The EU's attempts to coerce Serbia into joining anti-Russian sanctions are nothing but blackmail, says the head of the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee.

"Presently the European Union is trying to force Serbia, which is not an EU member, to join their sanctions program. They are practically blackmailing Serbia: either it joins the sanctions against Russia or [the bloc] won't see it as a country with a chance of joining the EU," MP Aleksey Pushkov (United Russia) told reporters at a Thursday press conference in Moscow.

"The problem for Serbia is that in any case it has no prospects for joining the EU anytime soon. Even if they join the anti-Russian sanctions now, they would simply succumb to blackmailers and no one would accept them in the EU in one year for doing this," he added.

The EU's biggest foreign crisis mission, expected to tackle corruption in troubled Kosovo, has itself become a target of bribe-taking allegations. Maria Bamieh, the prosecutor who shed light on the crimes within the EULEX program, is on SophieCo today, to talk about who's to blame and why the EU still hasn't properly investigated her revelations.


Sophie Shevarnadze: Prosecutor, member of the EU Rule of Law Mission to Kosovo Maria Bamieh. Welcome to the show, it's great to have you with us. Now, you accused top officials who were part of the EULEX mission in Kosovo of corruption and taking bribes. Did you confront them right away?

Maria Bamieh: No, I didn't. I confronted one of them in 2012 as I was reporting the evidence that I've found to the Head of Justice. Myself and my direct manager, line manager both went to see him as a result of the interceptions that I came by innocently, and one of the perpetrators was in his room and I was made to confront her directly. The main perpetrator, Judge Florit (former chairman of EULEX' Assembly of Judges - RT), I didn't confront directly. I thought EULEX were investigating the matter, but I subsequently found out they weren't, but recently on KTV in Kosovo I confronted the other perpetrator directly.

I'm confused. The first thing I'm confused about is democratic legitimacy after elections are held in war-torn countries.

Western leaders have hailed the recent parliamentary elections in Ukraine, as a great triumph of "democracy."

Barack Obama said it was "an important milestone in Ukraine's democratic development." Top EU officials said it represented "a victory of the people of Ukraine and of democracy."

Yet large parts of war-torn Ukraine took no part in the vote. Turnout, according to the Ukraine Central Election Commission was just 52.42 percent.

In May's presidential elections, turnout, according to official figures, was 60.3 percent. They were won by Petro Poroshenko with 54.7 percent of the vote. Again, western leaders hailed the results as a great victory for "democracy."

Now let's consider the case of Syria, another war-torn country where there were also important elections this year.

This just in: it turns out that the rumors were right after all.

At least part of the reason the US State Dept./CIA staged a coup in Ukraine that overthrew its democratically elected government and installed a neo-Nazi puppet regime was to steal Ukraine's gold.

Rumor had it that shortly after the coup the gold was quietly loaded onto a plane that took it to the US.

And now comes the official revelation: Ukraine has no gold reserves left. The gold was sold to pay for a failed military campaign in Eastern Ukraine, and to prop up the fake paper gold market for a little bit longer. One would expect that once the fix is off, the price of gold will skyrocket, the US dollar will drop like a rock, and Americans will need to add the word "hyperinflation" to their list of national woes.

© AP Photo/Tyler Morning Telegraph, Sarah A. Miller
In a Dec. 5, 2012, photo, foreman Javier Garcia works with his crew as they lower a section of pipe along the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline section two near Winona, Texas.

This post originally appeared on The Huffington Post and was produced in collaboration with Climate Desk.

TransCanada Corp., the company seeking to build the Keystone XL pipeline, has teamed up with the world's largest public relations firm to promote a proposed alternative pipeline that's entirely in Canada.

Greenpeace Canada obtained documents that the US public relations firm Edelman drafted for TransCanada that outline a campaign to promote Energy East, the company's proposed 2,858-mile pipeline that would transport crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to the east coast of Canada. The company filed an application to build the Energy East pipeline last month - a project that has been described as an "oil route around Obama" amid political wrangling over Keystone XL in the United States.

Greenpeace says the documents show a company increasingly concerned about the fate of Keystone XL, which would connect the tar sands with Gulf Coast refineries. TransCanada's Energy East also faces increasing opposition, as does a proposed pipeline to the west, Enbridge's Northern Gateway. Enbridge got approval from the Canadian government to build Northern Gateway, but work has been delayed, in large part because of opposition from First Nation communities along the pipeline route.

"TransCanada has been saying, 'If you don't let us build Keystone, we will build to the east,'" said Keith Stewart, the climate and energy campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Canada. "These documents show that they're clearly worried about the Energy East pipeline as well. It's going to face just as rough a ride as Keystone or Northern Gateway."

The Energy East documents outline plans to create a "grassroots" advocacy campaign on behalf of TransCanada, recruit outside voices backing the company, and investigate environmental groups seen as threats to the project.

Stewart said the documents show Edelman and TransCanada "systematically organizing what we'd call a dirty tricks campaign" typical in the US, but not in Canada. "We're nice, we don't do things like that," Stewart said.

The US has no plans to humiliate Russia, but instead wants to subdue it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said, adding that no one had ever succeeded in doing so - and never will.

Speaking at a forum of the All-Russia Peoples' Front in Moscow on Tuesday, the Russian leader said that history was not about to change, and that no one would manage to suppress the country.

"Throughout history no one has ever managed to do so toward Russia - and no one ever will," Putin said.

Responding to a question about whether America was trying to humiliate Russia, Putin disagreed, saying that the US wanted "to solve their problems at our expense."

He said that people in Russia really like the Americans, but it's the US politics that are not accepted so well. "I think America and its people are more liked than disliked by people here [in Russia]. It's the politics of the ruling class [in the US] that is likely negatively viewed by the majority of our citizens," he said.

The Russian leader said the US had managed to subordinate its allies to its influence - with such countries "trying to protect foreign national interests on obscure conditions and perspectives."

The father of an eight-year-old boy who died in the 1980s has alleged that his son may have been abducted and murdered by members of a Westminster pedophile ring. He claims Scotland Yard were complicit in "covering up" the crime.

Vishambar Mehrotra, a retired magistrate, said he recorded a male prostitute saying in a telephone call that Mehrotra's son Vishal may have been abducted in the notorious Elm Guest House in southwest London in 1981.

Mehrotra also said despite playing the recording for police officers, they refused to investigate allegations that high-profile judges and politicians were involved in the kidnapping of his son.

The father of murdered eight-year-old Vishal Mehrotra says police ignored a tip-off that the boy may have been abducted by a VIP paedophile ring

Do read Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya's article from a week or so ago: The War in Rojava: How U.S. and Turkey seek to gain control over Syria. In it, he writes:

Instead of preventing the fall of Kobani and supporting the local defenders which were doing the heavy fighting on the ground against the ISIL and containing its pseudo-caliphate, Washington did not move. The US position on Kobani is an important indicator that the US war initiated against the ISIL has been mere bravado and a fictitious public relations stunt aimed at hiding the real objective of getting a strategic foothold inside Syrian territory. ...

Although Turkey passed legislature to invade Syria on October 2, Ankara remained cautious. In reality, Turkey was doing everything in its power to ensure that Kobani would fall into the control of the ISIL and that Kobani's local defenders would be defeated.

In the context of Kobani, numerous reports were made revealing that large weapon shipments were delivered to the heavily armed battalions of the ISIL by Turkey for the offensive on Kobani. One journalist, Serena Shim, would pay with her life for trying to document this. ...

The Pentagon's two different approaches, one for Iraq and one for Syria, say a lot about what Washington is doing in the Syrian Arab Republic. Washington is still going after Syria and in the process it and Turkey wants to either co-opt the Syrian Kurds or to neutralize them. This is why the battle for Kobani was launched with Turkish involvement and why there was inaction by the US government.

Now, after failing to help the Kurds defeat ISIS when it really mattered, the U.S. has decided to just bomb the hell out of the city. The U.S. Air Force reportedly conducted 31 airstrikes in Syria and Iraq between November 14-17, 9 of which were near Kobani.

Vladimir Putin has accepted the credentials of new US Ambassador John Tefft, and said that he hopes for a thawing in ties with Washington, based on mutual respect - and both sides keeping out of each other's backyards.

"We are ready for practical cooperation with our American partners concerning a wide range of issues under the principles of mutually understanding each other, without interfering in each other's internal affairs," Putin said at a ceremony at the Kremlin, where he accepted the credentials of 15 new ambassadors to the country, including US Ambassador John Tefft.

Putin said that Russia and the US share responsibility for ensuring safety and stability around the globe, and reiterated that Moscow was willing to work with the US following strained relations between the two countries.

Underlining the importance of the two countries' roles around the world, Putin said, "Russia and the US have a particular responsibility to support safety and stability in the world and to counter global challenges and threats," according to a transcript of his remarks reported by RIA Novosti.