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If rumored US threat against Lebanese Speaker Berri is true, Americans may be asked to leave permanently

Elijah J. Magnier
ejmagnier.com
Mon, 08 Apr 2019 15:05 UTC
pompeo berri
The Emirati newspaper, The National - quoting sources with knowledge of US plans - reports that the United States is considering sanctions against the Shia Lebanese Speaker Nabih Berri, along with a number of his financial supporters. Well-informed sources knowledgeable of the Speaker's intentions said that "such a step - if it is serious and not just an empty threat - will lead to the forceful exit of all US forces from Lebanon, particularly those training and embedded with the Lebanese Army and other security forces. This step will also be taken against all US government-linked organisations by a clear decision of the Lebanese parliament as retaliation against aggressive decisions adopted by the US establishment".

The sources say that "Speaker Nabih Berri does not enjoy the support of the AMAL movement or Hezbollah and their respective members of Parliament and Ministers, but he does enjoy the support of the majority of Lebanese MPs. It is they who have elected him over decades. Therefore, any US step against the Speaker or AMAL's supporters in Lebanon or Africa or anywhere in the world with the aim to hit Berri indirectly will be met with the same retaliation in Lebanon against the US presence in the country. Berri has a wide circle of friends among Muslim speakers and the presidents of parliament in GCC and Muslim African countries, who are ready to stand with him against the US establishment. The reaction is expected to be harsher and more visible than the Arab states' merely verbal condemnation of Israel annexation of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem".
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Chess

Trump's trade war with EU escalates over aviation subsidies

Jonathan Stearns, Kim Chipman and Shawn Donnan
Bloomberg
Mon, 08 Apr 2019 15:01 UTC
trump eu officials
The European Union is preparing retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. over subsidies to Boeing Co., significantly escalating transatlantic trade tensions hours after Washington vowed to hit the EU with duties over its support for Airbus SE.

The two sets of punitive measures are the latest twists in a 14-year-old dispute that the U.S. and EU have fought at the World Trade Organization, with each side accusing the other of illegally subsidizing their main aircraft makers. President Donald Trump's administration on Monday said it would impose tariffs on $11 billion in imports from the EU because of the European aid.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said that EU support for Airbus had caused "adverse effects" when announcing the new measures, which would target European goods including jetliners, cheese, wine and motorcycles. The EU called the sum cited by the USTR "greatly exaggerated" and said preparations were underway to hit back. While the EU hasn't disclosed the amount of American goods it would target, Airbus said the bloc would proceed with "far larger countermeasures against the U.S."
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Bad Guys

The evolution of oil geopolitics: From vital necessity to black gold

Thierry Meyssan
Voltaire Network
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 14:47 UTC
oil machinery
Economy depends primarily on the source of energy to which it has access. This need has always been one of the main causes of war. At one time, it was necessary to put slaves to work in the fields then, in the 19th century, to seize coal with which to feed machinery, and today we rely on hydrocarbons (oil and gas).

To avoid looking at this logic too closely, men have always invented good reasons to justify what they are doing.

Thus, today we believe
  • that Iran is being sanctioned because of its military nuclear programme (which it closed down in 1988);
  • that the installations and assets of the PDVSA (Venezuelan Oil) have been seized in order to transfer them from the dictator Maduro to Juan Guaido's team (although it is the former and not the latter who was constitutionally elected President of Venezuela);
  • or again that the United States maintains its military presence in Syria in order to support their Kurdish allies against the dictator el-Assad (while in fact the Kurds are mercenaries who do not represent their people, and el-Assad was democratically elected).
These narratives have no real basis in truth and are contradicted by the facts. We believe them because we think we can make a profit from them.
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Russian Flag

Turkey aims to boost trade with Russia to $100 billion


RT
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 14:59 UTC
Istanbul market
© Reuters / Murad Sezer
Istanbul market
Turkish President Recep Erdogan has set an ambitious goal for bilateral trade with Russia, saying he wants to boost it to $100 billion, nearly four times more than the current trade volume between the two countries.

Last year's $26 billion in trade turnover does not reflect the cooperation potential between Russia and Turkey, Erdogan said during the meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday.

Ankara is making "every effort" to ease trade ties with Moscow and is therefore going to provide exemptions for Russian entrepreneurs, said the Turkish president.

"We do not view your firms as foreign or Russian, we view them as our own," the Turkish President said as cited by TASS. "Russian entrepreneurs willing to invest in Turkey will be provided with various exemptions."
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Light Sabers

Trump pumps new poison into US confrontation with Iran

George Galloway
RT
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 14:54 UTC
Iranian revolutionary guard
© Reuters / Stringer
Iranian revolutionary guard
The US action against Iran's Revolutionary Guard is a dangerous escalation which can only endanger a fragile world peace and widen the breach between the Trump administration and many of its closest allies, principally the EU.

On Monday, the US designated Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) as a "terrorist organization".

It is the equivalent of declaring the US Marine Corps a terrorist organization, though with much less justification given that Iran hasn't invaded another country for centuries. Washington's description of Iran as "expansionist" is enough to make a horse laugh given the world-wide projection of US bases and military hardware around the world - and around Iran.

It is the first time ever that a US government has designated a part of a foreign government as a "terrorist organization". Anyone doing business with Iran will have no way of knowing if they are "bankrolling terrorism" by doing so, and that of course is the point.
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Megaphone

TIME Magazine sinks to new depths of hypocrisy and propaganda with latest cover story on scary Russia

Danielle Ryan
RT
Tue, 09 Apr 2019 14:47 UTC
putin time magazine cover
© Time Magazine
With the Mueller investigation wrapped up and interest in Russia's alleged misdeeds against the US threatening to wane among the masses, mainstream media has decided to widen the net and refocus Russia's "other" evil schemes.

TIME magazine has gotten a head start with its latest cover story, authored by journalist Simon Shuster, literally titled "Russia's other plot" and illustrated with the usual clichéd, Soviet-inspired scary red and black artwork.

The story, ostensibly, is about Russia's construction of an "empire of rogue states" around the world - but in reality the circular screed is actually just bold propaganda for US foreign policy and regime change wars.

The Kremlin, we are told, has been "scouring the world in search of influence" in an attempt to fill "the void left by an inward-looking West." This is the point at which alarm bells start ringing for those with even a cursory grasp of US and Western foreign policy, who will be asking themselves, since when has the US - with its constant destructive and unwanted interference in the affairs of other nations - ever been "inward-looking"?
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USA

Goes without saying: Kosovo PM says he's 'a soldier of America', follows US orders


RT
Mon, 08 Apr 2019 14:30 UTC
Ramush Haradinaj
© BBC
Ramush Haradinaj, prime minister of the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo, said the policies of his government serve US interests against Serbia and Russia, and that he's just following orders from Washington.

"The Albanian people all in our lands are part of what America is leading. In the whole global plan we are together," Haradinaj told the Albanian-language Gazeta Blic on Friday, describing the 100-percent tariffs on all goods from Serbia and Bosnia that Kosovo imposed in November last year as aligned with "what America stands for."
I am a soldier of America on the ground. I just carry out the orders.
Haradinaj was a commander in the "Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA) during the 1998-1999 conflict, fighting for separating the province from Serbia and making it an independent ethnic Albanian state. In June 1999, following a 78-day NATO air war, Serbia allowed in UN peacekeepers - which in practice meant NATO taking over Kosovo and handing it to the KLA.
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Bullseye

The political lessons Donald Trump needs to learn from William Shakespeare

Martin Sieff
Strategic Culture Foundation
Sun, 07 Apr 2019 18:52 UTC
shakespeare
Now that President Donald Trump has finally been exonerated from the always farcical Big Lie of Collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, the US leader had better watch out: The Deep State will really go after him now that it's supposed Soft Coup plot has failed.

Trump needs to recognize he is a modern version of Shakespeare's King Henry IV, a monarch who can never afford to rest.

The forces opposed to Trump and his decent, sensible 2016 campaign vision of defusing tensions with Russia worked viciously, relentlessly and long to discredit the 45th President of the United States before he could even get going. The idea that they are now going to sit back like good losers because their entire pyramid of lies on Collusion with Russia has been exposed is ludicrous.

The two years of hysteria in fact were far from unsuccessful. They failed to topple Trump from office or separate and discredit him with his potent domestic political base. But they certainly prevented him from working openly and constructively with Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the ongoing bloodbaths in Syria and Yemen that Trump inherited and to reduce global nuclear tensions.
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Bad Guys

Absolute racism a prerequisite for becoming prime minister of Israel

Siddiq Bazarwala
Mondoweiss
Mon, 08 Apr 2019 00:01 UTC
netanyahu
© Tomer Appelbaum/Reuters
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu campaigning in Tel Aviv, April 2, 2019.
Regardless of who wins the upcoming Israeli elections on 9 April 2019, Palestinians will most certainly lose.

While past elections focus on Iran or the economy, this campaign season the Israeli electorate is being fed a steady diet of anti-Palestinian toxicity. Historically Israelis have a tendency of voting for those with the most vile, intolerant and yet variedly repeated anti-Palestinians tropes.

Racism in the upper echelon of the Israeli government is a norm, however, embedded just as well deep within its institutional policies, the media, immigration rights, housing and legal policies. In fact, it all goes back to the time Israel was founded.

Comment: See also:

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Handcuffs

UK: Google 'avoided paying £1.5bn in tax' that could have paid for 60,000 nurses

Graham Hiscott
Mirror
Sun, 07 Apr 2019 22:10 UTC
google
Web giant Google has been accused of avoiding enough UK corporation tax last year to give our flatlining NHS 60,000 more nurses.

The £1.5billion estimate by campaign group the Tax Justice Network, in an analysis for the Mirror, is based on the firm booking all UK sales here rather than ­apparently diverting them abroad.

The potential shot in the arm for our public services would be almost 24 times the £67million Google says it actually paid in corporation tax in 2018.

The claims come after Google agreed a deal with HMRC in 2016 to hand over £130million in back taxes following an outcry at how little it had been paying.

Comment: Google is just one example of many, because, in the UK, the poor pay taxes but big business and the wealthy find ways to 'avoid' them:

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