In many countries, it is difficult to speak out about government-related crime and abuse of power. In Russia it is getting even more difficult. RT writes regarding the new legislation that there will only be “mild” measures againt violators, such as up to 15 days in jail for insulting the state and authorities!

Read the recent article in The Intercept

When Glenn Greenwald examins the media failures on the Trump/Russia story, he finds that

all of these “errors” go only in one direction: namely, exaggerating the grave threat posed by Moscow and the Trump circle’s connection to it. It’s inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that’s being done in good faith, one would expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories. That is most definitely not the case here. Just as was true in 2002 and 2003, when the media clearly wanted to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and thus all of its “errors” went in that direction, virtually all of its major “errors” in this story are devoted to the same agenda and script

Meanwhile, the English translation Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News of Udo Ulfkotte’s German bestseller is extremely difficult to buy. Today, only a few used books are available on Amazon, at a price from 691 USD!

On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group of over 60 prominent American citizens is calling upon Congress to reopen the investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Read more on paulcraigroberts.org and Consortium News.

After careful review, the conclusion by Joseph Majerle III published ealier this week is:

I think one of the mercenary aircraft, operating around Ndola on that night, fired a tracer bullet into the fuel tanks of the Hammarskjöld plane, causing the left wing to catch on fire. Fearing that the left wing would fold up into the fuselage of the plane, the pilots did the only thing that was available to them: to configure the plane for a controlled (so to speak) crash landing in the short amount of time available to them. That action explains the 30 degrees of flaps setting on impact (nine miles out from the Ndola runway!), the relative slow speed at impact (they were just above the stall speed), and the compact crash site (not consistent with CFIT). The pilots had no choice but to put the plane “on the ground…now!” and that they did, skillfully, in my mind.

Had they succeeded and been able to tell their own story at the inquests, we would now have a clearer picture of what happened on that fatal approach. Because the crew was killed on impact or in the subsequent fires, it was left to colonial administrators—in places such as Northern Rhodesia—to whitewash the crash scene and to blame the pilots, who along with Hammarskjöld and his team were also the victims. Exonerating the pilots would go a long way in correcting an injustice that has lingered since 1961.

And today it is in the news that a Belgian mercenary who was a former Royal Air Force pilot confessed to having shot down Hammarskjöld’s plane.

Against the rules, Germany has during many years made arms deals with Israel. In a recent article about a new submarine, The Times of Israel writes:

Israel’s submarines are seen as a key strategic asset for the Jewish state. According to foreign reports, the vessels are able to carry nuclear missiles and grant Israel a “second strike” capability, meaning the ability to launch atomic weapons even if the homeland is attacked.

Note the wording “According to foreign reports” in the above.

A six-part article in Spiegel Online has explaind more on this subject, including the censorship that applies in Israel.

In another article, The real German submarine scandal, Victor Gilinsky wrote in 2017:

Israel is absorbed with a “submarine scandal” that centers on improprieties in the award of a billion-dollar contract under which Israel would acquire three new advanced German submarines. (Germany has already delivered five of the subs, on a previous contract for six.) It came to light that the prime minister’s personal lawyer was on the payroll of the submarine builder, ThyssenKrupp. Then it turned out that Iran, which figures heavily in the motive for getting the submarines, owns 4.5 percent of ThyssenKrupp and so would gain a profit from their sale. On top of that, there is a Lebanese connection to the German builder, too. But the real scandal is that Germany supplies the submarines at all, and does so through a loophole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The develpment of nuclear weapons in Israel has during many years been hidden from the Israeli people and parliament. Read about the kidnapping and imprisonment of whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu.

Stephen Lendman and CovertAction Magazine remember William Blum, who passed away on December 9 at age 85. One of the famous quotes by Blum is:

No matter how paranoid or conspiracy-minded you are, what the government is actually doing is worse than you imagine.

Author William Blum at an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C., 2007. Photo: Thomas Good / NLN [GNU Free Documentation License], via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NLN_William_Blum.jpg

The murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul has been making headlines over the world since October. It makes you wonder what is really behind this, because so many countries have earlier let Saudi Arabia get away with anything – including torture to death and the war in Yemen. Many countries are apparently still doing business as usual with Saudi Arabia. Russia has even attempted to capitalise on the strain the scandal has put on the relationship between Riyadh and western powers and now signals support for the Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman.

In his departure letter from NBC, William Arkin speaks out about the “machine of perpetual war acceptance”. Read also the related article by Glenn Greenwald.

Read the recent articles in The Nation and Pulse Nigeria