United States

The U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time it broke up and many other experts have said that the West promised Gorbachev that – if the USSR allowed German re-unification – NATO wouldn’t move “one inch closer” to Russia.

While Western leaders have long denied that such a promise, newly-declassified documents now prove this.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University reported Tuesday:

On Saturday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported an "Incident" had taken place involving a USAF F-22 over Syria which according to the Russians "actively prevented the Russian pair of Su-25 attack aircraft from carrying out a combat mission to destroy the Daesh stronghold in the suburbs of the city of Mayadin in the airspace over the western bank of the Euphrates River on November 23" with the The F-22 firing off heat flares and released brake shields with "permanent maneuvering, imitating an air battle" to which we said that in the apparent eagerness by the US to re-engage Russia, it is

One day after the Fed hiked rates by 25 bps as part of Janet Yellen's final news conference, it is central bank bonanza day, with rate decisions coming from the rest of the world's most important central banks, including the ECB, BOE, SNB, Norges Bank, HKMA, Turkey and others.

Greece's Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Russian national Aleksandr Vinnik, the purported mastermind of what US authorities have described as a $4 billion bitcoin money laundering operation, to avoid extradition to the US, where he has been indicted – along with his former company, mysterious digital currency exchange BTC-e – on nearly two dozen felony counts, including fraud and money laundering.

Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The neoliberal world order has been in crisis for some years now, with no signs of recovery. Trump's victory is an expression of a breach of trust between the American people and the national elites.

The perfect storm. This is what the situation in the Middle East looks like. More and more events in the region seem to be leading towards an epochal change in the delicate balance of power.