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Light Sabers

Russia & China veto Western resolution on keeping Syria-Turkey border crossings open, but Moscow's counter-proposal fails

un aid
© Reuters / Osman Orsal
A Russian UN Security Council resolution on Syrian-Turkish border crossings has been rejected, after Moscow and Beijing vetoed a draft by Western members who sought to reopen the checkpoints outside of government control.

The international body, working in an online format due to the coronavirus pandemic, rejected the Russian proposal with four votes in favor, seven against, and four abstentions. It is the fourth time that a vote on the rival measures has failed, with the council struggling to reach a compromise as the mandate of the border crossings expires on Friday.

Earlier on Friday, 13 out of 15 Security Council members supported a draft prepared by Germany and Belgium. Moscow and Beijing used their veto to stop the motion, however.

X

Trump commutes Roger Stone's sentence just days before prison surrender deadline

Roger Stone
© Wall Street JournalRoger Stone signals 'victory'
The Republican strategist and Trump's longtime friend was days away from having to surrender to a federal prison. He was sentenced in February to 40 months in prison for lying to Congress.

President Donald Trump on Friday commuted the prison sentence of former campaign aide Roger Stone, sparing his longtime adviser from having to report to prison next week.

"Roger Stone has already suffered greatly," the White House said in a statement. "He was treated very unfairly, as were many others in this case. Roger Stone is now a free man!"

A source told NBC News Trump called Stone on Friday night to tell him the news.

The announcement came shortly after a federal appeals court denied Stone's emergency motion to delay his July 14th surrender date.

Stone lawyer Robert Buschel told NBC News "We are grateful and relieved. And glad this nightmare is over."


Comment: Tucker Carlson reiterates the facts of Stone''s arrest and his pardon:

UPDATES 11/7/2020: RS's dance for joy not only hit a nerve with the liberal left and opponents of President Trump, it triggered fury and indignation from the critics:




So what's next for Roger Stone, should he put the legal mess to rest?




Star of David

Did Ireland's minister distort the truth about Israel's settlement imports to lawmakers?

Coveney/Woulfe
© Niall Carson/PA Wire/Zuma PressIrish FM Simon Coveney • Legal advisor Seamus Woulfe
Ireland's foreign minister Simon Coveney may have misled his fellow lawmakers during a debate on forbidding goods from Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank. Coveney has been the key obstacle to introducing such a ban.

Two of the three parties forming Ireland's new government have supported the Occupied Territories Bill - as the legislation banning settlement imports is called. Yet Coveney vetoed its inclusion in the program for the new coalition.

The bill had previously been approved by a majority in both houses of Ireland's parliament, the Oireachtas. Despite how the bill had won such broad support, Coveney and his colleagues in the right-wing Fine Gael party prevented it from coming into effect.

Coveney remains foreign minister in the new government, a post he has held since 2017. Last year Coveney made a statement against the legislation when it came before the Dáil, the lower house in the national parliament.

He alleged then that the Occupied Territories Bill was at odds with European Union law and if it was implemented Ireland "would be exposed to potentially very significant fines." Penalties imposed by the EU could be as high as "tens of millions of euros" per year, he said.

Coveney claimed that Seamus Woulfe, then Ireland's attorney general, had "confirmed clearly that passage of the bill would put Ireland in breach of EU law and would expose Ireland to legal action by the European Commission." But, Woulfe's advice was not as clear cut as Coveney suggested.

Briefcase

Michael Flynn's defense team says new DOJ documents contain 'shocking exculpatory evidence'

Michael Flynn
© AP Photo/Carolyn KasterIn this Feb. 1, 2017, file photo, then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn speaks during the daily news briefing at the White House, in Washington.
FBI 'did not believe General Flynn was acting as an agent of Russia' the documents state

Newly released documents about the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn show additional "exculpatory evidence" linked to a Justice Department review of the case investigators built against him shortly after President Trump's election, his lawyers argued in a court filing Friday.

"These documents establish that on January 25, 2017 - the day after the agents ambushed him at the White House - the agents and DOJ officials knew General Flynn's statements were not material to any investigation, that he was 'open and forthcoming' with the agents, that he had no intent to deceive them, and that he believed he was fully truthful with them," Flynn's attorneys wrote. "In short, there was no crime for many reasons."

Flynn's lawyers said that top Justice Department officials and the special counsel's office knew about the documents for three years before they were able to obtain them, following U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri Jeffrey Jensen's review of the case.

Comment: While its good to finally see how Flynn was wrongfully accused and persecuted coming to light, what's horribly egregious is how federal judge Sullivan, who is presiding over the case, refuses to dismiss it - in what is clearly a politically motivated maneuver.

Others in Washington in are not giving up however:






Smoking

WHO partners with Johnson & Johnson, Amazon & Google to launch new AI-based anti-tobacco program

No smoking
© republicworld.com
The World Health Organisation has partnered with Johnson & Johnson, Amazon and Google in its new anti-tobacco program aimed at introducing new tools to quit smoking. The WHO has been warning that the globe's 1.3 billion tobacco users are at higher risk during the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The initiative includes developing nicotine patches and artificial-intelligence-fuelled support to tackle both the physical and mental challenges to quitting tobacco at once.

The Access Initiative for Quitting Tobacco program will begin with Jordan, which has the highest rates of tobacco users in the world and will eventually be rolled out to other countries. Dr Ruediger Krech of WHO said that the partnership with tech and pharmaceutical industries will improve people's health and save lives during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Comment: See also:


Black Cat

Peak hypocrisy: Netherlands govt. to take RUSSIA to European Court of Human Rights over 'role' in MH17 crash

MH17 wreckage 800px
© Sputnik / Andrey SteninWreckage of MH17 on July 18, 2014 in Shaktarsk, the day after it crashed.
The Dutch government has said it will file a suit against Russia at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). It alleges that Moscow played a part in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014.

"Today, the Dutch government decided to bring Russia before the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for its role in the downing of Flight MH17,"said Stef Blok, the Dutch foreign minister, as cited by his ministry's website.

Achieving justice for the 298 victims of the tragedy, two thirds of whom were citizens of the Netherlands, "is and will remain the government's highest priority" and by going to the ECHR it's "moving closer to this goal," according to the official.

Comment:


Info

UN 'Independent' Commission on Syria cannot guarantee credibility of its own data

UN ‘Independent’ Commission on Syria Cannot Guarantee Credibility of Its Own Data
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, which reported "crimes" of the official Damascus in Idlib, cannot guarantee the credibility of the information it disseminates, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday following a videoconference with his counterparts from the African Union trio (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt and South Africa).

"We believe that all issues regarding the Syrian or any other conflict must be viewed and solved only based on concrete facts, on information that the relevant organization can be held responsible for," Lavrov stated, according to TASS.

"This independent commission cannot be held responsible for its own statements, which has been proven repeatedly," he added.

Comment: Good on Lavrov and others in the Russian Federation for continuing to call out the UN, the OPCW, and other Western-influenced organizations who have been tasked with wholesale lying to the world about Syria and Russia.

See also:


NPC

AOC: 'Only entitled moaners think cancel culture exists' (in a post complaining about her critics) - social media bites back

ocasio cortez
© REUTERS/Andrew KellyU.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) strikes what she hopes is a heroic pose
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has denied the existence of cancel culture, suggesting it is an invention of privileged moaners who can't handle criticism. Her thesis prompted speculation that the powerful lawmaker has no self-awareness.

The rookie New York congresswoman, whose 'woke' Twitter takes have made her a hero to many on the Left, attempted to debunk the concept of cancel culture in a series of profound posts.

"People who are actually 'cancelled' don't get their thoughts published and amplified in major outlets," she argued, adding that the whiners who complain about being 'cancelled' are actually just entitled and hate being "held accountable" or "unliked."

Comment:


Syringe

UK's quantitative easing ponzi-scheme injecting even more cash than during the crash of '08

bank of england
© Getty ImagesWe are hooked on the economic equivalent of crack cocaine
The FTSE-100 index of leading stocks is over 20 per cent up since Britain went into lockdown — 'bull market' territory. The government borrowed £55 billion in May, nine times more than the same month last year — yet borrowing costs are down, with some investors now paying to lend to an increasingly indebted nation.

Who cares if the UK economy will shrink some 10 per cent this year, as our national debt rockets above 100 per cent of GDP? Stocks are up, bond prices are up and the laws of economics have been suspended. It's different this time — and all because of quantitative easing.

Back in 2009, with the global banking system on the brink of collapse, QE was a justifiable emergency measure. But this one-off post-crisis necessity has now morphed into a lifestyle choice. For a decade since the financial crisis, QE has pumped up share prices and suppressed bond yields, allowing governments to borrow cheaply. But as state spending has surged post-Covid, we've become dependent. QE is now the economic equivalent of crack cocaine.

Comment: See also:


Eye 1

Meet the Israeli intelligence-linked firm using AI to profile Americans and guide US lockdown policy

Israeli AI
An Israeli government contractor founded by a former Israeli spy has partnered with one U.S. state and is set to announce a series of new partnerships with other states and U.S. healthcare providers to monitor civilian health and use an IDF-designed AI system to profile Americans likely to contract coronavirus and to inform U.S. government lockdown policy.

A company tied to Israel's military signal intelligence unit, Unit 8200, has recently partnered with the state of Rhode Island to use an artificial intelligence-based system developed in tandem with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to profile Americans potentially infected and/or "at risk" of being infected with coronavirus, then informing government authorities of their "risk profile." Once flagged, state health officials can target those individuals as well as their communities for mandatory testing, treatment and/or more restrictive lockdown measures.

The firm, Israel-based Diagnostic Robotics, is poised to announce a series of new such partnerships with several other U.S. states as well as major U.S. hospital systems and healthcare providers in the coming weeks, according to a company spokesperson. The first of these announcements came on June 30 regarding the firm's new partnership with Mayo Clinic, which will soon implement the Diagnostic Robotics' "artificial intelligence platform that predicts patients' hospitalization risk." They have also been in discussions with Vice President Mike Pence about the platform's implementation nationwide since April.

Comment: See also: