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South China Sea dispute: Hague Tribunal rules in favor of Philippines, China to ignore decision


RT
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 00:03 UTC
Mischief Reef
© U.S. Navy / Reuters
Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in this still image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United States Navy May 21, 2015.
China has caused irreparable harm to the ecosystem of the Spratly Islands and breached the Philippines' sovereign rights, the Hague Tribunal has ruled.

Beijing has ignored the ruling, saying its islands come with exclusive economic zones, where Chinese people have had activities for 2,000 years.

The court said in the 497-page ruling that "There was no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to resources within the sea areas falling within the 'nine-dash line'," referring to a demarcation line on a map of the sea from 1947.

China has repeatedly warned that it would not recognize any adverse ruling from The Hague's arbitration court, which was widely expected. Beijing boycotted the hearings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, saying that it does not have jurisdiction to decide the dispute.
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Wall Street

EU politicians furious over Jose Manuel Barroso's new job at Goldman Sachs


RT
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 23:48 UTC
Jose Manuel Barroso
© Christian Hartmann / Reuters
EU politicians are demanding former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso is sanctioned for taking a job with Goldman Sachs. They say he has failed to "behave with integrity and discretion."

He is criticized for joining the Wall Street bank that helped set off the 2008 financial crisis. Goldman has also been blamed for assisting Athens in hiding its financial situation in order to enter the eurozone in 2000.

Barroso has been appointed as a chairman and senior adviser to the international arm of Goldman Sachs, and will move to London and instruct the bank on UK negotiations to leave the European Union.

"Of course I know well the EU, I also know relatively well the UK environment," the FT quoted Barroso as saying, adding "if my advice can be helpful in this circumstance I'm ready to contribute, of course."

Comment: More stories of this awful too-big-to-fail bank called Goldman Sachs:

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Light Saber

Pepe Escobar: The Hague's South China Sea ruling puts China between a rock and a hard place

Pepe Escobar
RT
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 22:03 UTC
us navy ship
© U.S. Navy / Reuters
The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, backed by the UN, essentially ruled that there is no legal basis for China to claim historic rights to vast sections of the South China Sea included in the 'nine-dash line'.

Here it is, in full legalese: "China's claims to historic rights, or other sovereign rights or jurisdiction, with respect to the maritime areas of the South China Sea encompassed by the relevant part of the 'nine-dash line' are contrary to the Convention and without lawful effect to the extent that they exceed the geographic and substantive limits of China's maritime entitlements under the Convention."

Well, nothing is black and white in such an immensely complex case. The Philippines were advised by a powerhouse Anglo-American legal team. China had "no agents or representatives appointed."

Beijing argues that all the attention over the South China Sea revolves around conflicting sovereign claims over islands/rocks/reefs and related maritime delimitations - over which the court has no jurisdiction. Attributing territorial sovereignty over maritime features in the South China Sea goes beyond the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
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Star of David

Israel bars Italian delegation's entry to Gaza - Italians are irate


Sputnik
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 21:53 UTC
israel flag

God's racial colony.
Italian senator Ornella Bertorotta, a member of the delegation visiting Israel and Palestine, told Sputnik that the Israeli authorities' decision to bar access to the territory is a "mistake."

A delegation of Italian politicians was denied entry to the Gaza Strip on Saturday by the Israeli authorities, who said that the decision was made for security reasons.

"The Gaza Strip is controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization hostile to Israel. Admission (to the territory) involves special permits, subject to security concerns," the Israeli embassy in Rome said.


Comment: Can you imagine France barring international delegations from entering the UK, or Mexico barring same from entering the U.S.? It is absurd, and rightly so. Israel is a global menace, and democracy will not exist in Israel until Palestine is free and treated like the sovereign nation it should be.

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Bad Guys

Totalitarianism here we come! Japan's ruling coalition wins election, opening door to constitutional changes

Jake Adelstein
Los Angeles Times
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 16:37 UTC
Shinzo Abe
© Kazuhiro Nogi / AFP/Getty Images
Japanese Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party President Shinzo Abe, center, places a rosette on an LDP candidate's name to indicate an election victory in Tokyo on July 10, 2016.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner won a majority of contested seats in Japan's parliamentary election Sunday, opening a path for them to amend Japan's postwar pacifist constitution.

The results were also an endorsement of Abe's plans to revive Japan's flagging economy, the issue that he built his campaign around. Abe has been trying for four years to get the political support to fully implement "Abenomics," a plan for structural reform of the economy through fiscal stimulus and monetary easing.


Comment: Remind us, how does "Abenomics" work exactly?


"In the near term, the most pressing question will be finalizing a stimulus package, which will occupy the ruling coalition for the next several months," said Tobias Harris, a Japan analyst at the political risk advisory firm Teneo Intelligence.

Half of the seats in the upper house of parliament were up for grabs in Sunday's election. Although the lower house is considered more powerful, the election was significant because it appeared to give Abe's Liberal Democrats and their allies a two-thirds majority in both houses. Previously, they had a two-thirds majority in the lower house, but only a simple majority in the upper chamber.

With two-thirds majorities in both houses, Abe could initiate a constitutional amendment - if his parliamentary allies are on board. Harris said it seemed likely that the Komeito party, Abe's coalition partner, would block a constitutional amendment, though Abe indicated after the vote that he would push for debate in parliament.

Comment: Now that Abe and his gang have a majority of seats, they're hoping to finally move forward with their grand plans of following in the West's fascist footsteps:

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USA

The killing fields of America - Who is responsible?

John W. Whitehead
A Government of Wolves
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 20:12 UTC
"I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."—Martin Luther King Jr.
Killing Fields of America
© Matt Skibert/Flickr
The latest shootings—in Texas, Minnesota, Louisiana, Illinois, New York, Missouri and every other state in the nation—are symptomatic of a psychotic outbreak by a nation that has been waging a war against its own citizens for too long.

We have long since passed the stage at which a government of wolves would give rise to a nation of sheep. As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we now have is a government of psychopaths that is actively breeding a nation of psychopathic killers.

We're getting distracted, people.

Instead of focusing our ire on the architects of the American police state, who are responsible for turning the streets into mini-war zones, we're getting distracted by the many voices eager to play the blame game by pointing their fingers at someone else.

Police groups are blaming President Obama and the Justice Department for failing to prosecute "cop killers." Texas Republicans are blaming the Black Lives Matter movement for fomenting a "war on cops" mindset. Gun control advocates are blaming "gun lovers and their mouthpieces at the National Rifle Association" for America's gun violence, reasoning that if all Americans were unarmed, police would not have to treat them as potential threats.

News outlets such as Rolling Stone and Mother Jones have concluded that racial bias is to blame for the "disproportionately high number of African-Americans among police shooting victims." The Drug Enforcement Administration has suggested that illegal steroid use could be responsible for "police officers who exhibit rage, aggression and/or poor judgment (all symptoms of possible steroid abuse) in confrontations with citizens."

Human Rights Watch blames police misconduct and excessive use of force on a systemic lack of accountability within law enforcement agencies and the criminal justice system. And civil rights advocates are blaming police militarization and the abundance of laws (overcriminalization) pushed by lawmakers for the nation's over-policing, over-jailing and over-killing.

Yet in the midst of all this finger pointing, no one is stepping forward to take responsibility for the violence that is tearing the nation apart, deepening racial tensions, heightening police tensions, justifying all manner of civil liberties abuses, and pushing us ever closer to a state of lockdown.

Shame on President Obama for not taking personal responsibility for the blowback resulting from America's endless wars abroad, the militarization of local police, and the ramifications of allowing police to use battlefield equipment such as drones, assault weapons, tanks, etc. How telling that the first domestic killing of an American citizen by a drone (in this case, a bomb-equipped police robot) should be carried out during the final term of a president whose targeted drone killings abroad have resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians.

Comment:

Psychopaths are Destroying our World (VIDEO)

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Windsock

Many small changes signal big change in Syrian war's political atmosphere


Moon of Alabama
Tue, 12 Jul 2016 19:35 UTC
Russian jets Syria
© Russian Defence Ministry
With Cameron leaving as UK Prime Minister another top politician who demanded that "Assad must go" has left the political scene. The Syrian President Assad is still in place and there is no sign that he will leave in the foreseeable future. It seems that real life facts still have more weight than "regime change" propaganda platitudes.

The facts continue to be persistent that there is therefore again some wind of change detectable in the political atmosphere.

The Syrian army and its allies are closing the only road to the eastern parts of Aleppo. This effort requires intense urban warfare (vid) against Jihadi terrorists. According to a Pentagon spokesperson, that part is held by al-Qaeda:
[I]t's primarily al-Nusra who holds Aleppo, and of course, al-Nusra is not part of the cessation of hostilities.
All attacks on east-Aleppo are thereby completely legitimate and do not break a ceasefire.

Comment: The last nine months have seen concession after concession on the part of official U.S. statements, which eventually come around to the Russian and Syrian point of view on the situation in Syria. So far, these have seemed to be more symbolic defeats on the Americans' part than anything. But it shows that their propaganda campaign is not working, and that they will not have an easy time destroying Syria, as they did Libya.

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Airplane

Kerry visits Moscow for fourth time in a year


RT
Mon, 11 Jul 2016 19:27 UTC
kerry
© Andrew Harnik / Reuters
US Secretary of State John Kerry arrives at Vnukovo international airport near Moscow, Russia, March 23, 2016
US Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Moscow with a visit this week, officials of the two countries confirmed on Monday. It will be America's top diplomat's fourth official trip to Russia since May 2015.

Kerry will meet with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to "continue to discuss topical issues of bilateral cooperation and international agenda," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. According to State Department spokesman John Kirby, such issues as the situation in Syria, Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh will be discussed during meetings with Russian officials.

The US Secretary of State will head to the Russian capital on Thursday, coming from France where he will be taking part in Bastille Day celebrations, Kirby said Monday. Moscow confirmed that Kerry would be in the city on July 14-15.

Comment: Kerry's visit comes in two days. It comes soon after the bizarro NATO summit, which demonstrated a total lack of connection to reality (which should prompt immediate psychiatric examinations of all involved). In the context of rapid warmongering and insanity on NATO's side, there's not much Kerry can say to Moscow officials that will warm relations between the two nations. It's impossible to reason with, or on behalf of, a clinically insane leadership.

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Cult

Pedophile rings are enormous and pervasive among the world's elites

Aaron Kesel
We Are Change
Thu, 07 Jul 2016 00:00 UTC
Pedophilia rings
For years it's been rumored that the globalist elite are involved in some pretty strange practices, from mock sacrificing a baby at Bohemian Grove to the testimony that a child was actually murdered in a Bohemian Grove ritual. The testimony and evidence in this article prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the allegations of Bohemian Grove are just the tip of the iceberg.

Bohemian Grove

Paul Bonacci once told investigators Gary Caradori, Ted L. Gunderson, and ex-Senator and attorney John Decamp that he was forced to murder a boy at the creepy California resort Bohemian Grove.

Here's is Bonacci's testimony on Child Murder at Bohemian Grove:


Comment: These are only some of the major stories that show just how psychopathic many among the elites are. See also:

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Yoda

Putin tries to talk sense to Merkel and Hollande about 'Ukrainian provocation'


The Moscow Times
Fri, 08 Jul 2016 18:08 UTC
putin merkel Ukraine
© Kremlin Press Service
Angel Merkel and Vladimir Putin
Russian president Vladimir Putin has held phone talks with German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande to discuss increasing violations of the ceasefire agreement in southeast Ukraine, the Kremlin announced Friday.

Putin stressed the "provocative nature" of Ukraine's military operations in the Donbass region, and called on Merkel and Hollande to pressure Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko into complying with the Minsk agreements.

All three agreed on the need to remove heavy weaponry and the equal withdrawal of forces from the front line.
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