Spanish farmers have dumped thousands of potatoes in front of Carrefour, a major supermarket chain, in response to a move to lower prices, further squeezing suppliers, in the wake of Russian sanctions on agricultural products from the EU.

The demonstration, which was called by the Union de Pequeños Agricultores y Ganaderos (UPA), took place on Thursday in Granada, southern Spain and targeted large companies like Carrefour who have taken advantage of the Russian food import ban by lowering prices, thus making it even harder for struggling suppliers.

A representative of the UPA told RT's video agency Ruptly that the length of time the sanctions will be imposed for means farmers may lose an important market in the long term.

"We have to remember once again that the Russian sanctions will be around for a whole year. This means that it will affect us in the present and future. We are risking losing a very important market for our annual work that we'll hardly be able to replace in the short term to recover sales and exports," he said.

A report has been made claiming that the body of Andrei Stenin, a Russian photojournalist missing since August 5, has been found, but no confirmation was made, and a Russian news article published about it today in the state newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda has been deleted.

According to the latest report dated 18:00 Kiev time, August 21 from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine:

The "deputy minister of interior" of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" ("DPR") told the SMM that the "DPR" had found a charred body on a road a few kilometres south-east of Snizhne (Snizhne is 80 km south-east of Donetsk city).

He claimed that the remains were those of a missing Russian journalist, but presented no supporting evidence.

The Russian pro-government online news site Russkaya Planeta had an article on the OSCE statement, then an additional report (translation by The Interpreter)

Updated 18:08 (Moscow Time) According to Komsomolskaya Pravda Dmitry Streshin, burnt passenger vehicle on the road from Dmitrovka to Snezhnoye was found two days ago. As Steshn reports, three bodies were found in the automobile, and also the remains of photography equipment. According to his hypotheses, the passengers were shot "from light small ams" and the car burned up from shelling of the area from missile systems which supposedly occurred later.

Russkaya Planeta published a tweet which was subsequently deleted for reasons unknown, saying they had found the remains and called OSCE:

In Pakistan, the "Long March" - a major protest led by opposition politicians calling for the resignation of the government - began in earnest on August 14th. The protest, which could more accurately be described as a series of overlapping protests led by two factions, in some ways similar and in some ways different from each other, promises to bring Pakistani political life to a standstill. However, the enigmatic, and quite often paradoxical, nature of Pakistani politics means that such a development requires careful analysis.

The protest leaders - Imran Khan of the Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI) and anti-government cleric Tahir-ul Qadri of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) - have pledged to turn out hundreds of thousands, if not millions, into the streets to demand an end to corruption and rule by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his PML-N party. But, beyond the rhetoric of "democracy" and "transparency," both political buzzwords more indicative of public relations and marketing than genuine political program, there is the troubling possibility that what is being billed as a democratic upsurge, is merely politics as usual in Pakistan.

Of course, one should not take a completely cynical perspective on Khan, Qadri, and the other leaders and factions participating in the Long March. Indeed, many of their criticisms and allegations regarding corruption, cronyism, and electoral theft are well founded in a country that suffers from institutionalized and endemic corruption. However, one should be at the very least cautious with a movement which with one breath calls for democracy, while with another demands the resignation of the elected government.

In critically examining the nature of the protest, as well as Khan's PTI and other organized political forces, it is clear that the outrage of the people of Pakistan is quite real, their suffering and poverty is tragic, and it is their future that is at stake. With that in mind, anyone interested in supporting peace and progress for the people of Pakistan must understand the current movement.

The ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee in the U.S. Senate is warning that ISIS terrorists, those who this week beheaded an American journalist, are trying to develop the capability of blowing up an entire American city.

The comments from Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., came in an interview with the Fox affiliate in Oklahoma City.

He said the U.S. now is in "the most dangerous position we've ever been in."

Responding to questions about terror and the threat facing Americans, he said: "They're crazy out there. And they are rapidly developing a method of blowing up a major U.S. city. You just can't believe that's happening."

The beheading of the American journalist, James Foley, by a British ISIS terrorist has triggered a series of articles which identified the umbilical cord that ties the ISIS terrorists to the Saudi Arabian monarchy. What, however, these articles did not point out is that Saudi Arabia is the only country today that officially beheads people and most of these victims are foreign migrant workers. Beheading is also the hallmark of the ISIS terrorists.

The Spectator article, "What's the difference between ISIS and Saudi Arabia? It's a matter of degree," that appeared Thursday, did allude to the common ideology of the Saudi Wahabists and the ISIS Wahabists. It said:

"Saudi Arabia is a close ally of Britain and a keen customer of our killing machines, and like most of the Arab states is hostile to lunatic elements like ISIS and Hamas. Yet they are part of the problem; like many Islamists, including those in Britain, the Saudis are happy to condemn ISIS in what they do but not their basic ideology, largely because it mirrors their own."

Strategy Page, a website that provides information on military affairs, in its article,"ISIL And The Saudi Connection," led off saying

"Saudi Arabia was the original source of nearly all current Islamic terrorism and is still the source of most recruits and financial supports for these groups."

Sinclair Lewis once opined that if fascism ever comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

I was reminded of that comment when a good friend of mine recently wrote a letter to her local newspaper in Augusta Georgia decrying the killing of nearly two thousand Palestinian civilians in Gaza, describing the deaths as part of "the systemic erosion of the rule of law in our nation and across the globe" since 9/11. A devout Christian, she concluded how from her perspective "The world, it seems, has lost its moral compass."

Unlike many letter writers, my friend has the life experience to back up her opinion, having served twenty-seven years as a United States Army lawyer, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel. Much of her most recent work has involved the cases of Guantanamo detainees.

It would have been reasonable to assume that my friend's letter would elicit a variety of responses, and one might have expected that there would be at least some agreement that a world in which killing and wars have become the norm is an unwelcome aberration. But it was not so. Out of the more than one hundred comments the vast majority were violently and caustically opposed to the principle that Israel and the United States have not exactly been role models for a peaceful world. Many of the comments were both personally insulting and, frequently, highly offensive. Some of the remarks clearly came from military veterans while others had a Christian context.

Russia sent over 130 aid trucks rolling into rebel-held eastern Ukraine on Friday without Kiev's approval, saying it had lost patience with the Ukrainian government's stalling tactics. Ukraine called the move a "direct invasion" that aimed to provoke an international incident.

The unilateral move sharply raised the stakes in eastern Ukraine, for any attack on the convoy could draw the Russian military directly into the conflict between the Ukrainian government and the separatist rebels in the east. Ukraine has long accused Russia of supporting and arming the rebels, a charge that Russia denies.


In the past few days, Ukraine says its troops have recaptured significant parts of Luhansk, the second-largest rebel city, and suspicions were running high that Moscow's humanitarian operation may instead be aimed at halting Kiev's military momentum. Fierce fighting has been reported this week both around Luhansk and the largest rebel-held city, Donetsk, with dozens of casualties.

Ukraine declared on Friday that Russia had launched a "direct invasion" of its territory after Moscow sent a convoy of aid trucks across the border into eastern Ukraine where pro-Russian rebels are fighting government forces.

Moscow, which has thousands of troops close to the Russian side of the border, warned against any attempt to "disrupt" the convoy it said was a purely humanitarian operation; but it did not say what action it might take if Kiev's military intervened.

The European Union urged Russia to reverse what it called a clear violation of the Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described the entry of the trucks without Kiev's permission as a "flagrant violation of international law."


But a senior security chief said Ukrainian forces would not attack the trucks, and had allowed them in, even without proper clearance, to avoid "provocations".

The Ukraine conflict has driven relations between Moscow and the West to their lowest level since the Cold War, with Western states imposing economic sanctions on Moscow and the Kremlin retaliating. NATO has deployed extra troops in member states bordering Russia, including the Baltic states and Poland.

Kiev called on international allies to unite in "a decisive condemnation of illegal and aggressive actions" by Russia.

International police organization Interpol secretary general Ronald Noble decisively condemned the murder of US journalist James Foley in a statement released Thursday, calling for a global response to the threat posed by the Islamic State (IS).

"The barbaric murder of James Foley by the Islamic State group underlines the depths of its depravity as it wages its campaign of terror across Syria and Iraq," Noble said, also calling for "a multilateral response against the terror threat."

"This public slaughter of an innocent man has appalled citizens worldwide, and it highlights the ongoing plight of other innocent people across the region at the hands of bloodthirsty terrorists who know neither compassion nor mercy," the Interpol chief added.

The murder of the journalist was also denounced by the United Nations, with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon saying that he "condemns in the strongest terms the horrific murder of journalist James Foley."

A video that documented the beheading of Foley by an IS militant was released earlier this week. IS said Foley's execution was in response to US airstrikes that hampered IS' advance in Iraq.

James Foley, 40, was abducted on November 22, 2012, in Syria. Prior to that, he had been kidnapped and released in Libya.

Islamic State is a radical Sunni group that had been fighting in Syria before launching an offensive in Iraq in June. Later that month, the militants announced the establishment of an Islamic caliphate on the territories that had fallen under its control.

As a basic principle we refrain from showing videos in which prisoners of war are questioned. However with this article we make an exception, because the video confirms what the interviewed insurgent states as well in the following text: that the Ukrainian army commits war crimes and buries their own dead in mass graves. So it is worthwhile to read both the text and to watch the video - two completely independent sources.

An interview with an insurgent from the Eastern Ukraine. He lives and fights in an area where the Ukrainian army was shattered three weeks ago, close to the Russian border in the Donetsk region. He stayed quiet about his name to me, but he was a wealthy businessman before the war. The interview was recorded mid-August and translated into German directly and from German. Some accuracy might have been lost when the German was translated to English.

Q: Why have you become an insurgent?

Because I do not agree with this government and the things that are happening. I do not agree with this attitude towards the people. I could not bear it anymore to watch the people being tormented. Therefore, I have become an insurgent even though I'm already 53 years old. I do not agree that they came into my region. I will protect my trees, my stones, houses, children, women and everything else.