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Eye 1

U.S. denies 10-year Philippines security pact aimed against China


RT.com
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 15:02 UTC
Marine 1
© AFP Photo / Ted Aljibe
An armed US marine patrols next to seahawk helicopters on the deck of 7th Fleet command ship, USS Blue Ridge shortly after arriving at the international port in Manila on March 18, 2014, for a port visit.
A new security treaty between the US and the Philippines to be signed Monday isn't aimed at containing China's military might, but is rather ensuring stability in the Asia-Pacific region, American officials said.

The Enhanced Defense Cooperation agreement would permit the enhanced "rotational presence" of US forces in the Philippines.

The American military will also be able to train and conduct exercises with their Philippine counterparts for maritime security, disaster assistance and humanitarian aid.

It would also allow US troops, aircraft and ships to pass through the Philippines and see the creation of storages facilities for American equipment.

Comment: No, nothing to do with China, just somewhere from where we can provide "humanitarian aid" to the region. Amazing that the "humanitarian aid" the US provides is always provided by their military.

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Brick Wall

US failing to push economic sanctions against Russia through EU allies


RT.com
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 12:36 UTC
Obama
© Reuters / Larry Downing
U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during joint news conference at the Perdana Putra Building in Putrajaya, April 27, 2014.
The new round of sanctions against Russia, which the EU and the US plan to unveil Monday, will not target the Russian economy. Washington said it won't use economic sanctions without the EU also signing up to them.

G7 members agreed Friday to roll out a third round of anti-Russian sanctions over the Ukrainian crisis. But those would be an extension of the previous two rounds of sanctions, which targeted 33 individuals in Russia and Ukraine and a Russian bank, which the Western government deemed responsible for the crisis in Ukraine or close enough to President Vladimir Putin to have leverage on him.

"What we will hear about in the coming days, what we will agree ... is an expansion of existing sanctions, measures against individuals or entities in Russia," UK Foreign Secretary William Hague told Sky News on Sunday.
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Hourglass

Unite against imperialism!

Andre Vltchek
CounterPunch
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 16:24 UTC
Image
In countless interviews, in personal letters, in face-to-face discussions, the questions I keep being asked are becoming very similar: "Now that it is obvious that the West is ready and willing to destroy everything that stands in its way to the total domination of the planet, what can still be done?"

Some say: 'Nothing'. There are plenty of discouraged, scared voices of people who have already fully given up, and come to the conclusion that the Empire is too powerful, too determined, and therefore, unstoppable.

Others are praying. And there are also some, who are putting all their trust into those few brave ones that are 'still fighting'.

Hopelessness, fear and defeatism - this is how the Empire wants you to feel.

Do not! Defeat is only purposefully encoded in the propaganda that is being spread by the West. In reality, nothing is lost.

Actually, working all over the world, I am increasingly optimistic. People in the Middle East, in Africa, in many parts of Asia, are now waking up. People in Latin America woke up long time ago - they are alert, vigilant!
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Bomb

Malcolm Fraser: An unlikely radical

Robert Manne
Sydney Morning Herald
Sat, 26 Apr 2014 16:01 UTC
Hated by progressives for his role in Gough Whitlam's dismissal and his ultra-conservative foreign policies when Liberal PM, Malcolm Fraser today believes Australia should cut all military ties to the US.


Everyone is familiar with the political movement of youthful leftists to the right. The alternative drift - of conservatives to the left - is far less common. As I read Malcolm Fraser's new book on Australian foreign policy, Dangerous Allies, which advocates nothing less than the end of the Australia's military alliance with the United States, the career of the towering 19th-century British Liberal, William Gladstone, came to mind.

Gladstone began his political life arguing that the great parliamentary Reform Act of 1832 "threatened to change the form of the British government and ultimately to break up the whole frame of society". He ended it, more than half a century later, almost tearing his party and his country apart by his determination to end the centuries-long British oppression of Ireland. Fraser's political metamorphosis has been no less dramatic.
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Pocket Knife

Army seizes National Guard's Apache attack helicopters

Douglas Ernst
The Washington Times
Wed, 09 Apr 2014 15:54 UTC
Image
© U.S. Army photo by CW4 Daniel McClinton, 1-227th, 1st ACB, 1st Cav. Div. Public Affairs)
Two AH-64D Apache attack helicopters from 1st “Attack” Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, taxi back to their parking spots after mission Aug. 15 at Camp Taji, Iraq. The Attack battalion supports ground troops through reconnaissance and aerial weaponry. The Apache crews of 1st ACB have disrupted numerous roadside bomb indirect fire attacks aimed at Iraqi civilians and coalition forces throughout the Baghdad area of operations.
The National Guard is following a direct order - but it's not happy with it.

All of the Guard's AH-64 Apache helicopters are scheduled to go to the active Army, and there's nothing its top brass can do about it.

"None of us like what we're having to do," National Guard Chief Gen. Frank Grass told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, the military website Defense One reported. "My big concern right now is figuring out how I'm going to move, and how many states I'm going to have an impact on, and what's the cost of facilities and to retrain pilots. I've got to tackle that because the decision's been made."
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X

Ukraine's failure to pay gas debt may cut gas supply to Europe - Russia's energy minister


RT.com
Sat, 26 Apr 2014 16:15 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo / Sergey Supinsky
Ukraine's growing gas debt may lead to the failure of the country's transit obligations and the reduction of gas supplies to south-eastern Europe, said the Russian Energy Ministry.

Officials from Russia, including Energy Minister Alexander Novak and Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, and officials from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia and Moldova held talks in Moscow on Saturday.

The meeting, also attended by officials from the Russian Ministry of Economic Development and the Finance Ministry, was held in the form of consultations on the security of gas transit through Ukraine.

All sides expressed deep concern about Ukraine's growing debt, Novak told journalists. "Currently Ukraine's debt is US$2.238 billion, this [figure] does not include gas deliveries made in April," Novak noted. "The debt will rise 1.3 billion for the April deliveries."
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Snakes in Suits

A change policy: The media is turning on President Obama (better late than never!)

Michael Goodwin
New York Post
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 03:09 UTC
Image

Photo: AP
With multiple crises spiraling out of control around the world, stories about the Obama presidency are taking on the air of postmortems. What went wrong, who's to blame, what next - even The New York Times is starting to recognize that Dear Leader is a global flop.

"Obama Suffers Setbacks in Japan and the Mideast," the paper declared on Friday's front page. The double whammy of failure pushed the growing Russian menace in ­Europe to inside pages, but even they were chock-full of reports about utopia gone wrong.

One story detailed how the White House was facing the "consequences of underestimating" North Korea's Kim Jong-un. Others recounted the continuing Syrian slaughter and the murder of three Americans in Afghanistan.

The accounts and others like them amount to an autopsy of a failed presidency, but the process won't be complete unless it is completely honest. To meet that test, the Times, other liberal news organizations and leading Democrats, in and out of office, must come to grips with their own failures, as well.
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Arrow Down

Several 'illegal foreign detention facilities' uncovered in Afghan govt probe


RT.com
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 12:52 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Jonathon Burch
A detainee holding cell is pictured at a detention centre at the U.S. Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul
Several "unlawful" prisons run by coalition forces in Afghanistan have been uncovered at Camp Bastion and Kandahar airfield in an investigation commissioned by President Hamid Karzai. The find could put a further strain on Afghan-Western relations.

"We have conducted a thorough investigation and search of Kandahar airfield and Camp Bastion and found several illegal and unlawful detention facilities run and operated by foreign military forces," the head of the committee, Abdul Shakur Dadras, told the government Saturday, The New York Times reported.

Two sites were surveyed by Dadras's team in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar - Camp Bastion, operated by the British, and the Kandahar airfield, which the Americans run. In the course of the investigation the team surveyed number of prisoners and the conditions they were kept in.

Further details and evidence will be released after a full report is made to President Karzai. The issue at Camp Bastion, otherwise known as 'British Guantanamo', had not been addressed in the past when the British stood accused of transferring prisoners to facilities where they knew torture was taking place. But it was not made clear in Dadras's report whether these are the same facilities as the ones he described.

Similarly, according to the NY Times, the Kandahar case raises questions, as it's not clear whether Dadras was referring to the regulation which prohibits the detention of an Afghani for a period longer than 96 hours, before handing them over to local forces, or if the team found evidence of a facility that is illegally holding locals.
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Eye 1

Whistleblower explains 'massive blackmail' potential from NSA spying on politicians


Police State USA
Sun, 27 Apr 2014 12:46 UTC
Russ Tice
© C-SPAN
NSA whistleblower Russ Tice.

With the astonishing number of ways the NSA can spy on Americans, one must consider the ways this trove of information could be used in the wrong hands (as if there are "right" hands). A former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency has gone on record saying that the NSA spies on persons of interest specifically for political reasons - seemingly nothing to do with national security.

These persons include congressmen, senators, important committeemen, judges, and even the man who was four years from becoming President of the United States.

"Its incredible what NSA has done," said Russell Tice, who spent 20 years as an analyst in U.S. government intelligence agencies. "They basically have turned themselves in my opinion in to a rogue agency that has J. Edgar Hoover capabilities on a monstrous scale on steroids."

Former FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was known for spying on politicians in order to obtain dirt on them that could be later used to leverage them politically. When Tice was asked about the potential for massive blackmail, he responded that it "absolutely" exists.

Tice once described his duties in the government as "black world operations" that included sophisticated dragnet spying on Americans in order to stop terrorism - or so he once believed. A few years after 9/11/2001 he became aware of the widespread abuses of the NSA and attempted to voice his concerns. In 2003, his clearance was quickly revoked and his career was ended.
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Yoda

Putin warns of consequences as Ukraine steps up offensive

Daryna Krasnolutska and Ilya Arkhipov
Bloomberg
Thu, 24 Apr 2014 10:34 UTC
Image
© Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian special forces take position in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk on April 24, 2014.
President Vladimir Putin warned Ukraine against continuing its anti-separatist offensive after government troops killed five rebels and prompted Russia's military to begin new drills on the two nations' border.

"If it's true that the current regime in Kiev sent the army against citizens inside its country, then it is a very serious crime against its own nation," Putin said today in St. Petersburg. "It will have consequences for the people who make such decisions, including relations between our countries. We'll see how the situation develops and we'll make conclusions based on the reality on the ground."

Ukrainian Interior Ministry and army troops destroyed three road blocks as they fought pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk region city of Slovyansk, the ministry said today on its website. Russia's latest drills are a response to events in eastern Ukraine and involve warplanes near the border, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, according to Interfax.
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