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Best of the Web: Senator Shelby, head of US delegation to Moscow: 'We have to look at Russia as a superpower'


RT
Wed, 04 Jul 2018 11:23 UTC
shelby lavrov
© AP/Alexander ZemlianichenkoRichard Shelby, R-Ala. and Sergey Lavrov
Despite the strained relations between Moscow and Washington, the US must see Russia as a superpower and seek dialogue, the head of a delegation of US lawmakers said after a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The delegation headed by Senator Richard Shelby is in the Russian capital to pave the way for the upcoming meeting between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki.

Shelby, who spoke to a journalist after meeting Lavrov, was non-committal about what he expected from the presidential meeting, but said the US should respect Russia.

"We have to look at Russia as a superpower, as a competitor and not an adversary, and we will see what happens," he said, adding that Trump and Putin are aiming at a productive negotiation. "I think they both a looking for a better day."

Comment: Well now. The tide is turning!

See also: Deep State terrified that Putin-Trump summit might lead to new spirit of goodwill between East and West

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Broom

Best of the Web: Political earthquake in Mexico: Leftist AMLO achieves historic landslide election victory

Tom Phillips & David Agren
The Guardian
Mon, 02 Jul 2018 11:13 UTC
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
© DesconocidoAndrés Manuel López Obrador


Baseball-loving nationalist who counts Jeremy Corbyn as a friend will be the new president

A baseball-loving left-wing nationalist who has vowed to crack down on corruption, rein in Mexico's war on drugs and rule for the poor has been elected president of Latin America's second-largest economy.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a silver-haired 64-year-old who is best known as Amlo and counts Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn among his friends, was elected with at least 53% of the vote, according to a quick count by Mexico's electoral commission.

López Obrador's closest rival, Ricardo Anaya from the National Action party (PAN), received around 22% while José Antonio Meade, a career civil servant running for the Institutional Revolutionary party, or PRI, which ruled Mexico for most of last century, came in third with around 16%.

Addressing the media after those results were announced, López Obrador vowed to repay the trust put in him by millions of Mexicans. "I will govern with rectitude and justice. I will not fail you. I will not disappoint you. I won't betray the people," he said.

Mexico's president-elect vowed to rule for people of all social classes, all sexual orientations and all points of view. "We will listen to everyone. We will care for everyone. We will respect everyone," he said. "But we will give priority to the most humble and to the forgotten."


Comment: Many have observed that there are similarities between Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Donald Trump. Although they come from opposite sides of the political spectrum, both won because they were seen as outsiders from the establishment, and the proof was that they were both demonized by the media. Yet the more they were attacked, the more popular they became.

For several decades only the corrupt PRI party and the center-right party PAN have occupied the presidency of Mexico. This will be the first president that comes holding a 'left' wing flag. How far left he will be taking things is yet to be seen.

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Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: Moscow in meltdown as Russia celebrates historic World Cup win

Oliver Carroll
The Independent, UK
Sun, 01 Jul 2018 23:31 UTC
russia spain win
A banner in the Luzhniki stadium called for a fairy tale, and a fairy tale is what they got. With a penalty-kick over highly-fancied Spain, Russia scored a most improbable victory, and one of the knock-out shocks of World Cup history.

It was, perhaps, Russia's most famous triumph since 1945. All across the capital, citizens began to party as such. From cars, and from bars, Russians chanted the name of their country in unison. "Ros-si-ya, Ros-si-ya."

In the central Chistye Prudi district, traffic ground to a halt as two men, deep in alcoholic haze, staggered back and forth across the main boulevard, flags draped across their shoulders.

Comment: Russia's World Cup just gets better and better!

Russophobes everywhere are FUMING. Not only is the tournament obliterating their propaganda arsenal, the Russian team is winning. That is NOT supposed to happen!

Spare a thought for Russian security services. It's either miraculous that there have been no 'ally ackbars' thus far, or it's been thanks to their brilliant (and non-instrusive) policing/surveillance.

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Cheesecake

Best of the Web: Former FDA chief admits 'We have failed in giving nutritional advice to people'

Joyce Frieden
MedPage Today
Thu, 21 Jun 2018 00:01 UTC
Dr. David A. Kessler FDA


Better answers to basic nutrition questions needed, says David Kessler, MD

"I'm not sure I know what to eat."

Was this a child at a buffet, or maybe someone on a sodium-restricted diet wondering which foods contain salt? No, these were the words of former FDA commissioner David Kessler, MD, trying to figure out what his own regular diet should be.

"Something has led all of us to get bigger and bigger," Kessler said Wednesday at an event sponsored by The Washington Post and the BlueCross BlueShield Association. "It's coming from what we eat and we don't fully understand it ... I think we have failed in giving nutritional advice to people. If diet and exercise were the answer, we'd all do it and there wouldn't be a problem."

Comment: While Kessler seems to be talking sense, all the other participants mentioned are simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The failed dietary advice of the past 70 years is clearly the root cause of the obesity/chronic disease epidemic. It's funny that it seems like the big-wigs only feel safe speaking out against the agenda of their former institutions once they've stepped down from their power positions.

See the video, well worth watching:

Nina Teicholz comments:
The exchange crystalizes a very basic difference of opinion that exists among nutrition researchers today: those who question the basic tenets of our nutritional guidelines vs. those, such as Marion Nestle, who insist that we know what a healthy diet is, and that obesity/diabetes continue to rise simply because Americans fail to follow the guidelines.

My own view is that we can no longer blame the American public and all people worldwide for failing to follow nutritional guidelines. This is not a plausible explanation, nor is it based on the best available data.

In this video, it is notable that Kessler acknowledges the failure of nutrition policy and states that obesity is the result of "metabolic chaos." He also gives a nod to "insulin resistance" as playing a role in the etiology of type 2 diabetes, a more nuanced view than the calories-in-calories-out model of thinking which Nestle still promotes.

...

Many people strive faithfully to be healthier. We are not all lazy junk-food eaters. So why can we not improve our health? Conventional explanations are no long sufficient or convincing.
See also:

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Russian Flag

Best of the Web: Propaganda, meet Reality: English football fans discover Russia is rather different to media portrayal

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Mon, 18 Jun 2018 21:05 UTC
russia england fans
© Nicolas Asfouri / AFPEngland football fans wave flags as they arrive at the Volgograd railway station, June 18, 2018.
As thousands of English football supporters attend the FIFA World Cup, the overwhelming feedback is that Russia is far better than they expected. The British media needs to analyze its own role in this paradox.

SOCHI - Showing an incredible lack of self-awareness, the Guardian's former Moscow correspondent tweeted on Sunday: "the England fans I've met in Volgograd so far are absolutely loving it. "It's the opposite of what we expected, everyone has been amazingly welcoming. Last night was brilliant - (I/we) couldn't ask for a better start to a world cup (sic) trip".


Thus, Shaun Walker, who for many years had the privilege of interpreting Russia for the second most visited indigenous online news source in the United Kingdom (after the BBC) seems mystified by this apparent contradiction. But there's a simple explanation: British media coverage of Russia is not presenting an accurate portrayal of the country.

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Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: Old video shows Trump was prepping for NK negotiations nearly 20 years ago

Cillian Zeal
Conservative Tribune
Tue, 12 Jun 2018 07:10 UTC
Trump
© UnknownUS President Donald Trump
Now that the summit in Singapore is over and President Donald Trump is on the way back home, one can cue the start of another round of talking-head chatter about his preparedness. This was one of the media's favorite subjects going into the Tuesday meeting: Did Donald Trump do his homework? Was he really prepared?

This seemed somewhat silly, as if Trump was supposed to be reading a huge binder marked "North Korea" under a desk lamp in the wee hours of the morning like it was an SAT study guide, cramming for his meeting with Kim Jong Un. The vast majority of this was outsourced to aides and foreign policy experts, the way it's always been under almost any administration.

Rest assured, however, that Trump's actually been preparing for this for decades - ever since North Korea's nuclear ambitions became apparent, in fact. That's borne out by video that's been popping up on social media these past few days, seemingly as a rejoinder to the preparedness issue.

[Mentioned below, the Interview with Wolf Blitzer:]


Comment: Depth, perception and candor. Three attributes many thought were lacking. (Well, yes, the candor part has been there.) Perhaps Trump holds close his strong suits.

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Gold Seal

Best of the Web: The war-loving Deep State is Trump's biggest obstacle to peace on the Korean peninsula

Finian Cunningham
RT
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 19:05 UTC
Apache helicopters
© Kim Hong-Ji / ReutersUS Army's AH-64 Apache helicopters fire during a US-South Korea joint live-fire military exercise, South Korea, April 21, 2017
President Donald Trump appeared to blindside everyone this week when he announced he was cancelling "war games" on the Korean Peninsula as a gesture of peaceful intent towards North Korea.

If Trump stands by that commitment then it will be key to a successful resolution of the decades-old conflict, with the specific result of North Korea fulfilling its vow to scrap nuclear weapons.

Significantly, following his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump referred to the annual joint military exercises between US and South Korean forces as "provocative" and "inappropriate" in the new context of peaceful exchange.

Until recently, the Trump administration - like previous US administrations - had refused to consider a reciprocal move over suspending its war maneuvers on the Korean Peninsula in return for North Korea's nuclear disarmament.
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Blackbox

Best of the Web: As the Atlanticist vision crumbles Europe faces a crossroad

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Fri, 15 Jun 2018 16:35 UTC
closed sign business
The world events of the past days are significant far beyond the apparent divide within the G7 industrial nations. If we imagine the planet as a giant electric force field, the lines of flux are in dramatic reordering as the post-1945 global dollar-based system comes to its disordered end phase. Europe's political elites are currently split between rationality and irrationality. The developments to the East however are drawing more and more force and we are seeing the early phases of what might be called a geopolitical polarity reversal within the EU from West to East. The latest developments across Eurasia including the Middle East, Iran and above all between Russia and China are gaining in importance as Washington offers only war, whether trade war, sanctions war, terror war or kinetic war.

The spectacle of a US President tweeting about its long-standing NATO ally and bordering country, Canada, openly calling the Canadian Prime Minister "dishonest and weak," and threatening new import tariffs for cars imported from Canada, is from all appearances not some whim of an erratic US President but rather a calculated strategy of putting all US allies off balance. It comes after Washington unilaterally tore up the Iran nuclear agreement to the dismay of Europe, Russia and China as well as Iran. On top of that the US announced new trade war tariffs on EU aluminum and steel in open violation of WTO agreements.
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Car Black

Best of the Web: Dennis Rodman on the US-NK summit: 'Like I've been saying all along, Kim doesn't want war with America'

Nikki Schwab
New York Post
Tue, 12 Jun 2018 12:23 UTC
Reuters
Basketballer-turned-peace broker Dennis Rodman was in Singapore Tuesday to cheer on the historic meeting between President Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

The Post caught up with Rodman poolside at the Regent Hotel Singapore just minutes after the two leaders signed their denuclarization agreement to get his thoughts.

What is your initial reaction to the summit?

I said it all along, this shouldn't be something negative, this should be something positive and still forward. And it took a long time for this to happen, it took a long time for this to happen. I think people want to see it and they're going to make it happen. We just gotta keep it positive. I don't think people want to see this as a publicity stunt. They don't want to see that. They want to see some major change. Whether it's war, peace or this friendship or some type of dialogue, I think people want to see that part. It's been a long time overdue, right? And I keep telling people Kim Jong Un don't want war, he don't want war between America. He just wants some type of positive feedback from Americans and if he believes that, I think this will go a long way.

Comment: In case you're wondering "if this eccentric celebrity ex-sportsman can grok the situation, and, roughly, what can/ought to be done about it, then what the heck do we need the so-called 'intelligence community' and 'think-tanks' for?"... you don't.

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Shoe

Best of the Web: Russia thrash Saudi Arabia in World Cup - Biggest opening game winning margin since 1934 - British press livid

Bryan MacDonald
RT
Thu, 14 Jun 2018 21:33 UTC
russia world cup putin
"Don't look at me. I had nothing to do with this spectacular result."
Far from events in Moscow, in Russia's most southerly large city, ninety minutes of determined and often sublime football ignited local passions as World Cup 2018 began. The UK press might resent it, but the party has started.

Krasnodar

Ten minutes before World Cup 2018 kicks off and Vanya and Misha aren't feeling confident. Despite the sweltering 34 degrees Celsius (93 F) Kuban summer heat, they are dressed in shirts and ties, and awaiting the Russia-Saudi Arabia game with emotions more akin to dread than elation.

"We've failed to win any of our last seven matches, and we're the lowest-ranked team in the competition," Misha explains. "I didn't even bother to buy a jersey: but Vanya stuck a flag on his car, he's always been a masochist."

Comment: An amazing result for a team rated worst of the tournament by FIFA.


Singer Robbie Williams had a special message for the British press at the opening ceremony.

Criticized for 'selling his soul to a dictator' for agreeing to perform, Williams changed one of the lyrics of his song to "...but I did this for free," then waved at them with this gesture:




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