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South Front Crisis News: 1 Ukrainian town, 8 months, 164 civilians killed by Kiev's shelling

south front
According to official reports, legislatively the strength of Kiev's army has been set at 250,000. The 22 existing brigades have been reorganized and twelve new brigades are about to be formed. Under state defense contracts the army has received more than 1,300 pieces of military equipment. Also, the Defense Ministry has created a center for development and material support for the Ukrainian armed forces and agreements have been authorized for shifting the army to NATO standards. The Minsk peaceful is going successful. (тут рукалицо)


Megaphone

Chinese central banker blames expectation of fed rate hike for market crash

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While the western mainstream media meme is that "this is all China's fault" - despite the fact that the real break happened after the FOMC Minutes last week - Xinhua reports that China central bank blames wide-spread expectations of a Fed rate hike in September for the global market rout... demanding The Fed "remain patient.

As Xinhua reports,
A researcher with China's central bank on Tuesday blamed wide expectation of a Fed rate rise in September for the global market rout.

Yao Yudong, head of the People's Bank of China's Research Institute of Finance, said the expected Fed rate hike next month had been the "trigger" for the wild market swings.

Analysts worried that the Fed rate hike could accelerate the plunge of U.S. stocks andtrigger a sell-off of assets worldwide and even a new global credit crisis.

Yao said the Fed should remain patient before the U.S. inflation reaches 2 percent.

Stock Down

Economist on global market crisis: It's not about China, the problem is America

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© Larry Downing / ReutersA view shows the Federal Reserve building
As stock markets continue their slide into negative territory, economists debate whether the problems lie in monetary mismanagement by the US Federal Reserve or with China's domestic concerns "exporting pain" to others via its yuan devaluation.

Speaking to RT, economist Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. said that there is a lot of "scapegoating" surrounding China and the yuan's devaluation when it comes to the recent downward fortunes of global stock markets, but that the Federal Reserve is the more responsible culprit when it comes to any instability in the American economy.

"This is not about China. This problem is made in America. It's all about the Fed. The Fed inflated this bubble and now they're threatening to prick it. Everybody expects the Fed to actually raise interest rates," Schiff said, after US stocks rallied early Tuesday before crashing in the final hour of trading.

He went on to say that he believes the possibility of the Fed raising rates is "a bluff," and that doing so would trigger another financial crisis.

Question

Inquiry questions if ISIS analysis was distorted

Bomber
© twitter.comAirstrikes on ISIS positions
The Pentagon's inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials have skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a more optimistic account of progress, according to several officials familiar with the inquiry.

The investigation began after at least one civilian Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told the authorities that he had evidence that officials at United States Central Command — the military headquarters overseeing the American bombing campaign and other efforts against the Islamic State — were improperly reworking the conclusions of intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama, the government officials said.

Fuller details of the claims were not available, including when the assessments were said to have been altered and who at Central Command, or Centcom, the analyst said was responsible. The officials, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about classified matters, said that the recently opened investigation focused on whether military officials had changed the conclusions of draft intelligence assessments during a review process and then passed them on.

Comment: Falsifying records, deceiving the public, "possibly misleading" the supreme decision-makers...and the penalty for this might be...? Or is this just another layer of problem solving to pull the wool, gain confidence and divert a real investigation or something else. From the looks of it, we have a 3-D pseudo war of Distortion, Deception and Disinformation. "Service Bias"...now there's an interesting term for manipulation and lying!


Chart Bar

Why China's slowdown will lead to sustainable growth

Chinese policy
© Jason Lee
In less than a week China's modest, by-the-book devaluation of its currency appears to have escalated into a full-scale political crisis, complete with reports of a Mao-style purge of top leaders and tanks in Tiananmen Square. Suddenly, the world's highest-flying economy appears headed for the brick wall of reality.

Reality doesn't mean early onset doom and gloom.

The danger of making 2 plus 2 equal 5 or 6 in this volatile interim is all too real. So is another week of panic in the bond and equity markets—as bad as or worse than the wholly unwarranted freak-out we've just been through.

Handcuffs

Clean slate: New Ferguson judge voids 10,000 arrest warrants

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© Kate Munsch / ReutersPolice guard the Municipal Court in Ferguson, Missouri, March 2015.
The new municipal judge in Ferguson has recalled all arrest warrants issued before 2015. The decision gives many residents of the troubled Missouri city a fresh start, just days before a court reform law is to take effect.

Issued by Ferguson Municipal Court Judge Donald McCullin, the order applies to all arrest warrants prior to December 31, 2014, whether for minor traffic violations or more serious offenses. Close to 10,000 warrants are affected by the decision, municipal prosecutor Stephanie Karr told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

"These changes should continue the process of restoring confidence in the court, alleviating fears of the consequences of appearing in court, and giving many residents a fresh start," said McCullin, who was appointed to the post in June. His predecessor, Ronald Brockmeyer, resigned in March following a scathing Department of Justice report accused Ferguson of unconstitutional practices and racial profiling.

Comment: Wow, a town of 21,000 voids 10,000 arrest warrants! That is almost half of the population! This seems like great news but will do little to really change the town's image of racial profiling.


Light Saber

Lavrov: Russia and China are stalwart opponents of imposing will over sovereign states and attempts to rewrite history

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© Vladimir Astapkovich / RIA Novosti
Rewriting history shatters the pillars of the world order perpetuated by the UN Charter, Russia's foreign minister said in an article published in Russian and Chinese media. The world's fate cannot be held in the hands of just one state, he added.

Sergey Lavrov's article 'History Lessons and New Frontiers' has been published in Russian Rossiyskaya Gazeta and the Chinese People's Daily along with a piece by China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

"Today we see barefaced craving to falsify the history of war (WWII) and equalize victims and slaughterers. This urge does not only revolt feelings of our people, but also undermines the basis of the modern world order perpetuated in the United Nations' Statute," Lavrov wrote.

It is highly important that Russia and China present a united front in persistently presenting the historical truth, Lavrov stressed, paying special attention to the significance of Chinese leader Xi Jinping's visit to Russia on the Victory Day and the march of Chinese soldiers on Red Square during the celebrations.

Comment: It's easy to see why Russia and China are painted as villains by the West when you read Lavrov's words. The U.S. believes in the exact opposite of what they do. Since the leaders of the U.S. are bound and determined to hold full hegemonic control of the world, they cannot let either country get enough control to change the global geopolitical makeup. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for humanity, they are failing.


Light Sabers

The West continues spreading the myth of the Russian threat

Pentagon
© Flickr/ Michael Baird
Not a week goes by without the Pentagon carping about an ominous Russian "threat".

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey entered certified Donald "known unknown" Rumsfeld territory when he recently tried to conceptualize the "threat"; "Threats are the combination, or the aggregate, of capabilities and intentions. Let me set aside for the moment, intentions, because I don't know what Russia intends."

So Dempsey admits he does not know what he's talking about. What he seems to know is that Russia is a "threat" anyway — in space, cyber space, ground-based cruise missiles, submarines.

And most of all, a threat to NATO; "One of the things that Russia does seem to do is either discredit, or even more ominously, create the conditions for the failure of NATO."

So Russia "does seem" to discredit an already self-discredited NATO. That's not much of a "threat".

All these rhetorical games take place while NATO "does seem" to get ready for a direct confrontation with Russia. And make no mistake; Moscow does view NATO's belligerence as a real threat.

Eye 2

U.S. complicity in war crimes and genocide in Yemen met with media silence

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© Khaled Abdullah / Reuters
In the latest atrocity in Yemen, Saudi warplanes bombed a residential area, killing at least 65 people. Most of the victims are reported to be civilians from the Salah district of Taiz, Yemen's third largest city.

The apparent war crime committed has tragically become an almost daily occurrence during five months of relentless aerial bombardment of Yemen by a Western-backed coalition of foreign powers.

In recent days, there were similar air strikes on civilian centers in the Red Sea port city of Hodeida and the northern province of Saada. In the Hodeida strike, which killed several dock workers, the British charity Save the Children said it believed the attack was a deliberate bid by the Saudis to sabotage aid supplies to the civilian population.

Surely, this should be front page news, with CNN, the BBC and France 24, among other big Western media outlets, splashing it as their top story. The onus is on them because their governments are implicated in grave crimes. However, there has been no news coverage of the tragic events. Aside from some brief, vague reports of a generalized humanitarian crisis, there has been a wall of silence as to how the Western-backed Saudi-led coalition is pulverizing Yemeni civilians and creating the crisis. That suggests a deliberate blackout by Western media.


Eye 1

Police in Baltimore using 'Stingray' surveillance technology for common crimes and then conceal usage

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© Shannon Stapleton / Reuters
Baltimore PD, like many other US police forces, increasingly employs indiscriminate 'Stingray' surveillance technology for common, petty crimes while concealing that usage from suspects, their attorneys, and judges, according to a new report.

Long billed as a groundbreaking tool to thwart terror plots or other major crimes, a suitcase-sized cell-site simulator was used by the Baltimore Police Department to nab a phone thief, catch a woman who sent "threatening and annoying" text messages, and someone who stole credit cards to pay two months' rent at a self-storage unit.

Surveillance records show that Baltimore police used stingray technology in 837 criminal cases identified by USA Today. In addition, Baltimore authorities routinely hid proof of stingray usage in court, with about a third of cases ending up in dismissal and only about a 50-percent conviction rate.

Maryland state law requires defense lawyers to be told about any use of electronic surveillance.

Comment: See also: