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'No joke, intruders will be shot!' Iran warns spies to keep clear of its joint drills with China & Russia


RT
Sun, 29 Dec 2019 01:11 UTC

Comment: Few in the West noticed because they're too busy slugging each other over trivia, but this triangulation of Eurasian power is a pretty significant event...


Xining
© AFP / Iranian Army officeChinese destroyer Xining (117), Iranian frigate Alborz (72), and Russian frigate Yaroslav Mudry (727) during joint Iran-Russia-China naval drills
As Iran, China, and Russia hold unprecedented joint naval drills that focus on anti-piracy and counter-terrorism tactics, Tehran has warned potential adversaries against nearing the war game zone for military espionage.

"A joint war game is no joke, and this is no joking matter for us either," the deputy chief of Iran's army for coordination, Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, told reporters on Saturday. "Many countries are definitely seeking to know what the matter is. Spies have also taken action."

"We will hit whatever spying craft in the war game zone, be it watercraft or aircraft, as we have proved having such a capability in the past."

The four-day exercise between the three nations began Friday in the Gulf of Oman, which saw multiple maritime incidents this year, while a section of the drills is set to take place in the northern parts of the Indian Ocean.

Comment: See also:

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Better Earth

Ukraine and Donbass conduct planned 'all for all' prisoner exchange in move to end war

Evgeniy Maloletka
AP
Sun, 29 Dec 2019 15:40 UTC
ukraine prisoner exchange
© AP Photo/Alexei AlexandrovA Russia-backed separatist soldier escorts a group of separatists war prisoners after they were exchanged near the checkpoint Horlivka, eastern Ukraine, Sunday, Dec. 29, 2019. Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebels in the east have begun exchanging prisoners in a move aimed at ending their five-year-long war.
Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine began exchanging scores of prisoners Sunday in a move aimed at ending their 5-year-long war.

The move was part of an agreement brokered earlier this month at a summit of the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France.

A rebel government official and the Ukrainian president's office confirmed that the swap at a checkpoint near the rebel-held city of Horlivka had started.

The total number of people freed was not immediately known, though authorities said earlier that 142 were expected to be involved in the exchange — 55 released by the rebels and 87 by Ukraine.


Comment: So far, the numbers are looking higher than expected:
The self-declared Donetsk People's Republic has handed over 51 people to Kiev, while receiving 61 of their followers. The Lugansk region returned 25 and took in 63 prisoners; nine people held by Kiev refused to partake in the exchange.

The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Kiev had received a total of 76 people from Donetsk and Lugansk.



Those to be released by Ukraine included five former members of the now-disbanded special police force Berkut who were charged in the killing of protesters in Kyiv in 2014, Ukrainian news site Hromadske quoted their lawyer, Igor Varfolomeyev, as saying.


Comment: Charged, but perhaps not guilty. Most if not all of the killing was done by neo-Nazi snipers and mercenaries.


Ludmila Denisova, human rights envoy for the Ukrainian parliament, said the first group released by the rebels included Ukrainian soldiers.

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Attention

Imran Khan: India 'will conduct some action' in Pakistani-held part of Kashmir to distract from citizenship law protests


RT
Sun, 29 Dec 2019 15:54 UTC
Imran Khan
© AFP / Aamir QureshiImran Khan addresses the nation outside the Prime Minister Secretariat building in Islamabad on August 30, 2019.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan warned that his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, wants to shift global attention away from ongoing protests against the citizenship law by conducting an operation in Pakistani-held territory.

"I have been telling the world for the past five months that Modi-RSS government, in order to divert the world attention away from Kashmir and the protests against the [citizenship] laws, will definitely conduct some sort of action in Azad Kashmir," Khan told the crowd in the Punjab Province on Thursday, according to local media reports, referring to the part of disputed Kashmir controlled by Pakistan.

Khan did not elaborate on what kind of "action" India may undertake in Pakistani-held areas of Kashmir. Cross-border shelling occurred along the Line of Control (LoC) on Wednesday, claiming victims on both sides. India and Pakistan accused each other of firing the first shot.
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Attention

Pakistan ex-President Pervez Musharraf challenges death sentence


Al Jazeera
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 15:47 UTC
Pervez Musharraf
© Anjum Naveed/APThe verdict called for the former president's corpse to be displayed outside Parliament
Former Pakistan president and army chief Pervez Musharraf has submitted a petition in Lahore High Court challenging the death sentence handed to him in a treason case earlier this month.

According to local media, the petition highlighted that the "judgement contained a mix of anomalies and contradictory statements" and that the special court "rapidly and hurriedly wrapped up the trial which was far from conclusion".

A special court convicted Musharraf and sentenced him to death on December 17 on charges of high treason and subverting the constitution - an unprecedented verdict in a country that has been ruled by its powerful military for roughly half of its 72-year history.
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Calendar

Britain sets 'hard deadline' for trade deal with EU - Brussels very worried

Rachel Russell
Express, UK
Sun, 29 Dec 2019 15:13 UTC
johnson leyen
© GETTYBoris Johnson has slapped down Ursula Von der Leyen's fears about a trade deal
Britain has set a hard deadline of December 2020 for reaching a new trade deal with the EU. But the European Commission President said both sides needed to seriously think about whether this is enough time to negotiate a new trade deal and work out agreements about a series of other issues. Ms Von der Leyen told French daily newspaper Les Echos: "It would be reasonable to evaluate the situation mid-year and then, if necessary, agree on extending the transition period."

In separate comments to German magazine Der Spiegel, Ms Von der Leyen added the UK's departure deadline on December 31 "worries her a lot."

She said: "That worries me a lot, because time is extremely short for the mass of issues that have to be negotiated."

She said earlier this month that this timeframe is "extremely short" to discuss not only trade issues but also education, transport, fisheries and other issues.

Comment: Which is why Brexit isn't happening this year, next year, or any year anytime soon.

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Propaganda

Best of the Web: Media's Deafening Silence On Latest WikiLeaks Drops Is Its Own Scandal

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Sat, 28 Dec 2019 14:34 UTC
opcw
This is getting really, really, really weird.

WikiLeaks has published yet another set of leaked internal documents from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) adding even more material to the mountain of evidence that we've been lied to about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria last year which resulted in airstrikes upon that nation from the US, UK and France.

This new WikiLeaks drop includes an email from the OPCW Chief of Cabinet Sebastien Braha (who is reportedly so detested by organisation inspectors that they code named him "Voldemort") throwing a fit over the Ian Henderson Engineering Assessment which found that the Douma incident was likely a staged event. Braha is seen ordering OPCW staff to "remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever" from the organisation's secure registry.
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Cards

Paul Craig Roberts reviews 'JFK-9/11, 50 Years of Deep State' by Laurent Guyenot

Paul Craig Roberts
paulcraigroberts.org
Sat, 28 Dec 2019 22:53 UTC
JFK-911 - 50 Years of the Deep State
© Amazon
In 2014 Progressive Press published a book by a French author, Laurent Guyenot, titled JFK-9/11: 50 Years of Deep State. The book contains much interesting reporting that shows that the official explanations we are given about even major events, such as the assassination of a President and 9/11, are transparently false. Yet, these transparently false explanations are hard to challenge despite all available evidence being against the explanations.

Reviewing such a book is a challenge that I avoided by securing permission to reprint two chapters from the book. One chapter, "Ghost planes," deals with the mystery of the four allegedly hijacked airliners. No trace of the one that allegedly hit the Pentagon has ever been found, and the many videos of the event remain under lock and key. No trace of the one that allegedly crashed in Pennsylvania has ever been found. Neither has any trace of the two that allegedly hit the two World Trade Center towers ever been found, although an unburnt passport was allegedly found in the ruins of two massive buildings.

Readers might remember that I raised the question why we did not hear demands for explanations from the families of the victims of the four destroyed airliners like we did from the families whose relatives were in the twin towers. Guyenot reports that of the alleged casualties of AA77 "only five of these have relatives who received the 9-11 Compensation Fund offered by the State. . . . no family of the victims of Flight UA93 requested compensation."

How can this be?

The other chapter, "The Art of the Patsy," shows that the key to the ability of the authorities to control the explanation is to have an explanation of the event ready at hand. No one expected President Kennedy's assassination or he wouldn't have been riding in a convertible. Yet it was instantly known that Oswald was the assassin. The explanation for 9/11 was also instantaneous. It was CIA-asset Osama bin Laden, who was dying from renal failure and no longer useful to the CIA.

If you find Guyenot interesting, you might want to read his book. What Guyenot shows us is that what the CIA has schooled the dumbshit presstitute media to ridicule as "conspiracy theory" is indeed a conspiracy, a real one usually involving the CIA.

Sorry. The images didn't transfer.
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Pyramid

SOTT Focus: De-Bunking the Myth of the Jewish Conspiracy

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 20:43 UTC
trump Jews
Recently, I've noticed a strong resurgence of a lazy tendency to blame all the world's problems on "the Jews". At least 20% of my published articles over the past year have resulted in readers condemning me for not saying that Jews are the causal hand running the world. Here, I'd like very much to say something about this. I think this is especially important since a growing number of influential alt-media platforms such as Russia Insider have moved not only towards an absolutely anti-Jewish, but also a dangerously pro-Hitler narrative that I believe must be nipped in the bud and put into some rational perspective.

Just to state clearly off the bat: I am not a fan of the ADL, the Rothschild banking dynasty, the younger Warburg dynasty, Mossad-affiliated pedophiles or George Soros. I do not condone the B'nai Brith's Freemasonic intrigues, nor do I approve of the "Greater Israel" logic of Jabotinzky-ite loving Zionists, who tend to believe that the entire Middle East from Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran belongs rightfully to them.

I do however believe that there is something profoundly beautiful in the Jewish cultural matrix that stems from Platonic humanist thinkers as Rabbi Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.-50 A.D.) to Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) to the great scholar Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), whose amazing contributions to human knowledge birthed Germany's incredible renaissance movement of the 18-19th century. The rise of such modern Jewish artists who led the Yiddish Renaissance as I.L. Peretz and Shalom Aleichem nourished their souls on such ecumenical inspiration at the turn of the 20th century. The rise of modern Zionism, as we shall see, was designed explicitly to destroy this positive spiritual tradition within Judaism, reducing it to a 'blood and soil' cult.

Comment: As always with this topic, it's complicated. But the author is essentially correct in that 'world rulership', to the extent that that is even a thing, doesn't start and end with 'the Jews', just as it doesn't with the British. No one country, ethnicity, religion or network is 'driving this thing'. The 'powers and principalities' behind the thrones are way too cunning to 'put all their eggs in one basket' by operating in this realm via just one source.

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Rocket

Best of the Web: What does deploying Russia's hypersonic warheads mean for arms race? Avangard changes everything!

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 20:38 UTC
Avangard
© 1Avangard liftoff, Sputnik/Russian Defense MinistryAvangard liftoff
Moscow's deployment of 'Avangard' hypersonic warheads means the US missile defense installations in Europe are now obsolete - and that Washington would have to spend a lot of money it doesn't have in order to catch up.

Video released by the Russian defense ministry on Friday shows the hypersonic glider warheads being loaded onto silo-based missiles. For now, the Avangards will be mounted on the UR-100N (or SS-19 Stiletto, as NATO calls them) ballistic missiles, until the RS-28 Sarmat is ready to enter service.

Hypersonic weapons fly far faster than the speed of sound. Avangard is capable of reaching Mach 27 without losing control or disintegrating under heat and pressure. This means that the weapon can outmaneuver any defenses on its approach phase, rendering it "absolutely invulnerable to any air or missile defense system," in the words of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We don't have any defense that could deny the employment of such a weapon against us," is how General John Hyten, then head of the US Strategic Command, put it to the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2018, shortly after Putin confirmed the existence of Avangard and several other weapons.


Comment: See also:



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Arrow Up

If FBI's contempt for the law goes unchallenged, its abuses will get worse

Adam Mill
The Federalist
Thu, 26 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
FBI Chief
© UnknownFBI Chief Christopher Wray
The former CIA and FBI director's article is a symptom of how the establishment media has become the propaganda arm of an increasingly robust U.S. authoritarian movement.

In 2018, the U.S. government filed 1,117 final applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for authority for the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches. One application was withdrawn. One other was denied. The remaining 1,115 were granted.

Hours before the FISA court issued a December 17 order openly declaring that it could no longer trust any of the sworn statements the FBI had submitted to justify spying on Americans, The New York Times published an opinion article by William Webster, a former director of both the FBI and the CIA. Webster wrote,
"Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them."
Gone are the days The New York Times worked to expose government abuse of power. The New York Times now defends power from truth.
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