Turkish PM Ahmed Davutoglu said the government expects Russian tourists to come despite tensions between Ankara and Moscow, as shrinkage in the sector was "unexpected." Russia earlier urged tourists not to visit Turkey, citing security concerns.

Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Davutoglu announced an action plan to provide support for the tourism industry, including an $87-million government grant and setting up a facility to allow travel firms to restructure their debts.

"We believe Russian tourists will start coming back to Turkey," he was quoted as saying by the Daily Sabah, an English-language newspaper published in Turkey. Davutoglu added the current political tensions between Ankara and Moscow should not impact Russian "guests" who visit the country.

The government did not expect any shrinkage in tourism stemming from this issue, he added.

Georgia's former president and now governor of Ukraine's Odessa region, Mikhail Saakashvili said on Sunday his ambitions in Ukraine reach further than the prime minister's office.

"My ambitions are to establish new rules of the game, which implies a new political elite in Ukraine's government," he said in an interview with the Tbilisi-based Rustavi 2 television company.

He said he has gathered around himself "young and promising lawmakers, representatives of non-government organizations, journalists, various regional leaders and deputy ministers and a couple of ministers."

"These people have got united in a bid to change the country," Saakashvili said.

Exactly one week ago, NATO, after the failure of the "national consensus government" in Libya, has another problem - the daughter of the leader of Jamahiriya - Aisha Gaddafi. After four years of silence, in a letter from Eritrea, she turned to the Libyans with a call to resist the new conquest of the West and declare themselves the successor of her legendary father - "the mother of Libya." The largest Libyan tribe "the warfalla", in the town of Beni Walid (Misurata), has already sworn allegiance to Aisha, proclaiming their commitment to the Jamahiriya. In response, the BBC circulated new, updated footage of the lynching of Muammar Gaddafi, aware of the particularly acute nervous reaction of his daughter. Meanwhile NATO convened an emergency meeting in the Netherlands on the situation in Libya.

Aisha has every reason to send a "black mark" to the West. She is the only child of Gaddafi who today can have an impact on the minds of Libyans and because the West represents a real threat. The only daughter of eight children of Gaddafi, it is typical of the fanaticism of women that they are able to defend their "child-Libyans". Enlightened in the best traditions of the Sorbonne, she announced the creation of a secret government in Libya and abroad. The West immediately accused her of taking a Martyr's death like the one that took her father. However, in addition to her father's death, Aisha still has a personal score to settle - the deaths of one child and a sibling from a NATO airstrike.

Former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday on the nationally syndicated radio show the Thom Hartmann Program that the United States is now an "oligarchy" in which "unlimited political bribery" has created "a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors." Both Democrats and Republicans, Carter said, "look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves."

Carter was responding to a question from Hartmann about recent Supreme Court decisions on campaign financing like Citizens United.

Transcript:

HARTMANN: Our Supreme Court has now said, "unlimited money in politics." It seems like a violation of principles of democracy. ... Your thoughts on that?

CARTER: It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it's just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we've just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election's over. ... The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody's who's already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who's just a challenger.

The UN Security Council on February 20 found itself unable to reach an agreement on a Russian resolution draft that urges all parties to ensure the preservation of Syria's territorial integrity. It would seem very straight forward to adopt a resolution that is perfectly logical from the point of view of international law. Yet, six members of the Council rejected it, and three of those have the right to veto. Those were the United States, the Great Britain and France, and as for those non-permanent Security Council members - those are Ukraine (did anyone have a glimpse of a doubt), New Zealand and Spain.

Thus, it turns out that six states have openly opposed the preservation of the territorial integrity of another UN member state. The situation looks surreal since this step contradicts the basic principles of the UN Charter, and those six above mentioned states have basically undermined the very foundation of this international organization.

The latest vote can only be interpreted as straightforward encouragement of armed aggression against Syria, which pursues a single goal - to tear apart this embattled nation as soon as possible. Of course, we are talking about Turkey, although this particular state or any other potential aggressor hasn't been mentioned in the draft of the resolution. Ankara is determined to occupy northern Syria and in the creation of a so-called "safe zone" that will harbor terrorists, a step in the creation of Erdogan's neo-Ottoman Empire.

Donald Trump closed his South Carolina campaign on Friday with a rambling speech highlighted by a giddy, almost childlike, enthusiasm for torturing and summarily executing the suspected enemies of America in the name of safety.

Trump was in free-association mode ahead of Saturday's primary, dwelling for an extended time on one topic, like heroin in New Hampshire or Japan's monetary policy, and then jumping to another.

"I'm really good at the trade," the billionaire told a crowd of thousands. "I'm really good at the borders."

The standout topic, however, was terrorism and national security. Trump repeated - favorably - an apparent myth about how General John Pershing summarily executed dozens of Muslim prisoners in the Philippines with tainted ammunition during a guerilla war against the occupying United States.

"He took fifty bullets, and he dipped them in pig's blood," Trump said. "And he had his men load his rifles and he lined up the fifty people, and they shot 49 of those people. And the fiftieth person he said 'You go back to your people and you tell them what happened.' And for 25 years there wasn't a problem, okay?"

For a few magic weeks, Bernie Sanders was taken seriously as a presidential candidate with a chance to win - a huge watershed for a self-avowed socialist. But after falling short (even if slightly) in Iowa and Nevada, and with no friendly states on the horizon, Sanders is back in protest candidacy territory.

Could taking on Hillary Clinton's warlike foreign policy, which Sanders stubbornly refused to do, have changed the game?

Ta-Nehisi Coates argues that Sanders's avoidance of racial justice issues says a lot about "how the left prioritizes its various radicalisms." (It astounded me that a progressive would launch a presidential campaign in April 2015 without one reference to Black Lives Matter, the year's most animating issue on the left.) The same can be said of Sanders's refusal to seriously critique Hillary's hawkishness, or her support for Israel.

Though Sanders opposed both Iraq invasions and has a clearly dovish record (except, of course, on Israel), his campaign is a potential setback to the movement to stop America's repeated drift toward war in the Middle East. His success suggests that war and Palestine aren't vital issues to the left, and that a progressive challenge can thrive while avoiding them entirely.

Sanders's campaign removed antiwar expression from the 2016 election (aside from Donald Trump) and is letting neocons maintain the fiction that opposing militarism is politically costly. Which is how they stay in power under both parties.

Austria has drawn the ire of neighbor and close ally Germany over the country's handling of the migration crisis, with Vienna's decision to accept no more than 80 asylum seekers per day labeled "unacceptable" by Berlin.

Ahead of planned talks between Austria, Bulgaria and the ministers from the Balkan states on Wednesday, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maziere slammed Vienna's actions, saying the decision to accept only 80 asylum seekers per day, while allowing 3,200 more to travel through to Germany, was sending "the wrong signal."

Vienna's decision to introduce caps on the number of people passing through the country has led to fears of bottlenecks along the Balkans, while it also goes against the German-led desure to keep EU borders open, whilst securing a bloc-wide agreement on refugee resettlement.

Leith Fadel, editor-in-chief of Al Masdar News, is reporting that "moderate" rebels (funded and armed by the United States and its Arab client states) are now fighting alongside ISIS in an attempt to push the Syrian army out of Southeastern Aleppo.


Your tax dollars hard at work:

[T]he Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS) is attacking the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in southeastern Aleppo; however, they are not alone, thanks in large part to the joint effort from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Jund Al-Aqsa (Syrian Al-Qaeda group).

ISIS and the Islamist rebels share control over the small village of Rasm Al-Nafal, along with 2 other points on the Khanasser-Aleppo Road that they captured in a simultaneous assault on the National Defense Forces (NDF) last night.

Both the Islamist rebels and ISIS announced that they control Rasm Al-Nafal and they have yet to attack one another; instead, they are assaulting the Syrian Armed Forces, who just sent fresh reinforcements to this front in order to recapture the points they lost along this road.

NATO's promises of security and attempts to drag Serbia into the alliance are particularly humiliating for the Balkan country at a time when two of its diplomats held hostage in Libya were killed in a pin-point US airstrike, Russia's FM spokeswoman said.

On Friday, US airstrikes against positions of an Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) affiliate group in Sabratha, Libya, killed more than 40 people including two Serbian nationals held hostage by the jihadists. The Serbian prime minister said the death of two embassy workers was "terrible collateral damage" and demanded explanations from Washington.

On Sunday, speaking on the Rossiya 1 TV channel, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Washington keeps accusing Russia of bombing civilian targets, providing no evidence whatsoever, and at the same times behaves as if nothing has happened when their own strikes result in confirmed civilian deaths.