Turks invade "Kurdistan" -- What next?!

And so it begins. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Twitter Wednesday that the Turkish offensive into northeast Syria has started. He calls it "#OperationPeaceSpring". The aim of the operation, he tweeted, is to "eradicate the threat of terror against Turkey." And the invasion will be good for Syria too, of course. "We will preserve Syria's territorial integrity," he wrote, "and liberate local communities from terrorists."

What kind of terrorists? Well, "PKK/YPG and Daesh terrorists", of course! You can't tell the players in the Muslim civil war without a programme, Walt will elucidate. "Daesh" is the name the PC media use for ISIS/ISIL, to avoid have to use the word "Islamic" (as in "Islamic terrorists"). "PKK" stands for "Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê" (= Kurdistan Workers' Party‎), a Kurdish far-left militant and political organization based in Turkey and Iraq. The Turkish government has been trying for years to suppress them, often by making them dead. "YPG" is the armed wing of the leftist Kurdish Democratic Union Party, closely allied to the Syriac Military Council, a militia of Assyrians.

The Kurds are an Iranian ethnic group native to Western Asia. Their mountainous "native land", known as Kurdistan, includes southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria. The most widely practiced religion in the region is Islam. According to a 2011 study conducted by the Pew Research Center, nearly all Kurds (98%) in Iraq identified as Sunni Muslim, while the other 2% identified as Shiite Muslims.

The predominant branch of the Religion of Peace in Iran is Shia Islam. In Turkey, Sunni Muslims are in the majority, with about 80% of the populartion. 19% of Turks are Shiites.

So you might think that there should be no friction, in Turkey, between the Sunni Turks and Sunni Kurds. You would be wrong. The problem is that the Kurds of Turkey would prefer to be united with the Kurds of Iran, Iraq and, yes, Syria in an independent Kurdistan. That is what they have been fighting for, allying themselves with whatever other groups or powers may be useful. See "How goes the war against IS/ISIL/ISIS? It's a fiasco!", WWW 27/5/19 (includes video).

The problem for the Kurds is that they just lost their biggest ally, the Excited States of America. Still-President Trump's decision to withdraw American forces from Syria, opens the desert of northeast Syria for Mr Erdogan's "Operation Peace Spring". (Dontcha love how all these invasions -- no matter who leads them -- have names that include "Peace", "Freedom", "Liberation", etc?) A UK-based Syrian war monitoring group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported today that people were fleeing the border town of Tal Abyad, which Turkey is expected to attack first. And Turkish television reports said Turkish jets had bombed Syrian Kurdish positions across the border from Turkey.

And so it begins. What happens next? Will Shia Iran seize the opportunity to move against the Sunni Kurds in its westerly regions? Will the Arab Iraqis try to oust the ethnically different Kurds from the oil-rich northern party of their alleged country? Where will it all end? God (or maybe Allah?) only knows. But don't forget that south of Syria lies Israel, and within Israel lies... wait for it... Armageddon.

Further reading (and viewing):
"Meanwhile, in the Middle East, something big is on the horizon", WWW 10/11/17 (includes video from Ron Paul Liberty Report)
"Scrapping the Iran deal: another milepost on the road to Armageddon", WWW 10/5/18.

VIDEO: Ron Paul comments on long-overdue US withdrawal from Syria

In case no-one noticed, our blog quietly passed its 10th anniversary back in July. [If I'd remembered I'd have baked a cake. Ed.] How time flies when you're having fun! One of the themes that I write about again and again [and again and again. Ed.] is the folly of America being entangled in foreign wars that it can't win, especially the oil wars in the Gulf and Middle East. See, for example, "Will America never learn? The persistence of bad foreign policy" (WWW 2/5/13).

It's not that I'm a pacifist, or anti-Israel, or an apologist for the Islamists. I'm just a realist, like Ron Paul, and think it's stupid to waste tens of thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars meddling in and tens of thousands trying to act as referees in Muslim civil wars. Here's what Dr Paul has to say about Still-President Trump's announcement that US forces will be withdrawn from Syria, starting yesterday!



IMHO the withdrawal is long overdue! We have (dare I say it?) no dog in those fights. The USA will be no better off no matter who wins, and no worse off no matter who loses. The usual suspects say the Bushes, Slick Willy, and the Prez sent American forces to the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan, and kept them there, not just to convert the feudal Arab states to modern Western democracy, but to keep the Saudis and multinational companies in control of the oil that lies beneat the blood-stained desert sands.

I call BS on that. With the development of fracking and shale oil, and the slowly lessening use of plastics and other oil-based products, America is virtually self-sufficient in oil. And if the liberals on both sides of the Canada-US border would smarten up and support the development of Canada's oil sands and the import of Canadian oil through pipelines which the leftists don't want to be built or expanded, oil self-sufficiency would be guaranteed. Who needs Arab oil?!

Mr Trump's announcement late Sunday has set the lefties' hair on fire. Expressions of shock and horror are being heard from all liberal quarters, notably Brussels, the capital of the European Union, and (of course) the commentariat of America, Britain and Canada.
* America is leaving its Kurdish allies in the lurch!
* America is surrendering! Another failure for Trump!
* America is caving to Assad!
* The Turkish invasion of Syria will be disastrous!
* More millions of refugees will be washing up on our shores!
and, inevitably
* We're inviting a resurgence of Al-Qaeda and ISIS!

Walt says, who cares?! Let the Islamists duke it out. And if a humanitarian disaster ensures, let the Europeans and Canucks take care of it, if they're so minded... and can afford it. Getting out of the Middle East is absolutely the right thing to do. As Dr Paul and Dan McAdams say near the end of the video, it's not going to happen overnight, but this week's decision by Still-President Trump is a step in the right direction.

Further reading: "Worried for Kurds in Syria, abandoned by US? Here’s an obvious solution but it will make Washington hawks MAD", by Nebojsa Malic, on the Ron Paul Institute website, 8/10/19.

VIDEO: Meanwhile, in the Middle East, something big is on the horizon

Are we witnessing the beginning of a bigger Middle East war? ISIS seems to be just about finished, at least in the sense of occupying a defined territory. The Syrian government of Basher Assad has overrun the last ISIS stronghold and seems likely to turn its attention to putting the Kurds back in their place. The Kurds are also being attacked by the so-called Iraqi National Army. Those conflicts will continue, while the western powers dither about whose side they should be on. See "Gulf Wars drag on: Walt's guide to who's fighting who", WWW 16/10/17 and "Why the Canadian Army is 'suspending' ops in Iraq", WWW 2810/17.

Here's the scary part. The fighting in Syria and Iraq is just a proxy war, a smaller part of the larger Muslim civil war between the Shi'ites (read: Iran) and the Sunnis (read: Saudi Arabia). Recent events suggest that an escalation of that conflict is imminent. This month has seen a huge purge among Saudi royals, accusations of Lebanese aggression, and threats by Hezbollah. Recent semi-secret trips by (((Jared Kushner))), President Trump's son-in-law and advisor to visit with the Saudi crown prince raise questions about the position of the USA. Israeli policy seems to be lining up with Saudi regional policy against Iran and Hezbollah. The Yemen war is at a standstill. Tensions are rising throughout the sandpit.

Is this the start of something big? In the November 7th edition of the Ron Paul Liberty Report (running time 16:50) Dr. Paul and co-host Daniel McAdams analyze the signs and portents, and conclude that we are getting ever closer to a major conflict. Notice that I didn't use the word "Armageddon", but only because they didn't use it!



Walt suggests that you bookmark the Ron Paul Liberty Report. There's a new broadcast every day at noon, Eastern Time.

Why the Canadian Army is "suspending" ops in Iraq

The big guys with the beards aren't ISIS jihadis or Iraqi "soldiers". They're Canucks! You can tell because they have better camoduds, with their maple leaf flag (cleverly died green) on the shoulders. They are pictured "advising and training" Kurdish Peshmerga "fighters" somewhere in northern Iraq.

"Gee whillikers, Walt! You mean there are Canadians fighting alongside the brave American forces in Iraq?" Well, not exactly, Bobby. There are Canadian Armed Forces personnel in Iraq, all right, but not all of them are, errr, fighting. There are intelligence officers (as in that great oxymoron "military intelligence"), a helicopter detachment and a medical contingent based in Erbil, the Kurdish capital. Separately, in Kuwait, there is a surveillance plane and an air-to-air refueller.

But yes, there are several dozen Canucks out there in camos, holding guns and other implements of destruction. By way of apology for not jumping at the chance to join the first Iraq fiasco, the government of former Canuck Prime Minister Steven Harpoon in 2014 sent roughly 200 Canadian commandos to "provide advice and assistance" on the ground in northern Iraq in an effort to help defeat ISIS militants. This summer, when it looked like the war was finally going to be won, the alleged government of Junior Trudeau extended the mission for two years.

And then, just as Walt predicted (lifetime pct .991) the war against ISIS took a sudden but not unpredictable turn in another direction. Having cleared the Islamists out of Mosul, the Kurds decided that it was time to consolidate their victory and assert their independence from the rest of Iraq. They held a referendum of sorts and voted to declare their own republic, a formalization of the autonomous state which already existed (in theory) in northern Iraq. The so-called national government of that wretched country, dominated by Shia Muslims, did not take kindly to the challenge to its authority, and sent their army, along with Shi'ite militias, to put the Kurds in their place... or out of their place, looking at it from the Kurds' point of view.

The Arab Iraqis seized the northern oil city of Kirkuk from the Kurds, with surprising ease, a few days ago, and are expected to move against Mosul and the Kurdish capital, Erbil, at any time. That puts the Canadian special forces in an awkward position, since they are based in Erbil and, if the Kurds take a stand against the Arab Iraqis, would be expected to lead their "trainees" into battle against the Iraqi forces whom the Canucks have also been "training".

What would you do, if you were the peace-loving Canadian Minister of Defence (who happens to be a Sikh) or his pussified boss, Justin Trudeau? Would you take the side of the "national" government of Iraq or the separatist Kurds? (See "Gulf Wars drag on: Walt's guide to who's fighting who", WWW 16/10/17.)

Perhaps you have already guessed the answer. It is not the Canadian way to offend anybody... anybody! Canadians, or their government at least, see themselves as the great peacemakers who can bring sanity and stability to a world dominated by crazy warmongers like Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump. (That's M Trudeau's view, not Walt's!) So, rather than take sides, the clever and peace-loving Canadians have decided to do... errr... nothing, "until greater clarity exists".

That's the word from Col. Jay Janzen, the director of military strategic communications for the Canadian Armed Forces, in a brief statement made while everyone was watching the World Series last night. "Given the fluidity of the current situation, Canada's Special Operations Task Force has temporarily suspended the provision of assistance to various elements of Iraqi security forces," he said. "Once greater clarity exists regarding the interrelationships of Iraqi security forces, and the key priorities and tasks ahead, the task force will resume activities."

Monitoring the situation without taking sides might seem like the sensible and moral thing to do, but, as with everything the Trudeau government does, there is an agenda behind the decision to put a temporary hold on their training of Iraqi and Kurdish forces in the wake of fighting between the two factions. The Canadian government is deathly afraid of two connected ideologies: separatism and nationalism.

Almost since the day of Canada's creation, just over 150 years ago, the federal government has been fighting to keep the people of Québec --
distinct ethnically, linguistically and religiously from the rest of Canada -- from seceding. In the most recent referendum on the question, in 1995, the people of La Belle Province voted by the narrowest of margins to not become un état -- an independent state. But the spark of separatist sentiment is hard to extinguish, and now it is being fanned into flame by the rise of separatist/nationalist movements in Scotland, Catalonia, and, yes, "Kurdistan".

Just yesterday, Junior Trudeau affirmed his support for a united Spain. Statements by Canadian politicians on the Kurdish question show that the only support for the ideal of Kurdish independence comes from the (federal) Bloc Québécois and the (provincial) Parti Québécois. If the independence of the new Catalan republic is recognized, if the Kurds succeed in driving the Arab Iraqis out of their region, Canada's Liberals will have yet another battle to fight to uphold their ideal of a post-national society. Stay tuned.

Gulf Wars drag on: Walt's guide to who's fighting who

Even though it's the longest-running continuous military engagement in US history, some time has passed since the Gulf Wars (aka Oil Wars) was front page news in the Paranoid States of America. That may be about to change as the fighting enters a new phase.

Now that the ISIS (the Sunni Muslim terrorist "state") has been more or less defeated, at least in Iraq, the "victors" -- Shiite Muslims in the south and Kurds in the north -- are starting to fight each other. Western armed forces, mostly American, are caught in the middle, "training and advising" both sides.

The last noteworthy battle in Iraq, which dragged on through most of this summer, was in Mosul, the heart of the Kurdish part of Iraq, also in the middle of large oil fields. The area is also home to millions of Arabs, Turkmen, Yazidis and a few thousand persecuted Christians. Mainly Kurdish forces, led into battle by American and Canadian "trainers" succeeded in driving out the ISIS jihadis.

Last month, flush with success and swimming in oil money, the Kurdish government of the semi-autonomous region held a referendum on independence, in defiance of Iraq's central government in Baghdad. To no-one's surprise, the Kurds voted overwhelmingly in favour of declaring the own republic. They already had a flag, so figured a state would make the set complete. The Iraqi government immediately called on foreign countries to stop importing oil from the Kurdish region and to deal with them instead.

This weekend the Iraqi government dropped the other shoe. The so-called Iraqi National Army and state-backed Shia militias launched a major, multi-pronged attack aimed at retaking Kirkuk. Kurdish forces appeared to be pulling back, abandoning fortified positions around the airport as large numbers of civilians fled the northern city ahead of a feared assault.

This latest phase in what is essentially a Muslim civil war pits two close US allies against each other, potentially undermining the unfinished war against ISIS. There is a very real possibility, right now, of American "trainers" and "special forces" being killed by Canadians, or (more likely) vice versa. Walt says it's folly to take sides in this conflict -- a waste of money and of the precious lives of our troops. Let the Muslims duke it out! We can buy oil from any of them... hell, all of them!

Further reading: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, by Thomas E. Ricks (Penguin Press 2006).

Walt's plan for the war in the Middle East

During the US election campaign, Hellery Clinton responded to challenges on what she was going to do to win the war against the Islamic terrorists -- the ones she wouldn't call by name -- by saying that she had a plan, which included the capture of Mosul, which would fall in a matter of days. Donald Trump said that even if the anti-ISIS "coalition" succeeded in liberating Mosul, they'd find the IS leaders long gone, precisely because La Clinton had given them plenty of notice, plus details of President 0's plans to "degrade" the soldiers of the Prophet.

As I pointed out a few days ago, in "Meanwhile, in the Middle East...", predictions of the capture of Mosul turned out to be premature. Latest reports are that the Kurds, advancing from the area they control in northern Iraq, are stalled at the gates of the city. The alleged Iraqi National Army, coming up from the south, has been unable to prevent ISIS fighters from breaking out to the west and south, heading for Syria. Enough of the terrorists remain in Mosul to make its fall uncertain at best.

Meanwhile, the eyes and ears of the world have turned toward Syria, where ISIS has retaken the ancient city of Palmyra, which it lost some nine months ago. Turns out this great victory for the "coalition" was, errr, of a temporary nature. As in Afghanistan and Iraq, "we" learned that occupying and securing a given area is rather more difficult than taking it in the first place. I can almost hear the cries of "They're baaaack!"

If you believe the propaganda dished out every day by the lamestream media, the retaking of Palmyra by ISIS isn't that big a deal. What is a big deal is the fall of Aleppo -- once Syria's biggest city -- not to ISIS but to [SHOCK! HORROR!] the forces of the evil, devilish, inhuman Bashir al-Assad! With more than a little help in the form of airstrikes by the Russians, Syrian government forces have entered and taken control of 99% of the eastern part of Aleppo, which had been held by rebel militias for years. MORE SHOCK! MORE HORROR!

The chattering classes and spokesthingies for liberal democracy are engaging in an orgy of handwringing, pissing and moaning that almost defies description. Here's a sample, written by someone called Terry Glavin [Who he? Ed.] in today's Emotional Post. "J’accuse! May Allah look down in his mercy upon Aleppo — no help is coming from us. This is what we have become. This is the depravity to which we have all sunk. Aleppo has fallen and so has humanity. We are disgraced."

Walt doesn't see it quite that way. There have been some civilian casualties in the battle for Aleppo, to be sure, including women and children. Hundreds, not thousands, have been killed, but those numbers pale in comparison to the numbers executed -- not killed in fighting, but executed -- by ISIS. So why is it the "end of civilization" when Syrian government forces do the killing, but not when atrocities are committed by the Sunni Muslim rebels and the Islamic extremists of ISIS? Answers on the back of a postage stamp, please, to the usual address.

As of this morning, the Assad government controls most of western Syria, which is the only part of the country worth having. The Kurds have most of their homeland in northern Iraq. ISIS holds their capital, Raqqa, as well as Mosul (still) and Palmyra (again). The alleged Iraqi government has a tenuous hold on Baghdad, but not much else. Their ill-trained and timorous army is (sometimes) fighting it out with ISIS for eastern Syria and south-central Iraq. I'll go out on a limb here and predict that there will be no significant change of any kind in the year to come. Lifetime pct .985.

What, then, should the USA, soon to be under new management, do about the Middle East? I've given it a lot of thought [All this week? Ed.] and can come up with no better plan than to bug out and let the Muslims duke it out amongst themselves. That, in essence, is what Ron Paul has been saying for years. The Syrian armed forces, with the help of the Russians, will keep pushing eastward, while the Kurds, helped by the Iranians, will keep pushing down from the north. Let them destroy the Sunnis (ISIS plus assorted rebel militias) if they can, and good luck to them. We’ve got no skin in that game.

Further reading: "Some Perspectives on the War on Terror: Anyway you look at it, it's a failure", by Philip Giraldi, in The Unz Review, 20/12/16.

Escalating the war in Syria: Has Obama learned nothing?

CNN politics reports today that President 0 is going to send another 250 American special ops forces to Syria in the coming weeks, in an effort to stem the influence and spread of ISIS. "Stem the influence and spread"? What happened to "degrade and destroy"? Even that got downgraded pretty quickly to "degrade and defeat". Now it's just "stem the influence and spread".

Here, according to CNN politics, are POTUS's actual words. "Just as I approved additional support for Iraqi forces against ISIL, I've decided to increase U.S. support for local forces fighting ISIL in Syria, a small number of special operations forces are already on the ground in Syria and their expertise has been critical as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas. So given their success I've approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria including special forces to keep up this momentum."

"Given their success..." Pardon me while I fall down laughing. Whatever success the anti-ISIS forces have had lately has come largely through the efforts of Kurdish fighters and those of our once-but-no-longer enemy Basher Assad, ably assisted by the Russian Air Force. But don't worry. The Paranoid States of America is going to step up the fight against the murderous Muslims. Really. Obama means it, this time.

Yes indeed. If more American boots on the ground don't do the trick, the USAF will win the war from the air. At the end of February, Air Force Gen. Herbert Carlisle, head of Air Combat Command, announced at the Air Force Association’s annual Air Warfare Symposium that they're going to send in the B52s! And Lt.-Gen. Charles Brown, in charge of the flying branch’s top headquarters for the Middle East, said he would help "bring B-52s to town", according to Air Force Magazine, quoted on The National Interest blogsite.

Send in the B52s to bomb whatever rubble is left. What an amazing idea. But hang on! Haven't we seen this movie before? Back in the early 70s? Didn't USAF B52s engage in carpet-bombing of not just Vietnam but Laos and Cambodia? How did that work out? [That was in a movie -- The Killing Fields. It didn't really happen! Ed.]

Sorry, Ed., but it did happen! It was part of the Johnson-Nixon grand strategy to end the war! Remember? Anyway, here's a quote from Rick Perlstein's Nixonland (Scribner 2008), recommended here a few days ago. "On April 16 [1972], five behemoth B-52s pounded Hanoi and North Vietnam's lifeline port, Haiphong Harbor....

"Then, the night of April 26, [Nixon] went on TV to make his latest Vietnam pitch: "...we have offered the most generous peace terms.... The South Vietnamese are fighting courageously and well in their self-defense.
'...I say to you tonight, let us bring our men home from Vietnam; let us end the war in Vietnam. But let us end it in such a way that the younger brothers and the sons of the brave men who have fought in Vietnam will not have to fight again in some other Vietnam at some time in the future....
'My fellow Americans, let us therefore unite as a nation in a firm and wise policy of real peace -- not the peace of surrender, but peace with honor, not just peace in our time, but peace for generations to come.'"

And how did that work out? Walt asks... again... how it can be that the leaders of the USA have learned nothing, nothing from the American experience in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, and (so far) in Syria? How can it be?!

Footnote regarding Nixonland: A reader has confessed to some puzzlement over Walt's recommendation of Nixonland. Isn't that book [he asks] nothing more than a hatchet job on RMN, published to discredit the Republicans ahead of the 2008 presidential election? Well, yes. Mr. Perlstein paints a picture of President Nixon as a scurrilous bounder and then some. But that the picture is unflattering doesn't make it unreal. And Mr. Perlstein shows no love for the Democrats or President Johnson either. About the only pols who come off at all well in the book are Messrs McCarthy and McGovern.

But that's beside the point. The main point of Nixonland, as far as I'm concerned, is that the liberal consensus of the 60s evaporated or was destroyed in 1968, and that the polarization of politics of the Nixon years is even more acute today. To paraphrase Mr. Perlstein, the majority of Americans are embittered, cynical, and resentful of the Establishment. They are ready to vote for anyone who can credibly pledge to tear down the Washington power structure. And that, dear readers, explains the popularity of Messrs Sanders, Cruz, and... of course... Trump.

Further reading:
Can America ever be united again?, WWW 12/4/16.
"Donald Trump taps into anger about U.S. misadventures in the world", CBC News 28/4/16

First Canadian soldier killed in mission vs ISIS

No. 1

It was bound to happen. Sgt. Andrew Joseph Doiron, a member of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, was killed Friday night (local time) somewhere in Iraq. Three other Canadian soldiers were injured and are being treated in Iraq. They are said to be in stable condition.

About six dozen members of Special Ops are in Iraq, participating in the American-led mission against ISIS (or ISIL, as Obama and his camp followers still call it). So was it ISIS jihadis who shot the four Canucks? Errr, no. Sgt. Doiron and his comrades were fired on by Iraqi Kurds. By mistake, of course.

Canadians were promised by their Dear Leader, Steve Harper, and his lickspittle ministers -- step forward Messrs. Baird, Nicholson, Mackay and Kenney -- that their troops would not be in harm's way, that they would just be "training" and "advising". Walt said at the time that trainers and advisors wear the same uniforms as combat troops, carry the same weapons as combat troops, and would doubtless be going into places where combat was taking place. It was therefore only a matter of time until they started coming home in body bags. See also "Canuck 'trainers' fired on in Iraq -- just fancy that!"

Since the initial Canadian commitment was for only six months, participation in the American invasion is supposedly up for review at the beginning of April. Messrs Harper et al. have, as recently as Thursday, been dropping broad hints that an extension of the mission was all but certain. Will they now rethink their mindless following the disastrous foreign policies of their good friends to the south, who, by the way, have not yet had a single casualty? Don't bet on it.

RIP, Sergeant Doiron. Walt hopes that the blowback from your death will prevent the deaths of others like you.

Why the Australian terrorist wannabe did it

Following 9/11, Dubya famously [infamously? Ed.] said that the Islamic terrorists hate us for our freedoms. Ascribing that motivation to al-Qaeda was risible at the time, and, as anyone who's been dealt with by TSA and other "protectors of our freedoms" knows, is now ludicrous. America "the land of the free"? HAH!

If not for our long-vanished freedomes, why, then, do the Muslim fanatics -- the Taliban, ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram -- really hate us? Why would a scumbag like Man Haron Monis -- the Iranian-born "refugee" shot by police yesterday in Sydney -- take over a dozen hostages in what was ultimately a futile and fatal publicity stunt?

The same question was asked in Canada back in October, after two "radicalized" Canadian converts to the Religion of Peace [HAH? Ed.] killed two Canadian soldiers in separate incidents outside of Montréal and in the nation's capital.

The Canadian government (Steve Harper, Beloved Leader) was keen to downplay any notion that the killings had anything to do with its decision to join the American coalition attacking ISIS (or "ISIL", as they and Obama persist in calling it, lest we believe it has anything to do with Syria). The Canucks could barely bring themselves to admit that the killers were, by conversion if not birth, Muslims. No, they were just misguided young men with emotional problems. Probably drug addicts too. Drug-addled nutbars, really. That was the PC government spin on the story.

So fast was the story spinning that the Mounties, who had promised to release a video made by the Parliament Hill shooter, reneged on their promise. They are now saying they might release a "transcript" of the video, which will doubtless be sanitized to remove images of the IS flag and the killer's repeated declaration that he acted to protest the Canadian involvement in the anti-IS coalition.

So now in Australia, we are seeing the same spin on what is basically the same story. It's a little more difficult for the Australian government to gloss over the late Mr. Monis's motives, since he had already been convicted of writing threatening letters to the families of Australian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, and -- more important -- had ranted on a widely-circulated video about wanting to make the Aussies pay for joining the US invasion of the Middle East.

The governments of Australia, Canada and (of course) the USA, would like you to forget that, until the Americans started bombing IS, it was confining its barbaric activities to killing fellow Muslim men, women and children, as well as religious and ethnic minorities -- particularly Kurds -- in Syria and Iraq.

It wasn't until after the American "intervention" in August that they started beheading westerners. And only after the September extension of the bombing to include Syria did IS urge its followers to attack Westerners wherever they might be found. That is exactly what the "lone wolves" in Canada and Australia did. And that's why they did it.

Will the governments of Australia and Canada and the Paranoid States of America now rethink they disastrous policy of constant meddling in the Middle East? Walt doubts it. Lifetime pct .977.

Further reading on WWW:
"Some wars would be better forgotten" (11/11/14)
"The war against ISIS explained... again... seriously, this time" (14/11/14)

IS jihadists clash with Kurds -- guess where?

Aw, c'mon. You cheated, didn't you? Probably took a close look at the picture and figured (correctly) that they don't have "POLIZEI" in places like Mosul, Kirkuk or old Baghdad. No siree Mohammed!

This bloody clash, between hundreds of supporters of the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) and more hundreds of ethnic Kurds took place in the streets of downtown Hamburg, the second-largest city in, errr, Germany.

The violence -- said by der Polizei to have been as ferocious as anything seen in Germany in recent memory -- is just a reminder that the jihad (holy war) being waged by Islamic extremists against all "infidels" (i.e. non-Muslims) is not limited to Syria or Iraq or Armpitistan or suchlike desert wastes. A battle could break out anywhere... in any place with more than a handful of Muslim immigrants or "refugees"... the kind of people the Pope and the Prez want us to welcome into our communities.

But don't take Walt's word for it. Listen to Daniel Abdin, imam of Hamburg's Al-Nour Mosque, told Der Spiegel, "I had the feeling that we are living in Hamburgistan... The atmosphere was very, very explosive."

German police said they were shocked by what they described as an unprecedented level of violence. In an interview with Passau Neue Presse, the chairman of the German Police Union, Rainer Wendt, reported that police in Hamburg "experienced life-threatening brute force" by perpetrators who were "armed to the teeth."

The copmeister warned that the IS-Kurdish conflict is "threatening to unleash a proxy war on German soil." Yes... Today Germany, tomorrow...

"We are a ruined church": Patriarch Sako talks about Christianity in Iraq

Migration of Christians: Percussion of the Alarm Bells is a very sad commentary by Louis Raphaël I Sako, Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, on the situation of Christians in Iraq.

Patriarch Sako blames the American invasion of Iraq for the demise of the Church in his country. "We are a ruined church", he said. "1400 years of Islam could not uproot us from our land and our churches, while the policies of the West [have] scattered us and distributed us all around the world."

The Chaldean Catholic Church is an Eastern Syriac particular church of the Catholic Church, maintaining full communion with the Bishop of Rome and the rest of the Catholic Church. Founded in the earliest days of Christianity (1st to 3rd centuries A.D.), it was originally a part of The Assyrian Church of the East, until in the 16th century Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa entered communion with the Roman Catholic Church. It was renamed as the Chaldean Catholic Church by Rome in 1683.

The Chaldean Catholic Church presently comprises an estimated 500,000 believers, mostly ethnic Assyrians indigenous to northern Iraq, and areas bordering it in southeast Turkey, northeast Syria and northwest Iran. This is a troubled area, coinciding geographically with large parts of what is called "Kurdistan", where the Muslim majority are struggling to carve their own state out of parts of Iraq, Turkey and Syria. In central and south Iraq, fighting between Sunni and Shia Muslims goes on as usual, in spite of -- or because of -- the failure of the American "intervention".

According to Patriarch Sako, the West would have been better off leaving the local peoples to sort out their differences on their own. "Democracy and change come through upbringing and education rather than through conflict," he said. "Intervention by the West in the region did not solve the problems...but on the contrary, produced more chaos and conflict."

Referring to the régime of Saddam Hussein, the patriarch said that "in the Church of the Ascension, Al-Mashtal, for example, there were about 5000 families and over 240 students preparing for their First Holy Communion before the régime’s fall.... On 25 April 2014, I celebrated in this church the Holy Mass for First Holy Communion of 13 students only."

"[Iraqi] government authorities bear part of the responsibility of this migration for failing to restore security and stability," Patriarch Sako continued. He called upon Muslim clerics to issue "a joint statement denying all forms of violence, mistrust and considering others as 'infidels'" and calling "for peace and brotherhood among the people."

For all the goodwill exhibited by Patriarch Sako, Walt thinks the likelihood of any such statement coming out of Iraq is about the same as that of Pope Francis admitting that "we are a ruined church" applies in the larger sense to the Roman Catholic Church as a whole.