House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte announced Tuesday morning they have officially opened a joint investigation into decisions made at the Obama Justice Department surrounding the FBI's criminal investigation into former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. They also want to know why the FBI kept quiet about ongoing investigations into members of the Trump campaign, like Paul Manafort, while publicly discussing the Clinton probe.

"Our justice system is represented by a blind-folded woman holding a set of scales. Those scales do not tip to the right or the left; they do not recognize wealth, power, or social status. The impartiality of our justice system is the bedrock of our republic and our fellow citizens must have confidence in its objectivity, independence, and evenhandedness. The law is the most equalizing force in this country. No entity or individual is exempt from oversight," Gowdy and Goodlatte released in a statement. "Decisions made by the Department of Justice in 2016 have led to a host of outstanding questions that must be answered."

Two very different faces of world leadership were on display this week. In Beijing, President Xi Jinping delivered a bold, outward-looking vision of Chinese global leadership. Meanwhile, in Washington President Donald Trump was embroiled in yet more egotistical infighting and tawdry claims of media lies.

Addressing the 19^th congress of China's Communist Party, 64-year-old Xi was reelected for a second five-year term. He is being talked about as the greatest Chinese leader since Mao Zedong who led the country's founding revolution in 1949. With dignified composure, Xi spoke to the Great Hall of the People about "a new era of modern socialism... open to the world."

The Washington DC-based Council on Foreign Relations headlined: "Xi Asserts China's Global Leadership Role".

The BBC reported Xi as telling the more than 2,000 delegates: "China has entered a new era in which it should take centre-stage in the world."

The Central Intelligence Agency, now under the direction of an extreme right-wing Republican, former Kansas Republication congressman Mike Pompeo, is insisting behind-the-scenes that the Cuban government is responsible for alleged sonic weaponry attacks on American diplomats in Havana.

The CIA, which wrote the book on false flag attacks in Europe and around the world during the Cold War and the "age of terrorism", had no trouble convincing the Trump administration to downgrade diplomatic relations with Cuba. The United States withdrew over half of its diplomatic staff in Cuba and expelled 15 Cuban diplomats in Washington. The break in relations with Cuba is in line with other Trump actions intended to reverse every action implemented during the 8-year term of Barack Obama, including the normalization of relations with Cuba. Trump called the normalization of ties with Havana "a completely one-sided deal." Ironically, it is known that Trump's businesses had previously violated US sanctions on Cuba to advance potential Trump-owned hotels and resorts on the island.

The Trump administration has stated that it does not know what is causing the high-pitched cricket-chirping sound claimed to have damaged the health and caused deafness of not only American but also some Canadian diplomats in Havana. The Cuban government even invited the FBI to come to Cuba to join in its investigation of the sonic attacks. The Trump administration refused the Cubans' invitation. Nevertheless, without a shred of evidence, Trump's spokespeople blame the Cuban government for the sonic interference. Trump directly blamed the Cuban government for the sonic attacks in an October 16 White House press conference. The State Department was forced to immediately contradict Trump's flippant remarks in a cable to all US diplomatic posts that stated the department "does not assigned blame to the Government of Cuba" for the attacks. The variance between the White House and State Department on who is behind the sonic attacks is both stark and troubling.

Joule Unlimited, a secretive green energy company that appears to have placed a big bet hiring Democratic insider John Podesta to its board, appears to have been doomed when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.

When the 2016 presidential election ended, senior company executives admitted the prospects for their renewable energy "biofuels" company evaporated. "We had a lot of prospects last year," former Joule CEO Brian Baynes told BioFuels Digest in a rare interview in July. "But those new investor prospects walked away, particularly post-election."

Dmitry Akhanov, the president and CEO of Rusnano USA Inc., a Kremlin-owned venture capital firm nicknamed "Putin's child," oversaw the Russian government's investment in Joule and sat on its board along with two other Russians with ties to the Kremlin. Akhavov agreed that Clinton's loss doomed the company.

An historic opportunity is being missed. The disastrous 2016 presidential election could and should have been a wakeup call. A corrupt political system that gave voters a choice between two terrible candidates is not democracy.

This should have been the signal to face reality. The U.S. political system is totally rotten, contemptuous of the people, serving the corporations and lobbies that pay to keep them in office. The time had come to organize a genuine alternative, an independent movement to liberate the electoral system from the grip of billionaires, to demand a transition from a war economy to an economy dedicated to improving the lives of the people who live here. What is needed is a movement for the pacification of America, at home and abroad.

That is a big order. Yet this approach could meet with wide support, especially if vigorous young people organized to stimulate popular debate, between real live people, from door to door if necessary, creating a mass movement for genuine democracy, equality and peace. This is as revolutionary a program as possible in the present circumstances. A moribund left should be coming back to life to take the lead in building such a movement.

Quite the opposite is happening.

In 2009 the FBI had substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin's atomic energy business inside the United States.

According to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) an FBI confidential informant holds information about the handling of a criminal probe linked to a controversial deal that ceded ownership of U.S. uranium assets to the Russian government.

Despite an ongoing criminal investigation into officials working for subsidiaries of Rosatom, the Russian government entity seeking to acquire ownership of U.S. uranium, the Obama Administration approved the deal. The Justice Department has reportedly threatened to prosecute the informant if he discloses details of his involvement in the investigation.

"The Executive Branch does not have the authority to use non-disclosure agreements to avoid Congressional scrutiny. If the FBI is allowed to contract itself out of Congressional oversight, it would seriously undermine our Constitutional system of checks and balances. The Justice Department needs to work with the Committee to ensure that witnesses are free to speak without fear, intimidation or retaliation from law enforcement. Witnesses who want to talk to Congress should not be gagged and threatened with prosecution for talking. If that has happened, senior DOJ leadership needs to fix it and release the witness from the gag order," Grassley said.

On Monday John Solomon from Circa News told Sean Hannity the FBI has emails, audio and video tapes by a US agent of Russian efforts to win favor with the Clintons in the Uranium One scandal.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the government to create laws governing the status of bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies, mining, ICOs, as well as defining everything that relates to digital money by July 2018, according to the Kremlin.

The miners of bitcoin, ethereum, and other virtual currencies will have to register and pay taxes.

Putin also wants regulation of ICOs (initial coin offerings), taking as a basis the practice of initial public offerings (IPOs).

British politicians, looking to explain why voting hasn't gone exactly as expected, appear to be going the full Hillary. A key committee has asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to cough up information on paid-for activity by Russian-linked accounts.

The head of Parliament's Digital, Media and Sport Committee, Damian Collins, wants the information as he leads an investigation into so-called "fake news" surrounding the 2016 EU Brexit referendum and the 2017 UK election.

"Part of this inquiry will focus on the role of foreign actors abusing platforms such as yours to interfere in the political discourse of other nations," Collins wrote in a letter to Zuckerberg circulated to media by the committee.

The Baghdad government and its paramilitary forces increasingly see American troop presence as the actual foreign menace.

A prominent Iraqi militia leader with close ties to Iran has told the United States to go home while also accusing US forces of not actually being interested in fighting ISIS: "Your forces should get ready to get out of our country once the excuse of Daesh's presence is over," said Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, the commander of the Shiite PMU group Asaib (Popular Mobilization Unit), through the group's TV channel on Monday. The threatening statement was issued the same day Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi publicly rejected Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's earlier suggestion that Iraqi paramilitary units who have for years fought Islamic State terrorists are actually "Iranian" and not Iraqi nationals.

On Sunday Tillerson controversially asserted that Iranian "militias" need to leave Iraq as the fight against Islamic State militants was coming to an end while in Riyadh where he engaged in rare high level talks with Abadi and Saudi Arabia's King Salman. "Certainly Iranian militias that are in Iraq, now that the fighting against (the Islamic State group) is coming to a close, those militias need to go home," Tillerson said during a press conference in Riyadh, just before boarding a plane for Baghdad. "All foreign fighters need to go home," he added.

Angela Merkel is frightened that damaging leaks from delicate Brexit negotiations could lead to the collapse of talks. The German chancellor reportedly thinks the fallout could cause British Prime Minister Theresa May's fragile government to implode.

According to the Times, Merkel was "furious" about leaks that appeared in the German press, which suggested May"begged" European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for help in the negotiations. An undisclosed source for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) told the paper that, following a meeting last week, Juncker told aides May was"anxious, despondent and disheartened."

He also told them May has a "struggle" to control her own party, while noting that she "looks like someone who doesn't sleep at night." The European Commission president denies the reports.