Czech people were told not to throw tomatoes and eggs at a US military convoy rumbling through Eastern Europe, the local media said, citing the laws of the land. Those in love with egg & tomato hurling may get up to three years if convicted.

"Should anyone emerge with the intent to attack the convoy, with [items] such as tomatoes or eggs, it would qualify as disorderly conduct according to Czech legislation (up to 2 years without parole, in recidivist cases up to 3 years) or damage to property (sentences in the range of 6 months to 3 years)."

This statement was aired on Czech TV Nova and cited by the Russian Insider last week, ahead of the planned US military convoy.

Operation 'Dragoon Ride', a convoy of US military vehicles, mostly IAV Stryker APCs, started on Saturday. The convoy will make its way through Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, the Czech Republic, with its final destination being Germany. It will cross the Czech Republic between March 29 and April 1 on its way to a base in the German city of Vilseck.

Unprecedented war games, involving 5,000 Norwegian troops and 400 vehicles, have started in Norway's northernmost province, bordering Russia. The biggest exercises since Cold War days will last for a week, amid growing tensions between Russia and NATO.

Joint Viking, Norway's biggest military training exercise in nearly 50 years, is being held in the country's far northeast Finnmark County, above the Arctic Circle. The region borders Russia's Kola Peninsula.

The last time a similar military exercise was conducted in Finnmark was in 1967.

"Today the army will transport their vehicles and crews to Finnmark and begin exercise Joint Viking. This is an operative exercise with all weapons and branches involved," Norwegian Army spokesperson Lt. Col. Aleksander Jankov said. "To illustrate the magnitude of this, I can mention that if we put the vehicles one after another on the road it will stretch 6km."

MT @vpkivimaki #Norway plans largest military ex in #Finnmark in nearly 50 yrs w/ 5k soldiers http://t.co/DKPIOivvey pic.twitter.com/DitrukoUd2

— hp (@2111015) December 6, 2014

Apart from the ground troops involved, the exercise (which will last until March 18) has put Norway's Navy submarines and surface vessels off the coast of Finnmark and Air Force fighter jets on alert. All types of weapons are promised to be put to use, reports the Barentz Observer.

Don't look now, but Washington just blinked. As we've documented exhaustively over the past week, pressure has been building steadily for the US to strike some manner of conciliatory tone towards China with regard to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a China-led institution aimed at rivaling the US/Japan-backed ADB. Britain's decision to join China in its new endeavor has prompted a number of Western nations to throw their support behind the bank ahead of the March 31 deadline for membership application. Because the AIIB effectively represents the beginning of the end for US hegemony, the White House has demeaned the effort from its inception questioning the ability of non-G-7 nations to create an institution that can be trusted to operation in accordance with the proper "standards." Now, with 35 nations set to join as founders, it appears Washington may be set to concede defeat. Here's more, via WSJ:

The Obama administration, facing defiance by allies that have signed up to support a new Chinese-led infrastructure fund, is proposing the bank work in a partnership with Washington-backed development institutions such as the World Bank.

The collaborative approach is designed to steer the new bank toward economic aims of the world's leading economies and away from becoming an instrument of Beijing's foreign policy. The bank's potential to promote new alliances and sidestep existing institutions has been one of the Obama administration's chief concerns as key allies including the U.K., Germany and France lined up in recent days to become founding members of the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The Obama administration wants to use existing development banks to co-finance projects with Beijing's new organization. Indirect support would help the U.S. address another long-standing goal: ensuring the new institution's standards are designed to prevent unhealthy debt buildups, human-rights abuses and environmental risks. U.S. support could also pave the way for American companies to bid on the new bank's projects.

"The U.S. would welcome new multilateral institutions that strengthen the international financial architecture," said Nathan Sheets, U.S. Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs. "Co-financing projects with existing institutions like the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank will help ensure that high quality, time-tested standards are maitained."

John McCain brushes off Israel PM's campaign comments on two-state solution, saying Obama 'has his priorities so screwed up it's unbelievable'
Republicans flocked to Binyamin Netanyahu's defense on Sunday, seizing on the soured relations between Barack Obama and the prime minister as ties between the US and Israel strain to their weakest point in decades. Obama has either let acrimonious feelings for Netanyahu cloud his decisions "or he's delusional", Senator John McCain said on CNN's State of the Union, referring to the president's comments on Friday that Netanyahu's recent disavowal of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict makes it "hard to find a path forward".

Waging a close and bitter re-election campaign, Netanyahu had ruled out a two-state solution the day before polls opened last week. Two days after they closed, he attempted to walk back his comments, saying, "I don't want a one-state solution. I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution. But for that, circumstances have to change."

McCain criticized Obama for taking issue with Netanyahu's statement: "The least of your problems are what Bibi Netanyahu said in a political campaign. If every politician was held to what they said in a political campaign, obviously that would be a topic of long discussion. The president has his priorities so screwed up that it's unbelievable." The former Republican presidential candidate said Obama should not even consider backing a UN resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state, adding the concern to a list of grievances that include a "Faustian bargain with the Iranians" over their nuclear program.

McCain and Republican senator Lindsey Graham have threatened to withhold US funds to the UN should the White House not intervene on the issue of Palestinian statehood.

If you are a journalist writing about or a person concerned about issues like Free Speech, read or write in alternative media or news, Occupy movement, Ferguson, Gaza, Ukraine, Russia, police brutality, US interventionism, fair government, homelessness, keeping the government accountable, representative government, government intrusions like the NSA is doing, or you are liberal, progressive, libertarian, conservative, separation of church and state, religion, ...

If you have a website, write, read, or like something in social media that strays outside the new lines the war isn't coming, its now here.

What would we do? Disrupt, deny, degrade, deceive, corrupt, usurp or destroy the information. The information, please don't forget, is the ultimate objective of cyber. That will directly impact the decision-making process of the adversary's leader who is the ultimate target."- Joel Harding on Ukraine's cyber strategy.

IO or IIO (Inform and Influence Operations) defined by the US Army includes the fields of psychological operations and military deception.

In military IIO operations center on the ability to influence foreign audiences, US and global audiences, and adversely affect enemy decision making through an integrated approach. Even current event news is released in this fashion. Each portal is given messages that follow the same themes because it is an across the board mainstream effort that fills the information space entirely when it is working correctly.

Professor Stephen Cohen, America's top Russian expert, says that he and other authorities have no input into US policy toward Russia. He says that there is no discourse, no debate, and that this is unprecedented in American foreign policy.

He says that the "ongoing extraordinary irrational and nonfactual demonization of Putin" is an indication of "the possibility of premeditated war with Russia."

Key points from Professor Cohen's speech can be found here, and you can watch it below...

Suicidal, armed to the teeth and threatening any opposition to U.S. hegemony, the extensive Western-backed Gladio network is having a field day. It seems that staging terror attacks in Tunisia, Yemen, Sweden, Denmark and Syria wasn't enough. The latest attacks happened in India and are already increasing tension between India and Pakistan - both states being Observers for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) membership.

Two gunmen armed with Kalashnikovs and wearing military uniforms walked into an Indian police station in Kathua district located close to the border with Pakistan and opened fire. Six people died in total, including the attackers.

The following day, around 20 kilometres from the first scene of the crime, two gunmen armed with automatic weapons and grenades opened fire on an army camp in Samba district of the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. After a shootout that lasted several hours, both attackers were killed. Security agencies believe that the two gunmen belonged to the same group that carried out the attack on the police station.

Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah reported in a Twitter post that: "If (this) is indeed a terrorist strike, it marks a sharp departure from past attacks. Two attacks in two days in (the) same area of Jammu (is) very unusual."

The European Union is not a state or a federation of states, it is something not seen before, but is assumed to grow state-like characteristics like a center of political accountability. It does not have a head of state or head of government. But political entities of any kind will at some point, when under pressure, cry out for leadership. Europe's crises are demanding this, and have thrown up an autocrat.

Angela Merkel is an accidental autocrat. She was not chosen to be leader of Europe through any democratic method. She was not appointed or anointed. She could hardly be a more unlikely leader of the continent, having received her political education in the sheltered system of the DDR, far removed from plans and beginnings of Europe's unification. She does not give the impression of having wanted the position, and if she relishes it she does not let on. She has demonstrated great political savvy, with tactical skills first honed when she was leader of a youth devision of East Germany's "Propaganda und Agitation". Her acumen has lifted her to an apparently invulnerable position above Germany's political parties. The big question for all of us interested in the world's future is whether she is becoming the inspired politician for whom many Europeans have been waiting. Can she rise to the occasion?

Between 2009 and 2013, including when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, according to that foundation, which is based in Kiev, Ukraine. It was created by Mr. Pinchuk, whose fortune stems from a pipe-making company. He served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament and is a proponent of closer ties between Ukraine and the European Union.

In 2008, Mr. Pinchuk made a five-year, $29 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative, a wing of the foundation that coordinates charitable projects and funding for them but doesn't handle the money. The pledge was to fund a program to train future Ukrainian leaders and professionals "to modernize Ukraine," according to the Clinton Foundation. Several alumni are current members of the Ukrainian Parliament. Actual donations so far amount to only $1.8 million, a Pinchuk foundation spokesman said, citing the impact of the 2008 financial crisis.

The Pinchuk foundation said its donations were intended to help to make Ukraine "a successful, free, modern country based on European values." It said that if Mr. Pinchuk was lobbying the State Department about Ukraine, "this cannot be seen as anything but a good thing."

- From the Wall Street Journal article: Clinton Charity Tapped Foreign Friends

In an exclusive interview, French entrepreneur and long-time resident of Ukraine, Thierry Laurent-Pellet, describes his run-in with the SBU and Right Sector — and explains why he has little faith in Poroshenko's post-Maidan regime

A truly shocking, firsthand account of the corruption and terror that has seized Ukraine

Thierry Laurent-Pellet knows Ukraine like "the bottom of his pocket." The French entrepreneur spent nine years in the country, experiencing firsthand the rampant corruption and political opportunism that still prevails in Kiev to this day. Thanks to the "revolution of dignity," Thierry has also experienced an SBU interrogation — and a Right Sector beating that has left him with serious health problems. But first, some background.