World War III news .... Part 2 .... September 25

From ShanghaiDaily:
U.S. threatens sanctions on Shiite rebels in Yemen  The United States on Wednesday threatened to slap sanctions on some of the Shiite rebels deemed to undermine Yemen's uneasy transition process..........



Debra Saunders writing at SFGate:
Where are the peaceniks? Why aren’t they marching on Market Street to protest President Obama’s use of military force in Syria and Iraq? The Chronicle’s Kevin Fagan interviewed peace activists who told him that their ranks are numb, in part because America has been at war for more than a decade. Some even wonder if the Islamic State is so barbaric as to merit air strikes.

“People are war-weary and have already been very disappointed in President Obama for some time,” Peaceworkers Executive Director David Hartsough said. That’s right; they’re disappointed. After GOP President George W. Bush sent U.S. troops into Iraq with congressional authorization in 2002, activists took to the streets, but after a Democrat ordered air strikes over Syria without explicit authorization, they’ve been subdued.

“It’s early still, and for the moment this is an air war and not a ground war,” another progressive told Fagan.

I understand. Partisans on both sides of the aisle like to think that if they were in charge, the world would be a safer place. For eight years, Democrats indulged in the seductive conceit that if they were in charge, the world couldn’t be worse than it was with the bumbling Bush as commander in chief. As Secretary of State John Kerry scoffed as a senator in 2004, Bush ran “the most arrogant, inept, reckless and ideological foreign policy in modern history.”

As the Democratic nominee in 2008, Obama promised ........

From Gc4hr:
Lawyer and human rights defender Samira Saleh Al-Naimi executed by ISIS in Mosul.
...Reports confirmed that on the evening of 22 September 2014, a group of masked armed men who belong to ISIS opened fire and killed her in a public square in the very heart of Mosul. She was kidnapped by ISIS from her home last week after she described as “barbaric” the widespread damage that ISIS inflicted on ancient features of her city.
Samira Saleh Al-Naimi is a prominent lawyer and human rights defender and famous for her activities that include defending detainees and supporting the disadvantaged families in the city....

From EnglishAl-Akhbar:
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the United Nations on Thursday that the West was responsible for "strategic blunders" in the Middle East and Central Asia that had created terror havens.
"The strategic blunders of the West in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus have turned these parts of the world into a haven for terrorists and extremists," he told the General Assembly in New York.
On Wednesday, Rouhani described the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group as "extremely savage and barbaric," but questioned the motives of the US-led bombing campaign and training of so-called "moderate" rebels in Syria..........

From GuardianUK:
...Buildings that had been used openly as Isis command centres in Raqqa were destroyed. However, they had long been evacuated as momentum built towards the attacks, and their occupants had melted into the streets of the city, which the middle of last year became the first Syrian city to fall completely outside the control of the regime....

From MilitaryTimes:
Combat footage: U.S. releases video stockpile showing Syria strikes.  

Stephen Lendman writing at GlobalResearch:
On Tuesday, Obama attacked another country lawlessly. Syria poses no threat to America.  Obama bombed multiple sites. He did so with no legal authority. He committed lawless aggression.  He’s done it repeatedly throughout his tenure. It’s the highest of high crimes against peace.  He violated international, constitutional and US statute laws. The 1996 US War Crimes Act calls them “grave breaches.”

Obama’s wars are Nuremberg-level crimes. They demand accountability.  His so-called coalition allies include a rogue’s gallery of despotic regimes. He said he’s “proud” to be allied with them.

Syria is the seventh country he bombed in less than six years in office. The others are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.  US special forces operate covertly and overtly in over 130 countries worldwide. They’re not good will ambassadors. They’re trained killers.  CIA elements operate everywhere. They’re agents of state terror. Their mission is supporting imperial lawlessness.

Obama acted extrajudicially. Security Council members alone may authorize war. It can do so only in self-defense.  Days earlier, John Kerry lied calling military action against Syria “a matter of national security.”

“It’s a matter of the credibility of the United States of America,” he said. “It’s a matter of upholding the interests of our allies and friends in the region.”Deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes lied claiming terrorists from a so-called Khorasan Group plan “attacks in the United States and Europe.”“We believe that attacking was imminent and that they had plans to conduct attacks external to Syria,” he added.“Plotting…was ongoing from” its territory, he claimed. “(S)trikes (undertaken were) aimed to disrupt” it, he added.

False! Targets struck had little or nothing to do with it. So was their timing.
Khorasan is more fiction than fact. It’s a Jahbat al-Nusra (awa as Nusra Front) group.

It’s a valued US/Israeli ally against Syria. Claiming it’s America’s latest alleged threat turns truth on its head. It’s done to justify the unjustifiable.  Washington’s only enemies are ones it invents. It does so to wage one war after another.
To assure instability. To prevent peace. To benefit monied interests. To advance its imperium.  On September 23, Obama’s UN envoy Samantha Power addressed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. She did so by letter.

She tried justifying the unjustifiable. She fooled no one. She fell woefully short. In part, she said:

“…Iraq…fac(es) a serious threat of continuing attacks from ISIL coming out of safe havens in Syria.”

Its government “asked that the United States lead international efforts to strike ISIL sites and military strongholds in Syria in order to end (ongoing attacks), to protect Iraqi citizens, and ultimately to enable and arm Iraqi forces to perform their task of regaining control of the Iraqi borders.”

Fact: Its US-installed puppet regime was pressured, bullied and threatened to support Obama’s new regional wars, or else!

“ISIL and other terrorist groups in Syria are a threat not only to Iraq, but also to many other countries, including the United States and our partners in the region and beyond,” Power claimed.
“The Syrian regime has shown that it cannot and will not confront these safe-havens effectively itself.”
“Accordingly, the United States has initiated necessary and proportionate military actions in Syria to eliminate the ongoing ISIL threat to Iraq…”

It “initiated military actions in Syria against al-Qaida elements known as the Khorasan Group to address threats that they pose to the United States and our partners and allies.”........

From AlAkhbar:
ISIS blows up Muslim shrine, seventh century Green Church in Iraq  
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) extremists controlling the Iraqi city of Tikrit have blown up a Muslim shrine and rigged one of the region's oldest churches with explosives, security sources and witnesses said Thursday......
.....Elsewhere in the hometown of executed former president Saddam Hussein, ISIS also rigged the Green Church, a striking structure carved into the rock and first built in the seventh century.....


From TodaysZaman:
Radical Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants allegedly have terrorist sleeper cells in three main provinces of Turkey -- İstanbul, Ankara and Konya -- and they are ready to attack at any time, US counter-terrorism officials warned Turkey during the recent NATO summit in Wales, the Taraf daily reported on Monday.
US security experts gave Turkish officials at the summit information about the existence of the ISIL sleeper cells in Ankara, İstanbul and Konya, adding that there are possibly sleeper cells in Van, Diyarbakır, Hatay, Gaziantep at Şanlıurfa. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the conference and had an extensive talk with the US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the event on Sept 5.
According to Taraf, determining the number of sleeper cells in Turkey is not easy due to the large number of Syrian refugees who have fled to Turkey from the civil war, as there might be ISIL supporters among them. The report said the ISIL militants in sleeper cells have the capacity to launch bomb attacks similar to last year's attack in Reyhanlı in May, which killed 53 people.,,,,,

From BBC:
Nine men, including the radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, have been arrested in London on suspicion of being members of a banned organisation.

Officers are searching 18 premises in London and one in Stoke-on-Trent.....

From Reuters:
French fighter jets struck Islamic State targets in Iraq on Thursday and the United States hit them in Syria, as a U.S.-led coalition to fight the militants gained momentum with an announcement that Britain would join.

The French strikes were a prompt answer to the beheading of a French tourist in Algeria by militants, who said the killing was punishment for Paris's decision last week to become the first European country to join the U.S.-led bombing campaign.

In the United States, FBI director James Comey said Washington had identified the masked Islamic State militant believed to have beheaded two American hostages in recent weeks, acts that helped galvanize Washington's bombing campaign.......  



Salman Rafi Sheikh writing at JournalNeo:
Since at least  the end of the Second World War, the US has been directly and indirectly fostering, aiding, funding and training fighting militias and groups in different regions of the world to further its own interests. However, the irony of this policy is that in most of the cases, the US ended up fighting, in the name of establishing peace, these very forces of destruction. History is replete with such examples. As the ‘sole’ super power of the world, it has actually been fighting the war of its own survival, that is, to continue to survive as the ‘sole’ super power. As such, not only does it ‘invent’ enemies, but also reasons to fight them. Let’s have a look at some of these ‘invented’ wars.
A number of examples can be given from history to justify this proposition. For example, the emergence of the Taliban is most directly the result of the CIA’s involvement in the Soviet-Afghan War. Not only did CIA provide all possible funding, but also established camps across Pakistan-Afghan border which were extensively used to train people to do “Jihad” against the Soviet Union. And, the fact that the Americans joyfully disseminate information about different aspects of this war in the form of Hollywood movies shows the extent of acknowledgement the US has publicly made regarding once supporting the Taliban when they were hailed and glorified as the “defenders” of the “free world.” Given that, now it looks remarkably amazing how that very Taliban later on turned into enemies and dragged the US into the longest war of its history....