In more ways than one, last week heralded the birth of a Eurasian century. Of course, the US$400 billion Russia-China gas deal was clinched only at the last minute in Shanghai, on Wednesday (a complement to the June 2013, 25-year, $270 billion oil deal between Rosneft and China's CNPC.).. on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his Shanghai triumph, addressed the participants and brought the house down...

 

  Don’t be confused! The protocol that Amira Hass revealed last week (“IDF uses live-fire zones to expel Palestinians from areas of West Bank, officer admits,”) is not another chapter in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” It is the official p.rotocol of the subcommittee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that discussed Palestinian construction in Area C of the West Bank.. here you can see sophisticated Zionism, alive and kicking: Not like in the past, a mere d.unam here and a dunam there. Now we have a little bit of ethnic cleansing here, a little expulsion there, and the path to a country free from Arabs is secure...

 

  The former Egyptian army chief has an ironic name if you consider the degree of failure of the ongoing Egyptian presidential elections.. If you consider the objectives of the coup leader since his jailing of the only legitimately elected president in many decades, the elections are undoubtedly closing the gates for Mr. CC and his supporters...

 

  Egyptian media castigated the public for a low turnout in a presidential election which former army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is expected to win, with one commentator saying those who failed to vote should be shot...

 

...Jubran is an internationally recognized and respected speaker, activist and writer on Palestinian human rights, and a critic of the U.S./Israeli occupation of the region. Having already been targeted by the US government for his political speech while a legal resident of the US in 2004, Jubran's current detention raises concerns that this is a political arrest aimed at silencing dissent and suggests cooperation between Jordanian authorities, the United States and Israel in suppressing criticism of US and Israeli policies...

 

  On May 29, 2014, a revolution was quietly announced by Israel's Ministry of Communications, The Second Authority for Television and Radio, and its two concessionaires Keshet and Reshet. The revolution was imposed by American billionaire Ronald Lauder, who is quietly leaving the Israeli arena after a noisy scandal involving another American billionaire, Sheldon Adelson. Both are closely related to PM Netanyahu...

 

..This was a speech that might be described as “visions of empire”. You have President Obama again saying that the US is the indispensable nation. I do not know what that makes the other 195 countries in the world; I guess they are all dispensable. The only way you can reconcile that is if you consider the word indispensable as synonymous with invasive because there is no country that has invaded more countries in the world, that has violated human rights and international law more than has the US, foreign policy expert Richard Becker told RT....

 

...Obama contradicted his peace-oriented rhetoric by reiterating his belief in “American exceptionalism” – the notion that the United States has virtually a God-given right and responsibility to play a dominant role in any conflict or crisis in the world. He talked about the world looking to America for everything from helping respond to a typhoon in the Philippines to responding to kidnappings in Nigeria. It didn’t seem to occur to him that there are some problems that might be better solved without U.S. involvement, or that there are some situations where American intervention, no matter how well intentioned, actually makes matters worse...

 

...I believe Obama's foreign policy is based on the premise that there are limits on US power and that we need to respect them. And those limits are not just tactical, they are also moral. Who made us God? Who, for heaven's sake, gave us the right to invade or bomb foreign countries because we don't approve of their governments? In short, his policy is that the use of military force is reserved for situations where we ourselves are threatened --the American people not companies like Halliburton. Or the other war contractors...

 

  "(I)n the absence of support from the Ukrainian population, the Maidan government has only one option if it wants to remain in power - to mobilize any support possible from foreign sponsors, including foreign mercenaries.. Among the candidates for the role of gendarme is the company Greystone Limited, registered in Barbados, which is integrated with the Academi corporation.. It is an analogue, or, probably, an affiliate body of the Blackwater private army, whose soldiers have been accused of committing rigorous and regular human rights abuses in troubled regions.."

 

Lies, provocation now America’s global reputation | PressTV

  Press TV has conducted an interview with Jim W. Dean, managing editor of Veteran’s Today from Atlanta, about Israel’s direct engagement in Syria and America’s double standard support for their allies...

 

...We started the week with a three-party political system.  As predicted on this website, with the emergence of UKIP as a credible political force, we now have a four-party system.. UKIP have swept the board, winning one-third of the vote to date and trouncing the Labour and Conservative parties... 

 

  I am not surprised that there are such contradictory reactions to Pope Francis’ recent visit to Palestine and Israel. To begin with, there are sharply divergent views about the Catholic Church, and the papacy itself. Understandably for some, the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy with the shocking prevalence of sexual abuse by priests of young boys seems institutionally discrediting in the extreme. The anti-modern cult of celibacy and a failure to allow women to participate equally in the life of the Catholic Church furthers undermine its moral authority given the changing realities of the 21st century. Beyond this there are questions raised about Pope Francis’s own past...

  Washington’s role in the coup d’etat in Kiev on Feb. 22 has brought the U.S. a Pyrrhic victory, with the West claiming control of Ukraine albeit with a shaky grip that still requires the crushing of anti-coup rebels in the east. But the high-fiving may be short-lived once the full consequences of the putsch become clear...

 

  The US doesn’t want peace in Ukraine - it wants control. So now that the situation there has largely blown up in their face, it’s not unreasonable to suspect them of fomenting more unrest in an attempt to change momentum. Monday’s ruthless attack by the Ukrainian government in Donetsk in which up to 100 people were killed was a clear indication of this...

 

  Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden did raise questions with top NSA lawyers, the agency admitted on Thursday. Snowden responded by saying the released emails are incomplete, and that NSA misdirection “raises serious concerns..”  Yet the NSA has, until now, denied the existence of any such correspondence. In fact, previously the agency said any such emails simply couldn’t be found...

 

...It is a measure I guess of how twisted and shallow our depiction of a people is that these images come as a shock to so many. The world has visited many terrible things on the Palestinian people, none more shameful than robbing them of their basic humanity. People are not statistics. That is all we attempted to show. A small, pathetically small step towards understanding...

 

 

  Mark Dolan interviews Gilad Atzmon, Jazz Saxophonist And Political Thinker on Fubar Radio.  We spoke about The Guardian of Zion being a controlled opposition front, UKIP's success, immigration, political correctness we even touched on the Holocaust and revisionism...

 

  On June 10, 2014, the Knesset will elect the next President of Israel. Shimon Peres will leave political life and a Brave New Zion will be born...One of the obscure candidates was involved in an accident in which ... was suspiciously killed... a Jewish State with 14 million Jews between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. 'Palestinians Raus!' was his message...

 

...if Herzl had had his way, Francis would have been greeted by President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Spanish. He would have honoured Herzl’s grave in the Jewish state somewhere south of Buenos Aires. If Francis had never heard of this episode, he is not the only one. The vast mass of Israelis has not either. It is not taught in Israeli schools. It is hidden, rather shamefully...

 

  A lot of people are warning against America turning "isolationist." We can dismiss the warnings—special pleadings, really—emanating from other countries, where people have free-ridden on American taxpayers for decades. If Europeans are worried about defending themselves, why are they cutting their military budgets? Not that we should mind if they do, but they should not look to us to pick up any slack...

 

  Capitalism dominates the globe. It has become so enmeshed into the cultural narrative that it seems almost axiomatic. Private owners (of capital) control the means of production. The goal: build profits. The best part about it is that if everyone pursues self-interest, the market will grow and society will benefit. The invisible hand helps the market to self-regulate, creating socially desirable results. Simple? No...

 

  The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the Platonic Ideal of a government entity, at least in these United States. TSA is oppressive, it subjects people to indignities, and its paranoid goal of keeping us safe from terrorists is being done – by most accounts – very poorly indeed.. the TSA will inexplicably continue to exist. Why? Well, because it provides scores of thousands of jobs, because of lingering fears of terrorism, and simply because existence bias demands it...

 

  I think that it is important to at least mention two major developments involving Russia.  First, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus have signed the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and they will soon be joined by Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.  Second, China has officially called for a new security alliance with Russia and Iran thereby proving that all the naysayers who said that China did not really mean it to form an alliance with Russia were plain wrong.. the scope and nature of the recent economic agreements between Russia and China already constituted what I called a crypto-alliance and now we see the first official move by China to drop the 'crypto' part of it...

 

  All Palestinian prisoners who have been on hunger strike in Israeli custody since April 24 have been evacuated to hospitals after their health deteriorated seriously, a lawyer said...

 

  A senior Fatah official said on Thursday afternoon that a government of national consensus would be decided upon and made public in the coming hours, as negotiators from both sides are working out the last disagreements.. Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri, however, said on Thursday that ongoing negotiations to form the government could potentially still need “several days” in order to be finalized...

 

  Bush’s top counter-terrorism official for his first year as president – Richard Clarke – tells Democracy Now that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld committed war crimes in Iraq … and that they can be tried at the Hague:..

 

  Over the years, one of the most important issues I have dealt with repeatedly for the Palestinian people is Jerusalem. For example, my friend Michael Saba and I launched an initiative to prevent the United States Government from illegally moving the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In order to forestall this abomination, I prepared Memoranda of Law on the U.S.-Israel Land Lease and Purchase Agreement of 1989 that would enable the construction of this U.S. Jerusalem “Embassy”..

 

...Unfortunately the people in Jerusalem were not privileged to be on the streets to welcome  Pope Francis . The Israeli Police closed all the roads that led to the areas which he was going to visit, and turned the city into a ghost town...

  It has been a busy weak for President Obama. On Memorial day he secretly flew off to Afghanistan just to let the troops know he genuinely cares and is thinking about them. Or so his PR advisors want it to appear as his ratings continue slumping and his disastrous foreign policy continues to come under heavy fire from all sides. A true characteristic of psychopaths is that everything they do is to.. promote their own image and position. Currently finding himself on the defensive, what does Obama the psychopath do? He opportunistically rushes off as Commander-in -Chief to spend the day that America mourns its fallen warriors with the live ones still fighting his lost cause in Afghanistan...

 

  I write to thank the Syrian Arab Army for its heroic rescue of Christians in the Qalamoun Mountain Range. I am especially grateful for the spectacular victory at Yabroud, where the Syrian Arab Army and Air Force liberated Christians and other Syrians who had been held captive by terrorists for several years. We are deeply grateful for the skill and valor displayed by Syrian troops who rescued the 13 nuns who were kidnapped and used as human shields by the cowardly jihadists at Yabroud...

 

  An uneasy feeling conquered my heart while reading the reports from Jerusalem on the day Zion celebrates the city's day. On May 28, 2014, Religious Services Government Minister Naftali Bennett, leader of the Religious-Zionist Jewish Home party, and key member in Netanyahu's current government conquered Jerusalem in a parade that followed the path of the IDF during the Six-Days War. The event and the words uttered there seemed taken from a neighboring continent in the previous century. The event was the Zionist equivalent of the Nuremberg Rallies...

 

  This week the earth moved under our feet… permanently. In past articles, I have used the term “America putting nails in its own coffin”, and a few more nails were added during the Russia-China summit this week. The incompetence of the West in pursuing a military intimidation solution to their declining financial fortunes just backfired on them...

 

  This video, narrated and edited by Joshua Blakeney, contains segments of an ABC radio interview with the former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Fraser in which he confirms that Israel deliberately attacked the USS Liberty on June 8th 1967.  The Israeli regime has always maintained that the US naval vessel was torpedoed “accidentally” however countless military experts have for some time alleged that it was a false-flag operation designed to induce conflict between the US and those Arab countries Israel was at the time vanquishing in the so called Six Day War...

 

  American author, historian and civil rights activist Maya Angelou died today at the age of 86.. Angelou’s passion for equality, tolerance and peace naturally placed her on the same path as the Palestinian people’s quest for freedom. In the video below, recorded in 2006, she reads out an email from American peace activist Rachel Corrie in which Corrie shares her thoughts on the struggle for justice...

 

...international law expert Francis Boyle discusses a plan he drew up some years ago pertaining to the status of Jerusalem in the event a peace settlement could be reached between Israelis and Palestinians. The plan is remarkably fair-minded and equitable, and would have set up a legal framework under which both the Israeli state and the Palestinian state could lay equal claim to the city of Jerusalem as their respective capitals. The plan was accepted by the PLO - and rejected by Israel. The article underscores quite vividly who has really sought peace - and who has been an obstacle to peace...

 

  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday accused the West of pushing Ukraine into a "fratricidal war" and repeated Moscow's calls for an end to the interim Ukrainian government's military action against pro-Russian separatists. Lavrov's remarks were in line with frequent Russian statements placing blame on the United States and EU for the turmoil in Ukraine, where government forces killed dozens of rebels in the eastern Donetsk province on Monday and Tuesday...

 

  Over the past few weeks, the American business lobby and in particular the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have come out in force to support the reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank of the United States. These groups and their puppets in Washington insist that the Ex-Im Bank is good for American small businesses and supports job growth, that failing to reauthorize will harm the overall economy. Conscious of the political atmosphere, the Bank’s supporters have carefully avoided some ugly facts about this vehicle for corporatist cooperation...

 

  In the old days the preposterous story now running on the WSJ would be readily recognizable as the work of some policy insider smoking out a stupid idea.  But not in today’s whacky world of the Obama White House. These people actually mean to dive right back into the Syrian nightmare less than a year after Vladimir Putin pulled their chestnuts from the fire - and surely for the last time.. Only someone who lunches at the UN Plaza could possibly come up with a plan this stupid...

 

...It was most disheartening to see banners hanging high above Tahrir Square, the birthplace of the revolution. The place where Egyptians of every sort gathered and talked about change and what they hoped for their kids in the new Egypt – the Egypt they were imagining together. An Egypt free of the Mubarak regime and their cronies, free of the corrupt business elite, and free of the military’s influence over the government. Tahrir Square, whitewashed and sanitized like all the massacre sites around Cairo, holds no hint of the young people who gave their lives for their country and their dreams. They too never existed...

 

  On 16 May, Libya’s rogue general Khalifa Haftar staged several bloody attacks against other Libyan militias in the name of eradicating terrorism by leading a paramilitary force evasively named the Libyan National Army. His well-equipped brigades were rapidly joined by officers from national army bases in the eastern parts of the country. Units from the air force also joined in, along with tribal gunmen and other militias, particularly the strong and notorious Zintan militia. The well-coordinated attacks, named Operation Karama, or Dignity, resulted in heavy casualties...

 

  Britain's spies tried to block intelligence from reaching Tony Blair, following publication of the "dodgy dossier" in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, according to a forthcoming book. A former senior intelligence officer, who worked with the then prime minister, said officials did not think "raw" intelligence was "good for him", because Mr Blair was not interested in any information "unless it conformed with his world view". The revelation comes amid calls for the publication of a report by Sir John Chilcot's inquiry into UK involvement in the Iraq War, as politicians express concern at repeated delays...

 

  The collapse of the monetary system awaits the world in the near future, says financial expert James Rickards. Russia and China's desire to rid the US dollar of its global reserve currency status is an early sign of the “increasingly inevitable” crisis. “China has three trillion dollars, but they are buying gold as fast as they can. China worries that the US is going to devalue the dollar through inflation so they want to have a hedge if the dollar goes down, so the gold will go up..”

 

...Palestinians were warned in advance by the Vatican that the tour had “no political agenda” it was simply a pilgrimage. A pilgrimage, apart from the usual Christian holy sites, to the grave of Theodor Herzl where, flanked by two war criminals, Netanyahu and Peres, Francis, the Vicar of Christ, laid a giant wreath in honour of the mastermind of Zionism that unleashed the atrocities of the Nakba committed by Jewish terrorist militia; the massacres, rapes, looting, demolition of 500 Palestinian villages and the  forced deportations and dispossession of 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from their beloved land…a paltry three years after the holocaust...

 

  I was at the Washington Nationals baseball game yesterday. Whenever I attend a Nats game, there is an air of militarism surrounding the game, but attending on Memorial Day helps to remind us what a truly militarized society America has become. After all, what in the world does baseball, a quite peaceful and enjoyable pastime, have to do with America’s countless foreign wars, which have killed, tortured, and maimed millions of people?..

 

  I was shocked to find myself in almost perfect agreement today with a recent column by the neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer. Usually Krauthammer has me groaning, but yesterday his column nailed it. He was writing about what he correctly observes as the end of “American hegemony” in the global political sphere...

 

  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to unveil a unity government by Thursday, ending seven years of rival administrations in the West Bank and Gaza, an official has said. "We have finished consultations on the national consensus government," Azzam al-Ahmed, an envoy from Abbas's Fatah movement, told the AFP news agency on Tuesday after talks in Gaza with its Hamas rulers. "The announcement will come from the president in the next two days.."

 

Pope Francis and the Middle East Peace Process, by Paul Pillar | The National Interest 

  The trip by Pope Francis to the Holy Land, billed in advance as solely religious, made some eye-catching intrusions into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.. Francis's foray into Israeli-Palestinian matters nonetheless was encouraging, for several reasons. One is that for a credible and prominent world figure to do this reduces the chance that the Israeli government can, as Jacob Heilbrunn puts it, “derogate the Palestinian issue to the back burner of international relations..”

 

  Information is power. This is the logic — or at least the aspiration — behind the U.S. government’s current approach to intelligence gathering: the more data (or metadata) in hand, the more control. The National Security Agency’s surveillance leviathan, funded by a black budget and presided over by a star-chamber court, suctions up almost inconceivable amounts of material from around the world, including your phone and computer. How did this begin, and where will it end? History shows us that this is a story about empire...

 

  Do you hate us; the Jews? This was an implied question that was asked to some 53,100 adults in 102 countries in 96 different languages covering approximately 86% of the world’s population in a largest ever worldwide survey conducted by the Jewish Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Global 100 between July 2013 and February 2014. The results of the survey, released on May 13th, stated that 26% of those polled – about 1.09 billion persons; one in every four - are reported to be “deeply inflicted” with “anti-Semitic” attitudes...

 

  After 1700 years of ongoing harassment, forced conversions, massacres and pogroms, one was looking forward to a different relationship in the 21st century between the Jewish world and Catholicism. The latest Papal visit has destroyed a great deal of the good work of Vatican II and those who laboured in the fields of building bridges. Each Papal visit to the Holy Land is filled with symbolic gestures and each move is calculated and orchestrated, and this visit was meant to embarrass and berate the Jewish State...

 

  A Turkish court has ordered the arrest of four Israeli commanders who were allegedly involved in the raid on the the Mavi Marmara aid ship off Gaza in 2010. The court will ask Interpol to issue international arrest warrants for the four men...

 

..Dr. Shaviv, a professor of physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, discussed the evidence demonstrating that the sun has a large effect on climate and the physical mechanism for this link...

 

  The undeniable surge in the support for Euro Sceptics and right wing parties in yesterday’s European Parliament election, suggests that the European working class, isn’t as apathetic as the Zionised Left wants it to be. The nationalist, patriotic and anti-immigration parties took the lead all over Europe last night. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Front pushed the shameless Socialist Party into third place. In Britain the situation was similar. Nigel Farage’s UKIP has taken the lead and is now a major player in British politics...

 

..Supreme Leader of Iran Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that most of the problems afflicting the Middle East and the world can be resolved reasonably and rationally. Citing the Qur’an, which urges people to reflect and use their God-given reasoning ability (al-’aql), Iran’s foremost political and religious leader urged his audience to reject violence and extremism. Much of the “violence in the name of Islam” in today’s world, including Boko Haram attributed attacks and kidnappings in Nigeria, are part of a divide-and-conquer campaign against the Islamic world, he added...

 

  It’s a sweet irony that declared winner of Ukraine’s presidential election, the billionaire «chocolate tycoon» Petro Poroshenko, proclaimed that his electoral victory «showed that people have chosen the path of European Union integration». Meanwhile, this week the people across the EU were voting in record numbers against the project of closer European centralization under Brussels. If Poroshenko is correct about Ukraine, which is doubtful, then the people of Ukraine are swimming against the popular tide in the EU where there is mounting disaffection with what is seen as overbearing governance by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels...

 

...The number of members of congress who ducked Vietnam through imaginary illness, special arrangements for “safe” National Guard units or simply deferment after deferment created a list of “chickenhawks” that became a national shame. Those that ducked service in Vietnam were the first to push for war after war for the children of those who fought. Who would have imagined this or have believed they could have gotten away with it?..

 

...By referring to the territory under occupation since 1967 as ‘Palestine,’ Francis affirmed the status conferred by the UN General Assembly in 2012, and since then angrily rejected by Tel Aviv and Washington. In doing so, Palestinian statehood was affirmed as a moral reality.. Most dramatically of all, by praying at the apartheid wall that separates Bethlehem from Jerusalem, and bowing his head prayer while touching with his hand that hated metaphor of Israeli cruelty, illegality, and oppressiveness, Pope Francis has made an indelible contribution to the Legitimacy War of nonviolent resistance and emancipation that the Palestinian National Movement has waged with increasing militancy, and is being embraced throughout the world...

 

  When Pope Benedict XVI visited the Holy Land five years ago, Israel heightened its security, gladly emphasising the potential threat he supposedly faced in Israel from Muslim extremists. As his successor, Pope Francis, arrived in Israel on Sunday, security was no less strict. Some 9,000 police had been drafted in to protect him, Christian institutions were under round-the-clock protection, and the intelligence services were working overtime. According to a Vatican official, Israel’s preparations had turned “the holy sites into a military base”. On this occasion Israel has been less keen to publicise the source of its fears.. Jewish fanatics linked to Israel’s settler movement...

 

  This weekend Bibi was offended because the leader of the Roman Catholic Church both referred to the occupied territories as Palestine and then, and this is much bigger, stopped to pray at the West Bank separation wall, providing the world with a photo that defines the supposed "security fence" forever...

 

...Jerusalem Christians numbered 24,000 before Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967. Today, we are less than 9,000! This is due to displacement, house confiscation and demolitions, revocation and denial of residency rights and restrictions of movement. We have become an isolated community, economically and socially as a result of Israeli laws against family re-unification, and torn apart by the separation wall. This is the truth of Jerusalem Christians today...

 

Emek Shaveh: Archaeological narratives and control of Jerusalem, by Beth Staton | Palestine Monitor

  It was a find, literally, of biblical proportions. Last week, Israeli archaeologist Eli Shukron boldly claimed that he’d discovered the legendary citadel captured by King David in his conquest of 3,000 years ago – a site that has long evaded discovery, but which is regarded as pivotal to Jewish biblical history. Unsurprisingly, the claim is not uncontroversial. Many Israeli archaeologists, Haaretz reports, are deeply critical of colleagues who “hold a spade in one hand and a bible in the other” as they scramble to verify biblical events throughout the holy land. In Jerusalem, archaeology is rarely a neutral practice – and its use has a profound impact on people’s perception of the past and their experience of the present...

 

  Despite vicious, intense campaigning against it by Israel and its lobby groups in the US, the Israel divestment referendum wins majority vote among DePaul University students! Student coalition DePaul Divest declares victory in campaign calling for student support to divest from corporations that profit off of human rights abuses against Palestinians. DePaul is among the largest private universities in the US, and arguably the largest Catholic university there...

 

...it was heartening to read that students at DePaul University in Chicago have voted in favour of a referendum calling for divestment from companies “that profit from Israel’s discriminatory practices and human rights violations” and help “violate people’s rights to life, movement, healthcare, education and freedom”.. Students say the vote was won despite a massive counter-campaign of intimidation and disinformation by pro-Israel lobbyist group StandWithUs and the Israeli consulate-general in Chicago. “It is clear that DePaul students do not wish to have their tuition dollars invested in weapons manufacturers..”

 

  The State Department’s handling of the Ukraine crisis may go down as a textbook diplomatic fiasco, doing nothing to advance genuine U.S. interests while disrupting cooperation with Moscow and pushing Russia and China back together.. American diplomacy, by definition, is supposed to advance the national interests of the United States, not contribute to international crises that undermine those interests. Yet, by that standard, the U.S. State Department and Secretary of State John Kerry have failed extraordinarily during the current Ukraine crisis...

 

  Russia’s foreign minister says Moscow is ready for dialogue with Petro Poroshenko, current leader of the presidential vote tally, but would like to see him end the military operation in Ukraine's southeast. Poroshenko believes the operation must go on...

 

..Is this a crisis in military relations? Is this the product of peculiar psychological settings of the leadership in Russia, in the West, in the Ukraine itself? Is this another crisis of capitalism? Is this an eschatological battle of “good against evil”?  The list could continue. In this article the crisis will be addressed as the crisis of the Ukrainian state, as that of a geopolitical experiment – more due to an accident of history rather than to conscious political ambitions from the side of that country’s leadership – which had indeed some chances of success in the past, but appears to have met its ultimate failure...

 

  There is simply no viable alternative for Ukraine than to cooperate with Russia and to pay the price that is necessary to do so. That is why Russia is just sitting back and waiting for that simple truth to become evident. In March we said: “Putin will now sit back and let the "west" squabble about who will throw tons of money into the bottomless pit that Ukraine is going to become.. Russia will not help, neither economically nor politically, unless Kiev and the "west" are willing to pay its price: A federalized Ukraine with strong regions and a weak central government.” Two months later this truth finally dawns on the mediocre thinkers in those "western" misnamed tanks. The Brookings Institute..

 

  Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has boasted about how he has defied the United States by building Jewish squatter colonies “in a smart way, in a quiet way” Addressing young Likud supporters, Netanyahu said: “I was threatened in Washington: ‘not one brick’ [of Jewish squatter colony construction]… after five years, we built a little more than one brick.” Asked “about peace talks with the Palestinians”, Netanyahu joked: “about the – what?” to which the audience responded by breaking out into laughter...

 

  Verifying the item took me some time. It made sense, after all the trial had been announced already in 2012. However, the news was published on May 26, 2014, while everybody was waiting the signing of the final reparations agreement between Turkey and Israel. Such a secondary event—issuing arrest orders against Israeli generals—was unlikely to rapidly reach international mainstream media, delaying me for a while. Odd timing, but the item checked out, with all main Hebrew media publishing insincere articles on Turkish anti-Semitism...

 

  “Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today’s war on terrorism merely makes the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.” ~ Professor William Odom, formerly President Reagan’s NSA Director.. after Syria, the US is quite experienced in using proxy troops now, including the terrorist kind. Unfortunately there has been no public political blow back, no accepting of responsibility by politicians or their parties for the continued slaughter in Syria. That has set the stage for encouraging them to use the same scenario on Ukraine...

 

...Washington, its EU puppets, and the Western media have denied that the votes in Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk are sincere and spontaneous. Instead, Washington alleges that the protests leading to the votes and the votes themselves were orchestrated by the Russian government with the use of bribes, threats, and coercion. Crimea was said to be a case of Russian invasion and annexation. These are blatant lies, and the foreign observers of the elections know it, but they have no voice in the Western media, which is a Ministry of Propaganda for Washington. Even the once proud BBC lies for Washington. ..

 

  Increased shortages of essential items in the Gaza Strip due to the closure of the single commercial crossing on Jewish holidays.. Extensive areas in the Bethlehem governorate seized by the Israeli authorities for settlement expansion.. Increased concern over the potential forcible transfer of Bedouin communities around the E1 area, to the east of Jerusalem...

 

  In statements reported Tuesday, European Union (EU) ambassador to Israel Faaborg Andersen once again displayed characteristic western bias toward Israel. Apparently trying to appease his Israeli audience, Andersen demanded that Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Liberation group, recognize Israel, give up resistance to the brutal Israeli military occupation and accept vague and controversial agreements signed between Israel and the PLO. Andersen totally ignored the fact that Israel doesn’t recognize Palestine. In fact important components of the Israeli government don’t even recognize the very existence of the Palestinian people...

 

 

  Since it is Memorial Day, I believe that we should not only memorialize those that died, but also those that lost their soul or humanity or both, because of what they did and what they saw. The parades and the flags are really not put out there in public to "memorialize" those that lost their lives in the wars, but to make us feel better about it.. the next time you participate in Memorial Day activities or "thank them for their service", think about why so many had to die and what was the reason for their deaths? Also think of the homeless Veterans on the streets and in the woods that are also causalities of war...

 

  More and more Americans (not to mention others) are coming to realize that the United States is a fake democracy. It is increassingly evident that ordinary people have no real say in what the government does, nor in what any of the major institutions in society do, such as the corporations, banks, universities and mass media from Hollywood and supermarket tabloids to the New York Times. The question is, who IS calling the shots?..

...Obama is a master of casual condescension. His true gift as an orator is in making you feel as if your misfortunes in life – losing your job, being evicted from your house, going bankrupt – are the products of your own lack of initiative or some moral failing. And then, remarkably, he entices the victims into applauding their own humiliation. That’s a kind of political prestidigitation even Reagan, with his strange power of seduction, couldn’t quite pull off...

 

...In this video and and his book upon which it is based, he shows that many of the most radical claims of the Protocols are today proclaimed by Zionists themselves around the world. such as domination of media, banking, and extensive power and influence in America, the EU and in many governments around the world. He quotes leading and influential Zionists and Zionist media in showing that many of the most important underlying themes can be be documented in historical and contemporary terms...

 

  As the Pope visits the 'Holy Land', much media coverage has focused on the current problems facing Christian Palestinians, and in particular, the so-called 'price tag' attacks being perpetrated by right-wing Jewish extremists. Ahead of the Papal visit, Israeli police even issued restraining orders against known activists.. These attacks and threats come on top of long-standing grievances over land confiscation, restrictions on freedom of access and worship, and visa problems for foreign clergy. But there is a bigger picture to take into account, beyond the latest disturbing developments...

 

  Following the dictum that the thing you most shouldn't talk about is precisely the thing you most [i]need to talk about, I'm posting two pieces on race...

 

...If it sounds like the big boys are dividing the spoils among themselves; it’s because they are. Exxon, BP, Shell; they’re all here. They all have their contracts in hand, and they’re all drilling their brains out thanks to the American servicemen and women who gave their lives for some trumped up baloney about WMD. Isn’t that what’s going on? Sure it is. And even now – after all the reasons for going to war have been exposed as lies–the farce continues. Nothing has changed...

 

  A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons” — the Wall Street banks and elitist multibillionaires — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace.. The second disturbing trend is that while the new water barons are buying up water all over the world, governments are moving fast to limit citizens’ ability to become water self-sufficient (as evidenced by the well-publicized Gary Harrington’s case in Oregon, in which the state criminalized the collection of rainwater in three ponds located on his private land, by convicting him on nine counts and sentencing him for 30 days in jail). Let’s put this criminalization in perspective:..

 

  Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip use the Israeli currency, the New Israeli Shekel, for their daily business. However, as the peace negotiation efforts of Secretary John Kerry stumbled (many would say failed) in late April, Israel took many measures to punish Palestinians for not accepting full political submission. One such measure is that Israel informed the Palestinian side that it would no longer allow Palestinian banks to transport their surplus Israeli currency to the Israeli Central Bank, an act that is unheard of in the world of banking. Israel is refusing to serve its own currency. In effect, Israel is declaring war on the Palestinian economy...

 

  The BBC tacitly praises the Right Sector and its role in the Maidan movement. “The Right Sector played a leading role in January’s violent anti-Yanukovych protests in Kiev.”  “The Right Sector is the most radical wing of Ukraine’s Maidan protest movement that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych in February. They are not Neo-Nazis. According to the BBC, that misleading designation is part of a propaganda ploy by Moscow to demonize bona fide Ukrainian nationalists...

 

Iran hangs main convict in biggest banking fraud | PressTV

  Iran has executed the number-one convict in the biggest embezzlement case in the country’s banking history. According to Tehran’s Public Prosecutor’s Office, Mahafarid Amir-Khosravi was hanged at Evin detention center Saturday dawn. Khosravi was convicted of disrupting the country’s economy through embezzlement, money laundering, and bribery...

 

  You come to Palestine as a diplomat, as a development worker. You come to create change. To make something better. Not for yourself but for people living on a small plot of land between the Jordan River and a wall. You are well educated, have a Master’s degree or you might even have a PhD in political sciences, economics or social sciences. You can also speak fairly good Arabic if not Hebrew. You have a lot of useful experiences and have been to many countries in Africa, Asia or Latin America. Palestine is normally not your first country. You are supposed to create change, a real change. That’s your challenge...

 

  Russia’s leader Vladimir Putin usually wears a perfect poker face. But last week in Shangahi, the icy-cold Russian president came awfully close to bursting into a big grin. And why not? Putin had just stolen a march on his western rivals. The US-British attempt to wound Russia’s economy and punish Putin for disobedience had just blown up in their red faces. After 20 years of difficult talks, Russia and China had just signed a huge deal that called for Russia to export 38 billion cubic meters of gas worth some $400 billion to China. The agreement begins in 2018 and will involve one of the globe’s largest engineering projects that links Russia’s remote gas fields to China’s pipeline system...

 

  The West supported anti-constitutional coup d'état, not just by giving away cookies, but by giving political support, support in the media, using all sorts of tools. And are you blaming us?..

 

  Is it the official diplomatic fanfare and public relations machine parading Israel’s religious “tourism,” or the unofficial welcome decorating Palestinian churches in Jerusalem with slogans like “Jesus is garbage” and “Mary is a cow”? Would it be the apartheid highways and byways dedicated exclusively to Israelis, or the high separation wall cordoning original Christian and Muslim Palestinians inside the city that cuddled and protected the baby more than 2,000 years ago?..

 

  Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has boasted about how he has defied the United States by building Jewish squatter colonies “in a smart way, in a quiet way”, +972 Magazine’s Noam Sheizaf reports. Addressing young Likud supporters, Netanyahu said: “I was threatened in Washington: ‘not one brick’ [of Jewish squatter colony construction]… after five years, we built a little more than one brick..” Asked “about peace talks with the Palestinians”, Netanyahu joked: “about the – what?” to which the audience responded by breaking out into laughter...

 

  Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's top presidential candidate and business magnate, has been in politics since late 1990s, supporting all major political figures at different times under both pro-Western and Moscow-backed administrations. The 48-year-old, born in the southwestern city of Odessa, was one of the organisers of the pro-European uprising which ousted Russia-backed President Viktor Yanukovich in February 2014...

 

  France's far-right National Front has caused a political "earthquake" in the country's European Parliament elections, with exit polls showing up to 25 percent of voters backing the party. The anti-immigration, anti-EU party would win 23 to 25 of France's 74 seats in the European Parliament, according to average results from five polling institutes published on Sunday. The party currently holds three seats...

 

  Despite the threats of Jewish extremists, the visit of the Pope in the Holy Land was successful from a security viewpoint to the extent that the Popemobile was used without the usual cage. However, tearful crocodiles awaited nearby. Verbal attacks are a different issue. One of the attacks published belongs to Rabbi Moshe (Musa) Cohen. Settler Channel 7 allowed its publication on May 25, when the Pope was in the Holy Land. If a similar text were published on Israeli and Jewish officials it would lead to an ADL lawsuit. Following is the article's longest and most poisonous paragraph...

 

  This full length GRTV documentary produced by Mahdi Dariuis Nazemroaya examines the fictitious land of “Nulandistan” (name after Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland)  that has been constructed out of Ukraine. It depicts how the realities of crimes against humanity and political oppression involving terrorist mobs are casually replaced by a world of fiction...

 

...a thoroughly corrupt but democratically elected President (Yanukovich) was overthrown in an armed coup by (lavishly - 5 billion dollars) paid agents of a foreign power.  The new regime is composed exclusively either of corrupt oligarchs (like Iatseniuk) or neo-Nazis (like Parubii).  Regardless, this regime has received the full and unconditional support of the US/EU and all those client-states worldwide which depend on them. The junta in power has unleashed a sustained campaign of terror against all those who dare to oppose it, including civilians (Odessa and Mariupol massacres) and their own armed forces...

 

...People’s representatives from eight Ukrainian regions gathered for a congress in Donetsk on Saturday, a day ahead of scheduled countrywide presidential elections. As a result of the congress, the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, where anti-government protests gained momentum, have announced the creation of a pro-federalization Popular Front socio-political coalition. The movement accepted a manifesto vowing self-determination and protection of people from “Nazi gangs’ terror.” The coalition involves Odessa, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Kharkov, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk Regions...

 

  A defiant Vladimir Putin declared today that the U.S.-led world order “has failed.” Speaking to business leaders a at a forum in St Petersburg, the Russian president railed against U.S. sanctions and dismissed allegations that Russia is meddling in Ukraine, which he said was in the midst of “civil war” thanks to the West. He also rejected accusations by President Obama in unusually pointed terms...

 

...Putin is a model geopolitical leader. He’s the polar opposite from Obama. He’s a master chess player. He’s besting his US counterpart at his own dirty game. Sergey Lavrov is a world-class diplomat. He stands tall. He shames his US and EU counterparts. He makes them look amateurish by comparison. He deplores war. He champions peace. He tirelessly pursues it. He’s done it despite ongoing US-led Western imperial adventurism...

 

...power-sharing in today’s America, or yesterday’s for that matter, does not have much of a following. Compromise in the international arena is basically reserved for dead-end situations where force majeure doesn’t allow Americans to impose their will, such as grudgingly accepting MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) during these past five decades.  Does any student of the global body politic think for a minute that Russia would be standing today free from the claws of the American empire were it not for US’s fear that militarily attacking her would reduce us all to ashes?..

 

...Rather than continuing to oppose justice, human decency and international law through unquestioning support for an ethno-religious-supremacist, settler-colonial experiment, European states, which are no longer anti-Semitic, could and should be opening their doors wide to any and all Israeli Jews who might be tempted to build a new and better life for themselves and their children, with less injustice and less insecurity, by returning to their countries of origin or emigrating to other countries of their choice, offering them immediate residency rights, generous resettlement assistance and a fast track to citizenship (if they do not already have it)..

 

..It is clear that the Syrian public and their officials, in all 14 of the country’s governorates, are committed to the complete restoration of their nation’s peerless and incomparable archaeological heritage sites as soon as security conditions permit..

 

  I have certain questions for "news" outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and CBS. These are the television stations that I watch, though I must tell you, I don't watch them for "news". I watch them to see what propaganda they are throwing out. So far today, I have heard about a mountain climber falling down a crevice, a teenage girl who was supposedly "kidnapped" when she was 15, and news about how terribly the VA treats their patients...

 

  One characteristic of a totalitarian state is that it is as determined to subjugate its own citizens as it is to conquer foreigners. That's why Edward Snowden could tell the National Press Club by live video link from his Russian exile that when he was a contractor for the National Security Agency(NSA) he was appalled to see NSA "collecting more information about Americans in America than it is about Russians in Russia.."

 

  Apparently Prime Minister Netanyahu is upset that the United States has (for the time being) stopped dicking around with its pointless peace process, proving that America's efforts were entirely designed to suit Israel's "hasbara" (propaganda) needs rather than end the conflict. That became crystal clear this morning with a New York Times op-ed ostensibly written by Dennis Ross, long known as "Israel's lawyer" and Netanyahu's bosom buddy. During every step of the "peace process," it has been Ross (certainly NOT that wild man Martin Indyk) who Netanyahu depends on to convert his desires into U.S. policy...

 

  The division of exclusion zones in the Black Sea is a big deal, because many geologists believe the floor of the Black Sea, like that of the North Sea, contains massive reserves of oil and gas, especially in deep water.. the annexation of Crimea by Russia was, at least in part, an aggressive energy grab by the Machiavellian Russian chess master, “Vlad the Bad” Putin...

 

...As was in Nazi Germany, resistance to the fascist empire is again given an unsavory name: terrorism. Partisans and patriots, resistance fighters – all of them were and have always been defined by fascist bigots as terrorists. By the logic of Empire, to murder millions of men, women and children in all corners of the world abroad is considered legitimate and patriotic, but to defend one’s motherland was and is a sign of extremism.. democracy, as it is seen from Washington, London or Paris, is nothing more and nothing less than what the white man needs in order to control this planet, unopposed and preferably never criticized...

  Eleven years ago, on March 16, 2013 , a young American woman named Rachel Corrie was killed in Rafah, at the southern Gaza Strip, when she tried to block with her body an Israeli army bulldozer engaged in the demolition of Palestinian homes. The bulldozer’s activity was part of the army's policy at the time, to maintain a corridor called "The Philadelphi Route" separating the Palestinians in Gaza from Egypt – and to extend it continuously by the systematic destruction of Palestinian homes. This policy ultimately failed and the IDF came out of there two and a half year later. That was far too late for Rachel Corrie as for many others who were killed there...

 

...the west seized the chance to intervene in Libya to get a grip on the Arab uprisings. Nato air power in support of the Libyan rebellion increased the death toll by a factor of about 10, but played the decisive role in the war— which meant no coherent political or military force was ready to fill the vacuum. Three years on, thousands are held without trial, there are heavy curbs on dissent, and institutions are close to collapse. But the US and Britain are still training Libyan troops to keep control...

 

.."If we allow our government to continue operating in secret, it is only a matter of time before you or a loved one find yourself in a position like I did, in a secret courtroom, alone, without any of the meaningful protections that were always supposed to be the people's defense against an abuse of state power.."

 

  The Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Wednesday brushed off demands, both domestic and international, for a transparent investigation into the deaths of two Palestinian youths killed by Israeli forces last week. The pressure follows the emergence of video footage apparently showing two Palestinian youths being shot despite them not posing danger to life. The ensuing controversy over the incident quickly prompted calls from Washington and the United Nations for a full investigation...

 

...The answer to the above question is three-fold. First, the idea that the Iran sanctions have caused little or no pressure on the Western countries is, of course, suspect and can be easily debunked. On the contrary, it can be shown that the whole edifice of sanctions regime was experiencing growing pressures and the Geneva agreement reflected a break not only for Iran but also the very sanctioning regimes, above all the US and European Union (EU)..

 

...Why am I invoking God in this instance? Maybe because it’s my birthday; maybe because this year is the centenary of the First World War, responsible for some 37 million unnecessary deaths. Maybe it is because of the recent anniversary of the Nakba on May 15th or maybe it comes from a desperate need to find the merest glimmer of hope that my country of birth, Palestine, is not lost forever. And maybe I am hoping beyond hope that my people will be delivered from this evil that has befallen them, Israel...

 

  Hats off to the students of DePaul University in Chicago, USA. According to the university students’ newspaper, Depaulia, a majority of students approved in a referendum a resolution calling for divestment from Israel.. The noose is tightening on the world’s only surviving apartheid state. That is clear to anyone who cares to look...

 

  As the Obama administration’s days in office start to wane, the process of vetting the 2016 Republican presidential hopefuls is in full swing. Adelson has let it be known that he is looking for a Republican to back in the 2016 Presidential election. Right on cue Scott Walker, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush took turns pandering to the 80 year old hard core Zionist billionaire. Adelson and his wife spent more than $93 million on the 2012 elections so sucking up to Shelly is certainly worth the effort for a 2016 Republican presidential wannabe...

 

  Yesterday during the early evening, several Palestinian youths were riding bikes near checkpoint 56 in the Tel Rumeida area of Al-Khalil (Hebron). At around 7pm, one youth, 17-year-old Izz Adel Bedo, from the Jabal Al-Takruri area of Hebron was knocked off his bike and run over by a settler driving a bus on the way to the illegal Tel Rumeida settlement...

 

  Israeli soldiers violently attacked and kidnapped a disabled Palestinian man, in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, after forcing him into their jeep, and threw his wheelchair away.. ‘Aabdeen was shot in his spine during the Ibhrahimi Mosque massacre in Hebron. The massacre took place on February 25, 1994, when an American-born fanatic Israeli settler, identified as Baruch Goldstein, stormed Hebron's Ibrahimi Mosque and opened fire, killing 29 worshipers and injuring 125, many of the wounded became disabled...

...The Western criminal enterprise in Ukraine is so audacious it has to be covered up by Washington and its European allies, with the compliant propagandizing assistance of the corporate news media, because the implications are so disturbing. The West has to turn reality on its head in order to distract public opinion by making outlandish and baseless comparisons between Putin and the Third Reich. Britain’s Prince Charles is the latest propaganda mouthpiece in this gross distortion of the truth. But the intervention by the House of Windsor has a particular irony...

 

..I know of no war worth the cost in human suffering and lives. Yet I acknowledge and respect the sacrifices and selflessness of those who were mislead and conditioned to kill and to die in America’s wars for wealth and hegemony. I see no contradiction in that.. I will spend this weekend grieving the loss of comrades and of my innocence. I will spend this weekend in meditation confronting the realization that sometimes death in war is liberation, and those who die more fortunate than we who are condemned to survive as penance for the sacrilege of war...

 

..Ukraine is by far the most significant post-WW II geopolitical crisis. Escalating it risks global conflict. Obama bears full responsibility. Complicit EU partners share it. Putin deserves no blame for their lawlessness. Washington stops at nothing to advance its imperium. Millions of corpses attest to its barbarity. Replacing independent governments with subservient pro-Western ones is longstanding US policy. Washington-supported Kiev putschists staged the most brazen coup d'etat since Mussolini's 1922 march on Rome. Claiming otherwise doesn't wash. It denies reality...

 

  As this report by Ivan Watson shows, CNN’s cameras were apparently trained on the Israeli occupation soldier who shot one of the boys...

 

  Liberal leader Justin Trudeau was recently criticized for allegedly commenting in an interview with Salam Toronto, a Persian-language news outlet, that Canada should take a more “balanced” approach to the Middle East and resume relations with Iran. Referring to the alleged comments, mouthpieces for the ruling Conservative Party stood up in Parliament and chastised Trudeau for not being sufficiently pro-Israel. Reports are now saying that the Liberal leader did not even make the comments in question and that a Zionist website distorted Trudeau’s actual remarks to suit their purposes...

 

  Those in the West who hesitate to boycott Israeli universities and academic institutions for fear of being accused of de-legitimizing Israel, need only remember this. The Israelis have no respect for other people’s right to education and, in the Palestinians’ case, do everything to obstruct it. They have de-legitimized themselves...

 

..“Nuclear talks are not about nuclear capability.” Zarif told me. “They are about Iranian integrity and dignity.” He went on, “If the other side understands the importance of dignity and integrity to the Iranian people, and grasps the fact that various Iranians—who may never have seen [facilities at] Natanz or Arak or Fordo—believe that dignity is not up for sale, that their technology and development is not up for sale … then they will be able to reach an understanding with us..”

 

  The Ukrainian crisis is a natural result of the West’s expansion of its influence eastwards at the expense of Russian interests, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. This stance ruins a historic chance for a unified continent. The turbulence in Ukraine is reminiscent of the violence and bloodshed that Europe experienced in the 20th century, Lavrov told a security conference in Moscow...

 

  So the ultimate politico-economic-media earthquake of the young 21st century remains the (poisonous) gift that keeps on giving. What a raw nerve Abel Ferrara, of King of New York and Bad Lieutenant fame, has now been able to strike. An "outraged" Dominique Strauss-Kahn, aka DSK, is going to sue the producers of Welcome to New York, the movie inspired by the epic 2011 scandal that effectively terminated his career as head of the International Monetary Fund and possible future president of France. The beauty of it is that Ferrara's soft porn spectacular is no more than a "fictionalized version"..

 

  ”Realpolitik” has become a mixture of marketing soundbites, propaganda and leaders making statements that border on the Theatre of the Absurd. Thinner and thinner links to Real-ity. This is what happens when decline in being denied. All empires go down. The U.S. empire is in decline. Macro historians (see British Arnold Toynbee’s 12-volume work 1934-61) tell that there are many reasons when empires fall:..

 

  It’s business as usual in South Africa where the ANC has won a predictable victory in the first elections since the death of Mandela. It is unlikely there will be any big changes in a country mired by one corruption scandal after another, which is now the murder capital of the world and which is slowly sliding into economic chaos. And one thing that will not be changing soon will be a relentless upward tick in the grim daily toll of murders of Whites by Blacks...

 

...The program would have been a farce if it were not for the profound seriousness of events at Treblinka. At best, this recent “forensic investigation” revisited the Soviet efforts of August 1944 and the investigation of Judge Zdzisław Łukaszkiewicz in November 1945 and August 1946. This program does no credit to the Smithsonian Institute. I hope the Smithsonian will act to either correct the errors in “Hitler’s Killing Machine” or disassociate itself from this Show. It has a moral obligation to do so...

 

  Chaos has gripped Ukraine after the late February coup in Kiev and a full-scale civil war has begun, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday. Commenting on the situation in Ukraine, he said: "There was a coup d'etat backed by American and European partners. Then, there was chaos and now we are witnessing a full-scale civil war"..

 

...As our existing historical system is in the process of dying, there is a fierce struggle over what kind of new historical system will succeed it. Soon, we may indeed no longer live in a capitalist system, but we could come to live in an even worse system – a “rough beast” seeking to be born? To be sure, this is only one possible collective choice. The alternative choice is a relatively democratic, relatively egalitarian system, also seeking to be born. Which one we shall see at the end of the struggle is up to us, bottom-up..

 

...Scores of university presidents denounced the ASA’s boycott resolution, and some, apparently, were rewarded with an AJC-guided trip to Israel and the occupied West Bank. The itinerary of AJC’s tour offers a portrait of a typical hasbara or propaganda tour designed to impress suggestible American elites with the image of Israel as a dynamic start-up nation perpetually yearning for peace while struggling to defend itself from intractable foes...

 

...From an Indian perspective, Europe’s double standard must be bewildering: India’s potential prime minister was treated as an untouchable for years, whereas Obama—who is responsible for upholding the abominations of Guantanamo, drone attacks, secret torture centres and spying programmes—is received as a hero. This policy is guided by an age-old story that dismisses India as an immoral and backward culture. If Europe continues to tell such stories, she will lose her way and her standing in the world of the 21st century...

 

  The Russian press is rarely unanimous in its opinions, but there are two points in today’s coverage of the Russia-China gas deal where all the experts agree. First, it is not yet clear whether the new deal is a boon for Russia. But it is certainly a huge failure for the US and the European Union, who lose out on Eastern Siberia’s gas. Second, in light of the sharp deterioration of Russia’s relations with the West because of the mishandled Western-supported “revolution” in Ukraine, the deal with China now becomes a strategic necessity for Moscow...

 

  Russian Defense Minister General of the Army Sergei Shoigu met with his Iranian counterpart Brigadier General Hosein Dehqan on the sidelines of the Third Moscow International Security Conference on Friday.. "I suggest we discuss the current condition of bilateral military cooperation, which is important for Russia, and regional security issues," Shoigu told Dehqan...

 

  Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a joint statement on May 21 to the effect that they had agreed on a further set of practical measures within the framework of their November 11, 2013 cooperation agreement. The first two measures relate to IAEA concerns about a possible military dimension (PMD) to Iran’s nuclear program, and the other three to Iran’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) safeguards agreement:..

 

Orwell and The Jews | Gilad Atzmon

  In this ERTV interview Romain Red and Myself spoke about  George Orwell and the Jews, We also elaborated on the devastating impact of Frankfurt School, Wilhelm Rich and Cultural Marxism. We discussed the Spanish Civil War and the impact of Jews within the International Brigade. We ended with Dieudonné and the quenelle. I am either very brave or just suicidal, we will know soon...

 

  Kudos to these courageous folks. Although they had to beat a hasty retreat, their initial willingness to go toe to toe with Leviathan, albeit foolhardy, deserves hearty applause...

 

  Last week we mentioned the religious tensions mounting ahead of Pope Francis’s visit to Jerusalem.  Haaretz reported the Israeli military and Shin Bet had issued restraining orders against “Jewish youths” to prevent them from “provocations” during his visit. Deep in the Haaretz report was an Israeli court ruling against additional restraining orders, aimed at keeping three Jewish extremists away from David’s Tomb and the Old City so as to prevent them from distributing provocative flyers...

 

...Israel is immeasurably stronger than Palestine in every material respect. One resembles a sleek American skyscraper, the other a dilapidated wooden shack. Palestine is under occupation by the other half of “both”. Palestinians are totally deprived of all elementary human and civil rights. Average income in Israel is 20 times higher than in Palestine. Not 20%, but a staggering 2000%. Militarily, Israel is a regional power, and in some respects a world power. In this reality, speaking of “both” is at best ignorant, at worst cynical. The very presentation of this picture of “both” is tantamount to acceptance of the Israeli narrative...

 

...Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come up with his own “best there is”, a Catch 22 which says that in order for Palestinians to talk peace they must be unified, and the unification must be Israeli-certified. Yossarian could not be grounded unless he was crazy. And yet, if he wants to avoid combat he cannot be certified crazy. This is the logic Israel uses, and despite its deliberate obscurantism, it continues to work in its favor. Or so the present Israeli government thinks. There are signs that Israel’s ability to dictate its own terms is slowly ebbing away...

 

  Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist specializing in politics and society, spoke at Moravian College on Tuesday, October 22. Hedges is the seventh Peace and Justice Scholar in Residence at Moravian College. His talk was drawn from his most recent book, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt...

 

  The Obama Administration doesn’t need to wait to see the results to know what they think, however, and are already going to bat for the election, defending its credibility despite the election not covering major protester-held cities in the east...

 

  Gareth Porter, author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, discusses how US demands on limiting Iran’s nuclear breakout capability are threatening to derail negotiations; and why Obama is not preparing a Nixonian “going to China” plan to normalize relations with Iran after 35 years of hostility...

 

  Moscow has demanded an official explanation from the UK over reported comments in which Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, compared Vladimir Putin’s actions in Ukraine to those of Adolf Hitler in the run up to World War II. “If such comments were genuinely made, they do not reflect well on the future King of England. We are not concerned, we are outraged,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich...

 

  In theory, many people hail the idea of independent thinking and praise the courage of speaking truth to power. In practice, however, the pressure of “group think” and the penalties inflicted on dissidents usually force people into line even when they know better.. World Wars I and II created watershed moments in the lives of Western intellectuals, defined here as those who are guided by their intellect and critical thinking and who understand various aspects of the world mainly through ideas and theories which they express through writing, teaching and other forms of public address...

 

...Stannard argues that the perpetrators of the American Holocaust operated from the same ideological source as the architects of the Nazi Holocaust. That ideology remains alive today in American foreign policy...

 

  The European Union has banned the import of poultry and eggs from Jewish squatter colonies in the occupied West Bank, including annexed East Jerusalem, the Gulf News website reported, citing the Israeli news website Walla...

 

  Well, it looks like Obama the Peacemaker image took another hit today. China, which has no overseas military bases and no carrier battle groups sailing the seas to defend its customers, considers itself a target and not a threat. Imagine that! The US "divide and conquer" ploy with the Asia Pivot is turning into Obama's Asia Boomerang. The land of freedom and democracy has turned into the major stimulus on the planet for forming defensive military alliances...

 

  The death of Christ in the first century was the turning point in human history, particularly in Palestine. It was in that century that Rabbinic Judaism made a solemn pact to reject the man on the cross. That man was a humble servant who came to proclaim peace instead of perpetual wars, reconciliation between man instead of plundering and pillaging, and salvation and ultimate meaning for humanity. Moreover, the man on the cross proclaimed that every single human being has intrinsic value...

 

..A Ukrainian national guard unit.. brought in from the city of Vinnitsa.  For three days were were told to man a checkpoint, but today they were given the order to attack civilians in a nearby village.  The unit refused and the commander announced that he would withdraw because "there were no terrorists here, only civilians".  At around 5AM a black sedan, two jeeps and several vehicles (vans and armored) of the company Privat Bank (belongs to the Jewish oligarch Kolomoiski) carrying members of the "Donbass" and "Azov" death-squads drove to the checkpoint and opened fire with everything they had... 

 

  However Ukrainians settle their drastic differences — and they can, providing all sides find the will to do so — a large and welcome consequence of this crisis falls to Americans. This is summed up in a single word. Ukraine gives us the gift of revelation. We Americans are destined to discover who we are in this century, as opposed to who we tell ourselves and others we are...

 

...Like his brothers in the talmudic faith, Pope Francis is spitting on Catholicism itself. This is what passes for 'balance' in the madhouse of Judaic culture imposed on us by the Pope and the NYT who represent one and the same force. This is the 'balance' of a Church that mauls its own theology, liturgy, prayers and teaching materials while on the other side of the scale 'the Jews' continue praying and working for our destruction and their canonized teachings of hatred, racial supremacy and genocide remain entirely intact and in force...

 

  The Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) is an inter-governmental forum created for promoting peace, security and stability in Asia. It was created in response to the changing times in an attempt to strengthen regional awareness and enhance the effectiveness of tackling the problems. Asia has increasingly become a driving force of global progress. In recent years, it has accounted for over 50% of global growth with China leading the race.. in 1999, the CICA pledged to create an «an environment of confidence» among its members states, which is merely, as its own mandate explains, a «stepping stone» for the ultimate goal - military alignment...

 

  Anyone who wonders why the organized Jewish community is dying need only take a look at this. Last month, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, rejected an application for membership from J Street on the grounds that the presence of an organization that believes that criticism of Israeli policies is sometimes necessary would be divisive. (Leading the successful effort to keep J Street out was the far right and blatantly racist Zionist Organization of America, which is so off-the-wall that it rejects AIPAC for nominally accepting the idea that there is a Palestinian people and that they have rights.)..

 

  Capitalism, neither in theory nor practice, advances through reason and prosperity. It relies on executive fiats, media manipulation and arbitrary police state intrusions. It increasingly relies on death squads dubbed “Special Forces” and a ‘reserve army’ of para-military fanatics. The new power bloc is the merger of big business, the wealthy professional classes, upwardly mobile, elite trained technocrats and cadres of ethno-religious fanatics who mobilize the masses. Capitalism and imperialism advances by uprooting millions, destroying local communities and economies, undermining local trade and production, exploiting labor and repressing social solidarity...

 

...as far as Russia is concerned all along we have been advocating inclusive dialogue, we have played a crucial role in preparing the Geneva Statement on April 17, we supported the OSCE “Road Map” which, incidentally, the Kiev authorities have not embraced publically so far. As far as we are concerned we are trying to make a positive contribution to the resolution of this crisis in Ukraine, which we played no part in creating, in contrast to some of our Western colleagues...

 

...My view is that what is important is not the election itself but to organise relations with all of Ukraine’s regions so that people, whether in the west, south, east or north of the country all feel that they are full-fledged citizens, and so that ethnic minorities have full rights as citizens, including the right to use their native language...

 

  The following excerpt from an open letter by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel recounts Peres’ career, emphasizing a record of war crimes:..

 

...The genius of Stanley Kubrick's film is that it accurately represents the cold war's lunacy and dangers. Most of the characters are based on real people and real maniacs. There is no equivalent to Strangelove today because popular culture is directed almost entirely at our interior lives, as if identity is the moral zeitgeist and true satire is redundant, yet the dangers are the same...

 

  This is another edition of Reality Asserts Itself. And the reality asserting itself these days is more than troubling. Geopolitical rivalry is intense and sharpening. Ukraine is just one recent symptom of the issue...

 

  The great writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn predicted the current situation in Ukraine almost half a century ago. A number of his writings from the Soviet period, including The Gulag Archipelago, contain ruminations on the issue of nationalism and the seeds for potential future ethnic unrest on Ukrainian territory...

 

  A new crusade appears to be underway to target independent research and analysis available via alternative news media.. As its discourse suggests, this propaganda campaign is using the now familiar “conspiracy theory” label, as outlined in.. the 1967 memo laying out a strategy for CIA “media assets” to counter criticism of the Warren Commission and attack independent investigators of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.. the prospect of being subject to the conspiracy theorist smear remains a potent weapon for intimidating authors, journalists, and scholars from interrogating complex events, policies, and other potentially controversial subject matter...

 

 

  Western analysts have long been skeptical of the prospects for sustained Sino-Russian cooperation—but over the last eight years, the new axis of oil has become undeniable market and geopolitical reality.  Russia is now one of China’s top three oil suppliers (with Saudi Arabia and Angola) and is set to grow its oil exports to China significantly in coming years...

  A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass -- at the expense of the United States. And no wonder Washington is anxious.  That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways...

 

  Russia has secured more than 40 business contracts with China during President Putin’s visit to Shanghai. Top is the $400 billion gas contract, there are also deals in finance, investment, aircraft, and automobiles. Here is RT’s list of key agreements...

 

  The Mongolian president, who spoke with Putin in Russian, agreed that the two countries had potential for further cooperation, including in the area of railway transport. “Mongolia is located between China and Russia and is the shortest way for transit by rail and other transport means,” he said. “We should look at how to use these possibilities..”

 

  At the Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) that opens May 20 in Shanghai, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will meet with both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.  Among other things, the summit will underscore how rising non-Western powers are playing ever more prominent roles on the global stage.  However, Western elites remain stuck in a time warp, wherein the United States and its European partners are the imperial masters of all they survey...

 

...The United States does not have any legitimate interest here. Every human being of course empathizes with children in distress. Africa's full of children in distress. Six million people have died in the eastern Congo since 1996, many, many of them children. The United States is complicit in those deaths. The United States's intentions are not good. If it is able to locate through its intelligence apparatus the location of these girls, that does not mean that the United States will prevent them from being killed. In fact, U.S. and French involvement, this war-making machinery, the pressures that are being put on all the governments, may make it more likely that the girls are killed.

 

  Is there any way the unelected Western-backed government in Kiev can legitimize itself? Can federalization and decentralization be a solution to the crisis? Why does Kiev reject this? And is the upcoming the choice between ‘Coke’ and ‘Pepsi’? CrossTalking with Caleb Maupin, Sarah Lain and Robert Parry...

 

  Russia has some of the most precious uncontaminated top soil on the planet and if it is rigorously controlled to stay GMO-free and free from chemicals its productivity would increase as Europe declines, geopolitical analyst William Engdahl told RT...

 

  Ongoing nuclear diplomacy between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 has both Iranian and non-Iranian players in the international oil market focused on the prospects for Iran’s re-emergence as a major oil producer and exporter. For most market players, the ideal scenario is one in which conclusion of a comprehensive nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 leads to a lifting of all sanctions against the Islamic Republic...

 

  A new poll shows support for ending U.S. Cold War policies toward Cuba coming from unlikely quarters. Florida, the state that has been the staging ground for hardcore anti-Castro activism for decades, now favors thawing relations in a trend that is reflected across the country. The poll by the Atlantic Council shows that 63 percent of Floridians favor normalizing U.S. relations with Cuba—a figure that outpaces even the majority 56 percent nationwide...

 

  Femen is known for bold and visually striking topless protests across Europe and North Africa. Often regarded as a feminist organization, the fact that they were started and was run by a man, Victor Svyatski, is less well known. He has recently been ousted from the leadership.. Also less well known are Femen’s ties to the anti-woman Ukrainian neo-Nazi movement. Victor Svyatski would personally review potential activists to see if they were pretty enough. In addition, Brazilian supporters were denied a franchise under the brand for not having the right weight..  "He was quite horrible with the girls. He would scream at them and call them bitches..”

 

...Since 1977, basketball is not a sport in Israel. It is just another manifestation of war. "Soviets, Greeks, and Spanish are all anti-Semites and we will defeat them at all costs," is the odd rationale behind this shadow war. "War is not made with anybody in the world, until he is called for peace," a rabbi ruled centuries ago. Yet, Israel declared war on individuals without calling for peace, without warning...

 

  Military training in live-fire zones in the West Bank is used as a way of reducing the number of Palestinians living nearby, and serves as an important part of the campaign against Palestinian illegal construction, an army officer revealed at a recent Knesset committee meeting...

 

  The Jewish State is not an apartheid apparatus! it is actually far worse. Israel doesn’t attempt to exploit the Palestinians, it wants them gone. Israel puts into action Nazi-like (Lebensraum) ethnic cleaning tactics because Jewish nationalism is an expansionist ideology driven by judeo-centric racist supremacy.  The truth is simple and devastating. However,  the Diaspora Jewish Left attempt to conceal it all is actually embarrassing, yet, symptomatic...

 

  Given that Israel has shown itself unwilling to halt settlement construction and end its numerous further violations of international law – the EU must live up to its commitment to condition its relations with Israel on “human rights and democratic principles..” Numerous EU and UN reports have concluded that Israel does not respect the basic principles of universal human rights and international law. The EU policy of maintaining close relations with Israel as a supposed means of persuading it to end its violations of human rights and international law, and negotiate in good faith, has clearly failed...

 

...On 14 April 2014 Eva Illouz, a professor of sociology at Hebrew University, published an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz entitled, “Is It Possible to Be a Jewish Intellectual?”  In this piece she sets forth two opposing positions: one is the Zionist/Israeli demand for the primacy of “ahavat Israel,” or the “love of the Jewish nation and people” - the claim that all Jews have a “duty of the heart” to be loyal to the “Jewish nation.” The other position is that of the lone intellectual (here her model is the philosopher Hannah Arendt), whose obligation is to maintain the “disinterested intelligence” necessary to, if you will, speak truth to power...

 

  Lia  Tarachansky presents the Nakba from the unusual viewpoint of its perpetrators and the ‘inheritors’ of its stolen booty- the land of Palestine. The protagonists are Tarachansky, who, herself, is an ex-settler from Israel’s largest illegal colony, Ariel,  Eitan Bronstein founder of Zochrot and Palmach veterans, Tivka Honig-Parnass and Amnon Noiman. Amnon’s struggle to come out of the torture chamber of silent guilt is vivid and (grudgingly) brave...

 

..For the last one hundred years Arabs have not produced a single marketable product, except for one – Arab on Arab wars and conflicts. Arab tyrants preferred fighting each other, often as proxies in the Cold War or to preserve their fiefdoms, rather than fighting their true enemy – Israel. Terrorism was initially introduced into the Middle East by Zionist terrorist groups such as the Irgun and Stern Gangs; but today the Arabs and Muslims have adopted and improved on their terrorism that has turned the Arab world into a basket case of death and destruction. Muslims killing Muslims – and these terrorist regimes and their sponsored terrorist groups are today claiming to represent true Islam...

 

  The 9/11 museum, which opens today in New York, is one of the most evil edifices ever built. It is the sacred temple of a satanic false religion: The Official Conspiracy Theory of 9/11. That false religion may be the first heresy in history that was carefully designed by experts in “the construction and maintenance of public myths” – which is how 9/11 scriptwriter Philip Zelikow describes his academic field...

 

...The veteran Algerian diplomat, who previously served as the UN special representative to Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti and South Africa, said that there may have been a missed opportunity with Russia early in the crisis. “I think the Russian analysis was right at the beginning, but everybody thought that it was an opinion and not an analysis. The Russians were saying that Syria is not Egypt and it is not Tunisia, and the president of Syria is not going to fall in a matter of two or three weeks.. “Maybe, maybe if people listened to them, and went to them, and said, listen you clearly know the situation in Syria better than anybody else. Let’s sit down and see how we can help Syria solve its problems..”

...The Boko Haram group is a manifestation of regional conflicts that were inherited from the British colonial system and continue as U.S. political dominance grows in the foreign and internal affairs of this oil-rich state...

  The reliance on the generosity of the imperial powers and the weak leadership of the Arab elites has been the principle cause of failure in Palestinian resistance For almost one hundred years of Palestinian resistance to the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine, various consecutive Palestinian leaderships have placed their trust in diplomacy and have looked with bedazzled eyes at powerful western nations, the international community and the Arab League to deliver them from the occupation and to bring a just resolution to the conflict. This is astounding when one considers that Israel, the reason behind the Palestinian people’s dispossession, is a western colonial project...

 

...The Neo-Nazi mobs had been trained and indoctrinated. Western special forces and mercenaries on contract to NATO and the Pentagon were involved in the training of the Right Sector paramilitary. In turn, the National Guard civilian militia created in mid-March is financed by Washington. The Right Sector Brown shirts had received prior paramilitary training in Poland in September 2013 ahead of the EuroMaidan riots. America’s Neo-Nazi Government in Kiev is a reality. The body of evidence suggests that US-NATO is directly involved in the crackdown on so-called “pro-Russian” activists, advising both the Right Sector and the Kiev government’s National Guard...

 

 

  Life in Eritrea is brutal and shrouded in secrecy. The world is indifferent. The regime trusts nobody – even the United Nation’s special rapporteur on Eritrea, Sheila Keetharuth, has been denied a visa...

 

  We are entitled to search for the truth. The real crime committed by the National Socialists – the exclusion, disempowerment, deportation, enslavement, death by omission and by commission and expulsion of a people simply because they were that people – was a terrible one. One does not need gas chambers to make the targeting of Jews, just because they are Jews, extraordinary and unacceptable. Nonetheless, if this targeting did not extend to extermination, if there were no gas chambers and if six million Jews did not die, then we should know it and, if necessary, address the implications...

 

  The hypocrisy of Secretary of State John Kerry’s statement that, “You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext," is beyond belief.  What about the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or regime change in Libya, or the threats to bomb Syria and attack Iran? The US has waged a massive propaganda campaign of misinformation, distortion, and outright lies and the national media has taken the State Department’s “facts” and disseminated them without question or challenge..  Although there is lip service to concerns about democracy and sovereignty.. the US acts in the interests of preserving its imperialist power and wealth...

 

Petition: We call upon the US government to stop intervening in the affairs of the Ukrainian people | Change
..why is Russia so alarmed?  Could it be the US-NATO campaign to militarily surround Russia and bring neighboring countries into the western military and financial orbit?  Might it be that the largest supply of natural gas in the world is in Russia and the pipelines go through Ukraine, or that global warming is opening the Arctic to oil drilling and Russia borders the Arctic?  It is clear that Russia will not passively sit by while the Western-backed coup, led by violent fascist forces and local billionaires, overthrows a democratically elected government and installs a puppet regime on its border...

 

  VTB, Russia’s second biggest lender, has signed a deal with Bank of China, which includes an agreement to pay each other in domestic currencies.. The agreement comes as a part of Russia’s larger scale pivot to Asia, as Western economies threaten sanctions over the turmoil in Ukraine. Sanctions by the US and the EU have been mostly limited to visa bans and asset freezes on some leading Russian officials, and so far only threatening a so-called third round of real economic sanctions against Russian businesses...

 

...The establishment of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel demanded to address the issue of Vatican properties in Israel. Their exact extent and value are not known, but they amount to many billions. In 1993, the countries signed a basic agreement to be followed by a permanent one. Since the British Mandate days, religious buildings.. are exempted from paying property tax (the arnona). Israel wants structures owned by the Vatican but that are not churches to pay the tax. The Catholic managed institutions refuse to pay, demanding first the achievement of a comprehensive agreement between Israel and the Holy See. Such an agreement demands to settle the status of King Davis's Tomb...

 

  Is the world getting fed up with US-NATO-Israeli false flags? Will nations that are actual or potential victims of these deceptions launch an all-out diplomatic and media effort to expose the 9/11 inside job – the mother of all false flags – and pre-empt future phony or staged “attacks”? They’d have to be crazy not to.. Now Russia Today (RT) is joining Press TV with hard-hitting coverage of false flags and 9/11...

 

  The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Al-Faisal, has announced an invitation to his Iranian counterpart to visit Saudi Arabia. This development is unsurprising, and it is welcome. It follows visits that Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a few months ago to some of the other Arab members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Rapprochement between Iran and its Arab neighbors is good for the neighbors as well as for Iranians, good for stability in the Persian Gulf, and good for U.S. interests in the region...

 

  The Black Students Campaign (BSC), which represents over one million Asian, Caribbean, African and other ethnic minority students, has voted by an overwhelming majority in favour of a motion calling for the boycott of, divestment from and sanctions against Israel. The BSC is a self-governing sub-section of the National Union of Students, which represents the majority of student unions in Britain. The motion commits the BSC to lobby for an “academic boycott of Israeli universities”, to “support the annual Israeli Apartheid Week initiative”, and advocates for divestment from “key BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] target companies, including G4S, Veolia and Eden Springs”..

 

  Libya is tipping toward all-out civil war as rival militias take sides for and against an attempted coup led by a renegade general that has pushed the central government towards disintegration. In a move likely to deepen the crisis, the army chief of staff, whose regular forces are weak and ill-armed, called on Islamist-led militias to help preserve the government.. The latest step in the dissolution of the Libyan state underlines the degree to which the opposition has proved unable to fill the vacuum left by the fall of Gaddafi. The war which led to his defeat in 2011 was largely fought by NATO air power...

 

...the NSA and handsomely financed partners in the self-styled “Intelligence community” will go on and on until someone stops them, and their spying, and that someone is hard to identify given the way the agencies seem to have the goods on the government as well as the rest of us...

 

...Paehlke is on strong ground when he ventures the opinion that the planetization of citizenship is an indispensable precondition for the establishment of global governance in forms that are both effective and fair. His insistence that global governance to be legitimate must address ethical issues as well as functional ones associated with sustainability is certainly welcome. He is also persuasive in advocating the formation of a global citizens movement (GCM) that takes advantage of the networking and mobilizing potential of the Internet, combining an initial focus on local challenges while nurturing a global perspective...

 

  I think that we can all agree that the situation in the Ukraine is one of total chaos.. I think that while it is premature to make grand conclusions and predictions, we can begin by agreeing on a number of basic facts. First, there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the junta in Kiev is clearly provoking Moscow in every possible way...

 

On Nakba Day, Israelis forced to confront a guilty secret, by Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth

  For 66 years Israel’s founding generation has lived with a guilty secret, one it successfully concealed from the generations that followed. Forests were planted to hide war crimes. School textbooks mythologised the events surrounding Israel’s creation. The army was blindly venerated as the most moral in the world. Once, “Nakba” – Arabic for “Catastrophe”, referring to the dispossession of the Palestinian homeland in 1948 – would have failed to register with any but a small number of Israeli Jews. Today, only those who never watch television or read a newspaper can plead ignorance.

  Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a "brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis", as if the truth "never happened even while it was happening". Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his "updated summary of the record of US foreign policy" which shows that, since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders...

 

  The German government has decided not to give Israel a massive subsidy for the purchase of German missile boats, due to the breakdown in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, both Israeli and German officials said on Thursday. For months now, Israel and Germany have been negotiating a deal under which Israel would purchase three or four German gunboats to protect its offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea. The deal, first reported by Haaretz, was valued at about $1 billion before any discounts...

 

  The Israeli-Ukrainian oligarch living in Switzerland, Ihor Kolomoisky, called South-East pro-federalist leader, Oleg Tsarev, to inform him that the Ukrainian Jewish community was prepared to pay a bounty of $ 1 million to whoever would assassinate him. He ordered him to immediately flee the country. Mr. Kolomoisky holds Mr Tsarev responsible for the death of a Jewish Kiev-coup supporter on May 9 in Mariupol...

 

...On July 4th all across America there will be patriotic speeches about our soldiers who gave their lives for their country.  To an informed person these speeches are curious.  I am hard pressed to think of any examples of our soldiers giving their lives for our country.  US Marine General Smedley Butler had the same problem. He said that his Marines gave their lives for United Fruit Company’s control of Central America...

 

..Contrary to the view on Wall Street and within the Western economic establishment restoration of Wall Street has not ‘fixed’ the economy. The policies of Mr. Geithner, the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve have ‘fixed’ profits, compensation and bonuses for Wall Street. The drop in median income is evidence of ongoing economic Depression for most citizens of the West. Assertions to the contrary by Mr. Geithner, the Obama administration and the ‘eternal sunshine of the spotless mind’ crowd of Western economists are evidence of whose interests they represent...

 

  As the West’s assault on Ukraine gets ever bloodier, the "news" on National Public Radio (NPR) is teeming with anti-Russian propaganda, interspersed with the usual pieces declaiming on one’s senior prom and other matters of equal import. All in all it is a pretty dismal substitute for news and analysis. But even at the "Diane Rehm Show," very near the bottom of the dung heap that is NPR, a few scraps of truth can be scavenged on occasion – usually uncovered by a caller’s question. Such was the case on March 27...

 

...Vietnam became the prototype for wars of invasion and occupation that failed not because they were based on a slightly erroneous predicate or a debatable case for national security. No, Vietnam and its progeny through Afghanistan today were completely senseless projects of imperial  over-reach and arrogance, driven by the vast military, diplomatic and financial machinery of the Warfare State...

 

  The mainstream American media has taken a nearsighted view of the Ukrainian crisis by following a script laid out by the State Department. Most reports have either ignored the truth or spun it in a way that paints only a partial picture. Here are seven things you should know about Ukraine...

 

...the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” regime far exceeded the permissive John Yoo Justice Department guideline that defined torture as any procedure that brought about organ failure or worse, the assumption being that physical abuse as part of the interrogation process would be unlikely to go beyond that point. Either Yoo guessed wrong regarding how far an interrogator might actually go if given legal cover or he did not appreciate that the widely publicized White House pledge to “take the gloves off” against the terrorists might actually have real-life repercussions...

 

  The timing is almost flawless as Russia is looking to shield itself from Western sanctions by pivoting towards Asia, and China desperately needs to switch from dirty coal to more environmentally friendly natural gas...

 

  Control over territories, land use, and ownership are central issues to the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. What follows is a historical overview of the system of land ownership in Palestine, including an examination of the methods by which the Israeli government and Jewish agencies acquired land in Palestine...

 

  Many Palestinian cities in the West Bank and especially in the Gaza Strip face chronic clean water shortages. The rural communities are virtually deprived of water and depend mainly on very expensive tank-water supplies.  In the main cities Palestinians have access to an average of only 70 liters of water per person per day for domestic use and personal hygiene, much less than the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended minimum of 100 liters. In the rural areas  Palestinians are surviving on 20 – 30 liters of water per person per day, while adjacent illegal Israeli colonies (settlements) built on stolen Palestinian land enjoy unlimited constant supply of water for personal and recreational use...

 

...When the Soviet Union broke up, these people suddenly found themselves the citizens of entities that hadn’t existed for decades, if at all. Unlike Poles or Estonians, they felt no pride in gaining or regaining national sovereignty, only confusion. But with no widespread sense of national allegiance and no public spirit, it was difficult to make democracy work. Władek turned out to be right: The people who eventually came to lead independent Ukraine failed to build Ukraine’s institutions. Instead, they built their own fortunes...

 

  Iranian students, studying in the United States and reliant on Bank of America debit cards and ATMs for access to their foreign bank accounts, have recently had their assets frozen. According to Ryan Costello and Jamal Abdi of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), “Due to a sudden, unnecessary and — most of all – discriminatory change in bank policy, Iranians and Iranian Americans across the country suddenly try to use their debit cards to make a purchase or withdraw money from an ATM, only to find that their accounts have been frozen effective immediately..”

 

  An 11-year old Russian girl, who has been staying in Slavyansk in eastern Ukraine without her parents since February, a major hotspot in the military stand-off between Kiev and pro-federalization forces, was brought back home after a special operation. “It took a month to get the operation ready and two days to carry it out,” Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s ombudsman for children’s rights who worked in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, to secure the girl’s return, told RIA Novosti...

 

...I have Jewish-Ukrainian friend who has family in Ukraine, whose father and grandmother survived a concentration camp after being turned in to the Germans by their Ukrainian neighbours for being Jewish. Somehow they escaped from a ghetto work camp in East Ukraine before it was closed and its inmates sent to death camps in Poland. This woman has family members working in the Security Services. Two days after the first deaths in Maidan Square she told me that, according to these family members, the snipers were killing members of both sides equally. The intercepted phone call has since confirmed this information...

 

..”Capitol Hill is overrun with Israeli spies. They have them on staff. They have congressmen working very closely with Israeli intelligence, helping them get anything they want. They literally sometimes can put orders in for things that the Pentagon will not share with them,” he added. “That’s a horrible national scandal,” Dean said. In one paragraph of the book, Greenwald explains the complex spying relationship between Tel Aviv and Washington as follows:..

 

  Aid convoys from Algeria and Jordan have crossed into Gaza from Egypt with $2.5m worth of supplies, Palestinian officials said. Alaa el-Batta, a government official, told a news conference at the Rafah border crossing that a 14-member Algerian delegation brought medicines and medical equipment worth $2m. The supplies were for the opening of an Algerian-sponsored hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis...

 

  What is a multipolar world going to look like? Will Washington recognize the rise of the other poles? And what is the future: order or chaos? CrossTalking with Rodney Shakespeare, Mark Sleboda and Ehsan Ahrari...

 

Ukraine creates arc of chaos, by Francesco Sisci | Asia Times Online

  As if on a romantic double date, Europe is strolling nonchalantly toward what in reality is a risky pair of electoral appointments: the vote for the European Union parliament in Brussels and the presidential election in Ukraine, both scheduled for May 25. The combination of the two could multiply the many hazards each separately entails. The most obviously precarious is the Ukrainian election...

 

...They have combined the darkest and the most radical interpretations of Islam with ignorance, superstitions and authoritarianism while targeting people’s lives, property and honor with such ideological weapons as excommunication and terrorism. At the same time, they consider their main duties to be confrontation with and rejection of traditional religious institutions, fighting the incumbent government and struggling against the establishment of democracy in the Nigerian society.. they consider themselves authorized to embark on all kinds of inhuman acts such as mass killing of people, stealing people’s property, and kidnapping...

 

...Christie was seated at the same table as Adelson, who figures to play a prominent role in the selection of the next Republican presidential nominee.. At the time, Christie, a Catholic, said he was overwhelmed by displays of religious tolerance during a recent trip to Jerusalem. "I took a helicopter ride from occupied territories across ... and just felt, personally, how extraordinary that was to understand the military risk that Israel faces every day.." The comment about "occupied territories" drew sharp criticism from some in the audience. The Israeli government and by extension most of Israel's supporters in the U.S. don't consider the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be occupied territory...

 

  “NewsBalt” publishes the full text of the appeal of the commander of the militia of Donetsk People`s Republic Igor Strelkov...

 

  ICC prosecutors focus on request for investigation of Canada's 'complicity in torture' & CIA extraordinary renditions. Canada's controversial policies of transferring Afghan detainees over to the danger of torture by other nations and Canada's alleged participation in the Central Intelligence Agency's extraordinary rendition program are now being formally examined by the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Prosecutors have confirmed that they are considering a 28-page request for a formal ICC investigation into Canada's alleged violations since 2002 of The Rome Statute, which prohibits torture and complicity in torture under international law...

...The Maidan street revolt and the subsequent coup just reshuffled the same marked deck of cards, forever rotating in power..  These people had brought Ukraine to its present abject state. In 1991, the Ukraine was richer than Russia, today it is three times poorer because of these people’s mismanagement and theft. Now they plan an old trick: to take loans in Ukraine’s name, pocket the cash and leave the country indebted. They sell state assets to Western companies and ask for NATO to come in and protect the investment...

 

  Reports allege that some 20 members from the armed Neo-Nazi front, Right Sector, attempted to storm the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, in Energodar city, Zaporizhia province.. Policemen of the city of Energodar have detained 20 activists of the Right Sector, who tried to seize the Zaporozhye NPP. According to the leader of the Zaporozhye branch of the organization, the militants were afraid that the city would fall in the hands of supporters of federalization...

 

  The screws continue to tighten on Palestinian and Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives and seeking safety in Lebanon. As the seemingly eternal governmental crisis in Lebanon escalates and various “warlord” veterans from the Lebanese civil war, who thanks to their auto- arranged general amnesty in 1989 designed to thwart justice for an assortment of war crimes, have appointed themselves Lebanon “political lords” seek again to choose a President. Certain anti-Palestinian and pro-Zionist parties who continue Lebanon’s “cold civil war” do not miss an opportunity, for political purposes, to bash the Palestinian refugees still stuck in Lebanon...

 

  U.S. Under Secretary of State Richard Stengel travelled to Kiev, Ukraine; Riga, Latvia; and Brussels, Belgium on May 12-16. As the State Department reported, he used his trip «to stress the need for greater regional engagement to support Ukraine’s upcoming May 25 elections, push back against efforts to delegitimize them and ensure that all Ukrainians are given the chance to decide their future for themselves».. the purpose of the visit was to orchestrate the anti-Russian information campaign. The junta was to be introduced to information warfare priorities, something the United States is trying to impose on Europe too...

 

  German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for restraint in imposing new sanctions on Russia, as politicians, businesses and the general public in Germany grow ever more skeptical of putting more pressure on Moscow...

 

..Ten days before the tragedy a secret meeting was held in Kiev, chaired by the incumbent president Olexander Turchinov, to prepare a special operation in Odessa. Present were minister of internal affairs Arsen Avakov, the head of the Ukrainian Security Service Valentin Nalivaychenko, and the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Andriy Parubiy. Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskiy, the Kiev-appointed head of regional administration of the Dnepropetrovsk region, was consulted in regard to the operation...

 

  The BBC News website’s Middle East section appears to have become all but officially part of Israel’s propaganda machine, with one report after another distorting uncontested facts to paint the best possible picture of the Zionist state...

 

  I arrive at Bethlehem along the same motorway as all tourists, in a taxi from the Ben Gurion airport. They arrive in coaches with their Jewish guides. Pilgrims from all over the world crowd into the Nativity Church on Manger Square. Perhaps the holiest place in the world for Christians? They buy souvenirs and go back home again as if the Palestinians do not exist.. The town is situated just south of Jerusalem and surrounded by The Wall and by fences. Check-points further limit people’s access and they are resigned to finding inconvenient diversions. Arbitrary travel permits for areas outside the town tear apart families that have lived in and around Bethlehem for thousands of years...

 

...the odd fact is that writing a fake Holocaust memoir has become, by now, a dog-bites-man story. Misha Defonseca is just the latest example of a genre that also includes Herman Rosenblat, author of the Oprah-endorsed Angel at the Fence—whose fraud was first exposed by The New Republic—and Benjamin Wilkomirski, author of Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood...

 

...Sanctions are neither the reason for the breakthrough, nor the impetus behind the government of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's openness to talks. They also did not get Rouhani elected. The idea that the United States has the ability to engineer the outcome of elections in a country that is thousands of miles away, with which it has no trade, where it has had no diplomatic presence for 35 years, and where only a handful of current U.S. diplomats have ever served or even visited, expands the concept of arrogance to new and exciting frontiers...

 

...The leader of the militants, who now make up the backbone of the newly created National Guards, currently conducting military operations against federalization activists in eastern Ukraine, has called for “extensive guerilla war” against the protesting federalist forces in Donetsk and Lugansk. The Right Sector, which last month formed a special detachment, Donbass-1, for waging war against the federalists in eastern Ukraine, is now busy forming the Donbass-2 unit and plans to recruit militants for a third one, said Yarosh...

 

  One from the Jewish Daily Forward, the other from the Occidental Observer...

 

  A moving song about how outsiders have torn apart the Slavic people. English subs...

 

 

  Teach in at Riverside Church May 11. Discussion of Imperialism and Fascism in Ukraine, Venezuela, the Philippines and everywhere. Demonstrations on May 26th against war in Ukraine and on May 15th to support Fast Food Workers...

 

...The reservists, only 3% showed up when called. They had to be Right Sector people. Everyone knew that Kiev was looking for cannon fodder to defend their coup. And then we had the frantic push to legalize the Right Sector thugs by putting them into the New National Guard. But our slimy corporate media never even asked why they were not mixed in with the regular national guard troops. The answer is that the regulars would not do what Kiev was going to be asking them to do, and Kiev knew that, so it took some time to create new units consisting solely of the nationalists...

 

Israeli espionage coming out of closet, by Jim W. Dean | PressTV

  Two top presidential contenders have recently put Israeli espionage front and center on the public stage. Rand Paul began with making a big deal over how could any of his Congressional colleagues oppose a “Jewish State in the Holy Land,” a cheap pander to the Lobby. And then Hillary Clinton, fearing that he was getting ahead of her in the Zio polls, got her knee pads out and declared she was THE great friend of Israel. Both disqualified themselves to be president on the grounds of being national security risks. And if you thing this is a big joke, keep reading...

 

...the Zionist kingdom is powerful but fragile. If Alexander Solzhenitsyn is right, that “One word of truth outweighs the world,” then the neo-Bolshevik ideology is in trouble, despite the fact that they are currently winning and holding the West captive...

 

..Below is the full transcript of the Russian president’s interview with Chinese Central Television, Xinhua news agency, China News Service, The People's Daily, China Radio International, and Phoenix Television...

 

  A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass - at the expense of the US. And no wonder Washington is anxious.  That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways.. Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain.  Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia’s Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile...

 

The following is an edited exchange of emails between Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, and David Rothkopf, CEO and editor of the FP Group.. The first of the emails came after Oren asked Rothkopf how he felt about a trip to Israel he made in late 2013, the first time he had visited the country.. The question, while simple enough, ignited a discourse on the United States, Israel, American Jews, Israeli Jews, and the state of the relationship as seen from two different perspectives - that of two men who started out with similar backgrounds and views and who, over time, reached some strikingly different conclusions...

 

  Two phone conversations have recently been intercepted by "parties unknown".. which are truly revealing of the true nature of the folks put in power by the CIA. The first one is a conversation between Igor Kolomoisky, mega-oligarch, Mafia don, dual Ukrainian-Israeli citizen and "junta governor" of the city of Dnepropetrovsk in southeastern Ukraine and Oleg Tsarev, ex-candidate in the Presidential election (ex Party of Regions, now independent), the one who was brutally assaulted in Kiev after participating to a show called - I kid you not - "free speech"..

 

...There is continuity: What the historical record suggests is that US intelligence from the “Truman doctrine” to the NeoCons (not to mention Obama) has supported Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi entities. The latter constitute “intelligence assets” which are currently being deployed in the wake of the Cold war, with a view to absorbing Ukraine within the realm of NATO enlargement as well destabilizing the Russian Federation.. It is important to analyze the Odessa mass killings in relation to US military doctrine. “Massive casualty producing events” resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians are part of a US military modus operandi applied extensively...

 

  Finance in today’s world has become war by non-military means. Its object is the same as that of military conquest: appropriation of land and basic infrastructure, and the rents that can be extracted as tribute. In today’s world this is taken mainly in the form of debt service and privatization. That is how neoliberalism works, subduing economies by indebting their governments and using unpayably high debts as a lever to pry away the public domain at distress prices. It is what today’s New Cold War is all about...

 

  Without even firing a shot, masked rebel gunmen overran a Ukrainian military headquarters in the main eastern city of Donetsk on Friday and swiftly declared they were in control. After a couple of hours of what one local described as "negotiations", uniformed members of a National Guard special forces unit simply took off in a few trucks, leaving the building to the rebels. Ukraine's military offensive against pro-Russian insurgents in the east, already a month old, has so far been a humiliating failure, with separatists now firmly in control of large swathes of the country's industrial heartland...

 

...Ukraine’s future is being determined by an unpredictable battle for leverage on the ground, which has been ongoing ever since Russia annexed Crimea, and will continue until the May 25 election in Ukraine. Ultimately, whoever is elected in Kyiv will have to agree to a compromise with Moscow on the degree of structural influence it will be given in Ukraine. After the independence referendums held in Luhansk and Donetsk on May 11, that is as inevitable an outcome as it is unpalatable in Western capitals. The notion that all of Ukraine can be pulled into a Western orientation now appears unrealistic and naïve...

 

  A political disaster planned and funded by Washington is entering a new and even Orwellian stage. What is Victoria Nuland's impact on the Ukrainian crisis? Is there a peaceful resolution of the crisis? And what is on Nuland's mind? ..

 

  The Russian Foreign Ministry deeply regrets that the report on the situation in Ukraine, published by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, actually justifies the criminal punitive operation in the southeast of Ukraine, conceals casualties among  peaceful civilians, makes an attempt to put the blame for the committed violations of human rights on the “pro-Russian forces..”

 

..Slavyansk was founded in 1696 by Don Cossacks upon the order of Tsar Alexey to defend Russia from raids of Crimean Tatars.. After the revolution the lands populated by Don Cossacks became part of Ukraine but the population remained Russian and continued to speak Russian language. In 2013 Shell made known its plans to start extraction of shale gas here in violation of ecologic norms. The contract envisioned taking property away from owners in case it stood in the way of cleaning the space for drilling...

 

...Officials from the OSCE, who modestly remained silent during the coup d’état in Ukraine and have not said a word about the tragedies in Odessa and Mariupol, have begun to raise a storm of activity around the «road map» for Ukraine. Some provisions of this document. were discussed during negotiations between Swiss president and chairman of the OSCE Didier Burkhalter and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on May 7. However, on May 11 in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine referendums were held which confirmed the choice of the people in favor of the state sovereignty of the new republics which have arisen there...

 

 

...the “big picture” strategic challenge for the United States in pursuing a diplomatic opening with Iran is recognizing that the Islamic Republic “has sovereign rights, treaty rights, and can be treated like a normal state.”  In the context of the nuclear talks, more specifically, the question is whether the United States “can countenance a country that will be strong, independent, and a real nuclear power—not a weapons power, but a real nuclear power..” “the crux of the problem is the very notion that Western powers are in a position or they have the authority to determine what Iran is allowed to have and is not allowed to have...

 

...You are black. You are white. You are blue. You are purple. You’re a Jew. You’re a Christian. You’re a Muslim. Above all else, that’s what you are. That’s the game. That’s the con. You’re not you. No. You’re not unique. No. You’re not an individual. No. You’re in a group. You always were. You always will be. And because you’re green with red polka dots, all sorts of statements apply directly to you. Some of those statements are acceptable, and some are not. Some words directed at you are reasonable, and some are illegitimate. The illegitimate words must be censored and banned. The people who speak those words must be punished and exiled...

 

  Were 900,000 Jews "gassed" at Treblinka? Were 3.9 Million "Steamed to Death" in "steam chambers" there too, as according to Nuremberg trial "evidence"? The official "Holocaust" story is that Treblinka 2 is the largest mass burial site in the entire world, where the Germans gassed 900,000 Jews in 13 "gas chambers disguised as shower rooms.." Free yourself from a lifetime of brainwashing about "Six Million" Jews "gassed" in "Gas Chambers Disguised as Shower Rooms.."

 

..Legion honchos are actively hostile to veterans of the USS Liberty – the most decorated ship since World War II. In fact Liberty is among the most decorated ships for a single engagement in the entire history of the U.S. Navy. Despite the Liberty crew’s extraordinary record of heroism, Legion personnel have repeatedly treated Liberty veterans, their families, and their friends with arrogance, disrespect, and even disdain that many feel demeans these American servicemen, their ship, their service to their country, and the memory of their 34 fellow crew members who never returned...

 

  Nick Clegg, the laughable Lib Dem leader, probably the most pathetic character in the history of British politics, has done it again. In a desperate attempt to appease some Jewish donators, he produced a shameless endorsement of Jewish politics. I guess that someone within the dysfunctional Lib Dem orbit better advise Clegg that Zionists do not like their subordinates to manifestly bend over. They somehow prefer their Shabbos Goyim to operate delicately and in a clandestine manner...

 

...Something is being cooked, something involving a shipping company, the Israeli military and the Imperial Capital. Deploying an asset as Idan Ofer is not something done lightly. "Yesh dvarim bego," an Israeli would exclaim, "There are things on the back." Something big is being hidden. Will Israel buy the Royal Navy? Proud Britons are unlikely to sell the pride of their former empire. International shipping businesses are centered in London, probably the above mentioned Hevra le'Israel (the Company for Israel, the formal owner of Zim) is about to purchase a significant shipping company and consolidate itself as a world leader in maritime transport...

 

  When your boss wins the Nobel Prize, how should you react? Normally, even if your boss were the world’s biggest jerk, you would have to be polite about it…wouldn’t you? Not if your name is Rahm Emmanuel, and you are the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States. The Associated Press recently reported that Emmanuel flew into a rage and issued a “verbal lashing” to the Norwegian Ambassador to the United States, Wegger Stroemmen, when Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. But the AP story doesn’t explain Emmanuel’s bizarre behavior...

 

  Far from assassinating President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald was a loyal American who warned the FBI in writing in Oct., 1963, that there was a plot afoot to shoot JFK if he came to Chicago, a new book asserts. Oswald’s timely warning caused the Chicago plot to fizzle, writes lawyer Navy Lt. Cmdr. James D. Norvell, J.D., late of Ft. Worth, Tex., in his just published book, “Treason, Treachery & Deceit: The Murderers of JFK, MLK & RFK..”

 

...The war in Syria is not over, but a light can be seen at the end of the tunnel. Syria’s ability to thwart NATO’s ambitions within and along its borders will translate to a loss of legitimacy and momentum elsewhere for NATO in the region and around the world. Syria and its allies must continue to resist and more importantly, successfully rebuild the nation stronger both domestically, and in regards to its ties internationally, once the conflict is concluded...

..(58 min. documentary, Israel-Germany-The Netherlands, 1997). Arguably the first film that seriously tackles the historical events that lead to the creation of 750,000 Palestinian refugees at the end of the first Israeli-Arab war of 1948. Based on historian Benny Morris' book "The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem, 1947-49"..

 

They’re lying about Ukraine, again: Primitive prejudice, stupidity and the reflexive compliance of the New York Times, by Patrick L. Smith | Salon

  However Ukrainians settle their drastic differences — and they can, providing all sides find the will to do so — a large and welcome consequence of this crisis falls to Americans. This is summed up in a single word. Ukraine gives us the gift of revelation. We Americans are destined to discover who we are in this century, as opposed to who we tell ourselves and others we are...

 

  Years ago I was invited to a UN conference on the Palestinian refugees in Paris. I was to open the debate as an Israeli, after the Palestinian representative, Salman Abu Sitta, a refugee from a Bedouin tribe in the Negev, had opened as a Palestinian. Before the debate I was warned that Abu Sitta was the most extreme of the refugees, a notorious hater of Israel. When my turn came, I said that I had to choose between answering him or reading my prepared text. I decided to read my text and promised to invite him to a private dinner and discuss his points...

 

..The piece is about an exchange that took place at The National Summit to Reassess the U.S.-Israel Special Relationship on March 7th 2014 between Mondoweiss' Philip Weiss, an anonymous member of the audience Allen Brownfeld, Justin Raimondo and Jeff Blankfort. The only change I've made is to put the clip of the exchange at the top...

 

..It should come as no surprise that the Harper regime is backing this new holocaust monument project, considering that the ruling neo-conservatives in Ottawa have openly expressed their adherence to Jewish supremacist ideology on numerous occasions. Harper and his lackeys in Parliament have incessantly praised the apartheid state of Israel (a nation birthed through ethnic cleansing and mass terror) and have vehemently denounced those who challenge or criticize Israeli imperialism and state-terrorism...

 

...it was not the only genocide committed against humanity in history.. The big difference is the way the Holocaust has been utilized by leading propagandists in the Zionist political movement. In fact, by far, the Holocaust is the most exploited genocide in history making the others seem relatively benign and inconsequential. And so, for Zionists who’s ambition is Eretz Israel, playing the Holocaust Card has become predictable on American media to make sure “we never forget”.  I mean, you can call it out every time there is a hiccup on the road to their conquest, the card gets played...

 

..For years we've been tracking Rabbi Riskin's self-proclaimed efforts to proselytize non-Judaic people to become 'Noahides,' that is, members of a lower-tier sect subservient the "Jews" of Counterfeit Israel. We documented Rabbi Riskin candidly admitted to learning from the dead Chabad 'Messiah' Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson that Chabad evangelism should be carried out by deception ("be modern on the outside and Chabad on the inside"). We've documented Riskin's fraudulent 'religion of peace' agenda...

 

 

 

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post feature long pieces today on the apparent demise of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. And who can deny it? Following the collapse of Secretary of State John Kerry's ill-conceived mission, it is impossible to imagine anyone even trying to resuscitate it anytime soon...

 

  “Stone Cold Justice” about the brutal practices used by the Israeli, military occupation, forces against Palestinian children. The program was aired several times on national Australian TV in February, 2014. It will never see the light of day in the controlled, American media. So, after watching this, bypass the US ” lame stream” media and recommend it to a friend...

 

  As diplomats began drafting a comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme and Western sanctions in Vienna Tuesday, U.S. officials were poised to demand a drastic cut in Iran’s enrichment capabilities that is widely expected to deadlock the negotiations. Iran is almost certain to reject the basic concept that it should reduce the number of its centrifuges to a fraction of its present total, and the resulting collapse of the talks could lead to a much higher level of tensions between the United States and Iran...

 

...The Russian foreign ministry believes that the report presented by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is marked by a systematic and routine ignorance of any Kiev involvement in sparking the Odessa carnage, while placing all the blame unequivocally with the pro-Russian self-defense forces. The ministry statement remarks that not a single word was said about neo-Nazi elements who engaged in setting buildings on fire with people inside, shooting dead anyone who opposed them and finishing off the wounded in plain sight...

 

...To exaggerate the issue in a typical Hebrew fashion, let me say the Israel considers the event part of the recent Independence Day celebrations. Israel won the Indian elections.. The Congress Party was never a close friend of Israel. In 1949, India voted against Israel's admission in the United Nations, though it recognized Israel in 1950. Official relations were established only in 1991; informal ties on intelligence issues existed before...

 

  Here is a fascinating interview with many insights from a national security whistleblower: Brendon O'Connell taking questions...

 

..The people of East Ukraine have spoken and they have chosen freedom… freedom from being ruled over by a foreign-backed Western coup for its own selfish goals. The honor of carrying the symbolic torch of universal freedom now passes from America’s hands to these East Ukrainians, a tragic dishonor for the disenfranchised American people who had nothing to do with this...

 

  It sounds as if the House of Saud is finally admitting to defeat in its regional proxy terror wars. This week the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al Faisal bin Abdulaziz made an apparently surprise announcement indicating that the oil-rich Arab kingdom wanted to improve relations with Iran...

 

  I am shocked, profoundly shocked to read in a Sydney newspaper that “He will not celebrate a public Mass in the country, but in a first for a visiting pontiff, he will lay flowers at the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the global Zionist movement..”  What about your Papal moral and religious responsibility to the  Suffering Christ in the evicted Palestinians who weep on the rubble of their  demolished homes, farms, uprooted olive groves and livelihoods, to the Suffering Christ in the ethnic cleansed Palestinian refugees refused their inalienable right of return by Israel...

 

  Is Germany fed up with Israel? Berlin has nixed a deal to give Israel a 30% discount on a $1 billion purchase of German gunboats, allegedly to be used for the protection of Israeli offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean Sea. Reportedly Israeli national security adviser Joseph Cohen claimed Chancellor Angela Merkel made an “explicit” promise to subsidize the purchase of the gun boats during a joint meeting between German and Israeli cabinets last February.. According to Haaretz, Heusgen told Cohen that there was “no chance” Germany’s parliament would approve the deal “given the breakdown of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which has been blamed at least partly on Israeli settlement construction..“

 

  Rarely seen archival footage accompanies memories and accounts of forgotten Palestinian cities and the catastrophic effect the creation of Israel in 1948 had on them.. Made for Al Jazeera Arabic in 2011, “Lost cities of Palestine” provides a rare opportunity to see Palestine as it was in the 30s and 40s and learn about the everyday life and culture of urban Palestine before 1948 Nakba...

 

 

...“Once, the Nakba was a non-issue for Israeli Jews. Many had never heard of it or didn’t know what the term meant. But now it is unavoidable. Israelis have to face it.” Long excluded from the Israeli national discourse, the Nakba – and the ensuing destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages – is slowly forcing itself into the consciousness of ordinary Israelis. And that is creating new sources of tension and potential conflict...

 

...Palestinians have never forgotten how Zionist militants intentionally committed, publicized, and circulated Haganah’s massacres and accounts of random rape to force them out of their towns and homes. Although the Palestinian “Nakba” has been substantiated and carefully documented by several Israeli and Palestinian historians, most Israelis either deny it ever took place, or dismiss and ignore its relevance...

 

  Some 10,000 Palestinians rallied in northern Israel on Tuesday to demand the right of return for refugees expelled after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. The demonstration took place in the Israeli village of Lavi, which was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Lubya...

 

  Thousands of Palestinians rallied across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip on Thursday to mark the 66th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948. For the first time since 2007, Palestinian political factions organized joint rallies to mark the mass displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians in the conflict surrounding Israel's creation...

 

  Two (unarmed) youths killed in violent clashes as thousands mark Nakba Day, 11 injured; Palestinian sources say they were shot by Border Police...

 

 

  Ukraine needs a government of national unity that reaches out to its own people and tackles the country’s long overdue reforms; both Russia and Western powers should back a vision for the country as a bridge between East and West, not a geopolitical battleground...

 

  Ukraine's government launched talks Wednesday on decentralizing power as part of a European-backed peace plan but didn't invite its main foes, the pro-Russia insurgents who have declared independence in the east. That deliberate oversight left it unclear whether the negotiations might help cool the tensions in the east...

 

  These accusations have been constantly repeated by numerous Russian media close to the Kremlin, and have become an important part of the ferocious disinformation war currently playing out in Ukraine. But they had, till now, essentially not been substantiated..The rumour, however, has been in part verified by a series of pictures taken by Paris Match photographers. These images show Andrey Denisenko, one of the Pravy Sektor chiefs, among a group of mysterious gunmen that attacked a voting station Sunday.. After occupying the local town hall for several hours, the militiamen shot down point blank one local civilian, and killed two other unarmed protesters...

 

  Ukraine's government is continuing what it calls an "anti-terrorism" operation in the country's east.There is also growing concern that nationalist armed groups, like the Right Sector, are signing up to help them.The Right Sector was a violent but instrumental part of the protests that ousted Viktor Yanukovich, Ukraine's former president, in February.Al Jazeera's Kim Vinnell reports from Dessna...

 

...Paris Match.. investigated the recent incidents in Krasnoarmeysk in east Ukraine where some para-military gang disrupted the vote on more autonomy for the region by killing two supporters of the federalists. It finds photographic evidence that the gang was led by functionary from the fascists paramilitary Right Sektor:.. These Pravy Sektor thugs were hired for the "special battalion Denjpr" of the newly created "National Guard" and are paid by oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi. But there is an even bigger scoop in this story...

 

  The OSCE Monitoring Mission is withholding information on the use of force by Ukrainian security services against civilians in the southeast of the country and on the referendum there.. "The OSCE Mission's reports poorly reflect or don't reflect the facts of the daily use of armed force against the local population on the part of Kiev authorities, Right Sector gunmen and mercenaries and on the violation of rights and freedoms of ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking members of other ethnic groups.."

 

  Western governments and their media cannot accept the results of the latest referenda or engage in a rational assessment. Not because the referenda lack legitimacy. But rather because recognizing the reality of widespread dissent within Ukrainian society against the Kiev cabal, which the referenda demonstrably show – that exposes the reality of criminal Western regime change in Ukraine...

 

  David Ben Gurion himself said that if he was a Palestinian he would not sign a peace agreement with Israel because the Jews came and stole their country and expelled them from their homeland. He also outlined Israel’s policy toward peace with the Palestinians. “..peace for us is a mean, and not an end. The end is the fulfillment of Zionism in its maximum scope. Only for this reason do we need peace, and do we need an agreement.” ~ David Ben Gurion, Shabtai Teveth, p.168

 

  Ever heard of the International Monetary Conference? No, I’m not referring to the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank but rather to another, more secretive annual gathering – this one hosted by the American Bankers Association and bringing together chief executives from over 100 of the world’s largest banks...

 

  The United States and its allies are now preparing for the home stretch in their nuclear negotiations with Iran. And, as they approach the finish line, it will be critical for insightful voices to help the Obama administration parse through difficult issues that remain on the negotiating table...

 

...The British government’s decision to give Livni temporary diplomatic immunity for her visit to London later this week stems from threats made by pro-Palestinian supporters and their allies, shortly after the Gaza war, to have her arrested for alleged war crimes against the Palestinians. A British judge in December 2009 accepted claims that there was sufficient evidence to put Livni on trial and from that date she has not set foot in the country...

 

  The “humanitarian” U.S. military occupation of Africa has been very successful, thus far. “The Chibok abductions have served the same U.S. foreign policy purposes as Joseph Kony sightings in central Africa.” Imagine: the superpower that financed the genocide of six million in Congo, claims to be a defender of teenage girls and human rights on the continent. If you believe that, then you are probably a member of the Congressional Black Caucus...

 

...The actual overriding reason for the West's war of aggression – strategic geopolitical dominance, including control of valuable hydrocarbon resources in the Middle East – was simply brushed aside. As ever, 'we' must be seen to be acting out of benign intent and pure desire to bring democracy to people around the globe. The reality is that 'we' must stifle other countries' independent development and, if required, bomb them into submission to Western state-corporate hegemony...

 

  American officials are disputing the findings of a secret Pakistani government report, the first known internal Pakistani assessment of America's lethal drone program, that says U.S. drones killed scores of civilians in a three-year span and that nearly 100 of those were children. The Pakistani report, obtained and published this week by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism, details 75 drone strikes and their alleged collateral damage between 2006 and 2009...

 

...As far as one can judge from statements made by Washington, the U.S. administration has no clear-cut plan with regard to improving relations with Iran or in its policy of pressuring Russia with sanctions with the goal of isolating it. In taking steps to hinder closer relations between Tehran and Moscow, the U.S. is reminiscent of a tightrope walker who has frozen midway across and risks losing his equilibrium...

 

  A draft law submitted to the Russian parliament seeks to impose punishment up to criminal prosecution to producers of genetically-modified organisms harmful to health or the environment. The draft legislation submitted on Wednesday amends Russia's law regulating GMOs and some other laws and provides for disciplinary action against individuals and firms, which produce or distribute harmful biotech products and government officials who fail to properly control them...

 

...The moment one integrates modern Jewish behavior with the pre-modern Jewish behavior, the moment one notices continuity of pre-Zionist and Zionist Jewish politics, the moment one leaves the safe ground of condemning occupation, one crosses into totally forbidden “antisemite” territory. Martillo dared and ventured there, and came up with strong and startling conclusions: the real issue is not Palestine. Unless they are neutralized, Israel lobbying groups, Israel advocates, Zionists, Neoconservatives, and Friedmanites will steal America and effectively abolish the Constitution in all but name...

 

  These three clips are cut and pasted from an article from The Daily Stormer. The thrust of the article that "There simply is no debate: we say the Jews are behind multiculturalism and the Jews say the Jews are behind multiculturalism" is dead right...

 

  Outgoing Israeli President Shimon Peres spoke in a recent interview about a peace agreement he had reached with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2011. According to Peres, the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, a rejected the draft understanding, telling him “to wait a few days for Tony Blair could get a better offer”. Peres continued: “The days passed and there was no better offer,” and there was no peace agreement...

 

  Authors and artists attending the 2013 Palestine Festival of Literature were taken around Jerusalem, where they saw the multiple techniques being employed to ethnically cleanse the city. They crossed into the city through Qalandia checkpoint and met with people in the Old City, Sheikh Jarrah and smaller, surrounding neighbourhoods. This is what they saw...

 

  An investigative documentary revealing how the Israeli military occupation in Palestine has become a business rather than a burden.. Since 9/11, the Israeli arms industries are doing bigger business than ever before. Large Israeli companies develop and test the vessels of future warfare, which is then sold worldwide by private Israeli agents, who manipulate a network of Israeli politicians and army commanders, while Israeli theoreticians explain to various foreign countries how to defeat civil and para-military resistance. All based on the extensive Israeli experience...

 

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boasts of her record of support for Israel, saying she is proud of her part in keeping “our relationship rock-solid..”

 

  The first to boycott the illegitimate tyranny posing as the US government & corporatocracy should be the American people. And if you support “boycott Israel,” you should boycott Washington DC too, since it has been fully Zionized & annexed. The Zionists aren’t limiting their land grab to the lands between the Nile and the Euphrates – they want everything between the Potomac and the Euphrates...

 

  Activists with the Freedom Flotilla Coalition on Monday said the so-called Gaza’s Ark, which was bombed two weeks ago while docked in Gaza City, would now set sail for Europe in autumn. While strongly implicating Israel as the culprit behind the attack, activists at a press conference in London said it was still too soon to draw firm conclusions.  The boat’s journey to the continent aimed to challenge Israel’s blockade on Gaza...

...No Israeli value is more deeply rooted than the burning belief that Israelis are the very best, the Chosen People, a light unto the nations. Another import from biblical mythology. God said so way back when, that’s what’s right. Secularity, modernity, liberalism? All very well, but we’re the “Chosen People,” as the Book of Books says. Three mentions in the Book of Isaiah are sufficient to persuade us all that we really are a “light unto the nations..”

 

...as we have explained repeatedly in the past, the further the west antagonizes Russia, and the more economic sanctions it lobs at it, the more Russia will be forced away from a USD-denominated trading system and into one which faces China and India. Which is why next week's announcement, as groundbreaking as it most certainly will be, is just the beginning...

 

  There’s an odor of prejudice in how the mainstream U.S. news media treats the ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, as if they are mindless beings, easily duped “minions” of Vladimir Putin. But this bias reflects more negatively on the U.S. press than on the people who are being insulted.. So what does the New York Times have against Ukraine’s ethnic Russians? While the newspaper has fallen over itself insisting on the “legitimacy” of the coup regime in Kiev, despite its collaboration with neo-Nazis who spearheaded the Feb. 22 ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the Times editors can’t hurl enough insults at the ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the regime’s authority...

 

..“The key point is a post-9/11 American recognition that a former member of President [George W.] Bush’s ‘axis of evil’ can be treated like a normal state with rights and interests that need to be accommodated.. the key question is whether the Obama administration can follow through on this recognition and treat the Islamic Republic as a truly sovereign state, with a right to the highest levels of technological sophistication it can attain—including in the nuclear arena.."

 

  Americans could be enjoying cultural and commercial relations with Iranians were it not for U.S. “leaders,” who are more aptly described as misleaders. Because of institutional, geopolitical, and economic reasons, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton were not about to let that happen. They thought America needed an enemy, and Iran filled the bill...

 

  The youngest son of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, has been appointed head of legal affairs at Ukraine's largest private gas producer — a move he said would benefit Ukrainians and the country's economy. In a statement published Monday on its website, Burisma Holdings announced Hunter Biden would join its board of directors and head the company's legal unit...

 

The foreign ministry said Monday that France and Germany intend to prevent Syrians living in their countries from voting in Syria's presidential election, expected to return President Bashar al-Assad to power. Germany and France are "preventing Syrians living in their territory from voting," the foreign ministry said...

 

  The Russian Finance Ministry believes moving away from international ratings agencies is just a question of time. Russia is eager to break the world monopoly of rating systems and create its own rating giants...

 

  “This new landmark in our nation's capital will encourage people to reflect on the events of the Holocaust, remember the victims and pay tribute to the survivors..”

 

  Why does the unelected government in Kiev call the eastern regions' referendums a farce? Is identity the main red line in the Ukrainian crisis? And will Ukraine as a sovereign state continue down the path of disintegration? CrossTalking with Martin McCauley, Michael Hudson and Daniel Welch...

 

...Since its establishment, Tel Aviv's Highest Park is often featured in the weekend sections of Hebrew newspapers, in a sad propagandistic attempt to lure the people to visit the park that nobody likes. Would you have a picnic on a mountain-high pile of trash?.. Untidy politicians tried to solve Israel's Demographic War in the 1990's by bringing over one million Russians. They forgot to check a tiny detail. Judaizing the Russians is not possible. Nowadays, Israel is facing a new demographic war, but it is too late. Zion is crumbling under the weight of its own trash...

 

  The Jewish ADL (Anti Defamation League) revealed this week that more than ‘one in four adults are ‘anti-Semitic.’.. Personally, I find both the ADL and its polls quite amusing.  Can you think of another people on this planet who so spend so much time and energy measuring how much they are loved or hated?..

 

  The howls of outrage from the pro-Israel lobby are probably the best indicator that John Kerry and his chief Middle East mediator, Martin Indyk, had it right. Organizations claiming to speak for America's Jews – mostly too far to the right to be representative of most of them – reeled in horror after Kerry dared to say it two weeks ago: if Israel doesn't reach a deal on an independent Palestine it risks becoming an "apartheid state"..

 

  Several high profile American actors have called for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, the Jewish news website JNS reported. Actors Danny Glover and Grace Lee Boggs, and 10 others, issued a statement condemning the screening in Israel, without permission, of the film “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs”. The statement said: “We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and support their call for cultural and academic boycott of Israel”, and it expresses shock at the unauthorized screening of the film at the DocAviv festival in Tel Aviv on 13 and 15 May...

 

  “They must really think we’re stupid.” That is what people all over the world are saying about the American government and media’s portrayal of world events.. No sane person could seriously assert that NATO’s missile shield circling Russia is intended to protect the West from Iran. Yet, that is exactly what NATO – the imperial American occupation army in Europe – tells the world. How stupid do they think we are? Governments lie. Imperial governments construct vast empires of lies. But in the past, most official lies carried at least a thin veneer of plausibility. Today, the US government and its media echo chamber do not seem to care whether their lies are even slightly credible..

 

  Since President George W. Bush attacked Iraq in an illegal war based on lies, it follows that the U.S. is responsible for trillions in reparations for those who died and infrastructure destroyed. Not only should Bush and his collaborating cabinet be relieved of their personal assets, but working Americans should have 1% of every paycheck turned over to Iraq until that country is paid in full for what America owes it...

 

  Who was it? Justice Minister and chief negotiator (with the Palestinians) Tzipi Livni. What did she say? On 9 May she said on Army Radio that Israeli settlements were to blame for the failure of peace talks. “The settlers want to prevent us from living a normal life and do not accept the authority of the law… Settlers are preventing us from reaching a resolution… Settlement construction makes it impossible to defend Israel around the world..”

 

...there is one group in particular that special interests within the United States has coddled, before, during, and after World War II that is perhaps the most iconic villain of recent human history – Adolf Hitler’s Nazis. A long and checkered history entwines the United States with the Nazi regime, leading up to present day where the heirs of this toxic ideology are being provided political and material support in overrunning the Eastern European nation of Ukraine...

As world opinion turns, Israeli soldiers parade their tyranny, by Jonathan Cook | The View from Nazareth

...The problems at the heart of these two incidents were underscored in a recent Amnesty International report titled Trigger Happy. The human rights group identified a disturbing pattern of behaviour: Israeli soldiers were targeting unarmed Palestinians, including children, with live ammunition, in some cases as they fled. Amnesty called the army’s use of force mostly “unnecessary, arbitrary and brutal”. Amnesty found that, after a lull in Palestinian deaths following the end of the second intifada in the mid-2000s, the rate of killings and injuries is dramatically on the rise...

 

  I think a description of the political space in which we live as a kind of twilight reality is not an exaggeration. Not only is a great deal of the news about the world we read and hear manipulated and even manufactured, but a great deal of genuine news is simply missing. People often do not know what is happening in the world, although they generally believe they do know after reading their newspapers or listening to news broadcasts. People receive the lulling sounds or words of most of this kind of news almost unconsciously just as they do to the strains of piped-in “elevator music” in stores and offices...

 

...Setting aside the important issue of bringing the anti-scientific methods of psychoanalysis into the writing of history, it needs to be said that the knowledge of Wistrich and his fellow self-deceiving historians is itself lacking. Norwich was not the site of the first accusation that Jews had killed Christians in ritual fashion, and rather than being a medieval “invention” it was in fact centuries old by 1144. The reason earlier incidences are ignored by self-deceiving historians is that such murders, which first emerged in AD 415 are almost universally agreed by experts to have taken place...

 

  “There are few sights more pitiful than a worn-out whore whom nobody wants anymore,” wrote Israeli peace activist and former Knesset member Uri Avnery 11 years ago on the occasion of Shimon Peres’s birthday. Unfortunately for Peres, history is repeating itself – a stark verdict not only on one of there biggest hypocrites in the Middle East but, more importantly, on the apartheid state of Israel itself...

 

  Iran and world powers resume negotiating a final deal on Tehran's nuclear program on Tuesday in Vienna while experts warn the hardest work is about to begin. Representatives from Iran and the US indicated last month that the drafting of a final deal would begin during this round of talks scheduled for five days - the longest session since the extended talks that led to the interim "Joint Plan of Action" (JPOA) reached November 24, 2013 in Geneva. "So far Iran has adhered to its undertaking, and it does seem that both sides are determined to see the negotiations through to success.. However, very tough negotiations lie ahead..”

 

  There has been no shortage of reports on the Iranian nuclear standoff. But among the most useful and timely is a report today by the International Crisis Group (ICG) that provides a blueprint for how a final nuclear deal can be reached. It comes only days before Iran and six world powers meet for a fourth time, with the July 20 deadline to conclude a deal looming. Like negotiators, the Brussels-based ICG's report is playing the long game. Its timeline stretches out for as much as 19 years, acknowledging that for a deal to stick, the parties will have to overcome decades of mistrust with years of demonstrated goodwill – or at least joint adherence to a deal...

 

  There is no shortage of profound questions arising out of the armed conflict in Syria. Yet whether the reported United Nations legal analysis concluding that the UN needs the consent of the Syrian authorities before it can undertake humanitarian relief actions on Syrian territory is not one of them. As international law questions go, this one is relatively straightforward: Absent a sufficient Security Council decision authorizing intervention—a decision which has not been forthcoming, at least not yet—UN system bodies, funds, programmes, and specialized agencies need to obtain the consent of the Syria authorities before undertaking relief actions on Syrian territory...

 

  The office of Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared that it does not wish to annex eastern Ukraine where "self-rule" referendums have overwhelmingly supported secession, but called on the Kiev government to open dialogue with the separatists. The referendums, organized by pro-Russian insurgents in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, claim a vote of about 90 percent in favor of forming their own sovereign nations. Separatist leaders have also expressed interest in joining the Russian Federation...

 

  Everything one needs to know about mediocre political elites allegedly representing the "values" of Western civilization has been laid bare by their reaction to the referendums in Donetsk and Lugansk. The referendums may have been a last-minute affair; organized in a rush; in the middle of a de facto civil war; and on top of it at gunpoint - supplied by the Kiev NATO neo-liberal neo-fascist junta, which even managed to kill some voters in Mariupol. An imperfect process? Yes. But absolutely perfect in terms of graphically depicting a mass movement in favor of self-rule and political independence from Kiev. This was direct democracy in action; no wonder the US State Department hated it with a vengeance...

 

  Israel is carving economic inroads into Asia which could be deep enough to compromise traditional Asian political support for Arabs. If this trend continues, growing economic Israeli-Asian relations will develop into political ties that neutralize Asia in the Arab-Israeli conflict...

 

  A trail of emails released Tuesday appears to shed yet more light on the Benghazi cover-up story that continues to nag President Obama and then Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. The latest exposure indicates that both Obama and Clinton knew that UN Secretary Susan Rice’s claim to the press that the attack on the Benghazi compound killing Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was due to an anti-Moslem youtube video was a complete lie. This latest piece of incriminating evidence is what Republicans are now calling their “smoking gun”..

 

  The battle has begun over Zionism Unsettled. The Christian Century opened round one by publishing an attack on Zionism Unsettled, a study guide developed for the study of Zionism, a secular ideology formed in the 19th century, which has had a major impact on Jewish–Christian relations. The battle will continue June 14, when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) gathers for national deliberations in Detroit, Michigan...

 

  Nine years after filing a civil suit against the State of Israel for the wrongful death of American peace activist Rachel Corrie, her family will have their appeal heard before the Israeli Supreme Court on May 21 at 11:30 a.m. in Jerusalem. The appeal.. challenges the Haifa District Court's August 2012 ruling which concluded that the Israeli military was not responsible for Rachel's death and that it conducted a credible investigation. "During the past nine years, we have sought accountability in the Israeli courts for Rachel's killing but were handed a verdict that showed blind indifference to the rights of the victim and little interest in seeking truth and justice," said Craig Corrie, Rachel's father...

 

  Wikileaks has published a cable according to which Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned the West that countries that recently joined NATO were doing and saying "whatever they wanted simply because they were under the NATO umbrella." Among other things some of them attempted to "rewrite history and glorify fascists," top Russian diplomat stated...

 

...Zion being Zion, its leaders will probably ignore common sense, the principles of law, and a few thousand years of civilization and attempt to legislate yet another illegitimate law enabling secular-religious conversions. After the violent events surrounding the recent Conscription Law, which forces Ultra-Orthodox men to conscript, Ultra-Orthodox communities will be finally convinced that secular Zionists have decided to obliterate the 19th Century pact. If the Messiah's Donkey fails Judaism, it has no room in a Jewish society. Soon afterwards, Palestinians will win the Demographic War. "Spasiba bolshoi," Palestine's President will say to Tel Aviv's Russian minority...

 

..With Washington also being an Israel occupied territory, they have every base covered. Little wonder why the Palestine solidarity movement has not had the slightest impact on U.S. policy in all the years it's been in existence...

 

...As they finalize plans for Pope Francis’ visit, there’s something slightly comical about both sides claiming Jesus as their own. Israel hails him as a Jew, the PLO proclaims him Palestinian, neither yet dare to muse that he might have been both. Palestine is preparing to greet him with hordes of well-wishers, Muslims and Christian alike, while Israel – less sure that Jews might not price-tag his convoy – is preparing to close the streets...

 

  Why did his commanders send a soldier with a record of violence to bully Palestinians in Hebron? The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit chose to respond to Haaretz’s question with “no comment.” Perhaps that’s because the right answer is: Violence and bullying are what the Israel Defense Forces’ presence in Hebron and the West Bank is really all about. And another right answer: The IDF’s first mission in the West Bank is to ensure the continuation of the settlement enterprise, which means expelling the Palestinians from their land. The violence of the army and the settlers serves this mission. The proof? The hundreds of buildings in Hebron’s Old City that have been emptied of their owners and tenants...

 

...the Western media continues to promote the notion that a “fashion revolution” is currently underway in Iran, wherein women deliberately and courageously challenge, defy and subvert the societal prescriptions – and proscriptions – of Islamic authority and government mandate as evidenced by the increasingly prolific image of “young, skinny, upper-class, colorfully-clad and trendy woman” in urban settings and headscarves that rest loosely on bouffant hairdos and tight top buns. Reliably, the folks over at Ajam Media Collective have dissected this media trend in all its Orientalist glory...

 

  A project run by the British Library, intended to help preserve and extend access to historically significant archives around the world, will allow researchers and the general public to access ancient and valuable manuscripts from Palestinian institutions...

 

  The results of a new survey released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as deplorable as they are, show that Iran is the least anti-Semitic country in the Middle East. Not that the ADL is doing anything to point this out in their just-released report entitled, Global 100: An Index of Anti-Semitism. This surprising fact can only be uncovered by comparing Iranian responses with those of other Middle Eastern countries...

 

...The “right sector” neo-Nazi massacres, the crowds chased into buildings and burned alive, the IMF austerity starvation regime, the Operation Gladio provocations, the threats to incinerate all Russian speakers with nuclear weapons…all of this is blowing up Ukraine, turning it into a failed state, and convincing the majority in the East that the only hope is to separate quickly and cleanly from the monster in Kiev. Are the neocons blowing up Ukraine in service to Israel, as Stephen Sniegoski argues? Or are they just stupid? However imbecilic they may be, they must think we are even bigger idiots...

 

  With the tensions running high over Ukraine there is a glance of hope the situation may improve. The results of the May 7 meeting between Russian President Putin and the head of OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Didier Burkhalter provide an opportunity that should not be missed against the background of NATO’s war rhetoric and sabre rattling policy. The hope is there, no matter the alliance appears to step on the warpath...

 

  Supporters of the National Security Agency inevitably defend its sweeping collection of phone and Internet records on the ground that it is only collecting so-called “metadata”—who you call, when you call, how long you talk. Since this does not include the actual content of the communications, the threat to privacy is said to be negligible. That argument is profoundly misleading...

 

  With talks between Iran and the UN Security Council scheduled to resume this week, Iranian leaders have reiterated their key positions and voiced their concerns. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Iran must not rely solely on negotiations to resolve its sanctions issues, parliament speaker Ali Larijani said that Iran’s only red line is the production of an atomic weapon and President Hassan Rouhani said that Iran would not give up any of the scientific accomplishments made in its nuclear program because the West has not stuck to its commitments in previous agreements...

 

  Ukraine’s largest steelmaker, Metinvest, has issued a call for employees in the Donetsk region to become “volunteer warriors” and protect local citizens against Kiev anti-terrorist operations. Many steelworkers took to the streets in their work overalls and helmets and patrolled the streets alongside local law enforcement Sunday. The men, unarmed, are trying to keep public order and prevent violence, looting and vandalism...

 

  The writer and Israel Prize laureate Amoz Oz said on Friday that those responsible for hate crimes against Arabs and Christians are "Hebrew neo-Nazis." Speaking at a Tel Aviv event marking his 75th birthday, Oz said that terms like "hilltop youth" and "price tag" are "sweet names for a monster that needs to be called what it is: Hebrew neo-Nazis groups.."

 

  The coup-imposed authorities in Kiev are continuing their crackdown on anti-government activists following pro-autonomy referendums in Ukraine's Donetsk and Lugansk regions. The unrest in the country's southeast has already resulted in dozens of deaths...

 

  Monday, 19:43 GMT: The chief prosecutor of Crimea and Internet sensation Natalia Poklonskaya [has] been banned entry to the European Union, as the bloc introduced Monday additional sanctions over the Ukraine crisis...

 

  The Yatsenyuk regime’s anti-terrorism operations in the southern and eastern oblasts (region) of Ukraine are really a use of martial force against Ukrainian civilians opposed to the coup-installed regime in Kiev. Predominately peaceful Ukrainian citizens opposing the coup leaders and not “armed separatists”  have been the main target of the regime’s militias. The discourse about “pro-Russian” separatists is a misleading attempt to hide the real nature of the protests against the regime, which is opposition to a coup...

 

..“Those reports are a little bit repetitive because we know this and I think what has to be addressed now is the role of these forces in the atrocities committed in Odessa and in Mariupol,” Chossudovsky told RIA Novosti. “I think that the Western military alliance is committed to generating further atrocities and civilian deaths, thus dividing the Ukrainian people. What is happening in Ukraine is not necessarily a pro-Russian initiative, this is a movement against the neo-Nazi government..”

 

...The naked truth is that Washington has by now relinquished all hopes for putting this pernicious plot into a practical shape. In fact, the foreign-backed militants fighting in Syria will soon have to leave the country with their tails between their legs. Interestingly, there is a mounting fear that the homegrown brainwashed European Takfiris in Syria many of whom hailed from Britain and France may now return to their countries with their overblown ambitions for unleashing  terror and atrocity in their own lands. In other words, there is a great angst that the chickens may come home to roost...  

 

...as far as trade relations between China and Japan are concerned, they have been directly trading their currencies, the Yen and the Yuan, on the inter-bank foreign exchange markets in Tokyo and Shanghai in a bid to strengthen bilateral trade and investment between the world’s second- and third-largest economies. Both countries are skipping the dollar in transactions, intend to reduce their dependence on the US dollar and on the US monetary authorities’ influence on the Asian economy. In other words, Japan, an ‘ally’ of the US has directly been aiding China’s goal of undercutting the US influence in the region...

 

  By subverting the elected government of The Ukraine, President Obama has restarted a dangerous and costly Cold War with Russia that literally threatens life on the planet. This reckless president, who has already bombed six countries, (Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq) is risking a possible escalation of the Ukraine crisis he helped foster, into World War III against Russia...

 

  On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a proposal for ending the violence in Ukraine at an OCSE (Organization for the Cooperation and Security in Europe) in Moscow. Unfortunately, most Americans never heard what he had to say because the media failed to publish his statement. The reason for the omission is fairly obvious, the media doesn’t want people to know that Putin is not the ghoulish, authoritarian caricature he’s portrayed to be, but a levelheaded pragmatist who wants a swift and peaceful resolution to the crisis. Here is what he said:..

 

  What does Eastern Ukraine vote for? Why is eastern region's will to vote condemned by the West? Can Kiev do anything after Odessa and Mariupol tragedies? And is Ukraine we once knew gone forever? CrossTalking with Kevin Barrett, Charles Shoebridge and Andrew Korybko...

 

  When a Palestinian boy loses half of his home to Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, he joins his community in a campaign of nonviolent protests. Efforts to put a quick end to the demonstrations are foiled when scores of Israelis choose to stand by the residents' side...

  The message is simple: don’t ever vote for a friend of Israel. Please distribute this video as widely as possible. It is one of the few chances that the Un-chosen People have of fighting back. But be careful who you ask for advice. If I were a Friend of Israel (perish the thought) I would try to infiltrate as many anti-Israel organisations that I could, including websites that purported to be pro-Palestinian. Remember Mossad’s motto: “By way of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War”..

 

  There’s a fifth column in America. A Trojan Horse within our laws. It’s composed of dual citizens and foreign nationals. Those people that hold loyalty to another country. Surprisingly, many of these dual citizens hold elected offices or are in “security sensitive” positions in America. This is not in the national interest of America. We need a new initiative to stop this. Please join us...

 

  It can’t get more blatant than this. On so-called Israeli “Independence Day” hundreds of Jewish squatters descended on the Palestinian village of Wadi Fuqeen, near Bethlehem, guarded by the Israeli occupation army. They used Palestinians farms as entertainment parks, destroying crops, contaminating irrigation pools and channels, and using, abusing and damaging Palestinian recreational facilities.. To make matters worse, the occupation army prohibited the Palestinians farmers from tending their crops and Palestinian children from playing in their playground while the Jewish squatters were present...

 

  Polling stations have closed in Ukraine's self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk after a referendum on independence from the Kiev government. The turnout reached over 70 percent, according to organizers of the poll...

 

  Cor, this is exciting. The Board of Deputies of British Jews is starting to realise that the game is up for hasbara, in particular over the merry dance formerly known as the, ahem, peace process...

 

...That Jewish historiography is rife with serious methodological problems, and generally suffers from a marked lack of scholarly objectivity, is fairly well-known. Some of the most astute comments in this regard can be found in Lindemann’s Esau’s Tears.. Lindemann clearly references neglect of contexts and exaggerated claims to objectivity when he writes that “many accounts of pre-twentieth century Jewish history move from one pogrom to the next, from expulsions to plunders, from hostile legislation to anti-Semitic manifestos – providing ‘just the facts,’ yet ignoring so many other facts and finally providing accounts that seriously lack depth and balance...

 

  If the West appears confused by Russian actions in Ukraine and unable to find an adequate response to the crisis, it is because from the outset, it has misread the situation, transforming an essentially domestic dispute into one that threatens the security architecture of Europe. While all sides have contributed to the current debacle, six widely held assumptions have played an inordinate role in shaping Western discourse about Ukraine. These will need to be corrected before any real progress can be made...

 

  We’re gonna have some fun with this one tonight!  Jeff Stein, Newsweek’s intelligence reporter has filed two great stories using inside U.S. intelligence, Homeland Security and Congressional aide sources to portray the massive Israeli spy presence in the U.S.  The second report was published yesterday and it was a real eye-opener.  Perhaps the most jaw-dropping revelation was that during a visit to Israel, then-VP Al Gore was ‘bunking’ at the King David Hotel...

 

...in early-19th-century Poland, approximately 85 percent of registered taverns were leased by Jews—and there was no shortage of taverns. For Poles of that time, there was a stereotypical image of a bartender, and he had a beard, a yarmulke and peyos. Jewish domination of Poland’s drinking culture was so complete and lasted so long that Poles simply assumed a connection between Jews and booze. As a standard Polish proverb of the time had it: “The peasant drinks at the inn, and the Jew does him in..”

 

  About 400 elite mercenaries from the notorious US private security firm Academi (formerly Blackwater) are taking part in the Ukrainian military operation against anti-government protesters in southeastern regions of the country, German media reports. The Bild am Sonntag newspaper, citing a source in intelligence circles, wrote Sunday that Academi employees are involved in the Kiev military crackdown on pro-autonomy activists in near the town of Slavyansk, in the Donetsk region...

 

ओं मणिपद्मे हूं  

 

...In this and other cases, the authorities' victims were not interrogated about the incidents that led to their detention. Instead, they were asked about where they went to mosque and what their prayer habits were. Considering the next step, this was just a clumsy attempt of dysfunctional detectives to be friendly. They already knew the answer; it was the reason for the entrapment. The next question surprised the victims. "Would you work for the police, eavesdropping in Muslim cafes and restaurants, or in mosques?..

 

...As a result of the seize of power by force and the anti-constitutional coup legitimate state authorities were actually broken down and a reign of lawlessness started. The growth of ultranationalist, extremist and neo-Nazi moods, religious intolerance and xenophobia, threats and pressure from leaders of the Euromaidan on their political opponents, purging, repressions, physical violence and open gangsterism have become a habit...

 

..Is apartheid an appropriate term to describe Israel’s occupation of the West Bank?.. Being an expansionist, racist and ethnic cleanser, the Jewish State is a Nazi like operation. This is the truth the Jewish Left attempts to disguise...      

 

  I sure would not like to have the job of these State Department people who have to sit down with these Central Asian folks, with the current track record of US aggression, including the use of terrorist proxy armies operating in brigade size, and have to pretend we want to help bring them democracy.. The targeted country is expected to understand that, being underprivileged and backwards, they could not possibly figure out how to govern themselves...

 

...America's deplorable history reflects barbarism writ large. Killing civilians is longstanding policy. Doing so violates core international law. It prohibits collective punishment. It forbids attacking noncombatants. Targets unrelated to military necessity are strictly off-limits. Lawless attacks constitute crimes of war, against humanity and genocide. Committing them reflects official US policy. It's been so throughout America's sordid history...

 

  A UN official on Friday called for solidarity with Palestinians though boycott and divestment from companies that benefit from settlements. In a report published in Arabic on the UN’s website, Richard Falk, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, urged organizations and companies around the world to join the “increasingly international solidarity movement against Israeli occupation.. Now is the best opportunity for the Palestinians to achieve self-determination through pressures at the grassroots level” and “nonviolent resistance,” Falk said...

 

...This instance of righteous action is a rare occurrence in Slaughter’s career.. By 2003 she was splitting hairs in a New York Times op-ed over whether the invasion of Iraq was “illegal” or “illegitimate.” The piece was a stomach-turning attempt to justify the invasion while appearing to uphold respect for multilateralism and international law.. On the tenth anniversary of the George W. Bush’s aggression against Iraq, Slaughter was party to one of several loathsome public displays of ersatz contrition (or worse) by pundits and policymakers...

 

 

...Fewer Americans are willing to believe, willing to blindly follow, willing to die for what more and more now clearly see as wars for Wall Street. Perhaps the most carefully hidden impact on America’s ability to wage war is the epidemic of military/veteran suicides, numbers far more than anyone imagined.  Current suicide numbers actually exceed the total combat deaths from both the Vietnam and Korean wars...

 

...The Western powers were not, at bottom, motivated by defeating fascism during the Second World War. They were motivated primarily by defeating, in their view, an errant Russia. That plan did not work out then, but the underlying strategic motive of subjugating an "errant Russia" is still the same in the present time. The Western powers are indeed at it again. They are once again backing fascist forces as a way of attacking a perceived geopolitical rival to their global hegemony - Russia led by Vladimir Putin...

 

  Israel denies Palestinians fundamental rights everyone deserves. Praying to the wrong God is considered terrorism. So is self-defense against Israeli brutality. So-called peace talks represent the greatest hoax in modern times. Multiple rounds for decades accomplished nothing. Things are worse than ever today.. Israel is all take. It's no give. Washington is part of the problem. The main part. It's no responsible peace partner. It's no honest broker. It one-sidedly supports Israeli interests. It endorses its worst crimes...

...The moral substance at the core of genuine citizenship only exists if the political structure allows opposition without imposing a severe punishment. If citizenship is possible, then it automatically gives rise to responsibility to act accordingly, that is, by honoring the imperatives of conscience. Unfortunately, considerations of prudence, career, and social propriety make it more attractive these days for most Americans to behave as subjects living within a rigid set of constraints...

 

...almost one and a half years since the U.N. upgrade to non-member observer state, which enabled Palestine to join the ICC, the PA has yet to apply. It was handed a potent weapon against Israel’s decades of illegal dispossession, occupation, colonization and oppression, but it has chosen not to wield it. This is a shameful dereliction of the PA’s duty to realize Palestinians’ human rights and national aspirations. ICC accession was the biggest prize of the upgraded U.N. status, and the primary reason for the vociferous opposition to the bid from Israel and the United States...

 

  Raqqa Christians are forced to pay a special tax to the Islamic state in Iraq and the Levant, and are strictly forbidden to wear or exhibited crosses in any way.  Christians are forbidden to repair or maintain war-damaged churches. Christians are not allowed to recite any prayer in the presence of Muslims, and are subject to conservative dress codes as imposed by ISIL.. public crucifixions are  warnings to anyone who challenges Islamic rule because they are the enemies of Allah...

 

  Weeks before Pope Francis is due to arrive in Israel May 24 for a three-day visit, attacks and threats against Christians and their holy sites have escalated dramatically. The latest hateful graffiti — “King David for the Jews” and “Jesus is garbage”– were sprayed in Hebrew on the Romanian Orthodox Church in Jerusalem this morning. That makes it the 20th attack of this nature inside Israel in 2014. Already this year Jewish extremists have graffiti’d “Death to Arabs,”  ”America is Nazi Germany” and “Jesus monkey, Maria cow,” on Christian holy sites, in attacks described by the church as “terrorist vandalism..”

 

  "A large number of terrorist Takfiri fighters in Syria, who bear Saudi and Chechnian nationalities and receive financial and military backup from the Saudi intelligence agency, have been transferred to the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on several planes to help the Ukrainian army in its fight against the pro-Russian population.."

 

  Ukrainian Jews with combat skills formed a rapid intervention force to stop anti-Semitic attacks. The force, which was set up in recent weeks, currently is made up of eight men who served in the Ukrainian or Israeli armies or have martial arts skills...

 

..The development underpins Frankfurt's bid to become a key offshore center for facilitating trade transactions and investments in renminbi. It is also the latest success in Beijing's drive to internationalize its once tightly-controlled currency, which is also called yuan...

 

  Frustrated by the IMF and World Bank controversial policy, the BRICS nations go on creating the alternative financial supranational institutions for emerging economies. In recent years the IMF has discredited itself, becoming a completely politicized and "odd" structure, which supports interventionist "super state" ambitions of the EU and the US, stresses Patrick L Young, an expert in global financial markets, referring to the ongoing events in Ukraine...

 

  These bulletins have in the past few weeks been following closely the developing and escalating crisis in Ukraine. We have been talking regularly with Dr. Nicolai Petro, from Odessa. Dr. Petro, a professor of international relations at the University of Rhode Island, is on a Fulbright Fellowship this year in Odessa and southern Ukraine...

 

  What influence does Russia have on the current situation in Ukraine? Is it a geopolitical blunder from a part of Washington, or is it a part of Putin's gambit? And does Washington want in fact a revolution in Russia? CrossTalking with Gordon Hahn, Joe Lauria and Edward Lozansky...

 

  President Barack Obama returned from his April 22-29 Asia tour having failed to accomplish any of the objectives that were spelled out on the eve of his four-nation excursion. He failed to arm-twist the Japanese into significant economic concessions aimed at pushing ahead with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free-trade scheme; he failed to get Japan to sign off on new U.S. sanctions against Russia; and he failed in his efforts to bridge the conflicts between Japan and South Korea, two key Asian nations which are part of the Obama scheme to build a containment alliance against China. As his “Asia-pivot” scheme falls apart, Obama faces collapsing support at home as well...

 

Iranian foreign minister questioned by parliament on Holocaust comments | Asharq Al-Awsat

  Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif appeared before a committee of Iran’s parliament on Tuesday to face questions from Iranian lawmakers about his controversial remarks on the Holocaust and the state of Iran’s military. The summons took place a week before the resumption of nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers in Vienna, and exposed the divisions between the administration of President Hassan Rouhani and hardliners suspicious of his attempts to end Iran’s international isolation...

 

  During the Den Haag peace conference at the beginning of the 20th century the so called civilized states agreed  to submit to the International Law. The International Law should amongst other topics humanize warfare, i.e.eliminate brutality against the defenceless. On January 26th 1919 “The Haag War Regulation”  was signed by all participating states amongst them the United States of America...

 

...In the early 1900s the Unites States was aware that a number of Jewish moguls were supporting the Bolshevik movement, so they had reason to be suspicious about Morgenthau’s plan for Germany. General George Patton declared that “the Red Army was the real threat and the Germans the real friends.” Patton also “protested against the pro-Jewish clout in the military government. In his opinion, the early American postwar policies were the result of a conspiracy of international bankers, labor leaders, Jews and Communists, whereas he regarded the Germans as potential allies against the adversary in the East...

 

Top 10 Holocaust Films | Gilad Atzmon

  Jewish suffering loves the big screen and vice versa...

 

...the soldier turns to Ahmed: "OK, fine, cameraman, get the fuck inside." He then turns to the Israeli woman, "next time videotape it, and if we had known we would have broken their bones." Issa, who once again tried to get a word in, is quickly told to shut up, and the two proceed to enter a tense argument. Issa tells the soldiers the cameras are doing what the soldiers fail to do (protect them) and the soldier responds that he defends Jews, not him. When Issa insists it's his job to protect him as well, the solder curses him and says: "Who protects you? You fucker – the next chance I get I'll shoot you.."

 

...Considering that this tiny organization may be the kingmaker, appointing its leader as the Israeli next Prime Minister, the careful attitude displayed by the media is understandable. Hebrew media is scared to death, especially after it lost a propaganda campaign in the style of American McCarthy against the current Foreign Affairs Ministry Avigdor Lieberman. A probable reason for his good relations with Russian President Putin is that the latter is trying, as the Israeli Comptroller, to figure out what Nativ does...

 

...Painful experience has taught the army that such clips, if broadcast abroad, can seriously undermine Israeli propaganda (officially called “explaining” or hasbara). Even more unusual was the announcement of the army spokesman that same evening, that the soldier had been judged by his superiors and sent to army prison for 28 days. All hell broke loose. The social media sprang into action. Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of soldiers declared their solidarity with the soldier who became known as “David Nahlawi”..

 

  In Tel Aviv’s Ben Yehuda Street a huge Israeli National Flag was hung, covering an entire building. On the flag were inscribed the words "Kol Hakavod Le’Tzahal" (Three Cheers to the IDF). Somebody must have paid a lot of money for this patriotic presentation. But on the windows and balconies of the neighboring houses, there were only few of the simple flags which ordinary citizens are supposed to hang out on this day of the year. The number of flags to be seen in the city streets on this Independence Day was manifestly less than it was last year and two years ago. Also the boys selling flags for cars at crossroads were sorely disappointed with the steep decline in sales...

 

  Fascists wage wars their way. Dirty ones rage. America fights this way. It's done so throughout its existence. No-holds-barred barbarism reflects official policy.Washington manipulates criminal events in Ukraine. Coup-appointed putschists are convenient stooges. They're murdering their own people. They're doing it in cold blood. Donetsk People's Republic leaders said Mariupol self-defense forces were attacked with chemical weapons...

 

...This article is intended to redress this imbalance by making Jewish self-deception the central focus of discussion, by bringing together what we already know, and by widening its application as an analytical tool to different historical and contemporary contexts. This extended article will commence with an explanation of terms and theory, before moving on to case studies and comparatives of Jewish self-deception in historiography, culture and politics. ..

 

...What makes me believe that we are in a crisis potentially much more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis is that at that time both the US and the USSR fully understood how serious the situation was and that the world had to be brought back from the brink of nuclear war.  Today, when I listen to idiots like Obama, Kerry, Psaki & Co. I am struck by how truly stupid and self-deluded these people are.  Here they are playing not only with our existence, but even with theirs, and they still are acting as if Putin was some Somali war lord who needed to be frightened into submission.  But if that tactic did not work with Somali warlords, why would they think that it will work with Putin?..

 

Dear Mr. Putin.. from Brett Redmayne-Titley | PressTV

  As the fascist flag of Kiev slithered upwards beyond the flames of the House of Trade Unions building, the visible horror of the Odessa massacre ricocheted across the globe, and the stench of burning human flesh hung fresh in the sour air. Modern-day Nazi atrocity, murder, and barbarism have returned to your borders, Mr. Putin, in colorized newsreel fashion. You merely watch?..

 

  Buenos Aires 1994: A terrorist attack blows up the social Jewish center AMIA. As a result, casualties: 85 dead, 300 wounded. Israel and international Zionistan blame it on Iran immediately. The film reviews the Iran track, the Syrian one, the Argentinean track and the Israeli one. With 15 interviews of Argentinean personnalities, Thierry Meyssan (France), sheikh Rabbani (Iran) and Jim Fetzer (USA).. On February 2013, an agreement between Argentina and Iran was signed in order to investigate the case of the AMIA attack in Buenos Aires 1994, imputed by previous judicial and political authorities in Argentina to the Iranian authorities...

 

  It is a major error to assume that England’s plutocrats slipped into the war against their will or even against their intentions. The opposite is true. The English warmongers wanted the war and used all the resources at their disposal over the years to bring it about. They surely were not surprised by the war. English plutocracy had no goal other than to unleash war against Germany at the right moment, and this since Germany first began to seek once again to be a world power...

 

  For the first time in history, an American university is hosting an event questioning the official stories of 9/11, the JFK assassination, and the Nazi holocaust. The conference, entitled “Academic Freedom: Are There Limits To Inquiry?” is being held today, April 26th, at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I will be participating, along with four other current or former professors: James Fetzer (Philosophy of Science), Nicholas Kollerstrom (History of Science), David Robinson (Education) and Winfield Abbe (Physics). Of the three topics, by far the most contentious is the holocaust...

 

...Lieutenant General Gantz, proud commander of the IDF, you are not conducting a war; you are perpetrating crimes against humanity. Nes is a mass murder system; the miracle is that the international community does not revive the Nuremberg Trials, this time against Israel...

 

  Most Americans assume the United States government speaks “the truth” to its citizens and defends their constitutional right to “free speech” (be it in the form of words or dollars). On the other hand, it is always the alleged enemies of the U.S. who indulge in propaganda and censoring of “the truth.” In practice it is not quite that way...

 

  The Sarkozy directive on 5th graders: "he has instructed, via his minister of education, schools to ensure that every French fifth grader learn the personal story of one of France's 11,000 child victims of the Holocaust." Dieudonné is a notorious French comedian, pushing the idea here of a new directive that would go even further than the previous one...

 

  Britain’s Foreign Office, presided over by William Hague, has come up with the most fatuous response so far to the collapse of the latest peace talks stage-managed, as always, by Israel’s partner in crime, America. Here it is:..

 

  The Kiev gang that can’t shoot straight continues to make a bad situation worse. They are learning that taking over a country when you have the great powers and Victoria Nuland’s $5 billion behind you, and running it… are two different things.. Because Putin and Lavrov have played such a cool hand in all this, John Kerry finds himself reduced to accusing the Russians of things that could happen in the future, some kind of diplomatic time-travel exercise or some exotic drugs of some sort...

 

...a significant unmentioned aspect of the Ukrainian affair is the irony-rich role of Israel, America's purported close ally, which has not been critical of Russia. In fact, Israel is actually improving its relationship with Russia and stands to benefit from the crisis. Neocons had been using the democracy card against Putin's Russia for some time, as they had previously done against the Soviet Union, because of Putin's hostility to the Russian liberals, many of whom happened to be Jewish and pro-Israel, and also because of Russia's support for Israel's major enemies — Iran and Syria...

 

  The Islamic Revolution and Sacred Defense Cinematic Community will hold this year’s festival with special focus on “Resistance, Wisdom and Prosperity.” The event will be presented in the three sections of ‘International Competition’, ‘Imad Moqniyeh Award’ and the ‘Outlook of Iran’s Resistance Cinema in the World’. While the festival aims at expanding the ‘Culture of Resistance’, it welcomes the works with focus on the resistance of Muslims and the oppressed worldwide...

 

  Whatever happened to honor among thieves? When the National Security Agency was caught eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone, it was considered a rude way to treat a friend. Now U.S. intelligence officials are saying—albeit very quietly, behind closed doors on Capitol Hill—that our Israeli “friends” have gone too far with their spying operations here. According to classified briefings on legislation that would lower visa restrictions on Israeli citizens, Jerusalem’s efforts to steal U.S. secrets under the cover of trade missions and joint defense technology contracts have “crossed red lines..”

 

  Russia's celebrations of the 69th anniversary of the defeat of fascism in World War II come just days after Ukrainian neo-fascists enacted an appalling Odessa massacre. For those who know their history, the graphic symbolism speaks for itself. And then a geopolitical chess gambit added outright puzzlement to the trademark hypocrisy displayed by the self-proclaimed representatives of "Western civilization". The gambit comes from - who else - Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is now actively mixing chess moves with Sun Tzu's Art of War and Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching...

 

  Recently I find myself in a high state of discomfort when by chance or design I’m looking at the POTUS adorning the TV screen addressing issues which should be of concern to all of us here in the United States and, at times, people around the globe. As I focus on his image and listen to Barack Obama, I cannot help but feel pity and disgust as I see before me an inglorious effigy of Sad Sack...

 

  Just before Israel’s 66th Independence Day, the country acquired a new national hero. If it is true that every nation gets the national heroes it deserves, it was a rather worrying spectacle. The video clip that turned David Adamov from an anonymous soldier into a national figure was taken with a Palestinian camera in Hebron. Such video cameras have become the bane of the Israeli army. They have been widely distributed to young Palestinians throughout the occupied territories by Israeli peace organizations, especially B’Tselem...

 

  In Libya, in Syria, and elsewhere the United States has been on the same side as the al-Qaeda types. But not in Ukraine. That’s the good news. The bad news is that in Ukraine the United States is on the same side as the neo-Nazi types, who – taking time off from parading around with their swastika-like symbols and calling for the death of Jews, Russians and Communists – on May 2 burned down a trade-union building in Odessa, killing scores of people and sending hundreds to hospital; many of the victims were beaten or shot when they tried to flee the flames and smoke; ambulances were blocked from reaching the wounded...

 

  Ukraine comes full circle. In six months, a troubled but intact nation is now pulled to pieces. Vasyl Krutov, the general in charge of what the provisional government in Kiev insists on calling its “anti-terror” military campaign in the east and south, acknowledged over the weekend that the country is “essentially at war.” Ukraine’s elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, had to go in February because of the violence that had erupted in Independence Square, scene of demonstrations since the previous November.. The provos who took his place are now doing the shooting — killing their countrymen, reclassified as terrorists, by the score...

 

...An insider in Israel’s nuclear program believes that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is employing needless fearmongering when it comes to Iran’s atomic aspirations, in order to further his own political aims. Brigadier General (res.) Uzi Eilam, who for a decade headed the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, does not believe that Tehran is even close to having a bomb, if that is even what it really aspires to...

 

  Ultra-Orthodox member of the Likud party also says PM told him Israel would officially adopt Hebrew calendar..

...Israel’s plan for Gaza was to turn Gazans into animals.. the man who designed apartheid in Palestine/Israel, Armon Sofer, had withdrawn all Jewish settlements from Gaza to make it a free-fire zone, a closed prison. Sofer had promised Ariel Sharon he would design a society with a majority of Jews separated from Arabs, and Gaza would be a desperately poor, desperately crowded prison where the inmates would soon become “even more animals than they already are..”

 

  Shortly after the signing of the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO in 1993, the Jerusalem Post ran a cartoon that depicted a critical aspect of those accords which has rarely been discussed much less acknowledged. In the cartoon, a smiling Yasser Arafat was sitting upright on a stretcher giving a “V” sign. The stretcher bearers were Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. Its message was clear: the Oslo agreement had come to the rescue of the PLO chairman whose reputation among his fellow Palestinians had sunk to the bottom of the barrel...

 

  Why do so few people know about the true histories of Bolshevism and Zionism? Why is there so little discussion of these movements, despite their integral role in shaping the 20th and 21st centuries? Could it be that both movements have Jewish origins and therefore receive soft treatment from historians, academics and the media? The destructive and murderous legacy of Bolshevism in Russia is seldom brought to the fore in mainstream discourse, yet we are fed a constant stream of messages and images about what happened to Jews during the Second World War...

 

...reinstating Crimea in the Russian federation was a necessary defensive move. In Germany, anyone who says thing like that can be denigrated as a “Putinversteher” (a Putin understander). That says it all. We are not supposed to understand.  We are supposed to hate.  The media are there to see to that. While the West doggedly refuses to understand Putin and Russia, Vladimir Putin, on the other hand, seems to understand things pretty well...

 

..Photos of the victims of the Odessa fire which have been circulating on the Internet have cast doubt on the official version of events. It’s now clear that many of the anti-junta activists who occupied the Trade Unions House were neither burned to death nor died of smoke inhalation, but were savagely shot at point-blank range by agents and thugs who had infiltrated the building to kill as many of the occupants as possible, burn the corpses, and then slip away without notice. Some of the victims–like a young woman who was eight months pregnant –were strangled with an electrical chord and left slumped backwards over her desk in a room that shows no sign of fire or smoke damage...

  It's essential. It's more urgent now than ever. Madness defines his agenda. He promised hope and change. He delivered permanent wars, domestic ruthlessness and betrayal. He's ideologically out-of-control. He presides over a homeland police state apparatus. He's recklessly advancing America's imperium. His quest for global dominance risks the unthinkable. Confronting Russia risks global conflict. It risks potential nuclear war. It risks possible armageddon...

 

  UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) is poised to cause an earthquake in British politics at the European elections on 22 May. The mainstream parties – Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats – are panicking as they watch UKIP surge ahead in the polls. So much so that they are reported to be conspiring to brand UKIP racist. If UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, is smart he’ll turn the tables and throw the spotlight on the three parties’ avid support for the racist Israeli regime and its apartheid policies that have terrorized, tormented and dispossessed the Arab Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land throughout the 66 years of brutal occupation...

 

  The buildup of NATO air and ground forces along the borders of Russia in eastern Europe and President Barack Obama’s American power-influencing trip to Asia have a single purpose. The seen and unseen forces who dictate policy to their political puppets in Washington, London, Paris, Brussels, Berlin, and other vassal capital cities have decided to smash BRICS – the emergent financial power bloc encompassing Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa...

 

Syria: The hidden massacre, by Sharmine Narwani | RT

  The attack took place shortly after the first stirrings of trouble in the southern Syrian city of Daraa in March 2011. Several old Russian-made military trucks packed with Syrian security forces rolled onto a hard slope on a valley road between Daraa al-Mahata and Daraa al-Balad. Unbeknown to the passengers, the sloping road was slick with oil poured by gunmen waiting to ambush the troops.. “From the start the protest movements were not purely peaceful. From the start I saw armed demonstrators marching along in the protests, who began to shoot at the police first. Very often the violence of the security forces has been a reaction to the brutal violence of the armed rebels..”

 

  The councils of the People’s Republics of two southeastern cities of Donetsk and Lugansk won’t postpone the referendums on their regions’ future as part of Ukraine and will hold them as planned on May, 11, the cities’ anti-government activists said...

 

  The Kiev authorities’ special operation in southeastern Ukraine will continue regardless of the decision of the Donetsk People’s Republic to hold a referendum on the region’s status, a senior Ukrainian official said Thursday. Andriy Parubiy, the Secretary of the Committee on National Security, said that according to the country’s laws, the DPR does not have the right to hold the vote...

 

...the only thriving youth movement left in the Zionist realm is Bnei Akiva ("Sons of Akiva"). Established in 1929, it is part of Religious Zionism, the result of the alliance between Zionists and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, which enabled the State of Israel. Nowadays it is part of the latest reincarnation of the movement, the Jewish Home party, member of Netanyahu's current coalition...

 

Surprised by 'brutal' CIA torture revelations? Canada isn't, by John McNamer | MWC News

  One day soon it appears there will be some fairly honest (redacted) revelations from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee about the "brutal, and far worse than previously communicated" torture programs put into place by the Central Intelligence Agency at numerous "black sites" worldwide, facilitated by a vast extra-legal extraordinary rendition program...

 

  Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea and threat to Ukraine are causing damage he perhaps did not anticipate: disorientation of the United States and profound division in Europe, especially in Germany, and in NATO. A real risk of war.. Helmut Schmidt, Germany’s strongest and most important Chancellor of the Cold War years.. says that the U.S., NATO and the European Union all are responsible for creating this conflict out of their own geo-political naïveté and ideology...

 

  The news that China will displace the US as the world's largest economy this year is big news. For economists who follow these measurements, the tectonic shift likely occurred a few years ago. But now the World Bank is making it official, so journalists and others who opine on world affairs will have to take this into account. And if they do so, they will find that this is a very big deal indeed. What does it mean?..

 

  If anything the past 24 hours have proved, once again, that the US and NATO are opposed to any form of negotiations, confidence-building measures or any other type of negotiations with the Donbass and with Russia.  Even though Putin tried really hard to sound accommodating and available for a negotiated solution, the US/NATO policy is clearly to provoke and confront Russia and its allies in every imaginable way..  As for the AngloZionist Empire, it is organizing all sorts of military maneuvers in Poland, the Baltic states and elsewhere.  Logically, many of you are coming to the conclusion that a war is becoming a very real possibility...

 

  Some 10,000 Palestinians rallied in northern Israel on Tuesday to demand the right of return for refugees expelled after the creation of the Israeli state in 1948. The demonstration took place in the Israeli village of Lavi, which was built on the ruins of the Palestinian village of Lubya. Lubya was home to 2,726 Palestinians until 1948, when Jewish mobs captured the village during the conflict that led to Israel’s creation...

 

  The U.S. State Department released its 2013 Country Reports on Terrorism on April 30th, stating: “With a weak government possessing very few tools to exert control throughout its territory, Libya has become a terrorist safe haven and its transit routes are used by various terrorist groups, notably in the southwest and northeast..” The Obama administration and its NATO allies bear responsibility for this mess because, having intervened to help rebels overthrow Gaddafi, they then swiftly exited without making a serious effort to help Libyans establish security and build a new political order...

...how did the utterly moronic policy of intervention and collision now being pursued by Washington and its European retainers come to pass?  What armchair generals concluded that the NATO military alliance should be pushed deep into the newly liberated corridor of former captive nations when there was no longer any military threat from the drunken Russian economy of the Yeltsin era? Moreover, that relentless incursion happened in a blatantly in your face manner. At the time of the German unification the US Secretary of State had used words which bore no trace of ambiguity, promising Gorbachev that NATO would “not move one inch to the East”..

 

..Obama earmarked an entire week for the trip to Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines.. The salience of the tour came to be that China didn’t figure in Obama’s itinerary and this is at a time when Beijing has locked horns with America’s key allies in the East and South Asia Seas…Clearly, China was the elephant in the room...

 

  The statement of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who expressed concern about the outburst of violence in Ukraine, shows that the current Kiev authorities continue violating widely recognized human rights, the Russian Foreign Ministry said. Moscow urges "the de-facto government in Kiev to immediately stop using force against its own people and take certain steps to start a reconciliation process in society.."

 

...The Benghazi story has once again become the “banzai!” rallying cry for a swarm of pundits and politicians in Washington. Lining up on both sides of the partisan aisle on all the Sunday morning talk shows, like it or not, the American public is being barraged with yet another frenzied round of media circus hype in the shark-infested political waters circling over four dead corpses of the murdered-in-Benghazi Americans. With their wagons drawn, the Democrat-leaning, pro-Hillary-Obama “liberal left” camp are in full damage control overdrive while diehard Republican predators smelling blood move in for the kill...

 

China-Russia join hands for $1.3 bn Crimea project | BRICS Post

  China and Russia are expected to sign an agreement during President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Shanghai next week for joint construction of a $1.3 billion transport corridor to Crimea via the Black Sea’s Kerch Strait. State-run China Railway Construction Corporation (CRCC) and the private investment fund China International Fund Ltd. (CIF) will participate in the Kremlin-backed project, say Russian media reports...

 

  Vladimir Putin is more likely to sign a 30-year deal to supply pipeline gas to China next month after more than a decade of false starts because the crisis in Ukraine is forcing Russia to look for markets outside Europe...

 

  On Wednesday, China announced that it plans to hold joint naval drills with Russia in the East China Sea later this month. “These drills are regular exercises held by China and Russia’s navies, and the purpose is to deepen practical cooperation between the two militaries, to raise the ability to jointly deal with maritime security threats,” China’s Defense Ministry said in a statement published on its website...

 

  The global "war on drugs" has been a catastrophic failure and world leaders must rethink their approach, a group including five Nobel prize-winning economists, Britain's deputy prime minister and a former US secretary of state has said. An academic report published on Tuesday by the London School of Economics (LSE), called Ending the Drug Wars, pointed to violence in Afghanistan, Latin America and other regions as evidence of the need for a new approach...

 

  In Iraq  there is an ongoing massacre. Below are the figures of the dead and wounded brought daily, to just one hospital in the country’s largest governorate, Anbar Province, the Emergency Department of the Fallujah General Hospital, between 28th February 2014 and 7th May 2014. They are the victims of the US imposed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s militias. The UN representative in Iraq is near silent, the varying Ambassadors in Iraq are silent, including those of the US and UK, whose actions and lies about fictional “weapons of mass destruction” are responsible for the ongoing, daily carnage. Eleven relentless years of death and heartbreak...

 

  Back in September of 2000, Edward Said declared, “American Zionism has made any serious public discussion of the past or future of Israel—by far the largest recipient ever of US foreign aid—a taboo. To call this quite literally the last taboo in American Life would not be an exaggeration.” In accordance with Said’s position, Israel-Palestine “negotiation” expert Martin Indyk is resigning as US special envoy after being outed as an “anonymous source” who blamed Israeli settlements for the failure of negotiations...

 

...despite more than 40 years of Cold War with the Soviet Union and recently strained relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, believe it or not, for the last two hundred years, the country in the world that the United States has shared the most strategic interests with is Russia. According to Michael Lind, in the book The American Way of Strategy: US Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life, American strategists always have counted on Russia to oppose the rise of potentially hegemonic powers in Europe and East Asia...

 

  Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked pro-Kremlin separatists in southeastern Ukraine to postpone a series of disputed referenda planned for this weekend on declaring greater autonomy or outright independence from Kiev. The move was announced after a Kremlin meeting with Swiss president and current Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) chief Didier Burkhalter on Wednesday...

 

...Washington’s strategic objective is to isolate Russia from without, undermine its military capability and erode its economy, in order to strengthen NATO’s political and economic collaborators inside Russia – leading to its further fragmentation and return to the semi-vassal status. The imperial strategic goal is to place neo-liberal political proxies in power in Moscow, just like the ones who oversaw the pillage and destruction of Russia during the infamous Yeltsin decade. The US-EU power grab in the Ukraine is a big step in that direction...

 

  After the brutal massacre of over 40 anti-regime protesters in the southern port city of Odessa – most of whom were burned to death after being trapped within the city’s Trade Unions House – the Western narrative of “Russian aggression” driving the current unrest in Ukraine is ringing particularly hollow. Unable to spin the massacre carried out by the very ultra-right Neo-Nazi mobs that propelled the current unelected regime into power, both the West’s media machine and its politicians have attempted to remain as ambiguous as possible regarding the recent brutality resulting from what Kiev calls “anti-terror” operations...

 

...how do you navigate an impossible story? The answer: You side with the victim, no matter her colour, sect or creed. You remain committed to the truth, no matter how elusive. You drop every presupposition, abandon ideology, permanently discard dogma, and approach Syria with abundance of humanity and humility. We need to understand the roots of this heinous war, but we also need it to end for the good of the Syrian people. The Syrian conflict should not be a stage of bloody political intrigues for the West and Russia, Israel, Iran and the Arabs...

 

...Israel is at least three nations. The Southern Negev Desert is Bedouin. The north is predominantly Palestinian while Jews are concentrated along the Coastal Plain and a narrow corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Same, same, President Peres; what you did is called black propaganda, sabotaging lies attempting to manipulate reality for your own profit. Syria is not Libya; the West miscalculated the attack. The Syrian army is mighty; not taking into account American special weapons, it is stronger than the Israeli one...

 

  The US-NATO sponsored Kiev coalition government is responsible for the killings perpetrated by Neo-Nazi Right Sector mobs and security forces in Odessa in which at least 43 people were killed. In Odessa, Right Sector thugs set fire to the city’s Trade Union building leading to countless deaths of innocent civilians who were burnt alive within the building which had been set ablaze. “Such actions are reminiscent of the crimes of the Nazis,” said Russia’s Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin. The “international community” has turned a blind eye...

 

  In recent days, friends and correspondents have asked my opinion concerning the Ukrainian and Crimean situation, so it seems appropriate to to present the following  report. In view of the hair-raising lies and misrepresentations that the Western media are spreading, I know it is difficult for many of you to form a halfway objective view of the situation. However, even someone who does not read Russian can obtain the necessary factual information from the Internet if he or she invests enough time...

 

...The survey "lays bare an image of Israeli society, and the picture is a very, very sick one", wrote Gideon Levy in Haaretz in a piece to accompany the poll. "Now it is not just critics at home and abroad, but Israelis themselves who are openly, shamelessly, and guiltlessly defining themselves as nationalistic racists. "If such a survey were released about the attitude to Jews in a European state, Israel would have raised hell. When it comes to us, the rules don't apply.."

 

  The arrest of a journalist and several political activists in Israel over the past few weeks has provoked a troubling debate: are laws applied differently depending on whether a citizen is Jewish or not? It is a question more often raised in connection with the occupied territories, where Israel operates two legal systems for much of the population – a civilian one for Jewish settlers, and a much harsher, military one for Palestinians. But recent, well-publicised arrests in Israel suggest that Palestinian Arab citizens, who comprise a fifth of Israel’s population, also face.. a form of “legal apartheid”, despite their citizenship and the fact that they are living under the same set of laws...

 

...The solution to the current economic crisis is the same solution to every other economic crisis of the past 500 years, namely, the elimination of usury. Once usury is eliminated from the economy, those who have profited from it—the Jews and the modern day Cahorsins—must make restitution. They must return their ill-gotten usurious gains to the people from whom they stole them. We’re talking here about the transfer of roughly $15 trillion back into the pockets of American citizens...

 

  There’s been another victory for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Student representatives at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, voted on 4 May to support divestment from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation in Palestine, the Electronic Intifada reports...

 

  In shaping EU policies the European Commission often relies on external expertise and advice given by industry-dominated Expert Groups and other advisory bodies. Yet many of the corporations giving this advice have been found guilty of breaking the law. Urgent reform is needed to ensure integrity, transparency and ethics in the Commission’s advisory bodies, ending the reliance on this form of ‘crooked counsel’..

 

...borderless corporations are defining the modern state. In the new user-pay USA, one can now expect either low corporate tax rates or a steady increase in corporate “inversions.” Forget about new roads, modern electricity grids, and innovative changes to education. Forget about potholes on your street. Welcome to more pay for corporate shareholders. Welcome to third-world status. Sadly, the U.S. is being eclipsed by its own worst self. RIP USA (1776-2014?)..

 

...North Korea and China, once close allies, are now increasingly embittered enemies. The message the Chinese are telegraphing to Pyongyang – and also to Washington – is clear: in case of war you’re on your own. The PLA won’t cross the border to save Kim Jong Un from the Americans and Seoul: indeed, the PLA plan calls for indirectly aiding the invaders by detaining key leaders and confronting "oppositional forces" with armed units. ..

 

  The tragic events in Odessa, where neo-Nazi militants have burned alive at least 50 people, are already being called a new Khatyn. The parallels are so striking that this image instantly infiltrated the world’s consciousness. And the same perpetrators were responsible. The residents of Khatyn were incinerated by the 118th Nazi police battalion, made up of mostly Ukrainian military personnel from the Nachtigall and Roland police battalions under Abwehr command that were originally created with the assistance of Stepan Bandera...

 

  The interim Ukrainian authorities are hiding from the public the true death toll in Friday's tragedy in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, which actually claimed 116 lives, a member of the Odessa regional council told RIA Novosti Monday. "According to our data, there were 116 people killed in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa. Killed, not just "dead". "We don't use the word "burned" or "suffocated", because autopsies are not being performed, since the people have bullet wounds to the head.."

 

...Just hours after the bloodbath took place in Odessa, President Obama praised the brutal crackdown in a joint-press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Obama announced that, “The Ukrainian government has the right and responsibility to uphold law and order within its territory.” The president made no mention of the 40 victims who were burned alive or who jumped to their death trying to escape the fire. Nor did Obama offer his condolences to the families who lost loved one’s in the Nazi-ignited blaze...

 

  The crisis in Ukraine is serious.  At some point soon, reality needs to become the priority.  No more name-calling.  No more blaming.  If there are any adults in the room, they need to stand up.  The crisis in Ukraine is going critical, and that is a fact. The first fact.  The Ukraine has 15 nuclear reactors loaded with a 1000 tons or more of radioactive fuels.. The second fact.  The ability to start a war has now been distributed across hundreds of relatively low-ranked individuals, on both sides.. We need proposals that have some prospect of resolving the Ukraine Crisis.  Here is my list:.. 

 

  It’s clear that the number of casualties in the Trade Unions House is far greater. Provocateurs forced people into the building where it was possible to kill them with impunity, with great relish, and without witnesses. Fire inside the building was directed in order to hide mass murdering of Ukrainian citizens...

 

..”April 2 in Odessa the people were burned alive and those who tried to escape were finished off with sticks. Besides as it appeared later among the dead there were lots of people with gunshot wounds. And moreover the police even didn’t think to interfere. All in all the facts lead to one conclusion. The reason of this tragedy in Odessa is a provocation in order to disperse and arrest the members of a numerous protests on the Kulikovo Pole against acting authorities. The fans were just used for this. On both sides there were skillful instigators. Considering all in all there was hardly anyone to plan the massacre but the crowd excited by the blood and impunity couldn’t stop..”

 

  Forces loyal to Kiev opened fire on military observers from OSCE nations after anti-government activists in Slavyansk released them. The group was shot at on the road to Donetsk, Czech Lt. Col. Josef Přerovský said in an interview with a local newspaper...

 

  A nuclear-armed superpower deployed intelligence operatives to a neighboring country. The intelligence agents immediately set about to infiltrate a radical secessionist movement in order to push it toward committing acts of kidnapping, assassination, and other violence. After the kidnapping of a foreign diplomat, the central government invoked draconian national security and war measures statutes, suspending civil liberties. The secessionists, who demanded their language, cultural, and political rights within a supposed «federal» system, were demonized by the foreign-led infiltration and radicalization of their movement. This scenario is not Ukraine in 2014 but Canada.. in 1970...

  The new activism of a young generation in the US has largely come out of the multiplicity and consistency of a new media narrative confidently mushrooming from a new generation of educated Palestinians...

 

  Anyone who looks carefully behind the veil of words cannot find democracy in America. For years I have been writing that the US government is no longer accountable to law or to the people. The Constitution has been set aside, and the executive branch is degenerating into Caesarism. Government is used to impose agendas that result from the symbiotic relationship between the neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony and the economic interests of powerful private interest groups... These agendas are pursued without the knowledge or approval of the American people and in spite of their opposition...

 

  Is there a connection between the regular harassment of schoolchildren by settlers from outpost X and the vandalism of Palestinian trees near outpost X? According to the IDF, the answer is no. So we learn from an April 28 deposition by Gilad Lev, who last year was a battalion commander in the southern Hebron Hills area. And do the police know what the “hilltop youth” are? No...

 

...someone in BDS, The Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions movement has materially diluted the founding purposes agreed upon by yourself and 172 organizations in 2005.  The BDS Movement original “Call” urges various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law by: “(1) ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the barrier Wall,” but this language has now been changed, apparently without notifying those of us who participate in the present, BDS movement...

 

...The Gaza accord signed by several Palestinian groups, including the two antagonist parties Fatah and Hamas consisted of five main points: 1) forming new national unity government, 2) holding elections, 3) reforming security forces, 4) social reforms, and 5) general liberties. The agreement was obviously an internal national issue outlining the functioning of good democratic governance. Logically, one could surmise that Israel would be very interested in negotiating peace with an entity representing all Palestinians factions.. Reaching an (peace) agreement, however, could put an end to the Zionist dream...

 

  Racism is a gnarly word based on a dubious concept – that of “race.” When it comes to malevolent, self-serving categorization, though, one group stands out - it has claimed superiority and expressed contempt for all others for millennia and now is more virulent and dangerous than ever. Click here...

 

  The Syrian civil war, insurrection, rebellion, revolt, uprising, call it what you will, was not home grown in Syria by Syrians with differing outlooks as to how their nation should be governed—as the mainstream media would have you believe—it was part of a strategy pre-planned by vicious, sociopathic foreigners called Neocons, and they began their planning in 1991, following the first invasion of Iraq, code-named: Desert Storm. To date, the major beneficiary of their diabolical planning has been Zionist Apartheid Israel, but that may be coming to an end...

 

  The conclusion to be drawn from the Obama administration’s predictable and predicted failure to get an Israeli-Palestinian peace process going is that the Zionist (not Jewish) monster state is beyond control. And the question arising is this. What are the real choices for the Palestinians?..

 

  Once again, the British press is panicking over the "Islamists" that are apparently lurking with malicious intent on every street corner in the UK. While tabloids fret over imagined Islamic plots to take bacon off Britain's streets, the broadsheets reflect a more highbrow hysteria over an extremist Islamism that has apparently taken root on British soil...

 

  In a sign of re-emerging ties between the European Union (EU) and Iran, Edgars Rinkevics, Latvia’s minister of foreign affairs, visited Tehran on April 24. The visit was significant because Latvia will hold the EU’s rotating presidency in the first half of 2015.. This visit was another step in a string of reconnections that include trips to Iran by foreign ministers and parliamentarians from a number of EU countries including Austria, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Not everybody is pleased with these developments...

 

  Last Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry touched off a firestorm of criticism by warning that Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state” after his initiative to broker Israeli-Palestinian peace limped this week to its inconclusive deadline. But Kerry is wrong to suggest that Israel will reach this pariah-hood tipping point in the indeterminate future.  Since its inception in 1948, Israel has maintained a regime of differentiated rights that privileges Israeli Jews and discriminates against Palestinians...  

 

  Rasmea Odeh, Palestinian community leader and icon, begins her trial on June 10th. Despite months of Rasmea Defense Committee organizing in Chicago and across the nation, the U.S. government refuses to drop its case against Rasmea, who they are alleging lied on an immigration application she filled out 20 years ago. If found guilty, she could face up to ten years in federal prison, an immediate revocation of her citizenship, and then deportation from the United States.. She was brutally tortured into a confession by the Israelis 45 years ago, and now the U.S. is trying to brutalize her once again. After giving so much of her life to others, Rasmea now needs our support...

...dedicated to Lindsey Graham and the 6-month Anniversary of his prediction. Why would anyone make a dire prediction like that unless he was following a written script? The dividing lines between corporate and alternative media are widening as the former is losing its grip on the only mouth piece that most people get their information from...

 

  How vividly I remember the photos of Obama in Berlin during his campaign in 2008: streets literally flooded with people keen to get a glimpse of a promising young politician, expressing for us all how exhausted the world was with the most ignorant and contemptible man ever to have been a president. Reporters said a quarter of million turned out to see a man who was a junior senator and had no claim yet to being a world figure.. A few years later, in 2013, an estimated 4 to 6 thousand showed up for a major speech by then-President Obama, and one is surprised even that many showed, but then there is always a set of people who just want to be able to say they saw a celebrity...

 

  In the name of a "free and independent media," the US government through its Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced that it will dedicate an additional $1.25 million to subsidize the Ukrainian media in advance of the May 25th presidential election. Through its multi-year "U-Media" project, USAID has been a major sponsor of the Ukrainian press. It goes without saying that the media outlets and organizations underwritten by the US government in Ukraine adhere closely to the US government's foreign policy position in the country and region. There will be no US government support for alternative media when it favors the government in power...

 

...The suppression of dissent at home and abroad speaks of a regime that has nothing meaningful to contribute by way of a viable solution – nothing to offer except entrenched colonisation, and institutionalised discrimination. It becomes a vicious circle. As more western diplomats, NGO workers and observers despair of this fanatical rejection, so the backlash against even mealy-mouthed criticism intensifies...

 

  “While Ukrainian punitive squads are carrying out their operations in east Ukraine, conducting sweeps in some settlements and blocking some others, the West has actually imposed an information blockade on tragic events taking place in that country,” the ministry said, adding that “It is quite illustrative that even in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) no one is aware that blood is being shed in Ukraine and troops are shooting at unarmed people...

 

  The story of the CIA-led killer drones which are killing women and children on a daily basis is a tale accorded inexcusably scant attention in media. Indeed it is being ignored. Just recently, the US director of national intelligence James Clapper ordered US senators to remove a provision from a major intelligence bill that would require the president to publicize information about drone strikes and their victims...

 

  The murder of at least 38 people in the city of Odessa in the midst of Kiev’s "anti-terrorist" offensive last Friday revealed the true face of the fascist regime that has seized power in Kiev – and the Western media is doing everything it can to cover up the truth...

 

..“NATO Allies are actively considering ways to further strengthen our long-standing cooperation with Ukraine, including in the area of public diplomacy,” a NATO official said. “Allies are also providing assistance to Ukraine on a bilateral basis.” NATO’s use of the phrase “public diplomacy” is significant. The term was coined during the Cold War when the United States engaged in a concerted propaganda effort to influence public opinion on the Soviet Union...

 

...the departure of opposition fighters from Homs would constitute another significant military advance by the government in its campaign against rebel forces—helping set the stage for Syrian presidential elections on June 3, with President Assad standing for a third term... 

 

...Russia’s Channel One television reconstructed the chronological order of events using publicly available YouTube videos detailing what happened in Odessa on Friday. It began with a football match between two teams – Chernomorets Odessa and Metalist Kharkov. Despite the high political tensions in the region, authorities still allowed the match to take place, realizing that a few thousand pro-Kiev football fans would be arriving to the city...

 

 

...During his peace talks pause, Obama should look back to 2006, the last time the U.S. and Israel “trusted” the Palestinians to speak for themselves. That was the year of the remarkable 2006 parliamentary elections in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The U.S and Israel did not actually trust the Palestinian voters, they tolerated them. Their “experts” on the ground assured them the election would end in victory for the Fatah party, known then for its loyalty to the Israeli-U.S. axis. The election was won by Hamas...

 

  Without money, a phone or identity papers, Fadel Tamimi's 14-year-old son was thrown out of an Israeli army jeep, in the dead of night, 15 kilometers away from home, after being interrogated...

 

...Maps, leaflets and posters explain the work of Zochrot – Hebrew for "Remembering". The organisation's mission is to educate Israeli Jews about a history that has been obscured by enmity, propaganda and denial for much of the last 66 years. Next week, Zochrot, whose activists include Jews and Palestinians, will connect the bitterly contested past with the hi-tech present...

 

...Faced with a strange and contradictory assortment of hostile people and organizations, unable to convince world bodies to act strongly and relieve their plight, the almost leaderless Palestinians are forced to rely on their own assortment of people and organizations to devise a comprehensive strategy that halts Israel's occupation of the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea...

 

...12 million people have died from violence or from war-imposed deprivation, half of them children, in the post-1990, Zionist–promoted US War on Muslims. Thus anti-racist  Jewish British  writer Harold Pinter in his Nobel Prize Acceptance speech declared “We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?..

 

  Pardon me, but I’m experiencing déjà vu with respect to Ukraine, specifically relating to the CIA. As everyone knows, the CIA’s business involves regime change, operations in which the CIA oftentimes secretly and surreptitiously ousts democratically elected regimes that are independent of or unfriendly to the U.S. government and replaces them with regimes that will do the bidding of the U.S. government. Both during and after the CIA’s regime-change operations, innocent people are killed. But that never seems to matter to the CIA...

 

  The US and EU have ignored all requests to use their extensive leverage to either have Kiev reign in Right Sector, meaning disarm and disband it as a national security threat. But the Western powers, having gotten away with using terrorist para-military proxy troops in Syria and other places, has developed a "no fear" policy for the continued use. The underlying problem is the almost blanket diplomatic immunity the politician and government perpetrators have enjoyed...

 

  As the death toll mounts in an incipient civil war between east and west Ukraine, a group of retired U.S. intelligence professionals urges President Obama to hold a summit with Russia’s President Putin to defuse the crisis.. The buck stops with you, Mr. President. If you want to stop a bloody civil war between east and west Ukraine and avert Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine, you may be able to do so before the violence hurtles completely out of control. You need to take the initiative and do it now...

 

  The most recent Ukrainian military operation against Russian separatists in Slavyansk could have a major strategic effect on the power struggle between Moscow and Kiev. The city has been the focus of a game of deterrence and brinkmanship that both leaderships feel compelled to play. The Ukrainian operation may propel Moscow to the very brink of overt intervention...

 

...Many in the West have a hard time understanding Putin because they are so used to completely irresponsible politicians who have been carefully selected by the West's "deep state" precisely for their lack of even basic decency, their knee jerk use of violence as the method of first resort and their eager willingness to reject any form of negotiations.  What is mysterious is not the Russian soul but the West unique track record in meting out senseless violence over and over and over again and to hell with the consequences.  That is the real mystery...

 

  Numerous US agents are helping the coup-appointed government in Ukraine to “fight organized crime” in the south east of the country, the German newspaper Bild revealed. According to the daily, the CIA and FBI are advising the government in Kiev on how to deal with the ‘fight against organized crime’ and stop the violence in the country’s restive eastern regions...

 

...The U.S. plan for Ukraine seems to be to bait Russia into an occupation. This would destroy EU-Russia relations, embolden NATO and help the U.S. to keep the EU as a secondary partner under its control. There would be lots of economic upsides for the U.S. in such a situation. Selling more arms and increasing energy market shares are only the starters. There are two reasons to believe that this plan will fail:..

 

...Odessa’s new police chief, Ivan Katerinchuk, has addressed a crowd of Right Sector activists outraged at the earlier freeing of anti-government activists by the local police.. A crowd of masked Right Sector members and supporters have gathered at the regional police precinct to “get familiar” with the new chief. Katerinchuk, who is calling on the radical group to be “helpful and diligent,” is rumored to have been instrumental in Friday's clashes in Odessa...

 

...an examination into this attempt at fostering Catholic subversion in Orthodox Ukraine is necessary in order to underline the behind-the-scenes forces conspiring for control over the country. Such a contemporary examination first and foremost needs to deal with fellow coup leaders Yatsenyuk and Turchynov and their religious beliefs. Unlike the majority of their Orthodox compatriots, these two are Scientologists and Baptists, respectively. This has important implications for Ukrainian identity, since the two junta masters do not represent the traditional faith of the people they are dominating...

 

  The Ukraine crisis has revealed diametrically opposing views on the subject of European and global security. The West continues to push NATO at Russia's expense. Is more conflict inevitable? And can Ukraine be a bridge between the West and the East? CrossTalking with Richard Weitz and Vladislav Krasnov...

 

  The White House’s predilection for constantly subjecting the world and nations in various regions to convulsions and disturbances is well known. After 1989, Washington began actively looking for ways to maintain its influence around the world. And if its strategy in those early stages did not manifest a clearly articulated belligerent and messianic attitude, such an attitude grew decisively evident with the rise to power of Bush the Younger, whose open aggression took everyone by surprise. In the era of George W. Bush’s administration, its organized disturbances of the world order most often took the form of initiating wars and armed aggression...

 

..."A long-lasting disruption of relations with Russia that depresses exports, investment, and growth, or a loss of economic control over the East that reduces budget revenue would require a significant recalibration of the program and additional financing, including from Ukraine's bilateral partners," the IMF said in a staff report released on Thursday. In outlining the risks to the program, the IMF also warned of uncertainty about the Ukraine government's commitment to a wide program of reforms, many of them politically unpopular, especially after presidential elections on May 25...

 

...it seems that Washington has given renewed military impetus to the Kiev regime in the form of CIA-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries operating alongside regular Ukraine forces – and also, very possibly, from the covert involvement of US mercenaries. Yet, all the while, the Western governments and their lockstep news media broadcast Orwellian reports of an «anti-terrorist operation» conducted by the «Ukrainian government» – even though the latter is an unelected fascist junta that came to power through a murderous coup earlier this year...

 

  The mainstream U.S. media likes to talk about Ukraine as an “information war,” meaning that the Russians are making stuff up. But the false narratives are actually being hatched more on the U.S. side, as a new New York Times story acknowledges.. The New York Times, which has asserted for weeks that the Russian government is behind the unrest in Ukraine’s east, finally sent some reporters to the region to dig up the proof, but all they found were eastern Ukrainians upset by the coup regime in Kiev that replaced President Viktor Yanukovych...

 

  Top level globalist and Rockefeller confidant Zbigniew Brzezinski has mounted the pages of Politico to call for more pointed U.S. involvement in Ukraine.. Brzezinski, a notorious Russophobe, employed a similar tactic when he was Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor. He was instrumental using U.S. taxpayer money to covertly arm the Afghan Mujahideen to fight against the Soviet Union. Factions within the Mujahideen would eventually become the Taliban and al-Qaeda... 

 

 

  Far more than CNN...

 

...Apart from its genesis being wholly illegitimate resulting in the dispossession of Palestine via massacres and ethnic cleansing, Israel, seven decades later remains embattled in a war of legitimacy. Is there no way out? How much longer will Israel and its gang of hardened rightwing leaders hold onto failed policies? Will they ever reach South Africa’s “de Klerk” moment?..

 

  A trail of emails released Tuesday appears to shed yet more light on the Benghazi cover-up story that continues to nag President Obama and then Secretary of State and current Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. The latest exposure indicates that both Obama and Clinton knew that UN Secretary Susan Rice’s claim to the press that the attack on the Benghazi compound killing Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans was due to an anti-Moslem youtube video was a complete lie...

 

...In 1982 started the First Lebanon War, a wild Israeli attack on its northern neighbor that lasted eighteen years. I was only a child back then, but even the limited media accessible to me was enough to understand that something was wrong. We were being told lies by the leaders, Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon and IDF Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan (Raful).. Shortly before Independence Day 2014 truth emerged. Declassified documents show that the three had conspired to hide the truth from the government, the parliament, the army, and the people, taking the people for a ride to Beirut. Their actions included responsibility for mass murder in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps...

 

  Russ Baker.. is highly critical of the conspiracy of silence by the corporate and alternative media regarding the obvious discrepancies in this case. The “official” version of the bombing and FBI investigation makes even less sense than the official narrative concerning 9-11 or the JFK assassination. Baker and investigative staff lay out the results of their year-long investigation.. In the video below, he also discusses the role of the media in perpetuating a sense of helplessness and apathy in the American people and what we can do about it...

 

  During my graduate study of clinical psychology I learned about paranoia; a mental disorder inflicting individuals. This mental sickness is characterized by systematic delusions of persecution accompanied, many times, with delusions of grandeur and aggression towards others. I learned, later in life, that paranoia could also infect a whole nation, such as Israel, and members of a specific religion, such as the Jews...

 

.."We were happy," said Suleiman Kayyed Jahalin, a member of the community. "We thought the Israelis had changed their minds and weren't going to demolish our homes after all. We were wrong.." the Israeli Civil Administration returned several hours later with soldiers and dismantled the three homes. Once dismantled, the ICA didn't have to wait for their demolition orders to survive a legal challenge; they simply confiscated the parts of the houses under an Israeli law that entitles them to confiscate building materials, equipment or cars without any advance notice...

 

  At least 60,000 people have fled towns in the Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria which has been the scene of fierce clashes between rival rebel groups, opposition activists say. The al-Qaeda affiliated al-Nusra Front have been battling the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) for four days...

 

  At the beginning of this very busy week there was a public uproar in the U.S. when Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling was heard saying very racist things about blacks. Among other things Sterling had said that "In Israel, the blacks are just treated like dogs." Sterling probably heard that the State of Israel imprisons without trial thousands of refugees and asylum seekers from Africa, far away among the Negev desert sands, and that Israeli cabinet ministers express pride that such is their policy and promise to continue pursuing it...

  The largest teachers' union in Europe has passed a resolution backing a boycott of companies profiting from Israel's illegal settlements and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The National Union of Teachers (NUT), which has more than 300,000 members in England and Wales, adopted the motion on Palestine at its recent annual conference. The vote was conducted by a show of hands, and passed by a clear majority...

 

  The developer and philanthropist Larry A. Silverstein has cut a striking figure in New York City. He owns the H.M.S. Bounty-size yacht favored by his peers and has dominated the rebuilding of ground zero for a decade. Along the way, he has internalized a developer’s rule of thumb in New York: Only a rube puts much of his own money at risk...

 

  Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin is taking the representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), released in Sloviansk, to the block post boundary...

 

...I do not expect the coup-government's move on Slovyansk to result in any success. The only gain from it will be more support for the federalists and greater alienation in the east. Anecdotal reports from journalists crossing government checkpoints pointed out that the interior ministry troops used in this government operation were pretty pissed about the orders had received from Kiev. They wonder how fighting against a significant part of the population is supposed to help the country...

 

..The country is losing hope to enter the European Union though its importance for Brussels has grown as a result of the events in Ukraine. No way will Ankara oppose Russia. The Erdogan government is looking for ways to boost bilateral cooperation. For this purpose it comes up with the proposals to expand gas supplies adding new branches to South Stream. It serves the interests of the ruling Party.. As previous experience shows, the Russia-Turkey energy talks won’t be easy. But Turkey has no choice. Ankara believes the European Union’s sanctions policy is doomed to failure, so solidarity with the EU is the last thing on the mind of Turkish

politicians...

 

  Washington has no intention of allowing the crisis in Ukraine to beresolved. Having failed to seize the country and evict Russia from its Black Sea naval base, Washington sees new opportunities in the crisis. One is to restart the Cold War by forcing the Russian government to occupy the Russian-speaking areas of present day Ukraine where protesters are objecting to the stooge anti-Russian government installed in Kiev by the American coup...

 

  Capitalists and corporations, we argue, are driven not to maximize profit, but to ‘beat the average’ and increase their differential power. In this approach, the redistribution of income and assets is not a ‘societal’ side effect of the economy, but the central conflict that propels modern capitalism. And the main weapon in this struggle, we claim, is not investment and growth, but what the American political economist Thorstein Veblen called ‘strategic sabotage’..

 

  How would the US react to a declaration that the Palestinians would not conduct negotiations with an Israeli government that includes semi-fascist parties? With outrage, of course. How does the US react to an Israeli statement that Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government that includes Hamas? With full approval, of course...

 

..On Independence Day, Israel is on fire. Smoke of burned meat hides the stench of state crimes, while the people eat Bedouins, Turks, and Iranians. "If they don't vote for us, they are just another nagla of mangal," sophisticated Israelis say using Bedouin Arabic.. This year, just before the meaty feast celebrating bloody violence, Israel announced that it will soon become the Jewish-Nation State, formally cementing its status as a racist state. Looking at the images from the city parks, where mangals are prepared, I failed to find even one item that could be defined as Israeli. Feasting on the meat and blood of others, they had nothing original...

 

  Excellent video about the Wall – just images and music – the evil that is Israel in high resolution [Editor]...

 

  In the following video, Jacques Attali tells a joke which, according to him, explains best what is happening in the modern financialised system! The video is in French but we provide an English translation… Pay attention tothe character’s names to fully grab Attali’s view on the financial world!..

 

  I just went to hear Mother Agnes-Mariam, a Syrian nun dressed in a serious nun outfit, give a talk on the horrible situation that her country finds itself in today -- and I ended up with ten pages of notes on the shocking details of what she said.  However, the main gist of her talk can be summed up in just a few words.  "[Western neo-colonial] powers have been engineering chaos in Syria -- and they need to stop this disruptive behavior right now so that peace and reconciliation can safely proceed.."

 

  During the last months of the Bush administration, a Secret Shadow Government (SSG) was created to sabotage President Obama, politically, economically and, in particular, on issues of foreign policy. “Transition conferences” were held, procedures enacted, roadblocks created.In every aspect of government, parallel command structures answerable to former officials and special interest groups were created.

 

  For at least the past 50 years, the American people have been fed a steady diet of lies. Coups, false flags, political assassinations, mind control, government corruption, Orwellian surveillance, psychopaths in power, bankster dictatorship, military-industrial complex dominance and the rise of the New World Order – all of these realities have been carefully hidden from the American people and the other citizens of the West. But during the past decade, a significant fraction of the public has begun to wake up, thanks to the rise of the internet-based alternative media...

 

  Capitalism and its imperialist proclivity have been associated with the structural causes of conflict and war over recent centuries. But given today’s imperative realities of a globalized economy, capitalism – or at least large sections of it – cannot afford such a conflict or desire it. In this regard, we may be witnessing a seminal shift, whereby Washington’s threatened sanctions towards Russia, and the war that that entails, are seen as an untenable political agenda divorced from the all-important economic realm. In pushing this agenda, Washington may be the one that finds itself isolated, not Moscow...

 

  The United States State Department, in its infinite wisdom, has once again designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. The newest Country Report on Terrorism, issued on April 30, 2014, includes Cuba in a list of nations that “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism”. The island country in the Caribbean has been so designated since 1982.One reads about the U.S. calling any other nation a ‘sponsor of terrorism’ in shocked disbelief. That the U.S., the greatest purveyor of terrorism on the planet, has the audicity to accuse any other nation of sponsoring terrorism is beyond all credibility...

 

  Two beautiful Slavic sisters, Ukraine and Russia, pitched against each other: long hair flying in the wind, gray-blue eyes staring forward accusatively, but in the same time with anticipation and love. One single moment, one wrong move, one word, and two countries, two allies, two almost identical cultures, can easily dash at each other’s throats… Different words, different gestures, and they can also fall into each other’s arms, instantly...

 

  Poor NATO. Damned Soviets. The benign North Atlantic Treaty Organization has spent two decades "trying to build a partnership" with Russia. But now, "clearly the Russians have declared NATO as an adversary, so we have to begin to view Russia no longer as a partner but as more of an adversary", according to NATO deputy secretary-general Alexander Vershbow, a former US diplomat/ Pentagon employee. The hot lava irony of a Pentagon hack carping about "Russia clearly trying to re-impose hegemony" is enough to put Vesuvius to shame...

 

  A Russian official angered over new sanctions that the United States imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis is suggesting that American astronauts get to the International Space Station by using trampolines instead of rockets. "The United States introduced sanctions against our space industry... We warned them, we will reply to statements with statements, to actions with actions," Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who heads Russia's defense industry, said on Twitter, according to Reuters...

 

...A comparison of Russia’s set of rules versus the US set of rules on invasions, overthrow of foreign governments, territories occupied/annexed, coups, and launch of drone attacks should prove very revealing. A professional journalist provides relevant background and context; a professional journalist scrutinizes centers of power rather than serving as a stenographer for power; a professional journalist lays out his case with sufficient information for readers to arrive at an informed conclusion...

 

  Every passing day bring it share of utterly nonsensical news out of the rump-Ukraine aka "Banderastan".. Ukraine reinstates conscription as crisis deepens. Sure enough, for the zombified TV watchers this might sound like something meaningful.  But is it?  Let's recall where the current Ukrainian military comes form by remembering what the Ukraine's military was at the moment this Soviet Republic became independent...

 

  The attempt to lever Kiev into the western camp by ousting an elected leader made conflict certain.. The threat of war in Ukraine is growing. As the unelected government in Kiev declares itself unable to control the rebellion in the country's east, John Kerry brands Russia a rogue state. The US and the European Union step up sanctions against the Kremlin, accusing it of destabilising Ukraine. The White House is reported to be set on a new cold war policy with the aim of turning Russia into a "pariah state"..

 

  American strategists are obsessed with the idea of a cold war with the Kremlin without having any understanding of how it might end. The White House's efforts to make Russia out as the guilty party in what is happening in Ukraine is not receiving support in the international community. Only U.S. satellites are on Washington's side; even in NATO countries there is no unity on the national level. The Americans' references to anti-Russian decisions from the European Commission may be disregarded; there the terms are dictated by around thirty commissioners appointed by the Council of Europe to whose opinions the leading countries of the Old World have never listened...

 

  The rapid unfreezing of old conflicts at the initiative of the West and the accelerated creation of new ones in the Balkan-Black Sea-Caucasus region require the closest of attention. Hopes that the Serbs, Montenegrins, Bulgarians and other nations can rid themselves of the dangers that threaten them by making concessions to Washington and Brussels are becoming an illusion. The next signal of this type could come from Transnistria...

 

  Kiev’s “anti-terrorist” operation in East Ukraine is in full swing, with at least 5 reported dead in the ensuing violence. Anti-government activists remain defiant and refuse to leave the seized buildings, demanding that Kiev’s troops withdraw. The Russian president’s special representative in Ukraine, Vladimir Lukin, is ready to immediately travel to Slavyansk to discuss the release of European military specialists who are being held by local self-defense squads, the Russian Foreign Ministry says.. the Ukrainian army and Right Sector militants have not agreed to allow Lukin to enter the town...

 

  The U.S. State Department, which has been caught promoting a series of false or dubious stories about Ukraine, is trying to give some substance to Secretary of State John Kerry’s counter-complaint that Russia’s RT network is a “propaganda bullhorn” promoting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “fantasy.”.. Richard Stengel, under secretary of state for public diplomacy, made some broad-brush criticisms of RT’s content – accusing the network of painting “a dangerous and false picture of Ukraine’s legitimate government” by citing examples of fascism, anti-Semitism and terrorism surrounding the Kiev regime...

 

  The Barack Obama administration seems to love the sound of unilateral sanctions in the morning. It must feel like "victory". Real, hardcore sanctions, if ever applied, would be devastating mostly for North Atlantic Treaty Organization poodles, not Moscow. Meanwhile, (energy) adults continue to do business as usual. There's no way to understand Cold War 2.0 without a flashback to November 2010...

 

  It appears that a massacre did take place today, but not in Slaviansk, but in Odessa were 38 people died when a building in which they had sought refuge was set ablaze.. While the exact circumstances of this tragedy are unclear, it appears that we are dealing with the massacre of pro-Russian activists by nationalist thugs (aka "football hooligans").  As I mentioned earlier, a Russian intervention in Odessa is far more likely than in the Donbass which seems capable of protecting itself without Russian assistance...

 

  A proposal by Academician Sergei Glazyev, advisor to President Vladimir Putin, for measures to protect the Russian economy in the face of U.S.-EU sanctions, surfaced in the financial daily Vedomosti on April 25, and quickly became the subject of intense discussion in Russia. The 15-point plan, as is apparent even in the summary given by Vedomosti, goes beyond short-term protective steps. It implies an escalation of Putin's announced policy of moving Russian finances out of offshore jurisdictions, and raises the possibility of new, state-guided approaches to generating credit for real economic investment—an idea whose time has come for every country, not only Russia...

 

  Yesterday, Roger Waters and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd urged the Rolling Stones not to go ahead with a planned concert in Tel Aviv this summer. “With the recent news that the Rolling Stones will be playing their first-ever concert in Israel, and at what is a critical time in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom and equal rights, we, the two surviving founders of Pink Floyd, have united in support of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), a growing, nonviolent global human rights movement initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005 to end Israel’s occupation, racial discrimination and denial of basic Palestinian rights..”

 

...In America the Jewish Lobby is dictating to the Secretary of State what terminology to use and what words to avoid. Even in the Palestinian solidarity movement , it is the Jewish groups that dictate the terminology. This serves to divert  attention from the fact that Israel defines itself as the Jewish State. In essence, Western politics has been Jerusalemized and the time for emancipation is overdue...

 

  A bill introduced by the California Democrat would uniquely exempt Israel from long-standing requirements imposed on all other nations.. In order for the US to permit citizens of a foreign country to enter the US without a visa, that country must agree to certain conditions. Chief among them is reciprocity: that country must allow Americans to enter without a visa as well...

 

  False flag operations and assassinations are a central component of the elaborate psychological warfare campaign waged on the American public to justify the so-called “global war on terrorism,” and the events of September 11, 2001 are this project’s cornerstone...

 

  How is this night different from all others? The question is repeated time and again during Passover, an event that celebrates freedom from slavery, when the ultimate leader, not eloquent and of slow speech, stood up against the world's mightiest ruler and won. Until now there was no reason to [remark on] these words on the eve of Israel's Independence Day. Invariably, it was a day celebrated by less than 80% of the citizens. The scary sirens announcing it are an awful reminder that the state attacks it citizens. The eve of Independence Day was like all other nights, a sad attempt to escape overwhelming violence...

 

  Is Israel at risk of becoming an apartheid state, as John Kerry said on Friday, or not, as he said on Tuesday? Who knows? Given his feeble performance as U.S. secretary of state and his disgraceful apology, maybe it no longer matters what Kerry thinks or says. Given the aggressiveness of the Jewish lobby and the weakness of the Obama administration, which capitulates to every “pro-Israel” whim, Israel doesn’t need enemies with friends like these...

 

...Already Falk’s predecessor, John Dugard, recommended that the ICJ should be asked to assess whether the prolonged occupation possess elements of “colonialism”, “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” inconsistent with International Human Rights Law (IHRL) in circumstances of belligerent occupation and the denial of the right of self-determination of the Palestinian people. Since no advisory opinion has been sought, Falk discusses Israeli policies and practices through the lens of the international prohibition upon ethnic discrimination, segregation and apartheid. According to International Law and all relevant conventions, Israel met all the requirements of these three allegations...

 

  The Idea of Israel - A History of Power and Knowledge, by Ilan Pappe, is a powerfully written, unsettling work that relates the story of Israel from the perspective of how ideas are changed and manipulated for the benefit of the state. Unfortunately the majority of citizens of most countries are susceptible to the ideation/ideology of the mainstream of political thought as it is supported by the mainstream press. In the case of Israel, image and ideation, its narrative and ideology, are of paramount importance...

 

  A week ago Israel suspended participation in the peace talks in response to news that the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah had for a third time concluded a unity agreement with the Hamas leadership of Gaza. Such a move toward intra-Palestinian reconciliation should have been welcomed by Israel as a tentative step in the right direction. Instead it was immediately denounced by Netanyahu as the end of the diplomatic road, contending that Israel will never be part of any political process that includes a terrorist organization pledged to its destruction. Without Hamas’ participation any diplomatic results of negotiations would likely have been of questionable value, and besides, Hamas deserves inclusion...

 

..Should it come as a surprise that China is about to take from America the baton as the world’s number one economy in 2014… a baton America took away from the Brits well over a century ago? Should Prometheus act surprised after willingly giving life to mankind? Neither Titan Prometheus nor Americans should be surprised… for China’s fast and furious economic ascent has to be in great part attributed to the Promethean great effort of American capitalism under the guise of globalization. Sooner or later it had to happen: the realization that implications from globalization transcend the economic sphere, eventually taking over and changing the social-DNA makeup of our society…

  ODS means One Democratic State. Palestine means today's Gaza, West Bank and Israel; in other words, historic Palestine or the territory of the League of Nations' British Mandate Palestine. The citizens of this state would be all present citizens of Israel plus residents of the West Bank and Gaza plus all Palestinian refugees and their descendants...

 

..."During the 9 months of Secretary Kerry’s efforts in the region, the Netanyahu Government promoted plans and tenders for at least 13,851 housing units in the settlements and East Jerusalem.. (A)n average of 50 units per day and 1,540 units per month" were built. Doing so exposed sham peace talks duplicity. Israel dragged them out to steal land. If they continue, months more of same old, same old is certain...

 

..“Netanyahu said he and Secretary of State John Kerry recently applauded that some progress was being made toward a peace agreement. ‘And then the next day, we were both shocked,  there’s no other word, we were absolutely stupefied that President Abbas embraced the terrorist organization Hamas that seeks Israel’s destruction..’ We will ignore for the moment the idea that the Prime Minister of Israel feels free to speak for the U.S. Secretary of State; when the puppet master pulls the strings, anything can happen...

 

...The good news is that this time the Palestinians did not play along with Israel's (and America's) game. That game required the Palestinians to sign on to some agreement that Israel would not abide by anyway. Then, following the deal's collapse, the United States would join Israel in blaming the Palestinians for killing the deal. (An Israeli once told me that Palestinians are exasperatingly slow in signing on to agreements because they know that they must abide by them. Israelis, he said, are quick to sign because they know that they don't have to adhere to the terms anyway.)..

 

  As expected, the ‘peace’ talks farce has ended in disarray with all parties utterly discredited again. Do they never learn? Expect more acrobatics and slapstick if the same circus clowns remain in the ring. We badly need a new act. Let this be the moment in history when world leaders finally stop talking poppycock about peace in relation to the Holy Land, and start talking justice...

 

  NATO must return to its original goal of fending off Russia, seizing the chance presented by the Ukrainian crisis to sever Europe from Moscow and move it closer to America, the US secretary of state said. Or else the bloc’s global leadership may be lost...

 

  America’s history for far more than a century exhibits wave after wave of aggression passed off as fighting imagined enemy aggression – the Mexican War (to seize as much of Mexican territory as possible), the Spanish American War (to seize Cuba and other possessions of a declining Spain), the Vietnam War (to keep a foothold on the opposite shore of the Pacific, regarded by some as “an American lake”), right down to the needless invasion of Iraq (to sweep Israel’s most implacable opponent from the game board)...

 

  Kiev did not take any steps towards fulfilling the Geneva agreements set during four-party talks between Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the US on April 17, Russia’s envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin said, adding that the West did not help either...

 

...During his recent trip to Asia, the President warned North Korea, China and Russia, all in one 48 hour period to follow US dictates or else -  not bad for a day’s work, if you want to be to known as the world’s greatest purveyor-of-war and violence. Despite striking similarities, the 2008 five day war between Russia, South Ossetia and Georgia offers an insight into how the belligerent Bush Administration pursued a different approach in Georgia as compared to Obama’s US-generated conflict in Ukraine causing the ultimate secession of Crimea...

 

...Events in the Ukraine seem to be the logical conclusion of Dirty Dick Cheney’s “Long War”.. This appears to be a move by the empire against Russia, Europe and China that are posing an existential threat to it by challenging the petrodollar. The flailing empire has chosen the Samson Option to ensure that the Russian-Chinese energy agreement and Russian-European gas deals continue to use the petrodollar. You can take the empire down, but at a heavy price...

 

...I consider the first package of sanctions an unlawful and hostile act against Russia, and a step that will definitely damage Russia-US and Russia-EU relations. But as for the second package of sanctions, it is not even clear exactly what they are all about, because they have no cause and effect link to what is happening now in Ukraine and in Russia. I think they are linked to the fact that our partners tried to settle the Ukrainian crisis using force, then realised what this leads to and are now looking for someone to blame...

 

  Eight months after an August 21 attack in the Damascus suburbs, the assumption that it was a Syrian government-sponsored attack continues to dominate discussion of the issue. But significant new information has become available that makes an attack by opposition forces far more plausible than appeared to be the case in the first weeks after the event...

 

  Europe is powering the military rise of China, approving multi-million dollar deals for the transfer of weapons and dual-use technology – despite an arms embargo stemming from the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, AFP reveals. China is the world’s second largest military spender and the fastest growing military market, with Beijing setting aside $132 billion in defense spending...

 

  American political figures like to talk about "American Democracy". The truth is there is no "American Democracy"; it is something that our rulers like to foist upon the World stage much like parents like to tell their children about Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny. It is fiction made in order to keep their "children" in line. The "children" in this case are the majority of Americans that don't have inside access to the mechanizations of the new American reality that is daily becoming more like a police state with all the trappings the best the Third Reich ever had to offer...

 

  Today, Gaza's Ark sabotage was subtly signed by Shayetet 13, the IDF Naval Commando that had perpetrated the Freedom Flotilla massacre.. The controlled explosion had been perpetrated by an underwater device placed on the boat's stern. It caused enough damage to prevent the boat's sailing without sinking it. In other words, it was perpetrated by professional saboteurs. Shayetet 13 (Fleet 13) is an expert on such operations, including the use of marine mammals for the placing of mines on ships...

 

  “We are tens of thousands” was a message I received the other day from one of the myriad of people without the freedom to leave Israel. They are not criminals. Is this just a common visa issue? Absolutely not. They don’t even have to be citizens of Israel...

 

...Last year, Russian President Putin and U.S. President Obama became a geopolitical odd couple as they worked to cool off hotspots such as Syria and Iran. But U.S. hawks succeeded in killing that collaboration via the crisis in Ukraine.. U.S. “pressure” – including token economic and travel sanctions against some Russian companies and friends of Putin – is likely to continue. But it is not likely to become more extensive if key European countries “man up” and tell Washington what was obvious from the start; namely, that Russia holds very high cards in this area and that the Europeans will not damage their own flagging economies by approving stronger economic sanctions...

 

...The Rothschild-led City of London bankers have held grand imperialist designs on Russia’s rich natural resources for two centuries, always to be stymied by the odd nationalist czar or Stalinist.  Putin thwarted their latest attempts when he jailed Israeli dual citizen Mikail Khodorkovsky and re-nationalized much of Russia’s energy sector.  It is no coincidence that one Russian official sanctioned yesterday was Igor Sechin – president of Russian oil giant Rosneft, of which BP still owns a 20 % share.. While the international banking syndicates had always dealt with the Soviet Union, access to its vast oil resources remained limited until Ronald Reagan entered the White House in 1980...

 

  The Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) has issued a stern warning to US-based coffee-shop chain Starbucks that it could face a backlash if media reports that it is about to buy a stake in SodaStream are true. Starbucks “would be deemed complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and would, therefore, face the prospects of popular boycotts and the possibility of legal action,” the BNC statement says. SodaStream is an Israeli company that manufactures home drink-carbonation machines in Maaleh Adumim, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, built on land from which Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed...