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R2-D2

Iceland drops bid for EU membership


Sputnik
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 20:16 UTC
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© Flickr/ Olya Sanakoev
According to Agence France-Presse, Iceland is reportedly dropping its bid for membership in the European Union.

A statement released by Foreign Minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson informed the European Union Commission of his country's decision to annul their application.

The announcement follows pledges made in 2013 after the election of a new eurosceptic government.

Iceland applied for EU membership in 2009, but earlier this year, the Icelandic prime minister said that his country would withdraw its application. The nation is already a member of the European Economic Area, which allows for free movement of persons and goods through other European Union member states.

"Participating in EU talks isn't really valid anymore," Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson said earlier this year, according to Reykjavik Grapevine magazine. "Both due to changes in the European Union and because it's not in line with the policies of the ruling government to accept everything that the last government was willing to accept. Because of that, we're back at square one."

Comment: It's hard to blame Iceland for wanting out of an organization that is merely a tool for the U.S. to use to manipulate countries into giving up their sovereignty. Plus, Iceland has probably been paying attention to the way the EU-backed sanctions against Russia have gone on to hurt European countries. With all that has transpired recently, it looks like a smart move for Iceland to slowly back away from the EU.

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Star of David

Bye-bye Bibi - Polls show Netanyahu facing defeat in Israeli elections


Sputnik
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 20:10 UTC
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© AP Photo/ Gali Tibbon, Pool
The latest poll numbers coming out of Israel don't look good for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

With less than week for the pivotal Israeli elections, polls show Netanyahu's conservative Likud Party losing ground to the centrist Zionist Union Party after weeks of being in a dead heat.

Most surveys are predicting that the Zionist Union could win up to 24 seats in the Israeli parliament, compared to Likud's 21. If current trends continue, Israel will have a new prime minister come March 17th and would form a coalition government. Labour Party leader Issac Herzog would become prime minister for the first two years of the four-year term, then Zionist Union leader Tzipi Livni would take over the remaining two years.

Netanyahu is on the defensive, saying that a loss by Likud would put the country's security at risk.

"If the gap between the Likud and Labor continues to grow, a week from now Herzog and Livni will become the prime ministers of Israel in rotation, with the backing of the Arab parties," Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post in a wide-ranging interview with the paper that is editorially friendly to the prime minister.

"That will cause such a monumental shift in policy that it is a danger, and anyone who wants to stop it has to vote Likud to narrow the gap. Yes, there will be pressures to withdraw to the (pre-) 1967 lines and divide Jerusalem. Yes, there will be pressures to relinquish our opposition to the Iranian (nuclear arms) deal. There is no privilege now to vote for other parties."

Comment: Bibi is at least going to go down using the same tired fear tactics that he only knows.

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Yoda

Russia press secretary answers Putin illness rumors - 'His handshakes break hands'


RT
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 19:39 UTC
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© Press Service of the Russian President
Vladimir Putin's press secretary has dismissed reports that the Russian president is ill as rumors, adding that the news itself could be a result of "spring madness" among some reporters.

"No need to worry, everything is all right. He has working meetings all the time, only not all of these meetings are public," Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday in an interview with Echo of Moscow radio. He added that the president is "absolutely healthy" and that "his handshake is so strong he breaks hands with it."

Shortly before the radio interview Peskov dismissed the rumors of Putin's possible illness in an interview with TASS.

"As soon as the sun appears in spring, when the smell of spring is in the air, some people suffer from crises. ... Some have hallucinations about the government dissolution and some cannot see Putin on television for several days," he said. "We have a calm attitude to such crises and keep answering all questions in a patient manner."

News of Putin's alleged health problems was initially circulated by Reuters in a report about the postponement of the president's visit to Kazakhstan.
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Bulb

UK Party Leader Farage: "We poked Russian bear with a stick, unsurprisingly Putin reacted"


RT
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:56 UTC
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© Reuters / Vincent KesslerLeader of Britain's UK Independence Party (UKIP) and member of the European Parliament (MEP) Nigel Farage
Britain's Nigel Farage launched a stinging attack on the idea of an EU army to counter Russia. The UKIP leader also placed some of the blame for the Ukraine crisis on EU expansion.

The notion of building up an EU army to counter Russia was the brainchild of European Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker. Farage quickly noted that the idea is already happening, despite many European leaders being against it.

He pointed to a conversation he had with Nick Clegg - leader of the Liberal Democrats and the UK's deputy prime minister - a year ago, during which both men agreed that the idea of a European army was a dangerous fantasy.

Farage then cited examples of the European Defense Agency, EU battle groups, an EU Navy operation against pirates off the coast of Somalia, and article 28 of the Lisbon Treaty, which provides for collective EU defense.

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Stormtrooper

EU plan to create a separate army leaves NATO not amused


RT
Wed, 11 Mar 2015 16:54 UTC
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© Reuters / Kacper Pempel
NATO says a plan by the European Union to create its own army would be ineffective. The military alliance's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, says the EU should make sure everything they do is complimentary to NATO and avoid duplication.

Stoltenberg told a press briefing in Belgium that he would welcome an increased investment by European nations in defense, but this should be channeled towards NATO, adding that "duplication would be inefficient. It's important to avoid duplication and I urge Europe to make sure that everything they do is complementary to the NATO alliance," he said, Reuters reported.


Comment: "duplication would be inefficient..." just like this article so far!!!


The idea of creating an EU army to counter the perceived threat from Russia was the brainchild of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who spoke of his ideas to a German newspaper on Sunday. "An army like this would help us to better coordinate our foreign and defense policies, and to collectively take on Europe's responsibilities in the world," the European Commission he said in an interview to Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper.


Comment: It is interesting that this idea has emerged and is gaining speed as a counterbalance to Russia and the US. The EU already has battle groups that are manned on a rotational basis as a rapid reaction force. This, however, is a far cry from a funded centralized EU army armed with the same capability of national institutionalized armed forces. What the take-away message may be is that the EU is reacting adversely to the US Lord of the World monopoly on calling the shots, are sick of stooges like Breedlove muddying the waters and complicating negotiations, and is feeling non-autonomous and ineffective. Obviously the US wants to push the war agenda as far as it possibly can, as it is the only deflection from more pressing problems at home, the financial solution it needs to remain viable, and its false belief in its self-aggrandizing "exceptionalism." The EU is caught in the middle and is looking for any way out while not cutting off its NATO nose in the process, as in "being inefficient by duplication."
See also:
NATO lies and provocations: Splitting up the Atlantic Alliance

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Stop

Best of the Web: Paramilitary occupation in America

Joseph Kishore
Global Research
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 00:00 UTC
It is necessary to call things by their right names. The obscene regularity of police murders in the United States has reached the point where it is appropriate to speak of the police as an occupying army, whose daily violence and brutality can best be described as a war against the country's poor and working people.
the military police
© wakeup-world.comComing soon to a front door near you...
Practically every day brings a new outrage. The death toll mounts relentlessly, against the backdrop of harassment and beatings that are daily facts of life in much of the country. The government does not publish figures on police killings; however, according to statistics compiled from media reports, some 1,000 people lose their lives as a result of police violence every year in the United States. That averages out to almost three fatalities a day.

Comment: There are several non-lethal ways to deal with civilians, especially when they are committing minor infractions. A loaded gun should never be the first option. We are traveling a dark and deadly road if we allow the murdering of civilians by militarized police forces as an acceptable form of societal control. Life matters, or have we forgotten that. Apparently so. Where is the outrage? Where, indeed, are the constraints? Uncorrected, the ramifications speak to a nefarious agenda and are nothing less than "deadly." We are literally in a one-sided war within our own country and it ain't gettin' better anytime soon.

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Wall Street

Ukraine Central Bank ex-head says IMF loan to Ukraine is 'involuntary servitude'


RT
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 16:41 UTC
Sergey Arbuzov
© RIA Novosti / Grigory VasilenkoSergey Arbuzov.
The $17.5 billion loan approved by the IMF won't save Ukraine from hopeless poverty; instead, it will inflict a blow on the country's population already living on the breadline, said the ex-head of the National Bank of Ukraine Sergei Arbuzov.

None of the options proposed by the IMF would improve the economy, said Arbuzov to Izvestia, adding that the biggest mistake made by the government was working with the IMF instead of working with the economy.

"Ukraine had all the reasons to talk with the IMF and international creditors not about the loan, but about debt relief and the restructuring of the remaining debt in long-term securities with low profitability," he said. "I do not see the reasons for the allies to refuse to make concession to the war-torn country that has experienced the Maidan. Instead, we've come up with an involuntary servitude variant, even without trying to negotiate."

Comment: More of the same from the IMF. The money is only for banks, not for economies and regular working people. How much longer can the world endure the banks sucking all the life out of everyone?

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Star of David

Israel destroys EU-funded West Bank shelter for Palestinians while expanding settlements


RT
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 16:24 UTC
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© Reuters / Ammar Awad
With politicians around the globe calling on Israel to take action against illegal settlements in the West Bank, the Jewish state has finally taken action. Not against its own communities, but against an EU-funded building for Palestinians.

On Tuesday, the Israeli government demolished an EU settlement on Mount Scopus in northeast Jerusalem. The city's municipality said it undertook the measures because the structure was constructed on land, which had been designated for a national park.

According to the EU it was not even a building, but a temporary shelter, which the pan-European organization has continued to fund to help displaced people.

"We condemn today's demolition of temporary shelters funded by the European Union... as part of its response to the needs of the affected communities," an EU statement said, according AFP.

Comment: The Israeli settlements continue unabated as the world does nothing concrete to stop it.

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Snakes in Suits

Obama absurdly declares Venezuela a security threat

Mark Weisbrot
Al Jazeera America
Tue, 10 Mar 2015 13:58 UTC
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© Jorge Silva / ReutersOpposition students next to national guards during a march against President Nicolás Maduro’s government in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb. 12, 2015.
Yesterday the White House took a new step toward the theater of the absurd by "declaring a national emergency with respect to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by the situation in Venezuela," as President Barack Obama put it in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner.

It remains to be seen whether anyone in the White House press corps will have the courage to ask what in the world the nation's chief executive could mean by that. Is Venezuela financing a coming terrorist attack on U.S. territory? Planning an invasion? Building a nuclear weapon?

Who do they think they are kidding? Some may say that the language is just there because it is necessary under U.S. law in order to impose the latest round of sanctions on Venezuela. That is not much of a defense, telling the whole world the rule of law in the United States is something the president can use lies to get around whenever he finds it inconvenient.

Comment: This world really is a "theater of the absurd".

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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: CrossTalk: Why is the Western media so rabidly anti-Russian?


RT
Thu, 12 Mar 2015 12:11 UTC
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19th century anti-Russian propaganda. Plus ça change...
The West's mainstream loves to loath Russia, anything related to Russia, and of course the Russian President Vladimir Putin. Where do these intense biases come from? And has anyone noticed that bad media coverage in the West only strengthens the resolve of the average Russian at home?

CrossTalking with Charles Bausman, Ben Aris, and Alexander Mercouris.

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