ERIC ZUESSE—News has only gradually seeped out that the Minsk II agreement, to find a peaceful way to end the war between Ukraine and its breakaway far eastern Donbass region, collapsed on March 26th. It was an agreement which Francois Hollande of France and Angela Merkel of Germany had established with Vladimir Putin of Russia, on 11 February 2015, in Minsk, Belarus. U.S. President Barack Obama, the founder of today’s Ukraine, had opposed that Agreement, because he was encouraging the then-President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, militarily to retake both Donbass and Crimea by force — or at least to attempt to do so.
Default Editor Patrice de Bergeracpas
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PATRICE GREANVILLE—This is a highly unusual film, a quiet, at times lyrical, other times creepy documentary on the small mansions —actually impressive mausoleums—where Mexico’s most notorious drug lords (and other victims of the drug war) lie at rest. Hauntingly, most of the residents in this city of the dead are extremely young. A meditation on culture and class, the images say a lot about the almost infinite ability of the poor to scrape a living under almost any circumstances, and about the people of Mexico’s unique attitude toward death and their apparent stubborn belief in an afterlife.
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PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS—What all of the alternative explanations have in common is distrust of the authorities and the official explanations. This is the fault of the authorities and the media, not of those with alternative explanations. If the public had confidence in the authorities, there would be no scope for alternative explanations. By not being forthcoming up front, by politicizing the virus against Trump and against China, by taking so long to acknowledge the seriousness of the threat while doing nothing to prepare, the authorities have harmed public trust in them.
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The Fall Of The Unipower (Revised/Reposted)
34 minutes readPAUL CRAIG ROBERTS—The distinguished and knowledgeable international commentator William Engdahl, in a superb statement, has expressed the view I gave you that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on September 28 at the 70th anniversary of the United Nations changed the balance of power in the world. Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully. Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar confiscations of bank net worth as the price of not following Washington’s policies toward other countries.
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U.S. Confirms Deployment Of Patriot Missiles In Iraq
14 minutes readOn the same day, the Turkish military established three new ‘observation posts’ around Jisr al-Shughur. They are located at the villages of Baksariya, al-Z’ainiyah and Furaykah. Idlib militants see Turkish positions as an important defense line that would allow containing possible Russia- and Iran-backed anti-terrorist operations in the area.
The 46th Regiment Base of the Syrian Army in western Aleppo came under Turkish artillery shelling. In response, Syrian forces struck position of Turkish-backed militants near Kafr Amma. The attack on the 46th Regiment Base became a third incident between the Turkish military and Syrian troops in less than a week. On April 3, two Syrian soldiers were killed in a Turkish artillery strike on their positions near Tell Abyad.