This article appeared in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung on December 5, 2011.

Book V of Aristotle's Politics describes the eternal transition of oligarchies making themselves into hereditary aristocracies - which end up being overthrown by tyrants or develop internal rivalries as some families decide to "take the multitude into their camp" and usher in democracy, within which an oligarchy emerges once again, followed by aristocracy, democracy, and so on throughout history.

Debt has been the main dynamic driving these shifts - always with new twists and turns. It polarizes wealth to create a creditor class, whose oligarchic rule is ended as new leaders ("tyrants" to Aristotle) win popular support by cancelling the debts and redistributing property or taking its usufruct for the state.

Since the Renaissance, however, bankers have shifted their political support to democracies. This did not reflect egalitarian or liberal political convictions as such, but rather a desire for better security for their loans. As James Steuart explained in 1767, royal borrowings remained private affairs rather than truly public debts. For a sovereign's debts to become binding upon the entire nation, elected representatives had to enact the taxes to pay their interest charges.

By giving taxpayers this voice in government, the Dutch and British democracies provided creditors with much safer claims for payment than did kings and princes whose debts died with them. But the recent debt protests from Iceland to Greece and Spain suggest that creditors are shifting their support away from democracies. They are demanding fiscal austerity and even privatization sell-offs.

This is turning international finance into a new mode of warfare. Its objective is the same as military conquest in times past: to appropriate land and mineral resources, also communal infrastructure and extract tribute. In response, democracies are demanding referendums over whether to pay creditors by selling off the public domain and raising taxes to impose unemployment, falling wages and economic depression. The alternative is to write down debts or even annul them, and to re-assert regulatory control over the financial sector.

The calls presented in the plan of peaceful settlement of the situation in Ukraine by Russian President Vladimir Putin should be heeded in Kiev, Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov has stated this at a meeting with OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Chairman Ilkka Kanerva on Thursday.

"We do not give up. President Vladimir Putin personally makes great efforts in direct contacts with President Poroshenko to find such ways of cooperation that will allow immediately put an end to bloodshed, remove the threat for the civilian population, ensure solution to humanitarian problems, problems of reconstruction of the destroyed infrastructure, and, of course, ensure the beginning of the negotiating political process," the Russian minister said.


After such contacts, the Russian president formulated the seven-point initiative that is aimed at helping Kiev's authorities and the militia of the southeast agree on and take steps in coordination to deescalate the situation, Lavrov said.

"We hope the calls will be heeded first and foremost in Kiev, Luhansk and Donetsk," the minister said. "We will be ready together with OSCE within the framework of the contact group to help the conflicting parties to move along the path of stabilization of the situation in practice."

The presence of Russian troops in Ukraine is beyond doubt, President Barack Obama said in Tallinn Concert Hall Nordea.

"Russian troops on the territory of Ukraine are not a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission," he said. According to him, "these are the facts that can be proved," and "they cannot be questioned."

A representative of the American Foreign Ministry Jen Psaki said that the United States Department of State had no independent evidence that the Russian troops crossed the border of Ukraine.

While the western mainstream media hurls abuse at Russia and its government, blaming it for the crisis in Eastern Ukraine there is little mention of the role of USA and its NATO puppets in the continuing tragedy.

The USA, Canada and EU are happy to impose sanctions on Russia and provide military assistance, loans and intelligence to a Ukrainian government that was not elected (established by the violent coup aided by the CIA). However these countries are not willing to allow Russia to assist the Eastern-Ukrainians in any way - even with humanitarian aid.


What is worse again is that while they condemn the Russians for not making the separatists lie down and accept an unelected and prejudiced government they also turn a blind eye to the constant bombing of unarmed civilians. Meanwhile, in Gaza the same thing is happening to the Palestinian people - they are being bombed consistently and it is again mostly unarmed civilians who are being injured or killed.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have registered no troops, ammunition or weapons crossing the Russian-Ukrainian border over the past two weeks, the OSCE report said on Wednesday.

"Throughout the week, the Observer Teams noticed a net increase of young people (both men and women) wearing military-style dress crossing the border in both directions but did not observe any weapons among these groups," the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission's report covering a period from August 20 to September 3 said.

The observers said they had regular interactions with supporters of the self-proclaimed republics. "Some discussed openly with the OSCE while others expressed their total mistrust toward the OSCE. At both Border Crossing Points, some supporters of the self-proclaimed republics explained that they are not allowed to cross the border with weapons," the report said.

The observers registered a decrease in helicopter sightings compared to last week but they were still observed at border crossing points flying at low altitude along the border.

"In either case, in as far as could be seen, the aircraft did not violate the Ukrainian airspace," the report said.

Vladimir Putin says a ceasefire deal between Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels could be reached by Friday. The Russian President's announcement comes after conflicting reports that a permanent ceasefire agreement had been reached by the two sides this morning.

Following witness reports of loud artillery explosions near the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the country's President Petro Poroshenko modified his statement to remove the word "permanent". It is unclear whether his actions were in response to reports of the explosion.


Reporting from Mariupol, Ukraine, Sky's Moscow Correspondent Katie Stallard said: "It's extremely unclear at this stage what exactly this ceasefire is supposed to be. No one we have spoken to on the ground seems to know about it.

"The Ukrainian president issued a statement this morning claiming he agreed with Vladimir Putin to a permanent ceasefire in the region. He has since slightly modified that statement and removed the word 'permanent'. A spokesman for President Putin said no such agreement has been reached, nor can it, because Russia is not a party to the conflict."

Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov was earlier quoted as saying the leaders' views "overlap to a considerable degree".

"The heads of state exchanged opinions about what needs to be done first in order to bring an end to the bloodletting in the southeast of the country as soon as possible," said Mr Peskov.

A nationalist lawmaker suggests making politicians disclose their psychiatric problems to the public and punish those who try to hide them by removing them from polls.

Aleksey Zhuravlev, who heads the nationalist party Rodina (Motherland), and sits in the Lower House on the ticket of the center-left party Fair Russia, claims that the initiative was caused by personal experience.

"In the course of election campaigns, I sometimes encounter candidates who cause only bewilderment. I have to explain the simplest things to them - like what security is, what social solidarity and responsibility are, what healthy conservatism is. Sometimes our citizens say that certain deputies must be insane. It might be a figure of speech, but we cannot rule out that it could be an actual fact," Zhuravlev said in an interview with Izvestia daily.

"I think voters should know about psychiatric problems of the people who seek their support. The candidates must submit official papers about their mental condition to the elections commissions, and, if they conceal anything, this can be a reason for removal from polls," he added. The MP said that the regulations could be similar to the requirements concerning criminal records - candidates must report it in their papers and can be disqualified from the race if they fail to do so.

The motion received some support from other Fair Russia MPs and lawmakers representing the Communist Party.

In the same interview, Zhuravlev gave an example of a politician who should undergo a test. He claimed that the leader of the old and established Russian pro-democracy party Yabloko, Sergey Mitrokhin, had been recognized as unfit for military service for health reasons, with the suggestion that it was because of his mental condition.

However, Mitrokhin refuted Zhuravlev's allegations in press comments saying that his military ID had a "fit for service" marking and expressed readiness to undergo an independent psychiatric test at any time.

"I hope other deputies agree to pass the test together with me as their mental condition can really cause worries - almost every week they submit schizophrenic motions to the parliament and then vote for them," the Yabloko leader said.

Iran's Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani says the United States and the United Kingdom have engineered and sponsored terrorism around the world.

"History shows that the first terrorists in the world and in the region are the superpowers themselves," Larijani said, adding that the US and UK are chief among them.

The United States and European states have expressed concerns that the Western militants fighting in Iraq and Syria would pose a security threat once they decide to return to their countries. This is while the United States and its Western allies have been actively funding and training the militants.

The top Iranian parliamentarian pointed out that the superpowers express misgivings over terrorism while they themselves have created the ISIL terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.

Referring to the Western countries, he said, "You will never be upset about terrorism and you are lying because you yourselves were the founders of terrorism in the region."

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, a senior editor with Veteran's Today, from Atlanta, about the West's direct support for the ISIL terrorist group slaughtering Syrians and their response to the recent killings of Western journalists. The following is an approximate transcript of the interview.

Press TV: Are you on the verge of another invasion by American troops to Iraq?

Dean: No, I'm afraid this has been really exaggerated. We have a lot of folks out there that don't like what America has done in the region and they have very good reasons for that; but they are kind of grasping... they are so angry that they try to grasp at anything that comes along that's going to bash America, but America's not, they have no need to because Iraq has a huge army.

All we're looking at and all really Iraq wants is of course American tax payers to pay for things; and they want airstrikes because they don't really have much of an air force.

The group purportedly responsible for discovering the Steven Sotloff beheading video is an intelligence asset specializing in war on terror propaganda.

"The video was first obtained by SITE Intelligence Group (Search for International Terrorist Entities), also known as SITE Intel Group, a relatively under-the-radar yet apparently very powerful nonprofit research body that monitors jihadist movements," reports USA Today. "The Bethesda, Maryland, organization has published a shortened version of the beheading video and published a transcript on its news site, which has been largely inaccessible since news of the beheading broke, likely due to an uptick in Web traffic."

One of SITE's founders, Rita Katz, is a government insider with close connections to former terrorism czar Richard Clarke and his staff in the White House, as well as investigators in the Department of Justice, Department of the Treasury, and the Department of Homeland Security, according to SourceWatch. Her father was executed in Iraq as an Israel spy, a fact that suggests a connection to Israeli intelligence.