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I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also. A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt. As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened. The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype: The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government. Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.” “I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things. “If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States. “America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.” But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB. It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling. Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake. In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT’s Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times. My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative “mainstream media.” My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda. For example, Martin’s denunciation of Russia for “invading” Ukraine is based on Western propaganda that Russia sent 16,000 troops to occupy Crimea. The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea.

So, here we have three of the smartest and most independent journalists of our time, and all three are under the impression created by Western propaganda that Russia has invaded Ukraine. It appears that the power of Washington’s propaganda is so great that not even the best and most independent journalists can escape its influence. What chance does truth have when Abby Martin gets kudos from Glenn Greenwald for denouncing Russia for an alleged “invasion” that has not taken place, and when independent Pat Buchanan opens his column dissenting from the blame-Russia-crowd by accepting that an invasion has taken place?

Apparently, neither Abby Martin nor Glenn Greenwald, two intelligent and aware people, knew this fact. Washington’s propaganda is so pervasive that two of our best reporters were victimized by it. As I have written several times in my columns, Washington organized the coup in Ukraine in order to promote its world hegemony by capturing Ukraine for NATO and putting US missile bases on Russia’s border in order to degrade Russia’s nuclear deterrent and force Russia to accept Washington’s hegemony. Russia has done nothing but respond in a very low-key way to a major strategic threat orchestrated by Washington. It is not only Martin and Greenwald who have fallen under Washington’s propaganda. They are joined by Patrick J. Buchanan. Pat’s column calling on readers to “resist the war party on Crimea” opens with Washington’s propagandistic claim: “With Vladimir Putin’s dispatch of Russian Troops into Crimea.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37847.htm No such dispatch has occurred. Putin has been granted authority by the Russian Duma to send troops to Ukraine, but Putin has stated publicly that sending troops would be a last resort to protect Crimean Russians from invasions by the ultra-nationalist neo-nazis who stole Washington’s coup and established themselves as the power in Kiev and western Ukraine.

Victories are to be celebrated and for the future of healthy life on our planet we all can celebrate a beautiful victory. The world’s largest nation, the Russian Federation, whose landmass spans Eurasia from the Baltic and Ukraine on the west to Vladivostock and the Pacific on her east, has formally declared all commercial planting of Genetically Modified Organisms, GMOs, to be prohibited. The issue has been subject of a heated debate for some months inside Russia. In February 2014, just days prior to the US-orchestrated coup d’etat in Ukraine, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev created a national research project to obtain scientific information so the Government and Duma might make a decision on GMOs in Russia. Now a definitive decision has been made, and it goes against Monsanto and the US-led GMO cartel. We can say Russia’s crisis has concentrated minds on the essentials of life.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dorkovich told an international biotechnology conference in Kirov September 18, “As far as genetically-modified organisms are concerned, we have made the decision not to use any GMO in food productions.” Last year the Duma or parliament voted to make tough GMO labeling laws as a first step to the new ban in order to inform consumers of presence of GMO in various foods they buy. That was before US and EU sanctions led to Russian counter-sanctions against EU imports of agriculture products. In August 2014, the Russian government announced its bans on import from the EU and several other countries of meat, fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables as a response to the sanctions. It produced surprising results. Since the imposition of tough Russian food import bans, Russian agriculture has undergone a spectacular rebirth.

This July, taking a page out of American history, the Russian government announced it was drafting a Russian “Homestead Act.” The Russian government is finalizing a bill which will give an opportunity to every Russian citizen to obtain one hectare of land, or a maximum of five hectares for a family of five, in the Russian Far East for free. They can use the land to farm, to do forestry or simply build a home and live, so long as they use the land for the first five years. After, they own the land free if the plot has been used for activities not banned by Russian laws, reported TASS. In the case of non-use the land will be confiscated and revert back to the government. Foreigners will have no right to get the free land. The new land law, if passed in the Duma, will take effect in January, 2016.

Russia has invited all NATO member States and the NATO leadership to attend a security conference in mid-April, said the Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov. The invitation comes against the backdrop of deteriorating relations between members of the Atlantic Alliance and Russia. Meanwhile, during a recent symposium, experts warned about the risk of a military escalation that includes the use of nuclear weapons, whether it be wanted or unwanted.  Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said on Thursday that NATO cannot be the sole guarantor of freedom and security in a modern world, reports the Russian Tass news agency, Antonov added that some countries now are trying to impose their policy and position on others and that latest developments show how imperfect the world is.

In 2008 NATO and the UN signed a Secretariat Coordination Treaty that implies that NATO has become the de facto military enforcement instrument of the international body, even though NATO is not representative of UN members or their individual rights or policies. The signing of this treaty was largely omitted by most media. Russia has since the reunification of Germany repeatedly complained that it perceives NATO’s eastwards expansion and the deployment of anti-missile systems directed against Russia along its borders as a potential threat and as a violation of the agreements which led to the reunification of Germany. This position has, among others, been stressed by the last Soviet leader Michael Gorbachev. It was confirmed by the former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas who stressed that the understanding that NATO would not expand eastwards was by all sides understood as “the essence of peace”.

The dispute was to some degree mitigated by the Russian – NATO cooperation within the NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” program which has largely been suspended since the eruption of the conflict in and about Ukraine in 2014. The Tass news agency quotes Antonov as saying that: “Some countries and even associations, such as the European Union, venture to define who and how should behave themselves on the international arena. If anyone voices another stance, which is different from that of Washington, Brussels and Ottawa, then they try to punish this country. … This is what is happening in regard to Russia today.” Antonov stressed that there today is a lack of confidence between the countries and that it would be difficult to mend the international security system which has been seriously undermined by the actions of the United States and its allies in the international arena. He added, however, that the potential of Russian – U.S.’ relations has not yet been exhausted although he never, in his entire diplomatic career that relations had been has difficult as they were today. Antonov stressed that the Ukrainian crisis affects security throughout Europe.

Amidst an astonishing, relentless, wide-ranging purge that shows no signs of abating, with 60,000 – and counting – civil servants, academics, judges, prosecutors, policemen, soldiers jailed, fired, suspended or stripped of professional accreditation, it’s relatively established by now the Turkish government was very much informed a military coup was imminent on July 15. The information may have come from Russian intelligence, although neither Moscow nor Ankara will reveal any details. So, once and for all, this was no false flag.

As Erdogan solidifies his internal iron grip, a formerly iron clad connection – NATO/Turkey – slowly dissolves into thin air. It’s as if the fate of Incirlik air base was hangin’ – literally – by a few, selected radar threads. There’s extreme suspicion across the spectrum in Turkey that the Pentagon knew what the «rebels» were up to. It’s a fact that not a pin drops in Incirlik without the Americans knowing it. AKP members stress the use of NATO’s communication network to coordinate the putschists and thus escape Turkish intel. At a minimum, the putschists may have believed NATO would have their backs. No «NATO ally» deigned itself to warn Erdogan about the coup. Then there’s the saga of the refueling tanker for the «rebel» F-16s. The tankers in Incirlik are all the same model – KC-135R Stratotanker – for Americans and Turks alike. They work side by side and are all under the same command; the 10th Main Tanker Base, led by Gen. Bekir Ercan Van, who was duly arrested this past Sunday – as seven judges also confiscated all the control tower communications. Not by accident Gen. Bekir Ercan Van happened to be very close to Pentagon head Ash Carter. What happened in Turkish airspace after Erdogan’s Gulfstream IV left the Mediterranean coast and landed in Istanbul’s Ataturk airport has been largely mapped – but there are still some crucial gaps in the narrative open to speculation. As Erdogan has been tight-lipped in all his interviews, one is left with a Mission Impossible-style scenario featuring «rebel» F-16s «Lion One» and «Lion Two» on a «special mission» with their transponder off; their face off with loyalist «Falcon One» and «Falcon Two»; one of the «Lions» piloted by the none other than the man who shot down the Russian Su-24 last November; the by now famous tanker that took off from Incirlik to refuel the «rebels»; and three extra pairs of F-16s that took off from Dalaman, Erzurum and Balikesir to intercept the «rebels», including the pair that protected Erdogan’s Gulfsteam (which was using callsign THY 8456 to disguise it as a Turkish Airlines flight).

Notorious Saudi whistleblower «Mujtahid» caused a sensation as he revealed that the UAE not only «played a role» in the coup but also kept the House of Saud in the loop. As if this was not damning enough, the self-deposed emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, very close to Erdogan, has alleged that the US and another Western nation (France is a strong possibility) had staged the whole thing, with Saudi Arabian involvement. Ankara, predictably, denied all of it.

There are clear signs that a major war is about to break out in Ukraine: A war actively promoted by the NATO regimes and supported by their allies and clients in Asia (Japan) and the Middle East (Saudi Arabia). The war over Ukraine will essentially run along the lines of a full-scale military offensive against the southeast Donbas region, targeting the breakaway ethnic Ukraine- Russian Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Lugansk, with the intention of deposing the democratically elected government, disarming the popular militias, killing the guerrilla resistance partisans and their mass base, dismantling the popular representative organizations and engaging in ethnic cleansing of millions of bilingual Ukraino-Russian citizens. NATO’s forthcoming military seizure of the Donbas region is a continuation and extension of its original violent putsch in Kiev, which overthrew an elected Ukrainian government in February 2014.

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR), on Friday, admitted domestic banks to the Russian alternative to the international SWIFT banking system. Domestic banks can access the system after signing agreements with the Central Bank. The Russian alternative to the SWIFT system is expected to be fully developed and operational by May 2015.

The Central Bank of Russia issued a statement saying that the new service would allow credit institutions to transmit SWIFT-format messages through the Bank of Russia in all regions within the Russian Federation without restrictions. The CBR added that the new service had been established to ensure continuous and secure transmissions of financial messages inside the country. The decision to create the domestic alternative to the SWIFT system was made against the backdrop of EU proposals in September, to disconnect Russia from the international SWIFT system as part of the sanctions against Russia over the situation in and about Ukraine. Several U.S. Senators lobbied in support of the measure. Moscow responded by drafting an alternative to the Brussels-based SWIFT system by creating a Russian alternative non-governmental inter-bank communication system.

The Russian Tass news agency reported that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) transmits 1.8 billion transactions per year, remitting payment orders worth $6 trillion a day. Disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system, as proposed by certain EU members in September, would not only harm the Russian economy. Disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system before an alternative is operational would also create substantial problems for Russia’s main trading partners within the EU, which include Germany, Italy and France.

French President Francois Hollande says he wants Western sanctions on Russia to be lifted if progress is made in talks on the Ukraine conflict this month. He did not specify which sanctions - imposed by the EU, US and Canada - could be lifted. The sanctions began after Russia annexed Crimea in March. Mr Hollande said Russian President Vladimir Putin "doesn't want to annex eastern Ukraine - he told me that". Germany's vice-chancellor has warned against further sanctions on Russia.

There have been calls elsewhere in the EU for an easing or lifting of the sanctions on Russia, which have hit its banks, energy industry and arms manufacturers, as well as targeting powerful figures close to Mr Putin. Politicians in Italy, Hungary and Slovakia are among those who want the sanctions eased.

A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who are usually more skeptical of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially their evidence-free claims, now question the patriotism of Americans who insist that the intelligence community supply proof to support the dangerous claims about Russian ‘hacking” of Democratic emails especially when some  veteran U.S. government experts say the data would be easily available if the Russians indeed were guilty. One of those experts is William Binney, a former high-level National Security Agency intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement, blew the whistle on the extraordinary breadth of NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W. Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home in 2007. Even before Edward Snowden’s NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 trillion to 20 trillion communications. Snowden has said: “I have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the rules.”

I spoke to Binney on Dec. 28 about Russia-gate and a host of topics having to do with spying and America’s expanding national security state.

Bernstein: Your expertise was in the Soviet Union and so you must know a lot about bugging.  Do you believe that Russia hacked and undermined our last election?  Can Trump thank Russia for the result? Binney:  We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an article on this in July.  First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic world, the NSA would know.  Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points on the fiber lines, taking in everything.    Mark Klein exposed some of this at the AT&T facility in San Francisco. This is not for foreigners, by the way, this is for targeting US citizens.  If they wanted only foreigners, all they would have to do was look at the transatlantic cables where they surface on the coast of the United States.  But they are not there, they are distributed among the US population. Bernstein: So if, in fact, the Russians were tapping into DNC headquarters, the NSA would absolutely know about it. Binney: Yes, and they would also have trace routes on where they went specifically, in Russia or anywhere else.  If you remember, about three or four years ago, the Chinese hacked into somewhere in the United States and our government came out and confirmed that it was the Chinese who did it, and it came from a specific military facility in Shanghai.  The NSA had these trace route programs embedded by the hundreds across the US and all around the world.

Russia on Monday warned the United States that it will start responding to cease-fire violations in Syria unilaterally starting Tuesday if the U.S. refuses to coordinate rules of engagement against the violators.The Russian military have accused the U.S. of dragging its feet on responding to Moscow's proposals on joint monitoring of a Syria cease-fire. A top Russian general said on the weekend that further delays are leading to civilian casualties, like in Aleppo where 67 civilians reportedly have been killed by militant fire since the truce started.

Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian General Staff said in a statement on Monday that Russia will have to use force unilaterally that because the U.S., in talks with Russia last week, had refused to coordinate a joint response."The American side was not ready for this particular discussion and for the approval of the agreement," the statement quoted him as saying.The cease-fire that began on Feb. 27, brokered by Russia and the U.S., has helped significantly reduce hostilities. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front have been excluded from the truce.

With tensions between the US and Russia escalating over the Syrian conflict, it appears the UK is more than willing to leap into the fray. According the Sunday Times, Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots have been given orders to shoot down Russian military jets operating in Syria if they feel that the Russian jets pose a threat: “[…] if a pilot is fired on or believes he is about to be fired on, he can defend himself.” The order, which is eerily reminiscent of the modus operandi of US police, comes days after UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson pushed for the UK to consider military options against the Russian-backed Assad regime in Syria over its controversial bombing campaign in Aleppo. UK/Russian relations have also been tested in recent weeks as the UK has joined the US in accusing Russia of not targeting ISIS and instead bombing civilian infrastructure. According to UK defense officials: “It took six days for Russia to strike any Isis targets at all. Their air strikes have included moderate opposition groups who have been fighting to defend their areas from Isis. Among the targets hit were three field hospitals.” However, the UK and the US have both been unable to show evidence or even name the civilian hospitals and infrastructure allegedly bombed by Russia and the Syrian government.

As the United States expands its proxy war against Russia and the BRICS nations through a newly discovered secret deal with Saudi Arabia to force down global oil prices, Russia is firing back to this monetary attack against their currency and economy. On Oct. 10, a new report on Russian currency outflows shows that during the third quarter ending in September, the Eurasian state paid off a near record $53 billion in foreign debt, and sold off dollars to use as capital to stabilize their declining currency, and to protect their primary resource industry from the deflation America has caused through the dumping of excess oil into the market supply. Some of this money was used earlier this week to support the declining Rouble as President Putin authorized the transfer of over $2 billion to be used directly to support the Russian currency. Additionally, the Russian central bank has already authorized funds to be set aside to supplement Russian corporations and oil industries should the need arise for liquidity and capital.

Russia is not the only Eurasian nation de-dollarizing at a fast pace. Earlier this week as well, long time U.S. economic ally South Korea disseminated that their foreign reserve holdings had grown in the Yuan over the past year, almost doubling its prior total of 13.7% which was the amount they held at the end of 2013. These reserves replace former dollar holdings, and rise a huge red flag that the Far Eastern manufacturing center is quickly moving into the Eurasian Trade camp, and away from Western hegemony. America's gambit to force down the price of oil is a ploy the U.S. used in the late 1980's to destroy the Rouble, and tear down the old Soviet Union's economy. However, the Russian leadership is not stupid, and have realized for a long time that this was an Achilles Heel in their economic system, and this time, the tables are quickly turning against the U.S. as Russia simply dumps more and more dollars to use as capital to supplement their currency and industry during these short term attacks by the West in their attempt to cripple them monetarily.

A large majority of Russia’s military strikes in Syria have not been aimed at the Islamic State group or jihadists tied to al-Qaida, and have instead targeted the moderate Syrian opposition, the US State Department said on Wednesday. “Greater than 90% of the strikes that we’ve seen them take to date have not been against Isil or al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists,” said spokesman John Kirby.

“They’ve been largely against opposition groups that want a better future for Syria and don’t want to see the Assad regime stay in power.” It was the first time that American authorities have offered any specific figures about the impact of Russian airstrikes in the war-torn country.

Washington, which supports the moderate Syrian opposition, has consistently said that the Russian action will only add more fuel to the fire and will benefit the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. “So whether they’re hit by a cruise missile from the sea or a bomb from a Russian military aircraft, the result is the same, that Assad continues to get support from Russia,” added Kirby. “Assad continues to be able to have at his, you know, at his hands the capability of striking his own people, including those who are opposed to his regime. “And that’s not a good future for Syria. It’s also, as we’ve said before, we believe a mistake for Russia, because not only are they going to be exacerbating sectarian tensions there in Syria, but they’re potentially exacerbating sectarian tensions in Russia itself. “They’re putting themselves at greater risk.”

ndia decided to proceed with the long-anticipated $5.5 bln deal to purchase Russia’s S-400 surface-to-air missile units despite  the US saying the purchase may affect the relations between Washington and New Dehli. According to the Hindustan Times, India’s Defense Ministry is to ask the apex Cabinet Committee to approve the purchase of the five S-400 Triumf systems, thus  finalizing the agreement.The deal is set to go through despite the fact that the Trump administration warning New Delhi of the possible ramifications of India’s intention to cultivate military ties with Russia, that would imminently jeopardise its relations with the US.Chairman of the U.S. Arms Service Committee Mac Thornberry has said that “the acquisition of this technology will limit, the degree with which the United States will feel comfortable in bringing additional technology into whatever country we are talking about.”In case the purchase officially goes through, the Trump administration's reaction might go as far as punishing India for violating the sanctions imposed against Russia.

India’s decision to rely on the Russian-made S-400 systems that have drawn a lot of interest from international buyers, could jeopardize sales of US-built Predator drones and Patriot missile defense systems. Though the US has been talking up the effectiveness of Patriots, the missile has reportedly been less than effective when used recently by Saudi Arabia.According to NATO classification, S-400 Triumf is Russia's most advanced air defense hardware, boasting unique and unparalleled capabilities. Capable of firing three types of missiles create a layered defense, the S-400 integrates a multifunction radar, autonomous detection and targeting systems, missile launchers and command posts. It can bring down aircrafts as well as missiles at the range of up to 400km.

India is not the only country that has been experiencing tough pressuring from Washington. The US has been very explicit in its criticism of its "strategic partner", Turkey and its deal with Russia to purchase the S-400 systems.According to State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, Washington is seriously concerned about the fact Turkey as a NATO member would choose to purchase weapons not made in the US. In a bid to pressure Ankara, Assistant US Secretary Wess Mitchell said that unless Turkey backed out, the purchase "could lead to sanctions.”Testifying before the House Foreign Relations committee last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the US was making efforts to “keep the Turks in a place where they will never acquire the S-400.”Moreover, US lawmakers introduced a bill which would virtually ban F-35 deliveries to Turkey to punish it for its increased "hostility.” The US has also criticized Ankara over the announcement it would look elsewhere in case Washington failed to deliver the F-35s.

ussia may consider allowing Chinese investors more than 50 percent stakes in its strategic oil and gas fields, an official said on Friday, an about-face by Moscow that underlines its need for foreign help to develop energy reserves. While closely guarding control of the oil and gas fields that supply the lifeblood of its economy, Russia has forged alliances with some Western companies to obtain the know-how it needs to tap hard-to-reach deposits. But now that Western sanctions over Moscow's role in Ukraine have all but halted that cooperation, Russia has overcome a "psychological barrier" and is ready to deepen its economic ties with China, Deputy Prime MinisterArkady Dvorkovich said. "We have a strategic partnership with China and now decisions are made much faster than before. In particular, we have a gas contract, a second one will be signed soon. Now we know China better: their motives and intentions are understood," he told a conference in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. "There used to be a psychological barrier. Now it doesn't exist any more. We are interested in maximum investments in new industries. China is an obvious investor for us."

As with a magician, sometimes you have to look where he isn’t pointing to catch sight of reality.  With that in mind, I’d like to nominate British journalist Patrick Cockburn for a prize.  In the midst of the recent headlines, in the most important article no one noticed, he pointed out something genuinely unnerving about our world.

Yes, we’re all aware that the U.S. invasion of Iraq didn’t exactly work out as planned and that Afghanistan has been a nearly 13-year disaster, even though the U.S. faced the most ragtag of minority insurgencies in both places.  What, however, about the monumental struggle that used to be called the Global War on Terror?  After all, we got Osama bin Laden.  It took a while, but SEAL Team 6 shot him down in his hideout in Pakistan.  And for years, thanks to the CIA’s drone assassination campaigns in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, Yemen, and Somalia (as well as a full scale hunter-killer operation in Iraq while we were still occupying that country), we’ve been told that endless key al-Qaeda “lieutenants” have been sent to their deaths and that al-Qaeda in Afghanistan has been reduced to 50-100 members. Yet Cockburn concludes: “Twelve years after the ‘war on terror’ was launched it has visibly failed and al-Qaeda-type jihadis, once confined to a few camps in Afghanistan, today rule whole provinces in the heart of the Middle East.”  Look across that region today and from Pakistan to Libya, you see the rise, not the fall, of jihadis of every type.  In Syria and parts of Iraq, groups that have associated themselves with al-Qaeda now have a controlling military presence in territories the size of, as Cockburn points out, Great Britain.  He calls al-Qaeda’s recent rise as the jihadi brand name of choice and the failure of the U.S. campaign against it “perhaps the most extraordinary development of the 21st century.”  And that, unlike the claims we've been hearing at the top of the news for weeks now, might not be an exaggeration.

Looked at another way, despite what had just happened to the Pentagon and those towers in New York, on September 12, 2001, the globe’s “sole superpower” had remarkably few enemies.  Small numbers of jihadis scattered mostly in the backlands of the planet and centered in an impoverished, decimated country -- Afghanistan -- with the most retro regime on Earth.  There were, in addition, three rickety “rogue states” (North Korea, Iraq, and Iran) singled out for enemy status but incapable of harming the U.S., and that was that. The world, as Dick Cheney & Co. took for granted, looked ready to be dominated by the only (angry) hyperpower left after centuries of imperial rivalry.  The U.S. military, its technological capability unrivaled by any state or possible grouping of states, was to be let loose to bring the Greater Middle East to heel in a decisive way.  Between that regular military and para-militarizing intelligence agencies, the planet was to be scoured of enemies, the “swamp drained” in up to 60 countries.  The result would be a Pax Americana in the Middle East, and perhaps even globally, into the distant future.  It was to be legendary.  And no method -- not torture, abuse, kidnapping, the creation of “black sites,” detention without charges, assassination, the creation of secret law, or surveillance on a previously unimaginable scale -- was to be left out of the toolkit used to birth this new all-American planet.  The “gloves” were to be taken off in a big way.

An October 7, 2015 hearing before the US Senate Committee on Armed Forces (SASC) titled, “Iranian Influence in Iraq and the Case of Camp Liberty,” served as a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to back the terrorist organization Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) and specifically 2,400 members of the organization being harbored on a former US military base in Iraq.

Providing testimony was former US Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, former US Marine Corps Commandant and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe General James Jones, USMC (Ret.), and Colonel Wesley Martin, US Army (Ret.). All three witnesses made passionate pleas before a room full of nodding senators for America to continue backing not only MEK terrorists currently harbored on a former US military base in Iraq, but to back groups like MEK inside of Iran itself to threaten the very survival of the government in Tehran. In the opening remarks by Lieberman, he stated: It was not only right and just that we took them off the foreign terrorist organization list, but the truth is now that we ought to be supportive of them and others in opposition to the government in Iran more than we have been.

Lieberman would also state (emphasis added): Here’s my point Mr. Chairman, we ought to compartmentalize that agreement also, that nuclear agreement. We ought to put it over there, and not let it stop us from confronting what they’re doing in Syria. Continuing the sanctions for human rights violations in Iran in support of terrorism. And here’s the point I want to make about the National Council of Resistance of Iran and other democratic opposition groups that are Iranian – we ought to be supporting them.  This regime in Tehran is hopeless. It’s not going to change. There’s no evidence … every piece of evidence says the contrary. So I hope we can find a way, we used to do this not so long ago, supporting opposition groups in Iran. They deserve our support, and actually they would constitute a form of pressure on the government in Tehran that would unsettle them as much as anything else we could do because it would threaten the survival of the regime which from every objective indicator I can see is a very unpopular regime in Iran.  The United States, unrepentant regarding the arc of chaos, mass murder, terrorism, civilizational destruction it has created stretching from Libya to Syria, now seeks openly to extend it further into Iran using precisely the same tactics – the use of terrorist proxies – to dismantle and destroy Iranian society.

Saudi Arabia has secretly offered Russia a sweeping deal to control the global oil market and safeguard Russia’s gas contracts, if the Kremlin backs away from the Assad regime in Syria.

The revelations come amid high tension in the Middle East, with US, British, and French warship poised for missile strikes in Syria. Iran has threatened to retaliate. The strategic jitters pushed Brent crude prices to a five-month high of $112 a barrel. “We are only one incident away from a serious oil spike. The market is a lot tighter than people think,” said Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review. Leaked transcripts of a closed-door meeting between Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan shed an extraordinary light on the hard-nosed Realpolitik of the two sides. Prince Bandar, head of Saudi intelligence, allegedly confronted the Kremlin with a mix of inducements and threats in a bid to break the deadlock over Syria. “Let us examine how to put together a unified Russian-Saudi strategy on the subject of oil. The aim is to agree on the price of oil and production quantities that keep the price stable in global oil markets,” he said at the four-hour meeting with Mr Putin. They met at Mr Putin’s dacha outside Moscow three weeks ago.

“We understand Russia’s great interest in the oil and gas in the Mediterranean from Israel to Cyprus. And we understand the importance of the Russian gas pipeline to Europe. We are not interested in competing with that. We can cooperate in this area,” he said, purporting to speak with the full backing of the US.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on February 2nd that he approves of US ‘Defense’ Secretary Ash Carter’s proposal to quadruple US armaments and troops in Europe, against ‘Russian aggression’. Secretary Carter said earlier that same day, in his announcement of America’s arming for war against Russia: We are reinforcing our posture in Europe to support our NATO allies in the face of Russia’s aggression. In Pentagon parlance, this is called the European Reassurance Initiative and after requesting about $800 million for last year, this year we’re more than quadrupling it for a total of $3.4 billion in 2017. That will fund a lot of things: more rotational US forces in Europe, more training and exercising with our allies, more preposition and war-fighting gear and infrastructure improvements to support all this. And when combined with US forces already in and assigned to Europe – which are also substantial – all of this together by the end of 2017 will let us rapidly form a highly capable combined arms ground force that can respond across that theater, if necessary.

The US is preparing for an invasion of Russia. «By the end of 2017» the US will be prepared to invade Russia. Secretary Carter went on to say: Russia and China are our most stressing competitors. They have developed and are continuing to advance military system[s] that seek to threaten our advantages in specific areas. And in some case[s], they are developing weapons and ways of wars that seek to achieve their objectives rapidly, before they hope, we can respond. Because of this and because of their actions to date, from Ukraine to the South China Sea, DOD has elevated their importance in our defense planning and budgeting. Since he is a Secretary of ‘Defense’ instead of a Secretary of Offense, he immediately added: While we do not desire conflict of any kind with either of these nations – and let me be clear. That’s all there was to the assertion there; he didn’t finish the sentence, nor even the thought. But in this offhanded way, he did at least try to give the impression that the US is never an aggressor – for example: that, though the US is expanding NATO right up to Russia’s borders, Russia is being the ‘aggressor’ to move troops and weapons up to those borders – up to Russia’s own borders (to counter the US & NATO invasion-threat, of course; but, no: it’s to threaten NATO, if you believe the West).

President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday slammed Washington for refusing to share intelligence with Russia on Syria, and accusing it of muddled thinking. "I believe some of our partners simply have mush for brains," Putin said, expressing some of his strongest criticism yet of Washington's handling of the Syrian crisis. Late last month Moscow launched a bombing campaign in Syria, saying it needed to target Islamic State jihadists before they cross into Russia, which has a large Muslim population. But Washington and its allies slammed Russia's intervention in the conflict, saying Moscow was also targeting Western-backed moderate rebels and sought to prop up the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

"Now, we often hear that our pilots are striking the wrong targets, not IS," Putin said at an investment forum in Moscow explaining that Russia had asked Washington to provide a list of targets. But Washington declined. "'No, we are not ready for this' was the answer," Putin quoted them as saying. "Then we thought again and asked another question: then tell us where we should not strike. No answer too," he said, adding: "That is not a joke. I did not make this up." "How is it possible to work together?" he asked. "I think some of our partners simply have mush for brains, they do not have a clear understanding of what really happens in the country and what goals they are seeking to achieve." Russia notified the U.S. and the European Union in advance “out of respect” that it intended to begin airstrikes against Islamic State and other militants in Syria, Putin said at an annual conference organized by VTB Capital in Moscow on Tuesday. This showed Russia’s ready to cooperate on Syria, while nobody ever warned the authorities in Moscow about their operations, he said.

Russia’s military intervention “has changed the whole dynamic of the situation,” though it must not distract from efforts to find a political solution to the Syrian crisis, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy on Syria, said at talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.