There have been times when the CNN host Piers Morgan didn't seem to like America very much - and American audiences have been more than willing to return the favor. Three years after taking over for Larry King, Mr. Morgan has seen the ratings for "Piers Morgan Live" hit some new lows, drawing a fraction of viewers compared with competitors at Fox News and MSNBC.

It's been an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate - the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt - and a CNN audience that is intrinsically provincial. After all, the people who tune into a cable news network are, by their nature, deeply interested in America.

CNN's president, Jeffrey Zucker, has other problems, but none bigger than Mr. Morgan and his plum 9 p.m. time slot. Mr. Morgan said last week that he and Mr. Zucker had been talking about the show's failure to connect and had decided to pull the plug, probably in March.

Crossing an ocean for a replacement for Larry King, who had ratings problems of his own near the end, was probably not a great idea to begin with. For a cable news station like CNN, major stories are like oxygen. When something important or scary happens in America, many of us have an immediate reflex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr. Morgan telling me what it all means, I have a similar reflex to dismiss what he is saying. It is difficult for him to speak credibly on significant American events because, after all, he just got here.

For more than two weeks while Russia hosted the Winter Olympics, President Vladimir Putin did his best to show the world that he and his country have a soft side.

Now the Sochi Games are over, Western governments are concerned the smile will disappear and the gloves come off in Russia's tug-of-war with Europe over the fate of Ukraine.

The circus artists, dancers and flag bearers hardly had time to leave the stadium after the closing ceremony in Sochi before Russia announced it had recalled its ambassador from Ukraine for consultations in Moscow.

Russian state television could not even wait for the end of the Games to launch a scathing attack on the ousted Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovich.

Accusing him of betrayal, presenter Dmitry Kiselyov said: "The consequences are irreversible. Ukraine is one step from a split and probably already beyond the threshold of civil war."

The president has not spoken in public about the fall of Yanukovich, but Kiselyov is a Putin loyalist who has the president's trust. He will soon take over a media organization intended to polish Russia's image.

A synagogue firebombed in eastern Ukraine sustained minor damage.

The firebombs hit the Giymat Rosa Synagogue in Zaporizhia, located 250 miles southeast of Kiev, on Sunday night, according to a report the following day on the news site timenews.in.ua. The website published photos showing traces of a fire on the facade of the synagogue balcony. The synagogue opened in 2012.

A spokesperson for the Zhovtneviy District where the synagogue is located said no one was hurt in the attack and that police were searching for suspects. Officers found the neck of a glass bottle that was used as a Molotov cocktail, according to the Central Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Several Ukrainian media reported erroneously that the attack happened in Kiev. The Ukrainian capital and other cities have seen a wave of violent demonstrations that culminated this weekend with the apparent ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych.

The power of a state is measured by its ability to defend itself and to attack on one or more fronts. In this context, Washington is trying for the first time to show it can overthrow three governments simultaneously: Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela. If it succeeds, no government would be henceforth able to resist it.

Washington, which failed in 2011 to bomb Libya and Syria simultaneously, is now engaged in a new demonstration of its strength: organizing regime change in three states at the same time, in different regions of the world: Syria (CentCom), Ukraine (EuCom) and Venezuela (SouthCom).

To do this, President Obama has mobilized almost the entire National Security Council team.

First, Advisor Susan Rice and Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power. These two women are champions of "democratic" talk. They have for many years specialized in advocating interference in the internal affairs of other countries under the pretext of preventing genocide. But behind this generous rhetoric, they couldn't care less about non-US lives as shown by Ms. Power during the chemical weapons crisis in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. The ambassador, who was aware of the innocence of the Syrian authorities, had gone to Europe with her husband to attend a film festival dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, while her government denounced a crime against humanity, the responsibility for which was placed upon President al Assad.

Several European nations said Tuesday they were suspending assistance to Uganda, a day after the country's president signed a law that could see some homosexuals jailed for life.

Norway, Netherlands and Denmark said they would withhold aid to the Ugandan government in protest against the "draconian law."

On first conviction for so-called homosexual acts, offenders face a 14-year prison sentence. Subsequent convictions for "aggravated homosexuality," which include homosexual acts committed by an HIV-positive person, could bring a penalty of life in prison.

An official at the Norwegian embassy in Kampala said that the measure would immediately affect at least $8 million in aid to Uganda's legal system. Norway extends more than $64 million to Uganda every year. The bulk of western aid has been going directly to the Ugandan government, which would then earmark it for spending in different departments - notably, health, education and the military.

Every time you think the war on terror can't get any weirder, it does.

In the latest manifestation, White House officials are leaking to the news media that they are considering whether to use drone strikes to kill an unnamed American in Pakistan. This behavior is bizarre as a matter of national security: If a terrorist really poses an imminent threat, how exactly does the administration have time to test the political waters before taking him out? But it is the inevitable result of a more fundamental, long-term problem with the U.S.'s use of drone strikes. President Barack Obama's administration has kept secret the legal justification for such strikes on Americans, as well as the internal procedures to be followed in making the decision. The secrecy shrouds the drone program in a basic sense of illegitimacy. No wonder the administration feels it can't just kill our enemies, but needs to send up trial balloons first: The whole program is operating under a bad legal conscience.

The backdrop to the current mess is the fundamental problem of secret legal opinions. In 2013, the Justice Department released a "white paper" -- not, it must be noted, a legal term -- vaguely explaining why it believed that it was constitutional and lawful to kill an American abroad if he or she was a "senior operational leader of al-Qaeda."

The white paper offered a kind of sketch or "framework" based on a secret Office of Legal Counsel memorandum that presumably provides the actual legal arguments on which the government relies in making such a momentous decision. But the memorandum itself has never been declassified: We have no idea what it really says, or whether the white paper accurately summarized its reasoning.

Secret units within the 'Five Eyes" global spying network engage in covert online operations that aim to invade, deceive, and control online communities and individuals through the spread of false information and use of ingenious social-science tactics.

Such teams of highly trained professionals have several main objectives, such as "to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet" and "to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable," The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald reported based on intelligence documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Abby Martin speaks with American University Professor and Author of 'Blowback: The First Full Account of America's Recruitment of Nazis, Chris Simpson, about the cooperation between US intelligence and military agencies and Nazi espionage and propaganda experts in the years following World War II.



Source: RT

Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has unveiled plans to shrink the US Army to its smallest size since before the US entered World War Two. Outlining his budget plan, the Pentagon chief proposed trimming the active-duty Army to 440,000-450,000 personnel, down from 520,000 currently.

Cold War-era Air Force fleets - the U-2 spy plane and the A-10 attack jet - will also be retired. The US defence budget remains higher than during most of the Cold War.

'Difficult decisions ahead'

On Monday, Mr Hagel noted the US military had come under pressure to downsize after two costly foreign wars. "This is a time for reality," he said. "This is a budget that recognises the reality of the magnitude of our fiscal challenges."

Thick smog is the best defence against US laser weapons, a Chinese military chief has declared on national television.

Zhang Zhaozhong, the Navy Major General for the People's Liberation Army drew massive criticism when he made the statement on CCTV's Haixia Liang'an (Cross-Straits) current affairs programme, adding that lasers were "most afraid of smog".

He said: "Under conditions where there is no smog, a laser weapon can fire [at a range of] 10 kilometres. When there's smog, it's only one kilometre. What's the point of making this kind of weapon?

"It only works when the weather is good. The enemy will target you when the weather is bad.