TBR News April 6, 2017

Apr 06 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. April 6, 2017: “As in the years before the outbreak of the First World War, tensions began to build in the Balkans and as the various national leaders

were inept and careless, the war erupted and flattened every one and ruined Europe.

Now we can clearly observe the tensions building in the Middle East. To analyze them is not impossible but useless.

Larger nations, through proxies, make secret wars on each other but the end result, clearly coming, will prove to be as destructive as the 1914 war and probably more so.

As an example, we have the breathless reports of “gassings” in Syria.

America blames the legitimate Syrian government, and though them the Russians but the Sarin gas used has been manufactured in the United States and recently, used by their Turkish allies against the Kurds, an ethnic group Turkey is determined to destroy, just as they destroyed the Christian Armenians in 1916.

Perhaps another Archduke will be assassinated and then we can all move to the cellars and pray to whatever God is available.”

Table of Contents

  • Syria denies & condemns use of chemical weapons – foreign minister
  • Russia and Syria counter claims of responsibility for “gas attack”
  • Comment
  • What if Putin is Telling the Truth?
  • Alternative Facts at the NYT
  • Duterte to ‘raise the Philippine flag’ in South China Sea
  • Is North Korea putting a nuclear-tipped bargaining chip on the table?
  • Erdogan Isn’t as Strong as He Looks – That’s What Makes Him Dangerous
  • Hungary passes bill targeting Soros-funded university

 Syria denies & condemns use of chemical weapons – foreign minister

April 6, 2017

RT

Syria’s foreign minister has dismissed allegations that the Syrian Army had deployed chemical weapons in the city of Idlib, saying the military will never use such weapons against its own people or even terrorists.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem denied claims that the military used chemical weapons in the western city of Idlib. Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, Muallem said an airstrike by Syrian military had targeted an arms depot where chemical weapons stockpiles were stored by Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Nusra Front militants.

He said it’s impossible that the army – which has been making significant gains in almost all theaters of the Syrian war – would use banned chemical weapons against its “own people” and even terrorists.

Asked if Damascus would allow a fact-finding mission into the Idlib incident, Muallem said past experience of similar investigations was “not encouraging.” He also said that he could not predict “the reality of US intentions” in Syria.

Muallem added that such a mission must not be politicized and must start its operations “from Damascus, not Turkey,” apparently referring to the latest statements by Ankara condemning the incident, as well as the fact that some victims were taken to Turkey for autopsy.

‘Monstrous crime’

Meanwhile, Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, said the Kremlin believes the Syrian military will do its utmost to prevent chemical agents from falling into the hands of terrorists.

“This was indeed a dangerous and monstrous crime, but in our opinion, it would be wrong to point fingers,” Peskov told reporters on Thursday. The Kremlin spokesman said Moscow does not agree with assessments provided by certain Western countries.

“Immediately after the tragedy no one had access to this area, so no one could have hard verifiable data. Consequently, any information which the US side or our colleagues from other countries might have had access to, could not be based on objective facts,” Peskov told reporters.

Though Peskov rejected “hasty assessments” of the alleged use of chemical weapons, he emphasized that there are always disagreements between Moscow and Washington, but mutual discords over the Idlib incident are unlikely to affect “the spirit of our cooperation.”

Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry dismissed as “unsubstantiated” statements by US Vice-President Mike Pence that Moscow and Damascus had failed to fulfill their obligations under a landmark 2013 deal to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons arsenals.

“I wouldn’t use profane language, especially when it comes to the second-most powerful man in the US administration, but I do believe that this is ignorance rather than irresponsibility,” Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the ministry’s Arms Control Department, said.

“The new administration has only recently begun reviewing its policy. Once that’s done, American officials’ statements, I hope, will become more accurate. There is no reason to say the US-Russia agreements [on eliminations Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles] did not work,” Ulyanov stated.

 

Russia and Syria counter claims of responsibility for “gas attack

Moscow and Damascus blamed rebel stockpiles of chemical weapons for the tragedy that has cost scores of civilians’ lives. Turkey said autopsies revealed the victims were likely subjected to the illegal nerve agent sarin.

April 6, 2017

DW

Moscow and Damascus blamed rebel stockpiles of chemical weapons for the tragedy that has cost scores of civilians’ lives. Turkey said autopsies revealed the victims were likely subjected to the illegal nerve agent sarin.

World powers engaged in a series of blame trading and increasingly volatile rhetoric on Thursday in the aftermath of a suspected gas attack in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun.

One day after Russia vetoed a United Nations resolution put forward by the UK, US and France to blame Damascus for the attack, Moscow backed a claim by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the catastrophe was the result of an airstrike against a rebel warehouse that happened to be storing chemical weapons.

The Kremlin issued a statement saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin found it “unacceptable to make groundless accusations against anyone without conducting a detailed and unbiased investigation.”

According to activists, at least 86 people were killed due to the release of a chemical nerve agent, and hundreds more needed medical attention for respiratory problems and other severe injuries. The attack occurred in Idlib province, an area on the Turkish border mostly controlled by al-Qaeda affiliated rebels.

Turkey suspects sarin use

Despite initial confusion over the exact nature of the substance, the Turkish Health Ministry said on Thursday that it had conducted autopsies on several victims and could confirm that they had been subjected to chemical weapons, most likely the internationally outlawed sarin gas.

The French government immediately called for Assad regime to be prosecuted over the incident.

“These crimes must not remain unpunished…one day, international justice will rule on Assad,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in an interview with CNews television. German Chancellor Angela Merkel added that it was a “scandal” that the UN resolution had failed.

Syria: International inquiry only under our conditions

Damascus has said it is open to the idea of an international investigation, but only on very strict terms. Top diplomat Walid al-Moualem said Syria had been subjected to biased inquiries by the global community in the past, and would not allow that to happen again.

“It must not be politicised, it must leave from Damascus and not Turkey. We have numerous questions about this subject. When we are certain these questions are addressed with convincing answers, we will give you our response,” he said.

Moualem also reiterated the claim, echoed by Moscow, that the tragedy occurred because the rebels had been stockpiling sarin gas, and the Syrian army had no way of knowing it was there.

“I confirm to you once again that the Syrian Arab Army has not and will not use this type of weapon against our people and our children, and not even against the terrorists who kill our people,” the foreign minister said.

Comment: Sarin was discovered in 1938 in Germany by members of the technical staff at IG Farben.

They had been attempting to create stronger pesticides.

The German Army developed Sarin as a war gas and put it in 150mm artillery shells.

Never used, the stocks of the gas fell into British and American military hands at the end of the war.

At Rocky Mountain Arsenal, located in the Denver Metropolitan Area in Commerce City, Colorado, operated by the United States Army throughout the later 20th century, Sarin was produced for military use and this officially ceased although though existing stocks of bulk sarin were re-distilled.

Earlier, in March of 1988, the ethnic Kurdish city of Halabja in northern Iraq was bombarded with chemical bombs, by elements of the Turkish Army which included American-supplied Sarin.

A conservative estimate puts the death toll there at 5,000.

Production and stockpiling of Sarin was outlawed, under international law, as of April 1997 although the U.S. military is known to have stocks of the gas in storage and the Turks have known quantities which, reports say, are earmarked for use against the Kurds.

As IS, as a Saudi/US Sunni Moslem organization, has connections with Turkey, their stockpiling and intended use of Sarin against the Shi’ite Syrians is a more than logical conclusion. Ed

What if Putin is Telling the Truth?

May 15,2015

  1. William Engdahl

NEO

On April 26 Russia’s main national TV station, Rossiya 1, featured President Vladimir Putin in a documentary to the Russian people on the events of the recent period including the annexation of Crimea, the US coup d’etat in Ukraine, and the general state of relations with the United States and the EU. His words were frank. And in the middle of his remarks the Russian former KGB chief dropped a political bombshell that was known by Russian intelligence two decades ago.

Putin stated bluntly that in his view the West would only be content in having a Russia weak, suffering and begging from the West, something clearly the Russian character is not disposed to. Then a short way into his remarks, the Russian President stated for the first time publicly something that Russian intelligence has known for almost two decades but kept silent until now, most probably in hopes of an era of better normalized Russia-US relations.

Putin stated that the terror in Chechnya and in the Russian Caucasus in the early 1990’s was actively backed by the CIA and western Intelligence services to deliberately weaken Russia. He noted that the Russian FSB foreign intelligence had documentation of the US covert role without giving details.

What Putin, an intelligence professional of the highest order, only hinted at in his remarks, I have documented in detail from non-Russian sources. The report has enormous implications to reveal to the world the long-standing hidden agenda of influential circles in Washington to destroy Russia as a functioning sovereign state, an agenda which includes the neo-nazi coup d’etat in Ukraine and severe financial sanction warfare against Moscow. The following is drawn on my book, “The Lost Hegemon” to be published soon…

CIA’s Chechen Wars

Not long after the CIA and Saudi Intelligence-financed Mujahideen had devastated Afghanistan at the end of the 1980’s, forcing the exit of the Soviet Army in 1989, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself some months later, the CIA began to look at possible places in the collapsing Soviet Union where their trained “Afghan Arabs” could be redeployed to further destabilize Russian influence over the post-Soviet Eurasian space.

They were called Afghan Arabs because they had been recruited from ultraconservative Wahhabite Sunni Muslims from Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and elsewhere in the Arab world where the ultra-strict Wahhabite Islam was practiced. They were brought to Afghanistan in the early 1980’s by a Saudi CIA recruit who had been sent to Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden.

With the former Soviet Union in total chaos and disarray, George H.W. Bush’s Administration decided to “kick ‘em when they’re down,” a sad error. Washington redeployed their Afghan veteran terrorists to bring chaos and destabilize all of Central Asia, even into the Russian Federation itself, then in a deep and traumatic crisis during the economic collapse of the Yeltsin era.

In the early 1990s, Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton, had surveyed the offshore oil potentials of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the entire Caspian Sea Basin. They estimated the region to be “another Saudi Arabia” worth several trillion dollars on today’s market. The US and UK were determined to keep that oil bonanza from Russian control by all means. The first target of Washington was to stage a coup in Azerbaijan against elected president Abulfaz Elchibey to install a President more friendly to a US-controlled Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, “the world’s most political pipeline,” bringing Baku oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey and the Mediterranean.

At that time, the only existing oil pipeline from Baku was a Soviet era Russian pipeline that ran through the Chechen capital, Grozny, taking Baku oil north via Russia’s Dagestan province, and across Chechenya to the Black Sea Russian port of Novorossiysk. The pipeline was the only competition and major obstacle to the very costly alternative route of Washington and the British and US oil majors.

President Bush Sr. gave his old friends at CIA the mandate to destroy that Russian Chechen pipeline and create such chaos in the Caucasus that no Western or Russian company would consider using the Grozny Russian oil pipeline.

Graham E. Fuller, an old colleague of Bush and former Deputy Director of the CIA National Council on Intelligence had been a key architect of the CIA Mujahideen strategy. Fuller described the CIA strategy in the Caucasus in the early 1990s: “The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power.”6

The CIA used a dirty tricks veteran, General Richard Secord, for the operation. Secord created a CIA front company, MEGA Oil. Secord had been convicted in the 1980s for his central role in the CIA’s Iran-Contra illegal arms and drugs operations.

In 1991 Secord, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, landed in Baku and set up the CIA front company, MEGA Oil. He was a veteran of the CIA covert opium operations in Laos during the Vietnam War. In Azerbaijan, he setup an airline to secretly fly hundreds of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda Mujahideen from Afghanistan into Azerbaijan. By 1993, MEGA Oil had recruited and armed 2,000 Mujahideen, converting Baku into a base for Caucasus-wide Mujahideen terrorist operations.

General Secord’s covert Mujahideen operation in the Caucasus initiated the military coup that toppled elected president Abulfaz Elchibey that year and installed Heydar Aliyev, a more pliable US puppet. A secret Turkish intelligence report leaked to the Sunday Times of London confirmed that “two petrol giants, BP and Amoco, British and American respectively, which together form the AIOC (Azerbaijan International Oil Consortium), are behind the coup d’état.”

Saudi Intelligence head, Turki al-Faisal, arranged that his agent, Osama bin Laden, whom he had sent to Afghanistan at the start of the Afghan war in the early 1980s, would use his Afghan organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) to recruit “Afghan Arabs” for what was rapidly becoming a global Jihad. Bin Laden’s mercenaries were used as shock troops by the Pentagon and CIA to coordinate and support Muslim offensives not only Azerbaijan but also in Chechnya and, later, Bosnia.

Bin Laden brought in another Saudi, Ibn al-Khattab, to become Commander, or Emir of Jihadist Mujahideen in Chechnya (sic!) together with Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. No matter that Ibn al-Khattab was a Saudi Arab who spoke barely a word of Chechen, let alone, Russian. He knew what Russian soldiers looked like and how to kill them.

Chechnya then was traditionally a predominantly Sufi society, a mild apolitical branch of Islam. Yet the increasing infiltration of the well-financed and well-trained US-sponsored Mujahideen terrorists preaching Jihad or Holy War against Russians transformed the initially reformist Chechen resistance movement. They spread al-Qaeda’s hardline Islamist ideology across the Caucasus. Under Secord’s guidance, Mujahideen terrorist operations had also quickly extended into neighboring Dagestan and Chechnya, turning Baku into a shipping point for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia.

From the mid-1990s, bin Laden paid Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab the handsome sum of several million dollars per month, a King’s fortune in economically desolate Chechnya in the 1990s, enabling them to sideline the moderate Chechen majority.21 US intelligence remained deeply involved in the Chechen conflict until the end of the 1990s. According to Yossef Bodansky, then Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in “yet another anti-Russian jihad, seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces.”

Bodansky revealed the entire CIA Caucasus strategy in detail in his report, stating that US Government officials participated in,

“a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in December 1999 in which specific programs for the training and equipping of Mujahideen from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon, culminating in Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US ‘private security companies’. . . to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing Jihad for a long time…Islamist Jihad in the Caucasus as a way to deprive Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism.”

The most intense phase of the Chechen wars wound down in 2000 only after heavy Russian military action defeated the Islamists. It was a pyrrhic victory, costing a massive toll in human life and destruction of entire cities. The exact death toll from the CIA-instigated Chechen conflict is unknown. Unofficial estimates ranged from 25,000 to 50,000 dead or missing, mostly civilians. Russian casualties were near 11,000 according to the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers.

The Anglo-American oil majors and the CIA’s operatives were happy. They had what they wanted: their Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline, bypassing Russia’s Grozny pipeline.

The Chechen Jihadists, under the Islamic command of Shamil Basayev, continued guerrilla attacks in and outside Chechnya. The CIA had refocused into the Caucasus.

Basayev’s Saudi Connection

Basayev was a key part of the CIA’s Global Jihad. In 1992, he met Saudi terrorist Ibn al-Khattag in Azerbaijan. From Azerbaijan, Ibn al-Khattab brought Basayev to Afghanistan to meet al-Khattab’s ally, fellow-Saudi Osama bin Laden. Ibn al-Khattab’s role was to recruit Chechen Muslims willing to wage Jihad against Russian forces in Chechnya on behalf of the covert CIA strategy of destabilizing post-Soviet Russia and securing British-US control over Caspian energy.

Once back in Chechnya, Basayev and al-Khattab created the International Islamic Brigade (IIB) with Saudi Intelligence money, approved by the CIA and coordinated through the liaison of Saudi Washington Ambassador and Bush family intimate Prince Bandar bin Sultan. Bandar, Saudi Washington Ambassador for more than two decades, was so intimate with the Bush family that George W. Bush referred to the playboy Saudi Ambassador as “Bandar Bush,” a kind of honorary family member.

Basayev and al-Khattab imported fighters from the Saudi fanatical Wahhabite strain of Sunni Islam into Chechnya. Ibn al-Khattab commanded what were called the “Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya,” his own private army of Arabs, Turks, and other foreign fighters. He was also commissioned to set up paramilitary training camps in the Caucasus Mountains of Chechnya that trained Chechens and Muslims from the North Caucasian Russian republics and from Central Asia.

The Saudi and CIA-financed Islamic International Brigade was responsible not only for terror in Chechnya. They carried out the October 2002 Moscow Dubrovka Theatre hostage seizure and the gruesome September 2004 Beslan school massacre. In 2010, the UN Security Council published the following report on al-Khattab and Basayev’s International Islamic Brigade:

Islamic International Brigade (IIB) was listed on 4 March 2003. . . as being associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban for “participating in the financing, planning, facilitating, preparing or perpetrating of acts or activities by, in conjunction with, under the name of, on behalf or in support of” Al-Qaida. . . The Islamic International Brigade (IIB) was founded and led by Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (deceased) and is linked to the Riyadus-Salikhin Reconnaissance and Sabotage Battalion of Chechen Martyrs (RSRSBCM). . . and the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment (SPIR). . .

On the evening of 23 October 2002, members of IIB, RSRSBCM and SPIR operated jointly to seize over 800 hostages at Moscow’s Podshipnikov Zavod (Dubrovka) Theater.

In October 1999, emissaries of Basayev and Al-Khattab traveled to Usama bin Laden’s home base in the Afghan province of Kandahar, where Bin Laden agreed to provide substantial military assistance and financial aid, including by making arrangements to send to Chechnya several hundred fighters to fight against Russian troops and perpetrate acts of terrorism. Later that year, Bin Laden sent substantial amounts of money to Basayev, Movsar Barayev (leader of SPIR) and Al-Khattab, which was to be used exclusively for training gunmen, recruiting mercenaries and buying ammunition.

The Afghan-Caucasus Al Qaeda “terrorist railway,” financed by Saudi intelligence, had two goals. One was a Saudi goal to spread fanatical Wahhabite Jihad into the Central Asian region of the former Soviet Union. The second was the CIA’s agenda of destabilizing a then-collapsing post-Soviet Russian Federation.

Beslan

On September 1, 2004, armed terrorists from Basayev and al-Khattab’s IIB took more than 1,100 people as hostages in a siege that included 777 children, and forced them into School Number One (SNO) in Beslan in North Ossetia, the autonomous republic in the North Caucasus of the Russian Federation near to the Georgia border.

On the third day of the hostage crisis, as explosions were heard inside the school, FSB and other elite Russian troops stormed the building. In the end, at least 334 hostages were killed, including 186 children, with a significant number of people injured and reported missing. It became clear afterward that the Russian forces had handled the intervention poorly.

The Washington propaganda machine, from Radio Free Europe to The New York Times and CNN, wasted no time demonizing Putin and Russia for their bad handling of the Beslan crisis rather than focus on the links of Basayev to Al Qaeda and Saudi intelligence. That would have brought the world’s attention to the intimate relations between the family of then US President George W. Bush and the Saudi billionaire bin Laden family.

On September 1, 2001, just ten days before the day of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, Saudi Intelligence head US-educated Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, who had directed Saudi Intelligence since 1977, including through the entire Osama bin Laden Mujahideen operation in Afghanistan and into the Caucasus, abruptly and inexplicably resigned, just days after having accepted a new term as intelligence head from his King. He gave no explanation. He was quickly reposted to London, away from Washington.

The record of the bin Laden-Bush family intimate ties was buried, in fact entirely deleted on “national security” (sic!) grounds in the official US Commission Report on 911. The Saudi background of fourteen of the nineteen alleged 911 terrorists in New York and Washington was also deleted from the US Government’s final 911 Commission report, released only in July 2004 by the Bush Administration, almost three years after the events.

Basayev claimed credit for having sent the terrorists to Beslan. His demands had included the complete independence of Chechnya from Russia, something that would have given Washington and the Pentagon an enormous strategic dagger in the southern underbelly of the Russian Federation.

By late 2004, in the aftermath of the tragic Beslan drama, President Vladimir Putin reportedly ordered a secret search and destroy mission by Russian intelligence to hunt and kill key leaders of the Caucasus Mujahideen of Basayev. Al-Khattab had been killed in 2002. The Russian security forces soon discovered that most of the Chechen Afghan Arab terrorists had fled. They had gotten safe haven in Turkey, a NATO member; in Azerbaijan, by then almost a NATO Member; or in Germany, a NATO Member; or in Dubai–one of the closest US Allies in the Arab States, and Qatar-another very close US ally. In other words, the Chechen terrorists were given NATO safe haven.

Alternative Facts at the NYT

The paper of record goes out of its way to downplay the Susan Rice revelations.

April 5, 2017

by Robert W. Merry

The American Conservative

Kellyanne Conway took a lot of heat some weeks back for suggesting that there could be “alternative facts” in political discourse, and no doubt she deserved it. But now we seem to have alternative news outlets giving starkly alternative interpretations of the facts, which seems pretty similar to alternative facts. The journalistic equivalent of Ms. Conway’s unfortunate digression can be seen in Tuesday’s New York Times and its handling of a highly significant Bloomberg View article about the mishandling of intelligence information in the Obama White House.

Bloomberg reporter Eli Lake revealed that White House lawyers learned last month that “on dozens of occasions” Susan Rice, President Obama’s national-security adviser, sought the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports. It turns out that these persons were connected to Donald Trump’s campaign and transition effort.

We have all learned in recent weeks that the names of American citizens can be pulled into intelligence-gathering operations involving foreigners—say, for example, when foreign officials are discussing Trump operatives or when foreign officials are actually conversing with Trump team members. But the identities of U.S. citizens typically are “masked” so they aren’t known outside closely controlled intelligence circles.

But Rice repeatedly asked for, and was granted, the identity of at least one Trump official, to be pieced together with information on what he had been doing. Lake quoted one unidentified U.S. official as saying this was “valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates in foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.”

In other words, this had all the markings of political espionage—an effort to find out, through misuse of intelligence-gathering methods, what the opposition was doing and planning. Lake leaves no doubt that this isn’t how things normally are supposed to be done in our government. “Indeed,” he writes, “much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated.”

And how does the New York Times play it? It plays it down, way down.

The headline reveals the “alternative facts” sensibility of the paper: “Trump tries to deflect scrutiny on Russia, citing a ‘crooked scheme’ by Obama.”

In other words, the Times sees no significance in what Susan Rice did except insofar as it unleashed another unconscionable and flimsy screed from the president. The paper suggests that the president’s “broadside” accompanied reports “in conservative media” (the alternative media, as the Times apparently views it) about Rice’s activities. The Times lead makes clear that the reporters, Peter Baker and Matthew Rosenberg, will not under any foreseeable circumstances take seriously the questions raised by Bloomberg.

“President Donald Trump,” they write, “sought to turn attention away from the Russia investigation Monday, saying that ‘the real story’ was what he called a ‘crooked scheme against us’ by President Barack Obama’s team to mine U.S. intelligence reports for information about him during last year’s presidential campaign.”

The reporters then inform us that they talked to former national-security officials (presumably Obama people) “who spoke on the condition of anonymity” and described the Rice requests as “normal and justified.” The reporters then helpfully explain, “The process of ‘unmasking’ Americans whose names are redacted in intelligence reports, they said, is not the same thing as leaking them publicly.”

A good thing, too, because leaking them publicly would be illegal. But the Times itself has reported that Obama issued an executive order allowing for much greater distribution of intelligence reports within the national-security apparatus, thus rendering them more likely to be leaked. And the Times also reported that Obama administration officials, in the last days of their tenure, scrambled to ensure that raw intelligence information, which is closely held, was processed into reports that could be more freely disseminated.

The aim, according to the Times, was to ensure that Trump officials couldn’t take control of that information and thus prevent disclosure of evidence related to possible Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election—or worse, cover up proof of collusion between the Trump team and Russia. The Times reported all this breathlessly, giving rise to inevitable suspicions on the part of discerning readers that surely the Times was on to a big story.

But no proof of any such collusion has emerged, which isn’t say it didn’t happen but does suggest perhaps a more measured approach by the Times might be in order.

On the other hand, it now has become difficult to ignore this evidence that at least some Obama officials did in fact collect political information on the opposition Trump team. The Wall Street Journal editorial page reports a source’s revelation that Rice “also examined dozens of other intelligence summaries that technically masked Trump official identities but were written in such a way as to make obvious who those officials were.” Thus, says the Journal, the masking was “meaningless.”

In a particularly telling revelation, the Journal also says its source said that “none of these documents had anything to do with Russia or the FBI investigations into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.” That removes the cover that the Obama people were simply trying to protect the country from that apparent collusion.

The Journal, which has not been particularly favorable to Trump since his emergence in last year’s presidential campaign, says the news about Rice’s unmaking role “raises a host of questions” for the congressional intelligence committees as they pursue their investigations into the questions surrounding possible Russian activities and political surveillance. For example: “What specific surveillance information did Ms. Rice seek and why? Was this information related to President Obama’s decision in January to make it possible for raw intelligence to be widely disbursed throughout the government? Was this surveillance of Trump officials ‘incidental’ collection gathered while listening to a foreigner, or were some Trump officials directly targeted, or ‘reverse targeted’?”

Good questions, all. But don’t expect the New York Times to answer them, let alone ask them. The folks there are chasing alternative facts.

Duterte to ‘raise the Philippine flag’ in South China Sea

The Philippine president has ordered troops to deploy to the South China Sea to assert the country’s regional claims. Duterte’s plan is likely to anger China  which claims the majority of the region.

April 6, 2017

DW

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered troops to occupy and fortify all Philippine-claimed islands and reefs in the South China Sea, he said Thursday.

The islands have several rival claimants including Beiing. China asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, over which about $5 trillion (4.7 trillion euros) worth of seaborne goods pass every year. Despite protests from its Southeast Asian neighbors, Beijing has built reefs into artificial islands able to house military planes.

Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan also have claims in the disputed waterway, and the Philippines is just joining the crowded race to control territory in the area, Duterte said.

“It looks like everybody is making a grab for the islands there, so we better live on those that are still vacant,” he said during a visit to a military camp on the western island of Palawan, near the disputed Spratly island group.

A back-and-forth with Beijing

Under Duterte’s predecessor Benigno Aquino, the Philippines actively challenged China’s claims. But Duterte, who assumed office last year on promises to kill thousands of drug dealers and addicts, sought instead to improve his nation’s relations with China.

The controversial president initially implemented a non-confrontational approach to the strategically important waters as he sought billions of dollars in investments and grants from Beijing.

Despite the fast-warming relationship, Duterte, who joked on the campaign trail that would jet ski to a Chinese man-made island to reinforce Manila’s claim, has again changed his tone. It was now the time “erect structures there and raise the Philippine flag,” he said Thursday.

Last June, Chinese coast guard vessels prevented a Philippine nationalist group from planting a national flag on a rock outcrop in another part of the South China Sea.

“I have ordered the armed forces to occupy all. At least, let us get what is ours now and make a strong point there that it is ours,” Duterte said..

He added Manila was claiming “nine or 10” land masses in the Spratly Islands, a disputed group of 14 islands, reefs or cays, including a marooned naval ship. The vessel intentionally grounded atop the Second Thomas Shoal in the late 1990s in response to China’s occupation of Mischief Reef.

Duterte also said he “may” visit the Philippine-claimed areas on June 12 to mark the 119th year of Philippine independence from more than three centuries of Spanish rule.

“In the coming Independence Day, I may go to Pagasa Island to raise the flag there,” Duterte said, using the local name for Thitu, the largest of the Philippine-controlled Spratly Islands. The island is just 26 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of Subi Reef, one of seven man-made islands that China is accused of militarizing with ground-to-air missiles.

While the Philippine military currently has garrisons on Thitu, Duterte said he planned to add a barracks for military personnel operating in the area.

Duterte’s announcement came two days after Manila’s acting foreign minister said China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations had taken steps forward outlining a code of conduct in the South China Sea.

The two neighbors are scheduled to hold talks in China in May to further discuss the issues related to the aquatic row.

Is North Korea putting a nuclear-tipped bargaining chip on the table?

April 6, 2017

by James Pearson and Ju-min Park

Reuters

Seoul-As the leaders of China and the United States sit down for a summit on Thursday, North Korea has made sure it also has something on the negotiating table: A nuclear-tipped bargaining chip.

North Korea launched a projectile on Wednesday, which U.S. officials said appeared to be a liquid-fueled, extended-range Scud missile that only traveled a fraction of its range before spinning out of control and crashing into the sea.

The launch was North Korea’s latest in a long series of missile and nuclear tests that have accelerated in their variation and intensity over the last two years.

And now, experts agree, North Korea is closing in on the ability to hit the United States with a missile, a goal that for decades has been the subject of Pyongyang’s vivid propaganda posters.

“They’ve been able to put a nuke on a missile for a while now,” said Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

“The stated purpose of the last test was to validate the nuclear weapon design that would arm all of North Korea’s missiles,” Lewis said of North Korea’s September 2016 nuclear test – its fifth and largest to date.

Since then, North Korea has further ramped up its tests and rhetoric, emphasizing a consistent message: To create a nuclear device small enough to mount on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and fire it at the United States.

“If we push the button, the bombs will be fired and reduce the U.S. to ashes,” an editorial in the ruling Workers’ Party newspaper the Rodong Sinmun said on Wednesday.

North Korea now has the strength to “wipe out” the United States “in a moment” with an H-bomb, the editorial said.

“This is again our warning”.

BARGAINING CHIP

From last year, North Korea took the rare step of publicizing images of its missile equipment tests, convincing analysts that Pyongyang’s banned program was further along toward successfully testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) than first thought.

“The first few tests might fail, but that’s not good news because they’ll learn,” said Lewis. “How long it takes to make it work is anyone’s guess. Maybe a couple of years, maybe the first time”.

North Korea has been pursuing its nuclear and missile programs at an unprecedented pace since last year, with an aim to expand its deterrence against Washington and diversify its line-up of nuclear-equipped missiles, another expert said. (See FACTBOX)

“They have been doing so many test launches last year and this year to develop systems to transport nuclear warheads,” said Kim Dong-yub, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Institute of Far Eastern Studies in Seoul.

“The whole thing is about expanding their deterrence and continuing to keep upgrading their missiles to deliver nuclear warheads,” said Kim.

It was not clear if Wednesday’s launch was deliberately timed to coincide with Thursday’s summit between China’s President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida, where North Korea is expected to be a prime topic of discussions.

Some experts think North Korea has tried to make sure the two world leaders are aware Pyongyang has a bargaining chip in any forthcoming moves to clam down on its weapons programs.

Cheong Seong-chang, a senior research fellow at Sejong Institute outside Seoul, said that could come in the form of another nuclear or ICBM test after the summit. Perhaps first with a low-level show of force – enough not to upset China – followed by a period of intensified weapons testing.

“Then, next month when a new (South Korean) government gets under way, North Korea is expected to try to turn the situation around into a phase of appeasement and, use its moratorium of nuclear and ballistic missile tests to find middle ground with South Korea and the United States,” Cheong said.

This year, North Korea officials, including young leader Kim Jong Un, have repeatedly indicated an ICBM test, or something similar, could be coming, possibly as soon as April 15, the 105th birthday of North Korea’s founding president and celebrated annually as “the Day of the Sun”.

(Editing by Bill Tarrant)

 

Erdogan Isn’t as Strong as He Looks – That’s What Makes Him Dangerous

April 6, 2017

by Conn Hallinan

AntiWar

At first glance, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s drive to create an executive presidency with almost unlimited power through a nationwide referendum looks like a slam-dunk.

The man hasn’t lost an election since 1994, and he’s loaded the dice and stacked the deck for the April 15 vote. Using last summer’s failed coup as a shield, he’s declared a state of emergency, fired 130,000 government employees, jailed 45,000 people – including opposition members of parliament – and closed down 176 media outlets. The opposition Republican People’s Party says it’s been harassed by death threats from referendum supporters and arrests by the police.

Meanwhile he’s deliberately picked fights with Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands to help whip up a storm of nationalism, and he charges that his opponents are “acting in concert with terrorists.” Selahattin Demirtas, a member of parliament and co-chair of the Kurdish-dominated People’s Democratic Party, the third largest political formation in Turkey, is under arrest and faces 143 years in prison. Over 70 Kurdish mayors are behind bars.

So why is Erdogan so nervous? Because he has reason to be.

A Wobbly Juggernaut

The juggernaut that Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) put together to dismantle Turkey’s current political system and replace it with a highly centralized executive with the power to dismiss parliament, control the judiciary, and rule by decree has developed a bit of a wobble.

First, Turkey’s nationalists – in particular the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) – are deeply split. The leadership of the MHP supports a “yes” vote on the referendum, but as much as 65 percent of the rank and file are preparing to vote “no.”

Second, there is increasing concern over the economy, formerly the AKP’s strong suit. Erdogan won the 2002 election on a pledge to raise living standards – especially for small businesses and among Turks who live in the country’s interior – and he largely delivered on those promises. Under the AKP’s stewardship, the Turkish economy grew, but with a built-in flaw.

The 2000s were a period of rapid growth for emerging economies like China, Russia, and Turkey. China did it by building a high-power manufacturing base and exporting its goods to the global market. Russia raised its economy through commodities sales, particularly oil and gas. Turkey’s huge spurt, however, was built around domestic consumption, in particular real estate and construction. Indeed, Turkey’s historical strength in manufacturing has languished.

Much of the construction boom was financed through foreign loans, and as long as investors were comfortable with the internal situation in Turkey – and money was cheap – real estate was Erdogan’s Anatolian tiger. But when the U.S. tightened up its monetary policies in 2013, those loans either dried up or got more expensive.

Turkey wasn’t the only victim of US tight money policies. Washington’s monetary shift also badly damaged the economies of Brazil, South Africa, India, and Indonesia. But the effect on Ankara has been to increase the debt burden and fuel a growing trade imbalance. Growth fell from 6.1 percent in 2015 to 1.5 percent in 2016.

The fall of the Turkish lira means imports cost more at a time when Turkey’s private sector has accrued a foreign exchange deficit of $210 billion. Consumer inflation will almost certainly reach 11 or 12 percent this year and the jobless rate is over 12 percent. Among young Turks, age 15-24, that figure is over 25 percent. Almost 4 million people are out of work, and many Turks now spend 50 percent of their income on food, housing and rent.

To add to these woes, the credit agencies Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and Fitch recently designated Turkey’s status as “non-investment” and downgraded its economic outlook from “stable” to “negative.” Part of the downgrade was based on politics, not the economy. Fitch pointed out that if Erdogan’s referendum passed, it “would entrench a system in which checks and balances have been eroded.”

Businesses are generally not bothered by authoritarian regimes, but they are uncomfortable with instability and a cavalier approach to the rule of law. Erdogan’s erratic foreign policies and the government’s seizures of private businesses whose owners choose to oppose him do not create an atmosphere conducive to investor confidence.

There is also growing nervousness about Erdogan’s internal and external policies. Turkey once had a policy of “no trouble with neighbors,” but Ankara is suddenly fighting with everyone. Erdogan strongly supported efforts to overthrow the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad. He backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. He put troops in northern Iraq aimed at keeping the Kurds down. He started a war with his own Kurds and bullies and intimidates any domestic opposition.

A case in point is the lucrative tourist industry that normally contributes about 5 percent of Turkey’s GNP. Turkey is the sixth most visited country in the world, but the industry was down 36 percent in 2016, a loss of $10 billion.

Formerly, large numbers of tourists visited from Russia and Iran. But Erdogan alienated the Russians when he shot down one of their bombers in 2015 and angered Iran when he went to Saudi Arabia and denounced the Iranians for trying to spread their Shiite ideology and “Persian nationalism” throughout the Middle East. As a result, tourism from both countries largely dried up, hitting Istanbul and coastal cities like Antalya particularly hard.

Iranians and Russians aren’t the only ones looking elsewhere for fun and relaxation. Erdogan’s sturm und drang rhetoric directed at European countries that refused to let him campaign for his referendum among their Turkish populations – “Nazis” and “fascists” were his favored epithets to describe Germany, the Netherlands, and Austria – has tourists from the West looking to vacation in Greece, Spain, and Italy instead.

Trouble in the Neighborhood

To label Erdogan’s foreign policy “schizophrenic” is an understatement.

On one hand, he’s backed off from his earlier demand that Syrian President Assad must go, and he’s working with the Russians and Iranians – and Egyptians – to find a negotiated settlement to the horrendous civil war.

On the other, he is wooing Saudi Arabia, the major backer of al-Qaeda-associated groups in Syria who’ve made it clear that they aren’t interested in negotiations or a political settlement. He’s also clashing with Russia and the US over their support for Kurdish forces battling the Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

In one rather bizarre example of schizoid foreign policy, Turkey sponsored a March 14 meeting of 50 Syrian tribal leaders to form an “Army of the Jezeera and Euphrates Tribes” to fight Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, and the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in Syria. Beating up on the Kurds is standard Erdogan politics, but how he squares attacking Russia and Iran while professing to support a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war isn’t clear.

His political calculations keep backfiring. For instance, when Iran signed its international nuclear agreement and sanctions were lifted, Turkish businesses were eager to ramp up trade with Tehran. Erdogan’s searing attack on Iran largely scotched that, however, and the Turkish president has very little to show for it. Erdogan calculated that embracing Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies would more than offset alienating Iran, but that hasn’t happened.

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar have a combined overseas investment portfolio of $262 billion, but only $8.7 billion of that went to Turkey. Europe makes up the great bulk of foreign investments in Turkey, distantly followed by the US and Russia.

In part this is because the Gulf monarchies have their own financial difficulties, given low oil prices and the grinding war they are fighting in Yemen. But one suspects that Saudi Arabia is wary of Erdogan’s AKP, which is a cousin of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis consider the Brotherhood their main enemy after Iran, and they strongly supported the 2013 military coup against the Egyptian Brotherhood government. The recent thaw in relations between Turkey and Egypt has resulted in a chilling of ties between Riyadh and Cairo.

Meanwhile the Islamic State has recently targeted Turkey, in large part as blowback from the Syrian civil war. Ankara formerly turned a blind eye to the Islamic State’s supply lines into Syria because Erdogan wanted to overthrow the Assad government and replace it with a Muslim Brotherhood-friendly regime. Now that policy has backfired on Turkey, much as US support for the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan led to the formation of al-Qaeda and the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The Kurds have also engaged in a bombing campaign, but that is a response to Erdogan’s attacks on Kurdish cities in southeastern Turkey.

Getting to Yes – Or Else

It’s not clear how widespread the “no” vote sentiment is, although it supposedly includes up to 100 AKP parliament members worried about concentrating too much power in the president’s hands.

Pollsters say a significant number of voters are unwilling to say how they will vote. In the current atmosphere of intimidation, it could mean those “refuse to say” will turn to “no.” Certainly Erdogan’s prediction of a 60 percent approval has gone a glimmering.

What happens if people do vote no? And would Erdogan accept any outcome that wasn’t yes?

One disturbing development is the formation of a paramilitary group called “Stay as Brothers, Turkey.” Organized by Orhan Uzuner, whose daughter is married to Erdogan’s son Bital, the group claims up to 500 members. The opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet calls the group “Erdogan’s militia,” and some members of the Nationalist Movement Party say the Brothers are sponsoring weapons training and encouraging members to arm themselves. With the military firmly under control following last year’s attempted coup, even a small group like the Brothers could play a major role if Erdogan decides he’s finished with the democratic process.

Certainly the president is in a bind. He needs foreign investments and tourism to get the economy back on track, but he’s alienating one ally after another.\He could tighten Turkey’s monetary policies to staunch the outflow of capital, but that would slow the economy and increase unemployment. He could lower interest rates to stimulate the economy, but that would further weaken the lira.

His strategy at this point is to double down on getting a yes vote. If he fails, things could get dangerous.

Hungary passes bill targeting Soros-funded university

Protests in Budapest and strongly-worded US response.

April 6, 2017

by Lili Bayer

politico

BUDAPEST — Against the backdrop of continued protests in Budapest, the Hungarian government Tuesday passed a fast-tracked bill that critics have described as an attack on academic independence.

The Central European University (CEU), founded by the billionaire American-Hungarian financier George Soros, won’t be able to operate under the new rules, which will prevent the Budapest-based institution from granting both U.S. and Hungarian degrees.

“We have no idea what will happen now,” said Aiski Ryökäs, a Finnish master’s student at CEU who was demonstrating at the university on Tuesday. “I didn’t think the university would be targeted.”

According to the new law, if CEU does not fulfill the requirements as of January 1, 2018, after this date no new students may be enrolled. However, programs which have started before January 1, 2018, may be completed with the current conditions in the academic year of 2020/21, the latest.

The government-sponsored bill passed despite significant foreign and domestic criticism, including a strongly-worded statement from the U.S. Embassy in Hungary and days of protests in Budapest.

“The United States is disappointed by the accelerated passage of legislation targeting Central European University, despite the serious concerns raised by the United States, by hundreds of local and international organizations and institutions, and by thousands of Hungarians who value academic freedom and the many important contributions by Central European University to Hungary,” the U.S. statement said.

During a short parliamentary debate, members of the ruling Fidesz party portrayed the new measures as a fight for national sovereignty. In recent months, the government has become increasingly hostile to Soros, designating him as an enemy of Hungary.

The university’s leadership is arguing that the law is discriminatory and is planning to fight for its survival.

“We will challenge the constitutionality of this act,” CEU President Michael Ignatieff told reporters on Tuesday, via video link from Washington where he is meeting with members of Congress and State Department officials.

The Hungarian government rejects that this is a witch hunt aimed at Soros or independent institutions.

“The sole aim of the amendment to the Act on Higher Education is for foreign universities in Hungary to operate lawfully and transparently by complying with Hungarian regulations,” the Hungarian government said in a statement to POLITICO. “Any other interpretations are symptoms of political hysteria.”

CEU is currently accredited in Budapest and New York and the Hungarian government is insisting on negotiating with Washington, despite the fact that the federal government does not have jurisdiction in the matter.

“The future of the ‘Soros university’ depends on American-Hungarian intergovernmental negotiations,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Friday in his weekly radio address.

 

 

 

 

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