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Washington, Secretive Global elites “Bilderberg” group gathers in US

June 2, 2017 by administrator

Global elites have gathered outside Washington, DC, to discuss Trump, transatlantic relations, globalization and the EU. The secretive Bilderberg meetings have spawned conspiracy theories.

Elite bankers, politicians, business leaders, academics and journalists huddle behind closed doors for meetings in Chantilly, Virginia, on Thursday to debate a range of global issues.

The four-day Bilderberg meeting this year gathers 131 elites from 21 countries for discussion, according to a statement from the group.

The group – two thirds from Europe and the rest from North America – have convened every year since 1954 to discuss major issues facing the world.

Key topics for this year’s meeting include a “progress report” on the Trump administration, transatlantic relations, Russia, the Middle East, China and the future of the EU, among other issues.

Discussions are designed to be private, according to the group, in order to allow a free sharing of ideas. Some top media representatives attend, but are not allowed to report.

“As such, they can take time to listen, reflect and gather insights. There is no desired outcome, no minutes are taken and no report is written. Furthermore, no resolutions are proposed, no votes are taken, and no policy statements are issued,” according to a statement.

Joining this year’s group are several officials from the Trump administration, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and the hawkish Republican Senator Tom Cotton are also attending

Invitees also include sharp critics of Trump, including Eric Schmidt, executive director of Google’s parent company.

Nine people from Germany are attending from business, media and finance. They include the chairman of Bayer, Werner Baumann; the CEO of media giant Axel Springer, Mathias Döpfner; Airbus CEO Thomas Enders; and Deutsche Borse CEO Carsten Kengeter.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, IMF chief Christine Lagarde, former CIA head John Brennan and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger are among the other high-profile names attending.

As usual, anti-globalization protesters are expected to descend outside the venue. The secretive nature of the group has spawned a trove of conspiracy theories.

A new Syrian rebel group has vowed to ‘resist’ Turkey’s military incursion

September 7, 2016 by administrator

The Syrian National Resistance announces its formation Tuesday. ANHA News via Now Lebanon

BEIRUT – A group claiming to represent “national Syrian forces” has vowed to fight Turkey’s military incursion in Syria, announcing its formation in a north Aleppo town that is under the administrative control of the de-facto autonomous Kurdish government.

On Tuesday, the Syrian National Resistance held a press conference in Tel Rifaat to introduce its founding declaration, which was read out by Rezan Hedo, an independent member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces’ political wing.

“Oh Syrian brothers, people of the region have suffered from the decades of Turkish-Ottoman rule, [which] has left us with only ignorance, backwardness, hatred, sectarianism and fighting between brothers at the same time as our wealth was taken away as well as parts of our land,” the speech, which was replete with nationalistic terminology, began.

The new group went on to launch further broadsides against Turkey, accusing Syria’s northern neighbor of perpetrating “the worst forms of genocide” against people in the region, including Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and Chaldeans.

“Today, [Turkey] has returned with a new look but with the same [old] mentality; to occupy other parts of our Syrian land after sowing discord and infighting between Syrians through their support for terror,” the statement added, in reference to Ankara’s military operation in northern Syria.

The Syrian National Resistance’s announcement, which made no explicit reference to Kurdish forces in northern Syria, presented its goals, which include:

1. “Resolving the disputes between the different Syrian components and uniting their powers to build a united, democratic Syria”;

2. “Confronting the Turkish occupation and deterring it from achieving its objectives; as well as restoring all Syrian land, from Jarablus to Liwa al-Iskenderun,” in reference to Turkey’s Hatay Province, which was annexed from Syria in 1939, and;

3. “Future work with all national forces to liberate every inch of occupied Syrian land.”

On August 24, Syrian rebel groups supported by the Turkish army crossed into Syria in an offensive to roll back ISIS and prevent Kurdish-led troops from controlling more territory along the border. These troops have since cleared ISIS from the border, while at the same time engaging with battles against the SDF north of Manbij.

A Turkish soldier on an armoured personnel carrier waves as it is driven from the border back to their base in Karkamis on the Turkish-Syrian border in the southeastern Gaziantep province, Turkey, August 27, 2016. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

The Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its People’s Protection Units (YPG) vociferously oppose the Turkish campaign, with PYD co-chief Saleh Muslim warning Ankara that it “will be defeated in the Syrian quagmire, just like ISIS.”

The PYD has made no official statement on the formation of the Syrian National Resistance, which was covered extensively by the ANHA news agency, which is close to Syria’s Kurdish fighting forces.

ANHA described the Syrian National Resistance as a coalition of “Syrian national forces and figures,” without specifying which groups joined the new formation.

Rezan Hedo, the head of the group’s political bureau, explained in aninterview with Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar that the Syrian National Resistance counts on “support from Syrians of different political orientations, between [regime] supporters and opponents.”

He also stressed that anti-Turkish alliance has no ties with the international coalition fighting ISIS, which backs the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-new-syrian-rebel-group-has-vowed-to-resist-turkeys-military-incursion-2016-9

Azerbaijan has always wished to see Turkey in Minsk Group, say Armenian officials

June 4, 2015 by administrator

Azerbaijan’s proposal to involve Turkey in the OSCE Minsk Group is what the country has been dreaming about for long, a deputy foreign minister of Armenia has said, not considering the move absolutely surprising.
“It has always been Azerbaijan’s dream. The problem has absolutely nothing to do with Germany; the main target is Turkey, which is identical with Azerbaijan,” Shavarsh Kocharyan told Tert.am, commenting on a statement made by the OSCE chairperson-in-office.
In the course of his recent visit to Yerevan, Ivica Dačić (who is also a deputy prime minister of Serbia) said that Azerbaijan had submitted to him a proposal calling for expanding the mission’s frameworks to Turkey and Germany. The European official admitted meantime that such a proposal wasn’t absolutely something new.
According to Artak Zakaryan, Head of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Foreign Relations (ruling Republican Party), not all the 11 member states of the OSCE are potentially able to handle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with the same effectiveness as do the current co-chairing states (US, France and Russia). report tert.am
Zakaryan said he knows that proposals the kind have been made repeatedly, both by the OSCE and different other countries which tried to offer support to the peace settlement efforts.
“It is already commendable, and the fact that the states and international organizations back the Minsk Group process, offering their international and political support is a sufficient guarantee for the problem to remain in the peaceful settlement phase for 20 years running. But there is an extremely important process that needs to be guaranteed by all the states and organizations which want to see the problem in a peaceful settlement phase. It requires putting an end to Azerbaijan’s destructive efforts and bringing the country to a platform that will make discussions over details possible,” he added.
Asked why then such a proposal was heard from the mouth of the OSCE’s top official, Zakaryan replied, “If we look back at the history of the conflict settlement process, we always had proposals in most different periods, but that doesn’t certainly imply a change in the conflict’s logic. And that logic cannot change in the current round either, as there is a clear understanding of a very important factor: the entire logic is based upon on the ideology of international norms and principles and has a detailed coverage, i.e. – the discussions held periodically in different formats – open and close – with respect to all the possible problems.”
The Republican lawmaker said he sees that the Minsk Group’s current format for now remains the most effective option promising a successful outcome in the talks. Zakaryan said he doesn’t think that the different proposals voiced periodically by Azerbaijan, Turkey or other states matter too much in the current negotiation process. “Armenia, as one of the parties to the conflict, has its clear-cut approach to the problem: that is, the exercise of the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s right to self-determination. And Armenia is the guarantor of the Nagorno-Karabakh population’s security,” he said, adding that many solutions need to be sought in the second Armenian republic.
Zakaryan said he sees also positive implications stemming from the statement. “If there is a proposal, there is also a process in which different problems are being discussed,” he said, stressing the need of focusing more on the constructiveness of the proposal-maker.
“For that we need clear assurances that Azerbaijan has a will to lead the political process to a peaceful settlement, as well as a genuine desire to see real solutions through constructive processes,” he added.

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Azerbaijan: Rights Group Representative Refused Entry

March 31, 2015 by administrator

Human Rights Watch Researcher Planned to Monitor Trials

(Berlin) – Azerbaijani authorities on March 30, 2015, refused to allow a Human Rights Watch researcher to enter the country. The senior South Caucasus researcher, Giorgi Gogia, was planning to attend the trials of two Azerbaijani human rights defenders who were arrested on bogus charges and have been behind bars awaiting trial. Report hnw.org

When Gogia arrived at Heydar Aliyev International Airport, authorities refused to allow him into the country, but would not provide an explanation. Immigration officials took his passport, and required him to remain in the passport hall. Thirty-one hours later they handed his passport to the flight crew aboard the plane Gogia took back to Tbilisi. No explanation was provided.

“Barring Giorgi Gogia from attending the trial hearings shows just how far Azerbaijan’s authorities have taken their crackdown on human rights,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “They’ve ruthlessly silenced many critical voices inside the country, and now they don’t want to let anyone in to bear witness to what they are doing.”

It is the first time that Azerbaijani authorities have denied Human Rights Watch staff members entry to the country.

For years the Azerbaijani government has had a poor human rights record, but in the past year a new crackdown has led to the arrest of the country’s human rights leaders and the forced shuttering of many independent groups.

Gogia had planned to attend hearings for Rasul Jafarov and Intigam Aliyev, both arrested in August, who are being tried in separate cases. Aliyev, one of Azerbaijan’s most respected human rights lawyers, is on trial on charges of tax evasion, abuse of power, illegal business activities, and embezzlement. Jafarov, who is being tried on similar charges, had planned a local “Sports for Rights” campaign, to draw attention to the human rights situation in the lead-up to the European Games, which Baku will host from June 12 to 28.

In the last year, the Azerbaijani authorities have used a range of bogus criminal charges, including narcotics and weapons possession, tax evasion, hooliganism, incitement, and even treason, to arrest or imprison at least 35 human rights defenders, political and civil activists, journalists, and bloggers. The crackdown has prompted dozens of others to flee the country or go into hiding. Many of the activists face similar charges, suggesting the punitive and political nature of the allegations.

In recent months Azerbaijani authorities also froze the bank accounts of numerous independent civic groups and their leaders, forcing these organizations to suspend their work or close. The government has also refused to register foreign grants and increased government control of foreign funding, making it virtually impossible for groups that criticize the government to function. The government has for many years harassed independent newspapers and television stations and forced many independent media outlets to shut down.

Human Rights Watch said other governments and international organizations should demand an end to the crackdown and the immediate and unconditional release of wrongfully imprisoned human rights defenders and journalists.

“It’s shocking that less than three months before the opening of the European Games, when the government is welcoming the world to Baku, it is closing the country to outside scrutiny,” Williamson said.

Photo essay highlights the plight of 12 people serving or facing long prison terms in Azerbaijan, apparently in retaliation for criticizing government policies.