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Arrow Up

Trump strikes again, announces new duties on $200B worth of Chinese goods


RT
Mon, 17 Sep 2018 22:45 UTC
Trump
© UnknownThe Tariffier!
US President Donald Trump has announced import tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. China has promised to retaliate.

The move, which sees $200 billion worth of Chinese imports slapped with a ten percent levy, comes amid a deepening trade spat between the world's two largest economies.

The tariffs will be applied to more than 1,000 Chinese products, including consumer goods like electronics, bicycles, tires, and furniture - all pumped out of Chinese factories in vast quantities for cheap export. The ten percent tariff will take effect on September 24, and rise to 25 percent on January 1, 2019.

In anticipation of Trump's tariff announcement, major US stock market indexes closed on a down note. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 92.55 points, or 0.35 percent. The S&P 500 lost 16.18 points, or 0.56 percent, and Nasdaq dropped 114.25 points, or 1.43 percent.

Comment: According to strategy, the price of Chinese goods to the US goes up because it includes the tariff costs. Subsequently, the impetus to buy US-made goods increases, a boon to US manufacturing.

More from RT:
China says it will levy retaliatory tariffs on September 24, simultaneously with Washington.

Beijing will have to retaliate against the latest US decision to impose new tariffs on China's imports, according to the Chinese Commerce Ministry.

"The US insists on increasing tariffs, which brings new uncertainty to the consultations between the two sides. It is hoped that the US will recognize the possible negative consequences of such actions and take convincing means to correct them in a timely manner," the statement reads.

The White House pledged to immediately pursue further tariffs on around $267 billion of Chinese imports if the country retaliates.


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Arrow Down

Moscow: Crisis in Russia-Ukraine relations shall end after the regime change in Kiev


RT
Mon, 17 Sep 2018 15:05 UTC
2guysflag
© Sergei Grits/APUkraine
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it expects relations between Moscow and Kiev to normalize sooner or later, but added that close ties would most likely be restored following a change of government in Ukraine.

The Foreign Ministry's comment was issued after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree on Monday, which terminated the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and Russia. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin told the press that the termination of the framework friendship treaty would cause a major revision of other agreements between Moscow and Kiev, but did not specify details.

Russian diplomats said in their statement that they continued to base their work on the presumption that people of Russia and Ukraine are destined by fate to have friendly and neighborly relations, built on centuries of common history as well as very close cultural and spiritual ties.

At the same time, the Foreign Ministry said that the current crisis in relations would most likely be overcome by cooperation with "different, more responsible Ukrainian politicians."
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Snakes in Suits

Historic summit: Kim Jong-un welcomes Moon Jae-in for historic summit


RT
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 01:32 UTC
Kim, Moon, wives
© LBS/RuptlyMoon Jae-in and wife Kim Jung-Sook • Kim Jong-un and sister Yo-jong
South Korean President Moon Jae-in has landed in Pyongyang for a historic summit with Kim Jong-un as part of the ongoing reconciliation process and talks on the denuclearization of the peninsula.

President Moon and his wife Kim Jung-sook were welcomed by the North Korean leader and Kim's sister Yo-jong, as well as hundreds of locals. Their three-day trip to Pyongyang began on Tuesday morning.

After Moon descended from the plane, Kim was seen offering a warm embrace to his South Korean counterpart, who has worked ardently to bring about a thaw in bilateral relations between the two states.

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Dominoes

German domestic spy chief removed, set to take up Interior Ministry post after questioning authenticity of far-right protests in Chemnitz


RT
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 19:10 UTC
chemnitz protest
© Matthias Rietschel / ReutersPeople attend the far-right "Pro Chemnitz" protest in Chemnitz, Germany, on September 7, 2018
Hans-Georg Maassen has been removed as the head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency and will become a senior official in the Interior Ministry. That's after he questioned videos of far-right violence in Chemnitz.

Maassen, who has been the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) since 2012, will take up the position of state secretary in the Interior Ministry.

"The Office of the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution will be re-filled. In future Mr. Maassen will become a state secretary in the interior ministry. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has high regard for Mr. Maassen's abilities on questions of domestic security, but he will not be responsible for the BfV within the ministry," the German government wrote in a statement Tuesday afternoon.

The move is being seen as a compromise between the Social Democrats, who had demanded Maassen's removal, and the conservative Interior Minister Horst Seehofer.
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Snakes in Suits

Nellie Ohr to testify before congress regarding work for Fusion GPS

Chuck Ross
The Daily Caller
Sun, 16 Sep 2018 12:25 UTC
Bruce&Nellie Ohr
© Politically Short/LongRoom.comBruce and Nellie Ohr
Congress will interview Nellie Ohr, the wife of Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr, later this week, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe said on Sunday.

Ratcliffe said Sunday that Ohr is expected to appear before a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary and House Oversight & Government Reform Committees, in an interview on Fox News.

Ohr worked during the 2016 election cycle for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that investigated Donald Trump on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC. Fusion hired former British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous anti-Trump dossier that was used to obtain spy warrants against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

While she worked for Fusion, Ohr's husband, Bruce Ohr, was in contact with both Steele and Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS. A former assistant deputy attorney general at the Justice Department, Bruce Ohr was interviewed by the congressional committees on Aug. 28.

Republican lawmakers have questioned the Ohrs' relationship to Fusion GPS and Steele. The husband-and-wife duo met with Steele on July 30, 2016, a day before the FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign's possible ties to Russia. Nellie Ohr began working for Fusion GPS in December 2015. Congressional sources have told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Fusion approached Ohr for the job.

Comment: That his wife worked for Fusion GPS and contributed to the "dossier" should have signaled 1) a conflict of interest for Ohr, and 2) a recusal from any investigation in which his wife was involved. See also:

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Bomb

Norway clueless about Libya yet helped bomb it into chaos, state report finding


RT
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 02:54 UTC
Libya Bombing Norway
© Goran Tomasevic/Reuters
A Norwegian state report says the officials "had very limited knowledge" of what was going on in Libya, but promptly decided to join the US-led intervention, turning the once thriving North African nation into a terrorist hotbed.

Norway rushed to help its NATO allies to pound Libya with airstrikes in 2011, without understanding what was actually happening on the ground or the dire consequences the intervention might lead to, a new state report has concluded. The commission, chaired by former Foreign Minister Jan Petersen, found that politicians in Oslo "had very limited knowledge of Libya" when they dragged the nation into the US-led bombing campaign against the Libyan government.

"In such situations, decision-makers often rely on information from media and other countries," the report says.

Furthermore, the commission states that there are "no written sources" indicating that, before deploying warplanes against Libya, the Norwegian officials "assessed the type of conflict Norway was taking part in."

Comment: "They say that they didn't really understand the [possible] outcome." They dropped 588 bombs and couldn't understand the outcome? Seriously?

See also:

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Better Earth

(New) New World Order: BRICS bank has successfully implemented 23 projects worth $5.7B


RT
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 08:57 UTC
brics logo
The infrastructure bank run by developing BRICS countries has been successfully implementing its projects, according to its senior manager.

"We have 23 projects approved for all BRICS countries. Their total cost is $5.7 billion. By the end of the year, I think another $1.5 billion will be added. Next year, we plan to expand projects to somewhere around $7.5 billion," BRICS New Development Bank Vice President Vladimir Kazbekov told TASS news agency.

According to Kazbekov, the bank has received a AA+ rating from Standard & Poor's and Fitch agencies, which is enough to confidently enter the international financial market with its debt instruments and receive funding from international investors at low interest rates.

Comment: The US will never join BRICS because it would not be included as a controlling member, nor have the autonomy to set the rules it won't abide by.

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Attention

Argentina: Former President Kirchner charged in corruption scandal


RT
Mon, 17 Sep 2018 19:09 UTC
Cristina Kirchner
© Claudio Santisteban/Global Look PressFormer President of Argentina Cristina Kirchner
Charges have been brought against former Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner, who now stands accused of being the head of an "illicit organization" involved in bribery and money laundering.

The decision was made by Judge Claudio Bonadio, who leads the case, and published by the official judicial news agency on Monday.

The new charges come as part of the so-called 'corruption notebooks' case, which focuses on an alleged wide-scale bribery operation totaling some $160 million. The scheme has allegedly involved top Argentinian politicians and businessmen.

The judge has demanded Kirchner's parliamentary immunity be lifted in order to place the former president under arrest.
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Bullseye

Why the revelation of Judge Kavanaugh's accuser was inevitable, and why it still means nothing

Scott Morefield
Townhall
Mon, 17 Sep 2018 17:55 UTC
Kavanaugh
Ever since rumors began swirling on Capitol Hill about a mystery letter in the possession of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, it was only a matter of time before Judge Kavanaugh's formerly "anonymous" accuser made her grand entrance to the national stage. After all, Democratic attempts to delay, interrupt, grandstand, and even "Spartacus" their way out of replacing former Justice Anthony Kennedy with a conservative jurist of President Trump's choosing had thus far been unsuccessful, so why not pull out the old classic "Anita Hill" tactic? It may or may not work, but Dems are just trying to run out the clock at this point, right?

And it was becoming all too clear that "anonymous accuser" wasn't going to cut it, not with so much at stake.

Enter Christine Blasey Ford, the as-of-Sunday no-longer-anonymous (and already lawyered-up) Kavanaugh accuser who contends that the then-prep-school student - as The Washington Post reported - "pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth."

Comment: As another site points out, there are red flags everywhere with regards to Christine Ford:
The one thing that stands out is Ford's presumption that she thought Kavanaugh was going to rape her or even kill her...This is conjecture on her part but now the media has jumped on the "rape" word and moved the ball down the field to accuse Kavanaugh of attempted rape and even attempted murder by repeating Ford's comment that she thought Kavanaugh might kill her...
Even though Christine Blasey Ford was able to scrub her social media accounts before revealing herself, information was discovered to reveal that she's a liberal activist who gave to many different liberal organizations.
Christine Blasey Ford's attorney is a self-described Anti-Trump Resistance activist.

She even signed a letter that was against President Trump immigration policy. She gave many times to the DNC, DNCCC, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and other leftist organizations.
It's also been revealed that Judge Kavanaugh's mother presided over the bankruptcy trial of Christine Batey Ford's parents. Judge Kavanaugh's mother ruled against the Batey parents:


Go to the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Criteria page: casesearch.courts.state.md.us/casesearch/ In the "Case Number" search column, type 156006V and click "Get Case." Then learn that the parents of Kavanaugh's accuser were defendants in a court case his mother presided over.
It's also worth pointing out that Ford's lawyer, Debra Katz, has a history of downplaying or dismissing accusations made by women against Democratic politicians -- including former President Bill Clinton and former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken. This is what she had to say about Paula Jones' accusation against Clinton in April 1998, according to a transcript of CBS Evening News.:
"Clearly a one-time incident that took place in 10 to 12 minutes, she was not forced to have sex, she left on her own volition, the courts increasingly are finding that that is not enough to create a sexually hostile work environment claim.
The above sounds just like what Ford is claiming happened between her and Kavanaugh. She's not done there either, defending Clinton against Jones' accusations:
'If a woman came to me with a similar fact pattern, that is someone in the company above her propositioned her but only once and she suffered no tangible job detriment,'' Katz told The New York Times in 1998, ''I would probably tell her that I'm sorry, it's unfair, but you don't have a case.''

Katz, speaking to the newspaper, added, ''If it's one time, it has to be severe, almost a sexual assault, not just a touching of somebody's breast or buttocks or even forceful kissing."
Erick Erickson - certainly no fan of the president - thinks there's a Democratic PR firm behind Ford's accusation. A number of influential Twitter users seem to be using the same phrasing when referring to the allegations:


There's also a huge double standard here, as one Twitter user astutely pointed out:



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Bullseye

Well said: EU encourages migration by offering large social benefits, why would the flow stop? - Putin


RT
Tue, 18 Sep 2018 18:18 UTC
migrant benefits france
© Stephane Mahe / Reuters / FileMigrants queue for a free meal in the downtown of Nantes, France on September 17, 2018.
The flow of migrants arriving in European countries is unlikely to stop until the EU itself addresses the issue and reviews its policies, which effectively "encourage" immigration, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

The European Union should address immigration and should not expect the problem to somehow fix itself, Putin said on Tuesday, following talks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Moscow.

"If one encourages migration with large social benefits and other bonuses, why should this flow ever stop?" the Russian president said. "Yet it's up to our colleagues in Europe to decide for themselves what is better for Europe and Europeans."
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