TBR News July 8, 2018

Jul 08 2018

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Isaiah 40:3-8

Washington, D.C. July 8, 2018: “According to F.B.I statistics nearly 800,000 people are reported missing each year. Out of the 800,000 people reported missing, approximately 75% percent of missing person cases are resolved within 24 hours.

Most of these are runaways and victims of parental kidnapping.

650,000 are accounted for leaving a balance of 150,000 per annum unaccounted for.

The solved vanished include men wanting out of a bad marriage without the process of divorce, kids running away and making a go of it, women running off with other men and changing their names, disenfranchised people crossing the border and seeking a different life, criminals on the run, people checking out the ‘have another identity’ sites on the internet and using them to escape credit problems and bill collectors.

But it is interesting to note that those unaccounted for never surface again, anywhere.

No one knows why they vanished or what happened to them.

In a typical incident, a happily married young man drove to the local market, shopped for food, put the food into the trunk of his car and was never seen again.

His car was found but he never was.

He never contacted any relative or friend, no money ever was taken from his bank account and law enforcement could never find any motive for his vanishing without a trace.

In another case, a top CIA official walked down the driveway of his country home with his wife watching him and he suddenly vanished.

His footprints were seen in the freshly dampened dirt driveway and like him, they stopped suddenly and did not continue.

No one ever saw him again.

Where all of these vanished went, no one knows.

Perhaps boggers and their invented ‘scientists’ know but no one else does.

There are questions but no answers.”

 

The Table of Contents

  • Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List
  • We Need Nonstop Protests Against Trump—and Here Are 20 New Ways to Do It
  • Whose side is Trump’s America on? The answer is becoming more and more obvious
  • Donald Trump’s mental health is still a question
  • Trump administration halts billions in insurance payments under Obamacare
  • US TO SUPPORT NEW TEMPLE
  • Holocaust deniers bid for US Congress in at least two districts
  • White House preparing ‘Rapture’ Contingency Plans
  • The Diminishing Numbers of Purported Murdered Jews in Auschwitz Camp.
  • What will Trump and Putin agree on at the Helsinki summit?
  • Iran threatens to block Strait of Hormuz
  • Get ready for $250 oil if Iran blocks key shipment route in Middle East, analysts tell RT

Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List

January 15, 2018

by David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick

The New York Times

Donald Trump has been obsessed with race for the entire time he has been a public figure. He had a history of making racist comments as a New York real-estate developer in the 1970s and ‘80s. More recently, his political rise was built on promulgating the lie that the nation’s first black president was born in Kenya. He then launched his campaign with a speech describing Mexicans as rapists.

The media often falls back on euphemisms when describing Trump’s comments about race: racially loaded, racially charged, racially tinged, racially sensitive. And Trump himself has claimed that he is “the least racist person.” But here’s the truth: Donald Trump is a racist. He talks about and treats people differently based on their race. He has done so for years, and he is still doing so.

Here, we have attempted to compile a definitive list of his racist comments – or at least the publicly known ones.

The New York Years

Trump’s real-estate company tried to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans in the 1970s and gave preferential treatment to whites, according to the federal government.

Trump treated black employees at his casinos differently from whites, according to multiple sources. A former hotel executive said Trump criticized a black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks.

In 1989, Trump took out ads in New York newspapers urging the death penalty for five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park; he argued they were guilty as late as October 2016, more than 10 years after DNA evidence had exonerated them.

In 1989, on NBC, Trump said: “I think sometimes a black may think they don’t have an advantage or this and that. I’ve said on one occasion, even about myself, if I were starting off today, I would love to be a well-educated black, because I really believe they do have an actual advantage.”

An Obsession With Dark-Skinned Immigrants

He began his 2016 presidential campaign with a speech disparaging Mexican immigrants as criminals and “rapists.”

He uses the gang MS-13 to disparage all immigrants. Among many other statements, he has suggested that Obama’s protection of the Dreamers — otherwise law-abiding immigrants who were brought to the United States illegally as children — contributed to the spread of MS-13.

In December 2015, Trump called for a “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” including refusing to readmit Muslim-American citizens who were outside of the country at the time.

Trump said a federal judge hearing a case about Trump University was biased because of the judge’s Mexican heritage.

In June 2017, Trump said 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS” and that 40,000 Nigerians, once seeing the United States, would never “go back to their huts” in Africa.

At the White House on Jan. 11, Trump vulgarly called for less immigration from Haiti and Africa and more from Norway.

Obama As Unqualified, Lazy and Un-American

He spent years suggesting that the nation’s first black president was born not in the United States but in Kenya, a lie that Trump still has not acknowledged as such.

Trump called Obama (who was editor in chief of the Harvard Law Review) “a terrible student, terrible.”

Trump frequently claimed that Obama did not work hard as president.

Trump falsely claimed that President Obama “issued a statement for Kwanzaa but failed to issue one for Christmas.”

Urban America As a Hellscape

He often casts heavily black American cities as dystopian war zones. In a 2016 debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump said, “Our inner cities, African Americans, Hispanics are living in hell because it’s so dangerous. You walk down the street, you get shot.” Trump also said to black voters: “You’re living in poverty; your schools are no good; you have no jobs.”

He frequently offers false crime statistics to exaggerate urban crime, including about Oakland, Philadelphia and Ferguson, Mo.

He is quick to highlight crimes committed by dark-skinned people, sometimes exaggerating or lying about them (such as a claim about growing crime from “radical Islamic terror” in Britain). He is very slow to decry hate crimes committed by whites against dark-skinned people (such as the killing of an Indian man in Kansas last year).

Minorities As Uppity and Ungrateful

He frequently criticizes prominent African-Americans for being unpatriotic, ungrateful and disrespectful.

He called Puerto Ricans who criticized his administration’s response to Hurricane Maria “politically motivated ingrates.”

Friendliness with Proud Racists and White Nationalists

He has retweeted white nationalists without apology.

He called some of those who marched alongside white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., last August “very fine people.”

After David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed him, Trump was reluctant to disavow Duke even when asked directly on television.

Trump hired Steve Bannon as his campaign head and later White House chief strategist. Under Bannon’s leadership, the website Breitbart made white nationalism a central theme. It featured a section, for example, on “black crime.”

Trump endorsed and campaigned for Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate who spoke positively about slavery and who called for an African-American Muslim member of Congress not to be seated because of his religion.

Trump pardoned – and fulsomely praises – Joe Arpaio, the Arizona sheriff sanctioned for racially profiling Latinos and for keeping immigrants in brutal prison conditions.

Denigrating Native Americans

In the 1990s, Trump took out advertisements alleging that the “Mohawk Indian record of criminal activity is well documented.” At the time, he was fighting competition for his casino business.

In a 1993 radio interview, he suggested that Native Americans in Connecticut were faking their ancestry. “I think I might have more Indian blood than a lot of the so-called Indians that are trying to open up the reservations.”

In a November 2017 meeting with Navajo veterans of World War II, Trump mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.”

Other Assorted Racism

Trump has trafficked in anti-Semitic caricatures, including the tweeting of a six-pointed star alongside a pile of cash. He has also been reluctant to condemn anti-Semitic attacks on journalists from his supporters, and he echoed neo-Nazi conspiracy theories by saying that Hillary Clinton “meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.”

In a White House meeting with a Korean-American intelligence analyst briefing him on Pakistan, Trump wondered aloud why she was not working on North Korea policy.

Trump once referred to a Hispanic Miss Universe as “Miss Housekeeping.”

At a June 2016 campaign rally, Trump pointed to one attendee and said: “Oh, look at my African-American over here. Look at him.”

 

We Need Nonstop Protests Against Trump—and Here Are 20 New Ways to Do It

What Trump is doing to this country is unprecedented—and it demands full-time citizen action to show the world that we who dissent are the majority.

July 2, 2018

by Peter Dreier

The Daily Beast

One of Donald Trump’s major accomplishments has been to catalyze a widespread resistance movement to thwart his policy agenda and to challenge his efforts to dismantle the fundamental norms and institutions of American democracy.

Since Trump took office, America has seen an unparalleled level of protest, starting with the five million Americans who took to the streets in January 2017 under the banner of women’s rights. It was the largest protest in U.S. history.  Every Trump action – his anti-Muslim travel bans, his attacks on DACA, his efforts to dismantle environmental regulations and undermine scientific evidence, his nuclear saber-rattling against North Korea, and most recently his heartless effort to separate undocumented immigrants from their children – has been met with a grassroots reaction.

Trump’s dizzying display of megalomania, lies, bigotry, and cold-blooded cruelty on a daily and weekly basis has inspired millions of Americans – including many who were never before involved in political protest – to take to the streets, participate in phone banks and door-to-door canvassing, and make donations to activist organizations. This new wave of activism is not simply against Trump. It is also for a more humane, democratic, and inclusive country.

This unprecedented resistance to Trump has taken a number of forms. But because people express their concerns in different ways and oppose Trump for different reasons, we need to provide Americans with a large repertoire of activities to get involved in the resistance movement.

That includes daily peaceful nonviolent protests and rallies, boycotts, large scale marches and strategic acts of civil disobedience, as well as more conventional actions like voter registration and get-out-the-vote drives, public forums with elected officials, an outbreak of yard signs and bumper stickers, and petition drives.

The goal is make Americans who object to what Trump is doing to their country aware that they are part of the vast majority–to not only challenge his policy agenda but to make sure that we do not normalize the daily diet of lies and indecency.

Here is a menu of possible tactics to help sustain and escalate the resistance movement:

  1. A massive voter registration campaign in states with voter suppression laws, modeled on the civil rights movement’s Freedom Summer crusade in the 1960s. It can recruit volunteers from college campuses, religious congregations, and the burgeoning activist groups like Indivisible that have emerged since Trump took office.
  2. A nonpartisan voter registration campaign in every high school next fall, starting with Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and other schools victimized by gun violence. The goal: 100 percent registration of all eligible students. The Ford Foundation and other large foundations should agree to donate $50,000 to all high schools that have 100 percent registration and an extra $25,000 to high schools that reach that goal and have 50 percent or more low-income students (i.e. eligible for free-or-reduced lunch). Local colleges should agree to give scholarships to students who graduate from high schools with 100 percent voter registration AND 100 percent turnout in the November elections. This will get students and teachers mobilized and promote civic engagement and leadership.
  3. A coordinated week-long rent strike by tenants in all Trump apartment buildings. By withholding rent, they will be telling Trump, and America, that they want him evicted from the White House.
  4. Labor unions withdrawing their pension funds from every Trump family business, and universities doing likewise with their endowments.
  5. A consumer boycott of Trump-branded products as well as picket lines, in front of retailers – like Walmart, Macy’s, Bloomingdales, Zappos, Lord & Taylor, Hudson’s Bay, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Burlington Coat Factory, Ross, Marshalls, and TJ Maxx — that continue to sell Ivanka Trump’s lines of clothing, jewelry, and handbags.
  6. Public pressure on the PGA and international golfing groups to not sponsor or endorse tournaments at any Trump golf courses, including those in Los Angeles, Miami, Hudson Valley, Westchester County and Ferry Point, N.Y., Sterling, Va., Colts Neck and Bedminster, N.J., Jupiter, Palm Beach, and Miami (Florida), Charlotte, N.C., Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Aberdeen and Turnberry (Scotland), Lido City and Bali (Indonesia), and two in Dubai.
  7. A one-day student strike against Trump (and local targets) at 1,000 community colleges, state universities, and private colleges and universities.
  8. Fans at the first college and high school football games next fall all taking a knee during the National Anthem.
  9. Fifty major daily papers all publishing a front page list of Trump’s biggest lies and the harm he’s done to workers, children, immigrants, women, and others — all on the same day.
  10. Sit-ins and mass arrests at Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, the White House, and other Trump residences.
  11. Immigrant children marches in 300 cities on the same day including in front of White House.
  12. One thousand GOP office holders (local, state, federally) jointly announcing they won’t vote for Trump in 2020. This will be easier if the Democrats gain a majority in the House, hold hearings on his taxes, his business dealings, his ties to Russia, and his other misdeeds, which could lead to impeachment proceedings. A growing number of Republican politicians, especially those in Democratic and swing districts, will want to distance themselves from an increasingly unpopular president.
  13. Coordinated hunger strikes by clergy in 25 major cities.
  14. A joint statement by 100 CEOs of large U.S. and foreign companies and banks saying that Trump is bad for the global economy and human rights.
  15. A joint statement by 400 Nobel Prize winners from around the world denouncing Trump.
  16. A pledge by 1,000 attorneys, including some from the nation’s largest and most elite law firms, to provide legal representation to asylum seekers and to immigrant families not yet unified.
  17. Major businesses, trade associations, professional associations (such as the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Political Science Association), and major nonprofits (such as the United Way) announcing they are refusing to hold any meetings or conventions in Trump hotels or resorts. This would inspire millions of American and foreign tourists to join in the boycott of these Trump enterprises.
  18. Churches, synagogues, and mosques around the country offering to “adopt” and provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrants and their children.
  19. Expanding the Moral Monday movement – pioneered by North Carolina activist Rev. William Barber – to other states, by organizing weekly demonstrations at GOP-controlled State Houses and Governors mansions around poverty wages, women’s and LGBQ rights, voting rights, gun control, health care, and other issues.
  20. Sit-ins at the offices of and homes of every Republican senator, and several wavering Democrats, demanding a “no” vote on Trump’s Supreme Court nominee to replace retiring Justice Kennedy. Activists should focus particular attention on the key swing votes in the Senate – Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, and Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota.

Since the Boston Tea Party, Americans have utilized protest to challenge the outsized influence of political and economic elites. The Depression-era sit-in by Flint auto workers, the Montgomery bus boycott, the United Farm Workers union’s lettuce and grape boycotts, the protest by ACT-UP to demand treatment of AIDS victims, the Occupy Wall Street rallies, the Fight for 15 and Justice for Janitors campaigns by low-wage workers, and the recent public shaming of sexual predators by the #metoo movement have heightened public concern,  moved issues from the margins to the mainstream, and catalyzed a realignment of electoral politics.

Because no president has shown his disdain for the basic tenets of our democracy like Trump, Americans are rising up in an unprecedented expression of moral outrage.    The twin goals of these activities are to both stop Trump and the GOP-led Congress from inflicting more pain and suffering through executive orders, legislation, and appointments to the Supreme Court and other key positions, and to translate this activism into a powerful electoral force to help Democrats take back Congress in 2018, the White House in 2020, and reverse Republicans’ domination in governors’ seats and state legislatures.

Peter Dreier is professor of politics at Occidental College and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy Department.

 

Whose side is Trump’s America on? The answer is becoming more and more obvious

As the US president arrives in Britain on a ‘working visit’, his contempt for European allies poses an increasing threat

July 8, 2018

by Simon Tisdall

The Guardian

Nato summits are generally unremarkable affairs, but this week’s two-day gathering in Brussels will be an exception. European members of the transatlantic alliance are pondering their biggest conundrum since its creation almost 70 years ago: is the US a friend – or a foe?

Only 18 months ago, the question would have been dismissed as absurd. But the globally destructive impact of Donald Trump’s chaotic presidency has shattered conventional wisdom and left strategic and geopolitical certainties in ruins.

The problem is not only that Trump will again insist on the other 28 Nato members increasing their defence spending, on the specious grounds the US is being “ripped off”. It’s not merely that he has queried the founding treaty’s article 5 commitment to collective defence, or that he may close US military bases in Germany.

The more fundamental problem is that the US president is questioning the purpose of Nato, despite it having advanced US security and economic interests since 1949, undercut efforts to forge greater European unity that could have challenged US dominance, kept the Soviet Union/Russia at bay, and (mostly) maintained peace in Europe.

Bottom line: Trump simply doesn’t buy into, or understand, basic concepts such as collective security, burden-sharing, forward defence and the balance of power. He just doesn’t get it.

This myopic, isolationist view, consistent with his “America First” outlook, reflects Trump’s hostility to multilateralism in general. He scorns the UN, and has cut its US funding and boycotted its human rights council in Geneva. He repudiates World Trade Organisation rules, adopting unilateral, protectionist tariffs that spark trade wars and threaten European jobs.

Trump tore up the Paris global climate change treaty, pulled out of the UN-endorsed 2015 Iran nuclear deal so beloved of Europe, and recently urged France to follow Britain in abandoning the EU – an organisation he treats with contempt. He singlehandedly wrecked last month’s G7 summit of leading democracies in Canada, petulantly rejecting its conclusions and insulting his hosts.

More gallingly, Trump treats old friends worse than ostensible enemies, personalising political interactions and resorting to bullying, rudeness and open misogyny. Angela Merkel has been singled out for special abuse. At the G7 meeting, he tossed two Starburst sweets at the Germans chancellor and said: “Here, Angela, don’t say I never give you anything.”

Ever since he grabbed Theresa May’s hand at their first White House meeting last year, Trump has treated the British prime minister with patronising disrespect. His crass interventions in British life, for example via tweets promoting the far-right group Britain First, and attacking London’s Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, were extraordinarily insulting. The Queen’s famous sang-froid may be tested to destruction when his visit to Britain begins on Thursday.

If Trump’s crude, nationalistic policies and uncouth persona were the only problems, the European allies might just cope. But in recent months, as he has jettisoned experienced advisers and his belief in his own infallibility has grown, Trump has moved from difficult partner to potential enemy.

The question grows ever more pressing: whose side is Trump’s America really on?

Trump’s sycophantic courting last year of the Saudi royals and China’s authoritarian president, Xi Jinping, were early indications of his preference for dictators over democrats. His recent summit with Kim Jong-un did nothing to curb North Korea’s nuclear arms buildup. But it did reveal Trump’s almost indecent love of raw power and ostentation.

This ugly trait will be on show again when he meets Vladimir Putin, Russia’s he-man president, in Helsinki on 16 July. Jon Huntsman, the US ambassador to Moscow, insists that Trump will focus on Russia’s “malign activity”, be it in Ukraine, in cyberspace, or in conducting chemical weapons attacks in Syria and Salisbury.

Trump has also promised to quiz Putin over covert Russian meddling that benefited his 2016 election campaign, activity confirmed last week by a US senate report. But will he really do so in the private, closed-doors summit he has demanded?

A more likely prospect is more crapulous fawning over an autocratic leader who exercises a mysterious hold over Trump and, most Nato members believe, threatens European security.

As with Kim in Singapore, Trump’s big day out with Putin in Helsinki will be noisily declared, by him, to be an outstanding success contributing to global harmony. If, as is suggested, the two men agree to extend the New Start nuclear arms treaty, that will be a rare plus.

But just as likely are unilateral, Nato-busting Trump moves to ease sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, a deal to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, the “normalisation” of Putin’s regime, and other concessions undermining the post-Salisbury western consensus.

In an augury of worse to come, Trump will also seek Putin’s support over Iran. US efforts to force regime change in Tehran are gathering pace, principally by halting Iranian oil sales and trying to starve out the mullahs. Even as European diplomats struggle to sustain open lines to Tehran, the US navy is gearing up for confrontation if Iran’s revolutionary guards retaliate, as threatened, by closing the Strait of Hormuz and blocking all Gulf oil exports.

Here, in a nutshell, is why Trump’s US increasingly poses a threat to Britain and Europe. In a reckless bid to impose his will on a sovereign people,he is risking a global energy crisis, a new war in the Middle East and the safety and prosperity of all America’s allies. With friends like him, who needs enemies?

 

Donald Trump’s mental health is still a question

Medical ethics prohibit diagnosis of mental health without consultation. But Trump’s alarming behaviour is prompting psychiatrists to speak out

March 18, 2018

by Alastair Campbell

GQ

Donald Trump keeps breaking all the rules. And leadership being what it is, that is making others break them too. Take the Goldwater Rule.

You’ve never heard of the Goldwater Rule? Well, back in 1964, when Trump was just 18, his predecessor as Republican presidential nominee was Senator Barry Goldwater.

Though he was a model of virtue and moderation alongside the campaign excesses of recent times, there were fears among the nation’s psychiatrists that Goldwater was – how to put it politely? – a few cents short of the dollar. A magazine called Fact polled psychiatrists and enough of them concurred with that view to allow a headline suggesting he was mentally unfit for office.

Goldwater, somewhat Trumpian in his views of the media, sued, successfully, and the magazine closed in the process. But another consequence was that the American Psychiatric Association added the “Goldwater Rule” to Section 7 of its Principles Of Medical Ethics. It makes clear that it is unethical for psychiatrists to give their medical opinion about public figures unless they have treated them personally and have their permission to talk about their diagnosis. However, some of the nation’s top psychiatrists are finding it impossible to sit idly by amid fears that their president may be seriously mentally ill.

On the back of Trump’s retweeting of hate messages and videos by Britain First (you keep thinking he can go no lower, then he finds a way), the latest to break the Goldwater Rule was Dr Lance Dodes, a former Harvard professor now with the Boston Psychoanalytic Society And Institute.

Trump, he argued, is “a psychopath… an enormous present danger… a very sick man… displaying symptoms of psychosis”. On Trump’s compulsive tweeting, Dodes said, “The simple explanation for it is that he’s not in control of himself. This is what we mean when we say that somebody is becoming psychotic or is briefly psychotic… All of his delusional ideas come up when he is stressed in some way and then he loses track of reality because it doesn’t fit what he needs to believe.” He also said it was “an extremely dangerous thing” for a position of power to be held by someone who “appears so wantonly unconcerned about the welfare of others and willing to do anything to promote himself”.

It’s not as though we weren’t warned: remember his very first official visit after his inauguration, to the HQ of the CIA? Smart move, I thought: he is going to build bridges after the rows with the intelligence community during the campaign. But no. He stood in front of the wall of stars commemorating CIA officers killed serving the US and created a huge storm about the media reports that there had been bigger crowds for Barack Obama’s inauguration than his – which there had. At best, chronic narcissism; at worst, a personality disorder that would be pretty scary in anyone, but frankly terrifying when we are talking about the president of the United States. Which is why the shrinks are refusing to be silent, rule or no rule.

Trump administration halts billions in insurance payments under Obamacare

July 7, 2018

Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Trump administration on Saturday halted billions of dollars in payments to health insurers under the Obamacare healthcare law, saying that a recent federal court ruling prevents the money from being disbursed.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which administers programs under the Affordable Care Act, said the action affects $10.4 billion in risk adjustment payments.

President Donald Trump’s administration has used its regulatory powers to undermine Obamacare after the Republican-controlled Congress last year failed to repeal and replace the law. About 20 million Americans have received health insurance coverage through the program.

The payments are intended to help stabilize health insurance markets by compensating insurers that had sicker, more expensive enrollees in 2017. The government collects the money from health insurers with relatively healthy enrollees, who cost less to insure.

CMS, which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the move was necessary because of a February ruling by a federal court in New Mexico, which found that the federal government was using an inaccurate formula for allocating the payments.

“We were disappointed by the court’s recent ruling. As a result of this litigation, billions of dollars in risk adjustment payments and collections are now on hold,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement.

A federal court in Massachusetts upheld the same allocation formula in January.

The CMS statement said the agency has asked the New Mexico court to reconsider its decision and expressed hope for a prompt resolution of the issue.

Reporting by David Morgan, editing by G Crosse

 

 

US to support New Temple

July 4, 2018

AP

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) – American officials confirmed on Monday that American President Donald Trump has very strongly indicated that he “fully supported” the pending rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem

The first Temple, built by King Solomon, was destroyed by the Babylonians and the second, by Herod Agrippa, was destroyed by the Romans after the collapse of the revolt of 67 AD.

“The Temple Mount will first have to be cleared off to make way for the new construction,” Jakob Weissberg of the Temple Commission said, “and the beginning of the new edifice can then commence.”

Plans for the new Temple have already been approved and construction is expected as soon as all the existing buildings on the site of the former Temples have been demolished and the site prepared.

Geological reports on the condition of the underlying stone have long been completed and all that was remaining for work to commence was the right political atmosphere and the moral support of the United States.

President Trump has personally expressed his satisfaction with this culturally and religiously significant project and indicated that he would be “deeply honored” to attend services when the new Temple was completed.

Mr.Trump  has long been seen as a strong and active supporter of Israel and a firm friend of Mr. Netanyahu

Weissberg has stated that construction is expected not to exceed seven months.

The most immediate and obvious obstacle to realization of these goals is the fact that two historic Islamic structures which are 13 centuries old, namely the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, are built on top of the Temple Mount. Israel has undertaken to ensure access to the Temple Mount for peaceful worshippers and visitors, while maintaining public order and security. Any efforts to damage or reduce access to these sites, or to build Jewish structures within, between, beneath, beside, cantilevered on top of, or instead of them, could lead to severe international conflicts, given the association of the Muslim world with these holy places.

The second obstacle concerns the location of the temple. The Holy of Holies in the third temple must be on the exact same spot as it was in the two previous temples. Therefore the temple must be built in the same location as it was before.

The Dome of the Rock is regarded as occupying the actual space where the Second Temple once stood, but some scholars disagree and instead claim that the temple was located either just north of the Dome of the Rock, or about 200 meters south of it, with access to the Gihon fresh water spring, or perhaps between the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Comment: The surplus “existing” buildings that are mentioned in this article include the Dome of the Rock mosque and other historically and religiously important Arab constructions. Why not tear down the Vatican while they are at it and erect a bagel stand in its place?

 

Holocaust deniers bid for US Congress in at least two districts

The era of President Donald Trump has rejuvenated white nationalism in the US alongside a spike in anti-Semitism. At least two far-right candidates are on the ballots for November, and at least one more may join them.

July 7, 2018

by Bruce Konviser

DW

As anti-Semitism surges in the United States, according to numbers from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), at least two self-declared Holocaust deniers will be on the ballot representing the Republican Party in US congressional elections in November, while a third candidate is contending in a Republican primary in the state of Wisconsin to replace the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, who is retiring.

In February, the ADL reported anti-Semitic incidents jumped by 60 percent in the US in 2017 compared with the previous year. The report labeled it “the largest single-year increase on record.”

The Republican party has distanced itself from the candidates, although the state party initially supported John Fitzgerald in California’s 11th Congressional District because the state party rule was to automatically endorse a candidate when that candidate was the only Republican on the ballot.

The state party has since abandoned its automatic endorsement rule amid vows to begin vetting potential candidates more closely. Nonetheless, in a reliably Democratic district, Fitzgerald won 23 percent of the vote in last month’s primary.

Holocaust called a ‘lie’

During an interview last week with Andrew Carrington Hitchcock, an openly anti-Semitic radio host, Fitzgerald declared: “Everything we’ve been told about the Holocaust is a lie. So my entire campaign, for the most part, is about exposing this lie.”

In Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District, Arthur Jones, who has acknowledged his past ties to the American Nazi Party, will also be representing the Republican party in November’s election.

Jones openly denies on his website that the Holocaust happened, and claims Mexicans want to reclaim a vast swathe of US territory stretching from Texas to California.

Fitzgerald and Jones are running in reliably Democratic districts, so they’re not likely to be elected.

Wisconsin’s primary is still five weeks away, but in the state’s 1st Congressional District Paul Nehlen, described as a white nationalist, is seen as having a credible chance of winning the nomination in that conservative district.

Nehlen had his Twitter account blocked earlier this year because of tweets that were deemed racist or anti-Semitic.

The anti-Semitic incidents reported by the ADL including more than 1,000 cases of harassment, including more than 160 bomb threats, an increase of 41 percent over 2016. It also counted more than 950 incidents of vandalism, a jump of 86 percent over the previous year.

Trump was roundly criticized for failing to condemn the white nationalist behind a deadly attack against anti-racism protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, last August. The suspect drove his car into a crowd, killing one woman.

 

White House preparing ‘Rapture’ Contingency Plans

  • The White House is exploring contingency plans in the event that President Trump and other prominent Christians are ‘raptured.’
  • Party leaders address presidential succession, security needs in event that President Trump and important other believers are summoned to heaven.

July 8, 2018

by Christian Jürs

WASHINGTON, DC—What if the rapture, the much-anticipated event in which God summons his faithful followers out of this world, happened on DOnald Trump’s watch? Until recently this seemingly far-fetched question was the stuff of Christian message boards. But with the White House well known for putting faith front and center, officials are reportedly at work on a contingency plan spelling out how to run the country in the event that President Trump and top-ranking Christians are ‘raptured.’

White House officials are said to be concerned by a recent up-tick in the Rapture Ready Index, a self-proclaimed prophetic speedometer of end-time activity that monitors such seemingly disparate factors as the crime rate, unemployment, wild weather and the “mark of the Beast,” evidence of activity related to the antichrist. The Rapture Ready Index recently reached 157, a high for 2018, pushed upwards by a new CUNY study showing that the number of Pagans in the US has skyrocketed of late.  The “mark of the Beast” category was also upgraded as a result of a nation-wide push to replace bar codes product labels with radio tags.

Who will rule?

For the White House, the possibility that the dramatic events described in Thessalonians 4:13-18, in which “the dead in Christ will rise, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord,” presents an obvious dilemma: if President Trump is summoned to meet his maker, who among the “left behind” can govern the country? According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, if the president is incapacitated, dies, resigns, is for any reason unable to hold his office, or is removed from office, he is to be succeeded by his vice president, in this case Mike Pence . But top White House officials have expressed concern that Pence’s health may make such a transition impossible, especially after the shock of witnessing his boss disappear through the ceiling of the Oval Office.

Security vs. tribulation

But Republican Party officials are already expressing concern that Pence may not be up to the task of seeing the US through the turbulent years of Tribulation, a seven-year long period in which the antichrist takes advantage of the Christians’ absence, and makes a treaty with the Jews, enabling them to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem and to reestablish their ancient liturgical system of animal-sacrifices. “We’re preparing for tough times ahead,” said an administration official. “We don’t know what’s going to happen or what to expect.” He notes that the White House is being helped in its efforts to plan for the post-rapture period by Professor Lee Clarke, a Rutgers University sociologist and the author of Mission Improbable: Using Fantasy Documents to Tame Disaster.

A number of senators have also expressed misgivings over the possibility that Pence may use the confusion of the Tribulation period to divert excessive discretionary spending, known as pork, to his home state of Indiana.

Ready or not, here he comes

Of course there is always the possibility that the rapture won’t happen during President Trump’s term, if at all. But millions of Christians, including many of those who might vote to give the president a second term, are convinced that the rapture isn’t just coming, but coming soon.

In a recent poll of Christians conducted on leftbehind.com, the online counterpart to the popular Left Behind series by Reverend Tim LeHaye, more than 50 percent of respondents said that they expected the rapture to happen any day. Nearly 3 in 10 either had unfinished business or didn’t want to end their earthly good times just yet. Many Republicans are probably feeling the same way these days.

The Diminishing Numbers of Purported Murdered Jews in Auschwitz Camp.

July 8, 2018

by Christian Jürs

9,000,000

Source: Cited by the French documentary, Night and Fog, which has been shown to millions of school students worldwide.

8,000,000

Source: The French War Crime Research Office, Doc. 31, 1945.

7,000,000

Source: Also cited by the French War Crime Research Office.

6,000,000

Source: Cited in the book Auschwitz Doctor by Miklos Nyiszli. It has since been proven that this book is a fraud and the “doctor” was never even at Auschwitz, even though the book is often cited by historians.

5,000,000 to 5,500,000

Source: Cited in 1945 at the trial of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss, based on his confession which was written in English, a language he never spoke.

5,000,000

Source: Cited on April 20, 1978 by the French daily, Le Monde. Also cited on January 23, 1995 by the German daily Die Welt. By September 1, 1989, Le Monde reduced the figure to 1,433,000.

4,500,000

Source: In 1945 this figure was cited by another witness at the aforementioned Höss trial.

4,000,000

Source: Cited by a Soviet document of May 6, 1945 and officially acknowledged by the Nuremberg War Crimes trial. This figure was also reported in The New York Times on April 18, 1945, although 50 years later on January 26, 1995, The New York Times and The Washington Post slashed the figure to 1,500,000 citing new findings by the Auschwitz Museum officials. In fact, the figure of 4,000,000 was later repudiated by the Auschwitz museum officials in 1990 but the figure of 1,500,000 victims was not formally announced by Polish President Lech Walesa until five years after the Auschwitz historians had first announced their discovery.

3,500,000

Source: Cited in the 1991 edition of the Dictionary of the French Language and by Claude Lanzmann in 1980 in his introduction to Filip Muller’s book, Three Years in an Auschwitz Gas Chamber.

3,000,000

Source: Cited in a forced confession by Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commander who said this was the number of those who had died at Auschwitz prior to Dec. 1, 1943. Later cited in the June 7, 1993 issue of Heritage, the most widely read Jewish newspaper in California, even though three years previously the authorities at the Auschwitz museum had scaled down the figure to a minimum of 1,100,000 and a maximum of 1,500,000. (see below).

2,500,000

Source: Cited by Rudolf Vrba (an author of various fraudulent accounts of events he claims to have witnessed at Auschwitz) when he testified on July 16, 1981 for the Israeli government’s war crimes trial of former SS official Adolf Eichmann.

2,000,000

Source: Cited by Leon Poliakov (1951) writing in Harvest of Hate; Georges Wellers, writing in 1973 in The Yellow Star at the Time of Vichy; and Lucy Dawidowicz, writing in 1975 in The War Against the Jews.

2,000,000 to 4,000,000

Source: Cited by Yehuda Bauer in 1982 in his book, A History of the Holocaust. However, by 1989 Bauer revised his figure to 1,600,000.

1,600,000

Source: This is a 1989 revision by Yehuda Bauer of his earlier figure in 1982 of 2,000,000 to 4,000,000, Bauer cited this new figure on September 22, 1989 in The Jerusalem Post, at which time he wrote “The larger figures have been dismissed for years, except that it hasn’t reached the public yet.”

1,500,000

Source: In 1995 this was the number of Auschwitz deaths announced by Polish President Lech Walesa as determined by those at the Auschwitz museum. This number was inscribed on the monument at the Auschwitz camp at that time, thereby “replacing” the earlier 4,000,000 figure that had been formally repudiated (and withdrawn from the monument) five years earlier in 1990. At that time, on July 17, 1990 The Washington Times reprinted a brief article from The London Daily Telegraph citing the “new” figure of 1,500,000 that had been determined by the authorities at the Auschwitz museum. This new figure was reported two years later in a UPI report published in the New York Post on March 26, 1992. On January 26, 1995 both The Washington Post and The New York Times cited this 1,500,000 figure as the new “official” figure (citing the Auschwitz Museum authorities).

1,471,595

Source: This is a 1983 figure cited by Georges Wellers who (as noted previously) had determined, writing in 1973, that some 2,000,000 had died.

1,433,000

Source: This figure was cited on September 1, 1989 by the French daily, Le Monde, which earlier, on April 20, 1978, had cited the figure at 4,000,000.

1,250,000

Source: In the book, The Destruction of the European Jews, by Raul Hilberg (1985).

1,100,000 to 1,500,000

Source: Sources for this estimate are Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum in their 1984 book, Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. This estimate was later also cited by Walter Reich, former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, writing in The Washington Post on September 8, 1998. The upper figure of 1,500,000 is (the new) “official” figure as now inscribed at Auschwitz, with the earlier figure of 4,000,000 having been removed from the memorial at the site of the former concentration camp.

1,000,000

Source: Jean-Claude Pressac, writing in his 1989 book Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers. This is interesting since he wrote his book to repudiate so-called “Holocaust deniers” who were called that precisely because they had questioned the numbers of those who had died at Auschwitz.

900,000

Source: Reported on August 3, 1990 11, by Aufbau, a Jewish newspaper in New York.

800,000 to 900,000

Source: Reported by Gerald Reitlinger in his book, The Final Solution.

775,000 to 800,000

Source: Jean-Claude Pressac’s revised figure, put forth in his 1993 book, The Crematoria of Auschwitz: The Mass Murder’s Machinery, scaling down his earlier claim of 1,000,000 dead.

630,000 to 710,000

Source: In 1994 Pressac scaled his figure down somewhat further; this is the figure cited in the German language translation of Pressac’s 1993 book originally published in French. Again, this is substantially less than Pressac’s 1989 figure of 1,000,000.

Using all available wartime records from the various camps it has been estimated that between 400,000 and 500,000 people died in the German concentration camp system (from all causes)between the years 1935-1945.

Note: All of the above information was suppositional, based on myths, legends and political expedience. The following official and documented information is the actual listing of the concentration camp system run by the Germans as well as an exact record of all inmates lodged in Auschwitz camp from the beginning to the end from the complete German records now in Russian archives.

Now, having seen the gradual reduction in the Auschwitz death tolls, we turn next to the official camp records now in the Russian State Archives and available on microfilm to the public. Each month, the commandant of each concentration camp was required to send a monthly report to camp headquarters in Berlin. The actual figures from every camp, starting in 1935, differ sharply from the ones invented by what can best be termed as merchandisers .

From July, 1941 through October, 1944

Total number of Jewish prisoners in the Auschwitz camp system: 173,000

Total number of Jewish prisoners who died of typhus: 58,240

Total number of Jewish prisoners who died of natural causes: 2,064

Total number of Jewish prisoners transferred to other camps: 100,743

Total number of Jewish prisoners executed: 117

Total number of Jewish prisoners  in camp after German evacuation on January 15, 1945:  11,839

Sources: CSA No. 187603: Roll 281-1940: Frames 107-869-Roll 282-1940-41: Frames 001-875-Roll 283-1941-42:Frames 001-872-Roll 284-1942-43: Frames 003-862-Roll 285-1943-44: Frames 019-852- Roll 286-1945: Frames 001-329.

 

What will Trump and Putin agree on at the Helsinki summit?

Facing mounting domestic pressure, Trump does not have much to offer to Putin except for Syria.

July 8, 2018

by Joe Macaron

AlJazeera

On July 16, US President Donald Trump will meet in the Finnish capital Helsinki a triumphant Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has just secured another victory in the Syrian war and obtained the international recognition he wanted from hosting the World Cup.

The Russian president will seek to exploit the growing rift between the United States and the European Union and the intensifying Iranian-Israeli rivalry to achieve his two main goals: Break Russia out of international isolation and become the sole kingmaker in Syria.

But in pursuing a deal with Trump, Putin poses the biggest threat to the legitimacy of his US counterpart domestically and internationally. The US establishment and intelligence community largely believe that the Kremlin favoured him in the 2016 US presidential race and an investigation into alleged Russian interference is still ongoing.

At the same time, Trump is confronted with an increasingly disgruntled group of allies who are wary of Russia’s aggressive posturing. That he will be meeting Putin right after attending the NATO summit in Brussels and visiting the UK (which has just had a major diplomatic crisis with Moscow), will not please any of them.

A history of Helsinki summits

The choice of Helsinki as the venue of the summit is not coincidental. The Finnish capital has hosted leaders of the two superpowers for important talks on two other major occasions.

In September 1990, a month after Iraq invaded Kuwait, US President George H W Bush met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Helsinki to discuss the crisis in the Gulf.

Preoccupied with the dissolution of the Eastern bloc after the fall of the Berlin Wall and with a Soviet Union on the verge of collapse, Gorbachev was negotiating from a position of weakness. Bush wanted his commitment to implementing sanctions on Saddam Hussein’s regime and he got it, in exchange for support for his counterpart’s reform plans.

In March 1997, US President Bill Clinton met Russian President Boris Yeltsin to discuss a range of security and economic issues, including nuclear disarmament. At that summit, the Russian president had no trump cards to play.

The economic situation in Russia had been persistently deteriorating while the government was waging a highly unpopular war in Chechnya. Badly needing US financial support and backing, Yeltsin decided to concede to the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe in return for Russia’s integration in the global economy with US help. For that disastrous decision, he was labelled a “US puppet” by his opponents.

On July 16, President Trump will meet President Putin, but this time around, it seems, the roles have been reversed. The US president is facing a growing legitimacy crisis at home, where he is perceived as “a Russian puppet”, while his Russian counterpart has been dealt a powerful hand.

The Trump-Putin deal

This will be the fourth meeting between the two leaders since Trump took office in January 2017. They met twice during the July 2017 G20 summit in Germany and once on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit (APEC) summit in Vietnam last November.

Since they last met, Trump succumbed to domestic pressure and took a number of anti-Russian measures, including approving lethal weapons sales to Ukraine in December, expelling Russian diplomats from the US in March, striking the Syrian regime and imposing additional sanctions on Russian officials in April.

Putin, too, upped the ante by giving a provocative speech on March 1, issuing unveiled threats of an arms race with the US. Then, after his re-election, he took advantage of the simmering US-EU trade war and the Iran nuclear deal crisis to re-engage with France and Germany, while also negotiating with Israel on key points of concern regarding the Syrian war.

Putin’s actions left Trump with no choice but to move up the meeting and send his national security adviser John Bolton to Moscow to set it up.

The US president plans to meet alone with his Russian counterpart and his translator, triggering concerns in the US and Europe regarding what he might concede if left alone in the room.

But despite these fears, no real breakthrough in US-Russian relations should be expected until Special Counsel Robert Mueller finalises his investigation. Lifting US sanctions on Russia, recognising its annexation of Crimea, and pulling US troops out of Eastern Europe are all off the table for the Helsinki summit; Trump’s hands are tied by US domestic politics.

The only issue on which he can concede to lure in the Russian president is the Syrian war. Trump will give up Syria to Putin the way Gorbachev left Iraq to Bush in 1990.

The prerequisites for this deal are already in place. Trump’s closest ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to meet Putin on July 11, just five days before the Helsinki summit; this will be their third meeting this year.

Russia is engaging the Israeli prime minister, aiming to repeat the Deraa scenario in Quneitra province near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Trump seems fine with the idea of ultimately removing US troops from the al-Tanf area on the Jordanian-Iraqi-Syrian border in return for keeping Iranian forces and their proxies away from southwest Syria.

Trump’s endgame is not Syria. What he ultimately wants is for Putin to remain neutral in the US diplomatic offensive on Iran. The White House hopes Russia will follow through on the initial agreement with Saudi Arabia and OPEC and increase its oil output to compensate for the drop in Iranian oil exports caused by the reimposition of US sanctions.

This move would diminish the effect of the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal on international markets and minimise a potential negative impact on the US economy ahead of mid-term elections in November. Moreover, Trump is also attempting to outmanoeuvre the Europeans in their rapprochement with Moscow by offering Putin to rejoin the G7.

And it already seems that the agreement between the two leaders is solidified even before they met. Russia is passively watching as the EU states scramble to save the nuclear deal with Iran, while the US has done nothing to help the Syrian opposition factions it once supported against the Russian and Syrian regime operation in Deraa.

Apart from that, the aftermath of the summit will also give an indication of how relations between Washington and Moscow will develop in the near future. Will a direct line of communication be re-established, most notably on arms control negotiations? Will the Russian ambassador in Washington have more access to US officials moving forward? Will the US establishment become more receptive to engaging Moscow without tangible shift in Russian policy post-Helsinky summit? If there is a change on one or more of these fronts, it could bring more dynamism into US-Russian relations.

 

Iran threatens to block Strait of Hormuz

Rouhani says US has not thought about consequences of oil ban

July 7, 2018

Gulf News

IRAN

Tehran, Vienna: The commander of the Al Quds Force in the Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday said Iran will block oil shipments through the Hormuz Strait if US President Donald Trump stops Iranian oil sales.

Qassem Solaimani’s comments came as President Hassan Rouhani pledged that Iran will stand firm against US threats to cut Iranian oil sales and said Washington had not thought about the consequences of such a move.

“The Americans say they want to reduce Iranian oil exports to zero… It shows they have not thought about its consequences,” Rouhani was quoted as saying by state news agency Irna on an official visit to Vienna.

Rouhani’s comments echoed his remarks on Tuesday when he hinted at a threat to disrupt oil shipments from neighbouring countries if Washington presses ahead with its goal of forcing all countries to stop buying Iranian oil.

Rouhani did not elaborate, but Iranian officials have in the past threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping route, in retaliation for any hostile US action against Iran.

Solaimani praised Rouhani’s remarks on Wednesday, said the Guards were ready to implement such a policy.

He said in a letter published on Irna: “I kiss your [Rouhani’s] hand for expressing such wise and timely comments, and I am at your service to implement any policy that serves the Islamic Republic.”

The United States pulled out of a multinational deal in May to lift sanctions against Iran in return for curbs to its nuclear programme. Washington has since told countries they must halt all imports of Iranian oil from November 4 or face US financial measures, with no exemptions.

Rouhani, who is now in Vienna trying to salvage the nuclear deal, said US sanctions against Iran were a “crime and aggression”, and called on European governments and others to stand up to Trump’s policies against Tehran.

“Iran will survive this round of US sanctions as it has survived them before. This US government will not stay in office forever … But history will judge other nations based on what they do today,” Rouhani said.

Earlier in the day Rouhani told reporters that “if the remaining signatories can guarantee Iran’s benefits, Iran will remain in the nuclear deal without the United States.” Rouhani said that Trump’s decision to withdraw from the accord was “strange” as it was “against US national interests and the interests of other countries.” A senior Iranian oil official said on Wednesday that Trump’s pressure on international firms not to buy Iranian oil will drive prices higher and end up hurting his own economy. — Agencies

 

Get ready for $250 oil if Iran blocks key shipment route in Middle East, analysts tell RT

July 7, 2018

RT

Tehran is threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial artery for oil shipments from the Middle East, if Iranian exports are hampered. This will result in a huge loss of global crude supply and soaring prices.

Most of the crude exported from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Iraq passes through the Strait of Hormuz. It is also the route for nearly all the liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipments from the world’s largest exporter, Qatar.

On Thursday, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the Strait Of Hormuz will be “for all or for no one,” according to Tasnim News agency. The US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, is dedicated to protecting commercial ships in the area.

“The declared nominal throughput capacity of the Strait of Hormuz is about 14 oil tankers per day, or 17 million barrels per day, or about half of the world’s daily crude oil exports. If exports through it stop, the law of supply and demand would double oil prices to $160 per barrel,” Vladimir Rojankovski, investment analyst at Global FX, told RT.

The analyst added that if the Strait is blocked for one or two months, oil traders could panic and buy out all available crude futures, sending prices to $250 per barrel. However, Rojankovski expressed doubt that Iran would do that since the area is highly militarized.

Artem Avinov, leading analyst with TeleTrade, also predicts that oil prices could jump to $250 per barrel if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked by Iran. But he also notes that such a scenario is highly improbable. “I am skeptical about the possibility of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to cut off oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz for several days or weeks. Even if Iran really acts, we are likely to see a quick economic or military retaliation, which will lead to the lifting of restrictions,” he told RT.

Another RT guest, Mikhail Mashchenko, who is an analyst at investors’ social network eToro, doesn’t believe crude will skyrocket even if a blockade takes place, since Brent never topped $150 per barrel.

He adds that US President Donald Trump’s rhetoric is propping up oil prices despite his wish to lower them. “If Trump didn’t try isolate Tehran so actively, investors would not have been buying oil so massively because of fears of a deficit. The fate of the oil market depends on the further actions of the top producers: How much the export from the US will decrease, and how much Saudi Arabia and Russia, which have a lot of unused capacities, will increase production,” he said.

 

 

 

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