Every now and again, they throw us a bone.

A nice cute story to take our minds off the gloom of economic recession, the doom of ecological catastrophe, the anguish of false-flag terror and the misery of war without end.

Anna Chapman nabbed! Britain's annual expenditure on 'counter-terrorism and intelligence' is over £3 billion - but whoever said it's a waste of money?

The story of the ‘Russian spies’ busted in the USA and Britain is one such tale.

For all I know it may actually be true – but really, are we expected to take this stuff seriously?

Hoping to get a moderately rational take on the drama, I turned to The Guardian, that venerable leftish British newspaper with a reputation (occasionally deserved) for serious journalism.

Here are some extracts from what Richard Norton-Taylor and two other hot-shot  journalists report about the most notorious of the Russian spies’, Anna Chapman aka Anya Kushchenko.

in 2005, she was, he said, “a ‘green, wet behind the ears’ type of girl“.

…less than two years later, Chapman was being wined and dined at Annabel’s and Cipriani in the company of Vincent Tchenguiz, a private equity billionaire.

“When I met her, she didn’t know which way was up,” said her husband, then a 21-year-old British student

But then, Alex Chapman said, his wife began to change.

In 2005, he said, she began having meetings with people she referred to as “Russian friends”.

About 36 hours ago, in the aftermath of the UN Security Council’s vote to punish Iran with yet another round of sanctions because of its nuclear program, a rumour circulated that Russia would freeze delivery to Iran of the long-awaited S-300 missile defence system.

The story, reported by Reuters New Agency, was based on a media release from Interfax. It was widely – and excitedly – repeated by the mainstream TV networks.

President Putin meets 'Sarko the Sayan'

Hours later,  the Russian Foreign Ministry denied the reports, saying that only sale of mobile S-300s would be frozen. This retraction was not as widely reported as the initial Interfax report of cancellation.

Today comes another twist in the saga. Following a meeting in Paris between Russian President Putin and French President Sarkosy (Sarkosy is widely rumoured to be a Mossad agent), the Russian President left without fronting reporters’ questions.

According to the Xinhuanet.com news agency, Putin confirmed at his meeting that the sale os S-300′s would be totally frozen – see Putin says no missile sale to Iran: press. This was rapidly re-reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz: Russia to freeze missile sale to Iran, Putin tells Sarkozy.

In the absence of a formal, high-level announcement from the Russian Government, it’s hard to know what’s really going on. The impression is that Israel – and its agents – are trying to ‘push’ Russia’s foreign policy. Unhappy with what the Russians are actually saying, they repeatedly put words into the Russian Government’s mouth.

In the 19th century, Persia was courted by two pushy suitors:  Czarist Russia and Imperial Britain. It was one of the key arenas where the so-called ‘Great Game’ for control of central Asia was ‘played’ by these two giant imperial powers. Eventually two ‘Areas of Influence’ were established, with Russia dominant in the north of the country, Britain to the south.

After World War One and the Russian Revolution, Britain became the supreme foreign power in Iran. This continued until after World War Two, when the ascendant USA took over as Iran’s chief  ‘ally’. In the late 1970s a popular revolt toppled the Shah and Iran’s Islamic Revolution ushered in the current era.

Dr Younes Parsa Benab: a left-wing historical perspective on Iran

For most of the 20th century, a secular left-wing was a significant force in Iranian politics. It was was not monolithic and had pro-Soviet and independent elements, like the left in most counties. It was recurrently suppressed by authoritarian Iranian regimes, acting with the support of Britain and America. After the Islamic Revolution, repression of the secular left did not come to an end.

Iran has been the plaything of domineering external interests for generations – and the determination of Iran’s current leadership to chart an independent course is not hard to understand. Those in the west with secular and ‘progressive’ aspirations for the Iranian people might do well to reflect on how those influences came to decline in the first place. The centuries-old western imperial remedy – yet more external manipulation – is no way to help this generation of Iranians.

In a single speech, President Obama has negated much of the goodwill and positive momentum that his new Administration brought to a weary, anxious world.

Obama: risks squandering global goodwill to placate his Zionist 'friends'

By committing to a massive expansion of the US war in Afghanistan, without time limit or any end in sight, Obama dooms his Administration to become another failed war Presidency.

America is now in danger of becoming the largest failed State in human history. Hopelessly corrupted by Zionist infiltrators, it insists of sparring (at massive cost) with invented foes, cranking up futile armed conflicts, against ‘enemies’ nominated by a foreign power, enemies that are really just popular restistance movements.

The real aim of this crazed war – not necessarily Obama’s goal, but the goal of his devious advisers – is the destablization and Balkanization of Pakistan. This is a longstanding Israeli objective. It will be dressed up, characteristically, as an attempt to achieve precisely the opposite.

Obama is clever, but he’s not Superman. He cannot fight demons on a dozen fronts at once. He cannot solve America’s horrific problems, fix its substandard healthcare system, solve it’s grotesque over-dependence on fossil fuels, make friends out of foes, show leadership in solving the global environmental crisis, extricate troops with a modicum of honour from Iraq, stand up to the foreign agents in its midst, pay for some of the damage his predecessor has done to Americans and others, rectify the US fiscal imbalance, keep public debt under control, rebuild America’s creaking civilian infrastructure, restore confidence in the banking system and world economy….. AND fight a massive new unwinnable war against a largely imaginary enemy, under the advice of  Zionist agents who clearly have other interests at heart.