U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley said that the Trump administration "wants to prevent another conflict like Syria, North Korea or South Sudan" in Venezuela which is a code phrase for "regime change." According to a May 17th report by the Associated Press (AP):

Haley said the U.S. intention wasn't to be "intrusive" or "heavy-handed" but to support regional efforts to find a political solution and "show respect for the Venezuelan people" who want free and fair elections, the release of political prisoners and the worsening humanitarian situation addressed.

"We think if that doesn't happen we will certainly be hearing this in the Security Council because it will be a real problem — not just in the region but internationally," Haley told reporters after the closed-door briefing and discussions that lasted over 1½ hours.

Venezuelan Ambassador Rafael Ramirez accused Washington of trying "to interfere in our domestic issues." The AP report says that the "demonstrations have escalated into a vehicle for airing grievances against the government for triple-digit inflation, food shortages and a rise in crime." What the AP forgot to mention was the fact that as early as 2014, Saudi Arabia flooded the markets with cheap oil, which at one point was at $110 per barrel. Saudi Arabia coordinated the move with approval from Washington and to a point, Tel Aviv to drive down oil prices which would affect Venezuela domestically thus opening the door to violent protests against the Maduro government. Washington knew that Venezuela's economy that provides social programs is mainly based on oil exports.

Clearly disappointed to have been left out of the headline heroics from Friday night (courtesy of The Washington Post and The New York Times), CNN has decided that anon-sourced perspectives on officials' feelings now warrants reportage.

The latest in the sad sage of mainstream media's downward spiral, as The Hill reports, is that former FBI Director James Comey is expected to testify that he believes President Trump was deliberately trying to meddle in the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in the presidential election, according to a report late Friday.


Despite swearing under oath that he "had never" been influenced during an investigation, and further that if he had he would have reported it immediately... CNN now reports that, according to a source, Comey has come to believe the president intended to influence him...

On Thursday, US-led coalition forces launched an airstrike on Syrian pro-government troops near the town of al-Tanf in southern Syria claiming that they posed a threat to the US-backed forces. Fyodor Lukyanov, an expert in foreign affairs, analyzed how it might be connected with what is going on the US' domestic political arena.

On May 18, the US-led coalition struck pro-Assad fighters near the town of al-Tanf in the vicinity of an established safe zone protected by Russia. The US military later claimed that they posed a threat to US-backed forces in the country's south near the Jordan border.

This was the second time that Donald Trump administration has used military force directly against Damascus.On April 6, US Navy destroyers fired 59 cruise missiles at the Ash Sha'irat Airbase in western Syria, calling their attacks a "warning" to Damascus following a chemical weapons incident in Idlib province which Washington claimed was carried out by the Syrian government forces.

Iran has sanctioned nine US-linked companies in response to American sanctions over the Middle East country's ballistic missile program. While Iran's re-elected president Rouhani said the country was ready for dialogue, the US came up with prerequisites to start it.

Nine more US-linked businesses, organizations and individuals are put in the sanctions list, created in March. The new list of sanctions is dated May 18, with AP reporting that it was put online on Saturday.

The sanctions mean that Iran could seize local assets of the listed organizations and deny their employees entry to the country. The first batch of sanctions were announced back in March in response to actions of the Trump administration, which sanctioned more than two dozen Iran-linked people and companies in February in retaliation for a ballistic missile test.

First Lady Melania Trump and the US president's daughter and adviser Ivanka Trump have praised Saudi Arabia for its "encouraging" progress with regards to women's rights.

Accompanying her father on his presidential trip to the Middle East, Ivanka met with a group of Saudi female leaders in Riyadh Sunday to discuss how women might gain further freedoms in the patriarchal state.

"In every country, including the United States, women and girls face challenges," Trump's eldest daughter told the group during a roundtable discussion led by Deputy President of the Women's Sports Authority Princess Reema bint Bander, according to AFP.

US President Trump arrives in Saudi Arabia at a time when Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - the country's de facto ruler - has launched it on a runaway spending programme which is bound to end in national bankruptcy.

US President Donald Trump's choice of Saudi Arabia for his first foreign trip has provoked some criticism. It is not difficult to understand why.

Whilst the US claims to be the leader of the "free world" the embarrassing reality is that its most important Middle East ally is a repressive autocratic Wahhabist monarchy. Whilst Donald Trump says the destruction of Jihadi terrorism is his priority, Saudi Arabia - as everyone knows - is the country that bankrolls most of this terrorism.

US President Donald Trump should discuss how to avoid "the likes of" the 9/11 terrorist attacks with his Saudi Arabian partners during his first official visit abroad, Iran's foreign minister said in an opinion piece.

Tehran and Riyadh have recently engaged in a war of words, accusing each other of undermining security across the Middle East, sponsoring fundamentalist organizations, and seeking regional dominance.

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's foreign minister and an outspoken diplomat, advised Donald Trump, who is on a tour of the Middle East, to tackle the issue of fueling Islamist extremism with his interlocutors in Saudi Arabia.

Is Israel and its infamous Wall of Separation representative of a modern evolving democratic state, based upon Biblical principles and teachings, as applied towards the original indigenous Palestinian peoples of Palestine, or is it an example of yet another ethnic-cleansing, apartheid state, possessive of the same genocidal-racist tendencies as those 19th century colonial-imperialistic powers - like the United States, Canada, Australia and South Africa - who also once invaded and committed wholesale destruction of other ancient indigenous peoples entire ways of life; sweeping their survivors aside onto reservations, reserves and Bantustan-type compounds to be ultimately ignored and forgotten?

Professor Ilan Pappe, one of Israel's most radical dissident historians, who now teaches and writes in exile, amply answers these questions in his latest book Ten Myths About Israel. A mere 148 pages long, this historical masterpiece reads more like a voluminous epic that eloquently offers up a clear, concise, arguably-undisputable, record of the true indigenous history of Palestine, the Palestinians and their ethnic-cleansing at the hands of the Jews ever since the Nakbah in 1948. The Nakbah a time when: 700,000 Palestinian Arabs were violently expelled; 400 to 600 of their villages sacked and destroyed; with eleven of their twelve major towns destroyed that virtually extinguished the urban life of Palestine. To the Israeli people it is celebrated as the time of their Declaration of Independence. But to the Palestinian Arabs it is simply known as the Time of the Catastrophe; which, 50 years later, in 2008, ultimately led to the Gaza War and Israel's Operation Cast Lead that killed a further 1,400 Palestinians, 926 of which were unarmed civilians, and then again, in 2012, during Israel's Operation Pillar of Cloud, when another 174 Palestinian's were killed, 107 of which were innocent civilians; later to be followed by Israel's Operation Protective Edge that further killed another 2300 Gazans, 1492 of them civilians, 551 of which were children and 209 woman, with the wounded numbering over 10,000, among which were 3,371 children, which also destroyed some 17,000 homes and partially destroyed another 30,000 homes.

Such facts and figures to be gleaned from Pappe's writings, and what caused them, affords the world with a seminal platform for the 21stcentury from which to simultaneously look backwards and forwards towards the true historical origins and identity of not only Israel and Zionism towards the indigenous Arab peoples of modern Eretz Israel, but also the similar contemporary state of many other longer-standing colonial-imperialistic powers in the world and their own treatment of the indigenous peoples in their midst, whose ancient homelands and natural resources continue to be coveted by these world powers for their own empire-building pursuits.

Avi Shlaim of the Guardian declares Ilan Pappe to be "one of the few Israeli students of the conflict in Palestine who writes about the Palestinian side of the story with real knowledge and empathy"; while the New Statesman deems Pappe to be, "Along with Edward Said, the most eloquent writer of Palestinian history" John Pilger, the acclaimed Australian writer-journalist further calls Pappe, "Israel's bravest, most principled, most incisive historian."; while this writer sees Professor Pappe as more like Israel's own I.F. Stone or Howard Zinn, who dares to expose and elucidate upon the dark underbelly of Israel's sordid history that few others ever dare to touch upon."

To this end, whatever one's take, Ten Myths About Israel goes a long way to dispel all the disinformation, misinformation and mythology that daily is propagated by the corporate media's spin doctors who would have the world's masses continue to forever adhere to such false beliefs as: "Palestine Was An Empty Land"; The Jews Were a People Without a Land";"Zionism is Judaism"; Zionism Is Not Colonialism"; "The Palestinians Voluntarily Left Their Homelands in 1948"; "The June 1967 War Was a War of No Choice"; "Israel is the Only Democracy in the Middle East"; "The Oslo Accord of 1993 Was/Is a Genuine Peace Process"; "The Palestinians Second Intifada of the 1980's Began a Terrorist Movement Against Israel", and finally: "The Victory of Hamas in the election of 2006 Began a Terrorist Movement Against Israel".

Students of Western Civilization, knowledgeable of the similar genocidal policies and mythologies perpetrated in countries like the United States, Canada, Britain Australia and South Africa against their own indigenous peoples - who have also borne the brunt of Western imperialism and suffered the same loss of self-determination, nationhood independence and the "Right To Return & Reclaim Their Ancestral Heritage" - will at once recognize in Pappe's writings the same cultural patterns that repeat themselves in modern-day Israel.

Russian officials bragged in conversations during the presidential campaign that they had cultivated a strong relationship with former Trump adviser retired Gen. Michael Flynn and believed they could use him to influence Donald Trump and his team, sources told CNN.

The conversations deeply concerned US intelligence officials, some of whom acted on their own to limit how much sensitive information they shared with Flynn, who was tapped to become Trump's national security adviser, current and former governments officials said.

"This was a five-alarm fire from early on," one former Obama administration official said, "the way the Russians were talking about him." Another former administration official said Flynn was viewed as a potential national security problem.

Several Israeli ministers expressed concern over the arms deal signed by the US and Saudi Arabia during US President Donald Trump's visit to Riyadh, saying Israel should maintain military superiority and demand an explanation from Washington.

"This is a matter that really should trouble us," Israeli Infrastructure, Energy and Water Resources Minister Yuval Steinitz said ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting, Reuters reports.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars in arms deals is something we need to get an explanation for," he also said, adding that Saudi Arabia "is a hostile country and we need to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge is maintained."