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SWIFT is neutral and will defy US if pressured to cut Russia off says CEO

us russia flag badge barbed wire
The SWIFT system, which ensures the transfer of financial messages between all banks of the world, will not disconnect Russia despite Western sanctions. In the political conflict between Russia and the West, SWIFT takes a neutral position, SWIFT CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said.

The SWIFT system will thus stay neutral in the conflict between Russia and the West and will not disconnect the country from the system of financial payments because of the sanctions, CEO Gottfried Leibbrandt said at the SWIFT business forum in Moscow, RBC reports.

"The question of disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT financial reporting system is not worth it, and our position remains unchanged: we are a neutral party that provides for the interconnection of users and whose purpose is to service the global financial industry," Mr. Leibbrandt said.

Comment: Since Russia has already set up an alternative, one Russian tech giant firm has just voluntarily left SWIFT, and that blocking Russia could anger the profitable emerging markets as well as Western financial institutions, and China, the worlds strongest economy, it's simple business sense to defy the less-profitable and failing empire:


Attention

Israeli snipers shoot 15-year-old child in the head, bringing Gaza death toll to 39

15 year old Palestinian, murdered by Israeli Sniper fire near the Gaza border

15 year old Palestinian, murdered by Israeli Sniper fire near the Gaza border
Four Palestinians have been killed and 650 others injured, as Israel violently responds to the fourth week of peaceful Friday demonstrations, taking place across the Gaza Strip.

So far, 39 Palestinians have been brutally executed in by the Israeli military in Gaza, since the beginning of the 'Great Return March'.

Four Palestinians have been killed and 650 others injured

Comment: UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov called for an investigation into the killing of the 15-year old, describing it as outrageous and adding that it "fuels anger and breeds more killing."
Palestinian medical sources said the teenager was standing with a group around 100-150 meters from the border when he was shot, while Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said all responsibility rests with Hamas.



Attention

11 y.o. old girl raped and killed during Indian wedding; attacker returns to the party like nothing happened

Asifa Bano

Asifa Bano, who was kidnapped, gang raped and murdered in the Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir this month.
An 11-year-old girl was raped and bludgeoned to death at a wedding before her attacker reportedly rejoined the celebrations covered in her blood.

Suspect Uttam Sahu, 24, is accused of luring the child away from the party in the Indian district of Kabirdham in Chhattisgarh late on Wednesday night.

After promising to get her a cold drink, he took her 1.5km away near to a dark and deserted spot near a stream, it is claimed.

There he raped her and bludgeoned her to death with a cement brick before abandoning her half-naked body, police say.

An investigator said he didn't bother covering his tracks, returning to the wedding and partying as if nothing had happened with her blood fresh on his shirt.

X

BlaqOUT: White people banned from LGBTQ event at UC Riverside

UC Riverside

Unfortunately for UC Riverside, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits “discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.”
California's taxpayer-subsidized University of California, Riverside campus is set to host a segregated LGBTQ conference at the end of this month.

BlaqOUT, the event in question, is a two day conference designed for people who identify as "Black/African American or of African descent that also identify as Same Gender Loving, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning or somewhere on the LGBT spectrum," according to the event page.

While it's relatively common to encounter on-campus events emphasizing or celebrating certain cultural groups or traditions, it is unheard of to deny someone admission to an event simply because they have a different skin color. Remarkably, this scenario appears to be exactly what BlaqOUT organizers are focused on establishing, as is explicitly listed in the event FAQ's.

"Can other people of color, white people and/or straight people attend?"

Comment: See also: Why the American left fears and hates Dr. Jordan Peterson


Star of David

Palestinians die not because Israeli soldiers disobey orders but because they follow them

israeli soldiers
© Agence France-Presse
Israeli snipers shoot at unarmed protesters with live fire, enjoying the open support of senior political and military leaders
The Israeli army has made it quite clear that top brass orders for snipers allow live ammunition to be directed at Palestinian protesters

It is now over a week since an Israeli sniper shot and killed Palestinian journalist Yaser Murtaja, as he covered the ongoing "Great Return March" protests in the occupied Gaza Strip. Incredibly, at the time of writing, the Israeli military has still not offered any explanation of why he was shot.

The killing of Murtaja has prompted widespread condemnation. He is, however, just one of 35 Palestinians killed - including three children - by Israeli forces since 30 March, with a further 1,500 protesters shot by Israeli live fire (see these AP reports).

Comment: The Israeli regime is clearly insane. They act according a reality they have created. And Palestinian pay with their lives.


Beaker

20 more Skripal questions: The lady and the curiously absent suspect

Salisburystreet
© Andrew Parsons/ Global Look Press
Zizzi restaurant where the Skripals dined, Salisbury, UK
Okay, so I'm up to 70 questions so far on this case (here, here and here), and here come another 20. Most of these are focused on Yulia Skripal, but there are also a number of questions at the end relating to the main character in the case, who so far seems to have been almost entirely forgotten. Let's just call him or her or them "A. Suspect", and note that so far he or she or they have been curiously conspicuous by their absence.

1. Both Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were admitted to Salisbury District Hospital (SDH) on 4th March 2018 and were said to have been in a coma in the weeks that followed. During this time, what actions were taken by the Hospital Trust to inform their next of kin of their condition - particularly Mr Skripal's 90-year-old mother (and of course Yulia's grandmother) -, and to keep them updated throughout their illness?

2. According to reports on 28th March, both Mr Skripal and his daughter were in a critical condition, and it was even suggested that the likelihood of either of them surviving was so remote that a judgement might be needed to make the "politically-sensitive decision over whether to maintain life support" for them. Yet just eight days later, on 5th April, it emerged that Yulia Skripal had contacted her cousin, Viktoria, by telephone, and that she had repeatedly stressed that "everything is fine" and "everyone is fine", including her father, who she said was "having a sleep". This suggests that the two of them had recovered a good while before the phone call. On what dates did the two of them regain consciousness?

3. The telephone conversation, which was recorded by Viktoria and played on Russian television, was the first public information that both Yulia and her father were no longer in a "critical condition". Why was this information not made public before her phone call was aired?

Comment: Slane's previous writing on the Skripal case:


Biohazard

Novichock creator: Poison could've been produced anywhere

skripal house
© Toby Melville / Reuters
The world will most likely never know the precise origins of the deadly nerve agent used to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the English city of Salisbury last month, says a former Russian chemical engineer who worked on developing the Novichok family of poisons.

"Imagine that you have the corpse of a murder victim," chemist Vladimir Uglyov told Current Time TV, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. "The criminal has left clues, including fingerprints. But you don't have those fingerprints in your database. That means you can only identify the killer if you catch him."

The source of the poison used in the Skripal case, Uglyov said, is almost certainly "some beaker standing in some safe in some city in some country."

British officials and allied governments have blamed Moscow for the March 4 poisoning of the Skripals, which has prompted sanctions and diplomatic expulsions and threatens to further harm relations between Russia and the West. Moscow has maintained its innocence.

Although Uglyov believes U.K. authorities' assertion that a nerve agent called A-234 was used against the Skripals, he said he is puzzled by the lack of the basic symptoms of A-234 poisoning -- uncontrollable urination and defecation. Such symptoms, he said, should appear if a person is exposed to something approaching half the median lethal dose.

"Maybe the dose was too small, as happened to me," he said.

Star of David

MSF teams in Gaza observe unusually severe and devastating gunshot injuries inflicted by IDF snipers

Médecins Sans Frontières gaza injuries
© Laurie Bonnaud/Médecins Sans Frontières
Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Thierry Saucier operates on the leg of an injured patient in Alqsa Hospital in Gaza.
Since 1 April, MSF teams in Gaza, Palestine, have provided post-operative care to more than 500 people injured by gunshots during the March of Return demonstrations. The number of patients treated in our clinics over the last three weeks is more than the number we treated throughout all of 2014, when Israel's military Operation Protective Edge was launched over the Gaza strip. MSF medical staff report receiving patients with devastating injuries of an unusual severity, which are extremely complex to treat. The injuries sustained by patients will leave most with serious, long-term physical disabilities.

Medical teams in Gaza's hospitals prepare to face a possible new influx of wounded this Friday in the latest of the March of Return demonstrations. MSF surgeons in Gaza report devastating gunshot wounds among hundreds of people injured during the protests over recent weeks. The huge majority of patients - mainly young men, but also some women and children - have unusually severe wounds to the lower extremities. MSF medical teams note the injuries include an extreme level of destruction to bones and soft tissue, and large exit wounds that can be the size of a fist.

Comment: Let it be noted that deliberately causing catastrophic injury and death to Palestinians is official Israeli policy.


Heart - Black

Ex-staffer says Home Office destroyed Windrush landing cards against advice of employees

windrush immigrants britain
© Bentley/Popperfoto/Getty Images
People carry their belongings as they arrive in Southampton
Evidence of UK arrivals discarded despite case worker protests, says former employee

The Home Office destroyed thousands of landing card slips recording Windrush immigrants' arrival dates in the UK, despite staff warnings that the move would make it harder to check the records of older Caribbean-born residents experiencing residency difficulties.

A former Home Office employee said the records, stored in the basement of a government tower block, were a vital resource for case workers when they were asked to find information about someone's arrival date in the UK from the West Indies - usually when the individual was struggling to resolve immigration status problems.

Although the home secretary, Amber Rudd, has promised to make it easier for Windrush-generation residents to regularise their status, the destruction of the database is likely to make the process harder, even with the support of the new taskforce announced this week.

Comment:


Biohazard

OPCW confirms team's visit to site of alleged chemical attack in Syria

OPCW Douma
© John Thys / Agence France-Presse
The OPCW confirmed that a team visited the site in Douma where an alleged chemical attack took place. The Russian Foreign Ministry has voiced concerns about the watchdog's plans to visit fewer sites and speak to fewer witnesses.

On Saturday the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed on Twitter that its fact-finding mission team "visited one of the sites" in Douma "to collect samples for analysis in connection with allegations of chemical weapons use on 7 April 2018."

Comment: Given all the witness accounts collected so far, the OPCW should find no evidence of chemical weapons in the Douma "attack". The Russians have secured the area, so barring pressure on the OPCW from the West (which has happened before), their findings will hopefully corroborate the statements by Douma locals.
Hassan Diab child chemical attack Douma Syria
© South Front
Hassan Diab appears in the video of the victims of the 'chemical attack' in Douma. Later the boy explained to Russian media how the event was staged.