Society's Child
Moscow has slammed the US for "artificially" creating conditions to halt the issuance of visas. "Even during the Cold War it did not come to this," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday, adding that art has always served for easing tensions and "melting the ice of distrust."
Now "influential forces" in the US, which are preoccupied with trying to pressure Russia, "do not stop at anything," the foreign ministry said. "They are trying to fence off Americans from Russians with a visa wall, as we've said before, making trips of our citizens to the USA practically impossible," according to the statement.
Yesterday Portman issued a statement elaborating on her earlier statement. She cited "atrocities" and her discomfort at attending a ceremony aalongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Though she also said she does not support BDS, boycott, divestment and sanctions.
I chose not to attend because I did not want to appear as endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu, who was to be giving a speech at the ceremony...I treasure my Israeli friends and family, Israeli food, books, art, cinema, and dance. Israel was created exactly 70 years ago as a haven for refugees from the Holocaust. But the mistreatment of those suffering from today's atrocities is simply not in line with my Jewish values. Because I care about Israel, I must stand up against violence, corruption, inequality, and abuse of power.The chief response of Israel's defenders has been silence.
"There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."There will be many such weeks from now until 2025, with the end result an emergence of a multi-polar world that will permanently unseat the unipolar U.S. imperial paradigm.
Calling Syrian President Bashar Assad as more of a "figurehead than a dictator," Lord Green of Deddington called for the government to rethink its strategy towards the war-torn country.
Lord Green said the UK should move "more in the direction of friendship" with Assad, as his regime "is here to stay." He was the UK's ambassador to Syria between 1991 and 1994 before he went on to found the Migration Watch think tank, which is dedicated to slashing immigration in Britain.
Comment: It's encouraging to see more circumspect voices speaking out against the hysterical war-mongering of F.UK.US. Whether any of those voices will be heard above the shrill cries for war and more war seems doubtful at this point.
May rejects Corbyn's 'War Powers Act' in second debate on Syria strikes
The FSB operatives attempted to arrest the suspected terrorist in the southern Russian region of Stavropol on Saturday. The perpetrator, however, resisted and engaged in a firefight with law enforcement, receiving a fatal wound, the FSB press service said.
The terrorist plotted an attack on a local office of the FSB and a Stavropol government building, "using firearms and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)."
While the United States military maintained that the 120 missiles launched in the attack destroyed a facility that was used to produce chemical weapons, witnesses on the ground in Douma, Syria, claimed that the airstrikes actually destroyed a cancer research facility.
U.S. intelligence officials have since admitted that the attack was carried out despite the fact that the United States had no proof that the Syrian government had carried out a sarin gas attack. Instead, the U.S. acted before an investigation could be conducted, and as is usually the case with reported gas attacks in Syria, proof has yet to be found to show that President Bashar al-Assad was responsible.
If the idea that a government would use chemicals to kill dozens of its own citizens is so abhorrent that the U.S. would risk World War 3 to take a stand against it, then it must mean that the U.S. would never do the same thing to its own citizens, for fear that it could be subjected to a similar response from another country-right?

Cosa Nostra kingpin Matteo Messina Denaro's brother-in-law, Rosario Allegra, was arrested Thursday.
Twenty-one people were arrested in towns near the Sicilian city of Trapani where Denaro's criminal empire is based, as part of the "Year Zero" police investigation that allowed authorities to uncover a system of paper notes, or "pizzini", that Denaro uses to give orders to his most faithful associates.
Those include brothers-in-law Gaspare Como and Rosario Allegra, both in custody, who allegedly manage their boss's most important affairs.
"The Trapani Mafia is (securely) in the hands of fugitive Matteo Messina Denaro and we can say that because its most important members are his own family," said Pasquale Angelosanto, head of the Italian carabinieri's ROS special investigative unit.
"At least 20 civilians were killed and others were injured in US-backed Saudi-led aggression airstrikes on Taiz province," a security official told Saba news agency on Friday. Meanwhile, a military source in Sanaa told Sputnik that at least 18 people died after "coalition aircraft launched a series of raids."
While some sources said a warplane targeted a single car carrying civilians with several airstrikes, a local medical official told Xinhua, that "two vehicles were destroyed by the Saudi-led airstrikes."
WARNING! GRAPHIC VIDEO!
According to research from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, as of March 2018, "more than 115 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids." These overdoses can be attributed to prescription pain medications, which are prescribed like candy with little warning about how dangerously addictive they are; heroin, which many addicts turn to when they lose access to prescription opioids; and fentanyl, which has become increasingly popular despite its deadly track record.
The rise of the opioid epidemic at home has coincided with the United States' control of poppy production worldwide. Before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, there were around 189,000 heroin users in the United States. By 2016, that number had increased dramatically to 4.5 million users. The longest war in the nation's history has resulted in the U.S. controlling 90 percent of the world's opium supply.
Comment: See also:
- There was no opioid epidemic in US before troops protected opium poppies in Afghanistan
- Trump outlines plan to tackle opioid crisis and reduce US prescription drug prices
- Trump proposes death penalty for opioid traffickers - What about Big Pharma?
- American drug cartel: The politicians who took opioid tycoons' blood money
- Vancouver mayor calls for immediate legalization of all drugs in efforts to fight opioid epidemic
- Opioid crisis leads to huge jump in ER visits across Midwest and East Coast
- New study suggests cannabis can help end the opioid crisis
The measure failed to clear the Senate Wednesday.
The bill was sponsored by Knoxville Republican Sen. Richard Briggs. It would have made it an offense to smoke in a vehicle with children under the age of 14, regardless of whether the windows in the car were rolled down.
Briggs cited the dangers of smoke to children in a confined space as small as a vehicle. But some lawmakers questioned whether it was too much of an overreach. Sparta Republican Sen. Paul Bailey said lawmakers couldn't legislate the morality of Tennesseans.














Comment: Here is Portman's full statement posted on Instagram: Just as the Left is devouring itself, so is the identity-politics obsessed Zionist movement. One tiny deviation from the party line, and a previous (and current) supporter is thrown to the dogs. How pathological must a political "identity group" be to call someone "vile" who supports Israel, doesn't support BDS, yet simply criticizes the premeditated murder of protesting civilians (under military occupation and blockade). In fact, Portman didn't even specifically refer to the murders, just to "violence, corruption, inequality, and abuse of power". That is an accurate, objective description of the Israeli government. You can support a country and criticize their government at the same time, contrary to popular belief.
See also: Natalie Portman says 'enough'! Refuses to accept Israel's equivalent of Nobel Prize based on recent events in Gaza