China has said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry did not refer to "provocative" action by Beijing in the South China Sea while holding a telephone conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. "In fact, U.S. Secretary of State Kerry made no such comments during the phone conversation," China Foreign Ministry spokesman Hua Chunying told the official Xinhua news agency late on Tuesday. Kerry's message during the phone talks was that the United States does not take sides in the South China Sea dispute, and has no intention to make any judgment on the issue of territorial sovereignty, Xinhua said.

The Big Secret Behind the Spying Program: While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about what’s really going on. [...] And it’s not just spying...The government may treat anyone who challenges its policies as terrorists.

Eric Sommer ■ Heavy distortions and suppressions of information regarding current Ukrainian events are appearing in US media. || You might wonder how so many different news sources could all completely avoid mentioning that the US government is consciously supporting two radical far-right parties, Svoboda and Right Sector, which are in control of key positions in the coup-installed new 'government' of the Ukraine. You might also wonder why almost all the US mass media news sources could conceal – with vague phrases like ''the sequence of events is not clear' and similar techniques – the role of these extremist organization in murdering dozens of unarmed civilians in the past few days in southeastern Ukraine. ● The explanation is surprisingly simple: There aren't numerous US mass media news sources at all; there are just five. Five giant corporations control 90 percent of US mass media. And direct links connect all five of these media conglomerates to the political establishment and the economic and political power-elites of the United States. ● These five conglomerates are Time Warner, Disney, Murdochs' News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS). Their control spans most of the newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV stations, movie studios, and much of the web news content of the United States. These conglomerates are in large measure responsible for inculcating the social, political, economic, and moral values of both adults and children in the United States.

■ Now let us perform a thought experiment to see how far the conglomerates can go to support government foreign policies. Imagine that US policy-makers decide a few years from now that the current US-supported and unelected Ukrainian 'government' no longer serves their interests. They might then announce that this government is 'undemocratic', 'is a human rights violator' or that it is a 'failed state' and that 'there must be 'regime change' to 'protect the Ukrainian people.' Following suit, the media conglomerates would then 'sound the alarm.' They would 'discover' the reality – which has existed all along – that “fascist or extreme-right forces are part of the coup-imposed Ukrainian 'government,” that there is a “history of anti-Semitism,” “murders of ethnic-minorities,” and conclude that the US government is right and a humanitarian intervention to remove the government is required. Is this scenario an impossible one? Not at all.

A Russian woman turned down for a teaching post in Switzerland has been told that she was not given the job because of her country's aggressive foreign policy. The rejection letter from the director of the Issal Institute in the city of Lausanne in western Switzerland read: "Many thanks for your application, but our philosophy will not allow us to employ teachers that come from a country which is provoking a civil war [in Ukraine] and whose president lies and abuses international law. We wish you good luck."

On Wednesday the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, said Russia has “very strong” suspicions about Academi inside Ukraine. Lavrov and the Russian government are demanding a response from the Obama administration on the issue. ● “I sent a message from ambassador to Washington asking him to respond to these assertions from the German media,” he during an interview with Bloomberg News, according to The Hill. “Rumors to this effect were spread even before and [Secretary of State] John Kerry rejected them. Now they popped up again, and we’d like to see whether this is true or not.”

Ukraine "is as close to civil war as you can get" and a solution must be found that satisfies all regions, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. Russia has "no intention" of sending its troops anywhere, Lavrov said in an interview today with Bloomberg Television at the Foreign Ministry building in central Moscow. While holding Russia accountable for Ukraine’s presidential election on May 25 is "ridiculous," the vote can’t be legitimate if it’s impeded by fighting, he said. There’s already a "real war" between government forces and separatist fighters in the country’s east and south, Lavrov said. Any attempt to grant NATO membership to Ukraine would be “an issue for Russia” and its inclusion in the alliance would hurt European security, he said.

The U.S. State Department's job is to implement the foreign policy of the United States and U.S. diplomacy efforts. It is essentially the equivalent of a foreign ministry in other countries. It's not a branch of the military, and it's not a demolition company, so why on earth did they put in an order for blasting caps, detonating cords, and a variety of high explosives on fbo.gov? I'm not making this up. Click here to go look at the page yourself. [...] Aren't these of things supposed to get routed through the CIA? Aren't they the ones in charge of covert mayhem and mischief? Perhaps Victoria Nuland and company have gone off the reservation.

■ That Russia has been pushing for trade arrangements that minimize the participation (and influence) of the US dollar ever since the onset of the Ukraine crisis (and before) is no secret: this has been covered extensively on these pages before (see Gazprom Prepares "Symbolic" Bond Issue In Chinese Yuan; Petrodollar Alert: Putin Prepares To Announce "Holy Grail" Gas Deal With China; Russia And China About To Sign "Holy Grail" Gas Deal; 40 Central Banks Are Betting This Will Be The Next Reserve Currency; From the Petrodollar to the Gas-o-yuan and so on).

■ But until now much of this was in the realm of hearsay and general wishful thinking. After all, surely it is "ridiculous" that a country can seriously contemplate to exist outside the ideological and religious confines of the Petrodollar... because if one can do it, all can do it, and next thing you know the US has hyperinflation, social collapse, civil war and all those other features prominently featured in other socialist banana republics like Venezuela which alas do not have a global reserve currency to kick around.

■ Or so the Keynesian economists, aka tenured priests of said Petrodollar religion, would demand that the world believe. However, as much as it may trouble the statists to read, Russia is actively pushing on with plans to put the US dollar in the rearview mirror and replace it with a dollar-free system. Or, as it is called in Russia, a "de-dollarized" world.

■ The further the west antagonizes Russia, and the more economic sanctions it lobs at it, the more Russia will be forced away from a USD-denominated trading system and into one which faces China and India. Which is why next week's announcement, as groundbreaking as it most certainly will be, is just the beginning.

Paul Craig Roberts: Russia should ignore Washington's 'new Cold War' - "The best thing the Russian government could do is just ignore [Washington's rhetoric] and go on making its relations with China, India, Brazil, and South America, and go on about its business and leave the dollar system, and simply quit trying to be accepted by Washington."

Gulf News ■ With a Knesset body seeking strict adherence to life sentence, Palestinian prisoners face a grim future. || It is about time that Israel dropped its charade of wanting a lasting peace agreement with Palestinians. That is simply not the case now — and most probably not as long as the right-wing hawks like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government hold the reins of power and occupation. The latest proof of this comes with a recommendation by a Knesset parliamentary committee that changes the sentencing guidelines for Palestinians unjustly held in Israeli jails. The committee wants life sentences to mean life. If this errant and misguided policy is adopted, it means that this class of Palestinians will be exempt from any future prisoner releases as a precursor to talks. [...] As it stands now, there are some 5,000 Palestinians in Israeli prisons. And one tenth of these are being held indefinitely under administrative detention. They are imprisoned in cells without any prospect of bail, release or even knowing what they are accused of, denied the most basic natural justice, deprived of due process of law in a judicial system stacked against them. That is simply criminal.