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US continues to stoke tensions in Gulf risking "outbreak of a conflict" - Moscow


RT
Fri, 19 Jul 2019 07:13 UTC
Harrier
© Reuters / Ahmed Jadallah
An AV-8B Harrier aircraft lakes off on the flight deck of USS Boxer in the Arabian Sea off Oman. July 17, 2019.
Washington's claim that it downed an Iranian drone is another sign that tensions in the Persian Gulf are at risk of spiraling into a bigger conflict, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned.

President Donald Trump had earlier claimed that the assault ship USS 'Boxer' shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching it in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran denied losing any aircraft that day.

"The concentration of forces of different countries in the Persian Gulf is so high that any incidents are possible there," the Russian diplomat told reporters on Friday, adding that the main task now is to "prevent the escalation."
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Sheriff

Sergey Lavrov interviewed by Russian newspaper Argumenty i Fakty


The Saker
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 12:00 UTC
lavrov


Question: Can an improvement in the relations with the United States be expected in the near future?

Sergey Lavrov: An improvement will hardly materialise any time soon, since it is anything but easy to sort out the mess that our relations are in, which is not our fault. After all, bilateral relations require reciprocal efforts. We have to meet each other half way.

Russia is ready to move in this direction, as we have said on a number of occasions. We proceed from the premise that Russia and the United States bear special responsibility. We are the two largest nuclear powers, the founding members of the United Nations and permanent members of its Security Council. Cooperation between our two countries is key to ensuring stability and predictability in international affairs. However, not everything depends on us. It takes two to tango, as the saying goes.

The situation is quite complicated on the American side. On the one hand, President Donald Trump talks about seeking to be on good terms with Russia, but this attitude is far from prevalent in Washington. We see this in unfriendly steps, such as various groundless accusations Russia faces, imposing financial and economic sanctions, seizing diplomatic property, kidnapping Russian nationals in third countries, opposing Russia's foreign policy interests, as well as attempts to meddle in our domestic affairs. We are seeing system-wide efforts to reach out to almost all countries around the world and persuade them to scale back their relations with Russia.
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Handcuffs

Pakistani authorities arrest Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Saeed on charges of financing terrorism

Asad Hashim
Al Jazeera
Wed, 17 Jul 2019 15:32 UTC
Hafiz Saeed Pakistan Lashkar-e-Taiba
© K.M.Chaudary/Associated Press/File
Saeed is the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba armed group and heads its Jamaat-ud-Dawa humanitarian wing
Jamaat-ud-Dawa, Lashkar-e-Taiba's humanitarian wing, says it will challenge the arrest of its head and apply for bail.

Pakistani police have arrested Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the founder of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) armed group and head of its Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) humanitarian wing, intercepting him on his way to court in the central city of Gujranwala,

Saeed was arrested on Wednesday by a group of counterterrorism department police at the Kamoke toll plaza, about 50km north of Pakistan's second city Lahore, JuD spokesman Nadeem Awan told Al Jazeera.

"The cases against him are all related to fundraising," Awan said. "He is charged with terrorism financing."
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Eye 2

Another Operation Carwash witness confesses he 'built a story' to incriminate Brazil's Lula


teleSUR
Fri, 19 Jul 2019 15:20 UTC
Former Odebrecht operation carwash Brazil Lula
© Brasil de Fato
Former Odebrecht executive Carlos Armando Paschoal during testimony to the Public Prosecutor's Office in November 2018.
Former Odebrecht Superintendent, Carlos Armando Paschoal, and one of the plaintiffs in the trial against former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva admitted that he was "almost coerced" by Operation Car Wash (Lava Jato) prosecutors to "build a story" that would incriminate Lula, according to a report published Tuesday by Brasil de Fato.

"In the case of the Atibaia site (the property attributed to former President Lula that was remodeled by Odebrecht allegedly in payment of a bribe), which I had absolutely nothing to do, for example, I was almost coerced to create an account of what happened," Paschoal testified in another trial on July 6.

According to his account, he was forced to say something like "look, this happened, this, this and that...I had to build a story," in exchange of reduced sentence of two years in open prison regime.

Comment:

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Newspaper

Three people killed, incl Turkish Deputy Consul-General, in Iraqi-Kurdistan shooting


RT
Wed, 17 Jul 2019 11:05 UTC
Erbil
© REUTERS/Azad Lashkari
FILE PHOTO A general view of a market in Erbil, Iraq
Three people, including the Turkish deputy consul, have been killed in a shooting at a restaurant in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, according to local media. Police confirmed the death of the Turkish diplomat.

The shooting was reported shortly after 2pm local time, and took place at a restaurant in an upmarket area of Iraqi Kurdistan's capital city. While local media reported that all three victims were officials with the Consulate General, Turkey's Foreign Ministry only confirmed the death of one diplomat.

Kurdish authorities sealed off roads around the scene and searched nearby cars and businesses. The gunmen have not yet been found.
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Eye 1

Hack of Department of Homeland Security contractor exposes government surveillance of drivers on US roads and border crossings

Kevin Reed
World Socialist Web site
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
PERCEPTICS PRESENTATION on survellience
© MOTHERBOARD
A SCREENSHOT OF A PERCEPTICS PRESENTATION MADE FOR CBP. FACES BLURRED BY MOTHERBOARD.
On July 2 the Washington Post reported that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suspended the license of a long-standing contractor of surveillance technology on the grounds that the firm exhibited "evidence of conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity."

CBP made the suspension more than a month after an anonymous hack of internal corporate data of Perceptics, a 35-year-old company based in Farragut, Tennessee. Perceptics is a supplier of license plate readers, facial recognition and artificial intelligence technologies to CBP and other government agencies at US border crossings, military facilities, electronic toll collection terminals and highway and city security systems.

The hack and subsequent publication of the data trove — including Department of Homeland Security handbooks, company PowerPoint presentations, equipment schematics, confidential agreements, technology lists, budget spreadsheets, internal photos and hardware blueprints of security systems — by a group of transparency advocates has exposed to the public the extensive infrastructure of government surveillance of drivers on roadways and at border crossings.

Comment: See also:

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Newspaper

Facebook Board member Peter Thiel says FBI, CIA should probe Google

David McCabe
AXIOS
Sun, 14 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
Peter Thiel
© Alex Wong/Getty Images
Peter Thiel speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Peter Thiel, billionaire investor and Facebook board member, on Sunday night said that Google should be federally investigated for allegedly aiding the Chinese military.

Why it matters: Thiel is the tech industry's highest-profile Trump supporter, and one of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley.

Thiel spoke at the National Conservatism Conference, a new event that bills itself as being focused on Trump-era nationalism, with part of his speech focusing on "three questions that should be asked" of Google:

Comment:



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Eye 2

On MH17 prosecution firing their biggest salvo, subjunctive and conditional tenses and Ukraine's secret services tapes

John Helmer
Dances With Bears
Thu, 18 Jul 2019 20:33 UTC
Wilbert Paulissen
© Associated Press
Wilbert Paulissen of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) speaks on the preliminary results of the investigation into the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines jetliner flight MH17 during a press conference in Nieuwegein, Netherlands, Sept. 28, 2016.
Dutch prosecutors have announced international arrest warrants and criminal charges against three Russians and a Ukrainian whom they accuse of being part of a chain of Russian military and political command leading to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.

The four are accused of acting in the Ukrainian civil war "to gain ground at the expense of the Ukrainian State and its armed forces"; of cooperating together in actions "which ultimately led to the shooting down of the MH17... Although they did not press the button themselves, it is alleged they worked closely together to get the BUK TELAR [anti-aircraft missile] to the firing location with the aim of shooting down an aircraft. They are therefore suspected to be held jointly responsible for shooting down flight MH17."

Comment: The Dutch prosecution has made much of the Ukraine wiretaps, which were released within hours of the crash. Max vander Werff and Yana Verlashova of Bonanza Media had the files analyzed. Experts said the sound files showed evidence of extensive editing.



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Star of David

'The Roots of Evil': Right-wing Israeli settler group Regavim accuses Palestinians of land theft in the heart of Israel

Miko Peled
MintPress News
Wed, 17 Jul 2019 02:36 UTC
Palestinian and flag
© Majdi Mohammed/AP
Palestinians attempting to stop the planned demolition of the West Bank hamlet of Khan al-Ahmar scuffle with Israeli police, July 4, 2018.
Israeli settler groups are turning the Israel-Palestine narrative on its head, accusing Palestinians of trying to illegally steal land in the West Bank's Area C.

In a move designed to shock Israeli settlers in the West Bank into action, activists from the right-wing settler organization "Regavim" hung Palestinian flags along the main West Bank settler roads last week.

Regavim claims that there is a Palestinian take over of Area C and that the Israeli government is not doing enough to fight it. The organization's PR stunt, shown in the video below, was in their own words "an in-your-face challenge to the הכנסת (Knesset) to enforce the law and halt the de facto creation of a terrorist state in the heart of Israel."


Regavim also published, "a comprehensive, in-depth report" titled, "The Roots of Evil, Land Theft in Area C is Creating a De Facto Palestinian State." In the report, the group claims that it has exposed a "secretive program undertaken by the Palestinian Authority, with massive financial support provided by the European Union, European governments, and other foreign interests." The secret program, which Regavim has dubbed "The Roots Project," is allegedly a systematic program of land theft by Palestinians which targets areas placed under full Israeli jurisdiction by the Oslo Accords and international law. The report alleges that the PA is taking advantage of a legal loophole in order to effectively annex territory throughout Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) through seemingly-innocuous agricultural projects.
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Moon

Beyond the pale! Attacks on Moon landing's 'whites and males' proves no achievement too big for libs to destroy

Igor Ogorodnev
RT
Wed, 17 Jul 2019 15:59 UTC
mission control
© NASA
Sea of white: The mission control for Apollo 11
Attempts to diminish the triumph of Apollo 11 and to reassign credit don't just taint the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, but presage the technological decline of the US if it persists with identity politics.

With the Founding Fathers now rarely mentioned in the media without side notes about their slave ownership, and the Betsy Ross flag is offensive to Colin Kaepernick and Nike, there is nothing new about liberal attempts to strike at the very heart of American identity.

But - leaving aside the conspiracy theorists - the moment Neil Armstrong stepped on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969 was objectively such a universal milestone that to qualify it seems a fight against human endeavor itself.

Heroes retconned

It would seem like the more logical route, for those who resent that this was a feat of white un-woke America, would be to try and diminish their role in favour of supposedly unsung heroes.

Hidden Figures, the Oscar-winning film from 2016 was the perfect archetype of this revisionist history, exaggerating and fictionalizing the role of a cadre of politically suitable black women, who did an entirely replaceable job and were no more important than thousands of others involved.

This way everyone would get to celebrate their own role models, even though in time such worthy changes of focus can end up with grotesque urban myths, like Crick and Watson stealing the Nobel Prize from (the actually dead) Rosalind Franklin.
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