Putin slams US Russophobes as Israel frets

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday US politicians whipping up Russophobia were either "stupid" or "dangerous."

That followed Monday’s hysteria in Washington over President Donald Trump’s sharing intelligence — now rumoured to be from Israel — on an Isis plot to bomb a Russian airliner with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov last week.

Mr Putin offered to provide transcripts of the meeting.

On claims Russia swung the election for Mr Trump, he said: “It's hard to imagine what the people who produce such nonsense can come up with next."

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman struck a jealous tone on Wedneday, saying: "The security relationship between Israel and our great ally the US is deep, meaningful and unprecedented in its scope.”

On Tuesday an anonymous US official claimed he had seen a note scribbled by sacked FBI director James Comey that Mr Trump had asked him to halt the probe into former security adviser Michael Flynn’s contacts with the Russian ambassador.

The Communist Party of the USA joined calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor to head the McCarthyite probe in the hope of Mr Trump’s impeachment — that would install Neocon warhawk Vice-President Mike Pence in the White House.

The mystery of the Guanches

The origins and language of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands remain a mystery, writes Dr Sabina Goralski Filonov Translation by James Tweedie The guanches, the aboriginals of the Canary Islands whose origin, lost in the mists of time, still arouses intense and passionate debate and great controversy about their origins and the how the seven Canary Islands were populated – which according to some studies occurred between 10,000 and 8,000 years BC. Literally, the word ‘Guan’ means man or person and ‘Chenech’ or ‘Chinet’ is applied to the island of Tenerife, thus meaning a man or inhabitant of Tenerife – although according to Núñez de la Peña, the Spanish named them the Guanchos during the conquest of the islands. But with the passage of time, experts in the subject are questioning whether the word Guanche was used to designate the primitive inhabitants of all the islands in the pre-Hispanic period. The term ‘Guanche’ has also ceased to be applied to the di...

Homeless dogs’ home fights for compensation

Dingo Dogs owner Phil Nelson at his since-demolished home. DOGS’ home owner Phil Nelson has vowed to take legal action following his eviction from his Dingo Dogs animal sanctuary in August. by James Tweedie Indian-born Mr Nelson, along with former girlfriend and Dingo Dogs treasurer Leigh Crouch were left homeless by the court-ordered eviction and have been sharing a small hut in the mountains near Las Chafiras with ten dogs and three cats ever since. Mr Nelson’s dispute with his former landlord began in September 2004, after he officially registered his rented hillside finca as an animal sanctuary. It was a requirement of his registration that he keep proper financial records, including receipts for payment of rent. Mr Nelson says that despite having a rental contract and paying his rent “as regular as clockwork” for years, his landlord never gave him a receipt even after he began asking for one every month in 2004. In May 2005, after his landlord ha...

Sun-crossed haters endanger 220,000 lives

My stepmother Shanthie Naidoo and her sister Ramnie were on an overnight flight from Johannesburg to Heathrow for a speaking tour when Extinction Rebellion offshoot Heathrow Pause began wilfully endangering aircraft by flying drones over the airport this morning. Shanthie is an ANC struggle veteran who lived in exile in London from 1973 to 1993, apart from some time in the exile community in Mazimbu, Tanzania. She and all her immediate family were jailed by the Apartheid government for political reasons. Shanthie's late brother Indres did 10 years on Robben Island and later wrote the book 'Island in Chains'. Their grandfather Thembi Naidoo worked alongside Mohandas K Gandhi during the civil disobedience campaigns against the early form of Apartheid. Extinction Rebellion has chosen for its logo a variation on the 'sonnenkreuz', a symbol used by both proto-fascist neo-pagan organisations and modern neo-Nazis. Around 220,000 passengers fly in and out of Heathr...

US allies say no Venezuela war

Lima Group rules out intervention Washington's Latin American allies will not back any invasion of Venezuela to overthrow its elected government. Peruvian Foreign Minister Néstor Popolizio insisted on Tuesday that the 'Lima Group' of nations – those hostile to Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government – was against “military intervention.” “As the Lima Group we have said that we do not support any military intervention in Venezuela,” Mr Popolizio said at a meeting of the group in the Canadian capital Ottawa. The prospect of a US-led invasion to back extremist Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guadió's claim to the presidency appeared more likely on Tuesday after White House National Security Advisor John Bolton appeared at a press conference holding a notepad scrawled with “5,000 troops to Colombia.” But Mr Popolizio insisted “we have no information” about a planned invasion. At Tuesday's pressconference US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin annou...

Venezuela exposes UN human rights hypocrisy

Venezuela challenged the UN on Monday to see for itself if opposition allegations of human rights abuses were true. Addressing the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza invited the organisation’s human rights experts to visit his country to see the situation there at first hand. He said the invitation was intended to break through the “media matrix” pushed by biased and unfounded sources from the global rightwing. Venezuela’s Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud) opposition blamed the government and security forces for the 124 deaths during four months of regime change riots from April to early August this year. The US, EU and Britain have backed those claims, with Washington slapping new financial sanctions on Venezuela last month. After meeting Mud leaders in Berlin last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was considering EU sanctions on Caracas as well for allegation rights violations. But Mr Arreaza said the rioters had committed crim...

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