Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has pardoned or commuted the sentences of a large number of Iranian prisoners arrested during the recent foreign-backed riots in the country.
On Thursday, Soylu condemned the closures as an attempt to meddle in campaigning for Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, which are scheduled for 14 May. The Turkish interior minister and other officials also suggested that the Western states had issued the security warnings in order to pressure Turkey to tone down its criticism of the sacrilegious move and resolve the NATO dispute.
Turkey’s parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for May 14 are fast approaching—angry rhetoric from the Erdogan regime, designed to nationalistically rouse its core vote, is no surprise. Nor are angry interventions from US politicians who dislike the unreliability of Turkey as a Nato ally, but at the same time stop short of anything that could irretrievably wreck relations with a country crucially located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
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Brian Nelson, the US Treasury Department’s top sanctions official, visited Turkish government and private sector officials on February 2 to urge more cooperation in disrupting the flow of goods that Russia can put to use in persisting with its war on the Ukrainians.
In a speech to bankers, reported by Reuters, Nelson said a pronounced year-long rise in exports to Russia left Turkish entities ‘particularly vulnerable to reputational and sanctions risks‘, or lost access to G7 markets.
A US jet destroyed a Chinese weather balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, with US officials saying the balloon had engaged in espionage as it flew over US airspace over the past several days. Beijing insists the dirigible was just a meteorological research balloon that drifted off course.
It is just as well that Antony “Guardrails” Blinken has called off his long-scheduled visit to Beijing, which was due to begin Tuesday. It would have been his first since taking over at State and the first by a secretary of state in four years. But Blinken would not have got any guardrails in place or built any exit ramps, which he seems to consider his highest calling. Let us wonder, parenthetically, if our Tony wasn’t meant to be a transportation engineer.
This is in response to Caitlin Johnstone’s January 28th article, which alleged that not all of the blame for the war in Ukraine goes to Obama’s decisions, and which accused Russia of “warmongering” (and avoided using any such strong term of condemnation against America’s Government), “Why Don’t You Ever Criticize RUSSIA’S Warmongering??”:
She maybe the highest ranking American official but most Americans do not even know her name. However, she is visiting Sri Lanka twice in one year & that should mean something. Why is she visiting Sri Lanka is however more important. She first visited Sri Lanka days before riots started resulted in the resignation of the former President. Naturally, all eyes are fixed on what is likely to emerge after her forthcoming visit. Over the years, there is no doubt the US has created local “agents” covering all spectrums of society.
Russia, Iran, and India are speeding up efforts to complete a new transport corridor that would largely cut Europe, its sanctions, and any other threats out of the picture. The International North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC) is a land-and sea-based 7,200-km long network comprising rail, road and water routes that are aimed at reducing costs and travel time for freight transport in a bid to boost trade between Russia, Iran, Central Asia, India.
RUSSIA’S Press Secretary to the President, Dmitry Peskov, spoke on Thursday, February 2, about the news that the Mozart Group, America’s answer to Russia’s Wagner Group – Putin’s network of mercenaries and de facto private army – was apparently ‘leaving’ Ukraine and said not to exaggerate the PMC’s significance.
The American military industrial complex was stunned and embarrassed by the rapid fall of its puppet government in Saigon in 1975. The CIA faced budget cuts and sought a new conflict to justify its size and spending. Portugal had just freed its colonies so there were power struggles in nations such as Angola. The American public was not told that the CIA had begun shipping arms to Angola and hiring mercenaries to fight there. Once news reports about CIA involvement appeared, the effort was spun as a fight against evil communists.
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