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Where will Islamic State find a safe house now that it is being driven from Syria?

Ulson Gunnar
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 00:00 UTC
ISIS safe house
Every villain needs a safe house and the Islamic State (IS) is no exception. Luckily for IS, it has two, possibly three waiting for it, all of them courtesy of NATO and in particular the United States.

The war in Syria has been going particularly poor for IS. With Russian air power cutting their supply lines with Turkey and the Syrian Arab Army closing in, it may soon be time for them to shop for a new home.

If the war is going bad for IS, it is going even worse for the supporting powers that have armed and funded them. To understand where IS might go next, one must first fully understand those supporting powers behind them. The premeditated creation of IS and revelations of the identity of their supporters were divulged in a Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo first published in 2012.

It admitted:
If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).

Comment: IS is on the run, but Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the U.S. seem committed to protecting their favorite proxy barbarians if recent events are any indication. And so IS may be induced to stay and slog it out with the forces of Assad and Russia.

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War Whore

NATO using refugee crisis as cover for full-on war mobilization in Mediterranean

Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 15 Feb 2016 17:33 UTC
nato warships
The US-led NATO alliance is dispatching warships to the Mediterranean to allegedly help ease Europe's refugee crisis. However, a closer look at the naval vessels in the NATO mission shows that this is no refugee rescue attempt - but rather a full-on war mobilization.

The timing comes just as US-Russian diplomatic talks on the Syrian crisis reach a make-or-break moment, suggesting that NATO is preparing military action in league with Turkey in order to salvage the covert war for regime change in Syria.

That war has seen rapidly mounting losses for the United States and its allies who have been fueling clandestine proxy militias to topple the Assad government since March 2011. Those losses have escalated since Russia began its aerial bombing campaign four months ago to help stabilize the allied Syrian state of President Bashar al-Assad.

After a meeting with NATO ministers in Brussels on Thursday, the alliance's Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced that «without delay» the Standing Maritime Group 2 would be dispatched and «will be tasked to conduct reconnaissance, monitoring and surveillance of the illegal [refugee smuggling] crossings in the Aegean Sea in cooperation with relevant authorities».
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Vader

More Americans concerned US military no longer #1


RT
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 14:12 UTC
US Air Force
Americans are increasingly unsure if the US is the world's top military power, according to a new poll. A rising number of Americans say the US spends too little on the military, even as the Pentagon budget is greater than the next seven nations combined.

Americans are evenly split, 49 percent to 49 percent, over whether the US military is clearly the "No.1 in the world militarily," according to a new Gallup poll. This is a marked difference from 2015, when 59 percent of respondents said the US was top dog, as opposed to 38 percent who disagreed.

Gallup said the 49 percent percent who see the US as No. 1 is the lowest it has recorded since first asking the question in 1994.
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Safe

Putin's stellar economic performance for Russia

Eric Zuesse
Sott.net
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 16:32 UTC
Putin nett
© Mikhail Klimentyev/ Getty
Despite Barack Obama's economic sanctions against Russia, and the plunge in oil prices that King Saud agreed to with Obama's Secretary of State John Kerry on 11 September 2014, the economic damages that the U.S. and Sauds have aimed against a particular oil-and-gas giant, Russia, have hit mostly elsewhere — at least till now.


Comment: Breaking news: Russia and Saudi Arabia agree to freeze oil production output
The world's two biggest crude producers say they won't increase oil output. Along with Russia and Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Venezuela have agreed to freeze production at January levels, according to Russia's Energy Ministry. ... Saudi Arabia has insisted it won't cut production unless major producers outside the cartel cooperate. Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak has said cooperation is possible if other producers joined in.

However, the CEO of Russia's biggest oil producer Rosneft Igor Sechin said last week that his company would defend traditional markets and raised doubts about production cuts. "Tell me who is supposed to cut? Will Saudi Arabia cut production? Will Iran cut production? Will Mexico cut production? Will Brazil cut production? Who is going to cut?" asked Sechin.

This has been happening while simultaneously Obama's violent February 2014 coup overthrowing Ukraine's democratically elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych (and the head of the 'private CIA' firm Stratfor calls it "the most blatant coup in history") has caused Ukraine's economy to plunge even further than Russia's, and corruption in Ukraine to soar even higher than it was before America's overthrow of that country's final freely elected government, so that Ukraine's economy has actually been harmed far more than Russia's was by Obama's coup in Ukraine and Obama's subsequent economic sanctions against Russia (sanctions that are based on clear and demonstrable Obama lies but that continue as if they weren't).
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Megaphone

Russian Ministry of Defense: Russia has no ship in Caspian Sea capable of hitting Syrian hospital


RT
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 16:54 UTC
Russia Ministry of Defense emblem
© Natalia Seliverstova / Sputnik
Emblem on the fence of the building of the Russian Defense Ministry on Frunzenskaya Embankment in Moscow
Russia has no ships in the Caspian Sea fleet that could have hit the Syrian hospital in Idlib province with a ballistic missile, the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a statement, responding to accusations leveled by Turkish PM Ahmet Davutoglu.

"The Caspian Sea fleet has no ships capable of launches of ballistic missiles," MoD spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters on Tuesday. On Monday, during a visit to Kiev, Turkish PM Davutoglu said Russia had launched a ballistic missile from the Caspian Sea and hit a medical facility in the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria.


Comment: See:

He reiterated that the Russian Air Force carries out strikes targeting terrorists only after repeated checks of received data, and following coordination with partners to exclude the risk of hitting civilians.


Comment: That's far more surveillance and care taken than by the West, who indiscriminately bomb civilian structures, which is why it's very likely that it was the West or one of its proxies that is bombing Syrian cities.


Konashenkov said the reports from Turkey on hospitals being hit were fakes.
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Vader

Fear the Brexit: Why the American Empire needs the UK to stay in the EU

Finian Cunningham
Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 08 Feb 2016 16:10 UTC
obama cameron
The countdown begins this week for the momentous question facing Britain: whether to exit the European Union - the so-called Brexit. While the issue seems to be primarily one for British national interests, lurking in the background is a crucial geopolitical concern for the United States. The outcome of the British referendum on Europe could severely undermine Washington's global hegemonic ambitions and in particular its adversarial agenda towards Russia.

British Prime Minister David Cameron launched a diplomatic charm offensive only days after European Council President Donald Tusk published the outline of a deal to retain Britain's membership of the 28-nation EU bloc. That provisional deal was the product of months of negotiations between the London government and the EU establishment, aimed at giving Britain more national freedom from Brussels. Cameron contends that he has won enough concessions to bolster British sovereignty, and the Conservative government leader is now openly campaigning for continued membership of the EU on that basis.

Cameron needs the backing of other EU leaders to finalize the reform package that he and Tusk have negotiated. His first stops this week were in Poland and Denmark where newly elected EU skeptical governments are inclined to sympathize with British concerns for wresting more national freedoms within the bloc. It's not certain if an EU leaders' summit slated for February 18-19 will agree to the British premier's desired reforms. Some see Britain's sought-after concessions as undermining the whole concept of the EU on matters of free movement and workers' rights. Both Germany and France have said that they are not willing to keep Britain onboard «at any price» - indicating a limit to tolerance towards British concessions.
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Vader

War crimes: US airstrikes destroy Syrian hospital and schools


RT
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 16:22 UTC
MSF hospital bombing Syria
© GHAITH OMRAN / AFP
People gather around the rubble of a hospital supported by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) near Maaret al-Numan, in Syria's northern province of Idlib, on February 15, 2016
Attacks on civilian infrastructures and hospitals in northern Syria reportedly left some 50 people dead on Monday. While Turkey accused Russia of perpetrating a "war crime" on its border, a Syrian ambassador blamed the US-led coalition for the destruction.

The UN Secretary General office said that close to 50 people were killed in attacks in northern Syria as the Syrian army engages jihadist militants in fierce battles across the Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

"The secretary-general is deeply concerned by reports of missile attacks on at least five medical facilities and two schools in Aleppo and in Idlib, which killed close to 50 civilians, including children, and injuring many," said UN spokesman Farhan Haq.

Comment:

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Quenelle - Golden

US boasted to Russia that Daesh would take control of Syria by October - Russian diplomat

Alexander Mercouris
Russia Insider
Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:50 UTC
isis
© Str. / Reuters
"I want to thank my family, God, and most of all, Western intelligence. I just wouldn't be here today if it weren't for them!"
Alexander Yakovenko, Russia's ambassador to Britain, dropped something of a bombshell on Monday, though one that has gone completely unnoticed.

In a piece in the print edition of the London Evening Standard defending Russian policy in Syria he made the following extraordinary disclosure:
"Last summer we were told by our Western partners that in October Damascus would fall to IS (ie. the Islamic State - AM).

What they were planning to do next we don't know. Probably, they would have ended up painting the extremists white and accepting them as a Sunni state straddling Iraq and Syria".

Comment: Good on Russia for voicing a resounding 'no' to Washington's plan to turn Syria into another terrorist safe haven. But, as the author points out, the media doesn't cover this. The West largely has no idea what's happening in Syria, or anywhere. Most have no idea that these psychos' efforts have been thwarted, and that they and their 'underlings' in Turkey and Saudi Arabia seem desperate enough to start an even larger conflict.

In the end the Russian coalition has a lot on their plate. The anti-Russian propaganda machine is in full gear, thanks to the 'refugee crisis' Western societies seem like they're on the verge of an hysterical breakdown, and Turkey is bombing Russia's allies. It is not a pretty picture.

Also see:

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Arrow Down

US Empire is at war with the world and Russia is the main force holding the criminal organization at bay

Finian Cunningham
Sputnik News
Fri, 12 Feb 2016 16:34 UTC
Dmitry Medvedev
© Sputnik/Dmitry Astakhov
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev attends Munich Security Conference.
Can we please just dispense with the nonsense and talk about how things really are. The US-led NATO military alliance is at war with the world. And Russia is the main force holding this criminal organization at bay.

Listening to various Western political leaders at the recent Munich Security Conference is both laughable and cringe-making. We heard from the likes of US top diplomat John Kerry and British foreign secretary Philip Hammond holding forth on issues of international law and peace, while NATO's Jens Stoltenberg and General Philip Breedlove assured that there was no Cold War.

The EU's foreign affairs chief Federica Morgherini also made the stupendous denial that the world was not witnessing a new Cold War towards Russia, as did German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Who do these people think we are? If they are stupid enough to live in denial that's up to them. But surely the rest of the thinking human race can see the world for what it is: a place where the United States and its various allies are running amok, making a mockery of international law, waging wars, covertly and overtly, against anyone who stands in their way.

This is exactly the sordid scenario that Russian president Vladimir Putin warned about back in 2007 when he addressed the Munich conference. Putin said it would end in tears, from lawlessness and state-sponsored terrorism, instigated and justified by Western leaders who hypocritically speak as if they are paragons of virtue.
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Windsock

Raqqa: Syrian army on major anti-ISIS assault


RT
Mon, 15 Feb 2016 08:22 UTC
Syrian army
© www.globalresearch.ca400
Syrian army moves into Raqqa province, ISIS moving out.
Syrian army units and paramilitary forces are reportedly moving into Raqqa province, seizing strategically important areas along the Salamiyah-Raqqa road which leads directly into the Islamic State stronghold.

On Sunday, Syrian government forces and Palestinian armed militia captured the strategically important Tal Masbah hilltop, the last entrenched Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) position. The fortified position guarded approaches to the Salamiyah-Raqqa highway, leading to the terror group's stronghold in the city of Raqqa, Al-Masdar news outlet reported, citing a military source. Later that day, the Syrian government army launched a massive assault on the village of Zakiyah and seized an important crossroads near the village, cutting IS's major supply route from Raqqa to nearby Hama province.

The Syrian government army's 555th Brigade, 4th Mechanized Division, "Desert Hawks" brigade and Golani regiment, as well as the pro-government Palestinian Liwaa Al-Quds militia (Jerusalem brigade) took part in both ground offensives. A source in the 555th brigade told Al-Masdar that IS militants entrenched at Tal Masbah hilltop were forced to flee northeast towards the desert on the Raqqa-Hama border, where an intense battle between the terror group and government forces is taking place.

Comment: Reversal of Fortune: Syrian army is on the march and gaining back strategic ground, complicating any Saudi invasion; ISIS is on the run.

Nexus Point*: With increasing Syrian success and what it means for the opposition, are we closer to a settlement or are we closer to WWIII?
*a juncture where destiny and opportunity collide

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