#Iran|ian military drill on Kurdistan Region border (Haji Omaran Crossing Border) despite business being conducted as usual.#TwitterKurds
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Iran Deploys Tanks To Border With Iraqi Kurdistan
Iran Deploys Tanks To Border With Iraqi Kurdistan
Days before last week’s Kurdistan referendum, Iran took steps to isolate and punish the Iraqi Kurdistan region and the government in Erbil (KRG). This included closing Iranian airspace to northern Iraq’s two international airports and sending Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard forces to conduct drills along the northwest border with Kurdistan, but in the early hours of Monday Iran dramatically escalated its military build-up along the border by deploying dozens of tanks supported by artillery – this according to a Kurdish government official and Iranian state television.
The Kurdish official confirmed the tank build-up, saying “The tanks can be seen from the Kurdish side.” And Iranian state TV on Saturday indicated that Iran and Iraq would cooperate in joint drills and the establishment of heightened border security, to the point that Iran would “receive Iraqi forces that are to be stationed at border posts”.
Iranian government officials had warned just prior to last week’s referendum that, “The republic of Iran has opened its legitimate border gates on the premise of the consent of the federal government of the Iraqi state. If such an event [referendum] happens, these border gates from the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran would lose its legitimacy.” It appears Iran is now making good on its threats as it worries that an independent Kurdistan at its border would be a destabilizing force concerning Iran’s own sizable Kurdish minority.
Last week multiple videos and images surfaced in Iranian social media purporting to show Iranian state police and security forces deploying to the Kurdish towns in Iran’s north. Multiple reports indicate pro-Kurdistan demonstrations took place in various Kurdish Iranian towns in response to the Erbil government’s referendum, something strictly banned and thus a rarity in the Islamic Republic.
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North Korea Claims 5 Million New Soldiers Enlisted Ahead Of “Imminent Provocation”
North Korea Claims 5 Million New Soldiers Enlisted Ahead Of “Imminent Provocation”
In what is probably a “slightly” exaggerated figure, North Korea claimed on Thursday that some 4.7 million students and workers have volunteered to join or re-enlist in the North Korean army since Kim Jong Un called Donald Trump a “dotard” and vowed to retaliate against the US for President Donald Trump’s threats to “destroy” North Korea. If accurate, that figure would represent nearly 20% of the North’s population (the country is believed to be home to 25 million people, making it about half the size, population-wise as South Korea).
Furthermore, according to the Rodong Sinmun, North Korea’s biggest newspaper among the volunteers were 1.2 million women, which was cited by South Korean news agency Yonhap.
Of course, North Korea has made similar claims in the past when tensions with the US have intensified. Pyongyang usually claims that its young citizens voluntarily enlisted in the military in its propaganda campaigns aimed at bolstering national solidarity – even as recently as last month.
North Korea made a similar assertion last month when it condemned the UN Security Council for adopting US-led resolutions over Pyongyang’s launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in July.
On Tuesday, the US imposed another round of meaningless new sanctions on North Korea’s banks, after President Donald Trump claimed an important victory by revealing that China had instructed its banks to halt business with North Korea. The president reiterated during a press conference with Spanish leader Mariano Rajoy that the US was “totally prepared” to use a military option against the North, which he said would be “totally devastating.” Earlier this week, National Security Advisor HR McMaster said the US had prepared “four or five different scenarios” for how the crisis with North Korea could be resolved, ominously adding that “some are uglier than others.”
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Trump Is Determined to Go to War
Trump Is Determined to Go to War
On September 18 Presidents Trump and Macron met in New York and said a few words in front of the media. It was a love-fest, with Trump pouring out a honey-stream of compliments and one of his observations was that Emmanuel Macron is “doing a terrific job in France. He’s doing what has to be done. He’s respected by the French people,” which was one of his more dubious statements of recent weeks.
Some 53 per cent of French citizens disapprove of President Macron, which is exactly the same as Trump’s domestic disapproval score, so it can’t be claimed that either of them is “respected” by a majority of their country’s deeply polarised populace.
The depths of Trump ignorance are verging on the unfathomable, but it isn’t that aspect of his psychotic character that is disturbing to the point of danger for the world as a whole. The scary thing about his comments was his ecstatic enthusiasm for blasting trumpets, roaring aircraft, rumbling tanks and all the paraphernalia of martial belligerence. He said he had loved the Bastille Day parade in Paris and “we may do something like that on July 4th in Washington, down Pennsylvania Avenue… We’re going to have to try and top it… we had a lot of planes going over and we had a lot of military might, and it was really a beautiful thing to see…”
When I was a soldier I participated in many parades and still warm to bands and like to see smartly marching troops. The general public in almost every country in the world likes them, too, and there is no reason to propose that such events be curtailed. But. BUT: I have grave doubts about a national leader who is so worked up and excited about them being “a lot of military might and… really a beautiful thing to see.”
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Trump on the Warpath
Trump on the Warpath
A Failing Empire: Russia and China’s Military Strategy to Contain the US
A Failing Empire: Russia and China’s Military Strategy to Contain the US
Looking at the global political landscape over the last month, two trends are becoming more apparent. The infamous military and economic power at America’s disposal is declining, whereas in the multipolar field, an acceleration has occurred in the creation of a series of infrastructures, mechanisms and procedures to contain and limit the negative effects of America’s declining unipolar moment. This series of three articles will focus firstly on the military aspect of these ongoing changes, then the economics at play, and finally, how and why smaller countries are transitioning from the unipolar camp to the multipolar field.
One of the most tangible consequences of the decline of US military power can be observed in the Syrian conflict. Over the past few weeks, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies have completed the historic and strategic liberation of Deir ez-Zor, a city besieged for more than five years by Islamists belonging to Al Qaeda and Daesh. The focus has now shifted to the oilfields south of the liberated city, with a frantic rush by both the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the SAA to free territories still held by Daesh. The final goal is to claim Syria’s resources and strengthen a weak US position (the US is not even part of the Astana peace talks) in future negotiations concerning the country’s future. To understand how much the US dream of partitioning Syria is failing, one only need note repeated US failures as seen in the liberation of Aleppo and then Deir Ez-Zor, and now the crossing of the Euphrates river. In spite of American intimidation, threats, and sometimes even direct aggression, the Syrian army continued to work against Daesh in the province of Deir Ez-Zor, advancing on oil rich sites.
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The United States of Hubris
The United States of Hubris
If anyone should have any questions about whether the United States of America is not the most aggressive, warlike, and terroristic nation on the face of the earth, its latest proposed action against the supposed rogue state of North Korea should allay any such doubts.
Last week, the US circulated a draft resolution which it intends to present to the UN Security Council that would give the American Navy and Air Force the power to interdict North Korean ships at sea to determine if they were transporting “weaponry material” or fuel and that US forces would be given “the right” to use “all necessary measures” to “enforce compliance.”*
Not surprisingly, Nikky Haley, the blood-thirsty and incompetent American Ambassador to the UN, has enthusiastically backed the resolution, utterly clueless of its ramifications if passed, the most horrific of which would be the igniting of WWIII. Trump’s selection of the neocon mouthpiece as UN Ambassador has been a disaster on several fronts: first, it was an early and quite telling sell out of his political base whom he promised an American First foreign policy of less belligerency and intervention. Second, Haley had no foreign policy experience and has made a fool of herself internationally on more than one occasion with her inane statements.
That the US is even considering such a provocative scheme once again shows the hubris which exists within its vast corridors of power. Any other country which would suggest such an audacious act would be rightly condemned, ostracized, and labeled as a rogue state. Yet, it is US lawmakers, policy wonks, and the CIA/NSA-directed American press corps that charge others (mostly those who do not kowtow to US dictates) of “terrorism.”
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Tracking Military Weaponry and War Machines Flowing to America’s Local Police Departments
Tracking Military Weaponry and War Machines Flowing to America’s Local Police Departments
This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions outlined plans to transfer heavy military weapons to local police across America. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images – taken before Miami press conference on sanctuary cities.)
This week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced President Donald Trump’s plan to distribute military gear to state and local law enforcement agencies. The rule change means weapons typically reserved for war-time use – tracked armored (tank-like) vehicles, weaponized aircraft and vessels, grenade launchers, bayonets, and firearms with ammunition of .50-caliber or higher – will start flowing to local law enforcement agencies through the Department of Defense’s 1033 Program.
Yes, the story is familiar. In 2016, we sounded the alarmat Forbes about the Obama administration sending heavy weapons to local police departments. We noted that people of good faith on both the left and right were raising serious concerns regarding civil liberties and the growth of government.
Today, the same questions are valid: What’s the legitimate law enforcement purpose for these weapons? Does the militarization of local police threaten our civil liberties?
Search our OpenTheBooks interactive map for all weaponry transferred to the 6,500 local, state and other federal police agencies across America since 2006. See it all – in your hometown, park district, forest preserve, junior college, university, county, state police – or federal agency such as Homeland Security, Interior and the Justice Department – across any ZIP code!
OpenTheBooks.comSearch the 6,500 local police departments across America for the military weaponry transferred from the Dept. of Defense.
What military gear will you find in your local police department? Here’s a sample of our findings:
- In Illinois, the College of DuPage received 14 fully automatic M16 rifles. The police department in Wheaton (pop. 53,000) picked up 68 M16 and M14 rifles plus five pistols (.45 caliber). Evanston – a small community known to promote gun control ordinances – procured 20 M16 rifles.
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NATO Builds Infrastructure for Permanent Military Presence Near Russia’s Borders
NATO Builds Infrastructure for Permanent Military Presence Near Russia’s Borders
A group of about 50 combat engineers based at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown were deployed to Latvia on April 29 as part of Operation Reassurance. The mission is to build a town for 500 soldiers. According to commanding officer Lt.-Col. Chris Cotton, the installation will have «everything you would expect in a small town, from its kitchen to its quarters, its electrical distribution system, water distribution system, internet, gym facilities that would allow people to survive over the long term in Latvia». Obviously, this is an element of vast infrastructure to provide for a long-term commitment.
In early April, a US-led battle group of 1,350 soldiers for NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence in Eastern Europe arrived at its base near Orzysz in northeastern Poland. It took place just a few days after a NATO-Russia Council meeting took place on March 30. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called the talks with Moscow «frank» and «constructive». Then the usual song and dance followed under the slogan of Russian threat.
British RAF fighters are scheduled to be stationed to Romania this May. In March the first of 800 UK troops arrived in Estonia supported by around 300 armed vehicles. Along with French and Danish forces they’ll be stationed there on what NATO leadership calls «rotational basis». In January, German and Belgian forces arrived in Lithuania near the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
The UK leads the Estonia Battlegroup while other NATO members are deploying forces to Latvia, Lithuania and Poland as part of the bloc’s Enhanced Forward Presence battalion. All in all, 4,000 NATO troops with tanks, armored vehicles, air support, and high-tech intelligence centers deployed to Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
In accordance with the fiscal year 2017 European Reassurance Initiative budget proposal, the US Army is reopening or creating five equipment-storage sites in the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium and two locations in Germany.
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Russia Denies Shooting at Ukrainian Military Plane In Black Sea
Russia Denies Shooting at Ukrainian Military Plane In Black Sea
With the US State Department in a state of protracted hiatus for the time being, tensions are again rising between Russia and Ukraine, and especially in East Ukraine, where over the past few days the number of soldiers killed in an offensive by pro-Russian separatists has reportedly risen to seven, Ukraine’s military said on Monday, in the deadliest outbreak of fighting in the east of the country since mid-December.
The clashes between Ukraine’s military and the pro-Russian separatists coincide with U.S. President Donald Trump’s call for better relations with Moscow that has alarmed Kiev while the conflict in its eastern region remains unresolved. According to Ukraine sources, the rebels began attacking government positions in the eastern frontline town of Avdiyivka on Sunday. Five soldiers were killed and nine wounded on Sunday and two more were killed on Monday, they said.
“The situation in the Avdiyivka industrial zone is challenging. The enemy continues to fire at our positions with heavy artillery and mortars,” Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk told a regular daily briefing. Naturally, since the media on both sides is clearly biased in its coverage, it came as no surprise that both local separatists news agencies, and Russia, denied escalation had occurred.
In the meantime, it appears that whether real or fabricated, the push to escalate another conflict is building, and on Wednesday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that a Ukrainian An-26 transport plane came under rifle fire from a Russian drilling rig while flying near the Odessa gas field in the Black Sea. The plane was allegedly involved in drill over Black Sea, and was flying in Ukrainian air space.
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Disconnect: Congressional hawks hate sustainability, but love military that seeks it
Disconnect: Congressional hawks hate sustainability, but love military that seeks it
Recently, I toured a U.S Navy mine sweeper and destroyer during Fleet Week. Just before the tour entrance line a tent with exhibits caught my attention. On the first table were a set of small bottles containing various kinds of liquid fuels, a sampling meant to highlight the biofuels now being developed and used by the Navy. At the second table I was greeted by a Navy public relations specialist who handed me a quarterly magazine devoted exclusively to the Navy’s energy and environmental initiatives.
The U.S. Navy isn’t the only service seeking to make itself less dependent on fossil fuels and friendlier to the environment. The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has committed itself to more sustainable practices and alternative fuels across all services. The reason: The DOD takes climate change and fossil fuel dependence as serious risks to the nation’s security and to the U.S. military’s own ability to fight and protect the nation.
Why does the U.S. military establishment take these threats seriously and act on them in such a thoroughgoing fashion while the military’s strongest congressional supporters are the most ardent opponents of sustainable practices?
Using the hawkish Center for Security Policy’s (CSP) 2013-2014 congressional scorecard as a proxy for devotion to all things military, we find 21 so-called “champions” of national security in the U.S. House and Senate who voted for all items favored by the CSP during the session. Among those 21 legislators, nine had a 0 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters for 2014, four had a 3 percent rating, four had a 6 percent rating, one had 20 percent rating, one had a 60 percent rating, and two were not rated.
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America’s Greatest Threat Is Its Crazed “Leadership” And Its Brainwashed Population
America’s Greatest Threat Is Its Crazed “Leadership” And Its Brainwashed Population
A Russian Warning
By Dmitry Orlov, The Saker, Victor Katsap and Evgenia Gurevich
June 02, 2016 “Information Clearing House” – “ClubOrlov” – We, the undersigned, are Russians living and working in the USA. We have been watching with increasing anxiety as the current US and NATO policies have set us on an extremely dangerous collision course with the Russian Federation, as well as with China. Many respected, patriotic Americans, such as Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Cohen, Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern and many others have been issuing warnings of a looming Third World War. But their voices have been all but lost among the din of a mass media that is full of deceptive and inaccurate stories that characterize the Russian economy as being in shambles and the Russian military as weak—all based on no evidence. But we-—knowing both Russian history and the current state of Russian society and the Russian military–cannot swallow these lies. We now feel that it is our duty, as Russians living in the US, to warn the American people that they are being lied to, and to tell them the truth. And the truth is simply this:
If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States
will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead.
Let us take a step back and put what is happening in a historical context. Russia has suffered a great deal at the hands of foreign invaders, losing 22 million people in World War II. Most of the dead were civilians, because the country was invaded, and the Russians have vowed to never let such a disaster happen again.
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US Exceptionalism Has No Place in a Multipolar World
US Exceptionalism Has No Place in a Multipolar World
With the end of the Cold War twenty-five years ago, many in the U.S have taken the country’s continued global hegemony for granted. However, this state of affairs is increasingly being challenged by both Russia and China, exemplified by their aerial flybys and interceptions of the US military within their respective regions.
Moscow is the Heart
“If St. Petersburg is Russia’s head, and Kiev its legs, then Moscow is its heart.” These words were spoken by Napoleon when explaining the need for France to capture Moscow in order to bring the entire Russian Empire into submission. More generally, he was commenting on the necessity of defeating Russia, first and foremost, in order to truly secure French dominion within Europe.
Recently, a Russian warplane “buzzed” the USS Donald Cook while the ship was performing maneuvers in the Baltic Sea. This incident occurred as the U.S. is looking to increase its material presence in eastern Europe in order to reassure nervous NATO allies in the wake of the Ukraine Crisis. As US-Russian relations continue to deteriorate, the U.S. will most likely face increasing pressure from NATO allies, most notably Poland and the Baltic states, to adopt an even harsher stance towards Russia.
‘She Will Shake the World’
“Let China sleep, for when the Dragon awakes, she will shake the world.” These words were also supposedly spoken by Napoleon and reference his belief that China’s eventual ascension will impact not only Europe, but the entire world. Even in Napoleon’s own time, before the eventual onset of the Opium Wars, this was self-evident.
China, meanwhile, has recently intercepted a US reconnaissance aircraft operating in the South China Sea. Although its relations with the U.S. are not nearly as hostile as US-Russia relations, China has come under increasing international criticism for its artificial island construction and overall territorial claims in the region with respect to its neighbors.
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Russia to form 3 new divisions to counter NATO buildup
Russia to form 3 new divisions to counter NATO buildup
Russia is to deploy two new divisions in the west and one in the south to counterbalance NATO’s increased military presence near Russian borders, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced.
“The Defense Ministry is taking a number of measures to respond to the NATO military buildup at the Russian border,” Shoigu said on Wednesday. “Before the year’s end two new divisions will be formed in the Western Military District and one in the Southern Military District.”
Spring is comnig! Estonia expects 1,500 NATO troops for major Spring Storm drillshttp://on.rt.com/7bk9
Earlier there were reports in the Russian media that three new divisions with 10,000 troops each may be deployed in Rostov-on-Don, the Smolensk Region and the Voronezh Region.
NATO has been sending additional forces to Poland, the Baltic States and elsewhere near Russian borders since 2014. It claimed that the deployments were necessary to build confidence of Eastern European members in the face of “Russian aggression.”
The perceived aggression was exemplified by the example of Crimea, which seceded from Ukraine after a coup in Kiev. The former Ukrainian region voted in a referendum to join Russia, which was described as an illegal annexation through military force by the new government in Kiev and its foreign allies.
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Andrew Bacevich and America’s Long Misguided War to Control the Greater Middle East
THE CONVICTION that invasion, bombing, and special forces benefit large swaths of the globe, while remaining consonant with a Platonic ideal of the national interest, runs deep in the American psyche. Like the poet Stevie Smith’s cat, the United States “likes to gallop about doing good.” The cat attacks and misses, sometimes injuring itself, but does not give up. It asks, as the U.S. should,
What’s the good
Of galloping about doing good
When angels stand in the path
And do not do as they should
Nothing undermines the American belief in military force. No matter how often its galloping about results in resentment and mayhem, the U.S. gets up again to do good elsewhere. Failure to improve life in Vietnam, Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya stiffens the resolve to get it right next time. This notion prevails among politicized elements of the officer corps; much of the media, whether nominally liberal or conservative; the foreign policy elite recycled quadrennially between corporation-endowed think tanks and government; and most politicians on the national stage. For them and the public they influence, the question is less whether to deploy force than when, where, and how.
Since 1979, when the Iranians overthrew the Shah and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the U.S. has concentrated its firepower in what former U.S. Army colonel Andrew Bacevich calls the “Greater Middle East.” The region comprises most of what America’s imperial predecessors, the British, called the Near and Middle East, a vast zone from Pakistan west to Morocco. In his new book, America’s War for the Greater Middle East, Bacevich writes, “From the end of World War II until 1980, virtually no American soldiers were killed in action while serving in that region. Within a decade, a great shift occurred. Since 1990, virtually no American soldiers have been killed anywhere except the Greater Middle East.”
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NEW YORK – Fifteen years after George W. Bush declared that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea formed “an axis of evil,” Donald Trump, in his maiden address to the United Nations, denounced Iran and North Korea in similarly vitriolic terms. Words have consequences, and Trump’s constitute a dire and immediate threat to global peace, just as Bush’s words did in 2002.
For Trump, as for Bush, there is Good (America) and Evil (Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iran, North Korea, and Iraq under Saddam Hussein). America the Good makes demands on the evildoers. If the evildoers do not comply, America can exercise the “military option” or impose punitive sanctions to enforce “justice” as the United States defines it.
Bush applied the logic of force vis-à-vis Afghanistan and the “axis of evil,” with disastrous results. The US quickly overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2002 but could not secure order. Fifteen years on, the Taliban controls considerable territory, and Trump has just ordered an increase in troops. America has spent roughly $800 billion in direct military outlays in Afghanistan, and indeed has been at war there almost non-stop since the CIA covertly intervened in 1979, helping to provoke the Soviet invasion of that country.
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