Russia has taken a step towards opening its energy sector to foreign investment at the G8 meeting in St Petersburg.
The group agreed to “open, transparent” energy markets and to nuclear energy as a power source for those who want it.
Russia had faced calls from the EU and US for increased international energy co-operation, amid fears Moscow may use energy as a tool of foreign policy.
bbc.co.uk
The United States is heading for bankruptcy, according to an extraordinary paper published by one of the key members of the country’s central bank.
A ballooning budget deficit and a pensions and welfare timebomb could send the economic superpower into insolvency, according to research by Professor Laurence Kotlikoff for the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, a leading constituent of the US Federal Reserve.
Prof Kotlikoff said that, by some measures, the US is already bankrupt. “To paraphrase the Oxford English Dictionary, is the United States at the end of its resources, exhausted, stripped bare, destitute, bereft, wanting in property, or wrecked in consequence of failure to pay its creditors,” he asked.
According to his central analysis, “the US government is, indeed, bankrupt, insofar as it will be unable to pay its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds”.
telegraph.co.uk
Iran warned its arch-enemy Israel of “unimaginable losses” if it attacks Syria and vowed that it was standing by the Syrian people.
“We hope the Zionist regime does not make the mistake of attacking Syria, because extending the front would definitely make the Zionist regime face unimaginable losses,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
“Iran is standing by the Syrian people,” he said of the Islamic republic’s sole regional ally.
“We have offered and will offer Syria and Lebanon spiritual and humanitarian support,” Asefi insisted, reiterating Iran’s denial that it is providing military and financial assistance to the Hezbollah movement.
The Israeli army has said Hezbollah militants had used an Iranian-built radar-guided anti-ship missile in an attack on Friday on an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast.
The attack marked the Lebanese militia’s first successful strike on an Israeli warship, dealing an unprecedented blow to the Jewish state’s military. One Israeli sailor was killed and three more were missing, feared dead.
An Israeli military intelligence official has also alleged that around 100 members of Iran’s powerful ideological army the elite Revolutionary Guards were in Lebanon, acting as military advisors to Hezbollah.
breitbart.com
Hizbollah rockets Haifa and Israel bombs Beirut
Chavez: U.S. support for Israel to lead to Holocaust
“The U.S. empire’s desire to dominate has no limits and that could take this world to a real Holocaust. May God save us.”
Putin thinks Israel ‘pursuing wider goals’
Guardian: The framing of Hizbullah
…To suggest Hizbullah attacked on the orders of Tehran and Damascus is to grossly oversimplify a strong strategic and ideological relationship. Historically there has been an overlap of interests between Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas. Together they form a strategic axis – the “axis of terror” to Israel – that confronts US-Israeli designs to redraw the map of the region.
But the nature of that relationship has changed much over the years. Since Syrian forces left Lebanon, Hizbullah has become the stronger party. It has never allowed any foreign power to dictate its military strategy.
It is ironic, given Israel’s bombing of civilian targets in Beirut, that Hizbullah is often dismissed in the west as a terrorist organisation. In fact its military record is overwhelmingly one of conflict with Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory. This is just an example of the way that the west employs an entirely different definition of terrorism to the one used in the Arab world and elsewhere, where there is a recognition that terrorism can come in many forms.
The attempt to frame Hizbullah as a terrorist organisation is very far from political reality in Lebanon, from public opinion across the Arab and Islamic world, and from international law.
Israeli tanks enter northern Gaza
GAZA (Reuters) – Several Israeli tanks on Saturday entered the northern Gaza Strip, often used by militants for firing rockets into Israel, Palestinian witnesses said.
The Israeli army said it did not have forces in northern Gaza.
Palestinian witnesses said the tanks moved into an area east of the town of Beit Hanoun.
Wider regional war already under way, most observers agree
WASHINGTON ˆ A new Middle East war is under way, Middle East analysts and scholars say, with the next, imminent step very likely to be another Israeli invasion and at least temporary occupation of southern Lebanon.
The only question, they say, is whether Syria will get involved in the fighting — considered a serious possibility — and how the conflict will affect the international faceoff with Iran over its nuclear program.
…Gold for August delivery rose $13.60, or 2.1 percent, to $668 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange, after reaching $669, the highest for a most-active contract since May 30. Gold for immediate delivery rose $6.90, or 1 percent, to $666.95 at 7:05 p.m. in London, up 6 percent this week.
bloomberg.com
” I am a man first and foremost”, Zinzdine Zidane told French television on Wednesday, in an effort to explain how his head managed to make contact with an Italian footballer’s chest in the closing minutes of the World Cup final. Coupled with David Beckham’s lame exit from the tournament, the rise of anti-hero Zidane will surely be hailed as a departure in our attitudes to malehood. Preening, sarong-sporting metrosexuality is so over, the style gurus will say; long live the hard man.
guardian.co.uk
MEXICO CITY, July 14 Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the embattled leftist presidential candidate, said Friday that he would never concede defeat, even if a recount of all ballots upheld a victory for his opponent, Felipe Calderon. But he added that if the courts did order a recount and he lost, he would call off demonstrations.
‘For me this election is fraudulent from start to finish,’ Mr. Lopez Obrador said in an interview broadcast on CNN.
Mr. Lopez Obrador seemed to be pressuring a seven-member electoral tribunal to order a recount while, at the same time, positioning himself to become the leader of a left-wing opposition that will never recognize the validity of the next government, if the court rules against him.
‘He doesn’t want to be the leader of the loyal opposition,’ said Federico Estevez, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico. ‘He’s perfectly happy to be the leader of the disloyal opposition, and that’s what he is poised to do.’
nytimes.com
The Bush Administration’s “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba,” co-chaired by the Secretaries of State and Commerce, has presented a new report to our President this week. Copies are on the Internet. It’s a lengthy and comprehensive Plan, detailing all the steps which US government and other “vital actors” will be taking to bring Cuba back into the family of overt US colonies, which now include some of the Pacific Islands, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Kabul, and the Green Zone in Baghdad.
The Administration was roundly criticized for not having such a plan for Iraq after its conquests there. Some even claimed it was the reason for the failure of the occupation. One of the purposes of this Plan may be to forestall such criticism in Cuba’s case.
Nevertheless this Plan is much the same as the one for Iraq (which was not publicly articulated beforehand.) By privatizing what used to be done publicly, it will bring Cuba into the modern, civilized world by creating a capitalist utopia where private entrepreneurs from the “international community” (mostly US corporations) and the “Cuban community abroad” (mostly US citizens), unencumbered by societal restraint, will unleash their full creative powers to save the long-suffering Cuban people from continuing poverty and tyranny while incidentally benefiting themselves.
The recommendation for Cuba destabilization activities going on now is to continue or increase everything, especially the radio-TV projects illegally being forced on Cubans by US airplanes, denying hard currency to Cuba by tightening the blockade, i.e., fining foreign banks which deal in Cuba transactions, punishing and rewarding foreign governments which increase or decrease Cuba trade, and tightening and increasing punishment for the travel restrictions, the cost of which already triples what we spend trying to trace Al Qaeda funds.
counterpunch.org
Militants forced open a border gate between Egypt and Gaza on Friday, wounding an Egyptian officer and letting hundreds of Palestinians who had been trapped on the Egyptian side of the border to get into Gaza.
Armed militants stood by as people carrying suitcases crossed into Gaza. Some walked through on crutches while others walked or ran through the gate.
Egyptian police Capt. Mohammed Abdel Hadi said masked Palestinian militants firing guns broke into the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing, clearing the way for the trapped Gazans.
One Egyptian border policeman was wounded when the militants stormed the frontier, said Abdel Hadi, who heads police on the Egyptian side of Rafah.
The crossing, Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world, has largely been closed since June 25, when Palestinian militants carried out a raid on a military outpost, killing two Israeli soldiers and capturing one.
Hundreds of people have been stranded on the Egyptian side, unable to get to their homes in Gaza.
Rafah’s closure left hundreds of Palestinians who work and study in Egypt stranded, while preventing hundreds of others from leaving the coastal area to receive medical treatment abroad.
breitbart.com
U.S. President George W. Bush called on Syria on Saturday to exert its influence to persuade Hezbollah to stop attacks against Israel.
At a joint news conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bush laid the blame for the upsurge in Middle East violence on Hezbollah.
“The best way to stop the violence is for Hezbollah to lay down its arms and to stop attacking. And therefore I call upon Syria to exert influence over Hezbollah.”
The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported Saturday that Israel issued an ultimatum to Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to which a regional war would erupt within 72 hours if Damascus does not prevent Hezbollah attacks.
According to the report, a Pentagon source said that if Syria does not try to influence Hezbollah, Israel could bomb essential installations in Syria. The source neither confirmed nor denied rumors that Israel had given Damascus 72 hours to comply with international demands.
haaretz.com
let the games begin…
Syria, Iran seen as behind kidnappings
…The Iranians “have an interest in fomenting as much trouble here as they can and think that it will benefit them somehow in terms of their ambitions in the region and ultimately how they resolve the nuclear question,” said Dennis Ross, a former U.S. Mideast envoy.
“In the case of Syria … they feel this makes them a factor, that people have to pay attention to them,” he said.
But they may have miscalculated.
…Two weeks ago, IAF jets performed a bit of sonic boom terrorism on Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, as he kicked back at his palace in the city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. ‘The IDF said the flyover, carried out by four planes flying in a low-altitude pattern, was a part of an overall IDF operation aimed at pressuring the Syrian leadership to expel Hamas Politburo chief Khaled Mashaal from Damascus,’ reported the neocon Jerusalem Post at the time.
Maybe, but it is more likely the Israelis wanted to send a message to al-Assad that they can get him, no matter where he is. Bashar al-Assad may be cringing in a bunker soon, in three days or two weeks.
…As noted in the neocon ‘Clean Break’ document, essentially the Rosetta Stone of the Likudite-neocon master plan, ‘Israel can shape its strategic environment by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria [because] Syria, and Iran, [are] principal agents of aggression in Lebanon [and] Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil.’ Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser, principal architects of the A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm white paper (originally crafted for incoming Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu), proposed ‘striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper. Of course, as there are no longer any ‘Syrian military targets in Lebanon,’ the obvious step is to blitzkrieg Syria directly.
kurtnimmo.com