And the root cause of how these slave markets were created, thanks to U.S. foreign policy, has been ignored.
Do you want to end the slave trade in Libya?
Puppet Masters
And the root cause of how these slave markets were created, thanks to U.S. foreign policy, has been ignored.
Do you want to end the slave trade in Libya?
© Shamil Zhumatov / Reuters
"We need to make sure that the innovative component of Russia's development is the main driver of the country's development. If we achieve this... then, without a doubt, Russia will retain its status a great power, including the defense capability of the state," Putin said in the documentary film 'World Order 2018' by journalist Vladimir Solovyev.
With a $4 trillion GDP in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), Russia has become the sixth-largest economy in the world after China, the United States, India, Japan and Germany.
"Without an efficient economy, without a social sphere that creates a basis for political stability, there can be no question of any greatness," Putin added.
© Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
Anti-government protesters aim their weapons during clashes with riot police at Independence Square in Kiev February 18, 2014.
Anti-government protesters aim their weapons during clashes with riot police at Independence Square in Kiev February 18, 2014.
The accusation refers to events that happened in February 2014, when Ukraine was gripped by violent anti-government protests. Yanukovich and three leaders of the opposition forces signed a power-sharing deal, which effectively amounted to a capitulation of the president.
The deal was enforced by three European nations: Germany, France and Poland. The accord lasted only a few days, however, as protestors - led by far-right nationalists - violated its terms and advanced unopposed by demoralized security forces. This forced Yanukovich to flee for his life.
"Here is something not publicly known," Putin revealed in an interview. "At this very moment, our American partners called us and asked to do everything - and that's almost a quote - to ensure that Yanukovich didn't use the army, so that the opposition could clear the squares and governmental buildings on its own terms and go on towards the implementation of the agreement."
The Russian president said Moscow agreed to this request, only to see the situation escalate the next day into a full-fledged armed coup. "They could have at least called us, do something, say a word! They could have said, 'It was a case of agents stepping out of line, but we will fix it and turn everything into the bounds of the law,'"he said.
"Not a word! On the contrary, there was full support of those who committed this coup," Putin recalled. "This is what they did with their own hands. How can they not support the current leadership now? They put themselves into a corner."
© A7_Mirza/ISW News via South Front
Battle situation Eastern Ghouta March 8 2018
Battle situation Eastern Ghouta March 8 2018
Reports from East Ghouta suggest that 40% of the former Jihadi enclave has now been recaptured by the Syrian army, up from the 30% of the enclave which the Syrian controlled just two days ago.
It seems that Jihadi resistance in the enclave is crumbling even faster than most expected, with the Jihadi fighters in the enclave unable despite their desperate resistance to stop or slow down the advance of the Syrian army.
© Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/Kremlin Pool/EPA-EFE/REX
President of Russia, Vladimir Putin
President of Russia, Vladimir Putin
One of the first rules of a shunning campaign is that it doesn't have to make sense. It just has to be what everyone's saying. Since most Americans went to high school, we tend to be instinctively familiar with the concept.
The crazy inverse logic of the new national blacklist was on full display after special prosecutor Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russian "troll farm" operatives in February. In the wake of this foreign meddling charge, CNN reporter Drew Griffin banged on the door of an elderly female Trump supporter named Florine Goldfarb and accused her of being a Russia-collaborator.
Goldfarb had attended a pro-Trump rally allegedly promoted on Facebook by Russian trolls. There were no Russians at the rally. The group didn't meet to discuss the subjugation of Abkhazia. They were plain, ordinary, Floridian Trump supporters - idiots, maybe, but not traitors.
Not according to CNN.
"That group was Russians," Griffin said accusingly.
"I had nothing to do with Russians," the old lady said.
"Maybe you didn't know it," Griffin countered, "but you did."
Nearly two years into the #Russiagate scandal, accusing people of being in league with Putin has become an almost daily feature of news coverage.
Comment: My, my how far we've come in the evolution and 'evilution' of democracy and freedom for all. A country at full tilt.
© AP
Senior Advisor to the President, Jared Kushner
Senior Advisor to the President, Jared Kushner
Although China and Mexico do not appear to have won much in the way of any favors, the UAE saw Trump back a Saudi-led economic embargo against Qatar, a move supported by Israel. Kushner's real estate dealings with China over a joint Kushner-Trump building complex in Jersey City also heightened suspicions among U.S. intelligence agencies that China was buying influence with the White House via Kushner and Chinese investors in the One Journal Square property in New Jersey.
Kushner's private business dealings, which included an attempted shakedown of the Qatar Investment Authority to purchase a $500 million stake in the practically-bankrupt Kushner building at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, led to the placement of Qatar on a list of nations the Trump administration considers to be supporting terrorism. Only the intervention of the Pentagon, which maintains a major military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar, saved Qatar from being subjected to crippling U.S. sanctions.
Comment: There has been a connection drawn between Kushner, his enterprises and his security clearance which may hold valid observations or cherry-picked circumstances.
Excerpt from Sott article, Jared Kushner loses access to top-secret intelligence:
Kushner is not alone. All White House aides working on the highest-level interim clearances - at the Top Secret/SCI-level - were informed in a memo sent Friday that their clearances would be downgraded to the Secret level.See also:
[D]ozens of White House aides had yet to receive permanent clearances but nonetheless had access to some of the country's deepest secrets.
The president has the ability to grant Kushner a permanent clearance, but Trump said Friday - the same day the memo was sent - that he was leaving the decision to his chief of staff. "I will let General Kelly make that decision," Trump told reporters. "I have no doubt he'll make the right decision."
- Jared Kushner can't pass his security clearance investigation - he omitted 100 'foreign contacts'
- Trump and Kelly hit a Wall: Trump blasts Kelly's claims of Mexico border rollback
© Denis Balbouse/Reuters
Kirill Dimitriyev
Kirill Dimitriyev
The meeting in the Indian Ocean island nation in January 2017 was between Erik Prince, a prominent U.S. military contractor who is the brother of Trump's education secretary, and Kirill Dmitriyev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund who is close to President Vladimir Putin, The Washington Post reported late on March 7.
Citing people familiar with the matter, whom it did not identify, The Washington Post said that a witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition team could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries.
Comment: The Prince meeting took place January, 11, 2017, with across the board denials of any backchannel attempt. See also:
- Blackwater founder Erik Prince admits to 'incidental' Seychelles meeting with Putin ally during Trump transition
- WaPo fake news: Kremlin denies reports of Blackwater founder helping establish Putin-Trump ties
- Blackwater founder Erik Prince: Obama put me under "illegal" surveillance and leaked it to WaPo
- Did the Washington Post inadvertently expose NSA capabilities over Kushner back-channel story?
© sadkhabar.ir/KJN
Instead of examining why Donald Trump was able to connect with voters in economically distressed parts of the country in a way that Democrats failed to do, adherents of the Russiagate narrative hoped that investigations would quickly find a smoking gun, leading to Trump's impeachment and undoing an election result they consider aberrant and unjust.
On Friday, I spoke at a conference in Washington, DC, titled The Israel Lobby and American Policy, sponsored by The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and IRmep, a group that researches the lobby's influence.
As I note in my talk, a handful of journalists - especially Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté of The Real News - have consistently debunked the wild, exaggerated and sometimes fabricated claims of Russian interference made by members of the self-styled but woefully ineffectual "Resistance" to Trump.
© Gleb Garanich/Reuters
Senators Chris Murphy, John McCain with opposition activists in Kiev, Ukraine 2013.
Senators Chris Murphy, John McCain with opposition activists in Kiev, Ukraine 2013.
The 2019 State Department budget request cuts the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) budget and separates it from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). Funding for the institutes would be moved to the State Department, where NDI and IRI would have to compete with private contractors, according to the Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, who described the proposal as "an assault not only on their organizations but also on the pro-democracy mission they are dedicated to."
Comment: This is sound business sense, keeps budgets separated, makes orgs accountable and offers competition to the marketplace - an accountability of sorts. This has nothing to do with democracy...(as neither do those organizations underneath all the democracy promo and facade).
"If implemented, the proposal would gut the program, force crippling layoffs and the symbolic meaning would also be shattering, sending a signal far and wide that the United States is turning its back on supporting brave people who share our values," NED President Carl Gershman told Rogin.
Comment: Shaking things up - what stays, what changes, what falls by the wayside that is corrupt or doesn't serve us. Sort of like cleaning out entrenched and moldy government closets.
© Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/KJN
The Chinese approach to relations with the African countries "encourages dependency" through the use of "opaque contracts, predatory loan practices, and corrupt deals that mire [the African] nations in debt and undercut their sovereignty," Rex Tillerson stated in his speech at the George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, on Tuesday, ahead of his official trip to Africa. He claimed that China's approach "stands in stark contrast" to the good intentions of the US.
Even though the top US diplomat admitted that "Chinese investment does have the potential to address Africa's infrastructure gap," he still argued that it eventually would only lead to "mounting debt" for the African nations and would create only "few, if any, jobs in most countries." He also claimed that China "endangers Africa's natural resources and its long-term economic political stability."
Comment: China is giving the US a run for the money in Africa. The US will have to 'up its game' to stay solidly in the market.
Comment: See also: