Binoy Kampmark | Global Research | January 24, 2015 What a spanner in the works of international relations he proved to be. The late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud of Saudi Arabia was always the spoiler in the morality plays of Western powers keen to back him. Oil was always the greatest deterrent against getting on…
Miriam Elder | Buzzfeed | 23 Jan 2015 DAVOS, Switzerland — The head of a leading Kremlin-owned bank warned on Friday that further banking sanctions would lead Russia and the U.S. to the “brink of war.” Andrei Kostin, the head of VTB, reacted angrily when asked what the consequences would be if Russia were excluded…
Glenn Greenwald | The Intercept | 23 Jan 2015 Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela four times from 1998 through 2012 and was admired and supported by a large majority of that country’s citizens, largely due to his policies that helped the poor. King Abdullah was the dictator and tyrant who ran one of the…
Mario | The Saker | 23 Jan 2015 How it starts: 1987–88 Iran signed three agreements with Argentina’s National Atomic Energy Commission. The first Iranian-Argentine agreement involved help in converting the U.S. supplied Tehran Nuclear Research Centre (TNRC) reactor from highly enriched fuel to 19.75% low-enriched uranium, and to supply the low-enriched uranium to Iran.…
GWPF | 23 Jan 2015 Richard Lindzen, an MIT professor of meteorology, is dismissing global-warming alarmists as a discredited “cult” whose members are becoming more hysterical as emerging evidence continues to contradict their beliefs. “As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they…
Seumas Milne | The Guardian | 22 Jan 2015 The billionaires and corporate oligarchs meeting in Davos this week are getting worried about inequality. It might be hard to stomach that the overlords of a system that has delivered the widest global economic gulf in human history should be handwringing about the consequences of their own…
Daily Mail | 23 Jan 2015 Just released flight records show Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has been flying with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein on the financier’s private jet dubbed the ‘Lolita Express’ since as early as 1997, despite public statements that they were only acquaintances. The high-profile lawyer has been distancing himself from Epstein…
Melanie Newman | Bureau of Investigative Journalism | 23 Jan 2015 The increasing use of encryption technologies in everyday emails and messaging services will lead to “ethically worse” behaviour by the intelligence agencies, a former head of GCHQ has predicted. Sir David Omand warned there would be greater intrusion on individuals’ privacy, not less, if agencies are…
GWPF | 22 Jan 2015 The polarisation of the climate debate has gone too far I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far…