News, Views and Opinions from the Alternative Media .... Week ending July 10

Peter Van Buren at Antiwar
Why it Matters the Dallas Police Used a Drone To Kill Someone in America

The Dallas police ended a standoff with the gunman who killed five officers with a tactic that is unprecedented: it blew him up using a robot.

This represents the first time in American history that a drone (wheels for now, maybe wings later) was used to kill an American citizen on American soil.

I get it, I get it.
The Dallas sniper had killed five cops. He was prepared to kill as many more as he could. He was in a standoff with police, and negotiations had broken down. The Supreme Court has made it clear that in cases such as this, the due process clause (i.e., a trial before execution in this instance) does not apply. If not for the robot bomb, the Dallas police would have eventually shot the sniper anyway. They were fully in their legal rights to kill him. None of those issues are in contention. I am not suggesting in any way the cops should have invited the sniper out for tea.

I am suggesting we stop and realize that in 2016 the police used a robot to send in an explosive to blow a person up. I am unaware that such a thing has happened in Russia, North Korea, China, Iran or other places where the rule of law is held by the few in power.

Weapons of War
The robot represents a significant escalation in the tools law enforcement use on the streets of America. Another weapon of war has come home from ....

Another milestone in our journey to find life other than our own


Catherine Austin Fitts at SolariReport
The Saker hears the drumbeats of war.
On this week’s Solari Report, Saker and I discuss his latest, A Russian Warning co-authored with Dmitri Orlov and Dr. Eugenia V Gurevich:

“We, the undersigned, are Russians living and working in the USA. We have been watching with increasing anxiety as the current US and NATO policies have set us on an extremely dangerous collision course with the Russian Federation, as well as with China. Many respected, patriotic Americans, such as Paul Craig Roberts, Stephen Cohen, Philip Giraldi, Ray McGovern and many others have been issuing warnings of a looming Third World War. But their voices have been all but lost among the din of a mass media that is full of deceptive and inaccurate stories that characterize the Russian economy as being in shambles and the Russian military as weak—all based on no evidence. But we—knowing both Russian history and the current state of Russian society and the Russian military, cannot swallow these lies. We now feel that it is our duty, as Russians living in the US, to warn the American people that they are being lied to, and to tell them the truth. And the truth is simply this: If there is going to be a war with Russia, then the United States will most certainly be destroyed, and most of us will end up dead.”

The Saker gives us an update on the Ukraine and the impact, along with events in the Middle East and US and European sanctions, on the Russian economy. We cover the ancient history of tensions between Russia and the Western nations and revisit why the Russian people are so supportive of Putin’s efforts to resist accommodation. Saker suggests some of the actions we can each take to reduce the chances of war.

Our discussion raises important questions about the shift to a multi-polar world. If the US offers countries two options – submit to multinational corporate control or be destroyed – it is only a matter of time before the world shifts into a deflationary spiral or war. Where are the incentives to cooperate and honor agreements that are the basis of global economic growth?...

Hopefully Dr Kelli Ward will replace the despicable warmonger McCain.


Christina Lin at AsiaTimes
Saudi Arabia and Turkey’s pipeline wars in Yemen and Syria 

Saudi Arabia’s pursuit of the war in Yemen, at considerable cost in blood and treasure, is a literal affirmation of the term “backdoor strategy.” However, both the “door” and the actual contours of that strategy remain submerged beneath the murky waters of Mideast politics.

In June 2015, a senior advisor on Yemen in the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Joke Buringa, wrote an article regarding Saudi Arabia’s interest in building an oil pipeline through Yemen. Her piece underscored the energy geopolitics behind Riyadh’s bombing campaign over the past year.

Saudi oil pipeline through Yemen’s Hadramaut

In her article entitled “Divide and Rule: Saudi Arabia, Oil and Yemen,” Buringa revealed that the Saudis fear an Iranian blockade of the Hormuz Strait, and were seeking pipelines through Yemen. This would provide Riyadh with direct access to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean to reach the Asian market(1)

Arabpipeline
Middle East Eye columnist Nafeez Ahmed, citing a 2008 State Department cable from Wikileaks, has confirmed the Saudi interest in building a pipeline that is “wholly owned, operated and protected by Saudi Arabia, through Hadramawt to a port on the Gulf of Aden.”[2]

Hadramaut is Yemen’s wealthiest governorate that counts 4 of the 26 million population, 50% of Yemen’s landmass, 80% of its oil exports, a sufficient water supply, and gold reserve worth $4 billion.

When Iran and Oman signed an agreement for a gas pipeline in 2014, this increased Riyadh’s distrust of Oman and increased the attractiveness of the Hadramaut pipeline option in Yemen. In February 2015 when the Houthis took control of the government, Riyadh began its bombing campaign the following month....

On the Medina attacks aka Jihadis going home to roost


From SputnikNews
Eight Dead as Terror Attacks Strike Prophet's Mosque in Medina, Qatif City
Two time synchronized suicide attacks have been reported near the el-Omran Shia mosque in Qatif City and near the Prophet Muhammad's mosque in Medina. Residents report hearing multiple explosions at each location. Tasnim News Agency confirmed six innocent people died in the blasts including two security officers and four pilgrims. Separately, Saudi's Arabiya TV confirmed at least two terrorists died in suicide blasts. The mosque is Islam's second holiest site and one of the largest mosques in the world.

From NYBooks (this  is from about a few months ago)
The Indonesian Massacre: What Did the US Know? by Margaret Scott

.....The Indonesian massacre was a critical moment in the cold war. In the early morning of October 1,1965, six Indonesian generals were killed by a group of junior officers who claimed they were forestalling a takeover by a CIA-backed “Council of Generals.” The putsch was poorly planned and collapsed in twenty-four hours. At the time, Indonesia was led by the leftist, romantic revolutionary-turned-autocrat Sukarno, and also had the third largest Communist Party in the world, the PKI, with some 3 million members. The Indonesian Army and the US government quickly blamed the botched coup on the PKI. (There is still much we don’t know about these events, but the head of the PKI, D. N. Aidit, was at least aware of the coup attempt; he was killed shortly thereafter by the army.) Seizing on an opportunity to unseat Sukarno and roll back communism, the army unleashed a campaign of violence in which perhaps five hundred thousand or perhaps one million suspected Communists were killed—no one knows for sure.

The assassination of the six generals, and fabricated stories that they had been tortured by Communist women, were used to stir up anti-Communist sentiment. Within days, the army and army-affiliated militias spread out across the archipelago, arresting anyone who was associated with the PKI and its many labor and farmer organizations. Then, mostly at night, those arrested were taken out and shot, beheaded, or stabbed to death. The army’s militias did most of the killings, and their members ranged from gangsters to young men who belonged to the country’s two largest Muslim organizations. The victims were thrown in mass graves or into rivers, and there are harrowing stories of rivers in Java, Sumatra, and Bali so filled with bodies that the water turned red.

For the Lyndon Johnson administration, the bloodbath was a momentous victory, shifting the balance of power in Southeast Asia. But for many Indonesians it was a terrifying time. In addition to those murdered, hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned, and their families and the families of the victims were formally shunned. When the killings ended, Indonesians lived under the military rule of General Suharto, who promoted the founding myth that the army saved the nation from the atheist Communists. No one talked about what had happened.

In 1967, a six-year-old Obama moved with his mother, Ann Dunham, to Jakarta as Suharto consolidated his jackboot rule. “Innuendo, half-whispered asides; that’s how she found out that we had arrived in Djakarta less than a year after one of the more brutal and swift campaigns of suppression in modern times,” Obama writes in his memoir, Dreams from My Father. “The idea frightened her, the notion that history could be swallowed up so completely.”.....

Gilad Atzmon at his blog
Chilcot, Israel and the Lobby

It took seven years for Sir Chilcot and his team to reach a set of conclusions that every Brit capable of thought understood back in November, 2003.

The inquiry produced a damning assessment of Blair’s conduct as well as the British military. But the Chilcot Inquiry failed to expose the crucial close ties between Blair’s criminal war, the Jewish Lobby and Israel.

At the time Britain entered the criminal war against Iraq, Blair’s chief funders were Lord ‘cashpoint’ Levy and the LFI (Labour Friends of Israel). The prime advocates for the immoral interventionist war within the British press were Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen. The attorney general that gave the green light for the war was Lord Goldsmith.

In 2008 The Guardian revealed that the “Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) successfully fought to keep secret any mention of Israel contained on the first draft of the controversial, now discredited Iraq weapons dossier.” Israel was conspicuously engaged in the vast production of WMDs. If Britain and America had any genuine concerns about WMDs, bombing Tel Aviv would have been the way to go.

In 2003 some intelligence experts insisted that the Iraq’s WMD dossier was initially produced in Tel Aviv and only ‘sexed up’ in London.

Since the Iraq war, the same Jewish Lobby has mounted enormous pressure on western governments, promoting more Zio-centic interventionist wars in Syria, Libya and Iran. So why did the Chilcot Inquiry fail to address this topic?

This crucial failure by Chilcot was to be expected. In 2010, highly respected ....

From CorbettReport
Interview 1185 – Peter Kirby Explains the New Manhattan Project

Peter Kirby is the author of the new book Chemtrails Exposed: A New Manhattan Project. Today we tackle the two questions most frequently asked by chemtrail skeptics: would the government do something like this and could they do something like this. We also talk about John Brennan’s recent call for stratospheric aerosol injection and a 2016 study on the health effects of stratospheric aerosols.


From RT
‘Sorry’ state of affairs: Adultery site Ashley Madison under FTC investigation
Executives of Ashley Madison, the website that offers extramarital affairs, say the parent company, Avid Life Media, is under investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission. They hint that the site’s use of “fembots” may be the probe’s focus.

Following the August 2015 massive data breach of the personal information of some 39 million users of Ashley Madison, the notorious dating website for cheaters, parent company Avid Life Media appointed a new team to salvage the company's reputation and improve security.
But now, according to a Reuters interview on Tuesday with Ashley Madison chief executive Rob Segal and president James Millership, Avid Life is facing an inquiry from federal trade regulators.

While acknowledging the FTC probe, Segal failed to share the details of the investigation. He stressed that Avid began cooperating with the feds last August.

The leading theory behind the government probe is that the website used “fembots” to lure in male customers, by artificially beefing up the female ratio in chat rooms.......

Claire Bernish at FreeThoughtProject
Americans Have No “Independence” to Celebrate — What July 4th Has Become in a Police State
We have failed, as a nation, the experiment intended by the founders to limit the size of government and the scope of tyrannical rule — as if that could come as a shocker, given our exclusionary founding based in genocide and the systematic enslavement of an entire population would dictate.

Perhaps the romantic love affair America claimed to have with democracy — through the vehicle of a constitutional republic — amounted thus to so much farce, or at least misguided hope. When the people’s call to terminate British rule in favor of popular governance, ignited by Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, ultimately led to a government whose very framework ensures elitist control, that failure, again, can hardly be surprising.

It’s Independence Day; though through carefully crafted semantics over the years, the significance of the day has been truncated to the uniquely strange celebration of a date — a telling bit of propaganda, itself.

How did we veer so severely off course? How did the summary call for revolution — based in shirking the twins of monarchical control and tyrannical over-governance — land all of us in a modern police state empire guilty of crimes against civilians domestically and worldwide?

Scholars argue the democracy-based constitutional republic that so defined America has since birthed an oligarchy; however, the incestuous marriage of the monied class consistently in power and profit-crazed corporate interests would best be described a corporatist plutocracy.

For the fetters of imperialism-driven, police-state corporatism to impart this stranglehold, the populace had to take one hell of a nap — akin, actually, to democratic dereliction of duty.

Consider the complacency necessary to abide....

F. William Engdahl at Journal-Neo
Russia’s Achilles Heel – Reflections from St. Petersburg

For three days this month, June 16-18, I had the opportunity to participate as a panelist in the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia. I’ve been in Russia many times since the Ukraine US-backed coup d’état of February 2014, and the deliberate escalations of NATO military and economic tensions and sanctions against the Russian Federation. This year’s forum, my second as participant, gave me a rare opportunity to speak with leading representatives from every sector of the Russian economy- from CEOs of the energy sector to the Russian Railways to the national Russia Grid electricity provider to numerous small and mid-sized businessmen, to a wide range of economists. It sharpened my perception of just how precarious the situation of Russia today is.

What became clearer to me in the course of the three days of discussions in St Petersburg is precisely how vulnerable Russia is. Her Achilles Heel is the reigning ideology that controls every key economic post of the Government of the Russian Federation under Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Under the terms of the Russian Constitution adopted in the chaos of the Yeltsin years and enormously influenced, if not literally drafted, by Russia’s foreign IMF advisers, economic policy is the portfolio responsibility of the Prime Minister and his various ministers of Economics, Finance and so forth. The Russian President, today Vladimir Putin, is responsible for defense and foreign policy.

Making the job virtually impossible of reviving credit flows to fuel genuine real investment in urgently needed infrastructure across the vast land expanse of Russia is the Central Bank of Russia. The Central Bank of Russia was given....

Matt Agorist The Free Thought Project
....Random acts of violence will only serve to undo what little progress those of us in the peaceful movement have accomplished and, in fact, will reverse it and prevent any future progress.

Violently attacking the government creates victims out of the ones we are trying to expose as criminals.

Those who initiate and support such violence will be complicit in creating the hellish police state that will inevitably ensue as a consequence of their actions.

It will start a war in which the people are the enemy.

We can simply look back to 9-11 as an example of what is to come if this violence continues.

Prior to 9-11 the TSA did not exist, indefinite detention did not exist, the NSA did not spy on American citizens, the police weren't given armored assault vehicles, and Americans could not be assassinated without trial.

If these acts of aggressive violence against the state continue, we can expect to see what little civil liberties are left to be whisked away in the name of protection from the 'domestic terror threat.'

We can expect to see peaceful activists rounded up and detained indefinitely. We can expect to see homes raided of individuals who are speaking out against the state. We will see more and more checkpoints, and less and less unmolested travel.

If you think that the American people can somehow win in a war against the military industrial complex that the US has built up in the last decade and a half, you are seriously delusional.

Your AR-15 will do nothing against thermal imaging predator drones equipped with Raytheon's small tactical munitions designed for blowing up single homes. They will not stop the MRAP as it plows through your front door. No matter how you slice it, the most well-armed American citizen is no match for the hundreds of billions spent annually by the US on warfare. ...

From MintPress
Police Already Made 2016 Deadlier Than 2015 By The End Of June

Mental illness was a known factor in almost a quarter of cases in which people were fatally shot by police so far this year, according to The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Fatal Force project.

As controversy continues to swirl around the issue of police violence in the United States, the media continues to be our main source of data about the scope of the problem.

The Washington Post, which tracks fatal shootings by police as part of its Fatal Force project, reports that there have already been 20 more fatal shootings this year compared to the same period of 2015.

In April, the Post’s Fatal Force project won a Pulitzer Prize, journalism’s most prestigious award, in the national reporting category. The project originated when Post staff realized that no government agency tracks police violence, reported Paul Farhi:
“After covering several high-profile incidents involving the killings of civilians by police officers in 2014, Washington Post staff writer Wesley Lowery was surprised to discover that there were no official statistics about such fatalities. So Lowery pitched an idea to his editors: The newspaper, he suggested, should collect the information itself and analyze it for patterns in law enforcement.”

While the FBI does track police killings, reporting by departments remains strictly voluntary, even despite what the Guardian’s Jon Swaine described in 2015 as a long-running “debate about why the American government has failed so badly to monitor this issue of national importance.”....

....Police are increasingly showing up as the first responders in emergency calls involving the mentally ill, and those encounters all too frequently turn violent or even fatal. Last July, Denver erupted in protest when police fatally shot Paul Castaway, a mentally ill Native American man, as he held a knife to his own neck in a crowded trailer park.....

Rori Donaghy at MiddleEastEye
Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam 'released from prison in Libya

Saif al-Islam was reportedly released in April by his Libyan captors despite being sentenced to death by a court in 2015
The most prominent son of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi appears to have been released from prison, according to reports on Wednesday.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was sentenced to death by firing squad last year, and he has been widely reported as imprisoned in the western Libyan town of Zintan.

However, on Wednesday, Gaddafi’s lawyer Karim Khan told France 24 that his client was in fact released on 12 April and is “well and safe in Libya”.

Khan, who was appointed as Gaddafi's lawyer on 27 June, said his client was released as part of an amnesty passed last year by the House of Representatives, which was Libya’s internationally recognised government until the UN-backed Government of National Accord took charge earlier this year.

Gaddafi’s current whereabouts are unknown and his lawyer did not say whether he has spoken to his client since the reported release....

....Mohamed Eljarh, Libyan analyst at the Atlantic Council, told MEE Gaddafi is still in Zintan, but it is not clear whether or not he has been freed from detention.

“I have spoken to people from Zintan and they said [Gaddafi] is still in Zintan and under their protection,” he said by phone from the capital Tripoli. “They did not say if he is still captive or free to go.”....

Matt Agorist at FreeThoughtProject
Fargo, ND — For a tiny bit of pot, cops sent a young college student to his death in their immoral pursuit of the war on drugs.

Andrew Sadek, a top college student in North Dakota, was caught selling $80 worth of marijuana. Because this pot was sold on a school campus, police sought to charge Sadek with serious felonies. They threatened him with 40 years in prison and a $40,000 fine — for a plant.

However, police had no intention of seeking those charges, as they knew they could force Sadek to become a snitch for them.

The interrogation room video shows Chief Jason Weber telling the dejected Andrew, who lost his older brother in a train wreck, that he faces up to 40 years in jail. Weber, experienced in deception, tells Andrew that he can “help himself” by becoming a confidential informant.

Andrew had to buy drugs from three other people to preserve his freedom, and keep everything an absolute secret. With no training or protection, Sadek was sent to his death by cops who couldn’t care less.

After Andrew went missing, family and friends pleaded on camera for his return and held prayer vigils, but he never returned. Andrew was found dead in a river with a bullet through his head and his backpack full of rocks.

Sadek’s parents filed a lawsuit last week, exactly two years after their son was found.

According to the AP, an autopsy concluded Sadek died of a gunshot wound...

Martin Berger at Journal-Neo
US Bases – the Dangerous Weapon of Western-style Democracy

As it has been noted by American analysts, war defines the United States. Even despite the fact that the United States has not officially declared war against any other state since 1942, and the fact that Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, in the last decade US troops have invaded the territories of numerous states and have been steadily increasing their presence abroad.

US military expenditures exceed the expenditures of the next nine countries following the US, with 598 billion dollars, 54 per cent of discretionary spending, in fiscal year 2015.

95% of all overseas military installations globally are American, many of them are designed to ensure “protection” from external threats. At the same time, garrisons of these bases themselves create new threats, becoming a primary cause of increased civil discontent, radicalism, wars and instability. The Nation would report:
While there are no freestanding foreign bases permanently located in the United States, there are now around 800 US bases in foreign countries. Seventy years after World War II and 62 years after the Korean War, there are still 174 US “base sites” in Germany, 113 in Japan, and 83 in South Korea, according to the Pentagon. Hundreds more dot the planet inaround 80 countries, including Aruba and Australia, Bahrain and Bulgaria, Colombia, Kenya, and Qatar, among many other places. Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.

It’s mind boggling that more than a quarter-million American troops are stationed at military bases around the world. In Europe the US has up to 75,000 battle-capable servicemen, not counting technical staff and supplies, which are usually represented by local civilian contractors (85%). In this region the US has the most significant military presence in Germany, with nearly 50,000 men stationed in this country.

The total cost of maintaining these bases, according to RAND Corporation estimates, approaches 156 billion dollars annually, and American taxpayers are paying an average of 40,000 dollars a year for the stationing of a single US soldier abroad.

However, those installations haven’t been transformed in the...

From AnswerCoalition
ANSWER Coalition joining protests at the DNC and RNC

The ANSWER Coalition will be present at a wide range of protest activities taking place during both the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, July 18-21, and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Penn., July 25-28. Organizing is well underway in both cities, and this page will be updated once event specifics are finalized.

For the last seven and a half years, the Democratic Party has blatantly ignored its anti-war campaign promises and in fact expanded U.S. wars of aggression. In Honduras, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Philippines and so many other countries, U.S. imperialism has inflicted tremendous suffering under a Democratic president. Racism and police brutality persist in all the big cities of the country, despite the fact that these are virtually all run by Democratic Party machines.....

David Galland and Stephen McBride at GarretGalland (This is a MUST READ in entirety)
How George Soros Singlehandedly Created the European Refugee Crisis - And Why

George Soros is trading again.

...Today, Soros’s net worth stands at $23 billion. Since taking a back seat in his company, Soros Fund Management, in 2000, Soros has been focusing on his philanthropic efforts, which he carries out through the Open Society Foundations he founded in 1993.

So who does he donate to, and what causes does he support?

During the 1980s and 1990s, Soros used his extraordinary wealth to bankroll and fund revolutions in dozens of European nations, including Czechoslovakia, Croatia, and Yugoslavia. He achieved this by funneling money to political opposition parties, publishing houses, and independent media in these nations.

If you wonder why Soros meddled in these nations’ affairs, part of the answer may lie in the fact that during and after the chaos, he invested heavily in assets in each of the respective countries....

...Why has Soros donated so much capital and effort to these organizations? For one simple reason: to buy political power.

Democratic politicians who go against the progressive narrative will see their funding cut and be attacked in media outlets such as Media Matters, which also directly contribute to mainstream sites such as NBC, Al Jazeera, and The New York Times.

Apart from the $5 billion Soros’s foundation has donated to groups like those cited above, he has also made huge contributions to the Democratic Party and its most prominent members, like Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and of course Bill and Hillary Clinton....

...Soros began supporting Hillary Clinton’s current presidential run in 2013, taking a senior role in the “Ready for Hillary” group. Since then, Soros has donated over $15 million to pro-Clinton groups and Super PACs.

More recently, Soros has given more than $33 million to the Black Lives Matter group, which has been involved in outbreaks of social unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, in 2015. Both of these incidents contributed to a worsening of race relations across America....

...Soros’s agenda is fundamentally about the destruction of national borders. This has recently been shown very clearly with his funding of the European refugee crisis....

From description at YouTube vid:
Thousands of protesters gathered in central Athens on Thursday to condemn the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) summit currently taking place in Warsaw. The summit unites heads of state and heads of government of the NATO countries in Warsaw on July 8th and 9th.


From LarouchePac
US Conference of Mayors Denounces Obama's Nuclear War Provocations  

The US Conference of Mayors, in its annual meeting from June 24-27 in Indianapolis, issued a scathing attack on the Obama Administration, directly targeting the massive NATO exercises now taking place on Russia's border, Obama's $1 trillion modernization of nuclear weapons, his failure to take significant action to reduce nuclear weapons, his belligerent policy toward Russia and China, and his disregard for the drastic collapse within the US of basic infrastructure and the general welfare of the people. It is of note that not one major US newspaper even reported this action.

The Mayors Conference took place at the same time as an historic Schiller Institute Conference in Berlin, in which Helga Zepp-LaRouche began her keynote speech saying that
we are experiencing an absolutely unprecedented, systemic and existential crisis of civilization. We have the coincidence of a war danger, where NATO is confronting Russia in a very, very aggressive fashion — which could lead to a Third World War. We have a U.S. confrontation against China in the South China Sea. We have the danger of a new 2008 type of financial crisis, which could blow up the financial system.

The Mayors' Resolution, while offering feint praise for Obama's visit to Hiroshima and his conclusion of a deal with Iran, then states:
At the same time, the Obama Administration has reduced the U.S. nuclear stockpile less than any post-Cold War presidency and has laid the groundwork for the United States to spend one trillion dollars over the next three decades to maintain and modernize its nuclear bombs and warheads, production facilities, delivery systems, and command and control, and the other nuclear-armed states are following suit.... The nuclear-armed countries are edging ever closer to direct military confrontation in conflict zones around the world, and the largest NATO war games in decades, involving 14,000 U.S. troops, and activation of U.S. missile defenses in Eastern Europe are fueling growing tensions between nuclear-armed giants, and according to former Defense Secretary William Perry: `The probability of a nuclear calamity is higher today, I believe, that it was during the cold war.'

It directly contrasts this danger and ....

Greg Hunter talks to Michael Krieger, founder of LibertyBlitzkrieg.com.


Robert Parry at ConsortiumNews
MH-17 Probe’s Torture-Implicated Ally

A senior United Nations official has accused Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service of frustrating U.N. investigations into its alleged role in torture and other war crimes, even as the SBU has been allowed to guide the international investigation into the shooting down of Malaysia Airline Flight 17 for nearly two years.

On June 29, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic criticized various “armed groups” in Ukraine for engaging in torture and arbitrary detention, adding that “The Security Services of Ukraine (SBU) is also not always providing access to all places where detainees may be kept. … OHCHR (the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights) also continues to receive accounts about torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary and incommunicado detention by the SBU, especially in the conflict zone.

“Torture and threats to members of the families, including sexual threats, are never justifiable, and perpetrators will be held to account sooner or later. … War crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of human rights cannot be the subject of an amnesty.”

In late May, U.N. inspectors called off their Ukraine torture investigation because the SBU denied the team access to detention facilities where human rights groups had found evidence of torture.

“This denial of access is in breach of Ukraine’s obligations as a State party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture,” according to the U.N. statement at the time. Sir Malcolm Evans, head of the four-member U.N. delegation, said: “It has meant that we have not been able to visit some places where we have heard numerous and serious allegations that people have been detained and where torture or ill-treatment may have occurred.”

Yet, the SBU, which is also responsible for protecting state secrets, has strongly influenced the direction of the supposedly Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team trying to determine who was responsible for shooting down MH-17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing 298 people.

Conflict of Interest

Although Ukrainian military units are among the logical suspects in the case, Ukraine was made ....

....Immediately after the shoot-down, the U.S. government sought to pin the blame on ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and their Russian government backers, a charge that was crucial to getting the European Union to adopt economic sanctions against Russia. But – as more evidence emerged – the possible role of a Ukrainian military unit became more plausible.

According to the Dutch intelligence service in a report released last October, the only anti-aircraft missiles in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, capable of hitting a plane flying at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian military.....

Cynthia Kroet at Politico
German police clash with squatters in Berlin district
The incident was the most violent in the past five years, authorities said.
At least 123 police officers were injured on Sunday in clashes with left-wing youth over the redevelopment of the Friedrichshain district in Berlin, authorities said.
The incident — the most violent one in the past five years — occured after weeks of tensions around a building, occupied by a group of squatters....



From TelsurTV July 6
Rousseff Legal Team Argues Before Senate Impeachment Hearing 

Senators are hearing legal arguments from Dilma Rousseff’s defense team on Wednesday.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff presented her written defense to a Senate impeachment trial Wednesday, denouncing the proceedings as a farce and saying her alleged crimes were no more than "routine acts of budgetary management."

"Everybody knows that you are judging an honest woman, a public servant dedicated to just causes," the suspended leftist leader said in a document read aloud by her lawyer and former Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo. "I've honored those who voted for me."

Her defense made clear she is sticking to the strategy of refuting the impeachment process as a soft "coup" led by her one-time vice-president Michel Temer, a conservative who has taken over since mid-May when the Senate voted to try Rousseff.

"What most hurts right now is the injustice," Rousseff said. "What hurts most is to perceive that I am the victim of a judicial and political farce."

Rousseff said she believes she is being targeted because she "never gave in to blackmail. I never accepted ... the backroom deals so well known in the traditional politics of our country." ....

From AllGov
Jewish Groups Pay to Send U.S. Police to Train in Israel  

The militarization of American police forces hasn’t been paid for by just the federal government. Pro-Israel groups in the U.S. have also played a role by financing trips for hundreds of law enforcement officers to travel to the Middle East for counterterrorism training, according to Ali Winston, a contributor to the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR).

Monies provided by such groups as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have made it possible for “at least 300 high-ranking sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and Maine to Orange County and Oakland, California” to attend privately funded seminars in Israel since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Winston discovered.

There, they have learned how Israeli security forces deal with demonstrators and armed threats by terrorists. The seminars include field trips to such sites as military installations, surveillance outposts, and checkpoints at the West Bank and the Israeli-Egyptian border. The training includes spending time observing operations conducted by Israel’s Border Patrol, Defense Forces, national police and intelligence services.

U.S. police officials who have undergone such training have come from the Los Angeles and New York police departments, the New York and New Jersey Port Authority Police Department, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police, and the Major County Sheriffs’ Association. The fact that the former chief of Missouri’s St. Louis County Police Department trained in Israel in 2011 recently came to light following the well-armed police response to protestors in St. Louis-based Ferguson.

Israeli training of U.S. police has also influenced the type of equipment being used. Security forces from both countries are now using some identical gear, including stun and tear gas grenades manufactured by the same U.S. companies—Combined Systems Inc. and Defense Technology Corp. A long-range “sound rifle” that emits ear-shattering noise to disperse crowds, which was used against 2005 West Bank protestors, was also used in the recent police action against protestors in Ferguson......

From SputnikNews
Daesh Terrorists Shoot Down Helicopter Near Palmyra: Russian Pilots Killed

The Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday that Daesh terrorists shot down a helicopter near Syria's Palmyra, killing two Russian military instructor pilots.

On July 8, Russian military instructor pilots conducted a test flight of a Syrian Mi-25 helicopter (export version of the Mi-24 helicopter), when it received a request from the Syrian authorities to carry out airstrikes against a large group of Daesh terrorists advancing to the east of Palmyra, the ministry said....

From RonPaulInstitute
Ron Paul on the Drug War, Federal Reserve, and Killing of Dallas Cops

To understand the conditions in America that can contribute to tensions with police and even potentially individuals being motivated to kill cops as occurred in Dallas, Texas on Thursday, it is important that people look at the United States government’s war on drugs and the Federal Reserve. Ron Paul Institute Chairman Ron Paul presented this argument in a recent Fox Business interview with host Deirdre Bolton.

When asked by Bolton to name “one measure” that Paul thinks could alleviate some the racial or class tensions in America, Paul responded with two. First, Paul suggested, end the war on drugs, and, second, end the Fed.

Regarding the drug war, Paul commented that “the judicial system is all messed up as a consequence of our drug laws.” Paul continued that “the judicial system is unfair to minorities because of the way we enforce our drug laws and mandatory minimums.”

Continuing on to the Federal Reserve, Paul explained that “the economy gets messed up because of the Federal Reserve System and monetary policy.”

Paul further suggests in the interview that, when the situation is “boiling over” in part due to the drug war and Federal Reserve actions, then instances of abuses of power by police can become the excuse for someone to seek to indiscriminately kill cops.....

Wayne Madsen at StrategicCulture
A Global Exit: Secessions and Breakups Occurring Everywhere

he globalist elites are clearly worried. The Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom was believed by the elites and their media to be heading for the UK remaining in the European Union. The political prognosticators and television chattering class were dead wrong. The UK is exiting the globalists’ top experiment for global governance, the increasingly-federalist European Union, and other members are poised to follow with their own exit referenda and withdrawal from a postwar monstrosity crafted in the 1940s and 1950s by industrialists, bankers, and outright fascists.

The globalists have reacted to Brexit by staging summit meetings intended to demonstrate that the goal of globalization continues unabated. The «Three Amigos Summit» held at the end of June in Ottawa was a lame attempt to continue with policies that advance open borders, «free trade», and eventual political union. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used the occasion to announce that Canada was dropping visa requirements for Mexican nationals. That was music to the ears of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has been a bitter critic of US Republican presidential standard bearer Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall on the US-Mexican border. President Barack Obama used the summit to push for another globalization contrivance, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which also includes Mexico and Canada. All three leaders spoke of an increasing «union» between their countries. Obama, Trudeau, and Pena Nieto are pushing against a global popular push for decentralization,
not more political federalization among nations and borderless political unions.....

The vid below from  WeAreChange  


From RussiaInsider ... Source: Vladimir Komilov of Vzglyad,Russian online gazette
The Kiev Matrix Doesn’t Work in Dallas

During the protests in Dallas, a former soldier opened fire at the police, killing five.

The same thing happened two and a half years ago in Kiev, when a hundred people, including riot policemen, were killed by snipers.  The United States called them ‘democratic protests’.

But in the Kiev version, Victoria Nuland came to greet the organizers of the slaughter encouraging them to drive the police out of the city. 

Then they should have assigned this organizer to the position either of the Minister of Internal Affairs, or the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Somehow,  the ‘Ukrainian matrix’ doesn’t work in Dallas.....

From TelesurTV
Portugal Wins Euro Cup For 1st Time

"We represented Portugal, a beautiful country of immigrants and we represent every one of them. This goes out to them," Portugal defender Pepe said.

Substitute Eder's thunderous finish deep into extra time secured Portugal's first European Championship title after they overcame the early loss of Cristiano Ronaldo to snatch a 1-0 smash-and-grab victory over hosts France Sunday.
Eder picked the perfect moment to score his first competitive goal for his country, marauding forward before letting fly with a bullet shot from 25 meters in the 109th minute.

It was a cruel blow for France, who had dominated the match and squandered a number of chances in front of their devastated home support, that had arrived at the Stade de France hoping to celebrate a third European crown.

The trophy was lifted by Ronaldo, who broke down in tears at the final whistle but whose game had come to a frustrating end after 24 minutes when he was carried crying from the pitch on a stretcher with a knee injury. ....