Another day, another protest in Armenia. And if we were to simply believe the Western media regarding this 'other protest,' we might get the impression that the Armenian people are upset with Russian policy and "Putinism." In reality, the protests are led by the same verified US-proxies exposed at the height of the "Electric Yerevan" protests mid-2015 which sought to undermine and overthrow the current government of Armenia in favor of a pro-Western political front more to Wall Street, London, and Brussels' liking.

The International Business Times in their article, "Armenia-Russia Ties Under Question Amid Fighting, Anti-Moscow Protests," would report regarding the recent protests that:

At a recent thousand-strong demonstration in the capital of Armenia, Davit Sanasaryan took out a couple of eggs and threw them at the Russian Embassy.

The gesture provoked both ridicule and approval in this small landlocked country that traditionally values very close ties with its large northern neighbor. "Our protests are not against Russia but against Russian policy and Putinism," activist and politician Sanasaryan said in an interview with International Business Times last week.

From the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down to Tom Brady's NFL suspension, reality gets defined not by facts and reason but by power and propaganda

Power - far more than fact - determines what is defined as true in America, a nation that has become dangerously disconnected from reality in matters both trivial and important.

The way it works now is that, in case after case, the more powerful entity in the equation imposes the answer and the rest of us are invited to join in by throwing stones and jeering at the weaker party. Two current examples make the point:

On the more substantive side, there is the 2014 case of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people - and blamed by U.S. officials and the Western media on ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (More on that below.)

On the more personal side is the case of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who has been defined by the powerful National Football League as a perjurer for denying under oath the NFL's scientifically dubious charges that he was part of a scheme to slightly deflate footballs.

The first informal meeting of the ministers of defense of Russia and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member countries took place on April 26th in Moscow. Sergey Shoigu discussed the situation in the Asia-Pacific region and approaches to ensuring regional security and the development of cooperation in the military sphere with his Southeast Asian colleagues.

Increasing multilateral cooperation with the "dozen" countries of Southeast Asia is one of Russia's priorities. The informal meeting was an important contribution to preparations for the commemorative Russia-ASEAN summit set to take place in Sochi in May. Shoigu outlined the views of the Russian Ministry of Defense on key challenges and threats in the Asia-Pacific region and put forth proposals for developing multilateral and bilateral cooperation with the ASEAN countries in a number of areas of mutual interest.

Turkey's Human Rights Association says it has submitted a report to the United Nations detailing the mass killing of Kurds in the city of Cizre. The documents were sent to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate.

"I spoke to the head of the OHCHR about the Russian position and what is happening in Cizre. We have a report of what has happened there, with testimonies of eyewitnesses who survived. We submitted it to the High Commissioner [for Human Rights]," president of the Human Rights Association Ozturk Turkdogan told RIA Novosti in an interview.

In March, RT submitted footage it obtained in Cizre, in the southeast of Turkey, to a number of human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International and Doctors without Borders. The footage documented atrocities carried out by the Turkish government against the Kurdish population in the town.

One local woman told RT's William Whiteman that between 45 and 50 people were burned alive in a building, and many of the victims appeared to have been beheaded by the Turkish troops.

The US meddling in Arab countries such as Iraq and Libya has turned them into hotbeds of terrorism, the head of the Russian general staff said. Libya, in particular, has become a hub for Islamic State jihadists. In the long run, American military interventions of the past two decades have only succeeded in fostering terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa, General Valery Gerasimov told an international security conference in Moscow. "The occupation of Iraq, the disposal of yet another strongman and 'democratization' of this country at gunpoint caused the majority of the dispersed military and ousted political elites to form the core of ISIS," he said.

Similar mistakes were made in Libya, when Western powers decided to use military force to oust its leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the Russian general said. "Libya... practically no longer exists as a state and has become a hotbed for IS and other terrorist groups," he pointed out. Gerasimov added that the refugee crisis in Europe is the price it is now paying for destabilizing Arab countries.

Lavrov: 'Use of terrorists as tool must stop'

Russia is suggesting that Western leaders should do their homework and change their behavior, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the conference. In particular they must stop supporting terrorist groups, which are fighting against Western countries' political rivals. "Fighting terrorism is a path with many obstacles. Homework needs to be done and actions that degrade the region must cease," he said. "The use of terrorists as a tool is unacceptable."

Similar concerns were voiced by Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan, one of many foreign dignitaries at the Moscow conference. "We are convinced that the world today lacks safety, stability and fear because of terrorist groups, which are supported by America, Israel and some countries in the region led by Saudi Arabia," he said.

The terrorism threat is the main topic of the security event, which this year Russia is hosting for the fifth time.

The allegations against the man were serious indeed.

• Donald Rumsfeld said he was "if not the number two, very close to the number two person" in Al Qaeda.
• The Central Intelligence Agency informed Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee that he "served as Usama Bin Laden's senior lieutenant. In that capacity, he has managed a network of training camps.... He also acted as al-Qaeda's coordinator of external contacts and foreign communications."
• CIA Director Michael Hayden would tell the press in 2008 that 25 percent of all the information his agency had gathered about Al Qaeda from human sources "originated" with one other detainee and him.
• George W. Bush would use his case to justify the CIA's "enhanced interrogation program," claiming that "he had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained" and that "he helped smuggle al-Qaeda leaders out of Afghanistan" so they would not be captured by US military forces.

None of it was true.

And even if it had been true, what the CIA did to Abu Zubaydah—with the knowledge and approval of the highest government officials—is a prime example of the kind of still-unpunished crimes that officials like Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Donald Rumsfeld committed in the so-called Global War on Terror.

So who was this infamous figure, and where is he now? His name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, but he is better known by his Arabic nickname, Abu Zubaydah. And as far as we know, he is still in solitary detention in Guantánamo.

Terrorists mortars, rockets, and Hell Cannon-fired gas canister bombs continue to rain down on Aleppo for the past few days (a dramatic increase from the sporadic but frequent terrorism Aleppo residents have been ravaged by over the years).

Since April 23, over 1000 terrorists' rockets/missiles/gas canisters have ravaged Aleppo (see: Syria: Aleppo is Burning and Western Media is Silent), killing at least 40 residents and injuring over 300, according to al-Alam journalist, Rabea Kalawandy's April 27 report.

In a more recent update, Kalawandy wrote:

٨" شهداء لحد اللحظة في ‫#‏حلب‬ نتيجة قذائف المعارضة المعتدلة بينهم أطفال ونساء

8 martyrs so far. In ‪#‎Aleppo‬ as a result of the moderate opposition shells including children and women."

The actual number of those murdered will likely be far higher, particularly with many of the injured being critically-injured.

Al Masdar news reported on April 26:

"6 civilians were killed, 25 others wounded when Islamist rebels fired a barrage of mortars and homegrown missiles into the government held districts of Ashrafiyah, Nile Street, Mokambo and Al-Khalidiyah, in the northern city of Aleppo."

In a video published by Anna News, Aleppo residents spoke out about their daily suffering from the rebel's constant shelling that took away many lives and did massive damage in Government-held Aleppo."

The Pentagon has adopted an Israel Defense Forces tactic for bombing the Islamic State. "Knock on the roof," the IDF method of firing a missile at a civilian home to alert occupants that a larger attack is pending, is often used in Palestinian territories.

During a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday, Air Force Major General Peter Gersten, who is responsible for all combat operations across Iraq and Syria, publicly described its "knock operation" as having been influenced by the Israelis. "We've certainly watched and observed their procedure. As we formulated the way to get the civilians out of the house, this was brought forward from one of our experts," Gersten told reporters.

The example given was an operation against an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) financial storage center in southern Mosul, Iraq. Gersten said the US had been watching the house of an IS finance operative for some time before the bombing on April 5.

"He was the major distributor of funds to Daesh [ISIS] fighters," said Gersten, who is deputy commander for operations and intelligence for the anti-IS Operation Inherent Resolve, in a news transcript. "We watched him come and go from his house, we watched his supplies, we watched the security that was involved in it. And we also watched occasionally a female and her children in and out of the quarters."

Gersten said they formulated a plan to ensure that women, children and non-combatants were clear of the bombing site. He said that IS operates in highly congested urban areas, which is of great concern to the military who are keen to minimize civilian casualties.

"We went as far as actually to put a Hellfire on top of the building and air-burst it so it wouldn't destroy the building, simply knock on the roof to ensure that she and the children were out of the building," he recounted to reporters. "And then we proceeded with our operations."

Initially the US thought the operation had spared the women inside, but it had not.

"[We] absolutely did see the women and child leave...the men that were in that building, multiple men, literally trampled over her to get out of the building," Gersten recounted. "And we watched her and observed her leaving the building. And she cleared the building, and we began to process the strike...it ended up in a civilian casualty...she ran back into the building."

It was "very difficult for us to watch, and it was within the final seconds of the actual impact,"Gersten recalled.

Iran is receiving its first deliveries of Russian-made S-300 air defense systems well ahead of schedule, and Tehran is in talks with Moscow about the purchase of other weaponry, Russia's top arms export official said.

Russian deliveries of S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Iran are going as planned, the head of Russia's federal arms exports service, FSVTS, told journalists on Tuesday.

"I would even say that we're well ahead of schedule," Fomin was quoted by TASS as saying. "Hopefully, everything will be fine."

He added that Russia and Iran have additionally discussed the procurement of other military equipment, but did not elaborate on the issue: "The talk is about only authorized items which are not on the UN list [of prohibited offensive weapons systems]."

Iran has had a long-standing interest in purchasing the S-300s, believed to be one of the most reliable and efficient systems of its kind, to boost its air defenses in an uneasy security environment.

French MPs have voted in favor of a resolution to lift the EU-imposed sanctions initially slapped on Russia over the crisis in Ukraine and the reunification with Crimea. The document is non-binding.

Fifty-five members of the French National Assembly have supported the resolution calling on the government not to extend the sanctions imposed on Russia by the EU. Forty-four voted against and two abstained. Of the 577 deputies in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, 101 took part in the vote.

The resolution, calling on the French government to protest extension of EU sanctions against Russia, was submitted by 85 French MPs.

Thierry Mariani, member of the center-right Republicans party who initiated the parliamentary debate, says the document "calls on the French government not to extend the restrictive measures and economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the European Union."