Новости за 21.01.2019

The author is a prominent American Christian conservative who was a presidential candidate for the paleoconservative Constitution Party in 2008, when he was endorsed by Ron Paul.  

As my readers may have noticed, in the interest of balance, I quite enjoy posting quotes from the Russian side of the new Cold War since they receive very little coverage in the Western media.  Some recent comments from Vladimir Putin on a wide range of subjects at the Russia Energy Week International Forum provide us with some very interesting insight into Russia's world view, its view on the United States and Donald Trump and its views on the world's energy markets.  In this posting, I wish to look at Mr. Читать дальше...

Buzzfeed was once notorious for traffic-generating “listicles”, but has since become an impressive outlet for deep investigative journalism under editor-in-chief Ben Smith.

The Roman poet Ovid’s masterful epic The Metamorphoses includes the memorable opening line regarding the poem’s central theme of transformation. He wrote In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora, which has been translated as “Of shapes transformed to bodies strange, I purpose to entreat…”

How did the KGB train its deep-cover officers to pose, operate and live under the guise of foreign nationalities? Former KGB Chairman Vladimir Efimovich Semichastny (1924-2001) describes how the KGB First Chief Directorate’s elite Directorate S processed, prepared and deployed illegal officers for work abroad in the field – without the protection of the Soviet embassy or Moscow Center.

The other day RT reporter Dan Cohen flagged how New Atheism guru Sam Harris recently had a shady cold war manipulator on his podcast promulgating the establishment narrative that Russian hackers and trolls interfered in the 2016 US election, despite the fact that there is no more publicly available evidence for this than there is for the existence of biblical Jehovah. I find this both fascinating and hilarious.

If there’s one thing everyone in today’s Washington can agree on, it’s that whenever an official or someone being paid by the government says something truly outrageous or dangerous, there should be consequences, if only a fleeting moment of media fury. With one notable exception: Arguing that the US should be quietly working to promote the violent disintegration and carving up of the largest country on Earth. 

A reader (and generous contributor) asks:

I want to move my family [details redacted] to an Eastern European country to escape the poz. We will start learning the language. Do you think Russia is the best option or is there a better one?

Last Monday, there was a striking headline in the Daily Telegraph: “Russia looks to bitcoin to soften effects of US Sanctions”. The immediate impact on bitcoin’s price was minimal, though it did rise 4.2% later in the day, after Zerohedge picked up the story.

After what many are describing as Trump’s attempted channeling of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ program with Thursday’s unveiling of a missile defense strategy heavily focused on space as “the next war-fighting domain”, Moscow has issued a predictably harsh rebuke, calling the newly published US Missile Defense Review (MDR) “openly confrontational” and a danger to global stability and peace. 

Friday, citing Russian sources the Palestinian-run, London-based, pan-Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported that Russia has told Israel it will not tolerate further air strikes near the Damascus International Airport:

Democratic presidential challenger Tulsi Gabbard has refused to budge on her anti-war views and apologize for meeting Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2017, defending dialogue as the "only alternative" to "more war."

Following what the Washington Post has described as “the highest-profile misstep yet for a news organization during a period of heightened and intense scrutiny of the press,” mass media representatives are now flailing desperately for an argument as to why people should continue to place their trust in ma

The Yellow Vest anti-government movement started in France on November 17, when over 300,000 people across France protested a carbon tax on fuel that French President Emmanuel Macron touted as evidence of France’s leadership when it comes to mitigating climate change.

The CBR’s estimate of the current account surplus for full year 2018 is a record $114.9bn, while for 4Q18 it is $38.8bn, which exceeded the $33bn surplus in 2017.

With unseemly haste, US news media leapt on the killing of four American military personnel in Syria as a way to undermine President Donald Trump’s plan to withdraw troops from that country.