The tense stand-off between hundreds of protesters and police has ended in the Nevada desert, forcing the authorities to cancel the round-up of 300 animals and to return the cattle to their owner. ● The standoff between rancher Cliven Bundy and the US Bureau of Land Management has lasted over a week, after hundreds of armed agents with the United States Bureau of Land Management and the FBI turned up in the Clark County to execute the court-ordered confiscation of nearly 1,000 cattle. The US government says the animals have trespassed on federal property. This provoked a fierce backlash from anti-government groups, right-wing politicians and gun-rights activists, who gathered near 67-year-old Cliven Bundy’s farmhouse to support him in the standoff against the government. At the height of the protests, there were about 1,000 protesters outside the rancher’s home. Among them were militia members from California, Idaho and other US states, camouflaged, with rifles and side arms.

Until last week, Shuler was the only known journalist in the Western Hemisphere jailed for doing his job. Shuler, a former sports reporter and university editor who developed the political blog Legal Schnauzer, is known as a controversial figure in his community. He has fielded other allegations of falsehoods and has been embroiled in numerous lawsuits over his blogging. But even his critics conceded that a court order banning him from writing anything about the alleged extramarital affair of a man rumored to be running for Congress was likely unconstitutional, and a First Amendment outrage.

Alison Weir ■ If things proceed normally, President Barak Obama will soon proclaim April 11, 2014 “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.” Despite the innocuous name, this day honors the memory of a religious leader whose lesser-known teachings help fuel some of the most violent attacks against Palestinians by extremist Israeli settlers and soldiers. The leader being honored on this day is Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, charismatic head of a mystical/fundamentalist version of Judaism. Every year since 1978, a Presidential Proclamation, often accompanied by a Congressional Resolution (the 1990 one had 219 sponsors), has declared Schneerson’s birthday an official national day of observance. Congress first passed a Resolution honoring Schneerson in 1975. Three years later a Joint Congressional Resolution called on President Jimmy Carter to proclaim “Education Day, U.S.A.” on the anniversary of Schneerson’s birth. The idea was to set aside a day to honor both education and the alleged educational work of Schneerson and the religious sect he headed up. Carter, like Congress, dutifully obeyed the Schneerson-initiatedresolution, as has every president since. And some individual states are now enacting their own observances of Schneerson’s birthday, withMinnesota and Alabama leading the way. Schneerson and his movement are an extremely mixed bag. [...] Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson: “This is what needs to be said about the body: the body of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of [members] of all nations of the world … The difference in the inner quality between Jews and non-Jews is “so great that the bodies should be considered as completely different species.” “An even greater difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the Jewish soul stems from holiness.”

Oriental Review ■ The flywheel of political repressions in Ukraine is gaining momentum these days. In sharp contrast with the liberal approach by president Yanukovych to the “Euromaidan” rout, the interim Kievan administration did not hesitate much about cracking down the public uprising against the “neo-Nazi regime” on the rise in the East and South of Ukraine. Today only in Kharkov at least 70 activists have been arrested during the so-called “anti-terrorist operation”. According to the reports, foreign mercenaries presumably from the US Greystone Ltd private military contractor firm were participating in the operation along with the National Guard (majorly consisting of the ultranationalist Pravy (Right) Sector fighters) and some loyal Interior Ministry units. ■ George Orwell was onto something when he coined the phrase, “war is peace,” to describe the groupthink of his fictional future totalitarian society. He would have no trouble recognizing the propaganda on parade during the recent overthrow of the Ukrainian government, during which “peaceful protesters” engaged in killing, burning, and looting … and continue to do so now.

Reuters: Ukraine's east braces for anti-rebel operation as deadline passes
EO Observer: Three EU countries back Ukraine's use of force
RT.com: Ukraine's Slavyansk under siege as Kiev orders crackdown on protests
Alex Lantier: UN Security Council holds emergency meeting over Ukraine
Stephen Lendman: We're All Ukrainians Now

This week, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove announced that the deployment of U.S. troops to Eastern European countries may serve as counter-measures against "Russia’s military threats" against Ukraine. ● Breedlove, who has been ordered to develop a plan for consolidation of allied forced until April 15th, mentioned in his interview to Associated Press that he would not ‘write off involvement by any nation, to include the United States’. ‘Essentially what we are looking at is a package of land, air and maritime measures that would build assurance for our easternmost allies. […]I’m tasked to deliver this by next week. I fully intend to deliver it early,’ – he told AP after the NATO conference in Paris, France.

Bloomberg News reported, on April 8th, that a Securities and Exchange Commission prosecuting attorney, James Kidney, said at his recent retirement party on March 27th, that his prosecutions of Goldman Sachs and other mega-banks had been squelched by top people at the agency, because they “were more focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service than on bringing difficult cases.” He suggested that SEC officials knew that Wall Street would likely hire them after the SEC at much bigger pay than their government remuneration was, so long as the SEC wouldn’t prosecute those megabank executives on any criminal charges for helping to cause the mortgage-backed securities scams and resulting 2008 economic crash. His ”remarks drew applause from the crowd of about 70 people,” according to the Bloomberg report. This would indicate that other SEC prosecutors feel similarly squelched by their bosses.

The government is now going through old records to see if it overpaid people on Social Security. If it thinks it did, it can now seize the IRS tax refund checks of the CHILDREN of those people it thinks it overpaid. ● This isn't a proposal—it's already happening. For the past three years, the government has been confiscating hundreds of thousands of Americans' tax refunds, according to the Washington Post. It has already confiscated $1.9 billion in tax refunds this year alone. The amazing thing is that the government is doing this even if it has little or no proof and no exact details. And the letters the government sends to unsuspecting taxpayers are frightening, use accusatory language, and include other financial threats.

Support for the eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP) has spiked to 20 per cent while Britain's ruling Conservatives have hit their lowest rating this year, according to a poll. ● The ComRes survey for the Independent on Sunday and Sunday Mirror newspapers showed Nigel Farage's UKIP up four points since last month to achieve its highest ever result in a poll by the consultancy. Farage's personal approval rating increased seven points since last month to 27 per cent, level with Prime Minister David Cameron, according to the survey. The poll comes around two weeks after the UKIP leader was widely judged to have performed well in two live televised debates with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, over Britain's future in European Union. In the debates both leaders drew battle lines ahead of European Parliament elections being held on May 22.

The US government is preparing the American people for a new world war by raising allegations against Russia and China over the crisis in Ukraine, an analyst writes in a column for the Press TV website. ● Gordon Duff said the US officials have been fabricating stories in recent weeks, telling people “that none of their weapons can keep them safe, not from the Russian and Chinese hordes.” Tensions between Moscow and the West remain high after Crimea separated from Ukraine and requested to join Russia after a referendum on March 16, in which nearly 97 percent of the participants voted for rejoining Russia. Russia subsequently accepted Crimea’s request. “Zionist extremists bent on a full-scale world war between the US, China and Russia will control two thirds of America’s government by January 2015,” further wrote Duff. The analyst said the belligerent Zionists will then nominate two “pro-war” candidates for the next presidential election. “This will not be an election, it will be an apocalypse,” he wrote.

Patrick Smith ■ Am I misjudging our time, or have we entered some accelerated cycle of American subversions, and then another cycle of coverups and disinformation that do not quite come off? In less than a year, the Obama administration has mounted four covert coup operations, all variants of the classic Cold War model, all costly of human life, all assuring us the contempt and animosity of many people for years to come.