The former prime minister's nomination to return to the post has elicited warnings from Washington.

Nouri al-Maliki, a two-term Iraqi prime minister viewed in Washington as being too close to Iran, has been nominated for a third term, prompting US warnings of diplomatic and economic repercussions and sparking accusations of foreign interference in the Arab nation's sovereignty.

So, who is Nouri al-Maliki and why has his likely return to power got Washington's attention?

An early member of Iraq's Islamic Dawa Party, an opposition group under Saddam Hussein's regime, al-Maliki spent 25 years in exile in Syria and Iran before returning to Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion. He rose steadily through the political ranks, eventually becoming prime minister in 2006. He served two consecutive terms until 2014 - the longest tenure since the invasion - and previously held other cabinet positions.

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has accused the Western authorities of covering up global child trafficking linked to the late sex offender.

The Western authorities shielded Jeffrey Epstein's child trafficking scheme, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said, calling newly unsealed US Justice Department files "pure hell."

The DOJ published the final tranche of Epstein files last week, including 3,000 personal emails, tapes, photographs, and documents seized from his estate.

Among the documents was a diary belonging to one of Epstein's victims, a teenage girl who alleged that he used her as a "human incubator" to have his child.

According to the diary, the girl gave birth around 2002, aged 16 or 17. She claimed that Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, now serving a 20-year sentence, oversaw the birth, after which the newborn was taken, never to be seen again. Other files suggest Epstein may have fathered multiple children with his victims. Media reports previously claimed that he hoped to seed the human race with his DNA to create a "superior gene pool."

Zakharova wrote on Telegram on Friday, noting that the teen's diary particularly shocked her:

"I'm reading the Epstein files every day with incredible effort. It's pure hell. Why did his accomplice [Maxwell] only get 20 years?!!!! Why wasn't an international investigation launched, given the international trafficking of children?"

The death of Jeffrey Epstein has always been extremely suspect, if only for the sheer number of odd coincidences that occurred the night of August 9th, 2019.

There are three theories: One, he actually killed himself. Two, the DOJ - headed up by Bill Barr whose pedocentric-author father hired Epstein to teach at Dalton in the 70s - had him murdered while in custody. Three, Epstein was smuggled out of jail and replaced by a mask-wearing homeless dude, with skeptics pointing to different nose and ear shapes on the body vs. photos of Epstein when he was alive.

Now - despite former FBI director Dan Bongino insisting "There's video clear as day, he's the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it," the DOJ just released new documents revealing that surveillance footage from the night of Epstein's death captured an orange-colored shape moving up a staircase toward the isolated, locked tier where his cell was located at around 10:39 p.m. the night he died, or whatever.

The below transcript is from Prof. Alexander Dugin's latest talk on the Radio Sputnik Escalation Show:

Radio Sputnik, Escalation Show Host: So, the US Department of Justice has finally published the Epstein lists: 3 million files that journalists are now actively sorting through. Some things look terrible, others comical, especially when individual names appearing in these materials are taken out of context. They found Zhirinovsky, Lenin, and even characters from films and cartoons.

Alexander Dugin, last year you mentioned that your name appeared in one of the correspondences. To sum up this whole story, how should it be interpreted, given that the news is spreading rapidly in both Russian and foreign media?

Alexander Dugin: In my opinion, I would not underestimate the significance of what is happening. A global network of pedophiles involved in torture, rape, murder, even cannibalism and "black masses" has now been exposed. This network included the elite of both American parties: from George Bush Sr. to Barack Obama, the Clintons, and Bill Gates. Their own participation as well as that of many European leaders in this structure has been confirmed. Many of them are now resigning because belonging to this group, being part of Epstein's inner circle, and visiting his island are, in principle, a total discrediting for any politician, public figure, person with scientific ambitions, thinker, philosopher, economist, or businessman. In essence, belonging to this criminal network, being acquainted with Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and other figures in their circle in any capacity, is tantamount to a full admission of criminal activity.

Therefore, in my opinion, this is extremely serious. First, the most important thing is that the modern Western elite is so immoral that no one in the West has the moral right to lecture their own society or dictate to it what to do, and when it comes to other nations, these degenerates — the pedophile, liberal, globalist elite — simply have no right to open their mouths. In my opinion, it is simply immoral to engage in any negotiations with them or to sit next to people who are tainted by the "Epstein list." People who respect their dignity are forbidden from finding themselves in the same situation as those who openly trample on that dignity. It is a matter of honor: the people on the Epstein list have completely lost any sense of being respectable or ability to interact with decent people. There is a harsh term in Russian criminal slang — byt' zakontachennym — "to be finished," "to be utterly discredited." People who have participated in child abuse are totally discredited in every respect. And that is the first colossal conclusion. Now they are trying to hush up this scandal a little, but it will have truly tectonic consequences.

Where the West's very own Epstein Filth meets the West's very own Russia Rage.
"Not many people know zis" - as Franz Liebkind, the demented Nazi hobby playwright character in "The Producers" - would have said, but Jeffrey "suicide-just-on-time" Epstein really was a terrific Beluga whale. Or maybe a giant, shapeshifting, hypnotic killer squid. Or just Charlie Sheen.

Impossible? Totally absurd? Absolutely delusional? Mais pas du tout (and pardon my French, please)! Because deep down, you see - You do see it? Right, right? - all of these things (and whatever is the appropriate category for Charlie) are the same. Namely, manifestations of Russia! Or, as we also say in the Bonkers West, RussiaRussiaRussia. And so was Jeffrey Epstein, at least according to a clearly coordinated, "the-memo-is-out" wave of desperate nonsense released by Western propaganda outlets, such as the British Telegraph, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, and the Polish government. Ukrainian and Russian-exile info-warriors, meanwhile, are falling over themselves to jump on the bandwagon. Or, perhaps rather, the (evil) clown car.

The allegations about Russia are so ludicrous that their substance does not merit discussion. Because there is no substance: What we are really seeing is a squalid spectacle of propagandists clutching not at straws but pure nothing, recycling each other's unfounded and evidence-free claims and resorting to sad, silly tricks so transparent they make you oscillate between laughing, weeping, and a pure unadulterated feeling of cringe. Meduza, for instance, click-baits with the headline "Who are the Russians named in the latest Epstein files? Vladimir Putin, for one" and then admits that "there's no evidence in the released files that a meeting between Putin and Epstein ever took place." That sort of beyond-despair BS.

Norway has launched an investigation into former Prime Minister Thorbjorn Jagland on suspicion of aggravated corruption stemming from his contact with disgraced US financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Jagland served as prime minister from 1996 to 1997. He was secretary-general of the Council of Europe from 2009 to 2019 and chaired the Norwegian Nobel Committee from 2009 to 2015.

In a statement on Thursday, Norway's anti-corruption agency, Okokrim, said it asked the Foreign Ministry to lift the immunity granted to Jagland as a former diplomat. Okokrim chief Pal Lonseth said the probe would focus on whether Jagland received gifts or favors in connection with his positions.

The veteran politician is mentioned multiple times in a trove of files from the Epstein Estate released last week by the US authorities.

A dishonest mindset now prevails among European leaders, Sergey Lavrov has told RT in an exclusive interview.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said Western politics is increasingly shaped by a dishonest mindset, with European leaders failing to learn from past mistakes.

Lavrov made the remarks to RT on Wednesday, ahead of Diplomats Day, addressing a question from interviewer Rick Sanchez about whether those connected to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein were the same as the figures behind the 2014 Western-backed coup in Ukraine.

"Regarding the specific persons, specific personalities, we can't probably make generalizations like that," Lavrov said. "But the fact that what we call the Deep State... they are said to be able to decide the fates of the world," he added, noting that he does not quite believe it.

The issue was reportedly discussed on the sidelines of the Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi.

Moscow and Washington are working on a deal to continue the New START nuclear reduction treaty, Axios reported on Thursday, citing three sources familiar with the issue. The strategic arms control agreement officially expired on February 5.

Signed in 2010, the treaty put caps on the number of strategic nuclear warheads and launchers that can be deployed and establishes monitoring mechanisms for both Russian and American arsenals. It was initially set to expire in 2021 but was extended for five years at the time.

According to Axios, President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff discussed the issue with the Russian delegation on the sidelines of the Ukraine peace talks in Abu Dhabi. "We agreed with Russia to operate in good faith and to start a discussion about ways it could be updated," a US official told the media outlet. Another source claimed that the sides had agreed to observe the treaty's terms for at least six months as the talks on a potential new deal would be ongoing.

Brussels manufactured the Romanian election debacle and faces accusations of strangling the free speech of Europeans and Americans alike.

The Republican US House Judiciary Committee has published details of what it claims is a decade-long campaign by the European Commission to stifle online political speech, with barely-veiled threats used to stamp out memes, satire, and anything Brussels calls "disinformation."

In a report published on Tuesday, the committee accused the EU of "directly infringing" on the free speech rights of Americans and Europeans alike by pressuring major social media platforms into censoring legal but "hateful" or otherwise problematic content.

Drawing on policy documents, emails, and the minutes of closed-door meetings in Brussels, the report identified how voluntary meetings with tech executives quickly turned into mob-style shakedowns, with the threat of legal action and multimillion-euro fines dangled over the heads of platform chiefs.

The committee is set to hold a hearing on the EU's censorship efforts on Wednesday. Ahead of the hearing, here's a dive into what they uncovered:

We've seen it repeatedly: You invent a pretext based on deliberate lies, fake news, exaggerations or a false flag operation which serves to construct a story that country or leader X is a threat to "us" which legitimates that we do a 'preemptive' strike against that - obviously invented - threat to eliminate it.

Mainstream media's task is to propagate the ploy, not to ask questions or reveal the lie.

Take Serbia's 'genocide' in Kosovo, Afghanistan's responsibility for 9/11, Saddam's possession of nukes in Iraq, Assad's use of chemical weapons against the Syrians, Gaddafi's 'mass murder' in Bengazi, Russia's planning to occupy and administer not only Ukraine but also a series of European countries thereafter, Hamas' attack on Israel - that Israel knew everything about before it happened - and now you have the blatant lie about Iran's being just about to become a nuclear weapons power.