The US Justice Department on Monday filed criminal charges against five Chinese army officers, claiming that they helped Chinese firms steal business information on US companies and that all of them came from Unit 61398 of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. Since February last year, the US government has been accusing the same unit of theft of US trade secrets.

The Department of Justice issued "wanted" posters for the officers with their photos. The Wall Street Journal stated in an article "the indictment may act instead as a public effort to name and shame the suspects."

The 48-page indictment providing details of the officers looks "real." Nevertheless, the specific country that made the allegations is the one that spies both home and abroad with the PRISM program of the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed by Edward Snowden, former NSA contractor. Washington was condemned by international public opinion and therefore its pretentious accusation against Chinese army officers is ridiculous.

The US government's claims that Chinese army officers have gathered US business intelligence in an organized way are beyond our imagination. It's fresh to us that Chinese military and civil companies have such a close relationship.

Perhaps all countries believe the US is the No.1 intelligence power. It has been taking bold steps in cyber espionage, as was shown by Snowden. Washington has also helped the rest of the world comprehend the meaning of "intelligence superpower" by not only collecting overseas information but also playing the victim role.

It's not really news, but it still amazes me: for two days in a row now, Jen Psaki, speaking for the regime in Washington, has declared that the USA has doubts about the real affiliation of the Russian journalists working for the Russian news outlet LifeNews. Even though the professional record of these journalists is in the public domain and very well known (they have worked for many years, including abroad), Mrs Psaki believes it is possible that they were spies. Ditto for the reporters of Russia Today which are still being held incommunicado.

Also in the news, the house of Oleg Tsarev has finally been burned.

I say 'finally', because:

1) The oligarch-mobster Kolomoisky had promised that to Tsarev
2) Tsarev had predicted that too
3) The house next to Tsarev had already been torched by mistake


I suppose that Mrs Psaki will speak of a "natural fire", or "spontaneous combustion" or even an "operation of Russian special forces" and threaten Russia with more sanctions.

As for the Western media, it couldn't care less. Just like when Uncle Sam bombed the TV station in Belgrade. After all, anybody opposing the AngloZionist Empire is a) a propagandist and b) subhuman.

The Security Council of Russia and the Committee for National Security and Defence of Cuba signed a memorandum on cooperation in Moscow on Wednesday and agreed to set up a joint working group, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolay Patrushev said at a joint meeting.

Yesterday, a Cuban delegation headed by special spokesman for the chairman of the Council of Ministers and the State Council of Cuba Alejandro Castro Espin arrived in Moscow and had a meeting with the leaders of the Investigative Committee of Russia.

Patrushev said that the situation in the world is changing fast, so now Russia and Cuba will have an opportunity to respond to the events in a more rapid manner.

A secret cable released by Wikileaks on Tuesday revealed that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Washington as far back as 2008 that US-EU-NATO meddling in Ukraine could split the country in two.

"Following a muted first reaction to Ukraine's intent to seek a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) at the Bucharest summit (ref A), Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat," said the 2008 cable classified by William Burns, than US Ambassador to Moscow and currently the US Deputy Secretary of State.

"NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains 'an emotional and neuralgic' issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene," the cable said.

Prince Charles has sensationally likened Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.

In a withering verdict on the actions of the Russian president in Ukraine, he told a woman who lost relatives in the Nazi Holocaust: 'And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler.'

The prince's extraordinary intervention is certain to cause international controversy.

It is likely to be seen as a criticism of the West for failing to confront Mr Putin over his seizure of Crimea. The annexation was the first by a major power in Europe since 1945.

Observers have compared the crisis in Ukraine with Hitler's takeovers of Czechoslovakia and Poland.

They have pointed to the similar use of disguised special forces to stir up tensions in disputed areas.


Charles, who is scheduled to meet Mr Putin at the D-Day commemorations in France on June 6, made his well-intentioned but unguarded comment during a visit to the Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The Russian Lower House calls the detention of Russian reporters in Ukraine a crime against the freedom of speech, and urges international journalist groups and human rights organizations to denounce the Kiev authorities.

An official State Duma motion on the holding of Russia's Lifenews journalists Marat Saichenko and Oleg Sidyakin has been prepared by the majority United Russia caucus. It was supported and jointly drafted by all four parliamentary factions.

It was passed unanimously on Wednesday afternoon.

The document reads that the reporters detained in Ukraine and charged with terrorism fell victim to a provocation and should be released immediately.

China on Tuesday warned the United States was jeopardizing military ties by charging five Chinese officers with cyberspying and tried to turn the tables on Washington by calling it "the biggest attacker of China's cyberspace."

China announced it was suspending cooperation with the United States in a joint cybersecurity task force over Monday's charges that officers stole trade secrets from major American companies. The Foreign Ministry demanded Washington withdraw the indictment.

The testy exchange marked an escalation in tensions over U.S. complaints that China's military uses its cyber warfare skills to steal foreign trade secrets to help the country's vast state-owned industrial sector. A U.S. security firm, Mandiant, said last year it traced attacks on American and other companies to a military unit in Shanghai.

The charges are the biggest challenge to relations since a meeting last summer between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, in Sunnylands, California.

Ties already were under strain due to conflicts over what Washington says are provocative Chinese moves to assert claims over disputed areas of the East and South China Seas. Beijing complains the Obama administration's effort to shift foreign policy emphasis toward Asia and expand its military presence in the region is emboldening Japan and other neighbors and fueling tension.

Beijing has denied conducting commercial spying and said it is a victim of computer hacking, but has given little indication it investigates foreign complaints.

China has accused the United States of "hypocrisy" and "double standards" following its decision to charge five Chinese army officers with cybertheft against major American businesses.

The Foreign Ministry in Beijing even took the step of summoning U.S. Ambassador Max Baucus late Monday, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported, as tensions between the two countries threatened to escalate into a full-scale diplomatic incident.

Earlier Monday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the men, all members of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), "maintained unauthorized access to victim computers to steal information from these entities that would be useful" to the victims' competitors in China.

Holder said some of the "victims" included U.S. Steel Corp., Westinghouse, Alcoa, Allegheny Technologies, the United Steel Workers Union and SolarWorld.

Former General Kalifa Hafter is leading a coup against the Libyan government.

After Islamist terrorists did NATO's dirty work, they are fighting over the spoils. Enter CIA-asset General Kalifer Hafter.

General Haftar has been in the pocket of the US via the CIA since his traitorous defection during the Libyan/Chadian conflict in the 70's and 80's. He defected and actually moved to the US and lived in and near Langley Virginia for years. It is a well known fact that he was working with the CIA.

So the ultimate politico-economic-media earthquake of the young 21st century remains the (poisonous) gift that keeps on giving. What a raw nerve Abel Ferrara, of King of New York and Bad Lieutenant fame, has now been able to strike.

An "outraged" Dominique Strauss-Kahn, aka DSK, is going to sue the producers of Welcome to New York, the movie inspired by the epic 2011 scandal that effectively terminated his career as head of the International Monetary Fund and possible future president of France.

The beauty of it is that Ferrara's soft porn spectacular is no more than a "fictionalized version"; "Devereaux" (Gerard Depardieu) stands for fallen Master of the Universe DSK and "Simone" (Jacqueline Bisset) for his multi-millionairess wife Anne Sinclair. Still, DSK's lawyerly bunch has been adamant in reminding Ferrara that their client was duly cleared by the US justice system of the charge of sexual aggression on a Guinean employee of the Sofitel New York in 2011.

DSK's former wife Sinclair, for her part, is publicly "vomiting" her "disgust" for Ferrara's alleged "anti-Semitism" (too much of a stretch) and misogyny (more plausible). Yet she won't sue. As even the Mars rover knows, the whole judicial bordello was confidentially settled by the end of 2012.

Gotta love the current hysteria-cum-PR blitz though - which somewhat mirrored the real thing back in 2011. (See Sex, power and American justice, Asia Times Online, May 19, 2011.) Welcome to New York had its mega-hyped world premiere on the margins of the Cannes Film Festival this past Saturday - under a tent on Nikki Beach, in front of the legendary Carlton, followed by a Depardieu press conference where he even quoted Shakespeare.

The shenanigans also featured a good, old-fashioned newspaper war. Le Monde got the scoop, watching the movie ahead of anyone else (and they loved it). Liberation hated it. And Le Figaro, not to be outdone, denounced "nauseous anti-Semitism"; Simone shows her Anne Sinclair avatar is shown to be an obsessive power woman, actively helping the state of Israel "with devotion and love" and coming from a family that made a dodgy fortune during World War II (one of Deveraux/Depardieu's best lines is "1945 was a good year").

Real life, meanwhile, is now sweet again for the former power couple. Sinclair is back in the limelight editing the French branch of the Huffington Post. And DSK showed up a few days ago on France 2 network pontificating about politics and economics.