Tom's Blog on Life

You may have heard that the US scrapped the Iranian nuclear deal this week, setting off a series of events that could very likely end up in a regional conflagration. But if that’s what you heard, then you heard wrong. In actuality, Trump signed an Executive Memorandum on Tuesday that reaffirmed his October 13, 2017 decision to deny re-certification of the JCPOA and lifted sanction waivers promised under that agreement.
Confused? Don’t worry, so is mostly everyone else. But here’s the bottom line: the “Iran nuclear deal” was not some treaty between the US and Iran. It was a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action signed by China, France, Russia the United Kingdom, the United States, the EU and Iran. In other words, only one player in this seven-member deal is walking away from the table.
This is not a trivial distinction. What it means is that it is still perfectly possible that the other signatories to the agreement could continue on with the agreement or hammer out some replacement for it. At the very least, Europe could stand up to Washington’s sanctions regime…if they followed Mish Shedlock’s advice and “Grow a Backbone on Something Important,” that is. As Mish points out, billions of dollars of European business are on the line. That money will be lost if the Europeans just roll over and accept US demands to wind down all business in Iran in the next three to six months…
…Now the punditsphere is openly musing on the questions of whether or not Europe has rebelled and what kind of relationship will be possible between Brussels and Washington going forward.
It’s a good question, and an important one. As I’ve pointed out many times before, we are being prepared for a transition away from the unipolar American-dominated world into a multi-polar BRICS-led “alternative” global system. As I’ve also pointed out many times before, this “alternative” is a false one, and those interested in human freedom should not be swept up in choosing sides in this false dialectic.
But make no mistake: a change is occurring, and with every passing year it is becoming more and more obvious that Europe’s long-term economic interests revolve around forging new, deeper ties with its Eurasian neighbors. Whether or not the EU ultimately goes along with America’s Iranian sanctions will be a bellwether of how quickly that change is taking place.
https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/human-rights/the-fate-of-the-world-is-in-the-eu-s-hands/

I’m reprinting an excerpt from an interview I did, several years ago, with former CBS investigative reporter, Sharyl Attkisson. It’s a reminder about the difference between fake and real news, and about who the major purveyors of fake news are. It also reveals a familiar strategy major news outlets deploy, when they happen to publish a true story and then realize its explosive implications: they shut down all further investigation. They close the book. Here is my piece in full: Unless you’ve …
https://www.nexusnewsfeed.com/article/jon-rappoport/my-interview-with-former-cbs-star-reporter/

This is my younger grandson the moment he figured out pedals. His mum says, “The moment he got the hang of pedals on a bike! I live for that face!”

Robert Fisk’s bombshell first-hand account for the UK Independent runs contrary to nearly every claim circulating in major international press concerning what happened just over week ago on April 7th in an embattled suburb outside Damascus: not only has the veteran British journalist found no evidence of a mass chemical attack, but he’s encountered multiple local eyewitnesses who experienced the chaos of that night, but who say the gas attack never happened.
Fisk is the first Western journalist to reach and report from the site of the alleged chemical weapons attack widely blamed on Assad’s forces. Writing from Douma in eastern Ghouta, Fisk has interviewed a Syrian doctor who works at the hospital shown in one of the well-known videos which purports to depict victims of a chemical attack.
Importantly, the report, published late in the day Monday, is causing a stir among mainstream journalists who–minutes after the Saudi-sponsored jihadist group Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) accused the Syrian Army of gassing civilians–began uncritically promoting the “Assad gassed his own people” narrative as an already cemented and “proven” fact based on the mere word a notoriously brutal armed group who itself has admitted to using chemical weapons on the Syrian battlefield in prior years. Also notable is that no journalist or international observer was anywhere near Douma when the purported chemical attack took place.
Controversy ensued immediately after Fisk’s report, especially as he is among the most recognizable names in the past four decades of Middle East war reporting, having twice won the British Press Awards’ Journalist of the Year prize and as seven-time winner of the British Press Awards’ Foreign Correspondent of the Year (the NY Times has referred to him as “probably the most famous foreign correspondent in Britain” while The Guardian has called him “one of the most famous journalists in the world”). An Arabic speaker, Fisk became famous for being among the few reporters in history to conduct face-to-face interviews with Osama bin Laden, which he did on three occasions between 1993 and 1997.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/famed-war-reporter-robert-fisk-reaches-syrian-chemical-attack-site-concludes-not-gassed/240660/