COLD WAR, ACT TWO: OTHER ASPECTS OF THAT RUSSIAN DOMESTIC CLEARING LAW

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Joseph P. Farrell • Filed Under: Bankers • http://gizadeathstar.com/2014/05/cold-war-act-two-aspects-russian-domestic-clearing-law/

This article came to me from Mr. V.T., who has also been following the story of the domestic clearing law just passed by the Russian state Duma and signed by President Putin. There’s more teeth in this law than is being reported by the lamestream pressititutes of the Western media.
Taking a page from the mercantilist playbook, Mr. Putin seems intent to study tactics, and reverse them. For one thing, the law requires Visa and Mastercard, if they wish to remain in operation in Russia, to pay the Russian government $3.8 billion in fees. Impose a sanction? Here, have a (large) fee. Increase the sanction? Here, have an increased fee. I have to laugh, because this type of reversal is playing the sanctions game to the hilt, and there’s little that can be done about it. Notably, the law did not require Visa and Mastercard to leave Russia, which it would have if Mr. Putin was the rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth neo-Stalinist devolution and throwback that he’s portrayed to be by the lamestream media, and particularly by the American “conservative” talk radio.
By playing the sanctions card, the American oligarchy appears to have committed a blunder, and you’ve just got to love the Russian strategic sense here, which is heavily fried like a pirogi in a dollop of artery-clotting ironic humor: because Visa and Mastercard can opt not pay the fee, stomp out of their Russian play pen like angry petulant children, and lose the profits of their Russian business, which will be eagerly snapped up by Mr. Putin and his own cronies. Or, they can sulk, sourly pay the fee, continue to do business in Russia with slightly smaller profits, and still be enriching the coffers of Moscow, which will doubtless turn over some of the money to Roscosmos to help in its lunar commercialization plans  while the chief of Roscosmos continues to advise NASA to use trampolines to get into space
. (I have this vision of Mr. Putin and his advisors, as they cooked this one up, sipping hot strong Russian black chai from a samovar Russian-style, through a sugar cube, and cackling amongst themselves as they hatched this one.)
But now, adding insult upon insult, and a heaping tablespoon of rock salt to the open fester, there’s something else in the law and I hope you caught it:

“The new law forbids international payment systems from cutting off services to Russian clients and obliges them to base their processing centre in Russia. To ensure their good behaviour, international operators will have to place a security deposit in Russia’s central bank equal to the average value of two days’ worth of transactions.”(Emphasis added)

So, Visa and Mastercard are welcome in Russia: just pay a fee and put your processing center in Russia, where we can get to it quickly if we have to.
Now, as the article goes on to point out, the Russian domestic clearing system is not a substitute internationally for Russian businesses conducting international trade.
But that, as I’ve been arguing all along is the next step. Imagine, however, if this system were to include Russian banks penetrating the West’s Visa and Mastercard franchises to such an extent that these names become substantially “BRIC-sized,” or “Russianized.” A nightmare scenario for the western oligarchs(or, at least, to some of them who still have a shred of patriotism or belief in western cultural values), to be sure. (For the rest, it will simply be another way to make money, so why not?)
So, this is one to watch, and don’t be surprised if someday, rather than getting endless (and, I hope they take notice in London) rejected and declined offers for a LIBOR-rigging major British Bank credit card, you get an invitation from a Russian bank for your very own Visa or Mastercard (sans Cyrillic characters of course), at better rates than those LIBOR-rigging banks can offer you.  That, of course, is a long way off, but if the BRICSA nations are successful in establishing mechanisms of international clearing independent of the West, it could happen.
The question is, will western consumers buy it?

How Five American Companies Control What You Think

By Eric Sommer

Global Research, May 15, 2014

RT Op-Edge 14 May 2014

Region: Russia and FSU

Theme: Media Disinformation

In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT

Heavy distortions and suppressions of information regarding current Ukrainian events are appearing in US media.
You might wonder how so many different news sources could all completely avoid mentioning that the US government is consciously supporting two radical far-right parties, Svoboda and Right Sector, which are in control of key positions in the coup-installed new ‘government’ of the Ukraine. You might also wonder why almost all the US mass media news sources could conceal – with vague phrases like”the sequence of events is not clear’ and similar techniques – the role of these extremist organization in murdering dozens of unarmed civilians in the past few days in southeastern Ukraine.
The explanation is surprisingly simple: There aren’t numerous US mass media news sources at all; there are just five. Five giant corporations control 90 percent of US mass media. And direct links connect all five of these media conglomerates to the political establishment and the economic and political power-elites of the United States.
These five conglomerates are Time Warner, Disney, Murdochs’ News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS). Their control spans most of the newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV stations, movie studios, and much of the web news content of the United States. These conglomerates are in large measure responsible for inculcating the social, political, economic, and moral values of both adults and children in the United States.
It was not always like this. Immediately after World War II three out of four US newspapers were independently owned. But the media-control numbers have been shrinking ever since then due to mergers, acquisitions, and other processes. By 1983, 50 corporations controlled 90 percent of US media. But today just five giant conglomerates control 90 percent of what most Americans read, watch, and listen to.
It is notable and should be emphasized that all the five major media conglomerates are corporate members of the Council on Foreign relations. This organization is a US think-tank whose members have been instrumental in formulating US government policies resulting in sanctions, destabilization efforts, and outright military attacks on nations which have never attacked the US.
The Council’s members’ activities helped to promote the Iraq war, the bombings of Serbia and Libya, and the recent overthrow of the elected government of the Ukraine. The promotion of these policies by the media conglomerates which belong to the Council has been key to preparing the American public to accept these policies.
The media conglomerates’ fellow members of the Council on Foreign relations include a large number of large corporations, powerful CEO’s, and present and former government officials. One prominent member is former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose doctrine calling for US control of the Eurasian landmass, which includes Russia and China, is one of the guiding elements in US foreign policy.

Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP

It should also be noted that the conglomerates themselves are giant corporations. They are among the largest companies in the world. They contribute to both of America’s big parties, the Republicans and Democrats, while supporting their policies. US media companies have also received from the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations progressively greater media deregulation, which permitted ever greater media ownership concentration, culminating for the first time in allowing all the media in a community or city to be owned by one company.
Pages would be needed to list the thousands of information outlets now controlled by the five conglomerates. A few examples will have to suffice. News Corp owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Barrons weekly, the London times, far Eastern Economic review, the New York Post, and hundreds of other large and small city and community newspapers, magazines, and internet properties.
Time-warner owns Time Magazine, Fortune Magazine, People Magazine, Sports Illustrated, CNN news group, Turner networks and movies, Warner brothers films, DC Comics, Times online systems, and much more.
And Disney is not just about Mickey Mouse Cartoons these days, as it owns ABC Television, magazine publishing business, Disney Films, Lucas Films, and a huge number of other media and entertainment enterprises.
Following the Government Wherever it goes
Now let us perform a thought experiment to see how far the conglomerates can go to support government foreign policies. Imagine that US policy-makers decide a few years from now that the current US-supported and unelected Ukrainian ‘government’ no longer serves their interests.
They might then announce that this government is ‘undemocratic’, ‘is a human rights violator’ or that it is a ‘failed state’ and that ‘there must be ‘regime change’ to ‘protect the Ukrainian people.’
Following suit, the media conglomerates would then ‘sound the alarm.’ They would ‘discover’ the reality – which has existed all along – that “fascist or extreme-right forces are part of the coup-imposed Ukrainian ‘government,” that there is a “history of anti-Semitism,” “murders of ethnic-minorities,” and conclude that the US government is right and a humanitarian intervention to remove the government is required.
Is this scenario an impossible one? Not at all. It is precisely how the repressive and brutal government of Saddam Hussein, to cite just one example, was dealt with. For many years he was praised by US officials as a “stalwart ally” and sent billions of dollars’ worth of military aid – and the media conglomerates went along for the ride.

Reuters/Jonathan Alcorn

Then, in the twinkling of an eye he was converted by the US government – and by the media – into a“tyrant,” a “ruthless killer,” a possessor of “weapons of mass destruction” aimed at the US; and a man whose country must be invaded.
Or consider Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan. For years the US government supported them with weapons and training and portrayed them as ‘freedom fighters’ against their secular ‘socialist government’ and the ‘Russian occupation’. The media for the most part went along with this narrative.
But then, after 9/11, in the twinkling of an eye, the fundamentalists became (in the eyes of the government and the conglomerates) ‘medievalists,’ ‘oppressors of women,’ and harborers of ‘terrorism’ who must be eliminated via a US invasion.
Recently, the US government, unable after ten years of military occupation to eliminate the Taliban resistance, has again changed course, and is seeking negotiations with the Taliban to include them in the Afghani government. And again the five conglomerates have also changed course to follow the government.
The best advice for anyone seeking to understand current events is to look at the history and realities behind them, and to look at media not controlled by the five conglomerates. Media – including print, television, and internet – is available in multiple languages including English from Russia, China, India, Pakistan, South Africa, the Middle East, Brazil, and other countries. You can easily find this media by internet search. No doubt all media contains bias; but at least your mind will not be shaped solely by the US narrative.
Eric Sommer for RT

Spying is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, not Catch Terrorists .... The Big Secret Behind the Spying Program

the "spy~in" IS ALL about  the hidden/fraudulent /finance / breakaway ..civ.      , folks !!!

By Washington's Blog

Global Research, May 15, 2014

Washington's Blog

Region: USA

Theme: 9/11 & 'War on Terrorism', Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights

While many Americans understand why the NSA is conducting mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, some are still confused about what’s really going on.

In his new book, No Place to Hide, Glenn Greenwald writes:

The perception that invasive surveillance is confined only to a marginalised and deserving group of those “doing wrong” – the bad people – ensures that the majority acquiesces to the abuse of power or even cheers it on. But that view radically misunderstands what goals drive all institutions of authority. “Doing something wrong” in the eyes of such institutions encompasses far more than illegal acts, violent behaviour and terrorist plots. It typically extends to meaningful dissent and any genuine challenge. It is the nature of authority to equate dissent with wrongdoing, or at least with a threat.
The record is suffused with examples of groups and individuals being placed under government surveillance by virtue of their dissenting views and activism – Martin Luther King, the civil rights movement, anti-war activists, environmentalists. In the eyes of the government and J Edgar Hoover’s FBI, they were all “doing something wrong”: political activity that threatened the prevailing order.
The FBI’s domestic counterintelligence programme, Cointelpro, was first exposed by a group of anti-war activists who had become convinced that the anti-war movement had been infiltrated, placed under surveillance and targeted with all sorts of dirty tricks. Lacking documentary evidence to prove it and unsuccessful in convincing journalists to write about their suspicions, they broke into an FBI branch office in Pennsylvania in 1971 and carted off thousands of documents.
Files related to Cointelpro showed how the FBI had targeted political groups and individuals it deemed subversive and dangerous, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, black nationalist movements, socialist and communist organizations, anti-war protesters and various rightwing groups. The bureau had infiltrated them with agents who, among other things, attempted to manipulate members into agreeing to commit criminal acts so that the FBI could arrest and prosecute them.
Those revelations led to the creation of the Senate Church Committee, which concluded: “[Over the course of 15 years] the bureau conducted a sophisticated vigilate operation aimed squarely at preventing the exercise of first amendment rights of speech and association, on the theory that preventing the growth of dangerous groups and the propagation of dangerous ideas would protect the national security and deter violence.”
These incidents were not aberrations of the era. During the Bush years, for example, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed, as the group put it in 2006, “new details of Pentagon surveillance of Americans opposed to the Iraq war, including Quakers and student groups“. The Pentagon was “keeping tabs on non-violent protesters by collecting information and storing it in a military anti-terrorism database”. The evidence shows that assurances that surveillance is only targeted at those who “have done something wrong” should provide little comfort, since a state will reflexively view any challenge to its power as wrongdoing.
The opportunity those in power have to characterise political opponents as “national security threats” or even “terrorists” has repeatedly proven irresistible. In the past decade, the government, in an echo of Hoover’s FBI, has formally so designatedenvironmental activists, broad swaths of anti-government rightwing groups, anti-war activists, and associations organised around Palestinian rights. Some individuals within those broad categories may deserve the designation, but undoubtedly most do not, guilty only of holding opposing political views. Yet such groups are routinely targeted for surveillance by the NSA and its partners.
One document from the Snowden files, dated 3 October 2012, chillingly underscores the point. It revealed that the agency has been monitoring the online activities of individuals it believes express “radical” ideas and who have a “radicalising” influence on others.
***
The NSA explicitly states that none of the targeted individuals is a member of a terrorist organisation or involved in any terror plots. Instead, their crime is the views they express, which are deemed “radical“, a term that warrants pervasive surveillance and destructive campaigns to “exploit vulnerabilities”.
Among the information collected about the individuals, at least one of whom is a “US person”, are details of their online sex activities and “online promiscuity” – the porn sites they visit and surreptitious sex chats with women who are not their wives. The agency discusses ways to exploit this information to destroy their reputations and credibility.
The NSA’s treatment of Anonymous, as well as the vague category of people known as “hacktivists”, is especially troubling and extreme. That’s because Anonymous is not actually a structured group but a loosely organised affiliation of people around an idea: someone becomes affiliated with Anonymous by virtue of the positions they hold. Worse still, the category “hacktivists” has no fixed meaning: it can mean the use of programming skills to undermine the security and functioning of the internetbut can also refer to anyone who uses online tools to promote political ideals. That the NSA targets such broad categories of people is tantamount to allowing it to spy on anyone anywhere, including in the US, whose ideas the government finds threatening.

Greenwald told Democracy Now yesterday:

People are aware of J. Edgar Hoover’s abuses. The nature of that series of events is that the United States government looks at people who oppose what they do as being, quote-unquote, “threats.” That’s the nature of power, is to regard anybody who’s a threat to your power as a broad national security threat.

***

There has already been reporting that shows that—the document, for example, in the book that shows the NSA plotting about how to use information that it collected against people it considers, quote, “radicalizers.” These are people the NSA itself says are not terrorists, do not belong to terrorist organizations, do not plan terrorist attacks. They simply express ideas the NSA considers radical. The NSA has collected their online sexual activity, chats of a sexual nature that they’ve had, pornographic websites that they visit, and plans, in the document, on how to use this information publicly to destroy the reputations or credibility of those people to render them ineffective as advocates. There are other documents showing the monitoring of who visits the WikiLeaks website and the collection of data that can identify who they are. There’s information about how to use deception to undermine people who are affiliated with the online activism group Anonymous.

Recent stories show that Greenwald is right:

• In 1972, the CIA Director Relabeled “Dissidents” As “Terrorists” So He Could Continue Spying On Them … And Nothing Has Changed

• 500 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is ALWAYS Aimed at Crushing Dissent

• “These Programs Were Never About Terrorism: They’re About Economic Spying, Social Control, and Diplomatic Manipulation. They’re About Power”

And it’s not just spying …
The government may treat anyone who challenges its policies as terrorists.  For example:

• The former head of the NSA and CIA compared privacy advocates to terrorists

• Peaceful protest may be treated as terrorism by the FBI

• Questioning war may be considered terrorism

The indefinite detention law may be used against American dissenters. Specifically, the trial judge in the lawsuit challenging the law had asked the government attorneys 5 times whether journalists like Pulitzer prize-winning reporter Chris Hedges could be indefinitely detained simply for interviewing and then writing about bad guys. The government refused to promise that journalists like Hedges won’t be thrown in a dungeon for the rest of their lives without any right to talk to a judge.
Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead writes:

No matter what the Obama administration may say to the contrary, actions speak louder than words, and history shows that the U.S. government is not averse to locking up its own citizens for its own purposes. What the NDAA does is open the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists, that technically applies to anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government.

Daniel Ellsberg notes that Obama’s claim of power to indefinitely detain people without charges or access to a lawyer or the courts is a power that even King George – the guy we fought the Revolutionary War against – didn’t claim.  (And former judge and adjunct professor of constitutional law Andrew Napolitano points out that Obama’s claim that he can indefinitely detain prisoners even after they are acquitted of their crimes is a power that even Hitler and Stalin didn’t claim.)
And the former top NSA official who created NSA’s mass surveillance system says, “We are now in a police state“.

Now, scientists building 'space ark' to save humanity

PTI | London | Updated: Apr 28 2014, http://www.financialexpress.com/news/now-scientists-building-space-ark-to-save-humanity/1244831

Armstrong's research focuses on bio-engineering, developing artificial soil and droplets of water that can be programmed to carry key elements. Reuters

SummaryThe spaceship would incorporate into its structure organic matter such as algae and artificial soil.

Scientists are developing an interstellar Noah's Ark - a self-sustaining spaceship that can carry humans on a one-way mission to find a new world to inhabit in the event of a global catastrophe.
Researchers around the UK are working with colleagues from the US, Italy and the Netherlands on Project Persephone, investigating new bio-technologies that could one day help to create a self-sustaining spacecraft to carry people beyond our solar system.
The spaceship would incorporate into its structure organic matter such as algae and artificial soil, using the Sun's energy to produce biofuel and a sustainable source of food, 'The Times' reported.
It would need to keep a few thousand people alive for generations on a one-way mission to find a new world to inhabit, researchers said.
According to the project website, scientists are "considering the application of living technologies such as protocells, programmable smart chemistry, in the context of habitable starship architecture that can respond and evolve according to the needs of its inhabitants."
Rachel Armstrong, a senior architecture and design lecturer at the University of Greenwich, is leading the project, which includes 13 designers, six of whom are based in the UK.
Armstrong's research focuses on bio-engineering, developing artificial soil and droplets of water that can be programmed to carry key elements.
"If the Earth ends up a no-go zone for human beings due to climate change or nuclear or biological warfare, we have to preserve human civilisation. We need nature to survive, so how do we take nature with us?" said Steve Fuller, the team's sociologist, based at the University of Warwick.
Researchers hope the project's principal use will be to teach us more about building sustainable cities on Earth. PTI RCL AKJ RCL 04281515