World War III Warning Thread weeks of 3/08/18 - 3/20/18

[danielboon]

last weeks thread http://www.thetreeofliberty.com/vb/s...8-3-5-18/page5

[danielboon]

Iran's Khamenei says won't negotiate with West over regional presence

Reuters|Published: 03.08.18 , 14:33
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday that Tehran would not negotiate over its presence in the Middle East region with the United States and Europe.


"European countries come (to Tehran) and say we want to negotiate with Iran over its presence in the region. It's none of your business. It is our region. Why are you here?" Khamenei was quoted as saying by his official website.


Khamenei said Iran would only negotiate on that issue with other states in the region.


https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,...150706,00.html

[danielboon]

Syria: US-backed Kurds brace for dramatic escalation of Turkish invasion that could be bloodier than Alep

In a field beside an abandoned railway station close to the Turkish border in northern Syria, Kurdish fighters are retraining to withstand Turkish air strikes. “We acted like a regular army when we were fighting Daesh [Isis] with US air support,” says Rojva, a veteran Kurdish commander of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). “But now it is us who may be under Turkish air attack and we will have to behave more like guerrillas.”

Rojva and his brigade have just returned from 45 days fighting Isis in Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria and are waiting orders which may redeploy them to face the Turkish army that invaded the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on 20 January. Rojva says that “we are mainly armed with light weapons like the Kalashnikov, RPG [rocket propelled grenade launcher] and light machine guns, but we will be resisting tanks and aircraft”. He makes clear that, whatever happened, they would fight to the end.

Kurdish and allied Arab units are streaming north from the front to the east of the Euphrates, where Isis is beginning to counter-attack, in order to stop the Turkish advance. Some 1,700 Arab militia left the area for Afrin on Tuesday and Turkey is demanding that the US stop them. The invasion is now in its seventh week and Rojva and his fighters take some comfort in the fact that it is moving so slowly. But the Turkish strategy has been to take rural areas before mowing methodically to surround and besiege Afrin City and residential areas.The big battles in Afrin are still to come and are likely to be as destructive and bloody as anything seen in Eastern Ghouta, Raqqa or East Aleppo. YPG fighters have battle experience stretching back to at least 2012, much of its gained against fanatical opponents like Isis. The likelihood is that, as in Ghouta, the Turkish generals will seek to avoid the heavy losses inevitable in street fighting and pound Afrin into ruins with air strikes and artillery fire. Civilian casualties are bound to be horrendous.The Syrian Kurds believe they are facing an existential threat. They believe Turkey wants to eliminate not just the enclave of Afrin, but the 25 per cent of Syria that the Kurds have taken with US backing since 2015. Some think that defeat will mean the ethnic cleansing of Kurds from Afrin, which has traditionally been one of their core majority areas. They cite a speech by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made the day after the start of the invasion started, claiming that “55 per cent of Afrin is Arab, 35 per cent are the Kurds ... and about 7 per cent are Turkmen. [We aim] to give Afrin back to its rightful owners.” There is a suspicion among Kurdish leaders that Erdogan plans to create a Sunni bloc of territory north and west of Aleppo which will be under direct or indirect Turkish control. The Kurdish leaders are convinced that Erdogan is determined to destroy their de facto state in the long run, but differ about the timing and objectives of the present attack. Elham Ahmad, the co-president of the Syrian Democratic Council that helps administer the Kurdish-held area, believes that the Turkish assault on Afrin, if successful, will set “a precedent for a further Turkish military advance”.

Ahmad had just returned from Afrin where she was born and where her family still lives. “Our convoy of 150 civilian cars was hit by a Turkish air strike,” she said. “We ran away from the cars, but 30 of them were destroyed and one person killed.” She is angry that the outside world is exclusively preoccupied with the bombardment of Eastern Ghouta by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, but ignores similar bombing and shelling in Afrin where, she says, 204 civilians had been killed, including 61 children, as of last weekend.She expects that the next Turkish target, if its so-called Operation Olive Branch succeeds in Afrin, will be the Arab city of Manbij that was taken by the YPG in 2016. Strategically placed on the main road from Aleppo to the Kurdish heartlands, with a diversion where part of the highway is held by Turkish forces, it is a prosperous looking place full of shops crammed with goods and produce. Local rumour has it that one small shop recently changed hands for $1m (£720,000). It is the main supply line to the Kurdish zone, the highway crowded with oil tankers bringing crude oil from Kurdish-held oilfields far to the east to the Syrian government refinery at Homs.If local people are nervous about the prospect of being submerged by the impending battle for northern Syria, they are not showing it. After being occupied by Isis and besieged by the YPG, they have strong nerves. They may also reflect that, if war is coming to their city and its 300,000 people, there is not a lot they can do to avert it. The main reason they might feel secure is a US pledge to defend their city against a Turkish attack, a promise backed up by regular and highly visible patrols of five or six US armoured vehicles carrying large Stars and Stripes. But the US willingness to confront its Nato partner Turkey is nuanced, particularly since Isis was defeated last year, though the movement is not entirely dead.Syria is subject to a complex web of competing international influences
There is a sense of phoney war on the front line between the forces of the Manbij Military Council and the Turkish army and its allied anti-Assad militias, who are dug in three or four miles north of the city. Most of the front lines in the Syrian civil war are a depressing scene of abandoned and half-wrecked buildings, even when there is no fighting going on. The Manbij front is idyllic by comparison, though just how long it will stay that way is another question.

This is a fertile heavily populated country with a Mediterranean feel to it, its hills and small fields full of olive trees, pines, poplars and almond trees which are covered in little white flowers. There are tractors on the roads and, just behind the front, we drove through the Arab village of Dadat, whose streets full of cheerful-looking children excited by the sight of military vehicles.A trench and rampart gauged out the hillside by bulldozers zigzags upwards through a green field to a fortified position on a hilltop. Peering through gun slits in a sandbagged post on top of an earth bank, one could see Turkish positions not far away on the far side of the Sajur river. “They have tanks and artillery on every hilltop and they fire randomly with heavy machine guns every night,” says Farhat Kobani, a local commander whose orders come from the Manbij Military Council. The Turkish army is backed up by Ahrar al-Sham, a militant Islamist movement long allied to Turkey, whose men act as auxiliaries.

These exchanges of fire do not seem very serious because everybody, at least in day time, is standing upright in easy range of the other side and Farhat says his men have not suffered any dead or wounded. Phoney war is often derided, but there is a lot to be said for it when compared to the real thing – and, unfortunately, that may not be too far away. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a8243981.html

[danielboon]

Turkey demands Greece arrest flag-burners – report

Turkey’s foreign ministry on Wednesday demanded that Greece arrest people who burned a Turkish flag at a rally in Athens this week.

"We strongly condemn the burning of our flag during a rally against Turkey organized by a racist political party in Athens on March 5”, the foreign ministry said in a written statement, according to state-run Anadolu news agency.

"We demand that the Greek authorities arrest the perpetrators, who committed this heinous act against our flag, and bring them to justice as soon as possible.”

Political and military tensions between Greece and Turkey have increased in recent months after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for the re-negotiation of the two countries’ borders and a Turkish patrol boat hit a Greek coastguard vessel in the Aegean. Turkey is also holding two Greek soldiers on espionage charges after they crossed its border. A Turkish court refused their release on Monday. Greece has also failed to hand over Turkish soldiers suspected of involvement in the July 2016 failed coup.

Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy also criticised statements regarding Turkey and its territorial integrity by Greek President Prokopios Pavlopoulos, Anadolu said.

“We invite President Pavlopoulos to respect international law and our borders, and to refrain from a rhetoric which is not befitting his position, and that could cause unnecessary tension,” Aksoy said.

On Tuesday, the Greek press reported Pavlopoulos as saying: "We might not have the territory that we should have had historically… If history compels us, we will do what our ancestors had done”, Anadolu said. https://ahvalnews.com/greece-turkey/...burners-report

[jhpigott]

EndGameWW3 @EndGameShowWW3 2 hod.
China says it will make necessary response in event of trade war
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/C...ade-war-544560

‘Top Secret’ Details of Israeli Military Systems, Tactics Briefly Leaked Online
http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13961217000810

Large US landing ship with 500 marines enters the Black Sea
http://uawire.org/us-landing-ship-wi...ters-black-sea#

[jhpigott]

Ryan Browne‏Verified account@rabrowne75 17h17 hours agoFirst on CNN: Pro-Syrian regime forces have once again recently begun massing east of the Euphrates River near where US troops are advising the SDF, US officials tell CNN. The area is very near where pro-regime forces attacked US/SDF troops last month, resulting in US airstrikes

Frank J. Villari‏@sugarvill 21h21 hours ago
'Significant' consequences if China takes key port in Djibouti: U.S. general
https://www.yahoo.com/news/significa...?.tsrc=fauxdal

AFP news agency‏Verified account@AFP 5h5 hours ago
#BREAKING More than 900 killed in assault on Syria's Ghouta: monitor

[jhpigott]

Yonhap News Agency‏@YonhapNews 13h13 hours ago(LEAD) Moon's special envoys head to U.S. to explain outcome of N. Korea trip
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news...001651315.html

LIM Yun Suk‏@yunsukCNA 7h7 hours ago
LIM Yun Suk Retweeted Yonhap News Agency
Reports say the envoys have a message from #KimJongUn for #Washington.

Anna Fifield‏Verified account@annafifield Mar 7
Is Kim Jong Un confident or desperate? As he agrees to talks with the United States, North Korea’s leader remains difficult to read. https://buff.ly/2FicP6b

[TheSearcher]

Yonhap News Agency‏@YonhapNews 13h13 hours ago(LEAD) Moon's special envoys head to U.S. to explain outcome of N. Korea trip
http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/news...001651315.html

Why does reading that make me feel all weird?

[danielboon]

Nuclear Attack On USA Imminent – Pentagon

Posted By: Eugene Boaheneon: March 08, 2018In: Breaking News, Nation, News, NigeriaNo Comments Print Email
The Pentagon has raised an alarm of a compelling evidence of possible nuclear weapon strike against the United States (U.S.).

“There is compelling evidence that at least one of our potential competitors in this space believes they can get away with striking us with a low-yield weapon.

“We cannot allow that perception to persist,” Gen. Paul Selva, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

Selva said the recent Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) ensured the U.S. could match any nuclear threat, including that of a low-yield nuclear weapon.

“The review makes it clear that the United States will respond in kind to any nuclear threat,” Selva said at the ninth annual Defense Programs conference hosted by McAleese and Associates and Credit Suisse.

The vice chairman underscored that the goal of the NPR was to maintain a safe, reliable, dependable and secure nuclear arsenal.

“We reviewed the world as it is, not the world as we wished it could be,” Selva said.

The NPR projected what capabilities might be useful to supplement the existing delivery systems in the nuclear triad to “raise the bar for all adversaries who might contemplate use of nuclear weapons against the U.S. or our allies,” he explained.

The new capabilities are the sea-launched cruise missile and a low-yield nuclear weapon that could be delivered from a submarine platform, Selva said.

“Don’t mistake the discussion of new capabilities for growth in the nuclear arsenal.

“And please don’t fall in the trap of having the conversation that low-yield lowers the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons,” he said.

Selva pointed out the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force 48 years ago but fewer than 10 countries possessed nuclear weapons or the capabilities to field them.

“We’ve actually created a safer world. That’s not to say that we’re free of the threat from nuclear weapons,” he said.

The NPR, which was released on Feb. 2, 2018, is nested in the other new national security strategies: the National Security Strategy, National Defence Strategy and a National Military Strategy, Selva explained.

“All of those set a vector for where we want to move the department, and they are all nested in how we built the fiscal year 2019 budget request,” he said.

The nuclear strategy and acquiring the best and most advanced technologies are vital elements as the U.S. seeks to apply its power and influence around the world, Selva told the conference audience.

The U.S. must continue to build strong alliances, and another important aspect in national security is to maintain the capability and capacity to deploy forces anywhere in the world and project American power where necessary to defend U.S. interests, he said.

“If there is no other reason to bring new technologies and capabilities into our force today, it’s to make sure that no asymmetry from an outside force can prevent us from projecting American force, power and influence at the point in place of our choosing,” Selva said.

The general commended the men and women who serve, saying they make up less than one per cent of the population and are the “secret sauce” to the successes of the Defense Department.

“They’re a unique group of young men and women. What we owe them is good leadership, sound decision tools, the technology that matters on the future battle space, the tools and the training to do the work that we ask them to do,” he said.http://www.thebreakingtimes.com/nucl...nent-pentagon/

[jhpigott]

Will Ripley-@willripleyCNN · 56 min.
Cautionary words from Fmr. US ROK Amb. contender @VictorDCha: “everyone should be aware that this dramatic act of diplomacy...may also take us closer to war. Failed negotiations at the summit level leave all parties with no other recourse for diplomacy.”
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/0...-share&referer=

문재인‏Verified account@moonriver365 5h5 hours agoI have been informed that President Donald J. Trump will meet Chairman Kim Jong-un of the State Affairs Commission of North Korea by May. I would like to express my gratitude to the two leaders who made a difficult decision reflecting their courage and wisdom.

Martyn Williams‏Verified account@martyn_williams 12h12 hours ago
Kim could have delivered the invitation directly through its United Nations mission but chose to use South Korea, thus giving it a stake in the game and signaling its the North's prime partner.