Iran and Russia plan to establish a joint bank as an effort to multiply bilateral trade and bypass sanctions on the Islamic Republic's banking sector.

Head of the Iran-Russia Joint Chamber of Commerce Asadollah Asgaroladi said that Tehran and Moscow are studying the possibilities of opening a new chapter in trade relations that could break the domination of Western currencies over bilateral exchanges.

"Since Russian banks fear the implications of working with Iran due to sanctions, we want to establish the joint Iran-Russia bank with the help of our central banks and private sectors," Asgaroladi said.

"Such a bank would be able to exchange money between the two sides using rials and rubles and put aside dollars, euros and pounds," he added.

Several relatives of people killed in the MH17 plane crash are considering suing the Dutch state for negligence over its handling of the tragedy, the Telegraaf says on Friday.

Remarks about one of the victims wearing an oxygen mask made by foreign affairs minister Frans Timmermans on television earlier this week were 'the final straw' for some relatives, the paper says.

Relatives who had taken comfort in the fact their relatives had not suffered were shocked by the revelations. 'We did not know. This should never have happened,' one relative told the paper.

When exactly a month ago the supposedly objective, impartial Netherlands released its official, 34-page preliminary report of the MH-17 crash over Ukraine, presumably based on black box data, air traffic control records, and other "authentic, verified" information, there were precisely zero mentions of "oxygen", "mask" or "oxygen mask."

Which is odd, because in what should become the biggest Freudian slip scandal in false-flag history, certainly since the Gulf of Tonkin, yesterday Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans accidentally revealed for the very first time ever, that one of the Australian passengers aboard the doomed airplane "appears to have donned an oxygen mask before the fatal crash, suggesting some on board might have been aware of their impending deaths, a Dutch official disclosed." Clearly a crucial aspect of the crash, as it points at the severity of the alleged explosion, yet one which was not noted until yesterday and which completely skipped the purvey of the official crash report for reasons unknown.

Needless to say, this makes a complete mockery of the story that the plane had exploded upon impact with the "Russian" missile, and is why there was supposedly no trace of any impact on the flight's black box recorder. Whether or not it also means that the alternative theory that a Ukraine jet had purposefully downed the Malaysian aircraft to serve as a pretext to implicate Russia, is unclear. But it also means that yet another conspiracy theory becomes fact: namely that whoever were the western powers who doctored and manipulated the "official" crash report of MH-17 to implicate Putin, not only lied but fabricated evidence.

Under the influence of an intense disinformation campaign much of the world has tried its best to ignore the existence of the sovereign state of Novorossiya (Federativnoye Gosudarstvo Novorossiya). The Western media when it does mention Novorossiya applies denigrating terms like "self-declared state", "unrecognized state" and even "puppet republic" to describe the status of Novorossiya. In fact, under international law, Novorossiya has the same status as any other member of the community nations - it is a sovereign independent nation.

The "gold standard" of statehood is the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States enacted in 1933. The Montevideo Convention requires an aspiring state to have it own territory, population, a functioning government and the ability to enter into relationships with other states. Novorossiya, while not currently in control of all its territory, has maintained an undisputed presence in Lugansk and Donetsk, backed up by a seasoned army and security forces. There is a sizeable population in Novorossiya, despite ethnic cleansing attempts by the Ukraine government. There is a functioning government and diplomatic efforts are ongoing, as evidenced by the Minsk process. In a just and fair world then, Novorossiya would be welcomed into the fold of sovereign nations as its newest member. But the world is neither just nor fair and Novorossiya is attacked by enemies in the West and blocked on other fronts by economic sanctions and diplomatic boycotts.

Nonetheless, Novorossiya has friends. The Russian people of course overwhelmingly support this new nation and South Ossetia has welcomed Novorossiya by diplomatically recognizing it. Diplomatic recognition is an important first step towards international legitimacy since South Ossetia itself is recognized by four UN member states - Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nauru. More recognition for Novorossiya of course would be desirable but is not necessary to establish legitimacy. Somaliland, for example, which has been sovereign since 1991 and is recognized by no other country, yet has maintained its complete independence and conducts business worldwide, issues passports and currency, and defends itself without any disapproval from the major powers. Novorossiya, unlike Somaliland, is an industrialized nation in Europe and not on the periphery of Africa; its relevance as an independent nation is assured.

Russia will acquire Europe's largest underground gas storage facility this autumn from Germany's BASF, continuing the development of its Nord Stream operations. In return, the Germans will get access to large gas reserves in Western Siberia.
Gazprom and the Wintersall subsidiary of German chemical company BASF are putting the final touches to the asset swap, which will see Gazprom getting the facility in the small German town of Rehden, Deutsche Welle reported Wednesday.

The framework for the deal was signed in December 2013 and was approved by the European Commission. Both the EU and Russia say the deal will not be sidetracked by sanctions.

The storage facility in Rehden covers eight square kilometers, storing some gas at depths of 2,000 meters. It can hold 4.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas, or about 7 percent of Germany's 60 billion cubic meters of annual consumption.In terms of sheer size the storage center is a crucial element in energy security both for Germany and the nearby Netherlands. In 2012, it represented about one fifth of the Germany's entire storage capacity.

The deal will help Gazprom get a footing in the gas market in Northern and Western Europe after opening its Nord Stream double pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea to Germany. The twin pipes were launched separately, the first in 2011 and the second in 2012.

"As a result, the exchange will significantly strengthen Gazprom's position in the entire production chain, from raw materials, to realization, to final products for customers," Gazprom said, as quoted by Vesti.

BASFalso owns a 15 percent stake in Gazprom's South Stream pipeline, which will deliver Russian gas to central Europe via the Black Sea and the Balkans.

In 2013, Russian natural gas exports to Germany increased to 40.2 billion cubic meters (bcm) up from 33.3 bcm the previous year.

It is common practice for Gazprom to use European gas storage facilities. It currently stores gas in Austria, the UK, Germany, Serbia, Latvia, Belarus, and Armenia.

RT Spanish started broadcasting in Argentina on Thursday, which makes it the first foreign TV channel on national television in the Latin America country. It will be available for over 80% of the country's 42 mln population.

A joint initiative of the two countries was made possible by the presidents of Russia and Argentina, Vladimir Putin and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who inaugurated the 24/7 broadcast during a video conference.

President Putin said he was sure that "the launch of a Spanish-language Russian channel in Argentina will make Russia much more understandable and will promote the further rapprochement between the peoples of our countries."

Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner said "We are really glad to welcome RT Spanish in Television Digital Terrestre (TDA), which is available all over the country."

"Harsh information wars and attempts of some countries to monopolize the truth and use it in their own interests have become a sign of modern times," Putin said stressing that "in these circumstances alternative sources of information are particularly in demand. RT is definitely one of them."

This article's bias and dishonesty is surprising to even the most hardened of cynics ...

The FT published a truly astounding, nay, embarrassing, article yesterday co-authored by Catherine Belton and Neil Buckley about bankrupted former oligarch Sergei Pugachev's legal battle with Russian prosecutors over the financial implosion of his business empire in 2012.

It betrays a stunning ignorance of the facts of the case, facts which are common knowledge to the financial community in Moscow.

In the 27 paragraph article, 17 of them were effectively a soapbox for Pugachev, with most of the rest drawing one false inference after another.

Only in the 15th paragraph does the article mention that the government charged Pugachev with massive and brazen fraud at the time, euphemizing it to the point where it seems trivial. It never mentions that Mr. Pugachev presided over the largest corporate bankruptcy in Russian history. That slim paragraph, and another minor mention, buried at the end of the article (paragraph #22), is the only space the FT gives to the other side of the story.

The FT grossly distorts the issue, painting Pugachev as another persecuted oligarch worthy of pity, when in fact, he is widely seen by most financial experts in Moscow, foreign and domestic, to be a died-in-the-wool fraudster, the Russian Bernie Madoff.

The demonization of Vladimir Putin fits in with the ideas voiced by US President Barack Obama, who has announced a new strategy of containing Russia, Cold War 2.0. This has set in motion Soviet-era mechanisms: instead of provoking "nationwide resentment" and "revolutions," the strategy has only strengthened public support for the president in Russia.

Acting in the spirit of the 20th century Cold War, foreign media and their masterminds disregarded the recent political and, most importantly, economic changes. As a result, their determination to push Russia into isolation has engendered a strong suspicion of the US administration's incompetence, including in the United States.

The examples of Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, which are often cited in connection with the demonization of Putin, are an element in the Western security services' game. More people are coming to believe that Gaddafi and Hussein were killed to create a precedent for using illegal methods to remove a legitimately elected leader of a sovereign state. In other words, the goal is to put psychological pressure on other leaders, including Vladimir Putin.


This practice needs to be considered seriously. Shocked by this disregard for law, Russian society is consolidating around the country's supreme authority, which is fresh evidence that society has not yet turned into a group of individual consumers who could give up their sovereignty for Parmesan cheese.

Speaking to students at Harvard's John F. Kennedy Forum Thursday, US Vice President Joseph Biden committed what the US media characterizes as a "gaffe." In other words, he told an embarrassing truth about US government policy, one that is usually obfuscated in the remarks of government officials and the commentaries of media pundits.

Asked about US policy in Syria, Biden touched on the dirty secret of the current US-led war against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. ISIS (or ISIL as the Obama administration terms it) is essentially the creation of the United States and its allies who fomented civil war in Syria against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Referring to Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Biden said, "They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad - except that the people who were being supplied were al Nusra and al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world."

"Now you think I'm exaggerating," he continued, to emphasize his point. "Take a look! Where did all of this go?" Biden claimed that the US opposed arming these al Qaeda-linked groups, which included ISIS, adding, "We could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them."

1997 witnessed the birth of one of the most pivotal American think tanks in modern times, whose ideas and objectives would come to shape the foreign policy of the United States (U.S.) for decades to come. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was founded by William Kristol, the chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle during the Bush senior administration, and Robert Kagan, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The PNAC group's stated objectives included the desire to "shape a new century favourable to American principles and interests" along with challenging "regimes hostile to U.S. interest and values".

Prominent individuals who belonged to the think tank include some of the most influential politicians in America's recent history, including the former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the Vice President of the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration, Dick Cheney, the ex President of the World Bank and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Global Strategic Affairs under Ronald Regan. In September 2000, the PNAC group released a document titled: 'Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century', in which the group discusses the need for the U.S. to assert its military authority around the globe to secure its strategic objectives: