Dr. Patrick Slattery’s News Roundup
A service of DavidDuke.com
From The Times of Israel
Russia PM warns foreign offensive in Syria could spark ‘world war’
Dmitry Medvedev urges ceasefire talks, advises against Arab forces entering years-long conflict
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Thursday that if Arab forces entered the Syrian war, they could spark a “new world war” and urged ceasefire talks instead.
“The Americans and our Arabic partners must think hard about this: do they want a permanent war?” he was quoted as telling the German Handelsblatt business daily. “Do they really think they would win such a war very quickly?”
He added: “All sides must be forced to the negotiating table instead of sparking a new world war.”
Despite calling for peace talks, the most recent Russian-backed offensive, near Aleppo, prompted opposition groups to walk out of peace talks last month while forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee toward the Turkish border.
From PressTV
Syria war death toll at 470,000: Report
A recent report has disclosed that the number of people who have lost their lives as a result of nearly five years of foreign-sponsored conflict in Syria is far higher than the total figure released by the United Nations.
The Syrian Center for Policy Research reported that 400,000 Syrians have been killed since the outbreak of the crisis as opposed to the latest UN toll of 260,000.
The report added that another 70,000 people have perished due to the lack of adequate health services, food, clean water, sanitation and proper housing, especially for those displaced within conflict zones.
It further noted that Syria’s mortality rate soared from 4.4 per thousand in 2010 to 10.9 per thousand in 2015, and life expectancy plunged from 70 in 2010 to 55.4 in 2015.
The report also put the number of those wounded at 1.9 million, stating that 11.5 percent of Syria’s population has been killed or injured since the crisis broke out in March 2011.
“We think that the UN documentation and informal estimation underestimated the casualties due to lack of access to information during the crisis,” Rabie Nasser, the author of the report, told The Guardian on Thursday.
Moreover, 6.36 million people have been displaced internally and more than four million others have fled the country since the beginning of the conflict. That accounts for 45 percent of the country’s population, which has shrunk by 21 percent.
About 13.8 million Syrians have also lost their source of income. Poverty increased by 85 percent in 2015 alone and consumer prices rose 53 percent last year.
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From PressTV
Saudi seeking greater contribution to US-led airstrikes: Pentagon
The United States says Saudi Arabia has proposed to expand its role in the air campaign by the US-led coalition on purported positions of the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group.
US Defense Secretary Ash Carter was speaking on Thursday following a meeting with Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, who also serves as the kingdom’s defense minister, at NATO headquarters in the Belgian capital city of Brussels.
“The [US defense] secretary thanked the deputy crown prince for participating in today’s meeting of [NATO] coalition defense ministers, and for Saudi Arabia’s decision to increase its military contributions, especially the Kingdom’s offer to expand its role in the air campaign,” Peter Cook, Carter’s spokesman, said in statement.
Saudi Arabia is a member of the US-led coalition that has been conducting air raids against what are claimed to be the Daesh elements inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate since September 2014. The US-led strikes have, on many occasions, targeted Syria’s infrastructure and left many civilians dead.
This is while Riyadh has been among the staunch supporters of the Takfiri militants operating to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since early 2011.
Recently, Saudi Arabia also expressed its readiness to get involved in a ground operation in Syria.
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From Russia Today
Overcome ‘dark side’: Campaign urges residents to embrace refugees launched in Germany
Published time: 11 Feb, 2016 21:19
© gesichtzeigen.de
As tensions in Germany continue to rise over the refugee crisis, a left-wing group in Berlin has launched a massive campaign urging residents to overcome the “dark side” and embrace new arrivals.
Six hundred giant billboards are expected to go up across the country, and 20,000 stickers and 45,000 postcards will be distributed as part of a campaign launched by a left-wing group called Show Your Face! For an Open Germany.
Slogans on the signs include “Germany, stay strong! With humanity towards your dark side” and “Against Hate & Baiting – no ifs or buts.” The campaign is backed by the Ministry for Families, Seniors, Women and Youth, Breitbart reported.
The term “Germany, stay strong!” is a “call to civil society to oppose right-wing tendencies and incitement. An appeal to a welcoming culture for people in need – and for a cosmopolitan Germany,” the group wrote on its website.
The text on the billboards is written over a German flag dripping with black paint, which is intended to represent “right wing” and “nationalist” groups such as the PEGIDA and the Eurosceptic Alternative for Germany (AfD). Those behind the campaign say they hope to “retrieve” the flag from such groups.
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From Russia Today
Soros: ‘Putin aims at EU disintegration, threat from Russia bigger than from jihadi attacks’
Published time: 11 Feb, 2016 19:21
Soros Fund Management Chairman George Soros. © Thomas Peter / AFP
American and EU leaders are making a “grievous error” by taking Russian President Vladimir Putin for their ally in the fight against Islamic State, billionaire investor George Soros has stated. Putin’s real aim is the EU’s disintegration, Soros alleged.
In an opinion piece for Project-syndicate.org, the billionaire stated that “the best way to [cause the disintegration of the Euro bloc] is to flood the EU with Syrian refugees.”
“There is no reason to believe that [Putin] intervened in Syria in order to aggravate the European refugee crisis,” Soros says. “But once Putin saw the opportunity to hasten the EU’s disintegration, he seized it. He has obfuscated his actions by talking of cooperating against a common enemy, ISIS [Islamic State/IS, also known as ISIL].”
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From Russia Today
Erdogan threatens Europe with new migrant wave, renews calls for no-fly zone in Syria
Published time: 11 Feb, 2016 17:39
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. © Adem Altan / AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned that unless the EU loosens its purse strings and fulfils its commitment for financial aid to tackle the refugee crisis, Ankara could open the borders for those seeking asylum in Europe.
“In the past we have stopped people at the gates to Europe, in Edirne [in northwest Turkey] we stopped their buses. This can happen once or twice, and then we’ll open the gates and wish them a safe journey,” Daily Sabah cited President Erdogan as saying during an address to the Young Businessmen Confederation of Turkey (TÜGİK) taking place in the capital Ankara.
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From The Times of Israel
CIA director John Brennan has said that Islamic State fighters have used chemical weapons and have the capability to make small quantities of chlorine and mustard gas, CBS News reported Thursday.
“We have a number of instances where ISIL has used chemical munitions on the battlefield,” Brennan told CBS News, which released excerpts of an interview to air in full on the “60 Minutes” news program on Sunday.
The network added that he told “60 Minutes” the CIA believes that the IS group has the ability to make small amounts of mustard or chlorine gas for weapons.
“There are reports that ISIS has access to chemical precursors and munitions that they can use,” Brennan said.
Brennan also warned of the possibility that the Islamic State group could seek to export the weapons to the West for financial gain.
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From The Times of Israel
Hollande calls for Russia to end support for Assad
While peace talks continue in Munich, French leader says Assad ‘is massacring some of his own people’
PARIS — French President Francois Hollande called Thursday for Russia to halt its military action in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“We need to ensure that Bashar Assad leaves power and at the moment, helped by the Russians, he is massacring some of his own people, even if he is also taking action against a certain number of terrorists,” Hollande said, adding: “I ask that Russia’s actions stop.”
As Hollande was speaking, the main players in the Syrian conflict were meeting in Munich to attempt to persuade Russia to agree to a ceasefire.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said as he began talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry that Moscow had made “propositions for a ceasefire that are quite specific.”
From Ynet News
UN rights expert accuses Israel of excessive force against Palestinians
Makarim Wibisono challenged Israeli authorities to charge or release all Palestinian prisoners being held under lengthy administrative detention, including children.
The UN human rights investigator for Gaza and the West Bank called on Israel on Thursday to investigate what he called excessive force used by Israeli security forces against Palestinians and to prosecute perpetrators.
From Ynet News
ISIS targets Le Pen’s right-wing party
The terrorist organization’s French magazine Dar al-Islam has article calling the National Front’s leaders and supporters ‘pagans’ and ‘prime targets’ for attacks.
The Islamic State has declared war on the French right-wing movement National Front led by Marine Le Pen in a statement in the latest edition of its French-language propaganda magazine Dar al-Islam.
The magazine has an image of a National Front demonstration and stated that the party, its leaders and its supporters are “pagans” and “prime targets” for attacks.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Refugees in Greece get medical equipment from Jewish-funded group
Refugees and migrants arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos, after crossing the Aegean sea from Turkey, Oct. 29, 2015. (Aris Messinis/AFP via Getty Images)
ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — A New York-based humanitarian organization, funded by several Jewish groups, has begun supplying a Greek island with desperately needed medical equipment to help cope with the influx of tens of thousands of refugees.
The Afya Foundation has already dispatched a container full of aid to hospitals and rescue organizations on the island of Lesbos, said the foundation’s executive director, Danielle Butin, who has just returned from a visit to the island to assess the needs.
The situation she found was dire: Hospital wings stand empty for of lack of equipment, doctors lack medicine to treat the ill and Greek Coast Guard boats that are pulling drowning refugees out of the sea, don’t have basic resuscitation equipment like defibrillators.
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From PressTV
Kurds should abandon secession bid: Iraq premier
The Iraqi prime minister has stressed the need for preserving the country’s territorial integrity and called on Kurdistan to scrap any plans for independence, saying the autonomous northern region could not do without the mainland.
“The Kurdistan region will not develop without Iraq, and Iraq must be united in all its components,” Haider al-Abadi said following talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday.
“Kurdistan is part of Iraq and I hope it will remain so,” he added.
The remarks came more than one week after President of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Masoud Barzani stated that the time is ripe for the region to hold a referendum on statehood despite major economic problems with which it is struggling.
Asked about the timing of the vote, Ali Awni, a leader in Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party, said that “today is better than tomorrow.”
Falling oil prices has hardly hit Iraqi Kurdistan, which like the capital, Baghdad, heavily relies on oil income to provide the majority of its funds.
Many blame the Kurdistan government’s independent selling of oil as a reason for its financial woes as the administration could keep itself afloat by having access to loans and bond markets with the authorization of the central government.
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From PressTV
Turkey army ends operations in Kurdish town of Cizre: Minister
The Turkish military has ended an almost two-month military operation in the mainly Kurdish southeastern town of Cizre, the country’s interior minister says.
Speaking to reporters in the Turkish port city of Istanbul, Efkan Ala said that the military on Thursday ended a “successful” operation to root out members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Cizre, which is located in Turkey’s Sirnak Province near the Iraqi and Syrian border.
“The operations in Cizre have been successfully completed,” the minister said, adding, “Control has been re-established in Cizre and over the terrorists there.”
However, the Turkish minister noted that a 24-hour curfew in the town will remain in place for a while longer. A 24-hour curfew has been imposed in parts of Cizre and Sur since December last year as part of the army’s plan to drive out PKK militants who have declared autonomy over the Kurdish region.
According to the Turkish military, at least 580 militants had been killed in Cizre since the operations began there against the PKK on December 14. However, Kurdish activists claim the campaign has cost dozens of civilian lives in the troubled region.
In late January, the New York based Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed Turkey for what it called a spike in human rights violations committed over the past year.Ankara has been engaged in a large-scale military campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the recent past. The Turkish military has been also conducting offensive against the PKK positions in northern Iraq.
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From Russia Today
Syria crisis plan: Cessation of hostilities, humanitarian airdrops, peace talks laid out in Munich
Published time: 12 Feb, 2016 00:10
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura (L-R) arrive for a news conference after the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) meeting in Munich, Germany, February 12, 2016. © Michael Dalder / Reuters
An ambitious plan to end hostilities in Syria with verifiable results within a week, revive the Geneva-3 peace talks, and immediately begin delivering humanitarian aid to civilians has been unveiled in Munich, Germany after talks including the US, Russia, and the UN.
Hostilities in Syria could come to a halt within a week after confirmation by the government of President Bashar Assad and the opposition, according to an official communiqué from the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) meeting.
A mechanism to help resolve humanitarian issues in Syria has been developed, which includes the creation of a task force that will begin work on Friday.
A press conference was held after the meeting of the so-called Syria Support Group, with the participation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, US Secretary of State John Kerry, and UN Special Envoy on Syria Staffan de Mistura.
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From Russia Today
NATO sends warships to Aegean Sea to combat migrant trafficking
Published time: 11 Feb, 2016 22:51
German navy frigate “Karlsruhe” © Michael Hanschke / Reuters
NATO is sending war ships to the Aegean Sea to help Turkey and Greece deal with people smugglers and stem the flow of migrants, the alliance’s top commander has announced.
Three military vessels from NATO’s Standing Maritime Group 2 have been ordered to “start to move now” and head for the Aegean sea to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance operations, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday.
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From The Times of Israel
Brother of Sanders gets frontline role with UK Greens
Larry Sanders, 81, becomes health spokesman for Green Party two days after Bernie’s New Hampshire primary win
The brother of Democratic US presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was named as the new health spokesman for England and Wales’s Green Party Thursday, two days after his sibling’s New Hampshire primary win.
Larry Sanders, who is 81 and has lived in Britain since 1969, is a retired social worker. He stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the Greens in Oxford at last year’s general election and has also represented them on the local council.
“Bernie’s main platform is almost identical to the Green Party’s,” Larry Sanders said in a press release released by the Greens confirming his appointment.
On his brother’s chances in the race for the White House, he added: “I wasn’t so sure how he would do at first, but the way things have been going recently, can he do it? Yes he can.”
Green Party policies at the 2015 election included increasing the minimum wage to £10 (13 euros, $14) an hour, introducing a wealth tax on the richest one percent of voters and ending austerity measures.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New citizenship law has Jews worldwide flocking to tiny Portugal city
PORTO, Portugal (JTA) — Five years ago, this city’s tiny Jewish community was so strapped for cash it couldn’t afford to fix the deep cracks in its synagogue’s moldy ceiling.
The Jewish Community of Porto was also too poor to hire a full-time rabbi because of its small size (50 members) and the paucity of donors in a country gripped by a financial crisis.
But last month the community, situation 200 miles north of Lisbon, showcased its stunning turnaround. Hosting the biggest event in its history, it drew hundreds of guests from all over the world to the city’s newly opened kosher hotel and newly renovated synagogue. The community also has a new Jewish museum and mikvah ritual bath, and there are plans to build a kosher shop, Jewish kindergarten and school.
The money, community members say, came from a massive influx of Jewish tourists that coincided with the implementation of Portugal’s 2013 law of return for Sephardic Jews and their descendants.
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Anti-Semitic educational videos pulled from NY schools
NEW YORK (JTA) — A New York state legislator is calling on all state districts to avoid using an educational publisher whose videos inaccurately depict Judaism.
On Wednesday, New York State Assemblyman Kenneth Zebrowski spoke out against the California-based Study.com, after the Jewish Federation of Rockland County raised concerns about two of its videos shown at public schools at two separate districts in the suburbs north of New York City recently, The Journal News reported.
In one video, Jews were described as being “aloof,” whereas in another, about first-century Palestine under Roman rule, Jews are depicted as aggressors, according to The Journal News.
In a letter to the company, Zebrowski urged it to review its videos to ensure its materials are “accurate and appropriate, especially when the materials are being used to introduce young, impressionable students to complex topics such as religion, race and ethnicity.”
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From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Ted Cruz campaign defends pastor who said God will send hunters for Jews
Kansas evangelical Pastor Mike Bickle, whose endorsement the campaign publicized last month, runs a project called Israel Mandate, one of whose goals is “partnering with Messianic Jews for the salvation of the Jewish people.”
In a sermon in 2011, Bickle said God would give Jews a chance to convert to Christianity and “raise up the hunters” against those who refuse. Bickle called Hitler “the most famous hunter in recent history.” In 2005, Bickle said in a sermon that before Jesus’ coming, “a significant number of Jews will be in work camps, prison camps or death camps.”
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From The Times of Israel
George Clooney seeks Merkel meet to discuss refugees
‘Syriana’ star and husband of human rights lawyer plans to ask how Hollywood can help with Europe’s unprecedented migrant crisis
BERLIN — Actor George Clooney says he plans to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss the situation in Syria, which has contributed to the surge in refugees coming to Europe over the past year.
Clooney told reporters at the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday that the movie industry is sometimes slow to react to events in the news.
The Hollywood star was asked whether he plans to make a sequel to his 2005 political thriller “Syriana” that would reflect the turmoil that has shaken the Middle East since then.
Clooney said telling those stories would be “tough” but necessary.
Clooney said he will meet with Merkel on Friday to ask “what messages and what things we can do and the things that we can help with.”
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