Israel has resumed its campaign of assassinations targeting scientists from the Middle East

Israel’s approach has been systematic. First it crossed off Iraqi military scientists, then it moved onto Iranian nuclear scientists. Now, the Hebrew State has sponsored the elimination of General Aziz Asber, one of Syria’s leading military scientists.

Following the attempt on Venezuelan Nicolas Maduro’s life with two explosive-laden drones on Saturday, the President promised to get to the bottom of the failed plot. Last night he showed that his government has learned some things at least, and Maduro says there is still more evidence to come.

Prior to releasing the evidence, Maduro announced that he would be showing off what Venezuelan security had found late Monday night. According to Maduro at the time the evidence backed up the initial claims he had made right after the assassination attempt that “there is sufficient evidence of the participation of the outgoing Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos.”

On Tuesday night Maduro presented the evidence to the people of Venezuela in a televised address. Much of what Maduro presented seems to confirm his conclusions and exposes a wider network of the forces plotting to end his life, and the Bolivarian revolution.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro has said he believes that his US counterpart Donald Trump would not allow anyone to plot the assassination of other world leaders on United States’ soil.

On Saturday, a military parade in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas attended by Maduro was interrupted by what authorities said was an assassination attempt on the life of the president. Venezuela’s Information Minister Jorge Rodriguez said several drones detonated close to the presidential box during Maduro's address. The president was unharmed, but seven soldiers sustained injuries.

It's been reported a senior Middle East intelligence agency official has blamed Israel's controversial intelligence agency Mossad for the assassination of a top Syrian rocket scientist.

Aziz Azbar and his driver were killed when his car exploded in the northern city of Masyaf late August 4 — the unnamed official told The New York Times Israel was behind the attack and said his own intelligence agency — again undisclosed — had been informed of the operation in advance.

Since the Saudi invasion of Yemen in 2015 a lot of people have died. Saudi airstrikes have killed thousands of civilians. Huge numbers of combatants have died. Starvation and lack of medicine has taken many, many more. Yemen even saw the worst cholera epidemic in human history.

There hasn’t been an official estimate since, and while that reflects the reality that we just don’t know how many people are dying in Yemen, it also reflects what appears to be limited interest, at least among official agencies, in pinning that figure down.

Saudi Arabia is likely a big part of that, as many of the regular airstrikes where the Saudis kill scores of civilians are denied by the Saudis to have happened. Since the Saudis have managed to keep the UN from investigating their war crimes, it would follow that they prefer not to have gaudy official figures being thrown around to answer for.

Israel’s minister of intelligence says he “welcomes” news that a Syrian scientist was killed by a car bomb, even as Tel Aviv denies any part in the murder. The New York Times reported that Israel’s Mossad was behind the attack.

Intelligence and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz weighed in on allegations that Israeli Mossad agents killed Dr. Aziz Asbar near the northwestern Syrian city of Masyaf, commenting that "assuming that [Asbar] was indeed involved in terrorist activity, I welcome his departure from the world.”

Asbar, the research director at Syria’s Scientific Studies and Research Center, was believed to be developing a secret weapons manufacturing facility with the help of Iran, which was to be used to manufacture precision-guided missiles in Syria. He was killed on Saturday by an explosive device planted on his car.

A video was revealed on Sunday showing former Colombian president, Alvaro Uribe, telling a group of listeners that Venezuelan soldiers need to “remove” President Nicolas Maduro from office.

The recording was released just 24 hours after two air drones carrying explosives were detonated above President Maduro and several members of his administration on Saturday as the head of state addressed a large crowd at the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard in Caracas. Maduro and other Venezuelan officials are saying that right-wing factions in the United States, Venezuelan and Colombia are behind the drone bombs.

In the video the former president and current Congress member says in English:

“I have said this in public, I have said that the Venezuelan soldiers need to remove that government (of Nicolas Maduro), not to establish a military government, but to call for a rapid transition, with democratic and transparent elections.

Update: Speaking on state TV a day after the alleged assassination attempt on Maduro, Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said that six people have been taken into custody and more arrests are possible in the coming hours. He also said that two drones carrying 1 kg each of C-4 explosive were "disoriented" by govt. signal blockers.

He added that the government has raided several Caracas hotels in search for evidence, and noted that one suspect linked to a 2017 attack on Carabobo military base, another to last year’s anti-government protests.

Footage has emerged which appears to show the moment a drone bomb detonated over a packed rally where Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was giving a speech.

The video, which has been widely shared by Venezuelan social media accounts, shows a single drone hovering above the military parade - before suddenly exploding into a fireball.

Venuzuelan officials have claimed dissidents used two M600 drones, each carrying 2lb of C4 explosive. One of the drones was allegedly set to explode above the president while the other was to detonate directly in front of him.

Interior Minister Nestor Reverol said the military managed to knock one of the drones off-course electronically and the other crashed into an apartment building two streets away from where Mr Maduro was speaking to the hundreds of troopsl.

Blood flows in the streets of Ferrara, Italy, as Nigerian migrants wage war with machetes, axes and knives, local media reports.

A slew of gruesome attacks have taken place in the last week in shop squares, parks, and bars as gang members and drug dealers settle disputes with lethal weapons in the once-peaceful bastion of high culture and gastronomy.

Police and emergency services have been responding to scenes of frequent clashes where butchered combatants are found lying in pools of gore.

"A nightmare... We are at the fourth fight on the street in two days. Here it is normal now," said a local official.

The toll from US-backed Saudi coalition air strikes on a fish market and hospital in the Yemeni port city of Hodeidah Thursday has risen to at least 60 people dead and 130 others wounded. The bombardment, which has been all but ignored by the establishment press, comes amid a weeks-long siege of the western city and coalition efforts to destroy vital civilian infrastructure, threatening to sharply escalate the world’s most dire humanitarian crisis.

Saudi coalition warplanes struck a crowded Hodeidah fish market as throngs of residents packed in to purchase one of Yemen’s only abundant domestic sources of food. Witnesses report a chaotic scene as a warplane overhead fired upon the packed market, then continued to linger above the city. As people rushed the dead and injured to the al-Thawra hospital just 20 meters (60 feet) away, the warplane began bombing the entrance to the hospital, apparently to prevent the injured from receiving treatment.

Did the US try to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro?
John Bolton, Trump’s veteran neocon national security adviser, told Fox News the US had nothing to do with the explosive drone attack during an appearance in Caracas that injured several people but left Maduro and his entourage untouched.

“I can say unequivocally there was no U.S. government involvement in this at all. If the government of Venezuela has hard information that they want to present to us that would show a potential violation of U.S. criminal law, we’ll take a serious look at it, but in the meantime I think what we really should focus on is the corruption and oppression in the Maduro regime in Venezuela,” said Bolton during an interview with Chris Wallace.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” US national security adviser John Bolton denied that the US government had at all been involved in the reported Saturday assassination attempt in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.

There were conflicting reports on what happened, but the government reported seven National Guard soldiers were injured by a pair of “drone-like devices that carried explosives.” They believe this was a failed attempt to assassinate President Maduro, who was unharmed.

One of Syria’s leading pro-government newspapers has said that Israel was behind a bomb blast in Hama province that killed a senior scientist working for the country’s missile program. Aziz Azbar was reportedly a senior research director at the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS. The Damascus-based agency is thought to be at the center of the Syrian government’s formidable chemical weapons program. Last year, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed economic sanctions on nearly 300 CERS employees, after Washington accused them of being directly responsible for the Syrian government’s repeated use of chemical weapons against rebels and civilians. The European Union, as well as the French and British governments, also imposed sanctions on CERS and its staff.

The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad has been accused of killing a top research director at a military agency linked to Syria’s chemical weapons program.
The al-Watan newspaper reported that Aziz Azbar, of the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC), died in a targeted blast Saturday night, in Syria’s Hama province.

It said Israel was suspected of carrying out the attack, although it provided no evidence for the claim.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syria war through local contacts, also reported Azbar’s death. It said he specialized in developing rocket systems at the center’s Masyaf facility in Hama. Azbar’s driver was also killed in the blast, according to al-Watan and the Observatory.

The head of a Syrian research facility that Western countries say was part of a chemical weapons programme was killed when his car was blown up, the pro-Syrian government newspaper al-Watan said on Sunday.

Aziz Asber was the director of the Syrian Scientific Research Centre in Masyaf, near the city of Hama, which Western governments say was a covert Syrian government installation.

“(Asber) died after an explosion targeted his car in the Hama countryside,” al-Watan said in an online report.

The explosion occurred on Saturday night, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group said. Who or what caused it is not known.

The Masyaf facility has previously been hit by what the Syrian government said were Israeli strikes in July and last year in September.

In April, missile strikes by the United States, Britain and France destroyed a Syrian Scientific Research Centre facility in Damascus, in response to a suspected poison gas attack.

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has survived an apparent attack on his life during a military parade celebrating the 81st anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard in the capital, Caracas.

In a televised national address late Saturday, Maduro said he was fine and laid blame for the attack firmly at the feet of “right-wing imperial forces” who he said had hired the would-be assassins.

“They have tried to assassinate me today, and everything points to the Venezuelan ultra-right and the Colombian ultra-right, and the name of Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack,” he said.

“I must inform that they have been captured – those who attempted to take my life – and they are being processed. I won’t say more, but the investigation is very advanced.

“I tell the Venezuelan opposition that I guarantee you can live in this country peacefully. If something happens to me, you will have to face millions of Campesinos and humble people making justice with their own hands.

A 20-year-old man with Down syndrome was shot and killed by police this week as he walked down the street with a toy gun. Police claimed the young man — who, according to his mother, had the mentality of a 3-year-old — created a threat that needed to be dealt with with deadly force.

According to the victim’s father, Richard Torell, his son Eric grabbed a toy gun from his toy pile and disappeared overnight.

“I woke up because Eric was gone,” Richard Torell told Expressen. “I went out and looked for him. I saw police cars on the street.

“Three police officers shot him in his stomach.”

As the Independent reports:

Police had been called after Eric reportedly showed the small toy gun to neighbours, who contacted authorities believing it was real.

Local media reports stated three police officers had shot him in the stomach after attending the incident. He was taken to hospital, but later died from his injuries.

An Oklahoma man was arrested here and is being held in lieu of $1 million bail for allegedly threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump

Russian MPs have supported the idea of a bill offering social guarantees to reporters working in “hot spots” and on other dangerous missions after three Russian journalists were killed in the Central African Republic.
The head of the Lower House Committee for Information Policy and Communications, MP Leonid Levin (Fair Russia), said in comments with RIA Novosti that he personally expected the State Duma to pass the bill during the next parliamentary session.

“The sad incident is yet another reminder about the dangers and risks that are an inseparable part of mass media’s work. I expect that the bill on social guarantees to journalists who work in hot spots will be passed during the fall session,” RIA Novosti quoted the lawmaker as saying on Wednesday. He also expressed his condolences to friends and relatives of the killed journalists.

Israel’s secret service is the world’s leader in assassinations having killed more people than the agents of any other country since World War II, and conducted more than 800 operations in the last decade, a book released earlier this year has revealed.

Author Ronen Bergman held 1,000 interviews and studied a number of leaked documents to shed light on the human cost of Israel’s assassinations.

According to Bergman, until 2000, Israel conducted more than 500 assassination operations which resulted in the killing of more than 1,000 people including bystanders. During the Second Intifada, Israel conducted 1,000 more operations, of which 168 succeeded.

Since then, some 800 operations have taken place against Hamas civilian and military targets in the Gaza Strip and abroad, he adds.

Fadel Abu al-Qumsan has survived two attacks in the past four years.

Early on 3 August 2014, Israel bombed his home in the Jabaliya refugee camp of northern Gaza. Two of his nieces and his brother-in-law were killed.

In recent months, Fadel, 53, and his family have once again been hurt by Israeli state violence.

On 6 April 2018, Fadel joined the Great March of Return to demand that Palestinians uprooted by Zionist forces in 1948 be allowed to return home.

At approximately 3 pm, he fell to the ground screaming. He had been shot in the leg by an Israeli sniper.

Fadel was roughly 700 meters from the boundary fence between Gaza and Israel at the time.

President Trump has become the third president to renew a post-9/11 emergency proclamation, stretching what was supposed to be a temporary state of national emergency after the 2001 terror attacks into its 17th year.

But the ongoing effects of that perpetual emergency aren't immediately clear, because the executive branch has ignored a law requiring it to report to Congress every six months on how much the president has spent under those extraordinary powers, USA TODAY has found.

Exactly 16 years ago Thursday, President Bush signed Proclamation 7463, giving himself sweeping powers to mobilize the military in the days following terrorist attacks that crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. It allowed him to call up National Guard and Reserve troops, hire and fire military officers, and bypass limits on the numbers of generals that could serve.

Seth Rich and Aaron Rich downloaded DNC files on a Western Digital $56.00 HDD?

Forty years ago, Wadie Haddad was one of the world’s most wanted men. Bold, determined, ruthless, Haddad was the founder of the far-Left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

He trained notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal and masterminded the hijack of an Air France plane that was flown to Entebbe in Uganda and later rescued by Israeli commandos.

Not surprisingly, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, wanted him dead. But six years after they first put out a ‘kill order’, Haddad was still very much alive, living in apparent comfort in Baghdad.

What happened next was worthy of a James Bond thriller. On January 10, 1978, a Mossad agent inside Haddad’s inner circle, known only as Sadness, switched his toothpaste for an identical tube laced with a deadly toxin, developed in a secret laboratory near Tel Aviv.

Every time Haddad brushed his teeth, a tiny quantity of the toxin worked its way through his gums into his bloodstream.

Forty years ago, Wadie Haddad was one of the world’s most wanted men. Bold, determined, ruthless, Haddad was the founder of the far-Left Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

He trained notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal and masterminded the hijack of an Air France plane that was flown to Entebbe in Uganda and later rescued by Israeli commandos.

Not surprisingly, the Israeli secret service, Mossad, wanted him dead. But six years after they first put out a ‘kill order’, Haddad was still very much alive, living in apparent comfort in Baghdad.

What happened next was worthy of a James Bond thriller. On January 10, 1978, a Mossad agent inside Haddad’s inner circle, known only as Sadness, switched his toothpaste for an identical tube laced with a deadly toxin, developed in a secret laboratory near Tel Aviv.

Every time Haddad brushed his teeth, a tiny quantity of the toxin worked its way through his gums into his bloodstream.

Homicide and crime rates – including sexual assaults, and knife and gun attacks – continue to rise in the United Kingdom, with 90% of recorded offenses not ending in charges.

A report published last week lays bare the shocking numbers – crimes resulting in charges sat at 11%, with the percentage falling two points in just a year to 9%; down from 15% in 2015.

Since March of this year and the 12 months before, only 443,000 crimes out of 4.6 million recorded resulted in charges.

NOTABLY, THE NUMBER OF RECORDED CRIMES ROSE BY 11% TO 5.5 MILLION OFFENSES – THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN OVER A DECADE.
Earlier this year, the homicide rate in London overtook New York City – with knife attacks rising by more than 30%. Although crime rates are surging in the U.K.,officer numbers in London have hit a record low.

As it stands, fewer than 1 in 10 of recorded crimes result in a charge, doing little to abate fear that England is undergoing an epidemic of violent crime.

Mexico’s next president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a former Mexico City mayor and outspoken critic of the political establishment - has a significant uphill battle once he is inaugurated as President on December 01: deadly violence in the country is intensifying and has hit an all-time high.

Mexico posted its highest homicides on record, with a new government report Sunday showing murders in the country rose by 16 percent in the first half of 2018.

The Interior Department said there were 15,973 homicides in the first half of the year, compared to 13,751 killings in the same period of 2017.

According to the AP, the record-breaking homicides have surpassed the violence seen during the dark years of Mexico’s drug war in 2011, along with exceeding all government data since records began in 1997.

Israeli troopers entered Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest shrine in Islam, and carried out arrests on Friday in what police described as a pursuit of youths who had lobbed rocks and fireworks during clashes with its forces outside.

The rare raid, on a site that is an emblem of Palestinians' statehood hopes and a frequent catalyst of their conflict with Israel, came as medics in Gaza said Israeli army gunfire killed two people - including a boy - during a weekly border protest.

A police spokesman said the troopers were sent into al-Aqsa after suspects who had barricaded themselves in after running confrontations in the surrounding compound, during which masked men launched firecrackers from handheld canisters.

There was no immediate word of any violence in the mosque, whose older male worshippers said they had been allowed to exit after being searched. Witnesses later saw around 20 younger men detained by police, and said mosque prayers later resumed.

Palestinian journalists daring to expose Israeli high crimes face extrajudicial arrest and imprisonment on the phony pretext of threatening national security.

Israeli violations against Palestinian media freedom are rampant. According to the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA), violations occur regularly, 62 reported in June alone – including by PA authorities acting as Israel’s enforcer.

Earlier in July, Israel shut down Al-Quds TV, banning its operations, prohibiting journalists from working with it on the phony pretext of inciting terrorism – code language for truth-telling the Netanyahu regime wants suppressed.

MADA denounced what’s going on, saying the latest “assault comes within a systematic and aggravated Israeli policy to suppress media freedoms and silencing journalism in Palestine by all forms of assaults, particularly, shutting down media institutions.”

A Meridian police officer has been fired after he was accused of using excessive force against a handcuffed man in the parking lot of a Walmart. This week, Police Chief Benny Dubose released the dash cam footage of the incident in the name of transparency.

The dash cam was released by the department to show why they fired officer Daniel Starks this week. The disturbing video shows the danger people are put in when dealing with police officers who lose their temper and become violent.

The incident began as police were responding to a call of a suspected shoplifter at Walmart. As the officer pulled the suspect over as he pulled out of the Walmart, the man complied without incident.

Everyone knew that it was inevitable that assassination markets would quickly pop up on decentralized prediction market platform Augur, but that doesn’t make the fact that users are now betting on whether U.S. President Donald Trump will be assassinated by the end of the year any less jarring.

Israeli occupation forces raiding a refugee camp in the West Bank shot a 14-year-old boy in the chest, killing him, on Monday.

Arkan Thaer Halami Mizher was wounded as residents of Dheisheh camp near the city of Bethlehem confronted raiding soldiers.

“Israeli forces closed the main road, preventing ambulances from reaching the area,” Defense for Children International Palestine stated. The boy was taken in a private car to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Such raids are commonplace throughout the West Bank.

The media is reporting that a cardiologist who at one time treated former President George H.W. Bush was recently shot dead while riding his bicycle on South Main Street, near Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women in Houston.

Dr. Mark Hausknecht, 65, was reportedly biking north-bound on his way to work when the shooter, also riding a bicycle and heading south, brandished a firearm. The man took two shots at Hausknecht, who was pronounced dead not long after, before proceeding onward on his route.

The strange incident occurred just before 9 a.m. on July 20, according to Executive Assistant Police Chief Troy Finner. Investigators are still trying to determine whether or not the shooting was intentional, or if it was simply random or prompted by road rage.

The Denver Post published a letter to the editor suggesting President Donald Trump should be executed for treason.

The letter criticized the president and Sen. Cory Gardner (R., Colo.) following Trump's summit with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, and said Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who passed atomic bomb secrets to Moscow, were executed for "far less."

The letter, written by Suzanne Gagnon of Lakewood, was in response to the paper's editorial last week, which gave tepid praise of Gardner. The editorial argued the Republican senator "deserves credit" for taking a tough stance against Russia and sponsoring legislation to add Russia to the state sponsor of terror list.

It is clear that there is a significant humanitarian disaster occurring in Yemen that is mostly being ignored internationally as the world keeps its eyes on Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. So why then is Yemen being ignored?

But with Yemen having a food shortage crisis with ports blockaded, a cholera crisis, and civilians targeted by double-tap airstrikes, including attacks against schools, hospitals, weddings, funerals and any other social event possibly imaginable, why is there little international condemnation against the main perpetrator, Saudi Arabia?

Turkish energy analyst and the Chairman of Ankara-based Institute for Energy Markets and Policies, Dr. Volkan Ozdemir, said in an interview with Sputnik Turkiye in 2017 that:

Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega said he will not move up elections despite street protests that have seen more than 300 deaths in the past three months, but is open to continuing a dialogue mediated by the Roman Catholic Church.

In a recorded interview broadcast Monday by Fox News, Ortega denied that he controls paramilitary groups blamed for most of the killings. They are supported by his political opponents and foreign interests, he said.

That is counter to what international organizations and Nicaraguan human rights groups have documented. Last week, the Organization of American States adopted a resolution condemning human rights abuses committed by Nicaraguan police and armed pro-government civilians.

“We were elected by the voters,” Ortega said. The next election is not scheduled until 2021. “And then we’ll have to see who will be voted in for the new administration.”

According to the reports, the Palestinian Embassy in Algeria told the family of one of the deceased that the two died of gas inhalation or due to a short circuit. Some Palestinian reports claim they were assassinated, however, there was no official confirmation.

Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies corp., announced last Thursday a ‘Growth Option 2.0’ upgrade for the F135 engine, which powers the fifth-generation Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II, that could provide increased power and thermal management system (PTMS) capacity.

“As the F-35 program moves forward with the Continuous Capability Development and Delivery (C2D2) strategy, we strive to stay in front of propulsion advances needed to enable F-35 modernization,” said Matthew Bromberg, president, Pratt & Whitney Military Engines. “We’re continuously assessing customer needs and responding with technology options to keep them ahead of evolving threats.”

The nation's premier corporate profit engines / social media giants are the ideal platforms for undermining the U.S. via the sowing of disintegration.

Whether it's stated or not, one source of the inchoate outrage triggered by Russian-sourced purchases of adverts on Facebook in 2016 (i.e. "meddling in our election") is the sense that the U.S. is sacrosanct due to our innate moral goodness and our Imperial Project: never mind that the intelligence agencies of all great powers (including the U.S.) meddle in the domestic affairs and elections of other nations, including those of allies as well as geopolitical rivals-- no other great power should ever meddle with U.S. domestic affairs and elections.

In effect, meddling in the domestic affairs and elections of other nations is the raison d'etre of all great power intelligence agencies:

It's Time for a Little Perspective on Russia (Current Affairs)

Israel launched its newest air defense system on Monday on the Syrian frontier, where Damascus’s Russian-backed forces have been routing rebels, as Moscow sent envoys for what it called “urgent” talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu planned to meet Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, and its armed forces chief, General Valery Gerasimov, later in the day, a visit the Israeli leader said was arranged last week at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Israel is on high alert as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad regains ground from rebels in the southwest of the country, bringing his forces close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

In a sign of high tensions, Israel launched two David’s Sling interceptor missiles at rockets which it said fell inside Syrian territory and were part of the internal fighting there.

The unprecedented move from MGM Resorts International to sue hundreds of victims of last year’s mass shooting in Las Vegas using an obscure U.S. law never tested in court has been framed by the casino-operator as an effort to avoid years of costly litigation — but the legal maneuver may not play out that way.

The company is not seeking money in the lawsuits filed in at least seven states over the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Instead, it wants federal courts to declare that it has no liability to survivors or families of slain victims under a federal law enacted after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

MGM argues that the Oct. 1 shooting met two conditions of the law: it qualifies as an act of terrorism and federally certified security services were used at the venue where 22,000 concertgoers were gathered as gunfire rained down from the company’s Mandalay Bay casino-resort.

The airstrikes began to slam Gaza just hours after Israeli soldiers gunned down at least three Palestinians during anti-occupation demonstrations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says one of its soldiers was killed by retaliatory gunfire from the Palestinians.

"Israel, one of the most powerful military powers in the world, is about to launch a military campaign with F-16s, Tanks, Naval ships and drones against a besieged, stateless population in Gaza."
—Yousef Munayyer, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights

"Palestinian defense forces fired back at Israeli snipers who have been murdering Palestinian men, women, and children for weeks," noted journalist Ali Abunimah.

After last weekend's significant escalation in Gaza involving Israeli airstrikes on 40 targets, which reportedly killed two teens and wounded over a dozen others, and over 30 rockets launched by Hamas toward southern Israel, all signs are currently pointing toward a broader outbreak of fighting as in new comments the Israeli defense minister is preparing the public for "a large and painful military operation" to come.

Israeli officials and media have broadly referred to this latest flare-up of hostilities as the biggest attack since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, and now Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman is warning that Israel is prepared to go to war if Gazans don't cease releasing incendiary kites and balloons in attempts to set communities and farmlands in southern Israel ablaze.

The Israel Air Force launched a major wave of strikes across the Gaza Strip on Friday evening as a cabinet minister said Israel was preparing a massive response to Hamas’s failure to heed repeated Israeli warnings to end the violence along the Gaza border.

“At this time our aircraft are carrying out widespread attacks against terror targets belonging to Hamas in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF said, adding that this came after the “serious shooting incident against our forces,” referring to sniper fire at IDF troops during a riot on the border earlier in the day.

Following the strikes, rocket warning sirens wailed in communities around Gaza. At least two projectiles were intercepted by the Iron Dome system and another fell in an open field, the army said. There were no reports of projectiles falling in Israeli communities or injuries.

The annual budget of the military/security complex is $1,000 billion. This vast sum is drawn from US taxpayers who have many unmet needs. To justify such an enormous budget a major enemy is required. The military/security complex and the media and politicians that the complex owns have designated Russia to be that enemy. The complex and its political and media agents will not permit Trump to normalize relations with Russia.

To prevent President Trump from reducing the dangerous tensions between nuclear powers that Washington has created, the military/security complex orchestrated Russiagate, a proven hoax, but believed by many due to its endless repetition. The military/security complex orchestrated the false indictments of 12 Russians. The military/security complex orchestrated the false arrest of Maria Butina, and so on and on.

Despite receiving little attention in the mass media, the November 2017 and April 2018 release of more than 35,000 and 18,000 documents by the Trump Administration, relating to the assassination of former President Kennedy—which had been withheld from the public for more than 50 years—sheds new light on the president’s murder and the two soldiers who attempted to stop it.

While the mainstream media did cursorily cover the two releases, virtually none of the coverage was aimed at the most damning revelations, which included the fact that two U.S. soldiers in separate locations uncovered cryptographic messages indicating that President Kennedy was going to be assassinated, prior to his murder in Dallas.

Ominously, both of these soldiers were subsequently institutionalized after attempting to get the information they had uncovered to authorities.

Protests have been happening for more than two months by Palestinians along the Gaza Strips. Their demands: to be allowed to return home and to have their lands returned after the expulsion from 70 years ago.

Since the beginning of the protests on March 30th, Israeli forces have wounded more than 15 000 people and have killed as many as 135 Palestinians, according to the health officials in Gaza.

The situation in recent months has gone from bad worse, mostly due to the US President Donald Trump recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Palestinians are left to look for international support to stop what it sees as a destruction of its last hopes to defend their interests and to achieve statehood.

Underscoring a policy change that’s been speculated for awhile, the Trump Administration has issued orders to US diplomats to seek direct talks with the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. Trump had previously ruled out talks with the Taliban, but officials have recently suggested support for the Ghani government’s attempts to start talks.

This comes amid reports of the administration considering a full strategy review for the Afghan War, as nearly a year after President Trump’s announced escalation, things are still going poorly. With no real chances for a military victory, officials are hoping to try to get back to the negotiating table.

Gen. John Nicholson followed this report out of the White House with a statement of his own, saying he is “ready” for direct talks with the Taliban in an effort to end the 17-year-long war. He says the US must have a “key role” in the talks.

President Trump's language and demeanor at Monday's summit in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin sent his detractors on both sides of the aisle into fits, just 72 hours after the Department of Justice indicted 12 Russian officials for hacking the DNC.

Trump's position has more or less been that peace with Russia is more important than election meddling, which didn't influence the election - and that the United States has been meddling in elections for a long time, so perhaps let's mend fences and move forward as two nuclear superpowers. Also Hillary sold Russia 20% of American uranium after a bunch of people connected to the transaction heavily contributed to her foundation, which was approved by a rubber-stamp committee, four months after Bill Clinton collected $500k in a speech to a Russian investment bank during a trip where he hung out with Putin at his house. All pre-Crimea of course, so no biggie.

We live in a time of very unpleasant realities. Truth has become such a valuable commodity that the government of the United States and the media have started (to put it politely) economizing it. Documented cases of media deception over the years have made it clear that the media lies to the public on important issues. As Richard Salent, Former President of CBS News has stated, media's job is to feed the public what media thinks the public ought to know. Clearly, anything that happens that the media doesn't think the public needs to know about will simply not be reported.

Israeli television recently aired a video of two Israeli soldiers filming themselves in the act of shooting a Palestinian protester at the Gaza boundary while cheering. Filming one’s own crimes against humanity – shooting Palestinians for sport – suggests a sense of security in never being held accountable.

Even more evidence of this impunity is apparent in Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations by veteran Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court might want to consider this book Exhibit A if Israeli government and military officials are ever indicted for war crimes. It contains open admissions of guilt in plotting and executing extralegal assassinations in violation of international law.

Tensions along the Israel-Gaza Strip border escalated dramatically on Saturday with an intense exchange of fire between Palestinian militants and Israeli security forces, including Israeli air force strikes inside Gaza, which reportedly targeted underground tunnels which Israel says are designed to launch attacks.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) cited 31 rockets fired from the Strip overnight to which Israel responded with airstrikes on 40 targets including Hamas' battalion headquarters, in a flare-up of hostilities officials are calling the biggest attack since Operation Protective Edge in 2014. Amazingly, however, no serious casualties were reported on either side, according to Bloomberg.

Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah on July 14th. Image source: AFP via Times of Israel

The deadliest terror attack in over a year has rocked Pakistan as bombs went off at two campaign rallies in different cities. The massive death toll climbed by the hour throughout Friday after a suicide bomber struck a convoy headed to an election-related event in Mastung near the southwestern city of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan Province.

Pakistani authorities said 128 were killed and over 150 wounded in a suicide attack reportedly claimed by the Islamic State (ISIS).

Some observers have noted that the spot is close to where Pakistani forces had previously claimed to have eliminated an ISIS base in the province.

Beleaguered social media giant Facebook has removed "treason" from their database of the keywords assigned to users for advertising purposes, the company stated Wednesday after Danish state broadcaster DR reported its existence.

Company spokesman Joe Osborne replied "National treason was an advertising interest because of its historical significance, but as it is an illegal act, we have removed it."

Facebook tags its more than 2 billion users with a wide variety of keywords depending on their interests - from shopping habits to political and religious views in order to sell more efficiently targeted advertising.

This makes Facebook a sublime sales channel for companies. Categorizing users in areas of interest means that companies with ads on Facebook can buy into an almost perfect audience. Eg. garden equipment for people with special interest in gardens, etc.

But categorization also allows intelligence services in all countries to look at the population over the shoulder.

UK, US, and French bombs inflicted mass loss of civilian life in ISIS-held Raqqa, according Amnesty International. A new report has also accused coalition forces of bombing areas where they knew civilians were trapped.

During the four-month operation to eradicate the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the US-led coalition – which includes British forces – killed hundreds of civilians and injured many more, says Amnesty International.

According to its damning report into the coalition forces, residents were trapped as fighting raged in the streets between IS militants and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), who were supported by coalition airstrikes. Escape routes for civilians were riddled with IEDs, put there by Islamic State, which also positioned snipers to shoot those trying to flee.

Introducing Eugene V. Dinkin. Two documents were released about this man in November which caught my attention, and one more appeared in the 2018 release.

Frankly, as an academic who wrote two books on JFK, I never heard of him.

Since it took 54 years to lift the veil of censorship on this account, perhaps Eugene should not be ignored any more than he already has.

The Washington, D.C. lobbyist who has been on the hunt for Seth Rich’s killer found a “credible” witness who will identify the two men he believes murdered the DNC staffer.

Jack Burkman, a Washington-based attorney and lobbyist who has worked with a private investigative team to solve the Seth Rich murder mystery, told The Gateway Pundit that the witness has conclusive evidence that will bring Rich’s killers to justice within a month.

“We believe that we have reached the beginning of the end of the Seth Rich murder investigation,” Burkman told The Gateway Pundit in an exclusive interview Sunday. “After two long hard years of work, we have a witness who is prepared to identify the two killers of Seth Rich. One is reportedly a current DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent, the other is reportedly a current ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) agent”

Soon after his oldest son’s death on March 30, the 55-year-old Wahid was rushed to the hospital with dangerously high blood pressure.

Even though he wasn't a protester, Amr was the first Palestinian killed during the months-long Great March of Return demonstrations shaking the Gaza Strip and Israel. Demonstrations turned violent, and at least 142 protesters have been killed by Israeli troops, according to Gaza's health ministry. Israel has been widely criticized for using lethal force against largely unarmed protesters.

But the 27-year-old Amr's death in a field near the fence with Israel illustrates why tens of thousands of fellow Palestinians have for months risked bullets and tear gas to protest the blockade of the enclave. Israeli officials did not respond to requests for comment and information for this article.

A Texas congressman said President Bill Clinton intimidated the government’s lead lawyer into not seeking an indictment of Hillary Clinton by telling her, "We killed Vince Foster."

Did Clinton, desperate to help his wife, declare as much about killing Foster, the White House deputy counsel at the start of Clinton’s two terms?

That's what Rep. Pete Olson said in a June 9, 2017, interview on the Houston-based Sam Malone Show.

Conspiracy theories have abounded since Foster’s body was found in 1993--all of a part with unsubstantiated tales alleging the Clintons share a sordid history of sidelining people. Over the years, debunkists at Snopes.com and for The Washington Post’s Fact Checker each found no basis to claims about fishiness in Foster's death.

Brett Kavanaugh, the federal judge who is the president’s nominee for Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, played a key role in the Vince Foster investigation.

The death of Hillary and Bill Clinton’s White House lawyer has spawned legions of conspiracy theories. Kavanaugh, who served in the George W. Bush administration and who helped Ken Starr write the Starr Report into Bill Clinton, was in the middle of some of the 1990s’ most dramatic controversies involving the Clintons. Among them: The death of Vince Foster, which was ruled a suicide.

The Washington, D.C. lobbyist who has been on the hunt for Seth Rich’s killer found a “credible” witness who will identify the two men he believes murdered the DNC staffer.

Jack Burkman, a Washington-based attorney and lobbyist who has worked with a private investigative team to solve the Seth Rich murder mystery, told The Gateway Pundit that the witness has conclusive evidence that will bring Rich’s killers to justice within a month.

“We believe that we have reached the beginning of the end of the Seth Rich murder investigation,” Burkman told The Gateway Pundit in an exclusive interview Sunday. “After two long hard years of work, we have a witness who is prepared to identify the two killers of Seth Rich. One is reportedly a current DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent, the other is reportedly a current ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) agent”

Israeli forces shot 22-year-old Muhammad Abu Halima in the chest, killing him, during protests east of Gaza City on Friday.

Nearly 400 people were injured along Gaza’s eastern boundary on the 15th consecutive week of the Great March of Return demonstrations. Nearly 60 were wounded with live ammunition, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

On Wednesday the health ministry announced that Mahmoud Majid al-Gharableh, 16, had succumbed to his wounds after being shot in the head on 14 May, which saw the highest number of fatalities in a single day since the launch of the protests in late March.

Al-Gharableh is the 20th child among the nearly 150 Palestinians reported killed by Israeli forces in Gaza during that period, the vast majority of them during protests. More than 4,000 others have been wounded by live fire.

Crude propaganda
Israel has resorted to crude propaganda to deflect blame for the deaths of Palestinian boys and girls hit by bullets fired by its soldiers.

Mexican President-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s transition team unveiled a plan on Friday to shake up the fight against crime, including reduced jail time but stiffer controls on weapons, as the country reels from a militarized drug war.

The concept of “transitional justice” is part of the incoming government’s integral security strategy, Olga Sanchez, Lopez Obrador’s proposed interior minister, told Reuters in an interview before her team unveiled the plan.

Transitional justice typically involves leniency for those who admit guilt, truth commissions to investigate atrocities and the granting of reparations for some victims.

“Not only will it be amnesty, it will be a law to reduce jail time,” Sanchez said.

“We will propose decriminalization, create truth commissions, we will attack the causes of poverty, we will give scholarships to the youth and we will work in the field to get them out of the drug situation,” she said.

During a Senate hearing in late January, Ed Markey asked then-EPA director Scott Pruitt about a little rumor that he’d overheard. “It’s my understanding,” the Massachusetts senator said, “that the EPA has finalized its conclusion that formaldehyde causes leukemia and other cancers and that [the] completed new assessment is ready to be released for public review, but is being held up.”

“You know, my understanding is similar to yours,” Pruitt replied.

Formaldehyde is one of the most ubiquitous industrial chemicals in the United States. It’s in much of the wooden furniture that Americans sit in, the body wash they clean themselves with — and, for those who live in the vicinity of a major refinery, the air that they breathe. And here, the director of the agency responsible for protecting the American people from toxic chemicals was saying, under oath, that he was vaguely aware of a report linking formaldehyde to a variety of terminal illnesses.