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Bad Guys

Western war crimes go unpunished: US military gets free pass after bombing MSF hospital in Kunduz


Media Lens
Thu, 31 Mar 2016 00:00 UTC
kunduz hospital bombing
On the night of October 3, 2015, a United States Air Force AC-130 gunship repeatedly attacked a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Forty-two people were killed and dozens wounded. The US military plane had conducted five strafing runs over the course of more than an hour despite MSF pleas to Afghan, US and Nato officials to call off the attack.

As we reported at the time, MSF were unequivocal in their condemnation of the American attack. The hospital was 'intentionally targeted' in 'a premeditated massacre'; it was a 'war crime'. The medical charity rejected US assurances of three inquiries by the US, Nato and the Afghan government. MSF demanded instead an independent international investigation. It was to no avail. The US ignored public outrage and went ahead with its standard whitewashing procedures when it commits war crimes that get exposed. The outcome was announced on March 18. BBC News reported:
'The US military has disciplined more than a dozen service members after an air strike on a Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan killed 42 people last year.

'The Pentagon has acknowledged that the clinic was targeted by mistake, but no personnel will face criminal charges.'
Note that the BBC wording - 'the Pentagon has acknowledged that the clinic was targeted by mistake' - is deceptive bias. The BBC made no mention that MSF had presented strong evidence that the clinic was 'deliberately targeted', that the attack was a 'war crime', and that there was an urgent need for an independent inquiry.

Comment:

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Document

Best of the Web: Disinfo campaign commences: Panama 'leaks' target West's enemies, ignore NATO criminals


Moon of Alabama
Mon, 04 Apr 2016 15:28 UTC
panama papers
A real leak of data from a law firm in Panama would be very interesting. Many rich people and/or politicians hide money in shell companies that such firms in Panama provide. But the current heavily promoted "leak" of such data to several NATO-supporting news organization and a US government-financed "Non Government Organization" is just a lame attempt to smear some people the U.S. empire dislikes. It also creates a huge blackmail opportunity by NOT publishing certain data in return for this or that desired favor.

Comment: While the media focuses on Putin, it's actually the UK that allegedly has the most links to off-shore tax havens. More than half of the 300,000 firms listed are registered in British-administered tax havens (Hong Kong tops the list). This is followed by Switzerland, the U.S., Panama, Guatemala, Luxembourg... Where's Russia?
In another startling revelation, the leak shows how the £26 million stolen in the notorious 1983 gold bullion heist at the Brink's-MAT depot near Heathrow may have been channeled through an offshore company set up by Mossack Fonesca.
...
Of the British officials implicated in the leak, only three have so far been named: Baroness and life peer Pamela Sharples, former Conservative Party donor and ADT security billionaire Michael Ashcroft, and former Tory MP for East Hampshire Michael Mates.
Here's the Corbett Report's take on the Panama Papers so far:



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Chess

Coming to their senses? French will vote on resolution to end anti-Russian sanctions


Sputnik
Sat, 02 Apr 2016 15:49 UTC
french national assembly
French lawmaker Thierry Mariani drafted a resolution that aims to lift anti-Russian sanctions and plans to present the document in the French National Assembly at the end of April.

Mariani, a prominent member of the center-right political party The Republicans, is a strong believer that sanctions against Russia have hurt the French economy and damaged Russo-French relations. To fix this, Mariani, came up with the draft version of the resolution #3585, which he will officially put forward to French lawmakers on April 28.

The voting on the resolution at the end of the month will show the true stance of lawmakers at the French parliament. According to Mariani, many French politicians, both from the left and the right of the political spectrum, understand that anti-Russian sanctions are ineffective and hurt the French economy.

Comment: It appears many EU member states are finally realizing the huge cost of alienating Russia.

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Book 2

European Islamaphobia: Estonian politician wants to ban Koran in public places


RT
Sun, 03 Apr 2016 15:19 UTC
Koran Exegese
An Estonian politician has come up with a proposal to ban the Koran in public places, saying that the "negative and criminal side" of Islam is very strong and that banishing the Muslim sacred book is good for Estonia's safety.

Outlawing the Koran was proposed by Kristiina Ojuland, head of the People's Unity Party (PUP), Estonian media reported.

"Today, the negative and criminal side of Islam is so strong that we believe this move is a necessary measure to provide safety for our country and our nation, especially our women and children," Ojuland, who served as Estonia's foreign minister from 2002 to 2005, told the Estonian BNS news agency.

The party's leadership said it is concerned over the growing number of refugees arriving in the EU and in particular in Estonia.

"We decided to start gathering information from the population on cases of abuse and harassment, which is hushed in the mainstream media," Triin Raidmets, the leader of the PUP branch in Pärnu, said.
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Key

Building bridges: Russian-Chinese alliance in full bloom

Jeff J. Brown
The Saker
Sun, 03 Apr 2016 00:00 UTC
xi putin, russia china alliance
© politrussia.com
Any questions about Russia's and China's long term cooperation were put to rest, after conducting research on what these two Anti-West colossuses are doing, on a daily basis.

This week, I did a web search on the popular internet engines, Google and Bing. I did this, to follow up on my previous Moscow-Beijing Express article, where I pondered if these two giants on the world stage were hopefully transforming the "Putin-Xi marriage", into a truly long term, bilateral alliance, for the future. See The Xi-Putin honeymoon is over-now it's time to make the China-Russia marriage succeed long term

What I found even surprised me and definitively reassured my hypothesis of hope.

I looked for "Russia + China" and "Xi + Putin". In each case, behind the Great Western Firewall, there were a couple of recent entries, and then mostly dated drivel from 2014 and before. There is obviously a reason for this. It is called censorship and propaganda. It's probably not the search engines' fault. The carefully scripted Western narrative of supreme empire and global hegemony is happening in the newsrooms and editorial boards of newspapers, radio and television stations across Eurangloland. This is being confirmed over and over, as shown in this article, with accompanying videos: Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake: "We All Lie For The CIA"

If you search for the same strings in Chinese though, you enter another reality, and I suspect the same observation would be true in Russian. The Chinese language web is saturated with articles, photos and videos of "Russia + China" and "Xi + Putin", and it is up to today's date and added to, with every bilateral contact and collaboration.

Comment:

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Chess

China's participation in Syria peace talks, a win for Moscow and Damascus


Sputnik
Sun, 03 Apr 2016 14:53 UTC
Xie Xiaoyan
© news.kodoom.comXie Xiaoyan, Special Representative to Syria
Chinese government for the first time appointed a Special Representative for Syria, who was the former Chinese ambassador to Iran, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei said. "China appointed a special envoy in order to better promote peace negotiations, to contribute to better contact with the relevant parties," the official representative of the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. Hong Lei also said that China supports the efforts of the Special Representative of the UN on Syria Staffan de Mistura on peaceful settlement of the Syrian crisis. "China comes from the fact that a political solution is the only way out of the Syrian crisis," he added.

Linking China to a political solution of the Syrian conflict will play into the hands of Russia and the legitimate government of Syria, political analyst Anton Khashchenko said. "On the whole, the decision of China is positive for Russia and for Syria too. If you look at China's position over the past few years on the Syrian conflict, it together with Russia has vetoed the UN Security Council on the Syrian issue for four times. China as well as Russia supports the legitimate authority in Syria."

In China, as well as in Russia, there is a problem amongst its own citizens, who are attracted to Daesh. Beijing is not interested in the fact that these people are returning to China after training with the militants. "It is for these reasons and for a number of others that I think China's decision to appoint a Special Representative is such an important point, including fixing of the negotiating political process that has begun already at a normal level," Anton Khashchenko told Sputnik. According to him, China is fully interested in putting an end to terrorist groups in the region, including those that are prohibited in Russia and other countries.

Comment: "China's position is based on the necessity to preserve Syria's independence, its sovereignty and territorial integrity. We hope that all the sides [involved in Syrian settlement] will decrease the level of controversies, achieve broader consensus and find a solution of the Syrian problem through dialogue and consultations," - Hong Lei

Due to similar approach and understanding, the Syrian conflict has only served to strengthen the ties between Russia and China, which will be perceived by the US as a detriment. Is it? So far a relatively neutral position happens to align two powerful countries under similar perceptions to achieve a peaceful and rightful conclusion for a sovereign nation in turmoil by Western-forced regime change. The US will likely inflame this neutrality until it becomes a negative, diabolical and conspiratorial plot in order to obfuscate Western empirical intentions. The US could have been on the same page and aligned with Russia and China, for real versus pretense. Instead it chose Israel's agenda.

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Vader

The strange case of a Nazi who became an Israeli hitman

The Forward and Dan Raviv And Yossi Melman
Haaretz
Mon, 04 Apr 2016 14:20 UTC
Otto Skorzeny
© Wikimedia Commons / Kurt AlberOtto Skorzeny
On September 11, 1962, a German scientist vanished. The basic facts were simple: Heinz Krug had been at his office, and he never came home.

The only other salient detail known to police in Munich was that Krug commuted to Cairo frequently. He was one of dozens of Nazi rocket experts who had been hired by Egypt to develop advanced weapons for that country.HaBoker, a now defunct Israeli newspaper, surprisingly claimed to have the explanation: The Egyptians kidnapped Krug to prevent him from doing business with Israel.

But that somewhat clumsy leak was an attempt by Israel to divert investigators from digging too deeply into the case — not that they ever would have found the 49-year-old scientist.

We can now report — based on interviews with former Mossad officers and with Israelis who have access to the Mossad's archived secrets from half a century ago — that Krug was murdered as part of an Israeli espionage plot to intimidate the German scientists working for Egypt.
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Vader

Pentagon cannot account for $223M in anti-ISIS operation spending


Sputnik
Mon, 28 Mar 2016 12:51 UTC
Pentagon Gate - Logo
© Kevin Harber
The US Central Command cannot account for $223 million in orders placed during the international operation against Daesh because of inaccurate records-keeping and poor guidance, according to a Department of Defense Inspector General audit released on Monday.

Specifically, the Inspector General said they were unable to verify the accuracy of 72 US Army Central Command ACSA orders valued at more than $202 million "due to a lack of supporting documentation."
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Folder

First Panama Papers casualty? Former Iceland Premier calls on current PM to resign to 'prevent a social uprising'

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge
Mon, 04 Apr 2016 08:57 UTC
Cameron and Gunnlaugsson
© Halldor Kolbeins/AFP/Getty ImagesBoth Gunnlaugsson and Cameron's father were implicated in the latest leaks.
One of the more prominent names featured in the Panama Papers disclosure is that of Iceland's Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. The reason is that according to the leaked files, Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned a company called Wintris set up in 2007 on the Caribbean island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, to hold investments with his wealthy partner, later wife, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir.

As Guardian reports, the couple were living in the UK at the time and had been advised to set up a company in the tax haven in order to hold and invest substantial proceeds from the sale of Pálsdóttir's share in her family's business back in Iceland.

Gunnlaugsson owned a 50% stake in Wintris for more than two years, then transferred it to Pálsdóttir, who held the other 50%, for one dollar. The prime minister's office now says his shareholding was an error and "it had always been clear to both of them that the prime minister's wife owned the assets". Once drawn to the couple's attention in late 2009, the error was corrected.

Towards the end of Gunnlaugsson's time as a Wintris shareholder, having returned to Iceland, he was elected to parliament as leader of the Progressive party.

Gunnlaugsson, who became prime minister four years later, never disclosed his Wintris shares on Iceland's parliamentary register of MPs' financial interests.

Comment: Further reading: Disinfo campaign commences: Panama 'leaks' target West's enemies, ignore NATO criminals

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Bad Guys

Washington Times: Erdogan is playing 'dangerous game' by blackmailing Europe


Sputnik
Mon, 04 Apr 2016 03:32 UTC
erdogan con isis
Pushing the European Union to make concessions to Turkey considering its accession to the bloc, President Erdogan may have won a Pyrrhic victory, American historian Daniel Pipes writes. Amid the major migrant crisis, Europeans not be too embracing of the increased influx of Turkish citizens to the continent.

Blackmailing Brussels, the Turkish president risks leading his country into a catastrophe of unprecedented scales that would likely result in the collapse of the state, Pipes, who is the president of the Middle East Forum, wrote in an opinion column for The Washington Times.

According to the historian, Erdogan has taken advantage of millions of Syrian refugees seeking a chance to get to northern Europe, using the moment as a tool to push his own agenda through.

Comment: Also see: Neocons ready to cut Erdogan loose? Open letter to the wannabe Sultan

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