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Sunday, November 20, 2016

Some news, views and opinions from the Alternative Media ... week ending November 20


Mark Taliano at GlobalResearch
Voices from Syria Refute Western Propaganda:
US-NATO Supported Terrorists Involved in Countless Atrocities
Jad Nasr lives in Syria.  He’s 29, and he has a Master’s in English literature.  He sometimes uses his considerable talents by serving as translator for high Syrian dignitaries, such as the Grand Mufti.

He also has the scar from a bullet wound in his chest, and he receives death threats.  He explains that terrorists shot him because they didn’t want to hear the truth.  Presumably, the terrorists prefer their own version of the “truth”, as dictated by Wahhabi – supporting al Jazeera and Safa TV… as well as all mainstream media messaging promulgated by the West.

Jad’s story is not pleasant, and it highlights what Syrians have to endure on a daily basis.  He says that his brother was kidnapped last year, and that the terrorists tortured him and destroyed his knees.  Now he can’t walk.   He also told me that his cousin, who was serving in the Syrian Arab Army, lost his leg when Wahhabi suicide bombers attacked his military vehicle. Another cousin was kidnapped in 2012, and remains in captivity....

....The terrorists control occupied territories with unspeakable barbarism.  A witness to the massacre at Adra described the scene in these words:

    The rebels began to attack the government centers, and attacked the police station—where all the policemen were killed after only a brief clash because of the large numbers of the attackers. They (the attackers) then headed to the checkpoint located on the edge of the city before moving to the clinic, where they slaughtered one from the medical staff and put his head in the popular market. They then dragged his body in front of townspeople who gathered to see what was happening. Bakery workers who resisted their machinery being taken away were roasted in their own oven. Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic Front fighters went from house to house with a list of names and none of those taken away then has been seen since.’

    When the Syrian army would try to enter Adra the Jihadists would throw women and children from the 20,000 people it captured off the top floors in front of the army.”

Nasr also discussed the lies propagated by imperialists, and believed by multitudes.  He says that for the first three weeks of the so-called “revolution”, police and security personnel were ordered to not carry guns.  It was during this time that 15 of Nasr’s friends were killed by so-called “peaceful protestors”....




Ron Paul at InstituteForPeaceAndProsperity
Memo to the Next Administration:
 Defense Spending Must Be For Actual Defense
In a disturbing indication of how difficult it would be to bring military spending in line with actual threats overseas, House Armed Services Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R – TX) told President Obama last week that his war funding request of $11.6 billion for the rest of the year was far too low. That figure for the last two months of 2016 is larger than Spain’s budget for the entire year! And this is just a “war-fighting” supplemental, not actual “defense” spending! More US troops are being sent to Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere and the supplemental request is a way to pay for them without falling afoul of the “sequestration” limits.

The question is whether this increase in US military activity and spending overseas actually keeps us safer, or whether it simply keeps the deep state and the military-industrial complex alive and well-funded.

Unfortunately many Americans confuse defense spending with military spending. The two terms are used almost interchangeably. But there is a huge difference. I have always said that I wouldn’t cut anything from the defense budget. We need a robust defense of the United States and it would be foolish to believe that we have no enemies or potential enemies.

The military budget is something very different from the defense budget. ....

Chris Rossini at RonPaulLibertyReport
REVEALED: The Real Fake News List

We've seen the make-shift "fake news" list created by a leftist feminist professor. Well, another fake news list has been revealed and this one holds a lot more water.

This list contains the culprits who told us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and lied us into multiple bogus wars. These are the news sources that told us "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." They told us that Hillary Clinton had a 98% of winning the election. They tell us in a never-ending loop that "The economy is in great shape!"

This is the real Fake News List (and it's sourced):

Jay Dyer at 21CenturyWire
Dyer: ‘LA Times ‘Fake News’ Article is an Attack on Independent Media’

According to a recent feature article published by the LA Times, and which has since gone viral, this website, 21st Century Wire, has been placed at the top of a “list” of “fake” news sites compiled by Dr Melissa Zimdars, an associate professor at Merrimack College in Massachusetts.

Aside from being a highly political attempt to discredit a number of online news source which Dr Zimdars and the Democratic Party establishment probably labels as “Alt Right,” this coordinated effort also points directly to a much deeper agenda, as part of a larger as psychological operation to create an algorithm for “filtering” (censoring) news items on major internet platforms and social networks.....




Jack Murphy at Sofrep
Three Green Berets killed by ISIS infiltrator after CIA ignored warnings

Green Berets Matthew Lewellen, Kevin McEnroe, and James Moriarty approached the Prince Faisal Airbase in Jordan in their vehicle along with one Jordanian military officer. They were assigned the IA mission, meaning inter-agency, as a part of the CIA’s Timber Sycamore covert operation to train and arm so-called moderate Syrian rebels. At the gate there was an exchange of gunfire which Jordanian authorities have described as a, “chain of unfortunate events.” Amidst the bedlam at the gate, a Special Forces Team Sergeant confronted the the shooter after failing to deescalate the attack. The Team Sergeant wounded the shooter during the firefight, who is now being held by the Jordanian government for questioning.

Initial reports were conflicted with each other, and a subsequent FBI investigation describes finding no trace of terrorist activity involved in the incident.  At first the Jordanians claimed that one of the Special Forces soldiers opened fire at the gate unprovoked.  A second story claimed that one of the Americans accidentally discharged his weapon leading to a confused firefight of mistaken identity. However, according to multiple sources inside Special Forces, the shooter conducted a deliberate and pre-planned assault on the 5th Special Forces Group members.  Multiple sources confirmed that the shooter is an ISIS sympathizer. Lewellen, McEnroe, and Moriarty, who were in the process of transitioning back to the United States were killed, the Jordanian officer injured.

The only detail left uncertain is if the shooter was a Jordanian military gate guard, or if he was actually one of the “moderate” rebels which the Special Forces men were there to train.
The slaying of three Green Berets comes after years of the Special Forces soldiers assigned to the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program complaining that the moderate rebels they had been sent to train were actually ISIS and al-Nusra infiltrators. The vetting that the CIA does of the rebels is dubious at best, consisting of bio-metric trace searches in old databases which are far from comprehensive. The Special Forces soldiers have repeatedly brought up the fact that the rebels they have to train have also failed their polygraphs and display allegiances to Islamists during interviews. Such concerns have also been expressed by the CIA’s para-military component, called Ground Branch, which have also gone ignored.....




Tony Cartalucci at NewAtlas
US Feigns Human Rights Concerns in Philippines

US once invaded, mass murdered, and terrorized the population of the Philippines, on a scale vastly dwarfing Duterte's "war on drugs."
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is heading a controversial campaign against crime, embodied in his "war on drugs" which has led to violence spanning the nation's troubled urban centers. President Duterte's comments have ranged from reasonable, to utterly indifferent regarding fears of extrajudicial executions, vigilantism, and very real human rights abuses - opening a door of opportunity for his political opponents both at home and abroad.

President Duterte's inability to clearly condemn extrajudicial executions and vigilante violence, along with his inflammatory, provocative, even dangerously demagogic statements both invites further abuses, as well as both legitimate and opportunistic criticism of him, his administration, and his policies.....

Syrian refugees in Morocco talk to DemocracyNow


Paul R Pillar at ConsortiumNews
Iran Deal Tests Trump’s Independence

An early test of whether President Trump will bow to Israel’s political clout may come over the Iran nuclear agreement which Prime Minister Netanyahu wants killed, as ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar describes.

Among the foreign policy issues on which Donald Trump took a simple anti-Obama, or anti-Clinton, stance during the campaign but about which he had not seemed to have devoted much thought, one of the most prominent and important is the agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA.

When the new president does get a chance to give the subject more attention, he will see that opposition to the agreement is primarily a matter of old political baggage.  If he does not want to be burdened with such baggage and desires instead to set his own course, he will build on the agreement rather than succumb to the pressures of those who would like to kill it.

The baggage has had two parts. One has been the effort by President Obama’s political opposition to deny him any major achievements — applicable to the JCPOA in that it has been one of the President’s most significant foreign policy achievements. Even viewed through a crass partisan political lens, this motivation will get more out of date with each day that goes by after Mr. Obama leaves office.

The other part has been opposition of the Netanyahu government in Israel, with all the usual implications of how that government’s postures affect U.S. politics and how the Iran issue has thus been treated as if it were an Israel issue. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opposition has been motivated by the objectives of keeping a regional rival to Israel isolated forever, portraying Iran as the root of all problems in the Middle East, distracting attention from problems that involve Israel and its policies, and keeping U.S. diplomacy and cooperative measures in the Middle East confined to Israel or channels approved by Israel....




Pepe Escobar at TheSaker
China ‘Marco Polo’ Xi Jinping starts jockeying in post-Obama world

In yet one more spectacular chapter of his running Marco Polo in reverse saga, Chinese President Xi Jinping made a strategic stop in Sardinia, Italy, on his way to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru.

Why beautiful Sardinia? Certainly not for a yacht cruise in the Costa Esmeralda. This is all about, once again, the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads.

Huawei is building its largest European HQ in Sardinia. The Chinese want to buy the port of Cagliari. And fabulous pecorino sardo – serious contender for best sheep cheese on the planet – in powdered form, is already feeding millions of Chinese babies.

As a casual extra bonus “Marco Polo” Xi, on Chinese national TV, exhorted his compatriots to invest in a massive tourist invasion of Sardinia. Now this is what a stimulus package in Europe is all about.

Meanwhile, lame duck President Obama, also on his way to APEC, is in Germany passing the caretaker “leader of the free world” baton to a dear-caught-in-the-headlights Angela Merkel. The headlights go by the name Donald Trump.

TPP six feet under
The sight of an ebullient Xi side by side with a dejected Obama against the background of South America’s Pacific coast will be priceless. Those were the days, in the go-go 1990s, when Bill Clinton ruled APEC, imprinting the American agenda. Now Asia-Pacific has to come to grips not only with protectionist Trumponomics, but also the fact that Obama’s cherished TPP – the mercantile arm of the “pivot to Asia” – is, for all practical purposes, dead.

Trump’s transition team, led by Mike Pence, has advised him to bury TPP (grouping the US plus 11 Pacific Rim nations) for good within his first 100 days in office. And the road map goes still further, advising him to drop out of NAFTA as well if a long list of “concessions” is not met.

Dejected US allies – mostly Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand – who had all been counting on the ascension of Hillary and the enthronization of TPP, are bound to conduct “secret” meetings in Peru aiming at a revised deal. That would have to ...



Brandon Turbeville at ActivistPost
Russian Analysis Shows Western-Backed Terrorists Using Chemical Weapons
 Against Civilians
In yet another blow to the credibility of the Western corporate media and the anti-Syria propaganda blitz it has maintained since early 2011, experts from the Russian Center For Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense have recently announced that analysis of the shells fired by terrorists at the 1070 Apartment Complex in Aleppo contained chemical weapons.

This new revelation brings Western propaganda crashing to ground in regards to the claims that it is Assad’s government using chemical weapons and that the terrorists have no access to them.

“Rapid sample analysis shows that the toxic substances in the militants’ artillery ammunition were chlorine and white phosphorus,” an analyst from the center said....

Dynamite Truth Teller. The TV host was expecting him to trash Trump like she has been doing, it didn't happen!


Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi at AymennJawadOrg

...This statement from the Dar al-Qada in Salqin that I have obtained was distributed recently (around two weeks ago) in the villages of Jabal al-Summaq, which, as I have documented previously, is an originally Druze area whose inhabitants have been forced to declare conversion to Sunni Islam twice, first under pressure from the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in late 2013 and then under Jabhat al-Nusra at the beginning of 2015....

....Note the language of the statement in speaking of "newly Muslim sects like what was known as the Druze," referring to the conversion of the Druze in Jabal al-Summaq to Sunni Islam. This illustrates the continuity in policy towards the people of Jabal al-Summaq, in that the imposition of Sunni Islam remains in place despite the rebranding from Jabhat al-Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham.....




From ZeroHedge
Putin Calls Trump To Congratulate President Elect, Renormalize Relations

Moments ago the Kremlin released a statement in which the Russian presidency reported that Putin and Trump held a conversation, in which the Russian leader congratulated his American counterpart again on his victory in the presidential election, wished him "success in the implementation of the pre-election program, and noted his willingness to build a partnership dialogue with the new administration on the principles of equality, mutual respect and non-interference in the internal affairs of each other."

During the conversation, Putin and Trump "not only agreed to assess the current unsatisfactory state of bilateral relations, but also spoke in favor of active joint work to normalize relations and aim for constructive cooperation on a wide range of issues. The call emphasized in particular the importance of creating a solid foundation of bilateral ties through the development of trade and economic relations.

In the call, it was also noted that that "next year marks 210 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States, which in itself should stimulate a return to pragmatic, mutually beneficial cooperation, which would meet the interests of both countries, stability and security throughout the world."
Posted by MariaS at 21:51
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