This morning’s key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com

Syria peace talks collapse as Russia carpet bombs opposition in Aleppo


U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura at Wednesday news conference announcing a ‘pause’ in peace talks (Reuters)

The Syria “peace talks” being held in Geneva collapsed on Wednesday, as the opposition walked out because Russian warplanes were saturation bombing opposition fighters in Aleppo, after Russia had promised to stop bombing altogether as a precondition to the talks.

A week ago when I wrote “25-Jan-16 World View — Farcical Syria peace process ‘proximity talks’ to begin this week in Geneva”, I pointed out that Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad used the preceding attempts at “peace talks” as a cover to continue his genocidal attempts at extermination of Sunnis in Syria, and that he never had any intention of fulfilling any commitments he made, as all commitments were just stalling maneuvers to give him more time to continues his genocide.

The new “peace talks” never had a chance because the Syria and Russian regimes once again were using it as a cover. The opposition groups did not want to attend at all, but they sent a representative under enormous American pressure, under assurances by Secretary of State John Kerry that the Russians were committed to pause the bombing at the start of the peace talks.

Instead, when the peace talks supposedly began on Monday, Russia not only did not pause the bombing, but actually redoubled the bombing on innocent civilians, thus making a fool of Kerry. According to a report that I heard from al-Jazeera’s United Nations correspondent, Kerry tried to phone Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, but Lavrov did not return his calls.

Syrian regime troops backed by Russian warplanes are now poised to recapture Aleppo from the opposition rebels. This will be a major victory against the opposition forces. Rebel forces are probably entrenched in the town, but that will not be a problem for the Russians who will bomb and flatten entire villages, killing as many as thousands of innocent women and children as necessary.

It still never ceases to amaze me what a disaster the Syrian, Russian and Iranian regimes have brought about, being entirely to blame for the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, triggering the flight of millions of refugees to Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Europe, and creating the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh).

As the entire Mideast continues to fall apart in different countries, as Europe continues to be flooded with Syrian refugees, and as ISIS affiliations continue to spread around the region, many international leaders have been hoping and praying that the Syrian peace talks would bring relief for all these problems.

The desperate Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations special envoy who is shepherding the negotiations, said that the collapse wasn’t really a collapse, but just a “pause” until February 25. Still, the air in Geneva, the United Nations and throughout the Mideast is thick with anxiety and desperation, as many people wonder what the next disaster will be to strike the Mideast.

For years, Generational Dynamics has predicted that the entire Mideast is headed for a major war between Jews and Arabs, between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and among various ethnic groups. Reuters and Baltimore Sun and Washington Post

John Kerry warns of ISIS expansion in Syria

U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry said Tuesday that ISIS is creating a new stronghold in oil-rich Libya:

“As everybody here knows, that country has resources,” Kerry said at a conference of 23 foreign ministers from nations that form the core of a coalition fighting the Islamic State. “The last thing in the world you’d want is a false caliphate with access to billions of dollars in oil revenue.”

As we reported a month ago, reports indicate that the US, Britain, France are preparing a new Libya military offensive around the beginning of March.

Kerry on Tuesday ruled out military intervention in Libya by the United States in the near future, but he said that could change if there were “some turn of events, like weapons of mass destruction ending up in the hands of the wrong people.” Washington Post and NBC News and Arab News

KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, John Kerry, Russia, Sergei Lavrov, Staffan de Mistura, Libya
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