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US Paratroopers Arrive in Ukraine as Fighting Intensifies in Donbass

Sputnik | 14.04.2015

After what could essentially be called a 1,100 mile military parade through Eastern Europe, US paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade have arrived in Ukraine to commence Operation Fearless Guardian.

It comes as Ukrainian hacking group CyberBerkut released a long list of foreign military inspectors set to arrive in Ukraine in April.

The convoy, consisting of 50 paratroops and 25 vehicles, disembarked from Vicenza, Italy. After traveling through Austria, as well as NATO allies Germany and Poland, the military caravan arrived in Yavoriv, Ukraine on Friday.

“This assistance is part of our ongoing efforts to help sustain Ukraine’s defense and internal security operations,” Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez told the Hill when the operation was first announced.

Operation Fearless Guardian is the codename given to US efforts to train the Ukrainian National Guard. Spanning a six-month period, the exercises will begin later this month. While 300 US soldiers will take part, the convoy delivered equipment as well.

“This equipment will provide maintenance support as well as troop and general cargo transport to and from training areas,” Captain P.J. Hartman said in a press release from the US Army.

Ukrainian media has reported that the training will conclude with the US military trainers handing over ammunition, though US Army Europe spokesman Donald Wrenn told Newsweek, “[W]e at Army Europe are not aware of any ammunition being provided following the training.”

Long planned, the mission was originally meant to begin last month, but it was delayed after the signing of the second ceasefire agreement in Minsk.

The convoy arrives amid renewed violence in the country’s east. Monitors with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe reported evidence of fighting on Sunday, including tank rounds and machine gun fire. Ceasefire breaches last week left three independence supporters dead and five others injured.

Fearless Guardian is just the latest in a series of steps taken by Washington which contradicts its message of diplomacy over violence. The US has so far provided over $120 million in non-lethal military aid, including 230 Humvees and unarmed Raven drones.

“While we continue to believe that there is no military resolution to this crisis, Ukraine has the right to defend itself,” Lainez said last month.

On Tuesday, Canada also announced it would deploy 200 troops to Ukraine to assist in the training exercises, while the UK has already sent a number of military instructors.

During a TV interview last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned about an increase in Western military presence in Ukraine.

“Provocateurs in Kiev and those who support the ‘party of war’ might attempt to cook something up in the hopes of inflaming world public opinion, resulting in weapons flowing into Ukraine,” Lavrov said. “We must keep a close eye on this.”

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , | Leave a comment

NATO plans amount to violation of NPT: Russian envoy

Press TV – April 16, 2015

Russia says the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is preparing the ground for the use of nuclear weapons by non-nuclear countries in contradiction to the Western military alliance’s obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

“NATO, contrary to the obligations taken under the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, is still conducting preparations for the use of nuclear weapons by countries that are non-nuclear states,” Alexander Grushko, Russia’s envoy to NATO, said at the Fourth Moscow International Security Conference on Thursday.

The NPT, which was ratified in 1970, constitutes the cornerstone of global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to open up access to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Non-nuclear signatories to the treaty have agreed not to seek to develop or acquire nuclear arms.

The Russian official further accused the military bloc of seeking to revive the Cold War ideology.

Meanwhile, Russian Defense Minister General Sergei Shoigu told the conference that NATO military exercises in the Arctic and Eastern Europe are against Russia.

The minister also warned that the participation of NATO’s non-nuclear states in the drills stimulate “the use of US tactical nuclear weapons” in violation of the NPT.

In February, NATO defense ministers agreed to increase from 13,000 soldiers to 30,000 the size of the alliance’s rapid reaction force. They also announced plans to set up six new command posts in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria.

The Western military bloc has over the past year increased its presence and conducted several drills in Eastern Europe amid the crisis in Ukraine. Moscow, however, has repeatedly condemned NATO’s exercises and military buildup near Russia’s borders.

Moscow-West relations have been extremely tense in recent months. The West accuses Moscow of supporting pro-Russia forces in eastern Ukraine, an allegation strongly denied by the Kremlin.

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

What the Hell Are We Doing in Yemen?

By Sheldon Richman | Free Association | April 16, 2015

The U.S. government has charged into another civil war in the Middle East. When you find yourself repeatedly asking, “Will they ever learn?” the answer may be that the decision-makers have no incentive to do things differently. What looks like failure may be the intended outcome. Quagmires have their benefits — to the ruling elite — if American casualties are minimized.

The Obama administration is assisting Saudi Arabia in its bombing of Yemen, creating — in concert with the Saudi embargo — a humanitarian catastrophe in the Middle East’s poorest country. Civilians are dying, and what infrastructure the country has is being destroyed.

Why? Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States won’t “stand by while the region is destabilized.” Kerry is a veteran, and presumably a student, of America’s Indochina war. So he must know that bombing is a terrible way to prevent destabilization. Kerry isn’t stupid — but that means he’s a liar and a demagogue.

Note that he says “the region,” not “Yemen.” Why would a civil war in Yemen affect the region? Because according to the official narrative, faithfully carried by most of the news media, Yemen is under siege by agents of Iran, the Houthis.

Iran today serves the same purpose the Soviet Union, or the International Communist Conspiracy, served from the end of World War II until 1989-91, when the Soviet empire collapsed. Iran is the all-purpose arch enemy on which virtually any evil can be blamed. So the war party and its Saudi and Israeli allies tell us every day that Iran is on the march, controlling capitals throughout the Middle East: Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, and now Sana’a.

But this is absurd. Iran is not on the march. George W. Bush knowingly delivered Baghdad to Iran-friendly Iraqi Shiites in 2003. The Assad regime in Syria is a long-time Iranian ally that Obama and his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, declared open season on, emboldening al-Qaeda and its more-virulent mutation, ISIS. Iran’s friends in Lebanon, the political party Hezbollah, formed itself in response to Israel’s 1982 invasion and long occupation. None of these demonstrate an aggressive Iran. A better explanation is that those alliances help Iran cope with the American encirclement. (Recall: the CIA overthrew Iran’s democratic government in 1953 and was complicit in Iraq’s 1980s offensive war against Iran, in which Saddam Hussein used U.S.-facilitated chemical weapons. Since then, U.S. presidents and Israel’s government have attacked Iran in many ways: economic, cyber, proxy-terrorist, and covert.)

And what of Yemen, where the Houthis drove out the U.S.-backed autocratic president while also fighting declared enemies of the United States, Sunni al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Yemeni affiliate of ISIS? Yes, the Houthis practice a kind of Shiite Islam, Zaidi, but it differs importantly from Iranian Shiism. In fact, the Houthis are merely the latest manifestation of a long-oppressed Yemeni religious minority seeking autonomy from the central government. After years of being frustrated, lied to, and double-crossed, it finally moved on that government. Say what you will about the group, but don’t call it an agent of Iran.

Saudi Arabia sees Iran as a menace, but the kingdom is hardly credible, and the Obama administration is likely to be placating the royal family now that a nuclear deal with Iran may be at hand. As independent researcher Jonathan Marshall notes, “Decades before Iran became an enemy, however, Saudi Arabia began intervening in its southern neighbor [Yemen]. Besides grabbing land, the Saudis poured vast sums of money into Yemen to promote its extreme brand of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. In 2009, it invaded northern Yemen to attack the Houthis, unsuccessfully.”

Marshall adds, “Washington has also inserted itself in Yemen’s civil conflicts for decades.”

Of course Washington has been killing Yemenis with drones — not all of them even “suspected terrorists” — since 2001, when the corrupt and oppressive government in Sana’a became an ally in the “war on terror.”

“Yemen’s government repeatedly used U.S. military aid to support an all-out assault against the Houthis (“Operation Scorched Earth”),” Marshall writes, “causing extensive civilian casualties.”

As we should know by now, U.S. intervention is no innocent mistake.

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Syrian Rebels Caught in ‘False-Flag’ Kidnapping

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | April 16, 2015

In December 2012, Syria’s U.S.-backed “moderate” rebels pulled off a false-flag kidnapping and “rescue” of NBC’s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel and his crew, getting the crime blamed on a militia tied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a propaganda scam that NBC played along with despite having evidence of the truth.

On Wednesday, Engel, who had blamed an Assad-linked Shiite militia in reports both for NBC and Vanity Fair, acknowledged that a new examination of the case persuaded him that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia.” He added that the kidnappers “put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite shabiha militiamen.”

According to an account published by the New York Times on Thursday – in its “Business Day” section – NBC executives had evidence from the beginning that the actual kidnappers were part of “a Sunni criminal element affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, the loose alliance of rebels opposed to Mr. Assad.”

The Free Syrian Army has been the principal rebel force supported by the U.S. government which, in April 2013, several months after Engel’s high-profile ordeal, earmarked $123 million in aid to the group to carry out its war against Assad’s government.

The other significance of the Syrian rebels’ successful false-flag kidnapping/rescue of Engel is that it may have encouraged them to sponsor other events that would be blamed on the Syrian government and excite the U.S. government and media to intervene militarily against Assad.

On Aug. 21, 2013, a mysterious Sarin gas attack outside Damascus killed several hundred people, causing U.S. officials, journalists and human rights activists to immediately leap to the conclusion that Assad was responsible and that he had crossed President Barack Obama’s “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and thus deserved U.S. military retaliation.

Within days, this political-media hysteria brought the United States to the verge of a sustained bombing campaign against the Syrian military before contrary evidence began emerging suggesting that extremist elements of the Syrian rebel force may have deployed the Sarin as a false-flag event. Obama pulled back at the last moment, infuriating America’s influential neoconservatives who had long put “regime change” in Syria near the top of their to-do list.

In retrospect, the aborted U.S. bombing campaign, if carried out, might well have so devastated the Syrian military that the gates of Damascus would have fallen open to the two most powerful rebel armies, Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the hyper-brutal Islamic State, meaning that the black flag of Islamic terrorism might have been raised over one of the Mideast’s most important capitals.

Dangers of Bad Journalism

The revelations about Engel’s staged kidnapping/rescue also illuminate the dangers of biased mainstream U.S. journalism in which the big news organizations take sides in a conflict overseas and shed even the pretense of professional objectivity.

In the case of Syria, the major U.S. media put on blinders for many months to pretend that Assad was opposed by “moderate” rebels until it became impossible to deny that the dominant rebel forces were Al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front and the Islamic State. In late September 2013, many of the U.S.-backed, supposedly “moderate” rebels realigned themselves with Al-Qaeda’s affiliate.

In the case of Ukraine, U.S. journalists have put on their blinders again so as not to notice that the U.S.-backed coup regime in Kiev has relied on neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists to wage an “anti-terrorist operation” against ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the overthrow of their elected President Viktor Yanukovych. When it comes to Ukraine, the more than 5,000 deaths – mostly ethnic Russians in the east – are all blamed on Russian President Vladimir Putin. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Seeing No Neo-Nazi Militias in Ukraine.”]

These biased storylines – with the “U.S. side” wearing white hats and the other side wearing black hats – are not only bad journalism but invite atrocities because the “U.S. side” knows that the U.S. mainstream media will reflexively blame any horrors on the black-hatted “bad guys.”

In the case of Engel’s staged kidnapping/rescue, the New York Times belatedly reexamined the case not in the context of a disinformation campaign designed to excite war against Syria’s Assad but as a follow-up to disclosures that NBC’s longtime anchor Brian Williams had exaggerated the danger he was in while covering the Iraq War in 2003 – explaining the story’s placement in the business section where such media articles often go.

The most serious journalistic offense by NBC in this case appeared to be that it was aware of the behind-the-scenes reality – that individuals associated with the U.S.-backed rebels were likely responsible – but still let Engel go on the air to point the finger of blame in Assad’s direction.

The Times reported that the kidnapping “group, known as the North Idlib Falcons Brigade, was led by two men, Azzo Qassab and Shukri Ajouj, who had a history of smuggling and other crimes. … NBC executives were informed of Mr. Ajouj and Mr. Qassab’s possible involvement during and after Mr. Engels’s captivity, according to current and former NBC employees and others who helped search for Mr. Engel, including political activists and security professionals.

“Still, the network moved quickly to put Mr. Engel on the air with an account blaming Shiite captors and did not present the other possible version of events. … NBC’s own assessment during the kidnapping had focused on Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj, according to a half-dozen people involved in the recovery effort.

“NBC had received GPS data from the team’s emergency beacon that showed it had been held early in the abduction at a chicken farm widely known by local residents and other rebels to be controlled by the Sunni criminal group.

“NBC had sent an Arab envoy into Syria to drive past the farm, according to three people involved in the efforts to locate Mr. Engel, and engaged in outreach to local commanders for help in obtaining the team’s release. These three people declined to be identified, citing safety considerations.

“Ali Bakran, a rebel commander who assisted in the search, said in an interview that when he confronted Mr. Qassab and Mr. Ajouj with the GPS map, ‘Azzo and Shukri both acknowledged having the NBC reporters.’ Several rebels and others with detailed knowledge of the episode said that the safe release of NBC’s team was staged after consultation with rebel leaders when it became clear that holding them might imperil the rebel efforts to court Western support.

“Abu Hassan, a local medic who is close to the rebel movement, and who was involved in seeking the team’s release, said that when the kidnappers realized that all the other rebels in the area were working to get the captives out, they decided to create a ruse to free them and blame the kidnapping on the Assad regime. ‘It was there that the play was completed,’ he said, speaking of the section of road Mr. Engel and the team were freed on.

“Thaer al-Sheib, another local man connected with the rebel movement who sought the NBC team, said that on the day of the release ‘we heard some random shots for less than a minute coming from the direction of the farm.’ He said that Abu Ayman, the rebel commander credited with freeing the team, is related by marriage to Mr. Ajouj, and that he staged the rescue.”

The Sarin Mystery

While it’s impossible to determine whether the successful scam about Engel’s kidnapping/rescue influenced the thinking of other Syrian rebels to sponsor a false-flag attack using Sarin, some of the same propaganda factors applied – with the U.S. news media jumping to conclusions about Assad’s responsibility for the Sarin deaths and then ridiculing any doubters.

Yet, like the Engel kidnapping affair, there were immediate reasons to doubt the “group think” on the Sarin attack, especially since Assad had just invited United Nations inspectors to Syria to investigate what he claimed was an earlier use of chemical weapons by the rebels. As the inspectors were unpacking their bags in Damascus, the Sarin attack occurred in a Damascus suburb, a provocation that quickly forced the inspectors to address the new incident instead.

The inspectors were under extraordinary U.S. pressure to implicate Assad — especially after Secretary of State John Kerry described a massive Sarin attack using multiple rockets that he said could only have come from a Syrian military base. But the inspectors only found one crudely made Sarin-laden rocket – and when rocket experts examined it, they estimated that it could only travel a couple of kilometers, meaning it was likely fired from rebel-controlled territory. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Collapsing Syria-Sarin Case.”]

Even as the evidence implicating the Syrian government evaporated, the mainstream U.S. news media and many wannabe important bloggers continued to defend the earlier “group think” on the Sarin attack and reject the possibility that the sainted rebels had done it. But the false-flag Engel kidnapping/rescue shows that such propaganda stunts were in the rebels’ bag of tricks.

~

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Two Ukraine journalists killed in Kiev, Poroshenko suspects ‘provocation’

RT | April 16, 2015

Oles Buzina (Image from wikipedia.org)

Oles Buzina (Image from wikipedia.org)

Opposition journalist and writer Oles Buzina was assassinated near his house in Kiev. The police believe it could have been a contract killing. It follows hot on the heels of the vicious murder of another Ukrainian journalist, Sergey Sukhobok.

Oles Buzina, 45, oppositional journalist and former editor-in-chief of Segodnya newspaper, was killed in the yard of his house in the Ukrainian capital on Thursday, according to the counselor of the Minister of Internal Affairs.

MP Anton Gerashenko wrote on his Facebook page that unknown people shot at Buzina from a car with Latvian or Belarusian license plates, adding, “The killing of anti-Maidan eyewitnesses seems to be going on.”

Buzina, author of several controversial books, recently quit his newspaper job, explaining he had worked under heavy censorship, had no rights to influence human resources policy, or to “talk to the press or participate in talk shows.”

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko called for law-enforcement agencies to investigate the cases of Buzina and Oleg Kalashnikov, a former MP and active anti-Maidan activist, who was killed in his flat in Kiev on Wednesday, “as soon as possible.” Poroshenko said these crimes were “a conscious provocation,” targeting “the destabilization of the political situation in Ukraine.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences to the family and colleagues of the dead journalist. “It is not the first political assassination – we have seen a series of such killings in Ukraine,” Putin said at his annual Q&A session on Thursday.

Investigators are currently working at the site of the murder. The police believe it was a contract killing, RIA Novosti reported.

Following Buzina’s death, police “immediately” arrested two suspects, accused of killing another journalist Sergey Sukhobok. Sukhobok was shot and killed outside his house on Monday night, also in Kiev. “The court has decided on pre-trial restrictions,” said a statement on the Obcom website founded by Sukhobok.

Police are looking into several motives ranging from political activities to debts.

In February, the European Union called for stricter observance of freedom of speech in the media by all sides in the Ukrainian conflict.

“We continue to condemn and call for an end to attacks on journalists notably in eastern Ukraine, including killings and abductions,” the statement read.

Read more: Series of ‘bizarre suicides’ & murders: Former Ukrainian MP shot dead in Kiev

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 3 Comments

FDA So Slow to Respond to GAO Recommendations about Secret Food Additives that It’s like not Responding at all

By Noel Brinkerhoff and Steve Straehley | AllGov | April 16, 2015

In 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examined the process used by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for regulating food additives and came up with six ways the FDA could improve this function. Five years later, FDA officials have satisfied only one of the GAO suggestions.

“It’s really clear that we have no basis to make almost any conclusions about the safety of the current food supply,” Laura MacCleery, an attorney with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, told the Center for Public Integrity. “We don’t know what people are eating.”

The GAO report even stated that the FDA’s oversight process does not help ensure the safety of all new food ingredients, and it criticized companies’ ability to use new added ingredients deemed generally recognized as safe (GRAS) without informing federal food regulators.

GRAS came about as a way to exempt simple ingredients in long use, such as table salt, from FDA review after food regulations were strengthened in the 1950s. However more items are added to the list each year as manufacturers use the GRAS list as a loophole to avoid having their products evaluated by the FDA.

The recommendation (“Develop a strategy to help ensure the safety of engineered nanomaterials that companies market as GRAS substances without the agency’s knowledge”) resulted in the FDA issuing a final guidance on nanotechnology last June, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

A second recommendation to develop a strategy to finalize a 1997 proposed rule that defines how companies can voluntarily submit safety determinations to the FDA for a cursory review will be completed by August 2016, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

The GAO’s four other recommendations were:

-Develop a strategy to require any company that conducts a GRAS determination to provide FDA with basic information, including the ingredient’s identity and intended uses, and post the information on the agency’s website.

-Develop a strategy to minimize the potential for conflicts of interest in companies’ GRAS determinations.

-Develop a strategy to monitor the appropriateness of companies’ GRAS determinations through random audits or some other means.

-Develop a strategy to conduct reconsiderations of the safety of GRAS substances in a more systematic manner including responding to citizen petitions in a timely manner.

To Learn More:

Why the FDA Doesn’t Really Know What’s in Your Food (by Erin Quinn and Chris Young, Center for Public Integrity)

Loopholes and Weak Enforcement Lead to Unapproved Chemicals Added to Foods (by Noel Brinkerhoff and Danny Biederman, AllGov )

35% of Food Additives Deemed Harmless were Evaluated by Manufacturer or Contractor Hired by Manufacturer (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov )

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

Series of ‘bizarre suicides’ & murders: Former Ukrainian MP shot dead in Kiev

RT | April 16, 2015

​A former Ukrainian MP and active anti-Maidan activist, Oleg Kalashnikov, has been killed in his flat in Kiev. His killing is the latest in a series of odd deaths plaguing former government officials and ex-President Yanukovich’s party members.

The 52-year-old was found dead at his residence in Kiev on Wednesday evening. His death was “caused by a gunshot,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement announcing a police inquiry. Ukraine’s criminal investigation chief Vasily Paskal, took the investigation under personal control and promised to share motives and the preliminary results of the probe with reporters as soon as they become available.

The investigation is focused on five possible motives for the crime, according to Interior Minister’s senior adviser, Anton Gerashchenko.

So far the investigation considers the primary possible motive behind the killing to be Kalashnikov’s “political activity” linked with his “participation in the organization and financing” of counter-revolutionary events in Ukraine. Gerashchenko emphasized that Kalashnikov “had knowledge” of the anti-Maidan movement that resisted the coup last year and continues to challenge new authorities in Kiev.

“Without any doubt the deceased knew a lot about who and in what way financed anti-Maidan, which cost Yanukovich and his camarilla several million hryvnias per day. He takes these secrets with him to the grave,” Gerashchenko said, also listing some other leads on his Facebook page. Business debts, personal enmity, burglary attempt and “other versions of murder”are listed among other possible motives.

Ukrainian media reported that before the murder Kalashnikov received threats of physical violence for his political views, in particular for his drive to defend Ukrainians’ right to widely celebrate the 70th anniversary of WWII victory.

In a letter addressed to his friend before the murder, Kalashnikov allegedly wrote that an “open genocide on dissent, death threats and constant dirty insults” have become the “norm” following his open call to honor the memory of heroes and victims of the Great Patriotic War.

An acting Ukrainian MP and ex-spokesman for the extremist Right Sector group, Borislav Bereza, went further and alleged that Kalashnikov has been eliminated by his “former employers,” who were tying up loose ends, “scared” he could disclose details of their past activities. While part of the secret was “taken to the grave,” some information remained in “electronic form,” Bereza stated.

“A series of bizarre suicides of ex-regionals [Members of the Party of Regions], and now the murder of Kalashnikov, raises questions to law enforcement authorities. I hope that Ukrainian society will get the answers,” Bereza said.

Meanwhile, Oleg Tsarev, parliamentary speaker of the self-proclaimed Novorossiya, agreed that Kalashnikov’s murder is the latest link in a chain of mysterious deaths of former supporters of the Party of Regions.

“Of course, this is a political murder. In Ukraine, it is now extremely difficult to maintain your point of view, not to give up, and to publicly express it,” Tsarev told Lifenews. “Of course, this is a retaliatory murder of the sane.”

The murder is meant as a warning for all those who dare to oppose Kiev government, which can do anything against the opponents, Tsarev believes.

In the past few months, at least eight former Ukrainian government officials died mysterious deaths, with most treated as suicides.

On January 29, former chairman of Kharkov region government, Aleksey Kolesnik, was found hanged.

On February 24, former Party of Regions member Stanislav Melnik died of a gunshot with his death treated as suicide.

On February 25, several hours before his trial, the Mayor of Melitopol Sergey Valter was found hanged leaving no suicide note.

The next day, February 26, deputy chief of Melitopol police, Aleksandr Bordyuga, who reportedly acted as Valter’s lawyer, was found dead in his garage.

On February 26, a former MP and ex-chairman of Zaporozhye Regional State Administration was found dead with a gun wound to his neck. His death is being investigated as a suicide.

On February 28, former member of the Party of Regions, Mikhail Chechetov, jumped from the window of his 17th floor apartment in Kiev, leaving a suicide note.

On March 14, a 32-year-old prosecutor Sergey Melnichuk fell from a window of a 9th floor apartment in Odessa.

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , | Leave a comment

Iran has the right to protect itself

By Vladimir KOZIN | Oriental Review | April 16, 2015

On April 13, 2015 Vladimir Putin lifted Russia’s  ban on shipping S-300 antiaircraft defensive missile systems to Iran, self-imposed in 2010. Moscow and Tehran originally signed a contract to supply these systems back in 2007. At the time, the idea was  to sell a number of Russia-manufactured S-300 divisions to Iran.

The term “self-imposed ban” is used here deliberately. UN Security Council Resolution 1929 from June 9, 2010 placed no restrictions of any kind on transferring S-300 systems to Iran. Paragraph 8 of the resolution introduced a “weapons” embargo on direct and indirect shipments to Iran of “… any battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems as defined for the purpose of the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms …” S-300 antiaircraft systems, whether air-defense or antiballistic, are not mentioned in the resolution in any way. In addition, that UN Register does not stipulate that countries that manufacture air- or missile-defense systems should be banned from shipping them to any other states.

The negative reaction to Moscow’s April 13 decision from the US and many of its NATO allies, as well as Israel, raises a lot of questions. It seems almost as though they inhabit a different universe and know nothing of the real world.

First, as already noted, the existing international legal norms have not and do not prohibit shipments of air- and missile-defense equipment to other states as part of trade in conventional arms. For example, the United States has supplied 12 different countries (both NATO members and non-members) with similar Patriot systems, as well as mobile TMD systems to another three states, and the even more effective and long-range Standard missile-defense systems to four more nations. In 2015 and 2018 Romania and Poland will be added to that list. It is common knowledge that the six states in the Persian Gulf where Iran is located have received various ABM systems from the US and intend to purchase updated versions of them in the future. Several NATO states have supplied Patriot antiaircraft systems to Turkey.

Second, the United States is not only moving its air- and missile-defense systems under its direct control to other countries, but is also positioning its own national, comparable armaments far beyond its borders, in Romania and Poland for example, while preventing those countries’ military experts from controlling the future operational ABM systems in, respectively, Deveselu and Redzikowo. But the S-300 and other comparable systems that may be sent to Iran will be fully and entirely under that country’s direct management and control.

Third, Washington has provided significant military assistance to Israel, helping it to develop and establish its own increasingly powerful air- and missile-defense system. That apparatus is technically superior to the existing Iranian versions.

Fourth, Russian S-300 systems and their subsequent variations, as well as the American systems mentioned above that are functionally similar, are purely defensive, not offensive weapons. In this context it must be kept in mind that offensive weapons can also be loaded into the silos that hold the defensive interceptors for the US missile-defense system in Romania and Poland. This means cruise missiles, and soon will also include exceptionally accurate, long-range hypersonic missiles. The proposed shipments of air- and missile-defense equipment to Iran will not pose a threat to either Israel or any other state in the Middle East.

But nowhere on earth is anyone using legal postulates to suggest banning US shipments of various categories of antiaircraft missiles to nearly two dozen other countries. Demands like that are generally tied to geopolitical considerations. But this is an example of a completely unfair double standard: why is one permitted to supply such weapons systems while another may not?

There is yet another factor to be considered – at the present time Israel has already developed nuclear weapons and possesses its own air defense and resources to intercept ballistic and other missiles, but Iran has not yet developed nuclear weapons of its own and does not yet command effective air- and missile-defense systems. As the United States, its leading NATO allies and Israel are continuously threatening to use military force against Iran, the current Iranian leadership’s pursuit of up-to-date air-defense and antiballistic countermeasures is actually a reasonable, logical, and opportune approach. Iran has every right to defend itself. For this reason, that nation’s leaders hope to receive these Russian air- and missile-defense systems before the end of this year. Their request is welcomed in Moscow and will be satisfied in time.

And one final important point: Russia’s decision to rescind her previous embargo against supplying Iran with S-300 antiaircraft systems (or some newer defensive systems of this class) is final and “not subject to appeal.” Moscow is firmly convinced that no restrictions on this exist any longer, nor can they exist.

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 1 Comment

Ed Miliband And The Jews

By Gilad Atzmon | April 15, 2015

Just a few month ago, in a speech in front of the Labour Friends Of Israel Lobby group, Ed Miliband – the Labour party’s current leader, produced one of the most embarrassing statements in the history of modern British politics:

“I want you to know”, Miliband told The Lobby, “that if I become Prime Minister in less than a year’s time, I will be proud to do so as a friend of Israel, a Jew and, most of all, someone who feels so proud to be part of the community gathered here today.” 

I guess that many British people would actually expect their Labour party candidate to be primarily a ‘proud Brit’ as well as a friend of the Kingdom. I would have loved to believe that such a clumsy statement on Miliband’s part would be enough for the Labour party to expel the man from its ranks. After all, the above statement proves that more than anything, Ed is much more ‘Blue & White’ than ‘simply Red,’ let alone a British patriot.

Surprise surprise, Labour didn’t react at all. Even the British public, known for its tolerance, was very forgiving. Funny enough, it is the Jews who actually dumped Ed Miliband, they do not believe him nor do they like him at all.

A poll published last week in the Jewish Chronicle revealed that an overwhelming majority of Jews prefer the Conservatives over Labour. 69 percent of Jews questioned said they were going to vote for David Cameron’s Tories. Only 22 percent sided with Labour and Ed Miliband.

Rather than voting for Labour under the leadership of the man who vowed ‘as a Jew’ to be a ‘friend of Israel,’ our British Jews actually want a ‘Goy’ to dwell at 10 Downing Street. How strange? Or is it…

A few analysts have tried this week to grasp this peculiar Jewish collective attitude. They wondered why are British Jews so opposed to the first Jewish candidate with a realistic chance of becoming the country’s leader?

Haaretz’ writer Anshel Pfeffer suggested that “the most obvious reason being given to this question is that while Cameron is widely regarded as ‘the most pro-Israel prime minister in British history,’ Miliband is considered indifferent at best and by many as downright hostile to the Jewish state.”

However, Pfeffer suggested correctly that Miliband is far from being an enemy of Israel. As we read above, Miliband is a staunch supporter of The Jewish State. “He [Milliband] has repeatedly said he is committed to Israel’s right to exist in security and strenuously voiced opposition to any form of anti-Israel boycott.”

Pfeffer is kind enough to provide us with a further insight into Jewish identity, psychic, and ideological attitude. “Historically, the majority of British Jews supported Labour because they saw the left wing as staunch opponents of any form of racism, of which they were so often the targets. In the last quarter of the 20th century, as they became better integrated and wealthier, they began drifting towards the Conservatives, particularly when Margaret Thatcher, who represented the north London Finchley constituency, became party leader.”

What Pfeffer is saying is pretty simple. In the old days, Jews supported Labour not because they were ‘anti racist,’ but just because they didn’t like being persecuted as Jews. But as they moved up the ladder, they actually decided to support the party that is committed to big money and the fight against Anti Semitism. With 80% of our Conservatives MPs being CFI members (Conservative Friends of Israel), the Tory party provides all Jewish needs – it is good for business but it is also united against one kind of racism, namely ‘Anti Semitism.’

Pfeffer correctly states that “the last three prime ministers, all proud Christians, have all felt very much at home with the Jewish community. Miliband came over at best as a polite but awkward stranger.” By now this is easy to explain.  The majority of British Jews prefer a ‘Sabbos Goy’ to run the country on their behalf; a politician that can be pushed and squeezed, a person that would take the country to the next Zionist global conflict without raising too many questions. A person that would support Israel when support is requested by The Lobby, a PM that would react to the imaginary fear of Anti Semitism even before the Jews themselves would sense such a fear. Only a dedicated Sabbos Goy can provide the goods. But Miliband will not be able to satisfy any of these demands. For the Jews, his Jewishness is clearly an obstacle. It only means that he will work hard to convey an image of impartiality and reason and, as we know, these two do not agree with Zion.

This Jewish attitude is far from being new, it is in fact as old as the Jews themselves. The Book Of Esther teaches Jews how to manipulate, mobilize and interfere with their rulers rather than becoming the rulers themselves. British Jews need a leader who will easily succumb to their lobby pressure. They suspect that Ed may be more resistant than any other candidate and truth must be told, they may as well be correct.

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 1 Comment

FBI won’t release video of police shooting of black teenager

Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by police in October 2014.

Press TV – April 16, 2015

The FBI and Chicago police department are refusing to release a video of the shooting death of a 17-year-old black man, who was killed by a police officer last year.

Chicago police and the FBI are withholding the dash-cam video because it is “central to their investigation,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was quoted as saying by the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Authorities said they were “confident this video will be released at the appropriate time when their investigation is complete.”

Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times in October 2014 when he allegedly brandished a knife and refused to drop it when confronted by officers. The city has approved a $5 million settlement with the teen’s family.

Some members of the Chicago City Council fear releasing the video could spark the kind of angry protests seen elsewhere in the United States in recent months.

“Regaining the trust of the community, particularly the black community, starts with honesty and hiding a potential execution is the kind of thing that destroys trust,” said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago.

The shooting has not generated the same kind of national attention as other recent high-profile confrontations involving officers. The Chicago police department has long been dogged by a reputation for police brutality.

The officer who killed McDonald is not being named but he has been stripped of his police powers and put on desk duty. No decision has been made on whether he will face criminal charges in the case.

Several videos showing police brutality have been released in recent weeks. A newly released video shows a police officer in Arizona intentionally running over an armed suspect with his vehicle last month.

Police Officer Michael Rapiejko slammed his car into 36-year-old Mario Valencia which was recorded in the dashboard camera that was released on Tuesday. Valencia was taken to a hospital in serious condition but released two days later into police custody.

Another cell phone video was released last week showing an officer in North Charleston, South Carolina firing multiple times at an African-American man as he ran away, sparking outrage around the country.

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Africa’s Cuba: Eritrea Endures 13 Years of Illegal Occupation and Sanctions

By Elias Amare | Black Agenda Report | April 15, 2015

Monday, April 13, was the 13th anniversary of the ruling of the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC), and the continued illegal occupation of sovereign Eritrean territories by Ethiopia since then. Also, it’s been well over five years since the US engineered unjust sanctions at the UN Security Council against Eritrea in late 2009.

In a “Global Action Day of Resistance,” Eritreans and their friends worldwide held rallies, online petitions, cycling tours, etc., to protest these injustices against Eritrea, a country in the Horn of Africa that many progressive analysts are recognizing as the “Cuba of Africa.” In the US, Eritreans in the Bay Area, California, held a protest rally in Oakland.

In Europe, more than twenty five cyclists from ten different countries (Canada, Denmark, Eritrea, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK), starting in Goteborg, Sweden, stopping in over ten German and three Swiss cities, rode over 1700 km, highlighting along the way the truth about Eritrea and its people and how, despite repeatedly being wronged by the west, the country is forging forward and has become an oasis of peace and harmony in the Horn of Africa.

The demands of this Eritrean Global Action Day of Resistance are:

An immediate and unconditional implementation of the 13-year old, final and binding, boundary decision and an end to Ethiopia’s illegal occupation of sovereign Eritrean territories, including the town of Badme; and

An end to the illegal UN sanctions imposed on Eritrea in December 2009, which have long been proven to be based on totally fabricated and falsified “evidence” by Ethiopia and its handlers.

Ethiopia’s Occupation: a Threat to Regional Peace

The Algiers Agreement was signed in December, 2000, in Algeria by President Isaias Afwerki for Eritrea and by the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi for Ethiopia and witnessed and guaranteed by Secretary General Kofi Annan on behalf of the United Nations, Senator Reno Serri (EU Special envoy for the Horn of Africa) on behalf of the European Union, President Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria, President Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on behalf of the United States, Secretary General, Salim Ahmed Salim representing the Organization for African Unity (OAU), now the African Union.

The Algiers Agreements, brokered and authored by the US State Department, called for the delimitation and demarcation of the Eritrea Ethiopia border and that punitive actions would be taken against the party that did not abide by its treaty obligations.

The independent and neutral Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) delivered unanimously its final and binding delimitation decision on 13 April, 2002, and because of Ethiopia’s intransigence the Commission, which was ready to demarcate the border physically, was forced to publish its virtual demarcation decision on 30 November, 2007. Eritrea had fully accepted the decisions; Ethiopia, however, has rejected it calling it “totally illegal, unjust, and irresponsible” and has refused to abide by the EEBC’s demarcation directives. Ethiopia, in breach of international law and its obligations under the Algiers Agreement, continues to occupy sovereign Eritrean territories, including the town of Badme, the casus belli for the conflict. As the EEBC had stated it in its final report, “Ethiopia has so persistently maintained a position of non-compliance with its obligations in relation to the Commission.” Furthermore, Ethiopia has failed to comply with the Commission’s Order of 17 July, 2002, that required Ethiopia to “return to Ethiopian territory of those persons in Dembe Mengul who were moved from Ethiopia pursuant to an Ethiopian resettlement program since 13 April, 2002.”

UN Sanctions: a Travesty of Justice

Though the pretext for the unjust UN Security Council sanctions on Eritrea, first on December 23, 2009 (Resolution 1907) and the other one from December 5, 2011 (Resolution 2023), were to “serve” peace and security in Somalia, as the past five years have made clear, punishing innocent Eritrea based on false premises has neither brought peace to Somalia nor security to the Horn of Africa. The very forces that orchestrated lies against Eritrea are still wreaking havoc in the region. Former US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs and veteran Ambassador Herman Cohen said it well a year ago:

“Those of us who know Eritrea well, understand that the Eritrean leadership fears Islamic militancy as much as any other country in the Horn of Africa region. … In view of the absence of any intelligence, real or fabricated, linking Eritrea with Shabaab for over four years, the UN Security Council should terminate sanctions imposed in 2009 by UNSC resolution 1907.”

There is no, and there has never been “intelligence, real or fabricated,” that links Eritrea to any form of extremism in the Horn of Africa other than what the Ethiopians provided the Somalia-Eritrea Monitoring Group. All evidence indicates that most of the fabrication against Eritrea has been generated by Ethiopian operatives at home and abroad, its highly-paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C., and other capitals, as well as the Ethiopian minority regime’s Western enablers.

As for the Somalia-Eritrea Monitoring Group, this is a group that has lots of problems when it comes to credibility. This is a group that cannot “execute its responsibilities and mandate with professionalism, impartiality and objectivity.” It is a Group that is influenced left and right “by political considerations outside of its mandate.”  The disgraceful exits of Dinesh Mahtani (its financial expert), in the fall of 2014, after he was caught red-handed advocating for “regime change” in Eritrea on behalf of the UN, and before that the firing of coordinator Matt Bryden for his dubious behavior as a monitor, are two latest cases that show this monitoring group has completely lost its legitimacy as an impartial UN investigative body.

In fact, the group has completely lost its credibility among many UN Security Council members, including some of its permanent members, Russia and China. In response to the Group’s 2013 report, the Russian Permanent Representative, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, dismissed it as “dishonest and politically motivated.” Besides China and Russia, the Group’s report was also dismissed by Norway, Italy, and South Africa. Even the Somali Government itself has wholesale rejected the Monitoring Group’s report.

Both UNSC Resolutions 1907 (2009) and 2023 (2011) were incubated in the U.S. and hatched in Ethiopia. US Ambassador Donald Yamamoto is quoted by one of the Wikileaked cables admitting that the US had “advised the Prime Minister and his senior leadership … any case against Eritrea should be raised by other countries. Any charges levied by Ethiopia would be viewed only in the context of their border conflict.” The 2011 sanctions were also adopted under the false accusations orchestrated by the US using Ethiopia and Kenya as actors. On the absurd accusation from Ethiopia, Ambassador Vitaly Churkin of Russia said, “the Security Council was not presented with convincing proof of Eritrea’s involvement in that incident. We have not seen the results of any investigation of that incident, if indeed there was one.” On the accusations from Kenya, the UN Monitoring group itself admitted that it “has found no evidence to substantiate allegations that Eritrea supplied Al-Shabaab with arms and ammunition by air in October and November 2011. No evidence to substantiate the allegations that one or more aircraft landed at Baidoa International Airport between 29 October and 3 November 2011, or that Eritrea supplied Al-Shabaab in Baidoa by air with arms and ammunition during the same period.”

This US-Ethiopia conspiracy against Eritrea gets as far as the US giving an approving nod to Ethiopia to employ terrorist groups against Eritrea. One of the Wikileak cables says: “Meles said one option would be to directly support opposition groups that are capable of sending ‘armed propaganda units’ into Eritrea. Meles said that the groups with the most capability to operate inside Eritrea are those ‘that you don’t like from the lowlands, like the Keru’ who he said would be ‘much better able to survive in Eritrea.’” This is a jihadist terrorist group that had murdered a Canadian geologist in cold blood in western Eritrea and is responsible for the March 20, 2015 attempt to sabotage the Canadian owned Bisha gold mine in Eritrea in the vicinity of the area the Americans and Ethiopians were talking about 5 years ago.

All these US hostilities against Eritrea stem from the fact that Eritrea has refused to be subservient to misguided US policies for the region. As Professor Richard Reid, a history professor at SOAS, University of London, put it, US policy is biased in favor of Ethiopia and against Eritrea “for all sorts of reasons” one of them being:

“Eritrea was seen as a bunker state; they were less easy to control. Ethiopia had a more reliable military perhaps. Their policy was more directable and perhaps predictable. Whereas Eritrea, from the mid 1990s, it was clearly seen as unpredictable and couldn’t be relied upon to do certain things that Washington might want to do.”

Denial of Remittance: Violation of Eritrea’s Right to Development

The much talked about 2% Rehabilitation and Development fund that Eritreans in the Diaspora pay, also had nothing to do with Somalia; it has been a target of the US from as far back as 1999 (during the Eritrea-Ethiopia border war). A leaked US diplomatic cable from Asmara makes it clear that the Americans were bent on “disrupting the hard currency supply chain” so that they can “significantly and detrimentally impact the operations of the GSE [Government of the State of Eritrea]”.

We also read in the Wikileak cables that the Americans were strategizing with the Ethiopians on this very evil scheme. As the Late Ethiopian Prime Minister said then, “Isaias’ calculations would be shattered, if the U.S. and others imposed financial sanctions on him and particularly cut off Isaias’ funding from Qatar and other countries and the important funding from the Diaspora in the U.S.” Another Ethiopian official repeats in the Wikileak cables that “cutting off the flow of money to Eritrea was essential. Particularly, remittances from the U.S. were a major source of funding for Eritrea.” The Ethiopian officials were assured by US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Karl Wycoff “that the U.S. remains committed to achieving a UNSC sanctions regime against Asmara and continues to broaden the discussion beyond the P3 and Uganda with a hard push by USUN” and that “USG was also expanding efforts to undercut support for Asmara,” noting for example he had been sent on “a trip to Cairo, Riyadh, Jeddah and other cities both to promote efforts to undercut flows of support to Asmara.”

Despite all these conspiracies and hostilities, however, Eritreans believe a long-term and fruitful relationship between Eritrea and the other nations in the region is essential for maintaining peace and security, and fighting off poverty and extremism in the Horn of Africa. Therefore, Eritreans and their friends are demanding that all progressives urge members of the UN Security Council to do what is moral and ethical: to lift these unjust sanctions against Eritrea.

During the past decade and a half, the priorities of Eritrea have been to achieve food security, eradicate diseases such as malaria, decrease infant and maternal mortality rates and increase access to education to all sectors of the population. Based on its own and other independent evaluations, Eritrea has achieved modest successes in these efforts. However, Ethiopia’s continued occupation of Eritrean territories and a de facto state of war is violating Eritrean people’s right to development, dignity, security and peace. All this has been made possible because the USA and Europe are continuing to bankroll Ethiopia’s defiance and aggression.

Eritreans worldwide are therefore calling on all progressive peace- and justice-loving friends and organizations to support their demands for peace and urge their national governments to reign in the lawless minority regime in Ethiopia that continues to wreak havoc over the lives of the peoples in the Horn of Africa region in general, but the people of Eritrea in particular.

Elias Amare is a journalist/researcher and peace activist based in Asmara, Eritrea. To learn more about Eritrea’s struggle against unjust imperialist sanctions visit http://eritrean-smart.org/

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Economics | , , , , | 1 Comment

Hezbollah: An Outsider’s Inside View

By Brenda Heard

hezbollah.-an-outsiders-inside-view-1Hezbollah: An Outsider’s Inside View is the answer to the question that has been asked for years by the concerned Westerner: who are those people over there and do we really need to be scared of them?

Based on an increasingly inside view of Hezbollah, this book is an opportunity for the Western reader to see for himself what this headline-grabbing group is all about.

Against a backdrop of records documenting the context from which Hezbollah has developed, you are invited to meet the administrators and the sheiks, the leaders and the fighters, the individuals and the families who are Hezbollah.

Written from a Western perspective, this inside view of the Islamic Resistance of Lebanon offers the opportunity to explore the militants at the horizon.

The website supporting this book is http://insidehezbollah.com.

“Hezbollah: An Outsider’s Inside View”  is available as an ebook or as a printed book with free delivery worldwide.  You are encouraged to rate, review, share and discuss it on bookseller websites and on Goodreads.

April 16, 2015 Posted by | Book Review | | Leave a comment