EU EXTENDS SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA AS MOSCOW WARNS OF ‘NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES’

International Business Times
September 4, 2015
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during a meeting with students and teachers on the first day of the academic year at the Sirius educational center for gifted children in Sochi, Russia, Sept. 1, 2015. Reuters/Mikhail Klimentyev/RIA Novosti/Kremlin

The European Union agreed Wednesday to a second extension of sanctions against Russian firms and individuals and Ukrainian separatists, for another six months, until March 2016. On the same day, the United States added 29 more individuals to its sanctions list against Russia, Reuters reported.
The 28-member EU agreed to the extension Wednesday and said it would sign off on it by mid-September,according to reports. The sanctions stem from Russia’s ongoing involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, which has taken the lives of over 6,700 and displaced over 1.4 million people since it started in April 2014. The previous sanctions extension was due to expire on Sept. 15. The sanctions target 150 people and 37 entities, making them subject to asset freezes and travel bans, according to the EU. Although EU countries have taken different stances on how to best end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the sanctions extension shows a united front.
The sanctions target key Russian officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak and senior Kremlin official Vladislav Surkov. A ceasefire agreement signed in Minsk in February has failed to stem the bloodshed and put an end to the conflict. A new truce agreed to for the first day of school, on Tuesday, had already frayed by Wednesday, with the Ukrainian government reporting the deaths of two civilians in eastern Ukraine.

MI6 SPY FOUND DEAD IN BAG IN BATH HAD HACKED CLINTON DATA

Breitbart
August 31, 2015

A Metropolitan Police Reconstruction of the Incident


The MI6 spy who was found dead inside a holdall bag in his bathtub in London hacked into secret data held on former U.S. President Bill Clinton, The Sun newspaper has sensationally claimed today. 

Gareth Williams was 31 years old when he was found naked, dead in his own bathtub in Pimlico, just a few minutes walk away from Britain’s Houses of Parliament.
Speculation has been rife ever since his death in September 2010 about the circumstances surrounding his death. A Metropolitan Police investigation revealed predictably, though suspiciously, that Mr Williams’ death was “probably an accident”. This was despite an initial inquest concluding that his death was “unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated.”
Since then the unexplained death has been the subject of investigation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The BBC reported as early as December 2010 that Mr Williams had been on secondment from Britain’s signals intelligence operation GCHQ to MI6, and then subsequently to the United States’ National Security Agency.
The Sun reports that Williams had “dug out the guestlist for an event the former American president was going to as a favour for a pal.”
The Murdoch-owned paper reports:
The Sun on Sunday can reveal that voicemail messages Mr Williams left for family and pals were deleted in the days after his death. And a rival agent may also have broken into the flat to destroy or remove evidence.
The inquest was barred from discussing Mr Williams’s work in public. But sources say he was helping on the joint monitoring network Echelon, which uses sophisticated programs to eavesdrop on terrorists and criminal gangs, particularly those in Russia.
A source said: “The Clinton diary hack came at a time when Williams’s work with America was of the most sensitive nature.
“It was a diplomatic nightmare for Sir John Sawers, the new director of MI6 at the time.”
Insiders claim Mr Williams, who had been given a second passport with a fresh identity, was also getting fed up with living a secret life. He is said to have loathed his spy training after having his wrist broken during one hardcore session.
Mr Williams, a keen cyclist originally from Anglesey, North Wales, died shortly after returning from a hacking conference in America.
He had been to see a drag queen show by himself two days before he was last seen alive, on August 15, 2010.
Eight days later his naked body was found folded into the 32in by 19in bag placed in the bath of his flat in Pimlico, central London.
His mobile phone and sim cards were laid out on a table. The last computer evidence of him being alive showed him looking at a cycling website.
A number of theories exist about Mr William’s death, including that of a scorned ex-lover, a “Kremlin car” driving past his house, and some bizarre sexual fantasies that Mr Williams may have played out and taken too far.
Mr Williams had no alcohol or drugs in his system when he was found, and the inquest found that he would not have been able to seal himself in the bag alone.
The Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the new revelations that Mr Clinton’s security details may have been breached by Mr Williams.

Islamic State Plotting ‘Second Blow’ to U.S. Financial System in Bid to ‘Purify the Earth of Corruption’

The Blaze
August 31, 2015

The Islamic State group revealed over the weekend that at the centerpiece of its goal to bring down America is a concerted effort to weaken the U.S. dollar and replace it with gold currency.
A video posted Saturday warned of the “dawning of a new age” in which replacing the dollar with gold would deliver “the second blow to America’s capitalist financial system of enslavement … casting into ruins their fraudulent dollar note.”
The first blow, it said, was the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
The Islamic State group vowed to destroy the U.S. dollar and replace it with gold dinars. (Screenshot: Islamic State group video)

The English-language video included archival footage from U.S. news channels, including a 2007 clip of Ron Paul sounding the alarm over the vulnerability of the dollar.
Produced by the Islamic State’s Al Hayat Media, the extremist Sunni group positioned itself as leading the fight against fiat currency by minting caliphate gold, silver and bronze coins. It named them after historical Islamic caliphate coins: the gold dinar, the silver dirham and the bronze fals (or the plural fulus).
Its dedication to gold – and opposition to paper notes – was grounded in the Quran, excerpts of which appeared onscreen in the video.