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Why US & Saudi Arabia fear Iran-Pakistan cooperation

Darius Shahtahmasebi
RT
Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:38 UTC
Imran Khan Rouhani
© AFP / IRANIAN PRESIDENCY
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's visit to Tehran has been marred by two recent deadly attacks. Despite an apparent willingness to cooperate, there remains many outside players who will push for this alliance to fail.

Someone clearly hates the idea of peaceful dialogue between Iran and Pakistan. Whether a coincidence or not, the timing of an attack in Pakistan within barely a day or two of a planned visit to Iran's capital by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is certainly perfect timing for those who view an increasing relationship between the two nations through negative terms. The attack in question saw at least 14 Pakistani security forces personnel killed in a bus ambush. Not helping the issue, is the fact that Pakistan's foreign office instantly blamed the attack on Iran, accusing Iran of inaction against ethnic Baloch separatist groups, even as Khan was set to visit Tehran.

In February, there was similarly an attack in eastern Iran that killed at least 27 Iranian security personnel. Tehran warned Islamabad it would "pay a heavy price" for allegedly harboring the militants who planned the suicide bombing, which was claimed by the Pakistan-based Jaish al-Adl group.

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Fire

2020 Democratic hopefuls want congress to 'take steps' toward impeaching Trump


Sputnik
Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:46 UTC
Trump shotgun
© AP Photo / John Locher
Although many Democrats fear that an attempt to unseat Donald Trump could backfire and bolster his support ahead of the 2020 election, some of his most outspoken critics appear to be willing to go down this road.

California Democratic US Senator Kamala Harris, one of the party's top 2020 contenders, said that lawmakers should launch an impeachment process based on the findings of the two-year investigation into the alleged Trump-Russia conspiracy.

"I think we have very good reason to believe that there is an investigation that has been conducted which has produced evidence that tells us that this President and his administration engaged in obstruction of justice," Harris said at a televised town hall in New Hampshire on Monday.

Comment: The opening line of this piece, that "many Democrats fear that an attempt to unseat Donald Trump could backfire and bolster his support ahead of the 2020 election," shows that "many Democrats" at least have some understanding of what goes on outside of their bubble. While a popular idea with a rabid lefty minority, most Americans don't want to see Trump impeached and likely won't vote for a candidate who centers their campaign around this single issue. Let it go, Dems. Let it go.

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Light Saber

Best of the Web: After Syria & Venezuela, Russian military prepares for Hybrid war


Russia Insider
Tue, 23 Apr 2019 10:40 UTC
army
Moscow's new military doctrine will put less emphasis on countering a large-scale land invasion
The Russian military's main job has always been to defeat a large land invasion of the Russian heartland, such as those of Hitler, Napoleon, and Charles XII. But after the experience of Syria and Ukraine, Russian generals are adjusting their military doctrine to defeat a wider array of possible attacks, which, although less dangerous than all-out invasion, are more likely to occur.

This move is a response to US behavior. Over the past few decades, the US has involved itself in countless, never-ending, low-risk conflicts. Americans seem to have forgotten Clausewitzian purpose of war: to destroy your enemy in a decisive engagement in order to achieve your political ends. Instead, they have allowed their foreign policy to be shaped by the careerist ambitions of military officers, private contractors, and Beltway pseudo-intellectuals, whose resumes depend on a steady supply of easy-to-win, fake wars. For them, war has become an end in itself.

Russia no longer needs to face down a lion, but only stave off the jackals.

Comment: Russia is leagues ahead in one area that the deep state players are unable to fathom: mutually beneficial, interdependent partnerships, and, ultimately, following this war of attrition, this may decide the course of the future:

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Sherlock

Trump and PM Khan might have ruined Iranian-Indian relations

Andrew Korybko
Eurasia Future
Mon, 22 Apr 2019 12:00 UTC
TrumpKhan
© AFP/ReutersPresident Donald Trump • Prime Minister Imran Khan
The American and Pakistani leaders independently took two very important and uncoordinated moves at almost the exact same time that might coincidentally have the same effect of ruining Iranian-Indian relations.

Iranian-Indian relations might be about to enter their worst-ever period in modern history as a result of two very important and uncoordinated moves undertaken at almost the exact same time by the American and Pakistani leaders. PM Khan just paid his first visit to Iran where he and his hosts announced that they'll enter into a new era of anti-terrorist cooperation that geopolitical analyst Adam Garrie comprehensively analyzed in his recent piece on this breaking news event. The ball was indeed in Iran's court to stop India's anti-Pakistani Baloch terrorism like I wrote the other day, and to Tehran's credit, its leadership finally understood this and decided to expand its military partnership with the global pivot state of Pakistan. This will greatly complicate India's HybridWar capabilities in clandestinely using Iranian territory to carry out terrorist attacks against Pakistan by proxy as it obsessively seeks to sabotage CPEC, meaning that PM Khan's visit will have far-reaching and long-term geostrategic security consequences in the New Cold War.

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Eye 1

Washington offering $10 million reward in hunt for three alleged 'Hezbollah financiers'


RT
Tue, 23 Apr 2019 09:42 UTC
Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah
© Reuters/Aziz TaherHezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, September 20, 2018.
The US government is offering a bounty of up to $10 million for information about three alleged financiers of Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based organization that the US considers to be Iran-backed terrorists.

Adham Tabaja, Ali Charara and Mohamed Bazzi were named as Hezbollah financiers on Monday by State Department and Treasury officials, who announced the bounty for "disruption of financial activities that support the global terrorist organization Lebanese Hezbollah."

Hezbollah receives "weapons, training, funding" from Iran to the tune of $1 billion a year, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Evanoff told reporters on Monday. He claimed Hezbollah uses those funds for "malign activities" such as supporting the government in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and "surveillance and intelligence gathering operations in the American homeland."

Comment: More from RT:



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Star of David

Elijah Magnier: Why Trump and Netanyahu's 'Deal of the Century' will not go through

Elijah J. Magnier
emagnier.com
Tue, 16 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC
historical map israel
For over a year now, the Israeli "Deal of the Century" for Palestine has been endorsed by the US establishment and is now echoing to the four corners of the world. The two novices in foreign policy, US President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, manoeuvred by Israel from behind the scenes, are trying to promote it among Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, the three countries who are supposed to exchange territories to further Israel's plans in Gaza and the West Bank. It remains improbable that the US and Israel can impose this plan that has taken shape under the watchful but impotent gaze of Europe and the Arab nations.

Notwithstanding US-Arab-Israeli initial approval of this deal, the ultimate decision is in the hands of the Palestinian people. Although bickering and serious splits are omnipresent among the Palestinian leadership, all (including the President ad interim Mahmoud Abbas) have agreed to reject the Israeli-US deal. Thus, the "Deal of the Century" is expected to fall through because the Palestinians will never again make the mistake they made in 1948, and will hold on to their territory. They will not agree to exchange Palestine for parcels of land in Egypt and Jordan as written in the plan leaked by the same US establishment.
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Megaphone

SOTT Focus: The Prosecution of Julian Assange is Infinitely Bigger Than Assange

Caitlin Johnstone
Medium
Sun, 21 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC
Julian Assange
Julian Assange's mother reported yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder has not been permitted any visitors during his detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors and his lawyers. Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have attested that he urgently needs medical care. Belmarsh is a maximum security prison sometimes referred to as "the UK's Guantanamo Bay".

And yet we're asked to believe that this has something to do with an alleged bail violation and a US extradition request for alleged computer crimes carrying a maximum sentence of five years. If you zoom out and listen to the less-informed chatter of the overt propagandists and the brainwashed rank-and-file Western mass media consumers, you will also see that people believe this has something to do with Russia and rape allegations as well.

Actually, none of these things are true. Assange is being imprisoned under draconian conditions for journalism, and for journalism only. The Obama administration declined to prosecute him after WikiLeaks' publication of the Manning leaks out of concern that doing so would endanger press freedoms, and the Obama administration didn't have any more evidence at its disposal than the Trump administration has now. The "crime" Assange is accused of consists of nothing other than standard journalistic practices that investigative journalists engage in all the time, including source protection and encouraging the source to obtain more material. The only thing that has changed is an increased willingness in the White House to prosecute journalists for practicing journalism, and there are an abundance of reasons to believe that he will be hit with far more serious charges once extradited to US soil. They're not going to all this trouble for a bail violation and a five-year maximum sentence.
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Snakes in Suits

Paul Craig Roberts: When evil is triumphant

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Wed, 17 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC
venezuela blackout
© Gaby Oráa / RMTFExplosion of two transformers of the electricity substation of Terrazas of the Club Hipico of Baruta
Today (April 17) I heard a NPR "news" report that described the democratically elected president of Venezuela as "the Venezuelan dictator Maduro." By repeating over and over that a democratically elected president is a dictator, the presstitutes create that image of Maduro in the minds of vast numbers of peoples who know nothing about Venezuela and had never heard of Maduro until he is dropped on them as "dictator."

Nicolas Maduro Moros was elected president of Venezuela in 2013 and again in 2018. Previously he served as vice president and foreign minister, and he was elected to the National Assembly in 2000. Despite Washington's propaganda campaign against him and Washington's attempt to instigate violent street protests and Maduro's overthrow by the Venezuelan military, whose leaders have been offered large sums of money, Maduro has the overwhelming support of the people, and the military has not moved against him.

What is going on is that American oil companies want to recover their control over the revenue streams from Venezuela's vast oil reserves. Under the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez, continued by Maduro, the oil revenues instead of departing the country have been used to reduce poverty and raise literacy inside Venezuela.

The opposition to Maduro inside Venezuela comes from the elites who have been traditionally allied with Washington in the looting of the country. These corrupt elites, with the CIA's help, temporarily overthrew Chavez, but the people and the Venezuelan military secured his release and return to the presidency.

Comment: Like Libya and Syria, Venezuela is not just about oil
The West needs to rule. It is obsessed with controlling the world, with feeling superior and exceptional. It is a game, a deadly game. For centuries, the West has been behaving like a fundamentalist religious fanatic, and its people have never even noticed that their world views have actually became synonymous with exceptionalism, and with cultural superiority. That is why the West is so successful in creating and injecting extremist religious movements of all denominations, into virtually all parts of the world: from Oceania to Asia, from Africa to Latin America, and of course, to China. Western leaders are 'at home' with Christian, Muslim or even Buddhist extremists.


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Bullseye

Best of the Web: The West's irrational fear of Iran is a disaster waiting to happen

Seyed Mohammad Marandi
Middle East Eye
Thu, 11 Apr 2019 12:20 UTC
blackout venezuela
© AFPIf the Trump regime miscalculates, the house can easily come crashing down on its head Electricity blackouts in Venezuela have been blamed by government supporters on a US-backed regime change operation, as also seen in Iran
While western regimes craft a fresh humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, their corporate and state-owned media and corrupted think-tanks embody what Shakespeare's Lorenzo describes as "this muddy vesture of decay" - and, true to form, frustrate attempts to provide voice to their latest subaltern victims.

Increasingly vitriolic voices, from Paris to Washington, reveal exasperation and express a need to intimidate and justify the eviction of the many increasingly difficult tenants of the Fifth Estate.

Just as advanced capitalism has successfully transformed the first four estates into an almost homogeneous, postmodern utopia for well-heeled Wall Street and Ivory Tower dwellers - amid a deluge of conspiratorial narratives of existential threats - western regime-affiliated intellectual elites vigorously promote a "benign" monopoly in this lucrative piece of real estate.

Ethnocentric worldview

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Stormtrooper

Best of the Web: Julian Assange's Nightmarish Future

Elizabeth Vos
Consortium News
Mon, 15 Apr 2019 00:00 UTC
Belmarsh Prison
© Wikimedia CommonsLondon's Belmarsh Prison
While Julian Assange waits for what comes next - sentencing on skipping bail in England and a U.S. extradition request - he is being held in a maximum-security prison in London that has been called the "UK's Guantanamo Bay" and has been used to detain alleged terrorists, sometimes indefinitely.

The reputation of HM Prison Belmarsh raises natural concerns about the wellbeing of the WikiLeaks publisher there.

"While many prisoners at Belmarsh say it's difficult to see a doctor or a nurse, these services are available at the facility," reports Bloomberg News, regarding the possibility of Assange receiving overdue medical attention.

Her Majesty's Prison Belmarsh had been used to detain high-profile national security prisoners indefinitely without charge under the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act of 2001, passed six weeks after 9/11, until the House of Lords ruled it violated the British Human Rights Act.

Assange was found guilty on Thursday of skipping bail. On May 2 he is scheduled to participate in a court hearing via video link on the U.S. extradition request.


Comment: See also:

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