Debkafile, an Israeli intelligence-linked online journal, published an article on March 24 headlined "Israeli security firm's advice on Brussels airport security unheeded" claiming that explosives were pre-planted within the Zaventem airport in Brussels "by an advance team of terrorist operatives masquerading as airport personnel, or a staff employee." Debkafile claims that three identical kits of explosives, AK-47s, ammunition, and hand grenades were placed throughout the airport in advance to provide the terrorists an opportunity to "strike the emergency teams, the medics, the security forces and the other first responders when they arrived to tend the victims of the first attack."

The article claims that Belgian police found and detonated these unexploded "kits" afterwards, writing:

Despite the spreading shock effect of the airport attack, it is also becoming clear that the terrorists only accomplished the first part of their jihadist mission. The Islamic State, which approved the operation, had envisaged a much bigger atrocity. This is attested to by the discovery of three bags containing identical kits of firearms and ammunition, a bomb belt, two AK-47 automatic rifles, magazines and hand grenades - all intact and unused. The police detonated them by controlled explosion.

CNN briefly mentioned that a third bomb was found in the airport and was indeed detonated in a "controlled explosion." But so far no major media has mentioned the three identical bags packed with explosives and other weapons being found.

The new excuse for U.S. imperial wars is "humanitarian" or "liberal" interventionism with Hillary Clinton and other proponents citing noble motives for destroying foreign societies, as ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller discusses.

Rajan Menon's new book, The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention, launches a timely argument against a dominant argument lying behind so much of modern American foreign policy — "humanitarian intervention" or "liberal interventionism."

We are, of course, well familiar with Republican and neocon readiness to go to war, but the reality is that many Democrat Party leaders have been no less seduced into a series of optional foreign military interventions, with increasingly disastrous consequences. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is today one of the leading exponents of the idea, but so are many of the advisors around President Barack Obama.

Menon offers powerful argumentation skewering the concept of "humanitarian intervention," demonstrating how it operates often as little more than a subtler form of an imperial agenda. Naked imperial ambitions tend to be recognizable for what they are. But when those global ambitions are cloaked in the liberal language of our "right to protect" oppressed peoples, prevent humanitarian outrages, stop genocide, and to topple noxious dictators, then the true motives behind such operations become harder to recognize.

It was a "historic" week for US President Barack Obama as he coupled a tour of arch-foe socialist Cuba with a breakthrough visit - and a tango dance - in Argentina. Historic diplomacy, or cheesy public relations?

The week began with Obama landing in Cuba - the first US president to set foot on the Caribbean island state since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. Given more than five decades of Cold War hostility since the Cuban revolution in 1959, the occasion was greeted with much hoopla in the US press as marking a historic shift in relations.

Then after three days, the American leader and his family were off to Argentina where he was greeted by new president, Mauricio Macri. Pro-business Macri was elected in December promising closer relations with Washington and bringing an end to more than a decade of left-wing governments in Buenos Aires, which had been staunchly critical of US policies in the region.

It was glaringly obvious which 'dance partner' Obama was more comfortable with. In Cuba, his manner with President Raul Castro - brother of Fidel - was cordial enough. However, there was one telling moment at a press conference when Obama awkwardly declined Castro's attempt to hold his arm aloft in a gesture of friendship.

Syrian government forces aided by allied militia units have advanced further into the ancient city of Palmyra with heavy support from Russian airstrikes that killed 100 Islamic State militants over the past 24 hours. Russian warplanes continued providing crucial support to Syrian forces in their offensive to recapture the Syrian city of Palmyra, a UNESCO Heritage Site, as they carried out 158 airstrikes hitting terrorist targets in and around the city. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, more than 100 extremists were killed in the bombardment, along with several pieces of heavy equipment.

"Russian Aerospace Forces have carried out 40 sorties in the Palmyra region," a statement published on the Defense Ministry's official website read, adding that "as a result ... four tanks, three artillery pieces, four ammunition depots, and five vehicles were destroyed."

In recent days, the Syrian army and allied militias have been advancing into Palmyra in an effort to retake it from the jihadists. They have already taken full control over several of the city's districts, breaching Islamic State's (IS, former ISIS/ISIL) last line of defense. Fierce clashes are still taking place throughout the city, however, according to Syrian state news agency SANA. The army also launched intensive military operations in the area's southern orchards, and is nearing Palmyra's airport in the eastern part of the city.

In an article in the New Republic in December, 1998, former UNSCOM leader Scott Ritter decried Iraq's chemical and biological weapons experiments on human subjects. Wrote Ritter,

"We had received credible intelligence that 95 political prisoners had been transferred from the Abu Ghraib Prison to a site in western Iraq, where they had been subjected to lethal testing under the supervision of a special unit from the Military Industrial Commission, under Saddam's personal authority."

The stance of the United States and her allies has always been that such experiments bear the watermark of a brutal dictatorship and are never engaged in by the free world.

Politically and symbolically any attack on Belgium - the state where the political and administrative center of NATO is located - is by implication an attack on the US and its global dominance, French journalist and founder of Agora Erasmus political organization Karel Vereycken told Sputnik.

The Brussels terror attacks on March 22, 2016 have triggered a heated debate among political analysts and military experts.

While some thought leaders are calling for strengthening a military alliance between the EU and the US, others have called attention to the fact that NATO has proven inefficient in mitigating and preventing terror threats. On the contrary, they argue, the Alliance has long been fanning the flames of the Islamist insurgency in Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

Syrian government forces have retaken the city of Palmyra from Islamic State, a military source told RT. "Our troops have established full control of the town and are chasing the remainder of the retreating gangs of Islamic State terrorists," the Syrian army's command said in a statement, as quoted by TASS. An army source also told AFP that the army is in control of both the ancient site of Palmyra and the residential neighborhoods.

A commander of the Desert Falcons unit of the Syrian army told RT that the "military operation to retake Palmyra lasted three days," adding that the "main difficulty was that there were a lot of mines along the roads." "Today the Syrian Arab Army is clearing the mines," he said. Noting the importance of Palmyra, journalist Neil Clark told RT that having control of the city is "incredibly important."

"...It's on the main highway, sort of equidistant between Damascus and Deir Ezzor...the Syrian army has [now] got a major boost in clearing IS out of a whole path of Syria, where [IS militants still are]," he said. IS fighters have reportedly retreated from Palmyra - located 215 kilometers (133.5 miles) from the Syrian capital Damascus - to the towns of Sukhnah, Raqqa, and Deir Ezzor. In a statement read on Syrian television, the military command said the recapture of Palmyra marks the beginning of the collapse of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). It said the success proves that the Syrian government and its allies are the only forces capable of defeating terrorism in the country.

One of the main reasons Russia has a "bad" global public image is the ongoing information war being waged by Anglo-Saxon media, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said, while blaming Turkey's leadership for a deadlock in relations.

Peskov made his remarks in an interview with Russian channel TVC that aired on Saturday. The fairly frank assessment was disclosed while he was speculating on why it was so hard for Russia to improve its international image. Peskov added that he believes both Moscow and Washington have suffered as a result of the infowar.

"They say that Russia has a bad public image. Do you know who else now has a bad image - the United States. We are currently in a state of information warfare with the trend-setters in the information space, most notably with the Anglo-Saxons, their media," Putin's spokesman said.

Peskov added that, regardless of whether one considers this war "declared or undeclared," it reduces some important political matters to "propaganda and counter-propaganda."

He also said he believes Russia would be better off if it was more deeply integrated in the global economy.

"We need to advocate for it. We need to make our economy more competitive and involved in global competition. Only then will we confidently stand on our feet," he stressed.

Commenting on the prospects for an improvement in US-Russian relations, Peskov cautiously noted some progress, but stressed that the Kremlin, doesn't have any "illusions."

"I think it is possible to say that there have been positive advances. They lie in mutual atmosphere, because if we compare the atmosphere with what it was a year ago, then of course there is an evident desire to communicate, and there is readiness. At least now the understanding has matured that there is no alternative to dialogue in resolving issues which cannot be delayed," he observed.

Add one more way to lose all your life savings. Many of us have heard about the covert "bail-in laws" that already went into effect this year in Europe making theft of private bank account assets "legal" in this topsy-turvy world where chaos and high crimes rule the day. The precedent was set a couple years ago in Cyprus where private citizens woke up one day and found the money they believed was secure in their banks suddenly stolen by the banks. Despite the Treasury Department and MSM propaganda that the bailout cost taxpayers only $21 billion, it actually cost Americans trillions in lost housing wealth, 9.3 million citizens lost their homes from 2005-2014 through foreclosure or short sale along with plenty of lost retirement funds and lots of lost jobs.

The untold misery and suffering of so many American people had insult added to injury when not one top financial executive ever faced charges but in fact were rewarded with obscene yearend bonuses. Already knowing the American public will not stand for another massive tax-supported bailout excusing the criminal banking cabal's gambling addiction for misusing their money that caused the 2008 housing bubble crisis, now the $247 trillion in exposure to casino-generated debt derivatives created by those same bankster gangsters are manipulating governments to deliver deceitful backdoor thievery that will cause the next financial crisis to steal whatever savings they may still have left sitting unsecured in their bank accounts.

But this month yet another potentially equal red alert danger now lurks to steal all our money. This time it's supposedly neither the private Federal Reserve banksters nor our federal government gangsters. It's the criminal hacksters who gained access to central banks' digital assets and pulled off one of the biggest bank heists in history a couple weeks ago. I'm talking about the $100 million grab of Federal Reserve money that managed to recover only $19 million of its lost assets for a grand total theft of $81 million, still making it among the largest bank robberies in history. On the day before US Empire's 2003 invasion of Iraq, per Saddam Hussein's instructions to his son Qusay, $1 billion was taken from the Iraqi central bank. And in 2007 Dar Es Salaam Bank guards in Iraq lifted another $282 million.

Croatia can not get virtually any of its supersonic aircraft into the air. This is after it paid $20 million to Ukraine to have them refurbished and to purchase additional machines.

The local press is now reporting that Croatian Defense Ministry hid the truth that Ukrainians returned the planes after performing virtually no work on them and that the newly acquired aircraft are not the ones Croatia bargained for, but are instead 'Frankenstein' planes cobbled together from parts purchased from all over the world. (More background: link)

Sounds pretty serious right? Well not according to the Ukrainian Ambassador, Oleksandr Levchenko. Levchenko who in 2013 lobbied for the deal to be awarded to Ukraine insists the Ukrainians had done a remarkable job and that the only scandal is the hit to Ukraine's reputation that the Croatian media is inflicting: