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Behind the Headlines: Russia vs USA, Israel vs Palestine - Interview with Finian Cunningham

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Sun, 03 Aug 2014 18:00 UTC
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This week we took take a closer look at the chaos unfolding in Ukraine and Gaza, placing both conflicts in the wider political context of the modern history of both the Middle East and Russia.

To help us do that, we were joined by Finian Cunningham, an Irish journalist who has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. For nearly 20 years, Finian worked as an editor and writer for major news media organisations, including The Daily Mirror, The Irish Times and The Independent.

Deported from Bahrain in June 2011 because of his critical journalism, in which he highlighted systematic human rights violations by the Bahraini regime forces, Finian is now a columnist on international politics for Press TV and Strategic Culture Foundation.

Running Time: 02:26:00

Download: MP3

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Target

The threat of sanctions worked against Israel in 1956 - and it can work again

Jinan Bastaki
Mondoweiss
Wed, 30 Jul 2014 12:28 UTC
In 1957, President Eisenhower addressed the US public:
"Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal? If we agreed that armed attack can properly achieve the purposes of the assailant, then I fear we will have turned back the clock of international order.

If the United Nations once admits that international disputes can be settled by using force, then we will have destroyed the very foundation of the organization and our best hope of establishing world order. The United Nations must not fall. I believe that in the interests of peace the United Nations has no choice but to exert pressure upon Israel to comply with the withdrawal resolutions." [1]
boycott israel
Eisenhower was referring to the 1956 Suez crisis, when France, Britain and Israel invaded and occupied the Suez canal, parts of the Sinai and Gaza. Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the charismatic and Pan-Arab leader of Egypt, had nationalized the Suez Canal on the 26th of July 1956. This especially antagonized Britain and France, and France was already wary with Nasser over his support of Algerian fighters. As scholar Avi Shlaim writes, on the 24th of October 1956 in Sevres, France, Britain and Israel met for secret talks to plan to attack Egypt. The goals included capturing the Sinai and Suez Canal, as well as toppling Nasser's government.

And on 29 October, Operation Kadesh began with the invasion of the Sinai by Israel.

Comment: And it is up to the rest of us to storm our power-holder representatives until they make it so. What else is left to do?

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Light Sabers

Hundreds of foreigners flee as Libya fighting rages on


Al Jazeera
Sat, 02 Aug 2014 12:04 UTC
foreigners flee libya
© Reuters
A Greek frigate evacuated embassy staff and nearly 200 people from Greece, China and other countries
Rocket strikes main fuel depot in Libyan capital as foreigners try to escape and parliament holds emergency meeting.

Some 200 people have been granted passage into Tunisia through the Ras Jedir border crossing, before Tunisian officials again closed the border after just a few hours, as heavy fighting rages in neighbouring Libya.

Tunisian citizens as well as foreign workers from Egypt and Libyans fleeing from the violence were allowed passage during a short period on Saturday, even as 10,000 to 15,000 remain stuck in the border, Al Jazeera's Ruli Amin, reporting from Ras Jedir, said.

Our correspondent said that the border crossing was "much more under control" compared to Friday, when hundreds of mostly Egyptians trying to leave clashed with Tunisian police.

Comment:

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War Whore

No help for struggling Americans, but plenty for Kiev neo-nazis: Pentagon asks for $19M to support Kiev


Itar Tass News Agency
Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:16 UTC
kiev forces
© ITAR-TASS/Maxim Nikitin
Money was intended to provide training for Ukraine's National Guard forces, in particular to train four companies of soldiers and a headquarters element

The United States intends to provide $19 million to bolster Ukraine's military operation, which pro-Kiev authorities conduct against militias in the southeastern regions of the country, Pentagon Press Secretary Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby said.

Kirby said the money was intended to provide training for Ukraine's National Guard forces, in particular to train four companies of soldiers and a headquarters element.

The high-ranking US military official said the United States was supporting Ukraine with non-lethal aid.

"We are not assisting them with issues of targeting," Kirby said. "We continue to review requests for military assistance from the government of Ukraine through an interagency process."

Comment: The US is crumbling, its economy and infrastructure have been deteriorating at an alarming rate, yet there is always money for infrastructure and military support to any country the US is currently using to wage wars of aggression.

Americans are so broke...': Twenty-one signs that there is no economic recovery
US Government Wasting Tax Money on Iraq, Afghanistan Reconstruction Failures
Spreading Democracy: Russian Red Cross calls situation in E. Ukraine an 'atrocious, humanitarian catastrophe'

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Green Light

EU 'quietly' lifts ban on supplying Kiev with weapons and technology to continue killing civilians


RT
Sat, 02 Aug 2014 11:22 UTC
kiev attack luganst
© RIA Novosti / Valeriy Melnikov
A woman is seen outside a residential building destroyed in an artillery attack by the Ukrainian army on Lugansk.
The European Union has "quietly" agreed to lift restrictions supplying Kiev with military technology and equipment which can be used for the "repression" in the country, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"During a recent meeting of the Council of Europe in Brussels, leaders of EU member states agreed 'on the quiet' to remove restrictions on exports to Kiev of equipment that could be used for internal repression," the ministry said in a statement on its website. "Exports of military technologies and equipment were also allowed."

Moscow slammed the move as "contradicting the rules of military technologies and ammunition exports which have been earlier applied by the EU" and also "pierced" by double standards.

Comment: Some of the EU countries must be making lots of profits by keeping the wars going. Thing is, they are supplying with weapons the very types that won't flinch when the time comes to turn against their 'benefactors'. Look at what they are doing to their compatriots.

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Rocket

Israeli indiscriminate use of force: Every missile strike is a war crime

Jonathan Cook
The Palestine Chronicle
Fri, 01 Aug 2014 04:57 UTC
dead Gaza kid beach

Today's Guardian includes an article that appears to be excusing Israel of responsibility for the massive death toll it has inflicted on Palestinian civilians. But, more significantly, it includes a lot of useful - and damning - information about just how "indiscriminate" Israel's weapons really are.

This interests me a great deal because I have been warning about problems with the interpretation of international law used by leading human rights groups on this very point since the 2006 Lebanon War.

At that time I got into a dispute with Human Rights Watch's Middle East policy director, Sarah Leah Whitson. Her organisation argued that Hizbullah was committing war crimes by definition whenever it fired rockets at Israel, even if it hit military targets, because those rockets were primitive and inherently inaccurate.

By contrast, HRW claimed, Israel's missiles were precise and therefore their use was not inherently inadmissible. Its view was that Israel did not commit war crimes by firing its missiles; the obligation was on observers to show that they had not been used within the rules of war - which is a much harder standard of proof. For more on this debate, see my articles here and here.

In practice, HRW's argument was nonsense, as was clear even in 2006. During that war, Israel dropped millions of cluster munitions - little bomblets that serve effectively as land mines - all over southern Lebanon, endangering the whole civilian population of the area.
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USA

Spreading "Democracy": Russian Red Cross calls situation in E. Ukraine an 'atrocious, humanitarian catastrophe'


RT
Thu, 31 Jul 2014 08:46 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti / Mikhail Voskresenskiy
Local residents in a house damaged during a rocket and mortar attack on Horlivka, Donetsk region
The Russian Red Cross has described the situation in Eastern Ukraine as a humanitarian catastrophe and has urged the rapid evacuation of children from the war zone.

"The situation in Ukraine is atrocious, a humanitarian catastrophe," Tatiana Klennitskaya, a spokeswoman for the Russian Red Cross, told Vzglyad daily. "The children are miserable, people are miserable. Of course, everyone has to be saved. The need for a humanitarian corridor is indisputable. The Red Cross is doing all it can."

The chairwoman of the Russian Red Cross, Raisa Lukutsova, said the organization would appeal to the International Committee of the Red Cross to facilitate the opening of a so-called humanitarian corridor, a temporary demilitarized zone which would allow the safe transit of humanitarian aid and refugees.

The Russian Red Cross is not alone in its efforts. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Ella Pamfilova has been trying to achieve the same goal.
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Vader

Israhellish forces continue to assault Gaza for the 26th day, killing over 60 Palestinians


Ma'an News Agency
Sat, 02 Aug 2014 10:24 UTC
rafah shelling
© Agence France-Presse/Said Khatib
A wounded Palestinian woman arrives at Al Najar hospital in the southern Gaza strip after Israeli shelling of Rafah on August 1, 2014
Israeli forces continued its assault on Gaza for a 26th day on Saturday, killing over 60 Palestinians as airstrikes and artillery shelling targeted houses and mosques across the Strip.

At least 35 of the Palestinians killed overnight were slain in Rafah, a day after an incident in the southern city led to the collapse of an agreed-upon 72-hour ceasefire.

Medical sources said Israeli raids on UN-funded public housing buildings in the Saudi neighborhood west of Rafah killed at least 23 people after midnight. About 15 dead bodies from the attack on the neighborhood were taken to the Emirati Hospital in the city and eight others were evacuated to the Kuwaiti Hospital.
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Pistol

Who is behind Gaza's mass execution? Pile of bodies found in house littered with Israeli shell casings

Jesse Rosenfeld
The Daily Beast
Fri, 01 Aug 2014 10:08 UTC
Piled in one room in a Gaza home are rotting bodies - and shell casings marked "IMI," short for "Israel Military Industries."

gaza execution

KHUZAA, Gaza - In a small bathroom on the edge of the Gaza town of Khuzaa there are the haunting signs of what looks like the summary execution of several Palestinians. This once vibrant village near the border with Israel sits on the edge of the city of Khan Younis, but it is well within the 1.8-mile "buffer zone" that Israel has turned into a no-man's land. It has been inaccessible for weeks as Israeli bombardment and troops try to take out heavy guerrilla resistance. Now all that's left is rubble, bombed-out buildings and the all-encompassing, sickening smell of death.

The temporary ceasefire announced Thursday night was supposed to give the residents of places like this time to return home, take stock of the damage and collect belongings. But the "72-hour" ceasefire broke down after 90 minutes, and as I walked through the main street, where pieces of humans were visible beneath homes and stores, the constant thud of exploding Israeli shells grew closer and closer.

As I reach the berm of sand, tile and stucco that marked a kind of front line, bodies are being piled on carts in the street. Near the ruins of a demolished store, the black ammunition vests worn by Palestinian fighters lie in tatters as if hastily stripped off. There are no bodies or weapons nearby.

Suddenly journalists and local residents are shouting from a house on the edge of the front. The small family home is still intact but the stench of rotting flesh that comes from inside is overpowering.

Comment: So, apparently, the Israeli army is now rounding up people and executing them on the spot. Have they decided that it's time for the 'Final Solution' to be implemented in Palestine?

We fully expect the Israeli PR machine to tell us that the Palestinians somehow did this to themselves. But if the Zionists are going for the final push in their decades-long strategy of ethnic cleansing, it will be hard for them to keep up with the lies for too long.

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War Whore

Spending your Tax dollars: U.S. will train and arm fascist Ukrainian National Guard in 2015


RT
Sat, 02 Aug 2014 09:28 UTC
Image

In the latest step by Washington to increase the pressure on Russia's border with Ukraine, the Obama administration has informed Congress that the US will train and arm the Ukrainian National Guard next year, the Pentagon said.

"The Defense Department and State Department have notified Congress of our intent to use $19 million in global security contingency fund authority to train and equip four companies and one tactical headquarters of the Ukrainian National Guard as part of their efforts to build their capacity for internal defense," Reuters quoted Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby as saying Friday.

The joint military training would take place at a facility inside Ukraine that is capable of hosting multilateral exercises, Kirby said. The advisors would be provided by US Army Europe and by the California National Guard, he added.

Also Friday, the United States pledged about $8 million in new aid to bolster the Ukrainian Border Guard Service.
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