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Russia has no plans to build airbase in Syria


RT
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:49 UTC
Image
© Vitaly Ankov / RIA Novosti
Russia has no plans for the construction of an airbase on Syrian soil, but at the same time does not rule out that such a possibility may arise in the future, a deputy chief of the General Staff of the Russian military said.

"For the moment, there [are] no such plans. However, everything could happen," the First Deputy Chief of General Staff, Nikolay Bogdanovsky, told Russian media.

So far, Russia only has a logistical support base in the Syrian port of Tartous.

Earlier, a number of Western media outlets reported that Russia has been creating an air base in an airfield near the Syrian city of Latakia with the US officials expressing their "concern" over reports of Russia's alleged military presence in Syria.
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Vader

UK general bemoans constraints of democracy, law, and public opposition to foreign wars


RT
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:24 UTC
Image
© Omar Sobhani / Reuters
British soldiers take cover as a helicopter lands at Musa Qala in Helmand province, Afghanistan
General Sir Nicholas Houghton, who is currently head of the British military, has bemoaned the limiting effects of democracy, law and public opposition to Britain's involvement in foreign wars.

He warned if the UK's enemies think the army will only fight as a matter of national survival it would give succor to Britain's international opponents, which would encourage "rather than deter revisionist states and their own ambitions."

"The more worrying constraints on the use of force lay in the areas of societal support, parliamentary consent and ever greater legal challenge," the general told an audience at the Chatham House think-tank on Tuesday.


Comment: Sounds like this military man would fit right in with Hitler in the 30s. There's probably quite a large percentage of world leaders who wished they could just turn their country into fascist dictatorships. It would make everything so much easier for them, like controlling the population through surveillance and police state tactics, and invading random countries, raping the people, and pillaging the lands. Must be really frustrating to pretend to care about things like human rights and popular opinion.


He said such limitations could hinder Britain's "national interest" if it came to a fight.
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Eye 1

Be afraid: Head of MI5 wants more surveillance powers for UK security agencies to fight terrorism


RT
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 17:18 UTC
Image
© UK Parliament via REUTERS TV
Andrew Parker the head of M15
MI5 chief Andrew Parker has called for more surveillance powers for Britain's security agencies in order to combat the growing terrorism threat, noting the need to outpace militants' growing tech acumen.

Parker warned that the terrorists' use of technology poses new challenges for intelligence agencies and that the "terrorism threat is the most serious threat that Britain faces in security terms."

He told BBC Radio on Thursday that the internet has "changed the shape" of the threat.


Comment: Someone might want to tell this guy the Internet has been around for quite a long time.


In August 2014, the UK raised its terrorism threat level to "severe," the second-highest stage on the scale. Parker explained this means attacks are considered "highly likely." The bump was caused by the growing influence of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and the surging number of Britons traveling to Syria and Iraq to join the radical organization.


Comment: If the UK government is concerned about attacks by IS, maybe they should stop funding and arming Islamic terrorists themselves. That might be a good place to start.

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2 + 2 = 4

No kidding! Ex-Nobel committee Exec expresses regret over Obama Peace Prize


RT
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 10:06 UTC
Image
© John McConnico / Pool / Reuters
U.S. President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama laughs after receiving his medal and diploma from Nobel committee chairman Thorbjorn Jagland at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony at City Hall in Oslo December 10, 2009.
Former Secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Geir Lundestad reportedly notes in his new book that the body "didn't achieve what it had hoped for" when it gave Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt and conferred the prestigious award on him in 2009.

While it is quite rare for Nobel officials to openly discuss the nuts and bolts of their secretive committee, the former director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute has apparently owned up in his memoir 'Secretary of Peace', to be released on Thursday, that the panel had expected the award to somewhat challenge Obama, who received the Nobel Peace Prize during his first term.

The Norwegian historian told AP that the committee "thought it would strengthen Obama and it didn't have this effect." The five members of the Nobel Committee, often former politicians, are appointed by the Norwegian parliament. The coveted award was met with an avalanche of criticism instead. An army of opponents noted that Obama had made no foreign policy achievements worthy of the prize in less than nine months in office. On top of this, he received the award while the US was engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Comment: Its taken the World a little time to catch up, but it now seems like people are seeing things more as they are and less what they had hoped for necessarily. Psychopaths in power are good at only one thing: Dashing the hopes of normal people and individuals of good will and conscience.

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Cow

Russia isolated? Brazil wants to export more meat to Russia


RT
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 16:08 UTC
brazil export meat russia
© Nacho Doce / Reuters
Brazilian companies want to increase supplies of agricultural products to the Russian market, says Russian food watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor. However, quality will be the deciding factor according to the agency.

"They produce a lot of meat. But the main problem is the reliability of food certification. We don't want to see pork raised using growth stimulants, especially American ractopamine, on our market", Rosselkhoznadzor spokesman Aleksey Alekseenko told RIA Novosti.

Brazil has promised to deliver ractopamine-free meat to Russia, he added.

The sides will discuss the issue on Tuesday.

Moscow has banned food products from countries that support anti-Russian sanctions. This has opened the door to the Russian market for other producers, particularly Latin American and BRICS countries like Brazil.

In July, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said that Brazil fully supports Russia's position that Western economic sanctions are counterproductive.

Comment: Russia clearly has the health and welfare of its citizens at heart. They've taken other measures to ensure a safe food supply. Making lemonade from lemons:

Thanks to sanctions Russia will be self-sufficient within a decade - Agricultural Minister

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War Whore

Keeping you safe: Alphabet agencies say they need warrantless access to Americans' emails

Kaveh Waddell
National Journal
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 15:27 UTC
fbi emails warrant
© Shutterstock
But the FTC and SEC have not used the current subpoena process in five years.

A bi­par­tis­an bid to re­form an elec­tron­ic-pri­vacy law has the sup­port of the tech com­munity and the White House, but fed­er­al law en­force­ment of­fi­cials tell Con­gress the changes would hamper civil pro­sec­u­tion.

Civil law en­force­ment agen­cies like the Fed­er­al Trade Com­mis­sion and the Se­cur­it­ies and Ex­change Com­mis­sion would not be able to ob­tain crit­ic­al in­form­a­tion if the law were changed to re­quire crim­in­al war­rants for ac­cess to data stored on cloud ser­vices, ac­cord­ing to wit­nesses from those agen­cies testi­fy­ing in front of the Sen­ate Ju­di­ciary Com­mit­tee Wed­nes­day.

The law en­force­ment of­fi­cials were re­act­ing to bills from Sens. Mike Lee and Patrick Leahy, and Reps. Kev­in Yo­der and Jared Pol­is, that aim to up­date the Elec­tron­ic Com­mu­nic­a­tions Pri­vacy Act, or ECPA.

In its cur­rent form, ECPA pro­tects emails from gov­ern­ment snoop­ing for 180 days. When the law was ini­tially drawn up in 1986, email pro­viders routinely re­moved emails from their serv­ers a month or two after they were de­livered; users would gen­er­ally down­load the mes­sages they in­ten­ded to keep. Whatever re­mains on an email serv­er after 180 days is fair game for gov­ern­ment to ac­cess, with just a sub­poena—not a war­rant.

Today, ubi­quit­ous cloud-based email sys­tems like Gmail, which of­fer giga­bytes of stor­age for free, al­low the av­er­age user to keep his or her mes­sages—and cal­en­dars, con­tacts, notes, and even loc­a­tion data—on a pro­vider's serv­ers in­def­in­itely.

The ECPA Amend­ments Act would re­quire law en­force­ment to get a war­rant to ac­cess serv­er-hos­ted in­form­a­tion, no mat­ter how old, and would re­quire the gov­ern­ment to no­ti­fy an in­di­vidu­al that his or her in­form­a­tion was ac­cessed with­in 10 days, with cer­tain ex­cep­tions.

But law en­force­ment of­fi­cials ex­pressed op­pos­i­tion to some of the bill's pro­posed changes, ar­guing that its re­quire­ment for crim­in­al war­rants could leave civil lit­ig­at­ors without ac­cess to im­port­ant elec­tron­ic in­form­a­tion.
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Crusader

Syrian UN ambassador: Russia has every right to fight ISIS in Syria


Sputnik
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 14:42 UTC
Image
© Flickr/ kuhnmi
Syria's UN ambassador on Wednesday said Russia had every right to carry out airstrikes against the Islamic State militants in his country.

"Why are the Americans fighting ISIL with their fighter jets and the Russians should be forbidden from that?" Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told reporters, "Does it make sense? It doesn't make sense."

"After all, we are fighting the same enemy," he added.

The Syrian envoy also said that Russia's military assistance to Damascus was coming as part of the longtime defense cooperation between the two countries.

President Barack Obama would welcome constructive Russian support for its efforts to create an anti-Islamic State collation in Syria, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters on Seprember 16.

Comment: The United States has been anything but welcoming towards Russia's efforts to defeat the Islamic State since IS is a creation of the US/NATO and is just a cover for the US/NATO destruction of Syria and their planned "regime change". Thus, this is just more psycho-babble from the White House as their definition of "constructive support" means one thing to pathological types and another thing to normal people.

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Light Saber

Getting off the Western financial merry-go-round is Russia's ultimate lethal weapon

Pepe Escobar
RT
Thu, 17 Sep 2015 15:18 UTC
Image
© ladimir Pesnya / RIA Novosti
Let's start with some classic Russian politics. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov is drawing up Russia's economic strategy for 2016, including the government budget. Siluanov - essentially a liberal, in favor of foreign investment - will present his proposals to the Kremlin by the end of this month.

So far, nothing spectacular. But then, a few days ago, Kommersant leaked that Russia's Security Council asked presidential aide Sergei Glazyev to come up with a separate economic strategy, to be presented to the council this week. This is not exactly a novelty, as the Russian Security Council in the past has asked small strategy groups for their economic assessment.

The Security Council is led by Nikolai Patrushev, the former head of the Federal Security Service. He and Siluanov are not exactly on the same wavelength.

And here's where the plot thickens. Glazyev, a brilliant economist, is a Russian nationalist - sanctioned personally by the US.

Glazyev is arguably going no holds barred. He is in favor of barring Russian companies from using foreign currency (which makes sense); taxing the conversion of rubles to foreign currencies (same); banning foreign loans to Russian firms (depending if they are not in US dollars or euro); and - the smoking gun - requiring Russian companies that have Western loans to default.
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Magnify

All according to the plan: Pentagon intelligence chief predicts breakup of Iraq and Syria


Sputnik
Fri, 11 Sep 2015 19:07 UTC
Iraq Syria breakup
Vincent Stewart, director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, told a conference that he found it difficult to envisage the countries emerging intact from the wars they endure.

The head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency admitted on Thursday his belief that Iraq and Syria are unlikely to emerge intact from years of war and sectarian violence.
"I'm having a tough time seeing it come back together," Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart told an audience of US security analysts.
With regards to Syria, the Pentagon chief gave a bleak prognosis; "I can see a time in the future where Syria is fractured into two or three parts."
In Iraq, the Defense Intelligence Agency boss indicated that he believes it unlikely that a government in Baghdad could hold authority over the disparate regions within the country's official borders; Stewart said he is "wrestling with the idea that the Kurds will come back to a central government of Iraq."

Comment: Of course they find it difficult to see Syria and Iraq emerging intact from the chaos the US and affiliated countries such as Saudi Arabia and Israel have fostered with the support and rise of ISIL. It is part of the plan long in the making whether it is officially acknowledged or not to weaken and break up these countries for the benefit of Israel. With the Neocons firmly in control throughout the Bush and Obama presidencies, what we are witnessing is this plan coming to fruition. From the rise of the specter of Islamic terrorists with 9/11 to the most recent pulling on heart strings with the refugee crisis in Europe, you can be sure that the Neocon psychopathic reality creators have set the agenda to destabilize the world to meet these ends, which is diametrically opposed to what is portrayed in the mainstream media. It seems only Russia stands in the way of the plan being fulfilled.

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Calculator

BoE: 50% of British banknotes stashed abroad, on black market


RT
Wed, 16 Sep 2015 14:42 UTC
Over 50 percent of all British banknotes in circulation are stashed abroad or on the black market, a Bank of England (BoE) report has said.

The Bank estimates a further £5 billion is stowed away under mattresses by thrifty families determined to build up savings. This means only 25 percent of all British cash can be used in the UK at any one time.

The BoE's report found that almost 20 percent of British residents keep an average of £345 in a deposit box, under their bed or elsewhere for emergencies. It estimated many other"super hoarders" exist who have hidden considerably larger amounts of cash.

The value of British banknotes in circulation has trebled since 1995 to £62.6 billion, according to the BoE. However, only £15 billion to £19 billion is accessible for everyday use by consumers. The remaining cash is believed to be held in foreign jurisdictions or the black market.

"The evidence suggests that no more than half of Bank of England notes in circulation are likely to be held for use within the domestic economy for legitimate purposes," the BoE said."The remainder is likely to be held overseas or for use in the shadow economy."


Comment: Money stuffed in mattresses...game changers? It's the little guy's "hedge" fund, for Pete's sake! Taxes are only for the economically unsavvy common folk or these "glitches" in the system would have been fixed long ago. According to the video, the PM and Treasurer of England have offshore, 'but legal,' accounts. Look the other way. No tax evasion there... As they say, those with wealth make the rules.

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