While Baltimore burns, the city has proven itself to be yet another staging ground in a long line of scenes involving "violent protests," riots, and racial violence following an incident concerning police brutality, real or otherwise.

Although the issues that have set off the spark in most of these protests were entirely legitimate, government agencies, foundations, organizations, and NGOs immediately swooped in to divert the protests into racially charged fit throwing and often violent riots.

With a carefully orchestrated network that was capable of organizing large numbers of individuals on a moment's notice, and a simultaneous media campaign that cleverly showed violence and riots but ignored peaceful or appropriately-directed violent acts, these organizations were able to turn what could and should have been a national movement into a racially-oriented hate-filled display of unrestrained destruction.

The ongoing armed conflict in Ukraine will end only after the return of Crimea and Donbas regions under control of the Kiev authorities, President Petro Poroshenko said Thursday.

"The war will end when Ukraine regains Donbas and Crimea," Poroshenko said in an interview with Ukraine's STB television channel.

"You support President Obama's proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy?" That was the question put to George Soros on CNN some three years ago. Here was his answer:

"Yes, very much... the super bubble really resulted in creating a great increase in inequality, and now we have the after effect where you have slow growth, but if you could have better distribution of income, then the average American would actually be better off."

There's no question that "everyday Americans" (as a reminder, those are the people Hillary Clinton wants to help by running for president... well, those people and perhaps a few foreign governments and any investment bank who is willing to pay her husband six figures for a speech) would be better off if they got a larger piece of the pie, but as we've seen over the past several months, that's not likely to happen as wage growth declines for the 80% of American workers classified by the BLS as "non-supervisory" even as the country's supervisors see their pay increase, and as Fed policy continues to inflate the assets most likely to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. As this sad reality continues to play itself out destroying the American Middle Class in the process, we wondered if Soros was doing his best to ameliorate the situation by redistributing more of his vast wealth to the very same "average Americans" about which he expressed so much concern in 2012. The short answer: no.

Swedish aid worker Anders Kompass has been suspended from his position at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights after giving French prosecutors confidential information on sexual violence against children by French peacekeepers in the Central African Republic.

Kompass, who served at the OHCHR in Geneva, has been suspended from his post as Coordinator of Field Operations after leaking the confidential UN report about French soldiers' purchase of sexual services at a refugee center in the Central African Republic in exchange for food and small sums of money. The UN has accused him of leaking confidential information and breaching protocol, the aid worker now faces dismissal.

A total of 70 Russian officers have been working in Ukraine's south-east since September 2014 under an agreement between the Russian and Ukrainian General Staffs of Armed Forces, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper published on Thursday.

"They are from the representative office of Russia's Defense Ministry in the Joint ceasefire control and coordination center and stabilization of contact line between the sides," he said adding that the JCCC also comprises the representatives of Ukraine's military and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.

"And our officers are working there at the request of the Ukrainian side. But Kiev does not want to acknowledge this in public," the official said. They are working directly in the security zone set up along the contact line of Ukraine's units and armed groups of the LPR and DPR.

Ukrainian hacker collective CyberBerkut has hacked into the inbox of a Kharkiv official, finding him complaining to nationalists presumed responsible for the murder of opposition journalist Oles Buzina about their 'excessive' use of force.

"We, the CyberBerkut, hereby present for public access materials confirming that the physical liquidation of public and political figures opposed to the Kiev Junta was authorized by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and was supervised by the Kharkiv political elite; the 'cleaners of Free Ukraine' turned out to be Kharkiv-based nationalist groups."

Hacking the email of Vyacheslav Abbakumov, the Deputy Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, CyberBerkut stated that they had found "correspondence between [Abbakumov] and an unknown leader of an extreme-nationalist group in the Kharkiv region."

As much as US President Barack Obama tried to dismiss it, the Russian sale of the S-300 missile system to Iran is a monumental game-changer. Even with the added gambit of the Iranian military assuring the made in Iran Bavar 373 may be even more efficient than the S-300.

This explains why Jane's Defense Weekly was already saying years ago that Israel could not penetrate Iranian airspace even if it managed to get there. And after the S-300s Iran inevitably will be offered the even more sophisticated S-400s, which are to be delivered to China as well.

The unspoken secret behind these game-changing proceedings actually terrifies Washington warmongers; it spells out a further frontline of Eurasian integration, in the form of an evolving Eurasian missile shield deployed against Pentagon/NATO ballistic plans.

A damning UN report about how French soldiers raped and sodomized starving and homeless boys in the Central African Republic, some as young as nine, has been leaked to the Guardian, and the UN official who blew the whistle is facing dismissal.

French peacekeeping troops were supposed to be protecting children at a center for internally displaced people at M'Poko Airport in CAR's capital Bangui, when the abuse reportedly took place between December 2013 and June 2014. It was at a time when the UN's mission at the country, MINUSCA, was in the process of being set up.

An internal investigation was ordered by the UN office of the high commissioner for human rights (UNHCR), after reports on the ground of sexual abuse of children displaced by the conflict.

A member of staff from the high commissioner of human rights and a specialist from UNICEF interviewed the children between May and June last year. Some of the boys were able to give good descriptions of individual soldiers who abused them.

Officials in Geneva reportedly received the report in summer 2014.

Swedish national, Anders Kompass, a senior UN aid worker who has been involved in humanitarian work for over than 30 years, passed the document on to French prosecutors because of the UN's failure to take action, sources close to the case told the Guardian.

The newspaper reports that after receiving the confidential UN report entitled Sexual Abuse on Children by International Armed Forces, French authorities traveled to Bangui to investigate the allegations.

A French judicial source said that the prosecutor's office had received the UN report in July 2014 and that a preliminary investigation had been launched.

"A preliminary investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutor since July 21, 2014. The investigation is ongoing," he said, as quoted by Reuters.

The OSCE data confirms that Kiev is preparing for provocations on Victory Day

The Ministry of Defense of the Donetsk People's Republic continues to receive confirmation that Ukrainian security forces are planning a provocation on Victory Day, said the deputy commander of the Ministry of Defense Corps Edward Basurin, earlier today.

"Once again, we have evidence of the preparations for a large-scale provocation by the Ukrainian security services, who set a goal to disrupt the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War over Nazi invaders" - said Basurin.

He also added that: "The report of the special monitoring mission of the OSCE in Ukraine for April 22, on their official website, you can read the information, which states that north of the villages of Lugansk and Debaltseve, under the control of Ukrainian security services, local residents have been warned that they need to leave town until May 9 due to the possibility of renewed hostilities. This is confirmed by preparing a large-scale provocation and thorough training. "

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the American people of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead?

It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution.

Unfortunately, with the Constitution under constant attack, the military's power, influence and authority have grown dramatically. Even the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes it a crime for the government to use the military to carry out arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other activities normally handled by a civilian police force, has been weakened by both Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who ushered in exemptions allowing troops to deploy domestically and arrest civilians in the wake of alleged terrorist acts.

Now we find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military and have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.

Making matters worse, we find out that the military plans to use southwestern states as staging grounds for guerilla warfare drills in which highly-trained military troops equipped with all manner of weapons turn American towns and cities in quasi-battlefields. Why? As they tell us, it's so that special operations forces can get "realistic military training" in "hostile" territory.

They've even got a name for the exercise: Jade Helm 15.

Whether or not Americans have anything to fear from Jade Helm 15, a covert, multi-agency, multi-state, eight-week military training exercise set to take place this summer from July 15 through Sept. 15, remains to be seen.

Insisting that there's nothing to be alarmed about, the Washington Post took great pains to point out that these military exercises on American soil are nothing new. For instance, there was Operation Bold Alligator, in which in which thousands of Marines and sailors carried out amphibious exercises against "insurgent" forces in Georgia and Florida. Operation Robin Sage had Green Beret soldiers engaging in guerrilla warfare in North Carolina. And Operation Derna Bridge sends Marine special forces into parts of South Carolina and the National Forest.

Yet if Americans are uneasy about this summer's planned Jade Helm 15 military exercises, they have every right to be.