"Our Views Coincide" - Putin Talks Up Russia's Alliance With China

In what should come as a surprise to nobody, as the United States continues to poke and prod at China and Russia, those two countries have become even closer friends.

In an interview conducted with Xinhua, Russian President Vladimir Putin talked up his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and praised the level of trust the two governments have for one another. "To say we have a strategic cooperation is not enough anymore. This is why we have started talking about a comprehensive partnership and strategic collaboration. Comprehensive means that we work virtually on all major avenues; strategic means that we attach enormous inter-government importance to this work" Putin told Xinhua.

Putin spoke of the important role that China has played in its trade, specifically the energy market and high-speed rail projects. Recall that in April we reported that China imported a record amount of Russian oil in April, as the two nations continue to push for the de-dollarization of global trade. Putin also pointed out that Russia and China were cooperating on military-technical items as well.

As RT reports

China is increasing its presence in our energy market, it is a major shareholder in one of our significant projects, Yamal LNG, and it has acquired 10 percent of the shares in one of our leading chemical holdings, SIBUR. We welcome these Chinese investments not only as a means of placing financial resources but also as a means of further developing our partnership.

Intensive work is underway on the famous Moscow-Kazan High-Speed Rail Line Project. Some railway sections will allow for a train speed of up to 400 kilometers per hour. We pay considerable attention to these prospects; this can be only the beginning of our large-scale infrastructure cooperation.

Our interaction in the humanitarian field is no less important. Thus, we have held cross?years of China in Russia and Russia in China, the Year of Youth Exchange, the Year of the Russian Language and, accordingly, the Year of the Chinese Language, the Year of Tourist Exchange, etc. Some events were initiated by the Russian side, and others – by the Chinese side; but they all have been very successful and will undoubtedly contribute to building an atmosphere of confidence between our peoples. These projects are as important as, for example, those in the energy sphere, such as the huge Power of Siberia project to supply up to 38 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per annum via a newly established eastern route from Russia to China. Add to this diplomatic, military, and military-technical cooperation.

In regards to collaborating on international affairs, Putin said that China and Russia's views are quite similar, and that the two consult each other on global and regional issues.

Apart from our joint work in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, we cooperate within BRICS, which in fact was jointly established by us, and we actively collaborate at the UN.

I would take the liberty to recall that it was this country, the Soviet Union at that time, which made every effort to give the People's Republic of China its deserved place among the permanent members of the Security Council. We have always believed that this is the place for the People's Republic of China. Today, we are particularly pleased that this has happened, since our views on international affairs, as diplomats say, are either very similar or coincide. At the same time, this similarity or coincidence is backed by concrete work, including efforts on the technical level. We are in constant contact and we consult on global and regional issues. Since we consider each other close allies, naturally, we always listen to our partners and take into account each other’s interests.

I am certain that our joint work during my visit to the People's Republic of China will proceed in the same way.

* * *

So, while the US provokes, ties are strengthening between Russia and China. We're sure China's order of 1,000 heavy transport aircraft and Russian vessels being spotted near disputed islands in the East China Sea are both just a coincidence and not a red flag that if the US engages with one, it will wind up with two problems.

Credit to Zero Hedge

"Now It's Our Turn" - Geert Wilders Calls For A Dutch Referendum

Just as we warned, the historic British rejection of the EU's totalitarian rule has sparked renewed ambitions to leave the clutches of Brussels across Europe. First to congratulate Britain was Holland's Geert Wilders, who calls for a Dutch referendum as soon as possible...

Thursday, June 23, 2016, will go down in history as Britain’s Independence Day.

The Europhile elite has been defeated. Britain points Europe the way to the future and to liberation. It is time for a new start, relying on our own strength and sovereignty. Also in the Netherlands.

A recent survey (EenVandaag, Dutch television) shows that a majority of the Dutch want a referendum on EU membership.It also shows that more Dutch are in favour of exit than of remaining in the EU.

The Dutch people deserve a referendum as well. The Party for Freedom consequently demands a referendum on NExit, a Dutch EU exit.

As quickly as possible the Dutch need to get the opportunity to have their say about Dutch membership of the European Union.

Geert Wilders: “We want be in charge of our own country, our own money, our own borders, and our own immigration policy. If I become prime minister, there will be a referendum in the Netherlands on leaving the European Union as well. Let the Dutch people decide.”

Credit to Zero Hedge

"Victory For Freedom" - Le Pen Demands Referendum For France

First, The Dutch; and now, The French...

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen says there should be a similar referendum about EU membership in France after Britons voted to leave the 28-nation bloc.

• France

Credit to Zero Hedge

Heroin use at 20-year high in U.S. drug 'epidemic', U.N. says

A heroin "epidemic" is gripping the United States, where cheap supply has helped push the number of users to a 20-year high, increasing drug-related deaths, the United Nations said on Thursday.

According to the U.N.'s World Drug Report 2016, the number of heroin users in the United States reached around one million in 2014, almost three times as many as in 2003. Heroin-related deaths there have increased five-fold since 2000.

"There is really a huge epidemic (of) heroin in the U.S.," said Angela Me, the chief researcher for the report which was released on Thursday.

"It is the highest definitely in the last 20 years," Me said, adding that the trend was continuing.

The rise could be linked to U.S. legislation introduced in recent years which makes it harder to abuse prescription opioids such as oxicodone, a powerful painkiller that can have similar effects to heroin, Me said.

The law meant the texture of the pills was changed to make it more difficult to crush them and inject them into the blood stream, Me said.

"This has caused a partial shift from the misuse of these prescription opioids to heroin." 

Another reason for the increase in the use of heroin, which in the United States mainly comes from Mexico and Colombia, is greater supply that has depressed prices in recent years, Me said.

The United States has also seen a spike in deaths related to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more so than morphine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fentanyl has been named as the drug that killed pop singer Prince this year.

At least 207,000 deaths globally were drug-related in 2014, with heroin use and overdose-related deaths increasing sharply also over the last two years, according to the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

"Heroin continues to be the drug that kills the most people and this resurgence must be addressed urgently," Yury Fedotov, the executive director of the UNODC, said.

Credit to Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-drugs-usa-heroin-idUSKCN0Z90UX

Who's next to leave the EU now Britain has quit crumbling bloc?

-MAPPED: How Brexit would send shockwaves across Europe

The levels of Euroscpeticism vary in different countries across Europe, according to data from American think tank Pew Research Center.

The Poles and the Hungarians are among the EU’s strongest backers, while there is only tepid public support for the EU in many other nations. 

The Greeks, French and British people had the most unfavourable views of the 28-member bloc overall, Pew Research Center found.

This map looks at what would happen in different European countries now Britain has voted to quit the EU in the referendum.

EXPRESSBrexit aftermath: This map looks at the levels of anti-EU feeling across Europe

BRITAIN: Brexit campaigners across the UK are celebrating their historic victory and David Cameron has resigned as Prime Minister.

The UK is now set to notify the EU that it wants to go by invoking Article 50 - the legal mechanism to leave the EU.

This move would start the timer on the two-year process of Britain’s political divorce from the bloc.

Mr Cameron said the next prime minister - expected to take office by October - should decide when to invoke Article 50.

BRUSSELS: EU leaders have immediately been forced into damage control and have issued responses in a bid to defend the integrity of the European bloc.

Before the referendum, European Council boss Donald Tusk has said that Europe’s “external enemies will open a bottle of champagne” to celebrate Brexit, adding: “We should do everything to spoil that party.”



SCOTLAND: Brexit has sparked renewed calls for another referendum on Scottish independence from the UK.

SNP MP Alex Salmond previously said: “Should Brexit succeed, Cameron would embark on a two-year negotiated exit, creating a time frame for a new referendum on Scottish independence.”

IRELAND: Ireland is the country which has the most to lose now Britain has voted to leave the EU, according to Standard and Poor’s rating agency.

MEDITERRANEAN: Brexit will fuel Euroscepticism before Spain’s election this Sunday and France’s presidential election in 2017.

It could also lead to a push for Grexit, a potential Greek exit, while Italian public opinion would move in a more Eurosceptic direction.

CENTRAL EUROPE: In Germany, Brexit would stir up anti-EU feeling ahead of federal elections in 2017 as the country struggles with immigration issues.

Over in the Netherlands, Eurosceptic politicians would also seek to ride on momentum from Brexit ahead of the next Dutch election.


ExpressThis table shows the results of the survey by Pew Research Center

NORTHERN EUROPE: The Nordic EU members Denmark, Sweden and Finland will lose Britain as their pro-free trade ally in the EU.

Credit to express.co.uk

http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/680957/Brexit-map-what-happens-Europe-if-Britain-leaves-EU-referendum-2016-impact-on-EU-countries

SCIENTOLOGY CULT OPENS MASSIVE NEW MEDIA STUDIO TO ‘REACH EVERY PERSON ON EARTH’

HOLLYWOOD MAY NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN NOW THAT THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY HAS OPENED ITS NEW MOVIE STUDIOS, WHICH THEY CLAIM HAS BIGGER AND BETTER FACILITIES THAN PARAMOUNT.

In the promotional video, the narrator tells you that Scientology wants to partner with ‘every religion in the world’ to create a new global dynamic. From the looks of their new, amazingly massive facilities, they are poised to inflict some heavy spiritual damage. If you were wondering what the broadcast control room for the Antichrist will look like, this is pretty much it.

Leader David Miscavige announced to the world that this will be an ‘uncorrupted communications line to the billions’, as Scientology promises to reach ‘virtually every person on Earth’. The colossal studio complex on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles was finally unveiled after five years of renovations at a cost of at least $50 million on May 28.

The new studio will also be used to make polished propaganda movies to recruit more followers while it’s most famous recruit, Tom Cruise, is set to film his Hollywood blockbusters at the glittering base, which has bigger studios and sound stages than Paramount, the church claims.

Scientology has had a hand in a number of Cruise films in the past, and scenes from Days of Thunder and Far And Away were all filmed at their main HQ Gold Base in Hemet, 60 miles outside Los Angeles in the desert.

It gives Cruise, who is worth $450 million, and Scientology, which has $8 billion in reserves, the opportunity to heavily influence the movie world again, which they were doing back in the day where they influenced around top Hollywood executives to get what they wanted on films such as War of the Worlds, Days of Thunder and Battlefield Earth.
THE CHURCH HAS ALSO PROMISED ROLLING 24/7 SCIENTOLOGY ‘CNN NEWS’ FOR ITS FOLLOWERS IN THE STATE-OF-THE-ART STUDIOS.



Scientology celebrities including Nancy Cartwright – the voice of Bart Simpson – and billionaire Bob Duggan, heard Miscavige tell a crowd of 10,000 people – a claim disputed by critics who say the number was nearer 1,000 – that the religion was going to rewrite history.

YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE THE ILLUMINATI AND LUCIFERIAN IMAGERY IN THE SCIENTOLOGY LOGOS AND BRANDING


Credit to nowtheendbegins.com

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/scientology-cult-opens-massive-new-media-studio-reach-every-person-earth/

Russia to deploy NUCLEAR-capable ballistic missiles in the heart of EUROPE

RUSSIA plans to station advanced nuclear-capable missiles deep inside Europe - putting vast swathes of the continent in the crosshairs of Moscow's short-range ballistic missile program.

Kremlin insiders say the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad - on the Baltic Sea wedged between Poland and Lithuania - will host the Iskander missile - dubbed the Stone by Nato.

Crimea, which was annexed from the Ukraine in 2014, could also host a second Iskander missile base, Russian defence sources claim.

Russia has been accused of blatant acts of aggression in eastern Europe and the Baltics, with land grabs, military exercises and close fly-bys of its fighter jets.

The move is in defiance of a US-backed Nato missile shield that was erected in Romania last month, with a second planned for Poland in 2018.

With a range of roughly 300 miles, the Iskander missile could hit targets as far away as eastern Germany, the entire Baltic region and Poland, as well as parts of Sweden.

But experts say the targets it will cover can be struck by longer-range Russian missiles anyway.Relations between Russia and the West have plunged to their lowest point since the Cold War in recent months.

Both sides have ramped up their defence spending, missile programmes and defensive shields as Europe enters what many observers believe is a new Cold War.

However, Russian and Western experts say the US-backed shield in Romania may simply have given the Kremlin the political cover it needs to justify stationing nuclear-capable missiles in central Europe - something it was planning all along.

Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, said there was a "long history in Moscow of saying what they're doing is in response to what you guys did, even though they planned it in advance".

Moscow is thought likely to wait until the planned Polish missile defence site opens in two years time before it unveils a more serious response.

The Kremlin has often threatened to put nuclear-capable missiles in Kaliningrad as a riposte to the shield.

Mikhail Barabanov, a senior research fellow at the Moscow-based Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, which advises the Russian Defence Ministry, said it was now "inevitable" that the Kremlin would deploy the missiles there permanently by 2019.

The Iskander, a mobile ballistic missile system codenamed SS-26 Stone by north Atlantic military alliance which replaced the Soviet Scud missile and can carry conventional or nuclear warheads.

Iskander missiles have been deployed twice by Russia on exercises in Kaliningrad - but on both occasions they are believed to have been withdrawn.

Credit to express.co.uk

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/682701/Russia-station-Iskander-nuclear-missiles-Kaliningrad-Cold-War-tensions

Great Tribulation Robots… Flying Hunter-Killer Swarms… And Iron Men: Welcome To The END TIMES Arms Race

In his quest to transform the way the Pentagon wages war, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter has turned to Silicon Valley, hoping its experimental culture, innovation and sense of urgency would rub off on the rigid bureaucracy he runs. 

Carter has made several trips to the region and appointed Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company to an advisory board. 

And recently he sat down at the Pentagon with Elon Musk to see what suggestions the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX might have to make the nation’s military more efficient and daring. Musk’s answer?

“Having an incentive structure that rewards innovation is extremely important,” he said in an interview after the meeting. “It’s economics 101. Whatever you reward will happen.”

The Pentagon finds itself in a new arms race, struggling to keep pace with forms of combat that are fought with bytes as well as bullets.

The technological advancements disrupting established business sectors are now shaking up the world of war – where robots, swarming drones and weapons enhanced by artificial intelligence might one day rule the skies and seas. And just like in industry, the advantages may be fleeting.

The Pentagon is seeking "an enduring competitive edge that lasts a generation," said Loren Thompson, a defense consultant who serves at the Lexington Institute, a think tank based in Arlington. "But generations in technology these days are measured in months."

Harnessing the latest technology to upgrade the Defense Department's arsenal is a top priority for Carter, who recently said, "The race now depends on who can out-innovate faster than anyone else."

The effort has a renewed energy in the waning months of the Obama administration, which is trying to embed the effort into the bureaucracy – and budget. The Pentagon is turning to start-ups and steering billions of dollars to its own laboratories and project teams to develop prototypes for the kind of promising technologies it may need in the future.

It is testing autonomous ships that can remain at sea for months without a crew, an electromagnetic railgun that fires a projectile that can travel at seven times the speed of sound, and increasingly powerful laser weapons that sizzle their targets.

At a recent conference put on by Defense One, a website that provides news and analysis on defense and national security, highlighted an effort to produce "revolutionary textiles that combine fibers with electronics to create fabrics that can sense, communicate, store energy, monitor health, change color, and much more."

The Pentagon speaks of its "Third Offset Strategy," a way to offset shrinking budgets and transient technological superiority. The first offset was the use of nuclear deterrence to keep the Soviets at bay starting in the 1950s. The second was the advent of new precision munitions and stealth to overwhelm robust air and ground forces of adversaries.

The Pentagon hopes that this is the dawn of a third technological revolution, even if the conditions are markedly different. Instead of trying to offset the advantages of a single, traditional adversary, the Pentagon faces challenges on multiple fronts, including large, technologically advanced nations such as Russia and China, smaller, aspiring powers such as North Korea, and independent non-state actors such as the Islamic State.

As part of the earlier offset campaigns the Pentagon adopted military capabilities that emerged from its own labs. But big advances in robotics, biotechnology and computing are coming out of the commercial sector, much of which wants little to do with the Pentagon.


Credit to adn.com
http://www.adn.com/alaska-news/nation-world/2016/06/17/robots-swarming-drones-and-iron-man-welcome-to-the-new-arms-race/

Israel Unveil F-35 ‘Crown Jewel’: Next-Gen Stealth Fighter Jet

“If I say: ‘My foot slippeth’, Thy mercy, O LORD, holdeth me up.” Psalms 94:18 (The Israel Bible™)




F35I Fighter Jet, ‘Adir,’ Unrolled at Ft. Worth Ceremony in Dallas, Texas in Presence of Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, 22.6.16 (Photo: Israel Air Force/TPS)

The F-35 stealth fighter jet, known in Hebrew as the Adir (“mighty”), was rolled out Wednesday in a special ceremony in Forth Worth, Texas attended by officials from the Israel Air Force and Defense Minister, including freshly appointed Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, as well as Governor Greg Abbott of Texas and US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro.

As the next generation jet stood majestically on the stage, emblazoned with a Star of David, top Israeli pilots heaped praise on the Lockheed Martin plane scheduled to be delivered to Israel in December.

“It was like holding the future in my hands,” said Brig. Gen. Tal Kelman, IAF Chief of Air Staff. “The unique combination between split edge technology, lethality and amazing man-machine interface will lead the world to the fifth generation”.

“I don’t think that it is an exaggeration to say that the presence of the F-35 in the Middle East will change the dynamic of the region for the better,” Kelman added.

“The IDF’s military strength is Israel’s main pillar of defense. The F-35s will dramatically enhance the IDF’s military power,” said Liberman. “Israel is the first country outside the US to receive these operational, excellent airplanes. The F-35 technology represents the crown jewel of air-power superiority and will therefore be a great contribution to the IDF’s air force.”

Liberman also stress that diplomatic tensions between Israel and the US have not affected the security cooperation.

“It’s not a secret that we have from time to time some disagreements, some disputes, with the US on the political level regarding some solutions with our neighbors,” Liberman said. “But when it comes to Israel’s security, we really enjoy full understanding, fruitful cooperation and strong commitment to our security concerns and needs.”

The rollout ceremony also featured a performance Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza, who sang his trademark ballads of peace.

Going off script for a moment, Liberman joked to Broza: “I’m not so optimistic like you about the possibility of achieving peace with our neighbors in the near future, but despite my personal position please try to create more new songs.”

Following the rollout ceremony, Minister Liberman entered the aircraft and scribbled on the jet with a Sharpie: “The best aircraft for the best pilots.”

Credit to breakingisraelnews.com
Read more at http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/70383/us-israel-unveil-f-35-crown-jewel-next-gen-stealth-fighter-jet/#RTP7hbBBG5Rv6vHJ.99