Israeli A Serious Problem Here, Con't

While the Israeli ground war ramps up and the death toll in Gaza is now well over 8,000, the world is not standing idly by as Palestinians are bombed and Israelis are hit with rockets, and while the most obvious candidate and route for this disaster to expand is Hezbollah and Iran, it turns out the more immediate threat may in fact be Turkey.

President Tayyip Erdogan addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters at one of the largest pro-Palestinian rallies since the Israel-Hamas war began, courting his Islamist political base a day ahead of the centenary of Turkey's secular republic.

"Israel has been openly committing war crimes for 22 days, but the Western leaders cannot even call on Israel for a ceasefire, let alone react to it," Erdogan told the crowd in Istanbul, who waved Palestinian flags.

"We will tell the whole world that Israel is a war criminal. We are making preparations for this. We will declare Israel a war criminal," he said.

In an hour-long speech, Erdogan also repeated his assertion that Hamas was not a terrorist organisation, describing Israel as an occupier.

Turkey has condemned Israeli civilian deaths caused by Hamas's Oct. 7 rampage through southern Israel, which killed 1,400, but Erdogan this week called the militant group Palestinian "freedom fighters".

He also criticised some Western nations' unconditional support for Israel, drawing sharp rebukes from Italy and Israel.

Unlike many NATO allies, the European Union and some Gulf states, Turkey does not consider Hamas a terrorist organisation. It has long hosted its members, supports a two-state solution and has offered to play a role in negotiating the release of hostages abducted by Hamas during the Oct. 7 assault.

Political analysts said Erdogan was keen to reinforce his criticism of Israel's bombardment of the Gaza Strip and to overshadow Sunday's celebrations marking Turkey's secular roots.

Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat and director of the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, an Istanbul-based think-tank, said Gaza's worsening humanitarian crisis and pressure from political allies had prompted Erdogan to sharpen his rhetoric.

Turkey "will protect its principles and share these with the international community, but it needs to do this with a more delicate diplomacy if it expects to play such a diplomatic role," Ulgen said.

The heads of allied nationalist and Islamist parties - which helped Erdogan secure victory in tight May elections - attended the rally at Istanbul's old airport. Erdogan criticised opposition parties for not calling Netanyahu a "terrorist" and for using the same term with reference to Hamas.

Needless to say, a NATO ally coming in on the side of Hamas against Israel right now would be the definition of catastrophic. Erdogan spouting saber-rattling rhetoric is one thing, but if this gets worse, or gets military, all bets are off. 

Turkey could in fact be the key to brokering a cease fire, but not if Ankara continues down this path.

Of course, there's always the usual suspects who could make things worse as well

We'll see.

Ukraine Grain In The Membrane

Russia says it will let the UN-brokered grain export deal for Ukraine through Black Sea ports expire in retaliation for a Ukraine security forces attack last week on the main land bridge to Crimea.

 

The announcement appeared to be the most serious blow yet to a year-old agreement that had been a rare example of fruitful talks between the warring nations, and had helped to alleviate part of the global fallout from Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukraine is a major producer of grain and other foodstuffs, and the United Nations had warned that some countries in the Middle East and Africa faced famine if Kyiv could not export its goods via the Black Sea.

A Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told journalists on Monday that the agreement was “suspended,” but added that the decision was not connected to the attack hours earlier on the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia to occupied Crimea. Russian officials blamed Ukraine for the bridge attack, but Kyiv has not taken responsibility.

Speaking about the grain agreement, Mr. Peskov said: “As soon as the Russian part is fulfilled, the Russian side will immediately return to the implementation of that deal.”

Russia has repeatedly complained about the agreement, which it considers one-sided in Ukraine’s favor. Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Monday issued a statement that emphasized its objections, including what it described as continued Ukrainian “provocations and attacks against Russian civilian and military facilities” in the Black Sea area, and said that the United Nations and Ukraine’s Western allies had not addressed Russian demands.

“Only upon receipt of concrete results, and not promises and assurances, will Russia be ready to consider restoring the ‘deal,’” the statement said.

The deal, known as the Black Sea Grain Initiative and brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, had been set to expire on Monday.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he would speak to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia about the agreement and signaled hope that he would agree to rejoin it.

“Despite the statement today, I believe the president of the Russian Federation, my friend Putin, wants the continuation of this humanitarian bridge,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul.

Last week, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, sent a letter containing proposals for Mr. Putin in an effort to meet Russia’s conditions for extending the deal. U.N. and Turkish negotiators spent the weekend awaiting a response from Moscow as the clock ticked down. Grain exports from Ukraine’s ports had dwindled almost to zero in the days before the deal expired.

The deal successfully eased shortages that resulted from blockades in the first months of the war, which caused global wheat prices to soar. It allowed Ukraine to restart the export of millions of tons of grain that had languished for months, and it has been renewed multiple times, most recently in May.

But Moscow has argued that while the deal has benefited Ukraine, Western sanctions have restricted the sale of Russia’s agricultural products. In an effort to address Russia’s demands, Mr. Guterres sent Mr. Putin proposals that he said would “remove hurdles affecting financial transactions” through Russia’s agricultural bank while allowing the Ukrainian grain shipments to continue.

In addition to its hope for smoother financial transactions, Russia has sought guarantees that would facilitate exports of its own grain and fertilizers, and the reopening of an ammonia pipeline that crosses Ukraine.

Ukraine has exported 32.8 million tons of grain and other food since the initiative began, according to U.N. data. Under the agreement, ships are permitted to pass by Russian naval vessels that in effect have blockaded Ukraine’s ports since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. The ships are inspected off the coast of Istanbul, in part to ensure they are not carrying weapons.

 

Wheat prices were up by more than 3% in the Chicago commodities market after the announcement. Grain prices are nowhere near where they were in Spring of 2022 when the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered a massive rise in wheat and grain prices worldwide, but if this agreement is suspended for too long things could get very bad, very quickly.

We'll see what happens with Turkey mediating.

Ridin' With Biden, Eurotrip Edition, Con't

Well, we know what Turkey's price is for dropping opposition to Sweden joining NATO: Turkey wants full EU membership.

 

Turkey's path to membership of the European Union should be cleared before Sweden's NATO membership, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"First, let's clear Turkey's way in the European Union, then let's clear the way for Sweden, just as we paved the way for Finland," Erdogan said during a press conference Monday ahead of a NATO summit in Lithuania.

"Turkey has been waiting at the gate of the European Union for over 50 years now," said Erdogan. "Almost all NATO member countries are European member countries."

Some context: Sweden and Finland both formally requested NATO membership shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

While Finland was granted accession in April 2023, Turkey continues to veto Sweden's bid, accusing the country of housing Kurdish “terrorist organizations.”

Erdogan has previously said Turkey would not approve Sweden’s NATO membership unless the country extradites “terrorists” upon Turkish request.

Sweden has made clear this won’t happen and for now, the process is stuck.

 

I mean with Britain gone, there's a spot at the EU table, I guess.  But that definitely means Sweden's NATO bid isn't going anywhere this week. The European Union isn't exactly known for doing things quickly. We'll see where this does go, but for now, Turkey has named its price, and as to whether or not the EU will let Erdogan in is anyone's guess.

The Swedes may have to budge on extradition of Kurds to Ankara before this may go anywhere, too.

 

On the Ukraine side, NATO has at least decided to put Kyiv on the short list instead of the waiting list. 

NATO has decided to drop a requirement for Ukraine to follow a Membership Action Plan (MAP) setting out targets to be met before joining the military alliance, Ukraine's foreign minister said on Monday.

In comments on the eve of a NATO summit, he said such a move would shorten Ukraine's path to joining the alliance.

"Following intensive talks, NATO allies have reached consensus on removing MAP from Ukraine's path to membership. I welcome this long-awaited decision that shortens our path to NATO," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter.

NATO did not immediately comment on Kuleba's remarks.

NATO leaders meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius are aiming to overcome divisions over Ukraine's drive for membership.

Kyiv wants to receive a clear invitation to join the alliance after Russia's war on Ukraine ends, and hopes to receive security guarantees until that time.

 

So there's that, but again, don't expect any miracles this week.

As I said, it's complicated, man.

[UPDATE] And as soon as this posts, NATO announces they have struck a deal with Turkey for Sweden's admission.

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that Turkey has agreed to back Sweden’s bid to join the military alliance – a major development on the eve of the NATO summit.

The announcement epresents a stunning about-face from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had earlier on Monday suggested Sweden could only join the alliance after his country is accepted into the European Union. Erdoğan has stood in the path of Sweden joining NATO for more than a year over a multitude of concerns.

Speaking at a news conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, following a meeting with Erdoğan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, Stoltenberg said that the Turkish president “has agreed to forward the accession protocol for Sweden to the Grand National Assembly as soon as possible, and work closely with the Assembly to ensure ratification.”

Erdoğan dropping his opposition marks a major step forward, but does not mean that Sweden will immediately become the next member of the alliance. Stoltenberg did not offer a specific timeline for when Erdoğan would move the document forward to the Turkish Parliament, which must then vote to approve it. Hungary also has not voted to approve Sweden’s membership, though Stoltenberg said Monday that Hungary had made clear that it would not be the last to ratify Sweden’s bid.

The movement on NATO’s accession comes after months of opposition and demands from Ankara. Turkey claimed that Sweden allows members of recognized Kurdish terror groups to operate, most notably the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Turkey had also accused Swedish officials of complicity in Islamophobic demonstrations, such as the burning of the Quran.

At his news conference Monday, Stoltenberg noted that Sweden and Turkey had “worked closely together to address Turkey’s legitimate security concerns.”

Don't expect miracles, but hell, I guess they happen. I was right about Sweden having to budge, and that's apparently what happened.

Last Call For Nobody's Business But The Turks, Con't

Turkey has once again elected Tayyip Erdogan as president, as his relentless two-decade rule continues.

President Tayyip Erdogan extended his two decades in power in elections on Sunday, winning a mandate to pursue increasingly authoritarian policies which have polarised Turkey and strengthened its position as a regional military power.

His challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, called it "the most unfair election in years" but did not dispute the outcome.

Official results showed Kilicdaroglu won 47.9% of the votes to Erdogan's 52.1%, pointing to a deeply divided nation.

The election had been seen as one of the most consequential yet for Turkey, with the opposition believing it had a strong chance of unseating Erdogan and reversing his policies after his popularity was hit by a cost-of-living crisis.

Instead, victory reinforced his image of invincibility, after he had already redrawn domestic, economic, security and foreign policy in the NATO member country of 85 million people.

The prospect of five more years of his rule was a major blow to opponents who accused him of undermining democracy as he amassed ever more power - a charge he denies.

In a victory speech in Ankara, Erdogan pledged to leave all disputes behind and unite behind national values and dreams but then switched gears, lashing out at the opposition and accusing Kilicdaroglu of siding with terrorists without providing evidence.

He said releasing former pro-Kurdish party leader Selahattin Demirtas, whom he branded a "terrorist," would not be possible under his governance.

Erdogan said inflation was Turkey's most urgent issue.

Kilicdaroglu's defeat will likely be mourned by Turkey's NATO allies which have been alarmed by Erdogan's ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who congratulated his "dear friend" on his victory.

 

At this point, Turkey walking away from NATO, Ukraine, and the EU seems more likely than not. Putin has been wanting to peel off Ankara from NATO for a while now, and with Erdogan having secured power for a fifth term, that's the immediate issue.

Turkey is the second-largest NATO military, behind the US. If they decide to pull the plug on arming Ukraine, it's going to be a bloody summer.

Meanwhile, domestically, Erdogan won based on promises to fix inflation. The world markets don't believe him for a moment.

The Turkish lira sank to a fresh record low Monday as incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured his victory in the 2023 presidential election, extending his rule into a third decade in power.

The currency briefly touched 20.0608 against the greenback at around 11 a.m. Monday morning local time, surpassing a low seen last week. It was at 20.0913 against the dollar near 12:45 London time.

“We have a pretty pessimistic outlook on the Turkish Lira as a result of Erdogan retaining office after the election,” Wells Fargo’s Emerging Markets Economist and FX Strategist Brendan McKenna told CNBC.

McKenna forecasts that the lira will reach a new record low of 23 against the dollar by end of the second quarter, and then 25 as early as next year. It has lost some 77% of its value against the dollar over the last five years. He expects Turkey’s unorthodox monetary and economic policy frameworks to remain in place going forward.

Turkey’s monetary policy places an emphasis on the pursuit of growth and export competition rather than taming inflation, and Erdogan endorses the unconventional view that raising interest rates increases inflation.

“The current set up is just not sustainable,” said BlueBay Asset Management’s Senior EM Sovereign Strategist Timothy Ash via email.

“With limited FX reserves and massively negative real interest rates the pressure on the lira is heavy,” Ash continued.

Istanbul’s main index, the Turkey ISE National 100 gained roughly 4.31%.

Credit default swaps, which measure the cost of insuring exposure to Turkish debt, also spiked.

Five-year CDS were trading at around 664.18 basis points, marking a 20% climb from the 550 basis point level prior to the run-offs, according to Refinitiv data.

These developments reflect market participants’ belief that orthodox policies, which were promised by the political opposition, were the only way to get the Turkish economy out of a potential crisis, said Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koç University.

Meanwhile, MarketVector’s CEO Steven Schoenfeld wrote in an e-mail. “If the Lira continues to plunge and inflation surges again due to the policy of inappropriately-low interest rates, we could see a repeat of the ‘flight to safety’ allocation to Turkish equities by local investors which moved the market sharply higher in 2022.”

 

So nobody's happy in Turkey right now except, of course, for Erdogan.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena for Trump's foreign business dealings during his White House tenure, implying that Trump's illegal trove of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago may not have only been shown to foreign entities, but that Trump directly profited from them, something I've been saying was a distinct possibility from the start.

 

Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents have issued a subpoena for information about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in foreign countries since he took office, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It remains unclear precisely what the prosecutors were hoping to find by sending the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, or when it was issued. But the subpoena suggests that investigators have cast a wider net than previously understood as they scrutinize whether he broke the law in taking sensitive government materials with him upon leaving the White House and then not fully complying with demands for their return.

The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter. The subpoena sought the records for deals reached since 2017, when Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

It is unclear what material the Trump Organization has turned over in response to the subpoena or whether Mr. Smith has obtained any separate evidence supporting that theory. But since the start of their investigation, prosecutors have sought to understand not only what sorts of materials Mr. Trump removed from the White House, but also why he might have taken them with him.

Among the government documents discovered in Mr. Trump’s possession were some related to Middle Eastern countries, according to a person familiar with Mr. Smith’s work. And when the F.B.I. executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, among the items recovered was material related to President Emmanuel Macron of France, according to court records.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to emails seeking comment. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

If there is such a link, and Jack Smith is definite;y digging into it, Trump will have literally been caught selling out his country to foes like China and to NATO allies like France and Turkey to line his own pockets, and that's not going to end well for him at all. Even the MAGA faithful will have to find some hesitation to back Trump selling state secrets to Beijing.

Which would mean of course that all of Trump's "China Joe" talk was -- surprise! -- projection of his own criminal activity.

If Smith's excavation pans out, this is how Trump gets what he deserves. And if Trump gets re-elected, killing this probe is his first order of business.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Less than 24 hours after a UN-brokered agreement to allow Ukraine to resume shipment of grain to the rest of the world from the port city of Odessa, Russia all but scrapped the deal and blasted the port facilities with missile strikes.

Russian missiles hit the Black Sea port of Odessa on Saturday, Ukrainian officials said a day after Moscow and Kyiv reached a deal to release millions of tons of trapped grain and ease a global food crisis.

The military command in southern Ukraine said two Kalibr cruise missiles hit the infrastructure of the port but not its grain silos in the city of Odessa — one of the country’s largest and most important seaside trading hubs.

Air raid warnings rang at about 11 a.m. local time as the sounds of explosions rocked the city. The military’s southern command reported no casualties. It said air defense systems shot down two other missiles in the attack, which the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine described as “outrageous.”

The strike imperils an agreement that U.N. and Turkish officials, less than 24 hours earlier, had hailed as a breakthrough after months of negotiations. Friday’s deal, brokered by the United Nations and Turkey, would help lift a blockade that has exposed countries around the world to the threat of rising hunger, especially in Africa and the Middle East.

The deal depends in part on Russian promises not to attack Odessa and two other ports involved in the shipments. It included security assurances for both Ukraine and Russia, who agreed not to “undertake any attacks against merchant vessels and other civilian vessels and port facilities” tied to the initiative.

Kyiv accused the Kremlin of jeopardizing the deal, which guarantees the safe passage of merchant ships from the three ports, to restart the flow of grain cut off by a Russian naval blockade.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey said the attack showed the deal with Russia wasn’t “even worth the signed paper,” while a Ukrainian foreign ministry official called it a “spit in the face” of the U.N. chief and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“It took less than 24 hours for Russia to launch a missile attack on Odessa’s port,” said Oleg Nikolenko, a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman.

Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, shared an image on Telegram that appeared to show smoking rising from the facility. “How will the safety of vessels in the port of Odessa be ensured, if Russia continues shelling?” he wrote.

 

The answer is that safety cannot be assured without risking a major naval confrontation on the Black Sea.  Russia either gets the Ukrainian concessions it wants, or it gets to starve out millions as grain rots in port. Russia cutting off natural gas to Europe is accomplishing much the same. 

 

Moscow isn't holding all the cards, but the hands they have put on the table have won again and again. 

As I've said previously, the current situation in Ukraine is untenable.  Russia's takeover of the Donbas region isn't complete yet, with Ukraine forces mounting counter-offensives thanks to US howitzers and HIMARS rocket artillery systems.

The Biden White House announced another $270 million in security assistance for Ukraine, including four more mobile rocket launchers — a weapon that officials say has caused severe damage to Russian forces.

John Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, told reporters that the Biden administration will deliver four additional truck-mounted, multiple-rocket launchers — called High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS — bringing the number the United States has sent to 16.

Mr. Kirby said the United States would also send Ukraine more HIMARS ammunition, as well as 36,000 rounds of artillery ammunition for howitzers already delivered to Kyiv. Those items will be drawn down from existing Defense Department stocks, Mr. Kirby said.

In addition, Mr. Kirby said, the Defense Department will provide Ukraine with up to 580 Phoenix Ghost tactical drones. Similar to the better-known Switchblade drone, the drones are capable of surveillance but can also be flown into targets and detonated on impact.

Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, previewed the coming HIMARS delivery during remarks to reporters at the Pentagon earlier this week. General Milley said that Ukrainian forces were “effectively employing these HIMARS, with strikes against Russian command and control nodes, their logistical networks, their field artillery near defense sites and many other targets.”

“These strikes are steadily degrading the Russian ability to supply their troops, command and control of their forces, and carry out their illegal war of aggression,” General Milley said.

Mr. Kirby said the new deliveries would bring the Biden administration’s total military assistance to Ukraine to $8.2 billion, and that more aid packages would be announced in the coming weeks. “The president’s been clear that we’re going to continue to support the government of Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes,” Mr. Kirby said.

 

The US is showing how effective its weapons are. But Russia has its own weapons, and as we're seeing this weekend, those weapons are effective too, both tactically and strategically.

 

 

Saudi Arabia, Coca-Cola

The Saudis are playing real hardball these days, because they know they have President Biden and the West over a barrel (of oil).

 

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hit back at Joe Biden after the US President confronted him about the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a meeting between the two leaders on Friday. 

In the meeting, Bin Salman, also known as MBS, denied responsibility for the killing of Khashoggi at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate. Biden said he indicated that he disagreed with MBS, based on US intelligence assessments, according to the source. 

In response to Biden bringing up Khashoggi, MBS cited the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison by US military personnel and the May killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank as incidents that reflected poorly on the US, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, told reporters on Saturday. 

"The Crown Prince responded to President Biden's remarks on ... Khashoggi after quite clearly -- that this crime, while very unfortunate and abhorrent, is something that the kingdom took very seriously (and) acted upon in a way commiserate with its position as a responsible country," bin Farhan said. "These are issues, mistakes that happen in any country, including the US. The Crown Prince pointed out that the US has made its own mistakes and has taken the necessary action to hold those responsible accountable and address these mistakes just as the kingdom has." 

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir echoed the sentiment in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer shortly after the end of the meeting, which Jubeir was part of. 

"We investigated, punished and ensure that this doesn't happen again," Jubeir said when asked about the Khashoggi murder. "This is what countries do. This is what the US did when the mistake of Abu Ghraib was committed."

 

On top of that,  the Saudis are publicly talking about joining China and Russia and the other BRICS nations...according to Russia and China, anyway...

The president of the BRICS International Forum expects Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to join the group "very soon". In an interview with Russia's Izvestia, Purnima Anand said that China, Russia and India discussed this issue during the 14th BRICS Summit, which was held online last month.

"All these countries have shown an interest in joining and are preparing to apply for membership. I think this is a good step, because expansion is always perceived positively; this will clearly increase the influence of BRICS in the world," explained Anand. "I hope that the accession of countries to BRICS will happen very quickly, because now all representatives of the core of the association are interested in expanding the organisation, so it will be very soon."

She stressed that the accession of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey may not take place at the same time.

Earlier, Li Kexin, Director-General of the Department of International Economic Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that several countries were "knocking on the doors" of the organisation, including Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Argentina.

The BRICS forum is a political organisation that began negotiations for its formation in 2006 and held its first summit in 2009. Its members were the countries with emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, and China, operating under the name BRIC, before South Africa joined the organisation in 2010, making it BRICS.

The organisation's countries are characterised as being among the industrialised developing countries with large and emerging economies. Half of the world's population lives in these five countries, and their combined gross domestic product is equivalent to that of the US ($13.6 trillion). Their total foreign exchange reserves are $4 trillion.

 

If the Saudis, Egypt, and Turkey actually did this, it would mean massive chaos in the oil markets and in NATO itself, which is what Russia and China want. But right now, having them pretend that this is possible serves all of those country's individual interests, especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Realpolitik is a bitch at times.

Nobody's Business But The Turks, Con't

With Sweden and Finland (and even the Swiss) wanting to join NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan knows that unanimous consent among all NATO members is needed to approve the move, and that means Erdogan can now extract all kinds of political concessions from his fellow NATO allies.

Ankara has repeatedly taken issue with Western governments like Sweden over their support for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). The dominant fighting force in the SDF, which has been the West's main partner in the fight against ISIS, is the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Turkey regards the YPG as a terrorist organization, associating it with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) — a militant, separatist group that has waged a violent campaign against the Turkish government since the mid-1980s as part of an effort to establish an independent Kurdish state.

The YPG has denied having any explicit organizational links with the PKK, but Turkey effectively views them as one in the same. The US also views the PKK as a terror group, but it hasn't taken the same stance toward the YPG and has worked closely with the SDF in the campaign against ISIS. Turkey has also rebuked the US over its support for the SDF.

This complex backdrop helps explain why Erdogan on Friday said he did not view Finland and Sweden's NATO aspirations positively and accused them of harboring terrorist organizations.

Over the weekend, Turkey's top diplomat appeared to signal that there was room for negotiation on the issue, laying out Ankara's demands in this regard.

"There absolutely needs to be security guarantees here. They need to stop supporting terrorist organizations," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in Berlin, per Reuters. The Turkish government has demanded that Finland and Sweden extradite suspected members of Kurdish militant groups like the PKK, while also calling for the two countries to lift restrictions on arms exports to Turkey that were imposed over military actions in Syria in 2019.

Meanwhile, Ibrahim Kalin, a spokesperson for Erdogan, on Saturday told Reuters that Turkey was "not closing the door" on Finland and Sweden's NATO bids. "But we are basically raising this issue as a matter of national security for Turkey," Kalin added.

Erdogan is running for re-election next year, and could be trying to score political points domestically by tying this issue to Turkey's issues with Kurdish militant groups.

"Erdogan decided to make this very public and announce Turkey's position, with a view also to obtain support domestically," Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat, told the Wall Street Journal, adding, "This is how he operates. He always has an eye to domestic politics."

Stoltenberg, the NATO chief, on Sunday said he did not believe it was Turkey's intention to prevent Sweden and Finland from joining the alliance. "Turkey has made it clear: Their intention is not to block membership," Stoltenberg told reporters Sunday, the Washington Post reported. "Therefore, I am confident we'll be able to address the concerns that Turkey has expressed in a way that doesn't delay the accession process."

But Erdogan's comments on Monday threw more uncertainty into the process. Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, offered remarks on the latest moves that stood in stark contrast with Moscow's generally hardline stance and threats against NATO expansion.

"Russia has no problem with these states — none," Putin said to the leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russia-led military alliance. "And so in this sense there is no immediate threat to Russia from an expansion of NATO to include these countries," he added, according to Reuters.

 

Expect the price tag to be pretty substantial, but Erdogan will get his realpolitik kickback here from Biden and company. Nobody wants to be the next Ukraine.

Turkish De-Fight

President Joe Biden is taking step to do what decades of American presidents before him refused to do: recognize that Turkey's Ottoman Emprie assault on Armenians a century ago was in fact, genocide.

The United States is formally recognizing that the systematic killing and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century was “genocide” as President Joe Biden used that precise word that the White House has avoided for decades for fear of alienating ally Turkey.

With the acknowledgement, Biden followed through on a campaign promise he made a year ago Saturday — the annual commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day — to recognize that the events that began in 1915 were a deliberate effort to wipe out Armenians.

While previous presidents have offered somber reflections of the dark moment in history via remembrance day proclamations, they have studiously avoided using the term genocide out of concern that it would complicate relations with Turkey — a NATO ally and important power in the Middle East.

But Biden campaigned on a promise to make human rights a central guidepost of his foreign policy. He argued when making the campaign pledge last year that failing to call the atrocities against the Armenian people a genocide would pave the way for future mass atrocities. An estimated 2 million Armenians were deported and 1.5 million were killed in the events known as Metz Yeghern.

“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a statement. “We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.”

Turkish officials immediately criticized Biden’s statement, while Armenians praised Biden for making what they said was a principled move.

“Recognition of the Armenian Genocide is important not only in terms of respecting the memory of 1.5 million innocent victims, but also in preventing the repetition of such crimes,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a letter to Biden.

“We reject and denounce in the strongest terms the statement of the President of the US regarding the events of 1915 made under the pressure of radical Armenian circles and anti-Turkey groups,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted that “words cannot change history or rewrite it,” and that Turkey “completely rejected” Biden’s statement.

Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin suggested on Twitter than Biden was repeating “the slander of groups whose only agenda is being hostile to our country.” He added: “We recommend that the U.S. President takes a look at his own history and today.”

During a telephone call Friday, Biden informed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of his plan to issue the statement, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The U.S. and Turkish governments, in separate statements following Biden and Erdogan’s call, made no mention of the American plan to recognize the Armenian genocide. But the White House said Biden told Erdogan he wants to improve the two countries’ relationship and find “effective management of disagreements.” The two also agreed to hold a bilateral meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.

 

So Biden not only did the right thing here -- and I know it's easy to say "words don't matter in human rights, actions do" here and shit all over Biden -- but the point is the US has even refused the words step until now. Biden stood up when it counted.

 

And guess what? The realpolitik is that Turkey is a NATO ally and important Middle East player, and Biden and Erdogan are going to meet in six weeks or so. Still.

 

Biden so far this week has stood up to Putin's military exercises in Ukraine and Erdogan on Armenian genocide.

 

The guy's not Trump, that's for damned sure.

Turkey Week: Pardon This Turkey

As widely expected, Trump is now going to pull the trigger on a deluge of Mueller probe pardons on the way out the door, starting with Michael Flynn.

President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he has "granted a Full Pardon" to former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 

"It is my Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon. Congratulations to @GenFlynn and his wonderful family, I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!" Trump tweeted. 

Flynn, who was Trump's first national security adviser, pleaded guilty twice to lying to the FBI during its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign about his conversations with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition. Trump said in March that he was "strongly considering" pardoning Flynn and had told aides in recent days that he planned to pardon him before leaving office. 

While the President has continued to falsely insist publicly that he won the presidential election rather than Joe Biden, the pardon of Flynn is a sign Trump understands his time in office is coming to a close. He's expected to issue a string of additional pardons before leaving the White House, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussion.

Flynn's tenure at the White House lasted only a few weeks and he resigned after being caught lying about his Russian contacts. At the time, Trump tweeted that he fired Flynn because he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence. Sources familiar with what happened also said Flynn lied to Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer, two top Trump officials at the time.

Flynn pleaded guilty in late 2017 to lying to the FBI about those contacts, but later disavowed his plea and tried to get the case thrown out. In a shocking twist this spring, the Justice Department abandoned the case, which is still tied up in legal limbo.

But it's that "more pardons are coming" part that's the fun stuff.

Behind the scenes: Sources with direct knowledge of the discussions said Flynn will be part of a series of pardons that Trump issues between now and when he leaves office.

The big picture: Flynn's pardon would be the culmination of a four-year political and legal saga that began with the FBI's investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 election. The retired lieutenant general is viewed by many Trump supporters as a victim of political retaliation by the Obama administration. Flynn's lawyers and members of conservative media have accused the FBI of entrapping him and cited his case as part of a broader campaign to discredit the Russia probe. Earlier this year, Trump commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, another associate charged in the Mueller investigation who the president complained had been unfairly targeted in a political witch hunt.

The backdrop: Flynn's legal troubles began during the 2016 presidential transition, when he urged former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in a phone call not to escalate in response to the Obama administration imposing sanctions on Russia for election interference. Flynn then lied about not discussing sanctions, to Vice President Mike Pence who repeated that denial to the media — causing alarm among Justice Department officials who feared the lies made Flynn susceptible to Russian blackmail. In January 2017, Flynn was interviewed without a lawyer present by FBI agents as part of a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference. He later admitted to lying to the FBI as part of a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Flash forward: In January 2020, after two years of sentencing delays due to his cooperation with the Mueller investigation, Flynn and his new legal team sought to withdraw his guilty plea, alleging prosecutorial misconduct. A federal prosecutor appointed to review the case by Attorney General Bill Barr recommended that the charges be dropped, finding that the FBI interview in which Flynn lied was "conducted without any legitimate investigative basis." 

District Judge Emmet Sullivan did not immediately agree to drop the charges, and asked for outside legal experts to weigh in on the unusual case. Flynn's lawyers filed an emergency appeal to force the judge to comply with the DOJ motion. That resulted in a protracted legal fight, which ended in August with an appeals court siding with Sullivan.

 

Happy Turkey Day, and remember, the Trump campaign took help from Russia to win in 2016. Flynn lied about it to the FBI and went to prison and admitted to spying for Turkey twice. He's now getting his name cleared, and a whole lot more people are going to follow.

And while Michael Flynn will get to enjoy his Thanksgiving as a free man, he should expect to keep his lawyers on retainer through next year because I guarantee you that, because the second Flynn accepts this pardon, he forfeits his 5th Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and he's fair game for both Tisha James and Cyrus Vance and their respective Trump Organization fraud cases.

Enjoy the subponas, Turkey turkey.

It's Nobody's Business But The Turks', Con't

Donald Trump didn't just do millions in foreign business with Russia and Saudi Arabia, he did it with Turkey as well, and the "illegal and immoral quid pro quo with a foreign leader" angle that got Trump impeached from Ukraine is even more obvious with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially since the NY Times got a hold of Trump's taxes.

Geoffrey S. Berman was outraged.

The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Mr. Berman had traveled to Washington in June 2019 to discuss a particularly delicate case with Attorney General William P. Barr and some of his top aides: a criminal investigation into Halkbank, a state-owned Turkish bank suspected of violating U.S. sanctions law by funneling billions of dollars of gold and cash to Iran.

For months, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey had been pressing President Trump to quash the investigation, which threatened not only the bank but potentially members of Mr. Erdogan’s family and political party. When Mr. Berman sat down with Mr. Barr, he was stunned to be presented with a settlement proposal that would give Mr. Erdogan a key concession.

Mr. Barr pressed Mr. Berman to allow the bank to avoid an indictment by paying a fine and acknowledging some wrongdoing. In addition, the Justice Department would agree to end investigations and criminal cases involving Turkish and bank officials who were allied with Mr. Erdogan and suspected of participating in the sanctions-busting scheme.

Mr. Berman didn’t buy it.

The bank had the right to try to negotiate a settlement. But his prosecutors were still investigating key individuals, including some with ties to Mr. Erdogan, and believed the scheme had helped finance Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

“This is completely wrong,” Mr. Berman later told lawyers in the Justice Department, according to people who were briefed on the proposal and his response. “You don’t grant immunity to individuals unless you are getting something from them — and we wouldn’t be here.”

It was not the first time Mr. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, had fended off attempts by top Justice Department political appointees to disrupt the Halkbank investigation.

Six months earlier, Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general who ran the department from November 2018 until Mr. Barr arrived in February 2019, rejected a request from Mr. Berman for permission to file criminal charges against the bank, two lawyers involved in the investigation said. Mr. Whitaker blocked the move shortly after Mr. Erdogan repeatedly pressed Mr. Trump in a series of conversations in November and December 2018 to resolve the Halkbank matter.

The president’s apparent eagerness to please Mr. Erdogan has drawn scrutiny for years. So has the scale and intensity of the lobbying effort by Turkey on issues like its demand for the extradition of one of Mr. Erdogan’s political rivals, a Turkish religious leader living in self-imposed exile in the United States. Mr. Erdogan had a big political stake in the outcome, because the case had become a major embarrassment for him in Turkey.

At the White House, Mr. Trump’s handling of the matter became troubling even to some senior officials at the time.

The president was discussing an active criminal case with the authoritarian leader of a nation in which Mr. Trump does business; he reported receiving at least $2.6 million in net income from operations in Turkey from 2015 through 2018, according to tax records obtained by The New York Times.

And Mr. Trump’s sympathetic response to Mr. Erdogan was especially jarring because it involved accusations that the bank had undercut Mr. Trump’s policy of economically isolating Iran, a centerpiece of his Middle East plan.

Former White House officials said they came to fear that the president was open to swaying the criminal justice system to advance a transactional and ill-defined agenda of his own.

“He would interfere in the regular government process to do something for a foreign leader,” John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, said in a recent interview. “In anticipation of what? In anticipation of another favor from that person down the road.”

In the case of Halkbank, it was only after an intense foreign policy clash between Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan over Syria last fall that the United States would proceed to lodge charges against the bank, though not against any additional individuals. Yet the administration’s bitterness over Mr. Berman’s unwillingness to go along with Mr. Barr’s proposal would linger, and ultimately contribute to Mr. Berman’s dismissal.

The Justice Department initially declined to comment, but after this article was published online, a department spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, provided a statement emphasizing that Mr. Barr had backed the decision last fall to indict the bank.

“The attorney general instructed S.D.N.Y. to move ahead with charges and approved the charges brought,” she said, referring to the federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

 

To recap:

 

Trump owes millions to Turkey's largest bank, Halkbank. Halkbank is basically laundering money for crooks, among them Erdogan's family. Trump had prosecution of Halkbank on money laundering delayed and reduced as a favor to Erdogan. 

Another impeachable offense, but of course, politically impossible to do anything about.

 

 

Retribution Execution, Con't

Good morning.  We have an active Constitutional crisis on our hands.

Another Trump Regime Friday Night Massacre, this time the Bill Barr Justice Department getting rid of Geoff Berman, the US Attorney looking into Rudy Giuliani's Ukraine criminality in the Southern District of New York. 

AG Bill Barr announced Berman's resignation late Friday night.

Only one problem. The resignation was news to Berman.

The Justice Department on Friday abruptly tried to oust the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, the powerful federal prosecutor whose office sent President Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, to prison and who has been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
But Mr. Berman said in a statement that he was refusing to leave his position, setting up a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs.

“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said, adding that he learned that he was “stepping down” in a press release from the Justice Department.
Attorney General William P. Barr’s announcement that President Trump was seeking to replace Mr. Berman was made with no notice. Mr. Barr said the president intended to nominate as Mr. Berman’s successor Jay Clayton, current chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Mr. Barr asked Mr. Berman to resign but he refused so Mr. Barr moved to fire him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump had been discussing removing Mr. Berman for some time with a small group of advisers, the person said.

Mr. Berman has taken an aggressive approach in a number of cases that have vexed the Trump administration, from the prosecution and guilty pleas obtained from Mr. Cohen to a broader investigation, growing out of that inquiry, which focused on Mr. Trump’s private company and others close to him.

Over the last year, Mr. Berman’s office brought indictments against two close associates of the president’s current lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and began an investigation into Mr. Giuliani himself, focusing on whether his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine on the president’s political rivals violated laws on lobbying for foreign entities.

Mr. Berman’s office also conducted an investigation into Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, subpoenaing financial and other records as part of a broad inquiry into possible illegal contributions from foreigners.

Mr. Berman’s abrupt removal came just days after Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, alleged in his new book that Mr. Trump sought to interfere in an investigation by Mr. Berman’s office into a Turkish bank, in a bid to cut deals with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Mr. Trump has been upset with Mr. Berman ever since the Manhattan prosecutor’s office pursued a case against Mr. Cohen, according to a person familiar with their relationship.

So, Berman was leading multiple active SDNY investigations into Trump regime criminality, the Giuliani's Ukraine/Burisma circus, the Trump inaugural committee foreign pay-for-play emoluments scam, and the Erdogan/Turkey Halkbank mess, the third one being widely confirmed now by John Bolton's Mustache's book. 

The memoir was apparently the last straw. And remember, Berman was already placed as acting US Attorney by the courts because Trump fired US Attorney Preet Bharara after just three months and the Senate never confirmed a replacement.

Berman isn't leaving.  In fact, he's all but accused Barr of obstruction of justice against the cases the SDNY is overseeing against the Trump regime and their cronies.

We have that full Constitutional crisis, fully-formed, right now.

Get ready.

Germany's Race To The Bottom

Donald Trump is just the symptom of the cancer of white supremacy across the globe, and that includes a country that had a major issue with it 75 years ago and again now, and the world paid the price.

A man suspected of shooting dead nine people in shisha bars in a German town before killing himself and his mother had posted a manifesto online including conspiracy theories and deeply racist views, prosecutors said on Thursday.

The presumed attacker - a 43-year-old German man identified as Tobias R. - was found dead close to a gun soon after the shootings late on Wednesday in Hanau, near Frankfurt, authorities said.

At least five of the victims were Turkish nationals, Ankara’s ambassador to Berlin told state broadcaster TRT Haber as his government demanded robust action.

Chancellor Angela Merkel condemned the “poison” of racism. Her deputy, Olaf Scholz, took to Twitter to say: “Politically, nobody can deny that 75 years after the Nazi dictatorship there is real terror again”.
The gunman burst into in a bar in downtown Hanau then drove to a second bar in town and opened fire again, police and witnesses said.

“First we heard five or six rounds of gunfire,” a German-Turkish survivor who gave his name as Muhammed told Reuters from his hospital bed in Hanau.

“Then I saw the man entering. I was eating my meal at that time. We were all eating. We gave orders. The man entered,” he said, sobbing.

“We were 10 to 12 people. Two, three or four people managed to survive. I am one of them.”

Officers chased a car leaving the scene of the last shooting to another address, where they found the bodies of the suspect and his 72-year-old mother, both with gunshot wounds, police said.

“On the suspected perpetrator’s home page, he had put up video messages and a kind of manifesto that, in addition to obscure thoughts and absurd conspiracy theories, pointed to deeply racist views,” said Prosecutor General Peter Frank.

The suspect gunned down people in two separate locations.  This wasn't a spur of the moment attack against an individual, he was trying to kill as many people as he could, and in this case they were Turks.

If even the Germans are admitting that there's a white supremacist problem in the Western world, then it's gotten pretty universally bad.

It's Nobody's Business But The Turks, Con't

Meanwhile, the US House has overwhelmingly voted to recognize the Armenian genocide by Turkey 100 years ago, a point of historical contention that the US has threatened to do for years against Ankara but didn't have the votes for until Erdogan started wiping out Syrian Kurdish allies this month.  The resolution is part of a new US sanctions bill against Turkey and in response, Turkey has called US Ambassador David Satterfield on the carpet and is warning the US that Ankara's NATO alliance is now definitely in jeopardy.

Turkey has summoned the U.S. ambassador after lawmakers in Washington voted to recognize Ottoman-era mass killings of Armenians as a genocide and called for sanctions against Ankara.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a resolution recognizing the genocide — which Ankara denies — and passed a bill aiming to impose fresh sanctions on Turkey over its military operation against Syrian Kurdish forces.

In response, the Turkish government on Wednesday morning summoned David Satterfield, the U.S. representative in Ankara, the state news agency Anadolu reported.

The Turkish foreign ministry rejected the genocide recognition as "meaningless" and "devoid of any historical or legal basis" in a statement issued late Tuesday, suggesting that lawmakers had approved the resolution to "take vengeance" against Turkey over its incursion into Syria.

"Undoubtedly, this resolution will negatively affect the image of the U.S. before the public opinion of Turkey as it also brings the dignity of the U.S. House of Representatives into disrepute," the statement added.

Considering the bill passed 403 to 16, Turkey's probably right to be concerned.  Where the bill goes in the Senate nobody knows, the Senate hasn't tipped their hand yet, but I would think it would pass.

We'll see.

Last Call For A Syria's Fold

And GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham has now completely reversed his position on Syria in order to bend the knee to Dear Leader, because he was told to do so.

In an interview with Fox News Channel, Graham said a conversation he had with Trump over the weekend had fueled his optimism that a solution could be reached where the security of Turkey and the Kurds was guaranteed and fighters from Islamic State contained.

“I am increasingly optimistic that we can have some historic solutions in Syria that have eluded us for years if we play our cards right,” Graham said.

Graham said Trump was prepared to use U.S. air power over a demilitarized zone occupied by international forces, adding that the use of air power could help ensure Islamic State fighters who had been held in the area did not “break out.”

Senator Jim Inhofe, a Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Saturday that Trump understood the need for the United States to maintain air power in the region.

“The U.S. must retain air power to keep the pressure on ISIS, prevent our adversaries Russia and Iran from exploiting this situation and protect our partners on the ground,” he said in a statement. ISIS is an acronym for Islamic State.

Graham also said he believed the United States and Kurdish forces long allied with Washington could establish a venture to modernize Syrian oil fields, with the revenue flowing to the Kurds. “President Trump is thinking outside the box,” Graham said of Trump’s thinking on oil.

“The president appreciates what the Kurds have done,” Graham added. “He wants to make sure ISIS does not come back. I expect we will continue to partner with the Kurds in Eastern Syria to make sure ISIS does not re-emerge.”

So now the reality is "We helped the Syrian Kurds by abandoning them to the tender mercies of Assad and Erdogan" because it's "outside the box".  And we'll "continue to partner with them" because I guess we figure they have no choice or something.

Lovely arrangement, yes?

And the Republican opposition to Trump's Syria debacle vanishes like a fart in a tornado.

A Syria's Mistake

Bloomberg's Eli Lake doesn't beat around the bush, calling the phony "ceasefire" deal negotiated by VP Mike Pence and Turkish President Erdogan as "total capitulation" by Trump, and oh yeah, it opens the door to the ethnic cleansing and genocide of millions of Syrian Kurds.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been open about this. Just this week, he outlined his plans: “We will secure the area extending from Manbij to the Iraqi border and then facilitate 1 million Syrian refugees’ return home in the first phase and, later on, the return of 2 million people.”

But this safe zone is an area that is for the most part historically Kurdish. If the Turkish military and its allied militias are allowed to dominate the area, then it is a near certainty that Kurdish civilians will suffer. 

And while it’s hard to confirm early reports in the fog of war, that appears to be exactly what is happening. New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi tweeted the grisly autopsy report of a murdered Kurdish politician. Public violence like this is meant to send a message that all civilians are targets. In essence, America has agreed to let Turkey solve its Syrian refugee problem by creating a new Kurdish refugee problem. 

Then there is the message this sends to Erdogan himself. The Turkish leader has humiliated Trump and the U.S. in recent weeks and months. He went ahead with the purchase of a Russian S-400 air defense system this summer, over several U.S. objections, and has faced no sanctions. He ordered his military to violate an earlier safe-haven agreement that to which Turkey had previously agreed. His forces fired artillery on a U.S. outpost last week. And he has metaphorically — and literally, according to the BBC — thrown Trump’s “Don’t be a tough guy” letter into the trash. 

In exchange for this disrespect and petulance, Erdogan got what he has wanted all along. He started a war to create a buffer zone in northern Syria, then got the U.S. to agree that he be allowed to keep it. Trump is even now repeating Erdogan’s talking points, claiming (without evidence) that the Syrian Kurds have launched attacks into Turkey. “In all fairness they’ve had a legitimate problem with it,” Trump said Thursday, referring to the safe zone. “They had to have it cleaned out. But once you start that, it gets to a point where a tremendous amount of bad things can happen.” 

That point has already been reached. Bad things are indeed happening, and will continue to happen. And there’s little reason to believe Trump’s capitulation in Ankara will do much to stop them.

And let's remember, Trump is doing this because Vladimir Putin has told him to do it.  We're firmly on the side of Putin, Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad, and other dictators and strongman.

America is no longer the good guys, folks.

And the rest of the world will eventually stop tolerating us.

A Syria's Case Of Withdrawal, Con't

The GOP "principled opposition" to Donald Trump's withdrawal of US troops from Syria and betrayal of Syrian Kurds never existed, because there is no GOP that exists that doesn't support Donald Trump in everything he does.

The Republican rebellion against President Donald Trump was short-lived. 

Republicans unleashed perhaps their most aggressive outcry of the Trump era after he abandoned the U.S.’ Kurdish allies and ceded northeastern Syria to Turkey. But now GOP lawmakers are dialing back their direct criticism of the president — instead working with Trump, dinging Democrats and trying to move forward.

Senior Republicans are coordinating with Trump’s top officials to try to rein in Turkey with sanctions and protect the Kurds, and while they’re still dissatisfied with the situation, they’ve shifted gears away from confrontation with the president.

“I do appreciate what the administration has done against Turkey through executive action, but more to follow,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon, after joining Trump for a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday. “I appreciate the phone calls yesterday with Erdogan, I think [Trump] reached out in a good way to let Turkey know they needed a cease-fire right now.” 

“I blame Turkey, but I look to President Trump to fix this,” Graham added later on Fox News. 

It was just a few days ago that Graham let loose on Trump as potentially “tired of fighting radical Islam” and compared him to one of the GOP’s key rivals, Barack Obama. The president has since embraced sanctions, engaged with Erdogan and dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence to Turkey to start cease-fire talks. Trump’s administration will spend the week shoring up Republican support. 

But already, the GOP fury toward Trump is winding down — just the latest example of how eager Republicans are to avoid a breach with the president and a reminder of how difficult it will be for Democrats to win over Republicans in the fast-moving impeachment inquiry. 

“Look, Obama didn’t have a strategy in Syria and unfortunately that’s what President Trump inherited. This was an untenable situation in a civil war,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “I don’t think the actual decision, itself, is surprising when you consider the alternatives.”

The GOP reality is whatever Trump says it is.  The Kurds were always "Obama's failure" and pretty soon they will never have been considered our allies in the first place.  Meanwhile, Turkish President Erdogan is busy splitting the pot with Syrian genocide fan Bashar al-Assad and telling VP Mike Pence to wait in the hallway.

The clown show rolls on.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Federal prosecutors are moving forward with the next stage of indictments in the Giuliani corruption investigation after last week's arrest of two ex-Soviet business pals of Rudy Giuliani on campaign finance charges.

We know Giuliani is facing a major federal probe from US attorneys in Manhattan over his corrupt clients, including aforementioned ex-Soviet Putin fixers Abe Parnas and Igor Fruman in Ukraine, and previously indicted Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who worked for convicted ex-bank exec Mehmet Atilla.

Now the Turkish state bank at the heart of Zarrab's plan to evade Iranian sanctions has been charged with money laundering and violating US sanctions on Iran.

Federal prosecutors in New York on Tuesday charged Turkey’s Halkbank (HALKB.IS) with taking part in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The charges against the majority state-owned bank mirror those against one of its former executives, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was found guilty and sentenced to prison after a trial in Manhattan federal court last year.

A U.S. lawyer for Halkbank did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Prosecutors said that between 2012 and 2016, Halkbank helped run a scheme that allowed Iran to spend proceeds from sales of its oil and gas on international markets, in violation of U.S. sanctions, using a complex web of front companies. 

The scheme ran with the protection of high-ranking officials in Iran and Turkey, some of whom received tens of millions of dollars in bribes, the prosecutors said.

Trump asked Rex Tillerson to get Justice to drop charges against Zarrab on Rudy's behalf.  Just this stuff alone is enough to impeach and remove Trump and put Giuliani in a cage for the rest of his life, but it gets worse for Rudy tonight.

Former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. 

“A grand jury has issued a subpoena related to Manhattan federal prosecutors’ investigation into Rudy Giuliani, seeking documents from former Rep. Pete Sessions about his dealings with President Trump’s personal lawyer and associates, according to people familiar with the matter,” the newspaper reported.

“The subpoena seeks documents related to Mr. Giuliani’s business dealings with Ukraine and his involvement in efforts to oust the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, as well as any interactions between Mr. Sessions, Mr. Giuliani and four of Mr. Giuliani’s associates who were indicted last week on campaign-finance and conspiracy accounts, the people said,” The Journal explained. “Mr. Giuliani is the primary focus of the subpoena, the people said. Mr. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing and said he has had no indication his actions are being investigated by prosecutors.”

Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, Trump has had criminal deals with figures from all those countries, and sold out America every time to further his own goals.  And Rudy Giuliani connects almost all of those dots.

Giuliani is now daring House Democrats to do anything to him as he's refusing to cooperate with any subpoenas.  VP Mike Pence is now saying he won't comply either.  Trump has already said he won't cooperate, and Dems are apparently holding off an impeachment inquiry vote while they make their next move.  Meanwhile, more testimony from State Department sources continues this week in House closed-door sessions.

Rudy Giuliani going to jail one way or another, but I'd surely like to see inherent contempt used...

A Syria's Case Of Withdrawal

Donald Trump has ordered all US troops out of northern Syria as the massacre of (formerly) US-allied Syrian Kurds at the hands of Turkey and Russia now continues unabated.

U.S. troops were preparing to withdraw from northern Syria Sunday as Turkish forces continued their advance.

Hundreds of Islamic State group supporters escaped from a displacement camp in the area and there were reports of alleged atrocities amid growing international alarm.

The situation on the ground was deteriorating rapidly, a U.S. official with direct knowledge told NBC News.

U.S. forces were at risk of being isolated and there was increased risk of confrontation between Turkish forces and U.S. troops, said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

President Donald Trump made the decision to withdraw Saturday night, the official said.

About 1,000 troops will leave the area "as safely and quickly as possible," Defense Secretary Mark Esper told CBS' "Face the Nation" in an interview Sunday.

They will not leave the country entirely, he said.

Esper said that the conflict between Turkish forces and U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters had become "untenable" for the U.S. military.

Trump has largely stood by his decision to pull U.S. troops back to clear the way for Turkish forces, despite growing chaos in the wake of their advance.

U.S. allies have urged an end to the Turkish invasion, which has sparked fears of a renewed humanitarian crisis in the region and a resurgent ISIS threat.

Meanwhile the ethnic cleansing of Syrian Kurds, long a priority of the Erdogan regime, is happening in real time.

Hundreds of foreigners affiliated with the Islamic State group (IS) have escaped from a camp in northern Syria amid a Turkish offensive, Kurdish officials say.

They say detainees attacked gates at the Ain Issa displacement camp as fighting raged nearby.

Turkey launched an assault last week aimed at driving Kurdish-led forces from the region.

The UN says 130,000 people have fled their homes, and the figure may rise.

Turkey accuses the Kurds of being terrorists and says it wants to force them away from a "safe zone" reaching some 30km into Syria.

It also plans to resettle more than three million Syrian refugees currently in Turkey - many of whom are not Kurds - inside the zone, which critics say could lead to ethnic cleansing of the local Kurdish population there.

It is genocide.  We're literally standing aside and allowing it to happen.  And it's all because everyone in Trump town thought Erdogan was bluffing, and that Trump would hold him back.  Probably at Putin's orders, as Russia is happily bombing Syrian hospitals while we're headed for the hills. Meanwhile, our troops are retreating to other bases in Syria, but they could be completely pulled out of country in days and as far as the Kurds go, well, Russia is offering a safe haven.  Just like Putin planned it.

It's a disaster of epic proportions.  No country will trust the US again in my lifetime.

Well, except our new Russian bosses.  They'll trust that they have us under their command at all times.

Sunday Long Read: The Man Who Never Left The Consulate

It's been a year now since the brutal murder of Washington Post contributor and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, hacked to pieces by a bonesaw in the depths of the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, lured by the promise of finally being able to make the marriage to the woman he loved official.  Evan Ratliff at Insider reconstructs Khashoggi's final days and why he was literally butchered by a ruthless Saudi prince and abandoned by the worst leader in US history.

It was easy to forget, later, that he was a man in love.

That was the Jamal Khashoggi who arrived on a flight into Istanbul, early on the morning of October 2, 2018. He was a few days short of 60 and divorced, a voluntary exile from his native Saudi Arabia living a lonely existence in Virginia. His tall frame carried an unsubtle paunch, and his hair had thinned out to the sides. The graying of his beard was nearly complete, covering an owlish face with eyes that could simultaneously betray easy mirth and deep sadness.

An internationally acclaimed journalist writing for The Washington Post, he was considered brilliant by his peers. But he spent most of his days struggling under the burden of what he'd left behind, writing in hopes of breaking the world's indifference to the creeping repression in his home country. He'd grown dismayed to see its architect, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman — known in the West as MBS — fêted by Washington and Silicon Valley as a dynamic reformer, while his friends and colleagues back home languished in prison for speaking out. His mission, he had come to believe, was to speak for them.

But on that fall morning in Istanbul, Khashoggi stepped off the plane with an entirely different purpose. Five months earlier, at the opening of a conference on Middle Eastern politics, he'd been approached by a 35-year-old researcher named Hatice Cengiz. She knew his work and wanted to interview him for an article she was writing. At the next coffee break, he sought her out. They spoke for nearly half an hour. She asked him about the prospects for reform in Saudi Arabia; he peppered her with questions about Turkish politics. By the end, their exchange had already begun to feel like something deeper. Before his next trip to Istanbul, he emailed to ask if she'd see him again.

The rest happened quickly, at the speed of two people who already knew themselves. By September he had met her parents. Wedding plans were in motion. The pair bought an apartment in Istanbul, the eastern anchor of what would become a dual life there and in the US.

On September 28 they visited Istanbul's civil-marriage bureau to begin the secular portion of the nuptials. Just one small problem, they were told: Because Khashoggi remained a Saudi citizen, they'd need a certificate from the Saudi government stating that he was unmarried. That would require a trip to the Saudi Consulate.

On an impulse, the couple went straight there that day. Outside the gate, Khashoggi left his two phones with Cengiz, knowing consular officials would ask for them at the door and fearing they would take the opportunity to hack them. He was wary. But once inside, the staff greeted him warmly. The document he needed couldn't be produced instantly, but if he came back on October 2 they would have it ready for him, they said. That afternoon, he left for the airport and caught a 2:40 p.m. flight to London to attend a conference.

The night before his return, Cengiz couldn't sleep, her head a scramble of nerves and excitement. Finally she drifted off, and was awoken by a call from her fiancé: His flight had arrived early. Khashoggi caught a cab to the as-yet-uninhabited apartment they'd purchased, in a gated community in Istanbul's Topkapi neighborhood. A security camera in the entryway caught them lightly embracing as they walked inside, just before 5 a.m.

Khashoggi called the consulate. An official told him to arrive at 1 p.m. to collect his paperwork.

At about a quarter to one, they set out. CCTV cameras captured the couple's unhurried stroll as they walked, hand in hand. Khashoggi wore an open-collared shirt and a blazer, Cengiz a headscarf and a long black dress.

At the security blockade typically positioned at the consulate's south-facing side, Khashoggi once again handed her both his phones. Using a handheld metal detector, a security officer conducted a quick scan of Khashoggi's person. Then the journalist passed between the metal barriers and walked briskly up to the main entrance. A doorman in a powder-blue blazer greeted him with a slight bow, and he was gone.

The rest, as they say, is now just another bloody chapter in the ugly history of the House of Saud, a blot on this Earth and one of the most repressive and murderous regimes on the planet.

Right next to the repressive and murderous regime here in the States, of course.  These days we're sending thousands of troops to Saudi soil as mercenaries because Donald Trump expects MBS to pay up front.

Never forget Khashoggi's story, however.