What's happened this week in Libya should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention over the last four years.

Geopolitically speaking and considering its proximity to Europe, this viper's nest has the potential to be even more perilous than Syria. At the beginning of the new year, we predicted that Libya would be the next major ISIS theater, paving the way for an eventual US or NATO intervention. 21WIRE's end-of-year feature article Game Changers: 2015 Predictions explains:

"Of all the emerging potential conflict fronts for central planning at NATO, this one looks by far the most promising. In classic Hegelian fashion, the Libyan disaster which NATO created back in 2011 is now ripe for a second clean-up round. Like Iraq, the country has been effectively split into 3 separate regions. Warlords and terrorist gangs have seized the power vacuum left by NATO's sloppy decapitation of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, and already NATO's puppet government has run for the hills, using what's left of their airforce to bomb their own cities".

From the onset, coverage of Libya has been riddled with misdirection and obfuscation. The warning signs have been visible since late 2011 (below).

Russia's prime minister has ordered the Energy Ministry and state-owned corporation Gazprom to prepare for natural gas deliveries to the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk Republics after the Kiev regime stopped selling fuel to the regions.

"There is a problem related to natural gas deliveries, caused by the decision of Ukrainian authorities that has not yet been canceled. The situation is that natural gas is not delivered to a number of settlements," Dmitry Medvedev told ministers at a cabinet meeting on Thursday.

"I would like the Energy Ministry and Gazprom to prepare their suggestions on rendering aid to these regions in the form of natural gas supplies. Of course this will be needed only if Kiev does not take urgent measures to resume gas supplies under the usual scheme."

"In any case, people must not freeze there. Prepare the necessary suggestions and report on what is done," Medvedev said.

Medvedev's press secretary Natalya Timakova told Interfax that Gazprom would send natural gas to Donetsk and Lugansk "on a commercial basis," but noted that the sources of financing were yet to be determined. The agency also quoted an unnamed source "acquainted with the situation" as saying that the possible scheme could include a bank credit.

The Russian Defense Ministry's TV channel has released video footage taken from a Tu-95 strategic bomber as it was shadowed by RAF Fighter Typhoon jets. The video features engines that appear to be stalling.

The video compilation published on Wednesday by the Zvezda channel was shot from one of the Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear" bombers as it was flying on a mission in international airspace close to the United Kingdom.

The turboprop bomber is seen being escorted closely by several NATO fighter jets scrambled to intercept it. One is easily identified by its tail code "FB" as an RAF Eurofigher Typhoon from the Lossiemouth airbase.

It's looking like the Ukrainians accidentally left behind some of their stuff during their "planned and organized" withdrawal from the Debaltsevo cauldron 'bridgehead' over the past couple days. See the following report, courtesy of Fort Russ:

Judging by the "LifeNews" report on February 19, 2015 about Novorossia fighters collecting trophies after Ukrainian troops withdrew from Debaltsevo, among other finds, NAF received one whole complex of LCMR (Lightweight Counter-Mortar Radar), supplied by the United States as part of military assistance to Ukraine.

The U.S. has decided to send to the armed forces of Ukraine 20 LCMR radars, the first three of which were delivered in November 2014. According to the information, received by our blog from the most serious sources, soon after the transfer one of the stations was damaged during transportation, and then another station was damaged by artillery fire of the enemy at the first attempt of its combat use by the Ukrainians. We can assume that the LCMR radar, abandoned by the Ukrainian troops in Debaltsevo is the third of this ill-fated first batch of the three stations.

Tony Blair has signed a contract to advise Serbia's prime minister, 16 years after the two were on opposite sides of the Balkan conflict. Former British PM Blair was instrumental in NATO airstrikes against Belgrade.

Blair will work for PM Aleksandar Vucic, Slobodan Milosevic's information minister at the time of the Kosovo conflict.

Vucic had previously been an outspoken critic of Blair. He was listed as an editor of the 2005 book 'English Gay Fart Tony Blair'.


The deal was paid for by the United Arab Emirates, according to Serbian officials, which has raised doubts over Blair's ability to operate as a neutral envoy in the Middle East for the Quartet - the UN, US, EU and Russia.

US search engine giant Google has warned against increasing the government's powers for infiltrating computer systems around the world, saying it would open a number of "monumental" constitutional issues.

Google released a tough-sounding statement against the Department Justice (DoJ) proposal to make it easier for the courts to issue search warrants to seize electronic data 'remotely' from anywhere in the world.

Efforts to rewrite federal regulations, presently encoded in a government provision known as Rule 41,"raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal, and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide," wrote Richard Salgado, Google's director for law enforcement and information security.

Under Rule 41, the judge that authorizes the computer tap must be situated in the same district as the computer under investigation. The new proposal would allow the FBI to operate beyond the immediate judicial area of the presiding judge.

Google: FBI's Plan To Expand Hacking Power a "Monumental" Constitutional Threat http://t.co/jl8B4tYEiw

— Anonymous Operations (@AnonOpsSE) February 19, 2015

Google warned in its statement that if the DoJ gets its way, the FBI will be authorized to hack into servers regardless of their geopolitical location, thus giving the US government unrestrained access to endless amounts of personal data around the globe.

As Google explains it, such covert invasions of privacy, "may take place anywhere in the world. This concern is not theoretical. ... [T]he nature of today's technology is such that warrants issued under the proposed amendment will in many cases end up authorizing the government to conduct searches outside the United States."

Just after Bill O'Reilly excoriated NBC's Brian Williams for fabricating his experiences during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, O'Reilly is now on the defensive himself after a publication questioned his claims of reporting during the Falklands war.

The left-leaning US magazine, Mother Jones, has bomb shelled Fox News by publishing an article that claims talk-show host Bill O'Reilly's heroic tales of war reporting "don't withstand scrutiny - even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in."

The article, entitled Bill O'Reilly Has His Own Brian Williams Problem, went on to produce a list of seemingly self-incriminating quotes from the notoriously outspoken Fox host, who has boasted on more than one occasion that he "experienced combat" during the 1982 conflict between England and Argentina.

Fisticuffs broke out in the Turkish parliament on Thursday night between members of the ruling party and Kurdish opposition deputies. The altercation was over a bill they say will turn the country into an "authoritarian state."

The fight broke out after an increasingly fraught three-hour discussion of the mooted Homeland Security Reform, advocated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP party, which enjoys a recently renewed majority in the country's legislative assembly.

"The ongoing dispute between the German and Greek governments is nothing less than a democratic revolution against German hegemony and the attempt of the Germans and their paladins in the EU to dictate Greek domestic policy."
- Mathew D. Rose, It's a revolution, Stupid! Naked Capitalism

"Germany is eating itself over Greece. It is eroding its moral authority, and seems prepared to destroy the eurozone's integrity just to make a point."
- Paul Mason, Germany v Greece is a fight to the death, a cultural and economic clash of wills, Guardian

If you haven't been following developments in the Greek-EU standoff, you're really missing out. This might be the best story of the year. And what makes it so riveting, is that no one thought that little Greece could face off with the powerful leaders of the EU and make them blink. But that's exactly what's happened. On Monday, members of the Eurogroup met with Greece's finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, to decide whether they would accept Greece's terms for an extension of the current loan agreement. There were no real changes to the agreement. The only difference was semantics, that is, the loan would not be seen as a bailout but as "a transitional stage to a new contract for growth for Greece". In other words, a bridge to a different program altogether.

Hopefully, the shaky truce between Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, brokered in Minsk by Angela Merkel, will hold.

For nothing good, but much evil, could come of broadening and lengthening this war that has cost the lives of 5,400 Ukrainians.

The longer it goes on, the greater the casualties, the more land Ukraine will lose, and the greater the likelihood Kiev will end up an amputated and bankrupt republic, a dependency the size of France on the doorstep of Europe.

Had no truce been achieved, 8,000 Ukrainian troops trapped in the Debaltseve pocket could have been forced to surrender or wiped out, causing a regime crisis in Kiev. U.S. weapons could have begun flowing in, setting the stage for a collision between Russia and the United States.