It doesn't get any more Orwellian than this: Wall Street mega banks crash the U.S. financial system in 2008. Hundreds of thousands of financial industry workers lose their jobs.

Then, beginning late last year, a rash of suspicious deaths start to occur among current and former bank employees.

Next we learn that four of the Wall Street mega banks likely hold over $680 billion face amount of life insurance on their workers, payable to the banks, not the families.

We ask their Federal regulator for the details of this life insurance under a Freedom of Information Act request and we're told the information constitutes "trade secrets."

Poor NATO. Damned Soviets. The benign North Atlantic Treaty Organization has spent two decades "trying to build a partnership" with Russia. But now, "clearly the Russians have declared NATO as an adversary, so we have to begin to view Russia no longer as a partner but as more of an adversary," according to NATO deputy secretary-general Alexander Vershbow, a former US diplomat/Pentagon employee.

The hot lava irony of a Pentagon hack carping about "Russia clearly trying to re-impose hegemony" is enough to put the Vesuvius to shame. But that's only a minor plot twist in NATO The Expandables (the movie).

NATO -- still in the process of being epically humiliated on a daily basis by a bunch of Pashtuns with Kalashnikovs in Afghanistan -- is now considering "new defensive measures" to deter "evil" Russia from "aggression" against NATO members, mostly the Baltic states. And that will mean deployment of "more substantial numbers of allied combat forces to Eastern Europe" -- mostly Poland. Permanently. Or, in Pentagonese, "semi-permanent unit training rotations". As if any doubt remained that Cold War 2.0 is here to stay.

NATO will "debate" the issue -- in its usual muddy waters fashion -- over the summer, and the result will be announced at a meeting in Wales in September, presided by Emperor Barack Obama himself.

Any analyst not embedded in the Pentagonese matrix knows that key European Union powers Germany and France -- which have solid economic and business ties to Russia -- will never buy this new spin for Cold War 2.0. As for other sizable NATO members, they are simply broke, and/or have better (economic) fish to fry at home.

Informed opinion also knows that were Cold War 2.0 to progress, payback will be handsome -- as in, just for starters, Russia simply killing the Northern Distribution Network, which allows NATO's escape route from its sterling performance in Afghanistan.

A car bomb attack in Nigeria's capital city has killed at least 19 people and injured another 60, according to officials.

The blast happened at a police security checkpoint near a bus station late last night in the city of Abuja.

Nobody has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but it bears the hallmarks of radical Islamic group Boko Haram, who set off another blast just yards away last month which killed a further 70 people.

The attack comes just days before the city hosts the World Economic Forum on Africa, which will attract prominent figures from across the globe including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is listed as a speaker.

With less than four weeks to go until the Egyptian presidential election, the country is reeling from four bomb blasts and violent clashes in Alexandria on Friday, officials said.

In Cairo, two separate bombs exploded, killing at least two. The first blast happened at a traffic checkpoint in the Heliopolis district, killing a low-ranking police officer and injuring a security officer and three security conscripts, Ahram Online reported. The second bombing happened late on Friday, when a car exploded on Ramsis Street near a subway station in downtown Cairo.

"A car with no plates exploded, killing its owner. Explosive experts are combing the area to make sure there aren't any explosive devices," an Interior Ministry spokesman told state-run news agency MENA.

Before dawn, two suicide bombings occurred in the Sinai Peninsula. In El-Tur, a town on the main road between the capital and a tourist resort, a suicide bomber blew both himself and a soldier up at the Wady El Tor security checkpoint. The blast also injured three policemen and another soldier, Reuters reported.

• Russia and the West locked in match of wits over eastern Ukraine
• Russia moved thousands of troops to border and is accused of stirring unrest in east Ukraine
• Speck: West must unite to pass severe sanctions on Russian regime
• Speck: Ukrainian government attempt to retake buildings could spark Russian invasion

Russia's seizure of Crimea last month may have unfolded with a lightning quickness, but Vladimir Putin and the West are now engaged in a much slower match of wits on a chessboard stretching across most of eastern Ukraine.


Rather than going for checkmate, both sides now seem content to wait for the other to make a mistake. Putin made a strong first move by placing 40,000 troops on the border -- and separatists, who are not officially linked to Russia, on the ground in Ukraine.

Now Moscow is waiting for the pro-Western government in Kiev to try to retake the parts of the east it has seemingly lost. In Russia's eyes, any such move from the capital would legitimize an overwhelming counterattack -- a re-run of the Georgia crisis in 2008, when President Mikheil Saakashvili lost his nerve, shot first, and prompted a Russian invasion.

Putin's problem is time; he cannot wait forever to strike. Troops cannot remain ready for combat for many months at a time. Separatists in eastern Ukraine are lost without outside support, and may become nervous as time drags on without any glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel.

On the other side of the board are U.S. President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukraine's fledgling government. The biggest challenge for Obama and his German counterpart is to keep a united Western front. They need to uphold a credible threat of massive economic sanctions that could undercut the Kremlin's funding if it doesn't toe the line.

But cracks in Western unity are visible everywhere. Europe may be concerned about Russian aggression in Ukraine, but the continent is dragging its collective feet on taking a more confrontational stance towards Putin.

Around 1,500 supporters of the Kiev authorities, accompanied by aggressive fans of the local football club, Chernomorets, tried to march through the center of the city yesterday chanting "Glory to Ukraine," "Death to enemies," "Knife the Moskals [a derogatory term for Russians]."

Many were wearing the ultra-nationalist Right Sector movement insignia that was last seen in Kiev during the supposedly "peaceful" Maidan protests in February that ousted the democratically elected President Yanukovych and installed a US-selected puppet regime.

As the Right Sector gangs started to drive the anti-coup-installed Kiev government activists back to their camp, many anti-Kiev protesters eventually hid inside the local House of Trade Unions building.

"Women and children were hiding in the Trade Union's building. First the armed men set fire to tents, then they started throwing Molotov cocktails and grenades at the building. We heard shots fired and saw smoke," an eye-witness told RT News

The first floor of the Trade Unions building was soon engulfed in flames. The people inside were trapped.

The result? At least 35 people dead, and images like these:


Another Odessa resident who survived the flames gave this first hand report:

"I was there, in the burning trade union house building. I almost suffocated... the fire brigade was taking an inexcusably long to arrive, about 20 minutes had passed, I guess it was not a coincidence. The absolute absence of the police was no coincidence either. I was helped to escape from the building by people without uniform - apparently they were ordinary civilians. The fire brigade still hadn't arrived.

The only reason there were people in that people in that building was because the "ultras" and other "Ukrainian patriots" were attacking the people from all sides with sticks, stones, chains and Molotov cocktails. There was no other place to go to escape their brutality. The people ran into the building and were trapped. The people I saw in the building were very poorly armed: sticks, bats, plank fragments, that was it. No guns or anything like that. There were many women and old people there also, they had come to downtown Odessa to offer medical help, as a doctor, I was one of them. (I emphasize: there were no military professionals, mercenaries or foreigners!).

Very soon Molotov cocktails were thrown into the window of the building, the corridor caught fire. There was a fire extinguisher, but it was completely useless against the rapidly spreading flames. Eleven of us hid in one of the rooms, everything was pitch black because of the acrid, dense smoke. Everyone dropped to the floor where some breathable air remained. Next to me there were people, groaning and praying, others trying to reach their relatives on the phone and pleading with them to call the fire brigade. At least there was an open window in our room, through which some fresh air came. The situation in the corridor was infinitely worse. We were shouting, screaming for help. None came. Later my relatives told me that either nobody from the fire brigade picked up the phone or the line was continuously busy..

After about twenty minutes a rope was thrown to us, we tied it up to a radiator and the people slowly started to climb down. Ordinary people had climbed up on to the cornices of the building and were helping us to climb down because there was a serious risk of falling. I couldn't see if anybody came down behind me, all I remember was that we heard a mobile phone ringing inside the building behind us, but its owner wasn't answering.

When I reached the ground I was given some water, the same "Maidan supporters" that had started this murderous fire began to harass me, but I managed to escape before more of these "Europe and "Democracy lovers" arrived and started to beat the people who had just narrowly missed being burned alive.

... For the first time in my life I wanted to leave Odessa and Ukraine for good."

US and European "freedom and democracy" has definitely arrived in Ukraine. Anyone who doesn't like must apparently suck it up or go to hell...literally.

Former United States congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul has called on the US to stay out of the intensifying Ukraine conflict, saying it was Western powers that initially stirred unrest there and which continue to incite the tense situation.

On the brink of what he calls a "civil war," Ukraine must be allowed to resolve its differences free of Western forces antagonizing and incentivizing further clashes, Paul said, especially in the nation's east where pro-Russian Ukrainians are moving to protect the area from the Western-backed government in Kiev.

"Western Ukraine right now is being urged on by its Western supporters, meaning its NATO supporters, the European Union, the United States and the IMF (International Monetary Fund)," Paul wrote on his website, ronpaulchannel.com.

Paul said the US and its allies provoked the Ukrainian conflict in the first place, despite what American media outlets and Western leaders claim about Russia's culpability.

"The truth is, the coup of several weeks ago to overthrow the elected leader Viktor Yanukovych was stirred up by the same group: NATO, the European Union, the U.S., and the IMF," he wrote.

In a candid moment, the US Secretary of State reveals the secret of American foreign policy

Oh, the burden of empire! It weighs so heavily on John Kerry's shoulders:

"Secretary of State John Kerry attested Tuesday to the massively complex challenges Washington faces in Ukraine, Russia, Iran and the Middle East, declaring 'it was easier' during the Cold War.

"In a candid moment during a State Department speech, the top US diplomat said changing global power dynamics made a quaint memory of the early East-West stalemate, when American children would 'crouch under our desks at school and practice' safety steps for a possible nuclear attack.

"'During the Cold War... it was easier than it is today - simpler is maybe a way to put it,' Kerry told aid and development experts.

"While Russia has been making efforts to de-escalate and resolve the crisis, the Kiev regime has chosen to launch airstrikes on peaceful residential areas, literally destroying the last hope for preserving the Geneva accords." Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman

"The crisis in Ukraine is not the result of 'Russian aggression,' but of a criminal strategy by the US and its European allies to install a hostile regime on Russia's borders in Ukraine and, ultimately, dismember Russia itself." Johannes Stern, "NATO boosts military build-up against Russia as protests spread in east Ukraine," World Socialist Web Site

Fighting broke out on Friday in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk when Kiev's coup government deployed military helicopters to fire on the city while troops and armored vehicles stormed checkpoints. At the time this article went to press, two helicopters had been shot down killing at least two pilots while one was captured. In an impassioned statement on Russian TV, Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, appealed to allies in the EU to do whatever they could to persuade Ukrainian authorities to call off the operation and stop the violence.

"We are calling on the European capitals, the United States of America to give an assessment of the current events and are of course calling on those carrying out airstrikes on residential areas to...immediately end the punitive operation and any violence against its own people..."

Bob Carr has denied being self-indulgent, a snob or a bigot following attacks from former Labor colleagues over the publication of a diary recounting his 18 months as foreign minister.

Pro-Israel leaders have also dismissed Mr Carr's claims they wielded ''extraordinary influence'' over former prime minister Julia Gillard as ''scurrilous gossip'' and a ''figment of his imagination''.

In his book, Diary of a Foreign Minister, Mr Carr suggests Ms Gillard supported Israel in a controversial United Nations vote on Palestinian recognition because Australian foreign policy had been ''subcontracted'' to Melbourne-based pro-Israel group the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.

The member for Melbourne Ports Michael Danby, who is Jewish and a strong supporter of Israel, told ABC radio: ''No lobby in Australia, I understand, has that kind of influence.