Psychopaths dominate the halls of power in both the United States and throughout the world. The current economic, political, military and legal system breeds psychopaths, rewarding psychopathic behavior and punishing those with conscience and integrity. Psychopaths will naturally be drawn to and converge at the apex of the power pyramid as much from their own drive for ambitious power as the hierarchical system that both requires and reinforces those who can comfortably operate without conscience, guilt or any genuine level of empathy toward others.

Psychopaths are in love with power and risk taking, masters of manipulation, self-serving opportunism and self-aggrandizement, and hold doctorates in deceit and deception. Psychopaths are super intelligent charmers who are highly skilled at playing others in order to get what they want. They are keenly perceptive at reading people, understanding their motives and values, brilliant at learning their weaknesses and blind spots, and highly effective at inducing both sympathy and guilt in others.

Instinctively knowing what others want to hear, psychopaths are gifted at winning over others, making them feel special and wanted. They are adept at making positive and lasting first impressions and initially demonstrating that they appear to be caring and considerate, but only on the most superficial, disingenuous level. Their innately keen intelligence, social charisma and charm, extroverted energies, over-the-top confidence are all weapons they utilize in their powerful arsenal to win over, defeat and control others, especially to win over those imbued with power and position that they yearn for themselves.

Psychopaths have an uncanny ability to pick brains, soliciting information, knowledge, creative ideas and even secrets from others, yet opportunistically utilize them to their own advantage as living proof that information is power, parading them as their own ideas and knowledge, and craftily taking and receiving undeserving credit and accolades from bosses and those in power. They are gifted actors, able to take on chameleon-like colors according to their particular social setting and company. Though they lack a capacity to feel emotions with any depth or intensity, as actors and manipulators they are able to manufacture crocodile tears for effect whenever it suits and benefits them.

The part of the brain that regulates emotions, the amygdala, is less active in psychopaths. Thus, they do not feel fear, sadness, regret or disgust that the rest of us experience. Only when it is self-serving will psychopaths act scared, sorry, indignant or surprised, and the key operable word here is act because that is all they can do when it comes to showing real emotion. They have no trouble putting on the act of emotions when they are determined to manipulate others most often into feeling guilty or sympathetic toward them. The only genuine emotion psychopaths express is anger whenever their manipulations are thwarted or rebuffed. They frequently use intimidation tactics and can behave impulsively and even violently when angered, especially in response to a perceived personal insult or perceived betrayal of trust or perceived lack of respect for their authority. But most often their emotional tirades are to manipulate, gain power and control over others.

Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested on Friday that the United States planned to receive competitive advantages in trade and economic ties with Europe by insisting on sanctions against Russia.

"Insisting on imposing sanctions against Russia, I have the suspicion that maybe our American friends, and they're pretty sophisticated guys, they, perhaps, even want to get certain competitive advantages in their trade and economic ties in Europe? I simply just don't see, don't understand any other incentive motives that are that serious or deep, but I hope that common sense prevails," Putin said.

The US and EU have imposed sanctions against Russia in connection to its policy in Ukraine and the reunification of Crimea. The sanctions have so far remained targeted and consist of government-approved lists of individuals and companies facing visa bans and asset freezes.

Editor's Note: Well, it looks like Obama the Peacemaker image took another hit today. China, which has no overseas military bases and no carrier battle groups sailing the seas to defend its customers, considers itself a target and not a threat. Imagine that!

The US "divide and conquer" ploy with the Asia Pivot is turning into Obama's Asia Boomerang. The land of freedom and democracy has turned into the major stimulus on the planet for forming defensive military alliances.

It seems they don't want to buy one of our "Sanctions-R-US" franchises. The Founding Fathers are turning over in their graves.

Maybe it's all a trick. Maybe "they" want to divert China and Russia's capital investment away from peaceful business endeavors and whiz it out the window, following the example of the $2 trillion we blew on the military industrial complex over the last decade with no credible threats on the planet.

Good gosh, what group in America would want to do that when our bridges are falling down and the highway trust fund is almost empty... the list goes on and on. Take a look at the companies that the Bush (43) thugs are all involved with, before and after. They seem to have done well.

Don't be surprised to hear brain dead Congressional candidates screaming about how we must rearm American to protect ourselves from the yellow horde building unsinkable inner tubes to float millions of Chinese secret DNA commandos across the Pacific to invade America.

The think tanks are sharpening their pens and swords to scare Americans into putting what money they have left into their various coffers by going on their Asian Jihad. Americans need to form a security alliance of their own here at home to defend ourselves against "you know who"... Jim W. Dean

President Putin is now the leader standing against a banker puppet led regime hell bent on wars for conquest for the central banking cartel that hates competition. Especially when it comes to honest money at odd with fiat based currencies

Putin was gracious to warm him giving some friendly advice to Obama when he first entered office saying Social is a failure. as a warning. Six years later. We can the POTUS did not heed Putin's advice. Here is a excerpt from Tea Party Command Center writing about Putin Slamming Obama's led Global government as a failure.

At least 16 Ukrainian troops were reportedly killed and over 30 injured in an attack on a military checkpoint in the Donetsk Region of Ukraine in the early hours of Thursday morning in the worst loss of life for Kiev forces to date. The question is, who did it?

Troops from Kiev are said to have arrived and established a checkpoint outside the village of Blahodatne, near the town of Ol'hynka earlier this week. The unofficial capital of the breakaway People's Republic of Donetsk, Donetsk City, is just 40km to the North. The checkpoint was therefore probably a part of a wider effort by the US-coup-installed interim government in Kiev to use troops loyal to Kiev to control access to the major hubs of eastern Ukraine in advance of the presidential elections on Sunday. As part of their decades-long occupation of Northern Ireland, the British used the same tactics in an effort to apprehend "terrorists" who were understood to use rural back roads rather than main arterial routes.

As has been the case in many other eastern Ukrainian towns and villages over the past 2 months, the locals of Blagodatnoe confronted the Kiev troops soon after they arrived. At that point, things get murky.

Ukrainian presidential candidate, non-faction Deputy Petr Poroshenko has said he was ready to pay 1000 hryvnyas (about 84 dollars) per day to volunteers involved in punitive operations in the South-East of the country, Avistarnews reports.

"I've promised to tell you at every meeting that I would hold that we would provide for the army. This will be our priority. There will be no conscripts, who participate in battles, in the army. There will be volunteers. He will get a thousand hryvnyas per day. His life and health will be insured for one million hryvnias," Poroshenko said, adding that after this proposal volunteers will immediately show up.

At the moment, the salary of a Ukrainian serviceman is 600 hryvnyas per month.

A "day of silence" is declared in Ukraine today. Any propaganda is prohibited ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for May 25.

Just in case you've been living under a rock (or absorbing the limited range of carefully selected and controlled news reports from the corporate media), Monsanto is a sinister multinational with headquarters in Creve Coeur, Missouri, and it is engaged in the production of seriously harmful chemicals and agricultural biotechnology.

It's the largest manufacturer of products which include genetically engineered seed and the herbicide glyphosate.

Apart from the genetically produced seed, they have also been known to produce chemicals such as DDT, PCBs, Agent Orange and bovine growth hormone among others. It has been given the name merchant of death by many groups that inform the sleepwalking masses about the dangers of using Monsanto products.

The New York Times and the Justice Department are under fire for bowing to the National Security Agency and either hiding (the Times) or misinforming (DOJ) the public about crucial pieces of the NSA's secret spying programs.

An episode of PBS Frontline focuses on the 2004 decision by New York Times editor Bill Keller to kill a story on the NSA in the run-up to that year's presidential election. The two-part program is called 'United States of Secrets,' and reveals "the dramatic inside story of the U.S. government's massive and controversial secret surveillance program - and the lengths they went to trying to keep it hidden from the public."

The report looks back at what the NSA called 'The Program' - the NSA's decision to spy on Americans' electronic interactions by spying on telephones, internet communications, metadata from emails, and almost all forms of electronic communications - all without warrants. Scandal broke out when the secretive agency's spying techniques were revealed to the world - but not by Edward Snowden in the summer of 2013. The NSA first landed in hot water nearly eight years before the government whistleblower began leaking documents.

Israel is working hard to build stronger security and economic ties with China and India, looking to broaden its options as the U.S., its closest ally, starts to play a smaller role on the world stage.

Israel has high hopes for help from Beijing in dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons development. "China has a central role in the efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb," Israeli President Shimon Peres told Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping during a trip to China early last month.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited China last May, and top defense officials from the two countries have been deepening their ties. The high-profile visits underscore Israel's aim of improving its diplomatic position in the United Nations by growing closer to China, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

India agreed in February to work with Israel to devise anti-terrorism measures and develop a missile defense system. They also plan to set up a fund to support joint ventures between technology companies in both countries.

Russia and China have just signed what is being called "the gas deal of the century", and the two countries are discussing moving away from the U.S. dollar and using their own currencies to trade with one another. This has huge implications for the future of the U.S. economy, but the mainstream media in the United States is being strangely quiet about all of this. For example, I searched CNN's website to see if I could find something about this gas deal between Russia and China and I did not find anything. But I did find links to "top stories" entitled "Celebs who went faux red" and "Adorable kid tugs on Obama's ear". Is it any wonder why the mainstream media is dying? If a particular story does not fit their agenda, they will simply ignore it. But the truth is that this new agreement between Russia and China is huge. It could end up fundamentally changing the global financial system, and not in a way that would be beneficial for the United States.

Russia and China had been negotiating this natural gas deal for ten years, and now it is finally done. Russia is the largest exporter of natural gas on the entire planet, and China is poised to become the world's largest economy in just a few years. This new $400 billion agreement means that these two superpowers could potentially enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship for the next 30 years...