The EU "does not see or is unwilling to see" Russia's efforts to establish peace in Ukraine, Moscow said in response to the bloc's new sanctions. Despite Brussels' "non-constructive" policy, Moscow is committed to helping implement the peace plan.

"We are sorry that the European Union has adopted a new round of sanctions. We have repeatedly expressed our discontent with the previously-imposed sanctions and our disagreement with them. We also considered them illegal," Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.

The EU decision "is absolutely beyond understanding and explanation," Peskov added, especially given Russia's recent efforts to help stop the bloodshed in Ukraine and peacefully resolve the conflict between Kiev and southeastern regions.


The presidential spokesman stressed that Brussels either fails to see or "is unwilling to see the real situation in Donbass and does not want to get informed about the steps the parties are taking towards settlement."

It appears the 'broad coalition' that President Obama so confidently described just two days ago is crumbling faster than the Iraqi army. First UK and Germany deny support for airstrikes in Syria and now Turkey refuses to allow a U.S.-led coalition to attack jihadists in neighboring Iraq and Syria from its air bases, nor will it take part in combat operations against militants, a government official. US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Ankara this morning to 'build the coalition' but, as AFP reports, Turkish officials have already made their position clear, "Turkey will not be involved in any armed operation but will entirely concentrate on humanitarian operations." Their 'excuse': "our hands and arms are tied because of the hostages," but follows PM Erdogan's recent shunning of Obama.

As AFP reports,

US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Ankara Friday for talks aimed at building a coalition against Islamic State jihadists, a visit that comes after Turkey said it would not allow its air bases to be used for strikes on the extremists.

The top US diplomat, touring the Middle East to establish a coalition of more than 40 countries, is to meet with Turkey's leaders including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks on measures to defeat the militants in Iraq and Syria.

Turkey, a NATO member and Washington's key ally in the region, is reluctant to take part in combat operations against Islamic State militants, or allow a US-led coalition to attack jihadists from its territory.

On the eve of the visit, a Turkish official told AFP: "Our hands and arms are tied because of the hostages."

The official added that Turkey will "not be involved in any armed operation but will entirely concentrate on humanitarian operations."

IS militants hold 49 Turks hostage, including diplomats and children, abducted from the Turkish consulate in Mosul in Iraq in June.

"There is a taboo," said the visionary Edward Said, "on telling the truth about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when this truth is out can any of us be free."

For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once intimidated into silence can't look away now. Staring at them from their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of others, such as Canada and Australian, in this epic crime.

The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gazais a siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new world war is growing by the day.

When Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine "the greatest moral issue of our time", he spoke on behalf of true civilisation, not that which empires invent. In Latin America, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador have made their stand on Gaza. Each of these countries has known its own dark silence when immunity for mass murder was sponsored by the same godfather in Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more ammunition to kill them.

Unlike Netanyahu and his killers, Washington's pet fascists in Latin America didn't concern themselves with moral window dressing. They simply murdered, and left the bodies on rubbish dumps. For Zionism, the goal is the same: to dispossess and ultimately destroy an entire human society: a truth that 225 Holocaust survivors and their descendants have compared with the genesis of genocide.

Nothing has changed since the Zionists' infamous "Plan D" in 1948 that ethnically cleansed an entire people. Recently, on the website of the Times of Israel were the words: "Genocide is Permissible". A deputy speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Moshe Feiglin, demands a policy of mass expulsion into concentration camps. An MP, Ayelet Shaked, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, calls for the extermination of Palestinian mothers to prevent them giving birth to what she calls "little snakes".

President Obama was left in no doubt yesterday about the difficulties surrounding his call for a united front to tackle Isil head on with a series of air strikes in Syria.

Responding to the plan for an offensive Russia warned that air strikes against militants in Syria would be a "gross violation" of international law.

A Russian foreign ministry spokesman said such action, without the backing of the UN, would be "an act of aggression".

The reaction came as US Secretary of State John Kerry met Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia to try to build a coalition against Isil.


Even on Capitol Hill in Washington regardless of the fact that it was the 13th anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Centre attacks there was no show of uniformity.

The United States stands accused of many of the brutal techniques used by ISIL, a terrorist group President Barack Obama has vowed to "degrade and ultimately destroy," a journalist and political commentator says.

"He says that these terrorists that he is fighting now are unique in their brutality," Anna O'Leary said in a phone interview with Press TV on Thursday. "What I say to Obama is America is unique in its brutality around the world."

O'Leary likened ISIL kidnappings to the CIA's rendition program in which terrorism suspects are secretly rounded up and transferred to secret prisons to be interrogated and tortured.

"He [Obama] talks about the terrorists kidnapping, but what happens when America kidnaps people and takes them to Guantanamo," she asked.

France may take part in the US bombing campaign in Iraq aimed at crippling the Islamic State militants if it is asked to do so. The US is now calling for an international coalition to defeat IS, but the UK and Germany are reluctant to join in the strikes.

"In Iraq... we support the formation of an inclusive government. We will participate if necessary in an aerial military action," French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday in a speech in Paris.

He added that several hundred French jihadists have joined the IS, formerly known as ISIS, and pose a domestic threat that the French government regards as serious.

Forget Stephen King. If you want scary, read U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier's 150-page Findings of Fact released Thursday in the Deepwater Horizon case.

Although the judge found BP liable for "gross negligence," some U.S. media failed to mention that Barbier let BP off the hook on punitive damages. And that stuns me, given that the record seems to identify enough smoking guns to roast a sizable pig.

Here's a standout example:

Every rig operator knows that, before a rig can unhook from a drill pipe, the operator has to run a "negative pressure test" to make sure the cement has properly sealed the drill pipe. If the pipe is safely plugged, the pressure gauge will read zero. The amount of pressure BP measured at 5 p.m. on April 20, 2010, the day of the explosion? 1400 psi (see the findings, pages 62-65).

Well that didn't take long. After espousing his strategy last night of leading a broad coalition against ISIS, it appears President Obama's "allies" are backing away from the plan. As The WSJ reports, Germany and the U.K. on Thursday ruled out carrying out air strikes on Islamic State militants in Syria.

It appears the Europeans, realizing the ire that these actions will likely cause to Putin, are stepping back - "We haven't been asked, nor will we do it," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told reporters and his U.K. counterpart Philip Hammond explicitly ruled out air strikes in Syria, after the U.K. parliament struck down such a move last year. So that leaves the French?

As usual, every European snaction (sic) has an equal and opposite Russian reaction. Here is how the Russian Foreign ministry responded to what van Rompuy announced earlier today would be a new round of Russian sanctions, which wil finally be enforced tomorrow. First from the Russian foreign ministry:

• BY PASSING NEW ANTI-RUSSIAN SANCTIONS, EU EFFECTIVELY MADE CHOICE AGAINST PEACE PROCESS IN UKRAINE - RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY'S STATEMENT

And from Russia's European ambassador:

• NEW EU SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA LEAVE RUSSIA NO OTHER CHOICE BUT TO GO FOR CERTAIN COUNTER-MEASURES - RUSSIA'S PERMANENT REP TO THE EU
  CHIZHOV
• EU SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA DEVOID OF ELEMENTARY LOGIC, COMING SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH DE-ESCALATION OF UKRAINIAN CRISIS - RUSSIA'S AMBASSADOR TO EU CHIZHOV

The Spanish government is readying itself for an autumn of discontent, spending nearly €1 billion ($1.29 billion) on riot gear for police units as disparate protest groups prepare a string of demonstrations.

Since June, the interior ministry has tendered four contracts to purchase riot equipment ranging from shields to stab vests. The ministry also finalized its purchase of a new truck-mounted water cannon, an anti-riot measure used during Spain's dictatorship and the transition to democracy but little seen in recent years.

Despite attempts by opposition Socialist politician Antonio Trevín to paint the purchase as "a return to times that we would rather forget," the ministry said in its tender that the water cannon was necessary, "given the current social dynamic."

The government's spending spree comes as groups across Spain are predicting a season of protests. "We're calling it the autumn of confronting power and institutions," said the activist group Coordinadora 25-S which has its roots in the Indignados movement.

Rallies are being planned to counter draft laws by the governing People's Party that would curtail access to abortion in Spain or see unauthorized protests levied fines of up to €600,000 ($775,000). Months after former King Juan Carlos abdicated the throne in favour of his son King Felipe VI, protests are also being planned to demand a referendum on the monarchy.