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CICA the Asian OSCE meet in Shanghai


Voltaire Network
Wed, 21 May 2014 12:44 UTC
CICA summit in Shanghai
© Unknown
The 4th Summit of Heads of State of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (Cica) opened on May 21 in Shanghai. This organization, which was created after the demise of the Soviet Union, aims to stabilize Asia on the pattern of the OSCE in Europe. However, this forum never really functioned due to both the lack of regional leadership throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and the absence of a culture of dialogue between Member States. The organization remained dormant during the Turkish chairmanship which has been taken over by China.

All changes are now possible around Russia and China. After the accession of Qatar and Bangladesh, the number of CICA member states has been brought to 26. Yesterday, the Russian and Chinese presidents have decided to consolidate the payment of their bilateral trade in local currencies rather than in dollars. And it appears certain that the summit will issue a joint statement with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Comment: Isn't that interesting! While Turkey, who is also a member of NATO and a U.S. puppet, had the chairmanship the organisation was dormant. Perhaps it is time for Asia to wake up to who is playing along with them and who is deliberately playing to the tune of another.

China has already picked up the baton and called for a new Asian security organisation:

Multipolar world! China calls for new Asian security alliance with Iran, Russia

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Cult

Is there another CIA coup in the making in Libya?


Voltaire Network
Wed, 21 May 2014 12:36 UTC
General Khalifa Haftar
© Unknown
General Khalifa Haftar
Coups follow one after another in Libya. After the Islamists and the Misrata clan at the General National Congress imposed, on 4 May 2014, Ahmed Maiteeq as the new Prime Minister, the other (resigning) Prime Minister, Abdullah al-Thinni, announced he was suspending the interim parliament until the general elections.

For his part, General Khalifa Haftar and Zintan clan, after their failed military takeover of parliament, declared war on the Ansar Al-Sharia Islamist militia.

General Haftar has been identified as a CIA operative since the Libya war with Chad. The Zintan Clan Zintan is holding Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi prisoner.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon stands ready to intervene. Four V-22 Osprey aircraft and 200 Marines arrived at the naval base in Sigonella (Italy), in addition to the other four V-22s Ospreys stationed in Moron (Spain), as part of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response team.
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Gold Coins

Russia dumps a record amount of US Treasurys, and buys lots of gold

Tyler Durden
Zerohedge.com
Wed, 21 May 2014 12:14 UTC
Last week we commented that based on TIC data, while "Belgium's" unprecedented Treasury buying spree continues, one country has been dumping US bonds at an unprecedented rate, and in March alone Russia sold a record $26 billion, or 20% of its holdings.
Russia us treasure holdings
© TIC/Zero Hedge
So as Russia is selling record amount of US paper, what is it buying? For the answer we go to Goldcore which tells us that...

Russia Buys 900,000 Ounces Of Gold Worth $1.17 Billion In April

The Russian central bank has again increased its gold reserves by another 900,000 ounces worth $1.17 billion in April.

Russia's gold reserves rose to 34.4 million troy ounces in April, from 33.5 million troy ounces in March, the Russian central bank announced on its website yesterday. The value of its gold holdings rose to $44.30 billion as of May 1, compared with $43.36 billion a month earlier, it added.
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Light Sabers

Multipolar world! China calls for new Asian security alliance with Iran, Russia


Press TV
Wed, 21 May 2014 11:30 UTC
Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia
© AP
Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia working towards a multipolar world
Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the creation of a new Asian organization for security cooperation with the participation of Iran and Russia.

Xi voiced his call while addressing the fourth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Shanghai, China.
"We need to innovate our security cooperation (and) establish new regional security cooperation architecture," Xi told the summit, which was also attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Chinese president said CICA should also create a security response center to deal with emergencies.

Xi said Asian nations should respond collectively to such significant problems as transnational crime, cyber security, energy security, terrorism and natural disasters.

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Sherlock

Giving NSA the boot - California to pass law to end spying on its citizens


RT
Tue, 20 May 2014 07:10 UTC
NSA office
© mashable.com
Spy Central
The state of California is looking to pass a law stating the federal government would need a warrant from a judge if it wants to search residents' cellphones and computer records. The bill passed the state senate with just one person voting against.

The bill was introduced following information that was leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who showed that US citizens had been subject to massive internal surveillance by the NSA.
"The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is very clear. It says the government shall not engage in unreasonable search and seizure," said the bill's author, Democratic State Senator Ted Lieu of Torrance, to Reuters. "The National Security Agency's massive and indiscriminate collecting of phone data on all Americans, including more than 38 million Californians, is a threat to our liberty and freedom."
California is one of eight states to introduce such measures, according to Lieu's spokesman, Jeff Gozzo. Alaska, Arizona and Oklahoma are also looking to counter this problem, though America's most populous state is the nearest to getting legislation passed. The bill will be heard before an assembly policy committee in June 2014.

The Obama administration is unhappy about the powers of NSA being diluted. Last year a federal judge ruled that the NSA's practice of 'spying' on its citizens was unconstitutional. The US government is currently appealing this ruling.

Comment: Can California really pull this off and set the bar? Or, will the "government" dial up another trump card...

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Bad Guys

The truth comes out about the Libyan War and Benghazi 2012 - Documentary

Joanne Moriarty
Libyanwarthetruth.com
Sun, 18 May 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© Unknown
This video documentary just released interviews US intelligence agents, US military personnel and others who confirm EVERYTHING that we have been saying about the illegal war against Libya. It was Obama who illegally continued the war in Libya in 2011 while arming and funding Al Qaeda rebels and mercenaries. The state of Libya is the shame of the west and was intentional. Chris Stevens death and the death of the 3 other men could have been prevented but the truth about the illegal activities in Libya were to be kept hidden and Obama having touted his great victory in Libya would have to explain how Al Qaeda took control of that country and destroyed all security for all of North Africa.

Comment: It has become clear that what happened in Libya is little more that subversive undeclared war by Western powers (US and NATO) against Libya, and has resulted in the destruction of the country and horrendous suffering of its people.

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Red Flag

No right to privacy: Why I was forced to shut down Lavabit

Ladar Levison
The Guardian
Tue, 20 May 2014 07:30 UTC
Image
© Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters
The prosecution argued that my users had no expectation of privacy, even though the service I provided – encryption – is designed for just that.
For the first time, the founder of an encrypted email startup that was supposed to insure privacy for all reveals how the FBI and the US legal system made sure we don't have the right to much privacy in the first place

My legal saga started last summer with a knock at the door, behind which stood two federal agents ready to to serve me with a court order requiring the installation of surveillance equipment on my company's network.

My company, Lavabit, provided email services to 410,000 people - including Edward Snowden, according to news reports - and thrived by offering features specifically designed to protect the privacy and security of its customers. I had no choice but to consent to the installation of their device, which would hand the US government access to all of the messages - to and from all of my customers - as they travelled between their email accounts other providers on the Internet.

But that wasn't enough. The federal agents then claimed that their court order required me to surrender my company's private encryption keys, and I balked. What they said they needed were customer passwords - which were sent securely - so that they could access the plain-text versions of messages from customers using my company's encrypted storage feature. (The government would later claim they only made this demand because of my "noncompliance".)

Comment: Criminalizing Privacy - U.S. Government Forces Snowden's Encrypted Email Service, Lavabit, to Shut Down

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Safe

Goodbye petrodollar: Russia's VTB and Bank of China agree on domestic currency settlements


RT
Tue, 20 May 2014 11:27 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin
VTB, Russia's second biggest lender, has signed a deal with Bank of China, which includes an agreement to pay each other in domestic currencies.

"Under the agreement, the banks plan to develop their partnership in a number of areas, including cooperation on ruble and renminbi settlements, investment banking, inter-bank lending, trade finance and capital-markets transactions," says the official VTB statement.

The deal underlines VTB Group's growing interest in Asian markets and will help grow trade between Russia and China that are already close trading partners, said VTB Bank Management Board Vasily Titov.

An Agreement on Cooperation was signed by Titov and Bank of China President Chen Siqing in Shanghai on Tuesday in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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Muffin

China heaps scorn on the US, calling it a 'robber playing cop'


RT
Wed, 21 May 2014 09:14 UTC
Image

www.globaltimes.cn
Traditionally reserved Beijing has heaped scorn on the US, calling it a 'robber playing cop,' after Washington filed criminal charges against Chinese military officers accused of conducting economic espionage against major US companies.

Chinese rhetoric crashed out of the gates on Wednesday after the US Justice Department took the unprecedented move of publishing, together with a 48-page indictment, the photographs of five Chinese military officers it suspects of committing cybercrimes against a number of household-name US companies, including US Steel, Westinghouse and Alcoa.

The wanted individuals are affiliated with Unit 61398, an elite cyber-department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army that attracted the condemnation of US officials even as the United States was conducting its own intensive cyber espionage against China.

An editorial in the Global Times, a subsidiary of the People's Daily, the official journal of China's Communist Party, was packed with insults aimed at Washington.

"We should encourage organizations and individuals whose rights have been infringed to stand up and sue Washington," the newspaper said. "Regarding the issue of network security, the US is such a mincing rascal that we must stop developing any illusions about it."

Comment: Things are getting interesting as the U.S empire has shown its overextension and unsurpassed greed in Ukraine and ultimately its weakness, allowing the other players to build bonds and openly stand up to the exposed bully, and call it what it is.

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Evil Rays

School yard bully: US presses austerity squeezed Cyprus for tougher sanctions against Russia


ITAR-TASS
Wed, 21 May 2014 06:27 UTC
US and Cyprus flags
© AP Photo/Petros Karadjias
Nicosia supported the first and second phases of the EU sanctions - suspension of visa and cooperation negotiations as well as expansion of the sanction list, yet resists real sanctions bound to affect the economy.

Strategic relations between the US and Cyprus, new sanctions and settlement of the crisis on the island are the tasks of US Vice President Joseph Biden's visit on Wednesday - the first US visit of this kind in the last 52 years.

Explaining the White House's interest in the small island which is struggling to get out of the economic crisis, a state official said Cyprus could play a major role in ensuring regional peace and said he was satisfied the island supported the EU consensus over sanctions against Russia. He promised Biden would discuss continuation of the sanction regime in detail with President Nicos Anastasiades.

Comment:




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