Edward Snowden: German TV Interview

Sanctions on Russia: Punishing Your Friends and Enemies Alike

In a post concerning Western sanctions on Russia, Mike (MIsh) Shedlock refers to an an interview with CNN, during which President Obama said that the US-led Western economic sanctions on Moscow are working, and credited the American-led effort with a downturn in Russia’s economy and the decline of its currency.

But then the President admitted that Russia has yet to pull back from its "aggressive posture" in Ukraine, which is to say Russia has not reversed its aquiescence to the request by the autonomous government of Crimea for accession to the Russian Federation, a request based on an overwhelming positive referendum vote.

In other words, the sanctions have so far entirely failed to achieve their alleged purpose.

Energy Economics and the Price of Oil

The World will never run out of oil. The OPEC countries alone, which currently deliver 30% of the World's supply, have reserves sufficient to meet 100% of world demand for more than 30 years. But new discoveries and continual improvements in recovery efficiency — currenly only around 40% — imply that OPEC will have vast oil reserves 30 years from now even if they were to triple production from today onward.

At the current price of $55–60 per barrel, OPEC is collecting a tidy profit on oil produced at a cost of $25–30 on-shore or $40–50 off-shore, which raises the question: why should prices ever return to the $100-plus range of recent years?

Hating Russians on Cue from the Western Mass Media

the Saker has a pretty scary piece entitled Oh how much they hate and fear Russia and Putin, which prompted several people to comment on the depth of hatred for Russia in the Western world.

But, in fact, Westerners don't in any meaningful way hate Russians. How could they? They know essentially nothing about Russia. They simply hate whoever they are told to hate. That's the essence of Western democracy. The elite brainwash the mass to think whatever the elite want them to think and to vote for whatever the elite intend to do. Right now, hating Russians is what is called for from the West's brainwashed masses.

Update: the Empire's Assault on Russia

Tony Cartalucci: The Feeding Frenzy Begins: Foreign Bankers Descend on Ukraine

Mike Whitney: The US-Saudi Economic Attack on Russia is a Risky Gambit

But who cares? The warmonger elite who planned the attack will no doubt have adjusted their investment portfolio to take advantage of the predictable carnage in oil stocks, vulnerable banks, foreign currencies, etc. If Western economies are damaged, so what? All nations, not just Ukraine and Russia, are to be subordinated to the interests of the international plutocratic elite, so the Machiavellians pulling the strings couldn't care less if the common  folk or non-elite controlled businesses in the West take some heavy hits as a result of their machinations.

UkraineWar.info: Shooting Down MH 17 – BUK 312 Story False Says Ukraine Crew Member

UkraineWar.info: Rostov’s MH17 flight data

Pat Buchanan: Putinism Is on the Rise Across the Globe

Fort Russ: Ukraine Begins to “Turchinovize” its Army

Deep Resource: Vicky, Fuck-the-EU, Newland and the New World Ordure

Thierry Meyssan: How Vladimir Putin upset NATO's Strategy

Paul Craig Roberts: The US Rigging Markets in the War for World Domination

William Engdahl: The Secret Stupid Saudi-US Deal on Syria

CanSpeccy: They will be assimilated, Resistance is futile

The Rouble Collapse: Paranoid Perception Versus Economic Reality

The Russian rouble has fallen to half its summertime value versus the US dollar, which during the same period has strengthened by around ten percent against a basket of other currencies (mainly the Euro, the Yen and the pound sterling).

Image Source Click for larger image.

Many with Russian sympathy attribute the decline to the evil machinations of the United States of Aggression. Collaspsenik, Dmitry Orlov blames Putin for being too liberal. He should, so Orlov thinks, stiff those pesky Western bankers by halting foreign debt repayment until Western sanctions on Russia are lifted.

The Saker holds that the "real problem is the lack of credibility of the Russian Central Bank and the Kremlin. Thus the key factor in the fall of the Ruble is distrust of the Russian authorities." Many commenting on the Saker's blog seem to take a similarly psychological view of the problem.

Canada Prepares for War in Europe: Sends Military Police to Kiev

"Non-lethal" Canadian aid the the Kiev Fascists: Source

The Harper government is seeking deeper ties with Ukraine's Kiev junta, and has signed an agreement aimed at broad military cooperation. As part of this agreement, Canada has sent a team that will seek training opportunities with Ukrainian forces in the areas of military police, medical personnel and "personal protective measures," although, according to the CBC report, neither the minister of Defense, Rob Nicholson, nor the Department of National Defence "could (would?) say what that meant in practical terms."

As we wrote in August, Nazi Nato appears to be setting the stage for a proxy war with Russia, a project in which Canada is a full participant. As a correspondent identified as Larchmonter 445 quoted by the Saker asks:

In the context of US cruise missiles into Poland and 100 US tanks into Latvia, also right on the Russian border, how do you interpret these developments?

If you wondered How Low the US and Its Allies Have Sunk in Hypocrisy and Brutality, Read This

Yes, National Review, We Did Execute Japanese for Waterboarding

By Paul Belaga

Huffington Post, May 25, 2011: In a CNN debate with Ari Fleischer, I said the United States executed Japanese war criminals for waterboarding. My point was that it is disingenuous for Bush Republicans to argue that waterboarding is not torture and thus illegal. It's kind of awkward to argue that waterboarding is not a crime when you hanged someone for doing it to our troops. My precise words were: "Our country executed Japanese soldiers who waterboarded American POWs. We executed them for the same crime we are now committing ourselves." Mr. Fleischer, ordinarily the most voluble of men, was tongue-tied. The silence, rare in cable debates, spoke volumes for the vacuity of his position.

Image source

Now Mark Hemingway of the National Review Online has asserted that I was wrong. I bookmark NRO and read it frequently. It's smart and breezy -- but on this one it got its facts wrong.

Mr. Hemingway assumed I was citing the case of Yukio Asano, who was convicted of waterboarding and other offenses and sentenced to 15 years hard labor -- not death by hanging. Mr. Hemingway made the assumption that I was referring to the Asano case because in 2006 Sen. Edward Kennedy had referred to it. (Sen. Kennedy accurately described the sentence as hard labor and not execution, by the way.)

Dumb Lefties — Left Handers, That Is

My present topic is not politics but handedness. In particular the findings of a recent investigation that left-handers are deficient in cognitive skills, have higher rates of mental and behavioral disability than normal people, and earn less.

As a lefty, this comes as a shock, brought up as I have been to the idea that we lefties are smarter than the right-handed mass. For example, among left-handed rulers there was Ramses II, whose reign is considered by many historians to mark the pinnacle of Egyptian art and culture; Alexander the Great, conqueror of the Persian Empire; Charlemagne, who invented joined-up writing, while founding an empire that set Western Europe on the march from stinking backwater to dominant global power; and, in Washington, DC, sometimes identified as the home of a "vast left-handed conspiracy," four of the last five US presidents (George Dubya Bush being the exception and obviously the dimmest of the lot).

Gold Is Not Money

Speaking before the spooky Council on Foreign Relations, Former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Bank, Alan Bubbles Greenspan, said:

Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency.

So what's a currency?

It is:

A system of money in general use in a particular country.

And what's money?

 It is:

something (such as coins or bills) used as a way to pay for goods and services and to pay people for their work 

So where is gold used to buy a pair of shoes, a loaf of bread, a Boeing airliner?

Ukraine Update

Russia Insider:
EU Seeks Russian Aid to Ukraine While Sanctioning Russia for Its Actions in Ukraine. LOL



Deep Resource:
Crimea for Dummies

James Petras:
The Rise of German Imperialism and the Phony “Russian Threat”

Moscow Times:
Crimean Government Steps Up Confiscation of Beachfront Property Stolen by Kiev Officials

Deep Resource:
Putin and Hollande Meet at a Moscow Airport

BBC:

Ukraine, Russia and the ceasefire that never was

When 1,000 people have died in less than three months, when civilians cower in basements and tens of thousands more flee their homes we can no longer speak of a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

And here's the Obama-backed Nazified President Porshenko boasting that forcing children to cower in basements is how Ukraine will win the war



Fort Russ:
Has Hollande Been Cured of the Bulgarian Syndrome by Putin and Nazarbaev?

John Pilger:
Weaponized media target Russia

Russia-Insider:
Ukraine’s New American Finance Minister Lost $100 Million of US Taxpayer Funds

BBC:

Source

Merkel condemns Russia 'interfering' in Eastern Europe
Merkel the NeoCon mouthpeace: only the US and its puppets to interfere in Eastern Europe

AP:
French president supports autonomy for Ukraine’s southeast
Better to face reality late than never.

WUFYS:
Bulgarian nationalist party leader proposes referendum on NATO and EU exit
US commanded sanctions and blocked Russian pipeline projects in response to Russia's response to the American-inspired Kiev coup, seem to be hurting EU nations and the integrity of the EU more than they hurt Russia or threaten Russian unity.

AP:
French leader reaches out to Putin in Moscow

Arkady Molev:
You who chase the Nazi criminals all over the world… how can you miss the Lviv Nazi Renaissance? 

Putin Quote (via Pravda):

This little country America, relies on foreign oil and is telling the whole world and us what to do. Never mind that we're the largest country in the world with our own resources of oil and gas that can supply every nation. America, trillions in debt printing paper money while we have a vast gold supply and trillions in reserves. America has forgotten history. Hitler with millions of soldiers could not conquer us. We met the Nazis face to face and pushed them back to Berlin. A country like the US that overthrows governments for corporate interests like the coup in Kiev will be overthrown in the end.

Deep Resource:
War Again in Europe? Not in Our Name!

Tyler Durden:
Kissinger Warns "We Need A New World Order"; Ukraine Should Forget Crimea & NATO

Patrick L. Smith:
New York Times propagandists exposed: Finally, the truth about Ukraine and Putin emerges

John Mearsheimer:
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault — The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

Russia's Puny Economy and Dying Population

In August, while speaking with John Micklethwait and Edward Carr from The Economist, President Obama remarked:

Russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking.

Russia's puny economy and general decline is a common theme among those who disparage Russia. For example, in discussing the threat posed by Russia to European security, former UK Ambassador Craig Murray recently blogged:

Russia is not a great power. Its total GDP is about the same as Spain’s – and Spain is pretty knackered. Russia has even less economic clout as a basis for world domination than the UK. Russia’s economy is not diversified. It is over-dependent on raw commodity production and export.  ...  It will not be long before Poland plus the Baltic states are economically stronger than Russia.

Let's consider these claims. OK, Russia doesn't make anything except, um:

Russophobia and Nationalism, the Tinder to Ignite WW III

Ukrainians, we are to understand, hate the Russkies. Why? Well, so we are now being told, it is because Stalin, who was in fact a native of Georgia, not Russia, killed so many of them, intellectuals and peasants alike: the Holodomor, the forced labor, the Gulag, etc.

But in fact, this rather ancient history seems to have little to do with it. Rather, Russophobia in Ukraine seems to be an extremely recent phenomenon. Thus, for example, in 2010, a Pew Trust survey found a large majority of Ukrainians believed that they had been better off under the Soviet Union, i.e., under Russian domination, than under the post-Soviet "free enterprise" regime.

Plain Language, Better English

How often do you use words the meaning of which you do not know — Excruciating, for example, or abject, or that favorite of headline writers, lurid?

Yes, you may use those words appropriately, which is to say in accordance with common usage, but do you really know what they mean?

Perhaps you do, but most people, it seems, do not. The Reuters headline: Horror film "Buried" an excruciating experience, for example, nicely demonstrates the incomprehending and absurd use of a multisyllabic Latinate adjective.

Excruciating is a word derived from the Latin ex, out of or from, and cruciare, to crucify. Now to be buried alive must certainly be horrific, but few would imagine it to be closely comparable to the torment of crucifixion. To be buried alive is to be cast into darkness, crushed and suffocated. To liken live burial with crucifixion thus robs the word excruciating of useful meaning. It makes it merely another in a long list of rather meaningless intensifiers, its only merit being its multisyllablicity, to coin a term, that makes it hiss, pop and slither off the tongue.

American Imperialism Versus Russian Nationalism: The Great Role Reversal

Anyone trying to understand why international tensions are rising and why the World appears to be lurching toward a nuclear showdown between East and West needs to understand not only the difference between Russia and America in self-identification and foreign policy objectives, but also how those differences have so recently changed.

Russia, under the Bolsheviks, was a godless tyranny driven by an ambition for global conquest to be achieved by any means. Confronting Soviet Communism, America was a largely Christian nation constitutionally committed to individual liberty, democracy and human rights.

Today, Russia has restored the Orthodox Christian church (which dates back over 1000 years to the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 988), eschews imperial ambitions, and functions politically under a constitution that recognizes human rights, and provides for local self-government and the democratic election of President and Parliament.

How Canada's Government Came to Love Ethnic Cleansers Wearing Swastikas

Canada's Foreign Minister, John Baird. 

Currently working feverishly, according to the CBC, in preparation to bomb Syria, while continuing a bombing mission without regard for the death of civilians in Iraq, John Baird nevertheless took time from his busy schedule to pen a diatribe for the (Toronto) Star against Vladimir Putin for his "aggression" in Ukraine (reader comments worth noting).

Russia, claims Baird, is guilty of murderous aggression in the Ukraine that has cost an estimated 4000 lives. But in fact, all that Russia has so far done is allow volunteer fighters and gifts of arms and ammunition to flow across the border with Ukraine in support of the self-defence forces of the people of Eastern Ukraine, ethnic Russians threatened with extermination by their own government.

The Myth of Western Democracy

Accountability through periodic free and fair elections is a good thing in itself, apart from any effects it may have on the quality of government or economic growth. The right to participate politically grants recognition to the moral personhood of the citizen, and exercise of that right gives that person some degree of agency over the common life of the community. The citizen may make poorly informed or bad decisions, but the exercise of political choice in and of itself is an important part of human flourishing.

Francis Fukuyama: Political Order and Political Decay

The above statement must be among the most inane to have been uttered by a serious student of the political order. From a scholar of the stature of Francis Fukuyama it is simply preposterous and is explicable only as the price of publication in today's globalist world order, where the money power controls almost every avenue of public expression, including book publication.

Carroll Quigley, the historian of the New World Order, stated in a lecture on The Mythology of American Democracy:

Democracy is not the highest political value. Speeches about democracy and the democratic tradition might lead you to think this is the most perfect political system ever devised. That just isn't true. There are other political values which are more important and urgent—security, for example. And I would suggest that political stability and political responsibility are also more important.

In fact, I would define a good government as a responsible government. In every society there is a structure of power. A government is responsible when its political processes reflect that power structure, thus ensuring that the power structure will never be able to overthrow the government. If a society in fact could be ruled by a minority because that elite had power to rule and the political system reflected that situation by giving governing power to that elite, then, it seems to me, we would have a responsible government even though it was not democratic.

A Suicidal Collapse of Western Civilization?

...it is cultural suicide, which adds to economic suicide and spells doom for the future of Western Europe. I have in mind here the heavy immigration from Islamic nations -- with most immigrants unwilling to adjust to the prevailing culture of the host country.

By Fred Singer

The American Thinker, November 16, 2014; My background is basically European -- and more specifically, Western European. I have lived and worked in many of those countries, and I know most of the major cities intimately -- from Stockholm in the north, Newcastle, London, Paris, The Hague, Munich, Vienna, to Rome and Erice, Sicily in the south. I have also spent several months in Moscow and in Jerusalem as a guest of academic institutions.

Economic Suicide

The ongoing economic suicide of Europe is based on a faulty understanding of the climate issue by most Western politicians and on their extreme policy response, based on emotion rather than logic and science. The major European economies have reacted irrationally to contrived, unjustified fear of imagined global-warming disasters.

Perhaps I should explain that the climate has not been warming for the past 18 years -- and even if it had been warming, it would be no disaster. The EU wants to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, a natural plant-fertilizer, by 40% within 15 years — by 2030. This insane drive to replace energy sources from fossil fuels that release plant-friendly CO2 into the atmosphere has led to greatly increased costs of energy. As is well understood, such actions not only hurt economic growth, but they increase poverty levels and therefore threaten the social fabric of these nations.

The Weakness of Russia: What Putin Must Do

By James Petras

The US-EU sponsored coup in the Ukraine and its conversion from a stable Russian trading partner, to a devastated EU economic client and NATO launch pad, as well as the subsequent economic sanctions against Russia for supporting the Russian ethnic majority in the Donbas region and Crimea, illustrate the dangerous vulnerability of the Russian economy and state.

The current effort to increase Russia’s national security and economic viability in the face of these challenges requires a critical analysis of the policies and structures emerging in the post-Soviet era.

Pillage as Privatization

The James Petras Website, November 8, 2014: Over the past quarter century, several trillion dollars worth of public property in every sector of the Russian economy was illegally transferred or violently seized by gangster-oligarchs acting through armed gangs, especially during its ‘transition to capitalism’.

From 1990 to 1999, over 6 million Russian citizens died prematurely as a result of the catastrophic collapse of the economy; life expectancy for males declined from 67 years during the Soviet era to 55 year during the Yeltsin period. Russia’s GNP declined sixty percent – a historic first for a country not at war. Following Yeltsin’s violent seizure of power and his bombing of the Russian parliament, the regime proceeded to ‘prioritize’ the privatization of the economy, selling off the energy, natural resources, banking, transport and communication sectors at one-tenth or less of their real value to well-connected cronies and foreign entities. Armed thugs, organized by emerging oligarchs “completed” the program of privatization by assaulting, murdering and threatening rivals. Hundreds of thousands of elderly pensioners were tossed out of their homes and apartments in a vicious land-grab by violent property speculators. US and European academic financial consultants “advised” rival oligarchs and government ministers on the most “efficient” market techniques for pillaging the economy, while skimming off lucrative fees and commissions –fortunes were made for the well-connected. Meanwhile, living standards collapsed, impoverishing two thirds of Russian households, suicides quadrupled and deaths from alcoholism, drug addiction, HIV and venereal diseases became rampant. Syphilis and tuberculosis reached epidemic proportions – diseases fully controlled during the Soviet era remerged with the closure of clinics and hospitals.

All the News the Mainstream Media Want You to Forget

President Porky Declares War on His Own People

Vinyard of the Saker: The Nazi plan for Novorussia: children bombed into basements and total war

Kiev's Latest Failed Assault on Eastern Ukraine

Fort Russ: The failed Ukrainian blitzkrieg that everyone failed to notice

Fatal Mistake, Did Kissinger say? 

 Yes, according to many news sources

Funny thing, though, in Spiegel's English translation, "fatal mistake" has become a mere "mistake." Nothing to worry about, then, folks.

Germans, En Masse, Abandon Germany's CIA-Bought Mass Media

Russia Insider: Germans Turn on Lying News Sites

Ukie Nazi Warriors Acknowledge Brit Alliance

Independent: White widow 'dead': Reports Samantha Lewthwaite killed in Ukraine dismissed as false

The White Widow, Samantha Lewthwaite, widow of alleged 7/7 London Tube train bomber Lindsay Germaine, is wanted by Interpol in connection with the planned bombings in Kenya. Concerning reports Lewthwaite had been killed by a Russian sniper while fighting with the Ukie Aidar battallion, the Independent reports:

Aidar commander Sergiy Melnychuk told BuzzFeed News the reports were false. He said: “We don’t have any white widows, and nor could we. They’re [the Russians} trying to drive a wedge between us and our British allies.”

So there's confirmation that the Brits are aiding the Nazis in the Ukraine civil war.

Bollocks from the New World Ordure: SEAL Who Claims To Have Killed Bin-Laden a Liar Says Fellow Warrior 

Mail Online. EXCLUSIVE - SEALS AT WAR: Fellow warriors brand Rob O'Neill a LIAR after he claims he was the shooter who fired three bullets into Bin Laden's head.

LOL. Liars lying about the lies they've told.

Related:  Bin Laden died in 2001

Loony Conspiracy Theory — Not?

ALEX JONES: GOVERNMENT HAD OSAMA BIN LADEN FROZEN FOR YEARS

How Mid-Term Elections Affect Obama

Finian Cunningham. America’s Moribund Democracy a Harbinger of More War: 

"With Republican control over the Congress, US President Barack Obama is now a lame-duck leader who can’t even quack."

How a Girl From Small-Town British Columbia Exposed JP Morgan's Humungus Mortgage Theft

Matt Taibbi: The $9 Billion Witness: Meet JPMorgan Chase's Worst Nightmare

Meet Alayne Fleischmann, the woman JPMorgan Chase paid one of the largest fines in American history to keep from talking

Matt Taibbi: The nine-billion-dollar witness.