Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko poses with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso (L) and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy (R) at the EU Council in Brussels June 27, 2014 (Reuters / Stringer)
Ukraine has signed the European Trade Association Agreement, the document that sent the country into a political frenzy when not signed eight months ago to this day. RT gives you the basics on how this will affect the economy of both from here on out.
The document contains 31 signatures – Ukraine, all 28 EU member states, as well as that of the President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. The agreement will only come into force when it is ratified by every national parliament in the EU. It is expected that the ratification process will be complete by this fall.
Leaders and delegates pose for a group photo during the G77+China Summit in Santa Cruz de la Sierra June 15, 2014.
‘Only we can save the source of life and society: Mother Earth. Our planet is under a death threat from predatory and insane capitalism. Another world is not only possible, it is indispensable, because otherwise, no world will be possible.’
Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, gave this remarkable opening talk at the summit of the Group of 77 plus China, meeting in Santa Clara, Bolivia, on June 14, 2014.
Fifty years ago, great leaders raised the flags of the anticolonial struggle and decided to join with their peoples in a march along the path of sovereignty and independence.
The world superpowers and transnationals were competing for control of territories and natural resources in order to continue expanding at the cost of impoverishing the peoples of the South.
In that context, on June 15, 1964, at the conclusion of an UNCTAD [United Nations Conference on Trade and Development] meeting, 77 countries from the South (we are now 133 plus China) met to enhance their trade bargaining capacities, by acting in a bloc to advance their collective interests while respecting their individual sovereign decisions.
During the past 50 years, these countries went beyond their statements and promoted resolutions at the United Nations and joint action in favor of development underpinned by South-South cooperation, a new world economic order, a responsible approach to climate change, and economic relations based on preferential treatment.
In this journey the struggle for decolonization as well as for the peoples’ self-determination and sovereignty over their natural resources must be highlighted. Notwithstanding these efforts and struggles for equality and justice for the world’s peoples, the hierarchies and inequalities in the world have increased.
Today, 10 countries in the world control 40% of the world’s total wealth and 15 transnational corporations control 50% of global output. Today, as 100 years ago, acting in the name of the free market and democracy, a handful of imperial powers invades countries, blocks trade, imposes prices on the rest of the world, chokes national economies, plots against progressive governments and resorts to espionage against the inhabitants of this planet.
A tiny elite of countries and transnational corporations controls, in an authoritarian fashion, the destinies of the world, its economies and its natural resources.
The economic and social inequality between regions, between countries, between social classes and between individuals has grown outrageously. About 0.1% of the world’s population owns 20% of humanity’s assets. In 1920, a business manager in the United States made 20 times the wage of a worker, but today he is paid 331 times that wage. This unfair concentration of wealth and predatory destruction of nature are also generating a structural crisis that is becoming unsustainable over time. It is indeed a structural crisis. It impacts every component of capitalist development. In other words, it is a mutually reinforcing crisis affecting international finance, energy, climate, water, food, institutions and values. It is a crisis inherent to capitalist civilization.
A Palestinian man inspects the damage caused by Israeli soldiers after a raid to his house in Hebron. (Abed Al Hashlamoun / EPA)
By Olivia Becker
Israel’s massive crackdown in the West Bank, which was sparked by the disappearance of three Israeli students on June 12, has now entered its 13th day and shows no sign of letting up.
The incursion, dubbed “Operation Brother’s Keeper,” has killed five Palestinians, arrested at least 361, raided some 1,600 locations, and put the entire southern region of the West Bank, and most major Palestinian cities under total lockdown. Of the hundreds of Palestinians arrested, very few have been formally charged, but rather are being held on “administrative detention.”
Israel has said that Operation Brother’s Keeper is intended to find and arrest those responsible for the kidnappings, which it insists is Hamas, despite offering no public proof of this allegation. But the reality of the situation — demonstrated by powerful images and the facts above — hints that the core of this crackdown is rooted in something other than the hunt for the missing teenagers.
“The response we’re seeing really suggests it is not about the crime,” Yousef Munayyer, executive director of the Palestine Center and The Jerusalem Fund, told VICE News. “It has provided an opportunity for Israel to impose a sweeping attack on Hamas, which imposes a severe cost on Palestinian society.”
Israel does not deny this. Speaking to reporters on June 17, Israeli Major General Nitzan Alon said: “We are fighting Hamas, a cruel terror organization. The operation against it is complicated and protracted. It didn’t start today and it’s not going to end anytime soon.” Alon added that the heads of Hamas are “feeling the hits and understand the message.”
General Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former leader of the Baath Party in Iraq (Jassim Mohammed/Associated Press)
By William Engdahl
For days now, since their dramatic June 10 taking of Mosul, Western mainstream media have been filled with horror stories of the military conquests in Iraq of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, with the curious acronym ISIS.
ISIS, as in the ancient Egyptian cult of the goddess of fertility and magic. The media picture being presented adds up less and less.
Details leaking out suggest that ISIS and the major military ‘surge’ in Iraq – and less so in neighboring Syria – is being shaped and controlled out of Langley, Virginia, and other CIA and Pentagon outposts as the next stage in spreading chaos in the world’s second-largest oil state, Iraq, as well as weakening the recent Syrian stabilization efforts.
The very details of the ISIS military success in the key Iraqi oil center, Mosul, are suspect. According to well-informed Iraqi journalists, ISIS overran the strategic Mosul region, site of some of the world’s most prolific oilfields, with barely a shot fired in resistance. According to one report, residents of Tikrit reported remarkable displays of “soldiers handing over their weapons and uniforms peacefully to militants who ordinarily would have been expected to kill government soldiers on the spot.”
We are told that ISIS masked psychopaths captured “arms and ammunition from the fleeing security forces” – arms and ammunition supplied by the American government. The offensive coincides with a successful campaign by ISIS in eastern Syria. According to Iraqi journalists, Sunni tribal chiefs in the region had been convinced to side with ISIS against the Shiite Al-Maliki government in Baghdad. They were promised a better deal under ISIS Sunni Sharia than with Baghdad anti-Sunni rule.
According to the New York Times, the mastermind behind the ISIS military success is former Baath Party head and Saddam Hussein successor, General Ibrahim al-Douri. Douri is reportedly the head of the Iraqi rebel group Army of the Men of the Naqshbandi Order as well as the Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation based on his longstanding positions of leadership in the Naqshbandi sect in Iraq.
In 2009, US ‘Iraqi surge’ General David Petraeus, at the time heading the US Central Command, claimed to reporters that Douri was in Syria. Iraqi parliamentarians claimed he was in Qatar. The curious fact is that despite being on the US most wanted list since 2003, Douri has miraculously managed to avoid capture and now to return with a vengeance to retake huge parts of Sunni Iraq. Luck or well-placed friends in Washington?
The financial backing for ISIS jihadists reportedly also comes from three of the closest US allies in the Sunni world—Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Iraq Militant Leader: Why We are Fighting with ISIS
A top commander in the Sunni insurgency in Iraq has told The Telegraph how his men are fighting alongside Isis to take Baghdad, even if it means pushing the country to civil war.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Dabash, 47, a founder of the Islamic Army of Iraq, who fought the allied invasion in 2003, has told The Telegraph how thousands of his men are participating in the Isis-led insurgency that swept across northern Iraq, and which now threatens the gates of the capital.
In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Mr Dabbash explained why his army has teamed up with Isis: “We brought them in to defend our religion, our money, our land and our people.”
The Islamic Army, however, does not share the same extremist ideology of Isis, Mr Dabash said, and raised the prospect of his faction one day turning its guns on their jihadist comrades.
“Isis are an important part of what we are doing, but I can’t say I can 100 per cent bring them under our wing,” said Mr Dabash.
Israeli soldiers detaining Palestinian children in Hebron.
Abduction possibly a ‘childish Israeli ploy’ to deflect negative attention, or just a criminal act, Riyad al-Maliki claims
Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki claimed on Sunday that Israel may have staged the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers 10 days ago to deflect international criticism from it, arguing that the Jewish state had no proof that Hamas was behind the abduction
“They [the Israelis] have no proof that Hamas is behind this operation, as they have failed to provide any proof indicating this,” Maliki told Saudi daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat from Jedda, where he, with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, was visiting last week.
“In the absence of proof, there are three possible scenarios for the issue: The kidnapping could be a childish game on the part of Israel to draw attention to it, it could be part of a larger game to turn the Israelis from aggressors to victims, or maybe they were really kidnapped,” Maliki said.
Even if the three teenagers were indeed abducted, the foreign minister continued, they could have been victims of “Jewish criminals, Palestinian criminals or Palestinian-Jewish criminals” who carried out the kidnapping “for their own personal goals.” The abduction could have also been carried out by “various Palestinian factions,” he said.
150 Palestinians Arrested in Search for Missing Teens
Israel has arrested scores of Palestinians, including the parliamentary speaker, in its hunt for the abductors of three teenagers. PM Benjamin Netanyahu demanded cooperation from the Palestinian Authority in returning the captives.
Israeli government accused the Palestinian movement Hamas of being behind the abductions on Thursday last week, but Hamas denied the allegations.
The IDF conducted mass arrests of Palestinians in the days of the hunt, with as many as 150 people taken into custody by Monday. Among them is Palestinian parliament Speaker Aziz Dweik, who is a member of Hamas, who was arrested overnight, and six other Palestinian MPs.
The army also conducted house-to-house searches, round-ups and interrogations in the West Bank, where the three Israelis vanished while apparently hitchhiking. Palestinian witnesses said in once instance the soldiers used explosives to force their way into a home in the city of Hebron belonging to a Hamas-linked family after occupants would not let them in.
Ramallah Raid on RT’s Office: Why the IDF Story Doesn’t Add Up
After staging a violent raid on RT’s office and other media organizations in Ramallah, the Israeli Defense Forces have been asked to provide an explanation. But their vague and inconsistent response has raised more questions than it answers.
In the early hours of Saturday, the IDF raided the Palmedia broadcast service provider’s building in the West Bank city of Ramallah, breaking down doors, destroying equipment and confiscating records. The materials and archives of RT’s Arabic service were seized.
Removal of Maliki from office, ending Iranian meddling and the establishment of a temporary nationalist, democratic and non-sectarian government, is the sole solution to the crisis in Iraq that is endorsed by significant sections of Iraqi society. The popular uprising in Iraq and the liberation of its cities one after the other, together with the collapse of Maliki’s forces and their mass desertion and retreat in face of the tribes, is continuing on a rapid basis. A number of facts on this development are as follows:
1. The propaganda by Maliki and his masters in Tehran, generously repeated by the Western media, that these regions have fallen into the hands of extremist terrorists of the Islamic State of Iraq in the Levant (ISIL), is ludicrous and baseless. Liberating around 100,000 square kilometers of Iraqi territory with a population of several million by an isolated and extremist group of several hundred or even several thousand members is preposterous. It is the tribes and ordinary Iraqi citizens who have risen up in anger against Maliki.
2. Under the pretext of fighting terrorism, Maliki and the Iranian regime on the one hand try to justify the interference of the Iranian terrorist Qods Force and the invasion of Iraq by the revolutionary guards and on the other hand attempt to encourage the United States to militarily interfere in favour of Maliki to repeat its past blunder in Iraq, on an even more dangerous scale. We in the West have to acknowledge that this is a popular revolution against Maliki and the suppressive and criminal regime, organized with the assistance of the United States and of course under the guidance and leadership of the religious fascists ruling Iran with the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars of the assets and oil wealth of Iraq.
3. The Iranian regime is now poised to save Maliki. In a telephone conversation, President Rouhani has promised Maliki every kind of cooperation. Fox News wrote on June 13: “Some 150 fighters from the Revolutionary Guards elite Quds force have already been dispatched by Tehran, and the division’s powerful commander, Qassem Suleimani, met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki Thursday and pledged to send two notorious Iranian brigades to aid in the defence of Baghdad.” And The Wall Street Journal of June 12 wrote: “At least three battalions of the Quds Forces, the elite overseas branch of the Guards, were dispatched to aid in the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, an offshoot of al Qaeda rapidly gaining territory across Iraq, they said: “One Guards unit that was already in Iraq fought alongside the Iraqi army, offering guerrilla warfare advice and tactics and helped reclaim most of the city of Tikrit on Thursday; two Guards’ units, dispatched from Iran’s western border provinces on Wednesday, were tasked with protecting Baghdad and the holy Shiite cities of Karbala and Najaf.” These reports only reveal part of the reality and support our constant warnings about the meddling of Iran.
4. Reports on Nineveh and Salahaddin provinces filed by journalists from CNN, al-Jazeera and BBC among others, support our previous intelligence that no violence or aggression has been carried out against the indigenous population. The residents of these areas are happy that Maliki’s forces have fled and public and private properties now enjoy relative security. The mass exodus of refugees from these cities is due to the bombardment by Maliki’s forces, although 48 hours after the liberation of Nineveh, the wave of refugees has markedly ebbed and some have already begun to return.
Iraqi Sunni scholars: Iraqi rebels, not ISIS, who face the Iraqi army
The Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq (AMSI) said on Friday that describing the rebels who drove the Iraqi army from several cities as operatives of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) is incorrect. They decried the designations as an attempt to abort the uprising in the country.
About the routing of the Iraqi army, the statement said: “This is an achievement that will infuriate many parties inside and outside Iraq, including those with external agendas that harmed the country for years.”
Despite claims that it was the ISIS which took over the cities and towns, several Iraqi sources have pointed out that tribal rebels as well as other Iraqi fighters constitute the main force currently fighting the Iraqi army, in addition to some affiliated to ISIS.
As Brazil hosts the world’s top football tournament, Juice Rap News’ Robert Foster investigates why many Brazilians are protesting against THIEFA’s World Coup, and why governments’ real interest in the sport should really be called “The World Game.”
Abby Martin speaks with Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi-American peace activist who gives her perspective on the announcement of the US deploying 275 troops to Iraq as the country continues to spiral into civil war.
Dahlia Wasfi: Keep Calm and Trust Iraqis with Iraq
The Iraqi resistance brought an end to the formal military occupation of their country; the resistance is NOW seeking to rid itself of the occupation-installed government and its bloody sectarianism. It is this resistance that is taking control of northern Iraqi cities. Witnesses on the ground in Iraq say that multiple groups with significant political differences have set those divisions aside to unite against the sectarian government of Nouri Al-Maliki. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is one of those groups, but they are playing a smaller role. Mosul and Tal Afar are in the hands of the General Military Council of the Iraqi Revolutionaries, liberated from Maliki’s brutal sectarian rule. Only a strong, coordinated military organization — not 1000 or even several thousand undisciplined extremists — could take and hold a city the size of Mosul (1.4 million) and continue to advance.
Understanding the horrors that we have continued to bring to Iraqis since 1991 helps us see that what is happening in Iraq is a legitimate rebellion against a brutal dictator (a theocratic one instead of a secular one). US President Barack Obama is sending more troops to Iraq to defend the sectarian government from the Iraqi people. Instead of sending more forces in, Mr. President, fly as many planes as you need to Baghdad, load up every last American and the bloody US-installed government, and leave. If you can find it, pick up your dignity on your way out.
On January 27, 1945 the Soviet Army entered the Auschwitz camp complex and liberated 7,000 prisoners, including children (Russian archive photo).
By Paul Craig Roberts
In my June 6 column, “The Lies Grow More Audacious,” I mentioned that Obama and the British prime minister, who Obama has as a lap dog, just as George Bush had Tony Blair as lap dog, had managed to celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany at the 70th anniversary of the Normandy invasion without mentioning the Russians.
I pointed out the fact, well known to historians and educated people, that the Red Army defeated Nazi Germany long before the US was able to get geared up to participate in the war. The Normandy invasion most certainly did not defeat Nazi Germany. What the Normandy invasion did was to prevent the Red Army from overrunning all of Europe.
It occurred to me that World War II was so long ago that few are alive who remember it, and by now even these few probably remember the propaganda version that they have heard at every Memorial Day and July 4th occasion since 1945. Little wonder that neither Obama nor Cameron or their pitiful speech writers knew nothing about the war that they were commemorating.
Propaganda has always been with us. The difference is that in the 21st century Americans have nothing but propaganda. Nothing else at all. Just lies. Lies are the American experience. The actual world as it exists is foreign to most Americans.
Boris Malagurski’s award-winning Canadian film “The Weight of Chains”, dealing with the breakup of Yugoslavia from a different angle.
If you thought you knew why Yugoslavia broke up, get ready for 2 hours of shocking facts that will shed a different light on Western intervention in the Balkans. Nicknamed the “Serbian Michael Moore” by the oldest daily newspaper in the Balkans, Malagurski will expose the root causes of the Yugoslav wars and explain that the goal was for the West to create economic and geopolitical colonies in that part of the world.
