Moscow condemns efforts to overthrow Syria's political regime using terrorist groups in the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Russia condemns the use of extremist groups in efforts to change the regime [in Syria]," Lavrov said, at a news conference on Wednesday in Sochi, after meeting his Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem.

The foreign minister called the US refusal to compromise with Syrian authorities "openly ideology-driven," saying that Syria's nuclear disarmament confirms the country's cooperation internationally.

Saying the fight against terrorism should be conducted without "double standards," the minister said strikes on the Islamic State forces without approval from Damascus violated international laws.

"In relation to this, questions to the US-led coalition arise, about who perform strikes on Islamic State without agreement with Damascus," said Lavrov.

Russia will keep advising Syria and other countries under terrorist threat on their military efficiency, Lavrov added, saying the fight against growing extremist forces in the Middle East is the international community's top priority.

Moscow has also asked the EU and UN to address the issue of terrorists selling oil from the occupied regions. Lavrov said that information regarding terrorists stealing oil from territories in Syria and Iraq continues to surface, and Russia is unimpressed with UN investigations into the matter.

The minister also criticized the EU decision to suspend its embargo on buying oil from Libya, saying there is still a region in the oil producing country controlled by terrorists.

Russia threatens no one and will stay aloof from geopolitical intrigues, however strongly anyone may wish to pull the country into them, said Russia's President Vladimir Putin, addressing a meeting on the development of the armed forces.

"We are not threatening anyone and are not planning to get involved in any geopolitical games, intrigues and especially conflicts, no matter who would want to pull us into them," Putin said at a meeting with military chiefs in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday.

The president stressed the importance of ensuring the sovereignty and integrity of Russia and its allies. He also said that an "integrated approach and the unification of all public authorities is needed in solving issues concerning national defense."

He noted that in recent years, Russia has completed the formation of an integral system of military planning, updated military management, and in January last year a new defense plan was approved.

On Monday, Putin met Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and head of GHQ Valery Gerasimov to discuss military development plans. The top officials talked about the formation of military units in Crimea, and a new unified strategic command in the Arctic based on Russia's Northern fleet from December 1.

The Swiss will vote on a referendum on November 30th that would ban the Swiss National Bank (SNB) from selling current and future gold reserves, repatriate foreign stored gold holdings to Switzerland, and mandate that gold must comprise a minimum of 20% of central bank assets. The SNB does not usually comment on political referendums. However, in this case it has done so quite vocally.

Why has the central bank decided to step into the political fray and oppose this initiative? What are its concerns? Are they valid or motivated by other factors?

The SNB's primary objections to the gold initiative are three fold.

1. It claims that gold is "one of the most volatile and riskiest investments",
2. that a 20% gold requirement will lower the "distributions to the confederation and the cantons" since gold does not pay interest like bonds and dividend paying stocks, and
3. that the 20% gold holding requirement will interfere with its ability to conduct monetary policy and complicate efforts to maintain "the minimum exchange rate", the "temporary" policy of pegging the Swiss franc (CHF) to the Euro (EUR) it initiated in 2011 and continues to enforce to this day.

The first two concerns can quickly be addressed and discounted. Gold is indeed a volatile asset at times but so are bonds and equities. In recent years Greek, Spanish, Italian, Irish and other European bonds have been far more volatile than gold. The SMI, the Swiss stock index, lost over 50% of its value on two separate occasions between 2000 and 2009 while gold steadily rose at an annual rate of 8.50% over the same period.

Regarding the second concern, the distribution of proceeds derived from financial speculation and paid to the confederation and cantons, one has to question whether or not it is really appropriate for the SNB to re-brand itself as a hedge fund instead of remaining focused on its core responsibilities as a central bank.

Political analyst Andrew Korybko says that the United States is seeking to form a group of anti-Russian states in eastern Europe.

Korybko made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Monday about a report that the US military would keep forces in Poland and other Baltic states through 2015 "to deter Russian aggression."

"There are going to be US Army forces here in Lithuania as well as Estonia and Latvia and Poland for as long as it's required to deter Russian aggression," Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of US Army Europe, said on Sunday.


Korybko said that the US "wants to create a type of cordon of anti-Russian states" in the region.

"The United States hopes to integrate a lot of Ukraine into what I term shadow NATO," he said, adding that Ukraine can have "a lot of military support" with this strategy.

The US wants "to have this military support not only on a NATO and Ukraine basis but also on a bilateral basis," he added.

He went on to say the US would not leave a country once it occupies it.

"Once the United States enters a country with their forces, it's very very unlikely they're going to leave or if they leave, it's not going to happen anywhere in a short term, they're going to leave after a long term," he said.


The US accuses Russia of arming troops fighting alongside pro-Russian forces in eastern Ukraine. Moscow denies any involvement in the fighting.

The United States prison system, not only a machine for mass incarceration, but a machine for modernized slave labor. The United States has 5% of the worlds population, yet we have 25% of the worlds prison population. Land of the free right?

It would seem the statistics say otherwise, since the official drug war president Nixon announced in the 70′s, our prison population has grown over 700%! Recent estimates put our prison population to well over 2.4 million inmates. 50% of the federal prison inmates are for non violent drug offenses. All the while 20% of state prison inmates are drug related.
Is this making Americans safer, or is there an entire industry making money off of imprisoning human beings? It's estimated that nearly 1 million convicts fill the ranks of Unicor. Unicor being the government owned corporation that handles the labor of inmates! It's no doubt the federal government see's an opportunity in prison labor, as they have used Unicor to have $100 million worth of military uniforms made for as little as $2 an hour. The government has no problem with using prison labor, and Unicor is estimated at raking in over $900 million a year.

Does the Name "Strauss-Kahn" Ring a Bell?

The International Monetary Fund has finally admitted that it was wrong to recommend austerity as early as it did in 2010-2011. The IMF now agrees that it should have waited until the US and EU economies were on a sustainable growth-path before advising them to trim their budget deficits and reduce public spending. According to a report issued by the IMF's research division, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO): "IMF advocacy of fiscal consolidation proved to be premature for major advanced economies, as growth projections turned out to be optimistic...This policy mix was less than fully effective in promoting recovery and exacerbated adverse spillovers."

Now there's an understatement.

What's so disingenuous about the IMF's apology, is that the bank knew exactly what the effects of its policy would be, but stuck with its recommendations to reward its constituents. That's what really happened. The only reason it's trying to distance itself from those decisions now, is to make the public think it was all just a big mistake.

But it wasn't a mistake. It was deliberate and here's the chart that proves it:

On the heels of the publication of President Putin's lengthy interview with ITAR-TASS (which rivals the 14-year-old First Person interviews in terms of their scope and candidness), the Russian Foreign Ministry has published an important speech given by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the XXII Assembly of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, given last week.(Don't miss his TASS interview, either, given back in September.)

For those who have actually read his words or seen him speak, you'll know Lavrov is an intelligent man. He's also an expert diplomat -- always polite, always professional, always keeps his cool. So you can be sure there is a lot going on behind and between the words he says, both for him personally and those around him. Even then, based on what he does say, you can bet he leaves his Western 'colleagues' steaming.

And what does he say? Read on and see for yourself.

While I haven't covered the topic of drones very much as of late, it was a core topic at Liberty Blitzkrieg several years ago. The most recent, relevant piece I published on it was during the summer of 2013 and titled: The Truth About Drones.

Here's an excerpt:

A lot of Americans have an impression that drone strikes are less damaging to civilian populations than conventional airstrikes. This would be false. In fact, earlier this month I highlighted an article from the Guardian that demonstrated how in reality drone strikes are 10x more likely to harm civilians per incident.

Now, thanks to a recently leaked document we find that many more civilians including children have been killed in these strikes than many of us would like to admit. In fact, of the 746 people killed in drone strikes in Pakistan from 2006-2009, an incredible 20% were civilians and 94 (13% of the total) were children.

I strongly believe that the reason so many Americans blindly support the widespread use of drones is due to the mistaken belief that they are precise and result in few civilian casualties. It's important to get some of the facts out to the public in order to have a more informed debate on the matter.

The merchants of death and destruction in the US are still itching for a fight with Russia, and they're willing to sacrifice as many Ukrainians as necessary to do so. Things have not exactly gone their way however. In contrast to US puppet Poroshenko's claim that the so-called 'anti-terrorist operation' would be over in a matter of weeks, the rebels of Dontesk and Luhansk have so far successfully repelled all attempts by Kiev's neo-Nazis to bludgeon them into submission. As is usual in cases where the US is waging a proxy imperial war in someone else's country and the plan isn't going as expected, top US officials have flown in to Ukraine for 'attaboys' to get things moving.
Last Thursday, US vice-president Joe Biden made his third call to Kiev in seven months to meet his underlings friends and to turn the heat up on the warmongering. It should not be forgotten that the son of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, is on the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, the largest private producer of natural gas in Ukraine that holds large licenses to drill for gas in East Ukraine. And as long as there is a war going on, no drilling is possible.

So what did daddy Biden say in Ukraine:

Speaking at the Presidential Administrative Building in Kiev, Biden encouraged the Ukrainian government to press forward with its draconian economic reform agenda to meet the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF has promised $17 billion in loans to prop up the collapsing Ukrainian economy. Biden reassured his audience that the American government is "looking for opportunities to improve Ukraine's business climate and increase trade and investment."

While in Kiev, the vice president also announced a further $23 million in assistance to the Ukrainian government. So far this year the Obama administration has committed $320 million in aid to Ukraine, with $118 million for providing equipment and training to bolster the Ukrainian Armed Forces, State Border Guard Service and the National Guard.

Yes, the US is so generous, don't you think? $23 million in further assistance to the Ukrainian government, which will undoubtedly go to the war effort. That the US stole the best part if not all of Ukraine's 42 tons of gold back in March is of course a minor issue, something that the Ukrainian people will only be to happy to give. And who needs gold in the life hereafter, a place/condition that the US is doing its level best to achieve for every Ukrainian.

In 2011, as the entire world watched the Arab Spring in amazement, the US and its allies, predominantly working under the banner of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), militarily overran the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

The peaceful civilian protesters they claimed to be intervening to protect were not really what the US and its cohorts presented to the world. Many of these so-called "protesters" were armed, and when this became apparent they eventually began to portray themselves as "rebel forces." These so-called "rebels" in Libya were not a military force that emerged spontaneously for the most part, but an insurgency movement cultivated and organised before any opposition activities were even reported in Libya.