Introduction: Prospects for Syria in light of elections and the Geneva talks

In Syria, elections were carried out last Wednesday, quite free and fair in respect to the primaries in the US. The numbers of women, Christians, and Sunnis elected ought to dispel the calumnies of the Western press, that the Assad regime is strictly Alawite sectarian. (To begin with, Bashar al-Assad is married to a Sunni.) These elections harbor a tenuous promise that is echoed by the semi-success of the Syrian ceasefire.

However, as the Geneva talks resume, few have hopes for quick permanent fixes. The crucial parties to the negotiations have not yet been settled in a logical manner. Kurds have been sidelined and the Saudi-assembled HNC have been included, and several foreign powers seem intent to pour fuel on the fire of still simmering tensions. Most manifestly, these naysayers and provocateurs include Turkey and Saudi Arabia, but the US and other NATO allies are also continuing their covert support for ISIS, al-Nusra and other terrorist factions. They still want Assad out, and are happy to use the vilest means to get there.

Sad to say, despite a tenuous but mostly successful 6-week ceasefire in Syria, the US and its allies also continue to talk out of both sides of their mouths, as they try to wriggle out of the corner into which they have been forced by the events of the last six months. Having been forced to acknowledge the success of Russia, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its Iranian and Hezbollah allies in mostly clearing the terrorists from the corridor of important cities in the west of Syria, the US now tries to claim credit for these successes as much as the gullible Western press will swallow that lie.

The US State Dept also continues to propose, or threaten rather, a literally and forthrightly divisive "Plan B", which is essentially the Western Plan A regurgitated in the wake of Assad's successes. This still envisions the fragmentation of Syria into minute and powerless statelets, including a tiny Alawite one for Assad (not recognizing that much of his cabinet, many of his generals, and most of his army are Sunni, or even Christian.)

The West continues to act in support of several opposing sides of the conflict; "their" Kurds and "their" takfiri terrorists are now fighting each other with US arms, as I mentioned last time. Raytheon can't complain, but this does not seem just the usual omnivorous profit-seeking motive of the military-industrial complex. Rather, it may reflect deep fissures in the Western alliances, and within the US power structure itself.

The confrontation last week between Russian aircraft and a US-Polish naval operation in the Baltic Sea, within shooting distance of Kaliningrad, was a long anticipated and professionally executed exercise by the military commanders of all three countries. "Unprofessional", as Admiral Mark Ferguson commanding US Naval Forces in Europe called it, was the very least thing it was. But who provoked, who feinted, who attacked first, and who defended are questions the publicity that has followed is meant to obscure.

One outcome that was not anticipated by either the attackers or defenders has begun to materialize in Warsaw. There, the rhetoric of military buildup along Poland's eastern frontier has run into the cold calculation that Poland's survival chances aren't likely to be much better than those of the USS Donald Cook, if there had been a real firefight, Turkish style.

The US destroyer Donald Cook is armed with the Aegis combat system, a combination of missiles intended to attack Russian nuclear, as well as non-nuclear missile batteries on land, sea, and in the air. The ship is normally docked at the NATO base at Rota, Spain. Between April 8 and 11, it was at the Polish port of Gdynia. The US Navy press reported the port call as part of the vessel's:

"fourth forward-deployed patrol in support of ballistic missile defense of Europe... Such port visits serve to enhance U.S.-Polish relations as the two nations work together for a stable, secure and prosperous region."

Cuba's 89-year-old revolutionary leader Fidel Castro delivered a rare speech to the Communist Party, stating he is nearing the end of his life and that members should carry on his socialist ideals after he dies.

"I'll be 90 years old soon. Soon I'll be like all the others," Fidel Castro said in a "farewell" speech to the members of the 7th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba that was broadcast on state television.

"The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban communists will remain as proof on this planet that if they are worked at with fervor and dignity, they can produce the material and cultural goods that human beings need, and we need to fight without truce to obtain them," he added during the closing ceremony.

Party members responded by shouting "Fidel!"

Israeli police arrested a diamond dealer on Wednesday suspected of taking part in a $65 million fraud at the country's diamond exchange. Some of his family members may also be involved in the embezzlement.

The suspect was identified as a well-known Israeli dealer Hanan Abramovich and head of Hanan Abramovich Diamonds.

"The suspect is under arrest and we are currently questioning him on suspicion of embezzlement," said a police spokeswoman as cited by Reuters.

The investigation was started after a number of dealers from the Israel Diamond Exchange (IDE) complained the Abramovich firm owed them "tens of millions of dollars" for gems it purchased but never paid for.

Finland is planning to contribute 100,000 euros to an American study on Russia and Putin. The research will assess the likelihood of Russian president Vladimir Putin remaining in power until 2024, as well as the implications thereof.

Finland's Defense Ministry and Ministry of Foreign Affairs have agreed to take part in the world-famous US-based Brookings Institution's Russian-themed research project titled, "Russia's Revisionism: Implications for the West". Both ministries are planning to split the cost, contributing 50,000 euros each.

The project aims to extensively investigate Russia's objectives in relation to the West, at the same time addressing the internal events and personally President Putin.

The Russian political system needs new people to keep the country united and peaceful, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a video conference with participants in the primaries of the United Russia party, in which Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took part.

"You have said that the political system needs new blood. This is exactly what it needs! You are absolutely right," Putin said in reply to a statement by a combat operations veteran, a participant in primaries in Krasnoyarsk.

"To keep the country united and to avoid bloodshed in our country the political system should get new blood. Fresh, interested, promising people should be joining politics - people who know what is to be done and how it is to be done," the president explained.

"The people selected by the United Russia party are mature and well-prepared. They genuinely want to do a good cause in the broadest sense of this word. I am not going to talk about any politics, I just want to say about the sincere desire to work for the good of the people of Russia," Putin concluded wishing success to the primaries' participants.

Ambassadors from Russia and NATO member states have held a "frank and serious" discussion despite "profound and persistent disagreements" as they met for the first time since the Ukrainian crisis kicked off in 2014.

"There were profound disagreements related to the crisis with Ukraine. Today's meeting did not change that," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters after the meeting.

"We have suspended practical cooperation between NATO and Russia, but we all agree that it is in all our interest to keep channels for political dialogue open. However, this does not mean that we are back to business as usual," he added.

Moscow is basing its Syrian strategy on the fact that the al-Nusra Front terrorist group is operating near Aleppo and urges the United States to share any information indicating otherwise, Permanent Representative of Russia to the UN Office and Other International Organizations in Geneva Alexey Borodavkin said on Tuesday.

"We are building on the fact that the al-Nusra Front is fighting Syria's armed forces near Aleppo. If someone has differing information, which is exact, with coordinates, then we once again request you to share it with us. Tell us where West-supported opposition forces that are observing the ceasefire are. If this is done, then of course, these groups will not be hit, as has been promised by Russia many times," Borodavkin told Sputnik.

In a recent article published in the Times of Israel, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton used an analogy of the Passover story to reassure Israel of her support, echoing Netanyahu's calls to counter the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Citing the ancient story of how the Jews gained their freedom from slavery in Egypt, Clinton compared BDS with the "Pharaoh" who "denied the Israelites the right to worship as they chose."

"International efforts to malign and isolate the Jewish people — like the alarming 'BDS' movement — are gaining steam," the former Secretary of State wrote two days prior to the crucial New York Democratic primary.

Brant Rosen, co-chair of the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Rabbinical Council, criticized Clinton's passage, referring to her analogy as "cynical."

"It feels more than a little galling to be given such a politically cynical Torah lesson by a candidate running for the highest office of the world's largest superpower," Rosen told AlterNet, "I'd say she's got her Pharaoh all wrong: America and Israel are the overwhelmingly more powerful and oppressive parties in this equation."

On the day Barack Obama is kowtowing to his Saudi allies, and just days after a senior Obama administration finally made the admission that has been a "conspiracy theory" for years namely that "a lot of the money, the seed money if you will, for what became Al Qaeda, came out of Saudi Arabia," the FT is out with another stunning revelation.

The FT has written an article that supposedly focuses on the US sources of growing diplomatic antipathy between the US and Saudi Arabia. The source of disagreement: the treatment of Iran.

As US President Barack Obama arrives on a valedictory visit to Saudi Arabia this week, that 70-year-old bargain looks frayed by fractious relations with a ruling House of Saud that is coming under unpredictable new management. The shale-based energy revolution meanwhile shows the potential to liberate the US from dependence on Saudi and Gulf oil. Mr Obama's main foreign policy achievement, the nuclear deal struck last year between international powers and Iran, is abhorrent to Saudi Arabia, whose virulently sectarian Wahhabi interpretation of Sunni Islam abominates the Shia Islam of Iran and its Arab network of co-religionists from Baghdad to Beirut.

But it was not just Iran.

"Even when the Iran deal was only at an interim and fragile stage in 2013, the Saudis were so affronted they rejected a seat for which they had vigorously lobbied on the UN Security Council. But differences between Washington and Riyadh had been steadily accumulating — starting with the fact that it was mainly Saudi terrorists, on orders of the Saudi Osama bin Laden, who struck America on 9/11."