Speech

Putin is making his annual speech to parliament today. Again I encourage you all to read what he actually says rather than selections twisted to fit propaganda requirements in the MSM. English. "The agreement between Ukraine and the European Union has been signed and ratified, but the implementation of the provisions regarding trade and economy has been postponed until the end of next year. Doesn't this mean that we were the ones who were actually right?" Well, doesn't it?


South Stream

South Stream was a proposed gas line from Russia, under the Black Sea, to come ashore in Bulgaria and serve southern Europe. The southern equivalent of Nord Stream, it would avoid the uncertainty of Ukrainian transit routes. The EU took against it and Bulgaria was pressured to delay or cancel. Brussels thought that Moscow could be bullied. It was wrong: Putin announced the cancellation in Ankara. "If Europe does not want to implement it, then it will not be implemented. We will focus our energy resource flows on other regions of the world". Western governments and media are trying to spin this as a defeat for Russia. "These reports are evidence of pressure mounting on Russia... and reduce Russia's ability to use gas as a tool of coercion". This is nonsense of course. Southern Europe will remain dependent on uncertain shipments of Russian gas passing through Ukraine or on as-yet-unbuilt tankers and port facilities bringing in more expensive and possibly non-existent LNG from the USA. It won't see employment in building the line or transit fees. Some reactions from Bulgarians. The Eurocrats and NATOcrats in Brussels get their Russian gas via Nord Stream. So they will be warm this winter.

Following tradition, Vladimir Putin's Annual Address to the Russian Federal Assembly took place at the Kremlin's St. George Hall. Putin spoke for just over an hour to an audience of over one thousand. In terms of quality, subject matter, and punch, it ranks up there with his recent speeches and interviews, including:

• Putin on fighting extremism, color revolutions
• Putin's keynote speech at the Valdai Club
• Interview with China's leading media companies
• Putin interview ahead of the G20 Summit
• Putin on sanctions: Western leaders must have something switched off in their brains
• Putin: The West's support of Russophobia in Ukraine will lead to catastrophe

We're including the complete transcript of his talk below the video. As usual, the published translation is clearer and more accurate than the live translation, so keep that in mind while viewing.

Since the coup in Ukraine in February 2014, there have been rumours floating around that CIA has so many operatives in Ukraine they have occupied a whole floor of a building in Kiev. This, plus the fact that there are likely several thousand foreign mercenaries fighting for the junta against the people of Donbass, has been a source of bad publicity, especially when such people die in the fighting. But, with the stroke of a pen, Waltzman aka Poroshenko solved this problem by signing a decree making mercenaries and other foreigners instant Ukrainians.

The natives of the US, Georgia and Lithuania were hastily granted Ukrainian citizenship in order to become key ministers in the new government of Ukraine, which was approved by the country's parliament on Tuesday.

It was claimed that there were not enough qualified citizens in Ukraine to fill the governmental positions in a country of 40 million! If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. The problem lies instead in the fact that

• There are not enough qualified fascists to fill the positions. The ultra-right-wing Svoboda party polled 10.44% in 2012.
• Perhaps no one is willing to stick their neck out and take responsibility for ever harsher austerity measures and privatization schemes. The Ukrainians have a habit of trashing their politicians -- literally.
• Further, a million people associated with the previous Yanukovych government are ineligible, having been purged under Ukraine's 'lustration' law.
• The CIA wanted to have their own people in the government.
• Those qualified might not have been subservient enough or might have had doubts about the benefits of aligning with the EU and the US.

There might well be other reasons not mentioned and it is likely a mix of the above.

A student protest at Warwick University against soaring tuition fees was broken up by police and security guards using tear gas and significant force. Protesters were threatened with a taser, pushed to the ground and rammed against a wall, activists say.

The protest, organized by Warwick For Free Education, occurred on Wednesday as part of a nationwide chain of student demonstrations coordinated by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts.

The students had organized a peaceful sit-in at the university's Senate House in protest at rising fees for higher education that have been introduced under PM David Cameron's government.

A spokesman for Warwick University said university security guards, who were monitoring the protest, were subjected to a "shocking and unprovoked act of violence," which prompted them to call for a police presence. But the spokesman's claims were contradicted by students who insisted the protest was quiet and peaceful.

At least three US female Navy officers, among the first to serve on a submarine as part of integration reform, have for a year been secretly filmed in the shower, Navy officials admit. An investigation into alleged criminal activity has been launched.

The videos were allegedly made and distributed among senior Navy officers by a 24-year-old male second class petty officer, the Navy Times reported.

The women in the videos were serving on the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine Wyoming, home-ported in Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, Georgia.

An officer on another sub who received a copy of the videos reported about them to his superiors, according to a Navy Times source.

Congressman Peter King (R-NY) appeared on CNN on Wednesday night as determined protestors filled the streets of NYC and cities across America to take a stand against the police killing innocent people with impunity.

The Congressman disrespectfully and coldly blamed the unarmed man's death on his weight.

He said "If he had not had asthma, and a heart condition, and was so obese, he would not have died from this."

An article from Think Progress says the congressman, "delivered an extended defense of the police killing of Eric Garner. King said that the officer, who employed an illegal chokehold to bring Garner down, was just doing his job. Ultimately, King pins says Garner was actually responsible for his own death."

Just two days after Putin's announcement of the cancellation of the South Stream project and the beefed up relations with Turkey that will replace what could have been a very good thing for Europe, Chechnya's capital, Grozny, was the site of an encounter between police and members of one of the country's major terrorist groups. The terrorists were traveling in three cars when they were stopped at a checkpoint outside Grozny just after midnight. They opened fire, killing the police, then entered the city and occupied the Press House building in the city center (and possibly others - the video footage and photos show more than one on fire).

Chechen special forces were then called in, who surrounded the occupied building(s) and killed the 10 militants. In all, Chechen authorities are reporting 10 police killed and 28 wounded in the operation.

NATO was the aggressor and got Ukraine wrong. Many months later, the media has eventually figured out the truth
Well, well, well. Gloating is unseemly, especially in public, but give me this one, will you?

It has been a long and lonely winter defending the true version of events in Ukraine, but here comes the sun. We now have open acknowledgment in high places that Washington is indeed responsible for this mess, the prime mover, the "aggressor," and finally this term is applied where it belongs. NATO, once again, is revealed as causing vastly more trouble than it has ever prevented.

Washington, it is now openly stated, has been wrong, wrong, wrong all along. The commentaries to be noted do not take on the media, but I will, and in language I use advisedly. With a few exceptions they are proven liars, liars, liars - not only conveying the official version of events but willfully elaborating on it off their own bats.

Memo to the New York Times' Moscow bureau: Vicky Nuland, infamous now for desiring sex with the European Union, has just FedExed little gold stars you can affix to your foreheads, one for each of you. Wear them with pride for you will surely fight another day, having learned nothing, and ignore all ridicule. If it gets too embarrassing, tell people they have something to do with the holidays.

O.K., gloat concluded. To the business at hand.

We have had, in the last little while, significant analyses of the Ukraine crisis, each employing that method the State Department finds deadly: historical perspective. In a lengthy interview with Der Spiegel, the German newsmagazine, none other than Henry Kissinger takes Washington carefully but mercilessly to task. "Does one achieve a world order through chaos or through insight?" Dr. K. asks.

A wild card in the seven months of extended negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over its nuclear program is the continuing plunge in global oil prices and its impact on Tehran's finances.

U.S. and European officials said they had a growing sense earlier this year that Tehran and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei believed they were weathering the West's international sanctions - despite the halving of Iranian oil exports since 2012, largely driven by a European embargo.

Under an interim agreement reached with the West a year ago, Iran has been receiving $700 million in monthly payments from oil revenues frozen in overseas accounts.

Anyone who takes the time to fully understand the reasons why Russia cancelled the South Stream pipeline project and then listens to the US response to the news can only conclude that the US government has lost all touch with reality.

US National Security Adviser Susan Rice said on Tuesday:

"The news that Russia has pulled back from its South Stream pipeline to southern Europe... is indicative of the mounting cost that Russia is paying for its behavior," Rice said. "As a result, a major project, which had been championed by Putin and the Russian government, is now not likely to materialize."

"When you look at where the Russian economy is, it has suffered over the last year substantially as a result of sanctions and also as a result of declining oil prices and the combination is pretty powerful."

President Obama also crowed on Wednesday:

[Obama] doubted Russian President Vladimir Putin will change course until politics catch up with the rough economic situation in Russia.

Obama said Putin has promoted a nationalist, backward-looking approach to Russian policy that scares neighbors and hurts Moscow's economy.

Have mercy! The only way Obama and Rice could have come up with that conclusion is if they were somehow mistaking themselves for Putin and US foreign policy for Russian foreign policy. We can almost hear these two earnestly tell the EU: "Don't worry this is going to hurt Russia more than it will hurt you. So man up!" Meanwhile, EU bureaucrats must be 'sweating bricks' at the projected loss of billions for EU economies as a result of the death of South Stream. But what can they do? It is almost certain that they are being blackmailed by the USA, courtesy of the NSA and its pathological voyeurism. This isn't going to end well.