Residents of Slavyansk and its suburbs were awoken overnight on Thursday by what they say were incendiary bombs that were dropped on their city by Kiev’s military. Witnesses and local media reports suggested that the bombs might be phosphorous. ● Much of the village of Semyonovka, located in the Slavyansk suburbs, was set ablaze. Local residents told RT that the ground didn't stop burning for some time. “We all saw what happened here yesterday. They used rocket launchers as well as incendiary bombs against us. The ground was on fire. How can the ground burn by itself. It burned for about forty minutes,” resident Roman Litvinov told RT over the phone. “Starting from 2 a.m. everyone I’ve met has a sore throat and is coughing all the time. I think this is because of the burning. I think we’ll feel the true consequences later. There are still a lot of people here, a lot of children we haven’t managed to get out yet,” resident Tatyana told RT.

VoR: Jen Psaki 'didn't see' Ukrainian army used phosphorus bombs near Slavyansk
PressTV: Deadly clashes erupt in Ukraine’s Mariupol

A man is executed in a new video released by ISIS

Senior Tehran official says leadership discussing cooperation with United States in face of insurgent threat in region, as militants battle Iraqi security forces 50 miles from Baghdad - follow latest Developments.

● 07.55 - The UN says that some half a million people have fled their homes since Monday, fearing violence, kidnapping and rape as ISIS militants tighten their grip on large parts of the country's north. Most have headed for the autonomous Kurdish region and workers were yesterday busy expanding the Khazer checkpoint in the area known as Kalak to cope with the flood of refugees.
● 07.45 - ISIS fighters have gained more ground overnight, taking two towns in the eastern province of Diyala after security forces abandoned their posts. Reuters cited security sources as reporting that the towns of Saadiyah and Jalawla have now fallen to the militants, who have also moved into several villages around the Himreen mountains, long a sanctuary for insurgent groups. Iraqi troops launched artillery rounds at the two towns, causing many families to flee towards Khaniqin, close to the Iranian border, the sources said.

xymphora ■ "Enter Ken Pollack and Tom Friedman– the Iraq experts!" || Note that the inability to grasp - or even talk about! - the role of World Jewry and ZOG in the long, long line of Wars For The Jews has not only permanently wrecked the United States, but is leading to the dangerous insanity of attacking the Islamists in Iraq while supporting them in Syria. World Jewry is also still trying to block the necessary Iranian nuclear negotiations! It is now more than ever critical for Americans to know, and attack, their real enemies.

Oded Yinon ■ A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties || Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization. [Additional links here and here]

PressTV: ISIL Takfiri militants, tools of Zionists: Analyst
Angry Arab: Human Rights Watch: in praise of ISIS
Kenny's Sideshow: Isis oh Isis
Robert Fisk: Sunni caliphate has been bankrolled by Saudi Arabia
Peter Oborne: A powerful and merciless force has emerged on the world stage
Bill Van Auken: Iraq crisis threatens to ignite regional war
Antiwar.com: US Readies Air Strikes Against al-Qaeda in Iraq
The Straits Times: Iran to combat terrorism in Iraq: Iran President Rouhani

A device containing radioactive substances [cesium-37 and americium-beryllium] was stolen from a government research facility and authorities are working to track it down, Mexico's No. 2 official said. "We have the report regarding the theft of this material and the alerts and protocol we follow in these cases have already been implemented," Government Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong told reporters after speaking at a conference of state law enforcement chiefs and attorneys general. A group of armed men grabbed the device Sunday night during an assault on a National Construction Laboratory warehouse in Tultitlan, Mexico state.

Global financial private wealth grew by 14.6 percent in 2013, according to a new report by The Boston Consulting Group. The surge, concentrated in the hands of the billionaires and millionaires of the world, has been driven by the policy of the Obama administration and other governments to pump cheap cash into the hands of the major banks and stock markets. Private financial wealth, as defined by the Boston Consulting Group, “includes cash and deposits, money market funds, and listed securities…life and pension assets, and other onshore and offshore assets.” However, it does not include “investors’ own businesses, any real estate, and luxury goods.”

Washington's Blog: Sorry, You’re Not Allowed: Capital Segregation and Rising Inequality
James Petras: Brazil: Workers Struggle Trumps Sports Spectacle

Hours before the opening ceremony of the football-soccer World Cup in Sao Paulo Thursday, protests continued across Brazil. Sao Paulo, the center of the opening festivities, is a city occupied by military forces. In the morning hours, the police used tear gas and rubber bullets to contain a protest march. At least five people, three reporters and two protesters, were reported injured. Police surrounded the demonstrators as they were nearing the Itaquerao stadium and forced them to retreat. Subway workers staged another demonstration, demanding that the state governor rehire scores of transit workers victimized during last week’s strike in this city, the largest in Latin America. [...] The street protests and strikes are a continuing reflection of popular anger over the US$11.3 million spent on the World Cup—four times the initial estimate—at a time in which clinics, schools, mass transit and other social services are facing cutbacks.

Is there a law which requires you to pay the Federal Income Tax? Is the Federal Reserve a part of the United States Government, or is it a private bank owned and operated by multinational corporate interests? Do they have our nation's best interests at heart? Unless something changes, what does the future of the United States look like? The answer to all these questions and more in this incredible documentary by legendary filmmaker Aaron Russo (February 14, 1943 - August 24, 2007).

Michael Hoffman ■ The alleged killers in Las Vegas of two policemen at a restaurant, and a bystander at a shopping center, are being variously described as white supremacists, Constitutionalists etc. They may be all or none of those things, but they are most certainly demon-possessed individuals initiated into a devil cult by immersion in the soul-killing Hollywood movies and television and New York entertainment “culture” that permeates the US like the fumo di Satana. ■ The New Testament was not lying when it gave accounts of Jesus Christ driving out demons. Are we supposed to believe that there are fewer demon-possessed persons now, than in the time of Christ? How can this be when there have been millions of abortions in America? How can this be when a man who inserts his sexual organ in the rectum of another man is celebrated as a noble civil rights activist? How can this be when Satan's initiatory Cryptocracy rules the air waves and the cinema screens, making initiates of our children merely by broadcasting into our living rooms? These days Americans have trouble calling anything by its correct name. Consequently, we cannot proceed to a true comprehension of the evils which have befallen our nation and the remedies that must be implemented for the sake of the innocent. Whatever the Las Vegas killers' political affiliation may be — whether contrived by the System or genuine — these suicide shooters, like James Holmes, are first and foremost demon-possessed. These murderers worship Satan, whether under that name, or as “Joker" or “Slender Man.” The people they kill are a propitiation to the god of this world. As Jerad Miller wrote, using what we believe to be a double entendre on his Facebook page hours before his alleged murder spree, "The dawn of a new day. May all of our coming sacrifices be worth it.” As suicides, he and his wife were among those “sacrificed.”