The United States is preparing measures to assist Ukraine in the development of a new defense strategy and the strengthening of the National Guard, reads a statement posted on the Web site of the White House on Friday.

"We also have launched initiatives to assist Ukraine in reforming its defense institutions. This support consists of multi-level engagements to provide advice to the Defense Ministry leadership in areas such as defense institution building, cyber defense, logistics, and standardization. Additionally, we are working to help Ukraine develop a new defense strategy and further develop its National Guard," reads the posting.

"We are also developing plans to support other states on Russia's periphery, particularly Moldova and Georgia. In addition to high-level engagements, we plan to intensify security assistance over the longer term," according to the document.

If you are looking for something to gag on today, please consider the Bloomberg View by Leonid Bershidsky: Ukraine's Cease-Fire Is Putin's Victory.

"...As for Russian President Vladimir Putin, he has secured a ringside seat and may settle down with a bowl of popcorn. Any outcome suits him as long as Ukraine struggles to get out of its impasse alone. He will be happy to see the Lugansk and Donetsk regions turn into a frozen-conflict zone, precluding Ukraine's further integration into NATO and the European Union, and equally pleased to have them gain broad autonomy from Kiev and a veto on major political decisions. A military solution suits him, too, since the West has refused to engage him except in the form of ineffectual sanctions."

Make no mistake about it: The ceasefire is a victory for Putin, a vindication of his aggression and duplicity. I just hope it ends the bloodshed.

Victory for Common Sense

While one can claim this is a victory for Putin, one should rightfully gag over Bershidsky's comment regarding "aggression and duplicity."

The US and EU fomented this crisis and now apologists for failed US policy don't like the results: Russia annexed Crimea and Ukraine may splinter.

Had this ceasefire not have been agreed to, rebels would have taken Mariupol. The city is now surrounded by rebel forces.

While my views on the morality of the death penalty have nothing to do with how I vote as a judge, they have a lot to do with whether I can or should be a judge at all. To put the point in the blunt terms employed by Justice Harold Blackmun towards the end of his career on the bench, when he announced that he would henceforth vote (as Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall had previously done) to overturn all death sentences, when I sit on a Court that reviews and affirms capital convictions, I am part of "the machinery of death." My vote, when joined with at least four others, is, in most cases, the last step that permits an execution to proceed. I could not take part in that process if I believed what was being done to be immoral.
- Justice Antonin Scalia

One might wonder how he can stay on the court after the revelation last week that two convicted murderers he once described as lucky to be given the blessing of a lethal injection have turned out to be innocent. That's right, this is about the case everyone's been talking about - the two brothers, both mentally disabled, who were railroaded onto death row some 30 years ago with coerced confessions by a corrupt police department. As the New York Times reported:

The case against the men, always weak, fell apart after DNA evidence implicated another man whose possible involvement had been somehow overlooked by the authorities even though he lived only a block from where the victim's body was found, and he had admitted to committing a similar rape and murder around the same time.

The startling shift in fortunes for the men, Henry Lee McCollum, 50, who has spent three decades on death row, and Leon Brown, 46, who was serving a life sentence, provided one of the most dramatic examples yet of the potential harm from false, coerced confessions and of the power of DNA tests to exonerate the innocent.

Britain has announced plans to erect a huge fence in the French port city of Calais. The steel fencing was previously used at a NATO summit. The move is part of the UK's campaign to deter illegal immigrants from entering the British Isles.

Dubbed the "ring of steel," the barrier - which measures more than 12 miles long and nine feet high - was previously used at a NATO summit in South Wales. It was first erected around Celtic Manor in Newport, as well as around summit venues in Cardiff. It was aimed at protecting dozens of world leaders and ministers from potential terrorist threats.

According to British Immigration Minister James Brokenshire, the fencing will now protect the country from illegal migrants entering the country by crossing the English Channel from Calais "which has been the access point to Britain from the continent for centuries."

"These [fences] could replace and enlarge the inadequate fencing at Calais, which is too easy for illegal immigrants to scale," the minister told The Telegraph.

Recently, the port has become a growing makeshift camp for an estimated 1,300 migrants from countries such as Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, and other troubled states in the Middle East and North and East Africa. According to authorities, the number of illegal immigrants has risen by 50 percent in recent months and continues to increase.

Qatari authorities have confirmed they are holding two British researchers who are investigating the 2022 World Cup facilities, which is linked with a scandal over poor working conditions and dozens of deaths of foreign workers.

Krishna Upadhyaya and Ghimire Gundev, who work for the Norway-based Global Network for Rights and Development (GNRD), were detained in Doha on August 31.

"All of the actions that have been taken against the two Britons are consistent with principles of human rights enshrined in the constitution," read the statement released by the Qatari QNA news agency on Sunday.

It was added that the two researchers are "being interrogated" and that the reason behind the detainment is "violations" of emigration laws.

GNRD posted on its website that Upadhyaya had reached out to his family, saying, "I am well, I have been well looked after and I will be home soon." He said that the reasons behind their arrest were "problems with paperwork."

Today's Trews is about how the media, both right and left, works to constrict conversation to limited, narrow parameters.

Internationally renowned Political scientist Michael Parenti at the University of Wisconsin Ohkosh campus. Parenti's discussion is focused on the topic: Empire vs. Democracy

The West Engineered the Crisis in Ukraine; Now Falsely Accuses Russia

Paranoia: The projection, onto another person or group, of an individual's own repressed aggressive or criminal impulses. The target of the projection is then falsely accused of being the aggressor.

More than twenty emergency United Nations Security Council meetings have been called since January, 2014, the majority of them currently demonizing Russian President Putin for destabilizing Eastern Ukraine. With the exception of China, the stark failure to acknowledge and confront the authors of the current tragic bloodshed and slaughter in Ukraine reveals paranoid ideation by US/NATO members of the Security Council, who either willfully ignore or deliberately eschew their own responsibility for the current ongoing carnage.

Putin does not bear responsibility for the destabilization and bloodshed in Ukraine. A mere six months ago the world gasped, when, with three words, "F**k the EU" US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland revealed the enormity of United States involvement in masterminding and engineering the destabilization and overthrow of the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Yanukovich, the President who had attempted to protect already impoverished Ukrainians from the scourge of IMF austerity measures which would enforce destitution on the majority of his citizens.

EU countries failed to approve new sanctions against Russia through an automatic written procedure as yet, which led to a necessity to summon an extraordinary meeting of ambassadors of the 28 European Union countries "to discuss the situation".

A diplomatic source from a mission of one of the western European countries informed ITAR-TASS about it on Monday.

The European Commission and the Council of the EU stated earlier on Monday that the approval of sanctions would take place at 15:00 local time (13:00 UTC). To approve the sanctions through a written procedure at the session of the Council of the EU in Brussels, it is necessary that all the 28 states of the EU sign the new package. It may become the first package of measures approved after the start of actual process of de-escalation of the Ukrainian crisis, the signing of the ceasefire agreement at the contact group meeting in Minsk September 5 and the start of negotiations on the political settlement of the conflict.

Earlier ITAR-TASS reported with reference to its source in Brussels that the EU might add another 20 individuals to the black list for Russia and Ukraine. In addition, according to reports of western media, three major state-run oil companies - Rosneft, Transneft and Gazprom Neft, as well as several companies of the military industrial sector may fall under sanctions. The EU also intends to reduce the maximum terms of conduit for their debt instruments placed in the EU from 90 to 30 days.

The situation in Ukraine may seem complicated, but the origin of what Western governments and media euphemistically call this 'crisis' is very clear.

It wasn't the corruption of former President Yanukovych, it wasn't Putin's "annexing of Crimea", and it wasn't "pro-Russian militias on the orders of Putin" demanding independence. It all started, as with so many other 'crises' around the globe, with Western politicians and bankers deciding that they needed more 'lebensraum'¹, and sources of cheap human capital and natural resources, to prop up Western nations' junk economies that have been looted by the same bankers and politicians.

Picture, if you will, the following fictional scenario: