China deployed two fighter jets and three warships Tuesday after a US navy ship sailed close to a disputed reef in the South China Sea.

Guided missile destroyer, the USS William P. Lawrence, traveled within 12 nautical miles of the Chinese-occupied Fiery Cross Reef to "challenge excessive maritime claims," said US Defense Department spokesman Bill Urban.

"These excessive maritime claims are inconsistent with international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention in that they purport to restrict the navigation rights that the United States and all states are entitled to exercise," Urban said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

Around 600 members of various European police and military forces have carried out a European Union-funded training exercise in preparation for major civil unrest and even war.

The exercise took place in North Rhine-Westphalia on the 15th of April, and is part of the EU's ongoing Lowlands Gendarmerie program.

So-called 'Gendarmeries' are a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations, and all seven European countries that maintain such "robust" units are joined together in the European Gendarmerie Force (Eurogendfor).

The European Commission financed three similar joint exercises in Italy, France and Germany back in 2008, Junge Welt reports.

The first series of Lowlands Gendarmerie exercises kicked off in 2014, with Special Forces from Kenya, Cameroon, Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan present. This year, it is reported that gendarmes from Turkey, Tunisia and Cameroon are involved.

The exercises are run by the European Union Police Services Training (EUPST), who's aim is to, "enhance skills of police officers likely to be deployed in post conflict situation", as well as, "developing the rapid deployment capability of police in international crisis situations."

"One language, one common procedure", goes the EUPST motto.

Forecasts of relentless civil unrest in the US, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia seen as massive 'investment opportunity'

The next five years will see the international market for 'riot control systems' boom to a value of more than $5 billion at an annual growth rate of 5%, according to a new report by a global business intelligence firm.

The report forecasts a dramatic rise in civil unrest across the world, including in North America and Europe, driven by an increase in Ferguson-style incidents and "extremist attacks."

The Middle East, North Africa and Asia-Pacific regions will also experience a persistent rise in conflicts.

This increasing trend in instability promises billions of dollars of profits for global defence firms, concludes the report, published last month by Infiniti Research Ltd., a market intelligence firm whose clients include Fortune 500 companies.

Two must-watch videos on the US plan to lock as much of the world into a technocratic, totalitarian, corporate hell, asap.

The first video is from Wikileaks, published last year, which explains the sneaky maneuvers:


This second one was made by an Irish MEP who recently shared the rigarmarole he had to go through just to view three of the documents that would bind the EU to Washington in death's embrace, forever...


Freedom and democracy, aint it great!?

Over April-May dozens of people were murdered across Aleppo as civilian areas and major hospitals were bombed by the NATO-backed 'rebel' groups.

They were even filmed firing their 'hell cannons' and saying "throw it on the civilians"

Meanwhile, western media ran fantasy stories about the besieged city.

If you believed the western corporate media you might think that the Syrian Government, for some unknown reason, has been bombing its own hospitals, and had killed Aleppo's only paediatric surgeon. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Aleppo faces a large operation by the Syrian Army, after the liberation of Palmyra on 28 March, to reclaim those sections of the city held by Islamist fighters since 2012. Almost half Aleppo's population has been displaced because of the fighting, but there are still about 1.8 million residents.

The withdrawal of the Saudi-backed 'High Negotiations Committee' from the Geneva peace talks on 21 April was followed the very next day by a pre-emptive counter-offensive. Many hundreds of rockets were fired into government-held areas by a coalition led by the internationally banned terrorist organisation Jabhat al Nusra.

These attacks came mostly from 'hell cannons', which shoot large gas canisters filled with explosives and at times chemicals. They caused havoc, killing and wounding many people in the streets, residential areas, schools and hospitals. The Syrian Army responded by shelling the al Nusra hideouts.

Russia hopes that cooperation with the US and other international partners on Syria will lead to fundamental changes in that country, says Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I hope that the mechanism we have developed together with our partners, including the Americans, in which the armed forces, our representatives and experts are taking an active part.... will lead to positive and fundamental changes," Putin said during a meeting with top military officials and arms manufacturers in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday.

According to the president, the situation in Syria "remains complicated," with the Russia-US-backed ceasefire still not fully implemented.

"A lot still must be done for the Syrian Army, but the most important thing is to form conditions for the political settlement in the country," he stressed.

Apparently, and to no one's complete surprise, Facebook has been wielding indiscriminate censorship yet again — this time by manipulating the "trending news" feature to suppress pertinent news stories presented by both conservative and independent media sources, according to an insider turned whistleblower.

As Gizmodo reported, a former journalist who worked in that division "says that workers prevented stories about right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, even though they were originally trending among the site's users."

Potentially directly affecting how topics become newsworthy events, Facebook "news curators," as they are called, were reportedly told to "inject" certain topics into the trending feed — even if said items weren't popular prior to that artificial inclusion.

Also unsurprisingly, the former curators claim they were instructed not to allow news pertaining to Facebook into the trending list — ironic, considering at the time of this article, this exact topic was trending on Facebook.

The billionaire big-mouth US presidential candidate Donald Trump appears to be the favorite contender for the White House among ordinary Russians, according to some polls.

His appeal abroad is due to various factors. Trump's has a rakish persona whose iconoclasm can at times seem amusing. He has clearly upset the US political establishment with his politically incorrect fiery talk, including members of his own Republican party.

Trump has also said things that appear to be progressively radical. In particular, he has voiced favorable comments in the past about Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has vowed to improve foreign relations between Washington and Moscow. He also slammed the US military alliance NATO as being obsolete.

The property magnate and former reality-TV star has therefore understandably garnered positive interest among Russian citizens. Trump may have said some obnoxious things against immigrants and Muslims, but on the other hand some of his views appear to set him refreshingly apart from conventional Washington politics, which invariably disparage Russia as a global threat.

Could The Donald come up trumps to thaw frosty relations between the US and Russia?

The trouble with Trump, who as of last week has become the Republican's presidential presumptive nominee, is that he can't be trusted. As a former business associate said of him to the Washington Post, Trump will saying anything if he thinks it will clinch a deal. In other words, the would-be president is a consummate self-serving player.

This week has shown Trump making a series of lightning-fast U-turns and rhetorical pirouettes almost befitting the Bolshoi Ballet.

On London's newly elected mayor, Sadiq Khan, Trump said he would make an "exception" to his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the US by allowing the British politician a visitor visa.

Khan won a stunning electoral victory last week when he became the first Muslim mayor of the British capital - one of the most prestigious cities of the world. The working-class son of an immigrant busman later said that he would like to visit the US to liaise with American mayors on municipal projects, but that he feared he would not be permitted entry if Trump became president in the November election to the White House, because of his "religious faith".

With the recent events surrounding hospital bombings (real and imagined) in Aleppo, growing attention is now being paid to the "human rights NGO" known as the White Helmets, a supposed Syrian organization that focuses on rescuing and providing medical care to injured civilians in Syria. According to the Western media, the White Helmets are knights in shining armor, willing to risk life and limb to save innocent people from the fangs of the evil Assad.

A more realistic examination of the White Helmets, however, provides us with a much different view of the organization.

Essentially the White Helmets are nothing more than a terrorist rescue organization funded, directed, and promoted by Western governments, intelligence agencies, and Foundations aimed at assisting Western-backed terrorists in the destruction of secular Syria. The organization serves as a clever and opportunistic tool to be used by Western media for the purposes of sourcing false claims as coming from "impartial" "activist" groups on the ground in Syria and giving the source the credibility of a "human rights" organization.

In an attempt to clarify his stance regarding potential default on national debt payments, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that, in the US, "you never have to default because you print the money."

Responding to questions over recent comments indicating that as president, he would renegotiate US national debt rather than pay creditors in full — which could spur a global financial shock — Trump said the notion that he would default on national debt is 'crazy.' "People said I want to go and buy debt and default on debt, and I mean, these people are crazy. This is the United States government," Trump told CNN on Monday "First of all, you never have to default because you print the money, I hate to tell you, OK?"


Late last week, Trump said that as president, he would "borrow, knowing that if the economy crashed, you could make a deal." He added, "And if the economy was good, it was good. So, therefore, you can't lose." Trump's comments alarmed many, as defaulting on national debt would send reverberations throughout global finance given US debt is considered about the lowest-risk financial asset the world over. On Monday, Trump addressed his previous comments.

"I said if we can buy back government debt at a discount, in other words, if interest rates go up and we can buy bonds back at a discount — if we are liquid enough as a country, we should do that," Trump said. "In other words, we can buy back debt at a discount."