With numbing regularity, Israel bombs the Gaza Strip, home to 1.8 million Palestinians, from the air, land, and sea, and the excuse is always the same: Hamas "terrorists" don't accept Israel's "right to exist." The specific trigger this time: the abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers.

Hamas has publicly stated that it was not responsible for the deaths, and the claim is credible. It had just concluded reconciliation talks with Fatah, a popular move with the Palestinian public, which it was not likely to jeopardize.

Bombing Gaza is convenient for Israel for many reasons: It ends further progress on Palestinian unity talks. It ends focus on the failure of the Kerry peace talks during which Israel continued to announce illegal settlement construction. It reminds all Palestinians that they will suffer a similar fate if they have the temerity to defy Israel. And it unites Israelis like nothing else.

Following the abduction of three Israeli teenagers, Israeli politicians called for vengeance. Netanyahu called the perpetrators "human animals."

In the Knesset, deputy speaker Moshe Feiglin called for cutting off power to Gaza hospitals. This was not the first time an Israeli politician in the Knesset has advocated war crimes against Palestinians.

Malaysian Airlines MH17 plane was travelling almost the same route as Russia's President Vladimir Putin's jet shortly before the crash that killed 295, Interfax news agency reports citing sources.

"I can say that Putin's plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft - 15:44 Moscow time," a source told the news agency on condition of anonymity.

"The contours of the aircrafts are similar, linear dimensions are also very similar, as for the coloring, at a quite remote distance they are almost identical", the source added.

UPDATE:

At the same time, there have been reports contradicting Intefax's report that was the first and the only media source to publish the news, saying that Presidential plane was not flying over Ukraine at the same time.

As a source told Gazeta.ru online news portal, Putin's plane does take off from Vnukovo-3 [the terminal that accepts business jets], but the president does not fly over the conflict-gripped neighboring country.

"Putin has only one jet - Board One, he does not fly other planes. This plane always takes off from Vnukovo-3, but the presidential plane have not been flying over Ukraine for a while," the source at Vnukovo-3 terminal said.

President Putin was on his way from Brazil, where he attended the BRICS summit, to Moscow.

Republicans file lawsuit in attempt to rein in president

A prominent law professor and avowed supporter of the Obama White House will tell the House on Wednesday that the president has created one of the biggest constitutional crises in the country's history and will endorse House Republicans' effort to sue to rein him in.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University, will say President Obama is trampling the founders' vision for the country in his push to circumvent Congress, and he will demand Republicans and Democrats alike forget their party labels to unify against this White House's power grab.

"What we are witnessing today is one of the greatest challenges to our constitutional system in the history of this country," Mr. Turley said in a prepared testimony, saying it began with previous presidents but under Mr. Obama has "reached a constitutional tipping point that threatens a fundamental change in how our country is governed."

How should one describe the U.S.-Israeli relationship? "Co-conspirators"? "Co-dependents"? "Frenemies"? "The corporate media in the United States and other western nations ignore, minimize or tell outright lies about the ongoing massacre" of Palestinians, but surely the Israeli media would do the same for the U.S. How about "Co-enablers in War Crimes"?
"Israelis in Sderot sit on a hilltop and watch bombs fall on homes, schools and hospitals that have now killed at least 185 people."

Of all the partners in international crime in existence right now, the United States and Israel are the worst. Along with their less powerful cohorts like Saudi Arabia they have instigated occupations and carnage on a mass scale. Yet while one hand washes the other, it isn't always clear who controls whom. Israel uses the political and economic muscle of its supporters to keep American politicians in line, but it also doesn't have to work very hard to find a receptive ear in Washington.

After killing American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in 2011, the Obama administration refused to disclose the legal rationale for the assassination. Fortunately, Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union revealed that Israel's war crimes were used as pretexts for American wrong doing.

A Department of Justice memorandum written by David Barron, now an Obama-appointed federal judge, legitimizes extra judicial killings on the grounds that Israel does the same thing. A 2006 Israeli Supreme Court decision ruled that targeted assassination of hundreds of Palestinians were legal and did not violate international law.

Actions by foreign governments are rarely used to justify American policy decisions. On any other subject Obama claims that the United States is exceptional and must be not just a leader in the world, but THE leader in the world. Apparently, claims of exceptionality end when it comes to explaining away state sponsored terror.

Moscow considers new package of the US sanctions against Russia "a primitive attempt at revenge for the course of events in Ukraine"

The European Union yielded to the US blackmail despite its own interests and chose the path of anti-Russian sanctions, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

Moscow pointed to the conclusions of the European Council meeting about the situation in Ukraine on July 16.

"We are disappointed that the European Union, contrary to its interests, yielded to the US administration blackmail and went the path of anti-Russian sanctions," the Ministry said. "Brussels, like Washington, uses "the mirror world logic", where all problems are blamed on those who make real efforts to de-escalate the situation in Ukraine, while flagrant facts such as the incessant refugees flow from Ukraine to Russia, shelling of the Russian territory and other anti-Russian provocations are conspicuously hushed up.

Supporting anti-Russian sanctions, the European Union "takes responsibility for Kiev's ongoing military operation that kills people every day", the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"Instead of using the opportunities available to start a dialogue between Kiev and respresentatives of the country's southeast, the European Union did bidding of those who advocate resolution of the internal Ukrainian conflict by force and provoking confrontation with Russia in this situation," the Ministry said.

Russia hopes that the European Union will put forward its own position in international affairs meeting interests of all countries on our continent.

Nestle continues to draw water to sell from wells located on a California reservation despite worsening drought conditions that have prompted conservation measures limiting personal use.

The company has been drawing water for more than a decade from wells near a spring on the Morongo Band of Mission Indians' reservation, but neighbors have grown concerned about the operation as the statewide drought continues into its third year.

"Why is it possible to take water from a drought area, bottle it, and sell it?" said Linda Ivey, a Palm Desert real estate appraiser.

The Desert Sun reported that Nestle Waters North America Inc., which leases the property from the tribe, had previously submitted annual reports on its groundwater extraction to local water districts.

Those reports show the company drew between 1,366 and 595 acre-feet from two wells in Millard Canyon that it then sold under the Arrowhead and Nestle Pure Life brands.

Outgoing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) derailed a CNN discussion on Tuesday about the thousands of undocumented immigrants arriving in the U.S. from Central America by calling them "invaders" and linking them to at least one rape case and an auto accident from six years ago.

"Foreign nationals that have come into the United States are between 300- to 500,000," Bachmann told an incredulous Crossfire co-host Van Jones. "My heart is broken for a female college student in Minnesota who was raped, murdered and mutilated by a foreign national who came into our country. We had a school bus full of kids in Minnesota - four children were killed on that school bus because an illegal alien driving a van went into that schoolbus."

"There are lines that can't be crossed here," Jones responded. "I'm sorry, congresswoman. Are you gonna scapegoat children for the crime of this despicable person?"

Imposing sanctions on Russia and blaming it for destabilizing Ukraine contradicts US national interests, President Putin said at the BRICS summit in Brazil, emphasizing that declared support of Ukrainians should not be limited to the country's oligarchs.

Speaking to the press following the BRICS summit in Brazil, Vladimir Putin was asked to comment on the new package of sanctions against Russia announced just minutes earlier by the US President.

"We aren't the ones introducing sanctions, you should ask them," Putin said.

"But as for sanctions, they usually have a boomerang effect, and without a doubt will force US-Russian relations into a corner," he elaborated. "This is a serious blow to our relationship. And it undermines the long term security interests of the US State and its people."

Putin said that it is "regrettable" that "our partners" have chosen to impose new sanctions, but Russia "will not close doors to negotiations."

"We're open to finding ways out of this situation," Putin said. "I really hope that common sense and the willingness to resolve all issues through peaceful diplomatic means will prevail."

Commenting on the Ukrainian crisis Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi urged to give up calls for a new Cold War and underlined that Europe should not be built in opposition to Russia.

"Within the EU we need to respect the cry for freedom of the Ukrainian people but we cannot build Europe in opposition to our neighbor - Russia," Renzi said speaking at the Democratic Party PD National Assembly late Tuesday.

The Prime Minister of Italy, which has recently taken over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from Greece, noted that "today we do not need to declare a Cold War, but should be capable of creating means for a dialogue."

EU leaders will discuss additional sanctions to be imposed on Russia over the Ukrainian crisis later Wednesday.

Last week, 11 new names have already been added to the sanctions list.

Israel has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. It has been morally bankrupted by the sanctification of victimhood, which it uses to justify an occupation that rivals the brutality and racism of apartheid South Africa. Its democracy - which was always exclusively for Jews - has been hijacked by extremists who are pushing the country toward fascism. Many of Israel's most enlightened and educated citizens - 1 million of them - have left the country. Its most courageous human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists - Israeli and Palestinian - are subject to constant state surveillance, arbitrary arrests and government-run smear campaigns. Its educational system, starting in primary school, has become an indoctrination machine for the military. And the greed and corruption of its venal political and economic elite have created vast income disparities, a mirror of the decay within America's democracy.

And yet, the hard truths about Israel remain largely unspoken. Liberal supporters of Israel decry its excesses. They wring their hands over the tragic necessity of airstrikes on Gaza or Lebanon or the demolition of Palestinian homes. They assure us that they respect human rights and want peace. But they react in inchoate fury when the reality of Israel is held up before them. This reality implodes the myth of the Jewish state. It exposes the cynicism of a state whose real goal is, and always has been, the transfer, forced immigration or utter subjugation and impoverishment of Palestinians inside Israel and the occupied territories.

Reality shatters the fiction of a peace process. Reality lays bare the fact that Israel routinely has used deadly force against unarmed civilians, including children, to steal half the land on the West Bank and crowd forcibly displaced Palestinians into squalid, militarized ghettos while turning their land and homes over to Jewish settlers. Reality exposes the new racial laws adopted by Israel as those once advocated by the fanatic racist Meir Kahane. Reality unveils the Saharonim detention camp in the Negev Desert, the largest detention center in the world. Reality mocks the lie of open, democratic debate, including in the country's parliament, the Knesset, where racist diatribes and physical threats, often enshrined into law, are used to silence and criminalize the few who attempt to promote a civil society. Liberal Jewish critics inside and outside Israel, however, desperately need the myth, not only to fetishize Israel but also to fetishize themselves. Strike at the myth and you unleash a savage vitriol, which in its fury exposes the self-adulation and latent racism that lie at the core of modern Zionism.