Israeli forces sprayed homes and shops along Bethlehem's Manger Street with a foul-smelling chemical on Friday night following clashes with local youths protesting in solidarity with Gaza.

On Friday evening, Israeli forces opened fire on youths in northern Bethlehem with stun grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets after large marches broke out in the area near Rachel's Tomb.

After midnight, Israeli forces brought in trucks that sprayed the sides of buildings along Manger Street with a putrid-smelling chemical known as "Skunk."

The chemical was sprayed along Bethlehem's main street primarily in the areas in front of the Paradise Hotel and Azza refugee camp, and as of morning the area continued to smell of sewage.

Matthew Bennett, editor of The Spain Report, has debunked one of yesterday's many disinformation campaigns. Yesterday, a man who identified himself as "Carlos,"supposedly a Spanish air traffic controller working in Kiev, made many fantastical claims on Twitter about yesterday's events. According to Carlos, two Ukrainian jets shot down the airliner, and soldiers were raiding his traffic control tower in Kiev as the story was unfolding.

Bennett has received confirmation from the Spanish embassy that "Carlos," a man who made similar claims during the Maidan protests, does not exist. Bennett tells us that, "he was posting yesterday that he was a Spanish controller in a tower that was taken over by soldiers as events unfolded. As far as I know, he was the source of the 'MH 17 tailed by two Ukrainian fighters' story. He's been quoted quite a bit on RT [the Russian state-operated propaganda network] since yesterday, and gained several thousand new Twitter followers in just a few hours."

"They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind as it is very proper for those who tackle the darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look at it too much..."

- Joseph Conrad "Heart of Darkness"

July 18, 2014 "ICH" - A noticeable change has occurred in Israel since its bombardment of Gaza in 2008/9, what I have termed the Christmas bombing of imprisoned civilians caught in a steel net surrounding their sliver of land, a change that offers perspective on the altering mindset that guides this benumbed state. Then Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday the 27^th "...instructed the Foreign ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel's international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza strip" (Haaretz, 12/28/08). Her intent as she ordered the military to continue its devastation of the Gazan people resulting in over 1400 dead, many children, was "to explain the rationale for the expanded IDF operations in the Gaza strip." An all out call to PR personnel to mobilize was issued, including those with language proficiency in Arabic, Italian, Spanish and German, the better to muffle the voices of those finding fault with the invasion. She noted at the time that Israel expects foreign media and diplomatic figures to support Israel.

Washington - US President Barack Obama telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday to voice concerns about the crisis in Gaza amid an Israeli ground offensive.

Obama said that while the US supports Israel's right to defend itself, "the United States and our friends and allies are deeply concerned about the risks of further escalation and the loss of more innocent life."

Israeli troops launched an offensive on the Gaza periphery aimed at destroying Hamas's network of cross-border tunnels on the 11th day of an assault in which 274 Palestinians, including many children, have been killed.

"Although we support military efforts by the Israelis to make sure that rockets are not being fired into their territory, we also have said that our understanding is the current military ground operations are designed to deal with the tunnels," Obama told reporters.

The US commander-in-chief added that Washington was "hopeful that Israel will continue to approach this process in a way that minimizes civilian casualties."

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Israel of "barbarism that surpasses Hitler" during its ground invasion of Gaza.

Erdogan made the comment during a campaign speech Saturday in the Black Sea port city of Ordu. He is running for the presidency in elections next month.

He has been speaking out strongly against Israel during its offensive against Hamas militants in Gaza, which has killed more than 300 Palestinians. He accuses Israel of using disproportionate force and has said the operation there has derailed efforts to normalize Turkish-Israeli ties. Those soured after Israel's 2010 raid on an aid ship which killed eight Turks and a Turkish-American.

Hundreds have also staged protests in recent days outside Israeli diplomatic mission in Ankara and Istanbul.

Edward Bernays was the master of influencing and shaping public opinion who developed upon the ideas of earlier social psychologists and the work of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, in order to create techniques to manipulate the subconscious desires of the masses.

Throughout his 103-year lifespan, the "father of public relations" was at the pinnacle of his field advising US Presidents Coolidge, Eisenhower, Hoover and Wilson, as well as inventor Thomas Edison, US industrialist Henry Ford and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. He also reportedly refused invitations by Hitler and Franco to work on fascist propaganda campaigns in Europe.

At the end of World War 1 Bernays served as a propagandist for America before going on to work with various government departments and corporations throughout his lifetime, including: the US Department of State, CBS, Procter and Gamble, and the American Tobacco Company, as well as designing the propaganda campaign for the United Fruit Company which led to the CIA coup against the Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954.

Passenger Boeing 777 2H6ER of Malaysia Airlines crashed in Ukraine near the village Grabovo 50 kilometers from the Russian border. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members were killed in the plane crash. Shortly after becoming aware of the accident, many sources suggested that B777 was hit by anti-aircraft missile system. Media also quoted eyewitnesses who said that Malaysian plane was shot down from the board of Su-25 by the Ukrainian Air Force.

The flight

Malaysian passenger plane, registration number 9M-MRD, KLM flight KL4103, took off from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur at 02.14 pm Moscow time on July 17, 2014. At about 04:20 pm Moscow time, when the plane was already over the territory of Ukraine, the contact was lost with it. It is known that, approximately 50 kilometers away from the Russian border, the liner began to descend, but whether it was the cause of damage to the aircraft or change of scheduled tier before moving from one country's airspace to another, is not yet clear. Later, B777's wreckage and bodies of passengers have been found near the village of Grabovo in the Donetsk region.

According to the State Air Traffic Service Enterprise of Ukraine (the "UkSATSE") responsible for the maintenance of passenger vessels in Ukrainian airspace, the flight of Malaysian Boeing was performed in accordance with the flight rules, without any technical faults. According to the UkSATSE CEO Dmitry Babeychuk, pilots of the KLM flight KL4103 did not report any problems. The last maintenance of the liner was held on July 11, 2014. The plane was flying at an altitude of 10.6 thousand meters, which is 2.7 thousand meters higher than the height of the official curfew imposed by the Ukrainian authorities on July 8 this year.

A plainclothes NYPD cop violated department protocol by using a chokehold while handcuffing a Staten Island man who died following the arrest, Mayor de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Friday.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (left) and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton speak to the media at a news conference to address the recent death of Eric Garner.Photo: Getty Images

That officer and another cop who arrested Eric Garner, 43, were both placed on desk duty following the controversial Thursday arrest, Bratton said at a press conference.

"The two officers who were engaged in the arrest of the deceased - one is an eight year veteran and the other is a four-year veteran - both officers have been assigned to desk duty pending the investigation," Bratton said.

"There's a very high chance that the officer who put him in a chokehold would lose his job," said a law-enforcement source who is familiar with the investigation.


"It violates protocol. It violates a direct rule which is never to put somebody in a chokehold."

Advanced U.S. satellites played a key role in the determination by intelligence officials that a surface-to-air missile shot down a Malaysian jetliner over Ukraine on Thursday.

The assessment was almost certainly based on a technical branch of spycraft known as measurement and signature intelligence, or MASINT, analysts said. The method detects, tracks and identifies a variety of electronic signatures, including radar.

The U.S. operates fleets of listening satellites and early warning satellites that could have identified the location of a missile launch site and its trajectory as it shot up to the 33,000-foot cruising altitude of the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777.

The Pentagon would have detected the launch because of its heat signature, said Riki Ellison, founder and chairman of Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a group that lobbies for missile defense spending.

The U.S. Air Force has satellites in high-Earth orbit that use infrared sensors to detect heat from missile and booster plumes against Earth's background. Called the Defense Support Program, the system provides early warning for intercontinental ballistic missile launches.

The satellites are sensitive enough to sense hot spots in forest fires, according to the Air Force.

A week long hearing exploring the extent of illegal UK government surveillance operations has ended with Amnesty International lambasting the government for making it descend into "the realms of farce and fantasy."

"It is a lightning strike on the privacy of everyone within the government's ever extending reach," said Amnesty International's Senior Director for Law and Policy, Michael Bochenek, on Friday.

"This week's hearing descended at times into the realms of farce and fantasy - thanks to the government's insistence they would neither confirm nor deny any of their surveillance activities."

The hearing has been exploring the allegations that the UK has been illegally intercepting millions of communications.

A GCHQ tribunal started to hear the legal challenges from Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, Privacy International and Liberty among others on Monday.

"This week's hearing will be the first time that these UK government agencies, including the notoriously shady GCHQ, have appeared in a public hearing to answer direct allegations and state their position on the mass surveillance operations as a whole," said Amnesty International in a statement at the beginning of the week.