On Thursday, US Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise visit to Afghanistan to meet with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, his first trip to the country since taking his vice presidential oath.

Pence was there to discuss changes to the US strategy in Afghanistan with Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, and also to offer his thanks to US troops ahead of the Christmas holiday.

"We're here to see this through," Pence told Ghani. "We believe that we are now on a path to achieving a lasting victory for freedom and security in Afghanistan."

Pence echoed the victory statement while addressing US troops stationed in the country.

"I believe victory is closer than ever before," Pence told them.

​But what exactly would victory in Afghanistan look like? According to Brian Terrell, co-coordinator for Voices for Creative Non-Violence, it's likely not what most people picture.

Speaking with Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear, Terrell said not to expect any end to violence in the war-torn country. This "is not a victory that… is pegged for on the calendar."

"It's always going to be elusive," says Terrell. "This war… is not meant to be resolved in any kind of way. It's not meant to be won, it's meant to be perpetual."

Trump announced in August that he was revising the US strategy in Afghanistan, which steered away from the idea of "nation-building" and instead aimed at addressing terrorist threats in the region.

"The policy that [US President] Donald Trump is talking about is going to keep this war going," Terrell predicted. This war isn't about trying to beat the "bad guys," he said, but about maintaining a cash cow for defense corporations.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201712231060257317-war-afghanistan-not-...

Not a new tactic, the Roman Empire used it to increase its wine making regions...

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - French Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire on Tuesday expressed hope that some of the Russian sanctions on French food products would be removed in the near future to restore cooperation with Moscow in the area of agriculture.

When asked what effect the Russian retaliatory sanctions had on the French agriculture sector, Le Maire said in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper that "they did affect it as we had active cooperation with Russia in the area of agriculture."

"I hope that in the near future we will be able to restore this work and lift a part of the sanctions on French food products," the French minister said.

At the same time, Le Maire stressed that France was fully committed to the decisions taken at the European level.

"France is one of the key EU countries, and we do not even put this decision into question. There are no possibilities to circumvent this political mechanism. But in the framework of this mechanism there is a space for maneuver, which we want to use for the economic cooperation," the minister noted.

READ MORE: EU Extends Economic Sanctions Against Russia for 6 Months — Council of EU

When asked to provide a specific example of how this could work, Le Maire pointed out that "in the past, Russia already lifted some of the restrictions on our products, for example a restriction on potatoes, imposed in 2013, and this had a positive effect."

In 2014, Moscow introduced food embargo against Western countries, which had targeted it with economic and diplomatic sanctions over Russia's alleged interference in the Ukrainian conflict and Crimea's reunification with Russia following a referendum. Moscow has repeatedly denied the accusations.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/201801091060609567-france-sanctions-russia/

Britain’s ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Saturday morning, where he was informed of Moscow’s response to London’s claims that Russia is behind the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former double agent, and his daughter, Yulia, on March 4 in Salisbury, UK.

The ministry issued a statement saying 23 employees of the British embassy in Moscow have been declared personae non gratae. The diplomats must leave within a week. It also announced the operation of the British Council in Russia will be ceased given its “unregulated status.”

In addition, Russia is revoking its agreement on the opening and operation of the UK Consulate General in St. Petersburg due to“disparity in the number of consulate facilities of the two countries.”

“The British side has been warned that in case further moves of an unfriendly nature towards Russia are implemented, the Russian side reserves the right to take other response measures,” the statement added.

London earlier ordered 23 Russian diplomats to leave the UK by March 20. Including family members, around 80 people will be uprooted from the country, according to Russia’s ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko.

Bristow told reporters upon leaving the ministry that “this crisis has arisen as a result of an appalling attack in the UK,” again linking Skripal’s murder attempt to a “chemical weapon developed in Russia.” He added that London’s steps were not directed against the “Russian people.”

On Friday, UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally ordered the suspected nerve agent attack – a claim Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called “shocking and unforgivable.”

“Sooner or later the British side would have to present some kind of comprehensive evidence [of Russia’s involvement], at least, to their partners [France, the US, Germany], who declared solidarity with London in this situation,” Peskov added.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/421568-russia-summons-uk-ambassador-skripal/

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from Neil Clark

Here we go again. In the UK government’s latest 52 page ’National Security Capability Review’, guess who’s right there at the top of the threats Britain faces? Yes - those dastardly Russians!

‘The resurgence of state-based threats, intensifying wider state competition and the erosion of the rules-based international order, making it harder to build consensus and tackle global threats', the report says. ‘The erosion of the rules-based international order'? Excuse me? Didn't that happen when the UK and its NATO allies bombed Yugoslavia- without UNSC approval in 1999- and when the UK and its allies illegally invaded Iraq — again without UNSC approval- in 2003?

According to the report, those events just didn't happen. Instead ‘Russian State Aggression' is the thing we should all be worried about. The long litany of alleged Russian crimes include ‘supporting the Assad regime‘ and the ‘illegal annexation of Crimea'. Never mind that the so-called ‘Assad regime‘ requested Russian assistance in fighting ISIS [Daesh]*/al-Qaeda* linked jihadists whose co-ideologists have brought terror to the streets of Britain.

Nor that the predominately Russian people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a democratic referendum to return to Russia following a western-backed regime change operation in Ukraine in which virulently anti-Russian nationalists and neo-Nazis provided the cutting edge. Let's not let little things like facts get in the way shall we?

Despite the British government providing no proof that Russia was responsible for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, or indeed that the Novichok nerve agent was definitely used, the report states boldly: The indiscriminate and reckless use of a military-grade nerve agent on British soil was an unlawful use of force by the Russian State. 

The truth is that the official government narrative on Salisbury has more holes in it than a slab of Swiss cheese. 

And that was before we were told last week that the oh-so-deadly nerve agent was probably on the Skripal's front door- the door which police officers had been touching on a regular basis as they came in and out of the house.

As in 2003, with the UK government's Iraqi WMD claims, a conspiracy theory is being presented as 100% established fact.

Everything is back to front. We've entered the ‘Through the Looking Glass' world of Lewis Carroll- where we‘re being asked by Theresa May and co to believe six impossible things before breakfast. 

Far from posing a threat to British security, Russian actions in the Middle East are actually making British citizens safer. It's the UK government which has been putting our lives at risk- not the ‘evil Putin‘. 

The UK‘s neo-conservative foreign policy — which has been followed by Labour and Conservative governments over the past 20-or so years, has involved targeting independently-minded secular states for violent regime change. None of these states threatened Britain or the British public. On the contrary, they were actually opposed to the extremist terror groups who DO pose a threat. By working to destabilise countries such as Iraq, Libya and Syria, the UK government has greatly boosted the cause of global terrorism.  

Saddam Hussein may have been a dictator but he was never going to attack Britain. By toppling the Iraqi strongman, and dismantling the entire state apparatus, Britain facilitated the rise of the Islamic State [Daesh] — a group whose adherents have carried out attacks against UK citizens. 

In Libya, Britain — and NATO acted as the air-force of radical jihadist groups — as part of their strategy to oust Muammar Gaddafi. Members of the so-called Libyan Islamic Fighting Group were able to travel freely between Britain and Libya.  ‘The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its foreign policy objectives,' writes Mark Curtis. ‘Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May — who was Home Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi — clearly have serious questions to answer.'

The first major ‘blowback' to British citizens of the UK government‘s Libya policy came in 2015, when British tourists were killed by terrorist attacks in neighbouring Tunisia. One was killed in an attack on the Bardo National Museum in March 2015, while three months later, 30 British tourists lost their lives in the holiday resort of Port El Kantaoui. Among those killed was Denis Thwaites, a former professional footballer with Birmingham City. Tunisia had been a safe place for British tourists — before Cameron and co set about ‘regime-changing' Libya and turning the country into a jihadists playground. It was reported that the Port El Kantaoui terrorist, Seifeddine Rezgui, had trained in an ISIS camp in ‘liberated' Libya.

Then in May 2017, 22 people were blown up when leaving a pop concert in Manchester by Salman Abedi. The radicalised bomber had only returned from ‘liberated' Libya a week earlier and is believed to have fought with his father with the LIFG, against Gaddafi — (and on the same side as NATO), six years earlier.

Again, remind me who is the biggest threat to UK security — the UK government — or Russia?

Having ticked off Libya from their ‘To Do' list, the neocons in the UK government turned their attentions to Syria. Again, here was a country whose secular government posed no threat to the UK. President Bashar al-Assad, who trained as an eye doctor in London and whose wife Asma was born in England and brought up in Acton, could have been an ally, if the UK had been genuinely interested in fighting Islamist terrorism. But instead the UK supported hardcore Islamists, euphemistically referred to as ‘rebels‘ to try and bring down the Assad government.  

In June 2015, Seumas Milne reported how a trial in London of a man accused of terrorism in Syria had collapsed — when it emerged that British Intelligence had been backing the very same ‘rebel‘ groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

‘Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much‘, Milne noted. But it was not an isolated case.

The government is now talking about a new ‘Fusion Doctrine' to ‘strengthen our collective approach to national security'. But here's a better strategy. Let's change our foreign policy. Let's stop regime-change wars and destabilisation campaigns against countries which mean us no harm. Let's stop supporting jihadist ‘rebels' abroad in pursuance of neo-conservative objectives. Let's start respecting international law. And let's stop blaming Russia for problems which have been created at home.

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*Daesh and al-Qaeda are terrorist groups outlawed in Russia and other countries

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201804021063144587-uk-skripal-russia-...

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Crimea’s handover to Kiev in 1954, which made the peninsula part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, was facilitated through an unprecedented number of legal violations, Vladimir Konstantinov, the head of the Crimean parliament, told RIA Novosti on Saturday. The senior MP heads a special parliamentary committee tasked with providing a legal review of the process.

The peninsula became part of the Russian Empire in the late 18th century. Previously, it was controlled by the Crimean Khanate for several centuries, which was a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire starting from the 15th century. Following its incorporation into Russia, Crimea was part of multiple Russian regions.

During Soviet times, Crimea was initially a separate autonomous republic within the USSR before becoming part of Soviet Russia – the RSFSR – in 1945.

In 1954, the peninsula was transferred to the Ukrainian SSR by Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev for logistical and economic reasons. This was first facilitated by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, which acted as the collective head of state in the USSR, in February 1954. The decision was then approved by the Supreme Soviet – a two-chamber body which possessed legislative powers and was considered the highest state authority in the USSR – in April of the same year.

According to Konstantinov, the procedure was fraught with legal irregularities and violations. “The sadly remembered handover of Crimea [to the Ukrainian SSR] saw a record level of legal nihilism and negligence to the then-applicable legislation,” he told RIA Novosti, adding that he does not know what prevented the Soviet authorities from making the procedure legal. He did not provide any details about the alleged irregularities, however.

A special committee of the modern Crimean parliament headed by Konstantinov has prepared a complaint which they plan to file with the Russian Constitutional Court to ask it to provide a legal review of the 1954 decision regarding whether it was constitutional.

The senior MP claims that the transfer violated three constitutions – those of the Ukrainian SSR, the RSFSR, and the USSR.

Crimea automatically became part of modern Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The government in Kiev rejected a number of plebiscites during the 1990s aimed at re-establishing Crimea as an independent republic. In 2014, the people of the region voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to become part of Russia in the wake of the Maidan coup in Ukraine.

Kiev and its Western backers still consider the peninsula to be “illegally annexed” Ukrainian territory. President Vladimir Zelensky said in August 2022 that Kiev would seize Crimea “by any means necessary.”He has also demanded that Russian troops withdraw from the peninsula and other territories claimed by Kiev as a prerequisite for any potential peace talks with Russia amid the ongoing conflict. Russia has dismissed the demands as being detached from reality.

Ukraine launched a major offensive in June 2023 aimed at seizing the former Ukrainian territories now controlled by Russia. The operation failed to bring about any major changes to the front lines, despite heavy losses on the Ukrainian side.

https://www.rt.com/russia/589576-ussr-crimea-ukraine-violation-law/

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MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....