​After weeks of military campaign against south-eastern regions rejecting Kiev government, which resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, the Ukrainian President has announced a 14-point peace plan to deescalate tensions and asked Russia for support.

In a meeting with Kiev-installed leaders of protest-struck Donetsk and Lugansk regions, the newly elected Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko outlined his vision for stabilizing the eastern part of the country amid an extensive "counter-terrorism operation."


The new leader highlighted the need to amend the constitution, a presidential press release reads, to decentralize the powers of the state. "The President voluntarily renounces the ability to appoint governors and heads of regional state administrations," and has agreed to hold early local elections, the presidential press service said.

The UK needs to grant Germany access to RAF Croughton military base which reportedly hosts a joint CIA/NSA unit, a Labor MP told British PM David Cameron, urging him to help the German federal investigation of the phone tapping of Angela Merkel.

Labour Party MP Tom Watson has sent Cameron a letter, urging the Prime Minister to facilitate the German investigation into the foreign surveillance of Merkel's phone so that Anglo-German relations are not damaged, The Guardian reports.

In the letter, Watson said that the German federal prosecutor should be given access to Royal Air Force base Croughton in Northamptonshire, which currently serves as a United States Air Force communications station. It has been prompted by allegations published by The Independent that the base hosts a hub for US listening stations in diplomatic missions sending intelligence to Washington.

I post this piece now and then to show how personal things can get inside a terminally corrupt government agency.

It's not all about remote decisions made from a great height.

These decisions can come about through the rank intimidation the Mafia exercises with a member who wants to leave the mob and go straight.

As in: "We know where your wife and kids are."

This article is based on a Truthout interview of a man who did drug reviews for the FDA. He examined applications to approve new medical drugs for public consumption.

With investigations continuing into alleged politicization at the Internal Revenue Service, a House Appropriations subpanel on Wednesday moved a bill to cut the tax agency's budget to below fiscal 2008 levels while adding management provisions including restrictions on employee bonuses and conference spending.

The initial version of the fiscal 2015 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which sets the Treasury Department's spending levels, would provide $10.95 billion for the IRS -- a cut of $341 million below last year's final level and $1.5 billion below President Obama's budget request. "This will bring the agency's budget below the sequester level and below the level that was in place in fiscal year 2008," the panel's staff wrote. "This funding level is sufficient for the IRS to perform its core duties, including taxpayer services and the proper collection of funds, but will require the agency to streamline and make better use of its budget."

Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, cited the bill's common-sense" approach. "In order to make these investments and to be good stewards of each and every tax dollar, the bill focuses cuts on lower-priority or poor-performing agencies - such as the scandal-plagued and inefficient Internal Revenue Service," he said.

If his current proposal for a truce, which came into force on Friday, fails to bring results, Ukraine's newly elected president Petro Poroshenko warns he has an alternative "detailed plan" of regaining control over south-eastern Ukraine.

"Peaceful scenario - it is our plan A," Poroshenko said in a statement on his website. "But those who expect to use the peace talks only to gain time to regroup, should know that we have a detailed plan B. I am not going to talk about it now, because I believe that our peace plan will work."

The ceasefire in eastern Ukraine took effect on June 20 and will last until June 27, the day Kiev plans to sign the EU Association agreement.

However, "the military will be given the right to return fire if Ukrainian army units or peaceful civilians are attacked," Poroshenko said in his decree. Since then, the tensions have slightly eased in some areas, but the Ukrainian army is still using artillery and the air force in sporadic clashes with anti-Kiev militias.

Poroshenko claims the ceasefire is designed to enable local self-defence militias to lay down their arms and flee the country, or be destroyed. He also, while drafting the plan with Kiev-appointed governors of the defiant regions, rejected any possibility of negotiations with representatives of anti-Kiev forces.

While welcoming Kiev's ceasefire efforts, the Russian president said the current peace plan on the table "should not take the form of an ultimatum to militia groups," according to the Kremlin statement. It's not enough to just put hostilities on pause, but vital to immediately start "constructive negotiations" to reach a viable compromise between the parties to the conflict.

The chairman of the Chemical Safety Board hit a buzz saw of criticism on Thursday at a House hearing that brought multiple calls for his resignation, with sparks flying over an allegedly dysfunctional investigative agency accused of retaliating against whistleblowers and stifling inspectors general seeking evidence.

Rafael Moure-Eraso, chairman of the independent 43-person accident-investigating agency with an $11 million budget, found himself at the center of a new report from two House committees quoting whistleblowers inside the agency portraying a "toxic work environment." They also alleged that general counsel Richard Loeb retaliated against them for disclosing management problems to the Office of Special Counsel and blasted Moure-Eraso for invoking attorney-client privilege and declining to hand over certain emails sought by inspectors general.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, assembled witnesses that included inspectors general and governmentwide Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner, threatened Moure-Eraso with criminal contempt and called upon him to resign.

The Chemical Safety Board chairman's failure to turn over documents "is a criminal obstruction of this committee's work," Issa said. "If my attorney has not received them by the end of the week, I will issue my own subpoena mirroring all the other subpoenas and will seek to hold you in contempt."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has welcomed the ceasefire announced by Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko. However, for the plan to become "realistic," Putin said both sides of the Ukrainian conflict must stop the fighting and sit down for talks.

Putin "supports" Poroshenko's decision for a "cease fire in the south-eastern Ukraine, and his pronounced intention to take some concrete steps for achieving peaceful settlement," a statement published on the Kremlin website said on Saturday.

With that, the Russian President notes the 15-point peace plan suggested by Poroshenko on Friday "will not be viable and realistic... without practical actions aimed at the start of the negotiations process."

Putin called on both Kiev and anti-government forces to "halt any battle actions and sit down at the negotiating table."

He also noted that the Friday incident, when a Russian checkpoint came under fire from the Ukrainian side after the ceasefire was announced was "unacceptable."

The Russian leader urged Poroshenko to use the opportunity for reaching "political compromises" with eastern Ukrainians, adding that the peace plan "should not be an ultimatum by nature."

Yet another scandal has engulfed the Obama administration, as the President has come under fire for his prisoner swap that secured the release of the only US POW remaining in Taliban custody.

However, the real scandal is not whether Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is a hero or a traitor, but rather the fact that the US - purportedly the "land of the free" - detains prisoners indefinitely, denying them any legal process.

In fact, under President Obama (a constitutional scholar), the practice of indefinite detention without trial or legal counsel, has been codified into US law. Perhaps this is what Obama means when he waxes poetic about "American exceptionalism" - the exception to the rule of law, the exception to international law, the exception to human rights?

The story behind the story

While media pundits, security "experts," and politicians engage in the typical finger-pointing and political jockeying around the Bergdahl scandal, there is one critical point entirely left out of the US and Western media narrative: that Washington continues to hold, illegally and without charge, many prisoners from the so-called "War on Terror" in its gulag at Guantanamo Bay. Such grave abuses of human rights, which have been enshrined as US policy, are far more destructive and scandalous than any backroom deal made by President Obama.

The ongoing detention of Saudi citizen and permanent UK resident Shaker Aamer is perhaps the most obvious example of the criminality and inhumanity of the US and the Obama administration. The UK-based human rights organization Reprieve, which works for the release of all prisoners held beyond the rule of law in the "War on Terror," has been actively working to secure the release of Aamer, along with all other prisoners held at Guantanamo. As the organization's website notes, "Shaker has long been cleared for release by the United States. He has never been charged by the United States with a crime and has never received a trial. However, he has been repeatedly abused and subjected to extended isolation in Guantánamo Bay."

This week the regular hosts were in the hot-seat as SOTT.net Editor Pierre Lescaudron interviewed Joe and Niall about their recently published book, Manufactured Terror: The Boston Marathon Bombings, Sandy Hook, Aurora Shooting and Other False Flag Terror Attacks.

Manufactured Terror is an anthology of investigative reporting on some of the most heinous crimes committed on American soil in recent years. While these events invariably go down as the work of 'lone nuts', gaping holes in the official narratives invite us to look behind the dramatic headlines and officials' psycho-babble.

Context is everything. Sometimes a lone nut is just that. But given abundant historical precedent for the involvement of state actors (note: not 'actors') in terror attacks and mass shootings, those who do most to position themselves as 'protectors of the people' appear to have most to gain from terrorizing their own population.

Running Time: 02:06:00

Download: MP3

The 44,000-capacity Arena da Amazonia in Manaus will host four group stage matches during the competition but many fear it will be left vacant and become a white elephant.

Even Fifa admits on its website that the city is "not a traditional hotbed of Brazilian football".

But prison authorities have raised the possibility of using the massive arena to hold suspects temporarily before being transferred elsewhere.

Sabino Marques, president of the Amazonas custodial system's monitoring and control group, told Brazilian website G1: "After the World Cup, I believe there will be entirely idle spaces. Every day we have arrests in Amazonas and where are we going to put them?

"The prison in Manaus has capacity for 200 to 300 people but there are at least 1,000 detainees there."