US sanctions violate the very system they created. ● Sanctions levied against Russia are against the norms of international trade and the core principles of the G20, as they can only be introduced via the United Nations, Putin said. Sanctions are “against WTO principles and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the GATT. The United States itself created that organization at a certain point. Now it is crudely violating its principles,” Putin explained.
Interconnected economy: What hurts us hurts you ● Sanctions against Russia have targeted the finance, energy and weaponry sectors of the economy. Russia’s retaliatory sanctions to ban agricultural imports are having a colossal ripple effect on jobs, social sectors, and growth. This is especially pertinent to Europe, which is feeling the squeeze of the agricultural export ban to Russia, one its biggest markets. “Everyone must understand that the global economy and finance these days are exceptionally dependent on each other,” Putin said. Germany’s economic growth is an example of financial blowback from sanctions with Russia.

Stephen Lendman ■ Putin: Sanctions Violate International Law
Itar-Tass: Putin: We are guided by interests rather than feelings in dealing with our partners

Israel has banned Norwegian doctor and human rights activist Mads Gilbert from entering Gaza for life. ● Gilbert, a professor at the University Hospital of North Norway, where he has worked since 1976, earned international renown for his philanthropic work in late 2008, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, an attack that, according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, killed roughly 1,400 Gazans, including almost 800 civilians, 350 of whom were children. ● The aid worker, along with fellow Norwegian doctor Erik Fosse, decided to volunteer in Gaza as soon as he heard that bombing had started, on 27 December 2008. Thanks to diplomatic and economic support (in the sum of $1 million dollar of emergency funding from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the two physicians managed to arrive in the strip by 30 December. ● The Israeli government prevented all international press from entering Gaza during Cast Lead (a documentary, The War Around Us, was made about the only two foreign reporters in the strip at the time), in what Gilbert called Israel’s insidious “PR plan.” The doctor, as one of the only international aid workers in Gaza, thus devoted considerable time to speaking with local Palestinian news outlets, some of whom were reporting on behalf of foreign networks including BBC, CNN, ABC, and Al Jazeera.

The Times of Israel: Israel bans co-author of Lancet letter from Gaza
Sputnik News: Israel Bans Norwegian Doctor From Entering Gaza for Life: Reports
ABC Nyheter: Se pressekonferanse med Mads Gilbert - VIDEO
Google search: 'mads gilbert'

Amid revelations of secret US spying program, a new report indicates that the US Justice Department has been spying on a large number of innocent Americans through their cellphones. ● The program run by the US Marshals Service began operations in 2007 by using fake communications towers on airplanes, according to the Wall Street Journal. The program uses Cessna aircraft from at least five metropolitan-area airports from a range that covers most of the Americans. The service gathered information from thousands of mobile phones through devices deployed on airplanes which mimic signals from cellphone towers. The report said on Thursday that the devices made by Boeing Co. mimic the cellphone towers and trick mobile phones into revealing their unique registration data. Planes, equipped with the devices known as “dirtboxes," can collect information from tens of thousands of cellphones in a single flight, which occur on a regular basis.

RT.com: Dragnet: Justice Dept gets airborne to spy on thousands of American cellphone users
Antiwar.com: Planes Cover 'Most of the US Population'
Sputnik News: US Spy Program Monitors American Mobiles From the Sky: Wall Street Journal
Wall Street Journal: Americans’ Cellphones Targeted in Secret U.S. Spy Program (subscription)

New radar data indicating that military aircraft were in the air near Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 when it crashed in eastern Ukraine on July 17 has been released by a Russian air safety consultancy. ● The consultancy provided a snapshot representing the readings taken by a radar station located in Russia’s Rostov, near the Ukrainian border, shortly before and about 20 minutes after the MH17 crash. According to Sergey Melnichenko, CEO of Aviation Safety consultancy, there were one or two warplanes in the air close to the Malaysian airliner. The data casts doubt on the version of the tragedy favored by Western nations, which claims the plane was shot down from the ground by rebel forces with a sophisticated surface-to-air missile. The data “came from an air traffic control center in Rostov,” Melnichenko told Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, declining to reveal which one and whether it was civilian or military. He assured that “we have full trust in the sources, which helped us make it available to the public.” “The data clearly shows that at the moment of the crash and after it there were planes moving north of the Boeing course. Most likely, they were military, because the spots are very close to each other. The conclusion is that there were either one or two aircraft there,” Melnichenko told the daily.

The Saker ■ MH17: more proof that the Ukies did it || What this image shows is 20 minutes of recording of the airspace before and after the shooting down of MH17. The course of MH17 is shown in purple while the numerous little blue "T" shaped objects in the circle show the radar return of one or, possibly two, aircraft which either do not have a transponder or which have not switched it on. Either way, since we know that the Novorussian Resistance did not have aircraft, and since we know that the Ukrainians have denied that they had any aircraft anywhere near this area at that time, and since we know that had this been a Russian aircraft the US/NATO AWACS and satellites would have picked it up and presented this damning proof a long time ago we can come to the only possible conclusion: the Ukies and their US/EU patrons are lying, the aircraft seen on the radar are Ukrainian, no Buk missile was involved in the shooting (though I personally believe that one was used to cue the Ukrainian aircraft to MH17) and that MH17 was shot down by a combo of gun and missile fire from one or two Ukrainian aircraft. The Saker ■ PS: by the way, if a civilian radar needs a return signal from a transponder to get the identity, altitude and speed of an aircraft, military radars do not. Since I am quite sure that the Russians also had plenty of military radars in the region, I am equally sure that, just as the US and NATO, the Russian military also has the ironclad proof that the Ukies did it in the form of radar track recordings. Whether they will ever present such proof or not (and I am sure that they would prefer not to) or whether they will only generate such "leaks" from civilian sources as the one today in MK instead is unclear to me. I guess it depends on what the AngloZionist propaganda says.

Sputnik News: Russia Concerned by MH17 Probe Delays, Lavrov Tells Kerry

From Sarah Palin to John McCain, from the NYT to the BBC, over the past year Russia has invaded Ukraine so many times that Google delivers over 1.3 million results on the subject. The newest accusation of Russian invasion has gotten so old and worn out, that people are simply starting to tune out the folly and silliness of the "boy who cried wolf." [So,] how many times has Russia invaded Ukraine in the last year? Let’s add them up

Russia Insider: Why Russia Hasn’t and Won’t Invade Ukraine

Obama chewed out for gum gaffe in China at the APEC summit. People in China took to the internet to criticise President Obama for getting caught on camera chewing gum as he arrived at an economic summit in Beijing. Some also took offence to his method of transportation.

US-Israel in Mexico: Murdered Students and the Failed State

NCAR’s Dr. Kevin Trenberth was a lead author of the IPCC’s 2nd, 3rd and 4th Assessment Reports. Near to the publication of the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report 7 years ago, Dr. Trenberth penned a blog post at Nature.com Predictions of climate — a blog post that exposed many critical weaknesses in the climate models used by the IPCC for divining the future of climate on Earth. The post was filled with extraordinary quotes, including:

• …none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate.
• In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models.
• Moreover, the starting climate state in several of the models may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors.
• … if the current state is one of drought then it is unlikely to get drier, but unrealistic model states and model biases can easily violate such constraints and project drier conditions.
• However, the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional predictions of climate.
• So the science is just beginning.
• We will adapt to climate change. The question is whether it will be planned or not?

Those are powerful statements. Please read Trenberth’s blog post in its entirety. You’ll find those quotes were reinforced by much of the remaining text. Occasionally, Trenberth interjected what could be considered global warming dogma to temper the critical aspects of the remainder. One of Trenberth’s statements stands out as self-deception, plain and simple: "The current projection method works to the extent it does because it utilizes differences from one time to another and the main model bias and systematic errors are thereby subtracted out. This assumes linearity." Seven years later everyone knows the “current projection method” does not work. The climate science community has known all along that Earth’s climate is chaotic and non-linear. It was only a matter of time until their “current projection method” failed, and it didn’t take long.