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Wave of 'suicides' among former Ukrainian regional officials continuing

Colonel Cassad
Slavyangrad
Sun, 15 Mar 2015 01:56 UTC
Peklushenko
The wave of "suicides" among former "Regionals" in Ukraine is continuing.

Former chairman of Zaporozhye Regional State Administration Alexander Peklushenko committed suicide

The Chief Inspector of the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Zaporozhye region, Aleksandr Soloshenko, informed the correspondent of RBC-Ukraine. "Yes. Aleksandr Peklushenko committed suicide at his home in the village of Solnechnoe. At the moment, an investigative team is working at the scene," said Aleksandr Soloshenko.

Aleksandr Peklushenko was a suspect in the case of the dispersal of Zaporozhye Maidan on January 26, 2014. On the night of February 28, a former deputy chairman of the Party of Regions, Mikhail Chechetov, committed suicide. On the evening of March 9, Party of Regions People's Deputy of the Fifth and Sixth Radas, Stanislav Melnik, committed suicide.

PS: Judging by the pace, new "suicides" are not far off. Belonging to the Party of Regions during Yanukovych's reign is apparently now a factor in raising the risk of a sudden "suicide". Nonetheless, the "Regionals" are in fact paying the price for last year's cowardice with their positions, money and sometimes even lives, because unlike them, the coup ringleaders who replaced them are not so delicate and, in contrast to Yanukovych, they are not so embarrassed by blood.

Comment: Care to bet whether there's more to these stories than meets the eye?

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Newspaper

EU unlikely to agree next week to prolong Russia sanctions

Adrian Croft
Yahoo! News
Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:00 UTC
EU Foreign Ministers
© REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
European Union Foreign Ministers pose for the media during their informal European Union Ministers of Foreign Affairs meeting (Gymnich) in Riga March 6, 2015.
European Union leaders are unlikely to reach agreement at their summit next week to prolong economic sanctions on Russia that expire in July, a senior EU official said on Friday.

New sanctions on Russia are also off the table for now because EU governments want to give a chance to a fragile ceasefire in eastern Ukraine.

But some of the EU's 28 member states had pushed for an early decision on extending sanctions on Russia's financial, energy and defense sectors adopted in July last year over Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

While leaders will discuss sanctions at next week's summit, the senior EU official said a majority would probably want to hold over discussion of renewing the economic sanctions on Russia until July.
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Oscar

Report: Ancient statues destroyed by ISIS were fake


RT
Sat, 14 Mar 2015 18:55 UTC
ISIS /statue
© www.ibtimes.co.uk
A still from the video showing IS destroying ancient statues in Mosul
The ancient statues that Islamic State militants smashed in Mosul on camera last month have been proved to be exact replicas of precious artifacts of Iraqi heritage. The real masterpieces of antiquity are said to be in Baghdad.

"They were copies. The originals are all here," Baghdad's museum director told Germany's Deutsche Welle. The head of the antiquity department in Iraq's cultural heritage authority, Fawzye al-Mahdi, also told the German broadcaster that "none" of the artifacts "were originals."

This, experts say, explains why in a video that shows the destruction statues crumble so easily.

winged bull
© yalibnan.com
Colossal statue of a winged bull.
"The reason they crumble so easily is that they're made of plaster. You can see iron bars inside," Mark Altaweel of the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London said to Channel 4. However, Mosul's exiled governor Atheel Nuafi, said that, while many of destroyed items were not originals, but there were real ones demolished afterward.

"There were two items that were real and which the militants destroyed," he told Iraq television. "One is a winged bull and the other was the God of Rozhan." He also said that before destroying the museum, ISIS militants could have stolen several items.

Comment: Perhaps that the artifacts were relocated to Baghdad, a fortunate circumstance considering, is Iraq's way of saying it doesn't trust the US, nor its spawn IS, with its cultural heritage treasures. There was once an Iraqi palace that didn't fare too well...you might remember...

"At a time when ISIL is destroying the ancient monuments and artifacts of Iraq's rich history, the United States continues to work towards preserving its historical legacy for the Iraqi people and for the world."

What a load of "winged bull." If the US was so magnanimous and culturally cognizant, it would have left Iraq alone over a decade ago. We can all be "Shocked and Awed" at this piece of propaganda...this bull just won't fly.

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Snakes in Suits

Poroshenko submits late draft resolution on special status of districts in Donbas region


ITAR-TASS
Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:28 UTC
Image
© EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has submitted a draft resolution on granting special status to separate districts, cities, settlements and villages in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions where a special order of self-government will be introduced, the Ukrainian parliament reports on its website.

Under point 4 of the package of measures to implement the Minsk agreements, Ukraine's Verkhovnaya Rada (parliament) was supposed to adopt a resolution indicating separate districts in the Donbas region that will have a special political and economic status by March 14. After the resolution had not been passed on time, the heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, who are the guarantors of the Minsk agreements, to exert pressure on the Ukrainian leadership and make it implement the Minsk agreements.

For the moment, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council is the only state body in Ukraine that has supported a decision to delimitate the borders of separate districts where a special form of local self-government is to be introduced along the line of contact defined by the Minsk agreements.

The Ukrainian parliament's next plenary meeting is scheduled for March 17, the website says.

Comment: Unsurprising Ukraine is slow to implement this point of the Minsk agreements. Sounds like a delaying tactic for some other nefarious plan.

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Crusader

Putin documentary on Crimea: US masterminds behind Ukraine coup


RT
Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:02 UTC
Image
© Rossiya 1 news
The Ukrainian armed coup was organized from Washington, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in an interview for a new documentary aired Sunday. The Americans tried to hide behind the Europeans, but Moscow saw through the trick, he added.

"The trick of the situation was that outwardly the [Ukrainian] opposition was supported mostly by the Europeans. But we knew for sure that the real masterminds were our American friends," Putin said in a documentary, Crimea - The Way Home, aired by Rossiya 1 news channel.

"They helped training the nationalists, their armed groups, in Western Ukraine, in Poland and to some extent in Lithuania," he added. "They facilitated the armed coup."

Comment: Putin's story of events in Ukraine hasn't changed since the beginning. US/EU/NATO however keep changing their plans to suit their agenda against Russia with no regard for what the population actually wants.

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Megaphone

Polish politician accuses US of warmongering, says he understands Putin


Sputnik
Sun, 15 Mar 2015 23:19 UTC
Image
© AP Photo/ Alik Keplicz
A Polish politician and MEP has criticized his country's stance on the Ukrainian conflict and said he understands the position of President Putin, whose country is being surrounded by NATO bases.

A Polish politician and member of the European parliament, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, is convinced his country should stick to neutrality in the Ukrainian conflict.

"We have no single reason to take part in this war," he said in an interview with the Polish news channel TVN 24. "The US has not been attacked. The NATO Treaty is only invoked if coalition members are attacked."

"We are America's ally, but only on matters of defense, not offensive," he added.

Comment: Glad to hear there are some thinking people in Poland.

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Heart - Black

Pedophilia in Britain 'woven into the fabric of society' - Theresa May


RT
Sat, 14 Mar 2015 14:02 UTC
As the UK has launched a new-judge led inquiry panel to investigate a pedophile ring operated in 1980s, the Home Secretary warns the allegations are just a "tip of an iceberg" and the problem is "woven, covertly, into the fabric of our society."
Image
© Reuters/Daniel Leal-Olivas
Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May
Following a spate of allegations concerning the abuse of children by adults, many of who abused their positions of power and status, Home Secretary Theresa May said Britons still do not appreciate the"true scale of that abuse."

Writing in the Telegraph, May warned that the investigation into predators of children will "lead into our schools and hospitals, our churches, our youth clubs and many other institutions that should have been places of safety..."

Comment: The depth of depravity at the highest levels of British society is indeed staggering. And, yet, it is only the tip of the iceberg.

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Newspaper

Journalists admit intelligence services, lobbies and advertisers dictate MSM content

Julie Lévesque
Global Research
Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:00 UTC
cia news
© www.troutinmilk.com
News - the CIA tool!
There are many reasons not to trust the mainstream media (MSM). Most, if not all those reasons, have been analyzed by independent news outlets. The MSM is owned by private companies and financed by advertising, both of which have a clear influence on its editorial content and the overall agenda setting. It has also been proven in the past, during the Church Committee, that the CIA, like other intelligence agencies, uses the mainstream media for propaganda purposes by planting stories and using journalism as a cover for agents. The mainstream media's complaisance towards governments has also been exposed, namely with the New York Times' yearlong silence on wiretapping under the Bush administration.

Recently, however, several stories from mainstream journalists have emerged, exposing the corrupt nature of the MSM, thus weighing in on the growing mistrust it inspires.

Comment: Maybe, if there are enough articles like this, the public will finally get the message and the media will be motivated to "keep it real." (How un"real"istic is that!)

Black is the new White As in the newspaper joke...what is black and white and read all over? The trick is in figuring out what is "black" and what is "white." More and more, it seems black is winning out, almost to the point we have a "blackout on truth." Applause to those who recognize this and submit unbiased, uncompromised articles to try and balance this badly sloping equation and honor their integrity to the public and their craft.

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Calculator

Can the Empire of Chaos apply 'controlled chaos' and remain hegemon?

Dmitry Orlov
Club Orlov
Tue, 10 Mar 2015 19:12 UTC
Image

The dollar black hole
The term "chaos" has been popping up a lot lately in the increasingly collapse-prone world in which we find ourselves. Pepe Escobar has even published a book on it. Titled Empire of Chaos, it describes a scenario "where a[n American] plutocracy progressively projects its own internal disintegration upon the whole world." Escobar's chaos is tailor-made; its purpose is "to prevent an economic integration of Eurasia that would leave the U.S. a non-hegemon, or worse still, an outsider."

Escobar is not the only one thinking along these lines; here is Vladimir Putin speaking at the Valdai Conference in 2014:
A unilateral diktat and imposing one's own models produces the opposite result. Instead of settling conflicts it leads to their escalation, instead of sovereign and stable states we see the growing spread of chaos, and instead of democracy there is support for a very dubious public ranging from open neo-fascists to Islamic radicals.

Why do they support such people? They do this because they decide to use them as instruments along the way in achieving their goals but then burn their fingers and recoil. I never cease to be amazed by the way that our partners just keep stepping on the same rake, as we say here in Russia, that is to say, make the same mistake over and over.
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Eye 1

Russian spy chief visits Washington amid Ukraine talks


Stratfor
Wed, 18 Feb 2015 17:28 UTC
Bortnikov
© RIA Novosti/Alexey Nikolskiy
Alexander Bortnikov
The world is watching as the cease-fire in Ukraine progresses on shaky ground and France and Germany lead a spate of negotiations. However, Moscow's eyes are on Washington, where one of Russia's most powerful men — Alexander Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Services, or FSB — arrived Wednesday.

The same day, Kiev took another important step in implementing the cease-fire when it withdrew its forces from the eastern Ukrainian city of Debaltseve, a key location along the demarcation line where heavy fighting was still taking place. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the cease-fire between Ukraine and Russian-backed separatist forces is largely being observed across the front line except in Debaltseve, which Lavrov called the "cauldron."

Even as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko continued to deny that Russian-backed separatists had encircled Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve, the Ukrainian forces' retreat from the city was effectively a recognition by the Ukrainian leader that he had no choice but to give into the demands of Russia and his European counterparts. These parties were not about to see the Minsk agreement fall apart because of one battle where the separatists clearly had the upper hand.

Comment: So what was discussed? Given the timing, it's obvious Bortnikov wasn't just there to attend a Summit on extremism...

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