What's wrong with Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson's killing of the unarmed 18-year-old black teenager, Michael Brown, and with a Grand Jury decision not to indict him for that outrageous slaying, is what is wrong with American law enforcement and American "justice" in general.

Both actions were permeated not only with racism, which clearly played a huge rule in both the verdict rendered by a Grand Jury composed of nine whites and only three blacks, and in this tragic police killing by a white cop of a black child, but also by a mentality on the part of police - and apparently by at least a majority of the citizen jurors on a panel evaluating Wilson's actions - that cops are authorities who must be obeyed without question, on pain of death.

Let's recall the most crucial evidence in this killing: According to the New York Times it was two shots into the top of the head by Officer Wilson that killed Brown - shots that multiple witnesses confirm were fired after the unarmed Brown was on his knees, already seriously wounded by four other apparently non-lethal shots to arm, neck and upper right chest, with his hands raised and pleading "Don't shoot." The Times also reports that those shots, apparently fired when Brown's head was leaning forward, or from a position above him, appeared to have been fired "not from close range," a determination based upon an absence of gun powder residue around the area of the entry wounds.

On 25 November, the Washington Post published an opinion piece by Katrina vanden Heuvel titled "Rethinking the cost of Western intervention in Ukraine." It's actually pretty good, which makes it all the more curious. After all, if you follow WaPo, you'd more expect to find headlines such as the following (all culled from the past 2 weeks or so):

• Prove to Mr. Putin that he is not 'invincible'
• Russia unnerves its neighbors
• How the United States can counter the ambitions of Russia and China
• Putin: Speak politely, but carry guns, too
• Putin's combative course
• NATO says Russian military definitely moving into Ukraine

The Post is also one of the soap boxes for arch Russophobe and Putin-baser Masha Gessen. (Masha has a history of getting her facts wrong: she starts from the premise that Putin is evil, then interprets anything and everything as proof of that position.) So what exactly did Heuvel write, and what's really going on here?

When Save the Children chose to bestow the Global Legacy Award on Tony Blair, the charity inadvertently revealed the dark underbelly of NGO activity.

When Tony Blair received the Global Legacy Award last week from Save the Children, an organization dedicated to "transforming children's lives," it seemed like a bad joke to many people. This, after all, was a man who had been willing to use fabricated evidence to launch an illegal war against Iraq during his time as Britain's Prime Minister, a conflict that irrevocably "transformed" the lives of thousands of children by killing them.

These days Blair is advising the new military regime in Egypt and doing a sideline in Saudi oil kickbacks. We don't hear too much about children in either of those countries, but I'm willing to bet that living under military or aristocratic dictatorship isn't too good for the little mites, especially when, as is the case with Saudi Arabia, child marriage is nothing unusual.

Considering this track record, I would think that anyone who has simply refrained from hurting children would be more qualified to receive an award from a charity dedicated to their protection than Tony Blair.

So how did "Teflon Tony" not only get away with murder, but actually get rewarded for it? Did the good folks at Save the Children simply suffer a regrettable overdose of saintliness, deciding to sweep Blair's past transgressions under the rug, and judge him not lest they themselves be judged? It sounds like the kind of misguided, goodness-orgy that an organization dedicated to helping children might be susceptible to. But if your idea of charity is still stuck in the age of rending thy cloak in half to clothe the naked, and dividing thy bread to feed the hungry, think again.

These days "helping" the needy is big business. Much has (rightly) been made of Save the Children's direct connections to Blair: UK Chief Executive Justin Forsyth worked for Tony Blair back when he was Prime Minister, as did Fergus Drake, the charity's UK Director of Programmes. But these two hardly make up the entire decision-making apparatus of the global behemoth that is Save the Children. How did such a disastrous decision slide through the ranks? A quick scan of the current and former occupations of Save the Children's trustees and top staff shows why the idea of rewarding the former PM slipped down their gullet so effortlessly: Barclays Bank, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Xerox, Yahoo, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, American Express, Goldman Sachs, KPMG, Coca-Cola, IKEA...the list goes on.

Are the US, NATO and Russia on a mad spiral leading to war in Europe? Is it inevitable? Far from it.

The US-propelled vassal Petro Poroshenko, currently starring in the oligarch dance in Ukraine this week advanced the proposition that Ukrainians in the near future, after his "reforms", will be asked to vote on whether to join NATO.

Let's be serious here. Some of you may be familiar with the concept of "shatter belt" - territories and peoples that historically have been squeezed between the Germanic Eagle and the Russian Bear.

As we stand, the whole shatter belt - apart from Ukraine and Belarus - has become NATO members. Were Ukraine to become a NATO member in - albeit remote - future, the shatter belt buffer zone would disappear. This means NATO - essentially the US - planted right on Russia's western border.

Washington has just announced that it will be pre-positioning more military vehicles in Europe, to be used in exercises or "potential military operations." This is perfectly in tune with the relentless US "think tank-land" spin that NATO and the US will be "forced" to balance their commitment to security in Eastern Europe against potential Russian "aggression."

As Ukraine, the Baltic States and Poland persist in compounded hysteria about such "aggression," the option of a post-MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) US-Russia nuclear war is now - casually - back on the discussion table. At least there's a countercurrent; strands of informed Americans are wondering why the US should be paying for Europe's defense when European GDP is larger than the US's.

The edge of chaos is the "comfort zone‟ for complex systems. [...] Networks, information technologies, non-linearity, positive feedback, self-organization, emergence, and decentralization are the main characteristics of the Chaoplexic Warfare.

Chaoplexity is "complexity at the edge of chaos"

--Cristina I. Brumar, Ralf D. Fabian, Boldur E. Bărbat; CSITAO Carnap-like Glossary

NATO and BRICS seem to be racing to the finish as fast as they possibly can. Both groups see an intense crisis looming on the horizon but, due to the diametrically opposed strategies of each -- for BRICS it is more or less mutual cooperation, for NATO it is more or less US-led domination via the manipulated crises -- both are heading in completely opposite directions.

Recent developments across the political and economic spectrum continue to confirm that big changes are a-coming down the pike, and humanity is facing two perennial choices in the form of major military and economic forces -- pragmatic cooperation or chaotic destruction.

Escalate the chaos

While the BRICS nations are stockpiling gold and are working their way through critical agreements, NATO is pouring more and more fuel into its various wars across the globe.

Britain is backward, "no longer fit for purpose," and characterized by stagnant politics and inefficient state institutions, Labour's policy review chief Jon Cruddas warned.

In a speech to the Institute for Government, Cruddas said that a sluggish political pool characterized by tired policies risks rendering parties "past their sell-by date" in the UK.

The MP for Dagenham and Rainham will lead the party's policy review as the countdown to the general election ensues. Throughout his address, he argued that average UK citizens feel abandoned by and divorced from government.


Cruddas suggested that Labour has suffered serious damage from the policy blunders of the Blair and Brown administrations.

US airstrikes against ISIL not meant to destroy ISIL

Instead of deterring the radical Islamist group, American airstrikes against them have accomplished two things: they have increased ISIL recruitment while at the same time have destroyed and degraded Syria's infrastructure, murdering innocent Syrian civilians along the way.

FBI Director James Comey told Congress in mid-September, just a week before airstrikes against ISIL expanded from Iraq and into Syria, that, "Support for Islamic State increased after U.S. airstrikes began in Iraq," and, "ISIL's widespread use of social media and growing online support intensified following the commencement of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq."⁽¹⁾ According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a large increase of 6,300 new fighters has been recruited into the group since the US began airstrikes. ⁽²⁾⁽³⁾ This is not surprising given the fact that Islamic extremist groups like ISIL draw their greatest legitimacy among their constituency from either actually fighting, or appearing to fight against the United States.

A month ago, Patrick Cockburn, a leading correspondent on the Middle-East, reported that, "The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama's plan to "degrade and destroy" Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting."⁽⁴⁾

In the end, a nuclear deal with Iran was aborted in Vienna. Is that a hopeful sign? Or should everyone start praying - and running for cover?

The players - Iran and the P5+1 (the five UN permanent members plus Germany) - not only missed the original November 24 deadline; they have now come up with two new deadlines; one on March 1 to reach a hazy "framework agreement", and the second - in theory - on July 1 for the final deal.

The P5+1 and Iran are negotiating under the November 2103 Geneva Joint Plan of Action - which calls for a freeze of some aspects of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, but not all sanctions. After all some of these illegal sanctions have absolutely nothing to do with the Iranian nuclear program, and must be lifted by the US Congress.

How is that for a ridiculous headline? You like it?

Well, it is just a little variation of a BBC headline today:

Nato commander warns Russia could control whole Black Sea

Here is an except from this article:

Russia's top military commander, Gen Valerii Gerasimov, has warned that US "militarization" of the annexed Florida Peninsula could be used to exert control over the whole Gulf of Mexico.

Well, the real excerpt was just slightly different:

Nato's top military commander, Gen Philip Breedlove, has warned that Russian "militarization" of the annexed Crimea Peninsula could be used to exert control over the whole Black Sea.

So is there a difference? Of course not. Except one: American exceptionalism, of course. Come to think of it, there is another difference: the US and NATO just tried to take control of Crimea via the Maidan color revolution whereas Russia did not try to take control of Florida. That, of course, also begs the following question: if the US and NATO suspect that Russia might use the Crimea Peninsula to control the whole of the Black Sea, then would it be most unreasonable to ask what exactly the US and NATO were hoping to achieve had they succeeded in taking over Crimea?

This is, of course, absolutely ridiculous and yet another example of the mind-blowing hypocrisy western corporate media. It goes like this: US in Gulf of Mexico - good. US in Black Sea - also good. Russia in Black Sea - bad. Russia in Gulf of Mexico - unthinkable.

And the worst here is not the imperial hubris and arrogance of the USA, it is the willing subservience of the Europeans to Uncle Sam. They all know it, but they pretend not to notice.

Still, does Gen Breedlove have a point? Oh yes, he sure does. Crimea will, indeed, give Russia total control of the Black Sea and even beyond. Russia will station at the very least one missile cruiser, several ultra-modern diesel attack submarines (ideal for brown and green water operations), supersonic medium range bombers armed with cruise missiles, coastal artillery and cruise missile batteries, fast attack craft, anti-submarine rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, etc. You can think of Crimea as a unsinkable mega-carrier. Kind of like Florida.

US interference in the internal affairs of countries around the world has brought neither peace, nor democracy, said Russia's Deputy Defense Minister. America's double standard experiments in supporting terrorists are provoking further destabilization.

"Think of it, over the last decades the US initiated two-thirds of all military conflicts (worldwide). Call to memory, how it all turned out in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria," Russia's deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said, addressing colleagues from the Southern and Southeast Asian states in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

"Using social and economic difficulties, various ethnical and religious conflicts and under the pretext of spreading democracy, Western political spin masters add populist slogans to the fire of public discontent, provoking mass disturbances," he said. "As a result, a lawful government is taken down, chaos, abuse of power and lawlessness spread, people die, and in some cases a regime favorable to the West is brought into power. Of course, terrorists feel comfortable in such conditions."

Antonov called on the US authorities to "give up double standards in the implementation of counter-terrorist measures" and stop dividing terrorists into good and bad ones.

"No matter what slogans terrorists use - they should remain outlaws," Antonov said, speaking about the current disastrous situations in Syria and Iraq as a vivid example of consequences of such"ineffectual experiments."