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The disastrous rise of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - Rising tensions with Iran

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 19:17 UTC
Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
The appointment of Prince Mohammed bin Salman as Saudi Crown Prince brings a reckless and inexperienced young man who talks of a pre-emptive war against Iran closer to untrammelled power.

King Salman of Saudi Arabia has now appointedhis 31 year old grandson Prince Mohammed bin Salman his Crown Prince, ousting his nephew, former Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who had previously supervised Saudi Arabia's security forces, and who is credited by some people with defeating the challenge within Saudi Arabia that extreme Wahhabi terrorists connected to Al-Qaeda posed to the ruling family.

King Salman is 81 and said to be in poor health. If so, and if all goes to plan, that could mean that Prince Mohammed bin Salman might be King of Saudi Arabia very soon, possibly within months.

That is an alarming prospect. I have already explained of how Prince Mohammed bin Salman's economic programme has lost all touch with reality, and of how his foreign policy is amateurish and reckless, involving Saudi Arabia in a disastrous war in Yemen and a pointless and unnecessary conflict with Qatar in which it is losing the support of the US.

Comment: See also: Saudi King names young son Mohammed bin Salman crown prince, strips eldest of title and post

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Propaganda

Otto Warmbier's death is being exploited for propaganda purposes by western media

Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:37 UTC
otto warmbier
Otto Warmbier was arrested last year on charges of theft as he attempted to leave North Korea after traveling there with a tour group. His recent release from North Korea after 15 months of detainment was followed by his death in the US.

A firestorm of accusations, condemnation, and angry threats have resonated across the Western media, with op-eds ranging from the Independent's, "America needs to do something about Otto Warmbier's death - but military force against North Korea isn't an option," which calls on US foreign policy to follow that of Imperial Rome's, including swift and severe retribution, to the Australian's, "What did North Korea do to Otto Warmbier?," which incoherently leaps from commenting on Warmbier's "beautiful name" to claiming, "he was a pawn, a victim of the maniacal brutality of Kim Jong-un," to Foreign Policy's piece in which the title, "North Korea Would Not Hesitate to Kill You," says it all.

Nowhere amongst this familiar Western propaganda used worldwide to dehumanize nations and prime the public for unending hostilities can any actual evidence be found that the North Korean government killed Otto Warmbier. In every article it is noted that he was returned to the US, and that it was in the US where he died. His death, however, is being blamed on his alleged mistreatment while in North Korea.
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Arrow Down

US undermines global oil prices, crude falls to lowest level in 7 months


RT
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:11 UTC
oil prices
© Unknown
On Wednesday, crude prices fell to their lowest level since November as growing US production is undermining supply cuts by OPEC and Russia.

Brent was trading 26 cents down at $45.76 per barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate dropped 20 cents to $43.31.
"The lack of a positive response in oil prices clearly suggests market participants are not convinced that the OPEC's efforts will help shore up prices in a meaningful way in the short-term as shale supply continues to rise in the US," said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at futures brokerage Forex.com, as quoted by Reuters.

"Unless we see a marked reduction in crude stockpiles, the possibility of further short-term falls in the price of oil cannot be ruled out," he added.

Comment: The US strategy, as a part of its economic war on Russia, is ultimately self-defeating and can only be considered a short-term victory at best. Russia has learned to grow in the face of difficulty. There will come a point when the US is no longer able to manipulate oil prices to such an extreme degree. The ridiculous US obsession against Russia may very well end up being its own demise.

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War Whore

Dept. of Defense report finds Chelsea Manning leaks on Iraq and Afghanistan did not significantly harm national security


RT
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:29 UTC
Chelsea E. Manning
© xychelsea87 / InstagramChelsea E. Manning
Leaked US military files provided to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning did not significantly harm national security, according to a recently released Department of Defense secret report published by BuzzFeed.

The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, providing access to classified intelligence, military and diplomatic documents, has been making headlines since its creation. The US government was hunting and prosecuting whistleblowers, saying the leaks pose a huge threat to national security. But it turns out that the leaked data, specifically on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was not so sensitive, a secret 107-page document obtained by the BuzzFeed News revealed.


Comment: The purpose of punishing Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, John Kirikaou, etc. is not that their leaks are damaging to the American Empire. The US wants to make sure that anyone who might even consider leaking anything understands the US does not suffer such actions lightly. It's not about harm to US national security, it's about total information control to maintain the facade of US moral superiority.


A task force of more than 20 US agencies, including NSA, CIA and FBI, carried out a "line-by-line review" of more than 740,000 records of "known or believed compromised" WikiLeaks data available as for 2011. The document was provided to BuzzFeed under a Freedom of Information Act, in response to a request filed in 2015. However, it was not fully disclosed, with only 35 pages available.
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Megaphone

Leading economist Jeffrey Sachs: US stuck in 20th Century foreign policy with nonstop wars and bases around the globe


RT
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:21 UTC
Jeffrey Sachs
Instead of building a global economy and solving problems like climate change in order to save the planet, the US is waging wars and maintaining military bases across the world, pursuing Cold War policies, Jeffrey Sachs says.

The world missed the opportunity to build a truly united and global economy, as the United States kept its Cold War mentality after the collapse of the Soviet Union and continued antagonizing Russia, Jeffrey Sachs, renowned American economist and director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, told RT in an exclusive interview.
"Both the West and the Soviet Union - Russia made bad mistakes already a quarter of a century ago in not finding a way towards a more constructive integration of the economies," Sachs said, adding that moving NATO borders "few hundred miles to the east" violated "Gorbachev's correct idea... that we should aim to have a unified economy that stretches from the North Sea and the Atlantic all the way to the Pacific, to Vladivostok."
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Attention

London and the Clash of the Extremists: Radical Islamists vs. radical anti-Islamists

J.M. Berger
The Atlantic
Mon, 19 Jun 2017 17:03 UTC
finsbury park police
© Neil Hall / ReutersPolice officers attend to the scene after a vehicle collided with pedestrians in Finsbury Park on June 19, 2017.
The violence ISIS carries out in the west provides fodder for anti-Muslim attackers, and violence against Muslims feeds back into the ISIS narrative.

Violent extremists march over the bodies of the innocent in an effort to rip societies apart and rebuild them in a darker image.

While extremists do sometimes fight each other directly, they rely on the tool of terrorism to aim their fire at the center of society. The immediate effect is to cut down people who are simply trying to live their lives in peace. The ultimate goal is to destroy the center entirely.

Al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks aimed to "wake up" the Muslim masses and inspire them to rise up against "corrupt" rulers in the Middle East and the "complicit" West. The Islamic State (ISIS) has advanced this concept into an even more ambitious war to completely eliminate the "gray zone" of peaceful coexistence among sects and religions.


Comment: Analysts like Berger won't "go there", but there is a another reason on top of those listed so far. Terror groups like ISIS are ponerogenic unions, groups of pathological individuals and those whose minds they have managed to corrupt. They are an infection on the body politic, and they wish to tear down the existing structures both at home and abroad, so that they will obtain all political power.

But their existence also serves the purpose demonstrated so well in Orwell's 1984: terrorism (as played by "Emmanuel Goldstein" and his followers) as a further means of political control by a group that on the surface appears to be in conflict with it (the "Party"). They may be a minority, but there are some in the Western establishment who support terrorism, seeing it as useful for their own purposes. It justifies foreign intervention and gives them an internal and external enemy. The Communists served the same purpose during the Cold War.

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MIB

Cover is blown: Brazilian secret service reveals identity of CIA's Brazilian chief


RT
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 17:02 UTC
Brazil and US flags
© Global Look Press
The GSI, the Brazilian secret service, published the identity the CIA's Brazil chief on its public list of visitors on its website earlier this month, according to reports.

A screen shot of the website shows that on June 9, the official agenda of General Sérgio Etchegoyen, head of the GSI, had a meeting with Duyane Norman, listing him as "Chief of the CIA Post in Brasilia."

It is not clear if Norman is the former or acting Brazil chief.

The indiscretion was revealed by Folha De Sao Paulo on Monday, and the gaff was first noticed by Eurasia consultancy analyst Joao Augusto de Castro Neves.

The US embassy in Brasilia told Folha it had read the reports but "following our policy, we cannot confirm or deny [them]."
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Bullseye

Buzzfeed's claimed "revelation" of Tillerson's new Russia strategy is old news

Adam Garrie
The Duran
Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:58 UTC
tillerson lavrov
Buzzfeed has reported that it got its hands on a classified document outlining US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's 'new Russia strategy'. There are only two problems.

1. The alleged contents of the document contained no new information above and beyond what Tillerson has stated on many occasions.

2. The document may not exist.

The three points are outlined by Sputnik as follows:
"First, it is supposed to convince Moscow to refrain from what the United States sees as aggressive actions and to make it clear that Washington will retaliate.

The second point is engagement with the Russian side on issues of strategic interest to the United States, including Syria and North Korea, as well as cybersecurity. In particular, Tillerson wants to seek coordination with Russia in fighting the Islamic State terror group, which is banned in both countries, more actively. As for North Korea, it is supposed to reverse the growth of trade between Russia and North Korea in order to isolate Pyongyang.
The third point of the plan emphasizes the importance of maintaining strategic stability with Russia".
Literally none of this is new information. Tillerson has repeatedly said, including in the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that he would like to cooperate with Russia constructively on issues such as Syria and North Korea. This was underscored in Tillerson's most recent meeting in Moscow with Lavrov.
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Megaphone

FBI and DHS: Alleged Russian hacking had no impact on outcome of 2016 presidential election


Sputnik
Wed, 21 Jun 2017 16:51 UTC
trump election night rally
© REUTERS/ Mike Segar
US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and FBI officials said Wednesday in a Senate hearing that alleged Russian hacking of US voting system had no impact on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election vote tally.

"There was no detected change," DHS Acting Director of Cyber Division Samuel Liles stated when asked if he had any evidence that the votes were changed in any way in the 2016 election.

DHS Acting Deputy Undersecretary of Cybersecurity Jeanette Manfra and FBI Assitant Director of Counterintelligence Division Bill Priestap also said during the hearing at the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the were no changes to the votes.

The United States has repeatedly accused Russia of meddling in the 2016 presidential election — Moscow refuted all allegations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the accusations "absolutely groundless".
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Arrow Up

State Department confirms formal inquiry into Hillary Clinton's mishandling of classified information

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:46 UTC
clinton
© InconnuLa Clinton
The State Department confirmed months of speculation on Tuesday when it leaked to Fox News that it had opened a formal inquiry into Hillary Clinton's alleged mishandling of classified information on her private email server. Clinton, who has repeatedly blamed the FBI's handling of the inquiry for her embarrassing defeat in November, is now facing the possibility of having her top-level security clearance revoked - a penalty that echoes the investigation of former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn.

President Donald Trump repeatedly promised to investigate the Clinton's, so the probe could see the president fulfilling yet another campaign promise. As Fox reports, "during the FBI's investigation of Clinton's use of top-secret and classified information on her private server, former FBI Director James Comey said there were seven email chains on Clinton's computer that were classified at the "Top Secret/Special Access Program level."

Another 2,000 emails on her private server were found to have contained information deemed classified now, though not marked classified when sent. In addition, the server also contained 22 top-secret emails deemed too damaging to national security to be released."
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