‘Glaring Error’ in Sydney Terror Case Evidence, Says Defense
teleSUR | November 13, 2014
On Thursday, the lawyer of a Sydney man accused of plotting a terror attack said a phone call at the heart of the case was mistranslated.
“There are inaccuracies in the translation … there is apparently one glaring error, which goes to the absolute crux of whether this man is acquiescing to be involved in a terrorist act,” the accused man’s barrister, Winston Terracini QC stated, according to The Australian newspaper.
Police have alleged that the accused, Omarjan Azari conspired to carry out the attack with accused Islamic State group sympathizer, Mohammad Baryalei.
The prosecution told the court they are still analyzing other evidence, but Terracini claimed police have little else against Azara.
“It seems in fact there was only one phone call, despite previous claims there are others,” he said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Azari, was arrested in September, during a raid touted by law enforcement as the largest counter-terrorism raid of its kind in Australia’s history.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott stated the raids were made in response to a “serious risk” that the Islamic State group was planning to behead random members of the public in Sydney.
At the time, local media carried images of police seizing a sword from one home, with the Daily Mail printing the headline, “Was this the lethal sword terror cell planned to use to behead an innocent victim on a Sydney street?”
According to the sword’s owner Mustafa Dirani, the answer is no. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald in October, Dirani said the sword is a common Shiite household ornament, and it’s made of plastic.
We press ahead with independence efforts: Catalonia president
Press TV – November 10, 2014
Catalonia’s government has pledged to increase its secession efforts after more than two million people voted in a symbolic independence referendum despite opposition from Spain’s central government.
Artur Mas, the president of the nationalist government of Catalonia, on Sunday hailed the vote “a total success” and noted that the referendum “made it very clear that we want to govern ourselves.”
He further said that his government would make efforts to hold an official referendum and would seek international support to help persuade the Spanish government to let it happen.
“We deserve to vote in a legal and binding referendum and this is what we are going to try to do,” Mas added.
Catalan Vice President Joana Ortega said early on Monday that with approximately all votes counted, 80.72 percent of the Catalans have said yes-yes to two questions about the region’s independence.
Voters were asked to respond to two questions. “Do you want Catalonia to become a state?” and “If so, do you want Catalonia to be an independent state?”
Over 10 percent of the voters said Yes to the statehood and No to its independence, and 4.55 percent voted neither for the statehood of the region nor for its independence.
The “Yes” in the non-binding vote will not automatically lead to the secession of the region, but only gives the Catalan president the mandate to negotiate independence with the Spanish administration.
Spanish Justice Minister Rafael Catala, meanwhile, denounced the vote as “fruitless and useless.
“The government considers this to be a day of political propaganda organized by pro-independence forces and devoid of any kind of democratic validity,” he added in a statement in the Spanish government’s first reaction to the polls held on Sunday.
Eastern Ukraine Independence Leaders Win the Elections
teleSUR | November 3, 2014
The incumbent prime ministers of the eastern Ukrainian People’s Republic of Donetsk and the Republic of Lugansk, Alexander Zakharchenko, and Igor Plotinitski, respectively, won the elections, according to preliminary results revealed by the Ruptly news agency.
The preliminary results show that Zakharchenko received over 70 percent of the votes, while Plotnitski received 63 percent. Zakharchenko’s closest rival, the vice president of the joint parliament of Donetsk and Lugansk, Alexander Kofman, received about 10 percent of the votes.
The initial results also indicate Zakharchenko’s separatist party has swept up an easy majority in the DPR’s parliament, with over 60 percent of the vote, Russian media outlets have reported.
“The fact that we have a right to carry out our own elections was written,” Zacharchenko said. He stated that the elections don’t contravene the Minsk agreements, which were signed with Kiev in order to reestablish peace in Eastern Ukraine. “We are ready to carry out conversations with whomever is willing to listen to us.”
This Sunday the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk went to the polling stations to elect new leaders and parliaments. Voting began at 8:00 a.m. local time (05:00 GMT) and continued to do so until 22:00 p.m. (19:00 GMT). All residents over 16 years of age were eligible to vote in Donetsk and Lugansk.
“The elections, which were prepared under difficult conditions, very quickly, were nonetheless carried out in an organized way,” Russian electoral observer Leonid Slutsky told Reuters.
Sunday’s vote in the DPR and neighboring Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) has been condemned by officials in Kiev, but backed by Moscow.
Ahead of the vote, German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the elections as “illegitimate,” though at the time of writing there were no reports from international observers of serious misconduct. Merkel had already warned Russia that the European Union would not accept the results of the elections. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had also warned Russia against recognizing the rebel held elections in the region.
“I believe the elections followed international standards of democratic elections. I was very impressed with the enthusiasm and the vigor with which the people went to the polls to express their opinion,” electoral observer and U.S. Senior Attorney Frank Abernathy told RT in Lugansk.
A DPR official told Russia’s Itar-Tass the most serious incident was a bomb threat, which later turned out to be a false alarm.
On the frontlines, however, clashes continued between DPR fighters and Ukrainian government forces. The fierce combat has left a death toll of over 300 people dead in the last 10 days, in spite of a bilateral cease-fire that was put into effect September 5.
Last Sunday, Ukraine also held parliamentary elections, which were won by the right wing party of Petro Poroshenko. The results were recognized by Russia.
‘Entire villages disappeared’: Ebola deaths in Sierra Leone ‘under-reported’
RT | November 1, 2014
Ebola’s toll on Sierra Leone is much greater than previously thought, with entire villages killed off by the virus. This means up to 20,000 people could have succumbed to the disease by now, a senior coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) believes.
According to Rony Zachariah, coordinator of operational research for MSF, the Ebola impact on Sierra Leone is in fact “under-reported,” AFP quotes.
“The situation is catastrophic. There are several villages and communities that have been basically wiped out. In one of the villages I went to, there were 40 inhabitants and 39 died,” Zachariah told the agency. “Whole communities have disappeared but many of them are not in the statistics. The situation on the ground is actually much worse.”
The latest figures from the World Health Organization (WHO) put the total number of dead at 4,951 out of 13,567 recorded cases.
But the real total could be up to 20,000 people dead, Zachariah argues. “The WHO says there is a correction factor of 2.5, so maybe it is 2.5 times higher and maybe that is not far from the truth. It could be 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000.”
Zachariah also highlighted the shortage of healthcare workers in the country.
“You have one nurse for 10,000 people and then you lose 10, 11, 12 nurses. How is the health system going to work?” he said.
Even at this point, the pace of dealing with Ebola is slow, he added. “We might get a vaccine and a treatment… but even now we need to go much faster because the clock is ticking…We want action now.”
Meanwhile, the latest cases of Ebola in Spain and the US have sparked fears of an even bigger outbreak, prompting Canada to step up its border security so as to limit the risk of infection spreading into the country.
The federal government announced on Friday it is suspending the processing of visa applications for residents and nationals who have been in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone in the last three months. The same goes for permanent residence applications. … Full article
READ MORE: Canada imposes visa ban on Ebola-hit African countries
ISIS: the Useful Enemy
By ISMAEL HOSSEIN-ZADEH | CounterPunch | October 31, 2014
The dark force of ISIS is apparently an invincible and unstoppable war juggernaut that is mercilessly killing and conquering in pursuit of establishing an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In reality, however, it is not as out of control as it appears. It is, indeed, carefully controlled and managed by its creators and supporters, that is, by the United States and its allies in the region—those who now pretend to have established a coalition to fight it! The U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other allies in the region do not really need to fight ISIS to (allegedly) destroy it; all they need to do to extinguish its hellish flames is stop supplying fuel for its fire, that is, stop supplying it with funds, mercenaries, military training and armaments.
There are many ways to show the fact that, in subtle ways, ISIS benefactors control its operations and direct its activities in accordance with their own geopolitical interests. One way is to pay attention to its purported mission: to dismantle the corrupt and illegitimate regimes in Iraq and Syria and replace them with a “pure” Islamic state under the rule of a “pious caliphate.” Despite this professed mission to fight the dictatorial regimes that have tarnished Islam, however, ISIS does not question the most corrupt, dictatorial and illegitimate regimes in the region—such as the Saudi, Qatari, Kuwaiti and Jordanian regimes that fund and arm its operations.
Another way is to compare ISIS’s attack (in early August) on the Iraqi Kurds in Irbil with its current attack on the Syrian Kurds in Kobani. When Irbil came under attack by ISIS, the U.S. unleashed the full force of its air power in concert with the Kurdish peshmerga fighters to repel the attack.
By contrast, while the Kurdish city of Kobani in Northern Syria is being attacked by the disproportionately better armed forces of ISIS, and thousands of its besieged residents face certain mass killings if it falls, the forces of the “coalition to fight ISIS” are watching—in effect, playing a game of hide-and-seek, or perhaps trick-or-treat, with ISIS—as the outgunned and out-manned Kurdish forces are valiantly fighting to the death against the attackers. Only occasionally the coalition forces carry out bombing missions that seem to be essentially theatrical, or just for the record.
So, why are the Kurds in Kobani treated differently than those in Irbil? I find Ajamu Baraka’s answer to this question quite insightful:
“The reason why the Kurds of Kobani are to be sacrificed stems from the fact that they are the wrong kind of Kurds. Masoud Barzani and the bourgeois Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) are the “good Kurds” and the predominant force among the Kurds of Iraq. Their control of almost 45% of Iraqi oil reserves and the booming business that they have been involved in with U.S. oil companies and Israel since their ‘liberation’ with the U.S. invasion makes them a valued asset for the U.S. The same goes for Turkey where despite the historic oppression of Kurds in Turkey, the government does a robust business with the Kurds of Iraq” (Source).
While the U.S., Turkey and their allies in the region do not view KDP as a threat to their geopolitical plans (at least for now), they do so when it comes to the “bad” Kurds in the self-governing area in Northern Syria, led by the Kurdish People’s Protection Unit (YPG). Contrary to KDP that tends to shun the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey in order not to antagonize the Turks, the United States and their allies in the region, YPG welcomes support from PKK in its fight against ISIS.
Turkey’s overriding interest in Syria is not so much against ISIS as it is against the Syrian Kurds, as well as the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad; because the rabidly anti-Kurd regime in Ankara fears that the weakened regime of Assad may not be able to do away with the self-governing Kurds in Kobani and the surrounding Kurdish areas. The Turkish regime is concerned that if the Kobani Kurds succeed in fending off the ISIS forces, their success and their experience of self-government in the Kobani region, may serve as a tempting model of self-rule for the 15-million Kurds in Turkey. The Turks are also concerned that the success of the Syrian Kurds against ISIS would thwart their long-harbored ambitions to occupy and/or annex the oil-rich Kurdish region in Northern Syria—hence their insistence on a buffer or no-fly zone in that region.
This helps explain why the Turkish regime insists that the overthrow of the Assad regime must take precedence over the fight against ISIS. It also explains why it is feverishly trying to prevent the Kurdish volunteers to cross its border with Syria to help the besieged Kobani defenders against the brutal ISIS attack—in effect, helping ISIS against the Kurds. The inaction or half-hearted action of the United States in the face of the preventable slaughter of the Syrian Kurds, which makes it complicit in the carnage, can be explained by its political horse-trading with Turkey in exchange for the Turks’ collaboration with the pursuit of its imperialistic interests in the region.
The U.S. approach to ISIS would be better understood when it is viewed in the context of its overall objectives in the region—and beyond. That overriding objective, shared and reinforced by its client states, is to undermine or eliminate “the axis of resistance,” consisting of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and, to a lesser extent, Shia forces in Iraq, Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Achievement of this goal would also be achievement of another, even broader, goal: undermining Russia’s influence and alliances in the region and, by extension, in other parts of the world—for example, its critically important role within both the Shanghai Cooperation Council (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) and the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).
To intervene in order to achieve these goals, the U.S. and its allies need pretexts and/or enemies—even if it means inventing or manufacturing such enemies. Without ISIS, resumption of U.S. military operations in Iraq and extension of those operations into Syria would have been difficult to justify to the American people. A year or so ago, the Obama administration’s drive to attack Syria was thwarted by the opposition from the American people and, therefore, the U.S. congress. The rise of ISIS quickly turned that opposition to support.
Viewed in this light, ISIS can be seen as essentially another (newly manufactured) instrument in the tool-box of U.S. foreign policy, which includes “global terrorism,” the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, weapons of mass destruction, Iran’s nuclear technology, Al-Qaeda, and many other radical Islamic groupings—all by-products of, or blowbacks to, imperialistic U.S. foreign policies.
Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion
Hamas official denies group’s involvement in Sinai attacks
MEMO | October 27, 2014
Mousa Abu-Marzouk, deputy of the Hamas political bureau, offered his condolences to the families who lost members in the terrorist attack in Abu Zeid, Sinai, on Friday.
Abu-Marzouk said: “We regret hearing about any drop of blood spilt in Egypt or anywhere in the Arab world as such news is very painful.”
In a telephone interview on Egyptian TV show Lazem Nafham, Abu-Marzouk stressed that linking Hamas to the attack in Sinai is an unwarranted claim that lacks any evidence. He said Hamas is a resistance movement that focuses its efforts toward the Israeli occupation and not its brothers in Egypt.
Abu-Marzouk went on to clarify that Hamas’ forces inside the Gaza Strip have increased their security measures to ensure that no activity takes place in Sinai and he asked the Egyptian government to avoid blaming the Palestinian people for actions and events that they have nothing to do with.
Emphasising that Palestinian have no reason to interfere in internal Egyptian affairs, he stressed that no party should accuse Hamas of anything without clear evidence and pointed out that the Palestinians have done nothing short of ensuring Egyptian national security.
“My statements regarding the kidnapping of Egyptian soldiers in Sinai are verified by a trustworthy source,” Abu-Marzouk said. He went on to emphasise that Gaza is the least extremist area in the entire Arab region.
Russia recognizes Ukraine poll despite violations, doubts
RT | October 27, 2014
It is obvious that the Supreme Rada elections in Ukraine can be considered valid despite a rather harsh and dirty campaign, Russia’s deputy foreign minister has said.
“We expect the official confirmation of the elections result, the information we are getting now is quite controversial. But even now it is obvious that the elections have taken place, despite a hard struggle and dirty tricks,” the Interfax news agency quoted Grigory Karasin as saying.
“The forming balance of forces will probably allow the Ukrainian authorities to deal with some rooted problems in the society,” the senior Russian diplomat added.
Karasin’s words echo an earlier statement from Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin who described the Ukrainian parliamentary campaign as “dirty and cynical”, but did not exclude the possibility of cooperation between Russian authorities and the new Rada.
The head of the Russian Upper House’s commission for monitoring the situation in Ukraine, Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov told the RIA Novosti news agency that Russian officials would try to cooperate with the freshly elected Ukrainian government despite doubts of its legitimacy.
“The southeast has not voted and there were lots of violations,” he said.
Dzhabarov noted that the new Rada would be much more radical than the previous one and emphasized the fact that the Communist Party of Ukraine did not make it into the parliament. Communists held over 13 percent of seats in the Rada after 2012 polls. The Russian senator said that this was a very surprising fact in a democratic country.
“We will attempt to cooperate in any case. We hope that reason would prevail among our new colleagues,” the senator said. “We cannot but attempt to build cooperation with the Rada because we have common history and we are neighbors.”
He also added that Russian Upper House chair, Valentina Matviyenko, had already sent the Ukrainian parliament an invitation to participate in the November session of the parliamentary assembly of the Russia-led CIS economic and political bloc.
The head of the Federation Council’s Committee for Constitutional Law, Andrey Klishas, promised the Russian parliament would cooperate with Ukrainian politicians who press for an end to the civil war and oppose the neo-Nazi state, and the arbitrariness and mass violations of human rights in Ukraine
“Ukrainians themselves cannot fail to notice the mass violations of human rights during the latest parliamentary campaign. These were the ban of free speech, attacks on opposition candidates, mass violence in the form of the so called ‘popular gatherings,’ even lynch mobs on the side of the pro-fascist political forces,” Klishas told RIA Novosti.
According to latest reports PM Arseny Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front party is ahead of rivals with 21.69 percent of votes, and President’s Petro Poroshenko Bloc is only slightly behind, so far garnering 21.63 percent. The other four parties making it into the Ukrainian parliament are the Samopomosh of Lvov’s Mayor Andrey Sadovy (10.9), Opposition Bloc (9.77), Radical Party of Oleg Lyashko (7.47), and Yulia Tymoshenko’s party Batkivshchina (Fatherland) (5.77).
Nigeria Announces Truce With Boko Haram
teleSUR | October 17, 2014
The Nigerian military announced on Friday that it reached a ceasefire agreement with the Islamist militant movement, Boko Haram, and that the Nigerian schoolgirls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram will be returned to their families.
Air Chief Marshal Badeh first spoke about the truce after a three day meeting between Nigeria and Cameroon. The BBC is reporting that the negotiations were mediated by Chad.
An official with Nigeria’s security forces told Reuters “Commitment among parts of Boko Haram and the military does appear to be genuine … It is worth taking seriously.”
Boko Haram has not made any statement about a truce.
The school girls were abducted from Chibok, a town in the northeastern state of Borno state, six months ago. Through the efforts of Nigerian women activists, the kidnapping of the girls became an international cause and brought Boko Haram onto the world stage. The Nigerian government has been strongly criticized by local as well as international human rights groups for its “lackluster” efforts to retrieve the girls. The release of the girls will be finalized next week in Ndjamena, Chad’s capital.
The Nigerian government spokesperson said that Boko Haram will not be given any land, but that the national government will not say what compromises it has made toward the militant group.
Boko Haram was founded in 2002 and has been fighting with the Nigerians military since 2009. More than 2,000 civilians have been killed this year in this conflict.
Putin: Ukraine’s new Donbass law ‘not perfect, but a step in right direction’
RT | October 17, 2014
The new law giving special status to troubled regions in eastern Ukraine is ‘not perfect,’ but might be used to finally stabilize the situation in the area, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart in Milan.
“Perhaps it’s not a perfect document, but it’s a step in the right direction, and we hope it will be used in complete resolution of security problems,” Putin said after closed-door talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Friday.
The two presidents met in Milan privately on the sidelines of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), a summit of Asian and European leaders.
The document on special status for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions was signed by Poroshenko on Thursday.
The legislation “defines temporary order of local government in certain districts,” according to the Ukrainian president’s official website.
The special order enacts governance “in the cities, towns and villages” to be “carried out by territorial communities through local government bodies under the Constitution and the Laws of Ukraine,” with local elections scheduled in the districts for December 7.
It also aims to restore the regions’ infrastructure and “create conditions” to stabilize the situation in the area.
The new law, which will be valid for three years from the date of its publication, is part of the agreement reached between Kiev authorities and eastern Ukrainian militias in Minsk on September 5.
The Minsk protocol, which also includes decisions on a ceasefire and the exchange of war prisoners, should be the guideline in Ukraine’s conflict management, Putin said.
“I’d like to point out that these agreements, unfortunately, are not fully implemented by either side,” added the Russian leader, speaking to journalists after the Milan talks.
Italy, France, Germany, and Russia have expressed willingness to use drones to monitor the situation in the region, Putin said. He added that the technical side of the plan will be discussed in the near future, when specialists gather at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe) headquarters in Vienna.
Special Tribunal for Lebanon issues another controversial decision
Al-Akhbar | October 6, 2014
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) decided on October 3 that it does have jurisdiction to hear cases against legal persons. However, member of tribunal Judge Walid Akoum objected to the decision because it allows for the prosecution of Lebanese political parties.
Old habits die hard and the STL was unable to change its old ways or deviate from the path that the rulers of the United Nations Security Council designed for it. An appeals panel issued a decision so dangerous that it prompted one of the members of the panel, Judge Akoum, to dissent (then sign it). But he did register his reservations, warning: “The present proceedings are already delicate. To this we now add a decision that potentially permits contempt charges to be brought against political parties, Lebanese institutions, associations or any other actors that are recognized as legal persons. In my view, there is no reason to do so.”
Akoum’s statement and the panel’s decision yesterday are in relation to the prosecution of Al-Akhbar newspaper and Al-Jadeed TV as well as the two colleagues, Ibrahim al-Amin and Karma al-Khayat on charges of contempt of court. The charges were brought against them for publishing information about secret witnesses on whose testimonies the prosecution relied to issue indictments.
The STL’s Contempt Judge Nicola Lettieri had issued a decision on July 24 stating that the Tribunal prosecutes individuals, not legal persons (corporations, institutions, political parties, states, entities…), therefore concluding that the STL has no personal jurisdiction to prosecute Al-Jadeed TV. He decided to proceed with the prosecution against Khayat, but not the company for which she works.
Lettieri’s decision constituted a positive development in the Tribunal’s track record of problematic and politicized decisions. However, the appeals panel consisting of the presiding judge, Janet Nosworthy, and members Judge Akoum and Judge Ivana Hrdlickova – Judge Rapporteur – reversed this decision. It expanded, once again, the jurisdiction of the tribunal, reiterating that it is not restricted to the prosecution of individuals accused with assassinating former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, but includes the prosecution of legal persons as well.
What Akoum talked about goes beyond the prosecution of Al-Jadeed TV now and Al-Akhbar in the coming weeks and months. It also goes beyond talks of freedom of opinion and expression and of violating Lebanese sovereignty. It primarily has to do with the process of promoting the Tribunal even before the decision to establish it was issued in 2007 by claiming that it will not accuse states, political parties or institutions, rather its authority is restricted to the prosecution of individuals.
The political translation of yesterday’s decision is that the Tribunal can now prosecute Hezbollah and not just certain members within the party.
Israel’s false peace
By Iqbal Jassat | Media Review Network | October 2, 2014
What is it about proclamations of “peace” that allows injustice to continue unhindered?
It’s a question applicable to governments, security institutions, media columnists and pro-Israel lobbies who regularly espouse a passion for “peace in the Holy Land”.
While on the surface it appears to be a perfectly normal and laudable aspiration, in the experience of Palestine it is unfortunately riddled with inconsistencies making it alarmingly dishonest.
“Peace” as espoused by Israel’s leaders is no more than a fig leaf for it seeks to conceal the regime’s unremitting repression of Palestinian rights.
Though “peace” is a concept embodying humane values associated with calm and serenity, for Palestinians it has had a devastating opposite effect. Their daily experience whether as refugees awaiting return home or as a collective of Occupied people, points to a life of subjugation which has for decades been exploited by successive governments in Israel.
While the deception inherent in Israel’s so-called desire for “peace” is known and documented quite extensively, it is also known that by leaning on this false notion, the regime has attempted to deflect scrutiny of its unjust conduct towards Palestinians.
Such deliberate and calculated sophistry has assisted Israel and her supporters to bluff the world. By staking its claim as a “peaceful” state whose citizens deserve to live in “peace”, Israel’s social architects expect immunity from censure for any and all forms of oppression and military barbarity.
“Peace” is thus a linguistic political tool without any connection to the noble values it incorporates. Malicious and misleading to the extreme for it implies that to oppose Israel is to oppose “peace”. In other words, anti-Israelism is equated with mindless violence.
This type of faulty rationale is deliberately constructed to demonise opponents of the regime’s colonial status as violent. Thus in the context of contrasting “peace” and “violence”, Israel continues to rally support for its savagery on the basis of an aspiration most people would unhesitatingly subscribe to.
Netanyahu has repeated this trick once again at the United Nations. By casting Israel as a victim of “terrorism” perpetrated by “violent” ideologues of “Islamist radicalism”, he hopes to garner global sympathy and thereby shield his apartheid regime’s catalogue of atrocities.
America’s current bombing spree in cahoots with Britain and France and their respective Arab client-states gives Israel perfect timing and cover. In Iraq and Syria, the US-led “war on terror” has a new enemy in the guise of ISIS commonly referred to as the Islamic State.
Overnight, ISIS has emerged as a new villain threatening the existence of Western civilization. Its dominance over large swathes of Iraq and Syria including key oil fields precipitated what most people currently associate ISIS with: beheadings of Western journalists.
Suddenly this new “Islamist bogeyman” emerges to not only distract global attention from Israel’s beheadings of Palestinian families, but also to extend a fresh lifeline to America’s military industrial complex. And, of course, to provide Netanyahu the opportunity to cast resistance movements such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the mould of ISIS.
Such tricks conjure the minds of magicians and keep people enthralled while deceptive policies of dispossession continue uninterrupted.
Netanyahu and his clique of magicians may believe that waving the wand of “peace” will conceal Israel’s bloody carnage and ongoing aggression, but unfortunately for Zionism this illusion won’t last.
If South Africa is used as a yardstick to measure whether Israel’s bag of dirty tricks has worked, it’s pretty clear that Netanyahu has failed dismally.
Here, a sustained campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) led by the ANC as the ruling party and a formidable formation of civil societies, churches and trade unions has demonstrated that it has not been deceived by false notions of “peace”.
Moscow rejects Kiev’s ‘virtual’ gas price, seeks $3.9bn to resume supplies
RT | September 30, 2014
Russia is ready to resume gas deliveries to Ukraine only after it pays $2 billion of its debt and makes a $1.9 billion advance payment for future supplies, Russian Minister of Energy Aleksandr Novak said.
“There will be no new supplies if part of the debt is not paid. Otherwise, it turns out to be a game with only one goal, where we deliver the gas and the debt payment is postponed,” he argued.
Novak said that Ukraine is prepared to pay $3.1 billion of its Russian gas debt.
“They calculated the cost at their own virtual price at $268.5 [per thousand cubic meters of gas],” the Minister said.
However Russia is happy to sell its gas at $385 which amounts to $1.9 billion for the 5 billion cubic meters Ukraine wants to purchase. Together with the debt payment it amounts to $3.9 billion.
Prepayment will likely be made every month, according to the needs of Ukraine. The amount of $3.1 billion has to be paid in two tranches: $2 billion before supplies are resumed, and the remainder – by the end of the year, Novak said.
Russia is ready to fulfill the agreements reached on Friday in Berlin and is waiting for a Ukrainian response, Novak said answering a question concerning the possibility of sealing the deal this week.
All the agreements of the so-called “winter plan” worked out on September 26 were verbal, and the gas price remains an unresolved issue.
The money for this plan has already been provided to Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Novak said.
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UAE tortured, killed journalist for opposing Israel normalization
The Cradle | October 31, 2026
UAE security officers detained, tortured, and killed Emirati poet and news editor Habib al-Sayegh in August 2019, shortly after he published a column opposing UAE normalization with Israel, according to a newly published book.
“Princes and Thieves,” a book by investigative journalist Matthew Cole published on 25 October, alleges that UAE security officers raided Sayegh’s Abu Dhabi home shortly after the publication of the column, hooded him in front of his wife and took him to a detention facility where he was tortured to death.
His interrogators reportedly pulled out several of his teeth with pliers and beat him repeatedly with a sharp metal object.
On 11 August 2019, Sayegh criticized the UAE’s plan to normalize relations with Israel as part of the Abraham Accords in his weekly column for Khaleej newspaper. The column was titled “Israel Is Our Real Enemy and A Dangerous Project.”
Sayegh described Israel as “a real and natural enemy” while questioning “who authorized the normalizers to speak on behalf of everyone?”
Nine days after the column was published, Emirati state media announced his death, without stating a cause. … continue
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