Welcome to Sott.net
Tue, 19 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Bulb

Barr announces sweeping new sanctions against left-wing sanctuary cities

Gregg Re
Fox News
Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:22 UTC
bill barr

Attorney General William Barr
Charging that so-called "sanctuary" cities that protect illegal immigrants are jeopardizing domestic security, Attorney General Bill Barr announced a slew of additional sanctions that he called a "significant escalation" against left-wing local and state governments that obstruct the "lawful functioning of our nation's immigration system."

Speaking at the National Sheriff's Association 2020 Winter Legislative and Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., Barr said the Justice Department would immediately file multiple lawsuits against sanctuary jurisdictions for unconstitutionally interfering with federal immigration enforcement, and implement unprecedented national reviews of left-wing sanctuary governments and prosecutors.

"Let us state the reality upfront and as clearly as possible," Barr began. "When we are talking about sanctuary cities, we are talking about policies that are designed to allow criminal aliens to escape. These policies are not about people who came to our country illegally but have otherwise been peaceful and productive members of society. Their express purpose is to shelter aliens whom local law enforcement has already arrested for other crimes. This is neither lawful nor sensible."
      Read More...
Stock Down

Things are falling apart for Europe's single currency in 2020

John Authers
Bloomberg
Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC
From political turmoil in Germany to slumping manufacturing, it's all going wrong.
Euro hole
© posteriori/Getty Images
The widening gyre.
Twilight of the Euro

2020 was supposed to be the year when Europe began to shine. After suffering the decision by the U.K. to leave, the European Union had the chance to move forward with greater certainty. The easing of the U.S.-China trade war would aid recovery after a slump in manufacturing that appeared to be ending. And the euro could start to strengthen against the dollar, in a consummation devoutly wished in the capitals of Europe and the U.S.

It hasn't worked out that way. After an ugly day's trading on Monday, the euro is at its weakest in four months, close to setting a 30-month low, and once more below its level on the day of the U.S. election in November 2016. One again the euro is falling down.
      Read More...
Quenelle

Twitter thumps the Hill-bot for comparing Trump to a 'failed-state fascist' in Roger Stone sentencing upset


RT
Wed, 12 Feb 2020 23:32 UTC
Hillary Clinton
© Reuters / Mario Anzuoni
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton
Failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton slammed her erstwhile rival US President Donald Trump for his criticism of a judge's apparent political bias, but her choice of words triggered a volley of attacks on social media.

Clinton accused Trump of "intimidating judges" in response to his tweet contrasting the Obama-appointed Judge Amy Berman Jackson's decision to put former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort in solitary confinement with her dismissal of a Benghazi-related lawsuit against Clinton.

But it was Clinton's odd choice of words and weirdly flippant tone - "Do you realize intimidating judges is the behavior of failed-state fascists? Just asking!" - that opened the floodgates.
      Read More...
Stormtrooper

Iraqi MP: US troops pullout already underway

Drago Bosnic
Fort Russ
Mon, 10 Feb 2020 22:36 UTC
us troops iraq
The United States has practically started pulling out its military forces from 15 bases in Iraq, senior parliamentary officials in Baghdad said, adding that Washington plans to keep troops just in Ein al-Assad and Erbil.

"The US has started withdrawal from Iraq and started retreat from 15 military bases," Ali al-Qameni, a member of the Iraqi parliament's Security and Defense Commission, was quoted by the Arabic-language al-Ahd news website, as saying on Monday.

He said the Americans only insist on continued buildup at the two bases of Ein al-Assad and Erbil, but Iraqi people and the parliament are pressuring them to conduct a full retreat from the country's entire territory.
      Read More...
Chess

Turkish-Russian tensions rising as Syria imposes the Astana deal for Idlib by force

Elijah J Magnier
EJMagnier.com
Tue, 11 Feb 2020 21:46 UTC
Aleppo bombed syria
© Elijah J. Magnier
Aleppo
Since 2012 the M5 Damascus-Aleppo had been under the control of jihadist forces. The Syrian Army has now liberated the M5 Damascus-Aleppo road and over 140 cities, villages and strategic hills. Turkey and the Uzbeks, Uighurs and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra) failed to protect their fortified positions, abandoning them and retreating towards the area surrounding Idlib.

This is the first time the Turkish Army has been shelled by the Syrian Army. Five Turkish officers were killed at Taftanaz military airport, the base used by Turkey and its jihadists gather. Ankara was forced to send its own army onto the battlefield to compensate for the weakness of its jihadist allies on the ground.

The liberation of the 432 km of the M5 from jihadists was stipulated in the Astana agreement signed in October 2018, a stipulation which Turkey failed to honour since then. The Syrian government carried out three major advances towards the M5 since then, but this time the decision to recover it was final. This is a Syrian-Russian message to President Erdogan that time is running out for Idlib. The Turkish-Russian bras-de-fer is also reaching beyond the Syrian borders. It is also evident in Ukraine and Libya, where Turkey is seeking a major role.
      Read More...
Umbrella

The Mideast's place within Russia's Greater Eurasian Partnership

Andrew Korybko
OneWorld
Tue, 11 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC
BearMap
© Unknown
The Greater Eurasian Partnership

Russian foreign policy and grand strategy more broadly are the subject of heated discussion among experts all across the world, but all observers would do well to accept a few objective facts about its guiding vision when producing analyses about this topic. The Eurasian Great Power is officially pursuing what it calls its Greater Eurasian Partnership, which President Putin described during his keynote speech at the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing last April as
"a project designed to 'integrate integration frameworks', and therefore to promote a closer alignment of various bilateral and multilateral integration processes that are currently underway in Eurasia."
In practice, it's envisaged that this will be advanced by Russia taking advantage of its centrally positioned location in Eurasia to connect the rest of the landmass through creative solutions that leverage its classical and military diplomacy.
      Read More...
Clipboard

WikiLeaks? US counter-intel agency adds 'public disclosure groups' to same threat list as al-Qaeda, ISIS, Iran


RT
Wed, 12 Feb 2020 00:19 UTC
TerroristAssangePic
© Global Look/Joel Goodman
A couple of terrorists, according to US Intelligence
The US National Counterintelligence and Security Center has warned in its latest report "public disclosure organizations" and hackers are dire spy threats on the level of Islamic State terrorists, Al-Qaeda, and Iran.

"Ideologically motivated entities such as hacktivists, leaktivists, and public disclosure organizations" pose "significant threats" to the US at the same level as non-state terrorist organizations like Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and Al-Qaeda, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's biannual National Counterintelligence Strategy report, released on Monday.

The report carefully avoids mentioning WikiLeaks by name, but pointed references to the "unauthorized disclosures of US cyber tools" — i.e. the Vault 7 leaks that revealed the CIA is able to disguise its own cyber-intrusions as "foreign hacks" — suggest the platform launched by hacker-turned-publisher Julian Assange (now incarcerated in the UK) has gotten deep under the intelligence community's skin.
      Read More...
Blue Pill

Siren call of a 'system leader'

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC
La Dolce Vita
© Unknown
Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni) and Maddalena (Anouk Aimee) in La Dolce Vita, impossibly cool and chic, are like the Last Woman and the Last Man before the deluge of ‘tawdry cheapness.’
The United States may be destined for a shorter historical existence than the Mongol era established by Genghis Khan. A considerable spectrum of the liberal West takes the American interpretation of what civilization consists of to be something like an immutable law of nature. But what if this interpretation is on the verge of an irreparable breakdown?

Michael Vlahos has argued that the US is not a mere nation-state but a "system leader" - "a civilizational power like Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire." And, we should add, China - which he did not mention. The system leader is "a universalistic identity framework tied to a state. This vantage is helpful because the United States clearly owns this identity framework today."

Intel stalwart Alastair Crooke, in a searing essay, digs deeper into how this "civilizational vision" was "forcefully unfurled across the globe" as the inevitable, American manifest destiny: not only politically - including all the accouterments of Western individualism and neo-liberalism, but coupled with "the metaphysics of Judeo-Christianity, too". Crooke also notes how deeply ingrained the notion that victory in the Cold War "spectacularly affirmed" the superiority of the US civilizational vision among the US elite.

Well, the post-modern tragedy - from the point of view of US elites - is that soon this may not be the case anymore. The vicious civil war engulfing Washington for the past three years - with the whole world as stunned spectators - has just accelerated the malaise.
      Read More...
Arrow Down

The 'Anonymous' resistance official behind NYT op-ed being quietly turfed from White House

Mike Brest
Washington Examiner
Mon, 10 Feb 2020 18:33 UTC
new york times op ed lies anonymous
The White House has identified the Trump administration official behind the anonymous tell-all book and critical New York Times opinion piece about the White House and will part ways with that person, according to former U.S. Attorney Joe diGenova.

DiGenova, a lawyer whose work has been caught up in the Ukraine-impeachment controversy, said on Monday that he and his wife, Victoria Toensing, were told by "a senior government official" that "Anonymous" had been identified as an official working in the White House and would be removed "soon."

DiGenova declined to reveal more details in an interview with WMAL's Mornings on the Mall, but his comments come days after the White House dismissed Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an impeachment witness, and his identical twin brother from the National Security Council.

Comment:

      Read More...
Star of David

One year later, UN finally releases blacklist of 112 companies with ties to illegal Israeli West Bank settlements

Noa Landau
Haaretz
Wed, 12 Feb 2020 18:00 UTC
illegal settlements west bank
© UPI/Debbie Hill
A Palestinian stands on his property overlooking the Israeli settlement Har Homa, West Bank, February 18, 2011.
The UN human rights office released Wednesday a long-anticipated report which names companies with ties to Israeli West Bank settlements.

OHCHR said it has reasonable grounds to believe that 112 business entities [For full list see below] have ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, 94 based in Israel, and 18 in six other countries.

In 2019, the publication of a UN database of companies with business ties to Israeli settlements in the West Bank was delayed, drawing the ire of activists who campaigned for it for three years.

Comment: About time. The list is down from the original 130 (some backroom horse-trading?), but better than nothing. Let the boycotts commence. For the retail consumers who want to do their part:
israel barcode boycott
israel companies boycott


      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts