Introduction

Brookings Institution has now issued a call for us to finance more firebombings, clusterbombings, and other support to the ethnic cleansing, which has been going on since Ukraine's coup - the ethnic cleansing that's occurring in the region of Ukraine's southeast that's called "Donbass" (which is the Ukrainian area shown in dark purple on this map, the map of the election results in Ukraine's last nationwide Presidential election before the coup; and that's the same region which rejects the U.S.-imposed coup-Government; the people there had voted 90% for the man whom the U.S. coup overthrew, which is the reason the U.S. Government wants them eliminated, so that Ukraine can keep the land - and its resources - but now cleansed of its residents, so that the U.S. can place missiles there aimed at Russia, which is America's current strategic objective: to control Russia).

On Monday, February 2nd, Brookings (whose Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack had been among the leaders of the invade-Iraq movement before the 2003 U.S. invasion there on false pretenses) issued a report, "Preserving Ukraine's Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do," and Brookings urged "providing direct military assistance - in far larger amounts than provided to date and including lethal defensive arms - so that Ukraine is better able to defend itself. The U.S. government should provide Ukraine $1 billion in military assistance as soon as possible in 2015, followed by additional tranches of $1 billion in FY 2016 and FY 2017." That euphemism "defensive arms" is for gullible individuals only: guns and tanks obviously fire in both directions, and so do anti-tank weapons etc. - and there was no "Russian Aggression" in Ukraine until the Obama Administration violently overthrew the existing Government there in February of last year. Adolf Hitler claimed to be "defending" Germany when he invaded and took over Poland in 1939, following a "false flag" incident in Poland that could have been a model for Obama's in Ukraine last year, and the United States is copying not only his PR tactics about it, but the continuing violence afterwards, differing mainly in his using surrogates to do the job, instead of (as Hitler did) claiming the consequences as being his own. (Hitler was able to tell Germans that Poland was threatening Germany, but Obama can't likewise persuasively say to Americans that Ukraine constitutes a threat to America: Americans aren't that gullible, and he knows this.) As the following videos of the U.S.-sponsored firebombings - and of regular bombings - of cities and villages in Donbass will make clear, these consequences also compete rather well with Hitler's in their sheer violence.

Unofficially, the Ukrainian Government acknowledges that its war against its Donbass region is an ethnic-cleansing operation.

The pro-regime Ukrainian TV station Hromandske TV - which is funded by the U.S. Government, the Dutch Government, and George Soros (via his International Renaissance Foundation or 'Fund') - has reported that the Ukrainian Government is specifically targeting civilians to die in the Donbass region in the former Ukraine's southeast. It's being done in order "to clean the cities."

This is open acknowledgement that the operation, which the U.S. is financing (and Ukraine is bankrupt so it can never reimburse its donors), is actually an ethnic-cleansing campaign.

Previously, on Hromadske TV, a proponent of doing just that (ethnic cleansing) was interviewed. He said: "If we take, for example, just the Donetsk oblast, there are approximately 4 million inhabitants, at least 1.5 million of which are superfluous. ... Donbass must be exploited as a resource, which it is. ... The most important thing that must be done - no matter how cruel it may sound - is that there is a certain category of people that must be exterminated."

Here is how it's done:

The video shows how big business will be able to call the shots in Brussels, via a new chapter in TTIP misleadingly called "regulatory cooperation". Regulatory Cooperation is bad news for consumers, workers and the environment. It means that corporations can co-write our regulation. The European Commission seems intent to open the doors to massive influence by big business.

This dangerous attack on democracy must be stopped now. On Monday, European leaders are meeting with their US counterparts to begin the next round of negotiations on TTIP. As usual, citizens are left in the dark about what is being negotiated. The only thing that can fight corporate power is people power. Let's show European leaders that we will not take this attack on our democracy lying down.


Already shared the video? Then please sign the petition to stop TTIP.

• Russian tank crew captured by Kiev? They must be invisible!
• Kiev restricting travel in order to force compliance with troop mobilization
• Kiev trying to convince Ukrainians that troops aren't cannon fodder
• Psaki says giving lethal aid to Ukraine is okay!

One of the things I learnt during the fighting last summer is that in assessing the state of the battle it is important not to lose sight of the whole wood by focusing too much on individual trees.

A great deal of energy was spent last summer discussing whether this or that village or settlement had been captured by the Ukrainian military or by the rebel militia and what this meant in strategic terms and what it showed about who was supposedly winning or losing. In reality, as became obvious if one looked at a map, from the first week of July until the last half of August, the position of the front lines was essentially stable.

In the end what decided the course of the battle was not minor movements backwards and forwards across the battlefield but the sheer scale of the losses the Ukrainian military was suffering. Quite simply, the Ukrainian military bled to death, or at least to the point where when the militia launched its offensive in the second half of August it had no strength left to resist it.

Kiev should not expect to gain military superiority over the militias of the people's republics, Aleksandr Zakharchenko said on Monday.

"If Poroshenko thinks that his army can compete with ours, let him see how quickly we took Uglegorsk," said Zakharchenko, appearing before journalists together with the head of the LPR, Igor Plotnitskiy.

"They are throwing into battle untrained reservists who can't even tell the business end of a rifle. We have high morale, we have lived here, we live here now, and will continue to do so, this is our land," added Zakharchenko.

He reminded that, in view of another wave of Ukrainian mobilization, DPR and LPR made a decision to start the recruitment of volunteers into the militia, and called on the people of Ukraine to turn against the unnecessary war.

"The brutality Palestine is experiencing must end", main opposition SYRIZA party leader Alexis Tsipras said on Tuesday, during a rally and march to Syntagma Square, held in protest of the Israeli army's military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
The event was organized by leftist and Palestinian groups and immigrant communities, PNN correspondence reports in conjunction with Greek media.

"Palestine is in perpetual war - this war must stop at some point; this brutality cannot be tolerated," Tsipras said. "When civilians and children are killed at beaches facing the same sea that borders the European continent, we cannot remain passive, because if this happens on the other side of the Mediterranean today, it can happen on our own side tomorrow. I want to note that the voices of solidarity movements are, for the first time, uniting under a strong movement within Israel," he added.

On 11 January, the Committee for State Security (KGB) made public information about the arrest of 20 Muslim Salafis that took place near Minsk in late November 2014.

While Belarus security services have monitored the behaviour of Islamic radicals in the past, the arrest is one of the most important actions taken by the authorities against Muslim extremists.

Muslims have lived in Belarus since the 14th century, blending in well. However, in recent years preachers from other states have been changing the nature of Islam in Belarus by infusing radical ideas.

By arresting a group of Salafi Muslims, Belarus may be signalling to the West that it is a reliable partner in fighting terrorism. How could Minsk benefit from such efforts?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper never tires of telling Canadians that we are at war with the Islamic State. Under the cloud of fear produced by his repeated hyperbole about the scope and nature of the threat, he now wants to turn our domestic spy agency into something that looks disturbingly like a secret police force.

Canadians should not be willing to accept such an obvious threat to their basic liberties. Our existing laws and our society are strong enough to stand up to the threat of terrorism without compromising our values.

This week, Mr. Harper released a video in which he recklessly conflates the two recent lone-wolf incidents in Canada with the Islamic State's call for attacks on "non-believing countries."

The two attacks - one in Ottawa and the other in St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. - were horrendous. They shocked Canadians and scared them. But there is no evidence that either attacker was connected to ISIS. The more likely theory is that they were troubled young men who self-radicalized.

And yet, as the Prime Minister reminds viewers in the video that ISIS has urged its followers to "attack, quote, disbelieving Canadians in any manner, vowing that we should not feel secure even in our own homes," the words are spoken over footage of the aftermath of the shooting at the National War Memorial, as if the Ottawa attack were a direct outcome of ISIS's urgings.

The head of UN inquiry into the hostilities between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas has pledged to resign due to Israel allegations of pro-Palestinian bias. He described the criticisms as "malicious attacks."

William Schabas, a Canadian academic living in the UK, was appointed last August to head the UN Human Rights Council's three-member team to probe the circumstances of the Operation Protective Edge and allegations of war crimes committed during it. Some 2,200 people, most of them Palestinian civilians, were killed in the conflict.

His candidacy however met fierce resistance from Israeli officials, who accused Schabas of being anti-Israel.

"If any other evidence of this was needed, appointing the committee's chairman, whose biased opinions and positions against Israel are well known, proves beyond all doubt that Israel cannot expect justice and that the committee's report has already been written," the Israeli Foreign Ministry said at the time.