De-Dollarization Accelerates: Iran Unveils Gold-Backed Cryptocurrency

Image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

 

Four banks in the Islamic Republic of Iran have developed a gold-backedcryptocurrency called PayMon, financial news website Financial Tribune reported on Jan. 30.

According to the article, the crypto asset has been developed in cooperation with the Parsian Bank, the Bank Pasargad, Bank Melli Iran and Bank Mellat. Iran Fara Bourse, an over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency exchange, will reportedly list the new cryptocurrency.

Italy and Poland in talks on anti-EU league

Polish ruling party chief Jaroslaw Kaczynski seldom meets foreign visitors (Photo: pis.org)

 

Poland and Italy’s right-wing rulers are to cement their “special relations” at a meeting in Warsaw, in what could make a new anti-EU league a major force in the next European Parliament (EP).

The meeting, between Polish ruling party chief, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Italian interior minister and deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini, on Wednesday (9 January) is to discuss Poland’s membership in Salvini’s new EP group, according to Italian daily La Repubblica.

The Prophesied Holy Roman Empire Has Arrived

 

Prominent European leaders are pushing for a revival of the spirit of Charlemagne.

In a November 17 interview with the Austrian daily newspaper Kurier, former German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg made a statement that ought to shock the world. He said that European heads of government should take a close look at, or follow the example of, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

Kurz has proudly declared that his religion guides his politics. Which religion is that? The same one that has powered the Holy Roman Empire in the spirit of Charlemagne for centuries! We are witnessing the seventh and final incarnation of this bloody empire. God’s Church has warned about this for over 80 years!

How a World Order Ends

 

And What Comes in Its Wake

A stable world order is a rare thing. When one does arise, it tends to come after a great convulsion that creates both the conditions and the desire for something new. It requires a stable distribution of power and broad acceptance of the rules that govern the conduct of international relations. It also needs skillful statecraft, since an order is made, not born. And no matter how ripe the starting conditions or strong the initial desire, maintaining it demands creative diplomacy, functioning institutions, and effective action to adjust it when circumstances change and buttress it when challenges come.

Infectious diseases are coming back: Half a century of vaccinations gone wasted

Wikimedia

 

In terms of the number of people vaccinated against measles, Europeans are already below the safety limit.

WHO requires the vaccination of at least 95 per cent of the young children population for community resistance to be preserved, offering protection also to people without resistance to a given disease. These are primarily people who have not been vaccinated because of medical contraindications. Only in five countries of the European Union is over 95 per cent of the population vaccinated with two doses. Thus, in Poland for example, where vaccination against measles is mandatory, there were 34,000 refusals to vaccinate in the first half of this year, that is more than in the whole of the previous year. There have been almost 140,000 instances where Polish parents refused to vaccinate their child over the past eight years.

Russian South Stream 2.0 Comes Out of the Shadows

Source: Kommersant

 

Russia and Turkey have announced that the two countries have reached significant progress in reviving the November 2014-shut down South Stream gas pipeline intended to land Russian gas across the Black Sea. The project is the part of the already secured open tender contracts for purchases of gas signed between Gazprom, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia and Austria.

The new Black Sea gas pipeline Turkish Stream will run under sea from Krasnodar to a landing hubv just west of Istanbul. On November 19, presidents Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Istanbul to announce the completion of pipeline’s off-shore section.

Italy Declares War on Merkel and the EU

 

If there were ever any doubts that the leaders of the Euroskeptic coalition that now runs Italy has a plan to defy the European Union its proposed budget should quell them. Both Deputy Prime Ministers, Luigi Di Maio of Five Star Movement and Matteo Salvini of The League, were adamant about locking horns with European Union leadership over all issues of sovereignty between now and May’s European Parliamentary elections.

Their budget proposal which included both tax cuts and universal income blew past the EU budget limit of 2.0% of GDP, coming in at 2.4%. It has put their Finance Minister, Giovanni Tria, in a difficult position because Tria doesn’t want to negotiate this budget with Brussels, preferring a less confrontational, read more pro-EU, approach.

Merkel Is Meddling In Macedonia’s Referendum

German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived to Macedonia on Sept. 8, 2018, three weeks before the referendum for Macedonia’s deal with neighboring Greece to change the country’s name to “North Macedonia” that would facilitate country’s EU and NATO accession.

 

She followed in the footsteps of her Austrian counterpart and the NATO Secretary General who also came to the country to show their support for its government’s proposal to rename it “North Macedonia”. This so-called “compromise name” was agreed to with Greece earlier this summer and would subsequently allow the country to be fast-tracked into the EU and NATO after Athens drops its objections to its membership that were previously made on the supposed basis that Macedonia’s constitutional name implies territorial claims against it.

In Sweden, Europe’s Drift To The Right Continues

 

“Populism” seemed to have suffered a premature death a year ago. Emmanuel Macron had beaten Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections, Dutch right-winger Geert Wilders had underperformed massively, and the EU had found — or at least thought to have found — new popularity all around Europe. After a turbulent 2016, in which the UK voted to exit the EU, and which saw Donald Trump become US president, everything seemed well again.

Ever since, however, the tide has turned again, and Europe’s drift to the right, coupled with the ongoing demise of center-left parties, has continued. Highlights of the past year included a strong performance by the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany (they are polling second behind Angela Merkel’s CDU right now), a right-wing coalition government in Austria, and the Italian election in March, which saw two “populist” movements come to power together (and since then causing havoc on the European level).

When the US Invaded Russia

 

Amid the bi-partisan mania over the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki, fevered, anti-Russian rhetoric in the United States makes conceivable what until recently seemed inconcievable: that dangerous tensions between Russia and the U.S. could lead to military conflict. It has happened before.

In September 1959, during a brief thaw in the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev made his famous visit to the United States. In Los Angeles, the Soviet leader was invited to a luncheon at Twentieth Century-Fox Studios in Hollywood and during a long and rambling exchange he had this to say:

“Your armed intervention in Russia was the most unpleasant thing that ever occurred in the relations between our two countries, for we had never waged war against America until then; our troops have never set foot on American soil, while your troops have set foot on Soviet soil.”

These remarks by Khrushchev were little noted in the U.S. press at the time – especially compared to his widely-reported complaint about not being allowed to visit Disneyland.  But even if Americans read about Khrushchev’s comments it is likely that few of them would have had any idea what the Soviet Premier was talking about.

Geopolitical crisis : A moribund NATO

 

As we have explained on other occasions, NATO is still there, of course, but only because there are no better options at hand. Everyone wants to be rid of it – the Europeans who want a common European defence[1] and Donald Trump who wants Europeans to participate more in their own defence. They are all contributing to a slow process in which NATO continues to get in the way whilst Europeans dither between several strategies:

• To increase their share[2] and thus acquire an equal say with that of the US within NATO (with the long-term aim of separating off to form a European NATO[3]). Problem: For this strategy to have a chance of success, much greater cohesion is needed in the European camp – something that is still a long way off at the moment.

U.S. government plutonium stolen out of truck never recovered: Report

How is it that radioactive weapons grade plutonium went missing from a government truck at such an opportune time?

SAN ANTONIO, Tex. (INTELLIHUB) — It’s not the first time that U.S. plutonium has gone missing but more than a year later the radioactive material which can be used to make a dirty bomb has not been recovered, according to a new report.

Coalition of Those Willing to Go to War

PARIS/BERLIN (Own report) – Germany is participating in a new European military formation that was launched yesterday. Originally a French proposal, the European Intervention Initiative (EII) will be open to EU and Non-EU member countries to join. Expanding the existing EU military cooperation (“PESCO”) with a new operational component, the EII should facilitate rapid decisions on joint military interventions. A first meeting of military commanders from the hitherto nine participant states is set for September. The EII includes Great Britain, which plans to continue its military cooperation with the continent, even after Brexit, as well as Denmark. Since the coordination of military interventions is now officially set outside of the EU framework, Denmark can sidestep the opt-out from EU military policy, it had once granted its population. Referred to by experts as a European “coalition of the willing,” it goes hand in hand with the EU Commission’s militarization plans worth billions and the high-cost German-French arms projects.

Your Friend and Neighbor

 

VIENNA/BERLIN (Own report) – The United Nations is protesting against the surveillance of its Vienna-based institutions conducted for years by the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND). The Vienna International Center (“UNO City”) “expects” that member states “respect the organization’s independence as well as the inviolability of its premises.” According to recent reports, from 1999 to 2006, the BND had monitored at least 2000 communication lines in Austria including those of the Vienna Chancellery and 128 telecommunication lines of the United Nations. The BND’s espionage in Austria has been known since 2015, but never clarified, because the competent German authorities, including the German Chancellery, refused to render Vienna the necessary assistance. The BND is accused of repeatedly refusing to tell the intelligence service monitors their reasons for spying, for example, on a “public body” of an EU member state. At the time of the large-scale spying in Austria, the current German President bore the highest responsibility for BND activities.

Austria plans to set up migrant centres outside the EU

(Shutterstock)

 

Austria is working with like-minded EU countries to set up migrant reception centres outside of the bloc, saying that shelters should provide protection and not a better life in Europe.

Speaking to public broadcaster ORF, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said: “efforts are underway to create protection centers outside of Europe where we can accommodate refugees, offer protection but not a better life in Central Europe.”