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How Washington could spoil the OPEC - Russia alliance

Nick Cunningham
oilprice.com
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 16:30 UTC
opec
© Reuters / Heinz-Peter Bader
OPEC and Russia are officially working to establish a formal alliance that would allow for the indefinite management of the oil market.

The OPEC/non-OPEC coalition, often referred to as "OPEC+", has presided over two rounds of production cuts since early 2017. The deals were one-off affairs, viewed as temporary emergency measures to erase a painful glut of supply that was draining the coffers of all oil producers alike.

But why not make the partnership official? The Wall Street Journal reports that such negotiations are underway. This is not the first time we have heard about a formal OPEC+ partnership. Last year, the two sides, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, discussed such an eventuality, but ultimately backed off.

The idea of a formal OPEC+ architecture has an obvious logic. Together, OPEC+ controls over 40 percent of global oil supply. Combining their production volumes to tweak output levels here and there in order to achieve stability - or, rather to obtain a desired price level - is much more easily achieved by coordinating their actions. They are stronger together rather than apart.
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Russian Flag

All words that threaten Western power are literally Russian propaganda

Curwen Ares Rolinson
Fort Russ News
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 16:20 UTC
anti-russian propaganda
Now here is quite a thing. What is being suggested, is that the primary users of any of these terms are supposedly Russian bots, or other vectors for material that can be 'safely dismissed' out of hand as "propaganda".
prop or not
This is not, strictly speaking, "Orwellian" - in the sense of Orwell's conception of "Newspeak". That, after all, was the deliberate efforts to change cognition and render rebellion impossible through the policing of language by removing whole words and thus, potentially, concepts ... whilst proffering other, more rote and mechanical formulations elsewhere. A pruning and 'simplification' of thought, with the goal of removing the "thought" bit.

No, this is something else. It is keeping alive [for how long, who can say], these terms rather than attempting to obviate them from our collective political discourse.

And doing so with a very specific agenda in mind - rendering them from potentially quite apt terms of description and/or castigation ... particularly of those in power today [you know, the politics of the "Establishment" .. oop there's one right there!] ... into taboo terms.

Words which delineate and demarcate the user, the possessor as some sort of false-flag enemy agent; who has no interest in the furtherance of democracy or in the positive participation of their state's genuine political process. And who therefore, once again, can safely be de-legitimated rather than listened to or otherwise dialogued with (lest they, you know, change the minds of people they talk to with facts and/or persuasive rhetoric), as "propaganda and propagandists do not argue in good faith" or whatever.

In a way, it is even more effective than the properly Orwellian approach outlined several paragraphs above.

Comment: And it's not just specific words but entire ideas or complete thoughts. If you think Crimea is Russian, you are a Russian propagandist. If you think Russia and Syria are waging a war on terror in Syria (not a war on civilians), you are a Russian propagandist. If you think the coup in Ukraine was an illegal coup, you are a Russian propagandist. If you think Putin is generally a smart and effective president, you are a Russian propagandist. If you think the U.S. has supported al-Qaeda or ISIS (whether directly or indirectly), you are a Russian propagandist. And so it goes.

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Snakes in Suits

Who do you trust more? NBC journalist's stab at RT backfires spectacularly


RT
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 16:01 UTC
Tulsi Gabbard
© Reuters/Brian Snyder
Tulsi Gabbard
Eager to defend NBC News' claim that Democrat Tulsi Gabbard was being promoted by a 'Russian machine,' journalist Kasie Hunt asked Twitter if they trusted her network or RT more. The results were not what she'd hoped for.

Fresh from a disastrous interview with Gabbard (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday morning, in which Hunt claimed that US troops were sent to Syria "pushing back against [President Bashar] Assad" rather than to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), Hunt asked her Twitter followers to compare the NBC story that claimed that Russia was "boosting" the congresswoman, to the report from "Russian state media" RT.

NBC's "excellent reporting" was based on "experts" from New Knowledge - a shady outfit that was exposed in December for making up fake Russian bot accounts to help Democrats during a 2017 Senate election. It was Glenn Greenwald from The Intercept that pushed back on NBC's claim first, a fact duly noted in RT's article - but not in Hunt's tweets.
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V

Repeat after me, protests in Venezuela good, protests in France bad!

Neil Clark
RT
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 14:47 UTC
protests
© REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier; Guadalupe Pardo
Large street protests in both France and Venezuela. Two Presidents with low approval ratings. But only one whose legitimacy has been denied by Western 'democracies' and by the French president himself.

Just when you thought globalist hypocrisy couldn't get any worse, it just did.

France and Venezuela have both experienced widespread anti-government protests in recent weeks. These have been fueled by economic factors and increased financial hardship of the majority.

But it's only in Venezuela where the democratically-elected leader, Nicolas Maduro, has been ordered to step down and his opponent, Juan Guaido, has been anointed president. The 'good old democracies' of the US and the EU have been falling over themselves to 'recognise' Guaido. They're simply Mad About the Boy, and mad at Maduro.

In France though, it's a very different story. Here it's been the street protestors - les gilets jaunes - who have been besmirched. They're 'populists' (boo, hiss) and there have been claims that the whole thing is being stirred up by Russia (an even louder boo, hiss).
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X

UN Peacekeeper discovers sex trafficking inside the UN with ties to the US State Department

Arjun Walia
Collective Evolution
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 15:13 UTC
Kathryn Bolkovac
The topic of pedophilia is a disturbing one for sure, what's even more disturbing is that this kind of thing continues to happen all over the world, particularly among the global elite. There are literally too many examples to go through, whether it be the pedophilia that's been exposed inside the Vatican or the fairly recent NBC news report accusing Hillary Clinton covering up a giant pedophile ring within the state department, this thing is hitting the mainstream.

What really blew the lid off the topic was the whole Pizzagate scandal, although labeled as "fake news" by those who control the mainstream media, as organizations like Wikileaks felt it very important to release that information, and question it. Then you have people with strange connections to the Clintons and other 'global elitists,' like Jimmy Savile, who was well connected with the Royal Family, as well as Jeffrey Epstein, who seemed to be well connected with Prince Andrew. In fact Epstein and prince Andrew have been implicated again in a new court case. You can read more about that here.

There are countless lawsuits, accusations, and more constantly going on that the public is completely unaware of. The Vatican alone has dished out approximately 4 billion dollars to settle child sex abuse claims, and right now, the prominent Vatican official Cardinal George Pell, who has been found on multiple occasions to be connected to large pedophilia rings, has been charged and convicted. You can read more about that here.

Comment: See also:

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Cards

An Israeli trauma expert predicted a Las Vegas attack three years before it happened

Ben Sales
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Mon, 02 Oct 2017 12:20 UTC
avraham rivkind las vegas
When Dr. Avi Rivkind landed in Las Vegas three years ago to lecture as a trauma care expert, he saw something that troubled him.

The airport, McCarran International, felt too open, almost exposed.

He felt no more comfortable on the city's Strip while watching crowds flow from hotels to casinos to shops to the street - with little security in sight.

"I felt there was a lack of presence, from the ease of getting around there, from the casinos, from how easy it is to enter all the malls," he told JTA on Monday. "I felt very uncomfortable."

Rivkind, who heads the Shock Trauma Unit at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, is a pioneer in treating victims of mass-casualty terror attacks. He gained his experience treating terror victims in Israel, and his techniques were used in 2013 to save the lives of some of the injured in the Boston Marathon bombing.


Comment: Specifically, he and a small team spent a couple of days, in 2005, training staff at Massachusetts General Hospital.


Comment: What a curious article for Israel's new agency to put out within hours of America's worst-ever mass shooting (really, a terror attack).

Rivkind may just have had one heckuva hunch. As weird as it is to non-Israelis, Rivkind's worldview is pretty normal for Israelis: they step off planes in unknown places and envisage the worst - which, in part, stems from their existential angst that the whole rest of the world is poised to snuff them out at any moment.

On the other hand, his information is so specific. And he's not just any old doctor...
Rivkind was the personal physician for the late Israeli President Ezer Weizman, helped care for Ariel Sharon when the prime minister fell into a coma following a stroke...


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Bad Guys

Against all votes: NATO grants North Macedonia membership despite failed referendum


RT
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 17:28 UTC
Macedonian army
© REUTERS / Ognen Teofilovski
FILE PHOTO: Macedonian Army perform in front of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Macedonian Defence Minister Radmila Sekerinska, September 6, 2018
The Balkan country of North Macedonia is set to officially become the 30th member of NATO on the back of a decades-long spat with Greece, a failed popular vote, and allegations that the US manipulated local politicians.

NATO and North Macedonia signed an accession protocol on Wednesday, meaning that the former Yugoslav republic will officially join the military bloc. Each member will now need to ratify the bid, but it is safe to say that the country's 10-year accession saga is now over.

North Macedonia is the fourth Balkan country to join NATO following Croatia, Albania and Montenegro. The three states met no resistance while applying for membership, but Skopje did, largely because of the country's name. Greeks have objected to Macedonia's name since it ceded from Yugoslavia in 1991, because the country has a region of the same name.


Comment: If that was the real reason, then clearly they've got their priorities of the world's most pressing issues in order...


Comment: See also: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Eye 1

Venezuela seizes 'US weapons shipment' as Trump vows to support 'noble quest for freedom'


RT
Wed, 06 Feb 2019 03:09 UTC
gun shipment
Donald Trump has expressed full support for the Venezuelan opposition to oust President Nicolas Maduro from power, just as the country's authorities announced they'd seized a cache of weapons, allegedly delivered from the US.

The US-made weapons were discovered at the storage yard of Arturo Michelena International Airport in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, the Interior Ministry said Tuesday. The stash included at least 19 rifles and 118 magazines, high-caliber ammunition, as well as 90 radios and six mobile phones - and was likely sent from Miami, Florida on Sunday, authorities believe. An investigation to determine the intended recipient of the shipment has been launched.

While the US never ruled out a military option to support Juan Guaidó's claim to power, so far Washington has called for a peaceful transition of power in the Latin American country.

Comment: The US has a long and dark history of supplying stooges in their country of choice to facilitate coups. Regarding Venezuela, they've openly admitted to stealing the country's wealth in order to fund the opposition and that they haven't ruled out an armed invasion: And check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: US Regime Change Operation in Venezuela - This Time It's Legit?

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Light Saber

France's yellow vest movement to contest EU Parliament vote


PressTV
Sun, 24 Feb 2019 07:25 UTC
yellow vest
© AFP
A man wearing a yellow vest takes notes as he attends a meeting called by local members of the “yellow vest” movement, in Ternay, near the French east-central city of Lyon, on January 22, 2019.
Members of France's "yellow vest" protest movement say they are to field candidates to run in the upcoming European Parliament elections, well more than two months after they began protest rallies against political elite and what they called inequality in the European country.

"The citizen movement... has shown the need to transform the anger into a political project capable of giving answers to the French people who have supported it," the movement said in a statement on Wednesday.

It also put forward a list of ten candidates aspiring to secure seats in the European Parliament in the May 26 elections on the "Citizen-led Rally" ticket. The hopefuls, aged 29 to 53, are from different walks of life, with jobs ranging from forklift driver and stay-at-home mother to sales director.

Comment: It will naturally be a difficult transition from the organic protests into an organized body but it is possible and, since the Yellow Vests enjoy significant support at home and throughout Europe, one hopes they will be successful and continue to be an example for others that making a difference is within reach: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Snakes in Suits

Donald Tusk: There's a 'special place in hell' for Brexit promoters who lack a plan


ABC News
Thu, 07 Feb 2019 11:32 UTC
Donald Tusk
The European Council President has delivered a stinging attack on those who promoted Brexit with no plan to carry it out, saying there would be a "special place in hell" for them.

Donald Tusk was giving a joint press conference with Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadker after the pair had talks in Brussels about the UK's impending departure from the European Union.

Mr Tusk said he and Mr Varadker had been discussing actions for the "possible fiasco" of a no-deal Brexit, before he ended his statement with the inflammatory comment.
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