The US government has been courting East European countries in a bid to go ahead with its project of waging war on humanity, Stephen Lendman tells Press TV. ● “It’s typical of [President Barack] Obama and US foreign policy. Literally, America is waging war on humanity,” Stephen Lendman told Press TV in an interview. During a visit to Poland on Tuesday, Obama said he will ask Congress for USD 1 billion to bolster security for countries in East Europe. Obama added that security in Europe is the “cornerstone of our own security and it is sacrosanct,” adding, “It is a commitment that is particularly important at this point in time.” Lendman said, “America is strictly imperial, it’s hegemonic, it’s world dominance, it’s literally to control everything and this war on humanity is America’s bottom-line option, pressuring EU countries, other NATO countries to join in America’s imperial project.” He added that the US desire for war is clear in a “disgusting” manner in Obama’s “speeches” and “body language.”

Stephen Lendman: American Exceptionalism Justifies War on Humanity
Paul Craig Roberts || Are You Ready For Nuclear War?
Bill Van Auken || Obama escalates NATO confrontation with Russia
Patrick Martin || Obama heads to Europe for week of meetings directed against Russia

Election centers were opened Tuesday at 07:00 for Syrian citizens across the country to cast their ballots in the presidential elections. Syrian citizens have flocked to the election centers to cast their votes and choose a president for the country for the next seven years. The presidential elections in Syria is the first pluralistic election process based on the new Constitution of Syria which was endorsed in 2012. The number of the election centers in all Syrian provinces is 9601, and they include 11776 ballot boxes. Three candidates are: Maher Abdel-Hafiz Hajjar, Hassan Abdullah al-Nouri and Bashar al-Assad are competing in the presidential elections after the Supreme Judicial Court accepted their applications to run for the post of president on May 10. More than 200 mass media, including news agencies, TVs, radios, newspapers from various countries in the world, among them the Western countries are accompanying the presidential elections in Syria.

SANA: International delegations stress Syria's voting process was fair and democratic

Stephen Lendman ■ Syrians Vote || June 3 was historic. It was Syria's first ever free, fair, open democratic presidential election. Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar competed with Assad. He's overwhelmingly popular. He'll win easily. Only his victory margin remains to be determined. Syrians want no one else leading them. Especially while conflict continues. He's fighting for Syrian freedom. He's defeating Obama's dirty game. [...] It bears repeating. Syria's election was open, free and fair. It mocked America's sham process.

The Saker ■ I was just watching Alain Soral's latest video when I heard him offer a very interesting explanation for why the AngloZionist Empire hates Putin so much. The article Soral quotes is entitled "The End of the New World Order" and it has been written by Christopher R. Hill, "former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009", i.e. a big shot in the US imperial nomenklatura. Here is what Hill writes:

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and ongoing intimidation of Ukraine appears to mean the end of a 25-year period whose hallmark was an effort to bring Russia into greater alignment with Euro-Atlantic goals and traditions. Now the question is: What comes next? (...) [the] new world order held for almost 25 years. Except for Russia’s brief war with Georgia in August 2008 (a conflict generally seen as instigated by reckless Georgian leadership), Russia’s acquiescence and commitment to the “new world order,” however problematic, was one of the great accomplishments of the post-Cold War era. Even Russia’s reluctance to support concerted Western action, such as in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990’s, was based on arguments that could be heard in other European countries. Russian democracy certainly had its share of flaws, but that hardly made it unique among post-communist countries. (...) Americans do need to understand the challenge they are facing from a Russia that no longer seems interested in what the West has been offering for the last 25 years: special status with NATO, a privileged relationship with the European Union, and partnership in international diplomatic endeavor.

For all the wrong reasons (the usual crap about a resurgent and revanchist Russian Empire), Hill is absolutely right: Russia has absolutely zero interest in the "Western project". Yes, today Russia has fundamentally turned away from the NWO and purged most, if not all, of the pro-NWO elite in Moscow. The future of Russia is in Asia and in the great Russian North and there is nothing the AngloZionist Empire can do about that.

Stephen Lendman || NATO is an imperial tool. It's a global killing machine. It targets humanity. It ravages one country after another. It threatens world peace.

Belgian police officers stand guard as the motorcade
carrying US President Barack Obama drives down empty
streets to Zaventem international airport in Brussels.

■ Obama left Monday. He spent two days in Poland. Ostensibly for Polish Freedom Day. Marking its liberation from Soviet Russia's control. He met with Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Then with Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian and Slovakian officials.

■ He met one-on-one with Ukrainian President-elect Petro Poroshenko. He pledged full US support. Political, economic and military. To harden fascist governance. To crush Eastern Ukrainian freedom fighters. To head Ukraine for NATO membership. To establish US bases on Russia's borders. To encroach on its entire Western flank. To target its heartland. To weaken and isolate a major rival. To replace it with pro-Western vassal govenance if all goes as planned.

■ On June 4 and 5, he was at NATO headquarters in Brussels. He met with other G-7 leaders. It's no longer G-8. Russia is excluded. Obama came to pressure European allies for stiffer sanctions. He'll get little more than already imposed.

■ On June 6, Obama [heads] for France to commemorate D-Day's 70th anniversary. His agenda prioritizes bashing Russia. It's enlisting greater support for Kiev putschists.

Paul Craig Roberts || Are You Ready For Nuclear War?
Bill Van Auken || Obama escalates NATO confrontation with Russia
Patrick Martin || Obama heads to Europe for week of meetings directed against Russia

● In the 72 hours since he was released by the Taliban in exchange for five prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl has come under increasingly vitriolic attack from right-wing US political circles and the media, which have denounced him as a deserter and traitor. There have been calls for him to be tried and even shot. Media outlets from CNN to NBC and the other major broadcasters have repeatedly run interviews with soldiers who served with Bergdahl accusing him of deserting his post. Some of them have placed the blame on Bergdahl for the death of six US troops who, they claim, were killed during a six-month intensive search for the missing soldier. The media has also made a great deal of recent Twitter posts from Bob Bergdahl expressing sympathy for Afghans killed in the war and their families and calling for the release of all detainees being held at Guantanamo. ● Prior to his disappearance, Bowe Bergdahl made clear in letters to his family and discussions with fellow soldiers his revulsion over the US war in Afghanistan and his sympathy for the Afghan people. There is little doubt that the primary factor behind the vitriol against the Bergdahls is their antiwar sentiment and the fear in ruling class circles that it will further fuel already broad popular opposition to the war in Afghanistan and the general warmongering policy of the Obama administration.

Rolling Stone: 13 Things You Need to Know About Bowe Bergdahl
Outside the Beltway: Lone American P.O,W. From Afghan War Freed In Prisoner Swap With Taliban

Robert Stevens ■ The most critical documents regarding the preparation and instigation of the illegal war against Iraq will never be seen by the Chilcot Inquiry. The Inquiry was authorised by the previous Labour government, fully five years ago. It is now 11 years since the invasion of Iraq. The inquiry into a war in which a sovereign nation was invaded by armies of imperialist occupation, on the basis of a monstrous pack of lies, concluded its sessions as far back as 2011. Headed by Sir John Chilcot, it has cost £7 million. However, publication of its findings has been delayed for three years due to the cover-up being concocted. Last week it was revealed that the pre-war conversations of the two political figures who authorised the filthy war in which an estimated more than one million people died, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W. Bush, will remain secret. [...] The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression carried out in the interests of the most predatory sections of the financial and corporate oligarchy in the United States and Britain. The five years since the formation of the Chilcot Inquiry have demonstrated that far more is involved than an attempt by those involved to cover up their crimes. The central role of the Inquiry has been to legitimise the invasion of Iraq and affirm the basis on which it was carried out—the US doctrine of pre-emptive war, a flagrant rejection of any concept of international law.