Turkey shares its longest border with its one-time ally Syria. The Turkey-Syria border is now closed, and both sides are trading blame for the bombing in Reyhanli, Turkey, on Saturday.Turkey accused Damascus of perpetrating the attack, while the Syrian government has denied its involvement, and said the attack is being used to justify a foreign intervention.Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu claimed that those behind the attacks were from an “old Marxist terrorist organization” with ties to the Assad government. “It is time for the international community to act together against this regime,” he said in a news conference on Sunday.Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi dismissed Turkey’s accusations: “No one has the right to make false accusations… Syria did not commit and would never commit such an act because our values would not allow that.”Relations were not always so strained between the two countries, Finoshina reported from the Turkey-Syria border.“It’s hard to imagine now but in 2009 the two countries even held joint military drills across that frontier, in what was a brief thaw in relations between the two,” Finoshina reported. In 2003, the two nations inked a free trade agreement, visa-free movement and held several presidential visits.Residents in the border regions of both countries grew close, with families on both sides feeling that they shared a common home. But now, with warlike rhetoric and accusations in the air, “relations between the two neighbors are strained like never before,” Finoshina said.Watch her full report above. … Read More
‘Re-writing legal language and political nudging – new US strategy for Syria’
For two years, the US government tried to publicly shy away from direct contact with radicals in Syria. Staunch advocates of peace, they did not want anything to do directly with weapons supplies to rebel forces. But in the light of concrete accusations of alleged chemical weapons use by the Syrian government, some fear the US will no longer hold back, instead taking a more direct role in the dismantling of the Assad regime. US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has announced that the country may finally push for a more direct involvement in the Syrian crisis. Geopolitical analyst Patrick Henningsen spoke to RT, expressing disbelief at the recent announcement and underlining the kind of strategies and power plays the West will now use to make their partnership with the Syrian rebels more official – as opposed to hushed and indirect, which he alleges has been happening all along.RT: President Obama talked about options and now his defense secretary is doing the same. Does Washington mean business in this case or is this just rhetoric?Patrick Henningsen: What they’re trying to do here is re-write the legal language that defines chemical weapons. You can see already in the US the government’s official position is that a pressure cooker constitutes a weapon of mass destruction. So that’s one side – the legal side. And the other side is called ‘political nudging’…so they’re nudging their way into Syria via different pathways. And of course they’re trying to nudge Russia out of the way in the process.RT: How much is this in danger of being a mission creep? Do you think the US could be stuck in a potentially explosive civil conflict in an unstable place?PH: A lot of this is public relations theatre. Unofficially the US, Britain and NATO have been airlifting quite a lot of weapons into Jordan via Croatia and other places, through turkey – another NATO country. So what they’re trying to do is make their position official rather than unofficial. This is aside from the fact that they have full support for the Saudis and the Qataris who are sending arms there as we speak. But they’re saying the weapons they’ve requested are surface-air missiles, anti-tank, depleted uranium munitions… this is kind of a ridiculous scenario where the rebels have this sort of wish list of arms they’d like to get and the US is hammering the UN to get them to try to do this ‘ legally’, quote unquote. But of course ‘legally’ is a very relative term, if you look at the history of the United States and Britain getting intervention green-lights in the last 10-15 years.RT: The rebels have long been able to purchase weapons. What would be the impact if simply the US weapons were able to go there?PH: What it’s going to do is making instead of an under-the-table operation a public operation. Of course one of the things it’s going to do as well is allow for Israel’s position on Syria to be formalized. Israel is very interested in taking a piece of Syria – the Golan Heights area. I said this on your program over a year ago and some people thought it was crazy, but that’s what the agenda is and you can see Israel moving in that direction already. So there’s a lot of different factors at play surrounding Syria right now and you’ve got Lebanon off to the side as well and the issue of Hezbollah, which Israel would like to eliminate on Lebanon. So there are all contributing to the interesting and not so nice mix we have going on with intervention in Syria.RT: Hegel’s statement came on the same day as the opposition reported what they call a massacre by government troops. What do you read into the timing of these two announcements?PH: One of the problems with reports of massacres is that the sole source of most of these statistics and reports is the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights based in London. And already their numbers and their reports have been proven to be fabricated, false and distorted. So this is the sole basis of intervention in Syria. This plus reports of uses of chemical weapons – but not real chemical weapons. So, we have a major problem: we’re basing the whole premise of intervention on stuff a lot of which is fiction. They’re trying to build their case to suit their already pre-existing conclusions. It’s a failure of politics, a failure of diplomacy. And it’s also a failure of logic, quite frankly. … Read More
Missile movement: Two Scuds ‘deployed’ to N. Korea’s east coast
The two mobile missile transporter-erector-launchers (TEL) enhanced the ballistic missile division in South Hamgyeong Province where seven more TELs were deployed earlier in April, according to Yonhap. Also, two mid-range Musudan missile complexes have been positioned near city of Wonsan, a mere 180km away from the South Korean capital, Seoul.South Korea is “closely watching” any suspicious activities of its north neighbor, the agency adds.Pyongyang has been escalating war rhetoric against Seoul urging foreign diplomats to leave the zone of possible armed conflict.The South Korean army grew worried of a possible missile launch on April 15, when North Korea was celebrating the 101st anniversary of the nation’s founder Kim Il-sung. However, nothing evolved, not even a military parade – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) merely issued another statement demanding “apologies” from Seoul.Back in March Pyongyang cancelled the Korean War ceasefire agreement after the US and its “puppet South Korea” went on with their joint drills, when some 10,000 US troops and 200,000 South Korean soldiers took part in the exercises.The US responded to with deploying its B-2 stealth bombers, F-22 fifth-generation fighter jets, the destroyer USS Fitzgerald, equipped with an Aegis counter-ballistic missile system, to South Korea, also strengthening its missile defenses in the region.To that Pyongyang, decrying ‘provocations’, declared it had final approval for pre-emptive nuclear strikes on US bases in the Pacific and South Korea.Russia has condemned North Korea’s behavior as “unacceptable,” but has been trying to maintain a diplomatic position throughout the crisis.Last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shared belief that there is a chance that the North Korea crisis could “calm down by itself.”“No one should intimidate anyone with any military maneuvers,” Lavrov stressed.Pyongyang’s most recent muscle-flexing comes after the US Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement made on April 12 during his visit to Seoul. Kerry said there will be no talks between Washington and Pyongyang unless North Korea makes tangible steps to abandon its nuclear weapons program.Earlier North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper wrote that talks with the US are possible but not on the denuclearization of the DPRK.”The US should not think about the denuclearization on the [Korean] Peninsula before the world is denuclearized,” the newspaper commented.Just last Thursday South Korean’s Chief of National Security Kim Jang-soo announced that Pyongyang is not capable of conducting a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula, though localized ‘provocations’ are still possible.Now the US-backed South Korea awaits a possible launch of a DPRK missile on April 25. On that date, a military parade in Pyongyang called to demonstrate country’s military might and decisiveness might require a more substantial argument in a 60-year-old dispute.In 2005, the DPRK signed a denuclearization deal to give up nuclear research in exchange for aid. Later Pyongyang backed out of the pact, naming its nuclear arms a “treasured sword” to be kept at hand. … Read More
‘Americans losing faith in Obama’
http://www.youtube.com/v/t5kNxCaqpGY?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Visit link: ‘Americans losing faith in Obama’
‘N.Korea wants talks while US pushes for brinkmanship’
http://www.youtube.com/v/G4P9lv9JRmg?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Link: ‘N.Korea wants talks while US pushes for brinkmanship’
Chuck Hagel: North Korea ‘skating very close to a dangerous line’
North Korea is “skating very close to a dangerous line” with its heated rhetoric and provocative actions, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told reporters Wednesday. The United States and its allies hoped Pyongyang would tone down its inflammatory language but the American military was…
Milton Friedman on How Francois Mitterrand (and Failed Lefty Economics) Helped Re-elect Margaret Thatcher
Yesterday I wrote a column
about how
Margaret Thatcher liberated Western Europe from the ills of
Francois Mitterrand-style nationalization of industry, in part by
“creating a world in which the French Socialist’s objections [to
privatization] could be overcome.”
Proving that people born on
July 31 think
alike, the Hoover Institution has reprinted
a July 1983 Newsweek column from Milton Friedman making
largely the same point, one that also has resonance to the American
experience with Ronald Reagan. Excerpt:
France was suffering from the same ills when Mitterrand was
elected president as Britain when Mrs. Thatcher became prime
minister and the United States when Ronald Reagan became
president—high and rising inflation, high unemployment and slow
economic growth. Mitterrand’s attack on those ills was precisely
the reverse of Mrs. Thatcher’s. On coming into office, Thatcher
reduced taxes; Mitterrand increased them. Thatcher reduced controls
over prices and wages; Mitterrand expanded them. Thatcher
eliminated foreign-exchange controls; Mitterrand made them tighter.
Thatcher moved to denationalize enterprises and reduce regulation,
Mitterrand nationalized private banks and other enterprises and
increased government intervention into the remaining private
enterprise. Thatcher tried to hold down government spending, albeit
with little success; Mitterrand went on a spending binge.
Had the Mitterrand policies succeeded, even if for only a year
or so, Thatcher’s opposition in Britain would have been enormously
strengthened. The Labor Party would have had a real alternative to
offer—one that was consistent with its ideological propensities and
that had worked on the other side of the Channel. The cry that
Thatcher’s “monetarism” was a tragic failure could not have been
dismissed as mere campaign rhetoric.
Instead, the Mitterrand policy was a clear failure. Inflation
remained high. Unemployment went up. The government’s budget
deficit soared. So did the deficit in the balance of payments. The
franc had to be devalued three times in the past two years, despite
massive government borrowing in a vain attempt to prop the franc
up. Worst of all for Thatcher’s opposition, Mitterrand was forced
to reverse course. The U-turn occurred across the Channel as the
French government was driven to adopt the much-derided Thatcher
policies.
Thatcher’s opposition was left intellectually bankrupt. It had
no credible alternative policy to offer. The claim that she was an
irresponsible demagogue imposing unnecessary costs on the British
people rang hollow. Her persistence in the main lines of her policy
was perceived by the voters as a realistic recognition that there
was no easy cure for ills that had accumulated during decades.
Reason on Thatcher here; on Milton
Friedman here. … Read More
