RT talks to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. He is worried that Western politicians are still trying to “flirt” with the Islamic front in Syria, although they are beginning to realize that overthrowing Assad’s regime would play into the hands of terrorists.
Full transcript at RT Russian politics
See also: Washington to Negotiate with Islamic Front in Syria
A Palestinian girl in the Gaza Strip has died in an Israeli raid after a Bedouin working on the border fence was shot and killed by an unknown sniper (source: AAP).
Israeli warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip in a series of attacked dubbed “retaliatory” for the death of a Bedouin employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry and shot along the border fence.
A three-year-old Palestinian girl has been killed in an Israeli raid on the Gaza Strip after the fatal shooting of an Israeli near the Gaza border, in the latest uptick in Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Cross-border exchanges between Israel and Gaza have increased in recent days, and Israel said on Tuesday it held Islamist movement Hamas responsible, as rulers of the Palestinian enclave, for any fire directed from there at the Jewish state.
Palestinian medics named the dead girl as Hala Abu Sabikha from a refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
They said at least six other people had been wounded in the series of tank and air strikes throughout Gaza, including on militant positions.
The Israeli army said its aircraft, tanks and infantry on Tuesday “targeted terror sites in the Gaza Strip.
“The sites included a weapon-manufacturing facility and a terror infrastructure in the southern Gaza Strip, a terror site and another terror infrastructure in the central Gaza Strip and a concealed rocket launcher in the northern Gaza Strip.”
The army said the attacks were in retaliation for the shooting of an Israeli man who was engaged in maintenance work on the Israel-Gaza border fence in the northern Gaza Strip.
Source: SBS News
In the last 10 days Israeli military has shot a Palestinian teenager in Gaza (on the 15th), shot and killed a man and injured two others (on the 20th), shot an injured a Palestinian farmer (on the 21st), fired at Palestinian fishing boats in Gaza (on the 22nd), and shot and seriously injured a Palestinian man (on the 23rd). All of these incidents happened in the days preceding yesterday’s events and involved Israel firing into Gaza.
Source: In Gaza
Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed the mass surveillance programmes organised by the US and other governments, gives this year’s The Alternative Christmas Message on Channel 4.
YouTube video blocked in Guernsey, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey and United Kingdom. View it here or here.
See also: Edward Snowden: My Mission is Already Accomplished
A shocking, eye-opening look at Afghanistan. “This is What Winning Looks Like” is a disturbing new documentary by British film maker Ben Anderson about the ineptitude, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, and corruption of the Afghan security forces as well as the reduced role of US Marines due to the troop withdrawal.
Read the full article at VICE Media.
Edward Snowden (photo courtesy of The Washington Post)
Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.
Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed.
“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago. Right now, all we are looking at are stretch goals.”
Snowden is an orderly thinker, with an engineer’s approach to problem-solving. He had come to believe that a dangerous machine of mass surveillance was growing unchecked. Closed-door oversight by Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was a “graveyard of judgment,” he said, manipulated by the agency it was supposed to keep in check. Classification rules erected walls to prevent public debate.
Toppling those walls would be a spectacular act of transgression against the norms that prevailed inside them. Someone would have to bypass security, extract the secrets, make undetected contact with journalists and provide them with enough proof to tell the stories.
The NSA’s business is “information dominance,” the use of other people’s secrets to shape events. At 29, Snowden upended the agency on its own turf.
Full interview at The Washington Post
The Drunken Glory movement — spawned by events like the Florida Outpouring and Toronto Blessing in the 90s, at which people appeared to be inebriated and high purely off the power of God — is on the rise, as godly YouTube channels find innovative ways of reaching their younger audience.
One of those channels, Red Letter Ministries, is run by former meth addict Brandon Barthrop. We went to Brandon’s hometown of Minneapolis, which boasts the largest concentration of drug addicts and churches in America, to try to get high on the glory of God.
Brandon and his posse of waifs, strays, and former addicts spend their days sniffing “diamond oil” and tripping out to the sound of Brandon’s YouTube preaching. Christian EDM DJs down the road are going to raves and attempting to “heal” clubbers high on drugs, and mega-churches run by rehab charities like Teen Challenge are preaching the drunken glory to thousands.
An inquest in the Evangelical world of the United States in 2004 by Martin Meissonnier & Roger Trilling. Cinematography by Christophe Petit, edited by Gilles Bovon.
By Adrian Salbuchi
A young, soft-spoken girl living the Syrian tragedy spells it out with far more common sense, truth and honesty than powerful Western governments and their money-controlled mass media puppets.
Identifying herself only as “Syrian, Patriot, anti-Neocon, anti-NWO, anti-Zionist”, early last year she set up her own YouTube Channel. In a short (nine-minute) video she explains “Why the NWO (New World Order) Hates Syria.” We would all do well to listen in…
Her ‘Top Eight Reasons Why They Hate Us’ is an excellent wrap-up, applicable to just about every self-respecting country in the world: no Rothschild-controlled Central Bank, no IMF debt, no genetically modified foods, oil and pipelines, anti-secret societies, anti-Zionism, secularism and nationalism.
Her brief message unravels as a sort of common sense manual which explains why the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the European Union (especially France) and Israel are so keen on destroying Syria, a country whose leadership just won’t bow down to the New World Order elites embedded deep inside the Western powers’ own public (government) and private (corporate/banking) power structures.
She describes these eight reasons succinctly and convincingly, giving the world much food for thought and should hopefully inspire deep soul-searching. Especially amongst the people of the US, UK, EU and Israel who are the only populations that can put very direct pressure on their elected politicians in Washington, London, Paris, Tel Aviv and other Western capitals, forcing them to stop behaving like global criminals gone berserk, and to start heeding the word of We the People, in a responsible and democratic manner.
Source: RT Op-Edge
Welcome to the United States of Scandinavia
A newly-leaked document from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden confirms Denmark’s formal agreement to work with the US surveillance agency NSA.
The document was revealed by Swedish television channel SVT as part of a documentary on Sweden’s participation in spying operations. Nine European countries – Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain – are listed in the document as “Third Party partners” to the Five Eyes nations (the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). The document can be viewed here.
Although Denmark’s participation with the NSA has been slowly revealed in bits and pieces, this marks the first time that written documentation from the NSA confirms Denmark’s status as one of the US’s trusted partners. And that is “very worrying”, says Enhedslisten’s Pernille Skipper.
“When Denmark is one of the US intelligence services’ close allies, one must ask themselves what it is we are giving in return,” Skipper said to public broadcaster DR. “When you consider this along with the other revelations that have come out, which insinuate that the US systematically spies on residents throughout Europe in violation of very basic rights, then you can naturally fear that the collaboration between Denmark and the US means that Danes have been spied upon.”
The document revealed by SVT came in connection to the channel’s interview with Glenn Greenwald, the journalist behind many of the Snowden leaks. SVT‘s interview with Greenwald can be seen here.
Source: The Copenhagen Post
Related: Glenn Greenwald: Denmark “Submissive” to the US | New NSA Leak: High Level of Danish and US Intelligence Sharing
Abby Martin speaks with British Parliamentarian George Galloway, discussing his upcoming film, ‘The Killing of Tony Blair’, and his brand new show on RT, ‘Sputnik: Orbiting the World with George Galloway.’
Related: The Wonderful World of Tony Blair | International War Criminals
Against the Grain 