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Saturday 6 June 2015

A man of conscience: Putin reveals what motivates him

© RIA Novosti/Alexei Druzhinin
Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    

In an interview with Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera on the eve of his visit to Milan, the Russian leader admitted that he "tried not to make himself an idol."

He noted that there are many worthy examples of brilliant leaders in Russian and European history; however, it is necessary to act in accordance with the present day circumstances.

"I try, or rather I am motivated by the interests of the Russian people in my work on the basis of all [the experience] that has been amassed over the past times. I act in accordance with the conditions of our present day life and, of course, I try to develop a medium-term and long-term strategy for our economy, policy, first and foremost, our domestic one, and our international agenda."

"Being honest with yourself and the people that have entrusted you this work is the most important thing,"
the Russian leader concluded.

Ebola virus found in the eye of American doctor declared free of virus

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© New York Times
Ian Crozier

    
American doctor Ian Crozier was treated for Ebola in Atlanta last year and declared free of the virus in his blood. But he had no way of knowing it still lurked in his eye.

At the time, his eyes were the least of his worries.

"There were lots of things sort of higher on the food chain," he told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." "I was struggling to learn to walk again."

But not long after, mild burning and light sensitivity afflicted his eyes.

Less than two months later, he was back at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta; testing showed the virus was still living in his eye.

Perplexed

His case has left doctors stunned and highlighted the need for eye checkups for Ebola survivors.

Crozier, 44, was hospitalized at Emory University Hospital for more than a month in September after contracting the disease in Sierra Leone, where he worked at a hospital.

At the time, the hospital said he was the sickest of all the four Ebola patients treated there.

Crozier was discharged in October, and about two months later, he developed eye problems and returned to Emory. Doctors stuck a needle in his eye and removed some fluid, which tested positive for the virus.

At the time, Crozier thought the problems were "an immune-related Ebola complication," but nothing to do with the return of the virus.

"We certainly didn't think it was related to active and replicating virus in the eye," Crozier said. "As my sight started to go bad, it became clear that this was a very different animal."

No risk of spreading the virus

Despite the presence of the virus in the eye, samples from tears and the outer eye membrane tested negative, which means the patient was not at risk of spreading the disease during casual contact, Emory said in a statement Thursday.

It did not name Crozier, but The did. The also released a study on the case. Crozier and Dr. Steven Yeh, an associate professor of ophthalmology at Emory University School of Medicine who helped treat him, were both listed as authors of the study.

Though the patient was not at risk of spreading the virus, all health care providers treating survivors, including eye doctors, must follow Ebola safety protocols, said Jay Varkey, assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine.

Ebola patient for a second time

When the virus was found in Crozier's eye, the eye started losing its original blue hue. It turned green.

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© CNN

    
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© CNN

    
Bewildered, doctors tried different forms of treatment as he relived his Ebola nightmare.

They gave him steroids and an antiviral agent (which required special approval from the Food and Drug Administration, according to the .)

His eye gradually returned to normal, but doctors are not sure whether it was as a result of the steroid shot, pill or his body's immune system.

While Ebola survivors in West Africa have reported eye problems, it's unclear how prevalent the condition is and how often it happens. Emory advises that Ebola patients should be monitored for the development of eye symptoms like pain, redness, light sensitivity and blurred vision.

Crozier said he hopes his case will bring light to the enormous challenges Ebola survivors face.

"You can imagine an Ebola survivor who's already been through their own personal hell," he said. "And as they emerge from that place, to then in a sense face the tragedy of going blind; it's a story that we must pay attention."

Epidemic slowly fading

Over the past year, about 25,000 people have fought Ebola infections. More than 10,000 have died, mostly in the West African nations of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

While the intensity of the largest Ebola epidemic in history has died down, a few people are still newly infected each week.

At least 18 new cases of Ebola were reported in the week ending May 3, the latest World Health Organization report said. All were in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

But as the number of new cases plummet, many unknowns remain on the aftereffects of the virus.

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SOTT FOCUS: SOTT Earth Changes Summary - May 2015: Extreme Weather and Planetary Upheaval

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© Sott.net

    
Winter in the northern hemisphere officially ended in March, and yet May 2015 saw heavy snowfalls in parts of Norway, Russia, China and the US. Europe recorded its highest ever (official) May June temperature - 44°C in Spain - during a brief heatwave, before the mercury plunged to as low as 8°C the following week. Like much of Siberia, northern China went from warm, dry weather - including sandstorms and wildfires - in April, to blizzards by the end of May, while spring snowfall and cold temperature records were broken in Russia.

There were at least four major tornado outbreaks in the US last month, generating some 460 tornado reports. Will the US break its 2011 record for highest number of tornadoes in one year? With the storms came hail, rain, and snow - lots of it. Texas was inundated with record-breaking rainfall that bought its 3-year-long drought to a chaotic end. There were also destructive tornadoes in New Zealand, Mexico, and Germany, which saw tornado outbreaks.

California's record-breaking drought continues, but Los Angeles saw its daily rainfall record smashed in May. Other parts of the US under water were Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alaska, which saw its 'worst flooding in decades', in part due to yet another bizarre spring heatwave. An 'apocalyptic' storm in Moscow flooded streets, while hailstorms turned streets into rivers of ice in Spain, Mexico, and Turkey, where cars were washed away in the coastal city of Izmir. Several huge sinkholes opened up - in the US, Turkey, the Canary Islands and Russia - swallowing gardens, street intersections, golf greens, and cars.

Another deadly earthquake - officially considered an aftershock - rocked Nepal on May 12th, just three weeks after the country was flattened by its worst seismic event in 80 years. Wolf Volcano in the Galapagos erupted for the first time in decades, followed a couple of days later by an explosive eruption of Mount Shindake in southern Japan. Next up was a magnitude 8.5 earthquake off the Japanese coast, the country's strongest since magnitude 9.0 earthquake in March 2011.

Some are asking 'when, if ever, will the climate change'? Our answer to that is: open your eyes; it's changing NOW!

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Watch it on Sott.net's Vimeo Channel:

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Music used: 'Escape from the Temple' by Per Kiilstofte. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

To understand what's going on, check out our book explaining how all these events are part of a natural climate shift, and why it's taking place now: Earth Changes and the Human-Cosmic Connection.

Check out previous installments in this series - now translated into multiple languages - and more videos from SOTT Media here or here.

You can help us chronicle the Signs of the Times by sending video suggestions to [email protected]

SOTT FOCUS: Israeli Collaborators, Provocateur Rocketeers and Cynical Ceasefires

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Did anyone else notice that the 'ceasefire' in Gaza sort of came out of the blue? Pundits put this down to 'war weariness' on both sides, but the precise timeline of events leading up to the ceasefire has me a little perplexed.

On Monday, 18th August, a 72-hour ceasefire was declared as part of the talks in Cairo. The following day, Tuesday, the Israeli delegation left at 4 pm, precisely the time when the IDF would later say that Hamas had fired rockets at Beersheba, thereby "breaking the ceasefire".

Israel used the opportunity to attack the house of the al-Dalou family where alleged Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif was believed to be. Deif, who is said to be partially paralyzed and wheel-chair bound (as a result of 5 previous attempts on his life by Israel), apparently wasn't there, or so Hamas claim (although Israel claims he was), so only his wife, his 3-year-old daughter Sara and baby son were murdered when the IDF dropped five 1-ton bombs on the building. Two days later, on Thursday, the IDF claimed that they had killed three Hamas officials in a multiple missile strike in Rafah in Southern Gaza.

Hamas was clearly rattled. The next day, Friday 22nd, Hamas executed 18 individuals that they claimed were "Israeli collaborators" and a 'rocket' landed in a Kibbutz on the Gaza border, killing four-year-old Daniel Tregerman, the first and only Israeli child casualty. The collaborators were reportedly executed for "following and monitoring leaderships, finding targets to hit the resistance - such as rocket launching pads and tunnels - monitoring the movements of leaders, delivering information on resistance members who have been targeted, providing detailed descriptions of the houses of a number of resistance members that have been destroyed during the war, determining civil and military sites and targets through GPS devices, collecting phone numbers of resistance members and getting devices and equipment from Israel for spying purposes."

In 2013, Al-Monitor's Adnan Abu Amer wrote:

"No official statistics from Palestine or Israel have been issued, nor have any exact numbers been provided. Some estimates say there could be fewer than 10,000 "undercover agents [in Gaza]."

The connection between the breaking of the ceasefire, the killing of Hamas officials and the execution of collaborators is clear. But what is most interesting is the fact that Hamas appears to have had no intention of breaking the ceasefire at that time, had not ordered the firing of rockets, and were unaware that any were about to be fired. On the other hand, the Israelis were expecting the ceasefire to be broken by 'Hamas rocket fire', at a very precise time, which allowed them to be confident that Deif would be in the house and vulnerable because he was not expecting an attack during a ceasefire, which he had no reason to believe would be broken. But someone did fire rockets just a short time before the Israeli attack on the Deif house and it's likely that that same 'someone' also gave Israel the precise location of the house where Deif was believed to be (and may well have been).

In a Haaretz article on August 20th, senior correspondent and columnist Amir Oren made some cryptic but very interesting remarks about the targeting of Deif:

It doesn't matter if Hamas fired the rockets that hit the Negev Tuesday evening, or knew who fired them [...] if Hamas' version of the sequence of events is true, it seems that Israel was hoping to seize a rare opportunity to strike Deif [...] [Israel] needed only two conditions: the breaking of the ceasefire by Palestinians which would give Israel the pretext to attack [...] and the involvement of other groups, aside from Hamas, in the fire.

Oren goes on to say:

In the past, more than 30 years ago, there were Israeli military and diplomatic officials who were not averse to staging an incident in order to have an excuse to respond to it, with a pre-planned operation.

With his reference to "staging an incident" in relation to Hamas 'breaking the ceasefire', Oren appears to be suggesting that the 'Hamas rocket fire' that 'broke the ceasefire' last week was a 'staged incident' in order to justify the pre-planned operation to target Deif when he least expected it. Oren's suggestion was echoed, in a more direct way, by former Israeli attorney general under both Rabin and Netanyahu, Michael Ben Yair, when he posted the following on his Facebook page:

There is no ceasefire [agreement]. There are only renewed acts of hatred. Who's at fault? Good question - Hamas which wants a deal more or Israel which faked a violation in order to assassinate Mohammed Deif.

Again we see a direct reference by a respected Israeli to Israel 'staging a provocation'. Over the past seven weeks, the only 'provocations' cited by Israel as justification for its continued bombardment of Gaza were 'Hamas rockets'. It makes you wonder about those alleged 10,000 Israeli collaborators inside Palestine and if the activities of some of them involve more than merely snitching to Israel on the location of Palestinians and tagging Palestinian homes with high-tech 'beacons'.

Amir Oren's comment that "more than 30 years ago, there were Israeli military and diplomatic officials who were not averse to staging an incident" is also interesting in that it places the idea of what is essentially Israeli 'false flag' operations in a long-term historical context.

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Not exactly high-tech

    
'More than 30 years ago' was the early 1980s and there are several "terror attacks" against Israel or involving Israel that might fit the bill. For example, the car bombing of the Israel military headquarters in then occupied Tyre, Lebanon, in November 1982 during Israel's first Lebanon war, an attack that the Israeli government has, ever since, insisted was a "gas cylinder explosion". There was also the June 1982 attempted assassination by members of the Abu Nidal gang of then Israeli ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov, that was used by Israel as justification for the aforementioned 1982 Lebanon war. Abu Nidal is widely believed to have been an Israeli agent, a psychopathic 'hired gun' who could be relied on to carry out attacks against both Israeli and Western targets and members of other Palestinian groups in order to undermine and discredit the Palestinian cause.

Just for the record, the true Palestinian cause, like all other true Arab (etc.) liberation movements of the 20th century, is based on resistance to Western imperialism and the promotion of progressive secularism. This was the ideological basis for all genuine and popular Arab political groups in the 1950s and '60s. Since then however, Western imperialists and the state of Israel have consistently sought to prevent the emergence of Arab democracies and, instead, promoted the most reactionary and extremist elements. As a result, they have successfully replaced the original, normal human ideals with the bastardized, grotesque image and 'ideals' of the modern "Muslim terrorist" which is nothing more than the projection onto Arabs of the inner nature of the Western and Israeli psychopathic elite. ISIS/IS is the culmination of this long term projection process and is the literal brainchild of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Getting back to our timeline; the day after the attack on Deif, a Hamas official living in Turkey, Saleh al-Arouri, made the surprising claim that Hamas was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens in June, the event that was initially used by Israel to kick start the attack on Gaza, an event which, as I have explained, bears all the hallmarks of the work of agents of the state of Israel itself. Strangely, Arouri added that Hamas in Gaza "did not have the intention at this time to ignite a large battle", in which case, we have to wonder who did have the intention to force a large battle on Hamas in Gaza? Hamas in Gaza has consistently denied that they knew anything about the murder of the teens, and the Israelis apparently believe them. Nevertheless, Arouri's 'admission' was responded to by Israel with the murder of three Hamas officials in a house in Rafah in the south of Gaza the next day.

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The destroyed home of the Kallab family, where three Hamas officials were assassinated by Israel, in Rafah, Aug. 21

    
The following day, Friday 22nd, Daniel Tregerman, a 4-year-old Israeli boy was killed when a 'rocket' hit a Kibbutz near the Gaza border. Three more days of sporadic 'rocket fire' and Israeli missile strikes on Gaza ensued before a sudden permanent ceasefire was announced on Tuesday 26th. This was certainly a strange time for the Israelis to 'give in'; after all, their rationale for the bombardment of Gaza was to 'prevent rocket fire into Israel' and yet, within a few days of the very first child casualty from that same rocket fire, they call an end to the punitive campaign?

Up to that point, just three people had been killed by rocket fire from Gaza, a rabbi, a bedouin and a Thai worker, so from the Israeli point of view, before the death of the 4-year-old, just one Israeli Jew had been killed by rocket fire. My point being, if the aim of Operation Protective Edge was to 'stop rocket fire' and protect the lives of Israelis, then the job was certainly not complete; in fact, given that the death of a child is generally viewed as more egregious than that of an adult, the death of Daniel Tregerman put the entire operation back to 'square one'. Yet a definitive ceasefire was agreed just 4 days later.

By most accounts, Hamas emerged the 'victor', receiving two of its four demands (relating to the lifting of the economic blockade of Gaza) and the other two (an airport and seaport for Gaza) to be discussed in one month's time. For its part, Israel reduced Gaza's 1.8 million population by about 2,000, killed a few Hamas officials, and secured the status quo, the status quo being more or less the situation before the 7-week bombardment of Gaza. As I have mentioned previously, Israel's real goal in launching operation Protective Edge was to stall the establishment of a Fatah/Hamas unity government and facilitate the continued expropriation of Palestinian land. Today, Israel announced the biggest annexation of West Bank land in 30 years. With the swipe of a pen, 400 hectares of Palestine became part of Israel. The justification? The killing of the three teens in June.

The false image of Palestinians as 'terrorists' who want to 'destroy Israel' is promoted by Israel as a bulwark against the emergence of a genuine movement for Palestinian rights that can be accepted internationally. To perpetuate the idea that Paestinian = terrorist, Israel has to launch periodic 'anti-terrorist' operations against the Palestinian people. When such operations are politically expedient, Israel manufactures a 'provocation' to justify the operation. On this occasion, the provocation was the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by agents of the state of Israel. While the operation was ongoing, provocations in the form of rockets fired by agents of the state of Israel inside Gaza were used.

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SOTT FOCUS: It's not the first time the Israeli military has massacred children on a Gaza beach

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A Palestinian boy whose father was killed weeps at his funeral in Gaza City, 13 July

    
Israel's latest game of "kill the Palestinians" began as a result of the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teenagers. No one knows who did it. Hamas denied they had anything to do with it, Israel has no evidence that Hamas had anything to do with it, and yet Israel blamed Hamas and, on the basis of that spurious claim, began bombing Gaza's civilians.

The latest example of unfettered Israeli criminality and brutality came today when Israeli missiles targeted part of the beach in Gaza, specifically, a part of the beach where four young Palestinian boys were playing football. This comes on the heels of last week's massacre of 9 young Palestinians in a beach cafe as they watched the World Cup.

The first projectile hit the sea wall of Gaza City's little harbour a little after four o'clock. As the smoke from the explosion thinned, four figures could be seen running, ragged silhouettes, legs pumping furiously along the wall. Even from a distance of 200 metres, it was obvious that three of them were children.

Jumping off the harbour wall, they turned on to the beach, attempting to cross the short distance to the safety of the Al-Deira hotel, base for many of the journalists covering the Gaza conflict.

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They waved and shouted at the watching journalists as they passed a little collection of brightly coloured beach tents, used by bathers in peacetime.

It was there that the second shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors. As it exploded, journalists standing by the terrace wall shouted: "They are only children."

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Four boys aged between seven and 11 were killed, three others were injured.
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One of the 'lucky' ones

    
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Not so 'lucky'.

    
One of the injured boys, Hamad Bakr, suffered a shrapnel wound to his chest. As he waited for surgery at the Shifa hospital today, his mother said: "They killed my nephew. Who does that? Who fires on children?"

That's a good question that goes to the heart of the matter. Who fires on children? Most people know the answer, although most also seem unable to apply it to Israeli politicians and the many Israeli Jews who cheer on the butchery.

In case you haven't noticed, Israel has developed something of a habit of periodically bombing Palestinians civilians in Gaza. It's as if every few years the psychopaths in Israel get a hankering for some major Palestinian blood-letting and they manufacture some barely plausible excuse to conceal their monstrous appetite from the world. They're also careful to give these blood-fests a euphemistic name to throw the mainstream media off the scent (not that the mainstream media needs much encouragement).

Back in 2006, it was under 'Operation Summer Rains' that Israelis got to enjoy the sight of Palestinians and their homes being blown to pieces. On a particular day that Summer, June 9th to be exact, a Palestinian family was trying to get some respite from the carnage by way of a picnic on Gaza's beach. But their relative peace and calm was suddenly shattered by an Israeli missile that literally blew the entire family (five members) to pieces, along with two others.


In the immediate aftermath of the 2006 attack, the Israeli government attempted to blame Hamas (and the victims), saying that the family had been killed by a mine placed on the beach by Hamas in the hope of killing Israeli soldiers. As I stated at the time, this claim was disingenuous at best given that the IDF had pulled out of Gaza a year before and there was therefore no reason for Hamas to think that a mine of the Gaza beach would kill anyone but Gazans. Confirmation that it was an Israeli missile eventually came from Marc Garlasco, a former Pentagon battle damage expert who surveyed the scene and concluded that "all the evidence points to a 155mm Israeli land-based artillery shell as its cause."

Mr Garlasco produced a four to five-inch, mainly blackened shell fragment which he collected about 100 yards from the scene of the explosion and in which the figures "55" and the letters "mm" are clearly discernible. Garlasco said other fragments and shrapnel which the Palestinian police explosives department took from the scene were definitely from a 155mm shell. Still, Israel denied any responsibility and blamed the victims.

In the eight years since that atrocity, Israel has continued its periodic slaughter of Palestinian children and continues to add massive insult to egregious injury by denying all responsibility. When orthodox Jewish settlers kidnapped 16 year old Mohamed Abu Khdeir, forced him to drink gasoline and then set him on fire, Israeli police deliberately spread the rumor that the boy had been killed by his own family for being gay.

If you're wondering what could possibly have possessed those settlers to subject another human being to such horrific treatment, you need look no further than the representatives of the state of Israel. The day before Mohamed Abu Khdeir was burned alive, member of the Israeli parliament and government whip Ayelet Shaked issued a call over Facebook to ethnically cleanse Palestine, declaring that "the entire Palestinian people is the enemy." Shaked advocated the complete destruction of Palestinians, "including the elderly" adding that the women must also be slaughtered, otherwise they would give birth to more "little snakes."

So don't be surprised by today's targeted killing of Palestinian children by the Israeli military on the orders of the psychopaths in the Israeli government. They've done it before, they'll do it again, they'll lie about it and blame the victims, and most of the world will continue to turn their collective face away as they succumb to the manipulations and distortions of the pusillanimous mainstream media.

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Joe Quinn (Profile)

Born, bred and fled from the last outpost of the British empire, Joe is a researcher, editor and writer for Sott.net

SOTT FOCUS: Psychopathic 'Morality': The Truth Behind the Kidnapping and Murder of 3 Israeli Teens

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While much of the public was being distracted by news reports of the scoreline in the Germany-Brazil World Cup game, another, admittedly less important, high-scoring 'game' was playing out in Israel/Palestine. While Brazil lost 7 to 1 to Germany, so far, Palestinians losses to Israel are running at 100-0, with no end to the carnage in sight.

A week ago I expressed my suspicions about the timing of the kidnapping and murder of the three Israelis teens. Since then, more details have come to light that confirm that the kidnapping was most likely a carefully orchestrated Israeli government propaganda campaign designed to destroy the Fatah/Hamas unity government, demomize the Palestinians as 'terrorists', and, as always, give the psychopaths in Tel Aviv another opportunity to blow Palestinian women and children to pieces.

As clinical studies on the psychopathic mind make clear, psychopaths periodically experience a compelling drive to give vent to their destructive instincts. In the case of psychopaths in positions of power, this usually means some kind of 'war' where innocent civilians (aka 'non-combatants') are targeted for the most brutal suffering. In the specific case of the Israeli psychopathic 'elite', the psychological profile goes something like this:

Netanyahu and his ilk have a deep, almost unconscious desire to obliterate the Palestinians, to 'erase them from the pages of history', because the Palestinians stand in the way of them achieving their goal of a idealized Jewish state where they reign supreme. The Israeli/Zionist ideologues are frequently and privately enraged at the Palestinians because the Palestinians force the Zionists to struggle to find a way to achieve their racist goals without tarnishing their own self-image as 'seeking peace' 'defending the Jewish people' being 'the only Democracy in the Middle East' etc. To the psychopaths in Israel therefore, all Palestinians are 'evil', but there's a problem: the Palestinians are not evil and their cause is just by normal human standards.

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Not your common or garden variety

    

If it was up to them, the psychopaths in Israel would just kill all the Palestinians and be done with it. But they can't because they are constrained by human rights, innocence, respect and other 'silly' ideals adhered to by normal people, and to which the psychopaths must also pay lip service if they are to maintain their mask of humanity on the world stage.

To get what they want therefore, the Israeli psychopaths must solve the problem of the Palestinians not conforming (in reality) to the evil image the Israelis have of them, that would allow the Israelis to freely express their destructive urges and achieve their idealized vision of a Jewish state. The solution that psychopathic types everywhere invariably come up with is to 'create their own reality' where they literally manufacture a 'reality' to fit the demonized image they have of the 'enemy' that stands in their way. At that point, they have the 'just cause' to attack the 'enemy' whose mere existence has been 'unfairly' thwarting their attempts to get what they want i.e. achieve their psychopathic agenda.

With that in mind, let's look at the details of events over the past month in Israel/Palestine.

Kidnapped and Murdered Teenagers - Political Capital

The official narrative around the kidnapping of the Israeli boys has them being 'missing' for 18 days before their bodies were discovered on July 1st. During this time, in a supposed desperate attempt to find them alive and "bring them home", the Israeli government had the (very willing) Israeli military rampage through the West Bank destroying homes and arresting and interrogating hundreds of Palestinians. The truth of what the Israeli government really knew about the fate of the boys appears, however, to be rather different.

A few days ago the Israeli National News reported that the details of the phone call made by one of the boys on the night of the kidnapping would have led the Israeli government to suspect that the boys had been shot. The call, which took place at 10:25 p.m. on June 12, lasted for 2:09 minutes - most of which is comprised the police trying to resume contact after the caller was abruptly cut off.

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An image you won't see in Israel: A father carries his severely wounded son after an Israeli missile hit the densely populated Gaza strip

    

In the audio recording, after one of the boys whispers "they've kidnapped me!" to the operator, the kidnappers can be heard shouting at the boys to get their heads down. Immediately thereafter shots are heard amid an apparent struggle and the boys can be heard crying out in pain. This was the moment when the teens were most likely shot dead in the back seat of the kidnappers' car. US investigators, involved because one of the boys was a US citizen, have said they were shot 10 times and that the weapons used to execute them were fitted with silencers.

The fact that blood, the boys' DNA and spent bullet casings were discovered in the burned-out car found shortly after the kidnapping tends to confirm this hypothesis. But rather than inform the boys' families and general public of these details, the Israeli government embarked on a propaganda campaign that was almost certainly planned many weeks in advance. A gag order on the press was quickly issued, preventing them from revealing the truth about the fate of the boys and the IDF proceeded on a two week-long 'search for the missing boys' as Israeli politicians and religious leaders whipped Israeli public opinion into a racist frenzy with calls for revenge and some individuals on FB responding to the murder of a Palestinian teenager by the IDF suggesting that all 4 million Palestinians should be "herded into gas chambers and their bodies burned".

The mother of one of the teens who had listened to the call the day after the kidnapping was told by police that the shots were 'blanks' and that the boys were probably still alive and the Israeli government initiated a '#BringBackOurBoys' campaign on Twitter in an attempted comparison to the #BringBackOurGirls campaign for the 276 Nigerian girls abducted in Nigeria by Islamic militant group Boko Haram (which appears to be a creation of Western powers, by the way).

The motivation for the lock-down on the truth about the fate of the boys was clear enough even to Israeli journalists. One week after the kidnapping, leading Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf stated in a Facebook post that the gag order was to "preserve the local and international legitimacy" for a military policy aimed at Hamas - and, as such, the gag order was a form of "media manipulation". Sheizaf also cited a Haaretz article of June 20th by Amos Harel that hinted that the military knew the teens were dead because the IDF operation in the West Bank clearly had nothing to do with finding the boys and was even harming the search for them.

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Not just in Israel: Protestors outside the Israeli consulate in NY.

    

What this means is that Netanyahu and his psycho cohorts callously used the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers to emotionally manipulate the Israeli population into calling for Palestinian blood (which they most assuredly did) and to justify the Israeli military bombardment of Gaza. Note that I don't state that 'preventing Hamas from firing rockets' was part of the motivation. It clearly wasn't. The only broad political agenda being served here was to demonize Fatah as a 'partner for peace' (because of its unity govt. attempts with Hamas) and gain local Israeli and international sympathy for Israel so that it can continue to occupy and steal more Palestinian land with impunity and murder any Palestinians who try to get in the way of the pathological 'Zionist dream'. It's interesting to note that, for years, Netanyahu claimed that there was no point in partnering with Fatah's Abbas because Abbas had no control over Hamas. But when Fatah and Hamas recently announced a unity government, Abbas was condemned by Netanyahu as getting into bed with a terrorist organisation. Indeed, it was the threat of that unity government and recent criticism of Netanyahu from the US government that appears to have produced the kidnapping of the teens and all that has resulted.

Callously using the death of children for political purposes is one thing (and par for the course in our psychopath-ruled society) but is it possible, as I have suggested previously, that the Israeli government was involved in some way in the kidnapping and murder itself?

Self-Destructive Palestinian 'Resistance'

Within a few days of the kidnapping, the Israeli government already had two likely suspects. Marwan Qawasmeh and Amar Abu Aisha are two members of the so-called 'Qawasmeh clan' of Hebron, a group that is said to pay little heed to what Hamas has to say and that often acts in ways that are counter to Hamas' goals. According to Israeli journalist Shlomi Eldar, the group has a tendency to attack (or try to attack) Israeli targets specifically during ceasefires. Eldar states:

"Each time Hamas had reached an understanding with Israel about a cease-fire or period of calm, at least one member of the family has been responsible for planning or initiating a suicide attack, and any understandings with Israel, achieved after considerable effort, were suddenly laid waste. If there is a single family throughout the PA territories whose actions can be blamed for Israel's assassination of the political leadership of Hamas, it is the Qawasmeh family of Hebron."

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A Palestinian rocket dirties an Israeli street

    
Eldar also points out that these alleged 'Qawasmeh clan' operations often resulted in Israeli assassinations of Hamas leaders and the indiscriminate bombing of Gaza. For example, in August 2003 two alleged 'suicide bombers' blew themselves up on a bus in Jerusalem killing 23 Israelis. While the 'Qawasmeh clan' were held responsible, the Israelis blamed Hamas and killed one of its most prominent political leaders in Gaza, Ismail Abu Shanab. Shanab was widely seen as a moderate who posed the best chance of a securing a peaceful settlement to the 60+ year conflict.

Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel wrote that: "there is no evidence that Hamas' leadership either in Gaza or abroad was involved in the kidnapping" and that there are many Palestinians who oppose killing unarmed boys" and that "the kidnapping undermined Hamas' relations with the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and effectively froze the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation." It seems pretty clear that Hamas had no knowledge of the kidnap plan and that it was carried out by individuals acting on their own initiative, and that the Israeli government knew this from the beginning, which makes the decision to indiscriminately bomb Gaza highly cynical on the part of the Israeli government, unless, of course, that was the plan.

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An Israeli missile lands in the densely populated Gaza strip

    
Political pundits in Israel and elsewhere all appear to agree on the idea that, while Hamas was not responsible for the kidnapping, it is very reluctant to condemn such attacks for fear of angering the Palestinian people who have precious little means to defend themselves against Israel's continued ethnic cleansing operation. But, as Haaretz military correspondent Amos Harel noted, there are many Palestinians who oppose the murder of innocent children, and it is clear that, far from a victory, the kidnapping and murder of the three teens was a crushing blow, both politically and physically, to Palestinian aspirations. As Max Blumenthal asked in a recent essay:

Why would Hamas leadership have authorized an operation that so clearly threatened to unravel the movement's political achievements, wrecking the vaunted unity deal and leaving Abbas without rival in the West Bank?

So who were the kidnappers? It doesn't seem reasonable to think that the 'Qawasmeh clan', who are well versed in the dynamics of Israeli occupation, would so nonchalantly invite such destruction from the Israelis with no tangible benefit to the Palestinians. Unless, of course, that was the kidnappers' plan.

Fifth Column

The idea of there being a 'rogue element' among the Palestinian resistance is nothing new, and on several occasions in the past, Palestinian leaders have not only denounced the firing of rockets at Israel, but pointed to Israel itself as being behind the attack:

Hamas blames 'Israeli collaborators' for launching rockets

Albawaba.com
Sun, 12 Oct 2008

The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday lashed out at gunners who fire rockets at Israel from the Palestinian territory in violation of a seven-week-old calm, calling them Israeli collaborators. "About the rocket-firing, I think those who are responsible are those who collaborate with Israel because there is a consensus by all Palestinian groups to respect the truce," said Dr. Mahmud Zahar, a senior leader of the Hamas movement.

On Monday, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip landed in an empty field outside the southern Israeli city of Sderot, causing no casualty or damage.

According to AFP, Zahar told a Gaza radio station that the party which fired the rocket was "linked to Israel as they provide a pretext to exercise pressure on the Palestinian people."

Israeli false-flag operations are not limited to rocket teams however:

Palestinians arrest al-Qaeda 'poseurs'

December 8 2002
Sydney Morning Herald

Palestinian security forces have arrested a group of Palestinians for collaborating with Israel and posing as operatives of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network, a senior official said yesterday.

The arrests come two days after Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon charged al-Qaeda militants were operating in Gaza and in Lebanon.

"The Palestinian Authority arrested a group of collaborators who confessed they were working for Israel, posing as al-Qaeda operatives in the Palestinian territories," said the official, on condition of anonymity.

He said the alleged collaborators sought to "discredit the Palestinian people, justify every Israeli crime and provide [Israel with] reasons to carry out a new [military] aggression in the Gaza Strip."

Ibrahim, the Shin Bet wants you to join Qaida

Danny Rubinstein
Harretz
Jan 7th 2006

Early last week, Rashi Abu Sba, head of the preventive security apparatus in Gaza, the equivalent of the Shin Bet, accused the Israeli security service of tricking young Palestinians into conducting missions in the name of Al-Qaida. Last Tuesday, a young man named Ibrahim was presented to reporters in Gaza. Ibrahim hid his face behind a mask, and told what happened to him.

He said that a year ago he sent in a personal, with his photo and phone number, to East Jerusalem's Post, a cultural-entertainment weekly with a personals section. Three months later, the Gazan received a phone call from an older man, who introduced himself as a merchant named Ahmed, who told Ibrahim that his photo reminded him of his son. They spoke on the phone a number of times, with Ahmed asking Ibrahim about the situation - and if he was a devout Muslim.

[...] In one of the conversations, Ahmed said he was working for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organization, and Ibrahim was meant to be one of its organizers in northern Gaza since the group already had an infrastructure in the south. Ahmed gave Ibrahim a list of people, mostly Hamas activists, and was told to collect information about them and follow them so they could also be drafted for the Al-Qaida cause.

The two never met, but at a certain point during their telephone contact, Ibrahim became suspicious. He contacted a preventive security officer in Gaza and told him the whole story. The officer looked into the matter and told Ibrahim that Ahmed was an Israeli Shin Bet agent, and Ibrahim should immediately cut off any contacts with him.

Palestinian sources said last week that the case was not unusual, and they reported it, as well as similar cases, during a security meeting with top-level U.S. security officials

The point of including these articles is to show that the dwindling Palestinian territories are most likely infested with Israeli intelligence operatives, either the 'real' kind or, more likely, 'turned' Palestinians who are working under some form of duress for Israel. History shows that any resistance organisation confronting the power of a state cannot maintain its integrity for very long. Infiltrators are a certainty, particularly in relation to such a small geographic area like the West Bank and Gaza. Given that the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli teens was always going to further the Israeli agenda while presenting a serious setback to the Palestinian, and rejecting the idea that the Palestinian political and military leadership is stupid enough to take action that would result in a very predictable 'own goal', and accepting the fact that Israeli politicians are psychopaths... I submit that Israel was directly or indirectly responsible for the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli teens. 'Cui bono', basically.

A Birds Eye View

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If the situation in Gaza (for example) were transplanted to the USA, it would be akin to there being a 25x5 mile Native American Indian reservation outside Washington DC where 1.8 million Indians have been effectively imprisoned by armed guard towers for 60 years. Subjected to an economic embargo to the extent that basic resources and food were scarce and periodically fired on or bombed by the US military, now and again, some of the Indians respond by fashioning rudimentary rockets that rarely reach their target in the suburbs of Washington or do any damage. Nevertheless, in response to these primitive attempts to defend themselves, the US government repeatedly orders the US military to drop massive ordnance on the Indian civilian population, killing entire families at a time. Who would support it?

The problem with Israel is not necessarily that it was founded on stolen land and has imprisoned and regularly bombs the dispossessed Palestinian population into submission, the problem is that Israel engages in such brutality while simultaneously attempting to manipulate the world into believing that it is a little piece of victimized 'Western democracy' and 'civilization' in an atavistic Middle East dominated by Neanderthal Arabs from whom it is merely 'defending itself' and that all Western peoples should support Israeli genocide of Palestinians because, if you don't, we'll shove the Jewish holocaust card down your throats at every turn. The massive and shocking irony in the FACT that the Israeli government and people are using the memory of the Jewish holocaust to justify doing precisely the same thing to the Palestinian people has been made by many others elsewhere, so I won't labor the point, but it does bear repeating, often.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is the world's longest running major conflict. Since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Israeli forces circa 1948, many attempts have been made by many people to find a solution, yet all of them have failed, and for one simple reason: most people misunderstand the Israeli political psychopaths when they say they want 'peace'. 'Peace' for Israeli politicians means the peace of not having to face each day the living testimony to their inhumanity against the Palestinians and the fact that their 'nation state' is a racist, Jewish Apartheid state founded on the theft of the land of the people they now hold in literal servitude in the world's largest open air prison camps.

Israel does not want peace with Palestinians, it wants to finish the job it started in the 1930s and 40s. It wants every Palestinian either dead or exiled to other Arab nations. When you understand the truth of that (and you can see the truth of it in Israeli actions over the past 60 years) you understand that there can be no peaceful solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict until either the Jews or the Palestinians are wiped out, in one way or another.

I'll leave you with a word from Diane Sawyer of ABC News USA. See if you can spot the slight flaw in the objectivity of this report. Unusual for a US media outlet when reporting on Israel/Palestine.

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Woman 'punishes' cat in washing machine, gets slapped with child abuse probe

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A young Russian woman got more than she'd bargained for after posting a kitty torture video involving a laundry machine. She is now facing a criminal child abuse case, as online outrage uncovered footage on her social media page of a kid beating as well.

The initial video that got the Russian internet and animal rights activists fuming was filmed by a young couple in the Urals city of Magnitogorsk earlier in April, but surfaced in the news on Monday after heated discussions on a local internet forum. The woman that turns the washing machine on, identified as 19-year-old Dinara Iskulova, posted the clip on her social media page.

Iskulova and her boyfriend decided to the cat in this way because it hadn't used its litter box. In the video, as the machine starts to rotate, the terrified animal cries, frantically trying to keep the drum in place. The couple, meanwhile, jokes about the cat's panic before letting the poor creature out.

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Days after the video went viral, the woman attracted the interest of Magnitogorsk police - for a different but not entirely unrelated reason.

Another video on the Iskulova's page featured a group of young people kicking a boy rolled up in a carpet. A six or seven-year-old child can be heard screaming and crying. The boy's 33-year-old mother also appears in the video, but does nothing to stop the beating.

the spokesperson for the office of criminal investigations for the Chelyabinsk region, told Chelyabinsk.ru website.

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Public prosecutor Sergey Gorshkov told the website that

According to media reports, Iskulova and her friends have not admitted to any wrongdoing. As to the cat, they insist it was a necessary measure.

Details have emerged regarding Iskulova's background suggesting that she grew up in a violent, drinking family, and that she had already been registered with police for an unspecified minor offence. It also became known, that her mother has recently died.

The young woman said she has received plenty of threats since the video of the cat abuse went public.

'Impeach Poroshenko!' Massive anti-govt rally held in central Kiev

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© RT

    
A massive march took place in the streets of Kiev to protest against the policies of the current Ukrainian government, calling for its resignation and economic reforms.

According to TASS news agency, up to 3,000 people took to the streets in Kiev on Saturday to protest against lack of reform and economic instability.

The people carried placards reading "We are hungry," "Raise pensions" as well as some anti-LGBT slogans as they marched along Khreshchatyk Street to Independence square (Maidan Nezalezhnosty) in central Kiev.

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© RT

    
Others called for the current administration to be removed and President Petro Poroshenko impeached, saying his government was unable to handle the problems facing the country.

Protesters demanded a raise in social welfare payments and an end to the unrest in eastern Ukraine. Reinforced police patrols ensured public order during the march.

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© RT

    
Meanwhile, on Friday a Gay Pride march also took place in central Kiev. However, it ended very quickly after attacks by far right radicals. Members of the Right Sector nationalist group hurled smoke bombs and stones at the demonstrators.

Five policemen were injured, one seriously, and about 30 attackers were arrested, according to local media reports.

Previous to the event, Right Sector spokesman Artem Skoropadsky threatened the LGBT activists saying "there will be thousands of us" to counter the march, the Kyiv Post reported on Friday.

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Political analyst Aleksandar Pavic told that there has been a rapid decline in living standards and human rights since the Maidan revolution in 2014, which resulted in the violent ouster of the former government by Kiev's current authorities.

"After the Maidan 2014 nobody in Ukraine is enjoying a better life, except people at the top of organizations and structures that caused the Maidan revolution," Pavic said.

Since Maidan, Ukraine has established an almost "oligarchical regime," as the current government has excluded a "large fragment of the population from having a say in political life," he said.

"If they look at their lives today and a year and a half ago I think they cannot but notice the big decline of living standards and even human rights."


Even under Yanukovich's rule Ukraine was "much closer to the European way of life," Pavic said.

"They had peace, they had some hope of economic advancement, they had offers from both West and East," he added.

Speculating on potential reactions from Kiev's Western supporter-states to the recent unrest in the capital, he said there will be a public reaction, but "fundamentally nothing will change because they need these people to keep Ukraine in the Western orbit."

"They've allowed the Right Sector to integrate with Ukraine's national army. You have US army officers training units with members of Right Sector in them."

The Maidan protests initially began as peaceful protest against then-President Viktor Yanukovich's refusal to sign an EU association deal in late 2013. However the demonstrations slid into violence and resulted in a coup that toppled the former Ukrainian president and his government in February 2014.

The new authorities promised to undertake political and social reforms needed to meet the economic and democratic norms of the EU countries, so that Ukraine could eventually join the union.

While Kiev awaits concrete assurances from bloc members, EU leaders have been wary of welcoming its eastern neighbor.

"They have their right to have a dream, but maybe not membership in the predictable future," European Council President Donald Tusk said at the latest Riga summit of the Eastern Partnership in May.