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Kurtz to return to power, historic coalition deal brings Greens into Austrian government


RT
Wed, 01 Jan 2020 21:42 UTC
Kurz/Kogler
© Reuters/Lisi NiesnerAustrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz • Green Party leader Werner Kogler
Austrian conservative leader Sebastian Kurz has finally made a deal with the Greens to form a governing coalition that will see Kurz return to power and the Greens join the national government for the first time.

Kurz and his Greens counterpart Werner Kogler announced on Wednesday that the deal had been done, both seeming quite proud that they had been able to keep "key campaign promises. When you present the program you will see that both work - greening the tax system, and reducing the tax burden," Kurz said, vowing to "do everything to serve the Austrians."

"We agreed more on climate protection than we suspected," Kogler said, explaining that "greening and social balance go hand in hand. If you love your home, don't split it."

The deal still has to be approved by a majority of Greens delegates at the party's Federal Congress on Saturday. If it passes, the new government could take power as soon as next week.
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Snakes in Suits

FBI agent reported Andrew McCabe apologized for his role in media leak

Chuck Ross
Daily Caller
Wed, 01 Jan 2020 11:50 UTC
AndrewMcCabe
© Marovich/Getty ImagesFormer FBI Director Andrew McCabe
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe apologized to an FBI investigator after changing his story regarding a leak to the media in October 2016, according to documents released Tuesday.

McCabe was interviewed May 9, 2017, the same day James Comey was fired as FBI director, regarding two separate leaks to the media. During the interview, FBI agents also asked McCabe whether he knew how FBI information wound up in an Oct. 23, 2016, Wall Street Journal article about an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

McCabe said during that sit-down he did not know how the Journal story came about, but he changed his story in an interview several months later, an FBI agent told investigators with the Justice Department's inspector general (IG). The IG later determined McCabe directed his general counsel, Lisa Page, to share information with a Journal reporter regarding the Clinton Foundation investigation.

McCabe admitted his role in authorizing the leaks during an interview with FBI agents Aug. 15, 2017, according to the documents, which were obtained by the liberal watchdog group, Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington.

Comment: See also:

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Footprints

Judge recuses in Hunter Biden paternity case

Bill Bowden
Arkansas Democrat Gazette
Wed, 01 Jan 2020 09:58 UTC
Hunter/Court doc
© Screen shot/FileHunter Biden and Court Document
The judge in Hunter Biden's Arkansas paternity case recused without explanation Tuesday, after men in Florida and Israel tried to intervene in the case in apparent attempts to get financial information on the former vice president's son.

Independence County Circuit Judge Don McSpadden has also been trying to get financial information from Biden, but the judge has said his interest was in the well-being of 1-year-old "Baby Doe," the child of Biden and Lunden Alexis Roberts of Independence County.

Potential intervenors Dominic Casey of D&A Investigations Inc. of Longwood, Fla., and Joel Caplan of Jerusalem appear to have other motives.

Casey, a private investigator, filed what he called a "Notice of Fraud and Counterfeiting and Production of Evidence" on Dec. 23. It was stricken from the record that same day by McSpadden, who noted that Casey hadn't filed a motion to intervene.

Casey filed a motion to intervene on Dec. 27, but McSpadden recused before ruling on it.

Comment: See also:

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Eye 1

SOTT Focus: Documents Reveal Dutch Government Sent Military Supplies to Terrorists in Syria

Amari Roos
Sott.net
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 21:06 UTC
isis, jabhat al-shamiya, levant front
A still from a video published by Jabhat al-Shamiya aka the Levant Front
Last year, a 'Government Information (Public Access) Act' request was filed by two Dutch daily newspapers (Trouw and Nieuwsuur) in an effort to reveal the exact nature of the 'aid' that had been sent to Syria by the Dutch government between 2015 and early 2018. While the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stef Blok, had previously said that the aid sent to Syria was "civil in nature", the released documents revealed otherwise.

The documents, comprising about 2,000 pages in total, revealed that almost all 'aid' sent by the Dutch government was sent to foreign jihadist and terrorists and was of a decidedly military rather than civilian nature. Trouw reported that Toyota Hilux and Isuzu D-max pick-up trucks, 'tactical vests' for weapons such as the M-16 and AK-47, food packages, generators, furniture, laptops, satellite telephones, mattresses, backpacks and cameras were all part of the 'aid'. Once in the hands of the terrorists, laptops were used to select military targets, while pick-up trucks, tactical vests, telephones and cameras were all used in assault missions against the Syrian and Russian militaries, not to mention the Syrian population. The rest of the material provided comfort to the terrorists.
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Bullseye

Putin reminds the West: Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it

Matthew Ehret
Strategic Culture Foundation
Wed, 01 Jan 2020 19:34 UTC
putin
© Pixabay
President Putin recently stirred up a hornets nest by reminding the western nations of their own complicity in supporting the rise of Nazism long before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed on August 23, 1939.

What was this hornet's nest exactly?

Between December 19 and 24, Putin responded on several occasions to the dangerous revival of fascism sweeping across Europe by calling out the Polish Ambassador to Germany Józef Lipski (1934-1939) as "scum and an anti-Semitic pig, there is no other way of describing him... He shared Hitler's anti-Semitic sentiment and moreover, he promised to erect a monument in Warsaw for the persecution of the Jewish people."
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Magnify

Post-Iraq war US intel report predicting 2020 looks 'eerily prescient' only compared to agencies' political blunders

Helen Buyniski
RT
Wed, 01 Jan 2020 19:13 UTC
trump
© Reuters / Joshua RobertsThe intelligence community wants you to think they predicted this
A 15-year-old intel report predicting the world of 2020 has been hailed for its accuracy, but much of the future it describes was already underway in 2004. Could today's hyper-politicized intelligence community see even that much?

Rolling out a list of "eerily prescient" predictions in order to brag about their accuracy - no flying cars here! - the National Intelligence Council (NIC) report is just what one might expect from an intel community desperate to shore up its reputation ahead of what's sure to be a hotly contested presidential election.

Intel vets have lamented that the intelligence community has become politicized, to the point where it has affected their ability to accurately and objectively describe the reality in front of them - never mind the world 15 years in the future. The NIC paper may thus represent a lost art of apolitical prognostication, a skill willingly sacrificed in the rush for modern spooks to prove themselves "team players." After the near-fatal blow to its credibility dealt by the three-year Russiagate debacle, US intelligence has a long way to go to build its reputation back.


Comment: That's assuming there isn't a clique within the IC which knowingly invented Russiagate...

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Stop

Belgian judge suspends arrest warrant, stops extradition attempt against Catalan separatist leader Carlos Puigdemont


Euronews
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 17:10 UTC
Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont
© Aris Oikonomou / AFP
The arrest warrant against the Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont has been suspended by a Belgian judge, a lawyer for Puigdemont said on Thursday.

Puigdemont's immunity as an MEP was cited as the reason for the warrant's suspension.

The Belgian judge in charge of the case also suspended the warrant issued against Toni Comin, a former Catalan cabinet member, lawyer Paul Bekaert told the Associated Press.

"Today, Belgian judicial authorities have again stopped the extradition attempt against president Puigdemont and councillor Comin, because they recognise their immunity as elected members of the European Parliament", the two Catalan leaders said in a statement.

Puigdemont and Comin are wanted in Spain for their involvement in a secession bid from 2017, led by the Catalan government and separatist MPs, which was deemed illegal by Spain.

Comment: See also:

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Eye 1

Best of the Web: The West is entering an era of totalitarian media control - Cybersecurity Analyst


Sputnik
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 19:01 UTC
camera
© CC0
The US Cyber Command is working on information warfare tactics that could be used to counter allegedly possible Russian interference in the 2020 election, The Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing current and former officials.

Finnish cybersecurity analyst, Petri Krohn, believes that the purported Russian meddling in the US vote is a hoax.

Sputnik: According to a WP report, military cyber officials are developing information warfare tactics that could be deployed against senior Russian officials and oligarchs if Moscow tries to interfere in the 2020 US elections through the hacking of election systems or sowing widespread discord. In your view, how likely is it that this process will actually be carried out by military cyber officials?

Petri Krohn: The WaPo article makes it clear that the United States is in a de facto war with Russia. Americans understand that they need to keep the conflict at a low intensity, otherwise the war could quickly escalate, even to a nuclear war. The cyber operations discussed are acts of war. Another act of war is the American sanctions on the Swiss companies building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. They are illegal under peacetime international law and violate every trade agreement the US has ever signed. But if the US is at war, then naturally it is free to take whatever steps it wishes against Russia.
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Laptop

Israel and Iran have been waging a secret cyber war for over a decade - German media


Sputnik
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 18:25 UTC
cyber warfare hackers
© Agence France-Presse / Thomas Samson
In 2019, a "war of words" in the Middle East came close to a "war of weapons" over attacks on Saudi and Iranian vessels, drone assaults on Saudi state oil company facilities - for which Yemen's Houthi movement claimed responsibility, and the downing of a US surveillance drone. However, the tensions are allegedly not limited to visible activities.

The US and, especially, Israel are waging a secret battle against Iran, the German broadcaster N-tv reports, citing security specialists. Amid this "shadow war", the US is said to be acting covertly with Israeli intelligence in carrying out operations in response to attacks allegedly sponsored by Iran.

The report says that Washington and Tel Aviv declared a "cyberware" war on Tehran and its allies more than a decade ago. As former intelligence officer of the Israel Defence Forces' 8200 reconnaissance unit Roy Barzilay told the outlet, US President Donald Trump reacted to this summer's attacks, which Washington and its allies have blamed on Iran, by ordering "to use a cyber attack to shut down the Iranian missile system and its intelligence agencies' computers".

Comment:

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Bad Guys

Turkish lawmakers approve sending troops to Libya


RFE/RL
Thu, 02 Jan 2020 18:13 UTC
edogan sarraj
© AFPTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) has said Libyan Prime Minster Fayez al-Sarraj’s government had requested the deployment
Turkey's parliament has approved the deployment of troops in Libya to back the UN-supported government there.

Turkish lawmakers voted 325-184 at an emergency session on January 2 in favor of allowing a one-year mandate to deploy troops.

There are concerns that Turkish forces could aggravate the conflict in Libya.

The Tripoli-based government of Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj is battling for power against a rival administration based in the east and led by General Khalifa Haftar.

Forces loyal to the warlord - who is backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and others, including what is believed to be a force of Russian mercenaries - launched an offensive in April to capture the capital.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Sarraj's Government of National Accord had requested the Turkish deployment.

Ankara says the deployment is vital for Turkey to safeguard its interests in Libya and in the eastern Mediterranean.

Comment: See also:

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