A Pentagon research team is studying the body movements of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other world leaders in order to better predict their actions and guide U.S. policy, Pentagon documents and interviews show.

The "Body Leads" project backed by the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), the think tank reporting to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, uses the principles of movement pattern analysis to predict how leaders will act.

U.S. policymakers are seeking any advantage they can find as they try to anticipate Putin, who in the past week has ordered Russian troops into neighboring Ukraine and laid claim to the Crimea Peninsula. The ensuing crisis has led to U.S. and European sanctions against Russia, spurred weapons and aircraft shipments to Eastern European nations and revived tensions last seen during the height of the Cold War.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has expressed his country's support for efforts by his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to restore "stability" and "security" to neighboring Ukraine.

In a message to the Russian leader, President Assad "expressed..., on behalf of the Syrian people, Syria's solidarity with Putin's efforts to restore security and stability to Ukraine in the face of attempted coups against legitimacy and democracy in favor of radical terrorists," Syria's official news agency SANA reported.

Gerald Celente calls the Western media "presstitutes," an ingenuous term that I often use. Presstitutes sell themselves to Washington for access and government sources and to keep their jobs. Ever since the corrupt Clinton regime permitted the concentration of the US media, there has been no journalistic independence in the United States except for some Internet sites.

Glenn Greenwald points out the independence that RT, a Russian media organization, permits Abby Martin who denounced Russia's alleged invasion of Ukraine, compared to the fates of Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC), both of whom were fired for expressing opposition to the Bush regime's illegal attack on Iraq. The fact that Donahue had NBC's highest rated program did not give him journalistic independence. Anyone who speaks the truth in the American print or TV media or on NPR is immediately fired.

Russia's RT seems actually to believe and observe the values that Americans profess but do not honor.

I agree with Greenwald. You can read his article here. Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT's Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times.

My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative "mainstream media." My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda.

Nine Russian soldiers who were participating in military exercises in Canada have been expelled from the country, as Ottawa continues to denounce Russia's military intervention in Crimea, CTV News has learned.

A government source confirmed that the soldiers were informed Thursday afternoon that they had 24 hours to leave Canada.

Six of the soldiers were in Saint-Jean, Que., where they were leaning English and French. Another two soldiers were participating in a training program at CFB Gagetown, and the ninth soldier was teaching Canadian soldiers Russian in Gatineau, Que.

Panama City - The Venezuelan government ordered Panama's ambassador and three other diplomats at the mission to leave the country within 48 hours, a Panamanian official said Thursday, a day after Caracas broke ties with Panama City.

"We received a note from the foreign ministry of Venezuela that was delivered to our embassy in which it declared four diplomats working in our embassy as 'persona non grata,'" Panama's Deputy Foreign Minister Mayra Arosemena told reporters.


The diplomats are Ambassador Pedro Pereira, charge d'affaires Jaime Serrano and two other embassy officials.

The response of China to the US- and European Union-backed coup in Ukraine, and Russia's subsequent intervention to maintain control over the Crimean peninsula, is being closely monitored by political leaders and strategic analysts around the world. Any decision by Beijing to openly support Moscow's actions would dramatically escalate the global tensions that now exist.

To this point, the Chinese government has engaged in a diplomatic balancing act, refusing to condemn either the pro-Western coup or Russia's response. At a press conference in Beijing on Sunday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Qin Gang stressed "China's long-standing position not to interfere in others' internal affairs" and voiced support for Ukraine's "independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity" - without indicating who China believed had violated it. At a press conference the next day, Gang refused to voice support for Russia's actions, but equally refused to state whether China recognised the legitimacy of the coup-installed government in Kiev or to condemn the Russian incursion into Crimea.

In Russia, the Putin government and loyal media outlets portrayed China's stance as supportive. The Russian foreign ministry declared on Monday that Moscow and Beijing had "broadly coinciding views... in connection to the situation in Ukraine and around it." In the United States, by contrast, the Wall Street Journal highlighted the "noncommittal remarks" coming from the Chinese government.

A politically sinister propaganda offensive is underway in the media to either deny the involvement of fascists in the US-backed coup in Ukraine or present their role as a marginal and insignificant detail.

The New York Times, for example, asserted, "Putin's claim of an immediate threat to Ukrainian Russians is empty," while Britain's Guardian dismissed as a "fancy" claims that events in Crimea were an attempt to "prevent attacks by bands of revolutionary fascists," adding that "the world's media has [not] yet seen or heard from" such forces.

This is an obscene cover-up.

The reality is that, for the first time since 1945, an avowedly anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi party controls key levers of state power in a European capital, courtesy of US and European imperialism. The unelected Ukrainian government, headed by US appointee Arseniy Yatsenyuk, includes no fewer than six ministers from the fascist Svoboda party.

Less than a year ago, the World Jewish Congress called for Svoboda to be banned. But the party's founder and leader,
Oleh Tyahnybok, who has spoken repeatedly of his determination to crush the "Russkie-Yid mafia that controls Ukraine," was feted by US and European Union officials as they prepared last month's coup.

Sevastopol, Ukraine - Drawing on his experiences as a young artillery officer in imperial Russia's military during the Crimean War in 1853-56, Leo Tolstoy described in "Sevastopol Sketches" how a Russian soldier whose leg had been amputated above the knee coped with agonizing pain.

"The chief thing, your honor, is not to think," Tolstoy's amputee remarked. "If you don't think, it is nothing much. It mostly all comes from thinking."

It is advice, however, that virtually nobody in Crimea, particularly here in Sevastopol, shows any sign of heeding. With nearly every other main street named after a Russian military hero or a gruesome battle, its lovely seafront promenade dominated by a "monument to sunken ships" and its central square named after the imperial admiral who commanded Russian forces against French, British and Turkish troops in the 19th century, Sevastopol constantly feeds thoughts of war and its agonies.

Bombarded with reminders of the Crimean War, which involved a near yearlong siege of the city in 1854-55, and World War II, when the city doggedly resisted Nazi forces until finally falling in July 1942, Sevastopol has never stopped thinking about wartime losses - and has never been able to cope with the amputation carried out in 1954 by the Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev.

The self-proclaimed government in Kiev is reportedly planning to cut pensions by 50 percent as part of unprecedented austerity measures to save Ukraine from default. With an "empty treasury", reduction of payments might take place in March.

According to the draft document obtained by Kommersant-Ukraine, social payments will be the first to be reduced.

"The Finance Ministry has prepared a plan for optimizing budget expenditures, which implies budget sequestration is to be in force before the end of March. For this purpose, in particular, it has been proposed to reduce capital costs, eliminate tax schemes and preferences and to cut social benefits, for example, 50 percent of pensions to working pensioners," Kommersant-Ukraine reported.

Ukraine's Ministry of Social Policy reported on December 1, 2013, that an average pension in Ukraine is $160.

The Cornerstones of Eurasia

When Pravy Sektor's Dmitry Yarosh called on the Chechen liberation fighters to join Ukrainian nationalists in global struggle, he accented the North Atlantic's energy politics better than anyone before him. Although Pravy Sektor blamed hackers for the call to arms, we ought to take the connection between the Caucasus and the Crimea extremely seriously.

The US and UK support Chechen moves for independence based on the vision of a "liberated region of the Caspian Sea," which would turn over its vast energy resources to "the global marketplace." This vision has been thwarted by Putin's devastating grip on Chechnya, as well as Moscow's involvement on behalf of Abkhazia and South Ossetia during the Russia-Georgia War of 2008. The outcome of the Kremlin's maneuvers has secured Russia's energy corridor from Central Asia into Europe through Ukraine. Hence, Pravy Sektor's manifesto for cross-cutting resistance in infrastructural cornerstones appears to connect North Atlantic's interests while also exposing the general strategy of provoking separatism in order to overthrow competing circles of influence.

It seems surprising, then, that Yarosh left out the rebels in that other Western infrastructural cornerstone - Syria - in his sabre rattling. Syria under Assad seeks to become a "four seas" hub, uniting the Caspian, Black Sea, Persian Gulf, and Mediterranean. Currently, Russia dominates the Caspian Sea, and holds the weight of power in the Black Sea after grabbing the Crimea. With Assad's Syria in place, the Kremlin has a strong foothold in the Mediterranean as well.

As in Chechnya and Ukraine, the US and allies such as Turkey support militants in Syria for a variety of reasons - not least of all, to pry hegemony from China and Russia. In the case of Syria, a gas pipeline from Iran through Iraq stands to generate capital and sovereignty for those powers that the US seeks to oppress. It also connects the Persian Gulf to Russia's encircling network. Critical within this network is also the nearly-concluded Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline, which could be linked up to the Russia-China Central Asian pipeline labyrinth that spans more than 6,500-miles.