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Gold Coins

Multipolar world: Iranian envoy says currency swap agreement with Pakistan could begin soon

Shahram Haq
The Express Tribune
Thu, 03 May 2018 00:00 UTC
Pakistani currency
© EXPRESS/ File
Ambassador of Iran to Pakistan Mehdi Honardoost said the establishment of banking channels and currency swap agreements with Pakistan is in process, and the business community should be able to hear the "good news" soon enough.

Currently, bilateral trade between the two countries is hindered by the absence of banking channels in the wake of US sanctions on Iran.

However, some of those sanctions were lifted in early 2016 after Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear weapons programme, paving way for trade with the country.

Comment: Sanctions and demonization will not stop Iran and and other countries from doing business; the world no longer revolves around the US and all of it's egregious policies.

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Red Flag

SBU raid Russian news agency as part of 'investigation into hybrid war against Ukraine'


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 14:50 UTC
RIA Novosti office Kiev
© SputnikBuilding in Kiev which houses the RIA Novosti office targeted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)
The Kremlin said a raid conducted by Ukraine on the Kiev office of Russian news agency RIA Novosti is "outrageous and blatant", adding that Moscow awaits "harsh and uncompromising" response from international groups.

On Tuesday morning RIA Novosti reported that its office was targeted by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). Hours earlier, Kirill Vyshynsky, who heads the Ukrainian bureau of the agency, was detained near his home in Kiev.

"If these actions of the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are somehow related to the work of these media, they are absolutely outrageous and blatant [and] violate all norms and rules," Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.
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Attention

The Nakba: A disaster that is never-ending for Palestinians

Marcello Di Cintio
The Globe and Mail
Fri, 11 May 2018 00:00 UTC
Nabka anniversary 2018
An Israeli border policeman stands guard as Palestinian demonstrators take part in a protest ahead of the Nakba anniversary in Bethlehem on May 10, 2018.
Marcello Di Cintio's books include Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, winner of the 2013 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. His latest book is Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense.

Abu Ahmed Sa'ad was 12 years old when a group of weary Palestinians arrived on foot seeking a night's respite in the village of al-Birwa. It was spring of 1948, just after the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14 and the beginning of the first Arab-Israeli War. More refugees passed through in the days that followed, all escaping the fighting along the coast. When farmers spotted Jewish soldiers advancing on the village, the Sa'ads and other al-Birwa families decided to flee. They took almost nothing with them. Everyone believed their exile from al-Birwa would be short-lived. The Sa'ad's were wrong. Al-Birwa was destroyed.

The Sa'ads were among the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes during the 14-month war, and al-Birwa one of more than 400 Palestinian villages effectively erased by Jewish forces. Seventy years later, three generations of Palestinian refugees and their descendants remain scattered throughout the world. More than five million refugees are registered with the United Nations Work and Relief Agency, and 1.5 million live in UNRWA-administered camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Palestinians refer to this mass-displacement as the Nakba, or "catastrophe."

Comment: '70th anniversary of Nakba': Trump creates, then exacerbates, crisis for Palestinian refugees

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Stop

Argentine President Macri announces deal with IMF, imposition of austerity measures

Frank Sellers
The Duran
Tue, 15 May 2018 13:07 UTC
Argentina protest IMF
Argentina appears to be on the road to getting the IMF treatment 2.0, and the people are taking to the streets over it..Radio Havanna reports:
Thousands of Argentineans marched in Buenos Aires on Thursday against the economic policies of the administration of Mauricio Macri and an announced deal with the IMF, the International Monetary Fund. Organizers of the protest said that the government will undoubtedly worsen the economic situation in the country and put in danger Argentina's peso currency.

Under a driving rain, protesters from progressive organizations and unions carried banners and waved flags. Secretary-General of the Association of State Workers, Hugo Godoy, sounded defiant as he spoke out against the government policies. He said: "To the workers: they will not stop us, nor the storm and because we workers are not going to to permit this Congress to accept the interference of the International Monetary Fund, the increase of tariffs or the labor reform. We are going to fight until the end so that those infamous resolutions of the government of Macri are turned back. The workers have a memory. We know that policies like these led us to hell and we will not allow it."

Macri and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde announced on Tuesday they were opening talks for a financing deal after Argentina's peso currency touched a new low of 23.5 to the dollar, despite tighter fiscal measures and hiking interest rates up to 40 percent in Latin America's third-largest economy.

On Wednesday, the Treasury Ministry announced it would seek a "stand-by deal" from the IMF, a type of financing that would likely require more conditions and orthodox policy reforms than a Flexible Credit Line (FCL), such as the more so-called stable economies of Mexico and Colombia have.
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Newspaper

Soros Foundation leaves Hungary for Berlin citing 'repression' of civil society


Sputnik
Tue, 15 May 2018 13:01 UTC
George Soros
© AP Photo / Kin Cheung
Earlier, the Hungarian government had expressed their opposition to the activities of billionaire George Soros and his organizations, accusing them of meddling in the country's internal affairs.

According to reports, George Soros' Open Society Foundations will close their office in the Hungarian capital and move to Berlin.

Comment:

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Rocket

Hassan Nasrallah: 'Hezbollah will strike heart of Israel if it continues crossing red lines'


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 10:15 UTC
Activists of al-Quds Liberation Movement
© Zahid Hussein / ReutersActivists of al-Quds Liberation Movement
The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah has warned Tel Aviv against crossing any more "red lines," claiming that the latest Israeli strikes on Iranian targets in Syria already triggered an "entirely new" stage of the confrontation.

"An entirely new phase" of armed resistance against Israel began last week, the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, noted on Monday night, claiming that some 55 missiles - including some "heavy" ones - were fired into the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights last Wednesday evening.

While stopping short of confirming or denying if Hezbollah was involved in the attacks on the Golan Heights, Nasrallah did note that "this is just one form of retaliation for the continuous Israeli aggression against Syria."

Comment: See also:

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Rocket

Bolton wants North Korea's nukes shipped to US in exchange for "security assurances"


RT
Tue, 15 May 2018 08:13 UTC
Y-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee
© National Nuclear Security Administration / ReutersY-12 complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee
President Donald Trump's national security adviser wants North Korea to ship all of its nuclear weapons to a US lab in Tennessee, to make sure Kim Jong-un follows through on his promise to dismantle the program.

North Korea's nuclear weapons should be dismantled and sent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee if Kim wants to see a relaxation of sanctions, John Bolton said during an interview on ABC's 'This Week' on Sunday.

"I think the implementation of this decision means getting rid of all the nuclear weapons, dismantling them, taking them to Oak Ridge", said Bolton. "It means getting rid of the uranium enrichment and plutonium processing capabilities. It means addressing the ballistic missile issue. A lot of things like that."
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Info

New Armenian leader Pashinian assures Putin 'strategic partnership' with Russia not in doubt


RFE/RL
Mon, 14 May 2018 22:37 UTC
pashinian putin
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for what he called Moscow's "balanced position" amid the political upheaval that brought him to power in Yerevan, and reassured the Kremlin that the "strategic alliance" between the countries is not in doubt.

In their first meeting since Pashinian was voted in by parliament on May 8 after leading weeks of antigovernment protests in the South Caucasus country, Putin wished him success and said he hoped that bilateral ties "will develop just as steadily as they have up to now."

The warm tone of the May 14 meeting on the sidelines of a summit of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi was in line with previous comments by Putin and Pashinian, who has repeatedly said that Armenia will not turn its back on Russia -- a far larger and more powerful country that has a major military base in the smaller nation.

Speaking to Putin with reporters present at the start of the meeting, Pashinian said that "the strategic-alliance relations between Armenia and Russia" required "no discussion." He added that "there is a consensus on this issue in Armenia. I think that nobody in our country has or will cast doubt on the strategic importance of Armenian-Russian relations."

Comment: In other words, not a Maidan. See also: Armenia isn't undergoing a color revolution - Armenians are just fed up with Sargsyan

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Arrow Down

Israeli minister compares killing unarmed Palestinian protesters to killing Nazis


RT
Mon, 14 May 2018 21:23 UTC
Gilad Erdan
Gilan Erdan, reprehensible human being.
Israeli Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan appeared to liken Palestinians killed in ongoing border protests to Nazi casualties in World War II when he tweeted about the death toll in Gaza.

Erdan said the number of Palestinians killed at Monday's protest "doesn't indicate anything - just as the number of Nazis who died in the world war doesn't make Nazism something you can explain or understand."

The sixth week of the Great Return March protests has been the most deadly, with 52 fatalities reported so far on Monday. Erdan placed the blame for the deaths solely on Hamas, which is in power in Gaza.


Comment: This is what happens when you give three-year-olds nuclear weapons: "But mommy, he MADE me murder him."


"All responsibility for the bloodshed lies with the leaders of Hamas, who, with Nazi anger, endlessly shed blood to erase from people's memories their own failures in the management of the Gaza Strip. Here it is, the truth." he said.


Comment: Erdan, everything you dislike isn't a Nazi. Seriously.

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Cut

Flashback Pakistan 'suspends military & intel ties' with US after Trump's aid cuts


RT
Wed, 10 Jan 2018 17:14 UTC
Pakistani cadets
© RIZWAN TABASSUM / AFPPakistani cadets parade in Karachi, December 25, 2017
Islamabad is suspending military ties and intelligence sharing with the US, the Pakistani defense minister said, following accusations and aid cuts by President Donald Trump.

Speaking at a public event set up by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) on Tuesday, Defense Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan told the gathering that "there is also a wide field of intelligence cooperation and defense cooperation which we have suspended," according to the Pakistan Tribune.

He did not go into specifics but said the suspension of military and intelligence ties comes on the heels of a recent announcement by US President Donald Trump that Washington was going to curb aid flows to Pakistan.

"Now all veils are off... It is time for a courteous yet ruthlessly candid dialogue between Pakistan and the United States," Khan said.

Comment: See also: The friction is still there: US imposes travel ban on Pakistani officials and family members - Pakistan reciprocates in tit-for-tat ban of their own

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