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Ukrainian Parliament authorizes law allowing army deserters to be shot


RT
Fri, 06 Feb 2015 02:44 UTC
Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada
© RIA Novosti / Evgeny Kotenko
Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada meeting.
Ukraine's parliament has passed a law which authorizes commanding officers to use physical force against army defectors. It comes as the latest military draft has seen a lack of enthusiasm on the part of potential soldiers.

Ukraine's parliament voted on Thursday with 260 MPs in favor - only 226 votes were needed to pass the law. The new article 22(1) added to the charter regulating service in the armed forces of Ukraine states that commanders "have the right to personally use physical force, special means, and weapons when in combat" against soldiers who commit "criminal acts."

Under criminal acts the law lists "disobedience, resistance or threat to use force against the commander, voluntary abandonment of military positions and certain locations of military units in areas of combat missions."

Comment: Can you blame the deserters? Ukrainian army bleeding to death - Alexander Mercouris

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Sherlock

FBI director warns against ISIL threat in...Mississippi?

Therese Apel
The Clarion-Ledger
Wed, 04 Feb 2015 00:18 UTC
FBI James Comey
© Rick Guy/The Clarion-Ledger
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey speaks as representatives of state law enforcement agencies look on during a press conference Tuesday at the MIssissippi FBI headquarters in Jackson
As Americans stood horrified at the news of a Jordanian pilot burned alive by the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, one of the top law enforcement officers in the country talked about how Mississippians can fight those kind of extremist ideals within our own borders.

FBI Director James Comey, who was in the state for the second visit of his 10-year term, said there are open cases looking into individuals who may be related to ISIS/ISIL in every state in the Union except Alaska.

"Mississippi is a great state, but like all 50 states it has troubled souls that might look to find meaning in this sick, misguided way. The challenge that we face in law enforcement is that they may be getting exposed to that poison and that training in their basement," Comey said. "They're sitting there consuming and may emerge from the basement to kill people of any sort, which is the call of ISIL, just kill somebody."

Comment: Just how dangerous is terrorism, really?

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Evil Rays

The liberal lie: Refusing to accept Obama's responsibility for Ukraine

Eric Zuesse
Washington's Blog
Thu, 05 Feb 2015 00:15 UTC
Image
© CNN
Steven F. Cohen
Liberals won't acknowledge that they've "been had" by Barack Obama when they believed his liberal rhetoric; they won't acknowledge it, even after Obama has proven by his actions that he is actually extremely conservative (a total agent of Wall Street; and, thus, inequality has been rising under his rule); Obama is conservative despite his liberal rhetoric, which is designed to deceive them; and he has - which is the worst thing of all - intentionally caused an extremely bloody ethnic cleansing in Ukraine, a war there against those of Ukraine's citizens who think that Russia is a better country than the United States: an ethnic cleansing to cement-in, as permanent, a rabidly anti-Russian Government in Ukraine, by getting rid of the people there who had voted for the man Obama overthrew. This is, historically, the first time in history that any American President has sponsored an ethnic cleansing: it's an attempt to exterminate a civilian population. That's how bad Obama actually is.

Liberals won't acknowledge either the violent coup in Ukraine, or the brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign to cement its result: an anti-Russian Government on Russia's doorstep - a very real threat to Russia's national security, and a very aggressive American policy against Russians.

Comment: This is a time of what Sebastian Haffner called "the ultimate decisions of conscience". Many have chosen firmly to make that decision by denying conscience and embracing lies, brutality, and psychopathy. Others, like Cohen, are sitting on the fence. The combined force of these two camps is enough that 'never again' will happen over and over again. It's past time to speak up. But that doesn't make it any less important.

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Attention

IS not the only one who burns victims to death

Glenn Greenwald
The Intercept
Wed, 04 Feb 2015 23:59 UTC
Vietnam Burning
The latest ISIS atrocity - releasing a video of a captured Jordanian fighter pilot being burned alive - prompted substantial discussion yesterday about this particular form of savagery. It is thus worth noting that deliberately burning people to death is achievable - and deliberately achieved - in all sorts of other ways:

Comment: The whole world is burning, and the U.S. seems to be fanning the flames nicely. In fact, the horrific practice of burning people to death is something of an American tradition:
lynching


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Propaganda

Propaganda Alert: USA Today equates Muslims with Nazis

Jim Naureckas
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Tue, 03 Feb 2015 23:38 UTC
Here's the cartoon, by Cameron Cardow of the Ottawa Citizen, that USA Today selected as its daily editorial cartoon for February 2:
Image
It's not a terribly hard cartoon to parse: Islam is the modern equivalent of Nazism, and threatens a new Holocaust. The cartoon lists entities that have nothing in common with each other aside from their connection to Islam - political movements like Hezbollah and Hamas, who have been the targets of far more violence than they are responsible for, along with groups like ISIS and Boko Haram, terrorist groups whose victims are primarily Muslim. Hezbollah and ISIS are actually engaged in intense warfare with each other.


Comment: Actually, what most of those "entities" have in common with each other is that they are all Western (U.S.)-created entities that were created to demonize Muslims and specific Muslim countries that have found themselves in the crosshairs of Western imperialism due to their unwillingness to join the empire.


In case you missed the point, the cartoon puts one of the holiest phrases in Islam - "Allah Akbar," or "God is great" - in the mouth of a Nazi skeleton.

(Along with its roll call of Muslim villains, the cartoon includes the phrase "politically correct" - which I can only take to mean that people who criticize the politics of cartoons - for example - are a kind of Nazi too.)

No doubt defenders of the cartoon will say that it's only talking about the bad kind of Islam, which is just as persuasive as making a list of all the horrible people you can think of from a particular ethnic group and then saying that you're only talking about the bad people from that ethnic group. One would hope USA Today would decline to make such a smear its daily editorial cartoon.

UPDATE: You can send feedback to USA Today's editorial page editor Brian Gallagher at bgallagher@usatoday.com.
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Chart Bar

CEO of Gallup: 5.6% unemployment in the U.S. is 'big fat lie'


Sputnik News
Thu, 05 Feb 2015 02:10 UTC
Image
© AP/Cliff Owen
Gallup CEO Jim Clifton
Don't be one of those people who drink the Kool-Aid and celebrates every time the unemployment figures come out. At least that's what the head of a renowned polling and research company is saying.

The official unemployment rate of 5.6% is extremely misleading, says Jim Clifton, President and CEO of Gallup, which is well-known for taking the pulse of the country on a number of issues, including the president's job performance and what people think about how the economy is doing.

Clifton says that lately the US Labor Department has been rolling out some reportedly good news about the economy and jobs, and everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, hooting and hollering about how great things are getting.

"The cheerleading for this number is deafening. Right now we're hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is 'down' to 5.6 %," says Clifton. "The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market."

And another thing, the Labor Department says if you work a minimum of one hour a week and are paid at least $20, then that's a "job" and you're not counted as unemployed, even though you'd be hard-pressed to try to get by with just $20 a week. But the positive vibes are all smoke and mirrors because the numbers don't take into account some key factors. For instance, the unemployment figures don't count people who have been unemployed for a while and out of frustration have stopped looking for work. It also doesn't take into account that people who are underemployed, which Gallup calculates is about 30 million Americans.

It's downright tomfoolery, says Clifton, especially when you take into consideration that not all jobs are created equal. In other words, what about all the people who are underemployed? Say you have a college degree and you got laid off from your job and you're driving a cab to make ends meet. Guess what? You're not counted among the 5.6%. That number doesn't look at the people who have stopped looking, those who are working part time, and anyone who's underemployed.
Clifton has three words for it: A BIG LIE.

Comment: "They call it 'The American Dream', because you have to be asleep to believe it" -George Carlin


The American Dream - Connecting The Dots

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Eye 1

British army creating propaganda battalion focusing on Facebook

Darren Orf
Gizmodo
Sun, 01 Feb 2015 23:04 UTC
Image
Warfare is a constantly changing landscape, from the weapons that are used to the battlefields they're fought on. Amidst mountains of Snowden leaks from the NSA and GCHQ, it's no longer a mystery that the digital warfare is advancing quickly, and the British Army just upped its digital artillery.

A new group of soldiers, referred to as "Facebook Warriors" will " wage complex and covert information and subversion campaigns," according to the Financial Times. This unit will be named the 77th battalion, whose number also has a historical significance. FT says:
The original Chindits [77th battalion] were a guerrilla unit led by the swashbuckling British commander Major General Orde Wingate, one of the pioneers of modern unconventional warfare. They operated deep behind Japanese lines in Burma between 1942 and 1945 and their missions were often of questionable success.
These Facebook warriors will be using similar atypical tactics, through non-violent means, to fight their adversary. This will mainly be achieved through "reflexive control," an old Soviet tactic of spreading specifically curated information in order to get your opponent to react in the exact way you want them to. It's a pretty tricky trick, and the British army will be doing just that with 1,500-person (or more) troop using Twitter and Facebook as a means to spread disinformation, real war truths, and "false flag" incidents as well as just general intelligence gathering. The 77th battalion will reportedly begin operations in April.


Comment: These tactics have been used for a very long time by many nations. It's only now that they are putting it out there publicly and focusing on Facebook. But information warfare is nothing new. From Hasbara to the Total Information Awareness program, the world has been subjected to disinformation and propaganda from governments for a long time.


Britain is far from the only country making a social media-focused investment. The Guardian notes that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) used 30 different social media sites in several different languages during Operation Cast Lead in an effort to "engage with an audience we otherwise wouldn't reach," says an IDF spokesperson. ISIS is also annoyingly adept at recruiting through social media and its sympathizers have hacked the U.S. military's social media accounts, including U.S. Central Command.

As Parks and Recreation's Ron Swanson once said, "Everything is a weapon," and social media is not an exception to the rule.
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Attention

Ukraine: The Propaganda War

David William Pear
OpedNews
Thu, 05 Feb 2015 22:52 UTC
Obama
© gopthedailydose.com/
Last week Thomas Friedman writing in the New York Times called Putin a "thug" and "Hitler" (HERE ). This week Timothy Garton Ash writing in the Guardian comment section says Putin is Slobodan Milosevic (HERE ).

Both Friedman and Ash say that Putin is threatening Europe and he must be stopped. Both say the only way to stop Putin is to tighten the screws of economic sanctions on Russia, send more lethal military equipment to Ukraine and put NATO boots on the ground. They both call on Obama to do so.

Putin is neither Hitler nor Milosevic. Whenever people write such hyperbole they should immediately be suspected of being propagandists, especially when they heap praise on John "Bomb-Bomb" McCain as Ash does.

Neither Friedman nor Ash can point to any evidence that Putin has been the aggressor in Ukraine, committed genocide as did Hitler and Milosevic, or tried to cause ethnic cleansing. Kiev backed by Obama has been committing genocide and ethnic cleansing in South-East Ukraine.

Russian tanks are not on the move and threatening Europe. Friedman and Ash are making it up. The Baltic States and Poland are safe no matter how much Obama and the main stream media wring their hands and say they are frightened of Russian aggression in Europe. It is almost laughable if they were not so deadly serious and determined about their ulterior motives for making these stories up.

Only those with exaggerated imaginations or people who want to make things up say that Russia has shown evil intentions on its neighbors. People like Friedman and Ashton keep sticking their finger in Putin's eye hoping that he will lash out irrationally. So far they have been very disappointed.

Throughout the crisis that Washington manufactured in Ukraine, Russia has reacted in a measured and moderate response. When Russia's national security was threatened with the loss of its naval base in Crimea, Russia waited for a democratic referendum to approve annexation. When Novorossiya voted to break away from Ukraine, Russia called for diplomacy and greater autonomy for Novorossiya rather than annexation.
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Propaganda

Propaganda Alert: Editor of major newspaper says he planted stories for CIA

Ralph Lopez
Digital Journal
Sun, 25 Jan 2015 02:50 UTC
Image
Becoming the first credentialed, well-known media insider to step forward and state publicly that he was secretly a "propagandist," an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA.

Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.

Comment: For more information on how the CIA has infiltrated the media read:

Controlled Media: CIA Admits Using News To Manipulate People

CIA media infiltration is real: From Operation Mockingbird to Pentagon social media trolls

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Family

SOTT Exclusive: Courageous Ukrainian women speak out

Aeneas Georg
Sott.net
Thu, 05 Feb 2015 13:35 UTC
Nataliya Vitrenko
© Unknown
Nataliya Vitrenko
The Ukrainian war has lasted close to a year now. Those who have followed it will know the names of many of the men in this conflict. Names from the junta such as Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk, Turchinov, Kolomoisky or from the Donbass resistance such as Zakharchenko, Plotnitsky, Strelkov, Givi, Motorola, Bezler etc. are familiar. What is not so familiar are the names of some very courageous women who have spoken out despite the odds of grave consequences. They deserve respect and to be known especially as they have spoken out against the war from within Kiev-controlled Ukraine.

One of these is Nataliya Vitrenko, who is a Doctor of Economics and a Ukrainian politician, leader of the Progressive Socialist Party and head of the Ukrainian women's organization "Gift of Life".


It is clear that Vitrenko is well aware of the game that the West plays in Ukraine and the fact that she is stating it so clearly is a threat to the Ukrainian government. She made a similar appeal to the UN, EU and the US on January 27th 2014 not to support the fascist coup that she saw was about to take the place. After this latest video appeal, calls have been made from the very top to silence her.

Another woman who has spoken out is a Deputy of the Dnipropetrovsk city council, Victoria Shilova, who is also leader of the antiwar movement in Ukraine. This is the appeal to reason that she made in August 2014 and as a result of which she is likely facing a 8 year prison sentence for opposing the war. The video appeal has the title: "Do Ukrainians want war?"
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