United States

Submitted by Gary Leupp via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

It seems so strange, twenty-seven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, to be living through a new Cold War with (as it happens, capitalist) Russia.

The Russian president is attacked by the U.S. political class and media as they never attacked Soviet leaders; he is personally vilified as a corrupt, venal dictator, who arrests or assassinates political opponents and dissident journalists, and is hell-bent on the restoration of the USSR.

We were surprised by how contained China was this morning after yesterday's confirmation hearing of Rex Tillerson, in which the former Exxon CEO said that a failure to respond to China had allowed it to “keep pushing the envelope” in the South China Sea and added that “we’re going to have to send China a clear signal that first the island-building stops and second your access to those islands is also not going to be allowed” and that putting military assets on those islands was "akin to Russia’s taking Crimea” from Ukraine."

Submitted by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) John Sopko is once again warning about the long-standing problems of corruption in Afghanistan, and the amount of US “reconstruction aid” disappearing down black holes over the course of the years. As always, the discussion came around to “ghost soldiers.”

Russia has declared a state of emergency over the increasingly hostile U.S. military build-up in Poland, calling the presence a “threat to national security.” The Kremlin have expressed concern that the 2,700 troops arriving on their border as part of operation Atlantic Resolve is secretly intended to incite a nuclear war between Russia and the West. Yahoo News reports: The Kremlin, which has previously criticised NATO for its reinforcement in Eastern Europe, said on Thursday the deployment was an aggressive step along its borders.

Just hours after NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden urged President Obama to "save [Chelsea Manning's] life by granting her clemency," Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange says he will agree to be extradited to the United States if the president grants clemency to the former US soldier Chelsea Manning, who is currently serving a 35-year sentence for leaking documents.