Russia has proposed mutual assurances to the United States over non-interference in each other's sovereign affairs, but Washington continues to reject the offer, a senior Russian diplomat told reporters.

Moscow has repeatedly offered such an agreement to the US State Department in recent years, and noted that the scheme worked in 1933 to restore healthy relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, said the head of the Foreign Relations Department the North America, Georgy Borisenko.

In 1933, Soviet Foreign Minister Maksim Litvinov and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt exchanged personal notes with obligations not to interfere in the sovereign affairs of the other nation, Borisenko noted. He said that these mutual guarantees were given at the insistence of the United States because, after the Great Depression, Washington was extremely concerned about the spread of communist ideas.

"Today we are proposing to exchange letters with similar content, for example between the heads of the foreign ministries of Russia and the United States. Unfortunately, Washington is stubbornly avoiding this proposal, they reject it in a simply categorical way," declared the diplomat.

In the Department of Defense authored summary of the National Defense Strategy of the United States for 2018, Secretary James Mattis quite succinctly sets out the challenges and goals of the U.S. military in the immediate future. Importantly, he acknowledges that the U.S. had become far too focused on counter-insurgency over the past two decades, but he seems to miss the causation of this mission in the first place. U.S. foreign policy, and its reliance on military intervention to solve all perceived problems, regime change and imperialist adventurism, resulted in the need to occupy nations, or destroy them. This leads to the growth of insurgencies, and the strengthening of long simmering religious radicalism and anti-western sentiment in the Middle East and Central Asia. The U.S. military willfully threw itself headlong into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The United States engaged in unnecessary wars, and when these wars were easily won on the immediate battlefield, the unplanned for occupations lead to guerilla insurgencies that were not so easy for a conventional military to confront. The U.S. Army was not prepared for guerilla warfare in urban areas, nor for the brutal and immoral tactics that their new enemies were willing to engage in. They obviously had not reflected upon the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, nor the nature of their new enemies. As casualties mounted due to roadside IEDs, snipers, and suicide bombers hidden amongst civilians, the U.S. military and the defense industry were forced to find ways to protect soldiers and make vehicle less vulnerable to these types of attacks. This resulted in vehicles of every description being armored and new IED resistant vehicles being designed and fielded in large numbers. This in turn, equated to a vast amount of time, effort and money. It also focused both the U.S. military services and the defense industry away from fighting conventional wars against peer adversaries.

After a decade of fighting an insurgency in Afghanistan and almost as long in Iraq, the U.S. leadership decided to destroy the sovereign nation of Libya, and foment a war in Syria immediately afterward. There is no doubt with the knowledge of historic events today, that the CIA and State Department facilitated a foreign invasion of Syria of Islamist radicals. They funded and armed these groups, provided clandestine training, and facilitated the logistical movement of fighters and weapons into a sovereign nation to cause its disintegration. In these two examples they decided not to occupy these countries, but to destroy all semblance of ordered society and replace it with brutally violent chaos. The U.S. political and military leadership seems to have learned that their past adventurism resulted in costly occupations, yet instead of refraining from using the military option as a tool to alter geopolitical realities they did not like, they merely opted to abandon the responsibility of occupation and reconstruction all together.

RT America's Rachel Blevins has had her public account axed by Facebook amid the social media giant's recent crackdown on alternative news sources. Blevins says she only posted her journalistic work and is baffled by the move.

Rachel says she had to work hard for four years to amass a following of nearly 70,000 people. She has no clue as to what might have prompted Facebook censors to see red and banish her from the site in the 'inauthentic behavior' crackdown, as she only posted her own work, articles and video reports.

The RT America correspondent said that Facebook listed a plethora of reasons as to why her account got the chop. Rachel says the social media giant said it was a "fake account", was "misleading users" and was "violating Facebook's spam policy".

"I've gotten some comments from people saying maybe its related to RT," the newly minted employee said, who recently started with RT.

During operations to clear terrorist-controlled areas across the country in recent months, Syrian forces discovered countless caches of Western and Israeli-made weapons, munitions and supplies.

Authorities in the town of Yalda, about 10 kilometers south of the Syrian capital, have discovered a large stock of weapons and ammunition carefully hidden inside a plastic water tank at a local farm abandoned by militants, the Syrian Arab News Agency reports.


The discovery included NATO-standard sniper rifles, a LAW portable anti-tank weapon, thermal and night vision equipment, grenades and improvised explosive devices, as well as multiple RPG launchers, Kalashnikovs and Dragunov rifles.

Militants were thought to have hidden the weapons at the farm earlier this year before evacuating from the area to Idlib.

Russian military has delivered about a tonne of food and medicines to Nabia es-Sahr village in Syria's Quneitra province, aid delivery group chief said.

"We have come to [the village] for the first time... We must continue and increase our aid... We are always welcomed with smiles as people are happy that aid has finally arrived," Vladimir Ladeynov told reporters. Russian medical staff have also arrived in the village to provide assistance.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin urged the international community to ensure that the process of humanitarian aid provision to Syrian civilians was not affected by politics.

In late August, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees adopted a "passive position" on providing assistance to Syrians due to an internal UN directive, adopted in October 2017, which "impedes the involvement of United Nations agencies in efforts to rebuild Syria until political changes are in effect in that country."

In a collective gasp heard 'round the world, the Western establishment media last week discovered that the Saudi regime is capable of doing evil stuff.

The 'brutal murder' of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey is bizarre on a number of levels, not least because everyone knows about it, yet it's not even confirmed that he's actually dead and not just missing.

US Congress appears to be going straight for the jugular, threatening sanctions against its - to this point, from its perspective - unblemished Middle Eastern ally. So 'sanctions', maybe, but cancelling the weapons sales which sustain the proxy war in Yemen? No way!

In addition to discussing the latest Saudi intrigue, this week's podcast explores the ongoing outbreak of Trump Anxiety Disorder across the West, but primarily in the USA. Joe Quinn elaborates on his idea that the real reason people hate Trump is that he is NOT a liar...


Running Time: 01:03:20

Download: MP3

All international problems are currently suspended, awaiting the results of the US mid-term elections. The partisans of the old international order are gambling on a change of majority in Congress and a rapid destitution of President Trump. If the man in the White House holds fast, the protagonists of the war against Syria will have to admit defeat and move on to other battle fields. On the other hand, if Donald Trump should lose the elections, the war on Syria will immediately be revived by the United Kingdom.

The current situation - extending from the Russian response to the destruction of its Ilyuchin-20 to the US mid-term elections on 6 November - is uncertain. All the protagonists of the war in Syria are waiting to see whether the White House will be able to pursue its policy of breaking away from the current international order, or if Congress will become the opposition and immediately trigger the process for the destitution of President Trump.

Although the Chinese government has not yet gone so far in the ever-escalating trade war as to sanction United States oil, imports are drying up anyway as Chinese buyers shy away from U.S. crude. According to U.S. Census Bureau data released last week, for the first time since 2016, China has halted purchases of U.S. crude, importing zero barrels in August. A major blow coming from the second biggest economy in the world - a blow that is sure to have reverberating repercussions and retaliations.

After Washington lifted restrictions on exports at the end of 2015, China began buying vast quantities of U.S. crude, and has even been giving Canada a run for its money as the number one importer in some instances. Chinese imports represented 23 percent of total U.S. crude exports in 2017 and averaged 22 percent this year - until August. That is definitively no longer the case, as tensions have ramped up significantly in the past months after the Trump Administration began a "trade war" at the beginning of this year.

In just one part of a long series of retaliations, China threatened in June to impose a 25 percent tariff on crude imports. This was in direct response to U.S. President Trump's hefty $50 billion levy on Chinese imports. China took a shot at U.S. crude despite Trump's threats that his $50 billion would be followed with more levies in the case of China's retaliation.

In July, Interior Minister Salvini announced on Twitter that he would be looking at reforming the self-defence laws to allow homeowners to confront intruders and defend themselves with firearms if need be. "A new law that allows the legitimate defence of decent people in their homes is our priority," Salvini said.

In polls over the summer 39 per cent of the Italian people said they would like to see less stringent criteria for the possession of firearms for the purposes of self-defence.

The trend of increased weapons licences is not limited to Italy. Several other European countries have seen a surge in licence requests and firearms sales since the height of the migrant crisis in 2015 including Germany, Belgium and Austria.

Danish lawmakers have gone on the offensive against interference in public debate, sparking criticism that a new proposal, which could entail criminal liability for expressing opinions similar to those of Moscow, may become a step toward silencing public debate.

According to a bill brought forward in local parliament, Danes could face a jail term if they voice dissent over the government's position on Russia.

The proposal, which is said to be meant to "strengthen efforts against illegal influence from foreign intelligence services," would introduce criminal penalties for perceived "meddling" in public debates and attempts to influence decision-making. Crimes committed during an election campaign would entail a maximum prison term of 12 years.