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China imports oil from Iran despite US sanctions, and Washington can do nothing

Paul Antonopoulos
Fort Russ News
Fri, 09 Aug 2019 12:00 UTC
Soroush
© REUTERS/Raheb Homavandi/File Photo
A gas flare on an oil production platform in the Soroush oil fields is seen alongside an Iranian flag in the Persian Gulf, Iran, July 25, 2005.
Last month, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Chinese oil trading company Zhuhai Zhengrong Ltd. and its CEO, Youmin Li, after a Bloomberg report accused China of circumventing tough US sanctions on Iran.

China continued its Iranian crude oil imports in July, two months after the end of US sanctions exemptions, research by three oil tanker companies showed, Reuters reported.

According to the data, tankers discharged between July and July between 4.4 million and 11 million barrels of oil in China, and some of the oil is believed to have gone to China's strategic oil reserves.

Comment: See also:

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Star

Liberal media puzzled: Openly gay Brnabic & Weidel prefer to work hard for their countries rather than aggressive PC campaigning

Dmitry Babich
RT
Thu, 08 Aug 2019 17:22 UTC
Ana Brnabic
© Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko; Reuters/Joachim Herrmann
Ana Brnabic and Alice Weidel
Western ultra-liberals and conservatives seem to forget the real European values, where tolerance is based on respect for a person's private life and professional qualities are put above belonging to minority groups.

When two years ago, in June 2017, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic appointed Ana Brnabic (a 42-year-old openly gay person who worked for American and British NGOs, including USAid) to the position of prime minister, the Western media was stupefied. It actually took Western journalists a few days to get out of their stupor.

Ana Brnabic is a member of a minority group, not a spokesperson for it

How was it possible? Could Aleksandar Vucic, this "ultranationalist" information minister (as the Guardian put it) in the government of the much-maligned Slobodan Milosevic be the one to make the dreams of the gay rights activists come true? (Milosevic was Serbia's president, and was toppled in a Western-backed 'revolution' in 2001 after the American-led invasion of Yugoslavia in 1999.)
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Black Cat

Nellie Ohr, wife of DOJ official funneled Clinton-funded dossier on Manafort to FBI

Ivan Pentchoukov
The Epoch Times
Fri, 09 Aug 2019 17:02 UTC
nellie ohr fusion gps
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr arrives for a closed-door interview with investigators from the House Judiciary and Oversight committees in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington Oct. 19, 2018.
The wife of a high-ranking Justice Department official handed her husband a dossier of research on former Trump-campaign chairman Paul Manafort in December 2016, according to FBI documents released on Aug. 8.

Nellie Ohr, the wife of Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, gave him a report titled "Manafort Chronology." Bruce Ohr gave the report to the FBI on Dec. 19, 2016.

Nellie Ohr compiled the Manafort report as part of her work for Fusion GPS. The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid Fusion GPS $1 million to conduct opposition research on then-candidate Donald Trump. Fusion GPS hired Nellie Ohr to conduct open-source opposition research in 2015.

Comment: Alexandra Chalupa's involvement points to one of the real sources of meddling in the 2016 election: Ukraine.

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Magic Wand

Biden & AOC are leading Democrats to the magical land where facts don't matter and truth is make-believe

Graham Dockery
RT
Sat, 10 Aug 2019 16:56 UTC
joe biden campaign
© Reuters / Eric Thayer
Joe Biden campaign
From Joe Biden announcing he chooses "truth over facts" and Congresswoman AOC more concerned about being "morally right," their frustration with President Donald Trump is making Democratic Party luminaries run afoul of reality.

Rallying the electorate at the Iowa State Fair on Thursday, Biden - the current front-runner for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2020 - proudly exclaimed his party's positions: "We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts!"

While this could be explained away as yet another unfortunate senior moment for Biden - who on the same day triggered mass facepalming with his declaration that "poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids" - it's not the first problematic pronouncement by prominent Democrats as of late.
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Top Secret

Presidential order also grants Barr power to declassify still-secret Hillary docs

Paul Sperry
Issues & Insights
Thu, 08 Aug 2019 16:37 UTC
william Barr

William Barr
For the past three years, Washington's gatekeepers have covered up evidence of two potentially massive and overlapping public-corruption scandals that, if fully exposed, threaten to shake the nation to its core.

One involves the Obama administration spying on the Trump campaign while sexing-up Russian interference in the 2016 election to justify it. The other involves it pulling punches in the Hillary Clinton email investigation and clearing her of criminal wrongdoing just in time for the Democratic National Convention.

President Donald Trump has granted his plucky new attorney general the power to rip the cover off both these election-year scandals.
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Eiffel Tower

France makes a small bid for freedom: Needs no 'permission' from Trump to talk with Iran


Sputnik
Sat, 10 Aug 2019 16:30 UTC
trump macron
© Associated Press/Susan Walsh
French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with President Donald Trump
Earlier, the US president criticised his French counterpart for allegedly trying to speak for the United States in talks with Iran, although without specifying when Macron tried to do so. Trump's tweet comes amid reports that France has tried to arrange a meeting between the US and Iranian presidents at the G7 summit.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has replied to recent statements by US President Donald Trump by saying that France doesn't require a green light from the US to hold negotiations with other states, including Iran.

"On Iran, France speaks with complete sovereignty. It is working hard for peace and security in the region, it is working to facilitate a de-escalation in tensions and it needs no permission to do so", he said.

Comment: Self-interest will always win out in world politics. What's interesting is Macron being so upfront about it.

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Light Saber

Why the Dems fear Tulsi Gabbard

Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone
Fri, 09 Aug 2019 14:57 UTC
tulsi gabbard
© Charles Krupa/Associated Press/Shutterstock
Presidential hopeful U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, smiles during a campaign stop at a brewery in Peterborough, N.H on March 22nd, 2019.
The lawmakers talks about the environment, war, nuclear safety, the media, pay-for-play politics, and the 2020 presidential race in a new Rolling Stone podcast

"It just shows," says Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, "that launching a smear campaign is the only response to the truth."

Gabbard, 38, burst into headlines after a July 31 Democratic Party presidential debate, when she went after California Senator Kamala Harris's record as Attorney General of the State of California. The "smear campaign" refers to the bizarre avalanche of negative press that ensued, as reporters seemed to circle wagons around a Harris, a party favorite.

The Gabbard-Harris exchange was brief but revealing, as a window into a schism in the Democratic Party. Harris was elected Attorney General of California in 2010. She frequently sought moderate or even conservative positions on issues like criminal sentencing, drug enforcement, and prison labor. These stances were standard among Democrats back when being "tough on crime" was considered an essential component of the "electability" argument.

Comment:

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X

Freudian slip? Biden in Iowa says 'poor kids' are just as smart as 'white kids'

Emma Kinery
Bloomberg
Fri, 09 Aug 2019 17:07 UTC
joe biden Iowa
Joe Biden told a group of mostly Asian and Hispanic voters in Iowa on Thursday that "poor kids are just as bright" as white children.

The former vice president, known for his verbal gaffes, made the remarks to the Asian & Latino Coalition in Des Moines, Iowa, where he's on a four-day campaign swing for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"We should challenge students in these schools and have advanced placement programs in these schools," Biden said. "We have this notion that somehow if you're poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented, as white kids." He quickly added, "Wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids, no I really mean it, but think how we think about it."

Comment: NBC Reports:
Though Biden's remarks were greeted with applause in the room, President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign quickly pounced on the gaffe, tweeting out video of the speech.

"Yikes...have fun mitigating that one," Andrew Clark, the campaign's rapid response director, tweeted.

The attack led to bitter back-and-forth between the Trump and the Biden camps that went on through much of Friday morning.

Kate Bedingfield, Biden's deputy campaign manager, said in a statement that the former vice president "misspoke and immediately corrected himself during a refrain he often uses to make the point that all children deserve a fair shot, and children born into lower-income circumstances are just as smart as those born to wealthy parents."

She also hit back at the Trump campaign, saying that "Trump is desperate to change the subject from his atrocious record of using racism to divide this country."

Later, Trump himself told reporters on the White House lawn that Biden is "not playing with a full deck."

"He made the comment ... I said, 'Whoa,'" Trump said.

Moments later, a Biden campaign aide told NBC News that Trump's "deck is all jokers."

Biden's awkward course-correction came just days after he excoriated Trump for having a "toxic tongue" that he said has inflamed the nation's divisions, saying that he lacked the moral authority to lead America.
See also:

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Light Sabers

China tells US to "stop interfering" after hypocritical State Dept call them a "thuggish regime"


RT
Fri, 09 Aug 2019 12:56 UTC
Hong Kong protesters
© Global Look Press / Emilio Navas / ZUMAPRESS.com
Hong Kong protesters wave US flags
Beijing has told Washington to stop meddling in its domestic affairs and make a State Department spokesperson revise her language, after the top official tacitly referred to China as "a thuggish regime" amid protests in Hong Kong.

US Department of State spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus should "first of all reflect on her words rather than criticize and smear the Chinese government using the media reports as an excuse," her Beijing counterpart Hua Chunying said on Friday.

"We urge the US to abide by international law and basic norms governing international relations, and immediately stop interfering in China's internal affairs."

Comment: See also: Pepe Escobar: Hong Kong, Kashmir: A tale of two occupations

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Document

Prince Andrew accused of groping minor at Epstein Mansion - court docs


Sputnik
Sat, 10 Aug 2019 01:42 UTC
prince andrew
© East News / Justin Sutcliffe
Recently unsealed court documents from the sex trafficking trial of American financier Jeffrey Epstein have revealed that the UK's Prince Andrew was named in a 2015 lawsuit against an accused Epstein accomplice. The plaintiff alleged Andrew groped her when she was a minor at Epstein's New York estate.

In 2015, Virginia Roberts Giuffre sued Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite and media heiress accused of being the "madame" for Epstein's supposed underage girl sex trafficking circuit, accusing Maxwell and Esptein and using her as a "sex slave" and claiming she was directed to perform sex acts with numerous famous men, one of them being Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and eighth in line to the British throne.

"Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue," Buckingham Palace said in a 2015 statement on the lawsuit. "It is emphatically denied that the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with [Giuffre]. The allegations made are false and without any foundation."

Comment: See also:

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