US EXCEPTIONALISM

The Russian embassy is still operating from Tunisia. I hope it will return to Tripoli as soon as some basic security is ensured there. A number of embassies operate there, but the security is very poor; so it was decided that Russian diplomats would work from Tunis. As for Russian mediation between the Libyan National Army and the Government of National Accord as Libya’s main rivals, the embassy, ​​of course, maintains contacts with all Libyan parties; but the issue is much broader here, so Moscow is also actively involved in building bridges between the conflicting parties. The Russian Foreign Ministry, as well as the Ministry of Defence, is trying to promote practical steps to agree on a compromise solution that will help resolve the Libyan crisis, which is not easy. Let me remind you that all the problems that Libya is facing go back to 2011, when NATO, in gross violation of UN Security Council resolutions, conducted direct military aggression in Libya to overthrow the Muammar Gaddafi regime.

VANESSA BEELEY—Iran has come to the aid of the Syrian air-force helicopters from Hama airport that were transporting water from Sourani Dam in Tartous to limit the expansion of the fires burning in the inaccessible mountain ranges, impossible to reach with fire brigade vehicles. The risk for Iran to assist Syria in this campaign is huge. The terrorist groups are equipped with the US-manufactured ground to air missile launchers which have been used in the past to bring down Syrian aircraft. Fire-fighting planes must necessarily fly low and slow to be most effective which makes them a relatively easy target for the Al Qaeda-linked armed groups armed by the US Coalition members.

September 15, 1970, was a dramatic day in the life of Chilean media mogul, Agustin Edwards Eastman. His day began at 8am, with breakfast in the office of Henry Kissinger, then national security advisor to President Richard Nixon. At 9:15am, Kissinger had arranged for Edwards to secretly see Nixon in the Oval Office. Although there is no documentary record that the meeting with the president took place, later that day at the Madison Hotel in downtown Washington D.C., Edwards became the only Chilean—civilian or military—known to meet face-to-face with CIA Director Richard Helms. At 3:25pm that afternoon, President Nixon called Kissinger and Helms into the Oval Office and instructed them to covertly try to “save Chile” by orchestrating a military takeover. “I have this impression that the president called this meeting,” Helms later testified before the U.S. Senate, “because of Edwards’ presence in Washington and what … Edwards was saying about conditions in Chile.”

Richard Nixon’s directive to Helm’s 50 years ago set in motion a series one of the more infamous acts in the annals of U.S. foreign policy. To instigate a coup CIA soon focused on providing guns, funds, and even life insurance policies for Chilean military operatives to remove the commander-in-chief of the Chilean armed forces, General Rene Schneider, who opposed a golpe. On October 22, 1970, Schneider was intercepted and shot on his way to work; he died the next day. His CIA-supported murder became one of the most legendary cases of U.S. involvement in the assassination of foreign leaders.

MoA—Every few days U.S. ‘intelligence’ and ‘officials’ produce fake claims about this or that ‘hostile’ country. U.S. media continue to reproduce those claims even if they lack any logic, substance, and do not make any sense. On June 27 the New York Times and the Washington Post published fake news about alleged Russian payments to the Taliban for killing U.S. troops. The stories ran on the outlets’ front pages. Two weeks later the story was shown to have no basis: