Puppet Masters

EU announces special trade channel, INSTEX operational; will allow firms to bypass US sanctions on Iran

RT
Fri, 28 Jun 2019 19:24 UTC

JCPOA Joint Commission Vienna Austria June 2019

© Reuters / Leonhard Foeger
European and Iranian officials attend a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria, June 28, 2019.

A special trade channel that will allow European firms to bypass American sanctions on Iran is operational - that was the outcome of the meeting between the countries who singed the nuclear deal ditched by US.

The EU called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) a "key element of global nuclear non-proliferation." The deal was in limbo after Washington left it a year ago and started piling up sanctions on Tehran, hampering its trade with other countries.

Now French, British and German officials say the trade mechanism, dubbed Instex, is operational. The mechanism would facilitate transactions between European and Iranian companies, bypassing the need for financial institutions like SWIFT to carry out exchanges. A payment balancing system will allow companies in Europe to buy Iranian goods, and vice-versa, without money-transfers between European and Iranian banks.

Comment: And the US tyrant is threatening MORE sanctions:

'Sons of b*tches': Duterte says he will jail anyone who tries to impeach him

RT
Fri, 28 Jun 2019 16:54 UTC

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to imprison anyone who tries to impeach him over his stance on a fishing rights controversy involving China, and challenged his opponents to go ahead and try.

"Me? Will be impeached? I will jail them all," Duterte told reporters on Thursday amid an escalating national argument over territorial fishing rights. He went on to say that he was "challenging" his opponents to attempt it: "You really want to force my hand into it? Okay. You sons of b*tches, do it. Yes. File it."

Duterte is facing heavy criticism for allowing China to fish in the Philippines' exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and for agreeing with Beijing that the recent sinking of a fishing boat by a Chinese vessel was an accident.

US Senate rejects proposal that would require president to have congressional approval before attacking foreign countries

Sputnik
Fri, 28 Jun 2019 19:18 UTC

Earlier, a bipartisan group of senators announced a legal proposal which would amend the 2020 National Defence Authorisation Act to require the president to seek congressional approval if he wanted to carry out military actions in foreign countries.

After heated deliberations which lasted over six hours, 41 senators voted to reject an amendment to the NDAA which would give them authority to block the president's military operations abroad, with the amendment's sponsors thus failing to reach the 60 vote supermajority required.

Presently, the president has the authority to authorise military operations against foreign countries using legislation granted to the Oval Office in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. The controversial provision, which critics have called a "blank cheque" for military adventurism abroad, has been used repeatedly by the US over the past two decades for controversial interventions in countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ethiopia and Yemen.

The myth of Russian media influence

Larry C. Johnson
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 19:16 UTC

Republicans and Democrats, along with almost all of the media, have accepted the lie that the Russians engaged in unprecedented "interference" in the 2016 Presidential election. It is a ridiculous proposition and is based on a presumption rather than actual evidence. The Intel Community said it is true so, by definition, it must be true.

Let's focus on the actual numbers. How much money did the Russians spend? According to Robert Mueller, $1.25 million per month. If you start that money clock in May of 2016, that means those pesky Rookies spent $8.75 million. But let us be generous and add on the previous four months, essentially starting the clock in January 2016 before the first primary votes. That brings the total to $13 million.

Hillary and Donald, by contrast, spent over $81 million on Facebook alone. According to TechCrunch:

Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns' behalf.

Trump and Clinton, when you factor in their various political action committees, spent millions more.

US to sanction any country that imports Iranian oil, says special envoy

Guy Faulsonbridge
Reuters
Fri, 28 Jun 2019 17:44 UTC

© REUTERS/Simon Dawson
Brian Hook, U.S. Special Representative for Iran, attends a news conference in London, Britain June 28, 2019.

The United States will sanction any country that imports Iranian oil and there are no exemptions in place, the U.S. special envoy for Iran said on Friday.

U.S. President Donald Trump targeted Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials with sanctions on Monday, taking an unprecedented step to increase pressure on Iran after Tehran's downing of an unmanned American drone last week.

"We will sanction any imports of Iranian crude oil," Brian Hook said when asked about the sale of Iranian crude to Asia, adding that the United States would take a look at reports of Iranian crude going to China.

May tells Putin UK has no interest in fixing ties with Russia - 'because Skripal'

RT
Fri, 28 Jun 2019 19:04 UTC

Outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May once again produced a little bit of déjà vu as she told Vladimir Putin there won't be any hope of restoring UK-Russia ties unless Moscow stops being "an irresponsible and destabilizing" actor.

Comment: The political equivalent of "when you stop beating your wife".

During a tense one-to-one exchange with Vladimir Putin in Osaka, Theresa May said "there cannot be a normalization of our bilateral relationship until Russia stops the irresponsible and destabilizing activity." Predictably, the outgoing British Prime Minister then jumped to her well-worn allegations about the Skripal poisoning affair.

According to her spokesperson, May naturally mentioned "the use of a deadly nerve agent on the streets of Salisbury," claiming again that the UK has "irrefutable evidence that Russia was behind the attack."

Comment: 'Highly likely' irrefutable evidence! The best and most reliable kind.

Returning to the future of UK-Russia ties, May said that "we remain open to a different relationship, but for that to happen the Russian government must choose a different path."

Comment: Um, thanks but no thanks?

Putin, however, believes all this is the opposite of the truth. The scandal surrounding the Salisbury incident did sour relations between Russia and the UK, thus damaging economic ties, he had earlier told the Financial Times.

Comment: Putin spoke more sense in the FT interview:

"I think that both Russia and the UK are interested in fully restoring our relations. At least I hope that a few preliminary steps will be made," Putin told the Financial Times newspaper.

The Russian leader noted that UK companies were eager to work with Russia.

"We know that businesses in the UK (by the way, I had a meeting with our British colleagues in this same room), they want to work with us, they are working with us and intend to continue doing so. And we support this intent," he said.

Tillerson recounts rocky tenure at State Dept, frustrations with Kushner, Sec of State experience humbling - an honor

Nahal Toosi
Politico
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 01:00 UTC

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was having dinner at a local restaurant when the owner came over to tell him that Mexico's foreign secretary happened to be eating at the same place. Would he like to say hello?

Tillerson was surprised, he recently recounted to congressional aides, because he hadn't been informed that his Mexican counterpart, Luis Videgaray Caso, was in Washington, D.C. He walked over to find that Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, was dining with the foreign diplomat.

"I could see the color go out of the face of the foreign secretary of Mexico as I very - I smiled big, and I said: 'Welcome to Washington,'" Tillerson told the staffers. "And I said: 'I don't want to interrupt what y'all are doing.' I said: 'Give me a call next time you're coming to town.' And I left it at that."

According to Tillerson, the Mexican diplomat had thought that the Secretary of State was fully aware that he was meeting with Kushner. Apparently, however, Kushner hadn't looped in the State Department.

The anecdote was one of the most vivid that Tillerson shared with bipartisan representatives of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on May 21, according to a partially redacted transcript of the private conversation released Thursday.

Comment: See also:

Ellen Brown: Facebook makes an audacious bid for global monetary control

Ellen Brown
Web of Debt Blog
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC

Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies. This has now been demonstrated - not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the US, where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly for free. In 2018 these cashless payments totaled a whopping $41.5 trillion; and 90% were through Alipay and WeChat Pay, a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled "Why China's Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares":

The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a technology company - whether from China or a homegrown juggernaut such as Amazon.com Inc. or Facebook Inc. - replicates the success of Alipay and WeChat in America. The stakes are enormous, potentially carving away billions of dollars in annual revenue from major banks and other firms.

That threat may now be materializing. On June 18, Facebook unveiled a white paper outlining ambitious plans to create a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, to be launched in 2020. The New York Times says Facebook has high hopes that Libra will become the foundation for a new financial system free of control by Wall Street power brokers and central banks.

Comment: See also:

Dems cave, pass Senate version of border bill 'for the children'

RT
Fri, 28 Jun 2019 00:24 UTC

The Democrat-led US House has grudgingly voted to approve an emergency $4.6 billion border funding bill after the Republican-majority Senate threatened to table any amended version of the measure.

"The children come first. At the end of the day, we have to make sure that the resources needed to protect the children are available," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said in a letter on Thursday prior to the vote, vowing to "reluctantly pass the Senate bill" lest "the children" go without aid one second longer.

Pelosi had initially promised not to accept the bill approved on Wednesday by the Republican-led Senate, with Democrats arguing it lacked sufficient protections for migrant children. A lengthy conversation with Vice President Mike Pence produced an administrative compromise of sorts, however: Congress will be notified within 24 hours if a child dies in custody, and no child will be kept in "emergency facilities" for more than 90 days.

The Senate version of the bill ultimately passed 305-102 in the House, with 95 Democrats expressing their dissatisfaction with the compromise. The bill allots $2.88 billion to Health and Human Services for safe shelter and care for detained children, $1.1 billion to Customs and Border Protection to build more processing facilities, $220 million to the Justice Department to process immigration cases and equip US Marshals at detention facilities, and $145 million for various military operations on the border.

New Rules: Trump's Twitter posts that violate new platform standards may be hidden or labeled as such

RT
Thu, 27 Jun 2019 19:05 UTC

President Donald Trump may soon find himself hidden or throttled by Twitter, according to the mainstream media interpretation of the platform's new rules for certain posts that "violate rules" but remain of "public interest."

There are "certain cases where it may be in the public's interest to have access to certain Tweets, even if they would otherwise be in violation of our rules," Twitter said on Thursday, trying to shed some light on when and how they will deal with them going forward.

For accounts to be given this leeway they must represent a government official or someone running for public office or awaiting confirmation, have over 100,000 followers, and be verified ("blue checkmark"). A team of Twitter officials will make the determination in each case.

The problematic tweet will not be removed from the platform, but it [will] be slapped with a notice, "feature less prominently" on Twitter, and not appear in searches, recommended tweets, notifications, or timelines under certain conditions, amounting to what has been commonly called a "shadowban."

While the document does not mention President Donald Trump by name, mainstream media outlets like CNN and Voice of America immediately jumped to the conclusion that he would find himself on the receiving end of the new policy.

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Puppet Masters

EU announces special trade channel, INSTEX operational; will allow firms to bypass US sanctions on Iran

'Sons of b*tches': Duterte says he will jail anyone who tries to impeach him

US Senate rejects proposal that would require president to have congressional approval before attacking foreign countries

The myth of Russian media influence

US to sanction any country that imports Iranian oil, says special envoy

May tells Putin UK has no interest in fixing ties with Russia - 'because Skripal'

Tillerson recounts rocky tenure at State Dept, frustrations with Kushner, Sec of State experience humbling - an honor

Ellen Brown: Facebook makes an audacious bid for global monetary control

Dems cave, pass Senate version of border bill 'for the children'

New Rules: Trump's Twitter posts that violate new platform standards may be hidden or labeled as such

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