Welcome to Sott.net
Tue, 02 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Radar

US general says US air power advantage fading in face of 'Russian military advances' - Pentagon must keep up


RT
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:37 UTC
A US Air Force general says the Pentagon needs to develop new tactics to keep up with Russian military advances, stating that Moscow has "closed the gap in capability." He added that Washington's air advantage is dwindling.
russia military equipment
© Alexander Vilf / RIA Novosti
Antey-2500 anti aircraft S-300VM
General Frank Gorenc, commander of US Air Forces in Europe, said he's concerned about Moscow's push to increase the quantity and quality of its aircraft and unmanned aircraft, Reuters reported.

"The advantage that we had from the air, I can honestly say, is shrinking," Gorenc said at the annual Air Force Association conference.

He went on to say that Moscow's investments in modernizing its air force and building formidable surface-to-air missile defenses are "alarming" moves.

US officials have often warned of China's developing military technology, particularly those aimed at defending against US stealth fighters and bombers, as well as increasingly capable surface-to-air missiles. But Gorenc says the concern does not just lie with China.

"This is not just a Pacific problem; it is as significant in Europe as it is anywhere else on the planet," he said. "I don't think it's controversial to say they've closed the gap in capability."

Comment: This is rich, coming from THE most wasteful department in the entire US government. Of course if the US didn't keep making aggressive moves towards Russia, Russia would feel no need to be accelerating its defensive projects.
  • Putin signs new military doctrine that names NATO expansion as greatest threat to Russia

      Read More...
Gold Seal

Assad to West: If you're worried about refugees, stop supporting terrorists


RT
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 15:59 UTC
Image
© AFP 2015/ LOUAI BESHARA
Europe is "not dealing with the cause" of the current refugee crisis, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview with Russian media, RT among them, adding that all Syrian people want is "security and safety."

"It's not about that Europe didn't accept them or embrace them as refugees, it's about not dealing with the cause. If you are worried about them, stop supporting terrorists. That's what we think regarding the crisis. This is the core of the whole issue of refugees.

"If we ask any Syrian today about what they want, the first thing they would say - 'We want security and safety for every person and every family'," the Syrian president said, adding that political forces, whether inside or outside the government "should unite around what the Syrian people want."

Comment: Assad is absolutely right. The reason people are fleeing Syria, Libya, and other Middle Eastern countries is because of terrorists like ISIS. Unfortunately, the West has not only shown very little desire to truly stop those groups but they're also likely helping to support them.

See also: Syria's Bashar al-Assad: Why the Anglo-American Axis cannot overthrow his government

      Read More...
Megaphone

The end of Schengen agreement could be end of EU

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 15:47 UTC
Image
© Leonhard Foeger / Reuters
Police maintain order as migrants attempt to leave the border crossing in Nickelsdorf, Austria September 14, 2015
The current refugee crisis, caused by western foreign policy, could have the unintended consequence of destroying the entire EU project.

In the 19th century, it was possible to travel overland from Paris to St Petersburg without passing a manned border or needing a visa. As travel became cheaper and faster, governments slowly began to erect impediments to free movement. After the First World War, governments began to require passports and entry permits.

Since the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, birthing the European Economic Community (later called the European Union), European leaders have collectively promoted the removal of barriers - whether related to the circulation of trade or people. For almost 60 years, the momentum has only swung one way - ever closer union and ever more liberal migration laws.

This weekend, it all changed. Since 1995, when the Schengen zone was created, the open travel agreement has only been paused in exceptional, localized circumstances. Malta once introduced temporary checks for a Papal visit and Estonia to facilitate security for Barack Obama's brief stop. France and Denmark previously kicked up a stink about asylum seekers abusing the system, but didn't close it down.
      Read More...
Pirates

Saudi Arabia won't accept Syrian refugees, but it offers to build 200 mosques for them in Germany


The Independent, UK
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 15:33 UTC
Image

"And then I told them: 'We'll build hundreds of mosques instead!'"
Saudi Arabia has reportedly responded to the growing number of people fleeing the Middle East for western Europe - by offering to build 200 mosques in Germany.

Syria's richer Gulf neighbours have been accused of not doing their fair share in the humanitarian crisis, with Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the UAE also keeping their doors firmly shut to asylum-seekers.

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which quoted a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al Diyar, Saudi Arabia would build one mosque for every 100 refugees who entered Germany in extraordinary numbers last weekend.

It would be unfair to suggest that the Gulf Arab states have done nothing to help the estimated four million Syrians who have fled their country since the start of the conflict in 2011.

Just this week, the al Hayat newspaper reported that 500,000 Syrians had found homes in Saudi Arabia since the civil war began - as workers, not refugees.

There have also been significant contributions from rich individuals towards the upkeep of refugee camps round the Syrian border, estimated by the BBC to total around $900 million (£600 million).

Comment: This is a sick joke on so many levels. For one, the refugees are coming from a secular country that is the antithesis of Wahhabist Saudi Arabia. The country they know has opposed the Saudis at every turn.

The right-wingers in Europe are going to have a field day with this. They've been warning for years that 'Sharia Law is coming to Europe'. It is looking that way... but it's coming with the connivance of the Western elites who are working overtime to create 'facts on the ground' to make real their 'clash of civilizations'.

According to historian Mark Curtis, Saudi Arabia has been building mosques and madrassas all across the Muslim world since the 1960s, spending some $50 billion on bending Islam to their insane interpretations of it. 'Islamic terrorism' and 'Saudi Islam' are one and the same thing.

And they have done it all thanks to the full support of the US and friends.

      Read More...
Radar

Massive Russia-led war games simulate 'international threat coming from central Asia'


RT
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 15:19 UTC
Image
© @mod_russia / Twitter
More than 95,000 troops belonging to Russia and its regional allies have started the annual Center exercises that span from the Volga to Siberia.

"Center-2015 is the final step in the armed forces' military preparations during 2015," said a statement from the ministry of defense, which said that it conducted nearly 80 military drills in August alone, as well as an unannounced inspection of the troops involved in the exercises last week.

The war games will engage more than 7,000 pieces of armor, up to 170 planes and 20 warships. 20 different training ranges will be used as troops belonging to all security branches, including border guards, FSB and drug police, will make maneuvers ranging up to 6,000 km. The exercises are scheduled to finish on September 20.

      Read More...
Megaphone

A minute of rage for the thousands of people who drown in the Mediterranean Sea

Yiannos Katsourides
cyprusnews.eu
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 09:06 UTC
μετανάστες μεσόγειος
We have learned to "honor" the dead victims with a minute of silence. Just one minute. That's all we delegate from our "precious time" to honor and remember this unwarranted loss of life (if we do it at all).

In my mind, instead of a minute of silence, it should be months and years of rage and fighting to change the conditions that lead so many people to death in the struggle of finding a viable life. I know though, that this suggestion will disrupt our daily life or take away from our infatuation with our own personal suffering, so I am prepared to take one minute of rage if I have to, for this tragedy that doesn't touch us personally because it affects people of different skin colour and in different lands.

A minute of rage towards everyone who could have prevented these tragedies from happening but didn't do it, and most possibly they never will because even the rage, the memory, the reaction and the time as presented through the media is coloured with racism and classism.

A minute of rage towards an inhumane and exploitative system that deifies profits and in its pursuit of it, and does not account for human lives other than as a statistical mark.

A minute of rage towards the international imperialism (I know, this old fashioned word) that imposes a continued division and redivision of the world and its markets, with wars and interventions (those "humanitarian" and "civilize-bringing" operations) in the name of more profit.

A minute of rage towards the EU that when it is not deftly playing its neutral position it turns into a fortress, lest it be contaminated by any "infectious" element.
      Read More...
Bad Guys

U.S. escalates proxy war in Yemen while the Establishment justifies the killing

Abayomi Azikiwe
Global Research
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 13:46 UTC
Yemen Saudi UAE
© AFP Photo/Saleh Al-Obeidi
Soldiers stand on a tank of the Saudi-led coalition deployed on the outskirts of the southern Yemeni port city of Aden, on August 3, 2015.

Western news reports begin to highlight genocidal war. A coalition of Washington-backed armies led by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has escalated their bombing raids on civilian areas in Yemen.

Neighborhoods, hospitals, mosques, factories, ports and other locations were hit during the last week. Dozens of people were killed in the airstrikes which are becoming more vicious in the aftermath of the deaths of over 50 troops operating on the ground from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Since the beginning of the Saudi-GCC air war against Yemen at least 4,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands injured. Four million Yemeni people have been forced to leave their homes while humanitarian assistance is almost impossible in light of the lack of security as well as the destruction of transport facilities and ports. A leading news story in the New York Times on Sunday September 13 exposed a war that has been largely hidden from the public view in the United States.

Also the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) on September 11 featured a detailed report on the bombing of a bottled water factory which the U.S.-backed forces claimed was a munitions production facility. Taking a camera crew to the destroyed plant located in an arid region of the country, Gabriel Gatehouse, a journalist for the BBC, reported that there was no indication that any capability for the manufacture of bombs existed at the location. British warplanes and bombs are being utilized in the air strikes along with those supplied by the U.S. defense industry. This report brought to hundreds of millions in Europe and internationally the scale of the war being directed against the people of Yemen under the guise of fighting the Ansurallah Movement (Houthis), who the West claims is being supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
      Read More...
Vader

Depriving Donbas civilians of drinking water is Medieval war method - Russian diplomat


TASS
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 13:51 UTC
Donbass
© Unknown
Moscow calls on the international community to exert influence on the Ukrainian authorities, Russian foreign ministry's envoy for human rights, democracy and the supremacy of law says

Moscow calls on the international community and human rights activists to press Kiev to have it take measures to normalize the water-supplies situation in Donbas, Konstantin Dolgov, Russian foreign ministry's envoy for human rights, democracy and the supremacy of law, said on Tuesday.

He reminded that the last week's report of the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) "rightly qualifies" the situation with water supplies in Donbas "as the most flagrant violation of the norms of humanitarian law, provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of December 16, 1966, Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and the Helsinki Final Act of 1992."

"We think is of paramount importance to insist Kiev stop any actions that might deteriorate the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Donbas," Dolgov stressed. "It is a cynical Medieval method of war to deprive civilians of drinking water."

"We call on the international community, including relevant human rights organizations and structures, to exert influence on the Ukrainian authorities," the Russian diplomat said.

Comment: Barbarians will always resort to barbaric methods. Gaza knows this well.
  • Ignoring 1.8 million Gazans struggling with 97% water contamination, the world celebrates World Water Day

      Read More...
Telephone

Behind the Headlines: Crimes of the global 'elite', interview with Ole Dammegard

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Sun, 13 Sep 2015 18:00 UTC
Image

Ole Dammegard, investigator
For almost 30 years, investigator Ole Dammegård has been on a quest to find the truth behind some of the worst conspiracies in the history of world - such as the murders US President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, John Lennon and the blowing up of m/s Estonia killing at least 852 innocent people.

This has taken him on a very frightening and dangerous journey into unknown territories. What has been claimed as acts by lone madmen has turned out to be connected to the International military industrial complex and top level high finance, all sanctioned locally behind dark smoke screens.Ole has also analysed the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, who was gunned down in February 1986.

Pyschopathic assassins, top politicians and innocent scapegoats make up the characters in the macabre drama known as global politics.

Ole recently joined Behind the Headlines hosts Niall Bradley and Joe Quinn for a riveting radio show...

Running Time: 01:36:00

Download: MP3

      Read More...
Evil Rays

Dear BBC, money can't buy you credibility

Ulson Gunnar
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 13:27 UTC
Image
© Unknown
The BBC is seeking to establish a Russian version of its World Service. It claims it must do so to counter the well-funded "propaganda" of Russia's RT. The UK Independent's article, "BBC to face down Vladimir Putin with plan for new World Service Russian TV channel," claims:

The BBC is proposing to set up a new World Service satellite news channel for Russian speakers, in a direct challenge to Russia Today, the Kremlin-funded television service found guilty of impartiality breaches.

The World Service would expand services in Russia, North Korea, the Middle East and other territories where state-sponsored broadcasters are denying audiences an impartial and independent source of news.

The problem for the BBC is, however, that it already has a larger budget than RT, plus a half-century head-start. The problem is not about a lack of funding, it is about a lack of credibility, something all the money on Wall Street and London cannot buy.

Credibility is the New Currency

There is an old adage that goes something like this: "It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it." For the media houses of Wall Street and London their "good reputation" wasn't even really built up upon good deeds. Their reputation was built up upon endemic ignorance throughout the general public, fancy suits, and million-dollar studios. Reputation was built upon marketing, something Wall Street and London understand very well.

Comment: The world is growing tired of the constant spin, denial and obfuscation from the Western media. It's undoing is its own doing. The lies are piling up to monumental proportions and more and more people are connecting the dots. It's laughable that the BBC thinks it can just throw more money at developing their 'World Service Russian TV' when the Russian people see right through them. Yes BBC, please do burn your money.

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts