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'Approaching the UK's area of interest': Royal Navy deploys destroyer, attack helicopter to tail Russian research vessel


RT
Sun, 03 Jun 2018 09:53 UTC
The Russian Navy research ship Yantar
© Russian Defence Ministry / Global Look Press
The Russian Navy research ship Yantar
The UK scrambled a Royal Navy warship and an RAF helicopter to follow a Russian Navy research ship as it passed through the English Channel. The move seems a bit overkill, as the Russian ship was not a 'killing machine.'

The Royal Navy's HMS Diamond was sent to tail Russian Northern Fleet research ship Yantar on its way through the English Channel, the British Navy said in a statement on June 1, calling the Russian vessel a "spy ship." It further added that the HMS Diamond, which is a Portsmouth-based Type 45 destroyer, "will continue to monitor the vessel's movements and activities as it continues north."

The Yantar, however, is far from being a warship. While indeed part of the Russian Northern Fleet, the vessel, commissioned in 2015, is designed to conduct deep-sea research. It can carry various manned and unmanned underwater vehicles, but has no armament.

Comment: See also:

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Jet1

'If we are strategic partners the US should not legally wrong us here': Erdogan tells US over plans to block F-35 sales


RT
Sun, 03 Jun 2018 09:29 UTC
Israeli F-35 Lightning II fighter jets
© Reuters
President Erdogan warned NATO ally the US that it should behave more like a strategic partner rather than place legal hurdles for Turkish arms deals. The remark was in response to US plans to block F-35 sales to Ankara.

"We say that the US is our strategic partner. As our strategic partner, the US should not say we should knock on another door," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. Speaking to Turkish Star TV, Erdogan was referring to a bill recently introduced in the US Senate with the aim of halting the shipment of F-35 stealth fighter jets to Ankara. "If we are strategic partners, if we are model partners, the US should not legally wrong us here," he said.

Turkey has ordered 100 American jets, and the first two units are to be deployed by 2019. The military spending bill, which is yet to be put up for a vote, is being pushed by senators from both the Republican and Democratic parties. It says that Ankara will not receive the promised aircraft and their maintenance depot if it "degrades NATO interoperability" and "exposes NATO assets to hostile actors." The senators also do not want Turkey to get the planes if it tries to buy weapons from nations under US sanctions. Lawmakers also cited the detention of US citizens by Ankara and potential threats to Greece, another NATO ally, as reasons to stop selling fighter jets to Turkey.

Comment: See also: Turkey threatens to deny US access to Incirlik Air Base, ongoing F-35 deal tensions

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Russian Flag

In the Middle East, Putin walks through the door Trump opened for him

Robert Fisk
The Independent
Tue, 29 May 2018 21:08 UTC
Putin Lieutenant General Valery Asapov
© Associated Press
Lieutenant General Valery Asapov (right, with President Putin) was killed in Deir Ezzor in September 2017, as he assisted Syrian commanders in their recapture of the city
Once it was the State Department which called for 'restraint on all sides' - usually when the Israelis were invading or bombing Lebanon or Gaza - but now it's the Kremlin which calls for 'restraint' between Israel and Iran. Putin is fast becoming a friend to all

Vladimir Putin will have paid very close attention to the location of the Syrian artillery battery where four Russian soldiers lost their lives at the weekend. The desert around Deir ez-Zour remains a dangerous place - politically as well as physically - in which the Americans and Russians play an extremely risky game of war.

Putin still suspects the Americans helped the artillery guidance of a mortar battery which killed the commander of the Russian Far East 5th Army in Deir ez-Zour, lieutenant general Valery Asapov, less than a year ago. Was the mortar fired by pro-American Kurdish fighters? Or by Isis? The Russians say that Isis mobile attackers stormed the Syrian artillery position this weekend at night - the Islamists' normal routine, streaming out of the desert wadis in suicide trucks and motorcycles - even though the little Syrian forts, hillocks of sand and cement strewn across the vast sand plateaus, are supposed to be invulnerable.

Comment: Mr. Fisk has unfortunately fallen for some of the West's propaganda. The Russians were extremely careful about civilian lives and especially medical facilities, unlike the carnage unleashed by the West in Raqqa.

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Eye 1

Obama's spying scandal is starting to resemble Nixon's Watergate

Michael Barone
The New York Post
Sun, 27 May 2018 20:54 UTC
obama halo
© Getty Images
"F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims," read the headline on a lengthy New York Times story May 18. "The Justice Department used a suspected informant to probe whether Trump campaign aides were making improper contacts with Russia in 2016," read a story in the May 21 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

So much for those who dismissed charges of Obama administration infiltration of Donald Trump's campaign as paranoid fantasy. Defenders of the Obama intelligence and law enforcement apparat have had to fall back on the argument that this infiltration was for Trump's - and the nation's - own good.

It's an argument that evidently didn't occur to Richard Nixon's defenders when it became clear that Nixon operatives had burglarized and wiretapped the Democratic National Committee's headquarters in June 1972.

Comment:

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Binoculars

A non-hysterical take on Putin's future from an American analyst

Gordon M. Hahn
gordonhahn.com
Fri, 01 Jun 2018 19:59 UTC
putin palace
Perhaps now, with the fourth presidential term for Vladimir Putin having begun, we can put aside all the empty talk of 'imminent coups', color revolutions, 'fatal illnesses,' and perhaps the American rusological community that foisted them upon our post-fact world and get down to some realistic forecasting about the tack Putin is likely to take in both Russian domestic and foreign policy in this new likely six-year run. One way we can do this is by looking at the tea leaves left at the bottom of the Kremlinological cup after the appointment of a government to begin the new term along with the reappointment of Dmitrii Medvedev.

In doing so, we should keep in mind that Putin is not the Hitler or Stalin of today, but rather a balancer trying to keep the Russian state and his own security intact after he decided to join the dark world of post-communist and Russian politics in December 1999. He is not trying to restore totalitarianism of any kind, nor is he trying to restore the Russian Empire or Soviet Union. He is trying to maximize his own power within a dangerous milieu of Russian politics and Russia's power in a world in which an expanding West, an unstable and often revolutionary Islamic world, and a rising China of unclear intentions surround Russia.

There is nothing to suggest that he will move to change any of these basic parameters, with the exception of relations with the West, where accommodation can occur if NATO expansion ends. Domestically, some modest modernizations in the economy might be expected.
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Star of David

As the West-Russia/China axis lock horns, what will be Israel's choice?

Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture Foundation
Tue, 10 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
IsraelFlag Bombing
© American Journal Review
A recent cluster of unrelated events is bringing Israel to a point of inflection; or at least, to a moment of deep almost existential reflection - on this, the seventieth anniversary of its founding. The depth of this quite anxious introspection became explicit in a discussion (Hebrew original) hosted by Yediot Ahronoth, Israel's widest circulation Hebrew newspaper, with six former heads of Mossad, the Israeli Intelligence Service.

The most iconic irruption into this sombre mood was the statement in the Knesset (parliament) that the population between the Jordan and the sea, was exactly balanced at 6.5 million each, between Israelis and Palestinians. Of course, that demographic equality would occur at some point, everybody knew. It was not as such, then, a surprise; but it constituted a slap of reality, nonetheless. These figures were published by the IDF and are therefore difficult to contest. This moment of reality thus curtails the ability of some Israelis to persist with the wishful thinking that the number of Palestinians is far less. This hugely symbolic tipping point is here - the point has arrived.

Comment: What had been a predictable conquest plan seems to be no longer the case. We see Israel taking military action against bogey Iranian and Palestinian aggression, widening the disconnect between truth and lies, honor and deceit. Global condemnation for its actions is mounting.

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Sherlock

Affirmative: The FBI was investigating Trump campaign when it spied

Andrew C. McCarthy
National Review
Wed, 30 May 2018 09:55 UTC
Comey
© Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
James Comey
Trey Gowdy and Marco Rubio evidently paid little attention to testimony before their own committees on how Obama officials made the Trump campaign the subject of a counterintelligence investigation.

Well, well, well. The bipartisan Beltway establishment has apparently had its fill of this "Trump colluded with Russia" narrative - the same narrative the same establishment has lustily peddled for nearly two years. The Obama administration recklessly chose to deploy the government's awesome counterintelligence powers to investigate - and, more to the point, to smear - its political opposition as a Kremlin confederate. Now that this ploy has blown up on the Justice Department and the FBI, these agencies - the ones that went out of their way, and outside their guidelines, to announce to the world that the Trump campaign was under investigation - want you to know the president and his campaign were not investigated at all, no siree.

What could possibly have made you imagine such a thing?

And so, to douse the controversy with cold water, dutifully stepping forward in fine bipartisan fettle are the Obama administration's top intelligence official and two influential Capitol Hill Republicans who evidently pay little attention to major testimony before their own committees.

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Clipboard

Prep for Putin-Trump summit underway

Seraphim Hanisch
The Duran
Sat, 02 Jun 2018 11:31 UTC
TrumPutin
© Happy News Bot
Meeting could become a massive breakthrough - and breakout - of the massive deadlock falsely brought about by Deep State operatives

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 1st, that the White House is making plans for a potential summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such a meeting would bring one of the world's most enigmatic relationships to front and center.

According to the Journal:
A senior administration official said Friday that Jon Huntsman, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been in Washington to help arrange a meeting between Messrs. Trump and Putin.

The planning is still at an early stage, the official said, with the two nations needing to agree on a date and location.

'This has been an ongoing project of Ambassador Huntsman, stretching back months, of getting a formal meeting between Putin and Trump,' the official said.
It would seem that the American President has decided that that RussiaGate controversy has become (rightfully) irrelevant enough to move forward with this plan. Still, the news was released late Friday evening, New York time, and will probably not be a huge piece in the American national media for some time.

Comment: Would it be so. The stale and putrid air surrounding Washington DC has not cleared, nor, in attempts to manipulate both US and Russia, will Israel likely give its blessing.

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Padlock

Moreno: Assange can remain at embassy as long as he doesn't practice journalism

Caitlin Johnstone
Steemit
Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00 UTC
Assange
© Peter Nichols/Reuters
Julian Assange
In 1999 I took a backpack and my life savings to South America, intending to spend six months traversing as much of the continent as I could possibly fit in. I landed in Ecuador and my plans changed almost immediately. I fell in love with the country and its people and ended up spending over half my time there.

I arrived a few days after the banks had collapsed in a grim neoliberal foreshadowing as to what was going to happen in the States a decade later. Bank accounts were frozen as the government put salvaging the banks above feeding the people. There was anger and rioting, tear gas and rubber bullets, and a brass band. Always, there was a brass band. Sometimes shirtless, often shoeless, with a few dinged-up instruments creating a wild cacophony of joy to riot to. A tiny country with the equator running through three distinct topographies -- the coast, the alps and the jungle -- its claim to being "el mitad del mundo" rings true. It feels like you are living in the heart of the world. It is life, concentrated. And its people seem more real and more alive than any I have encountered in my many travels.

Which is why I was not surprised when this plucky nation knowingly took on the wrath of the western empire in granting Julian Assange political asylum in 2012. While my own sycophantic country Australia pathetically ignored the plight of its own citizen, Ecuador defiantly strode forward, locked eyes with the US-centralized power establishment, and did what no one else was willing to.

Comment: To openly support Assange, or even acknowledge his contribution in a neutral way, opens the door for others to follow in his footsteps. If Western partners were honorable, law-abiding countries with nothing to hide, the Assanges of the world would be considered valuable. In some respects, this is not about what Assange/Wikileaks has revealed so far, it is fear for what might come next.

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Star of David

Israel gets impunity while US vetoes UNSC proposal to ensure protection for Palestinians


RT
Fri, 01 Jun 2018 21:27 UTC
Nikki Haley
© Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
The United States has vetoed a Kuwaiti proposal to the United Nation Security Council (UNSC), which sought to offer "international protection" to Palestinian civilians in the wake of more than 120 of deaths in the Gaza strip.

In a speech to the council, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley criticized the proposal, describing it as a "grossly one-sided view". Haley accused Hamas of inciting violent acts at the border between Gaza and Israel, purposefully infiltrating the 'Great March of Return' mass protests with its "terrorist fighters" and deliberately using civilians as human shields.


Comment: Even if that were a speck true in, let's say another galaxy, the IDF didn't have to fire.


"The terrorist group Hamas bears primary responsibility for the awful living conditions in Gaza,"she said, before the UNSC vote.

The US was the only council member to vote against the proposal. There were 10 votes in favor and four abstentions (Poland, the UK, Netherlands and Ethiopia). A resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the US, Russia, China, France or the UK in order to be adopted.
"The message given by the council today, as it votes against this, is that the occupying power enjoys an exception," the Kuwaiti representative said, after the proposal was vetoed. "Why do Palestinians continue to suffer? Why does the international community fail to act? Why does Israel enjoy impunity? Why are all these lives lost and all this blood is shed?" he asked.

Comment: What is wrong with this woman? UN protection would secure the Palestinians from ALL such violence (including Hamas if they were even involved) precisely because it is 'international protection'. Can't Haley separate 'protection' from 'blame'?

Unequivocally, the IDF murdered 120 innocent people and injured hundreds. Given the standards in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there are many infringements continually perpetrated by Israel that would come into question. Haley is determined for these to remain off radar in order to keep up the pretenses against Hamas and substantiate Israeli aggression.

See also:
Appendix 4: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights description of 30 human rights guaranteed by the UN
Appendix 5:The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (abbreviated)

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