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Donetsk and Lugansk have formed militias and taken the war to the enemy. They’ve engaged Obama’s proxy-army on the battlefield and pounded it into mincemeat. That’s why Obama deployed his propagandists to lie about the fictitious “Russian invasion”. The administration needs a diversion because the Novorussia forces (aka-the “pro Russia separatists”) are kicking the holy crap out of Obama’s legions. That’s why Washington and Kiev are in full panic-mode, because none of this was supposed to happen. Obama figured the army would put down the insurrection, crush the resistance, and move him one step closer to his goal of establishing NATO bases and missile defense systems on Russia’s western flank. Well, guess what? It’s not playing out that way and it probably never will. The Novorussia fighters are too tough, too smart and too motivated to be one-upped by Obama’s feckless troopers. (Check out this short video and you’ll see why the rebels are winning: Vineyard of the Saker)

Putin hasn’t sent tanks and artillery into Ukraine. He doesn’t need to. The militias are loaded with battle-hardened veterans who know how to fight and who are quite good at it. Just ask Poroshenko whose army has been taking it in the shorts for the last couple of weeks. Check out this blurb in Thursday’s Itar Tass: “Over the week of August 16-23, the self-defense fighters of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics seized 14 T-64 tanks, 25 infantry fighting vehicles, 18 armored personnel carriers, one armored reconnaissance and patrol vehicle, one Uragan multiple launch rocket system, two Gvozdika self-propelled artillery guns, four D-30 howitzers, four mortars, one ZU-23-2 air defense system and 33 vehicles.” (East Ukraine militias seize large amount of Ukrainian armor, Itar Tass) Get the picture? The Ukrainian army is getting beaten to a pulp, which means that Obama’s glorious “pivot strategy” just slammed into a brick wall.

Bottom line: Russia has not invaded Ukraine. The propagandists in the media are just trying to hide the fact that the Novorussia Army Forces (NAF; aka-the pro Russia separatists) are kicking ass and taking names. That’s what’s really going on. That’s why Obama and his gaggle of miscreant neocons are in a furor. It’s because they don’t know what to do next, so they’ve returned to their default position on every issue; lie like hell until they settle on a plan.

So, who do you believe; Kerry or the facts? And who are you going to believe this time; “Aluminum tubes” Gordie or Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitor Andrey Kelin who said yesterday: “We have said that no Russian involvement has been spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment present.” “Accusations relating to convoys of armored personnel carriers have been heard during the past week and the week before that. All of them were proven false back then, and are being proven false again now.” (RT) Repeat: “No Russian involvement”. All the accusations “were proven false.” “False” as in fake, phony, propaganda, bunkum, lies which, by the way, appears to be Gordon’s area of expertise.

In the case of the US-Japanese war, the US-Korean war, the US-Indochinese war and the post-September 11 war against an independent secular nationalist regime (Iraq) and the Islamic Afghan republic, the Executive branch (with the uniform support of the mass media and congress) provoked a hostile response from its target and fabricated a pretext as a basis for mass mobilization for prolonged and bloody wars.

Wars in an imperialist democracy cannot simply be dictated by executive fiat, they require the consent of highly motivated masses who will make the human and material sacrifices. Imperialist leaders have to create a visible and highly charged emotional sense of injustice and righteousness to secure national cohesion and overcome the natural opposition to early death, destruction and disruption of civilian life and to the brutal regimentation that goes with submission to absolutist rule by the military. The need to invent a cause is especially the case with imperialist countries because their national territory is not under threat. There is no visible occupation army oppressing the mass of the people in their everyday life. The ‘enemy’ does not disrupt everyday normal life – as forced conscription would and does. Under normal peaceful time, who would be willing to sacrifice their constitutional rights and their participation in civil society to subject themselves to martial rule that precludes the exercise of all their civil freedoms?

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in June that warrantless searches of cellphone data were illegal in most cases. It is unclear how the ruling would apply to such a device that is capable of indiscriminate data collection, but police say it is not used for that purpose.

And then there's NATO's recent record. An ignominious defeat in Afghanistan. A "humanitarian" bombing that reduced once-stable Libya to a miserable failed state immersed in total anarchy and ravaged by rabid militias. Not exactly fabulous PR for NATO's future as a coalition assembly line with global "vocation", capable of pulling off expeditionary wars all around the world by creating the appearance of a military and political consensus unified by - what else - an Empire of Chaos doctrine: NATO's "strategic concept" approved at the 2010 Lisbon summit. (See US a kid in a NATO candy store, Asia Times Online, November 25, 2010.) Since those go-go "Bubba" Clinton years; through the "pre-emptive" Dubya era; and now under the R2P dementia of Obama's warring Medusas (Rice, Power, Hillary), the Pentagon dreams of NATO as global Robocop, dominating all the roles embodied by the UN and the EU in terms of security. This has absolutely nothing to do with the original collective defense of NATO signatories against possible territorial attacks. Oh, sorry; we forgot the attacks by those (non-existent) nuclear missiles deployed by evil Iran.

The Ukraine battleground at least has the merit of showing the alliance is naked. For the Full Spectrum Dominance Pentagon, what really matters above all is something that's been actually happening since the fall of the Soviet Union; unlimited NATO expansion to the westernmost borders of Russia. The real deal this September is not NATO. It's the SCO's summit. Expect the proverbial tectonic shifts of geopolitical plaques in the upcoming meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - a shift as far-reaching as when the Ottoman empire failed at the gates of Vienna in 1683. On the initiative of Russia and China, at the SCO summit, India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia will be invited to become permanent members. Once again, the battle lines are drawn. NATO vs SCO. NATO vs BRICS. NATO vs Global South. Therefore, NATO attacks!

The historical picture is far from complete in other areas as well. Most intriguing, we still do not know much about President Nixon's direct involvement in the debate, in particular exactly how, when, and why he ultimately overruled strong advice from senior officials to use pressure against the Israeli government. A draft Kissinger memorandum, declassified in 2007 and included in today's publication, sheds some light on why Nixon may have concluded that keeping the Israeli nuclear program a secret was the optimum solution. Certainly the outcome of the Nixon-Meir secret understanding-which left the Israeli program in place and secret-was significantly different from the recommendations of his key officials (not withstanding National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger), but to this day we have almost no paper trail on the most important element in the policy puzzle: what exactly went on during the Nixon-Meir one-on-one meeting of 26 September 1969. Indeed, it appears that no record exists in the national archives of either country that reveals what was agreed to at the meeting

THE DOCUMENTS Except for documents 2, 8, and 10, the following documents are from a file, Israel 471.61, in the 1969 Top Secret records of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and his deputy David Packard held at the Federal Records Center in Suitland, Maryland. The file was the subject of a 2006 mandatory declassification review request that led to a final appeal in 2009 by the National Security Archive to ISCAP, which released more information earlier this year.

Besides taking Turkish hostages, and using Turkish territory to bring supplies and new fighters into Syria, ISIS has been making millions by selling diesel fuel on the Turkish black market. More directly worrisome from Ankara’s point of view, Turkish news media have quoted some ISIS members as threatening to stage attacks within the country. Around 1,000 Turks are estimated to have joined the group in Syria. More than a million Syrian refugees, meanwhile, have flooded into Turkish camps and Turkish cities.Ankara’s policies have been upended further by the fact that Turkish-Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are playing a major role in the fight against ISIS in northern Iraq. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said this week that the government is concerned the PKK, which has been waging war against Ankara for 30 years, could receive sophisticated arms from Western nations supporting Kurdish forces fighting ISIS.

GT: China's "One Belt and One Road" project is believed to have a major influence on the Middle East. Will it be a counterbalance of the US' influence in the region?Flynt: US power in the Persian Gulf is in relative decline. But because it is desperate to cling to its hegemonic ambitions in the region, Washington is trying to put China's interests at risk. China will decide what its interests are in the Middle East. As an analytic point, though, if China really wants to have an independent and balanced foreign policy, China will need to decide how accommodating it wants to be of US preferences and to what extent it wants to pursue its own interests, even when the US is not necessarily happy about that. I think the Middle East's engagement in the Silk Road, especially Iran, is going to be a testing ground for China. Hillary: I think the US will definitely disagree with the project. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has really focused on trying to expand its influence, military or otherwise, on Central Asian states in a bid to put pressure on Russia. This has been a consistent theme through both Democratic and Republican administrations. China's project will unavoidably reach Central Asia, which could lessen interest in those states in aligning with various American projects and make it harder for the US to pressure Russia. Besides, as Iran is central for both Silk Roads, China's good relationship with Iran will be very problematic for the US interests, and also for its hegemonic ambitions across the entire Middle East.

King Salman has been part of the ruling clique of princes for decades and is thought likely to continue the main thrusts of Saudi strategic policy, including maintaining the alliance with the United States and working towards energy market stability. During his five decades as Riyadh governor he was reputedly adept at managing the delicate balance of clerical, tribal and princely interests that determine Saudi policy, while maintaining good relations with the West.In the long term Saudi rulers have to manage the needs of a rapidly growing population plagued by structural unemployment, and an economy that remains overly dependent on oil revenue and undermined by lavish subsidies.Saudi Arabia, which holds more than a fifth of the world's crude oil, also exerts some influence over the world's 1.6 billion Muslims through its guardianship of Mecca and Medina, Islam's holiest sites.

Most senior members of the ruling al-Saud family are thought to favor similar positions on foreign and energy policy, but incoming kings have traditionally chosen to appoint new ministers to head top ministries like oil and finance. In a country where the big ministries are dominated by royals, successive kings have kept the oil portfolio reserved for commoners and insisted on maintaining substantial spare output capacity to help reduce market volatility.

It is noteworthy that TEPCO has had problems with its filtering equipment since it began using it in 2013 and that these problems are recurring. The Fukushima Daiichi NPP has released hundreds of cubic meters of highly contaminated water into the Pacific since the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 2011 led to the world’s worst nuclear disaster. It is also noteworthy that the TEPCO has established a Tank Farm with over one-thousand tanks. The tanks contain highly radioactive contaminated water. These tanks are not welded tanks but flange tankes with steel bolts and rubber seals. Many of these tanks have begun leaking already. These tanks are connected with swimming-pool grade plastic pipes. Experts repeatedly warned that these tanks were not designed to withstand a major earth quake. A recent study shows that the Fukushima Daiichi NPP is located in an area in which the risk of a major destructive earthquake occurring within a 30-year period, is 26% or above. That is, earthquakes of magnitude five or above on Japan’s earthquake scale that rates six as the strongest and most destructive earthquakes. Many of Japan’s NPPs are located in the most earthquake and tsunami prone regions of Japan, revealed a recent study. (See related article below).

NUMBER FOUR: "The Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States are hereby repealed.   All Federal agencies, programs, laws, rules, regulations, and/or orders created, passed, or handed down as a direct or indirect result of the Fourteenth, Sixteenth, and/or Seventeenth Amendments are hereby stricken from Law, declared null and void, and have no force of effect."

NUMBER SEVEN:   "Section One:   The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States shall be interpreted to mean the FUNDAMENTAL right of individual citizens and/or groups of citizens to keep and bear arms; in their homes and/or other properties, in public and private, and on their persons. Section Two:    Non-citizens and persons convicted of a violent felony by a jury of their peers do not have this right."

Bloomberg's dready summary of the US economy is generally spot on, and is to be expected when any nation finally leaves, voluntarily or otherwise, the stranglehold of a global reserve currency. What Bloomberg failed to account for is what happens to the remainder of the Petrodollar world. Here is what we said last time: Outside from the domestic economic impact within EMs due to the downward oil price shock, we believe that the implications for financial market liquidity via the reduced recycling of petrodollars should not be underestimated. Because energy exporters do not fully invest their export receipts and effectively ‘save’ a considerable portion of their income, these surplus funds find their way back into bank deposits (fuelling the loan market) as well as into financial markets and other assets. This capital has helped fund debt among importers, helping to boost overall growth as well as other financial markets liquidity conditions. ... [T]his year, we expect that incremental liquidity typically provided by such recycled flows will be markedly reduced, estimating that direct and other capital outflows from energy exporters will have declined by USD253bn YoY. Of course, these economies also receive inward capital, so on a net basis, the additional capital provided externally is much lower. This year, we expect that net capital flows will be negative for EM, representing the first net inflow of capital (USD8bn) for the first time in eighteen years. This compares with USD60bn last year, which itself was down from USD248bn in 2012. At its peak, recycled EM petro dollars amounted to USD511bn back in 2006. The declines seen since 2006 not only reflect the changed global environment, but also the propensity of underlying exporters to begin investing the money domestically rather than save. The implications for financial markets liquidity - not to mention related downward pressure on US Treasury yields – is negative.

Considering the wildly violent moves we have seen so far in the market confirming just how little liquidity is left in the market, and of course, the absolutely collapse in Treasury yields, with the 30 Year just hitting a record low, this prediction has been borne out precisely as expected. And now, we await to see which other country will follow Russia out of the Petrodollar next, and what impact that will have not only on the world's reserve currency, on US Treasury rates, and on the most financialized commodity as this chart demonstrates...

... but on what is most important to developed world central planners everywhere: asset prices levels, and specifically what happens when the sellers emerge into what is rapidly shaping up as the most illiquid market in history.

But in a provision likely to raise concerns from privacy advocates, the administration wants to require DHS to share that information “in as near real time as possible” with other government agencies that have a cybersecurity mission, the official said. Those include the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s ­Cyber Command, the FBI and the Secret Service. “DHS needs to take an active lead role in ensuring that unnecessary personal information is not shared with intelligence authorities,” Jaycox said. The debates over government surveillance prompted by disclosures from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have shown that “the agencies already have a tremendous amount of unnecessary information,” he said.

The administration official stressed that the legislation will require companies to remove unnecessary personal information before furnishing it to the government in order to qualify for liability protection. It also will impose limits on the use of the data for cybersecurity crimes and instances in which there is a threat of death or bodily harm, such as kidnapping, the official said. And it will require DHS and the attorney general to develop guidelines for the federal government’s use and retention of the data. It will not authorize a company to take offensive cyber-measures to defend itself, such as “hacking back” into a server or computer outside its own network to track a breach. The bill also will provide liability protection to companies that share data with private-sector-developed organizations set up specifically for that purpose. Called information sharing and analysis organizations, these groups often are set up by particular industries, such as banking, to facilitate the exchange of data and best practices.

Efforts to pass information-sharing legislation have stalled in the past five years, blocked primarily by privacy concerns. The package also contains provisions that would allow prosecution for the sale of botnets or access to armies of compromised computers that can be used to spread malware, would criminalize the overseas sale of stolen U.S. credit card and bank account numbers, would expand federal law enforcement authority to deter the sale of spyware used to stalk people or commit identity theft, and would give courts the authority to shut down botnets being used for criminal activity, such as denial-of-service attacks.

It would reaffirm that federal racketeering law applies to cybercrimes and amends the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by ensuring that “insignificant conduct” does not fall within the scope of the statute. A third element of the package is legislation Obama proposed Monday to help protect consumers and students against cyberattacks. The theft of personal financial information “is a direct threat to the economic security of American families, and we’ve got to stop it,” Obama said. The plan, unveiled in a speech at the Federal Trade Commission, would require companies to notify customers within 30 days after the theft of personal information is discovered. Right now, data breaches are handled under a patchwork of state laws that the president said are confusing and costly to enforce. Obama’s plan would streamline those into one clear federal standard and bolster requirements for companies to notify customers. Obama is proposing closing loopholes to make it easier to track down cybercriminals overseas who steal and sell identities. “The more we do to protect consumer information and privacy, the harder it is for hackers to damage our businesses and hurt our economy,” he said.

In October, Obama signed an order to protect consumers from identity theft by strengthening security features in credit cards and the terminals that process them. Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said there is concern that a federal standard would “preempt stronger state laws” about how and when companies have to notify consumers. The Student Digital Privacy Act would ensure that data entered would be used only for educational purposes. It would prohibit companies from selling student data to third-party companies for purposes other than education. Obama also plans to introduce a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. And the White House will host a summit on cybersecurity and consumer protection on Feb. 13 at Stanford University.

The trial was part Washington spectacle, part cloak and dagger. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified, as did C.I.A. operatives who gave only their first names and last initials, with their faces shielded behind seven-foot-high partitions. A scientist was referred to only by his code name, Merlin. His wife was Mrs. Merlin.Officials revealed their preferred strategies for persuading reporters not to run sensitive stories. Jurors learned that, at the C.I.A.’s office in New York, employees could easily walk out with classified documents and never be searched.

Mr. Sterling is the latest in a string of former officials and contractors the Obama administration has charged with discussing national security matters with reporters. Under all previous presidents combined, three people had faced such prosecutions. Under President Obama, there have been eight cases, and journalists have complained that the crackdown has discouraged officials from discussing even unclassified security matters.

While the administration has defended the crackdown, Mr. Holder said he believed it went too far at times when it targeted journalists. Under Mr. Holder, prosecutors seized phone records from The Associated Press, labeled one Fox News reporter a potential criminal co-conspirator for inquiring about classified information and tried to force another to testify before a grand jury.

Two months ago, Larry Page said the company’s outgrown its 14-year-old mission statement. Its ambitions have grown, and its priorities have shifted.Google in 2015 is focused on the present and future. Its social and mobile efforts, experiments with robotics and artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles and fiberoptics.As it turns out, organizing the world’s information isn’t always profitable. Projects that preserve the past for the public good aren’t really a big profit center. Old Google knew that, but didn’t seem to care.

The desire to preserve the past died along with 20% time, Google Labs, and the spirit of haphazard experimentation.Google may have dropped the ball on the past, but fortunately, someone was there to pick it up.