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Stephen Lendman
After consolidating dictatorial powers by a manipulated referendum, a process OSCE observers said “fell short” of international standards, citing numerous irregularities, Erdogan will meet with Vladimir Putin Wednesday in Sochi, Russia, followed by a May 16-17 meeting with Trump in Washington.
He’s part of the geopolitical landscape problem, not the solution - waging war on Kurds at home and abroad, wanting northern Syria and Iraq annexed, pretending to want conflict resolution.
His belligerence and despotic rule belie his duplicitous rhetoric. According to Turkey’s deputy director for Syria policy Mustafa Yurdakul, he and Putin “will discuss, among other issues, the strengthening of the ceasefire regime, the situation with prisoners and issues of mine clearance.”
Turkish troops invaded northern Syria last August. Erdogan talks peace while waging war.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he and Putin will discuss the ongoing conflict in Syria, offering no further elaboration.
Stephen Lendman
At a time of US responsibility for dismal East/West relations, Angela Merkel will meet one-on-one with Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia on Tuesday for the first time in two years.
According to the Kremlin press service, both leaders will discuss “key international problems, including the fight against terrorism, the situation in the Middle East, and the implementation of the Minsk agreements aimed at resolving the Ukrainian crisis,” along with the current state and prospects for improving dismal bilateral relations, notably on trade.
Things were further strained after Germany’s Bundestag was cyberattacked in late April 2015, falsely blamed on Moscow.
Hostility toward Russia remains intense in America and Europe, including a steady stream of anti-Russia disinformation.
Ahead of Merkel’s trip, NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence director Janis Sarts said Germany anchors the EU, falsely adding “Moscow equates a strong Europe with a weakening of Russia’s position and that is the reason for” the cyberattack.
Stephen Lendman
The neocon Washington Post is a CIA house organ. Owner Jeff Bezos is bought, paid for and owned by dark forces running America.
He got a $600 million CIA contract for much more than Amazon Web Services. He publishes what his CIA masters dictate - all fake news all the time on issues mattering most.
In November 2013, he said “(w)e look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA.” He has a longstanding history of currying favors from Washington’s national security establishment.
He’s an enemy of fundamental freedoms and responsible journalism, collaborating with rogue US government elements, betraying WaPo readers.
Eric Zuesse
The disenchanted Reagan Administration official and much-honored economist and political scientist, Paul Craig Roberts, headlined on April 27th, "Washington Plans to Nuke Russia and China” and stated an impressive case that this radical conclusion is realistic, no mere alarmism. Roberts even said in it that "Russia and China cannot simply sit there and await America’s preemptive nuclear strike,” which is an extremely bold and even courageous thing to assert in a country that the rest of the world labels as being overwhelmingly “the greatest threat to peace in the world today” (and this U.S.-government-sponsored global poll was taken only once, in 2013, and because of its finding was never repeated, nor was it mentioned in the government-controlled media).
Dr. Roberts employed his trademark unflinchingly unambiguous style to state that, “The US military/security complex has clearly prevailed over Trump’s intention to normalize relations between the US and Russia, and anti-Russian venom continues to pour out of NATO and Washington’s European vassal states. The majority of the American people seem to have accepted the propaganda that Russia is the number one threat to the United States. With propaganda controlling the explanation, Washington’s aggressive actions are explained as defense against a threat and not as a policy that will end life on earth.”
But how can this possibly be true, given that a war between the U.S. and Russia would ultimately release 15,000 nuclear warheads before the ‘winner’ would even be able to contemplate what he had ‘won’, and the ‘winner’ would almost certainly die from radiation sickness within, at most, a decade, if not from starvation or illnesses or injuries produced by the nuclear-destroyed planet, occurring within even less time than that? We’ll get to that question; he has an answer to it.
Stephen Lendman
On Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry called Washington’s Eastern European deployment a flagrant INF violation, saying:
“The United States has deployed Aegis Ashore anti-missile systems at its base in Romania, and plans…another such system in Poland.”
“(They) incorporate vertical launch systems similar to Mk-41 universal systems that are capable of launching intermediate-range (Tomahawk) cruise missiles…”
For over two decades, Washington repeatedly breached INF mandates, continuing missile tests prohibited by the treaty. It’s boosting production and use of unmanned offensive vehicles, falling under its definition of ground-based cruise missiles.
“Notably, we have been pointing (out US) violations of the INF Treaty for 15 years. But there is no constructive reaction,” said Russia’s Foreign Ministry.
James Petras
Introduction
Every day in unimaginable ways, prominent leaders from the left and the right, from bankers to Parisian intellectuals, are fabricating stories and pushing slogans that denigrate presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. They obfuscate her program, substituting the label ‘extremist’ for her pro-working class and anti-imperialist commitment. Fear and envy over the fact that a new leader heads a popular movement has seeped into Emmanuel “Manny” Macron’s champagne-soaked dinner parties. He has good reason to be afraid: Le Pen addresses the fundamental interests of the vast- majority of French workers, farmers, public employees, unemployed and underemployed youth and older workers approaching retirement.
The mass media, political class and judicial as well as street provocateurs savagely assault Le Pen, distorting her domestic and foreign policies. They are incensed that Le Pen pledges to remove France from NATO’s integrated command - effectively ending its commitment to US directed global wars. Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have enriched bankers and multi-national corporations. Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum over the EU – to decide French submission. Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and, instead, increase trade. She will end France’s intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran and Palestine.
Le Pen is committed to Keynesian demand-driven industrial revitalization as opposed to Emmanuel Macron’s ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda.
Eric Zuesse
Chris Tomson of Al Masdar News headlined on Monday May 1st, “Syrian Army tank takes direct hit from ISIS guided missile in Deir Ezzor” and reported that, “Currently, government forces are less than 1500 meters from linking up Deir Ezzor city to its airbase,” which would be an essential link-up in order for the Syrian government to begin to restore control over the largest city in eastern Syria. Here will be the account of how U.S. President Barack Obama handed that city over to ISIS by means of two key actions, so as to weaken Assad’s government.
Today, Der Zor, or Deir Ezzor, Syria’s major oil center, is controlled by ISIS or Daesh, but Obama’s warplanes bombed the Syrian government troops there on 17 September 2016 and thereby ended the then 5-day-old ceasefire that John Kerry had spent months putting together with Sergei Lavrov, and thus Obama effectively ended all peace negotiations with Russia regarding Syria. Then, when U.S. and Turkish forces attacked ISIS in Mosul Iraq, an escape-path was intentionally left by them for those ISIS jihadists to travel west to Der Zor, so that they could not only take over the oil wells there, but do major damage to the Syrian government’s army forces in that key city, after Obama had bombed there on September 17th. Consequently, Erdogan and Obama were now using ISIS in Mosul as a means for reinforcing ISIS in Syria, in such a way as to provide oil-income to ISIS and also to directly weaken Assad’s government.
Obama never told anyone that he favored ISIS and all jihadists over Assad’s government, but he showed it clearly and consistently by his actions.
Stephen Lendman
Russia knows Washington’s adversarial relations remain longstanding under Republicans or Democrats. Occasional more conciliatory-sounding rhetoric is subterfuge.
America’s deep state wants regime change, Russian sovereignty eliminated, the country transformed into another US vassal state, balkanized for easier control, its resources looted, its people ruthlessly exploited.
America is not Russia’s partner. Pretending otherwise won’t change things. So why does Moscow extend outreach overtures to a nation wanting its own destroyed in its current form?
Why does it pursue diplomatic niceties accomplishing nothing? Why does it waste time on what never worked before, and won’t now with neocons infesting Trump’s administration and Congress?
America doesn’t negotiate. It demands. It breaches virtually all treaties and agreements reached. It can’t be trusted. It has interests, not allies, using other nations to further its imperial objectives.
Eric Zuesse
Here is one detailed analysis, published on 28 March 2017, of the voter-data from the 2016 Clinton-v-Trump Presidential contest.
Here is another, published on 1 May 2017, which goes even deeper.
Both conclude the same thing: Trump won mainly because of people who had voted for Obama in 2012, voting for Trump in 2016.
Thus, the two separate most-recent and most-detailed studies of the data regarding the 2016 election, indicate exactly the same main reason why Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump: it isn’t “turnout” (as the Democratic Party propaganda has been claiming to have been the chief reason) but instead it is voters who had voted for Obama against Romney in 2012, voting for Trump against Hillary in 2016 — voters who were so disappointed in the (as it turned out) Romneyish Obama, and considered Hillary to embody Obama’s deceits and bad policies (such as her NAFTA and his TPP and Wall Street bailouts) even more than Obama embodied those deceits and bad policies. She was viewed in the worst way, by these voters — the voters who (as both studies show) decided the election.
Stephen Lendman
Contrast the two countries. North Korea never attacked another nation throughout its history. In June 1950, it responded to South Korea’s aggression, Truman’s war.
Israel wages permanent war on Palestine, terror-bombs Syria and Lebanon at its discretion.
Which country poses a greater threat to world peace, stability and security? Which one is more likely to attack another nation? Which leadership is more recklessly dangerous?
The US/Israeli axis threatens humanity’s survival. Days earlier, Israel’s Arab-hating ultranationalist/fascist defense minister Avigdor Lieberman called North Korean leader Kim Jong-un a “madman,” heading a “crazy and radical group, undermining global stability” - the dubious dishonor applying to America and Israel.
Both countries are nuclear armed and dangerous. They each maintain banned chemical, biological, radiological and other terror weapons.
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