The Wisdom of Zbigniew Brzezinski and What It Can Tell Us Now

World-renowned Polish-American political thinker and ideologist of US global hegemony, Zbigniew Brzezinski, has passed away aged 89, but his words will long echo in global politics. 

Brzezinski was national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter. His words open a window through which we can interpret geopolitical games being played on the continent.

Caution: these sayings were collected and selected by RT,

so there may be some political bias involved.

Apparently, his words will not echo long in global politics where free-speech no longer exists.

Afghanistan was a disaster for Russia. But one has to wonder how often the practice of drawing another country into war with a third country is exercised. I suspect it happens far more often than we would like to believe. I'm sure Americans were delighted that the Russians were involved in an expensive war they could not possibly win, but what it did to Afghanistan resulted in the Taliban and Sharia Law which was a disaster for all women and children in the country.

Gee, can't think of anybody like that! 

For many of us, it made it clear that communism was a great hoax, that it creates a phenomenal level of paranoia, and that it makes obvious that a world without God is a very sick and sad place. 

Yet there are many, many liberals who would completely disagree. They are those who will find their daughters or granddaughters wearing niqabs and living under Sharia Law and wonder how it happened.

Is NATO the tool for accomplishing this? 

North Koreans in Breadbasket Province Malnourished

If the situation is prolonged for another 1-2 years,

people tell each other that they'll "all be dead."

By Elizabeth Shim


North Koreans work in the fields near the North Korean city Sinuiju, across the Yalu River from Dandong, China's largest border city with North Korea. Rural residents of Hwanghae Province are suffering from malnutrition because of Kim Jong Un’s agricultural policy, a source said. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

SEOUL, Aug. 8 (UPI) -- North Koreans living in a province that is the center of the country's agriculture are malnourished, sources say.

The residents of Hwanghae, the breadbasket province of North Korea, are relinquishing their rice supply to the army and the residents of Pyongyang, Daily NK reported Monday.

A North Korean residing in North Hwanghae said there is barely enough to eat and "just enough to carry on the lifeline."

The dire situation is compelling some North Koreans to consider making an appeal to the government, the source said.

The report challenges claims the supply of rice in North Korea for the population increased after the creation of a new "incentive system" on June 28, under Kim Jong Un's orders.

"There is nothing left in Hwanghae after harvested rice all goes to the military," the source said. "The people who harvest the rice cannot taste their own product and must go all the way to Yanggang province to buy rice."

The source also said standards of living have declined in the past 10 years. Vagrants have increased in number, and if the situation is prolonged for another 1-2 years, people tell each other that they'll "all be dead."

The unofficial marketization in North Korea has not reaped benefits for the country's farmers because they produce rice for the military and the residents of Pyongyang, the source said.

Farmers have also been unable to take advantage of grey markets because they lack sufficient capital, the source added.

Inequality of wealth between the urban and rural areas is increasing, according to the source.

This is communism! Stalin used to take all the potatoes grown in the Ukraine from the farmers and sell them abroad for the money. Of course the farmers either starved to death of left for Canada or elsewhere.

The absurdity of life in Pyongyang and the insanity of the North Korean military cannot be reconciled with a healthy lifestyle for rural people. Kim Jong Un has to realize that soon or his country is going to self-destruct.

Putin's Russia Looking More and More Like Stalin's USSR

Sex tape scandal was work of Putin, says Russian political activist exposed in video

Natalia Pelevina says Russian president ordered FSB to record her and fellow Putin opponent having sex

By Susan Ormiston, CBC News 

Pelevina and Ormiston, Susan Ormiston's career spans more than 25 years reporting from hot spots such as Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Haiti, Lebanon and South Africa.

Natalia Pelevina, a Russian political activist at the heart of a shocking sex scandal, has no doubts about who is responsible for revealing her affair with a former Russian prime minister.

A secret video of her and Mikhail Kasyanov showing intimate bedroom sex scenes and frank private conversations was baldly exposed last Friday on national television.

Pelevina is convinced the Russian security services planted the recording devices to entrap the couple at the behest of the president.

"It had to be Putin. I have no doubt about that," Pelevina told CBC during an exclusive interview in Moscow this week.

She hadn't spoken publicly about the sex scandal since it broke last week. Kasyanov is chairman of PARNAS, a liberal opposition party in Russia. Pelevina is his political assistant and was, until this week, a member of the party executive.

Russian broadcaster NTV aired a 40-minute special program liberally laced with scenes from the secretly taped video of the two.


Natalia Pelevina believes Russian President Vladimir Putin is ultimately responsible for the release of a video showing her and her lover, Mikhail Kasyanov, having sex. The tape was played on national Russian television last week. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)

Since being turfed from Vladimir Putin's government in 2004, Kasyanov has been a prominent Kremlin critic.

The black and white video played on NTV, with clear audio, first showed Pelevina in sexy lingerie, then the two lovers naked in various stages of cooing and lovemaking. It seemed to have been quickly edited to highlight salacious, sometimes cringing moments of intimate talk between the two.

"What has come out, the just unthinkable awfulness of it, really tells me that he (Putin) did not only go after Kasyanov this time. The goal was to destroy him," Pelevina told CBC News.


There were warning signs

Pelevina believes a surveillance camera was installed behind a bedroom wall and a microphone hidden under the kitchen table in a private Moscow apartment owned by Kasyanov.

Pelevina and Kasyanov often met there during their long affair. She is 38 and single; he is 58, married with two children. They worked together in the trenches of Russia's battered opposition. Both were deep in preparations for this fall's parliamentary elections when the video emerged.


Secret sex tape


Pelevina believes the secret surveillance of a private apartment owned by Kasyanov, a married father of two, was carried out by Russia's security services and lasted six months. (NTV)

Pelevina, born in Moscow, lived in Britain until four years ago. She's been an activist with the Magnitksy Justice Campaign, formed in support of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison after blowing the whistle on corruption in Russian state-owned enterprises. She returned to Moscow, she says, to actively work with Russia's opposition.

She acknowledges she and Kasyanov were careless in their relationship, especially given that they had received warning signs that they were being watched. At a restaurant recently, the owner left them a note in their menu saying, "Don't go in there," indicating a corner room. "It was bugged just before you arrived."

They had discussed how they might be tailed and watched.

"We never thought they would go this far," Pelevina said.


6 months of surveillance

NTV did not explain how it got the secret video, but the channel is close to the Kremlin. The footage that aired appeared to show one night of sex, but Pelevina says the scenes were edited together from, she believes, six months of secret surveillance. She is horrified thinking the couple may have been spied on for that long.

There were obvious signs that pressure was building on Kasyanov — beginning in January, when Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov posted video of Kasyanov inside a sniper's crosshairs. A few weeks later, he was "pied" in the face at a restaurant, a favourite threatening tactic of provocateurs.


Kasyanov is chairman of PARNAS, a liberal opposition party in Russia, and was prime minister before he fell out of favour and was ousted by Putin in 2004. Pelevina is his political assistant and was a member of the party executive until she resigned this week. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)

In an interview with CBC in February, Kasyanov said "the situation is worsening every day. Putin's pursuing a tough policy, squeezing the whole political environment in Russia. We have permanent blackmailing of the opposition. We face problems every day."

Kasyanov's adultery wasn't the only "revelation" in the video. Clear audio recordings reveal Pelevina, a would-be parliamentary candidate, aggressively badmouthing other leaders of the opposition. She is heard saying that an alliance with opposition leader Alexei Navalny was necessary, but she clearly detests him.

"Navalny is a piece of shit," she's heard to say.

She goes on to call the deputy chairman of PARNAS, Ilya Yashin, "a freak who's willing to sell his place in the campaign for $30,000."


In an exclusive interview with CBC News, Pelevina told Susan Ormiston she's convinced Putin's aim was to 'destroy' Kasyanov, who is running in the fall parliamentary elections and has been the target of past intimidation tactics along with other members of the opposition. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)

Kasyanov is heard trying to subdue her strong opinions, then telling her he'll put her in the Duma (Russia's parliament) and build the party around her.

The political talk is edited over scenes in the bedroom appearing as if it was pillow talk, but Pelevina says much of it was said over wine and cheese in the kitchen, where they often unloaded daily frustrations and talked politics.


'The words I used were foul, but I'm human'

Pelevina has resigned her seat on PARNAS's political council in the wake of the scandal.

"I'm not making excuses but … they cut all the terrible things in such a way that it looks like one crazy verbal explosion, and it was never like that," she said. "The words I used were foul, but I'm human, and when you get upset, you sometimes say things you regret."

But there is no doubt the video hurts the opposition, already weak and struggling to unite in order to present a stronger alternative to an overwhelmingly popular governing party. With only five months to go before the election for the Duma, the opposition is reeling.


Dimitry Nekrasov, a moderate opposition politician, says the greater crime in the sex tape scandal is not adultery but using state power to suppress opposition. (Jean Francois Bisson/CBC)

"I don't want them (security services) to succeed in this. It's not right," said Pelevina. "All of us have sacrificed a lot. It's a tough life in Russia right now, and to be in opposition, it's like being at war."

'The most damaging information was not the fact of sexual affairs of Mr. Kasyanov, 

but the fact of using state power, state secret services, against the opposition.'

- Dmitry Nekrasov, opposition politician

Media reported that millions of Russians watched the NTV broadcast, which raised the bar on political sabotage to new levels, even in a country used to political smut.

"It's damaging, of course," says Dmitry Nekrasov, running for a seat in the Duma this fall.

"But it won't be as damaging for Kasyanov as if it happened in many Western countries. It won't be so harmful.

"In Russia, there's a lot of damaging information regarding all politicians, and it's used from time to time by different parties. That's why people don't believe in many things."


Use of state power against the opposition

Nekrasov concurs that Kasyanov should have been far more careful in the current climate of surveillance.

But "in my opinion, the most damaging information was not the fact of sexual affairs of Mr. Kasyanov, but the fact of using state power, state secret services, against the opposition," Nekrasov siad.

'The fact that Mikhail was and is married, yes, it is wrong, 

but unfortunately, what we felt was stronger than that fact.'

- Natalia Pelevina

"Nothing we did was illegal," said Pelevina angrily. She paused, trying to collect herself. Speaking about the affair is clearly painful for her.

"The fact that Mikhail was and is married, yes, it is wrong, but unfortunately, what we felt was stronger than that fact. We weren't able to end the relationship."

The secret surveillance wasn't the first attack aimed at Pelevina. Only three weeks ago, she was charged with possessing a pen-size spy camera, the kind you can buy at a gadget shop. She says it was a gag gift from her sister. She now faces a criminal charge, and even though she has British residency, she cannot leave Moscow. If convicted, she can never run for political office.


Mikhail Kasyanov and Boris Nemtsov


Kasyanov and fellow opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered on a Moscow bridge in February 2015.

As for Kasyanov, the married man, father and seasoned warrior of Russian politics, he has yet to surface to explain his behaviour. It's not at all clear whether, in political affairs, this is his fatal blow.

But in the affairs of the heart? The tryst, exposed for all of Russia to see, has left many people deeply hurt and damaged.

Pelevina is humiliated. The affair, she says, is over.

"I wish he (Kasyanov) had had better judgment. I wish he had known that this would be possible," she said.

Pelevina said she spoke to Kasyanov several days after the scandal broke. He was very emotional.

"[He said], 'I did this to you. I did it.' And he did. I trusted him to know these things," said Pelevina, tears welling up.

"But I can't be angry at him, because I loved that man very much."

Russian politics is cutthroat. This isn't the first dirty sex tape scandal, nor will it be the last. There is a degree of indifference to yet more political dirty tricks; they're predictable.

While not as violent as Stalin's reign of terror, Putin is exercising autocratic control over politics and the media. He destroys the opposition through any means he can including murder. 

It's a shame! The man is brilliant enough to keep his job and excel both nationally and internationally. Perhaps it is his KGB paranoia that causes him to resort to ruthlessness. Pity, he could bring Russian society into the 21st century by simply behaving with some kind of integrity.

'Everyone is Being Framed', Journalist Deported from Turkey Tells of Govt Media Takeover

There are two reasons why autocratic states take over their media: 

1. They are doing, or planning something either illegal or immoral, ie invading Crimea

2. They are completely paranoid. The KGB and its forerunner kept Stalin terrified that someone was always trying to overthrow him. They knew it wasn't true but that's empire building at its finest.

But it doesn't have to be an either / or situation. It could well be that Erdogan is completely paranoid; and it is certain that he is assisting ISIS and attempting to destroy the Kurds.

Riot police use tear gas to disperse protesting employees and supporters of Zaman newspaper at the courtyard of the newspaper's office in Istanbul, Turkey March 5, 2016. © Osman Orsal / Reuters

The latest government takeover of the Zaman media outlet in Istanbul is "not a surprise at all," a journalist who had been working in the country told RT, adding that "the press has never been free in Turkey."

"Everybody who opposes them [the government], every journalist who is against the government is being framed. I was framed as a terrorist supporter and Zaman is linked to the Gulen movement – which is a movement of a religious Turkish leader [Sunni cleric Fethullah Gulen] who is based in the US, and they say he is trying to stage a coup against the government. So now Zaman journalists and people who read Zaman are being framed as coup supporters, that's how the government is doing it," Frederike Geerdink, Dutch freelance journalist who was deported from Turkey last year, told RT.

On Friday, the Istanbul-based Turkish-language Zaman newspaper, which has been sharply critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was ordered into administration by a court decision. Following the order, which the outlet journalists proclaimed an "unlawful takeover," the paper's editor-in-chief Abdulhamit Bilici was fired by trustees, while police put barbed wire around the headquarters.

"All content management systems at Zaman" have also been blocked by the new administration, Zaman's sister publication in English, Today's Zaman, said, with its journalists covering the situation via social media and posting updates on Twitter.

"All internet connection is cut off at the seized Zaman building by police raid," they posted, adding that after the takeover of the headquarters in Istanbul, Ankara office has also "lost access to company internal servers."

Government affiliates have also taken under control and blocked access to the outlet's Cihan news agency, Today's Zaman reported, adding that it is "the only news agency that was monitoring elections besides state-run Anadolu."

"It's not a surprise at all. Several of the government newspapers have in the last couple of weeks hinted at this [takeover] already, and other media who are linked to the Gulen movement have come under the same procedure with trustees," Frederike Geerdink, who has herself been prosecuted in Turkey "for making propaganda for a terrorist organization," said.

The journalist told RT that she has been in contact with one of Zaman's employees, who told her weeks ago that they had been "having a difficult time" because of government pressure. Zaman was losing advertisers and readers, "because if you work for the state you cannot be seen with Zaman under your arm, as it can lead to losing your job," the Dutch journalist was told by her Turkish colleague.

"Zaman was being attacked for months," she said, but added that the current situation with the media in the country "is not something new."

Two years ago, one of Today's Zaman journalists, Azerbaijan national Mahir Zeynalov, was deported from Turkey after having worked at the Turkish newspaper for years. The reporter was facing prosecution related to a tweet, his employers said, adding that a complaint against Zeynalov was filed by then PM Erdogan, accusing the journalist of "defamation and inciting public to hatred."

"People now think that Erdogan invented the lack of press freedom in Turkey - which is totally not true. He takes it to extreme heights – that's definitely true, but the press has never been free in Turkey," Geerdink told RT. "For example, 20 years ago nobody could go to the southeast to report on the realities there. At the time it was the army that was censoring the press, and now Erdogan is using the same mechanisms to silence opponents," she said.

Not only government-owned media outlets are being biased in Turkey, the Dutch journalist said. Some are under indirect, economic pressure.

"Most of the big papers and big channels, also the ones we call 'mainstream' which are not necessarily total mouthpieces of the government, have economic ties to the government, because they are part of big companies, and have to report in line with general government policy. [Otherwise] these companies lose contracts in the telecom market," Geerdink said, adding that CNN Turk – which hasn't been covering the Zaman protests, is one example.

"CNN Turk cancelled two rather popular talk shows of people who are not really in line with the government - and that is another problem in Turkey," she said.

France Shaken Up by Zemmour and 'New Reactionaries', and It's About Time

Finally French philosophers are waking up and speaking out about the desperate condition of their country. It will become an Islamic state within the next generation and ethnic French will disappear in diaspora. Is it too late to fix? Probably, but at least they are beginning to talk about it.

Eric Zemmour is scorned by the French establishment
but says he has been adopted by the people

There is a new intellectual force in France - giving shape and weight to ideas that challenge the disastrous post-1968 left-wing consensus.

That at least is the hope of the so-called neo-reactionnaires (new reactionaries) - a loose group of writers and thinkers who want to shake up debate on issues like immigration, Islam and national identity.

Of course others see the group rather differently.

For their enemies they are rabble-rousers, providing spurious philosophical cover for the extremism of the National Front (FN).

Most famous of the exponents is journalist Eric Zemmour, whose new book French Suicide reads like a desperate cavalry charge, sabre aloft, into the massed ranks of the progressives.

Seizing popular culture
Zemmour is scorned by most of the Paris establishment but his book is a runaway bestseller. To date it has sold 400,000 copies.

"The big divide today is between the elite and the people," he tells me at Le Figaro newspaper's headquarters, where he works.

"And that is why my book has done so well. Because I have become a kind of representative of the people. They have adopted me. They say that what I write is what they think."

Zemmour is a small, slight man, whose timid air quickly vanishes when he warms to his theme. He has the intellectual confidence and volubility of the school swot, and is probably inured to the swot's unpopularity.

Philosopher Alain Finkielkraut was nearly blackballed
for his views on national identity

Ironically, Zemmour's inspiration is not some right-winger but Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci wrote that for the left to win, it had first to take over popular culture.

And that, according to Zemmour, has indeed been the French left's greatest achievement.

"First of all there were the deconstructionist philosophers of the 1960s, who said that everything was social and therefore artificial.

"Then that philosophy was carried into the national bloodstream via the intermediary of derision. The greatest example is our comic Coluche.

"With his amazing talent, Coluche undermined the structures of French society - nation, family, police. When he ran for the presidency in 1981, he was supported by the well-known deconstructionist philosophers. That says it all."

Packages of rice are displayed in front of a picture of late French comic
Coluche at a food  distribution centre for the "Les Restos du Coeur"
 (Restaurants of the Heart) in Paris on 24 November 2014.
The late French comic Coluche was a presidential candidate in the early 80s

"So after deconstruction, and then derision, we are now in the phase of destruction. It is what I call the three Ds," he says.

But isn't "destruction" putting it a bit strongly? After all, France is still standing tall among the nations. Just about.

"Not at all. The sovereignty of the nation has disappeared. The state no longer has the power to revive the economy, or to defend our borders. The state is powerless.

"There are parts of France which feel like a different continent today. There are neighbourhoods which are completely Muslim - in their appearance, in their shops, in their tradition.

"And at the same time we have the constant process of Americanisation. Our budget is controlled by Brussels. We have no currency. Our army has to follow Washington's orders.

"That is what I mean by destruction."

'Another people's history'
Other well-known figures in the movement include philosopher Alain Finkielkraut. Formerly identified with the political left, he was nearly blackballed this year from the prestigious Academie Francaise because of his writings on national identity.

Renaud Camus lost his literary support base after
he vowed to vote for the far-right FN party

More controversial is aesthete and prolific writer Renaud Camus, who lives in self-imposed isolation in a 14th-Century fortress in the wilds of Gascony.

Camus was ostracised from French literary society after he said he would vote for the far-right's Marine Le Pen at the last election. Lacking a publisher, he now produces his own books.

"It's absurd, because in most things there is nothing right wing about me. But I just happen to think that today's immigration is the most important thing to have happened to France - ever," he says.

Gascony castle - the 14th-Century fortress from where 

Mr Camus writes and produces his books

"It is what I call 'le grand remplacement' - the great replacement. If there is a new population in France, then we will no longer have our own history. It will be another people's history, and another people's civilisation."

Camus strongly resists charges that he is racist.

"Of course I have been called a racist. I have given up fighting it. I do not see myself as one. I don't think I am unfair about other races. I do not seek to judge.

"But I do think that ethnic belonging is an important factor in the history of the world. It would be absurd to pretend otherwise.

"France has been very good at integrating individuals. But you cannot integrate whole peoples. If immigrants come from a different civilisation which they have no particular interest in abandoning, then they will be representative of that civilisation."

Outsiders and insiders
Back in Paris, a new magazine called Causeur has been created to disseminate the views of the "neo-reactionnaires".

Founders Gil Mihaely and Elizabeth Levy say that mainstream publications are too scared to discuss issues such as immigration and national identity.

"France has had a very troubled history. And all that troubled past is still alive in people's minds today," says Mihaely.

"It means that people instinctively feel they have to be very careful what they say - or it could end in violence.

"But by not talking about real issues like immigration, we drove people to voting for the extremes. It is far healthier to broaden the spectrum of debate, which is what we are doing."

While disowning any claim to belong to a new school of thought, Mihaely draws parallels with the recent history of French philosophy.

"In the late 1970s we had what became known as the 'nouveaux philosophes' (new philosophers). These were people like Bernard Henri-Levy, who broke away from the Sartre-inspired establishment because they could see the reality of totalitarianism in China and Russia.

"They saw a new reality, and realised they had to change their thinking. The same is happening now.

"Today there are thinkers who can see today's new reality: the Arab world, our immigration neighbourhoods, Islam. And they realise they have to change their ideas."

No allegiance claimed
The term "neo-reactionnaire" is an exonym. In other words it is a description applied to the group by outsiders. Insiders say they come from both camps - right and left.

"The big division today is over the nation state," says Mihaely. "Is the state's historic role finished, or is it still a major actor in the political, anthropological and cultural arenas?"

"The question is not if you are left or right but if you believe in the nation."

France's far-right National Front (FN) leader Marine Le Pen speaks during the
launch of the new FN youth movement (FNJ) campaign in Nanterre 8 Dec 2014.
None of the "neo-reactionnaires" has pledged allegiance
to Marine Le Pen's far-right National Front

"Our position is that the nation is still the only framework in which politics has any meaning. It is the only arena in which things can get done, where people can vote for change and change happens."

None of the neo-reactionnaires - not even Camus - claims allegiance to the FN. Many of them are Jewish.

Nonetheless they stand accused, by expressing such strong views on Islam, identity and the nation, of promoting the cause of the far right.

Zemmour says he is fed up with being asked about the FN.

"Can't they understand that the FN is not a cause, it is a consequence. It is a consequence of the disintegration of France.

"People vote for the FN to say to their elites, 'Stop doing what you are doing!' But they never do.

"It was Stalin who first realised how effective it was to turn the enemy into a fascist. That is what they are doing to us today."

Putin Rallies Russians for Hard Times By Invoking 'Old School' KGB Paranoia

'It's us against the world', 'the whole world wants to destroy us', 'the west is always plotting against us'. These are the attitudes that the tiny branch of Soviet military, Cheka, used to build itself into the KGB, the world's biggest spy agency - spying all over the world and especially within the Soviet Union. 

Vladimir Putin
was a KGB agent

They feasted on the paranoia of Lenin and Stalin to build it's enormous empire. Formed in Dec 1917, for the purpose of rooting out all counter-revolutionaries, identifying them, interrogating them, sometimes executing them. By 1922, when Cheka was reorganized into the NKVD, their internal security branch exceeded 200,000 personnel. From there it continued to flourish under the severe paranoia of Joseph Stalin.

Vladimir Putin was a KGB agent in the 1980s. Whether he is still brainwashed into thinking the world is out to get him, or whether he is deliberately choosing to use what worked before for 73 years, is anybody's guess.

President Putin: "The times we are facing are hard and difficult"

President Vladimir Putin has warned Russians of hard times ahead and urged self-reliance, in his annual state-of-the nation address to parliament.

Russia has been hit hard by falling oil prices and by Western sanctions imposed in response to its interventions in the crisis in neighbouring Ukraine.

The rouble, once a symbol of stability under Mr Putin, suffered its biggest one-day decline since 1998 on Monday.

The government has warned that Russia will fall into recession next year.

Speaking to both chambers in the Kremlin, Mr Putin also accused Western governments of seeking to raise a new "iron curtain" around Russia.

He expressed no regrets for annexing Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, saying the territory had a "sacred meaning" for Russia.

A Ukrainian soldier fires a cannon close to Donetsk airport, 2 December

He insisted the "tragedy" in Ukraine's south-east had proved that Russian policy had been right but said Russia would respect its neighbour as a brotherly country.

Speaking in Basel in Switzerland later, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the West did not seek confrontation with Russia.

"No-one gains from this confrontation... It is not our design or desire that we see a Russia isolated through its own actions," Mr Kerry said.

Russia could rebuild trust, he said, by withdrawing support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Analysis: BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Moscow

The final draft of Vladimir Putin's annual speech is written by the president himself. It is his view of the state of the Russian nation and outlines his priorities for the year ahead.

So it's telling that Mr Putin chose to stress his unwavering hard line on the crisis in Ukraine: what happened in Kiev was an "illegal coup" and Crimea, which Russia annexed, is like "holy land" for Russia and will always be treated that way.

Vladimir Putin again accused the West of meddling in Russia's internal affairs and using sanctions to "contain" the country as it grew stronger and more independent. His response was a rallying-cry to Russians to pull together for the good of their country.

That included a remarkable call for a one-off amnesty on the return of Russian capital stashed offshore. But people here are starting to feel the economic consequences of their president's defiance, through sanctions. For those who are worried, this speech probably offered little reassurance.

Mr Putin's speech came amid continued volatility in the value of the rouble.

The currency slid almost 9% against the dollar on Monday, before rallying after a suspected central bank intervention.

But on Thursday it weakened again as Mr Putin's speech failed to impress investors. At 14:30 GMT it was 1.6% lower on the day against the dollar.

"Not seeing any new big ideas in this speech which are going to help the Russian economy, or ease market pressure on Russian assets," Standard Bank analyst Tim Ash said in a note. "This is old school, Cold War stuff."

Crosses are reflected in the window of a bureau de change in Moscow, 4 Dec.

Over the past year, the rouble has lost around 40% of its value against the dollar and inflation is expected to reach 10% early next year.

Russians are believed to have taken more than $100bn (£64bn; €81bn) out of the country this year and Mr Putin promised an amnesty for anyone choosing to bring their money back.

He said that they would face no questions over how they had earned it.  That should keep him popular with his Oligarch buddies, for awhile.

Other economic measures Mr Putin outlined included:

A four-year freeze on tax rates to help businesses
A drive by the central bank and government to combat "speculators"
Lending by the National Welfare Fund on favourable terms to major banks.

A woman irons clothes as Vladimir Putin speaks on a TV screen in Moscow

Sanction 'stimulus'
Falling oil prices have affected Russia because of the country's reliance on energy exports. Russia's estimate of the cost of sanctions and falling oil prices is $140bn a year.

Mr Putin foresaw budget cuts of at least 5% over the next three years but hoped to see a return to above-average economic growth within "three to four years".

A Moscow street shows exchange rates, 3 December
President Putin was once admired for keeping the rouble rate stable

Stressing that Russia remained "open for the world", Mr Putin suggested Western sanctions should be seen as a stimulus.

"We have a huge internal market and resources... capable, intelligent people," he said. "Our people have demonstrated national strength, patriotism - and the difficulties we are facing create new opportunities".

Russian marines at a parade in Crimea last week

Condemning the "pure cynicism" of the West, he suggested that even if Crimea had not been annexed, the West would have come up with a different pretext to impose sanctions to contain Russia's resurgence. Russia's greatest resurgence is in paranoia.

Russia, he said, would not enter an "expensive arms race" but would provide its own security.

Mr Putin said: "There is no doubt they would have loved to see the Yugoslavia scenario of collapse and dismemberment for us - with all the tragic consequences it would have for the peoples of Russia. This has not happened. We did not allow it."

President Putin remains popular, the BBC's Steve Rosenberg reports. One opinion poll this week suggested that 72% of Russians still approved of the way he was running the country. Give them 6 months or a year with a rapidly declining economy and they will turn on Putin. That's why he's trying to deflect the issue. Will he be willing to abandon his expansionist dream for the good of the Russian economy. We'll see.

IS (Daesh) Document Discloses Plans to Seize Iran’s Nuclear Secrets

The militant group urges its members to plan for war with Iran according to a seized policy manifesto

The Gulf States refer to IS or ISIS as Daesh, an anagram. That's all we needed was another name.

Published: 16:50 October 5, 2014 Gulf News

London: The Daesh extremist militant group plans to seize Iran’s nuclear secrets, unleash a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing and Nazi-style eugenics to consolidate and expand its self-declared caliphate, according to a seized policy manifesto of the outfit.

The group urged its members to plan for war with Iran and has ambitions to seize Tehran’s nuclear secrets in a manifesto believed to have been written by Abdullah Ahmad Al Meshedani, a member of the group’s highly secretive six-man war cabinet.

This is what will be happening in Kobane in the next few days.

While the picture above is disturbing, it is one of the least disturbing photos of this murderous group, but it is as far into the darkness as I am willing to take you. The world hasn't seen this kind of brutality and cold-blooded mass-murder since Pol Pot or the Nazi's. Their ultimate goal is to eliminate everyone in the world who will not accept and follow their demonic interpretation of the Quran.

The document, typed on perforated sheets, was seized by Iraqi special forces during a raid in March on the home of one of the commanders of Daesh, The Sunday Times reported on Sunday.

In the document, which has been examined by Western security officials who believe it to be authentic, Al Meshedani wrote that Daesh aims to get hold of nuclear weapons with the help of Russia, to whom it would offer access to gas fields it controls in Iraq’s Anbar province.

Also, the documents said, the Kremlin will have to give up “Iran and its nuclear programme and hands over its secrets.” Russia would also have to abandon support for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and back the Gulf states against Iran.

Believed to be a policy manifesto prepared for senior members of Daesh, the document offers a unique insight into the ambitions of the Islamist commanders who have shocked the world with their fanaticism and brutality, the paper said.

The Daesh militants have captured swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria and their leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi has declared himself the Caliph of the “Islamic State”.

Al Baghdadi, before and after declaring himself Caliph

The document contains 70 different plans such as launching a vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing, Nazi-style eugenics and intelligence gathering operations to consolidate and expand the group’s self-declared Islamic caliphate, it said.

Al Meshedani, whose duties include managing suicide bombers, also calls for Shiite Iran to be stripped of “all its power” and for the destruction of the Shiite ascendancy in Iraq.

He also incites followers to kill Iraqi military chiefs, Shiite officials and Iranian-backed militias fighting for the Iraqi government, the paper said, citing the document.

A security source familiar with the document told the paper: “Nothing shocks Western governments these days in relation to [Daesh] and its fanatical aspirations."

“And we’ve known and feared for some time that they want to obtain chemical and nuclear weapons.”

In an indication of Daesh’ brutal ideology, Al Meshedani writes that its intelligence operatives will “eliminate” its own leaders if they deviate from its “desired goal”.

“The leadership of the political wing must know that it is being watched and listened to by the intelligence apparatuses which pass on everything,” he warns them. Sounds quite Stalinesque. Is Al Baghdadi as paranoid as Stalin was?

Al Meshedani also suggests buying islands from Yemen and the Comoros, in the Indian Ocean, “to establish a military base on the flank of the Arab lands”.

Bushehr Nuclear Plant, Iran

At first glance one would think that they have overly ambitious plans. However, they have been able accomplish some very ambitious feats. I seriously doubt that Russia would ever cooperate with IS. Their plan to globalize jihad would eventually threaten Moscow. Putin is smart enough to see that, although you never know what he is liable to do.

It's to IS advantage to take over Iran and its nuclear machinery. Stealing their secrets would still leave them decades from a nuclear bomb if starting from scratch. Iran is many times the size of 'the caliphate', so that would require huge numbers of militants flocking to IS. I doubt that there are enough insane zealots in Islam to accomplish that, at least, I'd like to think so.

Why Chechens Hate Russians, A Stalin Legacy

Isa Khashiyev with the Koran and daggers
his family hid during their 13 years in exile

Seventy years ago, in February 1944, nearly half a million Chechen and Ingush people were herded into cattle trucks and forced into exile in remote parts of the Soviet Union. It's estimated that more than a third of them died before they were allowed back 13 years later.

"At dawn, five soldiers entered each house and took all the men away - anyone over the age of 14. I was 10 years old. Then they said they would deport all of us," says Isa Khashiyev.

"We had 10 people in our family - mum and dad, grandmother and seven children. I was the eldest, and my youngest sister was three months old.

"The soldier who was assigned to deport us was very kind. He loaded our truck with five sacks of grain and helped us pack our bedding and other belongings. It was thanks to him that we survived," he says. The truck took them to the nearest railway station in Ingushetia where they were put in a cattle wagon with 10 other families.

Sanu Mamoyeva spent eight years in a
Gulag for listening to anti-Stalin folk
music - she made this case to bring
her possessions home to Chechnya.

Khashiyev's family was sent on a 15-day journey to Kazakhstan. "We had no water and no food. The weak were suffering from hunger, and those who were stronger would get off the train and buy some food. Some people died on the way - no-one in our carriage, but in the next carriage I saw them taking out two corpses."

It was cold and dark when they arrived in Kokchetav, in the plains of northern Kazakhstan. "We went off on a sledge, I fell off at one point, but they stopped the sledge and my mum ran back to find me," says Khashiyev.

"Our baby sister died that night. My dad was looking for a place to bury her - he found a suitable place, dug the grave and buried her… she must have frozen to death."

The exiles were housed by local families, not all were happy with the situation. "The landlady didn't want to let us in - she had heard that we were cannibals or something," he says. "Eventually she agreed to take us in, but she wouldn't speak to us."

Khashiyev is one of nearly 100,000 Ingush who were deported - nearly 400,000 Chechens were exiled at the same time. Both had a long history of resistance to outside authority. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (who was completely paranoid, partly thanks to the NKVD which exploited that paranoia for their own benefit) suspected them of collaborating with German forces as they pushed south into the Caucasus in 1942 and 1943.

Khumid Gabayev's father died in exile -
he brought his remains home to Chechnya for burial

Other nationalities deported en masse included the Balkars and Karachai, also from the North Caucasus, the Kalmyks, whose territory borders the Caspian Sea, the Crimean Tatars and, from the South Caucasus, the Meskhetian Turks.

Exiles who survived the difficult journey east had to abide by strict regulations curbing their movement. They had to report to the authorities regularly and if they broke the rules they risked lengthy prison sentences in labour camps where conditions were even worse.

On their return to Chechnya,
deportees had to fight
 to reclaim their land and
restore ancestral towers

The NKVD or secret police were the eyes and ears of the government and kept a close eye on the deportees. But some NKVD officers - like Alaudin Shadiyev, who had fought against the Nazis, but was deported along with all his compatriots - found this very tough.

Mukhtar Yevloyev who was deported
 as a young boy tends sheep
like his father before him

Alaudin Shadiyev fought against the Nazis and was later assigned to the NKVD secret police. "I was very upset. I used to cry every night. And I did my best to help my people, and also to help the secret police," he says.

Shadiyev's job was to check up on the exiles but he was horrified by the conditions he found at one deserted orphanage.

Shadiyev
wearing his medals

"I was asking, 'Where are all the children?' And someone waved in the direction of the forest… and under the trees I saw lots of babies lying on straw. Then a teenage girl came up to me, and more girls joined her, they were all about 12 years old, or younger.

"The eldest pointed to the babies lying around, some on rags, some on the straw, and they were stretching their arms towards me… they were asking for help."

The girls had to forage in the fields and orchards or beg for food. "All these children were dying in silence. It was too hard for me to witness this. Even today I can hardly speak about this," says Shadiyev.

The deportations were a taboo subject under Stalin - the Soviet leader died in 1953 and the exiles were not allowed to return home until 1957. Khashiyev is now 80 and lives back in his native village where he is one of the elders. Shadiyev is 94 and lives near Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia.

Chekhkiyeva on her ancestral land
Tovsari Chekhkiyeva, now 101, had to fight to reclaim 
her family's land in Ingushetia when she returned home