The 2016 ‘October Surprise’ A Second American Revolution?
By Bryan Kinnear | OffGuardian | November 7, 2016
Amid claims of silent coup and counter-coup, this year’s “October Surprise” has yet to fully play out. Neither – with lasts weekend’s reopening of the ‘Servergate’ saga that has so dogged HRC – will it be concluded by the November 8th polling day. As this can only be viewed as to be by design – prepare for an explosive finale.
In its current iteration ‘Weinergate’ concerns 650,000 ‘additional’ emails kept on a phone and laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner – former US Congressman and estranged husband of Huma Abedin – HRC’s top aide. These emails are widely presumed to be the legacy of when Weiner had shared access with his then wife to the documents. It is speculated she kept them as ‘Life Insurance’ and he backed them up (presumably for the same reason.)
The reason I’m writing this in vague terminology is the truth is – no one knows. The devices were surrendered on an ‘unrelated matter’ – that matter being the alleged paedophilia of Weiner (notice that the Orwellian M$M have sanitised this activity as ‘sexting’ – but if you send photos of your manhood to an under age girl – that’s paedophilia.)
As I understand it, when FBI Director Comey wrote his letter of intent to reinvestigate last Friday – he can’t of legally even seen the content. The FBI didn’t obtain a warrant until Sunday to begin cross referencing between the two cases. His leaked letter has been described as “long on innuendo but short on fact.” So how can he be sure that the current crop of emails are pertinent and will shed new light? Despite the Democrat cat-call for elucidation – Comey has been silent since.
It appears that the FBI is investigating Pandora’s Box – the lid is on at the moment – but of all the worldly ills that may come out to haunt Hillary when the lid is finally lifted – are racketeering and ‘pay-to-play’ by the Clinton Foundation; political cronyism; corruption; vote rigging by the DNC; perjury and possible felony by Huma Abedin and other aides (for not turning over all devices related to the original investigation.)[1] This would all be on the mild end of a spectrum running all the way up to the treasonous acceptance of donations from terrorist backing foreign powers (KSA and Qatar) [2]; high level espionage (by Huma Abedin) [3] and being a member of an international paedophile ring.[4]
The new paedophilia allegation against Hillary and Bill surfaced yesterday (03/11/16). It comes from Steve Pieczenik – who in his videos claims to be the face of the counter-coup.[5] He only came on my radar yesterday morning but his credentials are real and impressive – his resume could be summed up as “consummate White House insider” going back to the Ford regime. Apart from being a veteran of the State Department, with expertise in foreign policy, international crisis management and intelligence (high ranking CIA.) He also is credited as a founding father of modern psychological warfare (psyops.) If you are conspiratorially minded (like me) – you could also consider him a perfect candidate for a Deep State actor. In one of his videos he even admits he was involved in the “continuity of the Republic” (Continuity of Government) process under Nixon and Reagan. Now he is the new and friendly face of the Deep State.
His claim is that Hill and Bill often travelled (six times together and twenty-six times for Bill alone) on the ‘Lolita Express’ to the US Virgin Isles – a plane belonging to Clinton Foundation donor, multi-billionaire and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. [6] During these flights and on Epsteins island…
I can’t find words to sanitise some of the most reprehensible crimes known to man – so I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
Manufactured or not – I very much doubt this to be a baseless claim – as it has much wider implications than even the current election. Pieczenik seems to confirm earlier leaks from the NYPD Special Victims Unit (SVU) ongoing investigation into Weiner. Sources from within the SVU claim that his laptop contained “evidence of an international child smuggling and child sex ring.” [7] Their probe now extends into the alleged endemic deviance of a ‘Washington Paedophile Ring’ – the possible repercussions of which could be international and dire enough to bring down “the entire federal government.” This would be a very bold claim indeed for an insider to make were it not credible – or at least backable.
My guess is that the very nature and magnitude of the crime is meant to force HRC to think twice about taking up residence in the Oval Office should she be elected. But she is too power crazed, criminally insane and possibly even demented to take notice. Because she always has – she thinks she can still walk on water – though to me it seems that she is no longer waving – but drowning.
(I seem to remember that should she succumb to illness in the first few months of office – First Lady Bill could reign by proxy – but lets not go there!)
In the meanwhile – in the absence of anything concrete and factual to go on – rumour is running wild. Everyone knows that the Russian Hack Plot is BS – the rantings of the deranged finally losing the plot. Yet for the Mockingbird M$M – it serves as a weak smokescreen to cover the enormity of the allegations being made and the substantive content of the various earlier data dumps on Wikileaks.
Julian Assange himself has felt the need to deny that Russia is the source (In an upcoming interview with John Pilger to be broadcast by RT on Saturday – excerpts of which are already available.) [8]
In a previous video Assange somewhat awkwardly seems to confirm Seth Rich as a probable source for the earlier DNC hack related to this case (the Clinton Campaign manager John Podesta emails.) [9] Rich was Director of Voter Expansion Data for the DNC – so he would have had all the relevant security keys and was at least well placed to collate the data prior to the leak. He was scheduled to talk to the FBI over the leaks. He was on the street near his home – talking to his girlfriend on the phone when he was shot in the back several times – in a robbery-gone-wrong where nothing was taken. Draw your own conclusion – but can we possibly add conspiracy to murder to the crimes in Pandora’s Box?.[10]
What seems more credible than ‘the Russians did it’ – and as Pieczenik contends – is that elements within the Washington intelligence community do not want HRC as POTUS. Those elements are ‘pissed’ about HRC’s as yet unpunished criminal inability to correctly handle State secrets – content to leave them “on the internet version of a park bench.” That this is the source of the current leaks surfacing through Wikileaks was also attested to by former UK ambassador Craig Murray – whom – although he is a friend of Assange – I would consider a trusted source without a dog in the presidential race. [11]
Among the theories circulating is that the Department of Justice (DoJ) under Lorretta Lynch is so compromised that investigations cannot proceed through proper channels – hence the resort to data dumps. This would seem to be borne out by Lynch’s extra-judicial meeting with Bill the night before Comey initially dropped the investigation.[12] [13]
Not only is Lynch seen as compromised or co-opted (as part of the Clinton coup according to Pieczenik); but so is Comey. Either by his own ineptness or possible corruption – he now finds himself pressured by a grass roots rebellion from within his own ranks – of those sick of the Clinton’s decades long history of criminality. “The FBI is Trumpland” as the Guardian put it. [14] Add to that the NYPD SVU investigators have claimed to uncover evidence so vile that they have threatened the FBI that they will go public if he does not follow through with the original investigation. “People are going to jail.” And Comey and Lynch may be joining them.
Another strand to this was the impropriety reported in the Wall Street Journal a few days before Comey wrote his letter to Congress – the $500,000 ‘campaign contribution’ made by long time Clinton ally and leading Democrat Terry McCauliffe – to the wife of the very FBI official (Deputy Director Andrew McCabe) who oversaw the original email investigation. So to political cronyism – can we add attempted cover up into Pandora’s box? [15]
If I wanted to get really conspiratorial – I could add that the FBI themselves have told us that a literal “Shadow Government” (the 7th Floor Committee including John Kerry) oversaw which of Hillary’s emails we got to see back in February. [16] Could they have sanitised the original emails or be sitting on evidence? Could this “Shadow Government” yet be attempting to manipulate the election for their own gain? Who knows – but probably.
If you did want to control – or at least influence the electorate – would there be a better way to do it than have an open-ended multi-faceted investigation involving one or both candidates – that you could close down or otherwise direct and manipulate at will – like the directed energy of a shaped charge you could ignite and control the blast radius? Just speculating – of course that is delusional – and anyway, it wouldn’t happen in the Land of the Free – would it?
So are we watching a re-envisioned 1776 in the form of a bloodless silent coup – a 21st century American rebellion by the honest and decent folk of the Intelligence Community to re-establish the Republic?
Or are we watching the chainstoking and death throes of an Empire as it passes into history?
Time will tell but I’m not fully bought into either of those just yet. Whatever dirt they have on HRC and the Establishment faction that constitute her backers – I feel sure that is fully accredited. If and when it’s let out of the box – I very much doubt that Hillary’s Hope will be left within. She could be a double first. The first female POTUS – and also the first POTUS to be impeached on their first day in office.
The battle lines of American power politics are drawn – the Establishment v the Intelligence Community – the deep state divisions are moving into place – but the real war is yet to come.
“This will continue as a revolution, hopefully civil, hopefully without violence.” Steve Pieczenik
It’s hard to see how this will play out – and harder still to see how anyone could hope to ‘keep a lid’ on it and control the collateral damage. The potential for internecine destruction is assured if things were to get out of hand – I haven’t even mentioned the dodgy Diebold voting machines or even Trump himself. He is unlikely to come up smelling of roses – not given that he is also a friend of Jeffrey Epstein – and they are both under the shadow of the upcoming ignominy of a shared rape trial (due in court in December.) A recent appearance by the plaintiff ‘Jane Doe’ – in which she was to reveal her identity was cancelled amid death threats to her.[17]
[What chance to have both candidates potentially hamstrung by their connection to a Tier 1 sex offender (Epstein) and to ongoing rape allegations?]
Should he win the popular vote his Presidency will be blighted by the smear that the vote was tainted and ‘Democracy overturned’ by these unprecedented and ‘illegal’ events. Or put more simplistically – “the Russians hacked the election.” The Establishment backing Hillary has already cried foul and has threatened to instigate the Hatch Act prosecution of Comey (I think that boys goose is cooked however this goes down!) [18]
Divide and rule comes to mind – the potential for civil war is real and should not be understated. That may be the design yet somehow I doubt it. Whoever wins the coming power struggle will want to control the damage and preserve the fabric of the State. Even though this could potentially be “bigger than Watergate” the Mockingbird M$M will do their best to make sure as little of this as possible comes to light. The thinning veneer of ‘real democracy’ as practised in the ‘exceptional and indispensable’ nation must be maintained. At any cost.
In all of this though, you can be assured – that the will of the American people is but a minor consideration.
References:
[1] [1] Huma Abedin had given a sworn deposition to Judicial Watch http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press- releases/clinton-email-update-judicial-watch-releases-former-clinton-deputy-chief-staff-huma- abedin-deposition-testimony/
[2] “Foreign govt donors: all the money is in” https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/7452
[3] The gist of the currently unfounded accusations that Huma Abedin may be a Saudi spy is that though she was born in the US; she only spent two years there before returning in 1996. Only two years after that she received Top Level security clearance and became Clinton’s aide. It was the Clinton’s who set her up with Weiner – a not so nice Jewish boy (as it turns out) as ‘cover.’ The rest of her family have salafist Muslim Brotherhood connections – ergo she must be a KSA spy. The main sources of this are Roger Stone (Trump campaign manager;) and Steve Pieczenik. I’m writing this still wondering if Pieczenik is yanking my chain – or acting for those who would want to pull the election? Or with his deep connection to the intelligence community – does he know something we don’t?
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12zVlaZyX3Q
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov5kvWSz5LM
[6] https://www.rt.com/usa/343048-clinton-epstein-lolita-express/
[7] https://www.superstation95.com/index.php/world/2357
[8] https://www.rt.com/news/365405-assange-pilger-full-transcript/
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7FkLBRpKg
[10] https://sputniknews.com/world/201608271044700879-wikileaks-seth-rich-murder-hillary/
[11] http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-02/former-british-ambassador-claims-source-podesta-leaks-comes-within-washington
[12] http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/11/the-bill-clinton-loretta-lynch-meeting-even-worse-than-we-thought.php
[13] http://www.globalresearch.ca/attorney-general-loretta-lynchs-law-firm-tied-to-hillary-clinton/5527877
[14] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/03/fbi-leaks-hillary-clinton-james-comey-donald-trump?
[15] http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-ally-aids-campaign-of-fbi-officials-wife-1477266114
[16] http://www.activistpost.com/2016/10/clintons-fbi-files-mention-shadow-government.html?
[17] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/02/donald-trump-rape-lawsuit-13-year-old-cancels-public-event
[18] http://www.globalresearch.ca/fbi-director-james-comey-to-be-investigated/5554367
A Tale of Three Foundations: Carter, Clinton and Trump
By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | November 7, 2016
Seen the latest front-page Jimmy Carter Center scandal? Hear about the six figure speaking fees former president Jimmy Carter pulls in from shady companies and foreign governments? An oil painting of himself he bought with charity money? Maybe not.
Take a moment to Google Jimmy Carter. Now do the same for Bill Clinton. The search results tell the tale of two former presidents, one determined to use his status honorably, the other seeking exploitation for personal benefit. And then throw in Donald Trump, who of course wants to someday be a former president. Each man has his own charitable foundation. Let’s compare them.
Three charitable organizations enter, only one emerges with honor. Let’s do this!
Carter
Carter’s presidency carries an uneven legacy. Yet his prescient but unwelcome 1979 warning that the country suffered a crisis of confidence, preventing Americans from uniting to solve tough problems, anticipated the faux bravado of Reagan’s “Morning in America.”
Many feel Carter has been a better ex-president than he was a president. His Carter Center focuses on impactful but unglamorous issues such as Guinea worm disease. When Carter left office, the disease afflicted 3.5 million people, mostly in Africa. Now it’s expected to be only the second disease, after smallpox, to ever be eradicated worldwide.
Carter, 90, still donates a week of his time each year to Habitat for Humanity. Not a photo-op, Carter goes out without the media in tow and hammers nails. Carter also tirelessly monitors elections in nascent democracies, lending his stature as a statesman to that work over 100 times already. Summing up his own term in office, Carter said “We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war.”
He is the last president since 1977 who can make that claim.
Clinton
Bill Clinton pushed the NAFTA agreement through, seen now by many as a mistake that cost American jobs. He pointlessly bombed Iraq and sent troops into Somalia (see Blackhawk Down.) Clinton’s legacy most of all is his having an oral affair with an intern, then fibbing about it, and then ending up one of only two American presidents ever impeached as a result.
As a former president, Clinton is nothing if not true to his unstatesman-like form. Bill makes six-figure speeches to businesses seeking influence within the U.S. government, earning as much as $50 million during his wife’s term as secretary of state alone. He used a shell company to hide some of the income.
His own charity, humbly known as the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Global Foundation, is a two billion dollar financial tangle. It spent in 2013 the same amount of money on travel expenses for Bill and his family as it did on charitable grants. Instead of volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, Bill takes his big donors on executive safaris to Africa. Many of those same donors also give generously to the Hillary Clinton campaign and its constellation of PACs.
Trump
Trump refuses to be very specific about who his charity donates to. We know its off-shoot, the Eric Trump charity, donated to a wine industry association, a plastic surgeon gifting nose jobs to kids and an artist who painted a portrait of Donald Trump. Trump-owned golf resorts received $880,000 for hosting Trump charity events.
Reports show Trump donated money from his foundation to conservative influencers ahead of his presidential bid, effectively using funds intended for charity to support his own political ambitions. The New York Attorney General ordered Donald Trump’s charity to immediately halt fundraising in the state, following reports that it had not submitted to routine audits.
***
Voters should judge a candidate not just on examples of past competency, but with an eye toward the core things that really matter: character, values, honesty, humility and selflessness. Perhaps this tale of two presidents and a wanna be has a lesson in it for 2016.
WikiLeaks Confirms Mainstream Media Takes Marching Orders from Clinton’s Army in the DNC
By Jack Burns | Free Thought Project | November 7, 2016
We’re within 48 hours of deciding who will be the next leader of the United States, and Wikileaks has just upped the ante in the high-stakes presidential election by releasing yet another batch of hacked Democratic National Committee emails. This time, Julian Assange’s organization has provided an even clearer picture of who’s in bed with the Clintons, and the revelations might surprise a lot of people.
In one email exchange between the DNC’s Mark Paustenbach (National Press Secretary & Deputy Communications Director) and the DNC’s Luis Miranda (Communications Director), Politico’s Peter Vogel appears to have passed along a story about Hillary Clinton’s fundraising campaign. While the content of Vogel’s story is unimportant, questions now arise as to why the Politico reporter felt the need to share his pre-published story with the DNC before sending it to his editor in chief.
Paustenbach wrote, “Vogel gave me his story ahead of time/before it goes to his editors as long as I didn’t share it. Let me know if you see anything that’s missing and I’ll push back.”
Was it because he was wanting permission to publish the story? Was he fact-checking with the DNC before running it? Or was he likely colluding with the DNC to paint Clinton and her campaign in a favorable light? These questions and more are now being raised about the apparently cozy relationship Vogel maintained with the DNC. Paustenbach even implied he had the potential to sway the article by using the words “push back.”
In another telling email, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer received questions to be asked of Donald Trump in an interview just a few days ahead of Trump’s foreign policy speech. Yes, the Democratic National Committee crafted the questions Blitzer was supposed to ask Trump. Many members of the DNC contributed questions to Blitzer’s interview of the billionaire Republican presidential nominee, adding credibility to critics’ claims CNN is actually the Clinton News Network. Here’s a sampling of the questions Blitzer was charged with asking. “Who helped you write the foreign policy speech you’re giving tomorrow?,” and, “What would you do if the military refused to listen to you?”
According to yet another email, it was CNN who was reaching out to the DNC for those questions. Lauren Dillon, the DNC’s Research Director, wrote, “CNN is looking for questions.”
The latest Wikileaks email dump is trending on Twitter with the hashtag #DNCLeak2, and is taking off like a wildfire. More details may emerge as the country moves closer to Tuesday evening’s election hours.
As The Free Thought Project has reported, it used to be a conspiracy theory that a secretive project called “Operation Mockingbird” was responsible for disseminating government sponsored talking points to the media, to be used in an echo chamber and repeated to various news outlets. But as of September 2016, the project is no longer secret and no longer hidden, and it could be that the aforementioned members of the mainstream media are all members of said project. With the FBI not bringing charges against Clinton, it appears she’s now the official government-sponsored candidate to win the election of 2016, by any means necessary, including working with the mainstream media to do so.
As the Free Thought Project covers the presidential candidates and their various blunders, depending on which candidate we criticize, we are accused of supporting the ‘other guy.’ It is important to note that the Free Thought Project does not and has not endorsed any individual candidate. If you look through our archives, you will find that we have exposed dirt on all of them.
Twenty Years of Dictatorial Democracy
By James Bovard | CounterPunch | November 7, 2016
The presidential campaign has mortified millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since 9/11, we have lived in a perpetual emergency which supposedly justifies trampling the law and Constitution. And the illegalities will not end after Tuesday’s vote count. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that they will perpetuate power grabs in the next four years.
For generations, politicians have touted voting as a magical process which almost automatically protects the rights of everyone within a 50 mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in presidential elections since 2000 did nothing to constrain the commander-in-chief.
Bush’s declaration in 2000 that America needed a more “humble” foreign policy did not deter him from vowing to “rid the world of evil” and launching the most catastrophic war in modern American history. Eight years later, Barack Obama campaigned as the candidate of peace and promised “a new birth of freedom.” But that did not stop him from bombing seven nations, claiming a right to assassinate American ciizens, and championing Orwellian total surveillance.
Bush was famous for “signing statements” decrees that nullified hundreds of provisions of laws enacted by Congress. Obama is renown for unilaterally endlessly rewriting laws such as the Affordable Care Act to postpone political backlashes against the Democratic Party and for effectively waiving federal immigration law. Both Bush and Obama exploited the “state secrets doctrine” to shield their most controversial policies from the American public.
While many conservatives applauded Bush’s power grabs, many liberals cheered Obama’s decrees. After 16 years of Bush-Obama, the federal government is far more arbitrary and lethal. Richard Nixon’s maxim – ‘it’s not illegal if the president does it’ – is the lodestar for commanders-in-chief in the new century.
There is no reason to expect the next president to be less power hungry than the last two White House occupants. Both Trump and Clinton can be expected to trample the First Amendment. Trump has talked of shutting down mosques and changing libel laws to make it far more perilous for the media to reveal abuses by the nation’s elite. Clinton was in the forefront of an administration that broke all records for prosecuting leakers and journalists who exposed government abuses. She could smash the remnants of the Freedom of Information Act like her aides hammered her Blackberry phones to obliterate her email trail.
Neither candidate seems to recognize any limit on presidential power. Trump calls for reviving the torture that profoundly disgraced the United States during the George W. Bush era. Clinton opposes torture but believes presidents have a right to launch wars whenever they decide it is in the national interest. After Clinton helped persuade Obama to bomb Libya in 2011, she signaled that the administration would scorn any congressional cease-and-desist order under the War Powers Act. She continues to tout the bombing of Libya as “smart power at its best.”
If Americans could be confident that either Trump or Clinton would be leashed by the law, there would be less dread about who wins on Tuesday. But elections are becoming simply coronations via vote counts. The president will take an oath of office on Inaugural Day but then can do as he or she damn well pleases.
We now have a political system which is nominally democratic but increasingly authoritarian. The proliferation of despotic precedents in the past 15 years would have horrified America’s Founding Fathers. The Rule of Law has been defined down to finding a single federal lawyer to write a secret memo vindicating the president’s latest unpublished executive order. And Washington has never had a shortage of weasely lawyers.
By the end of the next presidential term, America will have had almost a 20-year stretch of dictatorial democracy. Washington’s disdain for the highest law of the land is torpedoing the citizenry’s faith in representative government. Forty percent of registered voters have “lost faith in American democracy,” according to recent Survey Monkey poll.
The United States may be on the verge of the biggest legitimacy crisis since the Civil War. Whoever wins in November will be profoundly distrusted even before being sworn in. The combination of a widely-detested new president and unrestrained power almost guarantees greater crises in the coming years.
Neither Trump nor Clinton are promising to “make America constitutional again.” But, as Thomas Jefferson declared in 1786, “an elective despotism was not the government we fought for.” If presidents are lawless, then voters are merely designating the most dangerous criminal in the land.
James Bovard is the author of Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, Terrorism and Tyranny, and other books. Bovard is on the USA Today Board of Contributors. He is on Twitter at @jimbovard. His website is at www.jimbovard.com
Malaysia: US Loses Another Key Ally in Asia Pacific Region
By Alex GORKA | Strategic Culture Foundation | 07.11.2016
Malaysia is another old time America’s ally to shift away from the US orbit following the Philippines. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak visited China on October 31-November 6 to sign 14 agreements totaling 143.64 billion ringgit ($34.25 billion), including a defence deal. Malaysia agreed to buy four Chinese littoral combat ships. Two will be built in China and two in Malaysia.
The rapprochement has taken place despite the differences over the South China Sea territorial disputes. During the visit, both countries pledged closer cooperation to handle the problem bilaterally to counter US influence in the region.
Najib Razak said Malaysia welcomed the China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank which marks a turning point «of peaceful dialogue, not foreign intervention, in sovereign states». Global institutions needed to be inclusive of «countries that were given no say in the legal and security infrastructure that was set up by the victors of the Second World War», he noted.
China has increasingly invested in Malaysia and is implementing major infrastructure and other projects in the country. Chinese companies are widely expected to win a planned $15bn high-speed rail project linking Kuala Lumpur and Singapore – a new rail line on Malaysia’s east coast. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in jeopardy, the US seems to have little leverage over Malaysian foreign policy.
The trip marks another potential setback for US Asia «pivot» policy. The event took place against the background of worsening relations between the US and the Philippines. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has made statements about his intent to break the military alliance with the United States and shift to the partnership with China and Russia. He had visited Beijing to defy America just two weeks before Mr. Razak’s trip.
Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asia politics analyst, said, «This is the new regional norm. Now China is implementing the power and the US is in retreat», adding Washington’s Asia «pivot» was «dead in the water».
Russia-Malaysia relations are also on the rise. In 2017 the two countries will mark the 50th anniversary since the diplomatic ties were established in 1967.
In May, the Malaysian PM visited Sochi, Russia, leading a delegation to the ASEAN-Russia Commemorative Summit. Back then, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, «We will be pleased to develop relations in the humanitarian sphere, in the economy, investments and of course in the military sphere, or in the sphere of military-technical cooperation».
The Russia-produced Sukhoi Su-30MKM is the most advanced fighter in the inventory of the Royal Malaysian Air Force. The contract to deliver 18 jets was signed in 2003 during the Russian president’s official visit to Malaysia. The purchase of Su-34 and Su-35 Russian jets is on the agenda.
Malaysian Defense Minister Hishamuddin Hussein believes his country should «look to the future, to a new era of military-technical cooperation with Russia». Russia took part in the 15th Defense Services Asia Exhibition and Conference on April 18-21, 2016, in Kuala Lumpur to demonstrate the Mi-171Sh helicopter, the T-90MS tank, the BTR-82A armored vehicle, and the Pantsir-S1 air defense system.
Malaysia will explore the possibility of signing a free trade agreement (FTA) with the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU).
There are other facts to prove the fact that the US loses its clout in the Asia Pacific region. Japanese banks and development institutions may offer loans to Russian regional banks. Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Hiroshige Seko told TASS in an interview.
It was also reported that the government-backed Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) will provide about 4 billion yen ($38.5 million) in financing to Sberbank of Russia, in open defiance of Western sanctions. The US and the European Union have effectively banned lending to certain Russian companies and financial institutions, including Sberbank, as part of sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014. The announcement comes before the President Putin’s visit to Japan in December.
The JBIC also plans to make investments into the Yamal LNG gas project. The JBIC is likely to set up a special fund to invest in Russian projects together with the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
The economic cooperation with Russia definitely threatens the Group of Seven’s united front on sanctions. The move will most certainly provoke Washington’s anger but Tokyo finds the development of ties with Russia important enough to risk it. The US influence in the region is not strong enough to prevent Japan from pursuing its national interests.
With the Philippines and Malaysia shifting away from US orbit, Washington is finding itself with increasingly fewer allies in the region. The Asia Pacific «pivot» appears to be another foreign policy failure in addition to the Middle Eastern debacle. In addition, the US faces a major setback as Europe rejects the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
America is a global power in retreat. A new US president will have to face this reality. The events in the Asia Pacific region provide a good example to support this obvious fact. In a very short period of time the US has lost two major allies in the region. Japan defies the anti-Russia sanctions regime. The American century seems to be fading away as other poles of power emerge on the world map.
Syria seizes US, Israeli arms from militants
Press TV – November 7, 2016
Syria has released footage of American- and Israeli-made weapons seized by the Syrian army from Takfiri militants in the capital, Damascus.
Syria’s official news agency said Sunday that the Syrian army units had confiscated the weapons in the town of Khan al-Shih in the countryside of Damascus.
The Syrian government says the Tel Aviv regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding the Takfiri militant groups fighting against Damascus.
On April 28, Syrian officials and locals confiscated a vehicle loaded with Israeli-manufactured weapons bound for the Takfiri Daesh terrorists in the Arab country’s southern province of Suwayda.
The vehicle, which was coming from eastern Dara’a Province, was heading to the eastern Badiya desert.
Anti-personnel landmines, RPG launcher and rounds, B9 shells, 120-mm, 80-mm, and 60-mm mortars, grenades and 23-mm machine-gun rounds were among the weapons confiscated back then.
Earlier in April, popular defense groups in Suwayda also seized a car packed with RPG rounds and other shells on their way to the Badiya desert.
Israel has also been treating the wounded militants from Syria in its medical centers and hospitals. Syrian sources have frequently reported that, after receiving treatment at the Israeli hospitals, the militants return to Syria to continue their acts of sabotage and terror.
Israel has spent millions of dollars for the treatment of the militants injured in fighting with Syrian government forces, documents from Israeli hospitals show.