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  If there were any doubts that Western “leaders” live in a fantasy make-believe world constructed out of their own lies, the G-7 meeting and 70th anniversary celebration of the Normandy landing dispelled the doubts. The howlers issuing from these occasions are enough to split your sides. Obama and his lap dog Cameron described the Normandy landing on June 6, 1944, as “the greatest liberation force that the world has ever known” and took all the credit for the US and Britain for the defeat of Hitler. No mention was made of the Soviet Union and the Red Army, which for three years prior to the Normandy landing had been fighting and defeating the Wehrmacht...

 

  On national-security matters, the news media couldn’t do a better job misinforming the public if they tried. The latest example is their portrayal of the five Taliban officials traded for Bowe Bergdahl. The media of course have an incentive to accentuate controversy. In the Bergdahl deal, this includes portraying the five Taliban prisoners as, in Sen. John McCain’s words, “hard-core jihadis responsible for 9/11.” McCain is wrong, but the major news outlets don’t care. Over and over, the five are identified as terrorists. Facts take a back seat to drama and conflict. President Obama fed this narrative:..

 

  With thousands of Arab and foreign fighters and a commander with designs on the leadership of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has become the gravest threat in Iraq and Syria. Despite the loss of two leaders, and earning the fury of even the core al-Qaeda leadership for its methods, the ISIL has expanded to control vast areas of Iraq and Syria as it seeks to establish a new Islamic caliphate. The ISIL can trace its roots to Tawhid and Jihad, a Sunni group which rose against the US and Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003...

 

  In reports in the NY Times and Yediot about the Iran poll compiled by the Israeli Interdisciplinary Center, the IDC said an “Iran expert” whom it refused to name prepared the poll.  In most cases in Israeli media, when a story says a source’s identity is concealed (hasui), it means he has intelligence background.  My Israeli source told me yesterday that this individual is indeed associated with Israeli intelligence...

 

  On the opening night of the seventh Palestine Festiva lof Literature (PalFest) in Ramallah, an impassioned controversy broke out over the political correctness of literary and cultural representations of Palestinians in world literature. The renowned Danish writer Hanne-Vibeke Holst read an excerpt from her 2011 novel, Undskyldningen (The Apology), which injects a Palestinian turned suicide bomber, Khalil, into a rocky relationship between a liberal mother, Helena Tholstrup, and her daughter Sophie. Holst had not finished reading when some members of audience audibly made it clear that such images are offensive and outrageous...

 

  Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been criticized for suggesting that force should not be used to promote cultural values in the country. “Do not interfere in people’s lives so much, even if it is out of compassion,” Rouhani said at a health insurance conference on May 24 arranged by the administration. “Let people pick their own path to heaven. One cannot take people to heaven through force and a whip. The Prophet [Mohammad] did not have a whip in his hand..”

 

  While the death toll among civilians is growing in Ukraine the United States continues its policy aimed at escalation of the conflict. It offers all kinds of support to Kiev including military aid. Deputy Secretary General Ambassador Alexander Vershbow said the cooperation is going to get a new impetus with instructors sent to beef up the modernization efforts of Ukraine’s armed forces... 

 

  The Russian Foreign Ministry hopes to complete working soon on its updated White Book on large-scale human rights violations in Ukraine.. “Unfortunately, the list continues to expand,” Dolgov said. “The Foreign Ministry is currently working on its completion, and we hope to update the White Book already published in the coming days.” The diplomat said the new version would cover the period from early April until early June of this year and would include “probably the most shocking humanitarian crimes”..

 

  The Great Game Round-Up brings you the latest newsworthy developments regarding Central Asia and the Caucasus region. We document the struggle for influence, power, hegemony and profits between a U.S.-dominated NATO, its GCC proxies, Russia, China and other regional players...

 

  Is he still working for his former masters in Washington, DC? Two diplomatic messages from the WikiLeaks Public Library on U.S. Diplomacy indicate that newly elected President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko was an agent for United States State Department. A confidential message from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev on April 29, 2006 mentions the newly elected Ukraine president twice...

 

  While Foreign Minister of Poland Radoslaw Sikorski is lamenting about "Russian propaganda" as the facts of direct Polish involvement in Kiev's "counter-terrorist" punitive operation in Novorossia go public, the following photo evidence, acquired during the last week's Turchinov's visit to the central command of punitive forces near Slavyansk, looks more than persuading...

 

  A controversial promotion was announced by the IDF, on Friday, June 6, 2014. Roni Numa was promoted to major general and became the second commander of the Depth Corps in their new configuration. Announcing the unit becoming operational, this is bad news for Iran...

 

  In last week’s celebratory atmosphere as the Palestinian unity government was sworn in, ending a seven-year feud between Fatah and Hamas, it was easy to overlook who was absent. Hamas had agreed to remain in the shadows to placate Washington, which is legally obliged to refuse aid to a government that includes a designated terrorist group. The new Palestinian cabinet looked little different from its predecessor. Hamas’s input was limited to three independents, all in low-level ministerial positions...

 

..If you, as one of those daily consumers of world news headlines, have the luxury of lighting a cigarette, take a drag and then deliberate on the Egyptian scene by cynically saying “But this is not how democracy should work” then my response would be “ Says who, and what kind of democracy are you talking about and moreover … who cares?”..

  On June 8, 1967, Israeli leaders learned they could deliberately attack a U.S. Navy ship and try to send it, together with its entire crew, to the bottom of the Mediterranean – with impunity. Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, a state-of-the-art intelligence collection platform sailing in international waters off the Sinai, killing 34 of the 294 crew members and wounding more than 170. On the 47th anniversary of that unprovoked attack let’s be clear about what happened: Israeli messages intercepted on June 8, 1967, leave no doubt that sinking the USS Liberty was the mission assigned to the attacking Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats as the Six-Day War raged in the Middle East...

 

..What if you heard through the news media that fighter jets from South Korea were used to attack a U.S. ship? Our answer would be clear – that the U.S. would not tolerate an attack by an ally. South Korea has not done that, but that’s what happened in 1967 with the USS Liberty when Israel [mistakenly](sic) attacked the ship. U.S. citizens should take it seriously when a foreign government can influence U.S. foreign policy, he says...

 

..I’ve regularly recounted the multiple failures of the Iron Dome missile defense system.  Yes, the very same one the U.S. has invested nearly a billion dollars in financing on Israel’s behalf.  In a fraud that is all too common for complex U.S. weapons systems, a product fulfills a political purpose and despite its operational failure continues being purchased and supported.  Iron Dome gives Israelis a false sense of protection and security that is fueled by false claims by the IDF and the system’s manufacturer.  As a result, the millions keep coming while the system doesn’t improve...

 

  President Obama’s recent foreign policy speech, delivered at this year’s West Point graduation ceremony, was a disappointment to anyone who hoped the president might be changing course. The failure of each US intervention thus far in the 21st century might have inspired at least a bit of reflection. However, the president made it clear that interventionism and American exceptionalism would continue to guide his administration in its final two years...

 

  When capitalism is in crisis, war is always an imminent danger. History shows us this to be case. The two biggest conflagrations ever, the First and Second World Wars – claiming total deaths of around 80 million – were both presaged by economic collapses in the capitalist system. This is what makes the present juncture in international relations so disturbing. The American-centered capitalist system is once again choking to death from deep social malaises of poverty, unemployment, vast income inequality.. The tendency, as in the previous depressed economic times of the early 1900s and 1930s, is to go to war in a desperate act of “creative destruction”..

 

  Let's play a word association game. What's the first thing that comes to mind when I say "humility"? Chances are it's not "heads of state".. Amidst these tendencies of the global political class, Uruguay's Jose "Pepe" Mujica looks like a veritable freak of nature. President since 2010, the 79-year-old Mujica lives in a one-bedroom farmhouse, attends official meetings in sandals and donates 90 percent of his salary to charity...

 

  Christine Fair is widely quoted as an expert on South Asian political and military affairs. She is often requested by mainstream media to comment on terrorist acts occurring in India and Pakistan and invited to educate members of the US administration on issues in her field of expertise.. Is her reputation deserved? In the following essay, I demonstrate.. that her reputation is based on the services she provides to imperialism, not on her academic excellence...

 

  Ukraine has chosen a new president. How is he going to deal with his country's dire problems? Is it possible to achieve the promised peace when he immediately refuses to compromise? How much latitude does President Petro Poroshenko have in his government at all? Peter Lavelle hosts CrossTalking, with Vladimir Suchan, Daniel Welch and Mark Sleboda...

 

  "Ukrainian mass media lies, lies without end. They lie so unapologetically that Goebbels would have envied their style."..

 

 

  It has been a good week for those who like their hypocrisy neat and straight from the bottle. There was US Secretary of State John Kerry condemning the Syrian presidential election in which Bashar al-Assad was re-elected for a third time against nominal opposition as “a great big zero”. But at the same time, the US and Britain said they were officially looking forward to working with president-elect Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt who is turning out to be a somewhat comical figure who cannot even fix an election properly. Despite an official holiday, free transport, massive media support, religious encouragement and the threat of $70 fines for non-voters, polling booths remained stubbornly empty...

 

...On first thought, one would think that people who had been abused would be more sensitive, not less, to the pain inflicted on others. That they would, as individuals or a collective, show a greater sense of empathy. But more often than not, in the case of children who were abused, they grow up to be abusers. It is as if the psychological damage and trauma from early childhood turns our natural and normal sense of compassion and empathy towards each other into a vicious cycle of  borderline sociopathic behaviors, where inflicting pain becomes a source of pleasure...

 

...Pale like a ghost and with a face reminding the one when he was called "traitor," the Lord of Vengeance said "It is within our power to bring peace to our children. This is our duty, the holy mission of parents." You are right Mr. Peres. The duty of every human is to bring peace, sending humanity one step closer to the Kingdom of God. If we are too insignificant and weak to achieve that, at least we should not advance violence and war, which are your signature. Days before your final exit, you have acknowledged the failure of your lifework, the only legacy behind you being an endless line of corpses...

 

  Should the Russian Annexation of Crimea & the Ongoing Disorder in Eastern Ukraine be a Casus Belli for Starting Cold War II with Russia? Let’s begin to peel the onion by asking...

 

  On June 2, a missile screamed through downtown Lugansk, in eastern Ukraine, leaving a trail of craters in a city park before slamming into a regional administration building. At least eight people were killed in the blast, as it struck in a busy pedestrian area. Blood and body parts were strewn throughout the blast zone. Eyewitnesses said the missile was fired from one of the military jet fighters that had been circling the area.. The US-backed government in Kiev, however, denied firing on civilians.. The US mainstream media dutifully reported the Kiev government line as fact. The anti-Kiev forces had blown up their own headquarters, they wrote...

 

  During the last few months I have been totally amazed by the lies and misrepresentations I have heard. I can honestly say that I'm totally flabbergasted. The reason why I'm feeling this way has nothing to do with any surprise I feel about the government or the media lying to the American people that has been going on for quite a long time. What has me shaking my head in disbelief is that no effort has been made to make their distortions of the truth believable...

 

  Elections to the European Parliament have brought groundbreaking changes in the structure of EU’s most powerful body: right wing parties along with Eurosceptics, an outsiders just a few years ago, have now taken the political scene. Front Nacional party in France gets the majority - signifying that people want change; the same with other nations. But what now? Is the European change of course inevitable? What will happen to the Union itself? Today, we meet again with our special guest, the leader of the Front Nacional party. Marine Le Pen is on Sophie&Co today...

 

  Wherever blame for the war might lie, for the immense majority of Americans in 1914 it was just another of the European horrors from which our policy of neutrality, set forth by the Founding Fathers of the Republic, had kept us free. Pašić, Sazonov, Conrad, Poincaré, Moltke, Edward Grey, and the rest – these were the men our Fathers had warned us against. No conceivable outcome of the war could threaten an invasion of our vast and solid continental base.. However, in 1914 the president of the United States was Thomas Woodrow Wilson...

 

  When our marine engineer first sent us the list of repairs needed for Gaza’s Ark as a result of the sabotage* of April 29, we were shocked at how long it was. The amount of extra work to be done is huge. In addition, the price of materials is now much higher than it was before Egypt closed the border with Gaza and destroyed the tunnels. Fiberglass, for example, is now four times the price. Not once, however, have we heard the boat builders complain. Palestinians have the most extraordinary ability to endure. Their steadfastness in the face of adversity and their ability to start over every time their homes, their orchards, or their boats are destroyed is amazing...

 

  The flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC) carried a signed article on Monday, calling on people to guard against "the trap of Western-style democracy." "Copying Western-style democracy would probably lead to disaster" and "'street politics' usually leads to domestic turmoil and even civil war.." The article acknowledged that democracy is good, but said it should be realized in different forms in different countries. There is actually no objective standard concerning democracy hailed by the US and other Western countries.. For the US and other Western countries, anything that accords with their interests and accepts their manipulation is democracy...

 

  No doubt the Guardian [is being] well paid to provide a "liberal" cloak for US propaganda...

 

  “Israel now bitterly dividing Jewish communities” in the United States, Rachel Zoll wrote in an article on the Associated Press website. “Internal American Jewish conflict has worsened as many Israel advocates have come to feel under siege in the US. The international boycott movement against Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians has gained some momentum in the US, and critics increasingly draw analogies between Israeli policies and South African apartheid..”

 

  As usual, the biggest story in America is suppression of news.  There has never been a time when the media has taken such an aggressive position, not even after 9/11.  It’s more than Ukraine or Syria.  The US has not only outraged Russia and China but other nations that were once afraid of the US are now ready to hit back.  The simplest way to go after the US is to release classified intelligence showing the US as an aggressor nation or worse, a dupe, violent, dangerous and uncaring...

 

...According to the New York Post about 67,000 New Yorkers have lately applied for 9/11 victim compensations due to cancers that are attributed to direct exposure to the toxic dust and smoke from the Twin Towers’ collapse. These patients have been diagnosed with multiple myeloma; a blood cancer typically resulted from nuclear exposure as had been documented in nuclear-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and is known as “The Hiroshima Disease.” These patients/victims represent the largest cancer group in history; larger in number than the surviving victims of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined...

  "Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The Bankers own the Earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create deposits, and with the flick of a pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again. However, take it away from them, and all the fortunes like mine will disappear, and they ought to disappear, for this world would be a happier and better world to live in. But if you wish to remain slaves of the Bankers and pay for the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create deposits." ~ Sir Josiah Stamp, President of the Bank of England in the 1920s, the second richest man in Britain...

  We live under the omnipresent shadow of a political/economic system, which promotes materiality, selfishness and individual success over group wellbeing. It is a model of civilization that is making us miserable and ill. Dependent on continuous consumption, everything and everyone is seen as a commodity, and competition and ambition are extolled as virtues. Together with reward and punishment this trinity of division has infiltrated and polluted all areas of contemporary life, including health care and education...

 

  US Secretary of State Kerry has pronounced the Syrian election to be a “farce”.   As if on cue,   National Public Radio, Associated Press, ABC  and other western media have presented stories which support that claim.   A closer look reveals the media has been exaggerating, distorting and lying about the Syrian elections. Following are a few examples  from the past few days...

 

...Stupid s**t also irretrievably takes a backseat to serious s**t during Obama’s current European tour. We just need to examine what’s in store at the selected pit stops. First is Warsaw – whose nervous poodle, US vassal government is absolutely hysterical over an imminent Russian “threat.” Then it’s the G7 in Brussels – the “ex-G8,” from which Russia was expelled by the self-proclaimed “great powers.” One of the items in the agenda is the possibility of slapping even more sanctions over Moscow’s “threat” to the Ukraine...

 

...Along with many other thoughtful Americans, Chamberlin was disgusted by the role played by the United States in the Second World War. He gave eloquent and scathing voice to his bitterness about the hypocrisy of western Allied leaders in that terrible conflict, above all, President Franklin Roosevelt.. an attentive reading of America's Second Crusade helps provide an understanding of the same arrogant and self-deluding thinking that is manifest in the eagerness of recent American presidents to use military might in foreign adventures, and, in the process, spend billions of the American people's money and take the lives of many young American men...

 

...In the port city of Le Havre, the mayor was bombarded with letters from angry residents complaining about drunkenness, jeep accidents, sexual assault — “a regime of terror,” as one put it, “imposed by bandits in uniform..” The liberation of France was “sold” to soldiers not as a battle for freedom but as an erotic adventure among oversexed Frenchwomen, stirring up a “tsunami of male lust” that a battered and mistrustful population often saw as a second assault on its sovereignty and dignity..

 

  One of the most important Palestinian feature films ever, Omar is, to date, the deepest expose of the diabolical nature of the Israeli occupation and the inhuman situation imposed on Palestinians by the Jewish State. It also throws light on the tragic and depressing Palestinian struggle against a sophisticated, demonic enemy - an on-going battle that so far has led nowhere...

 

...My continued hopes for Egypt are rooted in its people. I remember the young Egyptians I met during my visit to Egypt just a month before the election of Mr. Morsi in 2012. They had expected him to win but were willing to revolt if he hijacked the government for the benefit of the Brotherhood only — which he did and they did. There must be hope that some of that same passion is still churning just below el-Sissi’s mandate...

 

  The American, Russian and incoming Ukrainian leaders have discussed, in separate meetings in France, a ceasefire and other possible steps to de-escalate the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, reports said. Russian President Vladimir Putin held brief one-on-one talks on Friday with his US counterpart Barack Obama and Ukraine's Petro Poroshenko, in a possible diplomatic breakthrough that played out amid continuing violence in eastern Ukraine...

 

  While the leaders of the Group of Seven made a show of unity here in the face of troubles in Ukraine and Asian waters, their waning ability to check Russian and Chinese assertiveness was all too apparent...

 

...The BIS’s reach and connections were vital for Germany. So much so, that all through the war, the Reichsbank continued paying interest on the monies lent by the BIS. This interest was used by the BIS to pay dividends to shareholders – which included the Bank of England. The BIS remains very profitable.. Every other month it hosts the Global Economy Meetings, where 60 of the most powerful central bankers.. meet.. The BIS also hosts the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which regulates commercial banks, and the new Financial Stability Board, which coordinates national regulatory authorities. The BIS has made itself the central pillar of the global financial system...

 

..Scare and Rule is a useful subset of the more standard Divide and Rule. Scare people against an imaginary enemy and they will commit any atrocity in the name of the unholy state. "The Mexicans killed two soldiers in Texas," the State may claim and deliver the militia. If the report is later found wrong, with the victims being just two squalid squirrels suffocated by the summer sun, it will not make any change; the goal would have been achieved...

 

First prime ministers of Israel terrorists | PressTV

  Press TV has conducted an interview with James Thring, a peace advocate and political commentator, in London, about Tel Aviv’s plans to build more settler units on occupied lands in defiance of international law and UN resolutions...

 

'US military move response to China dollar dumping' | PressTV

  An analyst says Washington’s most recent act of military provocation against China is in retaliation for Beijing’s decision to trade in its own currency and undermine the US dollar, Press TV reports. Jim W. Dean made the remarks when talking to Press TV on Saturday about the US deployment of two of its most advanced long-distance surveillance drones to a base in northern Japan to spy on North Korea and China...

 

  Every year, the world’s most powerful people meet in secret. Their agenda: total world domination. Big media observe a near-total blackout. It sounds like dystopian science fiction, or a conspiracy theorist’s worst nightmare. The strangest part is that it’s true...

 

  The claim by Binyamin Netanyahu that he has a right to pick and choose the Palestinian government is rather astonishing. All the important Palestinian political parties have agreed on a new government coalition. This is a negative coalition: all the parties agree not to have their own members in the government. The government is composed of non-party “technocrats”. I hardly know a single one of them. Netanyahu should be happy. No member of the evil, terroristic, anti-Semitic Hamas is included...

 

...On June 22, 1944– deliberately chosen as the anniversary of the 1941 German attack – the Soviets launched "Operation Bagration," inflicting a Stalingrad-level defeat on the Germans and reaching Warsaw by August 19.. Yet according to Barack Obama, none of that ever happened. It was Normandy where "the tide was turned in that common struggle for freedom," as the American Emperor told the assembled crowd at the American Cemetery and Memorial, in what sounded more like a campaign speech than remembrance for the fallen...

  British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery had three laws of war: One, never march on Moscow; Two, never get in a land war in Asia; Three, never march on Moscow. So why are the United States, the European Union (EU), and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) all on the road to the Russian capital? And exactly what are they hoping to achieve?..

 

...AIPAC is without doubt the most powerful lobby in the United States that is focused on a foreign policy issue. The institutional Israel boosters are in turn backed by a cluster of think tanks and institutes that spout a relentlessly pro-Likud line.. And backing the think tanks up are the enablers in the media who suppress stories critical of Israel and consistently editorialize supporting policies favored by Tel Aviv. Israeli Ambassadors, uniquely, regularly write op-eds for publications like the Washington Post and The New York Times...

 

  For the past several years, David Albright has been the primary nonofficial source in news media reporting of the alarming message that Iran presents a nuclear weapons threat.  In dozens of media interviews since Spring 2008, he has provided ostensibly independent support for the case made by the United States, Israel and the IAEA, that Iran has hidden an alleged nuclear weapons program and must now confess.. He did something very similar in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq, as the neoconservatives in the George W. Bush administration assembled a dodgy intelligence dossier with which to justify the invasion...

 

...Whatever the actual results of the voting, it is clear that Poroshenko would be declared the president simply because the Americans decided as much, and going forward he will do what the Americans instruct him to do. And they will instruct him to impede interaction between the European Union and the Russian Federation by all means possible, including [by means of] a war in which Russia will be forced to intervene to protect the Russian majority of Ukraine’s citizens. I don’t even rule out the blowing up of the oil and gas pipelines through which energy resources from Russia are supplied to the EU...

  Vladimir Putin faced a barrage of tricky questions in France from the media ahead of his meeting with world leaders at the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings. Here are his best replies on key issues: Ukraine, Crimea, relations with the US, and others...