The opening of a $5 billion credit line provided by Russia to Iran signals rapidly strengthening ties.

Though it has received minimal world attention, there is now confirmation that Russia has granted Iran a $5 billion credit line.

This is a credit line rather than a loan (earlier media reports referred to it as a loan).

That Russia was willing to lend $5 billion to Iran was confirmed during President Putin's visit to Iran last November. Completion of the loan was however then delayed due to unspecified legal reasons. However in April it was confirmed that the legal problems - whatever they were - had been resolved and that Russia was pressing ahead with the loan.

The fact that the loan takes the form of a credit line rather than cash may be the clue to the delay. Though part of Iran's nuclear deal was the lifting of sanctions on Iran, the US is dragging its heels in doing that so that the bulk of the estimated $30 billion of Iranian funds frozen in Iranian accounts in Western banks have still not been released to Iran.

The heads of the foreign ministries of Poland, Romania and Turkey agree that European missile defense needs expansion, according to the Turkish foreign minister. "Russia's aggressive attitude" poses a serious threat to regional security and stability, he said. The range of such systems should be significantly broadened to maintain secure protection of the population, Turkey's Anadolu news agency cited Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying.


The Turkish FM pointed out that NATO's missile defense (Patriot systems) is already deployed in all three countries "for defense purposes."

"We've reached common ground that missile defense systems should be expanded to provide protection to all the three states and their populations," Cavusoglu said.

A range of Syrian women have denounced the US-UK funded group the 'White Helmets', led by a former British soldier and recently revealed to be financed by USAID. They come from all the country's communities (e.g. Sunni, Alawi, Druze, Christian) but, like most Syrians, prefer to identify simply as Syrian.

Their comments follow the release of a range of evidence (Beeley 2015; Hands off Syria 2016) which show that the White Helmets - who present as 'heroes' rescuing civilians from the destruction of war - are in fact armed, partisan, western government funded and participating with Jabhat al Nusra (al Qaeda) in sectarian celebrations and executions.

Atalia from Tartus says: 'the true fact about the white helmets is that they are FAKE and are just propaganda tools used by the US and UK administrations to justify military actions against the Syrian government, they were NOT created by Syrians nor do they serve Syria.'

Poland is living today, and with some delay, a political development comparable to that of Turkey. These two States, members of the Atlantic Alliance, militarized and conduct extensive political repression. Given the involvement of Turkey in the war against Syria and Poland in that against Ukraine, we can logically deduce that these abuses are not national events, but the result of the Nato policy.

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
Pastor Martin Niemöller, German anti-Nazi theologian

Although it might seem overstated, the situation described in Niemoller's poem is beginning to take shape in Poland. A country which was considered for many years as a symbol of the fight against totalitarianism and pioneer of democratic reforms in Central and Eastern Europe is today quickly being transformed into a tyrannical satrapy where civil liberties are curtailed and repression is applied to people with different ideological views than the prevailing political narrative.

On the morning of May 18, 2016, officers of the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) searched apartments of members of the national leadership of the Zmiana (Change) Party, demanding that they hand over hard-disks, memory sticks, documents etc. The search took place in three different cities at the same time, and in some cases (as in our Warsaw office) with a serious violation of legal procedures. Besides seizing computers, telephones and hard drives, ABW officers took all our books, leaflets, posters, the sound system we used during a demonstration, banners our party flags and even Polish national flags - to prevent and complicate any political actions and protests in the future. Some members of our party who did not want to participate in the unlawful activities of the Internal Security Agency were intimidated.

This type of action is an obvious form of a political repression against those who hold different visions of Poland's foreign, domestic and socio-economic policies than those of the Polish neoconservative and pro-NATO authorities.

The Nusra Front terrorists bombarded several parts of the Syrian province of Aleppo, injuring several civilians and leaving one child dead, a representative of the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation at Hmeimim airbase reported.

The Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front continued to fight for control of the war-scarred city of Aleppo, Syria and the surrounding region, leaving one child dead and 8 other civilians injured, according to the representative.

"Tonight, militants from the international terrorist organization Jabhat al-Nusra shelled the city of Handarat and the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood [Kurdish neighborhood in the city of Aleppo] in the province of Aleppo," the representative said on Friday.

"Jabhat al-Nusra do not stop shelling of the Kurdish district of Sheikh Maqsood in northern Aleppo. The terrorists fire from the area of ​​Castello shopping center, previously occupied by the moderate opposition forces," the representative said.

The reunification of Crimea and Russia didn't happen. Instead of 'Russia Day' celebrations on 12th of June - the peninsula is ravaged by war. Alternative news in an alternative reality.

Only eighteen months ago prospects for a major southern Europe natural gas pipeline from Russian gas fields across the Black Sea, into Turkey and on to the Greek-Turkish border was in negotiation between Russian President Putin and Turkey's Erdogan. Turkish Stream as it was called, was proposed in talks in Ankara between Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in December 2014 after EU economic sabotage had forced Russia to cancel plans for its South Stream pipeline into Bulgaria and on to the states of South East and Southern Europe. Now Greece has foolishly decided to join NATO's "gas war" against Russia by signing a far more costly agreement to build the so-called Trans-Adriatic Pipeline to carry gas from Baku's offshore Shan Deniz II field across Greece, through Albania then under the Adriatic to Italy. European gas geopolitics are rapidly becoming as risky as its oil geopolitics.

On May 17, Alexis Tsipras, Greek opportunist-in-chief and Prime Minister, signed an agreement in Thessaloniki to inaugurate the start of construction for the 550 km Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) through Greece. Tsipras hyped the estimated $1.5 billion project to the media as "one of the greatest direct foreign investment projects carried out in Greece." Present at the ceremony were European Union bureaucrats as well as high ranking officials from Greece, Turkey, Albania, Italy and Bulgaria.

Curiously enough, the US State Department was also present, although they are no direct party to EU internal energy agreements. Indirectly, ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, however, Washington has been in the middle of EU energy strategies, attempting sabotage of Russia's Gazprom at every chance. The essence of the EU "gas war" is the US effort, directly via Washington pressure and by NATO pressure, and indirectly via "friends" in the EU Commission, to weaken or outright sabotage Russian Gazprom exports to EU markets.

Drug lords have raised the ante for anyone who kills Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, local media report. Over $1 million will be paid for the assassination of the country's new leader, who has recently declared "a bloody war" on drug cartels.

The incoming police chief Ronald Dela Rosa said he had received a tip-off from a source saying that raising the reward from 10 million pesos ($216,000) to 50 million pesos ($1,083,845) was the main subject of a meeting between drug lords currently behind bars at the National Bilibid Prison (NBP) in Muntinlupa, Philippines.

"What they did not know is that one of those present in the meeting has told me what they discussed," Dela Rosa told the Manila Bulletin.

When asked how he plans to deal with them, Dela Rosa reportedly replied: "They should be taken out of the NBP horizontally."

American warships entering the Black Sea will prompt "response measures" from Moscow, a top Russian diplomat has warned, adding that another US aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean is clearly an attempt to show force ahead of an upcoming NATO summit.

The USS Porter (DDG-78), armed with assault cruise missiles and an Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System (primary weapon: Standard Missile 3), entered the Black Sea this week.

"American warships do enter the Black Sea now and then. Certainly, this does not meet with [Russia's] approval and will undoubtedly lead to planning response measures," Andrey Kelin, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry's European Cooperation Department, told RIA Novosti on Friday.

He also disapproved of the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman in the Mediterranean ahead of the NATO summit in Warsaw in July as muscle-flexing.

Russia's defense minister held a series of meetings with his Syrian and Iranian counterparts in Tehran to discuss counter-terrorism activities and security initiatives that would prevent jihadists from conducting wider operations in the region.

In trilateral consultations with Syrian Defense Minister Fahd Jassem Freij and Iran's Hossein Dehghan, Sergey Shoigu discussed priority measures to strengthen cooperation in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorist groups, the Russian Defense Ministry said.

According to Iranian state television, which quoted Dehghan, the three ministers agreed to conduct "decisive" war against "all terrorist groups." At the same time, the trio also agreed that a "comprehensive ceasefire" and humanitarian aids is vital in establishing firm peace in Syria.

"We agree to a guaranteed ceasefire that doesn't lead to the strengthening of terrorists in this country," Dehghan said, adding that diplomatic efforts to bring peace to the country must continue.