The real frontline confronting ISIS is not US or French bombers (the latter currently targeting Raqqa, a city with 140,000 civilians, who are virtual prisoners of ISIS) but the Kurds of Iraq and northern Syria. Just over a week ago the combined Kurd forces, under the command of the Yezidis, liberated Sinjar from ISIS. For the Kurds, their war is not just about defeating ISIS, but about creating their own autonomous region - a region that would link all the Kurd cantons. This will not be easy, especially as the Iraq-based Kurds (Peshmerga) are allied with Iran and benefit from US support (nor are the Iraqi Kurds in any hurry to secede from Iraq). But the largest hurdle to an autonomous Kurdistan is Turkey, which not only has rekindled its war with the PKK (Kurdish Workers Party), but has done everything it can over the last 12 months or so to ensure Kurd victories against ISIS were minimised. So where is the evidence for this? It comes from a range of sources, including the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (Columbia University) and leading commentators/analysts Nafeez Ahmed and David Graeber.

A. Introduction

The Kurds of northern Syria, together with the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq, have been at war with ISIS since the latter rose up and declared their so-called caliphate. It was the Syrian Kurds and their Kurdish comrades in Turkey who helped rescue the Yezidis, after they had fled the ISIS onslaught to take refuge in the Sinjar mountains. It was the Syrian Kurds and their comrades in Turkey who liberated the city of Kobani from ISIS.

But the Kurds of northern Syria have not just been waging war. They have also been waging peace: creating new, democratic structures, declaring autonomous cantons; setting up schools, universities, hospitals. They have taken their inspiration from the Zapatistas of Mexico, who in their thousands retreated into the jungles of Chiapas and together with the Mayans created a new society, free from the oppression of the Mexican authorities.

In short, the northern Syrian Kurds have created and are living a social revolution. It is no wonder, therefore, that the authoritarian and neo-Islamist Erdogan Government of Turkey is doing everything it can to break the Kurds, including providing covert support to the Kurds' main enemy, to ISIS.

In a recent article in the Guardian, Professor David Graeber of the London School of Economics stated how "Back in August, the YPG, fresh from their victories in Kobani and Gire Spi, were poised to seize Jarablus, the last Isis-held town on the Turkish border that the terror organisation had been using to resupply its capital in Raqqa with weapons, materials, and recruits - Isis supply lines pass directly through Turkey." Graeber added: "Commentators predicted that with Jarablus gone, Raqqa would soon follow. Erdoğan reacted by declaring Jarablus a "red line": if the Kurds attacked, his forces would intervene militarily - against the YPG. So Jarablus remains in terrorist hands to this day, under de facto Turkish military protection."

The sad truth is that in the new millennium, government propaganda prepares its citizens for war so skillfully that it is quite likely that they do not want the truthful, objective and balanced reporting that good war correspondents once did their best to provide.

- Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty

Exposing the lies spewing forth from Washington and its MSM ministry of propaganda these days is a fulltime job entrusted to alternative media to report the deceptively hidden truth. The latest round of developments in the aftermath of last week's Paris tragedy killing 129 people and injuring over 350 more innocent victims illuminates the aforementioned problem in article on Saturday headlined, "Pentagon pressing allies for more help against Islamic State."

After an emergency meeting with member nations in Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO fully supports Turkey's decision to shoot down a Russian bomber. Try to read this entire statement without throwing your computer out the window:

I have previously expressed my concerns about the implications of the military actions of the Russian Federation close to NATO's borders.

This highlights the importance of having and respecting arrangements to avoid such incidents in the future.

As we have repeatedly made clear, we stand in solidarity with Turkey and support the territorial integrity of our NATO Ally, Turkey.

The rest of the press conference is predictable: Stoltenberg blames Russia for violating precious NATO airspace, says Russia should be more careful in order to avoid "accidents" like this in the future, and then admits that NATO is not directly in contact with Russia.

NATO is awful.

Turkey's unprovoked shoot-down of a Russian military aircraft over Syria raises interesting questions. It seems unlikely that the Turkish government would commit an act of war against a much more powerful neighbor unless Washington had cleared the attack. Turkey's government is not very competent, but even the incompetent know better than to put themselves into a position of facing Russia alone.

If the attack was cleared with Washington, was Obama bypassed by the neocons who control his government, or is Obama himself complicit? Clearly the neoconservatives are disturbed by the French president's call for unity with Russia against ISIL and easily could have used their connections to Turkey to stage an event that Washington can use to prevent cooperation with Russia.

Washington's complicity is certainly indicated, but it is not completely out of the question that the well-placed Turks who are purchasing oil from ISIL took revenge against Russia for destroying their oil tanker investments and profitable business. But if the attack has a private or semi-private origin in connections between gangsters and military, would Turkey's president have defended the shoot-down on such spurious grounds as "national defense"? No one can believe that one Russian jet is a threat to Turkey's security.

Don't expect the presstitutes to look into any such questions. The presstitutes, such as the BBC's Moscow correspondent Sarah Rainsford, are spinning the story that the loss of the Russian aircraft, and earlier the airliner, proves that Putin's policy of air strikes against iSIL has backfired as Russians are not safer.

Even if two Russians jets did indeed violate Turkish airspace (which Moscow denies), the intrusion would have lasted for just 17 seconds before one of the Su-24s was shot down, a leaked Turkish letter to the UN revealed.

Two Su-24 planes approached Turkish airspace on Tuesday morning, a letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the 15 members of the UN Security Council said.

The Russian planes are described in a document, published by WikiLeaks and Al Jazeera, as aircraft "the nationality of which is unknown."

Over two dozen were killed at hotel in Bamako, Mali. Despite the presence of French and United States Special Forces inside Mali, the siege of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako on November 20 has resulted in the deaths of over two dozen people.


U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) leader Army General David Rodriguez continues to maintain that the purpose of Washington's military policy on the continent is to assist nation-states in their efforts to enhance the security capacity of various governments. AFRICOM identifies its purpose as working with African states in the so-called "war on terrorism."

Nonetheless, the "war on terrorism" is a by-product of successive failed imperialist interventions from Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The so-called "Islamist extremist" organizations were nurtured, funded and coordinated since the early 1980s when the administration of President Jimmy Carter worked vigorously to overthrow the socialist government in Afghanistan which was supported by the former Soviet Union.

With the overthrow of the government of President Saddam Hussein in Iraq, these same strains of Islamic organizations were strengthened spreading their influence into the Syrian situation which began during the early months of 2011. The outbreak of the Syrian war coincided with the destruction of Libya that subsequently brought unrest and instability throughout North and West Africa, right across the Mediterranean into Southern, Central and Eastern Europe.

President of France Francois Hollande has gained the highest popularity rating over the last three years following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, according to a poll released Tuesday.

The poll conducted by Ipsos research company at request of Le Point magazine revealed that the French have highly appreciated Hollande's activity, who strongly reacted to the Paris tragedy, having declared war to the Islamic State terrorist group.

The Russian Air Force should continue its efforts to close the Jarabulus-Afrin corridor in northern Syria, despite the latest Turkish provocation, Bangkok-based geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci stresses.

Geopolitical analyst Tony Cartalucci draws attention to the fact that over the recent weeks Russian and Syrian forces have been steadily gaining ground in Syria, retaking territory from ISIL and al-Qaeda.

"The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has even begun approaching the Euphrates River east of Aleppo, which would effectively cut off ISIS [ISIL] from its supply lines leading out of Turkish territory," Cartalucci narrates in his latest article for New Eastern Outlook.

He explains that from there, Syrian troops with Russian air support would move north, into the very "safe zone" which Washington and Ankara have planned to carve out of Syria. Cartalucci points out that the "safe zone" includes a northern Syria area stretching from Jarabulus to Afrin and Al-Dana.

Turkey's provocative action puts Russia one step away from full-scale war with NATO

With today's shoot-down of a Russian SU-24 by a Turkish F-16, the conflict in Syria has entered a very dangerous escalation.

Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance. Let us therefore not mince words: A NATO state has just attacked Russia. Perhaps not since the downing of an American U-2 over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, has the world been so close to a third world war.

At that time, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as most of John F. Kennedy's cabinet supported retaliatory bombing and invasion of Cuba. Had such taken place, it would have compelled Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev to seize West Berlin. That in turn would have led to further retaliation by NATO. Within a very short time full-scale war, including nuclear exchange, could have taken place.

Fortunately, Kennedy and his closest circle of advisors were able to foresee the progression of events, resist the warhawks, establish direct communication with Khruschev and find a negotiated settlement to the crisis. Had he reacted rashly or buckled under the pressure for war, it is doubtful the world would exist today.

Like Kennedy, Putin must now display the ultimate statesmanship

While authorities in Ankara have insisted that it shot down the Russian Su-24 bomber after the aircraft entered Turkish airspace, the Russian Defense Ministry has released video proving that the plane never left Syrian airspace.

According to a leaked letter written to the UN Security Council by the Turkish Ambassador, Turkey's military justified the shooting down of a Russian bomber by claiming that the aircraft had entered Turkish airspace for 17 seconds.

But flight data released by Russian Ministry of Defense shows that the Su-24s never entered Turkey, and were attacked while performing legitimate maneuvers over Syria.


On Tuesday, Turkish F-16s shot down a Russian Su-24M Fencer bomber. One of the pilots has been confirmed dead by Russian authorities, shot by rebel ground units after ejecting.Russian President Vladimir Putin described the incident as a "stab in the back, carried out against us by accomplices of terrorists."