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Libyan confrontations reveal war crimes on both sides

Richard Galustian
Ron Paul Institute
Wed, 03 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
Libya Soldiers
© ABDULLAH DOMA/AFP/Getty Images
A major escalation of the Libyan war has commenced. On Monday 1st July, Libyan National Army (LNA) Commander Mohamed Manfour announced the beginning of a new aerial bombardment campaign after "traditional means" to "liberate Tripoli" had been exhausted.

Rumours abounded two weeks ago that the militias of Tripoli were beginning to show signs of buckling under the pressure from Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar's LNA. The LNA Airforce's looked like it had achieved air superiority over Tripoli, then an unexpected turn occurred: Turkey upped their ante and embarked on a resupply of defence equipment to the Tripoli and Misrata militias.

The consequences on the ground in Libya of Turkey's interference were immediate. A major setback resulted for Haftar on the 27th of June when the pro-Tripoli GNA Forces "liberated" Gharayan and forced Haftar's LNA army to retreat from the town.

Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA), said on Sunday (30th June) its air force destroyed a Turkish drone parked at Mitiga International Airport. "Our air force targeted and destroyed a Turkish 'Bayraktar' aircraft as it was taking off," Haftar's LNA said in a statement on Facebook. "The aircraft had been prepared to target our armed forces' positions," it said.

Comment: See also:

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Question

Galloway: Does anyone seriously expect Von der Leyen and Lagarde to change the neo-liberal status quo?

George Galloway
RT
Wed, 03 Jul 2019 10:24 UTC
von der Leyen,Lagarde
© VT News Networks/Reuters
Ursula von der Leyen • Christine Lagarde
No hustings, no debate, no votes, no elections. In fact, there was no democracy at all. Not even puffs of white smoke from the Brussels chimney to tell hundreds of millions of EU citizens who their new governors were going to be. Just simple horse-trading, and what a donkey derby it was.

A German minister of defense, a fanatic for a European army - what could possibly go wrong?!

Lagarde, who was found guilty of negligence linked to misuse of public funds when she was France's finance minister, gets the keys to the biggest bank of all.

For the identity-politics liberals, this was a matter for rejoicing because of the chromosomes involved. Both Ursula von der Leyen, the hawk replacing the merry Jean-Claude Juncker, and Christine Lagarde are women. That neither woman has a shred of democratic legitimacy but a shed-load of power matters not a jot. Personally, I stopped believing in that kind of thing when Margaret Thatcher handbagged her way through the 1980s, laying industrial Britain to waste.

The horse-trading took a whole three days and was a wrangle essentially between Germany and France, the two countries for whom the EU was designed and who have benefited from it most.
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Arrow Up

Italy announces opening a trade bureau with Russia

Joaquin Flores
FRN
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
Conte, Medvedev
© Unknown
Italian PM Giuseppi Conte • Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev
A specialized bureau to support Russian exports is scheduled to open in Italy. According to the VEB.RF press service, the office will work in Milan, and the export support group with the participation of the Russian trade mission in Rome.

Earlier, VEB, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia and the REC signed a trilateral memorandum on the organization of cooperation in the field of foreign trade, on the issues of building a unified system of export promotion. The parties agreed to share the experience, capabilities, resources and infrastructure of the VEB, REC and trade missions abroad. The message said:
The project is being implemented within the framework of creating a unified system of export promotion in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and abroad. The opening of integrated support structures is provided for by the national project 'International Cooperation and Export'.
It should be noted that Italy is traditionally one of the largest trading partners of Russia and ranks fifth in terms of turnover. At the end of 2018, it amounted to $ 27 billion, an increase of 13%.

Comment: More from FRN: Sanctions against Russia counter-productive; opportunities for cooperation
Italy believes that unilateral decisions on anti-Russian sanctions are counter-productive, and is working on universal dialogue about the total abolition of the restrictions regime.



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Star of David

Why is Trump's Middle East team packed with Zionist Jews ?

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 18:34 UTC
cartoon friedman breaks wall tunnel jerusalem
© Carlos Latuff/Mondoweiss
US ambassador David Friedman knocks down a wall in the occupation, on behalf of settlers. By Carlos Latuff. July 3, 2019.
Two of Donald Trump's Middle East peace negotiators, Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman, took part in a grotesque celebration of a religious settlers' dig under a Palestinian neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem on Sunday, and the bash has raised an issue that it is almost impossible to discuss in the U.S.: Why are there so many Zionist Jews on this portfolio?

Not everyone is allowed to ask that question. Michael Koplow laid out his own Jewish liberal Zionist credentials before attacking the inappropriate religious conduct of two White House officials cavorting in their favorite "historical and religious playground."
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Shoe

Sneaker wars: Trump Jr. trolls Nike with photo of Soviet-style shoe design: 'More in line with their views'

Sam Dorman
Fox News
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 18:20 UTC
sneakers shoes betsy ross flag design
© Nike
Donald Trump Jr. had a scathing critique of the athletic company Nike after it decided to pull a sneaker bearing a flag used during the American Revolution.

Instead of using that older version of the American flag, Trump Jr. suggested Nike should unveil a communist-style shoe looking similar to the hammer-and-sickle logo of the former Soviet Union.

"If the Betsy Ross Flag, the flag of the American Revolution, is too offensive for Nike to commemorate The 4th of July maybe Nike should go with this... seems to be more in line with their views," Trump Jr. tweeted on Wednesday.
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Bulb

North Korea says US 'hell-bent on hostile acts' despite Trump wanting to talk

Michelle Nichols
Reuters
Wed, 03 Jul 2019 17:45 UTC
trumpkim
North Korea's mission to the United Nations accused the United States on Wednesday of being "more and more hell-bent on hostile acts" against Pyongyang, despite President Donald Trump wanting talks between the two countries.

In a statement the mission said it was responding to a U.S. accusation that Pyongyang breached a cap on refined petroleum imports and a letter that it said was sent on June 29 by the United States, France, Germany and Britain to all U.N. member states urging them to implement sanctions against North Korea.

"What can't be overlooked is the fact that this joint letter game was carried out by the permanent mission of the United States to the U.N. under instruction of the State Department, on the very same day when President Trump proposed for the summit meeting," the statement said.

Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea on Sunday when he met leader Kim Jong Un in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) between the two Koreas. The pair agreed to resume stalled talks aimed at getting Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons program.
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Dollars

China insists US must remove all trade war tariffs as part of deal

Frank Tang
South China Morning Post
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 17:34 UTC
trump xi
© Xinhua
US President Donald Trump agreed to pause placing tariffs of up to 25 per cent on an additional US$300 billion of Chinese imports not yet subject to taxes after his meeting with Xi Jinping at the G20 summit last weekend in Japan.
China has insisted that all tariffs on Chinese imports added by the United States during the trade war must be scrapped immediately as part of any deal to end the year-long conflict, which would require the Trump administration to give up its position that some levies remain in place even after an agreement is reached.

US President Donald Trump agreed to pause placing tariffs of up to 25 per cent on an additional US$300 billion of Chinese imports not yet subject to taxes after his meeting with Xi Jinping at the G20 summit last weekend in Japan.

But for any deal to be reached, US tariffs of 25 per cent on US$250 billion of Chinese imports that remain in place must be removed, said Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng on Thursday, underscoring that there are still many issues to be resolved to end the conflict as it approaches its one-year anniversary on Saturday.

"The US tariff hike on Chinese products was the trigger for bilateral trade frictions, so all the additional tariffs imposed since [the beginning of the trade war in July 2018] must be scrapped once there is a deal," Gao said at Thursday's regular media briefing in the first public comments on China'a demands for a trade deal since the truce was announced in Osaka.

"Consultations must be conducted based on the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit. The deal must be balanced, equal and mutually beneficial. China's core concerns must be addressed."
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Eagle

'Defective human product' Bolton hails sanctions for 'severing ties' between Cuba & Venezuela


RT
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 17:29 UTC
john bolton
US President Donald Trump's national security hawk John Bolton has vowed to "sever ties" between Havana and Caracas with sanctions on oil and other exports after an Italian oil shipping firm folded under pressure.

The US State Department has lifted sanctions from the Italy-based PB Tankers oil shipping company, commending it for taking steps to "ensure that its vessels no longer were complicit in supporting the former Maduro regime."

The company was sanctioned in April along with three others, accused by the US of aiding Maduro government by transporting oil from Venezuela, including to Cuba. The inclusion on the list came like a bolt out of the blue to PB Tankers, which said it was "shocked and concerned" by the development, while pledging to comply with the demands.

While the Italian firm caved in to the US' browbeating, Washington slapped sanctions on Cubametales, a Cuban state-run company. In a statement on Wednesday, the State Department called it a "prime facilitator of oil imports from Venezuela" for its attempt to breach the US economic blockade.

Bolton apparently took pride in having bullied businesses into denying services to Venezuela, tweeting that the US "will continue to take actions" to end what he called an "oil for repression" scheme.
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Bad Guys

Supreme Court: Bad day for all

J. Christian Adams
PJ Media
Sat, 27 Jul 2019 16:34 UTC
supreme court
Today the Supreme Court issued two major opinions with profound implications for American politics. It blocked, for now, adding a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census in Department of Commerce vs. New York. In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court permanently killed off allowing federal courts to decide that a legislative map gave one side too much of a partisan advantage.

It was a bad day for the right, a very bad day for the left, and an extremely bad day for Chief Justice John Roberts.

First, the very bad day for the left. For years, the institutional left has been trying to strip state legislatures of power and give it to federal courts. They wanted federal judges to have the power to say that a given legislative map helped one political party too much. For example, if a state voted 52 percent to 48 percent, then state and congressional legislative lines should apportion power in roughly the same percentages. If they didn't, federal courts should get to decide the legislative lines.
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Bizarro Earth

Glenn Greenwald slams report he's being investigated in Brazil: 'Fake news' or police 'losing their minds'?


RT
Thu, 04 Jul 2019 16:16 UTC
brazil police officer
© Global Look Press / ZUMAPRESS.com / Bruno Rocha / File
Award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald has said that a report of him being investigated by Brazilian police is either fake news or retaliation from the authorities after he ran bombshell stories about the nation's top brass.

On Tuesday, Brazilian media outlet O Antagonista claimed that police requested the state-run money laundering watchdog, the COAF, to investigate Greenwald's "financial activities." The probe is reportedly tasked with finding whether the US-born journalist, who now lives and works in Brazil, is somehow related in the hacking of the cell phones of high-ranking officials.

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