Recall what we said earlier today: the proxy Ukraine war just like that in Syria preceding it, "is all about energy." Recall also the following chart showing Ukraine's shale gas deposits, keeping in mind that the Dnieper-Donets basin which lies in the hotly contested eastern part of the nation and where as everyone knows by now a bloody civil war is raging, is the major oil and gas producing region of Ukraine accounting for approximately 90 per cent of Ukrainian production and according to EIA may have 42 tcf of shale gas resources technically recoverable from 197 tcf of risked shale gas in place. Finally, recall our story from May that Joe Biden's son, Hunter, just joined the board of the largest Ukraine gas producer Burisma Holdings.

An MSNBC contributor used her appearance on the cable news channel Monday to sharply criticize its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict. During an interview on "Ronan Farrow Daily," Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal unloaded on Western media outlets, including MSNBC, arguing that influence from pro-Israel forces makes the news coverage more favorable to the likes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Because of AIPAC, and because of the money behind it, and because of Sheldon Adelson, and because of all of us in the media. We are ridiculous. We are disgustingly biased when it comes to this issue," Jebreal said. "Look at how many airtime Netanyahu and his folks have on air on a daily basis. Andrea Mitchell and others," she continued, referring to the MSNBC stalwart whose show airs right before Farrow's afternoon program. "I never see one Palestinian being interviewed on theses same issues." When Farrow pushed back gently and pointed out that Palestinian guests have been interviewed, Jebreal continued her criticism. "Maybe 30 seconds! And then you have 25 minutes for Bibi Netanyahu, and then half an hour for Naftali Bennett and many others," Jebreal said.

PressTV: Zionist censors enabling war crimes
PressTV: Obama, US politicians ‘owned’ by Zionist lobby: Barry Grossman
Robert Fisk: Eight hundred dead Palestinians. But Israel has impunity
Intifada Palestine: Horrifying details continue to emerge of massacre in Khuza’a
Eric Zuesse: America’s Nazi Allies in Israel and Ukraine
America [Now] Is the Only Country with a Favorable View of Israel

Our rulers, many of whom like the Bushes and Kerry are Skull and Bones ‘Devil That Is Death’ worshippers, made 9/11 possible so they could kill millions of innocent people and enslave the rest of us and kill our basic civil liberties. Today, the ‘unclassified’ book telling many agencies how they can ape the Soviet Union has been forced out into the open. The ‘security’ gang is furious about revealing how they run our borders. Meanwhile, after 9/11, these same clowns didn’t patrol our borders at all effectively letting in millions of illegal aliens and drug gangs, criminals, etc. Just so the rich could have cheap under the table labor.

The Intercept: The Secret Government Rulebook For Labeling You a Terrorist

The Ukrainian army is using indiscriminate Grad missiles to attack densely populated areas in Donetsk, which violates international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch alleged. It also blamed militia for taking cover in those areas. ● The rights organization confirmed four rocket attacks by the Ukrainian military, or Kiev-allied paramilitary, on residential areas in or near Donetsk, which resulted in at least 16 civilian deaths and many more wounded. The attacks were carried out with Grad multiple rocket weapon systems, highly indiscriminate weapons that cannot be used against populated areas.

RIA Novosti: Ukrainian Army Used Phosphorus Bombs on Civilians - Russian Defense Ministry

Israeli soldiers and members of the Breslauer Hassidic sect dance and bless artillery shells.
Israeli rabbi says killing civilians in Gaza is allowed

Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk Resigns! His far right wing fascist government is so unpopular, it fell suddenly. While the Chocolate King tried desperately to lure the US into a war with Russia, he suddenly gave up. Meanwhile, Obama, reading script written by Zionist fascists, has dropped the ‘Putin shot down the civilian plane’ for ‘Putin is FIRING ON UKRAINE. Even with the CIA puppet regime collapsing, they are keeping up the warmongering.

Paul Craig Roberts ■ Government of Ukraine Collapses || Today the Ukrainian government resigned. The prime minister Yatsenyuk, or “Yats” as affectionately called by Victoria Nuland who put “Yats” into office, resigned along with the entire Cabinet. The parliament refused to vote the harsh conditions demanded by the IMF. I am not sure what this means. Perhaps it is just a tactic to force the parliament to do as the IMF says. Or perhaps “Yats”, Washington’s stooge, has realized that IMF or no IMF, Ukraine’s economy is imploding and wants to get out of the blame. The point for now is that I checked the BBC, the New York Times, and CNN and there is not one word about the collapse of the government of Ukraine. Professor Michael Chossudovsky has provided an account of the collapse of the Ukrainian government on Global Research.

Alex Lantier ■ Ukraine prime minister resigns as NATO, Australia prepare intervention in east || The far-right parliamentary coalition in Kiev collapsed yesterday, as the Western-backed regime met with visiting Dutch and Australian officials to prepare a foreign military intervention in war-torn east Ukraine, under cover of investigating the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17.

SMH: Australian soldiers to back up police in securing Ukrainian site of MH17 crash
No Limit to Our Anger (c) V. M. Molotov: Igor Strelkov and Militia Briefings, July 24, 2014

Jason Ditz ■ US State Department Tells Lies To Justify War || Apparently still laying the groundwork for their own planned military intervention, the US government has invented a narrative of massive Russian artillery strikes against Ukrainian military bases along the border. The latest invented story appears to have been produced primarily as a replacement for Marie Harf’s increasingly debunked allegations surrounding the MH17 shoot-down, a talking point which has gained her no small mocking in the press over the past week, as she directly contradicts the US intelligence community’s own releases on the matter. Harf’s latest allegations included the phantom artillery fire and secret evidence of Russia planning to maybe send a bunch more weapons to the rebels. One member of the assembled press, humorously, asked if there was “a YouTube video or something that you can point us to,” calling back to Harf’s regular use of social media as “proof” for her claims. Harf declared “I just said I wasn’t going to give you the underlying source,” and asked if the press preferred she keep things to herself that she can’t prove. This led to another exchange, with someone shooting back “Marie, I think that it would be best for all concerned here if when you make an allegation like that, you’re able to back it up with something more than just “because I said so.” “

RT.com: State Dept. accuses Russia of firing artillery into Ukraine, refuses to provide any evidence - Video

Mohammed Shinbary comforts his daughter Mahasin, 7,
who was injured after an attack on a United Nations school.

There are major clashes occurring currently in The West Bank tonight as claims of 10s of thousands and Palestinians clash with Israeli soldiers. Sadly, as the photos below reveal taken moments ago show, things appear set to get very much worse. [via ZH] Israeli security forces have been put on heightened alert after two Palestinians were killed during a massive protest in the West Bank. The victims were among an estimated 10,000 people who clashed violently with soldiers and border police at a checkpoint in Qalandiya, between Jerusalem and Ramallah. The protest came hours after 15 people were killed and more than 200 injured when a UN-run school in the city of Beit Hanoun, Gaza, was hit by an Israeli artillery shell. Israel said today it had mobilised different units in and around Jerusalem to "deal with any disturbances". (Photo: New York Times)

Israeli bombardment of hospital kills Palestinian toddler in the intensive care unit
Israel Shells UN School in Gaza, Killing 16 Civilians, Wounding Hundreds
Israeli strike on Gaza school kills 15 and leaves 200 wounded
PressTV: Death toll from Israeli attacks on Gaza hits 830
SMH: Israel bans radio ad listing dead children's names
Haaretz: Israeli agency bans radio clip naming children killed in Gaza
IMEMC: List of Palestinians Killed Between 7/8 and 7/24 - Updated
Truthout: US Provides Israel the Weapons Used on Gaza

Ten dark suited men entered the premises of FBME bank in Cyprus on Friday afternoon and took it hostage. It must have looked like a scene from the Matrix. And given the surrealism of how this conflict is escalating, maybe it was. The men were from the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC). And they commandeered FBME because an obscure agency within the US government recently issued a report accusing the bank of laundering money. It just so happens that FBME… and Cyprus in general… is where a lot of wealthy Russians hold their vast fortunes...Bear in mind, there has been no proof that any crime was committed. There was no court hearing. No charges were read. It wasn’t even the government of Cyprus who accused them of anything. There was just a generic report penned by some bureaucrat 10,000 miles away.

John Napier Tye ■ Executive Order 12333 contains no [...] protections for U.S. persons if the collection occurs outside U.S. borders. Issued by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 to authorize foreign intelligence investigations, 12333 is not a statute and has never been subject to meaningful oversight from Congress or any court. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has said that the committee has not been able to “sufficiently” oversee activities conducted under 12333. [...] A legal regime in which U.S. citizens’ data receives different levels of privacy and oversight, depending on whether it is collected inside or outside U.S. borders, may have made sense when most communications by U.S. persons stayed inside the United States. But today, U.S. communications increasingly travel across U.S. borders — or are stored beyond them. For example, the Google and Yahoo e-mail systems rely on networks of “mirror” servers located throughout the world. An e-mail from New York to New Jersey is likely to wind up on servers in Brazil, Japan and Britain. The same is true for most purely domestic communications. [...] Executive Order 12333 contains nothing to prevent the NSA from collecting and storing all such communications — content as well as metadata — provided that such collection occurs outside the United States in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence investigation. No warrant or court approval is required, and such collection never need be reported to Congress. None of the reforms that Obama announced earlier this year will affect such collection.

Ed Hightower: Former State Department employee reveals spying on Americans by executive order

Sunni militants from the Islamic State have ordered all girls and women aged 11 to 46 in and around the city of Mosul to undergo female genital mutilation, the UN reported. The potential number of victims is estimated at 4 million. The shocking news, adding to an already long list of crimes reportedly committed by the militants since the takeover of northern Iraq last month, was broken by UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, Jacqueline Badcock. "This is something very new for Iraq, particularly in this area, and is of grave concern and does need to be addressed," she told reporters in Geneva by videolink from Arbil on Thursday. "This is not the will of Iraqi people, or the women of Iraq in these vulnerable areas covered by the terrorists," she added.

Soon after Malaysian Airlines MH17 crashed near Donetsk, Ukraine on July 18, killing 298 people, the BBC website quickly, and rightly, set up a 'LIVE' feed with rolling reports and commentary on the disaster. This was clearly an important and dramatic event involving horrific loss of life with serious political implications. The public would, of course, be searching for the latest news. However, since July 8, ten days prior to the crash, Israeli armed forces had been bombarding the trapped civilian population of Gaza with airstrikes, drone strikes and naval shelling. As the massive Israeli assault ramped up on July 9, the World section of the BBC News website had this as its headline: 'Israel under renewed Hamas attack'. By July 18, around 300 people had been killed in Gaza, 80% of them civilians. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a key political issue of our time, one that was clearly developing by the minute after July 8. And yet at no point had the BBC set up a 'LIVE' feed with rolling news.

Dov Lior, a racist Israeli rabbi from the West Bank settlement Kiryat Arba, recently posted a Halakhic ruling allowing to kill innocent civilians, after being asked about the “war” (it’s a massacre) in Gaza. Here are a few lines from the ruling:

“The Torah of Israel guides us in all walks of life, private and public, on how to behave during war and also how to keep moral standards. The Maharal from Prague (Rabbi Judah Loew), in his book Gur Arye, clearly writes that… in all wars the attacked people are allowed to attack fiercely the people from whom the attackers came from and they do not have to check if he personally belongs to the fighters. Therefore, during war the attacked people are allowed to punish the enemy population in any punishment it finds worthy, such as denying supplies or electricity and also to bomb the whole area according to the discretion of the army minister and not to just simply endanger soldier’s lives but to take crushing deterrence steps to exterminate the enemy. In the case of Gaza, the Minister of Defense will be allowed to instruct even the destruction of Gaza so that the south will no longer suffer and to avoid harm to our people who have been suffering for so long from the surrounding enemies.” Any kind of talk about humanism and consideration are moot when speaking of saving our brothers in the south and in the rest of the country and bringing back quiet to our country.” (Source)

Reuters: At least 15 killed by Israeli shelling of Gaza school; toll exceeds 760
The Telegraph: Revealed: the Palestinian children killed by Israeli forces
PressTV: Hamas kills 8 Israeli soldiers in Gaza
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: On the 16th Day of the Israeli Offensive (Report)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fumes over the UN Human Rights Council’s plan to strike up an investigation into Tel Aviv’s human rights violations in the Gaza Strip. ● Netanyahu vented his anger on Thursday at a joint press conference with British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond in al-Quds (Jerusalem). "It's a travesty of justice; it's a travesty of fairness; it's a travesty of common sense; it's a travesty of truth," Netanyahu said. His remarks came after the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) launched a commission on Wednesday to investigate Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Netanyahu once again put the blame on the Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, for the death of Palestinian civilians.

PressTV: Israel calls UNHRC ‘council for terrorists’

Israeli Professor Suggests Rape as 'Terror Deterrent'. Mordechai Kedar: Sex Assault on Relatives Will Stop Attacks. ● “The only thing that can deter terrorists, like those who kidnapped the children and killed them, is the knowledge that their sister or their mother will be raped.” This assertion was made by Middle East scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University on an Israel Radio program. “It sounds very bad, but that’s the Middle East,” added Kedar, of Bar-Ilan’s Department of Arabic. The program “Hakol Diburim” (“It’s All Talk”) was broadcast on July 1, immediately after the discovery of the bodies of Gilad Shaar, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah, who were kidnapped and murdered in the West Bank. It dealt, among other things, with the question of how Hamas can be deterred.

Maurice Pinay: The United States' 'out of control military rabbinate'
PressTV: Israeli rabbi says killing civilians in Gaza is allowed

Referring to the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, Cunningham said the Zionist entity is putting once again “on display” its crimes against humanity “in the most despicable and barbaric way.” He said a truce between the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and the Israeli regime could not fix the oppression of Palestinians, adding, “There is a hemorrhage of human life that requires deep intervention.” Nearly 750 Palestinians have been killed in 17 days of Israeli aerial and ground offensives in the besieged Gaza Strip.

PressTV: UK issues 400 arms licenses to Israel

■ Dear Mark, I want to use this opportunity to send you a sincere big bear of a hug! Your replies were perfect. I also want to express here my admiration for your restraint. We both know that for you and I each death, each person wounded in this ugly war is a wound on our soul, but for that BBC presstitute it's just an opportunity to make yet another snide comments expressing his full contempt and hatred for the people we love. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn once said about another such arrogant russophobic liar "за это надругательство над всеми погибшими и подавленными — пусть его рассудят Небеса!" Warmest regards to you and your loved ones! - The Saker

■ We have already seen Mark Sleboda vs a typical BBC Presstitute, today I bring you Peter Lavelle vs a typical CNN Presstitute. I have to admit that I have been loathing the Ziomedia for many years and it has been close to 20 years since I tossed away my TV, stopped reading the papers, stopped listening to Neocon Public Radio and basically fully switched to the Internet for news and entertainment. I never regretted this decision and I still think that this is the necessary and unavoidable first step towards personal liberation from system of mind control the plutocrats have imposed everywhere they had a chance to. I sincerely admire both Mark Sleboda and Peter Lavelle for their courage to try to get at least a tiny little bit of truth across in their interviews, but I have to say that I also think that their efforts are futile. I think that the zombies who watch the Idiot Tube in 2014 are simply beyond hope, they have lost any capability to think, reason, analyze, or question. As Roger Waters put it so well: "But it was only a fantasy, The wall was too high as you can see, No matter how he tried he could not break free, And the worms ate into his brain". We might as well call them Cerebrum Numbing Network. See for yourself in this video. (The Saker)

RT.com: If Russia is behind MH17 crash, where’s the evidence? – Defense Ministry
Paul Craig Roberts ■ US Intelligence: No Evidence Russia Did It

You’re Much More Likely to Be Killed By Brain-Eating Parasites, Texting While Driving, Toddlers, Lightning, Falling Out of Bed, Alcoholism, Food Poisoning, a Financial Crash, Obesity, Medical Errors or “Autoerotic Asphyxiation” than by Terrorists. ● The number of deaths by suicide has also surpassed car crashes. Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you’re 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist.

The state of Arizona killed Joseph Wood by lethal injection Wednesday in an execution process that took almost two hours. The botched lethal injection was just one of several that have been carried out in the United States in the past few months. The execution took place around 1.30 p.m., local-time. After Joseph Wood’s arms were injected with two lines, his veins were filled with a combination of the drugs midazolam and hydromorphone. According to an eyewitness with the Associated Press (AP), a look of pain overtook Wood’s face, and then Wood closed his eyes. Ten minutes into the execution, roughly the amount of time lethal injections usually take to kill someone, Wood began gasping. Eyewitnesses reported that his jaw suddenly dropped and his chest puffed up. Afterwards he let out a gasp. AP reported: “The gasps repeated every five to 12 seconds. They went on and on, hundreds of times.”

The Telegraph: Arizona execution takes nearly two hours to kill prisoner

("Netanyahu war criminal, Hollande accomplice")

France became the first country in the world to ban pro Palestinian demonstrations …. does this make them ‘The Only Democracy In Europe?’ (sic) ● Thousands of protesters were expected to march in Paris over the weekend and call for an end to the violence in Gaza, as it emerged on Friday that the Israeli military had killed 296 Palestinians in the renewed conflict – including a baby, four children and a 70-year-old woman since Thursday. One Israeli civilian and one IDF soldier have died in the 11-day conflict. Citing a “threat to public order”, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve backed the police ban on the widely-advertised mass demonstrations, after members of the Jewish Defence League (LDJ) and pro-Palestinian groups clashed last Sunday. He also advised other police prefects to consider banning planned rallies on a “case by case” basis.

Kumaran Ira ■ French Socialist Party government attacks anti-Gaza war protests || The police attack on a march against the Gaza war in Paris Saturday, after President François Hollande of the Socialist Party (PS) personally endorsed a ban on the protest, directly implicates the French government in the Israeli state’s mass murder in Gaza. Hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including children, have been killed and thousands wounded in the Israeli bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza. On Saturday, thousands of people defied the PS ban, marching in cities throughout France to show both their anger at Israel’s offensive in Gaza and their indignation at the PS ban. Protests also took place internationally, in the Middle East and in Europe including in London, Rome and Brussels. Protesters met with violent repression by CRS riot police in Paris, who arrested 38 protesters.

The Saker ■ Yup, you probably guessed it. It's BHL, Bernard Henri-Levi, the so-called "philosopher" and France's ArchZionist who after declaring war in Libya and, before that, Serbia, is now declaring war on Russia. Normally, I would post the article in question. But for BHL I will make an exception and only post the link. If you can do that and keep your breakfast down, I urge you to read his piece. His racist hatred of Russians is not even subtle: "vodka-soaked rabble army" "undisciplined louts who know only the law of the jungle" "dogs of war who follow no creed and no law". He does not even need to say "subhuman" like Iatseniuk did - it is already quite clear. It's 1917 (hiding behind a thin veneer of 1941) all over again. The Trotskists want their genocide again. But this time around Russia understands it and is ready.

Fifty million Americans still live in poverty in the United States, including almost one-in-four US children, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Wednesday. ● In its newest report on the world’s largest economy, the IMF urged Washington to boost the nation’s sluggish long-term growth and employment rates to tackle its social vows. “Despite improving growth and rising employment, almost 50 million Americans still live in poverty, unable to earn enough to meet their basic needs… Improved employment prospects and economic growth will be essential to bringing this number down,” the IMF said in its annual survey. [...] The global economic monitor pointed to a slump in US economic activity in the first quarter of 2014 following an unusually harsh winter, which together with a struggling housing market, slower exports demand and a 2.9-percent drop in home production output, stole the momentum of the second half of 2013. “Growth for the year as a whole will be a disappointing 1.7 percent,” the report said, citing the “large drag” from the first quarter contraction, which will be difficult to offset.

PCR interviewed by Norbert Lichtner, Slovokia Media for Czech and Slovak audience: here

Two Ukrainian warplanes were shot down Wednesday over rebel-held eastern Ukraine in the same vicinity as a Malaysian airliner that was downed last week, Ukrainian officials said. The planes, both Sukhoi attack aircraft, were struck in the vicinity of Saur Mogila, a town just west of the Russian border, said Aleksey Dmitrashkovsky, a spokesman for the Ukrainian armed forces. He said he had no information about the fate of the pilots. But Bogdan Senik, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said a witness reported seeing at least one parachute open.

CBC News: 2 Ukraine fighter jets shot down by pro-Russian rebels
Bloomberg: Two Ukraine Fighter Jets Downed by Rebels Near MH17 Site

Tanvi Madan is the director of the India Project at the Brookings Institution. Pepe Escobar is the Asia Times roving correspondent and veteran Brazilian journalist in Sao Paulo, Brazil.