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This statement, and others like it, are a huge deal. This isn’t how the leader of a major civilized Western so-called “democracy” speaks to the citizenry. It is how a master talks to his slaves. How a ruler addresses his subjects. Those of us who are in disbelief over David Cameron’s recent language, don’t have to just point to the quote above. There’s a lot more to it than a simple quote. For example, the Guardian reports: The measures would give the police powers to apply to the high court for an order to limit the “harmful activities” of an...

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia will help Palestine in achieving its goal of becoming an independent state with the capital in East Jerusalem, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday in his address to the Arab League summit participants. “Russia will continue contributing to the attainment of this goal [Palestine’s independence], working through bilateral channels and through multilateral channels, including in the ‘Quartet’ of international mediators,” Putin said. The Quartet comprising Russia, the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, was established in 2002, aiming to reach a long-term peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians. The Russian president stressed on...

At least 220 Russian soldiers have died fighting in Ukraine despite the Kremlin’s denial of sending troops there, according to a new report started by the murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov. “The evidence provided by sources with whom Nemtsov began his work allows us to assert that all the key military successes of the separatists were secured by units of the Russian Army,” said Ilya Yashin, one of the report’s authors. Mr Nemtsov, 55, was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin as he walked home with his girlfriend in February. Two alleged hitmen have been charged with his...

Everyone in Moscow tells you that if you want to understand Russia's foreign policy and its view of its place the world, the person you need to talk to is Fyodor Lukyanov. Lukyanov is the chair of Russia's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, as well as the editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, which are something like the Russian equivalents of America's Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs — though the Russian versions are considered much closer to the state and its worldview.

Despite threatening language, Vladimir Putin is not going to start a nuclear war, according to Yuri Shvets, who studied along with him at the KGB’s Andropov Institute. Putin’s only desire is to remain in power for life, he says, and he knows Russia’s nuclear weapon delivery systems aren’t accurate enough for a first strike that would not result in national suicide. “Do you seriously think, that a man who annually disappears from public view for seven to ten days in order to have a facelift and to fill himself up with Botox is capable of unleashing a nuclear war?”

Is Russia Planning to Disassemble the International Space Station? Goodbye, International Space Station. We hardly knew ye. For nearly two decades, since the launch of its first "module" in 1998, the International Space Station has been a symbol of global cooperation, and the site of actual cooperation among scientists from many nations. Comprised of 15 separate modules, and inhabited continuously since 2000, the International Space Station has hosted upward of 200 astronauts and cosmonauts from 15 different nations over 17 years in service. But in just a few more years, all this will come to an end. Like disassembling an...

Amid Russia’s economic woes, billions of dollars continue to disappear in offshore havens. The net outflow of capital from Russia reached $32.6 billion during the first quarter of 2015, according to the nation’s Central Bank. The bank is now forecasting that capital flight may reach $131 billion by the end of the year. In reporting first quarter numbers, the Central Bank also upwardly revised the 2014 figure for net capital outflow to $154.1 billion from the previously reported $151.5 billion. That figure marks the highest annual total of capital flight since the Central Bank started tracking the trend back in...

As May 9th, Victory Day in many post-Soviet states, approaches, decency demands that we celebrate the defeat of Adolf Hitler’s Germany and honor the millions of soldiers and civilians who gave their lives to rid the world of the scourge of Nazism. At the same time, if we truly want to honor the dead, we must take heed of the historical lies that the Kremlin, both in its Soviet and post-Soviet hypostases, promotes about the USSR’s relationship with Nazi Germany. For starters, the Moscow-controlled Communist International, and its sidekick, the Communist Party of Germany, made Hitler’s rise to power possible,...

In a startling new interview, a 3-star general and former head of Communist Romania’s secret police who defected to the United States in 1978, claims that the Theology of Liberation was the creation of the KGB, who exported it to Latin America as a way of introducing Marxism into the continent. Ion Mihai Pacepa has been called “the Cold War’s most important defector,” and after his defection, the Romanian government under Nicolae Ceausescu placed two death sentences and a $2 million bounty on his head. During the more than ten years that Pacepa worked with the CIA, he made what...

Update 3: Turns out Iran did seize a ship, just not a US ship: PENTAGON SAYS NO US SHIP WAS SEIZED BY IRAN NON-U.S. SHIP MAY HAVE BEEN SEIZED BY IRAN, U.S. OFFICIAL SAYS IRANIAN MILITARY BOARDED MARSHALL ISLANDS-FLAGGED CARGO SHIP IRANIANS BOARDED MV MAERSK TIGRIS CARGO SHIP: PENTAGON Update 2: Curiously, while we were confident Iran would deny the report first, it was in fact the US: US NAVY DENIES CONFRONTATION WITH IRANIAN MILITARY: CNBC The good news is that it will be very easy to confirm who is lying and who is telling the truth, in a matter...

KIEV, April 22 (Reuters) - Ukraine, in a break with tradition that is certain to rile Moscow, is ditching the Soviet name for World War Two and aims to adopt the poppy, a mainly British wartime symbol, to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany. [....] In another break with the Soviet past, Kiev will align its calendar with that of its European allies by adding for the first time May 8 - known in the West as Victory in Europe Day - as a national holiday. A decree signed by President Petro Poroshenko fixed May 8...

No one in Russian-speaking Kharkiv wants to follow rebels into open revolt. But locals say Kiev has no idea how badly it's aggravating the region with its initiatives, including the 'Great Wall of Ukraine.' It's been nicknamed the "Great Wall of Ukraine." Its planned combination of barbed-wire fences, watchtowers, berms, and tank traps along Ukraine's 1,300-mile border with Russia look like something you'd find on one of Israel's borders with its hostile neighbors. If it's ever completed, the wall will seal a frontier that, until last year, had always been wide open. Inaugurating construction here last fall, Prime Minister Arseniy...

The establishment GOP-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), recently touted by the White House as the “most progressive trade agreement in history,” is also a “Trojan horse” to advance Obama’s “unrestricted immigration” agenda, according to political insiders and critics who have studied the secretive scheming. With the Big Government wing of the Republican Party currently plotting to empower the Obama administration with fast-track Trade Promotion Authority to make it easier to impose the TPP and other radical agreements on the American people, opponents are warning that the White House immigration agenda may become all but impossible to stop. Critics say Congress must...

Russia has key interests in common with the United States and needs to work with it on a common agenda, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday in a television interview. In his comments to the state-run Rossiya channel, Putin appeared to soften his anti-American rhetoric after being highly critical. Relations between Moscow and Washington and other Western powers have soured over the conflict in Russia's neighbor Ukraine, sinking to an all-time low. "We have disagreements on several issues on the international agenda. But at the same time there is something that unites us, that forces us to work together,"...

Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Israel on Saturday against selling weapons to the pro-Western government in Kiev as retaliation for Moscow’s recently announced weapons deal with Iran. Speaking to official state media in Russia, Putin said that any such deals between Israel and Ukraine would be “counterproductive” and would “only cause a new round of hostility.” “The death toll would rise, but the result would not change,” Putin was quoted as telling Rossiya, the official state-run television channel.

Is another shoe about to drop on the Clinton Foundation, and on Hillary Clinton’s problematic rollout? Newsweek’s Rory Ross reported this morning that the largest individual donor to the Clinton family business has conducted trade with Iran, perhaps in breach of US sanctions. Ukrainian energy mogul Victor Pinchuk has connections to the Clintons that go back almost a decade, and financial connections to the regime in Tehran that go much farther: The fourth richest man in Ukraine, Pinchuk owns Interpipe Group, a Cyprus-incorporated manufacturer of seamless pipes used in oil and gas sectors.Newsweek has seen declarations and documents from...

The commander of the US army in Europe has warned that Nato must remain united in the face of a "real threat" from Russia. "It's not an assumption. There is a Russian threat," Lt-Gen Frederick "Ben" Hodges said. "You've got the Russian ambassador threatening that Denmark will be a nuclear target if it participates in any missile defence programme. And when you look at the unsafe way Russian aircraft are flying without transponders in proximity to civilian aircraft, that's not professional conduct." Gen Hodges spoke to the Telegraph on the sidelines of a military debriefing after an exercise to move...

Ukraine's parliament has voted to ban "propaganda of the totalitarian communist and Nazi regimes," a major rebuke to the country's Soviet-era masters in Moscow and to Russia. A total of 254 members of the 450-seat Vekhovna Rada voted on April 9 in favor of the legislation in the former Soviet republic, which is deeply at odds with Russia over its annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 6,000 people. Under the legislation, the communist government that ruled between 1917 and 1991 -- the Soviet era -- is condemned as a criminal regime...

Even if the Senate gets a clue and does shut-down Obama's bizarre non-agreement with Iran, cascading collateral damage has already begun: Gulf states are looking to get their own atomic weaponry, US prestige and credibility has suffered yet another heavy blow (Obama/Kerry don't even know how to surrender), and now the Russians are sending their advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Tehran... Putin signed something that cleared the way for the (bartered for crude oil) missiles yesterday- a system that experts say could leave Iran 'untouchable'... the only way to get by that would be a large stealth fleet...

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas in Moscow on Monday where the issue of Middle East peace talks will be raised, Russian authorities announced Thursday. “The two leaders will hold talks concerning key aspects of Russian-Palestinian relations and their future, with particular attention on the trade, economy and humanitarian sectors,” the Kremlin said in a statement according to AFP. There will also be “an exchange of ideas on the process of Israeli-Palestinian talks and other problematic regional situations,” the statement continued, adding that North Africa would also be on the agenda. …