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Russian Meddling in Mexican Election Statements Groundless – President of Senate

Sputnik – 18.05.2018

The statements made by US and Mexican politicians about alleged the interference of Moscow in the elections in Mexico are unfounded, Ernesto Cordero Arroyo, the president of the Mexican Senate, told Sputnik.

“They had not presented any evidence and we should understand that during the election campaign people become very creative and inventive,” the Mexican politician said.

According to the senior lawmaker, the Mexican side has not registered any foreign meddling in the election process.

Mexicans will elect the next president of the nation on July 1. Ahead of the vote, former US National Security Adviser Herbert McMaster said that the United States noticed signs of “Russian intervention” in the Mexican presidential election.

Enrique Ochoa, the leader of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRR), said the international media outlets had “documented” the interests of Russia and Venezuela in backing leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

Russia has faced numerous accusations of interference in foreign elections, including the 2016 US presidential vote. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called the claims groundless, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has stressed that there was no evidence to substantiate such accusations.

May 18, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

With Iran sanctions Trump made Europeans look like the fools they are

By John Laughland | RT | May 18, 2018

The attacks by European leaders against US President Donald Trump are getting sharper by the day.

On the day Trump announced that he was ripping up the Iran deal, and that the US would impose sanctions on European companies trading with that country, the French finance minister Bruno Le Maire said that European states refused to be treated like “vassals” of the US.

At Aachen on 11 May, Emmanuel Macron effectively accused the US of blackmail.  On 17 May, the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, asked, “With friends like that (i.e. Trump), who needs enemies?”

The temperature only rose further when the French energy giant Total announced that it would pull out of a multi-billion dollar gas deal with Iran unless European diplomacy succeeds in obtaining a specific waiver from US sanctions. Other European behemoths including Allianz and Siemens have also announced either that they will wind down operations in Iran or that they will not start any new ones.

These statements show that Trump’s decision is a slap in the face for the EU politically, economically and – perhaps above all – ideologically. Politically, because both Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel made special trips to Washington to plead with Trump, to no avail whatever.  Moreover, the EU is itself a signatory to the Iran deal, which it regards as a major diplomatic triumph from which it draws credibility: its disavowal by Trump is a deep insult to the diplomatic status of the EU as such.

Economically, because of the gigantic contracts which European companies could lose. For years, following the nearly $9 billion fine imposed by the US on Paribas in 2015, European companies and banks have been terrified of engaging in any business activity likely to attract the ire of the Americans. Deals with Russia, for instance, are shunned. The effect of this latest decision could be like many Paribas situations at once.

Ideologically, because the EU draws its entire legitimacy from the belief that by pooling sovereignty and by merging its states into one entity, it has advanced beyond the age when international relations were decided by force. It believes that it embodies instead a new international system based on rules and agreements, and that any other system leads to war. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of this belief for European leaders; yet Donald Trump has just driven a coach and horses through it.

The angry statements by European leaders might lead one to think that we are on the cusp of a major reappraisal of trans-Atlantic relations. However, the reality is that the EU and its leaders have painted themselves into a corner from which it will be very difficult, perhaps impossible, to extricate themselves.

First, the links between the EU and the US are not only very long-standing, they are also set in stone. NATO and the EU are in reality Siamese twins, two bodies born at the same time which are joined at the hip. The first European community was created with overt and covert US support in 1950 in order to militarize Western Europe and to prepare it to fight a land war against the Soviet Union; NATO acquired its integrated command structure a few months later and its Supreme Commander is always an American.

Today the two organizations are legally inseparable because the consolidated Treaty on European Union, in the form adopted at Lisbon in 2009, states that EU foreign policy “shall respect” the obligations of NATO member states and that it shall “be compatible” with NATO policy. In other words, the constitutional charter of the EU subordinates it to NATO, which the USA dominates legally and structurally. In such circumstances, European states can only liberate themselves from US hegemony, as Donald Tusk said they should, by leaving the EU.  It is obvious that they are not prepared to do that.

Second, EU leaders have burned their own bridges with other potential partners, especially Russia. Angela Merkel traveled to Russia on Friday but only a few weeks ago more than half of the EU member states expelled scores of Russian diplomats and encouraged non-EU European states like Ukraine and Montenegro to do the same, in retaliation for the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei and Julia Skripal.

How is Mrs Merkel going to convince Mr Putin to join her in keeping Iran’s nuclear program under control if she officially thinks that Mr Putin is guilty of secretly stockpiling and using chemical weapons for assassinations in the West?  Only a few weeks later, in mid-April, Britain and France, together with the US, attacked Syria on the basis that its army had used chemical weapons at Douma with Russian backing. If they try to turn on the charm now in Sochi or in Moscow, do they really expect the Russians can take them seriously?

Third, how can EU leaders complain about US sanctions against their companies when they themselves have applied sanctions against Russian companies causing major economic disruptions in that country? EU states have also introduced punitive sanctions against Syria since 2011, one of the biggest programs of sanctions ever, whose effect and purpose is to disrupt the activities of the Syrian state including its ability to provide public goods like health.

Britain and France, who are, with Germany, the European signatories of the Iran deal, have been pursuing regime change in Syria for half a decade. By what right do they protest now that the US administration is taking decisions whose goal is to provoke regime change in Iran?

As if these external issues were not bad enough, the EU is currently riven by internal divisions too. Donald Tusk may say “Europe must be united economically, politically and also militarily like never before … either we are together or we are not at all” but Europe is indeed not “together” at all. The Brussels commission is hounding Poland and Hungary on what are clearly internal political matters beyond the Commission’s remit; the EU is about to lose one of its most important member states; and a new government is going to take power in Rome whose economic policies (a flat tax at 15%) will blow the eurozone’s borrowing rules out of the water and perhaps cause Italy to leave the euro.

The Italian 5-Star / League government also wants an end to the EU sanctions against Russia; these are voted by a unanimity which, although fragile, has held until now but which, if the new power in Rome keeps its word, will shortly collapse. In other words, what Trump has done is to make the Europeans look like the fools they are. In circumstances in which the EU has placed all its eggs in one basket, a basket which Trump has now overturned, it will be impossible for it to come together. On the contrary, it is falling apart.

John Laughland, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and who has taught at universities in Paris and Rome, is a historian and specialist in international affairs.

May 18, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Gaza Massacre Exposes Western Hypocrisy on Russia’s ‘Annexation’ of Crimea

By Finian CUNNINGHAM | Strategic Culture Foundation | 18.05.2018

This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new 19-kilometer bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with mainland southern Russia. Thousands of kilometers away, in occupied Palestine, a massacre was being carried out by Israeli soldiers with full support of the United States as it opened a new embassy.

The two events are not as disparate as one might think at first glance. They both involve “annexation” – one fictitious, the other very real. But Western hypocrisy inverts the reality.

While US dignitaries were opening the new American embassy in Jerusalem amid pomp and ceremony, some 60 unarmed Palestinian protesters were shot dead in cold blood by Israeli snipers. Among the dead were eight children. Thousands of others were maimed by live fire. The bloodshed could increase in coming days.

The relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the Israeli-occupied city of Jerusalem, ordered by President Trump, has been rebuked by the majority of nations. The American move pre-empts any negotiated peace settlement which was supposed to bequeath East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Trump’s decision to relocate the American embassy effectively endorses Israeli claims to the whole of Jerusalem as the “undivided capital of the Jewish state”. Israel has occupied all of Jerusalem in contravention of international law since the 1967 Six Day War.

In other words, Washington has shifted from tacit acceptance to an openly complicit policy in Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory, an annexation which has been going on for seven decades since the inception of the Israeli state in 1948. The now de facto American approval of the annexation of all Jerusalem marked by the opening of the US embassy is the culmination of 70 years of Israeli expansion and occupation.

Meanwhile, Putin’s unveiling this week of the bridge linking southern Russian mainland to the Crimea Peninsula is a timely reminder of the brazen hypocrisy of American and European states.

Since Crimea voted in a referendum in March 2014 to rejoin its historic homeland of Russia, Washington and its allies have continually complained about Moscow’s alleged “annexation” of the Black Sea peninsula.

Never mind that the Crimean people were prompted to hold their accession referendum following a bloody coup in Ukraine against an elected government by CIA-backed Neo-Nazis in February 2014. The people of Crimea voted in a peacefully constituted referendum to secede from Ukraine to join Russia, which it was historically a part of until 1954 when the Soviet Union arbitrarily assigned Crimea to the jurisdiction of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine.

For the past four years, Western governments, their corporate news media and think-tanks, as well as the US-led NATO military alliance, have mounted an intense anti-Russian campaign of economic sanctions, denigration and offensive posturing all on the back of dubious claims that Russia “annexed” Crimea.

Relations between the US and the European Union towards Russia have descended into the freezer of a new and potentially catastrophic Cold War, supposedly motivated by the principle that Moscow had violated international law and changed borders by force. Russia’s alleged “annexation” of Crimea is cited as a sign of Moscow threatening Europe with expansionist aggression. Putin has been vilified as a “new Hitler” or “new Stalin” depending on your historical illiteracy.

This Western distortion about the events that occurred in Ukraine during 2014, and subsequently, can be easily disputed with hard facts as a blatant falsification to conceal what was actually illegal interference by Washington and its European allies in the sovereign affairs of the Ukraine. In short, Western interference was about regime change; with the objective of destabilizing Moscow and projecting NATO force on Russia’s borders.

That is one way of challenging the Western narrative about Ukraine and Crimea. Through weighing up factual events, such as the CIA-backed false-flag sniper shootings of dozens of protesters in Kiev in February 2014. Or the ongoing Western-backed military offensive by Kiev’s Neo-Nazi forces against the breakaway republics of Donbas in Eastern Ukraine.

Another way is to ascertain the integrity of supposed Western legal principle about the general practice of annexation of territory.

From listening to the incessant public consternation expressed by Western governments and media about Russia’s alleged annexation of Crimea, one might think that the putative expropriation of territory is a most grievous violation of international law. Oh how chivalrous, one might think, are Washington and the Europeans in their defense of territorial sovereignty, judging by their seeming righteous repudiation of “annexation”.

However, this week’s grotesque opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem accompanied by the massacre of protesting unarmed Palestinians shows that Western professed concerns about “annexation” are nothing but a diabolical sham. In seven decades of expanding illegal occupation of Palestinian territory by the Israelis, Washington and the Europeans have enacted no opposition.

But when it comes to Crimea, even though their case is not valid, the Western powers never stop hand-wringing about Russia’s “annexation” as if it was the biggest crime in modern history.

Worse than hypocrisy, the US and European Union have been silently complicit in allowing Israel to continue annexing more and more Palestinian territory despite the stark violation of international law. Periodic massacres and whole populations held under brutal military siege in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have never registered any effective opposition from Western powers.

This week, Washington has gone one step further to, in effect, exult in the Israeli annexation of Palestinian territory in the most provocative way by opening its embassy in occupied Jerusalem. Then on top of that violation of international law, we have the obscenity of the Trump White House defending the massacre of unarmed civilians as “an act of self-defense” by the illegally occupying and US-armed Israeli military. A White House license to kill.

The pathetic, muted response from the European Union and the United Nations towards this state terrorism and criminality exposes their cowardly complicity.

US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has for months been hysterically accusing Russia of violations in Ukraine and Syria. Yet, on the mass murder of Palestinians this week, Haley was silent. Her only remarks were to congratulate Israel over the new US embassy in occupied Jerusalem.

So, the next time we hear Washington and its European allies pontificate to Russia about “annexation”, the only fitting response should be one of contempt for their vile hypocrisy towards Palestinian rights and the ongoing genocide of its people under Western-backed occupation.

May 18, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

An Iranian Perspective on the Battle for Syria

By Rick Sterling | Consortium News | May 17, 2018

West against East on the Syrian battle-field, in the newspapers and now on film: A new, full-length action movie, titled Damascus Time, gives an Iranian perspective on the battle against ISIS in Syria.

The movie comes from Iranian screenwriter and film director Ebrahim Hatamikia. Two award-winning Iranian actors, Hadi Hejazifar and Babak Hamidian, play father and son pilots trying to rescue civilians besieged and attacked by ISIS forces in eastern Syria. The pilots have come to help the townspeople escape in an aging Ilyushin cargo plane.

Syrian and Iraqi actors play Syrian civilians and ISIS terrorists hell bent on blowing up the plane or using it on a suicide mission against Damascus.

The movie portrays sensational scenes from real ISIS atrocities with a backdrop showing the Syrian desert and famous ruins of Palmyra. The city where civilians are surrounded and besieged is similar to the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor, which was surrounded and attacked by ISIS for years. During that time, the townspeople and soldiers depended on air-dropped food and ammunition to hold off the attackers, as shown in the movie.

Damascus Time’s jihadists display a human side, but they are wrapped in sectarianism, hate and violence.

Life’s complexities are demonstrated in the younger of the two Iranian pilots who has left his pregnant wife to be with his father. The mother-in-law of the young pilot bitterly criticizes him for leaving his wife. He tells her it will be his last trip.

While the story is fiction, what it portrays is all too real: Hundreds of thousands of real Syrians and Iraqis have been killed by the unleashing of the ISIS Frankenstein. Ironically, American leaders criticize Iran for being the “leading state sponsor of terrorism.” But in the Syrian war, Iran has been combatting it. Iran is more tolerant than most Westerners think too, as indeed Islam is. How many know for instance that Jews are represented in the Iranian parliament?

Western-backed Extremism

In reality, the U.S. and UK have allied for decades with extremists for short-term political gain. As documented in “Devil’s Game: How the U.S. Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam,” by Robert Dreyfuss, Britain and the U.S. promoted a violent and sectarian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine the nationalist and socialist policies of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt. Starting in 1979, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia promoted the founders of what became Al Qaeda to attack the socialist-leaning government of Afghanistan.

This policy has continued to the present. In the summer of 2012, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency outlined their strategy in a secret document : “THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR).”The U.S. looked favorably on what the document predicts will be the creation of the “Islamic State”: “THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.

Then, in a leaked audio conversation with Syrian opposition figures in September, Secretary of State John Kerry said the U.S., rather than seriously fight Islamic State in Syria, was ready to use the growing strength of the jihadists to pressure Assad to resign, just as outlined in the DIA document.

“We know that this was growing, we were watching, we saw that Daesh [a derisive name for Islamic State] was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened,” Kerry said. “We thought however we could probably manage that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.”

Russia began its military intervention in late September 2015 without the United States, with the Kremlin’s motives made abundantly clear by Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials. But such clear explanations are rarely reported clearly by Western corporate media, which instead peddles the line from officials and think tanks that Russia is trying to recover lost imperial glory in the Middle East.

Who sponsors terrorism?

But Kerry knew why Russia intervened. “The reason Russia came in is because ISIL [another acronym for Islamic State] was getting stronger, Daesh was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus, and that’s why Russia came in because they didn’t want a Daesh government and they supported Assad,” he said in the leaked discussion. Kerry’s comment suggests that the U.S. was willing to risk Islamic State and its jihadist allies gaining power in order to oust Assad.

The Biggest Sponsors

The true “state sponsor of terrorism” is not Iran; it is the West and their allies. Since Iran has been fighting ISIS and other extremists in Syria, it is appropriate that the first feature length movie depicting that battle against terrorism and ISIS comes from Iran.

Hundreds of Iranians have given their lives alongside their Syrian and Iraqi comrades. “Damascus Time” is not the product of Hollywood fantasy; it’s the product of actual human drama and conflict occurring in the Middle East today. “Damascus Time” is fictional but based on a real conflict with actual blood, atrocities, tragedies and martyrs.

The movie is currently being shown at cinemas throughout Iran. In recent weeks it was the second highest ranking movie. A trailer of the film can be viewed here. It should be available for viewing in the West in the near future, unless western sanctions and censorship are extended to culture.

Rick Sterling can be contacted at rsterling1@gmail.com

May 18, 2018 Posted by | Film Review | , , , | Leave a comment

Clashing Visions of Denuclearization Pose Risk to U.S.-North Korea Summit

By Gregory Elich | Zoom In Korea | May 17, 2018

The soaring hopes generated by the recent Inter-Korean Summit are now supplanted by uncertainty, due to North Korea’s suspension of a planned meeting with the South.

In the weeks following the summit’s Panmunjom Declaration, North Korea took actions to demonstrate its goodwill and desire for peaceful resolution of differences.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea) announced that it would dismantle its underground nuclear test site, culminating in explosions to collapse tunnels, the blocking of entries, and removal of above-ground facilities.

Substantial progress has already been made on disabling the site. The DPRK could have waited and made this a negotiable issue in talks with the United States. Instead, it offered the step to the United States ahead of the summit as a confidence-building measure. Before that, North Korea also committed to a suspension of nuclear and missile testing. As an additional gesture of good intentions, North Korea released all three American prisoners.

Initial signs from U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s meetings with Chairman Kim Jong Un were quite encouraging, hinting at an uncharacteristic degree of flexibility on the part of the Trump administration. North Korean media reported that the talks indicated that Trump “has a new alternative” and a “proactive attitude,” and that Kim and Pompeo had reached a “satisfactory agreement on the issues.”

Meanwhile, as Pompeo and Kim were making apparent headway, the process began to unravel from a different direction. There were many in the Trump administration who were not keen on the idea of reciprocity. The dominant view was that rewards, such as they were, could only come after denuclearization.

National Security Advisor John Bolton was trotted out for a series of interviews to elucidate the U.S. position. Permanent, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization would have to take place before “the benefits start to flow.” The expectation is that the DPRK should abandon its nuclear deterrent without receiving anything more in return than the promise of future rewards. Nor does Bolton consider nuclear disarmament to be sufficient. Negotiations have not begun, and already the U.S. is piling on more demands. Talks, Bolton insisted, would also need to tackle the DPRK’s ballistic missile program and human rights concerns. Chemical and biological weapons will also be on the agenda, he said, despite the fact that their existence is purely speculative. Negotiations on denuclearization will be challenging enough. Overloading the talks with additional issues is likely to be a recipe for failure.

Even as North Korea strives to meet American demands, it can expect no relief from sanctions and threats. Bolton asserts that the U.S. needs to see North Korea implementing denuclearization, and the policy of maximum pressure will not relent until that happens.

What kind of benefits can North Korea expect in return for compliance with U.S. demands? “I wouldn’t look for economic aid from us,” Bolton bluntly stated. Presumably, once North Korea has satisfied all of the Trump administration’s demands, sanctions will start to be reduced or eliminated. That is not a reward. If someone is punishing another, and then promises to reduce the amount of punishment, it is safe to say that the victim will not regard that as a “reward.”

On the economic front, Mike Pompeo agrees with Bolton. No taxpayer funds will go towards assisting North Korea, he said. What the United States is willing to do is send rapacious corporate investors to North Korea to seek profit-making opportunities. Once denuclearization has been completed and sanctions lifted, Pompeo says that what Chairman Kim “will get from America is our finest – our entrepreneurs, our risk takers, our capital providers…They will get private capital that comes in.” A strong argument could be made that those are actually among America’s worst people, and not to be wished upon North Korea or any other nation.

Pompeo went on to talk about North Korea’s need for energy, agricultural equipment, and technology. The need is there. But why is that? For decades, the United States has subjected the DPRK to enormous economic damage through sanctions. The North Korean people are not incapable of improving their lot. They only need to be allowed to do so, unhindered and unpunished. What the DPRK needs and what it consistently calls for is normalization of relations.

Certainly, North Korea is not looking to privatize state-owned firms or to contract out work to U.S. firms that it is capable of doing itself, once it is released from the burden of sanctions.

It is clear that the Trump administration is not willing to give anything to North Korea. It costs nothing to lift sanctions or to cherish the hope that lucrative opportunities will blossom in North Korea for U.S. investors. Signing a piece of paper promising a security guarantee imposes no burden on the United States. The Trump administration, or any future administration for that matter, is free to ignore that guarantee and send the cruise missiles flying whenever it sees fit.

Nor does the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran inspire confidence in the reliability of the United States as a negotiating partner.

Bolton’s pronouncements, perhaps aided by behind-the-scenes maneuvering, appear to have led Pompeo to walk back on his earlier statements about progress being made and having reached a mutual understanding with Chairman Kim. He is now reporting that a great deal of work remains and the U.S. and North Korea are not “remotely close.”

“We have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004,” Bolton recently told Fox News. That model would have North Korea ship its nuclear weapons to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for destruction. The DPRK would be required to complete disarmament before receiving relief from sanctions.

So how did that model work for Libya? That nation began to denuclearize at the beginning of 2004, and throughout the process, it fully complied with U.S. demands for unilateral denuclearization. But the United States was slow when it came to compensation, and the Libyans often complained to American diplomats that they had not been rewarded for their compliance. It was not until 2006 that the U.S. restored diplomatic relations and removed Libya from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Although the U.S. was sluggish in providing relief to Libya, it was eager to issue more demands. John Bolton, who was Under-secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration at the time, told Libyan officials that they had to sever military cooperation with Iran in order to complete the denuclearization agreement. On at least one occasion, a U.S. official pressured Libya to cut off military trade with North Korea, Iran, and Syria.

American officials also demanded that Libya recognize the independence of Kosovo, a position that Libya had consistently opposed. That was followed by a U.S. diplomatic note to Libya, ordering it to vote against the Serbian government’s resolution at the United Nations, which requested a ruling by the International Court of Justice on the legality of Kosovo independence. Under the circumstances, Libya preferred to absent itself from the vote rather than join the United States and three other nations in opposing the measure.

The U.S. was more successful in winning Libya’s vote in favor of UN sanctions against Iran. Under U.S. pressure, Libya also launched a privatization program and opened opportunities for U.S. businesses.

North Korea can expect the same treatment if it follows this model. The United States will start to treat it as a vassal state, expecting it to take orders on myriad issues having nothing to do with denuclearization.

We know how the model ended, with the United States and its NATO partners bombing Libya, and the brutal murder of Muammar al-Qaddafi. The North Koreans know it, too.

In 2006, Great Britain and Libya signed a Joint Letter on Peace and Security. The document stated that the two nations “pledge in their international relations to refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of one another.” It further obligated the parties to refrain from intervening in the internal affairs of one another. Five years later, Great Britain was aiding jihadists fighting to overthrow the government, and joining NATO in bombing Libya. That is the Libya model, too, in which a Western security “guarantee” is proven worthless.

The DPRK has a more credible action-for-action approach in mind for negotiations, in which there is a phased approach, and each side gains something as progress continues towards the final goal of denuclearization and normalization of relations.

In continuing to set a framework of mutual respect for talks, North Korea sharply reduced the scale of its annual armored vehicle exercises this month.

Washington is sending signals of a different nature, however. On May 11, the joint U.S.-South Korea Max Thunder air drills kicked off, deploying over 100 aircraft, including advanced Stealth F-22 Raptor fighter planes. This year’s exercise is the largest ever held, in an apparent bid to apply additional pressure on North Korea.

In response, North Korea announced that it was suspending its May 16 meeting with South Korean officials. KCNA, North Korea’s news agency, pointed out that the expanded drills constituted “an undisguised challenge to the Panmunjom Declaration,” in which both Koreas had pledged to cease all hostile acts. It added that the Panmunjom Declaration cannot be implemented by one party alone.

DPRK’s First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kim Kye Gwan followed that up by announcing that the improvement in relations with the United States risks being undone by American officials calling for unilateral disarmament and adherence to the Libya model. North Korea has already stated its intention to denuclearize in exchange for an end to the U.S. hostile policy, he continued. “But now, the U.S. is miscalculating the magnanimity and broad-minded initiatives of the DPRK as signs of weakness.”

North Korea has left the door open to the U.S. and South Korea. The May 16 meeting with South Korean officials was suspended, not cancelled. And the North Koreans are saying that they will closely watch the behavior of U.S. and South Korean officials. Portrayed in Western media as an act of inexplicable petulance, the suspension of the inter-Korean meeting is a wake-up call to the United States and South Korea. The capitulation model is not a viable approach. Reciprocity is essential.

The North Koreans are not going to relinquish their nuclear deterrent for nothing more than an empty security promise and the suggestion that sanctions may be lifted if they meet a host of additional demands.

During the Obama administration, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program was at a sufficiently immature stage of development that the United States felt it could demand that North Korea fully denuclearize as a precondition for talks.

After the DPRK completed its fast-track nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, it now has something substantial to trade. It expects the United States to engage in the normal give-and-take of diplomatic negotiations. Former U.S. Department of State Special Representative for North Korea Joseph Yun notes, “The price has gone up. You have to address what they want. If you believe they should only address what we want I think that’s a very, very mistaken path.”

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and a Korea Policy Institute associate. He is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific.

His website is https://gregoryelich.org

May 18, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Israel blocks Turkey from transporting wounded Palestinians from Gaza

RT | May 18, 2018

Turkey’s attempts to evacuate Palestinians wounded in Gaza for medical treatment have been blocked by Israel, the government in Ankara said.

Israel is blocking Turkey from “standing beside our oppressed brothers,” Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Recep Akdag, said, as cited by Anadolu Agency. Turkey asked to send a plane to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, but the request was rejected due to political and security concerns, according to Israel’s Channel 10.

“We received a request from international health authorities to approve a Turkish flight to evacuate those being treated in Gaza to Turkey,” Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman told Channel 10.

“After discussion with security agencies and Israeli experts, we decided to allow treatment in Israel and/or to send medical supplies to Gaza. But we did not permit the Turkish flight.”

Tensions have increased between the two nations since Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador from Ankara and withdrew its ambassador from Tel Aviv, in response to Israel’s killing of at least 60 Palestinians at the Great Return March protests in Gaza on Monday. More than 100 people have been killed during the six-week protests.

The Rafah border crossing has been opened for six days this week to allow injured Palestinians in Gaza to receive treatment in Egypt. Minister of Health Ahmed Emad Eddine said he had been “instructed by the political leadership” to allow Palestinians to be treated in Egyptian hospitals, Egypt Today reports.

Last month, Israel rejected a request to transfer two wounded Palestinians from Gaza to the West Bank because they had taken part in the demonstrations. The High Court ruled Israel had to allow the patients to receive treatment, but at that stage both needed amputations.

“The situation in Gaza is devastating and the crisis is far from over,” UN humanitarian coordinator Jamie McGoldrick said. “Medical teams in Gaza have exerted heroic efforts, working tirelessly and often at personal risk, to save lives. But stocks of medicines and supplies are being depleted, with few resources to replenish them. Our ability to reach affected families, including children, and provide assistance is extremely limited due to funding shortfalls.”

Before Monday’s protest, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza said its medical facilities were “completely overwhelmed and will soon be unable to manage additional wounded,” and warned the health system was “on the verge of collapse.”

May 18, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Cheap political ritual’: Trump orders sanctions against Russia over alleged INF treaty violation

RT | May 17, 2018

President Donald Trump ordered his Cabinet to work on sanctions targeting Russian officials for what the US claims is a violation of a key arms control treaty. The action is perceived as a ‘cheap political ritual’ in Moscow.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty bans the US and Russia from developing and deploying land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 1,000km. Signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, it helped reverse the nuclearization of Europe and deflate Cold War tension. Washington and Moscow have since accused each other of violating the key arms control agreement, but neither went as far as withdrawing from it.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 in US has a section that requires the White House to prepare a list of senior Russian officials responsible for violating the INF, who could be slapped with personal sanctions for it. Those include property freezes, travel bans and whatever Trump deems appropriate.

A memorandum by Trump, which was published on Wednesday, instructs several Cabinet members, including the State Secretary, the Director of National Security and the Secretary of the Treasury, to carry out the work.

The development was dismissed in Moscow as largely insignificant. “I have three words to describe it: cheap political ritual,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov on Thursday.

The US falsely believes that “Russia may be pressured by sanctions into offering unilateral concessions and actions pleasing Washington,” he said. “It’s obvious that this does not promote normal dialogue on strategic stability and on the contrary hurts it.”

The US accuses Russia of secretly developing two rockets with intermediary range, which can be fired by a standard launcher of the tactical missile system Iskander-M. Russia denies that the rocket’s range falls within the restrictions.

Moscow in turn accuses the US of having developed banned missiles under the guise of target projectiles for anti-missile systems. It also says the US adopted naval vertical launch systems, which can fire Tomahawk missiles, to land deployment as part of AEGIS Ashore program, effectively making the cruise missiles land-based.

May 17, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

US, Israel can aid coup in Iran & if it fails, let Iranians fight each other – ex-Mossad official

RT | May 17, 2018

The US, Israel and Saudi Arabia – can change regime in Iran, and Trump’s policy provides an opening for it, a former top Mossad official speculated, adding that if a coup fails, Iranians will still be fighting each other.

Haim Tomer, a former Mossad official said to lead Intelligence, Counter-Terrorism and International Divisions, explicitly talked about possible options for regime change in Tehran during an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

Claiming that the “Khomeini-ist Islamic state” wants to destroy Israel, Tomer argued: “We can deal with the threat itself: nuclear weapons, conventional Iranian missiles. We can defend against them.” The former intelligence chief went further, saying Trump’s policy on Iran “created a major opening… to carefully weigh pushing for regime change as a formal goal.”

Tomer outlined what a possible coup in Iran would look like. Israel could “clandestinely help facilitate regime change” and the US “could support it on various fronts,” while the Saudis could fund the effort.

Asked what exactly Israel could try, he said “clandestine actions can lead to change… There is a lot that the Mossad can do when it gets a mission. I cannot go into the details… but it would be clandestine.”

Tomer, who now works as investment and tech advisor, bluntly said that the Iranian government – presided over by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – is unpopular with the Iranian public, and the Supreme Leader himself is old and has health issues.

He said Mossad, widely believed to have carried out several clandestine operations on Iranian soil in the past, can play a crucial role in conspiring against the Islamic Republic. “The Mossad carries out substantial and complex operations – and has carried out many,” referring to 2013 reports that Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz was ravaged by a Stuxnet malware.

“The Mossad has done many things in Iran before. This was among the most important, but there have been operations like it, and maybe even more important,” Tomer said.

The ex-Mossad official also said that the Israeli intelligence agency is one of few which carries out targeted killings. “[Regarding] targeted killings, very few [foreign intelligence agencies] do this; Israel [is one that] does, according to foreign sources,” he added.

However, he acknowledged: “I am not saying it will be a piece of cake – The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basiji militias are very strong.” But even if it does not succeed, “it is better to have the Iranians fighting among themselves.”

Israeli leaders have at times made similar statements on the issue. “When this regime [the Iranian government] finally falls, and one day it will, Iranians and Israelis will be great friends once again,” Prime Minister Bebjamin Netanyahu said in January amid violent unrest in Iran. He praised the protesters who have rallied since Thursday, saying that they sought “freedom and justice.”

Iran has already seen a CIA-orchestrated coup which toppled the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. The CIA and State Department had given green light on overthrowing Mosaddegh – codenamed Operation Ajax – after he nationalized major oil assets.

The coup d’etat is thought to give birth to Iranian nationalism, which, in turn, paved way to the 1979 Islamic Revolution – a major event that poisoned US-Iran relations into the 21st century.

May 17, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

UNICEF: 1,000 children injured by Israeli gunfire in Gaza protests

Palestine Information Center | May 17, 2018

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Over 1,000 children have been injured by Israeli forces in the besieged Gaza Strip during demonstrations since March 30, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The UN body pointed out that some injuries had been severe and potentially life-altering, including amputations.

“Recent violence has exacerbated the already weak health system in the Gaza Strip, which is crumbling because of the severe power cuts and shortages of fuel, medicine and equipment,” UNICEF said in a statement.

“Medical facilities are buckling under the strain of additional casualties,” it further warned.

On Wednesday, UNICEF and its partners delivered two truck-loads of urgent medical supplies to the Gaza Strip for an estimated 70,000 people.

May 17, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Award-winning photographer shot by Israel soldier in the West Bank

Internationally-acclaimed and award-winning photographer, Tanya Habjouqa [Happeningarts/Twitter]
MEMO | May 17, 2018

An internationally-acclaimed, award-winning photographer was shot by an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, reports the Art Newspaper.

Tanya Habjouqa, who won the 2014 World Press photo award, was struck in the leg by a rubber-coated metal bullet fired by Israeli occupation forces during a protest near Bet El checkpoint.

Habjouqa told the paper that she was some 40 metres from Palestinian protesters “when Israeli soldiers in the distance started shooting rubber bullets and tear gas in several directions”.

“She also saw soldiers aim at a Palestinian gas station where there were no protesters, just people filling up their gas tanks,” the report added.

“I was on the side with my camera at the beginning of the protest with cameras around my neck, so I feel I was definitely targeted though thankfully they chose not to aim for my head,” Habjouqa tells us. “It hurts like hell and the bruise is spreading front and back.”

Habjouqa is a founder of Rawiya, the first all-female photo collective in the Middle East, as well as a member of the Noor Photography collective, a Magnum Foundation grantee, and the author of the photo book Occupied Pleasures that the Smithsonian named one of the best photo books of 2015.

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Institut du Monde Art in Paris.

Read also:

Media freedom watchdog warns of more Israel attacks on journalists in Gaza

May 17, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU will use ‘blocking statute’ to protect its firms from US sanctions for operating in Iran

RT | May 17, 2018

The European Union will activate legislation banning the bloc’s companies from complying with US sanctions against Iran as soon as Friday, according to European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

The law also does not recognize any court rulings enforcing penalties, which could be potentially introduced by the White House against European corporations doing business in the Islamic Republic.

“As the European Commission we have the duty to protect European companies,” the Commission president said at a news conference after a meeting of EU leaders. “We now need to act and this is why we are launching the process of to activate the ‘blocking statute’ from 1996. We will do that tomorrow morning at 10:30.”

“We also decided to allow the European Investment Bank to facilitate European companies’ investment in Iran. The Commission itself will maintain its cooperation with Iran,” Juncker said.

The move followed Washington’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, clinched three years ago between Tehran and the P5+1 powers (China, France, Russia, UK, US, plus Germany) and to reintroduce sanctions that were lifted after signing the pact.

The US Treasury Department said it would give European businesses six months to wind up their investments in the country or risk US sanctions – forbidding them from signing new contracts.

Following a decades-long financial and economic blockade, the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), opened Iran as one of the biggest global markets to dozens of multinationals across the globe. The EU’s biggest companies rushed to sign multi-billion euro deals with Tehran shortly after the sanctions were lifted. As for Iran, the energy-rich republic got an opportunity to ramp up its presence in the global oil markets.

The EU has a lot of experience protecting its interests, Dawood Nazirizadeh, chairman of the Wiesbaden Academy for integration, told RT.

“In 1996 it defended itself against US secondary sanctions with the ‘blocking statute’. As a result, the US granted exemptions to European companies. However, under the current US administration, we are not optimistic about the future for such an agreement,” said Nazirizadeh.

The EU also agreed to stick to the Iran nuclear deal, aiming to protect the interests of European corporations dealing with Tehran against US sanctions, according to European Council President Donald Tusk.

“On Iran nuclear deal, we agreed unanimously that the EU will stay in the agreement as long as Iran remains fully committed to it. Additionally the Commission was given a green light to be ready to act whenever European interests are affected,” the top EU official said.

May 17, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

West Continues to Underestimate Support for Assad in Syria – UK Shadow FM

Sputnik | May 17, 2018

Although many politicians in the ruling Tory British government have expressed opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with some endorsing the UK’s role in the US-led strikes against Syria on April 13, some members of the opposition, including Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and members of his shadow cabinet, have called for restraint.

Shadow UK Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry told Prospect magazine on Wednesday that the West underestimates the level of support President Assad enjoys in Syria and suggested that opposition forces have exaggerated domestic opposition to the Syrian government.

“There is an argument that if [President Bashar al-Assad] had been as overwhelmingly unpopular as the rebels told the west at the outset then he wouldn’t be there. I think there has been a depth and a breadth of support for Assad that has been underestimated,” the British shadow foreign secretary told Prospect magazine on May 16.

Shadow FM Thornberry went on to insist that all foreign forces need to leave Syria.

“They’re not fighting for the sake of the Syrian people. Any of them. Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, Turkey, America, Britain—have I missed anyone?”

She proceeded to add Russia to the list.

When questioned about Russia’s vetoing of UN resolutions she pointed towards other countries which have also blocked numerous resolutions and said it’s the nature of international politics.

“People will always block resolutions. If you look at the number of resolutions America has blocked, I mean that’s the way of politics,” Shadow FM Thornberry said.

The UK shadow foreign secretary went on to say Britain should support any peace process which yields results, whether that’s the Astana, Geneva or Sochi process.

“I think we should be working with whatever works, for the sake of the Syrian kids. None of this is revolutionary,” she added.

Despite the tripartite aggression by the US, the UK and France against the Syrian Army and other military personnel in Syria last month, government forces have continued to advance against terrorists throughout the country and once they deal with the final Daesh* remnants in south Damascus, they are likely to take aim at either Deraa or Idlib.

On the topic of military intervention against Damascus, UK Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry warned that it could further destabilize Syria, citing Libya as an example.

“[It] has been such a disaster. Responsibility to Protect is not [supposed to be] a cover for ‘those people are being treated badly let’s go and bomb, everything will be fine.’ It didn’t work—look at Libya now,” FM Thornberry, who voted in favor of bombing Libya in 2011, told Prospect magazine earlier this week.

May 17, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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