There's so much happening with regard to Venezuela. Below some stuff that should give you a clearer picture of the havoc wrought on that country by the usual main culprits. Sadly, I have to use the plural ... because the last few years, Canada has joined the USA in the " main culprits" exclusive club.
Deplorables dare not complain when Venezuelan refugees make a beeline to US border. " Pence Urges Venezuelans To Rise Up Against "Dictator" Maduro After Failed Military Revolt " #cdnpoli#tcot#TOpolihttps://t.co/O8jcUdqys6
huh???? But, but, but US and Canadian media are telling us that the protestors are all against Maduro. No so, eh? Propaganda and fake news as usual to bring about wars and regime changes, eh?#cdnpoli#tcot#TOpolihttps://t.co/jQofR7gmdh
Venezuela should ask for help from Russia n China to not only withstand the evil from US/Canada/Brazil/Colombia/EU,etc but also 2 help w its economy. #cdnpoli#tcot#TOpolihttps://t.co/WTJZquNlue
would they have still taken the dangerous road to the borders of the USA, plus all the abuse and hate from Americans if their own countries were prosperous? And, why are their own countries not doing well? Could it be because the USA has looted their countries' wealth in cahoots with the corrupt governments of those countries placed in power by the United States of America?
The Attorney general, Jeff Sessions, known for his racism as Alabama’s Senator, and who was Trump’s earliest congressional backer, confessed to having ordered this inhumane policy in order to deter Latino families from illegally entering the United States — or even legally seeking asylum. As the President for several days refused to back down until his wife intervened, together with the wives of previous Republican presidents, MSNBC and CNN inundated the airwaves with the sounds of little children crying for their mothers in Spanish.
None so far have asked the obvious question: What has made the people in the US’s back-yard so miserable that they are willing to risk temporarily — or even permanently — losing their children as they try to get into a country where they are not wanted? A recent book titled Crusade and Jihadby William Polk an Arabist and former diplomat, documents all the ways in which the North committed crimes against the South since Great Britain used gains from piracy to take over India two centuries ago. Alas, little attention is paid by academics or journalists to America’s historic treatment of its Hispanic neighbors.
For two centuries, the tiny countries of Central America extending from Mexico to the southern American hemisphere have lurched from one US-backed government to another and from what sociologists call one development path to another, until politically motivated revolts and revolutions were succeeded by gang violence.
Benign neglect is the best one can say about these fiefdoms which United Fruit ruled for over a century. By the 1930s, the vast conglomerate was the single largest land owner in Guatemala. With a total of 3.5 million acres in Central America and the Caribbean, it had absolute power over the governments of these small, under-developed countries. (The phrase Banana Republic says it all.)
In 1944, a popular uprising in Guatemalaled to the country’s first democratic election, introducing near-universal suffrage, and a minimum wage. What happened later made it the poster child for Caribbean turmoil until the Cuban Revolution of 1959. The revolution’s second government, led by Jacobo Árbenz, broke up large estates, distributing property to landless peasants, and legalized the Communist Party. These actions threw up red flags in Washington, and when 40% of United Fruit Company’s land was expropriated, the powerful conglomerate persuaded the Truman and Eisenhower administrations that Arbenz planned to align Guatemala with the Soviet Bloc....
Description at video: In March of 1951, Jacobo Arbenz came to power in Guatemala after having been resoundingly elected by the people. A little more than three years later, he was forced to resign in the midst of armed intervention. His reforms to redistribute unused land to poor peasants had fallen afoul of the United Fruit Company, which owned and warehoused vast tracts of Guatemalan land. The American corporation solicited the US government to overthrow the populist president and the Eisenhower administration delivered with the help of the Department of State and CIA, which happened to be led by the Dulles brothers, who had strong ties to the company. Arbenz’ ousting put an end to democracy in Guatemala for decades and replaced it by military rule. A civil war followed several years later, resulting in the deaths of over 200,000 people. The country remains one of Latin America’s most impoverished to this day. And Guatemala is but one of a myriad of countries whose fates have been catastrophically dictated by America’s imperialist interventions. In this film, American author, journalist, and academic Stephen Kinzer explores the formula and rationale the US uses to overthrow governments it doesn’t like, as well as its real motives. As illustrated in Guatemala, Libya, and Hawaii, the people in places whose governments were toppled by US-engineered coups are still dealing with the aftermath many years later.
Jason Ditz at Antiwar US Has Nearly 30,000 Defense Contractors in Afghanistan Over Three Times as Many Contractors as Soldiers Remain While the Obama Administration has presented its (already-stalled) drawdown in Afghanistan as “ending” the war and bringing the number of US forces down in the country to very small levels, they rarely discuss the substantial number of American defense contractors still in the country. While the US officially has just 9,000 troops in Afghanistan, they also have some 29,000 contractors stationed around the country. Two-thirds of the contractors are said to be foreign nationals, with the Pentagon saying they are mostly involved in logistics and maintenance for the ongoing war. The US has long used large numbers of contractors as a way to have more boots on the ground than the officially publicized figures. This has tended to be rough parity between the two forces, however. At the peak of the Afghan War, the US had 88,000 troops and 117,000 contractors....
From ZeroHedge Soros Hack Reveals Plot Behind Europe's Refugee Crisis; Media Manipulation; Cash For "Social Justice" In the two days since the Soros Open Society Foundation hack by the DCLeaks collective, several notable revelations have emerged among the data dump of over 2,500 documents exposing the internal strategy of the organization, which expose some of Soros' tactics to influence and benefit from Europe's refugee crisis, the opportunistic funding and influence of media organizations, providing cash for assorted "pro-democracy" groups including the infamous La Raza, Soros' funding of various "social justice" organizations while paying to track unfavorable media coverage including that of Pamela Geller.
One particular leaked memo, profiled earlier by the Daily Caller, argues that Europe’s refugee crisis should be accepted as a “new normal,” and that the refugee crisis means “new opportunities” for Soros’ organization to influence immigration policies on a global scale. OSF program officer Anna Crowley and program specialist Katin Rosin co-authored the May 12 memo, titled “Migration Governance and Enforcement Portfolio Review.”
The nine-page review makes three key points: OSF has been successful at influencing global immigration policy; Europe’s refugee crisis presents “new opportunities” for the organization to influence global immigration policy; and the refugee crisis is the “new normal.”
As the authors write in the introduction, one of the purposes of the review “consider the effectiveness of the approaches we have used to achieve change at the international level.” A section of the review titled “Our Work” describes how America’s least transparent think tank has worked with “leaders in the field” to “shape migration policymaking and influence regional and global processes affecting the way migration is governed and enforced.”
This may be of particular interest to Germans, the majority of whom are displeased with Merkel's "open door" policies in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks on German soil....
...More importantly, the memo explains how Europe’s refugee crisis is opening doors for Soros’ organization to further influence global immigration policy....
...They also explain that the current crisis provides “new opportunities” for influencing immigration policy on a global scale....
...The review states, “The refugee crisis is opening new opportunities” for “coordination and collaboration” with other wealthy donors....
...One memo, which is an overview of the "Ukraine Media Project" exposes how Soros influences media coverage of events in Ukraine...
Lakota Sioux protesters blockading the planned route of a $3.8 billion, four-state oil pipeline won a short-term victory on Wednesday, when the project’s developer, Energy Transfer Partners of Dallas, agreed to halt construction near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota for at least a week.
“The decision was made at this time to have the pipeline company workers pull out, for the safety of everybody,” Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirschmeier told journalists. “They’ll stop until we can get this resolved.”.....
The Obama Doctrine Is Ravaging the Middle East Everyone seems to have a theory on how to obliterate ISIS, or “Daesh”. However, two points are rarely raised: one, concerning the origins of the group and the second, on whether there are genuine intentions to defeat it, in the first place.
We must boldly address the first to unravel the enigma behind the rise and growth of “Daesh” – otherwise, how else can the group be dismantled. ....
....Now that the Americans have launched yet another aerial war against Libya, purportedly to target “Daesh” positions there, the discussion is being carefully geared towards how far the US must go to defeat the militant group?
In fact, “can airstrikes alone win a war without ‘boots on the ground’?” has morphed, somehow, to become the crux of the matter, which has engaged a large number of intellectuals on both sides of the debate. ....
A newly-formed governing council in Yemen could work with Russia to "fight terrorism" by allowing Moscow use of the war-torn country's military bases, Yemen's former president said on Sunday.
Ali Abdullah Saleh, a former counter-terrorism ally of the U.S. who was toppled by mass protests in 2011, told state-owned channel Russia 24 that Yemen was ready to grant Moscow access to air and naval bases.
"In the fight against terrorism we reach out and offer all facilities. Our airports, our ports... We are ready to provide this to the Russian Federation," Saleh said in an interview in Sanaa.
The ex-strongman may lack the clout to implement such an offer. But officials from the party he heads now run a political council that controls much of the country along with the Houthi movement allied to Iran. ....
Members of the Justice and Development (AKP) Party government were protested and expelled today from the funeral of 42 people that were massacred in Gaziantep by a suspected Islamic State suicide bombing yesterday.
Participants chanted the slogan ‘Murderer Erdoğan’ and expelled the AKP Mayor and parliamentarians from the funeral.
The corpses of 50 of the 51 people (29 children) who lost their lives in the bomb attack on a Kurdish wedding in the Beybahçe neighbourhood of Gaziantep’s Şahinbey district were brought to Yeşilkent cemetery morgue. ....
Honduras has become one of the most hostile and dangerous countries for human rights defenders.
Honduras has seen at least eight human rights activists killed in 2016, making it one the most dangerous countries in the world for human rights defenders, the United Nations and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) warned Friday.... ....In March Goldman Environmental Prize winner Berta Caceres, an Indigenous rights and land defender who tirelessly campaigned against a widely unpopular dam, was assassinated in her home, prompting international outrage. According to Global Witness, at least 109 environmental defenders were killed in Honduras between 2010 and 2015.....
Alex Christoforou at TheDuran Leaked memo proves George Soros ruled Ukraine in 2014, minutes from “Breakfast with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt” The power and control that George Soros held over Ukraine after the Maidan is beyond belief.
This is too funny! From ZeroHedge The Fed Launches A Facebook Page... And The Result Is Not What It Had Expected While it is not exactly clear what public relations goals the privately-owned Fed (recall Bernanke's Former Advisor: "People Would Be Stunned To Know The Extent To Which The Fed Is Privately Owned") hoped to achieve by launching its first Facebook page last Thursday, the resultant outpouring of less than euphoric public reactions suggest this latest PR effort may have been waster at best, and at worst backfired at a magnitude that matches JPM's infamous #AskJPM twitter gaffe.
Here are some examples of the public responses to the Fed's original posting: they all share a certain uniformity...
The escalating anti-Russian rhetoric in the US presidential campaign comes in the midst of a major push by military contractors to position Moscow as a potent enemy that must be countered with a drastic increase in military spending by NATO countries.
Weapon makers have told investors that they are relying on tensions with Russia to fuel new business in the wake of Russian’s annexation of Crimea and modest increases in its military budget.
In particular, the arms industry — both directly and through its arsenal of hired-gun, think-tank experts and lobbyists – is actively pressuring NATO member nations to hike defense spending in line with the NATO goal for member states to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.
Retired Army Gen. Richard Cody, a vice president at L-3 Communications, the seventh largest US defense contractor, explained to shareholders in December that the industry was faced with a historic opportunity. Following the end of the Cold War, Cody said, peace had “pretty much broken out all over the world,” with Russia in decline and NATO nations celebrating. “The Wall came down,” he said, and “all defense budgets went south.”....
Maybe it's hot where you are, but Iraq and much of the Middle East are broiling in unprecedented heat. Baghdad has topped 109 Fahrenheit every day since June 19. Consider how many displaced people lack shelter. Climate change is devastating agriculture in the region -- which by the way was a contributing cause to the dissolution of Syrian society. One has to wonder whether the region, including Iraq, can sustain its current population in coming years.
Peshmerga continue to capture villages near Mosul.
In disturbing news, the fire that killed 13 babies in Yarmuk hospital is now said to have been arson, contrary to earlier reports that it was caused by an electrical fault....... Syria
The fighting in Aleppo, which the rebels call 'The Great Battle of Aleppo', is not in stalemate. The rebel counter-offensive has stalled leading to a battle of attrition the rebels cannot afford.
The recent fighting in and around southern Aleppo has attracted an enormous amount of attention, with those fascinated by military affairs now familiar with places like the apartment building complex 1070, the cement factory, Al-Ramousseh roundabout, the "artillery base" (actually a complex of military schools and technical colleges) etc. Scholars of the fighting in Stalingrad in 1942 will be very familiar with this sort of thing.
Whenever battles like the one currently being fought in and around Aleppo are discussed it is essential however to keep in mind the big picture and to focus too much on the fighting for particular strongpoints.
Briefly, by the middle of last year the rebels controlled roughly a quarter of Aleppo, had captured the thermal plant cutting off electricity to most of the city, and had cut the city off from the rest of the government controlled areas of the country by cutting the roads leading to it.
A series of government offensives, which began in the autumn of last year, and which relied heavily on Russian air support, gradually reopened the roads. Progress was slow because the Syrian army lacks manpower. Also the offensives had to repel repeated rebel counter-attacks and were interrupted by ceasefires negotiated by the US and the Russians. ...
...As for the claim that the seizure by the rebels of their narrow corridor means that the government controlled areas of Aleppo are cut off from resupply, that is simply untrue.
With the government in control of all of the main roads leading to Aleppo - including the Castello road where the Syrian army's best units continue to be concentrated - the Syrian government can still send supplies by road to the city, and is in fact doing so. ...
Nice to see that many from the alternative media are throwing sunlight on one of many, many, many disastrous regime changes orchestrated by the USA government. In the case of Honduras, it has brought even more unrest and suffering to the poor. USA indulges in these adventures not for the love of democracy, far from it. It's not because the dear, sweet Americans are crying their eyes out for the poor of those unfortunate countries targeted for regime change ... far from it. The only reason, the ONLY one is this: USA goes into those countries through their corporations and banking systems to loot the resources in order to award the 1% powers-that-be. That's it! Nothing else!
A critical difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is their position on whether children who fled violence in Central American countries, particularly Honduras, two years ago should be allowed to stay in the United States or be returned.
Sen. Sanders states unequivocally that they should be able to remain in the U.S. Former Secretary of State Clinton disagrees. She would guarantee them “due process,” but nothing more. In 2014, Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “It may be safer [for the children to remain in the U.S.],” but “they should be sent back.”
By supporting the June 28, 2009 coup d’état in Honduras when she was secretary of state, Clinton helped create the dire conditions that caused many of these children to flee. And the assassination of legendary Honduran human rights leader Berta Cáceres earlier this month can be traced indirectly to Clinton’s policies.
During the Feb. 11 Democratic debate in Milwaukee, Clinton said that sending the children back would “send a message.” In answer to a question by debate moderator Judy Woodruff of PBS, she said, “Those children needed to be processed appropriately, but we also had to send a message to families and communities in Central America not to send their children on this dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers.”
Sanders retorted, “Who are you sending a message to? These are children who are....
Another indigenous environmentalist has been murdered in Honduras, less than two weeks after the assassination of renowned activist Berta Cáceres. Nelson García was shot to death Tuesday after returning home from helping indigenous people who had been displaced in a mass eviction by Honduran security forces. García was a member of COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, co-founded by Berta Cáceres, who won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize last year for her decade-long fight against the Agua Zarca Dam, a project planned along a river sacred to the indigenous Lenca people. She was shot to death at her home on March 3. On Thursday, thousands converged in Tegucigalpa for the start of a mobilization to demand justice for Berta Cáceres and an end to what they say is a culture of repression and impunity linked to the Honduran government’s support for corporate interests. At the same time, hundreds of people, most of them women, gathered outside the Honduran Mission to the United Nations chanting "Berta no se murió; se multiplicó – Berta didn’t die; she multiplied." We speak with Cáceres’s daughter, Bertha Zúniga Cáceres, and with Lilian Esperanza López Benítez, the financial coordinator of COPINH....
The presidential candidate has ignored criticism of her role in enabling the consolidation of the Honduran coup. Before her murder on March 3, Berta Cáceres, a Honduran indigenous rights and environmental activist, named Hillary Clinton, holding her responsible for legitimating the 2009 coup. “We warned that this would be very dangerous,” she said, referring to Clinton’s effort to impose elections that would consolidate the power of murderers.
In a video interview, given in Buenos Aires in 2014, Cáceres says it was Clinton who helped legitimate and institutionalize the coup. In response to a question about the exhaustion of the opposition movement (to restore democracy), Cáceres says (around 6:10): “The same Hillary Clinton, in her book Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the bad legacy of North American influence in our country. The return of Mel Zelaya to the presidency (that is, to his constitutionally elected position) was turned into a secondary concern. There were going to be elections.” Clinton, in her position as secretary of state, pressured (as her emails show) other countries to agree to sideline the demands of Cáceres and others that Zelaya be returned to power. Instead, Clinton pushed for the election of what she calls in Hard Choices a “unity government.” But Cáceres says: “We warned that this would be very dangerous.… The elections took place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud.”
The Clinton-brokered election did indeed install and legitimate a militarized regime based on repression. In the interview, Cáceres says that Clinton’s coup-government, under pressure from Washington, passed terrorist and intelligence laws that criminalized political protest. Cáceres called it “counterinsurgency,” carried out on behalf of “international capital”—mostly resource extractors—that has terrorized the population, murdering political activists by the high hundreds. “Every day,” Cáceres said elsewhere, “people are killed.”
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton removed the most damning sentences regarding her role in legitimating the Honduran coup from the paperback edition of Hard Choices. ....
From TheRealNewsNetwork .....And Berta was always identifying three main evils that she called them, or systemic forces would more likely be the word she would have used. Capitalism, the idea that people who don't live and work on the land will decide what happens on that land. Racism, which has [Lenca] a group that had been made invisible for hundreds and hundreds of years. She is playing a key role in making them visible again within Honduras and in the world, and will be one of her major legacies, and the legacy of her group, COPINH, in breaking that isolation. The racism involved in that. And patriarchy, which she constantly ran into as a, as a strong woman, a strong, indigenous woman. She will be seen as a model for indigenous people. She was, she is unwavering in her willingness to say yes, I speak to the river, and yes, I speak on a cell phone. And those things are not contradictory.
So this is a, this is a woman--they've made a martyr right now in Honduras. And if you go on social media in Honduras right now you'll see it. They've created a martyr last night that is of a size and stature that Central America may not have seen since I was born, in 30 or more years, maybe since Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980......
Lee Fang at The Intercept During Honduras Crisis, Clinton Suggested Back Channel With Lobbyist Lanny Davis
The Hillary Clinton emails released last week include some telling exchanges about the June 2009 military coup that toppled democratically elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, a leftist who was seen as a threat by the Honduran establishment and U.S. business interests.
At a time when the State Department strategized over how best to keep Zelaya out of power while not explicitly endorsing the coup, Clinton suggested using longtime Clinton confidant Lanny Davis as a back-channel to Roberto Micheletti, the interim president installed after the coup.
During that period, Davis was working as a consultant to a group of Honduran businessmen who had supported the coup.
In an email chain discussing a meeting between Davis and State Department officials, Clinton asked, “Can he help me talk w Micheletti?”
Davis rose to prominence as an adviser to the Clintons during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and has since served as a high-powered “crisis communications” adviser to a variety of people and organizations facing negative attention in the media, from scandal-plagued for-profit college companies to African dictators. His client list has elicited frequent accusations of hypocrisy.
Davis was not the only foreign agent with access to Clinton. As The Guardian and Politico have reported, other emails point to lobbyists with direct access to Clinton’s personal email.
....In her memoirs, Clinton herself discloses she had no intention on restoring the elected President Zelaya to power. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras,” Clinton wrote, “and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
On September 28, State Department officials blocked the OAS from adopting a resolution that would have refused to recognize Honduran elections carried out under the dictatorship—giving the US’s final seal of approval to the military coup that began three months prior.....
....The Washington Post, Guardian, NBC, CNN and NPR didn’t mention the 2009 coup that brought to power Cáceres’ likely murderers, let alone the US’s tacit involvement in the coup. TheNew York Times did briefly mention it, but omitted US responsibility:...
The countries in it, either in major or minor roles: USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Jordan, UAE, Qatar,Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Turkey, Kurdistan, Yemen, Nigeria,France with (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad ) Germany, Italy, Czech Republic,Albania, Estonia, Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Japan,Republic of Korea, Ireland, Spain, Slovakia, Norway, The Netherlands, Luxembourg,Bulgaria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Novorussia, Ukraine, Russia, Chechnya, Somalia, Iran, India, South Korea, North Korea, Central African Republic, Kenya, Tunisia, ThePhilippines, Egypt, Albania, Serbia, China, Sudan, South Sudan, Bukina Faso, Palestine,Georgia, Chad, Spain, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Nepal, Congo, Uganda, Romania,Mexico, Gambia, Haiti, Cameroon, Chad, Algeria, Venezuela, Thailand, Argentina, Vietnam,Myanmar, Georgia, Burundi, Senegal, Macedonia, Armenia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala
From FirstLook Yemen’s Hidden War: How the Saudi-Led Coalition Is Killing Civilians IN THE ISLAMIC CONCEPT of qadar, your divine destiny is inescapable. If you try to cheat death it will find you. For two women on a dusty road in mid-June on the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, their repeated attempts to dodge fate ended in tragic failure. Leaving the war zone of Yemen’s southern port city of Aden on June 10, the women headed north in a Toyota Cressida driven by a male relative. The pair were escaping the violence that had already turned entire streets in Aden to rubble, left hundreds dead and thousands of civilians under siege, struggling to find food, water and medical care. Driving ahead of them was a family of four in a Hilux pick-up truck, slowing at the numerous checkpoints along the road and weaving around potholes in the asphalt. Between 4:30 and 5 p.m., seemingly from nowhere, the first missile struck. The Hilux flipped into a cartwheeling fireball, killing the two children and their parents inside. Before the women in the Toyota had a chance to compose themselves an ominous whistle........
A third explosion in China! Again at the chemical factory in Dongying City.
And, all after devaluation and dumping.
https://t.co/Cjgkz1KFKr
From Bangkokpost 19 killed, 123 hurt as bomb blast rocks Bangkok tourist attraction A bomb explosion inside one of Bangkok’s most popular tourist attractions killed at least 19 people and injured 123 others – mostly foreign tourists – on Monday. Of the 19 dead victims, 12 died at the scene. The figures were based on information released by the Royal Thai Police Office as of 11.20pm on Monday.....
From NPR Thai Prime Minister Says 'Main Suspect' In Bangkok Bombing Arrested Police in Thailand have arrested a second foreign man — who Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said is the main suspect — in connection with the deadly Bangkok bombing on Aug. 17, Michael Sullivan reports for NPR. Prayuth told reporters the man arrested Tuesday was taken into custody in eastern Thailand, near the border with Cambodia, and that the suspect may have been attempting to flee the country, Sullivan reports. "Prayuth said the man is not Thai and is believed to be the main suspect in the bombing" Sullivan says. But officials don't know whether he is the yellow-shirted man seen on surveillance video leaving a backpack at Bangkok's Erawan Shrine on the day of the bombing.
From VICE VICE News Condemns Turkish Government Over Detention of Its Journalists on Terrorism Charges A Turkish court leveled formal charges of terrorism at two VICE News journalists and their colleague on Monday, as global rights groups have called for the reporters to be released. The two British journalists, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, have been detained since late Thursday evening local time in Turkey. The two were taken into custody in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir along with their fixer — a local journalist who serves as a translator and guide — and a driver. The driver has now been released. Kevin Sutcliffe, VICE's Head of News Programming in Europe, condemned the detention of the journalists in a statement Monday. "Today the Turkish government has leveled baseless and alarmingly false charges of 'working on behalf of a terrorist organization' against three VICE News reporters, in an attempt to intimidate and censor their coverage," he said. "Prior to being unjustly detained, these journalists were reporting and documenting the situation in the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir......
Germany and EU's migrant problem
From CNN ISIS claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack that wounded at least 29 people in Cairo early Thursday, saying it was retribution for the execution of six men in May. The car detonated near the National Security Building in the northern suburb of Shubra al-Kheemag, Egypt's Health Ministry said. The driver had parked it then was picked up by a motorcycle and fled before the explosives went off. Among the 29 wounded were six police officers, the Interior Ministry said. The blast echoed through the capital for miles, waking residents in predawn hours, London Times reporter Bel Trew told CNN. Video revealed at least one building facade nearly defaced, cars mangled, and heavy concrete street barriers knocked over near the bomb site. ........
From NYTimes Saudis Said to Kill More Than 65 Civilians in Yemen Bombing Doctors Without Borders said that Saudi-led airstrikes killed more than 65 civilians early Friday in Yemen’s southwest province of Taiz, including 17 people from one family. If confirmed, it would be one of the largest tolls from airstrikes by Saudi Arabia and its military coalition partners since they began bombing Yemen five months ago in a campaign to crush the Houthi insurgency in the country, the Arab world’s poorest. A statement posted on the website of Doctors Without Borders, the international medical charity that works in many conflict zones, said the bombings left extensive damage in the area, with a population of 600,000. “Those who survived the bombings are searching through the rubble with their bare hands in the hope of finding survivors, as well as the bodies of victims of the attack,” Salah Dongu’du, the Doctors Without Borders coordinator in Taiz, said in the statement. He said many survivors, as well as the charity’s staff, had been unable to reach the seven hospitals still functioning in the area, which originally had 20. “These seven hospitals are totally overwhelmed with wounded patients and have run out of essential medication,” he said..........
From Guardian Libya urges Arab allies to launch air strikes against Isis Foreign minister asks for arms but does not expect Britain or other western countries to intervene militarily in north Africa Libya’s internationally recognised government is calling on fellow Arab states to carry out air strikes against Isis targets but it does not expect Britain or other western countries to intervene militarily, its foreign minister has said. Mohamed al-Dayri requested arms supplies to help the Tobruk-based administration fight “barbaric terrorists” who have crucified and beheaded Libyans and Egyptians as the north African country continues to suffer “catastrophic violence” four years after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Dayri told the Guardian in an exclusive interview that he had asked Philip Hammond, the British foreign secretary, to expedite the delivery of ammunition and night-vision equipment, which are banned under the current UN arms embargo.........
From Reuters Saudi-led warplanes hit Yemeni port, aid group sounds alarm Warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition hit Yemen's Red Sea port of Hodeida on Tuesday, and officials there said the raids destroyed cranes and warehouses in the main entry point for aid supplies to the north of the country. Hodeida, controlled by Iranian-allied Houthi forces, has become a focal point of efforts to resupply the impoverished Arab state, battered by five months of war that has killed over 4,300 people.
From AntiWar Saudi Airstrike Hits Yemen Neighborhood, Killing 17 Civilians Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners are facing yet another round of condemnation today after an airstrike against northern Yemen’s Amran Province killed 17 civilians, including 13 teachers and four children. 20 other civilians were wounded in the strike. The attack hit a building which houses the teachers union offices for the region, and staff were preparing make-up exams for students who had missed final exams because of the ongoing Saudi war. The children at the site were the children of teachers, who were playing outside when the strike hit.....
From SCMP Ten days a fter Tianjin blasts, nine injured in explosion at chemical plant in eastern China A chemical factory in a village in eastern Shandong province exploded on Saturday night, injuring nine people, local media and police reported. The blast shattered windows of houses less than a kilometre away. ........... The explosion occurred at about 8.50pm at a chemical plant owned by Ruixing Chemical in Dongfu village near Zibo city, the Qilu Evening News reported on Weibo. Zibo city police said nine people were injured. The incident occurred just 10 days after a series of blasts at a chemicals factory in Tianjin, 120km east of Beijing, resulted in 121 casualties, including 67 dead firefighters and 54 people still unaccounted for.
From CBSNews Blast at U.S. Army depot in Japan lights up night sky An explosion at a U.S. Army depot outside of Tokyo set off a large blaze that lit up the night sky early Monday morning, but there were no reports of injuries. The blast happened after midnight at the Sagami Depot in Sagamihara, a city about 25 miles southwest of Tokyo, Pentagon duty officer Navy Commander Bill Urban said.......
From CounterPunch Ukrainians are Voting With Their Feet Against War and Economic Disaster The people of Ukraine are finding new and innovative ways to avoid compulsory military service and the vigilante military recruiters who enforce it. Deepening resistance to the draconian measure is now a significant impediment to the very prosecution of the war. Battle over public spaces Recruiters are routinely raiding public spaces to hunt down and grab men of conscription age (20-26) who fail to answer the call to war. They block exits to shopping centers, transit vehicles, parks and other public spaces and then conduct identification checks. Those found to have dodged service or whose call-up dates are approaching are hauled away or given strict instructions of when and where to report for duty. Vesti.com reports on the new phenomenon by Ukrainians of creating online maps to mark the public places where recruiters commonly hunt. Men and their families use the maps as a guide to public spaces to avoid. The first map appeared in the city of Dniepropetrovsk, reports Vesti. The phenomenon has quickly spread across the country.......
Boko Haram kills 79 people in three recent attacks in northeast Nigeria, local militia and residents say. http://t.co/OF6lwUp2ur
From VICE What We Learned While Embedded With Kurdish Forces Clearing the Islamic State From Hasakah Everyone was silent as we watched the flare spiral slowly to the ground, burning brightly, high above the smoke, noise, and flame of the burning oil refinery on the flat horizon. The Kurdish fighters then seemed to waken suddenly, shouldering their weapons and firing bursts of hot red tracer into the Islamic State (IS) positions just ahead. Six weeks earlier the jihadist group had launched a shock offensive on the city of Hasakah, northeast Syria, capturing almost half of it and initiating a bloody three-way struggle between IS, the Syrian regime and the Kurdish YPG forces, as well their allied militias. On this August night, however, the next few hours would see IS finally expelled from the city, and the YPG in almost total control of their first provincial capital in Syria.
Hasakah is the commercial and political center of the northeastern governorate of the same name, one of the most ethnically and culturally diverse in Syria. Thinly populated before French colonial rule in the early 20th century, the flat and dusty region is home to the majority of Syria's Kurdish population, as well as Assyrian and Syriac Christians, and Sunni Arab tribes, many of whom were planted in the region in the 1960s and 70s by the Syrian regime in an act of colonial settlement to dilute the region's Kurdish majority.........
From VICE Tens of thousands of Malaysian protesters turned out in the streets of Kuala Lumpur on Saturday to call for the resignation of Prime Minister Najib Razak following the discovery of millions of dollars worth of clandestine deposits made to his personal bank accounts. An internal probe uncovered more than $700 million that had been deposited into Razak's accounts from entities linked with the state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB). .........
From RT 'Make it a revolution!’ : Lebanon protesters give 72-hour ultimatum to government Thousands of street protesters in Beirut are demanding the resignation of two government ministers, after hundreds were injured in a similar demonstration last week. RT's Paula Slier reports that violence has again broken out. The organizing movement behind the street protests, ‘You Stink!,’ said it would “escalate” its public protests unless the interior minister responsible for alleged police brutality was replaced along with the minister of the environment who is in charge of the ineffectual rubbish collection service that has left the streets of Beirut lined with trash. Its spokesman Rasha Halabi went further, however, telling a crowd that the movement will be pushing for new national elections.......
Trouble brewing in Guatemala which might erupt into a civil war. Note that the present criminal of a president has been there from the Reagan era and supported by the US govt.
From AP One-day record for migrant rescues in sea near Libya: 4,400 Italy's coast guard says it coordinated the rescue of some 4,400 migrants in a single day, a record-setting number, as smugglers took advantage of ideal sea conditions off Libya to launch a fleet of overcrowded, unseaworthy boats. The coast guard on Sunday said 22 rescue operations were carried out a day earlier for motorized rubber dinghies and fishing boats, all crammed with migrants desperate to reach Europe's southern shores. Italian coast guard, navy and border police boats pitched in, as did Norwegian and Irish naval vessels deployed in a European patrol-and-rescue force. Boats in distress use satellite phones to call coast guard rescuers or are spotted by patrolling Italian military aircraft. So far this year, some 110,000 migrants have been rescued off Libya and brought to southern Italian ports........
From PressTV At least 30 killed in huge explosion near hospital in Syria’s Rif Dimashq Dozens of people have reportedly been killed in a huge bomb explosion targeting pro-government forces in southwestern Syria. The bomb attack on Wednesday hit a hospital in Harasta, a town located around 10 kilometers from the capital Damascus in Rif Dimashq, killing at least 30 people and injuring tens of others, Sky News Arabia reported.........
From JapanTimes EU-bound refugee wave rolls through Macedonia, Serbia, threatening bloc’s ‘soul’ PRESEVO, SERBIA – Thousands of migrants, mostly Syrian refugees, traveled through Macedonia and Serbia on Sunday toward Western Europe, as Italy’s foreign minister said the escalating crisis threatened the bloc’s “soul. More than 7,000 men, woman and children crossed into southern Serbia from Macedonia overnight Saturday to Sunday alone, the U.N.’s refugee agency (UNHCR) said, with many more still expected to arrive. The mass movement came after Macedonian police on Saturday finally reopened the border with Greece after three days of trying to hold back streams of migrants.
Macedonia had on Thursday declared a state of emergency and sealed off its border to halt the influx, leaving thousands stranded in no-man’s land. After a tense standoff on the border, hundreds of stranded refugees, many carrying small children, forced their way through barbed wire fences in dramatic scenes on Saturday as police hurled stun grenades. By Saturday evening, border guards stood aside to allow 1,500 migrants through unhindered, with many heading straight for Serbia, the next stop on their journey to reach the European Union.........
From Reuters Rockets fired by Houthi militiamen killed 14 civilians, most of them children, as fighting intensified for control of Yemen's third largest city, Taiz, residents said on Monday. The Saudi-led coalition opposing the Houthis also launched air raids on military bases and Houthi positions in the southwestern city during the fighting, residents said, but no casualties were reported. Fighters loyal to Yemen's exiled government have been contesting control of Taiz - Yemen's cultural capital - with the Houthis since April. Hundreds of combatants and civilians have been killed..........
From ICRC Yemen: ICRC office in Aden attacked The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) strongly condemns an attack which has taken place on its offices in the city of Aden in Yemen. Unidentified gunmen stormed the building on Monday (24 August, 2015) and held staff at gunpoint. Cars, cash and equipment were subsequently stolen. As a result, fourteen international staff members have been relocated. "This is not the first time that we have had a security incident in Aden," said the ICRC's head of sub-delegation in the city, Samer Jarjouhi. "There have been at least ten such incidents recently. This is not acceptable and we have relocated staff until the situation improves." It is not clear who the gunmen were but the security situation in Aden has deteriorated in recent months. The ICRC will remain in contact with the authorities in the city to discuss safety considerations.........
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Russia has begun its military intervention in #Syria, deploying an aerial contingent to a permanent Syrian base pic.twitter.com/us1Z1SS5Tt
From Anadolu Germany, Turkey 'coordinated' Patriot's withdrawal Germany has denied reports that its withdrawal of Patriot anti-missile system from eastern Turkey is due to Turkish military strikes against PKK Germany has denied reports that its decision to end its deployment of Patriot anti-missile systems in southern Turkey is a reaction to recent Turkish military operations against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Defense Ministry spokesman Ingo Gerhartz said Monday that Germany’s decision to end its contribution to NATO's Patriot system in Turkey was taken after a review within the alliance in June, which concluded that the threat against Turkish territories by Syrian ballistic missiles was very low........
From AlMonitor Oman’s diplomatic bridge to Syria Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem’s recent visit to Oman signals Damascus’ heightened interest in negotiating an end to its 4½-year-old civil war, an interest rendered more urgent by a series of on-the-ground setbacks for the Syrian army. Moallem met Aug. 6 with his Omani counterpart, Yusuf bin Alawi in Muscat, Oman, to discuss “constructive efforts” aimed at ending the Syrian crisis. Syria’s state-run news agency reported the two diplomats “agreed to continue cooperation and coordination to achieve the shared goals of their peoples and governments.” Moallem’s visit, which came at Muscat’s invitation, marked his first trip to a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state since the Syrian conflict erupted in 2011. As early as 2011, Omani leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said hosted American and Iranian officials for talks, which laid the groundwork for last month’s historic nuclear agreement. Since the six world powers and Tehran signed the deal, numerous actors have signaled greater interest in pursuing diplomatic steps to resolve the Syrian crisis and in working together to counter the Islamic State (IS).........
FromTelegraph Nato launches largest airborne drills in Europe since end of Cold War 5,000 troops from 11 Nato allies are taking part in exercises across Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania The US said Tuesday it has launched the biggest allied airborne drills in Europe since the Cold War ended, as fighting involving pro-Russian separatists escalated in eastern Ukraine. Nearly 5,000 soldiers from 11 Nato allies are taking part in four weeks of "simultaneous multinational airborne operations" across Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Romania that began on Saturday, the US army said in a statement. "Swift Response 15 is the largest Allied airborne training event on the continent since the end of the Cold War," according to the statement from the US army in Grafenwohr in southern Germany. ..........
After all the death and destruction American foreign policies has wrought all over the world, arrogant Americans still have the nerve to ask: "Why do they hate us?" Parts of the vid are narrated by Susan Sarandon. I found segments of what Ramsey Clark had to say to be very poignant. About the video below from AddictedToWar:
This 2-hour 23 minute video compilation is an excellent and invaluable educational tool that reveals the true nature of U.S. foreign policy. It's been seen in many classrooms, churches, home screenings, on cable TV and shown by many Peace and Justice organizations.
People such as Howard Zinn, S. Brian Willson, Blase Bonpane, Michael Parenti, Oliver Stone, Father Roy Bourgeois, Ramsey Clark, Ed Asner, Casey Kasem, Susan Sarandon, Chalmers Johnson, Cynthia McKinney and many others have seen this video and find it very informative and empowering!
by making inroads in trading amicably with the world at large. Whereas; in the West we have leaders whose egos have bloated to such an extent, they put the blowfish to shame and their personas are also as poisonous.
Tyler Durden writing at ZeroHedge: Step Aside Panama Canal: China To Build Nicaragua Canal, "World's Largest Infrastructure Project Ever"
A month ago, a Nicaraguan committee approved Chinese billionaire Wang Jing's project to create The Nicaraguan Canal. With a planned capacity to accommodate ships with loaded displacement of 400,000 tons (notably bigger than The Panama Canal), the proposed 278-kilometer-long canal that will run across the Nicaragua isthmus would probably change the landscape of the world's maritime trade. "The project is the largest infrastructure project ever in the history of man in terms of engineering difficulty, investment scale, workload and its global impact," Wang told reporters, adding that with regard the project's financing, which is around $50 billion, Wang seems quite confident, "If you can deliver, you will find all the world's money at your disposal." Worried about conservation? Don't be: "We have 100-year concession rights, we will be responsible to ourselves, and we are there to build, not to destroy," explained Wang.............
Instead of going after drug cartels closer to home, the USA finds it fit to send thousands of soldiers halfway across the world to fight the world's other growers of opium .. the Taliban. The Taliban supplies to the Muslim drug cartels, who in turn supply the scum in Colombia and the rest of South America, and they in turn sell the poison in the streets of America and the West.
Murdered evangelist’s widow also killed after threats. 3 orphaned by ELN guerrillas’ actions, death threats continue. January 9 (World Watch Monitor) — Four months after guerrillas of the National Liberation Army (ELN) sent a murdered evangelist's wife their first demand to abandon her home in northeast Colombia's volatile Arauca department, the militants made good on their threats, report sources close to Open Doors, a ministry to persecuted Christians.
On Monday, Jan 7th 2013, as the family's pastor finished an evening devotional in the home of widow Alicia Castilla, assassins entered the home and opened fire on her with pistols, killing her instantly in front of her three children and her father.
An Open Doors worker who cannot be named for security reasons told World Watch Monitor that before leaving the home, the guerrillas told Castilla's son, 18-year-old Hernán, that the rest of the family had three days to leave the region. After that, the killers warned, they would return and one by one kill other family members.
Castilla's death follows the murder of her husband, lay evangelist Nelson Ramos, two years before, in January 2011, also at the hands of the ELN. The armed rebel group holds a virtual sway of terror over the area.....
Hizbollah, Hamas and any number of terrorist groups have been in South America for decades and only of late a few Americans seem to be waking up from their slumber and acknowledging their presence and the danger they pose. But, why really worry, eh?! Obama and his admin are true believers in open borders and one big headchopping Utopia for all.
J.Millard Burr writing at RightSideNews: In October 1987 Paraguayan residents were surprised to read in La Tarde, Asuncion’s afternoon newspaper, that plans were afoot to open a huge section of the Paraguayan Chaco to 500 Muslim families. Paraguayans with some knowledge of the isolated Chaco, and the difficulty the settlers would encounter there, felt certain that the proposed Nueva Andalucia settlement in Boqueron Department had to be a bogus operation. It was the sort of land scam that had been customary during the more than three-decade reign of dictator Adolfo Stroessner.
This time, however, the report elicited more than the usual share of criticism. There seemed no logic to the undertaking, especially since the project was reportedly underwritten by the shadowy World Islamic Council (WIC) and would involve settlers from an unnamed country or countries. Only Mennonite settlements had successfully tamed the central Chaco, and the phlegmatic Paraguayans were aware that they had done so because they were unbelievably industrious. They had persisted in an environment that had defeated every group that had preceded them.
Acting as spokesman for the WIC was Elio Massagrande, the Italian-born resident in Paraguay who was himself under investigation in Italy. It was reported that he had been granted usufruct right to 100,000 hectares (1,000 sq. kilometers) of Chaco land. Massagrande was said to be financing the construction of a large fertilizer plant within the WIC colony. In Asuncion, citizens aware of Massagrande’s vile history, and his barely disguised belief that most Paraguayans were moronic country bumpkins, were left to wonder what the Italian really had in mind....
....As for the flow of Arabs, after Stroessner was deposed it was learned that Paraguayan consuls and honorary consuls living abroad had participated in the sale of untold thousands of Paraguayan passports, visas and travel documents.....
