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US reaffirms 'strong friendship' with head-chopping dictatorship

Rudy Panko
Russia Insider
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 14:42 UTC
Obama
© Russia Insider
Obama, being awarded the prestigious Most Improved Head-Chopper necklace.
Poor Saudi Arabia. Their arch-rival, Iran, has been allowed back into the global economy after fourty-odd years of Draconian sanctions; their invasion of Yemen has been a total disaster (not including all the bombed hospitals), and their moderate rebels in Syria are being pummeled by Russian airstrikes.

Where's the love? Oh, here's John Kerry, with some merriment and cheer:
"We have as solid a relationship, as clear an alliance and as strong a friendship with the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as we have ever had, and nothing has changed because we worked to eliminate a nuclear weapon with a country in the region," he said, referring to the Iran nuclear deal.
Yes. It was a great day for head-choppers all over the world, especially for Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, who was quick to remind Kerry and foreign reporters why Saudi Arabia is a desert of self-delusional sadness:
"Iran remains the world's chief sponsor of terrorism," Jubeir said.

"Overall I think the United States is very aware of the danger of Iran's mischief and nefarious activities... I don't believe the United States is under any illusion as to what type of government Iran is."
Maybe. The US is certainly not under any illusions as to what type of government Saudi Arabia is — but that's not stopping them from selling billions of dollars worth of weapons to Riyadh. Why would it?
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Jet4

Russian Air Force destroys two of the largest ISIS military camps in Hama, Syria

Leith Fadel
Al-Masdar News
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 02:26 UTC
ISIS in the crosshairs
© Al-Madsar News
The Russian Air Force has been relentlessly targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) between the Hama and Homs Governorates as of late, striking several of the terrorist group's strongholds and convoys in the cities of Quraytayn, Palmyra, 'Aqayrbat, and Qunbar.

On Saturday evening in the Hama Governorate's eastern countryside, the Russian Air Force struck two of the largest ISIS military camps near the Al-Raqqa Governorate border, destroying these sites after conducting a half dozen airstrikes.

According to a military source from the Syrian Arab Air Force, the Russian airstrikes caused a massive explosion inside the ISIS stronghold of Aqayrbat in the Al-Salamiyah District of east Hama; this attack reportedly struck a missile depot inside the terrorist camp.

The massive explosions from the city of Aqayrbat could be heard as far west as Al-Salamiyah and as far south as the Al-Sha'ar Mountains (Jabal Al-Sha'ar) in the Homs Governorate.

In addition to destroying the ISIS military camp at Aqayrbat, the Russian Air Force also destroyed the terrorist group's second largest camp in east Hama at the nearby town of Qunbar, where dozens of enemy combatants were reportedly killed by airstrikes.

Much of ISIS' missiles and rockets were stored in the Aqayrbat and Qunbar camps; this is one of the reasons why the Russian Air Force targeted them on Saturday night.

Comment: Fighting back: Russian airstrikes eliminate 60 ISIS militants after mass executions of civilians were reported

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Handcuffs

Gitmo guard: CIA staged suicides to cover up Guantanamo prison deaths


Press TV
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 04:20 UTC
noose
© www.salon.com
Guantanamo Bay prison facility
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has staged suicides to cover up inmate deaths at the notorious US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, says a former guard. Nearly 10 years ago, the Pentagon announced that three Guantanamo inmates "killed themselves in an apparent suicide pact."

"Two Saudis and one Yemeni, each located in Camp 1, were found unresponsive and not breathing in their cells by guards," Joint Task Force-Guantanamo (JTF) said June 10, 2006, adding that "all lifesaving measures had been exhausted." The camp was quickly shuttered the next day.

However, former Guantanamo guard Joseph Hickman says the alleged suicides were in fact staged by the CIA, saying the US government might have had an interest in silencing the prisoners who "caused a lot of problems." In an interview with Russia Today, which was published on Saturday, Hickman unveiled what he saw in the few hours leading up to the deaths.

He said he witnessed hunger strike "leaders" being brought to a secret CIA "black site," where CIA agents would make their deaths look like suicide by hanging. "I witnessed a van - we used to call it paddy wagon - it was a detainee transport van," he said. "The van came into the gate, backed up to Camp 1 and took a detainee out of Camp 1 Alpha Block and put him into the paddy wagon and drove [him away]."

Comment: See also: Safe haven for sadists: Document reveals potential CIA coverup, further undercuts official story around Guantanamo 'suicides'

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Heart - Black

'Leave no one alive': Senior Israeli rabbi calls for execution of all Palestinians


Press TV
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 17:48 UTC
Psychopath Shmuel Eliyahu
© Press TV
Israeli rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu
A senior Israeli rabbi says Tel Aviv should execute Palestinians instead of arresting them and "leave no one alive" in order to establish safety in the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinian media report.

"Israeli army has to stop arresting Palestinians," Shmuel Eliyahu said in a message posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday, adding, "but, it must execute them and leave no one alive," Palestine News Network reported.

As chief rabbi of the city of Safed, Eliyahu is known for his racist behavior and remarks about Arabs and Muslims. He had earlier urged the Israeli regime to take "revenge" against Arabs in order to restore what he called Israel's deterrence.

He also described Palestinians as the enemy of Israel and claimed that they "must be destroyed and crushed in order to end violence. If they don't stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand. And if they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don't stop we must kill 100,000, even a million," the Jerusalem Post quoted him as saying in 2007.

In 2012, he was charged for making racist statements as he called the Arab culture "cruel" and accused Arabs of having "violent norms" which "have turned into ideology." Eliyahu alleged that Arabs steal farm equipment belonging to Jews and blackmail farmers.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

10 Facts about Israel that everyone should know

Anthony Bellchambers
Global Research
Sat, 23 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
Israel flag

1.Out of the 14.2 million Jewish people in the world, (in 2016), only a minority of 43% reside in Israel.

2. Whilst 75% of Israelis are Jewish, 21% are indigenous Arabs with restricted civil rights.

3. Israel has the highest birth rate in the developed world, with an average of 3 children per woman.

4. The Netanyahu government now receives more than US$6 billion every year from the US congress/ AIPAC lobby i.e. equating to $1000 annually for every Jewish Israeli, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Comment: Here are a few more:

11. Israel created Hamas to split Palestine.

12. Israel's President Shimon Peres admits that Israel ordered the assassination of Yasser Arafat

13. Israel is assisting ISIL to further its larger plan to divide and conquer the Middle East.

14. Israel was built on a plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians already living on the lands coveted by Israel's founding fathers.

15. Elements of Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad, are behind and largely responsible for the terrorism of 911.

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SOTT Logo Radio

Behind the Headlines: Weekly Broadcast - 24 January 2016


Sott.net
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 17:00 UTC
Sott Talk Radio logo
Welcome to the radio network of SOTT.net, your media source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events. The Behind the Headlines talkshow takes place each Sunday on the SOTT Radio Network. Analyzing global impact events that shape our world and future, and connecting the dots to reveal the bigger picture obscured by mainstream programming, Behind the Headlines is current affairs for people who think.

From the crisis in Ukraine to the ISIS in Iraq, from increasingly extreme weather to surviving in a world ruled by psychopaths, your hosts, their colleagues (and occasional guests) explore the deeper truths driving world events by exposing the manipulations behind what passes for 'news'.

Behind the Headlines airs live this Sunday, 24 January 2015, from 12-2pm EST / 5-7pm UTC / 6-8pm CET.

Running Time: 01:36:00

Download: MP3

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Dollars

Norway's biggest bank demands ban on cash

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 15:52 UTC
Electronic-Money graphic
The war on cash is escalating faster than many had imagined. Having documented the growing calls from the elites and propagandist explanations of the "benefits" to their serfs over the last few years, with China, and The IMF entering the "cashless society" call most recently, International Business Times reports that Norway - suffering from its own economic collapse as oil revenues crash - has joined its Scandi peers Denmark and Sweden in a call to "ban cash."

By way of background, as we explained previously, What exactly does a "war on cash" mean?
It means governments are limiting the use of cash and a variety of official-mouthpiece economists are calling for the outright abolition of cash. Authorities are both restricting the amount of cash that can be withdrawn from banks, and limiting what can be purchased with cash.
These limits are broadly called "capital controls."

Why Now? Why are governments suddenly so keen to ban physical cash?

Comment: Also read: Two phases in the War on Cash

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Ambulance

Can presidential candidates deliver a cure for Obamacare ?

Margaret Flowers and Jill Stein
Truth Dig
Fri, 22 Jan 2016 00:00 UTC
Bernie Sanders Hillary Clinton

Sen. Bernie Sander and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton's recent attack on Sen. Bernie Sanders for his advocacy of single-payer health plan has brought the health care crisis into the spotlight.

We are both physicians who have a long history of working on health policy. While the two Democratic candidates offer proposals that are very different from each other, we see that neither is calling out health care privatization as the fatal flaw in the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Clinton argues we can simply expand the Affordable Care Act to achieve universal coverage, which we view as impossible. Sanders is on target with his new Medicare-for-all proposal. However, by preserving the illusion that the ACA is a "step in the right direction," Sanders misses the point that the current U.S. health care system under the ACA is unique among industrialized nations because it treats health care as a commodity rather than a public good.

Health care should be a central issue in the presidential campaigns. A Reuters/IPSOS poll in December showed that the cost of health care is a bipartisan concern, with 62 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of Democrats surveyed saying they would want to know about a presidential candidate's plan for reducing health care costs. This is not surprising, since the ACA has produced high premiums and unaffordable out-of-pocket costs. The status quo is not working.

We have both been clear about our long-term support for a national improved Medicare-for-all health system based on a strong public health foundation and human rights principles. We offer a critique of the current health care debate and our prescription for the solution to the crisis.

Comment: Looking beyond the dog and pony circus preceding elections, history shows that any village, nation, civilization that doesn't take care of its own, will not survive. For all we know, that's the plan.

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Boat

The new Eurasia directly challenges America's naval supremacy

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Sun, 24 Jan 2016 05:03 UTC
Navy China
© Unknown

The United States' leading military planners following the Spanish-American War of 1898 studied carefully the imperial model of their English-speaking cousins in Britain. After 1873 as the British economy sank deeper into what they called The Great Depression, men like Junius Pierpont Morgan, the most powerful banker in America, Andrew Carnegie, her largest steelmaker, John D. Rockefeller, her oil monopolist—America's first oligarchs—realized that for the United States to rival Britain as the world power numero uno, she would have to have a "navy second to none." That US naval dominance may soon fade into the pages of past history. Look closely at what China and Russia are doing on the strategic seas.

In August 2015, an event occurred whose longer-term strategic significance is beginning to cause consternation in Washington and NATO headquarters. Russia and China, the two great Eurasian nations, engaged in joint naval exercises in the Sea of Japan off coast from Russia's far-east port city, Vladivostock. Commenting on its significance, Vice Admiral Alexander Fedotenkov, Deputy Commander of the Russian Navy, said at the time that the "scope of the exercise is unprecedented," with 22 Russian and Chinese combat ships, 20 aircraft, 40 armored vehicles and 500 troops taking part. The exercises simulated anti-aircraft and anti-submarine warfare. It was phase two of joint Sino-Russian naval exercises, Joint Sea 2015, which began in May when 10 Russian and Chinese ships conducted their first combined drills in theMediterranean Sea.

The strategic significance of joint Russian-Chinese naval exercises in both the Mediterranean and in the waters off China's and Russia's far east shores is but the tip of what is clearly a far larger joint military strategy that potentially challenges US control of the seas.
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Clipboard

Taliban: Remove us from UN blacklist before new peace talks


Press TV
Sat, 23 Jan 2016 05:22 UTC
taliban
© www.boiseweekly.com
Former Taliban fighters carry their weapons prior to turning them over as they join a government peace and reconciliation process at a ceremony in Jalalabad, 2013.
The Taliban militant group says it wants to be removed from the blacklist of the United Nations as a condition for rejoining peace talks for an end to the conflict in Afghanistan. "We conveyed them to first remove us from the ‎blacklist of the United Nations and allow us to freely travel around the world and then we can think about holding peace talks," said an unidentified Taliban member during unofficial talks with activists and former Afghan officials in the Qatari capital of Doha on Saturday.

Taliban has reemerged as a strong militant group over the past months as it has managed to capture some key areas in the north and south of Afghanistan. The militants also carry out attacks in the capital, Kabul. That has prompted renewed efforts in the country and by neighbors to revive stalled negotiations between the militant group and the Afghan government.

Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said Saturday that representatives of the group had attended the unofficial talks in Doha to express the views of the group on how the situation in the country should be handled. "The meeting is providing us an opportunity to express our views about the future of Afghanistan," said Mujahid, without elaborating on the condition set by other senior members about removal of Taliban from the UN blacklist.

Comment: As far back as 2009 the UN called for talks with Taliban leaders. In 2010, the UN lifted sanctions on the Taliban and a request that Taliban leaders and others be removed from terrorism watch lists. It is now 2016.

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