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Bombshell Dropped on ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ Mantra

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. . .How far has Russia fallen off the media’s radar? So far, that, in a jaw-dropping role-reversal, it is actually the White House now pushing the story on the media . . .

At the end of Thursday’s daily press briefing, a visibly bemused White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders chided reporters, “You guys love to talk about Russia, and there’s been nonstop coverage. And the one day that there might have been a question on Russia, there wasn’t.”

So she raised the topic herself, noting, “[T]here was public testimony that further discredited the phony dossier that’s been the source of so much of the fake news and conspiracy theories. And we learned that the firm that produced it was also being paid by the Russians.”

That revelation didn’t just chill mainstream media interest. The Democrats also suddenly stopped uttering their Russia mantra.

That’s because Thursday’s testimony indicated the entire Russia collusion story may be turned on its head in fantastic fashion. (Read more from “Bombshell Dropped on ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ Mantra” HERE)

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Russian Leader: US Isn’t Strong Enough to Be Perceived as a Threat to Russia

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Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, gave a rare interview to a US outlet that aired [this week]. In speaking to HBO’s “Real Sports,” he denied that gay people are humans, that they exist in his region, and that his government regularly detains or tortures them, despite ample reports to the contrary. . .

Kadyrov, known for his forceful style of speaking, said: “America is not really a strong enough state for us to regard it as an enemy of Russia. We have a strong government and are a nuclear state.

“Even if our government was completely destroyed, our nuclear missiles would be automatically deployed. We will put the whole world on its knees and screw it from behind.”

The New York Times points out that Russia built a system in the 1980s that could do what Kadyrov described, known as the Perimeter System. Essentially, if there were a nuclear attack to destroy the government of Russia — or anything a 1980s-era system would perceive as an attack — an automated system would empty Russia’s missile silos in a counterattack.

Bruce Blair, the former US nuclear officer who broke the story of the Perimeter System for The Times in 1993, told Business Insider that the system works when it detects nuclear explosions. Only a small crew, deep in a bunker, has a hand in the otherwise automated system, according to Blair. (Read more from “Russian Leader: US Isn’t Strong Enough to Be Perceived as a Threat to Russia” HERE)

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The Left Is a Greater Threat to America Than Putin

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Last week, I tweeted, “The news media in the West pose a far greater danger to Western civilization than Russia does.”

To my surprise, the tweet went viral. And while there were more likes than dislikes, 99 percent of the written reactions were negative.

Typical reactions were:

–“F— you.”

–“Move to Russia.”

–“Your very full diapers pose a very great danger, please change them.” That received 1,880 likes.

–“I’ve wiped s— off my shoes more trustworthy and patriotic than your sorry a–.” That received 606 likes.

You get the idea.

But it wasn’t the ad hominem insults that I found troubling. What was troubling was the low state of logical thinking that so many responses reflected.

This was exemplified by their reminding me how important a free press is to democracy (as if attacking the behavior of the media were the same as denying the need for a free press); their asking how many nukes the media have compared with Russia (as if a threat to lives were the same as a threat to a civilization); and their thinking that my tweet was about President Donald Trump (he was never mentioned, and the words were just as true when Barack Obama was president).

My tweet was about the Western left undoing Western civilization. My one regret is that I did not mention universities along with the media.

The tweet had nothing to do with the existence of a free press. Attacking what the media is doing is not the same as attacking the existence of the media—any more than attacking Trump is attacking the existence of the presidency.

With regard to Russia having more nukes than the media, those who noted this fact so missed the entire point of the tweet that it is almost breathtaking.

When one speaks about dangers to a civilization, one is speaking ideologically, not physically. Of course, if Russia were to unleash its nuclear weapons against the West, it would kill vast numbers of Westerners.

However, that would no more mean the end of Western civilization than the Holocaust meant the end of Jewish civilization. Civilization connotes a body of ideas and a value system.

Furthermore, a Russian nuclear attack threatening the West’s physical existence is an utterly remote possibility. Russian leaders, just as Soviet leaders before them, fear what is known as MAD (mutually assured destruction).

The real nuclear threat comes from North Korea and, above all, Iran, which constantly announces its intent to exterminate Israel. But while The New York Times cannot stop writing about the threat Russian President Vladimir Putin poses, it accuses Trump of “demonizing” Iran.

The real threat to Western civilization is Western civilization ceasing to believe in itself. And, in that regard, Russia poses no danger, while the left-wing-dominated media and universities pose an existential threat.

That’s why the most depressing of the negative reactions were those from people calling themselves conservatives. If conservatism isn’t about conserving Western civilization first and foremost, what is it about?

Students in college have voted the American flag off their campus. Where did these students learn their unprecedented contempt for America and patriotism, if not from their schools and the media?

European countries continue to welcome in millions of Muslims, adding to the tens of millions of Muslims already in Europe—many of whom, if not most, have no interest in adopting Europe’s values.

Do the critics of my tweet conclude nothing about the left’s role—meaning the role of Western media and academia—in promoting multiculturalism, the doctrine that holds that no cultural, religious, or value system is superior to any other?

At the University of Pennsylvania, its left-wing English department has removed its long-standing portrait of Shakespeare because he was white and male. Is that not a direct hit on Western civilization?

The left-wing prime minister of Canada has proudly announced, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” and that Canada is “the first postnational state.”

What produced him? Putin?

Is it Putin who is removing American flags from American campuses?

Is Putin destroying the notion of male and female?

Has Putin convinced half of America’s millennials that socialism is preferable to capitalism?

Did Putin convince Pope Francis that Islamic terrorists are no more of a threat to Europe than baptized Catholics who kill their girlfriends?

Is Putin the reason Oxford University students voted that Israel is a greater threat to peace than Hamas?

Putin is indeed a murderous quasi dictator. But all this contempt for Western civilization comes from the Western media and the Western universities.

The smoking gun was provided just two weeks ago in the media’s reactions to Trump’s speech in Warsaw, Poland, in which he called for protecting Western civilization.

Virtually the entire Western media said it was a call to protect white racism—because the media deem Western civilization to be nothing more than a euphemism for white supremacy.

That’s what my tweet was about. (For more from the author of “The Left Is a Greater Threat to America Than Putin” (For more from the author of “The Left Is a Greater Threat to America Than Putin” please click HERE)

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Russia and China Declare All out War on US Petrodollar — Prepare for Exclusive Trade in Gold

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The formation of a BRICS gold marketplace, which could bypass the U.S. Petrodollar in bilateral trade, continues to take shape as Russia’s largest bank, state-owned Sberbank, announced this week that its Swiss subsidiary had begun trading in gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

Russian officials have repeatedly signaled that they plan to conduct transactions with China using gold as a means of marginalizing the power of the dollar in bilateral trade between the geopolitically powerful nations. This latest movement is quite simply the manifestation of a larger geopolitical game afoot between great powers.

According to a report published by Reuters:

Sberbank was granted international membership of the Shanghai exchange in September last year and in July completed a pilot transaction with 200 kg of gold kilobars sold to local financial institutions, the bank said.

Sberbank plans to expand its presence on the Chinese precious metals market and anticipates total delivery of 5-6 tonnes of gold to China in the remaining months of 2017.

Gold bars will be delivered directly to the official importers in China as well as through the exchange, Sberbank said.

Russia’s second-largest bank VTB is also a member of the Shanghai Gold Exchange.

To be clear, there is a revolutionary transformation of the entire global monetary system currently underway, being driven by an almost perfect storm. The implications of this transformation are extremely profound for U.S. policy in the Middle East, which for nearly the past half century has been underpinned by its strategic relationship with Saudi Arabia.

THE RISE & FALL OF THE PETRODOLLAR

The dollar was established as the global reserve currency in 1944 with the Bretton Woods agreement, commonly referred to as the gold standard. The U.S. leveraged itself into this power position by holding the largest reserve of gold in the world. The dollar was pegged at $35 an ounce — and freely exchangeable into gold.

By the 1960s, a surplus of U.S. dollars caused by foreign aid, military spending, and foreign investment threatened this system, as the U.S. did not have enough gold to cover the volume of dollars in worldwide circulation at the rate of $35 per ounce; as a result, the dollar was overvalued.

America temporarily embraced a new paradigm in 1971, as the dollar became a pure fiat currency (decoupled from any physical store of value), until the petrodollar agreement was concluded by President Nixon in 1973.

The quid pro quo was that Saudi Arabia would denominate all oil trades in U.S. dollars, and in return, the U.S. would agree to sell Saudi Arabia military hardware and guarantee the defense of the Kingdom.

A report by the Centre for Research on Globalization clarifies the implications of these most recent moves by the Russians and the Chinese in an ongoing drive to replace the US petrodollar as the global reserve currency:

Fast forward to March 2017; the Russian Central Bank opened its first overseas office in Beijing as an early step in phasing in a gold-backed standard of trade. This would be done by finalizing the issuance of the first federal loan bonds denominated in Chinese yuan and to allow gold imports from Russia.

The Chinese government wishes to internationalize the yuan, and conduct trade in yuan as it has been doing, and is beginning to increase trade with Russia. They’ve been taking these steps with bilateral trading, native trading systems and so on. However, when Russia and China agreed on their bilateral US$400 billion pipeline deal, China wished to, and did, pay for the pipeline with yuan treasury bonds, and then later for Russian oil in yuan.

This evasion of, and unprecedented breakaway from, the reign of the US dollar monetary system is taking many forms, but one of the most threatening is the Russians trading Chinese yuan for gold. The Russians are already taking Chinese yuan, made from the sales of their oil to China, back to the Shanghai Gold Exchange to then buy gold with yuan-denominated gold futures contracts – basically a barter system or trade.

The Chinese are hoping that by starting to assimilate the yuan futures contract for oil, facilitating the payment of oil in yuan, the hedging of which will be done in Shanghai, it will allow the yuan to be perceived as a primary currency for trading oil. The world’s top importer (China) and exporter (Russia) are taking steps to convert payments into gold. This is known. So, who would be the greatest asset to lure into trading oil for yuan? The Saudis, of course.

All the Chinese need is for the Saudis to sell China oil in exchange for yuan. If the House of Saud decides to pursue that exchange, the Gulf petro-monarchies will follow suit, and then Nigeria, and so on. This will fundamentally threaten the petrodollar.

According to a report by the Russian government media, significant progress has been made in promoting bilateral trade in yuan, between the two nations, as the first step towards an even more ambitious plan—using gold to make transactions:

One measure under consideration is the joint organization of trade in gold. In recent years, China and Russia have been the world’s most active buyers of the precious metal.

On a visit to China last year, deputy head of the Russian Central Bank Sergey Shvetsov said that the two countries want to facilitate more transactions in gold between the two countries.

In April, Sberbank expressed interest in financing the direct import of gold to India—also a BRICS member. Make no mistake that a BRICS gold marketplace could be used to bypass the dollar in bilateral trade, and undermine the hegemonic control enjoyed by the US petrodollar as the global reserve currency.

“In 2014 Russia and China signed two mammoth 30-year contracts for Russian gas to China. The contracts specified that the exchange would be done in Renminbi [yuan] and Russian rubles, not in dollars. That was the beginning of an accelerating process of de-dollarization that is underway today,” according to strategic risk consultant F. William Engdahl.

Russia and China are now creating a new paradigm for the world economy and paving the way for a global de-dollarization.

“A Russian-Chinese alternative to the dollar in the form of a gold-backed ruble and gold-backed Renminbi or yuan, could start a snowball exit from the US dollar, and with it, a severe decline in America’s ability to use the reserve dollar role to finance her wars with other peoples’ money,” Engdahl concludes. (For more from the author of “Russia and China Declare All out War on US Petrodollar — Prepare for Exclusive Trade in Gold” please click HERE)

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DOJ Let Russian Lawyer Into the US

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The Russian lawyer who penetrated Donald Trump’s inner circle was initially cleared into the United States by the Justice Department under “extraordinary circumstances” before she embarked on a lobbying campaign last year that ensnared the president’s eldest son, members of Congress, journalists and State Department officials, according to court and Justice Department documents and interviews.

This revelation means it was the Obama Justice Department that enabled the newest and most intriguing figure in the Russia-Trump investigation to enter the country without a visa.

Later, a series of events between an intermediary for the attorney and the Trump campaign ultimately led to the controversy surrounding Donald Trump Jr.

Just five days after meeting in June 2016 at Trump Tower with Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Moscow attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya showed up in Washington in the front row of a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Russia policy, video footage of the hearing shows.

She also engaged in a pro-Russia lobbying campaign and attended an event at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., where Russian supporters showed a movie that challenged the underpinnings of the U.S. human rights law known as the Magnitsky Act, which Russian President Vladimir Putin has reviled and tried to reverse. (Read more from “DOJ Let Russian Lawyer Into the US” HERE)

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American Propaganda in Overdrive: CNN Producer Admits Russia Narrative “Bullsh*T”, 3 Employees Quit Over Fake News

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CNN Producer John Bonifield who was caught on hidden-camera admitting that there is no proof to CNN’s Russia narrative. He confirms that the driving factor at CNN is ratings:

Three Employees Resign From CNN Amid Very Fake News Scandal

By Matthew Boyle. Three CNN employees have resigned amid the network’s very fake news scandal in which it was forced to retract a hit piece on President Donald Trump and his associates.

“CNN said Monday that three journalists, including the executive editor in charge of a new investigative unit, have resigned after the publication of a Russia-related article that was retracted,” CNN’s Brian Stelter reported late Monday. “Thomas Frank, who wrote the story in question; Eric Lichtblau, an editor in the unit; and Lex Haris, who oversaw the unit, have all left CNN.”

Stelter quoted an anonymous CNN spokesperson—the network refused to comment to him on Sunday night over the scandal—as saying the network accepted their resignations. As Stelter acknowledged — not in this piece, but in his Sunday evening “Reliable Sources” newsletter — it was a Breitbart News investigation that forced CNN’s retraction and now the resignations of three top network officials. (Read more from “Three Employees Resign From CNN Amid Very Fake News Scandal” HERE)

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CNN Is Imposing Strict New Rules on Its Russia Coverage

By Jon Passantino. CNN is imposing strict new publishing restrictions for online articles involving Russia after the network deleted a story and then issued a retraction late Friday, according to an internal email obtained by BuzzFeed News.

The email went out at 11:21 a.m. on Saturday from Rich Barbieri, the CNNMoney executive editor, saying “No one should publish any content involving Russia without coming to me and Jason [Farkas],” a CNN vice president . . .

The new restrictions also apply to other areas of the network — not just CNNMoney, which wasn’t involved with the article that was deleted and retracted. (Read more from “CNN Is Imposing Strict New Rules on Its Russia Coverage” HERE)

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Report: CNN Imposing New Rules on Russia Coverage After Another Botched Story

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Higher-ups at CNN are cracking down after another botched story regarding President Trump and Russia.

The network retracted and deleted a story late last week that claimed Anthony Scaramucci, who served on Trump’s transition team, was under FBI investigation for a meeting he had with a Russian executive. That story, which was based off of one unnamed congressional source, was false.

“No one should publish any content involving Russia without coming to me and Jason,” CNNMoney executive editor Rich Barbieri said in an email obtained by BuzzFeed. “This applies to social, video, editorial, and MoneyStream. No exceptions.” The “Jason” referred to in the email is a vice president at CNN, according to BuzzFeed. (Read more from “Report: CNN Imposing New Rules on Russia Coverage After Another Botched Story” HERE)

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Homeland Security: Russia Targeted 21 States in 2016, Changed No Votes

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Russians hacked or attempted to hack into election systems in 21 states, Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed to a Senate panel Wednesday, but stressed this didn’t affect any election outcomes.

However, federal officials would not disclose which states were victims of hacking attempts, other than Arizona and Illinois, which were revealed last year to have been attacked. State election officials, later testifying to the same panel, wanted more information from the federal government. Also, a top FBI official told the panel Russia has interfered in U.S. elections since the Cold War.

“We determined that internet-connected election-related networks in 21 states were potentially targeted by Russian government cyber actors. It is important to note that none of these systems were involved in vote tallying,” Samuel Liles, acting director of the cyber division for the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

This was the latest in a series of Senate hearings regarding the continuing investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election. Former FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions both testified to the committee this month regarding the Russian probe.

“This vast majority of activity we’ve observed was indicative of simple scanning for vulnerabilities and analogous to someone walking down the street to see if you were home,” Liles said. “A small number of systems were unsuccessfully exploited as though someone rattled the door knob but was unable to get in, so to speak. Finally, a small number of the networks were successfully exploited. They made it through the door.”

During the hearing, the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, doggedly pressed the DHS and FBI and, if they were aware, state officials, to notify the public which states were targeted.

“I think there is a public obligation to disclose, again, not to relitigate 2016 but to make sure that we are prepared to for 2017, where I have state elections in my state this year, and 2018,” Warner said. “There are some in the political process that believe this whole Russian incursion into our elections is a witch hunt and fake news. I could very easily see some local elected official saying this is not a problem, this is not a bother.”

Liles returned to the point that Americans can have faith in the election, despite the cyber intrusions.

“Multiple checks and redundancies in U.S. election infrastructures, including diversity of systems, noninternet-connected voting machines, pre-election testing, and processes for media, campaign, and election officials to check, audit, and validate the results, all of these made it likely that cyber manipulation of the U.S. election system intended to change the outcome of the national election would be detected,” Liles said.

However, Alex Halderman, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, contended U.S. election equipment is “vulnerable to sabotage” that “could change votes.”

“We’ve found ways for hackers to sabotage machines and steal votes. These capabilities are certainly within reach for America’s enemies,” Halderman told senators.

He said he and his team spent 10 years researching cyber vulnerabilities of election equipment. The professor said:

Some say that the fact that voting machines aren’t directly connected to the internet makes them secure. But, unfortunately, this is not true. Voting machines are not as distant from the internet as they may seem. Before every election, they need to be programmed with races and candidates. That programming is created on a desktop computer, then transferred to voting machines. If Russia infiltrated these election management computers, it could have spread a vote-stealing attack to a vast number of machines. I don’t know how far Russia got or whether they managed to interfere with equipment on Election Day.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of the select committee, noted during the hearing the importance of preventing any manipulation of tallying votes.

“I would think that if you could get into the vote tallying system and you did want to impact the outcome of an election, obviously the vote tallying system is the place to do that,” Blunt said.

Blunt said he doesn’t want the federal government to take over elections, but does hope the DHS should “give advice to state and local election officials to be sure that that vote tallying system is protected at a level above other systems.”

Jeanette Manfra, the acting director of the DHS national protection and programs directorate, insisted vote counting has a greater level of protection.

“What we can assess is that those vote tallying systems, whether it was the machines at a kiosk that a voter uses at a polling station or the systems that are used to tally votes were very difficult to access and particularly to access them remotely and then given the level of observation for vote tallying at every level of the process that adds into that we would have identified issues there, and there were no identified issues,” Manfra said.

Bill Priestap, the FBI’s assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division, said Russia “has for years conducted influence operations targeting our elections.” Though he said it was not equal to the interference in 2016.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., seemed surprised Russia had interfered before and pressed him on details.

“The scale and the aggressiveness of the effort in my opinion made this one different,” Priestap told the senator. “Again, it’s because of the electronic infrastructure the internet, what have you today, that allowed Russia to do things that in the past they weren’t able to do.”

Citing previous intelligence reports, Priestap said Russia’s goal was to attempt to create discord and delegitimize the election. Citing those same reports, he said the interference was intended to harm Democrat Hillary Clinton and help then-Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Feinstein asked if Russians have ever taken sides in previous efforts. Priestap answered affirmatively, but couldn’t provide an immediate example.

“Yes, ma’am, they have. I’m sorry, I can’t think of an example off the top of my head, but all the way through the Cold War up to our most recent election, in my opinion they have tried to influence all of our elections since then,” Priestap said. “This is a common practice.”

One occurrence came ahead of the 1984 presidential race. A letter to then-Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, dated May 14, 1983, KGB head Viktor Chebrikov explained that then-Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., was eager to “counter the militaristic policies” of President Ronald Reagan, and to undermine his prospects for re-election in 1984.

The National Association of Secretaries of State oppose the Department of Homeland Security designating election equipment as critical infrastructure, said Connie Lawson, the group’s president-elect and Indiana secretary of state.

“Threat sharing has been touted as a key justification for the designation,” Lawson told the senators. “Yet, nearly six months later, no secretary of state is currently authorized to receive classified threat information from our intelligence agencies. From information gaps to knowledge gaps that aren’t being addressed, this process threatens to erode public confidence in the election process as much any foreign cyber threat.”

The “critical infrastructure” designation puts locally-run elections under the same category as national defense, highways, the power grid, the food and water supply, and communications systems. The federal government can step in to protect these fronts in case of an emergency under the post-9/11 designation.

“It’s also shredding the rights that the states hold to determine their own election procedures, subject to the acts of Congress,” Lawson continued.

She added: “If I have one major request for you today—other than rescinding the critical infrastructure designation for elections—it is to help election officials get access to classified information sharing. We need this information to defend state elections from foreign interference and respond to threats.” (For more from the author of “Homeland Security: Russia Targeted 21 States in 2016, Changed No Votes” please click HERE)

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Why Russia Might Shoot Down American Planes in Syria

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On the afternoon of June 18, the world changed. The U.S. Air Force shot down a bomber of the Syrian air force controlled by Bashir Assad. The reason for this action was plain and simple. This bomber attacked American allies in Syria: the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)—an alliance of Kurds, Christians, and non-jihadist Arabs. The U.S. did what every good ally should do and tried to stop the attack. First the Americans demanded withdrawal. When no response came, this bomber was shot down in order to stop any senseless killing of SDF forces. In response Russia now threatens to shoot down U.S. jets that happen to enter the Russian sphere of influence over Syria.

This is happening while the SDF is taking the first ring of quarters of Raqqa, the ‘capital’ of ISIS. The liberation of Raqqa started June 6 and is progressing. It is quite obvious that attacking the SDF at the end of the day only helps ISIS.

The U.S. and Russia Fight for Dominance of Post-ISIS Syria

At first sight the downing of this Syrian jet is a very simple situation: The US defends its ally on the ground. If that is true, why then is Russia threatening to shoot down U.S. fighting jets? That is because something else is equally true: All players involved are now starting to look to a new map of post-ISIS Syria. And the U.S. wants to stop Iran from dominating either Syria or Iraq.

Look at the battle map that accompanies this column. (The map has not been updated yet, but there is a change in the area southwest of Raqqa.)

Iran Could Threaten Israel Through Syria

We can see that the Syrian army has (finally) made some serious progress against ISIS. Assad’s goal is probably not to defeat ISIS as such. More likely he wants to capture oilfields try to block the U.S-backed SDF. Assad wants to distract the SDF and keep its forces busy. Why? Because Assad wants his forces to beat them to the strategic site called Deir Ezzor.

The strategic importance of Deir Ezzor has totally been ignored until now. This ISIS stronghold controls the road from Teheran, Iran, across Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean Sea and Iran’s enemy, Israel. Iran wants to control this road, so it can funnel weapons to its terrorist allies in Lebanon and the West Bank, which target Israel. The U.S. wants to prevent that, for obvious reasons.

The race to Deir Ezzor has suddenly become a high-stakes game. None of the players is at this point ready to take that area from ISIS. The Assad forces are stretched out and still a long way away. Iranian proxies are on the Iraqi side of the Iraq/Syria border, but this is a relative small force with a lot of other forces around it. The SDF meanwhile is busy in Raqqa and has no spare forces left to march to Deir Ezzor.

How Can We Block Iran?

The big question is what the US can do to block Iran. The answer is actually quite simple. The US has to deepen its commitment to the whole SDF. It must offer weapons to every element in that army. The sad truth is that the US still does not provide the Syriac Military Council (the Christian wing of SDF) any arms or ammo. These brave Christians are fighting ISIS in Raqqa as you read this. But they have to scrape their equipment together and ask others for help. Even the Arab and Kurdish parts of the SDF, which the U.S. does supply, are still under-equipped.

The U.S. still does not tap into the full potential of the SDF. although it is standing ready. For example the Syriac Military Council has more men and women trained than they can arm and this is also true for Kurdish and Arab forces in the SDF. More and better equipment can help to build an army that will act much faster in Raqqa and stand ready much sooner to win the race to Deir Ezzor. That would protect Israel and Iraq from Iran’s terrorist allies. To stabilize northern Syria, the U.S. would be wise to much more humanitarian aid and support rebuilding.

Arm Syria’s Christians

Much is at stake and President Trump can once more make a major difference. This time not only for the peoples in the Federation of Northern Syria but also for Israel.

One thing is clear. We are now definitively looking at a new map of Syria. Turkey is no longer able to block America’s policies. The U.S. has a clear, democratic, religiously tolerant ally: The SDF. America needs to build its ally up. There are now several small US military airbases in northern Syria, built to last rather years than months. The U.S. has realized that the SDF and the Federation of Northern Syria are there to stay. A return to the old, centralized and dictatorial Syria is out of the question. A new decentralized or even divided Syria is in the cards.

Don’t mourn the end of a brutal, centralized Syria. Its demise means that freedom has come to the heart of the Middle East. The task of the U.S. should be to make sure that all religious minorities, including Christians, are treated fairly. (For more from the author of “Why Russia Might Shoot Down American Planes in Syria” please click HERE)

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Ukrainian President Credits US Help in Defense Against Russia

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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the United States has been a “co-sponsor of this story of success” in helping his country fight for freedom against Russian aggression, as he sat with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office Tuesday.

Trump and national security adviser H.R. McMaster had a “drop-in” of a White House late morning meeting between Poroshenko and Vice President Mike Pence.

Ahead of the meeting, the Treasury Department announced sanctions against 38 individuals and organizations that U.S. authorities determined had helped Russia in its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

“We’re really fighting for freedom and democracy,” Poroshenko said in front of reporters in the Oval Office after the private meeting, according to the press pool report.

The Ukrainian leader talked about U.S. support for security and defense of his country of 45 million people.

“I’m absolutely confident that today is a story of success and I’m proud to have you, Mr. President, and the United States as the co-sponsor of this story of success,” he said.

Critics have accused Trump of being overly sympathetic with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and slow to denounce the invasion. Trump has said he wants Russia’s help in combatting the Islamic State, a Sunni terrorist group.

Trump spoke broadly during his comments with Poroshenko.

“It’s a great honor to be with President Poroshenko of the Ukraine, a place that we’ve all been very much involved in and we’ve been seeing it and everybody’s been reading about it,” Trump said. “And we’ve had some very, very good discussions. It’s going to continue throughout the day and I think a lot of progress has been made.”

The official White House readout of the meeting said Trump and Poroshenko “discussed support for the peaceful resolution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and President Poroshenko’s reform agenda and anti-corruption efforts.”

Regarding the new sanctions, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was more direct.

“These designations will maintain pressure on Russia to work toward a diplomatic solution,” Mnuchin said in a statement. “This administration is committed to a diplomatic process that guarantees Ukrainian sovereignty, and there should be no sanctions relief until Russia meets its obligations under the Minsk agreements.”

In 2014, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula, and working with pro-Russian separatist militias in Ukraine, annexed the region. The conflict began after Kremlin-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was rejected by the public. The conflict has led to more than 10,000 deaths, 23,000 wounded, and 1.8 million displaced.

During the public appearance, Trump also addressed the death of American Otto Warmbier, who was imprisoned in North Korea. Warmbier died Monday shortly after returning home in a coma. Trump seemed to lay some blame on the Obama administration for not resolving the matter sooner.

“It’s a disgrace what happened to Otto. It’s a total disgrace what happened to Otto. It should never, ever be allowed to happen,” Trump said. “And frankly, if he were brought home sooner, I think the results would have been a lot different. He should have brought home that same day. The results would have been a lot different. What happened to Otto is a disgrace.” (For more from the author of “Ukrainian President Credits US Help in Defense Against Russia” please click HERE)

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