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© Ministry of defence of the Russian Federation
Russia launched airstrikes against the Islamic State jihadist group and other extremist targets in Syria at the request of its president, Bashar Assad, on September 30.
The note of protest, obtained by RIA Novosti, cites an alleged Russian Aerospace Forces strike on a Syrian Turkmen settlement in northern Syria.
Comment: Is Turkey's Foreign Ministry jumping on the anti-Russia bandwagon here? It certainly looks like it - after all, Russia has been conscientiously avoiding the deaths of civilians. But the terrorists they are meticulously targeting are Turkey's brainchildren too.
Read more:
© REUTERS/ Christian Hartmann
"Amid all the bellicose rhetoric, it might be difficult not to conclude that Europe was on the verge of marching into Syria to take on ISIL toe-to-toe. Yet nothing could be further from the truth," he noted.
Firstly, Europe's strategy aimed at defeating the brutal group, which took responsibility for the massacre in Paris, has been largely formulated in Washington.
Comment: The EU's 'geopolitical impotence' is apparently by design. This is why, for those serious about ensuring that ISIS receives justice, joining Russia's anti-ISIS coalition is the most intelligent option. Russia has proven again and again that they are more than capable of checking the terrorist threat, while Washington has repeatedly betrayed the EU for its own geopolitical ambitions.
Check out:
© AFP 2015/ PATRICK HERTZOG
After the terrorist attacks in Paris Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, has again raised the question of creating the EU's own defense policy. Earlier this year, he called for creating a European Union army, but the proposal was criticized.
According to Juncker, now it is time to invest in establishing real military forces to protect Europe.
Most seem unaware of the vicious role France played in the military intervention in Libya, about France’s very hawkish policy line on Syria from the beginning of the civil war, meaning support for the anti-Assad terrorists.
For the Elysée palace, Assad equaled Daesh.
A measure of the incongruence of Hollande's administration is that none of his ENA-formed advisors told him he was becoming even more irrelevant than usual.
Russia and Iran were proving their point with the "4+1" (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq plus Hezbollah) actions on the ground and skies in Syria fighting all shades of Salafi-jihadism, "moderate" or otherwise.
And even the Obama administration - after multiple meetings between Secretary Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov - was correcting its course. That culminated in those pregnant-with-meaning 35 minutes of Obama and Putin face-to-face in a side table at the G-20 in Antalya on Sunday.
Comment: Escobar posted an early version of this article on his Facebook page (available here). This updated and expanded version is no longer available on the Asia Times website. For updates on the Paris attacks since Escobar wrote this piece, see:
- SOTT Exclusive: Terror mastermind and female suicide bomber killed: Some questions about the St-Denis raid
- SOTT Exclusive: Bearded Middle East Jihadis or clean-shaven white professional hit-men? A few questions about the Paris attacks
© Joshua Roberts / ReutersThe Whitehouse
In a one-minute video titled Paris before Rome, a bearded man in a turban menaces the US with threats of suicide attacks and car bombings. Speaking in Arabic on behalf of fellow jihadists, he warns that other states will face attacks similar to the ones carried out in Paris should they follow the example of French President Francois Hollande and US President Barack Obama.
Comment: Just in time to lend support for a new bill making Syrian refugee admission almost impossible. How convenient.
© Yannis Behrakis / ReutersA volunteer carries a Syrian refugee girl off an overcrowded raft after landing at a rocky beach in the Greek island of Lesbos, November 19, 2015
The final vote was 289 in favor, with 137 opposed. Some 48 Democrats, a quarter of the party's representatives in the House, broke ranks and voted in favor of the bill. Only three Republicans were against.
Following the terrorist attacks in Paris, opposition to hosting Syrian refugees in the US has grown in many states. The US was planning to receive 30,000 refugees from Syria in 2016, after hundreds of thousands flooded Europe this summer. Now 31 states say they would put a halt on their resettlement or even stop it completely, citing terror concerns.
Two of the terrorists involved in the November 13 Paris terror attacks got into Europe as refugees.
Comment: That's the claim anyway...
Comment: Just like what they did to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany... the excuse being that Jews were undesirables for various reasons.
© UnkownJe suis un dumbass
Earlier this month I wrote a short piece on why the US diplomatic corps just doesn't measure up - particularly when going up against its far more able and professional Russian counterpart.
I mentioned how America's top diplomat, John Kerry, is not even a diplomat; and that this causes big problems for the US when he has to deal with men like Russia's Sergey Lavrov or Iran's Mohammad Zarif.
This week Kerry showed - yet again - just how much of a rank amateur he really is; and it did not require a brutal humiliation at the hands of a Lavrov or a Zarif to do it. He managed this one all on his own.
He's never put his foot in his mouth like this…
Because that's what tends to happen when you've told so many lies on so many different subjects - you forget what exactly it is you're not supposed to say in public.
So candid that the White House actually issued an apology to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates (i.e. not a retraction, but an apology for revealing their culpability in arming IS).
Shooting his mouth off at a Harvard Q&A with students last Thursday, Biden said:
"... our biggest problem is our allies - our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks were great friends - and I have the greatest relationship with Erdogan, which I just spent a lot of time with - the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. But what were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do?Scroll down and listen to the White House's own audio tape. Ignored by all Western mainstream media because (1) it's what Putin has been saying all along and (2) well, because Biden wasn't meant to say it.
They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.
Now you think I'm exaggerating - take a look... Now we have - the President's been able to put together a coalition of our Sunni neighbors, because America can't once again go into a Muslim nation and be seen as the aggressor - it has to be led by Sunnis to go and attack a Sunni organization."
Excellent additional commentary on CIA involvement in weapons transfers from Libya (Benghazi, anyone?) to Syria.
Comment: This 'information war' clearly has casualties: