JORDAN COMMITS TO SYRIAN INVASION

Russia warns Turks: We might bomb your troops

The Turkish military has been lobbing artillery fire at Menagh Air Base, a former Syrian air force facility that had been held by the jihadist group Ahrar ash-Sham, which the Russians consider to be a terrorist group.

According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Ahrar ash-Sham has been getting “serious reinforcements from Turkey.” In addition, a senior Russian official told G2 Bulletin that Ahrar ash-Sham, among other Islamic groups in Syria, are terrorists and “need to be killed.”

Menagh Air Base is at a strategic location near Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, which is about to be recaptured by Syrian military forces with the help of the Syrian Kurds, Iran’s proxy group Hezbollah and intense Russian aerial bombardment.

The region in the Aleppo Governorate is of historical interest to Sunni Turkey, which ultimately wants back the area and would rather see it occupied by such Sunni jihadi fighters as the Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian version of al-Qaida or ISIS.

For now, Turkey is bombarding the region from inside Turkey but is threatening to send troops into Kurdish-occupied portion of Syria, which would put Turkey in the crosshairs of Russian aerial attacks, which are protecting the Kurds in the region.



Since last November, when Turkey ordered the shootdown of a Russian Sukhoi-24 jet fighter which penetrated Turkish airspace for 17 seconds, tensions between Ankara and Moscow have been high.

Russia carefully has avoided any military action inside Turkey, since it is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Article 5 of the NATO charter says an attack on one is an attack on all.

However, a Russian official recently told G2 Bulletin that should Turkish troops enter Syria to attack Syrian military forces or Kurdish fighters, they could be subject to Russian aerial attack.

Such an attack, he said, would not constitute a violation of NATO’s Article 5, since it would not be on Turkish soil.

Credit to WND
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2016/02/russia-warns-turks-we-might-bomb-your-troops/#1BCyj7gLwxr2vDAF.99

It is up to Putin to decide when and how to strike back

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan clearly took a calculated risk when he ordered a two-hour cross-border artillery bombardment Saturday, Feb. 13 of Syrian army forces positioned around the northern Syrian town of Azaz and the Kurdish YPG militia units which two days earlier took control of the former Syrian military air base of Minagh some six kilometers from the Turkish border.

Kurdish troops backed by the Russian air force seized that base last week from rebel militias as part of the operation for cutting the rebel groups under siege in Aleppo from their supply routes. The Turkish bombardment was therefore an indirect attack on the Russian forces backing pro-Assad forces against the rebels in the Syria war.

Erdogan knows that Moscow hasn’t finished settling accounts with Turkey for the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 on Nov. 24 and is spoiling for more punishment. After that incident, the Russians deployed top-of-line S-400 ground-to-air missile batteries and advanced Sukhoi Su-35 warplanes to their base in Latakia near the Turkish border. Ankara therefore limited its strike to a two-hour artillery bombardment from Turkish soil, reasoning that a Turkish warplane anywhere near the Syrian border would be shot down instantly.
Emboldened by the delay in the Russian response, the Turks took another step: Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu threatened the Kurdish YPG militia with more attacks if they failed to withdraw from the Menagh air base.

Although the Turkish prime minister had called on “allies and supporters” to back the operation against the Russian-backed Syrian Kurds, Washington took the opposite line by urging Turkey, a fellow member of NATO, to desist from any further attacks.

Washington’s concern is obvious. An outright clash between Turkey and Russia would entitle Ankara to invoke the NATO charter and demand allied protection for a member state under attack.

The Obama administration would have had to spurn this appeal for three reasons:
1. To avoid getting mixed up in a military clash between two countries, just as the US kept its powder dry in the Russian-Ukraine confrontation after Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in February 2014.

2. To avoid upsetting the secret Obama-Putin deal on the allocation of spheres of influence in Syria: the Americans have taken the regions east of the Euphrates River, and the Russians, the west.
The Kurdish YPG militia forces near Aleppo and the city itself come under the Russian area of influence.

3. Regional tensions were tightened another notch Saturday by Russian comments: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that his country and the West have “slid into a new Cold War period,” and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a third World War is actually underway -“I call this struggle a third World War by other means.,” he said.
Washington will avoid any action that risks further stoking this high state of international tension, but will act instead to de-escalate the cross-border Turkish-Russian confrontation over Syria.

All eyes are now on Moscow, Much depends on Russia’s response to the artillery bombardment of its Syrian and Kurdish allies. It is up to Putin to decide when and how to strike back – if at all.

Credit to Debka file

China sends missiles to contested South China Sea island

China has deployed an advanced surface-to-air missile system to one of the disputed islands it controls in the South China Sea, Taiwan and U.S. officials said, ratcheting up tensions even as U.S. President Barack Obama urged restraint in the region.

Taiwan defense ministry spokesman Major General David Lo told Reuters on Wednesday the missile batteries had been set up on Woody Island. The island is part of the Paracels chain, under Chinese control for more than 40 years but also claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam.

A U.S. defense official also confirmed the "apparent deployment" of the missiles, first reported by Fox News.

China's foreign minister said reports by "certain Western media" should focus more on China's building of lighthouses to improve shipping safety in the region.

"As for the limited and necessary self-defense facilities that China has built on islands and reefs we have people stationed on, this is consistent with the right to self-protection that China is entitled to under international law so there should be no question about it," Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing.

Taiwan Coast Guard patrol ships are seen during a drill held about 4 nautical miles out of the port …

The Chinese defense ministry told Reuters in a statement that defense facilities on "relevant islands and reefs" had been in place for many years, adding that the latest reports about missile deployment were nothing but "hype".

China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in global trade passes every year, and has been building runways and other infrastructure on artificial islands to bolster its title.

The United States has said it will continue conducting "freedom of navigation patrols" by ships and aircraft to assure unimpeded passage through the region, where Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims.



Admiral Harry Harris, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, said the deployment of missiles to the Paracels would not be a surprise but would be a concern, and be contrary to China's pledge not to militarize the region.

"We will conduct more, and more complex, freedom of navigation operations as time goes on in the South China Sea," Harris told a briefing in Tokyo. "We have no intention of stopping."

Credit to Yahoo News

James Turk-Paper Assets Evaporate in 2016

Muslims mistreated & killed each other for 1400 years now blamed the West

America Is On the Verge of Mass Starvation

There is a very dangerous trend in America and it could literally threaten the lives of every single American in the near future. America is presently on a deliberate course to follow in the footsteps of Venezuela.

America Has Been Down The Starvation Road Before

An estimated seven million people starved to death during the Great Depression. And amazingly, these people had food preparation skills that are basically a lost art in America today (e.g. canning). These are skills that Americans no longer possess. Our collective food preparation skills consists of making sure we have enough gas to get to and from the grocery store.

With a staggering debt looming over the country, how vulnerable are Americans to starvation if and when an economic collapse takes down our economy?

It is not a secret that the world is in a desperate situation when it comes to overall world hunger. In the last year I was able to find statistics, the World Bank cites the disturbing fact that there have been 51 food riots in 37 countries in recent memory due to high food prices and the further escalation of food prices has no end in sight. The World Bank further speculates that the present state of food prices could lead to political instability and this is the kind of stuff that wars are made of. And what is the number one cause of rising food prices according to the World Bank? It is the increasing demand (see attached PDF)  for food from a growing population inside of China. The future military implications should be self-evident where hungry nations invade less hungry nations. But what about the United States? How vulnerable are Americans to the possibility of mass starvation?

A Snapshot of America’s Food Vulnerability

Almost beyond belief, a full 79 percent of the people that use food banks purchase typically buy cheap, unhealthy food and still just have enough to feed their children.  The price of food continues to quickly out-pace the paychecks of most middle class families.  For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high. There are nearly 50 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity in various degrees of distress. Just over one out of seven Americans rely on obtaining food from various banks at one point or another and these food banks are beginning to experience record shortages.

In a case of “defend the nation and starve”, military families are feeling even more stress  from not being able to obtain sufficient quantities of food as 25% of America military families require outside assistance in getting enough to eat. What does this say about an administration which uses our soldiers to defend the nation and then kicks them to the curb by denying their VA  health benefits as the government also starves their families because they cannot survive on what we pay our soldiers? This is disgraceful, but this represents Obama’s fundamental transformation of American way!

According to the New York Times, the typical American family is now worth 36% less than it was worth only 12 years ago!

Shockingly, one out of every six men, ranging in ages from 25 to 54, are not employed. Median family income in the United States is 7% lower than it was in 2000. The United States is now in 19th place in the world and falling. There is no way that the majority of American families can keep pace with food inflation as the wages of Americans are now inversely correlated with the rising food prices. This is a prescription for disaster. The most vulnerable to starvation within the present economic climate are the children as an amazing twenty six percent of all children are living below the poverty level. And we certainly cannot ignore the fact that 50 million Americans are on some form of Federal Food Stamps. With these kind of distressing statistics, a significant number of Americans are vulnerable to politically motivated “food blackmail” in these  times of economic distress.

Just how many Americans are vulnerable to “blackmail by starvation”? Nobody can be totally accurate in the estimation, however, the numbers listed in the above paragraphs provide a good starting point from which to estimate the risk.

Disruption to Transportation Would Prove Catastrophic

The critical element which could most impact the number of Americans who would vulnerable to starvation has to do with disruptions in our transportation system. For the purpose of efficiency and to maximize profits “Just in time (JIT)” food deliveries take place at grocery outlets several times per day. Without these JIT deliveries, we would see immediate shortages occurring on day one of any disruption to the delivery of our food to its final destination.

Although, about 10% of all Americans live near substantial food supplies, my previous investigations have revealed the fact that transportation disruption would be life-threatening to most Americans and the effects would be realized within two days. Most Americans are, at most, nine meals away starvation, which is the amount of food that the average person has stored according to FEMA.

The Obama Administration Makes a Bad Situation Worse

The BLM have been busy trying to illegally seize every farm and every ranch that it can in the west. At one time, I wrote that out of 52 ranchers who lived and operated near Cliven Bundy’s ranch, 51 of these ranchers were forced to move off of their lands. Now, with Cliven Bundy’s arrest, the number has dropped to 52 out of 52 as the Bundy’s will no doubt be forced to sell with most of the Bundy males sitting in jail without the possibility of making bail.

Why does the BLM and its first cousins at the EPA want to drive farmers and ranchers off of their land. To get a clearer picture of this issue, let’s take a brief look at Executive Order 13603.

With the stroke of his pen, Obama has total and absolute control over all food where his EO 13603 states: 

1. e) “Food resources” means all commodities and products, (simple, mixed, or compound), or complements to such commodities or products, that are capable of being ingested by either human beings or animals, irrespective of other uses to which such commodities or products may be put, at all stages of processing from the raw commodity to the products thereof in vendible form for human or animal consumption. “Food resources” also means potable water packaged in commercially marketable containers, all starches, sugars, vegetable and animal or marine fats and oils, seed, cotton, hemp, and flax fiber, but does not mean any such material after it loses its identity as an agricultural commodity or agricultural product. (f) “Food resource facilities” means plants, machinery, vehicles (including on farm), and other facilities required for the production, processing, distribution, and storage (including cold storage) of food resources, and for the domestic distribution of farm equipment and fertilizer…”

Conclusion

These mandates arising out of Executive Order 13603 is EXACTLY what is happening in Venezuela. It is not a case of “kinda, sorta, could be”, it is a case of this is EXACTLY what is happening right now in Venezuela. In tomorrow’s article, I will draw the unmistakable parallels between the mass starvation that is just beginning to happen in the United States right now.

While you are waiting for tomorrow’s article, please allow me to leave you with teaser #1. The Baltic Dry Index (BDI), is the most accurate measure of how many “dry” products are being shipped around the world. The BDI, once over 5,000, has now declined to a record low of under 300. One of the major contributors to the crisis is that oil is approaching historical lows. Middle men, who ship products, need a stable oil price in order to profit from their role as distributor. When the price of oil sinks far enough, it is not longer profitable to ship anything, including food! We are quickly approaching this point inside the United States.

IF you think that this information is highly disturbing, and it is, as the facts in this article are a story unto itself. However, this piece is merely a set up article for what will be revealed tomorrow.

Teaser #2 has to do with the coincidental death of Justice Scalia. I find myself in absolute agreement with World Net Daily in that the timing of Scalia’s death is high suspicious and the circumstantial variables swirling around Scalia’s unexpected death could very easily relate back to these very issues.

Credit to Common Sense show