Ukraine

According to Reuters "Russia has positioned about a half dozen tanks at a Syrian airfield where it has been steadily building up defenses." The sources of this material escalation: two U.S. officials...  speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Just like the "sources" on all Greek developments over the past 5 years. We can only hope the "anonymous" US officials will soon provide photographic evidence of their claims.

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"[Kerry employs] an absolutely upside-down logic and [it's] yet another attempt to appease those who use terrorists to fight dissenting regimes. We are always in favor of military people talking to each other in a professional way. They understand each other very well. If, as he has said many times, the United States wants those channels frozen, then be our guest."

"You can’t talk for months about how to stabilize the situation and then take a decision that puts Ukraine and Slovakia into an unenviable situation."

The lack of leadership to tackle this clear and present danger to Europe's future is truly concerning. Both the migrants and the Europeans might be worse off as a result.

“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences..." – Robert Louis Stephenson

So if you really want to make “refugees” the election issue “du jour”, one can waste a lot of time watching the mainstream incumbent parties bicker over the “right” number of refugees to allow into Canada or how much taxpayer money to throw at aid, or even whether more Canadian “boots on the ground” should be headed over there on various “peace keeping” escapades... or, you could ask the really hard hitting questions...

A baby boy turned to flotsam. Washed up on the shore, face down in the mud. Warmongers in government and the media are perversely but predictably trying to conscript Aylan’s corpse into their march to escalation. They are contending that Aylan died because the West has not intervened against Syria’s dictator Bashar al-Assad, and that it must do so now to spare other children the same fate. Um, no, Aylan’s family were Kurdish refugees from Kobani who had to flee that city when it was besieged, not by Assad, but by Assad’s enemy: ISIS.

As events unfold that have to be seen to be be believed in Belgian capital Brussels, European farmers - protesting plunging food prices, blamed on Russia's food embargo, which was retaliation to Europe and US sanctions - are demanding EU intervention to bail them out. What was originally a parade of tractors quickly turned violent as farm equipment rammed police barricades and police released tear gas and water jets in response to the farmers unleashing their "hay cannon." Boomerang anyone? "EU farmers are paying the price for international politics...There have been hundreds of suicides as a result of disastrous agricultural policies."

Don’t expect to see any end to desperation and instability in MENA, but do expect new demographic crises out of other regions: Indonesia, Ukraine, Pakistan, West Africa, and Brazil, with its cratering economy. It’s not inconceivable that China might bust apart politically, with centrifugal consequences. The global economy is contracting. We have indeed attained the limits to growth. Cheap oil is bygone and the capital infrastructure we have won’t run on expensive oil — including the oil industry itself. New technology or further central bank legerdemain is not going to fix that. We’re in population overshoot and a scramble is underway to bail on the places that just can’t support the people who live there. National boundaries will be defended. Sentimentalists will have to step aside. History is not a bedtime story about bunnies and kittens.

Amid reports that Russia is building a substantial military presence in Syria, a worried John Kerry called Sergei Lavrov on Saturday. Here, according to the State Department, is what was said: "The secretary made clear that if such reports were accurate, these actions could further escalate the conflict, lead to greater loss of innocent life, increase refugee flows and risk confrontation with the anti-ISIL coalition operating in Syria."

Over the past 48 hours or so, we’ve seen what certainly appears to be visual confirmation of a non-negligible Russian military presence in Syria. Going into the weekend however, Russia had yet to confirm publicly that it had commenced military operations in the region despite the fact that it’s the next closest thing to common knowledge that at the very least, the Kremlin has provided logistical support and technical assistance for a period that probably spans two or more years. But on Friday, Vladimir Putin looks to have confirmed the scope of Russia’s military role, even if he stopped short of admitting that Russian troops are engaged in combat.

"The opening of the new units will feed an artificially created confrontation. [This is] the logic of the Cold War. It runs counter to genuine interests of the European and regional security." - Alexander Grushko, Russian ambassador to NATO.

Not a week goes by without the Pentagon carping about an ominous Russian "threat". The Pentagon’s rhetorical games also serve to mask a real high-stakes process; essentially an energy war – centering on the control of oil, natural gas and mineral resources of Russia and Central Asia. Will this wealth be controlled by oligarch frontmen “supervised” by their masters in New York and London, or by Russia and its Central Asian partners? Thus the relentless propaganda war.

Amid the Ukraine government's vote for constitutional changes to give its eastern regions a special status (that it hopes will blunt their separatist drive) protests have turned deadly as RT reports 50 Ukrainian nation guards have been injured in a greande blast near parliament in Kiev.

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