World must Denuclearize Israeli Regime

Posted by Jim W. Dean on December 15, 2014 - www.veteranstoday.com

"Israel is not only a dead man walking...but with a suicide belt on."

The world should take solid steps to disarm Israel as part of efforts to make the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone, a prominent political commentator says, Press TV reports.

Israel is believed to be the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US-led Western countries and their allies have turned a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear program.

Commenting on the Israeli expansionist agenda, Dean said, “There has to be boycott pressure [against Israel]. I have been talking about this for several years.”

Israel wouldn’t abide by the international law without sanctions, economic boycott and pressure, the analyst said.

Israel, which is facing isolation over its aggressive policies against Palestinians, is mainly under fire over its ongoing illegal settlement projects.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Dean praised the Palestinian initiative of taking the issue of Israeli occupation before the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

The Palestinian government is set to hand over a draft resolution to the UNSC to put pressure on the Israeli regime to end its occupation. The text is widely expected to be vetoed by the United States, a close ally of the Tel Aviv regime, because it set a two-year timetable for the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the occupied West Bank.

Jim W. Dean is managing editor of Veterans Today wearing many hats from day to day operations, development, writing and editing articles. He also has an active schedule of TV and radio interviews as do the other VT editors, and some guest radio hosting on the Rense network.

Jim comes from an old military family dating back to the American Revolution. Dozens of Confederate ancestors fought for the South in the War Between the States. Uncles fought in WWII and Korea. His father was a WWII P-40 and later P-51 Mustang fighter pilot. Vietnam found several uncles serving, a cousin, and brother Wendell as a young Ranger officer. His mother was a WWII widow at 16, her first husband killed with all 580 aboard when the SS Paul Hamilton, an ammunition ship with 7000 tons of explosives aboard, was torpedoed off the coast of Algiers. 

He has been writing, speaking and doing public relations, television, consulting and now multimedia work for a variety of American heritage, historical, military, veterans and Intel platforms. Jim's only film appearance was in the PBSLooking for Lincoln documentary with Prof. Henry Lewis Gates, and he has guest lectured at the Army Command and General Staff School at Fort Gordon. 

Currently he is working to take his extensive historical video archives on line to assist his affiliated organizations with their website multimedia efforts, such as the Military Order of World Wars, Atlanta, Sons of the American Revolution, Sons of Confederate Veterans , Assoc. for Intelligence Officers, the Navy League, Georgia Heritage Council, National Memorial Assoc.of Georgia.

The Ultimate Guide to Mainstream Media: American TV Networks (P1)

U.S. Mainstream media is such a sham.



http://rt.com/usa/213171-us-mainstream-media-bias/

An Israeli Soldier's Story - Eran Efrati

Everyone should take 40 mins out of their day to watch this. Open your mind.




http://youtu.be/93hqlmrZKd8

Revitalized Turkey drifts away from Europe and towards Eurasia

Published time: December 14, 2014

Along with Russia, Turkey lies at the confluence between Europe and Asia. A peripheral European power, like Russia, it is following Moscow's lead and also looking east.

In Turkey, I found a nation of deep contrasts, but a country incredibly sure of its statehood and fastened together by a strong overriding identity. Unlike its Black Sea neighbors, most of whom are searching for a stable course, Turkey is assured and united.

A country without the deep-seated corruption of nearby ‘European’ states and the religious radicalism of its Middle Eastern neighbours, Turkey is back in business. It also has the potential to become the dominant power in its hinterland, if it isn’t already.

Relations between Moscow and Ankara have been making headlines due to a new gas deal which will replace the ill-fated South Stream project. Nevertheless, from a Turkish perspective, warmer relations with Russia are part of a greater pivot to Eurasia. After flirting with Europe for decades and being constantly spurned, Turkey no longer seeks to be an attachment to a failing EU. Indeed, many Turks expressed the view that being rejected by Brussels has turned out to be a lucky escape.

“Imagine being tied to that now? Paying for Greece and all the other bankrupt places? We were blessed. They wouldn’t accept us because we were too big and too Muslim. Now we don’t feel like supporting their stagnant economies,” as one Black Sea coast politician put it.

While Europe has spent six years flailing around for solutions to its economic malaise and lurching from one crisis to another, it’s been another story entirely in Turkey. Its economy grew by 9.2 percent in 2010, with a projected four percent increase this year. By contrast, the EU managed a meagre two percent in 2010, and an astonishingly paltry 0.1 percent is predicted for 2014. Thus, it’s fairly clear that Turkey benefits from keeping the Brussels behemoth at arm’s length.

Leverage

Now, thanks to the collapse of Russia-EU relations, Ankara has very cleverly positioned itself as a major energy conduit to Europe, dramatically adding to its collection of bargaining chips. Once upon a time, Turkey would have probably used this advantage to increase its hopes of joining the EU – but now it will be used as leverage in other areas.

Turkey may also be a potential member of an expanded BRICS alliance, as it continues to slide away from its Cold War position in the pro-American camp. The nation is transitioning from being a relatively poor, 20th century backwater to a revanchist major power in the 21st.

An enthusiastic NATO member during the Soviet period, Turkey housed US missiles and played a central role in the tense Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Western governments provided Turkey with mountains of aid during the Cold War and turned a blind eye to its succession of dictatorships, mostly formed by coups. They also ignored the continuous persecution of minorities, most notably the Kurds. Kurds make up around 20 percent of the country’s population.

In 2002, modern Turkey reached a fork in the road after AKP formed the first single party government of the democratic era. The moderate Islamist party reduced military spending, and soon education had a bigger budget than defense. In a country once effectively ruled by generals, it was a bold move. Secular policies, a legacy of Kemal Ataturk’s blueprint for modern Turkey, were rolled back and Islam began to reassert itself nationwide.

Fed up

In foreign policy, much has changed. AKP’s leader, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, takes a firm pro-Palestinian line in the Middle East, which has diluted Turkey’s traditionally close relations with Washington and Tel Aviv.

Fed up with the perceived anti-Turk positions in Brussels, Turkey seems further away from EU membership than ever, although Erdogan’s government opened formal negotiations in 2005. With France and Germany both opposed to accession, it’s clear that the process is mere political posturing. There are important domestic reasons why Ankara maintains the pretense of actively seeking to join the EU. The notion plays to secularists and their supporters in the military.

Germany’s views on Turkey are quite bizarre at times. After mass immigration from Turkey in previous decades, Germans see the nation through the same prism as the ‘Gastarbeiters.’

What Germans fail to grasp is that Turkey’s European-leaning elite didn’t migrate as guest workers. They stayed at home. There is no comparison between the cosmopolitan denizens of western Edirne and the stoically religious residents of eastern Rize.

The newcomers to Germany were rural Turks, who adhered far more strongly to Islamic custom than the power brokers inside Turkey. In the old capital, Istanbul, and among the influential military officers, a Eurocentric world view has prevailed.

However, Europe has failed to realize this. While Ankara continuously applied to Brussels for membership, ‘core Europe’ balked at the notion of millions of Turkish Muslims inside the EU and ignored their application. In 2005, as Brussels finally opened accession talks, the EU media were warning against the "Islamization of Europe."

Around the same time, support for pro-Islamic politicians was hardening in Turkey, and pro-religious feeling was expanding. Brussels had skirted the Turkish issue for too long, and now the fleeting moment had passed. Ankara was headed in another direction.

The present internal dialogue, in all corners of the country, concerns how far Turkey has drifted away from its traditional allies – the USA, Israel, and the EU – and which relationships it must develop instead. While no consensus exists, the concept currently winning out is the notion of becoming a Eurasian power. Ankara is now looking more to Moscow or Beijing than Washington or Berlin.

The European-leaning Turkish system, bequeathed by Ataturk, has been struggling under the pressure of influences from Islamist regimes around the region, most notably neighboring Iran.

In eastern Turkey, even in large cities like Samsun and Trabzon, considerably more women now wear Islamic dress than secular costume. Under Ataturk and the governments that followed, it was prohibited to dress in a pious Islamic way in public. Turkey has changed and is no longer the nation that once cozied up to Israel and the US.

President Erdogan’s ruling AKP party publicly clings to a desire to join the EU. However, the government is fully aware that Brussels will never admit them. Hence, the EU path is used as a signal to Islamists that the AKP won’t countenance deviation from the European path plotted by Ataturk.

Erdogan walks a fine line between secularists – who have the support of Turkey’s extremely powerful military – and the religious, who demand something approaching Sharia law. The truth is that neither the EU nor the Sharia options are legitimate possibilities in Turkey. Instead, governments will continue to balance both ideologies and remain as close to Ataturk’s philosophy as possible.

Berlin anti-war rally protests NATO militarism, anti-Russian warmongering

Published time: December 14

Hundreds of people in Berlin joined the German Peace Movement march on Saturday, blaming the West – especially the US and NATO – for spreading wars worldwide. The protest called for peaceful resolutions to conflicts and mending relations with Russia.

At least 3,500 people came out to support the ‘Die Friedensbewegung’ march, which ended outside Bellevue Palace – the official residence of Germany’s President Joachim Gauck.

Footage from Ruptly shows hundreds of people marching down the streets chanting while carrying placards, posters, flags and signs.

Shouting slogans against what the protesters say is Gauck’s pro-war policy, they referred to Western governments as warmongers. Organizers of the march told Die Welt that wars are spreading around the world with immense speed, and those conflicts eventually come back to bite Europe in one form or another.

They added that NATO and the US are the main players behind the militaristic policies that ignite global conflict.

One of the topics that concerned protesters the most is the relationship between Germany and Russia in light of the Ukrainian conflict.

“Russian people are our friends and we don’t want to live at war with them. We like peace in Europe and Russia is one part of Europe,” one of the protesters told Ruptly.

People of all ages participated in the march, including children and the elderly. Some brought along drums to keep the atmosphere upbeat.

Police were dispatched to supervise the peaceful rally, but did not intervene.

CIA torture is reason for France to exit NATO – Le Pen

Published time: December 13, 2014

The shocking revelations of CIA torture techniques give France a reason to exit NATO, National Front party leader Marine Le Pen said on Saturday. The report on the CIA’s former interrogation practices has drawn wide criticism since its release.

“If indeed everyone is outraged by the tortures used by the US then, let’s leave NATO,” Le Pen said during an interview with Europe 1 radio channel. She wrote the same statement on her Twitter account.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee's CIA “torture report,” which details the CIA’s use of torture on prisoners in the wake of 9/11, was released by the Senate on Tuesday.

After four years of research at a cost of over $40 million, the findings unveiled the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or EITs, used within the walls of covert, overseas prisons by the CIA.

The report raised serious questions over controversial tactics which included sleep deprivation, waterboarding, rectal feeding, and others. Dianne Feinstein, the committee chair, admitted that the techniques were “torture,” though the word was never used in the report.

The findings also revealed that the CIA’s treatment breached the body's legal mandate, as investigators said they found evidence of the intelligence agency’s systematic deception of Congress. Despite the methods used, the agency failed to gather information that foiled subsequent threats to US national security, the report found.

Since the report's release, prominent human rights groups have demanded to prosecute the responsible US officials listed in the document.

Despite widespread criticism and a wave of outrage sparked by the results of the Senate investigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Wednesday that it will not be pursuing charges against those involved in the interrogations.

UN special rapporteur for torture Juan Mendez told RT that the report will likely create momentum that will lead to justice. He insisted that countries complicit in the CIA torture need to carry out their own investigations.

“We have lived without prosecutions now for several years, but the experience shows that when truth telling is done honestly and sincerely, it generates a debate and the debate then generates a momentum towards justice,” he said in an interview on Thursday.

Le Pen has previously criticized French President Francois Hollande’s close ties with the US and called on France to leave NATO.

Speaking to RT's Sophie Shevardnadze in June, Le Pen said that NATO is an opportunity for the United States to extend its influence.

ISIS leader says US prisons in Iraq led to creation of terrorist organization

Published time: December 12, 2014

A leading member of the Islamic State has revealed the group could never have been formed without the help of the US. American prison camps in Iraq gave the Islamists the perfect opportunity to meet and plan their eventual rise to power.

Ten years ago, Abu Ahmed was incarcerated at Camp Bucca, a US run prison in Iraq. In an exclusive interview a decade later to the Guardian, he reveals how the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) might never have formed if US detention centers hadn’t existed.

Abu Ahmed, who uses a pseudonym, is now one of the Islamic State’s senior leaders. He recalls how he initially feared going to Camp Bucca, but he soon realized he had arrived at a facility that was a hive of Islamist radicals.

“We could never have all got together like this in Baghdad, or anywhere else,” he told the Guardian. “It would have been impossibly dangerous. Here, we were not only safe, but we were only a few hundred meters away from the entire Al-Qaida leadership.”

The Iraqi government estimates that 17 of the most important IS leaders spent time in US prison’s from 2004-11, the Guardian reported. The inmates were released at different times and were spread across the country. However, they came-up with an ingenious way to stay in touch after being granted their freedom. They would write each other’s telephone numbers and addresses on the inside of their boxer shorts, as they had no access to paper or other electronic aids.

After Abu Ahmed was released, the first thing he did when he was safe in Baghdad was to undress, then carefully take a pair of scissors to his underwear and cut away the elastic where everything was written down. “I cut the fabric from my boxers and all the numbers were there. We reconnected. And we got to work.” Across Iraq, other ex-inmates were doing the same. “It really was that simple,” Abu Ahmed said, as he recalled how his captors had been outwitted. “Boxers helped us win the war.”

During his time at Camp Bucca, Abu Ahmed also came face to face with the current IS leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. He says Al-Baghdadi proved he had a direct lineage to the Prophet Mohammed and also had a PhD in Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad, which played a key role in being able to maneuver himself into a position of power.

“Baghdadi was a quiet person. He had a charisma. You could feel that he was someone important. But there were others who were more important. I honestly did not think he would get this far,” Abu Ahmed told the Guardian.

“The Americans never knew who they had,” Abu Ahmed continued, speaking of Al-Baghdadi. However, the US army was not alone as most of Baghdadi’s fellow prisoners – some 24,000 men, divided into 24 camps – seem to have been equally unaware.

However, the current IS leader certainly managed to create a rapport with the US Army. He was often seen as a go-between to settle disputes between rival factions in the prison camp.

“But as time went on, every time there was a problem in the camp, he was at the center of it. He wanted to be the head of the prison – and when I look back now, he was using a policy of conquer and divide to get what he wanted, which was status. And it worked.”

By December 2004, Baghdadi was deemed by his jailers to pose no further risk and his release was authorized. He eventually left Camp Bucca in 2009.

“He was respected very much by the US army,” Abu Ahmed said. “If he wanted to visit people in another camp he could, but we couldn’t. And all the while, a new strategy, which he was leading, was rising under their noses, and that was to build the Islamic State. If there was no American prison in Iraq, there would be no IS now. Bucca was a factory. It made us all. It built our ideology.”

Camp Bucca was one of a number of US prisons in Iraq, but the most infamous was Abu Ghraib, which closed in April.

It came to international attention in early 2004, when it was revealed that US troops physically and sexually abused, tortured, raped, and killed inmates. The disturbing images that came out of the facility went a long way to fueling Iraqi fury with American forces, and forever changed the perception of the war.

Hundreds of prisoners escaped from Abu Ghraib last year when nearby Fallujah fell under the control of the Islamic State. An attack on Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons freed more than 500 prisoners, including a number of senior militants and killed 120 Iraqi guards and SWAT forces, an Al-Qaeda spokesman told reporters last year.