Sinai. Gunmen fired on the car of the commander of the Second Field Army in Sinai today. This is the third attack in four days in Sinai.
Comment: Security conditions in Sinai require watching because any threat to disrupt traffic in the Suez Canal most likely would emerge from the eastern, Sinai, bank of the Canal. The new administration cannot afford to show any sign of hesitation to control the Sinai militants. Army operations were supposed to have already begun, but no news outlet has confirmed them.
Below is a translation from As-Safir, a Lebanese newspaper, July 6, 2013, by Arabic-English translator Eric Mueller. As the translator was not present at the Group of Eight meeting, he cannot vouch for the accuracy of the report, only for the accuracy of the translation. The report by Dawud Rimal does reflect Putin's no-nonsense manner of speaking. The report from As-Safir contrasts with the US coverage.
Diplomatic sources: Putin tells G8 “You want Asad to resign. Look at the leaders you've made in the Middle East.”
Phi Beta Iota: We consider Somalia and Yemen to be two perfect candidates for any coalition that wishes to wage peace instead of war. Bury them in solar power, desalinated water, hydroponic agriculture, and free celluar and Internet access. Then get out of the way as they create wealth and with wealth, legitimacy and stability.
Twitching, rumpled and passionate, Max Keiser explains the deeper significance of Edward Snowden’s recent intelligence leaks. It’s not about national security. Keiser implies that Snowden has revealed evidence of a fascist market-rigging operation that’s ultimately funding America’s secret government–a corporate plutocracy.
This article is a compilation of a number of pieces I’ve written about Ed Snowden and the NSA. It doesn’t replace them, but it hits the high points…
EXTRACT
For years ATS [substitute NSA] had been using its technological superiority to conduct massive insider trading. Since the early 1980s, the company had spied on anyone and everyone in the financial world. They listened in on phone calls, intercepted faxes, and evolved right along with the technology, hacking internal computer networks and e-mail accounts. They created mountains of ‘black dollars’ for themselves, which they washed through various programs they were running under secret contract, far from the prying eyes of financial regulators.
Those black dollars were invested into hard assets around the world, as well as in the stock market, through sham, offshore corporations. They also funneled the money into reams of promising R&D projects, which eventually would be turned around and sold to the Pentagon or the CIA.
Doku Umarov, the most wanted Chechen terrorist in Russia, has made a direct threat against the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, which are to be held in Sochi on the Black Sea, an area once known as Circassia. The tribes that lived there were Muslim, but 600,000 were slaughtered and the rest were driven out around the time of the U.S. Civil War.
The Caucasus Emirate is both the group seeking to create an independent Islamic state and the name they seek to use for the state itself. Note Sochi itself, at the center on the left edge of the map.
This Real News Network report discusses two human rights violations against Palestinian children that were first publicized by an Israeli organization and have since been investigated by the UN: abusive confinement and prosecution, and using them as human shields.
Phi Beta Iota: The US Media may well be the most corrupt in the world — apart from not being honest about war crimes, the mere fact that Bloomberg Business Week reports without question the false economic and employment statistics of the US Government should alarm all who hold the illusion that the US Media is worth anything at all.
Semi-official reports in the recent 36 hours describe a mysterious blast in a Syrian arms depot in the city of Latakia ,located well within the Allawite enclave in North Western Syria. FSA sources claimed responsibility for the blast, but western observes cast doubts on these claims due to the geographical and tactical constraints. According to some estimations the blasts were caused by missiles arriving from the western direction, that is from the Mediterranean sea. This would suggest that if the Israelis are behind this event, they may have used an undetectable maritime platform, like the Dolphin class submarine, to bypass the recently deployed S-300 air defense systems, operated in Syria by Russian teams. Sea skimming cruise missiles are hard to detect, likewise submarine-borne naval commandos conducting nocturnal raids on enemy ports. If so, this would indicate a decision to refrain from risking a confrontation with the Russian military which would surely break out in case of a direct attack on the S-300 batteries. There is no ‘smoking gun’ to support this version yet,but the refusal of Israeli official to comment on this event may suggest a repetition of the standard mode of operation used during the IAF bombing raids on Hezbollah targets and biochemical facilities in Damascus in the recent year: maintaining two-fold plausible deniability which enables both governments (of Israel and Syria) to limit armed clashes to the clandestine level in order to avoid the unpredictable results of a full scale war .
Sinai. Gunmen fired on the car of the commander of the Second Field Army in Sinai today. This is the third attack in four days in Sinai.
