President Barack Obama, speaking in Germany on Monday, said we're fortunate to be living in the "most peaceful" era in human history. "I want to begin with an observation that, given the challenges that we face in the world and the headlines we see every day, may seem improbable but it's true. We are fortunate to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history," he said.

"That may surprise young people who are watching TV or looking at your phones," he said, "and it seems like only bad news comes through every day, but consider it's been decades since the last war between major powers." In the same speech, the president warned against complacency, as "dangerous forces" threaten to take the world backward.


Then he announced that he is sending 250 more American special forces troops to Syria: "They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground," he said, "but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces that continue to drive ISIL back."

After touting world peace, Obama moved on to prosperity and progress: "More people live in democracies, where they live wealthier and healthier and better educated with a global economy that has lifted up more than a billion people from extreme poverty and created new middle classes from the Americas to Africa to Asia."

Lifenews has acquired a video of the interrogation of Maksim Terentyev, who was supposed to have eliminated Alexander Zakharchenko.

Maksim Terentyev, who was supposed to eliminate the head of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko, spoke about the details of the preparation for the assassination during the interrogation. Lifenews has obtained a copy of the video of the interrogation of the killer. According to Terentyev, he was recruited by the staff of SBU in February 2015. Until April 2016, he was engaged in collecting information on the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic, and in April, he was set the task of removing Zakharchenko.

"I was recruited by the staff of the SBU in Artemovsk in February 2015. To this day, I performed the task of information gathering on the territory of the DPR. In April 2016, I received the task from the staff of SBU on the elimination of the head of the DPR - Zakharchenko. The SBU prepared and camouflaged an explosive device in the form of domestic furniture, which was given to me in the city of Donetsk," said Maksim Terentyev.

"I had to place this device in the "Artemida" shooting complex. According to the SBU, this complex is frequently visited by the head of the DPR - Zakharchenko. I was promised a reward to the amount of $100,000 for the completion of the attack," he added.

Earlier, representatives of the Ministry of State Security of the DPR stated that the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko gave the order to eliminate the head of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko.

The publication "nedelya.ua" has reported that a number of Ukrainian media citing sources close to the Ukrainian presidential administration have released information that the former prime minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, was in Moscow incognito from April 19-22, where he met with officials of the Russian Federation.

The newspaper "Izvestiya v Ukraine" has particularly written about this.

The initiator and organizer of such meetings is supposedly the Ukrainian oligarch and owner of the SKM company, Rinat Akhmetov, who has close contacts with the Russian side.

The businessman supposedly brought Yatsenyuk to Russia so that he could tell of the corruption schemes of Poroshenko and other Ukrainian officials, as well as about the details of the Maidan in 2014 which led to the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovich.

In exchange for organizing these meetings, Akhmetov intends to demand that the Russian presidential administration to guarantee his enterprises currently located on the territory of the DPR and LPR, Ukrainian media write.

Back in 2015 the Journal of Evolutionary Psychological Science published a study that provided yet more evidence that "individuals with psychopathic traits may be able to express fraudulent emotions that appear genuine to the people around them." The authors added, "individuals involved in predatory behavior need to appear to be cooperative and 'normal' to successfully take advantage of others."

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the common emotional rhetoric of Israeli politicians. In the past week Netanyahu has claimed 'outrage' that the UN would dare support Syria's claim to its territory in the Golan Heights, and Israel's representative to the UN, Danny Danon, claimed in a heated debate that it is fine for Israel to abduct children because "'terrorists' deserved no other treatment."

But of course Israel's minister of defense would think otherwise. He opined just a few months back that the IDF and Sunni terrorists in Syria were on the 'same page'. Therefore, applying Israeli political logic, if they're 5 years old they're a target for illegal abduction. But if they're a group of drugged-out head-choppers selling Israel stolen oil, then they're 'just fine by us'.

So perhaps it's time to step in and issue a reminder of what is truly 'outrageous' in this situation. What is outrageous is a sadistic regime which steals the land of its neighbors, openly sides with terrorists to steal those neighbors' resources, and proceeds to torture and murder an entire ethnic group while claiming 'defense against terrorism'. All this while Netanyahu has the gall to say, with a straight face, "Israel, [is] the only true democracy in the Middle East."

Ankara's ongoing military crackdown on Kurds has sparked yet another fierce brawl between the ruling AKP and the pro-Kurdish HDP opposition MPs. In the meantime the streets of Istanbul witnessed violent clashes between police and youths sympathetic to the PKK. Deputies threw punches, pushed and tried to restrain each other in the assembly on Thursday in a row over military operations targeting Kurdish militants in Turkey's largely Kurdish southeast.


Initially the session of the Constitutional Committee of the Turkish Parliament convened to discuss the controversial proposal by the ruling Justice and Development Party about the possibility of removing immunity from deputies, which could potentially translate into mass prosecution of pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) parliamentarians. HDP deputies have been under the eye of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for having links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

After the start of the discussions, those opposing the ruling party's proposal to strip immunity began arguing with the proponents of new motion against such a move. Instead the HDP, which denies direct links with the PKK, called on the government, to stop fighting against the Kurds in the southeast and resume peace efforts.

The debate became heated and lawmakers threw punches at opponents. Three ruling-party and two HDP lawmakers sought medical help after the brawl, Dogan news agency reported.

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Syrian forces had surprised Israel and were fast approaching the edge of the steep Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. It seemed as if Syrian armor and infantry would retake Golan, then pour down into Israeli Galilee.

Soviet recon satellites observed Israel moving its nuclear-armed, 500km-range Jericho missiles out of protective caves and onto their launch pads. At the same time, Israel was seen loading nuclear bombs on their US-supplied F-4 fighter-bombers at Tel Nof airbase.

Believing Israel was about to use nuclear weapons against Syria and Egypt, Moscow put huge pressure on both to rein in their advancing forces. Damascus, already in range of Israeli artillery on Golan, ordered its armored forces on Golan to halt, allowing Israel to mount powerful counter-attacks and retake the strategic heights.

In 1981, Israel formally annexed the 580 sq. mile portion of Golan that it occupied. This illegal annexation was condemned by the United Nations, the United States and Europe' powers. But Israel held on to Golan and implanted 50,000 there in some 41 subsidized settlements.

What does a government do when it's caught in a flagrant lie? If you are the U.S. government, you simply tell another lie — and laugh at anyone who tries to call out your hypocrisy.

Setting aside his oft-parroted no-boots-on-the-ground imperative, President Obama announced Monday the U.S. would be quintupling the number of special forces troops deployed to Syria to fight Daesh (the so-called Islamic State). In fact, the announcement was made later on the same day Obama claimed to have "ruled out" the deployment of ground troops.

Though this reneging on stated foreign policy has become somewhat par for the course, State Department spokesman John Kirby not only missed the hypocritical move, he flatly and bafflingly denied the Obama administration's repeated claim there would be "no boots on the ground."

In fact, instead of taking responsibility for initiating military maneuvers the public might find displeasing, the Obama administration has developed an apparent affinity for nitpicking semantics.

In a press conference, this farcical denial of reality reached stupefying proportions when Kirby was asked by an Associated Press reporter about this stark reversal of policy. All emphasis has been added to highlight the absurdities.

"I'm just curious if this is, like, part of some kind of devious grand strategy to say one thing and then do the complete opposite of it," the reporter queried.

"I just — I don't see it that way," Kirby responded. "There was never this 'no boots on the ground.' I don't know where this keeps coming from."

If you think that the geopolitics chessboard with US Empire hegemony historically ruling the roost has been shaken up in recent months whereby such longstanding US allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have been thrown under the bus by the Obama administration in favor of warming relations with longtime enemy Iran since the P-5 nuke deal, think again. Despite Congress' end-around in March 2015 defying US law requiring any foreign leader's entrance to the US to be cleared by the standing US president, Netanyahu's grandstanding performance wooing multiple ovations from an adoring AIPAC-bribed Congress on Capitol Hill designed to embarrass Obama and sabotage his Iran nuclear agreement failed in the end and the longtime negotiated deal with Iran was congressionally ratified last September, much to Bibi and AIPAC's chagrin.

This unprecedented development marked a discrete break from previous US Middle East policy where US always knuckled under to do whatever bidding Israel wanted or demanded (including fighting two costly proxy wars for the Greater Israel Project in the region, the longest running wars in US history still being fought). Meanwhile Iran was always deemed the incorrigible, heavily sanctioned enemy ever since US puppet dictator the Shah was overthrown by an Islamic fundamentalist Khomeini government back in February 1979. And ever since the Bush-Cheney 7 nation regime change list, Iran and its defense pact ally Syria remain the final two notches on Empire's imperialistic gun.

The neocon fabrication called the war on terror since 9/11 has cost the lives of 1.7 million Iraqi civilians and over 4 million Muslims in all. And these numbers don't even include the over half million Iraqi kids under age 5 who died from the first Gulf War under George HW. To this very day in Iraq US bombs are still raining down on civilian populations, destroying not only thousands more innocent lives but essential food production and storage facilities, Iraqi water treatment plants, hospitals, pharmaceutical factories, schools, infrastructure all needed to sustain life are still being heartlessly targeted by Empire bombs. These life preserving resources continue piling up as so called "collateral damage," endless casualties demolished by America's endless war of terror through its air strikes in Mosul this last week under the all-too-familiar pretext of going after ISIS. The Empire of Chaos and Destruction never ceases in its bloodthirst killing of fellow humans.

If we step back and look at what's happened since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09, it's easy to see that the global leadership has chosen to do more of what's failed spectacularly.

Since the Global Financial Meltdown, central bankers and planners have pursued policies designed to boost global stock markets to create a wealth effect in which people will be psychologically inclined to borrow and spend more because their stock market/IRA portfolios are rising. This supposedly encourages them to spend this "paper wealth."

But the policy runs aground on two realities: 1) only the top 5% of the households own enough stocks to make a difference to their wealth (and their perception of wealth, i.e. the wealth effect), and 2) the wealth effect only occurs in "good times" when people feel the economy is healthy and their prospects are improving.

When people sense the economy is unhealthy and their prospects have dimmed, they save more regardless of how much the stock market rises.

Twelve years ago, John Perkins published his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and it rapidly rose up The New York Times' best-seller list. In it, Perkins describes his career convincing heads of state to adopt economic policies that impoverished their countries and undermined democratic institutions. These policies helped to enrich tiny, local elite groups while padding the pockets of U.S.-based transnational corporations.

Perkins was recruited, he says, by the National Security Agency (NSA), but he worked for a private consulting company. His job as an under-trained, overpaid economist was to generate reports that justified lucrative contracts for U.S. corporations, while plunging vulnerable nations into debt. Countries that didn't cooperate saw the screws tightened on their economies. In Chile, for example, President Richard Nixon famously called on the CIA to "make the economy scream" to undermine the prospects of the democratically elected president, Salvador Allende.

If economic pressure and threats didn't work, Perkins says, the jackals were called to either overthrow or assassinate the non compliant heads of state. That is, indeed, what happened to Allende, with the backing of the CIA.