In his essential book on UK foreign policy, Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World, historian Mark Curtis notes "the ideological system promotes one key concept that underpins everything else - the idea of Britain's basic benevolence." Criticism of foreign policies is possible "but within narrow limits which show 'exceptions' to, or 'mistakes' in, promoting the rule of basic benevolence". I would only add one caveat to Curtis's enduring maxim - the ideological system in the UK also promotes the basic benevolence of the United States, our closest ally. And arguably it is the UK's liberal media who are the biggest cheerleaders and apologists of the US as an active and aggressive world power.

Writing about President Obama's State of the Union address in January Simon Tisdall, the Guardian's foreign affairs commentator, explained the speech "was evidence of unabashed retreat from attachment to the imperious might, the responsibilities and the ideals that once made America an unrivalled and deserving superpower" (my emphasis added). Writing two months later, the BBC's North America Editor Mark Mardell argued this retreat was so significant the White House now "thinks military power is a relic from a past age." Mardell seems to be unaware the Obama Administration has launched drone attacks on seven nations since coming to office.

The United States is trying to provoke a confrontation with Russia and using the crisis in Ukraine as an excuse to achieve its goal, a political commentator says.Jeffrey Steinberg, senior editor at Executive Intelligence Review, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Wednesday .

"I think, this entire crisis, if you look at it honestly, has been provoked from the United States and some other NATO member countries in Europe. The illegal coup d'état that took place in February was in reaction to the fact that the legally- elected Ukrainian government refused to sign a partnership deal with the European Union that would have meant economic destruction of the country," Steinberg said.

"And that government is violently overthrown by... the children and grand children of the wartime pro-Nazi Ukrainians, who fought with the Axis (the Axis powers) against the Soviet Union, United States, Britain and others in World War Two," he added.

"These violent people carried out the military coup, and the United States and most European countries have refused to acknowledge that, and fully support the overthrow of a legitimately-elected and certified government," the veteran journalist noted.

The digital currency bitcoin is a possible terrorist threat, suspects the US Department of Defense. The Defense Department is conducting a counterterrorism program investigation of virtual currencies like Bitcoin and other new technologies, including smartphones and social media, to better understand if they pose security threats. Its Combatting Terrorism Technical Support Office that analyzes terrorism and irregular warfare capabilities is spearheading a program that will help the military understand how modern technologies could pose threats to national security, the International Business Times reported.

Recently, an unclassified memo by the CTTSO was obtained by Bitcoin Magazine, which suggested what areas should be looked at to determine the level of threat virtual currencies actually pose.

A memo detailing some of the CTTSO projects states, "The introduction of virtual currency will likely shape threat finance by increasing the opaqueness, transactional velocity, and overall efficiencies of terrorist attacks," as reported by Bitcoin Magazine, according to IBTimes.

The anonymity offered by virtual currencies is a top point of concern for law enforcement as the transactions are public, but the people involved in the operations are unnamed.

Putin isn't dragging the world back to the 19th century. Obama just needs to stop pretending it's 1991.

Russia is dragging the world back into the 19th century, at least according to Barack Obama's administration. "You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext," said Secretary of State John Kerry, following Moscow's annexation of Crimea. "What we see here are distinctly 19th- and 20th-century decisions made by President [Vladimir] Putin to address problems," added another senior administration official. "Sending in troops and, because you're bigger and stronger, taking a piece of the country -- that is not how international law and international norms are observed in the 21st century," President Obama declared a few weeks later.

As Moscow continues to threaten a broader invasion -- most recently demanding that Kiev withdraw its troops from eastern Ukraine -- America's indignant response reveals a great deal about how its leaders think about international norms.

Unfortunately, it is the Americans, not the Russians, who are trapped in a time warp. They believe that the legal norms promoted by the United States during its brief period of global hegemony -- which started in 1991 and has eroded over the last decade -- are still in force. They aren't.

In the 1990s, it was possible to believe that a new international order had replaced the bipolar system of the Cold War. Memorably dubbed the "new world order" by President George H.W. Bush, it was characterized by the peaceful settlement of disputes through international courts, universal human rights, international criminal justice, and free trade and investment. Above all, the new liberal order emphasized international rule of law -- the idea that international law and legal institutions would be the major source of global organization.

US Government and United Launch Alliance (ULA) requested the Court of Federal Claims on Wednesday to lift its temporary ban on purchasing Russian-designed rocket engines RD-180 for the US Atlas V launch systems.

The ban ruled by judge Susan Braden a week ago is temporary and may be cancelled if the Department of the Treasury, Department of Commerce and Department of State provide a paper that RD-180 supplies do not breach the President's sanction law. The document, saying that the use of these rocket engines in the US is not in direct or indirect contravention of the sanction legislation, was presented to the judge on the ULA's request on Wednesday.

It is not only the ULA, a joint venture of the aerospace industry giants Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, that is keen to see the ban lifted but also the Pentagon, or rather the US air force, on whose commission the ULA launches military and spy satellites under exclusive billion dollar contracts.

According to the Pentagon's Press Secretary, Rear Admiral John Kirby, this program will not be harmed in the foreseeable future, as the US has a stock sufficient for the following two years and contracts for RD-180 supplies from the Moscow region town Khimki for another couple of years. Besides, the temporary ban does not include the contracts already signed.

Russia and Iran have reportedly signed a secret deal on wide cooperation in space exploration, ranging from training Iranian cosmonauts in Russia to possible production of Earth observation and telecommunication satellites for Iran. The alleged deal was boosted by the West's sanctions targeting Russia in retaliation for its position on the Ukrainian crisis, Russian newspaper Izvestia reported.

"A protocol on cooperation was signed on April 10 in Tehran after the fifth session of a Russian-Iranian work group on space cooperation," the newspaper cites a source in Roscosmos, Russia's national space agency.

The satellite part of the agreement is of greatest interest for Tehran. Russia pledged to provide sample images of earth gathered by its Resurs-DK and Resurs-P satellites, which allow taking photos with resolution up to 70 cm per pixel, Izvestia said citing the text of the protocol it obtained.

Iranians plan to build domestic communication stations capable of receiving information from the Russian constellation of satellites.

"Russia has assured the Iranian side that there is no insurmountable obstacle to the delivery of receiver stations to get satellite information from the Russian earth observation satellites to communication centers located in foreign nations," the protocol reportedly says.

Gazprom says Kiev has failed to pay its mounting gas bill, which now has hit $3.5 billion. This means that in June Ukraine might receive Russian gas only on the condition of advanced payment.

"The deadline has passed, no payment has been received," said Sergey Kupriyanov, the company's representative. Earlier the company said that if the deadline was not met, Gazprom would issue an advance bill for June gas supplies on May 16.

Naftogaz, Ukraine's state-owned oil and gas company, has a long record of late payments and unpaid bills to, a problem which has only gotten worse as Ukraine has slipped into revolution and civil unrest.

The debt as of May 7, 2014 stands at $3.508 billion, Gazprom said Wednesday, up from the $2.2 billion tab at the end of April. The sum is contested by Ukraine. Moscow, Kiev and the European Commission plan to hold a new round of talks to negotiate the debt; its date will be discussed on May 12, Russia's Energy Ministry said.

A prominent Japanese politician has raised hackles as Barack Obama visits Tokyo by claiming it's an 'open secret' that he and the first lady are headed for divorce, and that the president has been using Secret Service agents to cover for him as he pursues extramarital affairs.

Kazuyuki Hamada, who sits in the upper house of Japan's parliament, earned his PhD a half-mile from the White House at George Washington University, and emerged as a shrill commentator on America's economy and foreign policy.

In 2009 he also joined the ranks of the so-called 'birthers,' arguing in a book titled 'Who is Obama?' that the president likely wasn't born in the United States.

But it's his more recent writing that's capturing the attention of the international press this week.

Hamada complained April 5 on his official blog about Obama's decision to visit Tokyo without first lady Michelle Obama in tow. 'His approval numbers are dragging down near 30 per cent,' Hamada wrote, according to an English translation.

'The president has been criticized for having no visions or leadership to solve domestic and diplomatic problems, some even ridiculing him as the worst president of the postwar era.'

'The biggest reason - of many - for the collapse of his reputation is his failed relationship with his wife,' Hamada claimed

Some 4,000 combatants supporting the Kiev authorities have been brought into Odessa, Georgy Fyodorov, deputy head of the Russian Civic Chamber's Committee for Coordination of Aid to Residents of Ukraine said Wednesday.

"Very alarming reports are coming in from our friends in Odessa," he said. "They suggest that control over the city has practically shifted to (tycoon Ihor) Kolomoisky because Igor Palitsya, the new governor of the Odessa region, is his henchman."

"Unfortunately, we have reports that armed militants of the Right Sector, fighters of the Dnipr and Kyiv-1 special task force battalions, and ultras of the FC Dnipro have been brought into the city and the overall number of the combatants propping up the Kiev regime exceeds 4,000 there now," Fyodorov said.

"The most dangerous thing is that local police have handed them the lists of the pro-federation movement activists," he said. "In addition, we have the information the whole city is blocked by checkpoints and traffic inside is practically paralyzed."

Fyodorov said the reports coming from Odessa were "a cry for salvation". "People are asking the Public Chamber and me personally to appeal to international organizations and to the authorities in Kiev to avert the planned actions of terror and to stop the city's slide into genocide."

"We're working on this very scrupulously now and watching the situation inside and outside of the city," he said.

Powerful Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky was appointed governor of Dnipropetrovsk region by the incumbent government in March 2014.

The U.S. Supreme Court decision to refuse to hear our case concerning Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process, means that this provision will continue to be law. It means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era. It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil by our government is legal. It means that the courts, like the legislative and executive branches of government, exclusively serve corporate power - one of the core definitions of fascism. It means that the internal mechanisms of state are so corrupted and subservient to corporate power that there is no hope of reform or protection for citizens under our most basic constitutional rights. It means that the consent of the governed - a poll by OpenCongress.com showed that this provision had a 98 percent disapproval rating - is a cruel joke. And it means that if we do not rapidly build militant mass movements to overthrow corporate tyranny, including breaking the back of the two-party duopoly that is the mask of corporate power, we will lose our liberty.

"In declining to hear the case Hedges v. Obama and declining to review the NDAA, the Supreme Court has turned its back on precedent dating back to the Civil War era that holds that the military cannot police the streets of America," said attorney Carl Mayer, who along with Bruce Afran devoted countless unpaid hours to the suit. "This is a major blow to civil liberties. It gives the green light to the military to detain people without trial or counsel in military installations, including secret installations abroad. There is little left of judicial review of presidential action during wartime."

Afran, Mayer and I brought the case to the U.S. Southern District Court of New York in January 2012. I was later joined by co-plaintiffs Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, journalist Alexa O'Brien, RevolutionTruth founder Tangerine Bolen, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir and Occupy London activist Kai Wargalla.