President Barack Obama isn't likely to hear many kind words from Republicans looking to succeed him in office. However, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is praising him for continuing a controversial surveillance program.

Considered a frontrunner for the GOP's 2016 presidential nomination, Bush recently said that Obama's decision to keep in place the National Security Agency's ability to monitor metadata - information such as when a phone call was made, who it was made to and how long it lasted - has helped keep the United States safe.

Outrage over the failure to prosecute alleged paedophile peer Greville Janner grew yesterday after it emerged he wrote to the House of Lords a fortnight ago, despite claims he is suffering from dementia.

Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders also faced accusations of double standards and a "cover up" because several defendants with dementia have been jailed for sex crimes in recent years.


Lord Janner, 86, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2009 and took a formal leave of absence last October.

On April 9 this year he replied to a House of Lords query about his retirement with a personally signed letter asking to continue his break.

The fact the Labour peer was able to sign the statement cast doubts on the DPP's decision not to charge him with 22 child sex offences due to the "severity" of his dementia.


His alleged victims said it denied them their day in court and was fuelling concerns of a cover-up.

Accusations that the peer is being protected by the Establishment grew after it emerged at least 19 men with dementia have been convicted of child sex offences since 2010, including 10 in the past year.

Bloomberg was perhaps the first western outlet to be given an interview by Zakharchenko but its presentation could hardly be more misleading and dishonest

In a rare western interview of the leader of the Donetsk Republic, Zakharchenko was given 'the full treatment' by Bloomberg. In doing so, they indeed may have violated international law, and committed crimes against humanity and crimes against peace.

Today's article in the US publication was indeed particularly instructive. It tells us how the US and the European Atlanticists will try to spin the actual Ukrainian violations of the Minsk II Agreement and ceasefire. The US and its direct and proxy agents working in the ostensibly 'private/independent' (but de facto state controlled) media are creating the pretext to use the UN Security Council resolution which enshrines the Minsk II Agreement against those which it favors; against those whose battlefield victories made it possible. Barring that, at the very least they are breeding an internal climate and setting the national discourse to justify things which are in violation of international law.

Western media is going to do it by twisting Zakharchenko's words to fit a tremendous lie. Specifically they will do this by taking what he said out of context and then inserting them into a fictional context of western media invention.

As things unfold, we will no doubt hear that 'Zakharchenko himself' said that he intended to break the ceasefire all along.

If you do not mind being insulted or enraged by what passes for news, analysis, or commentary in the west, then we suggest you have a read for yourself : "Gunfire in Donetsk as Rebel Leader Refuses Ukrainian Unity".

In this review, we will highlight some of the most dangerously misleading and dishonest parts of the Bloomberg article. Insofar as these are used to encourage the US public to support the US government in increasing its illegal wars in the world, these are war crimes as understood by the precedent established at Nuremburg and subsequent prosecutions by the ICJ in The Hague in decades that followed.

That Europe let almost 1000 people die in the Mediterranean in one night shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, at least not to those who are still occasionally awake. The Club Med migrant crisis has been going on for a long time, and the EU's only reaction to it has been to slash its budget and operations in the area, not to expand them.

So when the New York Times opens with "European leaders were confronted on Monday with a humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean.", they're a mile and a half less than honest. Brussels has known what was going on for years, and decided to do less than nothing.

The onus was put on Italy, Malta, Greece and a handful of private compassionate activists to handle the situation, as if it was some sort of local, or even tourist, issue, while Europe's finest went back to festive gala openings of their €1 billion+ 'official' edifices, and back to forcing more austerity on member nations. Somebody has to pay for those buildings.

The war against cash has, up to now, been waged almost exclusively by national governments and official international organizations, although there are exceptions. Now the war has acquired a powerful new ally in Chase, the largest bank in the U.S. and a subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase and Co., according to Forbes, the world's third largest public company.

Of course , it is hardly surprising that a crony capitalist fractional-reserve bank, which received $25 billion in bailout loans from the U.S. Treasury, should want to curry favor with its regulators and political masters and, in the process, ensure its own stability by helping to stamp out the use of cash. For the very existence of cash places the power over fractional-reserve banks squarely in the hands of their depositors who may withdraw their cash in any amount and at any time, bringing even the mightiest bank to its knees literally overnight (e.g., Washington Mutual).

Gazprom says it will guarantee the transit of up to 47 billion cubic meters of gas to Greece after the construction of a gas pipeline from the Greek-Turkish border. The company's CEO Aleksey Miller confirmed the deal.

Such volumes of transit, on the project known as Turkish Stream, will allow Greece to attract commercial loans for the implementation of other ventures, Miller said on Tuesday during a meeting with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.

A number of European companies have already shown interest in participation, Miller mentioned, adding, "The project will be developed according to European legislation."

Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US economy requires a "toppling" of the wealthiest 1%, according to a New York Times report published Tuesday.

Clinton reportedly made the comments in a meeting with economists earlier this year, when she was shown a graph that "charted how real wages, adjusted for inflation, had increased exponentially for the wealthiest Americans, making the bar so steep it hardly fit on the chart."

"Clinton pointed at the top category and said the economy required a 'toppling' of the wealthiest 1 percent, according to several people," writes The Times' Amy Chozick.

"A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear."—John Salter

We have entered into a particularly dismal chapter in the American narrative, one that shifts us from a swashbuckling tale of adventure into a bone-chilling horror story.

As I document in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, "we the people" have now come full circle, from being held captive by the British police state to being held captive by the American police state. In between, we have charted a course from revolutionaries fighting for our independence and a free people establishing a new nation to pioneers and explorers, braving the wilderness and expanding into new territories.

Where we went wrong, however, was in allowing ourselves to become enthralled with and then held hostage by a military empire in bondage to a corporate state (the very definition of fascism). No longer would America hold the moral high ground as a champion of freedom and human rights. Instead, in the pursuit of profit, our overlords succumbed to greed, took pleasure in inflicting pain, exported torture, and imported the machinery of war, transforming the American landscape into a battlefield, complete with military personnel, tactics and weaponry.

To our dismay, we now find ourselves scrambling for a foothold as our once rock-solid constitutional foundation crumbles beneath us. And no longer can we rely on the president, Congress, the courts, or the police to protect us from wrongdoing.

Indeed, they have come to embody all that is wrong with America.

For instance, how does a man who is relatively healthy when taken into custody by police lapse into a coma and die while under their supervision? What kind of twisted logic allows a police officer to use a police car to run down an American citizen and justifies it in the name of permissible deadly force? And what country are we living in where the police can beat, shoot, choke, taser and tackle American citizens, all with the protection of the courts?

Certainly, the Constitution's safeguards against police abuse means nothing when government agents can crash through your door, terrorize your children, shoot your dogs, and jail you on any number of trumped of charges, and you have little say in the matter. For instance, San Diego police, responding to a domestic disturbance call on a Sunday morning, showed up at the wrong address, only to shoot the homeowner's 6-year-old service dog in the head.

The putsch in Kiev has reminded governments in the Caucasus and Central Asia that they could fall victim to similar events at any time. This applies especially to countries in Russia's sphere of influence, such as Kyrgyzstan. The specter of a Kyrgyz Maidan has haunted Bishkek since last year, when the suspicious activities of the U.S. State Department's TechCamp project and the subsequent visit of George Soros raised a few eyebrows. Lately, Kyrgyz and Russian media went into a frenzy over the delivery of 150 tons of "diplomatic mail" to the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek:

US Sends Mysterious 150 Tons of 'Diplomatic Mail' to Embassy in Kyrgyzstan

Washington has remained tight-lipped on a report by the Kyrgyz newspaper Delo No. that a mysterious Ukrainian aircraft delivered 150 tons of cargo with the status of "diplomatic mail" to the US Embassy in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek late last month.

According to the newspaper, the cargo was delivered during two separate flights by the AN-124 transport jet of the Ukrainian air carrier Antonov Avialinii. The flights took place between March 28 and March 30, and each time the plane was en route from the UAE capital Abu Dhabi to the Manas international airport.

The newspaper recalled that in November 2013, the US Embassy in Kiev also received "diplomatic cargos" that were delivered by US Air Force transport aircraft.

Research centers of Great Britain and the US are studying the possibility of the use of drugs for 'color revolutions' and mass unrest, the head of the Russian Federal Drug Control Service Viktor Ivanov said on Tuesday.

If harder elements are added to drugs, they get toxic features producing a strong effect. It could cause a very strong passionate reaction if used among the young people, he said citing Russian poet, literary critic and traveler Nikolai Gumilyov. "This can be practiced in 'color revolutions'," Ivanov added.

Ivanov said this method was used during Maidan riots in Ukraine. "Methadone therapy was used on Maidan, it was widely used in Ukraine and scores of methadone were spread among drug users as a matter of fact legally," he continued. "These were the people used as cannon fodder on Maidan," he noted.

At the moment some countries are studying the use of drugs in mass riots.

"Research centers in Great Britain, in the US, in particular, study the possible use of drugs in the interests of 'color revolutions' and to generate mass unrest for protection of their population," Ivanov added.