The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) warned last week that 20 million people are in danger of starvation because of conflicts and drought.

If you missed this shocking and very important news, then it's no surprise, as it didn't receive too many headlines - certainly not in the West. Those have been dominated instead by expressions of faux-outrage from the pro-war political and media Establishment over footage of children in Syria who appeared to have been the victims of a suspected chemical weapons attack, which the US and its allies were very quick to blame, without firm evidence, on Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) concluded its annual conference late last month, triggering the usual debate in various alternative media outlets. Why does so much U.S. taxpayer money go to a small and not particularly useful client state that has a vibrant European-level economy and is already a regional military colossus?

Those who support the cash flow argue that Israel is threatened, most notably by Iran; they claim the assistance, which has been largely but not completely used to buy American-made weapons, is required to maintain a qualitative edge over the country's potential enemies. Those who oppose the aid would counter that the Iranian threat is largely an Israeli and Saudi Arabian invention, used to justify continued American support for the national-security policies of both countries. And they would add that Tel Aviv is more than able to defend itself and pay for its own military establishment.

In truth, American aid to Israel is something like a pot of gold that keeps on giving. Both sides in the discussion would probably agree that the domestic Israel Lobby has been instrumental in sustaining the high level of aid, though they would undoubtedly disagree over whether that is a good or bad thing. The operation of "The Lobby," generally regarded as the most powerful voice on foreign policy in Washington, led Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer to ask, "Why has the U.S. been willing to set aside its own security ... in order to advance the interests of another state? [No] explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the U.S. provides." They observed that "Other special interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that U.S. interests and those of the other country—in this case, Israel—are essentially identical."

Since the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948, it has been "the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II," according to the Congressional Research Service. The United States has provided Israel with $233.7 billion in adjusted for inflation aid between 1948 through the end of 2012, reports Haaretz. Current discussions center on the Obama administration's memo of understanding with Israel that promised it $38 billion in military assistance over the next 10 years, a considerable sum but nevertheless a total that is far less than what is actually received annually from the United States Treasury and from other American sources.

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), speaking in the most recent legislative discussion over Israeli aid, stated that the $38 billion should be regarded as a floor, and that Congress should approve additional funds for Israeli defense as needed. It has, in fact, done so. At its most recent meeting, AIPAC announced the latest windfall from America, applauding "the U.S. House of Representatives for significantly bolstering its support of U.S.-Israel missile defense cooperation in the FY 2017 defense appropriations bill. The House appropriated $600.7 million for U.S.-Israel missile defense programs." And there is a long history of such special funding for Israeli-connected projects. The Iron Dome missile-defense system was largely funded by the United States, to the tune of more than $1 billion. In the 1980s, the Israeli Lavi jet-fighter development program was funded by Washington, costing $2 billion to the U.S. taxpayer before it was terminated over technical and other problems, part of $5.45 billion in Pentagon funding of various Israeli weapons projects through 2002.

Keystone XL Pipeline is a long-controversial proposed Canadian pipeline project through the U.S. north to south, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, to trans-ship the world's most global-warming filthiest oil, from Canada's tar-sands, to be burnt and used in Europe.

On March 24^th, U.S. President Trump informed the to-be-owner of the Keystone XL Pipeline project, that he gives them the go-ahead to build it, after U.S. President Barack Obama had, near the end of his Presidency, prohibited it. Obama had wanted it built (and had pressured the EU to accept the oil that would be shipped to them from the proposed Pipeline's southern terminus in Galveston, to sell this Canadian oil in Europe), but the EU said no; they wouldn't relax their anti-global-warming standards to accept the world's dirtiest oil, and this refusal by them eased Obama's decision to give Ms. Clinton's campaign the boost it needed by his simply nixing the project altogether. He nixed it in order to show Democratic voters that the Democratic Party cares about the environment, so as not to depress the electoral turnout for Hillary Clinton (who was actually a big supporter of fossil-fuels) on Election Day November 8^th. But not only did the EU say no; the voters said no, to Clinton, too. So, this was a double disappointment to Obama; he had turned the Pipeline down for nothing — nothing that he had wanted, anyway, because global warming never seriously mattered to him (and therefore what he was doing about it in secret was supportive of the gas-and-oil industries).

Donald Trump has reversed his national-security policies 180 degrees, and is now focusing it around conquering Russia, instead of around reducing the threat from jihadists. The reason for this drastic change is in order for him to be able to win the support of the U.S. aristocracy, who had overwhelmingly favored Hillary Clinton during the Presidential contest, and who (and whose 'news'media) have been trying to portray Trump as "Putin's fool" or even as "Putin's Manchurian candidate" and thus as an illegitimate President or even traitor who is beholden to 'America's enemy' (which to them is Russia) for Trump's having won the U.S. Presidency — which they had tried to block from happening.

Actually, even Republican billionaires generally preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump — and almost all of them hate Putin, who insists upon Russia's independence, which the U.S. aristocracy call by all sorts of bad names, so that any American who even so much as merely questions the characterization of Russia as being an 'enemy' nation, is considered to be 'unAmerican', like in the days of communism and Joseph R. McCarthy, as if communism and the U.S.S.R. and its Warsaw Pact that mirrored America's NATO military alliance, even existed today, which they obviously don't.

So: the U.S. Establishment's portrayal of current international reality is so bizarre, it can be believed only by fools, but enough such fools exist so as to enable that Establishment to do horrific things, such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the 2011 invasion of Libya, just to name two examples, which got rid of two national leaders who were friendly toward Russia.)

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.

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.

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."

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.

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."

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."