Good morning from Moscow! Today is June 24, 2017. And as always, there is lots of juicy Russian Meddling in the news for us to enjoy.

This morning's top story: CNN says sorry for making up spooky stories about Russian agents working for Trump.

Yes, apparently at least one person at CNN—probably an unpaid summer intern—still has a bit of self-respect.

Donald Trump also returned to a popular campaign theme, insisting that US intervention in the middle east has caused nothing but harm.

Donald Trump made a startling admission in a speech to his supporters in Iowa earlier this week.

The US president continued his unique brand of personal communication with the American electorate by holding a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on Wednesday.

Near the conclusion of his speech to an enthusiastic crowd, Trump turned to discussion of his first foreign tour, which saw him meeting with the heads of 54 Muslim countries in the Saudi capital of Riyadh:

...you go to Saudi Arabia where I just came back - a monumental, epic trip. Because I said: You cannot continue to fund terrorism. And the king of Saudi Arabia who...is really a very special man, I mean that - he has taken it to heart.

Washington Post confirms Trump Dossier caused Russiagate, triggering demands within an Obama administration humiliated at being bested by Russia in Syria for a massive showdown with Russia.

On 11th January 2017, shortly after publication of the now notorious Trump Dossier, I speculated that this obviously fictitious document might have been the cause of the whole Russiagate scandal.

After carefully explaining why the document is certainly a fiction I made the following point:

The big question is not whether the facts in this dossier are true or not; it is the extent to which the paranoid claims made in the dossier have shaped and might even have been the origin for the whole Russian hacking scandal.

I say this because media reports confirm that the dossier or extracts from it have circulated amongst US politicians (including Hillary Clinton and John McCain), US intelligence agencies, and within the media for weeks if not months. The earliest reports in the dossier are dated to July, which suggests that some of its claims - which include circumstantial details of who supposedly within the Russian government was behind the Clinton leaks - were already circulating early in the summer. That is a very early point in the Russian hacking story, making it at least possible that the dossier at least influenced the thinking of some of the people in the US intelligence community and in the media who have been pushing the Russian hacking scandal most aggressively.

Many have remarked on the absence of evidence in the ONDI report which was published last Friday. Even Masha Gessen - one of President Putin's most relentless critics - has pointed this out.

Publication of this dossier looks like an attempt to provide "evidence" which the ODNI report failed to do. If so then that at least gives rise to the possibility that the dossier is the "evidence" - or more correctly a part of the evidence - that formed the background to the ONDI report but which the ODNI report omitted.

Whatever the truth of this, the fact that an obviously concocted dossier like this has circulated for weeks if not months with its source apparently still considered "unimpeachable" and "reliable" by the West's intelligence agencies shows how wildly paranoid and ignorant about Russia the West's intelligence agencies and its politicians and journalists have become.

Fantasy has replaced truth, and it seems that a clever fabricator out to make money has successfully cashed in on it, quite possibly doing serious harm along the way.

Just when geopolitical practitioners were betting on regime change in Qatar - orchestrated by a desperate House of Saud - regime change ended up happening in Riyadh, orchestrated by Warrior Prince, Destroyer of Yemen and Blockader of Qatar, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS).

Considering the impenetrability of that desert petrodollar family oligarchy impersonating a nation it's up to a few foreigners granted access to make sense of the latest Arabian Game of Thrones. It also does not help that the "largesse" of Saudi - and Emirati - lobbies in Washington reduces virtually every think tank and hack in sight to abject sycophancy.

A top Middle East source close to the House of Saud, and a de facto dissident of the Beltway consensus, minces no words; "The CIA is very displeased with the firing of [former Crown Prince] Mohammad bin Nayef. Mohammad bin Salman is regarded as sponsoring terrorism. In April 2014 the entire royal families of the UAE and Saudi Arabia were to be ousted by the US over terrorism. A compromise was worked out that Nayef would take over running the Kingdom to stop it."

Russia will not bow its head down and listen to demands of the United States.

On Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement, saying that Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently held a telephone conversation with his US counterpart Rex Tillerson, regarding the latest batch of US sanctions against Russia.

During the conversation, Lavrov said Moscow is still waiting for an answer from Washington on its proposals on normalization of bilateral relations between the countries.

"Under these circumstances and in order to assess the situation properly, the Russian side was forced to postpone the meeting of vice foreign ministers, which was originally scheduled to address particular issues in the US - Russian-relations", said Lavrov.

New drone footage from ravaged Old Mosul has depicted the extent of air and artillery strike damage that has been inflicted on Iraqi's second largest city. Amid the rubble and the ruin, the video captured the site where the Great Mosque of al-Nuri once stood.TrendsIraq carnage, Islamic State

Surrounded by scenes of devastation and rising smoke, the drone hovering in mid-air captured the site where, until recently, Mosul's Great al-Nuri Mosque dominated the city skyline for over eight centuries.

Consecrated in the year 1172, the mosque had served as a religious center for centuries until Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) forces destroyed the famous leaning al-Hadba Minaret along with the entire structure Wednesday, just as Iraqi troops edged to within 50 meters of the site.

When we watch a documentary film I imagine most of us suppose it to be portraying factual information, not fiction. That, after all, is what would differentiate a documentary from other genres like drama or entertainment.

With this assumption in mind I have often wondered how broadcasters, filmmakers, festivals and prizegivers could be screening and celebrating 'documentaries' that purvey demonstrable untruths.

As luck would have it, with the International Film Festival being in town here in Edinburgh just now, I was able to get my answer from an industry expert.

So let's start with two obvious points about the whole Russia fiasco...

Namely, there is no "there, there." First off, the president has the power to declassify secret documents at will. But in this instance he could also do that without compromising intelligence community (IC) "sources and methods" in the slightest.

That's because after Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013, the whole world was put on notice — and most especially Washington's adversaries — that it collects every single electronic digit that passes through the worldwide web and related communications grids.

Washington essentially has universal and omniscient SIGINT (signals intelligence). Acknowledging that fact by publishing the Russia-Trump intercepts would provide new knowledge to exactly no one.

Nor would it jeopardize the lives of any American spy or agent (HUMINT). It would just document the unconstitutional interference in the election process that had been committed by the U.S. intelligence agencies and political operatives in the Obama White House.

The next war with Israel would draw hundreds of thousands of fighters from across the entire Middle East, Hezbollah's leader has warned after the Israeli Air Force chief promised to drop a month's worth of bombs in a matter of days if a new conflict breaks out.

Hassan Nasrallah delivered a televised address on Friday saying "the Israeli enemy must know that if an Israeli war is launched on Syria or Lebanon, it is not known that the fighting will remain Lebanese-Israeli, or Syrian-Israeli."

"Doors will open" for hundreds of thousands of fighters to "join the resistance" against Israel, he warned as cited by Israeli broadcaster i24NEWS.

"Everyone should know that the resistance axis is very strong and will not fail. Today there are more forces working in the area in Yemen and Iraq," Nasrallah said, adding that Pakistani, Afghan and Syrian fighters might also get involved.

New photos released by United States European Command (EUCOM) show an Su-27 less than ten meters from a US surveillance aircraft, in one of just several close brushes between Russian and NATO forces to occur in the tense theater in the past several days.

"A US RC-135U flying in international airspace over the Baltic Sea was intercepted by a Russian Su-27 Flanker June 19, 2017. Due to the high rate of closure speed and poor control of the aircraft during the intercept, this interaction was determined to be unsafe," said a statement from EUCOM.