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Chinese warships dock in Sydney harbour for 4 day stopover

Melanie Sun
The Epoch Times
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 15:01 UTC
Chinese warships
© PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images
Three Chinese warships are seen docked at Garden Island naval base in Sydney on June 3, 2019.
A People's Liberation Army frigate, an auxiliary replenishment ship, and an amphibious vessel docked at a naval base in Sydney Harbour, Australia, on June 3 for a four-day stopover.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) ships with approximately 730 sailors onboard docked in Garden Island, which lies below HMAS Kuttabul in Potts Point.

It is the first visit by the PLA since a similar visit in 2017, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the government knew that three Chinese navy ships were due to arrive in Sydney Harbour on Monday, despite the government not publicly announcing the visit.
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Info

Boris Johnson snubs Trump, says he's "too busy" for meeting

Tyler Durden
Zero Hedge
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 09:00 UTC
boris johnson and trump
Boris Johnson has basked in President Trump's praise, touting Trump's endorsement as yet another reason why he should succeed Theresa May as Britain's next prime minister. But when the opportunity arose for Johnson to meet Trump, the former foreign secretary snubbed the leader of the free world, saying he was "too busy" to meet with him.

Over the weekend, Trump praised Johnson as a "friend" and as a "very talented" politician with whom the US might be able to negotiate a sweeping trade deal (Trump has repeatedly brought up the possibility of a trade deal during his trip, to the delight of Brexiteers who are pushing for a 'no deal' exit from the EU). Trump has also compared Johnson favorably to Theresa May (much, we imagine, to the prime minister's chagrin).

But during a Tuesday morning phone call, Johnson reportedly turned down the opportunity for a one-on-one meeting with Trump because of a Conservative leadership hustings event, according to ITV reporter Robert Peston.
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Snakes in Suits

One insult after another: Kushner believes Palestinians can't govern themselves, more concerned with mortgages than statehood

Yumna Patel
Mondoweiss
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 00:00 UTC
Jared Kushner
© AP Photo / Evan Vucci
Senior advisor and son-in-law to US President Donald Trump is making headlines again for comments he made in a television interview on Sunday, insinuating that he didn't believe Palestinians were capable of governing themselves.

Kushner's controversial statements were made during a sit-down interview with Axios reporter Jonathan Swan who covered a range of topics, including Kushner's views on Middle East peace - something he has been tasked with achieving by the US administration.

Swan posed the question of whether Kushner believed that Palestinians were "capable of governing themselves without Israeli interference," to which Kushner responded with, essentially, 'not yet.'

Comment:

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Bad Guys

'No sympathy': Spineless British Foreign Secretary won't protect Assange from US extradition

Camilo Montoya-Galvez
Face the Nation
Sun, 02 Jun 2019 11:15 UTC
Jeremy Hunt
© file photo
British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt
The U.K.'s top diplomat said he would not stand in the way of Julian Assange's extradition to the U.S., a move the Justice Department has requested since the WikiLeaks founder was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and arrested by British authorities in April.

Pressed on the U.S. government's extradition request for Assange, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, one of the high-profile Conservative politicians vying to replace outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May, expressed no sympathy for Assange and said he would not block an extradition if he was chosen to lead the British government.

"Well, we would have to follow our own legal processes, just as the U.S. has to follow its own legal processes," Hunt told "Face the Nation" Sunday. "But would I want to stand in the way of Julian Assange facing justice? No, I would not."

After Ecuador withdrew Assange's asylum in early April, British police entered the embassy and arrested him for failing to appear in court in relation to an extradition request by the government in Sweden, where he faces allegations of sexual abuse. He has since been sentenced to 50 weeks of imprisonment by the British judiciary.

Comment: Hunt won't do anything to impede his ambitions for higher office. Annoying the US certainly won't earn him any Brownie points nor doing the right thing by Julian Assange.

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Brick Wall

Federal judge denies Democrat's efforts to block Trump's use of Pentagon funds for border wall


RT
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 12:48 UTC
US Border Wall
© Reuters / Mike Blake
A federal judge has denied House Democrats' efforts to block President Donald Trump's use of Pentagon funds for his promised wall on the border with Mexico, arguing they lacked constitutional standing to challenge the move.

"[W]hile the Constitution bestows upon Members of the House many powers, it does not grant them standing to hale the Executive Branch into court claiming a dilution of Congress's legislative authority," Judge Trevor McFadden wrote, siding with the Trump administration in a ruling that affirmed the House lacks the authority to unilaterally quash presidential reappropriation of funds.

Attempting to steer clear of involvement in the House's "political turf war with the President over the implementation of legislation," McFadden padded his decision with a conciliatory acknowledgement of the Democrats' numerous potential investigative routes to victory - over 50, by his count - but drew a distinction between the House's investigatory powers and its power over appropriations, denying the latter.

Comment: The Wall is going up, despite the howls and stonewalling of Democrats:

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Stop

Eight Muslim Sri Lankan officials resign in protest over terrorism accusations


RT
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 09:42 UTC
Sri Lanka Muslims officials ministers
© Reuters / Dinuka Liyanawatte
Eight Muslim officials in Sri Lanka have stepped down from their posts in solidarity with another minister, accused by the opposition of ties to the group behind the lethal Easter Sunday bombings that killed over 250 people.

The ministers quit their posts on Monday in a show of solidarity with Rishad Bathiudeen, who had resigned his post as industry minister earlier in the day.

Bathiudeen's resignation preempted the planned no-confidence motion against him, introduced by the opposition. The motion accused the minister of providing ammunition to a factory owned by one of the suspects in the April 21 bombings, and pressuring the army to release several suspects arrested after the attacks, among other things. The opposition offered no evidence to back up these claims.

Comment: Also see:

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Star of David

Kushner slammed for suggesting Palestinians currently 'incapable of governing themselves'


RT
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 09:42 UTC
Jared Kushner
© Reuters / Yuri Gripas
Jared Kushner, Washington
White House envoy Jared Kushner stands accused of "racism" for answering a question about Palestinians' ability to self-govern by expressing hope they'll be capable of this in the future - implying they're incapable of this now.

In a sit-down interview with Axios on HBO, the son-in-law of US President Donald Trump and his charge d'affaires for brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal triggered a storm of anger when he equivocated about Palestinian competence. "We'll have to see,"said Kushner. "The hope is that they [Palestinians], over time, will become capable of governing."

Kushner's comments - called "racist" by some observers - put in doubt the possibility that the so-called "deal of the century" he has been hawking for over a year and a half stands a chance of meeting the minimum expectations of Palestinians, let alone cracking the code for a peace agreement that has long eluded the land's inhabitants.
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Wall Street

Trump's typically American LNG sales pitch: 'We're shipping freedom & opportunity!'


RT
Tue, 04 Jun 2019 09:42 UTC
Donald Trump LNG export natural gas Louisiana
© ERIN SCHAFF, STF / NYT
President Donald Trump plans to get a first-hand look at the soon-to-be-opened Cameron LNG export terminal just a couple hours east of Houston in Louisiana.
Donald Trump has boasted about shipments of "freedom and opportunity" - now in liquid rather than aerial form - as Washington continues to persuade its allies halfway across the globe to buy its overpriced liquefied natural gas.

"The first shipment of LNG has just left the Cameron LNG Export Facility in Louisiana," Trump tweeted. "Not only have thousands of JOBS been created in USA, we're shipping freedom and opportunity abroad!"

Trump unironically branded LNG exports as true harbingers of freedom, as Washington struggles to capture the European market through demonizing its competitor, Moscow. Russia's EU partners, especially Germany, however, have refused to bow to the pressure, arguing that Russian pipeline supplies are much more economically feasible.

Comment: Also see: NOT satire: US Energy Department rebrands LNG 'Freedom Gas', looks forward to 'exporting molecules of US freedom around the world'

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Eye 2

US bombers, warships conduct "simulated strikes" aimed at Iran in Arabian Sea

Carlo Muñoz
Washington Times
Mon, 03 Jun 2019 12:00 UTC
F/A-18E
© MCSA Ignacio D. Perez
An F/A-18E Super Hornet from the Tophatters of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 14 participates in an air power demonstration over the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74). The John C. Stennis Carrier Strike Group is returning from an eight-month deployment to the U.S. 5th and 7th Fleet areas of responsibility.
An Air Force long-range bomber and attack aircraft from the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln carried out a series of "simulated strike operations" and other offensive military drills in the Arabian Sea over the weekend in an effort to curb Iranian aggression in the region.

A B-52 Stratofortress from the U.S. Air Force's 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron teamed up with F/A-18 Super Hornets and E-2D Growler electronic warfare planes from the U.S.S. Lincoln's Carrier Air Wing 7 to "conducted several joint training evolutions designed to improve operational tactics in several warfare areas," says a U.S. Central Command statement.

As part of those live-fire combat drills, which began June 1, U.S. fighter and bomber aircraft conducted "simulated strike operations in defense of a national asset," the command statement says. The drills were "an incredible demonstration of how our military can to rapidly join capabilities to enhance our lethality and our ability to respond to any threat when called upon," Carrier Air Wing Commander Navy Capt. William Reed said in the statement.

Comment: Evidently the only aggressor in the region is the US and its allies:

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UFO

Former US defense official: 'We know UFOs exist, the issue is why are they here?'

Anna Hopkins
Fox News
Thu, 30 May 2019 00:00 UTC
Christopher Mellon UFO's

Christopher Mellon during his top-level clearance days, an Area 51 sign and CGI
After a bombshell report detailing near-daily interactions with unidentified flying objects by Navy pilots in 2014 and 2015, Christopher Mellon has argued that this information is nothing new, and the government needs to do something about it.

Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, is involved with a new History Channel series, 'Unidentified,' which will expand on topics discussed in a recent New York Times article. In numerous interviews, Navy pilots revealed that they saw UFOs moving at hypersonic speeds, performing acts "beyond the physical limits of a human crew," and emitting "no visible engine or infrared exhaust plumes."

In a Wednesday morning interview with "Fox & Friends," Mellon, who has written extensively on the topic before, outlined the reasons the Navy is concerned about these sightings.

"We know that UFOs exist. This is no longer an issue," he said. "The issue is why are they here? Where are they coming from and what is the technology behind these devices that we are observing?"


Comment: This interview continues a recent push by "authority figures" in government and media discussing UFOs. There is clearly a push by those in power to begin the acceptance of other life forms in the universe by the general public. The question is, why?

What The Hell Is Going On With UFOs And The Department Of Defense?
On the other hand, putting a possible goal of disclosure aside, there is also a very real reason why the Pentagon would want the idea of UFOs injected back into the public's consciousness and even to add validity to it. Doing so is in itself a very old chapter in Uncle Sam's information warfare playbook.[...]

As I have said over and over again, the sky, and the things we are accustomed to seeing inhabiting it, is going to look increasingly different in the very near term. Hypersonics, drone swarms, directed energy weapons, and a full-on emerging arms race in space are just some of the very real activities and technologies that will dominate the near future of American weapons development. The products of all of these initiatives, once manifested, could appear positively alien to curious bystanders.

The military will be able to explain some of this, but some of it they won't. So, reinvigorating the presence of UFOs in the American psyche by adding heaps of validity to the topic on an official level and possibly also on a less than official level (To The Stars Academy for instance) can help keep secret programs that grace the skies just that, secret. And who knows, that list of programs and technologies could include the very Tic Tac and other bizarrely shaped craft that can defy imagination with their aerial feats that have been spotted and even recorded in recent years. In fact, if the U.S. military has such a capability, the UFO cover story would be imperative to keeping the nature of its existence under wraps.
See also:

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