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. [...]

People ask what can be done about the elite control system. The answer lies with taking concrete steps toward understanding where the control truly is. Done sneakily, or under the illusion of democracy, in recent times more oppressive laws have been made than ever before. Between us being subjected to more and more ordinances, rules, restrictions and outright laws then demonizing our dissension [...]

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 [...]

“One of the greatest stories of the 20th century was that we doubled the life expectancy of adults,” Terry Fulmer, head of the John A. Hartford Foundation, remarked recently. In the last quarter-century, Washington has helped fight this trend. Consider the dark news Health Affairs delivered this month. Mexico saw a “decline in life expectancy from 2005 to 2010 among men nationwide,” mai [...]

I never thought I’d see the day, I don’t think anybody imagined it would happen, but, by late December, Bernie Sanders’ campaign had caught on to such an extent that corporate media and National Public Radio, corporate media’s fellow traveler, could no longer pretend that it wasn’t happening. [...]

A U.S. rendition plane was ready and waiting in Copenhagen in June 2013 to nab National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, a Danish news website reported this week. At the time, Snowden had fled Hong Kong and was stuck at the airport in Moscow. [...]

In what some are calling another example of a two-tiered justice system, the Pentagon said Friday that it would not demote Retired General David Petraeus, who was convicted in 2015 of leaking classified information to his biographer and mistress. [...]

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. [...]

Robert Gates, a Republican stalwart and former US defence secretary who served under eight presidents, has derided the party’s election candidates for a grasp of national security issues that “would embarrass a middle schooler”. An ex-CIA director who first joined the White House under Richard Nixon, Gates joked that if frontrunner Donald Trump wins the presidency, he would emigrate to Ca [...]

Conservative activists have spent a generation building up their movement — and the Donald is ruining it all. If there’s one thing that Donald Trump has done for the leaders of the conservative movement, the Christian Right and the Republican party it’s that he’s teaching them a necessary lesson in reality: [...]

When a crackdown on excessive dispensing of prescription painkillers took place in the U.S., an unexpected consequence took root: a new epidemic of heroin use. Betty Tully has firsthand experience with the devastating effects of prescription opiate addiction. [...]

ANN JONES, went to Norway in 2011 as a Fulbright Fellow and recently returned to the U.S. Her books include, They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from America’s Wars — the Untold Story. She just wrote the piece “American Democracy Down for the Count: Or What Is It the Scandinavians Have That We Don’t?” [...]

The Wall Street Journal recently reported: “Both of the leading Democratic presidential candidates made the case [during the last debate] that the financial services industry wants to keep them out of the White House, fearing the tough regulatory measures they would impose if elected.” Vox reports: “According to [Bernie] Sanders, a bank that is too big to fail is too big to exist … [...]