The Swedish Embassy in Russia will not request that the Russian Foreign Ministry clarify minister Sergei Lavrov's statement on possible military response should Sweden join NATO, ambassador Peter Ericson said Thursday. Last month, Lavrov said that Russia would respond in military-technical terms on its northern borders if Sweden were to join NATO.

"I think this case is closed," Ericson told RIA Novosti.

According to the diplomat, the embassy has a good relationship with the Russian Foreign Ministry.

"I think both sides know each other's opinions," Ericson explained.

He added that the Swedish government was content with cooperating with the bloc without being its member. Sweden officially declares the country is neutral and non-aligned. Despite it being a part of the bloc, the country does sometimes contributes to various NATO operations. In 2011, Sweden became the only country, neither a member of NATO nor the Arab League, to participate in the no-fly zone over Libya by sending there its air force upon NATO's request.

Former CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi said that the US government is fully aware that the allegedly moderate opposition in Syria is working closely with the al-Nusra Front, an offshoot of the al-Qaeda terror group, but publicly pretends the two groups are separate.

"The so-called moderate rebels are in cohabitation with the Nusra Front, so this is not surprising," Giraldi, a former CIA Case Officer and US Army Intelligence Officer who spent 20 years overseas working on terrorism cases, said on Wednesday.

The US government attempted to include the al-Nusra Front in the new ceasefire agreement in Aleppo, but the Russian government insisted on excluding the Islamist organization as unacceptable, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Sputnik in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. In reality, the opposition groups supported by Washington in their bid to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, were almost totally under the control of the al-Nusra Front and its masters, al-Qaeda, Giraldi pointed out.

"Indeed, the so-called 'moderates' have largely been absorbed by the Nusra Front," he explained.

Remember, it's supposed to come right back here because that which the U.S. has created and maybe, perhaps, even the very reason for being that America was set up to do, is almost accomplished. Once it's accomplished, they'll be doing the same thing back home. You'll SUBMERGE into the world system you helped create. - Alan Watt, CuttingThroughTheMatrix.com

As Western media outlets and the U.S. State Department attempt to gin up public sentiment surrounding alleged bombings of alleged hospitals that may or may not have even existed and that, even if they did, were nothing more than field hospitals for terrorists, the Syrian people are suffering under unimaginable conditions. These true victims, of course, are completely ignored by the same outlets that cry and pine over the deaths and setbacks of jihadists, rapists, torturers, and murderers.

Amidst the constant propaganda and dehumanizing method of reporting "news" in the West, both the humanity and the wishes of the Syrian people are lost completely.

In a video posted by the ANNA News Agency, one is able to see footage of Aleppo where Western-backed terrorists are lobbing missiles and bombs against civilian targets, film that would never be played on Western televisions under the guise of protecting a violence-ridden and violence-obsessed public from the "graphic images" of the results of their own intellectual laziness and lack of moral conviction. Graphic images are no problem when it is movie time, of course, but when violent images come home to roost, trigger warnings are required and censorship is always invoked. That is, unless the necessity of stirring up public support for foreign wars is dire enough to warrant its presentation.

Listening to the western corporate media one would get the impression that the Kremlin controls all the Russian media with an iron grip and that not a word of criticism of Russia, never mind Putin himself, is ever allowed. So bad is this situation that the AngloZionists are now funding new "information" efforts to counter-act the Russian propaganda machine and bring some much needed information to the Russian people who clearly do not realize that they are being lied to and deprived from any truthful or even alternative information.

In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

First, while some Directorates of the KGB have been renamed and reorganized, the Directorate in charge of dissidents, "other thinkers" and assorted ideological "enemies of the state" (the 5^th Main Directorate) has been disbanded completely. So there is no "ideological police in Russia". Some forms of speech are, indeed, banned - "extremist" speech (terrorism, violence, racism, hate speech, etc.) and some specific organizations, like the Ukrainian "Right Sector" or the Tatar "Mejlis". Other than that, the only control over speech in Russia is based on criminal charges. So, really, Russia is not unique in that matter at all - she more or less does the exact same as European states.

Second, there is *a lot* of criticism of Putin and the government in general in a very active RuNet (Russian Internet), not only in Russia, but also worldwide (USA, Canada, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine, etc.). Some of the criticism comes from a rather small pro-US minority, but most of it comes from the anti-US camp: nationalists, Communists and critics of the government economic policies all blame Putin for being too weak and unwilling to confront the West frontally. Unlike in the Ukraine, foreign media organizations are not banned, and neither are their broadcasts or newspapers.

"We have seen no foundry like Yemen for our soldiers. Each time we have sent an expeditionary force there, it has melted away like salt dissolved in water." ~ The Ottoman accountant-general in Egypt

Reports have come in this morning from Al Masirah TV, of a US troop build up in southern Yemen. At least one hundred US Rangers have landed in Lahij close to the ISIS and AQAP controlled port of Aden. This was followed by the arrival of four US planes carrying military equipment and supplies.

The US mission creep began last week when a reported 8 or 10 US Rangers combined with UAE forces to ostensibly drive AQAP out of the Al Mukalla areas of southern Yemen. The western media failed to report on this intervention as it was happening. Finally on the 24th April, the New York Times published an account.


From reports on the ground and from reading this NYT report we can conclude that, despite claims of US involvement being to combat the AQAP threat in the region, in reality the militants offered little or no resistance and simply "handed over" the Al Mukalla base to the UAE and US forces. One comment in the NYT article gives us a very familiar insight into the potential symbiotic partnership between the Saudi Coalition, the US and their potential proxies already on the ground in Yemen. "But in the end, hardly a shot was fired. By nightfall, the Qaeda militants had withdrawn from Al Mukalla in an apparently tactical retreat, residents said.

The militants had faced little resistance. During the war between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels, a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition supporting the government with airstrikes rarely, if ever, attacked Al Qaeda."

There is reasons to believe that this "airstrike" did not happen:

Syrian monitors say at least 28 people have been killed in airstrikes on a makeshift refugee camp close to the border with Turkey. The attack on Sarmada, in Syrian rebel-held territory, follows more deaths in Homs.

Sarmada is in north-west Idleb province, just three miles from the Turkish borders and air defense.

Wounded were rushed across the border for treatment in Turkey, said the Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights, adding that the death toll was likely to rise.

Social media footage showed the charred frames of tents that had been pitched in a muddy field. The Observatory said those killed included women and children.

Comment: The "Observatory for Human Rights" is a one-man propaganda machine operating out of London.

• British-Controlled Monajed Is Source Of All the Press Accounts of How Many Syrians Assad Supposedly Killed
• Meet the 'Human Rights' front groups that have been waging information war against Syria

It was not initially clear who had carried out the raids on Sarmada in rebel-held territory in Syria's northwestern Idlib province and about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of divided Aleppo.

Abu Ibrahim al-Sarmai, an activist, said "two aerial strikes" hit the makeshift camp for displaced people.
...
Nidal Abdul Qader, an opposition civilian aid official who lives about one kilometer (half a mile) from the camp, said around 50 tents and a school had burned down.

Take a look at the video evidence the rebel propaganda put out.

FBI investigators will interrogate Hillary Clinton in the coming weeks over her use of a private email server for state communications, according to officials cited by CNN late Thursday.

The news came after MSNBC interviewed the hacker "Guccifer", who exposed the server containing 2,200 emails, 22 marked "top secret", and claimed its security was easy to compromise.

The resignation of the Turkish Prime Minister puts Angela Merkel's refugee deal in jeopardy.

The forced resignation of Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu underlines the folly of Merkel's and the EU's appeasement of Turkish President Erdogan.

Davutoglu did not leave voluntarily. He was forced out by Erdogan who has been steadily concentrating power as he changes Turkey from a parliamentary to a Presidential republic. Obviously in such a system Erdogan has no use for a strong and independent minded Prime Minister which is why Davutoglu had to go.

Even saying all that understates the nature of what Erdogan is doing. There are many examples around the world of successful Presidential republics. In such cases the President works within a strong constitutional and institutional structure which defines what he can do.

What is happening in Turkey is that its already severely weakened constitutional and institutional structure is now being systematically dismantled by a politician - Erdogan - who accepts no limits on what he can do and who sees the law in purely functional terms as there to do what he wants.

The current situation in the global economy is similar to the situation on the eve of the crisis of 2008, billionaire trader Stanley Druckenmiller said.

According to the businessman, the main risks stem from actions of the US Federal Reserve and the People's Bank of China.

He criticized the Federal Reserve for its "myopic policy" of low interest rates which has led to growing bullish sentiments in the market.

"The bull market is exhausting itself," he said at the Ira Sohn Investment Conference in New York.

India's defense minister expressed that India is not interested in acquiring US F-16 fighter aircraft despite aggressive lobbying by Lockheed Martin.

In what can be seen as a sharp denial to the US, India has dismissed a proposal made by Lockheed Martin Corp to build F-16 fighter jets in India.

India's defense minister Manohar Parrikar said in Parliament, "The experience of flying against F-16 is what we require as we are not going to induct F-16, at least; as of now."