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Attention

Former Russian minister: US-China trade deal a 'ticking time bomb' for international commerce


RT
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 17:00 UTC
Flags/Capitol
© Hyungwon Kang
The trade agreement between economic superpowers China and the United States will lead to the growth of global trade disputes in the next two years, says Russian presidential adviser Maksim Oreshkin. In an interview with Russia 24 TV channel, the former Russian economic development minister said the trade deal raises a number of questions.

"We see the Europeans' reaction to the US-China deal, we see that the Chinese pledge to increase purchases of American goods causes very serious concerns," said Oreshkin.

He added that there is a question about China's switch to American products, and whether it means additional barriers on European goods.

"This is such a big ticking time bomb and I think it certainly won't explode this year, but starting from 2021-2022 we will see a lot of disputes in the US-China-Europe triangle with the inclusion of other countries."

Oreshkin noted that Russia remains a supporter of multilateral formats when it comes to world trade. "I don't think that bilateralism is a new future for world trade policy. Russia will certainly remain a supporter of the multilateral formats, [such as] the WTO..." he said.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Cover-up: Pentagon AGAIN increases injuries toll from Iranian airstrikes on al-Asad airbase, this time to 34

Corey Dickstein
Stars and Stripes
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 20:22 UTC

Comment: First the Pentagon said there were 'zero casualties'. Then early reports about some 200 injured US troops being flown to Israel for treatment were retracted as 'fake news'. Then they admitted 11 casualties. Now, just over weeks later, the Pentagon has increased that number to '34', and 'promises to review how it reports injuries'...


al-asad airbase iranian airstrikes
The Pentagon said Friday that 34 U.S. service members suffered concussions from the Iranian missile attack Jan. 8 on al Asad Air Base in Iraq and it will review its injury reporting requirements amid the shifting narrative about casualties resulting from that strike.


Comment: In other words, they themselves realize how dodgy this all is.


Eight of the troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injury as a result of the attack have been transported to the United States where they will receive treatment as outpatients at either their home stations or at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, said Jonathan Hoffman, the Pentagon's chief spokesman. Seventeen of the 34 have returned to duty at al Asad since their diagnoses, he said.

The Pentagon's announcement Friday marked at least the third official adjustment to the number of troops injured when Iran launched 11 ballistic missiles into al Asad as retaliation for the U.S. drone strike Jan. 3 in Baghdad on Iran's most powerful military official, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of its elite Quds Force. The base in western Iraq's Anbar province hosts the largest American force in that country - some 1,500 U.S. and allied troops.

Comment: In short, it's a cover-up.

A couple of possible reasons for it: reporting injuries up front would have made it politically difficult for the US to 'de-escalate' and instead have fueled demand for retaliation.

Alternatively, the US sought to downplay the effectiveness of the Iranian military by presenting its airstrikes as a 'miss', and thus preserving perception of American 'invincibility'.

Either way, military casualties is a REALLY sensitive topic in the US...

Here's a reminder of what at least some US personnel saw up close that night:



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Yellow Vest

Millions of Iraqis take to the streets to demand immediate withdrawal of all US forces


RT
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 19:41 UTC

Comment: We're not sure that the turnout was in the millions, but Western observers in Baghdad today reported a sea of people many miles long in every direction.

It looks like the chickens have finally come home to roost on America's bloody adventures in Mesopotamia.


march iraq us troops
© REUTERS/Alaa al-Marjani
Trump was honored at the march. Sort of...
A massive demonstration -called for by a prominent Shia cleric- has flooded the streets of the Iraq's capital Baghdad, with thousands voicing their anger at the US military presence there.

Early on Friday morning, throngs of protesters - men and women, young and old - began amassing at al-Hurriya Square in central Baghdad, near the city's main university. The anti-America rally, dubbed the "Million-man March," was called by Moqtada al-Sadr, Iraq's top Shiite cleric.


Some were wearing white robes, symbolizing their readiness to die for a religious cause, while others were pictured holding signs that read: "To the families of American soldiers - insist on the withdrawal of [your] sons from our country or prepare their coffins!"

"Get out, get out, occupier!" protesters shouted, while others chanted, "Yes to sovereignty!"
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Propaganda

Lee Camp straightens out NYT 'sewage' article that claims Russian bots 'sowed confusion' in South America


RT
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 18:24 UTC
Supporters Venezuela Maduro
© REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Supporters of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro take part in a rally in Caracas, Venezuela July 13, 2019.
American comedian Lee Camp issued a scathing retort to a New York Times piece alleging that Russian bots stoked tensions in South America, jokingly noting that it would take several years to fully dissect the baseless report.

The host of Redacted Tonight marveled at how the piece, titled "As Protests in South America Surged, So Did Russian Trolls on Twitter, US Finds," was based on data provided by not-very-objective State Department 'analysts'. For Camp, this raised a number of obvious red flags.
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Magnify

Trump witch hunt: Justice Department finds FBI should have concluded surveillance of Trump advisor Carter Page sooner


MarketWatch
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 17:46 UTC
Carter Page
© Associated Press
Carter Page
The Justice Department has concluded that it should have ended its surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser earlier than it did because it lacked "insufficient predication" to continue eavesdropping, according to an order made public Thursday by a secretive intelligence court.

The FBI obtained a warrant in 2016 to eavesdrop on former Trump national security aide Carter Page on suspicions that he was secretly a Russian agent. The Justice Department renewed the warrant three times, including during the early months of the Trump administration.

But the Justice Department's inspector general has harshly criticized the FBI's handing of those applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It says the FBI omitted from the court key details that undercut their original premise about Page, who has denied any wrongdoing and was never charged as part of the investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
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Sherlock

James Comey focus of FBI leak investigation, report says

Gregg Re
Fox News
Thu, 16 Jan 2020 17:41 UTC
Comey
© AP/Carolyn Kaster
James Comey
The Justice Department is investigating whether then-FBI Director James Comey illegally leaked secret information concerning a Russian document to The New York Times and The Washington Post, the Times reported late Thursday.

The new review, which the Times downplayed as a possibly politically motivated probe, reportedly concerned a Russian intelligence document "claiming a tacit understanding between the Clinton campaign and the [Obama] Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server," as the Post described it in May 2017.

Dutch intelligence accessed the document on Russian computers and provided it to the FBI. Included in the document was a discussion between Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., then the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, and Leonard Benardo, who worked with the George Soros-founded group Open Society Foundations.
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Bad Guys

Assassins' creed: US envoy to Iran threatens to murder Iran's new IRGC chief 'if he kills Americans'


RT
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 17:37 UTC
Esmail Qaani
© Tasnim News Agency/Handout via REUTERS
The newly-appointed head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Esmail Qaani
A top US diplomat took aim at Esmail Ghaani who succeeded the murdered General Soleimani, threatening that the new head of Iran's elite unit may end up like his famed predecessor if he's into killing Americans.

If General Esmail Ghaani, the newly appointed chief of the Quds Force - the secretive part of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) - "follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate," US Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook said in an interview with the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.

"We will hold the regime and its agents responsible for any attack on Americans or American interests in the region," Hook continued, not elaborating further.

Comment: The Iranian Foreign Ministry slammed the comments by Hook, calling them a "clear unveiling of America's targeted and governmental terrorism."

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War Whore

US to grant $35 million to promote its fake news bubble in Syria & control local media

Eva Bartlett
RT
Fri, 24 Jan 2020 17:19 UTC
anti war protest
© Reuters / Yuri Gripas
Although Western media has a shoddy track record of lying on Syria (and Libya, Iraq...), the US State Department will pump $35 million more into future war propaganda on Syria, under the guise of promoting honest reporting.

A US State Department grant, "Support for Independent Media in Syria," is unabashed in stating one of its main goals is "to advance U.S. Government policy objectives in Syria."

That is probably the sole honest clause in the grant description: that it is in the end about US self-serving, hegemonic objectives in Syria.

The description goes on to claim these goals include the defeat of ISIS — although the illegal US-led coalition has attacked Syrian army positions on numerous occasions, ensuring the advance (not defeat) of ISIS in those areas. One of the most glaring instances being the September 2016 repeated attacks on the Syrian army in Deir ez-Zor province, which saw ISIS take over the region.
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Star of David

World leaders gather for solemn Holocaust memorial - Netanyahu hijacks event to complain about Iran, ICC

Oliver Holmes
The Guardian
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 19:09 UTC
Netanyahu
© Abir SULTAN / POOL / AFP
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech during the Fifth World Holocaust Forum at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem on January 23, 2020
Dozens of monarchs, presidents and prime ministers travelled to Jerusalem to remember the Holocaust on Thursday, and were given stark warnings not to ignore escalating antisemitism and violence against Jews in Europe and the United States.

Leaders congregated at the Yad Vashem remembrance centre on the western hills of Jerusalem for a three-hour event held by the fifth World Holocaust Forum. Organisers hoped the meeting would provide a united front against anti-Jewish hatred, including in countries run by many of the attendees.

"Historical lessons were forgotten. Remembering the past is our duty, but it is not enough," said the narrator of a video played at the start of the ceremony, as the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the US vice-president, Mike Pence, sat in the front row.
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Bad Guys

US imposes Iran-related sanctions on two people and six companies, mostly Chinese


RT
Thu, 23 Jan 2020 20:37 UTC
oil refinery
© Reuters / Essam Al-Sudani
Abadan oil refinery in southwest Iran, pictured in September 2019
The United States has applied fresh economic sanctions to two Iranian individuals and six companies, including four firms tied to Iran's national oil company. The move comes following a military standoff between both countries.

The US Department of the Treasury accuses the four international petroleum and petrochemical firms of helping Tehran export "hundreds of millions of dollars" worth of oil, which it says helps the Iranian government fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guard COrps (IRGC) and its "terrorist proxies."
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