Caught in a lie, US & allies bomb Syria the night before international inspectors arrive

Source: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/424186-us-allies-syria-lie/

The US, Britain and France trampled international law to launch missiles against Syria, claiming to have “evidence” of the government’s use of chemical weapons. That evidence is based on terrorist lies.

After a week of outrageous tweets and proclamations by POTUS Trump, which included continued accusations that Syria’s president ordered a chemical weapons attack on civilians in Douma, east of Damascus, with Trump using grotesque and juvenile terminology, such as “animal Assad,” the very evening before chemical weapons inspectors of the OPCW were to visit Douma, America and allies launched illegal bombings against Syria. The illegal bombings included 103 missiles, 71 of which Russia states were intercepted.

For the past week, we were told that the US had ‘evidence’ and the UK had ‘evidence’ that Syria had used chemicals. The ‘evidence’ largely relied on video clips and photos shared on social media, provided by the Western-funded White Helmets (that “rescuer” group that somehow only operates in Al-Qaeda and co-terrorist occupied areas and participates in torture and executions), as well as by Yaser al-Doumani, a man whose allegiance to Jaysh al-Islam is clear from his own Facebook posts, for example of former Jaysh al-Islam leader, Zahran Alloush.

Western Media's conundrum – why is 'bad guy' Putin so popular at home?

Source: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/423921-putin-economy-russia-capitalism/
By: Steve Keen is an Australian economist and author. He’s professor and Head of the School of Economics, History and Politics at Kingston University in London. You can support his attempts to build a new economics https://www.patreon.com/ProfSteveKeen.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is reviled as a "bad person" in the Western press and by Western politicians. And those accusations have heightened since the Skripal poisoning incident, which has been blamed on the Kremlin.

I'm neither going to dispute, nor support that characterization. Instead, I want to give some background as to why a "bad person" or "strongman" or, indeed, a hyper patriot, might have been elected Russia's leader in the first place. In other words, I want to explain why Putin has pursued certain policies which have helped to prompt such emotional reactions from many Western analysts.

And elected he was, first in 2000 – when, though the elections were criticized, they were regarded as broadly democratic. He has since been elected another three times, though Russia is no longer regarded as a true democracy by much of the West's media and political establishments.

The Bolshevik Experiment

No story starts yesterday, especially with Russia. The latest date one should commence with is 1914, when Russia was ruled by a hereditary emperor whose political ineptness helped lead to the First World War. The many disasters that flowed from WWI led to Nicholas II's own overthrow in 1917 when, after a bloody civil war, the Bolshevik faction of the Communist Party led by Vladimir Lenin became Russia's new leaders.