Rss Feed - Search results for 'Abroad' Search results for 'Abroad' Mon, 30 Nov 2015 04:58:14 -0500 Liveleak Rss Feed - Search results for 'Abroad' Thanksgiving and Puritan Geopolitics in the Americas Sun, 29 Nov 2015 23:42:17 -0500 sunburner1124 November 26, 2015 The painting "Desembarco de los Puritanos en America," or "The Arrival of the Pilgrims in America," by Antonio Gisbert shows Puritans landing in America in 1620. By Antonio Gisbert (1834-1902) , via Wikimedia Commons Summary Editor's Note: In light of the U.S. celebration of Thanksgiving, we are republishing this November 2014 piece explaining the geopolitical and historical context of the Plymouth colony. The first winter took many of the English at Plymouth. By fall 1621, only 53 remained of the 132 who had arrived on the Mayflower. But those who had survived brought in a harvest. And so, in keeping with tradition, the governor called the living 53 together for a three-day harvest feast, joined by more than 90 locals from the Wampanoag tribe. The meal was a moment to recognize the English plantation's small step toward stability and, hopefully, profit. This was no small thing. A first, deadly year was common. Getting through it was an accomplishment. England's successful colony of Virginia had had a massive death toll - of the 8,000 arrivals between 1607 and 1625, only 15 percent lived. But still the English came to North America and still government and business leaders supported them. This was not without reason. In the 17th century, Europe was in upheaval and England's place in it unsure. Moreover, England was going through a period of internal instability that would culminate in the unthinkable - civil war in 1642 and regicide in 1649. England's colonies were born from this situation, and the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay and the little-known colony of Providence Island in the Caribbean were part of a broader Puritan geopolitical strategy to solve England's problems. Analysis Throughout the first half of the 17th century, England was wracked by internal divisions that would lead to civil war in 1642. Religion was a huge part of this. The dispute was over the direction of the Church of England. Some factions favored "high" church practices that involved elaborate ritual. The Puritans, by contrast, wanted to clear the national religion of what they considered Catholic traces. This religious crisis compounded a political crisis at the highest levels of government, pitting Parliament against the monarchy. By the beginning of the 17th century, England had undergone centralizing reforms that gave the king and his Parliament unrestricted power to make laws. Balance was needed. The king had the power to call Parliament into session and dismiss it. Parliament had the power to grant him vital funds needed for war or to pay down debt. However, Parliament had powerful Puritan factions that sought not only to advance their sectarian cause but also to advance the power of Parliament beyond its constraints. Kings James I and his son Charles I, for their part, sought to gain an unrestrained hold on power that would enable them to make decisive strategic choices abroad. They relied, internally and externally, on Catholics, crypto-Catholics and high church advocates - exacerbating the displeasure of Parliament. Both kings continually fought with Parliament over funding for the monarchy's debt and for new ventures. Both dissolved Parliament several times; Charles ultimately did so for a full 11 years beginning in 1629. Spain was England's major strategic problem on the Continent. Protestant England saw itself as under constant threat from the Catholic powers in Europe. This led to problems when the people came to see their leaders, James I and his son Charles, as insufficiently hostile to Spain and insufficiently committed to the Protestant cause on the Continent. In order to stop mounting debt, shortly after taking power James made the unpopular move of ending a war with Spain that England had been waging alongside the Netherlands since 1585. In 1618, the Thirty Years' War broke out in the German states - a war that, in part, pitted Protestants against Catholics and spread throughout Central Europe. James did not wish to become involved in the war. In 1620, the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II, a relative of Spain's King Philip III, pushed Frederick V, the Protestant son-in-law of England's King James, out of his lands in Bohemia, and Spain attacked Frederick in his other lands in the Rhineland. The English monarchy called for a defense of Frederick but was unwilling to commit to significant military action to aid him. Puritan factions in Parliament, however, wanted England to strike at Spain directly by attacking Spanish shipments from the Americas, which could have paid for itself in captured goods. To make matters worse, from 1614 to 1623, James I pursued an unpopular plan to marry his son Charles to the Catholic daughter of Philip III of Spain - a plan called the "Spanish Match." Instead, Charles I ended up marrying the Catholic daughter of the king of France in 1625. This contributed to the impression that James and Charles were too friendly with Spain and Catholicism, or even were secret Catholics. Many Puritans and other zealous promoters of the Protestant cause began to feel that they had to look outside of the English government to further their cause. Amid this complex constellation of Continental powers and England's own internal incoherence, a group of Puritan leaders in Parliament, who would later play a pivotal role in the English Civil War, focused on the geopolitical factors that were troubling England. Issues of finance and Spanish power were at the core. A group of them struck on the idea of establishing a set of Puritan colonial ventures in the Americas that would simultaneously serve to unseat Spain from her colonial empire and enrich England, tipping the geopolitical balance. In this they were continuing Elizabeth I's strategy of 1585, when she started a privateer war in the Atlantic and Caribbean to capture Spanish treasure ships bound from the Americas. Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were part of this early vision, but they were both far too remote to challenge the Spanish, and the group believed that the area's climate precluded it from being a source of vast wealth from cash crops. New England, however, was safe from Spanish aggression and could serve as a suitable starting point for a colonial push into the heart of Spanish territory. The Effects of Spanish Colonization Spain's 1492 voyage to the Americas and subsequent colonization had changed Europe indelibly by the 17th century. It had complicated each nation's efforts to achieve a favorable balance of power. As the vanguard of settlement in the New World, Spain and Portugal were the clear winners. From their mines, especially the Spanish silver mine in Potosi, American precious metals began to flow into their government coffers in significant amounts beginning in 1520, with a major uptick after 1550. Traditionally a resource-poor and fragmented nation, Spain now had a reliable revenue source to pursue its global ambitions. This new economic power added to Spain's already advantageous position. At a time when England, France and the Netherlands were internally divided between opposing sectarian groups, Spain was solidly Catholic. As a result of its unity, Spain's elites generally pursued a more coherent foreign policy. Moreover, Spain had ties across the Continent. Charles V was both king of Spain and Holy Roman emperor, making him the most powerful man of his era. He abdicated in 1556, two years before his death, and divided his territories among his heirs. His son, Philip II of Spain, and Charles' brother, Ferdinand I, inherited the divided dominions and retained their ties to each other, giving them power throughout the Continent and territory surrounding France. Despite having no successful colonies until the beginning of the 17th century, England did see some major benefits from the discovery of the Americas. The addition of the Western Atlantic to Europe's map and the influx of trade goods from that direction fundamentally altered trade routes in Europe, shifting them from their previous intense focus on the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean to encompass an ocean on which England held a unique strategic position. The nearby Netherlands - recently free from Spain - enjoyed a similar position and, along with England, took a major new role in shipping. By the middle of the 17th century, the Dutch had a merchant fleet as large as all others combined in Europe and were competing for lands in the New World. Sweden, another major European naval power, also held a few possessions in North America and the Caribbean. (This led to curious events such as "New Sweden," a colony located along the Delaware River, falling under Dutch control in the 1650s and becoming part of the "New Netherlands.") England's Drive Into the New World In spite of its gains in maritime commerce, England was still far behind Spain and Portugal in the Americas. The Iberian nations had established a strong hold on South America, Central America and the southern portions of North America, including the Caribbean. Much of North America, however, remained relatively untouched. It did not possess the proven mineral wealth of the south but it had a wealth of natural capital - fisheries, timber, furs and expanses of fertile soil. However, much of the population of the Americas was in a band in central Mexico, meaning that the vast pools of labor available to the Spanish and Portuguese were not present elsewhere in North America. Instead, England and other colonial powers would need to bring their own labor. They were at a demographic advantage in this regard. Since the 16th century, the Continent's population had exploded. The British Isles and Northwest Europe grew the most, with England expanding from 2.6 million in 1500 to around 5.6 million by 1650. By contrast, the eastern woodlands of North America in 1600 had around 200,000 inhabitants - the population of London. Recent catastrophic epidemics brought by seasonal European fishermen and traders further decimated the population, especially that of New England. The disaster directly benefited Plymouth, which was built on the site of the deserted town of Patuxet and used native cleared and cultivated land. After its founding in 1620, Plymouth was alone in New England for a decade and struggled to become profitable. It was the first foothold, however, for a great Puritan push into the region. In time, this push would subsume the tiny separatist colony within the larger sphere of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This new colony's numbers were much higher: The first wave in 1630 brought 700 English settlers to Salem, and by 1640 there were 11,000 living in the region. Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were different from nearby Virginia. Virginia was initially solely a business venture, and its colonists provided the manpower. New England, by contrast, was a settler society of families from the start. Both Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay were started by English Puritans - Christian sectarians critical of the state-run Church of England. Plymouth's settlers were Puritan separatists who wanted no connection to England. Massachusetts Bay's colonists were non-separatist Puritans who believed in reforming the church. For both, creating polities in North America furthered their sectarian political goals. The pilgrims wanted to establish a separate godly society to escape persecution; the Puritans of Salem wanted to establish a beacon that would serve to change England by example. Less known, however, is that the financial backers of the New England colonies had a more ambitious goal of which New England was only the initial phase. In this plan, Massachusetts was to provide profit to its investors, but it was also to serve as a way station from which they could then send settlers to a small colony they simultaneously founded on Providence Island off the Miskito Coast of modern Nicaragua. This island, now part of Colombia, was in the heart of the Spanish Caribbean and was meant to alter the geopolitics of Central America and bring it under English control. It was in this way that they hoped to solve England's geostrategic problems on the Continent and advance their own political agenda. Providence was an uninhabited island in an area where the Spanish had not established deep roots. The island was a natural fortress, with a coral reef that made approach difficult and high, craggy rocks that helped in defense. It also had sheltered harbors and pockets of fertile land that could be used for production of food and cash crops. It would serve, in their mind, as the perfect first foothold for England in the lucrative tropical regions of the Americas, from which it could trade with nearby native polities. In the short run, Providence was a base of operations, but in the long run it was to be a launchpad for an ambitious project to unseat Spain in the Americas and take Central America for England. In keeping with Puritan ideals, Providence was to be the same sort of "godly" society as Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth, just a more profitable one. Providence Island would enable the English to harry Spanish ships, bring in profit to end disputes with the crown and bolster the Protestant position in the Thirty Years' War. But while Massachusetts Bay would succeed, Providence would fail utterly. Both Massachusetts Bay and Providence Island received their first shipment of Puritan settlers in 1630. Providence was expected to yield immense profits, while Massachusetts was expected to be a tougher venture. Both were difficult, but Providence's constraints proved fatal. The island did not establish a cash crop economy and its attempts to trade with native groups on the mainland were not fruitful. The island's geopolitical position in Spanish military territory meant that it needed to obsessively focus on security. This proved its downfall. After numerous attacks and several successful raids on Spanish trade on the coast, the investors decided in 1641 to initiate plans to move colonists down from Massachusetts Bay to Providence. Spanish forces received intelligence of this plan and took the island with a massive force, ending England's control. Puritan Legacies The 1641 invasion ended English settlement on the island, which subsequently became a Spanish military depot. The Puritans left little legacy there. New England, however, flourished. It became, in time, the nearest replica of English political life outside of the British Isles and a key regional component of the Thirteen Colonies and, later, the United States. It was the center of an agricultural order based on individual farmers and families and later of the United States' early manufacturing power. England sorted out its internal turmoil not by altering its geopolitical position externally - a project that faced serious resource and geographical constraints - but through massive internal upheaval during the English Civil War. The celebration of the fruits of the Plymouth Colony's brutal first year is the byproduct of England's struggle against Spain on the Continent and in the New World. Thus, the most celebrated meal in America comes with a side of geopolitics. The original source of this article is stratfor Copyright (c) stratfor sunburner1124 Thanksgiving and Puritan Geopolitics in the Americas Thanksgiving, Puritan, Geopolitics, Americas Syria's Assad says enemies boosting support for 'terrorists' Sun, 29 Nov 2015 13:25:19 -0500 sharkie1 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Sunday that his enemies abroad had increased support for the regime's armed opponents since the start of a major offensive to win back lost territory. Meeting with a senior Iranian official in Damascus, Assad highlighted "important gains by the Syrian army in the fight against terrorism, with the support of its friends led by Iran and Russia," state news agency SANA reported. But these gains, he said, have "pushed certain countries hostile to Syria and who pretend to fight terrorism to... increase their financing and arming of terrorist groups." Since the outbreak of Syria's conflict in 2011, Assad has accused Sunni Muslim countries including Turkey and Gulf nations of arming his mainly Sunni opponents. Assad's regime, launched a key offensive to retake areas seized by opponents after Moscow launched air strikes in support of the government in late September. Iran, the region's main Muslim power, has also backed Assad, including with the reported deployment of hundreds of "military advisers" to bolster regime forces. After his talks with Assad, Ali Akbar Velayati, a top adviser to Iran's supreme leader, said Tehran was determined to "continue its support for the Syrian government and people, because the war against terrorism is crucial for the region and the world." Velayati also praised Iran for its "exceptional resistance" to "terrorists supported by regional and Western countries". Assad insisted that talk of a political solution to Syria's civil war could only take place after "eradicating terrorism". "This is the real prelude to the success of any political solution decided by Syrians," he said. Source: SANA sharkie1 Syria's Assad says enemies boosting support for 'terrorists' Syria, Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah, Russia Russian terrorists and ISIS : dirty collaboration revealed!! THE TRUTH Sat, 28 Nov 2015 20:41:48 -0500 Ya-Istiklal-Ya-Olum Russian's bastards dirty game exposed. Fucking terrorists pieces of shit... Yeah I know, putinbots will cry &quot;bullshit, hoax&quot;, it's butthurting I understand, deal with it russkof motherfuckers. But I will tell you something good, most of the Chechens fighters in ISIS are leaving it and joining rebels, why ? Because of the russian terrorists involvement in war! They want to fight against the russian scum because they have &quot;a matters to settle&quot; with them! So, as russian terrorists only target rebels and never ISIS, Chechens leave ISIS to join rebels! Russia Is Sending Jihadis to Join ISIS Even as Washington touts its counter-terrorism partnerships with Moscow, evidence points to Putin's intelligence service practically helping the Islamic State. It is an article of faith among the many critics of the current Russian government that, however unpleasant Vladimir Putin may be, he is still a necessary partner in one crucial field of U.S. foreign policy: cooperation in the war on Islamic terrorism. Proof, if it were needed, for how valued this cooperation is among U.S. policymakers came in the conspicuous absence of Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia's domestic intelligence agency, from sanctions levied by the Treasury Department against Russian officials. The sanctions targeted bureaucrats involved in both the invasion and occupation of Crimea and the unacknowledged maskirovka war that Moscow is still waging in eastern Ukraine -a war that has drawn amply on the resources of the FSB and has included several "former" FSB officers on the battlefield. Not only was Bortnikov not sanctioned, he was invited by the White House last February as a guest to President Obama's three-day conference on "countering violent extremism," whereas the current FBI director, James Comey, was not. That conference was held principally because of the international threat posed by ISIS and the coalition war against it in Syria and Iraq, not to mention the Chechen identity of the Tsarnaev brothers, perpetrators of the 2013 Boston marathon bombings. Bortnikov's presence was a mutual recognition by the U.S. and Russia that fighting jihadism is a shared challenge between two countries now embroiled in a pitched standoff over the fate of Europe and much else. Yet a recent investigation conducted by Novaya Gazeta , one of the few independent newspapers left in Russia, complicates this cozy tale of counterterrorist cooperation. Based on extensive fieldwork in one village in the North Caucasus, reporter Elena Milashina has concluded that the "Russian special services have controlled" the flow of jihadists into Syria, where they have lately joined up not only with ISIS but other radical Islamist factions. In other words, Russian officials are adding to the ranks of terrorists which the Russian government has deemed a collective threat to the security and longevity of its dictatorial ally on the Mediterranean, Bashar al-Assad. It may sound paradoxical-helping the enemy of your friend-but the logic is actually straightforward: Better the terrorists go abroad and fight in Syria than blow things up in Russia. Penetrating and co-opting terrorism also has a long, well-attested history in the annals of Chekist tradecraft. Milashina makes her case study the village of Novosasitili in Dagestan's Khasavyurt district. Since 2011, nearly 1 percent of the total population of Novosasitili has gone to Syria-22 out of 2,500 residents. Of that figure, five were killed and five have returned home. But they didn't leave Russia, a country notoriously difficult to enter and exit, without outside help. The FSB established a "green corridor" to allow them to migrate first to Turkey, and then to Syria.(Russians, including those living in the North Caucasus, can catch any of the daily non-stop flights to Istanbul and visit Turkey without a visa.) "I know someone who has been at war for 15 years," Akhyad Abdullaev, head of the village, tells Milashina. "He fought in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now in Syria. He surely cannot live peacefully. If such people go off to war, it's no loss. In our village there is a person, a negotiator. He, together with the FSB, brought several leaders out of the underground and sent them off abroad on jihad. The underground resistance has been weakened, we're well off. They want to fight-let them fight, just not here." Milashina next interviews the "negotiator" Abdullaev mentions. He tells her of his role as an intermediary between the FSB and local militants in arranging the latter's departure to the Levant. In 2012, for instance, he helped arrange for a man known as the "emir of the northern sector"-a "very dangerous man," believed by the FSB to have been behind several terrorist bombings-to go to Turkey if he agreed to quit jihadism in Dagestan. The FSB gave the emir a passport and acted as his travel agent. The condition was that he'd deal exclusively with the FSB and not inform any of his confederates of his true sponsor. The emir has since been killed in Syria, but the "negotiator" tells the journalist that he's subsequently brought another five militants to the FSB who benefited from the same quid pro quo arrangement. "This was in 2012," he says. "Just before the Syrian path opened up. More precisely, opened it." So far the tactic of encouraging hijrah , or jihadist emigration, has appeared to help the Russian government pacify its decades-long insurgency in the North Caucasus. Akhmet Yarlya, a researcher at Moscow State Institute of International Relations's Center of the Problems of the Caucasus and Regional Security, a group attached to Russia's Foreign Ministry, has estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 Islamic militants have joined ISIS in the Middle East. By all accounts, the result has been great for counterterrorism officials, who are now able to claim direct credit for seeing terrorist violence in the region halved since the Syria crisis kicked off. Tanya Lokshina, the Russia program director and a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Daily Beast that while she can neither confirm nor deny the allegations put forward in Novaya Gazeta , "It is also evident that law enforcement and security agencies are proud of the fact that the number of casualties in armed clashes between insurgent forces and security has declined very significantly by some 50 percent. Officials attribute it to the success of the government in fighting the insurgency; in reality, it seems the drop derives from the fact that all the aggressive, competent fighters are no longer fighting in Dagestan but are in Syria as part of ISIS." Mike Rogers, a former U.S. representative and the chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence , told The Daily Beast that the FSB might be turning a "blind eye" to jihadist outflow to Syria. "The only reason I say that is that they could alert Assad's folks to get them once they're in Syria," Rogers said. "But for me, the idea of getting them out of town doesn't make sense because they know they get combat training and come back home." However, a former CIA operative who has liaised with the FSB in Tajikistan, told The Daily Beast that such concerns wouldn't necessarily stop a clandestine conveyor belt of extremists out of Russia, which is hardly unique to Putin's regime. "It's perfectly conceivable that the FSB would take their most violent types and say, 'Yeah, you want your caliphate? Go set it up in Raqqa.' The Saudis did this in the '80s with the Afghans. It's sort of tried and true. We could do the same thing. Of course, we're not." "What's the most significant policy decision we made to bring down the Soviet Union?" asks Glen Howard, the president of the Jamestown Foundation and a specialist on the Caucasus and Central Asia. "Us sending foreign fighters into Afghanistan. This is the perfect form of payback. Create a quagmire in Syria, get us bogged down-all the while, offer your cooperation in helping to root out terrorism." "It's perfectly conceivable that the FSB would take their most violent types and say, 'Yeah, you want your caliphate? Go set it up in Raqqa.'" There's also the issue of how the Russian government, while it doesn't kill or capture militants, encourages them to run away through a systematic campaign of harassment. Suspects are put on Salafist watchlists, interrogated, photographed, and fingerprinted repeatedly. Some have to submit DNA samples. "All the ones I spoke to," Lokshina said, "say that once you're on the watchlist, you no longer have a normal life. It's as if law enforcement and the security officials are trying to push them out into the forest." One man in his 40s, Lokshina remembered, who didn't support violence, was stopped in Dagestan and taken into custody by an official who asked him, "Hey, how come you're not in the woods yet? Your cousin is already with the insurgents, all these people you know are with them and yet how come you're not?" If there is indeed a cynical FSB plot to push jihadists into ISIS, then Lokshina thinks it's occurring at the local rather than national level, as a way for field agents in the North Caucasus to impress their higher-ups back in Moscow with improved security quotas. "This is something members of the police force told me off the record: If you have 10 people registered this month, then there is pressure for you to register 12 next month. It's all about numbers." Andrei Soldatov, a journalist specializing in the Russian security services, agrees. "To me, it looks like a desperate attempt in Dagestan where the FSB tried everything to support radical Islamists to try and pacify the situation," Soldatov said. "It doesn't look like a well-thought-out campaign to steer trouble away from the North Caucasus into Syria." Nevertheless, trouble has been conveniently steered away from Russia and into the Middle East, leaving many analysts to wonder at how even well-known clerics under 24-hour surveillance managed to slip the watchful eye of the FSB. Joanna Paraszczuk is a journalist with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty who covers the Russian contingent of ISIS fighters, which she believes is in the "hundreds," not thousands, based on documentary evidence she has examined including videos and social media usage. "Many are youngish boys who get recruited in Russia or Dagestan and then go to Istanbul. Then they get taken to ISIS territory, usually Raqqa. Are they on watch lists? How'd they get passports to leave the country? Here's the weird thing: Some of the radical preachers from Dagestan are turning up in the 'caliphate,' too." One of these is Nadir Abu Khalid, who was under house arrest in Dagestan but has suddenly "popped up" in Iraq with another insurgent called Abu Jihad, a close friend of Abu Umar al-Shishani, the Chechen field commander for ISIS in Aleppo. "What we have right now is a growing number of Dagestani preachers who are forming the core group of recruiters in Iraq," Paraszczuk said. How did Tamerlan get from Makhachkala to Moscow, then board a plane back to New York, if he was wanted for questioning by the Russian security services? And for all Putin's bellicose tough-on-terror rhetoric, this displacement actually suits his interests quite nicely. In June, the Caucasus Emirate, the leading radical insurgency in Russia, pledged allegiance to ISIS, giving Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's terror army a nominal affiliate in a major Eurasian country. That fact ought to be terrifying to Moscow. Except that it isn't. "Russia is very happy about this because it means that it can now blame the local insurgency on ISIS-'an international group created by the West'-rather than on local problems in the Caucasus," Paraszczuk said. In July, Chechnya's warlord "president" Ramzan Kadyrov took to his favorite social media platform, Instagram, to claim that ISIS was an invention of "Western intelligence agencies... Everyone knows that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is also fed by the USA CIA, and was recruited by Gen. David Petraeus during al-Baghdadi's time as a POW in Camp Bucca in Iraq." Jamestown's Glen Howard agrees that Moscow is using the terror army to feed the monster of anti-American conspiracies in the Muslim world: "I was in Baghdad a year and a half ago. At the al-Rasheed Hotel I saw all sorts of Russians running around with the Iraqi government officials. Iraqis kept repeating to me conspiracy theories about how America created ISIS. Did anyone in Washington ever stop to ask if maybe the Russians are helping that conspiracy theory along in Iraq?" Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general who once headed Moscow's counterintelligence First Chief Directorate, told The Daily Beast that not only is the Novaya Gazeta story plausible, it's likely. "I'm pretty sure that what has been reported did in fact happen," he said. Kalugin noted that Russian intelligence has a long, ignominious history of "pushing forward the more extremist elements and use their facilities to do the most damage to a local population." This was the strategy, after all, during the First and Second Chechen Wars when jihadist warlords such as Shamil Basayev were co-opted by Russia's military intelligence (GRU) in order to vitiate the secular or democratic Chechen movement. Basayev was a useful tool for the Kremlin-at least until the FSB (probably) assassinated him in 2006-because he wasn't really interested in secession from the Russian Federation; he wanted to establish an "emirate" in the Caucasus. His carnage accomplished two things at once: It cast a pall on the legitimate separatist struggle and offered a wag-the-dog national security justification for a scorched-earth Russian counterinsurgency, which did nothing short of level Grozny. Anatoly Kulikov, the former chairman of the Russian Interior Ministry and a former deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, told the weekly newspaper Argumenty i Fakty in 2002 that he had a "great deal of evidence" to suggest that Boris Berezovsky, then the most powerful oligarch in Russia and a key political adviser to the Yeltsin administration, was using the Russian Security Council to finance Chechen extremists, Basayev included. Much of the money paid was to buy back hostages taken by Basyev's forces, including journalists who worked for Berezovsky's media empire. Many observers of this period say that there was an ulterior motive of trying to split the opposition and strengthen the extremist Chechen elements at the expense of moderates. Even one of Berezovsky's closest friends and allies, Alex Goldfarb, conceded that by 1999, the goal in Moscow had become even more subversive than that: to prompt a guerrilla incursion into Dagestan, which would then green-light a short but popular Russian invasion of the top third of Chechnya, down to the Terek River. A state of emergency would then be declared and national elections in Russia would be postponed in the wake of a cataclysmic financial crash. In the Russian intelligence playbook, such a gambit is known as provokatsiya. As former NSA analyst John Schindler defines it , the technique "simply means taking control of your enemies in secret and encouraging them to do things that discredit them and help you." The czar's Okhrana used it against the Bolsheviks and other revolutionary socialist factions; Lenin and Stalin's intelligence services used it against the West; and Putin has used it to remarkable effect in Ukraine. Berezovsky would later be granted asylum in London and would turn into one the most prominent exiled critics of Putin, whose rise to power he was largely responsible for. Even before he left Russia, Berezovsky had used his ORT television network to report honestly on the horrors of the Second Chechen War. Putin retaliated by taking ORT away from the oligarch and turning it into a state-run channel. From London, Berezovsky later denounced Putin for working with Chechen extremists-an allegation thrown right back at him by the new master of the Kremlin. Whatever the truth, there is no denying that Chechnya is indeed ruled in blood-brutal fashion by a former insurgent, Kadyrov, who excels beyond the standards of most post-Soviet dictators by personally torturing his victims. Kadyrov has his own intelligence service and his own guerrilla paramilitary, so-called Kadyrovtsky ,battalions of which he has copped to dispatching to the Donbas to fight on behalf of the anti-Kiev (and Moscow-backed) rebellion in Ukraine. There is also widespread suspicion of how his regime both monitors and works with Islamic extremists. Some of Kadyrov's musclebound henchmen, who have been accused of murder and rape in Moscow, have been arrested only to be let go-on the orders of the FSB brass, and much to the chagrin of subordinate investigating officers. "Kadyrov is getting money from two sources: the Kremlin and Arab countries," said Yuri Felshtinsky, a historian who writes about the Russian security services. "The Chechen Republic for all practical purposes is an Islamist republic. What we have there is what we had in Afghanistan; it started with a fight against Russian occupation and ended with extremists taking power." The problem, according to Felshtinsky, is that it is near impossible to say just how localized any funny business is between jihadism and the intelligence organs; does it begin and end with Kadyrov, who runs his fief semi-autonomously, or does it extend all the way back to Moscow? Soldatov believes that the FSB relies on Kadyrov for actionable intelligence as to the whereabouts and goings-on of Caucasian jihadists-including those who've run off to Syria. "All my contacts inside the FSB and Interior Ministry tell me that it's extremely difficult to penetrate militant groups. In the mid-2000s, they set up big detention centers in Chechnya to process as many Chechens as possible, to recruit them in prison and release them as informants. We had only a few real examples of successful penetration." The eventual killing of Basyev, he said, was done by using agents recruited by the FSB. By 2005, after an attack on state security buildings in Nalchik, in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic in southern Russia, the FSB began cultivating diasporas to establish contact with Islamist militants abroad. "They had a diaspora of Circassians they used to try to make contact with Zarqawi," Soldatov said, referring to the founder of al-Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS's first incarnation. "Well, the first thing they needed to start with was a list of those who trained and studied Islam abroad. But the FSB didn't have such a list. So this raised the profile of Kadyrov; he was able to use his connections inside Chechnya and among the diaspora to become indispensable to Moscow." For other analysts, however, it beggars belief that the central Russian government is unaware of this dirty nexus between the regional officialdom and the state's most radical opponents. "The Russian government has several aims and they're mixed together and it's very difficult to say which one applies in any particular case," Paul Goble, an expert on Russia's ethnic minorities and a former adviser to both the U.S. State Department and the CIA, told The Daily Beast. "First, the Russians are not idiots. They've thoroughly penetrated militant groups in the North Caucasus. These aren't 'controlled' by Moscow, but they're wholly penetrated. The easiest way to garner intelligence is to get these militants to go to Syria posing as freedom fighters. Second, Moscow is running out of money to buy off the North Caucasus and needs a new way to oppress the opposition there. Well, the best way to oppress it is to exile it. Better that they should be fighting the U.S.-led coalition in Syria and Iraq than fighting Russian government in Dagestan or Ingushetia. "It's like Victor Serge's Comrade Tulayev, " Goble said, referring to the 1948 novel based on the assassination of a Stalinist official Sergei Kirov and the consequent dragnet of paranoiac purges that swept the Soviet Union. "Moscow comes up with a broad prescription and you get all sorts of people coming up with ways to implement it." David Satter has written extensively on Russian security organs' double-game with terrorism and, just before the Sochi Winter Olympics last year, became the first American journalist to be banned from Russia since the end of the Cold War. "No sooner did Chechnya emerge as a quasi-independent state than there appeared Islamists who demanded that the population only submit to the laws of Allah and not to the government," he said. "This is something people in the West have a very hard time understanding. Russian authorities and particularly the FSB don't react to acts of terror with the horror that people in the West do. They just see it as one more tactic that can be used by a regime to advance its aims. It can be used against foreigners and it can be used against its own people." Satter's Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State deals at length with the September 1999 apartment bombings in Moscow, Buinaksk, in Dagestan, and Volgodonsk, in Rostov, which collectively killed 300 Russian civilians and wounded hundreds more. Today, a bevy of credible observers, both within and without Russia, believe that these operations were actually orchestrated by the FSB and blamed on Chechen jihadists as a pretext for launching the retaliatory invasion which, in the event, got underway three weeks later. "They also served to propel a little-known retired lieutenant colonel in the secret police, who had been appointed by President Yeltsin to the post of acting prime minister a month previously, into the Russian presidency," in the words of John B. Dunlop, a senior fellow at the Stanford University-based Hoover Institution, who has published his own monograph on the mysterious apartment immolations. "Three-and-a-half months after the Moscow bombings took place," Dunlop wrote, "Putin was elected president of the country in March of 2000." Putin had served as FSB director right up until the bombings, when he was appointed prime minister in August 1999. This more or less coincided with an Islamist militant incursion into western Dagestan from Chechnya, led by Basayev-an incursion many believe was quietly planned and unwritten by the Kremlin as the ultimate form of provokatsiya . A week and a half after the second apartment bombing, of a building on the Kashirskoye Highway in Moscow, Putin used a locution that would be remembered both for its borrowing from the Russian criminal argot and for catapulting him, a once obscure Yeltsin silovik , into national prominence and power. "We will pursue the terrorists everywhere," he declared. "If they are in an airport, then, in an airport, and, forgive me, if we catch them in the toilet, then we'll rub them out in the crapper in the final analysis." The strongest evidence to date that the agency Putin had headed just weeks earlier was in fact behind the attacks he vowed ultimate vengeance for-attacks which would have required months of planning-is the bomb that failed to go off. Not long after 9 p.m. on September 22, 1999, residents of an apartment building in Ryazan, a city southeast of Moscow, reported three suspicious people leaving their basement and driving off in the same car. The residents went into the basement and discovered several large sacks typically used to carry sugar rigged with wiring and an electrical device. Ryazan police were called; the head of the local bomb squad declared the sacks were in fact a "live bomb." They also tested positive for hexogen, a highly combustible agent that is both extremely difficult to obtain in Russia given its status as regulated by Russia's "power ministries" (i.e. the police, intelligence,and military). It was also the same substance used in the previous apartment bombings. The detonator for the Ryazan bomb was set to activate at 5:30 a.m. Had it gone off, all 250 residents of the building would have likely been killed. On September 23, a day later, an operator connected a call to Moscow from a public telephone designed for inter-city communication and said that the voice on the receiving end told the caller: "Split up and each of you make your own way out." The operator alerted the police, who traced the number and found that it belonged to the FSB. "A short time later," Satter wrote ( PDF ), "with the help of tips from the population, the police arrested two terrorists. They produced identification from the FSB and were released on orders from Moscow." On September 24, a day and a half after the abortive attack, Nikolai Patrushev, Putin's successor as FSB director, claimed that the Ryazan bomb had been a fake and the entire plot nothing more than a "training exercise" designed to test the vigilance of local communities in detecting terrorist activity. The stuff tested positively as hexogen? It was just sugar, according to Patrushev, contradicting what every Ryazan first-responder had claimed, not to mention Putin and Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo, both of whom were on record in deeming the explosive all too real. If it was just a training exercise, then why were some 30,000 residents of the city made to stand out on the street all night when the nothing-to-see-here reality of the operation could have been disclosed immediately? The sapper who defused it months later told Pavel Voloshin, a reporter with with Novaya Gazeta, that the detonator had been military-grade and clearly designed by a professional. Subsequent efforts for a parliamentary inquiry were blocked by Unity, the pro-Kremlin party under whose banner Putin would run for, and win, the presidency shortly before the party was dissolved in 2001. As journalist Maxim Glinkin observed in 2002, reflecting on the terrible spate of atrocities that led to Putin's political ascendance, "The authorities are conducting themselves like criminals in an Agatha Christie novel who have been almost caught out by Hercule Poirot." And Then There Were None certainly seemed a subplot for anyone in Russia trying to uncover the truth about these grim events. Among those who at least share the theory that the FSB was behind the bombings were two former FSB agents, both of whom became targets after airing their allegations. One was Mikhail Trepashkin, like Putin a former lieutenant colonel, assigned to the Protection Administration of the FSB, which is tasked with keeping fellow officers and their families safe. Trepashkin had in the mid-'90s uncovered evidence that Russian law enforcement, including the FSB, had connived with Chechen extremists and criminal elements in Moscow. He would even be awarded a medal of valor for his efforts but was later marginalized in the Protection Administration after clashing with its then-commander-Nikolai Patrushev. Trepashkin claimed to have uncovered the "Mohammed Atta" of the Moscow apartment bombings, a man called Vladimir Romanovich, who was both an FSB agent and a mob boss-hardly a redundancy after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He was arrested in 2003 on the charge of possession of illegal weapons he insists were planted in his car. Trepashkin was sentenced to four years of hard labor on a second count of disclosing a state secret. Amnesty International found the entire case against him had been politicized, using fabricated evidence. He was released from prison in November 2007 after suffering an extreme illness, for which he was never properly treated. (The Daily Beast tried unsuccessfully to reach him for comment on this story.) The other FSB officer to accuse his employer of perpetrating state terrorism against the Russian people was Alexander Litvinenko, who had worked for the economic crimes division of the service and had exposed the collusion between law enforcement and organized crime. Litvinenko fled Russia for London in 2000 and became an informant and spy for the British security services, briefing EU countries on the infiltration of Russian gangsters (and Russian intelligence assets) on their soil. Along with Yuri Felshtinsky, he wrote Blowing Up Russia: Terror from Within , arguing that the apartment bombings were false-flag operations intended to precipitate the Second Chechen War and therefore platform the grey blur that was Vladimir Putin as Yeltsin's successor. Litvinenko was poisoned to death at a London hotel in 2006 after Polonium-210, a radioactive isotope, was poured into his tea. The perpetrators of that assassination, according to Scotland Yard, are almost certainly Dmitri Kovtun, a former Soviet army officer, and Andrei Lugovoi, a former FSB officer and now a much be-medaled Duma deputy. The Russian state, the British government has concluded, "is likely to have been the sponsor of this plot" because of its desire to see Litvinenko silenced for good. In 2011, to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of the apartment bombings, journalist Anton Orekh called them "a key moment in our most recent history. Because if those bombings were not accidental in the sequence of events which followed: if, to put it bluntly, they were the work of our authorities-then everything will once and forever take its proper place. Then there is not and cannot be an iota of illusion about the those who rule us. Then those people are not minor or large-scale swindlers and thieves. Then they are among the most terrible criminals." After the Boston Marathon bombing, American counter-terrorism officials queried the failure to follow up on a lead provided by the FSB about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the elder of the two terrorists responsible for the attack, which was sent first to the FBI and then to the CIA. In April 2014, an unclassified summary of a 168-page classified assessment prepared on the marathon bombings by the Inspectors General for the CIA, Department of Justice, and Department of Homeland Security was released to the public. It found that in March 2011, the FSB sent a memo, in Russian, to the FBI Legal Attache in Moscow concerning Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva. "According to the English translation used by the FBI," the unclassified summary read, "the memorandum alleged that both were adherents of radical Islam, and that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was preparing to travel to Russia to join unspecified 'bandit underground groups' in Dagestan and Chechnya and had considered changing his last name to 'Tsarni.' The Russian authorities provided personal information about both Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, including their telephone numbers and e-mail addresses, and requested that the FBI provide the FSB with specific information about them, including possible travel by Tsarnaev to Russia." The FSB memorandum gave two incorrect birthdates for Tamerlan: October 21, 1987, and the same calendar date in 1988. Also, because of likely owing to the variability of transliteration from Cyrillic into English, the surnames were spelled differently-Tsarnayev and Tsarnayeva-from how Tamerlan and Zubeidat spelled them in America (minus the "y"). The FBI Legal Attache replied to the FSB acknowledging receipt of the memorandum and "requesting that it keep the bureau informed of any details it developed" on mother and son. Whether or not any additional details were ever dispatched to the FBI is not disclosed in the unclassified summary. All that is mentioned is that in September 2011, the FSB sent a near-identical memorandum to the CIA. Most of the Inspector Generals' assessment of the bombing focused on the FBI-led Boston Joint Terrorism Task Force's failure to query Tamerlan about his travel plans to Russia when it interviewed him and his parents, and on its failure to respond to an alert it was sent once he flew from New York to Moscow in January 2012, a year after he'd been added to a terrorism watchlist. Tamerlan returned to New York from Moscow around six months later, in July 2012. Yet, the assessment found that all U.S. agencies under scrutiny had "followed procedures appropriately" given the information available to them at the time. Nevertheless, Massachusetts Representative Bill Keating, who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, was scathing about the lack of forthrightness shown after the marathon attacks by American law enforcement. "I got more information from Russia than I did from our own FBI," Keating told Boston Public Radio in August 2013. Did the FSB really try to help the U.S. in surveilling or apprehending a dangerous jihadist? "On the Tsarnaev brothers, they did tell us once, and then they stopped," said Mike Rogers, the former chair of the House Intelligence Committee. "When the FBI made further inquiries, they stopped cooperating. I thought that was really interesting because clearly they knew the Tsarnaevs were being radicalized." There is evidence that the FSB also sat on more than it had disclosed in its dual memoranda to the two U.S. agencies. It had intercepted telephone calls made by and between Tamerlan and Zubeidat. In one, the son discussed jihad and the possibility of going to Palestine. In another, the mother spoke to someone in the Caucasus who was under FBI investigation. But how did Tamerlan manage to arrive unmolested at Moscow's Sheremetevo Airport in January 2012, then proceed to Dagestan, after the FSB was obviously aware of his purported plans to join "bandit underground groups"? Still another Novaya Gazeta reporter, Irina Gordienko , found that Tamerlan had in fact tried to join the Caucasian underground and that officials from the Republic of Dagestan Center for Combating Extremism (RDCCE), a body run out of the Russian Interior Ministry, had put him on a surveillance list after he caught their attention in April 2012, four months after his trip to Russia. He'd been associating with Makhmud Mansur Nidal, an 18-year-old suspected of acting as a jihadist recruiter. Gordienko found that Tamerlan had only stayed in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, where his father lived, save for a brief trip to Chechnya in March 2012. Yet in May, Russian special forces killed Nidal in a raid in Makhachkala, after which Tamerlan moved out of his father's apartment and stayed with other relatives in the city. In her investigation, Gordienko also disclosed that in 2011, the FSB requested information from the FBI on Tamerlan because his name had come up after the detention and interrogation (which likely involved torture) of William Plotnikov, a 21-year-old Russian-Canadian convert to Islam, who traveled to Dagestan. Plotnikov had reportedly been in touch with Tamerlan via Islamic social media outlets. Plotnikov was released due to a lack of criminal evidence; then in July 2012, he, too, was killed in another raid, this one near the village of Utamysh in Kayakent District. After the death of his second jihadist contact, Tamerlan apparently disappeared from the Russian authorities' sight. "The police came to visit his father, but the father claimed that everything was fine, that his son had returned to the USA," Gordienko wrote. "They didn't believe his father, and supposed that Tsarnaev had gone off to the forest. They were made cautious by the fact that Tamerlan left without waiting to pick up his passport, the documents for which he had submitted at the end of June 2012." The FSB then sent a second inquiry, this one to the CIA, seeking more information on the elder Tsarnaev brother. That one never got answered either. In 2013, Dagestan's police chief denied that Tamerlan was recruited to the "bandit underground" or had any contact with members of it; although the same police chief also (erroneously) insisted that Tamerlan was in Makhachkala for only a few days, relying on testimony from the boy's father. So assuming Gordienko's reporting is accurate, the questions arise: How did Tamerlan get from Makhachkala to Moscow, then board a plane back to New York, if he was wanted for questioning by the Russian security services? And did the FSB, in seeking information from the CIA, ever alert it to the fact that Tamerlan had now vanished from its purview in a hotbed of fundamentalist insurgency? It was not the first time a terrorist had gone into the wind in Dagestan. In 1996, Ayman al-Zawahiri, today the leader of al-Qaeda, was arrested in Dagestan where he'd gone to scout Chechnya as a possible safe haven for Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the terrorist organization he headed before joining bin Laden's franchise and which was made world-famous for its role in assassinating Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981. Zawahiri posed as a Sudanese businessman named Abdullah Imam Mohammed Amin who claimed to work for an Azeri trading firm and carried with him $6,400 in cash, in multiple foreign currencies, a laptop, and other communication devices. He traveled with two Islamic Jihad members, who also used phony names and passports. They were grabbed by Russian police within hours of reaching Dagestan, interrogated, then moved to a remote prison near Makhachkala. The FSB sent Zawahiri's laptop to Moscow for analysis. Even still, the Russians claimed that they never knew who they had in their midst and were dumbfounded by the outpouring of Muslim and Islamist support for the three "businessmen." At their trial, Zawahiri told the judge , "We wanted to find out the price of leather, medicine and other goods." (He'd later write that "God blinded them to our identities.") The three jihadists ended up doing six months in jail, at the end of which they got their laptop back. Had the FSB, which hardly lacks for expert Arabic speakers, not gone through the files it contained, or did "Mr. Amin" and company cover their tracks digitally, too? More than 20 years on, the history of this bizarre interlude in the curriculum vitae of one of the world's most wanted terrorists has never been established. Once released, Zawahiri spent another 10 days meeting Islamists in Dagestan before repairing to Afghanistan. "Every Ivan Ivanovich KGB and GRU officer who served in Egypt in the late '70s and 1980s knew who Zawahiri was because of his involvement in the Sadat assassination," said Jamestown's Glen Howard. "They'd have seen his pictures on Egyptian TV in a massive cage broadcast live following his arrest and trial. So for Moscow to arrest him in Dagestan in 1996 and hold him for six months in a Dagestani jail cell and claim they never knew who he was-well, this is pure nonsense." Howard and Satter both believe that the FSB is likely sitting on more than it will ever share with the Americans about Tamerlan Tsarnaev's half-year in Dagestan, too. Both, though, are keen to also note that the Kremlin has used every opportunity to exploit the Boston atrocity in two contradictory ways. First, it has amplified the importance of counterterrorism cooperation between two post-Cold War rivals, now at odds again. Bortnikov's RSVP to Obama's summit on violent extremism was a major propaganda coup for the FSB, as was his sudden stature boost in the U.S. intelligence establishment after the marathon bombings. "Bortnikov has been playing up for three years his raised international profile," said Soldatov. "For him, this is a huge success because it's kept him off the U.S. sanctions list." Second, while proffering the hand of friendship in Washington, the siloviki have wasted no effort slandering their intelligence counterparts in the CIA for creating the very terrorism unleashed on American soil, chiefly by propagating all manner of conspiracy theories as to how Tamerlan became radicalized. And here, Howard's own organization has been conscripted in a hysterical propaganda campaign. In April 2013, two months after the Boston attacks, Russia's state-owned newspaper Izvestiya ran an article alleging that while he lived in Dagestan, Tamerlan had attended "events and seminars" put on jointly by the Caucasian Fund, a Georgian NGO, and the Jamestown Foundation. " Izvestia has obtained some documents from the Georgian Interior Ministry's Department of Counter-intelligence which confirms that the Georgian organization Caucasian Fund is collaborating with the American non-profit organization Jamestown Foundation (Zbigniew Brzezinski, U.S. foreign policy ideologue, was formerly on Jamestown's board of directors)," the piece stated, laying it on with a trowel, "and has been recruiting residents of the North Caucasus to work in the interests of the United States in Georgia." Russians are apparently "recruited at these seminars and trained for terrorist attacks." The Jamestown Foundation rejected the allegation as absurd. The Georgian Ministry of the Interior added that the Georgian Colonel Grigor Chanturia, the lynchpin of Izvestia 's supposed reporting, wasn't a real person. No matter. The Kremlin's English-language propaganda mill RT picked up the story uncritically, as did, the feverish website run by Alex Jones, which has not yet encountered a conspiracy theory it didn't like. In general, counterterrorism cooperation between Russia and the U.S. is more a comforting legend of the post-Cold War order, something mouthed perfunctorily by both sides while being given little credence by the intelligence professionals whose job it is to talk to foreign counterparts. Kalugin, the former KGB counterintelligence official, thinks there is "lots of talk but little action" when it comes to constructing a mutual bulwark against Islamic terrorism. The former CIA operative who liaised with the FSB in Tajikistan remembers the Russians sharing nothing of substance with him. "They never talked about the Tajik opposition or the pre-al Qaeda types coming across. They never discussed the politics of Central Asia, the roots of terrorism. It was always generalities." Several analysts consulted for this story also pointed out that even if the FSB wanted to work in good faith with the U.S., systemic corruption and incompetence in the ranks, the sort of dysfunction bred of an authoritarian regime that promotes loyalists and cronies at the expense of adept professionals, would hamper any attempt at bilateral rehabilitation. "You want to stamp out bearded nut jobs together, OK-first Russia has to stamp out bribery which lets them slip in and out of the country or board planes to blow them up," said one analyst. There's another problem in ushering in a new dawn of transnational police work.Despite the happy talk, America and Russia just don't trust each other. "To say that Russia is our partner is a significant overstatement," Mike Rogers, the former congressman and House Intelligence Committee chair, said. "There are some relationships, but the FSB doesn't like to cooperate with the FBI and the FBI has a natural suspicion of the FSB. Principally this is because the FBI is also busy trying to catch Russian spies in America. They're not our friends and they're not our partners." "At the political level, the White House will say we're cooperating on terrorism, but that doesn't mean anything," the former CIA operative groused. "So if the FSB is now sending jihadists to Syria so that they can die at the hands of the Americans rather than the Russians, should we be surprised? We're just so goddamn ignorant." Ya-Istiklal-Ya-Olum Russian terrorists and ISIS : dirty collaboration revealed!! THE TRUTH Russian terrorism, Russia-isis, ISIS, chechens, false-flag, false flag, terrorist, syria, Daech, USA, Iraq, CIA, FBI, FSB Liveleak Interactive; Where should I work? Fri, 27 Nov 2015 23:42:46 -0500 Clark Orwell I will be going abroad to work as soon as January. I just had a job interview this past Thursday when a language school in the Ukraine. I will have a job interview this coming Wednesday with a language school in Russia. Given the problems between the both of them, you can see why I am asking you guys for advice. Here's the skinny on both At both language schools, I would be teaching adults, not kids (thank fucking god!). But the only real difference is the visa situation. In the Ukraine, I would be going there on a tourist visa for 90 days and I would be traveling to the EU every 90 days to get another tourist visa (similar to what I did in Colombia and South Korea). While I need to apply for a formal work visa for Russia, which entailed; 1. having a passport that was valid for longer than 2 years (no problem for me since I got a new passport 2 years ago) 2. an invitation letter from the language school 3. an HIV test (obviously they're worried that Americans have AIDS) 4. a filled out visa application in English (nailed it!) 5. a 2"x2" photo of me (yikes!). The cost of the visa is $193 for a 1-year work visa. Though the tourist visa for the Ukraine is free, you have to factor in the cost of traveling back and forth to the Ukraine every 90 days. I'd have to pay for rent for both jobs, which sucks either way but the pay is the same at both. So what do you think? If I were accepted for both, which should I take? If I didn't get either of them, I will just go work in China. Clark Orwell Liveleak Interactive; Where should I work? ESL, teaching, job, Ukraine, Russia JAPAN USED BY USA Thu, 26 Nov 2015 01:57:59 -0500 EricBrickman The ability of the United States to play on the contradictions no one will dispute. In recent years, Americans have gained a wealth of experience to destabilize the social and political situation in different countries. The key is to focus the public attention on certain conflicts and how frequently it is mentioned in the media, etc .. For example, as was done during the collapse of Yugoslavia in the late 90s. It was triggered by the conflict between Serbs and Croats on the basis of the genocide of the Serb population by Croatia during World War II. The cause of the conflict, as a rule, the economic interests of the West. To consider the background of collapse of Yugoslavia, it turns out that it refused to enter into a common economic space with Europe, dominated by transnational corporations. The refusal of Yugoslavia to let these corporations into its territory and the preservation of key industries under state control played a decisive role in the sad fate of this country. The impact of economic interests on public policy is obvious. In today's conditions, the level of economic development determines the position of the country on the world stage. In 2009, US President Barack Obama said, "turn to Asia." In a literal sense, this meant that Washington is concerned with the rapid growth of China's influence in the region and intends to correct the situation. The main agent of the US influence in the Asia-Pacific region is Japan. There are two main areas in which the US acts: 1. Economic. Creating a Trans-Pacific Partnership (economic union which involves 12 countries (Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada, Japan and the United States), which accounts for about 40% of world GDP). 2. War. The militarization of Japan, joint exercises, armed allies in the region. The main objective of the TTP is to deprive China of raw materials. To date, little is known about the progress of this initiative, as the negotiations take place under a veil of secrecy. Obviously because substantial benefit members of the alliance and the people do not derive, respectively, there is no need to know. One have to understand that the United States pursue geopolitical interests rather than the needs of ordinary people. With regard to the military component, America was able to achieve certain results. As an example, one can consider the policy of the Government of Japan for the last few years. The policy of militarization taken by Abe carried out in full swing: - April 1, 2014 a new law regulating the military-technical cooperation of Japan with other countries. The Japanese government has waived its right arms exports in force since 1967 and in fact prohibits any supply of defense products to foreign markets; - In May 2015 it approved the package of draft laws, which will be possible thanks to the increased use of self-defense forces, including abroad .; - June 19, 2015 Japan to participate in joint exercises with the US and the Philippines near the disputed Spratly Islands (Senkaku). Moreover Philippines declared their readiness to buy Japanese weapons and to develop cooperation in the military sphere, to the growing military might of China. It is possible that in the near future will create a military bloc on the initiative of Japan, which in addition to the Philippines and Japan itself can also enter South Korea. Certainly Tokyo escalation of tension in the region to anything, and Beijing has repeatedly stated its commitment to a political resolution of all territorial disputes. It should be understood that the intensification of the contradictions between Japan and China in the interests of the United States. Judging by the facts, Obama acts recklessly and hastily. Apparently, the White House is putting pressure on Abe to the fact that he was engaged as soon as possible the legal framework for the activities of the Self Defense Forces overseas and arms exports. Proof of this is that according to the MIA Russia Today only 28% of Japanese support the initiative of Prime Minister of Japan on the revision of the constitution, while 60% against this policy. Like manner to implement the course of militarization without providing the necessary public support suggests quickness Abe patrons in Washington, where they want to see only the results. No matter what the economy is in the pre-crisis state, no matter what the people of Japan against militarization and no matter what the likely conflict to which Japan is preparing for the benefit only of the USA. EricBrickman JAPAN USED BY USA japan, used, by, usa French PM Says Europe Can't Take Any More Migrants Wed, 25 Nov 2015 07:07:10 -0500 gemini 25 Nov 2015 - European countries are stretched to their limits in the refugee crisis and cannot take in any more new arrivals, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was quoted as saying in a German newspaper on Wednesday. Europe is grappling with its worst refugee crisis since World War Two. Germany so far has taken in the bulk of some 1 million people expected to arrive this year. "We cannot accommodate any more refugees in Europe, that's not possible," Valls told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, adding that tighter control of Europe's external borders would determine the fate of the European Union. "If we don't do that, the people will say: Enough of Europe," Valls warned. The comments were published only hours before German Chancellor Angela Merkel was scheduled to meet French President Francois Hollande in Paris. Merkel was initially celebrated at home and abroad for her welcoming approach to the refugees, many of whom are fleeing conflict in the Middle East. But as the flow has continued the chancellor has come under increasing criticism. Some conservatives say Merkel's decision to open up Germany's borders to Syrian refugees in September has spurred more migrants to come. The refugee debate has become more politically charged after the deadly attacks in Paris that stoked fears Islamic State militants could exploit the migrant crisis to send extremists to Europe. Valls avoided criticising Merkel directly for having suspended European asylum rules to allow in Syrian refugees stranded in Hungary. "Germany has made an honourable choice there," he said. But he signalled that Paris was taken by surprise by Merkel's decision: "It was not France that said: Come!" French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron and his German counterpart, Sigmar Gabriel, have proposed setting up a 10 billion euro ($10.7 billion) fund to pay for tighter security, external border controls and caring for refugees. The United Nations on Tuesday condemned new restrictions on refugees that have left around 1,000 migrants stuck at the main border crossing into Macedonia from Greece. gemini French PM Says Europe Can't Take Any More Migrants French PM Says Europe Can't Take Any More Migrants The love affair between ISIS and the Turkish JDP (AKP) government. The entire story and evidence. Wed, 25 Nov 2015 05:12:42 -0500 shakeass Everybody knows that the menace of ISIS grew in the Middle East with the help of the JDP (Justice Development Party;AKP) government in Turkey Everybody knows that the menace of ISIS grew in the Middle East with the help of the JDP (Justice Development Party) government in Turkey. We get to understand this reality better with each massacre at the hands of the jihadists. We think this is a good time to republish the case of documents, articles and evidence of such relationship we had compiled earlier on between the JDP and the ISIS. JDP government of Turkey gave ISIL 49 people to be used as human shields. Turkey gave a consulate building to ISIS to be used as the headquarters. JDP government of Turkey gave a port to be used as the landing site for the jihadists arriving from Libya. Turkey gave planes to transfer militant jihadists from Central Asia and the Caucuses. It was the Turkish government of JDP which gave the media equipment to ISIS so they could publish the propaganda of their savagery. Turkey supplied the state news agency Anadolu Ajansi so that ISIS could promote themselves. Turkish government of JDP gave them roads for attacking the Kurds. ISIS received permission from the Turkish JDP government so they could simply flow unhindered through the borders. Turkey gave ISIS border towns to sit back and relax when the jihadists got tired after long days of severing heads. Turkey provided them with markets to sell the oil they stole. The opportunities were given to ISIS by the Turkish JDP government so they could gather money and fighters. What else could the JDP government give ISIS? Of course, of course, all of these are lies, all of these are made up, all of these are conspiracy theories. Sure. Read on . 1. JDP GAVE 49 PRECIOUS HOSTAGES TO ISIS: ISIS occupied the Turkish Mosul Consulate building on June 10, 2014. They took 49 consulate workers as hostages, including the Turkish consul. This provided the cover for Turkish government to protect the ISIS by saying, "We can't do anything against ISIS. If we do anything they may harm our consulate workers." Full Turkish text 2. TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTER DAVUTOGLU GAVE OPPORTUNITY TO ISIL TO RAID THE TURKISH CONSULATE. Turkish foreign ministry had been warned prior to the attack on the Turkish consulate, however the foreign minister Davutoglu opposed evacuating the consulate declaring, "ISIS is not our enemy." Full Turkish text 3. FOREIGN MINISTRY IGNORED ALL ISIS WARNING. While ISIS was approaching the consulate openly and dangerously, the Turkish consulate workers had written their concerns about their safety in the social media. The JDP chose to look the other way. Full Turkish text 4. INTERIOR AFFAIRS MINISTRY IGNORED ALL ISIS WARNINGS IN HATAY, TURKEY. Warning on ISIS was not only originating from abroad but also internally. Governor of Hatay, Mr. Lekesiz, warned that ISIS would target the entire country since they were already using the city of Hatay. Full Turkish text 5. ISIS HEADQUARTERS IS THE TURKISH CONSULATE IN MOSUL Turkish consulate in Mosul became the headquarters of ISIS that changed its name to Islamic State. Full Turkish text 6. "ISIS' MOSUL ATTACK WAS PLANNED WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF TURKEY" The daily G"undem published a serious claim on the "sudden" ISIS attack on the Turkish consulate documenting who planned the attack and when it was planned. Full Turkish text 7. ISIS FOLLOWED PRIME MINSTER ERDOGAN AND SEVERED THE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ANKARA AND THE MOSUL CONSUL Turkish Consul General, hostage of ISIS in Mosul, was communicating with Ankara secretly with his cell phone ISIS militants had forgotten to take. Erdogan, in a public speech declared he personally was communicating with the Turkish consul. Following this tip, ISIS discovered and severed the secret communication. Full Turkish text 8. ISIS TURNED THE 49 HOSTAGES INTO HUMAN SHIELDS While Erdogan expected the Turkish hostages to be freed by his "faithful" Sunni friends, ISIS used the hostages as human shields. Full Turkish text 9. IHH, THE HUMANITARIAN RELIEF FUND, IS THE GO BETWEEN ISIS AND THE TURKISH JDP GOVERNMENT Turkish expert Henry Barkey who has ties to the US intelligence organization CIA says the situation in Turkey is very bad and that the JDP government is in close contact with the Sunni politicians and IHH who are elbow to elbow with ISIS. Full Turkish text 10. TURKISH GOVERNMENT NEWS AGENCY, ANADOLU AJANSI: ISIS IS WONDERFUL, WHY DON'T YOU JOIN US? As expected, the Turkish official news agency Anadolu Ajansi, the Anatolian News Agency, worked like the propaganda tool of ISIS. The agency correspondents "secretly" went to Mosul and reported positively about ISIS from Mosul. Full Turkish text 11. TURKEY IS IN THE MAP OF CALIPHATE DRAWN BY ISIS. From the organization that declares, "Iraq-Syria will not be the only border we will do away with, we will eliminate other borders as well," comes the map of Caliphate which includes Turkey within its borders. Full Turkish text 12. "SINCE WE CAN NOT SAY ANYTHING NEGATIVE AGAINST ISIS, LET'S AT LEAST ATTACK THE OPPOSITION PARTY RPP (CHP - Republican Peoples' Party)" JDP which took criticism for not saying anything negative against ISIS. To counter this criticism, the governing JDP switched the real target on the Reyhanli massacre and accused the opposition party RPP instead of the actual criminals ISIS. Full Turkish text 13. "ISIS CANNOT BE TAKEN LIGHTLY, THIS NATION WILL SPIT ON THE FACE OF THE OPPOSITION LEADER KILICDAROGLU" Erdogan's heaviest criticism of ISIS is, "cannot be taken lightly," while his entire anger is hurled towards the Alevite opposition leader Kilicdaroglu. Full Turkish text 14. ISIS HOLIDAY GREETING PARTY IN THE HEART OF ISTANBUL WITH THE SUPPORT OF JDP Serious claims surfaced of the holiday greeting party in Istanbul organized by ISIS with the support of the governing JDP where calls for jihad were raised and death fetwas were delivered. Full Turkish text 15. THOUSANDS OF NEW MEMBERS FROM TURKEY FLOWS TO ISIS It is very easy to join ISIS from Turkey. ISIS is allowed to recruit everywhere from the most remote areas to the heartland of the country. These militants easily cross the borders under the control of Turkish intelligence agency MIT and the Turkish armed forces. Full Turkish text 16. TURKISH GOVERNMENT ALLOWS ISIS TO OPEN A STAND FOR RECRUITING MILITANTS IN THE VERY HEART OF ISTANBUL, FATIH. ISIS opens a recruitment stand claims to be gathering "help." The public, open stand clearly had the large ISIS flag displayed soliciting donations for ISIS. Full Turkish text 17. THE SERIES ISIL CRITICIZED WAS PULLED SUDDENLY FROM THE STATE TV, TRT The series, The Red Apple, had been criticized by ISIS. Turkish security offices had sent warning messages to the Turkish State TV that the series was getting a reaction from ISIS. Immediately the series was pulled down. The series was about the Turkish intelligence service MIT. ISIS considered the series to be "hostile to ISIS" because it portrayed ISIS "like an organization that spreads fear," and considered The Red Apple and other "series for women" to be culturally adversarial. As soon as this was communicated to the state TV by the intelligence service, the series was pulled from broadcast. Full Turkish text 18. THEN FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER DAVUTOGLU (now, the Prime Minister) PRAISES ISIL PUBLICLY Davutoglu portrayed the terrorist organization as, "Only a reaction against the unpleasant situation in the region." He claimed the terrorist organization representing the feeling of the region's people. Full Turkish text 19. ISIS IS ALLOWED TO SELL OIL IN TURKISH MARKETS WORTH $800,000,000.00 RPP (Republican Peoples' Party) representative Mehmet Ali Ediboglu declared ISIS had sold 800 million dollars' worth of oil in the Turkish markets. Assemblyman Ediboglu also revealed that the Turkish intelligence service MIT was behind ISIS and supported their oil trading in Turkey. Full Turkish text 20. THE MONEY SENT TO ISIS FROM QATAR PASSED THROUGH TURKEY The opposition in Qatar revealed with documentation how $1,375,000 was paid to Turkey to be passed along to ISIS. Documents also show the Kurdish leader Barzani helping the ISIS jihadists to pass through Iraq. The money was sent to Turkey from Qatar for their services of hosting the terrorists and obtaining the equipment the jihadists may need. Full Turkish text 21. ISIS MILITANTS USED TURKISH PORTS TO GO TO IRAQ "We request that the coordination with Turkey commences to allow the passage of armed volunteers whose gear have been completed in Northern Africa to go through Kurdistan to Iraq for jihad, to provide the logistic help and to meet the fighters in Turkish ports" Full Turkish text 22. ISIS MILITANTS FLOWN TO IRAQ WITH TURKISH STATE AIRLINES THY The Persian News Agency in Iran reported that 91 jihadist militants from Tajikistan were transported with THY, the Turkish State Airlines, to ISIS. The ISIS terrorists were carried on July 2, 2014 to Istanbul where they were later routed to Iraq. The source also claimed that around 1,000 Tajik citizens were carried to ISIS by Turkish Airlines, the state airline of Turkey. Full Turkish text 23. THE BARBAROUS MEDIA NETWORK OF ISIS WAS ESTABLISHED WITH TURKEY AND QATAR'S HELP The money sent through Turkey was used to buy sophisticated media equipment for the ISIS propaganda. Full Turkish text 24. THE TARGET OF UN'S DECISION ON ISIS'S OIL TRADE IS TURKEY Turkey becomes the country that would be most affected by the UN's decision of sanctions against ISIS. UN decided on sanctions for the countries that trade oil with the Islamic State. This is a decision initiated by Russia against the wide spread oil trading ISIS freely does in Turkey. Full Turkish text 25. UN PASSES RESOLUTION IN THE SECURITY COUNCIL AFFECTS MOSTLY TURKEY The resolution warned those countries that allowed terrorists to pass freely to Iraq and Syria. Full Turkish text 26. TURKISH ARMY STAGES A SHOW WITH THE PERMISSION OF ISIS TERRORISTS Turkish army crosses the Syrian border to carry the Suleyman Sah grave closer to Turkish border. The army units crossed the border in the morning from the Kurdish YPG controlled region and returned safely without any clashes with ISIS from ISIS controlled area in the evening. Kurdish guerillas openly gave permission for the Turkish forces to cross. Since no clashes occurred between the ISIS forces controlling the area and the Turkish military, observers claim there must have been a secret agreement. When asked about this, the prime minister Erdogan said, "We have no issues with ISIS. We were only sending help to the site of the grave." Full Turkish text 27. KURDISH FORCES SHARPLY WARN TURKEY FOR ITS COOPERATION WITH ISIS JIHADIST TERRORISTS Kurdish organization KCK warned, "ISIS and the JDP Turkish state have joined forces. Their common strategy is for Kobane to fall to ISIS and to reverse the revolution in Rojava in Kurdistan. With such an agreement the Turkish hostages in Mosul will be allowed to go free." Full Turkish text 28. TURKISH POLICE ATTACK THE PEOPLE WHO CROSS THE BORDER TO STOP ISIS ATTACKS. In the Cengelli village of Suruc in Turkey, the residents crossed the border after ISIS attacks against Turkish and Kurdish civilians and residents. To protect ISIS, the Turkish police and military attacked its own citizens wounding 10 people. Turkish forces also destroyed the tents setup by people for kitchen and toilet purposes. Demonstrations against the ISIS terrorists and the Turkish forces acting in unison gathered more than 10,000 marching to the border. Full Turkish text 29. ISIS THREATENS THEIR TURKISH COUNTERPARTS: "IF YOU DON'T OPEN UP THE ATATURK DAM, WE WILL COME AND OPEN IT FROM ISTANBUL" ISIS openly told the Turkish government how to help them with water supplies: "I am praying that the government who may fall against Allah will reevaluate their decision. If they don't reevaluate their decisions, we will free Istanbul from them," says the ISIS Media representative Ebu Musa. Turkey had prevented the water flow to ISIS terrorist controlled area. Full Turkish text 30. ASSEMBLY MEMBER DEMANDS AN END TO ALL RELATIONSHIP WITH ISIS Elected National Assembly member representative Sezgin Tanrikulu calls to end all state relationship to ISIS and demands an inquiry to reveal the murderers of Turkish soldiers. He added, "If you want peace in Turkey, you must cut all ties to ISIS." Three Turkish soldiers had been killed in Turkish city of Ceylanpinar where ISIS was organizing and recruiting. The Turkish state immediately, of course, accused the Kurdish people with the killings. Kurds, on the other hand, immediately rejected this accusation. Previously the Kurds had owned up to any clashes or casualties they caused. The representative said Turkey was openly supporting, helping and aiding the ISIS jihadists. He claimed the center for ISIS recruitments was in Gaziantep, in Turkey. Full Turkish text 31. SNOWDEN REVELATIONS SHOW ISIS IS A COMMON PROJECT AMONG THE US AND ISRAEL Snowden's documents reveal the relationship of ISIS and imperialists. However, the Turkish government media stayed silent for months after the revelation. Then only reported the relationship with a twist to protect the JDP government. The only reason this was brought to media's attention was not the revelations but the UN resolution that called attention to the countries helping terrorists in the Middle East. Full Turkish text 32. ISIL ADMITS OPENLY: WE ENJOYED A LOT OF HELP WE RECEIVED FROM THE JDP. HOWEVER, WE DON'T NEED THEM ANY MORE Washington Post reported that ISIS was using the town of Reyhanli in Turkey like its very own shopping mall. Report also mentioned that Turkey was laying red carpet to the terrorist organization. It was also indicated that "Turkey is reaping what is saw" Full Turkish text 33. DAILY CUMHURIYET PUBLISHED THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF ARMS BEING CARRIED TO ISIS IN THE STATE TRUCKS THE GOVERNMENT CLAIMED WERE CARRYING FOOD. The pictures obtained by daily Cumhuriyet showed the arms smuggling the Turkish state was involved in, supplying ISIS with fighting materials. Full Turkish text 34. PICTURES OF ISIS HEADQUARTERS IN URFA, AKCAKALE The picture of a house given to ISIS to be used as their headquarters by the JDP government after the terrorist jihadists had to evacuate Tel Abyad in Syria was published. What is interesting is that this headquarters was right next to a Turkish army garrison and very close to the border. The home owner is paid 100,000 TL (around $30,000) per month rent. Full Turkish text 35. ISIS ATTACKS THE KURDISH TOWN KOBANE WITH VEHICLES CROSSING THE BORDER FROM TURKEY Isis dressed up as Kurdish fighters to disguise themselves as Kurds attack Syria from Turkish side of the border. In this attack ISIS murdered more than 20 civilians in Berxbotan village. Total casualties added up to 42 with hundreds wounded. Full Turkish text 36. THE GOVERNOR OF URFA ARRESTS 4 JOURNALISTS WHO ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT ISIS During a press conference when journalists asked about presence of ISIS in his town, the Governor became agitated and shouted at security, "Take them in!" The journalists were arrested. The press representative of the Governor's office replied, "How dare they ask questions like this? They are bringing tension to the press conference." Other officers tried to beat the journalists before they were arrested. The journalists were taken to "Anti Terror" department for questioning. Full Turkish text shakeass The love affair between ISIS and the Turkish JDP (AKP) government. The entire story and evidence. turkey, is, isis Water-boarding, here we go again. Tue, 24 Nov 2015 05:47:12 -0500 reaper7recon Today, Donald Trump made news again. Yet another reporter injected a "gotcha" question, trying to embarrass the presidential hopeful. This was obviously a biased reporter, trying to discredit Trump, and show him as unqualified or even dangerous if he were elected to the highest military office in the US. Let's talk about water-boarding. The objective is fear, nothing more. Most people who shower, have accidentally water-boarded themselves. Tilting your head back too far, while water rushes over your face, can create the circumstances where water enters your nasal cavity. The effect is immediate, your heart rate jumps, your eyes open wide, your breathing is spiked. The reflex action, actually makes matters worse. The effects are temporary, and do absolutely zero physical harm, even the emotional impact, is based on the individual. This technique, was absolutely instrumental in getting intel that lead directly to the location of osama bin dyin'. Many democrats liberals will argue that this is torture, and goes against the US Constitution. Let us tackle the law first. Being a US citizen, carries rights that are unmatched around the world. Other countries have similar laws, adopted from the US, but no other country matches it 100 percent. The rights and freedoms, are the reason so many people around the world, dream of becoming an American citizen. One of those rights, is how we treat citizens, suspected of crimes. They have the RIGHT to remain silent. This is often ignored by dumb people, who refuse to shut the fuck up. Once a citizen invokes this right, it is illegal for their captors to continue questioning them. They also have the RIGHT to legal counsel. This is so important, that the state will bear the burden of this right, if the citizen can't afford counsel. The citizen has the RIGHT to due process, speedy justice, and coverage against unlawful search or seizure of their property, person and effects. These rights are paramount to freedom, and they are ONLY applicable to CITIZENS, no matter where they may travel throughout the world. So who has been, or can be, water-boarded? Anyone that is NOT a citizen. Anyone who has taken up arms against the USA, her allies and interests, at home or abroad. This is where being a citizen, has it's advantages. Anyone who is NOT a citizen, are not subject too, or covered by, the RIGHT provided by our Constitution. This allows for the US, to use what ever methods are necessary to protect our country, allies and interests at home or abroad. The next argument these democrats and liberals will make, "it is illegal under the Geneva Convention". This is patently false. The convention protects enemy POW's, who are uniformed members of the military of another convention country. The technique of water-boarding, has been used on people who are NOT covered, either by the US Constitution or Geneva Convention. They are not wearing uniforms, are not members of an organized military from a nation that is a member of the Convention. Simply put, they have no rights. Lately, liberals have blurred the line of citizen rights, and those of illegals and enemy combatants abroad. When you give rights to people who do not deserve them, you take away the incentive for legal immigration and citizenship. Why go through all the time and trouble, when just putting your ass on US soil, automatically places that blanket of freedom upon you? When you give financial aid to illegals/non-citizens, who did not earn it, or deserve it, you erase the line between citizens and everyone else. Foreign fighters, not of a Convention member military, should have even less rights than illegal migrants. Democrats and liberals would have you believe that there is no difference, that our Constitutional Rights are for every human being on the planet, and being an American carries no special privileges. If this is true, we might as well scrape the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. This is similar to their "everyone gets a trophy" bullshit. By giving it too everyone, just for showing up, you destroy the meaning of the trophies earned. This is simply false, and has damaged the country in ways that will scar us for decades to come. Both in quality of the people, and financially. The other huge disparity in the democrat/liberal mindset, is the indiscriminate killing of enemy combatants. They say it is unlawful to pour water on someone's face, but it is OK to blow them into a million pieces, by drone strike, from ten thousand miles away. Some of these people, are against it, but with far less enthusiasm as the "water-boarding is torture" group. The other argument, is the "we are no better than our enemy", utter bullshit. If you have trouble seeing the line that divides us, you have serious ethical issues to deal with. There is no comparison between our actions, and theirs. Over the last several years, as oshitma has made a hasty retreat from the world, these monsters have consolidated and grown. Their methods of terror, is outright barbarism. Between the beheadings, burning and crucifixion of anyone not in good standing with their brand of radical islam, they do even more atrocities. You only hear about the ultraviolent acts, but they do far more heinous shit that doesn't make the news cycle for any particular day. Why? Because it is so common, and by some views, boring. The enslavement of people, by the thousands. The rape of girls and boys. The mutilation of the genitals of young women, because you can't allow them to derive pleasure from anything sexual. Girls are a means to an end, nothing more. If these muslims could make babies by ass raping young boys, without women, they would kill every female on the planet. The subjugation of the population, where ever they carry their black flag of death. The theft of anything of value, and destruction of anything cultural which they don't approve of. The loss of freedom, no matter how little and shitty it was, they have ZERO rights today. These people, if you can call them people, are hell bent on bringing about the end of the world. Being tortured is nothing to these people, they expect it. They thrive on misery. They dish out, far worse than we have ever treated them. While some people don't want to use these methods, it is only because they are too far removed from the dangers posed by these savages. Place their child in the hands of is-is, and see how fast their moral superiority walls crumble. If we care about the fight we are in, and have any chance of winning it, we must remove all the stops and go at them as hard as they dream of going after us. We can offer them no quarter, give them no chance to regroup, catch their breath, find shade and rest. The longer they have to sit around, planning, the closer we are to another massive civilian attack. The only way to prevent this, is by never allowing them to think about anything other than survival for another day. If they have even a remote chance of a successful attack, and we can prevent it by using methods we would otherwise find disagreeable, we must do it anyway. Having tried to extract the information and failed, is better than never having tried at all. When a terrorist feels uncomfortable, and you shed a tear, you are offering comfort and support to those terrorists. How do you feel, when innocent people die, and you could have prevented it if only you had the courage or stomach to do what is necessary to protect them? I say that we need to get with the program, or get out of the way. You don't need to be an open supporter of these methods, having mixed feelings about it, is expected. Having reservations about these methods, is what separates us from them. But this should not hinder us from doing what is required to protect our people. There are those who are willing to do the hard stuff, and we should be grateful. Without those people, bin dying would still be out there, motivating new attacks. More innocent blood would be on our streets. We need to also be grateful of our lives, our freedoms, the privilege to live in a just nation of laws, of a system that actually PROTECTS US from our government. These are not the norm, around the globe. Even nations that are supposedly "free", do not match what Americans enjoy. Having that freedom, makes us a target by those jealous of, or angry about such freedoms. They want to rule you, make you follow their ways, or die. In conclusion, we need to think about what we have as Americans. What we risk losing, if we are too afraid to fight in the mud. We need to understand how fortunate we are for the rights our founders provided us. How this difference is paramount in the fight against evil. Giving away the rights and freedoms, so many have died for, is a slap in the face of what makes us exceptional. If we remove these things, or give away to those undeserving, we undermine everything that makes us unique. We live in a new Era. Now long ago, our enemies were obvious, they built walls trapping their subjects inside, and presumably keeping us out. They used radio and TV to pound their propaganda into their captive population, and discredit our way of life. There was no instagram, no facebook to follow, no satellite up link to spread their videos of beheadings. They had uniforms, and played war-games. Today, they are much more cowardly. They hide within the population, they wear no uniforms, they do not scrutinize between strategic military targets and purely civilian targets. They embrace the term "terrorist". They use unconventional methods, insurgency methods, anywhere anytime attacks. Body count is their measure of success. We must use every tool in the bag to defeat these monsters. If we are too scared to get our hands dirty in this fight, they will exploit this weakness and we will pay for it in spades. They kill to imprison people, we kill to free them. That is the basic fact. We better get our heads around this fight, or be prepared to lose everything. I hope that those who oppose these methods, can sleep with the consequences. The price we pay for action, is far lower than the price we will pay for doing nothing at all. *in the last hour, we have seen the consequences of this administration's failures in foreign policy. As turkey, a member of NATO, just shot down a russian warplanes. The odds of russia doing nothing, is very low. The odds of NATO protecting one of their members, may be even lower. As America is failing on every front, foreign and domestic, our enemies are growing stronger. Russia has not been this bold, since the early 80's. This is directly tied to the failure of the oshitma administration. We are far closer to WWIII, in my lifetime, than even during the Cold War. While obama continues to play checkers, the rest of the world must step up and fill this void. Clearly, they are not nearly as good at the game, as we used to be. reaper7recon Water-boarding, here we go again. Water-boarding, torture, conventions, Geneva, US, Constitution, rights, terror, civilians, casualties, death, coward, complacent, blunders, mistakes New England Patriots hold a minute's silence for Ezra Schwartz, who was murdered in Palestinian shooting attack Tue, 24 Nov 2015 04:38:23 -0500 aydeo The Football team memorializes Massachusetts teen - and passionate fan - who was murdered in Palestinian shooting attack on Thursday - The New England Patriots football team observed a minute of silence before its game overnight Monday against the Buffalo Bills in memory of Ezra Schwartz, a native of Sharon, Massachusetts, who was killed in a terror attack in Israel on Thursday. Schwartz, a devoted fan of the team, was laid to rest in his hometown on Sunday. The 18-year-old student, on a gap-year program in Israel, was gunned down in the Etzion bloc on Thursday evening while on his way to distribute food packages to IDF soldiers. Local resident Yaakov Don, and Palestinian Shadi Arfa were also killed in the terror attack. At the start of the game, attended by more than 65,000 fans and watched on television by over 15 million, stadium announcer John Dolan said a moment of silence would be held to remember those who had recently lost their lives in "senseless terrorist attacks abroad." "Last Thursday, this reality struck close to home when 18-year-old Ezra Schwartz, a native of Sharon, Massachusetts, and a huge patriots fan was gunned down nearly 5,500 miles from home while studying abroad," he said. "At this time we would like to honor Ezra Schwartz and the hundreds of victims like him with a moment of silence." On Sunday, former Israeli Knesset memebr Dov Lipman sent a letter to Patriots owner Robert Kraft, asking him to memorialize 18-year-old Schwartz. "This is such a fitting tribute to Ezra and is so meaningful to his family and friends," Lipman said after the announcement. "Mr. Kraft is a first class human being who does what is right and just. His support for Israel during these tough times has been unwavering and a pillar of strength for all of us. I am usually a Washington Redskins fan but tonight - and possibly from now on - we are all Patriots. Let's go Pats!" According to Lipman, students in the Ashreinu yeshiva that Schwartz attended recalled the teenager's love of the Patriots, with one student apologizing to Schwartz for telling him "to stop screaming with joy as he watched games in his dorm room at 3:00 a.m." Story after story told by family members and his Maimonides School baseball coach recalled Schwartz as a loyal Patriots fan who proudly wore the team's jerseys and caps. Gillette Stadium, home of the Patriots, is located in Foxborough, the town that borders Sharon. Ezra followed the team closely while studying in Israel, according to his father Ari Schwartz, who said the family watched the games together over the internet. Recently, Ezra lost the connection on his end, but one of his younger brothers held up his phone to the televised game so they could continue watching, he said at the funeral. "Football kept us connected and we loved it together," Ari Schwartz said. aydeo New England Patriots hold a minute's silence for Ezra Schwartz, who was murdered in Palestinian shooting attack New England,Fuutball,Team,Patriots,Minute,Silence,Memory,Ezra Schwartz Britain to boost defence spending and create rapid strike force Tue, 24 Nov 2015 04:01:13 -0500 Euronews David Cameron has announced a massive boost to Britain's defence budget in the wake of the Paris attacks. Speaking after visiting the French capital, the British prime minister said he wants to increase spending by some 14 billion euros and create a 10,000 strong rapid reaction force ready to deploy across the world. The plans are outlined in the government's five-year strategic and defence spending review. In a speech to parliament Cameron said: "As the murders on the streets of Paris remind us so starkly, ISIL is not some remote problem thousands of miles away, it is a direct threat to our security at home and abroad." Detailing a list of new purchases, more financing for intelligence agencies and the targeting of aid budgets to support failed states, he added: "Not one of these capabilites is an optional extra." "We will invest more than a 178 bln pounds in buying and maintaining equipment over the next decade, including doubling our investment in equipment to support our special forces, and we will also increase the size of our deployable armed forces." "The conflict stability and security fund will grow to over 1.3 bln pounds a year by the end of this parliament. And we will also create a new 1.3 bln pound prosperity fund to drive forward our aim of promoting global prosperity and good governance," said Cameron. The extra spending also includes new F-35 fighter jets and maritime patrol aircraft. But the review also requires the defence ministry to cut civilian staff by 30 percent, some 41,000 jobs, to help keep the government's budget in check. On Thursday, Cameron will present his case to parliament for extending air strikes against IS targets from Iraq to Syria. Euronews Britain to boost defence spending and create rapid strike force Euronews Operation UNIFIER Tue, 24 Nov 2015 03:59:01 -0500 TheSupremeLeader Canadian training mission to Ukraine. Summary . Canadians setting up . Rifle Range training . Urban operations training . Live fire range with BMP . EOD procedures training TheSupremeLeader Operation UNIFIER Operation UNIFIER, canada, ukraine, Joint Task Force Ukraine, eod, bmp 24.11.2015 Crisis News Mon, 23 Nov 2015 22:38:31 -0500 ygfront Not all heavy armaments have been withdrawn from the disengagement line in east Ukraine, Deputy Chief Monitor of the Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE in Ukraine Alexander Hug said Thursday. He added that the ceasefire regime in the area of Kievs military operation is very unstable. The mission is continuing to observe ceasefire violations in different areas of the contact line. Kuwait has uncovered an international cell that supplied ISIS with weapons bought in Ukraine, funds and new recruits. Six members were arrested but four others remain on the run abroad. The information came from Kuwaits Interior Ministry, which identified the leader of the group as a 45-year-old Lebanese national, Osama Khayat. The weapons were first shipped from Ukraine to Turkey and then smuggled into Syria. The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense has issued a statement saying that Ukraine has had nothing to do with ammunition supplies to ISIS because all that could be supplied had already been stolen. Belgian security forces launched a massive-scale operation in Brussels on Sunday evening. Police arrested 16 people. One of the people arrested was wounded, he added. However, Belgian forces failed to find Salah Abdeslam, one of the key suspects in the November 13 Paris terror attacks, who was believed to be on the loose in Belgium. A total of 19 raids were carried out in Brussels and three houses were searched in Charleroi, south of the capital. A militant group incorporated into ISIS has been neutralized in Nalchik (Russias North Caucasus) and a workshop for the production of home-made explosive devices has been rendered harmless, a spokesman for the National Anti-terrorist Committee stated on Sunday. Eleven militants were spotted at a fortified base located in a mountain forest. They were killed when they tried to break away from the blocked area. The group recruited fighters for terrorist groups and sent them to Syria. ygfront 24.11.2015 Crisis News Ukraine, Russia, EU, Kuwait, ISIS