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US State Dept boasted in 2017 that the appointment of FM Chrystia Freeland meant Canada had adopted an 'America First foreign policy'

Ben Norton
The Grayzone
Tue, 09 Jul 2019 15:30 UTC
Nieto Trump trudeau freeland USMCA siging
© Getty Images
Enrique Pena Nieto, Mexico's president, President Donald Trump, and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sign the USMCA, with FM Chrystia Freeland looking on.
The US embassy in Ottawa boasted in a March 2017 memo, "Canada Adopts 'America First' Foreign Policy," just after PM Trudeau appointed hard-line hawk Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister.

The US State Department boasted in a declassified memo in March 2017 that Canada had adopted an "America first" foreign policy.

The cable was authored just weeks after the centrist government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Chrystia Freeland as foreign minister. The former editor of the major international news agency Reuters, Freeland has pushed for aggressive policies against states targeted by Washington for regime change, including Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Syria, and Iran.

The State Department added that Trudeau had promoted Freeland "in large part because of her strong U.S. contacts," and that her "number one priority" was working closely with Washington.

Comment: For more on Chrystia Freeland's sketchy past, see this excellent background piece from Arina Tsukanova on Consortium News.
"Canada's fiercely anti-Russian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland says her Ukrainian grandfather struggled "to return freedom and democracy to Ukraine," but she leaves out that he was a Nazi propagandist justifying the slaughter of Jews, writes Arina Tsukanova."


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Arrow Down

Judge rules against Trump on drug pricing disclosures - says it's up to Congress

Nathaniel Weixel
The Hill
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 16:58 UTC
pills Big pharma money
© REUTERS/Srdjan Zivulovic
A federal judge on Monday sided with a coalition of drug companies and blocked the Trump administration from implementing a policy that would require prescription drug manufacturers to disclose list prices in TV ads.

The pharmaceutical companies — Amgen, Merck, and Eli Lilly — were joined in the lawsuit by the Association of National Advertisers. The rule was scheduled to take effect Tuesday. U.S. District Court Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington, D.C., agreed with the drug companies that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) does not have the authority to compel drug companies to disclose prices.

"To be clear, the court does not question HHS's motives in adopting the [rule]," Mehta wrote. "Nor does it take any view on the wisdom of requiring drug companies to disclose prices. That policy very well could be an effective tool in halting the rising cost of prescription drugs. But no matter how vexing the problem of spiraling drug costs may be, HHS cannot do more than what Congress has authorized. The responsibility rests with Congress to act in the first instance."

Under the rule, which was announced by HHS Secretary Alex Azar in May, drug manufacturers would have to state the list price of a 30-day supply of any drug that is covered through Medicare and Medicaid and costs at least $35 a month.
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Boat

Norwegian tanker 'attacked' in Gulf set to dock in Iran despite US blame-game


Sputnik
Tue, 09 Jul 2019 16:51 UTC
oil tanker
© AFP 2019 / HANDOUT / Emirati National Media Council
Four tankers in the Gulf of Oman, belonging to Norway, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, were left crippled as a result of several explosions that damaged their hulls in May 2019. While an investigation by the UAE has failed to determine the actor behind the "sabotage", the US has groundlessly accused Iran of it. Tehran has denied all the accusations.

Andrea Victory, a Norwegian tanker that suffered a significant blast on 12 May while sailing in the Gulf of Oman near a UAE port, is readying to dock at Iran's Bandar Imam Khomeini port, almost two months after the attack, the research company Refinitiv Energy reported on its Twitter.

According to Refinitiv, the tanker is completing its voyage, which was interrupted by the May incident, carrying a shipment of oil from Argentina to Iran. Following the blast, Andrea Victory reportedly unloaded its cargo onto another ship and was then moored at a dry dock for repairs needed to cover the hole in its hull. Recently, the tanker reclaimed its cargo and is now heading towards its destination, according to Refinitiv Energy.
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Gold Bar

Poland is latest country to repatriate its gold from the Bank of England


RT
Tue, 09 Jul 2019 10:22 UTC
gold
© Getty Images / Achmad Arphan / EyeEm
Poland is repatriating gold from overseas, after it more than doubled its bullion holdings in the past year. Central banks all over the world have been stocking up on gold in recent years, shifting away from the US dollar.

The National Bank of Poland (NBP) has bought 100 tons of the precious metal since the beginning of this year, nearly four times more than it added to its reserves in 2018.

Now Warsaw wants to bring a significant part the precious metal back home, repatriating it from the Bank of England. The NBP wants to transfer at least 100 tons and store the repatriated bullion in its vaults.

The Polish central bank noted that the repatriation comes on account of central banks' need to diversify the storage of their gold reserves "to limit geopolitical risk," which, it says, could result "in losing access to or restriction of the availability of gold resources held abroad."

In recent months, the Bank of England refused to return 14 tons of gold belonging to Venezuela. Caracas wanted to repatriate some of its bullion holdings to deal with the country's economic crisis, which is exacerbated by US sanctions.

Comment: The following may also have something to do with the desire of various nations to hold on to their own gold:

A revolution in world economies is underway thanks to the Bank for International Settlements' 'Basel III' policy

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Clipboard

The top 10 indicators of 'liberal imperialism' - and the 'thinking' behind it

Stephen M. Walt
Foreign Policy
Mon, 20 May 2013 17:25 UTC
Liberal imperialists
© MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP/Getty Images
Are you a liberal imperialist? Liberal imperialists are like kinder, gentler neoconservatives: Like neocons, they believe it's America's responsibility to right political and humanitarian wrongs around the world, and they're comfortable with the idea of the United States deciding who will run countries such as Libya, Syria, or Afghanistan. Unlike neocons, liberal imperialists embrace and support international institutions (like the United Nations), and they are driven more by concern for human rights than they are by blind nationalism or protecting the U.S.-Israel special relationship. Still, like the neocons, liberal imperialists are eager proponents for using American hard power, even in situations where it might easily do more harm than good. The odd-bedfellow combination of their idealism with neocons' ideology has given us a lot of bad foreign policy over the past decade, especially the decisions to intervene militarily in Iraq or nation-build in Afghanistan, and today's drumbeat to do the same in Syria.

It's not that the United States should never intervene in other countries or that its military should not undertake humanitarian missions (as it did in Indonesia following the Asian tsunami and in Haiti after a damaging earthquake). It should do so, however, only when there are vital national interests at stake or when sending U.S. troops or American arms is overwhelmingly likely to make things better. In short, decisions to intervene need to clear a very high bar and survive hardheaded questioning about what the use of force will actually accomplish.

Comment: Another term for "liberal imperialism" would seem to be neoliberalism - and at the end of the day these folks sure have a lot in common with neoconservatives:

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Briefcase

Rep. Peter King: 'Severe, serious abuses' by FBI and CIA in Russia probe are 'going to come out'

Ron Blitzer
Fox News
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 00:00 UTC
Rep. Peter King

Rep. Peter King
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said he is "confident" that when Attorney General Bill Barr concludes his investigation of the origins of the investigation of President Trump's 2016 campaign, the American people will learn that the FBI and CIA under the Obama administration engaged in foul play.

President Trump and his supporters have questioned how the investigation started in the first place, accusing the FBI of carrying it out under false pretenses. King is among those leveling such allegations.

"There was no legal basis at all for them to begin the investigation of his campaign," King said in a Friday interview with New York radio host John Catsimatidis, "and the way they carried it forward and the way information was leaked, the improper applications they filed in the FISA court to get surveillance, all of this is going to come out."

King was referring to the FBI's application for a warrant under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Republicans, including California Rep. Devin Nunes, claimed that federal authorities did not fully disclose their reliance on an unverified dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, which was part of opposition research for Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Comment: As the Democrats continue to try and make something of absolutely nothing they may find themselves, correctly, at the opposite end of the investigation - and may have some hell to pay for it:

See also:

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Bullseye

Britain is run by a self-serving clique, that's why it's in crisis

Gary Younge
The Guardian
Fri, 05 Jul 2019 06:01 UTC
britain food bank
© Illustration: Ben Jennings/The Guardian
Government and culture are dominated by the same narrow section of the population. It's no way to run a country
Last week Boris Johnson delivered a speech to a Royal Horticultural Society audience in Wisley, Surrey, before heading to the affluent village of Oxshott to buy some fennel and tarragon sausages and have a cup of tea in the Munch and Wiggles cafe. In a series of interviews later that day, he was unwilling to reveal the provenance of the staged photograph of him and his partner, Carrie Symonds. He was, however, able to insist that Britain would leave the European Union, "do or die", by the end of October.

On the same day, the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission issued a report into elitism in Britain that "paints a picture of a country whose power structures are dominated by a narrow section of the population [where] social mobility is low and not improving". Those who went to private school comprise 7% of the country's population but 39% of the elite; those who went to Oxford or Cambridge university comprise less than 1% of the population but 24% of the elite. Senior judges, junior ministers, permanent secretaries and diplomats are among the least representative professions. But the media, and particularly newspaper columnists, are right up there, too.

Comment: It's not just a case of elitism, and it's not just Britain, the system throughout the Western world is becoming ponerized and is collapsing under the weight of its own corruption: Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes Also check out SOTT radio's:

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TV

UK bars RT & Sputnik from conference on media freedom for 'disinformation'


Yahoo
Tue, 09 Jul 2019 09:57 UTC
Simonyan
© (AFP Photo/EVGENIA NOVOZHENINA)
Britain has said it will bar Sputnik news and RT from a global conference on media freedom in London; in this image from May 23 2019, Russia's President Vladimir Putin presents flowers to editor-in-chief of Russian broadcaster RT Margarita Simonyan after awarding her with the "Order of Alexander Nevsky"
Britain said Monday it had barred Russia's RT and Sputnik news organisations from a global conference on media freedom in London because of their "active role in spreading disinformation".

Some 60 ministers and 1,000 journalists and members of civil society are expected to attend the meeting on Wednesday and Thursday co-hosted with Canada.

"We have not accredited RT or Sputnik because of their active role in spreading disinformation," a Foreign Office spokeswoman said.

Comment: When pressed for proof of Russian 'disinformation' the accusers in the West are forever unable to provide any. However the evidence incriminating the disinfo peddlers in the UK and it's propaganda outlets, like the BBC, is legion. While RT and Sputnik reveal the sordid truth about the systemic corruption that the plagues the country, the UK gov and it's outlets are busy trying to cover it up:

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Broom

US will 'no longer deal with' British ambassador following leaks scandal - Trump


RT
Tue, 09 Jul 2019 18:35 UTC
trump
© Global Look Press / White House
Washington will cut its ties with British ambassador Kim Darroch, President Donald Trump has announced. According to leaked cables, Darroch called the Trump administration "dysfunctional," "inept," and "incompetent."

In a rambling series of tweets critical of British Prime Minister Theresa May's handling of Brexit, Trump called out Darroch on Monday, saying the diplomat is "not liked or well thought of within the US."

In a series of diplomatic cables leaked to the Daily Mail and reported by the paper on Sunday, Darroch slammed the Trump administration's hardline Iran policies, saying they are unlikely "to become more coherent anytime soon." Darroch also panned "hawkish" hardliners within Trump's cabinet, likely National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.


Comment: Darroch can't be pleased with the UK's behavior towards Iran then: Iranian DM Hatami: UK's seisure of Iranian oil tanker is 'maritime robbery'


Comment: See also:

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Red Flag

Arch hypocrisy: Washington creates commission on 'inalienable rights'; Pompeo & Amnesty disagree on who gets to weaponize them

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Mon, 08 Jul 2019 20:59 UTC
human rights as lethal arrows
© https://cdni.rt.com/files/2019.07/article/5d23aea7fc7e93e40c8b4600.jpg
To establish the need for such a body, Pompeo quoted former Czech dissident – and later president – Vaclav Havel, who warned that human rights “can be rays of light in a realm of darkness … [but] they can also be lethal arrows.”
In setting up a new commission on 'unalienable rights,' Washington has admitted to using human rights as a weapon. Its critics don't disagree, but want that weapon to work both ways. Of actual human rights, there is not a trace.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday the establishment of the commission, made up of "human rights experts, philosophers, and activists" with the purpose of conducting an "informed review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy."

To establish the need for such a body, Pompeo quoted former Czech dissident - and later president - Vaclav Havel, who warned that human rights "can be rays of light in a realm of darkness ... [but] they can also be lethal arrows."

This stunning admission, however, went entirely unnoticed by professional human rights activists, who were too busy shrieking about President Donald Trump's "hateful policies."

Comment: Pot calling the kettle black? A little background on the 'human rights' records of Washington and Amnesty International:

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