Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has given a green light to sell the country's newest S-400 air defense guided missile system to China, which Russian media claim will give Beijing an edge in the airspace of the Taiwan Strait and over islands in the East China Sea at the center of a dispute with Japan, reports the military news website of Huanqiu.com, the Chinese-language website of China's Global Times.

Beijing has been interested in acquiring the guided missile system since 2011. Two years ago, Russia talked with several countries interested in buying the system but was forced to suspend negotiations in order to ensure its supply to the Russian military, the general manager of a Russian national defense export company told Russian newspaper Kommersant in January this year. Export sales of the system may not begin until 2016.

Talk of a potential deal with China drew concerns from Russian security officials who worried that it may not only affect the supply of the system to Russia's own military but also that China could back-engineer the technology to produce its own systems. The system's manufacturer Almaz-Antei has eased the former concerns by delivering the first batch of the system. Moscow also announced a plan in January to build three new plants for the contractor in order to build more air defense and anti-guided missile systems. An intellectual property rights agreement that China and Russia signed with regard to the arms trade has also come into effect.

Though in what volume China wishes to acquire the S-400 system is unclear, Kommersant's source said China wants enough systems to equip two to four battalions. The People's Liberation Army has already obtained an air defense guided missile system and another command system from Russian and deployed them in the defense of Beijing and Shanghai, according to the paper, which estimated that the country would be able to control the airspace over Taiwan and the disputed Diaoyutai islands (Diaoyu to China, Senkaku to Japan).

As my plane left Dubai for Kiev, I began browsing through an endless pile of newspapers and magazines: from the New York Times to the Economist, from the Times to several Gulf-based and Turkish periodicals, as well as Spanish and German ones.

The consensus on Putin being a villain was absolute. There were no dissident voices, but also, not surprisingly, no Russian intellectual voices. There were absolutely no editorials written by Russians attacking the Western destabilization of Ukraine and the destruction of its democratically elected government.

It was also shocking how the Arabic and Turkish press was translating and reprinting all that appeared in the West.

There were no clear, simple and logical explanations of what actually happened in Ukraine recently.

That is, that the West, particularly the greedy and desperate EU, wanted to get its hands on the tremendous natural resources of the Ukraine, on its heavy industry and cheap but highly-educated work force. They offered a deal. A very bad deal, under which, European companies would be allowed to plunder the country, but Ukrainian people would not be even allowed to enter the EU, let alone seek employment there.

Are Western diplomats and media outlets being serious when they accuse the Russian government of launching a new Cold War? Do they really believe their own rhetoric when they say Putin has expansionary ambitions and wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire? Did Hillary Clinton, the former US secretary of state, mean it when she said Russia's actions in Crimea are similar to 'what Hitler did back in the 1930s'? Other anti-Russian observers have also claimed that Russia's incorporation of Crimea is analogous to the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Do all these people sincerely believe this interpretation of current geopolitical events?

It is always difficult, if not dangerous, to speculate about the thought processes that drive powerful diplomats and political leaders to say and do certain things. It is especially difficult to make sense of the dynamics that turned the crisis in Ukraine into a perilous international dispute. In a recent interview, a Russian journalist asked me why Western media outlets have become so careless about fact-checking in relation to Ukraine and Russia more broadly. I wasn't sure if I could answer the question, so I was forced to say that I would have to reflect on it further.

Israel is voicing displeasure about its citizens not being able to enter the US as freely as they would like. While the latter stands firm on Israel's failure to meet the necessary requirements, the question of Palestinian settlements also looms.

Israel is pushing for an entry into the US Visa Waiver Program - a membership enjoyed by 38 countries, many of which Israel sees as not being nearly as dedicated to a political friendship with America as it is.

The US has given a list of reasons for why this isn't happening, like Israel's treatment of Arab-American visitors at the airport - something Israel denies flat out, the AP reports.

But Israel is now also seeing a dramatic spike in visa rejections for its citizens that has taken place in the course of only one year. Its younger travelers (including many who have served in the armed forces, and wish to perform a now-traditional trip to the US after being discharged) are being turned away by the dozen, it seems. Statistically, rejection has risen from 5.4 percent to 9.7 in 2013, which is an 80 percent increase. Even though the US State Department's Jen Psaki claimed at a briefing last week that 90 percent of Israeli applicants get through - its only 80 percent for the early-twenties category, the Israeli government sees the new figures to be discriminatory and a result of a concrete agenda.

The US, meanwhile, maintains that it's still largely possible for Israelis to get the 90-day 'B' visa for business or travel purposes.

In the meantime, Israel still has among the highest-ranking visa approval ratings when visiting the US. And it's fair to say that other countries' US visa rejections have also gone up overall. And by contrast, their approval rate isn't half as good as Israel's: Belarus got almost 21 percent of rejections in 2013, while Bulgaria's was nearly 20, and Ireland's close to 17.

A New York Democrat Senator Charle Schumer is urging the State Department to "end its widespread, arbitrary practice of denying young Israelis tourist visas." Some members of Congress even sought legislation that would free Israel from adhering to any conditions whatsoever presented by the Visa Waiver Program.

Madam President, as the longest serving Independent in the history of the U.S. Congress, I wish to address an issue which I believe does not get the kind of discussion it should from either political party but certainly not from our Republican colleagues--the moral, economic, and political dimensions of the kind of income and wealth inequality which we have in our country today. In my view, this is the most important issue facing the United States because it impacts on virtually every aspect of our lives. It is an issue we must be discussing thoroughly and one in which the American people have to be engaged.

The fact is that while we often speak of the United States of America being the wealthiest Nation on the face of the Earth, that is only partially true, because within the context of total wealth is the reality that the great middle class of this country is disappearing. The reality is we have more people living in poverty today than at any time in the history of the United States of America. The fact is we have by far the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major industrialized nation on Earth. So if we add it all together, yes, we are the wealthiest Nation on Earth, but the reality is the people on top own a huge amount of this wealth while the middle class is shrinking and poverty is increasing.

I will speak to our colleagues and the American people about some of the realities in terms of income and wealth distribution.

North Korea's Unha-3 rocket was built with components from South Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States, UN experts revealed.

In a little-publicized March 10 report, the UN Panel of Experts also discovered the rocket contained off-the-shelf parts from China and Switzerland, while Soviet-era SCUD missiles have also been stripped down for components.

The bulk of the components had not been obtained in violation of sanctions targeting the North, the UN said, adding their utilization "shows the ability of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to assemble complex systems with globally sourced components."

Many of the parts in question listed are widely available computer components. However, a US-manufactured video decoder, along with UK-made temperature and pressure sensors, were also recovered.

President Barack Obama may authorize the shipment of new air defense systems to rebel forces in Syria's ongoing civil war, a new Associated Press report states.

Citing an unnamed US official, the AP stated Obama is mulling over the idea of sending man-portable air-defense systems, also known as MANPADs, to Syrian opposition groups, a move that would mark a notable shift compared to the White House's past statements.

As RT reported last month, the Obama administration has been interested in employing new ways to put pressure on Syrian President Bashar Assad and boost the opposing rebels, who have lost ground in the conflict over the last few months.

Officials then stated the US would send anti-tank rockets and humanitarian aid to the opposition, but noted MANPADs - portable missile-launchers - would not be part of the package, due to fears they could land in extremist hands and potentially be used to take down commercial airliners.

Some more thoughts on the leaked tape from a meeting in the Turkish foreign ministry which is only very selectively reported in "western" media.


A video with recorded voices and English text is available as is the seemingly complete text in two parts.

The setting of the recording is this:

The voices of the illegal recording believed to belong to Davutoğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Hakan Fidan, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu, and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Gürel. According to the information obtained from sources, the recording consists of a chat between four officials in Davutoğlu's office before the commencement of the official meeting with the participation of more civil and military bureaucrats in another room at the Foreign Ministry.

It is not clear when exactly the meeting happened. It would fit the situation late last year or early 2014.

Does Obama realize that he is leading the US and its puppet states to war with Russia and China, or is Obama being manipulated into this disaster by his neoconservative speech writers and government officials? World War 1 (and World War 2) was the result of the ambitions and mistakes of a very small number of people. Only one head of state was actually involved - the President of France.

In The genesis Of The World War, Harry Elmer Barnes shows that World War 1 was the product of 4 or 5 people. Three stand out: Raymond Poincare', President of France, Sergei Sazonov, Russian Foreign Minister, and Alexander Izvolski, Russian Ambassador to France. Poincare' wanted Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, and the Russians wanted Istanbul and the Bosphorus Strait, which connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. They realized that their ambitions required a general European war and worked to produce the desired war.

A Franco-Russian Alliance was formed. This alliance became the vehicle for orchestrating the war. The British government, thanks to the incompetence, stupidity, or whatever of its Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Grey, was pulled into the Franco-Russian Alliance. The war was started by Russia's mobilization. The German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, was blamed for the war despite the fact that he did everything possible to avoid it.

Barnes' book was published in 1926. His reward for confronting the corrupt court historians with the truth was to be accused of being paid by Germany to write his history. Eighty-six years later historian Christopher Clark in his book, The Sleepwalkers, comes to essentially the same conclusion as Barnes.

European leaders on Wednesday asked Barack Obama to share the US's shale gas bonanza with Europe by facilitating gas exports to help counter the stranglehold Russia has on the continent's energy needs.

At an EU-US summit in Brussels, Barack Obama's first visit to the city in office, the impact of Vladimir Putin's seizure of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula loomed large, affecting transatlantic relations in various ways - from defence spending to energy policies and trade talks.

With Russia's gas monopoly, Gazprom, supplying a quarter of Europe's gas needs, and almost all of the gas in parts of eastern Europe, the energy issue has soared to the top of Europe's strategic agenda as a result of the Ukrainian crisis and the fear that the Kremlin will be able to blackmail Europe if a threatened trade war erupts.

Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso, presidents of the European council and the European commission respectively, asked Obama to come up with measures that would favour European companies obtaining licences to export US shale gas in liquid form to Europe.