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The forces of the Hezbollah managed to drive al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front militants out of Qarnat al-Tannour Heights on Sunday. According to the sources, a large number of the militants were killed and injured in the operation by the resistance movement and many others fled the area. The recaptured area overlooks the three key valleys of Uwaiss, Atneen and al-Khayl in Arsal barrens, the sources added.
Two months earlier, President Santos treacherously set-up the FARC to lower their defenses by appearing to 'reciprocate' when he ordered "the suspension of air force bombing of FARC field camps". In other words, the Santos government and US adviser Aronson used the 'cover of peace negotiations' and the FARC's unilateral 'cease fire' to launch a major military offensive. The FARC ended its cease fire and resumed combat in ten regional 'departments', as the regime intensified its offensive by bombing villages in FARC-controlled regions. While Santos and Aronson escalated their military offensive in Colombia, the FARC negotiators in Havana continued their "peace" negotiations....
Comment: What a sad picture of the world the author paints. The continued bullying by the US will ensure we will end up in M.A.D.
Turkey elections: Erdogan's party loses majority as pro-Kurdish party enters parliament for 1st time
© Reuters / Yagiz KarahanAn election official empties a ballot box at a polling station during the parliamentary election in Istanbul, Turkey, June 7, 2015
Preliminary results, with over 99 percent of votes counted, suggest the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has garnered some 41 percent of the votes, a loss of 9 percentage points, netting it about 258 seats in the country's 550-seat Grand National Assembly. The data comes from Turkey's NTV channel, citing the central electoral committee.
The polls opened at 8 a.m. local time (5 a.m. GMT) on Sunday and closed at 5 p.m. local time (2 p.m. GMT).
While the official results are to be presented in 11-12 days, preliminary results indicate that three opposition parties have passed 10 percent barrier necessary to enter parliament, and that to form a government the AKP will have to enter a coalition with one of them.
The Republican People's Party (CHP) has preliminarily garnered about 25 percent of the vote (a rise of 4 percentage points), taking about 130 seats in parliament. Ahead of the voting, the party pledged to limit the president's influence over the judiciary and executive branches.
© Flickr/ Dieter Zirnig
Simultaneously, Moldova tightened the rules of transit for Russian military personnel traveling via Chisinau airport.
Chisinau had periodically blocked and deported Russian soldiers who were not clearly identified as international peacekeepers or who had failed to give sufficient advance notice.
Even though much cooperation was of course already suspended, throughout the current crisis Russia had been able to use Ukrainian territory to supply its peacekeepers in Transnistria, a narrow strip of land on Ukraine's western border. No longer.
Russia's response was quick and stern.
"The Ministry of Defense is left with no other option than to supply Russian forces with all the necessities by air bridge, with military-transport aircraft," Yuri Yakubov, a senior Russian MoD official, said after the Ukrainian vote. "The Russian contingent will be supplied under any circumstances," he added.
© Reuters
The script, though, came straight from the Surrealist Manifesto.
The US State Department's number two, Tony Blinken, swore Washington does not doubt its "winning" strategy. He insisted that the "winning" strategy has killed at least 10,000 fake Caliphate jihadists. A chorus of CIA spooks was forced to raise their eyebrows.
Blinken also insisted on "progress"; he might have confused the issue with the FBI nailing FIFA bigwigs. The coalition, predictably, supported Baghdad - with plenty of rhetoric and a vague promise of more weapons, and extolled the government to be more inclusive towards Sunni tribes.
No one addressed the fact that it is a Ba'athist support base among Sunnis - call them, Donald Rumsfeld-style, "remnants" of the Saddam regime - that has ensured the fake Caliphate's success in Anbar province. And that's what prevents Baghdad from being more inclusive.
© UnknownTexas' own Russell Bonner Bentley, and a company of Donbass liberators
This may well be the longest rant you ever read. For English speakers though, it should also be required reading.
When US Secretary of State John Kerry travelled to Sochi, Russia begging and audience with Vladimir Putin, the straight shooter in me sighed a breath of relief. "At last my government realized their folly, they know they have lost", I thought out loud. A colleague on social media tweeted me, I cannot remember who; "Don't be so optimistic, they'll not stop Phil". Watching RT's live coverage of a special session called over hostilities in the town of Marinka, West of Donetsk, I became physically ill as any decent human being would. Many of the diplomats within the UNSC, especially those from the UK Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, are simply liars or worse. Taking the gloves off here, Rycroft's commentary before the world yesterday frames a British government neck deep in committing its own form of terrorism. Read what Rycroft interjects, then continue on to read from real people on the ground in Donbass:
© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
"There is strong consensus that we need to keep pushing Russia to abide by the Mink agreement," Obama said. He added that the Western partners also need to encourage Kiev to stick to the Minsk deal.
"There was discussion of additional steps," if Russia "doubles the aggression on Ukraine", however they were on a technical and not political level, he added.
Comment: And Merkel joined in with the chorus:
"We are prepared to toughen the sanctions, if the situation makes it necessary,"With Poroshenko ignoring the Minsk agreements and hell bent to bring all of Ukraine and Crimea under Kiev's control and Obama rebuffing Kerry's call for restraint in Ukraine, there is no way for the Russian sanctions to ease and apparently will get worse.
© wikipedia.orgUGM-73 Poseidon intermediate range ballistic missile
There have been "some worrying signs of stepping up levels of activity both by Russian forces and by Russian-controlled separatist forces" in Ukraine, Hammond told the BBC's Andrew Marr.
Comment: What worrying signs? As Vladimir Putin stated clearly in a recent interview, "I would like to stress that Russia is interested in and will strive to ensure the full and unconditional implementation of the Minsk Agreements, and I don't believe there is any other way to settle this conflict today."
There have been media reports in the last week that Washington was considering withdrawing from a Cold War-era treaty with Moscow and returning nuclear-capable medium-range missiles to Europe in an effort to counter what it calls "Russian aggression."
Comment: What Russian aggression? From the same interview, Putin says,
"As for us, we are not expanding anywhere; it is NATO infrastructure, including military infrastructure, that is moving towards our borders. Is this a manifestation of our aggression?"Putin's interview with Il Corriere della Sera
"American submarines are on permanent alert off the Norwegian coast; they are equipped with missiles that can reach Moscow in 17 minutes. But we dismantled all of our bases in Cuba a long time ago, even the non-strategic ones. And you would call us aggressive? "
"We have dismantled our bases in various regions of the world, including Cuba, Vietnam, and so on. This means that our policy in this respect is not global, offensive or aggressive.
I invite you to publish the world map in your newspaper and to mark all the US military bases on it. You will see the difference."
"Everything we do is just a response to the threats emerging against us. Besides, what we do is limited in scope and scale, which are, however, sufficient to ensure Russia's security. Or did someone expect Russia to disarm unilaterally?"
Comment: This delusional response from Hammond follows on from yet more insane thinking, as US officials consider nuclear strikes against Russia.
Not to mention blatant double standards! British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond recently referred to Crimea's referendum to join Russia held in March 2014 a "flagrant breach of Ukrainian and international law" and demanded that Russia returned the peninsula to Ukraine. In response, Aleksey Pushkov said:
"London should pause and chill out. All Western opinion polls in Crimea say the absolute majority supports reunification with Russia," adding, "Take notice, London. Crimea has much more reasons to be part of Russia than the Falklands to be part of Britain."
© Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Europe
They didn't like him being violently tossed out and replaced by his enemies.) Kerry said then that, regarding Poroshenko,
we would strongly urge him to think twice not to engage in that kind of activity, that that would put Minsk in serious jeopardy. And we would be very, very concerned about what the consequences of that kind of action at this time may be
Comment: Interesting information.