Turkey's Erdogan should come to terms with the "stark reality" that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not fall anytime soon, former senior CIA official Graham E. Fuller notes, stressing that Erdogan's personal interests are not synonymous with Turkey’s national interests. Ankara is faced with the dilemma of choosing between pursuing its present foreign policy and returning to the more pea [...]

President Bill Clinton’s Kosovo war of 1999 was loved by neocons and liberal hawks – the forerunner for Iraq, Libya, Syria and other conflicts this century – but Kosovo’s political violence and lawlessness today underscore the grim consequences of those strategies even when they "succeed," writes Jonathan Marshall. [...]

Critics charge that the plan 'offers no viable solution to ending what Guantánamo represents, any more than it offers either freedom or justice for remaining prisoners.' President Barack Obama on Tuesday outlined his long-awaited plan to close the Guantánamo Bay military detention center in Cuba, [...]

A part of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) will not participate in the ceasefire deal unless al-Nusra Front is involved, a commander of Ahrar ash-Sham militants said Tuesday. On Monday, Russia and the United States announced an agreement on cessation of hostilities between the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad and the armed opposition factions had been reached. The agreement will come into [...]

The era of the US global sea dominance – ensured by its 10 giant aircraft carriers – may come to an end, a study by respected Washington-based think tank warns. Russia, China and Iran can make the mammoth vessels useless by new weapons, tech and tactics. Aircraft carriers are at the heart of the US Navy's global reach capabilities, and a symbol of American military might. [...]

By adopting terms for a cessation of hostilities together with Russia, the US showed Turkey it is not going to support Ankara’s efforts to send troops into Syria and NATO won’t come to rescue them later, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT. How confident can we be that this new agreement will hold?   [...]

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign has received more than $4 million in bundled lobbyist contributions from those who lobby on behalf of industries she claims to be her “enemies,” according to FEC documents. Clinton, who officially launched her presidential campaign in April 2015, [...]

Further proof of ties between the Turkish military and Islamic State fighters operating on the Syrian-Turkish border has been revealed in the Cumhuriyet newspaper, which published more transcripts of telephone calls between the jihadists and officers. The documents are said to come from an ongoing court case on Islamic State at the Ankara 3rd High Criminal Court. [...]

The Syrian government has accepted the terms of a ceasefire deal announced by the US and Russia, a foreign ministry source said, as cited by Sana news agency. But Damascus wants the fight against terrorists such as Islamic State to continue. [...]

The deployment of Russia's super-maneuverable multirole Su-35S fighter jets in Syria immediately grabbed global headlines, which touted the warplane as "one of the world's most dangerous fighters." Russia's deployment of four state-of-the-art Su-35S fighter jets to Syria swiftly hit international headlines, [...]

A spate of atrocities over the past week suggests that the Erdogan regime in Turkey is desperately trying to goad Washington into a wider Syrian war. Who’s giving the orders here? The evidence points to Washington losing control over its regional underlings. That in turn makes the situation all the more volatile and dangerous. [...]

Former European Union and US Agency for International Development (USAID) advisor Paolo von Schirach said that the agreement between the United States and Russia to effect cessation of hostilities in Syria confirms that Moscow has emerged as the real power there. [...]

No Surprise In a recent Guardian column arguing that nominal socialist Bernie Sanders’ majority support among Democratic voters below the age of 50 shows that the United States is entering a new progressive politico-ideological phase, the liberal French economist Thomas Piketty notes that “Hillary Clinton… [...]

This week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a major address calling for internet freedom around the world. As Clinton condemned the Egyptian and Iranian governments for arresting and beating protesters, former U.S. Army and CIA officer Ray McGovern was violently ejected [...]

On June 28, 2009, when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup. The United Nations, the European Union, and the Organization of American States condemned the coup, and on July 5, Honduras was suspended from the OAS. [...]

Between 3,000 and 5,000 so-called ‘foreign fighters’ – EU citizens trained in Islamic state terror camps - have returned to Europe and pose a “completely new challenge,” according the continent’s top police chief. “Europe is currently facing the highest terror threat in more than in a decade,” Rob Wainwright, Europol’s director, told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung daily, war [...]

Repeat after me: “The Russian military is much weaker than many think, with lots of outdated, dilapidated commie era equipment.” And: “The Russian military is a major threat to us so we need to spend more on our military and renew Trident.” [...]

American society is morally bankrupt and politically broken, and its vision of the future appears utterly dystopian. As the United States descends into the dark abyss of an updated form of totalitarianism, the unimaginable has become imaginable in that it has become possible not only to foresee the death of the essential principles of constitutional democracy, but also the birth of what Hannah Are [...]

Perhaps proving Egypt is “ruled by lunatics,” as the child’s defense lawyer put it, a four-year-old boy has been sentenced to life in prison on multiple counts of murder for crimes allegedly committed when he was just two years old.   [...]

While Russia has presented a draft resolution to the United Nations asking all parties to respect Syria’s right to sovereignty, the United States and France have criticized the move as a mere distraction. This is unsurprising given that the US and France are both currently violating Syria’s sovereignty. [...]

The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated. Jobs offshoring benefitted Wall Street, corporate executives, and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Stre [...]

The risk that the multi-sided Syrian war could spark World War III continues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia and U.S. neocons seek an invasion that could kill Russian troops — and possibly escalate the Syrian crisis into a nuclear showdown, amazingly to protect Al Qaeda terrorists, reports Robert Parry. When President Barack Obama took questions from reporters on Tuesday, [...]