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Handcuffs

Gaddafi's frozen assets: How UK is capitalising on the Libyan people's money


RT
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 20:25 UTC
gaddafi
© Sputnik / Vladimir Fedorenko
Following the exposure of Belgium's mishandling of Muammar Gaddafi's frozen funds, it turns out that the British government has been collecting taxes on the former head of state's blocked UK assets. British and US lawmakers have discussed the legality of London's move and shared prognoses on whether the money will ever be returned to the Libyans.

Neither the late Muammar Gaddafi nor the citizens of Libya have access to the whopping £12 billion in assets the former head of state had in the UK, but Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has collected around £17 million in taxes on the assets since 2016, according to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee's latest report.

The disclosure has prompted some British lawmakers to demand that London use the money earned in interest on the frozen accounts to compensate the victims of the Irish Republican Army (IRA); the organisation was supplied with weapons and explosives by the Gaddafi government in the 1980s.

Comment: And it's not just Libya's wealth they're intent on holding onto for 'safekeeping': See also: And for more on the situation in Libya, check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Interview With The Moriartys - New Light on Benghazi, And Liberating Libya

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Attention

Explosion in Northern Cyprus may be Syrian S-200 missile repelling Israeli air strikes


RT
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 08:02 UTC
cyrpus missile
© YouTube / Barko Türk
An object which caused an overnight explosion in the Turkish-recognized Northern Cyprus could be a "Russian-made" air defense missile that missed its target during an Israeli raid on Syria, local authorities claimed.

The projectile that landed in Northern Cyprus on Sunday night could be "a Russian-made S-200 air defense missile," according to Kudret Ozersay's posts on Facebook and Twitter. The official suggested that the missile had "completed its range" and crashed on the Mediterranean island after missing its target.

Markings on the retrieved debris were identical to that of an S-200 missile that was reportedly found in the southeastern Turkish province of Gaziantep back in 2018, Ozersay added.

Comment: RT's initial report provides more images of the event:
Footage from the scene shows an intense blaze and much debris scattered throughout the area. Local authorities immediately started investigating the crash but ruled out that the wreckage was that of a Northern Cypriot aircraft.

As the day progressed, government officials "hinted at not something stemming from our soil." It could have been caused by "one of the bad sides of the war in the region falling into our country,"said Mustafa Akinci, the Turkish Cypriot leader.

Kudret Ozersay, the foreign minister, was more specific with his guesses. "Initial findings indicate the object that caused the explosion was either an aircraft carrying explosives or a direct explosive [missile]," he wrote on Twitter.

Notably, local residents told Cypriot media that they had witnessed a light in the sky, followed by three loud explosions.

Social media users immediately rushed to analyze the blurry videos and pictures, coming up with various explanations and wild guesses.







See also: Israeli airstrikes on Syria kills 4 civilians, including toddler - As fourth and final S-300 became operational

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Airplane

Sent to Mongolia? Bolton's absence from Trump-Kim meeting brings on the rumors


RT
Sun, 30 Jun 2019 23:47 UTC
Bolton
© AP/Jacquelyn MartinUS Natl. Security Advisor John Bolton
Hawkish national security adviser John Bolton was absent from President Trump's team during his meeting with Kim Jong-un. However, non-interventionist Fox News host Tucker Carlson was present. Twitter put the pieces together.

As Trump's most trusted adviser on all things geopolitical, one would expect John Bolton to have the president's ear before, during, and after his historic foray across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea and subsequent meeting with Kim Jong-un. However, Bolton was nowhere to be seen during Sunday's impromptu summit, and was instead dispatched to Mongolia to talk security with Mongolian State Secretary Davaasuren Damdinsuren.


Notably present in Trump's entourage, however, was Fox News host Tucker Carlson, an outspoken anti-interventionist and tireless critic of Bolton's trigger-happy neoconservatism.

Comment: Eyes on the prize: Mongolia is located between Russia and China, presenting a strategic target for US infiltration and situational leverage. Is Bolton there to set the stage?

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Bad Guys

Robert Mueller and the art of stagecraft

James Kunstler
kunstler.com
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 20:58 UTC
robert mueller superhero
© Colin Anderson / Alex Wong / Getty / Paul Spella / The AtlanticComing to save the Woke
The playwrights of yore had a neat way of resolving sticky plots: when it seemed all was lost among the confounded mortals on stage, a supernatural figure would descend from the riggings above the proscenium, lowered in a basket on a cable — Moliere liked to use an actor playing Louis XIV, his patron — to resolve, untangle, forgive, and pardon all the complications of the story. This device is known as the Deus ex Machina, God in a machine.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) announced last week that ex-Special Counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to descend from on-high into the witness chair of Mr. Nadler's House committee chamber on July 17, presumably to resolve all the conundrums left by his semi-inconclusive RussiaGate report. Remember, in his nine-minute homily on May 29, Mr. Mueller said that if called to testify, he would only answer by referring to the text of his report — hallowed in Wokesterdom until its disappointing release.
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Chess

EU summit suspended amid deadlock over top job candidates - fallout from Europe's political shakeup in 2018


KCRG
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 20:25 UTC
EU flags
© Sputnik/Alexey Vitvitsky
Almost a full day after sitting down to pick candidates for the European Union's prime political posts, weary EU leaders broke off their talks Monday amid deep divisions over who should run the European project for at least the next five years.

After a full night of one-on-one meetings, trilateral talks, and group discussions — including sitting down over breakfast — EU Council President Donald Tusk called a halt, and said the summit should reconvene at 1100 local time (0900 GMT) on Tuesday.

French President Emmanuel Macron lamented the meeting as a "failure," and said the summit "gives an image of Europe that is not serious" due to the stalemate.

This failure, he said, should lead to "deep changes" to how the EU operates.
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Attention

Blatant election rigging! Twitter to make sure we NEVER have 'another Trump' for president

Michael Snyder
End of the American Dream
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
TrumpTweetbird
© eurojewcong.orgTwitter rigging aims at censoring President Trump
Just in time for the 2020 election, Twitter has come up with a new "policy" that is obviously intended to neuter the effectiveness of President Trump's Twitter account. Right now, Trump has 61.4 million followers on Twitter, and his tweets regularly make headlines all over the world. Trump has been devastatingly effective on Twitter for years, and his social media strategy was one of the keys to his victory in 2016.

Needless to say, the radical leftists that run Twitter were absolutely horrified by Trump's upset victory, and they want to do whatever they can to make sure that such a thing never happens again. They started by deleting, shadowbanning and greatly suppressing the accounts of prominent conservatives. Personally, my own account has been shadowbanned for a very long time. I have over 16,000 followers, but if you check out my account you will notice that I barely get any retweets at all these days. However, a few years ago there was a ton of interaction with my tweets. An expert looked into it and found that just like so many other prominent conservatives, I had been shadowbanned.

But all of the censorship that we have seen so far is apparently not enough for the control freaks at Twitter, and so now they are going after President Trump himself.

Comment: More on social media censorship:

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Nuke

UN watchdog: Verification Iran exceeded cap on uranium stockpile


RFE/RL
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 11:47 UTC
Iran centrifuges
© Screengrab IRIB/APThree versions of domestically built centrifuges used in enrichment process.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has verified Iran's claim that its stockpile of low-enriched uranium has exceeded the limit set by the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers. IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano informed the UN nuclear watchdog's board of governors of the development in Vienna on July 1, according to reports.

Iran's state-run IRNA news agency earlier the same day quoted Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif as confirming that the 300-kilogram limit had been breached. The comment came after the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted a source as saying that IAEA inspectors had measured the stockpile and confirmed it had surpassed the cap.

The UN watchdog is expected next to file a report on the issue.

Comment: See also:

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Nuke

Peace through strength? Trump boasts building new nukes and weapons he will 'never use'


RT
Sun, 30 Jun 2019 16:08 UTC
TrumpTroops
© 51st Fighter Wing Public Affairs/Staff Sgt. Alex EcholsTrump and Troops at Osan Air Base, Republic of Korea
US President Donald Trump touted his upgrades to the military that cost billions of dollars but said he never wanted to use them, despite the fact that...he already did.

"We are totally revamping and improving and in some cases getting brand new nuclear weapons - never wanna have to use them - but we have the most and the best in the world," he told American soldiers, sailors and marines at the Osan Air Base near Seoul, South Korea, on Sunday. "It's getting to a level where it wasn't even close," Trump said. "Hopefully we'll never have to use it," he said, speaking about the military's capacity in general.

Though Trump repeatedly stressed that he never wants to use nuclear weapons, some of his administration's recent actions have raised the threat of nuclear confrontation in Europe. Washington's decision to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia earlier this year raised fears of a Cold War-style nuclear buildup in Europe.

In addition, the US military's Missile Defense Review - released in January - revealed plans for space-based missile defense systems, plans that Russia has warned could lead to a new arms race in space.

Trump certainly seems to be a believer in 'peace through strength.' A scathing opponent of America's wars in the Middle East during his campaign, then-candidate Trump called the Iraq War "a tremendous disservice to humanity," and promised to bring American troops home from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, and to embrace a more isolationist foreign policy.

Comment: See also:

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Dollars

US will fight back as Russia/China encourage BRICS to exit dollar trade


RT
Mon, 01 Jul 2019 12:48 UTC
BuckRoubles
© Aleksey Sukhorukov/SputnikBuck and Roubles
While Russia and China's push to reduce the role of the US dollar in trade is catching on, don't expect Washington to give up its global economic dominance without a fight, political expert Jack Rasmus, told RT.

The two countries' presidents, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, recently announced their intention to expand the use of their national currencies - the ruble and the yuan - in bilateral financial transactions. The two states have agreed to develop financial instruments for this purpose and signed an intergovernmental agreement to boost cross-currency settlements. Both are also working on their own alternatives to the globally recognized SWIFT payment system.

"It's only at the very beginning and we're talking about only two countries. They're fairy large countries and it could be a significant amount of trade in non-dollar currencies or in kind," Jack Rasmus, professor of political economy at Saint Mary's College of California, told RT.

While Russia has already called on allied emerging economies - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) - to develop settlement instruments in national currencies, the anti-dollar push will not go unnoticed and will face a response from Washington, according to the analyst.

"Dollar is still the global currency. I think it'll be a fight with BRICS. The US won't stand by and do nothing if BRICS join the China-Russia payment system," Rasmus said. He added that if BRICS countries finally join Russia and China, Washington will definitely "take counter-actions overtly and covertly to discourage it."

Comment: See also:

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Fire

Tripoli: Haftar's forces 'destroy' Turkish drone, airport halts air traffic


RT
Sun, 30 Jun 2019 19:22 UTC
Mitiga airport
© Reuters/Ismail ZitounyMitiga airport in Tripoli, Libya.
Traffic at the only operating airport in Libya's capital, Tripoli, was halted after an airstrike on Sunday. The Libyan National Army of Khalifa Haftar said that it had targeted a Turkish military drone on the runway.

The LNA announced that its fighter jets have "destroyed" a Turkish UAV during takeoff at Mitiga airport outside Tripoli on Sunday. Haftar's information division claimed on Facebook that the drone was delivered to Libya by Ankara to carry out attacks against LNA forces.

Mitiga airport authorities confirmed that the facility was hit by an airstrike, saying that all flights have been put on hold until further notice.
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