Total confusion reigned Thursday morning, Aug. 14, stirred up by a night of contradictory words and actions around the mirage of yet another truce in the Gaza war. The only immutable fact was Hamas rocket fire starting two hours before the last 72-hour ceasefire was scheduled to end Wednesday midnight and continuing up until 2 a.m. Thursday – namely before and after PLO-Ramallah envoys in Cairo and Egyptian officials reported a new five-day ceasefire had been agreed. Hamas-Gaza denied any such deal until all its conditions met. No Israeli official was available to confirm or deny the PLO-Egyptian claims. However, the
Israeli air force retaliated for the Palestinian rocket fire with air strikes over the Gaza Strip.
Early Thursday, the unofficial word from Jerusalem was that the indirect talks in Cairo, which according to Hamas had broken down, will “apparently” be resumed Sunday.
Egypt, Hamas, the PLO and Israel appear to be totally at loggerheads. This impasse has produced a volatile and unpredictable situation that is closer to a lingering war of attrition between Hamas and Israel than a negotiated accommodation. Towards dawn Thursday, Ashkelon, Kiryat Gath, Netivot, and the Lachish, Eshkol and Shear Hanegev Districts again heard the explosions of Hamas rockets and Israeli air strikes over Khan Younes and central Gaza.
Members of the Israeli cabinet say that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon don’t keep them in the picture. Its hazy outline indicates that the two war leaders still hope to maneuver Hamas into accepting a prolonged ceasefire. Because that is the last thing that the Palestinian Islamists seek, they will keep on shooting.
Two hours before the Gaza truce was due to end Wednesday midnight, Palestinian rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at large parts of southern Israel, including Ashkelon, Kiryat Gath, Yoav District, Shear Hanegev. Two were intercepted. No casualties were reported. Hamas envoys said that the Cairo talks had broken down and the truce would not be renewed unless their conditions were met. They called off a scheduled news conference without explanation. Hamas went back to launching rockets after Israel nodded its acceptance of a further truce, while at the same time concentrating armored forces on the Gaza border in case the Palestinians against fired rockets. Wednesday afternoon, IDF reservists were called up, as columns of tanks, tank carriers and APCs thundered down the roads leading to the Gaza border.
Our sources also reported that the indirect Egyptian-brokered talks between the parties in Cairo never got off the ground. From the start, all three realized that the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians were unbridgeable and, moreover, that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were totally at odds on a common negotiating stance.
Our military sources say that Israel’s government and military leaders were braced for the next stage of the confrontation with Hamas, which will be a lot tougher, deeper and broader than a few restrained air strikes.
The sides’ agreement in principle to another 120 hours of calm stems principally from their failure to find a solution, not a dramatic narrowing of the gaps between them. The three relevant parties in the Cairo talks — Israel, Hamas and Cairo itself — are deeply at odds not only with each other and also internally as regards their own interests, reducing the prospects of an overall agreement.
Israel apparently wants a long-term ceasefire, but does not wish to pay the heavy price of lifting the blockade on Gaza without a drastic change there: the disarming of Hamas.
Egypt has no desire for an agreement that would give any legitimacy to Hamas, and therefore almost any overall deal conflicts with its interests. At the same time, Egypt doesn’t want the talks to fail completely, since this would mean the end of the Egyptian channel and the search for an alternate mediator such as Qatar.
As for Hamas, here the internal conflicts are worst of all. Gaza’s Islamist rulers want an end to the conflict, but they know that without a significant gain — such as a seaport or airport — they will be subjected to immense criticism by the people of Gaza and rival, more extreme, terrorist groups there. Hamas also knows that the Palestinian Authority would utilize its failure in order to strengthen Fatah’s standing in Gaza and the West Bank. And yet that significant achievement does not seem remotely likely.
At 9:30 p.m., the head of the Palestinian delegation, Fatah representative Ahmad Al-Azzam, had been scheduled to hold a press conference to announce that the talks had failed. But strong pressure from Egypt caused the postponement of that press conference. The Egyptians had already received agreement from Israel to extend the truce and they warned the Palestinians against declaring the talks over. Instead, they urged the Fatah and Hamas delegates: announce a break of a few days for consultations.
Five days in the MIddle East is close to an eternity. Yet, as things stand, it is far from clear that the 120-hour truce will enable an agreement. Hamas wants promises from anybody with the exception of Egypt who can guarantee that Israel will agree to a seaport and airport in Gaza in the foreseeable future. But nobody can make any such guarantees without a Hamas promise to disarm. Meanwhile, the Hamas military wing is urging the political leadership not to compromise. According to Palestinian sources in Gaza, it wants the conflict resumed so long as Israel is not prepared to sanction a dramatic change in the Gaza reality.
And thus the likelihood of a re-escalation is certainly as realistic as the likelihood of an agreement, if not more so. Hamas is under siege in Cairo, not just in Gaza, by three hostile players — Israel, the PA and Egypt. It may well decide not to return to the Cairo talks at all.
A transfer of a large batch of Hellfire missiles was subsequently put on hold by the Pentagon.
The author of a book that is credited with revealing to the public a clandestine campaign for a “North American Union” suggests the current border crisis – in which tens or even hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are simply moving into America – is a steppingstone to the original NAU plan.
“We stopped the [Security and Prosperity Partnership] simply by exposing the plan to create a North American Union,” said Jerome Corsi, author of “The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada.”
The book tackled the issue of the governments of the U.S., Mexico and Canada meeting to coordinate activities and actions, regulations and more, but those overt efforts have diminished since the controversy erupted.
“Now the timetable for continental integration has slowed down,” Corsi said. “The decision seems to have been made to accomplish first the integration of the United States and Mexico by leaving the southern border open to an unstopped flood of Hispanics crossing the border illegally.”
Regardless of why illegal aliens enter the U.S. from Latin America, the fact remains that their presence in large numbers could make it much easier to integrate the U.S. with Mexico, Corsi argues.
And once integration happens, it would become even easier for Mexicans to migrate to the United States, with illegal immigration and an open borders concept . So illegal immigration and a North American Union would reinforce each other.
He said in an age of mass immigration and a “global economy,” a national sovereignty is hard to continue.
“With the open borders and the invasion going on from Central America, I think Americans are again seeing that the SPP plans are still in place, just today in a stealth methodology,” he said.
The official Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which some called a prelude to the NAU, has been officially inactive since 2009.
But Corsi said the globalists have not stopped, “and the globalists will never stop.”
The Patriots of Ukraine is a nationalist organization whose members are also members of the Azov Battalion. The Patriots of Ukraine’s flag depicts a black Wolfsangel emblem on a yellow background.
The National Guard of Ukraine is a unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Interior ministry that was established on March 12, 2014. The guard’s badge bears signs of a swastika in its decorations.
This process is more psychological than political in its goals. One could argue that if the elites already have control of all central banks and governments, then why do they need a global government? The answer is that these men do not want secret global governance, they wantopen global governance. They want us to ACCEPT the idea as a fact of existence, for only when we agree to participate in the lie will they then have truly won.
The end result of World War I was the creation of the League of Nations and the argument that sovereignty leads to disunion and catastrophe. World War II led to the creation of the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. I believe that a third world war is nearly upon us, one that may involve weapons of monetary destruction more so than weapons of mass destruction. Each supposed disintegration of global unity has eventually led to greater centralization, and this is something the skeptics seem to forget. The progression of crises suggests that the next war will lead to total globalization under the dominance of a minority of elitists posing as “wise men” who only wish to bring peace and harmony to the masses. In the meantime, the skeptics will continue to mindlessly debate in the face of all reason that the whole thing was a fluke, an act of random mathematical chance, leading coincidentally to the one thing the establishment rulers crave: total global totalitarian micromanagement.
Ukraine accused Moscow of mounting a cynical attempt to incite a pro-Russian rebellion on Wednesday, as uncertainty surrounded a 262-truck "aid convoy" that appeared to grind to a halt before reaching the border.
The stand-off came as violence worsened in eastern Ukraine, with the United Nations announcing that the death toll in the four-month conflict had doubled in the past two weeks to more than 2,000.
Government forces are seeking to press their advantage against the pro-Russian rebels, which has stoked fears that the aid convoy is part of a Russian plan to fend off the rebels' seemingly inevitable defeat.
"The level of Russian cynicism knows no bounds," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian prime minister. "First they send tanks, Grad missiles and bandits who fire on Ukrainians – and then they send water and salt."
Arsen Avakov, Ukraine's interior minister, had said the "Putinist" convoy would not pass, calling it a "provocation by a cynical aggressor".
The convoy, which departed from an army base near Moscow on Tuesday, appeared to vanish on Wednesday, adding to confusion surrounding the route and purpose of the cargo.
Last seen in the city of Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow, on Tuesday, the convoy never reached the border near the Russian city of Belgorod that the Russian foreign ministry said it would use.
Rumours that the convoy had headed south from Voronezh to cross the border directly into rebel-held territory – a move that would be viewed by Kiev as tantamount to a declaration of war – could not be substantiated.
Russian state television initially reported the convoy to be en route to Belgorod. But journalists waiting at the Pletenivka checkpoint, on the Ukrainian side of the border where Russia had said the convoy would cross, saw no sign of the vehicles.
Vladimir Putin's spokesman said the convoy was "on the move", although reporters in Voronezh said it had never been seen leaving the airbase where the lorries spent the night.
In an apparent breakthrough last night, Ukraine said it could allow the Russian aid convoy to cross the border "in order to prevent a large-scale invasion".
But with the route and details, or even the existence, of an agreement with the Kremlin unclear, it remains uncertain whether the apparent breakthrough will result in aid reaching residents in Luhansk.
Lysenko said any deliveries of aid “that don’t have the mandate of the Red Cross … are taken as aggressive forces and the response will be adequate to that.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, insisted the aid convoy was on the move inside Russia, but declined to comment on the route. He said the operation was proceeding in full cooperation with the Red Cross.
But Red Cross officials in Ukraine said they have been left in the dark about the whereabouts of the Russian aid.
“The final route is not known. Even at the moment I am trying to find out where the convoy is,” said Andre Loersch, a spokesman for the ICRC mission in Ukraine.
Amid the tensions, Putin traveled to Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in March, where he chaired a session of his Security Council. A meeting with Putin’s entire Cabinet and most Russian lawmakers is scheduled for Thursday.
Russia says the 1,800 metric tons of aid includes goods ranging from baby food and canned meat to portable generators and sleeping bags. It’s intended for civilians in the Luhansk region, the scene of some of the fiercest fighting. The regional capital of Luhansk has had no electricity for 11 days and only the most essential goods are available, city authorities say.
A spokeswoman for the U.N.’s human rights office, Cecile Pouilly, said in a statement Wednesday that the U.N.’s “very conservative estimates” show the overall death toll in eastern Ukraine has risen to at least 2,086 people as of Aug. 10 from 1,129 on July 26.
While Ukrainian authorities have been denying their affiliation with neo-fascist movements, similarities between the symbols used by the Kiev-backed forces and those used in Nazi Germany during World War II cannot be overlooked.
MOSCOW, August 13 (RIA Novosti) - While Ukrainian authorities have been denying their affiliation with neo-fascist movements, similarities between the symbols used by the Kiev-backed forces and those used in Nazi Germany during World War II cannot be overlooked.
The Azov Battalion is an armed group, with members of the patrol unit of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. The battalion was formed in May 2014 in the city of Mariupol. The group’s badge bears strong resemblance to the Wolfsangel rune that served as a symbol for the Waffen-SS military forces. The symbol is comprised of Latin letter “I” for “idea” and “N” for “nation”.
The Wolfsangel badge of the Azov Battalion has the so-called “black sun” (“Schwarze Sonne”) in the background painted in white. The “black sun” occult symbol was once adopted by the Third Reich.
One of the Azov Battalion’s badges also has the phrase “Black corps” on it, which is a direct reference to the Waffen-SS official newspaper, titled “Das Schwarze Korps” (“The Black Corps”).
The Donbass Battalion is a volunteer battalion created in April 2014 to oppose the independence supporters of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The group’s emblem has an inverted eagle, resembling a trident, with half-spread wings. The same symbol was used by the Wehrmacht forces of Germany from 1935 to 1946. Media reports suggest that the members of the battalion have swastika-shaped tattoos.
The developing violence in Ferguson, Missouri, where throngs have been rioting for several days over the shooting death by a police officer of an 18-year-old high school graduate, has put on display the country’s increasingly militarized local police force, according to the author of “Police State USA: How Orwell’s Nightmare is Becoming Our Reality.”
Cheryl Chumley has been watching developments in Missouri, where Michael Brown was shot over the weekend, and just overnight two more people were shot, including one by police.
“Armored vehicles on patrol, Kevlar-wearing, camouflage dressed officials carting high-powered rifles, tear gas wafting through the air – sounds like something right off the streets of Iraq. But it’s not. It’s actually the scene that’s playing out in Ferguson right now, with SWAT-type police taking to the residential streets for crowd control duties,” she said.
The trend toward massive machines, weaponized officers and more worries Chumley.
“While looting has no doubt become an issue in the area, and protesters have reportedly taken on more violent tones, it has to be asked: Do police really need to dress like battleground soldiers to get the crowds into control?
“What ever happened to the old ‘serve and protect’ model and mantra of civilian policing?” she asked.
Chumley said the task may have been better left out of police’s hands from the beginning.
“Far too often these days, police are taking on much more militarized duties. Ferguson is just the latest example of where we see that. But most Americans need only look to their own backyards to see how police are snapping up military gear through the Pentagon’s … program that lets local law enforcement buy cast-aways from soldiers who served in Afghanistan and Iraq,” she said
“This trend is turning the local cop on a beat into a lock-and-load fighting machine with a shoot first ask questions later mentality. Many have already been injured – or even killed – by this dangerous police trend. The big question is: Can our Constitution survive?”
From traffic light cameras to phone tapping, from militarized police forces to targeting specific groups of people, the government is unfettered in its desire to control the American people, she contends in her book.
“Police State USA” chronicles how America got to the point of what Chumley believes is a de facto police state and how the nation’s freedoms, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, might be recaptured.
3 comments:
So....its now out of the bag. The US State Dept has put a hold on us resupplying Israel's military stores. Well, guess we knew it was going to happen.
Was kind of shocked to hear we had resupplied Israel for the bombs it expended. Now we find out the Military did it without the Admin's knowledge.....and got its hand slapped.
Geeprers, what a coward's way of blackmail. Publicly yelling they have a right to defend themselves but behind the scenes preventing them from doing so.
This will not go down well. Genesis 12:3 has not been rescinded to my knowledge.
"Our relationship with Israel must be respected and maintained. I refuse to embrace your anti-Israel, pro-terrorist policy — and as a citizen of the nation you were elected to serve, I urge you to do whatever is necessary to protect and defend the nation of Israel."
"Stand With Israel" petition letters. Seems like there's so little we can do, but little is better than nothing. Let your voice be heard. Enter zip code & send e-letters to your congressmen & to Obama.
http://aclj.org/israel/stand-with-israel-to-defeat-terrorists
Evidently they've just removed the letters to congressmen & Obama page listed above & it goes to a donation page, sorry. White House phone line instead instead. Only I doubt Obama will answer -- the world's in turmoil, but who cares? He's very busy arguing with Hillary right now.
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