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Much ado about nothing: Iran nuclear talks extended seven months

Louis Charbonneau and Fredrik Dahl
Reuters
Mon, 24 Nov 2014 16:27 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Joe Klamar/Pool
Delegations of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Britain's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi sit around the negotiations table during their meeting in Vienna November 24, 2014.
Iran and six powers failed for a second time this year on Monday to resolve their 12-year dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions and gave themselves seven more months to overcome the deadlock that has prevented them from clinching an historic deal.

Western officials said they were aiming to secure an agreement on the substance of a final accord by March but that more time would be needed to reach a consensus on the all-important technical details.

"We have had to conclude it is not possible to get to an agreement by the deadline that was set for today and therefore we will extend the JPOA to June 30, 2015," British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters at the end of the talks.

He was referring to the so-called Joint Plan of Action, an interim deal agreed between the six and Iran a year ago in Geneva, under which Tehran halted higher level uranium enrichment in exchange for a limited easing of sanctions, including access to some frozen oil revenues abroad.

Hammond said the expectation was that Iran would continue to refrain from sensitive atomic activity.

He added that Iran and the powers "made some significant progress" in the latest round of talks, which began last Tuesday in the Austrian capital. Hammond said that there was a clear target to reach a "headline agreement" of substance within the next three months and talks would resume next month.

Comment: Much ado about nothing. See also Breaking the Syria-Iran alliance is the endgame for U.S. "Islamic State" strategy.

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Red Flag

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to step down

Jim Acosta, Barbara Starr and Alexandra Jaffe
CNN
Mon, 24 Nov 2014 16:12 UTC
Chuck Hagel
© AFP Photo / Jim Watson
Chuck Hagel
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel will step down from his position, a senior administration official confirmed to CNN Monday.

Hagel, who has served in this position since February 2013, was forced out by President Barack Obama, CNN confirmed from several sources.

White House officials, however, are portraying this as a mutual decision.

Administration officials said there was a series of discussions over the past several weeks with the President, initiated by Hagel. The talks covered a "broader discussion of national security for the next two years," a defense official said.

The two came to realize that "a different focus was needed and a change is in order," the official added. "It is wrong to conclude that this was a protest by Hagel or it was over policy differences."


Comment: Ah yes, stay calm, nothing to see here.


The White House announced that Obama will make a personnel announcement from the White House State Dining Room at 11:10 a.m. The New York Times first reported Monday morning that Obama asked Hagel to step down last Friday, seeking to reassure critics of the President's foreign policy with the move.

The move, White House officials told the Times, was meant to acknowledge that the new national security threats facing the nation - most notably the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria - call for a different kind of leadership in the Defense Department.

"The next couple of years will demand a different kind of focus," an administration official told the paper.

A critic of the Iraq war, Hagel was brought on to oversee withdrawal from Afghanistan and a smaller Pentagon budget than ever before.

Hagel, a former senator of Nebraska, was the last Republican still serving in Obama's Cabinet.

Comment: We shall see who Obama picks as the next Defense Secretary to determine if world events and wars will be escalating.

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Snakes in Suits

Obama is no Machiavelli

Phillip Butler
RT
Sat, 22 Nov 2014 09:04 UTC
obama
© REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
President Obama seems poised to declare war on the world. American policy in 2014 has taken on a "zombie-like" feverishness aimed at war. Terror has been turned into a horror gag reel these days, as Washington acts out some fetish for chaos in our world.

And for those who consider Obama a Machiavellian genius, this requires a massive intellect. A modern day political Frankenstein seems more apt.

America has armed and sponsored Israel so they can butcher Palestinian civilians. We're prodding NATO moves in Ukraine, right on Russia's doorstep. We've fueled a fetish to unseat Syria's Assad, and to perpetuate the Iraq war, maybe forever. Yes, Washington's gone totally biblical, and not in a good way.

Meanwhile, we sit on our couches in Omaha or Orlando, reading the morning news served up to strike fear and loathing. A thousand authors, conjure for you, images of Russian bears devouring Europe, of gleaming scimitars slicing the air, and a rerun of those twin towers plummeting, down, down, down. But this is a time of WikiLeaks, the NSA spies, lies, deceit, and misdirect. You must see it, anyone surely must!

While Caliphates, the Supreme Soviet, and Hamas rockets are blamed for baby killing, a crumbling western civilization is not brought about by Vladimir Putin, but by a decaying system of greed, graft, and mediocre leaders. The fact is ISIS, the Arab Spring, and Ukraine and yes, Gaza are all components of Washington policy under Obama. This cannot be repudiated, but it can be reasoned.
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Bomb

Psychopathic semantics: US providing 'non-lethal assistance' to Kiev forces (not to mention military advisors and paid mercenaries)


Sputnik
Sat, 22 Nov 2014 13:23 UTC
Image
© RIA Novosti/Valeriy Melnikov
Local residents, obviously terrorists, escape from a fire in the house destroyed in the Ukrainian armed forces' air attack on the village of Luganskaya on July 2, 2014
As the US is debating whether it should send lethal military aid to Ukraine, some political analysts say current claims that Washington is only providing Kiev with non-lethal military assistance are nothing more than a red herring, because that aid is also being used for lethal purposes.

Former US President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley has called on the CIA to provide lethal military assistance to the Ukrainian government.

So far, the White House has officially relegated support to non-lethal assistance despite Kiev's requests for lethal military aid.

However, some political analysts believe that all this talk about lethal aid and non-lethal aid ignores the fact that the non-lethal aid that the US has been giving Ukraine has been used in a lethal context.

"Even if the US supplies only non-lethal military equipment, what is this equipment being used for? Is it being used defensively? The word "defensively" totally disarms the cognitive ability to assess that it is being used offensively. I mean, to give armor to troops to send them into the battlefield to kill people including civilians - you can call it non-lethal aid but it is being used for lethal aims," Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization and a contributor at the Strategic Culture Foundation told Radio Sputnik.

Comment: The following exemplifies the type of "non-lethal advice" that the U.S. psychopaths have so far given to the military forces of Kiev from: Heartbreaking video of man finding his home and family bombed by U.S.-backed Kiev army

"One of the hardest things about producing this site is watching these gut-wrenching videos coming out of East Ukraine.

There are literally hundreds of them.

We think of ourselves as pretty hard-boiled, but sifting through them looking for news, or even worse, having to watch sections of them over and over again as one edits and captions is sometimes too much ...

Sometimes without warning, the tears well up as your soul rebels ...

Watch this video, even if it hurts. After seeing this, no sane person could still believe Kiev is right in attacking East Ukraine.

Western politicians are guilty of this. Obama and Merkel are guilty of this.

They are funding, encouraging, and justifying a cynical, homicidal military attack against civilians, whose only sin was to exercise their right to secede from a country they no longer wanted to belong to, a basic right recognized in all democracies.

The attack is being led to a large extent by psychopathic neo-nazi extremists.

And the western media is complicit in the crime, by saying its not happening. It's as simple as that. Sometimes evil leaps out and rips your face off, right in the middle of civilization.

That's what is going on in East Ukraine."



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Arrow Down

Willful ignorance: Scientists banned from advising the EPA

Daisy Luther
The Organic Prepper
Sun, 23 Nov 2014 12:44 UTC
EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency is a federal agency that is charged with the responsibility of writing and enforcing legislation to protect human health and the environment. Established under Nixon in 1970, the EPA is another one of those agencies that sounds like a good idea, until you peel off the shiny friendly top layer to discover the stench of corruption underneath. Up until now, they at least pretended to be there to serve as watchdogs, but it seems like they've decided to give up on that silly illusion.

Since they are looking after all things environmental, they need unbiased specialists to advise them on policies and issues.

Silly me, I always thought that sounded sort of...I dunno...science-y.

Our estimable House of Representatives disagrees.

Comment: Welcome to the United States of Fascism where corporations and government are one.

The EPA Closes Its Libraries, Destroys Documents

Judge says EPA does not have to address call to label hazardous pesticide ingredients

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Vader

Veiled threat? Palestinian state recognition will be a 'grave mistake', Netanyahu warns France


RT
Sun, 23 Nov 2014 23:51 UTC
Netanyahu
© RIA Novosti/Sergey Guneev
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has warned it would be a "grave mistake" for the French parliament to follow the suit of several other European nations in recognizing a Palestinian state in a vote scheduled early December.

"Recognition of a Palestinian state by France would be a grave mistake," Netanyahu told reporters in Jerusalem. "Do they have nothing better to do at a time of beheadings across the Middle East, including that of a French citizen?" apparently referring to Herve Gourdel executed by Algerian jihadists in September.

"The State of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, the only state that we have, and the Palestinians demanding a state do not want to recognize the right to have a state for the Jewish people," Netanyahu added.

Just hours before the statement, the Israeli government approved a controversial 'Jewish state bill', which the critics already called anti-democratic. If approved by the parliament on Wednesday, it will redefine Israel as the "national homeland of the Jewish people" instead of a "Jewish and Democratic State."
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Quenelle - Golden

TASS interviews Putin: 'We are strong because we are right'

Vladimir Putin
ITAR-TASS
Sun, 23 Nov 2014 00:04 UTC
putin
© Mikhail Metzel/TASS
In the TASS special project Top Officials, Vladimir Putin talks about healthy lifestyle, the "fifth column" and oil prices "plot" and argues with Russian philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev.

On health, wrong statement and the other side of the coin

- What's your health status now, Vladimir Vladimirovich?

- All worries are in foes' dreams!

- The foes are making hints...

- Really? It's the first time I hear about it. What are they saying? Just fantasying?

- I won't retell it to you. As a matter of fact, I've come to the firsthand source.

- Let them think this way. It'll make them relaxed and will bring us benefits, too.

Comment: As usual, Vladimir Putin shows himself to be an intelligent, humble, diplomatic, no-nonsense human being, and a force to be reckoned with. There have been very few incorruptible politicians and statesmen in the last century - Hammarskjold was one, Kennedy became another. At the very least, Putin is the best this planet has at the moment. And ordinary people realize it. See:

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Gold Coins

SOTT EXCLUSIVE: Gold, gold, gold! Dutch gold boosted, Ukrainian gold looted, Russia buying BIG, Swiss vote gold-quake

Aeneas Georg
Sott.net
Sun, 23 Nov 2014 11:04 UTC
Gold has been in the news a lot in the last week. Most interesting was the fact that the Dutch government secretly got 122.5 tons of gold back from Uncle Sam.
Dutch gold
© Bullionstar.com
Source: the WGC, DNB
DNB states it has changed allocation policy from 11 % in Amsterdam, 51 % at the FRBNY, 20 % in Canada and 18 % at the Bank Of England (BOE); to 31 % in Amsterdam, 31 % at the FRBNY, 20 % in Canada and 18 % at the BOE. According to the World Gold Council's latest data DNB has 612.5 tonnes in official gold reserves.
Even if much of it is still owed to the Netherlands, this is a nice chunk of gold being repatriated. In contrast, consider that Germany's attempts to have its gold repatriated, which amounted to just 5 tons in 2013, have been stalled, allegedly thanks to the resumption of its suicidal confidence in Uncle Sam as 'lender of last resort'. A more realistic view is that Germany was told that there is no gold, so they can forget all about it.

So why did the Dutch National Bank (DNB) bring back some of its gold?
"It is no longer wise to keep half of our gold in one part of the world," a DNB spokesman told Telegraaf. "Maybe it was desirable during the Cold War, but not now."
Interesting. THEN was a Cold War; not now. That's not going to go down too well in the US State Department. The Dutch didn't bother having a referendum in order to bring it back, like the Swiss. They just went ahead and did it.
De Telegraaf reports that for years there have been doubts at the DNB if the Dutch gold was still in New York. After a very secret and almost military operation DNB has shipped gold from Manhattan to Amsterdam, to bring about a more balanced allocation of its gold reserves and give the Dutch citizens more confidence by storing the gold on own soil to guide the country, if necessary, through a following major crisis. In the previous weeks many armored trucks were seen at the DNB in Amsterdam.
Other news this week included official admission from Ukraine that their gold is gone. This was first noticed back in March, just after the coup, but never verified and only mentioned on alternative news sites... which figures because only they can be relied on to tell you the news:
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Binoculars

The Iran nuclear deal countdown

Pepe Escobar
The Oceania Saker
Mon, 24 Nov 2014 22:56 UTC
Image

Kerry: "Just to be clear, I have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about." U.S. Sec. of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and EU envoy Catherine Ashton in Vienna November 22, 2014.
Tasnim News Agency asked me about a possible Iran - P5+1 nuclear deal as we approach crunch time. Article is in Farsi. This is what I said, in English:

In these final crucial days there's a lot of Western spin about an extension of negotiations; as in an understanding reached on Monday, followed by renewed talks up to March 2015. That's NOT a good idea - in fact dangerous. All those powerful forces against a deal will work on overtime to sabotage it.


Comment: The deadline was for November 24. See SOTT's coverage here: P5+1 meetings in Vienna over Iran's 'nukes' - Much ado about nothing

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Vader

Netanyahu govt approves disputed bill making Israel nation-state of Jewish people


RT
Sun, 23 Nov 2014 17:42 UTC
Netanyahu
© AFP Photo / Gil Cohen-Magen
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Following heated debate, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet has voted in favor of anchoring in law the status of Israel as "the national homeland of the Jewish people," which critics fear would discriminate the Arab population.

According to the draft law, Israel's Basic Laws would no longer define it as "Jewish and democratic" country, but as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

15 Israeli ministers in the cabinet supported the 'Jewish state bill,' with only six, including Israeli Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, saying 'no' to the initiative on Sunday.

The bill now has to be approved by the country's parliament, Knesset, which is scheduled to vote on it on Wednesday.

Netanyahu said that it's high time to amend the legislation as the idea of Israel being the national homeland of the Jewish people is challenged by many inside and outside the country.

"The Palestinians refuse to recognize this, and there is also opposition from within - there are those who want to establish autonomy in the Galilee and the Negev, and who deny our national rights," the Prime Minister is cited by Jerusalem Post newspaper.

He assured that the bill won't give Judaism precedence over democracy, with all Israeli citizens - no mater of their culture and faith - to have equal rights.

"But there are national rights only for the Jewish people: a flag, anthem, the right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel, and other national symbols," Netanyahu added.

However, the critics have called the proposal "anti-democratic," expressing concerns that it would legalize discrimination against 1.7 million Arabs living in Israel.
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