И еще немного про Эболу.

SAN ANTONIO Texas (Reuters)  A health worker in Texas at the hospital where the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States died last week has tested positive for the deadly virus in a preliminary test, the states health department said on Sunday.

U.S. authorities are stepping up efforts to stop the spread of the virus, with medical teams at New Yorks John F. Kennedy Airport on Saturday beginning the screening of travelers from the three West African countries hardest hit by the worst Ebola outbreak on record.

The worker at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital reported a low-grade fever Friday night and was isolated and referred for testing, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement.

We knew a second case could be a reality, and weve been preparing for this possibility, said Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the health service.

The worker tested positive in a preliminary test at the state public health laboratory in Austin.

Confirmatory testing will be conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, the department said. The worker is believed to be the first person in the United States to test positive for Ebola who has not been to West Africa.

Thomas Eric Duncan, who had recently arrived from his native Liberia, died in an isolation ward of the same Dallas hospital on Oct. 8, 11 days after being admitted.

Liberia is the country worst affected by the virus with 2,316 victims, followed by 930 in Sierra Leone, 778 in Guinea, eight in Nigeria and one in the United States, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Some 4033 people are known to have died in seven countries from the outbreak, it said.

The U.S. government has ordered five airports to start screening U.S.-bound travelers for fever from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

John F. Kennedy Airport began the screening on Saturday and will be followed on Thursday by four others: Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago OHare and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta.

Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of an affected person or contamination from objects such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.

The United Nations said on Friday that its appeal for $1 billion to respond to the West Africa outbreak was only 25 percent funded and a surge in trained healthcare personnel was also needed to help tackle the crisis.

Отсюда.

Опять Сноуден.

Government whistleblower Edward Snowden gave the public a few words of wisdom, and caution, during a Saturday night video interview for The New Yorker Festival. During the hour-long conversation with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, Snowden advised viewers to get rid of Dropbox, and to avoid using high-profile online services such as Facebook and Google, if they wanted to protect their privacy in the ever-more-informed Information Age.

During an audience Q&A, Snowden that people should search for encrypted communication services because they enforce your rights. He advised the public to be wary of online services that are “hostile to privacy,” specifically Facebook and Google and cloud storage service Dropbox, the latter of which doesn’t support encryption (although the company has said that its users privacy is a “top priority”). Snowden suggested using alternative storage services like SpiderOak, which does support encryption, although he was careful to mention that much of the technology the public needs hasnt been invented or popularized yet.

Snowden also advised Americans to not send unencrypted texts via cell phones, and turn to secure services like Silent Circle and RedPhone. Even with increased encryption and security, Snowden insisted that no phone, even those running Apples latest version of iOS, is entirely safe from third-party intrusion. Major cell phone providers, including Verizon, AT&T and Apple, can be subpoenaed, and authorities can still request warrants that will grant them access to their suspect’s phones.

Полномтью,  здесь.

Под таким номером поправки будет проходить в Орегоне вопрос о легализации марихуаны.

Я уже писал об этом.

Сейчас впервые, в качестве довода за услышал по ТВ довод экономический.

Штату не хватает денег на содержание школ, полиции и т.д. Любопытно, почему раньше хватало?

И, что, после легализации, все школы и полицейские будут купаться в деньгах? Плохому танцору, как известно, мешает абсолютно все. Плохому управляющему, вряд-ли поможет что-то, хоть ты завали его деньгами.

Последнее соображение, а оно того стоит, вообще? Как известно, стоит только начать&

Где будет остановка?!..

..Как вот это..

Согласовывается с этим?..

Международные эксперты убеждены: если не будут предприняты немедленные, сплоченные и решительные действия, то лихорадка Эбола, которая уже унесла жизни более четырех тысяч человек в Западной Африке, может стать всемирным бедствием.

Как сообщает The Washington Post, мир стоит перед двумя сценариями распространения лихорадки. Первый  конвенциональные методы по сдерживанию Эболы: изоляция пациентов и выход на людей, которые могли заразиться, чтобы снизить скорость появления новых случаев заболевания, до тех пор пока эпидемия не сойдет на нет.

Второй сценарий, как передает InoPressa, является более суровым. Слишком поздно применять обычные методы, эпидемия продолжает распространяться, и ответ вирусу связан только с разработкой вакцин и выводом их на ступень повсеместного применения, отмечают эксперты.

По данным американской газеты, руководитель Центра по контролю и профилактике заболеваний США Том Фриден 9 октября предупредил, что если не будут предприняты немедленные, сплоченные и решительные действия, вирус Эбола может стать всемирным бедствием, как СПИД.

По его словам, в мире еще не было опасней заболевания со времен открытия вируса иммунодефицита человека. Как отметил Фриден, за те 30 лет, которые он работает в сфере здравоохранения, только один вирус по своей силе был похож на Эболу  это ВИЧ, поэтому срочно нужна вакцина.

Как сообщает ВВС, высокопоставленный сотрудник ВОЗ Крис Дай признался: когда были зафиксированы еще первые очаги лихорадки в западноафриканских странах, никто не был в состоянии предвидеть тех масштабов, до которых разрастется эпидемия к настоящему времени.

По его словам, организация сделала запрос на один миллиард долларов для борьбы с лихорадкой, однако на данный момент у специалистов имеется только 300 миллионов долларов в условиях все большего нарастания угрозы распространения лихорадки.

Пока стопроцентного метода излечения от смертоносного заболевания врачами предложено не было. Однако сотрудники системы здравоохранения Мали начали проходить вакцинацию от вируса экспериментальным препаратом, разработанным компанией GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) для клинического тестирования. Тестирования проводятся с целью создания препарата, который позволит защититься от болезни.

Как сообщает агентство Reuters, вакцинацию уже прошли три медработника, в последующие недели ее пройдут еще 37 человек. Исследования ведутся Национальным институтом по аллергическим и инфекционным заболеваниям США.

Полученные данные дадут нам ценнейшую информацию о том, является ли вакцина безопасной, переносимой и способной стимулировать необходимый иммунный ответ у наиболее уязвимой части населения  медработников в Западной Африке,  сказал Мирон Левин, директор Центра разработки вакцин университета в Мэриленде, инициировавшего тестирование.

Первые пробы начались в сентябре в Оксфорде, в них приняли участие 60 добровольцев. В Мали и Гамбии в пробах примут участие по 40 человек от каждой страны. Клиническая апробация экспериментальной вакцины компании Johnson & Johnson должна начаться в начале 2015 года.

Вирус Эбола, как отмечают во Всемирной организации здравоохранения, передается от человека к человеку через физический контакт. Особую опасность представляет кровь зараженного. Однако в организации отмечают, что заразу можно подцепить после контакта с предметами, которые использовал больной.

Согласно последним данным, жертвами заболевания стали 4033 человек, причем свыше 200 из них были медработниками, которые помогали бороться с распространением смертельного вируса. Изначально вспышку зарегистрировали в Либерии, Сьерра-Леоне и Гвинее, но затем случаи заражения были зафиксированы в Нигерии и Сенегале. Затем инфицированные больные были обнаружены в США и Испании.

Вместе с тем эксперты не исключают появления Эболы в России. Согласно прогнозам лаборатории моделирования биологических и социотехнических систем (MoBS) Северо-Восточного университета Бостона, вероятность появления вируса в РФ к 24 октября составляет 1%, а еще через месяц  5%. При этом, как сообщает ТАСС, в Татарстане шестеро африканских студентов уже помещены на карантин из-за риска завоза опасного заболевания.

Отсюда.

Кто здесь что не так излагает?

&Вот, что хотите думайте обо мне, но я думаю, это видео,  еще один повод для российских спецслужб заняться Украиной.

Я думаю, терористами нужно заниматься там, где они появляются. Не ждать, пока они придут кого-то убивать.

Это касается любых террористов.

Найдено,  здесь.

О том, что в России готовится что-то вроде цветной революции, о бунте, об этом долго и нудно говорят некоторые патриотически настроенные личности&

Мы теперь можем назвать тех, кто же в России готовит бунт и даже указать на них пальцем.

Вот они!

Госдума приняла в первом чтении закон о компенсациях россиянам, пострадавшим от неправосудных решений зарубежных судов, в том числе и от введения санкций.

Проект закона поддержали только единороссы, которые и внесли его на обсуждение.

За документ проголосовали 233 депутата, 202  против, двое  воздержались. Чтобы этот закон был принят, достаточно было простого большинства в 226 голосов, которые есть у фракции Единая Россия.

Российские СМИ законопроект сразу же назвали законом Ротенберга в честь российского бизнесмена Аркадия Ротенберга, попавшего под санкции ЕС и США: в конце сентября в Италии были арестованы виллы и апартаменты предпринимателя.

Российские граждане и компании, чье имущество подвергнется аресту или другим взысканиям иностранных судов, смогут потребовать компенсации в российских судах, следует из законопроекта.

Как обозначено в документе, компенсация будет производиться за счет средств федерального бюджета.

Ранее правительство представило в Госдуму два официальных отзыва. Первый отзыв, представленный еще летом, был отрицательным. Однако в конце сентября поступил еще один отзыв, в котором позиция правительства по этому вопросу была смягчена.

Кабинет министров выразил поддержку законопроекту в первом чтении при условии его доработки ко второму.

Принимая во внимание участившиеся случаи введения отдельными иностранными государствами ограничений прав собственника в отношении российских граждан и компаний, вопрос защиты [их] имущественных интересов заслуживает внимания,  говорится в новом отзыве правительства.

Полностью,  здесь. Но можно отыскать и во многих других местах необъятной Сети.

Прошу прощения, но те, кто сочиняет подобного рода законы в России,  полные идиты.

Они хотят бунта?

Они его получат!

Очень хорошо понимаю, что вранья сейчас очень много и с обеих сторон.

Но, вот такого рода вранье,  оно зачем?

Для кого?

Никак не могу понять. Неужели выведен такой класс потребителя подобной информации, что верит этот потребитель уже всему абсолютно?

Не хочу здесь упоминать известные слова одного очень известного гуманиста двадцатого столетия о чудовищной лжи&

Взято у Анатолия Шария.

One more&

It does not take a lot of strength to hang on, It takes a lot of strength to let go.

 J.C. Watts.

It is just a quote. Again.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

 Winston Churchill

К этому.

Прислали в комментарии.

Эпидемиология ГЛЭ такова, что вспышки заболевания привязаны к местам обитания крыланов, тогда как во всех прочих странах наблюдаются только завозные случаи. И хотя передача инфекции от больного человека к здоровому вполне возможна в любой точке мира, до сих пор не описано ни одного случая такой передачи за пределами природных очагов.



Такая картина объясняется тем, что инфекция передается не так свободно и быстро, как опасались ученые еще совсем недавно. Когда я был студентом, лихорадка Эбола преподавалась на курсе инфекционных болезней как наистрашнейшая зараза, мгновенно поражающая всех контактных лиц и требующая полной изоляции всего населенного пункта. В 1995-ом выпустили даже фильм-катастрофу «Вирус» про вымирание целых мегаполисов, заговоры врачей и чиновников и проч., и всё это по мотивам лихорадки Эбола. Многое преувеличивалось в связи с неизвестностью – очень уж мало мы знали о вирусе, путях его передачи и о вирулентности.

Сегодня можно с уверенностью утверждать, что вирус не передается по воздуху и с обычной пищей/водой, и это уже очень хорошая новость. Для заражения необходим тесный и прямой контакт с больным, более того — не просто с носителем инфекции, а с заболевшим человеком, когда у того уже есть выраженная симптоматика. Конечно, можно заразиться и через нестерильный медицинский инструментарий, но это уже из области ЧП.

Все эти факторы — эпидемиологическая привязка к природному резервуару (крыланам), ограниченные пути передачи и непродолжительность заболевания (больной заразен только в фазе выраженной симптоматики, которая длится несколько дней) — и обусловливают невозможности глобального распространения эпидемии с поражением больших популяций вне стран Субсахарной Африки. По сути все вспышки наблюдаются исключительно в небольших деревушках экваториальной Африки, граничащих с лесными массивами – природными очагами эболавируса.

Значительно преувеличивается и летальность инфекции. Т.е. она основывалась на статистике по исходам у зарегистрированных больных, госпитализированных преимущественно в странах экваториальной Африки, где медицина не особо развита: в беднейших районах иногда до сих пор на всех больных имеется всего несколько шприцев, которые кипятят раз в неделю — если для этого есть вода. При лечении тех же случаев в развитых странах смертность была бы значительно ниже. Кроме того, учитываются лишь госпитализации, тогда как многие переносят инфекцию в форме легкой простуды или вовсе бессимптомно.

Опять же ГЛЭ вызывается разными видами и штаммами эболавирусов и не все они одинаково вирулентны и летальны. Например, заирский эболавирус (самый зловредный) в прошлом убивал 60-90% госпитализированных, тогда как суданский не более 60%, а бундибугионский только 25% — и всё это с учетом крайне низкого уровня медицинской помощи, когда речь шла практически о самовыживании.

Отдельно радует, что вирус не способен к длительному персистированию в организме, таким образом заболевание никогда не хронизируется и не формируется популяция бессимптомных носителей, заражающих других людей. Болезнь длится всего несколько дней и больной либо полностью элиминирует вирус из организма, либо погибает.

Полностью,  здесь.

И, вот что интересно. На ТВ сейчас  паника. Скорее всего я плохо смотрю телевизор, но.. ни разу, пока, я не видел такого подробного объяснения, как о природе вируса, так и о способах заражения оным.

Почему?

И, наконец, последнее, США послали три тысячи из армейского персонала в Либерию(?), решать вопрос с& чем? Что могут сделать военные?

& Ну, как бы это сказать?!

Понятно, что прошло много лет, но.. Почему эти люди теперь, вдруг, задумались о россиянах и России?

..Или, не совсем новое..

Но, неужели совсем перестанут вкладываться в облигации США и откладывть в Резервный фонд?

Возглавляемая Дмитрием Медведевым правящая партия готовит для страны альтернативный экономический курс. Одним из главных идеологов этого курса становится советник президента Сергей Глазьев. Вчера в Госдуме прошли широко анонсированные парламентские слушания о новой экономической политике – «О предложениях по ускорению социально-экономического развития России». Предлагаемые единороссами меры прямо противоположны политике правительства Дмитрия Медведева.

Депутаты, в частности, предлагают в пять раз увеличить бюджетный дефицит, резко сократить налоговую нагрузку и потратить на инвестиции почти половину золотовалютных запасов страны за ближайшие пять лет. В свою очередь, Сергей Глазьев предложил ввести налог на вывоз капитала.

Предварительный список рекомендаций подготовлен специальным научным советом при партии «Единая Россия». По итогам парламентских слушаний думский комитет по экономической политике обобщит все предложения и выпустит окончательный вариант документа, с которым ознакомятся правительство, федеральные и региональные ведомства, объединения предпринимателей и ведущие ученые страны.

Авторы рекомендаций подчеркивают, что они основываются на озвученных президентом Владимиром Путиным ориентирах. Итак, по их словам, властям сейчас надо преодолеть стагнацию, стагфляцию и рецессию, ускорив экономический рост до 3–4% в год в период с 2015 по 2020-й и до 5–6% в год в период с 2020 по 2025-й. К 2025 году российский ВВП должен вырасти с текущих 67 трлн руб. до 100 трлн руб. в ценах 2013 года.

Главное средство экономического ускорения – «переход к форсированному росту инвестиций в основной капитал». В период 2015–2020 годов рост инвестиций должен составлять 8% в год, затем – 10% в год. Доля инвестиций в ВВП должна вырасти с 19% в 2014 году до 30% в 2025-м.

 See more at: http://www.nakanune.ru/articles/19476/

Или это только слова и желания сердца?

&Любопытно, кто заинтересован в подобного рода бунтах?

Москва. 7 октября. INTERFAX.RU  Депутаты думы Астраханской области обратились в правоохранительные органы в связи с хакерским взломом и появлением на сайте парламента сообщения о выходе региона из состава России, заявила заместитель спикера Думы Ирина Родненко.

В ночь на 7 октября на сайте думы была размещена информация, никакого отношении к ней не имеющая. Буквально 1,5-2 часа она поддерживалась, наши специалисты не могли ее убрать. Естественно, потом она была удалена. Мы с утра написали официальное обращение руководителям УМВД и УФСБ региона, чтобы была проведена соответствующая проверка данного хулиганского поступка,  сказала Родненко журналистам перед заседанием областного правительства во вторник.

По ее словам, пока руководство областного парламента не располагает информацией о том, кто и с какой целью это сделал.

Мне думается, что это, действительно, провокация. Текст заявления составлен весьма грамотно. То есть это не просто хулиганы-мальчишки, которые ерунду написали. Все очень выверено, описана четкая последовательность действий по выходу Астраханской области из состава Российской Федерации,  сказала спикер.

Она отметила, что неприятный инцидент должен стать поводом для пересмотра системы защиты сайтов органов госвласти.

В ночь на вторник на официальном сайте думы Астраханской области появилось сообщение о выходе региона из состава России и создании Нижне-Волжской народной республики. Сообщение было сделано от лица чрезвычайного комитета, состоящего якобы из председателя областной думы, главы региона, начальника УФСБ по Астраханской области и бывшего министра обороны ДНР Игоря Стрелкова.

Скриншоты с сайта облдумы с сепаратистскими призывами появились в социальных сетях и ряде СМИ. На данный момент обращение удалено с сайта.

Руководитель пресс-службы УМВД региона Петр Русанов сообщил, что по факту взлома сайта проводится проверка. Специалисты УФСБ также примут участие в расследовании инцидента.

Отсюда.

..В данный момент, самая серьезная проблема,  Эбола.

(CNN)  Another American Ebola patient arrived in the United States on Monday, reminding the nation that the virus killing thousands of people in West Africa, will likely continue crossing U.S. borders.

As freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo  who contracted it while covering the outbreaks carnage  was on his way for treatment in isolation at Nebraska Medical Center, government officials talked of shoring up defenses at airports.

All options are on the table for further strengthening the screening process here in the U.S., a federal official said. That includes thermometer checks for fever, something West African authorities are already carrying out.

But finding the right passengers to screen is not so simple.

Direct flights from Ebola-affected areas are rare. Travelers typically take flights that connect through other countries. Then they come here, so that makes it more of a challenge, the official said.

Mukpo, who worked for NBC, is not representative of that challenge. He was diagnosed on Thursday in Liberia and left there on a specially-equipped plane on Sunday.

But another patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, may be. To fly from Monrovia, Liberia, the country hit hardest by the epidemic, to Dallas, Texas, where he lies in an isolation unit in critical condition, he had to connect.

But even if Duncan had undergone a temperature screening, it would have turned up negative, and he would have made it into the country undetected.

His Ebola  and his fever  did not break out until he was within U.S. borders.

Screening and monitoring

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering enhanced screenings at major U.S. airports, a CDC official said. But it does not appear to have concrete plans in place yet.

Officials want to make sure that the gain of new screenings will be worth potentially disrupting air travel and that they dont unintentionally increase the risk of spreading the disease.

The question thats being considered now and readdressed is that, should there be entry screening of some sort?, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. If you do implement it, what would it look like and what would be the resources that are necessary to implement it? Thats the kind of thing thats being actively discussed right now.

Director Dr. Tom Frieden has said that authorities are taking suggestions from Congress, the public and the media. He is expected to brief President Obama on Monday.

Полностью.

Первый больной зарегистрирован на территории США.

&Малайзийский Боинг?

Вот, про него,  вспомнили.

(CNN)  The next phase in the underwater search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has begun.

The GO Phoenix search vessel arrived in the search area in the southern Indian Ocean and started its search Monday morning (Sunday evening ET), the Australian Transport Safety Board (ATSB) said. It marks the beginning of a potentially year-long search operation, spearheaded by Australian authorities.

The ship, and two others which will arrive within the month, will conduct detailed sonar sweeps in an attempt to locate wreckage of the plane.

The disappearance of MH370 is arguably the greatest mystery in the history of commercial flight, with an extensive search failing to turn up a single piece of definitive evidence of its whereabouts.

Heres where we are with the search for MH370.

What happened initially?

Around 1:30 a.m. on March 8, air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur, lost contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777-200ER, over the sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.

The planes transponder, which identifies the aircraft and relays details like altitude and speed to controllers, stopped transmitting, and the passenger jet seemingly disappeared without a trace.

Planes and ships from 14 countries initially searched areas of the South China Sea, the south of Vietnam and the Malaysian peninsula.

The search was then widened and then shifted location as it was determined, through careful analysis of aircraft performance, cross-referenced with data from the Immarsat handshakes, that the plane diverted south. Since then resources have been focused on a swathe of the Indian Ocean, around 2000 km (1242 miles) off the west coast of Australia, the so-called seventh arc.

Continued analysis of the satellite data, along with a better understanding of the communication between aircraft and satellite and of aircraft performance limits has enabled investigators to further refine the search areas.

Although search teams have been focusing along the seventh arc or partial handshake, where investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel, for months, its only within the past several weeks that investigators have shifted their focus further south. It is in this area that GO Phoenix has begun its underwater search.

Полностью,  здесь.

Если совсем коротко, то..  ищут.

Фильм снят американскими документалистами.

Если я правильно понимаю, этот фильм, получил приз.

Фильм американских документалистов Maidan massacre (Резня на Майдане) взял на показе в Сиене приз зрительских симпатий  Красного коня.

Отсюда.

И, Анатолий Шарий.

Фильм американских документалистов Maidan massacre (Резня на Майдане) взял на показе в Сиене приз зрительских симпатий  Красного коня.

В фильме звучат мнения нескольких специалистов (профессионального снайпера, сотрудника ФБР и еще ряда интересных граждан) по поводу того, откуда велся огонь по людям на Институтской и кто, собственно, мог убить Небесную сотню.

Выводы весьма неутешительны, скажем так. Не вижу ажиотажа в СМИ. Тишина. Вероятно, не просто так. Это своего рода Fahrenheit 9/11 об Украине.

Отсюда.

В фильме есть слова о том, что снайперы были из России.

Вот только, если они были оттуда, то&  почему следствие спускают на тормозах? Точнее, уже спустили..

И, кстати, в фильме есть деятели из Правого сектора, которые выносят с места трагедии музыкальные инструменты.

В общем, еще одно преступление, за которое никто не понесет наказание.

Как в Одессе.

Как я понимаю, расследования событий 2 мая, 2014-ого, как не было, так и нет.

Будет?

И, конечно же, фашизма на Украине нет.

Просто, ребята шалят. А от шалостей погибают люди.

На мой взгляд,  интересная.

After the military corrupted the English language with “collateral damage”, I’d like to introduce the equally dainty and equally misleading “collateral benefit”. I hope you like the smooth way the euphemism oozes from the lips; the imperceptible subtlety with which it shuffles off responsibility.

The phrase implies, without being so crude as to say so out loud, that the west does not intend mass murderers to benefit from its wars any more than it intends civilians to die in its airstrikes. If when the accountants of violence make their reckoning, the dictators are as triumphant as the civilians are dead, that is no concern of ours.

Bashar Assad is now enjoying the collateral benefits of western foreign policy. It is not that he, and by extension Iran and Hezbollah, is our formal ally. We still have our standards, after all. If their power is strengthened, and the bombing and slaughtering of civilians continues, we regret it, naturally. These are unintended side-effects no one can expect us to control.

Human suffering is not a competition. You can’t measure mounds of corpses and reserve your criticism for the highest. Yet when Barack Obama addressed the UN, he did not even glance at the mountain of bodies in Syria. He described the war crimes of Islamic State, but did not once say that clerical fascism had been nurtured by the bloodier war Assad had launched against the Syrian version of the Arab spring.

“We will support Iraqis and Syrians fighting to reclaim their communities,” Obama cried. But only if they were fighting to reclaim them from Islamic State.

Between 2011, when peaceful demonstrators demanded the removal of a Ba’athist dictatorship that has tyrannised Syria since 1963, and April this year, the UN said that 191,000 people had been killed – the figure is “probably an underestimate”, it added. About nine million Syrians have fled their homes. To comprehend the catastrophe the Assad regime has brought, you must imagine an apocalyptic Britain where the entire population of London – and then some – run for their lives. Assad has launched chemical weapons attacks on the suburbs of his own capital. The gallant Syrian air force has dropped incendiary bombs on school playgrounds. Uncounted thousands, including relief workers, lawyers and doctors, have disappeared into his prisons where their jailers have beaten, mutilated and raped them.

Obama might have thrown every condemnation he threw at Islamic State at the Assad regime. Both have “terrorised all whom they come across” in Syria. Both have subjected “mothers, sisters and daughters to rape as a weapon of war”. Both “have gunned down innocent children”. But while Obama said Islamic State had shocked “the conscience of the world”, he could not manage one word about Assad.

I accept that the conscience of the world is as flexible as an iPhone. And I have mentioned before how Mr Obama’s bends with the wind. But his behaviour, and that of the wider west, remains extraordinary. We are going to war against a barbaric enemy, but no one is talking about the barbarism that helped create it. That airstrikes against Assad’s enemies must strengthen his chances of survival is not a fit subject for discussion.

I am tempted to write that Obama’s willingness to aid criminals is Nixonian. Authorities on the Middle East are already looking at the diplomatic exchanges with Tehran and speculating that he is edging towards his own Nixon in China moment. Nadim Shehadi of Chatham House says that Assad must be waiting for the news that Obama is prepared to allow him to dominate Syria and his Iranian puppetmasters to dominate Iraq and Lebanon as well. Perhaps, however, the comparison with the worst of his predecessors is too kind to Obama. Nixon and Kissinger would do anything and support anyone who was against the Soviet Union. For all their crimes, they had a brutal singlemindedness. I struggle to find coherence of any kind in Obama’s foreign policy.

Assad does not care. He knows he is winning, whatever the president’s motives. Ali Haidar, his “minister for national reconciliation”, purred like the Queen on hearing the result of the Scottish referendum when he described the US attacks on Islamic State targets. “What has happened so far is proceeding in the right direction in terms of informing the Syrian government and by not targeting Syrian military installations.”

I am not disputing the need to confront Islamic State. Militant Islam will drive the Christians and Zoroastrians out of Iraq like the Jews before them. The Kurds, who could be our truest friends in the region, may suffer yet more massacres. Britain has a particular moral responsibility to confront radical Islam when our “vibrant” and “diverse” society has furnished Islamic State with so many willing executioners. (Or would have a moral responsibility if our armed forces had not lost their battle with George Osborne and been left in no condition to confront anyone.)

But just as the west won’t recognise the right of the Kurds to self-determination, so it won’t accept that you cannot fight Islamic State in Syria without offering hope to those who oppose Assad. Instead it carries on propagating the authentically orientalist lie that Syrians are either Ba’athists or Islamists, and there is no alternative to tyranny.

I do not believe the line will hold. How long will the Sunni Arab states stay in Obama’s coalition when they see their Shia enemies benefiting? How will Syrians react to the double standard?

It is as if every liberal chant of the last decade is returning to haunt Obama. You will remember hearing, or perhaps said yourself, that we should concentrate on the “root causes” of terrorism. The root cause of Islamic State is Shia sectarianism in Iraq and sectarian mass murder in Syria. Mohammed Antabli, a leader of Syrian exiles in Britain, told me how he took British and European politicians to Turkey’s border with Syria at the start of the war and warned them that Islamism would flourish if the west did nothing for the moderate opposition. And so it has.

You will remember hearing, or perhaps said yourself, that we must not alienate “the Arab street”. Kassem Eid, an opposition activist now in exile in the US, said what streets were left in Syria were alienated beyond measure. The democratic world has done nothing. No no-fly zone. No attempt to slow Assad down, even for a day, even when he crossed Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons. Every Syrian activist I spoke to repeated his assertion that western hypocrisies were driving support for Islamism.

In his 1 September, 1939, on the eve of another war, WH Auden wrote: “I and the public know/ that all schoolchildren learn,/ Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.”

A great evil has been done to Syria. I cannot see how any western project against Islamic State can prosper until the “conscience of the world” provides redress by saying it will not tolerate the continuation of the Assad regime. At present, however, the world won’t even acknowledge evil’s existence. We must expect evil in return.

Отсюда.

Еще одна статья.

One constant of Russian diplomacy in the last several years has been for Moscow to vociferously criticize U.S. actions that go against Russia’s preferences, particularly those that represent any erosion of the Westphalian ideal of state sovereignty, as violations of international law—and then to claim an American precedent when it becomes convenient for Russia to similarly breach those principles. When Washington claimed a right to deploy military force against another sovereign state without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, justified armed action on the basis of a “right to protect” or recognized a unilateral declaration of independence, Russia led the chorus of disapproval from the stalwart defenders of state sovereignty and territorial integrity (especially the rising and resurgent powers of the global south and east, like India, China and Brazil). The NATO intervention against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999 (without the blessing of the United Nations) and the subsequent recognition of an independent Kosovo (despite an explicit UN Security Council resolution calling for the province to enjoy maximal autonomy within the bounds of a Serbian state, and in the absence of Belgrade’s consent), initially condemned by Russia, were then cited as precedents to justify Russian military action in Georgia in 2008, and then to recognize the self-declared independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

A similar parallelism can be seen between Syria and Ukraine. Russia has strongly condemned efforts by Western states to aid the opposition seeking to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad as violations of Syrian sovereignty and criticized efforts by Washington and its allies in the Persian Gulf to provide assistance to rebel organizations. But when the government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was deposed, hours after a power-sharing and transition agreement was reached between Yanukovych and the opposition in the presence of a European Union delegation, Moscow was quick to adopt the same language used by Washington to describe the Assad regime: an illegitimate government holding no mandate to rule, and defending the right of an opposition to challenge the subsequent “junta” by force of arms if necessary to secure their rights.

In both Ukraine and Syria, Russia wanted to see broad-based coalition governments emerge, preferably still headed by presidential allies (Yanukovych and Assad) at the onset, which would guarantee the security of Russian interests in both countries and the continuation of reasonably friendly regimes in Kyiv and Damascus. The collapse of the Geneva process for a transition in Syria and the effective negation of the February 2014 agreement reached in Kyiv has been interpreted by the Kremlin to mean that no compromise between Western and Russian interests in both Syria and Ukraine would be possible, and that Washington was pursuing an all-or-nothing approach. Thus, at the beginning of this year, Russian strategy was to oppose Washington’s preferences for outcomes in both Ukraine and Syria.

The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has the possibility to change that dynamic. ISIS targets both U.S. and Russian clients in the region and has threatened both to raise its flag over the White House, and personally target Vladimir Putin. Yet the situation has not yet reached crisis levels where it might serve to bring together Washington and Moscow the same way that 9/11 did. The Russian preference—for a broad anti-ISIS coalition that would include Assad and Iran as partners, and where the United States would be expected to reach compromise settlements with both Damascus and Tehran, and, in the case of Russia, rolling back the sanctions imposed on Moscow and signing off on a decentralized, neutral Ukraine—is not President Barack Obama’s preferred strategy. Thus, while both Moscow and Washington will work for the destruction of ISIS—Russia, through its ability to supply both Syrian and Iraqi forces—there is not likely to be much coordination of effort.

Moscow cannot object, from a strategic point of view, to U.S. airstrikes directed against ISIS targets in Syria, but from a political standpoint, it will continue to condemn U.S. actions as long as Washington does not seek Assad’s permission for such action and as long as the United States holds open the possibility that, at some point in the future, airstrikes might also be directed against Assad’s forces should the opportunity arise to assist U.S. proxies in their struggle.

But Russia is also going to keep handy the U.S. justification for the recent set of strikes inside Syria: the claim that Syrian government permission was not needed and that attacks against ISIS and another organization, the Khorasan group, are justified because of their threats to regional stability and, in the case of the latter, an apparent threat to the U.S. homeland itself. This expanded definition of national self-defense, to move beyond imminent attack to be able to strike at threats before they have fully reached their potential, utilized as well by the George W. Bush administration, has readily been taken up by the Kremlin, which cited its own right to go after groups deemed to be terrorist threats anywhere in the world.

Indeed, as much as Moscow complains about American unilateralism, Putin finds that he is more than happy to take the position that he too can interpret international law to his own liking. So it will probably only be a matter of time before we hear the curious echo of Obama’s recent statements about the Syria strikes when Russia seeks to justify a future military action in the face of condemnation by the West.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev, a contributing editor at The National Interest, is a visiting professor in international relations at Brown University and co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Interests, Vectors and Sectors (CQ Press, 2013).

Взята отсюда.

Здесь,  перевод на русский.

&Достаточно интересная, на мой взгляд.

Exclusive: By driving a wedge between President Obama and President Putin over Ukraine, America’s neocons and the mainstream media can hope for more “shock and awe” in the Mideast, but the U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill, including $1 trillion more on nuclear weapons, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The costs of the mainstream U.S. media’s wildly anti-Moscow bias in the Ukraine crisis are adding up, as the Obama administration has decided to react to alleged “Russian aggression” by investing as much as $1 trillion in modernizing the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

On Monday, a typically slanted New York Times article justified these modernization plans by describing “Russia on the warpath” and adding: “Congress has expressed less interest in atomic reductions than looking tough in Washington’s escalating confrontation with Moscow.”

But the Ukraine crisis has been a textbook case of the U.S. mainstream media misreporting the facts of a foreign confrontation and then misinterpreting the meaning of the events, a classic case of “garbage in, garbage out.” The core of the false mainstream narrative is that Russian President Vladimir Putin instigated the crisis as an excuse to reclaim territory for the Russian Empire.

While that interpretation of events has been the cornerstone of Official Washington’s “group think,” the reality always was that Putin favored maintaining the status quo in Ukraine. He had no plans to “invade” Ukraine and was satisfied with the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych. Indeed, when the crisis heated up last February, Putin was distracted by the Sochi Winter Olympics.

Rather than Putin’s “warmongering” – as the Times said in the lead-in to another Monday article – the evidence is clear that it was the United States and the European Union that initiated this confrontation in a bid to pull Ukraine out of Russia’s sphere of influence and into the West’s orbit.

This was a scheme long in the making, but the immediate framework for the crisis took shape a year ago when influential U.S. neocons set their sights on Ukraine and Putin after Putin helped defuse a crisis in Syria by persuading President Barack Obama to set aside plans to bomb Syrian government targets over a disputed Sarin gas attack and instead accept Syria’s willingness to surrender its entire chemical weapons arsenal.

But the neocons and their “liberal interventionist” allies had their hearts set on another “shock and awe” campaign with the goal of precipitating another “regime change” against a Middle East government disfavored by Israel. Putin also worked with Obama to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, averting another neocon dream to “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”

The Despised Putin

So, Putin suddenly rose to the top of the neocons’ “enemies list” and some prominent neocons quickly detected his vulnerability in Ukraine, a historical route for western invasions of Russia and the scene of extraordinarily bloody fighting during World War II.

National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, one of the top neocon paymasters spreading around $100 million a year in U.S. taxpayers’ money, declared in late September 2013 that Ukraine represented “the biggest prize” but beyond that was an opportunity to put Putin “on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

The context for Gershman’s excitement was a European Union offer of an association agreement to Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych, but it came with some nasty strings attached, an austerity plan demanded by the International Monetary Fund that would have made the hard lives of the average Ukrainian even harder.

That prompted Yanukovych to seek a better deal from Putin who offered $15 billion in aid without the IMF’s harsh terms. Yet, once Yanukovych rebuffed the EU plan, his government was targeted by a destabilization campaign that involved scores of political and media projects funded by Gershman’s NED and other U.S. agencies.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, a neocon holdover who had been an adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, reminded a group of Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.” Nuland, wife of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, also showed up at the Maidan square in Kiev passing out cookies to protesters.

The Maidan protests, reflecting western Ukraine’s desire for closer ties to Europe, also were cheered on by neocon Sen. John McCain, who appeared on a podium with leaders of the far-right Svoboda party under a banner honoring Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. A year earlier, the European Parliament had identified Svoboda as professing “racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views [that] go against the EU’s fundamental values and principles.”

Yet, militants from Svoboda and the even more extreme Right Sektor were emerging as the muscle of the Maidan protests, seizing government buildings and hurling firebombs at police. A well-known Ukrainian neo-Nazi leader, Andriy Parubiy, became the commandant of the Maidan’s “self-defense” forces.

Behind the scenes, Assistant Secretary Nuland was deciding who would take over the Ukrainian government once Yanukovych was ousted. In an intercepted phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, Nuland crossed off some potential leaders and announced that “Yats” – or Arseniy Yatsenyuk – was her guy.

The Coup

On Feb. 20, as the neo-Nazi militias stepped up their attacks on police, a mysterious sniper opened fire on both protesters and police killing scores and bringing the political crisis to a boil. The U.S. news media blamed Yanukovych for the killings though he denied giving such an order and some evidence pointed toward a provocation from the far-right extremists.

As Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet said in another intercepted phone call with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Asthon, “there is a stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych, it was somebody from the new coalition.”

But the sniper shootings led Yanukovych to agree on Feb. 21 to a deal guaranteed by three European countries – France, Germany and Poland – that he would surrender much of his power and move up elections so he could be voted out of office. He also assented to U.S. demands that he pull back his police.

That last move, however, prompted the neo-Nazi militias to overrun the presidential buildings on Feb. 22 and force Yanukovych’s officials to flee for their lives. Then, rather than seeking to enforce the Feb. 21 agreement, the U.S. State Department promptly declared the coup regime “legitimate” and blamed everything on Yanukovych and Putin.

Nuland’s choice, Yatsenyuk, was made prime minister and the neo-Nazis were rewarded for their crucial role by receiving several ministries, including national security headed by Parubiy. The parliament also voted to ban Russian as an official language (though that was later rescinded), and the IMF austerity demands were pushed through by Yatsenyuk. Not surprisingly, ethnic Russians in the south and east, the base of Yanukovych’s support, began resisting what they regarded as the illegitimate coup regime.

To blame this crisis on Putin simply ignores the facts and defies logic. To presume that Putin instigated the ouster of Yanukovych in some convoluted scheme to seize territory requires you to believe that Putin got the EU to make its reckless association offer, organized the mass protests at the Maidan, convinced neo-Nazis from western Ukraine to throw firebombs at police, and manipulated Gershman, Nuland and McCain to coordinate with the coup-makers – all while appearing to support Yanukovych’s idea for new elections within Ukraine’s constitutional structure.

Though such a crazy conspiracy theory would make people in tinfoil hats blush, this certainty is at the heart of what every “smart” person in Official Washington believes. If you dared to suggest that Putin was actually distracted by the Sochi Olympics last February, was caught off guard by the events in Ukraine, and reacted to a Western-inspired crisis on his border (including his acceptance of Crimea’s request to be readmitted to Russia), you would be immediately dismissed as “a stooge of Moscow.”

Such is how mindless “group think” works in Washington. All the people who matter jump on the bandwagon and smirk at anyone who questions how wise it is to be rolling downhill in some disastrous direction.

But the pols and pundits who appear on U.S. television spouting the conventional wisdom are always the winners in this scenario. They get to look tough, standing up to villains like Yanukovych and Putin and siding with the saintly Maidan protesters. The neo-Nazi brown shirts are whited out of the picture and any Ukrainian who objected to the U.S.-backed coup regime finds a black hat firmly glued on his or her head.

For the neocons, there are both financial and ideological benefits. By shattering the fragile alliance that had evolved between Putin and Obama over Syria and Iran, the neocons seized greater control over U.S. policies in the Middle East and revived the prospects for violent “regime change.”

On a more mundane level – by stirring up a new Cold War – the neocons generate more U.S. government money for military contractors who bestow a portion on Washington think tanks that provide cushy jobs for neocons when they are out of government.

The Losers

The worst losers are the people of Ukraine, most tragically the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, thousands of whom have died from a combination of heavy artillery fire by the Ukrainian army on residential areas followed by street fighting led by brutal neo-Nazi militias who were incorporated into Kiev’s battle plans. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s ‘Romantic’ Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]

The devastation of eastern Ukraine, which has driven an estimated one million Ukrainians out of their homes, has left parts of this industrial region in ruins. Of course, in the U.S. media version, it’s all Putin’s fault for deceiving these ethnic Russians with “propaganda” about neo-Nazis and then inducing these deluded individuals to resist the “legitimate” authorities in Kiev.

Notably, America’s righteous “responsibility to protect” crowd, which demanded that Obama begin airstrikes in Syria a year ago, swallowed its moral whistles when it came to the U.S.-backed Kiev regime butchering ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (or for that matter, when Israeli forces slaughtered Palestinians in Gaza).

However, beyond the death and destruction in eastern Ukraine, the meddling by Nuland, Gershman and others has pushed all of Ukraine toward financial catastrophe. As “The Business Insider” reported on Sept. 21, “Ukraine Is on the Brink of Total Economic Collapse.”

Author Walter Kurtz wrote: “Those who have spent any time in Ukraine during the winter know how harsh the weather can get. And at these [current] valuations, hryvnia [Ukraine’s currency] isn’t going to buy much heating fuel from abroad. …

“Inflation rate is running above 14% and will spike sharply from here in the next few months if the currency weakness persists. Real wages are collapsing. … Finally, Ukraine’s fiscal situation is unraveling.”

In other words, the already suffering Ukrainians from the west, east and center of the country can expect to suffer a great deal more. They have been made expendable pawns in a geopolitical chess game played by neocon masters and serving interests far from Lviv, Donetsk and Kiev.

But other victims from these latest machinations by the U.S. political/media elite will include the American taxpayers who will be expected to foot the bill for the new Cold War launched in reaction to Putin’s imaginary scheme to instigate the Ukraine crisis so he could reclaim territory of the Russian Empire.

As nutty as that conspiracy theory is, it is now one of the key reasons why the American people have to spend $1 trillion to modernize the nation’s nuclear arsenal, rather than scaling back the thousands of U.S. atomic weapons to around 900, as had been planned.

Or as one supposed expert, Gary Samore at Harvard, explained to the New York Times: “The most fundamental game changer is Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That has made any measure to reduce the stockpile unilaterally politically impossible.”

Thus, you can see how hyperbolic journalism and self-interested punditry can end up costing the American taxpayers vast sums of money and contributing to a more dangerous world.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative.

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