Mar 31, 2014 It is no secret that I spent twenty years in the U.S. Army. However the World has changed, and unfortunately, not for the better. At the time I enlisted, the Soviet Union was the biggest World threat, and had been so since my birth in 1950. When I manned the radars in the fire control section of the Nike-Hercules missile system (designed to protect the U.S. and our overseas allies from a Soviet bomber attack), I felt proud to be a part of using these nuclear devices to protect my country. It was a different era and I had a different mindset... ...as the longest serving Independent in the history of the U.S. Congress, I wish to address an issue which I believe does not get the kind of discussion it should from either political party but certainly not from our Republican colleagues--the moral, economic, and political dimensions of the kind of income and wealth inequality which we have in our country today. In my view, this is the most important issue facing the United States because it impacts on virtually every aspect of our lives. It is an issue we must be discussing thoroughly and one in which the American people have to be engaged... Richard Forer, author of "Breakthrough: Transforming Fear Into Compassion - A New Perspective on the Israel-Palestine Conflict", being interviewed by Jack Dresser of the al-Nakba Awareness Project, discusses anti-Semitism, the roots and history of the Israel-Palestine Conflict and the differences in opinion between the "pro-Israeli" and pro-Palestinian positions... For the first time Israel’s Supreme Court is set to consider evidence on April 2 that senior Israeli political and military officials committed war crimes in relation to major military operations in Gaza and Lebanon. Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the current justice minister, are among the high-level figures accused of breaking the laws of war when they launched attacks on Lebanon in 2006, and on Gaza in the winter of 2008-09... [This should be entertaining] It is now apparent that the “Maidan protests” in Kiev were in actuality a Washington organized coup against the elected democratic government. The purpose of the coup is to put NATO military bases on Ukraine’s border with Russia and to impose an IMF austerity program that serves as cover for Western financial interests to loot the country. The sincere idealistic protesters who took to the streets without being paid were the gullible dupes of the plot to destroy their country.. If the animosity displayed toward the Russian speaking population by the stooge government in Kiev continues, more defections to Russia are likely... .."Current developments in Ukraine have resulted from a deep statehood crisis, triggered, among other things, by the inability (I’d hate to think of reluctance) of every successive leader coming to power to reconcile the interests of Ukraine’s western region and Ukraine’s South-East", the Russian Foreign Minister said. "This cannot continue that way anymore". "We are certain that Ukraine needs profound constitutional reform. In all fairness, we can’t see any other way to ensure the stable development of Ukraine but to sign a federal agreement.." ...As for introducing sanctions - this is a dead-end track. There is a feeling that our Western partners have been working to ‘tear’ Ukraine away from Russia for years. When they realized that they were wrong and that they had made a mistake by undermining all the agreements we made after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they couldn’t admit it. Misunderstood feeling of pride got involved. So the reflective sanctioning we’re observing right now looks like an attempt to express their frustration through the most possibly decent means... The key issues are the prevention of Russia and Europe developing closer trade and political ties – stemming primarily from a vast trade in energy fuels; and, secondly, the survival of the American dollar as the world’s reserve currency. So vital are these issues for continued American hegemony that Washington is prepared to sacrifice millions of lives in a war between Russia and its so-called transatlantic European “ally”. This shocking revelation comes from a former European NATO commander... US President Barack Obama arrived in Saudi Arabia Friday, trailed by leaks to the Washington media suggesting that the US government had decided to escalate its intervention in the civil war in Syria. Press reports cited the ongoing conflict with Russia over Ukraine as a key factor in impelling the White House to change course in its attacks on Syria, a key Russian ally.. “The Obama administration, stung by reversals in Ukraine and Syria, appears to have decided to expand its covert program of training and assistance for the Syrian opposition, deepening US involvement in that brutal and stalemated civil war... The theory of cognitive dissonance was first posited by American social psychologist Leon Festinger in 1957 to explain the discomfort and mental stress that we feel when our beliefs, ideals or values don’t match up to reality. Festinger’s theory states that when people are in a state of dissonance, that is, when their beliefs or values don’t match up with their behavior or experiences, they will adjust those beliefs or values, or even adjust their perception of reality, in order to achieve consonance. Furthermore, Festinger showed that people will actively avoid situations or information that might challenge those beliefs and values in order to avoid dissonance... “Greater Israel” consists in an area extending from the Nile Valley to the Euphrates.’ With Al-Sisi as Egyptian President, the Greater Israel Project – a long-standing Zionist scheme to steal all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates – could be halfway there? “You can help us or we ‘will overthrow the world’.” – Chaim Weizmann, first president of the State of Israel, arrogantly warned the American leaders and the US-led Western regimes leaders years ago... A topic that is not discussed enough is the screaming, in-your-face, hostile aggression that people must withstand when they dare to trample on Jewish sensibilities. We are not talking about the sophisticated rationalization one sees in the op-ed pages of the mainstream media, or even the smear techniques of organizations like the ADL or the SPLC. We are talking about interpersonal aggression. There is something absolutely primal about it... [Karin is a friend of mine so I happen to know that her background is German Catholic, not Jewish. That’s about the only thing he gets wrong.] File this one under “under-reported stories of 2013.” A New York Democrat state assemblyman successfully lobbied to get Visa and Mastercard to withdraw credit card processing privileges from organizations he opposes. Surely this story was covered far and wide in the conservative press. I mean, the scope and severity of this matter dwarfs Bloomberg’s Big Gulp ban. Certainly, conservatives were all over this one Breitbart style, decrying such an abuse of power! Shhhh……you’ll wake the conservatives... [Stein/Cole reprises Zelig - what a character!] R2P, or the “responsibility to protect,” was a geopolitical tool used by the West after thoroughly destabilizing a nation through armed proxies to then intervene militarily, enact regime change, occupy, and reorder the nation both economically and sociopolitically. It has been used to devastating effect in Serbia in the carving out of Kosovo, as well as more recently in Libya... The Turkish opponents of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his beleaguered government have claimed that a distressed Erdogan may try to start a conflict with Syria and even invade Syrian territory. According to Erdogan’s opponents, the aim of a Turkish invasion of Syria by Erdogan is to invoke patriotic sentiments domestically. The aim of this is to manipulate the Turkish population into supporting Prime Minister Erdogan’s declining Justice and Development Party (AKP) during the Turkish municipal elections.. There is a series of events that are giving increasing credence to these arguments and accusations... ...The key organization in the coup that took place here recently was the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists [OUN], or a specific branch of it known as the Banderas [OUN-B]. They’re the group behind the Svoboda party, which got a number of key positions in the new interim regime. The OUN goes back to the 1920s, when they split off from other groups, and, especially in the 1930s, began a campaign of assassinating and otherwise terrorizing people who didn’t agree with them. As World War II approached, they made an alliance with the Nazi powers... [There is little substantive difference, if any, between Ukrainian, German, Israeli/Jewish or American fascism. And all of them are arrayed in support of the coup administration in Kiev and against the Russians.] Crimea is not a foreign territory to Russia, which has suddenly decided to join her. It is an essential element of its history, without which Russia today could not exist. The Oriental Review sheds light on the physical bond that unites them... Three Republican governors eyeing the White House, including embattled New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, were in Las Vegas yesterday to court Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino owner who could give any of their eventual campaigns a major financial boost. The governors met one-on-one with Adelson, 80, and addressed a conference of the Republican Jewish Coalition... [The scum rises to the top - hey, it's the American Way!] Many critics of Israel and its policies make a sharp distinction between Israel and its state ideology, Zionism, on the one hand, and Judaism, or the Jewish religious tradition and outlook, on the other.. In fact, the often cruel and arrogant policies of Israel, and the often arrogant attitudes of what is called the “Israel Lobby,” the Jewish lobby, or the organized Jewish community, are not an aberration, but rather are deeply rooted in Jewish religious writings and in centuries of Jewish tradition... As it became clear that the economic sanctions against Russia are going to backlash against the United States and the European Union, the West started to study other ways to «punish» Russia, including bringing down market energy rates. Obama promised to start gas deliveries from the US straight to Europe. Many saw it as the start of energy war against Russia. On March 26, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee held hearing on «The Geopolitical Potential of the U.S. Energy Boom» to study the ways how the energy production growth in the United States could be used against Russia... Syria has been the target of an attempted foreign-backed regime change. Riding on the momentum of the US-engineered “Arab Spring,” protesters took to the streets across Syria, serving as cover for armed militants the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia – on record – had been preparing since at least as early as 2007... Mar 30, 2014 ...Speaking in Belgium after meeting with the leaders of the G7 (plus and now minus 1), he went out of his way to insult his (disinvited) Russian counterpart, calling him a leader of a regional power whose actions betoken weakness. Obama calling Putin weak! How did he keep a straight face? But then how does he keep a straight face when he accuses Putin of violating international law? The man continues to amaze... The self-deception of contemporary Western diplomacy can be most clearly seen in the casual way that it applies double standards in its assessments of global affairs. The naive, almost child-like self-delusion of the modern Western attitude to Russia was brought home to me last May during a visit to Budapest. Following a series of meetings on the role of young people in civil society, I had an opportunity to talk with a group of youngish Americans who were employed by US-based NGOs to work in Russia. During our chat, one NGO worker, from Seattle, said she was surprised to discover that some Russian officials treated her as if she were an ‘agent of a foreign power’.. The lawless actions of Ukraine's nationalists have finally caught attention of the intl community, with EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton denouncing Right Sector for its ‘pressure’ and ‘undemocratic’ demand of the interior minister’s resignation. A day after neo-Nazi activists who helped bring the acting government in Kiev to power turned against it, Ashton has issued a statement condemning the “pressure by activists of the Right Sector who have surrounded the building of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine..” [I guess it's time to jettison the berserkers - they did their job and now they're expendable] ...The serious historical questions which Kendal failed to posit and which are largely and sometimes deliberately ignored by the Holocaust establishment are simply these: If Hitler’s goal was to annihilate an entire race, how is it possible that there were thousands upon thousands of people of Jewish descent in Nazi Germany? Is it historically and intellectually satisfying to maintain both contradictory positions at the same time and in the same respect? Is it rationally sound to say that those Jewish people were simply dupes and simply didn’t know Hitler’s real intention?.. [Jews love to make up self-serving stories. That they actually believe these stories themselves belies the notion that they are particularly intelligent. That they are so successful at getting others to believe them is their true talent.] ...As is being increasingly well documented to the great credit of Syria’s Directorate General of Antiquities & Museums (DGAM) of the Ministry of Culture, hundreds of Syrian World Heritage sites, including those listed by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as warranting international protections, are being threatened, damaged and in some cases substantially destroyed. In Homs Governorate, one of 14 Administrative Districts in Syria, there is extensive damage ranging from the Old City of Homs to the recently liberated Roman fortress, Crac des Chevaliers, 100 km west to Homs, and on to Palmyra, 200 km to east of Homs toward the Iraqi border... ...Has there been a single Israeli prime minister who has ever been serious about giving Palestinians a viable state of their own? Of course not. A colonial power does not give political power back to the people whose land it has stolen by force and by guile. Unless that is, you are the white minority of South Africa which lacked the one thing it needed to continue to control the indigenous population which it had pushed into bantustans: A well-funded Lobby which owned the U .S. Congress... ...when Israel closed the Palestine file with its victory on the battlefield in 1948, the Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as Zionism and the major powers – that the file would remain closed. The Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency. (Thereafter, and despite some stupid rhetoric to the contrary which gave apparent substance to Zionism’s propaganda lies, the Arab regimes never, ever, had any intention of fighting Israel to liberate Palestine. It was only in Zionist mythology and brainwashed Jewish minds everywhere that the Arab states were committed to driving Israel’s Jews into the sea).. ...Some people, although they wish to see an end to the occupation and settlements, believe that BDS should target only institutions that directly support the occupation and/or settlements. They want settlements-related business to be “disentangled” from other Israeli businesses and institutions. For reasons given below, I believe that this view would lead to a sadly truncated “movement”, shorn of most of its potential power to effect change—that BDS should target all Israeli businesses and institutions... Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative movement, has estimated that Israel has incurred losses of around eight billion dollars due to the boycott campaign against illegal settlements, equivalent to 20 per cent of their GDP. Regarding the latest Palestinian efforts to escalate the settlement boycott, Barghouti revealed that an agreement has been made with 13 democratic Arab parties to form boycott committees in the Arab world... [Barghouti is playing a dubious game. He unilateraly changed the wording of the mission statement of BDS from boycotting Israel to boycotting the settlements (just the Occupation). I’m not sure what he’s up to, but the purpose of BDS needs to be discussed more broadly – democratically – among the Palestinian civil society organizations that called for it in the first place.] ..PCHR Director Raji Sourani called 2013 "the worst year ever due to the Israeli crimes which went unpunished.. The world's silence towards Israel's closure of any door to justice in the face of the Palestinian victims (includes) pressure exerted on countries which adopt universal jurisdiction.." Israeli war criminals want immunity. They want unrestricted freedom to brutalize Palestinians unaccountably. They want slow-motion genocide continued against besieged Gazans... [It’s not hyperbole when I refer to Israel as a malignant tumor – it’s a precise and accurate metaphor] ...Silicon Valley’s model of empowerment and equality couldn’t be more different from Israel’s technology hub or its practices of technology disenfranchisement for Palestinians. The agreement between Gov. Jerry Brown and Netanyahu dangerously ignores the underlying differences and implicitly condones effective technology apartheid. If Apple CEO Tim Cook were a Palestinian living in Ramallah, he would not be able to use any iPhone applications, including WhatsApp, on the local cell network. Globally, over 2 billion people have 3G access, including Israeli settlers living in the West Bank, but Palestinians are prohibited by Israeli military dictate... The Washington narrative about Iran’s alleged secret program to obtain nuclear weapons capability is among the single greatest lies ever propagated by the Warfare State. It has been underway for 30 years now—so the cumulative web of deceit, disinformation, distortions and fabrications has become nearly impossible to untangle, and for good reason: Keeping alive the notion that America is threatened by a fanatical incipient nuclear state is a vital lynch-pin justifying the presence of the vast US war machine in the Persian Gulf and our incessant interventions and meddling in the region’s conflicts... A rapidly congealing Beltway consensus seems to be forming around the idea of a new Cold War. The anti-Russia sentiment is partially rooted in the particulars of the Ukraine crisis, which flowed from the West-backed insurrection in Maidan that overthrew a democratically elected—if terminally corrupt—Ukrainian leader and replaced him with an unelected nationalist anti-Russian regime. These events sparked a predictable Russian countermove.. In cascading fashion, this has descended upon an American political establishment that has responded as if it had been subconsciously yearning for a “bipartisan” and “unifying” mission of the sort the Cold War once provided... A few days ago, my partner, turning from something about Afghanistan on the television news, said to me, “It seems there’s been a war going on as long as we’ve been alive.” And we’re well into our 70s. But think about it: she’s almost right. This country has been at war, or at least has deployed troops, every year since 1940, when we were tots, except for occasional sporadic periods of quasi-peace amounting in all to about 18 years.. what could be the point of all this warification of America? Certainly not defense, for we were attacked but once, and all the rest of the time we either initiated action or fabricated an excuse for doing so... In a surprising move, PM Netanyahu's main financer is taking over Hebrew media. The Israeli Parliament is attempting to block the move by legislation, but in March 2014 Israel got one step closer to become a formal dictatorship. Over the years, I had the doubtful joy of speaking with Israeli Zionists belonging to the right and left sides of the political spectrum. The differences between them were not political in nature, but mainly an issue of style. Rightists were acidly sarcastic, while leftists were naively sarcastic. Both actively promoted violence toward anybody perceived as belonging to a different camp... It is extremely naïve to believe that Communist Russia just suddenly «went away.» Rather, the post-Reagan opening up of the USSR was simply the opportunity for its ruling oligarchs to clean up and get much wealthier - just as the banksters have done in the West, and just as China has also done. Coordination and planning, with the infiltrated West, never stopped. In fact, it only increased. The White House might now be painted red, Communist (satanic) red, as the more apropos color... [I remarked to my friend who sent me this link “Heavy, man – as we used to say. Can’t say I’d be all that surprised – and nothing shocks me anymore. It’s hardly outside the realm of possibility. That there is a clusterf—k of great magnitude happening is clear enough – as if the producers of the show are high on some unknown but powerful drug and are either completely out of their minds or humanity is just going through a period of peak confusion and disorder. But it is as it is.” He wrote “I suspect the next wave will not come with bombs, but with plague, but again, I hope never to find out.” Nor do I, but we’re in our 70’s and our race is almost run. Young people would be well advised to consider the Boy Scout motto: "Be prepared," although I haven't a clue what that might entail.] On May 26, the UN Human Rights Council issued a report titled "Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development - Report of the Special Rapporteur (Philip Alston) on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions." Alston was damning in his criticism regarding "three areas in which significant improvement is necessary if the US Government is to match its actions to its stated commitment to human rights and the rule of law:".. [Richard Falk’s retirement from his job as Special Rapporteur for Palestine has been such a blessing for the vampires who swarm in DC , but it looks like there’s another renegade down there at the UN who’s ready to assume the position of hated boogeyman. The vitriol will keep pouring forth from the neocons particularly, but there are so many others. It’s a very large and well-fed flock.] Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has called for domestic support for his fighters after a year of growing sectarian violence in Lebanon following the Shia armed group's intervention in the Syrian war. "Some in Lebanon say the resistance (Hezbollah) has nothing to do with Syria.. The problem in Lebanon is not that Hezbollah went to Syria, but that we were late in doing so," he said. "This resistance will remain solid, with its head held high, protecting its people and its nation.." [I hope to have a complete transcription within a day or two] After years in the shadows, U.S. Navy SEALs emerged in a big way with the 2011night raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Afterward, they were lauded in print as supermen, feted by the president, and praised by the first lady. Soon, some of the country’s most secretive and elite special operators were taking the big screen by storm with 2012’s blockbuster Zero Dark Thirty and a film starring actual Navy Seals, Act of Valor. Last year, yet another Hollywood smash, Captain Phillips, featured heroic SEALs. This time, the elite mariners weren’t slipping into a compound in Pakistan or on some crazy global quest, but killing pirates off the coast of Africa. The location was telling... ...Al-Rashq said that he appeared before the judge nearly ten times, and every time there were surprise witnesses, including settlers and members of the Israeli intelligence services who testified against him. Al-Rashq is a ninth grader who studies at the Islamic Orphanage in the old town. He explained that the investigators also used torture against other child detainees, adding that the investigators threatened him not to mention his torture or mistreatment inside the prison or else he would be beaten again. They also asked him to sign papers confirming that he was not beaten; however, he refused to sign them... [Sometimes I wonder if they’re actually human – and no, I’m not talking about the Palestinians.] Mar 29, 2014 Another excellent piece by the great warrior, for whom I have much affection. I sent him the following comment: “Dear Uri, I became convinced about 15 years ago that flags were actually important. So I created a website called Alternative Flags which, after a couple of years, morphed into a site about Israel/Palestine. I remain convinced that at a deep, mythical level, flags matter. Please click on the link below and let me know which design you prefer.” I wonder if he’ll be amused or pissed off. Probably the latter, I fear. After all, he still believes in at least the idea of a Jewish State, which makes him a Zionist, albeit an extremely attenuated and civilized one. But Zionism is the quintessential form of fascism, and fascists tend not to have a sense of humor, unless it’s at the expense of one of their enemies, which is pretty much everyone outside their chosen identity group. [Editor] ...The prizes we should be after are social justice and ecological sustainability in a meaningfully democratic society. The trees are the crimes and misdemeanors of various evil and/or incompetent executives and politicians. The forest is our vaunted corporate-capitalist system, the predatory essence of which makes those crimes—and worse—inevitable. The dance is the implicit bargain with powerful people and institutions struck by journalists, who agree not to point out that the whole system is morally indefensible, politically incoherent, and ecologically destructive... In December of 2013, the German and French press began reporting that Martin Heidegger’s so-called Black Notebooks, forthcoming as volumes 94 to 96 of his Gesamtausgabe, contain passages that constitute an anti-Semitic “smoking gun” (or maybe just a smoking chimney).. Heidegger spoke against the “Jewification of German intellectual life.” But, we are told, Heidegger was only a “spiritual” or “cultural” anti-Semite rather than a racial one. Beyond that, Heidegger opposed displays of vulgar and petty anti-Semitism while he was Rector of the University of Freiburg... On Wednesday, March 26, Barack Obama gave an impassioned speech at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, condemning Russia’s "assault" on Ukraine and extolling the virtues of the Atlantic Empire. Eleven years since his predecessor’s invasion of Iraq, fifteen years since the U.S-led NATO aggression in Serbia, Mr. Obama tried to lecture Moscow about "the belief among some that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way" and the "recycled maxim that might, somehow, makes right." His indignation would be a lot more righteous if the government that actually held such a belief, and recycled the said maxim, were not his own... President Obama’s recent speeches condemning the Crimean secession as much worse than anything else in recent history have raised a lot of eyebrows, as yesterday he bizarrely tried to portray the bloody US occupation of Iraq as much less of a deal. But Obama appears now to be inventing events wholesale to try to rebrand them, claiming that in contrast to the Crimean secession, Kosovo seceded from Serbia after a referendum organized “in careful cooperation with the United Nations.” While Iraq may have been a bizarrely skewed interpretation of what happened, Kosovo is just a flat out lie... Following a siege of Kiev parliament building by the Right Sector nationalists, Ukraine’s security officials have discussed banning the movement during an urgent security meeting.. President Obama just went to Flanders Field in Belgium to pay homage to those who lost their lives in World War I. But rather than use the occasion to point out the idiotic hideousness of that war, he whitewashed it, praising “the profound sacrifice they made so that we might stand here today.” He saluted their “willingness to fight, and die, for the freedom that we enjoy as their heirs.” But this was not a war for freedom. It was a triumph of nationalism, pitting one nation’s vanity against another. It was a war between empires for the spoils... Intellectually, this is like Mohammed Ali sparring with a Barbie Doll. Barbie’s contribution is a lot of infantile squealing [Editor].. Today I am going to look into the topic of Orthodox and Muslim cooperation, suggest one possible approach to this issue and give a practical example were this could be done immediately and with great benefit for all the parties involved.. I will limit my scope to the topic of cooperation between Orthodox Christians and non-Wahabi Muslims.. when I will speak of 'Christian' below this will strictly refer to Orthodox Christians and 'Muslim' will refer to any Muslim except Wahabis... ...whether or not the Six Million are a historical reality, it is the Professor who states that they have in any case acquired the status of a secular religion. Does it take a supposedly irreligious man to discern what serves as the main religion of our times ? I might wish a few more Catholics would have the gumption to see and say what is today’s main rival to their true religion. Here is a very brief overview of an article written on the subject in 2008 by Professor Faurisson:.. [You don't have to be a Roman Catholic, or anything with a label for that matter, to see the obvious - the Holycause is the dominant religion of our time, at least in the West. To classify it as a false religion is at the same time a matter of simple common sense and also considerable courage. What Bishop Williamson - a modern Thomas More - and many others have endured at the hands of the new, kosher Holy Inquisition is unspeakable.] .."there would be no modern state of Israel without British Freemasonry. In the 1860s, the British-Israelite movement was initiated from within Freemasonry. Its goal was to establish a Jewish-Masonic state in the Turkish province of Palestine...Initially, British Jewish Masonic families like the Rothschilds and Montefiores provided the capital to build the infrastructure for the anticipated wave of immigration. However, luring the Jews to Israel was proving difficult. They, simply, liked European life too much to abandon it. So Europe was to be turned into a nightmare for the Jews.." The current global stage is dominated by the attempt of historical centers of imperialism (the US, Western and Central Europe, Japan - hereafter called "the Triad") to maintain their exclusive control over the planet through a combination of: so-called neo-liberal economic globalization policies allowing financial transnational capital of the Triad to decide alone on all issues in their exclusive interests; the military control of the planet by the US and its subordinate allies (NATO and Japan) in order to annihilate any attempt by any country not of the Triad to move out from under their yoke... [My comment on the page: “If the writer had written "USrael" instead of "the US" in the first sentence I would have given the piece 5 stars. However, by leaving out Israel, the one power that to a large extent actually runs the whole show, the whole argument is rendered hollow.”] English translation of recorded conversation between Turkish Foreign Minister, Chief of Intelligence, Deputy Chief of General Staff, and Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs about massive military aid to jihadist terrorists in Syria, black ops, and war plans to invade Syria, as well as the general disarray and goofiness in Erdogan's Islamic dictatorship. Erdogan and his corralled media have branded all those who distribute this video as traitors. That we are, traitors to his phenomenally profitable bribes and corruption business fueled by Gulf money that he reels in thanks to the heads he has chopped off in Syria... [Back in the day when the American media were more than a mere tool of the ZPC (Zionist Power Configuration) this would have been top-of-the-fold news. And it would have been there during the flap between Erdogan and Israel over the Mavi Marmara incident. But Israel and Turkey are back to being buddies again.] Internationals from 20 countries came to Istanbul to hear testimony on March 27, 2014 against Israeli officials and to offer their support to the victims on board the Mavi Marmara. Many of these supporters had also been attacked on other flotilla boats; suffering wounds, unlawful detention, torture and theft of money, credit cards and possessions at the hands of the Israeli militants.. We are hopeful that the court in Turkey will issue arrest warrants for the Israeli officials who ordered the raid on six civilian boats in international waters, and that these warrants will be turned over and executed by Interpol... The United States is continuing to ratchet up its low-intensity sanctions regime against Russia, introducing measures that include a ban on exporting defense items and services to Russia to pressure Moscow over recent events in Ukraine. US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told a news conference Thursday that the latest sanctions followed a Commerce Department ban on the export to Russia of "dual use" items that potentially have military applications... ...After Israel started to shun Palestinian workers, it began bringing in workers from Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, Turkey, Romania, Nigeria and Colombia; the Zionist ethos was built upon the sweat, work and tears of non-Jewish workers.. They are paid travel expenses, a basic health package, and get the minimum salary allowed by law. $200 is not much even in Thailand; that’s why only Thais from the most remote sites join the project. If the workers want to send something home, they must save on essentials.. In the first years, they shocked Israelis when, desperately hungry, they ate dogs... ...It may well be that out of the present hot rhetoric comes the logic for a surprising new bipolar world. On one hand, Washington holds on to sentimental if wobbly allies in NATO. On the other hand, Moscow and Beijing command vast energy and trade resources through their economic and military ties to the predatory but vulnerable Iran. It would be easy then to add Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia and India as SCO members, creating a contiguous bloc across Asia... ...America's Constitution prohibits cruel and usual punishment. US courts interpret this to mean prisoners requiring medical care receive what's necessary to treat them.. US prison authorities do what they please. So do their Israeli counterparts.. Access to proper care is poor at best. The same holds for Palestinians in Israeli prisons and then some. Conditions resemble gulag hell... President Vladimir Putin has ordered all weapons and hardware left by the Ukrainian military after Crimea’s accession to Russia to be returned to Ukraine... [If the shoe were on the other foot – say, that it was the US rather than Russia - would they have returned it? Not a chance in hell – as far as the Empire is concerned, everything everywhere belongs to them.] President Barack Obama may authorize the shipment of new air defense systems to rebel forces in Syria’s ongoing civil war, a new Associated Press report states. Citing an unnamed US official, the AP stated Obama is mulling over the idea of sending man-portable air-defense systems, also known as MANPADs, to Syrian opposition groups, a move that would mark a notable shift compared to the White House’s past statements... [Making deals with the devil is hardly unprecedented – for the Empire it’s been SOP for most of the last 100 years] Mar 28, 2014 Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley is an exacting account of how the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the European central banks, and the giant investment banks that dominate them (e.g. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan) came to control all western governments. According to Quigley, banks have controlled western society – by manipulating the money supply – since the creation of the Bank of England and the fractional reserve lending system in 1694... Students at London University’s prestigious King College have delivered a blow to Israel by voting to endorse the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) against the world’s only apartheid state. The motion, adopted on 25 March, was passed by 348 to 252 votes... ...The shocking videos of the US Embassy funded street thugs have been widely distributed on the Net now… with beating up Parliament members, the TV station chief, and slapping around a local prosecutor to convince him that arresting Right Sector thugs on any charges at all would be suicide. The beating, threats and intimidation campaign were rolled out very quickly over just a few days and had a chilling effect. That showed that it had already been planned... Barack Obama is one smooth operator, relentlessly expanding on the fascist domestic and international infrastructure bequeathed him by George W. Bush, the cartoon cowboy imperialist. As we described him in 2012, Obama is truly the “more effective evil” – a president who routinely commits the most brazen aggressions under the lawless doctrine of “humanitarian” intervention, and who has utterly trashed due process and the rule of law on the domestic front. If you want to see fascism built right, get a Black Harvard man to do it – and watch the internal resistance crumble... With fully one Ukrainian soldier confirmed dead and several others wounded in myriad clashes, world leaders seem agreed that the Russian annexation of Crimea is the worst thing to happen within their collective memories. Then someone, likely just to bum everyone out, brought up Iraq.. President Obama went on a lengthy diatribe about how the decade-long US occupation of Iraq, which left roughly a million people dead and the entire region awash in al-Qaeda factions, was nowhere near as bad a thing as Crimea... [After Obama’s turn on the DC stage, he could team up with GW Bush (or McCain) in an updated Laurel and Hardy act. It could be marketed as a 21st Century political Minstrel Show. One obvious skit would be a Simon Legree and Uncle Tom takeoff. Could be hilarious.] Let's start with the serious stuff. As Russia's Federation Council ratifies a treaty with Crimea, concluding the formal annexation, Ukraine signs the political chapters of an association agreement with the European Union (EU). The signing of the full EU agreement will only happen later in 2014. These are the facts on the ground. Now let's turn to comedy hour - also known as the sanctions war... When US President Barack Obama opened his tour of Europe this week it had the unmistakable choreography of a scripted set piece: lights, camera, action etc. The storyline is a familiar trope. America, the shining beacon of democracy and human rights, comes to the rescue of European damsels in distress just before they are ravaged by bestial European recidivism for war. European political figures of increasingly low caliber are indulging this American parody of reality by appearing to unite around Obama’s call for tougher sanctions against Russia... Against the background of what is happening in and around Crimea, the war in Syria has been somewhat relegated to the sidelines of world politics. In the meantime, the country has experienced some extremely important events in the last few days that have spoiled the mood of the White House even further. The Syrian army has cleared the Qalamoun region of opposing forces, which is strategically as important as the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan... There are pretty good signs that the shots which killed Aleksandr Muzychko might turn out to be the first ones of the upcoming civil war. So far, what happened was not a civil war, but a armed insurrection followed by a coup, a revolution for sure, but not a civil war. What is beginning to take place now is very different. Consider this:.. Prior to the March 16 referendum, the BBC website reported: 'Crimeans will vote on whether they want their autonomous republic to break away from Ukraine and join Russia.' The title of the news report indicated the focus: 'Is Crimea's referendum legal?' The answer: 'Ukraine and the West have dismissed the referendum as illegal and one that will be held at gunpoint, but Russia supports it.' Legality was not an issue in BBC coverage of the January 2005 election held in Iraq under US-UK occupation. This was accepted on the main BBC evening news as 'the first democratic election in fifty years'.. What a splendid outcome that would be. A sane reader would stand up and applaud, along with Bertrand Russell’s ghost. The British Empire depended heavily on Scottish and Irish cannon fodder. Ireland’s gone, except for the rump colony of Ulster, and Scotland may take its leave as well. All good. Who knows? Maybe England would become livable again. [Ed.] ..We got off on the wrong foot back in the 1940s. If you look closely enough, you can see ongoing damage from that poor launch in which the United States was visited by the government-in-waiting, the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, and rather than do anything else, they set up a vast, illegal smuggling network through an archipelago of non-profit organizations that were there specifically to steal WWII surplus and channel it to Jewish fighters in Palestine. Some of the materiel was bought for cents on the dollar; some of the materiel was stolen outright from the U.S. Marines in Hawaii. ..This past week has been nothing short of inspirational. Hundreds of Palestinian students, SAFE activists and allies from dozens of student organizations persevered through a weeklong sit-in, which transformed the Central Student Government (CSG) chambers into the “Edward Said Lounge.” The sit-in action in the Michigan Union captivated the University’s attention and reminded campus of the time when a coalition of students of color took over the Michigan Union secret society tower space in 2000... Ideologue Daniel Jonah Goldhagen.. declared that Israel over the years has maintained “a robust and vibrant democracy,” and that the Arabs should look up to Israel in order to free themselves from the shackles of undemocratic government. There is no doubt that Goldhagen knows what he is doing, because scholars of various stripes have shown him the utter silliness of many of his sophomoric arguments. In fact, after much reflection on Goldhagen’s writing, Norman Finkelstein actually called him “the Holocaust industry poster boy..” If you take politicians and the mainstream media seriously, you believe that Iran wants a nuclear weapon and has relentlessly engaged in covert efforts to build one. Even if you are aware that Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is subject to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections, you may believe that those who run the Islamic Republic have cleverly found ways to construct a nuclear-weapons industry almost undetected. Therefore, you may conclude, Democratic and Republican administrations have been justified in pressuring Iran to come clean and give up its “nuclear program.” But you would be wrong... ...by the magic of the interwebs, we have the ‘leaked’ clip and it is clear why he wanted it blocked/banned. As the rough translation explains, it purports to be a conversation between key Turkish military and political leaders discussing what appears to be a false flag attack to launch war with Syria... Mar 27, 2014 ..each and every one of them is subjected to a policy of oppression and occupation, and is under the danger of being either ethnically cleansed or killed or imprisoned. I think the worst place, nowadays, is probably the Gaza Strip, where the ghettoization of the Strip continues, especially with the new policies of the Egyptian government, that in a way copies the Israeli policies now. And so the siege is even tighter than it was before, and most human rights organizations are fearful of a huge human catastrophe that can happen any day in Gaza... [At some point in the near future it will become obvious even to the brainwashed public in the West that the malignant tumor called Israel must be surgically removed. Otherwise, the host – the whole interconnected world – is in grave danger. This needn’t be a violent or even painful procedure. It only requires a political reconfiguration from a fascist, colonialist, apartheid state engaged in ruthless ethnic cleansing and oppression and ruling over a helpless population to a state of all its citizens, aka the One State Solution. It isn’t rocket science.] This lecture by the Palestinian historian, Prof. Walid Khalidi, Institute for Palestine Studies, Beirut entitled “Palestine and Palestine Studies, One Century since the First World War and the Balfour Declaration” was given on 6th March 2014 at the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS, University of London. In his lecture, Prof. Walid Khalidi shared his views and opinion about Zionism and the current situation of Palestine/Israel conflict... Recent reports from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the accuracy of which have been admitted by the White House but denied in Tel Aviv, have it that around half of Syria’s chemical weapons have left the country. One hundred percent are believed to have been neutralized, which would make Syria well along the path to meeting the agreed June 30 discard date... [Fat chance - the duplicitous silver-tongued speechwriter has never done so before] The recent resurrection of Mohammad Dahlan by several Arab governments, Israel and the US is a most important development for the future of the Palestinian cause, Palestinian Authority (PA)-Israel negotiations, and Hamas-ruled Gaza. Dahlan is viewed, by many Palestinians, as the most corrupt official in the history of the Palestinian national movement (and there are many contenders for that title)... Harvard Professor Stephen Walt has described the current contretemps over Ukraine as “geostrategic incompetence of the highest order” on the part of the White House. Seconding that I would add that the central problem with the Obama foreign policy, guided as it is by a bundle of poorly defined principles, is that it has no coherency... ...US Ambassador Samantha Powers was quoted as saying, “A thief can steal property, but that does not confer the right of ownership on the thief..” Let’s for the sake of argument agree with Ms Powers’ assessment calling Russian support for the “overwhelming” wishes of 96 per cent of voters as theft. Using the same parallels, how about Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights? It is this thief which Ms Powers supports at the UN Security Council to expropriate occupied land to build “Jewish only” homes... ["the property of a Gentile, according to our law, belongs to no one, and the first Jew that passes has full right to seize it." ~ Schulchan Aruch, Choszen Hamiszpat 156] The observation that the Chinese characters for the word "crisis" combine the characters for "danger" and "opportunity" has become a staple of Washington foreign policy discourse for years. So it's no surprise that the ongoing crisis in Ukraine - and Russia's de facto absorption of Crimea - provides lots of "opportunities" for various interests to push their favorite causes.. The notion of a new Cold War appeared to offer all kinds of opportunities for those interests nostalgic for the financial and bureaucratic benefits which it wrought... Any (bureaucratic) doubts the New Cold War is on have been dispelled by the Group of Seven issuing a pompous, self-described Hague Declaration. Abandon all hope those who expected The Hague to become the seat of a tribunal judging the war crimes of the Cheney regime. The G-7 also cancelled its upcoming summer summit in Sochi as a means of "punishing" Moscow over Crimea. As if this carried any practical value. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded with class; if you don't want us, we have better things to do... ...Biden reminded Russia that article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty considers an attack on any NATO member to be an attack on all. He added that the United States was “absolutely committed” to defending its allies. “We’re in this with you, together,” he told the Baltic leaders. Those comments confirm that U.S. policymakers have apparently forgotten NATO’s original strategic purpose. Indeed, they have apparently forgotten what the purpose should be of any U.S. military alliance: to enhance the security of the American republic. The commitments to NATO easternmost members threaten to do the opposite: greatly increase the risks to America for the most meager possible benefits... [Inside the beltway malevolent idiots reign supreme – it’s been this way for a long time] ...NATO is now in overdrive selling the notion that Ukraine is “under threat” – and should join as soon as possible. NATO’s secretary-general – the astonishingly mediocre American poodle, Anders Fogh Rasmussen - said we’re living the most serious threat to Europe’s security since the end of the Cold War: “This is a wake-up call. For the Euro-Atlantic community. For NATO. And for all those committed to a Europe whole, free and at peace.’’ He forgot to add: a Europe under free and peaceful submission to the Pentagon... It’s longstanding US policy. In his March 18 address on Crimea, Putin was right saying: “(W)e have every reason to assume that the infamous policy of containment, led in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, continues today.” Western nations are “constantly trying to sweep us into a corner because we have an independent position, because we maintain it, and because we call things like they are and do not engage in hypocrisy..” Last month, Pando’s Mark Ames reported that Omidyar Networks, the philanthropic organization operated by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife Pamela, had co-invested with the US government in opposition groups that played a key role in organizing Ukraine’s recent revolution. Unsurprisingly, given Omidyar is now running First Look Media, a journalistic enterprise dedicated to exposing US government wrongdoing around the world, some FLM staffers and supporters rushed to cry foul over our report... Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, on Friday called on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to assess the legal status of Israel's prolonged occupation of Palestine. Falk accuses Israel of engaging in colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing and argues that the ongoing settlement undermines the peace process. Falk, who is scheduled to step down as special rapporteur at the end of the month, has made a number of controversial statements during his tenure, including accusing Israel of war crimes and calling for a boycott of companies assisting Israel in building settlements... [He has all the right enemies, which confirms his unique status as a spokesperson for humanity] VT has dared to print this. We shy away from nothing, America has already given up too many rights, rights we have fought for and will fight for again. Here, Dr. Zundel cites America’s Neocon traitors as Marxists. For many of us here, our own separate “path of discovery” has led us inexorably to the same conclusion, that the “Bush revolution” was everything but “Reaganesque” or even conservative. America, like Germany in the 20′s, has been overrun by Bolsheviks, repackaged as “neocons,” as “Zionists” and even as “Christian evangelists.” They have been lovers of totalitarianism, of war, of “one world government” and of concentration camps and torture... What does Benjamin Netanyahu hope comes next, after his stalling formally ends the peace process? My best guess is he thinks that, if he can hold on a couple more years, he will have in office the Republican candidate of his choice. Am I suggesting that Netanyahu can decide who is US president? No, but a good friend of his may be able to... These days, you can order almost anything by phone. Books. Movies. Food. Sex. Salvation? Sure, why not. Salvation. And not just any old kind, but the kind you can only get by virtue of an appeal to one of Israel’s most notorious killers: Baruch Goldstein. Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs 20 years ago, and to this day right-wing Jews still flock to his grave in nearby Kiryat Arba. They go there to pray, hoping that proximity to this “holy man” will help get their prayers through the pearly gates... [For the purpose of amusement only. Reading this will not earn you a seat in Heaven next to G-d.] Natalia Poklonskaya, the newly minted Prosecutor General appointed by the secessionist government of Crimea, has captured the hearts and minds of RuNet, and, surprisingly, Japan. A video from her March 11 press conference accepting the position has over a million views on YouTube, perhaps because of her incongruously youthful appearance (she is actually 33) combined with the seriousness of her office... ...With a new cold war looming over Ukraine, and Syria still engulfed by endless carnage, is it too much of a luxury to be poring over these exotic but largely forgotten episodes from the annals of diplomacy? No less a person than Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, publicly posed that question recently, and answered with an emphatic "no". And Mr Lavrov's remarks are worth studying closely, just as a historian might parse the cables of his predecessor, Count Mikhail Muraviev (pictured above), who was the master of the Tsar's diplomacy. With an almost British flair for understatement, the current foreign minister said... On March 26, 2014, Reuters published that Lev Leviev, an Israeli-Bukharian businessman who is a close friend of Russian President Putin, will open a deep-sea phosphate mine off the Namibian coast. The agreement with Namibia was achieved after an eighteen moths freeze due to environmental concerns in the negotiations. Active in the blood-diamonds' business, Leviev brings further economic terror to Africa... [From blood diamonds to blood phosphates. Maintaining an ancient, dishonorable tradition. What a macher!] Brace yourselves: Ukraine could end up with an Israeli as president. The Israeli news website Ynet reports that Vadim Rabinovich, a Ukrainian Jewish oligarch who holds an Israeli passport and has lived in the apartheid state of Israel, has announced that he will run for Ukrainian president. He is one of four people to announce their presidential bid for the elections scheduled for 25 May... [If he wins, will he insist on being addressed as Mein Führer?] Mar 26, 2014 To listen to the endless cacophony from American global interventionists who are regularly booked on the major American news networks to spew their neo-Cold War rhetoric, one might think that we are back in the 1960s during the dark days of fractious U.S.-Soviet relations. However, there are a growing number of voices in the United States who do not want to play the game of the neo-conservatives and «set back» the clock of Washington-Moscow relations to the Cold War era... BRICS have slammed recent reports ahead of the G20 meet to isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin or to place any restrictions on his participation at the G-20 summit in Australia later this year. “The Ministers noted with concern, the recent media statement on the forthcoming G20 Summit to be held in Brisbane in November 2014. The custodianship of the G20 belongs to all Member States equally and no one Member State can unilaterally determine its nature and character..” ...Obama, Congress, and NATO all declare Russia will soon invade and annex its former Soviet satellite states. The establishment media, however, omits the fact that NATO and the West have successfully annexed 12 countries that were members of the Warsaw Pact and three former members of the Soviet Union. This occurred despite assurances by the United States it would not move on Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev was told that if Soviet troops withdrew from East Germany, NATO would not move “one inch east,” a promise the U.S. soon violated... ...we have been hearing accusations against Russia regards the illegality of the connection of Crimea, even the use of the term “annexation” lately.. When my colleagues, whom I contact regularly, both from the west and others, including the heads of several international organisations attempt to use the term “annexation”, I offer them a simple answer:. It is impossible to play, rehearse or stage this joy, this true happiness... A fierce war of words ensued between China and the U.S. following President Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama. Recently Obama has taken active measures to stage a “nuclear war” around China’s borders. According to a Feb. 24 report from China’s Xinhua News, President Obama approved the U.S.-Vietnam Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement on Feb. 24. He expressed that implementation of this pact should promote “common defense and security” and not constitute “unreasonable risk..” This paper examines the basis for the ethics of genocide: why there is a concept of genocide, and its origins. The concept is identified both as propaganda, and as part of the legitimation of nationalism. Nationalism is itself a spatial form of the legitimation of political decisions - nations limit territorial "opting out". The article lists the claims of nations, which underlie the present world order: claims to global territorial control, to inclusivity, to a monopoly of state formation and thus autonomy, and to legitimacy unlimited in time. Since these features combine to block developments which are themselves legitimate, it is concluded that a contra-nationalism is legitimate... More thinking outside the box... As Russia tightens its grip on Crimea, the European Union and the U.S. are poised to hand over billions in aid to Ukraine’s new leadership. The interim government in Kiev, led by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, has promised, in Yatsenyuk’s words, to pursue “real reforms to stabilize the Ukrainian economy” while strengthening ties with the country’s European neighbors. Will they deliver? Here are four unpleasant truths about Ukraine and the people now running it... ...The Foreign Affairs Minister of the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, the very glamorous Nina Shtanski, welcomed the outcome of Crimea’s referendum on self-determination and recalled that on 17 September 2006, in an analogous vote, 97.2% of Transnistrians had come out in favor of becoming part of the Russian Federation. The President of Transnistria’s Parliament, Mikhail Burla, wrote to his Russian counterpart asking him to pass a law on the accession of Transnistria to the Russian Federation emulating, what has been done for Crimea... The recent robbing of passengers, traveling from Russia to Moldova via Ukraine’s territory, by a local ultra-nationalist Insurgent Army is a manifestation of “anarchy,” the Russian Foreign Ministry has said. On March 21, the train, en route from Moscow to the capital of Moldova, Chisinau, made a scheduled stop in the city of Vinnitsa in central Ukraine... [The US/EU/fascist putsch could unravel rapidly] Bizarre on the verge of hallucinated was the only sensible reaction to the news. Judging by Netanyahu's face in the picture accompanying it, he agrees with me. Israel Police gave him the sword of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the main ideologue behind what now is the Likud party headed by Prime Minister Netanyahu... Explaining the unusual growth of Israel and predicting its future solicits comparisons between the Zionist adventure and previous historical episodes. As circumstances and facts on the ground change, so does the comparison of the Middle East crisis with past dramas... Israel is becoming an unattractive proposition not just for the ever growing proportion of civilized human beings who are backing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, but for Israelis themselves. A study of 501 Hebrew-speaking Israelis aged 15-18, commissioned by the Zionist Council in Israel and conducted by the Midgam Research Institute, found that about a quarter of secular Israeli youth wanted to leave Israel and make their lives elsewhere... Washington is making hay of its defeat in Ukraine: it is getting the Europeans to cut themselves off economically from Russia and is already imposing on them the expansion of its missile coverage. While the Western media focus on NATO’s narrative of events (the so-called "military annexation" of Crimea), the Alliance is noiselessly deploying its imperial apparatus... ...In the wake of the revelations regarding torture and detainee abuse in US prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention elsewhere around the world), the primary response by the rulers and the media was one that attempted to redefine those acts as something other than torture. By doing so, Washington and London hoped to legitimize the actions of their torturers. As noted before, given the lack of prosecution by the legal systems in either country, it would appear that they have succeeded. This would not be possible without the acceptance by the public of such methods... ...Indiscriminate bombing of civilians, instead of sticking to military targets, is usually defended as (1) a response to similarly indiscriminate bombing campaigns by the Germans, like in the Blitz, and (2) the only way to completely bring down the Nazi regime. “Overy demonstrates, however, that the tactic of bombing urban areas had been put into action by the British before the Blitz,” Macintyre reports. And as for the second justification:.. Saudi Arabia is one of a handful of Middle East anachronisms: a family-based monarchy that believes it sits at the right hand of God. The Saud clan that rules in Saudi Arabia is both insular and fanatic. It is devoted to the Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam, perhaps the most strict and intolerant manifestation of the religion. Except for the religious details, there is really not much difference between the respective outlooks of a Wahhabi true believer, a hard-core Christian fundamentalist, and the Jewish extremists in Israel... The events in Ukraine since the start of anti-Yanukovich protests last November have been reported in Germany and in the Western mainstream media such that we are led to believe the ousted Yanukovich regime was evil and the new regime are the good democrats. What has been deliberately censored from Western media is the reality on the ground. Here are a number of amateur videos filmed during and after the coup that paint an alarming picture of the new regime that now might join NATO if Washington has its way... The military coup in Egypt provides a fascinating insight into the mindsets of the national-security establishments in both Egypt and the United States. After all, don’t forget: It has been the U.S. national-security state that has, over the decades, funded, built up, fortified, trained, and closely worked with the Egyptian military-intelligence establishment. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the mindsets of those who manage these two massive national-security state structures in both countries are similar to each other... ” I am ready to grab a machinegun and shoot that motherf__ker [Putin] in the head.” ” I would have found a way to kill those assh_les. I hope I will be able to get all of my connections involved.” ” And I will use all of my means to make the entire world rise up, so there wouldn’t even be a scorched field left in Russia..” [Gee, Captain Amerika, what nice friends you have] ...Mahmoud Abbas always kept his promise to Israel, committed to “peaceful and negotiated settlements” even if there is nothing left of Palestine, agreeing not to incite any civil and unarmed uprising against the continued Israeli Occupation, declaring himself against the “boycott of Israel” as was the case with Apartheid South Africa, but broke all of his promises to the Palestinian people, certainly breaking his repeated “threats” not to return to negotiations while Israel continued with its settlement and promise to return the “keys” of the Occupation to Israel, a tacit approval that he, the PLO, PA and Fatah as managers and trusted keepers of the Israeli Occupation... Mar 25, 2014 Extra! Extra! Read All About It! Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin The breakdown of the Palestinian Authority would turn the West Bank into a violent, criminal, chaotic, disease-ridden place. But even though most Palestinians want the PA to survive, either for the sake of basic social order or personal interest, and although Israel dreads having to resume responsibility for 3 million West Bankers, President Mahmoud Abbas’ regime will collapse before too long if Israel continues to thwart Palestinian aspirations for independence. This is the conclusion of a massive six-month study by the highly-regarded Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah... ["If the Palestinian Authority passes into irrelevance or collapses (as now seems likely) calls for a one-state solution to the conflict will come out of the shadows and enter the mainstream." ~ Alvaro de Soto] ...a poll this month of US public opinion revealed a startling finding. Despite a US political climate committed to a two-state solution, nearly two-thirds of Americans back a single democratic state for Jews and Palestinians should a Palestinian state prove unfeasible. That view is shared by more than half of Israel’s supporters in the US. That would constitute a paradigm shift, a moment of reckoning that draws nearer by the day as the peace process again splutters into irrelevance... Lately I’ve been looking at Israelis closely. / I’ve been looking them straight in the eye, to see if they know. / If they have a clue. / Any clue. / About what’s in their future. / The not too distant future. / Most probably in the lifetimes of many of them. / I look at them closely... [Only if the Palestinians allow them to stay, which I would strongly advise against] What to do about Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea? This is the question of the hour for the War Party, and they are tearing their hair out in a paroxysm of frustration about what course to take. The Obama administration, for its part, seems content to get up on its high horse and issue feckless denunciations which aren’t all that convincing even to those who have joined the rapidly-expanding Russia-Haters Club... ...Russia reacted like it did because of NATO's expansion since the late 1990. Such a reaction was utterly foreseeable and was foreseen when the very first NATO expansion towards the East happened. George Kennan was the U.S. diplomat and Russia specialist who developed the cold war strategy of containment of the Soviet Union, though he later criticized its militaristic implementation. In 1998, when the Senate voted to extend NATO to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, Kennan was asked to comment... Have we narrowly averted a war with Iran, and were the Neocons again behind the bellicose threats against Tehran? Investigative journalist Gareth Porter offers his perspective, as detailed in Manufactured Crisis in this interview with Truthout... It was almost ten years ago when, before the House International Relations Committee, I objected to the US Government funding NGOs to meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine. At the time the “Orange Revolution” had forced a regime change in Ukraine with the help of millions of dollars from Washington. At that time I told the Committee:.. [The best account that I’ve read of the reality behind the love-and-lighty façade of the major NGOs is in Paul Theroux’s 'Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown'. As always from this exceptional traveler and observer, a hell of a good read.] ...The roots of the problem go back as far as 1845 when John Sullivan offered the concept of American Lebensraum – the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. His follower Joshua Strong filled it with geopolitical essence – the creation of all-American empire. Along with the Monroe doctrine, the concepts have become a kind of theological basis for conquest and subjugation of the world by the United States. In this context the conflicts in Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Ukraine are the continuation of the war... [The Russians are no dummies – they have taken the measure of Leviathan] Beyond the emphatic cries of the West against the accession of the Crimea to the Russian Federation, the real issue is whether this is an orphan event or whether it foreshadows a turning of Eastern Europe toward Moscow. With only enslavement to the Brussels bureaucracy to offer, Brussels fears that existing clients may be attracted by Moscow’s freedom and money... The crisis over Crimea has naturally raised questions about possible effects of this disturbance on other issues and specifically ones that depend on U.S.-Russian cooperation. This includes the negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov raised eyebrows with a comment this week about how dealings with Iran may be an area where his government would look for possible options in responding to Western sanctions against Russia... The mainstream western media has presented a united front in its coverage of events in the Ukraine since the Maidan protests began in late November 2013. The same narrative has informed the comments and actions of the so-called ‘international community’ – typically an anglo-american-zionist.. but on this occasion also including enthusiastic backing from the EU. Within the UN, the narrative enjoys the support of all individuals, institutions and NGO’s that are typically aligned with/controlled by the ‘international community’. As a result, the ‘man in the street’ in New York, London or Paris has absorbed the same narrative - wherever he/she turns.. they encounter a consistent narrative... The West's interests in Ukraine may be part of a much bigger picture. That's according to former German MP and Vice President of the OSCE Assembly, Willy Wimmer. Back in 90's, he expressed alarm over NATO's expansion plans during the alliance's bombing campaign of Yugoslavia. In fact, he was so concerned - he wrote a letter to then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Now Willy Wimmer believes that plan is still in action and the crisis in Ukraine is a major part of achieving it... First the good news: the Royal Institute of British Architects has voted to call on the International Union of Architects to suspend the Israeli Association of United Architects. Here's the resolution: “Since the Israeli Association of United Architects has paid no regard to the UIA resolution 13 of 2005 and 2009, the RIBA calls on the UIA, as the international guardian of professional and ethical standards in our profession, to suspend the membership of the Israeli Association of United Architects, until it acts to resist these illegal projects, and observes international law, the UIA Accords and Resolution 13.” The Jewish Chronicle's report on the motion was surprisingly factual but the editorial is lunacy itself:.. Ukrainians must take up arms against Russians so that not even scorched earth will be left where Russia stands; an example of former Ukrainian PM Yulia Tymoshenko’s vitriol in phone call leaked online... ...Last week, Abbas told Fatah’s revolutionary council that he wouldn’t conclude his life with betraying the Palestinian national cause. That was probably the best thing Abbas has ever said.. I have no doubt in my mind that Muhammed Dahlan is a key Israeli agent in the Palestinian arena. At the very least, he has been acting like one. His mission has always been to fight the Islamists and destabilize political life in the occupied territories, all on Israel’s behalf... ...In 2013, Israel murdered at least two dozen other nonviolent Palestinians. Four were young children. They were shot in cold blood. Some in the back. Thousands of Palestinians are wounded annually. Thousands more are lawlessly arrested and detained. Many get long prison terms. Their crime is wanting to live free in peace on their own land in their own country... Let me start by saying that you have done a lot for BDS and that BDS has done a lot for the Palestinian cause. It is perhaps for this reason that we should all be concerned with potential corruption of the movement, and you most of all. I refer to changes of wording, changes of direction and changes of priority within the movement... [Is Barghouti, to some extent at least, an agent of Israel? It could well be.] ...There were two levels to the American control of their "backyard".. The first was political and was best defined by the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Monroe defined an American position regarding the Americas: European powers are to be kept out at all costs.. The second level is military; the book deals mainly with the situation in Argentina, but it applies also to what is known as the "Southern Cone" (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay).. All of them experienced some of the most ruthless military-terror dictatorships during the 20th century.. This military-terror machinery had been trained by the USA and was designed to perform exactly that: civil terror for the profit of Empire... ...it was the largest attack ever undertaken by the alliance. It was also the first time that NATO used military force without the approval of the UN Security Council and against a sovereign nation that did not pose a real threat to any member of the alliance. NATO demonstrated in 1999 that it can do whatever it wants under the guise of “humanitarian intervention,” “war on terror,” or “preventive war” – something that everyone has witnessed in subsequent years in different parts of the globe... ...The majority of Germans who are discussing this important international event on Internet forums are making more neutral remarks, but express understanding for Russia's actions... The Russian president's speech and his arguments seemed convincing even to those who admit that they do not sympathize with Moscow: «In this case Putin is right, he has acted intelligently, the Russians are proud of him; the government in Kiev is unlawful, and they should not be dealt with».. Seth Ferris gives us a breath-catching look back on some of the Ukraine events with a long needed look at the chaos of legal versus illegal claims being made in the 21st century, despite all of the international organizations, treaties and case law we have behind us.. Israel comes to mind as one glaring example of ignoring any international jurisprudence whatsoever, even though it has used courts around the world to extort WWII reparations from innocent contemporary victims while refusing to admit they are the new primo victimizer. Are the Zios not the "gold standard" for that peculiarity?.. Mar 24, 2014 The Ukrainian crisis? It is basically the opposite of what the media and politicians keep repeating both in the US and Europe. They say that the so-called International community have isolated Russia and Vladimir Putin. In fact it is the real sponsors of the coup d’état and the violence in Ukraine who are isolated not only morally but also strategically. And it is Putin, the first leader who resisted and defeated the strategy of world domination, who is enjoying the enthusiastic support of his people and the growing admiration of the world... [And who woulda thunk it. But it is as it is.] Saddam Hussein has already been executed, and so has Osama bin Laden. But all is not lost for the enlightened West. There is a new devil, and his name is Vladimir Putin. He hates gay people, so the leaders of the enlightenment did not go to Sochi. Now he is occupying land, so sanctions and boycotts will be imposed upon him. The West is screaming bloody murder from wall to wall: How dare he annex territory in Crimea?.. ...It is the neocons who are the real vampires, promoting their not-so hidden agenda, subsisting on an evil elixir of blood and oil which they regurgitate into ink… useful for producing money and media which influences politicians who will, in turn, keep them employed. And they are legion, the earthly manifestation of a legendary demon that robs humans of their souls and condemns them to the living hell that is war... ...Khamenei frequently describes Israel (or at least Zionism) in the most despicable of terms, and calls for its destruction. In one of his most offensive moments in 2001, Khamenei was quoted as saying, “There is evidence which shows that Zionists had close relations with German Nazis and exaggerated statistics on Jewish killings.” Similarly, after a Danish newspaper published a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad, Khamenei noted that in the West, “casting doubt or negating the genocide of the Jews is banned but insulting the beliefs of 1.5 billion Muslims is allowed.”.. [The writer apparently has a problem with those statements. Why, I ask, since they are obviously true, backed up by numerous facts and documents. It’s amazing how many otherwise astute people are true believers in the Holycause religion. Such people are few and far between in Iran, which has been under attack for more than 50 years.] Thousands of people in Odessa, Ukraine’s vital port city, took to the streets on Sunday to protest against the usurpation of state power in the country and the unfolding political repressions. People were carrying the flags of Ukraine, Russia and Crimea and chanting ‘Ukraine and Russia Are Together’, ‘Odessa is a Russian City’, ‘Odessa Opposes Nazis and Oligarchs’, ‘Odessa Summon Your Courage and Drive Bandera Out’.. The Western Warmongers will not be denied. World instability provocations continue to roll out at a fast pace. It’s almost as if those orchestrating them do not want the public to be looking at any one aspect for too long, or too closely... The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan, and British Science Fiction writer Sir Arthur C Clarke along with English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author Stephen Hawking candidly discuss the Big Bang theory, Black Holes, God, our existence, the Universe as well as the possibility of extraterrestrial life... This song is inspired by an archaeology finding of a 3,800-year old middle-aged female body that was buried in sand located in the far Northwest area of China. The body was preserved so well that her hair, skin, nails were almost complete. She had sheep-skin covering, shoes, and hat on her body. Her face, nose, and eyes show that she was a beautiful woman when alive. "Lou Lan" is an old Chinese word for native people who lived in the areas of the finding. Archaeologists couldn't figure out why the body was able to last 3,800.. They named the body "Lou Lan Beauty". Dao Lang is a famous song writer and singer in China. Yun Duo, the singer of this song is his student... Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and I have something in common: we are both deeply concerned about the future of our respective tribes. Of course, unlike Lieberman’s concerns, mine are regarded, in a Western world dominated by the enemies of my people, as the illegitimate and malevolent product of a sick mind. It seems Lieberman can openly call for all young Jews to be placed in virtual ethnic quarantine to prevent race mixing (Jews call it “intermarriage”) and to be inculcated with a fervent ethnic pride and nationalism (Jews call it “Zionism”).. On this March 22, 2014, episode of The Martinez Perspective, host Brandon Martinez talks with Canadian journalist and author Greg Felton about Zionist power in Canada, myths and propaganda surrounding World War II and the abuse of history... Watchdogs from several European countries have noticed no indication of a massive build-up of Russian military that would threaten the security of neighboring states, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Sunday.. The Russian deputy defense minister urged Ukrainian and European watchdogs to update their corresponding governments on the actual situation on the Russian borders, saying a clearer picture would certainly de-escalate the situation in the region... [Not too bloody like, unfortunately. The Empire has its agenda and they aren't about to let such irrelevant trivia as facts get in their way.] Can a secular country behave according to religious principles? A few months ago the secular Israeli administration tried to decide the identity of the Chief Rabbi. This action failed and was one of the triggers in the ongoing amalgamation of Jewish Ultra-Orthodoxy as a coordinated political force opposing Zionism... Ali Abunimah introduced his new book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine, to about thirty people at a presentation at UM Dearborn (University of Michigan, Dearborn campus) last Tuesday. I asked him whether, in response to Blake Alcott's request to "bury the hatchet" he would be willing to sit down with Gilad Atzmon and publicly hash out their differences. "Absolutely not" was his reply... [I’m sure that Abunimah’s crusade against Atzmon is very pleasing to Ali’s ‘progressive’ Jewish gatekeeper friends in the Palestine Solidarity movement, which is dominated by these ‘anti-zionist Zionists,’ but people like myself are just disgusted. Ali’s PC approved, kosher campaign against discussing a taboo subject– Jewish culture, or “Jewishness” – serves him well. His career is on track, and he will always be welcome at the Seder, just like Abbas.] Gilad Atzmon, who is an Israeli-born British novelist, political activist and writer, made the remarks in a telephone interview with Press TV on Saturday, commenting on two American senators’ reassurance to Israel that military aid to Tel Aviv will not wane after the current package worth some $3 billion a year expires in 2017. “The message is very simple. This is just another proof that American life, American foreign policy, and definitely American budget is dominated by the Jewish lobby that serves primarily Jewish interests,” Atzmon said... The Afghan President Hamid Karzai has supported the decision of the Crimea on reunification with Russia. The head of the republic made this statement in the course of the March 22 meeting with a delegation of US congressmen... [It would be so ironic if Afghanistan wound up being a Russian client state after all. It certainly makes geopolitical sense.] Can you think of anything more arrogant than being a guest in someone’s home and criticizing them because you don’t like their drapes? Maybe yes, criticizing their drapes when you have none decorating the windows in your own home. Most people would agree that that behavior would cross the line. How could anyone be so lacking in common courtesy and finesse – especially when that person is a brilliant, well-educated First Lady?.. [Outside of the Empire, is there anyone left in the world who believes the BS emanating from our dear leaders and our media?] If the purpose of U.S. intervention in the affairs of other countries is really to help suffering people, the program has a fatal flaw. (This should surprise no one familiar with other government programs.) The flaw is that the U.S. government does opposition movements no favors when it gives credibility to the charge that those movements are tools of foreign — particularly American — interests. I call this taint the American disease. Opposition movements have a hard enough time fighting authoritarian regimes without the U.S. government’s “help”.. ...in the last fifty years military intervention has rarely worked out well for the target society or for the intervener; that is, historical experience would seem to call for what lawyers call ‘a presumption against intervention.’ This presumption is not intended as an absolute prohibition, but it does impose a burden of persuasion on the advocates of intervention. Often, also, the evidence pro and con intervention is doctored and manipulated one way or another to reflect the views of the government or of special interests... ...The 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court calls apartheid a crime under the Court's jurisdiction. Israel is a flagrant violator. It's unaccountable. For decades, it's gotten away with high crimes too grave to ignore. Israel denies Palestinians self-determination multiple ways. It violates the integrity of their land. It prohibits meaningful self-government. Subservient Palestinian Authority officials enforce Israeli policy. They betray their own people in the process. Palestine's economy is lawlessly integrated into Israel's. Palestinian resources are stolen. Free movement, expression and cultural heritage are denied. Equal justice under law is nonexistent... On the face of it that’s a silly question and the speculation it represents – that Palestinian “President” Abbas could be replaced by an Israeli agent or asset – is not worthy of discussion. But before dismissing it readers might do what I did and consider two things... Mar 23, 2014 Regardless the merits of their respective claims, it was clear even before the state of Israel came into being that a just and lasting peace between the Jewish settlers in Palestine and the Arab population living there could only be imposed from outside. It has been the same ever since. The settlers, then and now, are on a mission – for God (or rather G-d) and Nation. They will not settle for less than everything – unless they are given an offer they cannot refuse... [Even people as aware and fundamentally decent as Mr. Levine are still imagining the possibility of a two-state solution, in spite of the facts that they themselves recite. The main argument against one state remains the same – the Israelis would under no circumstances accept it. This is a lousy argument for two reasons. One state has always been and remains the only option that will actually resolve the situation. And second, given the inevitability of this outcome, the Israelis would indeed accept it – once they realized there was no other choice. They are practical people and they are not stupid, nor are they suicidal, the Sampson Option notwithstanding.] ...Looking at that circus, I was wondering: do these imbeciles really believe that these puny sanctions of 30-40 individuals will make Russia suddenly change course, apologize and leave Crimea? Have they forgotten that during WWII Leningrad was blockaded by German forces for nine hundred (900! Not 33 like Hezbollah or 78 like the Serbs) days and that it was pounded by the German Air Force and artillery during each one of these 900 days, that most men died and that the city at the end was defended by mostly women.. that medicine had run out and that the winter cold was brutal and yet that the Russian people did not surrender?! Official Washington, including its compliant mainstream media, paints Moscow as the “black hat” in the Ukraine crisis but the fuller picture would show that the supposed U.S. “white hats” are the ones who have violated the deal that ended the Cold War, writes ex-CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman... Writer Toni Morrison famously dubbed Bill Clinton "the first black president" -- a title he fervently embraced. Abner Mikva, the Chicago Democratic Party stalwart and former Clinton White House counsel, offers a variation on that theme. "If Clinton was our first black president, then Barack Obama is our first Jewish president," says Mikva, who was among the first to spot the potential of the skinny young law school graduate with the odd name... [I often say that O’Bummer was discovered, nurtured and handled by the Chicago Jewish political mafia. This little piece in the Tribune dating from 2008 lays it out.] Dear President Obama: As you ponder your potential moves regarding President Vladimir V. Putin’s annexation of Crimea (a large majority of its 2 million people are ethnic Russians), it is important to remember that whatever moral leverage you may have had in the court of world opinion has been sacrificed by the precedents set by previous American presidents who did not do what you say Mr. Putin should do – obey international law... [They should change the title from ‘President’ to Chief Hypocrite] In the wake of Crimea’s independence referendum, Hillary Clinton says Russian President Putin is a “new Hitler.” Zbigniew Brezezinski, former National Security Advisor agrees, calling Putin not just another Hitler, but also a thug, a menace, a Mafia gangster, and a Mussolini. The Western mainstream media echoes this childish name-calling. Why is the whole Western foreign policy establishment so afraid of Putin? Because Putin is standing up against Western aggression – not only in Ukraine, but also in Syria and Iran... This is an episode from a planned series on several aspects of the Syrian conflict... While the first Cold War was fought against communism, a successor Cold War is steadily unfolding against democratic electoral outcomes unfavorable to America's perceived interests. Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal occupation of Crimea has for now revived raging Western memories of Joseph Stalin's top-down incorporation of the former Eastern Europe. Lost in the new anti-Russian narrative, however, is the growing US pattern of ignoring democratic electoral outcomes where they are inconvenient, in the name of "promoting democracy." Ultimately this process of "democracy through intervention" reinforces bureaucratic authoritarian trends in both East and West... The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm... Any competent military or Intel professional would tell you that the West knew that the result of it’s coup in Kiev would be for Russians in the Eastern part of the country to seek protection from Russia. Why? Because they do not want to fall under the control of the new axis of evil. Why would they allow US missiles and military bases staged on their territory, ‘legalized’ Right Sector terrorists incorporated into Ukraine’s secret service and prosecutor’s offices, and becoming perpetual serfs to the EU and IMF as their curtain of exploitation descends upon them?.. Appearing by telepresence robot, Edward Snowden speaks at TED2014 about surveillance and Internet freedom. The right to data privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a fundamental rethink of the role of the internet in our lives — and the laws that protect it. "Your rights matter," he say, "because you never know when you're going to need them." Chris Anderson interviews, with special guest Tim Berners-Lee. These Presidents ignored the hardships imposed by the military occupation on the Palestinians in trying to educate themselves and their children. Nor did they understand that those who came from Europe to settle in Palestine, and form their own state and destroy the Palestinian people, as a people, were/are the victimizers, not the victims... .."This is a nice cup of Turkish Coffee. Israel paid for it," Abbas was thinking in his office. 20 Years in the payroll of the Palestinian Authority had transformed him into another Israeli Administrator. His people mean nothing anymore. "We will keep our principles and will not give up," he said while daily surrendering to the final stages of the Zionist conquest... Has the Arab Spring turned into an Islamist winter? Mehdi Hasan challenges Islamic intellectual Tariq Ramadan on the principles and practice of political Islam. Together they dissect the Arab revolts, focusing on Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise and demise, and the subsequent military coup... "We are paying very close attention to the situation in Ukraine. We hope all parties can calmly maintain restraint to prevent the situation from further escalating and worsening. Political resolution and dialogue is the only way out." This, via Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Li Baodong, is Beijing's quite measured, official interpretation of what's happening in Ukraine, tailored for global consumption. But here, in a People's Daily editorial, is what the leadership is really thinking... Russian ambassador to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin has issued a response to Christiane Amanpour after the CNN anchor lashed out at the diplomat over his inability to appear on her show and brought his daughter into the equation... [As I have said before, and as odd as it may seem, the Russians appear to be the only adults in the room] Christiane Amanpour called out RT’s Nastya Churkina on CNN, claiming she’d reported on her own father, as if that was some kind of journalistic sacrilege.. Oh, these beautiful double standards! When you don’t know what to say, fall back on those standards at the double, as it were. But it is getting tedious and hard to stomach anymore... A right-wing Israeli politician who called for Israel to take over the Haram al-Sharif in occupied East Jerusalem has visited the holy compound, causing a backlash from stone-throwing Palestinians protesting against the visit. Moshe Feiglin, a nationalist member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party, visited the compound on Thursday, after calling on the Israeli Knesset last week to strengthen Israel's control over the holy site and usurp sovereignty... [Repeating an ancient pattern, push will most likely come to shove over this particular shrine, resolving the Palestine/Israel struggle – however it comes out. Historically, though, it usually winds up with the Jews packing their bags and making a long trek to somewhere else in the wilderness. All of which, of course, they - the eternal victims - will blame on the dastardly goyim.] ...what would Albert Camus, the great moralist of the 20th century, think about the latest innovation in administrative murder, Obama’s drone program, a kind of remote-control gallows, where the killers never see their victims, never hear their screams, smell their burning bodies, touch their mutilated flesh? The conscience of the killer has been sterilized, the drone operator, fully alienated from the act he is committing, can walk out the door after his shift is over and calmly order an IPA at the local microbrew or play a round of golf under the desert sky. He is left with no blood on his hands, no savagery weighing on his conscience, no degrading images to stalk his dreams... Mar 22, 2014 The immediate precursor to today’s pro-Israel lobby began in 1939 under the leadership of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, originally from Lithuania. He created the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), which by 1943 had acquired a budget of half a million dollars at a time when a nickel bought a loaf of bread... [This looks like a blockbuster of a book. It will be interesting to see how it sells.] Seventy years ago, my father.. died in Italy fighting the Nazis. He was a committed pacifist, and a conscientious objector at the start of the war, but as Hitler’s crimes spread across Europe, he swapped the ambulance he had driven through the London blitz for a tin hat and a commission in the Royal Fusiliers and he joined the fight against fascism. He was killed near Aprilia in the battle for the Anzio Bridgehead on Feb. 18, 1944. My mother – Mary Duncan Waters – spent the rest of her life politically active, striving always to ensure that her children, and everyone else’s children, had no Sword of Damocles in the form of the despised Nazi Creed or any other despicable creed hanging over their heads... While Europe is furiously scrambling to find alternative sources of energy should Gazprom pull the plug on natgas exports to Germany and Europe (the imminent surge in Ukraine gas prices by 40% is probably the best indication of what the outcome would be), Russia is preparing the announcement of the "Holy Grail" energy deal with none other than China, a move which would send geopolitical shockwaves around the world and bind the two nations in a commodity-backed axis. One which, as some especially on these pages, have suggested would lay the groundwork for a new joint, commodity-backed reserve currency that bypasses the dollar... The leaders of Russia and China agreed to expand use of the ruble and yuan in bilateral trade to lessen dependence on the U.S. dollar a day after they took part in the first summit of the so-called BRIC countries... [I don’t pretend to understand this stuff, but I’m led to believe that any significant move away from the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency would have earthshaking consequences. The House of Cards might come tumbling down.] Nobody expected events to move on with such a breath-taking speed. The Russians took their time; they sat on the fence and watched while the Brown storm-troopers conquered Kiev, and they watched while Mrs Victoria Nuland of the State Department and her pal Yatsenyuk (“Yats”) slapped each other’s backs and congratulated themselves on their quick victory... This from Ha'aretz is about some current goings-on in the Jewish community in Berlin. It's quite interesting but even if it weren't, I'd still read it because I'm always interested in what Jews are up to in Germany... Since the beginning of Europe’s Age of Discovery in early 15th century European nations have competed with each other to invade, colonize, and annex nations and territories from the Americas to the west they cast their net across the entire southern hemisphere to the small Oceanic islands in the east. Such was the rule of the “White Man’s Burden” tasked divinely and economically to civilize the savages and barbarians of the dark continents... "Shalom," says Putin. "Previet," Lieberman answers. Russia and Israel are getting closer, developing a business both countries excel in. War is in the air, a tornado about to twist the Crimea and Ukraine. Instead of the wild whirl, Russia and Israel see a cloud of dollars about to make landfall... When Will Americans Come to Their Senses?: Ukraine and Yugoslavia, by Diana Johnstone | CounterPunch Five years ago, I wrote a paper for a Belgrade conference commemorating the tenth anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In that paper I stressed that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had been used as an experimental laboratory to perfect various techniques that would subsequently be used in so-called “color revolutions” or other “regime change” operations directed against leaders considered undesirable by the United States government... Over the past few weeks, one primary issue has blanketed Western media coverage: the situation in Ukraine. Since this issue is of great interest to the world community, it has allowed other developments, especially in the Middle East, to escape public scrutiny... Let's start with the serious stuff. As Russia's Federation Council ratifies a treaty with Crimea, concluding the formal annexation, Ukraine signs the political chapters of an association agreement with the European Union (EU). The signing of the full EU agreement will only happen later in 2014. These are the facts on the ground. Now let's turn to comedy hour - also known as the sanctions war... ..Dr. Ashrawi welcomed the European Parliament resolution of March 14, 2013 that called “for the immediate release of all imprisoned members of the PLC, including Marwan Barghouti.” Dr. Ashrawi stressed, “With the arbitrary arrests of Palestinians and the torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, Israel is in direct violation of international law and the basic norms of human rights. There is a global rule of law, and Israel must be subject to it..” This footage gives you an intimate yet disturbing close-up of colonial expansion and occupation. Watch as over a dozen Jewish settlers make their way into a Palestinian home in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and lay claim to a section of the property... In 1919, after allied sanctions on food shipments had starved the Kaiser’s Germany into submission, President Wilson endorsed the continued use of sanctions to settle international disputes as an “economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy.” Almost a century later, the weapon is more popular than ever, mostly because of a wholly mistaken belief that it makes the targets do what we want. Currently, the United States is enforcing no fewer than 24 separate sanctions regimes directed at targets ranging from the Balkans to Zimbabwe. Now, of course, with Vladimir Putin proving fractious, Washington has opened another financial offensive, this time against Russia... While Islam as a faith is the main religion in 48 countries, and Muslims around the globe are rapidly growing, Saudi Islam is the main sectarian movement in Saudi Arabia, and its influence is also rapidly growing. Acting as the protector of Islam through its own form of Islam, while it remains an American client state through its location, petrodollar’s cheque book, and American diplomatic and military protection, it could be argued that among the major influential players, Saudi Arabia’s policies, its own form of Islam, and its relations with the US, undoubtedly constitute one of the most serious threats to the security of the world today... ..“We want to understand, who exactly will represent legitimate authorities in Kiev. In this regard we have a proposal: first of all, a constitutional reform should be held, so that interests of all Ukrainian citizens and regions are respected. This is the only basis for forming legitimate authorities, legislative and executive, central and regional,” Lavrov told members of the lower chamber of the Russian parliament. “And we are convinced that the situation in the country can be stabilized only through making Ukraine a federal state,” he continued... Exactly a month ago the Ukrainian crisis seemed on the verge of a peaceful resolution: the European Union had mediated negotiations between the government of Viktor Yanukovich and leaders of the opposition, and an agreement had been reached. The government consented to a truce in exchange for a promise of early elections, a downsizing of the President’s powers, and the freeing of opposition leader and wealthy oligarch Julia Tymoshenko, jailed on charges of corruption (and possible involvement in a murder plot). It didn’t work out that way... The Foreign Ministry of Kyrgyzstan said on Thursday that it recognizes the results of Sunday’s referendum in Crimea, in which the region decided to secede Ukraine and join Russia. “The results of the referendum in Crimea reflect the views of the region’s absolute majority, and this is reality,” the ministry said in a statement. The document blames former Ukrainian authorities for political crisis in the country, which resulted in the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych... ...the people of the Crimea were not consulted. There was no referendum. The majority of the population is Russian, and undoubtedly wishes now to return to Russia. It expressed this wish in a referendum that, on the whole, seems to be quite authentic. So the annexation may be justified.. If we leave out cynicism, hypocrisy and great power politics for a moment, and stick to simple moral principles, then what is good for the goose is good for the gander. A sizable national minority, living in its homeland, has a right to secede from a state it does not like... ...On the same day that President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority came to meet President Barack Obama of the United States at the White House, and when President Valdimir Putin of Russia announced that as far as he is concerned the Crimea is no longer part of Ukraine, news came out which excited the world of science and managed to get some attention even from those who are not involved in physics. "The confirmation of the theory means that the universe which we can see, spanning over 14 billion light years with hundreds of billions of galaxies, is only an infinitesimal corner in a far vaster cosmos whose size, structure and ultimate fate are unfathomable".. Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law the treaty formally making Crimea part of the Russian Federation, after it was approved by the parliament, on the same day Ukraine capped a landmark alliance with the European Union.. The treaty creates two new Russian administrative regions, Crimea and the port city of Sevastopol, where Russia's Black Sea fleet is based. Despite threats of more sanctions from the EU and the US, Kremlin has declared that it considers Crimea part of Russia since the signing of the treaty... Dmitry Orlov is a Russian blogger who writes about the parallel between the U.S and the USSR. Orlov lived through the financial collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, and he thinks the U.S. is on the same trajectory. Orlov contends, “The trajectory is defined by this sort of incompetent militarism where more and more money results in bigger and bigger military fiascos around the world and less and less of actual foreign policy that can be pursued or articulated... Mar 21, 2014 The study of world power has been blighted by Eurocentric historians who have distorted and ignored the dominant role China played in the world economy between 1100 and 1800. John Hobson’s[1] brilliant historical survey of the world economy during this period provides an abundance of empirical data making the case for China ’s economic and technological superiority over Western civilization for the better part of a millennium prior to its conquest and decline in the 19th century... Fascism dribbles off the tongue too easily, yet it is possible to wrap one’s arms around the concept and practice with, allowing for historical variations, some degree of precision. Hitler’s Germany may be the gold standard by which to measure all else, but even there correction can be made for both underlying structural features and ideological themes applied to other and different settings. By that I mean, e.g., functional equivalents of Nazi societal organization, if you will, foundations or perhaps sub-foundations of the social order and political culture... [A far simpler, less academic and much deeper understanding of fascism would be so useful. Sigh.] Karma is coming for the elite in a big way. As the Powers That Be head toward a devastating defeat in their war plans for Syria, signs are emerging that their rule over humanity is rapidly diminishing. Over the last decade the global elite have been on a mad dash to consolidate power over the world. It's always been their plan like some evil villain in a comic book, but after 9/11 the plan went into overdrive and then turbo charged during the financial crisis of 2008. Yet it's doomed to fail because humans are meant to be guided by their own free will, not controlled like livestock... ...At the time, the former colleague said Wahl told the same employee that she had been approached by an unnamed person who wanted her to help undermine RT. “Liz said to me, ‘I’m working with someone right now who wants to take down RT and wants me to write this hit piece,’ ” the employee told us. “She asked me what I thought and I told her it would be really messed up and not to do it. She said, ‘You’re right.’ ”The employee added, “[Kirchick’s] obviously been trying to charm her into doing this for a while...” [She’d be perfect for Fox News – she’s attractive, ignorant, unscrupulous and willing to do anything to get ahead. See also the RT video on the story: Neocon Con? US right stage media attack on alternative news] It is a chilling five-minute film made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), showing its fighters stopping three large trucks on what looks like the main highway linking Syria and Iraq. A burly bearded gunmen takes the ID cards of the drivers who stand nervously in front of him. “You are all Shia,” he says threateningly. “No, we are Sunni from Homs,” says one of the drivers in a low, hopeless tone of voice. “May Allah give you victory..” The Crimea’s return to Russia is a hot issue, but it’s not something absolutely extraordinary for Europe. Pretty soon the international community’s attention will switch over to other important and unexpected events related to the desire of peoples to implement their right to self-determination... The Rwandan genocide — think you know the story? Deep-seated ethic enmity erupted in a 100-day genocidal rampage by Hutus killing Tutsis, which was only stopped by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). A noble Canadian general tried to end the bloodletting but a dysfunctional UN refused resources. Washington was caught off guard by the slaughter, but it has apologized for failing to intervene and has committed to never again avoid its responsibility to protect. In Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, Robin Philpot demolishes this version of history... The political crisis between Europe and Russia continues to worsen and sanctions are coming. But Johannes Teyssen, CEO of utility giant E.on is unconcerned. He says the Moscow-Berlin partnership has promoted peace on the continent and warns against gambling it away... ...A look at the U.S.’s flagrant disregard for international law and principles reveals actions such as denial of habeas corpus and due process (originating in the Magna Carta almost 800 years ago); unilaterally undertaking aggressive wars; “shock and awe” bombings; extraordinary renditions; and extrajudicial assassinations, including with drone strikes and Hellfire missiles. These all demonstrate the extent to which the U.S. is willing to disobey all legal and moral conventions to achieve its political goals, all in the name of fighting terrorism... ...On March 20, 2014, Hebrew media main story was Russian preparations for occupying additional areas of Ukraine. The day after Syria achieved gains in the Golan Heights, the IDF started a hurried drill which enjoyed an unusual media coverage in real time. The exercise prepares forces for entrance into Syria. "The Post-Communist Empire is born," I thought and started writing... [Israel, directly and indirectly, has severely degraded the international status of the US. And it may well be that Israel and its supporters will eventually drag down the Empire so severely that it will self-destruct. Hope springs eternal.] According to online reports, the treaty on Crimea being accepted into Russia has prompted the setting up of an initiative group that will draw up a proposal for the Palestinian enclave in Israel to hold a referendum on joining the Russian Federation, too. This is reported by the Russian-language version of the Palestinian Information Centre... [I trust you’ll get a chuckle or two out of this – I did] For many years we have been encountering the relentless attempts of anti Zionist Jews to divert the attention from the fact that Israel defines itself as the Jewish State. For some peculiar reason, it is Rabbi Kahane, the ultimate Jewish bigot who reveals the full truth... The West took a major credibility beating today, one inflicted on itself. This hit is going to be one more chapter of the US and EU foreign policy gang, who can’t shoot straight and who believe their own bull manure... John Kerry threatened Russia. He warned against intervening in eastern Ukraine. Doing so would be “as egregious as any step I can think of,” he said. He barely stopped short of threatening war. Whether Washington intends risking it remains to be seen. Russian nationals in Ukraine aren’t safe. Expect incidents like what happened to Aleksandr Panteleymonov to repeat. He’s National Television Company of Ukraine (NTU) acting CEO. At least he was. Kiev putschist elements stormed his office. Neo-Nazi Svoboda party members were involved. Perhaps Right Sector extremists... American geo-strategic planners are fond of the chess game analogy, as articulated foremost by former National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. In the wake of the resounding vote for Crimean unification with Russia at the weekend, it may be said that this move by the Crimean electorate declares a «check» on Washington’s machinations in the Ukraine. A reading of reactions from officials in Washington and their allies in Europe indicates that the game was not meant to turn out this way... They got this far by murdering millions. But they want more. For them to really feel like they’ve ‘made it,’ billions will have to die. See also An honest man? [Ed.] Protest, dissent and terrorist wars are obviously very distinct forms of expressing opposition and bringing about change. The Obama-Kerry regime claim that the opposition in Venezuela is a “protest movement” a “peaceful democratic opposition” expressing discontent with economic conditions and that the democratically elected Maduro Administration is an ‘authoritarian regime’ violently repressing dissent. Washington claims to play no part in the action of the opposition and that its pronouncements are directed at furthering democratic freedoms... Britain’s Zionophile prime Minister, David Cameron, might be spellbound by Zionism and Israel, but back in the real world things are moving in the opposite direction. The Guardian newspaper reports that the UK’s top architectural body has called for its Israeli counterpart to be excluded from the International Union of Architects (IUA) in protest at Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestine... While no one ever lost money overestimating the capacity of the U.S. government to blunder, we cannot rule out that American officials knew exactly what they were doing when they helped provoke the crisis in Ukraine. It is hard to believe that all these officials are so ignorant of Russian history that they could not anticipate how President Vladimir Putin would respond to U.S.-backed machinations in Kiev. These machinations led to the ouster of elected (if corrupt and power-hungry) president Viktor Yanukovych after street demonstrations, which included neo-Nazi elements now represented in the new government... Mar 20, 2014 Ukraine: Russia Holding Down the Fort so far, so good Following the past few, truly incredible, days which saw momentous developments taking place at an amazingly rapid pace, I think that it is time to take a moment to calmly and carefully reflect about what I consider to be a historical event of an immense magnitude. Formally, this event will be recorded as the “The address of Russian President Vladimir Putin to the State Duma deputies, Federation Council members, heads of Russian regions and civil society representatives in the Kremlin”. In reality, of course, this was much more. This was the address of the New Russia to the entire world... In perhaps the most pivotal address of the post-Soviet era, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the West to cut the bull on two decades of double standards and put the Cold War to rest. Here are the top 10 moments from his barn-burning address... With regards to the referendum of 16 March 2014 in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Kazakhstan reiterates its commitment to the fundamental principles of international law in accordance with the United Nations Charter. The referendum held in Crimea is seen in Kazakhstan as a free expression of the will of the Autonomous Republic's population while the decision of the Russian Federation under the existing circumstances is regarded with understanding. We support peaceful ways of settlement of the crisis in Ukraine and believe it should be done by means of negotiations under the aegis of the United Nations and other reputable international organizations. The Crimean plebiscite resulting in a vote of over 95 percent in favor of union with the Russian Federation has been roundly denounced by Western governments as "illegitimate" and in violation of "international law." Putative presidential candidate Hillary Clinton went so far as to compare Vladimir Putin to Hitler and the Crimean accession to Russia to Germany’s conquest of Sudetenland in the run up to World War II – prefiguring, perhaps, her Amazonian approach to foreign policy in 2016. Twitter is ablaze with hyperbole of a similar tone, and the foreign policy pundits have been quick to take up the cry of "Putin the Aggressor.".. [Vintage USraeli imperial style. Comes with all the Coca-cola you can drink and all the Big Macs you want, at least until you’re homeless.] The Obama administration suffered its worst foreign policy defeat in 5 years on Sunday when the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to reject Washington’s Nazi-backed junta government in Kiev and join the Russian Federation. The balloting, in which more than 93 percent of voters “approved splitting off and joining Russia” reflects the strong ethnic, cultural and historic ties its people share with Moscow as well as the understandable fear that being “liberated” by the US could lead to grinding third world poverty and widespread mayhem the likes of which are manifest in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria... Russia supports the idea of sending a European observer mission to Ukraine, presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said on Tuesday. He said the idea is widely discussed within the framework of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. “We are generally positive about this idea. However, this mission should work not only in southeastern Ukraine, but in other regions too,” he said... The two paths to 21st century empire-building-via-proxies are illustrated through the violent seizure of power in the Ukraine by a US-backed junta and the electoral gains of the US-backed Colombian war lord, Alvaro Uribe. We will describe the ‘mechanics’ of US intervention in the domestic politics of these two countries and their profound external effects – that is how they enhance imperial power on a continent-wide basis. The conversion of the Ukraine into a US-EU vassal state has been a prolonged process which involved large scale, long term financing, indoctrination and recruitment of cadres, organization and training of politicos and street fighters... Referenda tend to be the devices used to seal the kiss of secession. It is an instrument of the ballot box, an expression of popular will. Its first formal use, according to Eugène Solière’s Le Plébiscite dans l’annexion (1901) came in the referendum held by Lyonnais in the 13th century when citizens sought to escape Church rule, with its citizens claiming “themselves subjects of the King of France” and requesting that he “take them under his special care.”.. [Relations between nations are still decided by ancient criteria, such as might makes right, not by international law. The bottom line regarding the Crimean secession is that it’s a fait accompli, with the Russians holding all the trump cards. ignoring any (rigged) court case that goes against them, they would just be following the many precedents set by the USraeli Empire, but with far greater justification.] ...This, characteristic solely for Western Ukraine, utterly criminal movement, which proudly was/is referring to the Darwinian ideology of “Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, limited itself to robberies and murders of linguistically and religiously “not chosen” neighbors, including Ukrainians resisting the UPA terror. A good symbol, of what “Right Sector” and “Freedom” Party enthusiasts are about, become Three Crucified Eagles, exposed last month, by “Maidan activists” at the plundered by them residence of president Yanukovich near Kiev:.. The decision of Crimea to join the Russian Federation has strategic and geopolitical implications. The union of Crimea with Russia redefines both the geography as well as the geopolitical chessboard in the Black Sea basin. It constitutes a major setback for US-NATO, whose longstanding objective has been to integrate Ukraine into NATO with a view to undermining Russia, while extending Western military presence in the Black Sea basin... A Ukrainian nationalist MP assisted by a group of helpers abused and threatened interim head of Ukraine’s National TV. They accused him of being anti-Ukrainian and bullied him into signing his resignation, claiming to be members of a new media regulator. The office of the acting CEO of the National Television Company of Ukraine, Aleksandr Panteleymonov, was stormed by people who claimed to be members of the freedom of speech and information committee. Among them were Ukrainian Svoboda MP Igor Miroshnynchenko and party ideologist Andrey Ilyenko... Alison Weir’s new book is by far the most comprehensive and precise expose of the depth of Zionist interference with American life in general and the politics of the United States in particular. It is a book every American should obtain, read and discuss openly. In spite of its succinctness, the book is saturated with information and insights that are backed by valuable historical references and primary source quotes. Since I am an avid reader of modern Jewish history, I was surprised to learn so much from such a relatively short text... Early in the morning of April 9th 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a beautiful Arab village with cut stone houses located on the west side of Jerusalem. It was several weeks before the end of the British Mandate and the declaration of the State of Israel. The village lay outside the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish state; it had a peaceful reputation; it was even said by a Jewish newspaper to have driven out some Arab militants. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem... The great game of dominance offers no immunity for even the most loyal US "ally". This is demonstrated by perhaps the least known of Washington's coups - in Australia. The story of this forgotten coup is a salutary lesson for those governments that believe a "Ukraine" or a "Chile" could never happen to them. Australia's deference to the United States makes Britain, by comparison, seem a renegade. During the American invasion of Vietnam - which Australia had pleaded to join - an official in Canberra voiced a rare complaint to Washington that the British knew more about US objectives in that war than its antipodean comrade-in-arms... Long before the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment campaign inched slowly from the fringes of global solidarity with Palestinians to take center stage, Tony Benn had been advocating a boycott of Israel with unrestricted conviction, for years. “Britain should offer its support for this strategy by stopping all arms sales to Israel, introducing trade sanctions and a ban on all investment there together with a boycott of Israeli goods here and make it a condition for the lifting of these measures that Israel complies with these demands at once,” Benn wrote in his blog on April 19, 2002, under the title “A State of Palestine Now”... Atzmon, a hard leftist, describes himself as a proud self-hating Jew and admits that his ideas derive from a notorious anti-Semite. He denies that the Holocaust is historically proven, but believes that Jews may well have killed Christian children to use their blood to bake Passover Matzah. And he thinks it’s “rational” to burn down synagogues... [Dershowitz, such a good mama’s boy. “Hey, Zadie, my little boychik became a lawyer!” He's a macher!] ...Despite Israeli and Western attempts to bring down the Syrian government, President al-Assad survived. The Western-backed mercenaries are continuously receding. Now, the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights are destabilizing. It does not matter what the origin of the explosives was. Israel was hit in a place and a way it did not consider possible... Henry Kamens takes us back once again into the belly of the beast with Republic of Georgia politics. The region that has been targeted for being Western puppet governments, for being exploited in their Neo-Cold War that the Western warmonger elites seem to feel is their due. That people in these countries would cooperate, who can read history books especially on colonialism, thinking there was some long-term benefit for their countries, should be immediately disqualified for any leadership position... Last week David Cameron, addressing Israel’s Knesset, pledged to defeat any boycotting of Israel. “Britain opposes boycotts,” he said without having consulted the British people on the matter. This should be enough to put the international BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) and the PSC (Palestine Solidarity Campaign) on a war footing... Freelance writer Brandon Martinez debunks the myth of Canada’s benevolence vis-a-vis foreign policy and the “good war” legend of World War II. This is Menachem Begin. Palestinians hated him as would anyone in their right mind. But Jews loved him. 'Begin, Begin, King of Israel' they called him, this little Jewish tailor who looked like your grandpa but then would tell the Goyim to F--- off. I remember once hearing him say, and with a straight face, "Jews bow to no-one, only to God!" ...Hey U.S. mass media journalists: A large number of you writing in outlets like CNN, Fox News, New York Times, and Washington Post have blood on your hands. It may initially sound exagerative, but you are complicit in mass murder. In the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi war criminals at the end of WW II, the prosecution powerfully argued that those journalists who use propaganda to prepare the public to accept war crimes are themselves also guilty of those crimes... Following serious cajoling by the United States and the European Union, and arm twisting by Arab governments, the Palestinians entered what was to be nine months of negotiations with Israel. The Palestinians, who had forgone demands for Israel’s compliance with previous signed agreements before starting new negotiations, were promised that this time Israel would enter into serious discussions to reach a final agreement by 29 April 2014.. The ostrich-like US and its subservient European Union suffer from a delusional denial syndrome. They refuse to read palpable writings on the wall: Israel perceives the Palestinian state as a risk and uses peace talks to realize the Jewish “demographic revolution”.. Mar 19, 2014 Ukraine: Today's Update ...A referendum was held in Crimea on March 16 in full compliance with democratic procedures and international norms.. In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia. This firm conviction is based on truth and justice and was passed from generation to generation, over time, under any circumstances, despite all the dramatic changes our country went through during the entire 20th century... Crimea's secession from Ukraine was just like Kosovo's secession from Serbia, and any arguments otherwise are just attempts to bend the West-advocated rules that were applied to the Kosovo case... While insisting they remain committed to “diplomacy” in their ongoing dispute over possession of the Crimean Republic, Ukraine’s interim government today announced a full military mobilization, preparing for war... [See also Russia Mediation Proposal ‘Unacceptable’] ...Banderastan is the Ukraine which Dmitry Iarosh, Andrei Parubii or Oleg Tiagnibok want to create: a "socialist national" state whose founding principle would be "beat the Jews and the Russians - the Ukraine for the Ukrainians". Simple and clear. This state would have one language (Ukrainian), one ethnicity (Ukrainian), one leader (Iarosh) and one founding father (Bandera).. You can think of the "Banderites" are the Ukie version of the Taliban, but far more evil and infinitely more stupid... It is perhaps unsurprising, but nevertheless unhelpful, for so much of the discussion in the United States about policy toward Ukraine to be fueled by Cold War-type juices that the crisis has gotten flowing. Current-day Russia gets equated with the earlier USSR, within a frame of mind that equates any Russian advance with a setback for U.S. interests. Even the Cold War itself was never that zero-sum, and a failure to realize that fact got the United States into some significant mistakes, the Vietnam War being the costliest one. But at least in the Cold War there was a global competition of ideologies... [Inside the Beltway is a synonym for Never-Never Land, or the Land of Oz] The Obama administration's "strategic" gambit to subcontract the State Department's "Khaganate of Nulands" to extricate Ukraine from the Russian sphere of influence - and ultimately annex it to NATO - by instrumentalizing a coalition of willing neo-nazis and fascists with a central bank veneer (prime minister "Yats"), is in utter shambles. Moscow's counterpunch was to prevent in Crimea - as intercepted by Russian intelligence - a planned replay of the putsch in Kiev... ...some Ukrainians who are not necessarily such great Russophiles might come around to realizing the limits of Western assistance, the Russian option as a workable course and the practicality of limiting the preferences of Svoboda and the Right Sector. As has been stated in Western mass media, Ukraine means more to Russia than the West. There is also the possibility that the zero sum game thinking, which has been evident in the West, might eventually decrease, in a more pragmatic and less confrontational manner... In the 1930s it was a notorious fact the German government of Adolf Hitler chose the month of March to perpetrate its most daring moves in reasserting the nation as a continental power, culminating in the most deadly war in history.. Over the past fifteen years a not dissimilar pattern has emerged... Ukraine On Its Knees: “The Commies are Coming, The Commies are Coming,” by Bo Filter | The 4th Media The media is clamoring to get Russia for attacking Ukraine, as if the US has had no influence on events. Yet, the riot in Kiev has a striking resemblance to US-sponsored color revolutions and Arab spring riots. The template shows US mercenaries hiding behind peaceful protestors, then, igniting violence. The idea is sinister: to co-opt peaceful protestor’s legitimate cause, granting some air of legitimacy, followed by a coup to super-impose western imperial demands. In Kiev, it started, as usual, with peace protests, then, thugs soon joined in as heavily armed trained militia. Western private media, holding its usual bag of secrets, dodges calls to tell us their country of origin... Of course it is illegal and of course it will be rigged, that referendum in Crimea today. And of course it is a ploy and comes only in the wake of Russia’s (read Putin’s) unprovoked aggression, used as a pretext to build a new Greater Russia. That is, if you browse the mainstream Western media the last week and on this Sunday morning... The psychopathic propaganda power brokers are inciting hysteria over expanding their Ukrainian coup operation. Pushing Russia to accept a hostile empire on their border is irrational. Belligerence and intimidation makes indefensible foreign affairs relationships. Those who swallow the "wag the dog" script that circulates in the Western mainstream media, deceived or brainwashed, are incapable of any independent thought. The forces that seek unremitting interventionist intrusions that thrive on self-induced chaos are the true threats to world peace... In popular idiom, doppelgänger hails from the German, meaning “look-alike” in behaviour or physical appearance. The frontline of Palestinian non-violent resistance in the West Bank of the State of Palestine, is not in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the PLO and the Palestinian National Council (PNC), but in the many villages, like Bill’in, Nil’ilin, Nabi Saleh, Kufr Kaddum, Al Maasara, Hizma, Al Walaja, Bab Al Shams, Burin, Budrus, that the PA supposedly is meant to represent and protect... Since the arrival of the first Zionist to Palestine, hundreds of massacres have been committed against unarmed Palestinian civilians in the name of “Israel”, making this entity synonym to death and destruction. One of the worst Zionist massacres committed against Palestinians is the Deir Yasin massacre. Defenceless Palestinian civilians were tortured before being massacres and their bodies mutilated. Women and children were raped, babies were butchered and pregnant women were bayoneted... The once well-respected Guardian has been reduced in recent years into a lame Zionist mouthpiece - a light Jewish Chronicle for Gentiles consumption. Last week, the paper launched an attack on Martin Heidegger, the 20th century’s most influential philosopher... Yesterday, I posted two videos by David Duke about the Jewish festival of Purim which we Jews have just celebrated (if such a word can be used). I came across the videos as part of an email exchange I was having with David.. here is our conversation:.. [Amen. Purim was March 15-16, ending on St. Patrick's Day.] [See also Purim II Promoting Genocide] ...Cryptojudaism is older than the book of Esther, the blueprint for Cryptojudaism, itself. It did not begin with the Spanish Inquisition, which while harsh, was a reaction to a very real problem, the same problem we see in West today where Khazar 'Mordechais' and 'Esthers' subvert governments to make war on non-Judaic 'enemies' in nations where Judaism is more accepted, safe and prosperous than ever. The Esther and Mordechai tradition has always been about gaining power in the name of 'preventing genocide..' The controversy surrounding Iran’s nuclear program in the recent decade has been the subject of millions of statements, thousands of news stories and articles, hundreds of speeches and interviews and tens of books and films. One of the most brilliant, revealing and educative books about Iran’s standoff with the West over its civilian nuclear program has been recently published by the prominent American investigative journalist Gareth Porter... These three pieces all came to me from Peter Myers. In my view, they all concern those same issues with which Gilad Atzmon is now so concerned... Statistics just published by Israel show that a policy of encouraging French Jews to emigrate to Israel was surprisingly successful. For the first time, in 2013 more French citizens emigrated to Israel than American ones. That despite the American Jewish community being roughly ten times larger than the French. The "surprisingly successful" in the former paragraph is accurate. Probably for the first time in history, emigration was encouraged by advertising cemeteries... On March 15th Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro addressed his military. Mindful of the recent CIA/bankster putsch in Ukraine, he warned the right-wing fascist thugs who have incited violence in the country over the past two months, “Prepare yourself. We are coming for you.” He then played John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance... ..the land that gave birth to Casanova and Vivaldi could find itself on the path to independence once more, as Venetians take to the polls in a vote that may see them cast aside 150 years of Italian unification. Tensions are running high. On Friday 25 Caribinieri military police officers broke up an interview with Russian TV in front of the Doge’s Palace in Venice and arrested independence organizers for flying the flag of St Mark. A 1997 ordinance made it illegal to display the Lion, symbol of the ancient Venetian republic, in St Mark’s Square... The stalled “peace” negotiation with Israel seems to suggest that the only viable option left for the Palestinian nation is to take Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Indeed, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said recently that “the Palestinians would take Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and violations of international law. The Palestinians will also seek membership in 63 international organizations, including the ICC”.. [I don’t trust Erekat or any members of the Vichy regime in Ramallah – except for Hanaan Ashrawi - but you never know.] Mar 18, 2014 Will the Great Ponzi Scheme that is the US economy crash and burn? Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of Pox Amerikana? Done in by greed, arrogance, aggression and ignorance Many of us have known for a long time that the only foreseeable way for the Empire to lose its overwhelming world dominance would be for the dollar to cease being the world’s reserve currency. That the Empire might self-destruct by forcing this to happen was not predicted by anyone, at least as far as I know [Ed.]... Russia could reduce to zero its economic dependency on the United States if Washington agreed sanctions against Moscow over Ukraine, a Kremlin aide said on Tuesday, warning that the American financial system faced a “crash” if this happened.. “An attempt to announce sanctions would end in a crash for the financial system of the United States, which would cause the end of the domination of the United States in the global financial system,” he added... On Tuesday Reuters reported that a Kremlin aid Sergei Glazyev had announced that if the U.S. were to impose sanctions on Russia Moscow may drop the dollar as a reserve currency and refuse to pay off any loans to U.S. banks saying that Moscow could recommend that all holders of U.S. treasuries sell them if Washington freezes the U.S. accounts of Russian businesses and individuals... ...like with the Syrian crisis of last September, Russia is quickly retaliating with their own economic threats, and one major action that they could undertake as a response is to discard the Petro-Dollar and demand physical gold as payment for energy purchases in both oil and natural gas. Just as the Iranians did under U.S. sanctions just a few years ago... The US government feels the need to intervene in the Russian issue with Ukraine. If it wasn’t for an economic reason, nobody could come up with a valid argument explaining what the US has to do with a former USSR geopolitical issue. Is it really true that US policy makers leverage these “opportunities” as they desperately seek for GDP growth which they can’t find elsewhere?.. For decades, American neocons have engaged in coups, false flag operations, covert and overt wars in order to institute their goal of global domination. America’s reach into Ukraine may well be the ‘touch’ that will end America as we know it today... [Repeated from two days ago, in case you missed it] ...Obama and the lawyers who drafted his executive order did not notice that the way the order is drafted it applies to Obama, to the unelected coup government in Kiev, and to the Washington and EU regimes. The order says that any person “responsible for or complicit in, or to have engaged in, directly or indirectly … actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine” is subject to having his assets frozen... The Executive Order reads, in part: “Given the declaration of will by the Crimean people in a nationwide referendum held on March 16, 2014, the Russian Federation is to recognise the Republic of Crimea as a sovereign and independent state, whose city of Sevastopol has a special status..” When Secretary of State John Kerry made his now infamous statement about Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the hypocrisy was immediately apparent to all but the most clueless of viewers. But perhaps Kerry wasn’t so wrong to expect the public to let him get away with such a transparently hypocritical statement. After all, the public have always been happy to go along with every pretext for war presented to them for decade after decade... The threat of Russian intervention in Ukraine has caused American lawyers and diplomats to raise their voices about the legality of Russian military action in Ukraine. These complaints, however, are based more on political rhetoric and posturing than on an understanding of international law. In fact the most recent practices of states using force against other states show that perhaps it is the United States that is violating international law once again... ..The United States and its European allies have reacted with fury to the Crimean referendum, which resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of breaking away from Ukraine and joining the Russian Federation.. in contrast to the Euro-American reaction to the Crimean referendum, the US and its European allies never entertained the idea of imposing sanctions on Israel for its annexations and colonization of stolen land... Tlaxcala asked three authors- Dmitry Orlov, The Saker and Pepe Escobar- who have been accurately following the situation in and around Ukraine, 5 questions. Here are their answers. What is the significance of this vote? How will it affect South-Eastern Ukraine? How will China and the West react? And, what can we expect next? CrossTalking with George Galloway, Michael Hughes and Dmitry Babich... ..In a phone call with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, their second since unsuccessful face-to-face talks on Friday in London, Kerry urged Russia "to support efforts by Ukrainians across the spectrum to address power sharing and decentralization through a constitutional reform process that is broadly inclusive and protects the rights of minorities," the State Department said.. The idea of such changes in the Ukrainian constitution clearly came from the Russian side... ...in 1954, Khrushchev, with the arbitrary capriciousness of a satrap, made a “gift” of the Crimea to Ukraine. But even he did not manage to make Ukraine a “gift” of Sevastopol, which remained a separate city under the jurisdiction of the U.S.S.R. central government.. Why does the State Department decide who should get Sevastopol? If one recalls the tactless declaration of President Bush about supporting Ukrainian sovereignty even before the referendum on that matter, one must conclude that all this stems from a common aim: to use all means possible.. to weaken Russia... ...the controllers are above the nation-state level and act as a virus that has infected the power structures of "democracies" and other forms of government around the globe. In the US the virus agent is called AIPAC. Just like a virus that invades cells in a body, they start ordering them to behave differently in order to satisfy its cravings and stop doing their normal functions. The "virus" takes over countries by using debt as its weapon and it is in the currency where the venom flows. Money is the "blood" of the economy. Without it society chokes and dies... A Russian Internet news site Iskra (“Spark”) based in Zaporozhye, eastern Ukraine, reported on March 7 that “Ukraine’s gold reserves had been hastily airlifted to the United States from Borispol Airport east of Kiev”. This alleged airlift and confiscation of Ukraine’s gold reserves by the New York Federal Reserve has not been confirmed by the Western media... The American Zionist-owned media and the Zionist-bought American Congress officials keep repeating the deceitful mantra of American Israeli “special relationship”. History shows that Talmudic Jews have systematically adopted and followed this kind of “special relationship” scheme with every empire. This is a parasitic relationship where the Jews keep sucking the blood of the empire until it collapses. Such is the American Israeli special relationship... The mass hypocrisy of Western leadership toward freedom and democracy will now go on display before the world as never before. They feel so insulated from the grass roots public that they have even lost their fear of hiding their true motives of conducting continual subversion and economic warfare against the East. After having looted their own populations they have to find new lands to continue doing their big squeeze... On this March 15, 2014, episode of The Martinez Perspective, I talk with former NSA linguist Scott Rickard and analyst E. Smith to discuss the goings on with the turmoil in Ukraine as well as the geopolitical realities surrounding the Middle East and a myriad of other related topics... ...The history of referenda on independence and secession demonstrates that they are only recognized internationally when the United States and the international bodies over which Washington maintains de facto control, for example, the United Nations and European Union, give them sanction. The Crimean parliament issued the following request to the world: «The republic of Crimea appeals to the United Nations and to all countries of the world to recognize it as an independent state, established by the Crimean people»... In a recent New York Times op-ed, John McCain, the man who hoped to be president, said that Russia’s invasion of Crimea has nothing to do with NATO expansion into Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Oh? Well, now, let’s see how McCain would be responding if the shoe were on the other foot... The Boycott Israel movement is developing a smart-phone application that will allow followers to avoid Israeli products. The campaign for Palestinian rights continues to gather momentum, despite Israeli accusations of anti-Semitism.. Drawing on a comprehensive database of warehousing product names and descriptions, the app will allow users to scan products to find out immediately whether they fall within the boycott’s guidelines... The banning of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Northeastern University in Boston on March 7, along with a university threat of disciplinary measures against some of its members, replicates sanctions being imposed against numerous student Palestinian rights groups across the country. The attacks, and the disturbingly similar forms of punishment, appear to be part of a coordinated effort by the Israeli government and the Israel lobby to blacklist all student groups that challenge the official Israeli narrative... I wonder what would have happened back in the 1960's if fat cat donors to U.S. universities demanded that school administrators ban anti-Vietnam war action on campus or else lose donations. Judging by the way some universities are caving to donors on the Israel-Palestine issue, it is just possible that the donors would have succeeded in crushing antiwar activity, cutting the legs out from the movement that ultimately forced the end of the Vietnam war... ..Walsingham tortured and used agents provocateurs, entrapped and lied, robbed and killed for the sake of filling the deep pockets of Queen Elizabeth with shiny gold.. Looking at the core activities of Walsingham, one can find the direct successors in MI5, in the country counterespionage, and MI6, espionage abroad. Israel inherited also this.. The UK and Israel are close. Now they even have a cyberpact... Mar 17, 2014 Ukraine on the Front Burner Over 95 percent of voters in the Crimean referendum have answered ‘yes’ to the autonomous republic joining Russia and less than 4 percent of the vote participants want the region to remain part of Ukraine, according to preliminary results. President Obama has decided to get tough with Russia by imposing sanctions and increasing support for Ukraine’s new government. This is a big mistake. This response is based on the same faulty logic that helped precipitate the crisis. Instead of resolving the dispute, it will lead to more trouble... I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, find that the actions and policies of persons -- including persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine -- that undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine; threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity; and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. I hereby order:.. [Now let me see, that would apply mostly to folks from the State Department, not to mention the CIA - and himself. Think he'll go through with it? I mean his wife would have a fit!] Tomorrow Crimeans will make a basic and clear choice. The choice will not be whether or not to remain part of Banderastan, the choice will be whether to become de-facto independent and accept a figleaf of Ukrainian sovereignty over Crimea, or to totally break-off from the "Ukrainian experiment" and return to Russia. All the members of the UNSC except Russia (vetoed) and China (abstained) seem to think that it is absolutely unacceptable to refuse to join a Nazi Banderastan for the people who had to bear 80% of the weight of ridding the world from the Third Reich.. Russia freed the West from the Nazis, yet the West prefers to Nazis to the Russians... US Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain suggests that people in Russia will finally oust President Vladimir Putin. “Eventually, Russians will come for Mr. Putin in the same way and for the same reasons that Ukrainians came for Viktor F. Yanukovych,” the hawkish senator wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times on Friday. “We must prepare for that day now..” [The fact that McCain is free to walk the streets instead of being behind bars or confined to a mental institution is a telling fact of contemporary American politics. As Tom Mysiewicz puts it, "McCain nearly sank a U.S. aircraft carrier (killing and maiming well over 100 sailors) through horseplay and, strangely, was allowed to continue flying combat missions prior to his court martial. His stay at the Hanoi Hilton, apparently, was most pleasant—leading some prisoners to call him the “Hanoi songbird”. He came out a war hero instead of a convict at Leavenworth. His father, the admiral, is noted for his adherence to LBJ’s orders (“I want that g-damned ship going to the bottom”) in failing to rescue the USS Liberty during an unprovoked attack by Israel. The Russians apparently saved the ship and surviving sailors by broadcasting messages that they were coming to intervene and the Israelis broke off the attack now known as “Operation Cyanide”.] The leader of ultranationalist group Right Sector, Dmitry Yarosh, has threatened to destroy Russian pipelines on Ukrainian territory if a diplomatic solution is not reached with Moscow. In a fiery address loaded warmongering rhetoric, Yarosh told his followers they should be ready to resist the Russian “occupiers.” The leader of the Right Sector made his address to the coup-appointed government in Kiev, as Crimeans made their way to ballots Sunday to vote to join with Russia or to remain within Ukraine... The referendum on Crimea’s status is going peacefully, with record-breaking turnout, international observers report. Most of them told RT that the referendum is credible and the vote of the Crimean people should be respected. No violations at the Crimea referendum have been reported by the international observers currently present in the republic... As the standoff over Russian interference in Crimea intensifies and the outbreak of a new war remains firmly in sight, few people wonder what the region's indigenous people - Crimean Tatars - think about the situation. The two main conflicting sides, Ukraine and Russia, regularly state their own views and motivations in the conflict, but the Crimean Tatar stance is equally - if not more - relevant as it is their homeland that's at stake. In the event of a war, would they not be the primary victims? For this reason, it is vital to understand the worries of the Tatar population... On 16 March, the people of Crimea will independently determine their own future. Opinion polls show that the overwhelming majority of Crimeans (75-80 percent) have already decided in favour of becoming part of the Russian Federation. Crimea is being given a unique opportunity to reunite with its historic homeland. Several days ago, Barak Obama called the overthrow of the legitimate authorities in Kiev a triumph of democracy. Now Crimea will give President Obama a lesson in democracy... The western media is roundly condemning Russia for vetoing a Security Council resolution condemning tomorrow’s referendum on Crimean self-determination as illegal under international law. The US, as usual, is being extremely selective in their support for international law. Their own veto history reveals that they have vetoed 41 resolutions demanding that Israel respect international law in occupied Palestine... Inverted World is a 1974 science fiction novel by Christopher Priest. The united Europe is described as a city slowly being winched along on four railroad tracks northward toward an ever-moving, mysterious «optimum». Its people travel across the earth on railway tracks being pursued by a destructive gravitational field.. Moving along this track one has a right to bomb Yugoslavia and declare independent a former part of Serbia calling it the Republic of Kosovo, but the right of Russian speaking Crimea for self-determination cannot be recognized... Activists in eastern Ukraine in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions are blocking columns of heavy military equipment heading from Kiev to the border with Russia... A crowd of 3,000 gathered for a rally in the centre of Ukraine's eastern industrial centre of Kharkov on Sunday afternoon to press for converting Ukraine into a federation.. "Our city has been Russian and will remain Russian, albeit within Ukraine. We are prepared to live in one country, but on our terms," one of the leaders of the association Civic Platform, Yuri Apukhtin, told the crowd... Demonstrators in Kharkov, north-east Ukraine, have appealed to Russia to pass to the UN their demands over a referendum on the federalization, while hundreds of protesters in Donetsk stormed a prosecutor’s office demanding to free a local “governor”. As Crimea decides on its future in a referendum, Sunday in eastern Ukraine was marked by a fresh series of pro-Russian rallies... ...The status of al-Aqsa mosque is unparalleled within the context of Muslim heritage in Palestine itself. It is also the third holiest Muslim shrine anywhere. But equally as important, it is a symbol of faith, resistance and defiance. Its story of struggle and perseverance goes hand in hand with the very modern Palestinian struggle for rights, freedom and identity. Praying at al-Aqsa at times seems like an impossible feat. Many Palestinians lost life or limbs simply trying to gain access to the mosque.. While the recurring violations at Al-Aqsa were led by Jewish settlers, according to the statement, they have done so under the watchful eye, protection and support of the Israeli police and army... Delinda Hanley at First American National Summit Reassessing US-Israel relations | Veterans News Now Cutting off aid to Israel is the logical, economical and ethical thing for Americans to do... ...Here then was the situation: We had a nationally known personality traveling to Egypt for a publicly scheduled and well-advertised peace mission. The Egyptian government knew she was on her way and it is probable that the U.S. government also knew her plans.. Here is what I surmise happened. Medea Benjamin's horrid treatment was not a mistake. It was not the action of a few rogue border officials. It was a premeditated act on the part of the military dictatorship that now passes for a government in Egypt.. Would you do that to a high-profile American activist without running the scheme by some relevant U.S. official?.. [Given the hammerlock applied to the US by the ZPC (Zionist Power Configuration), anything is possible, particularly if it is devious, hypocritical, immoral, unethical, illegal and especially if it is violent.] Syrian forces, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, are in full control of Yabroud after clearing out rebels holed up in the strategic Syrian town for months, Syrian state media and opposition activists have reported. Capturing Yabroud, the last major rebel bastion near the Lebanese border north of Damascus, will help President Bashar al-Assad secure the land route linking his Mediterranean coastal stronghold with the capital Damascus, and choke off a cross-border rebel supply line from Lebanon... My involvement in political activity began many years ago , as high school pupil in Tel Aviv who came to volunteer at the elections headquarters of the “Holam Hazeh - New Force" party. It was a small party, holding but a single seat among 120 in the Knesset, and that single MK was Uri Avnery. It was an unconventional and highly dissident party, which struggled for the separation of religion and state, and which was the first to raise the idea of establishing a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip immediately after these territories were occupied in June 1967... Throughout his tenure, Obama plotted one lawless regime change scheme after another. How many are too many? What new ones does he plan? How many more wars will he wage? How much more carnage will follow? How much more death, destruction and unspeakable human misery? How much more violence and instability? How much longer will nations for peace and security put up with US lawlessness? Resisting it is a global imperative. Saving humanity from the madness of imperial rampaging depends on it... As Crimeans make their way to the polls this Sunday, another region further in the heart of Europe is also deciding its fate in a referendum: the Italian region of Veneto, which is voting on whether to break with Rome. The independence movement insists the industrial northern region’s wealth is being drained by Rome’s mismanagement of the financial crisis. Following in the footsteps of Scotland and Catalonia, Venice – the capital of the Italian region of Veneto – will be holding a referendum to form an independent republic... Mar 16, 2014 Why now? What would this mean for the people and for the region? What would it take? How does ODS compare with the currently accepted two-state solution? How can ODS be implemented? Join us for an in-depth discussion about the ideology, political implications and Palestinian and Israeli support of ODS with following honored speakers and many more from Palestine / Israel and Europe:.. ...the problem is not scarcity of money. The problem is how it is being spent. We are getting very little defense–training, maintenance, hardware, and troops–for a gigantic amount of money. By virtue of how they characterize $1 trillion dollars as penury, our national security leaders in the Pentagon and Congress are clearly incapable of dealing with the problem... [We have met the enemy, and they are us. "My 1%, right or wrong!"] The conflict in Ukraine has prompted several level-headed commentators to point out that, of all governments, the U.S. government is in no position to lecture Russia about respecting other nations’ borders. When Secretary of State John Kerry said on Meet the Press, “This is an act of aggression that is completely trumped up in terms of its pretext.… You just don’t invade another country on phony pretext in order to assert your interests,” one of those commentators, Ivan Eland, responded:.. On Sunday, March 16, two polls will be held in Eastern Europe. One will be a complete mockery of democracy, resulting in a government determined to trample a country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The other will be a referendum on independence in the Crimea... Something very important happened this week in the most unlikely of places: the Knesset. On the agenda were three laws, one worse than the other... ...Inspired by Marx’s Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Fritz wrote of the societal core of capitalism as rooted in the COMMODITY, in which exchange value trumps use value, and in which human beings relate to each other as commodities (what’s in it for me?) and in terms of their ownership of commodities (the act of ownership defining their very being). From this, much else follows:.. Inside the beltway types and the media constantly refer to Israel as an ally, which it is not. Israeli soldiers have never fought beside American troops and to be an ally you need an actual alliance on paper. No such legally binding document exists between Washington and Tel Aviv. Sycophants in congress are also fond of calling Israel Washington’s best or closest friend in spite of the fact that it does actual damage to the United States through using its considerable access to the government and media to promote policies that are good neither for the US nor for Israel itself... ..The following series of questions has been circulating on the internet for awhile. It is a piece of trashy Zionist propaganda, meant to make the Palestinians look as though they never existed – a favorite Zionist fairytale. Note the snarky “humour” and the confused cartoon faces. I became sick of seeing these questions posted everywhere without answers, so I wrote the answers... In Purim 2014, Netanyahu and Peres got funny. So funny, that decent people cry. Since Peres described Purim as "a holiday that is all about fun," let's start with him. Few accept Peres' merry definition. A European subscriber of the website wrote me once that Jews celebrating Purim are like Germans celebrating the Holocaust... Why would the United States run the risk of siding with anti-Semitic, neo-Nazis in Ukraine? One of the keys may be found by looking back at Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard in which he wrote, “Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire..” ...While distancing himself from the racial theories pursued by Nazi intellectuals, Heidegger argues that Weltjudentum ("world Judaism") is one of the main drivers of western modernity, which he viewed critically. "World Judaism", Heidegger writes in the notebooks, "is ungraspable everywhere and doesn't need to get involved in military action while continuing to unfurl its influence, whereas we are left to sacrifice the best blood of the best of our people". In another passage, the philosopher writes that the Jewish people, with their "talent for calculation", were so vehemently opposed to the Nazi's racial theories because "they themselves have lived according to the race principle for longest".. [Sounds pretty accurate to me – I guess that makes me a big bad ‘antisemite’ too. Boo-hoo.] I never thought I would see it. A mainstream TV programme, this one made by Australian channel ABC, that shows the occupation in all its inhuman horror. The 45-minute investigative film concerns the Israeli army’s mistreatment of Palestinian children. Along the way, it provides absolutely devastating evidence that the children’s abuse is not some unfortunate byproduct of the occupation but the cornerstone of Israel’s system of control and its related need to destroy the fabric of Palestinian society... In a series of hacked emails received from “Anonymous Ukraine” it is clear that Pentagon officials working in concert with extremist elements in the Ukraine have carried out and are planning more attacks in Ukraine. What is also clear is that these attacks are to be blamed on Russia including blowing up planes at an airport. Other attacks may well include mass civilian casualties. The long series of emails include several that are frighteningly incriminating. This is first of the “worst,” three “smoking gun” false flag planning documents:.. [This could be a 'reverse' psy-op cooked up by Gordon and the boys. Hey, if it is, more power to 'em!] The first Israeli settlement was established in the early 1970. It was wrong. It should have been resisted by a torrent of protests across the country. It did not come. And I freely admit my own guilt. I should have done more. I should have made this the cause of the day, everyday, from then on. But, today, I have happy news.There is a way out. It is a way that is humane, just and peaceful. Not one shot out of a gun required. Not one extra dollar or shekel required:.. [There’s also a link on the page to video of the entire conference. Y'know, there have been so few sane, decent and honorable people in the US Congress in the last hundred years or so, someone should build a Hall of Honor or a Museum for them. It wouldn't cost much - wouldn't have to be any bigger than the average living room.] ...“I think people have a right of self-determination. It’s written to the international law. It’s a moral principle and of course if you believe in limited government, everybody should have the right to minimize their government and there should be a right of secession.” Paul said he does not understand how the United States can argue against the results of the election. “We loved secession when we seceded from Great Britain, and we loved secession when the Soviet Union broke up,” Paul said... Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry met in London on Friday, March 14, for talks on Ukraine before the planned referendum in Crimea. The meeting lasted many hours to prove that the United States conscientiously let the situation slide to deepen the conflict between Russia, which stands for the principle of self-determination of Crimea, and the interim government in Kiev. This policy is hard to construe any other way but the desire on the part of US to provoke a clash between Russia and Ukraine... ...the politics of the Obama administration ought to be called center-right, economically and socially. The fact that he's labeled a leftist by so many is testament not only to this rightward shift but also to our political culture's increasing detachment from reality. To our left/progressive friends outside Texas, we ask: Is it really so much better where you live? Where in mainstream politics in the United States - whether Republicans or Democrats dominate - is there much sanity?.. The following is a guest post by Mara Kozelsky, a historian at the University of South Alabama who studies Crimea in the Russian Empire. Here she discusses the importance of Crimea for Russia’s religious identity, the focus of her book, “Christianizing Crimea: Shaping Sacred Spaces in the Russian Empire and Beyond”.. Mar 15, 2014 Mar 14, 2014 In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called “two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre – and its entirety…visible only to God..” [Comprehensive – a must read] Having studied enough American Indian Tribes over the years, I have grown accustomed to creation myths that each Tribe assigns itself as its reason for being. And the definition of “chutzpah” that I’ve been taught is that of a young man on trial for murdering his parents, who throws himself on the mercy of the Court on grounds that he is an orphan. That, as Alison Weir has made clear, is Israel’s situation... This week, the Israeli company Elbit Systems Ltd. announced that its subsidiary won a contract from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection to produce and install surveillance systems along the U.S.-Mexico border. The company is famous for providing "intrusion detection systems” and other infastructure support for the Israeli West Bank barrier... [At some point in the last decade what I call ‘applied paranoia’ replaced blood diamonds as Israel’s top export industry] Tony Benn accuses the BBC ON AIR of capitulating to the Israeli Government by refusing to air an appeal for the Gazan people by the Disaster Emergency Commitee (DEC) he then broadcasts the Address himself much to the consternation of the interviewer!.. Below is a six minute segment from a Q&A session at the Washington Report's AIPAC Conference of March 2014. It begins the moment the Holocaust narrative is challenged and the panic on the stage becomes palpable. In the clip, an anonymous but well-informed member of the audience asks the panel to address the question of the dominance of the Holocaust in American life... [The Holycause is the only religion one dare not question. It has become the de facto semi-official faith of the Empire. The Sacred Six Million have replaced Jesus as the embodiment of divinity. Expressing doubt about any of its dogmas may well cost you your reputation and your job. Once the Inquisition gets hold of you, you’re toast.] The Northeastern University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has become the latest student group to face reprimand for organizing around the Palestinian cause. Northeastern has suspended the group until 2015, barring it from meeting on campus and stripping it of any university funding. The move comes just weeks after student activists distributed mock eviction notices across the campus during Israeli Apartheid Week. The notices were intended to resemble those used by Israel to notify Palestinians of pending demolitions or seizures of their homes... ...Interviewed in 2005 David Cameron was asked why Conservatives should be friends of Israel. He replied, “Because Conservatives believe in supporting democracy, defending freedom and standing up against terrorism. Israel is in the front line in the international struggle against terrorist violence and we should show solidarity with all involved in that fight. Conservatives also recognise Israel’s unique position as a lone democracy in a region that currently boasts no others..” What stupidity... A special nine-judge panel of the Israeli Supreme Court, headed by Supreme Court President Asher Gronis, will deliberate the constitutionality of the "Boycott Law " on Sunday.. Former Knesset Member Uri Avnery and the Gush Shalom Movement have filed an appeal to the Supreme Court in July 2011, immediately after the Knesset enacted the "Boycott Law ". Voted into law at the culmination of a heated debate, this piece of legislation makes anyone calling for a boycott of Israel liable to heavy torts and fines, and calling for a boycott of settlements in the Occupied Territories was defined as “a form of boycotting Israel”.. ...For the first time since WW II, overt fascists have real power. They hold major government posts. In December 2012, European parliamentarians expressed concern about "rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter" Ukraine's parliament. Their "racist, anti-Semitic, and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values," they said.. All is forgiven. EU officials look the other way... ...Up to now, Ashton has enjoyed something of a benevolent image akin to a "well-meaning auntie figure". Mild-mannered and modest, she might be seen as an honest broker. For example, she is credited with helping to broker the P5+1 interim nuclear deal with Iran last November. However, the covert involvement of Western governments in orchestrating the coup d'état in Ukraine and Ashton's de facto participation in this regime-change operation makes her much less a lady and more a cynical operator who is far from an honest broker... ...real liberals and conservatives have no reason to demonize Russia’s leader. Liberals should welcome him in under their capacious tent. Conservatives should embrace him. Nevertheless, Democrats and Republicans demonize him. Since philosophical differences don’t explain this, there must be some other reason. Could it be because Russia is the country Putin leads?.. Imagine you commit a heinous crime. Then imagine that, once facing charges in court, you’re allowed to withhold incriminating evidence brought forth by the prosecutors, keeping the jury in the dark about the details of your lawbreaking. Further, imagine you commit more crimes while on trial and imagine the judge enables and covers up these additional offenses. Who would call this a fair trial? Clearly, it’s nothing but a mockery of the rule of law. But that’s essentially how the Senate investigation into the CIA’s Bush-era torture program has proceeded and the chaos seemed to have hit its zenith with Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s testimony on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday... ...on a planet still impressively heavily garrisoned by Washington, hardly noticed by anyone and rarely written about, the U.S. military has for years been quietly moving into Africa in a distinctly below-the-radar fashion. This represents a major new commitment of American power in a world of supposed cutbacks, but you would never know it... ‘All that glitters is not gold; all that shivers is not cold.’ Mythology has it that Midas, the king of Phyrgia, was able to turn everything he touched into gold -- ‘the Midas Touch’. According to Aristotle, the legendary figure died of starvation as a result of his greed to transmute everything from its natural substance to gold. This myth is a tragic reality when it comes to America and its neocolonial adventures; America’s reach into Ukraine may well be the ‘touch’ that will end America as we know it today... Serious clashes have taken place in the city of Donetsk. According to most accounts, the newly appointed billionaire governor Taruta attempted to organize a demonstration in support of "a united Ukraine". For his purpose he bused in (some Nazi thugs) from Kiev and western Ukraine. The local population organized a counter-demonstration. The cops tried to keep the two groups apart, but failed, and soon violent clashes happened. The Banderites were fewer in numbers, but were armed with metal bars, tear gas and other weapons, but the locals had the numbers on their side and eventually the Banderites had to withdraw... [I think that if the Donbass is able to put up a solid resistance, then all of Eastern Ukraine will likely join the Crimea under Russian protection.] Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has accused one of his main Fatah rivals, Mohammed Dahlan, of involvement in six murders, and questioned his role in the death of former leader Yasser Arafat. Abbas made the accusations against Dahlan, who is regularly cited as a possible future president, during a meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council on March 10 in Ramallah, with his comments later released to media... ...The University of Chicago routinely trained me and innumerable other students to become ruthless and unprincipled Machiavellians. That is precisely why so many neophyte Neo-Con students gravitated towards the University of Chicago or towards Chicago Alumni at other universities. Years later, the University of Chicago became the "brains" behind the Bush Jr. Empire and his Ashcroft Police State. Attorney General John Ashcroft received his law degree from the Neo-Con University of Chicago Law School in 1967. Many of his lawyers at the Bush Jr. Department of Injustice were members of the right-wing, racist, bigoted, reactionary, elitist, war-mongering, and totalitarian Federalist Society... I write this letter, as I wrote my last, between bouts of violent vomiting and sharp pains in my stomach caused by this morning's force-feeding session. Reading news articles, you would think that we have stopped striking. Perhaps you might think that our protests had even been sated by government concessions. We may be trapped behind the walls of Guantanamo, but we will not be silenced. I write this letter to tell you that we are still striking. We will not stop until we get our dignity back in this place and are allowed to return home to our families. With President Barack Obama's blessing, Colonel Bogdan, the warden at Guantanamo, has instituted humiliating groin searches... ...the idea that the Senate or Congress is adversarial to the White House and CIA is mythological. I mean they both work for the same masters, the bankers, the bankroll, the campaigns that put these politicians in office are the ones that are pulling the strings of these puppets. So to think that the Congress and the Senate is somehow going to serve the interest of the people and genuinely investigate accusations of torture is a bit silly and I think people would make a big mistake if they thought that were the case... Public discussion on the Palestinian/Israeli crisis, which has diminished in recent years, received a powerful impetus with The National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship, March 7 at the National Press Club, Washington, DC.. The speakers did not disappoint; each was informative and spoke eloquently, with conviction, and credibly.. One sour note: In one panel, Jeffrey Blankfort, outspoken radio commentator and well known antagonist of the "Jewish left," unnecessarily and unfairly berated Noah Chomsky, Phyllis Bennis, Amy Goodman and others, all of whom have been in the frontline in the battle for Palestinian rights... [As regular readers of this site well know (yes, there are one or two), I don’t have a PC bone in my body and I have made exactly the same critique of Chomsky et al as that stalwart, Mr. Blankfort. There isn’t any substantive difference between guarding the Left flank or the Right flank of the Jewish fascist project. In any case, like Mr. Lieberman, I think it behooves anyone interested in the central struggle of our time to watch the videos from this seminal conference. As far as the mainstream media are concerned, except for C-SPAN which videotapes all events at the NPC, it never happened. Here's a link to the videos. Catch it before it disappears from C-SPAN.] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to the United States has ended in an unprecedented failure. On the Palestinian front, the Iranian front and the domestic US front, Netanyahu’s efforts last week ran badly aground. Let’s review the categories... [Some day, sooner than later I trust, people will think of Israel as “The Mouse that Roared” – at least until the cheese was gone.] This is an excerpt from an interview with the Archbishop of Hassakeh-Nisibi for the Syriac Catholics, Jacques Behnan Hindo, where he expresses his anger at Western foreign policy that has been actively backing hardline Wahhabi terrorists to topple the Syrian government while causing all Syrians to suffer as a result... This diatribe from the very popular Rabbi Boteach should be archived so that when, sometime in the future, people study this phenomenon they will have available such a perfect expression of the tribal Jewish mind at work in our time. Every paragraph is packed with self-serving lies and distortions. What is truly telling is that the good Rabbi must actually believe this incredibly twisted view of things – the world seen through judeo-centric glasses [Ed.].. The chances of quickly and painlessly resolving the Ukrainian crisis are slim. If U.S. President Barack Obama gets serious, however, and stops wasting his time on useless PR stunts with amateur political kamikazes — such as Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, whom the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland affectionately calls "Yats" — there might still be a chance of turning this around... ...These days the Knesset closes its winter session with the legislation of three racist laws. After the first two were approved, I was closely following the fate of the Referendum Law, when the mass of data flowing from Gaza became critical. The topic that swayed the scale in favor of Gaza was published in the Facebook page of Minister of Foreign Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman and was entirely quoted by Kikar HaShabat, an Ultra-Orthodox newspaper. Lieberman wants to conquer Gaza... “I just believe that as believers in Jesus Christ who see the authority of scripture, I believe that the Lord and his strong right arm will have Israel’s back and will be her protector,” (Michele) Bachmann (R MN) said. “The question is, will we as the United States cooperate in standing with Israel and blessing Israel, or will we join those nations that come against her? We are definitely on the wrong side. It is jaw dropping, it is stunning, it’s breathtaking.” With these “eloquent” words Michele Bachmann returned to the declarations of the dominionists who thrived during the George W. Bush administration, calling again for more war on behalf of that foreign state that receives 8 million a day from American taxpayers... [That religious lunatics like Michelle aren’t locked up under the care of competent healers of mental diseases is a sorry comment on human cultural evolution. And there are tens of millions of them!] Russia’s Foreign Ministry and ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych have correctly pointed out that the decision by the Obama administration to provide U.S. economic assistance to Ukraine’s coup leaders is a direct violation of U.S. laws designed to ensure that juntas, which overthrow democratically-elected governments, are not rewarded with U.S. taxpayers’ money in the form of grants, loan guarantees, and other economic and/or military assistance... [After dubya they don't even bother checking with the lawyers anymore. Given the proven complicity of the Supreme Court, if a few cantankerous sheep want to complain, let 'em bleat.] ...the imbroglio in the Ukraine was orchestrated by Neoconservative elements in Washington. The Neoconservatives as you may know, began infiltrating the U.S. Government and the American news media in earnest during the H.W. Bush Administration. They came into glory during the co-consulship of Dick Cheney and G.W. Bush. In the present instance, Russian President Vladimir Putin has reacted in a predictable manner to a situation which the Neocons have brought about in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.. Does Washington want a new Cold War? If so, why?.. The word “kosher” originally only applied to Hebrew/Jewish Biblical demands allegedly made by God on the Hebrews/Jews regarding the food they ate and how they slaughtered animals that were to be consumed as food. (It’s comical and entertaining when we realize just how foolish the Jewish god is as shown by such things as his instructing the Hebrews/Jews not to eat four legged fowl.. I am using the word kosher in regards to slavery because the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament makes many claims that God instructed the Hebrews/Jews about slavery just as it’s claimed he gave instructions regarding slaughtering animals and food... In a week when 6 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops within 24 hours, and while the Israeli Occupation Forces are committing a new war crime in Gaza , David Cameron is flying off to Israel saying “I’ve got a planeload of innovative British companies coming with me and we’ll be linking them up with Israeli businesses so they can forge new partnerships..” [There is something so pathetic about these shabbas goyim – they are willing to do anything, including spilling the blood of millions, on behalf of people who have nothing but contempt for them.] ...The Ukrainian elite has been unable to steer its country towards a more prosperous future. In 1990 Ukraine’s gross domestic product per capita was similar to that of Belarus; today, it is half. Each change of government has brought a worse cadre of incompetents and thieves into Kiev’s corridors of power. The elections in 2004 – in which the west openly interfered – ushered in the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko: nationalist, unbelievably incompetent but staunchly pro-western. In 2010 he was replaced by Viktor Yanukovich, whose flaws were just as deep... ...We know how the U.S. will create false flags so they can do a military action, just like they tried in Syria, with the chemical attack that was really caused by Saudi Arabia. Emails from Jason Gresh were hacked, he is the Assistant Army Attache at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine. The emails discuss setting up bombs and a false flag to blame Russia... [See also 43 Trillion dollar suit against U.S. govt. officials and major banks! Accused of stealing from U.S. people and money laundering. This (somewhat semi-literate) Sherrie seems to be a new kid on the block. Maybe it’s all just tabloid fodder, but otherwise could be very interesting.] In January, 2014, Major General Paul Vallely, retired from the US Army 21 years ago, met with leaders of Al Qaeda, while in Syria. His “cover” was that of “military analyst” for Fox News, the “tabloidesque” propaganda arm of what can only be called the New World Order. Vallely wasn’t there to report. He was there to manage, “aid and comfort” and much more. The Ukraine is a Vallely concern also. Who is this man?.. On February 27, 2014, they announced their so-called "Ukrainian government of people's trust." It includes a rogue's gallery of societal misfits. Many are militant fascists. They're thugs. They're criminals. They're illegitimate putschists. They're xenophobic, hate-mongering, ultranationalist anti-Semites. Combined they represent mob rule. They make mafia bosses look saintly by comparison... We are back to the nitty-gritty of the so-called Palestinian peace talks. The usual tools are again available to kill the talks at any time. Israel demands as preconditions what it knows their prisoners will never accept...their being holocausted from their conquered lands by accepting a “Jewish State.” No one has yet dared use that h-term. But I have no hesitation. We once had a free press in America, but it is now on its knees, literally bought and paid for... Efforts by authorities to suppress the official record of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Conn., are only intensifying public doubts about its veracity.n“There is absolutely no evidence or proof that a mass shooting took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012,” insists Professor Emeritus Dr. James Fetzer of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, among those who have challenged the official record. “No one was ever able to get into the school to verify if there were any bullet-marks and bloodstains and nobody will ever get in now that the school has been demolished..” On March 16 Crimea is to hold a referendum to define its fate. The decision has evoked an extremely nervous reaction in the West. US President Barack Obama said it violated international law but never adduced any legal arguments to support the statement. The same applies to other statements on this account, they all lack legal substantiation... Mar 13, 2014 I have been asked recently why do I persist in working hard for the things that I believe in, knowing that I will die in the next several years, and am almost certain not to be around for the catastrophic future that seems to cast its dark shadow across the road ahead, and can only be removed by a major transnational movement of the peoples of the world... [Outside of certain spiritual lineages, Mr. Falk is about the closest thing to a truly wise person that I know of in this world.] Is it just me, or do you also see a thread of colonial superiority and racism binding US, Australia, Canada to Israel? Think about it. All are ex-British colonies and like Israel, have a shameful history of genocide committed against their respective Indigenous Peoples and all continue to treat their First Peoples as third class citizens... Here's a handy A to Z guide to U.S.-backed international crime... Starting with last ditch march and non-violent action in DC against Keystone XL pipeline. 400 arrests. Then Medea Benjamin and Code Pink against the AIPAC warmonger convention in DC. Benjamin goes off to Egypt to try to reach Gaza with 100 other women activists. She tells Amy Goodman how Egypt cops beat her and deported her... ..Following a 13 year rampage that has reduced large swathes of Central Asia and the Middle East to anarchy and ruin, the US military juggernaut has finally met its match on a small peninsula in southeastern Ukraine that serves as the primary operating base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Crimea is the door through which Washington must pass if it intends to extend its forward-operating bases throughout Eurasia, seize control of vital pipeline corridors and resources, and establish itself as the dominant military/economic power-player in the new century... ...Since the idea is to make the outrageous, criminal acts of the globalists mainstream and easy to swallow, “conspiracy theories” will be acknowledged and investigated in stories that will fully express the facts in the story. This article will be likely answered by an establishment expert, someone with a mountain of credentials but no scruples, assuring the public that although the facts of the case are true, there is no danger involved and many logical reasons why the situation exists. After which, the matter will be debated on a public forum, in a civilized manner and then filed under interesting but irrelevant... In the first few phases of Wall Street’s exploitation of the American people and of the world, terrible things were done to common folk.. The Federal Reserve gave banks the right to charge us interest on money they created out of nothing. The IRS was needed to make us pay taxes for the interest on the money the bankers created out of nothing.. That 3 million Americans starved to death in the Great Depression was of no interest to them. That 58 million people were killed in WW II after the German military and the Japanese Emperor tried to surrender cannot be mentioned in the Corporate media. The deaths of more than 60 million under the Jewish controlled Soviet Regime is a forbidden topic... Second victory in two consecutive days. The new Conscription Law was approved by the Knesset on March 12, 2014. Shortly before that, the law had managed to gather the largest protest in Israel's history, when 600,000 Ultra-Orthodox Jews protested against it in Jerusalem.. The third vote on the law ended as oddly as yesterday's vote on the Governability Law. The vote was boycotted by the opposition, which includes all Ultra-Orthodox parties. Even the Labor boycotted the event. Netanyahu should not be happy; everybody is telling him that he is acting illegitimately. Obtuse, he keeps hitting his people, as savages do... ...he knew that sending 500 Britishers to start an uprising of Britishers in the Boer states would provoke the Boers into taking some action against it’s British minority. Rhodes could then use his cosy relationship with the British press to spin this into Boer attacks on poor innocent British settlers and that would soon have the British public clamouring for it’s government to send troops to teach these damn Boers a lesson for daring to lay hands on British citizens. The situation I just described fits exactly into the standard model of regime change that we have seen implemented many times since 1945 by the CIA-M16-Mossad (in reality, they largely operate as a single agency).. ...This week, Feinstein stepped forward to tweak her tap dance — insisting that intrusive surveillance, so vile when directed at her and colleagues with august stature, must only be directed at others. A huge problem is that for the USA’s top movers and shakers in media and politics, nothing rises to the level of constitutional crisis unless their noble oxen start to get gored. It doesn’t seem to dawn on the likes of Senator Feinstein that Fourth Amendment protections for the few are not Fourth Amendment protections at all... [She probably wonders what all the fuss is about – after all, special status for the few is the very bedrock of Zionism; it’s ‘normal.’] Nothing is really a surprise here. All of this shadow boxing will remind everybody about defense stuff they are paying for but rarely see. And the military just loves to get the attention. But Americans may want to note that our American leaders don't really feel we require a rational reason for our aggressive destabilization subversion on Russia's border. And if it all backfires on us, which is what so often happens, what genius is going to dive on a sword from his second story window? Inquiring minds would like to know... Comedians say that the art of telling jokes relies on "timing." Israeli's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the world's top comic politician, seemed to be proving the point with his "timely" claims about seizing Iranian rockets aboard a cargo ship in the Red Sea. Standing in front of 40 pointed missiles, each carefully displayed on props (you sense the stilted exhibitionism here), the Israeli leader said the seized cache "showed the true face of Iran" in its support for terrorism... How shall we do this? This is what I’d like to suggest: let’s have a conversation, rather than an interview. Therefore, I would ask you to begin by stating all your questions, I will jot them down and try to answer them, and then we will have a more detailed discussion of the specifics that interest you most. Let’s begin... [Easy to imagine Obama attempting this – not that he would dare – a steady stream of diluted treacle issuing forth from his silver tongued totally insincere mouth.] Mar 12, 2014 The Obama regime, in coordination with its allies and proxies, has re-launched a virulent world-wide campaign to destroy independent governments, encircle and ultimately, undermine global competitors, and establish a new US – EU centered world order. We will proceed by identifying the recent ‘cycles’ of US empire-building; the advances and retreats; the methods and strategies; the results and perspectives. Our main focus is on the imperial dynamics driving the US toward greater military confrontations, up to and including conditions which can lead to a world war... “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext.” Thus spoke Secretary of State John Kerry.. just as Russia took control of Crimea in the latest escalation of the Ukraine crisis. This extraordinary remark appears to have gone briefly viral. And surely I am not alone in requiring time to recover from the sheer ignorance and presumption of it. Ignorant because even by the standards at State, where the past must evaporate on an almost daily basis, it is hypocrisy unlimited on the very face of it. Presumptuous because it implies a degree of stupidity among us that not even P.T. Barnum would dare take for granted... Today an outspoken hedge fund manager out of Hong Kong stunned King World News when he said that the entire Ukrainian gold hoard may have just secretly been flown from Ukraine to the United States. William Kaye, who 25 years ago worked for Goldman Sachs in mergers and acquisitions, also spoke about the incredible implications of this astonishing development. Below is what Kaye had to say in this powerful interview... ...This was the justification for the Governability Law, an attempt to reduce the number of parties. Its main victims will be Palestinians and Bedouins. Since this is a Zero-sum Game (a set number of seats), it means that every seat taken from them will pass to Jewish parties. Minorities which until now were represented at half their strength will be now wiped out almost completely... ..."A very important document - a declaration of independence - was adopted during the session. This document is needed for the judicial procedures as part of Crimea's entry into Russia, as well as for the Crimean referendum," the Crimean lawmaker added. MPs of Crimea and Sevatopol stress that they acted in strict compliance with the UN Charter and took into account the fact that unilateral proclamations of independence don't violate international law. The provision was approved by the UN International Court on July 22, 2010, in relation to Kosovo... [Now there’s irony for you] ...1) proclivities toward war suggests not simply the continuous historical record of interventions, but, in this case, a premeditated framework directed to placing Ukraine in the context of a renewed, or rather, intensified Cold War, absorbing it into the Western orbit for both commercial and military reasons, placing it under IMF discipline and bringing NATO to the border of Russia; and 2) military-corporate globalization suggests, beyond the scope of US-geopolitical intended dominance, the changing character of American capitalism, which despite, or because of, market fundamentalism, is adding a significant component to its internal composition, its structural-ideological militarization... Fed up with their nation’s corrupt, mendacious, ineffectual leadership, a group of Americans is seeking to join the Russian Federation. “We are collecting signatures for a national referendum on whether to remain a failed state – an economic basket case run by criminal oligarchs – or to join the Russian Federation under a President with a proven track record of bringing oligarchs to heel,” said Bill Blatsky, head of the Join Russia – Putin for President committee... [Kevin's on a satire binge - a wise course of action in these theater-of-the-absurd times] The story of '300: Rise of an Empire' comes from a graphic novel, but it's based on a travesty of history that has long existed in the Western imagination. Shortly after the 2007 release of 300—Zack Snyder’s computerized gorefest about the ancient Battle of Thermopylae—the Iranians issued an angry response.. A tradition of Western myth-making gained traction in the 19th century that insisted these battles between Greek city-states and the Persian Empire were a showdown over the fate of Western civilization itself... [The implication is that this is Western Eurocentric propaganda. Close, but actually it’s in the grand tradition of tribal Jewish agit-prop that has poured out like a gusher from Hollywood for nigh on 100 years.] ...The NSA surveillance and the F-35s are part of the same machine. They are all included in the umbrella known as national security and they are all part of a system that manipulates the public with fear and nationalism. To make it worse, this is all done in the name of freedom; a freedom that is chipped away each and every time a phone call is recorded, an email logged, a fighter plane flies over, and a dollar given to the Pentagon... Americans have not experienced political leadership or an independent media for such a long time that they will be amazed at the straightforward answers from the Russian President and by media asking real questions, some of which show the influence of Washington’s propaganda. Americans will also be struck by how greatly the facts of the Ukraine situation diverge from the constant stream of lies that flow from Washington, its European puppets, and presstitute media... ..Long before it even became a nation Americans, and later America, have never given a damn about any nation’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, independence, or people’s right to “self determination”. If a nation has some economic or strategic benefit to the U.S. you’ll become a victim of the freedom spreading U.S. military.. whenever the U.S. faintly pushes for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians that a Jewish manufactured crisis occurs somewhere in the world to distract the U.S. and the world from dealing with Israel’s brutal military occupation of Palestinian territories and its killing siege of Gaza for 7 years? I don’t know about you but there’s something Jewishly rotten in the Ukraine Crisis... ...On March 6, the Middle East Monitor (MEM) headlined "Israel cuts off water to 45,000 Palestinians." For nearly three days, Shuafat refugee camp residents had no water. Nor did suburban Jerusalem's Ras Shehadeh, Ras Khamis, As-Salam and Anata. Two weeks ago, Israeli water company Gihon began reducing supplies. Stopping them entirely followed. On March 5, Shuafat's popular committee member Khaled Al-Khalidi said 23,000 camp refugees had no water for three days... [Perhaps it was needed for the free Kool-Aid the Israeli government is dispensing to its Jewish population.] To learn why Richard Nixon was really blown out of the White House, you could begin with the infamous Nazi chemical/pharmaceutical cartel, IG Farben. The cartel that pushed Hitler over the top into power in Germany. One of its lasting legacies is the multinational corporation expanded to titanic proportions... Back in my CIA days we sometimes used to describe our opponents in the KGB as "ten feet tall." It was, in truth, a tribute to their tradecraft and ability to operate in largely hostile environments. Soviet case officers were sent overseas meticulously trained in both the local culture and language, remained in a country for as long as they continued to be effective, and would engage in hours long "runs" to detect and eventually evade surveillance before making their meetings with their agents... “Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honor…or any form of indecent assault” – (Article 27 of the Geneva Convention) Nadia didn’t have a permit and she wasn’t about to request one. Nadia, a Palestinian resident, knew that being married to Imad, who as his father, his grandfather and his great grandfather was born in Jerusalem, isn’t reason enough for her to be able to live under the same roof with her husband in his home. She knew she doesn’t fit the “criterions” of the ‘temporary’ Citizenship Law... A resolution passed by the Crimean parliament guarantees proportional representation in the republic’s legislative and executive bodies for the Crimean Tatar ethnic minority and grants their language official status, among other things... H.F.Verwoed, former SA Prime Minister, observed in 1961 that the Jews “took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. In that I agree with them. Israel, like South Africa is an apartheid state.” From its origins in the 19th century, Zionism, the official ideology of the state of Israel, centred on the idea of creating a specifically Jewish state in which Jews would be protected and privileged over non-Jews. In 1991 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) rescinded, after intense USA and Western pressure, the resolution that condemned Zionism “as a form of racism and racial discrimination”. This was followed three years later by the dismantling of Apartheid SA... ...over 1,000 people protested in the South Sudanese capital Juba after a UN convoy marked as carrying food was caught ferrying weapons to rebels loyal to former government deputy Riek Machar. The rebels, who began attacking the government in December, are known as The White Army. More precisely they are the Rothschilds’ army. On July 9, 2011 South Sudan became the world’s 193rd nation. Less than a week later violence has erupted in South Kordofan - an area on the new border between Sudan and South Sudan which is controlled by Sudan and rich in oil.. the Rothschild-led Eight Families banking cartel now seeks to push the new border further north... Mar 11, 2014 Freelance journalist Brandon Martinez breaks down the deceptive language people use to whitewash the true nature of the so-called Israel-Palestine conflict... [A simple, clear exposition of the situation, obvious to anyone who is at leastreasonably sane - by a young person, too, which is very promising] William Engdahl interviewed by Cara St. Louis on the historical situation of the Ukraine, the coup d´etat, snipers and lies in the mass media... When a sufficient number of people come to realize that the Holycause is a monstrous case of pathological self-deception, then the basis of Israel’s existence will disappear – as will Israel and its death grip over Western societies, not to mention Palestine – and hopefully some sanity will return to our world [Ed.]... Winning the war against Israel’s domination of Palestine would concomitantly be a deafening blow to the imperial powers and partners that have controlled the larger region for a century and shaped our global political economy for longer. It is this bigger picture, and history, which suggest that the battle for the self-determination of the Palestinian people, despite the momentum it has currently garnered, is poised for another perilous setback... Secret Thoughts of a Palestinian Teacher in Israel, by Hatim Kanaaneh (Satire) | Palestine Chronicle The airport security apparatus’s routine act of strip-searching Ezies Elias Shehadeh, an Arab teacher in a Jewish school, has generated too much media noise including Israeli TV and radio reports and interviews and the main editorial in Haaretz. Local Arabic language papers veered off from their focus on the earthshaking Nazareth mayoral election rerun destined to decide the future of the Middle East and the world’s balance of power and nuclear armament, all to report on the teacher’s claims of injured pride. At the risk of angering friends and foes alike, let me be the devil’s advocate in pointing out the obvious:.. The Jewish religious holiday of Purim is around the corner. Jewish children are receiving ‘The Purim Superhero’, a children story book as a gift from the PJ Library. It’s the first Jewish children’s book with LGBT characters. Elizabeth Kushner, the author of ‘The Purim Superhero’, is a lesbian Jewish mother who lives in Vancouver, Canada with her spouse Lise and daughter. She wrote the book to compete in a picture book contest held by Keshet, a Jewish lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) organization – and won the contest... A new kind of war is developing. It is very different from the mass conflict of the First World War when governments mobilised millions of men and vast industrial resources. Wars have got smaller, but are equally and, on occasions, more vicious than in the past. Not all are identical, but armed conflicts in Chechnya, Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya have many traits in common and not only because people in these countries are largely Muslim, with the exception of the Balkans... NGOs caught forging documents for war, insider warns all NGOs infiltrated; 'Independent military observers' for EU-based group OSCE again turned away in Crimea, OSCE branded one more 'vulgar instrument' for foreign interests; and CNN buys the latest State Department hoax.. with Illinois University Professor of International Law and former Amnesty board member Francis Boyle; Infowars Editor Paul Joseph Watson; Eric Draitser of Boiling Frogs Post; Ron Paul Institute Executive Director Daniel McAdams; Ukraine protest organizers; Sliman Bouchuiguir, whose NGO fabricated the claims against Libya; and Asst. Secretary of State Vic Nuland... [Or read transcript here] British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned that Europe could face a “shooting conflict” that could last “months and months and months” if Russian forces move beyond the Crimean Peninsula and into eastern Ukraine... ..Notice that the BBC make out the Crimea to be some sort of large land mass extending in to the Black Sea, whereas Bing show it to be essentially a big island with a couple of major bridges. In one of them, it looks like Russia is taking control of a chunk of country, in the other it looks like they’re taking control of an island. The implications are very different, in that an island is much easier to control and defend. It’s interesting to consider that these are at best maps of political boundaries yet the geography behind them is what’s actually important for military action... Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday the U.S. is pushing “aggressively” for a diplomatic resolution to the Ukrainian Crimea tug-of-war with Russia and that he’s been in touch with his Russian counterpart daily... [It's not "Russia's ethnic Crimea claim" that threatens Eastern Europe - the Empire does, big time, with austerity, bankruptcy and debt peonage.] Imagine an organization, let's say the Toronto's True Tellers, that decides to publish a guideline on how to deal with the systemic lies of the State of Israel's government. They will do a thorough job; considering the topic, this is not difficult. Just list the declarations of Prime Minister regarding the negotiations with the Palestinians. Compare the statements and bring also the data from the ground. How many settlements and enlargement of settlements were approved while making conciliatory remarks towards Palestine? How many Palestinian lands were confiscated while conducting negotiations that will demand the giving back of the Occupied Territories?.. ..It's hard matching his bluster. His hyperventilating wore thin long ago. Even current and former Israeli officials don't trust him. He's way over-the-top. He's his own worst enemy. His bullying/bluster offends. He repeats one Big Lie after another. It's habitual. He considers Arabs subhuman. He obsesses over Iran. He heads Israel's rogue state government. He's a regional existential threat... [Bibi rides the wave of Zionism’s deepest current – psychopathic paranoia.] On The Manner In Which Jewish intelligentsia destroyed the Working Class (by mistake) | Gilad Atzmon This is my most important talk to date. The new Left, The Frankfurt School, ID politics, the collapse of Working Class politics, the end of production and the meltdown of dissent. An expose... The U.S. and European Union countries played a key role in the overthrow of the elected government in the Ukraine headed by Victor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. Listening to the politicians in Washington or watching the corporate media, it would be easy to believe that the coup in the Ukraine has ushered in a new era of democracy for the people of that country. Nothing could be further from the truth. The new, self-appointed government in Kiev is a coalition between right-wing and outright fascist forces... The article below is satirical, flippant, and in questionable taste... [This is a rib-cracker - enjoy!] There has been virtually no speculation about whether the Ukraine balloon going up now was timed to put pressure on Russia for not being more compliant about removing Assad. Sure, we all know that destabilizing countries has become the American secret national sport, and Ukraine has been in play for some time. But our Intel sources confirm that major foreign powers were behind the sustained assault that produced the tipping point, plus reneging on the compromise agreement both parties had agreed to, before the ink was dry... Resisters of Sykes-Picot Land Grab Perform Key Fighting Roles in Syria, by Franklin Lamb | OpEd News Every school kid here in Syria learns at an early age about the various colonial land grabs that have lopped off key parts of their ancient country, and they receive instruction about their national duty to recover this sacred territory. The concept applies equally to still-occupied Palestine, or at least it did before the 2011 uprising got started, albeit since then a degree of resentment has arisen over participation by some Palestinians with rebel groups seeking to topple the Syrian government... ...Commenting on the 2-to-1 victory for the BDS motion, Martin O’Quigley, the chairman of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), praised the students “who stood with the oppressed on the right side of history and endorsed this measure, despite a stream of venomous anti-Palestinian propaganda and dirty tricks being injected into the debate from off-campus forces, including the Israeli embassy in Ireland’s failed attempts at using social media to influence the outcome..” Notwithstanding its recent decision to lift its debt ceiling once again to enable it to add to its ever-growing mountain of debt, the U.S. government has now issued a new pledge, this one being as a guarantor of a $1 billion loan to the new government of Ukraine. Unfortunately, that’s not all that U.S. officials have pledged in that part of the world. I wonder how many Americans realize that the U.S. government has also pledged the lives and limbs of America’s young people in the defense of nations that once formed part of the Soviet bloc. That’s what membership in NATO is all about... Mar 10, 2014 I have long believed that prospects for a hopeful human future depend on radical and visionary feelings, thought, and action. Such an outlook reflects my view that the major challenges of our time cannot be met by thinking within the box, or implementing the realist agenda of doing what it is feasible while disregarding what is necessary and desirable.. In effect, it opts for a worse human future, and remains in bondage to the deformities wrought by clearly deficient neoliberal prescriptions for human fulfillment... Ukraine: Today's Update Russia is increasingly left with no choice but to ‘declassify’ the privileged information in its possession regarding the western intelligence operation that forced the power grab in Kiev. It is extraordinary that Russia handed over to the UN Security Council the information with the request to hold an impartial international investigation. Of course, any such move for impartial investigation will be vetoed by the United States. Russia knows it, too, but then, there is also an information war going on today regarding the situation around Ukraine and from Moscow’s point of view, as tensions keep rising, it has become imperative to expose the US’ narrative to be sheer baloney... New Russian ships have added reinforcements to their positions in the Crimea, unloading some 200 military vehicles and bringing the estimated number of troops there around the limit under treaty of 25,000... Western news media have long functioned as a propaganda arm of the state, concealing elite corruption at the heart of government: the collusion between corporate, financial and ruling power and the deeply anti-democratic nature of that power. Despite the formality of recurring elections and parliamentary style appearance, Western states are in the nuts-and-bolts of working power more accurately described as fascist corporate entities with a patina of popular democracy for window-dressing... ...What many conclude is hypocrisy.. is not hypocrisy at all, but rather a cognitive deficiency. It is the same cognitive deficiency that allows John Kerry to state without any sense of irony, in response to reports that Russia might be moving troops into Crimea, that “You just don’t, in the 21st century, behave in a 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretexts.” If someone had reminded Kerry that it was the “trumped-up pretext” of weapons of mass destruction that was the basis for the illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq by the U.S., he probably would not have been able to cognitively process the contradiction... March 16 is C Day. The Crimean parliament - by 78 votes with 8 abstentions - decided this is the day when Crimean voters will choose between joining the Russian Federation or to remain part of Ukraine as an autonomous region with very strong powers, according to the 1992 constitution. Whatever "diplomatic" tantrums Washington and Brussels will keep pulling, and they will be incandescent, facts on the ground speak for themselves... Political representatives from India have weighed in on the crisis in Crimea, boldly taking the side of Russia, putting forward an even more explicit show of support than China offered earlier in the week. National security adviser Shivshankar Menon said India wants the confrontation between the West and Moscow over Ukraine resolved peacefully. However, he added that they also hoped that the interests of Russia were taken into account... A referendum in Crimea will say in a week if the region wants more autonomy from Kiev, or if it sees itself a part of Russia. RT’s Paula Slier asked residents of Crimea’s capital whether they want to have the region’s status changed and, if so, why. Many in the Black Sea peninsula are refusing to recognize the self-proclaimed authorities in Kiev, RT found out. Violent seizure of government buildings and bloodshed on the streets – that’s how Crimeans see recent events in Kiev... Financial journalist Lars Schall talked with a former Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of Defense in Germany, Willy Wimmer, about the crisis unfolding in the Ukraine. According to Wimmer, the intention of the US in the Ukraine is to split Europe one more time... The Obama administration’s rationale for supporting the fascist-led coup in Ukraine collapsed on Wednesday when a “hacked” phone call between EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet revealed that the snipers who fired on protestors in Maidan Square in Kiev were not aligned with President Viktor Yanukovych, but with the protest leaders themselves. The significance of the discovery cannot be overstated since the Obama team has used the killing of protestors to justify its support for the new imposter government. Now it appears that members of the new government may be implicated in the killing of innocent civilians... The suspected plot of the US and Germany against Russia will not work and is likely to backfire since Moscow can turn the gas tap off on Berlin, a political commentator says... The scale of the Ukrainian crisis eclipsed a fundamental issue of who and why provoked it. All the ratchet, which broke loose like hell in Western media seems to avoid a reasoned debate on this issue of culpability. It is obvious that those who hid behind colorless personalities of Brussels bureaucracy knew full well what they were doing when offered Kiev a deep integration short of full membership. They knew also that this deal would have a serious impact on an extensive Russo-Ukrainian trade and economic relationship. If Moscow was engaged in such talks when the EU admitted new members, why not now?.. Ukraine has accused Russia of staging an "armed invasion" of its Crimea Peninsula after unidentified pro-Moscow gunmen appeared on the streets of the region. The development comes after Ukraine's new government, which came to power after the removal of President Viktor Yanukovich through deadly anti-government protests, has called for fresh presidential elections on May 25. The move has been countered by the Crimea administration that has announced plans for a referendum on the same date to decide on the region's future. As the government in Kiev continues to emphasise the need for a united Ukraine, here is a timeline of some of the events that have led to the current situation... ...While the world is intently looking at Ukraine a key event took place in Cyprus. In late February 2014, Turkey and the Greek Cypriot government signed a framework agreement for the reunification of the island. It is not a comprehensive agreement. It is not a final one. Yet, both sides agreed to a common end. Not far is the day in which this war will be over. Apparently a viable solution would be a creation of a federation between the two sides. The timing was not random. Israel looked at the event with dismay since it would damage its military businesses with the adjacent island. Yet, the solidifying agreement is to be blamed on Israel... An insightful conversation between Gilad Atzmon and Paul Eisen. It takes a deep look into their minds and the troublesome relationship they hold with 'Jewish identity politics', 'Jewish ideology','Jewish power' and Jewish history alongside their prolonged intellectual and political activism... A recent public opinion poll asked Americans which of two options they would favour if a two-state solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict was no longer on the table. (It is in the rhetoric of leaders and diplomats but not in reality). The two options were:.. According to the poll, 65 percent of those asked for their opinion preferred the one state option... ...In this episode, Mehdi Hasan challenges Shlomo Ben Ami , the former Israeli foreign minister and avowed liberal Zionist, on the challenges of Zionism and the failures of the Israeli peace camp. Also joining the discussion are: Avi Shlaim, a renowned new historian and emeritus professor of international relations at the University of Oxford; Paul Charney, the chairman of the Zionist Federation; and Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organisation... The failure to take responsibility for our own behaviours and actions – let’s call it “blamism” – is one of the biggest ills of modern times. Rapists blame the victims (“she was wearing a short mini-skirt”) for their crimes and paedophiles blame parental abuse, among other things, for abusing children. Israeli Jews blame the holocaust for their collective kleptomania, narcissism and lack of humanity. Arabs and people in the Third World blame a variety of others – imperialism, colonialism, dictatorship, the devil – for their innumerable problems. But very few have the courage to stand up and accept responsibility for their own actions... ...A motion supporting a blanket boycott of Israel was passed by students of the National University of Ireland on Thursday. The referendum results at the NUI Galway Students Union make it the first student body in Ireland to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, campaign against Israel... A group of Israeli teenagers have told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that they will refuse to serve in the military because of its role in the occupation of Palestinian land. "The main reason for our refusal is our opposition to the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the army," about 50 youths wrote in a letter to Netanyahu, published on Saturday by an Israeli pacifist group. The group referred to "human rights violations" in the West Bank, including "executions, settlement construction, administrative detention, torture, collective punishment and unfair distribution of water and electricity".. [So even in Sodom and Gomorra there are some decent people – maybe God will see fit to spare Israel his wrath this time on their behalf – but I doubt it] The Arab League has backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's rejection of Israel as a "Jewish state", as US-backed negotiations approach a deadline next month. League chief Nabil Elaraby called on Arab countries to take a "firm stand" against Israel's demands, calling it a deviation from an agreed-upon framework for peace talks... Mar 9, 2014 There is a controversial story abroad, which says that in our midst lives a great and wise teacher, a Self-realized man of infinite love, intelligence and wisdom. His name is Maitreya, he is the World Teacher for the New Age or cosmic cycle we are now entering into, the ‘age of Aquarius’. It is a story circulated far and wide over the last thirty-five years or so by the British artist and writer Benjamin Crème. It is a story I first heard in October 1987, which for me had the ring of truth; it is an extraordinary tale of hope and wonder that if true, must be the single most important event of our time... [My comment on the site: The coming of Maitreya was predicted by early Mahayana buddhism, about 2,200 years ago. Following Siddartha Gautama Shakyamuni, he would be the Sixth Buddha, each appearing at the end of the previous cycle of 2,500 years. The last of the five ‘ages’ that comprise a cycle is called the Dark Age. It has been 2,500 years since the Buddha taught, roughly at the same time as a number of other great masters, such as Lao Tze, Chuang Tze, Confucius, not to mention Socrates and Plato and probably others. The tail end of the Dark Age – what we have been experiencing for the last 100 years or so – is characterized by all of the great evils that humanity is prone to, occurring in an environment of vast confusion and ignorance. So we could say that the pattern is reliably repeating itself. One of the interesting things about the Maitreya story is that he is depicted in images dating back at least 2000 years as sitting in a chair – pieces of furniture that were extremely rare in those times. All I can say is hurry up! I don’t think we can hold out much longer otherwise.] Is it really possible that the European public has no clue what was done to Ukraine? Are the men and women of the continent that lives in hallucination, that it is well educated and well informed, really unaware how its own governments have created and supported that ‘opposition movement’ in Kiev; a movement full of fascists and bigots? Unfortunately, it is possible, and it is to be expected! After working in some one hundred and fifty countries, in all the continents, I have finally come to the absolutely clear conclusion: there is no part of the world as brainwashed, so programmed, so indoctrinated, as are both Europe and North America... A diverse panel of experts examined the relationship between the U.S. and Israel, and the impact of lobbying groups on U.S. policy in the Middle East. The “National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel 'Special Relationship'” was held at the National Press Club by the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy along with the Council for the National Interest, If Americans Knew, and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs... [This is a video of the entire proceedings – 8 hours. A lot of useful, pertinent information imparted by some of the best of the best in a relatively brief time period - and free for the asking!] ...Blackwater and other mercenaries: to the extend that any of them have really made it to the Ukraine, their mission will be the protection of certain individuals and objects, but not attacking Russian-speakers in the Ukraine, much less so the Russian military in Crimea. Why? Because there are plenty of very competent instructors in the Ukraine insurgents for such missions, and do so at a fraction of the costs of hiring Blackwater & Co. Then, the political scandal of just one US mercenary caught fighting the Russians would be huge, not to mention the headache of getting him back. But the main reason is that there is plenty of expertise available locally... In the early days of the Syrian uprising-turned civil war three years ago, the writing on the wall of it becoming an intricate regional and international conflict was there for all to see. Palestinians in Syria were likely to find themselves a pawn in a dirty war, but few could have predicted the magnitude of the crisis, and perhaps, few cared. Despite their many differences, there are two common denominators that unite all the parties involved in the Syrian conflict. One is that they are all contributing, directly or otherwise, to the killing of Syrians with unmitigated impunity, savageness even. And, two, in the same breath, they all pose as defenders of the Syrian people... Alain Soral and Gilad Atzmon have each faced (and perhaps welcomed) criticism and controversy as a result of their intellectual inquiries and honest reasoning. Neither man has shied away from politically incorrect observations including those on issues of Zionism, culture, Europe or freedom of speech... ..."Actually there’s no state control over public order and the so-called Right Sector calls the tune, the group that has resorted to terror and intimidation.. Our western partners, it seems to me, are quite well informed of what they [the radicals] represent, because they are frequent quests there [in Kiev] and among themselves they are sharing extremely alarming impressions. But I guess for political reasons, they try to conceal the facts in public..” [More death, destruction, hatred, confusion among the goyim. Way to go, Uncle Shlomo, you’ve done it again!] The roots of the Bologna process go back to old times and reflect the need of European empires for educated cretins to fill positions in government structures. Since then the Bologna system of education has been modernized. For instance, the graduates had not hidden their intellectual abilities before the information war started. Today they learn to pretend to be deaf, dumb, subject to temporary insanity and incoherent thinking; it all makes them acquire the makings of seasoned and able fighters defending democratic values and freedoms.. Catherine Ashton, the head of Brussels diplomacy, has been in the spotlight more often.. setting a bright example of imitating the loss of consciousness... [A little Russian satirical humor goes a long way] ...The IAEA’s report of Iran’s compliance with the November agreement has certainly raised hopes of a successful denouement to this prolonged impasse. But Gareth Porter, author of the fascinating new book Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, is less sanguine about the possibilities for a breakthrough.. In a recent.. article, Porter notes that White House spokesperson Jay Carney recently insisted that Iran also has “to deal with matters related to their ballistic missile program” in these nuclear negotiations, even though this issue was not part of the interim deal signed last fall. The new demand, Porter concludes, is an Israeli-inspired monkey wrench thrown by its lobby... I'm so delighted that President Obama and Congress are moving to impose sanctions on Russia over its military intervention in Crimea. Regardless of whether one thinks this is a wise or just policy in the case of Russia, this is setting a great political precedent in the United States for considering boycotts, divestment and sanctions on Israel over its military occupation of Palestine - the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem... Mimicking flies jetting towards the nearest butcher shop, Israel cannot resist war zones. For those in the business of war, battlefields are profitable; a McDonald’s branch at a premium location, an unguarded blood-diamond placed on the town’s central plaza awaiting a thief. After keeping an odd silence during the early stages of the conflict, in March 2014, Israel became clearer on the war taking place in Ukraine. It bets on the split of the country and is playing with both sides... When it gets complicated and confusing, when you’re overwhelmed with too much information, changing daily; too many explanations, some contradictory … try putting it into some kind of context by stepping back and looking at the larger, long-term picture. The United States strives for world domination, hegemony wherever possible, their main occupation for over a century, it’s what they do for a living. The United States, NATO and the European Union form The Holy Triumvirate... The White House Fool has repeatedly declared erroneously and foolishly that it is “against international law” for Crimea to exercise self-determination. Self-determination, as used by Washington, is a propaganda term that serves Washington’s empire but is not permissible for real people to exercise. On March 6 Obama telephoned Putin to tell the Russian President again that only Washington has the right to interfere in Ukraine and to insist against all logic that only the “government” in Kiev installed by the Washington-organized coup is “legitimate” and “democratic..” ..We Must Save Palestine And Make Sure That Naive Abbas Does The Right Thing For The Palestinian People. Now There Is No Need To Negotiate For A 2 State Solution Because With Only 18%, How Can It Be A State! We Must Push For The Full Liberation Of Palestine, Period! That Scumbag Netanyahu Wants To Use Palestine As A Tool For Bargaining With Obama, Which Is Utter Rubbish! They Treat The Palestinians As Pawns Which Can Be Used As Bargaining Chips!!!! The Zionist Jews Are Really Corrupt And Cunning Devils!! [Well, clearly over the top, but her heart is in the right place and we can use all the help we can get] We are seeing it today, in the Ukraine, Syria, across Africa; more than two dozen instances have been cataloged. Highly organized armed groups, multiple nationalities, all drawn upon at need, ready for any mission, riot, revolution, subversion, terror attacks or assassinations. Their actions are ruthless, their allegiances a matter of “conspiracy theory.” They never take credit, never issue manifestos, have no website. Gladio operatives run entire nations... ..Putin supports peace and stability. Obama wages one war after another. Putin affirms UN Charter and other rule of law principles. Obama ignores them. He claims a divine right to achieve unchallenged hegemony. He does it belligerently. Putin believes nation-state sovereignty is inviolable. Obama wants pro-Western puppet governments replacing independent ones... A year has passed since the physical parting of Hugo Chavez and it’s still impossible to accept. His voice was a constant in revolutionary Venezuela, his discourse was a school in continuous development. A humble man with a noble soul, Chavez had the courage of warriors and a heart filled with patriotism. He defied the most powerful interests without ever flinching. His hand never trembled, he never bowed down, he was always firm with serenity and conviction, ready to confront the most powerful threats. His value was immense, a soldier of the people, a giant of centuries... [You go, girl – love ya] A nation is not a person. A nation is a place where class conflict rages. A nation's government--"democratically elected" or not--is an instrument that the ruling class uses to dominate the rest of the population. When a government wages war or otherwise uses its military forces, it is for the purpose of defending or expanding the domination of the nation's ruling class over people inside its nation and perhaps over people inside another nation. Replace the word "nation" with "ethnic group" or "race" or "religion" and the above statements remain true, with the qualification that "government" may need to be replaced with "authorities" or "leaders.." Israeli regime forces have fired stun grenades and tear gas at dozens of Palestinian protesters marking the International Women’s Day near a West Bank checkpoint, injuring at least 11 women. During the Saturday incident, the female protesters suffered from tear gas inhalation after the Israeli occupation forces attacked their rally at the Qalandiya checkpoint in the central West Bank, Ma’an news agency reported... Israel cut off the water supply to 45,000 Palestinians this week while Prime Minister Netanyahu was traipsing across the globe signing historic legislation with the governor of my very own state, California, on — you guessed it — water conservation! Ever since I read about the outlandish conniption fit caused by EU Prez Martin Schulz‘s address to the Knesset (he had the audacity to question the water allocation between Israelis and Palestinians) Israel’s hypocritically alleged ‘innovative water management‘ has been on my radar. But imagine my shock in reading this “innovation” was coming to my own back yard... Mar 8, 2014 The Ukraine: Today's Update The stakes are high in the Ukraine: after the coup, as Crimea and Donbas asserted their right to self determination, American and Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory, both under cover. The American soldiers are “military advisors”, ostensibly members of the Blackwater private army (renamed Academi); a few hundred of them patrol Kiev while others try to suppress the revolt in Donetsk. Officially, they were invited by the new West-installed regime. They are the spearhead of the US invasion attempting to prop up the regime and break down all resistance... ...Detailed and grisly descriptions of the United States’ past interventions, nearly every one deeply unpopular with Soviet and Russian people, have become a dominant theme in Russian reporting on Ukraine and its Russian-populated Crimean Peninsula. Nevertheless, they dare to reproach Russia for ‘armed aggression’ when she stands up for her countrymen, who constitute the majority of the Crimean people, so as to prevent ultranationalist forces from arranging another bloody ‘Maidan’.. [The pathological liars calling "them" liars. So prototypically Zionist.] Legally, Washington and its European allies haven’t a leg to stand on. Both can be rightly accused of violating international law from their gross interference in Ukrainian sovereign affairs – from the instigation of violent street protests that led to the sacking of an elected president and government, to the subsequent climate of lawlessness and fear sweeping across Ukraine and felt in particular by the majority Russian ethnic population in the east and south of the country... George Washington warned against “foreign entanglements.” Was it because he had a premonition of the cluelessness and ineptitude of his successors in the Bush years and in the Age of Obama? If so, the Bush-Cheney – now Obama — War on Terror shows how right he was. It might as well have been concocted deliberately to encourage Islamists to attack Western targets. The ill will it has created will be a factor in world politics for generations to come. It has also diminished the liberal protections Washington and his contemporaries prized... Binyamin Netanyahu is very good at making speeches, especially to Jews, neocons and such, who jump up and applaud wildly at everything he says, including that tomorrow the sun will rise in the west. The question is: is he good at anything else?.. [Avnery makes a good point about how multi-tribal nations are breaking apart. That is an essential part of my argument that when the Palestinians finally, eventually, get the upper hand, they must expel almost all of the Jews if they wish to remain in control of their own country. No big deal - Jews are used to it.] It is the Unlimited Imperialists along the lines of Alexander, Rome, Napoleon and Hitler who are now in charge of conducting American foreign policy. The factual circumstances surrounding the outbreaks of both the First World War and the Second World War currently hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity. Historically, this latest eruption of American militarism at the start of the 21st Century is akin to that of America opening the 20th Century by means of the U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898... The only way out of this crisis that allows Russia to save face and avoid any armed conflict is to allow the Ukrainian people to hold a referendum to determine their destiny and future as one nation or two nations with the east and south joining Russia. Russia should keep its naval fleet in the Crimea; all talk of sanctions and isolation should cease, and the G8 Summit should be held as scheduled. However, such a solution will be disastrous for the U.S. and Israel as the world would then demand that the Palestinians be allowed the same opportunity for “self determination”.. putting Obama in a difficult place... [To expect him to side with humanity, or just most Americans, over the interests of Israel would be naïve – a lap dog doesn’t bark at its master.] Just recently, Hilary Clinton has proved herself to be a Zionist buffoon when she likened Putin’s “actions on the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine to those of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.” If Hitler didn’t exist, the Zionist and neo-Bolshevik world would have almost certainly invented him. They have beaten the entire world over the head with that name while at the same time they absolve themselves from any responsibility whatsoever. One individual who has seen this as an exploitation of what happened in history is Jewish member of Britain’s parliament Sir Gerald Kaufman... ...these days there is not much difference because Israel has a death grip on the Middle East policy of the United States. AIPAC owns Congress; Congress stands up and gives repeated standing ovations for Netanyahu to the point that Netanyahu does not even get a chance to talk because of its nonstop applause. Talk about subservience, talk about obsequiousness! And you sir, are a disgusting example of American big lies in subservience to Israel... The totally corrupt anti-American Obama regime is trying to appoint the head or former head of the Israeli Central Bank as the Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. The scuttlebutt is that Obama has been paid tens of millions of dollars to deliver the US Federal Reserve to Israel’s control. I don’t know whether to believe this or not, but considering the corruption of all sectors of the US government, I would not be surprised by anything. In Washington there is nothing that cannot be bought... [The last three heads of the Fed were Jews, including the new one. Perhaps this is just more of the same, to further consolidate their ownership of America. From their point of view, they bought it - they own it. Or is it "you broke it, you bought it?" Ain't capitalism wonderful!] Their names are Jawhar Nasser Jawhar, 19, and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, 17. They were once soccer players in the West Bank. Now they are never going to play sports again. Jawhar and Adam were on their way home from a training session in the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium on January 31 when Israeli forces fired upon them as they approached a checkpoint. After being shot repeatedly, they were mauled by checkpoint dogs and then beaten. Ten bullets were put into Jawhar’s feet. Adam took one bullet in each foot... Press TV has conducted an interview with Alison Weir, Executive Director of If Americans Knew from Washington, to discuss contradictory messages coming out of the White House regarding American intentions towards Iran... Read transcript, watch video... ...Americans just won’t put up with dirty tricks like deliberately causing people to wait in lines for hours to get to New York and if Christie knew about it, he is not fit to be president of the United States. We have high standards. On the other hand, people in Gaza wait in their cars all day, every day, or stand in line for six to twelve hours, holding a jug, hoping to get enough fuel oil to cook supper for their children. Standing in line is a deliberate tactic in Gaza and everyone, including Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, and Barack Obama, President of the United States knows who is responsible... ...We are now witnessing accelerating efforts to curtail speech, to exercise censorship, and to carry out retaliatory action against individuals on the basis of their political views or associations, notably support for BDS. We ask cultural and educational institutions to have the courage and the principle to stand for, and safeguard, the very principles of free expression and the free exchange of ideas that make those institutions possible... ...At a meeting between Joseph Stalin and leaders of the Socialist Unity Party in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, held on January 31, 1947, Stalin asked what percentage of Germans (in all the occupation zones) were “fascist elements,” and “what influence did they retain in the Western zones”?.. The United States is sending signals to Israel that “it is far from being [pleased] at Israeli conduct” by denying visa requests from hundreds of Israeli military and intelligence officials, Gilad Atzmon told Press TV in a phone interview on Thursday. “I think the American administration realizes by now that they were gambling and for more than a while on the wrong horse..” ...British Major General Wingate was assigned to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1936, while still a captain. He created the Jewish Special Night Squads, which were instrumental during the 1936–39 Arab Revolt. The unit was disbanded in 1939, after Wingate was removed from its command due to his Zionism. The British army was not supposed to take sides.. In the context of the proper minimalism preached by Zionists, this may seem a bit exaggerated, unless one is acquainted with Tower and Stockade. Those in the know, treat him as more than a friend; without Wingate the State of Israel was unlikely to have been created... The Dark Ages Have Descended Anew: No truth Need Apply, by Daniel Patrick Welch | The Smirking Chimp The near total blackout of truth in the Western media makes this one of the most dangerous times in history, with coordinated “news” outlets acting collectively as a sort of Ministry of Government Lies. To try to escape this stranglehold, it is necessary to reach outside the echo chamber of massaged and approved opinion in which we are basted day in and day out. It's not that difficult... Prime Minister Netanyahu is an old-fashioned right-wing Zionist, which is why he is demanding that Palestinians recognize Israel "as a Jewish state" as part of any final status agreement. Today President Mahmoud Abbas said "no, no way" and he is absolutely right. Historically, right-wing Zionism--in contrast to the socialist Zionism of David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and their allies--preferred rhetoric to action. While the old socialists were building the physical infrastructure of the future state and then the state itself, the right-wing Zionists stuck to rhetoric... There are those who stand in regal splendor in halls resplendent with brilliantly colored flags and emblems of rank testifying to their positions as leaders in the world, acknowledged with respectful applause, as the audience standing in adulation of that position, witness the entrance of the announced Lord of the realm as he ascends to the podium to declare his moral righteousness before the world spread out through the nations in the Temple of Television, and boldly, shamelessly lie before all humankind—they are the face of falsehood... [According to the Talmud, it’s kosher if a Jew says it. A Jew cannot sin in any relationship with a goy – whether it involves lying, fraud, theft, rape, murder and you get the idea.] Mar 7, 2014 The Ukraine: Latest Update The Crimean parliament has voted for the region to join Russia. The decision will only come in force if approved by the Crimeans at a referendum which will be held in 10 days... According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. It is Greece all over again. Before anything approaching stability and legitimacy has been obtained for the puppet government put in power by the Washington orchestrated coup against the legitimate, elected Ukraine government, the Western looters are already at work... As the events in Ukraine unfold, the voices calling for sanctions against Russia are raised louder in the West. They got united in a choir as the Russian Federation Council unanimously approved on March 1 the bill which envisions granting the President special powers to use the armed forces in Ukraine to prevent the spread of banditry and protect the Russian population in the brotherly nation... Public discussion on Ukraine is all about confrontation. But do we know where we are going? In my life, I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm and public support, all of which we did not know how to end and from three of which we withdrew unilaterally. The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins. Far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them... [Compared to the ignorant, bellicose hotheads who run the show, the war criminal Kissinger’s words sound like sanity.] The hazards associated with American foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should appear obvious to all, because it is precisely this policy that has caused the crisis in Ukraine with all its negative consequences for the coming months and years. President Barack Obama was candid in admitting it on Monday March 3, 2014, when he said that "we are indicating to the Russians [that] if in fact they continue on the current trajectory they’re on, then we are examining a whole series of steps — economic, diplomatic— that will isolate Russia... ...The main thing he confirms prior to the shooting part is that the members of the transition government are a lot of people with some very shady pasts…gangsters, America’s, the EU’s and NATO’s new terror ally nation-builders in Eastern Europe. They don’t get into the shooting discussion until around 8 minutes. The Estonian FM says that the medical and on the ground people all confirm that the riot police and the protestors were shot by the same group…and there was no qualification on that. You will notice that Ashton matter of factly acknowledges this but does not ask any questions... ...'What Russia did is wrong!' Following Martin’s announcement, many western media outlets were quick to denounce the ‘Kremlin’s funded’ TV network and its authoritarian manner, but the fact that Martin openly criticised the Russian government proves the opposite. Martin’s statement means that Russia is far more respectful of freedom of speech and thought than our so called ‘Free West.’ Can you imagine a BBC presenter standing up against the British Government?.. The irony could not be more bitter - or sickening. US Secretary of State John was photographed laying wreaths in Kiev this week and offering "heartfelt" condolences for those killed during recent violent street clashes in the Ukrainian capital. It now turns out that the killing of protesters and police officers was carried out by covert snipers working for the new Western-backed junta that seized power in Kiev. Kerry was thus laying flowers in memory of victims who were shot on the orders of the very people whom the West has been sponsoring... U.S. foreign policy from Vietnam to Afghanistan has mostly been counter-productive - enabling what the policies were intended to prevent. The disturbing manner in which the crisis in Ukraine is unfolding -- more and more provocative -- demonstrates once again that U.S. policy is doomed to be counter-productive. Because healthy thought opposes senseless speculation, analyzing the statements of the "movers" and "shakers" of the United States provides awareness to the U.S. agenda on the situation in Ukraine. If comments by U.S. government officials and media actors represent the thoughts that are guiding U.S. policy toward Ukraine, then its time to ask: "Who is in charge of this madhouse?".. In the past couple of years a disturbing political phenomenon has arisen. To put it simply, groups espousing democracy have caused their countries to politically self-destruct by violently turning against the results of free and fair elections. Apparently, they act this way because the elections did not go their way and/or the elected officials adopted policies they oppose. They do so even when there is a possibility that changes in policy, and even changes in constitutions, can be had peacefully through legal means... Ukraine and the U.S. National Security State, by Jacob Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation At the end of the Cold War, the American people had a grand opportunity, one that entailed the dismantling of the national-security state apparatus that had been grafted onto our governmental system after the end of World War II.. No more Cold War should have meant no more national-security state. Unfortunately, however, that was the last thing the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA were going to permit. Having become essentially the fourth branch of the U.S. government — and the most powerful branch at that — they weren’t about to permit themselves to be dismantled... The US has authorised sanctions that include visa bans and the seizure of assets of Ukrainians and Russians involved in stoking Ukraine's ongoing crisis. Barack Obama, the US president, issued an executive order and declared a state of emergency on Thursday, calling Russia's involvement in Crimea an "extraordinary threat" to US national security and foreign policy. People who "undermine democratic processes and institutions in Ukraine, threaten its peace, security, stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity and contribute to the misappropriation of its assets" will have any existing property and interests in the US blocked, Obama said... [And who will punish the US for crimes 1... N? The enumeration of the particulars of the indictment is so long and so foul that it would break the internet backbone if I attempted to post it. Suffice it to say that in the last 100 years the US has bombed more than 60 countries and killed upwards of 60 million people, more than 95% of whom were innocent non-combatants. We're definitely #1/] One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG.. [Well, we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, Mr. Greenwald, for the time being. But we are watching your relationship with Omidyar very closely.] Tuesday evening, Israeli soldiers ordered twenty-one families in the Wad Ebzeeq area in the Northern Plains of the occupied West Bank to leave due to a “live fire military drill”. Similar exercises and “intermediate displacements” have increased in 2012 and 2013. We asked a Palestinian intelligence expert and received the stunning answer. “Israel is training for the ethnic cleansing of the Jordan Valley and much of the West Bank and their annexation, village by village”, along with the permanent annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights and parts of Southern Lebanon... ...Poor Natalie discovered that she does not belong and is sad. Allow me to contribute a little grain of sand in a tragic attempt to improve her damaged feelings. Dear Natalie, cheer up! Do you really want to belong to a foreign army running amok in foreign lands? The people of Nachlaot accused you of being a foreign army, in ugly graffiti sprayed around your pretty set. But also they are an occupying army. Don't cry, Natalie, nobody can truly belong to a mishmash of cultures preaching nothing but state trickery and violence... Alain Soral Total Censorship Society (English Subs) | YouTube It is perhaps a sign of the weakening of the Israel Lobby after three significant defeats over the Chuck Hagel confirmation, bombing Syria and imposing new sanctions on Iran that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) should be willing to crawl out from the shadows on and around Capitol Hill where it usually operates in an attempt to convince the public of the need to confront the Mullahs. And it is perhaps a reminder of its still considerable clout that the forum that it chose to argue its case was The New York Times, the "Gray Lady" of Times Square, America’s self-described "newspaper of record.." ...Borders are becoming a bit odd in the Middle East. They always have been, of course. Ever since Mark Sykes and François Georges Picot — the latter a former French consul in Beirut, by the way, who cost a lot of brave Lebanese their lives by his carelessness in sealing their anti-Ottoman letters behind an embassy wall — divvied up the Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, etc, one lot of Arabs (or their grandchildren) found themselves living as refugees not many miles from their original homes, cursed and sometimes killed by another lot of Arabs who turned out to be — much to their own surprise, in some cases — Lebanese or Syrians... Membership of the Israeli Football Association (IFA) should be suspended until Israel respects the human rights of Palestinians and observes international law, thus enabling Palestinian footballers to play and compete nationally and internationally. Since 1967, Israel has maintained a brutal military occupation of Palestine, building illegal settlements and a separation wall on stolen land, despite condemnation by the UN and International Court of Justice. Within Israel, over fifty laws discriminate against its Palestinian citizens. When influential sports organizations say nothing in the face of an injustice of such magnitude they are complicit... Quickly, take cover, America’s former top diplomat decided to become a talking-mime now that she’s two years away from her office in the State Department! Back in November 1999 it was a kiss to Suha Arafat (wife of then Palestinian President Yasser Arafat) that got Hillary in political trouble as a candidate for the Senate, from which she quickly backtracked in order to get the Jewish vote in New York. Now she is also backtracking on her stupid, ill-informed remarks demonizing Vladimir Putin... [“All options are on the table!,” she always threatens. What, no immediate capitulation? “Off with their effing heads!” she shouts. Just gotta love American diplomacy during the twilight of the Empire.] Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave one of his typical speeches at this year’s AIPAC convention in Washington. Before he delivered his usual sermon about Iran and the other “terrorists” in the region, he implored the friendship and the alliance between Israel and the United States of America. This time, neither President Barack Obama nor VP Joe Biden showed up. Netanyahu’s main purpose of coming to Washington was, however, to strengthen the forces of opposition against the talks between Iran and the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. For the Palestinian negotiators, he erected insurmountable political obstacles in order to... Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday implored Palestinian leader, Mahmud Abbas, to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and to "abandon the fantasy" of refugees returning to Israel, fueling anger from the Palestinians. "It's time the Palestinians stop denying history. Just as Israel is prepared to recognize a Palestinian state, the Palestinians must be prepared to recognize a Jewish state," he said. The Israeli leader then hit upon two controversial issues in a single sentence. "President Abbas: recognize the Jewish state and in doing so, you would be telling your people to abandon the fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees," he said... Mar 6, 2014 The Ukraine - Latest Update Under the title “In Kiev, an Israeli army vet led a street-fighting unit”, the Jewish News Agency JTA confirms that soldiers from the IDF were involved in the EuroMaidan protest movement under the direct command of the Neo-Nazi Svoboda Party. The Svoboda Party follows in the footsteps of World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. The leader of the “Blue Helmets of Maidan” is Delta “the nom de guerre of the commander of a Jewish-led militia force that participated in the Ukrainian revolution”. Delta is a Veteran of the notorious Givati infantry brigade... [This shouldn’t come as any surprise. After all, Zionism and Nazism are essentially the same deal. See Zionism and Nazism: Is there a difference that makes a difference?] Here's the laughable irony of Obama's protestations.The latest apparent Russian military moves follow months of US-sponsored destabilization in Ukraine. This illegal and covert American interference has trampled all over Ukrainian sovereignty, which ironically Obama is now accusing his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin of doing... According to financial disclosures and reports published by Pando, the founder and publisher of Glenn Greenwald’s new venture co-invested with the US government to help fund regime change in Ukraine. This is a major exposé that vindicates our series on the Greenwald-Snowden-Omidyar axis. Here are a few excerpts, but I urge you to visit Pando’s website and read the entire investigative report, and do so several times... The self-proclaimed government in Kiev has appointed two of Ukraine’s richest men to govern large industrial regions in the defiant east. One of the reasons for the Maidan protest was the influence the rich have on politics in the country. The appointments of new governors of Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk Regions are among 18 made on Sunday by Kiev, which is struggling to consolidate power after the coup which ousted President Yanukovich last month.. Kolomoysky has a dual Ukrainian-Israeli citizenship and controls his business empire from Switzerland... So the US leadership is supporting the creation of One Nation Under God in Ukraine. As one of the key groups involved in the militant overthrow of an elected government has stated in its party platform, “a system of the dictatorship of the Nation with regard to the socioeconomic interests of the people” needs to be implemented. Isn’t that what the military in Egypt proclaimed in its coup to oust another elected official, Morsi?.. With the eyes of the world fixed on Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the prospect of a wider war engulfing all Ukraine, our attention has been diverted from what may be the most significant aspect of this crisis: the ascension of a genuinely fascist mass movement into the corridors of power. Our "mainstream" media shrugs off what it describes as the presence of "a few ultra-nationalists" at the Kiev protests, but this is nonsense: it is far more than a few. Indeed, the activists of the two main fascist parties in Ukraine – Svoboda and "Right Sector" – provided the muscle the insurrectionists needed to take over government buildings in Kiev and across western Ukraine... The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a Washington D.C-based quasi-governmental organization funded by the U.S. which boasts that it is "supporting freedom around the world." Alan Weinstein, one of the founders of the NED, explained in 1991: “A lot of what we [NED] do was done 25 years ago covertly by the CIA.” Most of the NED, and its affiliated organizations, deals with influencing political processes abroad... President Barack Obama has been trying, mostly in secret, to craft a new foreign policy that relies heavily on cooperation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to tamp down confrontations in hotspots such as Iran and Syria. But Obama’s timidity about publicly explaining this strategy has left it open to attack from powerful elements of Official Washington, including well-placed neocons and people in his own administration. The gravest threat to this Obama-Putin collaboration has now emerged in Ukraine, where a coalition of U.S. neocon operatives and neocon holdovers within the State Department fanned the flames of unrest in Ukraine... So this morning we have a "revelation": EU officials are discussing the reports that the Maidan snipers were not sent by Yanukovich but that they were insurgents firing on both sides. Immense surprise everywhere! Well, a few "minor fringe proponents of conspiracy theories" did mention something like that, but for the "proper and rational people" (the folks who watch TV and read the corporate media) this is a big surprise. Might make you wonder who really did know about this. I can tell you. I have seen it happening many years ago, in the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Here is how this works:.. ...the crisis in the Ukraine, which has been fomented by the Neo-Con Kagan family and their Zionist masters, will fail in the Ukraine. Americans should ask why is the United States government pursuing such a destructive and reckless foreign policy, which is clearly detrimental to our national interest?.. I’ve never been to Ukraine or Russia before but the minute I started following the news of the huge protests in Kiev, I felt like I was somehow connected /related in a strange way to this Ukrainian revolution. This whole revolution thing sounded not so unfamiliar to me. As days went by and as the violence and the smoke that came out of the heavily fortified Maidan/independence square got heavier I thought I was looking at a retrospective of the Egyptian revolution with all the violent clashes that took place in Tahrir Square during the winter of 2011-2012... Everywhere you look in the West, you find political pygmies rather than statesmen. In France, we see a pathetic man whose own people intensely dislike him, François Hollande, attempt to speak as though he were something other than a dry, pompous school teacher-like purveyor of American views.. In Britain, the Prime Minister, David Cameron, is a wishy-washy man of little integrity and less ability, again a purveyor of American views, and I’m sure he goes to sleep every night fantasizing about the last Prime Minister who faithfully served American interests, Tony Blair, being showered with gold.. The United States is represented by a man of not one achievement... [Ah, t’is true, t’is pity t’is true] Boris Johnson, the controversial mayor of London, has said that Muslim children in the UK at risk of being “taught crazy stuff” at home by their parents should be taken into care to avoid this form of “child abuse.” Johnson stated that efforts of counter-terrorism officers were being blocked by “what I am obliged to call political correctness,” and that Muslim children at risk of being fed extreme ideologies from their parents in the UK ran the risk of becoming “potential killers or suicide bombers..” ..when news got out one year ago that Charlie Krafft, widely known as the artist behind the “Hitler Teapot,” happened to question the received history of “The Holocaust” and failed to prostrate himself sufficiently before the sacred number “6 Million,” the arts and cultural commentariat had ERROR blinking in their short-circuiting brains. They couldn’t process the fact that what they had thought to be mildly shocking and ironic was clearly—what precisely?.. [This is quite brilliant, and, as Paul Eisen remarks, "Why is it that all the intelligent writing is now coming from the Right? What's happened to the Left?"] Palestinian civil society groups in present-day Israel have rejected a discriminatory bill passed into law by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, on 24 February, which defines Palestinian Christian citizens of Israel as “non-Arab.” Although there were objections, the bill passed by a 21-6 vote.. A group of 18 Palestinian NGOs in present-day Israel subsequently released a joint statement that denounced the law as “sectarian” and “similar to the approaches adopted by the apartheid regime in South Africa, and by the French in its colonial rule in Algeria, among others. It is a policy that seeks to fragment the original people of the land into small groups with narrowed identities to replace their national identity..” Press TV has conducted an interview with political commentator James Morris to talk about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s latest remarks on Iran.. “I think that it’s hypocritical of Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s a blatant double standard on behalf of the US government to basically go after Iran’s peaceful nuclear program. You can read Gareth Porter’s book A Manufactured Crisis and he clearly conveys in that book that it is a manufactured crisis about Iran’s supposed nuclear weapons, like I said, with a double standard that we have by Benjamin Netanyahu. He just wants to reign supreme over the Middle East..” Two Hundred Years Together is a monumental work of historical scholarship by Soviet dissident and 1970 Nobel literature laureate, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dealing with the relationship between Russians and Jews inside the Russian and Soviet Empires. Solzhenitsyn authored it in Russian and the original work was published in Russian in 2001/2, with published translations in German and French following soon after. However, for reasons that will be obvious to those who have read it, it has never found an English language publisher.. The currently available chapters are hosted on Wikispooks and linked from the table below... Israel is in troubles. Iran has successfully deactivated the artificial crisis surrounding its legitimate nuclear program. The Syrian War against mercenaries supported mainly by Western regimes is over with Bashar al-Assad remaining in power. The USA enforced the renewal of talks with Palestine. Israel's business of war is crumbling. In despair, Netanyahu called the spirits of Stalin, Hitler, Napoleon, Churchill and Genghis Khan, and consulted the elders. "Me too, me too!" Roosevelt shouted and added "Why do you bother us? Start a war.." Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon in a video titled "Israel Palestinian Conflict: The Truth About the West Bank" told lies and FALSE historical facts relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Here 2 courageous Palestinian ladies responding with facts to all the lies he told in the video... Well, it’s a real pain in the ass, vastly worse than the nastiest imaginable hemorrhoid pleasure to welcome once again Prime Minister Netanyahu to the Oval Office. There’s nobody I’ve met with more or consulted with more and wished to meet with less and consult with less than Bibi. And it’s a testimony to the incredible bond between our two nations and the power of the [expletive-deleted] Zionists. I’ve said before and I will repeat, we do not have a nastier and more vicious, devious, and downright odious closer so-called friend or ally than Israel and the bond between our two countries and our two peoples is unbearable unbreakable... [Amusing, but we know all too well that O'Bummer is far too much of a pussy to even think in language like that] Famed journalist George Seldes (1890 - 1995) called them "prostitutes of the press." Paul Craig Roberts calls them "presstitutes." They're that and much more. They're propagandists, not journalists. They're charlatans. They're scam artists. They're blackguards. They're scoundrels in the worst sense of the term. They make street whores look respectable by comparison. They're paid to lie, distort, misinform, and blame imperial victims for horrendous crimes committed against them... [All true enough, but to a large extent it’s also because most of them are astonishingly ignorant.] Mar 5, 2014 U.S. financial, military, and diplomatic support for Israel has grown significantly and steadily throughout the past 60 years and now dwarfs annual American foreign assistance to all other nations. Research indicates the U.S.-Israel "special relationship" is a major factor in foreign hostility towards Americans. Some experts suggest that Israel has been central to U.S. wars in the Middle East... [Registration is still open] ...It appears that the al-Sisi regime thugs battered Benjamin under orders from Israel, the main force behind last summer’s coup d’état. The al-Sisi regime, which has slaughtered thousands of peaceful protestors all over the country and has resorted to wholesale detention and torture of tens of thousands more, has become the ugliest, most vicious, and most purely and unabashedly evil regime in the region, with the possible exception of al-Sisi’s Israeli paymasters in Tel Aviv... “Jewish Banking is Born? Are you kidding me? What about Rothschild et al.?”.. Before proud Israelis start to recite uncontrollably “The Jewish Brain invents patents,” I must emphasize that the idea is copied from Islam. In the previous century, extensive work took place in Islamic societies to adapt the concept of Western banking to comply with the Sharia Law. The result is an Islamic banking system based on sharing profit and loss; it forbids lending money at interest so that usury is avoided... “Palestinians are failing to advance peace.” Netanyahu was obviously correct! 1. Palestinians must stop oppressing Israelis and Jews. 2. If the Palestinians want peace, they better end the occupation immediately. 3. The Palestinians must stop building in the West Bank. 4. And if the Palestinians want peace for real, they better give up on the racist, supremacist, anti Jewish idea that Israel becomes a true democracy and a state of its citizens. Only then Shalom may prevail... Russia in Crimea: to Rescue, Protect and Defend, by Boris Novoseltsev | Strategic Culture Foundation Crimea is what the whole world is talking about. Western media is bringing news about «aggression» or ‘intervention» in Ukraine accusing Russia of trying to annex part of foreign land. They fully ignore the reality – the fact that Moscow has lent a helping hand to rescue, protect and defend the Russian speaking population in the peninsula. A few days ago the leaders of the European Union signed an agreement on crisis management with the legally elected President of Ukraine. Now the putschists have become the West’s partners. The inadequate reaction is explained by the threat posed to the Western geopolitical game played on the Grand Chessboard... Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin says ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has sent a letter to Putin asking him to use military force in Ukraine to restore law and order. "Under the influence of Western countries, there are open acts of terror and violence," Churkin quoted the letter from Yanukovich to Putin in the third emergency meeting of the UN Security Council... [When the Atlantic Empire talks about R2P and ‘humanitarian intervention” it is almost always utter hypocrisy. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and the right and the obligation to send armed forces into Crimea and other eastern and southern regions of the Ukraine should be perfectly obvious to anyone other than the idiotic talking-heads of the mainstream media, and of course, our slimy, bought and paid for politicians.] ...I am no supporter or defender of Merkel, but the tug over the Ukraine is as much between the EU and the United States as it is between the "west" and the "east". Yes, the EU screwed up its Ukraine strategy by giving an ultimatum to Yanukovich to sign an association agreement and, when he rejected it, by instigating trouble in Kiev. But what the U.S. is doing is worse. It managed to sabotage the February 21 compromise three EU foreign minister had negotiated between Yanukovich and his opposition and ordered fascist storm troupers onto the Ukrainian parliament to press it to illegally "elect" its favorite candidate to head the Ukraine... Things are not the same anymore between Israel and the United States, it seems. The US is apparently refusing to grant visas to Israeli security service agents, the ultra-right-wing Israeli news website Arutz Shiva 7 reports. “Senior security personnel… said that over the past year there have seen hundreds of cases in which members of the Shin Bet [the internal security service] and Mossad [the foreign spy agency], and workers in Israel’s defence industries, have been told they cannot visit America,” the report said, citing the Israeli newspaper Maariv... [Is the dog finally wagging the tail? Well, not quite yet, but it's on the way.] ...The collapse of authority in Ukraine led to what appears to be the breakaway of an already autonomous Crimea, now to be aligned with Russia. The frigate Hetman Sahaydachniy (the flagship of the Ukrainian Navy), on NATO maneuvers in the Gulf of Aden, refused to take orders from Kiev and raised the Russian naval flag as it returned to Simferopol. Simultaneously, Russian troops blocked three Crimean bases, demanding Ukrainian forces surrender. Residents have announced they are going to hold a referendum on 30 March to determine the fate of Crimea... ...They are the most powerful lobby in US history, a lobby that defines “loyalty” as that for Israel. They demand wars by America, yet they join and send their sons and daughters to the Israeli army. They took us to wars that caused over $3 Trillions all for nothing, stupid senseless wars to secure Israel’s Eastern borders as far as Afghanistan and Iraq. Thousands of brave American died and these senseless wars and tens of thousands are maimed for life and America was never so insecure. They take us to wars overseas and then rob us of our lifetime savings through a criminally corrupt banking and financial system that destroyed whatever remained good and decent in America... ...The Cabinet is not only integrated by the Svoboda and Right Sector (not to mention former members of defunct fascist UNA-UNSO), the two main Neo-Nazi entities have been entrusted with key positions which grant them de facto control over the Armed Forces, Police, Justice and National Security... A leading principle of international relations theory is that the state's highest priority is to ensure security. As Cold War strategist George F. Kennan formulated the standard view, government is created "to assure order and justice internally and to provide for the common defense." The proposition seems plausible, almost self-evident, until we look more closely and ask: Security for whom? For the general population? For state power itself? For dominant domestic constituencies?.. If the order was to escalate, the takeover of the village of Bir Zeit last Thursday by the Yamam counterterrorism unit and the Nahal infantry brigade was surely a step in the right direction. Israeli forces killed Muataz Washaha, a 24-year-old activist in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. His funeral Friday was boiling, bubbling lava, striving to burst out of a crack... [Death for those directly responsible would be reasonable. For the accomplices before and after the fact - about 4 million Jewish Israelis - expulsion from the country would be a suitable punishment, for this and so many similar murders, not to mention war crimes, crimes against humanity, massive land theft and other violations of the basic laws of human decency.] ...No matter how we shuffle the media deck of cards in America, and to a lesser extent in the EU, the cards that will be dealt to the citizenry will have time and again the same message: West represents Good and East represents Evil; not just under communism but any other ism… these days translating to “putinism.” Those who thought America’s elite would relent with a capitalist Russia are beginning to understand why Vladimir Putin stated that the greatest geopolitical catastrophe in the 20th century was the Soviet collapse. Maybe Putin’s statement was only intended for internal political consumption, but history might render such a remark to possess much after-the-fact wisdom... Mark Twain died 104 years ago, but his truth goes marching on. Witness two of our exalted Congressmen who recently launched a resolution of such ineptitude that it twists facts inside out without batting an eyelash, indeed while fluttering their eyelashes like some street harlots beckoning the innocent to join them in their frolic. Well here are two that take the facts and figures that characterize the malevolent state of Israel, erase them as though they were chalk on a black board, and then apply their crimes to those desirous of justice and equity for those destroyed by the Israeli state... Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has called on Palestinian leaders to recognise his country as a "Jewish state", a call a top Palestinian official said was an "official announcement of a unilateral end to negotiations". In his address to the annual policy conference of pro-Israeli lobbyist group AIPAC in Washington DC on Tuesday, Netanyahu said he was prepared to make an "historic peace", but not without a Palestinian acceptance of the Jewish state... [Well, fair is fair. Let’s recognize it as the Jewish State, which would provide the final, irrefutable justification (as if any more were needed), for wiping it off the map.] In 2009 in the northern Venezuelan city of Barcelona, I approached an elderly street sweeper and asked to purchase her baseball cap, which was red and featured a Hugo Chavez-related slogan. As I saw it, the item would be an optimal addition to my collection of revolutionary paraphernalia, which thus far consisted of posters, flags, and a CD containing various musical performances by Chavez himself - most of them upbeat numbers critiquing the Venezuelan political opposition. The woman, however, refused the offer despite my best efforts at capitalist persuasion. I left empty-handed. Such levels of devotion to the former president... ...the intended victims are now thinking “let's just go ahead and crash the financial system now and we will watch how you explain that to your people. Maybe we will have some more sensible people to deal with for the recovery.” The only silver lining I see in all this is that never before has the poverty of leadership in the West been more evident than now, their accepting no responsibility whatsoever for all of their failed policies and corruption. It's time for a good strong dose of political 'ex-Lax' for the whole planet. It might be unpleasant for a while, but we will definitely be in a lot better shape afterward... ...it's on my mind as an example of the horrifying thinking in the 'controlled opposition' that is western Palestine solidarity in general and the British PSC in particular (both are now pretty well controlled by 'the Jews'), and secondly because this piece by Gilad Atzmon brought it to mind. BTW, Trevor, I know how you feel... Mar 4, 2014 The Charge of the Light Brigade - by Proxy Waterloo. Stalingrad. Egomaniacal imperialists think they can conquer the world. But they can’t–at least not forever. So maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. Well, not *all* wrong, but from too dark a place. Until now it has been tempting to see the US and its imperial death merchants as being on a roll, a sort of superhuman circus performer who can somehow juggle chainsaws without cutting his own balls off. Look at them go! Full Spectrum Dominance Death Star firing on all cylinders–we can overthrow governments in Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine at the same time, without breaking a sweat... U.S. officials and the mainstream press are aflame with outrage and indignation over Russia’s invasion of Crimea. If only they would feel the same degree of outrage and indignation over what the U.S. national security state, which was grafted onto our governmental system without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, has done to our American republic. Isn’t it fascinating how U.S. officials and the mainstream media are able to quickly arrive at a moral judgment condemning foreign interventionism on the part of Russia while, at the same time, blocking out of their minds all the foreign interventionism on the part of the U.S. government for the past many decades?.. ...The Zionist movement was unhappy about the lack of progress in their efforts to destroy the Iran-Syria-Lebanon axis using others as cannon fodder. A big part of their failure to get more conflicts (as they did with Iraq) is due to the fact that Russia (and China) refuse to go along and realized that the end-game is total Western hegemony in Western Asia (with Israel assuming even more power over Western foreign policies). The Russians and Chinese also took lessons from the disastrous US attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan and NATO attacks on Libya which had terrible consequences (including spreading radicalism and terrorism around the area). The calculated they must draw a line... How far the blunt and threatening posture US secretary of state John Kerry took in his interview with the CBS News toward Moscow — and President Vladimir Putin in person — over the Ukraine situation was genuine and how far it was intended to meet the domestic criticism of the Barack Obama administration being ‘weak’ in its foreign policies doesn’t really matter. What matters is that Kerry demanded virtual capitulation by Russia under the shadow of US retribution and that’s being plain dishonest and unrealistic... “Today the majority of the Ukrainian armed forces deployed in Crimea passed to the side of the authorities of the Crimean autonomous region. The transition was absolutely peaceful, without a single shot fired either by the military or by the forces of self-defense,” an unnamed source told RIA Novosti news agency... ...Pando published financial documents, showing numerous funding entries for NGO activities across Ukraine, including in Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Sumy, and elsewhere, mostly in the Ukrainian-speaking west and center. The list also names US-based contributors, such as billionaire George Soros, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his Omidyar Network foundation, as well as the National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded largely by the US Congress... ...Although Kerry was never challenged by the interviewer to comment in terms of that statement on Washington’s own constant threats to use force and military invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan, those who watched the interview immediately smelled the hypocrisy... [Recently Kerry’s brother confirmed the rumor. “We’re Jewish,” he said. No wonder such blatant sophistry comes so trippingly to the tongue of our (i.e., Israel’s) Secretary of State.] ...The damn fool in the White House risks global war. Ukraine is a major flashpoint. Conditions today are the most dangerous since the 1962 missiles of October crisis. Jack Kennedy was president. Early in his administration he changed from cold warrior to peacemaker. He wanted all nuclear weapons abolished. He favored "general and complete disarmament." He wanted all US forces out of Vietnam by December 1965. He wanted to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.." Since the days of President Woodrow Wilson – that is, for roughly 100 years – the USA has been on a self-styled crusade to “make the world safe for democracy.” Colossal wars, hot and cold, were fought against German kaisers and fuehrers, Russian communists, and Third World nationalists. The American people were told they were “defending democracy.”Americans slaughtered 3.5 million Vietnamese, and nearly another million Cambodians, to “defend democracy” in Southeast Asia. They murdered millions of Iraqis through wars and sanctions to “defend democracy” in the Middle East... ...the West's long time involvement in state sponsored terrorism, and supporting allies that do this like Israel, without acknowledging the boomerang cost to us. Those targeted turn the tactic around on us. Who even thinks of their using terror as a counter terrorism tactic...like so many Western nations do? Our pretend-to-be representatives in Congress have served us poorly in this regard, as shown in their consistently low ratings. I often frame this in discussions by posing, “If we had lost a war and had an occupation government ruling over us, could their public ratings be any lower than what we have now “?.. [The joke (albeit gallows humor) is that we do have “an occupation government ruling over us.” And they, the ZioNazis, are the creators of modern, ruthless terrorism.] ..“A female Voina activist nicknamed ‘Vacuous Cunt With Inconceivably Huge Tits’ removed a chicken from the refrigerated section of the supermarket, then laboriously stuffed the entire chicken into her own vagina, while being filmed by other Voina members. “She then shoplifted the chicken by leaving the supermarket without paying, with the chicken still inserted, and rejoined protesters outside the store.. It was no accident, then, that members of the Pussy Riot were Trotskyites. And it was no accident that the neoconservatives were supporting them... sublime... During a meeting at the Dama Rose hotel in Damascus the other morning this observer was being briefed by "Abu Modar" a reputedly battle honed field commander of the "Death Brigade" which is based in the northern Syria Eskanderoun region north of Latakia. Abu Modar explained that he personally had chosen the rather peculiar name for his brigade "Death" to symbolize his militia's willingness to die for their cause which is protecting Syria. "Before each battle or each mission I ask my God to let me die defending Syria", he explained. "If we are involved with a joint operation with Hezbollah, who are much admired because of their honesty and trustworthiness... "Malignant psoriasis" was the funniest thing said yesterday by Ultra-Orthodox Jews protesting Israel's new Conscription law. They aimed the colorful expression at Religious Zionists ahead of the largest protest in Israel's history. I had no doubt that the Zionists would hit back while devoutly scratching their boils... A new copy of a satirical version of an AIPAC policy conference promotional video has been posted online after YouTube shut down the account that posted the original video. The parody video was posted on YouTube prior to the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee’s annual policy conference, which is to be held from March 2 to 4. The video contains real footage of several US and Israeli officials at previous AIPAC policy conferences but their voices are dubbed over... [Fighting evil, ignorance and stupidity with satire is a time honored custom.] A key Israel Lobby convention, the AIPAC Conference was severely inconvenienced today by the media coverage of Crimean secession, which many complained was “stealing their thunder.” Still it wouldn’t be an AIPAC conference if they didn’t treat US foreign policy as something they could unilaterally dictate, and today that meant specific demands for what the detailsof a US-Iran deal would be allowed to include. Immediately endorsed by a series of Congressional hawks in attendance, the demands are the same Israel has been pushing, aimed at making a deal impossible to reach and effectively killing the talks... ...I re-examined certain statements and confessions that had been made in German and Allied courts concerning the use of Zyklon B for putting camp detainees to death, and I was shocked. And now, you in turn will also be shocked. I shall first offer you the statement or confession of Rudolf Höss. Then, I shall offer you the results of my research, purely physical, on hydrocyanic acid and Zyklon B. (Please bear in mind that Höss was one of the three successive commandants at Auschwitz, all three of whom were imprisoned and interrogated by the Allies. Only Höss left a confession, for which we are indebted to his Polish jailers.).. [Anyone who actually looks into it with an open mind is going to come to the inescapable conclusion that there were no gas chambers. Lots of flatulence in the prisoners’ barracks no doubt, but that would be about it. Of course, this is heresy according to the dogma of the now dominant religion in the West, the Holycause. In a dozen European countries they will drag you before the Inquisition and you will be sent to prison. In the other countries, particularly the US, the guardians of the faith will see to it that your life is ruined. When is this going to stop? Well, the first step is to dismantle the criminal and illegitimate State of Israel – then there will no longer a purpose for maintaining this disgusting fiction.] ...it does not matter whether Anelka, or even officials within The FA’s disciplinary department, think that a gesture is anti-Semitic or not. Whether something is anti- Semitic depends on the perception of the victims of the insult or abuse. It is therefore robust practice in anti-Racism to seek the views of the group likely to be offended. Palestinians – Muslim and Christian — living in humiliation under Israel’s apartheid jackboot, take note of this “robust practice”.. [Whenever one of those 'Ziofreaks' is in the vicinity, flip them the bird. If they react in the predictable way, show them the quenelle. When they call that antisemitic, then stick your tongue out. Be creative, keep it up and eventually the vampires, exhausted, will start shrinking and then whither away entirely. Guaranteed solution to The Problem.] [Vampires, like poodles, come in diverse colors, genders and sizes] Bad news for Israel is becoming almost as regular as Israeli crimes and violations of international law. This time the bad news is from Canada, hitherto the most pro-Zionist state in the Western hemisphere, more than even the United States. The ultra-right-wing Israeli news website Arutz Sheva 7 reports that students at Ontario’s Windsor University have voted in favour of a comprehensive boycott of Israel... [Time is the great physician and laughter is the best medicine] Expressing "extreme anger" towards the United States government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said in an interview that the war in Afghanistan was not fought with his country's interests in mind. "Afghans died in a war that's not ours," Karzai said in an interview with the Washington Post newspaper published late on Sunday, just a month before the election to pick his successor. He was quoted as saying he was certain the 12-year-old war, the United States' longest and launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001, was "for the US security and for the Western interest.." The number of Israeli settlements being started in the West Bank more than doubled during 2013, the Israel central bureau of statistics has said. The bureau said work began on 2,534 new housing units in the settlements in 2013, compared to 1,133 in 2012. Monday's announcement comes just hours before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet with President Barack Obama in Washington... [Too little, too late, guys – you’re toast. Go back to whatever corner of hell you came from, while the getting’s good.] Mar 3, 2014 Ukraine in the Mosh Pit Madness reigns as the Atlantic Empire, with its imposing fleet of sinking ships, tries to maintain their imaginary control of the world while neglecting to repair the leaks in their hulls - and their heads and hearts. A $5+ billion dollar effort to further destabilize an already unstable Ukraine and add it to the Imperial holdings has led to an impasse. The Russians, who appear to be the only adults in the room, are justifiably enraged at the duplicity and hypocrisy of the West. They will do what they can to save as much of eastern and southern Ukraine as is feasible from the neo-Nazi/neolib Putsch centered in Kiev, but they aren’t superhuman and just might lose their cool if the Empire continues to engage in mindless, belligerent provocations... Something absolutely huge has just happened in Russia: the Russian Council of the Federation, the equivalent of the US Senate, has just UNANIMOUSLY passed a resolution allowing Putin to use Russian armed forces in the Ukraine, something the Duma had requested earlier. Before the vote took place, Russian senators said that Obama had threatened Russia, insulted the Russian people and that they demanded that Putin recall the Russian ambassador to the USA. I have never seen such a level of outrage and even rage in Russia as right now... Russia’s border guard service said Sunday that some 675,000 Ukrainian citizens have migrated to Russia since the beginning of 2014 amid fears of uncertain future in crisis-hit Ukraine... I have convened the North Atlantic Council today because of Russia’s military action in Ukraine. And because of President Putin’s threats against this sovereign nation. What Russia is doing now in Ukraine violates the principles of the United Nations Charter. It threatens peace and security in Europe. Russia must stop its military activities and its threats... [I wonder if the guards could hear Breivik cackling and loudly applauding from his cell.] ...Looks like the United States administration was not mentally prepared for the development of the Ukrainian crisis. The synchronized actions of the new Crimean authorities and the press-conference of the expelled president Victor Yanukovych in Rostov-on-Don gave undeniable judicial advantage to the opposite side in Ukraine who are not ready to acknowledge the illegitimate “government” elected by the rowdy Euro-mob in Kiev three days ago. The United States have no tangible tools to destabilize Crimea, de facto controlled by the Ukrainian anti-putschist resistance forces, while the judicial status of Victor Yanukovych (whatever we think about him as a person and political figure) is indubitable... Nothing is quite as nauseating as watching the hypocrisy and hubris with which President Obama ‘warns’ the Russian president not to ‘interfere’ in Ukraine, telling the Russians there would be ‘costs to pay.’ It’s a surreal move, echoed by his equally creepy and out-of-touch consigliore and chief “diplomat,” the morally bankrupt John Kerry. Astonishing in its audacity and lack of regard for history, truth or facts, this bellicose blather seems aimed only at the idiots over whom he presides, the fools and tools in congress and the press, and his bought-and-paid-for lackeys in European capitals... Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accused the West of breaking promises made after the fall of the Iron Curtain, saying that NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe violated commitments made during the negotiations over German reunification. Newly discovered documents from Western archives support the Russian position... The current lies and distortions coming from the mainstream media are pure propaganda. I've been quite for some time now, wondering what the United States was up to, since it backed off of military intervention in Syria. I wonder if anyone noticed the way Russia was portrayed by the presstitutes that covered the Winter Olympics in Sochi. It seemed to me that they pointed out not the grandeur of the games that was hardly mentioned. The small mistakes in planning by the Russian Olympic planners were front and center. Russia was consistently mocked and made to look as inept as possible. Think about it. Who are these so-called reporters working for?.. [They’re working for the Sanhedrin, like so many people in the West, including the vast majority of Jews. It pays the bills.] With all of the reports coming out of Ukraine, Moscow, Washington, and European capitals, the mutual accusations, the knee-jerk speculation, and—not least—the hysterical language of some observers, bordering on the apocalyptic, it is difficult to keep in mind the long-term implications of what is happening. Nevertheless, I believe that nobody can understand the likely outcomes of what is happening unless they bear in mind the historical, geographic, political and psychological factors at play in these dramatic events. The view of most of the media, whether Russian or Western, seems to be that one side or the other is going to “win” or “lose” Ukraine... The U.S. and EU sponsored coup against the elected government and president of the Ukraine had several strategic implications and aims. One of them is the Black Sea base of the Russian Navy which is used to supply and defend Syria. A takeover of the government in Kiev was necessary but not sufficient to neutralize the base as a strategic Russian asset. To do that a takeover of the local government of the Crimea and all its powers would also have to take place. The Crimea is historically Russian and most of it inhabitants are Russians. There is also a rather small minority of Tatars of Muslim heritage... [Anthony nails it – again] ...Bracing itself for the tears of a million shofarot, Zion is closing itself. The gathering was scheduled to start at 4PM, but organizers will give time to those on the road. If the road is free, the trip upwards longs a bit over one hour. Ultra-Orthodox congregations in New York and London will protest at the same time. Meanwhile, unprecedented publications prepare the Ultra-Orthodox public to what in the future will probably be defined as their birth moment, when myriad denominations joined forces to oppose ultra-violent Zionism... ...Washington’s political class has wholeheartedly and uncritically adopted both the Israel-centric jargon and also Tel Aviv’s skewed perceptions of Middle Eastern realities, producing the unique spectacle of a great global power doing everything possible to placate a tiny client state. Pandering to Israel will be on full display at the AIPAC conference. But amid all the celebration AIPAC’s leadership knows that it can no longer produce a napkin and have the signatures of 70 senators on it within a day. Nor does its steady flow of “information memos” sent to the legislature and the media command the same respect they once did... [Perhaps America will survive this extraordinary, crippling subversion after all. America wants its soul back.] Hundreds of years have passed since the prophet Hosea spoke these words of reproval: “The days of punishment have come, The days of retribution have come; Let Israel know this! The prophet is a fool, The inspired man is demented, Because of the grossness of your iniquity, And because your hostility is so great” and they are relevant and precise today as they were back then. “Soldiers, you are imprisoned - it is your occupation!” Abu Nahadi, “the mad man”, yelled at the bulletproof window behind which the soldiers sit... During the Cold War, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency concocted a scheme by which so-called «Captive Nations», so-called «satellite» nations of eastern and central Europe and countries lacking United Nations membership, such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, were treated as subjugated nation-states by the West. These and other non-existent nations, such as White Ruthenia, West Galicia, Cossackia, Ural-Idel, and Turkestan, were regularly lauded by supportive statements from the White House, U.S. Congress, and U.S. statehouses... ...For too long in this country, people supporting human rights and international law in relation to the Palestinian/Israeli issue have been reluctant to speak out. Many university faculty members didn’t want to get involved in an issue that they believed might cost them their jobs or tenure. Politicians were afraid of the power of the Israel Lobby. For example, in 1974 funding from the Lobby played a major role in ousting Senator J. William Fulbright, one of the more powerful and courageous senators, and his defeat sent a loud message to others... Based on the distorted supremacist racist Judaic religious myth of “God’s Chosen People in God’s Promised Land” the elite of the Jewish power elite came together, more than two thousand years ago, and plotted a scheme to establish a Jewish World Order, whose ultimate goal is to establish a Jewish-only Greater Israel in the heart of the Old World extending from the river Euphrates to the Nile with Jerusalem as its capital... How do the few haves stay on top of the many have-nots? After generations of domination, the haves know how to do it pretty well. They know how to divide and conquer the have-nots. This is the secret of their power. The have-nots never stop fighting against their domination by the haves. But the have-nots remain dominated. When a large majority keeps fighting the domination of a small minority, and keeps failing to overthrow that domination, it means something is fundamentally wrong in the way that they're fighting... Mar 2, 2014 The Ukrainian pot continues to boil over Giddyup! The Russian Cavalry to the Rescue [Gotta love it – the Empire hoist on their own “humanitarian” petard] Ukraine nationalist leader calls on 'most wanted' terrorist Umarov 'to act against Russia' | RT News [Whenever there’s evil to be done, you can bet your bottom shekel that the Usual Suspects will be upfront and center, or more often than not, lurking behind the curtain.] Let's Have Some Theme Music Solidarity from "Pro-Palestinian" Jews Revisited, by Ibrahim Alloush | Free Arab Voice No Palestinian Arab would ever argue whether international solidarity with our cause is welcome or not. In fact, it's our obligation to garner such support wherever we may. Moreover, we can never neglect our obligation to confront Zionist propaganda internationally and to debunk Zionist myths in any language, shape, or form. So at least as far as this goes, ALL Palestinian activists would NOT disagree. The question remains, however, what actually constitutes support for the Palestinian cause: sympathy with the victimization of Palestinians, like one would sympathize with road kills for example, conscious political support for a platform for liberation, or something in between?.. [See also A Conversation with Dr. Ibrahim Alloush| IHR] Read more...Yarmouk | Paul Eisen "It is impossible not to be touched by the apocalyptic scenes emerging from the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk in Damascus, besieged and cut off for months. The images are at once epic and personal. Row upon row of gaunt faces, serried ranks of grimy, raged figures; the delicate, hunger-ravaged features of children waiting in line for an UNRWA food parcel; the face of a mother creased in grief for a deceased child.. [The real holocaust continues, going on now for 60+ years and counting. Far worse than what happened to equally innocent Jews during the Third Reich.] Read more...IAEA: We Didn’t Shelve Any Iran Report, by Jason Ditz | Antiwar Yesterday’s allegation from Reuters citing an unnamed “source” who claimed the IAEA killed a report critical of Iran to avoid killing negotiations with the country has sparked a harsh reaction from Israel. Israeli officials were quick to demand that the IAEA reverse course and immediately release the report. Since Israel opposes the negotiations anyhow, the idea of the IAEA killing them was no doubt appealing. The only problem is, the IAEA insists the report never existed in the first place, and the unnamed source was simply false... Read more... "Five Broken Cameras" on BBC4, by Antoine Raffoul | Sabbah Report Oscar-nominated film compiled from the video diary of a Palestinian farmer who documents unrest in his West Bank village. Emad Burnat starts filming with his first camera following the birth of his fourth son. At the same time in his village of Bil’in, a separation barrier is being built and the villagers begin to resist this decision.. Watch it on Mon 3rd Mar 2014 22:30 BBC Four... Read more... Robert Faurisson and the "QPC": Will France abolish the "holocaust-denial-law"? | YouTube Interview with Prof. Robert Faurisson before his trial at the XVII. criminal chamber of Paris on 20th February 2014. Faurisson had to appear because of his speech held at the Holocaust Conference in Tehran in December 2006... Rouhani: Iran stopped nuclear weapons program as sinful | RT News Iran abandoned its military nuclear program because owning nukes is a sin, the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani revealed in an interview. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei formalized the ban with a religious decree forbidding nuclear weapons.. Apart from being “useless, harmful and dangerous”, the very possession of nuclear weapons is a sin, said Rouhani, reiterating the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had issued a religious decree banning development and use of nuclear weapons... Read more... Resolving Nuclear Arms Claims Hinges on Iran’s Demand for Documents, by Gareth Porter | Dissident Voice The Barack Obama administration has demanded that Iran resolve “past and present concerns” about the “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear programme as a condition for signing a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Tehran.. But the record of negotiations between Iran and the IAEA shows Tehran has been ready for the past two years to provide detailed responses to all the charges of an Iranian nuclear weapons work, and that the problem has been the refusal of the IAEA to share with Iran the documentary evidence on which those allegations have been based... Read more... Rabbis Defend Colleagues Against AIPAC, by MJ Rosenberg | Tikkun One of the first acts taken by New York’s Mayor Bill De Blasio was to convene a secret meeting with AIPAC to tell the lobby that he will always do whatever it wants. This is, of course, typical behavior for New York politicians but rather surprising coming from a progressive like De Blasio rather than the likes of Ed Koch, Al D’Amato or Chuck Schumer. The only indication that De Blasio knew that what he was doing was wrong was his insistence that the meeting be kept secret. This is also an indication of how toxic AIPAC has become for liberals... Israel shoots dead woman near Gaza border | Al Jazeera Israelis murdering Palestinians is hardly newsworthy – it happens on nearly a daily basis. But I misread the title of the article – shooting dead Palestinians would be a new low, even for the Israelis... Read more... Mar 1, 2014 Ukraine: The Second Coming (of the Nazis) Will the Russians Stem the Tide - Again? Reality on the ground in Ukraine contradicts the incompetent and immoral Obama regime’s portrait of Ukrainian democracy on the march. To the extent that government exists in post-coup Ukraine, it is laws dictated by gun and threat wielding thugs of the neo-Nazi, Russophobic, ultra-nationalist, right-wing parties. Watch the video of the armed thug, Aleksandr Muzychko, who boosts of killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya, dictating to the Rovno regional parliament a grant of apartments to families of protesters... This was an interesting week. America seeks the rearrangement of European relations through Obama’s intervention-from-afar in Ukraine, one further notch in revivifying the Cold War in spirit and action; Hagel announces a Pentagon budget, paraded as the reduction of forces, which implements a global strategy of counterrevolution through more precise destructive power; and Obama shifts the onus onto Karzai for jeopardizing a bilateral security arrangement (B.S.A.) on which the US counts for maintaining its influence and power in Asia. Peace is war, under the smiley face of liberalism... ...As for the US/NATO, I don't believe that they will intervene militarily. There will be A LOT of Russia-bashing, a lot of pro-Ukie propaganda, millions of US dollars will continue to flow into the pockets of the insurgency leaders, but eventually the US and its EU puppets will have to come to term with the fact that they failed to boot out the Black Sea Fleet from the Crimea and that the Crimea is going to Russia instead as a direct blowback to the color revolution the US and EU unleashed in Kiev... The more the acrid black smoke disperses from the burning tyres on Kiev’s Maidan Square, the more quietly and deeply are analysts beginning to think about who has actually emerged as the winner in the latest round of the endless Ukrainian ‘chess tournament’, and how much is still to come? Initial euphoria in the West regarding the fact that while absorbed in competing at Sochi, Moscow was overlooking a tricky combination next door is gradually evaporating. And the question arises: what next? And here it becomes clear that the victory which has been marked by a change of regime in Kiev is highly questionable... Events in Ukraine are providing plenty of theater, but little economic change. Since the USSR’s collapse the ‘set’ has been changed many times over several acts of our long-running Ukrainian ‘play.’ Rotating oligarchs shift in and out looting the ‘set,’ but without a shift in plot. One set of oligarchs merely replaces another, with the periodic display of ‘color revolutions’ as wardrobe changes to re-animate the tired theme with a sense of novelty. Russian and Ukrainian nationalist continue to spar in a Spy vs. Spy fashion, while Ukraine’s economy continues to unravel and its people continue their exodus on an Old Testament scale to the ‘promised land’ of the EU... The White House has decided that Ukraine is in for a transition period, though it’s not clear where exactly the country is heading to. President Obama promises to cooperate with all parties without having an idea who he means exactly. It’s not known as yet who has happened to be a winner or a loser as a result of US intervention, but the contemporary plight of Ukraine allows calling it a non-existent state. America cannot stay away from the events in Ukraine but it is not ready to act on its own. The US knows how to destabilize other countries but in the given case it would like to rectify the situation with the help of Moscow... In Yarmouk refugee camp, the largest concentration of Palestinians in Syria among the nine refugee camps there, the Palestinian population is trapped and suffering. The camp sits just south of Damascus and its strategic location has made it part of the battlefield, leaving refugees who would rather take a neutral stance for their own safety caught in the middle. Prior to 2011, the camp was home to some 180, 000 Palestinian refugees, today only about 20,000 remain. Most of its inhabitants have been forced into becoming refugees again... [If the Israelis had any understanding of cause and effect, aka karma, they would pack up and leave before it’s too late.] I feel obligated to share the story of Iqbal Al-Assad. She is 16 years old and has one more year to finish her internship at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar. She is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee in Beeka, Lebanon. At 17 she will be the youngest doctor in the world. Unfortunately, she will not able to practice because Lebanon does not allow for Palestinian refugees to practice Law or Medicine... The first bullet struck 16-year-old Samir Awad in his left leg. He staggered away as fast as he could, but was too slow. A second round slammed into his left shoulder, exiting from the right side of his chest. Then, moments later, a third bullet penetrated the back of his skull and exited from his forehead. The live rounds were fired by a group of Israeli soldiers guarding a section of Israel’s separation barrier built on the lands of Samir’s village in the occupied West Bank. The wall has been used by Israel to make large areas of the town of Budrus’ farmland inaccessible to the villagers... [For those who still don’t get it, think of it this way - Palestine is Middle Earth; the Israelis come from Mordor] February 2014 marks the 35th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution - an epochal event whose ultimate significance remains unknown. Regarded as the "last great revolution," one that overturned Iran's political, economic, social and cultural order, Iranians will endlessly assess and debate its aftermath, up to and including the clerical rule that soon followed in its wake. Yet, few will regret the revolution itself. Even among those who most vigorously dissent from the Islamic Republic's rule, the revolution remains a source of intense pride - a living testament to the will and determination of a people to break the chains and assert their independence... It is the summer of 1941. Five youngsters – three young men and two young women – meet in a bar and spend a happy evening, flirting with each other, getting drunk, dancing forbidden foreign dances. They have grown up together in the same neighborhood of Berlin... [Very intriguing review of the film (it sounds like a must see) – read the paragraph that starts with “People who carelessly play with..” Is he holding the mirror up to his Israeli readers? You never know with Avnery – he has a blind spot, but otherwise his eyesight is excellent.] ...The call to rebel was serious. Once Ultra-Orthodox Jews will be forced out to the streets there would be no way back. They will die under violent Zionist hands while crying to death Sh'ma Israel, the Jewish declaration of Faith. They will not surrender to evil even if burned alive, and will die honorably "al kidush hashem," "on the sanctification of the name of God.." [It would be so ironic if...] ...The more I told him, the more outraged and dumbfounded he became, which was a little shocking to me because I had no idea he would become so outraged and care so much, always seeing the larger philosophical implications of everything. He actually cared more about me than I did, and pointed out that the jewish ethnic activists were doing a lot more than just harassing me, they are actually terrorizing the entire community by threatening everyone, forbidding them from hiring me, talking to me, or even being my FB friend... [Tribal Jewry carries a nasty virus. It's memetic, not genetic, and has destroyed many millions of lives over the millennia. When is the NIMH gonna get on the case?] The Batsheva Dance Company went to New Zealand, for a performance reflecting the decades long artistic work of its director, the well known choreographer Ohad Naharin. But even there, on the other side of the world, the dancers could not escape the political problems of this country. Outside the St. James Theatre in Wellington were waiting for them dozens of angry protesters, who accused Bat Sheva of “whitewashing”, of presenting a nice face for the State of Israel, hiding the violation of the Human Rights of Palestinians... ...AIPAC's conference this year will be an empty shell. Yes, it will have the usual 14,000 delegates in attendance, and thousands upon thousands of subsidized (free trips) college kids. 350 Members of Congress will show up for the big dinner. Keynote speakers, the always thrilling Senators Schumer and Menendez will swear eternal devotion to Israel. And Prime Minister Netanyahu will produce ovation after ovation by comparing Iran to Nazi Germany, pledging "Never Again" and demanding recognition of Israel as a Jewish, Jewish, extremely Jewish State. And none of it will mean anything... ...I feel that the never ending false attacks by the Zionists to be what we all know was nothing more than a diversion from their own unmonitored program has lead to putting major wind in the sails of the boycott movement. The world is sick and tired of the Zio-Hustle. And by that I do not mean boycotting just the settlements, nor their WMD, but their own five warhead MIRV'd ICBMs they are building with India. Our phony corporate media of course hardly ever prints a word about any on this despite its being a major national security concern for all the rest of us. Crimes Against Humanity in Israel not only carries no social stigma,but is the national sport for some... ...in his actions abroad from Afghanistan to Libya, his moves on the global stage haven’t exactly proven to be brilliant coups de théâtre. Many have, in fact, been remarkably boneheaded. But no one ever claimed that Superman’s superpowers included super-brain-power. Think of this White House, then, as the schizophrenic presidency, one half remarkably impotent, the other ever more potent. The conundrum is that they both inhabit the same man. And if they add up to anything, as Karen Greenberg.. makes clear today, it's long-term bad news for the country and the planet... “For the first time in AIPAC HISTORY we are beginning to lose our ironclad grip on Congress. We haven’t bombed Iran, we haven’t bombed Syria and these peace talks are killing us.” “Our job is to prevent a Palestinian Intifada, ensure a nuclear armed Israel and an Israel that always gets our taxpayer money” “I thank you… and I thank you for standing up for the Apartheid State of Israel” Watch video... |
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