Joe Lauria at ConsortiumNews
US hawks gamble on Turkeys invasions
....Publicly the U.S. opposes Turkish military intervention in Raqqa and Mosul, while privately it is effectively riding Erdogan’s outsized ambitions to let Turkish NATO troops create Hillary Clinton’s desired “safe zone” for rebel forces fighting to overthrow the Syrian government. This “safe zone” is on territory taken mostly from Islamic State that could eventually stretch from northeast Syria into western Iraq.
Yet, there is abundant evidence that Turkey has supported Islamic State from its incarnation as one of the jihadist forces seeking to overthrow Syria’s secular government of Bashar al-Assad. If Erdogan is now fighting the terrorist group, it may well be because he wants something like the Caliphate for himself and for Turkey, which abolished it in 1924. And that just might fit into U.S. plans, which President Obama has already altered to accommodate Clinton’s desires.
“The goal here is to take back Mosul,” Clinton said at the last debate, as if already speaking as the U.S. President, “and then continue to press into Syria to begin to take back and move on Raqqa.”
A Sunnistan Corridor
A safe area in eastern Syria stretching to western Iraq could implement the so-called Plan B: dividing Syria to weaken it, while also creating a “Sunnistan” corridor for a gas pipeline from Qatar through the Iraq/Syria border area to Turkey and on to Europe.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad rejected a Qatar pipeline through Syrian territory in 2009, a move that some analysts think spurred the Gulf-backed insurgency to overthrow him. However, settling for Plan B, a partition of Syria, would be an admission that Plan A, “regime change,” had failed.
There might also be another crucial task for Turkey on behalf of Washington’s hawks in both Syria and Iraq. Erdogan may well target his move into Iraq on the area of the Shia Turkmen around Tal Afar. The Shia-led Iraqi government wants to get that area under central government control to possibly open a corridor from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, a corridor Clinton has vowed to close in accordance with a longstanding Israeli goal. Turkey could also cut this passage in northern Syria.
Is the U.S. allowing Turkish troops to create these facts on the ground? ....
Nigel Farage
From SputnikNews
Daesh Leader Manages to Escape From Iraq's Mosul
The Iraqi armed forces press service said Monday about the escape of Daesh leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi from Iraqi Mosul in the course of the operation to liberate the city conducted by the country's army together with the international coalition.
The Iraqi prime minister announced a campaign on October 17 to reclaim the key Daesh stronghold, with mixed forces of Iraqi army, Kurdish militias and Sunni Arab tribesmen advancing from south, east and north......
#Iraq|i regime army is advancing inside Mosul from:@CNN front@CBSNews front@washingtonpost front@nytimes front— Rami (@RamiAILoIah) November 6, 2016
On ground = Zero#ISIS
From RT
Ukraine's Maidan is eating itself:
Saakashvili quits Odessa with all guns blazing
This is what happens when a loose cannon backfires. Eighteen months after he arrived in Odessa promising to reform the notoriously corrupt region, Mikhail Saakashvili has exited his post as governor.
While I’m writing this, a song by Swedish rockers The Hives is bouncing around my brain. It’s called Hate to Say I Told You So. The tune is apt right now, because what everyone who understands Ukraine - and doesn’t live in cloud cuckoo land - warned would eventually happen is happening. Maidan is eating itself. And it hasn’t taken very long either.
Just over two and a half years since the violent coup/revolution which Western leaders and opinion formers promised would transform Ukraine, nothing much has changed. In fact, things are arguably worse than ever. The economy lies in ruins and the country is divided. Perhaps permanently.
Now another high profile figure has leaped from the sinking ship. And it’s a big beast this time. Mikhail Saakashvili tendered his resignation on Monday and he didn’t depart quietly. Instead, he accused highly-placed officials in Kiev of obstructing his attempts at change.
The timing isn’t hugely surprising either, as ‘Misha’ proved his heart wasn’t in the job last month, when he predicted his imminent return to Tbilisi.This proved yet another delusion, as Saakashvili’s hopes of a victory for his former political movement in Georgia’s general election ran aground. On the contrary, his party was annihilated at the polls....
Ron Paul
Ramzy Baroud at ForeignPolicyJournal
Why Palestinians Want to Sue Britain:
99 Years since the Balfour Declaration
Palestinians will continue to resist as long as the reasons that inspired their rebellion nearly a century ago remain in place.
Last July, the Palestinian Authority took the unexpected, although belated step of seeking Arab backing in suing Britain over the Balfour Declaration. That ‘declaration’ was the first ever explicit commitment made by Britain, and the West in general, to establish a Jewish homeland atop an existing Palestinian homeland.
It is too early to tell whether the Arab League would heed the Palestinian call, or if the PA would even follow through, especially considering that the latter has the habit of making too many proclamations backed by little or no action.
However, it seems that the next year will witness a significant tug of war regarding the Balfour Declaration, the 100th anniversary of which will be commemorated on November 2, 2017.....
— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) November 13, 2016
From MediaLens
Flagship Of Fearmongering:
The Guardian, MI5 And State Propaganda
Readers of the Guardian woke up last Tuesday (November 1, 2016) to find that the newspaper and website had been given over to promoting MI5. To be more precise: the paper was trumpeting a fearmongering 'exclusive' with MI5 Director-General, Andrew Parker. It was billed as 'the first interview of its kind' and was conducted by the paper's deputy editor, Paul Johnson, and the diplomatic editor, Ewen MacAskill. However, it quickly became clear that this 'interview' consisted largely of the two senior Guardian journalists listening to the MI5 chief and diligently writing down what he said with no discernible challenge or scrutiny....
....This was state ideology masquerading as robust reporting; in Britain's 'flagship' newspaper of liberal journalism, no less. The front page of the Guardian website, with an accompanying photograph of two armed policemen, was a model example of propaganda that should be pored over by journalism students for decades to come:
Treasury Dept sanctions Muhaysni 2 years too late. We've known this since 2014. Meantime millions raised,1000s recruited&1000s killed #Syria pic.twitter.com/Xrx3HZMsaF— Walid (@walid970721) November 10, 2016
Jason Ditz at Antiwar
Trump Expects to End US Aid to Syrian Rebels
Says US Has No Idea Who 'Moderate' Rebels Actually Are
In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal, President-elect Donald Trump said that he is likely to end the US support of “moderate” Syrian rebel groups, saying that “we have no idea who these people are” and that the US needs to focus on defeating ISIS.
The interview only briefly touched on foreign policy, but Trump echoed similar concerns about backing Syrian rebels in the past, saying that the defeat of Assad could lead to something even worse in the country, and today warning that backing the rebellion risks starting a fight with Syria and Russia.
This has been an ongoing problem for the US, with the Pentagon seeking to fight ISIS and the CIA and State Department seeking to shift the focus away from ISIS and toward regime change. The CIA is heavily involved in arming and funding the rebels.....
— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) November 13, 2016
Shawn Helton at 21stcenturywire
‘COLOR REV’ AGIT PROP: George Soros MoveOn Agitators
March on America – as Billionaire Instigator Sued
Anti-Trump street protests linked to the Soros’ funded organization MoveOn.org have cascaded across the nation for the third day following the 2016 presidential election result.
Mainstream media outlets like CNN and MSNBC have given the protests around-the-clock media coverage, drowning out all other news stories, including a successful transition meeting between the President Elect and President Barack Obama....
....Last year during the ongoing European migrant crisis, startling claims were levied by Hungarian PM Victor Orban (left photo), concerning the role played by Soros.
PM Orban contended that the founder and chair of Open Society Foundations (Open Society Institute), was entrenched in a “circle of activists,” that “inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network.”
The stunning declaration by Orban recalled the misguided machinations of ‘The Occupy Movement’(aka OWS) in 2011, as well as the Soros funded protests in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, along with other Black Lives Matter protests this past year – all of which were uniquely designed to push naive participants (along with paid provocateurs) into violent action and social unrest....
From TelesurTV
Son of Honduran Human Rights and Resistance Activist Murdered
In post-coup Honduras, a coup which Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton supported, the corpses continue to pile up.
Human rights organizations are raising alarm after yet another assassination in Honduras, this time of the son of a prominent resistance activist, human rights defender, and aspiring progressive candidate for local political office with the left-wing Libre party.
Fernando Aleman Banegas was shot dead in the early hours of Monday morning when we was getting into his car after leaving a club in the northern port city of La Ceiba, according to local reports. The gunmen reportedly fled the scene on a motorcycle. ...
— MariaS Nunes (@Dodocanspell) November 13, 2016
Robert Fisk at InformationClearingHouse
A View of the Syrian War From the Golan Heights
One Syrian lieutenant described to me how he directed his artillery fire onto an Israeli jeep in the Jabhat al-Nusra occupied town of Al-Hamidiya inside Syria and destroyed it. The jeep might have been a gift or borrowed from Israel
From Colonel Saleh’s forward position on his front line north of Quneitra, he has a unique and exclusive view of the Syrian war. To his west and south is a vast area of his country which is occupied by Jabhat al-Nusra Islamist fighters – their earthen ramparts and supply roads are scarcely half a mile away. Then, another couple of miles away, Israeli soldiers are inside their concrete positions on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, above the old and Nusra-held Syrian city of Quneitra.
“You see that mosque over there, just to the right of the water tower?” the colonel asks. “Well, Nusra is there. And you see the triangular hill beyond? The Israelis are there.” It’s what you call a politically intriguing battlefield – yes, shells do come whizzing in towards the Syrians from Nusra and also from the Israelis. The Syrians concentrate their fire on Nusra but Nusra’s casualties are often taken through the Israeli lines for hospital treatment in Haifa.
So whose side is Israel on? .....
article below from ScientificAmerican is from sep 26
Trump Picks Top Climate Skeptic to Lead EPA Transition
Choosing Myron Ebell means Trump plans to drastically reshape climate policies
....Ebell appears to relish criticism from the left.
In a biography submitted when he testified before Congress, he listed among his recognitions that he had been featured in a Greenpeace “Field Guide to Climate Criminals,” dubbed a “misleader” on global warming by Rolling Stone and was the subject of a motion to censure in the British House of Commons after Ebell criticized the United Kingdom’s chief scientific adviser for his views on global warming.
More recently, Ebell has called the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan for greenhouse gases illegal and said that Obama joining the Paris climate treaty “is clearly an unconstitutional usurpation of the Senate’s authority.”
He told Vanity Fair in 2007, “There has been a little bit of warming ... but it’s been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it’s caused by human beings or not, it’s nothing to worry about.”
Ebell’s views appear to square with Trump’s when it comes to EPA’s agenda. Trump has called global warming “bullshit” and he has said he would “cancel” the Paris global warming accord and roll back President Obama’s executive actions on climate change (ClimateWire, May 27).
From ZeroHedge
Trump Reveals Policy Goals:
"Building That Wall", End "War On Coal", Repeal Obamacare, Dismantle Dodd-Frank
On his transition website GreatAgain.gov, the Trump team has laid out the framework of his initial policies with policies focused i) on American Security including as Defense and National security, Immigration Reform and Building That Wall, and Energy Independence; ii) Getting America Back to Work Again including Tax Reform; Regulatory Reform; Trade Reform; Education; Transportation & Infrastructure and Financial Services Reform; and iii) Government for the people including Healthcare Reform (Obamacare), Veterans Administration Reform and Protecting Americans' Constitutional Rights.
The key highlights include:
overhaul in immigration policies, including "Building that Wall" , the Trump transition team will "execute on the following ten-point plan to restore integrity to our immigration system, protect our communities, and put America first" - i) Build a Wall on the Southern Border; ii) End Catch-and-Release; iii) Zero Tolerance for Criminal Aliens; iv) Block Funding for Sanctuary Cities; v) Cancel Unconstitutional Executive Orders & Enforce All Immigration Laws; vi) Suspend the Issuance of Visas to Any Place Where Adequate Screening Cannot Occur; vii) Ensure that Other Countries Take Their People Back When We Order Them Deported; viii) Finally Complete the Biometric Entry-Exit Visa Tracking System; ix) Turn Off the Jobs and Benefits Magnet
promoting a strong, robust military force to defend against the "threat posed to our nation and our allies by radical ideologies that direct and inspire terrorism." The administration will push for immediate and sustainable actions to counter the threats posed by radical ideologies; will address the "catastrophic threats posed by nuclear weapons and cyber attacks" and will "ensure our strategic nuclear triad is modernized to ensure it continues to be an effective deterrent, and his Administration will review and minimize our nation’s infrastructure vulnerabilities to cyber threats."
dismantling and replacing of the Dodd-Frank Act financial-sector law with pro-growth policies. This means that banks will be allowed to not only engage in prop trading again, but to invest directly in hedge funds. “The Dodd-Frank economy does not work for working people. Bureaucratic red tape and Washington mandates are not the answer,” says statement on Trump’s official transition website.
changing the tax code: policies since President Obama took office “have been blocked in one way or another” by Democratic opposition, the transition website says in section outlining “tax reform/economic vision.” It adds that “a Trump administration tax plan can be summarized as lower, simpler, fairer, and pro-growth.” as the website summarizes "a Trump Administration tax plan can be summarized as lower, simpler, fairer, and pro-growth."
addressing the millions of American jobs that have been lost over the last decade "because of trade deals that do not put Americans first." ....
Broward County election fraud
Think about it... If Brenda Snipes in Broward didn't open 150K ballots & write another 100K, it prob not be close https://t.co/i4Qae0QoOR— Richard Baris (@Peoples_Pundit) November 9, 2016
From AhramEnglish
Egypt slams Erdogan's 'double standards'
Egypt condemned what it described as “irresponsible” statements made by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan about the Egyptian government.
Earlier on Thursday, Erdogan said during an interview with Qatari channel Al-Jazeera that he accused “the Egyptian regime of providing support to the Gulen movement”, which is led by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has been accused of masterminding the failed coup attempt in Turkey last July.
“We differentiate between the Egyptian people and the administration there. We love the nation like it was ours and that’s why we have provided all support to them but we are against coup governments and the violation of freedoms, and we will stand with the Egyptian people in their fight for democracy,” the Turkish president said during the interview aired on Thursday.
In an official statement on Thursday, the Egyptian foreign ministry spokesman said Egypt considered the Turkish statements as a “continuation to the blundering and double standards approach that the Turkish policies have been characterised by through out the past years.”
The foreign ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid expressed his “surprise” at the Turkish president inaugurating himself as a “guardian of democracy and protector of freedoms at a time when his government is arresting hundreds of professors and media personnel and tens of parliamentary members, as well as shutting down tens of newspapers and eliminating thousands of civil workers and army officers and judges from their jobs.....
Jake Johnson from a May 2015 article at Alternet
...Trump has been viewed with bewilderment by politicians
who have divorced themselves from the needs of the people and who have sold them false goods to get ahead. But Trump, as Chomsky's prescient interview demonstrates, was inevitable.
"The mood of the country is frightening," Chomsky concluded. "The level of anger, frustration and hatred of institutions is not organized in a constructive way. It is going off into self-destructive fantasies."
Trump embodies the fantasy: He is the anger, the hammer with which his supporters hope to smash America's institutions and take America back to a mythical, blissful past.
America's political class has not simply faltered under the weight of the Trump phenomenon; its failures created him, and the establishment is now faced with a choice. It will either address the legitimate concerns of the people who are attracted to Trump's fake populism — from his critiques of disastrous trade deals to his contempt for America's foreign policy elite — or it will resign itself to the fact that the Republican Party is now the party of Donald Trump, who says out loud what Republicans have been saying in code for decades.....
Documentary from RT
...The practice is called Bacha Posh,
which literally means “dressed up as a boy”. Girls in this role wear boys’ clothes, have close-cropped hair and answer to a boy’s name in the street. They get the freedoms that men in Afghan society enjoy at the price of their true identity. As they grow up, however, most go back to behaving like women again: they get married and must comply with the traditional restrictions women face
For girls who have tasted freedom while posing as boys, it is particularly difficult to readjust to the behaviour expected of Afghan women. For this reason, some girls decide against going back to following female rules, preferring to remain Bacha Posh instead. RT Doc met some of the Bacha Posh of Afghanistan, and they all had very different stories to tell. Amena’s parents decided that she would be the boy in the family. She doesn’t enjoy her status but has to help her father with his work. Fazilya has been raised as a boy since birth and knows no different, while Asiya consciously chose the male role to gain more freedom. To hear more of the stories Afghanistan’s pretend boys have to tell, watch the full documentary...
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