Russian President Vladimir Putin participates in Valdai International Club discussion "World Order: New Rules or No Rules?"

The modern global and regional security system is seriously fragmented and deformed, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday.

"Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that the existing system of global and regional security can protect us from disruption. The system is seriously weakened, shattered and deformed. International and regional institutions of political, economic and cultural cooperation are going through a very difficult period," Putin said at the plenary session of the 11th meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club.

The winners in the Cold War seem to be bent on reshaping the world so that it could better accommodate their own needs, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday in a comment on US foreign policy.

"It looks like the so-called 'winners' of the Cold War are determined to have it all and reshape the world into a place that could better serve their interests alone," Vladimir Putin said at the 11th conference of the Valdai Discussion Forum in the Russian city of Sochi.

The general director and a deputy general director from Moscow's Vnukovo International Airport have resigned after the fatal crash that killed French oil giant Total's CEO earlier in the week, the airport's press service reported Thursday.

"In line with the tragic event that occurred [late Monday night on October 20], the following [individuals] have resigned: Vnukovo International Airport General Director Andrei Dyakov and Deputy General Director Sergei Solntsev," the press release reads.

Vnukovo accepted both resignations, according to the statement.

Several other airport managerial staff were dismissed as well on Thursday.

Total CEO Christophe de Margerie died in the crash of a Falcon 50 business jet late Monday night at Vnukovo-3 Airport. The incident happened when the aircraft, which was to fly to Paris, hit a snow removal vehicle when taking off. De Margerie was the only passenger on board along with three crew members, also French citizens. The crew also died in the crash.

Three months after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was violently brought down from the skies over Ukraine, there are still no definitive answers to what caused the tragedy. Civil conflict in the area prevented international experts from conducting a full and thorough investigation. The wreckage should have been collected and scrupulously re-assembled to identify all the damage, but this standard investigative procedure was never carried out. Until that's done, evidence can only be gleaned from pictures of the debris, the flight recorders or black boxes and eye-witnesses' testimonies. This may be enough to help build a picture of what really happened to the aircraft, whether a rocket fired from the ground or gunfire from a military jet.

Eric Draitser of StopImperialism.org appears on RT to discuss the Ottawa shooting and the political context in which it should be understood. Draitser explains that an investigation into the role of intelligence agencies in the event is critical to an understanding of how this event really happened. He also notes the convenient timing of the incident and how it will be capitalized on politically by the Harper government. Finally, Draitser outlines how this incident will harden the policies of the government as it relates to the US-led coalition in the Middle East, rather than forcing it to rethink them.

EU finance ministers have agreed to emergency talks after British Prime Minister David Cameron challenged a demand from the EU for an extra £1.7 billion by December 1, because the UK economy has done better than other EU members since 1995.

Cameron interrupted a meeting of EU leaders to tell Jose Manuel Barosso, the head of the European Commission, that the demand for extra cash from the UK was unacceptable.

The Prime Minister emphasized that a lot of money was being demanded and that it was not just a problem of dealing with Euroskeptic sections of the British media and public.

The demand from the EU will add about a fifth to the UK's annual contribution of £8.6 billion (US$13.8 billion).

The bill comes after the EU modified how it works out how much each state should pay based on national income. The surcharge now includes estimations from illegal trade in the so-called black economy, such as prostitution and drugs.

"It is not acceptable, it an appalling way to behave," Cameron told a press conference in Brussels on Friday. "I'm not paying that bill on December 1. If people think I am they've got another thing coming. It is not going to happen."

A spokesman for the British government said they would be pressing Brussels to explain the bill and that the amount of money they were demanding needs "a full political-level discussion."

"This money the European Commission was not expecting and does not need, and we will be working with other countries to do all we can to challenge this," said a British spokesman.

Cameron was supported by Matteo Renzi, the prime minister of Italy, who has also been hit for extra payments by the EU.

The market is now forecasting that incumbent Dilma Rousseff will be re-elected president in a squeaker on Sunday. Although rival Aécio Neves could pull off an upset if enough of Marina Silva's voters choose him or opt-out of voting for anyone, his victory would now be seen as a surprise. Downside risks remain in Brazilian equities.

Neves came from polling in third place behind Marina Silva to clobbering her in the first round on Oct. 5, thus guaranteeing him the No. 2 contender spot against Dilma. Polls have suggested that at least 60% of Marina's voters would chose Neves on Sunday, but he needs a little more than 65% providing the rest of Marina's voters choose Dilma. So far, that has not been the case as only around 20% of Marina's voters said they would vote for Dilma on Sunday, meaning the current crop of undecided voters will call the shots. Recent polls show a technical tie.

It is worth noting that the market's forecast is not exactly the market's preference. At this stage, investors are broadly looking for change in Brasilia, even more so than the average Brazilian.

Vladimir Putin has lashed out at the United States for destabilizing the world order of checks and balances for its own gains. He also accused the West of inflaming the situation in Ukraine and said Russia was not interested in building an empire.


The Russian President delivered a fierce broadside aimed at the United States at a speech for the Valdai Club in Sochi, which is an informal group of scholars. He hit out at Washington for behaving without regard to the rest of the world's interests

"The system of international relations needed some changes, but the USA, who believe they were the winners of the Cold War, have not seen the need for this." He added that the US has been trying to create the world "for their own gains." The Russian President added that because of this, regional and global security had been weakened.

Putin also touched on the issue of the growth of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, while also accused the West of, "turning a blind eye," to the encroachment of international terrorism into Russia and Central Asia. Putin believes the US has played a considerable role in sponsoring the growth of Islamic extremism, using the example of Washington's funding of the Mujaheddin in the Afghan-Soviet war in the 1980's, which eventually gave birth to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

I'm not one to hastily jump to conclusions about events like these, but the alleged shooting at the Canadian parliament and a nearby war memorial that took place today smells like a false-flag operation designed to expedite the Harper regime's militarist agenda.

The mainstream media is in a furor over the incident. Non-stop wall-to-wall coverage has commenced. Even American and British outlets have picked up the story.

One very noticeable clue as to the fraudulent nature of this event is the immediate calls from establishment propagandists for a crack down on free speech (what they call "hate speech") and the bolstering of Orwellian "anti-terrorism" laws which will in effect hand the state unlimited powers to spy on the citizenry of Canada and snuff out dissidents.

For example, the former CSIS Assistant Director Ray Boisvert said this on CBC:

"We need to get at those who are the purveyors of hate. So those who proselytize, those who are radicalizing, we need to find ways to go after them with respect to hate speech or perhaps its time for new legislation under the anti-terrorism act as we're seeing in the UK."

The former Canadian spy boss essentially echoed what British PM David Cameron said in a UN speech last month wherein he called for "non-violent extremists" to be criminalized. The traitorous British statesman specifically named 9/11 and 7/7 skeptics as falling within his dubious definition of "non-violent extremists."

A very cold winter in Eastern Europe may tilt its political balance in Russia's direction, And why the situation might go from bad to worse.

As winter approaches, Putin's hand is even stronger, as the crisis begins to transform from a military confrontation into a confrontation between Ukraine and Europe over the supply of Russian natural gas

Reports out of Milan regarding last Friday's much anticipated meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko indicate that little progress has been made toward resolving the nearly yearlong Ukraine crisis. This, given the broader political currents at play in Europe, is unsurprising.

To begin with, Mr. Poroshenko has, for all intents and purposes, lost the military battle over the Donbas in resounding fashion. While his bloc leads in the polls ahead of next Sunday's parliamentary election, Poroshenko faces a number of other challenges, not least of which is a collapsing economy (some estimates have the Ukrainian economy shrinking by 10 percent this year) and a burgeoning populist backlash over the government's handling of the crisis.

So what we saw play out in Milan is more or less a repeat of the last Putin/Poroshenko meeting that took place in Minsk on August 26, because the same logic applies. Mr. Putin, as I wrote then, is always going to be the party - regardless of whether he is facing sanctions or a chorus of international condemnation - who will be playing the stronger hand in negotiations with Ukraine.

Yet as we approach November, his hand is even stronger, as the crisis begins to transform from a military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine into a confrontation between Ukraine and Europe over the supply of Russian natural gas. Ukraine serves as the transit point for 50 percent of EU-bound Russian LNG, and Ukraine's siphoning off of LNG bound for southeastern Europe, which led to Russia cutting off the supply in January 2006 and January 2009, is still fresh in the minds of European leaders.

The Rada's recent passage of a lustration bill, widely publicized acts of violence against sitting MPs through "trash bucket challenges," a popular revival of Nazi-era symbols and the incorporation of far-right elements into Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk's "People's Front" do not exactly augur well for the chances for a tranquil political environment in either Ukraine or in Eastern Europe, where the memory of Ukrainian collaboration against the Poles and the region's Jews is fresher there than it is here in the United States.