"US seeks help from Turkey with ISIS" by David E. Sanger | New York Times September 14, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is struggling to cut off the millions of dollars in oil revenue that has made the Islamic State one of the wealthiest terror groups in history but has been unable to persuade Turkey, the NATO ally where much of the oil is traded on the black market, to crack down on an extensive sales network.
PFFFT!
Western intelligence officials say they can track the Islamic State oil shipments as they move across Iraq and into Turkey’s southern border regions. Despite extensive discussions inside the Pentagon, US forces have not attacked the tanker trucks, though a senior administration official said Friday “that remains an option.”
In public, the administration has been unwilling to criticize Turkey, which insists it has little control over the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria across its borders or the flow of oil back out.
So they are enabling all of it while admitting they don't have control of their borders, huh?
I guess that is better than the real reason this is allowed to continue even if they look damn foolish proclaiming it.
One senior official, calling President Obama’s recent conversations with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “sensitive,” said the decisions about what the country will do to counter the Islamic State “will be theirs to make.”
Meaning nothing will be done.
But behind the scenes, the conversations about the Sunni extremist group’s ability to gather vast sums to finance its operations have become increasingly tense since Obama’s vow on Wednesday night to degrade and ultimately destroy the group.
Turkey’s failure to help choke off the oil trade symbolizes the magnitude of the challenges facing the administration in assembling a coalition to counter the Sunni militant group. The Islamic State’s access to cash is critical to its ability to recruit members, meet its growing payroll of fighters, expand its reach, and operate across the territory of two countries.
“Turkey in many ways is a wild card in this coalition equation,” said Juan Zarate, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and author of “Treasury’s War, the Unleashing of a New Era of Financial Warfare.”
“It’s a great disappointment: There is a real danger that the effort to degrade and destroy ISIS is at risk,” Zarate said, referring to the Islamic State. “You have a major NATO ally, and it is not clear they are willing and able to cut off flows of funds, fighters, and support to ISIS.”
After helping with it all, this is gross propaganda. It's offensive, insulting, and not really worth the time.
Turkey declined to sign a communiqué on Thursday in Saudi Arabia that committed gulf states in the region to counter the Islamic State, even limited to the extent each nation considered “appropriate.” Turkish officials told their US counterparts that with 49 Turkish diplomats being held as hostages in Iraq, they could not risk taking a public stance against the terror group.
You won't have to wait long for that situation to resolve itself, and thus will not have that excuse to fall back on.
And think about it? Who benefits most from a release by the "terrorists?" Whose argument is advanced?
Still, administration officials say they believe Turkey could substantially disrupt the cash flow to the Islamic State if it tried. “Like any sort of black market smuggling operation, if you devote the resources and the effort to attack it, you are unlikely to eradicate it but you are likely to put a very significant dent in it,” a senior administration official said Saturday.
I'm tired of the war-mongering from this administration, but I want to know WHO is BUYING this TERRORIST OIL?!! And if this scenario is so, why bother with sanctions against anyone? Wouldn't every nation being doing the same as the "terrorists?"
A second senior official said that Obama’s national security team had spoken several times with Erdogan and other top Turkish officials in the past two weeks about what they can do to help counter the Islamic State. “Stopping the flow of foreign fighters, border security, and dismantling ISIL funding networks are also key aspects of our strategy, and we will continue to work closely with Turkey and our other partners in the region on these efforts in the days ahead,” the official said, using a different acronym to describe the militant organization.
That stuff rings so hollow once you understand that it is the EUSraeli empire that created and controls ISIS.
At the core of the talks are the dozen or so oil fields and refineries in Iraq and Syria on territory the group has controlled.
Oil is at the bottom of so much of what the "terrorists" do. Amazing how they advocate for the USraeli Clean Break and PNAC plans at every turn, huh?
The output has provided a steady stream of financing, which experts place at $1 million to $2 million a day — a pittance in terms of the global oil market, but a windfall for a terror group.
“Oil is a huge part of the financing equation” that empowers the Islamic State, said James Phillips, the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based research center.
The territory the Islamic State controls in Iraq alone is producing anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 barrels of oil a day, which can fetch a minimum of $1.2 million on the black market, according to Luay al-Khatteeb, a visiting foreign policy fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, who also directs the Iraq Energy Institute.
Turkish authorities have been unwilling to cooperate in efforts to target the smuggling network. The supply chain of routes, individuals, families, and organizations that allow the oil to flow are well-established, some dating back decades, to when President Saddam Hussein of Iraq smuggled oil during the United Nations Oil-for-Food Program.
OMG, this is hilarious.
For those not in the know, the U.S. and U.N. turned a blind eye to that because it was allies buying oil against sanctions. There was a report and everything about it years ago.
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I do take the flogging of the war drums seriously so let's get on with it:
"UN details horrors in Syria, warns on military solution" by Nick Cumming-Bruce | New York Times September 17, 2014
Good, more laughs.
GENEVA — As Western and regional powers prepared to intensify the fight against Sunni militants of the Islamic State, UN investigators presented details Tuesday of more atrocities committed by Islamic extremists and the government in Syria, warning that there could be no battlefield solution to the “madness” in the civil war there.
“I have run out of words to depict the gravity of the crimes committed inside Syria,” Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, chairman of the four-person UN panel told the Human Rights Council in Geneva, presenting its eighth report in three years.
Related: Obama Silent About Syrian Atrocities
Well, when you had a hand in creating and enabling them.
Besides, they are just making friends and winning over people with their brutality, right?
In addition to the killing of two American journalists, James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff, and a British aid worker, David Cawthorne Haines, the Islamic State “has continued to subject scores of Syrians to the same fate in public squares in the north and east of the country,” Pinheiro told the council, describing the terror of communities in large swaths of Syria that it controls.
Related: British Beheadings
Who knows how many more they have in the can and ready to go.
The jihadist group massacred civilians at the Shaar gas fields in Homs province, killed hundreds of captured soldiers in Raqqa in the northeast in July and August, and reportedly killed hundreds of members of the Sheitat tribe in the eastern province of Deir al-Zour, Pinheiro said.
“Children are encouraged to attend executions,” he said, describing systematic exposure to violence. “Later they wander past corpses displayed on crucifixes in public squares.”
Okay, I'm not sure I'm buying all that, but if true it is the EUSraeli-created entities doing it so your point is.... ???
Women have been banned from public life and stoned to death after being accused of adultery, or lashed for being seen in public without a male relative or with their heads uncovered, he said. Girls’ education has been curtailed and early marriage is on the rise, he added.
We have to go to war for the women, don't you understand? If we martyr them with a misplaced missile built upon a lie it was for the greater good, doncha see?
“If you want to know what effect this war has had you must listen to its victims,” he said, submitting a separate 17-page report with the redacted testimony of a dozen Syrians recently interviewed by the panel. It revealed trends in violence and showed “few Syrians have been spared in this war.”
Unless they are Palestinian! Or some other Muslim population AmeriKa is currently bombing. I'm needing two hands for it!
Despite the extremes of violence committed by Islamic militants, Pinheiro said, the Syrian government “remains responsible for the majority of the civilian casualties, killing and maiming scores of civilians daily,” describing killing “from a distance” by shelling and aerial bombardment and “up close at checkpoints and in its interrogation rooms.”
In other words, the Syrian government is behaving just like AmeriKa and its NATO allies.
Among the dozen statements from witnesses selected by the panel were accounts of families torn apart by shelling and former prisoners describing their torture in government detention centers and deaths of cellmates from injuries sustained during interrogation, insufficient medical care, and lack of air in densely packed cells. A prisoner held in a military jail reported that severely malnourished patients had been chained, naked, two or four to a bed, without sufficient medical attention and that they were subjected to torture.
Are you sure it wasn't a down the memory hole hunger strike like at Gitmo, and the techniques sound similar to AmeriKan torture chambers in Iraq and Afghanistan but nothing ever came of those still operating facilities now offshored.
Women interviewed by the panel did not consent to allow publication of their accounts detailing rape.
Oh, right, need to wave the women in front of us to make us remember why we must save them by killing them.
Pinheiro recalled that the panel had repeatedly urged the UN Security Council and influential states to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court and to push for a political settlement.
The JU.N. is obviously a agenda-advancing outfit for Zionist interests despite the show fooley of Israeli complaints.
Their inaction “nourished the violence” consuming Syria, he told the Human Rights Council. “Its most recent beneficiary is ISIS,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State.
I'm telling you, once you now what garbage we have been fed for decades now regarding wars this crap propaganda just rings hollow. The self-serving s*** just doesn't go down like it once used to. I can not believe I once thought I was learning something reading the Boston Globe. Now I realize it is nothing but a huge mound of dung to advance a God-awful war agenda in the extreme.
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At least Syria is pitching in with the fight on ISIS:
"Syrian aircraft crashes in city held by IS group" by DIAA HADID | Associated Press September 17, 2014
BEIRUT — A Syrian military plane crashed into the defacto capital of the Islamic State group on Tuesday, killing at least eight people, as thousands of residents fled to nearby villages in anticipation of expected US airstrikes against the militants, activists said.
That will explain the flood of articles to come!
There were conflicting reports about what caused the aircraft to slam into the northeastern city of Raqqa.
Oh, no, not more Malaysia s***.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the plane was hit by antiaircraft fire, while an activist based in the city said it may have experienced a technical failure.
The terrorists shot it down? The good terrorists, I mean?
A militant website published pictures of what it said was the wreckage of a Syrian warplane shot down by the Islamic State in Raqqa.
Oh, well.
In Damascus, Syrian rebels emerged from underground sewers to attack government troops at dawn, one of very few such infiltration attempts to pass the boundaries of the capital since the conflict erupted three years ago over the rule of President Bashar Assad, activists said.
You know, this stuff is starting to stink.
At least 18 fighters were killed in the city’s southern area of Midan after two groups of rebels crawled in through the tunnel network to attack a Syrian government checkpoint, said Rami Abdurrahman of the Observatory for Human Rights.
The fighters belonged to several rebel brigades, including Syria’s Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front.
Those are the moderate, wait, they are the more extreme, no, wait, WTF is going on over there?
It is just WHATEVER PILE of S*** will SELL so KEEP PLOPPING them out there?
C'mon!
The fighting lasted four hours, said an activist based east of Damascus who uses the name Mamoun Ayoubi. The activist said the fighters were trying to relieve pressure on rebels in eastern Damascus.
‘‘This is not a normal situation, the fighting didn’t halt from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m.,’’ Ayoubi said over Skype.
The rare clash in Damascus came after another failed rebel attempt Monday to infiltrate the capital. That attempt was reported by state-run media and an activist.
More than 190,000 people have been killed since the 2011 start of Syria’s conflict, which has transformed into a multilayered civil war.
So says the war-promoting, agenda-pushing Zionist narrative.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, controls a proto-state that stretches from northern Syria across much of northern and western Iraq. Raqqa, an ancient city on the Euphrates River with a prewar population of 500,000, serves as the extremists’ stronghold in Syria.
That's a new one.
The United States has been conducting airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq since the militants tried to push toward the city of Irbil in Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region in August. President Obama last week authorized strikes against the group in Syria as well, and his administration is currently trying to cobble together an international coalition to go after the group.
Related: Obama Announces Wider Invasion of Middle East
Also see: France to Help Kerry U.S. in Iraq
Just giving US a "hand."
As international attention has zeroed in on the extremists, the Syrian government, which largely shied away from bombing the group’s territory for more than a year, has begun targeting cities and towns under the militants’ control more frequently. On Tuesday, there were at least seven airstrikes on the city.
Those government strikes, and the prospect of an American-led aerial campaign that is all but certain to target Raqqa, have prompted many residents to pack up and move to outlying villages.
‘‘By God, yes, people began fleeing about a week ago,’’ said a woman who requested anonymity, fearing identification by the militant group.
Okay. The New World Order coming into view with Obummer at the helm. Look at all the refugees this guy has created across the entire region. All part of breaking it all up, weakening everyone in favor of Israeli hegemony, and awaaaaaay we go!
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"Militant gains illustrate plight of Syrian Kurds; Islamic State captures at least 20 Syrian towns" by Bassem Mroue | Associated Press September 19, 2014
BEIRUT — Islamic State militiamen backed by tanks defiantly advanced Thursday in Syria, capturing more than 20 Kurdish villages as the international community strains to assemble a coalition that might destroy them.
Can't you see the urgency of confronting them now, the enemy that is always everywhere and nowhere. I mean, Kurds just kicked their ass out of Iraq and back into Syria I was told a few weeks ago, but whatever. Let's roll with it!
Oh, wait, WhyTF did EUSrael help create them with their Gulf Arab allies?
What's up with that?
The gains highlighted the plight of Syria’s Kurds, who have been some of the most successful against the Islamic extremists. But unlike US-backed Iraqi Kurds, they seem largely on their own in a devastated country where the enemy’s enemy is not necessarily a friend.
All this enemy of my enemy is my friend stuff I've been seeing lately so smacks of a huge shove effort at a World War III.
The main Kurdish force in Syria, known as the People’s Protection Units or YPK, is viewed with suspicion by mainstream Syrian rebels and their Western supporters because of perceived links to President Bashar Assad’s government.
NATO member Turkey is also wary of the group, which it believes is affiliated with the Kurdish PKK movement that waged a long and bloody insurgency in southeast Turkey.
‘‘This is a complicating factor in the equation,’’ said Fawaz Gerges, a Middle East specialist at the London School of Economics.
What, the blood all over Turkish hands?
The United States and its allies think the Kurdish alliance is fighting alongside the Assad government, he said. And the Americans do not want to upset Turkey.
And the terrorist oil flows as the war agenda gets oiled!
So while the United States and its allies accelerate weapons deliveries to Iraqi Kurds, Syrian Kurds complain they have been largely dismissed and ignored as a fighting force.
Just die, will ya?
‘‘We are ready to join any coalition to face Daesh,’’ said Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for Syria’s powerful Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD, which dominates the Kurdish fighters. He used an Arabic name to refer to the Islamic State group.
Umm, U.S.?
The YPK has been fighting the group since July 2013. Over the past year, it has cleared many Kurdish areas of jihadi fighters.
But since June, when Islamic State fighters captured weapons and vehicles from Iraqi army bases and brought them into Syria, the militants have retaken some Kurdish areas, mostly in the northern region of Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab.
Over the span of two days, they took 21 villages in the area, activists said Thursday.
Beyond building the coalition, Washington is also making plans to train up to 5,000 Syrian rebels. Kurdish officials in Syria say the YPK should be the group to spearhead the mission against jihadis.
That's not an answer unless you are advancing some insane ideas to hold onto a falling empire. That hasn't worked, in fact that has created the self-serving proble.... HEY!
The group denies any links to Assad’s government or the PKK, which is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
‘‘There are double standards. They are looking for allies who serve them. They are not looking for real allies,’’ said Nasser Haj Mansour, an official at the defense office in Syria’s Kurdish region about the planned US-led coalition.
The United States has been conducting airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq since August, when the militants tried to push toward the northern city of Irbil in Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region.
President Obama last week authorized strikes against the group in Syria as well, and the United States is already flying reconnaissance missions over Syria.
I condemn the spinchter Obummer before all this! History, mr. President, and I'll be waiting for you in hell.
The United States and other Western countries have sent weapons to Iraqi Kurds, who have strong relations with Washington.
Well, yeah! What you don't read about in the war-promoting propaganda pre$$ is the Israeli and CIA base it provides for activities in the region. You see, being a CIA station and base for Israeli intelligence that launches attacks on Iran doesn't help getting you goosed-up for war.
Marking a possible shift, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that arming the Syrian Kurds was under consideration.
‘‘We haven’t reached out to the Syrian Kurdish forces yet. But I do think that as we look at how to squeeze ISIL from all directions, they will certainly be considered,’’ Dempsey said in an interview in Paris.
He acknowledged the Syrian Kurds’ military capability.
‘‘The question is whether they should be part of a coalition,’’ he said, citing the concerns related to Turkey.
So when are the ground troops you said you would need going in, Dempsey?
After the erection, 'er, election?
Earlier this week, YPK fighters captured 14 villages from the militants around the jihadi group’s stronghold of Tel Hamis in northeastern Syria near the border with Iraq.
The jihadis retaliated by attacking the predominantly Kurdish region of Kobani near the Turkish border on Wednesday.
They used tanks and artillery to capture the 21 villages and force some 3,000 people to flee toward the Turkish border.
The area would link the Islamic State group’s strongholds in Aleppo with those in Raqqa and all the way to Iraq.
Still expanding then is this enemy who is nowhere yet everywhere!
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"Syrians fleeing militants go to Turkey" by Ryan Lucas | Associated Press September 20, 2014
BEIRUT — Several thousand Syrians, most of them Kurds, crossed into Turkey on Friday to find refuge from Islamic State militants who have barreled through dozens of Kurdish villages in northern Syria in the past 48 hours.
The extremists’ offensive on the Kobani area near the border with Turkey prompted the leader of Iraq’s Kurdish region to urge the international community to intervene to save Syria’s Kurds from the militant onslaught.
Oh, I see. The ISIS is everywhere has not stirred a war-hating because it is not weariness anymore, it is hate have having been continuously and currently lied to for so long.
It's OVER, guys! The emperor has no clothiers, not even a new$paper to cover him.
Together, the exodus to Turkey and appeal for help by an Iraqi leader show how the growing muscle of the Islamic State group has transcended borders to become a regional problem.
And WHO BENEFITS from that argument? WHAT AGENDA? C'mon! And look at the imagery in the word selection meant to evoke certain things in your mind! The exodus and appeal for help! They may as well be Jewish!
The United States began conducting airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Iraq last month to protect US facilities and personnel as well as minority groups that have come under threat from the militants. President Obama is now trying to line up an international coalition to destroy the extremist group. The White House’s plan also includes training and support for mainstream rebels in Syria, as well as potential airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Syria.
God, it's a third invasion of Iraq! Gotta prop up the new puppet.
In a statement posted on his website, the president of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, said the Islamic State group’s ‘‘barbaric and terrorist acts’’ on the Kobani area in northern Syria ‘‘threaten the whole entirety of the Kurdish nation and it has targeted the honor, dignity, and existence of our people.’’
There has to be Ashkenazi Kurds, there gotta be! Look how close it is.
Heck, if you dig deep enough Ataturk was Jewish back in the day. Hmmmmm.
‘‘The ISIS terrorists perpetrate crimes and tragedies wherever they are, therefore they have to be hit and defeated wherever they are,’’ Barzani said, using an alternate name for the group.
By basing his appeal on humanitarian grounds, Barzani appeared to be trying to call for airstrikes similar to the ones the US military has conducted in Iraq against Islamic State fighters to help Kurdish security forces and protect religious minorities like the Yazidi community.
Yeah, that will solve everything. And about those Yazidis.... ya sick of being lied to yet?
But unlike their Iraqi brethren, Syria’s Kurds have been left on their own in the fight against the Islamic State group, and it is unclear whether the United State would be willing to meet Barzani’s request.
(Blog editor just shakes head. None of this propaganda print is serious)
The main Kurdish force in Syria, known as the People’s Protection Units or YPK, has been battling the Islamic State group for more than a year. But the YPK is still viewed with suspicion by mainstream Syrian rebels and their Western supporters because of perceived links to President Bashar Assad’s government.
Well, they supported him because he was an enemy of the people who were killing them. You know, the EUSraeli-created ISIS.
NATO member Turkey is also wary of the group, which it believes is affiliated with the Kurdish PKK movement that waged a long and bloody insurgency in southeast Turkey.
This all seems so familiar.
The Syrian Kurds who are now fleeing to Turkey are escaping an Islamic State onslaught that has captured more than 20 villages in the Kobani area since Wednesday, sending civilians streaming toward the frontier.
‘‘Our house was destroyed. We have no family, no property left. We have nothing now. Everything is gone,’’ said Ibrahim Halil, a Syrian Kurd who had just arrived in the Turkish village of Dikmetas in Sanliurfa province.
Welcome to the world of a Palestinian.
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"Kurdish fighters head to Syria to face militants" by Diaa Hadid and Suzan Fraser | Associated Press September 21, 2014
BEIRUT — Hundreds of Kurdish fighters raced from Turkey and Iraq into neighboring Syria on Saturday to defend a Kurdish area under attack by Islamic State militants.
Same as in Iraq, and I'll bet the brutal bastards will disappear and resurface somewhere else.
As the fighting raged, more than 60,000 mostly Kurdish refugees streamed across the border into Turkey.
Along the dusty and barren border, some of the refugees hobbled on crutches and others lugged bulging sacks of belongings on their backs.
Again, the imagery invoked by the agenda-pushing Zionist pre$$.
The large-scale displacement of so many and the movement of the Kurdish fighters into Syria reflected the ferocity of the fighting in the northern Kobani area, which borders Turkey. Militants of the extremist Islamic State group have been barreling through the area for the past three days, prompting Kurdish leaders to plead for international help.
Civilians seeking safety began massing on the Turkish border on Thursday. Turkey did not let them in at first, saying it would provide them with aid on the Syrian side of the border instead. By Friday, it had changed its mind and started to let in several thousand.
??????????
The numbers grew quickly as more entry points opened, and by late Saturday afternoon, more than 60,000 had poured across the frontier, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said.
Even by the standards of Syria’s bitter war, it was unusual for so many refugees to flee in such a short time. Their numbers add to the 2.8 million Syrians who have become refugees in the past three years, and another 6.4 million who have been displaced within their own country — more than a third of Syria’s prewar population of 23 million.
Same thing happened in Iraq. Thank you, AmeriKa, 'eh?
Many of those who came across Saturday cradled young children or carried them on their shoulders. Kurtulmus said some refugees were staying with relatives, while others took shelter in schools or tents.
How come illegal immigrants and other agenda-pushing populations get such sympathy and Gazans get squat?
‘‘Kobani is facing the fiercest and most barbaric attack in its history,’’ said official Mohammed Saleh Muslim, head of Syria’s powerful Kurdish Democratic Union. The groups’ members dominate the Syrian Kurdish group known as the YPK, which is fighting the Islamic State militants.
Worse than Assad's three year reign of terror? Remember the U.N. report?
‘‘Kobani calls on all those who defend humane and democratic values ... to stand by Kobani and support it immediately. The coming hours are decisive,’’ he said.
That's why I'm being SILLI because things are moving so fast.
On Friday, the president of Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region, Masoud Barzani, warned that the militant group’s attacks on the Kobani area ‘‘threaten the whole entirety of the Kurdish nation.’’
The battle over Kobani is part of a long-running fight between the Islamic State group and Syria’s Kurds that has raged across a band of Syrian territory stretching along the Turkish border from the north to the far northeast, where large numbers of Kurds live. The clashes are one aspect of Syria’s broader civil war — a multilayered conflict that the UN says has killed more than 190,000.
So says the propaganda spew.
The YPK is viewed with suspicion by many Syrian rebels and their Western supporters because of perceived links to President Bashar Assad’s government. That may be changing, however, as Kurdish fighters battle alongside some Syrian rebel groups against the Islamic State in northern and eastern Syria.
NATO member Turkey is wary of the group. It believes the Syrian organization is affiliated with the Kurdish PKK movement, which has waged a long and bloody insurgency in southeast Turkey.
Several hundred Kurdish fighters streamed into the Kobani area from Turkey, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
At least some of the volunteers looked to be PKK fighters, while others appeared to be eager civilians, according to Kurdish officials who insisted on anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to reporters.
All AmeriKan-paid mercenaries, no doubt!
Some 600 PKK fighters also crossed from Iraq into Syria, heading toward Kobani, said a military official in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. That official also spoke on condition his name not be used because he wasn’t authorized to speak to journalists. The PKK have a base in the Qandil mountains in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
Ethnic Kurds dominate a mountainous region that straddles Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey.
Perfect place for intelligence agency bases!
Syrian Kurdish fighters had been successfully fighting off the militants for the past two years.
So what happened?
They even clashed with the Islamic State group’s fighters in northern Iraq, carving a safe passage for thousands of embattled Iraqis of the Yazidi minority, whom the militant group sees as apostates. But the tide changed in September as Islamic State group fighters began employing more powerful weaponry they had seized from Iraqi soldiers.
Ha-ha-ha-ha.
You mean the sands shifted, right?
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Oh, and that excuse Turkey had for not participating overtly as they participate covertly?
"49 Turks held since June by extremists taken home" by Sebnem Arsu and Ceylan Yeginsu | New York Times September 21, 2014
ISTANBUL — Forty-nine Turkish hostages who had been held for months in Iraq by Islamic State militants were returned Saturday to Turkey after what Turkey said was a covert operation led by its intelligence agency.
Oh, a rescue and no fake videos of Turks being beheaded!
The hostages, including diplomats and their families, had been seized in June from the Turkish consulate in the Iraqi city of Mosul.
“The Turkish intelligence agency has followed the situation very sensitively and patiently since the beginning and, as a result, conducted a successful rescue operation,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday.
Yeah, okay.
The details of the hostages’ release were unclear.
Not another staged and scripted hoax?
The semiofficial Turkish news agency Anadolu reported that Turkey had not paid ransom for them or engaged in a military operation. It said Turkey had used drones to track the hostages, who had been moved to different locations at least eight times during their 101 days in captivity.
Uh-oh. This makes the U.S. and Britain look bad now.
The agency said Turkish intelligence teams had tried five times to rescue the hostages but that each attempt had been thwarted by clashes in the area where they were being held.
One senior US official, who asked not to be named, said Saturday that Turkey had not notified the United States before securing the return of the hostages, or made a specific request for US military help in connection with their release.
“I am sharing joyful news, which as a nation we have been waiting for,” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he was on an official visit.
So what hotel room were they being billeted at?
“After intense efforts that lasted days and weeks, in the early hours, our citizens were handed over to us and we brought them back to our country,” he said.
The prime minister left Baku for the Turkish province of Urfa, where the freed hostages, who included Consul General Ozturk Yilmaz, other diplomats, children, and consulate guards, had been brought from Raqqa, the de facto headquarters of the Islamic State militants.
One hostage told a Turkish reporter for CNN aboard the flight to Urfa that the hostages had been moved eight times.
“We had tough days, very bad days,” he said.
Another hostage, asked whether he and the others seized had been tortured, said, “Surely, we went through certain things.”
Yilmaz said he was proud of the strength that the Turkish state has shown during the ordeal and praised efforts that led to their release.
“We’ve been through many hardships, but for one’s country, all were not to complain about but to be proud of,” he said.
As opposed to the British guy that was reported beheaded last week.
Yilmaz described Mosul as “the most dangerous place in the world, a place thousands of people get killed,” and “the hub of terror incidents.” He said it was “nowhere easy to wave a flag.”
The freed hostages were later to be flown to Ankara to be reunited with their families. They were advised not to immediately talk to the news media.
More crisis actors, and if so this is getting way old!
Turkey, a predominantly Sunni Muslim country and a NATO ally, declined to sign a communiqué calling for a military campaign against the Islamic State, citing the capture of its hostages.
And now they got them back, huh?
But it did agree to contribute to an international alliance against the group, which has been gaining ground across Turkey’s southern borders.
Ankara agreed to open its Incirlik air base in the southern Adana province for logistical and humanitarian support, and pledged to strengthen border security especially in the south.
Oh, so forget the semantics. They on board and this hostage situation looking more of what I'm saying: complete sh** for diversionary purposes.
Its goal there is to stop trafficking of foreign fighters who have long used Turkey’s porous borders to join the militant group’s front lines.
But let the oil flow.
Turkey has a no-entry list of 6,000 potential jihadist suspects, and last year it deported 1,000 foreigners on the basis of suspected links to jihadist groups in the region, a government official said in a recent interview.
While Ankara will no doubt remain concerned about the Islamic State’s possible retaliation throughout Turkey if it contributes effectively to a military operation against it, analysts said, the hostages’ release still might be a game changer.
The agenda-pushing propaganda is getting so thick these days.
“One of the main hurdles for Turkey’s strategy was the hostage crisis, and therefore the release of the hostages will no doubt give Turkey more freedom with respect to its own strategy to resist the Islamic State,” said Mensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Center in Istanbul.
Who benefited?
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Look who else is fleeing:
"Fijian peacekeepers freed by Syrian rebels after 2 weeks" by Edith M. Lederer and Ryan Lucas | Associated Press September 12, 2014
BEIRUT — Al Qaeda-linked militants released 45 Fijian peacekeepers captured two weeks ago in Syria, ending the UN’s fourth crisis over abducted soldiers in the Golan Heights since March 2013 amid questions about the future of the 40-year-old monitoring mission there.
I know I had links somewhere but I couldn't find them.
Who cares anyway? All this is, imho, staged and scripted fraud.
The Fijians were captured on the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan Heights by fighters from the Nusra Front, who have been battling Syrian government forces in the contested buffer zone between Syria and Israel.
The modera.... never mind.
The 1,200-strong UN force that has patrolled the zone since 1974 has increasingly been caught in the spillover from Syria’s civil war.
And JWHO would want them to LEAVE before something like an INVASION of SYRIA?
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said ‘‘no demands were made and no concessions were made’’ to secure the release of the peacekeepers.
‘‘No ransom was paid,’’ he said.
That's weird.
Qatar, a chief backer of rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, said it played a role in the release. The official Qatar News Agency reported that the tiny Arab Gulf emirate had ‘‘succeeded in the release of the Fijian soldiers’’ in response to a request from Fiji for its mediation.
Related:
Floods shut down Philippine capital, 3 killed
Philippines president visits Boston College
Decide for yourself whether the Globe's Philippines coverage is any good.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon thanked the efforts ‘‘of all concerned’’ in the release, without naming anyone. He demanded that all parties respect the mandate of the UN force and the right of peacekeepers to move freely and safely, according to a statement from his office.
The Fijian troops were captured Aug. 28, a day after militants seized control of the Syrian side of the Quneitra crossing from President Bashar Assad’s troops.
The idea of peacekeepers being taken hostage ‘‘is just impossible to accept because it will happen more and more, and that will make countries hesitant about sending their armies, so we were very happy’’ about the release of the peacekeepers, Jordan’s UN Ambassador Dina Kawar said.
Israel’s Channel Two news reported that the Fijians were given food and medical attention after crossing into Israeli-controlled territory.
Israel takes care of everyone, even ISIS terrorists.
--more--"
"UN withdraws many peacekeepers from Golan Heights" Associated Press September 16, 2014
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations said Monday it has withdrawn its peacekeepers from many positions on the Golan Heights because of escalating fighting in the war between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters.
The situation has deteriorated severely over the last few days and advances by armed groups posed ‘‘a direct threat to the safety and security of the UN peacekeepers’’ along the Syrian side of the border and in Camp Faouar, where many troops are based, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Then surely they pose a threat to Israel, right?
He said all troops in those areas have been moved to the Israeli side of the border.
Well, the ground should reflect reality.
The UN decision follows the two-week abduction of 45 Fijian peacekeepers, who were released last week. They had been captured on the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan Heights by fighters from the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
The 1,200-strong UN force has patrolled a buffer zone between Syria and Israel since 1974, a year after a war between Arab nations and Israel.
Since then, UN monitors helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria, but the spillover from the Syrian civil war has led to the abduction of peacekeepers four times since March 2013, made troop contributors wary, and led several countries to withdraw their soldiers.
US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power urged all parties in Syria to respect the organization’s mission.
I'm not going to get into that hypocritical embarrassment and inaneness today.
--more--"
And what is with the defective vaccine? Syrians being treated as test subjects? Is that part of the whole program of creating refugees? For pharmaceutical rea$ons?
"50 Syrian children die after vaccines in rebel-held area" by Rick Gladstone and Hwaida Saad | New York Times September 18, 2014
Spoiled or possibly sabotaged measles vaccine has killed up to 50 children in insurgent-held areas of northwestern Syria, forcing a suspension of a large-scale vaccination campaign intended to stop the spread of measles, mumps, rubella, and polio, volunteer medical organizations reported Wednesday.
Whoa, sabotage!
The victims, some of them infants, apparently all died on Tuesday, mostly concentrated in the cities of Jarjanaz and Sinjar in Idlib province, an area controlled by forces opposed to President Bashar Assad. These opposition forces have sought to function as an interim government and provide basic health care services, including inoculations and vaccinations to children, given the collapse of Syria’s public health care system since the civil war began more than three years ago.
That doesn't sound like radical Islamist militants at all!
Dozens of other children in Idlib were reported to have been sickened by the vaccine. Dr. Abdulla Ajaj, a physician who helped administer the vaccine, said the suspect batch of doses had been received three days before they were used. “This is the first time we have had such a problem,” he said in a Skype interview.
The provenance of the vaccine was not immediately clear, but Ajaj speculated the doses may have been stored at improperly high temperatures. “Most probably they were badly kept inside the fridges,” he said.
Lame.
The Syrian American Medical Society, which organizes medical missions to Syria and runs a hospital in Idlib, said recipients of the bad vaccine began displaying symptoms within minutes, including shortness of breath, slowed heart rate, wheezing, and inflammation of the larynx. The group’s own facility saw at least 65 patients, it said in a statement, and 15 were dead on arrival, all under the age of 1.
I feel terrible for the parents.
The statement said the reason the medicines turned deadly were unclear, “though local staff speculate that the vaccinations may have been compromised by the storage location in Jarjanaz or potential tampering with the vaccinations.”
Why did Ebola just leap to mind?
Physicians for Human Rights, a New York organization that has liaisons in rebel held areas of northwest Syria, distributed an internal e-mail saying that up to 50 children may have died from the vaccine, which appeared to have been either spoiled or outdated, and that samples had been sent to Turkey for analysis.
That gets us back to the beginning of the post.
--more--"
Related(?):
"Public health officials are warning that people may have been exposed to measles at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In a news release, Public Health-Seattle & King County officials said a passenger who has a confirmed case of the disease — probably contracted outside the United States — was contagious when he or she was at the airport. The most likely time people exposed would become sick is between Sept. 13 and 27."
Syrian terrorists brought it in?
"Militants holding Lebanese soldiers release video" Associated Press September 15, 2014
BEIRUT — An Al Qaeda-linked militant group holding Lebanese soldiers and police released a video of the captive men Sunday, as officials continue mediation to release the men.
No beheadings?
The ongoing captivity of some 20 Lebanese security men by militants in Syria has emerged as one of the most serious spillovers of violence from the neighboring conflict, now in its fourth year. Militants from Syria seized the men when they overran the border town of Arsal, killing and kidnapping soldiers and police.
At least eight of the men are being held by the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, which has a history of releasing detainees unharmed.
Others are being held by the extremist Islamic State group, which has decapitated two Lebanese soldiers.
The men’s beheadings outraged Lebanon and sparked days of violence against Syrian refugees in the country.
The urgency of the Lebanese men’s situation was underscored by the release on Saturday of a video showing the beheading of a British aid worker by Islamic State group fighters.
Related: British Beheadings
David Haines was abducted in Syria last year.
The Islamic State has also beheaded two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and has killed many more Syrians and Iraqis.
In the two-part, 20-minute video released Sunday by the Nusra Front, one Lebanese soldier inquired about his mother, and another burst into tears as he spoke to his family.
I can't take the videos seriously anymore, sorry.
--more--"
Related:
"In Lebanon on Thursday, leaders of Eastern Catholic churches from across the Middle East issued a statement denouncing the Islamic State in northern Iraq and urging the international community to stop its “crimes against humanity.”
Then what would I get for a morning paper?
What do you mean they are all going after the wrong guys?
"UN withdraws many peacekeepers from Golan Heights" Associated Press September 16, 2014
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations said Monday it has withdrawn its peacekeepers from many positions on the Golan Heights because of escalating fighting in the war between Syrian government forces and opposition fighters.
The situation has deteriorated severely over the last few days and advances by armed groups posed ‘‘a direct threat to the safety and security of the UN peacekeepers’’ along the Syrian side of the border and in Camp Faouar, where many troops are based, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Then surely they pose a threat to Israel, right?
He said all troops in those areas have been moved to the Israeli side of the border.
Well, the ground should reflect reality.
The UN decision follows the two-week abduction of 45 Fijian peacekeepers, who were released last week. They had been captured on the Syrian-controlled side of the Golan Heights by fighters from the Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
The 1,200-strong UN force has patrolled a buffer zone between Syria and Israel since 1974, a year after a war between Arab nations and Israel.
Since then, UN monitors helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria, but the spillover from the Syrian civil war has led to the abduction of peacekeepers four times since March 2013, made troop contributors wary, and led several countries to withdraw their soldiers.
US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power urged all parties in Syria to respect the organization’s mission.
I'm not going to get into that hypocritical embarrassment and inaneness today.
--more--"
And what is with the defective vaccine? Syrians being treated as test subjects? Is that part of the whole program of creating refugees? For pharmaceutical rea$ons?
"50 Syrian children die after vaccines in rebel-held area" by Rick Gladstone and Hwaida Saad | New York Times September 18, 2014
Spoiled or possibly sabotaged measles vaccine has killed up to 50 children in insurgent-held areas of northwestern Syria, forcing a suspension of a large-scale vaccination campaign intended to stop the spread of measles, mumps, rubella, and polio, volunteer medical organizations reported Wednesday.
Whoa, sabotage!
The victims, some of them infants, apparently all died on Tuesday, mostly concentrated in the cities of Jarjanaz and Sinjar in Idlib province, an area controlled by forces opposed to President Bashar Assad. These opposition forces have sought to function as an interim government and provide basic health care services, including inoculations and vaccinations to children, given the collapse of Syria’s public health care system since the civil war began more than three years ago.
That doesn't sound like radical Islamist militants at all!
Dozens of other children in Idlib were reported to have been sickened by the vaccine. Dr. Abdulla Ajaj, a physician who helped administer the vaccine, said the suspect batch of doses had been received three days before they were used. “This is the first time we have had such a problem,” he said in a Skype interview.
The provenance of the vaccine was not immediately clear, but Ajaj speculated the doses may have been stored at improperly high temperatures. “Most probably they were badly kept inside the fridges,” he said.
Lame.
The Syrian American Medical Society, which organizes medical missions to Syria and runs a hospital in Idlib, said recipients of the bad vaccine began displaying symptoms within minutes, including shortness of breath, slowed heart rate, wheezing, and inflammation of the larynx. The group’s own facility saw at least 65 patients, it said in a statement, and 15 were dead on arrival, all under the age of 1.
I feel terrible for the parents.
The statement said the reason the medicines turned deadly were unclear, “though local staff speculate that the vaccinations may have been compromised by the storage location in Jarjanaz or potential tampering with the vaccinations.”
Why did Ebola just leap to mind?
Physicians for Human Rights, a New York organization that has liaisons in rebel held areas of northwest Syria, distributed an internal e-mail saying that up to 50 children may have died from the vaccine, which appeared to have been either spoiled or outdated, and that samples had been sent to Turkey for analysis.
That gets us back to the beginning of the post.
--more--"
Related(?):
"Public health officials are warning that people may have been exposed to measles at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In a news release, Public Health-Seattle & King County officials said a passenger who has a confirmed case of the disease — probably contracted outside the United States — was contagious when he or she was at the airport. The most likely time people exposed would become sick is between Sept. 13 and 27."
Syrian terrorists brought it in?
"Militants holding Lebanese soldiers release video" Associated Press September 15, 2014
BEIRUT — An Al Qaeda-linked militant group holding Lebanese soldiers and police released a video of the captive men Sunday, as officials continue mediation to release the men.
No beheadings?
The ongoing captivity of some 20 Lebanese security men by militants in Syria has emerged as one of the most serious spillovers of violence from the neighboring conflict, now in its fourth year. Militants from Syria seized the men when they overran the border town of Arsal, killing and kidnapping soldiers and police.
At least eight of the men are being held by the Syrian Al Qaeda affiliate, the Nusra Front, which has a history of releasing detainees unharmed.
Others are being held by the extremist Islamic State group, which has decapitated two Lebanese soldiers.
The men’s beheadings outraged Lebanon and sparked days of violence against Syrian refugees in the country.
The urgency of the Lebanese men’s situation was underscored by the release on Saturday of a video showing the beheading of a British aid worker by Islamic State group fighters.
Related: British Beheadings
David Haines was abducted in Syria last year.
The Islamic State has also beheaded two American journalists, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and has killed many more Syrians and Iraqis.
In the two-part, 20-minute video released Sunday by the Nusra Front, one Lebanese soldier inquired about his mother, and another burst into tears as he spoke to his family.
I can't take the videos seriously anymore, sorry.
--more--"
Related:
"In Lebanon on Thursday, leaders of Eastern Catholic churches from across the Middle East issued a statement denouncing the Islamic State in northern Iraq and urging the international community to stop its “crimes against humanity.”
Then what would I get for a morning paper?
What do you mean they are all going after the wrong guys?
