An attack on a Russian aircraft in neutral space would be a declaration of war, said Anatoly Antonov, Russia's ambassador to Washington.

« Intentionally attacking a Russian aircraft in neutral airspace is not only a crime under international law, but also an open declaration of war against the greatest nuclear power. “, he warned.

by Bruno Bertez

« An armed confrontation between Russia and the United States would be radically different from the proxy war that the Americans are waging from a distance against us in Ukraine..

We are in room 20, on the 2nd floor of the Central Museum of the Armed Forces in Moscow. Pictured are the remains of the CIA's U2 spy plane, shot down on May 1, 1960 over Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinenburg) by S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missiles. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, far from swallowing the cyanide capsule that had been provided to him and not destroying the plane, preferred to parachute.

by Fausto Guidice

The missiles also shot down a Mig-19 which had chased the U2, Powers was first mistaken for a Soviet pilot, then the misunderstanding cleared up. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and then traded in 1962 for William Fischer, a KGB spy who had remained silent as a grave under interrogation.

Regular readers of this journal will be dismayed at the breakneck speed at which Australia is party to the goading of a potentially catastrophic war in our region. With Western mainstream media in anti-China mad dog mode, both sides of the aisle in Canberra sleepwalking, and with nothing at all to win and everything to lose, it seems the only ones who can save us from ourselves are the Taiwanese.

By Guest author Graham Pickering

Russia’s Wagner Group has purchased an advertisement on Pornhub, urging users of the massive porn site to join the “coolest private army in the world.” The military company recently expanded its recruitment efforts as it fights to take a key Donbass city.

Spotted by Russian Telegram users earlier this week, the ad features a woman licking a lollipop suggestively as a female voice invites viewers to sign up with Wagner. It was reportedly only visible to those accessing the site from Russia.

“We are the f**king coolest private army in the world. We are recruiting fighters from all regions of Russia. Don’t w**ck off – go work for PMC Wagner,” the Russian-language ad says, before a phone number appears on screen.

The policies of the US Federal Reserve are responsible for the unfolding banking crisis and could lead to more failures in the sector, Chairman of the Institute for Political Economy Paul Craig Roberts believes.

The official, who served in the US Treasury in the 1980s, talked to RT about the recent high-profile bank failures that have rattled the US financial system and the potential fallout of those events.

“For many years, the Federal Reserve kept the rates very low, so the interest on the financial assets that the banks have on their balance sheet is low. When the rates start rising, the values of their portfolios fall, but their liabilities don’t,” Roberts explained.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin reached out to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu, on Wednesday, for the first time in months, to discuss the incident in which an American spy drone went down in the Black Sea waters off Crimea. 

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Shoigu told Austin that the incident was caused by the Americans violating the airspace restriction declared by Russia, with all the proper international notifications in place. Shoigu called US drone flights off the Russian coast “provocative in nature” and risked an escalation of tensions in the Black Sea. 

The US MQ-9 Reaper drone fell in the Black Sea after engaging in a sharp maneuvering as Russian fighter jets were scrambled to identify the aircraft flying in the direction of Crimea with its transponders turned off. The US European Command raised the alarm, apparently forgetting how the US Air Forces unleashed a war on "balloons" last month.

BY EKATERINA BLINOVA

"The United States and NATO have created an already intolerable situation around Russian borders, especially in the Black Sea region. They are present there in different capacities. There are [US/NATO] reconnaissance aircraft and drones [in the region]," Ivan Konovalov, a military expert and political analyst, told Sputnik.

Speaking out strongly against AUKUS at the Press Club yesterday, Paul Keating’s concern is that Australia’s security has been laid limp upon the altar of small target politics by the two key Ministers – Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles.

By Mike Gilligan

Movie star Steven Seagal made an appearance at the inaugural meeting of the International Russophile Movement in Moscow on Tuesday, claiming he was actually "a million percent Russian" himself. The actor received Russian citizenship back in 2016 and currently serves as a special envoy of the Russian Foreign Ministry on humanitarian relations between Moscow and Washington.

Speaking at a press conference following the event, Seagal said that roughly half of Americans still "love"Russia despite the ongoing international turmoil. The actor also spoke about his ancestry – his grandfather immigrated to America from Russia – revealing what it means for him to be Russian.

A vessel allegedly linked to the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines is currently anchored off the north-east coast of Germany in the Baltic Sea, Der Spiegel has reported. The German news website also claimed one of the e-mail addresses used by the alleged bombers might point to Ukrainian involvement.

According to Monday's report, Der Spiegel journalists found the ‘Andromeda’ yacht on the Bug peninsula in the Dranske municipality, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region, which used to serve as a base for the German Democratic Republic’s Navy.

Here’s the thing for everyone who doubts me: if I didn’t know what was going on, how would I be able to make all of these predictions?

Do I just guess, and somehow always end up correct?

I said, explicitly, that the narrative from all of the top figures in the GOP was going to be that we should end the Ukraine war in order to focus on starting a war with the Chinese. I said it before any of them said it, and now they’re all saying it.

Former prime minister Paul Keating has launched an extraordinary attack on the Albanese government over its adoption of the AUKUS pact, accusing it of making the worst foreign policy decision by a Labor government since the attempted introduction of conscription during World War One.

By Matthew Knott

We think that MATTHEW WAS THE JOURNO WHICH KEATING TOLD HIM TO GO AWAY IN SHAME AND NOT COME BACK...

San Diego: Australians are being urged to accept hard decisions to fund a decades-long plan to build nuclear-powered submarines after the potential $368 billion cost sparked a political furore over whether the nation could afford the mammoth outlay on a stronger defence force.

The federal government said the investment was essential to shield the country from security threats by purchasing an interim fleet of nuclear-powered submarines from the United States in the 2030s before building a future fleet in Adelaide that would enter service in the 2040s.

But the Greens said the increase in defence spending would require future cuts to health and education and warned they would not help in parliament to make any savings, while the Coalition warned against ‘‘cannibalising’’ other defence programs to pay for the submarines.

Oliver Stone is a filmmaker with 3 Oscar wins and 11 Oscar nominations. His films include Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Scarface, JFK, Nixon, Alexander, W, Snowden, and documentaries where he has interviewed Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Vladimir Putin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygAqYC8JOQI

OUTLINE:

0:00 - Introduction

2:54 - Nuclear power

15:52 - Russia and US relations

21:07 - JFK and the Cold War

FRI

[This article was originally published in April, 2021 at which time Raytheon had obtained $2.36 billion in Pentagon contracts since Austin’s appointment. Since that time, CAM has kept tabs on Raytheon’s contracts and the article has been updated.—Editors]

The Pentagon has awarded the defense giant Raytheon Technologies, the second largest weapons-maker in the world, over $30 billion in government contracts since Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III’s confirmation on January 22nd, 2021.

 Jeremy Kuzmarov

Austin was on Raytheon’s board of directors prior to his confirmation.