By Mazin Qumsiyeh

United States European Command
March 30, 2014
US delivers 300,000 meals to Ukrainian military
March 30, 2014
YAVORIV, Ukraine:- The United States provided its first delivery of non-lethal aid to government of Ukraine this weekend. The aid came in the form of approximately 300,000 meals-ready-to-eat (MREs), which were delivered to the Ukrainian military.

Stars and Stripes
March 31, 2014
NATO commander ordered back to Europe in response to Ukraine crisis
KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany: America’s top general in Europe has been ordered back from Washington to meet with NATO leaders because of growing uncertainty over Russia’s intentions in Ukraine.

Apparently, segments of the GOP political apparatus are trying to put the kibosh on Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential run before it is even officially announced. Paul’s 2016 Republican contenders and their wealthy backers hate his foreign policy so much that they are willing to spend time and resources to destroy his electoral chances.

Lithuania Tribune
March 31, 2014
NATO preps for military exercises in Baltic airspace

The heir to the du Pont fortune pled guilty in 2009 to charges of raping his three-year old daughter, but never spent time in jail
Newly released documents reveal that in 2009 a Delaware judge sentenced a wealthy heir to probation after he admitted he had raped his 3-year old daughter, saying the rich white man would “not do well” in prison.

Philadelphia’s James Dupree is an accomplished artist whose work has appeared in museum all over the world, including his hometown’s Philadelphia Museum of Art and African American Museum.
In 2005, Dupree bought a dilapidated warehouse in the City of Brotherly Love’s Mantua neighborhood and worked to turn it into a studio that hosts his personal workshop, art classes, and even visitors through Airbnb.
That’s all being threatened by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA), a local government agency that is supposed to revitalize distressed neighborhoods.

Brazil’s public prosecutor wants to suspend use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s pervasive herbicide Roundup. A recent study suggested glyphosate may be linked to a fatal kidney disease that has affected poor farming regions worldwide.

Residents in Crimea have captured on video Russia’s military progression into the area.
As Russia’s prime minister promised to pour funds into the newly annexed peninsula during a surprise visit to Crimea today, videos have been posted online showing trains loaded with Russian equipment travelling west towards the Crimean capital Simferopol.
The videos, posted earlier this month, appear to show tanks, vehicles and other military equipment as they are transported on flatbed freight trains.

TELL YOUR CITY COUNSILS / MAYORS TO JUST SAY NO! TO DHS GRANTS! (or… YOU will say NO to their re-selection)

 

I am joined by a listener named Tony to discuss his public school teaching experience in the Bronx through New York State's version of Teach For America, and his experience and insights living and teaching in Turkey. We also run through a primer on Turkish politics, current events and history.

Bumper Music:
"Can I Kick It?" (Instrumental) A Tribe Called Quest

I am joined by a listener named Tony to discuss his public school teaching experience in the Bronx through New York State's version of Teach For America, and his experience and insights living and teaching in Turkey.

I am joined by a listener named Tony to discuss his public school teaching experience in the Bronx through New York State's version of Teach For America, and his experience and insights living and teaching in Turkey. We also run through a primer on Turkish politics, current events and history.

Bumper Music:
"Can I Kick It?" (Instrumental) A Tribe Called Quest

 

A protest over the Albuquerque Police Department’s use of force was finally subdued by 6-7 tear gas canisters.
Mike Paczesny
The Rundown Live

This morning, Vermont Independent Senator Bernie Sanders endorsed a Democrat running for a House seat in Pennsylvania. Senators don't often endorse in House races and almost never endorse in primaries in other states.

Just to review, in Kansas you can be SWAT-raided and never be permitted to learn the basis for the warrant. This means the police can get a warrant for bogus reasons and reasonably expect that, if their victims are innocent, they will never be able to call them into an account.
So naturally, the Kansas state legislature has decided to add official protections to the police so that they are still more invulnerable to public scrutiny.

After annexing Crimea and with troops massed on the border of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will not stop trying to expand Russia until he has “conquered” Belarus, the Baltic states and Finland, one of his closest former advisers has said.
According to Andrej Illarionov, the President’s chief economic adviser from 2000 to 2005, Mr Putin seeks to create “historical justice” with a return to the days of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Soviet Union under Stalin.

One anti-fracking activist’s life is about to get a little bit easier.
A Pennsylvania judge on Friday loosened a court injunction restricting the movements of Vera Scroggins, who was banned from setting foot on property owned by or leased to Cabot Oil & Gas Co. in Susquehanna County — and therefore unable to shop at her favorite grocery store, go to the nearby hospital, or visit some of her friends.

Mutations Explain Poor Showing of 2012 Flu Vaccine
Study raises questions over the use of chicken eggs to provide viral strains for flu vaccines.

Mar 29, 2014 |By Declan Butler and Nature magazine

 
SMH
North and South Korea traded artillery fire across their disputed maritime border on Monday.
The North conducted extensive live-fire military drills off its southern coast on Monday, some of its artillery shells falling south of the disputed sea border with South Korea, in a military provocation that came a day after the North threatened to conduct more nuclear tests.

The International Court of Justice has ordered a temporary halt to Japan’s annual slaughter of whales in the southern ocean after concluding that the hunts are not, as Japan claims, conducted for scientific research.
The UN court’s decision, by a 12-4 majority among a panel of judges, casts serious doubt over the long-term future of the jewel in the crown of Japan’s controversial whaling programme.

Neukom, Gergis and Karoly, accompanied by a phalanx of protective specialists, have served up a plate of cold screened spaghetti in today’s Nature (announced by Gergis here).
Gergis et al 2012 (presently in a sort of zombie withdrawal) had foundered on ex post screening. Neukom, Gergis and Karoly + 2014 take ex post screening to a new and shall-we-say unprecedented level. This will be the topic of today’s post.
Data Availability

Back in December, I argued in the Huffington Post that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is really not about “free trade,” but about serving the strategic interests of Washington.

MEMO | March 31, 2014

Former American President Jimmy Carter has warned the US Secretary of State John Kerry of violating international law in his potential peace framework agreement between the Palestinians and the Israeli occupation.

Al-Akhbar | March 31, 2014

Tel Aviv district court on Monday convicted former prime minister Ehud Olmert in a trial for corruption linked to a major property development in Jerusalem, Israeli media reports said.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
March 31, 2014
DUTCH GENERAL THANKS MISSILE DEFENDERS IN TURKEY

Adana, TURKEY – “Your deployment is a huge effort. We ask more than we really should expect from you.” The Dutch Chief of Defence (CHOD) General Tom Middendorp said during his visit to the Dutch unit in the Turkish city of Adana last Thursday, 27 March 2014.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization
Allied Command Operations
March 31, 2014

Blue America reached and surpassed our March goals for most of our candidates. Today's the last day of the month. We can make up for the contributions we didn't deliver next month. But, if you're inspired by all the spam from the DCCC and their dreadful candidates to give to candidates who would represent our values in Congress, these are the candidates we fell a little short on. Actually, first, these are the candidates where we hit the goals:

Voice of Russia
March 31, 2014
Fighting drugs trade – most urgent issue new Afghan president will face
Anna Mikhailova
Download audio file
The April 5 presidential vote will be held in a climate of uncertainty as NATO combat forces ready their withdrawal at the end of 2014. If successful, the election will usher in the first handover from one elected president to another in Afghan history.

Voice of Russia
March 31, 2014
Will Afghanistan get peace?
Anna Mikhailova
Download audio file

Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
William Butler Yeats
The Rose of Peace

The Rose of Peace
If Michael, leader of God’s host
When Heaven and Hell are met,
Looked down on you from Heaven’s door-post
He would his deeds forget.
Brooding no more upon God’s wars
In his Divine homestead,

We have absolutely no intentions of crossing Ukrainian borders. This is not in our interests. We simply want everybody to work together; we want the violence to stop and we want the Western countries who are trying to sweep under the rug those cases of violence and to portray the situation in Ukraine in a positive light to realize they need to bear the responsibility.
The post Russia has no intention to send troops into Ukraine – Lavrov appeared first on BSNEWS.

RT | March 31, 2014

NATO will strengthen relations with Ukraine and send more troops to Eastern Europe, the bloc’s outgoing chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said. The Ukrainian coup-imposed foreign minister is to fly to Brussels to take part in Ukraine-NATO talks.

The governments in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are controlled by the dumbest, and most short-sighted leaders in the Middle East. Naturally, they won't survive much longer. Their policy of supporting international Jihadist terrorism and religious extremism in Syria will backfire. Syria will not be another Afghanistan.
The post Saudi Arabia And Pakistan Are Paying A Political Price For Leading The Talibanization of Syria appeared first on BSNEWS.

Joining us on the program today are James and JoAnne Moriarty of LibyanWarTheTruth.com. We discuss their experiences as businesspeople in Libya since 2007 and as eyewitnesses to the destruction wrought by the NATO-sponsored Al-CIAda perpetrated overthrow of that country in 2011.

This is actually an update, since this article was originally published on Mar 10, 2014, however seeing that we’ve been censored again since then, I felt it important to not only share the new developments against freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but also to inform those of you who missed the original release of this story the first time around, of what has been happening in the Land of The Free.

This is actually an update, since this article was originally published on Mar 10, 2014, however seeing that we’ve been censored again since then, I felt it important to not only share the new developments against freedom of speech and…Read more →

Originally posted at TomDispatch. "Up to a few months ago, Ben Suc was a prosperous village of some thirty-five hundred people." That is the initial line of The Village of Ben Suc, his first book, a copy of which I recently reread on a plane trip, knowing that he was soon to die. That book, […]

The good news is that Secretary of State John Kerry is meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Paris – the bad news is that the negotiations will come to naught if the US insists on upholding its black-and-white narrative, which depicts Russia as the "aggressor" and Ukraine as the blameless helpless victim. What’s […]

As the Ukrainian crisis has unfolded over the past few weeks, it’s hard for Americans not to see Vladimir Putin as the big villain. But the history of the region is a history of competing villains vying against one another; and one school of villains – the Nazis – have a long history of engagement […]

Last week Congress overwhelmingly passed a bill approving a billion dollars in aid to Ukraine and more sanctions on Russia. The bill will likely receive the president’s signature within days. If you think this is the last time US citizens will have their money sent to Ukraine, you should think again. This is only the […]

Syrian Free Press Network
Damascus – 30/03/2014 – Presidential Political and Media Advisor Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban said that al-Quds and Golan are the eyes of the Arab Nation and it is the duty of all to defend them, adding “clinging to the land and sacrificing for it is the only choice for us.”

Last week, you may recall, Blue America did a end-of-the-quarter fundraiser for our House candidates. The name of one of the most generous contributors looked vaguely familiar, so I looked him up. Steven H. Levinson was a judge on the Hawaii Supreme Court and the reason why I had his name in my memory bank was because he authored the lead opinion in Baehr vs. Lewin, the first-ever court ruling to determine that denying marriage to same-sex couples was discriminatory.

 
 
by Tony Cartalucci

At least 56 people were killed and 55 more were wounded in scattered attacks across Iraq today. In one attack, a major bridge fell into the Euphrates killing several people.

by Tony Cartalucci
(NEO)  -  The small northwestern Syrian town of Kassab, located directly on the Syrian-Turkish border, has turned into a pivotal battleground between Syrian security forces and armed militants backed by the Turkish military. The clashes grabbed headlines last Sunday when Turkey shot down a Syrian warplane conducting airstrikes along the border as the militants crossed over into Syrian territory.
 

James Corbett joins Derrick Broze of The Conscious Resistance to discuss what’s happening in Ukraine and how it feeds into the overall geopolitical and economic situation in the end stages of the drive toward one world government.

For years there has been a severe amount of whining by uninformed members of the public, and worse abrasive arrests, convictions, and outlandish sentencing in regards to those who choose to consume marijuana. However, in recent years as stronger advocacy for the plant has grown, and the opinions and attitudes of Americans have changed, more notably with a concentration on where marijuana stacks up in the health category.

For years there has been a severe amount of whining by uninformed members of the public, and worse abrasive arrests, convictions, and outlandish sentencing in regards to those who choose to consume marijuana. However, in recent years as stronger advocacy…Read more →