Bernie Sanders fills a stadium at last week's rally in Tacoma, Washington
Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign, much like President Trump, loves to boast about crowd sizes.
Having attracted tens of thousands of people to a Presidents Day event, the Vermont senator and 2020 Democrat has some bragging rights.
A press release from the Sanders campaign claimed
over 50,000 cumulatively attended rallies in five states from Saturday through Friday. In addition, over 4 million viewed the livestreams of the events online, the campaign said.
"Bernie has built a multiracial, multi-generational, people-driven movement for change that has broad support across the country," Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a written statement. "This is the kind of energy and excitement that will defeat Donald Trump in November and usher in the political revolution that this country badly needs."
Comment: These crowd numbers may just reflect liberal oases in a sea of Republican Red, but if that's the case, then it should also be reflected in Sanders being the Democratic nominee.
We'll get a good idea tomorrow, 'Super-Tuesday' - when some 14 states pledge their delegates behind candidates ahead of the Democratic Convention in June - if the DNC is going to rig it against Sanders like it did in 2016.
The Iranian Advisory Center in Syria, which takes part in the fighting in northern Syria, issued a press release through the news agency U-News in reaction to the recent confrontation between the Syrian army and the Turkish army. It should be noted that
the Iranian Advisory Center is made up of the group of Iranian experts who advise the Syrian State and its armed forces, and that this is the first statement it has issued since the beginning of the war in Syria.
Full text of the statement
In reaction to the latest confrontation between the Syrian Arab Army and the Turkish Army, it is important for us to inform the public of the following:
First: We fought alongside the Syrian Arab army and supported it, at the request of the Syrian State, to open the M5 highway, with a Syrian force led by elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and of Hezbollah, and with the participation of factions of the Resistance within the force; and we have helped civilians and residents of the liberated villages.
© Amit Shabi/pool/Flash90/File
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with his then-aide Natan Eshel, on August 28, 2011.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's senior aide Natan Eshel said that "hate is what unites" the right-wing camp led by the Likud party and that negative campaigning works well on "non-Ashkenazi voters" in a leaked recording revealed by Channel 12 on Saturday.
Eshel, a former Netanyahu chief of staff who resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct, continues to work with the premier, leading the previous two coalition negotiations over the past year.
In the newly revealed recording,
he can be heard discussing the party's campaign strategy with an unnamed person whom he is trying to recruit as a political adviser, according to the report. In the tape, Eshel says that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit's decision to indict Netanyahu in three corruption cases actually helped the premier in his campaign. "He went up by 20 percent" Eshel recalls, though it was unclear what numbers he was referring to.
Comment: Numerous leaks, scandals as well as Israel's government policy over many years show that sentiments like this and similar are shared both by a significant proportion of the voting public and the Israeli establishment. It's also notable that this leak comes just before yet another election for Israel, following a year or more of the leading parties failure to form a government:
RTFri, 28 Feb 2020 11:45 UTC
© Reuters / Ilya Naymushin
Sales of Russian gold abroad jumped eight-fold last year to $5.7 billion, with almost all of that volume purchased by the United Kingdom.
According to customs data seen by RBC business news outlet, gold exports to Britain have grown more than 12 times in terms of value, to $5.33 billion.
Supplies to the UK accounted for 93 percent of all Russian gold exports. Twelve other countries, including Kazakhstan and Switzerland, bought only $409 million-worth of Russian gold.
In physical terms, gold exports from Russia to the United Kingdom in 2019 increased 11 times, from 10.4 tons to 113.5 tons.
Tommy Sheridan
SputnikSun, 01 Mar 2020 23:57 UTC
© REUTERS / Khalil Ashawi
Last week the surreal nature of the Syrian war reached a new level of absurdity. Turkey lost soldiers in an air strike targeted at the terrorists in Idlib who were trying to recover the last stronghold of Daesh*.
Apparently 33 Turkish soldiers who happened to be there died.
In response the spokesman of the ruling AKP party, Omer Celik, sought NATO support and protection and allegedly floated the idea of invoking Article 5 of the NATO Charter which classifies an attack on one NATO Member as an attack on all NATO Members.
RTSun, 01 Mar 2020 23:53 UTC
© Reuters / Mussa Qawasma
Palestinians argue with Israeli forces during a protest in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank on February 28, 2020
Trump's plan to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will bring anything but peace to the region, former Danish FM and UNGA President Mogens Lykketoft told RT, as it only cements apartheid-like conditions for the Palestinians.
Lykketoft is among a large group of former high-ranking European officials who published an open letter warning about the dangers of the Trump plan and urging the EU to firmly reject any US attempts to somehow implement it.
The plan was pompously unveiled by US President Donald Trump and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu last month, but it was immediately condemned by Palestinians and many countries worldwide.
Justin Wise
The HillSun, 01 Mar 2020 23:50 UTC
© Getty Images
Israel's ambassador to the United Nations on Sunday lambasted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) over the critical comments he recently made about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, describing the presidential candidate as "a liar, an ignorant fool or both."
Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference, Danny Danon offered a searing rebuke to Sanders for calling Netanyahu a "reactionary racist,"
according to The Times of Israel.
"Whoever calls the prime minister of Israel a 'racist' is either a liar, an ignorant fool or both," Danon said as he spoke on the first day of the pro-Israel lobbying group's annual conference. "We don't want Sanders at AIPAC. We don't want him in Israel."
RTSun, 01 Mar 2020 23:42 UTC
© Karim Jaafar / AFP
US peace envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad (L) and Taliban senior chief Abdul Ghani Baradar (R) in Doha, Qatar on February 29, 2020
Iran has said that, despite cutting a deal with the Taliban, the US has absolutely no right to decide Afghanistan's future, and
that intra-Afghan peace talks should be supervised by the UN, not Washington.
Tehran views Washington's actions as "an attempt to legitimize the presence of troops in Afghanistan," the Iranian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday.
The United States lacks the legal standing to sign a peace deal or determine the future of Afghanistan. We believe that the United Nations has the appropriate authority to facilitate intra-Afghan negotiations, as well as to monitor them, and ensure that the agreement is implemented.
The ministry said that the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan is illegal and remains "one of the main causes of the war" ravaging the country. Iran has stressed that a lasting peace settlement can be achieved only through dialogue between all Afghan political groups, including the Taliban.
The US-Taliban deal signed on Saturday set up the framework for future talks between the Taliban and the US-backed government in Kabul. Washington promised to scale down and then completely withdraw all coalition troops in 14 months, provided the negotiations go as planned and the militants fulfill their commitments.
RFE/RLSun, 01 Mar 2020 19:51 UTC
Iranians wear face masks as public areas are disinfected in Orumieh
Iranian officials have announced another jump in confirmed cases and deaths from the coronavirus that is causing global havoc since its outbreak began in central China late last year.
Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur told a televised news conference that 385 newly confirmed cases of the COVID-19 illness in Iran brought the total to 978. Eleven new deaths brings the official death toll in Iran from coronavirus to 54, he said.
Those numbers are well below the level that many experts fear the Iranian contagion has reached since officials downplayed the risk of a local outbreak before -- in the case of one deputy health minister and several other prominent officials -- coming down themselves with the illness.
© Steve Humphreys 25th February 2020
Sinn Fein President Mary Lou McDonald addressing a rally at Liberty Hall.
A police chief interfering in a country's electoral process is something we have come to expect - but usually in Third World dictatorships.
A generalissimo in such a state would normally condemn the opposition parties and deem them not fit to hold office if the ruling elites were in danger of losing power.
While Garda chief Drew Harris didn't quite go that far, he certainly made grave allegations against the most popular party in the State when attempts were being made to form a government.
The establishment is terrified after an empowered working and middle class largely rejected the old unreliables of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.
Panic makes those in authority do strange things and none can be weirder than calling on the services of Her Majesty's Secret Service to help win power in this republic.
Comment: The 'populist pattern' is repeating even in small countries: 'deep state' elements interfering in electoral politics because people are gathering around and being galvanized by 'the wrong candidate/party/idea'.
In Ireland's case, the fallout from its recent election result - even though it ostensibly was
not about Irish unity, nationalism, and the past century of pseudo-independence charted by its leadership - is bringing into sharp focus the thoroughly corrupt and increasingly irrelevant mandate of its establishment parties.
The establishment parties are so frightened of what has taken place that they're running a major media campaign - with the help of British intelligence and the above British top cop they hired to run Ireland's police force - to paint Sinn Fein as 'still terrorists' (coz that worked so well BEFORE they won the election!)
So Mary-Lou McDonald speaking to large crowds up and down the country isn't Sinn Fein being a normal democratic political party, it's a "
campaign of bullying and intimidation."
The question is how far will the the British security services and its lackeys in the Dublin state go?
In the 1980s, they worked hand-in-glove with 'reasonable' IRA figures to convince them to disarm and become fully political. But now that the Republican movement in the form of Sinn Fein has become the only all-Ireland political party
and the largest political party in the Republic of Ireland... will the British shift the goalposts once again?
Ireland has watched them do so for hundreds of years, so it would be wise to expect them to continue doing so.
Comment: These crowd numbers may just reflect liberal oases in a sea of Republican Red, but if that's the case, then it should also be reflected in Sanders being the Democratic nominee.
We'll get a good idea tomorrow, 'Super-Tuesday' - when some 14 states pledge their delegates behind candidates ahead of the Democratic Convention in June - if the DNC is going to rig it against Sanders like it did in 2016.