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Anti-aircraft brotherhood: What joint 'Russian Commonwealth' air defense can do


Sputnik
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 16:52 UTC
Servicemen load a Pechora-2M air defense complex of the Tajikistan armed forces
© Sputnik/ Mihail MokrushinServicemen load a Pechora-2M air defense complex of the Tajikistan armed forces during the 2013 Combat Commonwealth, a military drill for the CIS joint air defense system, at the Ashuluk training ground.
Seven former Soviet republics will continue building up their joint air defense capability, the deputy head of Russia's Air Space Command said.

"We have worked out recommendations on better coordination of our air defense forces, based on the results of the joint command-and-control drill we had in 2016," Lt.-Gen. Pavel Kurachenko said after meeting with his colleagues from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in Bishkek.

The Commonwealth of Independent States, also called the Russian Commonwealth, is a regional organization formed after the dissolution of the USSR comprising of nine former Soviet republics as member states.
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Eye 1

Influencing voters: With 9 days to go before French elections, judges pursue prosecution of Le Pen


RT
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 01:04 UTC

French judges have asked the European Parliament to suspend the immunity of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen relating to the alleged misuse of European Union funds by the rightist National Front leader.

The request, first revealed by Europe 1 radio on Friday, had actually been filed on March 29, sources of AFP and Reuters have confirmed. However, European MPs are unlikely to be able to approve the request before the first round of the French presidential election on April 23.

Le Pen is accused of fictitiously employing her staff as her assistants at the European Parliament while actually doing no EU work.

Comment: See also: The Deep State Rises to the Surface in French Elections

What's interesting about this is that they're only now getting around to prosecuting Le Pen in what is essentially trial-by-media, whereas the other pro-Putin candidate, Francois Fillon, has been under the spotlight for similar alleged 'infractions' since late last year.

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MIB

American foreign policy and the tangled matrix of deceit

Vladimir Golstein
The Duran
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 16:03 UTC
Matrix code
Will America do anything and think anything to preserve its hegemony?

Goethe's Faust, an ever energetic, never satisfied individual, is the traditional symbol of a Western man. He refuses to stay in the moment and vows never to declare: "Verweile doch, du bist so schön" - "Stay a while, you are so beautiful." Judging by its elites and by the stories it tells about itself, Modern West has turned into the very opposite of this Faustian man. For the current western leaders, the beautiful moment had already occurred, as was officially pronounced by Francis Fukuyama in his notorious treatise of the1990s, The End of History and the Last Man. That was the moment when the Soviet Union collapsed, and the dreams of the Full Spectrum Dominance and the perennial Pax Americana were cooked up by various neoconservative thinkers and the authors of PNAC. At this "beautiful moment," such concepts as Truth, West, or Order have finally found their eternal abode in Washington, DC.

Bizarre as Fukuyama's rejection of change was, it took roots. Of course, Fukuyama dressed it in Hegelian terms, announcing the death of grand narratives and radical revolutions, but underneath these intellectual trappings laid a rather conservative message: "Read my lips: no new paradigms. The history has ended."
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Bizarro Earth

Four more killed in opposition-led violence in Venezuela, death toll now at six

Rachael Boothroyd Rojasr
Venezuelanalysis.com
Wed, 12 Apr 2017 15:58 UTC
violence venezuela
© Cristian Hernández/European Pressphoto AgencyDemonstrators and Venezuelan police and militias have been clashing since President Nicolás Maduro attempted to take over the nation's Congress late last month. On Thursday, a fifth protester died from injuries stemming from these clashes
Four more citizens have been killed in opposition-led street violence in Venezuela, bringing the death count to a total of six since the protests began nine days ago.

The victims are: Bryan Principal, 13, Miguel Ángel Colmenares, 36, Oliver Villa Camargo, 29, and Antonio Gruseny Canelon, 32.

Principal, Colmenarez, and Canelon were all killed in the western state of Lara, one of the focal points of the violence, while Camargo was shot dead in central Caracas.

According to reports, Principal was killed by opposition protestors who opened fire on the Ali Primera government housing project in Barquisimeto during a black-out on Tuesday night. He later died from his injuries in the hospital.

In statements released following the minor's death, residents at Ali Primera explained that the housing project had been at the centre of an ongoing confrontation between pro-government supporters and opposition protesters throughout the day.

Comment: The odds of the violence being home-grown are low. The U.S. has a long history of meddling in Venezuela.

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Attention

N. Korea blasts US 'military hysteria & aggression' in Syria


RT
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:51 UTC
North Korea military
© KCNA / Reuters
Pyongyang has called the US cruise-missile strike against Syria a war crime, urging Washington to stop its "military hysteria" and come to its "senses" - or otherwise face a merciless response in case of any provocations against North Korea.

"The US should be punished according to international law as its military attack on Syria was an undisguised act of aggression and war crime," a spokesman for the Korean Jurists Committee said in a statement cited by KCNA.

Simultaneously, on Friday, a spokesman for the General Staff of the Korean People's Army (KPA) issued a statement claiming that following the unilateral strike against Syria, Donald Trump's "serious military hysteria" has reached a dangerous phase where the DPRK will be forced to respond against the US and its allies in such a "merciless manner as not to allow the aggressors to survive."
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Chess

Former US diplomat: Trump needs to learn the rules of the game, Russia should teach him how to act in Syria


RT
Fri, 14 Apr 2017 20:41 UTC
Trump
© Carlos Barria / Reuters
Donald Trump lacks international experience and it's up to Moscow and others to teach him the rules of the game, John Brady Kiesling, ex-US diplomat and a signee of an open letter, warning US president against escalating relations with Russia, told RT.

"The difficulty is that President Trump is inexperienced... His instinct is to do the opposite to whatever President Obama did," Kiesling, who represented the US Foreign Service in Israel, Morocco, Greece and Armenia between 1983 and 2006, said.

"The goal here should be to teach President Trump. And here Russia needs to do more than it has done to explain how the international community can do what's needed in Syria," he added.

The former diplomat said President Vladimir Putin "obviously, has much more experience" than his US counterpart and that "Trump will have to learn the rules of the game."

Comment: Trump administration on Syria: Two weeks, six positions, clear as mud

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Dollar

Another Trump flip-flop: US Treasury does not label China currency manipulator, keeps on monitor list


RT
Fri, 14 Apr 2017 15:49 UTC
Chinese currency
© Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
The Trump administration has declined to label China a currency manipulator, but is keeping the country on its list of those to monitor, according to a new report from the US Treasury Department.

The monitoring list includes China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Germany and Switzerland, according to a Treasury report to Congress entitled, "Foreign Exchange Policies of Major Trading Partners of the United States," published Friday.

President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal this week he would not consider China as manipulating its currency, which he attributed to a strong US dollar, China's recent currency activity as well as the development of a new strategy with the US to rein in North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
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Info

Marine Le Pen blasts Donald Trump and his new found love for NATO

Alex Christoforou
The Duran
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:42 UTC
Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen criticized President Donald Trump on Friday for his sudden embrace of NATO.

Last week The Duran reported on the many "deplorables" turned off by Trump's new found fancy for a US interventionist foreign policy.

Last week Trump also backtracked on much of his NATO pre-presidential stance.

He signed off on Montenegro's membership to the alliance...which now means Serbia is completely surrounded by an aggressive military alliance, that has bombed it mercilessly in the past under false flag pretenses.

Trump also met with NATO head warmonger Stoltenberg, and reversed his NATO position from "obsolete" to, "it is no longer obsolete".

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is not amused with Trump's swiveling foreign policy.
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Bomb

Afghan officials: Massive US bomb death toll rises to 94


RFE/RL
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:36 UTC
US GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB)
© United States Department of Defence / Wikipedia
Afghan officials say the number of Islamic State (IS) group fighters killed in an attack by the most powerful nonnuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S. military has risen to 94.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb -- dubbed the Mother Of All Bombs -- was deployed in combat for the first time on April 13, hitting IS positions in eastern Nangarhar Province.

Provincial Governor Muhammad Ismail Shinwari said on April 15 that four key commanders were among the militants killed. Shinwari said no civilian casualties were inflicted as civilians living in the area of the bombing had been evacuated by the Afghan military.
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Folder

What are they looking for? Microsoft bombarded with record number of US foreign intelligence requests in 2016


RT
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 15:18 UTC
microsoft
© Lucy Nicholson / Reuters
Microsoft received over 1,000 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests from the US government in the first half of 2016 alone - the highest number in the company's recorded history.

This was more than double the number of requests in the preceding six-month period the company stated in a Transparency report published online Thursday.

Microsoft also published a redacted National Security Letter the company received from the FBI. The correspondence sought specific user information and also functioned as a temporary gag order, preventing the corporation from disclosing the request to the public.

In 2015, Congress included additional transparency measures in the USA Freedom Act, allowing tech companies (such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Twitter) to publish similar letters from the FBI in recent months, reports The Hill.

Following a number of widely publicized leaks involving the scope of US intelligence gathering both at home and abroad, such practices by US authorities have come under increased scrutiny in recent months.
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