Syria vows to use 'any means necessary' to take back Golan
Syria hit back at Israel Sunday hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that the Golan Heights will remain in Israeli hands. Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad warned that his war-torn state would retake the plateau by any means necessary.
Netanyahu had convened the first-ever cabinet meeting in the Golan Heights, and used the occasion to declare that the territory seized by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War would forever remain a part of Israel.
“All options are on the table for getting back the occupied territory from Israel,” Mekdad told the Beirut-based al-Mayadeen news channel. “We are prepared to do anything in order to return the Golan to the Syrian motherland, including using military force.”
In the interview on the Pan-Arab news station, Mekdad called on the entire “Arab nation” to help take back all the “occupied territories” from Israel.
He also accused Israel of being behind “terror attacks” against Syria and called the Israeli cabinet meeting a “political attack.”
Netanyahu said during the cabinet meeting that he told US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday that Israel does not oppose efforts to reach a political agreement to end the Syrian civil war, but that Israel’s boundary line with the country would not change.
“I convened this celebratory meeting in the Golan Heights to send a clear message: The Golan will always remain in Israel’s hands. Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights,” he declared.
While the international community never accepted Israel’s decision to apply its law to the Golan Heights, Israeli leaders see the turmoil in Syria as an opportunity to convince the world to recognize its sovereignty there.
“It is time the international community recognized reality,” Netanyahu said. “Whatever happens on the other side of the border, the border itself will not move. Secondly, after 50 years it is time that the international community realized that the Golan will remain under Israeli sovereignty.”
Russian Jet Threatens U.S. Recon Aircraft
A Russian fighter jet flew dangerously close to a U.S. RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft on Thursday in the latest military provocation by Moscow over the Baltic Sea, the U.S. European Command said Saturday.
“On April 14, a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft flying a routine route in international airspace over the Baltic Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 in an unsafe and unprofessional manner,” said Navy Capt. Danny Hernandez.
“This intercept comes shortly after the unsafe Russian encounters with USS Donald Cook,” he added. “There have been repeated incidents over the last year where Russian military aircraft have come close enough to other air and sea traffic to raise serious safety concerns, and we are very concerned with any such behavior.”
Hernandez said the U.S. aircraft, a militarized Boeing 707 jet, was operating in international airspace “and at no time crossed into Russian territory.”
“This unsafe and unprofessional air intercept has the potential to cause serious harm and injury to all aircrews involved,” he said. “More importantly, the unsafe and unprofessional actions of a single pilot have the potential to unnecessarily escalate tensions between countries.”
According to Hernandez, the Su-27 carried out “erratic and aggressive maneuvers” by approaching the RC-135 at a high rate of speed from the side.
The Russian jet “then proceeded to perform an aggressive maneuver that posed a threat to the safety of the U.S. aircrew in the RC-135U,” the spokesman said.
“More specifically, the SU-27 closed within 50 feet of the wing-tip of the RC-135 and conducted a barrel roll starting from the left side of the aircraft, going over the top of the aircraft and ended up to the right of the aircraft,” he said.
The U.S. government is protesting all the incidents this week to the Russian government through diplomatic channels, he said.
The RC-135U, an electronic intelligence-gathering aircraft, is normally operated by five air crew and up to 16 electronic warfare officers and six or more regional specialists.
The dangerous aerial incident came two days after a simulated Russian aerial assault against the guided missile destroyer USS Donald Cook in the Baltic Sea. Washington called the simulated assault a military provocation, and said it nearly caused an international shootout.
Two Russian fighter-bombers, identified as Su-24s, made close passes over the Cook, including one jet that came within 30 feet of the warship.
A Navy officer said the buzzing was the most reckless flyover of a U.S. warship by either a Russian or Chinese warplane since the Cold War. “I’ve been in a lot of those situations and I’ve never seen any plane come that close,” the officer said.
The aerial harassment appears to be part of a Russian military campaign of intimidation against the United States and NATO.
Moscow has adopted hostile military policies toward the United States over U.S. deployment of missile defenses in Europe, which Moscow says threaten its missile forces. The Russians also have been upset by Western sanctions against its military annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.
Because this article states so many things that might be likely to contradict what most people in Western countries have been led to believe, readers here are especially strongly encouraged to click onto any allegation which seems at all questionable, in order to get to the sources behind any given questionable allegation. And wherever a clicked-onto source turns out to be another article, one is encouraged similarly to do the same there, so that the reader will be able, in this way, to probe down to the ultimate sources, which are the sources upon which this article is finally based.
After having expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders and essentially surrounded Russia with US military installations, the United States is now using the pretext of Russia’s having allowed the people of Crimea in 2014 to rejoin Russia (after the Soviet dictator Khrushchev had transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954) as being an excuse for arming and soldiering Russia’s northwestern borders sufficiently to be able to launch as soon as 2017 a ground invasion of Russia, which would then be backed up by US air power and nuclear arms.
In the United States and Europe, the promotion for this action presents the plan as purely defensive against ‘Russian aggression’, for Russia’s having ‘seized’ Crimea in 2014. Promptly, US President Barack Obama slapped economic sanctions against Russia for Russia’s accepting Crimea back into Russia. It was actually hardly a ‘seizure’; it was a protection of the residents there, 75% of whom had voted for the man who had recently been overthrown in a violent coup (which was presented in the West as being a ‘democratic revolution’.)
However, the US had virtually forced Russia to accept the pleas of the residents of Crimea to become again a part of Russia, after the anti-Russian coup in Ukraine – which the head of Stratfor has called «the most blatant coup in history» – after that coup had terrified the residents of Crimea, whom even Western-backed polling of Crimeans had shown that they wanted to rejoin with Russia, even before the US took control of Ukraine in its very bloody coup. (Ever since that coup, there has been no action condemned by the US White House, on the part of the thus-installed anti-Russian Ukrainian government. Now, instead, the condemnations of the Ukrainian government are coming from Moscow, against Russia now having such a rabidly anti-Russian-led nation along Russia’s longest European or western border. (It’s as if Canada were being led now by anti-American bigots who had been installed by the world’s superpower in a world in which the US were only the #2 power. The US would then be extremely disturbed at that type of situation; and, so, too, are Russians, naturally.)
The anti-Russian Cato Institute calls Russia «a defensive, paranoid, nuclear power». Cato doesn’t call the US by a phrase that actually fits the US but certainly not post-Soviet Russia: «the greatest threat to peace in the world today». That’s because America’s aristocracy want the American people and the people in the nations controlled by their allied aristocracies to view Russia as being «a defensive, paranoid, nuclear power», instead of as being an intensely threatened nation – threatened by the US, the nation that is actually generally viewed as being, by far, «the greatest threat to peace in the world today».
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on February 2nd that he approves of US ‘Defense’ Secretary Ash Carter’s proposal to quadruple US armaments and troops in Europe, against ‘Russian aggression.’
Secretary Carter said earlier that same day, in his announcement of America’s arming for war against Russia:
‘We are reinforcing our posture in Europe to support our NATO allies in the face of Russia's aggression. In Pentagon parlance, this is called the European Reassurance Initiative and after requesting about $800 million for last year, this year we're more than quadrupling it for a total of $3.4 billion in 2017.
That will fund a lot of things: more rotational US forces in Europe, more training and exercising with our allies, more preposition and war-fighting gear and infrastructure improvements to support all this.
And when combined with US forces already in and assigned to Europe – which are also substantial – all of this together by the end of 2017 will let us rapidly form a highly capable combined arms ground force that can respond across that theater, if necessary.’
However, the truth is: Russia is not expanding to NATO’s borders; NATO is expanding to Russia’s borders. The baldness of the Western lie to the contrary is an insult to Westerners’ intelligence.
Iran parades parts of advanced S-300 missile battery in Tehran
Iran on Sunday paraded what it claimed were parts of its newly received Russian-made S-300 air defense system, after months of speculation over whether Moscow would deliver the advanced weapon.
Several trucks loaded with what Iran said were parts of the system, including vehicles and missile housing, were paraded through Tehran during an event to mark the country’s annual Army Day, days after an Iranian official said Russia had begun to carry out its part of the deal following years of start-and-stop negotiations.
Israel has long sought to block the sale to Iran of the S-300 system, which analysts say could impede a potential Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities. Other officials have expressed concern that the systems could reach Syria and Hezbollah, diluting Israel’s regional air supremacy.
In the last several months, there have been multiple reports in the Russian and Iranian press that delivery of the system was imminent or had been carried out.
The Israeli Air Force has trained for a scenario in which it would have to carry out strikes in Syria or Iran on facilities defended by the Russian-made S-300 air defense system.
Pyongyang must abandon its nuclear tests, as its ongoing missile launches pose a real danger of a full-scale military conflict, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.
"Continuing launches of missiles and DPRK's nuclear tests are in no way contributing to peace and stability in the region, gradually increasing the intensity and thereby creating a real risk of a full-scale military conflict," Ryabkov wrote in the article with Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Lassina Zerbo, which was published in the Kommersant and Foreign Policy media outlets.
They added that other world powers must refrain from any actions that can further aggravate the situation on the Korean Peninsula.
Dr. Ron Paul says the American electoral system is rigged to keep “independent thinkers” from succeeding.
“I see elections as so much of a charade,” the former Texas congressman said during an April 11 appearance on RT America’s “The Fishtank.” “So much deceit goes on.”
Paul is no stranger to the twisted rules of the American presidential horse race. He ran for the highest office as a Libertarian in 1988, and in 2008 and 2012 as a Republican.
He arguably came closest to the nomination in 2012, when the GOP amended its party regulations to prevent the former Texas representative from stealing Mitt Romney’s thunder.
Rule 40(b) of “The Rules of the Republican Party” was changed so the Republican National Committee could “limit the visibility and power of libertarian-minded Texas Rep. Ron Paul at the convention and thus present a unified front behind Mitt Romney, the presumptive nominee,” according to David Byler, an elections analyst at RealClearPolitics. The rule requires that, in order to win the nomination, a candidate must have the support of a majority of delegates from eight states.
Paul interprets the success of these outsider candidates as a sign that “more people are discovering that the system is all rigged and voting is just pacification for the voters and it really doesn’t count.”
Paul recalled his own 2012 encounter with Rule 40(b) as an important political lesson for both himself and the American people.
“I was upset about it but didn’t want to waste too much energy being angry because this is the way the system works,” he said. “It’s a rotten system.”
AVO detected an explosion at Cleveland Volcano in both infrasound (air pressure) and seismic data this morning at 10:58 AKDT (18:58 UTC).
There are no recent satellite views since the detected explosion, but earlier views are obscured by clouds at about 30,000 feet above sea level.
Scientists have raised the threat level of Alaska's Cleveland Volcano from yellow to orange after detecting a lower-level eruption late Saturday morning.
Jessica Larsen, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, said scientists had not seen evidence for ash in satellite images.
There are no recent satellite views since the detected explosion, but earlier views are obscured by clouds at about 30,000 feet above sea level.
Scientists have raised the threat level of Alaska's Cleveland Volcano from yellow to orange after detecting a lower-level eruption late Saturday morning.
Jessica Larsen, with the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, said scientists had not seen evidence for ash in satellite images.
She says there were clouds at 30,000 feet and scientists could not see evidence for ash above that. The volcano is located on an uninhabited island in the Aleutian Islands.
The threat level was raised by the Alaska Volcano Observatory.
Larsen says that according to an observatory seismologist, this is the 40th explosion at Cleveland Volcano since 2011 and the first since last August.
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