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An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition. His “crime” according to protest leaders was that he rejected an EU offer of a vaguely-defined associate EU membership that offered little to Ukraine in favor of a concrete deal with Russia that gave immediate €15 billion debt relief and a huge reduction in Russian gas import prices. Washington at that point went into high gear and the result today is catastrophe. A secretive neo-nazi military organization reported linked to NATO played a decisive role in targeted sniper attacks and violence that led to the collapse of the elected government.

Snipers began shooting into the crowd on February 22 in Maidan or Independence Square. Panic ensued and riot police retreated in panic according to eyewitnesses. The opposition leader Vitali Klitschko withdrew from the deal, no reason given. Yanukovich fled Kiev.[3] The question unanswered until now is who deployed the snipers? According to veteran US intelligence sources, the snipers came from an ultra-right-wing military organization known as Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

Strange Ukraine ‘Nationalists’ The leader of UNA-UNSO, Andriy Shkil, ten years ago became an adviser to Julia Tymoshenko. UNA-UNSO, during the US-instigated 2003-2004 “Orange Revolution”, backed pro-NATO candidate Viktor Yushchenko against his pro-Russian opponent, Yanukovich. UNA-UNSO members provided security for the supporters of Yushchenko and Julia Tymoshenko on Independence Square in Kiev in 2003-4.[4] UNA-UNSO is also reported to have close ties to the German National Democratic Party (NDP). [5] Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the crack-para-military UNA-UNSO members have been behind every revolt against Russian influence. The one connecting thread in their violent campaigns is always anti-Russia. The organization, according to veteran US intelligence sources, is part of a secret NATO “GLADIO” organization, and not a Ukraine nationalist group as portrayed in western media. [6] According to these sources, UNA-UNSO have been involved (confirmed officially) in the Lithuanian events in the Winter of 1991, the Soviet Coup d’etat in Summer 1991, the war for the Pridnister Republic 1992, the anti-Moscow Abkhazia War 1993, the Chechen War, the US-organized Kosovo Campaign Against the Serbs, and the August 8 2008 war in Georgia. According to these reports, UNA-UNSO para-military have been involved in every NATO dirty war in the post-cold war period, always fighting on behalf of NATO. “These people are the dangerous mercenaries used all over the world to fight NATO’s dirty war, and to frame Russia because this group pretends to be Russian special forces. THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS, forget about the window dressing nationalists, these are the men behind the sniper rifles,” these sources insist. [7]

Two incidents where chemical weapons were used in Syria last year appear to have come from Syrian army stockpiles, United Nations investigators said on Wednesday in a new report that goes beyond previous conclusions. The team of experts led by Paulo Pinheiro concluded that sarin – a deadly nerve agent – was used in total in three incidents: in the Damascus suburb of Al-Ghouta on August 21, in Khan al-Assal near Aleppo on March 19, and in Saraqeb near the northern town of Idlib in April 2013, Reuters reported. "The evidence available concerning the nature, quality and quantity of the agents used on 21 August indicated that the perpetrators likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military, as well as the expertise and equipment necessary to manipulate safely large amount of chemical agents," the UN investigators said in the report. They also concluded that the attack in Khan al-Assal in March used the same chemical agents and bore exactly the same hallmarks as the Al-Ghouta attack in August.

But Pinheiro’s report did not give any reliable casualty figures from the attacks and was only able to determine “that at least several hundred people were affected.” Ake Sellstrom, who was in charge of the inspection team that was on the ground in Syria, concluded in an earlier report in December that while chemical weapons had most likely been used in five out of seven alleged attacks, the team did not assign any blame. Both the Syrian government and the opposition have blamed each other for the attacks, which they have also both denied. The Al-Ghouta attack was the world’s deadliest in 25 years and provoked threats of retaliatory military attacks by the US. Under a diplomatic initiative suggested and largely brokered by the Russians, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to help the international community to destroy his chemical weapons arsenal. On Tuesday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) – the global chemical weapons watchdog – said that Syria has so far managed to ship out about one-third of its stockpile, including mustard gas, for destruction abroad or on vessels in international waters.

The Pinheiro team has been investigating up to 20 incidents where chemical weapons have allegedly been used. He said they were building on Sellstrom’s findings while also trying to dig deeper. Pinheiro told a news conference on Thursday that his team had interviewed a wide group of people, including doctors, victims, defectors, and journalists. “We made other investigations [to Sellstrom] in terms of interviews of experts, interviews with functionaries involved. We conducted our own investigation including specialized expertise and of course we have been in close contact with the members of this Sellstrom mission,” he said. Selltsrom’s December report visited only seven sites and cited poor security conditions as the primary reason.

Senators on Wednesday expressed alarm at explosive allegations that the CIA might have spied on their computers to keep tabs on their controversial review of Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” techniques.ADVERTISEMENTLawmakers from both parties said that if the allegations against the CIA prove true, intelligence officials might have violated the law — and certainly violated the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.“I’m assuming that’s it’s not true, but if it is true, it should be World War III in terms of Congress standing up for itself against the CIA, ” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told The Hill.Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) confirmed Wednesday that the CIA inspector general was investigating accusations that the covert agency had peered into the panel’s computers. But she didn’t comment on reports that the investigator has referred the matter to the Justice Department.Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), an ex officio member of the Intelligence panel, said the charge of spying is “extremely serious.”“There are laws against intruding and tampering, hacking into, accessing computers without permission. And that law applies to everybody,” he said.Brennan in a statement said he was "dismayed" by the “spurious allegations,” which he said were "wholly unsupported by the facts."

His statement was released Wednesday evening as McClatchy reported that the computer spying was allegedly discovered when the CIA confronted the Senate Intelligence panel about documents removed from the agency’s headquarters."I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the Executive Branch or Legislative Branch," Brennan said.“Until then, I would encourage others to refrain from outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers."The allegations escalated a long-simmering feud between Democrats on the Intelligence panel and the CIA over the committee’s classified interrogation report, which provides an exhaustive look at the treatment of detainees in the years after Sept. 11.Sen. Mark Udall (Colo.) and two other Democrats on the Intelligence panel have criticized the CIA and its director, John Brennan, for blocking their efforts to declassify the 6,300-page investigation.“The CIA tried to intimidate the Intelligence Committee, plain and simple,” Udall said. “I’m going to keep fighting like hell to make sure the CIA never dodges congressional oversight again.”

Senators have said their review, which was completed in December 2012, is harshly critical of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, concluding that they were ineffective and did not contribute to the capture of Osama bin Laden.Udall and other Democrats say the report needs to be released because it will "set the record straight" about the use of techniques that critics say amount to torture.While Democrats on the panel backed the report’s findings, most of the Intelligence Committee Republicans dissented.The CIA has objected to some of the report’s conclusions as well, though Udall says its internal review contradicts the agency’s public statements.Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), who has joined Udall in pressing for the release of the report, said the allegations about CIA spying show the lengths that the agency will go to protect itself.“I think it’s been pretty clear that the CIA will do just about anything to make sure that this detention and interrogation report doesn’t come out,” Heinrich told The Hill.

(Reuters) - Western nations have indicated to the Syrian opposition that peace next month talks may not lead to the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and that his Alawite minority will remain key in any transitional administration, opposition sources said. The message, delivered to senior members of the Syrian National Coalition at a meeting of the anti-Assad Friends of Syria alliance in London last week, was prompted by rise of al Qaeda and other militant groups, and their takeover of a border crossing and arms depots near Turkey belonging to the moderate Free Syrian Army, the sources told Reuters. "Our Western friends made it clear in London that Assad cannot be allowed to go now because they think chaos and an Islamist militant takeover would ensue," said one senior member of the Coalition who is close to officials from Saudi Arabia.

The shift in Western priorities, particularly the United States and Britain, from removing Assad towards combating Islamist militants is causing divisions within international powers backing the nearly three-year-old revolt, according to diplomats and senior members of the coalition. Like U.S. President Barack Obama's rejection of air strikes against Syria in September after he accused Assad's forces of using poison gas, such a diplomatic compromise on a transition could narrow Western differences with Russia, which has blocked United Nations action against Assad, but also widen a gap in approach with the rebels' allies in the Middle East. The civil war pits Assad and many Alawites, backed by Iran and its Shi'ite Muslim allies, against Sunni Muslim rebels supported by Turkey, Libya and Sunni Gulf Arab states. Unlike in Libya in 2011, the West has ruled out military intervention, leaving militant Islamists including al Qaeda affiliates to emerge as the most formidable rebel force, raising alarm among Washington and its allies that Syria, which borders Israel and Iraq, has become a centre for global jihad.

Also signalling differences with Washington, opposition activists in Syria have said that Turkey has let a weapons consignment cross into Syria to the Islamic Front, the rebel group that overran the Bab al-Hawa border crossing last week, seizing arms and Western equipment supplied to non-Islamists.

Russia is ready to retaliate with counter sanctions against the EU and US if they go ahead with economic measures against Russia over tension in Crimea, the Russian Economic Ministry has said. "We hope that there will only be targeted political sanctions, and not a broad package affecting economic trade,” Deputy Economic Development Minister Aleksey Likhachev said. “Our sanctions will be, of course, similar,” he added. One way Russia plans on shielding itself from pending sanctions is by boosting trade in other currencies, not the US dollar. “We need to increase trade volume conducted in national currencies. Why, in relation to China, India, Turkey and other countries, should we be negotiating in dollars? Why should we do that? We should sign deals in national currencies- this applies to energy, oil, gas, and everything else,” Aleksey Ulyukaev, the Minister of Economic Development said in an interview with the Vesti 24 TV channel. The Duma, Russia’s parliament, is drafting legislation to allow Moscow to freeze assets of Western companies and individuals in the event sanctions are imposed following the Crimea referendum vote on March 16.

Earlier this week the European Union threatened to impose further sanctions on Russia starting on March 17, after the referendum in Crimea takes place on Sunday. Speaking to the German parliament, Chancellor Angela Merkel hinted sanctions would be needed if Russia "continues its course of the past weeks" in Ukraine. "It would not only change the European Union's relationship with Russia. No, this would also cause massive damage to Russia, economically and politically," Merkel said Thursday. The decision on sanctions was made, “especially on the procedure of introducing sanctions,” Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. “The consequence of this will be the start of sanctions on Monday,” he added. However, China’s ambassador to Germany Shi Mingde, warns of the global economic affect sanctions against Russia could hold. Mingde said the geo-political tiff between Russia and the West could “spiral” into chaos. President Putin and the foreign ministry have both said sanctions against Russia could backfire, and spill over into the global economy.

Fracking remains enormously controversial, but the report that the oil-extraction technique is about to lift the United States' oil production beyond that of mega-producer Saudi Arabia means it's probably here to stay. The practice, which involves injecting water into the ground in order to fracture the rock and allow oil and gas to escape, has been associated by critics with earthquakes and heightened pollution, to name just two problems. Just today, Thursday, Ohio authorities shut down a local fracking operation while geological detectives investigate whether it could be behind the 11 quakes recorded there in a few days.

But an indication of just how crucial fracking has become to the American economy comes from next-door Tennessee, where lawmakers voted down proposals to ban the practice (and mountaintop mining, while about it). As The Independent reported today, thanks to the practice, the United States is about to become a bigger oil producer than Saudi Arabia.

Proponents of the technique point mainly at economic benefits, not least achieving American independence from imported oil. Opponents bewail contamination of ground-water, depletion of fresh water supplies, and ground contamination from the rising hydrocarbons. More recently concerns have arisen that like mining, fracking can stabilize local geology and cause quakes. The United Kingdom had banned fracking but later lifted the prohibition, favoring regulation instead. In the United States, legislation on the matter depends on the state, and Germany frowns on the practice but hasn't outlawed it. France has, becoming one of the countries to adopt the position of opponents and ban fracking outright, in 2011. Just today a French court voided a drilling license held by the American energy company Hess for fear that it would frack.

Washington, enabled by its compliant but stupid NATO puppets, is pushing the Ukrainian situation closer to war.

Washington understands that economic sanctions are a far less threat to Russia than the loss of its Black Sea naval base. Washington also understands that Putin cannot possibly abandon the millions of Russians in eastern and southern Ukraine to the mercy of the anti-Russian and unelected government imposed by Washington in Kiev. As Washington knows that its threat of sanctions is empty, why did Washington make it? The answer is in order to drive the crisis to war. Washington’s neoconservative nazis have been agitating for war with Russia for a long time. They want to remover one of the three remaining restraints (Russia, China, Iran) on Washington’s world hegemony. Washington wants to break up the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) before these countries form a separate currency bloc and avoid the use of the US dollar. Russia will respond in kind to Washington’s sanctions. European peoples and Western banks and corporations will suffer losses. It would be at least two or three years before Washington has in place means of delivering US natural gas achieved by fracking and contamination of US water supplies to Europe to take the place of Russia’s cutoff of energy to Europe. The Western presstitute media will dramatize the Russian response to sanctions and demonize Russia, while ignoring who started the fight, thereby helping Washington prepare Americans for war. As neither side can afford to lose the war, nuclear weapons will be used. There will be no winners.

The criminally insane government in Washington has pushed the Russian bear into a corner. The bear is not going to surrender.

The head of the opposition Free Syrian Army on Saturday rejected an agreement between the United States and Russia to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stock by mid-2014. “We cannot accept any part of this initiative,” General Selim Idriss told reporters in Istanbul, saying it is a blow to the two-and-a-half year uprising aiming to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “We in the Free Syrian Army are unconcerned by the implementation of any part of the initiative... I and my brothers in arms will continue to fight until the regime falls,” he said in a statement carried by Agence-France-Presse. Idriss said the deal would allow Assad to avoid being held accountable for killing hundreds of civilians in a poison gas attack on Damascus on Aug. 21. Assad has denied responsibility for the purported attack.

The United States’ strike plans were put off after Russia proposed that Damascus put its chemical arms under international supervision, Assad agreed to the proposal. Idriss spoke shortly after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced the agreed time frame, after three days of talks in Geneva. “Are we Syrians supposed to wait until mid-2014, to continue being killed every day and to accept [the deal] just because the chemical arms will be destroyed in 2014,” asked Idriss.

Top secret documents retrieved by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden show that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government allowed the largest American spy agency to conduct widespread surveillance in Canada during the 2010 G8 and G20 summits.

The briefing notes, stamped "Top Secret," show the U.S. turned its Ottawa embassy into a security command post during a six-day spying operation by the National Security Agency while U.S. President Barack Obama and 25 other foreign heads of government were on Canadian soil in June of 2010. The covert U.S. operation was no secret to Canadian authorities.

Notably, the secret NSA briefing document describes part of the U.S. eavesdropping agency's mandate at the Toronto summit as "providing support to policymakers." Documents previously released by Snowden, a former NSA contractor who has sought and received asylum in Russia, suggested that support at other international gatherings included spying on the foreign delegations to get an unfair advantage in any negotiations or policy debates at the summit. It was those documents that first exposed the spying on world leaders at the London summit. More recently, Snowden's trove of classified information revealed Canada's eavesdropping agency had hacked into phones and computers in the Brazilian government's department of mines, a story that touched off a political firestorm both in that country and in Ottawa.

The story of Fukushima should be on the front pages of every newspaper. Instead, it is rarely mentioned. The problems at Fukushima are unprecedented in human experience and involve a high risk of radiation events larger than any that the global community has ever experienced. It is going to take the best engineering minds in the world to solve these problems and to diminish their global impact. When we researched the realities of Fukushima in preparation for this article, words like apocalyptic, cataclysmic and Earth-threatening came to mind. But, when we say such things, people react as if we were the little red hen screaming "the sky is falling" and the reports are ignored. So, we’re going to present what is known in this article and you can decide whether we are facing a potentially cataclysmic event.

There are three major problems at Fukushima: (1) Three reactor cores are missing; (2) Radiated water has been leaking from the plant in mass quantities for 2.5 years; and (3) Eleven thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, perhaps the most dangerous things ever created by humans, are stored at the plant and need to be removed, 1,533 of those are in a very precarious and dangerous position. Each of these three could result in dramatic radiation events, unlike any radiation exposure humans have ever experienced.  We’ll discuss them in order, saving the most dangerous for last.

Missing reactor cores:  Since the accident at Fukushima on March 11, 2011, three reactor cores have gone missing.  There was an unprecedented three reactor ‘melt-down.’ These melted cores, called corium lavas, are thought to have passed through the basements of reactor buildings 1, 2 and 3, and to be somewhere in the ground underneath.  Harvey Wasserman, who has been working on nuclear energy issues for over 40 years, tells us that during those four decades no one ever talked about the possibility of a multiple meltdown, but that is what occurred at Fukushima.  It is an unprecedented situation to not know where these cores are. TEPCO is pouring water where they think the cores are, but they are not sure. There are occasional steam eruptions coming from the grounds of the reactors, so the cores are thought to still be hot. The concern is that the corium lavas will enter or may have already entered the aquifer below the plant. That would contaminate a much larger area with radioactive elements. Some suggest that it would require the area surrounding Tokyo, 40 million people, to be evacuated. Another concern is that if the corium lavas enter the aquifer, they could create a "super-heated pressurized steam reaction beneath a layer of caprock causing a major 'hydrovolcanic' explosion." A further concern is that a large reserve of groundwater which is coming in contact with the corium lavas is migrating towards the ocean at the rate of four meters per month. This could release greater amounts of radiation than were released in the early days of the disaster.

Secret documents reveal more than 1,000 targets of American and British surveillance in recent years, including the office of an Israeli prime minister, heads of international aid organizations, foreign energy companies and a European Union official involved in antitrust battles with American technology businesses.

While the names of some political and diplomatic leaders have previously emerged as targets, the newly disclosed intelligence documents provide a much fuller portrait of the spies’ sweeping interests in more than 60 countries. Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters, working closely with the National Security Agency, monitored the communications of senior European Union officials, foreign leaders including African heads of state and sometimes their family members, directors of United Nations and other relief programs, and officials overseeing oil and finance ministries, according to the documents. In addition to Israel, some targets involved close allies like France and Germany, where tensions have already erupted over recent revelations about spying by the N.S.A.

Details of the surveillance are described in documents from the N.S.A. and Britain’s eavesdropping agency, known as GCHQ, dating from 2008 to 2011. The target lists appear in a set of GCHQ reports that sometimes identify which agency requested the surveillance, but more often do not. The documents were leaked by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden and shared by The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel. The reports are spare, technical bulletins produced as the spies, typically working out of British intelligence sites, systematically tapped one international communications link after another, focusing especially on satellite transmissions. The value of each link is gauged, in part, by the number of surveillance targets found to be using it for emails, text messages or phone calls. More than 1,000 targets, which also include people suspected of being terrorists or militants, are in the reports. It is unclear what the eavesdroppers gleaned. The documents include a few fragmentary transcripts of conversations and messages, but otherwise contain only hints that further information was available elsewhere, possibly in a larger database.

(Reuters) - Upset at President Barack Obama's policies on Iran and Syria, members of Saudi Arabia's ruling family are threatening a rift with the United States that could take the alliance between Washington and the kingdom to its lowest point in years. Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a "major shift" in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent."It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.

Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief is vowing that the kingdom will make a "major shift" in relations with the United States to protest perceived American inaction over Syria's civil war as well as recent U.S. overtures to Iran, a source close to Saudi policy said on Tuesday.Prince Bandar bin Sultan told European diplomats that the United States had failed to act effectively against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, was growing closer to Tehran, and had failed to back Saudi support for Bahrain when it crushed an anti-government revolt in 2011, the source said."The shift away from the U.S. is a major one," the source close to Saudi policy said. "Saudi doesn't want to find itself any longer in a situation where it is dependent."It was not immediately clear whether the reported statements by Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to Washington for 22 years, had the full backing of King Abdullah.The growing breach between the United States and Saudi Arabia was also on display in Washington, where another senior Saudi prince criticized Obama's Middle East policies, accusing him of "dithering" on Syria and Israeli-Palestinian peace.

In unusually blunt public remarks, Prince Turki al-Faisal called Obama's policies in Syria "lamentable" and ridiculed a U.S.-Russian deal to eliminate Assad's chemical weapons. He suggested it was a ruse to let Obama avoid military action in Syria."The current charade of international control over Bashar's chemical arsenal would be funny if it were not so blatantly perfidious. And designed not only to give Mr. Obama an opportunity to back down (from military strikes), but also to help Assad to butcher his people," said Prince Turki, a member of the Saudi royal family and former director of Saudi intelligence.The United States and Saudi Arabia have been allies since the kingdom was declared in 1932, giving Riyadh a powerful military protector and Washington secure oil supplies.The Saudi criticism came days after the 40th anniversary of the October 1973 Arab oil embargo imposed to punish the West for supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur war.That was one of the low points in U.S.-Saudi ties, which were also badly shaken by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals.

The White House and State Department have refuted a media report that Turkey planned a deadly chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus that nearly brought the U.S. into open conflict with Syria, in a statement issued to Anadolu Agency.

The White House and State Department have refuted a media report that Turkey planned a deadly chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus that nearly brought the U.S. into open conflict with Syria, in a statement issued to Anadolu Agency. Seymour Hersh, a freelance journalist, published an article in the London Review of Books (LRB) in which he claimed that Ankara had supplied the al Nusra Front with chemical weapons that they used to carry out the August 2013 attack. The Washington Post and the New Yorker declined the story prior to its publication in the LRB. “The Assad regime, and only the Assad regime, could have been responsible for the chemical weapons attack that took place on August 21,” said Shawn Turner and Caitlyn Hayden in a statement initially issued to fact checkers working on the report and later sent to AA. “The suggestion that there was an effort to suppress or alter intelligence is simply false.” State Department Spokesperson, Jen Psaki, in her daily press briefing said there is no doubt that the chemical attack was carried out by the Syrian regime.

The White House and State Department have refuted a media report that Turkey planned a deadly chemical attack in the suburbs of Damascus that nearly brought the U.S. into open conflict with Syria, in a statement issued to Anadolu Agency.

 Russia has just dropped another bombshell, announcing not only the de-coupling of its trade from the dollar, but also that its hydrocarbon trade will in the future be carried out in rubles and local currencies of its trading partners – no longer in dollars – see Voice of Russia Russia’s trade in hydrocarbons amounts to about a trillion dollars per year. Other countries, especially the BRICS and BRCIS-associates (BRICSA) may soon follow suit and join forces with Russia, abandoning the ‘petro-dollar’ as trading unit for oil and gas. This could amount to tens of trillions in loss for demand of petro-dollars per year (US GDP about 17 trillion dollars – December 2013) – leaving an important dent in the US economy would be an understatement. Added to this is the declaration today by Russia’s Press TV – China will re-open the old Silk Road as a new trading route linking Germany, Russia and China, allowing to connect and develop new markets along the road, especially in Central Asia, where this new project will bring economic and political stability, and in Western China provinces,where “New Areas” of development will be created. The first one will be the Lanzhou New Area in China’s Northwestern gansu Province, one of China’s poorest regions.

Curiously, western media have so far been oblivious to both events. It seems like a desire to extending the falsehood of our western illusion and arrogance – as long as the silence will bear. Germany, the economic driver of Europe – the world’s fourth largest economy (US$ 3.6 trillion GDP) – on the western end of the new trading axis, will be like a giant magnet, attracting other European trading partners of Germany’s to the New Silk Road. What looks like a future gain for Russia and China, also bringing about security and stability, would be a lethal loss for Washington. In addition, the BRICS are preparing to launch a new currency – composed by a basket of their local currencies – to be used for international trading, as well as for a new reserve currency, replacing the rather worthless debt ridden dollar – a welcome feat for the world. Along with the new BRICS(A) currency will come a new international payment settlement system, replacing the SWIFT and IBAN exchanges, thereby breaking the hegemony of the infamous privately owned currency and gold manipulator, the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) in Basle, Switzerland – also called the central bank of all central banks.

By Pepe Escobar Let's start with a flashback to February 1992 - only two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. First draft of the US government's Defense Planning Guidance. It was later toned down, but it still formed the basis for the exceptionalist dementia incarnated by the Project for the New American Century; and also reappeared in full glory in Dr Zbig "Let's Rule Eurasia" Brzezinski's 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard. It's all there, raw, rough and ready: Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> the order of that posed by the Soviet Union. This ... requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.

By Pepe Escobar Let's start with a flashback to February 1992 - only two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. First draft of the US government's Defense Planning Guidance. It was later toned down, but it still formed the basis for the exceptionalist dementia incarnated by the Project for the New American Century; and also reappeared in full glory in Dr Zbig "Let's Rule Eurasia" Brzezinski's 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard. It's all there, raw, rough and ready: Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on <a href='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a9473bc7&cb=%n' target='_blank'><img src='http://asianmedia.com/GAAN/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=36&cb=%n&n=a9473bc7&ct0=%c' border='0' alt='' ></a> the order of that posed by the Soviet Union. This ... requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.

That's all one needs to know about the Obama administration's "pivoting to Asia", as well as the pivoting to Iran ("if we're not going to war", as US Secretary of State John Kerry let it slip) and the pivoting to Cold War 2.0, as in using Ukraine as a "new Vietnam" remix next door to Russia. And that's also the crucial context for Obama's Pax Americana Spring collection currently unrolling in selected Asian catwalks (Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Philippines).

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has confirmed reports that Turkey has sent 300 troops into neighboring Syria to guard the tomb of a leading Turkish figure believed to be under threat from radical Islamist rebels, according to Today's Zaman. The Turkish military force, which also included several armored vehicles, is being sent to bolster a small existing unit at the tomb of Süleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire. The move - which essentially amounts to a limited military intervention in wore-torn Syria - should come as no surprise, after secret conversations were leaked online in which leading Turkish political and military figures can be heard discussing military intervention in Syria to protect the tomb from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). ISIS, a radical breakaway faction of Al Qaeda, has taken advantage of the chaos to implement its puritanical version of Islam in some areas of northern Syria.

The leaked conversations prompted a ban on Youtube in Turkey. Turkey's escalating intervention is not the first time a neighboring country has sent troops into Syria to protect its interests, using threats to Islamic shrines as a pretext. Shia Islamist fighters from Lebanon's Hezbollah and a variety of other Iranian-backed Lebanese and Iraqi militias have played a prominent role in backing the regime of Bashar al-Assad, having initially justified their intervention as a way of protecting Shia Muslim shrines deemed heretical by Sunni Islamist rebels.

On Saturday, the Syrian army and its allies foiled a plan by al-Nusra Front in collaboration with Turkish intelligence, to stage a sarin gas attack in the Syrian capital during President Bashar al-Assad’s inauguration.

The chapter on Latin America, particularly the section on Honduras, a major source of the child migrants currently pouring into the United States, has gone largely unnoticed. In letters to Clinton and her successor, John Kerry, more than 100 members of Congress have repeatedly warned about the deteriorating security situation in Honduras, especially since the 2009 military coup that ousted the country’s democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. As Honduran scholar Dana Frank points out in Foreign Affairs, the U.S.-backed post-coup government “rewarded coup loyalists with top ministries,” opening the door for further “violence and anarchy.”

Despite this, however, both under Clinton and Kerry, the State Department’s response to the violence and military and police impunity has largely been silence, along with continued U.S. aid to Honduran security forces. In “Hard Choices,” Clinton describes her role in the aftermath of the coup that brought about this dire situation. Her firsthand account is significant both for the confession of an important truth and for a crucial false testimony. First, the confession: Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico,” Clinton writes. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.” This may not come as a surprise to those who followed the post-coup drama closely. (See my commentary from 2009 on Washington’s role in helping the coup succeed here, here and here.) But the official storyline, which was dutifully accepted by most in the media, was that the Obama administration actually opposed the coup and wanted Zelaya to return to office.

The question of Zelaya was anything but moot. Latin American leaders, the United Nations General Assembly and other international bodies vehemently demanded his immediate return to office. Clinton’s defiant and anti-democratic stance spurred a downward slide in U.S. relations with several Latin American countries, which has continued. It eroded the warm welcome and benefit of the doubt that even the leftist governments in region offered to the newly installed Obama administration a few months earlier. Clinton’s false testimony is even more revealing. She reports that Zelaya was arrested amid “fears that he was preparing to circumvent the constitution and extend his term in office.” This is simply not true. As Clinton must know, when Zelaya was kidnapped by the military and flown out of the country in his pajamas on June 28, 2009, he was trying to put a consultative, nonbinding poll on the ballot to ask voters whether they wanted to have a real referendum on reforming the constitution during the scheduled election in November. It is important to note that Zelaya was not eligible to run in that election. Even if he had gotten everything he wanted, it was impossible for Zelaya to extend his term in office. But this did not stop the extreme right in Honduras and the United States from using false charges of tampering with the constitution to justify the coup.

Iraqi President Fouad Massoum said that the government was looking for an independent Sunni Muslim to fill the post of defense minister in an effort to improve chances of reunifying the country and defeating the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS). Massoum, in his first extended comments to a US audience since his recent selection as president of Iraq, also said Sept. 26 that Iraqi Kurds—while they might still hold a referendum on independence—would not secede from Iraq at a time of such major peril.

Massoum began his remarks with a fascinating explanation of how IS, which he called ISIS, for the Islamic State of Iraq and as-Shams, came into being. He said the group began “as a marriage” between nationalist military officers and religious extremists that took place when they were in prison together while the US still occupied Iraq. The notion of combining Iraq with the Levant—made up of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan—is actually an old Arab nationalist concept, Massoum said. As for the religious aspects of the movement, Massoum traced that to the so-called Hashishin—users of hashish. This Shia group, formed in the late 11th century, challenged the then-Sunni rulers of the day, used suicide attacks and were said to be under the influence of drugs. The English word “assassin” derives from the term. “Many times these terrorist practices [were used] in the name of a religion or a sect,” Massoum said.

Abadi, however, has been unable so far to get parliament to approve his choices for the sensitive posts of defense and interior ministers. Queried about this, Massoum said, “There seems to be some understanding that the minister of defense should be Sunni and there is a search for an independent Sunni.” As for interior minister, Massoum said, they were looking for an “independent Shia” to take the post. For the time being, Abadi is holding the portfolios, but unlike his predecessor, who retained them, has clearly stated that he does not want to assume those responsibilities for long. Massoum said a decision was likely after the coming Muslim holiday, the Eid al-Adha.