The Israeli group Breaking the Silence issued a report this morning containing testimony from Israeli soldiers about the savagery and criminality committed by the Israeli military during the attack on Gaza last summer. The Independent has a good article describing the report's findings: "The Israeli military deliberately pounded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip with incessant fire of inaccurate ordinance" and "was at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population." At best.

This should surprise nobody who paid any attention to the brutal Israeli destruction of Gaza or, for that matter, countless Israeli attacks before that. The U.N. has said that 7 out of 10 people killed by the Israelis were civilians, "including 1,462 civilians, among them 495 children and 253 women"; video of Israelis killing four Gazan boys as they played on a beach sickened anyone decent.

Nonetheless, reading the accounts from these Israeli soldiers is revolting and important in equal parts. It shines considerable light on the reality of what Israeli loyalists have long hailed as "the most moral army in the world," one unfairly held to a difference standard that ignores their great "restraint."

The Intercept has chosen some selected, representative excerpts from the report, with the rank of the testifying soldier indicated (each one was granted anonymity by the report's organizers). This is the savage occupying force known as the Israeli Defense Forces:

"Whoever you see there, you kill"

Staff Sargent, Armored Corps:

[A]fter 48 hours during which no one shoots at you and they're like ghosts, unseen, their presence unfelt - except once in a while the sound of one shot fired over the course of an entire day - you come to realize the situation is under control. And that's when my difficulty there started, because the formal rules of engagement - I don't know if for all soldiers - were, "Anything still there is as good as dead. Anything you see moving in the neighborhoods you're in is not supposed to be there. The [Palestinian] civilians know they are not supposed to be there. Therefore whoever you see there, you kill. . . .

The commander [gave that order]. "Anything you see in the neighborhoods you're in, anything within a reasonable distance, say between zero and 200 meters - is dead on the spot. No authorization needed." We asked him: "I see someone walking in the street, do I shoot him?" He said yes.

Did the commander discuss what happens if you run into civilians or uninvolved people?

There are none. The working assumption states - and I want to stress that this is a quote of sorts: that anyone located in an IDF area, in areas the IDF took over - is not [considered] a civilian. That is the working assumption. We entered Gaza with that in mind, and with an insane amount of firepower.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended Germany's intelligence agency following allegations it helped the US spy on European companies. She says she will fully cooperate with a parliamentary investigation and provide "all the details" it needs.

Chancellor Merkel was speaking for the first time publically about the accusations that Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency helped the National Security Agency (NSA) eavesdrop on some of Europe's top firms.

She said it was imperative the BND continued to work with the NSA and the US to help in the fight against international terrorism. However, she also added that it was not acceptable for friendly nations to spy on each other.

"This ability to carry out its duties in the face of international terrorism threats is done in cooperation with other intelligence agencies, and that includes first and foremost the NSA," Merkel told journalists in Berlin.

"Intelligence agencies are working to ensure the public's safety and the German government will do everything it can to ensure that it can carry out its job," the German chancellor added.

The New York Senate majority leader and his son have been arrested by the FBI on corruption and conspiracy charges. State Sen. Dean G. Skelos is accused of using his position to benefit his son's business dealings.

Sen. Skelos and his son, Adam B. Skelos, were arrested on six charges, including conspiracy to commit extortion, honest services wire fraud, extortion and solicitation of bribes. The criminal complaint, filed by federal authorities in US District Court, were unsealed Monday morning. The Skeloses turned themselves in shortly after, according to the New York Post.

ABC News confirms that one of the suspects of the Garland Texas shooting incident, featuring professional war propagandists of the so-called "American Freedom Defense Intitiative" (AFDI), has been under FBI surveillance and investigation since at least as early as 2007.

Their report, "Garland Shooting Suspect Elton Simpson's Father: 'My Son Made a Bad Choice'," states:

Followers of ISIS had been sending messages about the event in Texas for more than a week, calling for attacks. One referenced January's Charlie Hebdo massacre in France and said it was time for "brothers" in the United States to do their part.

Simpson was well known to the FBI. Five years ago he was convicted for lying to federal agents about his plans to travel to Africa where investigators alleged he planned to join a terror group.

The investigation into Simpson reached back to July 2007, when he was recorded saying of fighting with Islamists, "I know we can do it, man. But you got to find the right people that... Gotta have connects."

Despite the event allegedly increasing chatter amongst "Islamic State" (ISIS) groups online, and despite the suspect Elton Simpson being long under FBI surveillance and even sentence to 3 years of probation resulting from a terror-related investigation, he was still able to conveniently conspire and carry out an attack on a highly provocative propaganda stunt in the state of Texas.

Garland Shooting Fits Pattern of Larger Staged Terror Campaign

As with all other staged provocations, including similar shootings in Paris, France, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Sydney, Australia, the suspects were well known to state security agencies for years, but allowed to conspire and carry out predictable, deadly, and politically highly convenient attacks. All of this echos the similar and long-since exposed staged provocations of the notorious "Operation Gladio," carried out by NATO.

In Paris, France, the suspects in the so-called "Charlie Hebo Shooting" were under the watch of security forces for years, were in and out of jail specifically for terrorism, were known to have left France to join terrorists fighting with Western-backing in Syria and return, only to be left "unwatched" for precisely the 6 months they would need to plan, assemble the weapons for, and prepare to execute the attack.

The Israeli military deliberately pounded civilian areas in the Gaza Strip with incessant fire of inaccurate ordinance during last year's war against Hamas and was at best indifferent about casualties among the Palestinian population.

Those are the conclusions of a report complied by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group that has spent the eight months since the end of the war, known as Operation Protective Edge, interviewing more than 60 members of the Israeli army, air force and navy, including soldiers and officers up to the rank of major.

The service personnel paint a picture that runs counter to official Israeli military claims that the surgical operation - which became a full-blown conflict after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered in the occupied West Bank - took great care to avoid civilian casualties and that Gaza's already fragile infrastructure was not unnecessarily targeted.

"In the West, most look at the war in Ukraine as simply a battle between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian government. But the truth on the ground is now far more complex, particularly when it comes to the volunteer battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine," according to Marcin Mamon. [1] What the Polish filmmaker is talking about is the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) / Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)/Islamic State (IS)/ Al-Dawlah Al-Islamiyah fe Al-Iraq wa Al-Sham (DAISH/DAESH) fighters, which include Chechen separatists, that have gone to fight in Ukraine.

It is no coincidence that one of the bases of the alliance between China, Russia, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is to fight what they call the "three evil forces" of "terrorism, extremism and separatism." The intersectionality of these forces is clear through the deployment to Ukraine of the ISIS/ISIL/IS/DAISH/DAESH to fight as comrades alongside racists ultra-nationalists, and as allies of the US government.

May 2, 2015

Kiev forces based in the Opytnoe village have opened fire on the territory of the embattled Donetsk airport more than 140 times over the past 24 hours, DPR military spokesperson Eduard Basurin stated. Ministry of Defence of DPR registered shellings from 120 mm artillery system, 120 mm and 82 mm mortars by the Kiev forces. Inherently, Kiev forces have increased activity following an interview of Self-proclaimed President Petro Poroshenko in which he said that the war would end when Kiev regained Donbass and Crimea. This speech has become a signal to the pro-Kiev military to increase provocations and violating of the ceasefire.

Ukrainian authorities have taken unprecedented precautions for the anniversary of the events of May 2. Up to 2,800 police, in addition to 500 personnel from other security organizations and volunteer units are being mobilized in the city. Armored cars and infantry fighting vehicles are set to reinforce them. Governor Ihor Palytsa told press that "we will respond firmly, and sort out whether the detention was lawful or not later. Those who might look even a little similar to the faces on wanted lists will face checked, so its best to carry [your] passports." Ministry of Internal Affairs Chief Ivan Katerynchuk added that anyone wearing St. George Ribbons will be detained.

Announcing her latest campaign for the presidency, Hillary Clinton declared she was entering the race to be the champion for "everyday Americans." As a lawmaker and diplomat, however, Clinton has long championed military campaigns that have killed scores of "everyday" people abroad, from Iraq to Yemen. As commander-in-chief, there's no reason to believe she'd be any less a hawk than she was as the senator who backed George W. Bush's war in Iraq, or the Secretary of State who encouraged Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. If her nomination is as sure a thing as people say, then antiwar organizing needs to start right away.

Hillary has already won the support of those who continually agitate for war. "I feel comfortable with her on foreign policy," Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, told The New York Times last summer. "If she pursues a policy which we think she will pursue," he said, "it's something that might have been called neocon, but clearly her supporters are not going to call it that; they are going to call it something else."



We're going to call it what it is: More of the same sort of murderous policies that destroyed Iraq, destabilized Libya, killed women and children with cluster bombs and drones in Yemen, and legitimized the undermining of democracy in Honduras. There's little chance the Republicans will nominate someone better, but given Clinton's record as a senator and Secretary of State - the latter giving us a very good idea of how she would approach foreign affairs once in office - it will be hard for them to find anyone much worse.

We know that Clinton is no reliable friend of peace. Today she supports diplomacy with Iran, but back in 2009, as Secretary of State, she was adamant that the U.S. keep open the option of attacking the Islamic Republic over never-proven allegations it was seeking the nuclear weapons that Israel already has. Her attempts to portray herself as an ally of those who are pro-peace, as a sort of reluctant imperialist, is the same sort of co-opting distortion that has helped quiet opposition to President Obama's pro-war agenda. If anything, Hillary is even more militaristic than the ostensibly reluctant warrior she's campaigning to replace. Still, that hasn't stopped her from trying to be all things to all people — even people like us.

EU leaders will try to develop a strategy to curb "Kremlin propaganda" - an issue that is on a par with the Grexit and terrorism threats on the agenda.

The leaders of 28 EU countries will discuss ways to clamp down on "Russian propaganda" in light of the Ukrainian crisis during their upcoming summit in June, a diplomatic source told RIA Novosti.

"EU leaders are expected to discuss a plan of action to counter the Russian disinformation campaign," the diplomat said.

Three sets of military exercises kicked off in Europe on Monday, involving thousands of servicemen from a variety of NATO nations and their allies, amid a wave of similar action across the area.

Estonia is holding its largest-ever military drills. Named Siil-2015 (Hedgehog), the maneuvers involve about 13,000 personnel. The number includes about 7,000 reservists, along with members of the volunteer Estonian Defense League.

Siil-2015, scheduled to last until May 15, also involves forces from the US, the UK, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands. American troops, who are staying in Estonia as part of the massive training operation Atlantic Resolve, will bring four Abrams main battle tanks to the exercise. British, Belgian and German air defense units, as well as several NATO warplanes, will also take part.