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Putin on nuke treaties at Valdai: "We gave you uranium, you repaid us by bombing Belgrade"

putin
© Grigoriy Sisoev / Sputnik
Vladimir Putin has criticized the US for failing to keep their end of the bargain in a host of international disarmament agreements. He says Moscow will not exit any existing treaties, but promised an "instant, symmetrical response" if Washington decides to quit first.

'US decided to do away with international law'

Speaking during a Q & A session at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi, an annual meeting with international journalists and Russia experts, Putin began by recalling the Megatons to Megawatts program, which ran between 1993 and 2013, and saw Russia downblend enriched uranium from the equivalent of about 20,000 of its nuclear warheads into low-enriched uranium to be used as fuel by US power stations.

Putin said that as part of what he called "one of the most effective disarmament efforts in history," US officials made 170 visits to top secret Russian facilities, and "set up permanent workplaces in them adorned with American flags."

"From the Russian side unprecedented openness and trust were demonstrated," said Putin, saying that through the 1990s, about 100 US officials were entitled to carry out surprise inspections of Russian nuclear facilities, as part of Gorbachev and Yeltsin-era agreements.

"What we got in return is well-known - a complete disregard for our national interests, support for separatism in the Caucasus, a circumvention of the UN Security Council, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq, and so on. The US must have seen the state of our nuclear weapons and economy and decided to do away with international law."

Light Sabers

Socialists in Venezuela win 17 of 23 states - US immediately casts doubt on election results

venezuela flags
© Reuters
The United Socialist Party of Venezuela won at least 17 of the 23 governorships, also garnering 54 percent of the vote.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, cast doubt on the results of Venezuela's Regional Elections where candidates from the governing Socialist Party won a vast majority of seats, claiming the vote was not "free and fair."

"An election is only legitimate if it is free and fair, and from the start, this was neither," Haley said via the U.S. mission to the United Nations Twitter account.

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV won at least 17 of the 23 governorships, also garnering 54 percent of the vote. The PSUV candidate for Bolivar state, where no official results have been declared yet, also claimed victory.

Turnout was 61.14 percent in Sunday's polls, with ballots cast at 13,559 polling stations nationwide.

Dollars

Bill Clinton sought permission to meet with Russian nuclear official during infamous uranium deal decision

Bill and Hillary Clinton
As he prepared to collect a $500,000 payday in Moscow in 2010, Bill Clinton sought clearance from the State Department to meet with a key board director of the Russian nuclear energy firm Rosatom - which at the time needed the Obama administration's approval for a controversial uranium deal, government records show.

Arkady Dvorkovich, a top aide to then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and one of the highest-ranking government officials to serve on Rosatom's board of supervisors, was listed on a May 14, 2010, email as one of 15 Russians the former president wanted to meet during a late June 2010 trip, the documents show.

"In the context of a possible trip to Russia at the end of June, WJC is being asked to see the business/government folks below. Would State have concerns about WJC seeing any of these folks," Clinton Foundation foreign policy adviser Amitabh Desai wrote the State Department on May 14, 2010, using the former president's initials and forwarding the list of names to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's team.

The email went to two of Hillary Clinton's most senior advisers, Jake Sullivan and Cheryl Mills.

The approval question, however, sat inside State for nearly two weeks without an answer, prompting Desai to make multiple pleas for a decision.

"Dear Jake, we urgently need feedback on this. Thanks, Ami," the former president's aide wrote in early June.

Sullivan finally responded on June 7, 2010, asking a fellow State official "What's the deal w this?"

Comment: See also:


Red Flag

Britain proposes suspending surgeries for smokers and obese patients in single-payer nightmare scenario

UK NHS building
Yesterday brought the news that two influential Senators had hammered out a bipartisan agreement that would temporarily resolve Obamacare's newly-expanded 'cost-sharing' subsidies dispute.

After President Trump ended his predecessor's illegal payments to insurers (ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts because the funds were never appropriated by Congress, as required), industry experts warned that the move would force premiums and costs even higher, as carriers seek to mitigate even bigger financial losses than the ones that have already driven providers out of marketplaces from coast to coast.

The Alexander-Murray compromise would legally allocate those bailout-style funds for two years, in exchange for very minor concessions from Democrats regarding state flexibility and catastrophic plans. Trump appeared initially supportive of the deal but has walked that back a bit -- as Paul Ryan signals that the proposed trade-offs are woefully insufficient to attract House Republican support. The fate of the whole "fix" push, therefore, remains murky.

Alarm Clock

Unacceptable! Former German Chancellor Schroeder lambastes Washington's economic war against Russian gas supplies to Europe

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
© Wolfgang Rattay / ReutersFormer German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder
The United States would like to weaken Russia's energy cooperation with the European Union, said former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, adding it's unacceptable to create barriers to Russian gas deliveries to the German market.

"It's wrong if the Americans and the European Union somehow resist each other on this issue. And still there are attempts to create some difficulties for this project [Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline - Ed.]," he told Rossiya 24 news channel.

According to Schroeder, "the fact the Americans will try entering the German market with the help of sanctions and to dominate with its liquefied shale gas is nothing but the signs of an economic war, and such war is unacceptable."

Comment: Any self-respecting European leader who hasn't bowed down to the diktats of Imperial Amerika would do the same.


Yoda

Vladimir Putin blasts the US for its past and present actions and likely future deeds

Putin Valdai 2017
© Sputnik/ Grigoriy SisoevRussian President Vladimir Putin takes part in final plenary session of Valdai International Discussion Club meeting
The Russian President's remarks during a public Q and A session in Sochi were among his most strident ever offered on the subject of US international lawlessness.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered one of his most wide reaching criticisms of the United States to-date, during his Q and A session at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi.

Putin described a worsening Moscow-Washington relationship that dates back to the 1990s when an 'untrustworthy' west took advantage of Russia's weak leadership in the age of Yeltsin, Gaidar and Chubais. Addressing his multi-national audience, the Russian President said,
"Our biggest mistake was that we trusted you too much. You interpreted our trust as weakness and you exploited that...

What we got in return is well-known: a complete disregard for our national interests, support for separatism in the Caucasus, a circumvention of the United Nations Security Council, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq, and so on. The US must have seen the state of our nuclear weapons and economy and decided to do away with international law".

Comment: Russia, along with China, and to a lesser degree, Iran, are the only adults currently operating on the world stage. It can only be hoped that the patient diplomatic efforts put forth by these nations will shepherd the most serious conflicts into solutions that benefit all sides. Russia has shown itself to be an honorable negotiator. The U.S. looks comparatively more villainous by the day.


Chess

Sites that post political content, from Facebook to Twitter to Drudge, could face libel suits for spreading "fake news"

internet hoax
Political content on the internet, paid or not, should face substantial federal regulation to eliminate undefined "disinformation," and users of platforms and news feeds, from Facebook, to Twitter, to the Drudge Report and even New York Times, could be punished for sharing "fake news" from those sites, the former Democratic chair of the FEC is urging.

In a broad proposal that adds threatening libel suits to regulatory plans already pushed by Democrats on the Federal Election Commission, ex-chair Ann Ravel believes that there is support for expanded regulation in the wake of reports foreign governments spent $100,000 on 2016 political ads on Facebook.

She would include "fake news," not just paid ads, to be regulated, though it's never defined other than the Democrat's description of "disinformation." And anybody who shares or retweets it could face a libel suit.

She would also use regulation to "improve voter competence," according to the new proposal titled Fool Me Once: The Case for Government Regulation of 'Fake News.' Ravel, who now lectures at Berkeley Law, still has allies on the FEC who support internet regulation. The paper was co-written by Abby K. Wood, an associate professor at the University of Southern California, and Irina Dykhne, a student at USC Gould School of Law.

Chess

Pepe Escobar: Clashes between Kurds and Iraqis in Kirkuk all about oil

iraqi tank
© Reuters / Alaa Al-MarjaniArtillery belonging to the Iraqi Security Forces reaches Kirkuk, Iraq, on October 17, 2017
The Battle of Kirkuk lasted less than 24 hours. In a lightning - and mostly bloodless - offensive, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) retook control of the North Oil Co. and North Gas Co. headquarters, the K1 military base, the Bai Hassan oil field, and two domes of the Kirkuk oil field on Monday.

Baghdad did what it had previously said it would do: reestablish federal authority over the key strategic assets of Kirkuk province, which had been controlled by the Kurdish Peshmerga since the 2014 Islamic State offensive.

But why did it take only 24 hours? There are two main reasons. One, the eternal, internal split between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), led by wily tribal schemer Masoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party of the late Jalal Talabani; and two, a brokered deal for Baghdad's advance. The Kurdish Peshmerga described the takeover as "a flagrant declaration of war" and vowed that Baghdad will pay a "heavy price." That's largely rhetorical.

The Pentagon - which has 10,000 US troops still in Iraq and is allied with Baghdad in the fight against ISIS but kept close links with the Kurds during the 2003-2008 occupation years - has been essentially helpless. The "coalition" the Pentagon essentially leads against ISIS insisted clashes between Peshmerga and Iraqi government forces were a mere "misunderstanding," and stressed it is not supporting any of the belligerents.

Blackbox

Say what? Saudi king vows to fight 'extremist' interpretations of Islam

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
© ReutersSaudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
Saudi Arabia will monitor interpretations of the Prophet Mohammad's words to counter extremism, King Salman said in a decree issued Tuesday.

The King will establish the "King Salman Complex" in Medina where elite scholars will monitor and examine religious teachings to "eliminate fake and extremist texts and any texts that contradict the teachings of Islam and justify the committing of crimes, murders and terrorist acts." the Saudi Press Agency reports.

An assembly will be created in Medina with a council of the world's Hadith scholars, appointed by royal decree.

Comment: Further reading: Saudi Arabia turns to Russia: Diversifies foreign relations, considers buying S-400 defense system - Update


Eye 1

UK's GCHQ spies on millions, shares data with corporations & foreign governments

spy intelligence hacking defence computer cyber warfare
© REUTERS/ Ben Birchall
UK spy agency GCHQ is monitoring social media accounts, gathering thousands of megabytes of citizens' information, according to a privacy rights group.

Rights group Privacy International has unearthed documents that show UK intelligence services collect data on millions of UK citizens via popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, and share harvested information with foreign governments and private businesses, without ministerial permission or official oversight.

The exposure represents the first concrete confirmation of the type of information collected and held by UK intelligence agencies, although it remains unclear what aspects of communications they hold and other types of information government agencies are collecting, beyond broad unspecific categories such as biographical details, commercial and financial activities, communications, travel data, and legally privileged communications.