Iran is back with a bang. And what a bang. The simplistic Western narrative rules that after the end of UN, US and EU sanctions – in fact a few still remain in place – Iran is rejoining global markets. That may be the case – from Tehran clinching a deal to buy 114 planes from Airbus to Iranian oil soon hitting Western markets. But the key question is actually how, at what pace, and with what partners Tehran plans to rejoin global markets. All the commotion, at the moment, predictably revolves around oil. Iran’s Deputy Oil Minister for Commerce and International Affairs, Amir Hossein Zamaninia, said the new oil export target is an extra 500,000 barrels a day within a few months. Tehran may indeed boost production by 600,000 barrels a day in six months, and add up to 800,000 barrels a day in output before the end of 2016.
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West’s Civilization Stands at Precipice
Flooded by foreigners and having disowned its roots, are we witnessing the end of Europe? Europe is in a panic. Europe is in horror. Europe groans. Victims of war and migrants from North Africa, cross the sea on fragile boats, previously drowning in site of the coast, at best clambering up to beg Europeans for a piece of bread, now storm the borders, tear at the barbed wire, throw flares at police. Over New Years in Germany they hunted down girls and young women to harass, rob, strip and rape. “What’s happening” – Europe’s moralists wonder? – How can these people, to whom we have given so much, dismiss the warmth we have shown them, why do they not appreciate our compassion and tolerance?”
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Reality and Hypocrisy: DPRK Nuclear Test Condemned By Nuclear Powers
The news of another nuclear weapon test by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, often referred to in the west as North Korea, has been met with condemnation from the most powerful nuclear armed state of them all, the United States of America, the only nation to have actually used them, against the people of Japan in 1945, and a nation that still retains a first strike strategy against its claimed enemies. This was to be expected from the greatest hypocrite state in the world. But the United States is not the only nuclear weapon state that showed blatant double standards in reaction the news. Both Russia and China have condemned the test of what the DPRK claimed was a miniaturized hydrogen bomb.
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Lofgren’s THE AMERICAN DEEP STATE
Summary: Here is the Forward to Mike Lofgren’s important new book about our Deep State, the center of the New America. The influence of the Deep State affects the daily headlines, yet remains unremarked. Lofgren’s book sketches the big picture of this institution and how it works. His forward is fun to read, like a well-written horror story. Which it is because it’s real. My review will follow later this week. As the seat of government and location of the headquarters of the armed forces, Washington has always had a large military contingent. Its presence is impossible to ignore. Now that it is regulation to wear camouflage uniforms as ordinary stateside service dress — is the rationale that an ISIS terrorist may emerge from behind the potted palm at the Washington Hilton? — this post-9/11 convention leads to some incongruous Washington scenes.
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Planet of FEAR: Make Trade, Not WAR Or Vice Versa, Beware Falcons of War
Facing the gleaming Doha skyline on a Persian Gulf winter carries the merit of a panoramic perspective. Most nations around it are going into melt down and the remaining ones – with the exception of Iran – exhibit neither the political leadership nor the economic and institutional infrastructure to do anything other than to meekly accept whatever tsunami hits their shores. They are nothing but scared spectators. The Empire of Chaos has enough warmongering hardware pre-positioned within spitting distance to turn the whole of Southwest Asia into ashes – as a gaggle of usual suspects in the Beltway, neocon or neoliberalcon, still can’t find a cure to their itching to «really win the next war» in a sort of exponential Shock and Awe.
International Voices
Debate
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Can America Abandon Corporatist Grip?
By James Hall
What is all the excitement around the Bernie Sanders diatribes that have the Occupy Democrats drooling? According to 170 Top Economists Pen Letter Backing Bernie Sanders’ Plan To Break Up The Biggest Banks, the argument made references the “hyperbolic imagery that invokes the bread lines of the Soviet Union and massive famines in China, entirely […]
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Currency Dictatorship – The Struggle to End It
By Rakesh Krishan Simha
India and the BRICS are giving the US dollar the boot? Is it really so? The last time a country decided to dump the dollar in the oil business, the US destroyed it. Now India, the world’s third largest economy, and Iran have agreed to settle their outstanding oil dues in rupees. What’s more, the […]
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Is the Chinese Economy Really in Trouble? Here Are the Lessons of History the Press Ignores
By Eamonn Fingleton
“You cannot hope to bribe or twist – thank God! – the British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there’s no occasion to.” So wrote the witty early twentieth century British man of letters Humbert Wolfe. His assessment of American journalists isn’t recorded but, where pivotal issues are concerned, they have probably […]
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Obama Haunted by the Centuries-old “Graveyard of Empires” in Afghanistan
By Finian CUNNINGHAM
US President Barack Obama has little to cheer about during his annual Christmas vacation – just as America’s longest-ever overseas war – in Afghanistan – flares up with no end in sight, and possibly for even more years to come. «The war in Afghanistan follows Obama to his vacation in Hawaii», was how the Washington Post described the […]
Politics
Twitter Campaign to Lure Migrants to Germany Coming From US
By Andrey Fomin
The whole refugee crisis was arranged by the US-based agents to frame up Chancellor Merkel and warn her against defiance and an independent stand for European sovereignty The premeditated operation of New Year’s rapes, in Cologne and elsewhere, continues with a denunciation of the responsibility of the Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel. A study of computer […]
Economy
The Fed’s Role in the Stock Market Slide
By Mike Whitney
When the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and S&P peaked in May 2015, investors were still confident that the Fed “had their back” and that any steep or prolonged downturn in stocks would be met with additional liquidity and a firm commitment to maintain zero rates as long as necessary. But now that the Fed […]
Society
ISIS: US-Saudi Plague Reaches Indonesia?
By Tony Cartalucci
ISIS attacks conveniently mesh with Washington’s growing frustration with Jakarta and its expanding ties with China. Coordinated bombings and mass shootings struck Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta on Thursday leaving several dead and many more wounded. The pattern matched that of attacks carried out last year in Paris, France, where known terrorists Western intelligence agencies were […]
Environment
Chinese Environmental Problems are Taking a Serious Turn for Worse
By Dmitry Bokarev
The recent announcement that heavy smog has triggered an orange level alert in Beijing, the densely populated capital of China, once again drew the attention of the international community to the environmental problems China faces. In fact, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is paying a staggering price for its rapid industrial and economic growth, […]
- Stormy Times: Climate Change as Predicted
- Genetic Manipulation of Organisms: Legal Victory in “Paris vs Monsanto GMO Cabal”
- US Intended to Destroy Civilian Populations With Nuclear Strikes: Declassified Document
- The Anthrax Files: US Forces Conducted Multiple Secret Anthrax Experiments in South Korea
Culture
America’s Military: They Simply Can’t Be Trusted
By Gordon Duff
This week President Obama, while riding around in his classic 1963 Chevrolet Corvette with comedian Jerry Seinfeld, set the tone for his last year in office. “How many world leaders do you think are just completely out of their mind?” Seinfeld asks. “A pretty sizable percentage,” Obama answered. Obama’s personal list starts with Netanyahu, Merkel, […]
- Reality and Hypocrisy: DPRK Nuclear Test Condemned By Nuclear Powers
- UNENDING US WAR IS DRIVING NORTH KOREA’s NUCLEAR PROGRAM: ENDING KOREAN WAR IS THE BEST RESPONSE
- Korean Jurists Committee Accuses U.S. of Sidestepping Conclusion of Peace Treaty with DPRK
- “Law of Gangsters” like US, Briton, Israel: Sanctions Economic Aggression-revisited
- 1 West's Civilization Stands at Precipice
- 2 Lofgren’s THE AMERICAN DEEP STATE
- 3 China Gears Up to Launch Middle East Pivot Policy: Xi Visits Iran, Saudi, ......
- 4 INCONTROVERTIBLE: New 9/11 Documentary by Tony Rooke: Long, Slow, Uneven, Excellent
- 5 Planet of FEAR: Make Trade, Not WAR Or Vice Versa, Beware Falcons of War
- 6 THE 21st CENTURY: AN ERA OF FRAUD
- 7 China Wades into IRAN-SAUDI Swamp
- 8 Reality and Hypocrisy: DPRK Nuclear Test Condemned By Nuclear Powers
- 9 AS GOES SYRIA, SO GOES THE WORLD
- 10 WATCH ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES SHOOTING PALESTINIAN DEMONSTRATORS
