Iran claims it has foiled an assassination attempt against one of its nuclear scientists by the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. A senior Iranian security official said the Revolutionary Guards thwarted the attempt.

"In the last two years, the Zionist enemy (Israel) was trying hard to assassinate an Iranian nuclear scientist, but the timely presence of the IRGC security forces thwarted the terrorist operation," the Deputy Chief Liaison Officer of Flight Guards Corps, Colonel Yaqoub Baqeri told Iran's Fars news agency on Saturday.

In recent months it's come to light that the U.S. government and allied Western powers have arrayed all of their economic, social, political, martial, and propagandizing forces against Russia and the leadership of its president, Vladimir Putin. Some of the policies, strategies and approaches towards destabilizing Russia are out in the open. Some less so. But this is where it gets most interesting. For while it was fairly easy to spot some of the aggression aimed at Russia from without, seeing it occur even more covertly from within is another story. Which brings us to some recent news.

The western media is now carrying the story of a protest on the streets of Manezh Square in Moscow which occurred on Tuesday, December 30th. At the center of the rally was Alexei Navalny, self-proclaimed "anti-corruption" blogger and head of the largest opposition movement of the leadership of Vladimir Putin and his administration in Russia. Navalny was just convicted of defrauding a cosmetics company of about $440,000 and given a suspended sentence of 3 1/2 years. Relating to the same case, his brother, Oleg, will be sent to prison for the same period of time. In 2013, Alexei Navalny was also tried and convicted of embezzling over $500,000 from the state-owned timber company Kirovles, where Navalny worked as a volunteer in 2009.

Credit Defaut Swap (CDS), mortgage backed security (MDS), bottom-up investment, high frequency trading, naked short sale... these are the kind of complicated terminology you encounter when you start exploring the financial jungle.

But don't be mislead. This overuse of jargon is designed to confuse and destroy any motivation to explore further. Clearly 'they' don't want you to understand because they are hiding some rather dirty secrets wrapped up in apparently complicated jargon.

Scratch beyond this seemingly complex veneer however, and the reality of finance is surprisingly simple... and disgusting. The objective of this article is to explain, in layman terms, finance principles and the slavery most individuals and states are subjected to. I will also show why things might soon change dramatically and offer some sound advice for such times of financial turmoil.

On January 1, 2015 Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan formed the Eurasian Union. The new economic alliance is a further step in the three countries' cooperation, replacing as it does the Customs Union that Moscow, Minsk and Astana formed in 2010.

The Eurasian Economic Union creates a common market of the three countries based on rules of the World Trade Organisation. In line with the treaty the territory of the EAU is free for the movement of goods, services and labour resources while the signatories undertake to carry out coordinated or unified economic policies. Member states also have agreed to bring their national legislations in line with Union rules within 10 years.

The new economic alliance comprises countries with a combined population of 170 million and is the biggest organisation of its kind in the post-Soviet space. Its trade turnover currently stands at $66 billion having increased by almost 50% over the past three years in the framework of the Customs Union. The three member countries of the new Union account for 20% of global reserves of gas and 15% of oil.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan welcomed the emergence of the Union as the 'birth of a new geopolitical reality of the 21st century'. At the same time he also cautioned against repeating mistakes of the European Union: "The point is that none of the participating countries were subject to de-industrialisation, and traditional industries did not suffer. Lessons from the European recession are in this."

An estimated 2,500 neo-Nazis decided to take to the streets of Kiev on the 1st of January and commemorate the birthday of the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, holding a torchlight procession in his honor. The fanatics carried portraits of Bandera as well as flags of the Svoboda and the Right Sector parties, shouted slogans such as: "Glory to the nation! Death to enemies!", "Ukraine belongs to Ukrainians" and "Bandera will return and restore order." The hooligans also assaulted and robbed Russian reporters in front of the police! Welcome to the new democratic Ukraine, brought to you by the U.S. and their 'partners' in the EU.


The Czech President Milos Zeman was appalled after watching the video of the demonstrations, saying that there was "something very wrong with Ukraine", as well as with the EU, which "doesn't condemn such rallies".

"The parade itself attempted to replicate Nazi torchlight parades where participants shouted the slogan: 'Death to the Poles, Jews and communists without mercy," Zeman explained.

In recent months the Western media has repeatedly excused or ignored the presence of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine and asserted that any such allegation were 'Russian propaganda'.

Below are a few more photos from the rally. Judge for yourself.
Stepan Bandera, the man that the regime in Kiev considers their hero, was one of the leaders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). The organization collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II and was involved in the ethnic cleansing of Russians, Poles and Jews. The following is a list of atrocities commited against civilians by this organization.

The euro fell to $1.1861, its weakest level since 2006 on the back of uncertainty over Greece's position within the single currency. A strong dollar and expectations that the European Central Bank will beef up its stimulus program have also not helped.

The euro dropped to a low of $1.1861 against the dollar during Asian trading hours on Monday. However, it did pick up slightly to trade at $1.1950 during European trading. This has seen the single currency lose as much as 1.2 percent of its value.

European shares were volatile, initially falling sharply before rebounding into positive territory within an hour of the open as investors digested the implications of the weak euro and yet another hefty slide in oil to a 5-1/2 year low, Reuters reports.

It could not have happened to a nastier person.

On New Year's day, in an unlikely unfortunate home "exercise" accident, USSA Senator, Harry Reid (D-NV) smashed his face, resulting in broken facial bones, as well as broken ribs and a very black eye.

Reid also previously dislocated his shoulder, bumped his head and got a black eye, while "jogging" in 2011.

It Happens All The Time

To high level politicians, I mean. Getting savagely brutalized by home exercise equipment, dislocating their arms while jogging.

By contrast, how many times have you gone to work out at the gym, and inadvertently smashed your face on a piece of exercise equipment, breaking facial bones and ribs, and getting a black eye? Probably never, but then you are not a high level politician.

In the latter part of 2014, China became the world's largest economy, dethroning the United States which has held the position since 1872. The technique for identifying such sizes will always be up for question, even if the IMF did account for the issue of purchasing power parity. Those in the US can still summon relatively larger pay packets than their Chinese counterparts.

Be that as it may, China now makes up for about 16.48 percent of the world's purchasing-power adjusted GDP, with the US coming in at 16.28 percent. Analysts point out that these figures ignore "raw terms" (Business Insider, Oct 8, 2014), though that doesn't diminish a spectacular transformation - in 1980, China's overall economic output was a mere tenth that of the US.

The chatter about Beijing's economic surge coincided well with its Balkans drive, yet another means by which the Chinese business juggernaut is seeking satiation. Chinese diplomats and figures are not strangers to the region. Their involvement during the eccentric relationship between Beijing and the communist Albanian state of Enver Hoxha is well noted.

The love affair with Hoxha went cold in the late 1970s. China began cultivating ties with Yugoslavia and Romania, insisting that both the Soviet Union and the United States adopt more constructive approaches to the Balkan region. Then, as now, the Balkans was to provide an entry point into the markets of European states while also enabling a currying of favour with so called third world countries.[1] Then, as now, China's regimes boasted new, reformist faces, at least in rhetorical aspiration.

Despite the firmness shown by the EU's biggest players when it comes to sanctioning Putin's Russia, lower down the pecking order some member states are not happy. Unlike the most craven and obedient puppets - the Baltic States and Poland - it took some arm twisting to get the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary to agree to punish Moscow for annexing Crimea. Each country is dependent for much of its energy on Russia with which there are also valued economic ties. Why rock the boat? Despite hyperbole claiming that Vladimir Putin was intent on taking them over and rebuilding the iron curtain, in reality, Russia has been an unproblematic neighbour for a quarter of a century.

Could these ripples of discontent with the famed Washington consensus develop into something more troubling for both the US and Brussels? What can they do about it? All three countries are members of both NATO and the EU. Promoting regime change inside the Euro-Atlantic tentsurely becomes more problematic. Or, does it? Let us examine each case separately and see what the auguries bode.

On 17^th November 2014, it was drab and raining in Prague as the Czechs celebrated 25 years since the so-called "velvet revolution," unlike the classic freezing, East European winter day of 17^th November 1989. Demonstrations to mark the event were slated to take place and a mass of candles filled the passage way on Národní Třida (National Street) where student "Martin Šmid" died at the hands of the police, an event that was said to have triggered the collapse of the communist regime. But, hold on: it soon emerged that Martin Šmid didn't exist; he had been invented by the Czechoslovak security services, the STB (Státní Bezpečnost) as part of a ploy to bring a new, reformed post-communist regime to power.

Emoting over a death that never took place seems weird but, in a way it sums up the banality that lays at the heart of all things connected with the "velvet" events. This was only reinforced later in the day when a group of anti-capitalist protesters snaked its way through the city centre wearing papier maché masks, some bearing the image of the evil Putin, others the reviled (at least, by the local cogniscenti) Czech president, Miloš Zeman. A few Ukrainian flags brought up the rear. Other banners denounced Ecuador's left wing president, Rafael Correa, hardly a household name in Prague.[I] As the hundred or so protesters passed the Rudolfinum concert hall, a group of elderly rock musicians with lank, grey hair plugged away at some ancient protest songs watched by a handful of leather clad biker types.

The chilling slogans and a flagrant demonstration of nationalist symbols during the neo-Nazi march in Kiev reminded the Czech President Milos Zeman of Hitler's Germany. He said something was "wrong" both with Ukraine and the EU which didn't condemn it.

Zeman was commenting on the appalling scenes, which showed thousands of Ukrainian nationalists holding a torchlight procession across the Ukrainian capital on Thursday to commemorate the 106th birthday of Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator and the Ukraine nationalist movement's leader during World War II.

"There is something wrong with Ukraine," the Czech Republic's leader told radio F1 on Sunday. "Yesterday evening I was browsing the Internet and discovered a video showing the demonstration on Kiev's Maidan on January 1."