Society's ChildS


Gold Coins

Bye bye petrodollar! Currency wars set to intensify as geopolitical tension supports gold

russia gold reserves
Today's AM fix was USD 1,307.50, EUR 972.84 and GBP 770.39 per ounce.
Yesterday's AM fix was USD 1,305.00, EUR 971.20 and GBP 768.55 per ounce.

Gold climbed $2.30 or 0.18% yesterday to $1,305.10/oz and silver rose $0.12 or 0.58% to $20.62/oz.

Gold rose 0.4% in London this morning after gold in Singapore traded sideways overnight. Futures trading volume continues to increase and was almost double the average for the past 100 days for this time of day, Bloomberg data shows.

Silver for immediate delivery rose 0.8% to $20.73 an ounce in London. Platinum was 0.1% lower at $1,486.82 an ounce. Palladium gained 0.3% to $883.63/oz and remains close to a 13 year nominal high of $889.75.

Geopolitical tension in Europe and in the Middle East is supporting gold. Israel's military pounded targets in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country should prepare for a long conflict in the Palestinian enclave, squashing any hopes of a swift end to 22 days of fighting.

Gaza residents reported heavy Israeli bombing in Gaza City. Israeli aircraft fired a missile at the house of a Hamas Gaza leader and flattened it before dawn. An Israeli military spokeswoman said 70 targets were struck in Gaza through the night. At least 30 people were killed in the assaults from air, land and sea, residents said, after a night of the most widespread attacks so far in the tiny enclave.

The new sanctions are set to inflame relations further. They are on "key sectors" of Russia's economy, U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said yesterday. Russia also signaled possible retaliation, announcing yesterday that it may ban imports of chicken from the U.S. and fruit from Europe because of concern about contamination.

Heart - Black

Poll: 91% of Israelis love to kill

gaza in ruins
Gaza in ruins...
Ninety-one percent (91%) of Israeli Jews support Israel's campaign against the people of Gaza, according to a survey published Monday - and just 4.2% believe the operation is a "mistake."

The survey also revealed that 85% of respondents would only support a cease-fire agreement if Israel eliminated every Hamas rocket and destroyed the full network of terror tunnels before agreeing to do so.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Israeli Jews polled "very strongly support" Operation Protective Edge's airstrikes on Gaza; 17% "support" the airstrikes; and 4.5% had "weak support" for the airstrikes. Just 1.5% of respondents opposed the airstrikes on Gaza.

Similarly, 50% "strongly support" the IDF's ground offensive in Gaza; 28% "support" the ground campaign and 14% have "weak support" for the campaign. By contrast, only 9% of respondents oppose sending ground troops into Gaza.

Eighty-two percent (82%) of respondents "strongly disagree" with the statement "Israel launching Operation Protective Edge was a mistake"; 11% only "slightly disagree." Just 7% of respondents "agree" or "strongly agree" with that statement.

Black Magic

Wolf Blitzer: Shilling for the Israeli "tunnel" propaganda

Image
© UnknownWolf Blitzer - Former AIPAC Employee
The opening was so small that CNN's Wolf Blitzer -- no physical giant -- had to bend down to climb inside one of 30 or so Palestinian tunnels from Gaza to southern Israel.

"I guess the tunnel was built for relatively short people, because if you stand up you're going to hit your head," Blitzer said of the almost two-mile concrete corridor about 45 feet underground where he reported from Monday.

His visit, accompanied by the Israeli military, revealed conditions in the network of tunnels below Gaza that are a key issue in the current violent spasm between Hamas militants in Gaza and Israel.

Originally built to avoid Israeli and Egyptian checkpoints into Gaza, the tunnels have been vital supply lines for Palestinians in Gaza. Now the snaking underground routes increasingly get used for attacks in Israel.


Comment: Says who? Where is the proof?


Comment: More tunnel BS from Israel. They are constantly trying to make Hamas and the Gaza Palestinians look more sophisticated and capable than they really are.


Cult

Puff Piece: Michelle Nunn "Leaked Memos" a distraction from the real corruption in the U.S.A.

Michelle Nunn
© Akili-Casundria Ramsess/APDemocratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Michelle Nunn speaks to her supporters after her primary win was announced at an election-night watch party on May 20, 2014, in Atlanta.
In an embarrassing leak, a detailed memo outlining Georgia Democratic Senate nominee Michelle Nunn's game plan for winning her election surfaced Monday.

National Review reporter Eliana Johnson posted the document, which she wrote came from sources who noticed it was accessible online in December, apparently by accident.

Most of the sections in the 144-page document are unremarkable, if annoying, for a campaign to see aired outside its offices - such as the Nunn campaign's strategies for courting LGBT donors or for winning over gun owners.

But the most passed-around parts concerned what the campaign believed were Nunn's vulnerabilities heading into the election. Once again, many of them were so obvious for a Democrat running in Georgia they barely needed to be written down - the campaign anticipated attacks that Nunn was "too liberal," "a rubber stamp for Democrats," and "not a 'real' Georgian."


Comment: Softball criticisms meant to humanize her. Too liberal is like saying too nice. How about she's a faux liberal shill who will vote whatever way the power elite want her to, regardless of her meaningless party affiliation?


Comment: Operation business as usual. This is just pushing digital wood. The idea that it is on the front page of MSNBC is incredible.


Network

Gaza war on Facebook: Critics of Israel fired after 'unacceptable' comments

gaza war on facebook
© Agence France-Presse/Said Khatib
Several people have reportedly been fired after criticizing the Israeli Gaza offence on social networks, or expressing joy over the deaths of Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) troops.

As violent confrontation in the Gaza Strip continues, with the Palestinian death toll already exceeding 1,000 and Israeli deaths being over 50, another battle has broken out on social networks.

Supporters and opponents of both sides have been flooding Facebook, Twitter and YouTube with emotional posts, photos and videos and have even launched a campaign urging an end to the war.

However, being too emotional in the expression of feelings online has cost several people their jobs and scholarship, according to Haaretz.com.

Comment: In other words, these people were fired for having a conscience and opposing the unjustified murder of innocent children and civilians due to the information provided by internet trolls paid heavily by the Israeli government to silence any such expressions of humanity against their psychopathic actions. Word to Bibi: pay as you may, you lost the PR war this time!


Gold Seal

Non-Germans, Germany needs your help! Sign the petition for 'Russia Today auf Deutsch', an important counterweight to Western propaganda

RT.com, russia today news
RT.com
As SOTT readers know, all people everywhere, those both awake and asleep, are engaged in an information war through which the power structures of the so-called 'progressive western nations' have pervaded all levels of global society - something that is readily apparent in the media, which effectively speaks as one voice on all things that matter.

Facts about world events are routinely twisted, invented or not mentioned at all. The powers that be prefer that we don't interfere and that we don't speak up against their crimes.

In Germany, as elsewhere, people are are fed up with the incessant barrage of lies in mainstream media. While there are some alternative news sites and blogs, what has been missing in Germany for far too long is a counterweight to the plethora of mainstream, corporate, US-centric news outlets.

Russian media outlet RT is currently available in Russian, English, Spanish, and Arabic. There is an opportunity to establish a German-language version of RT.com. An online petition has set a target of 100,000 votes its organizers hope will lead to establishing 'RT auf Deutsch' in Germany.

We the editors of de.sott.net believe that having RT in yet another language strengthens the signal being sent to the universe that we, the thinking and caring people of this world, do not want any more twisting of facts and do not want any more lies in the name the psychopathic elites' murderous war-mongering and deviant ambitions for totalitarian global control.

Vader

War Crime: Israel destroys only power plant in Gaza

israel bombs power plant 2014
© Reuters / Ahmed ZakotA Palestinian firefighter tries to put out a fire at Gaza's main power plant, which witnesses said was hit in Israeli shelling, in the central Gaza Strip July 29, 2014.
Over a million people in Gaza could be without electricity after Israeli tank shells hit the fuel depot of the enclave's only power station, causing it to shut down. Its director, Mohammed al-Sharif, said, "The power plant is finished."

A thick column of black smoke rose from the facility, which supplies the territory with two-thirds of its energy needs, and the fuel containers were in flames. Al-Sharif added that the local fire brigade was not equipped to extinguish the blaze.

Comment:
The incredible hate of Israel and their unrelenting attack against a small, trapped group of innocent civilians is absolutely criminal.


Star of David

An Israeli soldier's realization that the war against Palestinians is an excuse for the Israeli army to test their new weapons before they sell them to other regimes!


The talk by Eran Efrati was filmed in Denver, Colorado on March 3, 2014 as part of The Soldier and the Refusenik U.S. tour with Maya Wind. Eran talked about his experiences in the IDF and then more broadly discusses Israel, its relationship to the U.S. and the global expansion of militarism.

Comment: The entire video is a Must Watch, as ex-Israeli soldier Eran Efrati describes his brutal disillusionment and subsequent awakening to his country's propaganda and the true reason why IDF continues steadily with the genocide of Palestinians.

Here is the transcript of the last 10 minutes of the talk that our SOTT editors loosely transcribed. People living in the U.S. might want to pay special attention to this part:
And during this time I am discovering something amazing. The more I go in looking for occupation, the more I find money. And I don't understand, so I am going deeper and deeper and then in 2010 I am getting into a very interesting story about how the Israeli government and Israeli army was selling a new tear gas canister to the police and government of Singapore people. They are buying tear canisters to fight their own protests in their country. And during this time I am looking and I am saying, "Israel is selling tear gas canisters?!"

So I am going into the website of this minister of security in Israel and I am finding out that they are saying that, "Israel just concluded a deal with the Singapore government of selling the best tear gas canister ever produced and tried by the Israeli army". And it mentioned there a few lines later that this tear gas canister was proven to be "the deadliest ever".

And I am going back and I am saying, "Wait... Tried the tear gas canister? Who would agree to try...?"

And then I understand. They are trying their weapons every day. Not in labs, down there in the field. I was trying their weapons in Biilin, in Ni'lin, in Hebron, in East Jerusalem [and other Palestinian communities], we are trying the weapons every day, and then we are selling them outside. And I can't believe the things that I am seeing, so I am going deeper and deeper and then I realized... You remember these guys, the young guys who threw stones at the beginning of the protests? They were not Palestinians. They were actually an undercover unit of the Israeli army, looking like me, Arab-Jews, disguised as Palestinians inside these villages starting a riot, starting something, so that the Israeli army will have a good excuse to start shooting the place up and testing the weapons!

And the more I go deeper the more I can't understand. Is this for real? How long is this going for? How much money are we making? I am going in and in and then I discovered. In the last 30-40 years - and this is a very, very partial list - this is the list of the dictatorships and regimes that the Israeli government, the Israeli army, is trading weapons with: trading knowledge with, trading technology or training their soldiers by themselves in those countries. The last 40 years we were involved in the worst dictatorships and regimes in the world. And we are making a killing out of it. Literally. We are making so much money out of it.

And then I understand. This is not an occupation. It's a laboratory. Sometimes as a soldier I would infuse poison to Palestinians. Sometimes as a protestor I would run away with Palestinians and be a lab rat. But all this time, we are trying weapons out and selling them out there. It's the source of everything. It's not the religion, it's not the land, there's a lot, a lot of money, and I understand that I am standing in the wrong place. And I am moving to New York City, from Jerusalem, it's a big change. And for the last 3 years in NYC I am researching the relationship between our army and your [U.S.] army. Our government and your government and all the money that flows in the middle.
He goes on to say how an interaction with a Maryland police officer gives him more perspective. When Eran says he is from Israel, the police officer replies:
"Oh men, you guys are bad asses, you know how to silence the one that opposes you, you know how to come down, nobody disobeys you, you guys are the best!"

And I am saying, "I don't think you know a lot about the Israeli army, so, you know, never mind..."

He says, "Oh no no, I just came back from there."

I say, "What? As a tourist?"

He says, "No, with the Maryland police, we just came back from training with your military and your police.

I say, "What?"

He says, "You know all of our police force here in the U.S. is going few weeks to Israel and train with your army and your police."

Then before I leave his [police officer] car I am asking, "Is there a chance you know Mr Efrati? My father, the head of the investigation of Jerusalem police?"

And the guy takes out his cell phone and flips his pictures, and he got a picture with my dad, in the middle of the night, in Washington DC. and I am just blown away, I am going out of the car and I am calling my dad in Jerusalem and I am saying "Dad, what the hell?!" And my dad is telling me, "Oh come on Eran, don't be naive! You know when NYPD got an office in Tel Aviv, right? You know we got an office in NYC, right? Come on, we are working together to protect you."

And then I understand. It wasn't the first time, but that was my closure.

For years we are doing these kind of lectures, very different kinds of lectures and talking with communities here in the U.S. telling them that all they need to do is take care of their community and it's going to be fine. Every one of us will take care of our community, but you should know that what's going on in Palestine is a humanitarian crisis. And I am going around and I am telling them, I learned something growing up. All of us want to be on the right place at the right time when history is knocking on the door. And history is knocking right now. Really loud in Palestine, and all of you need to be on the right side in this humanitarian case. But if you don't care about Palestinians after these lectures, I don't care. And if you don't care about us Israelis asking for your help to stop the apartheid regime in Israel, I am fine with that also.

But you guys should know: you are next in line. The next one who will die from a tear gas canister, it will be in Denver, it will be in Oakland, in San Francisco... It is happening here already. It's happening to different people, to people of color, to immigrants, it's already happening, you guys are next in line. The next one who will die out of police brutality will be one of your sons, or your daughters, in a protest. Because they are training together: your police training with our army. Our army is training them on how to take care of the "enemy". Because Palestinians are our "enemy". But when they come back, you are their enemy. All this time, when we are taking care of our community - I was taking care of mine, and you were trying to take care of yours - they (the government, the police) are organizing together, globally, to oppress us. We need to start organizing globally to resist them. And that starts in Palestine, right now. Stopping the training there, we'll stop it here. That's why I joined in 2005 the Civil Society Call for the Palestinians for Boycott Divestment and Sanction on the state of Israel, taking it out from the source. Non-violently. Taking the money out of the equation.

How many lives can we save?



Bomb

Breaking news! St. Petersburg Pulkovo Airport evacuated over bomb threat

Image
© RIA Novosti / Igor Russak
Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg, Russia, is being evacuated over a bomb threat, the airport's press service told RT. No new plane arrivals are being allowed and passengers in landed aircraft are remaining in their planes.

Pulkovo, servicing the northern 'capital', received a phone call about a bomb in the airport, press secretary Anna Fedoseeva told RT.

Meanwhile, the airport's virtual flight board on its website is showing no changes in the airport's operations.

Star of David

"I hate all the Arabs!" sings joyful Israeli crowd


In her latest post, my colleague Rania Khalek makes reference to "a new racist chant mocking the more than two hundred children slaughtered by Israel's merciless bombing campaign in Gaza: 'Tomorrow there's no school in Gaza, they don't have any children left.'"

This video shows an Israeli mob actually singing in celebration of children's deaths in the style of a soccer fans' song: "In Gaza there's no studying, No children are left there, Olé, olé, olé-olé-olé."

The mob also incites directly against Ahmed Tibi and Haneen Zoabi, two prominent Palestinian citizens of Israel who are members of the Knesset, Israel's parliament.

The video of the 26 July event in Tel Aviv was published by Israeli journalist Haim Har-Zahav.

Comment: Disgusting. A true example of a ponerized society.