Welcome to Sott.net
Tue, 26 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Arrow Down

Trump rips McConnell in speech to Republicans

John Bowden
The Hill
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 07:31 UTC
McConnell/Trump
© Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images/www.slate.com/KJN
Senator Mitch McConnell • Former US President Donald Trump
Former President Trump reportedly tore into Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during a gathering Saturday evening, condemning the Kentucky Republican for not doing more to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

According to The Washington Post, Trump referred to McConnell as a "dumb son of a bitch" during a speech to members of the Republican National Committee (RNC) at the former president's private Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and suggested Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) would have fought for Trump if they were in the same party. Trump told the assembled RNC members, according to the Post.:
"If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it. I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you?"
Trump reportedly added, referring to his nomination of Elaine Chao, who served as Transportation secretary in the Trump administration and is married to McConnell.

The two top Republicans were publicly aligned throughout the four years of Trump's presidency, with McConnell opposing the former president's two impeachment trials. But their relationship soured in the weeks following the 2020 election as McConnell was reported to be urging senators not to oppose the certification of the results.
      Read More...
Arrow Up

In 5-4 vote, Supreme Court lifts California's COVID ban on group Bible study in homes

David G. Savage
Los Angeles Times
Fri, 09 Apr 2021 07:47 UTC
Supreme Court
© J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The Supreme Court building on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C.
The Supreme Court citing religious liberty, has lifted another of California's COVID restrictions, holding the state may not prevent people from gathering in homes for Bible study and prayer meetings. The court issued a 5-4 order near midnight Friday barring the enforcement of a state restriction that was due to expire on Thursday.

The court's conservatives slammed the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for what they called another "erroneous" decision in favor of the state.

"This is the fifth time the court has summarily rejected the 9th Circuit's analysis of California's COVID restrictions on religious exercise," they said in Tandon vs. Newsom. In the most significant of the rulings, the court in early February said churches in California may open for indoor worship services, so long as they enforced limits on how many people gathered together.

Repeatedly in these cases, judges in California and the justices in Washington have disagreed over how to compare, for example, people gathering in a restaurant or hair salon to people gathering for a worship service. The state has enforced stricter limits on indoor gatherings such as in theaters or churches where people sit together for an hour or more while allowing retail stores where people go in and out to remain open.

In the latest order, the conservative justices again noted that the state has opened public businesses while restricting religious gatherings. And they said the state regulators are violating the 1st Amendment's protection for the free exercise of religion "whenever they treat any comparable secular activity more favorably than religious exercise."
      Read More...
Star of David

IDF reportedly wants probe into leak of alleged Israeli attack on Iranian cargo ship

Oleg Burunov
Sputnik
Sun, 11 Apr 2021 09:02 UTC
Iranian Ship Saviz
© Al Arabiya/Screenshot
Iranian ship 'Saviz' in the Red Sea, in 2018.
On Thursday, Iran vowed it would respond to a recent attack on a cargo ship in the Red Sea, once it uncovers the source of the assault, a statement that came after Israel reportedly claimed its forces attacked the vessel.

Officials from the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have called for a probe into the leak of an alleged sensitive operation that was recently conducted by the IDF against Iran, to foreign media, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The reported call comes a few days after The New York Times cited an unnamed source as saying that Israel notified the United States that its forces had attacked an Iranian cargo ship, the Saviz, in the Red Sea.


Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Bad Guys

Istanbul meeting has Erdogan and Zelensky confirm 'strategic partnership'

Tim Korso
Sputnik
Sat, 10 Apr 2021 19:10 UTC
erdogan zelensky meeting ukraine turkey
© Agence France-Presse
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (right) with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Istanbul on April 10.
President Erdogan praised cooperation between the two countries, especially regarding the defence industry.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has announced following talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that Ankara and Kiev have agreed to continue their "strategic partnership." Erdogan added that ensuring security and peace in the Black Sea region is Turkey's priority.

Comment: From RFL/RL:
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan called for an end to what he described as "worrying" developments in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on April 10.

The meeting, which lasted more than three hours in Istanbul, was part of a previously scheduled visit but coincided with increased tensions between Kyiv and Moscow over the long-running conflict in eastern Ukraine.

During their meeting the presidents also discussed expanding defense cooperation between their countries. Zelenskiy said the stepped-up cooperation would apply especially to weaponry and the construction of fighter jets.

Zelenskiy said Kyiv and Ankara share the same view on threats in the Black Sea region and the response to those threats.

Zelenskiy, who visited troops in the Donbas region two days ago, said he had briefed Erdogan on the situation in detail.

Major movements of Russian armed forces toward or near Ukraine's borders and into Ukraine's Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula have been captured in photographs, video, and other data, fueling concerns that Moscow may be preparing to send forces into eastern Ukraine.

The Kremlin has rejected Western calls to pull back its troops, denying they are a threat while adding that military movements within Russia are an internal sovereign issue.

Washington has called Moscow's military buildup "destabilizing," and the White House has expressed concern about the recent troop movements.


Let it be remembered that Ukraine initiated the military buildup and has been shelling civilian areas in Donbass for months.




U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken consulted the German and French foreign ministers on April 9 about the need for Russia to cease its military buildup in the occupied Crimean Peninsula and near Ukraine's eastern borders.






Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, sending in troops and staging a referendum denounced as illegitimate by at least 100 countries.

Since then, overwhelming evidence suggests Russia has continued to lend diplomatic and military aid to armed separatists fighting in the Donbas region.

The conflict has killed more than 13,000 people and displaced more than 1 million since April 2014.


      Read More...
Clipboard

Election 'fortified': Michigan elections forensics report says 66,194 unregistered ballots tallied

The Wiz
Election Wizard
Sat, 10 Apr 2021 18:49 UTC
Michigan ballots
© AP/Mary Altaffer
Michigan constitutional attorney Matthew DePerno released his much anticipated Michigan Elections Forensics Report on Friday.

On election night, Antrim County, a traditionally "red" county flipped overwhelmingly to "blue." The flip raised major flags. The reported results featured a 3,260 vote margin for Joe Biden out of a total of 16,047 votes cast. The wide victory didn't make sense to most political observers.

Following the oddity, the Antrim County Board of Canvassers conducted a series of recounts. Strangely enough, each recount produced different results.

The first recount on November 5, showed Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden by 2,494 votes out of a new total of 18,059 votes cast. The second recount conducted on November 21, indicated that Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden by 3,788 votes out of a new total of 16,044 votes cast.

Comment: See also: 'If we did it': TIME magazine reveals the 'shadow campaign' that 'saved' the 2020 election

      Read More...
Recycle

The United States rejoining the Iran nuclear deal is a good thing, right? Well, not necessarily

Scott Ritter
RT
Sat, 10 Apr 2021 20:24 UTC
iran us flag
© Reuters
The Iranian and US flags
Biden's apparent policy reversal regarding the US returning to the JCPOA should result in diffusing tensions over Iran's nuclear program, but in fact all it does is reset the clock for the next round of US obstruction.

As the countdown closed in on the point of no return regarding any chance of salvaging the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, better known as the Iran nuclear agreement), the administration of President Joe Biden has signalled a dramatic policy change. Following a series of emergency meetings in Vienna, Austria, this week between the US and the remaining members of the landmark 2015 nuclear agreement, the Biden administration has indicated its desire to rejoin the agreement, and that it would end all the nuclear-related sanctions without any of the conditions it had previously stipulated must be met by Iran prior to them being removed.

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Sherlock

Russian exile was 'strangled in London home by third party', week after poisoning of Skripals


BBC
Sat, 10 Apr 2021 20:10 UTC
Glushkov

Nikolai Glushkov was granted political asylum in the UK in 2010
A Russian exile was strangled in his own home by a third party, a coroner has ruled.

Businessman Nikolai Glushkov, who was critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was found dead in New Malden in south-west London in March 2018.


Comment: The BBC is trying to imply that Glushkov being a critic of Putin and his murder are in some way connected. However it's likely that numerous Russian criminals are critical of Putin because it is his policies that have put an end to the rampant criminality that were destroying the country. This is also one reason why the vast majority of Russians have repeatedly voted Putin back into power.

What's actually notable is how the UK has a habit of granting asylum to so many known criminals.


West London Coroner's Court heard there was evidence to suggest his death was made to look like a suicide and there had been "third-party involvement".

Senior coroner Chinyere Inyama ruled that Mr Glushkov was unlawfully killed.

Comment: For further insight into just may be going on, see:

      Read More...
Attention

GOP puts Biden administration on notice: Congress is not bound by new Iran deal

Adam Kredo
The Washington Free Beacon
Thu, 08 Apr 2021 11:20 UTC
US Capitol
© Anthony T. Pope/CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia
US Capitol Building
Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress officially informed the Biden administration late Wednesday that they will not be bound to any new agreement with Iran that promises relief from harsh economic sanctions, according to a copy of that communication exclusively obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The letter is a sign that any new Iran deal is likely to be plagued by the same weaknesses as the original 2015 accord, which the Obama administration never brought before Congress for approval. The decision to skirt Congress meant the deal was never ratified as a formal treaty and paved the way for the Trump administration to easily cancel it in 2018.

GOP foreign policy leaders are now warning the Biden administration that any new deal will suffer a similar fate under the next Republican administration.

The lawmakers are also sending a message to Tehran: Anything promised by the Biden administration can be taken back in the near future.

Comment: Slick Obama got away with bypassing Congress - a lot of illegitimate power in one man's hands without transparency:

      Read More...
Yoda

Russia 'would really not want' Cold War 2.0

Pepe Escobar
The Saker
Fri, 09 Apr 2021 00:00 UTC
Patrushev
© Alexei Nikolsky/Russian Presidential Press and Information Office/TASS
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev
The Triple Yoda, Nikolai Patrushev, hopes cooler heads can avoid sanctions such as the SWIFT 'nuclear option'

The Beltway was always fond of describing the late Andrew Marshall - who identified emerging or future threats for the Pentagon and whose proteges included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz - as Yoda.

Well, if that's the case, then Chinese national security supremo Yang Jiechi - who recently made shark fin's soup out of Tony Blinken in Alaska - is Double Yoda. And Nikolai Patrushev - Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation - is Triple Yoda.

Amid current ice-cold US-Russia relations - plunged into their worst state since the end of the Cold War - Triple Yoda, discreet, diplomatic and always sharp as a dagger, remains a soothing voice of reason, as demonstrated in a stunning interview by Kommersant daily.

Patrushev, born in 1951, is an army general who worked for KGB counter-intel in Leningrad, during the USSR days. Starting in 1994 he was the head of quite a few FSB departments. From 1999 to 2008 he was the FSB director, and led counter-terror ops in the North Caucasus from 2001 to 2003. Since May 2008 he is Russia's top security advisor.

Comment: Nothing is worse for a global bully than insights from an intuitive and articulate dignitary of its frenemy.

      Read More...
Briefcase

Biden establishes commission to study expanding Supreme Court

Morgan Chalfant, John Kruzel
The Hill
Fri, 09 Apr 2021 11:33 UTC
supreme court
© Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
US Supreme Court
President Biden signed an executive order Friday establishing a commission to study whether to add seats to the Supreme Court and other reform proposals, the White House announced, fulfilling a promise he made on the campaign trail.

The commission will be chaired by former White House counsel Bob Bauer and Cristina Rodríguez, a Yale law school professor and former deputy assistant attorney general, and largely consists of academics and former officials from across the political spectrum.

It will delve into the issue of potentially expanding the court — an idea that has been floated by some progressives but heavily criticized by Republicans — and which Biden himself has been cool to, though without explicitly ruling out the option.

The White House said in a release:
"The Commission's purpose is to provide an analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals. The topics it will examine include the genesis of the reform debate; the Court's role in the Constitutional system; the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court; the membership and size of the Court; and the Court's case selection, rules, and practices."
The White House said that the commission will hold public meetings to hear arguments from experts and interested parties. It will be required to complete a report on its work within 180 days of its first public meeting.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts