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Trump threat to China: $100B more in tariffs in response to Beijing's 'unfair retaliation'


RT
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 22:54 UTC
TrumpAirForceOne
© Kevin Lamarque / ReutersPresident Trump speaks to reporters on Air Force One
Donald Trump has instructed the US Trade Representative to consider slapping China with an additional $100 billion in tariffs, accusing China of engaging in "unfair retaliation" instead of backing down to Washington's pressure.
"Rather than remedy its misconduct, China has chosen to harm our farmers and manufacturers. In light of China's unfair retaliation, I have instructed the USTR to consider whether $100 billion of additional tariffs would be appropriate under section 301 and, if so, to identify the products upon which to impose such tariffs," Trump's statement, released by the White House, said.
Earlier this week Beijing announced that it was considering a mirror response, after the United States Trade Representative (USTR) released a preliminary list of Chinese products, totaling some $50 billion, which it plans to slap with increased tariffs, under Trump's order.

Comment: Just Tariffic! The art and tart of negotiation.

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Vader

Iran DM Hatami: MbS and the 'illusion of power' trap; the future of ISIS in Afghanistan


RT
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 12:13 UTC
Hatami
© Al Masdar NewsIranian General Amir Hatami
Saudi Arabia's young leader - who recently compared Iran's Supreme Leader with Hitler - has, like many leaders before him, fallen into the trap of the illusion of power, the Iranian defense minister told RT.

RT caught up with General Amir Hatami during his visit to Moscow, where he headed the Iranian delegation to an international security conference. In an exclusive interview, he chided Saudi Arabian Crown Prince (and de facto ruler) Mohammad bin Salman, often referred to as "MbS" by the media.

The Saudi leader recently wasted no chance to criticize Iran, Saudi Arabia's regional arch-rival. Among other things, the crown prince said Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was worse than Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler and predicted that the two nations may go to war in a decade.
"Those words have been said by a man who has little experience in state affairs," the Iranian official told RT. "Once he claimed he could resolve the situation in Yemen in just one week. Yemen is a poor country with little military strength. The war in Yemen is now in its fourth year, and it has become a quagmire for Saudi Arabia."
Hatami said Mohammad bin Salman's statements should be measured against his achievements, which were not particularly spectacular in Yemen. The country has been devastated by a civil war, in which Saudi Arabia is directly involved on one side and Iran is being accused of secretly arming and supporting the other. It has resulted in one of the biggest humanitarian disasters of modern times, with millions of people living under the threat of famine.
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Beaker

No 100% assurance toxin's origin can be determined says ex-UN chemical weapons expert on Skripal case


RT
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 02:56 UTC
OPCW building
© Sputnik International
While there could be no way to accurately determine the origin of the toxin used against Sergei Skripal, the OPCW's reluctance to address Russia's concerns about the probe undermines its credibility [...] in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Anton Utkin, a former UN chemical weapons inspector in Iraq, told RT.

Moscow's bid for a joint Russia-UK investigation into the Skripal case has been voted down at the extraordinary session of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Wednesday, leaving Russia's concerns and questions about the Salisbury poisoning unanswered.


While Russia accused London of attempting to take advantage of the OPCW to support its own unsubstantiated claims, Dr. Anton Utkin, a former UN inspector in Iraq told RT that Wednesday's decision could undermine the only international mechanism designed to shield humanity from chemical weapons.
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Attention

Duterte: 'If my plane explodes - ask the CIA', after arms request of Russia and China


RT
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 04:03 UTC
Duterte cap
© Noel Celis/AFPPhilippines President Rodrigo Duterte
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte isn't ruling out that the US might be very annoyed and consider his decision to procure weapons from China and Russia a threat, after Washington refused to supply Manila with arms.

The Philippines has been seeking modern weapons and small arms to step up combat against ISIS-linked Islamists, ever since Duterte assumed office in June 2016. However, Washington's refusal to sell assault rifles, over concerns about the country's human rights record amid the ongoing war on drugs, has forced Duterte to seek new suppliers. Manila, which has long depended on the US for weapons, turned to China and Russia to fill the gap.

"The fact is, the Americans really do not honor their word," Rodrigo Duterte said on Thursday, explaining his decision to look for alternative partners. Beijing and Moscow answered the call, even agreeing to provide some of the weapons for free, the Philippines leader told a group of farmers and fishermen gathered at a presidential palace reception.
"So I went to China... to ask [Chinese President Xi Jinping] to help us: 'I need arms,'" Duterte said during his long speech. "Xi Jinping said, 'No problem. Do not pay me, it's all yours.'"

"So I went to Russia... 'I came here to ask for your help! It's okay, I'll give it to you, free,'" Duterte paraphrased President Vladimir Putin's alleged response during their meeting last year.
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Sherlock

'Theater of the absurd': Russian envoy destroys UK's Skripal conspiracy theory at UN security Council


RT
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 19:07 UTC
UN skripal security council
Russia's UN envoy described the UK's attempt, without evidence, to pin the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on Moscow as "theater of absurd", in his address updating the UNSC on the scandal.

The extraordinary meeting was requested by Moscow, following the announcement made by the secretive British Porton Down chemical laboratory, that it had not established that the nerve agent used to poison the Skripals was of Russian origin.

The top British officials explicitly cited the Porton Down laboratory when pinning the blame on Moscow, so following this revelation their theory started to fall apart, said Vasily Nebenzia, noting that the UK's secret agencies rushed to help the government, producing new claims based on some "intelligence data."

"I don't even know how to comment on this. It's some sort of the theater of absurd. You couldn't have come up with better fake story?" Nebenzia asked.


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Info

Paul Manafort approved media 'black ops' to help Yanukovych

Luke Harding
The Guardian
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 17:20 UTC
Paul Manafort
© Drew Angerer / Getty Images / AFPPaul Manafort, former campaign manager for Donald Trump.
Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort authorised a secret media operation on behalf of Ukraine's former president featuring "black ops", "placed" articles in the Wall Street Journal and US websites and anonymous briefings against Hillary Clinton.

The project was designed to boost the reputation of Ukraine's then leader, Viktor Yanukovych. It was part of a multimillion-dollar lobbying effort carried out by Manafort on behalf of Yanukovych's embattled government, emails and documents reveal.

The strategies included:
  • Proposing to rewrite Wikipedia entries to smear a key opponent of the then Ukrainian president.
  • Setting up a fake thinktank in Vienna to disseminate viewpoints supporting Yanukovych.
  • A social media blitz "aimed at targeted audiences in Europe and the US".
  • Briefing journalists from the rightwing website Breitbart to attack Clinton when she was US secretary of state.
Manafort's Ukraine strategy anticipated later efforts by the Kremlin and its troll factory to use Twitter and Facebook to discredit Clinton and to help Trump win the 2016 US election. The material seen by the Guardian dates from 2011 to 2013.


Comment: Luke Harding is a tool. Rather than point out of the obvious: that this is standard operating procedure for American political interests, he just has to get a dig in against Russia. The American 'black ops' propaganda strategy is much more refined than the Russians. But then again, Luke Harding would know all about that.


Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, has indicted Manafort on multiple counts. Manafort is accused of "laundering profits" from his lobbying work in Ukraine, carried out over a period of a decade for Yanukovych and his political party.
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War Whore

CIA documents reveal US was plotting tactics for regime change in Syria as far back as 1986

Brandon Turbeville
The Activist Post
Mon, 02 Apr 2018 16:51 UTC
CIA pentagon syria
While the connections between the plans to destroy Syria and the Obama administration are generally known, what is even less well-known is the fact that there existed a plan to destroy Syria as far back as not only the Bush administration but also the Reagan Administration in 1983.

Documents contained in the U.S. National Archives and drawn up by the CIA reveal a plan to destroy the Syrian government going back decades. One such document entitled, "Bringing Real Muscle To Bear In Syria," written by CIA officer Graham Fuller, is particularly illuminating. In this document, Fuller wrote,
Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf - through closure of Iraq's pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the [Iran-Iraq] war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.
Even as far back as 1983, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez Assad, was viewed as a gadfly to the plans of Western imperialists seeking to weaken both the Iraqis and the Iranians and extend hegemony over the Middle East and Persia. The document shows that Assad and hence Syria represented a resistance to Western imperialism, a threat to Israel, and that Assad himself was well aware of the game the United States, Israel, and other members of the Western imperialist coalition were trying to play against him.

Comment: The US is in the midst of trying to pull off its plan, though it's not going as well as hoped.

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Info

Kurdish Defense Official confirms French troops operate in northern Syria - Putin and Macron discuss the situation in Syria

Helbast Shekhani, Editing by Karzan Sulaivany
Kurdistan 24
Tue, 03 Apr 2018 18:59 UTC
Rezan Gilo, the joint chief of defense in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava)
© Photo: Kurdistan 24Rezan Gilo, the joint chief of defense in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), speaks to Kurdistan 24 on the latest developments after France promised to support the YPG-led SDF, Qamishlo city, Rojava, Syria, April 2, 2018
A senior official in the Kurdish-run administration in northern Syria on Monday confirmed the presence of French forces in the region.

Rezan Gilo, the joint chief of defense in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), told Kurdistan 24 there are French and US troops in Manbij, Raqqa, and all over northern Syria.

"We tell of what we see on the ground, not the statements," he said, responding to some reports denying the presence of those forces in Rojava.

Comment: Turkey on Thursday urged France not to "make the same mistake" as the US by sending troops to the Syrian town of Manbij, which Ankara has threatened to attack to dislodge Kurdish militia.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey would expand its offensive against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia to the town in north Syria.

Turkey's Yeni Safak daily said that France had deployed 50 soldiers to Manbij to support the YPG.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in a telephone call with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron spoke about his recent meetings on Syria with Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the Kremlin press service said in a statement.
"Putin informed Macron about the decisions made at the April 4 Russian-Turkish-Iranian summit in Ankara, which concern further cooperation aimed at ensuring long-term stability in Syria, strengthening the country's sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity," the statement reads. "It was noted that there was a need to advance the political settlement process through implementing the decisions made at the Syrian national Dialogue Congress, as well as to promptly establish a United Nations sponsored Constitutional Committee," the Kremlin press service added.

"The situation in Eastern Ghouta was also discussed, the focus was on the unprecedented large-scale operation to save civilians and withdraw militants not willing to lay down their arms," the statement says. "Russia emphasized the importance of consolidating the global community's efforts to provide humanitarian aid to people in need across Syria in compliance with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2401," the Kremlin press service pointed out.

The two presidents expressed "readiness to continue Russian-French consultations on key aspects of the Syria settlement."

The Kremlin press service added that the telephone call had been initiated by Paris.


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Biohazard

Russian official: OPCW knows no chem weapons produced at facility accused by anonymous British officials


Sputnik
Fri, 06 Apr 2018 17:12 UTC
laboratory
© CC0
Earlier, the Times newspaper reported that the nerve agent allegedly used to poison a GRU ex-employee, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, was produced in a laboratory in the Russian city of Shikhany in the Saratov region.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) as well as international experts are aware of the fact that there are no chemical weapons in Russia's Saratov region, the president's special representative in the region, Michail Babich, said.

"Chemical weapons have never been stored or produced at the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology in Shikhany, which was mentioned in the British intelligence's report," Babich told reporters.

According to the official, the site is working on the eradication of organic chemicals, agricultural chemicals, pesticides and so on.

"Our colleagues from the OPCW are fully aware of it. And it is bewildering how Uzumju, the director general of the OPCW, who had visited all the chemical facilities in Russia, was modestly silent at the organization's emergency meeting on April 4 about this fact," Babich emphasized.


Comment: Uzumju is probably under a lot of pressure. Western intelligence can be very 'persuasive'.


"Of course, this is another confirmation of the scale of the provocation against Russia and the enormous pressure on international officials that Britain and its allies are exerting nowadays," the presidential envoy concluded.

Comment: See Alexander Mercouris's latest for more on the anonymous sources attempting to cover up for the UK's shoddy PR campaign by providing leaked "evidence": The Skripal case and UK's flagrant misuse of 'intelligence'

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Biohazard

Lithuanian, Bulgarian, German officials: UK has presented no proof of Russian involvement in Skripal poisoning


Sputnik
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 17:06 UTC
Saulius Skvernelis
© AFP 2018/ Petras Malukas
Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis has called on the British government to furnish cogent evidence of Russia's involvement in the nerve agent attack on former Russian intelligent officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, saying the current assessment is not convincing.

In an interview with Lithuanian radio station Ziniu Radijas, the prime minister said that Russia's involvement in the Skripal poisoning case hasn't been proven with 100 percent certainty and he urged the UK to finally provide concrete evidence.

"I think that both the UK and international experts should give us a clear answer and draw a line under the case because right now it is highly likely that Russia had its hands in the case - but a possibility is not a 100 percent proof of the fact," Skvernelis said Thursday.

"I hope that experts investigating this will be able to provide concrete evidence," the Lithuanian leader concluded.

Comment: When even the Baltics question your anti-Russian 'evidence', you know it's bad.

Bulgaria's president, Rumen Radev, also spoke out, saying there must be "clear and irrefutable" evidence before Bulgaria is to expel any Russian diplomats.
"Let's not forget that Bulgaria is currently President of the Council of the European Union and as such, it must conduct a policy of dialogue and balance", said Radev, preaching caution and 'transparency' in the investigation.
And the German government's coordinator for Russia, Gernot Erler:
The UK has yet to prove that Russia is culpable in the Skripal poisoning case, and recent revelations contradicting the claim have "raised the pressure" on London, a German government representative said. ... London needed to cough up evidence of Moscow's guilt after the UK's Porton Down military research center said on Tuesday that it could not verify that the nerve agent used in the attack came from Russia.

"That contradicts what we had previously heard from British politicians and will certainly raise the pressure on Britain to show further proof that the traces plausibly point to Moscow," Erler told German broadcaster ARD.
...
Erler added that the contradictory statements coming from London now called into question the reliability of other claims made by Prime Minister Theresa May and her government. Citing classified intelligence reports, the UK government has suggested that Russian President Vladimir Putin may have ordered the nerve agent attack that targeted ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury on March 4.

"These (reports) are not known publicly and now there is pressure for more of this information to be made known, otherwise the whole thing is not transparent," he said.

Asked by ARD who is responsible for the attack, Erler stated simply: "We don't know."

Erler is the second German official this week to publicly rebuke the UK for its handling of the case. On Tuesday, Armin Laschet, the leader of North Rhine-Westphalia and a deputy chairman of Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), tweeted: "If you force almost all NATO countries to show solidarity, shouldn't you have sound evidence? You can think of Russia what you want, but I have learned a different way of dealing with states from studying international law."


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