Greece's new ambassador to Iran said that his country seeks friendship and strategic ties as the European Union continues its sanctions regime despite breakthroughs in nuclear negotiations.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani welcomed Greece's new ambassador to the country, who told the President that his country wants to develop a strategic partnership with Iran.

The move would be a first for any EU member state, as the organization previously pursued sanctions against Iran.

"Iran is a key country in the region and Athens is determined to be Tehran's friend and strategic partner," incoming Ambassador Georgio Aifantis said.

Rouhani commended Greece for its moderate stance on Iran and opposition on the use of sanctions.

"Tehran welcomes better relations with Athens, and we appreciate the country's moderate positions on Iran's nuclear program," Rouhani said.

Rouhani added the use of sanctions in the modern world is unacceptable and that the era of using sanctions to pressure countries is over.

"Maidan was also our operation. The snipers were trained in Poland. These terrorists shot 40 demonstrators and 20 police officers on the Maidan in order to provoke disorders," said the EU Parliament Deputy and presidential candidate Janusz Korwin-Mikke.

JKM: Poland does not have a conflict of interests with Russia. We have no problems on the Polish-Russian border. Fostering a militaristic state of mind is not useful to us, only to the US. It's hard to agree with people like Vladimir Zhirinovskiy, since he is crazy, but he is fair to call us as Washington's stooges.

Wirtualna Polska: But such sentiments are only natural given Russia's aggressive policies. It's difficult to ignore Iskander missiles on our borders.

JKM: Just a second! The Iskanders appeared there only recently, after Poland launched a hundred brutal verbal assaults on Russia, and after US armored cavalry paraded on Polish territory. I am a poker player, and in poker one has to think like the opponent. From Russia's perspective, the situation looks as follows: in the last twenty years NATO had swallowed up the German Democratic Republic, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, and wants to lay its paws on Ukraine. Moreover, they tore Kosovo away from Serbia, attacked Muammar Khadafy (may he rest in peace), and now it is attacking the only defender of Christianity in the Middle East, His Excellency Bashar al-Assad, only because they are Russia's allies. One can find an internet meme which says "Russians want war. Look how they placed their country close to NATO bases." So I'm asking, who's the aggressor?

For months after the 2014 military coup that ousted Thaksin Shinawatra's sister, Yingluck Shinawatra from office in Southeast Asia's nation of Thailand, the West has attempted to destabilize and undermine the military-led government that has since then worked ceaselessly to uproot the political machine that had granted the Shinawatra's impunity and maintained their grip on power for over a decade.

Amid this effort, the West, including both their influential media networks and lobbying firms, is a concerted attack on Thailand's tourism industry. The UK Daily Mail has particularly rolled over for lobbyists in their bid to see Shinawatra returned to power, and has ceaselessly attacked Thailand along any and all fronts with a storm of outrageous propaganda.

In regards to Thailand's tourism in particular, the Daily Mail would actually publish an article titled, "Thailand 'one of the most dangerous tourist destinations on Earth': Expat investigation lifts lid on dark side of the Land of Smiles."

The book is written by a bitter expat who is empty-handed in terms of facts. The report merely consists of the daily propaganda produced by Western media networks condensed into a book. Despite the outrageous title of their article, the Daily Mail was only able to cite a double murder of two British tourists, intentionally blown out of proportion by Western networks in their bid to paint Thailand as a dangerous, failed state in the wake of the military coup.

We warned last week that capital controls were inevitable and it apears the first steps have been taken (very quietly):

• GREECE ISSUES DECREE: LOCAL GOVTS OBLIGED TO TRANSFER DEPOSIT RESERVES AT CENTRAL BANK

So, following the pension fund raid, the Greek government is now centralizing all Greek cash citing an "extremely urgent and unforeseen need.".

One wonders if this is per Krugman's advice?

As Bloomberg reports:

Govt decree issued today forces local govts, general govt sector entities to transfer cash reserves to the Bank of Greece.

*DECREE ON MANDATORY CASH TRANSFER POSTED IN GOVT GAZETTE

It was only last year that President Obama was praising the way Yemen was 'progressing', meaning of course that the government in Yemen was aligned with the interests of the US without them having to send in the troops to bully the nation into submission.

The US president said: "You look at a country like Yemen - a very impoverished country and one that has its own sectarian or ethnic divisions - there, we do have a committed partner in President Hadi and his government. And we have been able to help to develop their capacities without putting large numbers of US troops on the ground at the same time as we've got enough CT, or counterterrorism capabilities that we're able to go after folks that might try to hit our embassy or might be trying to export terrorism into Europe or the United States."

This 'successful' Yemeni model as Obama called it was supposed to serve as a model for 'peace' in Syria and Iraq, meaning that the US was contemplating a 'peaceful' transition of power in Syria and replacing it with a puppet regime that would fuel the US-led war on terror, that is, help them 'fight' the terror menace that they and their partners propped up in the first place.

Obama described the existing partnership between Washington and Yemen in the fight against terrorism as "ideal" and said "we are looking at establishing a similar model to be part of the solution in Syria and Iraq, but if we want to do this, we need actual governments on the ground that we can partner with and that we've got some confidence are going to pursue the political policies of inclusiveness."

As with all statements made by Obama, this makes no sense since the Syrian government has been fighting foreign-backed terrorist proxies, or folks that might try to hit US embassies, as Obama calls them, for years, while the US along with their committed 'partners' in the region are the responsible parties that have been arming, funding and sending these folks to fight their wars, and at the same time serving as an excuse to justify their illegal invasions of Syria and Iraq or any other nation that gets in their way.

The narrative that is being served on a plate for the consumption of the Western audience by the media concerning the conflict in Yemen is that the head choppers ruling Saudi Arabia are bombing Yemen in an attempt to restore a democratically elected president back to power, all of which is fully endorsed and supported by the US. It only shows that the script writers for the media mouthpieces think that we are all both stupid and gullible at the same time.

Germany and France embarked upon an open and honest discussion to reconcile their long-standing historical differences after the Second World War. What we see now is the opposite: history is being used to divide countries and peoples in Eastern Europe and Russia.

As the 70th anniversary of fascism's demise in Europe approaches, history is being re-cast, particularly events before, during, and after World War II. This history is being reinterpreted and even rewritten in a number of post-Soviet and Eastern European states. This approach often undermines, or even denies, the role the Soviet Union (its peoples and soldiers) played in the defeat of Nazi Germany. This has less to do with historical knowledge than it does with scoring cheap geopolitical points in the present at Russia's expense.

In an April interview with PBS Newshour, Secretary of State John Kerry was asked about Iran's involvement in the escalating war in Yemen. His response was astounding and revealing.

"Iran needs to recognize that the United States is not going to stand by while the region is destabilized or while people engage in overt warfare across lines — international boundaries — in other countries," Kerry said.

The quip was astounding because Iran is not bombing Yemen or engaged in "overt warfare" there, though it has given some support to one side. The culprit on the overt warfare front is Saudi Arabia.

It was revealing that Kerry ignored the Saudi and Gulf Arab role in the catastrophe unfolding in Yemen. The silence on their bombing campaign, which has led to civilian deaths, a flow of refugees and the destabilization of the poorest country in the Arab world, is effectively a show of support for the Saudi war. And that support extends far beyond mere words, or the lack of them.

On Saturday, April 18th, the Commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, told Britain'sTelegraph that "There is a Russian threat," and that "The best insurance we have against a showdown is that NATO stands together."

Ever since the Soviet Union's military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, dissolved in 1991, NATO has expanded eastward to Russia's borders, and now it is preparing to admit yet another nation on Russia's border: Ukraine. This eastward expansion broke (and breaks, since it's continuing) a verbal agreement which had produced the termination of the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet Union's equivalent of America's NATO alliance).

In February 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush sent his Secretary of State, James Baker, to Moscow to negotiate with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev an end to the Cold War. According to Jack Matlock, the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union then, Baker offered Gorbachev the following deal: "Assuming there is no expansion of NATO jurisdiction to the East, not one inch, what would you prefer, a Germany embedded in NATO, or one that can go independently in any direction it chooses."

With the passage of House Bill 195 into law, the State of Louisiana has banned the use of cash in all transactions involving second-hand goods. State representative Ricky Hardy, a co-author of the bill, claims that the bill targets criminals who traffic in stolen goods. According to Hardy, "It's a mechanism to be used so the police department has something to go on and have a lead."

The bill prohibits cash transactions by "second-hand dealers," defined to include garage sales, flea markets, resellers of specialty items, and even non-profit resellers like Goodwill. Curiously, it specifically exempts pawnbrokers from the ban. But of course, pawn shops - and not rented stalls at local church flea markets - are notorious as places that criminals frequent to convert stolen goods into quick cash. So what gives?

Are the authors of the bill and those who voted for it ignoramuses - or are they deliberately obscuring the real purpose of the bill? The answer is clear once we examine the other provisions of the bill. The bill goes far beyond banning cash transactions.

As lawyer Thad Ackel notes, the bill requires second-hand dealers to turn over a valuable business asset, namely, their business' proprietary client information. For every transaction, a second-hand dealer must obtain the seller's personal information such as their name, address, driver's license number, and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the goods were delivered.

They must also make a detailed description of the item(s) purchased and submit this with the personal identification information of every transaction to the local policing authorities through electronic daily reports.

If a seller cannot or refuses to produce to the second-hand dealer any of the required forms of identification, the second-hand dealer is prohibited from completing the transaction.

In a couple of weeks' time, commemorative events will be held in Russia and Europe to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of 'the Second World War'. Barely 20 years following 'the Great War (to end all wars)', World War II, or the 'Great Patriotic War' as it's known in Russia and the former Soviet Republics, left some 80 million people dead (including civilians who died as a result of war-related disease and famine). The largest number of casualties suffered by any one country was Russia, with some 30 million deaths.

Since then, children in Western countries have been taught that a US and UK-led coalition defeated the Nazis (and Imperial Japan) to save the world from fascism and secure a better world for all. But is this the whole story? Was the sudden emergence of a post-war geopolitical balance-of-power that transformed the USSR from ally to enemy - and the US from 'reluctant participant' to global superpower - merely an accident of fate? As we try to understand the current global chaos, we need to ask; what crucial details and context have been excised from the history books?

Today on Behind the Headlines, we look back at this mass outbreak of insanity to explore its causes, historical comparisons, and consequences. We're live this Sunday, April 19th 2015, from 2-4pm EST / 11am-1pm PST / 7-9pm UTC / 8-10pm CET

Running Time: 01:50:00

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