Dr. Patrick Slattery’s News Roundup
A service of DavidDuke.com
From The Independent
Donald Trump is right about one thing: Nato is obsolete
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Netanyahu vows to keep Golan Heights forever
A UN observer atop Mount Bental on the Israeli side of the border with Syria, near the city of Quneitra, May 30, 2015. (Yossi Zamir/Flash 90)
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel will never give up the Golan Heights, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday, a day after the Israeli leader said he delivered the same message to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
The meeting was held for the first time on the land captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War.
“I chose to hold this festive Cabinet meeting on the Golan Heights in order to deliver a clear message: The Golan Heights will forever remain in Israel’s hands. Israel will never come down from the Golan Heights,” Netanyahu said.
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From PressTV
‘All options,’ even military ones, on table to push Israel out of Golan
Syria will do whatever it takes to take back the occupied Golan Heights from the Israeli regime, says a high-ranking official.
Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad made the announcement on Sunday, in response to remarks made earlier by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who claimed “the Golan Heights will remain in the hands of Israel forever,” during the regime’s first cabinet meeting in the occupied territory.
Noting that the occupied region belongs to Syria according to international law, Mekdad stressed that the Arab Syrian Golan Heights will be taken back from the Israelis.
“All options are on the table for getting back the occupied territory from Israel,” he said during an interview aired on the Lebanese television channel al-Mayadeen.
“We are prepared to do anything in order to return the Golan to the Syrian motherland, including using military force,” Mekdad (pictured below) asserted.
During the Sunday cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also demanded that the international community recognize Syria’s Golan as Israeli territory. He 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.”
Tel Aviv has portrayed the cabinet meeting as a symbolic gesture aimed at consolidating Israel’s sovereignty in the occupied region despite international pressure.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 six-day war and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community.
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From PressTV
‘Opposition’ negotiator urges attacks on Syria forces
The chief negotiator of Syria’s so-called opposition, Mohammed Alloush, has called for the resumption of attacks on government forces despite a UN-brokered ceasefire deal in the Arab country.
Alloush, who is the top negotiator of the Saudi-backed opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC), made the remarks on Sunday. He is currently in Geneva together with representatives from the Syrian government for peace talks aimed at finding a political solution to the Syrian conflict.
“Don’t trust the regime and don’t wait for their pity,” Alloush wrote on Twitter, adding, “Strike them at their necks (kill them). Strike them everywhere.”
A few figures of the opposition group, however, said that Alloush’s comments did not represent the HNC’s stance.
“Alloush’s position is personal. We as the HNC cannot adopt this position,” Yahya al-Aridi, a member of the HNC who is in Geneva, said.
Alloush is among senior figures of the Jaish al-Islam militant group and had reportedly spent most of his life in Saudi Arabia and studied Islamic religious courses.
A truce, brokered by the US and Russia, went into effect across Syria on February 27. It does not apply to terrorist groups such as Daesh and al-Qaeda’s Syria branch al-Nusra Front, however.
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From PressTV
Syria’s ruling coalition wins majority of Syrian parliamentary seats
Syria’s ruling Ba’ath Party and its allies have won the majority of the votes in the recent parliamentary elections in the country, official results show.
The Syrian electoral commission announced late Saturday that the National Unity coalition, comprising the ruling party and its allies, had won 200 of the 250 seats at the People’s Assembly (Majlis al-Sha’ab).
“Out of 8,834,994 eligible voters, more than five million cast their votes,” commission head Hisham al-Sha’ar was quoted as saying. The figure was equal to 57.56 percent.
About 3,500 candidates took part in the elections. A total of 7,300 polling stations were set up in government-controlled areas across the country. In the capital, Damascus, alone, there were about 1,500 polling centers in addition to 540 polling stations for people from the provinces of Dayr al-Zawr, al-Raqqah, Idlib, Aleppo, and Dara’a, where foreign-backed militants have certain parts under their control.
The vote is the second parliamentary ballot since the beginning of the war in 2011. The last parliamentarian elections were held in 2012.
Parliament members are elected for a four-year term. The foreign-backed opposition in Syria had boycotted the recent and the last elections.
Western countries and the United Nations (UN) have said they do not recognize the election results, claiming that the prevailing militancy across the country does not allow fair elections.
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From Russia Today
US took advantage of EU by forcing it to sanction Russia – European MP
Published time: 16 Apr, 2016 18:03
© Toby Melville / Reuters
Washington tricked the EU by forcing it to impose disadvantageous sanctions against Russia, a European lawmaker told RT at an International Economic Forum in Crimea. Other MEPs attending the forum said the restrictive measures must be lifted.
“The US was pushing the EU, especially, Germany to sanction Russia. What happened is when we put sanctions on Russia the US business stepped into Russia,” German MEP Markus Pretzell, told RT.
Pretzell, who is a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, slammed EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, for her recent comment that there would be no “business as usual” with Moscow.
“She’s a puppet of the EU and US establishment,” the European Parliament member said of Mogherini.
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From Russia Today
US can’t keep pace with Russian submarine deployments – top Navy official
Published time: 16 Apr, 2016 07:47
© Igor Zarembo / Sputnik
The US Navy is facing better and more numerous Russian submarines capable of taking out aircraft carrier groups. The service can’t ensure full awareness of Russian sub activity, CNN reported, citing American admiral.
“The submarines that we’re seeing are much more stealthy,” Adm. Mark Ferguson, commander of US Naval Forces in Europe, told the news channel. “We’re seeing [the Russians] have more advanced weapons systems, missile systems that can attack land at long ranges, and we also see their operating proficiency is getting better as they range farther from home waters.”
Russian deployments of attack and ballistic missile submarines are currently at levels unseen since the Cold War, he said. The US has 53 submarines in service and the number will drop to 41 by the late 2020s due to budget constraints, Ferguson added.
Even with the current numbers, the Pentagon can’t monitor all Russian subs, according to retired Adm. James Stavridis, a former NATO supreme allied commander.
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From Russia Today
Russia more dangerous than ‘non-existential ISIS threat’ – Polish FM
Published time: 16 Apr, 2016 05:08
Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski © Kacper Pempel / Reuters
Islamic State and other terrorist groups do not represent an existential threat to Europe, unlike Moscow and perceived aggression on its part, claimed foreign minister Witold Waszczykowski in the latest round of anti-Russian “nonsense” coming from Polish politicians.
“By all evidence, Russia’s activity is a sort of existential threat because this activity can destroy countries,” said Witold Waszczykowski, while visiting annual Globsec security forum in Bratislava.
When asked specifically about the threat of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL), when compared to Russia, the minister said that while being a very serious one, “this is not an existential threat for Europe.”
“We also have non-existential threats like terrorism, like the great waves of migrants,” he added.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Refugees bring anti-Semitism to Europe, warns senior Hungarian minister
Janos Lazar (Wikimedia Commons)
(JTA) — A senior Hungarian Cabinet minister warned that refugees entering Europe are anti-Semitic to defend his government’s tough stance on admitting them.
Janos Lazar, Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s powerful Cabinet chief, delivered the warning Thursday during a news conference in Budapest, the news site NOL reported.
“Refugees entering Europe now are strongly anti-Semitic,” he said in explaining why his government was blocking the vast majority of people from Syria and Iraq from entering the country. “Where there are large numbers of immigrants, there is greater anti-Semitism — France and Germany, for example,” Lazar said. He also claimed Hungary has low levels of anti-Semitism.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Bernie Sanders stops by Vatican to take economic message global
Bernie Sanders and his wife Jane leaving after a conference of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences in Vatican City, Vatican, April 16, 2016. (Elisabetta Villa/Getty Images)
VATICAN CITY (JTA) – Bernie Sanders denounced capitalist excess, called for a global “moral economy” and praised Pope Francis’ leadership in a speech here.
The Jewish senator spoke for 10 minutes Friday at the Roman Catholic Church’s Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences just hours after making some similar points in a testy Democratic presidential debate in New York ahead of the state’s Tuesday primary.
The Vatican conference marked the 25th anniversary of Centesimus Annus, an encyclical on the economy and social justice after the fall of communism promulgated by the late Pope John Paul II.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
City University of NY doctoral students back academic boycott of Israel
(JTA) — A group of doctoral students at the City University of New York passed a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel.
The Doctoral Students’ Council resolution, which called to “boycott Israeli academic institutions for as long as the Israeli state continues to violate Palestinian rights under international law,” passed on Friday afternoon with 42 students voting in favor and 19 opposed, with 9 abstentions. The council represents nearly 5,000 graduate students.
The resolution also expressed support for the campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine, the New York Daily News reported.
Jack Martins, a Republican state senator representing Nassau County, called the resolution “hate speech.” He added that the group stacked the deck in favor of the resolution by calling the vote so close to the Jewish Sabbath.
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From Russia Today
Dilma Rousseff loses impeachment vote in Brazil’s lower house
Published time: 18 Apr, 2016 00:45
Congressmen, who either support or oppose the impeachment, demonstrate before a session to review the request for Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment, at the Chamber of Deputies in Brasilia, Brazil April 17, 2016. © Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
A majority in the lower house of Brazil’s Congress has voted for the president’s impeachment. Hundreds of thousands of Dilma Rousseff’s opponents and supporters have been rallying across the country.
With 481 votes having been cast so far, 348 congressmen voted in favor of Rousseff’s impeachment and 133 voted against or abstained. The impeachment backers needed a two thirds majority or at least 342 votes in the 513-set body for the measure to move on to the Senate.
The ruling Workers’ Party has admitted the defeat with the party’s leader in the chamber, Jose Guimaraes, saying that the battle will now move into the Senate.
“The fight continues now in the Senate,” Guimaraes told reporters as cited by Reuters.
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From Russia Today
German ZDF broadcaster to defend popular comic facing probe over Erdogan satire
Published time: 16 Apr, 2016 19:08
janboehm © youtube.com
Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF said it will offer comedian Jan Boehmermann full legal protection after the German government gave the green light to his potential prosecution for mocking the Turkish president.
ZDF director general Thomas Bellut told Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday that the company will defend its top comic Jan Boehmermann in all courts as he currently faces defamation charges filed against him upon request of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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