Free Republic

Speaking on the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement last week, President of the Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, declared that the old Middle East created by European imperialism was dead – and that an independent Kurdish state must be part of the emerging new order. Referring to the secret arrangement by the Allied Powers in World War I to divide the Middle East into “spheres of influence”, Barzani blasted the Sykes-Picot Agreement, saying that it denied the rights of the inhabitants and carved up populations with arbitrary lines. The agreement served as the basis for the establishment of the modern...

[EXCERPT] Turkish artillery hit the northern villages, while Iranian gunners hit the southern ones. Iranian troops attempted to cross into Iraq through the mountain passes, but PJAK fighters held the line. "The goal of the Iranians is to drive us from the border area," rebel leader Biryar Gabar told Newsmax. "They want to turn this area into a no-man's land, so they can use it to smuggle weapons and Islamist guerillas into Iraq to fight the Americans."

Turkey opened a new front in Syria's nearly seven-year-old war on Saturday, launching airstrikes against a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia in Afrin province that raise the prospect of a further strain on relations between Ankara and Washington.The operation, dubbed "Operation Olive Branch" by Ankara, pits Turkey against Kurdish fighters allied to the United States at a time when ties between Turkey and Washington - NATO allies and members of the coalition against Islamic State - appear dangerously close to a breaking point.The strikes on the Syrian-Kurdish YPG militia hit some 108 targets, the Turkish military said. On land, the Turkey-backed Free...

Germany hardened its stance Thursday against Turkey over its military offensive against a Kurdish militia in Syria, which threatened to end a thaw in frosty relations between the NATO partners. Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel voiced "great concern" about Turkey's cross-border military incursion, called for NATO to discuss the situation and said Berlin would put on ice any weapons deals. Most painfully for Turkey, he postponed for at least several months a request to upgrade German-made Leopard tanks which Ankara has deployed in its operation against the Syrian-Kurdish militia YPG.Gabriel said Berlin and Paris were committed "to stopping a further escalation,...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says his troops recently advanced on the Kurdish stronghold of Afrin only after Ankara got a green light from Russia. Moscow has denied giving such assent, but Erdogan on Monday said that indeed, Turkey had an agreement with Russia to launch the offensive. It’s a page straight from the Kremlin playbook. Moscow is capitalizing on the discord between the U.S. and Turkey over the Kurds to cozy up to a member of NATO, an alliance the Kremlin still regards as an existential threat on its western border. Aggravate the rift between Washington and Ankara, Moscow...

The percentage of GDP spent by Norway on defense has decreased, despite NATO obligations for member countries to increase spending in the area to two percent by 2024. The reduction in spending was reported by newspaper VG on Thursday. Defense minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said in a written response to a parliamentary question that government spending on defense would reach 1.56 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year. It will then fall further to 1.5 percent in 2020 and remain at that level until 2024, according to the report. […] According to NATO’s own figures, Norway spent 1.59 percent of...

The former US Secretary of State also surprised his interlocutor by saying he was seriously considering running for president in 2020. By BEN CASPIT/MAARIV January 24, 2018 08:08 The former US Secretary of State also surprised his interlocutor by saying he was seriously considering running for president in 2020. . . . During the conversation, according to the report, Kerry asked Agha to convey a message to Abbas and ask him to "hold on and be strong." Tell him, he told Agha, "that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and...

An eastern German city has imposed a temporary ban on new refugees in an effort to stem a number of recent violent incidents. Cottbus, about 120 kilometres southeast of Berlin, has been rocked by violence from refugees and right-wing extremists since the start of this year. Earlier this week, Brandenburg state police reported that two male Syrian teenagers were arrested under the suspicion of injuring a German teenager in the face with a knife. The 16-year-old sustained non life-threatening injuries in what started as an altercation between Syrian and German school acquaintances near a tram station. The incident happened just...

USN The French Navy will reportedly retire the last of its Alouette III light helicopters after more than 55 years of service and at least a decade before its scheduled replacement arrives, as the Cold War-era helicopters have become a nightmare to maintain. The service plans to lease Airbus Helicopters AS365 Dauphins to fill the resulting gap until the European consortium's new H160 become available. French newspaper La Tribune first reported the decision on Jan. 19, 2018. At present, the French Navy’s aviation arm, or l'Aéronavale, has fewer than 20 of the aging Alouette IIIs, which first entered service in...

The feeling of relief in the room was palpable as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Christian Social Union boss Horst Seehofer, and Social Democratic Party Leader Martin Schultz walked up to the stage to announce a breakthrough in their coalition government talks after 24 straight hours of haggling.  For Germans used to quick and smooth transitions of power after parliamentary elections, the announcement from the three leaders was taken as the beginning of the end of four months of political uncertainty.Some of the most significant public policy issues in German politics today were included in the 28-page draft agreement, from refugee...

Moscow will work to preserve the Iran nuclear deal despite Donald Trump's recent pledge to change it, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at his annual news conference. "Unfortunately, our American colleagues still want to operate only on the basis of dictating policy, issuing ultimatums, they do not want to hear the perspectives of other centers of world politics," Lavrov said on Monday. The US is refusing to "acknowledge the reality of the emerging multi-polar world," he added. The Russian foreign minister said that statements coming from the US also "seriously aggravated" tensions in other parts of the world, including...

The Pentagon’s new defense strategy calls for aggressive steps to counter Russia and China, directing the military to retrain its attention on great-power competition after nearly two decades of focusing primarily on Islamist militants and "rogue" nations. The Obama-era Quadrennial Defense Review called for “preserving strategic stability” with Moscow and Beijing and took a rosier view of the prospects for further nuclear arms reductions in partnership with Russia. Now, the new document asserts in blunt language, both Russia and China must be the U.S. armed forces’ "principal priorities." “The erosion of our military advantage is the problem that the strategy...

Despite the “rise and fall of the unipolar concert,” China and Russia’s balancing strategies have backfired: they are not leading to multipolarity, but are actually reinforcing unipolarity. The reason is that China and Russia’s balancing strategies have focused on regional “revisionism,” which has provoked powerful responses in East Asia and Europe to contain them. Russia’s balancing strategy has to a large extent proven to be counter-productive. Instead of preventing the expansion of NATO through a “divide and conquer” strategy, or driving a diplomatic wedge between the United States and Europe, Russian revisionism has united NATO...Perhaps most illustrative of all, a...

When Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of the US last January, politicians in Berlin worried that it could have a dramatic impact on relations between the two allies. A year on, there are reasons for optimism, as well as continued concern. […] Top of the list of German concerns about a Trump administration were his insinuations that the US would no longer automatically come to the defense of Europe in the event of an attack on a NATO member. And the fact that he repeatedly barracked Germany for its trade surplus with the US in his...

Video at link is 39 minutes 28 seconds in length. Recommend you skip first 13-14 minutes. At the 13:42 there is a nice overview of Operation Mockingbird. At the 14:39 minute mark there are old television clips of the CIA being asked about what information they insert into television and news programming. Well actually, when asked if they people inserting information into television programming, the CIA rep claims executive privilege (wants to respond later in executive session). At the 16:00 minute mark, we see Sig Mickleson of CBS cagily defending the CIA sourcing of news. Actually everyone interviewed answered cagily....

THESE ARE dark days for journalists in Turkey, now the leader among governments that imprison news-gatherers. In one week alone, nearly 70 journalists were on trial on false accusations of supporting terrorism. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic alliance, and not all that long ago a boisterous democracy, has fallen into the grip of dictatorship. The theater of the absurd is in full season.

President Trump has transformed the world’s view of the United States from an anchor of the international order into something more inward-looking and unpredictable. WASHINGTON — President Trump was already revved up when he emerged from his limousine to visit NATO’s new headquarters in Brussels last May. He had just met France’s recently elected president, Emmanuel Macron, whom he greeted with a white-knuckle handshake and a complaint that Europeans do not pay their fair share of the alliance’s costs. On the long walk through the NATO building’s cathedral-like atrium, the president’s anger grew. He looked at the polished floors and...

[snip]The two U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the Turkish officer was working at the headquarters of NATO's Allied Command Transformation, located in Norfolk, Virginia. They did not name him or offer his rank. However, an official at Turkey's embassy in Washington said Turkish Navy Rear Admiral Mustafa Ugurlu had failed to report to authorities after Turkey issued a detention order for him last month. "On July 22, on that day he left his badges and his ID at the base and after that no one has heard anything from him," the official said, also...

BRUSSELS — Russian submarines have dramatically stepped up activity around undersea data cables in the North Atlantic, part of a more aggressive naval posture that has driven NATO to revive a Cold War-era command, according to senior military officials. We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen,” said U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Andrew Lennon, the commander of NATO’s submarine forces. “Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO and NATO nations’ undersea infrastructure.”

Russia simulated going to war against NATO, bombing Germany and invading Baltic states during Vladimir Putin's 'West 2017' military exercises, analysts have revealed. A massive programme of war games featuring tens of thousands of troops and code named 'Zapad' took place near the Belarus capital Minsk in September.