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President Obama on Friday called the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 an “outrage of unspeakable proportions,” declared it a “wake-up call” for timid European leaders, and all but laid blame for the tragedy directly at the doorstep of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Obama’s blunt language, delivered in the White House briefing room from behind a lectern with the presidential seal, offered a stark contrast to his muddled public handling of the disaster a day earlier. As the news broke on Thursday, the White House signaled that the president had first learned about the world-shaking events from Putin at the...

If not for Thursday’s .38 second special speech on the downed Malaysian airline, BO’s address yesterday might have gone down as the worst international incident speech by an American President ever. For any number of reasons, here are just a few: “By far the country that lost the most people onboard the place was the Netherlands.” – thanks BO, butt there isn’t a prize. “Now, here is what we know so far. Evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile that was launched from an area that is controlled by Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine.”...

Obama and Europe chose not to stand up to Vladimir Putin — now we're seeing the terrible toll. There are many questions still to be answered about what happened to Malaysian Air flight MH17 over Eastern Ukraine. I will limit myself to what is known to a reasonable doubt based on the evidence and statements that have been provided by numerous officials in the 36 hours since the tragedy. Nearly 300 innocent lives were lost when flight MH17 was shot out of the sky with a surface-to-air missile. The missile was launched from an area in Eastern Ukraine controlled by...

After the Malaysia Airlines passenger plane crashed on July 17 in Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast with 298 people on board, Kremlin-backed enthusiastically claimed credit, saying they thought they had shot down another Ukrainian military transport plane. “We did warn you - do not fly in our sky,” Kremlin-backed separatist leader Igor Girkin, a Russian intelligence service officer, wrote on his official Vkontakte soon after the tragedy. Though when the gravity of the mistake became obvious, the Russian-backed insurgents backpedaled and claimed innocence. The statements of Girkin posted on his Vkontakte page on July 18 appeared to be a lot more confusing....

Only a few months ago, a meeting between the Russian and German leaders would have raised few eyebrows in Washington. Now, in the middle of the most severe crisis in German-American relations in decades—and sharply escalated tensions between the West and Russia following the shooting-down of a civilian Malaysian airliner with many Westerners on board Thursday—there is a lot more at stake. A profound distrust has developed in U.S. governmental circles about what the Germans and Russians are discussing and whether Berlin is going its own way, especially as the Ukraine crisis has festered on.

This is how a 20th century U.S. President addressed the downing of a civilian airliner: This is how a more enlightened 21st century U.S. President addressed the downing of a civilian airliner:“It looks like it may be a terrible tragedy.”Translation:“Why can’t I just eat my waffle?”BO’s well crafted 38 second response was completely pragmatic: after all, the plane had already crashed and burned. So what difference, at this point, does it make?America evolving: Open all night . And by open, I mean “OPEN.”Posted from: Michelle Obama’s Mirror

One of the oddities of our current struggle against ISIS in Iraq is that Obama armed these people while they were in Syria. They were part of that coalition of rebels that Obama considered the 'moderates' who were fighting the Assad regime. Then ISIS went to Iraq, and they became bad guys. In a plot from the 'Twilight Zone', Assad began bombing them in Iraq, apparently, and thereby became an unheralded ally. During their foray into Iraq, ISIS has slaughtered (and tortured) thousands. Obama's former friends should be credited to Obama's account, but our media being what it is, the...

If you look up 'shameless' in the dictionary... As a passenger liner with almost 300 people was shot-down, the Kremlin can see that this is the death for the underhanded crap they've been pulling in Ukraine, as for outside opinion anyway, they're toast. Vlad was trained how to lie, obfuscate, and deflect by the KGB, and he's usually pretty good at it. But this one really takes the cake: "This would not have happened if there were peace on this land ... and, certainly, the state over whose territory this occurred bears responsibility." Oh really? Not the lowlife GBU Colonel...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday it appeared that the downing of a Malaysian airliner near the Ukraine-Russia border was not an accident and that the passenger jet apparently was "blown out of the sky." "This is truly a grave situation," Biden said in a speech in Detroit. He said he had seen reports that Americans may have been on board and that "we're now working every minute to try to confirm those reports as I speak." Biden said the downing of the jet was tragic. He spoke by phone to Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko.

The Kremlin says Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama have discussed the Malaysia Airlines plane incident over eastern Ukraine., according to wire reports. The Kremlin website published a statement late Thursday that says "the Russian leader informed the U.S. president of the report from air traffic controllers that the Malaysian plane had crashed on Ukrainian territory, which had arrived immediately before the phone call." The statement gave no further details about what the leaders discussed with regard to the plane crash. The rest of the phone call was dedicated to the general situation in eastern Ukraine, and recent...

<p>Should the Russian government yank its supply of rocket engines for United States launches, critical national-security satellite missions could be delayed up to four years, experts told a joint Senate hearing Wednesday.</p> <p>United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Atlas 5 rocket is the workhorse of heavy satellite launches in the United States, but the booster requires a Russian RD-180 engine to get off the ground.</p>

The current outburst of tensions over Ukraine is typically described as a replay of a centuries-old Russian tradition of imperial dominance of its neighbors. Yet, beneath this “Russia as usual” façade there might be a truly tectonic shift: For the first time in centuries, it appears that the Russian state does not have a modernizing project. This means nothing less than a reinvention of the Russian state. Back in the eighteenth century, Catherine the Great insisted provocatively in her programmatic “Instruction” that “Russia is a European power.” Decades later, Alexander Pushkin conceded that the government “is the sole European in...

NATO announced earlier this July that it is shelving plans to welcome any new members during its forthcoming Wales summit. The hopes of four countries—Bosnia, Macedonia, Georgia and Montenegro, which were expecting to deepen their cooperation with NATO—are now all but dashed, as senior NATO officials have hit the pause button on future enlargement. Just like the European Union, it seems that NATO is also suffering from enlargement fatigue. Unlike the Union though, NATO is shying away from even awarding the equivalent of the EU’s association agreement, namely the Membership Action Plan (MAP), to Georgia, over fears of provoking Moscow’s...

From The Interpreter's Live Thread: LB.ua reports that there are eyewitness reports of Russian armoured vehicles heading towards Donetsk. They report seeing two columns of separatist fighters with military vehicles manned by Russians. LB describes reports of 34 tanks, 34 self-propelled guns and 2 BTR armoured personnel carriers. snip It may also be relevant to note that the howitzer carried by the Gvodzika, a D-30, is the same gun that the Russian military claimed to have identified as responsible for shelling on June 22. The last paragraph is a reference to shelling that allegedly occurred in Russia. They accused Ukraine...

0544GMT: We’ve all grown accustomed to the lurid claims of the Kremlin’s many state media properties, which we cover frequently and which were most notably rounded up in an Examiner article about “60 Lies,” some of which we’ve debunked. But last week, Channel 1 reached new lows with a claim that the Ukrainian army committed atrocities when liberating Slavyansk. “How could this happen in the center of Europe?” intones the narrator. In the processing of debunking the claim, we can trace the close connection among ultranationalist ideologues in Russia, the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, and Russian state TV programs. One...

The Chinese tycoon behind a plan to build a mammoth interoceanic waterway to compete with the Panama Canal whisked into Nicaragua last week and, in several appearances, including one with President Daniel Ortega, affirmed that “the biggest construction project in the history of mankind” has a green light. In a lengthy appearance on state television Tuesday night, Ortega sat next to Wang Jing, the Chinese telecommunications magnate who has been pushing the plan, and pledged that the proposed canal “will permit the country to eradicate poverty and misery.”

MANAGUA, July 12 /ITAR-TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has changed the schedule of his Latin American tour and arrived in Nicaragua for a brief working visit. On his way from Cuba to Argentina on Saturday, the Russian leader decided to make a stopover in Managua, where he had been officially invited earlier. At the Managua airport, he was welcomed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. ‘Much is yet to be done to develop our relations, especially in the area of economy, but we have good base for that,” Putin said, adding that Russia and Nicaragua had long-standing good relations. “We admire...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he was hopeful Russian oil company Rosneft and Cuban state oil company Cupet could begin jointly exploring Cuba's potential offshore oil reserves "in the very near future."

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support for Israel in its struggle against Hamas and its supporters, and cited the three Israeli teenagers who had been recently murdered. "I follow closely what's going on in Israel," said Putin to a delegation of rabbis. "I support the struggle of Israel as it attempts to protect its citizens. I also heard about the shocking murder of the three youths. It is an act that cannot be allowed, and I ask you to transmit my condolences to the families." Putin referenced Jews during the Holocaust, saying, "I remember visiting in the Yad...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel may hold brief talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin when both attend the soccer World Cup final in Brazil on Sunday, Merkel’s spokesman said on Friday. […] Merkel is traveling to Rio de Janeiro to see Germany play Argentina in the final, and Putin is attending because Russia will host the next World Cup in 2018. …