The Turkish President continues to exacerbate and profiteer on the Syrian crisis and now holds Europe hostage to a refugee crisis.

"The European Union needs Turkey more than Turkey needs the European Union," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan proclaimed in a televised speech to municipal leaders in Ankara on Tuesday.

The proclamation comes after the European Parliament published a 2015 progress report on Turkey, accusing Erdogan's government of "backsliding" on its commitment to democracy and the rule of law, and raising concerns over Ankara's track record on human rights and freedom of the press.

Erdogan's government has increasingly come under fire for human rights violations against the country's Kurdish minority, funneling arms and funding Daesh through an illicit oil trade, undermining the Syrian coalition against Islamist radicals, seeking to reconstitute the Ottoman empire, cracking down on freedom of the press, attacking US protesters during a visit to Washington, fomenting a civil war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the contested Nagorno-Karabakh territory, and trying to blackmail the European Union regarding the Syrian refugee crisis, among other concerns.

International Military Review - Syria (Apr. 19)

Syria's chief negotiator at the Geneva peace talks Bashar Ja'afri accused Israel of "cooperating" with the Islamic State and Al Nusra, an affiliate of al-Qaeda in the Golan Heights

According to Ja'afari (quoted by RT):

"This Israeli provocation confirms without any doubt the cooperation between Israel and terrorists of Daesh (Isis) and Nusra Front on the demarcation line between where the Golan is and UN troops are positioned.

"It is no coincidence at all that this Israeli escalation was accompanied by irresponsible statements by members of the so-called Saudi delegation at talks here in Geneva," Ja'afari added, referring to the main opposition group.

The statement of Syria's envoy to the peace talks confirms something which is known and documented. Israel alongside Saudi Arabia and Turkey is a State Sponsor of Terrorism.

Israel does not deny that they have been supporting Al Qaeda out of the Golan Heights from the very outset of the war on Syria (March 2011). The occupied Golan Heights is being used as a military and logistics hub in support of Al Qaeda. Military aid and supplies are channeled into Syria through the occupied Golan Heights.

The U.S. Navy's return to Keflavik revives an American presence that ended when the service shifted its focus in Europe away from the North Atlantic and toward the Mediterranean.

The Navy is asking for funds to upgrade an aircraft hangar at its former base in Keflavik, Iceland, as part of the Defense Department's fiscal 2017 budget request, Navy officials say to Stars and Stripes. The hangar will house P-8 Poseidon aircraft, successor to the P-3 Orion once stationed at the base.

Established in 1951, the base is strategically located midway between the U.S. East Coast and Europe, making it ideal for patrolling the frigid waters between Greenland, Iceland and the U.K.

Naval Air Station Keflavik was home to thousands of service members who supported Navy and Air Force fighter jets, tankers and rescue helicopters before closing in 2006.

For now, the Navy is only interested in deploying maritime patrol aircraft for short durations, as needed, the official said. The Navy could eventually establish regular patrol rotations at the base, the official said, which would likely resemble the Navy's maritime patrol force at its air base in Sigonella, Sicily, where squadrons rotate out every six months.

In a speech to the Israel advocacy group J Street on Monday, Biden called the settlements an obstacle to a two-state solution, and denounced Israeli moves under Netanyahu as "counterproductive" to the Tel Aviv regime's security.

"Settlement policies are hurting support for Israel and moving us further away from a two-state solution," Biden said.

"I firmly believe that the action Israel's government has taken over the past several years - the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures - they're moving us, and more important, they're moving Israel, in the wrong direction," Biden said.

"They're moving us toward a one-state reality, and that reality is dangerous," he continued.


The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

Several NATO countries, as well as non-members Finland and Sweden, are sending planes to Estonia for the first massive air force exercise to feature civilian airports aimed at training for interception of "aircraft losing contact inside Finnish airspace."

The two-day exercise called Ramstein Alloy 1 will kick off at the Estonia's Amari Air Force Base next Thursday and will involving warplanes and aircrews from Belgium, Spain, and Poland, as well as non-NATO members Finland and Sweden, according to a statement from the Allied Air Command stationed at Ramstein, Germany.

"A United States Air Force tanker, a transport aircraft and an E-3D Airborne Early Warning plane from RAF Waddington in the United Kingdom will support the two-day maneuvers," it added.

"The training scenario simulates a transport aircraft losing communication contact inside Finnish airspace. Finnish interceptors will intervene with the aircraft that lost communications, then hand it over to the Belgian interceptors who will escort it back to Amari Air Base."

Belgian F-16s are currently stationed at Amari within the so-called Baltic Air Policing mission, in which NATO countries deploy air force units in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which have none.

According to a new report, the Pentagon used inaccurate and vague data to convince Congress that military commanders were more effective prosecutors of sex offenders than civilians.

The arguments were made as the Senate debated military justice reform.

"Whether you agree or disagree with the policy at issue, every Senator should be outraged and revisit their votes," said Colonel Don Christensen, president of Protect Our Defenders, who released the report on Monday. "Congress should hold a hearing to investigate the extent to which the Pentagon knowingly replied upon false information to derail reforms they oppose."

The report said that the Pentagon misled Congress when it said civilian prosecutors had refused to prosecute 93 cases of sexual assault that were later pursued by military commanders.

Welcome to the strange world of 'unsolvable' refugee crises and back-room deals, a world where Cold War relics arm terrorist proxies, and where innocent refugees are used as pawns in ever more sinister games of cat and mouse. In all it's a world almost too absurd and too horrific to believe, but we'll try to tell it, and understand it, anyways. This is the story of the EU-Turkey Refugee Deal.

Intro

Tensions continue to mount across Europe as the refugee crisis reveals deep cracks in the European Union. In the past month Austria announced the construction of a massive wall along the Brenner Pass, in order to restrict the flow of people moving to Northern Europe. Subsequently Switzerland announced that it would have to respond to Austria's border closure by stationing a battalion of tanks to keep out the inevitable 'migrant onslaught'. Poor Greece is piling up with refugees after Macedonia closed its border - the tension has led to fights erupting between troops and migrants.

In the background EU and Turkish officials would have us all believe that they've been struggling to find a solution to this 'inescapable' crisis. The result was the EU-Turkey refugee deal which recently took effect - the first refugees have been traded like baseball cards.

In an interview with Sputnik Radio a professor from the University of Twente in the Netherlands pointed out a number of obstacles the EU had to overcome before coming to grips with the refugee crisis. Among them is the EU's lack of a central decision-making body that could issue demands which individual member states couldn't push back on. He stated, "What you have in the EU is the lack of a central government. In fact, they decided at one stage that they were going to take refugees and now they are pushing them back and they have a new deal with Turkey. But the refugees are still coming anyway."

In all, the professor makes several valid points. However, due to his selection of facts he misses the big picture, and thereby misleads his audience. Besides political in-fighting in Europe, and whether or not the refugee deal will be 'efficient', the following elements play a larger and much more critical role in the refugee crisis:

1. The EU functions as a mere cheerleader for the interests of the cabal running the USA.
2. Recent US interests have included the decimation of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, thus creating a refugee crisis
3. Turkey has played a fundamental role in first collecting, then disbursing refugees into Europe for its own political and financial gain

Who can you trust to give you accurate, objective information about science and health these days? That's a question that keeps surfacing again and again, as mainstream sources for this type of information are being increasingly infiltrated by special interest groups.

A recent article in The Huffington Post¹ discusses "Monsanto's media machine," noting the many ways in which it has tried to manipulate and dominate the conversation about genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

In March, the media and partnerships division of Scientific American hosted a panel discussion about GMOs. The event was co-sponsored by GMO Answers, an organization created by the PR firm Ketchum, which works on behalf of the Council for Biotechnology Information to improve the public image of GMOs. US Right to Know has previously called attention to a video ad in which the firm talks about how it doubled positive GMO coverage using online social media monitoring.

This is a tactic that smacks of internet "sockpuppets" — fake internet personas who interject themselves into social media conversations to steer the debate.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif underlined that Tehran was never keen on resuming economic relations with the US, urging Washington not to interfere in Iran's trade ties with other countries.

"We were not after having economic relations with the US, while we don't face any restrictions for healthy economic ties with the US either, but the Americans have some problems in receiving congressional approval," Zarif said on Tuesday in New York where he is participating in the United Nations Sustainable Development conference.

He referred to the goals pursued by Iran through signing the nuclear agreement with the world powers, and said, "The nuclear deal was not aimed at changing those (congress) approvals but it sought to prevent the US from interfering in Iran's relations with other countries."

In relevant remarks on Monday, Iranian First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri urged the United States government to stop putting pressure on global financial institutions that are reviving ties with Iran.

Speaking in a gathering in Kermanshah to discuss the results of the nuclear deal with the world powers, Jahangiri said as always Tehran is committed to the nuclear deal, urging Washington to stop undermining the agreement by hindering Iran's banking ties with the global financial institutions.