Russian president Vladimir Putin has "lost Ukraine for good" with his move to annex Crimea, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko said Friday in her first live television appearance since returning to the country.

Tymoshenko, who spent three years in jail on what she said were politically motivated charges before being freed last month, appealed to fellow Ukrainians to be ready to fight in the event of a Russian invasion.

"Putin has lost Ukraine forever after declaring war on us," said the leader of the 2004 pro-Western Orange Revolution as she appeared on a live talk show in her trademark blonde plaits.

When it gets complicated and confusing, when you're overwhelmed with too much information, changing daily; too many explanations, some contradictory ... try putting it into some kind of context by stepping back and looking at the larger, long-term picture.

The United States strives for world domination, hegemony wherever possible, their main occupation for over a century, it's what they do for a living. The United States, NATO and the European Union form The Holy Triumvirate. The Holy Triumvirate has subsidiaries, chiefly The International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Trade Organization, International Criminal Court ... all help to keep in line those governments lacking the Holy Triumvirate Seal Of Approval: the IMF, WB, and WTO impose market fundamentalism, while foreign leaders who act too independent are threatened with being handed over to the ICC for heavy punishment, as the United States imposes sanctions on governments and their leaders as only the King of Sanctions can, lacking any sense of hypocrisy or irony.

And who threatens United States domination? Who can challenge The Holy Triumvirate's hegemony? Only Russia and China, if they were as imperialistic as the Western powers. (No, the Soviet Union wasn't imperialistic; that was self-defense; Eastern Europe was a highway twice used by the West to invade; tens of millions of Russians killed or wounded.)

Three Democratic lawmakers asked to discuss with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder the Department of Justice's allegedly uneven efforts to prosecute mortgage fraud, according to a letter dated Monday.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren and representatives Elijah Cummings and Maxine Waters are seeking an audience with Holder over a new watchdog report that said the FBI ranked mortgage fraud as a low threat after the height of the financial crisis, even though the Justice Department had said investigating that crime would be a top priority.

"This report calls into question the Department's commitment to investigate and prosecute crimes such as predatory lending, loan modification scams, and abusive mortgage servicing practices," the three lawmakers wrote of the report released last week by the Justice Department's inspector general.

A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Washington is making hay of its defeat in Ukraine: it is getting the Europeans to cut themselves off economically from Russia and is already imposing on them the expansion of its missile coverage. While the Western media focus on NATO's narrative of events (the so-called "military annexation" of Crimea), the Alliance is noiselessly deploying its imperial apparatus.

Vice President Joe Biden's flash visit to Poland and Estonia to ensure that, in the face of "Russia's shameless incursion" in Ukraine - a country determined to build "a government for the people" (guaranteed by the neo-Nazis [1] brought to power by the "new Gladio" coup [2] ) - the United States reiterates its unwavering commitment to comply with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty on "collective defense." As Ukraine is now a de facto, but not official, member of NATO, there is always "non-Article 5," urging members to "execute evolving missions not described under Article 5," which was promoted by the Italian government of Massimo D'Alema during the NATO war on Yugoslavia in 1999, and later also applied to the wars on Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

The European Union and the United States, which have supported and funded for years all neo-Nazi groups and other radical extremist factions in Eastern Europe, have given the order to these new fascists never use to brandish the swastika, associated with Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, in their marches or other demonstrations.

Indeed, it would be a more discreet way to be seen in public, but an even better way to avoid compromising the U.S. and the European Union because of the secret alliance that binds them to these groups (intelligence operatives and subversive infiltration within the New Gladio).

Thus, the Western mainstream press can present them today as fighters for democracy in the face of the "Russian invasion". However their methods, ideology and actions are a continuation of the same Nazi practices that took place in 1933-1939.

In Kiev, the police arrived at the City Hall after receiving word that unidentified persons had broken into the municipal offices. But they were caught in an ambush by dozens of masked men protected by helmets, who started beating them up.

Ukraine has become the final battlefield in the "cold war", and it is becoming a possibility that the crisis will trigger a second "cold war". The Crimean parliament's declaration of independence from Ukraine ahead of the March 16 referendum indicates that Crimea may go ahead and join Russia. The tug of war between Russia and western countries teaches us four things.

A geostrategic conflict leads to the tragedy of big-power politics

Most people in west Ukraine are Catholics while in east Ukraine most are Russian Orthodox believers. The financial crisis caused conflict between civilizations, pushing Ukraine to the brink of bankruptcy and fragmentation. This created a vacuum that provided the big powers wth an incentive to meddle in Ukraine's affairs.

Ukraine's economic over-reliance on Russia is the soft underbelly of its national security

In recent years, the western countries have succeeded in promoting several regime changes. Ukraine is on the brink of debt default and bankruptcy. Ukraine's economic over-reliance on Russia is the soft underbelly of its national security. Western countries have taken advantage of this weak spot in their efforts to promote regime change in Ukraine.

The MasterCard and Visa electronic payment networks have reversed their decision to cut off online services for payment transactions for the clients of the SMP bank controlled by brothers Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, who have both been listed among the Russian officials subject to US sanctions over Crimea.

SMP Bank's co-owner Yuri Kovalchuk is also on the US sanctions list of 20 Russians, which was announced on Thursday.

The same day Visa and MasterCard stopped serving the clients of SPM Bank and another Russian bank, Rossiya. The payment system MasterCard made this decision in the late hours of Saturday and the Visa system made the decision on Sunday morning.

"By now, card serviceability for the bank's MasterCard holders has been fully restored. Transactions for Visa card holders will resume within hours," SPN Bank said in statement on Sunday.

"We are glad that the world's largest international payment networks have heeded our arguments and reversed their decision to suspend transactions...," the statement quotes the bank's CEO Dmitry Kalantyrsky as saying.

Last week David Cameron, addressing Israel's Knesset, pledged to defeat any boycotting of Israel. "Britain opposes boycotts," he said without having consulted the British people on the matter.

This should be enough to put the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) on a war footing. But when a friend suggested to one of the PSC's senior people that next year's general election candidates who had joined Friends of Israel should be named and shamed, he got a sniffy response. Being a Friend of Israel, he was told, "is not a totally reliable indicator of where people stand".

The enemy within

There's no doubt where the ringleaders stand, though. Their words and actions make it perfectly clear. And with electioneering already in full swing, now would be a good time to target them. Cameron and his lieutenant, William Hague [Foreign Secretary], have provided abundant ammunition, here for example, to mount a devastating campaign exposing their unnatural devotion to a foreign military power that practises apartheid and treats international law with contempt.

The pair are currently drumming up sanctions against Russia after the citizens of Crimea, exercising their right of self-determination, upset the West's apple-cart by voting to rejoin "the Bear". On the Foreign Office website Hague whined: "We are witnessing a clear attempt to pave the way for the annexation of part of the sovereign territory of an independent European state, through military force and an illegal and illegitimate referendum." Yet he and Cameron continue rewarding Israel for annexing Jerusalem (al-Quds), large parts of the West Bank, the Golan Heights and Gaza's airspace and territorial waters, at gunpoint and all without a referendum of any kind.

Approximate Transcript of Interview

The Ukrainian crisis? It is basically the opposite of what the media and politicians keep repeating both in the US and Europe. They say that the so-called International community have isolated Russia and Vladimir Putin.

In fact it is the real sponsors of the coup d'état and the violence in Ukraine who are isolated not only morally but also strategically.

And it is Putin, the first leader who resisted and defeated the strategy of world domination, who is enjoying the enthusiastic support of his people and the growing admiration of the world. The well financed media and politicians do not want to hear this, but this is the reality. Without exaggeration, one can compare this resistance to that against Napoleon and Hitler...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a US congressional delegation that he respects the decision of the people of Crimea to reunite with Russia. His comment follows the March 16 referendum in which 96 percent of voters opted to join the Russian Federation.

The events in Crimea and Ukraine were among several issues discussed in a Kabul meeting between Karzai and the group of Democratic and Republican congressmen. The bipartisan delegation was led by Senator Kelly Ayotte.

Karzai made it clear that Afghanistan respects the free will of the people of Crimea and Sevastopol to decide their own future, the Afghan president's office said on its website.