instruction:
Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.
question:
Putin and Erdogan: Partnership of convenience? The fate of the multibillion dollar project had been up in the air for a few months . Breaching EU competition rules, the pipeline project could have gone through if it had allowed access to suppliers other than Gazprom . The crisis in Ukraine and the mounting tensions gave EU policymakers an additional reason not to accommodate Russia's demands for special treatment . As a result, Putin declared that resources will be directed towards upgrading gas pipeline infrastructure linking Russia to Turkey - or even building an altogether new pipeline, in an attempt to save face and offset the losses incurred over South Stream . This decision underscores the pragmatism in the way Moscow and Ankara deal with each other . Meetings and official phone conversations between Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, more than 35 over the past few years, usually follow a very similar script . The two leaders agree to disagree on the ongoing human tragedy in Syria, where they sit on opposing sides, and proceed with bilateral business . This time around, they made the usual pledge to triple the volume of trade between the two countries from the current figure of $33bn to $100bn by the end of this decade . That might be an ambitious target but one should not forget that Russia is already Turkey's second largest trading partner after Germany . It is, furthermore, the second biggest market for Russian gas exports outside the former Soviet Union, with Germany again the frontrunner . Turkish construction firms have carved out a niche in the Russian market , benefiting handsomely from large public-funded project such as the Sochi Winter Olympics . This explains why Erdogan was deaf to calls for Turks of Circassian origin to boycott the games , which were set in the part of the Caucasus they were uprooted from back in the 1860s . Currently, there is a problem with gas deliveries over the Trans-Balkan pipeline to western Turkey via Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and Bulgaria , because of disruptions due to the constant wrangling between Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftohaz . If the winter is harsh , heating in Istanbul and other large cities in the Marmara region will suffer . That is not a welcome prospect for the Turkish government , which is heading for general elections in the first half of 2015 and is therefore determined to avoid such unpleasant shocks and also keep gas prices low . High-ranking Russian representatives, including Gazprom's CEO Alexei Miller, who was in Ankara last week, promise to step up volumes through the Blue Stream, the pipeline connecting the Russian grid to central Anatolia via the Black Sea, and reach a total of 30 billion cubic metres in 2014, from 25.6 billion cubic metres the previous year . In this context, it makes perfect sense that investment should be redirected from the botched South Stream project to the upgrade of Blue Stream . In the long run, Ankara would also like to move away from dependence on Russia and tap into new gas flowing from Azerbaijan - via the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) coming onstream in 2019 - Northern Iraq, Iran and, should a solution be reached on the Cyprus Issue, the Eastern Mediterranean . The AKP government has helped decrease imports from Russia to 57 percent of the overall volume , but in absolute terms, consumption in an expanding economy like Turkey's is only going higher . Luckily, the plummeting prices of oil have come as a huge bonus to the government , reducing Turkey's bill and improving the balance of payments vis-a-vis Russia . What Turkey is offering in exchange is neutrality in Putin's confrontation with the West . Ankara has a lot of reasons to be unhappy about the annexation of Crimea, home to a large Tatar community which views Turkey as a kin state, and about the frozen conflict in Eastern Ukraine . Yet ,  unlike all other members of NATO, it has declined to join the sanctions imposed on Russia (imports of Turkish poultry and seafood have rocketed since) . The strategic value of Turkey's neutrality has only gone up after Putin found himself shouldered aside by most emerging powers at the recent G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia . Russia has long encouraged Turkey's pursuit of an autonomous foreign policy and emancipation from NATO and the US . As the Turkish city of Antalya hosts the next G20 summit , there will be a renewed emphasis on Turkey's transformation into a global leader rather than a pliant western periphery . But geopolitical gains may not give Russia sufficient incentive to accommodate Turkish demands . Putin came with a delegation of 10 government ministers and a shopping list too . He would like to see progress on Rosatom's $20bn project to build Turkey's first nuclear power station at Akkuyu near Mersin . Construction work is expected to start in May , but reportedly Putin has insisted on a preferential treatment for the Russian state company by the Turkish tax authorities . It seems, however , that Erdogan has held his ground this time around and Rosatom has not obtained what it wanted . Though Putin's visit will be remembered for the South Stream announcement , what is most remarkable about it is the continued development of Russian- Turkish relations, amid mounting tensions between Putin and the West .
answer:
The crisis in Ukraine and the mounting tensions gave EU policymakers an additional reason not to accommodate Russia's demands for special treatment


question:
Stalin, Muhammad and Obama. Pundits agonize over President Obama's resistance to calling Islamist terror "Islamist terror." How can he not see the obvious? How can he ignore the overwhelming and ever-increasing evidence? How can he insist that his subordinates continue their buffoonish insistence that Islamist terror has nothing to do with Islam and that they--secularized Christians and non- observant Jews--know Islam's character better than Muslims themselves? It's easy . President Obama and his commissars fit the longstanding pattern of behavior (insistence, denial, castigation) that the hard left has embraced for generations . In the mid-20th century, leftists, bereft of God and desperate for a new faith, insisted for decade after decade that Comrade Stalin was a paragon of political virtues and that the Soviet Union was Utopia . All reports of purges, terror, man-made famines and the Gulag were fabrications of capitalists and their servants . Even after Premier Khrushchev revealed Stalin's crimes to the world, hardcore leftists excused or ignored the truth, insisting still that Red terror wasn't terror and that Communism was a movement (religion?) of peace and progress, that humankind's hope still waited in the east . Only the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet collapse briefly sobered a few on the extreme left--the milieu in which our president spent his youth and pre-presidency adulthood . But leftists need a utopia, a fantasy heaven on earth, to comfort them and to give their lives purpose . Robbed of the Soviet dream, the forlorn left was in need of a new redeemer . Welcome, Comrade Usama! The left--and young Barack Obama -- already saw Islam as an oppressed religion, the noble faith of the wretched of the earth , while casting Christianity and Judaism in the role once occupied by capitalist imperialists: that of oppressors . Bin Laden gave the left a new torch to carry . While it remained necessary to condemn terrorism in public , the left simultaneously justified it in a globalized version of the Marxist construct of a class struggle . Really, didn't American deserve 9/11? Islamism fit the left like a tailored glove . Just as Western Reds didn't need to endure life in the Soviet Union ("Pass the foie gras, Comrade!") . , so today's leftwing cadres need not actually live in the Middle East or North Africa . From the comfort of Cambridge or the splendor of California's coast, they can rationalize radical Islam, a creed that would, if imported here, exterminate them as surely as Comrade Stalin would have purged the old American left . The staff of Charlie Hebdo? Stalin would have killed those pranksters, too . The only difference is that "Uncle Joe" would have gotten them all . When you take the long view, it's disheartening(to put it mildly) that the Western left simply cannot live without dreaming of an impossible utopia to be imposed by one ideology or another on the rest of us . Radical Islam? It's a "religion of peace." Just as Soviet Communism was an ideology of peace, justice and brotherhood . So President Obama's just playing by the time-honored rules, substituting Muhammad for Josef Stalin or Mao: Never criticize the Party . Ignore the facts . If the facts can't be ignored , deny or twist them . No matter what, stick to the script (let them laugh for now, they'll see soon enough ...). And anyone who strays one inch must be neutralized , whether as a Trotskyist yesteryear or slandered as an Islamophobe today . The left's existential bleakness and its resultant need to embrace horrid schemes for man-made heavens on earth form a peerless argument for humankind's need for religion . In the absence of belief there is only a desert of the soul . And Red terror gives way to Islamist terror . The Communist International cedes pride of place to the global caliphate . Comrade Stalin fades into Comrade Muhammad . Truth is malleable . Facts are nuisances to be exterminated, along with troublesome people . Middle-class notions of freedom must be shouted down . The rule of the intellectuals must be imposed . Never, ever criticize the cause . Deny everything . Never forget that Islam's a religion of peace . The future is ours, Comrades .
answer:
Pundits agonize over President Obama's resistance to calling Islamist terror "Islamist terror."


question:
Lebanon has just done the unthinkable. Lebanon has just done the apparently unthinkable and placed visa control on the entry of Syrians into the country . Before, the situation was effectively a free flow that had resulted in Syrians, mostly refugees, amounting today to 20 percent of the population on Lebanese soil . Imagine 12 million French in the UK today . The Lebanese government has assured international agencies that it will still permit and facilitate humanitarian cases , but the step is a telling one . The real story behind this is the annihilation of borders from Baghdad to Beirut . ISIL is one stark and ugly manifestation of that reality but so are the refugees, a tragic event that has also affected Turkey and Jordan . This zone that once facilitated trade is now closer to scenes from Road Warrior - or the sad march of the displaced . The disintegration of Sykes Picot has blurred nation-states as cross border allegiances fight it out on a series of fronts and through a myriad of forces from Jubhat al-Nusra, Shia militias, Peshmergas, to the Lebanese Armed forces to the now infamous ISIL . Borders don't seem to mean much in this Middle East , if they ever did . The refugees are the terrible consequence and victims of these conflicts that plague this area . The best response to them is not visas but a proper joint response by the Lebanese government assisted by international insititutions . The reality however is that the former is incapable , and the latter insufficiently funded to deal with such a massive influx . As a result, many refugees are living in terrible conditions . The other harsh reality is that the Lebanese government has said that this will not affect Syrian "visitors" to Lebanon . There are six classes of visitors in the new system and the Syrian middle class and rich are unlikley to be affected . Walid Jumblatt stated that his country should differentiate between "refugees who are fleeing death and destruction in Syria after they lost their homes," and those who intend to be politically active , but the reality is that the poorest will be most affected . Indeed ,  it's a large question mark whether Lebanon has the capacity to even implement the measure it has just taken . The Syrian presence in Lebanon is so pervasive it may well be impossible to manage the situation, except to manage some future inflow . Furthermore ,  the idea of Lebanon, a country barely treading water, being able to manage such a problem is unrealistic . Only a regional and international effort of significance can manage such a scale , and regional powers are busy carving their fiefdoms and creating the very problem rather than solving it . The plight of the refugees is key but it is also important to perceive this event from the perspective of the host country; a small nation with very poor governance and infrastructure in the midst of regional turmoil . In a way, this is Lebanon's very small response to the erosion of Sykes Picot . Syrians are indeed everywhere in Lebanon . In Beirut, and in every village and town one visits . Flights from Beirut to Europe are one-third to half full of Syrians . Indeed ,  given this massive presence and Lebanon's already poor infrastructure and socio-economic state, it is an achievement that the Syrian crisis has not led to further deterioration in the country . The relations in Lebanon between the two peoples, despite some racism and ugly incidents, could have been far worse . Until now, Lebanese hosting of the refugees is characterised by neither generosity nor enmity, but by a passive acceptance of fate . This is partially driven by the fact that Syrians are culturally and linguistically akin , and some sectors of the Lebanese economy, e.g  construction, remain highly dependent on Syrian workers . How this will square with the new visa rules is unknown . More importantly, this step can be seen as part of a series of recent indirect actions that attempt to strengthen the Lebanese state, or at least make the pretense of doing so . Minister of Health Abu Faour has been on an intense and mediatic campaign to clean up the food industry in Lebanon, cracking down restaurants, slaughterhouses, and airport storage sites . Despite complaints, this clean up, if it lasts, is a welcome step for Lebanese ; it is national, potentially affects everyone positively, and is an act of government . Second ,  in an echo of the Nahr el-Bared campaign, the Lebanese army is taking responsibility in the Northern Bekaa and Hermel areas against the radical groups who are effectively fighting the Syrian war on Lebanese soil . Pride in the Lebanese army is rising . There are also rumours that the Lebanese government will also take on the murderous Indie-500 speeders on Lebanse highways in the spring . If this does occur in addition to bold step of visas for Syrians , a move that would have been unheard of when Lebanon was effectively a vassal state of Damascus, then indeed Lebanon could see the bare beginnings of emerging out of chaos through these small attempts . The political realities in Lebanon are of course more complicated and illusory than this . Many only see in all of the above feeble attempts to deflect from the reality of a total political vaccuum . Indeed , the Lebanese visa step is obviously not humanitarian , it is a self- interested attempt to stem the tide, put a thumb in the dyke, and avoid the emergent chaos in the Middle East . It would be better if the Lebanese had the magnamity, or much more importantly, the capacity , to continue simply receiving all Syrians , but they are barely running their own country . Compassion requires an orderly method and capacities in order to be effectively pursued , i.e the Lebanese need a functioning state of their own to handle such a crisis properly . Indeed ,  Lebanon has mostly escaped the wars next door not out of wisdom or discipline, or any energetic international diplomacy, but because the memories of that conflict are still vivid in the minds of Lebanese adults . No one will go to war because they remember what war costs , and because they know how little they derived from the devastation . The result of 15 years of fighting was that the state was further weakened in favour of sectarianism, cronyism and corruption , while the Lebanese kept on doing what they do best, make money and enjoy life, living for today and certainly not tomorrow . Meanwhile, social and environmental erosion make the country less and less livable by the day . The recent steps however, triggered by political challenges and health risks, signal some early and feeble attempts at a return of the state, or at the very least preserving the semblance of the old order, the shadow of a nation-state, amidst the dark fluidity and chaos surging from there to Kurdistan . It took the Lebanese 40 years and external pressures to begin to think about getting their house in order , if that is indeed what is happening today . Hopefully, it won't take their neighbours that long to start to address the necessary basics of life .
answer:

Lebanon has just done the apparently unthinkable and placed visa control on the entry of Syrians into the country