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The Israel Electric Corporation CEO Eli Glickman warned Israel's security chiefs in a letter sent Sunday that the company would have to limit electricity to territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority and the Jerusalem District Energy Company (JEDCO) – which buys electricity from Israel and sells it to various cities in the West Bank – because of a debt totalling NIS 1,700,843,315.

The letter noted that as of December 31, debt owed by the Palestinian Authority and the Jerusalem District Electricity Company amounted to more than NIS 1.7 billion, of which NIS 1,054,914,845 were from the JDECO, and NIS 645,928,470 from the PA.  

French President Francois Hollande says he wants Western sanctions on Russia to be lifted if progress is made in talks on the Ukraine conflict this month. He did not specify which sanctions - imposed by the EU, US and Canada - could be lifted. The sanctions began after Russia annexed Crimea in March. Mr Hollande said Russian President Vladimir Putin "doesn't want to annex eastern Ukraine - he told me that". Germany's vice-chancellor has warned against further sanctions on Russia.

There have been calls elsewhere in the EU for an easing or lifting of the sanctions on Russia, which have hit its banks, energy industry and arms manufacturers, as well as targeting powerful figures close to Mr Putin. Politicians in Italy, Hungary and Slovakia are among those who want the sanctions eased.

In the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, the dominant discourse is that the Palestinian militants provoked the hostilities — while Israel, as President Barack Obama affirmed last week, is acting in legitimate self-defense. Many have attempted to problematize this narrative, for instance by arguing that Israel, as an occupying power, does not have a legitimate legal or moral claim to self-defense. Others have argued that rockets fired by Hamas do not constitute an existential crisis for Israel or its citizens and certainly did not warrant the killing of more than 500 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including women and children. While these are all valid and important points, the broader narrative remains largely unchallenged: Hamas began firing rockets at Israel first, triggering Israel’s latest military incursion. This is not true. In fact, far from acting in self-defense, the crisis is the result of deliberate actions by Israel over the last few weeks — first to stir up anti-Arab sentiment among the Israeli population and then to provoke Hamas into open conflict.

A senior Senate Democrat is firing a warning shot at the White House against stalling the release of a report about the past use of torture by the U.S. intelligence community. Sen. Ron Wyden is talking with his colleagues about the possibility of using a seldom-invoked procedure to declassify an Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture in the event the White House does not move ahead quickly. Speaking with reporters on a variety of subjects Thursday, the Oregon Democrat referred to the Senate’s “Resolution 400″ — the Abraham A. Ribicoff-sponsored resolution that established the Intelligence Committee back in 1976. Wyden said he was discussing invoking the resolution “in order to move this along if we have to, through the committee process, to get it declassified.” Matt Bai of Yahoo! News reported earlier Thursday that Wyden mentioned the same procedure to him. And it was not the first time he’s discussed the possibility. Wyden previously explained the provision in October 2013, KATU reported. The Senate Intelligence Committee voted on April 3 to provide for declassification of the report into the use of harsh interrogation practices by the CIA during the administration of President George W. Bush. That action set the gears in motion for declassification review. The report is now in the hands of the White House.

The attack in Mosul wasn’t particularly surprising, according to Wameed, an Iraqi soldier who’d been assigned to the city’s main highway that night. It began June 9 with suicide bombers in cars and machine gun fire directed at checkpoints leading to the main thoroughfares of Iraq’s second largest city.

“All checkpoints were being attacked from all sides, and not just from Daash,” he said. “Then our commanders turned off their mobile phones. We knew this was big. . . . There were just 20 of us on the highway. What could we do alone? We ran.”In the following days as much as half the Iraqi army drew the same conclusion and effectively disbanded; by some accounts less than half of the army remains combat effective. Despite its 10 to 1 numerical advantage, the army fled.

It was one of biggest collapses of a conventional military in modern times. It also said much about the evolution of ISIS, which until the capture of Mosul and its blitzkrieg-like advance across northern and central Iraq, had been known to the world largely as a terrorist organization that had used car bombs to fight the United States in Iraq and adopted even more brutal tactics when it moved to Syria to battle the government of President Bashar Assad.In the conquest of Mosul, however, ISIS unveiled itself as a conventional fighting force with clear tactical and strategic goals _ and the patience to execute them. Its announcement Sunday that it was establishing an Islamic caliphate has taken virtually everyone in the region by surprise _ except for perhaps two men.Those would be Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, who took over the leadership of the group in 2010, and a shadowy former intelligence officer from the toppled regime of Saddam Hussein who’s known only by a pseudonym, Hajj Bakr.Assembling a coherent picture of how ISIS executed its transformation is something U.S. intelligence officials will be striving to do in coming weeks as they examine what happened to the U.S.-trained Iraqi army.

President Obama says it all the time — no combat troops will return to Iraq.But many experts believe it will be extremely hard to achieve Obama’s newly expanded military mission there without more Americans on the ground.“I think the slippery slope analogy is the right one for Iraq right now,” said Barry Posen, director of the Security Studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.On Thursday, Obama authorized a new open-ended operation in response to gains by the Islamic State militants in northern Iraq.

For now, the new mission relies on aircraft based outside Iraq. The U.S. will help defend the Kurdish city of Erbil from Islamic State fighters using “targeted air strikes,” Obama said. Those air strikes began Friday morning and included at least three separate bombings before noon, defense officials said.The second mission is a commitment to protect some 40,000 Iraqi Yazidis who are trapped on a mountain surrounded by the militants. That began Thursday night with air drops of food and water for at least 8,000 people.Military experts say tactical commanders will want more ground forces. Forward air controllers could provide more precise targeting information. U.S. advisers could support the Kurdish forces fighting the militants. And U.S. commanders may need to expand their intelligence effort on the ground.

Getting the Yazidis off the mountain and safely transporting them to a secure location will require either an “an enormous helicopter air lift” or ground combat units to confront militants and secure a safe-passage corridor for the refugees, Mansoor said.“That may require some kind of ground presence to escort them through enemy held territory,” Mansoor said.“That is [IS] controlled territory. There could be major combat along the way. This could be very difficult,” Mansoor said.

U.S. defense and diplomatic officials said Thursday that Russia is firing artillery across its border at Ukrainian military positions. At a State Department briefing, spokeswoman Marie Harf said the U.S. also has evidence that Russia intends to deliver powerful rocket systems to pro-Russia rebels in Ukraine. Ms. Harf declined to provide details about the systems or about how that conclusion was reached, sparking a back-and-forth with Associated Press journalist Matthew Lee over how the conclusion was reached.

On Tuesday, U.S. intelligence officials had laid out their case to reporters that Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last week, relying on photographs, social media, and voiceprint analysis of Ukrainian communications intercepts. The evidence cited, however, didn’t raise the case for Russian involvement in the shoot-down to a new level of certainty, as The Wall Street Journal reported, and officials said they were working to refine evidence and may offer more in coming days.

By Paul Craig Roberts August 29, 2014 "ICH" - The latest Washington lie, this one coming from NATO, is that Russia has invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops and self-propelled artillery. How do we know that this is a lie? Is it because we have heard nothing but lies about Russia from NATO, from US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, from assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, from Obama and his entire regime of pathological liars, and from the British, German, and French governments along with the BBC and the entirety of the Western media? This, of course, is a good reason for knowing that the latest Western propaganda is a lie. Those who are pathological liars don’t suddenly start telling the truth. But there are even better reasons for understanding that Russia has not invaded Ukraine with 1,000 troops. One reason is that Putin has invested heavily in diplomacy backed by unprovocative behavior. He would not risk his bet on diplomacy by sending in troops too few in number to have a decisive effect on the outcome.

Another reason is that if Putin decides he has no alternative to sending the Russian military to protect the Russian residents in eastern and southern Ukraine, Putin will send in enough troops to do the job quickly as he did in Georgia when the American and Israeli trained Georgian army invaded South Ossetia and was destroyed in a few hours by the Russian response. If you hear that 100,000 Russian troops accompanied by air cover have invaded Ukraine, it would be a more believable claim. A third reason is that the Russian military does not need to send troops into Ukraine in order to stop the bombing and artillery shelling of the Russian populations by Washington’s puppet government in Kiev. The Russian air force can easily and quickly destroy the Ukrainian air force and artillery and, thereby, stop the Ukrainian attack on the secessionist provinces.

It was only two weeks ago that a fabricated report spread by the UK Guardian and the BBC that a Russian armored convoy entered Ukraine and was destroyed by the Ukrainian Military. And two weeks prior to that we had the hoax of the satellite images allegedly released by the US State Department that the corrupt US ambassador in Kiev spread around the world on social media allegedly showing that Russian forces were firing into Ukraine. One or two weeks from now we will have another lie, and another a week or two after that, and so on. The cumulative effect of lie piled upon lie for most people is to build the view that the Russians are up to no good. Once this view is established, Western governments can take more serious moves against Russia.

David Petraeus, the person who Feinstein said has “suffered enough,” was hired last year by the $73 billion investment fund KKR to be Chairman of its newly created KKR Global Institute, on top of the $220,000/year pension he receives from the U.S. Army and the teaching position he holds at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Let us all pause for a moment to lament the deep suffering of this man, and the grave injustice of inflicting any further deprivation upon him. In 2011, I wrote a book, With Liberty and Justice for Some, that examined the two-tiered justice system prevailing in the U.S.: how the U.S. imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world (both in absolute numbers and proportionally) often for trivial transgressions, while immunizing its political and economic elites for even the most egregious crimes. Matt Taibbi’s book, The Divide, examines the same dynamic with a focus on the protection of economic elites and legal repression of ordinary citizens in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. This latest example from Feinstein is one of the most vivid yet. She wanted Julian Assange – who isn’t even a U.S. citizen and never served in the U.S. Government – prosecuted for espionage for exposing war crimes, and demanded that Edward Snowden be charged with “treason” for exposing illegal eavesdropping which shocked the world. But a four-star general who leaked classified information not for any noble purpose but to his mistress for personal reasons should be protected from any legal consequences.

Long-standing mavens of DC political power literally believe that they and their class-comrades are too noble, important and elevated to be subjected to the rule of law to which they subject everyone else. They barely even disguise it any more. It’s the dynamic by which the Obama administration prosecuted leakers with unprecedented aggression who disclose information that embarrasses them politically while ignoring or even sanctioning the leaks of classified information which politically glorify them. It is, of course, inconceivable that someone like Dianne Feinstein would urge the release of ordinary convicts from prison on the ground that their actions are “in the past” or that they have “suffered enough.” This generous mentality of mercy, forgiveness and understanding - like Obama’s decree that we Look Forward, Not Backward to justify immunity for American torturers - is reserved only for political officials, Generals, telecoms, banks and oligarchs who reside above and beyond the rule of law.

About half of Europe's member states are pushing for greater online censorship powers in the wake of the terror attacks in France earlier this month. In a joint statement, interior ministers from 11 European member states -- including Germany, Poland, Spain, and the U.K. -- expressed condemnation of the attacks, while stressing further cooperation between their law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Members of the European Union, along with a delegation from the U.S. government -- including outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder -- adopted, among other sentiments, a resolution to create a partnership of major Internet providers to report and remove material associated with extremism.

"We are concerned at the increasingly frequent use of the Internet to fuel hatred and violence and signal our determination to ensure that the Internet is not abused to this end, while safeguarding that it remains, in scrupulous observance of fundamental freedoms, a forum for free expression, in full respect of the law," the statement said. The statement also said the Internet was a focal point in the "fight against radicalization," and there was a need to strengthen resources across the region, including greater border surveillance.

Editor's Note:With the rise of the Islamic State (IS), the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and the struggle between Iran and the West over nuclear issues, the Middle East remained chaotic in 2014. What about 2015? What kind of role will the US play in the regional political landscape? At a seminar held by the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, Global Times (GT) reporter Liu Zhun talked to Flynt Leverett (Flynt), former senior director of Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), and Hillary Mann Leverett (Hillary), former director of Iran, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the NSC, about these issues. GT: What is your forecast of the situation of the Middle East this year?

Flynt: More and more negative consequences of the failed US drive for the hegemony in the Middle East will become increasingly evident. The US is struggling to come to terms with that. Washington should reconsider its basic strategy for this region, but President Barack Obama has a great belief in US' hegemonic agenda. Many analysts in the US argue that Washington should "double-down" on its strategy. But this is the wrong direction.Hillary: There will be more violence throughout the region - violence encouraged by the US. A potential difference rests on the possibility that an alternative mindset will be brought in by China as it rises. Whether Russia, with the support of China and Iran, can put Syria's conflicts on a different trajectory toward resolution is important - whether they can bring in a different paradigm for conflict resolution. I am not sure they can yet, but I am encouraged by China's rise and its focus on sovereignty and conflict resolution. GT: If the US changes its course, will the region be a better place?Flynt: Yes, it will be a better place. The historical record has proven that. For 20 years after China's revolution, the US was doing everything it could to isolate and hurt the People's Republic of China. After it gave up its hostile policies toward China, China, as well as other East Asian countries, embarked on a long and productive period of economic expansion with rising prosperity for hundreds of millions of people. The Middle East will not be perfect after the US changes its policy, but it will be better.

GT: But the chaos in the Middle East, much of which is driven by religious issues, is more complicated than the conflicts China encountered with the US, which were basically ideological. What do you think of the role of Islam in the chaos of the Middle East?Hillary: There has been a perception that there is something wrong with Islam and that it is the major contributor to the complications of the problems in the Middle East. But if you look historically, that is not really true. There is no evidence that Muslims are historically terrorists. The head of the IS was in an American prison, where he became more extreme in his own views and forged a network with other extremists.The perennial chaos of the Middle East, to a large extent, is caused by a long history of military penetration by Western countries such as France, the UK and now the US. GT: You suggest the US should shift its Middle East policy and pull back from trying to be a hegemon - for example, by restoring ties with Iran. What do you think of Obama's current strategy to the Middle East?Flynt: People are talking about the Obama doctrine and his being less interventionist. I don't really think that is right. I think the Obama administration is no less committed to so-called global leadership, which is actually hegemony, over strategically important areas like the Middle East. The Obama administration thinks it has a smarter way of promoting that leadership than its immediate predecessor. But that is more a tactical than strategic difference.

The Times goes on to say that Moussaoui’s testimony, if found to be factually accurate, could change our understanding of Saudi Arabia and its relationship to 9/11: [T]he extent and nature of Saudi involvement in Al Qaeda, and whether it extended to the planning and financing of the Sept. 11 attacks, has long been a subject of dispute. *** That may be so, but the Times, like the rest of the traditional media, has ignored earlier evidence of deep Saudi royal ties to the 9/11 attacks—evidence that isn’t dependent on a man whose sanity has been questioned. Back in 2011, a small non-profit news outfit in South Florida, the Broward Bulldog, which does primarily local stories, published an article that also appeared in a major traditional newspaper, the Miami Herald. Despite the story’s explosive content, it was widely ignored.

That article revealed that a well-heeled Saudi family, living in a gated community in Sarasota, Florida, had direct connections to the hijackers. Phone records documented communication, dating back more than a year, between this Saudi family and the alleged plot leader, Mohammed Atta, his hijack pilots and 11 of the other hijackers. In addition, records from the guard house at the gated community showed Atta and other hijackers had visited the house.

The family left the country abruptly just before the 9/11 attacks. Family members abandoned enough valuable possessions—such as three cars—to testify to the speed of their departure. The article also revealed that the FBI had quietly investigated the family and documented numerous interactions between them and the alleged hijackers. They, however, neglected to tell Congressional investigators and the evidence didn’t appear in the 9/11 Commission Report. You might think these revelations would attract widespread attention, considering that 15 of the 19 purported hijackers were Saudi citizens. Yet the Bulldog story generated barely a blip.

On February 12, Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, announced that the IMF had reached an agreement with the Ukrainian government on a new economic reform program. Ms Lagarde’s statement, made in Brussels, came only minutes after peace negotiations between the heads of the German, French, Russian und Ukrainian governments in Minsk, Belarus, had ended. The timing was no coincidence. Washington had been left out of the negotiations and now reacted by sending its most powerful financial organization to the forefront in order to deliver a clear message to the world: that the US will not loosen its grip on the Ukraine, if not by sending weapons, then at least economically and financially.

The loans will be based on the terms of an economic program for Ukraine for 2015 – 2020, passed by the Kiev parliament in December 2014, and are tied to harsh conditions laid down in a letter of intent, signed by prime minister Yatseniuk and president Poroshenko in August 2014. Some of the measures have already been implemented, others will follow. Among those already in force is the flexible exchange rate regime which has not only led to a 67% devaluation of the hrivna, lowering the average monthly wage of Ukrainian workers to less than $ 60, but has also opened the doors for international currency speculators who have already made millions by indebting themselves in hrivnia and repaying their debts in euros and dollars. The rate of inflation, running at 25 % in 2014 and expected to rise even higher in 2015, and a hike in gas prices by 50 % in May 2014 made survival almost impossible for the weakest 20 % of the population who already lived below the poverty line in 2013. Among the measures still to come are the layoff of 10 % of the country’s public employees and the partial privatization of health care and education. The retirement age for women is to be raised by 10 years, that for men by 5 years, most benefits for old age pensioners are to be abolished, the pharmaceuticals market is to be deregulated. Retirement pensions will be frozen, and there will be no more free lunches for school children and patients in hospitals. Benefits for victims of the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl are to be cut, and the boundaries of the officially designated radioactive hazard zone will be revised. The country’s monthly minimum wage is to remain at 1,218.00 hrivna ($ 46 at the current rate of exchange) until at least November 2015.

Ukrainian food prices are rising at a rate faster than in the ‘90s. But the Yatsenyuk government is still blaming the situation on the ignorance of the population and speculation by supermarket chains.

They used to blame currency exchangers, now they are blaming supermarket directors. However, you can’t feed the people with such tales.

The government’s “economy block” hastily summoned the director of the Ukrainian State Reserve Vladimir Zhukov. They demanded that he open the storehouses and fill the shelves with flour, sugar, canned meat, and buckwheat from its stores. In response the keeper of Motherland’s strategic stores revealed a terrible military secret to Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko: the storehouses are empty.

As a secular Jew, I don’t do much praying. But this week, as the powerful pro-Israeli- government lobby AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) holds its annual policy meeting in Washington, I’m praying that this year marks the beginning of the end of the lobby’s grip on US foreign policy. From March 1-3, over 10,000 AIPAC supporters will descend on the nation’s capital. The meeting comes at a time when the relationship between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at an all-time low. House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress right after he speaks at the AIPAC conference is seen by the White House as a direct attempt to undermine the president and his administration’s nuclear talks with Iran. In an unprecedented move, over fifty brave members of Congress have decided to skip Netanyahu’s address. AIPAC’s support of the Israeli prime minister over the US president is turning AIPAC into a Republican-biased lobby, which could prove fatal to its future influence in Washington. Here are ten reasons why this would be good for world peace:

According to an Israeli media report, Saudi Arabia has agreed to let Israeli warplanes fly over Saudi territory to save fuel while attacking Iranian nuclear sites, the latest indication of how the two former enemies have developed a behind-the-scenes alliance that is reshaping geopolitics in the Middle East.“The Saudi authorities are completely coordinated with Israel on all matters related to Iran,” a European official in Brussels told Israel’s Channel 2 in a report broadcast on Tuesday and described in other Israeli media outlets.

Riyadh’s only condition was that Israel make some progress in peace talks with the Palestinians, a stipulation that may be mostly cosmetic so the Saudis can save face with other Arab states without really interfering with an Israeli flyover to strike Iran.Disclosure of this Israeli-Saudi military cooperation also comes as the United States and five other world powers rush to finish an agreement with Iran to curtail but not eliminate its nuclear program, which Iran says is only for civilian purposes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to appear before the U.S. Congress on March 3 to undercut President Barack Obama’s negotiations.The reported Saudi permission for Israeli warplanes to take a shorter route to bomb Iran also suggests that Netanyahu may be laying the groundwork for his own plans to attack the Iranian nuclear sites if the international negotiations are successful. Netanyahu has denounced a possible deal as an “existential threat” to Israel.

Mulloy said the quality of China's submarines was lower than those built by the United States, but the size of its undersea fleet had now surpassed that of the U.S. fleet. A spokeswoman said the U.S. Navy had 71 commissioned U.S. submarines.

He said the U.S. military did not believe China carried nuclear missiles on its submarines, but that it had been producing missiles and testing them.

A long-awaited showdown this week between the White House and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has far-reaching implications for ties between the two countries, for the shape of power and influence in the Middle East and for a potential international agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

(Reuters) - Thousands of Iraqi soldiers and Shi'ite militiamen sought to seal off Islamic State fighters in Tikrit and nearby towns on Tuesday, the second day of Iraq's biggest offensive yet against a stronghold of the radical Sunni Islamist militants. Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani, who has helped coordinate Baghdad's counter-attacks against Islamic State since it seized much of northern Iraq in June, was overseeing at least part of the operation, witnesses told Reuters.His presence on the frontline highlights neighboring Iran's influence over the Shi'ite fighters who have been key to containing the militants in Iraq.

In contrast the U.S.-led air coalition which has been attacking Islamic State across Iraq and Syria has not yet played a role in Tikrit, the Pentagon said on Monday, perhaps in part because of the high-level Iranian presence.Iraqi military officials said security forces backed by the Shi'ite militia known as Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) units were advancing gradually, their progress slowed by roadside bombs and snipers. They have yet to enter Tikrit, best known as the hometown of executed former president Saddam Hussein, or the nearby Tigris river town of al-Dour, which officials describe as a major center for the Islamic State fighters.

On the southern flank of the offensive, army and police officials said government forces moving north from the city of Samarra could launch an attack on al-Dour later on Tuesday.Soleimani, head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, was directing operations on the eastern flank from a village about 55 km (35 miles) from Tikrit called Albu Rayash, captured from Islamic State two days ago.With him were two Iraqi Shi'ite paramilitary leaders: the leader of the Hashid Shaabi, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, and Hadi al-Amiri who leads the Badr Organisation, a powerful Shi'ite militia."(Soleimani) was standing on top of a hill pointing with his hands toward the areas where Islamic State are still operating," said a witness who was accompanying security forces near Albu Rayash.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Tuesday said an Iran nuclear deal was “at hand” and urged different sides to show political will ahead of a new round of talks scheduled in Geneva next week

“We cannot miss this opportunity,” Federica Mogherini, whose predecessor Catherine Ashton chairs the talks in Switzerland, said at Chatham House, a think tank in London.

“A good deal is at hand if the parties will keep cooperating as they did so far and if we have enough political will from all sides to agree on a good deal and sell it domestically,” Mogherini said. “We have a series of internal domestic political dynamics we have to handle with care,” she said, listing “tensions” in the US Congress, Israel’s elections and Sunni-Shiite rivalry in the Gulf region. “A comprehensive agreement would be mutually beneficial for all sides,” she said. US Secretary of State John Kerry earlier on Tuesday said world powers “had made inroads” since reaching an interim deal with Iran in November 2013 on reining in its suspect nuclear program. “We expect to know soon whether or not Iran is willing to put together an acceptable, verifiable plan,” Kerry said after returning from talks in Geneva with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.