Prime minister told that allowing in ‘food which would be illegal to produce here would not only be morally bankrupt, it would be the work of the insane’
Britain's farmers have taken a swipe at Boris Johnson, warning that slashing standards would be "the work of the insane", after the prime minister attacked resistance to US food as "mumbo jumbo".
The president of the National Farmers' Union insisted that nothing is more important than what people will eat after Brexit. "This is not hysteria. This is not mumbo jumbo," she said.
The comments are a direct response to the prime minister championing US food in a speech earlier this month, when he insisted "pretty well-nourished" Americans disproved "hysterical fears".
And they come after
George Eustice, the environment secretary, hinted that acid-washed chicken - if not chlorine-washed - would be allowed on sale in the UK after its departure from the EU.
Comment: Inciting the wrath of the farmers seems to be a running theme in Europe at the moment:
Natasha Bertrand
PoliticoMon, 24 Feb 2020 18:42 UTC
Julian Assange
Attorneys for Julian Assange, who is fighting a U.S. extradition request on espionage and computer hacking charges, plan to introduce evidence in the WikiLeaks founder's extradition hearing involving President Donald Trump's new intel chief Richard Grenell.
Gareth Peirce, a lawyer representing Assange in his extradition proceedings in London, plans to argue this week that the process to try to extradite her client
was abused from early on. Representatives for Assange's defense team say they expect to introduce recordings and screenshots of communications of a close Grenell associate, including a secondhand claim that Grenell was acting on the president's orders.
Grenell's sudden embroilment in Assange's extradition fight comes at an inconvenient time, as Democrats and national security veterans criticize him as ill-suited and unqualified to be the acting director of national intelligence. And it threatens to spotlight his close relationship with President Trump, feeding the widespread perception that the president is politicizing intelligence work for partisan ends.
Comment: Cassandra Fairbanks posted a video giving the background regarding Arthur Schwartz's call to her. She seems pretty shaken by the whole experience:
RTFri, 28 Feb 2020 18:16 UTC
© China Daily via REUTERS/REUTERS/Willy KurniawanMedical staff treat a patient with coronavirus at hospital in Wuhan/Donald Trump Jr. speaking at news conference
Democratic Rep. John Garamendi had some harsh words for Donald Trump Jr. after the president's son said Dems "seemingly hope" the coronavirus comes to the US and "kills millions."
The coronavirus is not only a pandemic, it's also now a political tool for Republicans and Democrats to lob across the aisle at each other.
California Congressman Garamendi perhaps went further than any politician has so far when he spoke about the disease and the political response to it in the US while appearing on MSNBC on Friday. Garamendi was particularly upset with Donald Trump Jr. over an earlier statement the president's son made about Democrats seeming to want people in the US to get sick so President Donald Trump looks bad.
"He shouldn't be near me when he says that," Garamendi said of Trump Jr. "There would be a serious altercation."
RTThu, 27 Feb 2020 18:16 UTC
© AFP / Bakr AlkasemA convoy of Turkish military vehicles drives east of Idlib city in northwestern Syria on February 20, 2020.
Tensions in Syria's Idlib province show no signs of abating, with the Syrian Army pressing the offensive against militants while Turkey still seems to be hell-bent on stopping it. Will the situation boil over into open war?
Recent days have seen another spiral of tensions between Ankara and Damascus over the troubled northwestern Syrian province of Idlib - the last major stronghold of extremists and militants. At least 22 Turkish soldiers deployed to Idlib were killed in an airstrike launched by the Syrian Air Force on Thursday, according to Ankara.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had earlier issued an ultimatum to the Syrian Army, demanding it retreats from Turkish observation posts in Idlib by Sunday.
A spokesman for his AK Party said that the Turkish Army is ready to step in as soon as the deadline set by Ankara expires.But the Syrian Armed Forces, which are still engaged in fierce clashes with militants that include an Al-Qaeda affiliate, clearly have no intention of pulling back. The troops loyal to Damascus continue to liberate cities and towns in the south of the province in their quest to take back a strategic highway linking the nation's second most populous city of Aleppo to the major port and the capital of the western coastal province of Latakia.
The tensions put Russia, a Syrian ally and Turkey's close partner, in a precarious position, and pose a potentially increasing challenge to Ankara's NATO allies. So could the looming Turkish operation be a harbinger of a greater disaster?
Comment: At least
33 Turkish soldiers were killed in Idlib in the Syrian airstrike. Despite the official narrative that it was the Syrian air force, there is some indication that it was a
joint Syrian-Russian operation:
What exactly transpired on Feb. 27? At around 5 p.m., a Turkish mechanized infantry battalion, comprised of about 400 soldiers, became the target of an airstrike on a road between al- Bara and Balyun, some 5 kilometers (3 miles) north of Kafr Nabl in southern Idlib. According to local sources contacted by Al-Monitor, two Russian Sukhoi Su-34 and two Syrian Su-22 fighter jets had launched intensive bombings of Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) targets in southern Idlib at around 11 a.m. that day. The same jets hit the Turkish convoy in coordinated action, the sources said. A first, a relatively lighter strike by the Su-22s forced the convoy to stop, after which the pounding intensified, forcing the soldiers to take shelter in several roadside buildings. What followed next was likely the dropping of KAB-1500L bombs — a variation of advanced laser-guided bunker buster bombs capable of penetrating to depths of up to 20 meters (65 feet) — by the Russian jets. Two of the buildings collapsed in the attack, leaving the Turkish soldiers under the rubble.
There was a
social media blackout in Turkey amid the escalation in fighting and rhetoric. Turkey reached out to NATO,
claiming that an attack on Turkey is an attack on NATO. Not really. Turkey is the country who invaded Syria, not the other way around. Article 5 only covers attacks on Europe and the U.S., not attacks on troops illegally intervening in foreign countries. Turkish consultations with NATO will apparently begin
tomorrow. Stoltenberg
confirmed an emergency meeting will be held, offering their "deepest condolences".
So far, though, the only thing to come out of NATO is the usual calls for de-escalation and an "
immediate ceasefire", despite chicken-hawks like Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham calling for war, bemoaning the fate of Turkish-backed jihadists. As Rubio put it, "Erdogan is on the right side here." Since when was al-Qaeda the right side, Marco?
Turkish VP Oktay called for
revenge after the airstrike that killed 33 soldiers:
Oktay minced no words, referring to the Syrian leader as "the head of a terror state" who "would go down in history as a war criminal" in a written statement reported by Turkey's Anadolu News Agency, adding that Damascus would "pay [a] heavy price" for what he called a "treacherous attack on Turkish troops."
Earlier on Thursday, Erdogan's press secretary Fahrettin Altun said Turkey has been retaliating to the attack on its soldiers by launching air and artillery strikes against Syrian positions. The media chief went so far as to compare the situation in Idlib with a genocide, the likes of "what happened in Rwanda and Bosnia."
Clowns, liars, and idiots, all of them. Anadolu released a video claiming to show Turkish attacks on Syrian forces, including the destruction of 130 pieces of military hardware, and the killing of
1700 Syrian troops.
Putin will NOT
meet with Erdogan again on March 5, signalling Russia's position on the matter. The Russian Ministry of Defence stated that the Turkish soldiers killed were
embedded with terrorist groups:
The Defense Ministry said that the Russian Reconciliation Center for Syria was in constant contact with Ankara, "regularly" requesting and receiving information on the whereabouts of Turkish troops. And, according to the data submitted by Turkey, there were no Turkish soldiers near Behun when the Syrian Army was fighting terrorists there.
...
It is not the first time that Russia has accused Ankara of failing to properly notify it and the Syrian government about the movement of Turkish military inside the Idlib "de-escalation zone." Earlier this month, six Turkish soldiers were killed when their convoy came under fire west of Saraqib after they moved there "without informing the Russian side," Moscow said at the time.
Plausible deniability will only get you so far, until your guys start dying back to back with terrorists. Turkey has miscalculated and overreached in Idlib. As Lavrov
states, Syria has every right to fight the terrorists Turkey was responsible for getting rid of in the first place:
The plan, which Russia and Turkey agreed upon, was "to separate the normal opposition forces from the terrorists, to demilitarize the inner belt in the zone to prevent attacks coming from it against the Syrian forces and the Russian [Air Base Khmeimim], to ensure free road travel through this zone."
The goals have not been achieved in more than a year, and with attacks from Idlib continuing "the Syria Army certainly has [the] full right to retaliate and suppress the terrorists," Lavrov said, adding that the requirement to defeat jihadist forces in Syria has been backed by the UN Security Council. "[Russia] cannot prohibit the Syrian Army from executing the demands written in the UNSC resolutions, which call for an uncompromising fight against terrorism in all its forms."
...
Lavrov reiterated that Russia has every intention to de-escalate the conflict and ensure that Turkish soldiers are not at risk in Idlib.
...
"As soon as we learned what had happened, we asked our Syrian colleagues to pause fighting and did everything we could to arrange a safe evacuation of the wounded and retrieval of the dead Turkish soldiers to the Turkish territory," the Russian minister said.
A Russian senator offered this
warning:
Hopefully, the tension would be defused because a big war in the region "will end badly for everyone, including Turkey," Vladimir Dzhabarov, the deputy chair of the foreign affairs committee of the upper chamber of the Russian parliament, commented.
"Turkey is not acting on its soil, but on the soil of another nation. So its hope that NATO would come to its defense seems groundless," he said. "If the Turks bet on military force, that would be a really bad idea since winning such a war would be difficult," he added. "Syria is not alone; it has allies in the Arab world, which will support it."
Yet Erdogan's adviser is not backing down,
stating:
"We have fought Russia 16 times in the past, and we will fight it again."
The official pointed to Russia's sizeable Muslim population and claimed that the country "will be shattered from inside" should an armed conflict break out between Moscow and Ankara.
Sure.
Here's Turkey's response so far:
Turkey can't contain Europe-bound Syrian refugees: 'No longer in position to hold them'
Darius Shahtahmasebi
RTFri, 28 Feb 2020 10:01 UTC
© Getty Images/Burak Milli/Anadolu AgencyArmoured personnel carriers and tanks of Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), February 09, 2020.
Turkey is calling for NATO's protection after 33 of its soldiers were killed in an apparent Syrian airstrike in Idlib, allegedly while fighting in terrorist ranks.
In the regional chaos that ensues, only one player stands to gain.Speculation over what's to come next has seen
#article 5 trending on Twitter in the hours following the attacks, after
Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkey's ruling AKP party, indicated to reporters in Ankara that he was looking at requesting formal NATO protection against Damascus and, by proxy, the Russian air force."We call on NATO to [start] consultations. This is not [an attack] on Turkey only, it is an attack on the international community. A common reaction is needed. The attack was also against NATO," Celik told Turkish media.
Article 5 of the NATO treaty says an attack on one member is an attack on them all.The US State Department also condemned the attack, stating that it stands by its "NATO ally Turkey." It further stated that it continues to "call for an immediate end to this despicable offensive by the Assad regime, Russia and Iranian-backed forces." Never one to let us down, the US envoy to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchinson also told journalists that "everything is on the table."
Tulsi Gabbard
The HillThu, 27 Feb 2020 06:30 UTC
© imrsDemocratic candidate for president Tulsi Gabbard
Enough is enough. I am calling on all presidential candidates to
stop playing these dangerous political games and immediately condemn any interference in our elections by out-of-control intelligence agencies.A "news article" published last week in the
Washington Post, which set off yet another
manufactured media firestorm, alleges that the goal of Russia is
to trick people into criticizing establishment Democrats. This is a laughably obvious
ploy to stifle legitimate criticism and cast aspersions on Americans who are rightly skeptical of the powerful forces exerting control over the primary election process. We are told the aim of Russia is to "sow division," but the aim of corporate media and self-serving politicians pushing this narrative is clearly to sow division of their own —
by generating baseless suspicion against the Sanders campaign.
RFE/RLWed, 26 Feb 2020 21:25 UTC
© Reuters/Al DragoUS President Donald Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump's reelection campaign has filed a libel lawsuit against
The New York Times (NYT), accusing it of falsely asserting a trade-off between Russian officials and the president's 2016 campaign.The lawsuit was filed on February 26 with the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, the state's trial-level court, and is
the first time Trump's political operation has taken legal action against a U.S. news outlet since he took office. Specifically, the litigation concerns
an opinion piece published in March 2019 and written by Max Frankel, the newspaper's executive editor from 1986 to 1994.
It was headlined
"The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo" with a subhead adding,
"The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy."Quid pro quo is a Latin term meaning a favor in exchange for a favor.
The lawsuit argues that
this assertion "is false" and that the
NYT published the essay "knowing it would misinform and mislead its own readers."It also alleges the
NYT harbors "extreme bias against and animosity toward" Trump's re-election campaign.
Comment: We shall see how this turns out as any NYT pushback to the legal action will undoubtedly skyrocket anti-Trump rhetoric and accusations by MSM news affiliations. Freedom to write falsehoods comes with freedom to pursue a lawsuit.
Tim Korso
SputnikFri, 28 Feb 2020 17:49 UTC
© Sputnik / Alexey VitvitskyThe Israeli prime minister's wife has already faced several scandals regarding her behaviour, with some even causing damage to the prime minister's reputation.
Wife of Israeli Prime Minister, Sara Netanyahu, is facing charges over allegedly causing "pain and suffering" to an unnamed former housekeeper at the Netanyahus' official residence, her attorney Opheer Shimson has announced. According to the housekeeper, cited by the attorney, she worked between June and November 2019. She had to quit her job due to not only sustaining continuing verbal abuse from Netanyahu's wife but also due to sustaining physical injuries after a fall allegedly caused by her "tyrannical demands".
"She adored the prime minister and saw her work at his home as a form of national service. But she's been traumatized by her experience.
Everyone knew what was going on there, and no one can say otherwise", the attorney stated.
Shimson also said that the former housekeeper kept a record of Sara Netanyahu's berating comments in her diary, which will serve as evidence in the case under which the accuser demands $190,000 in damages. The woman's attorney read out some of the records, written by the former housekeeper in her diary.
Comment: Sara Netanyahu's behavior captures the Israeli national character perfectly:
RTThu, 27 Feb 2020 17:53 UTC
© Reuters / Callaghan O'Hare / AFP / Florida Department of Law Enforcement
Apparent efforts to quash discussion of the documented relationship between billionaire Democratic candidate Mike Bloomberg and billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein have only added more fuel to the fire on social media.
The link in itself is nothing new, as photos of Bloomberg with Epstein's alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell have been circulating for months. There have also been calls for Democratic primary debate moderators to ask the former New York mayor about his relationship with the deceased pedophile. But several Twitter users are now claiming their accounts were locked when they posted screenshots of Epstein's "little black book" showing a listing for "Bloomberg Mike" just beneath neocon UK ex-PM Tony Blair.
"I apologize for doxxing Jeffrey Epstein and his pedophile friends," one of the affected users sarcastically
tweeted after he was allowed back onto the platform.
Word got around that "Bloomberg or his campaign is apparently now reporting people for bringing up the black book," and the Streisand Effect kicked in. Thousands of posters using the hashtag #BlackBookBloomberg — under the 'Storm Area 51'-like logic of "can't block us all" — did their best to make Bloomberg's campaign (or whoever was behind the blocks) regret trying to squash speculation.
Eric Zuesse
Sott.netFri, 28 Feb 2020 16:31 UTC
© Associated PressErdogan speaks to his ruling party officials Thursday, August 5, 2019 in Ankara, Turkey,
On February 26th, Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's President, told his Islamist political party that Idlib, which is the most heavily jihadist of all of Syria's provinces and the province where Syria had been sending jihadists who had been defeated but not killed by the Syrian army elsewhere in the Syrian war, is now permanently under Turkey's protection, and belongs to Turkey — Turkish territory. Russia's RT news headlined on the 26th,
"'We're the hosts there': Erdogan says Turkey won't pull back from Syria's sovereign territory, gives Assad ultimatum to retreat", and reported that,
The Turkish leader has ruled out withdrawal from Idlib, where his forces are backing militants fighting the Syrian Army. He also gave Damascus an ultimatum to retreat beyond Turkey's observation posts placed on Syrian soil.
"We will not step back in Idlib. We are not the guests in this realm, we are the hosts," Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a meeting of his AK party on Wednesday. Vowing to bring "the regime's attacks" to an end, Erdogan said Ankara is giving Damascus time to pull forces back from Turkish observation posts.
The very next day, on the 27th, the Turkish English-language newspaper
Yeni Safak bannered
"Situation in Syria's Idlib 'in favor of Turkey': Turkish president says Turkey has also reversed situation in Libya, which was previously in favor of Libyan warlord Haftar" and they reported that Erdogan saw signs that Turkey was introducing new international realities in both Syria and Libya.
Comment: Inciting the wrath of the farmers seems to be a running theme in Europe at the moment: