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Turkey disrupting efforts in settling Syrian crisis and violating territorial integrity of Iraq and Syria


Sputnik
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 13:35 UTC
Lavrov
© REUTERS/ Maxim Shemetov
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the international community is taking on the Syrian settlement and providing for full-fledged participation by all Syrian, ethnic, and religious groups in the peace negotiations.

Turkey's actions are disrupting efforts in settling the crisis in Syria, including the ceasefire and delivery of humanitarian aid, and requires the international community to respond, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

"I believe that this demands efforts that the international community is taking on the Syrian settlement and providing for full-fledged participation by all Syrian, ethnic, and religious groups in the peace negotiations, as well as efforts to provide for halting military actions, and demands a tough and clear reaction from the international community because Turkey's activities are, as a matter of fact, disrupting these efforts that are being made, including with the UN Security Council's approval, and on issues of the ceasefire, and issues of delivering humanitarian cargoes, as well as issues on the beginning of the political process," Lavrov said during a joint press conference in Moscow with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.
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Attention

Syrian Kurds to declare federal system while Damascus opposes Syria federalization


RT
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 12:55 UTC
kurds protest turkey aggression
© REUTERS/ RODI SAID
Kurdish people carry flags as they march during a protest in the city of al-Derbasiyah, on the Syrian-Turkish border, against what the protesters said were the operations launched in Turkey by government security forces against the Kurds, February 9, 2016
Kurdish-controlled autonomous areas in northern Syria are expected to declare a federal system, local media and RT's sources on the ground have said. The conference to declare the federation of three Western Kurdistan enclaves will be in Rmelan.

The areas will reportedly be named the Federation of Northern Syria and represent all ethnic groups living there, Idris Nassan, an official in the foreign affairs directorate of Kobani - one of three autonomous areas set up by Kurdish groups two years ago - told Reuters. The federal system would mean "widening the framework of self-administration which the Kurds and others have formed," Nassan said.

A newly established system would see the autonomous cantons in Syria Kurdistan (Rojava) replaced.

Syrian Kurds effectively control a stretch of 400 kilometers (250 miles) along the Syria-Turkey border, from the frontier with Iraq to the Euphrates River. They also control a section of the northwestern border in the Afrin area.

Comment: Damascus doesn't support federalization of Syria:
Damascus opposes Syria federalization initiative put forward by the Kurdish representatives, the head of the Damascus delegation to the Geneva proximity talks on the Syrian reconciliation said Wednesday.

"Betting on creating any kind of division between Syrians will be a total failure," Bashar Jaafari told reporters asked to comment on the initiative.

He added that the delegation arrived in Geneva to discuss "how to keep unity and independence of Syria."


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2 + 2 = 4

US gov't admits that the people they armed in Syria have committed genocide

Matt Agorist
Free Thought Project
Tue, 15 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
Genocide ISIS
Monday night, the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to declare that Islamic State is committing genocide against Christians and other minority groups in Iraq and Syria.

In a unanimous 393-0 vote, the House resolution comes just days before the State Department is legally mandated by Congress to determine whether Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) persecution of minorities in Iraq and Syria - Christians, Yazidis, Sunni Kurds and Shiite Muslims - constitutes genocide, reports RT.

"What is happening in Iraq and Syria is a deliberate, systematic targeting of religious and ethnic minorities. Today, the House unanimously voted to call ISIS's atrocities what they are: a genocide. We also will continue to offer our prayers for the persecuted," House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) said in a statement.

Comment: Perhaps the creation of ISIS is less a case of blowback than it is one of blowup. Yes, there are probably a number of individuals who have turned to extreme measures in response to Western brutality and imperialism - but how many of them could be doing what they are today in Syria and elsewhere without the massive support of the US and allied psychopathic governments? What's worse is that this is precisely what the West wants and the trap that has been laid for the oppressed - not unlike the desperation induced by Israel towards Palestinians.

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Bad Guys

Turkish terrorist state: British academic arrested for having a Kurdish new year invitation


RT
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 03:34 UTC
Erdogan Daesh
A British academic has been arrested in Istanbul for allegedly distributing invitations to Kurdish New Year celebrations. He was accused of spreading "terrorist propaganda" amid the ongoing crackdown on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party and its supporters.

Chris Stephenson, a Cambridge University graduate, British national and a professor of computer sciences, who was a lecturer at Istanbul's Bilgi University, was detained on charges of "making propaganda for a terrorist organization."

Stephenson was arrested outside an Istanbul police department where he arrived in support of three Turkish academics arrested the day before. According to Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, the scholar was detained for spreading terrorist propaganda because he was in possession of leaflets that contained "PKK messages and images."

However, according to other reports the leaflets were only invitations to attend the Kurdish Nevruz (New Year) holiday celebrations, and the man was not even distributing them.

Comment: Further reading: 'Erdogan destroyed our world': Kurds report Turkish forces have beheaded & burned to death hundreds of civilians

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Bad Guys

Saudi airstrikes destroy Yemeni market, kill 41 civilians & injure 75 others


RT
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 03:53 UTC
ISIS Saudi comparison
© www.infiniteunknown.net
The Saudi-led coalition's air strikes hit a market in Yemen's Haja province on Tuesday, killing 41 civilians and injuring 75 others, according to a senior provincial health official.

The director of Haja health department, Dr. Ayman Mathkour, told Reuters that three airstrikes hit the market in the Mustaba disctict.

There have been conflicting reports as to the number of casualties resulting from the strike on the market. Saba Net, a Yemeni news agency controlled by the Houthis, says that 65 people have been killed and 55 more injured in the air strike in Mustaba.
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Fire

Terrorist attack in Ankara is the pretext Erdogan wanted for an invasion of Syria

Viktor Titov
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 15 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
Ankara blast
The bloody attack in Ankara on March 13 that left 35 people dead and 120 injured provoked universal condemnation across the globe. Russia's President Vladimir Putin almost immediately sent his condolences to the Turkish people after the attack. Turkish officials decided that the coverage of this attack in the media would be closely monitored and censored. Moreover, Turkish citizens found their access to certain social networks blocked by Turkish security agencies. Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has immediately assembled an urgent meeting of the Security Council in the aftermath of the attack.

Naturally, the question arises: who may be behind this outrageous crime and who benefits from it? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to point the finger in the direction of ISIS, since its members have been roaming Turkish territory freely while being particularly unhappy about the fact that the process of national reconciliation has begun in Syria. It would even be easier to push the blame on the militants of the Kurdish PKK or their supporters from among the Syrian Kurds who are dissatisfied with the fact that Turkey has been continuously shelling their settlements, in spite of the declared cease-fire.

It didn't take Turkish security services long to announce that they had found a "trace" of the PKK behind the attack. But there's just one question nobody can answer: how could the car that was used in the attack, the one that was allegedly stolen last January from an old woman, be allowed to be taken to the city of Diyarbakir (located in Turkish Kurdistan) first, and then once filled with explosives be driven across Turkey to become a murderous weapon in Ankara? It has been announced repeatedly that in recent years Turkish authorities have seriously tightened security measures in Ankara, Istanbul and other major cities, especially in south-eastern Anatolia, where ethnic Kurds are being literally slaughtered by the Turkish army. So how could this be possible?
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Mr. Potato

Ben Carson confession: I endorsed Trump because he promised me a job


Sputnik
Wed, 16 Mar 2016 02:21 UTC
carson_trump
© AP Photo/ Mark J. Terrill
Doctor Ben Carson's endorsement of Donald Trump on Friday appears to have come at a price, in the form of a promised position within the Trump administration, which may be illegal.

"I didn't see a path for [John] Kasich, who I like, or for [Marco] Rubio, who I like. As far as [Ted] Cruz is concerned, I don't think he's gonna be able to draw independents and Democrats unless has has some kind of miraculous change... Is there another scenario that I would have preferred? Yes. But that scenario isn't available," Carson told NewsMax TV on Monday, clarifying that he would have preferred to back another candidate.


Carson admitted that Trump promised him a role in his administration, "certainly in an advisory capacity," but when asked if that meant a cabinet position, the doctor said that he could not "reveal any details about it right now, because all of this is still very liquid."

Under federal election laws, candidates are expressly prohibited from directly or indirectly promising "the appointment of any person to any public or private position or employment, for the purpose of procuring support in his candidacy." Violation of this law includes fines or a year in jail, two years if the violation was willful, ThinkProgress reports.
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Mail

Letter to Obama: US should apologize for its support to "dirty war" that killed over 20,000 people in Argentina

Martin Edwin Andersen
The Nation
Tue, 15 Mar 2016 23:24 UTC
 Now, President Obama has the chance to apologize for American complicity in the dirty war.
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
© AP Photo
 The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo engaged in an anti-government protest over the imprisonment and kidnappings of their husbands and children, many of them Argentine journalists, in Buenos Aires in 1977.
Dear Mr. President,

After a historic visit to Cuba, later this month on March 24, you plan to be in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the 40th anniversary of a vicious military coup that resulted in the secret kidnapping, torture, and murder of more than 20,000 people, including leftist guerrillas, nonviolent dissidents, and even many uninvolved citizens caught in the web of terror.

In an October 1987 article in The Nation, I broke the story about how the murderous generals and their neo-Nazi minions received a "green light" for their clandestine repression from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Although buttressed by other sources, the Nation story was largely based on a memorandum of conversation I received from Patricia Derian, the wonderfully feisty activist and Mississippi civil-rights hero.

Appointed by President Jimmy Carter as the first assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, Patt played a key role in bringing to life Carter's desperately needed post-Vietnam and post-Watergate Human Rights Revolution.
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Stock Down

The effect of corporate pillage: The Mexicanization of the United States

Chris Hedges
truthdig
Sun, 13 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
Workers at maquiladoras,Juarez, Mexico
© Ivan Pierre Aguirre / AP
Workers at one of the maquiladoras in Juarez, Mexico, raise flags in 2013. Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, such factories have proliferated, but critics of the pact say its effects have been economically devastating on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
The neoliberal ideology that is the engine of corporate capitalism spews its poison around the globe. Constitutions are rewritten by judicial fiat in a mockery of democracy. Laws and regulations that impede corporate exploitation are abolished. Corporations orchestrate legally sanctioned tax boycotts.Free-trade deals destroy small farmers and businesses along with labor unions and government agencies designed to protect the public from contaminated air, water and food and from usurious creditors and lenders. The press is transformed into an echo chamber for the corporate elites. Wages stagnate or decline. Unemployment and underemployment soar. Social services are curtailed or abolished in the name of austerity. The political system becomes a charade. Dissent is criminalized. The ecocide by the fossil fuel industry accelerates. State enterprises and utilities are sold to corporations. The educational system mutates into vocational training. Culture and the arts are replaced by sexual commodification, banal entertainment and graphic depictions of violence. Infrastructures crumble.
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Arrow Down

11 Major US retailers closing the most stores


Government Slaves
Tue, 15 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
Store closing
© Unknown
1. Office Depot

> Closings: 400 (2013-2016)
> Annual net income: $8 million
> 1-year share price % chg.: -42%
> Industry: Office supply

As workspaces across the country transition from pen and paper to digital tools, traditional office supply retailers suffer. Office Depot has reported losses in six of the last eight years, and is currently in the process of closing hundreds of locations. Another factor leading to these closings may have been the company's 2013 merger with OfficeMax. The new company needs to consolidate operations and said it will be closing 400 locations by the end of 2016.

Early last year, rival office supplier Staples announced its intention to acquire Office Depot in an effort to compete against Amazon and other e-commerce companies. The deal requires the approval of both the Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission, and would likely result in more store closings. So far, the EC has approved the merger while the FTC has denied it.
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