The Guardian's columnist David Hill wrote an article on recent opposition riots in Ecuador. It is one-sided and full of misrepresentations. Here is why. A recent article by The Guardian's environment writer David Hill on the recent protests in the Ecuador was titled "Protests by 1,000s of Ecuadorians met with brutal repression." It claimed the police were teargassing and clubbing protesters in capital Quito, while in other regions the police were "specifically targeting female protestors' 'intimate parts.'"

While Hill's bio on The Guardian states that he is a "freelance writer based in the Amazon," teleSUR English is based in Quito and has been covering the protests in the country over the past few months and was on the ground and witnessed and reported significantly different scenes from this week's protests in Quito.

teleSUR English's team put together a video that demonstrates how Hill's article was riddled with errors and misrepresentations and how The Guardian got Latin America wrong, yet again.

The idea of partition for Iraq would never be agreed by Moscow, Russian FM Sergey Lavrov said, stressing that this kind of 'state structure manipulation' is obsolete and Iraqis should define the future of their country themselves

"We would never adopt a position voiced without any constraint by US Vice President Joe Biden, who said directly that Iraq should be split into Shia and Sunni parts and that the Kurds should be given what they want," Lavrov told the participants of the youth forum 'Territory of meanings' near Moscow.

Lavrov labeled Biden's position as "highly irresponsible and what's more important - unacceptable," because someone from overseas is lecturing Iraqi people on what to do with their country.

A year after Israel launched premeditated aggression on Gaza last July, the Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement said:

"(T)he Strip remains in ruins, light years away from the reconstruction many had hoped for.

Despite the growing recognition amongst the Israeli security establishment that Gaza's rehabilitation is a precondition to regional stability and security, Israel continues to impose sweeping, arbitrary restrictions on travel and on movement of commercial goods. Today, access remains the exception, rather than the rule."

Unemployment exceeds 40% - for youths around 60%. "(N)o significant rebuilding is taking place and civilian infrastructure has not even been restored to its state prior to the operation. Poverty and aid dependence are rampant." Widespread destruction was overwhelming.

U.S. military officials in Iraq have issued preliminary confirmation that Islamic State militants used mustard gas in a mortar attack on Kurdish forces in August, a Defense Department official said.

After an Aug. 11 attack that reportedly sickened dozens of Kurdish troops, the Kurds provided U.S. officials with fragments of shells that later tested positive for the presence of "HD, or what is known as sulfur mustard," said Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Killea, chief of staff for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

The attack occurred in the town of Makhmour in northern Iraq near the front lines of the Kurdish forces' fight against the Islamic State, according to Killea, who briefed reporters at the Pentagon on Friday. Killea cautioned that this was a "presumptive field test," and further analysis is needed to possibly determine the source of the chemical weapon.

Both Iraq and Syria have in the past maintained stockpiles of chemical weapons, and U.S. officials say it is unclear whether the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, has seized any of those weapons.

The United States continues to flex its muscles and provoke Russia - the US Air Force announced it would deploy its F-22 Raptor stealth fighters to Europe to "enhance regional security." Officially, the move is to show US allies in Europe Washington's "commitment to the security and stability" on the continent, linking it to the Ukrainian crisis.

"Russia's military activity in the Ukraine continues to be of great concern to us and to our European allies," the air force secretary, Deborah James, told a news conference at the Pentagon.


The exact details, such as the specific number of planes, date of deployment or location were not revealed, but the F-22 deployment will be in line with "a strong and balanced approach to Russia," the Guardian reported.

Although the Americans tried to justify the deployment as providing security to their European allies, the move in itself is provocative and may trigger counter measures from Russia. Battle-ready US aircraft flying in the immediate proximity from Russian borders is akin to Russian war planes patrolling the Gulf of Mexico or the coast of the Canadian province of British Columbia, right next to the US border.

To followers of Ayn Rand and Ronald Reagan, and to all the business people who despise government, 'community' is a form of 'communism.' Even taking the train is too communal for them. Americans have been led to believe that only individuals matter, that every person should fend for him/herself, that "winner-take-all" is the ultimate goal, and that the winners have no responsibility to others.

To the capitalist, everything is a potential market. Education, health care, even the right to water. But with every market failure it becomes more clear that basic human rights can't be bought and sold like cars and cell phones. The pursuit of profit, when essential needs are part of the product, means that not everyone will be able to pay the price. Some will be denied those essential needs.

"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."—Martin Luther King Jr.

There's an ill will blowing across the country. The economy is tanking. The people are directionless, and politics provides no answer. And like former regimes, the militarized police have stepped up to provide a façade of law and order manifested by an overt violence against the citizenry.

Despite the revelations of the past several years, nothing has changed to push back against the American police state. Our freedoms—especially the Fourth Amendment—continue to be choked out by a prevailing view among government bureaucrats that they have the right to search, seize, strip, scan, spy on, probe, pat down, taser, and arrest any individual at any time and for the slightest provocation.

Despite the recent outrage and protests, nothing has changed to restore us to our rightful role as having dominion over our bodies, our lives and our property, especially when it comes to interactions with the government.

Forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases—these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials. Thus far, the courts have done little to preserve our Fourth Amendment rights, let alone what shreds of bodily integrity remain to us.

Indeed, on a daily basis, Americans are being forced to relinquish the most intimate details of who we are—our biological makeup, our genetic blueprints, and our biometrics (facial characteristics and structure, fingerprints, iris scans, etc.)—in order to clear the nearly insurmountable hurdle that increasingly defines life in the United States.

In other words, we are all guilty until proven innocent.

Worst of all, it seems as if nothing will change as long as the American people remain distracted by politics, divided by their own prejudices, and brainwashed into believing that the Constitution still reigns supreme as the law of the land, when in fact, we have almost completed the shift into fascism.

In other words, despite our occasional bursts of outrage over abusive police practices, sporadic calls for government reform, and periodic bouts of awareness that all is not what it seems, the police state continues to march steadily onward.

Such is life in America today that individuals are being threatened with arrest and carted off to jail for the least hint of noncompliance, homes are being raided by police under the slightest pretext, and roadside police stops have devolved into government-sanctioned exercises in humiliation and degradation with a complete disregard for privacy and human dignity.

The investigation continues into a powerful bomb that tore through downtown Bangkok Monday, killing 20 and injuring over 100 more. The attack was timed as the current government reshuffled top positions, the new national charter prepared to move forward, and ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra faced the loss of his police rank.

The investigation faces many technical challenges but as the government, police, and military attempt to carry it out, the Western media has attempted to "take over" and begin its own investigation, carried out by unqualified pundits and subjected to public opinion rather than actual fact.

The objective of the Western media is not truth, but rather to undermine the current government while attempting to exonerate Thaksin Shinawatra - leader of an ousted client regime groomed by and in the service of Western interests since as early as the 1990's.

To confront this intentional, politically motivated manipulation, it may be useful to examine several key questions facing any investigation and answer them with what real evidence now stands.

PLO leadership asks Palestine National Council to meet in one month to elect new executive committee.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas resigned Saturday as head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's Executive Committee in a bid to force new elections for the top body, an official said.

Wassel Abu Yussef said that more than half of the 18-member committee had also stepped down.

"The resignation of the president of the executive committee Mahmud Abbas and more than half of its members has created a legal vacuum, and therefore the Palestine National Council has been asked to meet in one month to elect a new executive committee," Yussef said.

Yussef added, however, that the resignations will take effect only when the PNC meets.

The PNC, or Palestinian parliament, has 740 members who live in the Palestinian territories and in the diaspora. It has not met in nearly 20 years.

The executive committee is the PLO's highest decision-making body and acts on behalf of Palestinians in the occupied territories and the diaspora, namely in the peace process with Israel.

2015 has become a year of living dangerously. Wars are spreading across the globe. Wars are escalating as new countries are bombed and the old are ravaged with ever greater intensity. Countries, where relatively peaceful changes had taken place through recent elections, are now on the verge of civil wars. These are wars without victors, but plenty of losers; wars that don't end; wars where imperial occupations are faced with prolonged resistance.

There are never-ending torrents of war refugees flooding across borders. Desperate people are detained, degraded and criminalized for being the survivors and victims of imperial invasions.

Now major nuclear powers face off in Europe and Asia: NATO versus Russia, US-Japan versus China. Will these streams of blood and wars converge into one radiated wilderness drained of its precious life blood?