The elite's cryptic monument to depopulation and world government just became more mysterious (and creepier) - somebody has officially updated it with an engraved cube marking the year 2014 inserted into the English/Spanish slab of the 'new 10 commandments' for the 'Age of Reason' desired by its creators.

The super-rich are looking to protect their wealth through buying record numbers of "Italian job" style gold bars, according to bullion experts.

The number of 12.5kg gold bars being bought by wealthy customers has increased 243pc so far this year, when compared to the same period last year, said Rob Halliday-Stein founder of BullionByPost.

"These gold bars are usually stored in the vaults of central banks and are the same ones you see in the film 'The Italian Job'," added David Cousins, bullion executive from London based ATS Bullion.

The bars which are made from pure gold and are worth more than £300,000 each at today's prices of $1,223 (£760) an ounce.

Mr Cousins added that he has seen more confidence from gold buyers this year as prices remain stable after sharp falls in the price of gold last year.

London politicians gulled Scottish voters out of independence by making a false "vow" to grant Glasgow extra powers, First Minister Alex Salmond has said. He also raised the prospect of another referendum, saying the break-up is inevitable.

Alex Salmond, leader of the 'Yes' campaign and the outgoing head of the Scottish National Party (SNP), told the BBC's Sunday Politics program that the UK government won last Thursday's referendum vote by 55-45 percent by deceiving the people ahead the referendum and promising to rapidly expand Scottish autonomy.

"I think the vow was something cooked up in desperation for the last few days of the campaign and I think everyone in Scotland now realizes that," said Salmond.

"It is the people who were persuaded to vote no, who were misled, who were gulled, who were tricked effectively," he added. "They are the ones who are really angry."

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time oil tycoon who spent a decade in President Vladimir Putin's prison, staked a claim to the leadership of Russia's opposition, which staged its biggest demonstration in years.

Khodorkovsky, living in exile in Switzerland since his release in December, called on supporters help influence the nation's 2016 parliamentary elections as he restarted his Open Russia movement. In interviews with major European newspapers including France's Le Monde, Spain's El Pais and Germany's Der Spiegel, he made the case that Putin is making mistakes that may hasten his departure.

Russia's opposition yesterday staged its biggest event since 2012, when Putin returned to the Kremlin after four years as prime minister amid the largest protests against his rule. His popularity has rebounded to near record highs since then as the conflict in neighboring Ukraine intensified. Even so, the government has been making mistakes that cost Russia and people will eventually realize that, Khodorkovsky told El Pais.


"Khodorkovsky is seeing that the protest movement in the country remains quite significant, while among existing politicians almost none aspire to ally with him and be a moral leader," Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, said by e-mail yesterday.


The "peace march" in Moscow drew about 26,000 people yesterday, according to Dmitry Nesterov, a coordinator for the Union of Observers for Russia. Estimates of the crowd size ranged between 5,000 according to police, and as much as 100,000 according to Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader.

The US is creating an alliance to end the pandemonium in Iraq and Syria. What America has assembled is a "coalition of the guilty", the same players that created the forces menacing Iraq and Syria, and hides America's role creating the disorder.

On September 15, 2014, a conference took place in France about the violence in Iraq. The forthright aim of the Paris conference was to convene a broad coalition to tackle the crisis in Iraq. Just as important, because of the cross-border nature of the crisis, the fighting in Syria was also part of the discussions in Paris.

This whole coalition-building process is a disingenuous deception. Two of the major regional players, which are at the forefront of fighting the cross-border insurgencies in Syria and Iraq, did not even attend the gathering. Syria was not present at the conference, because it was not invited. The Iranians were not present in Paris either.

The best thing that the world can do is to prevent the governments in Washington, Paris, and London from get involved any further in the debacle.

Were the above governments not the very same authorities that helped form, train, arm, and finance the same groups inside Syria that they now say they want to fight there and in Iraq?

Were the head choppers, cannibals, rapists, and criminals that are trying to fragment Iraq and Syria - whatever you want to call them: Al-Qaeda/Al Nusra/ISIL/ISIS/DAISH/IS/DI - not trained by the US and its allies in places like Jordan and Turkey?

Since the start of the Ukrainian crisis in November 2013, Western media and politicians have accused Russia's in its role in the Ukrainian crisis, repeatedly claiming that Russia has acted aggressively without any provocation. Contrary to these frequent statements, Russia has been a victim of regular provocations over the last few years, but despite these aggravations, Russia has not acted bellicosely, but instead continued to search for a diplomatic solution to the current crisis.

How Russia was provoked by the West

The first myth stipulates that Russia deliberately attacked Ukraine without any reason, annexing Crimea and destabilising eastern Ukraine. Debunking this myth is crucial, as many other false statements about Russia originate from the assumption that Russia acted belligerently. However, the truth is that the West triggered Russia into reacting the way it did. Firstly, since 2004 the West continuously supported and injected finance into pro-Western groups in Ukraine, despite warnings from Russia to not destabilise Ukraine. Secondly, the European Union was blackmailing former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich into signing an Association Agreement, a deal that would be of grave consequences to Russian economy due to Western products flooding the Russian market.

Iranian and Chinese naval vessels are beginning joint drills focusing on "relief and rescue operations" in the Persian Gulf for the first time ever.
For the first time ever, Iran and China have begun joint naval drills in the Persian Gulf.

"Discussing and studying the two countries' naval relief and rescue operations and drills, confronting sea incidents and accidents, and gaining the necessary technical preparedness, are among the actions to be practiced with the Chinese army forces," Admiral Amir Hossein Azad, commander of Iran's First Naval Zone said Saturday, according to the FARS news agency.

"The voyage of the Chinese army's fleet of warships for the first time in the Persian Gulf waters is aimed at joint preparation of Iran and China for establishing peace, stability, tranquility and multilateral and mutual cooperation," Azad said.

Last year Iranian ships traveled to the Sea of China "to deliver Iran's message of peace and friendship to the Chinese," FARSreported.

A few days ago the Iranian Navy stopped pirates from attacking a Chinese vessel in the Gulf of Aden, the news agency reported. The container ship was allegedly en route from Singapore to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) at the time of the attack.

The Palestinian Prisoners Society has reported, Sunday, that Israeli soldiers kidnapped 174 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, in the second week of September, 2014.
The PPS added that most of the kidnappings were focused in the northern West Bank district of Jenin with 69 arrests in different parts of the district.

It added that the soldiers also kidnapped 40 Palestinians in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, 12 in Bethlehem, 17 in Ramallah, and 10 in occupied Jerusalem.

Four more Palestinians have been kidnapped in the Nablus district, four in Qalqilia, five in Tulkarem, while 13 Palestinians have been kidnapped in Tubas and Salfit, in Central West Bank.

There are approximately 7000 Palestinians who are currently held by Israel in 17 prisons and detention camps.

Among the detained Palestinians are 75 Palestinians who have been kidnapped after being released under the Shalit Prisoner Swap Agreement.

30 detainees have been imprisoned since before the First Oslo Agreement of 1993; the longest serving detainee is Karim Younis, who has been imprisoned since at least 32 years.

They were supposed to be released back in late March, but Israel violated its own vows to release them under the fourth and final phase of releasing all veteran detainees.

Former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has announced his return to the country's political arena after being beaten by current president Francois Hollande in 2012.

Sarkozy made the announcement on his Facebook page and he is now likely to run as the candidate for the center-right aligned Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), which could put him in line for another presidential bid.

"I am a candidate for the presidency of my political family," he wrote. "I propose a complete transformation so as to create within three months the conditions for a vast new movement that will address itself to all French people irrespective of partisanship."

World View: Israel takes land, Palestine loses land; that's the way it works

So a bit more of Palestine has slidden down the plughole. A thousand more acres of Palestinian land stolen by the Israeli government - for "appropriation" is theft, is it not? - and the world has made the usual excuses. The Americans found it "counter-productive" to peace, which is probably a bit less forceful than its reaction would be if Mexico were to bite off a 1,000-acre chunk of Texas and decided to build homes there for its illegal immigrants in the US. But this is "Palestine" (inverted commas more necessary than ever) and Israel has been getting away with theft, albeit not on quite this scale - it is the biggest land heist in 30 years - ever since it signed up to the Oslo agreement in 1993.

The Rabin-Arafat handshake, the promises and handovers of territory and military withdrawals, and the determination to leave everything important (Jerusalem, refugees, the right of return) to the end, until everyone trusted each other so much that the whole thing would be a doddle - no wonder the world bestowed its financial generosity upon the pair. But this latest land-grab not only reduces "Palestine" but continues the circle of concrete around Jerusalem to cut Palestinians off from both the capital they are supposed to share with Israelis and from Bethlehem.

It was instructive to learn the Israeli-Jewish Etzion council regarded this larceny as punishment for the murder of three Israeli teenagers in June. "The goal of the murders of those three youths was to sow fear among us, to disrupt our daily lives and to call into doubt our right [sic] to the land," the Etzion council announced. "Our response is to strengthen settlement." This must be the first time that land in "Palestine" has been acquired not through excuses about security or land deeds - or on God's personal authority - but out of revenge.

And it raises an interesting precedent. If an innocent Israeli life - cruelly taken - is worth around 330 acres of land, then an innocent Palestinian life - equally cruelly taken - must surely equal the same. And if even half the 2,200 Palestinian dead of Gaza last month - and this is a conservative figure - were innocent, then the Palestinians presumably now have the right to take over 330,000 acres of Israeli land, in reality much more. But however "counter-productive" this might be, I'm sure America would not stand for it. Israel takes land, Palestinians lose land; that's the way it works. And thus it has been since 1948, and that is how it will continue.