Russian President Vladimir Putin has discussed situation in Eastern Ghouta in the context of the UN Security Council's resolution on the Syrian ceasefire in a phone conversation with Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Kremlin's press service said in a statement.

"The situation in Eastern Ghouta in the context of implementation of UN Security Council's resolution 2401 was discussed. The importance of settling the humanitarian problems and the necessity of further uncompromising fight against the terrorist groups in this region was underlined," the statement, released late on Tuesday, read.

" ... is America better-off insulting Russia with tired Cold War rhetoric or is a businesslike approach based on mutual interests worth a try?"

This year represents the centennial of the communist takeover of Russia, which indelibly marked the transition from Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union. The U.S.S.R. was a menace not only to the free world, but also to its own people. Despite its collapse and Russia's independence over 25 years ago, many in Washington still cannot allow themselves to imagine, let alone manifest, a productive relationship with Russia.

Prior to 1917, Russia was the only major power in the world with which the United States had neither a war, nor serious diplomatic dispute. It even supported and defended America during its formative and most vulnerable years-the American Revolution¹ and Civil War. Thus, President Jefferson declared, "Russia is the most cordially friendly to us of any power on earth" and President Lincoln's Secretary of State stated, "[Russia] has our friendship, in preference to any other European power."² Notwithstanding constitutional differences between the Russian monarchy and American democracy, their relationship blossomed.

The former UN Ambassador under Barack Obama who oversaw the murder of millions of people in Libya, Syria and Ukraine is blaming Russia for Italy's election results.

Let's not forget that Power was also the evil witch that came up with the concept of American "humanitarian intervention" that oversaw the United States and its NATO proxy pummel Serbian civilians without remorse.

Power did not waste anytime blaming Italy's election results on those evil "Russians", because a globalist with millions of body bags notched into her bed post cannot fathom that Europeans are tired of open borders, endless wars, and complete economic despair.

The Trump administration discussed last week the possibility of "a new military action" against Syria as a punitive measure, citing Damascus' alleged use chemical weapons in Eastern Ghouta, the Washington Post quoted unnamed US officials as saying.

According to the newspaper, the topic was discussed during a gathering in the White House, which was attended by President Donald Trump, Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Adviser Herbert McMaster and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

The Washington Post cited a senior US administration official as saying that Mattis was "adamantly" against acting militarily in response to the reports about Damascus' chlorine attacks and that McMaster "was for it."

As you may have noticed from the title, I'm cutting to the chase on this one. Context is everything these days when attempting to understand major geopolitical events.

Sergei Skripal is a former Russian army colonel who worked for Soviet military intelligence during the Cold War. In the late 1990s he was recruited by MI6 as a double agent. In December 2004, Skripal was arrested and charged with "high treason in the form of espionage", convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison. In July 2010, he was released as part of a spy exchange for ten Russian agents who had been arrested in the United States as part of the 'Illegals Program'. Skripal was then settled in the UK by MI6 in the town of Salisbury. Yesterday he was found on a public bench with his 33-year-old daughter, Yulia. Both were incoherent and/or incapacitated. When medical personnel arrived, some of them also allegedly became ill.

Within a few hours of the discovery of the pair, the British media and politicians had decided that they had been poisoned at the behest of Vladimir Putin himself, with some as yet "unknown substance". British newspapers said it, so it must be true. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson threatened fresh sanctions against Russia if it is proven to have poisoned a Russian double agent and branded the country "a malign and disruptive force". No evidence was cited to back up any of these allegations, because everyone 'knows' that Putin is a ruthless dictator who just loves to bump off people that he doesn't like. British newspapers and politicians said it, so it must be true.For the unfortunate cretins who still refuse to swallow the anti-Russia narrative, the British government and media duly require you to remember the case of Alexander Litvinenko, another former Russian intelligence agent who became a British intelligence asset. Litvinenko was, 'everyone knows', murdered in 2006 by polonium that was given to him by two Russian spies on the 'direct orders of Putin'. The problem is that there was, and is today, no hard evidence for this claim. But who needs evidence when you have a propaganda bullhorn to addle the public brain. Mush-for-brains are highly averse to evidence anyway. It's much better to quote the words of people like Alexander Goldfarb, long-term anti-Putin activist, author of Litvinenko's deathbed testimony accusing Putin, and promoter of the activities of 'Pussy Riot'. On the Skripal situation, Goldfarb, who was (coincidentally) a close friend of Skripal, said:

"Any reasonable person would think immediately that Russia had the opportunity, motive and a prior history of this kind of crime so it is reasonable to think it was involved in this attack. This is the Kremlin's modus operandi. There are plenty of precedents. What's interesting now is that this happens just before Russia's presidential election."

The Skripal event, and the way it is being reported, cannot be understood except in the context of the vicious and persistent defamation and slander campaign that Western governments and media have waged against Russia over the past several years. To put it another way, the Skripal event is simply one more chapter in that defamation campaign. The reasons for the West's anti-Russia hysteria have everything to do with the fact that, over the past 10-15 years, Russia has re-emerged as a powerful independent player on the world stage, capable of pushing back long-standing Anglo-American designs on global control. Exceptional nations with a serious megalomaniacal streak (and their lackeys) don't like being pushed back, not even an inch. When they don't get their way, and lack the cojones to engage in a fair fight, they resort to dirty tricks and smear campaigns, at which they are very adept.

Crying at the funeral of a friend is a sign you murdered them, according to a top journalist at the BBC. Well, only if you're Russian, and your name is Vladimir Putin.

Shedding tears at the last goodbye, embracing said friend's wife, and showing emotion was a giveaway of blood on the Russian president's hands, apparently.

An eagle-eyed reporter turned body language expert, psychologist and well, mind reader, has treated us all to his ramblings and taken us on his giant leap from tears for a loved one to 'mystery solved' in an article titled "The day Putin cried."

Former Conservative cabinet minister Diane Finley told a parliamentary committee this week she believes contraband tobacco sales financed "the blowing up of the Twin Towers," as she argued against a government bill that would implement plain packaging for cigarettes.

Though Finley clarified to the National Post Friday that she was referring to the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, not the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a leading terrorism researcher characterized it as a "conspiracy theory."

"Illegal tobacco has been named as the key contributor financially to the blowing up of the Twin Towers. This is how serious this is. And whether people like to believe that or not, it has been proven to be a fact," Finley said during a meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health Wednesday.

While the experts were wondering about the possible evolution of the world order towards a multipolar system, or even a simple tripolar system, the sudden advances of Russian military technology force the return to a bipolar organisation. Let's take another look at what we have learned over the last three years, until the President Putin's revelations on 1 March 2018.

In the second quarter of 2012, Russia and its allies agreed to deploy a peace force in Syria as soon as the Geneva agreement was concluded. But everything changed when France rebooted the war in July 2012. Although Russia had obtained recognition by the UNO of the Collective Security Treaty Organization in order to deploy Muslim soldiers, mainly from Kazakhstan, nothing was happening. Despite the calls for help from Damascus, Moscow remained silent for a long time. It was only three years later that the Russian Air Force arrived, and bombed the jihadists' underground installations.

During the three years that followed, there were many military incidents which opposed Russia to the United States. For example, the Pentagon complained about the strange aggressivity of Russian bombers which approached the US coast. In Damascus, we sought an explanation for Moscow's silence, and asked ourselves if Russia had forgotten its engagements. None of that was true. Russia was secretly building a new arsenal, and moved in only when it was ready.

Xi's extended tenure could embody the guarantee China needs to continue its anti-corruption purge and guide the ongoing economic reorientation.

It took only two sentences for Xinhua to make the historical announcement; the Central Committee of the CCCP "proposed to remove the expression that 'the president and vice-president of the People's Republic of China shall serve no more than two consecutive terms' from the country's constitution."

That will be all but confirmed at the end of the annual National People's Congress session starting next week in Beijing.

A 'Made in the West' geopolitical storm duly ensued; forceful condemnations of the "regime" and its "authoritarian revival," across-the-spectrum demonization of the "dictator for life" and "the new Mao." It's as if the New Emperor was about to concoct the imminent launch of a Great Famine, Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen combo.

The annual speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 1 to the Russian Federal Assembly, televised to the nation, contained a section on Russian military cutting edge technologies that NATO-friendly media chose to either downplay as a propaganda ploy or an election campaign stunt. Given the hints of Russian military technology developments unveiled in the Syrian war theater since September 2015, Washington ignores what is clearly a strategic game-breaking development and makes all the hundreds of billions of dollars of so-called US missile defense technology being deployed from South Korea, Japan, Poland and beyond into little more than a Pentagon defense boondoggle.

The military security section of Putin's two hour speech to the Russian Federal Assembly on March 1 began some two-thirds into his remarks, after extensive discussions of plans to lift the economy, transform health care, improve education.

The keystone of Putin's security remarks, ignored in mainstream western media coverage, was the Russian response has been to the "unilateral US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the practical deployment of their missile defense systems both in the US and beyond their national borders."