In The News:

Caroline Glick: Kerry's Jewish 'Best Friends'

Once again, Caroline Glick puts current events in perspective and this article is worth reading in full. Below are the introductory comments:

Anti-Semitism is not a simple bigotry. It is a complex neurosis. It involves assigning malign intent to Jews where none exists on the one hand, and rejecting reason as a basis for understanding the world and operating within it on the other hand.

John Kerry’s recent use of the term “Apartheid” in reference to Israel’s future was an anti-Semitic act. 

Leave aside the fact that Kerry’s scenarios are based on phony demographic data.

As I demonstrate in my book The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, Israel will maintain a strong and growing Jewish majority in a “unitary state” that includes the territory within the 1949 armistice lines and Judea and Samaria. But even if Kerry’s fictional data were correct, the only “Apartheid state” that has any chance of emerging is the Palestinian state that Kerry claims Israel’s survival depends on. The Palestinians demand that the territory that would comprise their state must be ethnically cleansed of all Jewish presence before they will agree to accept sovereign responsibility for it. 

In other words, the future leaders of that state – from the PLO, Hamas and Islamic Jihad alike --- are so imbued with genocidal Jew hatred that they insist that all 650,000 Jews living in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria must be forcibly ejected from their homes. These Jewish towns, cities and neighborhoods must all be emptied before the Palestinians whose cause Kerry so wildly champions will even agree to set up their Apartheid state. 

According to the 1998 Rome Statute, Apartheid is a crime of intent, not of outcome. It is the malign intent of the Palestinians –across their political and ideological spectrum -- to found a state predicated on anti-Jewish bigotry and ethnic cleansing. In stark contrast, no potential Israeli leader or faction has any intention of basing national policies on racial subjugation in any form.

By ignoring the fact that every Palestinian leader views Jews as a contaminant that must be blotted out from the territory the Palestinians seek to control, (before they will even agree to accept sovereign responsibility for it), while attributing to Jews malicious intent towards the Palestinians that no Israeli Jewish politician with a chance of leading the country harbors, Kerry is adopting a full-throated and comprehensive anti-Semitic position. 

It is both untethered from reason and libelous of Jews. 

Secret U.S.-Hizballah Talks. Washington Plans To Include Lebanon, Syria Deals In Iran Nuclear Pact

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' initiation of a unity pact with the Hamas extremists last week did not come out of the blue. It was prompted by the direct contacts the Obama administration has secretly established with the Lebanese Hizballah. Abbas reasoned that if Washington can start a dialogue with a terrorist organization, so too can his own PLO and Fatah.

Obama administration appears to have carried over to Lebanon the doctrine set out by the late Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan, whereby dialogue with Taliban should be made the centerpiece of Washington's strategy for US troop withdrawal. Holbrooke’s influence on Secretary of State John Kerry dated back to his run for the presidency in 2004.

However, many Middle East experts find the US take on Hizballah to be naïve and simplistic and strongly doubt that the path it has chosen will bring Nasrallah – or Tehran - around to serving America's will or purposes. They draw a parallel with the underlying US assumptions which ultimately led the Palestinians-Israeli talks off track.

But expectations of the Hizballah track are high and strongly guide the actions of President Obama, John Kerry, National Security Advisor Susan Rice and CIA Director John Brennan. And so, in early March, the first secret rendezvous took place in Cyprus between CIA officers and Hizballah intelligence and security operatives.

According to a number of Mid East intelligence sources, two such meetings have since been conducted and initial US-Hizballah understandings reached relating to the volatile situations in Syria and Lebanon.

Our intelligence sources add that US Ambassador to Beirut David Hale has been in charge of preparing these meetings and implementing the understandings reached. 

Ukraine Crisis: Mayor Of Second City Gennady Kernes Fights For Life After Murder Attempt Blamed On Kremlin

The day began with the police station and administration building  Konstantinovska being  overrun; next the airport at Kramatorsk was attacked with rocket propelled grenades and then the mayor of Kharkiv was shot in the back. It ended in a vicious ambush on a demonstration in Donetsk. While America and the European Union impose new sanctions on Russia, violence and turmoil continues unabated in  eastern Ukraine.

The attempted murder of Gennady Kernes, the mayor of the country’s second-largest city, raised fears that prominent public figures were being targeted for assassination. Last night he was “fighting for his life”, said his spokesman, after emergency surgery, with blame for the shooting leveled at both the Kremlin and extreme right wing groups.

Kramatorsk airport, where the government’s anti-terrorist mission to take back a dozen protester-held towns and cities is based, came under fire by fighters using rocket propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs. Two service personnel were injured: a number of officers seen as crucial for planning future operations were immediately relocated, some back to Kiev.

This was the second attack in four days on the airport. A helicopter-gunship was destroyed in a previous one and senior officers are considering whether the location is safe enough to be such a crucial hub. The owner of the airport, Dmitri Podushkin, who had been present during both attacks, said: “The first one was like watching a film, this one was very real. They will try to keep on hitting this place and there is always the possibility that there will be casualties. Of course, we are very worried about the future. Planes can still fly from here, but the civil side of the airport has ceased to function.”

Ukrainian checkpoints which were supposed to stop the movements of militant fighters between urban centres especially from Slovyansk, a separatist stronghold.

But yesterday morning gunmen took over the police headquarters and municipal offices at Kosryantynivka, a city half way between Slovyansk and Donetsk, replacing the Ukrainian flag with those of the Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Russia.

Donetsk Riots Break Out In 'Scenes Of Absolute Brutality'

It seems the US and EU sanctions escalation has done nothing to calm the tensions between Ukrainians and pro-Russian forces in Donetsk, where according to report ultranationalists from Kiev are involved in a skirmish with local riot police. As the following clip suggests... "rocks and missiles are being thrown from both sides - there are injuries and scenes of absolute brutality as both sides clash."

Blasts, Fierce Fighting In Donetsk Between Pro- And Anti-Kiev Demos (Video, Photos)

There's gunfire, explosions and brutal clashes in the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine as fighting erupted between pro- and anti-govt protesters, RT’s stringer reports from the scene.

14 people have asked for medical assistance, with several hospitalized, after clashes in Donetsk, the regional administration told Interfax-Ukraine news agency.

According to Novosti Donbassa (Donbas News), eight people have been taken to the city’s Kalinin hospital after violence broke out.

The website also reports of a policeman being shell-shocked due to handmade grenade exploding near him.

Pro- and-anti-Kiev protest rallies took place simultaneously in the city.

According to RT’s stringer Graham Phillips, there were plenty of masked young men on both sides, and they were clearly looking for a fight.

The police failed to contain the crowd as protesters clashed with each other, using firecrackers, smoke grenades, baseball bats and sticks.

A group of about 1,000 “neo-Nazi thugs” has come to Donetsk from Dnepropetrovsk on Monday to cause provocations, the press-service of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk told RT.

“We were expecting an attack. We had objective information. Really, the guys arrived with baseball bats, sticks and rods. Those were the ultras from Dnepropetrovsk, FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk supporters. According to our info, there were also people from FC Dynamo Kyiv fan base. I have no information of any Right Sector involvement,” Vitaly Ivanov, a press-service member, who was at the scene, stressed.

Initially, there were about 200 local anti-Kiev activists, who went out “to meet them halfway in order to regain the initiative”, he said.

“More and more people joined us at an incredible pace as we made our way… When we reached them [pro-Kiev radicals], there were around 1,000 of us,” Ivanov said.

According to him, the ultras were “surrounded by the police, which was brought, especially, for the occasion” as the officers on the scene were from Kirovograd region, but not from the Donetsk force.

“We were received with aggression. Smoke grenades were thrown at us. Several people got injured. Then there were a couple of small scuffles with the ultras. And then they just dispersed. They didn’t expect such a rebuff; that there’ll be so many of us,” he said.

There were around 2,000 pro-Kiev demonstrators, who were marching on one of the main streets of the city, RT’s Paula Slier reports from Donetsk.

When they crossed paths with a smaller rally of anti-government protesters, violent clashes erupted, she said.

“I was among the group that is anti-Kiev. What I saw was both sides with their faces covered. There were Molotov cocktails and stones being thrown... Among the anti-Kiev crowd people were shouting: ‘Crimea! Donbass! Russia!” Slier reported.

U.S. Sanctions Push Putin Toward His Dream Of A New Financial System

Although Monday's sanctions will hurt Russia in the short term, they will also force Putin to step up his efforts to weaken U.S. influence over the global economy, which so far has been "little more than wishful thinking because of the difficult reforms it would 

As TIME reported last month, when the U.S. hit Russia with its first round of sanctions, the impact on the targets of the sanctions was quick, choking off access to global markets and payment systems, which are still dominated by the U.S. But Sechin also has a point. There is no way to isolate the world’s largest publicly traded oil producer from the global economy without causing the world economy to crash, and if the U.S. refuses to do business with Sechin, there are plenty of others standing in line. The global oil major BP, for instance, is already the second biggeststakeholder in Rosneft after the Russian government, and has been more than willing to offer Russia its state of the art technology.

But all of these concerns take a backseat to Putin’s larger strategy – and Sechin’s. For years, they have been calling for a new world order – or as they tend to call it, a “multipolar world” – in which the West must cede its dominance of the global economy to several regional powers, including Russia.

But the sanctions regime against Russia will likely only accelerate its drive to carry out these reforms. In the past month, Moscow has already begun trying to set up its own “national payment system” to challenge global players like Visa and Mastercard. It also appears to bedumping American treasury bills, one of the favored means of storing its reserves. The next stage in this strategy is expected to come in May, when Sechin is set to take the helm of a commodities exchange in St. Petersburg, his and Putin’s hometown. In the coming years, that exchange, which is known as SPIMEX, will be seeking to take a major chunk of the global trade in oil and gas, with the ruble as its main form of settlement. All of these efforts have been pushed into overdrive amid Russia’s standoff with the West over Ukraine, and to be sure, they have nudged Russia into murky economic waters. In seeking to disrupt the framework of the global economy, Russia could easily drag itself into a depression.

But Putin has been preparing for that. Over the past two years, he has urged all Russian businessmen and officials to bring their money onshore, and apart from building closer ties with China – the main challenger to the West’s economic hegemony – Russia has formed alliances with other states that would love to see that hegemony broken. Venezuela is one example. It sits on top of the largest untapped reserves of oil in the world, but it has struggled to bring that fuel to market because of its lack of partners in the West. (The U.S. has not had an ambassador in Caracas since 2010.)

Russian Banks Vote For National Payment System From Scratch

Volcanic Blast 'As great A Threat To UK Security As Nuclear Terrorism'

AN ERUPTION of a supervolcano in Iceland should pose as great a threat to Britain as nuclear terrorism, according to a high level UK government report.

The warning was made by a group of academics and scientists from the British Geological Survey and the Met Office, which also involved geologists from Edinburgh University.

They argue that certain types of eruptions of Icelandic volcanoes, known as effusive gas-rich eruptions, should be considered an immediate risk to human health and the environment for much of northern Europe.

They can erupt for months and cause geological devastation across thousands of miles.

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano, which erupted in 2010, is thought to be a more 'explosive' type as it propels ash in to the atmosphere over a shorter period of time.

While air traffic was grounded as a result, the Cabinet Office report argues the event was relatively small event, given the potentially-lethal power Icelandic volcanoes possess.

Their research touches on the catastrophic Laki eruption in 1783 which is thought to have led to the death of tens of thousands of people in Britain.

If another such eruption takes place, then Britain and other countries could be hit by a blanket of ash and toxic materials, along with several years of extreme weather.

Their claims will be aired today during a conference at the European Geosciences Union in Vienna.

China's Communist Party Accused Of A 'Barbaric Campaign Against Christianity'

Chinese authorities have been accused of an anti-Christian crackdown after ripping down a church in 'the Jerusalem of the East'.
The nation's Communist party keeps a tight grip on religion, fearing challenges to its authority, but allows worship at state-controlled churches.

Thousands of protesters have spent weeks as a human shield around the Protestant Sanjiang church in Wenzhou, south east China, after officials claimed it was four times the permitted size. 

Big Chill: Feds Want To Scour Net, Media For 'Hate Speech'

If two Democratic lawmakers have their way, Barack Obama’s Justice Department will submit a report for action against any Internet sites, broadcast, cable television or radio shows determined to be advocating or encouraging “violent acts.”

This according to the text of a new bill from Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.

The Hate Crime Reporting Act of 2014 “would create an updated comprehensive report examining the role of the Internet and other telecommunications in encouraging hate crimes based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation and create recommendations to address such crimes,” stated a news release from Markey’s office.

The one-page bill, reviewed by WND, calls for the Justice Department and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to “analyze information on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts and the commission of crimes of hate.”

The bill does not define which actions by broadcasters would be considered to have encouraged violence, seemingly leaving that open to interpretation.

The Boston Herald took issue with the bill, calling it “frankly chilling”that Markey is seeking to “empower an obscure federal agency to begin scouring the Internet, TV and radio for speech it finds threatening.”

“Perhaps he could crack a briefing book on the crisis in Ukraine rather than looking for his own extra-constitutional methods of punishing speech he finds unacceptable,” added the Herald editorial.