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What we know so far about Russia-Ukraine gas transit deal


RT
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 13:25 UTC
Kiev gas
© Reuters / Gleb GaranichFILE PHOTO: A gas compressor station in the village of Boyarka, outside Kiev
After multiple rounds of talks, Russia and Ukraine have finally hammered out an extension to the current gas agreement that is set to expire at the end of the year.

While the agreement "in principle" was reached earlier this week, the sides revealed the key points on Saturday. Here are the details of the breakthrough deal.

Terms of agreement

The new contract will ensure gas supplies to Europe for the next five years, and the deal might be further prolonged for another ten years. The deal stipulates the transit of 65 billion cubic meters of gas next year, and 40 billion cubic meters per year for the rest of the time, from 2021 through 2024, judging by the transport capacities booked by Gazprom.

Comment: Russia is being as fair as it can be, one wonders whether those nefarious forces working within Ukraine will allow such positive developments to continue:

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Chart Bar

Study shows Swedish justice ministry manipulated crime statistics


RT
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 18:48 UTC
malmo shooting
© Reuters / Johan NilssonA police officer investigates the scene of a fatal shooting in Malmo, Sweden
Sweden's Ministry of Justice pressured the country's Crime Prevention Council to hide, manipulate, or ignore potentially embarrassing crime statistics, a university study has found.

Sweden's Crime Prevention Council (Brå) has a difficult task. In a country where media outlets omit police-circulated descriptions of suspects' ethnicity, and the government actively downplays the surge in gun crime and bombings in its immigrant ghettoes, Brå is charged with compiling factual, accurate crime statistics.

According to a study published by Linköping University this week, the government intervenes here too to downplay "politically sensitive" data.

Employees told the university researchers that their managers - acting on orders from the country's Justice Ministry - instructed them to manipulate results on "hot potato" issues. Presumably, these results were ones that could embarrass the government, and likely dealt with issues of race or immigration.

One interviewee stated that "methodological deficiencies" was the reason given for the change.

Comment: The media's role today of dis/misinforming the public, not informing it, is clear as day here. No matter the country, bureaucrats and politicians love quick fixes. They're incapable of long-term thinking. In this case, the short-term gains of hiding the truth from the public are all they see. But in the end, it will be their undoing. Censorship of this sort only serves to ruin their credibility in the long term. Thus, the Sweden Democrats' rise in popularity.

See also:

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Eye 2

Best of the Web: Macron's Achilles Heel: The Corrupt Privatization of Toulouse Airport

Evan Jones
Dissident Voice
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 18:05 UTC
macron on throne
© Charles Platiau/AFP/Getty
Emmanuel Macron is a spiv, a first class spiv. Yet Emmanuel Macron is President of the French Republic, which is a worry.

The stamp of the man could have been readily gauged from his curious appointment and period as Economy Minister, August 2014 to August 2016, under President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Macron's first action as Economy Minister was the privatization of the Toulouse-Blagnac airport (SATB). It was a process steeped in anomalies, for which reason it has been the subject of unprecedented court proceedings.

This is a story of deception, incompetence and corruption at the highest levels of the French state. This account is essentially drawn from Laurent Mauduit, tireless investigative journalist with the online daily Mediapart.
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Magic Hat

Kabuki theater: Pelosi & Trump pretend 'business as usual' for SOTU, while supporters root for each to stab the other in the back


RT
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 17:51 UTC
trump pelosi
© Reuters / Leah Millis / Yuri GripasUS President Donald Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
US President Donald Trump has accepted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's invitation to give the annual State of the Union address, extended just two days after the House voted to impeach. Does she have something up her sleeve? Does he?

Trump accepted the invitation to deliver the yearly speech before Congress February 4, less than two hours after Pelosi sent it on Friday - an incongruously civil act of business-as-usual amid the chaos of impeachment that has seen both parties trade insults all week. The date could see Trump delivering the SOTU while the Senate oversees his trial, and falls the day after the first Democratic primary caucus.
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Attention

Former Obama doctor says Biden 'not a healthy guy', has 'lot of issues'

Kimberly Leonard
Washington Examiner
Thu, 19 Dec 2019 17:37 UTC
Biden blood eye
© Fox NewsDemocratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden
Former President Barack Obama's once-longtime doctor said the medical records Joe Biden's campaign disclosed are concerning and incomplete.

"He's not a healthy guy," Dr. David Scheiner, who was Obama's personal physician for 22 years before he became president, concluded after reading the records. "He's not in bad shape for his age, but I wouldn't say he's in outstanding health. Could I guarantee he won't have issues for the next four years? He has a lot of issues that are just sort of sitting there."

A three-page letter from Biden's physician concluded the former vice president is a "healthy, vigorous, 77-year-old" that is fit to be president. But the letter also revealed Biden receives treatment for an irregular heartbeat and high cholesterol and that he deals with acid reflux and seasonal allergies. It noted his already known history of aneurysms and that he took blood thinners.
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Dollar

Rewarding ineptitude: Makers of faulty touch-screen controls that involved USS McCain in tanker collision will get paid to install upgrades

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 17:22 UTC
USS John S. McCain warshp
© REUTERS/Ahmad MasoodUSS John S. McCain, after a collision in Singapore Strait, August 21, 2017.
A new report into the 2017 collision that killed 10 sailors and nearly sank a US warship argues the badly designed touch-screen control system was at fault. So its creators will now get paid to 'fix' it, obviously.

The guided missile destroyer USS John S. McCain sailed into the path of the tanker MC Alnic just east of the Singapore Strait in the early hours of August 21, 2017. The 30,000-ton vessel rammed the McCain, collapsing a bulkhead where 12 sailors were asleep. Only two made it out alive. It was the Navy's worst accident at sea in decades.

The Pentagon launched a probe, and forced several admirals into retirement. Also punished were the McCain's captain, Commander Alfredo Sanchez, the ship's chief petty officer, and several sailors who were on duty that night. Now a report from the investigative outfit ProPublica argues that much of the fault for the collision lies with the Integrated Bridge and Navigation System (IBNS), designed and installed by Northrop Grumman.
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Bad Guys

Soros Group Has Given $1.5 Million To Organization Closely Linked To Fusion GPS

Chuck Ross
Daily Caller
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 01:38 UTC
George Soros
© Peter Foley - Pool/Getty Images
A nonprofit group progressive billionaire George Soros controls contributed $1.5 million in 2017 and 2018 to The Democracy Integrity Project, an organization that has worked closely with Fusion GPS and dossier author Christopher Steele to investigate President Donald Trump and Russian meddling in Western elections.

Soros' group, Fund for Policy Reform, Inc., gave a $1 million grant to TDIP in 2017 and followed up with a $500,000 contribution in 2018, according to a database at Open Society Foundations, Soros' network of nonprofits.

Soros is listed as chairman and director of Fund for Policy Reform, which contributes heavily to left-leaning groups like Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Both of the TDIP grants were for general operating expenses, according to the database. It has been previously reported that Soros gave $1 million to TDIP, but the additional $500,000 has not been publicized.
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Pistol

UK tribunal rules that MI5 informants DO have a 'Licence to KILL'

Martin Robinson & Mark Duell
Mail Online
Sat, 21 Dec 2019 13:08 UTC
The MI5 headquarters
The MI5 headquarters at Thames House on Millbank in London, adjacent to Lambeth Bridge
MI5 moles are authorised to potentially commit murder, kidnap, torture or carry out other serious and violent crimes otherwise it would be 'impossible' for them to maintain their cover, a landmark tribunal ruled today.

Four human rights groups including one set up by the relatives of Pat Finucane, who was shot dead for representing IRA members including Bobby Sands, lost the case in London this morning.

Today the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled by a 3-2 majority that MI5 does have the lawful power to authorise the commission of criminal offences by informants.

Sir James Eadie QC, representing the Government, had said it would be 'impossible' for MI5 to operate without covert sources going about their business normally in terrorist groups or extreme protest groups.

The legal cover policy is said to be the equivalent of MI6's powers under Section 7 of the Intelligence Services Act 1994 - known as the 'James Bond clause'.
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Eye 1

'Absolutely unaware': Assange testifies in trial of Spanish company that spied on WikiLeaks founder inside embassy


RT
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 20:50 UTC
Assange
© REUTERS/Henry NichollsWikileaks founder Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, December 20, 2019.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange briefly stepped out of maximum security prison in the UK to testify via video-link in a Spanish case against a company that spied on him inside the Ecuadorian embassy, allegedly on the US' behalf.

Assange, who is being held at Belmarsh prison in southern London pending his hearing on extradition to the US, was driven over to the Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday, where a video-link was set up for him to speak with a judge in Madrid. The proceedings were closed to the press on the grounds of "national security."

The High Court in Madrid is hearing Assange's case against Undercover Global Ltd, a Spanish security company that allegedly bugged him during his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Undercover Global was contracted to provide embassy security between 2015 and 2018, and in that capacity secretly recorded Assange's every move via hidden cameras, microphones and electronic surveillance, the lawsuit says.

Comment: And it looks like Bojo is enshrining the establishment's treatment of Assange into UK legislation: I spy with my little eye: Threats to civil liberties in Johnson's Queen's speech

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MIB

Six ways we were blind to screaming red flags about government surveillance

Sharyl Attkisson
The Hill
Fri, 20 Dec 2019 15:00 UTC
comey clapper brennan
The secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court has given the FBI until Jan. 10 to address abuses and lapses identified by the Department of Justice inspector general (IG) in a recent report. That report heavily criticized FBI practices in its long-term spy case that produced no evidence of any American improperly conspiring with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

Here are six ways we were blind to screaming red flags about government surveillance abuse:

Comment: A common thread running through it is that they're all deep state actions, if not directly, then indirectly through their influence. See also:

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