The airstrikes of the international US-led coalition destroyed the compound of the Turkish consulate located in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which is occupied by Daesh, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday. In 2014, Daesh fighters occupied Mosul and surrounding areas, during their offensive against the Iraqi government forces.

"On April 4, 2016 03:00 a.m. [01:00 GMT] airstrikes of the international anti-Daesh coalition destroyed the premises of the consulate in Mosul, which has been under occupation of Daesh since June 2014. According to the intelligence data, it had been used as a residence for senior Daesh terrorists," the statement read. It was added in the statement that the coalition's airstrikes had been sanctioned by Turkey.

The infamous Daesh group, which is outlawed in many countries worldwide, including the United States and Russia, has seized large areas in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate on territories under its control. The US-led coalition of over 60 nations has been conducting airstrikes against the terrorist group first in Iraq and later Syria since 2014.

Having contributed to Palmyra's liberation, the Russian president once again has outperformed prognosis and predictions, Le Point reported. Recently, Vladimir Putin announced the Russian withdrawal from Syria, which marked the end of the main stage of the military campaign launched six months ago.

However, the pull out was partial. Some Russian forces are still deployed to Syria, and last week they contributed to the liberation of Palmyra. The Syrian Army with its own forces could not retake Palmyra from Daesh terrorists without Russia's assistance, an article in Le Point read.

Russia played a major role in the operation, by including their ability to deliver airstrikes. Russian bombers and attack helicopters pummeled Daesh motorcades fleeing from Palmyra. The terrorists sustained record losses - 400 militants were killed, according to the Syrian Center for Human Rights.

Beholden to special interests; complicit in US war crimes across the globe; held top secret information on an unsecured home server; incessantly lies (like most politicians); and is married to a man who has been accused by multiple women of sexual assault: the fact that Hillary Clinton is even remotely capable of becoming President of the US is symptomatic of how corrupt and screwed up the US political system actually is.

Puppet on a String

Clinton is the walking, talking definition of a political prostitute, completely controlled by special interests, Israel and the shadow establishment. Since the beginning of 2013, Clinton has received at least $21.7 million for 92 speeches she has given to private organizations and groups. This includes $225,000 from Morgan Stanley; $225,000 from Deutsche Bank; $225,000 from Bank of America; and $675,000 from the Goldman Sachs Group (for three separate speeches). George Soros, the investor, billionaire and regime change extraordinaire, has also put millions into Clinton's campaign.

Hillary is controlled by the parallel US government, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). In 2009, she revealed her relationship with the CFR when she addressed the council at their newly opened outpost in Washington D.C.:

"I have been often to the mother ship in New York City, but it's good to have an outpost of the council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the council, so this will mean I won't have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future."

A look at the corporate membership of the council reveals the level of power vested in such a small amount of hands, with approximately 200 of the most influential corporate players belonging to the group, including: Exxon Mobil Corporation; Goldman Sachs Group; JPMorgan Chase; BP plc; Barclays; IBM; Google Inc; Facebook; Lockheed Martin; Raytheon; Pfizer; Merck & Co; Deutsche Bank AG; Shell Oil Company; and Soros Fund Management.

Baltimore—When Rory Fanning, a burly veteran who served in the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion and was deployed in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2004, appeared at the Donald Trump rally in Chicago last month he was wearing the top half of his combat fatigues. As he moved through the crowd, dozens of Trump supporters shouted greetings such as "Welcome home, brother" and "Thank you for your service." Then came the protest that shut down the rally. Fanning, one of the demonstrators, pulled out a flag that read "Vets Against Racism, War and Empire."(watch video below)

"Immediately someone threw a drink on me," he said when I interviewed him on my teleSUR show, "Days of Revolt." "I got hit from behind in the head three or four times. It was quite the switch, quite the pivot on me. Questioning the narrative, questioning Donald Trump's narrative, and I was suddenly out of their good graces."

Nationalists do not venerate veterans. They venerate veterans who read from the approved patriotic script. America is the greatest and most powerful country on earth. Those we fight are depraved barbarians. Our enemies deserve death. God is on our side. Victory is assured. Our soldiers and Marines are heroes. Deviate from this cant, no matter how many military tours you may have served, and you become despicable. The vaunted patriotism of the right wing is about self-worship. It is a raw lust for violence. It is blind subservience to the state. And it works to censor the reality of war.

"A lot of soldiers who've come back from war see themselves as anything but a hero," Fanning said. "To throw that term around loosely is dangerous. It's a way to manipulate soldiers. It buys their silence."

"Soldiers are not encouraged to talk about the realities of war when they come back," he said. "They're labeled a hero or warrior. That's a major problem. It leads to further seclusion, isolation with soldiers. We talk about the suicide rates amongst veterans—22 a day. It's because we're not allowed to talk about what we saw overseas, how unjust it was, how we feel like bullies. How many innocent people have been killed since 9/11? Throwing out words like 'heroes' does a disservice to the experience of veterans and all the innocent people that have been killed since then."

War, up close, bears no relation to the myth. It is depraved and cruel. It has nothing to do with noble ends or justice. Killing is a dirty, ugly business. There is a vast disparity between war's reality and the myth peddled by the press, the entertainment industry, politicians and churches.

"What I didn't know as I entered [Afghanistan] with the 2nd Army Ranger Battalion was that the Taliban had essentially surrendered after the initial assault by the Air Force and the special forces," Fanning said of his first tour, which started in late 2001. "Our job was essentially to draw the Taliban back into the fight. Surrender wasn't good enough for politicians after 9/11. We wanted blood. We wanted a head count. It really didn't matter who it was. So we'd walk up to people, people who had been occupied ... , involved in civil war before that, with tons of money at our disposal. We'd said, 'Hey, we will give you this amount of money if you point out a member of the Taliban.' An Afghan would say, 'Sure, absolutely. There's a member right there.' So we go next door. We'd land in their neighbor's front yard, put a bag over every military-aged person's head, whether they were a member of the Taliban or not, give the person who identified that person money. Then that person would also get that neighbor's property. In a country with as much desperation and poverty as Afghanistan you'd do anything to put money or food on your family's table. Essentially that's what we were doing. But we were also bringing people who had absolutely no stake in the fight into the war. We were creating enemies.

"I signed up after 9/11 to prevent another 9/11 from happening," he went on. "But soon after arriving in Afghanistan I realized I was only creating the conditions for more terrorist attacks. It was a hard pill to swallow. We were essentially bullies."

The disproportionate use of force on the part of the American occupation forces not only left huge numbers of civilians dead but served as a potent recruiting weapon for insurgents.

In complying with a request made by the Turkish president's son, Ankara blocked websites detailing alleged criminal connections between him and a businessman recently arrested in the United States.

Turkey blocked 21 news websites detailing the US criminal case related to Bilal Erdogan, son of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

On March 22, Turkish national Reza Zarrab was arrested in the United States for fraud, money laundering and evading sanctions against Iran. Zarrab was previously implicated in a 2013 Turkish corruption scandal, which was tied to Bilal Erdogan, who was tied to the indictment though a connected businessman, Sıtkı Ayan.

The websites, including those of the newspapers Haberdar and Cumhuriyet were blocked, but no warning or court order was given prior to the block. It was only after the websites were blocked that officials sent notes to Haberdar.

Along with information about the connections between Bilal Edogan and the criminal case, newspapers cited fragments of a leaked wiretaps of a conversation between Bilal and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made during the 2013 anti-corruption operation.

Large-scale fighting has begun in Nagorno-Karabakh with the Azerbaijani army starting an offensive on the night of April 2nd, 2016 across the whole line of contact with the armed forces of Armenia, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. After the day of fighting it was ceased, but may resume at every moment. Artillery, aviation and tanks were used, with both sides blaming each other for the escalation of the conflict, but the features of the Azerbaijani attack indicates a pre-planned operation. The age-old conflict between the two peoples of the region: Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis, related to the Turks, broke out with renewed vigor.

US President Barack Obama has said there is "no doubt" that innocent civilians have been killed in drone strikes worldwide, despite intelligence on the targets being "checked, double-checked, triple-checked." Drone warfare has become a symbol of post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other countries. The Obama administration has continuously expanded the drone program over two presidential terms, drawing heavy criticism for the extent of civilian deaths - also known as "collateral damage."

Speaking at a press conference on Friday, President Obama was asked to comment on the rising death toll in US drone strikes in the Middle East and beyond. "In the past, there was legitimate criticism that the legal architecture around the use of drone strikes wasn't as precise as it should have been," he said, as cited by AP. "There's no doubt that civilians were killed that shouldn't have been. In situations of war, you know, we have to take responsibility when we're not acting appropriately," Obama added.

He claimed that, in general, the US military and CIA - the main drone operators - use "vigorous criteria" to gather the intelligence used in targeting, and that this intelligence is "checked, double-checked, triple-checked before kinetic actions are taken."

The president's straightforward acknowledgement of civilian deaths caused by drone strikes stands out among his previous statements on the issue. To date, Washington has preferred to downplay public criticism by making formal apologies or denying any wrongdoing.

On the night of October 3, 2015, a United States Air Force AC-130 gunship repeatedly attacked a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Forty-two people were killed and dozens wounded. The US military plane had conducted five strafing runs over the course of more than an hour despite MSF pleas to Afghan, US and Nato officials to call off the attack.

As we reported at the time, MSF were unequivocal in their condemnation of the American attack. The hospital was 'intentionally targeted' in 'a premeditated massacre'; it was a 'war crime'. The medical charity rejected US assurances of three inquiries by the US, Nato and the Afghan government. MSF demanded instead an independent international investigation. It was to no avail. The US ignored public outrage and went ahead with its standard whitewashing procedures when it commits war crimes that get exposed. The outcome was announced on March 18. BBC News reported:

'The US military has disciplined more than a dozen service members after an air strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan killed 42 people last year.

'The Pentagon has acknowledged that the clinic was targeted by mistake, but no personnel will face criminal charges.'

Note that the BBC wording - 'the Pentagon has acknowledged that the clinic was targeted by mistake' - is deceptive bias. The BBC made no mention that MSF had presented strong evidence that the clinic was 'deliberately targeted', that the attack was a 'war crime', and that there was an urgent need for an independent inquiry.

A real leak of data from a law firm in Panama would be very interesting. Many rich people and/or politicians hide money in shell companies that such firms in Panama provide. But the current heavily promoted "leak" of such data to several NATO-supporting news organization and a US government-financed "Non Government Organization" is just a lame attempt to smear some people the U.S. empire dislikes. It also creates a huge blackmail opportunity by NOT publishing certain data in return for this or that desired favor.

French lawmaker Thierry Mariani drafted a resolution that aims to lift anti-Russian sanctions and plans to present the document in the French National Assembly at the end of April.

Mariani, a prominent member of the center-right political party The Republicans, is a strong believer that sanctions against Russia have hurt the French economy and damaged Russo-French relations. To fix this, Mariani, came up with the draft version of the resolution #3585, which he will officially put forward to French lawmakers on April 28.

The voting on the resolution at the end of the month will show the true stance of lawmakers at the French parliament. According to Mariani, many French politicians, both from the left and the right of the political spectrum, understand that anti-Russian sanctions are ineffective and hurt the French economy.