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Iran claims its ballistic missile and space launch program in line with UN resolution, not in violation of deal


RT
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 18:35 UTC
missile Iran
© Reuters/Mahmood Hosseini
A ballistic missile is launched and tested in an undisclosed location in Iran, 2016
Iran says it will "resolutely continue" its ballistic missile program. Tehran claims the program does not violate the deal it signed with Western powers in 2015, and accuses the West of selectively interpreting a UN resolution.

"Iran is determined to resolutely continue its activities related to ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles," the country's UN envoy Majid Takhte Ravanchi wrote in a letter to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday.

Comment: See also:

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Mr. Potato

Delusional Killary hints at Trump grudge match: Democrats approach political extinction

Robert Bridge
RT
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 20:40 UTC
hillary clinton
The former First Lady just can't let it go. The belief that the presidency was denied her in 2016 by a thousand conspiracies is tempting her to enter the 2020 race at a time when Democrats desperately need new blood.

With uncanny timing, Hillary Rodham Clinton has hit the international talk show circuit, triggering heated speculation that she may be planning a last-minute plunge into the Democratic primaries against a disappointing field of nominees. The temptation of getting another shot at Donald Trump, who beat Clinton in 2016 despite losing the popular vote, appears to have become an idée fixe for the former secretary of state.

On the UK's Graham Norton Show, Clinton gave a very unconvincing denial that she was entertaining any presidential ambitions when she commented, "Right now, I'm not, at all, you know, planning that. I'd have to make up my mind really quickly, because it's moving very fast."
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Bad Guys

Youtube CEO Wojcicki boasts of new algorithm, army of 10,000 censors that have disappeared 'controversial content' by 70%

Ian Schwartz
Real Clear Politics
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 23:12 UTC
Wojcicki
© AP/Reed Saxon
YouTube's Susan Wojcicki
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki tells Lesley Stahl what the video platform is doing about hate speech in an interview Sunday on the CBS newsmagazine program '60 Minutes.'

Wojcicki told '60 Minutes' that Google employs 10,000 people to focus on "controversial content." She described their schedule, which includes time for therapy. Stahl also said there are reports that the "monitors" are "beginning to buy the conspiracy theories."

"What we really had to do was tighten our enforcement of that to make sure we were catching everything and we use a combination of people and machines," Wojcicki explained. "So Google as a whole has about 10,000 people that are focused on controversial content."

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Windsock

Show's over, folks? Farage loses three more Brexit Party MEPs to the Tories

Zoe Drewett
Metro, UK
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 18:38 UTC
farage meps
© PA – Getty
Brexit party leader Nigel Farage said he was disappointed by the decision
It has not been a great election campaign for Nigel Farage by all accounts. He gave up more than 300 seats to the Conservatives in the first week of his campaign after a number of candidates quit and then had members turning on him and calling him a traitor. Now, three Brexit Party MEPs have announced they are quitting too in order to back Boris Johnson and the Conservatives in the general election.

Jacob Rees-Mogg's sister Annunziata, Lance Forman and Lucy Harris today said they had resigned the whip to back the prime minister's push to 'get Brexit done'. It follows the decision yesterday to sack John Longworth, the former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, for 'repeatedly undermining' Mr Farage's election strategy.

Ms Rees-Mogg, MEP for the East Midlands and a former Conservative candidate, said: 'We need a strong Leave-supporting government to deliver the Brexit 17.4 million voted for. The Conservatives are the only option for Brexit supporters and democrats alike.'

The Brexit Party leader, who isn't standing in the election, said he was 'disappointed' by the decision.
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Magic Hat

Punting the propaganda: Pelosi lectures Americans that impeachment not really about Ukraine but all about... Russia!


RT
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 14:57 UTC
Pelosi
© J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
For Americans still confused why exactly Democrats want to impeach President Donald Trump - something about Ukraine, maybe? - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has helpfully clarified that it's all about Russia and always has been.

Briefing reporters on the impeachment inquiry on Thursday, Pelosi (D-California) made sure to point out that "this isn't about Ukraine, this is about Russia."
"Russia. It's about Russia. Russia invading eastern Ukraine ...all roads lead to Putin. Understand that."
That may come as a surprise given the Democrats' recent line of argument that Trump must be impeached because he tried to force new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to open a corruption investigation into the gas company that had Joe Biden's son Hunter on its board - a "quid pro quo" that qualified as bribery and election interference, somehow.

Comment: While no one can chart the course of the latest unhinged Democratic gambit, the tone seems to be coming increasingly desperate. If the Russia card doesn't play with the American public any more, what do they have left?

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Vader

Trump not considering sending thousands more troops to Mideast to counter Iran - Pentagon

Jamie McIntyre
Washington Examiner
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 14:33 UTC
pentagon
The Pentagon is throwing cold water on a report from the Wall Street Journal that President Trump could decide as soon as this month to dispatch thousands more troops and dozens more ships to the Persian Gulf region to counter Iran.

The report suggested that as many as 14,000 additional U.S. troops could be sent, which would be "significant expansion of the U.S. military footprint in the Middle East."

"This reporting by the @WSJ is wrong," tweeted Pentagon Press Secretary Alyssa Farah, "The U.S. is not sending 14,000 troops to the Middle East to confront Iran."

Comment: Presumptuous of McKenzie to flat out point the finger at Iran for the Saudi oil attacks, when the most likely culprit is Yemen. After all, they've done it before, but still no one believes it. The circumstances are murky, and no determinations have been made yet.

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Bullseye

'Expulsion of Russian diplomats over Berlin murder case suits trend of blaming Moscow for everything, whether it's true or not'


RT
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 15:45 UTC
Berlin
© Global Look Press / DPA / Christoph Soeder
FILE PHOTO: A good three months after the murder of a Chechen man in Berlin, the Prosecutor General has taken over the investigation
Germany seems to be joining the cohort of those playing the old-time blame-Russia game, having expelled two diplomats citing Moscow's unwillingness to help probe a murder of a suspected terrorist on its soil.

On a sunny day in August, Zelimkhan Khangoshvili - formerly a Chechen militant suspected of terrorist activity in Russia and a Georgian national - set off for his last walk through the Kleiner Tiergarten park located in one of Berlin's central boroughs. Not long after that, he was shot dead in broad daylight by an assassin who allegedly used a silenced pistol to do the job.

The high-profile murder case returned to the spotlight when Berlin made a bold move expelling two Russian diplomats.

Comment: At the very least these situations reveal those who are acting in Germany's best interest, with diplomacy and based on fact, and those who are simply intent on scuppering its relations with Russia, whatever the cost:

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TV

'Where's the grilling you gave Corbyn?' UK TV breakfast show hosts slammed online for giving BoJo easy ride with 'cosy chat'


RT
Fri, 06 Dec 2019 16:50 UTC
Johnson
© Global Look Press / I-Images
(L) PM Boris Johnson Reuters / Hannah McKay / Pool; (R) This Morning presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield
British TV breakfast show presenters Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby received a brutal backlash on social media after a cuddly "selfie" pic with Boris Johnson went viral following the UK prime minister's interview.

Johnson has faced widespread criticism for failing to agree to an interview with the BBC's flagship political presenter Andrew Neil, who is seen as a notoriously tough and forensic interrogator. Every other party leader has agreed to one - apart from the current PM.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had appeared on ITV's This Morning program earlier in the week, where he received a tough grilling from Schofield and Willoughby on his party's handling of the issue of anti-Semitism. In sharp contrast, the pair failed to ask Johnson one question on the Tories' record of tackling Islamophobia within the party.

Comment: Here's what BBC presenter Andrew Neil had to say about Bojo's avoidance of his show:


And here's what a doctor had to say about the Tory government:




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Red Flag

London fog: The NATO alliance is an empire in crisis

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Wed, 04 Dec 2019 22:01 UTC
NATO leaders annual summit Watford UK
© REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
NATO leaders pose for a family photo during the annual summit at the Grove Hotel in Watford, UK, December 4, 2019.
Officially, the NATO summit in London was a huge success and alliance is strong and united. Yet even the mainstream media aren't buying this any more, seizing on high-school-style gossip to mock the alliance leaders.

US President Donald Trump is playing the summit off as "great progress," singling out the promised increases in military spending. "Thank you NATO," he declared in a slick video tweet produced by the White House on Wednesday.
Thank you @NATO! #NATOLondonpic.twitter.com/8gJeXZxwpH

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2019
Meanwhile, both Trump's domestic critics and the hostile mainstream press were busy hyping the president's early departure as a sign he is mentally unstable, a thin-skinned "snowflake," and "privately viewed with a mixture of mirth and alarm" (The Guardian).

Trump justified skipping the final press conference by saying "we did so many over the past two days," which is true enough. It was inevitable, however, that it would be interpreted in the context of snide remarks by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a Buckingham Palace reception on Tuesday.

Comment: Global NATO: The 70-Year Long Alliance of Oppressors is Now in Crisis

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Bullseye

The Saker reviews Andrei Martyanov's newest book: The (real) Revolution in Military Affairs

The Saker
The Unz Review
Thu, 05 Dec 2019 21:56 UTC
book military history martyanov
Last year I reviewed Andrei Martyanov's book Losing Military Supremacy: the Myopia of American Strategic Planning for the Unz Review. In that book, Martyanov explained why the era of easy US victories over pretty much defenseless countries was over and what that meant for US force planners. This year it is my immense pleasure to review his latest book The (real) Revolution in Military Affairs. Let me immediately say that you do not have to read the first book to greatly enjoy the second one, but I still do think that the best "combo" to get a full picture would be to read both books in the order they were published. Still, today I will review only the second book.

First, debunking the many US political science canards

Martyanov begins his book by debunking the so-called "Thucydides Trap" which Foreign Policy summarized as so:
: "When one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result — but it doesn't have to be"
(with a clear emphasis on the first part of the subtitle). Martyanov correctly calls this (typically "political science geeks") cliché as very dangerous and misleading. He then proceeds to debunk a who's who list of US political science cliches, including the latest one, the so-called "hybrid warfare". He speaks of "unnecessary and pseudo-scholastic confusion" and he adds that the current "Western think-tankdom" is "utterly unprepared" for the realities of modern warfare. As somebody who worked (during my college years) for several US think tanks in Washington DC, I can only agree. I also know for a fact that most think tanks will write anything, no matter how false, just to secure more funding (I even had colleague who worked in "respectable" think tanks laugh about the nonsense they were writing just to get more funding).
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