It's not been a good day for the CIA. First, the State Department slams them for brutally treating terror suspects after the 9/11 attacks, noting that "no American is proud" of CIA tactics. And now, as The NY Times reports, an internal investigation has found that its officers improperly penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing the report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Of course, this is not the first time the CIA has hacked Senate networks but do not fear American citizenry, CIA Director has apologized for his staff "acting inappropriately" and is setting up an internal accountability board to review the matter. It appears Ron Paul was right.

Contradicting earlier claims, CIA admits it improperly accessed Senate computers

An Israeli sniper has admitted to killing 13 children in the Gaza Strip in one day, as Tel Aviv continues its aerial and ground attacks in the besieged enclave. ● Posting on an Instagram account, David Ovadia released a photo of himself holding a sniper rifle. The image with his post, however, was deleted entirely by hackers from an anonymous group. The group has launched hundreds of attacks on Israeli websites over the past two years. The move was reportedly followed by the group’s cyber attacks on Israel's Mossad and Ministry of Military Affairs. The development comes as Tel Aviv claims that its military has been targeting Palestinian fighters from resistance group Hamas and described the growing death toll in the enclave as collateral damage.

Gilad Atzmon ■ Poll Confirms -Israelis Love To Kill
Kevin Barrett ■ Child-killing sociopaths of Israel
Jonathan Cook ■ Is Killing Civilians Part Of Israel’s Plan?
Israeli MP: Mothers of all Palestinians must be killed
Rationales Justifying Collective Punishment of Amalek
Israeli lobby urges Americans to unconditionally back war in Gaza

Death of a Photo Journalist (and Many Others) || If you can handle this, video shot in the middle of the shelling at the Gaza market--you'll see the journalist, in blue with camera, near the start. Just horrible, never seen anything quite like it, even in the past two weeks. Also dead and injured kids on the ground. Send it to your president and Congress person. Now wait for the apologists to claim this is fake. I dare NYT, which ran video of visit to an (unfinished, inoperative) Hamas tunnel yesterday to post this on their site today. You know, "balance."

U.N. official breaks down over deaths of Palestinian children || As my colleagues report, Palestinian officials and a U.N. agency say Israeli artillery shells on Wednesday hit a U.N.-run school that was sheltering Palestinian families, killing at least 20.

A U.N. statement pinned the blame on the Israeli military, which says it's investigating the incident. "Today the world stands disgraced," the statement read. For Chris Gunness, a spokesman for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which has numerous facilities in Gaza, it's all too much. This is the sixth time UNRWA sites have been hit during Israel's current campaign. He broke down sobbing during an interview, footage of which was screened by Al Jazeera Arabic. Watch it (right).

So far in more than three weeks of fighting, 1,340 Palestinians have died, the majority of whom were civilians, including many women and children. Fifty-three Israeli soldiers have perished, as have three civilians in Israel, one of whom was a farm worker from Thailand.

Paul Craig Roberts ■ US Government Simultaneously Condemns Israel for Murdering Children in an UN Safe School and Grants Israel’s Request for More Heavy Explosives to be Used Against Palestinians || No sooner than the White House condemned the shelling of a United Nations-operated school in Gaza on Wednesday did news break that the Pentagon will supply the Israeli military with new ammunition to further their campaign on the war-ravaged city. That afternoon, CNN reported that the United States military will be honoring a request from Israel for assistance in the midst of their weeks-long campaign against militants from Hamas residing in Gaza City. According to the network, Pentagon officials have confirmed that the US will honor a request from Israel for several types of ammunition, including 120mm mortar rounds and 40mm ammunition for grenade launchers. The exchange will not be an emergency sale, the unnamed officials said, and is coming from a stockpile of weapons maintained by the US in Israel worth more than $1 billion.

Henry Siegman: Israel’s offensive in Gaza ‘a slaughter of innocents’
kenny's sideshow ■ They Shoot Donkeys, Don't They?
Mike Head ■ US rearms Israel as its war crimes mount in Gaza
US condemns shelling of UN school in Gaza but restocks Israeli ammunition
US resupplying Israel with ammunition even after condemning shelling of Gaza school
The US Is Stockpiling A Huge Cache Of Weapons In Israel [Apr. 23, 2012]

Bolivia has declared Israel to be a “terrorist state” and renounced a visa exemption agreement with the country in protest over the ongoing Israeli military offense in Gaza which already killed more than 1,300 dead and left over 7,000 wounded. ● Canceling the 1972 agreement which allowed Israelis to travel freely to Bolivia “means, in other words, we are declaring (Israel) a terrorist state,” the country's President Evo Morales announced. Morales explained that Operation Protective edge clearly shows that “Israel is not a guarantor of the principles of respect for life and the elementary precepts of rights that govern the peaceful and harmonious coexistence of our international community.”

Paul Craig Roberts ■ South America Takes Moral Leadership Away From The Immoral West

A Senate report on the CIA's interrogation and detention practices after the 9/11 attacks concludes that the agency initially kept the secretary of state and some U.S. ambassadors in the dark about harsh techniques and secret prisons, according to a document circulating among White House staff. The still-classified report also says some ambassadors who were informed about interrogations of al-Qaida detainees at so-called black sites in their countries were instructed not to tell their superiors at the State Department, says the document, which the White House accidentally emailed to an Associated Press reporter.

Vladimir Putin on US Sanctions and Ukraine, right after his return from
the South America Tour, July 2014.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity ■ U.S.-Russian intensions are building in a precarious way over Ukraine, and we are far from certain that your advisers fully appreciate the danger of escalation. The New York Times and other media outlets are treating sensitive issues in dispute as flat-fact, taking their cue from U.S. government sources. Twelve days after the shoot-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, your administration still has issued no coordinated intelligence assessment summarizing what evidence exists to determine who was responsible – much less to convincingly support repeated claims that the plane was downed by a Russian-supplied missile in the hands of Ukrainian separatists. Your administration has not showed any satellite imagery showing that the separatists had such weaponry, and there are several other "dogs that have not barked." Washington’s credibility, and your own, will continue to erode, should you be unwilling – or unable – to present more tangible evidence behind administration claims. In what follows, we put this in the perspective of former intelligence professionals with a cumulative total of 260 years in various parts of U.S. intelligence.

The US-backed Ukrainian government and its armed forces blocked access to the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) crash site amid heavy fighting in towns in east Ukraine targeted by the far-right US- and European-backed regime in Kiev. ● The military operation hit many towns in eastern Ukraine and involved an artillery strike on Horlivka that killed at least 13 civilians. In Donetsk at least three people died in shelling, and civilian casualties were also reported in Luhansk. Ukrainian troops and tanks entered the town of Shakhtarsk, 10 miles west of the site of the Boeing 777 crash, and fighting was reported in the towns of Snizhne and Torez, the mid-sized towns nearest to the crash site.