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EU & Canada pledge 'swift countermeasures' to US steel & aluminum tariffs


RT
Fri, 02 Mar 2018 09:45 UTC
steel factory
© Ina Fassbender / Reuters
A worker controls a tapping of a blast furnace at Europe's largest steel factory
The steep tariffs on America's imports of steel and aluminum announced by the US President Donald Trump will be met with swift countermeasures, pledge European Union and Canadian officials.

Canadian Trade Minister Francois-Phillippe Champagne has promised to defend his country's workers, calling the tariffs "unacceptable."

According to Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, trade restrictions will hurt workers and manufacturers on both sides of the border. It is inappropriate for the US to view any trade with Canada as a national security threat, she said.

The Canadian economy is reliant on trade with the US with more than 75 percent of exports going south of the border. Last month, Canada filed a 32-page complaint to the WTO, accusing Washington of misusing tariffs. In addition to a tariff on Canadian lumber, Ottawa's complaint lists 200 more instances of alleged US trade misconduct affecting other WTO members.

Comment: Considering the EU is also not happy about the Russian sanctions, it doesn't seem like a good move to further alienate the EU if they want to keep them under their thumb. Whether this will really bring back the steel industry to the US remains to be seen.
See also: Trump slaps steel imports with 25% tariff to boost US industry

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Info

Terrorists in Syria are using civilians as 'human shields' and plan to sabotage UN aid


RT
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 19:40 UTC
Tarma in the eastern Ghouta region
© Ammar Suleiman / AFP
Tarma in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on March 2, 2018
Terrorists in Syria's Eastern Ghouta are hiding in civilians' homes, taking away food and stealing instructions on how to pass through the humanitarian corridor. Militants also plan to shell aid convoys, the Russian military said.

The militants are continuing their activities during the daily humanitarian pauses, and on Saturday before noon they opened fire four times at the humanitarian corridor in besieged Eastern Ghouta, injuring three locals, Major General Vladimir Zolotukhin, a spokesman for the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria, stated.

Jaysh al-Islam terrorists try to cover their command posts in civilian infrastructure and use locals' homes for this purpose. They also use underground tunnels, according to the general.

"These actions of militias, as well as their continuing shelling of Damascus and its suburbs, are war crimes and the perpetrators must be brought to justice," Zolotukhin said.

Comment: Civilians in insurgent-controlled areas of Damascus' East Ghouta region are beginning to form armed groups to combat militant factions and escape towards government-held areas according to reports by Russian military sources.
Reports state that what started off as protests against militant groups in East Ghouta by disillusioned 'civic activists' is now slowly turning into a grass-roots counter-insurgency movement.
Maj. Gen. Yuri Yevtushenko, a spokesman for the Russian Reconciliation for Syria, said earlier today that the situation around the humanitarian corridor in Syria's Eastern Ghouta remains tense, with militant snipers regularly firing at access routes.
"(The) situation near the check point is still strained. Since yesterday evening, snipers have been shelling at approaches to the check point. Today, the Jeish al-Islam terrorists have carried out two mortar attacks from Eastern outskirts of Douma targeting the security corridor leading to the checkpoint near al-Waffedeen," Yevtushenko said.

According to Yevtushenko, residents of Eastern Ghouta are provided with information about exit routes and rules for safe leaving the area through the humanitarian corridor.


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Question

Armed and dangerous: What good are police if they refuse to protect the public?

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
Mon, 26 Feb 2018 00:00 UTC
american police
"After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it. I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military."-Author William S. Burroughs
In the American police state, police have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

In fact, police don't usually need much incentive to shoot and kill members of the public.

Police have shot and killed Americans of all ages-many of them unarmed-for standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something-anything-that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer's mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

In recent years, Americans have been killed by police merely for standing in a "shooting stance," holding a cell phone, behaving oddly and holding a baseball bat, opening the front door, running in an aggressive manner holding a tree branch, crawling around naked, hunching over in a defensive posture, wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey, driving while deaf, being homeless, brandishing a shoehorn, holding a garden hose, and peeing outdoors.

So when police in Florida had to deal with a 19-year-old embarking on a shooting rampage inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., what did they do?

Nothing.
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Chess

Afghanistan - A US-controlled pipeline, a shaky peace process and possible pitfalls


Moon of Alabama
Fri, 02 Mar 2018 17:36 UTC
pipeline afghanistan
© W. Foo/Asian Development Bank
Peace negotiations in Afghanistan had long stalled. But that recently changed in a surprising way. Secret negotiations between many parties must have taken place to suddenly achieve these two results: Both, the Taliban support for TAPI as well as President Ghani's offer are new. Just two weeks ago Ghani still rejected unconditional talks.

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline has been negotiated about since the early 1990s. It is supposed to bring gas from Central Asia to Pakistan and India. Only Russian pipelines are currently connecting Turkmenistan and its large gas reserves to its export markets. This is one reason why the U.S. always pushed for the project. The U.S. company Unocal was heavily involved. One of its consultants was Zalmay Khalilzad who later became U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and then Iraq.
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Vader

Western criminal powers are the true perpetrators of the siege of Syria


The Strategic Culture Foundation
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:18 UTC
Syria seige citizens playground
In more than seven years of war in Syria, we have seen many times how Western governments and news media shamelessly invert reality.

The same was seen this week over the grim fighting around Eastern Ghouta, the suburb near the capital, Damascus, where 400,000 people are said to be trapped.

But who is trapping who?

US and European media breathlessly claim that Eastern Ghouta is under siege from Syrian "regime forces" allied with Russia. This description is posing things upside down.

The district was taken over nearly six years ago by foreign-backed extremists, like Jaysh al Islam, Ahrar al Sham, and Al Nusra Front. The latter is an internationally outlawed terror group, but they all share the same murderous ideology, as well as the same Western covert sponsors in the American CIA, British MI6, French DGSE, and lavish Gulf Arab funding. It is these illegally armed insurgents who are holding the civilian population under siege in a reign of terror.
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Arrow Up

Putin and Austrian chancellor Kurz commit to strengthening political, economic ties amid booming trade between the countries


Russia Feed
Fri, 02 Mar 2018 00:00 UTC
Putin and Kurz
Trade between the Russian Federation and Austria is skyrocketing, and the list of areas where the nations share mutual interest is quite large, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurtz in Moscow:
Last year the trade grew by more than 40%, Russian investments in the Austrian economy reached 23 billion dollars, Austrian investments in the Russian economy - 5 billion dollars.

Comment: Putin took the occasion to discuss the economic benefits of the Nord Stream 2 project while making pointed remarks that the continuing sanctions 'visibly harm' EU interests.



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Dominoes

Postmodern Feminist Ideology: UK Courts Instructed to Treat Men Unequally Before The Law

Beau Christensen
Sott.net
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 17:38 UTC
feminist ideology meme
We're living in dangerous times folks. The postmodern feminist worldview has been officially adopted in UK courts.

In making their rulings, British judges use a guidance manual named the 'Equal Treatment Bench Book', which is published by the Judicial College, a body responsible for training all UK judges. The manual was just updated with a very pro-feminist, anti-male worldview taking hold. Judges are now being advised to avoid offending any of the snowflakes that might appear in their courtroom:
"Judges are now being urged to refrain from using certain words, including 'ethnic minorities,' 'afro-Caribbean' and 'transsexual,' while 'postman' should be replaced by 'postal operative'."
But the politically correct language doesn't stop there. It gets much worse:
"The guidelines also call for judges to be "slow" when it comes to jailing women, as imprisonment is believed to be more damaging to females than males. Going against the long-standing social norm whereby all are treated equally before the law, the guidelines suggest the opposite. "True equal treatment may not always mean treating everyone in the same way," the new version reads."
It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous statement. Equal treatment absolutely means treating everyone equally. Anything else is unequal treatment, plain and simple. This cannot be denied, yet the wizards at the Judicial College somehow have convinced themselves of something that is completely at odds with both the function of the English language and observable reality. Welcome to the liberal feminist ideology, where black is white and unequal treatment is fair if it benefits those poor victims of the patriarchy.
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Propaganda

Welcome to another Western edition of anti-Assad political theater in Ghouta

Robert Bridge
RT
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 14:41 UTC
Bashar al-Assad
© Reuters

Western media is heaping scorn on Syria for using 'excessive force' in its effort to liberate Ghouta from militant control. But where was that same concern when Mosul was being pulverized by US-led forces?

The Syrian government's liberation efforts in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta have deteriorated into a media circus where truth has taken a back seat in the clown car. As was the case in the liberation of Aleppo, the government of President Bashar Assad - as opposed to the militant groups wreaking havoc in his country - has borne the main brunt of criticism from the Western world.

Due to the conditions on the ground in Ghouta, it is virtually impossible to get a clear picture of the situation there. What we do know, however, is that Damascus is being hit by approximately 70 missiles daily from militant positions inside Ghouta. The Western media would rather ignore that fact, speculating instead that "more than 500 people" have been killed by the Assad "regime" since efforts to retake the city began last month.
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Snakes in Suits

Report: FBI's Andrew McCabe's information leak and misleading DOJ watchdog to be exposed


RT
Fri, 02 Mar 2018 22:13 UTC
McCabe
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
Andrew McCabe
Andrew McCabe, the former number two at the FBI, leaked information about Clinton's emails probe to the press and later misled watchdog investigators, according to a Justice Department review due to be released next month.

McCabe authorized the leak to the Wall Street Journal for a story about an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation scandal in 2016, according to The New York Times and the Washington Post, who cited several sources familiar with the upcoming report. McCabe also misled the DOJ watchdog investigators about his improper media disclosure.

McCabe stepped down from his position as the FBI Deputy Director in January, amid concerns over a review by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

The report is part of Horowitz's review on how the FBI and Justice Department handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was serving as secretary of state. The Justice Department is investigating why McCabe took three weeks to act on a request to examine Clinton's emails, which were discovered during the 2016 US presidential election. The Wall Street Journal revealed a dispute between the FBI and the Justice Department over how to address the probe into the financial dealings of the Clinton Foundation.
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Map

Complexities of warfare: Trump and Assad are on the 'same side' in Afrin

Andrew Korybko
Oriental Review
Sat, 03 Mar 2018 13:51 UTC
Turkish intervention in Afrin map
The independent convergence of American and Syrian interests against Turkey's anti-terrorist campaign is coincidental and doesn't imply a "conspiracy", but it's also instructive in the sense that it proves that it's possible for the most unlikely pair of countries to tacitly agree on a subject of shared interest, despite this allegedly being impossible according to the prevailing Alt-Media narrative.

It probably sounds absurd the first time that the average person hears it, but Presidents Trump and Assad are on the same side in Afrin in spite of the legacy of 7 years of Hybrid Warfare that the US has been waging against Syria. As the saying goes, "there are no friends or enemies in international politics, just interests", and nowhere is this more self-evident than Washington and Damascus' similar interpretation of how UNSC Res. 2401 relates to Turkey's anti-terrorist "Operation Olive Branch" against the "federal" Kurds.
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