Tag: NATO

Russia stages massive military exercises in response to NATO provocation

Russian military exercises this week range from the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean and involve tens of thousands of troops, the Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

The Kremlin has voiced concern about U.S. plans to beef up its military presence near Russia’s borders. Later this month, U.S. troops are holding joint exercises with forces from EU nations Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Four Polish NATO MiG-29s flew training missions in Lithuania on Monday, under the command and control of an alliance AWACS surveillance aircraft in a small corridor between Belarus and the Kaliningrad region.

Monday’s AWACS mission was flying from Oerland airbase, near Trondheim in Norway. The AWACS flights were part of efforts to bolster NATO members, particularly the Baltic states.

AP reported that Russia plans to station state-of-the art missiles in its westernmost Baltic exclave and deploy nuclear-capable bombers to Crimea in response.

The Iskander missiles will be sent to the Kaliningrad region that borders NATO members Poland and Lithuania as part of the maneuvers, said a Defense Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment publicly.

The official also said Russia will deploy long-range, nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 bombers to Crimea, on the Black Sea peninsula.

In a statement, the Defense Ministry said the Baltic Fleet, the Southern Military District and the Airborne Forces have been brought to the highest stage of combat readiness and have started moving to shooting ranges as part of the drills.

The wide-ranging exercise started Monday, when President Vladimir Putin ordered the Northern Fleet and other military forces on combat alert as part of the exercise in the Arctic. Other units in the Pacific region, southern Siberia and southwestern Russia also launched drills.

The Iskander missiles deployment to Kaliningrad reflects Moscow’s readiness in response to NATO moves to deploy forces closer to Russia’s borders.

The missiles, which are capable of hitting enemy targets up to 500 kilometers (310 miles away) with high precision, can be equipped with a nuclear or a conventional warhead. From Kaliningrad, they could reach several NATO member states.

Meanwhile heavy machine-gun and light artillery fire pounded a district of Donetsk, the biggest city of eastern Ukraine, on Monday and pro-Russian self-defence forces said there has been no lull in the fighting since a February cease-fire.

The Spartak district, adjacent to the city’s now-flattened airport, is one of several sites in eastern Ukraine to have seen continued hostilities between the self-defence forces and the Ukrainian junta since last month’s cease-fire, brokered by France and Germany in the Belarussian capital Minsk.

The cease-fire is broadly holding in the rest of the region, Reuters reported.

Black Hawks head to Europe

An additional 450 soldiers and 25 Black Hawk helicopters will join the expanding roster of NATO forces converging on Eastern Europe in March

Pilots, flight and ground crews from the 4th Battalion, 3rd Aviation Regiment, 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade out of Hunter Army Air Field, Ga., will be deploying to Illesheim, Germany, later this month.

From the staging ground there, they will then deploy in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve, a multinational training mission to reassure Poland and the Baltic countries of NATO’s commitment in the face of Russia’s aggressive moves in Ukraine.

The unit will remain deployed for about nine months, U.S. Army Europe said in a March 3 news release.

While in Europe they will serve as a supporting element to the Operation Atlantic Resolve ground forces, led by the 1st Armor Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, from Fort Stewart, Ga., as that unit assumes the role of the regionally aligned force in the area. The Vilseck-based 2nd Cavalry Regiment is currently holding that position.

About 100 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Carson, Colo., make up the regionally aligned force operational command element, led in part by Brig. Gen. Randy George, the 4th ID deputy commander.

“USAREUR right now is running [Operation Atlantic Resolve], but the commander of USAREUR also has responsibilities elsewhere throughout Europe,” said 4th ID mission command element deputy chief of staff Maj. George H. Johnson. “He just has somebody now that he can give particular direction to.”

George will run the first iteration of the mission command element in Europe. His first task, according to Johnson, will be to coordinate the transition with the outgoing 2CR.

After that, the 4th Infantry soldiers will settle in for their first long-term command of troops in Europe as Operation Atlantic Resolve continues.

“USAREUR was running that themselves and that is because there hasn’t been a division headquarters in Europe since the 1st Infantry Division left,” Johnson said. “Now they see a place where having a division headquarters in Europe could help in synchronizing between the militaries of nations, making sure that we train together and learn how to work and operate together. That’s what we’re here to do.”

Source: Stars and Stripes

NATO tries to torpedo Berlin with fake numbers and no intel

Top NATO commander General Philip Breedlove has raised hackles in Germany with his public statements about the Ukraine crisis.

Hawks in Washington seem determined to torpedo Berlin’s approach of finding a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, and bellicose statements from NATO’s top commander in Europe has been helping.

It was quiet in eastern Ukraine last Wednesday. Indeed, it was another quiet day in an extended stretch of relative calm. The battles between the Ukrainian army and the pro-Russian separatists had largely stopped and heavy weaponry was being withdrawn. The Minsk cease-fire wasn’t holding perfectly, but it was holding.

On that same day, General Philip Breedlove, the top NATO commander in Europe, stepped before the press in Washington. Putin, the 59-year-old said, had once again “upped the ante” in eastern Ukraine — with “well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defense, battalions of artillery” having been sent to the Donbass. “What is clear,” Breedlove said, “is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day.”

German leaders in Berlin were stunned. They didn’t understand what Breedlove was talking about. And it wasn’t the first time. Once again, the German government, supported by intelligence gathered by the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, did not share the view of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR).

The pattern has become a familiar one. For months, Breedlove has been commenting on Russian activities in eastern Ukraine, speaking of troop advances on the border, the amassing of munitions and alleged columns of Russian tanks. Over and over again, Breedlove’s numbers have been fake, playing into the hands of the hardliners in the US Congress and in NATO.

The German government is alarmed. Are the Americans trying to thwart European efforts at mediation led by Chancellor Angela Merkel? Sources in the Chancellery have referred to Breedlove’s comments as “dangerous propaganda.” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier even found it necessary recently to bring up Breedlove’s comments with NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg.

But Breedlove hasn’t been the only source of friction. Europeans have also begun to see others as hindrances in their search for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict. First and foremost among them is Victoria Nuland, head of European affairs at the US State Department. She and others would like to see Washington deliver arms to Ukraine and are supported by Congressional Republicans as well as many powerful Democrats.

Breedlove’s announcements are making Berlin very uneasy. False claims and exaggerated accounts, warned a top German official during a recent meeting on Ukraine, have put NATO — and by extension, the entire West — in danger of losing its credibility.

The fact that NATO has no intelligence agency of its own plays into Breedlove’s hands. The alliance relies on intelligence gathered by agents from the US and Britain.

“I stand by all the public statements I have made during the Ukraine crisis,” he wrote to SPIEGEL in response to a request for a statement accompanied by a list of his controversial claims. He wrote that it was to be expected that assessments of NATO’s intelligence center, which receives information from all 33 alliance members in addition to partner states, doesn’t always match assessments made by individual nations.

Berlin has the impression that important power brokers in Washington are working against the Europeans. Berlin officials have noticed that, following the visit of American politicians or military leaders in Kiev, Ukrainian officials are much more bellicose and optimistic about the Ukrainian military’s ability to win the conflict on the battlefield. “We then have to laboriously bring the Ukrainians back onto the course of negotiations,” said one Berlin official.

Nuland, who is seen as a possible secretary of state should the Republicans win back the White House in next year’s presidential election, is unfortunately an important voice in US policy.

A massive troop training range is located in Yavoriv in western Ukraine near the Polish border. According to the Pentagon’s plans, American officers are going to train troops on how to use American artillery-locating radar devices.

The US Army in Europe commander Lt. Gen. Hodges announced in January that the training would start at the beginning of March, but on Tuesday, Hodges said during an appearance in Berlin that he expects the training will still begin at some point this month.

Source: Der Spiegel

Ukrainian army leaves fracking equipment behind

On the outskirts of the village of Shishkovo under the snow and rain rusts the expensive equipment: four residential trailers for employees, diesel substation and equipment for conducting seismic surveys. Judging by the labels this equipment was certified in the U.S., and now it is in possession of the people of Donbass.

Local residents recall that this was a temporary base of geologists from Ukrgazdobicha. The residents of the Shishkovo witnessed the beginning of the work.

“This equipment was brought at a time when in June the Ukrainian tanks came from Metallist and started shelling the city. As we suppose, Kiev authorities planned a quick capture of South-East, Donbass in particular, for further extraction of shale gas,” explains a local resident Vladimir.

“They were from Western Ukraine. Geo-research. They were saying something about gas, said there is shale gas here. First there were two vehicles, then 10 -12. There was a lot,” says a resident.

Earlier the field was divided into squares, here the expert gasman conducted seismic studies and measurements and were preparing to install a rig.

Local mechanics and welders were not hired, because many of the them spoke out against the extraction of shale gas.

The residents of Shishkovo were not notified of the purpose of the camp. The camp was staffed mainly with residents of Western Ukraine, which is revealed by the documents left behind : “Ivano-Frankovsk, Cherkassy, Poltava region, Zhitomir region.” The documents also mention both gas and oil research.

According to the paperwork for 2013 found onsite, similar bases were also located in villages Shevchenko, Raigorodka and Gerasimovka.

As the local residents say, the research continued until the Ukrainian national guard had left. Along with tanks and howitzers the Ukrainian soldiers also took part of the seismic equipment, but in the rush they did not have the time to gather everything.

This abandoned base can be observed well from the Ukrainian side of the frontline. Just over this field, a mile from the abandoned base is the town of Schastye, which is under the complete control of the Ukrainian army. Even now, in the midst of a ceasefire it is not safe to be here. Locals say that during evening hours the Ukrainian Armed forces and volunteer battalions begin to fire at each other.

Translated from Russian LifeNews

NATO and Europe on diplomatic collision course

The fraught relationship between Russia and the West, which was supposed to improve following an agreement over Ukraine, has descended instead into renewed acrimony after a series of tense military and diplomatic confrontations.

France and Germany, which had brokered the Minsk accord last week, were yesterday trying to hold together the increasingly fragile ceasefire in Ukraine amid reports that fighting was spreading once again.

Kremlin-backed separatists and Cossack fighters triumphantly paraded through Debaltseve, a strategic point they had captured in the past 48 hours, leaving the Atlanticist project to expand NATO into Ukraine in tatters.

Britain, which along with the EU will be strongly criticised by a House of Lords committee today for “sleep-walking into this crisis”, was drawn towards centre-stage after two Russian Bear bombers off the coast of Cornwall – but just outside UK airspace – were met by RAF jets scrambled from their base in Coningsby, Lincolnshire.

The apparent probe of British readiness came soon after the Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, accused President Vladimir Putin of a “campaign of destabilisation to the Baltic countries”. The Russian leader, he said, presented “as much of a threat to Europe as ISIS”.

Russian deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Lukashevich declared that Fallon’s war-mongering comments were “already beyond diplomatic ethics”, adding: “The characterisation of Russia is completely intolerable. We will find a way to respond to the comments.”

In London, Rory Stewart, the chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, said the West was on a “political razor-edge”. He urged all British political parties to write into their manifestoes a commitment to spend two per cent of GDP on defence – as required by Nato. He also asked them to prepare to deal with threats such as cyber-attacks, irregular troops, and propaganda.

The British Government, which is one of the guarantors of the territorial integrity of Ukraine in return for it giving up a nuclear arsenal, is worried that Germany and France may have already recognised separate regions.

“It [the committee] believes that the EU, and by implication the UK, was guilty of sleep-walking into this crisis,” said the committee chairman, Lord Tugendhat. “The lack of robust analytical capacity, in both the UK and the EU, effectively led to a catastrophic misreading of the mood in the run-up to the crisis.”

An inspection by Dutch military specialists revealed no military activities on the part of Russia in the Rostov region bordering Ukraine, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry’s International Treaties Implementation Department told RIA Novosti on Friday.

Dutch military experts inspected 13,000 square kilometers (5,000 square miles) in Russia’s Rostov Region bordering Ukraine, Sergei Ryzhkov added.

“The inspection took place in accordance with the Vienna Document and was carried out not only on the ground, but also with the help of helicopters,” Sergei Ryzhkov said.

Dutch military inspected the same area in the Rostov Region bordering Ukraine that Ukrainian specialists chose for inspection earlier.

Kiev authorities and Atlanticists have accused Russia of providing military aid and troops to Donbas militias. Moscow has dismissed the allegations and denied any involvement in the armed conflict in Ukraine.

NATO fractures on Ukraine

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has announced that each member of the alliance must make an independent decision on the supply of weapons to the Kiev government, which continues to fight independence supporters in southeastern Ukraine, the DPA news agency reports.

Speaking at the Conference of the Social and Democratic Party in Berlin on Sunday, Stoltenberg also said that he supports the reconciliation efforts of the Normandy Quartet, which includes Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine.

Normandy format talks have not led to any significant breakthroughs in Ukraine peace efforts. Kiev forces that launched a military operation against independence supporters in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions last spring, continue to clash with local militia, which leads to heavy civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, the US Congress has recently called for the provision of lethal assistance to Kiev-led forces.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asked US Congress for lethal weapon supplies during his September visit to the United States, however, Washington did not grant his request.

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out any possibility of weapon supplies to Ukraine, stating that this would not help solve the crisis. Other European states, including Finland, France and Italy have also rejected the idea.

Source: Sputnik News

Russia to set up military bases in an EU state

Cyprus has offered Russia to have air and navy bases on its territory.

Cypriot president Nicos Anastasiades announced that the country is ready to host Russian aviation and naval bases. The official agreement on military cooperation between the two nations is expected be signed on February 25, 2015, according to Lenta.ru.

“There is an old [defense] agreement, which should be renewed as is. At the same time, some additional services will be provided in the same way as we do with other countries, such as, for example, with France and Germany,” Nicos Anastasiades said. “Cyprus and Russia have traditionally had good relations, and this is not subject to change.”

Cyprus’ announcement comes after Russia expressed interest in having a military base in Cyprus in late January, according to the Global Post and Greek Reporter.

Notably, Cyprus is one of the 28-member states in the EU, which have been imposing sanctions on Russia over the past year in response to the actions in Ukraine.

And just like Greece has recently caused a stir by complicating the process of extending sanctions on Russia, Cyprus, too, just voiced some opposition to the additional sanctions on Russia, adding that many EU members share that opinion.

“We want to avoid further deterioration of relations between Russia and the European Union,” the Cypriot president reportedly said.

Source: Business Insider

Britain to lead spearhead NATO force in Eastern Europe

Britain will play a lead role in a “high readiness” NATO force that will be established in Eastern Europe, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said Thursday.

Britain would send up to 1,000 troops and four RAF Typhoon jets for “air policing” in the region, BBC reported cited Fallon as saying.

The multinational force is the biggest reinforcement of NATO’s collective defence since the end of the Cold War.

It comes as French and German leaders headed to the Ukrainian capital Kiev to try to negotiate an end to escalating fighting in the east of the country.

Fallon said NATO’s credibility in the face of the security challenges depended on “everyone playing their part” to implement decisions taken to bolster its forces at a summit of member states in Wales last year.

“Strong words must be backed up with firm action,” he said.

NATO defence ministers have gathered in Brussels to discuss the details of the “Very High Readiness Joint Task Force” (VJTF), which will form NATO’s first response in the face of aggression.

It is expected to be made up of about 5,000 troops from NATO countries, with its lead units able to deploy at two days’ notice.

Britain will be the force’s lead nation in 2017 and then on rotation thereafter, Fallon said.

Fallon said Britain would contribute manpower to two regional headquarters in Poland and Romania, and to force integration units in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

Britain would also send four RAF Typhoon jets to support NATO’s Baltic air policing mission in 2015, he confirmed.

The Typhoons will operate alongside Norwegian aircraft between May and August 2015, with the aim of securing NATO’s airspace over Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which do not have their own air defence fighters.

They will operate at NATO’s request from Amari Airbase in Estonia, he said.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine began last April, when separatists seized government buildings after Ukraine’s southern Crimea peninsula acceded to Russia.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg has said that Russia continues to violate international law as fighting continues in Ukraine.

Source: daijiworld.com

Where is the United States of Pindostan?

If you talk to a Russian about the international political situation, sooner or later you will be informed that there is a country in North America that you’ve never heard of. Its name is ‘Pindosia,’ ‘Pindostan’ or, more officially, ‘United States of Pindostan,’ and you will be told that one part of it, called Alaska, used to belong to Russia. Part of the word—‘stan’—stands for underdeveloped state, as in ‘ Pakistan,’ ‘Kazakhstan,’ or ‘Uzbekistan.’ The citizens of this country in plural form are called ‘pindoses,’ in singular—‘pindos.’

There are more than 316 million ‘pindoses’ in ‘Pindostan.’

Today, this country has a black President, and the Russians have a nickname for him too. He is called Maximka—after a character from a popular Soviet movie, made in 1952, which told the story of a black boy saved by the Russian sailors from the cruelty of the vicious American slave-traders who were terribly abusing him and calling him just that—“Boy.” In the film, the saved boy was fed well by the Russian crew, given the name Maximka, and became one of their own in the end.

But by the modern-day Russian legend, Maximka, unfortunately, has grown up into an ungrateful Russophobe.

One can assume that the reader by now has a clue what this country is.

The word ‘pindos’ in Russian is highly offensive, and defines a helpless creature that is a product of a very bad educational system, one who can survive in this world only with the help of various gadgets. The origin of the word is unknown, and the philologists are fighting to establish it. The most popular explanation states that this word was invented by Russian peacekeepers in Serbia with the purpose of describing a NATO soldier, who was seen by them as a strange, clumsy figure with his 90 lbs. of bulletproof vest, weapons, radios, flashlights and so on.

From afar, he looked very strange to the Russian eye—like a penguin.

The Russians have had their favorite, most-hated pindoses. One of them, the constant laughingstock in the media, used to be the US Ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul. He was a huge fan of Twitter and if judged by the number of his tweets, spent more time on his gadget than actually doing his job. After more than two years of service there, upon his departure, he received only two words in Russian—via Twitter—from the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs: “Goodbye Mikhail.”

Today his place has been taken by the spokesperson for the US Department of State, Jen Psaki. She has an anti-fan club of haters who consider her not to be very bright—they even invented their own anti-IQ unit called 1 Psaki. One who has 3 Psakis has a brain of a clam. The term ‘psaking’ in Russian political newspeak means to know nothing about the subject while saying something banal and politically correct. She is so popular that when she injured her foot and came in front of the cameras with the cast on, all major Russian TV channels and newspapers reported the event.

Another hated ‘pindos’ is Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), famous in Russia for his periodic tweets to ‘Dear Vlad.’ In 2011, for example, Mr. McCain tweeted Putin, “Dear Vlad, The #ArabSpring is coming to a neighborhood near you.” Usually reserved and purposefully polite while talking about his ‘partners from over the Big Pool’ (Big Pool being the Atlantic Ocean ), this time Mr. Putin shot back, saying that Mr. McCain “has a lot of blood of peaceful civilians on his hands. He must relish and can’t live without the disgusting, repulsive scenes of the killing of Gadhafi.” “Mr. McCain was captured in Vietnam and they kept him not just in prison, but in a pit for several years,” Mr. Putin added. “Anyone [in his place] would have had his roof moved over.” The last three words in Russian slang mean “suddenly to become insane.”

Today, according to the respected Moscow ‘Levada Center,’ which measures political sentiment in Russian society, 74% of Russians have negative feelings towards the USA. It hasn’t always been like this; in the 1990s, 80% had positive attitude toward America.

Currently, 76% of Russians hate Obama personally and only a meager 2% like him. In 2009 only 12% of Russians had extremely negative feelings towards Obama.

These are the maximum peaks of anti-American feelings in Russia in years but the sociologists believe they could go even higher in the near future.

Anti-American sentiment has been growing slowly in Russia since the war in former Yugoslavia. But the sharp recent increase happened as a result of the US-led sanctions that were imposed on Russia after the ‘Russian annexation of Crimea.’ For example, just last week Visa and MasterCard completely stopped their operations in Crimea, leaving more than 2 million people there without access to their money. 75% of Russians do not believe that their country is responsible for the events in Ukraine. On the contrary, they blame the US.

When the sanctions began, many Russian businesses responded by putting up ‘Obama Is Sanctioned Here’ signs on their doors and windows.

However today they went much farther.

The owners of the Moscow supermarket “Electronics on Presnya” are using American flag doormats so the customers could wipe their dirty feet off, according to the British tabloid Daily Mail. “Customers have been filmed wiping their feet on the fabled stars and stripes as they enter and exit stores across Moscow, as struggling retailers take a hopeless swipe at their Cold War adversaries,” reports the newspaper. According to the Moskovky Komsomolets Moscow newspaper, the nation’s business owners decided to put the US flag under the Russians’ feet because of the strained relations between the two countries. “New doormats with the American flag were put at every exit so that America would not think that she is allowed to everything,” they say. “From one perspective, of course it is a flag, but from the other, because of this entire situation in the world, regular folks are suffering. All the electronics we import, mostly from China and buy for dollars. We have to work directly so the US would have no chance to manipulate the prices.” (The Russian ruble lost about 50% of its value because of the economic sanctions by the western countries and a fall in the oil price.)

By the words of the shopping center’s attorney Konstantin Trapaidze, the doormats with the American flag do not break any Russian law. “It is very probable that the doormats have a decorative character. Yes, people are walking on them but nobody prohibited this. They produce not only doormats with the flag on them but also furniture upholstery. The breaking of the law would be when someone would start burning such a doormat or real flag demonstratively, or tear it up.”

Major Russian TV channel Vesti eagerly reported that fact. They also added that some Moscow stores were selling the toilet paper with American flag imprinted on it. The pricetag was $1 per roll.

A number of Russian politicians have been working very hard to keep the flames of rage burning. Last week, the Speaker of the Russian Parliament, Sergei Naryshkin, raised the issue of starting an international investigation of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings by the US in 1945, as a ‘crime against humanity’ has no time limit. He wanted nothing less than a new Nuremberg trial with the US at the criminal’s bench.

Vladimir Putin, from his side, during his most recent press conference, used the occasion to show his negative attitude toward one of America ’s most popular products. Answering a question about Russian drink Kvass, he said, “I don’t know how harmful Coca-Cola is, but a lot of specialists say that it is, especially for children. I don’t want to offend Coca-Cola, but we have our own national non-alcoholic beverages, and we shall help them to win our stores’ shelves.”

He could have chosen another brand as an example of an unhealthy soda, since there is no shortage of different drinks in Russia’s stores. But to no one’s surprise, the Russian President chose for his attack the very symbol of Pindostan.

Source: New York Observer

Australia warned of ISIS security risk

Up to 160 Australians have either been involved in fighting in the Middle East or actively supporting it, officials have said.

At leats 20 are believed to have returned to Australia and pose a security risk, the head of the national spy agency said last week, according to Reuters.

As The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Highlighting the risk of homegrown militants returning from the Middle East, Abbott pledged on Sunday to send a 600-strong force as well as strike aircraft to join a U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq.

Top terrorist recruiter Mohammad Baryalei is behind an Islamic State plot to murder Australians on video, police say, sparking the nation’s biggest ever counter-terrorism raids and prompting warnings of a high alert for a further 18 months.

NSW and federal police as well as ASIO officers raided homes across Sydney and Brisbane on Thursday morning, arresting 15 men, some of them as young as 18 or 19.

They swooped amid fears for the public’s safety after Baryalei allegedly spoke by phone with Omarjan Azari on Tuesday to discuss a plan to kidnap and murder – presumably by beheading – a random person on camera, the footage of which would then be posted online by the Islamic State’s sophisticated and powerful propaganda wing.

Australian Federal Police assistant commissioner Neil Gaughan told Fairfax Media that the terrorism alert level would have to stay on “high” despite the arrests – perhaps for a further 18 months.

“There is no doubt in my view the terror alert needs to stay high for the foreseeable future. We have seen an unprecedented increase in activity over the last 12 months,” he said.

“And it’s based on a lot of factors – ISIL, the declaration of the caliphate, an intent by people to do things in support of that, people continuing to recruit … We are in totally uncharted waters. I do not see any respite in the next 18 months.”

Led by a “British-speaking” murderer, ISIS released beheading videos of US journalists initially.

Australian police have now raided hundreds of homes foiling a direct ISIS provocation to publicly behead a random citizen in Sydney.

As Reuters reports, more than 800 police were involved in the pre-dawn security operation in Sydney and Brisbane, which was described as the largest in Australian history.

A 22-year-old Sydney man was arrested, after links were found to top ISIS recruiter Mohammad Baryalei that PM Abbot stated were “clearly designed to shock and horrify, perhaps terrify” the community.

CIA torture: France should exit NATO says Le Pen

NATO is an opportunity for the United States to extend its influence

The shocking revelations of CIA torture techniques give France a reason to exit NATO, National Front party leader Marine Le Pen said on Saturday. The report on the CIA’s former interrogation practices has drawn wide criticism since its release.

“If indeed everyone is outraged by the tortures used by the US then, let’s leave NATO,” Le Pen said during an interview with Europe 1 radio channel. She wrote the same statement on her Twitter account.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee’s CIA “torture report,” which details the CIA’s use of torture on prisoners in the wake of 9/11, was released by the Senate on Tuesday.

Le Pen has previously criticized French President Francois Hollande’s close ties with the US and called on France to leave NATO.

Speaking to RT’s Sophie Shevardnadze in June, Le Pen said that NATO is an opportunity for the United States to extend its influence.

At a cost of over $40 million, the findings unveiled the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” or EITs, used within the walls of covert, overseas prisons by the CIA.

The report raised serious questions over controversial tactics which included sleep deprivation, waterboarding, rectal feeding, and others. Dianne Feinstein, the committee chair, admitted that the techniques were “torture,” though the word was never used in the report.

The findings also revealed that the CIA’s treatment breached the body’s legal mandate, as investigators said they found evidence of the intelligence agency’s systematic deception of Congress. Despite the methods used, the agency failed to gather information that foiled subsequent threats to US national security, the report found.

Since the report’s release, prominent human rights groups have demanded to prosecute the responsible US officials listed in the document.

Despite widespread criticism and a wave of outrage sparked by the results of the Senate investigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Wednesday that it will not be pursuing charges against those involved in the interrogations.

 

SA family killed in Afghanistan ahead of NATO donor meeting

The death of a South African father and his two teenage children come in the wake of a secret order that was signed by president Barack Obama just last week to strengthen the combat role of American troops in Afghanistan.

Insurgents have targeted foreign guesthouses, embassy vehicles, US troops and a female member of parliament in recent weeks.

Werner Groenewald, 46, his son Jean-Pierre, 17, and daughter Rode, 15, were killed in Saturday’s attack on the compound of Partnership in Academics and Development (PAD), a small California-based education group.

Obama has secretly signed an order that expands the United States’ direct combat role in Afghanistan throughout 2015, the New York Times reported.

The secret order permits American forces to continue to battle the Taliban and other militants that pose a threat to either the Afghan government or US personnel.

According to the Times, US jets, bombers, and drones will be able to aid ground troops – be they Afghan or US forces – in whatever mission they undertake.

This marks a significant expansion of America’s role in Afghanistan in 2015. The new revelation that the U.S. is quietly planning to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan above publicly pledged levels is just the latest indication that the end of the war is, in fact, nowhere near.

Meanwhile, new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has a much softer position on the US presence in his country compared to his predecessor Hamid Karzai.

Ghani removed restrictions against US airstrikes and joint raids that were implemented by Karzai.

Werner’s wife Hannelie, a doctor, was working at a hospital when the attack began, Hannelie’s sister Riana du Plessis, who is acting as family spokeswoman, told AFP.

Explosions and gunfire erupted for three hours as Afghan elite commandos battled three militants who were eventually killed.

“Their house was burned down,” Ms du Plessis said, speaking in South Africa. “Hannelie went back there this morning to try to recover some of their goods, but there was nothing to recover.

“She lost everything — her children, her husband, her cats, her dogs.” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed on Twitter that the compound was that of a secret Christian missionary group.

According to South African sources the Groenewalds recieved a warning ahead of the attack. The three victims suffered immensely, as they bled to death while being suffocated, the source said.

Werner was previously a Christian pastor in Pretoria, while Hannelie is a qualified doctor who answered the call “to help the sick in Afghanistan”.

Kabul police chief General Zahir Zahir stepped down on Sunday shortly after he confirmed the attack.

The killing of the Groenewald family occured just days ahead of a NATO donor meeting in Brussels and London.

President Ashraf Ghani, who came to power in September after signing a power-sharing deal with his poll rival Abdullah Abdullah.

Ghani was due to give a televised address on Sunday evening to announce that a deal had been reached over cabinet positions in the new government.

Ghani and Abdullah will fly to Brussels on Monday for NATO meetings, and to London on Wednesday for a donor conference designed to showcase the “national unity government” and demonstrate continuing international support for Afghanistan.

American news sources did not disclose the nationality of the Groenewalds.

 

Mistral mix-up continues

France hasn’t yet fixed a date for delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia (scheduled for November 14), the French defense minister said. If France doesn’t deliver due to US and NATO pressure, it will have to pay a huge forfeit.

“No delivery date can be fixed at this stage,” Jean-Yves Le Drian, the country’s defense minister told the National Assembly, the lower house of France’s Parliament.

“The president of the Republic has said that a definitive decision will come at the right moment, taking into account all the responsibilities that come with this decision, which is not a simple one,” he added.

On Thursday, reports emerged that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin will not attend the ceremony where France hands over the first Mistral ship to Russia at the Saint-Nazaire shipyards. On October 29, he said that Moscow had received an invitation to take delivery.

DCNS, a French industrial group specializing in naval defense and energy, sent the invitations to the ceremony of the ship delivery scheduled November 14, France’s Le Nouvel Observateur magazine wrote on Wednesday. However, the event was canceled.

The outlet managed to take a screenshot of the letter which was sent to a French official.

“When I opened my mail, I fell off my chair,” the official told the magazine on condition of anonymity.

The chief of DCNS would not confirm whether this letter, signed by the export manager, was authentic. The official line is that these invitations were issued by mistake and the project manager was subsequently fired, RT reported.

Hungary breaks ranks with EU

Hajra, magyarok! Hajra Magyarorszag! Hungary has broken ranks with the European Union and may it’s spirited defiance continue.

Not long ago Hungary was being toasted in the West for opening its border with Austria to East Germans. This bold move led to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

But Western elites are not happy with the independently minded Budapest any longer. But bullying Hungary does not make many headlines because it’s so-called “democratic” Westerners doing the bullying.

The Hungarian parliament approved a law to build the South Stream gas pipeline from Russia without the approval of the European Union, and the ruling Fidesz Party largely ignoring enraged foreign owned banks and energy companies.

The refusal of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Fidesz to join the new US and EU Cold War against Russia has been met with anger and rage in Washington and Brussels.

Hungarian officials have been banned from entering the US, while the European Commission is trying to pressure the authorities on South Stream with legal action against the Hungarian government for its law restricting the rights of foreigners to buy agricultural land.

Viktor Orban is a nationalist and a conservative but that doesn’t really matter. Only obsequious servility to Uncle Sam and the Euro-elites matter, all in the name of “freedom” and “democracy.”

Fidesz returned to power in 2010. The previous Socialist administration was hugely popular in the West because it played lapdog to Washington and Brussels and the international banks, even taking out an unnecessary IMF loan.

Fidesz and its coalition allies, the Christian Democratic People’s Party, (KDNP) rather introduced a $855m bank tax, the highest in Europe, leaving the financial elite foaming at the mouth.

Orban clashed with the IMF too, with his government rejecting new loan terms in 2012, and paying off early a loan taken out by the previous government, to reduce interest payments.

Russia is Hungary’s third biggest trading partner and ties between the two countries have strengthened in the last couple of years, to the consternation of western Russophobes. In April, a deal was struck for Moscow to loan Hungary €10 billion to help upgrade its nuclear plant at Paks.

Orban’s policy of improving trade and business links with Russia, while staying a member of the EU and NATO, has however been put under increasing strain by the new hostile policy towards Moscow from Washington and Brussels.

Orban also spoke up for rights of the 200,000 strong Hungarian community living in Ukraine.”Ukraine can neither be stable, nor democratic, if it does not give its minorities, including Hungarians, their due. That is dual citizenship, collective rights and autonomy.”

Hungary’s Ambassador was immediately summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Kiev. Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland – the US’s most obedient servant in Eastern Europe – quickly called Orban’s comments “unfortunate and disturbing” in order to impress his masters. Little did it matter that it was strictly none of Tusk’s business.

In August, Orban accurately described the sanctions policy of the West towards Russia as like “shooting oneself in the foot.”

In October, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto also questioned the sanctions on Russia, revealing that his country is losing 50 million forints a day due to the policy.

Hungary has made its position clear, but for daring to question EU and US policy, and for its rapprochement with Moscow, the country has been punished.

It’s democratically elected civilian government which enjoys high levels of public support, has ludicrously – and obscenely – been likened to military governments which have massacred their opponents. “From Hungary to Egypt, endless regulations and overt intimidation increasingly target civil society,” declared US President Barack Obama in September.

Last month there was another salvo fired at Hungary – it was announced that the US had banned six unnamed Hungarian government officials from entering America, citing concerns over corruption- without the US providing any proof of the corruption.

“At a certain point, the situation, if it continues this way, will deteriorate to the extent where it is impossible to work together as an ally,” warned the Charge D’Affaires of the US Embassy in Budapest, Andre Goodfriend.

The failure to provide any evidence, understandably caused outrage in Hungary. “The government of Hungary is somewhat baffled at the events that have unfolded because this is not the way friends deal with issues,” said Janos Lazar, Orban‘s chief of staff.

“I am inclined to think that it is a punishment for the fact that we talk to Russia,” said Gabor Stier, the head foreign policy editor of the leading Hungarian newspaper Magyar Nemzet.

“America thinks that we are corrupt, but we are a sovereign state, and it is our business. Many people in the United States do not like that Viktor Orban is very independent…..Corruption is just an excuse.”

The 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Transparency International, reveals that Latvia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina are all below Hungary, as indeed is Italy. Yet it’s Hungarian officials that the US is banning.

‘Is Hungary, the EU’s only dictatorship?’ asked Bloomberg View in April. The BBC ran a hostile piece on Orban and Fidesz in October entitled ‘Cracks Emerge in leading party’.

The piece looked forward to the end of Fidesz rule.

While earlier this week, the New York Times published an OpEd by Kati Marton, whose late husband Richard Holbrooke, was a leading US diplomat, entitled ‘Hungary’s Authoritarian Descent’.

You’d never guess that the Hungarian government wasn’t the flavor of the month in the West would you?

Will Hungary be the next country to be the target of a US/EU sponsored regime change?

Attacks on Orban and his government are sure to intensify but the more the West attacks, the more popular Orban becomes as the defender of Hungary’s national interests.

Hungary gave the West everything it wanted in 1989, and its “reformist” leadership was richly rewarded. But it seems that for the West it’s never enough.