As the current rhetoric between the Kremlin and the White House appears to be riddled with contradictions, US congressman and former Reagan speechwriter Dana Rohrabacher spoke with RT about the past, present, and future of US-Russia relations.

"The relations between our countries in the last 3 years have gone from dismal to worse. It's become hurtful for both our nations," says Rohrabacher, adding that the communications on both sides has always been disappointingly lacking in mutual trust and cooperation.

"Instead of an understanding that Russia is no longer the Cold War threat and thus they should be our friends, our government has only become closer because they feel they have to. Unfortunately, [it's] not going further," he told RT's Oksana Boyko, the host of Worlds Apart.

The congressman claims that despite seeming attempts to foster friendship, such as Secretary of State Kerry's three visits to Moscow in just the last 10 months, the US interacts with Russia more out of a sense of necessity than desire, and that is why the level of cooperation is dismal.

"There's a necessity for our government to work with Russia now, because otherwise we'll be suffering dramatic setbacks in the Middle East and in the cause of fighting against radical Islamic terrorism," Rohrabacher suggested.

Just over a year ago, a black swan landed in the middle of Europe, when in what was then dubbed a "Spectacular Development" In Austria, the "bad bank" of failed Hypo Alpe Adria - the Heta Asset Resolution AG - itself went from good to bad, with its creditors forced into an involuntary "bail-in" following the "discovery" of a $8.5 billion capital hole in its balance sheet primarily related to ongoing deterioration in central and eastern European economies.

Austria had previously nationalized Heta's predecessor Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International six years ago after it nearly collapsed under the bad loans it ran up when it grew rapidly in the former Yugoslavia. Having burnt through €5.5 euros of taxpayers' money to prop up Hypo Alpe, Finance Minister Hans Joerg Schelling ended support in March 2015, triggering the FMA's takeover.

This was the first official proposed "Bail-In" of creditors, one that took place before similar ad hoc balance sheet restructuring would take place in Greece and Portugal in the coming months. Or rather, it wasn't a fully executed "Bail-In" for the reason that creditors fought it tooth and nail.

And then today, following a decision by the Austrian Banking Regulator, the Finanzmarktaufsicht or Financial Market Authority, Austria officially became the first European country to use a new law under the framework imposed by Bank the European Recovery and Resolution Directive to share losses of a failed bank with senior creditors as it slashed the value of debt owed by Heta Asset Resolution AG.

Taliban insurgents announced the start to the extremist group's annual so-called spring offensive in Afghanistan against US and Afghan security forces on Tuesday.

Taliban dubbed this year's offensive "Operation Omari" in honor of Mullah Omar, the militant group's leader whose 2013 death was acknowledged last summer. The campaign officially kicked off at 5 a.m. local time (00:30 GMT).

The extremist group said that with the advent of spring it is time for them to renew their jihadi operations.

The mythologizing of Antonin Scalia began only a few hours after his leathery heart stopped beating in West Texas and Satan swept his soul to the 8th Circle of the Inferno, where corrupt barrators are imprisoned for eternity. Here, strapped to a sparking electric chair, Scalia's torments will be supervised by the demon Malacoda, who, Dante informs us, regularly "makes a trumpet of his ass."

There was something of an uproar over the lack of an autopsy for Scalia's ravaged body. Quick-draw conspiracists alleged the portly associate justice was murdered to give Obama a chance to realign the Supreme Court. These creative thinkers seem not to have paid much attention to the bleak presence of Elena Kagan on the bench. There's no mystery about Scalia's death. A three- pack a day man for most of his life, Scalia was clearly offed by his friends in the tobacco industry, whose murderous enterprise he zealously guarded in his legal opinions. And they say there's no justice.

It's not Scalia's corpse that needed dissecting, but the true nature and quality of his jurisprudence. From the Weekly Standard to the Washington Post, Scalia was lionized as a "titanic legal thinker," who possessed a blistering prose style and a wit "worthy of Swift." Even more bizarrely, the praise for Scalia's alleged brilliance was advanced by Beltway liberals, such as former Obama White House counsel Cass Sunstein (spouse of the odious Samantha Power) who asserted that Scalia was "witty, warm, funny and full of life. He was not only one of the most important justices in the nation's history; he was also one of the greatest." This curious assessment would have surprised former Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who for years sternly refused to assign any major court ruling to Scalia because he feared Scalia's mad legal theories and nasty prose style would undermine the standing of the court.

There's having guile, and then there's being shameless. But let's begin at the beginning.

In May 2015 ISIS captured the ancient Syrian town of Palmyra from the Syrian Arab Army. ISIS succeeded to do so in a two week battle which killed at least 81 SAA soldiers, at a cost of at least 170 ISIS fighters (but up to 300 according to the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights).

Moreover, during the battle ISIS captured 25 Syrian soldiers which were then gruesomely and theatrically executed.

ISIS' victory in Palmyra occurred in parallel to a much bigger offensive of Al-Qaeda-led rebels in northwestern Syria which lasted between March and June 2015 and which captured large swathes of Idlib, Hama and Latakia provinces and threatened to fracture the Syrian state altogether.

These gains came on the heels of a general trend of rebel strength and victories in 2014-2015, which in turn was a result of a decision in late 2013 by the Obama-Kerry tandem to beef up military aid to rebels, including distributing 15,000 anti-tank TOW missiles via Saudi Arabia.

Several Iraqi policemen claim to have seen US aircraft dropping weapons and munitions for Daesh terrorists in a region west of the Anbar province on Friday. In a video posted on Iraq's al-Maaloomah news website on Sunday, they are purportedly heard saying that the American plane had also jammed their communication devices in the Hadisah Island district. "There is an American aircraft seen at four o'clock in the morning on Friday over the Hadisah Island district of the Anbar province, delivering weapons and munitions to Daesh criminals," one of the policemen says.

"The plane proceeded to jam radar devices of the police regiment stationed in Hadisah Island to prevent contact between the affiliates and the headquarters of the regiment,"he added. The man said they had seen a military vehicle of Daesh arriving in the region a few minutes later and transferring the weapons to the place the group controlled. In the video, the man and his associates are heard appealing to Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi to follow up the issue. The Iraqi army and the volunteer Hashd al-Shaabi forces liberated the district from Daesh terrorists just last month.

US military surge

On Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Baghdad where he said Daesh was losing ground, including more than 40 percent of the territory that they once controlled in the country. The United States, which withdrew its forces from Iraq in 2011, has redeployed several thousand as part of a coalition, which it says, it is leading against Daesh.

President Barack Obama is reportedly weighing an increase in the number of American troops in Iraq but Kerry said there had been no formal request from the Iraqis and the issue had not been raised on Friday. US officials said last week Washington was also considering to greatly increase the number of its special operations forces deployed to Syria. The US, they said, looked to "accelerate recent gains" against Daesh.

Critics, however, questioned motives behind the plan, citing Washington's failure to commit troops when Daesh was overrunning Syrian and Iraqi cities one after another.

"The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government." ― Ron Paul

If there is an absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off.

This is true whether you're talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities. Rubbing salt in the wound, even monetary awards in lawsuits against government officials who are found guilty of wrongdoing are paid by the taxpayer.

Not only are American taxpayers forced to "spend more on state, municipal, and federal taxes than the annual financial burdens of food, clothing, and housing combined," but we're also being played as easy marks by hustlers bearing the imprimatur of the government.

With every new tax, fine, fee and law adopted by our so-called representatives, the yoke around the neck of the average American seems to tighten just a little bit more.

Everywhere you go, everything you do, and every which way you look, we're getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and corporate shareholders of the American police state out to make a profit at taxpayer expense.

The overt and costly signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government are all around us: warrantless surveillance of Americans' private phone and email conversations by the NSA; SWAT team raids of Americans' homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; roving TSA sweeps; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that collect and disseminate data on Americans' private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Meanwhile, the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) and the agencies under their command—Defense, Commerce, Education, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, etc.—have switched their allegiance to the Corporate State with its unassailable pursuit of profit at all costs and by any means possible. As a result, we are now ruled by a government consumed with squeezing every last penny out of the population and seemingly unconcerned if essential freedoms are trampled in the process.

As with most things, if you want to know the real motives behind any government program, follow the money trail.

As Poland commemorates the sixth anniversary of the tragic Smolensk crash that killed its 96 passengers, including Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his top officials, some Warsaw officials continue to use wild conspiracy theories as political leverage.

On April 10, 2010 a Polish Tu-154M plane flying from Warsaw to Smolensk, Western Russia, which was carrying President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, the governor of the central bank, all senior military commanders and other high-profile officials, crashed upon landing killing all 96 people on board.

A subsequent Russian-Polish investigative team found that the pilots had been under constant pressure and lacked adequate training. They decided to land against Smolensk air traffic control's (ATC) warnings to abort the landing because of low visibility and thick fog.

During the final descent, electronic awareness systems fired audible alerts: "Terrain ahead," and "Pull up! Pull up." The presidential aircraft hit the ground and was violently torn apart. The tragedy made headlines around the globe, causing shock and grief in Poland as well as in Russia. Moscow offered its full cooperation with Polish investigators, providing access to all procedures and documents.

In Poland, conspiracy theories began circulating immediately after the crash, claiming that it was an elaborate Russian plot or a coup attempt allegedly orchestrated by Moscow.

The twin brother of Lech Kaczynski, Jaroslaw, as well as Antoni Macierewicz, the-then head of controversial parliamentary inquiry and now defense minister, became fierce advocates of groundless assassination theories.

These statements spurred wild conspiracy theories offering so-called explanations about what might have killed President Kaczynski and Polish senior officials.

Over the past 72 hours, you have seen our political establishment operating at a level of panic rarely equalled in postwar history. Britain's prime minister has had yanked out of him some of his most intimate financial details. Complete strangers now know how much he's inherited so far from his mum and dad, and the offshore investments from which he's profited. Yesterday he even took the unprecedented step of revealing the taxes he'd paid over the past six years. Leaders of other parties have responded by summarily publishing their own HMRC returns. In contemporary Britain, where one's extramarital affairs are more readily discussed in public than one's tax affairs, this is jaw-dropping stuff.

The questions David Cameron still faces over his tax affairs Downing St has repeatedly attempted to calm crisis over offshore investments, but questions remain unanswered

And it will not stop here. Whatever the lazy shorthand being used by some commentators, David Cameron has not released his tax returns, but merely a summary certified by an accountants' firm. That halfway house will hardly be enough. If Jeremy Corbyn, other senior politicians and the press keep up this level of attack, then within days more details of the prime minister's finances will emerge. Nor will the flacks of Downing Street be able to maintain their lockdown on disclosing how many cabinet members have offshore interests: the ministers themselves will break ranks. Indeed, a few are already beginning to do so.

But the risk is that all this will descend into a morass of semi-titillating detail: a string of revelations about who gave what to whom, and whether he or she then declared it to the Revenue. The story will become about "handling" and "narrative" and individual culpability. That will be entertaining for those who like to point fingers, perplexing for those too busy to engage in the detail - and miss the wider truth revealed by the leak which forced all this into public discussion.

Because at root, the Panama Papers are not about tax. They're not even about money. What the Panama Papers really depict is the corruption of our democracy.

The former head of Boris Berezovsky's security service spoke about the relationship between famous blogger Alexey Navalny and the British MI6 intelligence service. He succeeded in exporting about 60 servers containing a huge amount of correspondence and documents.

"23rd December, 2007 - to the head of the Secret Intelligence Service A. Belt
.
Report of agent Solomon about ending Navalny's verification and the assignment of the pseudonym "freedom".

"Had a conversation over an encrypted communication channel between the employee and the CRS (SIS) and agent Solomon. The agent got approval for a confidential cooperation with Alexei Navalny. It was mentioned that it is necessary for Navalny to arrange financial support to carry out the tasks within the framework of special operation "Shiver" to undermine the existing constitutional order in the Russian Federation. Navalny has a nickname of "Freedom"", reads one of the documents.

Agent Solomon is the notorious William Browder, head of Hermitage Capital, inspirer of the Magnitsky act, and a person who made a fortune in Russia in the 90's.