A news report from Russia's Interfax News Service quotes "the press-secretary of the US embassy in Moscow," whom it identifies as "William Stevens," as saying that during a meeting U.S. CIA Director [John] Brennan had in Moscow with "Russia officials" "in early March," "Director Brennan" chose "to emphasize with Russian officials the importance of Russia and the Assad regime following through on their agreements to implement the cessation of hostilities in Syria" and that, "Director Brennan also reiterated the US government's consistent support for a genuine political transition in Syria, and the need for Assad's departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people."

All of this is from Russia's Sputnik News, that allegedly "William Stevens told RIA Novosti." Western news services are citing that Russian source as the sole source in their own reporting of the matter; and no denial has yet been issued by the U.S. government.

If the allegation is true, then the U.S., "in early March," was demanding "Assad's departure," despite there being no participation of the Syrian people in that decision — no new election in Syria, much less Assad's losing any such election; and, yet, Mr. Brennan was demanding this, "in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people," somehow (despite there being no democratic process whatsoever).

Ex-President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko stated that he is proud of and applauds what happened in Odessa on 2nd May, but regretted that residents of Donbass were also not burned.

"Travel a bit in Kiev, look out the windows. You will say that you live in the capital of independent Ukraine? It's somewhere in Tula, here, near the Urals you will see such a language. It's already another culture. Because the essence of the nationality is language. If you lose language, you lose statehood"

Furthermore, Yushchenko spoke about the behavior of residents of the former Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which approved the addition of anti-Maidan activists in Odessa.

"Some citizens did as in Odessa. And I applaud them, and I am proud. I did not expect the inhabitants of Odessa would arrive. The spirit was not enough in Lugansk?"

Most likely, he was referring to the pro-Russian activists who died in the fire at the Trade Unions building on May 2nd, 2014, and the creation of DPR and LPR.

A former French official who has had senior roles in internal security and terror fighting has come forward with a remarkable statement: that he has documentary evidence proving that Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy who died from polonium poisoning, was killed by US and UK special services.

In a lengthy interview which is soon to be published, he goes further, saying that Litvinenko's murder was a special sevices operation designed to defame Russia and Vladimir Putin, that the notorious Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky was involved, and was himself killed by MI6 when he became a liability. He even says he knows the code name of the operation: "Beluga".

President Obama, with his characteristic diffidence, has announced his "liberation" from the Washington foreign-policy "playbook," but the national security elite is already striking back, writes Gareth Porter. The biggest story in Jeffrey Goldberg's 20,000-word report on "The Obama Doctrine" is President Barack Obama's open break with the foreign policy establishment.

The critique of orthodox national security policy thinking that Obama outlined in interviews with Goldberg goes farther than anything delivered on the record by a sitting president. It showed that Obama's view on how to define and advance U.S. "national security" diverges sharply from those of the orthodox views of national security bureaucracy and Washington foreign policy think tanks on U.S. "credibility," the real interests the United States in the Middle East and how the United States should respond to terrorism.

It was the controversy surrounding his decision in the 2013 Syrian crisis not to authorize airstrikes against government forces that provoked Obama to go public with his position in that broader struggle. The foreign policy elite in Washington has issued a steady drumbeat of opinion pieces portraying Obama's failure to launch a cruise missile attack against the Syrian air force and its air defense system in 2013 as a major blow to the U.S. role in the world because it forfeited U.S. "credibility."

International Military Review - Syria & Iraq (Mar. 29)

There is undoubtedly an information war raging. There are intentional liars, people who witlessly repeat these lies, poor research, and opinions spun to look as if it is research. To sort the ever increasing amount of information from disinformation, there are a few simple methods people can use.

But above all, people must personally dedicate themselves to following the truth no matter where it brings them, having the courage to accept a reality that may not necessarily mesh with their current perception. The inability to do this will render moot all other means of determining the veracity of any given report or piece of analysis.

Find the Original Source

This is fundamental. When anyone, anywhere makes a claim, whether it is in a historical documentary or book, or regarding current events, one must find the original source. Where did this information come from? Is it a direct quote? If so, can this quote be verified? If the quote is "alleged" or "leaked" or otherwise second-hand information or the sources never revealed, it is impossible to verify and therefore impossible to consider as verified.

Often conversations relayed by second-hand sources serve as the basis of propaganda. It is essentially the process of placing words into the mouths of people who never said anything of the sort. Media that repeatedly uses quotes that are impossible to verify may be engaged in disinformation.

If the quote is confirmed, that alone does not mean that what was said was "true." It simply means that someone made a statement - the veracity of which must be determined through other means. Finding the source of a claim often helps shatter long-held myths. This is particularly true in regards to historical matters.

Follow the Money

All protests, political movements, and armed struggles require immense amounts of resources to start, perpetuate, and most importantly to succeed. They also require leadership. If one finds themselves reading reports of events that do not mention funding or the names of specific leaders, either those reporting on the events don't have these facts and should make note that such information is both missing and essential to find, or misdirection and disinformation is at play.

Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov has said that Western mass media intends to launch a new slander attack on Vladimir Putin and expressed regret that reporters' professionalism is often "sacrificed to political demands."

According to Peskov, the fresh set of false reports made with intent to harm the president's reputation will be released in the nearest future. He said the presidential administration received letters with requests to comment on more unfounded allegations.

He went on to blame "certain public groups, NGOs, Western special services and certain mass media outlets" for attempts to destabilize the situation in Russia ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections by attempting to discredit senior officials and above all, Putin.

"Another piece of spin, which is claimed to be sensational and objective, will happen in the nearest days. We have received some excessively-rich requests that, however, in their form were more like questions at an interrogation," Peskov said.

The Paris and Brussels attacks have rightly caused outrage across the globe. However, while millions in the West took to social media to share their grief, there are numerous attacks across the world that go largely unreported in the mainstream media.

NIGERIA - Over 80 killed, children burned to death

On January 30, Boko Haram terrorists killed 86 people after they attacked a village in northeast Nigeria. The assault took place on the outskirts of the city of Maiduguri, which is the birthplace of the Islamist militant group.

Citing an eyewitness who managed to survive the attack, AP reported that Boko Haram extremists firebombed huts. The survivor said that he had heard the screams of children burning to death from a hiding place in a tree.

"There is a real bias against media coverage of terrorist attacks in Africa, and especially in Nigeria," Max Abrahms, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, told RT.

"I think many people would be surprised to know how much killing power the main terrorist group Boko Haram has," he said, adding that if such attacks were carried out against people in European or North American countries, "there would be much more media coverage."

A virulent if familiar censorship is about to descend on the US election campaign. As the cartoon brute, Donald Trump, seems almost certain to win the Republican Party's nomination, Hillary Clinton is being ordained both as the "women's candidate" and the champion of American liberalism in its heroic struggle with the Evil One.

This is drivel, of course; Hillary Clinton leaves a trail of blood and suffering around the world and a clear record of exploitation and greed in her own country. To say so, however, is becoming intolerable in the land of free speech.

The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama should have alerted even the most dewy-eyed. Obama based his "hope" campaign almost entirely on the fact of an African-American aspiring to lead the land of slavery. He was also "antiwar".

Obama was never antiwar. On the contrary, like all American presidents, he was pro-war. He had voted for George W. Bush's funding of the slaughter in Iraq and he was planning to escalate the invasion of Afghanistan. In the weeks before he took the presidential oath, he secretly approved an Israeli assault on Gaza, the massacre known as Operation Cast Lead. He promised to close the concentration camp at Guantanamo and did not. He pledged to help make the world "free from nuclear weapons" and did the opposite.

As a new kind of marketing manager for the status quo, the unctuous Obama was an inspired choice. Even at the end of his blood-spattered presidency, with his signature drones spreading infinitely more terror and death around the world than that ignited by jihadists in Paris and Brussels, Obama is fawned on as "cool" (the Guardian).

On March 23, my article, "A World War has Begun: Break the Silence", was published across the web. As has been my practice for years, I had syndicated it to an international network, including Truthout.com, the liberal American website. Truthout publishes some important journalism, not least Dahr Jamail's outstanding corporate exposes.

Truthout rejected the piece because, said an editor, it had appeared on Counterpunch and had broken "guidelines". I replied that this had never been a problem over many years and I knew of no guidelines.

In the early days of the war on terror, the CIA snapped nude photographs of terrorism suspects it had detained, before sending them to torture sites in Libya, Egypt, Syria and elsewhere, according to a new report.

The "gruesome" images are part of a classified trove of pictures that are still stored by the CIA, and reportedly depict detainees who are "blindfolded, bound and show visible bruises. Some photographs also show people believed to be CIA officials or contractors alongside the naked detainees," according to the Guardian.

According to the newspaper, the photographs were taken as part of an effort to document the conditions of the detainees before they were sent off to torture sites operated by foreign countries allied with the US. The images were meant as a way to protect the CIA from any legal or political blowback in the event that a detainee's treatment was brought to light or questioned in the future.


"Photographing or videotaping detainees in US custody unrelated to the processing of prisoners or the management of detention facilities can constitute a violation of the laws of war, including the Geneva conventions, in some cases," Nathaniel Raymond, a detainee abuse expert at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, told the news outlet."Any evidence that the CIA or any other US government agency intentionally photographed naked detainees should be investigated by law enforcement as a potential violation of domestic and international law."