Japan Decides to Stop Works on US Airbase Relocation in Okinawa
Sputnik | March 4, 2016
TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has decided to halt landfill work on the Henoko coastal area of Nago city in Okinawa for the relocation of a US airbase under a court-mediated settlement plan, Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said Friday.
“The government has decided to accept the court-mediated settlement plan,” Nakatani said as quoted by Kyodo news agency.
Litigation between the authorities of the Okinawa prefecture and the central Japanese government is due to be completed under the settlement plan. The parties are expected to hold consultations to work out an acceptable final solution.The relocation of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma was agreed on in 2006. Current plans envision the base to be closed by February 2019 and relocated within the Okinawa prefecture.
The relocation decision has met resistance from Okinawa’s local authorities, with many Okinawa residents wishing to see the base gone rather than relocated. Okinawa Prefecture Governor Takeshi Onaga convinced the central government to temporarily halt construction in August 2015.
Elected in 2014, Onaga ran on promises to oppose the airbase’s construction. In mid-November, the Okinawa government was sued by the central government over the dispute.
Daesh Receiving Assistance From Turkey ‘With Ankara’s Tacit Approval’
Sputnik – March 4, 2016
Mounting evidence appears to indicate that Turkey is providing extensive support to Daesh and al-Nusra Front, the two key terrorist organizations that have turned Syria into ruins and wreak chaos elsewhere.
“Taking publicly available information into account, we’ve come to the conclusion that Turkey has directly or indirectly served as Daesh’s mediator and ally by helping the radical group to prepare and commit terrorist acts, acquire necessary resources and recruit new fighters,” Ertuğrul Kürkçü, the current Honorary President of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), told Sputnik.
Despite its tough anti-Daesh rhetoric, the Turkish leadership has done nothing to dismantle the existing terrorist network in the country. “After so many horrible terrorist acts, not a single real participant or mastermind has been arrested,” the Turkish politician observed.
Kürkçü also mentioned that some in the Turkish military and law enforcement agencies are in direct contact with the terrorist group. He was referring to a recent report, released by the Cumhuriyet newspaper.
The opposition daily published transcripts of several phone conversations between unnamed Turkish officers and a key Daesh operative in the region bordering Syria. The documents appear to show that Turkish officers not only frequently communicated, but worked with the militants.
It follows then that “at the moment Daesh receives support and recruits with the tacit approval of the Turkish government, as well as the country’s president and prime minister,” Kürkçü concluded.
Meanwhile, RT has published footage shot on the outskirts of the Syrian town of Azaz, which is controlled by al-Nusra Front militants. The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have been unable to liberate Azaz because Turkish forces shelled the area.
The YPG told RT’s Lizzie Phelan that al-Nusra Front fighters receive regular supplies of weapons from Turkey.
“We can actually see here the important border town of Azaz, that Turkey is determined to prevent YPG from taking. Just a little beyond that you can see the Bab al-Salam border crossing and a heavy flow of vehicles coming from Turkey into Azaz,” the RT correspondent narrated.
Indigenous Governor in Colombia Assassinated
Politician and member of the Yanacona community, William Alexander Joiner, was shot three times and killed Wednesday. | Photo: ONIC
teleSUR – March 3, 2016
An Indigenous lawmaker from Colombia’s southern department of Cauca was shot and killed Wednesday, in what officials think may have been a targeted or political assassination.
William Alexander Joiner, a lawmaker from the municipality of Rio Blanco and member of the Yanacona community, was shot by passing motorcyclists while in the capital of Cauca, Popoyan.
Eyewitnesses reported that the Indigenous governor was shot three times by three riders in the city’s historical center. Joiner was taken to University Hospital, San Jose de Popayan, where he later died.
Col. Pedro Rodelo Asfora, commander of the Metropolitan Police of Popoyan, said a reward of US$3,000 (10 million pesos) will be offered for anyone with information leading to the identification of the culprits.
Colonel Asfora said officials do not believe allegations that it was a robbery, and have not ruled out the possibility that it may have been a targeted attack.
The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), and its offices across the country, have condemned Joiner’s killing, saying it is part of a larger strategy to exterminate Indigenous leaders and people.
The ONIC, with its 47 subsidiaries across the country, as well as the National Indigenous Movement have demanded that the relevant authorities be assigned to investigate the crime, and that the culprits do not go unpunished.
Obama Renews Decree Calling Venezuela a ‘Threat’
teleSUR | March 3, 2016
U.S. President Barack Obama renewed Thursday an executive order issued last March that declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
The renewal of the decree is valid for one year and was revealed in a letter from Obama to congressional leaders. In the letter, the U.S. president claims that alleged conditions that first prompted the order had “not improved.”
The executive order was first issued by Obama in March 2015 and provoked a storm of controversy inside Venezuela and a backlash throughout Latin America.
Leaders from throughout the region condemned the decree.
All 33 members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States expressed their opposition to the U.S. government’s move and called for it to be reversed.
“CELAC calls upon the government of the United States of America and the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to launch a dialogue, under the principles of respect for sovereignty, non-interference in the internal affairs of the states, the self-determination of the peoples and the democratic and institutional order in line with international law,” read the unanimous statement by the regional bloc.
The United Nations of South America also strongly criticized Obama’s order.
Inside Venezuela, millions signed a petition asserting that the country was not a threat and called for the decree to be repealed.
The U.S. president eventually responded to the outcry, admitting that Venezuela “does not pose a threat” to the United States in an interview with EFE.
The order allows the U.S. government to impose sanctions on Venezuela.
US B-52s to perform ‘not normal’ exercises in Norway
RT | March 3, 2016
Three B-52 Stratofortress bombers that have moved from the US to Europe are set to participate in military exercises in Norway. A top US commander characterized the redeployment as “not normal.”
The move, which began last week with the bombers and 200 support airmen being stationed in Spain, is part of the Obama administration’s build-up of US forces in Europe in response to European countries’ anxiety over perceived Russian aggression.
However, US Air Force General Philip Breedlove said Tuesday that while the deployment of the B-52s was abnormal, the aircraft had been scheduled for NATO exercises and the move was not prompted by the actions of Russia, the Washington Post reported.
“It is a part of the exercise objectives… not a part of any response [to Russian actions],” Breedlove insisted, according to Sputnik.
The three bombers are assigned to the 2nd Bomb Wing and were rebased from Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana on Friday, and will temporarily stay at Spain’s Morón Air Base.
“Strategic bomber deployments enhance the readiness and training vital to rapidly projecting global power and responding to any potential crisis or challenge,” Admiral Cecil D. Haney, the commander of US Strategic Command, said in a statement.
The bombers provide a unique complement to the nuclear delivery capabilities of intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines, Haney added.
The Norwegian exercise, called Cold Response, is meant to practice “high-intensity operations in winter conditions,” according to the Pentagon. More than a dozen NATO countries will participate in the rehearsal that is meant to underscore NATO’s ability “to defend against any threat in any environment.”
In February, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that US military spending on Europe would be more than quadrupled from $689 million in 2016 to $3.4 billion in 2017.
MH17 Crash: More Questions Arise as US Fails to Provide Promised Info
Sputnik – March 3, 2016
Dutch MPs have held a parliamentary debate on the ongoing investigation into the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine. The discussion focused on radar data and satellite imagery that US Secretary of State John Kerry claimed the United States possessed and which it called strong evidence.
“We picked up the imagery of this launch. We know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing, and it was exactly at the time that this aircraft disappeared from the radar,” Kerry said in a July 2014 interview.
Question 1. Why did not the US provide this information to the Dutch investigators?
The Dutch MPs and members of the Dutch Safety Board insisted that they had seen no evidence of what John Kerry described as “irrefutable proof.”
Question 2. Why is the investigation taking so long?
The parliamentarians also complained about the investigation into the MH17 disaster taking too long and obvious attempts to keep the public in the dark about its progress.
Question 3. Why haven’t the key documents related to the investigation been made available to the Dutch MPs?
Some important documents related to the probe have been classified indefinitely, which means that they will be kept under wraps for good.
The reason probably being that if these documents were released, they would compromise the method of how this intelligence was collected.
If the US has either secret ground based radar in Ukraine or satellites with unknown capabilities, they will not want to disclose their collection abilities to the public.
Question 4. What is being done to prevent such tragedies ever happening again?
The lawmakers also wanted to know what was being done to rule out such tragedies in future again and make sure that civilian aircraft never fly over war zones.
When asked by representatives of the far-right Dutch Freedom Party whether such incidents could be ruled out in future, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that such guarantees simply did not exist.
When asked during a daily briefing in Washington whether the US had provided Dutch investigators with the data that Secretary Kerry said the US had, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: “I believe we have collaborated with the Dutch in their investigation. To what level of detail, I just don’t know.”
RT correspondent Gayane Chichakyan asked whether the Americans had shared vital radar information with the Dutch.
“I know we’ve collaborated with them; I just don’t know to what level we’ve shared information with them. I’d have to look into that,” Mark Toner said.
Obama extends anti-Russia sanctions for another year
Press TV – March 3, 2016
US President Barack Obama has signed a new Executive Order that extends economic sanctions against Russia for another year.
The decree, published Wednesday on the official White House website, states that economic and financial sanctions imposed on Moscow over its involvement in the Ukrainian crisis will stay in place until March 6, 2017.
The decision came as “Russia’s actions continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” Obama said in the document.
“I found that the actions and policies of the Government of the Russian Federation with respect to Ukraine undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets,” the president added.
The move drew criticism from the Kremlin, with Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters on Thursday that the decision was regrettable.
The sanctions were originally introduced against Moscow in March 2014, after Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea joined Russia. The move prompted the US to press sanctions against Russia’s energy and finance sectors.
The European Union followed suit shortly after, introducing its own set of sanctions against Moscow that targeted a number of Russian politicians and businessmen, and placed restrictions on lending to Russia’s major state-owned banks, military and oil firms.
On the military side, exporting dual-use equipment to Russia was banned and all future EU-Moscow military deals were put on hold.
According to EU spokeswoman Maja Kocijancic, the bans sought to force Russia to comply with the ceasefire introduced by the Minsk agreement.
Putin signed the agreement with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in February last year, following negotiations held in the presence of French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The deal introduces a complete ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weaponry from border areas, and holding free elections in the region.
Some 30 towns, villages in Syria’s Hama join national reconciliation
Press TV – March 3, 2016
Some 30 towns and villages in the Syrian province of Hama have joined the national reconciliation process in the war-torn country through the mediation of the Russian center for reconciliation, the head of the center says.
“The work is very meticulous and delicate, everything here is based on religious and national matters, but overall about 30 communities have signed an application form to join the peace process and negotiations,” Lt. Col. German Rudenko told reporters on Thursday.
Rudenko noted that the agreement signed by representatives of local communities includes points banning the use of weapons against government forces, facilitating the peace process and return of state power to the region.
On Monday, a large number of militants from Syria’s southern province of Dara’a put down their weapons in exchange for amnesty from the government.
The militants filed their personal information and wrote a letter vowing not to engage in any anti-government activities. The government will provide them with certificates in the future to get back to normal life.
Under the national reconciliation, devised by the Syrian government, citizens who have been involved in the five-year-old militancy in the Arab country could become part of a rehabilitation program if they promise to lay down weapons and accept government investigation. The Syrian Ministry for National Reconciliation Affairs was established in 2012.
On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the ceasefire agreement in Syria, which was brokered by Russia and the United States and entered into force on February 27, has been violated 31 times over the past three days.
Zakharova did not specify which side of the conflict had broken the truce.
When asked about the presence of the Kurds in the upcoming peace talks in Geneva on March 9, Zakharova said the participants are invited by the United Nations, but Russia believes that peace talks without the participation of the Kurds will be imperfect.
“The talks without the participation of the Kurds will be incomplete, and it will affect the process, because the Kurds have a large population, they are a faction and they have participated in the ground counter-terrorism operations. It is not correct to ignore or take no account of these factors only because some delegates don’t want the Kurds to participate in it,” she said.
Turkey has already announced opposition to the presence of the Kurds in the peace talks. Ankara regards the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and its umbrella group the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) as an ally of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militant group, which has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey since the 1980s.
Turkey has been heavily shelling the positions of Syrian Kurdish fighters who are battling Takfiri groups near the two countries’ border.
The Syrian government has said it accepts the terms of the deal on condition that military efforts against Daesh and the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front continue.
Photo – © Sputnik/ Iliya Pitalev
US defense establishment believes Putin must be ‘defeated’
By Bryan MacDonald | RT | March 3, 2016
Russian President Vladimir Putin. © Alexei Druzhinin / Sputnik
Certain people in America’s defense establishment believe that only governments that do Washington’s bidding are “truly legitimate.” Others have ideological reasons to stir up tensions with Russia. This fuels discord and creates an unstable world.
Imagine if a major Russian media outlet carried an article with the headline, “How We Can Defeat Obama.” It’s pretty certain that within minutes various pro-NATO analysts would be all over Twitter labeling it as “hybrid warfare,”“Russian aggression” or even, heaven forbid, “hot war.” Or whatever this month’s agreed catchphrase is.
Let’s take it a step further. Ponder what would happen if the same pundits then realized the author was a recently redundant Russian Defense Department official. Without any doubt, the concern-o-meter would reach the stratosphere. Soon, the topic would be trending on Neocon Twitter. Neocon Twitter, by the way, is different than normal Twitter. In this version, all dissenting voices are blocked.
Last week, Newsweek published Evelyn Farkas, the former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia (who vacated the post only last October). In her incredibly aggressive op-ed, Farkas explained “How We Can Defeat Putin.” The same Putin who is the popularly elected President of Russia. The world’s second strongest military power.
Farkas is now an employee of the pro-NATO Atlantic Council, which the formerly venerable Newsweek appears to have partnered with. The Atlantic Council is funded by the US State Department, the US Army, the US Air Force, the UAE & Bahraini governments and various other vested interests. None of them are particularly supportive of Russia. On the other hand, most would directly benefit from increased NATO spending.
Throwing Money At NATO
How does Farkas propose “defeating” Putin? By spending more money on NATO, of course. Also, she suggests sending more weapons to Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Of course, it was American meddling in the first two that created the current tensions. The latter country is currently enduring a political crisis and mass protests. This is ignored in the western media, because the corrupt incumbent regime is pro-Washington.
Farkas suggests arming the Syrian opposition, the loose coalition that includes the Al-Nusra front, which is part of Al Qaeda, the same folks who attacked New York on September 11, 2001. Not to mention, that such a course of action would destroy the nascent ceasefire in that unfortunate country.
Reading between the lines, Farkas is essentially suggesting that Washington use Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia (and anti-Assad forces in Syria) as pawns against Russia. With no concern for the economic wellbeing, or safety, of the people who live in those countries (or those in Russia). The complicated ethnic situation in those regions also seems to be irrelevant. The only priority is ‘American interests.’ Which are sacrosanct.
The fact that Farkas is the daughter of a Soviet-era Hungarian dissident is very relevant here. Charles Farkas fled Budapest, for America, following the abortive 1956 uprising. That embryonic freedom movement was brutally oppressed by Nikita Khrushchev’s USSR. Thus, it’s understandable that Evelyn has an axe to grind with Russia, even if many of its current leaders weren’t even born at that time.
Indeed, it seems almost certain that Farkas’ rhetoric projects her own deeply embedded distrust of Russia. Naturally, that hasn’t harmed her career. Hawkish anti-Russian views are attractive to the US military industry, which requires a tangible enemy to maintain funding levels. A glance at her biography shows a meteoric rise, which includes top positions at NATO.
The Big Prize
However, Farkas’s perspective outlines all that’s wrong with how the US interacts with the rest of the world today. She’s calling for the defeat of a leader with 80 percent approval ratings, because he doesn’t support US foreign policy objectives. If Putin prevents America taking over the world, he must be removed. It’s Doctor Evil stuff.
This fanatical analyst believes that Russia is a threat to America. However, it’s NATO which has been expanding during the past two decades, while Moscow has taken a defensive, often highly reactionary posture. For example, in Syria, Assad’s forces had the upper hand in Aleppo and would surely have taken the city, but Putin agreed a ceasefire rather than continue the bloodshed there. A real-life expansionist warmonger would have kept the fighting going.
In reality, it’s America which has been aggressive in this century. Illegally invading Iraq, destroying Libya, facilitating the collapse of Yemen and the Syrian Civil War. In Russia’s backyard, Washington has openly fomented uprisings in Georgia and Ukraine, the results of which have subsequently been rejected at the ballot box. The US-backed regimes in Kiev and Tbilisi were both eventually voted out after the “Orange” and “Rose” revolutions. The current ‘Maidan’ administration in Kiev now has lower approval ratings than the democratically elected, if corrupt, government it replaced.
This indicates that they were never popular upheavals to begin with, but rather driven by capital city liberals, without mass backing in the provinces.
The Washington elite believes that it can dictate to Russians about how they should be governed. They also present fringe opposition figures, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Garry Kasparov, as realistic alternatives to Putin. In the real world, serious Russia experts know that these characters have almost no support inside the country.
Russia After Putin?
As it happens, should Putin be removed as President, or voluntarily resign, it’s much more likely that his successor would be far more hardline in their attitude to the West. By Russian standards, Putin is a moderate. The vast majority of Russians are far less tolerant of America’s behavior than their President.
Another Neocon obsession is with NATO expansion. Their argument is that countries wish to join the alliance and that it’s not Russia’s business. That fails to take into account how poor these states are. The likes of Montenegro and Albania can choose to use their own meager resources to maintain a military or (https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spending-vs-world/) have their defense spending largely looked after by America. The same America that spends as much on its army as the next nine countries combined.
With NATO, comes money. Lots of it. Dollars are attractive to impoverished nations. Doubtless, if Russia could match US largesse, the situation would probably be very different. Thus, America buys loyalty and these nations become little more than US military bases in Washington’s eyes.
The problem with Farkas’ Newsweek diatribe, and other similarly bellicose American discourse, is how downright dangerous it is. These people believe that any leadership, no matter how popular at home, with an agenda contrary to Washington is invalid and must be removed or defeated. They don’t acknowledge the absurdity that if Russia followed the same logic, there would be an apocalypse. This is because they believe that only the US is allowed to have – and pursue – ‘interests.’
A certain cabal in Washington thinks that only America, and countries that do its bidding are “truly legitimate.” They can only countenance the US agenda, at the expense of all others. This is a recipe for disaster.
Bryan MacDonald is a journalist. He worked in Dublin for many years, for Ireland on Sunday and the Evening Herald. He was also theatre critic of The Daily Mail for a period and a news, features and opinion writer. He now mainly covers Russia.
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How the occupied mentality syndrome works
Saudi Arabia on the American chessboard – Part 3
By B. J. Sabri | American Herald Tribune | June 27, 2016
Read part 2: “The occupied mentality Syndrome“
Previously I argued whether Saudi Arabia’s repeated involvements in U.S. interventions and wars stem from free national will or in response to a specific condition. For starters, in Saudi Arabia there is no national will. In Saudi Arabia, the national will is the will of the Al Saud clan. Still, when a major Arab state allies itself with a superpower that committed unspeakable crimes against humanity in almost every Arab country, then something is wrong. This fact alone should compel us to examine the U.S.-Saudi relation for one exceptional reason. As a result of the U.S.-Saudi wars, hundreds of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia have lost their lives. Millions became displaced in their own homelands. And millions more rendered refugees.
Attributing the Saudi policies to the bonds of “partnership” with the U.S. is frivolous. There are no bonds between these two thugs except those of business, military deals, secret plots, and wars. Proving this point, bonds such as these have no space for the American and Saudi peoples to share significant cultural or societal exchanges. If partnership is not the reason for the Saudi contribution to the U.S. strategy of empire and imperialism, then another reason must exist.
This leads to three possibilities. … continue
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