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Tue, 02 Nov 2021
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Quenelle - Golden

Ukrainian comedian who starred in TV show about guy who pulls off incredible election victory... is about to pull off incredible election victory!

zelenskiy
© Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
Latest polling in Ukraine suggests that the actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who has eschewed traditional political campaigning and given little insight into his policy positions, is set to win a crushing victory in Sunday's presidential election.

Zelenskiy is known for his television series Servant of the People in which he plays a history teacher who wins a shock victory in presidential elections. He is now odds-on to pull off the feat in real life, after capitalising on widespread disappointment with the incumbent, Petro Poroshenko, who won elections in 2014 after the Maidan revolution kicked out the previous government.

A poll released earlier this week gave Zelenskiy 72% of votes from those who said they were certain to vote, against 25% for Poroshenko. Other polls have also given Zelenskiy an overwhelming lead.

Comment: Now, in fairness to Ukraine, liberal democracy is a joke in pretty much every country these days.

So, our congratulations to this fledging Democrazi for taking it up down to the next level...


Che Guevara

World bully: US targets Cuba with more sanctions, 'to restrict tourism' - Bolton

cuba
© REUTERS/Phil Noble
The US is targeting Cuba with additional sanctions, including restricting travel to the island nation, limiting remittances, and sanctioning additional entities, White House national security adviser John Bolton said.

US citizens sending remittances to Cuba will be limited t $1,000 per person per quarter, Bolton said on Wednesday. Non-family travel will be restricted to reduce "veiled tourism" that benefits the Cuban government and military, he added.

"Through the Treasury Department, we will also implement changes to end the use of 'U-turn transactions,' which allow the regime to circumvent sanctions and obtain access to hard currency and the US banking system," Bolton said in a speech to veterans of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, when CIA-backed Cuban exiles tried to overthrow Fidel Castro's revolutionary government.

Comment: Is the US, floundering in their overthrow of Venezuela, now going for Cuba?


Arrow Up

Farage's Brexit Party set to storm EU elections with shock win following surge in polls

Brexit Party
© Reuters / Eddie Keogh
(R) Nigel Farage with (L) Chairman Richard Tice during the launch of the newly created 'Brexit Party' campaign
The new Brexit Party, led by Nigel Farage, is on course to cause a political earthquake at next month's EU Parliament elections, with a new survey showing his anti-EU group ahead of both Labour and the Tories.

YouGov, one of Britain's main polling companies, has Farage's Brexit Party at 27 percent, five points ahead of Labour and well ahead of PM Theresa May's Conservatives at 15 percent, with just a few weeks to go until elections on May 23.

The newly-formed party has surged 12 percent in less than a week, with Farage's former party, UKIP, suffering the most from the pro-Brexit group's incarnation, plunging seven percent over the same period.

Comment: It remains to be seen whether Farage will achieve anything if he does win, but it is yet another sign that most citizens in Europe are fed up with the EU as it is: And check out SOTT radio's:


Bad Guys

US & Israeli-made arms left by terrorists found in Syrian countryside, again

Israel weapons syria
© Youtube / Syrian Ministry of Defense
The cache is just the latest hoard of weapons and supplies found by Syrian forces as they have advanced to clear the country from a diverse assortment of terrorists seeking to overthrow the country's government to establish an Islamist caliphate.

Authorities in the Daraa countryside in southern Syria have showed off a fresh cache of armaments left behind by terrorists as they fled the area, with the Syrian Arab News Agency posting photos of the massive haul, featuring a wide assortment of weapons, some of them made in the USA and Israel.

The catch includes a wide variety of rifles, heavy machine guns, mortar shells and RPG rounds, grenades and an assortment of ammunition of various calibers, with walkie-talkies and field hospital equipment also in the mix. The photos show that some of the equipment is brand new in what appears to be its original packaging.

Comment: Considering the sheer quantity, variety and the regularity with which these supplies are found, it is not, as a US commander previously claimed, that they 'lost track' of these armaments, but that, evidently, there has been a well funded and organized supply line to the terrorists:


Network

Huawei CEO: US sees 5G technology as 'strategic weaponry' like the nuclear bomb

Huawei
© Reuters / Tyrone Siu
Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei has blasted Donald Trump's fixation on 5G competition with China, likening the technology to a "nuclear bomb" for the US president. Zhengfei also promised to support a "no-spy agreement" with Germany.

"Unfortunately, the US sees 5G technology as a strategic weapon," Zhengfei said in an interview with German Wirtschaftswoche and Handelsblatt newspapers.

"For them it is a kind of nuclear bomb," he added.

NPC

Maxine Waters & Elijah Cummings sign secret MOUs to target Trump

Elijah Cummings

Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Elijah Cummings
Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Elijah Cummings and Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters executed a secret Memorandum of Understanding to "target" President Trump and subpoena all his financial and banking records, according to a letter sent to Cummings from ranking committee member Rep. Jim Jordan.

Further, Jordan's letter indicates that other MOUs have apparently been signed and agreed to with House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Ca, who has promised to continue investigations into the president despite findings by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office that there was no conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Attorney General William Barr released a summary of Mueller's 400 page report several weeks ago and the redacted version of the report is expected to be released by the DOJ this Thursday.

On Monday, Jordan sent a memorandum explaining his objections to the partisan behavior of Cummings and "unprecedented subpoena to Mazars USA LLP," as reported by SaraACarter.com.

Bad Guys

Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow confirms that 3 FISA applications were denied in 2016

Contreras Flynn Strzok
During a rather innocuous podcast discussion panel yesterday, one of President Trump's personal lawyers Jay Sekulow mentioned the FBI had three FISA applications denied by the FISA court in 2016. [Podcast Here - Note comment at 25:05] The denials were always suspected; however, until now no-one in/around the administration has ever confirmed.

Jay Sekulow did not expand on his statement and did not explain where the information was derived from; however, if accurate this may explain the backstory to why FISA Judge Rudolph Contreras was recused. This issue has been nagging many people since the recusal notation in December 2017.

Jet5

India has a vast arsenal of Russian-made weapons - and is only seeking to expand it

India's Russian Weapons
© AFP / Sam Panthaky / Money Sharma / R Narendra
Even as Washington is wooing New Delhi, India is seeking to buy Russian-made military hardware. The most recent deal would see the purchase of more than 450 tanks from Moscow for $1.93 billion, and it's not even the biggest one.

The purchase of 464 T-90MS main battle tanks, approved last week, will further expand the large stock of Russian-designed and manufactured weapons in India's arsenal. The country is one of the primary customers for Moscow's arms.

Another, even more significant contract - worth $5.43 billion - was signed last October, when India ordered five S-400 anti-aircraft missile systems. Delivery is expected by 2020.

S-400 launchers.
© Sputnik / Artem Zhitenev
S-400 launchers.

Magic Hat

Oops! NY Times Accidentally Unravels UK Government's Official Skripal Fairy Tale

skripals house
© Hannah Mckay / Reuters
While London almost immediately blamed Moscow for being behind the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the UK city of Salisbury in March 2018, Russia has strongly rejected its involvement, stressing it's been denied access both to the investigation into the incident and the Russian nationals affected.

On 16th April, the New York Times published a glowing profile of Gina Haspel, who in May 2018 became the seventh director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The article referred to Haspel - the former head of a CIA 'black site' in Thailand at which an indeterminate number of suspected terrorists were viciously tortured - as an "adept tactician" blessed with "good listening, empathy and an ability to connect", and discussed the difficulties the intelligence chief faced in ensuring "her voice is heard at the White House", due to the intransigence of President Donald Trump and a White House that allegedly treats national security professionals "with deep skepticism".

Comment: Indeed, Integrity Initiative, spawn of the MI5 op Institute for Statecraft, has been running this story:


Attention

Investigative group: France may be complicit in Saudi war crimes in Yemen

Shooting thing smoke
© 5Reuters/Faisal Al Nasser
While Paris is pointedly secretive about its role in the campaign waged by Riyadh in Yemen, the scale of its involvement might make France complicit in the Saudi war crimes, a co-founder of a French investigative group told RT.

Recent revelations made by the French investigative news organization Disclose have lifted the curtain on the true scale of French assistance to Saudi Arabia in its brutal war against the Yemeni Houthi rebels, widely seen as one of the worst humanitarian crises unfolding in today's world.

Paris argues that the weapons it actively sells to the Saudis are used for defensive purposes only and are intended to help Riyadh fight terrorists. However, that might not exactly be the case, Geoffrey Rivolsi, the co-founder of Disclose, believes.

Comment: As goes France, so likewise the USA. Both are in the crosshairs as to their responsibility and support for the Saudi coalition's reign of terror on the Yemeni population and the blood money it produces. Are they complicit or non-complicit by technicality? Who decides? Over a hundred thousand dead from war and starvation have no vote.

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