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Moscow outraged at Ukraine’s National Guard for detaining 2 more Russian journalists

russian-journalists-detained-ukraine.si

RT | June 14, 2014

Russia’s Foreign Ministry is demanding the immediate release of two Russian journalists detained in eastern Ukraine by the National Guard on their way to Dnepropetrovsk Airport.

“Unidentified men” detained correspondent Evgeny Davydov and sound engineer Nikita Konashenkov at around 5 p.m. local time in the Donetsk region on Saturday, Zvezda TV channel reported. The two were on their way to Dnepropetrovsk Airport for a flight back to Moscow.

The journalists are now being held captive in the Ministry of Justice building in Dnepropetrovsk, according to Zvezda.

“Journalists of Zvezda TV channel were again detained several hours ago on the territory of Ukraine. This is the second time this week. According to our preliminary data, the guys are in the region of the city administration of Dnepropetrovsk,” said Alexey Pimenov, head of media holding company Krasnaya Zvezda.

The Russian channel is demanding that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the Ukrainian Security Service “immediately release our employees who were on an official business trip.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry also called for the release of the journalists. The ministry said the arrest was carried out by the National Guard. Moscow also slammed Ukraine for “continuing to encroach upon the rights of Russian mass media.”

Earlier in June, the National Guard detained two journalists from Zvezda – video operator Andrey Sushenkov and sound engineer Anton Malyshev – at a military roadblock near the city of Slavyansk. According to their driver, they were blindfolded and handcuffed during a routine check, and then taken to an undisclosed location. They were held captive for two days on accusations of espionage.

Russian journalists from a range of media outlets have been detained during the conflict in eastern Ukraine. Two Russian journalists working for LifeNews TV channel – reporter Oleg Sidyakin and cameraman Marat Saichenko – were captured by Kiev forces in May near the eastern city of Kramatorsk. Following their detention, a video appeared showing Ukrainian troops holding the men at gunpoint and forcing them to get down on their knees. They were investigated under charges of “aiding terrorist groups,” according to Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.

RT contributor and UK national Graham Phillips was detained by Kiev military forces at a checkpoint in the city of Mariupol on May 20. He was transferred to army barracks and interrogated by Ukrainian security forces. He was released after 36 hours.

There have also been reports that Ukrainian troops have fired at people with cameras, as well as people wearing press vests. On May 9, a Ruptly cameraman was seriously wounded during an armed assault by Kiev’s army on the Mariupol police headquarters.

Russia’s commissioner for human rights, Ella Pamfilova, told RT in May that she is confused by the fact that international human rights organizations are ignoring the violations of journalists’ rights that are taking place in Ukraine.

“I am perplexed and confused that the organizations highly respected by me, including international journalist and ‘Without Borders’ organizations… are suddenly bashfully closing their eyes or ignoring the rights violations of not only Russian journalists on Ukraine’s territory.”

June 14, 2014 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 1 Comment

Medicated to Death: SSRIs & Mass Killings

The EyeOpener Report | April 17, 2014

SSRI stands for Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, and it is a class of drugs that is often used to treat depression and anxiety. It includes Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Paxil and a host of other commonly prescribed antidepressants. And the perpetrators of a raft of school shootings, mass murders and other violent incidents in recent years have been taking them.

Find out more about the correlation between SSRIs and mass murder in this week’s edition of the EyeOpener Report with James Corbett.

Transcript

By James Corbett | BoilingFrogsPost | April 16, 2014

[CLICK HERE for a French translation of this video.]

In May 1998, 15 year old Kip Kinkel murdered his parents and two classmates, as well as injuring 25 others, after engaging in a shooting spree that ended up in his school’s cafeteria. In the investigation it emerged that he had been taking popular antidepressant medication Prozac since the summer of the previous year.

In December 2000, Michael McDermott went on a shooting rampage at his workplace, Edgewater Technologies, killing seven of his co-workers. During his trial, the court heard testimony that in the weeks before the shooting, McDermott had tripled the dosage of his antidepressant medication, Prozac, from 70 milligrams per day to 210 milligrams.

In March 2005, 16 year old Jeff Weise shot and killed nine people, including five students at Red Lake Senior High School in Minnesota, before turning the gun on himself. It was later revealed he had been undergoing treatment for depression and had been on Prozac at the time.

In September 2008, Finnish post-secondary student Matti Saari shot and killed ten other students on campus before killing himself. The official Finnish government report on the incident revealed that he had been taking an SSRI medication at the time of the shooting.

SSRI stands for Selective Seratonin Reuptake Inhibitor, and it is a class of drugs that is often used to treat depression and anxiety. It includes Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Paxil and a host of other commonly prescribed antidepressants. And the perpetrators of a raft of school shootings, mass murders and other violent incidents in recent years have been taking them.

And so it was perhaps not surprising when the culprit of this month’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Specialist Ivan Lopez, turned out to be taking unnamed antidepressants himself.

Although it has yet to be reported (and may in fact never be revealed) precisely what type of antidepressant Lopez was taking or whether it was an SSRI, the number of confirmed SSRI shooters in recent years has raised the question of a causal link between the medication and incidents of violence.

Although the drug manufacturers are quick to downplay this connection as anecdotal or coincidental mounting scientific evidence points to a strong correlation between the use of psychiatric drugs in general, and SSRIS in particular, and violent behavior.

In 2010, the Public Library of Science published a study titled “Prescription Drugs Associa
ted with Reports of Violence Towards Others” which examined how 484 drugs were associated with 1,937 documented cases of violent behaviour. Of those 484 drugs, 31 of them were responsible for 79% of the violence, including 11 antidepressants.

When incidents of school massacres in the US are charted against prescription of psychiatric medication, the correlation is undeniable. Further research is needed to establish if there is a causal linkage between these pharmaceuticals and the incidents of violence, but critics of the big pharmaceutical manufacturers complain such research is hampered by the low standards for reporting that these companies are held to.

One such critic, David Healy, author of over 150 peer-reviewed papers in the field of psychiatry and the author of numerous books, including Pharmageddon, joined me on The Corbett Report last week to discuss this issue.

Further complicating the issue is the fact that the general public is often, as in the case of the Fort Hood shooter, left in a state of limbo regarding the medical history of the perpetrators of these mass shooting events. Often stories are reported with vague and unconfirmed details about “antidepressants” or sometimes just medication. It can be difficult for the average person to sort through the daily reports of adverse and violent effects of these types of drugs.

One website that helps in that effort is SSRIStories.org. Begun in the 1990s, it is a repository of over 5000 news articles in which prescription drugs were linked to adverse events, including incidents of violence. Last week Julie Wood, one of the proprietors of the site, joined me to discuss the problem of sorting through the often incomplete information from these reports.

In the final equation, the question of the causal linkage between SSRIs and indeed other forms of psychiatric drugs and incidents of violence needs to be taken seriously. There are many factors at play here, from differences in individual reactions to the fact that people who are more likely to commit violent acts in the first place are often the people who are prescribed these drugs.

But the threat of violence has been taken seriously enough that the FDA in the US, the Ministry of Health in Japan and other similar bodies in countries around the world have added a warning in their guidelines for antidepressants. According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, “There are cases where we cannot rule out a causal relationship [of hostility, anxiety, and sudden acts of violence] with the medication.” And in the FDA formulation: “Antidepressant medicines may increase suicidal thoughts or actions in some children, teenagers, and young adults within the first few months of treatment.”

How can it be seen to be a good thing for anyone but the drug manufacturers themselves that these drugs have been on the market for decades and the bodies in charge of regulating them still can only offer such wishy-washy, non-evidence based statements? The issue of drug-linked violence is one that we as a society need to start discussing and acting on soon, otherwise we will continue to let the status quo be ruled not by doctors or patients or their loved ones, and certainly not by the victims of these mass murders, but by the men in the board rooms of these pharmaceutical companies who have been shown time and time again to care about nothing other than their own bottom line.

June 14, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

EFF to Court: U.S. Warrants Don’t Apply to Overseas Emails

Microsoft Fights to Protect Data Held on Servers in Ireland

EFF | June 13, 2014

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has urged a federal court to block a U.S. search warrant ordering Microsoft to turn over a customer’s emails held in an overseas server, arguing that the case has dangerous privacy implications for Internet users everywhere.

The case started in December of last year, when a magistrate judge in New York signed a search warrant seeking records and emails from a Microsoft account in connection with a criminal investigation. However, Microsoft determined that the emails the government sought were on a Microsoft server in Dublin, Ireland. Because a U.S. judge has no authority to issue warrants to search and seize property or data abroad, Microsoft refused to turn over the emails and asked the magistrate to quash the warrant. But the magistrate denied Microsoft’s request, ruling there was no foreign search because the data would be reviewed by law enforcement agents in the U.S.

Microsoft appealed the decision. In an amicus brief in support of Microsoft, EFF argues the magistrate’s rationale ignores the fact that copying the emails is a “seizure” that takes place in Ireland.

“The Fourth Amendment protects from unreasonable search and seizure. You can’t ignore the ‘seizure’ part just because the property is digital and not physical,” said EFF Staff Attorney Hanni Fakhoury. “Ignoring this basic point has dangerous implications – it could open the door to unfounded law enforcement access to and collection of data stored around the world.”

The government has argued that allowing a U.S. judge to order the collection of data stored abroad is necessary, because international storage would make it easy for U.S. Internet companies to avoid complying with search warrants. But Microsoft asserts that the government’s legal theory could hurt U.S. technology companies that are trying to do business internationally. Additionally, EFF argues in its amicus brief that the government’s approach hurts Internet users globally, as it would allow the U.S. to obtain electronic records stored abroad without complying with mutual assistance treaty obligations or other nations’ own laws.

“Microsoft is doing the right thing by pushing back here. It’s great to see a tech giant fighting for its customers,” said Fakhoury.

For the full brief in this case:
https://www.eff.org/document/eff-amicus-brief-support-microsoft

Contact:

Hanni Fakhoury
Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
hanni@eff.org

June 14, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Violence in Ni’lin

International Solidarity Movement | June 14, 2014

Ni’lin, Occupied Palestine – A Red Crescent paramedic, present at the Ni’lin demonstration last week, spoke to ISM about the protest last Friday, 6th June. He explained that the demonstration began as the protesters marched towards the apartheid wall, with Israeli soldiers firing tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets.

IMG_8682-1After just 15 minutes, a 41-year-old Palestinian protester was shot in the leg with a 0.22 live ammunition bullet. The soldiers had been hiding in the olive trees next to the apartheid wall and were unseen by the demonstrators. When a Red Crescent volunteer tried to give the wounded protester medical treatment, after placing a bandage on the bleeding wound, he was attacked by the Israeli soldiers. The soldiers kicked the volunteer and used their guns to beat his face, after the demonstration he was taken to the hospital to receive treatment.

The 41-year-old who was shot by the Israeli military was then arrested and held for two hours, before being ‘handed back’ to the Red Crescent ambulance at the Ni’lin checkpoint. He had received some medical treatment from the Israeli paramedics, but this wasn’t immediate, and he also had wounds, including a cut on his head that required one stitch, where the Israeli forces had beaten him while he was arrested.

The protester is now slowly recovering, the 0.22 bullet fractured his tibia [a bone in his lower leg], and it will be another month before he is healed.

The demonstration yesterday was fortunately less violent, there were no injuries or arrests. However, before the protest could begin, the military moved a long way out from the apartheid wall, pushing the demonstrators deep into their own olive trees. The military fired many tear gas grenades and canisters and some of the protesters suffered from tear gas inhalation, requiring support from Red Crescent paramedics. At least twice during the demonstration, Israeli forces fired tear gas canisters directly at protesters, both highly dangerous and in contravention to Israeli military procedure, which is shooting them up into an arch to lower the impacted velocity.

Ni’lin began demonstrating in 2008, against the apartheid wall’s construction. The protests continued after the wall was completed, and since 2008, five villagers from Ni’lin have been murdered by Israeli forces.

June 14, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Iraqi Sunni scholars: Iraqi rebels, not ISIS, who face the Iraqi army

iraqi-military-armour-helmet-equipment-left-during-retreat-from-mosul-isis

When the Iraqi army fled Mosul, they left much military equipment behind, from personal armor to armored vehicles, rockets launchers and even thermal missiles
MEMO | June 14, 2014

The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) said on Friday that describing the rebels who drove the Iraqi army from several cities as operatives of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is incorrect. They decried the designations as an attempt to abort the uprising in the country.

In the statement reported by the Jordanian Assabeel newspaper, AMSI said that the ISIS label is a clear distortion which does not change the reality that Iraqi rebels are the main component of this uprising.

Meanwhile, the AMSI also denounced the call by an ISIS spokesman for fighters to head towards Karbala and Al-Najaf. They described the call as “irresponsible and objectionable.”

About the routing of the Iraqi army, the statement said: “This is an achievement that will infuriate many parties inside and outside Iraq, including those with external agendas that harmed the country for years.”

Despite claims that it was the ISIS which took over the cities and towns, several Iraqi sources have pointed out that tribal rebels as well as other Iraqi fighters constitute the main force currently fighting the Iraqi army, in addition to some affiliated to ISIS.

June 14, 2014 Posted by | Deception | , | Leave a comment

Ukraine to halt gas imports from Russia

The BRICS Post | June 14, 2014

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk has ordered a halt to natural gas imports from Russia from June 16 after the two countries failed to resolve their gas price dispute, the Ukrainian government said Friday.

“By its deliberate unilateral refusal to settle the conflict, Russia has been undermining the energy security of Ukraine and the European Union,” Yatsenyuk was quoted by the government press agency.

Yatsenyuk had also instructed the country’s Justice Ministry and state-run energy company Naftogaz to complete preparations to file a lawsuit with the Stockholm arbitration court over the dispute, the press service said in a statement.

Moreover, he asked the National Regulatory Commission to set “economically justified” tariffs for the transit of Russian gas through Ukrainian territory, it said.

Earlier in the day, Naftogaz Chairman Andrey Kobolev said Kiev was ready to compromise with Russia on gas issues, offering to pay a “compromise temporary price” of $326 per 1,000 cubic meters for Russian gas deliveries for the next 18 months.

Moscow currently charges Ukraine $485, but Kiev claims a fair price would be $268.

The two sides have been locked in dispute for three years over a 2009 contract, under which they agreed to tie the price of gas to the international spot price for oil.

Maenwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry sent a note of protest to Ukraine over alleged border violation by Ukrainian soldiers, an official statement said Friday.

“The state border was violated by armed units, as infantry fighting vehicles crossed the border. An attempt was made to defy Russian border guards’ orders,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

An infantry fighting vehicle of Ukrainian armed forces crossed the Russian state border in the Rostov region of southwestern Russia earlier in the day, according to the Itar-Tass news agency. Russian border guards detained the vehicle and its crewmen retreated. No arms was used and no casualties reported.

An investigation is underway although Kiev is yet to respond to the Russian reports.

June 14, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment