June 21, 2018 – Astute News

June 21, 2018

Sexy Metal: the Missing Element in the Korean Puzzle

This may not be about condos on North Korean beaches after all. Arguably, the heart of the matter in the Trump administration’s embrace of Kim Jong-un has everything to do with one of the largest deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) in the world, located only 150 km northwest of Pyongyang and potentially worth billions of US dollars. All the implements...

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June 21, 2018

Israel Wants to Turn Filming of Its Crimes Into a Crime

In the aftermath of numerous tragic incidents in which Israeli human rights NGOs and Palestinian activists have documented the maiming and execution of Palestinian suspects by security forces, a ministerial committee has approved a new bill criminalising such filming. They did this despite the attorney-general criticising the bill for its extensive legal defects. Notes accompanying the proposed law state that...

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June 21, 2018

Syrian Games: Expulsion of Iran and Russia Continues

A number of countries are strengthening their efforts to force Iran out of Syria and diminish Russia’s influence there at all costs. On 17 June unidentified airplanes struck a massive blow against the Syrian military and Iranian proxy forces in the region of Abu Kamal causing 200 deaths. It is noteworthy that the airstrike on Abu Kamal coincided with the...

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June 21, 2018

Does Trump Really Think That China Hasn’t Identified His “Negotiating” Pattern?

Donald Trump has just threatened to implement a new round of tariffs on Chinese goods as Beijing is making plans to implement a 25% tariff on a variety of US imports valued at $50 billion. China’s new tariffs are of course a mirror of those which Trump imposed on Chinese imports to the US last week. Now, Trump is planning...

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June 21, 2018

A Neocon Senate Coup Against Trump’s Foreign Policy?

The bright line that separates Donald Trump’s foreign policy from his predecessors is the question of regime change. Between the collapse of communism in 1989 and the departure of the Obama Administration, the American foreign policy establishment embraced the “end of history” premise that liberal democracy would replace all the autocracies of the past, and that the goal of American...

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June 21, 2018

It’s Time to Start Getting Enraged At What Western Imperialists Have Done to Syria

Rumors are again swirling of an impending false flag chemical weapons attack in Syria, just as they did shortly before the highly suspiciousDouma case in April. Warnings from Syrian and Russian intelligence, as well as US war ship movements and an uptick in US funding for the Al Qaeda propaganda firm known as the White Helmets, give these warnings a fair...

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June 21, 2018

Vietnam’s Protests will Complicate the Clinching of Any Pragmatic Deal with China

Scores of people gathered in several cities all across Vietnam in order to draw attention to what they fear is China’s imminent exploitation of a proposed bill on Special Economic Zones (SEZ) that will give investors 99-year leases on land in three coastal regions. Their concerns are just speculation at this point since there’s no evidence that this would be...

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June 21, 2018

How Bulldozers, Bedouin and Ethnic Cleansing Herald the Death of the Two-State Solution

It takes barely 30 minutes to drive from Jerusalem to the doomed Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, on the main road to Jericho on the West Bank. But there’s no turning off the main road. We have to park in a nearby lay-by, jump over metal barriers, dodge fast oncoming traffic, then scramble up a steep slope to reach the...

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Daily Archive: June 21, 2018

Sexy Metal: the Missing Element in the Korean Puzzle

Israel Wants to Turn Filming of Its Crimes Into a Crime

Syrian Games: Expulsion of Iran and Russia Continues

Does Trump Really Think That China Hasn’t Identified His “Negotiating” Pattern?

A Neocon Senate Coup Against Trump’s Foreign Policy?

It’s Time to Start Getting Enraged At What Western Imperialists Have Done to Syria

Vietnam’s Protests will Complicate the Clinching of Any Pragmatic Deal with China

How Bulldozers, Bedouin and Ethnic Cleansing Herald the Death of the Two-State Solution