Tom Carter

Facts are stubborn things. What we know for certain is that a key witness in relation to the Boston bombings has been terminated by the state.

On May 22, Ibragim Todashev, a key witness in events related to the Boston Marathon bombings, was killed by an FBI agent in his residence in Florida. Todashev, an alleged acquaintance of bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was unarmed and in custody when he was shot as many as seven times, including once in the head.

This extraordinary event, which has been largely buried in the US media, stinks of a cover-up, deceit and criminality. Four or five completely different accounts of the killing have been presented by the government in the space of little more than a week. None of these accounts can be believed.

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Stephen Lendman

Photo: Mass graves have been discovered in the historical cemetery of Al-Kazakhana in Jaffa, Al-Aqsa Foundation for Islamic Endowments and Heritage announced on Monday. The graves contain the remains of Palestinians killed by Jewish militias in 1948 during the Nakba (Catastrophe). According to the Foundation, they were discovered during routine maintenance and rehabilitation of the cemetery in one of the cities occupied by Israel since 1948. The Head of the cemetery rehabilitation project, Mohammed al-Ashqar, said that the remains indicate that they were of Palestinians of varied ages “killed by Zionist gangs” in Jaffa. Some of the graves also date back to the Palestinian Uprising of 1936 against British Mandate rule. (MasterAdrian2nd)

On June 1, Press TV headlined "Mass graves from 1948 war discovered in Jaffa." Palestinian Jaffa is now Tel Aviv's Jaffa municipality. Six mass graves were discovered. They contain remains of at least hundreds of Palestinian victims. These and other questions remain unanswered.

■ How many more mass graves are yet to be discovered? How many never will be found?
■ How many thousands of dead Palestinians remain hidden? How many loved ones were lost? How many surviving family members couldn't bury them respectfully?
■ Why have responsible Israelis remained unaccountable? Why hasn't the official historical record been set straight? Why don't lost Palestinian lives matter?

The Nakba was one of history's great crimes. Much about it is known. Israeli historian Ilan Pappe documented it. His book titled "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" explains. More on that below.

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Tarihinde Yayımlandı

To my friends who live outside of Turkey:

I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because most of the media sources are shut down by the government and the word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.

Four days ago a group of people who did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines.

No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out.

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray. They chased the crowds out of the park.

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Chris Marsden

Michael Adebolajo, who used a meat cleaver to hack the head off
Lee Rigby, had been approached by agents of Security Service
(MI5), a British intelligence agency, but reportedly refused to join,
his friend Abu Nusaybah told the BBC. Minutes after the interview,
Nusaybah himself was arrested. (iTV News/New Daily News)

The killing of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London has lifted a corner of the carefully constructed veil of lies, intrigue and criminality surrounding British foreign policy.

Immediately after Rigby’s brutal murder, a chorus of political and media figures insisted that this was not the occasion for questioning the motives of his killers, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale.

Labour MP David Lammy described “the suggestion that the murder was a direct consequence of British foreign policy” as “superficially compelling,” including criticism of “my vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq.”

The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland attacked “liberal and left” figures for identifying a connection between events in London and the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria for having “some sneaking sympathy, not for the act itself, but for the cause it seeks to highlight.”

Preventing discussion of the circumstances leading to the horrific crime of Adebolajo and Adebowale serves only to conceal the still-greater crimes perpetrated by Britain’s ruling elite.

Within a matter of days, it was clear that both alleged killers had been known to MI5 for years, for a decade in Adebolajo’s case. He was affiliated to the banned Islamist group Al-Mahajiroun. In November 2010, he was detained in Kenya while trying to travel to Somalia, allegedly to join the Islamist group Al-Shabaab.

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Stephen Lendman

The FBI murdered Ibragim Todashev and lied about it.

America does it wholesale and retail. Obama's wars increase body counts. They mount daily. Special forces death squads in over 120 countries add their own. So do covert CIA agents. They're licensed to kill. They do it globally. FBI assassins operate domestically. Doing so belies their "Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity" motto.

They don't prevent crimes. They aid and abet them. They commit them. They're political police. They subvert democratic values. They menace freedom. They're agents of repression.

They support wealth, power and privilege. They're state-sponsored terrorists. They kill with impunity. They were involved in the Boston Marathon bombings. The official story doesn't wash.

They and/or police killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev. He and his brother Dzhokhar were set up. They were convenient patsies. An image showed Tamerlan trying to surrender. He was lying prone with his arms outstretched. He held no weapon. None was near him. No blood was visible. He was murdered in cold blood. His body was riddled with bullets from head to toe.

Brother Dzhokhar perhaps also tried to surrender. Local and/or federal assassins tried to kill him. He was shot multiple times. A throat wound prevented him from speaking. He can now.

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Bill Van Auken

In a series of raids in the capital of Istanbul and in the southern provinces of Mersin, Adana and Hatay near the Syrian border, Turkish police rounded up 12 members of Syria’s Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front along with chemical weapons materials.

The Turkish media initially reported that police recovered four and a half pounds of sarin, the deadly never gas which had earlier been linked to chemical weapons attacks inside Syria.

While widely reported in the Turkish press, the arrests Wednesday have been virtually blacked out by the corporate media in the US. Newspapers like the New York Times, which have openly promoted a US intervention in Syria, citing alleged chemical weapons use by the regime of Bashar al-Assad as a pretext, have posted not a word about the raids in Turkey.

The daily newspaper Zaman reported that “the al-Nusra members had been planning a bomb attack for Thursday in [the Turkish city of] Adana but that the attack was averted when the police caught the suspects. Along with the sarin gas, the police seized a number of handguns, grenades, bullets and documents during their search.”

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Stephen Lendman

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks into Syria from
the Golan Heights in January 2013. (Photo: Kobi Gideon)

Stephen Lendman: Israel Threatens Russia

Self-defense is inviolable. It's a fundamental right. International law affirms it.

On May 29, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Washington supports Israel's right to defend itself. Israeli-style defense is offense. It hasn't been attacked in 40 years. It faces no regional threats now except ones it invents. It prioritizes violence, conflict and instability.

Syria is Washington's war. Israel's very much involved. It's arming US-enlisted death squads. It bombed Syrian targets. It did so lawlessly. It initiated other provocations. It threatens more attacks now.

Russia's supplying Syria with sophisticated S-300 anti-aircraft missiles. They have every right to do so. They're for defense, not offense. Washington wants Syria defenseless. It maliciously calls self-defense belligerent and provocative. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell "condemn(ed) the continued supply of Russian weapons to the (Syrian) regime." He responded to Moscow affirming its S-300 missile sale. White House spokesman Jay Carney said doing so "does not bring us closer to the political transition that Syria deserves."

International law is unequivocal. Sovereign rights are inviolable. No nation or combination thereof may interfere in the internal affairs of others. Syrians alone may choose who leads them.

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