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It's not the first time the Israeli military has massacred children on a Gaza beach

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 15:14 UTC
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A Palestinian boy whose father was killed weeps at his funeral in Gaza City, 13 July
Israel's latest game of "kill the Palestinians" began as a result of the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teenagers. No one knows who did it. Hamas denied they had anything to do with it, Israel has no evidence that Hamas had anything to do with it, and yet Israel blamed Hamas and, on the basis of that spurious claim, began bombing Gaza's civilians.

The latest example of unfettered Israeli criminality and brutality came today when Israeli missiles targeted part of the beach in Gaza, specifically, a part of the beach where four young Palestinian boys were playing football. This comes on the heels of last week's massacre of 9 young Palestinians in a beach cafe as they watched the World Cup.
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Chess

Russia to reopen Cuban spy base


RT
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 09:51 UTC
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© Reuters
Moscow and Havana have reportedly reached an agreement on reopening the SIGINT facility in Lourdes, Cuba - once Russia's largest foreign base of this kind - which was shut down in 2001 due to financial problems and under US pressure.

When operational, the facility was manned by thousands of military and intelligence personnel, whose task was to intercept signals coming from and to the US territory and to provide communication for the Russian vessels in the western hemisphere.

Russia considered reopening the Lourdes base since 2004 and has sealed a deal with Cuba last week during the visit of the Russian President Vladimir Putin to the island nation, reports Kommersant business daily citing multiple sources.

"I can say one thing: at last!" one of the sources commented on the news to the paper, adding that the significance of the move is hard to overestimate.
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Chess

Germany considers using typewriters to deter US snooping


RT
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Reuters
Amid the worsening Berlin-Washington spy row, German politicians are considering going back to old-fashioned manual typewriters for confidential documents to protect national secrets from American NSA spooks.

Patrick Sensburg, the chair of the German parliament's enquiry into NSA alleged spying, said committee members are considering new security measures and are seriously thinking about abandoning email and returning to old school typewriters.

"As a matter of fact, we already have [a typewriter], and it's even a non-electronic typewriter," he told the ARD Morning Show Monday.

The interviewer, apparently surprised by the idea, asked if that was really the case, The Guardian writes. "Yes, no joke", responded Sensburg of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party.

The committee was set up to investigate the scope of surveillance uncovered by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden who revealed that the US has been eavesdropping Germans and even bugged Merkel's cell phone. The scandal led to a chill in relations between old allies, Berlin and Washington, with Merkel saying at the time that "monitoring of friends was unacceptable."
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Target

Reporting from Gaza: When my son screams...

Mohammed Omer
The Nation.
Tue, 15 Jul 2014 00:00 UTC
We don't even seem to have a right to exist or defend ourselves. That right, according to the United States, belongs to Israel alone.

children at child funeral
© blog.milliyet.com.tr
Children of Palestine paying last respects.
At just 3 months old, my son Omar cries, swaddled in his crib. It's dark. The electricity and water are out. My wife frantically tries to comfort him, shield him and assure him as tears stream down her face. This night Omar's lullaby is Israel's rendition of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, with F-16s forming the ground-pounding percussion, Hellfire missiles leading the winds and drones representing the string section. All around us crashing bombs from Israeli gunships and ground-based mortars complete the symphony, their sound as distinct as the infamous Wagner tubas.

But unlike a performance, this opera of death lasts days. Audience applause is replaced with the terrified cries of babies and children shrouded in smoke. Shrapnel zings off buildings and cars as another missile finds its mark, landing on another home. Six more are now dead. A doctor's house next door was hit by three Israeli F-16 missiles. It's hard to know what was the target. The doctor was killed, joining his mom and dad, killed in the previous war in 2008 - 09. The airstrikes are buzzing in my ears and Lina's. Omar's crying is continuing. Now the death toll is at 186, with 1,390 injured, the majority of them are civilians, as reported by the UN.

3 children
© www.presstv.ir
Palestinian children witness atrocity in Gaza as warplanes bomb their neighborhood.
There is no end in sight. Beyond the border we see tanks amassing, preparing for a ground assault. Above, the ever-present thwup-thwup of hovering Apache helicopters rock Omar's cradle through vibration. Warning sirens pierce the night - another incoming missile from an Israeli warship. The border is not far. But we cannot leave. The Gaza Strip has been under siege since 2007. Unlike Israel, we do not have bomb shelters to hide in. The 1.8 million citizens of Gaza, over half of them children under the age of 18, are packed into an area the size of Manhattan, unable to leave. We must stay and pray, pray that we don't get hit.

Comment: There are reports that the Israeli regime has resorted (once again) to the use of internationally-banned weapons within the imprisoned Gaza enclave. Bodies of most victims have been incinerated, while others had been completely torn apart. This type of Israeli weaponry has a history of use in two previous wars on Gaza (Anadolu Agency source). Is there no recourse for the Palestinians but to suffer this slow and horrific annihilation? Is there no country or power willing and able to step up and stop blatant Israeli genocide or are we still supposed to believe without question that Israel is the victim... May Mr. Omer and his family remain safe and the atrocities cease in Gaza.

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People

CrossTalk: Gaza under siege, with Miko Peled, Gideon Levy and Fred Lazin

CrossTalk
RT
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 11:23 UTC
crosstalk
What does Israel hope to achieve with its most recent assault on Gaza? Does Tel Aviv merely want to reinforce the status quo. And what of the Palestinians' right to resist illegal occupation? Will Gaza's suffering ever end? CrossTalking with Miko Peled, Gideon Levy and Fred Lazin.


Comment: Lazin is lazy when it comes to facts, and morals. Killing civilians is not a war crime, while sending practically harmless rockets into civilian areas is? What is this guy smoking? Warning that a house will be bombed by bombing it magically makes it not a war crime?? Jon Stewart recently pointed out the absurdity of this Israeli practice:



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Heart - Black

Israeli naval ship purposefully targets and bombs Palestinian children playing on Gaza beach, killing four

William Booth
The Washington Post
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 10:39 UTC
Israeli targets children at the beach
© Reuters
A man on a beach in Gaza City carries a child in the aftermath of Israeli shelling
It is not unusual for militants to launch rockets from sites near my hotel. Israeli missiles have also landed pretty close to Al Deira, an old red stucco inn with a large terrace overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Just a few hundred yards down the beach is the fishing harbor.

I had just returned to the hotel to type up some notes and file inserts on the day's news when there was a large explosion on the quay at the port, a little after 4'o clock in the afternoon.

We could smell the charge. I wondered: Did Hamas just fire a rocket? But it was the sound of an incoming missile. We saw a small fisherman's shack on the quay, churning with gray smoke.

Then we saw a gang of kids running from the shack, down the breakwater and onto the sand, hurtling toward Al Deira. A couple of waiters, the cook and a few journalists starting waving at them. Run here! Then a second missile exploded on the beach right behind them.

The staff were yelling, "They're hurt!"

Comment: The Guardian reports about the same event:
Journalists heard two loud explosions outside the Gaza City hotel, before children were pulled into the restaurant area for treatment.

A journalist who saw the incident said some of the children who survived were running away when another shell seemed to be aimed at them.


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Gold Seal

The return of George Orwell and Big Brother's war on Palestine, Ukraine and the truth

John Pilger
Independent Australia
Fri, 11 Jul 2014 04:19 UTC
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The other night, I saw George Orwells's Nineteen Eighty-Four performed on the London stage.

Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell's warning about the future was presented as a period piece - remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said:
'... to be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.'
Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned.

"What a mindfuck," said a young woman, lighting up her phone.

As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular.

In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in 1984. 'Democracy' is now a rhetorical device. Peace is 'perpetual war'. 'Global' is imperial. The once hopeful concept of 'reform' now means regression, even destruction. 'Austerity' is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich - an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few.
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Life Preserver

Oil on troubled waters: China removes disputed China Sea oil rig


RIA Novosti
Wed, 16 Jul 2014 09:02 UTC
Chinese oil platform
© REUTERS/ Martin Petty
Vietnamese and chineese coastguards thereabouts Haiyang Shiyou 981 platform
China has begun the withdrawal of its oil platform from the South China Sea area that has caused a dispute with Vietnam and mass anti-China protests in Hanoi, China's Foreign Ministry announced on its website and Vietnamese media reported Wednesday.

"China's Haiyang Shiyou 981 platform, which has been drilling in waters near the Xisha Islands [Paracel Islands] since May 2, successfully completed the work on July 15. Based on the geological data attained, corresponding companies will determine the next work plan," China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hong Lei said in a statement.

Relations between China and Vietnam worsened when the oil rig arrived in waters near the Paracel Islands at the beginning of May, and Vietnam sent its ships to prevent the platform installation in what it considers its exclusive economic zone, while Beijing claims the area is part of its maritime belt. Since then, more than 1,000 clashes between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels have taken place.
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Star of David

Latest Gaza bombardment: What you're not being told


SCG News
Tue, 15 Jul 2014 17:55 UTC
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The corporate media isn't just distorting the facts on the Gaza assault, they're flat out covering them up.

On July 7, 2014 Israel began a massive assault on the Gaza strip of Palestine. In the first week alone Israel dropped over 400 tons of bombs, killing over 130 Palestinians. Most were civilians, about half of them were women and children. By the time you are watching the the number will be higher.

Israel's official justification for this wholesale slaughter: the murder of three Israeli teenagers which Israel blames on Hamas. That's not the real reason. First of all Israel has not produced one single piece of evidence implicating Hamas or even a Palestinian in the murders, and in fact the the evidence we do have indicates that that murderers were Israeli. You see on Tuesday July 1st, The Jerusalem Post released the audio of the kidnapped teen's distress call to police, and in that call the kidnappers can be heard telling the boys to put their heads down in HEBREW. According to the Jerusalem Post prior to being leaked to the public this audio was being held under a gag order by the Israeli government.


Comment: Normal people tend to read into the intentions - or what they think are the intentions - of psychopaths in the hope of making coherent sense out of their insanity.

Doing this for gas, while outrageous, at least makes sense.

Thing is though, as Israeli author Miko Peled explained in last week's SOTT Talk Radio show, Israel already effectively owns whatever resources are in or near the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It has been diverting Palestinians' water since forever. It has long considered the whole of Palestine to be Israeli-owned. The Palestinian government doesn't even control its own financial budget, making it more impotent than city councils in Israel proper. So Israel is not doing this with a view to 'securing gas fields off Gaza', although it may play a role.

The issue isn't the gas.

The issue is the people.

Palestinians' very existence is a problem for Israel. They must be eliminated.

Problem is, 'those normal people' keep making such a fuss about it.

As Joe Quinn explained recently:
As clinical studies on the psychopathic mind make clear, psychopaths periodically experience a compelling drive to give vent to their destructive instincts. In the case of psychopaths in positions of power, this usually means some kind of 'war' where innocent civilians (aka 'non-combatants') are targeted for the most brutal suffering. In the specific case of the Israeli psychopathic 'elite', the psychological profile goes something like this:

Netanyahu and his ilk have a deep, almost unconscious desire to obliterate the Palestinians, to 'erase them from the pages of history', because the Palestinians stand in the way of them achieving their goal of a idealized Jewish state where they reign supreme. The Israeli/Zionist ideologues are frequently and privately enraged at the Palestinians because the Palestinians force the Zionists to struggle to find a way to achieve their racist goals without tarnishing their own self-image as 'seeking peace' 'defending the Jewish people' being 'the only Democracy in the Middle East' etc. To the psychopaths in Israel therefore, all Palestinians are 'evil', but there's a problem: the Palestinians are not evil and their cause is just by normal human standards.

If it was up to them, the psychopaths in Israel would just kill all the Palestinians and be done with it. But they can't because they are constrained by human rights, innocence, respect and other 'silly' ideals adhered to by normal people, and to which the psychopaths must also pay lip service if they are to maintain their mask of humanity on the world stage.

To get what they want therefore, the Israeli psychopaths must solve the problem of the Palestinians not conforming (in reality) to the evil image the Israelis have of them, that would allow the Israelis to freely express their destructive urges and achieve their idealized vision of a Jewish state. The solution that psychopathic types everywhere invariably come up with is to 'create their own reality' where they literally manufacture a 'reality' to fit the demonized image they have of the 'enemy' that stands in their way. At that point, they have the 'just cause' to attack the 'enemy' whose mere existence has been 'unfairly' thwarting their attempts to get what they want i.e. achieve their psychopathic agenda.


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Heart - Black

Shelling and killing civilians: western hypocrisy over Israel and Ukraine

Alexander Clackson
Global Research
Sun, 13 Jul 2014 07:35 UTC
whitewash war crimes
Western leaders have frequently used the pretext of 'protecting civilians' to carry out their aggressive and illegal military interventions, such as directly in Libya, Iraq, and indirectly in Syria by supporting extremists.

It has already been established that this pretext was nothing more than an excuse to carry out regime change that would benefit Washington. The current violence in Ukraine and Israel, where the Ukrainian and Israeli governments are shelling and killing civilians, while the West turns a blind eye, further illustrates the hypocritical and immoral nature of Western governments.

Comment: It's no wonder that there's never any action to stop the bloodbaths of innocent civilians around the world, when the psychopaths in positions of power shamelessly broadcast their lies and propaganda to excuse acting out their natural instincts, and those purportedly protecting the innocent tiptoe around calling it as it is: cold blooded murders, for NO reason at all.

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