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Russia wants to extend 'New START' nuclear arms control deal but not at any cost - deputy foreign minister


RT
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 18:05 UTC
missile
© Sputnik / Russian Northern Fleet Press ServiceFILE PHOTO: A test launch of a Russian RSM-56 Bulava sumarine-launched ballistic missile.
Moscow wishes to prolong the New START Treaty but not if the US demands unreasonable concessions, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said, adding that the Russian and American positions on the issue remain quite different.

Russia is ready to extend the treaty without any preconditions BUT Washington is still hesitating in agreeing to that, Ryabkov said following another round of nuclear arms talks with the US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea in Vienna.

The high-ranking diplomat hailed some progress in the negotiations by saying that both sides took a more constructive stance and stuck to "intensive, in-depth and business-like discussions," according to Russia's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna, Mikhail Ulyanov.

Comment: See also: US ignores Russia's offer to extend New START arms control treaty without conditions

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Cow Skull

Best of the Web: CODENAME: Operation Virus Identification 2019; the Elitist Plan to Remake Society

Mike Whitney
The Unz Review
Sun, 16 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
CFR chart
Everything we were originally told about the Coronavirus has turned out to be wrong. In fact, it's not a "novel" one-of-a-kind infection at all, but a member of a larger family of which there have been many iterations in the recent past. It's also not the most contagious or most lethal virus we've ever seen, but a fairly-mild infection that has no impact on the majority of people and that only kills somewhere between 1 in every 200 to 1 in every 1,000 people. (CDC-IFR- 0.26%) Also, there was no real danger that our public health system was going to collapse, because the projected number of potential deaths (1 to 2 million in the US) never approached the estimates of the flawed computer models that were used to decide the policy. In short, just about everything we were told from the very beginning turned out to be demonstrably wrong. Why is that? Why do you think that the people who provided us with the information - many of them supposedly "experts" in their field - were so wrong about everything? And why haven't they made any effort to publicly correct their mistakes when they realize how much confusion they've caused?
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Stop

Jared Kushner: US won't give Israel green light to annex parts of West Bank 'for some time'

Mica Soellner
Washington Examiner
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
Kushen Netanyahu
Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said that the United States won't approve of Israel annexing parts of the West Bank "for some time."

After President Trump announced last week a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates focused on normalizing relations between the two Middle East nations, Trump's son-in-law stressed that Israel won't follow through on annexation without U.S. approval.

"Israel has agreed with us that they will not move forward without our consent. We do not plan to give our consent for some time," Kushner told reporters on Monday.

Comment: Israel's pathological thirst for hegemony and carnage in the Middle East has likely been quenched a bit with what was likely their doing in the recent Beirut explosion. They can afford to seem magnanimous and peaceful for a few minutes while they wonder if any evidence of that atrocity comes to light.

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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: Has Sweden beaten C0VlD? One death so far in August, no lockdown, no masks

Ben Swann
Sott.net
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
Ben Swann video
Can it be? Is it true? With the relentless almost word-wide hysteria around you know what, how is it that Sweden is doing so well doing so little? Are those Swedes, unlike the rest of us just, somehow, Covid-resistant? Or have their policies of just letting the virus take its course proven the policy of lockdowns, masks, social distancing just a load of pure bull?


Comment: The truth about Sweden has been out there for some time now, but don't expect to hear anything about it from the talking heads in corporate media:

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Control Panel

'Trump probably won't dare take part': Tehran doubts if Iran summit proposed by Putin will yield results, because of US


RT
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 15:31 UTC
Iran sign
Tehran is unsure if the online summit proposed by Vladimir Putin to defuse mounting tensions around Iran and the UN arms embargo will have any effect, thanks to America's stance and the expected absence of Donald Trump.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week proposed an online gathering, featuring Iran, Germany and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Defusing tensions around Iran and making the region safer can be achieved "if our countries and the regional states combine their political will and creative energy,"said the Kremlin's statement on the matter.

According to Tehran, that part is the hardest to achieve. "We understand the good intentions of Mr Putin to reduce tensions. However, one way or another, we doubt that such a meeting will be effective in the absence of sincerity on the part of the American government," Iranian government spokesperson Ali Rabiei told Russian news agency RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
Probably, the US president [Donald Trump] will not dare to take part in the summit because he is convinced that he will again be isolated.
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Sherlock

Pentagon investigating 'drone that flew remarkably close' to Air Force One


Fox News
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 20:47 UTC
Trump on Air Force One
FILE PHOTO: Trump on Air Force One
The Air Force is investigating whether a small drone flew close to Air Force One on Sunday before it landed safely at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C.

The White House referred queries to the Pentagon, which confirmed that the incident, which was described by reporters aboard the plane as Mr. Trump was returning from his golf resort in Bedminster, N.J. Sunday evening, was being examined.

"The 89th Airlift Wing is aware of the report. The matter is under review," said a statement from the Air Force unit which oversees Air Force One operations at Joint Base Andrews, Md. "The 89th Airlift Wing's C-32A aircraft landed safely without incident."

Comment: See also:

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Pharoah

Best of the Web: Our leaders cannot 'eradicate' much less 'mitigate' this Coronavirus. We grossly overestimate their powers

Adam Creighton
The Australian
Tue, 18 Aug 2020 12:38 UTC
australia lockdown
On the hunt for The Covid
We can probably excuse Henry VI for trying to ban kissing in 1439 without a serious cost-benefit analysis. The Black Death was wiping out close to a third of all people, after all, so it was natural the precautionary principle would swing into action.

But the spectacle of millions of masked-up Victorians, clinking elbows if they find someone else bold enough to have stepped outside, suggests our response is over the top, born of a mistaken belief that governments have more control over the course of events than they really do.

King Canute realised he couldn't control the tides. Outbreaks of the coronavirus in Victoria and New Zealand should remind us that controlling the spread of an invisible, highly contagious virus is not much easier.

Comment: Coronaviruses and many other types of highly contagious viruses are essentially designed by Nature to blanket the entire human population as quickly as possible.

In fact, we're MEANT to be infected by them because they're essentially 'system upgrades', without which the ever-changing near-Earth and planetary environment would REALLY kill us all!

Which means that trying to stop such system upgrades is the height of folly. Really, it's the stupidest thing the human race has ever attempted to do.

And that's saying something.

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Putin

China and Russia ditch dollar in move towards 'financial alliance'

Dimitri Simes,
Nikkei Asian Review
Thu, 06 Aug 2020 05:16 UTC
dollar
© Dreamstime/FT Montage
Russia and China are partnering to reduce their dependence on the dollar — a development some experts say could lead to a "financial alliance" between them.

In the first quarter of 2020, the dollar's share of trade between Russia and China fell below 50 per cent for the first time on record, according to recent data from Russia's Central Bank and Federal Customs Service.

The greenback was used for only 46 per cent of settlements between the two countries. At the same time, the euro made up an all-time high of 30 per cent, while their national currencies accounted for 24 per cent, also a new high.

Russia and China have drastically cut their use of the dollar in bilateral trade over the past several years. As recently as 2015, approximately 90 per cent of bilateral transactions were conducted in dollars. Following the outbreak of the US-China trade war and a concerted push by both Moscow and Beijing to move away from the dollar, however, the figure had dropped to 51 per cent by 2019.
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Video

Popular viral video firm sues Facebook over Russian propaganda label

Alan Macleod
MintPress News
Sat, 15 Aug 2020 00:00 UTC
womanfacebook
© MintPress/Antonio Cabrera
The company behind In The Now, Soapbox and Waste-Ed is taking on media giant Facebook, who it claims is falsely labeling it as Russian state-controlled propaganda.

An online media company is suing social media giant Facebook for falsely smearing it as a Russian state-controlled propaganda outlet. Maffick, the owner of In The Now, Soapbox and Waste-Ed, has filed a lawsuit against Facebook in a Northern California district court for defamation, intentional interference and violating section 43(a) of the Lanham Act, unjustly causing them economic and reputational harm, claiming that Facebook's actions represent unfair competitive practices.

Go to any of the Maffick-owned Facebook pages, including In The Now (4.9 million followers), which focuses on light-hearted news and social justice issues, Soapbox (320,000 followers), featuring politically opinionated videos, or Waste-Ed (216,000 followers), with content on environmental topics, and you are greeted with a warning from Facebook: "This publisher is wholly or partially under the editorial control of a state." Maffick strenuously denies this, noting that its sole owner, Anissa Naouai, is a U.S. citizen living in California. "In doing all of these actions, Facebook has acted fraudulently, with actual malice and in reckless disregard for the truth," the complaint alleges.
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Calendar

It's 'magnanimous' when Jacinda Ardern delays an election, but an 'assault on democracy' when Trump suggests it!

Guy Birchall
RT
Mon, 17 Aug 2020 20:24 UTC
Ardern/Trump
© SIMON SCHLUTER/FAIRFAX/HEADPRESS/REDUX/Reuters/Jim BourgNew Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern • US Prsident Donald Trump
New Zealand's PM Jacinda Ardern has shut the nation's borders, interred the few still allowed to enter and now postponed the election for a month - but it's all okay because she's the 'right kind of leader'.

Ardern has postponed the elections in New Zealand for a month so the country can deal with a new spike in Covid-19 cases. The Kiwi PM has become something of a darling of liberal outlets around the world who larrup praise on her progressive outlook, being a female world leader and, most recently, the way she has dealt with the pandemic.

New Zealand has so far only had 22 deaths related to Covid-19, which is obviously all down to Ms Ardern and nothing to do with the fact that New Zealand is sparsely populated, over a thousand miles away from any other country and has five times as many sheep as people.

Comment: See also:

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