Israel

Israel bombs Syria: claims airstrikes at Syrian Army convoy north of Damascus

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By Alalam
Global Research, December 06, 2015
Alalam 5 December 2015

Israeli jets carried out several raids North of Damascus overnight Thursday-Friday, Israel’s Channel 2 claimed, and citing foreign reports.

There were no immediate reports of casualties, the Times of Israel claimed.

The airstrikes were said to have targeted a four-truck Syrian army convoy, loaded with ballistic missiles.

The Israeli planes struck the vehicles after they left an army base, the reports claimed.

The Israeli Air Force also reportedly hit a gas supply, sparking massive explosions, According to Fars News Agency.

Israeli airstrikes in Syria have been widely reported over the last almost five years of the country’s crisis in support of the Takfiri terrorists.

The original source of this article is Alalam

The secret ISIS safe havens nobody wants you to know about

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From New Eastern Outlook
by Gordon Duff
9-23-15

With recent talk of mysterious Russian forces inside Syria, forces no one has been able to locate, including Syrian President Assad, wondrous possibilities open to redress the both regional and global threat that ISIS represents.

It isn’t just the ISIS safe havens, certainly the many ISIS bases, prison camps and slave markets set up inside Turkey. It goes much further and a stronger military involvement by Russia could make lightning strikes against these terror centers a reality.

The legal precedents were set during Vietnam and, particularly, during the War on Terror, rendition, secret prisons, assassinations and drone attacks on facilities, now a useful tool when deployed against terror supporters across the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Only when we decide to get tough on real terrorists and use the legal tools the United States government has granted the world, can we finally be safe, just as Dick Cheney had wanted for us all.

Last week Syrian artillery began decimating hundreds of ISIS fighters fleeing their last hiding places in Zabadani, scene of a month long battle with Syrian and Hezbollah forces, one of a string of successes in reducing the dwindling ISIS footprint in that beleaguered nation.

Within minutes, forward air controllers among the fleeing fear-struck terrorists called for air support. There American built F16 fighters took off from ISIS held bases inside Israel and silenced the Syrian Army artillery position north of Damascus.

This has happened many times and been reported many times, never with any attempt at denial.

Back in 1970, a famous American military strategist and political advisor named Henry Kissinger was faced with a similar situation. American forces inside South Vietnam were being attacked from strongholds inside the neighboring nation of Cambodia.

First, Kissinger sent in B52’s to carpet-bomb the region. Then Kissinger announced a US invasion of Cambodia, May 1970, with tens of thousands of American troops entering that country legally, by American standards, going after the militant forces that now constitute the legal government of a reunited Vietnam.

Daraa Province in Southern Syria has been plagued with forces trained inside Jordan at CIA camps entering Syria and butchering thousands of civilians. These forces leaving Jordan fly the black flag of ISIS. Managing their operations is a command center outside of Amman, Jordan, staffed with US, Jordanian, Israeli and Saudi officers.

The large logistical facility that handles both trucked and air dropped supplies for ISIS in both Syria and Iraq is staffed by members of MEK, a pseudo-Islamic cult established during the 1960s in Iran by the Mossad, the same group responsible for fighting alongside Saddam against Iran and gassing 30,000 Kurds to death between 1991 and 1993.

From October 2014 onward, an endless stream of top of the line TOW missiles has been shipped by Raytheon Corporation to US Army supply depots. There is no record of end user certificates transferring these to any other nation.

These missiles ended up at a US Air Force Base in Constanta, Romania. From there, they were flown to Tbilisi, Georgia and from there trucked by British Petroleum and Bechtel Corporation through Turkey and into Syria where they were turned over to al Nusra/al Qaeda forces.

More high tech weaponry paid for by the American taxpayer was flown into a US Air Force Base in Adana, Turkey. From there it was trucked to an ISIS/al Nusra logistics facility run by the Turkish Army in the town of Rehanli, Hatay, Turkey, only miles from ISIS bases inside the Syrian city of Aleppo.

When tracking down the TOW missiles, it was found they had been consigned to the CIA as secret supplies to the Kiev junta. Evidence is accumulating that Kiev is actively supplying ISIS with weapons and, more interestingly, actively advising and assisting with chemical warfare against the Kurds, in exchange for promises from Turkey which may include a Ukrainian gas hookup to the new Turkish/Russian southern route through Romania. Online maps showing this spur have been purged from search engines and wrapped in malware.

Going further afield in order to find terror supporters who can, according to US law, be subject to drone strikes, we can begin to finally, years later, start degrading the material supporters of ISIS, not just Senator John McCain but others as well.

We know ISIS gets considerable funding from selling stolen oil. We also know who is running this for them; British Petroleum and Exxon Corporation.

These terror supporters are vulnerable, they have tanker fleets that can be seized and assets around the world. Were Exxon headquarters in Irving, Texas or several of their terrorist operational centers north of Houston at the Woodlands to be hit by the Delta Force aided by Russian Spetznaz, it would be the first real step in a very real war on global terror. Is America ready for that?

Remember, it is American law that makes everyone involved subject to non-judicial killing.

Let’s not forget the theft of Syrian and Iraqi antiquities. Interpol has carefully traced thousands of items worth hundreds of millions of dollars into auction houses in London, New York, Vienna, Paris and Berlin.

Nearly every major house has some terrorist items with some well-known houses taking major positions in terrorist finance.

Basically, here is the plan using American strategic and legal precedents:

  • At the outset, a No Fly Zone has to be established over Israel until ISIS run air facilities can be put out of action. It can be safely assumed that any air traffic over Israel may be terrorist, perhaps including airliners which can be stuffed with bio weapons or nuclear waste from Dimona.
  • A string of lighting attacks, over a period of two to three years, will be needed to degrade the terror infrastructure inside Turkey. Chemical weapons facilities, training camps, air bases, all need to be taken out before ISIS can be beaten.
  • Terror camps and command centers in Jordan will require the heaviest munitions as some are deeply hidden underground including those inside the new Saudi Arabian “embassy” complex outside Amman.
  • Rendition teams will be hitting auction houses, banks, boardrooms and newspaper offices around the world, ferreting out terror supporters, just as the US had done after 9/11.
  • There are dozens of NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) like the Syrian Human Rights Observatory in London which operates public relations for ISIS and dozens of others, some operating as refugee aid fronts that traffic in jihadists, human slavery and narcotics. All must be brought to justice.

America has to be given credit for using some of the greatest legal minds the world has seen, bringing them together, all members of the noted Federalist Society, and putting together the laws that will bring ISIS to its knees.

That America, though poor judgement, kidnapped and assassinated almost entirely innocent people under these provisions is unfortunate. Perhaps others will do better.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/09/23/the-secret-isis-safe-havens-nobody-wants-you-to-know-about/

Report: NATO military and mercenary numbers and losses in Donbass, May 2014 – February 2015

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From Newsli.ru
March 12, 2015
Translated on Voices of Sevastopol

Russian Professor, Doctor of Political Sciences and a member of the Academy of Military Sciences Igor Panarin counted the losses of foreign military as a result of participation in the so-called ATO, in the territory of Donbass. The document published is called: “The losses of foreign mercenaries and NATO troops in Donbass in the period from 2 May 2014 to 15 February 2015“. As a result of calculations it became known that the foreign mercenary troops suffered losses of about 1,200 people killed.

The greatest losses among foreign mercenaries operating in the punitive units of Ukrainian junta were suffered by:

– Polish PMC «ASBS Othago» – 394 people (killed and wounded)
– American PMC “Greystone” -180 people,
– American PMC “Academi” (until 2009 known as Blackwater) – 269 people.
Baltic sniper women lost 26 people.
CIA – 25 people.

In addition, according to some expert data, there were about 25% of the personnel (approximately 2,200 people) of NATO troops and foreign mercenaries as a part of the encircled punitive group in Debaltsevo. This explains the diplomatic activity of the Western leaders and arrival of the leaders of France and Germany in Moscow.

We can assume the losses among NATO military and its allies (killed and wounded) in Debaltsevo pocket:

1.Soldiers of UK Airborne Service – about 20 people
2.The military forces of SOF (Special Operations Forces) of the United States – about 15 people
3.Soldiers of Foreign French Legion – 10 people.
4.Polish military -10 people
4.Soldiers from Israel -10 people.
5.Soldiers from Croatia -10 people.

http://www.newsli.ru/news/world/proisshestviya/14172

http://en.voicesevas.ru/news/3613-losses-of-foreign-legions-and-nato-mercenaries-in-donbass.html

 

Argo vs. Waking up in Tehran — what happened in 1979? Hollywood propaganda vs. historical reality

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The book Waking Up in Tehran by Margot Lachlan White, which David Swanson describes as a “magnificent modern epic”, was apparently never published. What happened to her and the book? It is not hard to imagine the pressure from Israel and the United States to make sure it did not see the light of day, especially in light of the experiences she describes. There are a few reviews online and a podcast interview.

It’s more timely than ever to get this book published and/or posted online.

Posted on War is a Crime.org, January 11, 2013
Waking up in Tehran
by David Swanson

According to one theory, U.S.-Iranian relations began around November 1979 when a crowd of irrational religious nutcases violently seized the U.S. embassy in Iran, took the employees hostage, tortured them, and held them until scared into freeing them by the arrival of a new sheriff in Washington, a man named Ronald Reagan.  From that day to this, according to this popular theory, Iran has been run by a bunch of subhuman lunatics with whom rational people couldn’t really talk if they wanted to.  These monsters only understand force.  And they have been moments away from developing and using nuclear weapons against us for decades now.  Moments away, I tell you!

According to another theory — a quaint little notion that I like to refer to as “verifiable history” — the CIA, operating out of that U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1953, maliciously and illegally overthrew a relatively democratic and liberal parliamentary government, and with it the 1951 Time magazine man of the year Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, because Mossadegh insisted that Iran’s oil wealth enrich Iranians rather than foreign corporations.  The CIA installed a dictatorship run by the Shah of Iran who quickly became a major source of profits for U.S. weapons makers, and his nation a testing ground for surveillance techniques and human rights abuses.  The U.S. government encouraged the Shah’s development of a nuclear energy program.  But the Shah impoverished and alienated the people of Iran, including hundreds of thousands educated abroad.  A secular pro-democracy revolution nonviolently overthrew the Shah in January 1979, but it was a revolution without a leader or a plan for governing.  It was co-opted by rightwing religious forces led by a man who pretended briefly to favor democratic reform.  The U.S. government, operating out of the same embassy despised by many in Iran since 1953, explored possible means of keeping the Shah in power, but some in the CIA worked to facilitate what they saw as the second best option: a theocracy that would substitute religious fanaticism and oppression for populist and nationalist demands.  When the U.S. embassy was taken over by an unarmed crowd the next November, immediately following the public announcement of the Shah’s arrival in the United States, and with fears of another U.S.-led coup widespread in Tehran, a sit-in planned for two or three days was co-opted, as the whole revolution had been, by mullahs with connections to the CIA and an extremely anti-democratic agenda.  They later made a deal with U.S. Republicans, as Robert Parry and others have well documented, to keep the hostage crisis going until Carter lost the 1980 presidential election to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan’s government secretly renewed weapons sales to the new Iranian dictatorship despite its public anti-American stance and with no more concern for its religious fervor than for that of future al Qaeda leaders who would spend the 1980s fighting the Soviets with U.S. weapons in Afghanistan.  At the same time, the Reagan administration made similarly profitable deals with Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, which had launched a war on Iran and continued it with U.S. support through the length of the Reagan presidency.  The mad military investment in the United States that took off with Reagan and again with George W. Bush, and which continues to this day, has made the nation of Iran — which asserts its serious independence from U.S. rule — a target of threatened war and actual sanctions and terrorism.

Ben Affleck was asked by Rolling Stone magazine, “What do you think the Iranians’ reaction is gonna be?” to Affleck’s movie Argo, which depicts a side-story about six embassy employees who, in 1979, avoided being taken hostage.  Affleck, mixing bits of truth and mythology, just as in the movie itself, replied:

“Who the FUCK knows – who knows if their reaction is going to be anything? This is still the same Stalinist, oppressive regime that was in place when the hostages were taken. There was no rhyme or reason to this action. What’s interesting is that people later figured out that Khomeini just used the hostages to consolidate power internally and marginalize the moderates and everyone in America was going, ‘What the fuck’s wrong with these people?’ You know, ‘What do they want from us?’ It was because it wasn’t about us. It was about Khomeini holding on to power and being able to say to his political opponents, of which he had many, ‘You’re either with us or you’re with the Americans’ – which is, of course, a tactic that works really well. That revolution was a students’ revolution. There were students and communists and secularists and merchants and Islamists, it’s just that Khomeini fucking slowly took it for himself.”

The takeover of the embassy is an action virtually no one would advocate in retrospect, but asserting that it lacked rhyme or reason requires willful ignorance of Iranian-U.S. relations.  Claiming that nobody knew what the hostage-takers wanted requires erasing from history their very clear demands for the Shah to be returned to stand trial, for Iranian money in U.S. banks to be returned to Iran, and for the United States to commit to never again interfering in Iranian politics.  In fact, not only were those demands clearly made, but they are almost indisputably reasonable demands.  A dictator guilty of murder, torture, and countless other abuses should have stood trial, and should have been extradited to do so, as required by treaty.  Money belonging to the Iranian government under a dictatorship should have been returned to a new Iranian government, not pocketed by a U.S. bank.  And for one nation to agree not to interfere in another’s politics is merely to agree to compliance with the most fundamental requirement of legal international relations.

Argo devotes its first 2 minutes or so to the 1953 background of the 1979 drama.  Blink and you’ll miss it, as I’m betting most viewers do.  For a richer understanding of what was happening in Iran in the late 1970s and early 1980s I have a better recommendation than watching Argo.  For a truly magnificent modern epic I strongly encourage getting a hold of the forthcoming masterpiece by M. Lachlan White, titled Waking Up in Tehran: Love and Intrigue in Revolutionary Iran, due to be published this spring.  Weighing in at well over 300,000 words, or about 100,000 more than Moby Dick, Waking Up in Tehran is the memoir of Margot White, an American human rights activist who became an ally of pro-democracy Iranian student groups in 1977, traveled to Iran, supported the revolution, met with the hostage-takers in the embassy, became a public figure, worked with the Kurdish resistance when the new regime attacked the Kurds for being infidels, married an Iranian, and was at home with her husband in Tehran when armed representatives of the government finally banged on the door.  I’m not going to give away what happened next.  This book will transport you into the world of a gripping novel, but you’ll emerge with a political, cultural, and even linguistic education.  This is an action-adventure that would, in fact, make an excellent movie — or even a film trilogy.  It’s also an historical document.

There are sections in which White relates conversations with her friends and colleagues in Iran, including their speculations as to who was behind what government intrigue.  A few of these speculations strike me as in need of more serious support.  They also strike me as helpful in understanding the viewpoints of Iranians at the time.  Had I edited this book I might have framed them a little differently, but I wouldn’t have left them out.  I wouldn’t have left anything out.  This is a several-hundred-page love letter from a woman to her husband and from an activist to humanity.  It is intensely romantic and as honest as cold steel.  It starts in 1977.

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Christian Science Monitor: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Israel should be “wiped off the map”

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In honor of Persian New Year, here is a 2012 article from the mainstream American news.

From the Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com

Iran’s nuclear program: 4 things you probably didn’t know

Tensions over Iran‘s nuclear program, which some in Israel and the US say is meant to produce nuclear weapons, continue to run high in the West. Most recently in a Iranian New Year’s sermon, Ayatollah Khamenei promised that Iran would respond “on the same level” as any attack against it.  But even as Israeli and Iranian officials take turns rattling their sabers, several key points remain misunderstood.  Do the US and Israel believe that Iran has a nuclear weapons program?  Did President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really promise to “wipe Israel off the map”?  The answers may surprise you.

By Arthur Bright, Correspondent posted June 8, 2012 at 2:11 pm EDT

1.President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”

One frequently proffered explanation for why a war with Iran is needed is because President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants Israel “wiped off the map,” and that with a nuclear weapon, he could.  But some argue that Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statement was mistranslated from less incidiary language.

Ahmadinejad’s alleged condemnation of Israel came at a “World Without Zionism” conference in Tehran in Oct. 2005, in which he was quoted by an English-language Iranian news site as saying “Israel must be wiped off the map.”  But as several analyses of the original Farsi statement show, this appears to be a mistranslation.

Arash Norouzi of the Mossadegh Project noted in 2007 that Ahmadinejad “never… uttered the words ‘map,’ ‘wipe out,’ or even ‘Israel'” in his statement.  Rather, he argued, the translation should have been that “this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”  (Both The Washington Post and The Atlantic came up with similarly variant translations.)

This is a key difference, Mr. Norouzi argued, because Ahmadinejad used the “vanish from the page of time” idiom elsewhere in his speech: when describing the governments of the Shah of Iran, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein.  While war and revolution were involved in the three regimes’ collapse, none of them, Norouzi argued, were “wiped off the map.”  Rather, they underwent regime change.  This suggests in turn, he said, that Ahmadinejad was calling for regime change in Israel, not nuclear genocide.  Juan Cole, another critic of the speech’s translation, compared Ahmadinejad’s statement to Reagan-era calls for the end of the Soviet Union.

Critics note that the translation is a matter of semantics and that regardless, they show Ahmadinejad’s hostility to Israel.  Ahmadinejad did not help the case for mistranslation when in subsequent interviews he refused to clarify whether he truly meant that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth.  But the ambiguity of the words and the indications from context suggest that “wiped off the map” is not the best translation for his statement.

2.Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons.

Whatever words Ahmadinejad used to describe his attitude towards Israel, it is undeniable that he is not the true leader of Iran.  That role is filled by the country’s supreme leader and foremost religious figure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.  Mr. Khamenei’s words are highly influential among religious Shiites –thus making his 2005 fatwa against nuclear weapons a significant factor in discussing Iran’s nuclear program.

A fatwa is a ruling on Islamic law issued by a recognized religious figure.  While generally nonbinding, fatwas have influence among the faithful, and fatwas issued by Iran’s supreme leader have more influence than most in Iran, both politically and religiously.  So when on Aug. 9, 2005, Khamenei issued a fatwa against the production and use of nuclear weapons, it was not simply a sermon – it carried political weight.  As Jamil Maidan Flores wrote in a commentary last week for the Jakarta Globe, “Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa on nuclear weapons does count for something. He issued it as the supreme spiritual and temporal leader of Iran, and as a marja, a holy man. The fatwa should be binding to all Iranian Shiites, and most binding of all to he himself who issued it.”  Khamenei has repeated his commitment to the fatwa many times since. Most recently, in February he called having nuclear weapons a “sin.”

But there is another Shiite religious concept, that of taghiyeh, which “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ” author Hooman Majd translates as “dissimulation.” A byproduct of the early years of Shia’s split from the Sunni mainstream, taghiyeh allows Shiites to lie in order to avoid death.  Mr. Flores notes that taghiyeh could be a factor in Khamenei’s fatwa on nuclear weapons, if somehow lying about development of such weapons would protect Shiites.  But Mr. Majd notes that taghiyeh is meant only for the purpose of lying about one’s religion to avoid death – which is not the case here – and adds that neither Khamenei nor the former supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, ever to anyone’s knowledge made use of taghiyeh.

3.Iran has a legitimate need for more energy, which is driving its nuclear efforts.

Iran has always insisted that its nuclear research was for peaceful purposes only: to provide more energy to a growing Iran.  In all the debate over the possibility of Iranian nuclear weapons, it is easy to overlook the fact that Iran does indeed need more power, power which nuclear plants could provide.

While Iran is a major supplier of both oil – it is the fourth largest producer in the world according to the CIA’s World Factbook – it is also a major consumer.  The Green Party of Iran (an environmental party not to be confused with the Green Movement behind the 2009 presidential protests) estimated in 2000 that Iran ranked second only to the US in gasoline consumption.  But despite Iran’s huge oil production, it lacks the facilities to refine it into gasoline, forcing it to import a barrel of oil for every eight it exports.  According to Majd, some Iranians blame their lack of refining infrastructure on Western sanctions.

Iran is also the world’s fifth largest producer of natural gas globally according to the CIA’s World Factbook.  But it consumed 137.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas in 2010, almost as much natural gas as it produced that year. (Editor’s note: This sentence was revised to correctly reflect Iran’s natural gas production in 2010.)

4.The US and Israel both say Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

It is perhaps the most important fact that is often ignored in the debate over war with Iran: Both US and Israeli intelligence agree that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Just last month, National Intelligence Agency Director James Clapper wrote in a report to the Senate Armed Services Committee that “Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons… should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

When asked in a hearing by Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan to confirm that “Iran has not yet decided to develop nuclear weapons,” Mr. Clapper did so, saying “That is the intelligence community’s assessment …,” and he reiterated that he has doubts about whether Iran is attempting to create a nuclear weapon when pressed further by Sen. Lindsay Graham (R) of South Carolina.  Gen. Roland Burgess of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who also appeared at the hearing, agreed with Clapper’s assessment.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta made statements even more to the point than Clapper’s in January.  In the January 8 edition of CBS‘s Face the Nation, Mr. Panetta said flat out, “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.”

Israeli intelligence also does not believe that Iran is currently pursuing a nuclear weapon.  In January, Haaretz reported that Israel believes Iran “has not yet decided whether to translate [its efforts to improve its nuclear power] capabilities into a nuclear weapon – or, more specifically, a nuclear warhead mounted atop a missile.”  That same month, Israeli military intelligence chief Gen. Aviv Kochavi told a Knesset hearing that Iran is not working on building a nuclear bomb, reported Agence France-Presse.

Reposted under Fair Use Rules.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2012/0608/Iran-s-nuclear-program-4-things-you-probably-didn-t-know/President-Mahmoud-Ahmadinejad-never-said-that-Israel-should-be-wiped-off-the-map.

Jewish homeland proposal for Crimea – Stalin and the “Crimea California” project

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Read Kristina Russ’ comments at the end.

From Fort Russ, March 14, 2015
Translated by Kristina Rus

 Crimean California
Sergey GORBACHEV
Originally published in “Ostrov Krym”  (“Crimea Island”) in September, 1999

1948. Returning from Sevastopol to his summer house, Stalin recalls everything that was recently associated with Crimea. As the main theorist in the field of ethnic issues, it was obvious to him: if the problems on the Peninsula are not properly addressed, these problems will turn into a time bomb of a tremendous destructive power in the future. In recent decades, the ethnic question, along with the victorious pace of its antipode – the ideas of proletarian internationalism, was the basis and the driving force behind processes on a global scale. It, of course, is not comparable with the power of the Marxist-Leninist ideology in general. But…

 The Crimean peninsula usually either contained several small municipal entities, or the entire Crimea or a part of it was part of other states. Therefore none of the historical events in Crimea should be considered in isolation, without regard to the fate of not only the Northern Black Sea region, but also Europe, and most importantly – the Soviet Union (Russia).

 – But… – Stalin mused, – now Crimea is just a region in RSFSR.

 Crimea is Russian, as it should be, for it is a historically predetermined fact. Only Russian, otherwise there will be a lot of hunters for this land. Take, for example, the project to create “Crimean California”…

These facts are little known today to the general public. Unavailability of archives raises a lot of conflicting rumors and speculation, but the secret is securely hidden…
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WSJ report: Israel treating Al-Nusra terrorists wounded in Syrian conflict

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From Farsi News Agency, March 14, 2014

TEHRAN (FNA)- Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to al-Nusra terrorists wounded in the ongoing war, a new report said.

The Wall Street Journal newspaper reported that al-Nusra Front, which is currently fighting the Syrian government, “hasn’t bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer” along the Golan Heights.

“Those (Takfiri) elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who their real enemy is – maybe it isn’t Israel,” Amos Yadlin the former military intelligence chief said.

Back in January, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said the Israeli military is obviously supporting terrorist groups in Syria by conducting airstrikes in the crisis-hit country.

“Whenever we make advances in some place, they (the Israelis) attack in order to undermine the army. It’s very clear,” Assad stated.

“Some in Syria joke: “How can you say that al-Qaeda doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force,” he added.

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13931223001274

Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2015

Al Qaeda a Lesser Evil? Syria War Pulls U.S., Israel Apart;
Mountaintop on edge of Golan Heights illustrates complexities

[Requires a subscription]

http://www.wsj.com/ articles/ al-qaeda-a-lesser-evil-syria-war-pulls-u-s-israel-apart-1426169708

From Jerusalem Post, March 13, 2015

Israel has opened its borders with Syria in order to provide medical treatment to Nusra Front and al-Qaida fighters wounded in the ongoing civil war, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The prominent American newspaper reported that Nusra Front, the Sunni Muslim al-Qaida offshoot which is currently fighting the Iranian-backed axis of Bashar Assad and Hezbollah, “hasn’t bothered Israel since seizing the border area last summer” along the Golan Heights.

While Israel views al-Qaida and its allies as enemies, it is far more disturbed by what it views as an even bigger menace – Iran and its proxies. According to The Wall Street Journal, this attitude has caused tension with the United States, which has also targeted al-Qaida and Nusra Front fighters in Syria.

Amos Yadlin, the former military intelligence chief who is currently in the running to be defense minister should the Zionist Union, led by Isaac Herzog, succeed in defeating incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the elections next week, told the Journal that Hezbollah and Iran “are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy.”

“Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy – maybe it isn’t Israel,” Yadlin is quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying.

The fact that the Israel-Syria border area along the Golan Heights has remained largely quiet has sparked accusations among supporters of embattled President Bashar Assad that the Sunni Islamist alliance, which includes al-Qaida, is backed by Israel.

“Some in Syria joke: ‘How can you say that al-Qaida doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force’,” Assad told Foreign Affairs magazine earlier this year. “They are supporting the rebels in Syria. It is very clear.”

Israel has denied actively aiding al-Qaida, though it makes no secret of its determination to thwart Hezbollah’s attempts to establish a foothold near the Golan frontier from whence it could harass the North.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has stated repeatedly his contention that Iran is seeking to open a new front against Israel from the Syrian Golan Heights.

Earlier this year, an air strike attributed by international media reports to Israel struck and killed 12 Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah operatives in Quneitra, Syria, near the Israeli border.

In retaliation, Hezbollah guerillas launched a missile attack near the Har Dov region straddling the Lebanon-Israel border weeks later, killing two Israeli soldiers.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, which has claimed the lives of upwards of 200,000 people, Israel has provided medical assistance to nearly 2,000 Syrians.

The Wall Street Journal quoted “an Israeli military official” who said that most of those treated were armed rebels fighting the regime.

“We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening,” the official said. “Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border and they go on their way.”

Report: Israel treating al-Qaida fighters wounded in Syria civil war
http://www.jpost.com/ Middle-East/ Report-Israel-treating-al-Qaida-fighters-wounded-in-Syria-civil-war-3 93862

 

Senior MP: Washington’s role in ISIL creation proven by capture of US military advisors; Israelis also captured

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Last year, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Mossad of training ISIL terrorists operating in Iraq and Syria.

Alexander Prokhanov said that Mossad is also likely to have transferred some of its spying experiences to the ISIL leadership, adding that Israel’s military advisors could be assisting the Takfiri terrorists.

Farsi News Agency, March 11, 2015

TEHRAN (FNA)- Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said the recent capture of the US military advisers who were aiding the ISIL in Northern Iraq is a compelling proof that Washington has created the Takfiri terrorist group.

“The capture of the American advisers by the Iraqi army leaves no doubt that ISIL has been created by the US,” Boroujerdi told reporters on Wednesday.

He underlined that the American people who will never forget the beheading of their journalists by ISIL now blast Washington officials as the main culprits in the crime.

On Saturday, Iraqi Special Forces declared that they have apprehended several foreign military advisors of ISIL, including American, Israeli and Arab nationals, in an operation in Mosul in the Northern parts of the country.

The Iraqi forces said they have retrieved four foreign passports, including those that belonged to American and Israeli nationals and one that belonged to the national of a Persian Gulf Cooperation Council (PGCC) member-state, from ISIL’s military advisors.

The foreign advisors were arrested in a military operation in Tal Abta desert near Mosul city.

On Monday, a senior Iraqi legislator lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, and said he is in possession of irrefutable intelligence documents showing that ISIL is receiving arms aids from Israel as well as a number of western and Arab countries.

“We have intelligence which shows Israel and some major western and regional states have supplied weapons to ISIL,” Al-Qad news website quoted member of the Iraqi parliament’s Security and Defense Committee Abbas al-Khazali as saying.

Meantime, the Iraqi legislator stressed that his country needs more weapons to fight the ISIL, and said Baghdad is willing to purchase weapons from East European countries, Russia and China.

Iraqi provincial officials and statesmen have repeatedly lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, revealing that US and Israeli-made weapons have been discovered from the areas purged of ISIL terrorists.

In late December, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s Security and Defense Committee disclosed that US planes were supplying the ISIL terrorist organization with arms and ammunition in Salahuddin province.

MP Majid al-Gharawi stated that he had intelligence to prove that US planes were supplying ISIL organization, not only in Salahuddin province, but also other provinces.

He added that the US and the international coalition are “not serious in fighting against the ISIL organization, because they have the technological power to determine the presence of ISIL gunmen and destroy them in one month”.

Gharawi added that “the US is trying to expand the time of the war against the ISIL to get guarantees from the Iraqi government to have its bases in Mosul and Anbar provinces.”

Salahuddin security commission also disclosed in December that “unknown planes threw arms and ammunition to the ISIL gunmen Southeast of Tikrit city”.

Later in December, another senior Iraqi lawmaker complained that the terrorist group still received aids dropped by unidentified aircraft.

“The international coalition is not serious about air strikes on ISIL terrorists and is even seeking to take out the popular (voluntary) forces from the battlefield against the Takfiris so that the problem with ISIL remains unsolved in the near future,” Nahlah al-Hababi told FNA.

“The ISIL terrorists are still receiving aids from unidentified fighter jets in Iraq and Syria,” she added.

Also in late December, the US-led coalition dropped aids to the Takfiri militants in an area North of Baghdad.

Field sources in Iraq told al-Manar that the international coalition airplanes dropped aids to the terrorist militants in Balad, an area which lies in Salahuddin province North of Baghdad.

Then in January, Head of the Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee Hakem al-Zameli disclosed that coalition planes had dropped weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL in Salahuddin, Al-Anbar and Diyala provinces.

Al-Zameli underlined that “the coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq”.

“There are proofs and evidence for the US-led coalition’s military aid to ISIL terrorists through air(dropped cargoes),” he told FNA in January.

He noted that the members of his committee have already proved that the US planes have dropped advanced weaponry, including anti-aircraft weapons, for the ISIL, and that an investigation committee had been set up to probe into the matter.

“The US drops weapons for the ISIL under the excuse that it doesn’t know about the whereabouts of the ISIL positions and it is trying to distort the reality with its allegations.

He noted that the committee had collected the data and the evidence provided by eyewitnesses, including Iraqi army officers and the popular forces, and said, “These documents are given to the investigation committee … and the necessary measures will be taken to protect the Iraqi airspace.”

Also in January, another senior Iraqi legislator reiterated that the US-led coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.

“The international coalition is only an excuse for protecting the ISIL and helping the terrorist group with equipment and weapons,” Jome Divan, who is member of the al-Sadr bloc in the Iraqi parliament, said.

He said the coalition’s support for the ISIL is now evident to everyone, and continued, “The coalition has not targeted ISIL’s main positions in Iraq.”

Then, on February 21 al-Zameli announced that he had documents and photos showing that the US Apache helicopters airdropped foodstuff and weapons for the ISIL in the Southern parts of Tikrit.

Two days later, the senior official declared that the Iraqi army has shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province.

“The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” al-Zameli said, according to a report released by the Arabic-language information center of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq on February 23.

He said the Iraqi parliament has asked London for explanations.

The senior Iraqi legislator further unveiled that the government in Baghdad is receiving daily reports from people and security forces in al-Anbar province on numerous flights by the US-led coalition planes that airdrop weapons and supplies for ISIL in terrorist-held areas.

The Iraqi lawmaker further noted the cause of such western aids to the terrorist group, and explained that the US prefers a chaotic situation in Anbar Province which is near the cities of Karbala and Baghdad as it does not want the ISIL crisis to come to an end.

Earlier on the same day, a senior Iraqi provincial official lashed out at the western countries and their regional allies for supporting Takfiri terrorists in Iraq, revealing that US and Israeli-made weapons have been discovered from the areas purged of ISIL terrorists.

“We have discovered weapons made in the US, European countries and Israel from the areas liberated from ISIL’s control in Al-Baqdadi region,” the Al-Ahad news website quoted Head of Al-Anbar Provincial Council Khalaf Tarmouz as saying.

He noted that the weapons made by the European countries and Israel were discovered from the terrorists in the Eastern parts of the city of Ramadi.

Two days later on February 25, another Iraqi provincial official revealed that the US airplanes still continued airdropping weapons and foodstuff for the ISIL terrorists.

“The US planes have dropped weapons for the ISIL terrorists in the areas under ISIL control and even in those areas that have been recently liberated from the ISIL control to encourage the terrorists to return to those places,” Coordinator of Iraqi popular forces Jafar al-Jaberi told FNA.

He noted that eyewitnesses in Al-Havijeh of Kirkuk province had witnessed the US airplanes dropping several suspicious parcels for ISIL terrorists in the province.

“Two coalition planes were also seen above the town of Al-Khas in Diyala and they carried the Takfiri terrorists to the region that has recently been liberated from the ISIL control,” Al-Jaberi said.

And eventually on February 28, the Iraqi popular forces who had shot down a US helicopter carrying weapons for the ISIL forces in Al-Baqdadi region released the photos of the downed chopper on the Internet.

A group of Iraqi popular forces known as Al-Hashad Al-Shabi (mobilized forces) had shot down the US Army helicopter that was carrying weapons for the ISIL in the western parts of Al-Baqdadi region in Al-Anbar province on February 21.

Last year, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Mossad of training ISIL terrorists operating in Iraq and Syria.

Alexander Prokhanov said that Mossad is also likely to have transferred some of its spying experiences to the ISIL leadership, adding that Israel’s military advisors could be assisting the Takfiri terrorists.

Prokhanov said ISIL is a byproduct of US policies in the Middle East.

“ISIL is a tool at the hands of the United States. They tell the Europeans that if we (the Americans) do not intervene, ISIL will cause you harm,” he said, adding that Iran and Russia are the prime targets of the ISIL.

“They launched their first terror attack against us just a few days back in Chechnya,” he said, stressing that the ISIL ideology has got nothing to do with the Islam practiced in Iran and some other Muslim countries in the Middle East region.

Prokhanov said the United States and Israel are one and the same when it comes to supporting a terror organization like the ISIL.

http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13931220000903

From Tasnim News

Reports of the arrest of American military advisors assisting ISIS militants in Iraq constitutes evidence of cooperation between the US and the ISIS terrorist group in the Arab country, an Iranian lawmaker said.

Speaking to the Tasnim News Agency on Sunday, Mohammad Saleh Jokar said the US and the coalition it leads are not after tackling the ISIS, but pursue other objectives.

On Saturday, Iraqi sources reported that the Arab country’s counter-terrorism forces in an operation in an outlying area in the province of Nineveh have arrested four foreign advisors -three of them from the US and Israel- who were employed as military advisors to the ISIS fighters.

The arrest of American advisors made it clear for the world public opinion that the ISIS is a product of the US and Washington backs it, Jokar explained.

The detained foreign advisors have been transferred to a security center in capital Baghdad.

Since March 2, the Iraqi troops, backed by voluntary forces, have launched an offensive to recapture Tikrit and the surrounding areas.

The offensive is the biggest military operation in the province since the ISIS terrorists seized swaths of north Iraq last June and advanced toward the capital Baghdad.

http://www.tasnimnews.com/english/Home/Single/678699

The relationship between Washington and ISIS: the evidence

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The UN peacekeeping force based in the occupied Golan has reported its observations of Israel’s Defence Forces ‘interacting with’ al Nusra fighters at the border. At the same time, Israeli arms have been found with the extremist groups, in both Syria and Iraq. In November 2014 members of the Druze minority in the Golan protested against Israel’s hospital support for al Nusra and ISIS fighters. This in turn led to questions by the Israeli media, as to whether ‘ Israel does, in fact, hospitalize members of al-Nusra and Daesh [ISIS]‘.

From Global Research, March 8, 2015
by Prof. Tim Anderson

obama-isis

Reports that US and British aircraft carrying arms to ISIS have been shot down by Iraqi forces have been met with shock and denial in western countries. Few in the Middle East doubt that Washington is playing a ‘double game’ with its proxy armies in Syria, but some key myths remain important amongst the significantly more ignorant western audiences.

A central myth is that Washington now arms ‘moderate Syrian rebels’, to both overthrow the Syrian Government and supposedly defeat the ‘extremist rebels’. This claim became more important in 2014, when the rationale of US aggression against Syria shifted from ‘humanitarian intervention’ to a renewal of Bush’s ‘war on terror’.

A distinct controversy is whether the al Qaeda styled groups (especially Jabhat al Nusra and ISIS) have been generated as a sort of organic reaction to the repeated US interventions, or whether they are actually paid agents of Washington.

Certainly, prominent ISIS leaders were held in US prisons. ISIS leader, Ibrahim al-Badri (aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) is said to have been held for between one and two years at Camp Bucca in Iraq. In 2006, as al-Baghdadi and others were released, the Bush administration announced its plan for a ‘New Middle East’, a plan which would employ sectarian violence as part of a process of ‘creative destruction’ in the region.

According to Seymour Hersh’s 2007 article, ‘The Redirection’, the US would make use of ‘moderate Sunni states’, not least the Saudis, to ‘contain’ the Shia gains in Iraq brought about by the 2003 US invasion. These ‘moderate Sunni’ forces would carry out clandestine operations to weaken Iran and Hezbollah, key enemies of Israel. This brought the Saudis and Israel closer, as both fear Iran.

While there have been claims that the ISIS ‘caliph’ al-Baghdadi is a CIA or Mossad trained agent, these have not yet been well backed up. There are certainly grounds for suspicion, but independent evidence is important, in the context of a supposed US ‘war’ against ISIS . So what is the broader evidence on Washington’s covert links with ISIS? Continue reading →

Vladimir Putin speaks to the Russian Security Council

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SOTT Exclusive: Putin on fighting extremism, color revolutions
By Harrison Koehli
November 20, 2014

Putin at meeting of Security Council, 20 November

Putin at meeting of Security Council, 20 November

Russian President Vladimir Putin recently spoke about countering extremism in the next decade at an expanded Security Council meting in the Kremlin. As usual, he had some interesting things to say. Here are some highlights, with commentary.

On the inhumanity of extremism

“I do not believe there is any need to prove how dangerous the very nature of extremism is and how destructive its ideology is – the ideology of intolerance, hatred and animosity. In all its manifestations, extremism is aggressive in nature, seditious and often violent and linked to terrorism.

It infringes on the rights and freedoms of citizens, often even endangering their very lives; it is a threat to national security, capable of cardinally unbalancing the political, economic and social systems. Such types of extremism as nationalism, religious intolerance and political extremism are especially dangerous for society and for the state. Every crime of this type (usually resonant and heinous in itself) can provoke mass violations of public order.”

The western puppet masters also know how dangerous and destructive extremism is, which is why they foment it in regions they wish to control. They also know that ordinary people also know how dangerous and destructive it is. But unlike their leaders, they see this as a bad thing, which is why their governments make a big show about ‘fighting terrorism’.

What none of them seem to know, or what none of them wish to reveal, is that extremism has a very real cause, not to be found in its specific ideology per se. There is nothing inherently ponerizing about an extremist ideology. The reason they work is because 1) they are created by individuals with certain psychopathologies with tendencies to see the world in anti-social, anti-human, doctrinaire, black-and-white, us-and-them ways, and 2) similar people gravitate towards those ideologies, either because they share the same emotional deficits or because they are simply ignorant of what’s really going on and get riled up by the revolutionary aspects. Andrew Lobaczewski laid it all out in Political Ponerology. If only the world would listen. [“Ponerology” is the study of evil.]

On color revolutions

“I would like to add that in the modern world extremism is often used as a geopolitical instrument to rearrange spheres of influence. We see the tragic consequences of the wave of so-called ‘colour revolutions’, the turmoil in the countries that have undergone the irresponsible experiments of covert and sometimes blatant interference in their lives. We take this as a lesson and a warning, and we must do everything necessary to ensure this never happens in Russia.”

Yep.

What to do

“This should not be piecemeal involvement, but a unified front, so to speak, which should act to prevent extremism, jointly educate people, including via the Internet, and create conditions for stronger peace and accord in society.

Once we achieve such coordination in every region, in each municipality, then we will have overall results in countering extremism. People would know that on their territory, there are authorities and there is a proactive and concerned society and together they can effectively resist any manifestations of extremism and maintain calm and stability.

In such conditions of trust and support, it is much easier to create an atmosphere of renouncing extremist propaganda. At the same time, the recognition by the citizens of the danger posed by extremism guarantees the efficiency of the measures taken by the authorities.

… I would like to reiterate that one of our key priorities is to breed public rejection of and civic immunity to the dissemination of extremist and radical ideas. For this purpose, we must unite the efforts of the authorities, society and all state and social agencies.”

Education is certainly important. As is a centralized effort to combat the ponerogenic process in such groups. The people need a central authority, otherwise foreign agents would be free to create and rile up existing extremist groups (ponerogenic unions). But that authority needs to be informed as to the exact causes and dynamics behind the process.

The weak spots

“I would like to single out some priority areas of our work. We should pay special attention to interethnic and inter-religious relations and fully support the culture, traditions and identity of the peoples living in a given area, town or city. This is a very delicate job, but you know what can happen if it is left undone.

The second area is work with the younger generation. It is among them that the leaders of extremist organisations are trying to find followers and conduct their propaganda, primarily using the internet. Extremist ideology is gaining momentum in the virtual world, spilling out into the real one.”

Putin is correct in that ponerogenic unions propagandize to youths (often those who are disenfranchised, who don’t feel they have any purpose, who feel powerless in the face of a national or global system that doesn’t give a shit about them) and exploit ethnic and religious differences. Most, if not all, religions have some degree of ponerogenic material, ripe for exploitation. The only solution is education, and a big part of that education is instilling real values into youths.

Illegal immigration

“The third important area is the improvement of the migration policy. We still have quite a few problems here that have to do with illegal, uncontrolled migration. We know that this breeds crime, interethnic tensions and extremism. We need greater control over compliance with regulations covering migrants’ stay in Russia and we have to take practical measures to promote their social and cultural adaptation and protect their labour and other rights.”

Whereas the U.S. seems to be against illegal immigration simply because it is a totally xenophobic and racist society, it can be a real problem. The Central Asian region of Russia’s border is largely uncontrolled, making easy entry for foreign mercenaries, drug traffickers, human traffickers, and smugglers. The U.S. has been exploiting this fact for years.

Conclusion

“…countering extremism has nothing to do with intolerance towards dissenters. Russia is a free democratic country and its citizens have the right to their opinion, the right to voice it and to be in opposition to the authorities. Moreover, no national leadership could ever be effective without society playing this role. … It is important that they exercise their rights, express their political preferences, positions and views in a civilised and legal manner.

As we assert our freedom of choice, the right to hold meetings, marches and rallies, we should not forget that we are responsible for our words and deeds. We must know and bear in mind that breeding conflict between people of different ethnicity and religion, propaganda of nationalist ideology, mass violations of public order on these grounds and particularly calls for a violent overthrow of the existing regime are direct manifestations of anti-national thinking and extremism. … Leaders of public movements should remember this; they should know that such actions are punishable by law.”

Those who cry “censorship!” should remember that freedom is not the same as free license. There are lines that should not be crossed, lines crossed by groups like ISIS, Ukraine’s neo-Nazi battalions, the U.S. government, NATO, etc.

On Jerusalem

“I have mentioned developments in the world. Life keeps teaching us new lessons. Sometimes this happens far from our borders; however, we should still be aware of them. The latest atrocity in Jerusalem, where praying people were attacked with an axe – this is beyond comprehension. Knowing this, realising the danger of such manifestations and having analysed their causes, we must make timely decisions that would save our country from such things.”

Putin is no doubt aware of the extent of Mossad operations in Israel. But he plays by the rules. In this case, if Mossad had a hand in the recent attack (it almost always does), it has given Putin the opportunity to use it as support for his own policies that run directly counter to the actions of countries like Israel, who foment extremism in countries they don’t like.

Harrison Koehli
Harrison Koehli hails from Edmonton, Alberta. A graduate of studies in music performance, Harrison is also an editor for Red Pill Press and has been interviewed on several North American radio shows in recognition of his contributions to advancing the study of ponerology. In addition to music and books, Harrison enjoys tobacco and bacon (often at the same time) and dislikes cell phones, vegetables, and fascists.

Source:
http://www.sott.net/article/289263-SOTT-EXCLUSIVE-Putin-on-fighting-extremism-color-revolutions