by Stephen Lendman

Numerous Knesset bills compromise speech, assembly, association and dissent. Israel's free press is endangered.

Palestine is ruthlessly targeted. The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) documents events daily. Monthly updates follow.

It's latest report covers March. "(N)o significant improvement" occurred, it said. Throughout the Occupied Territories, "violations against (Palestinian) journalists" increased.

Israeli occupation forces (IOF) target them with "stun grenades and rubber bullets…" Injuries result. Arrests follow.

On March 23, Israeli forces attacked AP photographer Iyad Hamad. He was covering Israeli soldiers. They were targeting Aida refugee camp Palestinian youths.

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By Greg Palast

From his investigation for Channel 4 Television in the newly released film, Vultures and Vote Rustlers.

There was CIA involvement through a company called Mega Oil. They were shipping in arms under the cover of oil tools.

BP operative Leslie Abrahams With AK-47 in Baku, Azerbaijan

The BP executive was explaining to me how the CIA, MI6 and British Petroleum engineered a coup d’état, overthrowing an elected president of a nation who was “not favorable to BP.” The corporation’s former Vice-President, Leslie Abrahams, is pictured here, holding an AK-47 in front of BP headquarters in Baku, Azerbaijan. Like most of the other BP executives I spoke with, he proudly added that while he was working for BP, he was also an operative for MI6, British intelligence.

The conversation was far from the weirdest I had in my four-continent investigation of the real story of the Deepwater Horizon.

The BP oilrig blew out on April 20, 2010, four years ago this Sunday.

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by Stephen Lendman

Western media headlined it. The New York Times said "Ukraine Push Against Rebels Grinds to a Halt." Things "unraveled in disarray."

An "entire contingent of 21 armored vehicles…surrendered or pull(ed) back…It was a glaring humiliation for the new government in Kiev. (Events) underscored (its) weakness."

The Wall Street Journal said "Ukraine's Efforts to Regain Control of East Sputter." Locals "halted army columns."

"The faltering 'antiterrorist' operation, launched a day earlier, leaves the government looking increasingly powerless in the face of separatists who are holding government buildings in as many as 10 cities close to the Russian border."

"The stumbling start underscored difficulties faced by the new government…(It) leaves Kiev with narrowing options."

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by Stephen Lendman

Obama declared war on Ukraine. He dispatched CIA chief John Brennan to Kiev. He arrived with administration instructions. Obama's proxy putschist stooges were unleashed to wage war on Eastern Ukrainian freedom fighters. The battle for Ukraine's soul escalated.

The country is "on the verge of civil war," said Putin. Prime Minister Medvedev said the same thing. Putschists launched violence.

"The illegal rulers are trying to restore the order they cynically trampled on when they participated in an armed uprising," Medvedev added.

Their military forces headed east. Tanks, armored vehicles and artillery are on the move. An assault on activist controlled Eastern Ukrainian cities began.

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By Nicola Nasser*

Survival is the key word to understand the Saudi dynasty’s latest external and internal policies. These are designed to pre-empt change but paradoxically they are creating more enemies in a changing world order marked by turbulent regional geopolitics and growing internal demands for change.

The seventy-year old strategic oil for security US-Saudi alliance seemed about to crack on its 69th anniversary ahead of the summit meeting of US President Barak Obama and king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz in March.

With the US now committed to pivoting east and possibly on track to become an oil exporter by 2017, American and Saudi policies are no longer identical.

Former US President George W. Bush’s democracy campaign, which Saudi opposed, alerted its rulers to be on guard. The Arab popular protests since 2011 pushed them into leading a regional defensive counterrevolution and ever since the gap in bilateral relations has been widening.

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by Stephen Lendman

US-led NATO threatens world peace. It's a global killing machine. It prioritizes militarism and war. It threatens humanity in the process.

It's escalating East/West tensions. It supports Kiev fascist putschists. It buries truth. It spreads lies about Russia.

On April 16, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said:

"We have just taken further measures to respond to the crisis in Ukraine."

"We call on Russia to be part of the solution. To stop destabilising Ukraine, pull back its troops from the borders and make clear it doesn't support the violent actions of well armed militias of pro-Russian separatists."

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by Stephen Lendman

On April 17, Russian, US, EU and Ukrainian foreign ministers met in Geneva. Discussion focused on deescalating Ukrainian crisis conditions.

A joint document was agreed on. It's not worth the paper it's written on. Washington's word isn't its bond. Its history reflects one broken promise after another.

Don't expect this time to be different. Ukraine's crisis may escalate. Perhaps the worst of all possible outcomes will follow. The fullness of time will tell.

Following discussions Sergei Lavrov explained an agreement reached, saying:

All parties must refrain from "violence, intimidation, or provocative actions."

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John Chuckman

The darkness to which I refer is something largely unanticipated in political studies and even in science fiction, a field which definitely enters this discussion, as readers will see. There have been many examples of national tyrannies and even stories of global autocracies, but the Hitler-Stalin-Mussolini type of tyranny is an antiquated model for advanced states despite its applying still to many third-world places. A unique set of circumstances now works towards a dystopian future in advanced states with no need for jackboots or brutal faces on posters.

Ironically, one of the key forces which brought Europe and North America over a few centuries to the kind of liberal democracies we know today is capable of delivering a new and unprecedented form of tyranny. That force is the body of interests of a nation’s middle class - the group of capable, ambitious, and rising people who were called a few centuries back by Europe’s landed old aristocracy “the new men.”

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Gilad Atzmon

DEBATE - Anti-Semitism: myth or reality
A Talk Given By Gilad Atzmon @ The Albion Beatnik Book Shop, Oxford, UK
April 15, 2014

Good evening book lovers and wisdom seekers.

As some of you have realised the title of this debate morphed slightly since I initiated it. The discussion was first titled ‘Anti-Semitism, A Myth or A Threat.’ We are now supposed to engage in a dialogue on ‘Racism, a Myth or a Threat.’

Ladies and gentleman, this shift in the title is, actually, more significant than it first appears. It is actually a manifestation of our confusion and fear of looking at Jewish identity, politics, culture and ideology.

There is no doubt amongst scholars that Jews, as a group, derive from multiple ethnic origins and are far from a homogenous race. There is no racial continuum between a Polish Jew and a Yemenite one. But it is also obvious that Jewish political culture, whether Zionist or ‘anti’ is ethno-centric and, to a large extent, racially driven. Just like Israel, the Jews-only State, Israel’s Jewish opponents too often prefer to operate within Jews-only organisations such as ‘Jewish Voices For Peace,’ ‘ Jews for Justice,‘ etc’. In short, whether they are Zionist or ‘anti,’ Jews somehow prefer to operate in ethnically segregated racially oriented political cells.

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Michael Collins
Ukrainian paratroopers stopped their attack on demonstrators in the Eastern Ukraine cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk. Military units are balking at attacking civilians and their militias in other cities targeted for attack by Ukraine's coup let government. If United States CIA Director John Brennan's trip was to plan this effort, the plan is failing.

Corporate media's reporting on the Ukrainian situation is so one sided, it's pathetic. Last night, Rachel Maddow interviewed NBC Correspondent Richard Engel who seemed in a trance insisting that the entirety of Russian President Vladimir Putin's policy was based on calling the Ukrainian leadership Nazi's (there are strong elements of Nazi sympathizers in the government). Maddow just sat there and let him talk. She failed to ask Engel about the real Nazi sympathizers in the Kiev government and couldn't remember or didn't know the various appeals for a federation solution and UN mediation by Putin.

That's the liberal media, servile to their clan leader President Barack Obama. They do nothing to inform Americans of the machinations and dangerous interference in Ukraine and Russia. We're left to rely on our reflexive distrust of propaganda. Nevertheless, honest reporting would be helpful.

This article is by The Saker, a blogger and author for the Asia Times. The Saker is pro Russian, which does not stop him from doing a good job of sifting through the various news sources to present a picture of events on the ground.

Ukraine SITREP April 16, 10:50 EST (Ukrainian civil war day 2) The Saker

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