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God Save Our Union: Poll Claims Brits up for Second Brexit Referendum

nigel farage
An increasing majority of people would back a second European Union referendum if Britain faced crashing out of the bloc without a deal, a new poll claims.

It comes after the national debate over a second referendum came under the spotlight last week when Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, signalled he would support the idea.

While both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have repeatedly dismissed such calls, the new research for BMG found that 57 per cent of those who expressed a view would back a fresh public vote if the UK was set to leave the bloc and resort to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, with 43 per cent opposed.

Comment: If even Farage is up for it, it's probably going to happen.

Maybe they'll rig the result properly this time around.

With everything that is in play, perhaps even the Establishment faction that wants out of the EU realizes that the only way to maintain the British Union is to remain in the European one.

See also: Ireland, UK and Brussels reach Brexit agreement: No hard border for Northern Ireland, which effectively remains in EU


Bizarro Earth

Amnesty International's Margaret Huang, is barking up the wrong tree

Margaret Huang, Amnesty International
I have received a letter from Margaret Huang, Amnesty International's executive director. She is fundraising on the basis of President Trump's "chilling disregard for our cherished human rights" and his exploitation of "hatred, misogyny, racism and xenophobia," by which he has "emboldened and empowered the most violent segments of our society."

Considering the hostility of Identity Politics toward Trump, one can understand why Ms. Huang frames her fundraiser in this way, but are the Trump deplorables the most empowered and violent segments of our society or is it the security agencies, the police, the neoconservatives, the presstitute media, and the Republican and Democratic parties?

Chess

Erdogan will continue Syria talks with Putin instead of Trump

Erdogan
© Adem Altan / AFP / Getty Images
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday that he was not planning to discuss the US intentions to create "border security forces" northern Syria with US President Donald Trump, but would maintain contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I am not planning to call Trump, but contacts with Putin continue," Erdogan told reporters, when asked a relevant question.

Erdogan also urged NATO to oppose the US plans to create the border force, saying that the military bloc was "obliged" to stand against those powers that "harass and violate the borders of its members."

Comment: Further reading: Report: Erdogan to launch airstrikes on US-backed Kurds in Syria


Jet4

Report: Erdogan to launch airstrikes on US-backed Kurds in Syria

Syria Afrin
© AFP 2018/ George OURFALIAN
Turkey's possible offensive in Syria's northern Kurdish-controlled Afrin enclave will start with airstrikes on 149 targets of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), Turkish media reported on Tuesday.

Since Saturday, Ankara has been threatening to start an operation against the Syrian Kurds in Afrin following an announcement by the US-led coalition about training a border protection force composed of the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), affiliated with the YPG, in northern Syria. Various Turkish media have been reporting about shelling by the Turkish army of the territory under YPG control in Afrin. Ankara has reportedly sent armed convoys to the Syrian border.

The Turkish Vatan newspaper reported, citing military sources, that the country's airstrikes would be carried out by fighter aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Comment: Further reading: US traps itself with new Syrian policy: Unsustainable military occupation, pushes Turkey to reinforce Astana agreement
The SDF and the Kurds are under control of the PKK/YPK, a terrorist organization that is nearly daily fighting and killing Turkish forces within Turkey. The Arabs which ostensibly shall seal the area against off from the rest of Syria are most likely tribal forces that were earlier aligned with the Islamic State.

The Turks were not consulted before the U.S. move and are of course not amused that a terrorist gang, trained and armed by the U.S., will control a long stretch of their southern border. Any Turkish government would have to take harsh measures to prevent such a strategic threat to the country



Arrow Down

Free Syrian Army begs CIA to revive weapons aid program to terrorists

Free Syrian Army
© Reuters/ Alaa Al-Faqir
Members of the Free Syrian Army have apparently asked the US to revive the previously suspended CIA military aid program to rebel groups seeking the ouster of Syria's President Bashar Assad.

Mustafa Sejari, a senior representative of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) said that the group's envoys who visited Washington explained to US officials the downsides of President Donald Trump's decision to shut off the CIA-facilitated supply of weapons to certain rebel groups in Syria.

"We asked for the resumption of aid and explained the dangers of leaving moderate FSA forces without support," Sejari said.

Comment: See also:


Chess

Russia & China are creating 'real global alternative' to US dollar

Chinese Yuan
© Thomas White / Reuters
Chinese business news and analysis portal BWChinese has outlined how, in addition to the petro-yuan, China and its Russian partners can go about creating a real global alternative to the US dollar.

According to the portal, China and Russia's use of yuan-denominated crude oil futures will help promote the ascendency of the renminbi. And although China's weight in the crude oil market is not by itself sufficient to shake the global dominance of the petro-dollar, its status as the world's largest crude oil importer will certainly help solidify the petro-yuan's positions, with even US energy companies showing interest in exporting shale oil to the Asian economic powerhouse.

At the same time, BWC asserts that apart from the creation of a non-dollar denominated environment for oil trade, "both Russia and China are also stepping up their exploration and acquisition of physical gold reserves," hedging against the implications of a possible collapse of the de-facto world currency.

Comment: Further reading:


Attention

Lithuania bars Kadyrov, Bastrykin and 47 other Russians under Magnitsky law

Aleksandr Bastrykin
© ReutersAlso targeted on the Lithuanian blacklist is Russian Investigative Committee chief Aleksandr Bastrykin, who is accused of carrying out numerous politically charged cases against Kremlin opponents.
Lithuania has issued its first blacklist of 49 Russians banned for allegedly violating human rights or engaging in corruption and money laundering under its new Magnitsky law.

The blacklist was published by Lithuania's Interior Ministry on January 15 and included Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Russia's Chechnya region, among other prominent Russians.

Human rights groups say that Kadyrov, who was appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007 to head Chechnya, rules through repressive measures and has created a climate of impunity for security forces.

Comment: Lithuania, along with Canada, Britain, and Estonia, are nothing more than US vassal states, parroting the US by imitating their Russian sanctions, relying on the Magnitsky Myth as justification. Will they ever see the light? See also:


Propaganda

France under Macron: RT reporter barred from media event for the second time this week

Macron
© AFP / Charles Platiau
For the second time in less than a week, an accredited RT crew has been barred from covering working visits of French President Emmanuel Macron - who is known to single out the news outlet.

On Monday, a journalist working for RT France was denied entry to the Elysee Palace to cover a technical briefing of Macron's upcoming visit to Calais on January 17. While passing through the security gates of the presidential palace, the journalist was stopped by a person in charge of handling the press at Macron's office. The media officer asked the RT journalist which media outlet he represents. After presenting the attendant with a press card issued by the French authorities, Macron's representative barred the journalist from entering, saying: "Oh no! You are not a journalist, we only bring in the journalists."

War Whore

Flashback Democrats: The real war party

banksy dove
© eddiedangerousArt by Banksy
Between the fall of Mosul to ISIS militants, the POW trade with Taliban officials and the revelation that almost every phone call made in Afghanistan since the US invasion has been recorded by the NSA, this month has seen politicians and journalists briefly (and perhaps reluctantly) turn their attention back to the chaos produced by American warmaking.

Since Obama's election, few Americans have wanted to talk about Afghanistan, our longest war ever, now in its thirteenth year, nor the continuing violence in Iraq, which has claimed over 4,000 lives in 2014 to date. Liberal pundits have remained similarly quiet on Obama's drone wars in Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Syria, while cheering the attack on Libya. Meanwhile anti-war and feminist sentiments have been deployed to organize "grassroots" campaigns demanding further U.S. intervention in central Africa and Nigeria against Joseph Kony and Boko Haram.

Many of the liberals who rally around Obama and the flag probably don't actually have a principled opposition to war. But what about those who do? They are trapped in the cognitive dissonance produced by one of America's fundamental political falsehoods: that the Democratic Party is opposed to war.

Comment: Two sides of the same coin. Heads, you lose. Tails, you lose. See also:


Bullseye

Why the media is losing its mind over DACA

immigration protestors
The MSM's attempt to slam the President over alleged language covers up the real matter that Democrats offered a bum solution for immigration reform

For three days now, the MSM has been screaming bloody murder about an alleged (and denied) vulgarity spoken by President Trump in a closed-door meeting about immigration reform and DACA. We have covered this media meltdown extensively in pieces you can link to here and here. But now, let's have a look into what the REAL news about DACA is, and we might even understand why the MSM is having such a meltdown.

On January 12th, the American radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh noted during his program that although there was not any detail about this known yet, the apparent issue was that President Trump was outraged over the Democrats trying to hand him a total nothing-burger deal about immigration. We have to remember that one of President Trump's wishes is to get the United States to adopt a "merit based" immigration position, where the US screens people who want to come to live in the USA in regards to what they can and will contribute to the well-being of this nation.

This is not a strange or barbarous position to take on immigration. Canada does it. Australia does it, Germany, Hong Kong, Denmark, New Zealand and other nations in the world probably do it as well. In fact, the United States itself ran with such a system up until the year 1952. Such a vetting process may go far in reducing the chance that elements who get in to a given nation will then attack it and its people.