A man suspected of recruiting for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) has been arrested by law enforcement officers in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia.

The 32-year-old resident of Bashkortostan's Dyurtyulinsky District, who is "suspected of cooperating with Islamic State," was detained in early May, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a statement to Russian media.

"It was established that the man shared the radical views of IS, involved Bashkortostan residents into operations of the international terrorist organization and facilitated their departure to Syria," the statement read.

A criminal case on assisting a terrorist organization has been launched against the suspect, who has been in custody since his arrest.

No, we are not referring to James Comey's dismissal (though this too, does reflect a change of mode). Perhaps we should have paid closer attention to Roger Stone, a long-time friend of the President, and his erstwhile campaign manager, who insists, and insists trenchantly, that Trump is his 'own man'. Those who think Trump can be manipulated are mistaken, Stone says. They misread the terrain, and subsequently will find that they are mistaken. No, by 'change of gear', we refer rather, to the Astana-Syria talks.

In all the dust kicked up in Washington over Comey, Astana has passed largely unnoticed. But there (Astana), the 'gear change' is substantive and merits close attention. In gist, Trump is willing to let Astana unfold, and to see whether it may lead to a strategic change in the Syrian situation. Two things emerge from this: Firstly, Russia and Iran are being tested by Trump. Ideological prejudices are being suspended for the moment, and both countries will be judged by their actions. (I think both states will stand content with this situation).

The second shift of mode, concerns certain (but not all) of Trump's military advisers. The latter have been quite prominent in the formulation of US foreign policy until now. No more (at least in Syria). There can be no doubt — strategic Syria policy now lies with Rex Tillerson and Sergei Lavrov, who have been mandated to follow up the Astana de-escalation process. And in the recent talks in Astana, unlike before, the US had a senior diplomat attend and observe the talks - an Assistant Secretary of State. In brief, the baton has passed from the Generals Mattis and McMaster, from the sphere of military intervention primarily, to the primacy of negotiations. To make this clear, Trump said explicitly in the wake of the Tomahawk attack: "We're not going in to Syria" — implying that the strike was a one-off action.

Many people view Donald Trump as the most dangerous man on the planet, but next week he flies to Saudi Arabia for a three-day visit during which he will meet a man who surely runs him a close second as a source of instability. This is deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, 31 - the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia since his father King Salman, 81, is incapacitated by old age - who has won a reputation for impulsiveness, aggression and poor judgement in the two-and-half years he has held power. Early on he escalated the Saudi role in Syria, thereby helping to precipitate Russian military intervention, and initiated a war in Yemen that is still going on and has reduced 17 million people to the brink of famine. Combine his failings with those of Trump, a man equally careless or ignorant about the consequence of his actions, and you have an explosive mixture threatening the most volatile region on earth.

Prince Mohammed, who is also defence minister, is not a man who learns from his mistakes or even notices that he has made them. Less than a year after his father became king in January 2015, the BND German intelligence agency issued a warning that Saudi Arabia had adopted "an impulsive policy of intervention" abroad and blamed this on the deputy crown prince whom it portrayed as a naïve political gambler. The degree of alarm within the BND about his impact on the region must have been high for them to release such a document which was swiftly withdrawn at the insistence of the German foreign ministry, but its predictions have been fulfilled disastrously in the following eighteen months.

The deputy crown prince is turning out to be not only a gambler, but one who recklessly raises his stakes when in trouble. Proof of this came in an extraordinary but under-reported interview he gave earlier this month, broadcast on al-Arabiya TV and Saudi TV, in which he threatens military intervention in Iran. "We will not wait until the battle is in Saudi Arabia, but we will work so the battle is there in Iran," he says. Speaking in highly sectarian terms, he claims that the Iranian Shia leaders are planning to seize Mecca and to establish their rule over all the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. He believes that "their logic is based on the notion that Imam Mahdi will come and they must prepare the fertile environment for his arrival and they must control the Muslim world." His diatribe is as anti-Shia as it is anti-Iranian and likely to provoke fears among Shia in Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia itself, where Shia make up a tenth of the population, that they will be the victims of an anti-Shia crusade.

It is absurd to imagine that the four or five Shia countries have the ambition or the ability to take over the fifty or more that are Sunni, though Sunni fundamentalists accuse tiny Shia minorities in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Indonesia of plotting to do so. Prince Mohammed appears to give credence to the theory of a grand anti-Sunni conspiracy orchestrated by Iran, saying that, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iran has been trying to "control Muslims in the Islamic world and spread the Twelver Jaafari [Shia] sect in the Islamic world so Imam Mahdi comes."

Syria has been living under Western sanctions for many years now. These sanctions concern even such an important sphere of the country as its medicine and medical supplies. Western medicines and spare parts for expensive European medical devices are not available in the country and that has a devastating effect on its civilians.

A pharmaceutical plant in the suburbs of Aleppo has started its production after Sheikh Najar district was liberated from militants. The workers at the plant are seen packing tablets, along the conveyor belt medicines in bottles are seen being transported. Although production has started once again after years of being shut down, the plant is not enough to help everyone.

Despite the popular belief of war affecting the production in the country, it was not the terrorists that caused the greatest harm to this industry, it was the western sanctions.

"The sanctions of the Western countries almost killed the entire pharmaceutical industry in the country, as we cannot buy medications or ingredients for their production. Now imports only come from Russia, China, Iran and some other countries," production director Mahmoud Abu Abed told Sputnik.

The media's constant focus on US President Donald Trump means the risk of famine in Africa and the Middle East is being overshadowed, the head of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said, adding that the issue is a "reality," not "fake news."

"I mean literally if you turn on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN - it's nothing but Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump!" WFP Director-General David Beasley told reporters in Geneva. "And very little information about the famines in Syria, northeast Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, Yemen."

"We've got to break through all of the smoke," he said, as quoted by AP. "This is not fake news, this is reality."

Beasley, the former governor of South Carolina, also expressed a need to "rise above all the confusion," particularly in "high-donor states" such as the US.

"So we're making an appeal today for the donors to step up to the game even more," he said.

Ukrainians will be quickly disappointed in their country's visa-free regime with the EU after they face a wide array of problems upon entering the bloc, Kiev-based political analyst Mikhail Pogrebinsky told Sputnik.

In an interview with Sputnik, Mikhail Pogrebinsky, head of the Kiev-based Center for Political and Conflict Resolution Studies, suggested that the numerous problems Ukrainians will face after entering the EU will lead to widespread disillusionment about their country's visa-free regime with the EU.

On Thursday, the EU Council approved the liberalization of the visa regime with Ukraine, allowing those who travel "for business, tourist or family purposes" to enter and stay in the European Union for up to 90 days in any 180-day period without a visa.

"Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content."

— Richard Hofstader

"Imperial privilege is this strange ability on the part of the U.S. public to 'shrug off' the consequences experienced by people impacted by the direct and indirect result of U.S. militarism."

— Ajamu Baraka

The recent firing of James Comey is interesting more for the reaction from liberals than what it means in substance. First off...lets harken back to the early days of post WW2 America. The Dulles brothers, and Henry Cabot Lodge and the like. Max Forte wrote a very comprehensive piece on his site.

It is useful to check the notes on the Eisenhower administration and the links to the United Fruit Company. And to the law firm that represented United Fruit, Sullivan and Cromwell...who today, drum roll, represent Goldman Sachs.

Now this relates to the current situation because the real delusion among liberals has to do with legitimacy of any of these governmental organizations. Also, to be clear, the engine behind the outrage of this firing has to do with the Clinton wing of the DNC. The truth is that Comey should have been fired, and in fact one wonders why he was ever appointed, and second, yes, Trump is awash in all manner of shady dealings and has been for twenty-five years. And sure, love to see Trump go, and Pence, and Kushner and the entire grotesque White House. But....but...the liberal left clings with a kind of hallucinatory tenacity to the Russia collusion story.

Putin: "Greater Eurasia is not an abstract geopolitical arrangement but, without exaggeration, a truly civilization-wide project looking toward the future"

Russia's President Vladimir Putin spoke at the opening of the One Belt, One Road international forum in Beijing on Sunday. The two-day summit will focus on China's Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

In his address, Putin welcomed China's One Belt, One Road initiative and stressed that Russia is committed to working with its regional partners to forge a new "political and economic landscape of the continent and bring peace, stability, prosperity and a new quality of life to Eurasia ... Greater Eurasia is not an abstract geopolitical arrangement but, without exaggeration, a truly civilization-wide project looking toward the future".

France's electoral campaign watchdog is looking into claims of ballot tampering made by the campaign of far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, the Associated Press reports.

The Le Pen campaign told the commission on Friday night that electoral administrators in several regions, including in Ardeche, Savoie, and the Loire, had found Le Pen ballots that had been "systematically torn up," the AP writes.

The Le Pen team said it received thousands of reports of "violations of the enforcement of electoral law."

The U.S. president's envoy, Jason Greenblatt, is suddenly getting chummy with peacenik Tzipi Livni, Bibi's archrival

The anxiety seeping into the Israeli right wing ahead of Donald Trump's visit is comparable only to the euphoria that gripped it when the ostensible master deal maker was elected U.S. president. What Habayit Hayehudi leader Naftali Bennett and his political cohorts saw as the realization of a dream of generations turned into a potential nightmare.

A bevy of politicians from the right and left were in the United States this week, some in Washington, others in New York, for the Jerusalem Post Annual Conference. They schmoozed with legislators and administration officials, and their impressions were similar − something big is about to happen in our region. Grampa Donald is cooking up something, but nobody knows what's in the pot.