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"Better 'No Deal' Than 'Bad Deal'": Walking Out Of Hanoi Summit Earns Trump Bipartisan Praise

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Though Kim Jong Un has a long train ride back to Pyongyang to ponder how the collapse of Thursday's talks in Hanoi might impact his relationship with Trump, senior officials in his government are already signaling that the detente between the two geopolitical rivals might be over, having deliberately undermined President Trump by contradicting his version events during a midnight press conference - even going so far as to suggest that Kim has "lost the will" to continue negotiating (since North Korea's "reasonable" position "will never change" - something that US intel analysts have been saying for months).
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Trump Talks Peace With Taliban - Will Neocons Go Nuts?

While all eyes are on the Trump/Kim talks in Hanoi, the US Administration is continuing peace talks with Afghanistan's Taliban in Qatar. Will the US withdraw all troops from Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban promises to keep fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda? Tune in to today's Liberty Report...
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The Age of Tyrannical Surveillance: We’re Being Branded, Bought and Sold for Our Data

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Uncle Sam wants you.

Correction: Big Brother wants you.

To be technically accurate, Big Brother—aided and abetted by his corporate partners in crime—wants your data.

That’s what we have been reduced to in the eyes of the government and Corporate America: data bits and economic units to be bought, bartered and sold to the highest bidder.

Those highest bidders include America’s political class and the politicians aspiring to get elected or re-elected. As the Los Angeles Times reports, “If you have been to a political rally, a town hall, or just fit a demographic a campaign is after, chances are good your movements are being tracked with unnerving accuracy by data vendors on the payroll of campaigns.”

Your phones, televisions and digital devices are selling you out to politicians who want your vote.

Have you shopped at Whole Foods? Tested out target practice at a gun range? Sipped coffee at Starbucks while surfing the web? Visited an abortion clinic? Watched FOX News or MSNBC? Played Candy Crush on your phone? Walked through a mall? Walked past a government building?
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US/North Korea Summit: Will Trump Win Nobel Peace Prize?

Tomorrow President Trump will meet for the second time with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. They meet in Hanoi, Vietnam, where some 50 years ago a bitter and futile war was fought. While Trump's enemies in the US are creating unrealistic expectations in hopes of making Trump look bad if he does not achieve a full surrender of North Korean nuclear capabilities, what would a successful summit look like to reasonable people? Can Trump pull it off? Tune in to today's Liberty Report...
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Attacking Iran: Fake news about a terrorist connection could serve as a pretext for war

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Observers of developments in the Middle East have long taken it as a given that the United States and Israel are seeking for an excuse to attack Iran. The recently terminated conference in Warsaw had that objective, which was clearly expressed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it failed to rally European and Middle Eastern states to support the cause. On the contrary, there was strong sentiment coming from Europe in particular that normalizing relations with Iran within the context of the 2015 multi party nuclear agreement is the preferred way to go both to avoid a major war and to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation.

There are foundations in Washington, all closely linked to Israel and its lobby in the US, that are wholly dedicated to making the case for war against Iran. They seek pretexts in various dark corners, including claims that Iran is cheating on its nuclear program, that it is developing ballistic missiles that will enable it to deliver its secret nuclear warheads onto targets in Europe and even the United States, that it is an oppressive, dictatorial government that must be subjected to regime change to liberate the Iranian people and give them democracy, and, most stridently, that is provoking and supporting wars and threats against US allies all throughout the Middle East.

Dissecting the claims about Iran, one might reasonably counter that rigorous inspections by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirm that Tehran has no nuclear weapons program, a view that is supported by the US intelligence community in its recent Worldwide Threat Assessment. Beyond that, Iran’s limited missile program can be regarded as largely defensive given the constant threats from Israel and the US and one might well accept that the removal of the Iranian government is a task best suited for the Iranian people, not delivered through military intervention by a foreign power that has been starving the country through economic warfare. And as for provoking wars in the Middle East, look to the United States and Israel, not Iran.
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The Second Battle of Cucuta

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On Sunday morn, February 28 1813, General Ramon Correa, commander of 800 Spanish Royalist troops, sat upon his favourite Cucuta pew. While Correa communed with the Almighty, Simon Bolivar marched 400 men to hilltops overlooking Cucuta. Futile attempts to dislodge Bolivar left Correa’s men disorganised and demoralised; and left Correa sporting a head-wound. In the afternoon Bolivar, espying gaps in Cucuta’s defences and in his own ammunition stores, led a bayonet charge at the town.
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Pence, Guaidó Fail to Secure Lima Group Approval for US Military Intervention in Venezuela

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CARACAS, VENEZUELA – On Sunday, the US-backed and self-declared “interim president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, announced that he would meet with the Lima Group on Monday to “formally propose” keeping “all options open” for the “liberation” of Venezuela. The Lima Group, composed of the US and its allies and client states in the Americas, have all recognized Guaidó as the “legitimate” leader of Venezuela.

The likelihood that Guaidó would use this meeting to request US-backed military intervention in Venezuela, a long-time aspiration of the Trump administration, increased substantially after the vice president of the Venezuelan government led by Nicolás Maduro, Delcy Rodríguez, announced that the government had credible information that Monday’s Lima Group meeting would approve “an international coalition” to invade Venezuela in order to topple Maduro and his Chavista government. The Lima Group meeting is also likely to result in the imposition of new sanctions targeting Venezuela, according to recent statements made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Some members of the Lima Group, however, have already announced that they are unwilling to endorse a military response to the Venezuelan crisis. On Monday, Peru’s Vice Foreign Minister Hugo de Zela Martínez stated at the beginning of the Lima Group conference that “the use of force, in any of its forms, is unacceptable” and that “the use of force is not a solution for what’s happening in Venezuela.”
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Venezuela False Flag: Who Burned The Aid Truck?

The weekend stand-off between the US aid trucks on the Colombian side of the border and the Venezuelan government did not go quite as planned by the US. The aid did not get through, the military did not defect, and US-selected "president" Guaido was nowhere to be seen. But the aid trucks did catch fire in Colombia and Washington is blaming Maduro. Do they have any evidence? Or is this a false flag?
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Bolton’s Long Game Against Iran – Pakistan Becomes Saudi Arabia’s New Client State

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The Wall Street Journal has an article whose very title – Ambitions for an “Arab NATO” Fade, Amid Discord – more or less, says it all. No surprise there at all. Even Antony Zinni, the retired Marine General who was to spearhead the project (but who has now resigned), said it was clear from early on that the idea of creating an “Arab NATO” was too ambitious. “There was no way that anybody was ready to jump into a NATO-type alliance,” he said. “One of the things I tried to do was kill that idea of a Gulf NATO or a Middle East NATO.” Instead, the planning has focused on “more realistic expectations,” the WSJ article concludes.

Apparently, “not all Middle Eastern nations working on the proposal, want to make Iran a central focus – a concern that has forced the US to frame the alliance as a broader coalition,” the WSJ recounts. No surprise there either: Gulf preoccupations have turned to a more direct anxiety – which is that Turkey intends to unloose (in association with Qatar) the Muslim Brotherhood – whose leadership is already gathering in Istanbul – against Turkey’s nemesis: Mohammad bin Zaid and the UAE (whom Turkish leadership believes, together with MbS, inspired the recent moves to surround the southern borders of Turkey with a cordon of hostile Kurdish statelets).

Even the Gulf leaders understand that if they want to “roll-back” Turkish influence in the Levant, they cannot be explicitly anti-Iranian. It just not viable in the Levant.

So, Iran then is off the hook? Well, no. Absolutely not. MESA (Middle East Security Alliance) maybe the new bland vehicle for a seemingly gentler Arab NATO, but its covert sub-layer is, under Mr Bolton’s guidance, as fixated on Iran, as was “Arab NATO” at the outset. How would it be otherwise (given Team Trump’s obsession with Iran)?
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