RUSSIANS HAVE BEEN PUT IN A STRAITJACKET. IT'S OVER FOR PUTIN AND THE RUSSIANS AND IT'S OVER FOR ASSAD IN SYRIA.

The big news of the day is the downing of a Russian jet fighter flying in support of Assad's Syria against anti-Assad forces by the Turkish Air Force. And there is little Russian leader Putin can do about it.

Back in 2014, under Putin, the Russians annexed Crimea after Crimeans declared their independence through referendum. Ukrainians have a history of declaring independence through referendum (see: REFERENDUMS ARE THE UKRAINIAN WAY! MAYBE IT'S TIME FOR REFERENDUMS FOR THOSE IN THE FAR WEST OF UKRAINE TO RETURN TO POLAND.). Putin wanted the military seaport at Sevastopol, Crimea and the Crimeans deliver it to him.

There is one deficiency with Sevastopol as a port. To sail from Sevastopol on the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, any ship must sail through two straits, The Bosphorus (Instanbul Strait) and the Dardanelles (Hellespont; Çanakkale Strait), as well as the Sea of Marmara that sits between these straits.



Both straits are known as the Turkish Straits for good reason. Along with the Sea of Marmara, the straits are part of Turkish territorial waters.

Russia’s Black Sea commercial ports carry 30% of Russian total maritime exports. If Russians want to stay viable commercially, they cannot retaliate against the Turks. Sure, they could cut off natural gas supplies to the Turks, but then the Turks could cut off shipping access to the Russians.

Putin and his team have crafted an image for Putin as the last rugged man, a kind of James Bond as political leader. Putin often gets photographed shirtless. It looks like it is over for the rogue agent of Russia.

The Russians cannot retaliate against the Turks at all. If Russians do, the Turks can block the Turkish straits and thus 30% of all Russian ship borne exports. And if Russians attack a NATO ally, the Danes can block the Danish straits.



The Russians have been put in a straitjacket as it were.

The best bet for ordinary Russians is for them to rise up against the ex-KGB and Russian mafia controlled Russian government. If true democratic government can come to Russia, American political elite should strive to make Russians the number one allies of Americans.

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SYRIA, A POST-WORLD WAR TWO EUROPEAN FAILED EXPERIMENT

So today, I read a take on Syria published by a highly-popular populist blogger who appeals to his readership mostly by bashing anything Americans do. He claims, "the US has destabilized Iraq and Syria" as folly-filled "nation building" exercises.



The body of the U.N. decreed that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is likely guilty of major war crimes in his efforts to squash the Arab Spring uprising that spread to Syria. There is no way the coalition of the leaders of the Arab League, the United States, the European Union and Canada are ever going to let this guy stay in power after such a declaration.

Al-Assad's Ba'ath political party is Leninist communist. That is another strike against him and another impetus to topple his rule over Syria. Everyone has agreed communism is a failed totalitarian doctrine.

Syria is a jumble of people with competing beliefs. Most Syrians are ethnic Arab. They follow the Sunni branch of Islam.

However, Al-Assad and his dictatorial family are Alawites. Everyone but the Alawites see the Alawites as a false cult. Most Syrians see themselves being ruled by a communist, religious freak.

Sunni Muslims want Al-Assad  gone. The U.S. Congress is willing to help.

A key to understanding the Middle East is this: Any leader or political party that supports peaceful co-existence with Israel gets to stay in power and gets to be among the favored nations in trade. Those who want Israel gone and Jews exterminated do not. If the military capability of the country is deemed weak and their leaders don't want peaceful co-existence with Israel, those leaders have been scheduled for regime change.

Years ago, Saudi Arabia was anointed the lead country of the Middle East and the Arab Muslim World. Slowly but surely the rivals of Saudi Arabians are being taken down with the help of the US Congress and law givers of EU member countries.

Syria is a conjured country created by French political leaders in the aftermath of World War Two. There was much fighting in Syria among the various factions until 1970 when Al-Assad came to power in a military coup. He aligned himself and Syria with the communist Soviet Union.

Like many countries conjured by the British and French political leaders after World War Two, Syria needs to break up into smaller countries that reflect the various people who live there. That is the same for Iraq with Kurds, Yazidis, Shia and Sunnis.

In non-secular countries, religious people can't seem to get along unless there is a central regime that brutally suppresses all other rival religions.

As Islamism is a political doctrine of totalitarianism that relies upon theistic rhetoric, the general problem of the Middle East has been the drawing of borders not along religious lines. Wherever you find competing religions in the Middle East, you find strife.

Most Syrians want to be free. Likely too, most Syrians would like their own country and to live among their own people with their own ways.

To be on the side of a brutal dictator like Bashar al-Assad is to be on the wrong side of history, regardless of whether or not you are a pacifist.

After googling, it seems Max Fisher of the Washington Post has alike views to me.

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WE INTERRUPT YOUR PROGRAMMING TO BRING YOU OUR LATEST WAR AGAINST ISLAMIC JIHADISTS, ISIS, OH AND SYRIA

This evening, Obama interrupted Americans to announce that Obama has agreed to involve the United States in a war against the unrecognized country of the Islamic State. As well, Obama has called for a war against the sovereign nation of Syria, a people who have done nothing against Americans.



Obama opened his speech with the Tricky Dick Nixon sounding, "My fellow Americans." Obama then went on to make the dubious claim that Americans are safer because of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Americans are safer because of Iraq, then why is Obama calling for re-engagement in Iraq?

Foolishly, Obama said ISIS is not Islamic. Yet, the first I in ISIS stands for Islamic. ISIS is an acronym for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

ISIS is the epitome of what it means to be Muslim and Islamic. According to the writers of Wikipedia, an Islamic state is a state that has adopted Islam, specifically Sharia, as its foundations for political institutions, or laws, exclusively, and has implemented the Islamic ruling system khilafah and is therefore a theocracy.

Sharia is the official basis for state laws in the following countries: Afghanistan (29.82 million), Iran (76.42 million), Mauritania (3.796 million), Saudi Arabia (28.29 million), Somalia (10.2 million), Sudan (37.2 million), and Yemen (23.85 million). Islam is the official religion of Pakistan (179.2 million) and its Federal Shariat Court has the duty of striking down any law not complying with the Sharia Islamic law.

Right now, roughly 24% of Muslims worldwide live under theocracy. ISIS has invaded Syria (22.4 million) and Iraq (32.58 million) to yoke another 3% under theocratic Islamic Law.

It's quite likely at least another 25% to 30% would like to live under Sharia law right now. So at least half of the so-called Muslim world favor the action of ISIS. That is a whopping 810 million on this earth or more than 2.5 times as many Americans favor living under an Islamic state.

In his speech, Obama listed the atrocities of ISIS — threatening those who are not Sunni Muslims with genocide, execution of prisoners, killing of children, raping of women, forcing women into marriages. In short, Obama pointed out that ISIS are Muslims who are carrying out Islamic jihad, though Obama failed to name it for what it is — Islamic jihad.

Only last Wednesday, Reuters reported on the father and brothers of a pregnant Pakistani woman stoned to death by them in broad daylight outside the Lahore high court in a so-called honor killing merely because the woman refused to marry her cousin in a marriage arranged by her father.

According to TheReligionofPeace.com, 

the Quran contains at least 109 verses that call Muslims to war with nonbelievers for the sake of Islamic rule.  Some are quite graphic, with commands to chop off heads and fingers and kill infidels wherever they may be hiding.  Muslims who do not join the fight are called 'hypocrites' and warned that Allah will send them to Hell if they do not join the slaughter.

In Frontpage Mag, Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam, wrote:

The distinctions between ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hamas, the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood or your friendly CAIR rep next door involve how to get to that endgame of a theocracy. Everything else is just tactics and details.
You’re not going to talk the other side out of their theocracy. ISIS believes that it’s already so near to the endgame that expediency is unnecessary. That it cannot be stopped. Which also means that ISIS cannot be reasoned with in the usual conventional ways.

Obama said, "the greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa," which is about the only claim Obama has right.  Almost everywhere you look on the earth, where there is significant conflict, you will find Muslims involved (see the CFR's Global Conflict Tracker and Wikipedia's List of Ongoing Conflicts). Muslim proclaimed terrorist and insurgent groups stirring up trouble and murdering innocents the earth over dominate the country-by-country listing of warring hot spots according to WarsintheWorld.com.

By laying out his plan, Obama announced that he shall command the U.S. Air Force to fly air strikes inside the sovereign borders of Syria. As well, Obama said he has been using the U.S. military to assist what he calls the "Syrian opposition." As Syria is a sovereign country, assisting rebels in a war is akin to assisting terrorists. Now, Obama has called on Congress for more spending to advance the cause of terrorists against sovereign Syrian government.

Obama was quick to denounce the Syrian president, Assad, who, quite likely is an evil guy. But Kim Jong-un, the leader of communist North Korea is a bad guy too and yet Obama isn't calling on Congress for war powers to topple him.

Americans shouldn't be on the hook to have the economy further wrecked because foreign policy wonks believe it's in the interest of U.S. registered corporate entities to control the Middle East. And as despicable as ISIS is, ISIS is a problem for the Saudi Arabians, the Kuwaitis, the Syrians, the Iraqis, and everyone else who lives in the Middle East.

Obama also has gotten it right when he said, "we cannot do for Iraqis what they must do for themselves, nor can we take the place of Arab partners in securing their region." The Sunni Saudis and Kuwaitis and their hated Shia neighbors, the Iranians, have the most to lose if ISIS were to prevail.

Many act as apologists for the warring, world-domination questing cult Mohammad created because of their anti-Christian or anti-Jewry ideological worldview. Often, such apologists are atheists or agnostics or suffer from silly-minded Western New Ageism fawning over eastern religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism.

Mohammad's cult appeals to masses of ignorant men precisely because as cult members, they get to lord over their women, abusing their women with impunity, even though they continue to count little in the political establishment hierarchy.

When political leaders can't confiscate property through taxation because people have so little property (right of ownership) in so few possessions, politicians must resort to other means to appeal to would-be supporters. Under Mohammadism that appeal is made by conferring lording status to males over their households.

By their propaganda of "the religion of peace," Muslim leaders mean that all who remain will have peace when everyone believes as these leaders dictate precisely because everyone else who refused to join their cult will have been killed off. In their quest for Sharia rule, at least 800 million of the 1.62 billion Muslim world worship a devil of an idea, a Satan of a doctrine, an evil jinn that has no respect for individualism and self-sovereignty, no respect for free-will that many see given as a gift from an all-loving creator.

The right policy for the U.S. political establishment is to isolate Sharia-law Muslims from partaking in world markets and thus the world economy. It is time to block imports from all Sharia-law Muslim countries and prohibit exports to the same. It is time to isolate the violent Muslim world bent on control under the guise of jihad.

Instead, if the U.S. political establishment were to make peace with the Russians and then make the Russians Americans' biggest ally, Americans could isolate the whole Muslim Middle East, the source of worldwide craziness.

NPR has a transcript of Obama's speech.

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OBAMA VS PUTIN.

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