Is it just coincidence that shortly after Russia begins a successful bombing campaign against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) positions in Syria, US think-tanks suddenly called for American boots on the ground in the Arab Republic? The US military has some of the world’s most advanced surveillance technology, capable of identifying suspected terrorists and eliminating them with state-o [...]

Ezra Levant of TheRebel.Media reports that Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, said there should be no limits for immigration from Islamic Middle East to Germany. With that, she started the stampede. No application forms, no proof - anyone who can make it gets thousands of dollars plus access to Germany’s existing welfare state. But you have to see this incredible video of a German woman wh [...]

Western media coverage does not accurately reflect what is happening on the Syrian battlefield, US journalist Mike Whitney wrote for the CounterPunch magazine: Damascus-led forces, assisted by Russian warplanes, have turned the tide of war and are on the way to flush Islamic radicals out of the country. Unlike America's military engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq, this process will not be a pro [...]

Russia is preparing to conduct an official military inspection in Turkey, Sergei Ryzhkov, head of Russia’s National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, told the media. "From February 2 until February 5, a Russian team of inspectors intends to conduct an inspection of a designated area in Turkey – about 18,000 square kilometers in total – in order to promote mutual trust and security in accorda [...]

Not only is there evidence of Turkey financing and arming ISIS and other terrorist groups, but we now see the Turkish government cracking down on its own citizens, says Middle East analyst Sharmine Narwani. Since the end of the WWII and the beginning of the Cold War Britain and the US have had a very close strategic working relationship with the Turkish government. [...]

Austrian athlete and daredevil, Felix Baumgartner, known for his super-sonic leap from the stratosphere, has bashed EU politicians for their “idiotic” refugee policies in a lengthy post. He added that Washington is destabilizing Europe “on purpose.” [...]

The UN-sponsored Syrian peace talks, which began on Friday in Geneva, will be boycotted by the main Syrian opposition group which has insisted that Russia stop bombing its positions while negotiations are conducted. To appreciate how ridiculous these demands are, one would have to imagine a similar scenario taking place in the United States. [...]

The United States put pressure on EU countries when it came to extending the anti-Russian sanctions, but as the situation in Europe deteriorates, the US prefers to watch from the sidelines, Austrian newspaper Kurier wrote. Washington strongly insisted on tougher measures against Moscow because it understood that the sanctions wouldn‘t affect it much, the article said. [...]

A case can be made that for Moscow it would be a tremendous waste of hard-earned foreign exchange to try to counter a rig against their currency they simply cannot beat, as the entire fiat financial power of the US is against them. Russia’s Central Bank by now should be all-out selling rubles for gold, and building Russia’s gold reserves. Well, it is happening, somewhat. [...]

As the West’s mainstream media portrays Russia as a crazy rogue state, Moscow’s thoughtful critiques of world affairs are ignored, not fitting the propaganda theme. Such was the case when Foreign Minister Lavrov explained why there would be no more “business as usual” with the West, as Gilbert Doctorow describes. On Jan. 26, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held an important year [...]

When there's a natural rapport between leaders, relationships are easy. In such an atmosphere, negotiating is a doddle. Of course, when the opposite is the case, the reverse often happens. Small disagreements can explode into furious arguments. [...]

Germany has been giving “financial incentives” to the embassies of some African countries to accept asylum seekers from third states who have been rejected by Germany without the consent of the migrants, a refugee aid organization claims. [...]

The Gracchus brothers of Rome, Indian Emperor Ashoka, and Jesus were all left-wingers, former Uruguayan president José Mujica told RT, as he shared a fascinating history lesson on the constant struggle between liberal and conservative ideas. [...]

Eighty Swiss banks have agreed to pay the US fines totaling $1.36 billion in order to avoid court prosecution, according to the US Justice Department. After the investigation has been completed all the banks are required to cooperate in related criminal or civil proceedings, said the department. [...]

Moscow has denied Turkey’s accusation that a Russian Su-34 bomber violated its airspace on Friday. The Russian Ministry of Defense said that Ankara couldn’t have determined which country the jet belonged to under the circumstances they described. He stressed that the airspace controlling radar stations that Turkey has can only determine the altitude, flight line, and speed of an aerial vehi [...]

Frans Timmermans, vice-president of the European Commission, doesn`t see any link between mass sex assaults on New Year's Eve in Cologne and the ongoing refugee crisis, internal minutes has revealed. He also lamented the reintroduction of internal border checks within the Schengen zone. [...]

AP is reporting: “Satellite photos obtained by The Associated Press confirm what church leaders and Middle East preservationists had feared: The oldest Christian monastery in Iraq has been reduced to a field of rubble, yet another victim of the Islamic State group’s relentless destruction of heritage sites it considers heretical.” [...]

A waitress at a bar in Austria, which controversially banned asylum seekers after some of them sexually harassed the female clients there, is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaulted her on New Year's Eve, she told Sputnik. Steffi G, a 19 year old waitress at Charly's Bar in the Austrian town of Bad Ischl, told Sputnik German that she is pressing charges after migrants sexually assaul [...]

After the 2014 coup ousting Ukraine’s elected President Yanukovych, the mainstream U.S. media hailed this unconstitutional move as a victory for “democracy” while ignoring the darker side, neo-Nazis coddled by the U.S. government since the Cold War, as Robert Parry wrote four days after the putsch. [...]

Few Americans understand the ugly history behind the Nazi-affiliated movements that have gained substantial power in today’s U.S.-backed Ukrainian regime. Western propaganda has made these right-wing extremists the “good guys” versus the Russian “bad guys,” as Jonathan Marshall explains. The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, one of the leading journals in its field, offers a tw [...]

Former senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton is the only candidate for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination who supported the invasion of Iraq. That war not only resulted in 4,500 American soldiers being killed and thousands more permanently disabled, but also hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, the destabilization of the region with the rise of the Islamic State and other ex [...]

Europe is on a dangerous, slippery slope of increasing xenophobia and racism engendered by the influx of refugees. Denmark’s new confiscation law is a sign of the brooding, baleful climate. But the real answer to the problem is dealing with Europe’s support for Washington’s criminal wars. [...]