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How India's new ballistic missile sub changes regional power balance


RT
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Modi - INS Arihant
© Global Look Press
INS Arihant is seen on a screen behind India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
India is gearing up to test-fire its most potent home-made ballistic missile in the coming days. The missile is an upgrade to the country's nuclear deterrence arsenal, but the submarine that fires it is a game-changer.

The K-4 submarine-launched missile has a range of 3,500 km and is scheduled for testing in mid-December, according to sources cited by the Economic Times. Previous tests scheduled for November had been scuppered by a cyclone off India's eastern coast. A successful test would bring the nuclear-capable missile significantly closer to operational status.

However, the weapon would be useless without a platform to launch it from, and this is where India's first home-built ballistic missile submarine enters the picture.
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Briefcase

IG report confirms suspicions of FBI misconduct and abuses in anti-Trump probe of Russia collusion hoax

Gregg Jarrett
Fox News
Tue, 10 Dec 2019 03:29 UTC
horowitz testimony FISA report hearing
© Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz arrives to testify about the Inspector General's report on alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Dec. 11, 2019.
It turns out that the most revealing aspect of the long-awaited Justice Department's inspector general's report on the origins of the Russia collusion hoax comes from Attorney General William Barr's damning assessment of it.

In unmistakably terse language, Barr denounced "a small group of now-former FBI officials" for their "misconduct," "malfeasance and misfeasance," and "clear abuse of the FISA process."

Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz, issued a 476-page report Monday that broadly examined: (1) how and why the FBI initiated an investigation of candidate Donald Trump and his campaign in July 2016; and (2) the decision to seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil a Trump campaign associate.
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Question

United Ireland in the cards? UK election results 'reflect dramatic & historic shift in Northern Ireland'


RT
Sat, 14 Dec 2019 03:11 UTC
Ireland genocide memorial
© Reuters / Clodagh Kilcoyne
A mural memorializing Britain's 19th century genocide in Ireland, is seen in a nationalist area of Belfast, Northern Ireland February 28, 2017.
Historic election results in Northern Ireland which saw pro-Irish nationalists overtake pro-British unionists for the first time indicates the demographics of the region are moving in favor of a united Ireland, analysts told RT.

With the republican Sinn Féin holding onto all of its seven seats and the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) winning two seats - while the hardline unionist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) lost two - parties that believe in advancing the cause of Irish unity are now in the majority.

Given that the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), signed in 1998, includes a provision for a united Ireland by referendum, nationalists will now be making it a more "pressing issue" than ever before, journalist Finian Cunningham told RT.
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Sherlock

Investigating Bill Browder: Why SPIEGEL is standing by its Magnitsky research


der SPEIGAL
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 21:57 UTC
browder
© Luke MacGregor/ Bloomberg/ Getty Images
Bill Browder, founder of Hermitage Capital Management and world-class fraudster
Former major investor Bill Browder accuses der SPIEGEL of misrepresenting the circumstances surrounding the death of Russian Sergei Magnitsky. SPIEGEL rejects this - and lists the arguments and facts.

The der SPIEGEL on 23November reported on the background of the so-called Magnitsky sanctions. These punitive measures, which the United States imposed on Russian officials, are largely based on the account of the former major investor Bill Browder and relate to the fate of his colleague Sergei Magnitsky.

Magnitsky died in a prison in Moscow in 2009 under circumstances that were not fully understood. Browder claims Magnitsky was murdered for uncovering a tax scandal. The SPIEGEL report describes the contradictions in Browder's statements and states that he cannot provide sufficient evidence for his thesis.

Browder has now made a complaint against the text public, in the form of a letter to the editor-in-chief and a complaint to the German Press Council. In his letter, he accuses der SPIEGEL of distorting the facts.

Comment: Der Spiegel finds Browder's Magnitsky narrative riddled with lies: Anti-Russian sanctions are based on fraudster's tales

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Stock Down

'No need to panic': Eurozone may need €20 billion cash injection as economies stagnate - Lagarde

Phillip Inman
The Guardian
Thu, 12 Dec 2019 17:29 UTC
Lagarde
© Ralph Orlowski/Reuters
Christine Lagarde spoke after her first policy meeting as president of the European Central Bank
New European Central Bank (ECB) boss Christine Lagarde has kept open the possibility of a fresh stimulus package for the eurozone after admitting that a plan to inject €20bn a month into the financial system was unlikely to push growth and inflation back to target.

Speaking after her first policy meeting as ECB president, Lagarde said the central bank would keep interest rates at historic lows and maintain the plan hatched by her predecessor Mario Draghi to re-start quantitive easing to cut the cost of borrowing and boost growth.

But she said a wide-ranging review of the ECB's strategy - the first since 2003 - could allow policymakers to expand the number of tools used to stimulate growth and push inflation back towards the target level of 2%.

Comment: The ECB can implore and plead to EU governments all they like but, looking around, most already have their citizens suffering punishing austerity measures in one way or another and they don't have the money to spend on propping up an ailing eurozone: But, unsurprisingly, it's not just the outlook for Europe that looks dark:

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Tornado1

Three major global imbalances: Financial, trust and geopolitical

Michael Krieger
Libertyblitzkrieg
Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:07 UTC
congress
But greed is a bottomless pit
And our freedom's a joke
We're just taking a piss
And the whole world must watch the sad comic display
If you're still free start running away
Cause we're coming for you!

- Conor Oberst, "Land Locked Blues"

It's hard to believe 2020 is just around the corner. If the last ten years have taught us anything, it's the extent to which a vicious and corrupt oligarchy will go to further extend and entrench their economic and societal interests. Although the myriad desperate actions undertaken by the ruling class this past decade have managed to sustain the current paradigm a bit longer, it has not come without cost and major long-term consequence. Gigantic imbalances across multiple areas have been created and worsened, and the resolution of these in the years ahead (2020-2025) will shape the future for decades to come. I want to discuss three of them today, the financial system imbalance, the trust imbalance and the geopolitical imbalance.

Recent posts have focused on how what really matters in a crisis is not the event itself, but the response to it. The financial crisis of ten years ago is particularly instructive, as the entire institutional response to a widespread financial industry crime spree was to focus on saving a failed system and then pretending nothing happened. The public was given no time or space to debate whether the system needed saving; or more specifically, which parts needed saving, which parts needed wholesale restructuring and which parts should've been thrown into the dustbin. Rather, unelected central bankers stepped in with trillions in order to prop up, empower and reward the very industry and individuals that created the crisis to begin with. There was no real public debate, central bankers just did whatever they wanted. It was a moment so brazen and disturbing it shook many of us, including myself, out of a lifetime of propaganda induced deception.
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USA

Blue state blues: America's founders feared the 'tyranny of the legislature'

Joel B. Pollak
Breitbart
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:09 UTC
T.Jefferson
© Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images
Thomas Jefferson
Democrats insisted this week that they had to impeach President Donald Trump because our Founders feared a "king." What they forgot, or never learned, is that our Founders feared the tyranny of the legislature as well.

Alexis de Tocqueville raised that point in his treatise, Democracy in America, where he warned that democracy could be destroyed by two forms of dictatorship: the despotism of a single ruler, and the tyranny of the majority.

Tocqueville quoted Thomas Jefferson's letter to James Madison in 1789, in which he declared:
"The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principal, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread and will be for many years."
Tocqueville also quoted James Madison's argument in The Federalist No. 51, arguing for the separation of powers among the several branches by warning that concentrating power in any one branch would be very dangerous.

In December 2015, I predicted that if Trump won the presidency, "[t]he congressional pushback against a President Trump might finally restore the constitutional balance our Framers intended." But Democrats, determined to undo the 2016 election, have upset the balance in the opposite direction.
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Arrow Up

Trump: 'Very large Phase One Deal' agreed with China


RT
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 15:32 UTC
China Shipping
© AFP/Mark Ralston
The United States and China have reached a "very large" trade deal, President Donald Trump has announced. The accord will see China step up its imports of American products, and could end a two-year trade war.

The president claimed that under the agreement, China will make "massive purchases of Agricultural Product, Energy, and Manufactured Goods, plus much more," later specifying to reporters that he predicted the country would purchase over $50 billion in US agricultural products.

"The farmers are going to have to go out and buy much larger tractors" because China is going to be buying so many American farm goods, Trump quipped.

The agreement will increase China's US imports by $200 billion over a two-year period in the agriculture, manufacturing, energy, and services sectors, according to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. Agriculture in particular is set to get a boost of $16 billion in the first year alone, up from 2017's baseline of $24 billion, and China has agreed to aim for Trump's goal of $50 billion. The deal also includes binding changes to some undesirable trade practices; for example, US companies will no longer be pressured to transfer technology to China. Lower tariffs will take effect 30 days after the deal is signed.

Comment: UPDATE: RT, 13/12/2019: Reports of US-China deal, stock markets surge
Washington was expected to impose 15 percent duties on $160 billion of Chinese consumer products such as smartphones, laptops, other electronics and clothes. The levies were set to take effect on Sunday. The White House has offered to scrap those duties.

China stayed silent on whether the two sides had reached a deal, with the Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Hua Chunying saying on Friday that an "agreement has to be mutually beneficial."

Asian stock markets rallied on Friday following the reports and in reaction to US market gains.The Hang Seng and Nikkei both gained 2.6 percent, while the Shanghai Composite was up 1.78 percent. US stocks gained for the second straight session on Friday to reach new record highs on the news.

Chinese officials are set to hold a press conference regarding the trade talks on Friday, at 10:30 p.m. Beijing time (2:30 p.m. GMT).
UPDATE: RT, 13/12/2019: US to remove tariffs 'phase-by-phase', China to cancel tax hikes
The two nations have also reached an agreement to crack down on counterfeit goods and intellectual property theft, Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen added.

China would import more US wheat, corn, and other agricultural products under the new trade agreement, Vice Agricultural Minister Qu Dongyu said, reassuring media that these imports would not create "shocks" to Chinese agriculture.

While Trump declared negotiations for phase two of the trade deal will begin "immediately," Chinese authorities cautioned that negotiations for the second stage will depend on how phase one is implemented. Both parties are still discussing when and where to sign the initial phase of the deal.
See also: China claims it is in close communication with US on trade as fresh tariffs loom

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Cult

House Judiciary Committee sheds crocodile tears over 'solemn and sad day', votes to impeach Trump after sham hearing

Rebecca Shabad
NBC News
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 19:52 UTC
Trump impeachment hearings
© Screen grab France 24
Impeachment hearings got under way in the US House of Representatives on December9, 2019.
The measures, charging abuse of power and obstruction of Congress by the president, now go to the full House for passage.

The House Judiciary Committee, in a historic vote that fell along party lines, approved articles of impeachment Friday against President Donald Trump, charging he abused his power as president and obstructed Congress.

"Today is a solemn and sad day," Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said after the vote in brief remarks. "For the third time in a little over a century and a half, the House Judiciary Committee has voted articles of impeachment against the president for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. The House will act expeditiously."

The measures, which will most likely be voted on by the full House on Wednesday, were passed by the committee after weeks of damaging testimony about Trump's alleged conduct from past and present diplomats and other government officials, as well as legal scholars. They asserted the president had improperly withheld security aid to Ukraine for political reasons, including seeking an investigation of the Bidens.

Comment: Trump says to bring it on:
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, Trump said that he "wouldn't mind" a drawn-out impeachment process, and would like to see the whistleblower whose complaint against him kickstarted the proceedings.

"I'll do whatever I want...we did nothing wrong, so I'll do long or short," Trump said. "I'd like to see the whistleblower, who is a fraud."

"By the way, where's the second whistleblower?" Trump added, citing "corrupt media" reports that a second official had emerged with evidence of his wrongdoing. "We're dealing with a lot of very corrupt people."
"To use the power of impeachment for this nonsense, it's an embarrassment to the country."
"The people are disgusted by the vote," the president added, before warning that impeachment could one day be turned on its current proponents, were a Democrat to take power and a Republican-controlled House remember the Democrats' example.

A Senate trial will allow Trump to call his own witnesses, which was denied to the House Republicans during the impeachment hearings to date.


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Bad Guys

Liverpool ex-beauty queen found guilty of funding terrorism

LIzzie Dearden
The Independent
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 19:02 UTC
Amaani Noor beauty queen jihadi
© YouTube/Amaani Noor
Amaani Noor had married a jihadi fighter online and wanted to join him in Syria
A former beauty queen has been found guilty of funding terrorism after sending her online "husband" £35.

Amaani Noor had attempted to join the Islamist fighter in Syria and prosecutors accused her of supporting violent jihad and sharia law.

The 21-year-old told Liverpool Crown Court she had become increasingly religious after breaking up with her ex-boyfriend, who was a Premier League footballer at the time.

She entered beauty competitions and became a finalist in the Miss Teen Great Britain pageant in 2014.

Noor said she had begun to focus on her religion after her relationship with a footballer in the "public eye" ended when she was 18.

Comment: Ms. Noor should count her blessings that she was only convicted of giving money to a terrorist organization while still in the UK. Her fate could have been much worse if she had gone to join her "husband".

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