Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No, it's an International Space Station. But if Russia gets its way, it's going to be off-limits to the United States soon.

For weeks now, there have been rumblings about Russia wanting to ban the United States from using the ISS while the two countries wrangled over Ukraine. While that would probably violate international law, it may be feasible from a practical perspective. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin argued that "the Russian segment [of the ISS] can exist independently from the American one. The U.S. one cannot."

Since the United States terminated its space shuttle program, we've depended on Russian rockets to carry U.S. astronauts to the ISS. NASA has a contract to continue these flights through 2016 -- at $70 million a pop. After that, Russia would be within its rights to deny U.S. astronauts seats on Soyuz rockets. If America wants to send astronauts up after the contract expires, joked Rogozin: "I propose that the United States delivers its astronauts to the ISS with the help of a trampoline."

It never just rains, it pours (even in space)

An even more immediate problem facing America is Russia's threat to cut off access to the RD-180 rocket engines that the United Launch Alliance (the joint venture between Boeing (NYSE: BA ) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) ) uses in its Atlas V rockets. These are the big beasts that carry U.S. military satellites into space. They're critical to national security. But we've only got enough RD-180s stockpiled to keep ULA supplied for about another 22 months.

Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced support for a cease-fire in Ukraine declared by his counterpart, calling for all sides to halt military activities even as he put more than 65,000 troops on combat alert.

Putin said that while he supports the week-long truce that President Petro Poroshenko announced on June 20, the move shouldn't be an ultimatum to militia groups and won't be "viable or realistic" without "constructive steps" to start negotiations with rebel leaders in southeast regions.

The statement, issued late yesterday by the Kremlin, came after the Defense Ministry in Moscow announced snap military drills across central Russia, the biggest since the country annexed Ukraine's Black Sea peninsula of Crimea in March. Poroshenko, in office two weeks, is seeking to quell violence in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions that's left hundreds dead.

The U.S., which accuses Russia of aiding the pro-Russian separatists, last week imposed sanctions on people linked to the insurgency, adding to penalties announced more than a month ago. U.S. and European officials have warned that more painful penalties affecting Russia's access to financial markets, technology and military hardware may come as early as this week if Putin fails to take measures to curb tensions.

Today, after more than a million dead and several millions exiled, as the "too extreme for al-Qaeda" ISIL is grabbing more and more of Iraq, the question once again arises:

Why did George Bush and Tony Blair drag us into the Iraq quagmire?

They told us it was about Saddam's WMD. But that was a preposterous lie. Bush even camped it up about looking for WMD under his desk. He thought it was fabulously hilarious that anyone had ever believed in Iraqi WMD.

So what was the real reason for the Iraq war?

Some say oil. But that seems dubious, since big oil lobbied hard against the Iraq invasion, fearing it would destabilize their business.

Others say Israel. That makes more sense; the Zionist lobby was the main force pushing for war in Iraq. But how can a sh*tty little country like Israel force a superpower to do its bidding?

One way is by blackmailing politicians. And in Bush and Blair, they had plenty of opportunity.

All Russian forces in Siberia, the Urals and beyond have been put on combat-ready alert, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said after President Putin ordered surprise drills.

Over 65,000 of Russia's troops in the Central Military District have been put on alert to verify troops' combat-readiness during massive war games of all branches of the armed forces. The exercises involve the relocation of military personnel and hardware, firing training and complex inspections.

"In accordance with president's order, today starting from 11:00 Moscow time [07:00 GMT] all troops of the Central Military District have been placed in a state of full combat readiness," Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at staff meeting.

The drills will last for a week, from June 21 through 28, Shoigu said.

Up to 5,500 military vehicles, 180 airplanes and 60 helicopters will participate in the drills, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov said, Interfax reported.

"[I]f the individual is no longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib, if they can 'seize' and 'search' him in their discretion, we enter a new regime. The decision to enter it should be made only after a full debate by the people of this country." - U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. In the police state being erected around us, the police and other government agents can probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it's police officers breaking through people's front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching innocent motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

These are the hallmarks of the emerging American police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

A review of the Supreme Court's rulings over the past 10 years, including some critical ones this term, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

The leader of self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in eastern Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire in the region until 10 a.m. local time on Friday. He stressed that the self-defense force's ceasefire will come only as a reciprocal move.

"The duration of the ceasefire is the same as announced previously - before 10 a.m. on June 27. During this period monitoring by Russian and OSCE representatives will be organized. We hope that during ceasefire from both sides we will be able to reach an agreement and start consultations on the process of peaceful settlement of the conflict," Aleksandr Boroday, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic said live on Rossiya 24 TV.

Earlier Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced his plan to deescalate the conflict, announcing a unilateral ceasefire from June 20 until June 27, the day Kiev plans to sign the EU Association agreement.

The news on mutual ceasefire has been confirmed by former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. "We agreed on bilateral ceasefire lasting until 10 a.m. on June 27," said Kuchma after taking part in talks on the conflict's settlement in Donetsk on June 23.

Syrian Foreign Ministry says Israeli actions are part of its policy of assisting rebels fighting the Assad regime.
The Syrian government acknowledged on Monday that Israel struck targets inside its territory overnight.

In its first official statement, the Syrian Foreign Ministry claimed four were killed and nine injured in Israeli strikes.

In what it termed a "flagrant violation" of its sovereignty, the Foreign Ministry stated that "Israel's new aggression comes within the context of direct and consistent support it provides terrorists in the area, following the Syrian regime's successful battle against them."

The Israel Air Force struck nine military targets, among them command centers, in response to Sunday's cross-border missile shooting, which killed an Israeli teenager and wounded his father and two other civilians in the Golan Heights.

On Monday morning a United States federal appeals court released the secret Obama administration memo that provided legal justification for the 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, an alleged al Qaeda leader.

Reuters explains the rationale, as put forth by the document:

The memo, prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, says that because the U.S. government considered al Awlaki to be an "operational leader" of an "enemy force," it would be legal for the CIA to attack him with a drone "as part of the United States' ongoing non-international armed conflict with al Qaeda," even though he was a U.S. citizen.

The memo also says the killing of al Awlaki by U.S. military forces would be legal under an authorization for the use of U.S. military force approved by Congress following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

While capturing al Awlaki would have been preferable, the memo states that "we also understand that an operation by either agency to capture al-Aulaqi in Yemen would be infeasible at this time."

View the full document below, with the drone memo starting on page 67:

The US has been quite busy this century trying to undo itself as a world power. This was slow going in the beginning - after all, mighty empires don't tend to fail overnight - but after a decade of assiduous effort the pace has started picking up speed. Like most collapses, the fiascos the US has been creating proceed slowly at first, then all at once.

Take the 2008 "war" in former Soviet Georgia. The Pentagon spent years trying to form Georgia into an anti-Russian, US-dominated puppet. Then, during the Olympic games in Beijing, the US-educated president of Georgia decided to please his masters by initiating artillery bombardment of civilians in a disputed enclave in Georgia inhabited by Russian citizens. In response, the Russians rolled into Georgia, mopped it up, annexed the disputed territory (plus another one) and left. Western media dutifully whitewashed Georgian war crimes and did their best to paint Russia as the aggressor. But his masters were not pleased, and its US-educated president was left to twist in the wind as a political corpse.

A similar fiasco started unfolding in Ukraine in the spring of 2014. You see, the US foreign policy and military establishments are quite compulsive in their unceasing efforts to undermine Russia. The 1%ers who own the US government also have a personal vendetta gainst Putin. They can't forgive him for what he did to Russia's oligarchs who did so much to undermine Russia under Yeltsin: he de-fanged and de-clawed them, banning them from politics and depriving them of political influence. During the Winter Olympics in Sochi, the democratically elected president of Ukraine was overthrown in a coup supported by a false flag operation in which mercenary snipers killed scores of civilians and policemen. In his place the US installed a hand-picked junta that included some neo-Nazi elements. This fiasco is still unfolding; I will return to it in a moment.

It's the fog of diplomacy.

For years, Iran has been an archenemy of the United States. Now, with alliances blurred in the Mideast, the two countries are talking about how to stop an offensive in Iraq by al-Qaida-inspired insurgents. How is it that adversaries that haven't trusted each other for 35 years could cooperate on Iraq today?

They are strange bedfellows, to say the least.

In the Syrian civil war, the U.S. backs the opposition. Iran supports Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The U.S. for three decades has considered Iran a "state sponsor of terrorism." The U.S. says Iran bankrolls anti-Israel terrorist groups and other extremists intent on destabilizing the Middle East. The U.S. has threatened Iran with military action if Iran approaches the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. But despite all the differences, the U.S. and Iran are more engaged diplomatically at this moment than in years.

After a breakthrough interim agreement last year, the U.S., Iran and other nations are hoping to wrap up a deal within the next month that would curb Iran's nuclear program. Progress on nuclear talks is leading American officials to explore whether Iran can be a useful partner on interests long viewed as shared, such as fighting Sunni extremism and ensuring stability of Iraq. Iran, like the Iraqi government, is Shiite. The insurgent group leading the assault in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is Sunni.

But there is worry that Iran is trying to leverage its helpfulness on Iraq into better terms in the nuclear negotiations.