Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Kurd Autonomy: Is it Kerry’s Plan B or Putin’s Plan A?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Monday, April 4, 2016

Kurd Autonomy: Is it Kerry’s Plan B or Putin’s Plan A?

Click here to access article by F. William Engdahl from New Eastern Outlook.

Engdahl looks at some of the strange happenings in and around Syria and sees some shrewd Machiavellian games being played. For example, both the US and Russia support the Syrian Kurds, but for very different reasons as he explains.

At this point it rather looks like a shrewd judo by Putin, himself an old judo master, with a Judo 8th Dan and sitting as Honorary President of the European Judo Union. It looks like Russia, despite its air force drawdown and troop pull-back, has just established the first “No Fly” zone in Syria, the most-wanted aim of the US Pentagon and Turkey only five months ago, as the necessary step to topple Assad and the Syrian government and create a weak government presiding over a Balkanized Syria. Only the Russian no fly zone has a quite different aim–to protect the Syrian Kurds from a possible Turkish military attack.

Then there is the Israeli trade deals with Russia cutting in on such deals with Turkey. All these maneuverings leave many questions. One thing is clear: deception is the name of the game.