occupied Golan so as to prevent pro-Iranian militias from moving up and provoking Israeli forces. It turns a blind eye to Israeli air attacks on Iranian advisers in Syria. Only now with Monday's loss of a Russian plane does it give the Israelis a public dressing-down for creating the confusion that led to the missile mistake.

Russia's relationship with Turkey is equally multifaceted. It condemns Turkey's occupation of northern Syrian territory, including parts of Idlib, but uses Turkey's presence to demand that Turkey disarm the jihadis it once supported there. Whether Monday's Sochi agreement will be implemented remains to be seen. Turkey has made earlier promises to tackle the extremists that have come to nothing.

In a separate part of Idlib, Syrian government forces and Russian aircraft are still massing for an assault on other anti-Assad fighters. Here the outside players include Britain, France and the US. They have been mounting a vigorous campaign to prevent a Russian bombing onslaught. While their motives are in part humanitarian, since heavy bombing is bound to cause death and displacement on a massive scale, their calls for a ceasefire are tainted with less honourable motives. They are designed to delay the success that the Syrian army and its Russian allies are about to achieve by regaining control over the last rebel-held region in the Syrian heartland.

Britain, France and the US, along with the Gulf Arab monarchies, have been intimately involved in Syria's civil war since the uprising against Assad was militarised in 2012. They have aided and financed rebel fighting groups, including jihadi extremists. Calling for ceasefires is a device for helping the rebels rather than the civilians they rule, often in brutal fashion.

There is a far better way to protect the 2 million or more civilians now huddled in Idlib, many in makeshift camps and other deplorable conditions. It is to find a political settlement under which the rebels surrender. The Syrian government has negotiated more than 100 surrender pacts with various rebel groups over the past two years. Described euphemistically as "reconciliation agreements", they have permitted thousands of rebels to leave besieged areas. Most have moved to Idlib. Eager to reassert government control, Syrian forces even allowed the rebels to take their rifles and side-arms with them and be transported in government buses.

Thousands of family members and other civilians have gone with the armed fighters, which is why Idlib is now so full of displaced people. But thousands of other Syrians have taken advantage of the reconciliation deals to start rebuilding their homes. They would rather live under Syrian government control than remain in towns and villages at war. The Syrian conflict was never a simple binary struggle between supporters and opponents of Assad. Millions of Syrians had little or no faith in either side but deplored the militarisation of what had started as a non-violent uprising and became a proxy war in which outside states used Syria as a battleground for their own interests.

While Turkey is involved in areas of Idlib run by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) - formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, an affiliate of al-Qaida - other parts are under the sway of fighters of Ahrar al-Sham and Noureddine al-Zinki, two groups with whom western special forces have had links. There is also the group known as the White Helmets, who are still on the British, French and US payroll.


Russian planes have been dropping leaflets urging the Idlib rebels to surrender. As happened in eastern Aleppo two years ago, there are reports that rebels punish people who pick up and distribute the leaflets or spread the message that it is better to make peace than go on with a fruitless war. Even at this late stage, the rebels have not given up the hope of a US-led bombing campaign on Assad's headquarters in Damascus.

Another rebel message is that anyone who surrenders, whether fighter or civilian, will be detained or killed by Syrian forces. The idea that the Syrian authorities would kill civilians who return to government control makes little sense. But even where there are legitimate fears of reprisals, the dangers inherent in carrying on the conflict will inevitably be greater.

Nevertheless, the Syrian government should announce loudly and clearly that amnesty will be given to all of Idlib's surrendering rebels, provided they have not been part of Islamic State or HTS.

They will not even be conscripted into the Syrian army (as happened under previous deals), since the government will not need so many troops now that the war is almost over. In return, the British, French and US governments should urge their proxies not to obstruct surrender deals.

It will be hard for many Syrians to admit that the anti-Assad revolution has failed, but denying reality only condemns Syria to more months of suffering. It will be hard for western governments to accept that Assad has won after seven years of demanding that he resign. It will also be hard to accept that Russian intervention has helped bring the war to an end.

The war's most-repeated cliche is the phrase that Assad has been killing his own people. But that merely underlines that this seven-year-struggle is a civil war in which, by the same logic, the rebels have also been killing their own people. Western governments bear partial responsibility for the carnage. By taking the right course over Idlib, they can begin to make amends.

Jonathan Steele is a former Guardian foreign correspondent

Western corporate media has cast Vladimir Putin as the main villain of today's geopolitics. If their coverage of Russia's president were truthful and objective, we'd have to conclude that Putin has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, that he is the greediest, most ruthless tyrant since Genghis Khan and that he had turned his government into a lawless mafia state. Indeed, unflattering, negative coverage of Vladimir Putin is pervasive, but where concrete evidence should be presented, ceaseless repetition of allegations is taken as sufficient proof.

Joseph Goebbels' technique of the big lie entails deceiving people with big, brazen lies and repeating them unrelentingly. If truth is to set us free, we must spread it with boldness and determination. We must push back and expose the lies. They who desire wars are few, and we who desire peace are many. Even if they can silence some of us, they can not silence us all. Do your part, reject fear and the lies, and together we can put an end to today's dystopian state of permanent war.

A good example of the big lie is the way Bill Browder "proved" Putin's corruption. His proof is laughable, yet corporate media treat Browder as an expert on the matter and repeat his allegations as though they were unquestionable facts. As suspicious as such blatant bias should be, the big lie technique seems to work. Today, most westerners seem inclined to believe that Putin routinely has critics and political rivals assassinated, that he amassed a vast personal fortune and that he runs Russia as his own personal fiefdom.

The demonization that gave rise to these beliefs is not an accident of chance. As we've already seen through examples of Slobodan Milosevic (Serbia), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Moammar Gaddafi (Libya) and Bashar Al Assad (Syria), vilifying a foreign leader is regularly used to generate public consent for war. Negative perception of target nations' leaders predisposes the public, especially those who deem themselves fair minded and progressive, to accept war or regime change operations as a way to "help" that nation free itself from political oppression and gain greater freedom and democracy.

Wars for resources or hegemony may not be acceptable to the public, but fighting wars to protect human rights is a different matter. Over the years I've heard many otherwise well-meaning and learned intellectuals strain to justify even clearly illegal wars, so long as they believed them to be motivated by human rights considerations.

Another big war could happen

In the age of permanent warfare we should not complacently believe that another world war is impossible. There are well understood (but never discussed) systemic reasons why a part of the western economic/political establishment regularly resorts to war as theirpreferred policy tool. They positively desire such a war and their agenda is not burdened by moral scruples that would inhibit 99.9% of us.

Having lived in the 1990s through the outbreak of war in former Yugoslavia I felt the obligation to discover the truth and to do my part to expose the big lie that could catalyze the next world war. The product of my effort is the book Grand Deception (now banned by those who wish for war against Russia) from where the following series of articles was excerpted.

Excerpt: why even bother about who Putin is as a man?

For a long time, even after Bill Browder alerted me to the fact that Putin might actually be a force for good in Russia, I had little interest in understanding Putin as a man. I thought of him as a politician and I generally subscribe to the idea that political power attracts precisely the sort of people who should not have it. I also believe that power corrupts even otherwise decent men and women, and I expected that Vladimir Putin was no different. It was not difficult for me to believe that he probably was corrupt and that he used his position to enrich himself, his family members and his associates. That, at any rate, is what everyone else in the west knew about Mr. Putin.

It was only as a consequence of the shrill and constant demonization of Vladimir Putin in the aftermath of the 2014 coup in Ukraine that I felt compelled to try and find out more about who he was as a person. I started by watching many of his speeches and interviews, listening carefully at what he was saying, as well as the way he was speaking.


In his famous "Munich speech" the Russian President delivered on February 10, 2007, Putin called attention to the crumbling system of international relations in the post-Cold War era and the inevitable doom of the unipolar world order. In many respects his warnings proved prophetic.

I also watched a number of documentaries about him - a few flattering films and many unflattering ones. I also searched online for testimonials from people who knew him personally and worked with him. The portrait of the man that emerged from many such testimonials as well as his own actions seems to be in a complete discord with the reputation Vladimir Putin had gained in the west. Here are some of the incidences that impacted my own perception of him.

Putting the people first

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis Putin declared publicly that he bore responsibility to ensure that the 1998 crisis would not repeat itself on his watch. His government also took proactive steps to limit the fallout from the crisis. In July 2008, Putin personally went to the town of Pikalyevo in Leningrad Oblast to confront the directors and owners of a large metallurgical factory. This was not long after the owners had shut the facility down, suspending without pay thousands of their workers.

Addressing the gathering, Putin excoriated them, saying that because of their unprofessional conduct and greed, thousands of families would find themselves destitute. This was unacceptable to his government and he ordered the owners to restart the facility, else the government would do it without them. He further ordered the management to immediately ("deadline today") pay all workers' salary arrears, amounting to more than 41 million rubles. This episode was recorded in a news report that subsequently became a very popular video on the internet. This almost certainly served a public relations event, but even so its intent and message was to alert the oligarch class not to treat the lives of their employees as a disposable resource.

Then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chastised Oleg Deripaska, once Russia's richest man, and other Russian businessmen at a meeting in Pikalyovo.

Putin took similar action protecting the ordinary people in another crisis situation. During his first winter as president, entire towns and villages across the far east of the country counting as many as 400,000 inhabitants, lost heating for the lack of coal. A serious crisis emerged with mines shutting down, workers out in the streets and even hospitals ceasing to function because of the cold. But the coal for heating was available in Russia, only most of it was already allotted for export. Vladimir Putin didn't think that Russian people should suffer freezing conditions all winter in order for that coal to be exchanged for American dollars. He decreed that export of coal be stopped immediately and that all available quantities be sent back to Siberia to fuel the boiler stations.

What these examples show is that in Putin's world, well-being of the people takes precedence over financial profits of the investor class. This concept may seem exotic and alien to Westerners who for a generation had been brainwashed with neoliberal economics where profits trump any and every other concern, including health and well-being of the people.

In stark contrast listen to what Larry Kudlow, currently the Director of the National Economic Council under President Donald Trump, had to say in the immediate aftermath of Japan's March 2011 tsunami that killed at least 20,000 people: "The human toll here looks to be much worse than the economic toll and we can be grateful for that."

I do believe however that, beyond the brainwash, every normal person - even western-educated economists - would agree that in a crisis, the decent thing to do would be to take care of the people and let the oligarchs cope with one quarter or a year of impaired profitability of their enterprises.

To be continued...

Alex Krainer is a hedge fund manager and author. His book, twice banned by Amazon in September 2017 and again in August 2018 is now available in pdf, kindle, and epub formats at the following link "Grand Deception: Truth About Bill Browder, the Magnitsky Act and Anti-Russian Sanctions." Paperback version published by Red Pill Press is now available here. Alex also wrote one book on commodities trading.

Fmr. US Sec. of State John Kerry recently admitted to carrying out 'shadow diplomacy' in order to 'save' the Iran Deal, for which he was lambasted by the Trump administration for undermining its hard-line anti-Iran policy. Kerry is almost certainly in violation of the Logan Act prohibiting civilians from conducting diplomacy on any issue that is contrary to the government's position. The Logan Act, which dates from 1799, is unlikely to be used against Kerry, but a more recent precedent saw Trump's initial National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, punished for a far less serious diplomatic transgression (namely, speaking on the phone with the Russian ambassador in Washington, DC).

Sott.net editor Niall Bradley joined Andrew Korybko on his Sputnik 'Trendstorm' show this week to discuss what Kerry's game-plan might be here, concluding that, whichever Iran policy 'wins' in Washington, the race is on between US 'good cops' and 'bad cops' to prevent Iran from achieving strategic military deterrence, thereby 'containing' its economic and military development, and thus its influence in the wider southwest Asian region.

Originally published as an .mp3 Trendstorm podcast on Sputnik

Transcript

John Kerry admitted to carrying out what some are euphemistically calling "shadow diplomacy" in trying to save the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump and Pompeo described as being potentially illegal and unprecedentedly undermining the foreign policy of the present administration. The former Secretary of State has a personal stake in the survival of this agreement because it defines his legacy of service under the Obama Administration, but as a Democrat, he also has political reasons for trying to thwart Trump's plans. Even so and regardless of intent, the case can be made that Kerry is in violation of the 1799 Logan Act prohibiting civilians from conducting diplomacy contrary to the government's position on any issue.

There are of course very serious domestic political implications over Kerry's "shadow diplomacy", especially in relation to the "deep state's" incessant efforts to obstruct the implementation of Trump's policies just for the sake of it, but it also speaks to the wariness that some have of the overall strategic consequences of the nuclear deal's failure. The forthcoming reimposition of energy-related sanctions against Iran in November is expected to hit its economy very hard, potentially catalyzing even more wide-scale unrest than what's already on display in the country and possibly leading to more security challenges for its government.

Iran is one of the lynchpins of contemporary Mideast affairs, with Trump assessing its regional role very negatively while Kerry is apparently a bit more pragmatic. These contrasting perceptions are also partially responsible for the "deep state" divide in the State Department, as many Obama-era supporters share Kerry's views while some of them - and especially Trump's appointees and those ideologically loyal to him - stand with the current President. The first-mentioned faction isn't as eager to see Iran destabilized as the latter one is, hence why it's behind Kerry's unprecedented "shadow diplomacy", while the second group is regarded as hawks and is eagerly awaiting the Hybrid War consequences that Trump's aggressive policies might have for Iran.

Korybko: What exactly does Kerry's "shadow diplomacy" with Iran aim to achieve in tangible terms, and how successful do you think he'll be?

Niall Bradley: Kerry has a history with Iranian foreign minister Mohamad Zarif - developed in the course of negotiating the JCPOA - the Iran Deal. I imagine Kerry is telling Zarif something like this: 'Hang in there! Trump isn't forever! Even when Trump's hardline policy shortly kicks in, don't do anything rash! We can still salvage this!'

Now, I don't think Iran would do anything rash - like, blockade oil and gas transit through the Strait of Hormuz, as rumors suggest it is poised to do. Iran - much like Russia, actually - largely needs to just ride out the US' unilateral sanctions while continuing to build capacity in all areas - military, infrastructure, trade, diplomatic relations, etc.

So, if we go with this and assume that Kerry is holding out to Iran the promise of a return to the pre-Trump status quo, and thus the normalization of US-Iranian relations, we immediately see that its success is highly contingent on US domestic political developments. And that front is so chaotic right now, there's no telling which Iran policy would succeed in the long-term.

At root, I think the US establishment is so schizophrenic on Iran because it has learned - the hard way, over the course of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - that Iranian cultural and political influence in the region is a fact of life, an immovable object. The dispute in Washington over what to do about that fact is whether cooperation with Iran, or undermining it - up to and including regime change or war - is the best, least risky way to contain, or manage, said Iranian influence.

Korybko: Kerry's outreaches to the Iranian leadership are historically unprecedented in the sense of just how much they undermine the sitting US President's policy, so what domestic consequences could this have for America's ever-intensifying "deep state" war against Trump?

Niall Bradley: As I hinted at before, Kerry is probably 'going rogue' because his faction is emboldened by the prospect of 'victory' over Trump. But this brazen undercutting of Trump then feeds back into the highly polemic atmosphere in the US, where pro-Israeli, anti-Iranian views in the US Christian right - Trump's support base - are further antagonized, which further polarizes the US domestic front.

US politics has come to evolve so much around the question of who loves Israel more - the Republicans or the Democrats - that, on the face of it, I can only see this undermining the Democrats' goal of retaking Congress in this November's midterm elections.

Here we approach what I suspect may have been Trump's original strategy when setting out to challenge said deep state:unequivocal support for whatever Israel and its powerful lobby network wants, in return for breathing space to effect at least some fundamental changes in US domestic policy and geopolitical outlook.

Korybko: Just like there's a "rogue" American diplomat negotiating with Iran in secret in a bid to retain the nuclear deal against the wishes of his country's sitting leader, how likely do you think it is that there's an Iranian counterpart doing the same in trying to mitigate the effect of Trump's sanctions and possibly probe a deal between the two countries despite Tehran's formal opposition to talks?

Niall Bradley: Possibly. I would imagine though that no significant Iranian faction would push this line of inquiry too far, lest they signal to Trump that 'yes, we are amenable to tearing up the JCPOA'. Remember, this stand-off hinges on Trump's bet that Iran will back down and agree to a new deal - one that's more favourable to US investment opportunities in Iran, and also more stringent in checking Iran's military development.

I think that Trump is emboldened in taking this hardline stance with Iran because of his apparent success when playing this game of 'chicken' with North Korea. You remember how that went, right? From 'imminent nuclear Armageddon' to 'unprecedented peace' in the blink of an eye!

How this stand-off develops probably hinges on the question of how close the Iranians are to achieving nuclear weapons - and, more importantly, I believe, because I suspect the Iranians already have a bomb or two - at what stage is their delivery system, their ballistic missile capability?