GOP Senate Caves on Immigration - So What Else is New?

Backstabbed Again

"If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can't stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again." 

Ann Coulter

Republican leadership in the Senate is fully caving to the demands of Democratic lawmakers calling for a so-called “clean” Department of Homeland Security funding bill that leaves President Obama’s executive amnesty intact, but Democrats are still balking at the plan.

“I’ve indicated to the Democratic leader that I’d be happy to have his cooperation to advance consideration of a clean DHS bill, which would carry us through September 30,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told reporters Tuesday. “With Democratic cooperation on a position they have been advocating for the last two months, we could have that vote very quickly.”

“This is a total victory for the Obama position,” said a GOP senator unhappy with McConnell’s plan. “The House hasn’t passed it yet, so they might could come up with something. But that’s a grim prospect.”

But Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid balked at the offer, saying Democrats would continue to filibuster the bill until House Speaker John Boehner indicated he was willing to also pass it through the House.

“So now all eyes are on Speaker Boehner,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) told reporters. “Will he fully fund homeland security in a separate bill sent it to the president for a signature and then both houses can debate immigration — as long as the majority in each house wants to — or is he going to go back to his old way and say ‘I’ll do this, that, or the other thing but I won’t fund homeland security?’”

(Breitbart)

Bottom Line
The United States does not need two open borders political parties.  The GOP left the borders wide open when they controlled Congress from 1995 to 2007 and today they find every possible excuse not to act.
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The time has come for a new political party, a Tea Party if you will.  Someone has to stand up for America while there is still an America left to stand up for.

Iraqi Army Downs Two British Planes Carrying Weapons to ISIS

The Truth or More Lies?

(Editor  -  I don't believe anything I hear from the Middle East.  But this one has a certain ring of truth considering ISIS is still getting arms and funding from US "allies".  Reports coming from Iran’s FAR News Agency say the Iraq Army has shot down two British planes delivering weapons to ISIS.)


(From Global Reasearch)  -  Iraq’s army has shot down two British planes as they were carrying weapons for the ISIL terrorists in Al-Anbar province, a senior lawmaker disclosed on Monday.

“The Iraqi Parliament’s National Security and Defense Committee has access to the photos of both planes that are British and have crashed while they were carrying weapons for the ISIL,” Head of the committee Hakem al-Zameli said, according to a Monday report of the Arabic-language information center of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

He said the Iraqi parliament has asked London for explanations in this regard.

The senior Iraqi legislator further unveiled that the government in Baghdad is receiving daily reports from people and security forces in al-Anbar province on numerous flights by the US-led coalition planes that airdrop weapons and supplies for ISIL in terrorist-held areas.

Al-Zameli underlined that  the coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.

“There are proofs and evidence for the US-led coalition’s military aid to ISIL terrorists through air(dropped cargoes),” he told FNA in January.

He noted that the members of his committee have already proved that the US planes have dropped advanced weaponry, including anti-aircraft weapons, for the ISIL, and that it has set up an investigation committee to probe into the matter.

“The US drops weapons for the ISIL on the excuse of not knowing about the whereabouts of the ISIL positions and it is trying to distort the reality with its allegations. 

He noted that the committee had collected the data and the evidence provided by eyewitnesses, including Iraqi army officers and the popular forces, and said, “These documents are given to the investigation committee … and the necessary measures will be taken to protect the Iraqi airspace.”

Also in January, another senior Iraqi legislator reiterated that the US-led coalition is the main cause of ISIL’s survival in Iraq.

“The international coalition is only an excuse for protecting the ISIL and helping the terrorist group with equipment and weapons,” Jome Divan, who is member of the al-Sadr bloc in the Iraqi parliament, said.

CNN - ISIS Gets US Weapons

Hollywood is giving you the finger

By Gary;

The Oscars came and went and Hollywood once again extended their collective middle finger to America and the world.

Simply, the Oscars are a giant, public self-masturbatory wet dream on live TV.  It is narcissism on steroids.

We have seen the moronic speeches before:  "I want to thank Mrs. Jones my kindergarten teacher, Bill my psychiatrist and Jose my drug dealer.  Without all of you I could not be this great person that you worship today."

Bullshit.  I stopped watching this farce decades ago.

The Academy works overtime to NOT nominate any film or actor that the public actually cares about.  They love to nominate obscure artsy films like Whiplash ($11 million box office) or Birdman ($33 million box office).  For example, Julianne Moore won for Still Alice ($7 million box office).

If a movie dares to be popular with the public it is totally fucked at awards time.

No one questions that Samuel L. Jackson is one of the great actors of our time.  But for some strange reason he was not nominated for best supporting actor for his outstanding performance as Nick Fury in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Could the reason possibly be that the movie grossed $714 million and was popular with the public?

I could go on and on, but you get the point.  The Oscars are a phony dog and pony show designed for ratings and to make cold hard cash from advertising.

I spent my Sunday night watching The Walking Dead.

2014 People's Choice Awards

The 41st People's Choice Awards, honoring the best in popular culture for 2014, were held January 7, 2015.  When the people are asked directly, the list of movies, actors and actresses is radically different from the phony Elitist list provided by Hollywood.

(41st People's Choice Awards)

Hollywood wants your cash, but they don't a
crap about what you like at awards time.

Updated 2020 Reapportionment Projections

Political Power Moves South and West

• Population and power moving South and West does not necessarily help the GOP.  Colorado, Virginia and Florida are projected to gain electoral college votes, but all three states voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.

(From Sabato's Crystal Ball)  -  At the end of 2014, the Census Bureau released its 2014 population estimates. This provides new fodder for political geeks when looking ahead to the 2020 census and its major political impact: congressional reapportionment.

Unfortunately, the Census Bureau doesn’t release state-level population projections anymore, just national estimates up to the year 2060, leaving it to others to extrapolate where the 50 states will be on April 1, 2020. The well-regarded firm Election Data Services — you may have seen some of their big election maps — put together a set of projections and found that, if trends continue, somewhere between 14 and 17 states may gain or lose U.S. House seats after the 2020 census, as shown above in Map 1.

Winners  -  Based on EDS’s projections, California (+1), Colorado (+1), Florida (+1), North Carolina (+1), and Texas (+3) are in line to gain at least one seat. In some cases, EDS found that Arizona, Oregon, and/or Virginia may also pick up an additional seat.

Losers  -  On the other side of the ledger, Alabama (-1), Illinois (-1), Michigan (-1), Minnesota (-1), Ohio (-1), Pennsylvania (-1), Rhode Island (-1), and West Virginia (-1) are positioned to lose a seat, and in at least one projection New York also lost one.

These changes are a broad continuation of the same patterns we have seen over the last few decades. States in the South and West, mainly in the Sun Belt, continue to see larger increases in population relative to states in the Northeast and Midwest. As a result, successive reapportionments keep shifting more and more seats to Southern and Western states at the expense of Northeastern and Midwestern states, as a Crystal Ball analysis from last year explored.

The gains or losses are worth exploring. The biggest winner for the second straight cycle will probably be Texas, with projections showing it likely to gain three seats after it gained four following the 2010 census. Should it gain three, the Lone Star State will have 39 House members, consolidating its position as the second-largest state in the U.S.

Looking further ahead, if it gains at least one more seat after the 2030 census — a seemingly likely outcome given recent trends — the country will have two states, California and Texas, with 40 or more representatives in Congress for the first time in its history, though the 435-seat House has only existed since 1910. Having two 40-plus states almost happened after the 1970 reapportionment but just missed: While California crossed the 40-seat threshold to 43 seats, New York fell from 41 to 39.

Until 2010, California had gained at least one seat in every reapportionment since it became a state in 1850, but the latest estimates suggest that it may again add a seat after 2020. In December 2014, the Census Bureau announced that Florida had surpassed New York to become the third-largest state in the union.

Read more at Center for Politics.

Private donors from Gulf Oil States Bankroll 100,000 ISIS Fighters

Worry about your friends, 

not your enemies

• As I have Blogged over and over, the weapons ISIS used to attack Syria and invade Iraq did not appear by magic on a beautiful spring day.  Since Syria is backed by Russia and Iran that means ISIS was deliberately funded and armed by the CIA and/or our Islamist "allies" like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.  More and more we are seeing articles come out talking about this.

(From Counter Punch)  -  Islamic State is still receiving significant financial support from Arab sympathisers outside Iraq and Syria, enabling it to expand its war effort, says a senior Kurdish official.

The US has being trying to stop such private donors in the Gulf oil states sending to Islamic State (Isis) funds that help pay the salaries of fighters who may number well over 100,000.

Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of the Kurdish President, Massoud Barzani, told The Independent on Sunday: “There is sympathy for Da’esh [the Arabic acronym for IS, also known as Isis] in many Arab countries and this has translated into money – and that is a disaster.”  He pointed out that until recently financial aid was being given more or less openly by Gulf states to the opposition in Syria – but by now most of these rebel groups have been absorbed into IS and Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda affiliate, so it is they “who now have the money and the weapons”.

Mr Hussein would not identify the states from which the funding for IS comes today, but implied that they were the same Gulf oil states that financed Sunni Arab rebels in Iraq and Syria in the past.

Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran member of the Iraqi Kurdish leadership who recently retired from the Iraqi parliament, said there was a misunderstanding as to why Gulf countries paid off IS. It is not only that donors are supporters of IS, but that the movement “gets money from the Arab countries because they are afraid of it”, he says. “Gulf countries give money to Da’esh so that it promises not to carry out operations on their territory.”

Iraqi leaders in Baghdad privately express similar suspicions that IS –  with a territory the size of Great Britain and a population of six million fighting a war on multiple fronts, from Aleppo to the Iranian border – could not be financially self-sufficient, given the calls on its limited resources.

On Tuesday night they made a surprise attack with between 300 and 400 fighters, many of them North Africans from Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, on Kurdish forces 40 miles west of the Kurdish capital, Irbil. The Kurds say that 34 IS fighters were killed in fighting and by US air strikes. At the same time, IS was battling for control of the town of al-Baghdadi, several hundred miles away in Anbar province. Despite forecasts by a CentCom spokesman last week that the tide has turned and that IS is on the retreat there is little sign of this on the ground.

On the contrary, IS appears to have the human and financial resources to fight a long war, though both are under strain. According to interviews by The Independent with people living in Mosul reached by phone, or with recent refugees from the city, IS officials are conscripting at least one young man from every family in Mosul, which has a population of 1.5 million. It has drafted a list of draconian punishments for those not willing to fight, starting with 80 lashes and ending with execution.

All these new recruits receive pay, as well as their keep, which until recently was $500 (£324) a month but has now been cut to about $350. Officers and commanders receive much more. A local source, who did not want to be named, says that foreign fighters, of whom there are an estimated 20,000 in IS, get a much higher salary – starting at $800 a month.

“I know three foreign fighters,” said Ahmad, a 45-year-old shopkeeper still working in Mosul. “I usually see them at checkpoints in our neighbourhood: one is Turkish and the others are Europeans. Some of them speak a little Arabic. I know them well because they buy soft drinks from the shops in our neighbourhood. The Turkish one is my customer. He says he talks to his family using the satellite internet service that is available for the foreigners, who have excellent privileges in terms of salaries, spoils and even captives.”

Read more at Counter Punch.org

France deploys aircraft carrier against ISIS

The French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle
(Reuters / Stringer)

I Smell Bullshit

• Call me a "crazy" Blogger, but as a military historian I smell political CYA Bullshit.
• #1  -  France sent a massive 40 soldiers to help train Iraqis and #2 their aircraft carrier will be in place an entire 8 weeks.  One never turns down help, but this looks more like a public relations stunt than war.

France's flagship aircraft carrier is now officially participating in the US-led military operation against the Islamic State (IS).

Speaking Monday aboard the Charles de Gaulle, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that the warship will remain stationed in the Persian Gulf for eight weeks, joining American supercarrier USS Carl Vinson in conducting airstrikes against IS positions in Iraq.

According to French daily Le Monde, the mission got underway early this morning when several Rafale fighter planes stationed on the Charles de Gaulle were deployed reports Vice News.

The Charles de Gaulle, a 42,000-ton, nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is currently positioned 125 miles off the northern coast of Bahrain. It has not participated in a military operation since France's 2011 military intervention in Libya.

More than just an aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle is the backbone of Task Force 473, a carrier battle group that includes an entire fleet of military escorts. The group, which set sail from the southern French port of Toulon on January 13, includes 12 Rafale fighter aircraft, nine Super-Étendards strike fighters, a Hawkeye early warning radar aircraft, and four helicopters, as well as a refueling tanker ship and the British HMS Kent anti-submarine frigate.

Task Force 473 will significantly add to the resources already mobilized by France as part of Operation Chammal, the codename for a series of airstrikes on IS targets in Iraq that began in September 2014.

On January 13, less than a week after the terror attacks that left 17 dead in Paris, lawmakers from the French National Assembly and Senate voted almost unanimously to continue Operation Chammal.

Chammal has mobilized 600 troops in the Gulf region in support of the efforts of the US-led coalition against IS. France has also contributed nine Rafale and six Mirage 2000D fighter jets to the mission, as well as a Breguet Atlantic maritime patrol aircraft and a KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft.

The deployment of the Charles de Gaulle will significantly reduce the time it takes for these aircraft — currently based in the United Arab Emirates and Jordan — to reach targets in Iraq.

Vincent Groizeleau, editor-in-chief of the French maritime news site Mer et Marine, told VICE News in January that the new positioning would "halve the flight time" for French fighters, significantly improving the country's air capabilities in Iraq.

France also announced plans in January to dispatch 40 soldiers to train Iraqi forces in Baghdad and Kurdish peshmerga forces stationed in the Kurdish capital of Erbil in northern Iraq.

The French aircraft carrier's stint in the Gulf is just one stop on a five-month mission that will see the warship head to India in April to take part in military exercises. France's defense minister is currently in New Delhi negotiating a multi-billion dollar arms sale that includes 126 Rafale fighters.

Kurd Commander: "“There really is no Iraqi army"

Kurdish Peshmerga forces

Someone didn't get the memo

• First, announcing a coming offensive against ISIS to the press in detail is an act of treason.  Period.
• But it looks like the Kurds didn't get the memo about lying to the public and the media.  So they actually told the truth.  How refreshing.

OUTSIDE SULTAN ABDULLAH, IRAQ 

Major Deliar Shouki, the commander of a string of Kurdish fire bases less than 20 miles from Mosul, admitted he was skeptical when he’d heard the news last week that a U.S. official had told Pentagon reporters that 25,000 Iraqi troops would attack the Islamic State-held city perhaps as soon as April.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article10937564.html#storylink=cpy

“There really is no Iraqi army, so I don’t know where they get the idea that they can train 25,000 soldiers in two months to fight house to house in Mosul,” he said on Friday as he gave a visiting journalist a tour of his men’s positions on the outskirts of the tiny hamlet of Sultan Abdullah, which lies about midway between Mosul and the Kurdish capital of Irbil.

Only a few hundred yards of open ground separates his troops from the Islamic State positions, with Shouki’s men dug in deeply on the tops of hills and the Islamic State fighters occupying the tiny village below. Nearly every night, the area is the scene World War I-style battles as the extremists attempt to storm the Kurdish trenches, only to be thrown back, with heavy casualties.

“It just seems to me like the Iraqi (Arabs) lack a certain morale to be soldiers, and I don’t want to directly accuse them of anything, but every time they fight Daash, they lose ground and equipment that ends up being used against us,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “It’s very suspicious and I don’t think they want to fight them.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article10937564.html#storylink=cpy

Both Shouki and the American-made armored vehicle he uses to shuttle ammunition and evacuate the wounded from his front line area are examples of how the Kurdish peshmerga adapted after the Islamic State stormed into Mosul and took over much of northern and central Iraq last summer.

Shouki isn’t exactly a major, it’s what his men call him. In fact, though, he’d retired from the peshmerga after years of fighting Saddam Hussein; when he volunteered to return as the Islamic State threatened, he was given command of one of the most bitterly contested sections of northern Iraq.

And his command vehicle once carried U.S. troops before being given to the Iraqi army when the Americans left in 2011. It was captured by the Islamic State in June when the Iraqi Army abandoned its equipment and fled before the extremists’ advance. The peshmerga captured it in battle a few months ago and immediately put it to use.

“We need more armored vehicles and heavier weapons,” Shouki explained. “We fight to defend Kurdistan and the coalition air strikes have been very helpful but we need [American] special forces ‘boots on the ground’ to help guide them in and heavier weapons if we are to drive them out of Iraq.”

“Americans need to understand we are fighting them here for you because if they stay in Mosul and take Irbil, they’ll come to New York and Washington eventually,” he added.

Sitting with a group of his commanders over a hot lunch of chicken and eggplant brought to the base by a local family as a thank you to the troops, the commanders of this section of the front line dismiss the notion that any major operation led by the central government in Baghdad to recapture Mosul is imminent.

“The Arabs can’t take Tikrit and Bayji,” laughed one commander, referring to two much smaller cities held by the Islamic State. “There is no Iraqi army, just Shiite militias.”

Another dignitary, dressed in traditional Kurdish garb and heavily armed who declined to give his name but described his occupation as an “arms dealer for Kurdistan,” said the only capable fighting forces that the Iraqi Arabs can field are the Iranian-trained, -led and -equipped militias, which he said, to much agreement in the room, aren’t interested in Sunni Arab Mosul, for both sectarian and strategic reasons.

“Shiite militias and Kurds are going into Sunni Arab Mosul?” he asked. “We Kurds will fight to protect our homeland but Mosul is not, it’s the Arabs’ home. And the Shiite only care about protecting Baghdad and their areas in the south from the Sunnis of Anbar,” the Iraqi province to the west of Baghdad that has largely fallen to the Islamic State.

“We are the only ones fighting and dying,” he said.

Read More at the Miami Herald.

Members of the Kurdish Peshmerga 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article10937564.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article10937564.html#storylink=cpy

Now Robots Are Taking Away Hospital Jobs

Welcome to Permanent Unemployment

• Jobs of every kind, in every field, are rapidly and permanently being abolished by robots, the Internet and outsourcing.
• The time is here when your MRI scan will be emailed to a "qualified" doctor to review in Bangladesh or Kenya at perhaps 15% of the cost of an American citizen doctor.

PinnacleHealth System is using eight robots in situations where time or distance prevent the needed doctor from being in the room.

The robots are equipped with things including powerful cameras which can provide a full view of the patient, or zoom in close enough to even test the reflex of the patient's pupil. They can transmit video and sound to a doctor located elsewhere, and enable the doctor to speak to the patient and attending caregivers, who also can see the doctor.

Dr. Christian Caicedo said such robots are the "future of medicine." Falling under the heading of telemedicine, they will become increasingly necessary as things such as the aging of the baby boomers and more people with health insurance stretch the supply of doctors reports Penn Live.

PinnacleHealth has a robot stationed at J.C. Blair Memorial Hospital in Huntingdon County, which is an affiliate of PinnacleHealth, and which is located in a rural area where a specialist such as a neurologist for a stroke patient might not be immediately available. In such cases, the specialist can use the robot to examine and access the patient, and do things such as order medication and tests.

PinnacleHealth is also using robots within its Harrisburg-area facilities in non-urgent instances such as when a specific doctor's expertise is required, but the doctor's physical presence is not. Caicedo, an emergency room doctor and medical director of West Shore Hospital, said a robot can allow a doctor to see several patients when, because of time and distance, the doctor could otherwise see only one.

PinnacleHealth has several versions of robots, including one that is self-propelled, and can be moved via remote control. Or tracks can be placed on the floor to guide the robot from a storage area to patient care areas. Doctors can control the robot and interact with the patient via computer, pad or smartphone.

Say Good-Bye to Jobs
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Hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area are using robots called Tugs to take over many of the everyday tasks involved in tending to patients. The bots are programmed to deliver food and drugs, pick up waste and laundry, and to travel the halls without crashing into people, according to an article in Wired — though it's clear the story's writer doesn't get a warm, fuzzy feeling from them.
.
.The University of California, San Francisco hospital recently began using the machines, and the nearby El Camino hospital has had a fleet since 2009. Hospital administrators say the rolling electronic porters can help bring down the "absurd" costs of healthcare in America, the article says, mostly by limiting the ranks of hospital staff.  (CNBC.com) 

Medical droid from Star Wars

The Future of American Workers
The moronic politicians and TV talking heads blunder forward thinking the future will look like the past, and they talk about new jobs and economic recovery.  
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Those of us still able to think for ourselves see the writing on the wall.  Technology, robotics, the Internet and outsourcing are permanently abolishing jobs by the millions.  At some point the consumer economy will collapse as people with jobs to buy products simply vanish.
,
The successful political party of the future will run on a "Jobs for Humans" platform.  It will be a  return of the Luddites as millions of people permanently made unemployable by machines demand help.

The greatest show on Earth! - Rio Carnival

Brazil

The World's Most Beautiful Women

Rio de Janeiro's Carnival came to a glittering end this last week with a mind-blowing evening of sequin-fuelled revelry, blaring music and scantily-clad dancers at the Sambadrome.

Tens of thousands of people gathered on both sides of the imposing venue to watch and sing along as Rio's famous Samba schools brought the five-day festival to a spectacular close.

(Daily Mail)      (Telegraph)

Turkish Forces Attack Syrian Troops

Lies piled on top of lies

• The Middle East has always been a pit of snakes.  This weekend we saw the Turkish Army invade northern Syria supposedly on a "rescue" mission.  Hell, things are so fucked up the cover story might even be true.
• Below is a Left-Wing Blog post about the CIA, Obama and our Islamist "allies".  True Leftists (like true Conservatives) do not believe the lies out of Washington about the Middle East wars.  We saw the US and our Islamist allies pump Syria full of weapons and then we expressed shock that those weapons were used.  100% Bullshit.

(From The People's Voice)  -  Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government partners with Obama's dirty war on Syria. CIA and US Special Forces arm and train IS terrorists in Turkish territory together with its military.

A Thursday agreed on deal affirms what's been ongoing all along covertly. Once readied for combat, death squad extremists head cross border to wage war on Assad.

For nearly four years, Obama waged proxy war to oust him - complicit with Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States, Jordan, Britain, and France.

In January, Pentagon sources confirmed deploying hundreds more US special forces and support personnel to train thousands of anti-Assad fighters - IS, Al Qaeda, Nusra Front and other terrorists called "moderates."

Former US ambassador to Syria Robert Ford admits moderates don't exist in numbers and motivation enough to matter. Claims otherwise are Big Lies.

On February 18, McClathy publications headlined "Once a top booster, ex-US envoy no longer backs arming Syrian rebels."

Saying they're jihadists. Extremist groups hold most areas outside government control. Ford calls Obama's Syrian policy "a huge failure…singularly unsuccessful."

The tomb, around 37 kilometers from the Turkish border,
is regarded as Turkish territory by international agreements
and was protected by around 40 soldiers.

"It is impossible to field an effective opposition when no one even agrees on who or what is the enemy…(W)alk away and say there's nothing we can do about Syria."

Last year, ALMONITOR reported wiretap evidence revealing Turkish troops attacking Syrian forces.

Evidence shows Ankara supplies IS and other extremist anti-Assad groups with weapons, munitions and artillery support.

"(W)iretap transcripts reveal that the opposition forces at Kassab inform people in Turkey of the coordinates of Syrian army positions around Kassab, and then Turkey shells those locations," said ALMONITOR.

Turkish forces shot down at least one Syrian warplane. Ankara's Foreign Ministry consistently lies claiming no Turkish involvement in "supporting the opposition forces by allowing them to use Turkish territory or in any other way." against Assad.

"Wiretaps tell a different story," said ALMONITOR. Showing Turkey directly supports extremist anti-Assad elements.

On February 19, Alakhbar headlined "Turkey Attempting to Thwart Syrian Army Operation in the Aleppo Countryside."

Ankara "involved itself in the battle raging in Aleppo's northern countryside." Heavy fighting continues. Turkey supports anti-Assad groups.

Transfers their fighters, weapons and munitions from Turkish territory to Aleppo. "Ankara opened the border to (anti-Assad fighters) and supplied them with what they need to preempt a new military reality in the area…"

US-supported IS and other extremist groups can't defeat Assad on their own. Or with US bombing short of heavily targeting Damascus, other government held areas and Syrian military positions.


War could continue for years. Tens of thousands more could die. Perhaps millions more uprooted. Nearly half of Syria's population is displaced.

Read more at The Peoples Voice.org

Turkish Troops Invade
Turkish forces entered Syria on Saturday to stage a rescue – of the thousand-year-old remains of Suleyman Shah, the grandfather of the man who would found the Ottoman Empire..
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Sunday that all 38 Turkish soldiers who had been guarding the tomb were brought home safely in the mission that involved hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles.(Haaretz.com)