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‘Ukraine committing economic suicide by thinking to stop gas transit’

RT | August 11, 2014

The Bulgarian government is under enormous pressure from the US to cancel the South Stream project, and so Bulgaria is the place to watch now, Daniel McAdams, executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity think tank, told RT.

On August 8, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk announced that Kiev had prepared a list of 172 Russian citizens and 65 companies, predominantly Russian, to put under sanctions for “sponsoring terrorism, supporting the annexation of Crimea, and violating the territorial integrity of Ukraine.” Proposed sanctions include asset freezes, bans on certain enterprises, bans on privatizing state property, refusing to issue licenses, and a complete or partial ban on gas transit and air flights through its territory. Ukraine’s parliament will vote on the final measures on August 12.

RT: Kiev is expected to vote on the sanctions on August 12. Do you think they’ll go through?

Daniel McAdams: I think given the bellicose nature of Prime Minister Yatsenuk and the reckless manner in which he is governing I would certainly expect them to. What Ukraine is doing is committing economic suicide, and the US itself demanding that the EU applies its own sanctions is demanding that the Europeans commit economic suicide. So it makes no sens,e but I suspect it would probably go through in a short term. Remember that Ukraine is spending 6 million dollars a day on its war against the people in the east of that country. This money is borrowed money, the money it expects to make up for not allowing transfer of gas. They are also expecting the IMF, i.e. the American taxpayers, to pony up.

RT: Who do you think will be hardest hit, should Ukraine impose these sanctions?

DM: I find it ironic that the most bellicose of nations, and I’m thinking particularly of Poland and its Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski… he is the one who is taking the most pleasure in sticking it to Russia, the average Pole is going to have an awfully bitter winter this year, thanks to Sikorski. Poland has around 90 percent of its gas from Russia, so they will be cut off. The Baltic States are also heavily dependent, they are also particularly bellicose against Russia, so they are cutting their own noses to spite their faces.

RT: Ukraine has already lost Russia’s gas. Is the threat to prevent Europe from getting supplies as well, an act of desperation or a carefully planned move?

DM: You have seen Ukraine escalating the situation continuously from the beginning of this government in Kiev and there has been no one to tell them to put the brakes on. However, what are you seeing now in West European media? I think the panic has started to set in. When Russia first announced sanctions on the food items, there was a panic. The Europeans said: “This is not fair, this is playing politics” just after the day they followed the US demand to apply sanctions. The publisher of the huge German economic journal, Handelsblatt, with a very powerful column, yesterday criticized the German government for its sanctions. You saw on Monday an article in the BBC highlighting all of the companies: Scottish fish exporters, Irish cheese makers who are going to take enormous economic hits in these tit-for-tat sanctions. Energy is not different, the only person that will do it well is ironically the US vice-president ‘s son, Joe Biden’s son, who you know is on the board of one of the largest Ukrainian energy companies, who are selling their line to the Ukrainians to make up for all of this by fracking and other alternative sources, which is just a joke.

RT: Do you think this move could speed up the construction of the currently-frozen South Stream?

DM: On one hand, it’s in its interest [Bulgaria] without question to continue with the South Stream and to have as good relations as it can because it gets almost all of its energy from Russia. However, I can imagine there is enormous pressure from the US. One can only imagine the pressure to cancel the South Stream project. So Bulgaria is the place to watch now.

August 11, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Egypt imposes incapacitating conditions on relief convoys delivering aid to Gaza

MEMO | August 11, 2014

An official Egyptian document has revealed that Egyptian authorities are imposing incapacitating conditions on relief convoys seeking to deliver medical and food aid to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.

The document addressed the “regulatory rules for the entry of aid convoys to the Gaza Strip through the Rafah border crossing at this stage.”

The document, which was handed by the Egyptian authorities to the Arab branches of the Red Cross and Red Crescent organisations during their latest meeting in Jordan, stated that the Egyptian authorities have obliged relief organisations seeking to deliver aid to Gaza to submit a request to Egypt through the foreign ministries of the countries in which they operate. The request should include a list of the aid items that the organisations plan to take into Gaza through Rafah.

Relief agencies must then wait for the approval of the Egyptian foreign ministry before they start sending aid to Gaza.

The document specified that aid items must arrive at either the Ismailiya Airport or at Port Said. Aid agencies are required to pay the cost of unloading and shipping the food and medical aid items in any of the two locations.

Relief agencies are banned from providing construction material, gas cylinders, fuel, or funds into Gaza, according to the document, which also notified the Red Cross and Red Crescent that only a limited number of persons will be allowed to accompany the aid items into Gaza.

The document further stressed that journalists who seek to cross to Gaza must provide their names and passport information to the Egyptian authorities beforehand, and they must obtain approval from their countries’ foreign ministries or Cairo embassies. However, Egypt reserves the right to refuse people entry into Gaza through the Rafah crossing without specifying the reasons for this decision.

With regards medical teams, the document noted that doctors are required to submit requests to their countries’ foreign ministries and coordinate with the Palestinian Health Ministry in Ramallah before they can obtain the Egyptian authorities’ approval to enter Gaza.

The head of the Algerian Red Crescent Saida Benhabyles, who is also a former minister, said in a press conference held in the Algerian capital that the Egyptian authorities want to put the logo of the Egyptian Red Crescent along with the logo of any aid or relief agency delivering aid into Gaza.

Benhabyles announced that, due to the Egyptian conditions, the Algerian Red Crescent had to cancel a donation campaign that had aimed to deliver blood to Gaza.

August 11, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Jewish Lobby got journalist fired over a ‘Gaza Cartoon’

Rehmat’s World | August 7, 2014

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Mike Carlton, 68, Australia’s veteran journalist and author, has resigned after his employer Sydney Morning Herald suspended him under pressure from country’s powerful Jewish Lobby.

Australian Jewish groups had slammed the newspaper over Carlton’s July 26 column in which he accused the Zionist entity of “waging its own war of terror on the entire Gaza population”. The column was accompanied by a cartoon (shown above), which was widely condemned as “anti-Jew” by leaders of country’s organized Jewry which also threatened to take legal action against the newspaper under country’s “Hate Law”.

Initially, the newspaper defended the cartoon, explaining that Le Lievre’s drawing was inspired by “news photographs of Israeli Jews seated in chairs and lounges, observing the Israeli shelling of Gaza.”

But then, as expected, the Jewish Lobby invoked the “Six Million Died” smoking gun to demonize the newspaper. The Australian Jewish News wrote: “Not only were we treated to baseless accusations of ‘genocide’ and ‘ethnic cleansing’ on Israel’s part, but then there was a subtle shift. These were crimes being committed by ‘a people with a proud liberal tradition of scholarship and culture, who hold the Warsaw Ghetto and the six million dead of the Holocaust at the centre of their race memory.’ “This column was no longer about a country, this was about a people and a race – a people and a race who should know better because of what they themselves went through. In short, you Jews are the same as the Nazis, worse perhaps because you choose to ignore the lessons of your own history.”

If I were Carlton, I would have responded: “If the shoes fit, wear them.”

However, in order to avoid further backlash from the Jewish community and the pro-Israel Tony Abbott government, on August 3, Herald published an editorial saying it “unreservedly apologizes” for any hurt caused to the Jewish community. The paper also removed the cartoon based on facts from its website. Dr. Danny Lamm, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia welcomed paper’s apology and departure of anti-Semite Mike Carlton.

The Sydney Morning Herald is one of the 30% Australian media which is not owned by the Crypto-Jew billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Ltd..

On October 13, 2010 America’s highest paid Israeli lobbyist Abraham Foxman (nearly $700,000 per year) awarded Murdoch his organization’s (ADL) highest award for looking after Israeli interests through his media empire.

Former prime minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, and former foreign minister, Robert John Carr have claimed that country’s organized Jewry runs Australia.

August 11, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | 4 Comments

Israeli Genocide and its Willing Accomplices

By James Petras | The Peoples Voice | August 11, 2014

Introduction

Outside of Israel and its organized supporters in the major Zionist organizations, world public opinion and most experts in international law see the Jewish State’s invasion of Gaza and its systematic attack on civilians and basic infrastructure as a crime against humanity.

The purpose of this essay is 4-fold: 1. To identify the nature of the crime – the genocidal character of the armed assault and the sequence leading up to it; 2. To identify the direct perpetrators of the war crimes and their domestic and international accomplices; 3. To explain the ties binding leaders, policymakers, propagandists, accomplices and followers, including their ideologies, material interests and organizational structure which make these crimes not only possible, but met so far with impunity and 4. To identify the larger imperial interests with which Israel allies with the US, and in pursuit of which, the Gaza assault is a horrifying dress rehearsal.

The ‘Morality’ of Prison Guards in a Genocidal State

Policymakers in the genocidal state run a highly militarized society where citizens and soldiers, criminals and professionals, torturers and sociopaths can and do coexist within the same person. Cold rationality is harnessed to mass murder, technology to massive devastation, language to euphemisms and executioners parade themselves as victims (and vice versa). Moral precepts become debased and supplanted by the ethics of mass murder. Moralists, rabbis and ethical philosophers all join to bless the bombs dropped on hospitals and schools and homes and all living things – even the dead and buried do not rest in peace when the cemeteries are bombed.

Rulers, imbued with a genocidal vision, see only military objectives – an oppressed people do not exist – all human existence and institutions in the target areas are to be demolished. The destruction of human life, of Palestinian daily existence has become the ultimate goal of this obscene operation.

The practical decision to exterminate Palestinians was conscious, planned and pursued with implacable resolve at the very top and carried out with savage enthusiasm by Israel’s ‘citizen army’.

The unfolding of this deadly plan began with what appeared a ‘generous’ peace offer. In 2004, Israel’s war criminal Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon ‘granted’ the Palestinians self-government in Gaza and in August 2005 withdrew a few thousand Jewish settlers and their Israeli ground troops. The consequence of this benevolence: Over 1.4 million Palestinians were to be locked and crowded into the most densely packed open air prison in the world: the largest ghetto in history. This was a sickening reminder of the Nazi roundup of Polish Jews herding them into the Warsaw ghetto . . . where they too were granted ‘self-government’. Once the Jewish settlers were removed (and paid up to $300,000 per family ‘compensation’), Israel’s military closed all of Gaza’s entrances and exits. Land, sea and airspace were blockaded and total control imposed on the entrance of food, medicine, school books and the exit of Palestinians for medical treatment, university studies, normal travel and commerce of any kind. This mirrored the Nazi policy toward those trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. Palestinian farmers were shot tending their fields, acts of brutality reminiscent of the Nazi starvation blockade of Leningrad… And the world was appalled!

Gaza and the Ghetto were first set up to be open-air prison camps . . . temporary measures to mask the real plans. Gaza’s young population had grown to over 1.8 million entrapped human beings by 2014. Obviously, if the Gazans could not travel, farm, fish and trade by normal means, they would dig tunnels for supplies and fight against their relegation to the status of caged animals by the Israeli state. The next steps after the successful enclosure would be systematic and pre-meditated: the Zionists, like the Nazis, launched total war against the inevitable acts of resistance by the oppressed. They sent planes, tanks, missiles and bombs to level populated areas, especially neighborhoods where young fighters rose up to resist this unendurable cruelty. The heroic young fighters of Gaza, like their Warsaw predecessors, resisted their totalitarian enemies time and again. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Israeli Jews cheered the devastation while claiming to be the victims and young overseas Jews volunteered to join the IDF in its slaughter of the Palestinians, just as the German population celebrated, along with the overseas German Bund, their leaders’ totalitarian crimes. Their responses were almost identical although in different times and places: Chosen People and Aryans of the world have united against what they both termed ‘terrorists’ claiming their tunnels will become their graves!

In line with this super race mythology, Israel’s killing machine is really most effective at murdering unarmed civilians– invalids who cannot run, doctors who stay to care for the wounded and mothers and children in their flimsy shelters– and rather pathetic when it confronts face to face determined armed resistance fighters. As of 8/6/14 the Israeli Air Force, Navy and artillery slaughtered 1,594 Palestinian civilians –via long distance high tech warfare -compared to 3 civilians in Israel (one Bedouin, one Thai farm worker and an Israeli Jew), a mind-boggling ratio of over 1,500 Palestinian civilians to one of the ‘Chosen’. But when it came to ‘ground fighting’, 64 Israeli soldiers were killed compared to 281 Palestinian partisans, a 4.4 to 1 ratio. Despite all the Israeli air cover support and high tech protective gear, the Israelis took heavy military casualties when their invasion came down to a more level fighting field where poorly equipped partisans are willing to die for their homes and liberation.

The War Criminals: Who are They and What are their Crimes

Clearly the commanding officers of the Israeli armed forces, the self-styled Israel Defense Forces, who are responsible for the systematic land, aerial and maritime attacks on civilians, hospitals, schools, refugee sanctuaries are first in line for the war crimes docket. They should be joined by Israeli military strategists and policy makers who systematically and criminally targeted homes, neighborhoods, water purification and sewage plants, electrical grids and power plants in a deliberate planned effort to destroy any possibility of normal daily existence for almost 2 million Palestinians: They have committed grave Crimes against Humanity, according to the Geneva Conventions and legal standards established at Nuremburg. There is eye-witness testimony and documentation showing middle and lower rank soldiers engaged in wanton shootings of school children, shoppers and mothers with babies fleeing combat zones. War crimes prosecutions cannot be confined merely to a few dozen senior officers – these crimes were committed at all level of the IDF.

Political leaders and policymakers, starting with Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his Cabinet, leading Party and Knesset members, who were the prime movers in launching the blitz against Gaza and justified the massive civilian killings, clearly should be at the center of any International War Crimes Tribunal.

But what about the Israeli public, the great mass of Israeli Jews, who view themselves as morally above world public opinion despite a near-universal revulsion over Israel’s crimes? More than 90% of Israeli Jews gave unstinting support to the ongoing blood bath, knowing, indeed cheering daily from grandstands erected on hills overlooking Gaza, the criminal consequences of their support – they also are an essential part of this criminal enterprise. They celebrated the carnage and they violently attacked the few Israelis who openly questioned this ‘war’. Israelis have no claim to ‘innocent ignorance’; they cannot call this a “tragic conflict between two peoples”. No Israeli can absolve himself by claiming ignorance of the nature of the crimes committed in their name – nor do they want to claim ignorance! The majority of informed Israeli Jews demanded this war from the beginning, many joining racist marches with banners and chants demanding ‘Death to Arabs’! They wear their endorsement of the Gaza holocaust as a badge of honor. Ninety percent of the Jewish citizens in Israel rejected any humanitarian ceasefire: Newspaper columnists and the vast majority of letter writers in the daily press argued openly for extermination! Self-declared war criminals are feted as Israeli heroes by their overseas brethren who hasten to endorse or even join the slaughter. Gidon Levy, Haaretz’s lonely dissident journalist, is spat upon in all the fashionable cafes and has to take his coffee at home now.

What can be said about the ‘moralists’, the famous chief rabbis, who have no qualms in piously urging on the mass slaughter: is there a High Court of Religious Authority to hold these “holy men” accountable for their incitement of war crimes? What about the worldwide network of international Zionist organizations who secure billions of dollars of the murderous arms shipments from the corrupt and craven US Congress and Executive? Are they not accomplices to genocide before and after the fact?

However, it is a blatant, conscious lie and fabrication to claim, like some phony critics on the ‘Left’, that ‘America shares responsibility’ for the Israel’s crimes against Gaza. Who asked the American people to endorse this slaughter? When did the American people organize a “lobby” to buy Congressional votes? Did the American people organize multi-million dollar fundraisers at the luxurious Waldorf-Astoria where Republican and Democratic elected leaders pledged to give an additional $225 million dollars in missiles and tanks to Israel, to resupply its arsenal used up in razing thousands of homes and obliterating entire families in Gaza? Any serious researcher, who has looked at American domestic politics, knows that the Presidents of the 52 Major American (sic) Jewish Organizations are complicit in Israel’s terror bombings of Gaza. And polls show that a majority of young Americans sympathize with the rights of the Palestinians…

Is there any clause in the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal proceedings which can bring charges against the overseas accomplices to war crimes? What about prominent leftist academics and ‘progressive’ journalists who cover-up for the overseas accomplices by falsely accusing “America” (and implying the American people) in this slaughter?

The Ties that Bind

We have identified a chain linking Israel’s political elite, military command and the mass of the Israeli public directly to war crimes and genocide with the active material complicity of overseas Zionist organizations. They act as one cohesive force plunging forward into the blood and gore of total war against the Palestinians – the original inhabitants and rightful owners of what is now called ‘Israel’.

The question arises: What unites them in this horrible undertaking? What moral blindness so afflicts them that they ignore the bookshelves cluttered with the writings and humanist teachings of Spinoza, Kant, Babel, or Buber? Are these tribal loyalties derived from Old Testament tales of vengeance and infanticide? Are these expressions of an ethno-religious fanaticism linked to the quest for a regional empire and plunder?

Racist ideology and its virulent expression both from high office and the “Jewish Street” are wide-spread and open. Degrading Palestinians, while claiming to be a superior race above the laws of the rest of the world, serves to justify all crimes against the people of Gaza. Near and far, this expression of “collective Jewish identity and solidarity”, based on ethnic-religious superiority always threatened by hostile, inferior ‘native’ people, accounts for the unflinching support by top Hollywood moguls, Ivy League professors, French intellectuals, British peers and prominent investment Wall Street bankers.

Ideological affinities and ethno-religious loyalties aside, many Israeli Jews also have a major, material stake in robbing and expelling the people of Palestine: Seized Palestinian lands result in new cheap subsidized housing, swimming pools for Jews only, developments on lands where olive groves once flourished and extended families had lived and died. Middle and working class Jews obtain free housing; real estate speculators seize choice ocean front properties for luxury condos and tourist destinations. Building contractors secure lucrative construction contracts from the state. Pillage forms an important material basis for Israel’s high standard of living, many times higher than that of Palestinians, much higher that that of Israel’s non-Jewish population and higher even than the Americans who have been forced to subsidize the ‘Jewish State’ for almost 50 years.

Equally important, Israel’s assault on Gaza serves as a testing ground for its weapons of mass destruction and its anti-missile Dome. In this regard, the slaughter in Gaza serves as a dress rehearsal (and a graphic warning) for new wars across the region in association with the US and its clients. NSA analyst Edward Snowden’s latest documents reveal that Israel works in tandem with the US throughout North Africa, the Middle East, The Persian Gulf, South Asia and Islamic countries in choosing targets and making war plans… Greater Israel is no longer the crackpot dream of Jewish visionaries: it is underway and its bloody beginnings in Gaza foreshadow bigger and bloodier wars against humanity in the future.

Conclusion

Israel’s total war against Gaza has provoked condemnation from millions of people around the world, greater outrage at their crimes against humanity, and calls for an international war crimes tribunal. If such a tribunal were to be convoked, the question arises of how wide the net should be cast – where to draw the line between leaders, soldiers, masses and complicit overseas supporters, all implicated to one degree or another? How many ‘willing accomplices’ to mass murder should be investigated and tried?

The rising horror and indignation has isolated Israel from the greater majority of mankind, including from thousands of Jews – but it has hardened its leaders and aroused its powerful core of influential supporters, especially in the US.

Bitter-enders, in their luxurious suites, are on the counter-offensive. Leading Hollywood producers denounce the morally outraged actors who have dared to criticize Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, labeling them ‘anti-Semites’ and threatening them with a lifetime of blacklists from any further work in ‘film or on stage’. Powerful Zionist organizations, not only secure US opposition to any UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli war crimes, but unanimous (100%) Congressional and White House approval and an ‘emergency allocation’ of over $250 million tax-payer dollars’ to re-supply Israel with the bombs and missiles it had dropped on the people of Gaza. The hardliners, who speak for the Presidents of the 52 Major American Jewish Organizations, have not relented in their support for Israel’s carnage even in the face of hundreds of thousands of demonstrators marching around the world to support the rights of the people of Palestine. The hardliners openly flaunt their blind support for Israel’s war crimes. These fanatics are convinced that every critic of Israel’s war crimes, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew or atheist, is an anti-Semite, a pervert or terrorist to be censored or crushed! Inside the Zionist bunker there is an iron-fisted reinforcement of loyalty to Israel, while outside, there is the smooth outpouring of propaganda which minimize Israel’s war crimes and vehement denials of overseas complicity with genocide.

Epilogue: A Dialogue between Zionists

The Right Zionist says to the Left, “Crimes at the service of Greater Israel are virtues.” The Left replies “There are crimes but America is ultimately responsible”.

A shrewd old Zionist observer comments with approval: “It’s our division of labor: the Right Zionists defend Israel and the Left Zionists confuse its critics.”

-###-

James Petras is a Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York. He is the author of 64 books published in 29 languages, and over 560 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Journal of Peasant Studies.

August 11, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

South Stream to Be Constructed Despite Russia-West Stand-Off – Austrian Energy Group

RIA Novosti | August 10, 2014

MOSCOW — The current stand-off between Russia and the West over the situation in Ukraine will not affect the scheduled construction of South Stream gas pipeline, the Financial Times reported Sunday quoting the head of the Austrian energy group OMV.

“Nobody can tell you not to build a pipeline. It’s a matter of national law… Everybody can decide for themselves. A pipeline is a 50-year project, so one should look at things realistically… A few months is not an issue,” Gerhard Roiss was quoted as saying.

He added that possible EU sanctions against Russia targeting the country’s gas industry would be an unwise decision.

“We have had integration in the area of gas with Russia for 45 years. Customers rely on getting their gas delivered. For that reason I don’t see any room for sanctions on gas,” the OMV chief elaborated.

Roiss also stressed that Russia is already delivering gas via the Opal pipeline with an annual capacity of 36 billion cubic meters even though Russia’s Gazprom had not secured an EU approval to run the pipeline at full capacity. Opal passes through Germany connecting the new trans-Baltic North Stream pipeline with gas transmission networks in Western and Central Europe.

Ross also insisted that an increase in the number of supply routes to Europe will benefit energy security.

“Four pipelines are better than three, and five are better than four. That is the pragmatic view,” he said.

Gazprom is constructing the South Stream pipeline across the Black Sea to Southern and Central European countries with aiming to diversify export routes for Russian gas. The construction started in late 2012, with the first deliveries expected in 2016. The pipeline is expected to become fully operational in 2018.

The European Commission is trying to hamper the project saying it violates the EU Third Energy Package banning the companies involved in gas production from owning long-distance pipelines in the region.

On June 24, Gazprom and OMV signed a shareholder pact of the joint venture South Stream Austria, defining the principles of construction and further operation of the respective gas pipeline on the Austrian territory.

August 11, 2014 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment