Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is nothing if not a political survivor. After weathering a US led year-long attempt to oust him for his failure to execute a Turkish military ground war to topple Bashar al Assad in neighboring Syria, now Erdogan, a student of Realpolitik perhaps even more than the Koran, is looking abroad for new strategic allies. At a time when NATO, the Obama Administration and others are doing everything to demonize Russia's Putin, using the pretext of Ukraine, Erdogan is moving significantly closer to - guess which world political leader. Yes, Vladimir Putin and Russia. The implications of a Turkish fundamental geopolitical realignment could have global consequences far beyond Turkey's mere size or political weight.

The first steps to a closer economic alliance between Turkey and Russia came this past April, well after the illegal US-orchestrated coup in Ukraine and after the Crimean Parliament requested to join Russia, opening a flood of anti-Russian propaganda from the west. On April 21 Turkish Minister of Energy Taner Yildiz invited Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev to Akara to work out details of a major increase of Russian gas to come to Turkey via Gazprom's Blue Stream pipeline. Turkey is already Russia's second largest gas and oil importer after the EU. The two agreed how to increase the capacity of the Blue Stream gas pipeline from 16 to 19 billion cubic meters per year, further adding to the economic ties binding the two historical rivals.

IDF air strikes have leveled two multi-story buildings in Gaza; both are said to have housed Hamas facilities. The new tactic of bringing down entire buildings has been tested amid a new escalation of tensions in the Israeli-Gaza conflict.


A seven-story office building in the Gaza Strip's southern town of Rafah was completely destroyed by an Israeli strike on Sunday morning, according to eyewitnesses. It's not yet clear if there were injured or dead in the attack

Another strike in the same city hit a two-story shopping center, wounding seven and badly damaging the building.

The Israeli military claim both the buildings housed facilities linked to Palestinian militants. One of the offices in the leveled seven-story Zourab building belonged to the Hamas-run interior ministry, AP reports.

Ukraine celebrated the 23rd anniversary of country's independence on Sunday

The speaker of Russia's parliament lower house
State Duma Sergei Naryshkin believes that a parade held in Ukraine's capital, Kiev, on the occasion of Independence Day of the country was a manifestation of aggressive plans to escalate the crisis.
"Yesterday a military parade was held in Kiev, where military units carrying out a punitive operation in the country's east already for several months also participated," Sergei Naryshkin told reporters on Monday. "I do not know what prompted them to take this decision, but instead of appeals to dialogue, instead of a mourning ceremony for all victims of a bloody conflict they showed their aggressive plans to escalate the crisis," the lower house speaker said.

Outspoken Union Theological Seminary professor Cornel West goes where very few 'thinkers-of-color' have had the courage to go in this interview with Salon's Thomas Frank: "The thing is, [Obama] posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free... we ended up with a brown-faced Clinton. Another opportunist. Another neoliberal opportunist... So you got low-quality black leadership. Al Sharpton is who? He's a cheerleader for Obama... Eric Holder won't touch the Wall Street executives; they're his friends... I think a post-Obama America is an America in post-traumatic depression."

Excerpted from Salon,

...how do you feel things have worked out since then, both with the economy and with this president? That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn't turn.

No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he's just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair. And that's a very sad moment in the history of the nation because we are - we're an empire in decline. Our culture is in increasing decay. Our school systems are in deep trouble. Our political system is dysfunctional. Our leaders are more and more bought off with legalized bribery and normalized corruption in Congress and too much of our civil life. You would think that we needed somebody - a Lincoln-like figure who could revive some democratic spirit and democratic possibility.

Arrests, expulsions, home demolitions, land seizure and settlers harassing Palestinians continues: Since the beginning of the fighting in the south on July 8, soldiers and police have injured 2,139 Palestinians in the West Bank.

Last Wednesday, about an hour and a half after midnight, a group of armed men in uniforms burst into the home in the West Bank city of Ramallah of Khalida Jarrar, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council representing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. One of the group tried to hand her a document written in Hebrew. She refused to accept the piece of paper. A female soldier, she recounted, read her what was written on the paper. A policeman translated it into Arabic.

Jarrar didn't pay attention to all the details, but rather to the basics: The Israel Defense Forces was expelling her to the West Bank city of Jericho, and she was to leave within 24 hours. She refused to sign the document. It's still at her house.

Under the signature of the IDF commander in the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, the order is dated August 15 and entitled: "Order with Regard to Security Directives (Consolidated Version), Judea and Samaria (No. 1651) 5770 2009." And below it there is another caption: "Special Supervisory Order."

The text of the order read as follows: "Following the accumulation of high-quality and credible intelligence material with regard to Khalida Kana'an Muhammed Jarrar (hereinafter 'the subject'), and after I have been convinced that serious security considerations required this and that the matter was necessary and required for decisive security reasons to maintain security in the region, I hereby order that the subject be placed under special supervision. As long as this order remains in effect, the subject shall not leave the Jericho district other than with a permit from me or someone authorized by me. This order will go into effect when signed and remain in effect until February 29, 2015 at 11:59 P.M."

Jarrar stated that she would not obey the expulsion order.

A funny thing happened on the way to 500 years of Western Empire and colonialism. Russia just boycotted Eurangloland's (The EU, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) food and agricultural products, which in itself is very telling about ongoing trends. But there's more. The oppressed are biting back. Until recently, the ongoing reaction of the world's non-Eurangloland governments to Russia's stand (those which represent the 85% of our planet's people), would have been unimaginable. So, sit back and enjoy the show.

In all fairness to this proud, global majority, you must add the peoples of Japan and South Korea to Eurangloland's empire. They are militarily occupied, supine satraps to the Princes of Power in Washington. Groveling like dogs, they actually take their barking orders from the West seriously. Throw in a few more countries that cower at the feet of Western Empire and we can say that about 20% of the world's people rule the remaining 80%, not much differently than the pharaohs did over their subjects and slaves in Ancient Egypt. The Pareto principle applies here too. This secondary list of client states waxes and wanes, depending on how recently the CIA/MI6/DGSE deep state has installed a whore government in their puppet, local halls of power, or as in the Philippines recently, which prostrated itself to America's Worldwide Wehrmacht. Ukraine is the most recent prom slut for Western servitude and so far, Venezuela is holding out admirably against the West's internal efforts at regime change.

Kudos to Russia for its genius to pick ag products as a punch in the solar plexus of power. As Deena Stryker recently pointed out in a recent article,

Anyone who has witnessed European farmers drive their tractors into the center of Brussels and dump crops in front of EU headquarters, knows the hold they have on legislators. Much of European agriculture takes place on family farms and the EU has had to create special rules and subsidies to keep its food producers happy.

Hamas signs off on Palestinian efforts to join International Criminal Court as international legal experts demand accountability

The push to engage the International Criminal Court in an investigation into possible war crimes by Israel for its military attacks on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip is gaining steam among Palestinian political factions as well as members of the international legal community.

On Friday, an international coalition of legal advocacy organizations wrote to the ICC's chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urging her to initiate an investigation into serious crimes committed by Israeli forces during it ongoing military operation against Palestinians living in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge.

And on Saturday - as Israeli airstrikes and bombing appeared to intensify once again - Hamas made it known that it will now support an effort by the Palestinian Authority to formally join the ICC.

Ukraine needs to purchase additional five billion cubic meters of gas from Russia for the forthcoming winter season, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Friday.

"Can Ukraine now survive without Russian gas? No, it can't. How much Russian gas do we need to buy? About 5 billion cubic meters," he said in an interview with Ukrainian TV channels.

He said that three-party gas talks, involving Ukraine, Russia and the European Union, are scheduled to take place next month.

"I hope there will be some final stage to these talks," he said.

He added that Kiev had reserved $3.1 billion for gas purchases in the National Bank of Ukraine.

On June 16, Russian gas giant Gazprom introduced a prepayment system for gas deliveries to Ukraine amid a dispute with Kiev over its $4.5 billion gas debt. The European Commission and Gazprom anticipate problems in winter, when Kiev is likely to run out of its own gas reserves.

The Russian compromise was a $100 discount to the contract price, bringing it down to $385, as well as a phased debt repayment scheme. Ukraine declined the offer, dissatisfied with the discount mechanism.Current Ukraine's gas debt is estimated to be more than $5 billion.


Earlier, Ukrainian national oil and gas company Naftogaz suggested to European companies purchasing Russian gas on the border between Russia and Ukraine. The European Commission said it would require a renegotiation of the transit contracts and a trilateral meeting between the European Commission, Russia and Ukraine.

On August 11, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko discussed the possibility of resuming gas talks between Ukraine, Russia and the European Union with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Official Washington's war-hysteria machine is running at full speed again after Russia unilaterally dispatched a convoy of trucks carrying humanitarian supplies to the blockaded Ukrainian city of Luhansk, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Before dawn broke in Washington on Saturday, "Ukrainian pro-Russian separatists" - more accurately described as federalists of southeast Ukraine who oppose last February's coup in Kiev - unloaded desperately needed provisions from some 280 Russian trucks in Luhansk, Ukraine. The West accused those trucks of "invading" Ukraine on Friday, but it was a record short invasion; after delivering their loads of humanitarian supplies, many of the trucks promptly returned to Russia.

I happen to know what a Russian invasion looks like, and this isn't it. Forty-six years ago, I was ten miles from the border of Czechoslovakia when Russian tanks stormed in to crush the "Prague Spring" experiment in democracy. The attack was brutal.

Once back in Munich, West Germany, where my duties included substantive liaison with Radio Free Europe, I experienced some of the saddest moments of my life listening to radio station after radio station on the Czech side of the border playing Smetana's patriotic "Ma vlast" (My Homeland) before going silent for more than two decades.

I was not near the frontier between Russia and southeastern Ukraine on Friday as the convoy of some 280 Russian supply trucks started rolling across the border heading toward the federalist-held city of Luhansk, but that "invasion" struck me as more like an attempt to break a siege, a brutal method of warfare that indiscriminately targets all, including civilians, violating the principle of non-combatant immunity.

The concept of "supply and demand" is a basic in economics. The rarer a commodity or resource is, the more it costs. The more abundant a resource or commodity is, the less it costs. Scarcity increases an items market value.

Oil and natural gas, despite government subsidies and other efforts to the contrary, are still subject to basic economic laws. The more oil and natural gas on the market, the less the cost. If the price of oil or natural gas falls, this means less profit for those who sell it.

The United States and Russia top the global oil and natural gas market. The US has just recently surpassed Russia as the top oil and natural gas producer.

The price of natural gas is in great decline due to a new innovation. The practice of hydraulic fracking, recently introduced in the US as a means for extracting shale gas resources, has created a huge abundance of natural gas. The price of natural gas is going down, threatening global markets.

In addition, oil is in over abundance. New African oil markets are also opening up. Oil and natural gas are non-renewable resources, yet the problem for the Wall Street bankers with names like Morgan and Rockfeller, is that there is too much of it. To keep the prices high, scarcity is a necessity.

The Rise of Russia and China

Russia, with its state owned natural gas company, is the top rival of the US in the natural gas market. The removal, or weakening of Russia within the world natural gas market is an economic necessity for the owners of US natural gas companies.

The Soviet Union was once the primary rival of the United States. It led a block of countries, some led by Communists, others led by Independent Nationalists, who developed independently, and broke the economic chains of Wall Street and London.

The events of 1991 devastated the USSR and Eastern Europe, causing a surge of poverty, chaos, and suffering. However, emerging from this chaos and suffering has been the nationalist government of Vladimir Putin. Russia has re-emerged from the crisis of the 90s, as an economic power. It is exporting oil and natural gas, and building an alliance with China, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran.

Putin's recent visits to oil producing South American countries confirms the growing influence of Russia on global markets. The plan for a natural gas pipeline, connecting Russia and China, is also another blow to Wall Street.

The rule of the capitalist market is "expand or die." Wall Street's influence is contracting, and its profits are shrinking. As the price of oil and natural gas declines, and more markets slip away toward China and Russia, the Wall Street monopolists are running out of options. In their desperation to stay on top, and keep their profits flowing in, they are doing their best to destroy economic rivals.