US – Page 13 – praag.org

ISIS Inc, Jihadists attract investors

The notorious ISIS, which has been slicing through Iraq moving closer to Baghdad, behaves like a big corporation, issuing press releases to create an image of a well-structured, disciplined and effective organization to attract investors and new members.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS/ISIL), which has made lightning advances against government forces seizing key cities, is determined to sweep towards Baghdad.

In just a few days ISIS fighters have almost reached the Iraqi capital, killing scores of people along the way. During the US-led invasion of the country it took the allied forces 22 days to reach Baghdad.

ISIS emerged back in 2004 following the chaos of invasion from radical Sunni jihadists, whose main objective is to establish an Islamic caliphate based on Sharia law.

Manipulating religions tensions in the country between Shias and Sunnis, they were able to unite followers of Saddam Hussein Ba’ath party, a Sunni dominant force. By 2011, ISIS militants regrouped after Nouri al-Maliki’s government released high-profile members of the militant movement.

Today ISIS claims to have over 15,000 fighters most of who are thought to be from neighboring middle eastern countries, but around 2,000 are believed to have come from Europe, including Britain.

In the militant’s own assessment, found in an annual report called al-Naba, or “the news”, ISIS boasts of its destructive force. A regurgitated version of the report, covering the period of November 2012 to November 2013, is offered by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Originally in Arabic the 400 page long document was initially published by the I’tisaam Media Foundation. It is also the second known ISIS release advertising their bloody rampage in Iraq.

The Institute for the Study of War summary also claims that “From the period of April 2013 through to the present, ISIS has been operating in Syria as well, though the distinctions between their military operations in Iraq and Syria is the subject of ongoing study at ISW.”

In its conclusion, the institute believed the organization is making several nation-wide changes to its tactics. “This is a strong indication of a unified, coherent leadership structure that commands from the top down.”

The report has been described as “almost like a company with details of martyrdom operations and targets,” by Nigel Inkster, former assistant chief of UK intelligence service MI6, in an interview to the Financial Times. “You have a clear overlay of structure, planning and strategy to the organisation.”

“ISIS is an extension of Al-Qaeda. With American funds, now ISIS is killing Iraqis and planning to go for Baghdad and Iraqi Shiite shrines to settle an old score,” Elijah Abraham, an Iraqi Christian evangelist told Baptist Press. “Since 2009 with President Obama’s policies in the Middle East, there has also been a systematic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East.”

Washington which spent $25 billion to train Iraq’s security forces over the years, according to a report by the special inspector general on Iraq, now finds itself at ground zero – Islamists are taking over Iraq.

Source: RT

Churches aid illegal invasion of US

Obama Administration deliberately facilitating the flood of illegal immigrants and churches are aiding the flow

South Texas church groups are working around the clock to shuttle what appears to be hundreds of illegal immigrants to housing facilities, benefiting the Obama administration in its deliberate plan to flood America with illegal aliens for political purposes.

Infowars reporters are on the ground in the Rio Grande Valley, the continental United States’ southernmost region, where children and parents from Central America are pouring by the thousands past the US-Mexico border with hopes the U.S. will soon grant them amnesty, which the Obama administration has practically done through selective enforcement of immigration laws.

While monitoring activity at a bus station in McAllen, Texas, Infowars witnessed several church group vans arriving throughout the day and being loaded to capacity with children (many of them without parents), before heading out to facilities nearby.

Illegal immigration by youth to the U.S. has increased over 1300% in the past three years, from 6,500 in 2011 to around 90,000 this year, and may more than double in 2015.

Efforts to house the undocumented immigrants come as agents with the Department of Homeland Security are reaching a breaking point, with one agent telling Infowars he believed the Obama Administration was deliberately facilitating the flow.

Obama announces sending US troops to Iraq

Tony Blair now tells the world that Western “inaction” in Syria has produced the Iraq crisis.

But since bombing Syria would have brought to power in Damascus the very Islamists who are now threatening Baghdad, it must therefore be only a mad person who considers his views.

President Obama certainly did not wince. He announced on Monday that US ground troops ‘equipped for combat’ are being sent to Iraq – just days after claiming that no American soldiers would be deployed to the war-ravaged country.

In a letter to Congress, the president said American troops will be returning to Iraq only three years after they left and their deployment began on Sunday.

The president told Congress that American military personnel in Baghdad will be ‘equipped for combat.’

It is instructive to contemplate what Blair’s rebel friends in Syria are up to.

Assad’s enemies are the same Nusra and al-Qaida fighters whom Blair’s bombing of Damascus would have helped and who now threaten Iraq’s existence.

Not to mention the recent attacks in Kenia.

Televangelist Pat Robertson on Monday blasted former President George W. Bush for selling Americans the Iraq invasion, which led to the violence that is currently sweeping across the country.

During his Monday broadcast, a viewer asked Robertson if there was a solution to the ongoing violence caused by an al Qaeda splinter group, ISIS, threatening to take over Iraq.

“Right now, what we did — and it was a great mistake to go in there,” Robertson explained, pointing out that Saddam Hussein’s “bomb maker” had said that the then-dictator “doesn’t know how to make an atomic bomb.”

And so to sell the American people on weapons of mass destruction, he had WMD and was getting [concentrated uranium] yellowcake out of Africa and all of that, it was a lot of nonsense,” the TV preacher said. “We were sold a bill of goods, we should never have gone into that country!”

“As bad as Saddam Hussein was, he held those warring factions in check, and he contained those radical Islamists,” he continued. “Fix it, no? It’s too late to fix it. It’s unfixable. Those simmering animosities have been there for centuries.”

Most people outside the US knew this before the ill-fated invasion.

The sudden implosion of the vast Iraqi Army of the Baghdad Puppet Regime constructed by the US is a timely warning of the fates of the other puppet states in the Muslim World: Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, UAE and lesser ones.

The whole Muslim World of one and a half billion people have turned overwhelmingly against the US and support guerrilla groups against the US.

Pakistan, a huge nuclear state with about 150 millon people quickly went from pro-US to fiercely anti-US over the annihilation of Afghanistan and the systematic drone attacks on Pakistani civilians.

Clearly American politicians understand money and funding, but have no grasp on geography or identity.

The true aims of the Terror War

By Chris Floyd.

The moral insanity of the Terror War continues to spawn more violence, more extremism, more repression, more injustice, and the total subversion of the “Western values,” all of which it is ostensibly designed to defend.

A new piece by Patrick Cockburn in the Independent provides a grimly illuminating look at this insanity in action on a specific front: Syria. It’s worth reading in full, but here is an excerpt:

The Syrian war has turned into a Syrian version of the Thirty Years War in Germany four centuries ago. Too many conflicts and too many players have become involved for any peace terms to be acceptable to all.. … It has become increasingly obvious over the past year that al-Qa’ida type movements, notably Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, have come to dominate or can operate freely in a great swathe of territory across northern Iraq and northern Syria. This gives Isis a vast hinterland in which it can manoeuvre and fight on both sides of what is a largely nominal Syrian-Iraqi border. …

Europeans have not yet woken up to the significance of these anarchic zones opening up on the shores of the Mediterranean in Syria and Libya. This is because the threat has been largely abstract but it is getting less so with the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels by a French jihadi who had been in Syria. US and European politicians do not want to explain why, 13 years after 9/11, when the “war on terror” was supposedly launched, thousands of al-Qa’ida militants have been able to carve out enclaves so close to Europe.

US and European politicians won’t explain it because any honest explanation would expose the emptiness at the core of all their proffered reasons for the Terror War. They can’t explain it because the Terror War system — including the increasing militarization and repression in their own countries — has now become organizing principle of Western society. Or rather, it is the latest incarnation of what has been the guiding principle of Western society since World War II: organizing society and the economy around war, either active war or the ever-present “threat” of war (assiduously exaggerated — or even manufactured — at every turn). For government and big business, the immense power and profit and control they inevitably accrued from conducting total war on a global basis was far too enticing to give up once the war was over. The full mobilization of society’s resources for war simply carried on; indeed, was expanded and amplified.

However, the war also had a life-transforming impact on many of its survivors. The savagery and loss — and the class-effacing comradeship — they had experienced during the war imbued millions of people with a burning desire to change society for the better, to do away with the poverty and injustices of the past, and build a better, more decent, more peaceful world. This spirit is evoked with remarkable power in a new book, Harry’s Last Stand, by Harry Leslie Smith, a 91-year-old WII veteran enraged to see the neoliberal extremists that have held sway in the US and Britain for more than 30 years sweeping away the progress toward a more just society that his generation tried to build on the ruins of the war. (Some of Smith’s writing can be found here and here.)

Source: Empire Burlesque

A surge that threatens to transform America

Greeting law enforcers — Illegals greeting US law enforcers

There’s a surge on the American southern border. This is a surge far different from George W. Bush’s dispatch of armed might to win the day in Iraq. This is a mass movement of immigrants that threatens to transform the nation.

Children are walking hundreds of miles across a hostile environment with little more than the clothes on their backs, accompanied by neither a parent nor other responsible adult. The numbers of these children making the treacherous journey are much higher than the Obama administration has acknowledged, according to reporting by our Stephen Dinan. The deputy Border Patrol chief, Ronald Vitiello, said in an internal memo on May 30 that border agents caught 40,000 unaccompanied children last year. They expect to apprehend 90,000 children this year, and 142,000 in 2015.

Americans are a kind and generous people, and photographs of a sea of small, frightened and hungry faces in U.S. shelters along the southern border are enough to break a million hearts. President Obama, whatever he intended, is largely responsible. Lured by lax immigration enforcement and the promise of citizenship as “dreamers,” the Obama children’s hour is changing the mission at the border from ensuring security to providing emergency assistance.

Last week, the president declared the border an “urgent humanitarian situation.” He assigned the handling of the influx of children to Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which customarily provides relief following natural disasters. This is a disaster, sure enough, but it’s a man-made disaster.

Source: Washington Times

Marine Le Pen: EU indifferent to suffering in eastern Ukraine

The leader of the Front National party Marine Le Pen talks to Sophie Shevardnadze on RT.

SS: Obama said the security of America’s European allies is sacrosanct, promising to boost U.S. military deployments and exercises around Europe. Does Europe need this kind of support?

MP: To defend ourselves against whom? […] To defend ourselves against whom? Well, you know that we are for leaving NATO, for France leaving NATO, we have a Gaullian vision of what international politics must be like, we are for developing our relations with Russia, without breaking ties with the United States. We believe that France must maintain its relations with all of the world’s great nations, and we do not want to be imposed with a way of seeing things by anybody. We aspire to have the freedom to determine the quality and the level of our international relations. But… to defend ourselves against whom? When we asked this question to a French politician, his answer was “China”. It almost makes you laugh. We can clearly see that, as a matter of fact, this is an opportunity for the United States to carry out military integration, and maybe tomorrow, economic integration, to extend the scope of its influence. The free-trade agreement that the United States want to sign at any price is really just another way to tie the European Union, in a quasi-definitive way, to the United States. This is, once again, a loss of independence, not to mention the catastrophic consequences that this free-trade agreement would have for us in terms of agriculture, industry, defence, etc. So this is much more a geopolitical treaty than a purely commercial or economic treaty.

S: The G7 condemned Russia for the situation in Ukraine, vowed more sanctions…Why are Western leaders calling on Russia and President Putin to end the violence, and not the government in Kiev, the newly-elected president they’ve been meeting with?

MP: That’s a good question. Because we are at the culmination of a Cold War that has been fought against Russia by the United States, to which the European capitals have completely submitted on an international level. It’s as simple as that, and a shame as well. And I would like to seize this opportunity to express my compassion and my sadness and my disgust to see these civil victims in the East of Ukraine, who are dying surrounded by the general indifference of the European political world and media. It is a real scandal which is happening on our doorstep, and you are right to say that from the moment Ukraine has a legitimate government, it is the government which must take responsibility. But for this, we would need to demand that the Ukrainian government dismantle and disarm the reigning militia, which would most likely embarrass a number of people.

SS: The elections in Ukraine were quick to be accepted by the major powers in the West – despite the civil war that’s going on in the country and the fact that there was no vote in the country’s rebellious East. At the same time, the elections in Syria, were branded illegitimate even before they were held. Why?

MP: Yes, but this has been happening for years! I mean, such and such decides who is on the good side and who is on the bad side. And this can change at any moment. The good guys of today will be the bad guys of tomorrow, and maybe the bad guys of today will become good tomorrow, if Washington decides that it is to their advantage to make them good. It is a shame, since there is a substantial amount of mistakes that have been made at an international level under Washington’s influence, especially in Syria. We were the only ones among the French political parties to oppose intervention in Syria, the first and only ones who, from the beginning, said that we were arming Islamic fundamentalists, who would, if they did win, implement a reign of terror like they did in Libya. This was, once again, because of us. We helped them come to power. This is the American method, the international American method: they defend their interests, or they think that they are defending them, since sometimes they make serious mistakes. What is terrible is that European countries no longer have a say in things. There are no more sovereign nations in Europe that can be the voice of reason for peaceful settlement of conflicts, the voice of balance between different interests of different nations.

SS: You’ve said the EU is responsible for the situation in Ukraine – did it ever know what it was getting into?

MP: By definition, it is not up to me to defend the competency of these bodies. To not know this would be tragic – such geopolitical ignorance seems astounding to me. Nevertheless, the result is there – the European Union did not play the role that it could have played, and it contributed to aggravating the situation. What is really a shame is that countries like France no longer have a diplomatic voice – because here is a conflict in which France, if it had kept a strong political voice, a balancing voice like the one I want it to recover, it could totally manage to overcome these difficulties. The diplomacy of the European Union is a catastrophe, and not only in Ukraine – each time the European Union participates on the global stage, it is usually either to create a problem or to aggravate it.

SS: A little while back there was talk about the new rising superpower – the European Union. These elections showed that the bloc is far from being a universally approved, superstate. Will Europe never unite now?

MP: Europe is not at stake; it is the European Union that is at stake. Europe exists, and it consists of nations whose wealth lies in their uniqueness, their sovereignty, their freedom, their democracy. So, I am for a Europe of nations – I wish that tomorrow we can constitute a Europe that could expand, but to countries that have preserved their sovereignty and that would work together on cooperative projects. This is what works, and this is what I want to implement, but in order to do this, we have to deconstruct this European Union.

Source: RT

Illegal immigrants pour into US

In recent weeks, a tide of young, unaccompanied minors crossing the Texas border illegally has pushed the US immigration system to its breaking point. Unable to cope with the volume of children crossing the border without their parents, immigration authorities have had to find emergency solutions, such as housing thousands in a San Antonio Air Force base, a California Navy base, and a makeshift detention center in Nogales, Ariz.

The Associated Press reported that the Nogales warehouse was running out of supplies.

The Obama administration has linked the trend to unrest in Central American countries, but Republican critics say an executive action that the president took in 2012 is to blame, calling the situation “an administration-made disaster.”

President Obama delayed rolling out new deportation reforms in late May partly because did didn’t want to further anger Republicans who accuse him of unconstitutionally bypassing Congress to set immigration policy. Now, if he proceeds, he will have to fend off fresh claims that the very policies he has set have pushed the country into crisis.

At issue is Mr. Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which in 2012 allowed some undocumented immigrants who came to America as minors to defer deportation for two years. Last week, the administration announced guidelines for how these immigrants could defer deportation for a further two years.

DACA would not apply to anyone coming across the border today. Only undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as minors before June 15, 2007, are eligible. But to Republican critics, DACA created the opportunity for misinformation and confusion.

“Word has gotten out around the world about President Obama’s lax immigration enforcement policies and it has encouraged more individuals to come to the United States illegally,” said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R) of Virginia, a key broker in immigration reform efforts on Capitol Hill, in a statement last week.

The numbers are stark.

During the decade preceding fiscal year 2012, the federal government agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally dealt with an average of 7,000 to 8,000 cases a year, according to a Department of Health and Human Services fact sheet. In fiscal year 2011, the number was 6,560.

The following year, however, the number jumped to 13,625. This fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, 2014, federal officials are estimating that the number could be 80,000, according to an internal memo cited by The New York Times.

Source: DC Decoder

Are You Ready For Nuclear War?

By Paul Craig Roberts

Pay close attention to Steven Starr’s guest column, “The Lethality of Nuclear Weapons“. Washington thinks nuclear war can be won and is planning for a first strike on Russia, and perhaps China, in order to prevent any challenge to Washington’s world hegemony.

The plan is far advanced, and the implementation of the plan is underway. As I have reported previously, US strategic doctrine was changed and the role of nuclear missiles was elevated from a retaliatory role to an offensive first strike role. US anti-ballistic missile (ABM) bases have been established in Poland on Russia’s frontier, and other bases are planned. When completed Russia will be ringed with US missile bases.

Anti-ballistic missiles, known as “star wars,” are weapons designed to intercept and destroy ICBMs. In Washington’s war doctrine, the US hits Russia with a first strike, and whatever retaliatory force Russia might have remaining is prevented from reaching the US by the shield of ABMs.

The reason Washington gave for the change in war doctrine is the possibility that terrorists might obtain a nuclear weapon with which to destroy an American city. This explanation is nonsensical. Terrorists are individuals or a group of individuals, not a country with a threatening military. To use nuclear weapons against terrorists would destroy far more than the terrorists and be pointless as a drone with a conventional missile would suffice.

The reason Washington gave for the ABM base in Poland is to protect Europe from Iranian ICBMs. Washington and every European government knows that Iran has no ICBMs and that Iran has not indicated any intent to attack Europe.

No government believes Washington’s reasons. Every government realizes that Washington’s reasons are feeble attempts to hide the fact that it is creating the capability on the ground to win a nuclear war.
The Russian government understands that the change in US war doctrine and the US ABM bases on its borders are directed at Russia and are indications that Washington plans a first strike with nuclear weapons on Russia.

China has also understood that Washington has similar intentions toward China. As I reported several months ago, in response to Washington’s threat China called the world’s attention to China’s ability to destroy the US should Washington initiate such a conflict.

However, Washington believes that it can win a nuclear war with little or no damage to the US. This belief makes nuclear war likely.

As Steven Starr makes clear, this belief is based in ignorance. Nuclear war has no winner. Even if US cities were saved from retaliation by ABMs, the radiation and nuclear winter effects of the weapons that hit Russia and China would destroy the US as well.

The media, conveniently concentrated into a few hands during the corrupt Clinton regime, is complicit by ignoring the issue. The governments of Washington’s vassal states in Western and Eastern Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan are also complicit, because they accept Washington’s plan and provide the bases for implementing it. The demented Polish government has probably signed the death warrant for humanity. The US Congress is complicit, because no hearings are held about the executive branch’s plans for initiating nuclear war.

Washington has created a dangerous situation. As Russia and China are clearly threatened with a first strike, they might decide to strike first themselves. Why should Russia and China sit and await the inevitable while their adversary creates the ability to protect itself by developing its ABM shield? Once Washington completes the shield, Russia and China are certain to be attacked, unless they surrender in advance.

The 10 minute report below from Russia Today makes it clear that Washington’s secret plan for a first strike on Russia is not secret. The report also makes it clear that Washington is prepared to eliminate any European leaders who do not align with Washington.

A transcript is provided by Global Research.

Readers will ask me, “What can we do?” This is what you can do. You can shut down the Ministry of Propaganda by turning off Fox News, CNN, the BBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, by ceasing to read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times. Simply exit the official media. Do not believe one word that the government says. Do not vote. Realize that evil is concentrated in Washington. In the 21st century

Washington has destroyed in whole or part seven countries. Millions of peoples murdered, maimed, displaced, and Washington has shown no remorse whatsoever. Neither have the “christian” churches. The devastation that Washington has inflicted is portrayed as a great success. Washington prevailed.
Washington is determined to prevail, and the evil that Washington represents is leading the world to destruction.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.

‘Russia has almost no troops abroad’

Russia is still ready for a dialogue with the US, which is the best way to reach mutual understanding, the Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with French TF-1 TV channel and radio station Europe-1, according to ITAR-TASS news agency. Extracts from the interview were released on Wednesday morning.

“I have no reasons to believe the US president does not want to talk to the Russian president, but, after all, he is free to do so,” Putin said. “I am always ready for a dialogue and think this is the best way to build bridges.” Until now, the two leaders had spoken on the telephone several times, he added.

Putin pointed to Washington’s highly aggressive actions on the international arena.

“It is no secret that the most aggressive, the most rigid policy on protection of own interests, as understood by the US Administration, is pursued exactly by the US, year in, year out,” Putin said. “We have barely any troops abroad, whereas the US has troops everywhere, it has military bases all over the world, and everywhere they participate in deciding the fates of other nations that are thousands of miles away from their own borders.”

Source: Voice of Russia

US bullies French bank BNP Paribas

France would defend the interests of bank BNP Paribas after the information appeared that it faced the prospect of over a $10 billion fine from the United States on charges of violating sanctions on Iran and Sudan, the country’s foreign ministry said, calling such sanctions “unreasonable.”

“If there is a an error or a violation then it’s normal that there is a fine, but the fine has to be proportionate and reasonable,” French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said on France 2 television. “These figures are not reasonable,” he said.

Currently, little is known about BNP Paribas’ negotiations with US authorities’ investigation whether it evaded sanctions related primarily to countries Iran, Syria, Sudan between 2002 and 2009.

US authorities declared that the BNP Paribas, which is the France’s biggest lender, stripped out identifying information from wire transfers so they could pass through the US financial system, Reuters reports.

Sources familiar with the negotiations said a settlement could include a fine of over $10 billion and other penalties, such as a possible temporary suspension of the bank’s authority to clear US dollar transactions.
Foreign minister Fabius said that US decision would raise questions over European Union-US trade negotiations given the agreement should be based on reciprocity.

“But here you would have an example of unfair and unilateral decision. It would be an extremely serious problem.”

Fabius’ comments come just two days before US President Barack Obama’s visit to France where he is going hold bilateral talks with his French counterpart Francois Hollande.

“These figures could have a negative impact and BNP could see its funds hit and that means less loans especially for French firms,” Fabius stated.

“It’s an extremely serious question that the Americans must handle in a spirit of partnership and not unilaterally,” he said.

Source: Voice of Russia

‘US foreign policy suffers from erectile disfunction’

A Chinese general used a regional security conference this weekend to tell a global audience that U.S. rhetoric about the South China Sea risks provoking Beijing.

For the Chinese language audience, the general used language saltier — and perhaps more provocative — words to describe how he feels about U.S. power.

Maj. Gen Zhu Chenghu, a professor at the National Defense University, made the remarks in an interview with Chinese-language Phoenix TV at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore Saturday.

He suggested that if China came to blows with any of its neighbors, the U.S. might not be a reliable ally.

“As U.S. power declines, Washington needs to rely on its allies in order to reach its goal of containing China’s development,” he told the TV station.

“But whether it will get involved or use military intervention once there is a territorial dispute involving China and its neighbors, that is another issue,” he added.

He said that this depended on the U.S. ability to project power, citing Ukraine as an example.

He said, “we can see from the situation in Ukraine this kind of ED” –which he explained in Chinese was a military abbreviation for something that may have meant “extended deployment” – “has become the male type of ED problem – erectile dysfunction.”

Mr. Zhu was one of several Chinese military officials who reacted angrily to remarks of U.S. defense secretary Chuck Hagel, who accused China of taking destabilizing actions in the South China Sea.

Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV has close ties to Beijing and much of its audience is in mainland China.

China’s stance on its maritime claims in the South China Sea has led it into disputes with Vietnam and the Philippines. A standoff over a Chinese drilling rig in waters claimed by Hanoi led to deadly anti-Chinese rioting in Vietnam in May.

Maj. Gen Zhu is no stranger to controversy. In 2005 he came under criticism for remarks that China would have no option but to go nuclear in the event of a conflict over Taiwan. U.S. officials called the remarks irresponsible and the Chinese foreign ministry backed away from them as well.

Source: WSJ

School cancels honors night for being ‘too exclusive’

Citing concerns about the “exclusive nature” of the annual honors night at Archie R. Cole Middle School, school officials have decided to scrap the tradition.

Instead, students who would normally be recognized at the annual spring tradition will be honored during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation.

The notice was sent to parents over the weekend in an e-mail signed by School Principal Alexis Meyer and Assistant Principal Dan Seger.

“Members of the school community have long expressed concerns related to the exclusive nature of Honors Night,” the email stated.

By having the recognition ceremonies during team-based ceremonies, it will “afford us the opportunity to celebrate the individual and collective success of all students and their effort, progress and excellence.”

At the same time, Cole varsity athletes will get medals and trophies at an after school ceremony.

One parent told ABC6 that he’s not happy with the change.

“How else are they suppose to learn coping skills, not just based on success, but relative failure, it might not be failure, but understand what it takes to achieve high levels,” said parent Joe Kosloski.

Source: eastgreenwich.patch.com

German press demolishes ‘humanitarian’ US

Headshot

In what is becoming a weekly ritual, the German press continues to demolish the US case of “idealistic humanitarian” Ukraine intervention.

A week ago the German tabloid Bild am Sonntag, reaching the broadest audience, reported that dozens of CIA and FBI agents were “advising the Ukraine government.”

This conclusion is hardly a stretch and certainly based on facts considering the recent semi-secret jaunt by CIA head Brennan to Kiev.

The same Bild has now reported that about 400 elite mercenary commandos of the private US security firm, Academi, f/k/a Xe Services, f/k/a Blackwater “are involved in a punitive operation mounted by Ukraine’s new government” against east Ukraine separatists.

Bild cites sources who report that on April 29, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) informed the Angela Merkel government about Academi commandos’ involvement in Kiev’s military operations in eastern Ukraine.

Spiegel adds that “the information originates from U.S. intelligence services and was presented during a meeting chaired by the Chancellor’s Office chief Peter Altmaier (CDU). At the meeting were present the president of the intelligence agencies and the Federal Criminal Office, as well as the intelligence coordinator of the Chancellor’s Office and senior Ministry officials.”

Bild am Sontag did not have information about who was paying the Blackwater commandos: it is well-known they do not come cheap.

The German press is aware of the emerging China-Russia axis. The relationship between Russia and Germany is the most notable story in the entire Ukraine conflict.

Americans turn anti-War

The American people are now overwhelmingly opposed to more war in Ukraine, Syria, Iran and elsewhere.

A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows:

Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington ….

In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer than one-fifth calling for more active engagement—an anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines.

A Pew poll from December found a majority of Americans – more than ever before in Pew’s 50-year history of polling this question – think the U.S. “should mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along as best they can on their own.”

A Pew/USA Today poll conducted over the weekend found that Americans oppose – by a 2-1 margin – any U.S. military aid to Ukraine.

A YouGov poll conducted last month found that only 14 percent of Americans said the U.S. has “any responsibility” to get involved in Ukraine, and only 18 percent think the U.S. “has any responsibility to protect Ukraine if Russia were to invade.”

Huffington Post reports:

Americans are more likely than not to say that the United States has no responsibility to get involved in Ukraine even under extreme circumstances, the new survey shows ….

Pluralities of Democrats, Republicans and independents agreed that the U.S. does not have a responsibility to protect Ukraine.

Support for a war against Syria is less than one-sixth the approval level Americans had for the Iraq war in 2003 (Americans would rather have a root canal or a colonoscopy than bomb Syria).

A USA Today/Pew Poll from January shows that Americans now believe by a 50%-38% margin that war against Iraq was stupid.

Support even for the Afghanistan war has collapsed. For example, only 35% of all Americans support the Afghanistan war, according to a 2011 CNN poll.

Most Americans are now strongly opposed to intervention in any Arab country.

The warmongers, however, are desperate to drum up business.

Obama has also declared a war on inequality. But given that income inequality has increased more under Obama than under Bush, and that bad policy enacted on a bipartisan basis is making inequality worse and worse, we may be in real trouble.

Of course, neither mainstream political party represents the interests of the people … as revealed by polls.

Source: washingtonsblog.com