Right To Left

NO, the rich are not paying most of the taxes! And you need to break down what taxes you're talking about here. Because most of the rich earn the bulk of their money from investment/not earned income! The richest 1% pay an effective federal income tax rate of 24.7% in 2014; someone making an average of $75,000 is paying a 19.7% rate. Speaking from the pov of someone earning about 85000 Cdn per year, I'm not poor, but neither do I have more money than I can possibly spend.....like the top 1%. When we're talking billionaires and at least one possible trillionaire in the next 15 years at current projections, I have to ask: what the hell is it all for? Is it about buying political power? Are you going to fund your own space stations in orbit or a base on Mars to live in after your money-making businesses have destroyed life on Earth? Do you plan to take it with you when you die? At some point, the endless quest to earn more profits is either an addiction or a sign of psychotic behaviour.....or both! And it needs to be pointed out that the poor have to pay those flat taxes (sales taxes, service charges etc.) that exact the same burden from everyone regardless of income! If we're calculating ability to pay, the poor always have the greatest burden! Since they have to cut spending on necessities, including food and medicine, if they have too many things to pay for. Bingo! Now do you think that after reducing corporate tax rates and investment tax rates and all of the various loopholes that allow companies like Amazon to pay zero corporate taxes for the past three years, the oligarchs are just going to say: maybe we cut our tax burden too much and need to change the rules back to where they were before? Hell will freeze over first! They will not make any concessions without fear that the working class will rise up and take their toys away. No, if Mitch played a role in replacing the elected government in Honduras with a drug-dealing general approved by the CIA, it came from the State Dept. and specifically from Hillary Clinton herself! Even Democrat media has to be honest about her first foreign policy disaster under the Obama Administration: Did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Enable the Coup in Honduras? 02/19/2016 10:58 am ET Updated Feb 19, 2017 On June 28, 2009, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup. The United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization of American States condemned the coup, and on July 5, Honduras was suspended from the OAS. Under longstanding and clear-cut U.S. law, all U.S. aid to Honduras except democracy assistance, including all military aid, should have been immediately suspended following the coup. On August 7, fifteen House Democrats, led by Rep. Raúl Grijalva, sent a letter to the Administration which began, “As you know, on June 28th, 2009 a military coup took place in Honduras,” and said: “The State Department should fully acknowledge that a military coup has taken place and follow through with the total suspension of non-humanitarian aid, as required by law.” Why wasn’t U.S. aid to Honduras suspended following the coup? The justification given by Clinton’s State Department on August 25 for not suspending U.S. aid to Honduras was that events in Honduras were murky and it was not clear whether a coup had taken place. Clinton’s State Department claimed that State Department lawyers were studying the murky question of whether a coup had taken place. This justification was a lie, and Clinton’s State Department knew it was a lie. By July 24, 2009, the State Department, including Secretary Clinton, knew clearly that the action of the Honduran military to remove President Zelaya on June 28, 2009 constituted a coup. On July 24, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens sent a cable to top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Clinton, with subject: “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” thoroughly documenting the assertion that “there is no doubt” that the events of June 28 “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.” Why did Clinton’s State Department lie and pretend that it was murky whether a coup had taken place when it knew the fact that a coup had taken place was clear-cut? Because Hillary Clinton wanted the coup to succeed. Clinton’s strategy to help the coup succeed, as revealed in her emails, was “delay, delay, delay,” as Donald Trump might say. Delay any action that might help force the coup government to stand down and allow the democratically elected President to be restored to office. As she later confessed in her book, her goal was to “render the question of [President] Zelaya moot.” Today, the rule of law in Honduras still has not recovered from the coup that Secretary Clinton helped enable. That’s a key reason that refugees have fled Honduras to the United States, only to find themselves hunted by the Department of Homeland Security raids that Secretary Clinton supported before she opposed them.

1. I guess there are no supply-siders left now that the evidence of the past 40 years is insurmountable that cutting taxes for the rich just feeds the wealth divide. Now that 3 men in America (described as philanthropists!!!) have equal wealth to the bottom half of the US population and the middle class has collapsed into a large poor class so badly that we hear shocking statistics that 40% of Americans don't even have $400 in savings to cover small emergencies. If leveling the playing field is "stealing" from the rich, that only tells us the rich have already stolen wealth from others by using the system they've designed and rigged to favor them and favor investment income over earned income. Warren is a fraud, and doesn't know her new script well enough to repeat it convincingly. Recall Obama told to pivot to the left by his advisers and made a mess of it stumbling over and stuttering his "You Didn't Build That" speech a few years back! Bernie is different. His message hasn't hardly changed in 40 years.....not that I think he hasn't made too many other compromises with political power.......especially Clinton power! 2. America loses its moral right to the "secure border" they talk about endlessly when they send in CIA, NGO's and State Dept. reps to destabilize governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia! Where was the Republicans and the big money Right in the US, when Hondurans started fleeing their country and making up the majority of migrants into Mexico trying to cross the US border after the Hillary Coup in 2009? And the policy of trying to make smaller nations 100% compliant with global capitalism is flying apart in Chile and Columbia.....often referred to as the Israel of the Americas for its compliance with US foreign policy. Stop interfering and destroying other countries....regardless of whether they have elected governments, and there will be a lot fewer people attempting to migrate....because most people will not pick up and leave family behind for strange and hostile new lands unless they consider the places where they are unlivable!

Get back to me when you start advocating sanctions on Saudi Arabia and satellite Gulf Emirates, or other US propped up dictatorships in the world.

1. Those are the best regimes? Israel is a settler-colonial state following the US model since Zionism began and tried to convert Judaism from being a religion to a political ideology. Qatar and UAE are state-sponsors and like the Saudis, even send off their surplus young men from poor families to wage jihad somewhere else..........and don't really want them to come back home again! You can thank these corrupt, oil-squandering states for everything that scares you about Muslims today! Bahrain is an illegitimate regime where a Sunni emir rules over a mostly Shia population, and is only kept in power because of the United States. As with other US-supported dictatorships, the MSM tried to ignore a major uprising in Bahrain about 10 years ago, but had to put it in the news cycle for raising the bar on depravity when they sent soldiers into hospitals to kill and abduct patients and shoot uncompliant doctors, nurses or other hospital staff. And I guess that makes Jordan and Oman look nice by comparison. 2. Destroyers and war instigators should be the ones with the burdens of redressing past wrongs. That was the logic behind the sanctions and war reparations loaded on Germany after the first world war. The US dodges indictments for war crimes today by refusing to sign on to rules they force on everyone else.

I didn't even realize I was responding on the Don Cherry thread! I'll have to leave this topic since I don't see a point to discussing Grapes anymore and don't want to hear what he has to say about politics or hockey!

1. Is there a single non-white country that has the resources necessary to govern its own fate? Are they at least able to shoot down all US bomber drones flying over their territories, representing a continual 24/7 threat to people on the ground? 2. Saudi could not bomb Yemen without continuous and active assistance from the DOD. They don't even have the capacity to refuel their F-15's in the air! And except for claims of covert Iranian support for Houthi rebels, it's a complete fraud to portray this ongoing war crime as a proxy battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia! Any Iranian support.....if any, is to aid forces trying to defend themselves from attack and invasion. And, it's not worth opening up.....since it is always ignored, but the constant MSM drumbeat of Houthis as Shia Muslims is also Wrong! For centuries, the Houthi tribes have followed the 'Zaidism' which is mostly closer to Sunni than the Shia branches of Islam, and until the modern era when invading Brits and then Americans, brought with them their literalistic versions of Christian orthodoxy, Muslims did not concern themselves with worrying whether every Muslim in the world was practicing the same way. So, the Zaidis, like the Alawites, Ismailis, and countless other Islamic sects and schools were able to carry out their worship without fear of an Al Qaeda or ISIS equivalent coming after them and killing them for doing it wrong. Like it or not, these retrograde Muslim orthodox movements are a product of Islamic modernism, and are a byproduct of the philosophy and attitudes they picked up from British colonialists who determined that there can only be one right answer to a question or problem, and that answer needs to be written down and followed by all. 3.Again, the US has everything to do with preventing former colonies from developing according to their own aspirations and objectives. That's why the US has a giant state department today! It's taken the place of the British Foreign Office......which has played the junior role in global empire since ending political colonialism.

If a targeted state has a small, foreign capital-dependent economy, like Yemen or Iran to a lesser extent, sanctions are the equivalent to siege warfare; since in the old days of castle walls and moats, the lords and military officers would have the last food reserves in case of being trapped inside during a long siege. The women and children would be the first to starve from lack of food. So what is the difference when it's an army surrounding a fortification, or trade and banking embargoes? If only Albright could have been put on that diet! When it comes to large nations, sanctions warfare is less effective and in the case of Russia, appears to be completely ineffective as Russia's economy has grown faster since Obama first imposed sanctions in 2014. Russia still is a large, resource-rich country and Obama/Trump sanctions only kickstarted a nationalist drive to focus on domestic production and cut imports....which has hurt Europe, especially Poland and Germany much more than Russia. At first, Germany was supposed to scrap the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project, and Russia just went east and refocused on the expanding Chinese market. Restarting Nordstream 2 has meant that the Eurozone has had to pick up a greater share of the construction and development costs than they started with. Right now, it looks like economic stagnation and supply shortages of medicines are the only major effects of sanctions on Iran. This may raise some instability as seen in recent riots in several cities, but it's unlikely that the US/Israel is going to be able to overthrow the theocratic government by this alone. And it sure as hell is NOT helping common Iranians! It's only useful for Neocon warmongers and their paid media trolls who need a new war to boost their rationgs!

I make a distinction between Real and Fake/virtue-signalling Left. And what pundits try to drum into our heads as The Left, are mostly amoral, corporate-owned and bought political parties here (Liberals) and the Democrats in the US, which focus most of their attention on social and identity issues and NOT on economic issues, because they are well aware they serve the tiny minority of monied elites who have designed modern neoliberal capitalism to serve their ambitions for amassing more wealth and ensuring their continued success by controlling media and politics. Every time there is even a modest and tepid introduction of economic redistribution, like Bernie's new new deal, they go into hysterics and start having bad dreams about unruly mobs and being marched off to the guillotines........just for being the job creators. And that's before we factor in the reactions of the military- war-for-profit capitalists who represent a range of interests, but all conclude that the only worthwhile profitable ventures today are the economic disruption created by bombing and invading a list of pre-chosen targets, where it's more profitable to leave the aftermath of regime change wars permanently ungovernable wastelands, while the expected refugee migrations from these zones will be dealt with with walls, refugee camps, and looking the other way on "illegal" slave labor suppressing wages at home.........................did anyone mention ICE, the talk of building The Wall, migrant detention (prison) camps, or even the worst aspects - separating young children from their families? Or has that all been forgotten now as the news cycle is Trump, Trump, Trump, Putin, Trump, Trump, Trump, Putin! The issue that so many Americans are paying attention to today..................... Poll: Americans Don’t Give A Hoot About So-Called Russian Collusion Has anything changed since last year? 2. I don't know if these laws are different in the US than Canada, but under Canadian law, shopping malls are considered public spaces under many circumstances. They cannot discriminate against people entering their privately owned premises for any personal reasons that would not also apply to a city-owned public square or space. So, off the top, the foundation of your defense of capitalists being allowed to do whatever they want with their PROPERTY is weak. Because if the US has changed its laws and courts enough to promote capitalist rule, there is a very large public out there who (except for us non-compliant types) feel they have no choice other than using Facebook or Google services, or even shopping on Amazon. And don't appreciate the extortion and seizure of private data to sell to others who want to squeeze more money out of them also. Besides all that, these "privately created and owned institutions " all began with a GOVERNMENT CREATED internet that allowed them to flourish and unlike the past, failed to reign in the computer/internet monopolists as they worked on their strategies to eliminate the competition in their respective niches. This is a usual progression and a flaw in Adam Smith's logic that Karl Marx identified 150 years ago: left to their own devices, capitalists will institute complete control of a market

Settler colonial states stick together! I never could get the logic behind the ruthless campaign to stamp out the BDS movement! As the Israeli Government steadily builds more illegal settlements in territories occupied from wars, they kill peaceful protesters....leaving only one option open to Palestinians facing eventual eviction.

How about if we improve freedom here by demanding an end to the internet monopolies: Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which have taken it upon themselves to "protect us" from "fake" news! If these services cannot function effectively if broken up into smaller, competing companies, then the monopolies should be public and have a board of governors which have to publish clear reasons why a user should be banned or have their accounts suspended. AND 'shadow-banning' and all of the bullshit games being played to push down certain sources in searches or removing pages without notice or stated reason (Facebook) should be considered unjustified interference with the free flow of information. And let's have sanctions over here against our corrupt government officials....some of them identified as Wikileaks published cables and emails delivered to them by whistleblowers tired of the corruption in their workplaces. And after we fix our corrupt corporate-serving government officials and guarantee our access to trustworthy information, then we can focus more attention on helping the Iranians!

You just mentioned three countries subjected to aggressive war and/or drone bombing from the CIA and DOD. I don't know if Trump is outdoing Obama's totals yet, but when Mr. Nobel Peace Prize was in charge, he was averaging dropping 26,000 bombs per year in a number of countries...including those three! What would Canada look like today if we were subjected to constant drone bombing attacks over our cities?

Even though he considered WWII (the European theater at least) to be the only just war, he did read enough history to come to the conclusion that the allies of the first world war set the table for a Hitler or some sort of fascist movement to rise in Germany, when they invoked the ruinous Treaty of Versailles and convince a lot of Germans that they were right the first time, and just needed to make sure they destroyed all their enemies in the next war. He agreed with Roosevelt's Marshall Plan after WWII....rebuilding Europe was the right choice, but was not happy about the Cold War and the nuclear buildup that followed. He died prior to 9-11, and would have been dismayed by the proliferation of wars today, with so many that appear to be just excuses to make and sell high tech weapons, and get very little analysis, let alone criticism in mainstream media today.

Chretien doesn't count! You got to go back to Trudeau Sr. for the last time Canada had a Prime Minister who didn't take orders from the US on foreign policy! Chretien surprised us though, when he dug in his heels and refused to get pulled into Iraq. Although part of the reason was that, after making our modest contribution to Afghanistan, our small, under-equipped military would have been stretched too far by adding Iraq, at a time when JC was trying to balance a federal budget on the backs of the provinces. Refraining from joining the Iraq Occupation may have been more about budget priorities than being opposed to war. And who said Syria is an angel? Who is among the nations of this world? My point is that, for all the claims of 'promoting democracy and freedom' in the world, it's uncanny how the US seems to line up with the worst regimes in the Middle East...the Saudi and Emirate monarchies, that support jihad terrorists and reactionary Islamic theocrats/ while targeting the secular non-sectarian regimes for destruction. But why stop with Libya? See if Syria could end up any better!

It's easy to portray people as animals after they have been subjected to invasions and occupations for 30 years, BUT would there have been a Taleban takeover or non-stop fighting between greedy, ruthless warlord if Afghanistan hadn't been used as a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union? Afghanistan 1970s And Now | Afghanistan Before Taliban: this 5 minute video of life in Afghanistan...focusing primarily on the major cities like Kabul, in the 60's and 70's blows all of the war porn propaganda that these people are innately savages or the "we have to liberate their women crapolla etc." out of the water! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7TDSUqdN2c Under the comments section I found this one from some dirty hippie who travelled through Afghanistan with a few friends in1971 on their way to "enlightenment" in Katmandu or some bullshit, BUT the story is a match for stories one of my older brothers' friends described when he did something similar in the early 70's: spellbound 1 year ago In early 1971, during the Hippie era, I travelled with three friends and my sister overland to Kathmandu in Nepal. Travelling from Herat and Kandahar we reached Kabul. Then we travelled to Mazar e-Sharif and Balkh. It was an amazing liberal land of modern and ancient. We were made welcome everywhere we went, the people of Afghanistan were wonderful to us in both the cities and the small villages. I wish things could be as it was before those horrible wars and let the people of Afghanistan have peace, freedom and happiness once again. Aside from all that, what I do know of Operation Medusa was that it was an ATTACK led by Canadian Forces. What else do you expect when you go on the attack in a country where you don't know the language, the culture or the history of what's already happened there...as one psychology professional described, people who live in these long term war zones exhibit all the effects of ptsd and are trying to live in a dysfunctional country because of all the guns and constant fighting....or they're trying to escape!

Yes, especially when you're country has played a part in causing mass migrations, it takes a pretty thick head or some level of sociopathic thinking to just write them off as disposable!

I'm old enough to recall that Remembrance Day used to be about remembering past wars and the sacrifices of soldiers who served in past wars. And I got to tell you that the old First World War veterans I recall when I was younger never got the respect the WWII and later veterans received...even from the WWII vets themselves! When I was young and not sure what to do with my life at a time when Canada was in the middle of a prolonged recession, I signed up to join the Canadian Armed Forces, and my father...who was a vet who was held back in the leadup to Normandy and sent over for the Occupation and the unexpected last gasp of the Nazis: the Battle of the Bulge..thought it was a stupid idea to want to join the Army, but he never liked talking about the War and didn't really feel like trying to explain why he had such a negative attitude about the War, the Army, and just about everyone in positions of authority. He was a radical way ahead of his time I suppose! His thinking was always that the guys who had the best and the most war stories to tell others who would listen, were the ones who did nothing but listen to war stories they were told and made them their own. So, he was one vet who ignored Remembrance Day and any parades and accolades that came with it

I already started blocking him mainly because he has no wisdom or maturity to understand the term - Blowback! A lot of people need to learn this in an era where waging war has become easy and lucrative for the aggressors. And it's easier for other conservatives in Europe and over here, to blame the refugees who have been forced to flee for their lives from countries layed waste by US & Allied use of military force for political and economic objectives! Every conservative about to do a rant about immigrants should be obliged to sit down and listen to war refugees and even economic refugees, who despite the childish chest-thumping beliefs about Canada and the US, Don Cherry and likeminded have, did not abandon family and everything they had to travel half way around the world because they decided on a whim they wanted to try something different!

Race and ethnicity are identities that should not be used as a broad brush to condemn or excuse people for whatever they do. I'm noticing from following what's going on in the US since the Occupy demonstrations started in 2011, is that it has taken a long time, but especially with Bernie Sanders' run for the White House four years ago, younger Americans are getting the point that the main division and most important division in any capitalist-governed society is where you are in economic class/not what your race, gender, ethnicity or even sexual orientation is! If you're rich, doors open for you, you don't have to follow the same laws and rules as the rest of the plebes, and the only times when members of the ruling class are punished (like will happen to Trump eventually) is if you violate the club rules of the ruling class. The most prominent billionaires and powerful government bureaucrats, are expected to fight their battles under the rules that they are all supposed to agree to and not out in public. Trump violates all of their rules and protocols by being a boorish idiot to start with and using accepted methods of government like bribing and threatening foreign leaders to go beyond that level and out a member of the club - Joe Biden in public. But, when it comes to the rest of us, it doesn't matter a crap what color we are or where we're from, but these are just convenient categories for the ruling classes to use and apply to divide us. So, long story short again, any self-proclaimed activists who are focusing on racism in places like Appalachia or the closed factory towns, are helping to rub salt in those divisions and keep people divided and unable to challenge the privileged minority who govern and manipulate us.

Yeah, Chretien wasn't exactly a profile in courage, but most of us who weren't fans understood that there were a lot of threats dished out by the Bush Admin for refusing to go along with the Iraq Invasion, so he had to do at least the bare minimum in Afghanistan. If that changed in 05 as you say, then it's a good thing Chretien was out, or it would have been no better with Paul Martin in charge! But my point about chicken hawks, which are all over the media and political spectrum.for the past 20 years, is that they need to show something more than a superficial understanding of the war plans our government and the US are up to before troops are sent in, and also before the bombing starts! If you're active duty, you have to go, whether you think it's a worthwhile operation or not! But looking at the US example, which the chicken hawks want Canada to follow, the majority of citizens in both countries see war as someone else's problem, since there's no draft or even conscription, as there was at the outset of WWII when my father and his brothers (except one who couldn't pass a physical) joined the Army and were later sent off to fight. In the US, the volunteers are sometimes called "The Other One Percent" because they are volunteering out of economic necessity, and have no chances for jobs or education unless they join one of the services. But tell me one thing: what I've heard from actual Afghanis who have managed to emigrate to Canada and even a young vet who was in Kandahar during that time, but was out before Harper took over and wanted the Canadian Forces to be as aggressive (and hated by the locals) kicking in doors and grabbing everyone accused of being Taleban, was that during his tour, the locals did not look upon Canadian and other Euro allies in the same way as the Americans, who were hated by everyone- Taleban and tribal chieftains they were fighting against. There were rumors that the Taleban were deliberately avoiding engaging Canadians and concentrating their efforts on the Americans. But this is not something some one dimensional clown like Don Cherry would ever be listening or paying attention to, since it doesn't fit on a bumper sticker!

It is a clear violation of the UN Charter regarding laws and rules of war signed by every nation that became a member of the UN after it was established for the primary purpose of preventing the next world war! The rules governing when it is legal and acceptable to invade and occupy another sovereign nation are extremely restricted, and have been violated more and more frequently since 9-11, when the US was unable to strongarm allies and adversaries into approving the Iraq Invasion.So, a "Coalition Of The Willing" translated into English as a "Coalition of The Bribed and Bought Off" was used by George Bush and friends as a figleaf to claim some sort of international legitimacy. The problem since then is If The Empire can just make up fake reasons to justify invasion and occupation (Weapons of Mass Destruction) what's stopping other nations, especially US allies like Turkey and Israel from turning the UN Charter into toilet paper? Nothing! So, now we live in a brave new world under Trump, where the US doesn't even have any concern for international law or good will, and will even allow its allies and surrogates to invade and cause destruction as long as it doesn't cross US interests. Up till now, this has been the only red line in US foreign policy; some sort of backroom deal had to be arranged before the US would allow Turkey to just go barnstorming through eastern Syria. But, many nations that are neither US allies or may see themselves as future targets of invasion and exploitation, are forming their own rival alliances, and to make a long story short, the world has never been closer to the precipice of total war since the end of WWII. So, I don't care if the demonized Hafez Assad is a good guy or a bad guy, the unmanipulated evidence shows claimed poison gas attacks have all been fake false flag events, but are ignored by mainstream media which won't comment on the reports from whistleblowers right inside the OPCW. And for their part, Turkey is no better than the other vultures who converged on Syria for nefarious reasons during a time when persistent drought was damaging agriculture and causing unrest as thousands of farmers gave up and moved to the cities, leading to homeless and tent cities that were easy targets for enemies to take advantage of to cause unrest. What Turkey did, early on in the civil war they helped create, was to destroy the chance for an agreement between the Syrian Government and the Kurds and other minorities in the East who wanted more independence! So, Operation Peace Spring is crap all the way around!

We'll do that after the Empire falls......providing we're not so tightly connected after 30 years of NAFTA that we also collapse into a bunch of feuding ethno-states. For my part, I'll avoid the Kingdom of Quebec and the kingdoms out west!

Yes, we're also assisting the Empire in Venezuela and Bolivia because Justin cares so deeply about human rights or our mining companies who are planning operations there.....so,what's your point? Canada is now firmly in the pocket of US foreign policy, whether it's Trump or another centrist Democrat standard-bearer!

Yes, Ray Dalio says the system is broken, but I'm glad that I first saw the story at the Naked Capitalism blog, where they linked directly to the article Dalio wrote on his Linked In page, rather than go through the muddled and manipulative translation at Huffpo! The point he is trying to make is that globalized financial capitalism has pushed its way to a peak where the entire system is about to collapse under its own weight and erase book values of stocks, real estate, currencies....pretty much everything you can think of is about to get wiped out because central banks all over the world (not just the Federal Reserve members) have been busy on their computer terminals in recent times trying to quantitatively ease their way out of each and every financial jam they see coming their way with the lack of real economic growth. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/world-has-gone-mad-system-broken-ray-dalio/ The capitalist system that has been used by the ruling classes to run this world is about to collapse under its own weight- so if there is a world left after the fall of capitalist empires, what kind of economic system will it use so that human activity is finally able to work within the limits that nature allows and will not make exceptions for!

It's not lost on me that Turkey's "Operation Peace Spring" is an illegal invasion of a sovereign country....same with the setup in the Syrian province of Idlib, where the Turks have been harboring their Al Qaeda/ISIS terrorists that is also on the to do list of the Syrian Government as it tries to reclaim territory taken by foreign terrorists and the nations like Turkey, US, Qatar, Israel, who have been supporting them. In Eastern Syria, the Kurds have made a deal with the Syrian Government that fell apart when the Kurds saw their chance to establish an independent Kurdish territory....problem was that the Eastern Syrian territories they were claiming all had large non-Kurdish populations! That's the problem with sectarian nations and movements. The US also has an illegal (by the international standards they force on everyone else) land grab in Eastern Syria, over a small oil reserve that only puts the 1000 or so US troops sent to protect it, in danger. Like it or not, the only nations that have forces in Syria legally, by the standards of international law are Russia and Iran, because they....unlike all the others, were invited in by the still legitimate government of Syria! But now the US is playing the same games of imposing dictatorships and overthrowing legitimate governments in South America...a little closer to home!