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Guaido under treason investigation in Venezuela over backroom Essequibo bargaining revelations

Paul Dobson
Venezuela Analysis
Tue, 10 Sep 2019 19:50 UTC
Essequibo venezuela guaido treason
© Roberto InsignaresJuan Guaido, Vanessa Neumann and Manuel Avendaño are accused of renouncing Venezuela’s claim over the Essequibo region to the United Kingdom in exchange for political support for their regime change agenda.
Self-declared "Interim President" Juan Guaido and two of his top advisors are being accused of treason and have had a criminal investigation opened against them.

Authorities have accused Guaido, his UK envoy, Vanessa Neumann, and his international office coordinator, Manuel Avendaño, of surrendering Venezuela's claim to the disputed Essequibo region in exchange for political support from the UK government.

The move comes as a recorded phone conversation between Neumann and Avendaño was released on Friday, in which the former can be heard advising Guaido's Venezuela-based team to "drop" the "official [government] line that we want to take control of the Essequibo from Guyana."

Neumann goes on to reference talks with the British Foreign Commonwealth Office and Guyana's high commissioner, clarifying that "they won't support [Guaido's efforts to overthrow Maduro] while we continue [that] line."

Comment: Venezuela prosecutors open probe into opposition leader Juan Guaido for 'high treason'

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Arrow Up

Trump says he could meet with President Rouhani, perhaps at UN General Assembly


RT
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 19:56 UTC
Trump/Rouhani
© unknownIranian President Hassan Rouhani • US President Donald Trump
US President Donald Trump said he has "no problem with the idea" of meeting with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani. There are rumors the meeting could happen later this month at the UN General Assembly.

Trump left open the possibility of the meeting during one of his helicopter press-conferences at the White House on Monday, prior to departing for North Carolina. "Iran should straighten it out, because they're in a very bad position right now."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that Trump was willing to meet with Rouhani "with no pre-condition," because "we don't want war with Iran."
"It's up to the Ayatollah to make the decision about the direction he wants to take his country," Pompeo added, referring to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is rumored by the US media to be against the meeting.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Prime Minister of Deception, Netanyahu finds yet another 'super secret' Iranian nuclear facility...


RT
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 18:58 UTC
Netanyahu
© Reuters/Ronen ZvulunNetanyahu speaks at news conference September 9, 2019.
As the world seeks to defuse tensions between the US and Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reappeared with fresh and controversial claims of "secret" Iranian nuclear activity, and he had visual materials to help.

In a brief press conference on Monday, Netanyahu claimed that Israel has discovered a secret Iranian "nuclear weapons development site" at Abadeh, south of the city of Isfahan. The Iranians "destroyed" the site, however, upon learning that Israel knew about it, Netanyahu said.

Using dramatic visual aids to back up his story - a penchant that has inspired mocking and memes - Netanyahu said it was "incredible" that "every time" Israel reveals information about Iran's alleged nuclear activities, Tehran suddenly moves to "cover up their tracks."

Comment: More from Sputnik, 9/9/2019: Possessor of real nukes cries wolf: Zarif reacts to Netanyahu's claim
Zarif: "[Netanyahu] and the #B_Team just want a war, no matter [the] innocent blood and another $7 TRILLION," the 'B Team' comment a reference to Netanyahu, hawkish senior Trump advisor John Bolton, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and UAE Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed, each of whose names have the letter 'b' in them. The "$7 trillion" was presumably a reference to President Trump's criticism of his predecessors, whom he accused of spending $7 trillion on "endless wars" in the Middle East.

Zarif accompanied the tweet with a 2002 video clip featuring Netanyahu's testimony to US lawmakers in the run up to the Iraq War, with Netanyahu promising "enormous positive reverberations" for the entire Middle East if Saddam Hussein's government was toppled. "This time, he assuredly won't be on the sidelines watching," Zarif warned.

[Netanyahu] "Even before that, Iran knew we were on to them, and so they cleared the [Abadeh] site. They cleared it...and then they actually covered up the site. This is an actual cover-up. They put gravel on it to try to hide their traces, but they didn't," the Israeli prime minister said, showing alleged satellite photos of the demolished alleged nuclear facility.

The UN's nuclear watchdog has yet to comment on Netanyahu's presentation. Earlier in the day, IAEA acting director-general Cornel Feruta told reporters that he had had "very substantial discussions with Iranian senior officials," and that he had been "pleased with the tone and the input that we received in those conversations."

Following Netanyahu's presentation Monday, Yair Lapid, co-leader of the opposition Blue and White Party, accused the prime minister of engaging in pre-election "propaganda" at the expense of Israel's national security. "The Iranian nuclear programme cannot be used for campaign Shenanigans," he tweeted. Israel is set to hold snap legislative elections later this month after Netanyahu's Likud Party and its allies failed to form a coalition government after elections in April.
From Sputnik, 9/9/2019 Israeli FM urges JCPOA parties to annul deal, join US sanctions
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz on Monday called on the signatories of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known commonly as the Iran nuclear deal, to annul the pact and join the US sanctions against Tehran in a bid to stop what he called Iran's "terrorist ambitions."

"Following IAEA's announcement on Iran's violation of JCPOA, I call on France, UK, Germany and others to annul the agreement and join American sanctions against Iran. The world must unite against Iran's military nuclear and global terrorist ambitions," Katz posted on Twitter.
Iranians and IAEA reps
© Reuters/Nazanin Tabatabaee/WANAActing head of UN's IAEA, Cornel Feruta, meets with Iranian FM Javad Zarif in Tehran, September 8, 2019.
On Sunday, the acting director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Cornel Feruta, said in a press briefing following his visit to Tehran and talks with senior Iranian officials that the agency was "informed about Iran's latest activities related to centrifuge research and development."
See also: And this from May, 2018:




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Attention

Italian Connection: Obama's attempts to set up Trump, deep state ties to Italians, server scandal

Joe Hoft
Gateway Pundit
Sat, 07 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
Renzi/Obama
© italoamericano.orgItalian PM Matteo Renzi • Former US President Barack Obama
The recent firings of top Italian spies were likely related to Obama and a plot to set up candidate and President Trump in a Hillary email scandal. We first reported this in May and now it appears this story is finally receiving sunlight!

In May Italian Prime Minister Conte asked for the resignations of four top intelligence officials after his call with President Donald Trump. After that it was reported that the recent removal of these top Italian intelligence ministers from their positions as top spies in the government had been uncovered.

Our story started in January 2017 when Computer World wrote about alleged crimes committed by Italian Giulio Occhionero:
The Tuesday arrest of Giulio Occhionero and his sister, Francesca Maria, has brought to light what appears to be the biggest, and highest-profile, hacking of institutional and corporate accounts ever reported in Italy. The siblings have been planting the Pyramid Eye remote access Trojan on computers using a spear-phishing technique over several years, according to the arrest order. They attacked at least 18,000 high-profile targets, including former Prime Ministers Matteo Renzi and Mario Monti, President of European Central Bank Mario Draghi, as well as employees and heads of various ministries including Internal Affairs, Treasury, Finance and Education.
But Giulio Occhionero claimed that he and his sister, Francesca Maria, were set up.

Comment: Check out the video for perspective on the Italian connection and the set up to frame Trump:


See also: Former Italian PM linked to Trump spying and Obama is also a cohort of the Clintons and George Soros

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X

MIT Media Lab director resigns in wake of institute's hidden financial ties to Epstein

Bowen Xiao
The Epoch Times
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
Joi Ito
© Phillip Faraone/Getty Images/WIRED25Joi Ito onstage at WIRED 25 Festival, San Francisco, CA, 2018
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Media Lab Director Joi Ito resigned on Sept. 7, a day after a new report detailed how the lab attempted to hide its financial relationship with recently deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had been facing trial on child sex-trafficking charges.

According to dozens of pages of emails and other documents obtained by The New Yorker, the Media Lab continued to accept gifts from Epstein, even as he was listed as "disqualified" in MIT's official donor database. The lab concealed the full amount of donations received from Epstein by marking his contributions as anonymous.

The documents also revealed that Epstein apparently served as a mediator of sorts between the lab and other wealthy donors, soliciting millions in donations, including from Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Leon Black, the report said. According to The New Yorker, the financial connections between the lab and Epstein went "well beyond" what the lab and its director previously described in public statements.
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Folder

Trump-Russia; Clinton-Libya: Tale of two probes and the FBI

Mark Hemingway
RealClear Investigations
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:00 UTC
Hillary
© Current AffairsFormer Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Records recently posted online by the FBI indicate that it did little to investigate allegations from private sources connected to Republicans about a scheme in which associates of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to exploit their connection to her to profit from the turmoil in Libya in 2011.

The FBI received the documents in June 2016, around the same time it launched an exhaustive, three-year investigation of the Trump campaign's ties to Russia based, in part, on information from private sources connected to Democrats that in the main would prove to be false - the Steele dossier.

The bureau's different responses to these documents also came during the same period when FBI Director James B. Comey controversially cleared Clinton, in his first of two exonerations, of criminal wrongdoing in the bureau's probe of her unauthorized and insecure email setup.

The documents, quietly released as part of the FBI's case files for the "Midyear Exam," its code name for the Clinton email investigation, revive a lingering mystery from Clinton's tenure as the nation's chief diplomat: Why did Sidney Blumenthal, the former journalist and Bill Clinton White House aide, send her a series of detailed memos and reports about Libya beginning in 2011?

Comment: See also:

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Laptop

Anonymous hacker, WikiLeaks source Jeremy Hammond summoned for testimony by Fed Grand Jury

Dell Cameron
Gizmodo
Tue, 03 Sep 2019 10:00 UTC
Jeremy Hammond
© FreeJeremy.net/WikipediaJeremy Hammond
Imprisoned hacktivist Jeremy Alexander Hammond, a former WikiLeaks source once regarded as the FBI's most-wanted cybercriminal, has been called to testify before a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, Gizmodo has learned.

On Saturday, the Jeremy Hammond Support Committee announced that the 34-year-old Chicago hacker had been transferred from his medium-security prison in Memphis, Tennessee, to a federal transfer center in Oklahoma City. But on Tuesday he arrived in Virginia, where he's expected to be questioned before a grand jury regarding his past ties with WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization whose founder, Julian Assange, currently faces a slew of federal charges, including several under the Espionage Act.

"Given the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, we don't know the nature or scope of the grand jury's investigation. However, our assumption is that this is the same grand jury that Chelsea Manning is currently being incarcerated for refusing to testify before," his supporters said in a statement.

Comment: See also:

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Bell

Brexit fiasco! Bojo suspends parliament for 5 weeks, what's next?


RT
Tue, 10 Sep 2019 12:44 UTC
Boris Johnson
© Getty ImagesBritish PM Boris Johnson
As the dust settles in Westminster after a raucous night that saw competing MPs trade blows over the suspension of the UK parliament, where does it leave the Brexit process? RT attempts to give clarity to the current chaos.

On Monday night, the supposed "mother of all parliaments" closed its doors on sitting British lawmakers after PM Boris Johnson chose to prorogue (suspend) proceedings for 5 weeks, at a time of national crisis over Brexit.

With little over 7 weeks until the UK is officially scheduled to exit the European Union (October 31) and no deal agreed with Brussels, what is next for the rollercoaster Brexit process?



Comment: More from RT, 10/9/2019: Scuffles in House of Commons, MPs try to stop suspension of parliament
The British House of Commons descended into chaos on Tuesday as MPs tried to one-up each other with ostentatious displays of outrage over Boris Johnson's suspension of parliament.

MPs scuffled at the doorway and had to be escorted out by security. One MP even vaulted themselves at the chair of outgoing House Speaker John Bercow.

Meanwhile, the less melodramatic among them merely held up signs reading 'silenced' in protest at the five-week closure announced by UK prime minister. Bercow also railed against the 'proroguing' or suspension of parliament.

Labour's Lloyd Russell-Moyle, 35, threw himself at Bercow's chair. When Bercow later left the chamber and made his way to the House of Lords, he left his own 'silenced' sign in his vacant seat.


Opposition MPs even engaged in a protest singalong, refusing to leave the chamber in opposition to what they perceive as a bastardization of British democracy.

The bizarre scenes unfolded at roughly 1:30am British time, after a marathon day in which MPs successfully blocked Johnson's second bid for a snap general election.


Bercow told the new Black Rod Sarah Clarke, essentially a messenger from the House of Lords, who entered the chamber to summon Bercow and the MPs through the lobby to the upper house:
"I will play my part but this is not a normal prorogation, it is not typical, it is not standard. It is one of the longest for decades. And it represents, not just in the minds of many colleagues but huge numbers of people outside, an act of executive fiat... but I will play my part."


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Gold Bar

China: Gold reserves up another 100 tonnes despite escalation of trade war with US


Sputnik
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 17:12 UTC
China Gold
© AP/Kin Cheung
Earlier, market watchers reported that Chinese exports to the US had fallen by 16 percent year-on-year in August, while imports from the US sagged by over 22 percent in the same period. The slump came as the US slapped a 15 percent tariff on the remaining $300 billion-worth of goods imported from China, with the tax stepping into effect on September 1.

China's gold reserves climbed by some 99.91 tonnes over the past nine months, with total gold reserves standing at 2,141 tonnes as of August 30, and foreign exchange reserves growing to $3.1 trillion, according to fresh figures from the People's Bank of China released over the weekend.

Between July and August alone, the value of China's gold hoard is said to have climbed by over $7.5 billion, from $87.87 to $95.45 billion, with the country buying 5.91 tonnes of the precious metal in the last month. China's total gold reserves had stood at 2,042 tonnes of the precious metal as of the end of December 2018, with the August figures meaning China's total holdings in tonnes had grown by 4.85 percent.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that gold prices have climbed by a whopping 19 percent since the start of the year, in part due to central banks' purchase of the precious metal, and in part due to economic uncertainties stemming from global trade conflicts, and fears of a US recession. The metal hit $1,555 per ounce in trading in late August, its highest value since 2013, and investment banks including Goldman Sachs expect prices to continue their steady climb.
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Snakes in Suits

Best of the Web: How Neocon money is funding the Hong Kong protests

Mnar Muhawesh
MintPress News
Mon, 09 Sep 2019 19:03 UTC
hong kong us
© Kin Cheung | APUnited States flags are reflected on glasses of a protester during a protest in Hong Kong, Sept. 8, 2019.
The West has more to do with the Hong Kong protest movement than it would like us to know. It's the ugly face of Washington's long-standing foreign policy directed at destabilizing one of its long-standing economic foes: China.

It's been a summer of unrest in Hong Kong, and the Western mainstream press has been in uproar providing non-stop coverage of what they've described as a "pro-democracy movement fighting for freedom" against the repressive Chinese government.

Since March, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets each week, clashing with police and security forces, escalating into a fight over who should control Hong Kong's future.

The protests erupted over a proposed amendment to an extradition treaty between Hong Kong, Macau, China and Taiwan.

Comment: See also:

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