The Culture Vulture, Pt. I

Those who can, do. 

Those who can't, teach. 

Those who can't teach, blog. 

--Ch'in Shih-tang

This past weekend initiated the 8-week holiday season for films, in which most of the serious releases will occur.  I note it, protesting the unnatural distribution, but the fact remains that those films (officially) released between January and October are not generally considered Oscar material by their distributors.  Yes, there are exceptions--last year, "The Grand Budapest Hotel", which won four Oscars, was released in March, and "Boyhood", which won only one but was nominated for five more, was released in the summer.  But the Oscar success of "Budapest" was a suprise to most, while "Boyhood" was an art film with a quirky concept and limited release that built its success over months.

(February through October) 2015 AV Review
I can't say I've seen all the major motion pictures released this year--in fact, due to a heavy travel schedule, I've seen few of them.  There has been some good entertainment, I guess--I liked "Trainwreck" with Amy Schumer and Bill Hader, Blake Lively in "The Age of Adaline" and--forgive me--I enjoyed "Hot Pursuit" (the women's comedy buddy movie still amuses me).  "Inside Out" has put me to sleep on airplanes on two different occasions, which is enough for now.  I missed out on the mega-release action movies of 2015, but neither I nor they feel the loss.  As for "The Martian", I suggest you see the 2000 release "Mission to Mars", which covers most of the same ground.  There are a couple of movies released earlier than this fall that I would still like to catch--"Aloha" and "Straight Outta Compton"--and some movies released (in limited release for the most part) that I would like to track down, though I may have to do that via video later on, because I will be sufficiently challenged keeping up with the frantic pace of late-season revleases coming ahead.

For the most part, I'm not watching anything, whether on the big or small screen, that is based around any of the following overworked genres:  organized crime, forensic criminal investigation, private detectives, zombies, vampires, superheroes or superpowers, counterterrorism, magic (magicians or wizards), stories about the last person or persons on Earth, and above all, that abomination falsely known as "reality TV" in most of its forms.  I will make an exception if the treatment is unusual enough, satirical with regard to the genre's formal conventions, or truly humorous.

Of the four "audiovisual productions" that I have seen since the 2015 Oscars in February and that merit serious comment for their artistic merit, I saw only one on the big screen, and that one hasn't been released in the US yet.

First, I must mention "Leviathan", which I was lucky enough to find on an airplane ride--it was released in 2014 and was one of the nominees for Best Foreign Language film, but never got to a cinema anywhere near me.  It's a character-based drama set in the far north of Russia, a brave, though indirect, political commentary that left a deep impression.  Next, "Veep":  it's just a TV comedy series, but a very funny one, a satire that hits a lot closer to the mark than "House of Cards" or "Madame Secretary" or "Scamdal".  I particularly like the episodes since Selena (Julia-Louis Dreyfuss' character) became the Accidental Preisdent.  Third, I mention "Show Me a Hero" the TV miniseries which fictionalized a case study of a political battle over desegregating housing in Yonkers, New York in the '70's, with a touching performance by Oscar Isaac (of "Inside Llewyn Davis").

The last of these four is "Youth", the latest film by Paolo Sorrentino, director of "The Great Beauty" ("La Grande Bellezza"), the Oscar winnner a year ago for Best Foreign Language film.  The two films share a similar visual sensibility, with an eye for outlandish persons, costumes, and gorgeous scenery, and also have in common powerful dialogue with a dose of philosophical inquiry, but other elements are completely different:  plot, location, types of characters.  "Youth" will be released in the US December 7--I don't expect great box-office, but Michael Caine's role as co-lead (along with Harvey Keitel, with Jane Fonda in an over-the-top supporting role) could even give Caine a shot an Oscar for Best Actor (he has been nominated for that one once, but has won twice for Supporting Actor).  If "Bellezza" turned you off because of the main character's self-indulgence, this one might not work any better (semi-retired, wealthy artists at a luxurious Swiss mountain resort), but Caine and Keitel's characters do not have the overweening self-regard that was the big hangup with Toni Servillo's Jep.

Holiday Movie Preview
Three themes I can foresee for this year's climactic season of film:

1) A desperate struggle for box office attention. There will be a few, certain monster hits:  "Star Wars: A Force Awakens" (Dec. 18), "Mockingjay: Part 2" (Nov. 20), and the new James Bond film, "Spectre" (Opened Nov. 6). "Victor Frankenstein (Nov. 25), yet another retelling of the classic human creationist fable, starring James McAvoy in the title role and Daniel "Harry Potter" Radcliffe as Igor, also looks like a winner.  So, dreams of commercial success for the primary artistic endeavors will likely not come into play until and unless their first runs survive well into 2016. (Note: the dates for the movies above will be hard to miss, but many of the ones below will be more low-key, possibly displaced, or limited to theaters not near you.)

2) Lead women's roles of an unusual nature. My early favorite for Best Actress award?  Eddie Redmayne, coming off his Best Actor award last year, for playing a man passing as a woman who decides to switch gender in the love story "The Danish Girl". OK, just kidding about that, and, although transgender is the cultural fad of the moment, it's not entirely new as a storyline--think of Julie Andrews in "Victor/Victoria" or Jaye Davidson in "The Crying Game", both of which were nominated for Oscars.  I would expect something similar for Redmayne; coming off an Oscar-winning performance in 2014, he will earn respect but probably not a repeat award.

Then there is Brie Larson in "Room", who is playing a captive woman who tries to make a decent living arrangement for her child; next, I mention Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in the lesbian romance "Carol" (Nov. 20) set in the Fifties. Oscar-wise, take your pick; I expect Blanchett to get a nomination for Best Actress and Mara for Supporting Actress.  "Carol" is a production of the Weinstein brothers, and those who have watched them do it year after year know that no one plays the Oscar campaign political game better. Jennifer Connelly plays a homeless drug addict in a love story called "Shelter" (Nov. 13). Toni Collette and Drew Barrymore in "Miss you Already" (opened Nov. 6) play inseparable friends that face cancere for Collette's character while Barrymore faces childbirth.  Finally, in this vein I mention Carey Mulligan as a working-class British woman who turns to violence for her cause--the vote--in the historical drama "Suffragette" (opened Oct. 23).

There are a couple of significant lead women's role contenders that are a bit more conventional: Saoirse Ronan as an Irish-American in "Brooklyn", and Jennifer Lawrence as a multi-faceted entrepreneur in "Joy", the latest from director David O. Russell.  The combination worked well for er in "Silver Linings Playbook" and may do so again.

3) Documentaries, Historical Drama, and Biopics. OK, there's "Steve Jobs", which has already come, flopped, and gone.  I'm not sure why it was so inferior to "The Social Network", which had the opposite commercial outcome, but I didn't really need one nor the other.  "Snowden", Oliver Stone's telling of the Edward Snowden saga, has now been postponed until 2016--maybe the story will have a different, more interesting, ending if he waits awhile; of course, Stone will always push the envelope of credibility. Michael Moore has come out with "Where to Invade Next" (Dec. 23)--as one of my friend's bumper stickers stated, "I'm already against the next war"--but the thrust of his film (which has been released for awhile but has not come anywhere close yet) is that the US could learn something by invading certain countries.  Seems doubtful.  Johnny Depp is out there as Whitey Bulger in "Black Mass"--Depp is a great risk-taker, but I got enough of that character (fictionalized) in "The Departed".

Three others that have greater interest for me"  "The 33" (Nov. 13), starring Antonio Banderas, is the true story that we may still remember of the Chilean coal miners, their ordeal, and their ultimate resuce.  If it is anything like the real-life drama, it could be gripping.  "Spotlight" (Nov. 6, starring Mark Rufalo and Michael Keaton, among others) is the story of the Boston Globe reporters who broke the story of Catholic priests in the diocese who abused children, and of the church officials who covered it up. "Trumbo", starring Bryan "Breaking Bad" Cranston, is a promising story of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in the McCarthy Era of the Fifties for refusing to answer whether he had been a Communist, but who was able to work under assumed names and contributed to some of the great successes of the period.

Finally in this category I want to mention "The Big Short" (Dec. 11), the movie version of Michael Lewis' non-fiction story about the financial crisis, and in particular, a few investors who figured out what was going to happen with the credit default swaps and made huge profits. It doesn't seem like a very suspenseful or entertaining movie, but Lewis' tales have already hit the mark twice in Hollywood, with "Moneyball" and "The Blind Side", so we'll see.

Big Question Marks, and a Couple "Sure Things"
I note first Quentin Tarantino's new film, "The Hateful Eight" (Dec. 25), which I presume is a variation off "The Magnificent Seven", itself a variation off Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai".  By now, we should know what to expect from a Tarantino genre knock-off romp, so the question is merely whether it's what you want to go watch.  Charlie Kaufman is one of the most brilliant, quirky writer/directors in the industry; he has a movie called "Anomalisa" coming out (Dec. 30) which is billed as a "stop-action animation sound play", whatever that is. And, returning to a topic he worked hilariously in "Being John Malkovich", puppets.  I am attracted to the idea of a new production, with modern action film techniques, of the Shakespeare action drama "Macbeth" (Dec. 4), starring Michael Fassbinder and Marion Cotillard--maybe the time is right for it.

For creatively divergent films with world-class production values, I have increasingly come to look to what I call the "Mexican Mafia"--directors Alejandro Inarritu, Alfonso Cuaron, and Guillermo del Toro, and the king of cinematographers, Emmanuel Lubetzsky. To me, this looks like an off-year for them, though:  Cuaron ("Gravity", "Children of Men") does not have any films coming out, while del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth", the "Hellboy" films) had a horror film, "Crimson Peak", that came out last month and didn't seem to take off.  Inarritu ("Birdman", "21 Grams") has a major release, "The Revenant", a gruesome-looking Western revenge drama with Leonardo diCaprio (Dec. 25). From the preview, I can see that, with his compadre Lubetzky, the cinematography will be incredible, and I will go see it, but I am not too hopeful.  And my other top go-to director, Joel/Ethan Coen (think of them as one auteur), has nothing coming out this season, either; his/their next movie, "Hail, Caesar!" is now scheduled for release in February, 2016.

Besides "Revenant", two other movies that I will have to see, and in their cases I expect they will be rewarding experiences, are:  "Sisters" (Dec. 18), with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (How could it miss? I hope it can't); and "In the Heart of the Sea" (Dec. 11), Ron Howard's adventure epic which re-creates the 19t-century whaling incident that was reputedly the inspiration for Herman Melville to write "Moby Dick".  Howard is a canny veteran who rarely goes astray, and I credit him for digging this one up.  Sight unseen (though I have seen the previews), it would be my pick for favorite in the Best Picture category.

Sorry if I missed something important.  Hope you can make it to the cinema to see some of them (in the words of the late Roger Ebert, "Save me the aisle seat").  I far prefer those venues, preferably a big old one with a good sound system (IMAX/3-D totally unnecessary), to DVD, DVR, Netflix, fill in the blank with the latest lazy consumption medium....

The Culture Vulture, Pt. 2

Songs
Every year, there is a sort of unofficial competition to find the "song of the summer".  That would be the one that crosses over all genres and radio formats, the one you can't help hearing even if you wanted, the one that plays in the water parks, the beach parties, the CYO high school dances.  The battle is for those in the age 12-17 demographic; in this field of entertainment they are the ones who move the commercial drivers:  downloads, social media, mp3, the free and paid online music services.

As I say, it's an unofficial competition, but I should note a couple of self-appointed official designations.  One was the Video Music Awards' Song of the Summer, which went to "She's Kinda Hot".  Kinda Not!  Well, at least the band's extended the term of its celebrity from five seconds to 15 minutes. As for Entertainment Weekly  ('ew") and Billboard, they went with "Cheerleader", a somewhat reggae dance number by Jamaican artist OMI.   I'm no devotee of the pop music circuit--I hear its stuff mostly in the big room/locker room of my gym--but I did catch "Cheerleader" a couple of times.  The song is pretty ordinary courting material, but the video does have show some attractive dancing (not by the singer).

Spotify, and Billboard, for that matter, acknowledged that the dominance of any single song was not so clear, and both mentioned songs by supreme crossover artist Taylor Swift ("Bad Blood") and Wiz Khalifa ("See You Again", with a falsetto crooner alternating with Wiz' raps). I agree with a web-mag called "Chicagoist" which, dismissed the OMI tune as "forgettable fluff", and noted the lack of a single clear winner.  They reviewed the candidates, adding  "Shut Up and Dance" (by Walk the Moon), which is quite catchy, a crossover tune to be sure, but was already tired by summertime, before opting for a danceable tune called "Can't Feel My Face"(...when I'm with you) by the Weeknd. I have no idea what that is supposed to mean--cocaine? They also invited their staff writers to come up with some alternatives, none of which I had ever heard, either the song or the performer.

I think the point is that the world of popular music is so fragmented that across-the-board success is mostly out of reach; a big success is to score in two or three of the various formats. Still, working off my daughter's observation that the "alternative" and "mix" formats seem to be converging, I have suggestions of my own:

--EW has a trend watch list of 10 hot things from any medium, or some such, each week.  ("The Must List", a name I find way too dank, but anyway--) The same week they announced OMI's "triumph", they mentioned in their list "Dreams", a single by Beck.  A bit late in the summer, maybe, but that song is a refreshing return by Hansen to the post-modern genre blend which brought him success in the '90's (a switch after the downer album which somehow won him the Best Album Grammy last year).
--"Ex's and O's" by Elle King, a saucy number about how her ex-boyfriends won't leave her alone after she's schooled them and left them.  I've heard it a lot on several different types of radio.
-- My nominee for the true song of the moment, though, is "The Long Way Down", by Robert DeLong.  It has an early Pet Shop Boys kind of sound--beats, synthesizer, multi-track vocals--and a similar kind of conflation of the political and romantic.  It's highly cynical, essentially saying to his romantic interest to stop trying to save the world and enjoy the slow ruination with him.  Not the message I would prefer, but at least he's saying something about something outside his immediate interests, even if only his disregard of them.

Finally, let's stipulate that "Hello", by Adele, would blow away any of these for universal popularity, but it just doesn't qualify on a chronological basis.  Adele's re-emergence with a new age-titled album, jumping from "21" to "25" (released this past weekend), with her current age actually 27, tells me that, while she's working very hard, it's getting hard to generate the same emotions out of her now more-settled lifestyle.  Like most everyone else, I admire her throwback talents, her highly-polished delivery, and I hope that she will eventually use, for a good purpose, the trust she has built up by dealing with her public with sincerity.

Books: Rock Memoirs
And then, on the other hand, there's Elvis Costello.  "Costello" (his assumed name) actually once released an album  called "Trust" (his fifth, a "transitional" album from his angry pop toward more thoughtful composition).  I now realize the title was a verb--in command form--rather than a noun, and the belief he commanded, and received, often obsessively, from his fans, was hardly reciprocated with sincerity on his part.   This seems to have been revealed, unabridged, in his new 700-page memoir (and accompanying 2-CD set, naturally), "Unfaithful Music and Disappearing Ink".

I haven't read it, won't buy it, but I've gotten the gist from his interview tour to help sell the product which is "this year's model" (another album, early, quite good).  From the reviews, it is extremely well-written, literate, self-deprecating, honest. It seems that all those popstar nasty young man hits produced in his early career were just a pose for commercial success, when what he really always wanted to be was a romantic lounge lizard, like Burt Bachrach (a longtime buddy and recent collaborator).  Or something similar, more like his old man, who was a successful singer in England's postwar period, or his wife Diana Krall, who sings moderately jazzy torch songs. One thing I've noted from his comments, with which I totally agree, is his fervent dissociation from the label "punk"--he was strong on musical skills, lyrical talent, high production value, and obfuscation, while, with a couple of exceptions, punk was the opposite of all that.

I am much more motivated to read, and especially to purchase, the memoirs of two different rock heroes of mine, Chrissie Hynde ("Reckless: My Life as a Pretender") and Carrie Brownstein of Slater-Kinney and the "Portlandia" TV show fame ("Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl").*

Theater
Lin-Manuel Miranda is already the toast of the town in New York for the show he created, "Hamilton", a rap musical about the life of our relatively unsung founding father, Alexander Hamilton. Miranda's talent and his show are now becoming too huge for even the Big Apple to contain; he has been featured in the past couple of weeks on "60 Minutes" and the "Tonight Show". His talent, which is musical theater, is remarkable and unique in its realization; his personality is generous, warm, and enthusiastic.  His show's concept is audacious, incredibly ambitious, and most amazingly, he has pulled it off with a success that has blitzed the city.

I don't know how long he will be willing to do it all:  direct and perform the show which he wrote and scored.  I hope I will have a chance to see it while it is still in its world-class form.  It's not impossible; at the current time, one just has to plan ahead a few months to get tickets from the box office.

Historically, even the greatest of societies are defined by a few magnificent creations, ones which express something essential of the time and place, and at the same time provide value for the generations, or centuries, that follow.  As we look at what the US has provided for human civilization during this period of its peak influence in the past century or so, clearly the marvels of science and technology stand out: things like electricity, electronics, the Internet, spaceflight, nuclear physics. These are things that will never be forgotten, as long as civilization as we know it continues.

Culturally and artistically, it is a tougher call.  I have a few films in mind, but will that entertainment mode survive in any form, or are today's film masterpieces the equivalent of the gramophone discs of 100 years past?  "Our" music (jazz/blues/rock) has been a gift to the world, one that the world has picked up and interpreted back to us.  That's a a thing of beauty but possibly only of the moment. We've had a few great books, but the Great American Novel remains an elusive target, maybe not even a real one.

The American theater is perhaps a limited artistic form in terms of size of audience, but it has retained its prestige, even if its relevance has sometimes waned (a surfeit of crowd-pleasing light musical entertainment, in my opinion).  There are a few American theater productions which have had outsized cultural significance--dramas like "Death of a Salesman", "A Streetcar Named Desire", and "Angels in America"; and, among all the musicals, I'd name "West Side Story".  And now, "Hamilton" has made a bid for this kind of immortality.

What to do Now?

The bestial attacks on Paris last night were a game-changer.  We must all recover from our unfocused anger and decide what the right response from the civilized world should be for these--barbarians is too good a word--monsters with evil intent.

I would assume that the domestic counterterrorism will swing into action in France and in other European countries to which the authorities can trace the routes of those who committed these heinous deeds.  The circle, hopefully, will expand to the point that other attacks this cell may have had in planning will be intercepted and precluded.

The question remains, though, how to prevent further atrocities, and the only way to address it is to go to the source, the regions controlled in the failed states of Syria, Iraq, and Libya; the places where the leaders of ISIS believe they can act openly.  Indiscriminate bombing, cruise missiles, even tactical nukes, or just "bomb the shit out of them" (as Donald Trump suggested even before the latest events)--I'm sure they will all be suggested in the coming days, and it's not that they are not deserved for those who hide there, and I'm not even all that sympathetic to those who have accepted to live among those of ISIS.  I just don't think it would work--the cancer would reappear, in a new and even more malignant form, as has occurred in the past after the destruction of al-Qaeda and the collapse of government control in those countries.

As it happens, the G-20--the leaders of 20 major nations--will gather in Antalya, Turkey--only a few hundred miles away from the center of ISIS' depravity--this Sunday and Monday.  All the major players will be there (President Hollande of France has cancelled, but will send his Foreign Minister).  I suspect the concerns about the global economy will recede under the circumstances, and the focus will be on a unified response.  Of course, there will be a communique with a condemnation of the murders, but that is not nearly enough. The response should include: 1) humanitarian aid, for Turkey, Jordan, liberated portions of Syria, and those portions of Europe which have borne the brunt of migrating refugees; 2) a quarantine, a "cordon sanitaire", around the worst-affected areas, to prevent unauthorized movement out (as though jihadists were afflicted with a deadly disease); and 3) a military plan, a broader coalition of the willing, with the objective of going beyond merely containing ISIS but to the physical elimination of its lawless "safe area".

Spring Back, Fall Forward

Leaving aside the question of whether daylight savings time itself makes sense, the mnemonic to remember the directions of change for clocks entering, then leaving, our annual time dislocation has never quite convinced me, because the inverse (see above title) also makes some sense. Especially right now, when many things in public affairs are a little confusing:  When events surprise us, we "spring back"; in the absence of shocks, politically, we just "fall forward".

The Markets are Perverse
The global economy is slowing, US earnings reports have been generally unfavorable; so why are the stock markets heading toward an all-time high?

There is a sort of logical explanation; it starts with the glut of crude oil and gives far too much weight to the question of whether, and when, the Fed may begin to raise interest rates. Despite a long period of job and GDP growth, inflation remains close to zero.  The oversupply of crude oil has kept energy prices low, with a stable to negative trend; while many of the cost-of-living measures exclude energy cost, low energy prices have an indirect effect on prices in general--for suppliers, and, I would argue, by strengthening the US dollar, which makes purchased objects cost less in dollars (especially imported ones).

So, the Fed looks at flat price trends--nothing to correct there yet.  Unemployment going down--it is their secondary goal to allow economic growth to continue.  The conclusion that the time is not yet ripe to begin to re-set interest rates upward from their current near-zero values is justifiable.  The trick is that Fed members know that they cannot be wholly reactive; because of the time-lag effects of their monetary adjustments, they need to anticipate future trends and act based upon the leading indicators.  As the unemployment rate drops, one that the Fed will watch closely will be labor costs; the low labor participation rate which you may have heard mentioned by Presidential campaigners looking for dark clouds is structural and demographic, and shortages in skilled professions may start up inflation's engine.  So far, though, there is no imperative to act, though the eventuality of raising rates from the floor level, where they've been for several years, is not in doubt.

Somehow this inevitability does not seem to have registered much with the markets, which respond with these reactions that I would describe as both knee-jerk and perverse:  good economic news, in the form of growth or employment, causes the markets to pull back, as the day of rate increases is deemed to draw nearer; while continuation of the slow-growth improving trend pushes the markets ever upward.  (I exclude the usual overreactions to individual companies' reports of negative news in their reporting of short-term revenues and profits, and the shocks from abroad, which cause one-day drops but have generally been absorbed.)  It would seem that the current rally is due to be erased once the date of the initial Fed rate increases becomes certain. On the other hand, my expectation is that the anticipation--of rate increases' negative effects on the economy--will be much more painful than the reality, and that the Fed would do well to puncture this little bubble in the stock markets, raise rates a single time, then wait for a new equilibrium to develop before making its next move.

A Critical Ally Endangered
We in the US may think our policy is confused in the Middle East, but I would say the top two priorities--containing and reducing ISIS, and restoring peace in Syria by easing out the failing Assad regime--are clear, and generally accepted by all parties.  Among the various Presidential candidates of both parties there is lots of posturing about our posture, and less agreement on handling the Iranians, but little in the way of meaningful alternatives to advance our objectives (see below on the "no-fly" option which has been revived by some).

One aspect about which I hear very little intelligent discussion here is our view of the much more complex challenges faced by our second greatest ally in the region (after Israel, given that Israelis are a player in this active war theater, somewhat on the margin, bordering as it does on Syria in the Golan Heights area), and the ally which is most directly involved in the mess.  Turkey has the challenge of managing several difficult, interrelated problems simultaneously:

1) Turkey is the front line for the international Syrian refugee problem, sheltering more than 1.5 million, and the point of departure for those among them with the means to try to escape the camps;
2) Turkey is the point of arrival for those inspired to try to enter the war theater from outside, and thus the only country with the ability to intercept them, block them, or otherwise impede them;
3) Turkey faces a huge issue, both domestically and outside its borders, of the Kurdish population which seeks greater autonomy and has been the most effective counterforce to ISIS in northern Syria and northern Iraq;
4) Turkey's domestic politics have been roiled by the instability in the region. 

The last of these is the most acute at present.  Turkey had its second general election in months today, in an environment in which President Erdogan sought to play the nationalism card to reverse an electoral defeat in June, in which his party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in a decade. Erdogan gained a partial victory, restoring his party's majority, but did not gain the two-thirds majority he had originally sought to pass constitutional amendments to lock in more deeply his political advantages.

Another result in today's election concerned the Kurdish party, perhaps comparable to Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein in being the peaceful arm of a movement which has--for decades--violently resisted the central government.  A significant factor in the defeat of Erdogan's party this spring was the emergence of this party as a political force which gained representation (at a minimum10% of the vote) in the national parliament for the first time.  The party lost ground but maintained a presence in parliament, so again only a partial victory for Erdogan.

The conditions of the electoral campaign were a state of high tension.  A peace rally of Turks and Kurds in the nation's capital, Ankara, was rocked by two suicide bombs which killed hundreds.  This great wound exacerbated a tension which had built over months, as Turkey agreed for the first time to facilitate US airstrikes, then responded to a previous bomb near the border by beginning airstrikes of their own into Syria, which seemed to focus more on the Kurdish forces than on ISIS.  Many Turks were deeply suspicious of the government's actions and motives; in the aftermath of the Ankara bombing, the opposition claimed that the government's forces of order were more interested in suppressing Kurdish political aspirations than in protecting civilians.  The government has attributed the attack to ISIS, but some were less than convinced;  political polarization has increased, and restrictions on individual liberties have continued.

It is not an overstatement to say that unlocking Turkey's capability to act effecctively and positively in the region is the key to solving the whole ISIS/Assad mess--at least with regard to Syria.  In this sense, the electoral result today could at least provide a stable outcome for the domestic environment. Turkey has been accused of playing a two-faced game, particularly during the desperate battle for the Syrian border city of Kobane between ISIS and the Kurdish forces; the accusation is true, but it simply reflects the complex realities the country faces.

Were it not for the pure evil of ISIS, Turkey would naturally gravitate more to that group, which opposes both of the nation's key foes in the region, the Kurdish nationalists and the Assad regime, the latter of which it blames entirely for the strife.  Indeed, there seemed to be an understanding between ISIS and Turkey for months leading into this past season, with Turkish hostages released and Turkey impeding others' use of its territory for attacks on ISIS. Turkey has the largest, best-trained military force in the northern Middle East; with the support of NATO, it could put ISIS out of business in a matter of months, though there would remain the problem of how to fill that power vacuum--Turkey would never do it if the result were to put Assad back in control in Syria.

In the meantime, instead of being part of the anti-ISIS coalition the US has sought to put together in the region, Turkey is pursuing its own objectives.  Foremost among them is to create safe areas within Syria and thus reduce the pressure of refugees fleeing the conflict.  They have long requested the US, and the West, to establish a no-fly zone within Syria.  It is a call that has been taken up by some, but it was always a tall order (due to the anti-aircraft capabilities of the Syrian government forces) that has just become much more complicated with the arrival in the area of the Russian air force.

Putin's "Improvocations"+
If the challenges of the US and its coalition and of Turkey were not messy enough, now Putin's Russia has inserted itself into the theater with aggressive and unpredictable actions, raising the geopolitical stakes even higher.  That Putin would line up with the Assad regime was a given; Russia has allied with the minority Alawite-dominated Assads for decades, and Syria has given Russia much-desired privileged access to the Mediterranean through its coast.  Providing lethal aid to Assad has been done more or less openly all along.  A month or so ago, though, Putin switched the focus of his mischief-making from the Ukraine border region to Syria, first stepping up the quantity of aid, then providing direct military assistance.

Putin's comments were all about defeating ISIS, but the initial bombing attacks focused on populated areas outside the control of both Assad and ISIS.  Clearly, the targets were not being chosen by the anti-ISIS coalition, but by Assad's clique:  their best chance to survive this civil war in power is to eliminate the possibility of any third force, making it a grim choice between them and the monsters of ISIS.  There was also an element of intrigue with Iran, too:  Russia joined the West in bringing Iran to agreement on its nuclear program, but has also been in the forefront, once the agreement has been concluded, to relieve sanctions there, and Iran and Russia share an interest in the survival of Assad's (anti-Sunni) regime.  Indeed, Russia launched cruise missiles from its ships in the Caspian Sea; when one of them fell off course into Iran, the Iranians did not publicly complain.

Most recently, the Russians are trying a little harder not to antagonize the West; they have met with our officials, first at a high level and then at a more technical level, to ensure their sorties will not conflict directly with our own.  The Russians are hoping to have their sanctions relieved, too; a key test will be if they can avoid actions which make the flight of refugees even worse than the present, and at the same time assist in the defeat of ISIS.  No doubt they will seek every opportunity to thumb their nose at the US, and at their ancient nemesis Turkey.

The latest news is the shocking plane crash in the Northern Sinai of a chartered plane full of Russians returning from vacation.  ISIS has claimed "credit" for this atrocity; the investigation has just begun, but the dispersal of the wreckage suggests the plane broke apart in midair, so it may not have been a mechanical failure, and pilot error would seem unlikely given the circumstances.  Once again, ISIS' insistence on violating norms of behavior may end up creating a powerful, fervent opponent when it could have avoided that.   Even the Russians and their Ukrainian stooges were discreet enough not to brag about shooting down a passenger aircraft when they did it.


+I just invented this term, which combines two words which share the same Latin root, "prov", meaning, to try:  "improvisation" and "provocation".