Late one afternoon last month, as separatist militia fighters and Ukrainian forces exchanged fire, a small-time thief by the name of Aleksei B. Pichko left his home on the southern edge of Slovyansk and headed for an abandoned residence at 17 Sadovaya Street. He had been drinking, and wanted to "see what could be stolen from there," according to documents recovered at the rebel headquarters after their retreat over the weekend.

Mr. Pichko, 30, never returned. An order signed and stamped by the rebels' powerful commander, Igor Strelkov, detailed Mr. Pichko's fate: death by firing squad for pilfering a pair of pants and two shirts.

"They told me they took him to the S.B.U.," said his mother, Maria Pichko, referring to the headquarters in this former separatist stronghold. "I don't know anything more."

The death sentence makes reference to a Stalin-era Soviet law, and in it Mr. Strelkov warns ominously that crimes "committed in the zone of military activity will continue to be punished ruthlessly and decisively."

Mr. Strelkov, a native Muscovite whose real name is Igor Girkin, is a figure as mysterious as he is fearsome. On Thursday, he made his first public appearance after months of fighting, attending a news conference in the provincial capital of Donetsk alongside Alexander Borodai, another Russian citizen leading the uprising here.

Having lost Slovyansk, Mr. Strelkov has moved to assert his authority over the fractious separatist militias that are gathering in Donetsk and Luhansk, the other major city in the rebellious east, rallying them for an urban war that would be both bloody and destructive - not to speak of suicidal, in the eyes of many analysts.

Kiev-controlled military units lost three in dead and 12 in wounded in fighting in eastern Ukraine over the past 24 hours, the press centre of the military operation reported on Friday.

Seven soldiers were wounded, two severely, by mortar fire in the area of the village of Dyakovo in the Luhansk region. Militiamen of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic also opened mortar fire at the Ukrainian military's positions near the villages of Staraya Krasnyanka, the Luhansk region, and Marinovka, the Donetsk region.

During the period of combat actions in the east, 173 Ukrainian servicemen have died, and 446 have been wounded, the press centre said.

How it all began

At the end of last year, Ukraine's then-President Viktor Yanukovych suspended the signing of an association agreement with the European Union to study the deal more thoroughly. His decision triggered anti-government protests that often turned violent and eventually led to a coup in February 2014.

New people were brought to power in Kiev amid riots and ultranationalist rhetoric. Crimea refused to recognize the coup-imposed authorities, held a referendum and seceded from Ukraine to reunify with Russia in mid-March after some 60 years as part of Ukraine.

The militia forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) have forced the Ukrainian army to retreat 10km from the Karlivka settlement to Galitsinovka village after continuous fighting on the approaches to Donetsk, the DPR press service told ITAR-TASS on Thursday.

According to the press service, the Ukrainian troops have been trying to seize Karlivka from the militia units for more than a week. The residents of nearby villages could hear the cannonade the whole day on Thursday. The Ukrainian troops used heavy artillery guns against the militias.

Ukraine's Interior Ministry said earlier on Thursday that the Ukrainian army, the National Guard and territorial defense battalions had launched an offensive near the Karlivka village, 30km away from Donetsk.

According to the ministry, an offensive with the use of armored vehicles was underway in several sections of the front.

Retailers are rushing goods into the nation's ports, fearful labor strife may arrive on the docks and affect the busy holiday season, a trade group said.

The powerful longshoremen's union is negotiating a new contract for its nearly 20,000 dockworkers at 29 West Coast ports. A breakdown in talks led to a 10-day lockout in 2002, shutting ports along the coast.

Fearful of such disruptions, retailers "aren't taking any chances," according the monthly Global Port Tracker report, released by the National Retail Federation.

Imports to large U.S. container ports will likely hit 1.5 million container units this month, the highest level in at least five years, the report said. Imports started surging this spring, as retailers looked to get goods in before the contract expired July 1. Importers have begun to shift cargo to East Coast ports as well, the group said.

Laws do not work in Ukraine and the authorities are killing people instead of protecting them, Crimea's Prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya said on Thursday while visiting a refugee camp for Ukrainians in the village of Opushki near Crimea's capital Simferopol.

Asked about a possibility of forced migrants to assert their rights in Ukraine, the prosecutor replied with emotion: "Look what is going on in Ukraine! What is the law there and who are the authorities protecting? A bunch of people who gathered together and dictate their conditions to the others and God knows what they are about?"

"Which law regulates murder of ordinary citizens?" the CrimeaInform quoted Poklonskaya as saying. "Who has given them a right to murder? The law does not work in Ukraine, there is none there."

"The people who came here and are now enjoying protection of Russian law and Russia testify to this fact," she said.

"Cursed be he who says, 'Avenge!' "
- Chaim Bialik, from "On The Slaughter"

From the moment three Israeli teens were reported missing last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the country's military-intelligence apparatus suppressed the flow of information to the general public. Through a toxic blend of propaganda, subterfuge and incitement, they inflamed a precarious situation, manipulating Israelis into supporting their agenda until they made an utterly avoidable nightmare inevitable.

Israeli police, intelligence officials and Netanyahu knew within hours of the kidnapping and murder of the three teens that they had been killed. And they knew who the prime suspects were less than a day after the kidnapping was reported.

Rather than reveal these details to the public, Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency imposed a gag order on the national media, barring news outlets from reporting that the teens had almost certainly been killed, and forbidding them from revealing the identities of their suspected killers. The Shin Bet even lied to the parents of the kidnapped teens, deceiving them into believing their sons were alive.

Yet another massive assault on Palestine is underway, where, of course, according to the Balfour Declaration, the Jewish population are guests not occupiers since: " ...the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of (this) it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine ..." (1.)

Overnight (8th/9th July) however, one hundred and sixty targets were initially hit, including the European Gaza Hospital (a war crime without a war.) Twenty eight people were killed and over two hundred injured (2) added to the unending onslaught on Palestine from the day the Zionist cuckoo took over the Palestinian nest, homes, gardens, history, culture, ancient sites, cemeteries, villages, valleys, olive and apricot groves on 14th May 1948 (3) ignoring, jack booting and bulldozing entirely the "civil and religious rights" of the population, accompanied by subsequent decades of mass murder and demolitions.

The current onslaught is apparently in response to the deaths of three youths from settler families, for whom no one has claimed responsibility and many questions remain (4.) However homes of two Palestinian "suspects" were arbitrarily destroyed by the Israeli military with no arrests, trial, recourse to law for the dispossessed victims of any kind.

Subsequently in an apparent revenge killing, Palestinian teenager Muhammad Abu Khudair (16) was kidnapped and murdered, his body doused in gasoline, which was also reportedly poured down his throat before setting him alight (5.) Muhammad's cousin Tariq Khudair (15) visiting from Florida was apprehended and beaten so badly by the Israeli police that he reportedly: "woke up in hospital." (6)

The all led to rockets being fired in to Israel, though no injuries have been reported. Israel responded by targeting Gaza (Palestine of course, has no meaningful defence forces) with: "four hundred tonnes of bombs and missiles" with "four hundred and forty targets being hit" and with: "The battle against Hamas (to) intensify over the coming days; it will exact a huge price." (7) The tiny Gaza Strip is just forty one kilometers long and between six and twelve miles wide and home to 1,816,379 people (2014 figure.)

Israel is clearly planning another "turkey shoot" reminiscent of General Norman Schwartzkopf's infamous boast of his aerial slaughter on the Basra Road, of those seeking safety, with no where to hide, in the first Gulf war.

In the latest case of Western mainstream media confusing the geographical location of warzones, an ABC News anchor described footage of Gaza homes shortly after their destruction by the IDF as belonging to Israel.

On July 8, veteran ABC news anchor Diane Sawyer, 68, opened up a news segment, entitled Under Attack, with the following introduction: "We take you overseas now to the rockets raining down on Israel today, as Israel tried to shoot them out of the sky, all part of the tinderbox, Israelis and Palestinians [sic]."

In two images that accompanied Sawyer's narration, she says, "Here are two Israelis trying to salvage what they can, while a woman is standing speechless among the ruins."


There was just one problem: The images of wide-scale physical destruction and human suffering shown in the images were not from Israel, but rather from the Gaza Strip, where the locals have been enduring days of aerial bombings.

William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington's move towards mass surveillance.

On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations.

"At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US", Binney said. "This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores."

The NSA will soon be able to collect 966 exabytes a year, the total of internet traffic annually. Former Google head Eric Schmidt once argued that the entire amount of knowledge from the beginning of humankind until 2003 amount to only five exabytes.

Binney, who featured in a 2012 short film by Oscar-nominated US film-maker Laura Poitras, described a future where surveillance is ubiquitous and government intrusion unlimited.

"The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control", Binney said, "but I'm a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone."

Dozens of Ukraine's government troops have been reportedly killed after local militia shelled pro-Kiev military forces with Grad rocket launchers. President Poroshenko has vowed "killing hundreds" for each deceased soldier.

Self-defense troops attacked a Ukrainian military unit at around 5:00am near Zelenopolye village in the Lugansk region, not far from the Russian border, Kiev's officials reported.

A military official described the consequences of what he called "a bloody terrorist act" as "destruction" saying that about 30 were feared killed.

"About 30 servicemen are thought to have been killed in a shelling by militants using Grad multiple rocket launchers at units of the Ukrainian anti-terrorist operation (ATO) forces near the village of Zelenopolye," Zoryan Shkyryak, an adviser to Interior Minister Arseny Avakov, said at a briefing. "There might be more victims."