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US and N. Korea begin talks aimed at arranging second Kim-Trump summit- UPDATE - Summit planned for February

Matthew Lee and Deb Riechmann
Associated Press
Fri, 18 Jan 2019 17:02 UTC
pompeo
© AP Photo/Carolyn KasterSecretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kim Yong Chol, a North Korean senior ruling party official and former intelligence chief, meet in Washington, Friday, Jan. 18, 2019
The U.S. and North Korea began highly anticipated talks Friday aimed at resuming stalled efforts to end the North's nuclear weapons program by arranging a second summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and North Korea's former spy chief, Kim Yong Chol, did not respond to reporters' questions before their meeting at a Washington hotel.

Pompeo, Kim and Steve Biegun, the special U.S. envoy for North Korea negotiations, stood silently as photographers took photos. Pompeo and Kim had plans to go to the White House later for a possible meeting with Trump.

Trump has spoken several times of having a second summit early this year and has exchanged multiple letters with Kim Jong Un despite little tangible progress on a vague denuclearization agreement reached at their historic first meeting in Singapore last June.

Comment:

UPDATE Jan 19: The White House has just announced after talks in Washington with North Korea's Vice Chairman Kim Yong Chol that the summit will take place at the end of February. Trump met with the envoy for an hour and a half, to discuss denuclearization and a second summit. The location of the summit will be announced at a later date.

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Red Flag

Paul Whelan's lawyer says his client is upbeat, confident his predicament will end soon


RT
Sat, 19 Jan 2019 09:27 UTC
Paul Whelan
© Paul Whelan Facebook
Paul Whelan, the American security specialist arrested in Moscow last month over charges of espionage is being kept in good conditions and is sure that his predicament will end soon, says his lawyer.

"Considering his case, he is very confident, sometimes jokey, sometimes in a positive mood. He believes it was an investigative error and he can prove his innocence," said celebrity lawyer Vladimir Zherebenkov in Moscow.

Despite the Russian foreign minister saying that Whelan was caught "red-handed," the 48-year-old former Marine and current head of security at a multinational car parts manufacturer insists that he "never collected any classified data," nor had he ever been employed by an intelligence agency.


Comment: Whelan's confidence suggests he views himself as important to the US security state, which itself suggests he is more than a simple businessman.

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NPC

DNC claims 'Russians' tried to hack them after 2018 midterms


RT
Sat, 19 Jan 2019 12:51 UTC
US Flag
© Reuters / Alexander Demianchuk
'Dozens' of officials at the Democratic National Committee received phishing emails a week after the 2018 midterm elections, the DNC said in a legal filing as part of its ongoing lawsuit against Russia and WikiLeaks.

Several official DNC email addresses received spear-phishing emails on November 14 last year - eight days after the midterm elections that eventually saw Democrats take over the House of Representatives - the DNC said in the legal filing submitted late Thursday, according to the Wall Street Journal. There was no evidence the alleged attack was successful, the DNC reportedly said.


In the filing, the DNC said it believed that a "Russian hacking group" called "Cozy Bear" was "likely" behind the phishing emails, which purported to come from State Department officials. This conclusion is apparently based on the timing and content of the email matching what cybersecurity company FireEye declared to be a "Cozy Bear" campaign at the time. The DNC's legal filing did not provide forensic evidence to back up the claim, according to the WSJ.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Zionist historian Benny Morris doubles down in favor of ethnic cleansing the Palestinians

Jonathan Cook
Mondoweiss
Fri, 18 Jan 2019 12:06 UTC
Benny Morris
Benny Morris
Benny Morris, the Israeli historian who has documented Israeli-Palestinian history so meticulously, is again bemoaning that a full ethnic cleansing was not completed in 1948.

In a long interview with Ofer Aderet in Haaretz (published in English today), Morris says:
If the War of Independence had ended with an absolute separation of populations - the Palestinian Arabs on the east side of the Jordan River and the Jews on the west side - the Middle East would be less volatile and both peoples would have suffered less over the past 70 years. They would have been satisfied with a state of their own, not exactly what they wanted, and we would have received the whole Land of Israel.
This is almost an identical repeat of what he said to Ari Shavit in a 2004 interview. There, he said:
If [David Ben-Gurion] was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. I know that this stuns the Arabs and the liberals and the politically correct types. But my feeling is that this place would be quieter and know less suffering if the matter had been resolved once and for all. If Ben-Gurion had carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country - the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan River. It may yet turn out that this was his fatal mistake. If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the State of Israel for generations.

Comment: For a much more factual appraisal of the Zionist program, one could do no better than Ilan Pappe's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
Renowned Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe's groundbreaking book revisits the formation of the State of Israel. Between 1947 and 1949, over 400 Palestinian villages were deliberately destroyed, civilians were massacred and around a million men, women, and children were expelled from their homes at gunpoint.

Denied for almost six decades, had it happened today it could only have been called "ethnic cleansing". Decisively debunking the myth that the Palestinian population left of their own accord in the course of this war, Ilan Pappe offers impressive archival evidence to demonstrate that, from its very inception, a central plank in Israel's founding ideology was the forcible removal of the indigenous population. Indispensable for anyone interested in the current crisis in the Middle East.


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Snakes in Suits

Brexit: Government has "no plans" for talks with opposition MPs, 'Final say' referendum possible

Rob Merrick
Indepdent
Sat, 19 Jan 2019 11:14 UTC
Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn
© Desconocido
Prime minister will instead meet 'a large number' of cabinet deeply split over whether to compromise or stand firm

Theresa May's pledge to reach a cross-party consensus to solve the Brexit crisis appears to have fizzled out with no further talks planned.

Downing Street said the prime minister would instead be meeting with "a large number" of her cabinet, both in small groups and in one-to-one conversations.

There are also "no plans" for cabinet members Michael Gove and David Lidington - who have met senior backbenchers from other parties - to hold further talks, a spokesperson said.

Asked about the prime minister's focus, she added: "Today is about discussing this week with her cabinet colleagues."

Comment: MEP Nigel Farage expands on the rumours of the possibility of a second referendum:
'2nd EU referendum would take more than one year' claims govt, as Farage hints at return

The UK government claims that a second EU referendum would take over a year to organize, according to official ministerial guidance leaked to the media, as Nigel Farage hints at returning via a different "vehicle."

The Telegraph's chief political correspondent Christopher Hope, took to social media to tweet that he had been given the official guidance drawn up by civil servants at the Cabinet Office. According to the leaked document, it would take a minimum of 14 months to pass the necessary legislation through parliament to carry out a second referendum.

Pro-EU campaigners and politicians such as Caroline Lucas from the Green Party, the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon and the Liberal Democrats' Vince Cable, have all urged UK PM Theresa May to keep the possibility of a second EU referendum on the table. May has been hostile to the idea up to now.

SECOND REFERENDUM TIMELINE
  • Primary legislation (seven months)
  • Electoral Commission question testing (12 weeks)
  • Secondary legislation (six weeks)
  • Designation of campaigns and the actual campaign (16 weeks)
A number of MPs have rubbished the government's estimations, including some of their own Tory politicians. Prominent 'people's vote' advocate, Dominic Grieve MP, called the timetable wrong and said that the government "must be aware of it themselves." Another, Dr Phillip Lee, who resigned his frontbench post over May's Brexit deal, labeled the guidance "nonsense."

It comes as former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, who quit the party in December, has said that he fears the UK is heading towards another referendum and that he is willing to fight another campaign - not with UKIP, but via an alternative "vehicle."

Farage told Sky News: "I think, I fear that the House of Commons is going to effectively overturn that Brexit. To me, the most likely outcome of all of this is an extension of Article 50. There could be another referendum."

May will present her 'plan b' Brexit proposal to parliament on Monday, with MPs voting on her alternative plan on January 29. She's been urged by many MPs to remove her redlines to get a deal through the House of Commons.



See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Arrow Down

Washington to terminate USAID office in Palestine by January 31st - ex-Director


Sputnik
Fri, 18 Jan 2019 02:24 UTC
USAID
© Sputnik
The US administration announced its intention last August.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) will cut funding to all its projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on January 31, Dave Harden, former USAID mission director and managing director of the Georgetown Strategy Group, said Thursday.

Harden lamented the White House's decision, adding that the administration "demonstrates again a lack of nuance, sophistication and appreciation for the complexity of the situation," according to the Jerusalem Post.

"Who suffers when USAID leaves schools and water systems unfinished? Palestinians, of course, but also Israelis and Americans. The administration just gave Hamas more running room," Harden said.

He later tweeted that the decision to close the office is "another example of the end of the two-state solution" to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Comment: See also: Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Has Trump Gone Full Shlemiel in Planned U.S. Embassy Move to Jerusalem?

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Bizarro Earth

EU loves British money more than it loves democracy


RT
Fri, 18 Jan 2019 16:08 UTC
EU Brexit
© Getty Images / Adam Gault
The EU's antagonistic stance towards Brexit, which was on show again this week, is not motivated by lofty, internationalist ideals, but by financial factors. Self-interest comes before respecting democratic decisions.

If we don't get the result we want, vote again. Or else we just ignore it.

Anyone who still believes the EU supports 'democracy' should reflect on this week's events.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Theresa May's so-called 'Withdrawal Agreement' was heavily defeated in the House of Commons, with a large number of Brexiteers voting against it.

On the same day, European Council President Donald Tusk, a former Prime Minister of Poland, tweeted: "If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?".

Comment: If there's anything to takeaway from the Brexit melee, it would be that, except for Jeremy Corbyn, whichever side the career politicians are on none of them have British citizens interests at heart and they're only really looking out for themselves and their interests, as usual: Also check out SOTT radio's:

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Attention

Russia warns US against arms race on Earth & space after missile defense plans revealed


RT
Fri, 18 Jan 2019 20:22 UTC
russia missile
© Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin
US rejection of any limitations on missile defense programs and readiness to weaponize space has drawn a blunt reaction from Moscow, with the Russian Foreign Ministry warning Washington not to restart the Cold War-era arms race.

Describing the US Missile Defense Review (MDR) published Thursday as "openly confrontational," the Russian Foreign Ministry said the document shows Washington's intent to establish military dominance and ability to conduct military operations anywhere on the planet with impunity, while rejecting any limitations on missile defense efforts.

"We would like to note that the very same logic served as the foundation of the widespread nuclear missile race that brought the world to the brink of disaster multiple times," Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Friday, adding that the US leadership has "apparently decided to step on the same rake, with predictable consequences."

Comment: The US finds itself mired in its own corruption and it's incapable of competing with Russia and China on merit, so instead it's breaking its agreements through some demented dream that it won't also be checkmated in space: Also check out SOTT radio's: Behind the Headlines: Putin The World To Rights: Russia's New Nuclear Weapons And The End of 'Unipolarity'

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Eagle

The National Security Agency is nothing less than a criminal organization

Paul Craig Roberts
paulcraigroberts.org
Thu, 17 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
NSA in Maryland
Years before Edward Snowden provided documented proof that the National Security Agency was really a national insecurity agency as it was violating law and the US Constitution and spying indiscriminately on American citizens, William Binney, who designed and developed the NSA spy program revealed the illegal and unconstitutional spying. Binney turned whistleblower, because NSA was using the program to spy on Americans. As Binney was well known to the US Congress, he did not think he needed any NSA document to make his case. But what he found out was:
"Congress would never hear me because then they'd lose plausible deniability. That was really their key. They needed to have plausible deniability so they can continue this massive spying program because it gave them power over everybody in the world. Even the members of Congress had power against others [in Congress]; they had power on judges on the Supreme Court, the federal judges, all of them. That's why they're so afraid. Everybody's afraid because all this data that's about them, the central agencies - the intelligence agencies - they have it. And that's why Senator Schumer warned President Trump earlier, a few months ago, that he shouldn't attack the intelligence community because they've got six ways to Sunday to come at you. That's because it's like J. Edgar Hoover on super steroids. . . . it's leverage against every member of parliament and every government in the world."

Comment: The monolithic and malevolent NSA exists to count and categorize every man woman and child it can - as either someone who would follow very deep state agendas - or those who would not:

Read Texe Marrs' Project L. U. C. I. D.: The Beast 666 Universal Human Control System to get a sense of just how pervasive and long-standing their mandate is.

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Document

New York Times columnist: Sheldon Adelson has 'more influence' than Pompeo in 'controlling' State Dept on Israel

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss
Fri, 18 Jan 2019 00:00 UTC
Sheldon Adelson
© Flash90Casino mogul, GOP financier and AIPAC supporter Sheldon Adelson.
Timothy Egan, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, has a column today defending the tradition of rich people having an outsize role in our politics, because that's just reality. But he slipped in not one but two cracks at Sheldon Adelson.
An 85-year-old casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson, now has more influence on American foreign policy than even the secretary of state, the Koch [Brothers] tool Mike Pompeo.

But the Kochs pay for politicians in order to enrich themselves and to gut regulations affecting the polluting industries that made them billionaires. Adelson got a similar tax windfall for the millions he put into electing Republicans, with the added benefit of controlling the State Department's view of Israel.

Comment: Indeed, Sheldon Adelson's out-sized financial influence has made Trump beholden to him. Adelson, like other Israel-firsters would see their imperial project in the Middle East succeed over the death and destruction of many:

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