The neoconservative foreign policy doctrine advanced by officials in President George W. Bush's administration was defined by the ideological belief that America has a "unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity and our principles." In other words, America is the one indispensable nation in the world. That ideological belief inspired the Bush administration to manufacture a case for war in Iraq that was based on lies. And now, more than eleven years later, that same ideological belief is driving President Barack Obama's administration.

In Obama's speech announcing his strategy to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), he invoked the September 11th attacks and the economic recession.

"My fellow Americans, we live in a time of great change. Tomorrow marks 13 years since our country was attacked. Next week marks 6 years since our economy suffered its worst setback since the Great Depression. Yet despite these shocks; through the pain we have felt and the grueling work required to bounce back - America is better positioned today to seize the future than any other nation on Earth."

Obama proceeded to fervently rattle off accomplishments, which will, for the most part, have absolutely no bearing on what happens in Iraq and Syria, as the US further escalates war. He mentioned tech companies, universities, manufacturing, auto industry and job creation.

"Abroad, American leadership is the one constant in an uncertain world. It is America that has the capacity and the will to mobilize the world against terrorists," Obama declared.

A member of the Ukrainian parliamentary probe into the Odessa massacre has retracted her signature under the document, saying it was heavily redacted after signing. Multiple Odessa news outlets published what they said was the original probe conclusions.

Svetlana Fabrikant, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and secretary of the parliamentary commission probing into the massacre in Odessa on May 2, as well as other episodes of violence in eastern Ukrainian cities, withdrew her signature under the commission's report, saying it was "different" from what she had signed.

"Regrettably, other members of the commission made some adjustments to the document after I had signed it," she said. "After the document was published on the official website of the parliament, I found my signature under a different document - and I cannot agree with this document," Itar-Tass quotes her as saying.

After the comparison of the version published by the parliament and the one obtained by Odessa media outlets, it can be concluded that the 'redacted' version got rid of witnesses' accounts implicating the involvement of Andrey Parubiy, then-secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, in organizing the Odessa massacre.

Parubiy resigned from his post in August.

The final version of the report presented by Kiev is also reportedly missing witnesses' accounts about the involvement of about 500 radicals who have been transferred to Odessa with the help of the region's governor, Vladimir Nemirovsky. It also failed to mention the head of Odessa branch of the Udar party, Andrey Yusov, and other Euromaidan leaders who allegedly instigated radical nationalists to set ablaze the Trade Unions House.

The Russian President has taken personal control of the body that assures cooperation between the military and the defense industry, days after ordering a major reform of the sector.

Vladimir Putin also signed a decree on Wednesday giving presidential status to the Military Industrial Commission. The Deputy PM in charge of the weapons industry, Dmitry Rogozin, was appointed deputy chairman of the commission.

Also on Wednesday Putin spoke with a group of top defense industry officials and told them that while Russia did not intend to artificially halt cooperation with foreign partners, the priorities lay in the ability to independently produce all critically important equipment, materials and devices. "We must do everything to ensure that national security is absolutely guaranteed," the President said.

Earlier this week Putin ordered the winding up of the Rosoboronzakaz and Rosoboronpostavka agencies which are responsible for placing and executing weapons orders for the military. Their functions will be transferred to the Defense Ministry, Finance Ministry and Audit Chamber.

Russia is currently running a major program to rearm the military. It started in 2008 and will continue till 2020. By then 70 percent of all weapons in the military must be replaced by newer models. The state is allocating significant sums for the purpose - in 2014 the total defense budget amounted to 2.3 trillion rubles ($60 billion), compared to just 600 billion rubles ($15 billion) in 2003.

The crisis in Ukraine has shown the need for even more reforms in the Russian defense sector. Facing the turmoil and hostility of the present Kiev regime, Russian authorities decided to cut ties with Ukrainian weapon makers and go for domestic production. President Putin discussed the plan with Deputy PM Rogozin in late July and said that the inevitable hardships and complications would eventually benefit the nation - new factories will appear in previously underdeveloped places, and old enterprises will be replaced with modern ones.

Three British military bases could be set up in the Persian Gulf to fight the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), a source in the Ministry of Defence said. The bases could be part of a larger US-led offensive to battle militants in Iraq and Syria.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman and Bahrain are all potential candidates to host the bases, the ministry source told the Times on Wednesday. The move would follow an agreement by NATO leaders to ramp up efforts to contain the terror threat emanating from the region.

UK forces already use the Al-Minhad airbase near Dubai to fly troops in and out of Afghanistan. "You could see an infantry battalion based in Al-Minhad, being able to train alongside the Emirates," a defense source said. It is also believed the Royal Navy would like to see the port in Bahrain expanded to accommodate more sailors and bigger warships.

Work reportedly began on establishing new bases before the rise of the IS. The effort is part of a review of the UK's presence in the Gulf following the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in December.

"The effect is that we are making a strategic adjustment, which is in my view quite sensible," said Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank. "But it is not something that I think has come from Downing Street. This has come through the armed forces working it out." The bases would be "smart footprints,"unlike the large facilities seen in Afghanistan, said Clarke.

While still in the development stages, a spokesman for the MoD said any new UK military presence in the region would represent a continuance of the UK's partnership with its Gulf allies.

The end goal of the US and NATO is to divide (balkanize) and pacify (finlandize) the world's biggest country, the Russian Federation, and to even establish a blanket of perpetual disorder (somalization) over its vast territory or, at a minimum, over a portion of Russia and the post-Soviet space, similarly to what is being done to the Middle East and North Africa. The future Russia or the many future Russias, a plurality of weakened and divided states, that Washington and its NATO allies see is/are demographically in decline, de-industrialized, poor, without any defensive capabilities, and hinterlands that will exploited for their resources.

The Plans of the Empire of Chaos for Russia

Breaking the Soviet Union has not been enough for Washington and NATO. The ultimate goal of the US is to prevent any alternatives from emerging in Europe and Eurasia to Euro-Atlantic integration. This is why the destruction of Russia is one of its strategic objectives.

Washington's goals were alive and at work during the fighting in Chechnya. They were also seen in the crisis that erupted with EuroMaidan in Ukraine. In fact, the first step of the divorce between Ukraine and Russia was a catalyst for the dissolution of the entire Soviet Union and any attempts at reorganizing it.

The Polish-American intellectual Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor and an architect behind the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, has actually advocated for the destruction of Russia through gradual disintegration and devolution. He has stipulated that «a more decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization». [1] In other words, if the US divides Russia up, Moscow would not be able to challenge Washington. In this context, he states the following: «A loosely confederated Russia - composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic - would find it easier to cultivate closer economic regulations with Europe, with the new states of Central Asia, and with [East Asia], which would thereby accelerate Russia's own development». [2]

These views are not merely constrained to some academic's ivory tower or to detached think-tanks. They have the backing of governments and have even cultivated adherents. One reflection of them is below.

A senior spokesman for Russia's Federal Drug Control Service has said legalizing drugs would inflict non-repairable damage to the nation and wouldn't happen in current conditions.

Vladimir Sinelshikov made his comment to the Interfax news agency on Wednesday, soon after the Global Commission on Drug Policy - an international panel of leading politicians - had urged governments all over the world to decriminalize a variety of drugs and facilitate a legal drug trade.

The group includes a former UN secretary general and seven former European and Latin American presidents urged all countries to legalize "as many of the drugs that are currently illegal as possible, with the understanding that some drugs may remain too dangerous to decriminalize." It also said that national authorities should stop prosecuting drug users and stimulate treatment for addicts while at the same time fighting against criminal cartels that profit from the drug trade.

The EU and the US are going to ban energy giants like Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell from searching for crude oil in Russia's Arctic, deep seas and shale formations, three American officials anonymously told Bloomberg.

These sanctions would reportedly not interfere with current oil drilling and production from conventional land-based wells and those along the shallow edges of inland seas, some of which have been pumping crude for decades, according to the officials.

The ban would only target reserves that would not begin providing crude to global energy markets for the next five to 10 years.

All of the officials asked to not be named. The EU has failed to agree on whether to impose its new round of sanctions on Russia. The announcement of the final decision has been held off as the ambassadors from the 28 EU members convene to continue discussions on Thursday.

Sparks were flying yesterday in what is typically a snooze-worthy Senate session. It felt like alien body snatchers had decided to remove the zombies and return the real U.S. Senators to their chairs on the Senate Banking Committee. Senators, right and left, asked tough, probing questions of the nation's banking regulators, leaving many squirming in their chairs.

The session was so unusual that Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, closed out the session in complete agreement that there is something seriously broken about the justice system in America.

Senator Warren told the hearing that in the past year, three of the nation's largest banks - JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America - have admitted breaking the law and settled the claims for $35 billion. The Senator continued:

"As Judge Rakoff of the Southern District of New York has noted, the law on this is clear. No corporation can break the law unless an individual within that corporation broke the law. Yet, despite the misconduct at these banks that generated tens of billions of dollars in settlement payments by the companies, not a single senior executive at these banks has been criminally prosecuted. Now, I know that your agencies can't bring prosecutions directly, but you're supposed to refer cases to the Justice Department when you think individuals should be prosecuted. So, can you tell me how many senior executives at these three banks you have referred to the Justice Department for prosecution?"

New sanctions against Russia over the situation in Ukraine should be postponed, Swiss President Didier Burkhalter, who is the chairman-in-office of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said Wednesday in Prague.

Burkhalter was quoted by Reuters as saying the ceasefire is "a real opportunity". He also said the truce should be given time before the West adopts more punitive measures against Russia.

Russian officials and companies came under Western sanctions, including visa bans, asset freezes, and sectoral restrictions for Russia's incorporation of Crimea after a coup in Ukraine in February and for what the West claimed was Moscow's alleged involvement in mass protests in Ukraine's embattled southeast, which Russia has repeatedly denied.

In response, Moscow imposed on August 6 a one-year ban on imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheeses, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from Australia, Canada, the EU, the United States and Norway.

Fierce clashes between troops loyal to Kiev and local militias in the southeastern Ukrainian Donetsk and Luhansk regions during Kiev's military operation to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luhansk People's republics (DPR and LPR), have killed hundreds of civilians, brought massive destruction and forced hundreds of thousands to flee Ukraine's southeast.

The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on a ceasefire during OSCE-mediated talks in Belarusian capital Minsk on September 5.

Have you ever wondered how complete and unconditional betrayal looks? How a knife looks when it is stuck by a steady hand right between the shoulder blades during a friendly embrace? How poison looks when it is mixed into a glass of water given to a man dying of thirst? As it turns out, all this looks far more ordinary and prosaic than even the most meagre and impoverished human imagination could portray. As it turns out, betrayal is simply two sheets of paper with a row of signatures at the end of a column of dry, numbered paragraphs.

The publicized text of the ceasefire agreement that was signed in Minsk is what this very real betrayal looks like. The betrayal of everything that the Novorossiya Militiamen fought and died for. The betrayal of Novorossiya itself, because, based on the text of this agreement, there is no place envisioned for Novorossiya, nor for the Militia and nor even for any "special status" for the People's Republics.

All that this so-called ceasefire agreement provides for is a temporary status of local self-government in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions. Even that is conditional on the complete elimination of the Militia and the release of all Ukrainian prisoners of war; moreover, the Militiamen are obliged not only to lay down arms, but also to leave the territory of Ukraine. In return, Ukraine promises amnesty to the parties to the conflict, a national dialogue, and certain measures aimed at improving the humanitarian situation in the Donbass. The LPR and the DPR are not even mentioned in the text of the agreement, and their representatives have signed it without any titles or ranks.

Independence and statehood? Novorossiya? A temporary special status in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions - here is all you have of independent Novorossiya. Here is all your freedom and sovereignty. You can write out these words a thousand times, print them on paper, and then shove them deep down your throat. In any event, death by strangulation is better than death through shame. Ukraine does not even intend to give autonomy to the People's Republics. She did not even deign to mention these very Republics in the agreement. Temporary self-government in certain areas - that is the extent of Ukrainian generosity for the rebellious Donbass.