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'Renew or be replaced': Blair says Labour party has been taken over by far-left

Kylie MacLellan
Reuters
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 09:13 UTC
Blair
© REUTERS/Toby Melville
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair speaks at the Hallam Conference Centre in London, Britain December 18, 2019.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair, Labour's most successful leader, on Wednesday urged the party to rebuild from electoral humiliation by rejecting the "protest movement with cult trimmings" created by outgoing leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Thursday's defeat was Labour's worst since 1935, and a battle for control is now under way between moderates and Corbyn's hard-left allies.

Blair won three elections for Labour by hauling it toward a business-friendly centrist platform, and was premier from 1997 to 2007. But he lost favor in part by sending British forces to back U.S. president George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.


Comment: He's also one of the most widely despised PMs of all time: 'Tony Blair lied, cheated and privatized': Former PM slammed online for criticisms of current British politics


Corbyn's supporters say Blair both betrayed the working classes and undermined faith in politicians, and "Blairism" remains badly tarnished, both inside and outside Labour.

Comment: See also: Someone Meddled in the UK Election & It Wasn't Russia

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Propaganda

Newsweek trusts Bellingcat more than Reuters - journalist who quit over 'suppressed' OPCW story to RT


RT
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 17:32 UTC
newsweek
© AFP / Nicholas Kamm
Blind trust in controversial 'citizen investigation' outlet Bellingcat prompted Newsweek editors to drop a report on the latest OPCW leaks, the author of the piece who resigned from the magazine after the incident told RT.

Tareq Haddad announced his resignation from Newsweek last week, accusing the magazine of "suppressing" his attempt to report on a leaked email casting doubts on the results of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) investigation into an April 2018 chemical attack in Douma, Syria, which allegedly killed dozens of civilians. The OPCW sent a fact-finding mission to the site, which pinned the blame for the attack on Damascus. While witnesses who later spoke in the Hague said the White Helmets' video of the attack was staged.

Haddad also issued a scathing rebuke to the Newsweek - and Western journalism in general - by accusing it of siding with the American warmongers to promote the US wars and obscure the truth. Now he also revealed to RT that it was the editorial board's quite peculiar pick of trustworthy sources that gave a rise to the whole issue in the first place.

Haddad first approached his editors with an OPCW leaks story pitch, citing an opinion piece by Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday.

"The fact that another British journalist has published it in a reputable publication, I thought, was more than enough for Newsweek to be able to do that," he told RT.

The editors simply discarded this idea by calling Hitchens - a man Haddad describes as an "accomplished journalist [working] for more than 12 years" - not trustworthy enough. Instead, they referred him to a Bellingcat article supposedly debunking the whole leak story.

Comment: See Haddad's piece, and further coverage of the OPCW scandal, here:

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Bug

Mad Maxine Waters: 'I believe' Trump-Putin conspiracy 'even though I don't have the facts to prove it'

Jessica Chasmar
The Washington Times
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
Maxine Waters
© AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
House Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., asks a question of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton, during a committee hearing, Tuesday Sept. 24, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
Rep. Maxine Waters admitted Monday that she doesn't have the facts to prove her firmly held belief that President Trump colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the 2016 presidential election.

Ms. Waters, California Democrat and chairwoman of the House Financial Service Committee, told CNN's Erin Burnett that she still believes Mr. Trump proposed lifting sanctions against Russia in exchange for helping him win in the election, even though a lengthy investigation conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of collusion between Mr. Trump's campaign and the Kremlin.

"I had done some research, and I knew about [Mr. Trump's] alignment with Putin, I knew about [Paul] Manafort and what the relationship was and the fact that he had been sent there by Putin, in essence, to head up the president's campaign," Ms. Waters said.


Comment: Another fact: Its the Democrats who did the real interfering with the US presidential elections (and will likely try and do it again this next go around).

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Light Saber

Trump pens fiery letter to Pelosi, and to history

Gregg Re
Fox News
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 16:43 UTC
Trump Pelosi
© Reuters/James Lawler Duggan/Jonathan Ernst
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi • President Donald Trump
President Trump, in a blistering, no-holds-barred six-page letter Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., lambasted the Democrats' impeachment inquiry as an "open war on American Democracy," writing that she has violated her oath of office and "cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment!"

"Everyone, you included, knows what is really happening," Trump said, just a day before House Democrats were expected to vote to impeach him. "Your chosen candidate lost the election in 2016, in an Electoral College landslide (306-227), and you and your party have never recovered from this defeat. So you have spent three straight years attempting to overturn the will of the American people and nullify their votes. You view democracy as your enemy!"
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Eye 1

FISA Court slams FBI: 'Misconduct... calls into question' every warrant FBI ever got

Christopher Bedford
The Federalist
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 16:24 UTC
comey obama sean joyce
© White House
(L-R) James Comey, FBI Dep. Director Sean Joyce, President Obama in 2013
Set deadline for reform, stops shy of suggesting punishment

The U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court harshly rebuked the FBI in a Tuesday afternoon order, saying FBI misconduct in applying for warrants against Trump campaign official Carter Page calls all past warrant applications into question, and setting a fast-approaching deadline to fix the system.

The order was issued in response to an inspector general report that found the FBI failed to include exculpatory evidence in its four successful applications for surveillance warrants on U.S. citizen, former Naval officer, and then-Trump campaign official Carter Page. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is a secret court set up in 1978 to grant U.S. intelligence agencies warrants to spy on suspected spies from other countries, or, literally, to surveil foreign intelligence.

Comment:

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Jet3

Russia's new 5gen supersonic stealth Su-57 fighter jets ace all objectives during trials in Syria


RT
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 10:24 UTC
Russia Su-57 5gen
© Sputnik / Vladimir Astapkovich
The testing of Russia's most advanced combat aircraft has yielded superb results, a senior military official has revealed, as the stealth aircraft enters its mass-production phase.

The jets "have successfully accomplished all of their tasks" during trials in Syria, Chief of General Staff General Valery Gerasimov told a group of foreign military attachés on Wednesday.

Gerasimov said that the campaign against militants in Syria has provided a "new impetus for further improvement" of all types of weaponry, including airborne. He added that the Air Force has taken delivery of 139 warplanes of various designs this year.

The Su-57s flew their first combat missions in Syria last year. They are already in mass production and the Air Force is set to commission 76 brand new fighters by 2028.

Comment: See also:

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Newspaper

Scaremongering? Refugee crisis over Kashmir could dwarf all others - Imran Khan


RT
Wed, 18 Dec 2019 02:14 UTC
Pakistan's Ghauri missile
© Reuters / Mian Khursheed
Pakistan's Ghauri nuclear-capable missile .
Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that India's tough new policies in Kashmir risk creating a severe refugee crisis that could then create a domino effect, even leading to a full-blown war with Islamabad.

Khan made his remarks while opening the UN-sponsored Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, on Tuesday.

He warned that if India tries to change the demography of its Muslim-majority Kashmir region, it will trigger "another refugee crisis that would dwarf other crises." From there on, the ensuing chaos and tensions could spiral into an open conflict between India and Pakistan, he warned.

Comment: There are very few Muslim refugees from India to Pakistan during recent decades. Recent Citizenship Amendment Act is aimed at addressing the immigrants from Bangladesh to India.

See also:

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Snakes in Suits

Family emergency keeps Jerry Nadler out of impeachment hearing

Virginia Kruta
Daily Caller
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 12:18 UTC
nadler
© Alex Wong/Getty Images
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler missed Tuesday's impeachment hearing in the Rules Committee due to a family emergency.

According to a report from Politico, Nadler went home to New York to handle a family emergency — the details of which were not initially disclosed — and was expected to return to Washington either late Tuesday or early Wednesday morning.

Comment: Who is really ill?

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Star of David

Gaza in 2020: How easily the world deletes Palestinian suffering

David Hearst
Middle East Eye
Fri, 13 Dec 2019 01:47 UTC
gaza baby dead
© Agence France-Presse
A man holds the hand of Maria al-Gazali, a 14-month-old Palestinian baby, as her body lies on a stretcher at a hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza on 5 May 2019. She died during an Israeli air strike
I would like you to try an exercise. Google the words "family of eight killed" and you will be given several options - one in Sonora, Mexico, another in Pike, Ohio, yet another in Mendocino County, California.

But Google's massive memory seems to have suffered amnesia over what took place just one month ago in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.

To recap, because you, too, may have forgotten: on 14 November, an Israeli pilot dropped a one-tonne JDAM bomb on a building where eight members of one family were sleeping. Five of them were children. Two of them were infants.
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Newspaper

Pakistan's former military ruler Musharraf sentenced to death for high treason


RFE/RL
Tue, 17 Dec 2019 08:24 UTC
Pervez Musharraf

Pervez Musharraf (file photo)
A Pakistani court has handed a death sentence to former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf on treason charges for suspending the country's constitution 12 years ago.

The 76-year-old ex-strongman is now living in exile in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.).

The special court in Islamabad announced the verdict on December 17 with a 2-1 majority.

Musharraf, who ruled Pakistan between 1999 and 2008, is the first military ruler to stand trial in Pakistan for overruling the constitution.

In a video statement issued from his hospital bed earlier this month, Musharraf described the case against him as "baseless."

Comment: RT reports:
"The decision given by special court about General Pervez Musharraf, Retired, has been received with a lot of pain and anguish by [the] rank and file of Pakistan Armed Forces," it said.

The distinguished military man, "who has served the country for over 40 years, [who] fought wars for the defense of the country, can surely never be a traitor," the statement continued, adding that "[the] Armed Forces of Pakistan expect that justice will be dispensed in line with [the] Constitution of [the] Islamic Republic of Pakistan."


He is a divisive figure in Pakistani history. Critics call him a military dictator who may have facilitated the assassination in 2007 of his political opponent, Benazir Bhutto. Supporters see him as a venerable veteran who stood up to foreign and domestic threats and boosted Pakistan's international profile.
In Benazir Bhutto - A Warning To Us All Joe Quinn writes:
In 1998 Benazir went into self-imposed exile in Dubai where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007 after reaching an understanding with CIA-asset President Musharraf, who took power in a military coup in 1999.

[...]

As the PPP party leader announced her death, the Pakistani people knew instantly where to look for the culprits as they erupted into shouts of "Musharraf is a dog". Let's not forget who his masters are.
Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: What's The Problem With Nationalism?

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