US foreign policy centers around selling weapons !

Finally a sane voice... But alas! the ignoramus populace is not going to get out of their deep slumber in time and fall for the traps of either Republicans or Democrats setup by the Military-Industrial Complex...

‘US foreign policy is a marketing strategy for selling weapon’ – Jill Stein

RT, 31 Jul, 2016

Democrats and Republicans are controlled by banks, oil giants, insurance companies and war profiteers, says Green Party presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein. Her party, she claims, gets no money from corporations and has liberty to really address problems.

As the two major US political parties have officially selected their nominees for president, Chris Hedges, host of RT’s On Contact program, discussed with the Green Party candidate for president, Dr. Jill Stein, what could be an alternative way forward.
According to Dr Stein, in the current presidential race, the American public is “clamoring for something else at unprecedented levels”.
“People have rejected not only both of these parties, which are minority parties by actual polling…Their candidates are running at record levels, all time highest for people disliking the Democratic and Republican candidates,” she said.
“The American people and the people all over the world are being thrown under the bus by this political system…in which both parties are basically funded by and controlled by predatory banks, by fossil-fuel giants, by war-profiteers, the health insurance industry - the usual suspects who are calling the shots from behind the closed doors,” Stein says.
Stein says that since her campaign and the Green Party “are the only candidates and party” that do not take money from corporations and lobbyists, and do not have super PACs, they have “the liberty to address the crises” that the US people are facing.

‘What Trump says has already been done by Clinton’

Speaking about the frontrunners, the Green Party candidate noted that if you “look at the track record, the terrible things that Donald Trump says – which are truly reprehensible and horrific – have actually been done by Hillary Clinton”.
For example, she said, “on immigrants, xenophobia and hate mongering, we’ve learned that Trump and the Republicans are the party of hate and fear”. But, Stein went on, “the Democrats are the party of deportation, detentions, and night raids”.
And the night-raiding is carried out against the women and children “who are feeling the violence that Hillary Clinton herself gave the thumbs up to with this horrific corporate coup in Honduras”.
US policies very much promoted by “Clinton herself are generating these refugees, which she then, and the Democrats, are criminalizing when they get here and sending them back,” says Stein.
Speaking about security issues - “finger on nuclear button”, as she put it, the Green Party candidate noted that Trump makes “irresponsible statements” and Clinton advocates the enforcing of a no-fly zone over Syria “against a nuclear armed country that is Russia.”
Clinton has already been antagonizing Russia by surrounding it with missile bases and soldiers, Stein said. “How would we feel if Russian troops were amassing on the border of Mexico and Canada?” she added. 

Trump – product of economic misery created by Clintons

Dr Stein has called Donald Trump “a product” of economic misery, which created vulnerability, fear, and sense of dread on behalf of the American worker and middle class, “to whom adversity is somewhat new”.
“They become very vulnerable to demagoguery, to wishful memory about ‘how we can recreate a powerful America of the past’,” she said. But not much is being asked about what caused this misery. In Stein’s opinion, this goes back to Wall Street deregulation “and the economic crash” that resulted in disappearance of millions of jobs, “stole five million homes out from under home owners, and to NAFTA which basically allowed a million jobs and more to be sent overseas and for wages to be pushed downward.”
The Wall Street deregulation passed by Bill Clinton was advocated for and celebrated by Hillary Clinton, she said.
“So, putting another Clinton in the White House – that’s not a solution; that was the problem, that is only going to fan the flames of right-wing extremism,” Stein said.

‘We bailed out crooks, time to bail out their victims’

The real solution would be economic investments in a form of a Green New Deal like the one that got the US out of the Great Depression and job-creation, the Green Party candidate said.
“This is not a kind of pie in the sky that we can fix this. The real solution here is economic investment; it’s job creation; it’s not wish fulfilment about how Donald Trump is going to cut a better deal for us. Donald Trump leaves a lake of bankruptcies and lawsuits behind him from workers who’ve been cheated, and jobs that have been sent overseas. So, Big Daddy is not the Big Daddy that we need,” she said. 
The Green Party, she insists, can grow the economy in a just and sustainable way. Her campaign suggests cancelling the student debt that affected about 40 million people “like we cancelled the debt for the Wall Street crooks who crashed the economy.”
“If we bailed out the crooks, it’s time to bail out their victims through the same tool of quantitative easing that doesn’t cost taxpayers a thing…” Jill Stein said.   

Demilitarizing foreign policy

The US spends a trillion dollars a year on its military, says Jill Stein. If that budget is cut it in half, the American economy will have the money it needs at home to provide for free public higher education, insure any health costs that aren’t covered already and work with other countries to address the problem of climate change – which remains one of the crucial problems globally, she believes. 
“Few people know what we pay for this catastrophic military which shoots first and asks questions later. In fact, what we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapon,” she said. “We’ve had these wars for oil - which are opportunities to sell weapons and to come and dear other people’s fossil fuel resources, which is basically what our military is doing. Why do we have a thousand bases for a hundred countries around the world?  This isn’t something that other countries do.”
The reason why the US keeps doing so is to safeguard its energy supplies and their routes of transportation, Stein says.
“This can no longer be justified – it’s all obsolete when we have a Green New Deal, which will reach 100 percent wind, water and sun clean renewable energy entirely by 2030. So, we can begin phasing down this network and stop stealing other people’s oil right now,” she said.
The US spent six trillion dollars on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – both of which failed, the presidential candidate said.
The US killed a million people in Iraq alone, “not winning the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East to say the least. And what do we have for it? Failed states, mass refuge migrations that are tearing apart Europe as well as the Middle East, and creating worse terrorist threats,” she added.

A New Fight Over Syria War Strategy

A must read to understand the inner workings of Syria conflict...

The supposed dissenters knew very well that Kerry has been advocating essentially the same policy they were articulating for years

by Gareth Porter, July 09, 2016

 

The long internal political struggle within the Obama administration over policy toward Syria has intensified following a proposal by President Barack Obama to cooperate with Russia in an air campaign against Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise.
The proposal, in response to an overture from Russia in May, would coordinate airstrikes against al-Nusra Front – the most powerful force in the war against Bashar al-Assad’s regime – in return for Russian agreement to constrain the Syrian regime from bombing non-jihadist forces willing to comply with the ceasefire.
If fully implemented, such a joint U.S.-Russian military campaign against Nusra could help hasten an end to the war by weakening the jihadist group cited by the Syrian regime as a major reason it has refused to make sufficient political concessions. In theory, such cooperation could strengthen both the regime and the so-called “moderate” rebels at the expense of the jihadists.
But Obama’s proposal is under attack by powerful elements of the national security bureaucracy. Even though the opponents have been unable to stop the proposal, they continue to press their case and it is not clear how committed the proponents are in pressuring their Syrian clients to comply with an agreement.
Last week, opponents of the proposal within the Obama administration leaked its existence to Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, whose sympathies clearly lie with the U.S. advocates of direct US war against the Assad regime.
Rogin’s story confirms that one major source of opposition to the proposal is Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and his staff. The article suggests, moreover, that the Pentagon opposition has less to do with Syria than with the Pentagon’s interest in preventing any softening of the new U.S.-Russia Cold War.
Carter opposed the Obama plan for a joint military strategy with Russia, Rogin writes, because Russian President Vladimir Putin sees military cooperation with Washington in Syria as “a way to gradually unwind Russia’s isolation following the Russian military intervention in Ukraine.”
But the primary argument against a joint campaign with Russia targeting Nusra Front is that it would jeopardize the military strength of Al Qaeda’s Syrian franchise and thus help the Assad government reclaim key territory.
Rogin quotes a complaint from Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, that, even if Russia delivers on a commitment to halt regime bombing of non-jihadist armed groups, the other armed groups fighting Assad would be in a much weaker position.
The on-the-ground subordination of the so-called “legitimate opposition” to the command structure of Al Qaeda’s offshoot, which is officially designated a terrorist organization, has been at the center of the diplomatic maneuvering between the Obama administration and Russia over possible military cooperation in Syria.
Russia’s Overture
The original Russian proposal to the United States for a joint air campaign, announced by Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu on May 20, was conditional on non-jihadist armed groups separating physically from Nusra. The Russians had made that same condition part of the agreement for the partial ceasefire in February.
Secretary of State John Kerry agreed to the condition but never delivered on the pledge to get the “moderate” armed groups to move away from Nusra and its jihadist allies. Nusra and another hard-line jihadist group, Ahrar al-Sham, have been the leaders of the powerful Saudi-backed rebel umbrella group, the Army of Conquest.
The subordinate non-jihadist groups have made it clear they have no intention of abandoning Nusra Front and its superior fighting capabilities. Instead of separating themselves from Nusra, the non-jihadist forces in northeastern Syria joined Nusra in breaking the ceasefire.
Charles Lister, a British specialist on the jihadists in Syria, recounted being told by the commander of a U.S.-supported armed group around March 20 that Nusra Front officials began a round of meetings with non-jihadist opposition groups from the areas of Hama, Latakia and southern Aleppo to persuade them to join in resuming the offensive against the Assad regime, rather than participating in a ceasefire and political negotiations.
When Nusra Front launched an offensive operation on April 3 on three fronts near Aleppo and in Idlib with the aim of taking back territory lost to the Syrian government in 2015, a number of the armed opposition groups supported by the United States fought alongside Al Qaeda’s affiliate.
The opposition commander explained to Lister that, if his group had not agreed to join Nusra’s offensive, “we would be seen as the enemy” — thus acknowledging that the U.S.-supported groups see no choice but to fight with the much stronger Nusra Front.
On May 5, just over two months ago, 37 armed opposition groups that were continuing to call themselves “Free Syrian Army,” the name applied to many of the U.S.-backed rebel forces inside Syria, issued a declaration that rejected any ceasefire that allowed attacks on Nusra Front.
“[A]ll the armed groups from across Syria will form a single bloc,” it said, adding, “Any offensive that takes place in an area where our units are present will be regarded as an attack against all the units throughout Syrian territory and we reserve the right to respond to it.”
In other words, many of the U.S.-armed, supposedly “moderate” rebels are in a strategic alliance with Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. It is that reality that has complicated Russian airstrikes against “terrorist” elements, both Nusra and the Islamic State, without also hitting U.S.-backed rebel groups and provoking outrage in Washington.
Facing Realities
Obama’s willingness to increase cooperation with the Russians is recognition that the continuing collaboration between Nusra and the so-called “moderates” represents an untenable situation if Syrian peace negotiations are to have any meaning. If the “moderates” don’t separate from Nusra, they effectively serve as its protective shield.
Thus, the inside-Washington bureaucratic pushback against Obama’s proposal to Russia was prompted by the fact that the Obama proposal appears to represent a fundamental departure from its policy in 2014-15 of encouraging – if not participating in – making a Nusra Front-led military coalition a powerful threat in northeastern Syria.
Turkish, Saudi and Qatari financial and logistical support for the Army of Conquest military command – dominated by Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham in Idlib – was the crucial factor in the shift in military balance that raised the specter of a jihadist victory over the largely secular Assad government and led to Russian military intervention last fall.
Though the Russian intervention helped the Syrian military regain key territory, the U.S.-Russian-negotiated partial ceasefire has enabled Nusra and its allies to regroup.
Brett McGurk, Obama’s special envoy for the “Global Coalition to Counter IS” – also known as the Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL or Daesh – has noted in written testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Nusra Front “is gaining ground in the west, putting down roots in Idlib province along the Turkish border.”
McGurk said Nusra Front is now “al-Qaeda’s largest formal affiliate in history” and added that it is “a serious concern.” It was the first time anyone in the Obama administration had registered the slightest concern about the military power of Nusra Front in Syria since the strategy of exploiting its military potential for diplomatic advantage over the Assad regime went into effect.
Obama’s proposed cooperation with Russia against Nusra Front was reportedly sent to Moscow by the State Department on June 27. The implication of the counter-argument protesting Obama’s proposal is that the opponents are willing to accept a long-term Al Qaeda-dominated mini-state in northeast Syria and even risk the possibility of a Nusra Front-led coalition coming to power in Damascus.
No Clean Break
But the fact that some hawks in the US security bureaucracy oppose Obama’s proposal does not necessarily mean that the President is seeking a clean break from past administration strategy.
In his Senate testimony, McGurk cited the need to “find a mechanism to de-escalate and end the Syrian civil war, thereby allowing the moderate opposition to take charge of its own territory without threat of Assad’s barrel bombs overhead or terrorists down the street.”
But Kerry and other administration policymakers know very well that the vast majority of the Syrian opposition groups are not going to separate themselves from Nusra Front, so the idea of a “moderate” opposition with its own zone of control is a political fiction.
A key element in the new proposal is the demand that Russia agree to guarantee an end to all Assad regime air attacks against the “legitimate opposition.” That is apparently being interpreted as imposing extreme limitations on operations by the Syrian air force.
Journalist Laura Rozen quotes “a diplomat involved in the international discussions on Syria” as saying, “Grounding the [Syrian] air force is possible; restricting its area of activity could be a possibility.”
Any U.S.-Russian agreement on cooperation against Nusra Front would be clearly based on the premise that any new limitations on either Russian or Syrian airpower would come only after opposition groups have moved away from the Nusra-dominated areas and withdrawn from the Nusra-led military commands with which they have been affiliated.
After those groups failed to move away from Nusra Front troops this spring, Kerry’s State Department did put pressure on their supplies lines across the Turkish border. But Kerry and the State Department continued to blame Russia for failing to prevent the Syrian government from carrying out air attacks on targets in the Nusra Font zone.
Kerry, who is supporting Obama’s proposal, according to Rogin’s report, may still be hoping to use the proposed agreement to build a case that Russian and Syrian government intransigence – not the continued US complicity in Turkish-Saudi-Qatari strategy of backing the Nusra Front-Ahrar al Sham duo in the northeast – is the reason why the “legitimate opposition” is still under air attack.
As the Obama administration goes into its final months, what appears to be the most promising path to an end to the Syrian civil war may yet be blocked by US refusal to break with the policies of its regional allies who have been feeding the jihadist-led war for years.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. He can be contacted at porter.gareth50@gmail.com.
Reprinted from the Middle East Eye with the author’s permission.
 

Eid Mubarak 1437H

May Allah help us celebrate this Eid peacefully...

Week of Death & Destruction in the Muslim World

It is often claimed that Islam is a religion of peace, but how is it substantiated looking at the pictures below?

ISIS' Ramadan terror campaign

Peter Bergen, (CNN) July 3, 2016

In the past two weeks, ISIS has conducted lethal terrorist attacks in Bangladesh, Iraq, Jordan, Yemen, and also, very likely, in Turkey. None of this should be too surprising. After all, ISIS explicitly called for terrorist attacks during the holy month of Ramadan, which commenced four weeks ago.

Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the spokesman for ISIS, released an audiotape in late May in which he called for attacks, saying, "Ramadan, the month of conquest and jihad... make it a month of calamity everywhere for the non-believers."

Seemingly a result of that call, ISIS or its affiliated groups started carrying out multiple attacks across the Middle East. Suicide attackers blew themselves up in a Christian village in Lebanon close to the Syrian border, killing five people.

Also on Monday, a wave of ISIS suicide attacks in Yemen in the southeastern city of Mukalla killed more than 40.

On Tuesday, ISIS claimed credit for a suicide attack that a week earlier had killed seven Jordanian security personnel at a border crossing between Jordan and Syria.

The same day, the Istanbul airport was attacked by three suicide bombers who were almost certainly dispatched by ISIS.

In the past three weeks, ISIS-inspired attackers also struck in the West, first in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people were killed in a gay nightclub -- the most lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 -- and, the day after the Orlando attack, an ISIS terrorist killed a police official and his partner in a town outside Paris.

Unfortunately, we may see more attacks. For Islamist terrorist groups such as ISIS, the holy month of Ramadan -- a time of fasting and prayer for the vast majority of Muslims -- is seen as a particularly auspicious time to launch terrorist attacks.

This is especially the case around the 27th day of Ramadan, the "Night of Power," which is a particularly sacred day for the world's Muslims as it was the time that the Prophet Mohammed started receiving the first verses of the Koran.

On the Night of Power in 2000, which that year fell on January 3, al Qaeda militants attempted to launch a suicide attack against the American warship USS The Sullivans off the coast of Yemen with a bomb-filled boat. The attack failed.

This year, the 27th day of Ramadan fell on July 2. This is the same day that the ISIS attackers in Bangladesh completed their massacre at the restaurant in Dhaka. The militants were all killed by Bengali forces.

The 27th day of Ramadan is also the same day that ISIS launched the attack that killed at least 125 in Baghdad.

If indeed the attacks at Istanbul's airport are the work of ISIS, it would fit into the terrorist organization's current strategy to attack commercial aviation targets. In March, two ISIS suicide bombers launched the attacks at the Brussels airport that killed 15.

In October, ISIS' Egyptian affiliate brought down a Russian commercial jet leaving Sinai airport, killing all 224 people on board, the deadliest attack on commercial aviation since 9/11.

ISIS also has ample motivation to want to attack Turkey. Where the Turks once had a laissez-faire attitude to the tens of thousands of "foreign fighters" who have transited Turkey to join ISIS in neighboring Syria, now the Turks have substantially cut down on ISIS recruits traveling though their country.

In 2015, ISIS, in one of its English language online publications, advised would-be foreign fighters hoping to join the group that, "Turkish intelligence agencies are in no way friends of the Islamic State [ISIS]."

Turkey has also allowed the United States to fly bombing missions aimed at ISIS from airports on Turkish soil.

 

The Collapse of Western Democracy

Couldn't put in better words than Dr Roberts...

The Collapse of Western Democracy

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, July 01, 2016

Paul Craig Roberts 29 June 2016

 

Democracy no longer exists in the West. In the US powerful private interest groups, such as the military-security complex, Wall Street, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness and the extractive industries of energy, timber and mining, have long exercised more control over government than the people. But now even the semblance of democracy has been abandoned.
In the US Donald Trump has won the Republican presidential nomination. However, Republican convention delegates are plotting to deny Trump the nomination that the people have voted him. The Republican political establishment is showing an unwillingness to accept democratic outcomes.
The people chose, but their choice is unacceptable to the establishment which intends to substitute its choice for the people’s choice.
Do you remember Dominic Strauss-Kahn? Strauss-Kahn is the Frenchman who was head of the IMF and, according to polls, the likely next president of France. He said something that sounded too favorable toward the Greek people. This concerned powerful banking interests who worried that he might get in the way of their plunder of Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Italy. A hotel maid appeared who accused him of rape. He was arrested and held without bail. After the police and prosecutors had made fools of themselves, he was released with all charges dropped. But the goal was achieved. Strauss-Kahn had to resign as IMF director and kiss goodbye his chance for the presidency of France.
Curious, isn’t it, that a woman has now appeared who claims Trump raped her when she was 13 years old.
Consider the political establishment’s response to the Brexit vote. Members of Parliament are saying that the vote is unacceptable and that Parliament has the right and responsibility to ignore the voice of the people.
The view now established in the West is that the people are not qualified to make political decisions. The position of the opponents of Brexit is clear: it simply is not a matter for the British people whether their sovereignty is given away to an unaccountable commission in Brussels.
Martin Schultz, President of the EU Parliament, puts it clearly: “It is not the EU philosophy that the crowd can decide its fate.”
The Western media have made it clear that they do not accept the people’s decision either. The vote is said to be “racist” and therefore can be disregarded as illegitimate.
Washington has no intention of permitting the British to exit the European Union. Washington did not work for 60 years to put all of Europe in the EU bag that Washington can control only to let democracy undo its achievement.
The Federal Reserve, its Wall Street allies, and its Bank of Japan and European Central Bank vassals will short the UK pound and equities, and the presstitutes will explain the decline in values as “the market’s” pronouncement that the British vote was a mistake. If Britain is actually permitted to leave, the two-year long negotiations will be used to tie the British into the EU so firmly that Britain leaves in name only.
No one with a brain believes that Europeans are happy that Washington and NATO are driving them into conflict with Russia. Yet their protests have no effect on their governments.
Consider the French protests of what the neoliberal French government, masquerading as socialist, calls “labor law reforms.” What the “reform” does is to take away the reforms that the French people achieved over decades of struggle. The French made employment more stable and less uncertain, thereby reducing stress and contributing to the happiness of life. But the corporations want more profit and regard regulations and laws that benefit people as barriers to higher profitability. Neoliberal economists backed the takeback of French labor rights with the false argument that a humane society causes unemployment. The neoliberal economists call it “liberating the employment market” from reforms achieved by the French people.
The French government, of course, represents corporations, not the French people.
The neoliberal economists and politicians have no qualms about sacrificing the quality of French life in order to clear the way for global corporations to make more profits. What is the value in “the global market” when the result is to worsen the fate of peoples?
Consider the Germans. They are being overrun with refugees from Washington’s wars, wars that the stupid German government enabled. The German people are experiencing increases in crime and sexual attacks. They protest, but their government does not hear them. The German government is more concerned about the refugees than it is about the German people.
Consider the Greeks and the Portuguese forced by their governments to accept personal financial ruin in order to boost the profits of foreign banks. These governments represent foreign bankers, not the Greek and Portuguese people.
One wonders how long before all Western peoples conclude that only a French Revolution complete with guillotine can set them free.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West, How America Was Lost, and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.

The original source of this article is Paul Craig Roberts

Copyright © Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, Paul Craig Roberts, 2016

Proof that Turkey is in bed with IS & Al-Nusra !

Turkey playing middleman's job on behalf of its terrorist masters & patrons...

‘Turkey going crazy, jumps in to save & help terrorists tools’ – Assad’s adviser to RT
19 Feb, 2016

Ankara is going “crazy” over Kurdish and Syrian army advances, which is why it ramped up its support of the so-called “moderate terrorists” and direct violations of Syria’s sovereignty, Assad’s political adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told RT.

Rejecting the avalanche of claims that Damascus and Russian air forces were involved in the bombing of schools and hospitals in Idlib and Alleppo provinces, that according to reports left dozens of civilians dead, Shaaban told RT that the media and politicians are basing their accusations on “unfounded claims...about what the Russians and the Syrian army are doing.”

“What the Syrian army in cooperation with Russian aircraft are doing is fighting terrorism in Syria... And what we are hopeful for is that other countries [will] join, because this terrorism is a threat to the entire[ty of] humanity,” Shaaban stressed.

The success of the anti-terror campaign on the ground, especially along the Turkish border, is making other regional players such as Ankara and Saudi Arabia “go crazy” in their statements and reactions, because they are the ones who are invested so much in “supporting terrorism in Syria,” Shaaban said.

Shaaban accused Ankara of leading the war against Syria by taking advantage of the shared border to allow the infiltration of jihadists “from all over the world” into the Arab Republic.

At a time when the Syrian army and Kurdish forces are making gains on the ground, Turkey is “attacking our cities and villages directly” in order to “save” their investments in the jihadist force they sent into Syria, the adviser said.

“Once Turkey saw that these terrorists are failing or they are being defeated, Turkey jumped in to save them and to help them,” Shaaban said.

The UNSC is yet to respond with an official reaction to a letter from Damascus which requested the world body to “stop” Turkish shelling of the Syrian border towns, the adviser noted, adding that in total Syria has sent “over 300 letters” from the beginning of the crisis outlining Turkish violations.

While violating Syrian sovereignty at the same Ankara is “accusing the Kurds of the things that they are not doing,” Shaaban added.

Turkey leadership’s ambitions, according to Assad’s adviser, go as far as to resurrect the Ottoman Empire and they are using every means possible, including the refugee crisis, to achieve their agenda.

“It is Turkey who started the refugee crisis four years ago. It was Turkey who put tanks on the borders well before any Syrian refugee was at any border,” she said. The only way out of the refugee crisis is for “Europe and Syria to speak together.”

“Turkey dismantled our factories, stole our heritage; has ambitions to recreate the Ottoman Empire in the Arab world...plus Erdogan government is a Muslim Brotherhood government and that is why they are launching this war with all the terrorist tools,” Shaaban added.

The Damascus spokesperson also once again stressed that there is no such a thing as “moderate” terrorism.

“Anyone who carries arms against civilians, against government, against institutions is a terrorist. Political opposition should be dealing with politics, should be in opposition against the government but by political means, without using arms, without killing people, without beheading people,” she said.

“Can terrorism be moderate?,” Shaaban asked rhetorically, noting that the gruesome 2013 footage showing a Syrian rebel commander who cut out the heart of a fallen enemy soldier before eating it, was a fighter with the Free Syrian Army, which the US and their coalition consider to be part of the “moderate” force.

The adviser did not deny that the conflict results in unfortunate collateral damage and accidental civilian deaths, but insisted that the only way to stop innocent people from dying is to “put an end to terrorism” and to stop arming and funding the extremists by strictly following the United Nations security council resolution that forbids countries supporting jihadist groups in Syria.

“There are all the means available if there is a real will to put an end to terrorism. There is the Security Council resolution 2235, which should force countries to stop financing, arming, facilitating and sending mercenaries and terrorist into Syria,” Shaaban told RT.

“I hope that the Western world would stop looking at Erdogan’s government as the means to help them whether in fighting terrorism or stopping the refugee crisis,” Shaaban said. “We would wish that Russia and America and all countries in the world would join forces in fighting terrorism...instead of exchanging accusations which lead nowhere.”

Turkey's illegal oil business with IS terrorists

Turkey caught red-handed...

‘Oxygen for jihadists’: ISIS-smuggled oil flows through Turkey to intl markets – Iraqi MP
RT, 29 Nov, 2015

Terroist group Islamic State earns millions of dollars selling oil on the black market in Turkey, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie told RT. He also revealed that wounded terrorists are being treated in Turkish hospitals.

“In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell ... $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold ...[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price,” Mowaffak al Rubaie said in an interview with RT.

“Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market.”

“Money and dollars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market  is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it’s operation,” he added. “Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate.”

The Iraqi MP said there is “no shadow of a doubt” that the Turkish government knows about the oil smuggling operations. “The merchants, the businessmen [are buying oil] in the black market in Turkey under the noses – under the auspices if you like – of the Turkish intelligence agency and the Turkish security apparatus,” he said.

Citing Iraqi intelligence services, Mowaffak al Rubaie also accused Turkey of providing medical treatment to terrorists in hospitals along the border and at times even in “Istanbul itself.”

“There are security officers who are sympathizing with ISIS in Turkey,” the Iraqi politician believes. “They are allowing them to go from Istanbul to the borders and infiltrate ... Syria and Iraq.”

“There is no terrorist organization which can stand alone, without a neighboring country helping it – in this case Turkey,” Rubaie said, urging Ankara to come clean and join the international efforts to destroy the terror group.

Russia considers ISIS oil smuggling operations to be one of the highest priority targets in crippling the terror group’s finances and capabilities. Moscow has long been requesting that Ankara properly addresses reports of its alleged involvement with ISIS oil smuggling.

President Putin himself noted that it was “hard to believe, but it is theoretically possible” that the Turkish leadership knows nothing about oil flowing into Turkey illegally. However he noted that the operations are too daring and obvious to ignore.

“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, comparing the views seen by Russian pilots and drones to a “living oil pipe” stretched from ISIS and rebel controlled areas of Syria into Turkey. “Day and night they are going to Turkey. Trucks always go there loaded, and back from there – empty,” Putin said earlier this week.

Syrian oil is the gravy for the Turkey, without it the turkey will be too dry.

==

Islamic State’s daring and impudent oil smuggling into Turkey should become a high-priority target in order to cripple the terrorist group, President Putin said, backed by French President Francois Hollande. Both agree that the source of terrorist financing must be hit first and foremost.

Commercial-scale oil smuggling from Islamic State controlled territory into Turkey must be stopped, Putin said after meeting Hollande in Moscow.

“Vehicles, carrying oil, lined up in a chain going beyond the horizon,” said Putin, reminding the press that the scale of the issue was discussed at the G20 summit in Antalya earlier this month, where the Russian leader demonstrated reconnaissance footage taken by Russian pilots.

The views resemble a “living oil pipe” stretched from ISIS and rebel controlled areas of Syria into Turkey, the Russian President stressed. “Day and night they are going to Turkey. Trucks always go there loaded, and back from there – empty.”

--

Israel is the Main Purchaser of ISIS Oil
By Enrico Braun
Global Research, December 05, 2015
Russian Insider 3 December 2015

Multiple reports claim that Israel is the top purchaser of smuggled ISIS oil

ISIS oil is transported to Israel via Turkey, according to reports

Citing multiple sources, the Israeli business press are now reporting that Israel is the main recipient of ISIS oil:

Kurdish and Turkish smugglers are transporting oil from ISIS controlled territory in Syria and Iraq and selling it to Israel, according to several reports in the Arab and Russian media. An estimated 20,000-40,000 barrels of oil are produced daily in ISIS controlled territory generating $1-1.5 million daily profit for the terrorist organization.

The oil is extracted from Dir A-Zur in Syria and two fields in Iraq and transported to the Kurdish city of Zakhu in a triangle of land near the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. Israeli and Turkish mediators come to the city and when prices are agreed, the oil is smuggled to the Turkish city of Silop marked as originating from Kurdish regions of Iraq and sold for $15-18 per barrel (WTI and Brent Crude currently sell for $41 and $45 per barrel) to the Israeli mediator, a man in his 50s with dual Greek-Israeli citizenship known as Dr. Farid. He transports the oil via several Turkish ports and then onto other ports, with Israel among the main destinations.

In August, the “Financial Times” reported that Israel obtained 75% of its oil supplies from Iraqi Kurdistan. More than a third of such exports go through the port of Ceyhan, which the FT describe as a “potential gateway for ISIS-smuggled crude.”

It’s been well-established that Turkey is a major transportation hub for ISIS oil smuggling operations. But where is the oil sent? Someone has to buy it. The answer, apparently, is: Israel.

Al-Araby published an extensive investigation which lays out in detail how oil is transported from ISIS-controlled wells to Israel via Turkey.

 

Readers' Comments:

Recall how quickly US VP Biden went to Turkey to apologize to Erdogan after Biden had badmouthed Erdogan, Turkey at a Harvard speech. Recall also that Benghazi was a US CIA gun running operation with weapons sent to Turkey then being forwarded to rebels in Syria Just lookup Benghazi online. Turkey was the US contact with anti Syrian mercenaries. Recall also pictures of "accidental" US air drops of equipment in Turkey, and mercenaries in a hundred or so Toyota trucks on mountain roads, with no US air force in sight, despite they were no doubt seen on satellite.

We all know that war is big business. There's always going to be another false flag and there's always going to be another bogeyman. The industrial war complex is bigger business than gas and oil combined. Welcome to our new world people. The one we all sat back an watched happen before our very eyes!

US created ISIS so that they can steal more oil.

Collected by journalists and presented by RT Solid evidences do ruin USA and Turkey mystic legend about no involvement of them into Stolen Syrian Oil Smuggling.
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US, Turkey and Merkel are beneficiaries from this dirty business built up on violation of International Laws, Killing Syrians and Support of ISIS.
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The Devil Stamp of War Criminals is on Foreheads of Obama, Erdogan and Merkel!!!

I believe that Nuttyahoo is by far more dangerous. He is completely protected by The Almighty, plus most of it's citizens, especially all the financial moguls and he has the rest of the world leaders not being able to criticize anything Israel as that is anti-Semitic. Don't forget his nuclear arsenal. He wins on all fronts.

ErDOGan is absolutely the primary terrorist leader in the middle east, followed by their brothers in blood, israel. The saudi collective are merely repulsive despots.

Erdognan is a tyrant and the EU gave him £6 Billion?. NATO invades Syria with impunity and helps ISIL by purchasing stolen Syrian oil which funds ISIL and enables ISIL and other terrorists in Syria to buy weapons off NATO. USA government which turns a blind eye to Turkeys daily violations' of human rights and imprisonment of journalists and innocent people who do not agree with the NATO tyrant Erdogan.

When will these Turks realize what they are doing. They're constantly voting for a theocratic-fascist leader who does nothing but destroy his country's media, abolish freedom of speech, destroy other nations and threatens superpowers. Do the Turks really want their future to be like that of Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany? I guess some people just don't get the fact that History Repeats Itself for those who don't know history.

The whole world knows that the EU buys this oil via Erdogan. The US and NATO are actively involved in this process. The worldwide and international institutions captured by US puppets. Yesterday in the UN, the US and UK blocked a report on the tragedy in Odessa. US - is the octopus and its tentacles have to hack. Only severing the tentacles, we can change the world. Diplomacy and journalism dead. We need a war against aggression US, to free the world from the fascist octopus USA democrats. Or throw out a dollar in the trash.

Trump v. Clinton: Both Unfit to Serve the country

Couldn't agree more than the author...

Trump v. Clinton: Both Widely Reviled, Unfit to Serve. “Americans Want Neither Candidate”
By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, June 12, 2016

Polls show most US voters want neither candidate elected president. One or the other will succeed Obama, continuing his deplorable agenda, likely exceeding his contempt for democratic values and rule of law principles – including four more years of endless imperial wars at home and abroad.

Comments the presumptive candidates made in Friday speeches signaled what’s shaping up as likely the nastiest rough and tumble campaign in memory.

They focused on pejoratives, each calling the other unfit to serve – likely a rare truthful comment either aspirant will make throughout the summer/fall campaign.

“When Donald Trump says ‘(l)et’s make America great again,’ that is code language for let’s take America backward,” Clinton blustered.

She ignored her unaccountable high crimes of war and against humanity as first lady, US senator, and secretary of state, as well as the Clinton crime family’s foundation, a racketeering operation masquerading as a charitable NGO.

Will Trump raise these issues in the weeks ahead? Failure to highlight them so far suggests not, featuring pejorative mudslinging instead.

Pretending to support progressive issues her public record shows otherwise, Clinton blasted Trump, saying he’ll “take us in the wrong direction on so many issues that we care about.”

She consistently ignores her longstanding pro-war, pro-Wall Street, pro-business, anti-labor, anti-populist agenda – including her deplorable record as arguably America’s worst ever secretary of state.

Trump was largely restrained, addressing an evangelical conference, mostly sticking to prepared remarks, using a teleprompter he usually spurns.

“Hillary Clinton has jeopardized, totally jeopardized, national security by putting her emails on a private server all to hide her corrupt dealings,” he told attendees.

“Bill and Hillary made $153 million, giving speeches to special interest groups since 2001. These donors own Hillary Clinton,” saying he spent $55 million of his own money on his campaign to date.

He defended Washington’s indefensible war on Islam, calling it “radical Islamic terrorism,” ignoring its US creation and support, an agenda he’ll follow if elected president.

“We will defend Christian Americans,” he blustered – for emphasis repeating “Christian Americans.”

Clinton will appoint “radical judges who will legislate from the bench…abolish the Second Amendment and destroy the rule of law.”

Trump ignored today’s federal courts stacked with right-wing extremists, notably America’s Supremes, mostly pro-dirty business as usual, largely likeminded under Democrat and Republican administrations since the Warren court, progressive jurists excluded from consideration.

Trump claiming “(w)e’re going to bring our nation together” belies a bipartisan system run by monied interest, self-serving oligarch governance, benefitting themselves exclusively, popular needs and concerns increasingly ignored.

Trump v. Clinton in November highlights fascist tyranny’s triumph over democratic rule. Continuing the worst of Bush/Obama awaits – possible WW III if war goddess Clinton wins.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

ISIS is IsraHell's strange bedfellow...

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