Ukrainian troops and rebels in the country's east have been blaming each other for sporadic ceasefire violations. Both sides say they only respond to attacks launched by adversary forces and question the possibility of heavy artillery withdrawal.

The ceasefire is largely holding in eastern Ukraine, the head of the OSCE mission there, Ertugrul Apakan, said Monday. He added that the one exception was Debaltsevo, a town where an estimated 5,000 Ukrainian task force remains trapped, surrounded by rebel forces.

Ceasefire holds in E.#Ukraine, except for Devaltsevo - head of @OSCE monitoring mission http://t.co/1tB46jed30 pic.twitter.com/Yb8hLLtC97

— RT (@RT_com) February 16, 2015

"The situation in Debaltsevo is still tense," the envoy of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, said Monday, Tass reported. "The Ukrainian forces continue shelling. And they are still trying to break through the encirclement from the outer side. It is impossible to cease fire completely there. That is why the self-defense forces have to respond."

He also said the rebels were "ready to provide a 'green corridor'" for the troops to be able to exit Debaltsevo. They only want them to leave with no weapons and ammunition.

Kiev has refused to acknowledge it has trapped military forces in Debaltsevo, a strategic railway hub that connects the breakaway regions of Lugansk and Donetsk. Military spokesman Vladislav Seleznyov also said the army would not leave.

"There are the Minsk agreements, according to which Debaltsevo is ours. We will not leave," he told Reuters by phone.

The Ukrainian military accused the rebels of shelling army positions 112 times over the first day of the ceasefire. They said five soldiers were killed and 25 wounded.

In recent years the US prestige around the world has been deteriorating rapidly due to the unpopular, outright failed policies, which is forcing the White House to go back to an old and dusty book of tricks that had previously been used by to create an image of prosperity and happiness. In actuality, a number of states around the world paid a bitter price in an attempt to recreate this image, which led to a wave of "color revolutions" in pursuit of "American-style democracy", due in part to the actions of Victoria Nuland, John McCain and the likes of them. It's no wonder then that there's nobody left in line for some more US-style democracy.

The stagnant US political machine is extremely reluctant to change its ways, therefore it is repeating the scenarios that have already been tested, regardless of the fact how poorly they fared previously.

Can you say PANDERING HYPOCRITE?

Isn't it wonderful when one's vaccination schedule magically lines up with his need to pull a political stunt and appease the puppet masters running the show?

Throw this one on the ever mounting pile of evidence that Rand is an establishment toy and nothing more.

P.S. - Chris Christie is openly a turd, but Rand is worse because he tries to cloak himself in this blanket of patriotic freedom and people's rights while he's obviously willing to sell out every last principle he has (if he even has them) to go along and get along with the system, and he just continues to prove it over and over and over again.

BBC Propagandist runs from incoming Ukrainian artillery, but calls it "outgoing" rebel shelling.

Apparently in the Western media, you should not believe your own eyes or reason - out is in, up is down, and left is right.

In one more incredibly biased TV report from the Donetsk airport, a BBC journalist started accusing Donetsk self defense forces of breaking the ceasefire while almost getting killed by a Ukrainian "peace-loving" sticking-to-ceasefire shell.

First, Ian Pannell, international BBC corespondent, implicitly accuses rebels of a "scorched earth policy".

Than in an almost surreal moment while saying that artillery fire "appears" to be mostly "outgoing", there's a clear and visible evidence of incoming Ukrainian fire, resulting in an dangerous explosion extremely close to and directly behind him.

Fortunately enough "outgoing fire" hasn't landed on his thick head.

A citizen's media group has lodged a complaint against German television channel ZDF for airing a photograph of Russian tanks in eastern Ukraine, which in reality were Russian tanks on patrol in South Ossetia in 2008.

Just days after a US politician presented on the Senate floor falsified images of Russian tanks purported to be taken in eastern Ukraine, one of Germany's largest broadcasters appears guilty of the very same error.

The German media watchdog group, known as the Permanent Open Committee of Media Monitoring, has issued a complaint against federal channel Zweiten Deutschen Fernsehens (ZDF) over false reporting on the situation in eastern Ukraine, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten has reported.

[T]he whole world had become strange and unsettling. Apart from the fascinating rules I knew, the great game had clearly had other secret rules that I had failed to grasp. There must have been something deceitful and false about it. Where could one find stability and security, faith and confidence, if world events could be so deceptive? If triumph upon triumph led to ultimate disaster, and the true rules of history were revealed only retrospectively in a shattering outcome? I stared into the abyss. I felt a horror for life. (Defying Hitler, p. 27)

This is how one young German man described his experience of the events that led to Nazi Germany. His name was Sebastian Haffner. He later became a journalist and historian, and his memoir, Defying Hitler, offers a candid, insightful perspective on the real impact of Nazism: its effect on the inner lives of the people who experienced it.

It's books like Defying Hitler that are essential if we, as a species, are ever going to learn how to remove ourselves from the seemingly endless cycles of affluence, ignorance, oppression and mutual destruction. Dry military histories, political memoirs, academic analyses, newspaper articles - all can provide some important details, but they miss the point. They miss the heart of the matter, the essence of the situation that makes it matter. In short, they lack psychological depth.

Talks between Greece and euro zone finance ministers over the country's debt crisis broke down on Monday when Athens rejected a proposal to request a six-month extension of its international bailout package as "unacceptable".

The unexpectedly rapid collapse raised doubts about Greece's future in the single currency area after a new leftist-led government vowed to scrap the 240 billion euro ($272.4 billion) bailout, reverse austerity policies and end cooperation with EU/IMF inspectors.

Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who chaired the meeting, said Athens had until Friday to request an extension, otherwise the bailout would expire at the end of the month. The Greek state and its banks would then face a looming cash crunch.

"You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."— George Orwell, 1984

None of us are perfect. All of us bend the rules occasionally. Even before the age of overcriminalization, when the most upstanding citizen could be counted on to break at least three laws a day without knowing it, most of us have knowingly flouted the law from time to time.

Indeed, there was a time when most Americans thought nothing of driving a few miles over the speed limit, pausing (rather than coming to a full stop) at a red light when making a right-hand turn if no one was around, jaywalking across the street, and letting their kid play hookie from school once in a while. Of course, that was before the era of speed cameras that ticket you for going even a mile over the posted limit, red light cameras that fine you for making safe "rolling stop" right-hand turns on red, surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition software mounted on street corners, and school truancy laws that fine parents for "unexcused" absences.

My, how times have changed.

Today, there's little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home. That's because technology—specifically the technology employed by the government against the American citizenry—has upped the stakes dramatically so that there's little we do that is not known by the government.

In such an environment, you're either a paragon of virtue, or you're a criminal.

If you haven't figured it out yet, we're all criminals. This is the creepy, calculating yet diabolical genius of the American police state: the very technology we hailed as revolutionary and liberating has become our prison, jailer, probation officer, Big Brother and Father Knows Best all rolled into one.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears. A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you're walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. As I point out in my book, A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, this doesn't even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday said that he hopes that all of the world's Jews will eventually make aliya to Israel.

Speaking to Army Radio from Paris, where on Sunday he participated alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other world leaders in an anti-terror march following a violent week in France, Liberman said that "Israel's message is that we are here with them. We won't forget our brothers, no matter where they are."

"I hope that aliya will bring all the world's Jews to Israel, it doesn't matter from where," he said.

Liberman said that his call for aliya doesn't necessarily have to do with the recent anti-Semitic attack in Paris at a kosher supermarket. "Israel's policy has always been to have an aliya of Jews to Israel."

If it seems like it never stops raining, blame the Russians. Or even the North Koreans. CIA chiefs fear hostile nations are trying to manipulate the world's weather, a conference heard.


A leading academic has told how he got a mysterious phone call asking whether foreign countries could be triggering droughts or flooding. Professor Alan Robock, from Rutgers University in New Jersey, said: 'Consultants working for the CIA rang and said we'd like to know if someone is controlling the world's climate would we know about it?

'Of course they were also asking - if we control someone else's climate would they then know about it.'

The professor is one of many scientists from around the world are actively looking at manipulating the weather as a way of combating climate change.

Geoengineering techniques range from cloud seeding, in which chemicals are sprayed by planes trigger rainfall, to shooting mirrors into space to reflect sunlight and cool the Earth.

Professor Robock told the callers that any attempts to meddle with the weather on a large scale would be detectable.