The United States and the two feuding Koreas could blunder into a real war unless both Pyongyang and Washington cease provoking one another.

Last week, two nuclear-capable US B-2 stealth bombers flew non-stop from America to South Korea, and then home. These 'invisible' aircraft can carry the GBU-43/B MOAB 13,600kg bomb that is said to be able to blast through 70 meters of reinforced concrete, putting North Korea's underground nuclear facilities and its leadership's command bunkers under dire threat.

Earlier this month, US B-52's heavy bombers staged mock attack runs over South Korea - within minutes flying time of the North - rekindling memories of the massive US carpet bombing raids that devastated North Korea during the 1950's Korean War. US-South Korean-Australian war games in March were designed to train for war with the North. The US media ignored these provocative exercises, but, as usual, North Korea went ballistic, foolishly threatening to attack the US with long-ranged missiles it does not yet possess.

We have grown jaded over the years by North Korea's threats and chest-beating. But its recent successful nuclear test and work on a long-ranged missile have begun to add muscle to Pyongyang's threats. No sooner was the new young North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, in power than the US, South Korea and Japan began testing him.

"He stated that he targeted and focused on that group because he wanted to instill fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police," Adams testifies.

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said blacks and Hispanics are targeted for "stop-and-frisks" by police as part of the city's program to get guns off the streets, a state lawmaker testified Monday in court.

State Sen. Eric Adams (D-Brooklyn)said Kelly made the surprise statement in 2010 during a meeting that included three other public officials - former Democratic Gov. David Paterson, State Sen. Marty Golden (R-Brooklyn) and former Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn).

Adams told Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin Monday that he raised concerns with Kelly at the 2010 meeting that blacks and Hispanics were disproportionately selected by cops for "stop and frisks."

The Commissioner responded by defending the controversial practice, saying it was an important tool for the department, Adams testified.

Cypriots and those who have their savings in the country's banks are already feeling the consequences of the €10 billion bank bailout from the Eurozone and the IMF. Anger is mounting in the country due to what they are calling a theft of their assets.

Professor of Political Economy at the University of Nicosia, Andreas Theophanous, is sure that Cyprus is not only in a financial crisis, but also 'is already having a major political crisis", as the credibility of the system - "both economic and political is at very low level at this point."

RT: There are allegations that the Cypriot President's inner circle is linked to a multi-million euro outflow of money... Are these claims being investigated - or is it mud-slinging?

Andreas Theophanous: It's true that we've seen reports about capital outflows. There will be a full investigation, but obviously the point that I would like to make is that in addition to the economic crisis, Cyprus is already having a major political crisis as well. There will be report, there will be investigations, but in any case the credibility of the system - both economic and political is at very low level at this point.

RT: Are these claims being investigated?

AT: Of course, economics and politics are related. There will be full investigation and again I am pointing out that the fundamental points - the respective of weather some political parties are trying to take advantage. At the same time it's true that there have been acts that made people very suspicious. The issue is that credibility is at a very low level today.

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among "Bush's useful idiots" argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the "liberal hawks" - who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens - did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed "the political cesspool." Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq "do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all." He called the typical anti-war protester a "blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist." The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war - shutting down public debate.

Haaretz piece reveals Syrian conflict is direct punitive result of Assad defying West, obstructing US-Israeli attack on Iran.

Haaretz has recently published an exceptionally revealing article, confirming that the Brooking Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report - a plan for the undermining and destruction of Iran - had indeed been set in motion, and that the current Syrian conflict is a direct result of Syria and Iran defying the West and disrupting what was to be a coup de grâce delivered to Tehran.

The article is titled, "Assad's Israeli friend," appears at first to be a ham-handed attempt to portray Syrian President Bashar Al Assad as somehow allied with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Instead, it actually reveals that Israel had attempted to execute verbatim, the strategies prescribed in the Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report, where Israel was to lure Syria away from Iran ahead of a US-Israeli strike and subsequent war with Tehran.

Syria obviously did not fall into the trap, and as a result, has been plunged into a destructive, spiteful war of proxy aggression by the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their regional allies.

In Honduras, Reagan-era atrocities are back as the Obama administration funds a state implicated in murdering opponents

The video (warning: contains graphic images of lethal violence), caught randomly on a warehouse security camera, is chilling.

Five young men walk down a quiet street in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. A big black SUV pulls up, followed by a second vehicle. Two masked men with bullet-proof vests jump out of the lead car, with AK-47s raised. The two youths closest to the vehicles see that they have no chance of running, so they freeze and put their hands in the air. The other three break into a sprint, with bullets chasing after them from the assassins' guns. Miraculously, they escape, with one injured - but the two who surrendered are forced to lie face down on the ground. The two students, who were brothers 18- and 20-years-old, are murdered with a burst of bullets, in full view of the camera. Less than 40 seconds after their arrival, the assassins are driving away, never to be found.

The high level of professional training and modus operandi of the assassins have led many observers to conclude that this was a government operation. The video was posted by the newspaper El Heraldo last month; the murder took place in November of last year. There have been no arrests.

Now, the Obama administration is coming under fire for its role in arming and funding murderous Honduran police, in violation of US law. Under the Leahy Law, named after Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, the US government is not allowed to fund foreign military units who have commit gross human rights violations with impunity. The director general of Honduras' national police force, Juan Carlos Bonilla, has been investigated in connection with death squad killings; and members of the US Congress have been complaining about it since Bonilla was appointed last May. Thanks to some excellent investigative reporting by the Associated Press in the last couple of weeks - showing that all police units are, in fact, under Bonilla's command - it has become clear that the US is illegally funding the Honduran police.

Russia's surprise, large-scale military exercises on the Black Sea are raising alarm among some of its neighbors. Russian President Vladimir Putin sprung the exercises on his military at 4 am Thursday and showed up in person, along with Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu, to observe the exercises on Friday. The exercises involve around 30 warships, 7,000 service-members and various armored vehicles and artillery.

But the Black Sea is a complex geopolitical environment: Russia's Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol, in on-again-off-again ally Ukraine. NATO members Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania also have naval forces on the sea, as of course does Russia's foe Georgia. So the international response to the exercise wasn't entirely positive. As RT put it, "The Russian naval drills came as a surprise not only to the Russian armed forces, but also for neighboring countries' militaries as well, which were forced to rub sleep from their eyes and rush to their duties as up to 30 Russian battleships left port."

Russian officials pointed out that there is nothing to prevent them from conducting these sorts of surprise drills. "According to international practice, exercises involving up to 7,000 people do not require us to inform our partners in advance," said Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

Continuing my series of banks ready to "Cyprus" their depositors, I offer this reader contribution from Don from Canada 2013-03-29 23:11:

As part of the 2013 budget in Canada, the Minister of Finance tabled the Economic Action Plan 2013 which included the newest buzzword 'bail-in'.

Source: budget.gc.ca/.../...
Page 145

"The [Canadian] Government proposes to implement a "bail-in" regime for systemically important banks. This regime will be designed to ensure that, in the unlikely event that a systemically important bank depletes its capital, the bank can be recapitalized and returned to viability through the very rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital. This will reduce risks for taxpayers. The Government will consult stakeholders on how best to implement a bail-in regime in Canada. Implementation timelines will allow for a smooth transition for affected institutions, investors and other market participants. Systemically important banks will continue to be subject to existing risk management requirements, including enhanced supervision and recovery and resolution plans.

This risk management framework will limit the unfair advantage that could be gained by Canada's systemically important banks through the mistaken belief by investors and other market participants that these institutions are 'too big to fail'."

A depositor is an unsecured creditor to a bank. The Canadian government presents its position to be one of shielding the taxpayer from the need to pay for bailing out a failing bank. As a taxpayer that is comforting.

However as a depositor, the phrase "rapid conversion of certain bank liabilities into regulatory capital" concerns me. My deposit is the bank's liability. Could depositors' funds fall under the definition of 'certain bank liabilities'?

I searched the entire 442 page document and I cannot find where the term 'certain bank liabilities' is defined.

The prudent approach I believe would be to assume that under certain conditions, certain bank liabilities will include depositors' funds; at least those funds in excess of CAD 100,000 which is our so-called insured amount.

Even if it has noble intentions now, under a credit and derivatives collapse scenario, it is conceivable that the Canadian government could be coerced or bullied by external agents into grabbing depositors' funds just like what is happening in Cyprus.

I find the newest 'bail-in' term being used since the Cyprus debacle quite amusing. It reminds me of the 'sit-in' and 'love-in' terms of the peace/hippie generation.

We all seem to be floating on the bathwater of fiat currency liquidity. The tub is being drained at the opposite end from where we are floating. The EU is circling the drain. The central banks are feverishly trying to replenish the tub with thimbles full of water, but it appears inevitable that some will go down the drain, whilst others will be left high and dry. The central bankers only have thimbles, not a drain stopper.

As two more Afghan children are liberated (from their lives) by NATO this weekend, a new film examines the effects of endless US aggression

Yesterday I had the privilege to watch Dirty Wars, an upcoming film directed by Richard Rowley that chronicles the investigations of journalist Jeremy Scahill into America's global covert war under President Obama and specifically his ever-growing kill lists. I will write comprehensively about this film closer to the date when it and the book by the same name will be released. For now, it will suffice to say that the film is one of the most important I've seen in years: gripping and emotionally affecting in the extreme, with remarkable, news-breaking revelations even for those of us who have intensely followed these issues. The film won awards at Sundance and rave reviews in unlikely places such as Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. But for now, I want to focus on just one small aspect of what makes the film so crucial.

The most propagandistic aspect of the US War on Terror has been, and remains, that its victims are rendered invisible and voiceless. They are almost never named by newspapers. They and their surviving family members are virtually never heard from on television. The Bush and Obama DOJs have collaborated with federal judges to ensure that even those who everyone admits are completely innocent have no access to American courts and thus no means of having their stories heard or their rights vindicated. Radical secrecy theories and escalating attacks on whistleblowers push these victims further into the dark.

It is the ultimate tactic of Othering: concealing their humanity, enabling their dehumanization, by simply relegating them to nonexistence. As Ashleigh Banfield put it her 2003 speech denouncing US media coverage of the Iraq war just months before she was demoted and then fired by MSNBC: US media reports systematically exclude both the perspectives of "the other side" and the victims of American violence. Media outlets in predominantly Muslim countries certainly report on their plight, but US media outlets simply do not, which is one major reason for the disparity in worldviews between the two populations. They know what the US does in their part of the world, but Americans are kept deliberately ignorant of it.

A West Virginia judge caught on video screaming furiously at litigants has been removed from the bench for the duration of his term.

The West Virginia Supreme Court on March 26 suspended Putnam County, W.Va., Family Court Judge William Watkins III without pay until December 2016, citing 24 violations of the state's judicial ethics rules.

The justices said that, while in court, Watkins shouted profanities at people and threatened litigants. On one occasion, he called a woman seeking a protective order against her husband "stupid," they said. He told her to shut up and criticized her for "shooting off [her] fat mouth about what happened."

The judge's conduct in a separate case was recorded on video and posted on YouTube in July.