By now even the New York Times is openly talking about the secret Obama Administration strategy of trying to bankrupt Russia by using its oil-bloated Bedouin bosom buddy, Saudi Arabia, to collapse the world price of oil. However, it's beginning to look like the neo-conservative Russia-haters and Cold war wanna-be hawks around Barack Obama may have just shot themselves in their oily foot. As I referred to it in an earlier article, their oil price strategy is basically stupid. Stupid, as all consequences have not been taken into account. Take now the impact on US oil production as prices plummet.

The collapse in US oil prices since September may very soon collapse the US shale oil bubble and tear away the illusion that the United States will surpass Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's largest oil producer. That illusion, fostered by faked resource estimates issued by the US Department of Energy, has been a lynchpin of Obama geopolitical strategy.

Now the financial Ponzi scheme behind the increase of US domestic oil output the past several years is about to evaporate in a cloud of fictitious smoke. The basic economics of shale oil production are being ravaged by the 23% oil price drop since John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah had their secret meeting near the Red Sea in early September to agree on the Saudi oil price war against Russia.

The killing of nine Gaza Freedom Flotilla protesters in 2010 by Israeli forces is "not of sufficient gravity" to come under the ICC's jurisdiction, despite a "reasonable basis" to believe that war crimes were committed, court papers say.

"The information available provides a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes under the Court's jurisdiction have been committed in the context of interception and takeover of the Mavi Marmara by IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) soldiers on 31 May 2010," reads the International Criminal Court document, a copy of which was seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

The 2010 Israeli raid on Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters killed eight Turkish nationals and an American of Turkish origin, as the vessels tried to penetrate the Israeli blockade on Gaza maintained since 2007. The lawsuit against the state of Israel was filed in The Hague in May 2013 on behalf of Turkey's Humanitarian Aid Foundation (IHH) and victim's families, with an authorization from Comoros Islands in which the raided vessel, Mavi Marmara, was registered.

"The evidence of Israeli aggression was presented to the court. The accused include Israeli officials involved in the raid, including the Israeli prime minister, defense minister and the chief of staff of the Israeli military," Ramazan Arıtürk, a lawyer for the victims, told the press at the time.

On November 2, the territory which is under the control of the Donetsk militia is going to hold the elections to the Parliament and the elections of the Head of the Republic. With high probability the first elected leader of the DPR will be Alexander Zaharchenko, combat commander, the current PM of the DPR. Before the war, Zaharchenko was a mining electrician, worked in a mine. His nomination was supported by other militia leaders such as Andrey Purgin and Denis Pushilin. The RR correspondent met Zaharchenko in Donetsk: she not only talked to him about the difference between a commander and an officer, combat brotherhood and high intrigues, but also came under a mortar attack.

In a café

Alexander: If you visit my supreme council and realize that you cannot trust anyone. [He sighs.] It's here, on the corner. The worst thing is that for some people the war is a way of making money, the redistribution of the spheres of influence... My dream ... You asked me what is my dream. [He flicks cigarette ashes.] Yes, I have a dream. Maybe it's stupid. Perhaps you will be laughing. Many people laugh. If I were one of them I'd also laugh at such a dream. But ... I also understand the structure and the economy of Donbass, so I want to improve the level of living of my fellow countrymen so that it was even higher than in Poland. Our land is unique, rich in minerals...

Marina: Donbass showed me miserable villages and miners from makeshift coalmines (kopankas) who...

Alexander: No. [He is lighting a cigarette, interrupting.] Let's not compare mines and kopankas. There are mines and there are kopankas. So, descending into a kopanka is degrading for a miner. My father thirty years worked in a mine. I have a year and a half of the underground service. But as a professional miner, my Dad would never go down in a kopanka. Going down there was beneath his dignity.

Marina: Why?

Alexander: A mine is a man's job. Kopanka is just a way of extraction of coal from the earth.

Marina: Do you remember your first descending into a mine?

Alexander: Yes, I remember. And will never forget. Despite my family are miners and they always talked about mines, when I was descending, I knew what awaits me there, but it was ... crazy.

Marina: Scary?

Alexander: No. It was interesting. I was not scared. I was scared only twice: it can be scary at the time of [gas] emissions or when the trolley has slipped from the rails and rushes towards you, while you are standing in its way. But all of this is not as bad as what I see here every day.

Marina: What do you see?

Alexander: Abkhazian [a nickname] has just come, the commander of the International Brigade. In yesterday's battle he had the three-hundreds [injured soldiers]. One of them lost his hand. He is disabled now. I saw him today [looks at the wrist, compresses his fingers]. I also had my hand nearly torn off. Maybe it's not so bad. Terrible is when the whole arm is torn off. Or when you are struck in the head by shrapnel.

Marina: Haven't you got used to losses?

Alexander: We can get used to the number of those killed. For you, six killed people who were found in the grave was a tragedy. And here we do not understand why you consider those six a tragedy (there was a broad discussion in the Russian press and on the diplomatic level burials found in the territory of the DPR. - Russian Reporter), when dozens die here every day. Why those six were so special for the journalists? Why?

Marina: Why do you think?

Alexander: Some of the answers that come to my mind... I was even afraid to articulate them. When people are killed every day, it becomes statistics. And when that pregnant woman was found in a grave ... and it coincided with the specific political moments ... And before that occurrence, those moments simply didn't overlap. Or some cosmic rays did not converge at the right point and so those deaths were not interesting ... But we here have quite a different attitude to death. Do you know who understands us? The miners, for example, from Vorkuta. Kuzbass will understand us. Every day I was going down into the mine, and my brother was going up. When I was going up, my brother was going down. My mother and wife were waiting. We all understand that we can never see the descended one again.

Marina: Can a person constantly worry all through those long hours of his shift?

Alexander: No. But death, the blunted awareness of it, is always with us. The thought of death sits in each miner and his family.

Marina: This thought, when death finally comes, does it help you to cope with the pain?

Alexander: No. It hurts anyway. But the thought of death is always there and never goes away.

Marina: If it hurts anyway, what's the point of this thought?

Alexander: It gives us strength. We become stronger when we prepare ourselves for the time when one of us does not come back. Why the battlefields didn't break us, as it happened with Kharkov and Odessa? For Odessa the incident was a shock, and they froze. But we were ready to die, and for us the events became a motivation for uprising. You see, death... it is important how you treat it. What are you dying for? If you know what for, then you're ready to give your life away.

I don't know if you have noticed this, but the usual crowd of Putin bashers is being uncharacteristically quiet these days, especially the ones I call the "hurray patriots". Some of their blogs have simply been closed, others are apparently frozen, and those still minimally active are getting very few visitors (nope, I shall not name them here, both on principle and in order not to direct any traffic towards these cesspools). They are all apparently getting tired of chanting their favorite mantras ("Putin has sold out!", "Putin has betrayed Novorussia!", "Putin is a puppet of the oligarchs!", etc.). The reason for that sudden drop in energy is simple: the Putin bashers have just suffered a series of painful political defeats. Let's look at them one by one:

For months the Western-created monster ISIS has been on a killing spree, murdering Shia Muslims, Kurds and Christians left and right. Sunni Muslims are also not exempt from the Sunni militants' kill list. Last week, one of Iraq's worst massacres in recent years occurred when ISIS launched a bloody attack on the Sunni Albu Nimr tribe in the western province of Anbar. Altogether, ISIS executed more than 300 Sunnis, including children and women. Most of the victims' bodies were dumped in a well and in a mass grave near the city of Ramadi, while others were found near the town of Hit.

The Albu Nimr tribesmen, along with Iraqi forces, had been fighting off ISIS for weeks, until the tribesmen withdrew when they began to run out of ammunition, food, and fuel. ISIS took this opportunity to attack and killed as many people left behind as they could.

Sheikh Naeem al-Ga'oud, one of the leaders of the Albu Nimr tribe, told Reuters that the tribe received no help from the Iraqi central government when arms or assistance was repeatedly requested. And what is more, security operations command officials in Anbar and civilians had said they had not heard or witnessed any airstrikes that were supposedly ordered by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Sunday, in response to the ISIS massacre. It makes one wonder just how high getting rid of ISIS and protecting Iraqi citizens is on the Iraqi government's agenda.

Following a disappointing Election Day for his Democratic Party, President Barack Obama said he may sign an executive order on immigration reform so the Republican-controlled Congress can take the issue up on its own.

From the White House on Wednesday afternoon, Pres. Obama told reporters he's willing to authorize an immigration reform bill himself in order to kick-start lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate to work on their own solution.

"If in fact the Republican leadership wants to see an immigration bill passed, they now have the capacity to pass it," Obama said this week hours after the GOP secured a majority in both the House and Senate.

Absence any immediate effort, however, Pres. Obama said he'll sign an executive order on immigration before the end of the year. At that point, he said, Congress will be hard pressed to come up with their own bill to supersede the administration's action.

"I have consistently said that it is my profound preference and interest to see act ask on a comprehensive immigration reform bill," Obama said, the likes of which he hopes would strength the United States' southern border but also put in place a framework for undocumented aliens to "get in the back of the line" and eventually gain citizenship.

Pres. Obama has sought immigration reform since his first term, but efforts during the last six years have been stalled in Congress, largely thanks to Republican Party lawmakers. Now with the GOP gaining control of both the House and Senate after this week's midterm elections, Obama said during Wednesday's presser that while he believes House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was sincere about achieving reform in recent months, the White House will write its own rules in lieu of waiting for the incoming Congress to accomplish as much.

George Bush won statewide office in Texas again. But he's not the former president, and he's not the governor-elect. George Prescott Bush will become the next state land commissioner after a landslide victory.

Bush won the office with nearly 60 percent of the vote, AFP reported. The Texas land commissioner, "oversees matters that range from state lands and coastal issues to veterans affairs," according to the official website ‒ including lucrative mineral rights for oil and gas in the state. The money is used to fund public schools in the Lone Star State.

"Our top job here at the General Land Office is to earn money for the school kids of Texas," outgoing Commissioner Jerry Patterson said in a statement last month, announcing that the oil boom had helped pump a record $1 billion into the fund during fiscal 2014, according to the Texas Tribune.

The 38-year-old is the nephew of former President George W. Bush, grandson of ex-President George H. W. Bush and son of potential presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush. (George P. told ABC News last month that he believes his father will "more than likely" run for president in 2016.)

The European Union and the euro could founder if its members don't stand together against Russia, George Soros said Tuesday in Düsseldorf. George Soros, one of the world's richest men and a tireless defender of oligarchs Central European democracy, warned that the European Union, a mainstay of post-war stability, could dissolve and unravel if the 28-country bloc can't agree on a common response to Russia's aggression in the Ukraine.


Speaking on Tuesday in Düsseldorf at a dinner sponsored by Handelsblatt, Mr. Soros, an 84-year-old Hungarian-American who survived the Holocaust and then fled the Soviets, said the future of the European alliance of nations stretching from Ireland to Estonia could hang in the balance.


Russia this year seized the Crimean peninsula from the Ukraine and is now arming and supporting a separatist movement in the eastern part of the country, an action which has been met with economic sanctions from the United States and the European Union.


The sanctions have hurt Russian and European trade, and have led to a slowdown of economic growth on the Continent. In Germany, some business and political leaders are now calling on political leaders to abandon the E.U. sanctions.

In other parts of Europe, the call is growing louder for a softer line with Russia.

"I think the real question is whether the European Union will break up over Russia," Mr. Soros told 400 people at a dinner held in a Düsseldorf museum by the German financial publishing group. "The E.U. is under threat from Russia... The E.U. is broken, and it is not functioning."

GMO bans pass in counties in Hawaii and California, while millions in industry spending drown out labeling efforts in Colorado.

Residents of Maui County in Hawaii, frequently referred to as 'GMO Ground Zero,' claimed a victory Tuesday evening when a measure to ban the planting of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) passed with 50.2 percent.

Agribusiness giants Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences, which for decades have run enormous growing and testing operations on the island, spent nearly $8 million dollars to defeat the ban, making it the most expensive campaign in Hawaii's history, according to Honolulu Civil Beat.

Known as the Maui County Genetically Modified Organism Moratorium Initiative, the measure will ban all GMO growth, testing or cultivation in the county until an environmental and public health study is conducted and finds the proposed cultivation practices to be safe and harmless.

Using the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as its justification, the Obama administration has recently given the psychiatric business and pharmaceutical industry a major gift by quietly introducing a behavioral and mental health program in public schools throughout the United States. The maneuver was initially laid out on January 16, 2013 in President Obama's executive policy, Now is the Time: The President's Plan to Protect Our Children and Our Communities by Reducing Gun Violence.
The document is partly devoted to articulating Obama's proposed gun control measures that failed to move gain legislative traction in 2013. Yet an under-reported section of Now is the Time is applied to "making schools safer" and "improving mental health services" for students.[1] While presented by the Obama administration as "commonsense solutions to gun violence," one is left to consider the long range implications of such an initiative, particularly in light of the Affordable Care Act and the psychopharmaceutical complex's never-ending drive to expand its clientele.

On September 22, 2014 Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced $99 million in new grants "to train new mental health providers, help teachers and others recognize mental health issues in youth and connect them to help and increase access to mental health services for young people."[2]

On September 23 the Department of Education announced an additional $70 million in "School Climate Transformation grants." According to the DOE, over half of the funding "will be used to develop, enhance, or expand systems of support for implementing evidence based, multi-tiered behavioral frameworks for improving behavioral outcomes and learning conditions." The goals of such measures include "connecting[ing] children, youths, and families to appropriate services and supports," and "increase[ing] measures of and the ability to respond to mental health issues among school-aged youth."[3]

Both HHS and DOE explicitly cite Obama's Now is the Time declaration as rationale for the new programs. "The administration is committed to increasing access to mental health services to protect the health of children and communities," Secretary Burwell asserts. "If kids don't feel safe, they can't learn," Secretary of Education Arne Duncan similarly remarks. "Through these grants of more than $70 million, we are continuing our commitment to ensure that kids have access to the best learning experience possible."