In general, over the last several decades the world has experienced an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. The opening up of relations with China and the "end of the Cold War" resulted in an extended period of cooperation between east and west that was truly unique in the annals of history. But now things are shifting.

The civil war in Ukraine and the crash of MH17 have created an enormous amount of tension between the United States and Russia, and many analysts believe that relations between the two superpowers are now even worse than they were during the end of the Cold War era. In addition, the indictment of five PLA officers for cyber espionage and sharp disagreements over China's territorial claims in the South China Sea (among other issues) have caused U.S. relations with China to dip to their lowest point since at least 1989.

So could the emerging division between the east and the west ultimately plunge us into a period of global chaos? And what would that mean for the world economy?

For as long as most Americans can remember, the U.S. dollar and the U.S. financial system have been overwhelmingly dominant. But now the powers of the east appear to be determined to break this monopoly.

Four of the BRICS nations (China, Russia, India and Brazil) are on the list of the top ten biggest economies on the planet, and they are starting to make moves to become much less dependent on the U.S.-centered financial system of the western world.

Earlier, when we commented in the abnormality in the flight path of flight MH-17 we said that "perhaps before coming to "certain" conclusion about the involvement of this rebel or that, the key questions one should ask before casting blame, is why did the pilot divert from his usual flight plan, why did he fly above restricted airspace, and just what, if any instructions, did Kiev air control give the pilot in the minutes before the tragic explosion?"

The simple answer would have come if Ukraine had merely released the Air Traffic Control recording from the tower and flight MH 17, something Malaysia did in the aftermath of the disappearance of flight MH 370, which at last check has still not been uncovered.

It now appears that answer will not be forthcoming because as the BBC reports "Ukraine's SBU security service has confiscated recordings of conversations between Ukrainian air traffic control officers and the crew of the doomed airliner, a source in Kiev has told Interfax news agency."

What happens to the recordings next is completely unknown. What is known is that any hope of getting an undoctored explanation why the plane flew as it did, or what the pilots may have seen or said in the moments before the explosion, is forever gone.

Why hasn't Washington joined Russian President Putin in calling for an objective, non-politicized international investigation by experts of the case of the Malaysian jetliner?

The Russian government continues to release facts, including satellite photos showing the presence of Ukrainian Buk anti-aircraft missiles in locations from which the airliner could have been brought down by the missile system and documentation that a Ukrainian SU-25 fighter jet rapidly approached the Malaysian airliner prior to its downing. The head of the Operations Directorate of Russian military headquarters said at a Moscow press conference today (July 21) that the presence of the Ukrainian military jet is confirmed by the Rostov monitoring center.

The Russian Defense Ministry pointed out that at the moment of destruction of MH-17 an American satellite was flying over the area. The Russian government urges Washington to make available the photos and data captured by the satellite.

President Putin has repeatedly stressed that the investigation of MH-17 requires "a fully representative group of experts to be working at the site under the guidance of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)." Putin's call for an independent expert examination by ICAO does not sound like a person with anything to hide.

Turning to Washington Putin stated: "In the meantime, no one [not even the "exceptional nation"] has the right to use this tragedy to achieve their narrowly selfish political goals."

Putin reminded Washington: "We repeatedly called upon all conflicting sides to stop the bloodshed immediately and to sit down at the negotiating table. I can say with confidence that if military operations were not resumed [by Kiev] on June 28 in eastern Ukraine, this tragedy wouldn't have happened."

What is the American response?

Lies and insinuations.

Russia's Defence Ministry on Monday challenged accusations pro-Russian rebels were to blame for shooting down a Malaysian airliner and asked the United States to produce satellite images to support its assertions.

At a briefing in which generals used flashing radar images on big screens in a state-of-the-art conference room, the ministry said a Ukrainian fighter jet had tracked the airliner despite Kiev's assertions that no aircraft were nearby.

The ministry also denied supplying the separatists in east Ukraine with SA-11 Buk anti-aircraft missile systems, known as "Gadfly" in NATO, or "any other weapons".

The hi-tech presentation appeared a direct response to video and audio recordings used by Ukrainian security officials to back up their accusations of Russian and rebel involvement - recordings the ministry's comments suggested were fabricated.

"Russian air space control systems detected a Ukrainian Air Force plane, presumably an SU-25 (fighter jet), scrambling in the direction of the Malaysian Boeing ... The distance of the SU-25 plane from the Boeing was from 3 to 5 kilometres (2 to 3 miles)," Air Force Lieutenant-General Igor Makushev said.

"Earlier, Ukrainian officials said that on the day of the Boeing 777 crash there were no military aircraft in the region - as you can see this does not appear to be true."

Another officer, Lieutenant-General Andrei Kartopolov, said that, "whether it is a coincidence or not", a U.S. satellite had been monitoring the area at the time.

"We also have some questions for our U.S. partners," he said. "According to the U.S. declarations, they have satellite images that confirm the missile was launched by the rebels. But nobody has seen these images." "If the American side has pictures from this satellite, then they should show the international community."

It used to be that blaming America for crisis abroad was largely the province of liberals. That folk wisdom appears to be changing - just ask Ron Paul. In the days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the former House member has been quick to attack the West and President Obama for pointing any fingers in the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"Just days after the tragic crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern Ukraine, Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin, they said," Ron Paul wrote in an editorial Sunday. "President Obama held a press conference to claim - even before an investigation - that it was pro-Russian rebels in the region who were responsible. His ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, did the same at the U.N. Security Council - just one day after the crash!"

Paul's argument, which he first made in a Friday television appearance, was quickly picked up by the Kremlin-funded English language outlet Russia Today. And on Monday, the Permanent Mission of Russia to NATO, a group tasked with facilitating cooperation between Russia and NATO, tweeted out his column.

It's easy to see why they liked the piece. Politically, it's a much sounder line of argument for protecting Russia from blame than what's being reported on Russian TV (much of which is funded by the Kremlin), where conspiracies theories abound. One report promotes the idea that the airliner was already full of corpses when it took off from Amsterdam. Another claims the tragedy was somehow mysteriously the result of the Ukrainian military confusing MH17 for Putin's presidential plane.

The early bird gets the worm and someone like US president Barack Obama who grew up in the tropics in Hawaii and Indonesia would know it far better than his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin from Leningrad. The alacrity with which Obama scrambled to take early lead in the propaganda war over Moscow on Ukraine almost makes it appear he was expecting such a horrendous tragedy to happen. So far he has had no phone conversation with Putin - not even to ascertain some facts first.

That is, unlike Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and the two most affected statesmen here in the tragedy of the ill-fated Malaysian plane - Dutch prime minister Mark Rutt and Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak. Rutt, in fact, already twice discussed the tragedy with Putin and they have agreed on the latter's suggestion for an "independent, open and fair investigation" into the tragic event in Donetsk by the International Civil Aviation Organization with the participation of "all the parties concerned", and pending that, to demand "an immediate and unconditional ceasefire" in eastern Ukraine.

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says.

Some of the controversial "sting" operations "were proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.

The lengthy report, released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system's ability to respect civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots.

"In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act," the report alleges.

"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else." - Author Tom Clancy

Call it what you will - taxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures, foreclosures, etc. - but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is theft.

We're operating in a topsy-turvy Sherwood Forest where instead of Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves stealing from the rich to feed the poor, you've got the government and its merry band of corporate thieves stealing from the poor to fatten the wallets of the rich. In this way, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. All the while, the American Dream of peace, prosperity, and liberty has turned into a nightmare of endless wars, debilitating debt, and outright tyranny.

What Americans don't seem to comprehend is that if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, without your having much say about it, you have no true rights. You're nothing more than a serf or a slave.

In this way, the police state with all of its trappings - from surveillance cameras, militarized police, SWAT team raids, truancy and zero tolerance policies, asset forfeiture laws, privatized prisons and red light cameras to Sting Ray guns, fusion centers, drones, black boxes, hollow-point bullets, detention centers, speed traps and abundance of laws criminalizing otherwise legitimate conduct - is little more than a front for a high-dollar covert operation aimed at laundering as much money as possible through government agencies and into the bank accounts of corporations.

The rationalizations for the American police state are many. There's the so-called threat of terrorism, the ongoing Drug War, the influx of illegal immigrants, the threat of civil unrest in the face of economic collapse, etc. However, these rationalizations are merely excuses for the growth of a government behemoth, one which works hand in hand with corporations to profit from a society kept under lockdown and in fear at all times.

In a September 2006 article for The Electronic Intifada, I defined the Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as an incremental genocide.

Israel's present assault on Gaza alas indicates that this policy continues unabated. The term is important since it appropriately locates Israel's barbaric action - then and now - within a wider historical context.

This context should be insisted upon, since the Israeli propaganda machine attempts again and again to narrate its policies as out of context and turns the pretext it found for every new wave of destruction into the main justification for another spree of indiscriminate slaughter in the killing fields of Palestine.

The Ukrainian military on Monday renewed its assault on this rebel-held city, even as international investigators in the region were trying to secure the remains of those killed in the shootdown last week of a Malaysia Airlines airliner.


In Washington, President Obama demanded Monday that Russia use its influence to compel pro-Russian separatists to allow the investigators full access to the victims and the crash site.


Noting that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has declared a demilitarized zone around the crash site near the Russian border, Obama said the rebels who control the area are continuing to block an investigation, are removing evidence from the scene and are mishandling the remains of passengers and crew among the 298 people who were killed when the plane was shot down Thursday over eastern Ukraine.