(Via CNN) A video surfaces threatening the Winter Olympics. Russia’s President vows the Games will be safe. Some U.S. lawmakers warn that they won’t be.   One thing was clear as debate over the situation surged on Sunday: security is a top concern, less than three weeks away from the competition…

…As a transcript of his interview with half a dozen national and international broadcasters was posted on the Kremlin website Sunday, a video that surfaced online again highlighted the security situation. (more…)

( Hat Tip ctdar ) MOSCOW — A Chechen rebel warlord who has plagued the region for decades and most recently threatened to attack the Sochi Olympics is dead, Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed strongman said Thursday, but he offered no proof and his claim couldn’t be verified.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov said on his Instagram that Doku Umarov, who urged his fighters to strike the Games, had died — a claim he has made repeatedly in the past. The information about Umarov’s death came from intercepted communications between other rebel leaders who were discussing his replacement, he said, but he didn’t make clear when the conversation took place or how it was heard. (more…)

Readers will know by now how often we have spotlighted a historical similarity between the former polish Solidarity Movement, and the ruse behind the current U.S. body politic as narrated by the media.    So it’s a little ironic to see Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa speak openly about how diminished the U.S. influence is.
(via WeaselZippers) The Nobel Peace Prize-winning former president of Poland, Lech Walesa, says President Obama has failed to reclaim America’s role as a world leader.

“When he was elected… there was great hope,” Walesa said. “…. we were hoping Obama would reclaim moral leadership for America,” adding: “That failed.”
“…. in terms of politics and morality, America no longer leads the world,” he said. “…America did not regain its leadership status. We were just lucky there were no big conflicts in the world,” saying the world has relied on a strong America to maintain the balance of power around the globe.
“… It’s a dangerous situation so we are awaiting a president who will understand that,” he said. (link)

The market place trolly was about 2 miles away from the Train Station bombing.
VOLOGRAD RUSSIA – A suicide bombing in the Russian city of Volgograd has killed at least 10 passengers on a trolley bus. The explosion comes a day after a terrorist attack in the city which killed 17 people and injured scores of others.

Правоохранители считают, что новый теракт в Волгограде схож по почерку с 2 предыдущими (ФОТО) http://t.co/PhKqSptxyM pic.twitter.com/NNoZIoFuwX

— RT на русском (@RT_russian) December 30, 2013

At least 15 people were injured by the blast on Monday morning. A  one-year-old baby is reported to be among the victims.
The explosion was set off by a suicide bomber, spokesman for the  Russian Investigative Committee, Vladimir Markin, confirmed. (more…)

Details beginning to come out behind this horrific terrorist attack in Russia.  Volgograd is a city of around 1 million people, about 690 km  northeast of Sochi and close to Russia’s volatile region of North  Caucasus. The city saw a terrorist attack just in October, when a   suicide  bomber blew herself up in a bus, killing six people and  injuring more than 30 others.

#Волгоград теракт вокзал добровольцы помогают скорой http://t.co/VfE2sJgCbp

— Кобликов Александр (@Koblikov34) December 29, 2013

•The power of the explosion at Volgograd’s station was equivalent  to at least 10 kg TNT, according to Vladimir Markin [Health Ministry].  The explosive device  was stuffed with pieces of scrap metal. The Committee said that  an undetonated F-1 grenade was also found at the scene.
•The female was initially identified as Oksana Aslanova, a close  friend of Naida Asiyalova – also known as ‘Amaturahman’ – who was  behind the October Volgograd attack. Aslanova is said to have  been married twice to two militants, both eliminated earlier.
A few hours later, more evidence emerged suggesting that a man  could have also been involved in the attack. The version, which  was also picked up by investigators, came after a male finger  with a pin from a grenade was found at the scene. (more…)

Venezuela, in a squeeze for hard currency, devalued its currency for foreigners another 44%, following an initial devaluation of 32% by Chavez in February.  The move is seen as a necessity to keep Venezuela from defaulting on sovereign debt when reliance on excessively high levels of public spending has been the tool of Chavez and his successor, Maduro, to maintain their grip on power.  It is the 6th such major devaluation in a decade.
The move is essentially a bookkeeping sleight-of-hand – it allows the Venezuelan central bank to balance its books by “earning” more Bolivars for its oil export sales, at a time when overall sales volume has decreased dramatically.

(more…)

According to CBS, several hundred thousand Ukrainians occupied a central square in the capital earlier Sunday, denouncing President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to turn away from Europe and align this former Soviet republic with Russia.

(more…)

I really wanted to hunker down and ride it out.  But the insufferable propaganda around the death of Nelson Mandela is too much to ignore. Rather than deconstruct all of these ridiculous liberal CNN-isms and talking points, let’s just cut it down to brass tacks and stick to historical facts.
Apartheid as a political structure in South Africa was bad. Oppression under any guise is always wrong.
But with Apartheid you must step back to the geo-political map of 1976-1990 and evaluate the alternatives.
A bunch of stuff happened between the fall of the Shah of Iran and the collapse of the Berlin Wall / Soviet Empire which framed the backdrop for U.S. political discussion and eventual activity in South Africa.
Namely, for those of us who were actually engaged in the fight, the last big push of desperate Communist expansion was underway.  (more…)

Update:  Here’s announcement:

No doubt Denis McDonough and Valerie Jarrett are putting the final touches and approvals together for POTUS to obfuscate in a propaganda speech.   They, along with the Cintons and Samantha Powers, will need to construct the verbiage carefully to hide their intention of undermining the Progressive Fabian arch-nemesis, Israel.   Choosing to announce at 10:30 on football night lets them slip in a few s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-s !

GENEVA — Iran and six major powers agreed early Sunday on an historic deal that freezes key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for temporary relief on some economic sanctions, diplomats confirmed.
The deal was reached after four days of marathon bargaining and an 11th-hour intervention by U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and other foreign ministers from Europe, Russia and China. the sources said.
The agreement, sealed at 3 a.m. signing ceremony in Geneva’s Palace of Nations, requires Iran to halt or scale back parts of it nuclear infrastructure, the first such pause in more than a decade. (more…)

A structurally subtle sentence set into a presser given by U.S. Secretary John Kerry to the press in the Middle East, yes.   But ask yourself this:  when was the last time a Secretary of State needed to tell the world, his boss, The President of The United States, was honest?
The irony is, and what the media will not report, this Kerry statement was given at the exact same time a series of Russian ships are docking in Egypt; as discussions begin between the Egyptian and Russian government’s for a Russian military base to be located in Egypt.    Egypt is looking for a “DEPENDABLE” ally.
Abu Dhabi: US Secretary of State John Kerry says no deal with Iran is better than a bad deal. And any deal with Iran would not allow them to own a nuclear weapon.
He was addressing a joint press conference with Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister.

“US President Obama is a man of his word,” Kerry said. “He said in his speech before the UN that the US will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon and this is our policy to which we are committed.”

Kerry said the US has a strategic partnership with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other partners in the region.  (read more)