Local Dutch broadcaster RTV Noord Holland recently launched an advertising campaign involving posters with the question: "Are other jihad families living in Het Gooi?". The poster refers to two families with children living in the area who, last year, were alleged to be planning to move to Syria and help ISIS. The posters were hung at bus stops in the cities Huizen and Hilversum (Het Gooi is the area around Hilversum). The Muslim community in the Netherlands, as well as non-Muslims have responded with shock, many voicing their concerns that this campaign increases Islamophobia and encourages the assumption that islam and terrorism are one and the same thing.

Several people have compared the campaign with the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War. Ali Osman, board member of Moslims in Dialoog, for instance, said: "It is not the same, but back then it also happened in steps. First the Jews were not wanted anymore, then they became second-rate citizens. That also seems to be the case here."

As a reaction to this recent uproar, Paul van Gessel, director of RTV Noord Holland that is responsible for the campaign of bigotry and jingoism, told the current affairs show Dit is de Dag:

'We focus on a theme which is important in a region,' 'Jihad fighters are an issue in Het Gooi. We are a journalistic organisation and we ask questions.'

How exactly a handful of alleged IS-supporters in an area with approx. 220,650 inhabitants (or about 0.005% of the population in the area) translates to "Jihad fighters" being ''an issue'' in the region is beyond me. If there truly was a Jihad-issue in Het Gooi, the problem could have been dealt with in a different manner. Instead of hanging up posters that exacerbate the disadvantageous social and economical position in which Muslims in Holland find themselves, they could have made efforts to educate people (Muslims and non-Muslims) about the real origins and purpose of ISIS. Investment could also have been in spreading information about the difference between someone committing violent acts in the name of a religion and the other peaceful followers of that same religion. This would have helped to alleviate the stress that the average Dutch Muslim has to deal with and discourage young adults of Muslim faith from falling prey to ISIS propaganda.

Alas, Paul van Gessel and others appear to have a different goal in mind.

It was not the traffic jams in Moscow, nor the police reinforcements, and not even the nightly roar of hundreds of tanks running down my street towards Red Square to rehearse for the parade - it's the media, who made me sick. And here's why.

No more war stories! Over the last couple of months an avalanche of words has been wading through my brain, trying to persuade me that what's good is good, what's bad is bad, that the grass is green and the water is wet, that Hitler started the War, and that Stalin won it.

We get this in May every year, OK. But this time it was just too much of a good thing. And not because something was wrong with the war movies, documentaries and veterans' interviews, but because it felt as if the widows shed their tears and the heroes shared their memories not with us, heirs of the victory, but with a bunch of foreign politicians and a herd of extremists who this year decided to extend the anti-Russian sanctions on our war memories. Why? Maybe because some in Europe feel that what we, Russians think about the war is a lot different from what the rest of the world considers being true? But is it? And if it is, is there anything frightening about it? Here - in a nutshell - is what the story looks like from our side:

For the Soviet people the Second World War started in July 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia. We call it "The Great Patriotic War", likewise the fight with Napoleon back in 1812, when the Russians also had to drive foreign invaders away from their home. The Great Patriotic War was a part of the Second World War, though the Soviet propaganda never really cared a lot about the battles on the Atlantic, in the Far East and Africa. Because of that we consider these events insignificant, compared to the dramatic fighting in Europe, in which the Soviets lost, by some estimates, up to 35 million soldiers and civilians.

Yes, we do know what stands for Pearl Harbor and the Battle of the Bulge, but we are absolutely certain that the main forces of our common enemy were sent to conquer Russia. Out of 177 Wehrmacht divisions 136 were fighting on the Eastern front. That means, all in all, considering another 53 divisions of Hitler's satellite countries, the Red Army withstood the might of 237 divisions! No wonder there isn't a military campaign in history that can be compared to the battles for Moscow, Kursk and Stalingrad - which were the turning points not only for the Great Patriotic War, but for the whole of WWII. After winning those three glorious victories the Red Army started chasing the Nazis back West.

Terrorists attacked the Macedonian city of Kumanovo on 9 May, but one wouldn't know that by reading the Western media's reaction to the tragedy, despite the fact that they typically mention that 8 police officers were killed and another 37 wounded during the firefight. The media's disingenuous 'reporting' reeks of ulterior motives, which is evidenced most visibly by their reluctance to use the word terrorist without putting it in questionable quotation marks, but also takes more subtle forms such as casting suspicion on the government for complicity in the attack and/or inferring that the attack was some type of legitimate protest reaction.


Western institutions like the EU and NATO are actually worse since they confer equal responsibility for the violence on both the terrorists (which they don't even refer to as) and the Macedonian security services, and even the UN has taken to echoing their sly sentiments with all three entities questioning the official course of events and demanding a "transparent investigation". The US and its main Western European NATO allies escalate the rhetoric and actually engage in a form of victim shaming against the country during its official two-day period of mourning by questioning its commitment to "democracy" and not showing any solidarity with it whatsoever in its fight against terrorism. This shameless act (and lack thereof) shows that they and all the previously mentioned actors are in fact implicit supporters of Albanian terrorism against Macedonia and strong proponents of the state destabilization.

Part I of the research demonstrates how unipolar information sources purposely manipulate their coverage of the latest terrorist attacks in Macedonia, while Part II begins by showing how this is also the case for the Western and pro-Western institutions of the EU, NATO, and the UN. The series continues by addressing how the US and its allies have tried to shame and intimidate Macedonia, and then concludes by identifying probable scenarios for how they plan on punishing the proud country for resisting their aggression.

Game Theory analysis confirms what we have been saying all along: In Ukraine, Russia holds all the strong cards.

The Western aim of a unitary Ukraine inside the EU and NATO and allied against Russia cannot happen.

Leonid Bershidsky elegantly summarises a paper that applies game theory to the Ukrainian conflict. Briefly, the paper says that Russia can destabilise Ukraine indefinitely, creating a "frozen conflict" there, and that the West cannot prevent it from doing so.
The West can in theory respond by: (1) military escalation; (2) sanctions; and (3) returning to business as usual with Russia.

The authors of the paper, and Bershidsky himself, appear to think the most likely outcome in the short term is (2) (sanctions), but with a measure of (3) (returning to business as usual), and with (3) prevailing over the long term. Option (1) (military escalation) is not ultimately viable.

We agree.

Bershidsky — rightly, in our opinion — sums up Kerry's visit to Moscow in that way: "Kerry has come to Russia so the sides can agree to disagree on Ukraine and move on to other issues such as Syria and Iran, where constructive interaction is still possible."

Latest reports say that Kerry has warned Poroshenko against any attempt to recover Donetsk airport, which appears to bear that out. It seems that some at least in the U.S. are now at last looking for ways to isolate the Ukrainian conflict from the rest of the U.S. Russia relationship, so that the U.S. can move forward in its relations with Russia on other questions.

This warning from Kerry is incidentally the first time the U.S. has publicly warned Ukraine against a military solution.

Reports that suggest European leaders are now also pressing Kiev to fulfill the political part of the February Minsk Memorandum by entering into substantive constitutional negotiations and by granting wide autonomy to Donbass (previously discussed by us in First Sign of Germany Putting Pressure on Kiev to Implement Peace Deal, Russia Insider, 27th April 2015, and by me on Radio Sputnik, 12th May 2015) point in the same direction.

It should be said clearly however that this is in no sense a "draw", as Bershidsky appears to suggest.

The Israeli authorities have issued a new raft of demolition orders to Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem.

On Sunday, an Israeli court approved the demolition of eight Palestinian homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Semiramis. The court said the owners must destroy the homes themselves and pay fines of 49,000 shekels ($12,667) by 1 August, Ma'an News Agency reports.

The demolition orders in Semiramis were delivered just days after Israel announced that it will build 900 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish-only colony in East Jerusalem,according to the anti-settlement group Peace Now.

In March, ahead of elections for Israel's parliament, the Knesset, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to expand settlements in the occupied city.

"We will continue to build in Jerusalem, we will add thousands of housing units, and in the face of all the [international] pressure, we will persist and continue to develop our eternal capital," Netanyahu said.

Rima Awwad, a member of the Jerusalemites Campaign, a group that campaigns for Palestinian rights in the city, said Netanyahu "campaigned on a platform of de-Palestinianization of the occupied city and he is now following through on his promise."

Can a new surveillance law help stop terrorists the government is already tracking and simply choosing not to stop?

France has announced that in the wake of the so-called "Charlie Hebdo Shooting," it will be passing a controversial new bill granting security agencies unprecedented powers to tap the communications of France's population without judicial overview.

Impossible to pass without having first provoked fear, hatred, division, and hysteria across the French population, and still facing stiff resistance from civil liberty activists, the bill's passage raises further suspicions regarding the fatal January 2015 shooting in regards to who organized the incident and who stood most to benefit.

A suspected terrorist is arrested every day in Britain. More than 700 British born extremists have traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State; half of them, according to Scotland Yard, are already back on British soil.

The Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner for specialist crime and operations, Mark Rowley, said: "ISIL and other terrorist groups are trying to direct attacks in the UK, encouraging British citizens to travel to Syria to fight and train, and are seeking, through propaganda, to provoke individuals in the UK to carry out violent attacks here.

"They are not aid workers or visiting relatives, they are people of real concern that are getting involved in fighting or are supportive of it. They are potential terrorist suspects."

Attempts to prove the presence of Russian soldiers in Ukraine are reaching surreal levels.

The Russian liberal opposition has released a report to that effect, which it seems was largely prepared by the murdered Russian liberal politician Boris Nemtsov before his death.

Reuters has also published a dispatch under the incendiary title Special Report - Russian soldiers quit over Ukraine, to essentially the same effect.

We learned recently from Paris that the Western world is deeply and passionately committed to free expression and ready to march and fight against attempts to suppress it. That's a really good thing, since there are all sorts of severe suppression efforts underway in the West — perpetrated not by The Terrorists but by the Western politicians claiming to fight them.

One of the most alarming examples comes, not at all surprisingly, from the U.K. government, which is currently agitating for new counterterrorism powers, "including plans for extremism disruption orders designed to restrict those trying to radicalize young people." Here are the powers which the British Freedom Fighters and Democracy Protectors are seeking:

They would include a ban on broadcasting and a requirement to submit to the police in advance any proposed publication on the web and social media or in print. The bill will also contain plans for banning orders for extremist organisations which seek to undermine democracy or use hate speech in public places, but it will fall short of banning on the grounds of provoking hatred.

It will also contain new powers to close premises including mosques where extremists seek to influence others. The powers of the Charity Commission to root out charities that misappropriate funds towards extremism and terrorism will also be strengthened.

While the war in Ukraine has raged on for more than a year, the growing conflict between the US-NATO and Russia has taken on new dimensions. From economic warfare waged by the West in the form of sanctions, to the diplomatic rows over the commemoration of Victory Day in Moscow, more and more it seems that relations between East and West are fraying beyond repair. Though it may seem that this conflict is escalating into simply an extension of what was once known as the Cold War, the potential exists for a hot war of global dimensions.

Lost amid the cacophony of saber-rattling and chest-thumping in Washington and Brussels is the quietly emerging, and infinitely dangerous, military deployment in the Black Sea. Once seen as a no-go zone for the US and NATO, the Black Sea, with its expansive Russian shores, has recently become the site of a slew of provocative military moves by the US, and equally significant counter-moves by Russia. Adding fuel to this potential fire is the participation of Chinese naval assets in this quietly brewing cocktail of global conflict.

The presence of US military assets all throughout the Black Sea region is undoubtedly provocative as it is pushing perilously close to Russia's borders. The potential for escalation - premeditated or otherwise - puts the entire region, and indeed the entire world, at risk of catastrophe.