Trumpism: the vicissitudes of the phenomenon
"Trump continues to display the symptoms of narcissistic alexithymia, the inability to understand or describe the emotions in the self. Unable to know themselves, sufferers are unable to understand, relate or attach to others.
To prove their own existence, they hunger for endless attention from outside. Lacking internal measures of their own worth, they rely on external but insecure criteria like wealth, beauty, fame and others’ submission."
"This has been one long, strange trip for the Republican nominee. I don’t think that he can fool all Americans all of the time. Still he’s come a very long way with a single idea: I, and I alone, can channel your anger into an American renaissance. Policies have never really come into the Trump phenomenon. Saviors don’t have policies. They have energy.
It now behooves America, whatever the outcome next month, to address that anger mixed with fear. It is widespread. Trump understood this and went to work. He grasped that many people in a polarized America, whipped up by Fox News and ushered into a post-fact world by the antics of the Republican Party, were ready for a straight-talking outsider prepared to offer scapegoats for every frustration. Trump’s has been a single-note campaign; that note is rage...
Tossed here and there by dimly understood global forces people revert to nativism, nationalism and ethnocentrism — in a word, to Trumpism...
His rise is a warning sign. If the warning is not heeded Trump may fail next month but another Trump will arise."
The Political and Geopolitical Games of Fear and Anger - 9.26.16
- The Political and Geopolitical Games of Fear and Anger - Google Search
- 9.2.16 - Donald Trump and the Politics of Fear - The Atlantic
- 3.15.16 - Anger and fear dominate U.S. politics - Chicago Tribune
- 12.10.15 - Trump's Popularity Reflects Fear, Anger and a Desire to Be Entertained - NYTimes.com
- Why Donald Trump is Winning - The Globalist
- Why Political Leaders Need To Focus On Voters' Fears And Anger Rather Than Policies
- Do mass shootings increase trump election chances? - Google Search
- Does Russia help Trump with mass shootings? - Google Search
- mass shootings increase trump election chances - Google Search
- mass shootings increased trump election chances - Google Search
- The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World: Dominique Moisi: 9780307387370: Amazon.com: Books
- Politics Daily
- Lewandowski: Clinton has to become human - POLITICO
- Why Trump Will Win the First Debate | Vanity Fair
- It’s beyond debate that Donald Trump is unfit to be president - The Washington Post
- Inside Trump adviser Manafort’s world of politics and global financial dealmaking - The Washington Post
- russian interference in us elections - Google Search
- russia interference in us elections - Google Search
- russian interference in european elections - Google Search
- russia interference in european elections - Google Search
Trumpism - Google Search
Huffington Post - 13 hours ago
- Trumpism - Google Search
- Donald Trump’s Weird World - The New York Times
- Trumpism After Trump - The New York Times
- Donald Trump’s Sad, Lonely Life - The New York Times
- The four characteristics of Trumpism | TheHill
- Why Trumpism Will Outlast Donald Trump - POLITICO Magazine
- The dark history of Donald Trump's rightwing revolt | Timothy Shenk | News | The Guardian
The point of town hall debates is that regular voters get to ask questions. In every town hall I’ve seen, the candidate turns to the voter, listens attentively and directs the answer at least partially back to that person.
The candidates do that because it’s polite, because it looks good to be seen taking others seriously and because most of us instinctively want to make some connection with the people we are talking to.
Hillary Clinton, not exactly a paragon of intimacy, behaved in the normal manner on Sunday night. But Donald Trump did not. Trump treated his questioners as unrelatable automatons and delivered his answers to the void, even when he had the chance to seem sympathetic to an appealing young Islamic woman.
That underlines the essential loneliness of Donald Trump.
Politics is an effort to make human connection, but Trump seems incapable of that. He is essentially adviser-less, friendless. His campaign team is made up of cold mercenaries at best and Roger Ailes at worst. His party treats him as a stench it can’t yet remove.
He was a germophobe through most of his life and cut off contact with others, and now I just picture him alone in the middle of the night, tweeting out hatred.
Trump breaks his own world record for being appalling on a weekly basis, but as the campaign sinks to new low after new low, I find myself experiencing feelings of deep sadness and pity.
Imagine if you had to go through a single day without sharing kind little moments with strangers and friends.
Imagine if you had to endure a single week in a hate-filled world, crowded with enemies of your own making, the object of disgust and derision.
You would be a twisted, tortured shrivel, too, and maybe you’d lash out and try to take cruel revenge on the universe. For Trump this is his whole life.
Trump continues to display the symptoms of narcissistic alexithymia, the inability to understand or describe the emotions in the self. Unable to know themselves, sufferers are unable to understand, relate or attach to others.
To prove their own existence, they hunger for endless attention from outside. Lacking internal measures of their own worth, they rely on external but insecure criteria like wealth, beauty, fame and others’ submission.
In this way, Trump seems to be denied all the pleasures that go with friendship and cooperation. Women could be sources of love and affection, but in his disordered state he can only hate and demean them. His attempts at intimacy are gruesome parodies, lunging at women as if they were pieces of meat.
Most of us derive a warm satisfaction when we feel our lives are aligned with ultimate values. But Trump lives in an alternative, amoral Howard Stern universe where he cannot enjoy the sweetness that altruism and community service can occasionally bring.
Bullies only experience peace when they are cruel. Their blood pressure drops the moment they beat the kid on the playground.
Imagine you are Trump. You are trying to bluff your way through a debate. You’re running for an office you’re completely unqualified for. You are chasing some glimmer of validation that recedes ever further from view.
Your only rest comes when you are insulting somebody, when you are threatening to throw your opponent in jail, when you are looming over her menacingly like a mafioso thug on the precipice of a hit, when you are bellowing that she has “tremendous hate in her heart” when it is clear to everyone you are only projecting what is in your own.
Trump’s emotional makeup means he can hit only a few notes: fury and aggression. In some ways, his debate performances look like primate dominance displays — filled with chest beating and looming growls. But at least primates have bands to connect with, whereas Trump is so alone, if a tree fell in his emotional forest, it would not make a sound.
It’s all so pathetic.
On Monday, one of Trump’s conservative critics, Erick Erickson, published a moving essay called “If I Die Before You Wake… .” Erickson has been the object of vicious assaults by Trump supporters. He and his wife are both facing serious health ailments and may pass before their children are grown. Yet as the essay makes clear, both are living lives of love, faith, devotion and service. Both have an ultimate confidence in the goodness of creation and their grace-filled place in it.
You may share that faith or not, but Erickson is living an attached life — emotionally, spiritually, morally and communally. Donald Trump’s life, by contrast, looks superficially successful and profoundly miserable. None of us would want to live in the howling wilderness of his own solitude, no matter how thick the gilding.
On Nov. 9, the day after Trump loses, there won’t be solidarity and howls of outrage. Everyone will just walk away.
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LOS ANGELES — If the United States escapes a disaster Nov. 8, it will have done so narrowly.Donald Trump, a dictator-in-waiting with a brat’s temper and a prig’s scowl, has won the support oftens of millions of Americans. It’s fortunate that we are less than a month from the election because we are running out of words to describe him: this phony, this liar, this blowhard, this cheat, this bully, this misogynist, this demagogue, this predator, this bigot, this bore, this egomaniac, this racist, this sexist, this sociopath. I will not go on. It’s pointless. Everyone knows, not least his supporters.
Trump slashed and burned his way through the second debate, taking no prisoners, loosing the dogs of war, hovering over Hillary Clinton like some dyspeptic Mafia boss, and threatening to put herbehind bars if he becomes president.
At times, watching was like rubbernecking a hideous accident. Trump’s was a good performance, performance being the operative word. It was also shot through with viciousness and ignorance. Trump invokes but does not understand the Constitution; he understands a business and a TV show where he can fire anybody, anytime. He knows no other modus operandi, which is why debate is really a misnomer for anything in which he is involved.
“You’re jailed!” Maybe that will be Trump’s next TV act. Call it “The Warden.” He has demonstrated beyond doubt that the human inclination to bow to an all-powerful master endures.
This has been one long, strange trip for the Republican nominee. I don’t think that he can fool all Americans all of the time. Still he’s come a very long way with a single idea: I, and I alone, can channel your anger into an American renaissance. Policies have never really come into the Trump phenomenon. Saviors don’t have policies. They have energy.
It now behooves America, whatever the outcome next month, to address that anger mixed with fear. It is widespread. Trump understood this and went to work. He grasped that many people in a polarized America, whipped up by Fox News and ushered into a post-fact world by the antics of the Republican Party, were ready for a straight-talking outsider prepared to offer scapegoats for every frustration. Trump’s has been a single-note campaign; that note is rage. It has been particularly effective against the ultimate insider, Clinton.
I was talking the other day with a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who said to me with a kind of deadpan resignation: “You know we are designing a world that is not fit for people.” Perhaps that admission comes closest to capturing the disquiet and dread on which Trump has thrived, along with other demagogues in Europe.
There is something rotten in the state of the West. It is not one single thing; it is a feeling of downward drift in societies unjustly skewed.
Trump likes to bloviate about China and unfair trade deals, but you can take China out of the equation and the American jobs lost to cheap labor in Asia are not coming back. Robots are doing those jobs, artificial intelligence is replacing them, and technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace in ways that make human beings redundant.
People know this. They feel the tectonic plates shifting, not only of America’s place in the world after two wars without victory, but also of production, employment, their livelihoods. Precariousness is the new normal. Everything is visible, including the immense wealth of the rich. Tossed here and there by dimly understood global forces people revert to nativism, nationalism and ethnocentrism — in a word, to Trumpism.
Imagine the day when Uber operates with driverless cars; it will come, a big economy-changing moment. In Silicon Valley, that’s called disruption, which is a sexy word. Disruption has delivered all kinds of new freedoms and options to people. But disruption has also pushed millions out of work. The real meaning of the word is sometimes no more than: We found a way to make a whole lot of money fast.
A political counter-disruption is now in full swing from the losers to turbo-capitalism. Its message: We will no longer listen to self-serving elites. Witness Brexit, a revolt fed by lies that delivered disaster.
The creative economy is a catchy phrase but in many cases, for those without the education or connections to benefit, what is created is misery. Technology is wonderful when it’s useful but less so when it puts an end to your usefulness. Its whirlwind has left humanity with their heads bowed gazing at desolate little screens.
The stooped yearn then to look up and perceive a man who promises deliverance. Trump has been that man. Who cares if he questions Clinton’s stamina one day and says, “She doesn’t quit, and she doesn’t give up,” the next?
He never made any damn sense anyway.
His rise is a warning sign. If the warning is not heeded Trump may fail next month but another Trump will arise.
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· · ·
If the American anger and dread that fed Trump’s rise are not addressed, the consequences will be dire.
The Kremlin wants to bomb Aleppo into submission and impose peace via a local strongman, just like it did in Grozny a decade and a half ago.
A mix of childish pranks and more serious menacing appears to have migrated from the United States, leading to anti-clown patrols in parts of Britain.
Nuclear launch officers count on the president to have sound judgment. That would not be possible under a President Trump.
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For most of this campaign, Donald Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and his willingness to act as a Kremlin apologist on issues ranging from Syria to the computer hacking of individuals and political parties have been sources of bafflement and dismay. Mr. Trump’s alarming performance at Sunday night’s debate deepened these concerns.
Mr. Trump again denied that the Russians were doing anything to manipulate the presidential election despite powerful evidence to the contrary. And he again laid bare his cockamamie and uninformed view of the bloody civil war in Syria and his refusal to acknowledge Russia’s role in making it worse.
Mr. Trump has no foreign policy experience. He has, however, received two briefings from American intelligence agencies that should have alerted him to the challenges facing the next president but apparently have not. All of which raises unsettling questions about whether the Republican nominee for the most powerful job in the world is Mr. Putin’s poodle, stubbornly naïve, totally clueless or, as some have ominously suggested, protecting undisclosed business interests in Russia.
Though allegations about Russian interference in the election have circulated for some time, the Obama administration on Friday formally accused Russia of stealing and disclosing emails from the Democratic National Committee and other institutions. When Hillary Clinton raised this, Mr. Trump came to Russia’s defense: “Maybe there is no hacking. But they always blame Russia. And the reason they blame Russia because they think they’re trying to tarnish me with Russia. I know nothing about Russia.”
“To profess not to know at this point is willful misrepresentation,” one senior United States official told NBC News. Presidents can choose to disregard an intelligence finding, but at this point, why would Mr. Trump feel he has better information or analytical ability than a “high confidence” conclusion by the country’s intelligence professionals? Why would he not want to acknowledge a threat and address it?
It is similarly unacceptable that Mr. Trump refuses to accept Russia’s role in backing Syria’s brutal dictator, Bashar al-Assad, and to condemn the bombings that have killed thousands of civilians in Aleppo and elsewhere. Instead, he ignored the civil war and effectively praised not just Russia but also Mr. Assad and Iran for “killing ISIS,” the Islamic State. Russia, Iran and the Assad forces are, in fact, largely focused on destroying the Syrian rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.
Various dark theories are circulating among experts about why Mr. Trump is so enamored of Mr. Putin, a dictator who has crushed dissent at home and is fixated on expanding his influence abroad. One theory, denied by Mr. Trump and impossible to confirm or rule out because he refuses to release his taxes, is that he has business interests in Russia that he wants to protect or develop in the future.
Mrs. Clinton has charged that Mr. Putin is trying to throw the election to her opponent because she is too tough on the Kremlin. Andrei Kozyrev, a former Russian foreign minister, told The Times: “I’m sure Putin is trying — and more successfully than many think — to manipulate both the process and one of the candidates. He realizes that Trump will trample American democracy and damage if not destroy America as a pillar of stability and major force able to contain him.”
In the end, it may not matter whether Mr. Trump is being manipulated by Mr. Putin or naïvely accepting Mr. Putin’s twisted views. What does matter is that with each new bizarre utterance he provides further proof of his inability to evaluate credible information and, more broadly, his lack of fitness to further his country’s best interests.
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· ·
Editorial: Donald Trump’s Weird Worldby THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The candidate’s willingness to act as a Kremlin apologist is baffling.
The Russian military is using life-size decoy tanks, jets and missile launchers for disguise and deception.
Foreign intelligence copied “an unknown quantity of documents,” a government report said, but it did not specify which country may have been responsible.
America’s closest allies fear a Trump presidency but have not prepared for the possibility.
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More than a hundred unaccompanied children vanished after the French government demolished part of the camp earlier this year.
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McDonald's says its iconic mascot will keep a low profile following creepy clown sightings around the world.
Creepy clowns are terrifying people across the world - but just how dangerous are these white-faced, red-nosed entertainers?
Security forces in Russia's North Caucasus region of Daghestan say they have killed at least three militants in a special operation.
Egypt says it will host Russian troops this month for joint military exercises at the coastal city of El-Alamein, the latest step in the two countries’ rapprochement.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has hinted that Turkey would delay extraditing criminals back to the United States as long as U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed for Turkey’s failed coup in July, is not returned to Turkey.
The Latest on the developments in the Syrian civil war (all times local):
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Britain has a duty to guarantee the safety of Russian diplomats on its soil, the Kremlin said on Wednesday, in response to a call by the British Foreign Secretary for protests over Syria outside the Russian embassy in London.
BERLIN (Reuters) - European Parliament President Martin Schulz on Monday said it was important to remain in dialogue with Russia and not dismiss it as a pariah, but also to maintain pressure on Moscow over its actions in eastern Ukraine and Syria.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will visit Berlin on Oct. 19 for talks with some leaders of the European Union and Ukraine to discuss a solution to the Ukrainian crisis, a Kremlin aide told reporters on Monday.
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - In barely four years, a little-known criminal gang has grown to challenge the world's most notorious drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, for domination of the Mexican underworld, unleashing a new tide of violence.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Suspected Kurdish militants shot and killed an official in Turkey's ruling AK Party late on Monday, authorities said, the second shooting of a politician in as many days in the strife-hit southeast.
PARIS (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin will not come to Paris next week after declining an offer to meet President Francois Hollande only for talks on Syria, a French presidency source said on Tuesday.
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ANKARA (Reuters) - A proposal by Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee in the U.S. presidential election, to arm Kurds fighting Islamic State in Syria is "unethical" and not befitting a NATO ally, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Tuesday.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish President Erdogan told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi to "know his limits" on Tuesday, and said the Turkish army would not take orders from Iraq on the Bashiqa camp.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Russian jets resumed heavy bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday after several days of relative calm, a rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Looking across Istanbul's skyline, it is impossible not to be struck by the array of red-and-white, star-and-crescent flags fluttering from buildings, monuments, bridges and flagpoles.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Nuri al-Maliki is once again positioning himself as Iraq's most powerful man, poised to return as kingmaker in a fight for influence that could decide Iraq's fate as a unified country after the coming battle to recapture Mosul from Islamic State.
STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Chess master Garry Kasparov on Tuesday won a case against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights for unlawful arrest and violation of his right to attend a rally he missed as a result of his detention.
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TBILISI (Reuters) - A small pro-Russian party has won seats in the Georgian parliament despite Russian troops controlling one fifth of the ex-Soviet republic and lingering memories of a short war between the two countries less than 10 years ago.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A malware attack against Australia's Bureau of Meteorology which might have spread into other government networks originated from a foreign intelligence service, an official report by the country's cyber defense agency said on Wednesday.
MANILA (Reuters) - About 250 Philippine business executives will visit Beijing with President Rodrigo Duterte next week as he puts aside years of hostility to seek a new partnership with China at a time when tensions between Manila and its traditional ally, the United States, are mounting.
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Islamic State militants in northern Syria are putting up "stiff resistance" to attacks by Turkish-backed rebel fighters, Turkey's military said on Wednesday, almost two months after it launched an incursion to drive them away from its border.
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis on Wednesday called for an "immediate ceasefire" in Syria to allow for the evacuation of civilians.
GENEVA (Reuters) - If Republican candidate Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, it would be "dangerous from an international point of view", the top United Nations human rights official said on Wednesday.
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Wednesday it views negatively White House statements about a planned "proportional" response to cyber attacks on political party organizations which it says were carried out by Russian hackers.
ANKARA (Reuters) - The Turkish government will soon restart efforts to change the constitution and expand presidential powers, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said on Wednesday, reviving the controversial plan after an opposition leader signaled his support.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Turkey has fired hundreds of senior military staff serving at NATO in Europe and the United States following July's coup attempt, documents show, broadening a purge to include some of the armed forces' best-trained officials.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey can't be excluded from a possible operation to recapture the Iraqi city of Mosul, Turkey's president said Tuesday, telling Iraq's leader to "know his place."...
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Militants attacked a Shiite shrine in Kabul on Tuesday, killing at least 14 people and deepening fears of a spasm of violence against Afghanistan's Shiites as they mark one of their most important religious days later this week....
Leaks show Clinton inner circle grappling with email issueby By MICHAEL BIESECKER, JULIE BYKOWICZ and CHAD DAY
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Hacked emails show that Hillary Clinton's campaign was slow to grasp the seriousness of the controversy over her use of a homebrew email server and believed it might blow over after one weekend....
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SAN DIEGO (AP) -- More than 20 years had elapsed since the U.S. government estimated how many people entered the country legally and overstayed their visas. The updated numbers, finally published in January, were sobering....
Clinton aide links Trump campaign to Russian email hackingby By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY and JULIE PACE
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- Hillary Clinton's top adviser said the FBI is investigating Russia's possible role in hacking thousands of his personal emails, an intrusion he said Donald Trump's campaign may have been aware of in advance....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Militant groups like Hezbollah and the Islamic State group have learned how to weaponize surveillance drones and use them against each other, adding a new twist to Syria's civil war, a U.S. military official and others say....
CNN |
White House: We will respond to Russia hacks
CNN The joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and Department of Homeland Security said not only were they confident the hacks of Democratic political groups and campaign officials originated from high levels of the ... White House says US will retaliate against Russia for hackingPolitico White House Vows 'Proportional' Response for Russian DNC HackWall Street Journal Obama to consider 'proportional' response to Russia hackingReuters Hot Air all 43 news articles » |
Toronto Sun |
Putin the puppeteer of US election?
Toronto Sun My Kremlin source, Deep Borscht, confirms what we all knew: Vladimir Putin sent that pesky fly to alight on Hillary's face. Was it an actual trained bug? A drone? A genetically shrunken cosmonaut? Deep Borscht could not say for certain. But he (or she ... Kim Dotcom runs 'Trump vs Clinton vs Putin' Twitter poll, result is something you'd expectRT all 3 news articles » |
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will consider a variety of responses to Russia's hacking of political party organizations and it is possible that any action may not be announced publicly, the White House said on Tuesday.
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CNBC |
Poll analysis: Trump victory all but impossible based on previous races
CNBC Rocked by the release of taped remarks degrading women and battered by mass defections from his own party, Donald Trump is now suffering a drop in national public opinion polls as Hillary Clinton pulls ahead. As of Tuesday, Clinton leads Trump by 6.5 ... The boring truth about the out-of-control 2016 election? It's the least volatile in yearsQuartz White House Watch: Is Latest Debate Narrowing The Gap Again?Rasmussen Reports all 47 news articles » |
The brutal assault on Aleppo has understandably stirred calls for action in the West, especially in America. Once Syria’s biggest urban conclave, the rebel-controlled city is being bombed and starved into submission by Russian jets and Syrian artillery. Hospitals have been destroyed, aid supplies to civilians have been cut off, and children are making up a disproportionate share of the casualties.
If the Assad regime seizes Aleppo, it will control most of Syria that’s not empty desert, boosting Iranian and Russian ambitions to be regional strongmen. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s failure to get aid to the city and his hapless diplomacy seem to confirm the widespread view that the United States is a weakling, unwilling or fearful of becoming involved.
Whether for humanitarian reasons or great-power calculations, the urge to do something is aching. But at this point, what can be done?
Look at Aleppo, the prize that Assad and his allies are determined to snatch. The city’s population, at 2.5 million people before the civil war began in 2011, is estimated at a tenth of that now. Homes, factories, infrastructure and Aleppo’s historic center have been pulverized. Even if the rebels abandon the city, Assad doesn’t have the manpower to occupy and control it, and Russia won’t commit ground forces to do the job. It’s hard to imagine many former Aleppo residents rushing to return to rebuild the smoking hulk.
No one will be the victor in the war for Aleppo because there’s nothing left. And what’s true for Aleppo is true for Syria.
Like the city, Syria has effectively been reduced to rubble too. Of a prewar population of 22 million, the United Nations estimates 4.8 million are living as refugees abroad and another 6 million are internally displaced. BMI Research, a British firm, estimates that by the end of this year the Syrian economy will have shrunk to nearly half its prewar levels.
Satellite pictures of nighttime light intensity – a barometer of economic activity in countries where the chaos is so deep there are no conventional numbers – show an 80 percent decline. Where Assad is in control, his rule is largely fictitious.
As Tobias Schneider, an American analyst who follows developments in Syria closely, wrote recently in the War on the Rocks website, the Syrian army has long ceased to be a fighting force. The regime relies on a collection of warlords and militias that are incapable of organizing sustained offensives or cooperating with each other. They are answerable to Assad only in theory. Iran adds to the anarchy with its own militias and Hezbollah, each pursuing its own interests. Russia supplies air power but isn’t dispatching the troops needed to control territory.
Moscow’s marketing campaign
When the day comes and the civil war in Syria winds down, the country’s situation will remain dire. In better times, when they were really in charge, the Assad family ran a fossilized command economy with an overlay of corrupt cronyism. There is no reason to assume that Bashar, advised by two countries whose own economies are wrecks, will now turn Syria into an economic miracle. Neither Russia nor Iran has the money or resources to help with a rebuilding effort. The smart refugees will stay where they are if they can; the naive ones will put a burden on a country ill prepared to take them back.
The militias that helped Assad win the war will want their share of the spoils, ensuring continued political chaos and the same kind of anarchy that has gripped Libya, Iraq and Yemen. So while Tehran may be counting on victory in Syria to turn the country into a second front against Israel, it’s more likely to find itself preoccupied with shoring up a feckless and weak regime in Damascus against internal enemies.
Aleppo’s and Syria’s suffering is dreadful, but the solutions that have been offered up, like more military aid to the rebels or no-fly zones, are prolonging the problem by ensuring the fighting continues without a conclusion. Washington made far bigger military commitments over many years at the cost of trillions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan and didn’t bring peace, prosperity or democracy to either. Syria’s chaos looks equally hopeless. Aleppo’s suffering might be eased in the short term by American action, but the trouble would move on to other places.
Nor is there any reason for America to worry about the strategic implications of a Russian victory. Putin’s military intervention was a marketing campaign aimed at making Brand Russia look like a superpower. But it’s all show. Russia has no economic interests that would profit by a friendly government in Damascus and, unlike the Cold War Soviet Union, it has no ideology to spread and cement alliances.
If the Russians think keeping Assad in power is a strategic prize, good luck to them.
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· · ·
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday canceled plans to travel to Paris next week, amid heightened tensions between Moscow and the West over the conflict in Syria.
French President François Hollande said he had demanded that a meeting with Mr. Putin be devoted solely to a discussion of the situation in Syria, where some Western officials have said Russia’s involvement in the bombing of Aleppo could amount to war crimes. The Russian leader refused, he said.
“I consider it necessary to have a dialogue with Russia,” Mr. Hollande said at the Council of Europe. “However, this dialogue must be firm and honest, otherwise it has no purpose and it’s a sham.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the visit had been canceled after events marking the opening of a Russian religious and cultural center were dropped from the visit’s schedule, Russian news agencies reported. The spokesman said Mr. Putin would reschedule his visit to Paris at a “convenient time” for Mr. Hollande.
“The president is not isolated,” added Mr. Peskov. “His very intense international schedule is proof of the opposite.”
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New drone footage shows a birds-eye view of Aleppo, once Syria's thriving commercial center, now where homes and other buildings have been destroyed by airstrikes and bombings. Photo: Aleppo Media Center.
The cancellation follows a rapid deterioration of relations between Russia and the West after the Syrian regime, backed by Russia, launched an offensive in Aleppo late last month following the collapse of a cease-fire deal brokered between Moscow and Washington.
Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry suspended talks with Moscow and said Russia and Syriashould be investigated for war crimes because of ongoing attacks on hospitals and civilians.
Russia’s ties with Europe have also hit new lows in recent days, as Germany said it would consider pushing for European sanctions against Russia for its actions in Syria. On Saturday, Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution drafted by France calling for a cease-fire.
On Monday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said Russian leaders might face war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court.
“There are war crimes,” Mr. Ayrault said on French radio. “Then we must assign responsibility.”
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“It is difficult to deny that Russia is partnering with the Syrian regime to carry out war crimes.”
This is the charge laid by the British ambassador to the UN, Matthew Rycroft, in a vituperative meeting of the Security Council on 25 September 2016. In comments unrestrained by the normal diplomatic niceties, Britain, France and the US openly condemned Russia as “an international pariah”.
The war crimes accusations centered on the widespread use of bunker-busting and incendiary bombs on the 275,000 civilians living in the rebel-held east of the city, weapons that Moscow’s accusers say were dropped by Russian aircraft.
“Bunker-busting bombs, more suited to destroying military installations, are now destroying homes, decimating bomb shelters, crippling, maiming, killing dozens, if not hundreds,” said Rycroft.
François Delattre, France’s UN ambassador, specifically declared that the use ofbunker-busters and incendiaries on urban residential areas was a war crime.
“Aleppo is to Syria what Sarajevo was to Bosnia,” he said. “This week will go down in history as the one in which diplomacy failed and barbarism triumphed”.
Delattre’s comparison with the battle of Sarajevo during the Bosnian conflict was both apt and significant. When the stricken capital of Sarajevo was under siege by Bosnian Serb militias for no less than 1,425 days – from 2 April 1992 until 29 February 1996 – former US president Bill Clinton made little effort to intervene. NATO mounted a few rather ineffective air-strikes which did little to deter the Serb military, who continued to target the civilian population with shells and sniper fire, killing in all some 14,000 people.
Delattre no doubt wished to remind both Russian President Valdimir Putin and Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad that, as a result, on 24 March 2016 Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić stood trial in the International Criminal Tribunal, was found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. His trial and sentence had been preceded by that of General Dragomir Milosevic in 2007 (29 years), and General Momcilo Pensic in 2011 (27 years).
“Though the mills of justice grind slowly,” Delattre might have been saying, “they grind exceeding small.”
The first of the war trials arising from the siege of Sarajevo, mounted in 2003, saw the commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, General Stanislav Galic, sentenced to life imprisonment. The prosecutor in his opening statement read out charges that have an uncanny contemporary relevance in the bombardment of Aleppo. Not since World War One, he said, “had a professional army conducted a campaign of unrelenting violence against the inhabitants of a European city so as to reduce them to a state of medieval deprivation in which they were in constant fear of death.”
Putin has doubtless calculated that the prospect, however justifiable, of his ever standing trial charged with war crimes is remote in the extreme; he doubtless assesses that the likelihood of Assad eventually facing justice is perhaps a tad more possible. But he has almost certainly convinced himself that if their joint effort to regain the whole of Aleppo succeeds, neither will ever be brought to account, regardless of the brutal and inhumane means they have used to do so, In the Machiavellian world view which prevails in global affairs, might is almost always right – a doctrine which Putin exemplifies, with the anschluss of Ukraine under his belt, eastern Crimea increasingly under his control, and a towering Russian presence in the Middle East achieved in the power vacuum created by President Obama’s abdication of the US’s previous dominance of the region.
Just as in the 1930s, while Mussolini and Hitler blatantly contravened international agreements, expanded their military might and invaded or occupied smaller nations, world powers have so far averted their gaze from Putin’s amoral march towards a status for the Russian Republics akin to that of the old Soviet Union. The ruckus at the recent Security Council meeting may be the first sign that the world will not stand idly by on this occasion. Russia and its client state – the rump of the Syria that was – have ridden roughshod over the conventions of acceptable military action, especially where civilians and children are concerned – and this time they may not get away with it.
Retribution may not come by way of charges of war crimes at the International Criminal Tribunal, at least not in the first instance. In his UN intervention Matthew Rycroft hinted that Western powers must consider coercive measures to force Russia to back away.
“We must now do more than demand or urge. We must now decide what we can do to enforce an end to bombardment,” he said. The West could consider economic sanctions or a diplomatic move against Russia to try to force it to change course.
The Russians are mightily irked by sanctions already taken in respect of their Ukrainian adventure.Putin characterized them as “the USA’s unfriendly acts toward Russia,” and “a threat to strategic stability.” As he signed a decree on October 3 suspending his country’s participation in a treaty with the US designed to eliminate nuclear weapons.
Putin’s decree stipulates that Moscow will resume its participation in the accord only if the US lifts all anti-Russian sanctions, compensates Russia for the sanctions-related losses and reduces the US military presence in Eastern Europe to pre-2000 levels (NATO opened command points in six eastern European nations in 2015 to enable swift deployment of troops and arms if necessary).
Moreover personal sanctions and travel bans against Russian officials clearly discomfort the regime, for Putin’s decree specifically wants the US to remove them. They hurt some of Putin’s oldest and closest allies whose family members live or study in Western Europe or the United States.
In a statement posted on his ministry website, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said: “Attempts to talk to Russia from the position of power - to use the language of sanctions and ultimatums, and at the same time, to continue a selective partnership with our country only in the areas that are beneficial to the US – are not going to work.”
If sanctions are, for the moment, the only effective counter measure to Russia’s naked aggression and its support for Syria’s brutal military assault on its opponents, regardless of the effect on the civilian population, then let the West clamp down hard with renewed and crippling sanctions – and soon. Something must stop the Behemoth in its tracks.
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ALEPPO, Syria (AFP) - Russia carried out its heaviest strikes in days on the city of Aleppo on Tuesday (Oct 11), as at least five children were killed in rebel fire on a school in the war-torn country's south.
The raids in Aleppo killed at least 12 civilians, a monitor said, and caused massive damage in several residential areas of the city's rebel-held east.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, cancelled a planned trip to Paris in a row over the violence in Syria, where Moscow is helping President Bashar al-Assad's forces in an operation to recapture all of Aleppo.
Syria's army announced a bid last month to retake the city, which has been divided since mid-2012.
The assault began after the collapse of a short-lived truce negotiated by Washington and Moscow, which has seen the besieged east of the city come under fierce aerial assault.
On October 5, the army said it would reduce its bombardment, after days of bombing that killed hundreds and destroyed the largest remaining hospital in the rebel-held east.
But on Tuesday, an Agence France-Presse correspondent and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported renewed heavy bombing.
"This is the heaviest Russian bombardment since the Syrian regime announced it would reduce the bombardment" last week, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
The 12 dead, among them four children, were killed in raids in the Bustan al-Qasr and Fardos neighbourhoods, the Observatory said.
An Agence France-Presse correspondent in Bustan al-Qasr saw a multi-storey residential building that had been destroyed, its facade sheared off in the air attack.
Members of the White Helmets rescue force pulled two lifeless toddlers from the building and wrapped them in white sheets.
The Britain-based Observatory - which relies on a network of sources inside Syria for its information - says it determines what planes carried out raids according to their type, location, flight patterns and the munitions involved.
Backed by Russian air raids, government forces have been advancing street by street into rebel-held parts of Aleppo.
At least 290 people, mostly civilians, have been killed by government or Russian fire since the operation began, according to the Observatory.
Rebel forces were also firing on western government-held districts of Aleppo on Tuesday, with state news agency SANA reporting four dead and 14 wounded in rebel bombing of Hamdaniyeh district.
Elsewhere in Syria, state media said five children were among six people killed in rebel rocket fire on a primary school in the southern city of Daraa.
The Observatory also reported the deaths, saying at least 25 people were wounded and the death toll could rise because a number of the wounded were in critical condition.
Rebel forces hold most of Daraa province, but the provincial capital is largely controlled by the government.
The assault on Aleppo has sparked international condemnation, with fears for the fate of more than 250,000 civilians trapped inside the east of the city since the government imposed a siege in mid-July.
French President Francois Hollande on Sunday (Oct 9) described the campaign in the city as a war crime, a day after Moscow vetoed a French-drafted UN resolution on a halt to air strikes on Aleppo.
In a sign of escalating tensions, the Kremlin on Tuesday said Mr Putin had called off an October 19 visit to inaugurate an Orthodox church in Paris, but was "ready to visit when it is comfortable for President Hollande".
Moscow will "wait for when that comfortable time comes", Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in the Russian capital.
The French presidency said it had told the Kremlin that Mr Hollande would only meet Mr Putin for a "working meeting" on Syria.
More than 300,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began in March 2011, and more than half the population has been displaced.
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Russian jets resumed heavy bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo Tuesday after several days of relative calm, a rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
Air strikes mostly hit the Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, Zakaria Malhifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group told Reuters.
"There is renewed bombardment and it is heavy," he said.
The Observatory said at least eight people were killed in Bustan al-Qasr and Fardous neighbourhoods.
Moscow and Damascus reduced air raids in the northern city last week. The Syrian army said it was partly to allow civilians to leave opposition-held eastern neighbourhoods.
The Syrian government said rebels holed up in Aleppo can leave with their families if they lay down their arms.
Insurgents denounced that offer as a deception.
President Bashar al-Assad seeks the complete recapture of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city before the five-and-a-half-year war, and which has been divided between government and opposition control for years.
Assad's ally Russia has meanwhile built up its forces in Syria since a brief ceasefire collapsed last month.
Russia's intervention a year ago has helped the government side gain the upper hand against rebels on many frontlines in the Syrian conflict, including Aleppo where the opposition-held sector has been completely encircled for weeks.
Insurgents had advanced elsewhere against government forces and their allies, including in Hama province further south where they captured a series of towns and villages last month. Government forces have regained some of those areas in recent days, however.
In the southern city of Deraa, which is split between government and rebel control, insurgent shelling of a school killed at least five people including children on Tuesday, the Observatory and state media reported.
Residents reported the same death toll.
A separate mortar attack hit a government complex in the heart of the city with reports of casualties, a Deraa resident said, adding that mosques were appealing for blood donations.
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Russian jets resumed heavy bombing of rebel-held eastern Aleppo on Tuesday after several days of relative calm, a rebel official and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
Air strikes mostly hit the Bustan al-Qasr neighbourhood, Zakaria Malhifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group told Reuters. “There is renewed bombardment and it is heavy,” he said. Rebel officials and the Observatory reported casualties from the air strikes but gave no immediate toll.
Moscow and Damascus reduced air raids in the northern city last week. The Syrian army said it was partly to allow civilians to leave opposition-held eastern neighbourhoods. The Syrian government said rebels holed up in Aleppo can leave with their families if they lay down their arms. Insurgents denounced that offer as a deception.
President Bashar al-Assad seeks the complete recapture of Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the 5-1/2-year war, and which has been divided between government and opposition control for years.
Assad’s ally Russia has meanwhile built up its forces in Syria since a brief ceasefire collapsed last month.
Rebel fighters shoot their weapons celebrating what they said was the taking over of Baraghedeh and Kafr-Ghan towns, in the northern Aleppo countryside. REUTERS
Putin cancels Paris visit
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not visit Paris next week or meet his French and German counterparts for separate talks on the Syria crisis, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
“The President made the decision to cancel his visit,” Peskov told a conference call with reporters. “The President noted that he is ready to visit Paris at a time convenient for (French President) Hollande. We will wait for this convenient time to come.”
Putin’s cancellation is the latest deterioration in ties between Moscow and the West after Russia vetoed a French-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution on Syria. Paris’ growing anger at events in the rebel-held areas of Syria’s Aleppo had led them to reconsider whether to host Putin on October 19.
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Heavy Russian bombing of Syria's Aleppo resumes, 12 civilians killed
The Straits Times-1 hour ago
The raids in Aleppo killed at least 12 civilians, a monitor said, and caused ... Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, cancelled a planned trip to ... "This is the heaviest Russian bombardmentsince the Syrian regime ...
Russian Federation says can protect its Syria assets if US carpet ...
Cosumnes Connection (subscription)-Oct 10, 2016
Cosumnes Connection (subscription)-Oct 10, 2016
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has cancelled a planned visit to France amid a row over Syria.
He had been due to meet French President Francois Hollande and open a new Orthodox church later this month.
But after France's government said talks would be confined to Syria the visit was halted, French presidential sources said.
On Monday, Mr Hollande suggested Russia could face war crimes charges over its bombardment of Syria's city of Aleppo.
The French presidency had told the Russians Mr Hollande would attend only one event with Mr Putin during the visit planned for 19 October - a working meeting on Syria, according to the sources.
But after this Russia "let it be known that it wanted to postpone the visit", they added.
A spokesman for Mr Putin confirmed the trip had been cancelled, adding that the visit would take place when it becomes "comfortable for President Hollande".
Despite this Mr Hollande has said he will meet Mr Putin at "any time" if it would "further peace".
The development comes a day after Mr Hollande told French TV that prosecutions over Syria could take place in the International Criminal Court (ICC).
"These are people who today are the victims of war crimes. Those that commit these acts will have to face up to their responsibility, including in the ICC," he said.
Neither Russia nor Syria is a member of the ICC.
Moscow has repeatedly denied attacking civilians, and says it targets terrorist groups in Syria.
The besieged east of Aleppo has come under intense aerial bombardment since a cessation of hostilities brokered by the US and Moscow collapsed last month.
The area was hit again on Tuesday in some of the heaviest air strikes in days, a monitoring group and activists said.
Eight civilians were killed in strikes on the Bustan al-Qasr and Fardos districts, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Diplomatic efforts to revive the ceasefire have so far come to nothing.
The UN has warned that eastern Aleppo, where an estimated 275,000 people still live, could face "total destruction" in two months.
Last week Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution drafted by France calling for an end to the bombing in Aleppo.
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