US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland confirmed Tuesday that if the Minsk agreements are fully implemented, the United States could lift a number of sanctions against Russia.


Speaking at a meeting with the students of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kiev, Nuland said the United States could cancel some of the sanctions it had imposed against Russia if the Minsk agreements are fully implemented and if both sides of the Ukrainian conflict observe the ceasefire.


The conflict in Ukraine started in April, when Kiev authorities launched a military operation against independence supporters in the southeastern regions of the country.

Tuesday this week commemorates 13 years since the start of the Afghan War - America's longest running campaign of its kind - yet an end to the operation is hardly on the horizon.

Under the terms of the Bilateral Security Agreement, the pact signed last week by representatives for both the United States and Afghanistan, the US will significantly reduce the number of soldiers involved in its post-9/11 Operation Enduring Freedom at the end of this year. Troop numbers will shrink to 10,000, signaling indeed a major step towards ending the war in Afghanistan - a campaign promise made by US President Barack Obama during the lead-up to his re-election in 2012. With this week's anniversary, however, the costs incurred already appear more evident than ever, and the length of the operation may be endless.

Combined with the only recently concluded war in Iraq, the financial toll of the Afghan war on Uncle Sam's pocketbook could range in $4 trillion to $6 trillion, according to research published last year out of Harvard University. Additionally, the iCasualties website claims the US military has suffered 2,349 deaths during Operation Enduring Freedom - including 48 this year, or as many lives lost in that war in 2003 when it was still relatively new. Of that tally, Breitbart News recently reported, 1,649 deaths or about 75 percent, have occurred since the start Pres. Obama's first term in early 2009.

The Ukrainian Civil War did not end with the 5 September Minsk Protocol, despite many in the mainstream media alleging that this is so. Besides the fact that the 'ceasefire' was a misnomer and never implemented in practice, the war has now evolved past an East-West Ukrainian struggle and into an intra-Western one, albeit in different form. Both pro- and anti-war protesters are marching against the government, and the militant Pravy Sektor is threatening Poroshenko and opposition parliamentary representatives with violence. All of this is occurring on the heels of early and controversial parliamentary elections, which will be held without the participation of the popular and banned Communist Party, nor that of the opposition Party of Regions, which is boycotting the charade. Although Poroshenko may have hoped that the 'ceasefire' would buy him time to consolidate his regime at home, what has in fact happened is that he miscalculated, and Western Ukraine's societal divisions could now tear that portion of the country apart as well.

The Charade

Ukraine is slated to have early parliamentary elections on 26 October due to the Rada's dissolution in August. That event was at least a few weeks in the making, with Poroshenko having earlier accused its members of being a "fifth column" during a paranoid fit earlier that month. In essence, he dissolved the Rada precisely to root out any remaining vestiges of political opposition to him in an effort to consolidate his control over the country. It must be remembered that just as oligarchs run businesses, so too do they run countries. Coupled with the Communists' banning and the Party of Regions' boycott, the 'elections' are a simple charade that does nothing to advance real democracy. Adding insult to injury for those who legitimately believe in the myth of democracy, 16 'Darth Vaders' and other Star Wars characters are ridiculously included on the ballot, making a complete mockery of the democratic process and highlighting just how broken the system is in Ukraine.

Nationalist Ricochet

Poroshenko's plan was centered around one major fallacy - that he can control the rampant nationalism he himself helped unleash. Such delusions of absolute control are expected of an oligarch but become disastrous when exercised by a 'president'. Instead of working to balance against the nationalists, Poroshenko emboldened them, hoping that they would rally around him and his war against all things Russian-related, essentially becoming his own personal 'brown shirts' in purging all opposition figures and ideas from public view in the run-up to the new 'elections'.

This nationalist bullet ricocheted, however, as Pravy Sektor took to the streets to protest Poroshenko for not being nationalist enough and even threatened him with Yanukovich's fate. To understand why this apparently sudden reversal of loyalty occurred, one must only be reminded of the adage that 'there is no honor among thieves'. So influential is this rivalry that Gilbert Doctorow, a leading Russian scholar, believes that it can even affect the implementation of Ukraine's planned decentralization, which in turn could officially reignite the hot war in the east, whether Poroshenko plans it or not. Thus, from being a fringe and non-influential political clique last year, Pravy Sektor has rapidly grown into one of the most important factors in post-coup Ukraine, posing a substantial power threat to Poroshenko and threatening to keep the entire country mired in chaos.

According to Ukrainian presidential adviser, thousands of much better trained troops are now in rotation in the east of the country
Since the ceasefire regime in Ukraine's east took effect, Kiev's authorities have redeployed there several hundred armoured vehicles, Ukrainian presidential adviser Yuri Lutsenko told Ukrainian television on Wednesday.

"I have no right to specify the figure, but I assure you: hundreds of armoured vehicles have been moved to the front these days. And thousands of much better trained troops are now in rotation," he said.

On Monday, similar statements were made by spokesman for the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Andrei Lysenko. According to him, the ceasefire in the east of Ukraine has allowed Kiev's security forces to regroup, optimise operation of the defence industry enterprises and complete the third mobilisation wave.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko last week gave a similar assessment to the ceasefire results. He said during a trip to Lviv that Kiev should effectively use the ceasefire regime in order to improve the defense and boost the army's combat effectiveness.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday it will soon announce new travel-related recommendations aimed at stopping the spread of Ebola in the United States, and indicated the new measures would be announced later this week.

CDC Director Tom Frieden didn't say whether the new recommendations would include a ban on flights from the three West African countries that have suffered an Ebola outbreak. But he did say the steps are related to travel, and said he knows many Americans are worried about how international travel could contribute to an outbreak in the United States.

"As the president said yesterday, we're looking hard at what we can do to further increase the safety of Americans, and in the coming days, we will announce further measures that will be taken," Frieden said.

Aside from a travel ban, the steps could include enhanced screening of passengers coming to the United States, and efforts to improve the tracking of passengers who might be trying to come to the United States indirectly.

One specific change that could be coming is requiring people who arrive in the United States to have their temperature checked and to fill out a questionnaire about their activities while overseas. Those steps are already required of people boarding planes in West Africa, and Frieden said the CDC is looking "very carefully" at those ideas.

Our readers may agree with us when we say that reality can be fairly depressing, to say the least! Sometimes it reaches a point where things get so bad, people must find all sorts of ways to deal with it. Some may choose to shut down and find a means of escape and distract themselves by dissociating. Others may feel numb and desensitized. Others may fall into a deep depression, while others may not have cared from the beginning. And yet, despite the grim global picture, some continue speaking up (like we do here on SOTT). If the world wasn't governed by psychopaths, this could be a wonderful place, couldn't it?

There are several ways to speak up and we believe that now it is the time to do it! One can share facts and expose lies in a serious manner. One can also simply share his or her opinion via the social networks. One can show indignation or righteous anger, where it belongs and in many different ways.

Well, this time we have decided to use yet another tactic to counteract lies and propaganda: Humor! We selected a song that many of you may know, from The Sound of Music. As you will see, the lyrics have been modified slightly, and it's not about Maria, but about one of the main perpetrators of crime and suffering in the world. Despite having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, full of empty promises of "Hope" and "Change", this character manipulated the masses and destroyed his own and other countries in the typical American way. He was probably put in power for that purpose. But his smile doesn't fool many people any more. Have you guessed who this song is about yet? You probably have.

So, plug in your microphone, and sing along! The lyrics are available in the video for you to be able to join in. Let your voice be heard by many, and share it around!

When the first ISIS 'beheading' video was released I was immediately struck by how utterly counter-productive it was for the 'Islamic State' to produce a glossy, high-definition video of the event and make it available to Western audiences. If the goal of such a dubious PR campaign was to intimidate the anglo-American Empire into backing off from attacking the alleged Levantine 'rebels', then it failed miserably.

What's most amazing however is that the IS leadership were unable to foresee that lopping the heads off US and UK citizens and producing a made for TV video of the gruesome spectacle would simply gift the anglo-American Empire builders with the justification to launch a bombing campaign against the video makers. I mean, how politically ignorant do you have to be to not realise that? Did they learn nothing from the 9/11 attacks? Western civilian casualties are the US military industrial complex's bread and butter! They use Western civilian casualties of Arab terrorism to justify the invasion and occupation of the Arab countries that the erstwhile Arab terrorists are trying to rid of US occupation!

Even the kids in the schoolyard know it's a bad idea to kick the bully in the shins, he'll just turn around and knock your head off. It's definitely an unequal exchange. So why would anyone in their right mind pursue such a strategy? I'm assuming that the leaders of ISIL are 'in their right minds' because they've shown themselves perspicacious and able enough to mount a successful blitzkrieg through northern Iraq. You don't do that without being somewhat proficient in military strategy. Seems to me we need to look for an alternative narrative about what the role of ISIL really is.

Though everyone adheres to Washington and its Gulf allies' anti-terrorist discourse, everyone understands that it is only a rhetorical justification for a war that has other purposes. The United States say they want to destroy the Islamic Emirate which they created and which performs for them the ethnic cleansing necessary to its plan for the remodeling of the "Broader Middle East". Stranger still, they say they want to fight in Syria alongside the moderate opposition which is composed of the same jihadists. Finally, they destroyed Rakka buildings that had been evacuated two days earlier by the Islamic Emirate. For Thierry Meyssan, behind these apparent contradictions the gas war continues.
US air campaign in Iraq and Syria is puzzling: it is impossible to destroy a terrorist group exclusively by air strikes. In Iraq, the United States and the GCC coupled their actions with those of Iraqi troops and Kurdish ground forces. In Syria, they have no serious force to fight against the Islamic Emirate. And even in this case, "the bombings are not able to affect the capacity of the Islamic Emirate or its operations in other parts of Iraq or Syria," according to General William Mayville, chief of operations at the US Chiefs of Staff. [1]

Moreover, and despite official declarations, the Islamic Emirate is a creation of the United States and the GCC, and it unflaggingly serves their interests:

- In May 2013, Senator John McCain came to Syria illegally to meet the staff of the Free Syrian Army (moderate), including Abu Youssef, also known as Abu Du'a, alias Ibrahim al-Baghdadi, the current caliph Ibrahim (Head of the extremists) [2].

- In January 2014, Reuters revealed that President Obama had called a secret session of Congress during which it voted to fund and arm the "rebels" in Syria, including those of the Islamic Emirate until September 2014 [3]. It was indeed a secret session and not just behind closed doors. The entire American press complied with the censorship of this information.

- Proud of this acknowledgement, Saudi state television clamored the fact that the Islamic Emirate was headed by Prince Abdul Rahman al-Faisal. [4]

- Meanwhile the head of Israeli military intelligence, General Aviv Kochavi, warned against a proliferation of anti-Syrian fighters and found that members of al-Qaida, including those of the Islamic Emirate (which it had not yet divorced) were trained in three camps in Turkey [under NATO control] located in Şanlıurfa, Osmaniye and Karaman. [5]

'Terror sword' or plastic decoration?

A plastic sword removed from a Sydney home during recent terror raids is a common part of Shiite Muslim household and not of the religious tradition Islamic State fighters adhere to.

It was one of the most frightening, powerful images to emerge from counter-terrorism raids across Sydney last month.

As one man was charged with conspiring to behead a random person in Sydney's CBD, police removed a sword in an evidence bag from a Marsfield home.

But the owner of the menacing item has revealed that it is actually a plastic decoration common in almost every Shiite Muslim household.

Community leader Jamal Daoud said the sword would be found in almost every Shiite household.

Mustafa Dirani, a 21-year-old part-time painter, was detained and his parents' Marsfield home raided at dawn on September 18 as part of the Joint Counter-Terrorism Team's Operation Appleby.

He said he doesn't know Omarjan Azari, who was detained, along with two of Azari's brothers, when their Guildford home was raided on the same day.

Azari, 22, was charged with conspiring to commit a terrorist act after allegedly speaking to terrorist Mohammad Ali Baryalei via phone and taking orders to seize a random person from the city's streets and behead them.

Dirani was detained and later released without charge.

Twitter, the world's largest microblogging platform, on Tuesday sued the U.S. government, alleging that the Justice Department's restrictions on what the company can say publicly about the government's national security requests for user data violate the firm's First Amendment rights.

With its lawsuit, the San Francisco-based firm is seeking to go further than five other technology companies that earlier this year reached a settlement with the government on the permissible scope of disclosure at a time of heightened concern about the scale of government surveillance.

"It's our belief that we are entitled under the First Amendment to respond to our users' concerns and to the statements of U.S. government officials by providing information about the scope of U.S. government surveillance - including what types of legal process have not been received," Ben Lee, a Twitter vice president, said in a post online. "We should be free to do this in a meaningful way, rather than in broad, inexact ranges."

In a post-Edward Snowden world in which technology companies are striving to reassure customers about their commitment to privacy, Twitter is pressing for the ability to be more candid in its twice-a-year transparency reports than the government has been willing to permit.

Tech firms may now report the numbers of requests they receive from the government in broad bands - such as zero to 999, for instance. Twitter would like to be able to disclose the exact number of national-security-related orders received in any particular category - including zero, if that is the case.