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Rumours May will postpone Brexit vote till day of EU Parliamentary elections, yet 'legally binding' changes agreed

Martin Williams
The Herald
Tue, 12 Mar 2019 09:30 UTC
Theresa May
May: Becoming a bit player.
LEGALLY binding changes that could finally allow Britain to agree a Brexit deal emerged last night.

Cabinet Office minister David Lidington says legally binding changes that strengthen and improve the withdrawal agreement have been secured.

"Tonight we will be laying two new documents to the House - a joint legally binding instrument on the withdrawal agreement and a joint statement to supplement the political declaration," he said.

He says the documents provide "confirmation that the EU cannot trap the UK in the backstop indefinitely."

It comes after Theresa May set off to Strasbourg for last-minute Brexit talks with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and was preparing to make a late night statement.

Comment: Postponing an important vote till an equally important and busy news day sounds like a scheme to distract from Brexit's next ridiculous plot twist: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Megaphone

After weeks of protests, Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika announces he will not seek a fifth term

Alison Tahmizian Meuse
Asia Times
Tue, 12 Mar 2019 08:57 UTC
Abdelaziz Bouteflika
© Ryad Kramdi/ / AFPIn this file photo taken on November 23, 2017, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is seen voting at a polling station in the capital Algiers. Bouteflika announced on Monday his withdrawal from a bid to win another term in office and postponed an April 18 election, following weeks of protests against his candidacy.
The military establishment of the oil-rich North African nation of Algeria emerged with its influence intact on Monday night, sacrificing the ailing 82-year-old president to quell weeks of street protests.

The wheelchair-bound Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has not addressed the 42-million strong public in five years, will not run for a fifth term in office, an official statement proclaimed.

In coordination with the orchestrated bow, the Algerian prime minister resigned and Interior Minister Noureddine Bedoui was named in his place - a regime stalwart tasked with forming a new cabinet to oversee a managed transition.

Elections scheduled for April 18 have been postponed indefinitely, during which time the military is expected to ordain a candidate of its choice.

Comment: French president Macron, who is currently in Djibouti, today approved the decision, calling for a "transition of reasonable duration."

Who will say likewise to him?

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Cult

US government no longer excludes MEK as a leadership option for Iran, post regime change

Barbara Slavin
Al Monitor
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
Giuliani
© Reuters/Regis DuvignauStooge: Rudy Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, delivers his umpteenth speech to an MEK coven in Paris, France, June 30, 2018.
US administration talking points no longer exclude the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK) as a potential replacement for the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Al-Monitor has learned.

Removed from a State Department list of terrorist organizations in 2012 after an expensive lobbying campaign, the MEK is understood to be widely reviled inside Iran as a leftist Islamist cult that sided with Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. The group advocates the overthrow of the Iranian government and the elevation of Maryam Rajavi, the wife of MEK founder Massoud Rajavi, as the new leader. She lives in exile outside Paris.

Top officials close to the Donald Trump administration - including national security adviser John Bolton and Rudolph Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer - have taken tens of thousands of dollars in fees from the MEK and its front organizations over the years to speak before rallies that promote Maryam Rajavi's leadership ambitions. Just last month, Giuliani told a pro-MEK rally in Warsaw, Poland, on the sidelines of a US-organized Middle East conference that Iran's leaders are "assassins" and "murderers" who should be overthrown and then replaced by Rajavi.


Comment: MEK is also known as: PMOI, MKO, NCRI, Muslim Iranian Students Society, Organization of the People's Holy Warriors of Iran, the National Liberation Army and Sazeman-e Mujahideen-e Khalq Iran. Why so many names? Because it has spent the last 4 decades dodging court battles in Western capitals.


Comment: Any hint of US consideration to supplant Iran's leadership with a globally-recognized terrorist organization should be alarming, if not surprising. Apparently MEK's self-admitted track record of at least 12K Iranian deaths from terrorist attacks, utilization by Israel to assassinate nuclear scientists in Iran, its decades-long practice of buying US politicians, and past involvement in Saddam Hussein's botched attempt to destabilize the Tehran government -- are just some of the qualities that appeal to a neocon Washington in quest of outsourcing conflict and regime change.

See also:

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Quenelle

Michael Caputo: Dems asking for my testimony in Trump investigation - but I have nothing to say or give them

Michael Caputo
Fox News
Wed, 06 Mar 2019 00:33 UTC
Michael Caputo
Michael Caputo
Michael Caputo on Jerrold Nadler asking for documents

I got a text from a reporter Monday telling me I am on the list of 81 associates of President Trump receiving document production requests from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. That was news to me.

I didn't receive the letter from the newly installed Democratic leader of the most powerful committee in the House of Representatives. I got it from a reporter. My attorney also didn't get the letter from Nadler - I had to send him the letter the reporter gave me.

This inauspicious beginning signaled the start of yet another bogus Russia investigation, this time by the new Democratic majority in the House.

After directing broadcast media coverage for seven House committees, I know the signs of a sideshow - and delivering demand letters to reporters before they go to the person being asked to produce documents is one of the chief signs.

Comment: American Lookout adds:
Scott Adams is sticking up for him:

You can't blame Caputo for fighting this. The legal battle has already cost him a fortune.

The Hill reported in May of last year:
Ex-Trump aide decries Senate Russia probe over high legal bills: report

Michael Caputo, a former communications adviser to President Trump's campaign, blasted the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, saying that its Russia probe has him racking up high legal bills.

"Your investigation and others into the allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russia are costing my family a great deal of money - more than $125,000 - and making a visceral impact on my children," Caputo told the committee in a prepared statement read during a closed-door interview.
Good for him for standing up now.


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Light Saber

Syria notifies Israel it will be attacked if IDF doesn't leave Golan Heights

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 23:57 UTC
Israel soldiers golan heights
© ReutersIsraeli forces at the border fence along the illegally-occupied side of the Golan Heights and Syria
In a surprising and provocative ultimatum, Syria has notified Israel through United Nations diplomatic channels that it is prepared to go to war if Israel does not leave the Golan Heights.

Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad reportedly sent the message through the head of the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), Christine Lund, this past week, according to a World Israel News report and later picked up other major Israeli sources, including The Jerusalem Post."Syria will attack Israel if it does not leave the Golan Heights," Mikdad told the UN representative.

Mikdad further warned Lund that Syria will respond with force should Israel continue its attacks on Syria, which have occurred more than a dozen times over the past year, but which seem to have recently paused following Russia's announced delivery of the advanced S-300 anti-air missile defense system to Damascus late last year.

"We will not hesitate to confront Israel," Syria's Mekdad said. "We are also not scared away by its [Israel's] supporters who are helping to perpetuate the occupation of the Golan," he added.

Comment: Once again, backed by the US, Israel doesn't have to care that its actions are illegal under international law:

Israel plans to populate Syria's Golan Heights further and develop it more amid 'security danger'

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Pumpkin 2

Elliott Abrams orders India to stop buying oil from Venezuela 'or else The Mighty USA will sanction you!'

Lesley Wroughton, Luc Cohen and Marianna Parraga
Reuters
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 17:36 UTC
Elliot Abrams
© EPA-EFE/JIM LO SCALZOUS Special Representative for Venezuela and convicted felon Elliott Abrams
The United States is pressing India to stop buying oil from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government, Washington's top envoy for Venezuela said, as the Trump administration this week threatened more U.S. sanctions to cut off Maduro's financial lifelines.

"We say you should not be helping this regime. You should be on the side of the Venezuelan people," Elliott Abrams told Reuters in an interview.

The Trump administration has given the same message to other governments, Abrams said, and has made a similar argument to foreign banks and companies doing business with Maduro.

Abrams described the U.S. approach as "arguing, cajoling, urging."
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Arrow Down

How much longer will the middle class politely tolerate its own destruction?

Robert Gore
Straight Line logic
Fri, 08 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
France police tear gas
© Damien Meyer/AFP
A middle class that outnumbers the combined poor and aristocracy is a relatively new phenomenon, dating back to around 1900. The rise of the middle class was the result of Industrial Revolution capitalism. It has been one of the most significant and epochal developments in history, yet the intellectual reaction for the most part has been to either ignore it or treat it with disdain. Now the project to destroy the middle class is well under way, with unpredictable and uncontrollable consequences that promise to be just as epochal as its creation.

Intellectual condescension towards the middle class is so common it's a cliché. What's rare are attempts to go back in history and see things through the perspectives of that despised group and its progenitors, the poor.

In 1800, virtually everyone was poor, living under conditions of deprivation and grinding poverty. Even being wealthy was no picnic; present-day poverty-line Americans live better. Life expectancy was an estimated twenty-nine years. Farming, the occupation of most, was dangerous, backbreaking labor from dawn to dusk. Most of those so engaged eked out a tenuous subsistence. There was no electricity, no running water, primitive sanitation and health care, and none of the machinery, gadgets, and appliances we take for granted. Only a few wealthy poets who didn't have to wrest a living from nature waxed euphoric about its "joys."
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Propaganda

Ukraine: Austrian Journalist and Kiev Critic was Barred 'For His Own Safety'

Christopher Miller
RFE/RL
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
Christian Wehrschuetz
© Heinz-Peter Bader (Reuters)Austrian ORF broadcast correspondent Christian Wehrschuetz arrives for an ORF meeting in Vienna, August 9, 2011
Austrian reporter Christian Wehrschuetz said he feared being attacked by Ukrainian nationalists over reporting critical of the government in Kyiv, according to the Ukrainian Security Service. Now they're using a one-year entry ban to keep him out of the country.

In citing Wehrschuetz's own purported concerns, the counterintelligence and counterterror agency appears to be contradicting the initial reason for the ban given to Austrian authorities: that he had violated Ukrainian law when his camera crew crossed the Kerch Strait via the Russian-built bridge connecting Russia to the annexed Crimean Peninsula. That legislation allows for bans of up to three years for those who violate it.

It also appears to skirt a dispute over whether or not Wehrscheutz actually broke the entry law, which is aimed at undermining Moscow's de facto control over the seized peninsula, since he said he stayed behind while other members of the crew crossed the bridge.
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Chart Bar

Trump's 2020 Budget Proposal: More for Defense,Border Security and Countering Russia, Less for Welfare and Food Stamps


RT
Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:25 UTC
President Trump
© Reuters / Kevin LamarquePresident Trump's budget presented on Capitol Hill
President Donald Trump has announced his 2020 budget request. The $4.7 trillion funding plan cuts foreign aid and DC spending, and gives a boost to the military and border security, as well as to countering Russia's "influence."

Announced on Monday, the 2020 budget promises to drive down the US' staggering $22 trillion debt by cutting "wasteful Washington spending," while demanding more resources for defense and national security.

The document outlines $2.7 trillion in spending cuts aimed at slashing nondefense spending by five percent. The State Department will see its spending cut by 23 percent, the Environmental Protection Agency will suffer a 31 percent chop, and food stamps will be cut by $17 billion and other welfare programs by $22 billion.
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Attention

China rebukes Turkey over Uighur criticism, closes consulate


The New Arab
Sat, 02 Mar 2019 00:00 UTC
Man and flags
© Getty Images
China has threatened Turkey with 'economic' consequences if it keeps criticising Beijing's treatment of Uighur Muslims in its far western Xinjiang region, days after the Chinese government shut down its general consulate in Turkey's third biggest city in an apparent punitive move.

The threats were made by China's envoy to Ankara on Friday, saying Turkey risks jeopardising economic ties with his government if it persists in its criticism of its internal policies.

China Map
© Unknown
"There may be disagreements or misunderstandings between friends but we should solve them through dialogue. Criticising your friend publicly everywhere is not a constructive approach," said Deng Li, Beijing's top diplomat to Ankara.

"If you choose a non-constructive path, it will negatively affect mutual trust and understanding and will be reflected in commercial and economic relations," Deng, speaking through a translator, told Reuters in [an] interview.

This comes as China is seeking to expand investments in Turkey, including in mega infrastructure projects, although the row over Xinjiang could now affect these efforts.

Comment: The US needs to destroy China's OBOR project. If completed, OBOR will create new and lasting trade partners for China while US trade diminishes. The plan is to infuse Xinjiang Province with TIP and IS cells from Syria to foment violence, challenge China's counter-terrorism capabilities and provide a strategic US foothold inside China. We should expect these efforts, and the spread of radical jihadist ideology in the Uighur population, to be funded and supported by the usual suspects: US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

See also:

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