Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Global Elite Agitating for War Against Russia

Insane bill in Senate will ultimately result in nuclear destruction
Global Elite Agitating for War Against Russia
by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | July 29, 2014





Victoria Nuland — who acted as the front person for the State Department’s coup in Kiev — bluntly expressed the opinion of the United States toward the European Union back in February.
Nuland employed a choice expletive when she dismissed the glacial movement of EU apparatchiks and their apparent political paralysis in response to the State Department’s covert effort to install a cooperative regime in Ukraine.
The MH17 downing was engineered to move the EU and public consensus in the direction of open confrontation with Russia. The EU does not want to appear indifferent and lackadaisical to the exploitatively propagandized tragedy, so it will lend its support for a new round of sanctions and, most importantly, the neocon introduced Senate bill 2277, the so-called “Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014” more appropriately dubbed the World War III bill.
The legislation was introduced by Sen. Bob Corker, who is slated to become the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee if Republicans take control of that house in November.
If passed the Corker bill will declare Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine “major non-NATO allies” and move NATO troops and equipment into the former Soviet republics of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. It will put an ABM system on the fast track in Eastern Europe and step up military and intelligence assistance to Ukrainian forces fighting against separatists in Donbass and elsewhere in Eastern Ukraine.
Other suggestions arising from Congress include adding Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Finland, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Sweden to NATO.
The Corker bill will encourage the color revolution crowd to subvert the Russian Federation. “S. 2277 would direct the secretary of state to intensify efforts to strengthen democratic institutions inside the Russian Federation, e.g., subvert Vladimir Putin’s government, looking toward regime change,” writes Patrick Buchanan.
Congress and establishment media blame Russia for MH17 downing without evidence.
“The U.S. directive to the State Department to work with NGOs in Russia, blatant intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, would be answered with a general expulsion of these agencies from Moscow,” Buchanan adds.
In 2012 Russia booted the premier color revolution organization – the U.S. Agency for International Development – out of the country. The State Department’s USAID, writes Eva Golinger, “is the principal entity that promotes the economic and strategic interests of the US across the globe as part of counterinsurgency operations… Wherever a coup d’etat, a colored revolution or a regime change favorable to US interests occurs, USAID and its flow of dollars is there.”
Corker and the neocon Republicans – including Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell, and others who co-sponsored S. 2277 – are looking to push a reluctant EU into a war posture with its trading partner.

“Most Europeans have little stomach for confronting Russia,” writes Doug Bandow for Forbes. “Economic ties with Moscow are profitable, there is no treaty obligation to Ukraine, and no alliance member desires war. So Washington has taken the lead against Moscow even though America has little at stake in Russia’s misbehavior.”
“Efforts to expand NATO are strikingly misguided. Traditional military alliances were created to advance a nation’s security. They were not intended to act as clubs for international business, associations for shared values, or tools for political integration. Military alliances were supposed to prevent and win wars. During the Cold War the U.S. established the alliance to protect the war-ravaged European states from America’s hegemonic adversary, the Soviet Union, and its satellite-allies.”
NATO has morphed from a post-war relic ostensibly designed to protect Europe into a belligerent alliance aligned against the Russian Federation. It works not only to destroy its economic relationship with Western Europe, but foment regime change within its borders.
“Western elites desire to loot Russia, a juicy prize, and there stands Putin in the way. The solution is to get rid of him like they got rid of President Yanukovich in Ukraine,” writes Paul Craig Roberts.
The last time a spat in Eastern Europe turned excessively violent, 65,000,000 people died and set the stage for the death of 85,000,000 a few years later. In total, during the 20th century, an excess of 250,000,000 people were killed by government.
A repeat of a similar situation will not result in a conventional war, but a nuclear one. “We have 450 active ICBMs, but because of geographical constraints, they can really only be used to attack Russia,” writes Eugene K. Chow.
The United States has a total inventory of 4,650 nuclear weapons, including nearly 2,000 actively deployed warheads, and Russia has about the same, Chow explains.
Nuclear weapons, like all weapons, were invented to be used and gain superiority and dominance over an enemy. “The crossbow, the dreadnought, poison gas, the tank, the landmine, chemical weapons, napalm, the B-29, the drone,” all of these weapons have been used, writes Tom Engelhardt, and some of them still are.
Recently a senior adviser to Vladimir Putin said the U.S. plans a nuclear first strike on Russia. Paul Craig Roberts insists the placement of ABM systems in Eastern Europe are intended to intercept Russian missiles after a first strike.
“The Western elites and governments are not merely totally corrupt, they are insane. As I have previously written, don’t expect to live much longer,” Roberts warns.


In Case of Hurricane: Save the Illegals!

 
by Infowars.com | July 29, 2014







Women and children first! Unless they’re American citizens.
They won’t even be told of dangerous emergencies until illegal immigrants are safely out of the area.




Monday, July 28, 2014

In Event of Emergency, Illegals to be Evacuated Before Citizens

'For everyone's safety..'
In Event of Emergency, Illegals to be Evacuated Before Citizens
Image Credits: Public domain
by Adan Salazar | Infowars.com | July 28, 2014

Should a hurricane or other life-threatening, catastrophic weather event impact South Texas, illegal aliens occupying various shelters will be first in line to get “to safer ground,” a National Weather Service coordinator says.
At a meeting last week, emergency managers in the Rio Grande Valley region addressed the reality that, in addition to picking up the tab for putting the immigrants up, they have also accepted responsibility for their safety. That means ensuring illegal aliens have a safe evacuation from temporary and permanent shelters during an emergency.
“You have extra sheltering areas and detention centers right here,” NWS Coordinator Barry Goldsmith told KRGV News. “And are they able to withstand the wind, are they able to withstand flood waters nearby to get humanitarian relief.”
Goldsmith is worried that if a hurricane or other emergency hits, the evacuation of some 4,000 illegal aliens could be impeded by citizens also trying to reach safety.
One way to ensure the illegals remain safe is to evacuate them before the general population receives evacuation orders, Valley city leaders have concluded.
“The entire Valley detention areas will be evacuated first,” says Goldsmith. “In other words, before the public gets their mandatory evacuation, the plan is to get all these unaccompanied women and children out of the Valley and to safer ground.”
The city and federal officials say by getting unaccompanied alien women and children out first, they are trying to avoid a Hurricane Rita-type situation, where more than 100 people died during the mass exodus of 2.5 million people from the Houston area.
The decision, which appears to have been made sans public input, illustrates how the establishment is seemingly taking better care of people in the country illegally, while military veterans and destitute American citizens continue to be cast by the wayside.
“In 2009, for example, former Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki and President Obama announced a goal to end Veteran homelessness by the end of 2015, giving the administration a little over six years to shelter the nearly 75,000 vets who were homeless in 2009,” explains Infowars’ Kit Daniels.
“But it only took the White House a month to shelter thousands of illegal immigrant youth, showing what the administration can do when it’s politically motivated.”
Facilities which could be repurposed to house homeless vets, such as the compound being used to house nearly 2,000 minors at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, for instance, operate at a tax payer cost of over $250 per child daily, or half a million per day.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Malaysian Flight False Flag Evidence Revealed

Neocons and their state-run media would have us believe the case is closed
by Infowars.com | July 20, 2014




Less than 24 hours after the devastating attack that downed Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, Neocons and their state-run media would have us believe the case is closed…before an investigation has even been launched. We break down the repetitive false-flag narrative.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Edward Snowden: ‘If I End Up in Chains in Guantanamo, I Can Live With That’

Government negotiations for Snowden to return home at standstill
Edward Snowden: 'If I End Up in Chains in Guantanamo, I Can Live With That'
by Nadia Prupis | Common Dreams | July 19, 2014



NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave a video interview to the Guardian this week to discuss the state of internet privacy, the changing landscape of investigative journalism, and what his life has been like since he released the classified documents last year that exposed the U.S. government’s global surveillance program. In one of the more poignant moments of the interview, Snowden spoke thoughtfully — and bluntly — about what his future might be if he leaves asylum in Russia and returns home to the U.S.

“If I end up in chains in Guantanamo,” Snowden told his interviewers, “I can live with that.”
Snowden also called on lawyers, journalists, doctors, and others who handle sensitive information to use alternative “zero-knowledge” security software and search engines that would protect confidentiality of sources and clients online better than Skype, Dropbox, or Google, for example. In some cases, he said, the big companies are actively anti-privacy, noting that Dropbox just added surveillance advocate Condoleezza Rice to their board of directors and calling them a “wannabe PRISM partner.”
 Technology can be useful for privacy, he said, as long as we don’t “sleepwalk” into accepting new apps. “We shouldn’t trust them without verifying what their activities are, how they’re using our data, and deciding for ourselves whether it’s appropriate where they draw the lines,” he said.Google and Skype have been useful for hosting public chats and interviews, Snowden said, but he would never rely on them in his personal life.Currently, with a lack of reliable privacy software and the consequences of unlimited government power, journalism has become “immeasurably harder,” Snowden said. The first contact with a source, “before encrypted communications are established, is enough to give it all away.” He said new training for professionals who handle private information is necessary to ensure safety for the “average member of our society,” particularly as technical literacy has become “a rare and precious resource.

”There should be no distinction between digital information and printed or spoken information, Snowden said. “If we confess something to our priest inside a church, that would be private, but is it any different if we send our pastor a private email confessing a crisis that we have in our life?”Before leaking the NSA documents to the public, Snowden said he first tried to address the matters that concerned him internally, asking colleagues and supervisors about the more nefarious elements of the program. “I said, ‘What do you think about this? Isn’t this unusual? How can we be doing this? Isn’t this unconstitutional? Isn’t this a violation of rights?’” he recalled.He was particularly worried about the fact that the many of the NSA’s invasive systems were used for fun. Snowden described a troubling work environment where unlimited access to private information was regularly taken advantage of by individual employees. If the surveillance program happened to pick up a person’s nude photographs, for example, co-workers would distribute them around the office, where a culture of lax supervision meant that no one was ever held responsible.Many of the agency’s surveillance workers were young men, 18 to 22, who had “suddenly been thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records,” Snowden said. “It’s never reported. Nobody ever knows about it because the auditing of these systems is incredibly weak.

”Unauthorized access to intimate information and being able to share it privately with impunity are seen as “the fringe benefits of surveillance positions,” he said.An NSA spokesperson did not deny Snowden’s claim, but told Forbes that the agency “has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency’s authorities or professional standards, and would respond as appropriate to any credible allegations of misconduct.”Responses to Snowden’s document leak and subsequent interviews have been mixed.Richard George, a former NSA mathematician, released a report (PDF) on Friday claiming that events like Snowden’s leak make it harder for intelligence agencies to predict and stop terrorist events.

“NSA is just one player on the team—from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Coast Guard, Air Force, Army, Navy, Marines, to local police and fire departments—whose reason for existence is to protect the people of this nation. Events like the Snowden leaks make that effort harder,” George wrote.Snowden had inadvertently preempted George’s argument in his interview. “It may be that by seizing all of the records of our private activities, by watching everywhere we go, by watching everything we do… that we could uncover a terrorist plot or we could discover more criminals,” he said. “But is that the kind of society we want to live in?” UN human rights commissioner Navi Pillay recently called on the U.S. government to drop its efforts to prosecute Snowden, saying his revelations served the public interest.“Those who disclose human rights violations should be protected. We need them,” Pillay said in a news conference this week. “We owe a great deal to [Snowden] for revealing this kind of information.” Snowden’s interview with the Guardian lasted seven hours. In that time, he described his life in Moscow as being solitary — though likely under surveillance —and laughed at speculations that he might be a spy for the Russian government. He also said he still holds out hope for a fair trial in front of a jury rather than a judge. “I think it would be very difficult to find any 12 Americans in the United States right now who would uniformally agree that the last year’s revelations about the NSA’s unconstitutional surveillance programs did not serve the public interest,” he said.Government negotiations for Snowden to return home, however, seem to be at a standstill. He recently applied to extend his asylum in Russia and is likely to receive it.

NSA Doc Reveals ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi is U.S., British and Israeli Intelligence Asset

NSA documents add more detail to plan to destabilize Middle East
NSA Doc Reveals ISIS Leader Al-Baghdadi is U.S., British and Israeli Intelligence Asset
by Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com | July 19, 2014





Editor’s note: The validity of the document mentioned below cannot be verified due to the exclusivity of the Snowden cache. Cryptome sent a letter to various sources in possession of the documents, including The New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Barton Gellman, Laura Poitrias, Glenn Greenwald, ACLU, EFF and others demanding an accounting. The allegation about ISIS and al-Baghdadi, however, pairs up with other information demonstrating ISIS is an intelligence asset.
According a document recently released by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, now the Islamic State, is an intelligence asset.
The NSA document reveals the United States, Israel, and Britain are responsible for the creation of ISIS.
Earlier this month Nabil Na’eem, the founder of the Islamic Democratic Jihad Party and former top al-Qaeda commander, told the Beirut-based pan-Arab TV station al-Maydeen all current al-Qaeda affiliates, including ISIS, work for the CIA.
ISIS is a well-armed and trained terrorist group now in control of large areas of Iraq and Syria.
The NSA document states the group was established by U.S., British and Israeli intelligence as part of a strategy dubbed “the hornet’s nest” to draw Islamic militants from around the world to Syria.
Prior Evidence of al-Baghdadi Link to Intelligence and Military
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi “took intensive military training for a whole year in the hands of Mossad, besides courses in theology and the art of speech,” the documents explain, according to Gulf Daily News, a Bahrainian source.
In June a Jordanian official told Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily ISIS members were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan. In 2012 it was reported the U.S., Turkey and Jordan were running a training base for the Syrian rebels in the Jordanian town of Safawi.

Corporate media has added weight to myth of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, repeatedly exposed as an intelligence asset.
Al-Baghdadi was reportedly a “civilian internee” at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military detention facility near Umm Qasr, Iraq. James Skylar Gerrond, a former U.S. Air Force security forces officer and a compound commander at Camp Bucca in 2006 and 2007, said earlier this month the camp “created a pressure cooker for extremism.”
“Circumstantial evidence suggests that al-Baghdadi may have been mind-controlled while held prisoner by the US military in Iraq,” writes Dr. Kevin Barrett.
Creating a Fake Terror Threat
The hornet’s nest strategy was designed to create the perception that Israel is threatened by an enemy near its borders.
According to the personal diary of former Israeli prime minister Moshe Sharett, however, Israel never took seriously an Arab or Muslim threat to its national security.
“Sharett’s diary reveals in explicit language that the Israeli political and military leadership never believed in any Arab danger to Israel,” writes Ralph Schoenman. “They sought to maneuver and force the Arab states into military confrontations which the Zionist leadership were certain of winning so Israel could carry out the destabilization of Arab regimes and the planned occupation of additional territory.”
In 1982 Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist with links to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, wrote The Zionist Plan for the Middle East.
The white paper proposed “that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units” and the “dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the long run.”
The destruction of the Arab and Muslim states, Yinon suggested, would be accomplished from within by exploiting their internal religious and ethnic tensions.
For more background see our ISIS and the Plan to Balkanize the Middle East.

Sanctions and Airliners

Washington’s attitude toward Russia is formed by the Wolfowitz Doctrine
Sanctions and Airliners
Image Credits: Kyiv Post via Twitter
by Paul Craig Roberts | Infowars.com | July 19, 2014
 




NOTE: Photos are now available of the wreckage from the Malaysian airliner crash. Notice the extensive debris and the large section of fuselage. You are observing remains of an airliner that was hit with a missile at 33,000 feet and fell to impact land. Remember, no such debris was present at the site where the airliner is alleged to have hit the Pentagon and at the alleged crash site in Pennsylvania of the 4th 9/11 hijacked airliner. Give that some thought. No doubt but that the 9/11 Commission will conclude that only Malaysian airliners leave debris.

The unilateral US sanctions announced by Obama on July 16 blocking Russian weapons and energy companies access to US bank loans demonstrate Washington’s impotence. The rest of the world, including America’s two largest business organizations, turned their backs on Obama. The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers placed ads in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post protesting US sanctions. NAM said that the manufacturer’s association is “disappointed that the US is extending sanctions in increasingly unilateral ways that will undermine US commercial engagement.” Bloomberg reported that “meeting in Brussels, leaders of the European Union refused to match the US measures.”
In attempting to isolate Russia, the White House Fool has isolated Washington.

The sanctions will have no effect on the Russian companies. The Russian companies can get more bank loans than they need from China, or from France and Germany.The three traits that define Washington–arrogance, hubris, and corruption–make Washington a slow learner. Arrogant people wallowing in hubris are incapable of learning. When they encounter resistance they respond with bribes, threats, and coercion. Diplomacy requires learning ability, but Washington left diplomacy years ago and relies on force.Consequently, with its sanctions Washington is undermining its own power and influence. Sanctions are encouraging countries to withdraw from the dollar payments system that is the foundation of US power. Christian Noyer, Governor of the Bank of France and a member of the European Central Bank’s Governing Council, said that Washington’s sanctions are driving companies and countries out of the dollar payments system. The huge sum extorted from the French bank, BNP Paribas, for doing business with countries disapproved by Washington makes clear the increased legal risks that arise from using the dollar when Washington makes the rules.Washington’s attack on the French bank was the occasion for many to remember the numerous past sanctions and to contemplate future sanctions, such as those that loom for Germany’s Commerzbank. A movement to diversify the currencies used in international trade is inevitable. Noyer pointed out that trade between Europe and China does not need to use the dollar and can be fully paid in Euros or Renminbi.The phenomenon of US rules expanding to all US dollar-denominated transactions around the world is accelerating the movement away from the dollar payment system.

 Some countries have already arranged bilateral agreements with trading partners to make their trade payments in their own currencies. The BRICS are establishing new payment methods independently of the dollar and are setting up their own International Monetary Fund to finance trade imbalances.The US dollar’s exchange value depends on its role in the international payments system. As this role shrivels, so will demand for dollars and the dollar’s exchange value. Inflation will enter the US economy via import prices, and already hard-pressed Americans will experience more compression of their living standards.In the 21st century distrust has been growing of Washington. Washington’s lies, such as Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons,” and “Iranian nukes” are recognized as lies by other governments. The lies were used by Washington to destroy countries and to threaten others with destruction, keeping the world in constant turmoil. Washington delivers no benefit that offsets the turmoil that Washington inflicts on everyone else. Washington’s friendship requires complying with Washington’s demands, and governments are concluding that Washington’s friendship is not worth the high cost.The NSA spy scandal and Washington’s refusal to apologize and desist has deepened the distrust of Washington by its own allies. World polls show that other countries regard the US as the greatest threat to peace. The American people themselves have no confidence in their government. Polls show that a large majority of Americans believe that politicians, the presstitute media, and private interest groups such as Wall Street and the military/security complex rig the system to serve themselves at the expense of the American people.Washington’s empire is beginning to crack, a circumstance that will bring desperate action from Washington. Today (July 17) I heard a BBC news report on National Public Radio about a Malaysian airliner being shot down in Ukraine. The reporting might have been honest, but it sounded like a frame-up of Russia and the Ukrainian “separatists.”

 As the BBC solicited more biased opinions, the broadcast ended with a report from social media that separatists had brought down the airliner with a Russian weapon system.No one on the program wondered what the separatists had to gain by shooting down an airliner. Instead, the discussion was whether once Russian responsibility was established, would this force the EU to endorse tougher US sanctions against Russia. The BBC was following Washington’s script and heading the story where Washington wanted it to go.The appearance of a Washington operation is present. All the warmongers were ready on cue. US Vice President Joe Biden declared that the airliner was “blown out of the sky.” It was “not an accident.” Why would a person without an agenda be so declarative prior to having any information? Clearly, Biden was not implying that it was Kiev that blew the airliner out of the sky. Biden was at work in advance of the evidence blaming Russia. Indeed, the way Washington operates, it will pile on blame until it needs no evidence.Senator John McCain jumped on the supposition that there were US citizens aboard to call for punitive actions against Russia before the passenger list and the cause of the airliner’s fate are known.The “investigation” is being conducted by Washington’s puppet regime in Kiev. I think we already know what the conclusion will be.The probability is high that we are going to have more fabricated evidence, such as the fabricated evidence presented by US Secretary of State Colin Powell to the UN “proving” the existence of the non-existent Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction.” Washington has succeeded with so many lies, deceptions and crimes that it believes that it can always succeed again.At this time as I write, we have no reliable information about the airliner, but the Roman question always pertains: “Who benefits?” There is no conceivable motive for separatists to shoot down an airliner, but Washington did have a motive–to frame-up Russia–and possibly a second motive. Among the reports or rumors there is one that says Putin’s presidential plane flew a similar route to that of the Malaysian airliner within 37 minutes of one another. This report has led to speculation that Washington decided to rid itself of Putin and mistook the Malaysian airliner for Putin’s jet. RT reports that the two airplanes are similar in appearance. http://rt.com/news/173672-malaysia-plane-crash-putin/Before you say Washington is too sophisticated to mistake one airliner for another, keep in mind that when Washington shot down an Iranian airliner over Iranian air space, the US Navy claimed that it thought the 290 civilians that it murdered were in an Iranian fighter jet, a F-14 Tomcat fighter, a US-made fighter that was a mainstay of the US Navy. If the US Navy cannot tell its own workhorse fighter aircraft from an Iranian airliner, clearly the US can confuse two airliners that the RT report shows appear very similar.During the entire BBC frame-up of Russia, no one mentioned the Iranian passenger airliner that the US “blew out of the sky.”

 No one put sanctions on Washington.Whatever the outcome of the Malaysian airliner incident, it demonstrates a danger in Putin’s soft policy toward Washington’s ongoing hard intervention in Ukraine. Putin’s decision to respond with diplomacy instead of with military means to Washington’s provocations in Ukraine gave Putin a winning hand, as evidenced by the opposition to Obama’s sanctions by the EU and US business interests. However, by not bringing a quick forceable end to the Washington-sponsored conflict in Ukraine, Putin has left the door open for the devious machinations in which Washington specializes.If Putin had accepted the requests of the former Russian territories in eastern and southern Ukraine to rejoin Mother Russia, the Ukrainian imbroglio would have come to an end months ago, and Russia would not be running risks of being framed-up.Putin did not get the full benefit of refusing to send troops into the former Russian territories, because Washington’s official position is that Russian troops are operating in Ukraine. When facts do not support Washington’s agenda, Washington disposes of the facts. The US media blames Putin as the perpetrator of violence in Ukraine. It is Washington’s accusation, not any known facts, that is the basis for the sanctions.As there is no act too dastardly for Washington to undertake, Putin and Russia could become victims of a devious machination.Russia seems hypnotized by the West and motivated to be included as a part of the West. This desire for acceptance plays into Washington’s hands. Russia does not need the West, but Europe needs Russia. One option for Russia is to tend to Russian interests and wait for Europe to come courting.The Russian government should not forget that Washington’s attitude toward Russia is formed by the Wolfowitz Doctrine which states:“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Palestinian Gaza death toll soars amid peace push

Toll from Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza strip climbed past 320
Palestinian Gaza death toll soars amid peace push
Image Credits: Vice News
by Al Arabiya News | July 19, 2014



The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s devastating assault on the Gaza strip reached climbed past 320 as international efforts to broker a truce between the Jewish state and Hamas militants continued.
Israel also suffered its biggest loss since hostilities between the two sides erupted more than two weeks ago, announcing that two of its’ soldiers had been killed by militants who breached the country’s border.
An army statement said the two were killed during a clash with a number of militants who infiltrated Israel through a tunnel from Gaza. Earlier in the day, Hamas said its fighters used one a tunnel to slip into Israel, inflicting casualties.
Saturday was the second day of Israel’s ground offensive into the Gaza strip, which included efforts at destroying rocket launch pads as well as tunnels used by Hamas after the last big flare-up of violence in 2012, Reuters news agency reported.Reuters quoted military spokesman Lieut. Col. Peter Lerner as saying that 13 tunnels, at least one of them 30 meters deep, and 95 rocket launchers were found and destroyed in the Gaza sweep.Searches were continuing for what he described as an open-ended mission that had “severely impeded Hamas capabilities.”Israel sent in ground forces on Thursday after 10 days of air and naval barrages failed to stop rocket fire from Gaza.Reuters quoted Gaza officials as saying that at least 325 Palestinians, including 70 children, have been killed in the 12-day conflict. Saturday’s death toll of 33 was composed mainly of civilians.Palestinians also launched at least 18 rockets into Israel on Saturday, killing a man and wounding four people, including two children, in a southern Bedouin Arab village, police said.At least four Israelis have been killed since the violence began.
No Ceasefire
Egypt has no plans to revise its ceasefire proposal, which Hamas has rejected, Cairo’s foreign minister said on Saturday.U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon planned to travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories this weekend. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is also looking to secure a ceasefire and was due to travel to regional power Qatar later in the day to see the emir of the Gulf state.It was not clear whether he would also see Hamas’s leader, Khaled Meshaal, who lives in exile in Qatar.Meanwhile, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius insisted on Saturday that his country’s “absolute priority” is to secure a truce in Gaza, saying Egypt’s initiative for a cease-fire enjoys international support.At a joint news conference with his Jordanian counterpart, Nasser Judeh, Fabius said his regional tour seeks to help “break the spiral of violence and to protect the civilian population as much as possible” in Gaza, where the Israeli bombardment has killed more than 330 Palestinians.“The human toll is already heavy… and I repeat here in Amman, our absolute priority must be the ceasefire,” he told reporters.“The Egyptian initiative remains on the table and the objective is ceasefire. Jordan, France and other countries support the initiative.”The truce plan, which Egypt had proposed take effect last Tuesday, calls for a ceasefire followed by indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas.But Hamas rejected the plan, insisting on negotiating key demands such as a guarantee to lift the blockade on Gaza’s border crossings before it halts its rocket fire.“This initiative has been widely supported by the international community and Arab countries,” Fabius said.“So now we need to ensure that the party that has rejected it accepts the plan to avoid losing more human lives,” he added, describing the toll in Gaza as “extremely tragic”.Fabius arrived in Amman from Cairo, where here made an “urgent” call for the truce, following talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who is rallying international support for Cairo’s ceasefire proposal while isolating Hamas.The foreign minister said he would meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night, following the stopover in Amman.“All countries involved in efforts to stop the bloodshed in Gaza support the cease-fire initiative, which seeks to end the violence and protect civilians,” said Judeh, whose country has a 1994 peace treaty with Israel.Judeh on Friday condemned Israel’s “brutal and barbaric aggression on Gaza as well as the targeting of civilians that led to the death or more martyrs”, state-run Petra news agency quoted him as telling Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini at a meeting.