Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 27 November 2015

The European Union Times


Posted: 26 Nov 2015 05:32 AM PST

The United States has imposed more sanctions against Russia for supporting the Syrian government, while Moscow has denounced the move, saying Washington is playing “geo-political games”.
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday announced that four Russian individuals and six entities, including a bank, have been added to Washington’s sanctions list.
US officials said they were involved in supporting the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Moscow has slammed the latest round of sanctions, accusing Washington of playing “geo-political games” on Syria.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Wednesday Moscow cannot understand the reason for the fresh punitive measure.
“It is clear that this is a new, complicated moment in relations,” RIA Novosti quoted Ryabkov as saying.
The sanctions came after NATO member Turkey shot down a Russian warplane, claiming the warplane had repeatedly violated its air space.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the jet had been attacked when it was 1 kilometer inside Syria.
He warned of “serious consequences” and called it a “stab in the back” administered by “the accomplices of terrorists.”
“We will never tolerate such crimes like the one committed today,” Putin said.
Russia has been conducting airstrikes on Daesh positions at the request of the Syrian government since September 30.
Syria has been gripped by deadly violence since March 2011. The United States and its regional allies – especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey – have been supporting the militants operating inside Syria since the beginning of the crisis.
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Posted: 26 Nov 2015 05:11 AM PST

A Turkish convoy, which according to some reports was transporting weapons to terrorist organizations, has been hit by apparent airstrikes in northwestern Syria. The convoy was hit most likely by Russian jets in retaliation to the downing of the Russian SU-24 jet over Syria by a Turkish F-16 jet.
Footage released online by the Istanbul-based Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) shows plumes of smoke from the burning trucks and people running about in panic. At least 20 trucks were engulfed in flames.
The mission, however, wasn’t sponsored or organized by the IHH, the group said. No organization has as yet confirmed that the convoy belonged to them.
“Our teams helped to extinguish the fire… The trucks do not belong to us and there is no information on who bombed them,” Mustafa Özbek, an official from İHH, told Reuters.
At least seven people were killed and 10 injured in the incident, according to the Turkish Anadolu agency. The trucks were reportedly heading to the town of Azaz in northwestern Syria.
Since the news emerged, media has been furiously speculating about who was behind the attack, what the trucks were transporting, what the convoy’s humanitarian mission was, or maybe it was carrying a more sinister load.
One of the aid workers who survived the incident said the trucks had been deliberately targeted, Reuters reported.
The nature of the ‘humanitarian aid’ is also in question. Turkish media and the IHH say the trucks were transporting humanitarian aid to refugees in Azaz.
However, the Turkish Cumhuriyet newspaper cited sources close to the Syrian government saying the convoy was delivering weapons to terrorist organizations.
The Hawar news agency reported that Turkey repeatedly sent convoys with arms to the Al-Nusra Front and other terrorist organizations under the guise of humanitarian aid.
Reports on Twitter went further – they identified the arms as allegedly “Docka machine guns” and “small arms with ammunitions.”
In the wake of the recent downing of a Russian Air Force bomber over Syria by Turkish fighter jets, some reports suggested the Russians were “avenging” the pilot’s death. Many media outlets thought it was the work of Vladimir Putin.
Anadolu cited ‘Syrian opposition sources,’ who claimed that Russian jets attacked the convoy.
Other sources suggested the airstrikes were carried out by Syrians, without specifying whether it was members of the Syrian Army loyal to President Bashar Assad, or one of the various Syrian rebel groups.
Neither Turkish, nor Russian authorities have yet commented on the incident. However, before the Azaz incident Tayyip Erdogan commented on an event that took place in 2013, when a Turkish security service convoy was stopped on the way to the Bayırbucak region in northwestern Syria. The Turkish president said: “If there were any weapons, then what? And if there weren’t, what would change?”
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Posted: 26 Nov 2015 04:57 AM PST
Konstantin Murakhtin, the surviving pilot of the doomed Russian Su-24M Fencer jet.
The sole survivor of the downed Russian Su-24M Fencer jet says the Turkish jets did not issue any visual or radio warnings before shooting down the warplane.
“There was no warning, not by radio exchange nor visually. There was no contact at all,” said Konstantin Murakhtin, the surviving pilot of the doomed jet, speaking to Russian journalists on Wednesday at Moscow’s base in Syria after being rescued by Russian special forces and Syrian troops.
The remarks made by the Russian pilot are in contrast to those of the Turkish government that claimed its F-16 warplanes had issued warnings before shooting down the aircraft.
The Turkish military has released what it claims to be an audio recording of repeated warnings to the Russian jet before it was shot down.
I ordered them to shoot, says the Premier
Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that he himself had given the order to destroy the Russian jet.
“Despite all the warnings, we had had to destroy the aircraft. The Turkish Armed Forces carried out orders given by me personally,” said Davutoglu, speaking to a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party, the Canadian ThinkPol news website reported.
Earlier in the day, Shamsail Saraliev of the ruling United Russia party who represents Chechnya in the State Duma − the lower house – tweeted that Russia should destroy the perpetrators of the “cowardly” attack.
“To start with, as a minimum, it is necessary to establish the identity of the Turkish pilots responsible for the cowardly attack on our aircraft and those who gave them orders, and destroy them,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
On Tuesday morning, NATO member Turkey shot down the Russian fighter jet with two pilots aboard, claiming that the warplane had repeatedly violated its airspace.
However, Russia denies all of Ankara’s claims, maintaining that the jet was downed in Syrian airspace where Russia has been carrying out operations against the Daesh Takfiri terrorists since September 30 upon a request by the Damascus government.
Based on radar imaging from Russia’s Hmeymim airbase, the Turkish jet actually violated Syrian airspace to attack the Russian jet.
Russian President Vladimir Putin had earlier said that the downing of the Russian plane would have “serious consequences” for Moscow-Ankara ties.
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Posted: 26 Nov 2015 04:21 AM PST

Readers of the Western press, be it American, British, German or otherwise, have expressed their complete outrage over the gunning down of the Russian bomber by Turkey in Syria, calling it “a grotesque overreaction and a bald faced attempt to give their jihadi buddies some help,” among others. Here are just some of the comments.
“It is a fact it was shot down over Syria. If it was shot down over Turkey the Turkish army would have taken the pilots prisoner. Instead Syrian jihadists murdered the pilots after they ejected. This is the same kind of war crime that ISIS (ISIL) commits,” user castlerock58 commented on an article in The National Interest magazine.
​“The EU needs to hold Turkey accountable for aiding the terrorists that committed the atrocity in Paris. ISIS (ISIL) gets most of its money from the oil it sells to Turkey,” he furthermore added.
“You have to wonder whose side Turkey is on right now. Whether or not Russian aircraft violated Turkish airspace means comparatively little when one considers the fact that the Su-24 was not targeting anything inside Turkey. This was a grotesque overreaction by the Turkish government and a bald faced attempt to give their jihadi buddies some help,” commentated user TDog on the same article.
​Some of the commentators also note that Turkey provided a poor excuse for the shooting down of the Russian bomber.
“The Su24 was in Turkish airspace for what the Turks claim to be 17 seconds and no more than 1.5 miles inside what is actually a disputed border area. The area it crossed is actually a spur of claimed Turkish territory that abuts into Syria. The figures the Turks cite in their letter to the UN Security Council don’t work out given that the stall speed of the Su24 is approximately 140 mph. Given the width of the spur and the amount of time the aircraft would’ve been at stall speed or very close to it. The stall warning hooter would have been going off in the cockpit,” reasoned user ngatimozart.
“They are hiding something and it might be that someone in the Turkish chain of command stuffed up,” he added.
“We need to recognise that Turkey and ISIL are one and the same.”
​”When British airmen were shot down the Nazis used to run into the fields and shoot them as they drifted down in their parachutes,” user mel3 commented on an article in The Telegraph.
“So today we still have airmen being machined gunned until they are limp and drift down in their parachutes. All for supposedly being a few seconds in someones Turkish airspace. The same Turkish government who happens take regular delivery of oil tankers from Islamic State and supplies them with cash and weapons in return,” he added.
​“Merkel has now gone mad and fallen for Turkey’s ISIL trojan horse and allowed Turkey into Europe. Turkey used the refugees displaced by ISIL as bargaining chips.”
“17 seconds. That’s how long the SU-24 was over Syrian territory. And you might as well say that it was on its way out of Turkish airspace as soon as it entered it — so the rules of engagement were NOT respected, as opposed to what Turkey claims. Besides, the SU-24 was hit over Syrian territory which goes even further against standard rules of engagement. This was not an engagement, it was an AMBUSH,” reasons user Euro_Hero, commenting on the same article.
​“Finally, I would like to remind everyone that what the Turkmen rebels did, shooting a parachutist in the air, IS A GROSS VIOLATION OF THE GENEVA CONVENTION. That’s right, and these are the kind of people that Turkey and some of us support against Assad. As well as Al Qaeda/Al Nusra and the Islamic Front against Assad- who like IS want Sharia law, no democracy and the slaughter of Shia communities as well as non-believers, generally speaking,” he adds.
“Turkey can certainly flex its muscles with NATO behind them, but the Russian jet was probably not a threat, 10 warnings or not, was it really necessary to shoot in this case?” wonders user Mullersun, commenting on the article in the German Der Spiegel.
“Ooophs — Mr Erdogan. Looks to me as if Turkey was just waiting for a half-chance to shoot down a Russian plane — for any whatever reason,” writes user wobec commenting on the article in the Zeit Online.
​Many of the users also suggested that it was high time Europe reconsidered its relationship with Turkey.
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Posted: 26 Nov 2015 03:58 AM PST

During a press conference from the White House which was supposed to be about the French President’s visit following the horrific Paris attacks by ISIS, Obama chose to talk about himself, his wife, and then followed it up with several clangers and further mind boggling statements.
Instead of concentrating on the 129+ victims of the attacks, or the French people, or French President Francois Hollande, Obama instead related a non-story about how he went to Paris once and tongued his wife:
“By my bed in the residence is a picture of me and Michelle in Luxembourg Gardens. Kissing. Those are the memories we have of Paris.” he stated, even adding in a ‘joke’ about his hair; “it was early on, I had no gray hair.”

You can almost hear the Tumbleweeds blowing through.
In addition to the fact that Obama didn’t even bother to go to Paris, unlike other world leaders, and made the French president come to him, he also made matters even worse by mis-quoting the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty – a gift from France to the US.
Obama noted that Lady Liberty bears an inscription of “words we know so well.”
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free,”
The inscription actually reads “masses yearning to breathe free.”
The clown show didn’t end there. Obama went on to lecture Americans about ‘Islamophobia’ and called for more Syrian refugees to be brought into America.

What diplomacy, what leadership.
Obama then claimed that the upcoming conference on climate change in Paris will be a “powerful rebuke” to the terrorists:

Huh? How so?
The bumbling embarrassing display follows an incident last week when Obama arrived late into the middle of a moment of silence during the G-20 conference in Turkey. Previous to the Paris attacks, the President had also claimed that ISIS was “contained”.
In reality, the worldwide number of annual terrorist deaths has more than quadrupled since Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.
The President’s approval rating has tanked in the wake of the Paris attacks with just 36% of Likely U.S. Voters giving Obama good or excellent marks for his actions following the attacks. A plurality (45%) rated his response as poor.
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Posted: 25 Nov 2015 02:14 PM PST

Like a vengeful Mafia don Recep Tayyip Erdogan shot down a Russian plane and nudged the Middle East a step closer to all-out war.
A few hours after the attack Obama climbed up on his soap box and said Turkey has a right to protect its national sovereignty.
Erdogan’s attack, however, had nothing to do with sovereignty or airspace. It was retaliation for Russia messing with his family business.
The son of Turkey’s president is accused of making a fortune on the sale of oil stolen by the Islamic State.
“Bilal Erdogan owns several maritime companies,” writes F. William Engdahl. “He has allegedly signed contracts with European operating companies to carry Iraqi stolen oil to different Asian countries. The Turkish government buys Iraqi plundered oil which is being produced from the Iraqi seized oil wells. Bilal Erdogan’s maritime companies own special wharfs in Beirut and Ceyhan ports that are transporting ISIS’ smuggled crude oil in Japan-bound oil tankers.”
Map of Iraq’s oil fields and areas controlled by the Islamic State.
According to Bilal’s father this pilfering and sale does not carry a penalty under international transportation conventions.
However, according to Gürsel Tekin, the vice-president of the Turkish Republican Peoples’ Party, “Bilal Erdogan is up to his neck in complicity with terrorism, but as long as his father holds office he will be immune from any judicial prosecution.”
Tekin explains Bilal’s maritime company dealing in stolen oil and trading with the Islamic State, BMZ Ltd, is “a family business and president Erdogan’s close relatives hold shares in BMZ and they misused public funds and took illicit loans from Turkish banks.”
The Erdogan clan is up to its neck in business deals with the head-choppers. Sümeyye Erdogan, the daughter of the president, operates a “secret hospital camp inside Turkey just over the Syrian border where Turkish army trucks daily bring in scores of wounded ISIS Jihadists to be patched up and sent back to wage the bloody Jihad in Syria, according to the testimony of a nurse who was recruited to work there until it was discovered she was a member of the Alawite branch of Islam, the same as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who Erdogan seems hell-bent on toppling,” writes Engdahl.
In addition to working with a fundamentalist Turkish Muslim sect to train Islamic State fighters and providing logistical support, Erdogan “organized the pillage of Syria, dismantled all the factories in Aleppo, the economic capital, and stole the machine-tools,” according to Thierry Meyssan. “Similarly, he organized the theft of archeological treasures and set up an international market in Antioch.”
The Russians are threatening to put these Mafia operations out of business and that provided the motivation to shoot down a Russian jet and stir the cauldron that is the Syrian “civil war,” in fact a manufactured proxy war designed to carve up the country and turn it over to a gang of psychopaths who follow a deviant sect of Saudi Wahhabism.
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Posted: 25 Nov 2015 01:57 PM PST

The Russian air force in Syria will be protected by the most powerful and advanced air defense system in the world, when it deploys its S-400 missile system to the Hmeymim airbase there.
Syria will have a comprehensive air defense after Russia deploys its S-400 missile systems to the Hmeymim airbase there, security analyst and US Navy veteran Mark Sleboda told Sputnik.
​”It is a significant upgrade on the S-300, which was a much earlier system. The S-400 came out at the end of the Soviet period, but there have been significant upgrades in recent years.”
“It is widely regarded by experts as the most powerful and technologically advanced air defense system in the world,” and its deployment in Syria sends a powerful statement, said Sleboda.
“This is a very powerful defensive statement from Russia … very soon there will be a quite effective Russian no-fly zone over almost the entirety of Syrian territory, certainly covering all west of Syria, and very far towards the eastern border.”
The deployment of S-400 is in addition to the Pantsir-S1 air defense missile-gun system the Russian air force already had at its disposal at the Hmeymim airbase, while the Moskva guided missile cruiser was already in the area.
“There wasn’t really a need for them (the more powerful S-400 system),” said Sleboda.
“ISIL, of course, doesn’t have an air force. They were simply a standard military precaution for an air mission. But now with the threat of NATO planes taking down Russian jets out of the air, that suddenly becomes a very real necessity.”
On Wednesday the Russian defense ministry announced that the S-400 defense missile system will be deployed to its air base in Syria.
It can destroy tactical ballistic missiles at a range of up to 60 km, and air targets including cruise missiles and aircraft flying at a speed of up to 4800 meters a second, and a distance of up to 250 km. The S-400 is also capable of tracking and launching against most stealth technology.
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Posted: 25 Nov 2015 01:24 PM PST

Several residents of the village Bolkesjø in Telemark, Norway, are in despair over that they can be forced to receive 400 new asylum seekers. A hotel has already been converted into an asylum center.
Gran hotel Bolkesjø has been converted into emergency rooms for 150 refugees, and now the Directorate of Immigration (UDI) is negotiating with the owners of the village’s other hotel, Bolkesjø Hotel, about making it into an asylum center too.
A report from TV2 states that several of the 40 residents in Bolkesjø feel overrun and fear that the small village will not cope with such a massive increase in population.
– We have accepted the 150 who have come here and done our best to ensure that they are happy. But we can not accept 400 more when we are only 40 people. I think everyone realizes that, says resident Ellen-Mari Bolkesjø Brandt, to TV2.
– There is nothing to do here, and it takes two hours to go to Notodden. There is nothing to do for those who come here, she adds.
Both in Bolkesjø and in Notodden municipalities, which already have two reception centres and a third on the way, they feel that they have contributed enough to cope with the ongoing refugee crisis.
But Regional Director Eirik Eide in UDI, confirms that Bolkesjø Hotel is one of the places under consideration, but that it is not yet determined whether it is suitable as an asylum center or not.
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Posted: 25 Nov 2015 01:01 PM PST

Turkish claims that the downed Russian Su-24 jet “violated” its airspace have sparked outrage among Greeks, who took to social media to say it is a clear-cut case of double standards as Turkish jets breached Greek airspace 2,244 times in 2014 alone.
They wondered what would happen if Greece had authorized engagement of Turkish aircraft, which breach the country’s borders on a regular basis.
On Wednesday, the Protothema newspaper released the numbers of breaches saying the Turkish Air Force is usually reluctant to share any details when it comes to such violations.
The newspaper quoted University of Thessaly statistics based on the Greek military’s count – there were 2,244 violations in 2014, an increase from 636 in 2013.
“The Turks are trying to enforce sovereignty over disputed islands and bring Greece to the negotiating table,” Thanos Dokos, the director general of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, told the Politico news website in July. “What’s worrying are the low-altitude flights, often by helicopters, over these islands.”
Turkey fails to respect the 10-mile airspace surrounding the Aegean Islands, which causes numerous dogfights between Greek and Turkish aircraft invading the area. From January to October 2015, the country’s airspace was violated 1,233 times including 31 flights over Greek territory itself, according to the Greek Air Force’s headquarters. Greek media noted the Turks are taking advantage of the country’s economic hardships.
“In the case of air incursions, you have to react,” Thanos Dokos said. “It’s very hard to unilaterally pull back from a situation of military aggression. It’s a tragic situation, because the money we’re spending on dogfights with Turkey is money that we could have spent on other areas of defense.”
Media attention has also focused on Turkish naval vessels repeatedly breaching national maritime borders. Over just seven months – from January to July 2015 – the Turkish Navy made 175 incursions into Greek maritime waters. In June, the Turkish Navy ship, the Gelibolu, repeatedly went on “patrol” in Greek territorial waters, a move that angered many in Greece.
Earlier on Wednesday, Greek Foreign Minister Nikas Kotzias expressed solidarity with Russia in a phone conversation with Russian FM Sergei Lavrov. The Russian Foreign Ministry said: “Athens agrees with the Russian president’s assessment on Ankara’s hostile actions, which are contrary to the goals of the anti-ISIS coalition,” RIA Novosti reports.
Greece, according to its Foreign Ministry, “especially comprehends provocative moves by Turkey given regular multiple violations of Greek air space by Ankara lasting for years.”
Both Turkey and Greece are NATO members, and each country claims a six- nautical-mile zone of the Aegean Sea. Many of the incidents take place within the disputed four-mile radius near the Turkish coast, which Athens considers its territory and Ankara calls international waters. Greece claims 10 miles of air space around the islands, while Turkey recognizes only six miles and argues that its fighters are flying in international airspace.
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Posted by Roberto Abraham Scaruffi at 11:54