In Ankara and Riyadh a decent night's sleep must be hard to come by nowadays, what with the prospects of the Sunni state they'd envisaged being established across a huge swathe of Syria slipping away in the face of an offensive by Syrian government forces that is sweeping all before it north of Aleppo, threatening to completely sever supply lines from Turkey to opposition forces in and around the city, and all but ensuring that its liberation is now a question of when not if.

The success being enjoyed by government forces and its allies on the ground is a testament to their remarkable morale and tenacity despite the battering they have endured over five years of unremitting conflict. Key to this re-invigoration and success in routing opposition forces - forces which only a few months ago were in the ascendancy - has of course Russian air, communications, and logistical support. Moscow's decision to intervene at the end of September last year may have been pregnant with risk, but so far it has been validated, and perhaps even beyond initial expectations.

Moscow, not Washington, is calling the shots in the region now, announcing the birth of a multipolar world and marking an astonishing recovery given the parlous state of Russia throughout the 1990s as it struggled to recover from the demise of the Soviet Union. No sooner was the hammer and sickle flag removed from atop the Kremlin than a procession of crazed free marketeers descended from the United States, and elsewhere in the West, to impose neoliberal nostrums in return for an IMF loan that was necessary in order to avert complete economic collapse. The record shows that rather than this collapse being averted it was accelerated by the structural adjustment reforms implemented by Yeltsin and other Russian converts to the new religion.

In Washington at the time 'end of history' triumphalism reigned as oh how they laughed. Well, they're not laughing now.

The Syrian Arab Army and the YPG troops of the Syrian Kurds are making good progress in the Azaz pocket. The pocket formed after the Syrian army cut through the "rebel" corridor between Aleppo city and the Turkish border. The aim now is to push all foreign proxy forces who are still in that pocket (green) back north into Turkey and to get full control of the border.

The Syrian-Russian command decided to let the YPG (yellow) have the fun of cleaning the pocket only to taunt the Turkish President Erdogan. Erdogan has a serious domestic policy problems when the Kurdish forces gain control in parts of Syria that the wannabe Sultan Erdogan regarded as sacred neo-Ottoman ground. His court jester, the Prime Minister Davutoglu, announced that his country would not allow the town of Azaz to fall to Kurdish fighters. He will have to eat a flock of crows over that.

There has been much speculation whether foreign official institutions (central banks, SWFs, reserve managers and so on) are selling Treasurys or equities, or both as part of the Quantitative Tightening phenomenon.

Moments ago, courtesy of the latest TIC data we have an answer: based on the monthly flow report breaking down Treasury transactions between foreign official and private entities, in December the far more important, former, group sold $48.1 billion in US Treasurys: the highest single monthly outflow on record.

According to the French BFMTV news channel, 212 lawmakers of the French parliament's lower chamber, the National Assembly, supported the Interior Ministry's draft law on the measures extension up to May 26.

Last week, the upper house of the French Parliament, the Senate, voted for the three-month extension.

On November 13, a series of terrorist attacks across Paris left at least 130 people dead. The Daesh terrorist group, outlawed in Russia and many other countries, claimed responsibility for the tragedy.

Bernie Sanders, who has attracted numerous young, white, college-educated supporters in his bid for the presidency, says he is creating a movement and promises a political revolution. This rhetoric is an updated version of the "change" promised by the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama and by Jesse Jackson's earlier National Rainbow Coalition. Such Democratic electoral campaigns, at best, raise political consciousness. But they do not become movements or engender revolutions. They exist as long as election campaigns endure and then they vanish. Sanders' campaign will be no different.

No movement or political revolution will ever be built within the confines of the Democratic Party. And the repeated failure of the American left to grasp the duplicitous game being played by the political elites has effectively neutered it as a political force. History, after all, should count for something.

The Democrats, like the Republicans, have no interest in genuine reform. They are wedded to corporate power. They are about appearance, not substance. They speak in the language of democracy, even liberal reform and populism, but doggedly block campaign finance reform and promote an array of policies, including new trade agreements, that disempower workers. They rig the elections, not only with money but also with so-called superdelegates—more than 700 delegates who are unbound among a total of more than 4,700 at the Democratic convention. Sanders may have received 60 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, but he came away with fewer of the state's delegates than Clinton. This is a harbinger of the campaign to come.

Both government and opposition-held towns in Syria over the border from Turkey have fallen under Ankara's shelling that began last week, according the Russian Ministry of Defense. Turkey's artillery has fired more than 100 shells at bordering areas in the northwest province of Aleppo, targeting both Syrian government forces and the opposition, MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters on Tuesday. "Impartial monitoring bodies have detected more than a hundred rounds of fire that targeted border towns in the province of Aleppo," Konashenkov said.

Last week Turkey started pounding Syrian Kurdish forces with fire in northern Syria in an apparent attempt to stop them from taking over the city of Azaz, Aleppo. On Monday, at least 14 people were killed after missiles hit a children's hospital, a school and other buildings, witnesses told Reuters. Ankara was quick to blame Russia for the strikes in Azaz. Monday's attacks have been condemned by the international community, with the UN calling on war parties to reduce hostility ahead of the planned ceasefire in Syria.

On a separate occasion, members of the United Nations Security Council expressed their concern with the aggressive actions carried out by Ankara in Syria and will urge it to follow international law. "The UN Security Council members are concerned with the Turkish attacks on a number of Syrian regions," UNSC President Rafael Ramirez said, according to TASS news agency, after a meeting held upon Russia's request, adding that the members "have agreed to ask Turkey to obey international law."

From Yinon to Yaalon

The U.S. and Russia are ostensibly trying to arrange a truce in Syria. As The Daily Mail reported, Israel recently voiced doubts about its success:

...Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said he was "very pessimistic" about the truce's prospects.

"Unfortunately we are going to face chronic instability for a very, very long period of time," he said. "And part of any grand strategy is to avoid the past, saying we are going to unify Syria. We know how to make an omelette from an egg. I don't know how to make an egg from an omelette."

Referring to some of the warring sects, Yaalon added: "We should realise that we are going to see enclaves — 'Alawistan', 'Syrian Kurdistan', 'Syrian Druzistan'. They might cooperate or fight each other."

Ram Ben-Barak, director-general of Israel's Intelligence Ministry, described partition as "the only possible solution".

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) does not exclude that its cooperation with Iran is possible in the future, NATO Secretary General's Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia James Appathurai, staying on visit in Azerbaijan, said Tuesday. According to Appathurai, the agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program is a right step toward possible cooperation.

"We have received no indication from Iran, there are no discussions within NATO about establishing relations. I don't exclude that it might happen at some point in the future," Appathurai said, as quoted by Azerbaijan's Trend News Agency.

In July 2015, Tehran and six international mediators — Russia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany — reached a historic deal on Iranian nuclear program, which is set to ensure the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the termination of anti-Tehran sanctions.

In mid-January, the sanctions were removed after the International Atomic Energy Agency verified Tehran's compliance with the nuclear agreement. The move makes it possible for Iran to develop relations with different military-political and economic international entities and states, which have been frozen for decades.

Following a briefing requested by Russia, the UN Security Council has urged Ankara to comply with international law in Syria. The closed-door meeting was called to discuss recent Turkish shelling of Kurdish YPG militia targets in Syria's north.

"UN Security Council members are concerned with the Turkish attacks on a number of Syrian regions," Venezuelan Ambassador Rafael Ramirez, who now chairs the UNSC, said after the meeting, as cited by TASS.

The UN Security Council received a letter from the Syrian government in which Damascus condemned Turkey's attacks in the north of Syria, Ramirez explained, noting that the entire council expressed "concern" about these violations.

"All members of the Security Council ... agreed to ask for Turkey to comply with international law," he added.

The UNSC also reiterated its commitment to the Munich agreement, expecting that all parties involved in the discussions will work toward a ceasefire to "allow humanitarian access for every place in the Syrian territory."

When asked if the UNSC discussed the shelling of the hospitals and schools in Northern Syria on Monday which left close to 50 people dead, Ramirez said the Council indeed discussed the issue, but reached "no agreement" or "consensus" because of "different sources" of information on the incidents.

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The untimely death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has predictably created a political firestorm.

Republicans and Democrats, eager to take advantage of an opening on the Supreme Court, have been quick to advance their ideas about Scalia's replacement. This is just the beginning of the furor over who gets to appoint the next U.S. Supreme Court justice (President Obama or his successor), when (as soon as Obama chooses or as long as Congress can delay), how (whether by way of a recess appointment or while Congress is in session), and where any judicial nominee will stand on the hot-button political issues of our day (same-sex marriage, Obamacare, immigration, the environment, and abortion).

This is yet another spectacle, not unlike the carnival-like antics of the presidential candidates, to create division, dissension and discord and distract the populace from the nation's steady march towards totalitarianism.

Not to worry. This is a done deal. There are no surprises awaiting us.

We may not know the gender, the orientation, the politics, or the ethnicity of Justice Scalia's replacement, but those things are relatively unimportant in the larger scheme of things.

The powers-that-be have already rigged the system. They—the corporations, the military industrial complex, the surveillance state, the monied elite, etc.—will not allow anyone to be appointed to the Supreme Court who will dial back the police state. They will not tolerate anyone who will undermine their policies, threaten their profit margins, or overturn their apple cart.

Scalia's replacement will be safe (i.e., palatable enough to withstand Congress' partisan wrangling), reliable and most important of all, an extension of the American police state.

With the old order dying off or advancing into old age rapidly, we've arrived at a pivotal point in the makeup of the Supreme Court. With every vacant seat on the Court and in key judgeships around the country, we are witnessing a transformation of the courts into pallid, legalistic bureaucracies governed by a new breed of judges who have been careful to refrain from saying, doing or writing anything that might compromise their future ambitions.