Flashpoint in Ukraine provides insight into today's gravest geopolitical crisis since WW II. Possible global war looms. Viewed from the perspective of Western mainstream media, the crisis arose due to pro-democracy activists overturning a brutal dictatorship, which led swiftly to Russian incursion into Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. Viewed from the perspective of the 22 highly-credentialed analysts who have contributed to this anthology, it's an entirely different story; Obama's pivot is global, in pursuit of unchallenged worldwide dominance, leading to multiple direct and proxy wars. Neocon-dominated Washington seeks to marginalize its Russian and Chinese rivals, surrounding both countries with US bases. Ukraine is in the eye of the storm, the crown jewel of NATO eastward expansion, the last step in Washington's drive to incorporate all former Soviet republics and Warsaw Pact countries into NATO and install missile defense sites on Russia's very border. To that end, the US has poured some $5 billion into pro-democracy NGOs which, counter to intention or not, were soon swept aside by neo-Nazi groups, and leading to the installation as President of former banker, Arseniy Yatseniuk, advance leaked as the unelected pick of Victoria Nuland, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. While, as it is argued here, Russia did not invade Crimea and in fact has taken an extremely measured response with primary emphasis on diplomacy and ending the crisis, NATO, European and US spokespersons and media are seeking to dramatize and indeed resurrect a Russian threat. Eastern resistance forestalls Obama's imperial project. The West appears willing to pursue it, at the risk not just of Ukrainian civil war and potential East/West confrontation but of global nuclear war. The flashpoint in Ukraine risks the unthinkable. This book explains what everyone needs to know, to get the world off the bandwagon to war. STELLAR CONTRIBUTORS: Robert Abele, Michel Chossoudovsky, Michael Hudson, Edward Herman, Mickey Huff, Andrew Kolin, Cynthia McKinney, John McMurtry, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Michael Parenti, David Peterson, James Petras, Peter Phillips, Jack Rasmus, Paul Craig Roberts, Rick Rozoff, Rodney Shakespeare, Jeffrey Sommers. Matthew Witt

Once again, in the grand tradition of activist pamphleteers and muckrakers, Stephen Lendman strikes to the heart of Wall Street/government collusion to protect the powerful and drive ordinary people into the Third World ditch. Here's some straight talk on unaffordable health care, unrepayable student debt, bankrupt cities, money printing madness, trillion dollar tax havens, IMF financial terrorism, the austerity hoax, banksters' market-rigging thievery, and the domestic police, media and legislative repression set to keep all that in place.

The 1913 Federal Reserve Act let powerful bankers usurp money creation authority in violation of the Constitution's Article I, Section 8, giving only Congress the power to "coin Money (and) regulate the Value thereof...." Thereafter, powerful bankers used their control over money, credit and debt for private self-enrichment, bankrolling and colluding with Congress and administrations to implement laws favoring them. As a result, decades of deregulation, outsourcing, economic financialization, and casino capitalism followed, producing asset bubbles, record budget and national debt levels, and depression-sized unemployment far higher than reported numbers, albeit manipulated to look better. After the financial crisis erupted in late 2007, even harder times have left Main Street in the early stages of a depression, with recovery pure illusion. Today's contagion has spread out of control, globally. Wall Street got trillions of dollars in a desperate attempt to socialize losses, privatize profits, and pump life back into the corpses by blowing public wealth into a moribund financial sector, failing corporate favorites, and America's aristocracy. While Wall Street boasts it has recovered, industrial America keeps imploding. High-paying jobs are exported. Economic prospects are eroding. Austerity is being imposed, with no one sure how to revive stable, sustainable long-term growth. This book provides a powerful tool for showing angry Americans how they've been fleeced, and includes a plan for constructive change.