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Turkish military repeatedly shell Assad forces; Kurds confirm to RT being hit by massive attack

RT | February 13, 2016

The Turkish army has shelled Syrian government forces in Aleppo and Latakia provinces, while also hitting Kurdish targets near the city of Azaz in northwestern Syria, including an air base recently retaken from Islamist rebels, with a massive attack.

Anatolia news agency reported that the Turkish military hit Syrian government forces on Saturday, adding that the shelling had been in response to fire inflicted on a Turkish military guard post in Turkey’s southern Hatay region.

Turkish artillery targeted Syrian forces again late on Saturday, according to a military source quoted by RIA Novosti. The attack targeted the town of Deir Jamal in the Aleppo Governorate.

The agency also cited details of an earlier attack on Syrian government army positions in northwestern Latakia.

“Turkey’s artillery opened fire on the positions of the Syrian Army in the vicinity of Aliya mountain in the northwestern part of the province of Latakia,” the source said.

Meanwhile, the Turkish shelling of Kurdish positions continued for more than three hours almost uninterruptedly, a Kurdish source told RT, adding that the Turkish forces are using mortars and missiles and firing from the Turkish border not far from the city of Azaz in the Aleppo Governorate.

The shelling targeted the Menagh military air base and the nearby village of Maranaz, where “many civilians were wounded,” local journalist Barzan Iso told RT. He added that Kurdish forces and their allies among “the Syrian democratic forces” had taken control of the air base on Thursday.

According to Iso, the Menagh base had previously been controlled by the Ahrar ash-Sham Islamist rebel group, which seized it in August of 2013. The journalist also added that Ahrar ash-Sham militants at the base had been supported by Al-Nusra terrorists and some extremist groups coming from Turkey.

Ahrar ash-Sham is a militant group that has trained teenagers to commit acts of terror in Damascus, Homs, and Latakia provinces, according to data provided to the Russian Defense Ministry by Syrian opposition forces.

The group, which has intensified its attacks on the Syrian government forces since January, was getting “serious reinforcements from Turkey,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a briefing in Moscow on January 21.

A source in the Turkish government confirmed to Reuters that the Turkish military had shelled Kurdish militia targets near Azaz on Saturday.

“The Turkish Armed Forces fired shells at PYD positions in the Azaz area,” the source said, referring to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Ankara views as a terrorist group.

A Turkish security official told Reuters that the shelling of the Kurds had been a response to a shelling of Turkish border military outposts by the PYD and forces loyal to Damascus, as required under Turkish military rules of engagement.

Turkey’s PM Davutoglu also confirmed that the country’s forces had struck Syrian Kurdish fighters and demanded that the Kurds retreat from all of the areas that they had recently seized.

“The YPG will immediately withdraw from Azaz and the surrounding area and will not go close to it again,” he told reporters, adding that Turkey “will retaliate against every step [by the YPG],” Reuters reports.

A Kurdish official confirmed to Reuters that the shelling had targeted the Menagh air base located south of Azaz.

According to the official, the base had been captured by the Jaysh al-Thuwwar rebel group, which is an ally of PYD and a member of the Syria Democratic Forces alliance.

Syrian Kurds are actively engaged in the fight against the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorist group and have been recently described as “some of the most successful” forces fighting IS jihadists in Syria by US State Department spokesman John Kirby, AFP reports.

Earlier, the US also called the PYD an “important partner” in the fight against Islamic State, adding that US support of the Kurdish fighters “will continue.”

Turkey’s shelling of the Syrian Kurds comes just days after a plan to end hostilities in Syria was presented in Munich after a meeting of the so-called International Syria Support Group (ISSG), in which Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and UN Special Envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura participated.

‘We will strike PYD’ – Turkish PM

Earlier on Saturday, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu threatened Syrian Kurds with military action, saying that Turkey will resort to force against the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) if it considers the step “necessary.”

“As I have said, the link between the YPG and the [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party] PKK is obvious. If the YPG threatens our security, then we will do what is necessary,” Davutoglu said on February 10, as quoted by the Hurriyet Daily.

“The leadership cadre and ideology of the PKK and PYD is the same,” he argued in a televised speech in the eastern city of Erzincan on Saturday, AFP reports.

Davutoglu also said that if there is a threat to Turkey, “we will strike PYD like we did Qandil,” referring to a bombing campaign waged by Turkey against the PKK in its Qandil mountain stronghold in northern Iraq, Daily Sabah reports.

Turkey regards the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its military wing, the YPG, as affiliates of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decade-long insurgency against Turkish authorities, demanding autonomy for Turkish Kurds.

The latest developments come as Turkey continues a relentless crackdown on Kurds in its southeastern region. Ankara launched a military operation against Kurdish insurgents from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in July of 2015, breaking a ceasefire signed in 2013.

Turkey’s General Staff claim that Turkish forces killed more than 700 PKK rebels during the offensive in the southeastern districts of Cizre and Sur. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has reported that at least 150 civilians, including women in children, were killed in the Turkish military operation, adding that over 200,000 lives have been put at risk.

According to the Turkish Human Rights Foundation, at least 198 civilians, including 39 children, have been murdered in the area since August of 2015.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | 2 Comments

While Kerry Talks Ceasefire, US Allies Secretly Ship Grad Missiles to Syria Rebels

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 12, 2016

grad2

photo

The big news yesterday was that after some five hours of intense negotiation on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, an agreement was reached between the major powers on a “cessation of hostilities” in Syria within the next week.

According to the agreement:

The [International Syria Support Group] members agreed that a nationwide cessation of hostilities must be urgently implemented, and should apply to any party currently engaged in military or paramilitary hostilities against any other parties other than Daesh, Jabhat al-Nusra, or other groups designated as terrorist organizations by the United Nations Security Council. The ISSG members commit to exercise influence for an immediate and significant reduction in violence leading to the nationwide cessation of hostilities.

Now today — just one day after the ceasefire agreement —  we discover that a massive shipment of ground-to-ground “Grad” missiles has been sent by US allies (and the CIA?) to rebels fighting against the Syrian government.

Reuters reports:

‘It is excellent additional fire power for us,’ said one of the commanders, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. The second rebel commander said the missiles were being used to hit army positions beyond the front line. ‘They give the factions longer reach,’ he said.

What are we to conclude by this dramatic turn of events? Two possibilities.

One, that since the deal is not finalized on paper the foreign powers backing regime change for Syria did not feel the need to halt the shipment and in fact may have hastened the delivery.

Two, that the “rebels” being supplied do not fall under the terms of the agreement spelled out above. In other words, the ceasefire does not apply to ISIS or al-Qaeda or affiliated forces, so perhaps the foreign Grad suppliers decided this is a two-way street: if Russia is still free to bomb the terrorist groups, then Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc. are still free to provide them weapons.

Does anyone have any confidence in this kind of ceasefire when either the “moderates” or named terrorist groups are being armed to the teeth on the eve of its implementation? Will the Russians begin to doubt the veracity of their western partners’ commitment to halting the violence in Syria when they learn of this massive weapons shipment?

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

Israel’s Army and Government at Loggerheads Over Cause of Attacks

By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | February 12, 2016

Israel’s frantic cocoon-weaving entered a new phase last week, as Benjamin Netanyahu’s government stepped up efforts to stifle the last vestiges of dissent.

The military censor’s office, a draconian 70-year-old hangover from British rule in Palestine, extended its powers over Israeli press and TV to prominent blogs and social media.

The government has also threatened to revoke the press cards of “journalists and editors who are negligent in their work” – aimed at those who depart too obviously from the official line.

These moves follow culture minister Miri Regev’s announcement of a “loyalty law” that will deny state funding to artists and cultural institutions that are not sufficiently patriotic.

The education minister, settler leader Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, is reportedly preparing a raft of measures: a ban on access for pupils to literature and theatre not in line with government thinking, cuts to already very limited pluralism education and a new civics textbook vilifying the Palestinian minority.

In this atmosphere of inculcated ignorance and prejudice, it is easy for Mr Netanyahu to persuade public opinion that the recent wave of Palestinian protests and attacks, which have left more than 160 Palestinians and 29 Israelis dead, is solely the result of “incitement” from Palestinian officials and media. The Israeli right suggests that Palestinians who stab or drive cars at their oppressors, most often soldiers and settlers, are easily inflamed into action by words that appeal to ancient prejudice.

As the Israeli public discourse grows ever more detached from reality, Israel’s military commanders sound like an oasis of sanity – at least, by comparison.

The Israeli army actually has an operational interest in understanding what drives the Palestinian attacks – both to better counter them and to quieten growing government pressure for drastic responses, ones that could trigger the collapse of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority.

The military have sent intelligence officials into Israeli prisons to interview Palestinians who were not killed during their attacks, including children as young as 13.

What the army has found should surprise no one. Palestinians feel desperate and hopeless about a situation in which their own and their families’ freedoms are tightly restricted by a seemingly endless Israeli occupation.

The Palestinians behind the attacks – “lone wolves”, as Israelis call them – are often also facing extreme personal crises: suicidal thoughts, financial troubles or grief from a relative or friend’s death at Israel’s hands.

Few have had any experience of Israelis beyond the soldiers who mistreat them at checkpoints and during raids on their villages, and the settlers who lord it over them.

These findings have provoked a widening rift between the government and military.

Mr Netanyahu and his allies, drawing on the Israeli right’s traditional “iron wall” philosophy of ruthlessly crushing Palestinian dissent, have demanded greater privations for those under occupation to make them submit.

Last week, the government responded to an attack on a checkpoint by a Palestinian security official that injured three Israeli soldiers by locking down Ramallah, the Palestinians’ current economic and political capital.

The army effectively overruled that decision the next day. Gadi Eisenkott, the chief of general staff, has repeatedly warned that collective punishment will only fuel Palestinian anger and increase attacks.

He argues that more permits for Palestinian labourers to work in Israel, improving the Palestinian economy, is “an Israeli interest and a restraining factor”. He also prefers nurturing existing ties with the Palestinian security forces.

The military doves, however, are no less deluded than the political hawks.

The politicians want a collective stick to beat the Palestinians, one that will only intensify the conflict. The military, on the other hand, want individual perks for good behaviour to perpetuate the status quo a little longer.

What neither side wishes to talk about is the framework that creates Palestinian despair and anger: the occupation.

The personal crises identified by the military that spur Palestinians to violence – debt, depression and the killing of a friend or relative – are not a stroke of bad luck befalling individuals. They are an inevitable by-product of the systematic abuses inflicted on an entire occupied population.

Lawlessness from land-hungry Jewish settlers, severe movement restrictions, home demolitions and “policing” by a hostile army ensure Palestinians live as a subjugated people, slaves to ever harsher repression.

Anyone who challenges Israelis’ bubble of illusions faces the Israeli government’s wrath, as UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon found last month. When he pointed out the obvious – that it was “human nature to react to occupation” – Mr Netanyahu accused him of “stoking terror”.

Worse vitriol rained down on Sweden’s foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom, when she made much the same point – and urged an investigation into the apparent executions of some of the Palestinians recently killed by the army. She was accused of “defamation” and officially barred from visiting Israel.

The blinkered assumptions of both Israel’s politicians and its generals mean neither can find a way out of the current mire.

Those who wish simply to perpetuate Palestinian suffering may triumph over those who would prefer to intensify it. Either way, Palestinians will continue to resist.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

Obama to sign trade agreement that equates settlements with Israel

Ma’an – February 12, 2016

BETHLEHEM – US President Barack Obama intends to sign a sweeping trade agreement including provisions that fail to differentiate between Israel and illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well as discourage the boycott of Israeli goods.

The agreement — H.R. 644: Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015 — was passed 75-20 on Thursday, and includes a provision that no US court can enforce judgement from a foreign court on a US citizen who “conducts business operations in Israel, or any territory controlled by Israel.”

The provision in effect allows US citizens immunity from conducting trade with illegal Israeli settlements, while its terminology fails to distinguish Israeli settlements from the state of Israel, violating the US’ official line against the construction of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The White House in a statement released Thursday regarding the agreement said: “As with any bipartisan compromise legislation, there are provisions in this bill that we do not support.”

Of those provisions that the Obama administration did not support was a provision that “contravenes longstanding US policy towards Israel and the occupied territories, including with regard to Israeli settlement activity,” the statement said.

Despite the contravention, Obama plans to sign the agreement into law “to help strengthen enforcement of the rules and level the playing field for American workers and businesses.”

The agreement also includes a provision that in creating commercial partnerships with foreign countries, the US should “discourage politically motivated boycotts of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel.”

The US government opposes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, and while US law requires that products made in illegal Israeli settlements may not be labeled “Made in Israel,” the law is rarely enforced.

Israel has been struggling to tackle a growing Palestinian-led boycott campaign which has had a number of high-profile successes abroad.

The BDS movement aims to exert political and economic pressure over Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in a bid to repeat the success of the campaign which ended apartheid in South Africa.

However, BDS initiatives have also faced pushback abroad, notably in France, where a court ruled in October that a group of activists advocating for BDS were guilty under French hate speech legislation.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why Are Neocons so Desperate to Rescue al-Qaeda in Syria?

By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | February 11, 2016

Reading Dennis Ross and David Ignatius is a good reminder that the neocons live in a different world than the rest of us. They do not conform their analysis to reality, but rather they conform reality to their view of the world. Where most people would be encouraged to read that Aleppo in Syria was about to be liberated from its 3.5 year occupation by al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, the neocons see a disaster.

On the brink of al-Qaeda’s defeat in Aleppo, the Washington Post’s Ignatius is furious that, “President Obama won’t approve military tactics that could actually shift the balance.” Yes, he wants to shift the balance toward al-Qaeda because like the other neocons he is so invested in the idea of regime change in Syria that he would even prefer turning the country into another Libya than to see government forces defeat his jihadist insurgents. Failing to “shift the balance” toward al-Qaeda fighters in Aleppo only brings “greater misery for the Syrian people,” in the world of Ignatius.

Ignatius’s Washington Post, which has never seen a potential war it did not want to see turned into an actual war, thinks it a tragedy that the Syrian army’s advance on al-Qaeda occupied Aleppo has “cut off all vital routes of supply from Turkey to the rebel-held areas of the city.” Those would be Turkish supplies in support of al-Qaeda and ISIS rebels, but the Post is too deceptive to mention that fact.

It is as dishonest an inversion of reality as anything printed in Pravda of old.

In the same vein as Ignatius, former Bush/Clinton/Obama Administration Middle East “expert” Dennis Ross writes to tell us, “what Putin is really up to in Syria.” In the above-linked article, The Los Angeles Times does not reveal that Ross is hardly an objective observer of the situation. As one of the founders of AIPAC‘s Washington Institute for Near East Policy — and a current counselor to that organization — Ross strongly supports AIPAC’s position in favor of regime change in Syria and Israel’s active role in assisting jihadist rebels from al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in their efforts to overthrow the Assad government.

So what does regime change neocon Dennis Ross want us to believe is happening in Syria? The Russians, he asserts, are playing a dirty game by stepping up their bombing campaign against ISIS, al-Qaeda, and affiliated rebels instead of pushing for a ceasefire. How funny that when the US/Turk/Saudi/Israeli-back jihadists were on the verge of taking over all of Syria not that long ago there was no talk from neocon quarters about a ceasefire or a negotiated political solution. Only now that al-Qaeda’s stronghold in Aleppo is on the verge of liberation by government forces are the neocons screaming that diplomacy should be given a chance.

Russian operations are “designed to strengthen the Assad regime and weaken the non-Islamic State Sunni opposition in different parts of the country,” writes Ross. He doesn’t mention that particularly when it comes to Aleppo, the “non-Islamic State Sunni opposition” means al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and affiliated forces.

By relentlessly bombing Islamic State and other jihadist groups seeking to introduce Sharia law into secular Syria, “Putin is… undercutting our aim of isolating Islamic State and having Sunnis lead the fight against it.” Read that again. By attacking ISIS he is preventing the US from isolating ISIS. Doublespeak.

What is Putin really up to in the world of Dennis Ross? He is not sincere about defeating Islamist extremism in Syria or even helping Assad’s forces win the war. No, Putin “aims to demonstrate that Russia, and not America, is the main power broker in the region and increasingly elsewhere.” Ah yes, the old argument about Russian expansionism. Baltic invasion, restoration of the USSR. All the neocon tripe.

Ah but here is where Ross plants his seed, whispers in the Administration’s neocon power brokers’ ears:

“Certainly, were Russia’s costs to increase, Putin might look for a way out.”

Hmm, now we see what he’s getting at:

… it is time we make it clear to the Russians that unless they impose a cease-fire on Assad and Hezbollah and insist that humanitarian corridors are open, we will have no choice but to act with our partners to create a haven in Syria — for refugees and for the organization of the Syrian opposition.

In other words, tell Russia if you do not stop fighting al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria we will face-off in a WWIII-threatening stance to establish a “jihadistan” in part of Syria from where the hundredth or so version of a rebel fighting force can be re-assembled.

Ross’s plan is not for the weak of heart. “[W]e cannot threaten to create a haven without following through if Putin refused to alter his course,” he writes. Meaning of course that we must be willing to actually go through with WWIII if Putin does not blink, back down, and pull out of Syria just as Russia’s intervention is meeting its objective. Surrender when on the verge of victory in Syria or face a nuclear war with the United States.

No one ever accused the neocons of thinking small. But with much of the Middle East a smoldering ruin due to the disastrous interventions they lied us into, no one should count out even their most insane-sounding plan being seriously considered somewhere in Washington.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

China opposed to US missile deployment in South Korea: FM

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Munich, Germany, Feb. 12, 2016 [Xinhua]

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Munich, Germany, Feb. 12, 2016 [Xinhua]
The BRICS Post | February 13, 2016

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday reacted strongly to South Korea-US talks on possible deployment of an advanced US missile defense system.

Wang said this “would complicate the regional stability situation”.

Meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, Wang made clear China’s opposition to the possible deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system in South Korea.

The United States and South Korea have begun negotiations on the deployment of THAAD. The Pentagon made the announcement hours after North Korea’s recent rocket launch.

As one of the most advanced missile defense systems in the world, THAAD can intercept and destroy ballistic missiles inside or just outside the atmosphere during their final phase of flight.

Despite claims by Washington and Seoul that the missile shield would be focused solely on North Korea, Beijing says the US deployment would pose considerable threat to neighboring countries.

In an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of the Munich meeting, Wang said he was concerned by the possible deployment of the sophisticated anti-missile system in South Korea.

“The deployment of the THAAD system by the United States … goes far beyond the defense needs of the Korean Peninsula and the coverage would mean it will reach deep into the Asian continent,” Wang said.

“It directly affects the strategic security interests of China and other Asian countries,” he added.

The Chinese foreign minister urged the US side to act cautiously, not to undermine China’s security interests or add new complications to regional peace and stability.

Regarding the DPRK’s recent nuclear test and rocket launch, Wang said both moves violated UN resolutions and pose serious challenges to the global non-proliferation regime.

China and the United States have agreed to speed up the consultation process at the UN Security Council to reach a new resolution and take strong and effective measures to deter further development of nuclear and missile programs by North Korea, Wang noted in his meeting with Kerry.

Reiterating China’s stance on sanctions against North Korea, he said “it remains to be our common goal to work together and find a way to bring the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue back to the right track of dialogue and negotiations, which is fully in line with the interests of all parties, including China and the United States.”

In the interview with Reuters, Wang said China insists that there should be no nuclear weapons on the peninsula, no matter whether they were possessed by the north or the south side, and no matter whether they were developed locally or introduced from the outside.

China, a neighboring country of the Korean Peninsula and a major stakeholder in regional stability, also maintains that the Korean Peninsula denuclearization should be achieved via dialogue, not war, and that China’s national security interests should be guaranteed, he added.

Russia has also expressed concern about the potential deployment of THAAD, saying it could trigger an arms race in Northeast Asia.

On Wednesday, South Korea suspended operations at the Kaesong industrial zone as punishment for the rocket launch and nuclear test.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Bernie, No! Winston Churchill Was a War Criminal, Not a ‘Hero’

teleSUR | February 12, 2016

Professing one’s love for Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during World War II, is shorthand in U.S. politics for: “I think killing Nazis was good.” Churchill is a pugnacious old man with a cigar in his mouth, more an inspirational poster—”Never Give In”—than a real human being, with all our human flaws. Still, it was nonetheless a little strange to hear Bernie Sanders, the social democrat campaigning to be the presidential nominee of the Democrat Party, describing the symbol of giving-it-your-all as one of his two “heroes” at the last debate.

“Winston Churchill’s politics were not my politics,” Sanders began. “He was kind of a conservative guy in many respects,” having been the head of the Conservative Party, “But nobody can deny that as a wartime leader, he rallied the British people when they stood virtually alone against the Nazi juggernaut and rallied them and eventually won.” Along with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the former U.S. president who also killed Nazis, “These are two leaders that I admire very much.”

That the Vermont senator did not name Hugo Chavez or Karl Marx, or even U.S. socialist leader Eugene Debs, is not surprising: Sanders is on the radical left only in relation to the center-right politics of the United States in 2016. Naming Churchill, in this center-right country, is playing it safe, akin to—and another way of—coming out against Adolf Hitler.

But if, as Sanders contends, the former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is a vile war criminal responsible for an illegal bombing campaign in Cambodia that aided the rise of the genocidal Khmer Rouge (“Not my kind of guy,” the senator said), then he should be made aware: Winston Churchill, too, was responsible for many crimes as a wartime leader, beyond just what he himself described as the Allies’ “terror bombing” of German civilians in Dresden.

“I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes,” Churchill declared in a 1919 memo, referring to the unlucky people of occupied India. Using chemical weapons “would spread a lively terror,” said Churchil—ever the humanitarian, he maintained that the “moral effect” of terrorizing the “natives” would ultimately reduce the loss of life, or so he claimed to believe. As a young man, he gladly took part in “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples”; as a white supremacist, he believed these people had a “propensity to kill” those attempting to steal their land, thus justifying the civilized white man’s efforts to kill them.

As secretary of state for war in the summer of 1919, Churchill would in fact authorize the use of toxic gas, planning and executing “a sustained chemical attack on northern Russia,” according to The Guardian, in an attempt to terrorize the Bolshevik government into collapse.

Despite his confidence in the humaneness of the weapon—”Why is it not fair for a British artilleryman to fire a shell which makes the said native sneeze?”—contemporary accounts suggest it was devastatingly lethal. Historian Gles Milton, the author of a book on the matter, noted in an interview with The Telegraph that “one soldier said that all 50 of his comrades were wiped out. It’s difficult to know how many fatalities there were but they dropped thousands of these things on various villages.”

Just as carpet bombing Cambodia did not aid the cause of moderation, dropping toxic gas all over revolutionary Russia did no favors to those revolutionaries who preferred the direct democracy of the soviets to the top-down, and decidedly more austere Stalinism that unsurprisingly prevailed with the help of a bloody civil war fueled by imperialism that left millions of people dead.

At the debate, Sanders said it was “rather amazing” that his rival, Hillary Clinton, would accept the advice of a man like Henry Kissinger, cast today as a round and cuddly figure but in fact “one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country,” with the blood of tens of thousands of people on his hands. “I am proud to say that Henry Kissinger is not my friend,” said Bernie, and bully for him. But if Kissinger’s crimes still matter, so should Winston’s.

Bernie may have just been fishing for a name that wouldn’t peg him as a no-good commie, falling back on an anti-communist that most are unaware was also a criminal white supremacist. But just as Hillary could use better advisers, Bernie should be reminded that he can find much better heroes. Clinton did, playing it safe and less problematic: She went with Nelson Mandela.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Russia Has Destroyed the CIA’s Arms Smuggling Operation in Syria

By Stuart Hooper – 21st Century Wire – February 12, 2016

The covert Syrian intervention could not have gone any worse for the Western powers involved in the attempt to oust Assad.

The Russian military has successfully closed the Azaz Corridor, a narrow strip of land connecting Turkey to the rebel forces in Aleppo, which was being used as a major supply route for the terrorist forces currently wrecking havoc throughout Syria.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was reportedly hounded by his American counterpart John Kerry at least six times to keep the Azaz corridor open.

A new report now explains why:

‘Mr. Kerry enters the negotiations with very little leverage: The Russians have cut off many of the pathways the C.I.A. has been using for a not-very-secret effort to arm rebel groups, according to several current and former officials.’

‘Mr. Kerry’s supporters inside the administration say he has been increasingly frustrated by the low level of American military activity, which he views as essential to bolstering his negotiation effort.’

For the last three years, the CIA has been smuggling arms into Syria via Turkey using the Azaz Corridor, and without it they have no leverage over Assad or the Russians.

Interestingly, now that the corridor has been essentially destroyed by Russian airpower, the US is now seeking to establish a peace deal in Syria meaning that the foreign interference could finally be coming to an end.

Assad has vowed to continue his fight with the Russians to finally liberate Syria and has openly decried the foreign support for terrorism.

Can the conflict in Syria now finally come to an end?

February 13, 2016 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Stalls in Implementing Minsk Agreements

Sputnik – February 13, 2016

Paris and Berlin are seriously concerned about Kiev’s unwillingness to adhere to the Minsk peace agreements on eastern Ukraine, according to the French newspaper Le Monde.

Kiev has failed to take steps to implement the Minsk peace agreements on eastern Ukraine, which continues to alarm Paris and Berlin. The countries’ leaders remain doubtful regarding the implementation of the accords, the French newspaper Le Monde said, citing a senior French official.According to the newspaper, this skepticism stems from the behavior of Ukrainian politicians, who had earlier played the role of “good students.” Le Monde quoted the official as saying that the situation remains the EU’s main concern, and “in the short term there is no reason for optimism in the matter.”

Donetsk units have delivered nine 82mm-caliber mortars to the site of their further storage in the neighborhood of Illovaisk. Under the Minsk accords, the Donetsk People’s Republic has accomplished its under-100mm-caliber artillery withdrawal from the contact line.

The official said that the past few years have seen an ever-increasing number of supporters of the normalization of relations with Russia in Europe, something that he said comes amid the Ukrainian side’s visible reluctance to comply with the Minsk agreements.

“Fatigue from the Ukrainian issue can quickly turn into fatigue from the Ukrainian partner, who has proven to be unreliable,” the official said, adding that “in this vein, the question of anti-Russian sanctions is seen in a different perspective.”

One of the main problems pertaining to the Minsk agreements is Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko‘s inability to approve the special status of eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region. The initiative is being blocked by many Ukrainian lawmakers, according to the Le Monde.

“Poroshenko’s hopes to gain a constitutional majority by getting two-thirds of the votes are already seen as unrealistic,” the newspaper said.

Another serious problem is related to the “vague wording on the implementation of some stages of the Minsk agreements,” Le Monde said. For example, restoring control of the region’s border with Russia to the Ukrainian government within the conflict zone after local elections. This has yet to be fulfilled because Kiev continues to insist that holding such elections in Donbass is impossible.In April 2014, Ukrainian authorities kicked off a military operation against supporters of Donbass independence in eastern Ukraine. The settlement of the conflict is still being discussed by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine in the Belarusian capital Minsk, which has already adopted three documents which establish guidelines for taking the necessary steps to de-escalate the conflict. The group includes representatives from Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Economics | , , , | Leave a comment

Hillary Clinton Sugarcoating Her Disastrous Record

By Ralph Nader | February 12, 2016

Bernie Sanders is far too easy on Hillary Clinton in their debates. Clinton flaunts her record and experience in ways that Sanders could use to expose her serious vulnerabilities and disqualifications for becoming president. Sanders responds to Clinton’s points, but without the precision that could demolish her arrogance.

For example, she repeatedly says that Sanders has not levelled with people about the cost of full Medicare for all, or single-payer. Really? In other countries, single-payer is far simpler and more efficient than our present profiteering, wasteful, corporatized healthcare industry. Canada covers all of its citizens, with free choice of doctors and hospitals, for about $4,500 per capita, compared to the over $9,000 per capita cost in the U.S. system that still leaves tens of millions of people uninsured or underinsured.

Detailed studies in the New England Journal of Medicine show big savings from a single-payer system in our country.

It is Hillary Clinton who is not levelling with the people about the costs of maintaining the spiraling U.S. costs of drugs, hospital stays and insurance premiums that are the highest in the world. The costs include: 1) the waste of well over $1 trillion a year; 2) daily denials of coverage by the Aetnas of the corporate world; 3) about forty thousand Americans dying each year, according to a peer-reviewed Harvard Medical School study, because they cannot afford health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time; and 4) daily  agonizing negotiations over insurance company denials, exclusions and bureaucratic paperwork that drive physicians up the wall.

Clinton hasn’t explained why she was once for single-payer until she defined her “being practical” as refusing to take on big pharma, commercial hospital chains and the giant insurance companies. She is very “practical” about taking political contributions and speaking fees from Wall Street and the health care industry.

As one 18 year-old student told the New York Times recently about Clinton, “sometimes you get this feeling that all of her sentences are owned by someone.”

This protector of the status quo and the gross imbalance of power between the few and the many expresses perfectly why Wall Street financiers like her so much and prove it with their large continuing monetary contributions.

Hillary Clinton is not “levelling with the American people,” when she keeps the transcripts (which she requested at the time) of her secret speeches (at $5,000 a minute!) before large Wall Street and trade association conventions. Her speaking contracts mandated secrecy. Clinton still hasn’t told voters what she was telling big bankers and many other industries from automotive to drugs to real estate developers behind closed doors.

She has the gall to accuse Bernie Sanders of not being transparent. Sanders is a presidential candidate who doesn’t take big-fee speeches or big donations from fat cat influence-peddlers, and his record is as clean as the Clintons’ political entanglements are sordid. (See Clinton Cash by Peter Schweizer.)

But it is in the area of foreign and military affairs that “Hillary the hawk” is most vulnerable. As Secretary of State her aggressiveness and poor judgement led her to the White House where, sweeping aside the strong objections of Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, she persuaded President Obama to bomb Libya and topple its dictatorial regime.

Gates had warned about the aftermath. He was right. Libya has descended into a ghastly state of chaotic violence that has spilled into neighboring African nations, such as Mali, and that opened the way for ISIS to establish an expanding base in central Libya. Her fellow hawks in Washington are now calling for U.S. special forces to go to Libya.

Whether as Senator on the Armed Services Committee or as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton has never met a war or raid she didn’t like, or a redundant, wasteful weapons system she was willing to aggressively challenge. As president, Hillary Clinton would mean more wars, more raids, more blowbacks, more military spending and more profits for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so prophetically warned about in his farewell address.

So when Bernie Sanders properly chided her for having as an advisor, Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, she bridled and tried to escape by asking Sanders to name his foreign policy advisors.

In fact, Kissinger and Clinton do have much in common about projecting the American Empire to brutal levels. Kissinger was the “butcher of Cambodia,” launching an illegal assault that destabilized that peaceful country into the Pol Pot slaughter of millions of innocents. She was the illegal “butcher of Libya,” an ongoing, unfolding tragedy whose blowbacks of “unintended consequences” are building by the week.

In a devastating recounting of Hillary Clinton’s disastrous war-making, Professor of Sustainable Economies at Columbia University, Jeffrey D. Sachs concludes that Clinton “is the candidate of the War Machine.” In a widely noted article on Huffington Post Professor Sachs, an advisor the United Nations on millennium development goals, called her record a “disaster,” adding that “Perhaps more than any other person, Hillary can lay claim to having stoked the violence that stretches from West Africa to Central Asia and that threatens U.S. security.”

The transformation of Hillary Clinton from a progressive young lawyer to a committed corporatist and militarist brings shame on the recent endorsement of her candidacy by the Congressional Black Caucus PAC.

But then, considering all the years of Clintonite double talk and corporate contributions going to the Black Caucus PAC (according to FEC reports January through December, 2015), and the Black Caucus conventions, why should anybody be surprised that Black Lives Matter and a growing surge of young African Americans are looking for someone in the White House who is not known for the Clintons’ sweet-talking betrayals?

See Michelle Alexander’s recent article in The Nation, “Hillary Clinton Does Not Deserve Black People’s Votes” for more information on this subject.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Economics, Militarism, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

‘UK must maintain submarine Trident’

Press TV – February 13, 2016

The UK must renew its submarine-borne Trident nuclear weapons system if it is to maintain its “outsized” role in the world affairs, said US Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

He went on stating that the deterrent allowed Britain to “continue to play that outsized role on the global stage that it does because of its moral standing and its historical standing.”

Carter said the submarine fleet helped the “special relationship” Britain enjoyed with the United States.

The statements come as a decision on replacing the aging fleet of four submarines which carry nuclear warheads is due to be made this year. While Prime Minister David Cameron is committed to renewal, the issue has caused deep divisions in the opposition Labour Party.

The Conservative government has said replacing the submarines will cost 31 billion pounds while media reports put the overall cost of renewing and maintaining a successor to Trident at more than 167 billion pounds over 32 years.

“It’s important that the military power matches that standing and so we’re very supportive of it. We depend upon the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom depends on us, that’s part of the special relationship,” the US official added.

While most lawmakers in Cameron’s party support keeping nuclear weapons, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn supports unilateral disarmament and is holding a review of the party’s policy.

That has led to deep divisions among its lawmakers and earlier this week Labour’s home affairs spokesman Andy Burnham said it might be impossible for the party to agree a position.

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US Propaganda Budget Reaches All-Time High

Sputnik – 13.02.2016

Western governments routinely sound the alarm over Russian “propaganda.” But President Obama’s new budget calls for a drastic increase in spending to America’s own foreign media arm, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which already spends millions more than its Russian counterpart.

Last year, the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the US federal agency responsible for Voice of America and Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, among others, requested a substantial budget increase. Seeking a boost of $30 million, the BBG’s budget soared to $751.5 million.

That was, evidently, not enough money. President Obama’s newly proposed budget for fiscal year 2017 proposes another massive increase in spending for the BBG. If granted, the agency will receive nearly $778 million, a roughly $27 million increase.

That sum is even more surprising given that the US repeatedly accuses Russia of spending vast sums on a “propaganda war” against the West through news outlets like RT and Sputnik. Yet the BBG’s budget is approximately twice that of Russia’s foreign media budget.

MIA Rossiya Segodnya, the parent company of Sputnik News, operates on a budget of $75 million, including both domestic and foreign media — 10 times less than the BBG.

RT, a publicly-funded, autonomous non-profit organization whose popularity is incomparable to VOA and Radio Free Europe, has an annual budget of slightly more than $300 million. That money — also significantly less than the sum allocated to the BBG — is used operate a number of satellite TV channels in multiple languages, a much costlier endeavor than the radio programs produced by the BBG’s outlets.

Taken together, both RT and Rossiya Segodnya’s budgets are a far cry from the BBG’s coffers, and while the agency claims to pursue objective journalism, this is hardly the case.

“[The BBG wants] to promote points of view that conform to American foreign and domestic policy,” political cartoonist Ted Rall told Sputnik.

“Objectivity does not exist in journalism. It’s impossible,” he added. “The best that a viewer, listener or reader can hope for when she or he consumes journalism is to understand the bias or biases of the relevant news outlet so that she or he can consider that point of view while consuming the news.”

The BBG, it seems, is especially unconcerned with objectivity. Last March, US Assistant Secretary of European Affairs Victoria Nuland told Congress that the BBG was specifically committing $23.2 million to “Russian-language programming,” adding that “the Kremlin’s pervasive propaganda campaign is poisoning minds across Russia, Russia’s periphery, and across Europe.”

The real reason for the budget increase has less to do with concerns of objectivity, and is actually about Washington’s concern that channels like RT are actually doing their job effectively, presenting audiences with a viewpoint that challenges those presented by the mainstream press.

Despite its relatively meager budget, RT has an international audience of millions. In the US alone, 2.8 million people in major cities watch RT weekly, according to 2014 Neilsen ratings. In the United Kingdom, RT viewership tops American behemoth Fox News. Across the Middle East, RT Arabic is watched by 6.7 million people every day.

With that kind of reach, it should come as no surprise that the US government is concerned enough to beef up its foreign media arm. Last April, Helle Dale, Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy at the Heritage Foundation, pointed out that Voice of America ranks 3,828 in Russia, while RT ranks 61.

“[Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]’s presence and reputation in Russia, it must be added, took a beating in 2012,” Dale admitted, citing poor management and the lack of qualified journalists. She also noted that RT is “flourishing.”

This lack of popularity could be directly proportional to its credibility.

“If the topic is something embarrassing to the United States, such as Julian Assange or Edward Snowden,” Rall told Sputnik, “I would trust Russian media more.”

February 13, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | Leave a comment

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