Amnesty International is accusing Israeli forces of using reckless violence in the occupied Palestinian territories. A new report from the human rights group goes as far as to suggest some killings may actually be war crimes.
Abby Martin goes over the strange rituals of secret societies, remarking on the Yale fraternity ‘Skull & Bones’ calling out the surreptitious behavior of two the society’s most famous members including George W Bush and John Kerry.
The reversed horizontal Wolfsangel is an official symbol of Ukraine’s Right Sector, which has been one of the most active forces in Ukraine’s recent unrest.
A hundred years ago Kiev was predominantly a Russian resort, and some central areas have retained this flavour. Now Kiev is patrolled by armed thugs from the Western Ukraine, by fighters from the neo-Nazi – Right Sector, descendants of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Quisling’s troopers, and by their local comrades-in-arms of nationalist persuasion.
Source: IsraelShamir.net
Gen. Leonid Ivashov, the former foreign relations head of the Russian Ministry of Defense and current president of the Academy of Geopolitical Studies.
What is happening in Ukraine and Syria is is a project of the West, a new type of war: in both places you see a clear anti-Russian approach, and as is well known, wars today begin with psychological and information warfare operations. . . Kerry and Obama are encouraging in Kiev what they harshly repress in their country. European leaders break up unauthorized demonstrations with hoses, throwing demonstrators in jail, while in the Ukrainian case they do the exact opposite, and on top of that they threaten Russia. Logically, this is part of information warfare.
Source: Before It’s News
After a fortnight of violent clashes in the name of democracy, Ukraine seems to be falling into a totally different trend. Symbols of victories over Hitler and Napoleon are being torn down, while those glorifying Nazi rule are multiplying.
Source: RT News
Black Sea and surrounding countries.
Now that President Vladimir Putin is no longer tied up with the Olympics, I have no doubt he will use the “interests of Russians” in Crimea as a pretext for supporting the separatist movement there, just as he did with South Ossetia in 2008. Putin does not even need to send troops to Crimea; they are already there, in accordance with a bilateral agreement with Ukraine. Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko had planned to cancel that agreement, but his successor, recently impeached President Viktor Yanukovych, extended it.
Source: The Moscow Times
Tenth Annual Israeli Apartheid Week
UK and US: February 24-March 2
Europe: March 1-8
South Africa: March 10-16
Brazil: March 24-28
Palestine, Arab world and Asia: TBA
Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid policies towards the Palestinians and to build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. Reflecting the global grassroots rejection of Israel’s military and political aggression, IAW was held in more than 200 locations in 2012 and more than 150 cities in 2013.
IAW is an annual international series of events including rallies, lectures, cultural performances, film screenings, multimedia displays and boycott of Israel actions held in cities and on university campuses across the globe.
Find out more at ApartheidWeek.org
Sir Gerald Kaufman, British MP, believes only an international boycott campaign supported by governments will stop Israel from taking the Middle East into yet more wars.
The culpability of the Israelis was demonstrated in the report to the UN by Richard Goldstone following Operation Cast Lead. After his report, he was harassed by Jewish organisations. At the end of a meeting I had with him in New York, his wife said to me, “It is good to meet another self-hating Jew.”
Again and again, Israel seeks to justify the vile injustices that it imposes on the people of Gaza and the West Bank on the grounds of the holocaust. Last week, we commemorated the holocaust; 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza are being penalised with that as the justification. That is unacceptable.
Source: Stop the War Coalition
By Peter Lavelle
The EU’s so-called “crisis plan” for Ukraine is itself a recipe for catastrophe. It is a brokered plan by the wrong people, under extreme (Western) outside pressure, and on behalf of a small group of backward looking and dangerous ideologues.
The idea to return to the constitutional order of 2004 is pointless and truly bizarre. One of the key issues during the Orange Revolution was which institution should predominate – the presidency or parliament. Well, the Ukrainians have now tried both with the same result – failure. Why a parliamentary-centered system will work now is not explained. What is worrisome is the fact that Viktor Yanukovich has agreed to give away to parliament control over the police and security forces. Don’t expect any investigation into extreme violence committed by the rioters. But do expect a witch-hunt against the police and security forces!
The brokered deal calls for a “national unity government” within days. Will this include the Right Sector? How about those who used violence against the legally established constitutional regime? If this is the case, then it is akin to allowing arsonists to become firefighters. While Dmitro Yarosh’s Right Sector controls the streets of Kiev, national unity is an illusion.
Another point is constitutional reform. This is laughable on its face. The opposition (and their riotous thug friends), as well as the EU, have trampled upon the constitution for months. Ukraine has conducted two elections recently (presidential and parliamentary) and been given a clean bill of health from Brussels and Washington. With such blatant abuse of the rule of law in Ukraine, it is hard to believe that ultranationalist bigoted rioters have any use for any constitution.
The deal also includes a presidential election no later than December 2014 (only a few months before the current president’s term expires). However, there must be a new constitution in place before this happens. Again, this does not pass the laugh test. We should expect Ukraine’s eastern and southern region to demand considerable autonomy from Kiev under a new constitution. Western Ukraine will surely object to this. Thus, don’t expect a new constitution soon or a presidential election this year.
Full article at RT Op-Edge
See also: Ukrainian Parliament Appoints Speaker as Acting President
A short-lived truce has broken down in Ukraine as street battles have erupted between anti-government protesters and police. Last night the country’s embattled president and the opposition leaders demanding his resignation called for a truce and negotiations to try to resolve Ukraine’s political crisis. But hours later, armed protesters attempted to retake Independence Square sparking another day of deadly violence. At least 50 people have died since Tuesday in the bloodiest period of Ukraine’s 22-year post-Soviet history. While President Obama has vowed to “continue to engage all sides” a recently leaked audio recording between two top U.S. officials reveal the Obama administration has been secretly plotting with the opposition. We speak to Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University. His most recent book, “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War,” is out in paperback. His latest Nation article is “Distorting Russia: How the American Media Misrepresent Putin, Sochi and Ukraine.”
Source: Democracy Now!
A protester demonstrating in support of Ukraine’s integration in the EU in the center of Kiev
By Paul Craig Roberts
As I reported on February 12, “Washington Orchestrated Protests Are Destabilizing Ukraine,” Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, a rabid Russophobe and neoconservative warmonger, told the National Press Club last December that the US has “invested” $5 billion in organizing a network to achieve US goals in Ukraine in order to give “Ukraine the future it deserves.” Nuland is the Obama regime official who was caught red-handed naming the members of the Ukrainian government Washington intends to impose on the Ukrainian people once the paid protesters have unseated the current elected and independent government.
What Nuland means by Ukraine’s future under EU overlordship is for Ukraine to be looted like Latvia and Greece and to be used by Washington as a staging ground for US missile bases against Russia.
As Karl Marx wrote, money turns everything into a commodity that is bought and sold. I wouldn’t be surprised if some protesters are working both sides of the street.
Of course, not all of the protesters are paid. There are plenty of gullible dupes in the streets who think they are protesting Ukraine government corruption. I have heard from several. There is little doubt that the Ukraine government is corrupt. What government isn’t? Government corruption is universal, but it is easy to go from the frying pan into the fire. Ukrainian protesters seem to think that they can escape corruption by joining the EU. Obviously, these gullible dupes are unfamiliar with the report on EU corruption issued February 3 by the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs. The report says that a business-political nexus of corruption affects all 28 EU member countries and costs the EU economies $162.2 billion per annum. According to the World Bank, the economic cost of EU corruption is almost as large as the size of Ukrainian GDP.
Clearly, Ukrainians will not escape corruption by joining the EU. Indeed, the corruption will be worse.
I have no objection to Ukrainians protesting government corruption. Indeed, such gullible people could benefit from the lesson they would learn once their country is in the hands of corrupt Brussels and Washington. What I object to is the lack of awareness on the part of the protesters that by permitting themselves to be manipulated by Washington, they are pushing the world toward a dangerous war. I would be surprised if Russia is content to have US military and missile bases in Ukraine.
It was fools like Nuland playing the great game that gave us World War I. World War III would be the last war. Washington’s drive to exploit every opportunity to establish its hegemony over the world is driving us all to nuclear war. Like Nuland, a significant percentage of the population of western Ukraine are Russophobes. I know the case for Ukrainian dislike of Russia, but Ukrainian emotions fueled with Washington’s money should not direct the course of history. No historians will be left to document how gullible and witless Ukrainians set the world up for destruction.
Full article at PaulCraigRoberts.org
Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight (ACOG), manufactured by Trijicon. At the end of the scope’s model number, you can read “JN8:12”, which is a reference to the New Testament book of John, Chapter 8, Verse 12, which reads: “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (Photo by ABC News)
By Philip Giraldi
The connection between America’s wars in the Middle East—and its wars more generally—with the more fundamentalist forms of Christianity in the United States is striking. Opinion polls suggest that the more religiously conservative one is, the more one will support overseas wars or even what many might describe as war crimes. Fully 60 percent of self-described evangelicals supported torturing suspected terrorists in 2009, for example. That is somewhat puzzling, as Christianity is, if anything, a religion of peace that only reluctantly embraced a “just war” concept that was deliberately and cautiously evolved to permit Christians—under very limited circumstances of imminent threat—to fight to defend themselves.
To be sure, some Christian conservatives who might be described as Armageddonists regard America’s Asian wars as part and parcel of the precursor events that will lead to the Second Coming of Christ, which they eagerly look forward to. Also, a non-interventionist friend of mine who comes from a religiously conservative background explained to me how the contradiction partly derives from the fact that many evangelical Christians hardly relate to the New Testament at all. While they can recite scripture and verse coming from the Old Testament, they are frequently only marginally conversant with the numerous episodes in the New Testament that attest to Jesus’s extolling the virtues of peacemaking and loving one’s neighbor. If true, that means that many evangelicals are much more imbued with the values of an eye-for-an-eye or smiting Philistines than they are with the Sermon on the Mount.
There has undeniably been pushback coming from some evangelical leaders as well as from many younger religious conservatives against America’s constant diet of God-anointed warfare, but given that those who describe themselves as evangelical Christians tend to disproportionately support America’s wars, it is perhaps no surprise to learn that fundamentalist viewpoints prevail in certain quarters in the military. There has indeed been considerable media reporting on the impact of evangelical Christians on the armed services, to include a bizarre account of US military sniper sights being inscribed with citations from the Bible, leading one critic to suggest that the soldiers were being issued “Jesus rifles.”
The increase in highly visible religiosity among U.S. soldiers also has real life consequences by becoming a propaganda tool for groups like al-Qaeda and strengthening the widespread belief that Washington is actually mounting a new crusade against Muslim regimes. Efforts to have soldiers distribute Bibles in Afghanistan’s languages, encouraged by some military chaplains, have been noted by both the local and international media, a practice that runs counter to both military regulations and specific general orders for the Afghan theater of operations.
Full article at The American Conservative
Washington’s Arab allies, disappointed with Syria peace talks, have agreed to provide rebels there with more sophisticated weaponry, including shoulder-fired missiles that can take down jets, according to Western and Arab diplomats and opposition figures.
Saudi Arabia has offered to give the opposition for the first time Chinese man-portable air defense systems, or Manpads, and antitank guided missiles from Russia, according to an Arab diplomat and several opposition figures with knowledge of the efforts. Saudi officials couldn’t be reached to comment.
The U.S. has long opposed arming rebels with antiaircraft missiles for fear they could fall into the hands of extremists who might use them against the West or commercial airlines. The Saudis have held off supplying them in the past because of U.S. opposition. A senior Obama administration official said Friday that the U.S. objection remains the same. “There hasn’t been a change internally on our view,” the official said.
The U.S. for its part has stepped up financial support, handing over millions of dollars in new aid to pay fighters’ salaries, said rebel commanders who received some of the money. The U.S. wouldn’t comment on any payments.
Source: Wall Street Journal
Against the Grain 