RTThu, 02 Apr 2020 09:38 UTC
© AFP/Atta Kenare
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif
Zarif took to Twitter to warn his followers not to "be [misled] by usual warmongers, AGAIN," then tagging US president Donald Trump. "Iran has FRIENDS. No one can have MILLIONS of 'proxies'," he continued.
RTMon, 06 Apr 2020 08:35 UTC
© blackgolddiggers.com
Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United States, and other countries need to bring stability to the markets as the world faces "probably the greatest recession ever," said Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). He told CNBC that Moscow and Riyadh are very close to striking a deal on oil production cuts.
"I think the whole market understands that this deal is important and it will bring lots of stability, so much important stability to the market, and we are very close."
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and non-member partners were expected to discuss reductions in oil output via video conference on Monday,
but they delayed their emergency meeting until Thursday. "Well actually look, a very positive message, I think they're very, very close," Dmitriev said when asked about the possibility of such a meeting at the end of this week.
He also pointed to comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin,
who last week proposed a combined production cut of 10 million barrels per day. "[Putin] talked about how important this oil deal is, so Russia is committed," Dmitriev said.
Indicating no willingness to participate in a joint effort to stabilize the market by cutting US oil production, President Donald Trump issued another threat on Sunday night to impose "very substantial tariffs" on oil imports if the crude price stays the way it is.
Comment: At a global level, it is hard to separate politics from business. Sometimes business is just business.
© Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images
Julian Assange gestures from the window of a prison van.
mprisoned
WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange is not eligible for an early Covid-19 release from prison with other inmates because he is not serving a criminal sentence, the Australian Associated Press has
reported.
British Justice Secretary Robert Buckland said Saturday that some low-risk inmates, weeks from release, will be let go with monitoring devices to help avoid a further outbreak of Covid-19 in the nations' prisons.
The US occupation forces continued their violations of international laws and entered a new convoy of 35 trucks laden with military and logistic materials to its illegal bases and occupation points in the Syrian al-Jazira region coming from northern Iraq.
Civil sources said that 35 trucks entered the Syrian territories coming from Iraq through the illegal al-Walid crossing in al-Ya'rubia countryside, to the far northeastern of Hasaka, loaded with logistic and military materials, the majority of which went to the illegal base in Khrab al-Jeer airport in al-Malikiyah area.
The sources pointed out that the US occupation forces are reinforcing their illegal presence in the military airport of Khrab al-Jeer and other areas occupied by them through sending convoys to these areas periodically, loaded with logistic materials and military equipment.
Comment: Even if Trump really wants to get the heck out of Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East, it seems he's powerless to prevent further encroachments and subterfuge from occurring at the hands of the US military and aligned intelligence agencies. The drive for plunder, and inflicting chaos and destruction in the region appears to be far too strong.
See also:
Tyler Durden
ZerohedgeMon, 06 Apr 2020 06:30 UTC
The rollout of immunity certificates across the world will likely be
government-issued to first responders and citizens who have developed resistance to COVID-19.
People who have contracted the virus and have recovered, normally develop antibodies to fight the virus, could be their golden ticket to escape regions that have strict social distancing measures and or lockdowns.
Just imagine, immunity certificates granted by governments to people who have recovered or have developed resistance to the virus could be
considered special passports that will allow them to freely travel across states, countries, and or the world — while everyone else remains hunkered down in their homes or doomsday bunkers.
Some of the first talks of this has originated in the UK. The government could roll out immunity passports to Britons who have already contracted and recovered from the virus so they can reenter the economy,
reported The New York Times.
"(An immunity certificate) is an important thing that we will be doing and are looking at but it's too early in the science of the immunity that comes from having had the disease," health minister Matt Hancock said at a Downing Street press conference.
Did Congress just nationalize the Fed? No. But the door to that result has been cracked open.
Mainstream politicians have long insisted that Medicare for all, a universal basic income, student debt relief and a slew of other much-needed public programs are off the table because the federal government cannot afford them. But that was before Wall Street and the stock market were driven onto life-support by a virus. Congress has now suddenly discovered the magic money tree. It took only a few days for Congress to unanimously pass the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security
(CARES) Act, which will be doling out
$2.2 trillion in crisis relief,
most of it going to Corporate America with few strings attached. Beyond that,
the Federal Reserve is making over $4 trillion available to banks, hedge funds and other financial entities of all stripes; it has dropped the fed funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from each other) effectively to zero; and it has made
$1.5 trillion available to the repo market.
It is also the Federal Reserve that will be picking up the tab for this bonanza, at least to start. The US central bank has opened the sluice gates to unlimited quantitative easing, buying Treasury securities and mortgage-backed securities "in the amounts needed to support smooth market functions." Last month, the Fed bought $650 billion worth of federal securities. At that rate, notes
Wall Street on Parade,
it will own the entire Treasury market in about 22 months. As Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari acknowledged on
60 Minutes, "
There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve."
Charlie Smith
StraightSun, 05 Apr 2020 23:56 UTC
© Wikipedia
Republicans have made tremendous political headway with their base through the term "fake news".
It's undermined confidence in the mainstream media and created an us-and-them perception of the relationship between the White House press corps and U.S. president Donald Trump.
But now, some Republicans are starting to use the term "fake science" to describe what they see as a globalist attempt to shut down the economy and benefit Big Pharma and the government of China.
The most articulate advocate of this point of view is Shiva Ayyadurai, a Mumbai-born and U.S.-raised entrepreneur with a PhD in biological engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
His academic research was focused on modelling whole cells. He was also a Fulbright scholar who studied how to integrate traditional medicine in South India with modern biological systems.
Ayyadurai is seeking the Republican nomination to run for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 2020.
In a video posted on Twitter this weekend, he claimed that the United States has been "at war, politically" as a result of the novel coronavirus.
"As an MIT PhD in biological engineering, it's my view that the fear-mongering is really being used to suppress dissent, it's being used to support mandated medicine, and it's being really used to support crashing this economy," Ayyadurai alleged.
He's launched a campaign to persuade U.S. president Donald Trump to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci, an immunologist and director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
RTSun, 05 Apr 2020 23:19 UTC
© Andy Buchanan / Pool via Reuters
Dr Catherine Calderwood is stepping down from the post of Scottish Chief Medical Officer following an embarrassing revelation that she repeatedly broke the same Covid-19 lockdown rules her office has been preaching.
"It is with a heavy heart that I resign as Chief Medical Officer," she said in a brief statement, admitting that a "justifiable focus" on her behaviour "risked becoming a distraction" from hugely important task of getting the country through the coronavirus crisis.
I am deeply sorry for my actions and the mistakes I have made.
Comment: It's not just the Scottish Health Minister.
Plenty of other authority figures are acting as thought rules don't apply to them. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was spotted working at out the Supreme Court's gym even though her personal trainer advised her not to. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was scolded on Twitter for also going to the gym. Philippines senator Koko Pimentel was hounded online for going to a hospital on the same evening that he test positive for COVID-19. Rules for thee, not for me!
When you see someone in authority telling you that engaging in certain behavior will endanger all our lives and then you see that same person engaging in that behavior, it's rational to assume that they don't believe their own propaganda.
RTSun, 05 Apr 2020 21:37 UTC
© China Daily via REUTERS
A worker inside a laboratory in Wuhan, Hubei province, China February 6, 2020.
Senior members of the UK government have become less skeptical of the fringe theory that the coronavirus pandemic came from a lab in Wuhan, China, the original epicenter of the outbreak, high-ranked sources told the
Daily Mail.
A member of Cobra, the emergency committee led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, told the paper that while it's still believed that the virus originated from animals,
intelligence reports have not ruled out the possibility that the deadly illness was man-made.
"There is a credible alternative view [to the zoonotic theory] based on the nature of the virus. Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is that laboratory in Wuhan. It is not discounted," the unnamed source told the British paper.
Rumors that the Chinese authorities had something to do with the outbreak have been solely based on the fact that Wuhan is home to the Institute of Virology. The facility, which is believed to have the most advanced labs in China, is
located a dozen kilometers from the wildlife market that was pinpointed by Beijing as the source of the pandemic. Experts at the institute were the first to suggest that the disease had been transmitted to humans from bats.
Suggestions that Covid-19 was man-made were thought to be mere conspiracy theories unsupported by any actual proof, but it has now emerged that this possibility was discussed at the highest level in the UK.
Comment: While the plebs are on lockdown, Scottish Chief Medical Officer Dr. Catherine Calderwood took a nice
vacation (she has since
resigned!). US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg went to the gym (reserved exclusively for her). NYC Mayor de Blasio did the same. Over in Zambia, police are threatening to
whip people who dare "to dare authorities". The head of the Paris police force
blamed Covid-19 patients for their current state - they didn't respect confinement suggestions, apparently.
Queen Elizabeth II
compared the present situation to WWII (a war in which tens of millions of people died and which lasted years...), but tried to reassure Brits at the same time. Meanwhile, Sweden
postponed their Aurora 20 military drills. But Trump sent thousands of troops to states reporting "high" numbers: "We are going to be adding a tremendous amount of military to help." As for the examples of the U.S. buying up supplies already earmarked for other countries (like France), Trump called such actions "the opposite of piracy":
"Low-risk" businesses in Iran will start
operating within a week, according to Rouhani. Italy plans to
roll back the lockdown "gradually and cautiously", after the country is past the "peak" (which it appears is already taking place, judging by the reported numbers). The reported numbers in Spain too are
decreasing. But Moscow's mayor says the capital is the "highest risk"
region in Russia, requiring "tough" decisions. (Russia is also planning to resume repatriation flights, after cancelling them last week.) The Russian national wealth fund
covered half of the expenses for the aid sent to New York. The Spanish PM says the very
survival of the EU is at stake over their handling of "the crisis". He may be right, but not in the way he intends.
Defence Attorney Sydney Powell and Michael Flynn
A lawyer for retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn said her client was prepared to "audit" the U.S. intelligence community as White House national security adviser.
And that, according to former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell, is partly why federal agents "set up" Flynn.
Flynn, 61, is fighting to dismiss the government's case against him. He pleaded guilty in December 2017 for
lying to investigators about his conversations with Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak on sanctions on Russia and a United Nations resolution on Israel, but in January, he told the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that he was "innocent of this crime."
Powell, who took over Flynn's defense last summer,
told the
Vicki McKenna Show on 1310 WIBA Madison on Tuesday that her client was "totally set up"
because he threatened to expose wrongdoing by top intelligence officials in the Obama administration.
Comment: At a global level, it is hard to separate politics from business. Sometimes business is just business.