So the EU "defeated" Putin by forcing him to cancel the South Stream pipeline. Thus ruled Western corporate media. Nonsense. Facts on the ground spell otherwise.

This "Pipelineistan" gambit will continue to send massive geopolitical shockwaves all across Eurasia for quite some time. In a nutshell, a few years ago Russia devised Nord Stream - fully operational - and South Stream - still a project - to bypass unreliable Ukraine as a gas transit nation. Now Russia devised a new deal with Turkey to bypass the "non-constructive" (Putin's words) approach of the European Commission (EC).

Background is essential to understand the current game. Five years ago I was following in detail Pipelineistan's ultimate opera - the war between rival pipelines South Stream and Nabucco. Nabucco eventually became road kill. South Stream may eventually resurrect, but only if the EC comes to its senses (don't bet on it.)

Hungary's Foreign Ministry on Wednesday summoned the U.S. ambassador in Hungary over comments made by U.S. Senator John McCain on Tuesday, calling Prime Minister Viktor Orban a "neo-fascist dictator."

The ministry called in Chargé d'Affaires André Goodfriend over McCain's comments, in which the Arizona Republican called on his Senate colleagues to block the approval of the new Ambassador to Hungary, Hollywood producer Colleen Bell.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart and correspondent Larry Wilmore rebuked conservatives on Tuesday for harping on crime statistics in response to the Ferguson demonstrations.

"What would you say to those people?" Stewart asked Wilmore, who will debut as host of the Nightly Show next month.

"I would say they can go f*ck themselves, Jon," Wilmore said. "First of all, can we quit calling it 'Black-on-Black' crime? It's just crime, ok? I mean, 'Black-on-Black' just makes it sound like a category on Redtube."

The conversation about "Black-on-Black" crime, Wilmore argued, is already happening within Black communities.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Kiev has failed to investigate its army's use of prohibited cluster bombs against civilians in the country's east. It also recommends Kiev invite the International Criminal Court to investigate.

The human rights watchdog is dissatisfied with the investigation conducted by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office into the use of cluster bombs by the Ukrainian armed forces in the east of the country, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth told a media briefing in Kiev on Wednesday.

"Instead of analyzing physical evidence," Ukraine's Prosecutor General looked into the"presence of weapons in depots," and said they were not taken anywhere, said Roth.

He explained the watchdog had appealed to Ukraine's Military Prosecutor's Office regarding the use of cluster bombs and Grad multiple rocket launchers by Kiev's military in residential areas. In turn, the prosecutor appealed to the Ministry of Defense. Therefore he said "it's no surprise" the ministry did not find any violations by Kiev's military. In addition, the inspection did not check cluster bombs, but mines, he added.
The HRW is not satisfied with this kind of investigation, he stressed.

Human Rights Watch found out during its own investigation that cluster bombs were used by pro-government forces in residential areas in eastern Ukraine, Roth said.

The area affected by the cluster bombs has a distinctive appearance, so the watchdog can say for sure that it was used in the area, Roth added. In addition, during talks with the defense ministry officials they didn't deny the "possibility" of the use of imprecise weaponry, however rejected the evidence provided by HWR, he said.

Common complaints within Intelligence Studies about the examination of foreign intelligence communities, especially those not residing in the west, run the gamut from being too historically driven to being completely ahistorical and thus nothing more than a simple organizational review of facts and details to being too often inevitably compared against a standard framework that uses either the United States or the United Kingdom as the backdrop. While these analyses are all important, they have failed to look at how the competing conceptualizations of culture within the discipline engender entirely different approaches and therefore radically different conclusions about how we view and evaluate said communities. Below is a 'case glance' of the phenomenon utilizing the Russian Federation. Perhaps most interesting and fairly unexpected is how in terms of security affairs American understanding about Russia seems to be hurt more analytically by grand strategic culture and is often never analyzed from a perspective that emphasizes contemporary reality, purpose-based objectives and actual organizational functionality.

Public support for the anti-Russian sanctions is slowly eroding in the EU due to lack of prominent developments in the Ukrainian crisis.

German chancellor Angela Merkel may have hard time keeping Russia sanctions in place, as she is facing widespread public discontent, both within her nation and in the EU. The restrictive measures were introduced earlier this year and now their effects on the EU economy, and German in particular, are undermining trade. The EU is facing two possible options at this point, either a gradual revocation of the economic restrictions on Russia or a further tightening of the sanctions regime with the implementation of new restrictions, according to a report by Financial Times.

"Keeping sanctions in place is a challenge for German policy," says Gernot Erler, an MP of the opposition Social Democratic Party.

Several authors have recently asked why Malaysia is not part of the MH17 joint investigation team and why is Ukraine, a suspect in this case, part of it? The questions we should first be asking are what exactly is the joint investigation team, in which legal framework is it operating and why was it established?

There are actually several investigations going on on the shootdown of MH17. We will, however, focus on two of them which people seem to get mixed up: the first official inquiry led by the Dutch Safety board (DSB), which published a preliminary report on September 9, 2014 and the joint investigation team inquiry, which was established August 7, 2014.

The first investigation, led by the DSB an independent organization, is ruled by the Convention on International Civil Aviation, also known as the Chicago Convention, which was established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations agency.

Putin's model of handling the internal and external partners, competitors and even enemies have long been known to all who are willing to look at things rationally. At the first stage, Putin offers a very good compromise. It is taken as a sign of weakness and rejected. At the second stage, the situation for those who rejected the compromise is rapidly deteriorating and a new compromise is offered, but significantly less profitable. And this continues up until there is no more compromise, or until a forever inflexible partner will "choke on a polonium scarf" in London. For example, in the situation with South Stream, we are observing phase two: the deterioration of EU's position with a hint of a new compromise in the form of an extended "Blue Stream" and a gas hub on a border with Greece.

'The Russians are slow to saddle their horses, but they run really fast'... And as Dmitry Orlov said in an interview a couple of days ago:

They're not very interested in communicating. They're far more interested in acting. So, what we'll probably see is a constant stream of surprises coming from Russia that will be completely unannounced and not predicted by anyone.

It should be added that when they act, it is significant. And boy did they act recently! Putin announced yesterday the decision to scrap the South Stream pipeline and simultaneously open a new one to Turkey with the same capacity, which thus makes NATO member Turkey a strategic partner for Russia.
That was a surprise and it didn't take long for the fallout and finger-pointing to begin. The Bulgarians, who have several times blocked the South Stream pipeline under the excuse of 'following EU directives', didn't see this coming. After not taking Russia seriously at first, they're now blaming Russia for the project's collapse!

Occasionally Israeli political and military leadership fail to survive Israeli wars. PM Golda Meir and her Chief Of Staff (David "Dado" Elazar) were sent home after the 1973 blunder (Yom Kippur war). PM Menachem Begin lost his sanity after the first Lebanon war (1982). Defense Minister Amir Peretz and his Chief Of Staff' Dan Halutz' were treated harshly by the Israeli media following the 2006 defeat in Lebanon. PM Benjamin Netanyahu is now paying a price for the recent Israeli disaster in Gaza and the Palestinian uprising that followed.

Strong nations tend to unite behind their leaders in times of crisis. The Israelis are spoiled. They prefer to turn against their leaders in times of conflict and not because they crave peace. Quite the opposite, they want to see a conclusive victory; buckets of Arab blood. Bibi didn't provide the goods and in the eyes of many Israeli patriots he was a softy.

Israelis didn't perform well in the last round of violence. The IDF didn't achieve a single military objective. After a few days, its forces withdrew, humiliated and exhausted. The Israeli military admitted that it lacked an answer to Palestinian ballistics, tunnels and fierceness. In addition, the conflict in Gaza spilled over to the West Bank and to Israeli cities. Throughout, Netanyahu's cabinet reacted slowly. It seemed confused by events. Soon Israelis were openly admitting that the future of the Jewish State was gloomier than ever.

The Israeli political establishment was quick to follow - with a total radicalization. The hawks wanted the state to admit that it is a 'Jewish home' instead of a 'Jewish democracy' (a term that in itself, provides a contradiction). The centrists and the Israeli Left insisted that Israel sustain the 'democratic' lie. It sounds good and the Goyim buy it they argued.