Did you know that some Americans are being hit with health insurance rate increases of more than 500 percent?

Taking advantage of "the stupidity of the American voter", the Democrats succeeded in ramming through one of the worst pieces of legislation that has ever come before Congress.

The full implementation of Obamacare has been repeatedly delayed, but now we are finally starting to see the true horror of this terrible law. Thanks to Obamacare, millions of American families are losing health plans that they were very happy with, health insurance rates are skyrocketing, millions of workers are having their full-time hours cut back to part-time hours, rural hospitals all over the country are dying, and thousands of doctors are being driven out of the industry thus intensifying the greatest doctor shortage in U.S. history.

"The sobering up of the Ukrainians will be harsh and painful"

In an interview for Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, explained how Russian analysts were predicting the development of the situation in Ukraine a year ago. And he also gave an assessment of the role of the United States and NATO in the events in eastern Ukraine, explained why these events are a continuation of Zbigniew Brzezinski's plan for the disintegration of the USSR and Russia, and assessed prospects for the development of the multipolar world and the possibility of a future struggle for hydrocarbon resources.

[Yegorov] Nikolay Platonovich, the realities of recent months are a coup d'etat in Ukraine, military operations by the Ukrainian authorities against the inhabitants of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and a frenzied anti-Russian course by Kiev. Would it have been possible to predict this turn of events only a year ago?

[Patrushev] Our specialists were warning of the high probability of an escalation of the situation in Ukraine in the context of political and economic instability, particularly under external influence. At the same time it should be acknowledged that the probability of an imminent instant seizure of power in Kiev with the support of militant groups of open Nazis was not considered at that time. Let me remind you that prior to the coup you mentioned, Moscow was implementing in full all its partnership commitments to Kiev.

We were constantly providing material and financial aid, without which Ukraine was in no condition to cope with economic difficulties that had become chronic in nature. To support our neighbours, material and financial resources amounting to tens of billions of dollars were mobilized. Unfortunately for many people in Ukraine this aid became, in time, so customary that its importance for the country's survival was simply forgotten.

As for longer-term predictions, the Ukraine crisis was an entirely expected outcome of systematic activity by the United States and its closest allies.

For the past quarter of a century this activity has been directed towards completely separating Ukraine and the other republics of the former USSR from Russia and totally reformatting the post-Soviet space to suit American interests. The conditions and pretexts were created for colour revolutions, supported by generous state funding.

Thus, Victoria Nuland, US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, has repeatedly stated that during the period 1991 through 2013 Washington spent 5bn dollars on "supporting the desire of the people of Ukraine for stronger, more democratic government". According to figures from open sources alone, for instance US Congress documents, the total amount of state funding for various American programmes of "aid" to Ukraine in the period 2001 through 2012 came to at least 2.4bn dollars. That is comparable with the annual budget of some small countries. The US Agency for International Development spent about 1.5bn dollars, the State Department nearly half a billion, and the Pentagon more than 370m dollars.

According to congressional records, organizations such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Peace Corps, and the Open World Centre took part in Ukrainian aid programmes, in addition to the well-known USAID and other departments. It is not hard to guess for whom and why American volunteers and staffers of diplomatic missions have been "opening the world" throughout the 23 years since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

"Can America Contain China?" it is often asked in the West. But given America's endless wars and assaults on the developing nations of the world, the question ought to be, "Can China Contain America"? Or at least, can China restrain the U.S. from doing more damage in East Asia and perhaps elsewhere in the developing world?

Last week Obama went to Beijing for the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit as the representative of the West and its centuries old grand project in East Asia. And what has that project been? History tells us that the West with its missionaries and soldiers, Obama's predecessors, bathed the region in suffering and bloodshed. A short and incomplete list includes: the Opium Wars on China, the war on the Philippines, the nuclear bombing of Japan, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the bombings that laid waste Laos and Cambodia, the bloody CIA coup in Indonesia, and the military assault on the Korean movement to overthrow the Park dictatorship.

And that thumbnail history merely recounts the Anglo-American contribution to the European rape of East Asia. For centuries, every two bit Western European power with a little bit of advanced military technology was in on the plunder in the Western Pacific.

Obama went to East Asia to say in essence: "We are not finished yet. The Indispensable Nation must dominate everywhere. We departed when the Vietnamese humiliated us and drove us from the neighborhood. But we are back. We are pivoting."

Here's the G20 in Australia in a one-liner: a tiny bunch of Anglo-Saxon political buffoons attempts to drown out the Global South.

Countries representing over 85 percent of the world economy get together to (in theory) discuss some really heavy economic/financial issues, and virtually the only thing pitiful Western corporate media blabbers about is Russian President Vladimir Putin cutting an 'isolated figure'.

Well, Washington and its string of puppets did try to turn the G20 into a farce. Fortunately the adults in the room had some business to do.

The five BRICS member-nations - despite their current problems, the G5 that really matters in the world - did meet before the summit, including the 'isolated figure'. Economically, this G5 more than matches the old, decrepit G7.

Now we know that Russia knows full well the ways and means of 'regime changing' the empire of chaos uses over and over to ensure its supremacy. This was made clear by Putin in his Valdai Club speech:

Incidentally, at the time, our colleagues [the US] tried to somehow manage these processes, use regional conflicts and design 'colour revolutions' to suit their interests, but the genie escaped the bottle. It looks like the controlled chaos theory fathers themselves do not know what to do with it; there is disarray in their ranks.

China has also been subject to attempts at regime change both in the Xinjiang province in West China and most recently in Hong Kong. The question is how aware are the Chinese of the US role in these protest movements? A recent YouTube video makes it abundantly clear that the Chinese read the geopolitical chess game very well, if the views presented also reflect the views of Chinese people generally. The video maps out 12 steps that the US uses for regime change and goes on to explain how these "regime changes" around the world and the antagonizing of Russia and China follow a pattern that could lead to World War III.

Though Russia has a right to demand an early repayment of its $3 billion loan to Kiev if its total debt exceeds 60 percent of GDP, Moscow has already decided against it, as it wants Ukraine to get on its feet, Vladimir Putin told German ARD channel.

Vladimir Putin answered questions from ARD's Hubert Seipel.

Hubert Seipel: After the Crimea joined Russia, the West expelled Russia from the Group of Eight, this exclusive club of industrial states. At the same time the USA and Great Britain imposed sanctions against Russia. Now you are heading to a G20 summit of the most important industrial states on the planet. The focus there will be on economic growth and employment. Russian Finance Minister said the following about your country: "There is no more growth and unemployment is set to increase. The sanctions are starting to have an effect: both the ruble and the oil price have set anti‑records." This is the exact opposite of what you are going to speak about in Brisbane. The forecast of attaining 2 percent growth in Russia is unfeasible. Other countries are in the same situation. This crisis has a counter‑productive character, including for the upcoming summit, wouldn't you say?

Vladimir Putin: You mean the Ukrainian crisis?

Hubert Seipel: Yes.

Vladimir Putin: Of course, who could benefit from it? You wanted to know how the situation is evolving and what our expectations are. Of course we expect the situation to change for the better. Of course we expect the Ukrainian crisis to end. Of course we want to have normal relations with our partners, including in the United States and Europe. Of course, the situation with the so-called sanctions is damaging for the global economy (it is damaging for us and it is damaging for global economy as well) and it is damaging for the Russian EU relations most of all. In this case it contradicts international law, which governs economic relations, the WTO principles and the agreements we will try to reach during the G20summit. It comes into direct collision.

By the way, according to the European Commission data, the losses from Russia's counter-measures aimed at protecting our economy are estimated as 5 - 6 billion euro. Can we estimate the losses that these sanctions have caused Russia? It is rather difficult. To some extent, these are virtual losses. Although we have really sustained losses, it is true. However, there are some advantages as well: the restrictions imposed on some Russian companies on purchasing certain goods from Western countries, from Europe and the United States, have induced us to produce these goods ourselves. The comfortable life, when all we had to do was produce more oil and gas, and to buy everything else, is a thing of the past. Now we must think about producing goods ourselves, not just oil and gas. We have solid science and technology resources, which makes us fully confident of our ability to address any technology issues independently, including in the defence sphere.

With regard to growth, we should note that this year growth was modest but it was present nevertheless at about 0.5 - 0.6 percent. Next year we are planning to achieve 1.2 percent growth, the year after that 2.3 percent and 3 percent in three years. Generally, these are not the figures we would like to have but nevertheless it is growth and we are confident that we will achieve these figures.

Israel, not Russia, was behind the downing of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in July, an American political commentator says.


In a phone interview with Press TV on Sunday, Professor James Henry Fetzer said, "While the United States is claiming that the newly released photographs by Russia -- claiming that the Ukrainian military jets targeted the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 -- are preposterous, [but] that does not mean they are not authentic, or that the plane having been shot down by Ukrainian jets is not true."

On Friday, Russian state media released satellite images purportedly showing a Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jet firing a missile at the MH17.

This is bizarre. The recent two summits (APEC and G20) have, I would argue, ended up as a disaster for the US and its allies (see here, here and here) while Russia, China and the rest of the BRICS are clearly in control of the situation, yet there are still those who believe the western corporate media which wants to portray Putin are Russia as "weak".

I suppose in our age of virtual reality perceptions are everything, and in this case such perceptions are clearly molded by exposure to the western corporate media whose brainwashing skills are nothing short of amazing. But let's look at the facts.

The single biggest development which came out of these two summits is that Xi Jinping has clearly and, for the first time, openly shown that he fully support Putin and Russia.

Dumb and Dumber To, the sequel after 20 years, was released recently. Unfortunately for Jim and Jeff and the Farrelly brothers, unintended humor will always be funnier than the scripted kind, no matter how hard Hollywood tries. Case in point: the Dumber slapstick was easily upstaged over the past few days by the G20 summit in Brisbane.

Not only did the pedantic Anglo-Saxon power hungry freak show of Harper, Cameron and Abbott (nobody even noticed Obama) give Vladimir V. Putin a good laugh with their empty chest thumping, entirely spin doctor scripted and entirely aimed at their domestic media and audiences, these so-called leaders also came up with no less than 800(!) measures they claim will boost global economic growth by 2.1%, or $2 trillion. Over 5 years, or some useless and opaque number like that (2018?).

It would seem to be painfully obvious that what the world needs really urgently badly today is not so much economic growth, but growth in the dendrites, synapses and neurons in the heads of both our leaders and of those who put them where they are, ourselves. No use holding your breath. As things are, none of us are any smarter than either Dumb or Dumber.

The remarks by Barack Obama at the University of Queensland on Saturday, delivered while he was in Australia for the G20 Leaders Summit, was a bellicose restatement that the US will use every means, including war, to prevent any challenge by China to American dominance over the Asia-Pacific.

Much of the speech was devoted to reviewing the military deployments and diplomatic intrigues against China that Washington has carried out since Obama announced the "pivot to Asia" before the Australian parliament in 2011. He boasted of how the US has strengthened its ties with Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, opened new bases in Australia and Singapore, encouraged India to play a greater regional military role and pursued closer relations with Vietnam, Malaysia and Burma.

China, by contrast, was discussed from the standpoint of US suspicions over "what kind of role it will play" in the region. Obama's platitudes that the US welcomed China's economic growth were swiftly followed by assertions that Beijing must "adhere to the same rules as other nations" - rules dictated by Washington - if conflict was to be avoided.