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Handcuffs

Barclays Bank boss quits ahead of report into link to sex offender Jeffrey Esptein


Wales Online
Mon, 01 Nov 2021 18:13 UTC
Jes Staley
Barclays Bank boss Jes Staley quits ahead of report into link to Jeffrey Esptein
The boss of Barclays Bank, Jes Staley, has quit ahead of a report by the financial watchdog into his relationship as Jeffrey Epstein's private banker in a previous job.

Jes Staley, boss of Barclays, said he will step down with immediate effect, with the bank's board saying it is "disappointed" with the outcome of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) report into his links to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The bank said it was made aware on Friday evening of the preliminary conclusions from the investigation, but did not go into details.

Comment: This comes just as British police have dropped their investigation into Prince Andrew following allegations by a former Epstein victim that he was also one of the men that took advantage of her as a minor.

See also:

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Target

Man accused in Sicknick case: 'We've all been destroyed'


American Greatness
Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
Bidens
© CNNUS President Joe Biden and wife Jill pay respects to Capitol Police Officer Sicknick
George Tanios' fiancée encouraged him to go to Washington on January 6 to hear President Trump's speech. "You're gonna regret it if you don't go," she said, hoping he could take a break from working 100-hours-a-week to run his popular sandwich shop in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Tanios and I both laughed after he told me that during a two-hour interview this week. (I was in contact with his fiancée, Amanda, as she cared for their three young children while he was incarcerated for five months.)

But there is nothing funny about how Joe Biden's Justice Department is trying to ruin Tanios' life to maintain the myth that Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died at the hands of Trump supporters on January 6.

Comment: See also:



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Stop

As COVID hits defense factories, some workers push back on vaccine mandate

Marcus Weisgerber
Defense One
Fri, 29 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
vaccination
© US Army/SPC Clara Soria-HernandezNorwegian soldier administers vaccine to civilian contractor at Al Asad Air Base, Iraq
Defense companies are preparing to lay off thousands of employees, largely factory workers, who refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccine before the Dec. 8 deadline.

The CEOs of America's largest defense companies this week warned these layoffs could delay weapon manufacturing. Some companies are already hiring new employees in anticipation of workers walking off the job or being fired because they refuse to comply with last month's executive order that the employees of federal contractors be vaccinated.

Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden said Thursday during the company's quarterly earnings call:
"We are proactively increasing our hiring now in anticipation that we may have some loss of workers and we are ensuring that we have training and skill building programs in place once we bring those new employees into the workplace so they can get productive and efficient as quickly as possible."
Privately, many defense industry leaders praise the vaccine mandates, which they say help protect their important and vulnerable workforces. Some say they're frustrated by workers who refuse to get vaccinated amid a pandemic that has killed nearly 750,000 in the United States and has cost the industry millions of dollars and the Pentagon billions.

"If you don't like science, don't work for a science company," one industry source said.

Comment: Numbers do not tell the story, they only reinforce a particular POV and thus any appropriated numbers will do.

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Attention

US defense establishment alert to 'stunning' Chinese military advances


South China Morning Post
Mon, 01 Nov 2021 03:23 UTC
Pentagon
© ShutterstockThe Pentagon
  • Shift in the global balance of power is seen as complicating Washington's alliances in Asia
  • China's test of hypersonic weapon able to partially orbit Earth then find a target was close to a Sputnik moment, says Joint Chiefs of Staff head Mark Milley
China's growing military muscle and its drive to end American predominance in the Asia-Pacific is rattling the US defence establishment. American officials see trouble quickly accumulating on multiple fronts: Beijing's expanding nuclear arsenal, its advances in space, cyber and missile technologies, and threats to Taiwan.

"The pace at which China is moving is stunning," said General John Hyten, the No 2-ranking US military officer, who previously commanded US nuclear forces and oversaw Air Force space operations.

At stake is a potential shift in the global balance of power that has favoured the United States for decades. A realignment more favourable to China does not pose a direct threat to the United States but could complicate US alliances in Asia. New signs of how the Pentagon intends to deal with the China challenge may emerge in the coming weeks from Biden administration policy reviews on nuclear weapons, global troop basing and overall defence strategy.

For now, officials marvel at how Beijing is marshalling the resources, technology and political will to make rapid gains - so rapid that the Biden administration is attempting to reorient all aspects of US foreign and defence policy.
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Family

Biden administration may pay millions to migrant families separated at border under Trump

Julia Ainsley, Jacob Soboroff
Yahoo News
Thu, 28 Oct 2021 05:35 UTC
Tornillo, Texas
© file photoTornillo, Texas tent facility to house immigrant children separated from their parents.
Thousands of migrant parents and children separated from each other at the U.S. border by Trump administration policies may soon be eligible for hundreds of thousands of dollars per person in compensation, according to three sources familiar with ongoing negotiations in a lawsuit brought on behalf of separated families.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Thursday that the Biden administration is in talks to offer separated migrant parents and children around $450,000 per person. That would mean that if a parent and a child were separated at the border, together they would be eligible for a combined payment of $900,000.

The talks are part of negotiations between the Justice Department and lawyers representing the separated families in a number of tort cases that have claimed the families experienced harm when they were forcibly separated.

The sum total of the payments remains unknown as negotiations continue, the sources said. But if enough parents and children are located, one source said, the U.S. government could be paying out hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate these families for what they went through.

Comment: Insanity has an outrageous price - one Biden seems eager to have American taxpayers pay.

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Star of David

Israel's UN envoy tears up Human Rights Council Report


Palestine Chronicle
Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
Gilad Erdan
© ScreenshotIsraeli Envoy to the UN Gilad Erdan tears to pieces the UNHRC's annual report while on the podium of the UN General Assembly.
Israeli Envoy to the United Nations (UN) Gilad Erdan on Friday tore to pieces the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC)'s annual report while on the podium of the UN General Assembly, claiming it was biassed against Israel, news agencies reported.

The UNHRC held a special hearing at the General Assembly while its president, Michelle Bachelet, presented the annual report to all member states.

In the report, the findings of an investigative committee founded after the Israeli occupation's offensive on Gaza that killed 260 Palestinians, including 67 children, 40 women, and 16 elderly, were presented.
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Dollar

Russia fines internet giants like Facebook, Google, TikTok a combined $2.6M for failing to delete banned content

Jonny Tickle
RT
Mon, 01 Nov 2021 12:59 UTC
Cell phone
© AFP/Chandan Khanna
So far this year, Russia has fined seven internet giants a combined total of $2.6 million for failure to remove prohibited information, including content that promoted the usage of drugs, the country's media watchdog has revealed.

In a post on its Telegram channel on Monday, Roskomnadzor outlined the penalties handed down to companies that refuse to abide by the watchdog's deletion requests.

The websites in question include US-based social networks Facebook ($998,000) and Twitter ($542,000), American search engine Google ($458,000), and Chinese video-sharing app TikTok ($58,000). Russian social media networks Odnoklassniki ($56,000) and VKontakte ($42,000) were also fined, alongside the popular messaging app Telegram ($494,000).

Whenever prohibited content is discovered online, Roskomnadzor files deletion demands. Any company that refuses to comply could be fined or even wholly banned, depending on the circumstances. As well as so-called 'pro-drug propaganda,' websites have been punished for refusing to remove other content such as child pornography, extremist materials, and calls for children to join illegal street protests.
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Cardboard Box

Pivoting from Russia to West has cost Kiev billions, Ukraine's ex-economy minister says


RT
Mon, 01 Nov 2021 14:11 UTC
Ukraine biz
© Sputnik/Marina Lystseva
When Ukraine decided to reorientate towards the West in 2014, it lost billions of dollars in exports to Russia. Seven years later, despite close ties with the EU and the US, Kiev still hasn't been able to replace the lost income.

That's according to Viktor Suslov, who spoke on Sunday to the country's NewsOne channel. Suslov served as the country's minister of economy in the 1990s.

In Suslov's opinion, the West's plan to pull Kiev over to its side was supposed to inflict serious damage on Moscow. However, in the time since, while both sides have lost a lot, Russia has mainly recovered from its loss of access to the market of its neighbor, while Ukraine itself is still struggling.
"Dragging Ukraine to the Western side should have weakened Russia dramatically. In fact, this only partially happened. After Ukraine turned to the West, all this economic cooperation was curtailed. Ukraine lost tens of billions of dollars from its exports."
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Bizarro Earth

US-trained Afghan spies & special forces are joining ISIS - Wall Street Journal

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Fri, 01 Oct 2021 23:05 UTC
afghan special forces
Many former national Afghan forces who are now being hunted by the Taliban after their US military backers withdrew from the country in August are turning to the Islamic State for protection, a new investigative Wall Street Journal report finds.


Comment: It's rather telling that these same people who were willing to work for the Americans during their war on their own country were rather quick to defect to ISIS. Note that there has been an uptick in attacks by ISIS on Afghanistan since US withdrawal, and it just so happens that chaos creation and overthrowing the Taliban is in line with the US agenda in the region: ISIS claims responsibility for deadliest attack on Afghanistan since US withdrawal


Also among those joining the ranks of ISIS in Afghanistan, or ISIS-K, are members of Afghanistan's US-trained intelligence service. "The number of defectors joining the terrorist group is relatively small, but growing, according to people who know these men, to former Afghan security officials and to the Taliban," The Wall Street Journal writes.

Though this is said to be happening in small numbers, and is described as a move out of desperation, it could be a huge boon to ISIS-K's capabilities, given US-trained intelligence members bring their expertise and capabilities with them to the terrorist group. Critics of the Biden's administration's Afghan exit fiasco have long warned that "left behind" US assets would be swooped up by terror groups.

Comment: It may be that some of those that defected did so under direction from their masters in the US: Pepe Escobar: Blowback: The Taliban target US intel's shadow army

See also: The Great Game in central Asia is over - and America lost

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Yoda

That Julian Assange's extradition show trial now boils down to exactly how suicidal he is, proves this has never been about justice

Richard Medhurst
RT
Mon, 01 Nov 2021 17:24 UTC
free assange banner
© REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File PhotoA supporter of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange posts a sign on the Woolwich Crown Court fence in London.
The US has put Assange's mental health in the spotlight, while offering worthless assurances. Now the conversation is no longer about criminalizing journalism, but whether Assange is healthy enough to be sent to his death.

This week, I attended the High Court hearing where US lawyers appealed against a UK judge's decision in January not to extradite Australian journalist and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Judge Vanessa Baraitser previously blocked the extradition on the grounds that it would be oppressive to his health, and that US prison conditions are inhumane.

Appealing on five grounds, the two main elements of the appeal dealt with Assange's health, and diplomatic assurances that he wouldn't be placed in oppressive prison conditions in America. The United States lawyers attempted to downplay the severity of Assange's mental illness, arguing that he was not at high risk of suicide. The prosecutors argued that he did not meet the criteria for his extradition to be considered oppressive.
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