Abstract

At first almost unnoticed after 1850, then with significant intensity after the onset of the Great Depression of 1873 in Britain, the sun began to set on the British Empire. By the end of the 19th Century, though the City of London remained undisputed financier of the world, British industrial excellence was in terminal decline. The decline paralleled an equally dramatic rise of a new industrial Great Power on the European stage, the German Reich. Germany soon passed England in output of steel, in quality of machine tools, chemicals and electrical goods. Beginning in the 1880s a group of leading German industrialists and bankers around Deutsche Bank's Georg von Siemens, recognized the urgent need for some form of colonial sources of raw materials as well as industrial export outlet. With Africa and Asia long since claimed by the other Great Powers, above all Great Britain, German policy set out to develop a special economic sphere in the imperial provinces of the debt-ridden Ottoman Empire. The policy was termed "penetration pacifique" an economic dependency which would be sealed with German military advisors and equipment. Initially, the policy was not greeted with joy in Paris, St. Petersburg or London, but it was tolerated. Deutsche Bank even sought, unsuccessfully, to enlist City of London financial backing for the keystone of the Ottoman expansion policy - the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway project, a project of enormous scale and complexity that would link the interior of Anatolia and Mesopotamia (today Iraq) to Germany. What Berlin and Deutsche Bank did not say was that they had secured subsurface mineral rights, including for oil along the path of the railway, and that their geologists had discovered petroleum in Mosul, Kirkuk and Basra.

The conversion of the British Navy under Churchill to oil from coal meant a high risk strategy as England had abundant coal but no then-known oil. It secured a major concession from the Shah of Persia in the early 1900s. The Baghdad rail link was increasingly seen in London as a threat to precisely this oil security. The British response to the growing German disruption of the European balance of power after the 1890s was to carefully craft a series of public and secret alliances with France and with Russia - former rivals - to encircle Germany. As well, she deployed a series of less public intrigues to disrupt the Balkans and encourage a revolt against the Ottoman Sultan via the Young Turks that severely weakened the prospects for the German Drang nach Osten. The dynamic of the rise of German assertiveness, including in addition to the Baghdad rail, the decision in 1900 to build a modern navy over two decades that could rival England's, set the stage for the outbreak of a war in August 1914 whose real significance was a colossal and tragic struggle for who would succeed the ebbing power of the British Empire. The resolution of that epic struggle was to take a second world war and another quarter century before the victor was undeniably established. The role of oil in the events leading to war in 1914 is too little appreciated. When the historical process behind the war is examined from this light a quite different picture emerges. The British Empire in the decades following 1873 and the American Century hegemony in the decades following approximately 1973 have more in common than is generally appreciated.

Blasts are rocking Gaza, smoke is rising over the city, apparently from an Israeli air strike, Reuters reports. This comes after Israeli authorities ordered military to respond to "at least 18 rockets from Gaza" by attacking "terror sites," the army said.

"The renewed rocket attacks by terrorists at Israel are unacceptable, intolerable and shortsighted. Hamas' bad decision to breach the ceasefire will be pursued by the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), we will continue to strike Hamas, its infrastructure, its operatives and restore security for the State of Israel," Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman said in a statement.

The first Palestinian fatality - a boy, according to Al-Arabiya - has reportedly lost his life in the Israeli strikes. Six other people have been wounded.

Among the rockets allegedly fired by Gaza, one was intercepted by the Iron Dome system over the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. Two more rockets fell in open areas without causing casualties or damage, Haaretz reported.

Israelis frequently accuse Palestinians of using human shields.

That claim is highly questionable.

However, in 2005, the Israeli high court found that Israeli soldiers had used Palestinian civilians as human shields 1,200 times in the past 5 years. As Ynet reported at the time:

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Tuesday demanded that the High Court review a ruling it issued last Thursday in which it declared that the 'human shield' procedure employed by the IDF when detaining Palestinian terror suspects is illegal and violates international law.

Sources at the Ministry of Defense said that Mofaz' comments are not an attempt to subvert the Court's decision, adding that the defense minister intends to use democratic means to revoke the ruling.

According to defense officials, the Israel Defense Forces made use of the 'human shield' procedure on 1,200 occasions over the last five years, and only on one occasion did a Palestinian civilian get hurt.

An 18-year-old Palestinian was killed in 2002 during one such operation.

Mofaz instructed the IDF to freeze the use of the 'human shield' and 'early warning' procedures in its arrest operations in the territories until the Court holds a new hearing on the issue.

The European Union is likely to consider filing appeals with the World Trade Organization (WTO) after Russia announced import bans on products from the EU, Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius said Thursday.

"We will consult with our partners. It is in the interest of the WTO to protect members of the European Commission. This is done cooperatively. So, I think these issues will be address. It is too early to speak about all the implications, we need to carefully review and draw conclusions. Now, it's hard to say, it's too soon," Linkevicius said, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

Lithuania is one of the EU nations that is most dependent on trade with Russia, which imported €25 billion of goods from the Baltic state in 2013. From that, €1.3 billion of exports to Russia were agriculture goods and alcoholic beverages.


This would not be Lithuania's first complaint in the WTO over Russia's so-called trade discrimination. At the end of June Riga filed a formal complaint with the WTO over Moscow's pork ban, which it announced in January after two cases of African swine fever were discovered in Poland and Lithuania.

In 2013, Russia imported $6.7 billion of meat and meat products in total. The largest suppliers came from now-banned countries like Denmark (6.6% of total Russian meat products), Germany (6.4%), USA (5.3%), and Canada (3.8%).

Kiev has suspended a ceasefire with the self-defense forces at the site of the Malaysian Airlines plane crash in eastern Ukraine, after the international recovery team searching for victims halted their efforts over security concerns.

The fighting is now feared to escalate as Kiev seeks to regain control over the area largely controlled by militia.

"The ceasefire in the plane crash zone, announced by the President of Ukraine at the request of international experts, which has been thoroughly observed by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, will not be in place at the beginning of the second phase of the investigation," the Ukrainian government said in a statement on Thursday.

This comes after The Netherlands, who lead the international probe, announced it was halting the mission to recover victims and debris of the July 17 MH17 crash because of fighting between Ukrainian forces and rebels in the area.


Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that the risk posed to the team of Australian, Dutch and Malaysian experts working in the area was too great to continue the operation under current conditions.

© Bjorn Kietzmann / Demotix / Corbis
The US Senate unanimously approved $225m funding for Israel’s Iron Dome on Friday, as Israel continues to ask for more funding from Washington.

It's time to step back and ask if we want to support Israel if it wants to eject all Palestinians from their land

Late last week, the White House decried Israel's attack on a UN school in Gaza as "totally unacceptable" and "totally indefensible", then proceeded to approve $225m in funding for its Iron Dome. On Monday, the US state department went further, calling the airstrikes upon a UN school "disgraceful" - and yet America provides Israel with more than $3.1bn every year, restocking the ability of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to hit more schools, and to wage total war against an imprisoned people, because of their nationality.

American taxpayers should not be paying for this. And the western world should stop rejecting serious inquiries about Israel's moral inconsistencies, or allow it to benefit from cognitive dissonance and information overload amid the current crisis in Gaza.

There is a land grab going on. The Israeli prime minister, Binjamin Netanyahu, has shrunk Gaza's habitable land mass by 44%, with an edict establishing a 3km (1.8-mile) buffer zone, a "no-go" zone for Palestinians - and that's quite significant, because a good part of Gaza is only 3 to 4 miles wide. Over 250,000 Palestinians within this zone must leave their homes, or be bombed. As their territorial space collapses, 1.8m Gazans now living in 147 square miles will be compressed into 82 square miles.

Gaza's entire social and physical infrastructure of housing, hospitals, places of worship, more than 130 of its schools, plus markets, water systems, sewer systems and roads are being destroyed. Under constant attack, without access to water, sanitary facilities, food and medical care, Gazans face an IDF-scripted apocalypse.

With Gaza's land mass shrinking due to Israeli military action, it's about time someone asked: What is the end game? Three weeks ago, Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset, called for Gaza to "become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel."

Israel has a housing crisis? After the "no-go" buffer zone is evacuated, there will be 21,951 Palestinians per square mile in Gaza, while Israel's population density stands at 964 persons per square mile.

As the death toll rises, cease-fires come and go, and protests mount, here are the key facts to keep in mind.

Two related things happened over the weekend: First, the death toll of Israel's assault on Gaza climbed to more than 1,800 Palestinians, overwhelmingly civilians, including some 400 children. Second, In Washington, D.C., an estimated 50,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the White House to protest the American role in this violent escalation, and then marched on to the Washington Post building (for symbolism's sake) to protest mainstream media coverage of the crisis.

I have recently debunked the ubiquitous allegation that "human shields" are responsible for Gaza's rising civilian death toll, and exposed the talking points used to invert the reality on the ground. Here, I would like to explain what brought 50,000 people out on the streets of Washington; namely the mishandling and misrepresentation of this crisis by both the U.S. media and the U.S. administration.

A Larimer County District Court judge has struck down Fort Collins' five-year moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, dealing the second blow in a month to Front Range cities that have sought to ban the drilling technique.

Larimer District Judge Gregory Lammons in a nine-page opinion issued Thursday ruled in favor of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association in its lawsuit challenging a fracking ban passed by Fort Collins voters in November. The temporary ban was meant to be in place while the effects of oil and gas development on human health were studied.

"The five-year ban on the use of hydraulic fracturing within the boundaries of the City of Fort Collins is preempted by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Act for two reasons: the five-year ban substantially impedes a significant state interest and the ban prohibits what state law allows," Lammons said in his decision.

City of Fort Collins officials had defended the city's moratorium as different from Longmont's fracking ban, while the Oil & Gas Association contended the fracking ban broke state law. Fracking involves pumping water mixed with sand and chemicals into a drilled hole to retrieve oil and natural gas from shale deep underground.

Israel was singled out in 2007 as a top espionage threat against the U.S. government, including its intelligence services, in a newly published National Security Agency (NSA) document obtained by fugitive leaker Edward Snowden, according to a news report Monday.

The document also identified Israel, along with North Korea, Cuba and India, as a "leading threat" to the infrastructure of U.S. financial and banking institutions.

The threats were listed in the NSA's 2007 Strategic Mission List, according to the document obtained by journalist/activist Glenn Greenwald, a founding editor of The Intercept, an online magazine that has a close relationship with Snowden, a former NSA and CIA contractor who fled the U.S. with thousands of top-secret documents last year.

"From start to finish, the Ukraine crisis has been instigated by US imperialism. Every action Washington has taken has been directed at exacerbating and intensifying this crisis. The longer this crisis goes on, the clearer it becomes that US policy is directed not so much at Ukraine as at Russia itself. Ukraine, it would seem, is meant merely to provide the pretext for a war with Russia."

- Bill Van Auken, "Does Washington want war with Russia?", World Socialist Web Site

German pilot and airlines expert, Peter Haisenko, thinks that Malaysia Flight 17 was not blown up by a ground-based antiaircraft missile, but shot down by the type of double-barreled 30-mm guns used on Ukrainian SU-25 fighter planes. Haisenko presented his theory in a widely-circulated and controversial article which appeared on the Global Research website titled "Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the "Shooting Down" of Malaysian MH17. "Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile". Here's an excerpt from the article:

"The facts speak clear and loud and are beyond the realm of speculation: The cockpit shows traces of shelling! You can see the entry and exit holes. The edge of a portion of the holes is bent inwards. These are the smaller holes, round and clean, showing the entry points most likely that of a 30 millimeter caliber projectile...." ("Revelations of German Pilot: Shocking Analysis of the "Shooting Down" of Malaysian MH17. "Aircraft Was Not Hit by a Missile"", Global Research)