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The ICC's investigation of Israeli war crimes: hold the cheers

Stephen Lendman
thepeoplesvoice.org
Sun, 14 Jun 2015 19:24 UTC
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Despite decades of well-documented , its government and officials continue remaining immune from accountability. Expect nothing different this time.

Months ahead of Palestine joining the International Criminal Court on April 1, an ICC prosecutor began a "preliminary examination" short of an official investigation into Israeli war crimes.

It covered violations "in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem since June 13, 2014" - focusing on Israel's 2014 summer Gaza war, Operation Protective Edge. It was strictly procedural with no commitment for further action. The court so far never held Israel accountable for indisputable crimes of war and against humanity.

In April 2012, former chief prosecutor Jose Luis Moreno Ocampo rejected the Palestinian Authority's bid to investigate Israeli war crimes during its December 2008/January 2009 Cast Lead Gaza aggression.

His reasoning was spurious - claiming under the Rome Statute "only internationally recognized states can join the court." His official statement said:
"(T)he current status granted to Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly is that of 'observer,' not as a 'Non-member State,' (and only) relevant bodies at the United Nations" or group of states that make up the court may decide if Palestinians can become part of the Rome Statute.

"(T)he Office has assessed that it is for the relevant bodies at the United Nations or the Assembly of States Parties to make the legal determination whether Palestine qualifies as a State for the purpose of acceding to the Rome Statute and thereby enabling the exercise of jurisdiction by the Court."

"The Rome Statute provides no authority for the Office of the Prosecutor to adopt a method to define the term 'State.' "

Comment: It is possible that Israel's crimes have become so heinous and stunningly obvious that something might come of this ICC investigation. As Mr. Lendman points out, Israel has gotten away with wholesale murder for years and years. Too many people in a position to DO something are turning a blind eye to it. This historical blindness is not likely to change, so we aren't holding our breath, but we do hope.

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Stock Down

End of the line! China and Germany stock markets look ready to pop

Harry Dent
Economy and Markets Daily
Fri, 12 Jun 2015 17:42 UTC
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The U.S. stock market has finally hit a speed bump after more than six years of a Fed- and QE-driven rally. The S&P 500 is up 232% since March of 2009 despite this unprecedented stimulus in the feeblest economic recovery in history.

But since late December 2014, U.S. stocks have gone nowhere as investors face some growing realities.

GDP, retail sales, production and exports are slowing.

The dollar's sharp rise in recent years has crushed global exports.

Long term interest rates are rising consistently... what I call the beginning of the end of stimulus policies designed to keep rates low forever.

Meanwhile, in just six months Germany saw its key stock market, the DAX, rise nearly 50% from mid-October into early April.

Germany's bubble has shot up 245% since March 2009 — greater than the U.S., despite its slower economy.

It won't last!

Comment: The warning signs continue to flash something big will happen soon.

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SOTT Logo Radio

Behind the Headlines: Why the World is going to Hell


Sott.net
Sun, 14 Jun 2015 18:00 UTC
Sott Talk Radio logo
Have you noticed? Our planet is in the grip of environmental and social chaos that shows no signs of abating. Quite the opposite in fact. Violent and deadly events across the planet have increased to become almost daily occurences. Prolonged record breaking droughts are followed by torrential rain and flooding. Volcanoes and earthquakes are 'going off' at a rate never before seen. The lives of our planet's billions of poor people are directly threatened by these events, keeping them in a state of stressed distraction. Meanwhile, politicians and other 'elites' continue to plumb new depths of mendacity and corruption. War and bloodshed has been engendered to the point that it is a mainstay of 'normal life', terrorizing some and terrifying others, while rumors of 'world war' are deliberately disseminated to keep those who might know better afraid and silent. Global economic collapse is increasingly touted as just around the corner, starting in the USA, as the 'forces of law and order' there rack up ever more civilian kills.

So what's behind this rapid decay of our 'quality of life' and the impending destruction of our global society?

Join your hosts this Sunday from 2-4pm EST, 8-10pm CET, for the answers.

Running Time: 02:05:00

Download: MP3

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Light Saber

Ecuador President Correa: Alternative news challenges Western media propaganda


Sputnik
Thu, 11 Jun 2015 16:38 UTC
Western propaganda of Latin American news coverage is now counterbalanced by RT and teleSUR, Rafael Correa said.

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© Sputnik
Ecuador President Rafael Correa
Alternative news outlets help counterbalance the editorial slant of Western media broadcasting in Latin America, Ecuador President Rafael Correa said in an interview with RT en Espanol released Thursday.

According to the Ecuadorian leader, the entire region has drawn on information from CNN - a US channel that "defends the capitalist system" - for years before the Latin American television network teleSUR was established.

"There was a shocking disproportion in news coverage. And it still exists. But, luckily, we also have alternative sources like teleSUR and RT," Correa said.

A survey conducted by ICM Research exclusively for Sputnik and released in May, showed that over half of those people polled in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Greece would like to get global news from sources other than mainstream Western media.
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Gold Bar

Texas passes law to build gold and silver bullion depository, repatriate gold

Valentin Schmid
theepochtimes.com
Fri, 12 Jun 2015 17:57 UTC
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© claffra/iStock
The lack of faith in central bank trustworthiness is spreading. First Germany, then Holland, and Austria, and now - as we noted was possible previously - Texas has enacted a Bill to repatriate $1 billion of gold from The NY Fed's vaults to a newly established state gold bullion depository. "People have this image of Texas as big and powerful ... so for a lot of people, this is exactly where they would want to go with their gold," and the Bill includes a section to prevent forced seizure from the Federal Government.

From 2011:
"The University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment, took delivery of almost $1 billion in gold bullion and is storing the bars in a New York vault, according to the fund's board."

The decision to turn the fund's investment into gold bars was influenced by Kyle Bass, a Dallas hedge fund manager and member of the endowment's board, Zimmerman said at its annual meeting on April 14. Bass made $500 million on the U.S. subprime-mortgage collapse.

"Central banks are printing more money than they ever have, so what's the value of money in terms of purchases of goods and services," Bass said yesterday in a telephone interview. "I look at gold as just another currency that they can't print any more of."
And now, after we noted the possibility previously, as The Epoch Times reports, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law on Friday, June 12, that will allow Texas to build a gold and silver bullion depository. In addition, Texas will repatriate $1 billion worth of bullion from the Federal Reserve in New York to the new facility once completed.

On the surface the bill looks rather innocent, but its implications are far reaching. HB 483, "relating to the establishment and administration of a state bullion depository" to store gold and silver coins, was introduced by state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione.
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Attention

EU calls for regime change in Macedonia while current PM determined to stay


Sputnik
Sat, 13 Jun 2015 16:23 UTC
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© AP Photo/ Visar Kryeziu
Macedonia continues to go through a political crisis, after Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn and the leaders of the four main political parties in Macedonia failed to reach an agreement on settling the crisis earlier this week.

Western media claims that Nikola Gruevski, the current Prime Minister of Macedonia, created the crisis that puts his government at risk, EUobserver reported.

Recently, Gruevski was accused of mass illegal surveillance, election fraud, as well as abuse of the country's justice system and media.

Now the European Commission wants to send the government in Skopje a list of tough rule-of-law reforms. If Gruevski doesn't react and there is no action taken by his government, the Commission will stop backing Macedonia's EU entry talks, EUobserver said.

Comment: Another mess brewing north of Greece.

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Bad Guys

Escalating tensions: Pentagon preparing to send heavy weapons and troops to Eastern Europe


Deutsche Welle
Sun, 14 Jun 2015 12:55 UTC
Fighter jet lands on warship
© ru.wikipedia.org
The "New York Times" has reported that the Pentagon is "poised" to station heavy weapons for up to 5,000 US troops in several Eastern European countries. The move would escalate tension with Russia.

Citing US and allied officials, the newspaper said that if accepted, the proposal would mark the first time since the Cold War that Washington has stationed heavy military equipment in the NATO member states in Eastern Europe that were once part of the Soviet sphere of influence.

"The proposed 'prepositioned' stocks - to be stored on allied bases and enough to equip a brigade of 3,000 to 5,000 soldiers - also would be similar to what the United States maintained in Kuwait for more than a decade after Iraq invaded in 1990 and was expelled by American and allied forces early the next year," the "New York Times" said.

Comment: Also see: Failing at the Great Game: Washington's continuous blunders

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Blue Planet

Russian President Vladimir Putin awards Poklonskaya rank of Major General


Sputnik
Fri, 12 Jun 2015 16:57 UTC
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© Sputnik/ Yuriy Lashov
Natalia Poklonskaya, Crimea, Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Crimea's Prosecutor General Natalia Poklonskaya with the rank of Judicial Counsellor 3 Class, according to a document.

This military rank is similar to that of Major General. Previously, Poklonskaya served as a Senior Counsellor of Justice, which is equivalent to the rank of colonel.

During the Euromaidan, Poklonskaya handed in her resignation from the Ukrainian General Directorate of Internal Affairs in Kiev on February 25, 2014. In the document, she wrote that she was "ashamed to live in a country where neo-fascists freely walk about the streets."

Comment: Here are more articles on Crimea's Prosecutor General Natalia Poklonskaya:

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Snakes in Suits

Ya think?! A Machiavellian plan against Russia?

Timothy Stanley
Forbes
Thu, 11 Jun 2015 04:14 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Just 'cause yer machiavellian don't mean yer smarter than yer opponents, Barry.
To the Kremlin, recent events in its backyard have proved once and for all that the amorphous body known as 'the West' - its politicians, institutions, media, diplomats, armies, financial architecture and governance bodies - are not to be trusted. The charge sheet is long and contested: it starts with NATO's 'out of theater' bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999, includes broken promises over eastern European integration into the EU and NATO in the early 1990s, color revolutions in neighboring states, botched interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, destabilization in Libya and Syria, repeated attempts to find common security architecture rebuffed, and leads to the revolution/coup that took place in Kiev in March 2014, breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, subsequent political and economic sanctions against Russia and, most recently, threats to remove Russia's FIFA World Cup hosting rights in 2018. Whether all of this is part of some long-term, Machiavellian plan to destabilize Russia - an entirely uncontroversial view at all levels of society here - is questionable, but calls to mind the famous quote from Catch-22: 'Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.'

Comment: The most interesting thing about this article is not all the factual data presented, or its objective view of U.S. aggression towards Russia which we have seen from many independent sources already - but that it was printed in an on line version of Forbes Magazine and known by its moniker "The Capitalist Tool" - a huge proponent of the "free market" as it is known in Western circles. Are some of these editor jackasses starting to get a clue and waking up from the slumber and illusion that has been foisted upon many in America and Europe? Whatever the case is, it will be interesting to see how many more of these types of articles the mainstream media is able to eke out before all is said and done.

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Document

Russian Foreign Ministry to U.S.: Kiev National Guard just as bad as Azov Nazis


Fort Russ
Fri, 12 Jun 2015 21:10 UTC
conyers azov
The Russian Foreign Ministry about the decision of US Congress on the "Azov" battalion: the National Guard of Ukraine is no better.

Moscow wants to remind Washington that other formations of the National guard of Ukraine are no better than the "Azov" battalion. This was stated by the official representative of Russian Foreign Ministry, Alexander Lukashevich, in connection with the ban on allocation of funds for training of "Azov", which was supported by the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress.

"It took more then a year for the US Congress to realize that this unit is a bunch of outright Nazis, flaunting the emblems of Nazi SS troops and behaving like the Nazis on the occupied territory. But better late than never", — said the diplomat.

The next logical step - is to recognize, finally, that last year's coup in Kiev, strongly supported by Washington, was done by the hands of those same Nazi thugs.

Comment: Yep, it took over a year for the U.S. to admit the obvious. But it's not as if they just found out. They've known all along who they've been supporting. The U.S. has no moral qualms with funding and supporting Nazis or Islamic extremists. They've been doing it for years, and they'll keep on doing it. But when the pressure gets a little too hot, and the obvious becomes so obvious as to be undeniable, they'll throw the dog a bone. Thus, Conyers's amendments. Don't expect Kiev to become any less fascist, however...

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