Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday, 28 August 2014

The European Union Times


Posted: 27 Aug 2014 01:40 PM PDT
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
Under the pretext of an ‘overt’ Russian threat, NATO is pushing for a ‘readiness action plan’ that will bring the Cold War military bloc closer to Russian borders than ever, even despite objections from some NATO members.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the 28-nation military bloc, which meets next week in Cardiff, Wales, would attempt to overcome internal opposition and agree to the deployment of military bases near the Russian border.
Amid the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, which is fracturing the country along east-west ideological lines, NATO is preparing to install for the first time military “reception facilities” in Eastern European countries, including Poland and the three Baltic countries: Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia.
“We have something already called the NATO response force, whose purpose is to be able to be deployed rapidly if needed,” Rasmussen said in an interview with several European newspapers. “Now it’s our intention to develop what I would call a spearhead within that response force at very, very, high readiness. In order to be able to provide such rapid reinforcements you also need some reception facilities in host nations. So it will involve the pre-positioning of supplies, of equipment, preparation of infrastructure, bases, headquarters.”
The bottom line, according to the NATO chief, is that there will be “a more visible NATO presence in the east.”
Asked whether there would be permanent NATO presence in Eastern Europe, he said, “The brief answer is ‘yes’. To prevent misunderstanding, I use the phrase ‘for as long as necessary’. Our eastern allies will be satisfied when they see what is actually in the readiness action plan.”
Rasmussen, whose term expires on September 30, said the new NATO forces in Eastern Europe could be “deployed within hours.”
Needless to say, NATO’s militarization of the region will not sit well with Moscow, which has watched with increasing alarm since the collapse of the Soviet Union, despite pledges from the Western military bloc not to expand further east as NATO continues its march towards Russia’s western border.
Currently, the Polish port city of Szczecin, which military experts anticipate will serve as one of NATO’s new “reception facilities,” represents NATO’s easternmost military presence.
Ironically, NATO’s latest enlargement plans are being opposed not just by Russia, but by its very members, some of whom do not see the point in aggravating tensions with Moscow.
It should come as no surprise that the United States and the United Kingdom, distant as they are from any potential fireworks on the European-Russian border, favor a military escalation in Eastern Europe. Other major NATO members, however, including France, Spain and Italy, have expressed serious reservations to the plans.
Meanwhile, Germany, NATO’s second strongest member, remains uncommitted to the expansion plans.
This should come as no surprise considering the recent deterioration in relations between Washington and Berlin.
Germany was forced to take a critical new look at its powerful American partner following Edward Snowden’s shocking NSA revelations, which showed massive US and UK spying on German citizens. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal mobile phone was caught up in the international surveillance net.
Remarkably, Rasmussen asserted that Russia “does not consider NATO a partner,” when it was NATO that flat-out refused Russian participation in the controversial US missile defense system, also planned for Eastern Europe. Such cooperation, had it been given the green light, would have sealed the so-called reset between the two Cold War-era foes, bringing to end years of mutual suspicion and antagonism. Instead, the US and NATO opted to keep Russia on the sidelines, ensuring nothing less than another full-blown arms race.
Speaking on the subject of Crimea’s decision to hold a referendum to join the Russian Federation under the threat of military attack by pro-Kiev forces, Rasmussen commented that “nobody had expected Russia to grab land by force.”
At the same time, the outgoing NATO chief reiterated claims – surprisingly without providing any sort of unassailable proof, in this age of advanced surveillance equipment – that Russia is actively participating in the Ukrainian upheaval.
“We have seen artillery firing across the border and also inside Ukraine. We have seen a Russian military buildup along the border. Quite clearly, Russia is involved in destabilizing eastern Ukraine … You see a sophisticated combination of traditional conventional warfare mixed up with information and primarily disinformation operations. It will take more than NATO to counter such hybrid warfare effectively,” Rasmussen was quoted as saying.
NATO officials, however, have admitted their intelligence is not perfect.
“We can only watch from 23 miles (37km) up,” one official told the Guardian.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko is to attend the NATO summit, where the 28-member bloc has prepared four ‘trust funds’ to finance Ukraine’s military logistics, command structures, and cyber defense forces, and to pay overdue military pensions.
Yet somehow Rasmussen was able to say of Russia’s embattled neighbor.
“Ukraine follows its own path…It is actually what we will decide to do at the summit, to help them build the capacity of their security sector, modernize it,” he said.
Meanwhile, it looks as if Rasmussen will be passing around the proverbial hat during next week’s summit, looking to collect more money from NATO members, even as their own countries are facing economic turmoil amid IMF-enforced austerity measures.
“Since the end of the Cold War we have lived in relatively good weather. Now we are faced with a profound climate change. That requires more investment,” said the NATO chief.
It will be interesting to see how many member states take up this latest challenge, which threatens to ratchet up European-Russian tensions to levels not seen since the Cold War.
Meanwhile, there is no question as to how Russia views NATO’s relentless eastward encroachment.
“No matter what our Western counterparts tell us, we can see what’s going on,” President Putin said in July at an emergency Security Council meeting in Moscow. “As it stands, NATO is blatantly building up its forces in Eastern Europe, including the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea areas. Its operational and combat training activities are gaining in scale.”
Putin stated that NATO’s military build-up near Russia’s border, which includes the US-built missile defense system, is not just for defensive purposes, but is an “offensive weapon” and an “element of the US offensive system deployed outside the mainland.”
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Posted: 27 Aug 2014 01:23 PM PDT

Takfiri ISIL militants have reportedly threatened to attack Saudi Arabia during Eid-Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice) that marks the culmination of the annual Hajj pilgrimage, a report says.
According to Syria Alaan news website, ISIL militants will begin an armed operation in Saudi Arabia after being supplied with arms and money by al-Qaeda agents.
The report said possible fall of the Saudi government would be a severe blow to Western states, especially the United States. Therefore, five Arab states have been required o cooperate with Saudi Arabia by providing necessary information on the ISIL.
The report added that Qatar will provide necessary information on the movements of the ISIL while Egypt and Jordan will do everything to prevent transfer of hefty sums of money through banks in the United Arab Emirates to the ISIL terrorists who have been earning a lot of money by selling stolen oil in Iraq and Syria.
The ISIL militants have been already wreaking havoc on Syria and Iraq. The terrorists have been committing heinous crimes in the areas they have under control in the two neighboring states, including the mass execution of civilians and armed forces.
Takfiri terrorists currently control parts of eastern Syria and Iraq’s northern and western regions. They have threatened all communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Izadi Kurds and others, as they continue their advances in Iraq.
Several gruesome video footages were released, purportedly showing members of the ISIL Takfiri terror group brutally killing Shia Muslims and other communities in drive-by shootings in Iraq.
Senior Iraqi officials have blamed Saudi Arabia, Qatar and some Persian Gulf Arab states for the growing terrorism in their country.
The terrorist group has links with Saudi intelligence and is believed to be indirectly supported by the Israeli regime.
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Posted: 27 Aug 2014 12:15 PM PDT


On Tuesday California Governor Jerry Brown met with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto in Sacramento.
A day prior to the meeting in the California capitol, Brown announced the collapse of the United States and the elimination of its national borders when he declared California to be wide-open to illegal immigration.
“You’re all welcome in California today,” Brown said in Los Angeles on Monday.
Nieto characterized the influx of illegal immigrants as justice for “those who contribute so much to the development of the American society.”
In reality, the influx spells the destruction of American society. Brown’s welcoming of a flood of new illegal immigrants and Nieto’s insistence crossing the border represents social justice will ultimately deal a fatal blow to not only the state, but the nation as a whole.
The growth of illegal and legal immigrants – between 1970 and 2008 the share of California’s population comprised of immigrants tripled from 9 percent to 27 percent – has turned California into a failed state.
It will soon do the same for the country as a whole.
California: A Socialist Dystopia
In February, Democrats signaled yet another assail on the economic viability of the state when they proposed legislation that allows illegal immigrants to qualify for healthcare coverage under Medicare.
California is on record as the largest welfare state in the country. The state has one-eighth of the nation’s population and one-third of all welfare recipients.
In 2011 Judicial Watch cited U.S. Census Bureau data to show that families headed up by illegal immigrants are more likely to use welfare programs.
“Even before the recession, immigrant households with children used welfare programs at consistently higher rates than natives,” the organization explained. “Basically, the majority of households across the country benefitting from publicly-funded welfare programs are headed by immigrants, both legal and illegal.”
In Los Angeles County alone during 2013, $650 million was spent on welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, according to SupervisorMichael D. Antonovich of the Department of Public Social Services.
In addition to unbridled welfare benefits, illegal immigrants are provided with in-state tuition breaks. Nearly a decade ago, this scheme, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform, would cost besieged taxpayers around $289 million a year.
California Paradigm
Democrats understand the capital harvested from wide open borders and liberal welfare and healthcare policies – both translate into a political monopoly. Overwhelming numbers of Hispanics vote Democrat. “Hispanics of all ages in the U.S. today are more than twice as likely to identify with or lean to the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party,” Gallup reported in 2013.
“The immigration proposal pending in Congress would transform the nation’s political landscape for a generation or more — pumping as many as 11 million new Hispanic voters into the electorate a decade from now in ways that, if current trends hold, would produce an electoral bonanza for Democrats and cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily,” Politico reported last April.
This political monopoly will, however, come at a tremendous cost. According to one study, the cost to U.S. taxpayers of legalizing the current flood of illegal immigrants would be approximately 6.3 trillion dollars over the next 50 years.
Destruction of American Culture
In addition to destroying the economic base of the nation and ultimately impoverishing Americans, unbridled illegal and unrestrained legal immigration will accomplish a primary goal held by the global elite – the destruction of American culture and its heritage grounded in the principles of liberty, private property and individual sovereignty.
“Besides the successful culture of independence, Obama hates the white nature of America,” writes L. Todd Wood. “He is attempting to manage the ethnicity of America and quicken the demise of the white majority. He is attempting to crowd out the American culture of self-reliance and the rule of law with the culture of gang violence of Central America dependent on the federal government. This is a racist strategy that only Hitler could be proud of.”
It is also a strategy the global elite are proud of. If the culture of liberty and the drive for economic prosperity can be successfully destroyed and Americans reduced to third world serfs, the plan for one world government and domination can be realized.
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Posted: 27 Aug 2014 10:18 AM PDT
The Pentagon has begun surveillance flights over militant-controlled parts of Syria, US officials say.
The United States has begun surveillance flights over militant-controlled parts of Syria after US President Barack Obama’s authorization, according to American officials.
One unnamed official said on Tuesday that the reconnaissance flights had started, while two other officials said earlier that Obama had ordered the flights, The Associated Press reported.
According to reports, the flights will provide intelligence information on potential targets for airstrikes in Syria if the US president approves.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said that the Pentagon wanted more clarity on the ISIL terrorist group in Syria, but declined to comment on the flights.
“Clearly the picture we have of ISIS (ISIL) on the Iraqi side is a more refined picture,” said Dempsey. “The existence and activities of ISIS on the Syrian side … we certainly want to have more insights.”
On Monday, the Syrian government insisted that any military action on its soil must be coordinated in advance. Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said that Syria rejects any unilateral military strikes by the US or any other country.
“Any violation of Syria’s sovereignty would be an act of aggression,” he said. There would be “no justification” for strikes on Syrian territory “except in coordination with us to fight terrorism.”
American officials, however, said they do not intend to ask permission from Damascus for the flights.
The United States’ decision to expand its military and reconnaissance activities in Syria and Iraq is triggered by the growing fear of ISIL which now controls large parts of Iraq and Syria.
The Obama administration has elevated ISIL as “enemy number one” for the United States after the terrorist group beheaded an American journalist James Foley in Syria.
The United States last week launched airstrikes against the militants who have overun parts of western and northern Iraq. The strikes came several months after the group began its attacks in Iraq.
A recent report by an independent news website, WND, said that ISIL militants were trained in 2012 by US instructors working at a secret base in Jordan.
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Posted: 27 Aug 2014 09:50 AM PDT

Children as young as 11 in the Yorkshire town of Rotherham were raped by multiple perpetrators, abducted, trafficked to other cities in England, beaten and intimidated, by groups of mainly Asian men (mostly Muslims) from 1997 to 2013, a troubling new report claims.
The inquiry team found examples of “children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone.”
Revealing details of the inquiry’s findings, Professor Alexis Jay, who wrote the latest report, said: “It is hard to describe the appalling nature of the abuse that child victims suffered.”
The report pinned the blame on the leadership of South Yorkshire Police and Rotherham council.
Despite calls for him to quit over the sex abuse scandal, South Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Shaun Wright has vowed to stay in his job.
Wright was a Labour cabinet member for children and young people’s services at Rotherham Council from 2005 to 2010, when he received three reports about widespread abuse but failed to act. The Labour Party has now called for his resignation.
Prof Jay said: “Within social care, the scale and seriousness of the problem was underplayed by senior managers. At an operational level, the police gave no priority to child sex exploitation, regarding many child victims with contempt and failing to act on their abuse as a crime.”
Police officers even dismissed the rape of children by saying that sex had been consensual.
‘Racism’ fears
Tuesday’s report concluded that by far the majority of perpetrators were Asian men.
According to the inquiry council officials were afraid to identify the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being labelled “racist” if they revealed the ethnicity of most of the abusers.
Downing Street on Tuesday night described the failure to halt the abuse in Rotherham as “appalling.”
A Number 10 spokesman said: “We are determined that the lessons of past failures must be learned and that those who have exploited these children are brought to justice.”
Following the publication of the report, Rotherham Council leader Roger Stone resigned. Stone, who has been the leader since 2003, said: “I believe it is only right that as leader I take responsibility for the historic failings described so clearly.”
No other council employees will face disciplinary proceedings after it was claimed that there was not enough evidence to take action.
The focus on Rotherham followed the jailing of five Asian men in 2010 after they were found guilty of grooming teenage girls for sex. The five men groomed teenage girls and had sex with them in cars and parks in Rotherham.
Schools also started raising alerts over the years about children as young as 11 being picked up by taxis, given presents and mobile phones and taken to Rotherham and other towns.
‘Authorities failed to protect children’
Prof Jay said there had been “blatant” collective failures by the council’s leadership, senior managers had “underplayed” the scale of the problem and South Yorkshire Police had failed to prioritize the issue.
She added: “The authorities involved have a great deal to answer for.”
The inquiry team found that in the early 2000s, when a group of professionals tried to monitor a number of children believed to be at risk, “managers gave little help or support to their efforts” and that some people at a senior level in the police and children’s social care thought the extent of the problem was being “exaggerated.”
For years, the police failed to address the problem, dismissing many of the victims as “out of control” or as “undesirables” who were not worthy of police protection, according to the report.
It emerged that there had been three previous reports looking into the problem which had been suppressed or ignored by officials, either because they did not like or did not believe the findings.
Prof Jay said, “No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013.”
A victim of abuse in Rotherham, who has been called “Isabel” to protect her identity, told BBC Panorama: “I was a child and they should have stepped in. No matter what’s done now… it’s not going to change that it was too late, it should have been stopped and prevented.”
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Posted: 26 Aug 2014 02:25 PM PDT

A long-term truce in Gaza has been agreed with Israel, Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas said. The ceasefire announced by Egypt came into effect at 16:00 GMT with almost immediate reports of warning sirens going off in southern Israel.
“We have responded to the Egyptian proposal for a complete and comprehensive cease-fire, which starts at 19:00 Cairo time,” Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, stated. “There will be a complete stop in fighting.”
A senior Israeli official confirmed to Reuters that Israel had accepted the Egyptian proposal for a “for a complete and unlimited-in-time ceasefire” Gaza ceasefire.
“Israel accepted already the Egyptian proposal on July 15. Israel has always supported an unconditional, open-ended ceasefire,” the anonymous official told the agency.
Celebratory gunfire rang through Gaza shortly after 7pm as thousands flocked to the streets in celebration.
However, shortly after the ceasefire was scheduled to take effect, sirens indicating rocket attacks also continued to be heard in southern Israel.
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying that indirect talks are set to continue within the space of a month.
An anonymous Palestinian official also told AFP that the contacts working on the issue in Egypt’s capital “agreed a permanent cease-fire, a [deal to] end the blockade and a guarantee that Gaza’s demands and needs will be met.”
Prior to the ceasefire’s announcement, Azzam al-Ahmed, head of the Palestinian delegation had been “shuttling between the leadership of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, all the factions, and Egyptian leaders, travelling between Ramallah, Gaza, Doha overseas,” for some 48 hours, according to the official.
Tel Aviv has reportedly agreed to bring its blockade of Gaza to a halt in order to allow relief supplies and construction materials through. Further discussions are expected to center around the potential establishment of a seaport and an airport in the Gaza strip, a senior Hamas official told AP.
The deal reached, however, will not see the opening of Gaza’s borders to Israel and Egypt, and did not apparently see any major steps back on the part of Israel despite cries of ‘victory’.
Fighting continued right up to the final minute before the ceasefire was declared. Rocket sirens were heard in southern Israel – near the Gaza border, reported Haaretz. Three Israelis were wounded by mortar shell explosion in Eshkol regional Council. The Jerusalem Post reported that at least 116 rockets exploded in the area over the course of the day.
Monday marked the 50th day since Israel started its campaign in Gaza on July 8 and the death toll has already reached 2,120 people, of which 577 are children, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
On Tuesday, 25 people were injured when Israel bombed two Gaza City high-rises containing dozens of homes and shops, according to health officials.
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Posted: 26 Aug 2014 02:11 PM PDT
Rescuers remove debris to search for missing people at the site of a landslide at a residential area in Hiroshima, western Japan, on August 26, 2014.
The death toll from the devastating landslides in western Japan has jumped to 63 with 25 others still missing as rescuers continue their efforts in combing through destroyed houses in search for survivors.
Local police authorities said three more people were confirmed dead in the disaster-hit city of Hiroshima, situated about 800 kilometers (497 miles) west of the capital Tokyo, on Tuesday.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Hiroshima on Monday and pledged full support for victims of last week’s massive landslides.
“The government wants to closely coordinate with the local authority. We will do our best to have victims return to normal life as soon as possible,” he told reporters.
Some 3,000 rescuers, including soldiers, are digging through mud and debris at the various sites on the outskirts of Hiroshima.
More than 1,600 people are also taking shelter in schools, town halls and other public buildings.
Heavy rain and torrential downpours triggered the August 20 landslides, which swallowed dozens of homes across Japan’s western areas.
Landslides are common in Japan’s populated mountainous areas, where there is frequent rainfall and many of the houses are built on or near steep slopes.
In October last year, multiple mudslides killed 35 people, four of whose bodies were never recovered, in the volcanic island of Izu Oshima. The slides followed a typhoon that dumped a record 824 millimeters of rain in a single day.
More than 30 people also died in 1999 when Hiroshima was struck by hundreds of landslides.
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Posted: 26 Aug 2014 01:59 PM PDT
Police refuse to treat incident as a hate crime, even though this is a clear hate crime racist attack.
A white Marine was left in an induced coma after a group of black men brutally beat him as part of a revenge attack in response to the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
The incident began at West Point Waffle House in Mississippi on Saturday morning at around 1am. With his friend Ralph Weems already inside the restaurant, David Knighten was approached outside by another diner who told him they should leave because a group of black men were “upset by the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and it wasn’t a safe place for whites,” Knighten told the Associated Press.
When Knighten entered the diner, he found 32-year-old Iraq war veteran Weems already engaged in a heated argument with the group of black men. The police were called and Knighten and Weems left and headed for a Huddle House restaurant on the way to Weems’ house.
However, after apparently having been followed by a mob of 20 men, Knighten exited the restroom to find Weems surrounded. After a security guard asked everyone to leave, Knighten was blocked from getting out of the restaurant but when he was eventually able to exit he witnessed Weems down on the ground being beaten.
Knighten, who served with the Air Force in Afghanistan, was also attacked, suffering broken bones in his face, a blood clot in his right eye and a cut over his left eye. While Weems was being beaten, Knighten heard “racial slurs” being yelled by the crowd.
Police were called to the scene at 2am but the mob had already left. Despite the context of the argument and the yelling of racial slurs, Police Chief Tim Brinkley said the incident wasn’t being treated as a hate crime.
“This does not appear to be a hate crime,” Brinkley said in the press release. “We are investigating this as an aggravated assault. It’s very early in this investigation but thus far the evidence and statements suggest that a verbal altercation turned physical and somebody got hurt.”
Weems received life threatening injuries and had to be put in a medically induced coma following brain surgery at North Mississippi Medical Center.
The fact that the beating isn’t being treated as a hate crime despite it clearly having racial connotations will anger many who have expressed concerns that black on white crime is being downplayed in the name of political correctness.
“To imagine how insane that statement is, just reverse “Black” and “White” in the story above, and imagine how quickly Al Sharpton and Eric Holder would be on a plane to Mississippi. This is just despicable,” writes Jason DeWitt.
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Posted: 26 Aug 2014 01:42 PM PDT
US President Barack Obama speaks on the phone with King Abdullah II of Jordan in the Oval Office of the White House on August 8, 2014 in Washington, DC after US jets struck ISIL positions in northern Iraq.
The Obama administration is reportedly preparing to begin air strikes on Syrian territory without the consent of the Syrian government. The pretext is the rapidly expanding US war on ISIL, but in fact this is the long-desired US attack on Syria that was temporarily thwarted, reportedly by popular opposition last year (but more likely by US knowledge that its claims the Assad government was behind the chemical attacks at Ghouta had no basis in reality and would not stand up to even superficial scrutiny).
Though it makes for a compelling story, the idea that popular opposition to Obama’s plans to attack Syria last year stopped the bombs seems more wishful thinking than reality. Consider how easy it has been these past two weeks to obliterate any opposition among the American people to the same US attack plan regurgitated almost exactly one year later.
A series of salacious stories about ISIL slaughtering a Yazidi minority that no one had even heard of mobilized US public opinion in favor of initial US strikes and even ground troops in Iraq. Never mind that the stories were hyped up and mostly false. Never mind that the US and its allies had armed and trained the individuals who now call themselves ISIL (now simply “IS”) for a number of years. Another “babies thrown from incubators” story and even self-identified non-interventionists were screaming for bombing runs.
Then came the video released purporting to be the beheading of US freelance journalist (and former USAID contractor) James Foley. Though the video did not show an actual beheading, skeptics were nevertheless silenced by admonitions to not add to the family’s grief by questioning the official US government line. The videos were feverishly removed from social media outlets before many had the chance to see that they did not show a beheading at all.
By the time the media started realizing that the video was a fake, public opinion had already been positioned in favor of taking ISIL out wherever they sought shelter.
Because the US-trained ISIL/IS also operates in Syria (where they are fighting for the US “regime change” objective), they now must be targeted by the US. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem reminded the US today that his government must be consulted before the US begins military action on Syrian soil. He was ignored by Washington. Washington began sending drones into Syrian territory.
We are now told that the only thing holding back US bombs on sovereign Syrian soil is concern that any attack would be perceived as a shift in US policy away from demands for “regime change” in Syria. In other words, the Obama administration does not want to be seen helping a Syrian government that has been battling what is now called IS for three years by also bombing IS in Syria.
Concerns that a US attack on Syria without permission would be a violation of international law, the UN charter, and would be a blatant act of aggression are not factored in to the US decision-making process. Nor is the fact that Congress is unlikely to be bothered to declare war or even pass an authorization for the use of force against Syria.
There is currently no active legislation that would permit the US president to make war on Syria.
The US is already violating Syrian territory by conducting aerial surveillance to determine targeting for planned air strikes. This violation of sovereignty is ignored by the same US government that condemned Russian delivery of food and water to those suffering in east Ukraine as a “flagrant violation” of Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Food and water to desperate civilians is a flagrant violation of sovereignty, air strikes are not. This is US government logic, but there is virtually no opposition among opinion makers, the media, or politicians.
This month the US government admitted that there were more than 12,000 foreign fighters inside Syria seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. Perhaps unwittingly, this admission undermines the entire three year rationale for the US “regime change” policy in Syria. Recall that the “Assad must go” position of the US government was justified by claims that the Syrian people were engaging in a popular revolt to establish self-rule and democracy. This cannot be true if in fact this war had been waged by foreign fighters.
War against Syria is perhaps days away. It will be an illegal war, without a UN resolution or permission from the Syrian government. Without Congress. Conducted by the peace president.
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Posted: 26 Aug 2014 01:38 PM PDT
The guided-missile destroyer USS Ross
A US Navy destroyer and a French frigate are expected to enter the waters of the Black Sea next week, a diplomatic and military source said.
“Two NATO warships at once will arrive in the Black Sea on September 3. They are US Navy’s destroyer USS Ross and frigate, Commandant Birot, of the naval forces of France,” the unnamed source told RIA-Novosti news agency.
There’s currently one NATO ship present in the Black Sea, with French surveillance ship, Dupuy de Lome, expected to remain in the area until September 5.
USS Vella Gulf, which was patrolling the black Sea since August 7, recently left for its port of commission.
The maintenance of the operational rotational presence of NATO ships does not promote stability in the Black Sea region in any way, the source noted.
According to the Montreux Convention of 1936, warships of non-Black Sea states can stay in the Black Sea for no more than 21 days.
But, earlier this year, the convention was violated by American frigate USS Taylor, which exceeded the authorized time limit by 11 days, the source said.
In July this year, the grouping of NATO ships in the Black Sea reached nine units, setting a record for the post-Soviet period.
The grouping consisted of Vella Gulf of the US Navy, French frigate Surcouf, Greek corvette Mahitis, two reconnaissance ships of France and the Elettra of the Italian Navy.
The same months, NATO held BREEZE 2014 naval exercises off the Bulgarian cost of the Black Sea, in which ships from Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Britain and the US participated.
The maneuvers were aimed at showing the alliance’s willingness to support its east European members who have been unnerved by Russia’s alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis.
In April, a Russian Su-24 fighter jet made several circles around USS Donald Cook that was then in the waters of the Black Sea.
Pentagon officials reacted by claiming that “Russia’s actions were contrary to international protocols and accepted agreements regulating the interaction of the armed forces of the two countries”.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 11:46