Given his background, what American Jewish leader Henry Siegman has to say about Israel's founding in 1948 through the current assault on Gaza may surprise you. From 1978 to 1994, Siegman served as executive director of the American Jewish Congress, long described as one of the nation's "big three" Jewish organizations along with the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. Born in Germany three years before the Nazis came to power in 1933, Siegman's family eventually moved to the United States. His father was a leader of the European Zionist movement that pushed for the creation of a Jewish state. In New York, Siegman studied the religion and was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi by Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, later becoming head of the Synagogue Council of America. After his time at the American Jewish Congress, Siegman became a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He now serves as president of the U.S./Middle East Project. In the first of our two-part interview, Siegman discusses the assault on Gaza, the myths surrounding Israel's founding in 1948, and his own background as a German-Jewish refugee who fled Nazi occupation to later become a leading American Jewish voice and now vocal critic of Israel's policies in the Occupied Territories.

"When one thinks that this is what is necessary for Israel to survive, that the Zionist dream is based on the repeated slaughter of innocents on a scale that we're watching these days on television, that is really a profound, profound crisis - and should be a profound crisis in the thinking of all of us who were committed to the establishment of the state and to its success," Siegman says. Responding to Israel's U.S.-backed claim that its assault on Gaza is necessary because no country would tolerate the rocket fire from militants in Gaza, Siegman says: "What undermines this principle is that no country and no people would live the way that Gazans have been made to live. ... The question of the morality of Israel's action depends, in the first instance, on the question, couldn't Israel be doing something [to prevent] this disaster that is playing out now, in terms of the destruction of human life? Couldn't they have done something that did not require that cost? And the answer is, sure, they could have ended the occupation."

Natixis Chief Executive Officer Laurent Mignon said in an interview with Bloomberg Television today in Paris the French investment bank is cutting its business with Russian clients
Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc, Britain's largest state-owned lender, joined European banks, including Natixis SA in cutting lending to Russian companies amid fresh sanctions over Ukraine, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Total exposure to Russian companies is 2.1 billion pounds ($3.5 billion) as "limits have been cut and credit restrictions introduced," RBS said in its earnings statement on its website. The bank's balance sheet exposure to euro-region periphery countries was reduced by 4% to 40.3 billion pounds in the first half of the year, it said.

The European Union this week stepped up economic pressure on Russia over its support for separatists in Ukraine and said it would prohibit Russian state-owned banks from selling shares or bonds in the world's main capital markets in an effort to force Moscow to end support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. The U.S. tightened sanctions earlier this month.

Russian companies have relied on funding from Europe and the U.S. and will need to find a replacement to support growth, said Vladimir Osakovsky, an economist at Bank of America Corp.

Russia's Defense Ministry will hold drills for reservists in all of the country's military commands in August-October. Measures to improve reservists' qualification were included in the Armed Forces training plan for 2014 put together last November.

"A number of citizens will be called up for reservist military training, which will see them receiving additional practice in military occupational specialties they obtained during their service in the Armed Forces," Defense Ministry press-service said.

The reservists will upgrade their skills in "main military specialties" directly within the Russian army's units, the press-service added.

The ministry stressed that the decision to hold the drills for part-time servicemen isn't newly made as it was planned in November 2013.

The military plans to train signalers, missilemen, bombardiers, mechanized infantrymen as well as specialists for the Navy's coastal forces, pontoon bridge, logistical support, rail and engineering units.

Abusive treatment and rampant victimization of whistleblowers has created a climate in which large segments of defence and health workers would be afraid to report departmental malfeasance, the powerful all-party Public Accounts Committee has revealed.

The report, issued on Friday, said that one in three civil servants didn't know how to raise concerns under the Whitehall code, and warned that fears of punishment would deter employees from exposing wrongdoing.

The statements come following a series of high-profile malpractices exposed by whistleblowers in the public sector, including the Mid-Staffordshire NHS scandal, in which over 1,000 patients died as a result of poor care and mismanagement.

The report also accuses the government of refusing to implement measures that protect whistleblowers, with committee chair Margaret Hodge claiming that ministers were failing to protect the public interest.

"Far too often, whistleblowers have been shockingly treated, and departments have sometimes failed to protect some whistleblowers from being victimised" she said.

A Republican lawmaker renewed his call for the release of 28 redacted pages from the investigative report into the 9/11 terrorist attacks - which a left-wing fringe group claims implicates the British monarchy.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) appeared Wednesday on the Glenn Beck Program to discuss the excerpt, which he and two other current lawmakers and one former lawmaker were permitted to read earlier this year.

The Tea Party-backed freshman lawmaker, who was one of five House Republicans who voted against authorizing Speaker John Boehner to sue President Barack Obama, posted video earlier this month from a news conference on those classified portions of the "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001."

"It is sort of shocking when you read it," Massie told reporters. "As I read it, we all had our own experience, I had to stop every couple of pages and absorb and try to rearrange my understanding of history for the past 13 years and the years leading up to that. It challenges you to rethink everything."

Around the world, people have organized and participated in pro-Gaza demonstrations, protesting against Israel's genocidal attacks on Palestinian civilians. The death toll in Gaza stands at over 1500, including hundreds of children. The total dead and injured number at least 10,000 after 4 weeks of Israeli bombardment. Despite all the dead children, women and innocent families, Netanyahu and his buddies continue the attacks, enraging many people around the world who finally decided to get up and speak out against the slaughter. Obviously, Bibi the psychopath wasn't too happy about these protests. Israeli officials demanded that the European Union impose "strict regulations on the format and content" of antiwar demonstrations going forward.

Whether Bibi and certain Israelis like it or not, in the Netherlands several pro-Gaza demonstrations have been organized, which have been quite successful so far, with more than 10,000 pro-Gaza protesters taking to the streets of Rotterdam. In recent days however, following the example of French, German and Italian authorities who opted to 'contain' or ban such protests due to violence or 'anti-semitic' words, Dutch authorities decided to 'contain' upcoming protests on the basis that 40 - 50 people were seen waving ISIS flags and chanting 'death to Jews' during a pro-Gaza protest in the Hague.

What's up with that?

It remains unclear exactly why or how the Gadhafi regime went from "a model" and an "important ally" to the next target for regime change in a period of just a few years. But after claims of "genocide" as the justification for NATO intervention were disputed by experts, several other theories have been floated.

Oil, of course, has been mentioned frequently - Libya is Africa's largest oil producer. But one possible reason in particular for Gadhafi's fall from grace has gained significant traction among analysts and segments of the non-Western media: central banking and the global monetary system.

According to more than a few observers, Gadhafi's plan to quit selling Libyan oil in U.S. dollars - demanding payment instead in gold-backed "dinars" (a single African currency made from gold) - was the real cause. The regime, sitting on massive amounts of gold, estimated at close to 150 tons, was also pushing other African and Middle Eastern governments to follow suit.

And it literally had the potential to bring down the dollar and the world monetary system by extension, according to analysts. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a "threat" to the financial security of the world. The "Insiders" were apparently panicking over Gadhafi's plan.

"Any move such as that would certainly not be welcomed by the power elite today, who are responsible for controlling the world's central banks," noted financial analyst Anthony Wile, editor of the free market-oriented Daily Bell, in an interview with RT. "So yes, that would certainly be something that would cause his immediate dismissal and the need for other reasons to be brought forward [for] removing him from power."

Actor and activist Russell Brand is at it again and this time he has set his sights on conservative radio host and Fox News pundit Sean Hannity.

Brand, who has recently started calling out Fox News for their blatant use of incendiary intimidation tactics, has once again taken up linguistic arms on his YouTube show The Trews.

A buffer zone surrounding Gaza has been continuously bombed, with a high rate of civilian casualties.
Gaza City - Israel declared a three kilometre buffer zone inside Gaza's borders last week, an area that represents 44 percent of Gaza's territory. Anyone within the zone has been warned by the Israeli military to leave or risk being bombed.

This buffer zone has only exacerbated Gaza's siege. To the east, Palestinians in Gaza are fenced in by Israeli artillery tanks, mortars, cannon shells and snipers. On Gaza's western side, Israeli warships form a blockade and allow only a three-mile fishing zone. To the north resides more military checkpoints and soldiers. To the south, the Egyptian military has closed off the Rafah border.

The buffer zone has tightened the Israeli chokehold around Gaza's small strip of land.

It was ten days ago when on the heels of Russia's 30-minute detailed presentation of what it believes happened to MH-17, the US government released a satellite trajectory map of what it says was the flight's path and the site from which the missile was shot as well as various other satellite images "proving" the missile that took down the Boeing 777 was fired by the pro-Russian separatists. Yesterday the Russian defense ministry finally responded to the US release stating that the "satellite images Kiev published as 'proof' it didn't deploy anti-aircraft batteries around the MH17 crash site carry altered time-stamps and are from days after the MH17 tragedy." In other words, the evidence the US has present to form public opinion was in the form of "altered images carrying wrong time-stamps."