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Field Marshal Haftar urges cancellation of UN embargo, as Libyan army needs arms against terrorists and armed groups

Field Marshal Haftar
© AP Photo / Mohammed El-SheikhyField Marshal Haftar
Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army (LNA), has explained the situation in the war-torn country and described Libya's potential future in an interview with Sputnik.

Khalifa Haftar stated that the country could have eliminated terrorism years ago, but the international arms embargo stopped the military from obtaining weapons, while the terror groups managed to smuggle arms without difficulty.
"The continuation of the international embargo means a boost for terrorism and war, the aggravation of its consequences. If not for the embargo, then we would have eliminated terrorism years ago and should have not paid such a high price for it. It should be noted that, despite the embargo, a vast amount of weapons is openly delivered to terrorist and armed groups in Libya by air and sea. We wonder how the world allows this on the one hand, and on the other, calls to fight against terrorism", he said.
He noted that at the moment there is no contact between the LNA and their opponents from the Government of National Accord (GNA).
"Unfortunately, we have wasted our precious time in dialogue with him [the Council's president Fayez Sarraj] in response to regional and international endeavors, but now there is no mediation, neither international nor local, and also between us and the council, including its head", Haftar said.

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Star of David

Israeli Forces Arrest PA Jerusalem Governor, Adnan Ghaith, Fatah's Secretary-General in Jerusalem

Adnan Ghaith governor palestine
© Agence France -PresseAdnan Ghaith, Palestinian Governor of Jerusalem
Israeli forces arrested the Palestinian Authority's (PA) Jerusalem governor, Adnan Ghaith, and the Fatah's party Secretary-General in Jerusalem, Shadi Matour, on Monday morning, the Palestinian Prisoners and Editors' Affairs Authority stated.
"The [Israeli] forces raided the governor's house in Jerusalem, Adnan Ghaith, in the neighbourhood of Silwan in the eastern part of the city; arrested him and took him for investigation. They also arrested the secretary-general of the Fatah movement in Jerusalem, Shadi Matour, after storming his house in the city", the Palestinian Authority said.
This was the fourth time this year the Israeli authorities have arrested these two officials. Some of the arrests were based on charges related to the sale of land โ€” Israeli police had previously investigated Ghaith over suspicions that he was involved in the arrest of US-Palestinian official Issam Akel, who was accused of selling an East Jerusalem building to Jewish buyers.

Comment: Top Palestinian officials arrested by Israel: Suspected of abducting US citizen for selling Jerusalem Arab property to Israeli


Red Flag

Iran's Foreign Minister Zarif: One or several governments are behind Iranian tanker attack

tanker attack
© REUTERS / West Asia News Agency
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has stated in an interview with the ICANA News agency that although the investigation into the Red Sea attack on the Sabiti oil tanker is still ongoing, it's already clear that one or several governments conducted it. He elaborated by indicating that the attack was a "complex operation", which could only have been conducted by a state actor.

Zarif further said that it's too early to point the finger at any country since the investigation is not yet complete and all the facts about the incidents have not been reviewed.

The Sabiti oil tanker was hit with two blasts in the Red Sea just 100 kilometres away from the Saudi port of Jeddah on 9 October, reportedly damaging its tanks and leading to an oil spill. The National Iranian Tanker Company (NITC), the owner of the vessel, stated that the blasts were "probably caused by missile strikes", but denied earlier media reports that they came from Saudi territory.

Comment: And in very related news: Video Analysis of Last Month's Missile Attack on Saudi Oil Refineries: False-Flag?


Snakes in Suits

"Dither and delay": Brexit talks continue in Brussels ahead of crunch summit

bojo
© AFP/GettyBoris Johnson (l) and Leo Varadkar (r) met last week to discuss a Brexit deal
Efforts to reach a Brexit deal before Thursday's summit of European leaders are continuing in Brussels.

Negotiators from both sides are trying to bridge what senior EU official Michel Barnier called "big gaps".

EU ambassadors were told on Sunday the UK would make concessions on its customs plan for Northern Ireland.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Boris Johnson said the government was preparing to leave on 31 October and it was time to "get Brexit done".

Comment: As can be discerned from the bolded parts above, it shouldn't be too surprising that Court docs reveal UK govt to request Article 50 extension. Brexit is NOT happening this month

See also: SNP declares intent to hold second Scottish independence referendum in 2020


USA

SOTT Focus: America is in a Permanent Coup

James Comey
© UntitledGate
I've lived through a few coups. They're insane, random, and terrifying, like watching sports, except your political future depends on the score.

The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who's got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who's writing tonight's newscast?

When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin's crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin's men, Alexander Rutskoi - who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin - prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the "criminals."

We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years.

That's all over, in the Trump era.

Comment: Would it even be such a bad thing; Special Forces rappelling into Soros and Comey's windows? Maybe the 'third world' gets some things right? Maybe it's imperative to 'tyrannize' the ultra-liberal minority in order to protect the freedoms of the generally-conservative majority? Maybe that's what the West has to learn from everyone else in these times...


Binoculars

The trouble with Mike Pence: Imagining a Christian Zionist neoconservative presidency

Mike Pence
© Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.comMike Pence
Be warned, the Vice President's foreign policy positions invoke a messianism not seen since the Bush Administration.

As Congress lurches towards impeachment, complete with Cabinet-level subpoenas, the specter of a Mike Pence presidency looms larger.

But let's face it: Whether it's in 2024 or sooner, President Pence in the Oval Office would be a dream come true for establishment Republicans and war hawk neocons alike. Trump-style "America First" nationalism would be dead on arrival, in its place the zombified corpse of globalism.

During the run up to the 2016 election, the media criticized Trump's choice of Pence as hypocritical. Trump had famously broke with Republican orthodoxy when he called the Iraq war "a disaster." He never missed an opportunity to deride Hillary Clinton for her support of the 2003 invasion. But Trump didn't seem to mind that his choice for vice president had also voted for the war. Huh?

That's because Trump sees the presidency as a one-man band, and he prefers to lead it in the same style as the Trump organization, unshackled by the past policy positions of aides. Pence looks straight out of "central casting," Trump has been heard to say of his veep. For Trump, advisers are mostly decorative, and Pence is a vice president a Hollywood director might choose for a second-rate film.

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Eagle

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu: It is the West that is responsible for waging hybrid wars, not us

Defence Minister General Sergei Shoigu
Russian Defence Minister General Sergei Shoigu in a September 22, 2019 Interview:

We long failed to understand the essential nature of what was going on around us. If the West had continued to behave as it began behaving in Gorbachev's time - if it had kept all its promises, not moved NATO ever closer to our borders, not expanded its influence in our near abroad, not gotten involved in the internal affairs of our country - then it seems to me that the West would ultimately have succeeded in everything. They would have succeeded in attaining the objective they had set themselves โ€” the objective of destroying and enslaving our country, as the West did to the former Soviet republics.

The process of recovering our common sense began in 1999. From that moment we have fought for all we are worth through difficulty and hardship to reach a situation whereby today the world has, nevertheless, ceased to be a unipolar world. And the West, naturally enough, is not at all happy about this, it is exerting every effort to recover for itself the monopoly of influence in the world. Some people believe that the West's wide-ranging overt opposition to Russia began only five years ago - with Ukraine and Crimea. But that is a mistake. I would recommend a detailed recollection of precisely what went on in the 1990's, in 2008, in 2013. What drivel was said and written about us at a time when we were preparing for the Olympic Games in Sochi! And this was by no means just a manifestation of information warfare.

Quenelle - Golden

Best of the Web: 'Equation of power changed': Top Iranian official says Middle East is 'safer place' without US

Iranian Missile Test
© AP Photo / IRNA/ Mostafa Qotbi
Following the start of the Turkish military operation in northern Syria, the US announced that it would pull out some of its troops from the area, with President Donald Trump criticising the efforts of previous administrations that dragged Washington into wars in the Middle East.

Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Ali Shamkhani has stated that the Middle East would be "a safer place without the US", stating that Washington should withdraw its troops from the region entirely and not just from Syria. He argued that even US officials have acknowledged that getting involved in the region's wars was a mistake, apparently referring to US President Donald Trump's recent criticism of past US administrations' Middle East policies.

Commenting on the recent statement by the POTUS, Shamkhani alleged that his administration has realised that "the equation of power and politics in the Middle East has changed" and that the US can no longer claim the leading position in the region.

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Dreamsicle

Budapest elects liberal mayor as Hungary's liberal opposition breaks conservatives' winning streak - But Orban still reigns

Viktor Orban
© Ferenc Isza/AFP via Getty ImagesViktor Orban casts a ballot on Oct. 13
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's party lost control of Budapest and four of the country's biggest cities, in a major rebuke to his rule after a video of one of his allies at an orgy handed a last-minute gift to a galvanized opposition.


Comment: Sneaky. They did the same thing to the Austrian conservative govt on the eve of May's European Parliament elections. It hits conservative types every time...


The unexpectedly strong showing in local elections across Hungary gave opposition parties, which united behind joint candidates for the first time, momentum to build on their alliance against the self-styled opponent of liberal democracy. Gergely Karacsony, a former district mayor in Budapest, claimed the most important victory on Sunday.

"This election was about how the power of the people is always stronger than the men of power," Karacsony said after Istvan Tarlos, the two-term Orban-backed mayor of Budapest, conceded defeat to him.

Comment: So Orban is still very much in favor in Hungary.

All the same, these local election results are very interesting.

It's remarkable how consistent the Liberal-Urban / Conservative-Rural divide is, right across the West. What is it with cities?


Binoculars

Best of the Web: Kurds face stark options after US pullback

kurd syria
© AFP / Delil SouleimanSyrian Arabs and Kurdish civilians arrive to Hassakeh city after fleeing bombardment on Syria's northeastern towns along the Turkish border on October 10, 2019 amid fears of a new humanitarian crisis.
In the annals of bombastic Trump tweets, this one is simply astonishing: here we have a President of the United States, on the record, unmasking the whole $8-trillion intervention in the Middle East as an endless war based on a "false premise." No wonder the Pentagon is not amused. Trump's tweet bisects the surreal geopolitical spectacle of Turkey attacking a 120-kilometer-long stretch of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates to essentially expel Syrian Kurds. Even after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cleared with Trump the terms of the Orwellian-named "Operation Peace Spring," Ankara may now face the risk of US economic sanctions.

The predominant Western narrative credits the Syrian Democratic Forces, mostly Kurdish, for fighting and defeating Islamic State, also known as Daesh. The SDF is essentially a collection of mercenaries working for the Pentagon against Damascus. But many Syrian citizens argue that ISIS was in fact defeated by the Syrian Arab Army, Russian aerial and technical expertise plus advisers and special forces from Iran and Hezbollah.

As much as Ankara may regard the YPG Kurds - the "People's protection units" - and the PKK as mere "terrorists" (in the PKK's case aligned with Washington), Operation Peace Spring has in principle nothing to do with a massacre of Kurds.

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