Arguing that NATO aggression against Russia required the “complete destruction of the enemy,” Sivkov went on to depict a chilling scenario. “Geologists believe that the Yellowstone supervolcano could explode at any moment. There are signs of growing activity there. Therefore it suffices to push the relatively small, for example the impact of the munition megaton class to initiate an eruption. The consequences will be catastrophic for the United States – a country just disappears,” he said.

A Yellowstone supervolcano eruption would kill millions of people in the initial blast and bury much of the United States in volcanic ash. According to some experts, it could cause the end of the world. The last time a supervolcano exploded in Siberia, 85 per cent of all land species and 95 per cent of all ocean dwellers were completely wiped out.

“Another vulnerable area of the United States from the geophysical point of view, is the San Andreas fault – 1300 kilometers between the Pacific and North American plates … a detonation of a nuclear weapon there can trigger catastrophic events like a coast-scale tsunami which can completely destroy the infrastructure of the United States,” he wrote.

While it would be unthinkable for anyone inside the Kremlin to take Sivkov’s comments seriously, his rhetoric illustrates how fraught tensions are between Moscow and Washington.

For example, almost two million Palestinians who have long been settled in Jordan, and have for decades enjoyed Jordanian citizenship, are routinely counted as "refugees" by UNRWA, and the State Department supports it. This, in spite of the fact that, under United States law, a person who has citizenship in the country where they reside, and enjoys the protection of that state, cannot lawfully be eligible for refugee status. How can State justify this contradiction?

Here is a second example: Another two million Palestinians who are already settled in the West Bank [sic] and Gaza, and who by their own account lived in the declared Palestinian state as its citizens, under a Palestinian government, are registered as "refugees" by UNRWA. By American legal standards, these Palestinians are "firmly settled" and therefore ineligible for "refugee" status. And according to American policy reaffirmed by three Presidents, these Palestinians already reside in their own future state, the place where Palestinian refugees are meant to be settled. Yet the State Department supports UNRWA's decision to count two million Palestinians well established in the West Bank and Gaza as "refugees" too.

Here is a third example: Under US laws and regulations, only an individual who was personally displaced, or is a spouse or underage dependent of such an individual, can be eligible for refugee status or derivative refugee status. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren are specifically not entitled to inherit refugee status merely because their ancestor was a refugee. But under UNRWA practices, any descendant of a male refugee, no matter how many generations and decades have passed is automatically entitled to be counted as a "refugee." In fact, 95% of today's UNRWA "refugees" were not even alive when Israel was born in 1948, were never personally displaced by Israel's creation, and are listed by UNRWA as "refugees" only because of this peculiar practice of inheriting refugee status as a birthright.

Amazingly, the State Department defends all this. The sad reality is that the United States Department of State does not want such simple reforms. State has chosen instead to act as UNRWA's patron and the protector of its mission, perpetuating and expanding the refugee issue as a source of conflict against Israel.

This development may be welcomed by an administration that has sought to extract the United States from Middle East wars. But the Arab initiatives — under-resourced and with questionable objectives — are as likely to compound as resolve the region’s wars, and they ultimately may undermine US interests.

In Yemen, the Saudis and like-minded nations are attempting to turn back an offensive by an alliance of dissident Yemeni forces and ethnic Houthis, a Shiite sect that has received weapons and training from Iran. The Saudis are probably correct in claiming that Iran is attempting to replace a Saudi-friendly government with another Iranian client militia; the Houthis share the ideology of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. But it’s not clear how the military campaign, which so far has consisted of bombing and naval shelling, will turn back the forces now besieging the southern port of Aden — much less accomplish the announced aims of restoring the previous government in Yemen and forcing the Houthis to disarm.

For more than a half-century, it has been the role of the United States to provide the leadership and military muscle that its Arab allies could not muster on their own. In Yemen, the Obama administration could have used air assets to turn back the Houthis before they overthrew the previous government; instead, intent on striking a deal with Iran, the White House at first indicated it could accept the Houthi takeover.

The administration now is offering intelligence support to the Saudi intervention. That will neither ensure its success nor bring about the negotiated settlement that is Yemen’s best option. The war that rages there could soon merge into a regional war between Iran and Saudi Arabia and their allies — a conflict that flourishes in the vacuum created by US retreat.

Greece came in for further criticism this weekend, when it emerged that the Greek Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis is to fly to Moscow on March 30 to negotiate lower gas prices for his country and find ways of increasing Greek exports to the Russian Federation, despite the EU sanctions over Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is expected to travel to Moscow next week to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in a move that has left German politicians apoplectic with rage with the chairman of the Bundestag [German parliament] European Committee Gunther Krichbaum accusing Greece of “frittering away valuable time and trust”. He added: “Instead of asking for help from his comrades in Russia, Prime Minister Tsipras should finally put forward concrete and dependable reform proposals.”

“Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is carrying out a very risky strategy,” Manfred Weber, the leader of the conservative EPP group in the European Parliament, told Der Spiegel. “His flirting with Russia makes a constructive solution with Europe in these financial questions difficult.”

Greece on Friday sent its creditors a long-awaited list of reforms with a pledge to produce a small budget surplus this year in the hope that it will unlock badly needed cash.

With stock prices rushing far ahead of economic reality over the last six or so years, more experts in the financial markets are coming to the same conclusion — even if they don’t fully understand how it’s being rigged or the consequences. Ed Yardeni, a longtime Wall Street guru who isn’t one of the clowns of the bunch, said flat out last week that the market was being propped up. “These markets are all rigged, and I don’t say that critically. I just say that factually,” he asserted on CNBC. Yardeni’s claim is the most basic one: that the Federal Reserve won’t do anything that will upset Wall Street and, in fact, is doing all it can to help the stock market.

Okay, so the markets are rigged. Basically everyone now agrees on that. But should we care? America was built on capitalism and free and fair markets. Today’s markets aren’t fair. In fact, they are unfair because they are putting lots of money into the pockets of a small number of Americans. The bigger problem is this: If stock prices are artificially inflated, nobody can tell what a company is really worth. And banks are going to be hesitant to lend money to companies with fuzzy valuations.

In the second such test on the health of the industry, the Bank has asked seven lenders to spell out the damage that would be done by a global nightmare scenario designed by central bank officials, with help from the International Monetary Fund and other financial authorities. Last year’s test, which focused on a property crisis in the UK, found that Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group would have come close to falling short of the capital requirements. Both had raised money or improved their balance sheets by the time the results were published in December.

As well as showing that their capital ratios could withstand a global shock, the banks are also expected to reassure the regulators that they could continue lending to British households and businesses. The stress test envisages a 10 percent rise in demand for borrowing between this year and 2019, the outer limit of the scenario.

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, said: “By assessing the resilience of the UK banking system against a major external shock, we will improve further our ability to identify vulnerabilities and we will ensure that banks have plans in place to address a wider range of possible stresses.” The tests are not forecasts, but rather a worst-case scenario of what the banks could face.

French Bishop Jean-Michel Faure, himself consecrated only two weeks ago by the Holocaust-denying British Bishop Richard Williamson, said the new group rejected Pope Francis and what it called his "new religion" and would not engage in a dialogue with Rome until the Vatican turned back the clock. Williamson and Faure, who were both excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church when the former made the latter a bishop without Vatican approval, are ex-members of a larger dissenting group that has been a thorn in Rome's side for years.

Their splinter movement is tiny - Faure did not give an estimate of followers - but the fact they plan to consecrate bishops is important because it means their schism can continue as a rebel form of Catholicism. "We follow the popes of the past, not the current one," Faure, 73, told reporters on Saturday at Santa Cruz Monastery in Nova Friburgo, in the mountain jungle 140 km (87 miles) inland from Rio de Janeiro. The prior of the monastery, Thomas Aquinas, explained the split simply: "The Pope is less Catholic than us."

Under Catholic law, Williamson and Faure are excommunicated from the Church but remain validly consecrated bishops. That means they can ordain priests into their schismatic group and claim to be Catholic, albeit without Vatican approval. By contrast, women supposedly made priests by dissident Catholic bishops are not validly ordained because Catholic law reserves the priesthood only for men.

At the same time as events are proceeding toward the prospect of a possible redesign of the Middle East, whether consensual or not, we are already witnessing an event the likes of which the region has not seen in decades. A number of Arab countries intend to assemble a large and powerful Arab military force and, for the first time, Israel is not alarmed. Not only is Israel not alarmed, it is actually ecstatic.

For generations, Israel’s defense strategy was based on a desire to be able to fend off any Arab coalition of forces rather than just individual Arab countries. But now that such a coalition is coming together, Israel sees it as an indivisible element of its own defense policy. Even if no one is inviting Israel to take part, it’s already among the coalition’s first stakeholders.

This week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis a danger to humanity. But Saudi Arabia did not need Netanyahu’s latest slogan in order to recognize the threat.

The clinic, opening this week in tony Friendship Heights, specializes in the abortion pill and will be unique for its advertising. Its unabashed approach also reflects a new push to destigmatize the nation’s most controversial medical procedure by talking about it openly and unapologetically.

Plagued by political setbacks in recent years, abortion-rights activists are now seeking to normalize abortion, to put a human face — and in some cases, even a positive spin — on the procedure. At Carafem, staff members plan to greet clients with warm teas, comfortable robes and a matter-of-fact attitude. “We don’t want to talk in hushed tones,” said Carafem president Christopher Purdy. “We use the A-word.”

“It was important for us to try to present an upgraded, almost spa-like feel,” said Melissa S Grant, vice president of health services for the clinic. If the project is successful, Purdy says, he hopes to expand his model to other states. “It’s fresh, it’s modern, it’s clean, it’s caring,” he said. “That’s the brand we’re trying to create.”

On Thursday, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into law, and some celebrities, politicians, and journalists – including Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher, and Hillary Clinton, just to name a few – are absolutely outraged. They say the law is a license to discriminate against gay people, which is simply not true.

However, they’re making that perception a reality in people’s minds by repeating that exact mantra often and everywhere they can. So calmer, wiser voices are speaking up to clarify just what this is all about. There are primers on RFRA all over the place, for those interested in knowing the truth behind the blowup. Here’s the Weekly Standard: “Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act really a license to discriminate against gay people?”

No. Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, a former appellate court judge, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email: “In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discriminate against gay customers, or anyone else.”

It’s actually the opposite. It’s a protection of individuals, business owners, others, from being discriminated against for conducting their business according to their beliefs.

Murray, a Democrat who is openly gay, issued his ban via executive order over the weekend, and Inslee issued his Monday afternoon. “I find Indiana’s new law disturbing, particularly at a time when more and more states and people in America are embracing civil rights for everyone," Inslee said in a statement. "Washington will join other states and cities in opposing this law and I will impose an administration-wide ban on state-funded travel to Indiana."

Murray says the law doesn't reflect Seattle residents’ values. He also has told all city departments to review their contracts to see whether Seattle is doing business with any company whose headquarters is in Indiana. “Seattleites know that discrimination has no place in our city,” he said in a statement. “That’s just equality 101.” The primary concern is that the law might allow a business to discriminate against gay residents, such as a baker being allowed refuse an order from a gay couple for a wedding cake.

But state lawmakers and Republican Governor Mike Pence have been defending and trying to explain the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ever since the governor signed it into law on Thursday. They note that then-President Bill Clinton in 1993 signed similar federal legislation into law, and 19 other states also have similar policies. However, the Indiana law differs in several ways, primarily in that it allows a business to assert a right to "the free exercise of religion."

Our then Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, also affirmed "there is no stronger bond than that between mother and child". Both leaders apologised for a misguided policy that had broken this primal bond and caused ongoing grief to mothers and children.

How hypocritical, then, that last Thursday a new policy to break that primal bond was scheduled to come before the Senate. It was a policy that would institute marriage without a woman, and so create families without a mother. Senator David Leyonhjelm’s Freedom to Marry Bill 2014 was withdrawn from the Senate at the last minute, in the face of two million emails urging the Government to keep marriage between man and woman.

The Bill will return and, if passed, would be a coldly calculated decision to abolish a mother from the lives of any future children created within two-man ‘marriage’. The most primal and sacred bond would be broken again. Gay parent Doug Mainwaring wrote in The Public Discourse that redefining marriage “might once again invite epic disaster for children, whose stories will emerge only as they become adults.”

Those stories are now emerging. Heather Barwick, raised in a loving same-sex household, made international headlines when she wrote this month in The Federalist, “Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter. That it’s all the same. But it’s not. A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting.”

Even bigger international headlines, and absurd accusations of homophobia, were made when gay fashion icons Dolce and Gabbana told Panorama magazine this month, "We oppose gay adoptions… You are born to a mother and a father – or at least that’s how it should be… Life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed.” In support of their comments, six adults raised in same-sex households wrote in an open letter, “Every human being has a mother and a father, and to cut either from a child’s life is to rob the child of dignity, humanity, and equality”.

There were four resolutions on Israel. And one on North Korea - a country that is home to government policies of torture, starvation, enslavement, rape, disappearances, and murder – to name just some of its crimes against humanity.

Four resolutions on Israel. And one on Syria. Where the death toll of four years of war is 100,000 civilians, ten million people are displaced, and barrel bombs containing chemical agents like chlorine gas are back in action.

Four resolutions on Israel. And one on Iran. Where there is no rule of law, no free elections, no freedom of speech, corruption is endemic, protestors are jailed and tortured, religious minorities are persecuted, and pedophilia is state-run. At last count, in 2012 Iranian courts ordered more than 30,000 girls ages 14 and under to be “married.” And what did that one resolution on Iran say? Co-sponsored by the United States, it was labelled a “short procedural text,” consisting of just three operative paragraphs that contained not a single condemnation of Iran.

The Israel resolutions, on the other hand, were full of “demands,” “condemns,” “expresses grave concern,” and “deplores” – along with orders to “cease immediately” a long list of alleged human rights violations. Ninety percent of states – inhabited by 6.6 billion people – got no mention at all. Countries like China, Qatar, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. For the UN, there was not one human rights violation worthy of mention by any of these human rights horror shows.

In an address to the Arab League summit in Egypt on Saturday, Mr Putin spoke against foreign intervention in countries’ internal disputes and spoke of the role Russia can play in diplomatic channels. While Russia openly opposes the stance of US-backed Israel on the Gaza crisis, its position in the Middle East is complicated. Mr Putin is one of Iran’s key allies, but as he spoke on Saturday the core nations of the Arab League engaged in air strikes on the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

His attempts to urge a peaceful solution in Yemen haven’t had much of an immediate impact – on Sunday, the Arab League agreed to the creation of a joint military force comprised of around 40,000 elite troops to resolve the future “challenges” of the Middle East. As one of the “Quartet” entities involved in Middle East peace negotiations, Russia has played a key role in talks about the fallout of last year’s Gaza crisis.

Analysts expect crude prices to command a new “geo-political premium” as it becomes clear that Saudi Arabia has lost control over the Yemen peninsular and faces a failed state on its 1,800 km southern border, where Al Qaeda can operate with near impunity. Over 3.8 million barrels a day (b/d) pass through the 18-mile Bab el-Mandeb Strait off Yemen, one of the world's key choke points for crude oil supply.

While there is little likelihood of disruption to tanker traffic, Saudi Arabia is increasingly threatened by Shiite or Jihadi enemies of different kinds. Shiite Houthi rebels have already seized Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, and pose a potential contagion risk for aggrieved Shia minorities across the Saudi border in the kingdom’s Southwest pocket, never an area friendly to the ruling Wahhabi dynasty in Riyadh.

The Saudis face an impossible dilemma. The harder they hit the Houthis, the greater the danger of a power vacuum that can only benefit Al Qaeda and Islamic State groupings that already control central Yemen. They are among the most lethal of the various Al Qaeda franchises. A cell from that area was responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.

Any sign that Saudi Arabia is becoming embroiled in “Vietnam-style” attrition in Yemen or that it cannot safely secure its porous northern and southern borders against Al-Qaeda/ISIS could upset the fragile psychology of the world’s oil markets in a heart-beat.