Kiev officials and representatives of the two self-proclaimed republics in southeastern Ukraine have agreed to a ceasefire, as the contact group met behind closed doors in Belarus.

The two sides accompanied by representatives of Russia and the OSCE were meeting in the Belorussian capital, Minsk, in an attempt to end the bloodshed in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is now in Wales for the NATO summit, has confirmed the ceasefire agreement on his Twitter account.

He has ordered the pro-government forces to stop military actions starting 6 pm local time (15:00 GMT), as stated in the protocol.

"I give the order to the chief of the General staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces to cease fire, starting from 18.00 [local time] on September 5," Poroshenko's statement says.

He has called on both the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the OSCE to provide international monitoring of compliance with the bilateral ceasefire.

"We must do everything possible and impossible to stop bloodshed and put an end to people's suffering," the president said in a statement posted on his official website.


He also expressed hope that both sides would follow the protocol.

Barack Obama has opened himself to widespread ridicule in Russia after making a history gaffe in a keynote speech in Estonia. Accusing Moscow of imperial ambitions, the US President suggested Russia is trying to reclaim some lands it "lost" 150 years ago.

"Reaching back to the days of the tzars, trying to reclaim lands lost in the 19th century is surely not the way to secure Russia's greatness in the 21st century," Obama said to the rapturous applause of his Estonian audience in Tallinn hall, where he was promising to defend the Baltic States from the Kremlin.

It was a neat and dramatic soundbite - contrasting the ages of monocles and crowns with that of drones and iPhones - and a callback to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who accused Russia of acting in a "19th century fashion" in Crimea back in spring.

There was one problem, though: the quote made little sense.

Russia's Foreign Ministry was quick to gleefully point out Obama's gaffe.

• Will we repeat the idealistic follies which led to disaster in Iraq, Syria and Libya?
• How can it be a 'defeat' to have conquered millions of square miles of central and eastern Europe, and destroyed Communism? Why do we need yet more territory?
• What is the moral imperative that says the 'West' must possess Ukraine?

A reply to Ben Judah's call to 'Arm Ukraine or Surrender' in the New York Times.

I have been much struck by an article in the New York Times by Ben Judah, published beneath the headline: 'Arm Ukraine or Surrender'. It really ought to have an exclamation mark on it, so frantic is its tone. Given its prominent publication in that important forum of opinion, it may be influential. It ought not to be. I explain why below. You can read it here.

It seems to me to have been written in the hope that its readers, especially its readers in Washington DC, will heed the call to arms (or rather to arms shipments), rather than the call to 'surrender' (or, as some might say, make a sensible compromise with Russia).

The same people who have turned much of Syria into a smoking, gore-encrusted rubble-heap, and Libya into a cauldron of blood and fire, are hard at work here, making a very similar mistake to the ones they made in Damascus and Tripoli. First, they think that because the Russian government is bad (beyond dispute), whatever replaces it will be better (very questionable).

The author presents the dilemma thus: 'Either we arm Ukraine, or we force Kiev to surrender and let Mr. Putin carve whatever territories he wants into a Russian-occupied zone of "frozen conflict."'

Let's go through the article. Mr Judah says :

'Russia and Ukraine are now at war.'

No they are not. No state of war yet exists, despite the best efforts of a legion of pot-stirrers who openly wish for a war with Russia. The two neighbours still have diplomatic relations and their governments are in communication with each other, probably rather more than either is letting on. Ukraine's leaders are much given to exaggerated public claims against Russia, which a generally gullible and unquestioning Western media reproduce as proven fact. Ukrainian forces have allegedly destroyed a Russian armoured column, an event for which no evidence has ever been produced. More recently Russian forces were said to have annihilated an entire Ukrainian village. I have yet to see evidence of this. There are plenty more such claims. I have seen them reproduced as fact, without qualification in headlines, in respectable western newspapers which ought to know better.

Russia meanwhile tells its own lies, not of exaggeration but of what might politely be called understatement. Russia maintains, quite incredibly, that none of its soldiers are in Ukraine and that it is not arming the rebels. Of course Russian soldiers are in Ukraine, and of course Russia is helping with supplies and training. To the extent that all its operations are technically deniable, this may well be true. But it is obvious that the GRU is giving powerful aid to the rebels. Quite rightly, the western media recover their proper scepticism when confronted by these claims, and sneer at them.

What they do not do is ask how it was that the pathetic Ukrainian armed forces suddenly, a couple of months ago, began to fight effectively. Could it be that they, too, have been receiving help from elsewhere? Anybody remotely interested in the serious truth about this crisis would surely at least wonder about this. But nobody does.

Australian researchers have shown that a book written ‒ and written off ‒ four decades ago accurately predicted where the world would be in terms of resource allocation and the environment. And that does not bode well for the future of humanity.

Researchers from the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) at the University of Melbourne used data from the last 40 years to compare to predictions made by the authors of the 1972 book Limits to Growth. They focused on what the original authors termed the "business-as-usual" (BAU) or "standard run" scenario, collating it to what has actually happened since the publication.

Just two years after the globe celebrated its first Earth Day in 1970, Italian think tank Club of Rome commissioned researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), led by husband-and-wife team Donella and Dennis Meadows, to build a computer model to track the world's economy and environment. They looked at industrialization, population, food, use of resources and pollution through 1970.

Once the fact was out, the internet giant tried to get a judge to help them hide it again.

Back in February, in a San Jose courtroom, a bombshell was dropped that could have been erased from the public record.

It turns out that Google, which bases its business on collecting and analyzing huge reams of data for advertising purposes, has been scanning users' emails even before users have a chance to open or read them, including email messages that are deleted without being opened. Google knows what's in your email before you do.

The revelation came in a now-settled legal dispute over Google's Gmail service. Dozens of the nation's largest newspapers and media companies fought to make sure that the case - and its wide-ranging implications for Internet users - received a full public airing. It has been an unfolding drama ever since, affecting what analysts estimate are 500 million Gmail users worldwide.

Google tried, and failed, to redact information about its email scanning process from a transcript of a public court hearing. Last month, the judge in the case ruled that portions of the transcript from that February hearing could not be redacted retroactively, since that would be tantamount to closing a public courtroom.

A row is brewing over claims that Israel is earning millions of euros from a de facto policy of preventing non-Israeli reconstruction aid from entering the Gaza Strip.

At least 65,000 people in the Gaza Strip are homeless after the recent seven-week conflict. Infrastructure ranging from water desalination centres to power plants lies in ruins.

No formal Israeli ban prevents the import of reconstruction materials that were not made in Israel, but EU sources speaking on condition of anonymity say that in practice, Israeli security demands present them with a fait accompli.

"If you want aid materials to be permitted to enter, they will almost inevitably come from Israeli sources," an EU official said. "I don't think you'll find it written down anywhere in official policy, but when you get to negotiate with the Israelis, this is what happens. It increases construction and transaction costs, and is a political problem that has to be dealt with."

Two days ago, following French president Hollande's announcement that France would not deliver the Mistral warship that was bought, paid for (and partially built) by Russia, I wrote on my Facebook page:

"Today, I am surfeited with the insanity on this planet. I left the US because of the madness there, Bush invading Iraq; now, the contagion seems to have spread everywhere."

I wasn't just saying that for effect, I was definitely plunged into a black hole of despair at the realization that there really isn't a single leader of any so-called civilized Western country, who has two neurons firing and an ounce of conscience.

With the escalating Ukrainian crisis towards the top of the agenda at this week's NATO summit in Wales, a group of former American intelligence workers appeal to Angela Merkel. In their open letter, they hit out at the US, saying the evidence it has provided is dubious and politically motivated. RT talks to Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who is among the signatories.

The Land Destroyer Report maintained a Facebook page under the name Anthony Cartalucci. Since 2009 it was used to express my personal thoughts regarding the news of the day, as well as share relevant links with followers. Today, Facebook, without warning or opportunity to appeal, decided that the Facebook account must be changed over to a "page." By doing so, all those following my account no longer would receive updates, because of Facebook's "news feed" filters.

The premise behind news feed filters is that people have too many "friends" and are following too many accounts, so they can't possibly manage all the content themselves. Therefore, Facebook will do it for them. We already know about the Facebook "experiment" where they intentionally manipulated the news feed of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users without their consent.

Drive your cart and your plow
Over the bones of the dead ...
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, really sports a mean PR vein. When the show seemed scheduled for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to save Ukraine and Western Civilization - at least rhetorically - from that Evil Empire remixed, Russia, The Caliph, accessing his expensive watch wisdom, intervened with - what else - yet another "off with their heads" special.
Eyebrows were properly raised until the United States' intel alphabet soup solemnly concluded that Islamic State (IS) really beheaded yet another American journalist on video (US President Barack Obama: "An horrific act of violence").

And then, out of the blue, The Caliph doubled down, proclaiming to the whole world his next target is none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Was he channeling the recently ostracized Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush?