Puppet Masters

Iran shattered US 'psyops' and dried up its 'capacity for war,' says head of Iran's Rev Guards

RT
Wed, 29 May 2019 19:51 UTC

Washington has unsuccessfully exhausted all of its avenues in trying to provoke conflict with Iran and its capacity to wage a successful war has dried up, the leader of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards has said.

"Today, we are a great and invincible power because we have experienced and defeated all of the enemy's scenarios," Major General Hossein Salami said, according to Iranian broadcaster Press TV. He added that Tehran had resisted US efforts to destabilize Iran with political and economic measures and this had effectively eliminated Washington's pretext for military conflict.

We have been able to shatter enemy psyops and dry up the enemy's capacity for war.

The commander's comments came as National Security Advisor John Bolton arrived in the UAE late on Tuesday, ahead of meetings with Emirati allies on security in the region. Speaking on Wednesday, Bolton accused Iran of "almost certainly" being behind recent attacks on oil tankers off the coast of the UAE, however, he has given no evidence to support the accusation.

'Nuclear' option? Xi sends Trump a message - Rare-earth export ban is coming - UPDATE

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Tue, 21 May 2019 09:10 UTC

Back in April of 2018, when the trade war with China was still in its early stages, we explained that among the five "nuclear" options Beijing has to retaliate against the US, one was the block of rare-earth exports to the US, potentially crippling countless US supply chains that rely on these rare commodities, and forcing painful and costly delays in US production as alternative supply pathways had to be implemented.

As a result, for many months China watchers expected Beijing to respond to Trump's tariff hikes by blocking the exports of one or more rare-earths, although fast forwarding one year later this still hasn't happened. But that doesn't mean it won't happen, and overnight President Xi Jinping's visit to a rare earths facility fueled speculation that the strategic materials will soon be weaponized in China's tit-for-tat war the US.

As Bloomberg reported overnight, shares in JL MAG Rare-Earth surged by the daily limit on Monday after Xinhua said the Chinese president had stopped by the company in Jiangxi, a scripted move designed to telegraph what China could do next.

Comment: Just one of the ways China has the US by the proverbial sack.

UPDATE May 29: RT reports that stocks of rare-earth miners have surged upon speculation that China may ban exports:

Hong Kong-listed shares of China Rare Earth Holdings Ltd skyrocketed around 40 percent after the opening bell before slightly falling back later in the day. At the same time JL Mag Rare-Earth Co, the plant Chinese President Xi Jinping visited last week, jumped more than 10 percent. The miner's stock has been rising for several consecutive trading sessions and hit a record high on Wednesday.

Other rare earth-related companies also enjoyed gains, with China Northern Rare Earth Group High-Tech Co. soaring around 9 percent Xiamen Tungsten Co. climbing nearly 5 percent.

Not only Chinese miners enjoyed gains on Wednesday, as shares of Australian rare earths producer Lynas reached a historic peak after they gained more than 15 percent in one day. Australia is one of the top global rare-earths producing countries, with annual output of 20,000 tons, but it is far behind Chinese yearly production of 120,000 tons.

Signalling the mood in China, People's Daily, China tweeted a response from a National Development and Reform Commission spokesman:

Seriously? Top IDF lawyer tells The Hague to back off, says Israel can probe own alleged war crimes

RT
Wed, 29 May 2019 17:02 UTC

protestors great march return Gaza fence

© Reuters / Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Palestinian demonstrators in front of Israeli forces during protests marking the 71st anniversary of the Nakba

The Israeli military wants the International Criminal Court to butt out of its affairs, its top military prosecutor has declared in response to efforts to hold it to account for its use of live fire against Palestinian protesters.

"Israel is a law-abiding country, with an independent and strong judicial system, and there is no reason for its actions to be scrutinized by the ICC," Brig. Gen. Sharon Afek, Israel's military advocate, declared at an international conference on warfare laws in Herzliya. "The position of Israel is that the International Criminal Court does not have jurisdiction to discuss the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Comment:

Craven western media outlets ignoring reports that Assange is gravely ill - supporters have no contact

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Wed, 29 May 2019 16:37 UTC

Julian Assange's Swedish lawyer Per Samuelson has told the press that "Assange's health situation on Friday was such that it was not possible to conduct a normal conversation with him."

This jarring revelation has been reported by a small handful of outlets, but only as an aside in relation to Sweden refusing Samuelson's request for a postponement of a scheduled hearing regarding Assange's detention en absentia for a preliminary investigation of rape allegations. The fact that the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder is so ill that he can't converse lucidly is itself far more significant than the postponement refusal, yet headlines mentioning Samuelson's statement focus on the Swedish case, de-emphasizing the startling news from his lawyer.

As of this writing I've been able to find very few news outlets reporting on this at all, the most mainstream being a Reuters article with the very tame headline "Swedish court rejects delay of Assange hearing over ill-health: lawyer". The Sydney Morning Herald also covered the story without even mentioning illness in headline, instead going with "Swedish court rejects effort to delay Assange hearing". The much smaller alternative media outlet World Socialist Website has been the only outlet I've found so far which reports on Samuelson's statement in anything resembling its proper scale, publishing a good article titled "Despite Assange's ill-health, Swedish court rejects delay to hearing" a few hours ago.

Comment: Is anyone surprised that Julian Assange is being treated in such a callous way. It would be very convenient for the PTB to have him die in prison before being put on trial. Too many messy details might be exposed.

Venezuela talks will begin in Oslo, but US says focus must be on ousting Maduro

AFP
Wed, 29 May 2019 00:00 UTC

© AFP/STF
Representatives of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, left, and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro are meeting in Oslo

Talks between Venezuela's government and opposition on ending months of crisis were under way in Norway, sources said Tuesday, but Washington insisted that the only item for discussion should be President Nicolas Maduro's removal.

US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido, who more than 50 countries recognize as interim president, had been leading a push to oust leftist firebrand Maduro, who presides over a crumbling economy.

But the opposition agreed to come to the table under Norwegian auspices after an army uprising coupled with street protests, which Guaido hoped would deal decisive blow, instead fizzled out a month ago.

Norwegian diplomats had said that the two sides would meet this week in Norway in their first face-to-face meeting since Guaido claimed power in January, without specifying a date or venue.

Sources close to the process told AFP that the talks were taking place in Oslo. The Norwegian foreign ministry declined to comment.

Ambassador: Palestine won't sell its 'land and rights' for Trump's skewed 'deal of the century'

RT
Tue, 28 May 2019 15:12 UTC

Palestine will not accept the "deal of the century" with Israel which is in the works in Washington and rejects all of the recent 'peacemaking' proposals, the Palestinian ambassador to Russia has said.

Abdelhafiz Nofal, speaking at a press conference in Moscow, has referred to the upcoming peace "deal of the century" advertised by US President Donald Trump, as a "strange agenda."

They are suggesting turning Palestinian refugee camps into some new cities, they are offering us money for our land, for our rights, but we will never accept that.

Comment: See also:

Russia's central bank takes steps towards establishing gold-backed cryptocurrency

Alex Kimani
Safe Haven
Sun, 26 May 2019 18:00 UTC

First there was Tether; a controversial dollar-backed cryptocurrency by crypto exchange firm, Bitfinex. Then came Petro, the industry's first oil-backed crypto issued by the Venezuelan government last year. And now we might be about to see the first gold-backed cryptocurrency - by a central bank, no less. According to Russian news agency, TASS, Russia's central bank, the Bank of Russia will consider issuing gold-backed cryptocurrencies - a rather strange move considering how cryptocurrencies are generally anathema to central banks.

Shot in the arm

But before crypto bugs can start doing a round of high fives, the head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, has revealed that the cryptocurrencies are not meant for retail use but rather for conducting big mutual settlements for entities with global jurisdictions.

In other words, only the heavyweights will get to lay their hands on them. Further, she says that she still believes that it's better for countries to develop international settlement systems such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) framework that use their own national currencies noting the said framework has demonstrated good dynamics.

Finally, she admonishes that the latest twist should not be interpreted to mean that the bank supports a scenario where cryptocurrencies eventually replace fiat in the monetary system.

Comment: Out of necessity, Russia has been ahead of the curve in shoring up its financial system for several years now:

'New' NATO strategy parrots hawkish US posture

RT
Tue, 28 May 2019 23:58 UTC

While details of NATO's new military strategy are still unknown, odds are the alliance is simply falling in line with recent updates to US doctrine and seeking to outgun all potential adversaries, a military expert tells RT.

Citing a "new security situation" as well as "challenges in the east and the south" and a "nuclear threat" from Moscow, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced last week that the alliance has adopted a new military strategy. Details of the document are not yet public.

"What's surprising is not that NATO has updated its military strategy, but that it took so long to do so," Mikhail Khodarenok, retired colonel in the Russian Aerospace Forces, told RT.

Comment: See also:

Is China's Belt & Road a decade too late?

Charles Hugh Smith
Sun, 12 May 2019 09:24 UTC

The world appears to be tiring of globalization and hegemons, and that trend may doom the Belt & Road to irrelevancy.

The conventional narrative holds that China's Belt & Road Initiative is cementing China's global superpower status. There's an alternative narrative, however: it's a decade too late. From this perspective, global trade has reached the top of the S-Curve and is in the stagnation phase, which will be followed by decline or collapse.

Why could global trade decline as a secular trend? The answer of the moment--trade wars-- is more a symptom than the disease itself, which is the benefits of globalization have declined and the negative consequences are becoming unavoidable.

Trade is never "free;" there are always losers to any trade, and if the benefits accrue to the few at the expense of the many, the gains no longer offset the losses. Resistance to globalization is rising, and national interests are gaining political ground.

Comment: It is true, the world cannot support the particular kind of elitist, warmongering, Western globalization that has been pushed for decades now. But China and Russia are at the forefront of helping bring about an alternative and, while it may not be perfect, and it may even fail, it's still a much more equitable offer that, currently, allows for national sovreignity and a future of many more possibilities that benefit the many and not the few:

NATO 'Deep State' and Israeli interests both served by the collapse of the Austrian government

Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley
Sott.net
Wed, 29 May 2019 12:17 UTC

Ex-vice Chancellor Strache (seated) and the hired Bosnian 'honey trap'.

Last week the coaltion government of the Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's conservative and the vice-chancellor Strache's Freedom Party (anti-immigration) collapsed as a secretly recorded videotape of a meeting in July 2017 in Ibiza was leaked to the German media. The video showed the vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and the deputy of the Freedom Party negotiate with a woman who posed to be the 'niece of a Russian oligarch' to give government contracts against favorable media coverage of Strache's party and the coalition government.

The resulting 'scandal' forced Strache to resign and saw Chancellor Kurz (who officielly had no part in the scandal) forced to stand down in a no-confidence vote. The fact that the videotape had been withheld for almost two years and then released less than a week before the European parliamentary elections is obviously not a coincidence, and 'the scandel was clearly a set-up with the design to achieve exactly what it did.

But who was behind this?

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Puppet Masters

Iran shattered US 'psyops' and dried up its 'capacity for war,' says head of Iran's Rev Guards

'Nuclear' option? Xi sends Trump a message - Rare-earth export ban is coming - UPDATE

Seriously? Top IDF lawyer tells The Hague to back off, says Israel can probe own alleged war crimes

Craven western media outlets ignoring reports that Assange is gravely ill - supporters have no contact

Venezuela talks will begin in Oslo, but US says focus must be on ousting Maduro

Ambassador: Palestine won't sell its 'land and rights' for Trump's skewed 'deal of the century'

Russia's central bank takes steps towards establishing gold-backed cryptocurrency

'New' NATO strategy parrots hawkish US posture

Is China's Belt & Road a decade too late?

NATO 'Deep State' and Israeli interests both served by the collapse of the Austrian government

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