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China to dominate world economy over next three decades, US to fall behind India, Russia will lead Europe, says report


RT
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 18:05 UTC
China dragon
© Jason Lee / Reuters
Over the next three decades, the global economy will be dominated by China, and the US economy will lose steam and fall behind India, says consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Russia will become the leading European economy ahead of Germany, UK, and Italy with GDP of $7 trillion, according to a PwC report.
emerging markets
The report, called "The long view: how will the global economic order change by 2050?," ranked 32 countries, based on their projected Gross Domestic Product by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

Comment: The way things are shaping out, the US and Europe would be lucky to fall to such positions. The decline will likely be much more drastic.

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Attention

Donbass is heating up: High risk of imminent large-scale military ops

The Saker
The Saker
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 18:03 UTC
Petro Poroshenko and John McCain
Mad Men.
Most of you must by now have heard various reports about the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Ukraine. Many, however, might have dismissed them because, let's be honest here, we have had so many false warnings about an imminent Ukronazi attack that we got used to them. In fact, there have been numerous previous incidents, but this time around I see enough indicators and warnings to warrant another warning. Here are the new elements:

Comment: Another dot to connect:
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says he views U.S. President Donald Trump's opinion about the conflict in Ukraine as "a qualitative change" compared to that of Barack Obama.

Lavrov told the state-owned news agency TASS on February 7 that Trump's position on the situation in Ukraine is to monitor how the two sides are behaving in the conflict.

"The Obama administration...tried to demand everything from us and absolve [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko," Lavrov said.

In a recent interview to Fox News, Trump said the United States has insufficient information about the developments in eastern Ukraine.
This might support point 7 above. Trump wants a real picture of what's going on, on the front line. The question remains: once he finds out that it is Kiev's aggression and violation of the Minsk agreements, what will he do? Anything?

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Chess

DoJ says 'US security at risk' as they challenge order suspending Trump's travel ban


RT
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 17:56 UTC
Muslim ban immigration Trump protest
© Patrick T. Fallon / Reuters
As the political backlash grows over President Trump's travel ban, the US Department of Justice is set to face off with its opponents in a federal appeals court. Its lawyers will argue that suspending the executive order puts national security at risk.

"The Executive Order is a lawful exercise of the President's authority over the entry of aliens into the United States and the admission of refugees," reads the official 15-page argument filed by the DoJ on Monday.

A hearing in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco set for late Tuesday is to determine the legitimacy of the travel ban, after a federal judge angered the White House by blocking the controversial move nationwide last week. The Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to overturn the block over the weekend.

Comment: Further reading: Trump's immigration executive order: Separating fact from the media's fake news fiction

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Arrow Down

Lowbrow fear mongering: MSNBC suggests Trump wants to assassinate journalists

Nicholas Fondacaro
NewsBusters
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 16:13 UTC
katy tur
MSNBC took its fear mongering smears of the Donald Trump administration to a dark new low Monday afternoon when reporter Katy Tur suggested the president's war with the media would start racking up actual casualties. During an interview with Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican, Tur suggested Trump would take a page from Russian President Vladimir Putin's playbook and start targeting journalists for death.

"As we know, there's, since 2000, been a couple dozen suspicious deaths of journalists in Russia who came out against the government there," Tur reminded the Senator before unscrupulously suggesting Trumps distaste for the media would escalate, "Donald Trump has made no secret about going after journalists and his distaste for any news that doesn't agree with him here. Do you find that this is a dangerous path he is heading down?"

Fischer defended the President, saying that it's his job to foster relationships with leaders from countries around the globe. "And I believe that President Trump will recognize, or does recognize right now, who Putin is," she added in his defense.


Comment: Katy Tur has apparently lost her mind. Not only is the claim that 'Putin kills journalists', an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory spread by the Western elite, the idea that Trump will end up killing journalists has no basis in reality. The US press has undermined their own credibility with mountains of lies, distortions and cover-ups, and now they're lashing out because people are no longer accepting their trash as news.

Trump Fox interview inconceivable


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War Whore

Rahm Emanuel explains his 'road map to power' for Democratic Party

Kim Jansen
Chicago Tribune
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 17:01 UTC
Rahm Emanuel
Rahm Emanuel with Benjamin Netanyahu
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has warned Democrats they need to "take a chill pill" and realize that they are not going to take back national power anytime soon.

"It ain't gonna happen in 2018," Emanuel said Monday at Stanford's Graduate School of Business in California. "Take a chill pill, man. You gotta be in this for the long haul."

As he did last month at an event in Washington, D.C., the mayor expanded on what he believes is the road map back to power for his party — putting moderate candidates such as veterans, football players, sheriffs and business people up in Republican districts, picking battles with Republicans, exploiting wedges within the GOP and fighting attempts to redistrict Congress on partisan grounds.
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War Whore

Head of Ukraine's Radical Party says country will 'restore nuclear capabilities' after Trump revoked his visa

Kristina Kharlova (translator)
Fort Russ
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 17:01 UTC
Oleg Lyashko
Oleg Lyashko
Oleg Lyashko, Facebook - Translated by Kristina Kharlova

"My 10-year U.S. visa, which I just got before the New Year was just revoked. The consular officer said that he had such instructions from Washington.

And I have instructions from the Ukrainian people - to demand that the US fulfills its obligations to Ukraine under the Budapest Memorandum, otherwise Ukraine will have to restore nuclear weapons to protect itself.

Comment: Yep, this is the same guy that claimed Ukraine should take a cue from Hitler's re-armament prior to World War II, then follow the US' and Israel's lead in adopting nuclear weapons. Oleg Lyashko, a kidnapper, accused pedophile and child rapist, has the solution to the country's problems - give him the presidency and nuclear weapons.

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Info

Thierry Meyssan: Trump is holding course, anti-Trump reaction is war propaganda

Thierry Meyssan (translated by Pete Kimberly)
Voltaire Network
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 17:07 UTC
Donald Trump
© Martin Schoeller para Time
Our previous articles concerning President Trump have caused some fierce reactions from our readers. Some of them have been wondering about the naïvety apparently displayed by Thierry Meyssan despite the warnings issued by the international Press and the accumulation of negative signals. Here is his response, well-reasoned as always.

Two weeks after his investiture, the Altantist Press continues with its work of disinformation and agitation against the new President of the United States of America. Trump and his new collaborators are multiplying declarations and gestures which are apparently contradictory, so that it is difficult to understand what is going on in Washington.

The anti-Trump campaign

The bad faith of the Atlantist Press can be verified for each of these four main themes.

1. Concerning the beginning of the dismantling of Obamacare (20 January), we are obliged to report that, contrary to what is being announced in the Atlantist Press, the underprivileged classes who should have benefited from this system have avoided it en masse. This form of «social security» turned out to be too expensive and too directive to attract them. Only the private companies who manage this system have been truly satisfied by it.
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Propaganda

Hearsay extrapolated: Zero proof of Amnesty International's "mass executions in Syria" claims solely based on hearsay and guesstimates of two witnesses: #fakenews goes even further


Moon of Alabama
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 16:41 UTC
syria amnesty mass graves
A new Amnesty International report claims that the Syrian government hanged between 5,000 and 13,000 prisoners in a military prison in Syria. The evidence for that claim is flimsy, based on hearsay of anonymous people outside of Syria. The numbers themselves are extrapolations that no scientist or court would ever accept. It is tabloid reporting and fiction style writing from its title "Human Slaughterhouse" down to the last paragraph.

But the Amnesty report is still not propagandish enough for the anti-Syrian media. Inevitably only the highest number in the range Amnesty claims is quoted. For some even that is not yet enough. The Associate Press agency, copied by many outlets, headlines: Report: At least 13,000 hanged in Syrian prison since 2011:
BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian authorities have killed at least 13,000 people since the start of the 2011 uprising in mass hangings at a prison north of Damascus known to detainees as "the slaughterhouse," Amnesty International said in a report Tuesday.
How does "at least 13,000" conforms to an already questionable report which claims "13,000" as the top number of a very wide range?
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Wall Street

More woes: Deutsche Bank's office in Israel raided, managing director arrested over tax violations

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Tue, 07 Feb 2017 16:50 UTC
Boaz Schwartz
Define irony: just three days after Deutsche Bank took out a massive, full-page ad in German media to apologize for its market rigging "misconduct", Deutsche Bank managing director, Boaz Schwartz, who is also the German lender's chief executive officer in Israel, was arrested over alleged value-added-tax violations involving the company's clients, in the latest setback in the German firm's attempts to end years of legal issues and misconduct, prompting some to question the sincerity of DB's solemn "apology."

Schwartz, suspected of misreporting 550 million shekels ($146 million) of transactions, was arrested on Tuesday Bloomberg reported, a day after tax authorities raided the bank's offices in Israel, seizing executives' laptops and mobile phones, according to a statement from the Israel Tax Authority. He was freed under condition by Judge Karen Miller of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court. Israeli police had no comment on the executive's arrest.

The Israel tax authority said that the alleged transactions were reported as if conducted by foreign residents and avoided Israel's 17-percent VAT. In a statement, Deutsche Bank said it "acts in accordance with the law and strict legal advice both in Israel and abroad", except when it gets caught?
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Bell

Is The Trump Administration Already Over?

Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts
Mon, 06 Feb 2017 16:51 UTC
Trump
© AFP 2016/ Domonick Reuter
Hopes for the Trump administration are not burning brightly. Trump's military chief, Gen. Mattis, is turning out to be true to his "mad dog" nickname. He has just declared that Iran "is the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world."

He has declared Russia to be the number one threat to the US.

He has threatened intervention in China's territorial affairs.

I was wrong. I thought Gen. Mattis was a reasonable choice as he rejects the efficacy of torture, and, according to Trump, convinced Trump that "torture doesn't work." Apparently Mattis cannot reach beyond this realization to higher geo-political realizations. Trump needs to fire Mattis who has placed the Pentagon in the way of normal relations with Russia.

There is no evidence in the behavior of Iran, Russia, and China to support Gen. Mattis' views. His definition of threat is the neoconservative one—a country capable of resisting US hegemony. This is a convenient threat for the military/security complex as it justifies an unlimited budget in order to prevail over such "threats." It is this hegemonic impulse that is the source of terrorism.

If truth can be spoken, there are only two countries in the world with hegemonic aspirations—Israel and the US—and they are the sources of terrorism. Israel terrorizes Palestinians and has done so for about 70 years. The US terrorizes the rest of the world.
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