Skip to main content

Home/ Socialism and the End of the American Dream/ Group items tagged buffer-zone

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Paul Merrell

U.S. to Keep Warplanes in Jordan, Pressing Syria - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Ratcheting up the pressure on President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the United States will keep American warplanes and antimissile batteries in Jordan, officials said Saturday.
  • The decision, which came at the request of Jordan, means that a detachment of American F-16 warplanes and Patriot missile-defense systems would remain in Jordan after a military exercise there concludes next week. The move followed President Obama’s decision last week to send arms to Syrian rebels and came as efforts were being made on multiple fronts on Saturday to increase the pressure on the government.
  • In Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry renewed his efforts to persuade Iraq to curtail Iranian air shipments of arms to Syria.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The Central Intelligence Agency has been training rebels in Jordan under a covert program, and weapons that are to be sent to the opposition by the United States are expected to be funneled through Jordan, both of which might heighten the risk of Syrian retaliation, including against possible training areas.
  • Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, highlighted the challenges in imposing a no-fly zone in Syria in a conference call with reporters on Thursday, and made it clear that the White House was not eager to take on such an open-ended commitment. But the Patriots and F-16s would have some utility if the United States decided to support the establishment of a buffer zone between Syria and Jordan. Contingency plans for such a zone, which would be enforced by Jordanian troops on the Syrian side of the border and supported politically by the United States, have already been developed.
  •  
    A U.S.-backed invasion of Syria by Jordan to establish a "buffer zone", enforced by U.S. Patriot missiles and F16 fighters? Not to mention the U.S. carrier/missile fleet in the Mediterranean. This would still be an war of aggression, invasion of another nation's sovereignty. A "buffer zone" in context is in effect just a smaller no-fly zone. It still needs Security Council approval unless Obama is willing to risk launching WWW III without the Security Council's blessing.  The steady escalation of military force positioning around Syria continues. But it's a tinder box situation. One mistake by either side and it could be Hell on Earth. 
Paul Merrell

Now Jordan Announces Plans To Invade Syria | Global Research - Centre for Research on G... - 0 views

  • Just one day after Turkey’s announcement of plans to invade Syria by implementing a “no-fly zone” or “buffer zone,” Jordan has now announced that it is consideringdoing the same. According to a report by the Financial Times published on Monday, the Jordanians also plan to implement a “buffer zone” on the southern border with Syria, stretching across the provinces of Deraa and Suwayda. The “buffer zone” would most likely include the city of Deraa and, like the Turkish incarnation, a “militarized zone” to “separate the buffer area from government forces.” While the Jordanian military would obviously be involved, the zone would largely be manned by terrorists receiving support from the United States and the West.
Paul Merrell

Proposed buffer zone leads al Qaeda to withdraw fighters from northern Aleppo province ... - 0 views

  • The Al Nusrah Front, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, has released a statement saying its fighters have been ordered to withdraw from their frontline positions north of Aleppo. Al Nusrah’s jihadists had been fighting against the Islamic State in the area. The move comes in response to Turkey’s attempt to establish a buffer zone for forces fighting Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s organization. The statement, which was released via Twitter on August 9, does not indicate that Al Nusrah is siding with the Islamic State in the multi-sided conflict. The group makes it clear that it will continue to fight Baghdadi’s men elsewhere. Instead, Turkey’s cooperation with the US-led coalition, which has targeted veteran al Qaeda leaders in northern Syria, has forced Al Nusrah to change tactics. The al Qaeda arm says it is relinquishing control of its territory in the northern part of the Aleppo province. Other rebel groups will step into the void. Al Nusrah criticizes the proposed buffer zone in its statement, saying it is intended to serve Turkey’s national security interests and is not part of a real effort to aid the mujahdeen’s cause. The Turkish government fears a Kurdish state on its southern border, according to Al Nusrah, and that is the real impetus behind its decision. The Kurds are one of the Islamic State’s main opponents and have gained territory at the expense of Baghdadi’s jihadists in recent months.
  • There is an even simpler explanation for Al Nusrah’s rejection of Turkey’s buffer zone: the US has been striking select al Qaeda operatives in Al Nusrah’s ranks. The Pentagon announced earlier this month that it had begun flying drones out of the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. Some of the air missions are reportedly backing up US-trained rebel forces on the ground. Those very same fighters have battled Al Nusrah, which has killed or captured a number of the “moderate” rebels.
  • Separately, the US has also repeatedly targeted senior al Qaeda leaders in Al Nusrah’s ranks. Labeled the “Khorasan Group,” this cadre of al Qaeda veterans has been plotting attacks in the West.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In September 2014, Francis Ricciardone, the former US ambassador to Turkey, accused the Turks of working with Al Nusrah. “We ultimately had no choice but to agree to disagree,” Ricciardone said of his discussion with Turkish officials. “The Turks frankly worked with groups for a period, including Al Nusrah, whom we finally designated as we’re not willing to work with.” Since early on the rebellion against the Assad regime, Turkey has permitted large numbers of foreign jihadists to travel into Syria. At various points, this benefitted not only Al Nusrah, but also al Qaeda’s rivals in the Islamic State, which Turkey now opposes. For instance, in October 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported on meetings between US officials, Turkish authorities and others. “Turkish officials said the threat posed by [Al Nusrah], the anti-Assad group, could be dealt with later,” according to US officials and Syrian opposition leaders who spoke with the newspaper. Officials also told the publication that the US government’s decision to designate Al Nusrah as a terrorist group in December 2012 was intended “in part to send a message to Ankara about the need to more tightly control the arms flow.” Eventually, in 2014, Turkey also designated Al Nusrah as a terrorist organization. Turkish authorities have also reportedly launched sporadic raids on al Qaeda-affiliated sites inside their country.
  • Still, al Qaeda has found Turkey to be a hospitable environment in the past. According to the US Treasury Department, al Qaeda has funneled cash and fighters through Turkish soil to Al Nusrah.
Paul Merrell

US Invasion of Syria Begins | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • As previously warned about in June of 2015, the United States has announced that it will officially begin ground operations in Syria through the use of special forces. The Washington Post in its article, “Obama seeks to intensify operations in Syria with Special Ops troops,”would report that:
  • President Obama is sending a small number of Special Operations troops to northern Syria, marking the first full-time deployment of U.S. forces to the chaotic country.  The mission marks a major shift for Obama, whose determination to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has been balanced by an abiding worry that U.S. troops not be pulled too deeply into the in­trac­table Syrian conflict.  The latest deployment will involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers, who will work with resistance forces battling the Islamic State in northern Syria but will not engage in direct combat, Obama administration officials said.
  • Unfortunately for US policymakers, it is no longer only Syria that US special forces and accompanying airpower must worry about. Russia, by invitation of Damascus, is now operating militarily across Syria, including along Turkey’s border where the US has long sought to establish its “safe zones.” The US has openly committed to the invasion and occupation of Syrian territory. It does so with the intent of carving Syria up into a series of dysfunctional, weak zones to literally “deconstruct” Syria as a functioning nation-state. It is doing this unable to cite any credible threat Syria poses to US national security and without any semblance of a mandate granted by the United Nations. It also does so with the prospect of triggering direct war with nuclear-armed Russia in a region Russia is operating legally.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • While the US claims this move is to “defeat the Islamic State (ISIS),” it is instead clearly a move to establish long-sought “buffer zones” or “safe zones” in Syria where the Syrian government can no longer operate. US airpower will also undoubtedly be used to cover these special forces, creating a defacto no-fly-zone wherever they operate. The map accompanying the Washington Post article clearly shows ISIS territory straddling the last remaining supply corridor being used to supply the terror group as well as others including Al Qaeda’s al Nusra Front from NATO-member Turkey’s territory. US special forces will likely begin operating in these areas, and zones carved out as US operations expand. The eventual outcome, if these operations are successful, will be the division and destruction of Syria as a nation-state. This is more than mere speculation – this is a conclusion drawn by signed and dated policy papers produced by the Brookings Institution, who has called for such zones since as early as 2012, but under different contrived pretexts.
  • America’s latest actions are a desperate move sought by an increasingly hysterical political and corporate-financier establishment in Washington and on Wall Street. Recent hearings conducted by the US Senate Committee on Armed Services have struggled to produce a credible response to America’s unraveling criminal conspiracy aimed at Syria, particularly in the wake of Russia’s recent intervention. The committee and witnesses brought before it, have struggled to formulate a response – however – no-fly-zones and US troops on the ground have been discussed at length. It is a poorly calculated bluff. The presence of US special forces and US airpower operating illegally in and above Syria, meant to deny Syria access to its own territory will take time to implement. The official number of US special forces being sent into Syria is said to not exceed 50. Syria and its allies could insert an equal or larger number of forces into these same areas to essentially create a “safe zone” from “safe zones.” Bringing America’s illegal actions before the UN would also be a sound measure ahead of potential confrontations with US forces operating uninvited in Syria. The premise that ISIS must be fought and defeated by striking them in Iraq and Syria is betrayed by America’s own admission that the organization has already spread far beyond the borders of either nation. ISIS is clearly not supporting itself on the limited resources found within either country. Were the US truly interested in stopping ISIS, it would strike at its sponsors in Ankara and Riyadh. Of course, it was clear, well over a year ago, that the appearance of ISIS would be used intentionally to accomplish US geopolitical objectives in both Syria and Iraq, serving as a pretext for wider, long-sought after direct Western military intervention.
  • The myth that dividing and destroying Syria while deposing its sitting government will somehow alleviate the violence in Syria and reduce the ongoing migrant crisis Europe faces, is betrayed by the fact that a similar premise used to sell intervention in Libya has only led to greater chaos in North Africa, and the creation of the migrant crisis in the first place. If the world, including Europe, seeks to prevent the spread of ISIS and the expansion of an already growing migrant crisis, stopping the United States and its partners before they create another “Libya” in the Levant must become top priority. And while it is unlikely that Europe will show any resolve in doing so, it would be hoped that Syria and its allies realize the consequences of failing now, at this juncture, and to whom’s borders the chaos will attempt to cross over into next.
Paul Merrell

Israel Grants Golan Heights Oil License - Business Insider - 0 views

  • srael has granted a U.S. company the first license to explore for oil and gas in the occupied Golan Heights, John Reed of the Financial Times reports. A local subsidiary of the New York-listed company Genie Energy — which is advised by former vice president Dick Cheney and whose shareholders include Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch — will now have exclusive rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights. That geographic location will likely prove controversial. Israel seized the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981. Its administration of the area — which is not recognized by international law — has been mostly peaceful until the Syrian civil war broke out 23 months ago. "This action is mostly political – it’s an attempt to deepen Israeli commitment to the occupied Golan Heights," Israeli political analyst Yaron Ezrahi told FT. "The timing is directly related to the fact that the Syrian government is dealing with violence and chaos and is not free to deal with this problem.”
  • Earlier this month we reported that Israel is considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles from Golan into Syria to secure the 47-mile border against the threat of Islamic radicals in the area. The move would overtake the UN Disengagement Observer Force Zone that was established in 1973 to end the Yom Kippur War and to provide a buffer zone between the two countries.
Paul Merrell

WHO ARE SYRIA'S WHITE HELMETS (terrorist linked)? - 0 views

  • The White Helmets have been demonstrated to be a primarily US and NATO funded organisation embedded in Al Nusra and ISIS held areas exclusively. This is an alleged “non-governmental” organisation, the definition of an NGO, that thus far has received funding from at least three major NATO governments, including $23 million from the US Government and $29 million (£19.7 million) from the UK Government, $4.5 million (€4 million) from the Dutch Government. In addition, it receives material assistance and training funded and run by a variety of other EU Nations. A request has been put into the EU Secretary General to provide all correspondence relating to the funding and training of the White Helmets. By law this information must be made transparent and available to the public. There has been a concerted campaign by a range of investigative journalists to expose the true roots of these Syria Civil Defence operatives, known as the White Helmets.  The most damning statement, however, did not come from us, but from their funders and backers in the US State Department who attempted to explain the US deportation of the prominent White Helmet leader, Raed Saleh, from Dulles airport on the 18th April 2016.
  • To condense our research on the Syria White Helmets, we have collated all relevant articles and interviews below.  We condemn wholeheartedly any senseless murder but we recommend that there is serious public and political re-evauluation of the morality of funding a US NATO organisation established to further “regime change” objectives in Syria. Mass murder is being committed across Syria and the region by US and NATO proxy terrorist militants. Funding the White Helmets will serve to prolong the suffering and bloodshed of the Syrian people.
  • Vanessa Beeley 21st Century Wire Who are the White Helmets? This is a question that everyone should be asking themselves. A hideous murder of a rising star in UK politics, Jo Cox MP, has just sent shock waves across the world. Within hours of her death, a special fund was established in her name to raise money for 3 causes. One of those causes is the Syrian White Helmets. Are we seeing a cynical and obscene exploitation of Jo Cox’s murder to revive the flagging credibility of a US State Department & UK Foreign Office asset on the ground in Syria, created and sustained as first responders for the US and NATO Al Nusra/Al Qaeda forces?
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • FOLLOW THE MONEY: The White Helmets are just one component of the new NGO Complex.
  • “It was unclear whether Mr. Saleh’s name might have shown up on a database, fed by a variety of intelligence and security agencies and intended to guard against the prospect of terrorism suspects slipping into the country.” ~ New York Times Mark Toner, State Department spokesperson: “And any individual – again, I’m broadening my language here for specific reasons, but any individual in any group suspected of ties or relations with extremist groups or that we had believed to be a security threat to the United States, we would act accordingly. But that does not, by extension, mean we condemn or would cut off ties to the group for which that individual works for.” http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=792ODrhwKkk So we come back to the initial question.  Why is the tragic death of a passionate and ambitious politician being exploited? Why are all political parties in the UK endorsing the Jo Cox fund to provide financial assistance for an organisation the UK Government is already funding and training? Why are the public once more being used as political pawns to further our government’s imperialist objectives inside Syria and their covert, illegal, proxy intervention of a sovereign nation via both terrorist forces and phony humanitarian first responders?
  • The White Helmets are perhaps being demonstrated to be the most crucial component of the US and NATO shadow state building inside Syria.  Led by the US and UK this group is essential to the propaganda stream that facilitates the continued media and political campaign against the elected Syrian government and permits the US and NATO to justify their regime of crippling economic and humanitarian sanctions against the Syrian people. If this latest mechanised ‘NGO’ blueprint is successful then we could see it being re-deployed as key to future neo-colonialist projects. The White Helmets are a direct intra-venus line into the terrorist enclaves within Syria, acting as a conduit for information, equipment and medical support to maintain the US NATO forces. Is this the future of warfare, is this the “swarming” outlined in a 2000 report produced by the RAND Corporation and entitled: Swarming and the Future of Conflict. “The emergence of a military doctrine based on swarming pods and clusters requires that defense policymakers develop new approaches to connectivity and control and achieve a new balance between the two. Far more than traditional approachesto battle, swarming clearly depends upon robust information flows. Securing these flows, therefore, can be seen as a necessary condition for successful swarming.”
  • An important “previously unpublished interview with Jo Cox” was released today by Adam Barnett.  In this interview Jo Cox makes a clear statement regarding the way the UK Government should be maximising the use of their assets, the White Helmets, inside Syria: “Second thing: many organisations, whether it’s the White Helmets or others, have got really creative ideas about how to operate under the siege and civil war conditions. They’ve got really interesting ideas about channelling money, getting aid in, thinking creatively about how they operate, which DfID [Department for International Development] should be listening to. [emphasis added] And then the third thing is about giving airtime to civil society groups, making sure that they get more time on panels– and making sure this is representative of the diversity of civil society views as well, whether that’s women’s groups, or the White Helmets, or NGOs, or just doctors or people who are literally trying to get on with making society function in response to the humanitarian crisis.” Is this why we are seeing what is, in effect, crowd funding for  proxy war? Do we really want to look back and be “judged by history” for enabling conflict and state terrorism, violating international law and invading sovereign nations.  Are we prepared to accept the consequences of such actions, consequences that should be taken by our governments alone but are now being diffused outwards to the general public.  Is this an attempt by our government to disassociate themselves from their criminal actions?
  • Vanessa Beeley speaks to Mike Robinson of UK Column about recent executions of Syrian Arab Army soldiers celebrated by White Helmet operatives.” Watch:
  • “Speaking to Mnar Muhawesh on ‘Behind the Headline,’ investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley pulls back the curtain on the anti-Assad ‘freedom fighters’ and ‘moderate rebels,’ revealing a carefully calibrated propaganda campaign to drive US intervention in the war-torn country.” Watch:
  • Video made by Hands Off Syria in Sydney Australia based upon the research of Vanessa Beeley on the White Helmets. Watch: http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5k6hSS6xBTw Mint Press: US Propaganda War in Syria: Report Ties White Helmets to US Intervention “White Helmets primary function is propaganda” reported an independent journalist, who tied the group to George Soros and the controversial advocacy group Avaaz.” Change.org Petition: Do NOT give 2016 Nobel Peace Prize to Syria White Helmets This petition has currently garnered 1370 signatures. The White Helmets have received over $ 40 million in funding from the US Government [USAID] and the UK Foreign Office despite their claims of being “fiercely independent and accepts no money from governments, corporations or anyone directly involved in the Syrian conflict.” Sputnik: Soros Sponsored NGO in Syria Aims at Ousting Assad not Saving Civilians “One of the largest humanitarian organizations operating in war-torn Syria – the White Helmets – has been accused of being an anti-government propaganda arm that encourages direct foreign intervention.” 21st Century Wire: Syria’s White Helmets, War by Way of Deception Part 1 This piece examines the role of the Syria Civil Defence aka,’The White Helmets’ currently operating in Syria and take a closer look at their financial sources and mainstream media partners in order to better determine if they are indeed “neutral” as media moguls proclaim these “humanitarians” to be.
  • 21st Century Wire: Part II. Syria’s White Helmets, “Moderate” Executioners The NGO hydra has no more powerful or influential serpentine head in Syria than the Syria Civil Defence aka The White Helmets who, according to their leader and creator, James Le Mesurier, hold greater sway than even ISIS or Al Nusra confabs over the Syrian communities. This article explores the White Helmet involvement in terrorist executions of civilians particularly in Aleppo. 21st Century Wire: Humanitarian Propaganda War Against Syria – Led by Avaaz and the White Helmets “The White Helmets in their haste to point the finger of blame at Moscow, managed to tweet about Russia’s air strikes several hours before the Russian Parliament actually authorized the use of the Air Force in Syria.” ~ Sott.net UK Column: Syria White Helmets “Mike Robinson speaks to Vanessa Beeley about the so-called NGO, the White Helmets. Are they really the humanitarian first responder organisation they claim to be?” Watch: http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLa9ztvAGWw Eva Bartlett: Human Rights Front Groups Warring on Syria This page will continue to expand as more so-called “Human Rights” groups are outed for propagating anti-Syria war rhetoric and false allegations against the Syrian government and Syrian Arab Army.  As it is, the list of players is quite extensive.  Below, I’ll list the known HR front people and groups (many, if not most, with links to the US State Department and criminals like George Soros). Ron Paul Institute: Syria the Propaganda Ring We have demonstrated that the White Helmets are an integral part of the propaganda vanguard that ensures obscurantism of fact and propagation of Human Rights fiction that elicits the well-intentioned and self righteous response from a very cleverly duped public. A priority for these NGOs is to keep pushing the No Fly Zone scenario which has already been seen to have disastrous implications for innocent civilians in Libya, for example. Dissident Voice: Seven Steps of Highly Effective Manipulators “But White Helmets primary function is propaganda. White Helmets demonizes the Assad government and encourages direct foreign intervention.”
  • Prof Tim Anderson: Syrian Women Denounce the White Helmets “A range of Syrian women have denounced the US-UK funded group the ‘White Helmets’, led by a former British soldier and recently revealed to be financed by USAID. They come from all the country’s communities (e.g. Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Christian) but, like most Syrians, prefer to identify simply as Syrian.” Khamenei.ir: Interview with Prof. Tim Anderson NATO’s Dirty War on Syria “The ‘White Helmets’ are a Wall Street creation, funded and led by the US and the UK, to give ‘humanitarian’ cover to the al Qaeda groups they support.” AlternativeView7:  Syria: White Helmets Exposed “We live in a world governed by propaganda where the majority of media mouthpieces are gagged by those who own them and only permitted to release information that serves the narrative of the ruling elite or Imperialist powers.”
  • Please note that the child that is rescued is very clean considering she has allegedly been buried under the rubble of “regime” bombing raids..we do not in any way wish to detract from the heroic work of the true first responders on the ground in Syria, the real Syria Civil Defence and the Red Crescent who are never mentioned in the western media but we do wish to draw your attention to the propaganda methods being employed to amplify US and NATO narratives that are insisting upon “regime change.”
  • We will add to the above articles and interviews as they become available.  Vanessa Beeley has just completed a speaking tour of the UK and Iran during which she highlighted the role of the NGO complex in general and the White Helmets in particular as a new breed of predatory humanitarianism being unleashed against target nations. Videos of her talks will be published as soon as they become available from the AV7 conference and Frome Stop War.
  • Author Vanessa Beeley is a special contributor to 21WIRE, and since 2011, she has spent most of her time in the Middle East reporting on events there – as a independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She is also a US Peace Council delegate and a volunteer with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. See more of her work at her blog The Wall Will Fall.
Paul Merrell

The Daily Star - Online Edition - 0 views

  • Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the Shiite Hezbollah group in Lebanon, appeared unwavering in his support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. He signaled for the first time the Iranian-backed militant group will stay involved in the civil war after helping Assad's army recapture the key town of Qusair in central Homs province from rebels. "We will be where we should be. We will continue to bear the responsibility we took upon ourselves," Nasrallah said in a speech via satellite to supporters in south Beirut. "There is no need to elaborate. ... We leave the details to the requirements of the battlefield."
  • Hezbollah has come under harsh criticism at home and abroad for sending its fighters to Qusair, and Nasrallah's gamble in Syria primarily stems from his group's vested interest in the regime's survival. The Syrian government has been one of Hezbollah's strongest backers for decades, and the militant group fears that if Assad's regime falls, it will be replaced by a U.S.-backed government that is hostile to Hezbollah.
  • Assad's forces, aided by the Hezbollah fighters, captured Qusair on June 5, dealing a heavy blow to rebels who had been entrenched in the strategic town for more than a year. Since then, the regime has shifted its attention to recapture other areas in the central province of Homs and the city of Aleppo in the north. Nasrallah did not say outright whether his group would go as far north as Aleppo, but he strongly suggested the group was prepared to fight until the end. "After Qusair for us will be the same as before Qusair," he said.
  •  
    There go the predictions that Hezbollah would confine itself to protecting a buffer zone along the Syria-Lebanon border.  
Gary Edwards

The Libertarian View: Are Tariffs Bad? - 1 views

  •  
    As many know, i spent quite a bit of time working for a Chinese Company seeking to enter the USA-European software market.  My task was to research the market, discover and define a market opportunity, design the product, and then work as product manager to get that service to market.  I took this job to better understand the Chinese marketplace and how sovereign Chinese companies work.  What i learned is how the Chinese seek to exploit and totally dominate open markets.  Software is just a category whose time has come.  and there are thousands of Chinese companies lining up.  The first step though is to fine tune the existing blueprint used by other Sina sovereigns.  amazing stuff. My take away from this experience is that the USA MUST set up a 30% tariff on ALL imports, and do so IMMEDIATELY!!!  Yesterday is not soon enough! As a newly minted libertarian, i wondered about the obvious conflict with Austrian Economics and their dedication to free markets and free trade?  I found the answer at this Libertarian forum, where many members were in heated discussion.  Comment #7 sums it up best i think.  Including a link to Ron Paul's Tariff-NAFTA speech. The thing is, the 30% Tariff should be part of an overall TAX REDUCTION PLAN.  I support the FAIR TAX and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  As an alternative to the Fair Tax, I would also support a 17% flat tax with no exceptions.  The ideal situation being an immediate, uncompromising, no exceptions 30% tariff on ALL imports coupled with the Fair Tax and the Balanced Budget Amendment.   And yes, i do believe this plan is consistent with the Founding Fathers Constitution.  But it took some kind of research to establish that opinion.   I've also concluded that "conservatism" is a convenient philosophical vehicle for the corrupt crony corporatism of both the military-industrial-complex, banksters and, international corporations.  Free trade and open markets concepts are perverted to become a thin veil
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: America's Covert Re-Invasion of Iraq - 0 views

  • mage: ISIS clearly did not materialize spontaneously within Iraq, it hasclearly redeployed from its NATO-sponsored destruction of Syria to northern Iraq, perhaps in an attempt to justify a NATO incursion and thecreation of a buffer zone straddling Syrian, Iraqi, and even possibly Iranian territory with the goal of targeting Iran directly with ISIS.   June 13, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Heavily armed, well funded, and organized as a professional, standing army, the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) swept southward into Iraq from Turkey and northeastern Syria, taking the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, and now threaten the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad itself. The United States was sure to prop up two unfounded narratives - the first being that US intelligence agencies, despite assets in Iraq and above it in the form of surveillance drones, failed to give warning of the invasion, and that ISIS is some sort of self-sustaining terror organization carving out a "state" by "robbing banks" and collecting "donations" on Twitter. The Wall Street Journal in its report, "Iraqi Drama Catches U.S. Off Guard," stated: The quickly unfolding drama prompted a White House meeting Wednesday of top policy makers and military leaders who were caught off guard by the swift collapse of Iraqi security forces, officials acknowledged.
  • mage: ISIS has convoys of brand new matching Toyota's the samevehicles seen among admittedly NATO-armed terrorists operatingeverywhere from Libya to Syria, and now Iraq. It is a synthetic, state-sponsored regional mercenary expeditionary force.
  • The question remains, if a Lebanese newspaper knew ISIS was on the move eastward, why didn't the CIA? The obvious answer is the CIA did know, and is simply feigning ignorance at the expense of their reputation to bait its enemies into suspecting the agency of  incompetency rather than complicity in the horrific terroristic swath ISIS is now carving through northern Iraq. Described extensively in the full New Eastern Outlook Journal (NEO) report, "NATO’s Terror Hordes in Iraq a Pretext for Syria Invasion," the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, have funded and armed terrorists operating in Syria for the past 3 years to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars - coincidentally the same amount that ISIS would require to gain primacy among militant groups fighting in Syria and to mobilize forces capable of crossing into Iraq and overwhelming Baghdad's national defenses.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • a 3-year ongoing CIA program (here, here, and here) all along the Turkish-Syrian border to "monitor" and "arm" "moderate" militants fighting the Syrian government, the US claims it was caught "by surprise." If drones and CIA operatives operating in ISIS territory weren't enough to detect the impending invasion, perhaps the CIA should have just picked up a newspaper.Indeed, the Lebanon Daily Start in March 2014 reported that ISIS openly withdrew its forces from Latakia and Idlib provinces in western Syria, and redeployed them in Syria's east - along the Syrian-Iraqi border. The article titled, "Al-Qaeda splinter group in Syria leaves two provinces: activists," stated explicitly that: On Friday, ISIS – which alienated many rebels by seizing territory and killing rival commanders – finished withdrawing from the Idlib and Latakia provinces and moved its forces toward the eastern Raqqa province and the eastern outskirts of the northern city of Aleppo, activists said.
  • The NEO report includes links to the US Army’s West Point Countering Terrorism Center reports, “Bombers, Bank Accounts and Bleedout: al-Qa’ida’s Road In and Out of Iraq,” and “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” which detail extensively the terror network used to flood Iraq with foreign terrorists, weapons, and cash to fuel an artificial "sectarian war" during the US occupation, and then turned over to flood Syria with terrorists in the West's bid to overthrow the government in Damascus. What's ISIS Doing in Iraq? The NEO report would also post Seymour Hersh's 2007 article, "The Redirection," documenting over the course of 9 pages US, Saudi, and Israeli intentions to create and deploy sectarian extremists region-wide to confront Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hersh would note that these "sectarian extremists" were either tied to Al Qaeda, or Al Qaeda itself. The ISIS army moving toward Baghdad is the final manifestation of this conspiracy, a standing army operating with impunity, threatening to topple the Syrian government, purge pro-Iranian forces in Iraq, and even threatening Iran itself by building a bridge from Al Qaeda's NATO safe havens in Turkey, across northern Iraq, and up to Iran's borders directly. Labeled "terrorists" by the West, grants the West plausible deniability in its creation, deployment, and across the broad spectrum of atrocities it is now carrying out.  
  • It is a defacto re-invasion of Iraq by Western interests - but this time without Western forces directly participating - rather a proxy force the West is desperately attempting to disavow any knowledge of or any connection to. However, no other explanation can account for the size and prowess of ISIS beyond state sponsorship. And since ISIS is the clear benefactor of state sponsorship, the question is, which states are sponsoring it? With Iraq, Syria, and Iran along with Lebanese-based Hezbollah locked in armed struggle with ISIS and other Al Qaeda franchises across the region, the only blocs left are NATO and the GCC (Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular).
  • With the West declaring ISIS fully villainous in an attempt to intervene more directly in northern Iraq and eastern Syria, creating a long desired "buffer zone" within which to harbor, arm, and fund an even larger terrorist expeditionary force, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and others are offered an opportunity to preempt Western involvement and to crush the ISIS - cornering and eliminating NATO-GCC's expeditionary force while scoring geopolitical points of vanquishing Washington's latest "villain." Joint Iraq-Iranian operations in the north and south of ISIS's locations, and just along Turkey's borders could envelop and trap ISIS to then be whittled down and destroyed - just as Syria has been doing to NATO's proxy terrorist forces within its own borders.Whatever the regional outcome may be, the fact is the West has re-invaded Iraq, with a force as brutal, if not worse than the "shock and awe" doctrine of 2003. Iraq faces another difficult occupation if it cannot summon a response from within, and among its allies abroad, to counter and crush this threat with utmost expediency.
Paul Merrell

Logistics 101: Where Does ISIS Get Its Guns? | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • Since ancient times an army required significant logistical support to carry out any kind of sustained military campaign. In ancient Rome, an extensive network of roads was constructed to facilitate not only trade, but to allow Roman legions to move quickly to where they were needed, and for the supplies needed to sustain military operations to follow them in turn.
  • ISIS’ Supply Lines The current conflict consuming the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria where the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) is operating and simultaneously fighting and defeating the forces of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, we are told, is built upon a logistical network based on black market oil and ransom payments. The fighting capacity of ISIS is that of a nation-state. It controls vast swaths of territory straddling both Syria and Iraq and not only is able to militarily defend and expand from this territory, but possesses the resources to occupy it, including the resources to administer the populations subjugated within it. For military analysts, especially former members of Western armed forces, as well as members of the Western media who remember the convoys of trucks required for the invasions of Iraq in the 1990s and again in 2003, they surely must wonder where ISIS’ trucks are today. After all, if the resources to maintain the fighting capacity exhibited by ISIS were available within Syrian and Iraqi territory alone, then certainly Syrian and Iraqi forces would also posses an equal or greater fighting capacity but they simply do not.
  • And were ISIS’ supply lines solely confined within Syrian and Iraqi territory, then surely both Syrian and Iraqi forces would utilize their one advantage – air power – to cut front line ISIS fighters from the source of their supplies. But this is not happening and there is a good reason why. Terrorists and weapons left over from NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011 were promptly sent to Turkey and then onto Syria – coordinated by US State Department officials and intelligence agencies in Benghazi – a terrorist hotbed for decades.ISIS’ supply lines run precisely where Syrian and Iraqi air power cannot go. To the north and into NATO-member Turkey, and to the southwest into US allies Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Beyond these borders exists a logistical network that spans a region including both Eastern Europe and North Africa. The London Telegraph would report in their 2013 article, “CIA ‘running arms smuggling team in Benghazi when consulate was attacked’,” that:
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • [CNN] said that a CIA team was working in an annex near the consulate on a project to supply missiles from Libyan armouries to Syrian rebels. Weapons have also come from Eastern Europe, with the New York Times reporting in 2013 in their article, “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A.,” that: From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia, and have vetted rebel commanders and groups to determine who should receive the weapons as they arrive, according to American officials speaking on the condition of anonymity. And while Western media sources continuously refer to ISIS and other factions operating under the banner of Al Qaeda as “rebels” or “moderates,” it is clear that if billions of dollars in weapons were truly going to “moderates,” they, not ISIS would be dominating the battlefield.
  • Recent revelations have revealed that as early as 2012 the United States Department of Defense not only anticipated the creation of a “Salafist Principality” straddling Syria and Iraq precisely where ISIS now exists, it welcomed it eagerly and contributed to the circumstances required to bring it about. Just How Extensive Are ISIS’ Supply Lines? While many across the West play willfully ignorant as to where ISIS truly gets their supplies from in order to maintain its impressive fighting capacity, some journalists have traveled to the region and have video taped and reported on the endless convoys of trucks supplying the terrorist army. Were these trucks traveling to and from factories in seized ISIS territory deep within Syrian and Iraqi territory? No. They were traveling from deep within Turkey, crossing the Syrian border with absolute impunity, and headed on their way with the implicit protection of nearby Turkish military forces. Attempts by Syria to attack these convoys and the terrorists flowing in with them have been met by Turkish air defenses. Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published the first video report from a major Western media outlet illustrating that ISIS is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey’s borders via hundreds of trucks a day.
  • The report titled, “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey,” confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 – that ISIS subsides on immense, multi-national state sponsorship, including, obviously, Turkey itself. Looking at maps of ISIS-held territory and reading action reports of its offensive maneuvers throughout the region and even beyond, one might imagine hundreds of trucks a day would be required to maintain this level of fighting capacity. One could imagine similar convoys crossing into Iraq from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Similar convoys are likely passing into Syria from Jordan. In all, considering the realities of logistics and their timeless importance to military campaigns throughout human history, there is no other plausible explanation to ISIS’s ability to wage war within Syria and Iraq besides immense resources being channeled to it from abroad. If an army marches on its stomach, and ISIS’ stomachs are full of NATO and Persian Gulf State supplies, ISIS will continue to march long and hard. The key to breaking the back of ISIS, is breaking the back of its supply lines. To do that however, and precisely why the conflict has dragged on for so long, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and others would have to eventually secure the borders and force ISIS to fight within Turkish, Jordanian, and Saudi territory – a difficult scenario to implement as nations like Turkey have created defacto buffer zones within Syrian territory which would require a direct military confrontation with Turkey itself to eliminate.
  • With Iran joining the fray with an alleged deployment of thousands of troops to bolster Syrian military operations, overwhelming principles of deterrence may prevent Turkey enforcing its buffer zones. What we are currently left with is NATO literally holding the region hostage with the prospect of a catastrophic regional war in a bid to defend and perpetuate the carnage perpetrated by ISIS within Syria, fully underwritten by an immense logistical network streaming out of NATO territory itself.
Paul Merrell

War over? Both sides in Ukraine conflict sign treaty banning military action - RT News - 0 views

  • Kiev and self-defense forces signed a memorandum aimed at effectively halting all fighting in eastern Ukraine after talks in Minsk. It creates a buffer zone, demands a pullback of troops and mercenaries, and bans military aviation flybys over the area.
  • The signed memorandum consists of nine points, former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma told journalists following peace talks in Minsk, Belarus.
  • The OSCE has been tasked to monitor that both sides adhere to the memorandum’s conditions. The organization’s observers will be sent to observe the situation along the entire zone of the ceasefire, Itar-Tass reported. Five hundred OSCE observers will be sent to monitor the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, Lugansk People’s Republic representative Aleksey Karyakin said, adding that the meeting was quite difficult.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The third convoy of Russian humanitarian aid has also crossed the border into Ukraine, Itar-Tass reported. The convoy consists of around 200 vehicles carrying some 2,000 tons of aid to the residents of southeastern Ukraine – including cereals, canned food, generators, medicine, warm clothes, and bottled water. Before the convoy’s departure, Ukrainian border guards had been repeatedly invited to inspect the cargo by the Russian side. However, the border patrol declined all offers without citing any particular reason.
  • Meanwhile, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, declared that there will be “no Ukrainian election” in Donetsk, referring to one of the conditions set out in the September 5 Minsk protocol, which gave special status to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, both located in eastern Ukraine. Zakharchenko said he considers the special status as a declaration of independence of the self-proclaimed republics.
  • The memorandum follows a more general ceasefire agreement signed on September 5, which outlined a peace roadmap negotiated by Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko and representatives of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
  • On Tuesday, the Ukrainian parliament approved laws on a special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as well as amnesty for those participating in the hostilities. Both points were originally outlined in the September 5 agreement.
Paul Merrell

Turkey Plans to Invade Syria, But to Stop the Kurds, Not ISIS - The Daily Beast - 0 views

  • Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is planning a military intervention into northern Syria to prevent Syrian Kurds from forming their own state there, despite concerns among his own generals and possible criticism from Washington and other NATO allies, according to reports in both pro- and anti-government media. In a speech last Friday, Erdogan vowed that Turkey would not accept a move by Syrian Kurds to set up their own state in Syria following gains by Kurdish fighters against the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, in recent weeks. “I am saying this to the whole world: We will never allow the establishment of a state on our southern border in the north of Syria,” Erdogan said. “We will continue our fight in that respect whatever the cost may be.” He accused Syrian Kurds of ethnic cleansing in Syrian areas under their control.After the speech, several news outlets reported that the president and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had decided to send the Turkish army into Syria, a hugely significant move by NATO’s second-biggest fighting force after the U.S. military. Both the daily Yeni Safak, a mouthpiece of the government, and the newspaper Sozcu, which is among Erdogan’s fiercest critics, ran stories saying the Turkish Army had received orders to send soldiers over the border. Several other media had similar stories, all quoting unnamed sources in Ankara. There has been no official confirmation or denial by the government.
  • The reports said up to 18,000 soldiers would be deployed to take over and hold a strip of territory up to 30 kilometers deep and 100 kilometers long that is held by ISIS. It stretches from close to the Kurdish-controlled city of Kobani in the east to an area further west held by the pro-Western Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel groups, beginning around the town of Mare. This “Mare Line,” as the press calls it, is to be secured with ground troops, artillery and air cover, the reports said. Yeni Safak reported preparations were due to be finalized by next Friday. There has been speculation about a Turkish military intervention ever since the Syrian conflict began in 2011. Ankara has asked the United Nations and its Western allies to give the green light to create a buffer zone and a no-fly area inside Syria to prevent chaos along the Turkish border and to help refugees on Syrian soil before they cross over into Turkey. But the Turkish request has fallen on deaf ears.
  • The daily Hurriyet reported Erdogan and Davutoglu wanted to “kill two birds with one stone” with a military intervention along the Mare Line. One aim would be to drive ISIS away from the Turkish border, depriving the jihadists of their last foothold on the frontier and thereby cutting off supply lines. Such a move would tie in with the U.S. strategy to contain and weaken ISIS.A second goal of the operation would be closer to Ankara’s own interests. The English-language Hurriyet Daily News quoted one source saying there was a need to  “prevent the PYD from taking full control over the Turkish-Syrian border,” and also to create a zone on Syrian territory rather than in Turkey to take in new waves of refugees.But the military is reluctant, the reports said. Generals told the government that Turkish troops could come up against ISIS, Kurds, and Syrian government troops and get drawn into the Syrian quagmire. Retaliation attacks by ISIS and Kurdish militants on Turkish territory are another concern.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Finally, the soldiers pointed to the international dimension. The military leadership told the government that the international community might get the impression that Turkey’s intervention was directed against Syria’s Kurds, the newspaper Haberturk reported.Turkey’s NATO partners, some of whom have deployed troops operating Patriot missile defense units near the Syrian border to shield member country Turkey against possible attacks from Syria, are unlikely to be happy with a Turkish intervention.
Paul Merrell

Thierry Meyssan :   The Sore Losers Of The Syrian Crisis    :   Information C... - 0 views

  • During a recent Round Table in Ankara, Admiral James Winnfeld, Vice-Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that Washington would reveal its intentions toward Syria once the 6 November presidential elections were over. He made it plainly understood to his Turkish counterparts that a peace plan had already been negotiated with Moscow, that Bashar al-Assad would remain in power and that the Security Council would not authorize the creation of buffer zones. For his part, Herve Ladsous, the U.N. Assistant Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, announced that he was studying the possible deployment of peacekeepers ("blue helmets") in Syria. All regional actors are preparing for the cease-fire which will be overseen by a U.N. force composed principally by troops of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikstan). These events signify that the United States is effectively continuing a process, begun in Iraq, of retreat from the region and has accepted to share its influence with Russian.
  • At the same time, the New York Times revealed that direct negotiations between Washington and Iran are slated to restart even as the United States continues its attack on Iranian monetary values. It is becoming clear that, after 33 years of containment, Washington is acknowledging that Teheran is an established regional power, all the while continuing to sabotage its economy. This new situation comes at the expense of Saudi Arabia, France, Israel, Qatar and Turkey all of whom had placed their bets on regime change in Damascus. This diverse coalition is now suffering divisions between those demanding a consolation prize and those trying to sabotage outright the process underway.
  • Only Israel and France remain in the opposition camp. The new scheme would offer a guarantee of protection to the state of Israel but it would also alter its special status on the international scene and end its expansionist dreams. Tel-Aviv would be relegated to being a secondary power. France, also, would lose influence in the region, particularly in Lebanon. Accordingly, the intelligence services of both states have concocted an operation to collapse the U.S.-Russia-Iran agreement which, even if it fails, would allow them to erase the traces of their involvement in the Syrian crisis.
Paul Merrell

Head of al Qaeda's Syrian branch threatens Russia in audio message | The Long War Journal - 0 views

  • The head of Al Nusrah Front, Abu Muhammad al Julani, has released an audio message addressing Russia’s role in the Syrian war. Julani depicts Russia as being “Eastern Crusaders,” calls for reprisal attacks inside Russia, says the jihadists should attack Shiite villages, and argues that groups fighting the Assad regime shouldn’t seek assistance from the West or countries throughout the region. He also offers bounties of several million Euros to anyone who kills Bashar al Assad or Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Julani’s 21-minute audio message, which was released online yesterday, is entitled “The Russian Intervention – The Last Arrow.” It has been translated by the SITE Intelligence Group.
  • Julani urges the “mujahideen in the Caucasus to distract” Russia’s attention from the war in Syria whenever possible by killing Russians in their home country, including soldiers. “If the Russian soldier kills from the masses of [Syria], kill from their masses. And if they kill from our soldiers, kill from theirs,” Julani says, according to SITE. “One for one. We will not be the ones who begin.” The infighting between various factions must come to a stop, Julani argues, so that the jihadists can focus on “breaking” the “Eastern and Western Crusader campaigns.” And the jihadists should mobilize on “all the fronts” throughout Syria in response. “All must start a large battle on the most sensitive areas for the regime, and the battle must be escalated and the Nusayri [Shiite] villages in Latakia targeted.” Latakia is a coastal province that has long been a stronghold for the Assad family. “I call upon all the factions to gather the largest possible amount of shells and rockets and strike the Nusayri [Shiite] villages every day with hundreds of rockets, just as the cursed ones do in the cities and villages of the Sunnis,” Julani says, according to SITE. “Make them taste some of the torture of our people. If they leave the villages and cities of the Sunnis, we will leave them alone and will not attack, for he who treats others the same as he treats himself is not unjust.”
  • Here, Julani is likely discussing the Sunni jihadists’ strategy of attacking Shiite civilian areas in order to force the Assad regime to refrain from attacking predominately Sunni areas. Al Nusrah, Ahrar al Sham and other Sunni jihadist groups have employed this strategy throughout the year by, for example, attacking Shiite villages in northern Syria until Assad, Iranian forces, and Hezbollah lay off of areas in the south where Sunnis, including jihadists, are cornered. Jaysh al Fateh has effectively used this plan to free civilians and some fighters stationed in Zabadani, a small city close to the border with Lebanon. Julani warns other groups in Syria to avoid seeking assistance from “the Western states and the regional states,” saying it will only bring more “humiliation and shame.” Julani does not address this warning to any specific parties, but he could be referring to Al Nusrah’s ally, Ahrar al Sham, which receives assistance from Turkey and Qatar. Al Nusrah itself has likely received support from Gulf nations, Turkey and other actors at times. In fact, al Qaeda ideologues have explicitly condoned such arrangements, arguing that it can advance the jihadists’ cause. Al Qaeda has even said it is permissible on theological grounds to receive support from Iran, which is currently the Sunni jihadists’ foe in Syria and elsewhere. So, while Julani may openly decry this practice, it is one al Qaeda has repeatedly deemed to be acceptable.
  •  
    It's good to stay aware of what the CIA's mercenary fores are doing. Sounds a lot like terrorism to me.
Paul Merrell

Another Anschluss In Crimea - 0 views

  • No western leaders should have been surprised by Crimea. Nations still have strategic sphere of influence. In 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev refused to use force to keep the union together and allowed Germany to peacefully reunify. In exchange, US President George H.W. Bush agreed not to expand NATO’s borders east, and certainly not to Russia’s borders. But at the time, Washington regarded Russia as a broken-down, third world nation beneath contempt. Bush senior and his successor, Bill Clinton, reneged on the deal with Moscow and began pushing Western influence east –to the Baltic, Romania and Bulgaria, Kosovo and Albania, then Georgia, across Central Asia. NATO offered membership to Ukraine. Moscow saw encirclement. Having serially violated Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, it was inevitable Moscow would riposte. This writer, who extensively covered the Soviet Union, strongly advised NATO in the early 1990’s not to push east but to leave a strategic buffer zone in Eastern Europe to maintain peace with nuclear-armed Russia. The opposite occurred.
  • The western allies have committed the same error over Ukraine that they did over Czechoslovakia in the mid-1930’s: extending security guarantees they could not possibly fulfill. As of now, it looks like Putin’s gambit over Crimea will work and there is nothing the West can do about it but huff, puff and impose mutually negative economic sanctions.
  • Washington’s pot-calls-kettle black denunciations of the Crimea referendum ring hollow given the blatantly rigged votes coming up in US-dominated Egypt and Afghanistan. Moreover, too few in Washington are asking what earthly interests the US has in Ukraine? About as much as Russia has in Nebraska. Yet the bankrupt US is to lend $1 billion to the anti-Russian Kiev leadership and risk war in a foolish challenge to Russia in a region where it has nothing to be gained. Except, of course, for the US neocons who have played a key role in engineering the coup in Kiev and this crisis. They want to see Russia punished for supporting Syria and the Palestinians.
  •  
    Yes, there was that agreement that NATO would not move into the former Soviet Republics, That hasn't been getting any time on U.S. mainstream media though. 
Paul Merrell

Turkey Cooks the Books in Syria | The American Conservative - 0 views

  • If you had been a reader of The American Conservative magazine back in December 2011, you might have learned from an article written by me that “Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons [to the Free Syrian Army] derived from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals…” Well, it seems that the rest of the media is beginning to catch up with the old news, supplemented with significant details by Sy Hersh in the latest issue of the London Review of Books in an article entitled “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” The reality is that numerous former intelligence officials, like myself, have long known most of the story surrounding the on-again off-again intervention by the United States and others in Syria, but what was needed was a Sy Hersh, with his unmatched range of contacts deep in both the Pentagon as well as at CIA and State Department, to stitch it all together with corroboration from multiple sources. In a sense it was a secret that wasn’t really very well hidden but which the mainstream media wouldn’t touch with a barge pole because it revealed that the Obama Administration, just like the Bushies who preceded it, has been actively though clandestinely conspiring to overthrow yet another government in the Middle East. One might well conclude that the White House is like the Bourbon Kings of France in that it never forgets anything but never learns anything either.
  • The few media outlets that are willing to pick up the Syria story even now are gingerly treating it as something new, jumping in based on their own editorial biases, sometimes emphasizing the CIA and MI6 role in cooperating with the Turks to undermine Bashar al-Assad. But Hersh’s tale is only surprising if one had not been reading between the lines over the past three years, where the clandestine role of the British and American governments was evident and frequently reported on over the internet and, most particularly, in the local media in the Middle East. Far from being either rogue or deliberately deceptive, operations by the U.S. and UK intelligence services, the so-called “ratlines” feeding weapons into Syria, were fully vetted and approved by both the White House and Number 10 Downing Street. The more recent exposure of the Benghazi CIA base’s possible involvement in obtaining Libyan arms as part of the process of equipping the Syrian insurgents almost blew the lid off of the arrangement but somehow the media attention was diverted by a partisan attack on the Obama Administration over who said what and when to explain the security breakdown and the real story sank out of sight.
  • So this is what happened, roughly speaking: the United States had been seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria since at least 2003, joining with Saudi Arabia, which had been funding efforts to destabilize his regime even earlier. Why? Because from the Saudi viewpoint Syria was an ally of Iran and was also a heretical state led by a secular government dominated by Alawite Muslims, viewed as being uncomfortably close to Shi’ites in their apostasy. From the U.S. viewpoint, the ties to Iran and reports of Syrian interference in Lebanon were a sufficient casus belli coupled with a geostrategic assessment shared with the Saudis that Syria served as the essential land bridge connecting Hezbollah in Lebanon to Iran. The subsequent Congressional Syria Accountability Acts of 2004 and 2010, like similar legislation directed against Iran, have resulted in little accountability and have instead stifled diplomacy. They punished Syria with sanctions for supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon and for its links to Tehran, making any possible improvement in relations problematical. The 2010 Act even calls for steps to bring about regime change in Damascus. The United States also engaged in a program eerily reminiscent of its recent moves to destabilize the government in Ukraine, i.e., sending in ambassadors and charges who deliberately provoked the Syrian government by meeting with opposition leaders and openly making demands for greater democracy. The last U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford spoke openly in support of the protesters while serving in Damascus in 2010. On one occasion he was pelted with tomatoes and was eventually removed over safety concerns.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Lost in translation is the fact that Washington’s growing support for radical insurgency in Syria would also inevitably destabilize all its neighbors, most notably including Iraq, which has indeed been the case, making a shambles of U.S. claims that it was seeking to introduce stable democracies into the region. Some also saw irony in the fact that a few years before Washington decided al-Assad was an enemy it had been sending victims of the CIA’s rendition program to Syria, suggesting that at least some short-term and long-term strategies were on a collision course from the start, if indeed the advocates of the two policies were actually communicating with each other at all. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, whose country shared a long border with Syria and who had legitimate security concerns relating to Kurdish separatists operating out of the border region, became the proxy in the secret war for Washington and its principal European allies, the British and French. When the U.S.-Saudi supported insurgency began to heat up and turn violent, Turkey became the key front line state in pushing for aggressive action against Damascus. Erdogan miscalculated, thinking that al-Assad was on his last legs, needing only a push to force him out, and Ankara saw itself as ultimately benefiting from a weak Syria with a Turkish-controlled buffer zone along the border to keep the Kurds in check.
  • Hersh reports how President Barack Obama had to back down from attacking Syria when the Anglo-American intelligence community informed him flatly and unambiguously that Damascus was not responsible for the poison gas attack that took place in Damascus on August 21, 2013 that was being exploited as a casus belli. The information supporting that assertion was known to many like myself who move around the fringes of the intelligence community, but the real revelation from Hersh is the depth of Turkish involvement in the incident in order to have the atrocity be exploitable as a pretext for American armed intervention, which, at that point, Erdogan strongly desired. As the use of weapons of mass destruction against civilians was one of the red lines that Obama had foolishly promoted regarding Syria Erdogan was eager to deliver just that to force the U.S.’s hand. Relying on unidentified senior U.S. intelligence sources, Hersh demonstrates how Turkey’s own preferred militant group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is generally regarded as an al-Qaeda affiliate, apparently used Turkish-provided chemicals and instructions to stage the attack.
  • Is it all true? Unless one has access to the same raw information as Sy Hersh it is difficult to say with any certainty, but I believe I know who some of the sources are and they both have good access to intelligence and are reliable. Plus, the whole narrative has an undeniable plausibility, particularly if one also considers other evidence of Erdogan’s willingness to take large risks coupled with a more general Turkish underhandedness relating to Syria. On March 23rd, one week before local elections in Turkey that Erdogan feared would go badly for him, a Turkish air force F-16 shot down a Syrian Mig-23, claiming that it had strayed half a mile into Turkish airspace. The pilot who bailed out, claimed that he was attacking insurgent targets at least four miles inside the border when he was shot down, an assertion borne out by physical evidence as the plane’s remains landed inside Syria. Was Erdogan demonstrating how tough he could be just before elections? Possibly.
  • Critics of Hersh claim that the Turks would be incapable of carrying out such a grand subterfuge, but I would argue that putting together some technicians, chemicals, and a couple of trucks to carry the load are well within the capability of MIT, an organization that I have worked with and whose abilities I respect. And one must regard with dismay the “tangled webs we weave,” with due credit to Bobby Burns, for what has subsequently evolved in Syria. Allies like Turkey that are willing to cook the books to bring about military action are exploiting the uncertainty of a White House that continues to search for foreign policy successes while simultaneously being unable to define any genuine American interests. Syria is far from an innocent in the ensuing mayhem, but it has become the fall guy for a whole series of failed policies. Turkey meanwhile has exploited the confusion to clamp down on dissent and to institutionalize Erdogan’s authoritarian inclinations. Ten years of American-licensed meddling combined with obliviousness to possible consequences has led to in excess of 100,000 dead Syrians and the introduction of large terrorist infrastructures into the Arab heartland, yet another foreign policy disaster in the making with no clear way out.
  •  
    Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi adds valuable context to revelations of Turkey's involvement in the false flag Sarin gas attack in Syria and in Turkey's follow-up plan to stage a false flag attack on a Turkish tomb in Syria as a pretext for Turkish invasion of Syria. 
Paul Merrell

Israeli army incursion into Syria hits refugee camp | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

  • The Israeli military on Wednesday stormed a camp for displaced Syrians near the boundary line between the 70 percent of the Golan Heights occupied by Israel and the rest of Syria, according to Syrian activists. The al-Shahaar refugee camp is located near Jabata al-Khashab, a Syrian town in the Quneitra province. The area is mostly controlled by Syrian opposition forces fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “This camp includes a large number of civilians fleeing the fighting between opposition forces and the regime, and who were forced today to go to Jabata al-Khashab in search of refuge after the Israeli army’s raid,” Abu Hamza al-Jowlani, a media activist, told al-Araby al-Jadeed in an Arabic-language report. Jabata al-Khashab, a nearby town, is located within the boundary lines of the United Nations-administered “buffer zone” between the Israeli-occupied portion of the Golan and the rest of the area.
  • After instructing the camp’s residents to leave, the Israeli army also destroyed tents, according to Syria Mubasher, a Syrian opposition-affiliated news site.  “Israeli army soldiers entered the al-Shahaar camp accompanied by several armored vehicles,” Syria Mubasher reported in Arabic, citing witnesses. “After ordering [the residents] to evacuate, [the Israelis] took and destroyed the tents with no people in them, and returned to the other side of the boundary line,” the report stated. Although Israel claims that it is a neutral bystander in the Syrian civil war, which began as a popular uprising against the Assad regime in 2011, it regularly intervenes in Syria.
Paul Merrell

Confirmed: Washington Intends to "Use" Al Qaeda to "Take Out" Syria and Overthrow the A... - 0 views

  • The Daily Beast’s article, “Petraeus: Use Al Qaeda Fighters to Beat ISIS,” reveals the final piece to the “safe haven” or “buffer zone” puzzle, providing the world a complete picture of how the United States and its regional allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and others, plan to finally overthrow the government in Damascus, and eliminate Syria as a functioning nation state through the use of listed terrorist organizations responsible for over a decade of devastating global war.
  • The Daily Beast reports: Members of al Qaeda’s branch in Syria have a surprising advocate in the corridors of American power: retired Army general and former CIA Director David Petraeus.  The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan has been quietly urging U.S. officials to consider using so-called moderate members of al Qaeda’s Nusra Front to fight ISIS in Syria, four sources familiar with the conversations, including one person who spoke to Petraeus directly, told The Daily Beast. 
  • In addition to Petraeus’ alleged plans, the Daily Beast reports former US Ambassador to Syria  Robert Ford also advocated supporting terrorists linked directly to Al Qaeda, including the Ahrar al Sham faction. However this “proposed” advocacy is an afterthought – a matter of public perception management – as terrorist organizations like Ahrar al Sham and the Al Nusra Front already are receiving significant US backing either directly or laundered through one of America’s many regional collaborators. Ahrar al Sham’s extensive video documentation online shows the group even employing US anti-tank TOW missiles. Furthermore, US corporate-financier funded policy think tanks like the Brookings Institution have already enumerated precisely this plan. In a recent publication on Brookings’ “Order From Chaos” blog titled, “Should the United States negotiate with terrorists?,” it is stated: Ultimately, negotiation and amnesty programs with extremist groups must enter the U.S. counterterrorism repertoire if reluctance to military deployment continues. Brookings describes almost verbatim the proposal put forth by Petraeus and Ford, indicating this plan is more deeply rooted as a matter of policy than indicated by the Daily Beast.
  •  
    Ignoring the fact that the U.S. voted for two adopted U.N. Security Council resolutions specifically forbidding nations from aiding in any way Al-0Qaida and Al-Nusrah, thus establishing it as a violation of international law to do as these jerks advise. Notwithstanding that, the U.S. has for several years been supplying Al-Nusrah with weapons, supplies, intelligence, and leadership through two operations centers, one in Jordan and the other in Turkey.   
Paul Merrell

Land Destroyer: BREAKING: Germany's DW Reports ISIS Supply Lines Originate in NATO's Tu... - 0 views

  • Germany's international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published a video report of immense implications - possibly the first national broadcaster in the West to admit that the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS) is supplied not by "black market oil" or "hostage ransoms" but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey's borders via hundreds of trucks a day. The report titled, "'IS' supply channels through Turkey," confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 - that NATO member Turkey has allowed a torrent in supplies, fighters, and weapons to cross its borders unopposed to resupply ISIS positions inside of Syria.
  • Local residents and merchants interviewed by Germany's DW admitted that commerce with Syria benefiting them had ended since the conflict began and that the supplies trucks carry as they stream across the border originates from "western Turkey." The DW report does not elaborate on what "western Turkey" means, but it most likely refers to Ankara, various ports used by NATO, and of course NATO's Incirlik Air Base. While DW's report claims no one knows who is arranging the shipments, it does reveal that the very torrent of trucks its film crew documented was officially denied by the Turkish government in Ankara. It is a certainty that Turkey is not only aware of this, but directly complicit, as is NATO who has feigned a desire to defeat ISIS but has failed to expose and uproot ISIS' multinational sponsorship and more importantly, has refused to cut its supply lines - an elementary prerequisite of any military strategy. 
  • SIS supply lines leading from NATO territory should be of no surprise. As reported since as early as 2007, the US and its regional accomplices conspired to use Al Qaeda and other armed extremists in a bid to reorder North Africa and the Middle East. It would be Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in his article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" that explicitly stated (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. 
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Of course, these "extremist groups" who "espouse a militant vision of Islam" and are "sympathetic to Al Qaeda," describe the "Islamic State" verbatim. ISIS constitutes NATO's mercenary expeditionary force, ravaging its enemies by proxy from Libya in North Africa to Lebanon and Syria in the Levant, to Iraq and even to the borders of Iran. Its seemingly inexhaustible supply of weapons, cash, and fighters can only be explained by multinational state sponsorship and safe havens provided by NATO ISIS' enemies - primarily Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, and Iraq - cannot strike. DW's report specifically notes how ISIS terrorists regularly flee certain demise in Syria by seeking safe haven in Turkey.  One of NATO's primary goals since as early as 2012, was to use various pretexts to expand such safe havens, or "buffer zones," into Syrian territory itself, protected by NATO military forces from which "rebels" could operate. Had they succeeded, DW camera crews would probably be filming convoys staging in cities like Idlib and Allepo instead of along Turkey's border with Syria. 
  • With the documented conspiracy of the US and its allies to create a sectarian mercenary force aligned to Al Qaeda, the so-called "moderate rebels" the US has openly backed in Syria now fully revealed as sectarian extremists, and now with DW documenting a torrent of supplies originating in Turkey, it is clear that the ISIS menace NATO poses as the solution to, was in fact NATO all along. What is  revealed is a foreign policy so staggeringly insidious, few are able to believe it, even with international broadcasters like DW showing ISIS' supply lines leading from NATO territory itself.  
  •  
    There is a second NATO supply line running from Saudi Arabia, across Iraq into Jordan, and from there to ISIL-Al-Nusrah in southern Syria. Also, Israel is flying combat missions for ISIL and running a resupply/medical services base for them on the Golan Heights. 
Paul Merrell

AL tabled UNSC Resolution on the Middle East likely to fail absent a US-U-Turn | nsnbc ... - 0 views

  • The Arab League announced that it would re-table a draft resolution at the UN Security Council on Monday, calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories including the occupied Syrian Golan and the Lebanese Sheba Farms. The Arab League’s draft resolution calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from all of the territories Israel occupied during the 1967 war. That is, Palestinian territories including East Jerusalem, the Israeli occupied Syrian Golan as well as the Israeli occupied, Lebanese Sheba Farms area in southeastern Lebanon.
  • The Arab League perceives the draft resolution as part of a policy based on the notion that a resolution of the Israel – Palestinian conflict only can be found within the framework of a comprehensive resolution that includes other issues which arose as a consequence to the 1967 war. In December 2014 the UN Security Council rejected a similar, Jordanian-sponsored draft resolution that called for a full Israeli withdrawal within two years. The resolution was endorsed by eight concurrent votes, falling one vote short of the minimum of nine votes. Had the resolution received the necessary nine votes, stated the U.S. State Department, the United States would have made use of its veto right at the Security Council. It were the victors of WWII who “endowed themselves” with the veto right, practically subjugating all other UN member States to the political will of the permanent UN Security Council members.
  • The rejection of the draft resolution, in December, prompted the President of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority to accede to some 20 international treaties, including the Rome Statute. On April 1, Palestine will become a member to the United Nations’s International Criminal Court (ICC). Neither the U.S., Russia, China or Israel have made their citizens subject to prosecution by the ICC.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Al-Khadoumi points out that Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, in 2013, stated that “Israel and the Golan are part and parcel” and that the “international community” should settle the question about sovereignty over the Golan within the framework of an Israel – Palestinian agreement. Besides open announcements about plans to permanently annex the Syrian Golan, Israel has been supporting Jabhat al-Nusrah and other al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood(FSA and co.) brigades via the Golan since 2012. In 2013 Israel’s covert support of the insurgents was leaked to the press by an Austrian UNDOF officer. By February 2014 the administration of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu launched a PR campaign to sell the support of the Islamist mercenary brigades under “humanitarian cover”. (see video)
  • By October 2014 Israel’s direct cooperation and State sponsorship of Jabhat al-Nusrah, the so-called Free Syrian Army and other mercenary brigades resulted in the withdrawal of UNDOF troops from a 12 – 16 km wide corridor in the buffer zone. (see UNDOF map above) The withdrawal has since then facilitated the direct interaction between Israeli military and intelligence and the foreign-backed mercenaries, using the Golan Heights as well as the Israeli occupied, Lebanese Sheba Farms area as launching pads for transgressions against Syria and Lebanon. Absent a U-turn in U.S. policy with regard to Israel and Syria, notes Al-Khadoumi, it is highly implausible that the re-drafted Security Council resolution will pass, or that it won’t be vetoed by the United States.
  •  
    There is a possibility that the U.S. may abstain from voting and allow the resolution to pass. The Obama Administration was considering such a move even before the flap over Netanyahu's speech to Congress because of Israel's refusal to negotiate in good faith for a 2-state solution. And if ever there was a situation crying out for a smackdown of Israeli government, it was Netanyahu's speech.   
1 - 20 of 23 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page