Extreme caution has long been the watchword of Saudi monarchs: caution in foreign policy, and caution especially when it comes to internal change. Since 2005, when the king nervously decided it was safe to allow elections for half the members of municipal councils (the other half were to be appointed by the king), it has taken a further 10 years to get around to letting women take part.

Of course, there are good reasons for this caution. Saudis often cite the assassination of King Faisal in 1975 as a warning, linking it to his attempts at reform and especially his introduction of television, which many at the time regarded as encouraging sin.

Large sections of Saudi society, and most notably the influential religious scholars, remain deeply conservative, and this social resistance means the rulers cannot implement change – supposing they actually want to – at anything like the pace needed in a rapidly changing world. To a large extent the rulers’ hands are tied, but this is something the House of Saud has brought upon itself by hitching its political legitimacy to the Wahhabi sect. If it can’t untie that knot, it is ultimately doomed.

Enter King Salman, who, in several respects since coming to the throne in January, has thrown caution to the wind. He is burning through the kingdom’s money reserves at an unsustainable rate and has launched an unwinnable war on his southern neighbour, Yemen. This is in addition to the conflict already raging across the northern border in Iraq and the war of words with Iran in the east.

He has also made significant changes in the royal pecking order which, coupled with the recent disasters in Mecca that cost more than 800 lives, help to explain the current rumblings of discontent from within the royal family.

One Saudi prince, a grandson of the kingdom’s founder, has stuck his head partly above the parapet with a letter calling for King Salman to go – and he appears to have support from others in the clan.

The prince is also saying things that less-privileged Saudis might well wish to say, but can’t. His royal blood means he is less likely to be carted off to jail and flogged, but even he is wary of being identified by name.

This highlights a fundamental problem in the Saudi system: its unaccountable autocracy. Decisions are handed down from on high – decisions which in Salman’s case many consider to be rash, and which certainly have far-reaching implications for the kingdom’s future. In other countries these would be subjected to some kind of public scrutiny and national debate before being finalised, but not in Saudi Arabia.

A key factor here is the continued suppression of civil society activity. The more civil society opens up, the more difficult it becomes to sustain an autocracy. To the extent that people are allowed to express their views at all, this is treated as a privilege rather than a right – a privilege that the government arbitrarily grants and, if it chooses, can also arbitrarily take away.

In the absence of political parties, one traditional way for Saudis to make their views known is through the majalis – gatherings in private houses where discussion often turns to politics. Another traditional method is to petition the king, though even that can be dangerous. In 2007, 10 people were arrested over a petition that called for a constitutional monarchy.

Seemingly non-political activity by charities, cultural and youth groups or professional organisations also tends to be unwelcome, as a recent research paper from Chatham House noted:

“Establishing new associations in Saudi Arabia has always been difficult. Even charitable associations must wait years to receive government approval and registration. For instance, according to one of its founders, it took three years to establish the Saudi Cancer Foundation … It apparently took 17 years to get the Saudi Diabetes Association approved …

“Saudis say that even if Saudi professionals get together, like doctors and accountants, the government gets nervous.”

This nervousness isn’t new in Saudi Arabia or among other Arab regimes in the Gulf, but it has increased sharply during the past few years, and it is one reason for their newfound inclination towards military action. In the west, their recent displays of “muscularity” and “assertiveness” have generally been welcomed as a sign they are becoming less dependent on American military might, but that is to misread the situation. Far from being a sign of growing self-confidence, it’s a measure of their desperation. They fear being overwhelmed.

Writing in the Lebanese Daily Star after a visit to Dubai, columnist Rami Khouri described a sense of alarm sweeping through the Gulf:

“Seen from Riyadh, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, the world around the mostly wealthy oil-producing [Gulf Cooperation Council] states has been turned on its head in the last four years. Every major geo-strategic potential threat or fear that they have quietly harboured for years has started to materialise – virtually simultaneously.”

Khouri went on to enumerate what are, for the Gulf states, terrifying developments: the street revolutions of 2011 that overthrew several Arab leaders (coupled, more generally, with growing popular aspirations towards democratic pluralism throughout the region), the rise of Muslim Brotherhood parties; the current turmoil in Libya, Iraq, Syria and Yemen, which has also spawned a plethora of jihadist groups and militias; the growing influence of Iran; and concerns that the US is trying to disengage itself from the Middle East. Each of these is dangerous for Gulf rulers, Khouri said, but together they “take on the dimensions of a tsunami”.

Then there’s the money. The Saudis have plenty of it, and that’s a large part of the problem. Splashing out riyals has become the remedy of choice whenever they get into difficulties.

Early in 2011, alarmed by the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, King Abdullah sought to buy off local opposition with a $133bn spending package which included more housing and medical facilities, more welfare benefits, and bonuses for government employees.

On coming to the Saudi throne in January, Salman also sought to buy popularity by handing out a two-month bonus to government employees and pensioners. This was one reason why the central bank’s net foreign assets dropped by $36bn – about 5% of the total – during February and March.

Aside from these domestic considerations, military adventures abroad can only add to demands on the kingdom’s finances, and though its pockets are still very deep, they are certainly not bottomless.

But getting into the habit of throwing money at problems has other negative effects. It has made the kingdom far less inclined to explore and adopt non-monetary solutions.

The recent hajj disaster may be a case in point. Vast amounts of money have been spent on showpiece construction projects to improve the facilities for pilgrims and, at least in theory, to make the hajj safer. What seems to have been missing from this was a more humdrum effort to establish some better thought-out methods of crowd management.

The kingdom can’t continue like this indefinitely and, increasingly, Saudis know it.

Same enemies, different friends

Mr Lavrov also said Russia was not planning to expand its air campaign to neighbouring Iraq, stressing that there had been no such request from the Baghdad government.

"We were not invited, we were not asked, and we are polite people, as you know. We don't come if not invited," Mr Lavrov said.

But Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi said he would welcome Russian air strikes against Islamic State and was receiving information from both Syria and Russia on the militant group.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/iran-troops-to-join-syria-war-russia-bombs-group-trained-by-cia/6821822

When Vladimir Putin sat down with Charlie Rose of “60 Minutes” last Sunday, there was something refreshing about the Russian president’s encounter with the American media. A world leader discussed the Middle East by using terms of Realpolitik such as the “national interest.” There was little if any of the Wilsonian globaloney favored by members of our foreign policy establishment—Democrats and Republicans alike—who seem to share the belief that the only thing missing from the region today is American “leadership.”

As Rose recycled all the clichés of the editorial page of the Washington Post (which he even quoted during the interview), he inquired whether the Russian leader agreed that the lack of U.S. leadership in the Middle East had helped create a “strategic vacuum,” one that Moscow was now trying to fill. Putin replied by recalling that the last time the United States had tried to project its leadership in the region—by ousting Saddam Hussein and “liberating” Iraq (he apropos also mentioned Gaddafi and Libya)—things had not turned out so well. It did indeed create a huge void, which in addition to strengthening Iran, ignited a bloody civil war that spilled over into Syria, destabilizing the entire region.

Meanwhile, on other channels and programs, you can watch critics of President Obama’s Syria policy (including presidential candidate Marco Rubio) bemoan Russia’s involvement there. These parrots on speed go on and on about how he should have retained more U.S. troops in Iraq and provided assistance to “moderate” Syrian insurgents. The subtext of all these arguments—as well as the suggestion that Obama could have negotiated a “better” Iran nuclear deal—is that all these proposed policies would not have worked, and that the United States would have eventually been forced to deploy a large number of ground troops to fight the Islamic State in Iraq, topple Assad in Syria, and end Iran’s nuclear program.

And as everyone knows, the majority of Americans do not want the United States to be drawn into a new war in the Middle East. The public does not care about achieving goals that do not seem to be in line with the nation’s strategic and economic interests.

There is also an element of retro-strategic thinking, if not nostalgia for the Cold War, in the spectacle of American politicians and pundits warning us of Russian expansion into the Middle East. Last time I stepped back to look at world events, it seemed clear that we do not have a bi-polar international system, and that Moscow is not trying to export communism into the Middle East or harm the interests of the United States and its regional allies. In fact, since the end of the Cold War, it is the United States that has been trying to export its universal ideology of liberal democracy into the Middle East and oust regimes that used to be clients of the Soviet Union, including in Iraq and Syria.

When Rose pestered Putin repeatedly about why he was providing support to the ruthless and bloody Baath regime in Damascus, the Russian President reminded viewers that once upon a time, Washington provided assistance to the ruthless and bloody Baath regime in Baghdad. That was when Saddam Hussein was fighting the Ayatollahs in Iran (he could have mentioned our alliance with the Saudis who are planning to “crucify” a young human rights activist in the coming days).

You do not have to be a great strategic thinker—or an ardent Russophile who wants to recreate the Byzantine Empire—to agree that Russia has legitimate national security interests to protect in the Middle East. After all, the Greater Middle East is in Russia’s strategic backyard and the current chaos in the region could spill over in the form of growing radicalization of its Muslim population. There is also the prospect of a regional war that could affect not only Russian interests, but also those of Germany and other European countries.

It should be noted that Russia is also helping the members of the Alawite minority in Syria, as well the endangered Christian communities under threat of being annihilated by the forces of the murderous Islamic State. Isn’t that also a U.S. interest?

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-logic-of-putins-syria-campaign/

Meanwhile our galahs in Canberra:

Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan has labelled Russia "not trustworthy" over its involvement in the Syrian conflict, after it began air strikes over the country this week.

A group of CIA-trained rebels says it was bombed by Russian forces during a second day of strikes.

Russian jets struck targets near the cities of Hama and Homs in western Syria.

The air raid placed Russia and the United States on opposite sides of a Middle East conflict for the first time since the Cold War.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/russia-motives-in-syria-not-trustworthy-michael-keenan-says/6822108

The Russian motives are as clear as a bell: Putin wants to retain Assad and beat the shit out of ISIL... Simple. Cannot be clearer than this. Meanwhile the Saudis want to get rid of Assad to implant a Sunni religious dictatorship in Syria and are moving military materiel into Turkey. Meanwhile, the West has no clues as to what's what... and has to collect more refugees from Syria... 

What's the human cost?

More than 250,000 Syrians have been killed and a million injured. Some 11 million others have been forced from their homes, of whom four million have fled abroad - including growing numbers who are making the dangerous journey to Europe.

How has the world reacted?

Iran, Russia and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement are propping up the Alawite-led Assad government, while Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar back the more moderate Sunni-dominated opposition, along with the US, UK and France. Hezbollah and Iran are believed to have troops and officers on the ground, while a Western-led coalition and Russia are carrying out air strikes.

read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34428725

----------------------

This article from the BBC could make you think that the Sunni led revolution in Syria is more moderate than the Alawite-led Assad government. Far from it. The Sunni opposition to the Alawites is only a tad more moderate than the idiots of ISIL. In terms of fighting for "freedom" and all that jazz, the Sunni dominated oppositions to Assad want to replace a generally moderate multi-faith accepting government with their own strict religious Wahhabi code, eliminating all others, including Christians and pseudo-Jews, from Syria. This is why the Sunnis are supported by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others — these little despotic Wahhabi kingdoms. 

What has the West got to do with this stupid "tribal" war? Well, to cut a long story short, the West wants to "encircle" Russia and strangle Iran, and use its "friendship" with the Saudis to do so. The West does not care about the Christians nor about the Alawite being massacred should the Sunni win this idiotic conflict. Taking side with the "moderate" (bullshit) Sunnis is only a strategic positioning, not a humanitarian heart-bleeding affair. We are hypocrites. 

The Russians have had enough of this conflict that threatens to spill in their own territories and as mentioned before the Russians can solve this within three months, while the West has been dithering for more than five years. But of course the West is "not trusting" the Russians motives...

The Russian motives are simple: The Russians want to retain Assad, who is painted like a ruthless tyrant by the West, while being less of a tyrant than the Saudi kingdom which we love because of the oil. The Russians want to put an end to the Sunni "moderate" (bullshit) revolution and wipe out ISIL, which the West is still dithering about — it helps create "fear" in our populace — a fear which we keep notching up from time to time. The Russians want to retain their Mediterranean port of Tartus (Tartous).

Most of the refugees from Syria are Alawites who know that, should the Sunni take over their country, they will be dead. Simple. And this would happen rather quickly, even with a "coalition" government of Sunnis and Alawite as proposed by the West as a "solution"... Dream on idiots...

And by the way, I would not be surprised if the CIA does try to "assassinate" Assad by various means...

“Do you realize now what you have done?”

So Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us.

Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of Kunduz. Only 10,000 U.S. troops still in that ravaged country prevent the Taliban’s triumphal return to power.

A dozen years after George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ISIS occupies its second city, Mosul, controls its largest province, Anbar, and holds Anbar’s capital, Ramadi, as Baghdad turns away from us—to Tehran. The cost to Iraqis of their “liberation”? A hundred thousand dead, half a million widows and fatherless children, millions gone from the country and, still, unending war.

How has Libya fared since we “liberated” that land? A failed state, it is torn apart by a civil war between an Islamist “Libya Dawn” in Tripoli and a Tobruk regime backed by Egypt’s dictator.

Then there is Yemen. Since March, when Houthi rebels chased a Saudi sock puppet from power, Riyadh, backed by U.S. ordinance and intel, has been bombing that poorest of nations in the Arab world. Five thousand are dead and 25,000 wounded since March. And as the 25 million Yemeni depend on imports for food, which have been largely cut off, what is happening is described by one U.N. official as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Yemen after five months looks like Syria after five years,” said the international head of the Red Cross on his return. On Monday, the wedding party of a Houthi fighter was struck by air-launched missiles with 130 guests dead. Did we help to produce that?

What does Putin see as the ideological root of these disasters?

“After the end of the Cold War, a single center of domination emerged in the world, and then those who found themselves at the top of the pyramid were tempted to think they were strong and exceptional, they knew better.”

Then, adopting policies “based on self-conceit and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity,” this “single center of domination,” the United States, began to export “so-called democratic” revolutions.

How did it all turn out? Says Putin:

An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. … Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.

Is Putin wrong in his depiction of what happened to the Middle East after we plunged in? Or does his summary of what American interventions have wrought echo the warnings made against them for years by American dissenters?

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/syria-and-the-danger-of-moral-imperialism/

Russia's motivations in the Syrian conflict go beyond targeting Islamic State (IS), Foreign Minister Julie Bishop says, as Russia announces it will intensify air strikes in the war-torn country.

• Julie Bishop says Russia's motivations in Syria go beyond targeting IS
• Moscow says its military intervention is weakening IS militants
• Obama warns Putin he could be sucked into a "quagmire"
• Britain says only one in 20 Russian air strikes were aimed at IS forces

Ms Bishop told the ABC's Insiders program the situation in Syria had become more complicated as a result of Russia's intervention.

"There's no doubt that they claim to be targeting ISIL ... Daesh," she said.

"There have been a number of statements by both president Putin and foreign minister Lavrov, but we understand that they are also broadening their attacks into part of Syria where ISIL or Daesh are not apparent and so it would appear that Russia's motivations go beyond just targeting Daesh."

read more : http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-04/russia-says-it-will-step-up-air-strikes-against-is-targets/6825908

Yes... and so? Read the above... And our Julie is a diplomat? More a diplomaticus sillimaticus... 

Josh Rogin and Eli Lake, two “columnists” functioning in the role of reporters for BloombergView, issued on the night of December 17th, their piece of U.S. government propaganda parading as if it were a ‘news’ report; and, in the process, they mistakenly included some real and interesting news that contradicts the very same fake storyline they’re pumping on behalf of the U.S. government, and of their billionaire employer: Wall Street’s Michael Bloomberg.

They started it with the false assumption — routine in the American ‘press’ — that the U.S. government is right and the Russian government is wrong in their respective war-involvements inside Syria. This false assumption is presented in their opening paragraph.

Headlining “New Russian Air Defenses in Syria Keep U.S. Grounded,” they opened: “There is a new crisis for the international effort to destroy the Islamic State, created by the Kremlin. The U.S. has stopped flying manned air-support missions for rebels in a key part of northern Syria due to Russia’s expansion of air defense systems there, and the Barack Obama administration is scrambling to figure out what to do about it.”

Their phrase “the international effort” presumes that the U.S. is fighting on “the international” side, and that Russia’s forces (and those of the Syrian government that invited-in Russia’s forces) must therefore be the violators of international law. This falsehood is accentuated by the allegation that “the Kremlin” “created” this “crisis.”

Key factual background in order to understand and evaluate the truthfulness, and even the honesty, of this opening paragraph is this: The U.S. invaded Syria; it was not invited in by the country’s universally-recognized-as-legitimate  government.  It’s instead trying to overthrow that very government. In fact: it’s an invader. The U.S. government has supplied weapons and some air-support to the ‘rebels’ of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups (including even ISIS) that are pouring into Syria to overthrow that country’s leader, Bashar al-Assad, who has been shown even in Western-sponsored polls in Syria to be overwhelmingly preferred over anyone else to lead that country — and the U.S. has now also been bombing Syria’s basic infrastructure in order to weaken its legitimate government further. Syria had invited in Russian air power to bomb those ‘rebels,’ the vast majority of whom are foreign invaders, just like the U.S. itself is. So: the U.S. and its allies caused this “crisis,” whatever it is or might be. In fact, the U.S. started planning it from the moment Barack Obama first became U.S. President, if not before. And, even the sarin gas attack that Obama blamed on the Assad government and used as his reason for invading Syria was a put-up job from the Obama Administration with the cooperation of the Sauds, Qataris, and Turks.

read more: http://off-guardian.org/2016/01/02/two-mainstream-u-s-journalists-provide-stenographic-news-report-u-s-anti-russia-propaganda/

See toon at top...

Western narratives, proven to be false, have nevertheless brought about a real Russia-West estrangement

Tony Kevin ( former Australian diplomat and author of ‘Return to Moscow’ (2017, UWA Publishing).

We have a situation now in which two major world governments, UK and Russia, both nuclear powers and permanent members of the UNSC, are upholding entirely opposed and contradictory narratives on two issues – the alleged Salisbury/Amesbury Novichuk poisonings, and the alleged nerve gas attacks by Assad Government forces on 7 April in Douma, Syria (on basis of false White Helmets-staged evidence). The latter allegation led to a US/UK bombing attack on Syrian Air Force bases.

On both issues, the US and French governments – also UNSC members and nuclear powers – have in solidarity supported UK government- sourced narratives , though in the former case there has been no UK judicial process, and in the latter case OPCW inspectors have found no physical evidence of use of nerve agents in Douma , and nor do local people’s accounts support the allegations.

In the Salisbury case, OPCW technical reports made public in Moscow on 14 April by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, detailing results of the Skripal samples analysis by the OPCW Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland, support a finding that the Skripals were probably poisoned temporarily with non- lethal BZ toxin , found in the Skripal samples, and that quantities of Novichok (A-234) lethal toxin had twice been added to the samples before they passed from British Govt to OPCW custody, in two clumsy attempts some weeks apart to create a false Novichok chemical trail. Lavrov commented, in strong language for him, that the fact Spiez Lab found these two doses of A-234 in the samples “appears to be utterly suspicious.”

Nevertheless, two days later on 16 April, the OPCW Executive Council , under Western pressure, decided unprecedentedly not to release the full reports of the samples testing by the four OPCW laboratories in Switzerland, thereby casting serious doubt on the professional reputation of OPCW. See here and here.

The second document contained a manifestly untrue statement by Mr Marc-Michael Blum, the Head of the OPCW Laboratory and leader of the technical assistance team that was deployed to the United Kingdom, that:

The Labs were able to confirm the identity of the chemical (Novichok, or A -234) by applying existing, well-established procedures.

*** There was no other chemical that was identified by the Labs ***.

The precursor of BZ that is referred to in the public statements, commonly known as 3Q, was contained in the control sample prepared by the OPCW Lab in accordance with the existing quality control procedures. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the samples collected by the OPCW Team in Salisbury. This chemical was reported back to the OPCW by the two designated labs and the findings are duly reflected in the report.’

This is simply laughable. The OPCW defence was that Britain had requested a very restricted test looking only for Novichok, and that it was therefore correct procedure for OPCW to withhold publication of the full laboratory results. So there is no official confirmation or denial of Lavrov’s statement that the Spiez Lab had found that A-234 had twice been improperly added to the Skripal samples. And a blatant lie was told on BZ.

Lavrov on 14 April had stood just short of accusing the UK government of concealing evidence and tampering with samples. But his imputation was very clear. Clearly he was appealing to Britain and the OPCW to do the right thing on 16 April. They did not do so. His words, recorded on the Russian MFA website, went unreported in the West. They are the essential basis of the Russian counter-narrative.

On the alleged use of CW in Douma, an alleged child victim Hassan Diab testified in The Hague three weeks later on 27 April that he had never been gassed, but he had been cruelly used in a White Helmets staged propaganda film.

Then, much later, the OPCW reported on 6 July their inspectors’ findings that they had not found any organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products in Douma.

These are facts. But it appears that facts no longer matter. In the UNSC, the weight of numbers is with the three Western permanent members and their allies. China has been circumspect on the issue, saying almost nothing except calling for proper procedures to be followed in OPCW.

Russia and China continue to have rights of veto on any future UNSC resolution that might try to condemn Russia for allegedly behaving as an international outlaw in these two contested matters.

Is there any legal way Russia could be expelled from the UNSC over either or both of these sets of allegations? America and Britain seem hell-bent now on portraying Russia as an international criminal, but surely this should carry no credibility now with the majority of the UNGA membership outside the compliant NATO/EU/Australia grouping.

There seems no way in which the facts of Salisbury/Amesbury can be publicly established, as long as the UK Government continues to suppress and tamper with evidence, and as long as its Western allies and the OPCW Executive continue to give to the UK Government cover and support. Only the election of a Corbyn Labour Govt might offer prospect of change, because Corbyn is a decent man who would refuse to sustain a UK government lie.

Russia will continue to press for consular access to their citizens the Skripals. They cannot let the issue be forgotten. So it will go on being a cause of major Russia-UK tension and bad blood, as the histories of the two series of events recede into mythology and contested narratives, and as distracting myths and legends accumulate around Salisbury-Amesbury.

Now, the US government is resorting with increasing recklessness to unilateral sanctions outside the UN system, announcing two tranches of increasingly severe sanctions against Russia, in August and November, unless Russia admits its crimes and promises not to repeat them. Russia has of course rejected these demands out of hand, as internationally illegal and without any justification.

If the US pursues this course it will lead to further distancing between the US and Russian economies. As Lavrov points out, many other countries will draw their own conclusions about the US’s reliability as an economic partner and reserve currency.

The most likely medium-term scenario is continued simmering anger and resentment on both sides , encouraging further polarisation of a ‘3 versus 2’ situation in UNSC. But I don’t see how Russia could be expelled or suspended from the UNSC.

The current situation suits Western Russia-hating elites. It is in their interest to delay and impede any moves to Russia-West detente, keeping tensions high but at a level just short of war, and keeping Trump on a tight leash for as long as he remains US President. So far, sadly, it is all working out according to this plan.

Read all: https://off-guardian.org/2018/08/17/western-narratives-proven-to-be-false-have-nevertheless-brought-about-a-real-russia-west-estrangement/

Meanwhile:

In an interview with Fox News US Senator Rand Paul said that he is planning to ask President Donald Trump to lift sanctions from certain Russian lawmakers, but failed to provide any names. Paul invited several Russian lawmakers from both legislative chambers to come to Washington this fall in a bid to start the dialogue between two countries. The senator extended this invitation during his visit to Moscow.

"They have agreed to come to Washington in the fall for further meetings. That's a good thing. The downside is the chairman of each of the committees is banned from coming to the US because of sanctions," he said.

It is unclear what format the meeting will take, if indeed it takes place. Spokesmen for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul Ryan and for the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee told the Hill that they haven't extended any invitations to Russian lawmakers.

Paul traveled to Moscow soon after the Helsinki Summit, although the visit had been planned almost six months prior to it, to find common ground with Kremlin and "help prevent further, unnecessary escalation of tensions." The US senator held talks with several Russian senators and invited them to meet with their US counterparts in Washington saying "[it] is incredibly important."

READ MORE: Rand Paul Meets Russian Ambassador to Discuss Anti-Terror Cooperation

Although it is so far unclear, who Rand Paul has invited, he definitely talked with Konstantin Kosachev, the chairman of the Russian Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs during his visit. The latter has shared with Russian media that Moscow is interested in bilateral talks at the level of foreign relations committees.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201808171067282903-rand-paul-russian-sanctions/

Read from top.

So in the mind of the Russophobe, when Vladimir Putin isn’t personally hacking America’s Got Talent or any number of other votes, how does he spend his leisure time?

‘Journal de 20 heures’ on France’s channel 2 revealed the secret last Friday.  The Russian President, among other things, hunts tigers, because that’s what all fairy tale villains do.  Journalist Valerie Astruc had proof, a picture of Putin and a group of men smiling next to a prone tiger, taken a mere decade ago.  Turns out, the tiger wasn’t actually dead but had been tranquilised so a tracking tag could be fitted, before it was later re-released.

“Putin likes to protect endangered species” just doesn’t have the same Russophobic ring to it does it. “The propaganda never takes time off,” said Astruc in her report. She should be applauded for self-awareness if nothing else.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/436236-russophobia-digest-putin-tigers/

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According to an anonymous official, cited abundantly in the Israeli press, General Aviv Kochavi (director of military intelligence from 2010 to 2014 and Tsahal’s future Chief of Staff) had probably organized several attempts to assassinate the elected Syrian President, Bashar al-Assad.

General Kochavi (see photo) thought that if Assad was eliminated, then Tsahal could invade Syria and destroy the Iranian bases there.

On the contrary, according to the same official who does not wish to be named, the Director of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, would have tried to negotiate with the Syrian Arab Republic, considering that if the Republic fell, this would generate chaos in the region.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204608.html

Read from top.