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Political snowflakery: China insists French Genghis Khan exhibit not use words 'Genghis Khan' - museum gives in

AFP
The Guardian
Tue, 13 Oct 2020 18:43 UTC
Genghis Khan
© G Adventures, Inc
Genghis Khan statue in Mongolia.
A French museum has postponed an exhibit about the Mongol emperor Genghis Khan citing interference by the Chinese government, which it accuses of trying to rewrite history.

The Château des ducs de Bretagne history museum in the western city of Nantes said it was putting the show about the fearsome 13th century leader on hold for over three years.

The museum's director, Bertrand Guillet, said: "We made the decision to stop this production in the name of the human, scientific and ethical values that we defend."


Comment: Is that what they're calling it now?


It said the Chinese authorities demanded that certain words, including "Genghis Khan," "Empire" and "Mongol" be taken out of the show. Subsequently they asked for power over exhibition brochures, legends and maps.

The spat comes as the Chinese government has hardened its discrimination against ethnic Mongols, many of whom live in the northern province of Inner Mongolia.

The exhibit was planned in collaboration with the Inner Mongolia Museum in Hohhot, China. But tensions arose, the Nantes museum said, when the Chinese Bureau of Cultural Heritage pressured the museum for changes to the original plan, "including notably elements of biased rewriting of Mongol culture in favour of a new national narrative".

The museum branded it "censorship" and said it underlined a "hardening ... of the position of the Chinese government against the Mongolian minority".

Comment: And yet they caved in to the pressure. Genghis would not tolerate such a display of weakness.

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X

Half-term lockdown: Boris Johnson under pressure to order two-week 'circuit breaker' as N Ireland makes move today

Harry Cole, Kate Ferguson, Matt Dathan
The Sun
Wed, 14 Oct 2020 18:09 UTC
Sir Keir Starmer

Labour leader Starmer
PM Boris Johnson was last night under increasing pressure to order a nationwide mini-lockdown - with a 60 per cent chance he will bring in the measure over half-term.

Growing demands for a "circuit breaker" to tackle surging Covid cases came as Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called for a shutdown of up to three weeks.

Scientists claim this could save thousands of lives.


Comment: Nonsense. They have no way of knowing that. First, there are no studies showing such a thing. Second, in politics such a thing is unfalsifiable, as the U.S. election is showing. Whatever the results, they can say it was a success, because things "would have" been worse otherwise - even if they might have been better.


The PM has so far rejected warnings from his medical advisers that a major reset is required.

But there is a growing belief in his inner circle that the move is inevitable.

One close Cabinet colleague said last night there is a 60 per cent chance he will bring in the measure over half-term, which begins for many a week on Friday.

It comes as Northern Ireland looks set to plunge into a four-week circuit breaker lockdown with schools, pubs and restaurants all to close.

Schools will close for half of the four-week period while restaurants and bars will only be able to offer takeaways.

Comment: The UK's first "Covid border" is in the works, which will ban entry into Wales from coronavirus 'hot spots'. Johnson is currently defending his (still over-the-top) three-tier strategy, but "rules nothing out" going forward. That's reassuring ... not. Meanwhile people in Liverpool are partying before the restrictions take effect. Might be the last chance they get...

See also:

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Star of David

Israel approves more illegal West Bank housing, just weeks after 'peace' deals with UAE, Bahrain


Middle East Eye
Wed, 14 Oct 2020 18:33 UTC
illegal settlements israel
© Agence France-Presse
New apartments buildings under construction in the Beit El settlement in the occupied the West Bank (AFP)
Gulf normalisation agreements were initially advertised as hinging on a freeze in settlement construction

Israel has approved the construction of new homes in its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank just weeks after signing normalisation agreements with the UAE and Bahrain.

According to official figures sent to AFP, 2,166 new homes in settlements across the West Bank were approved on Wednesday, ending an eight-month lull in settlement expansion.

The latest plans, for a total of more than 4,000 new homes, are on the agenda on Wednesday and Thursday at a session of the top planning committee of Israel's Civil Administration, the military body which oversees civil affairs in the occupied West Bank.
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Attention

Smoking-gun email in forgotten laptop reveals Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad

Emma-Jo Morris & Gabrielle Fonrouge
The New York Post
Wed, 14 Oct 2020 16:55 UTC

Comment: Twitter and Facebook are censoring this report... from one of the largest US media outlets.

In any other year, such revelations as these would force a candidate out of the race.

But this is 2020, so the rest of the media is just ignoring the Post's reports...


Hunter Joe biden emails burisma laptop
© NY Post photo composite
Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by The Post.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

"Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It's realty [sic] an honor and pleasure," the email reads.

Comment: The NY Post has more on this here.

Not surprisingly, there has been radio silence on this story from the Biden-supporting libtard media:
biden laptop emails reporting
© Ground News
The Senate Homeland Security Committee has commented on the case. Fox News reports:
Committee Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Fox News on Wednesday that the committee has been in touch with the person who provided the emails and was in the process of validating the information.

"We regularly speak with individuals who email the committee's whistleblower account to determine whether we can validate their claims," Johnson told Fox News. "Although we consider those communications to be confidential, because the individual in this instance spoke with the media about his contact with the committee, we can confirm receipt of his email complaint, have been in contact with the whistleblower, and are in the process of validating the information he provided."

The Post report revealed that Biden, at Hunter's request, met with Vadym Pozharskyi in April 2015 in Washington D.C.

Johnson's committee has been investigating Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings since 2019, and released, last month, an interim report on their monthslong probe into Hunter Biden's role on the board of Burisma and his alleged "extensive and complex financial transactions."

Johnson and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said their investigation has "faced many obstacles" from Democrats on their committees and that executive agencies "failed to comply with document requests."

The chairmen added that "there remains much work to be done" in their probe. Hunter Biden is the son of the Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. His work background played a starring role in the Trump impeachment efforts earlier this year. He and his father have denied any wrongdoing related to his work.

The 87-page report stated that Obama administration officials "knew" that Hunter Biden's position on the board of Burisma was "problematic" and that it interfered "in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine."

"This investigation has illustrated the extent to which officials within the Obama administration ignored the glaring warning signs when the vice president's son joined the board of a company owned by a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch," the report's executive summary stated.

Meanwhile, the Post reported Wednesday the emails were part of a trove of data recovered from a laptop which was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware in April 2019.

The Post reported that other material turned up on the laptop, including a video, which they described as showing Hunter smoking crack while engaged in a sexual act with an unidentified woman, as well as other sexually explicit images.

The FBI reportedly seized the computer and hard drive in December 2019. The shop owner, though, said he made a copy of the hard drive and later gave it to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's lawyer, Robert Costello.

The Post reported that the FBI referred questions about the hard drive and laptop to the Delaware US Attorney's Office, where a spokesperson told the outlet that the office "can neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation."

A lawyer for Hunter Biden did not comment on specifics, but instead told the Post that Giuliani "has been pushing widely discredited conspiracy theories about the Biden family, openly relying on actors tied to Russian intelligence."
What a cesspool of corruption all centered on one family:

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War Whore

Declassified FBI spreadsheet shows it used media reports seeded by British spy to 'corroborate' anti-Trump Steele Dossier

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Wed, 14 Oct 2020 16:07 UTC
protest trump collusion russia
© REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Protest against President Donald Trump's alleged "collusion" with Russia in New York, April 4, 2019.
The FBI sought to 'verify' information in the notorious dossier at the heart of Russiagate by using media articles seeded by the actual dossier author, British spy Christopher Steele, newly released evidence has shown.

The so-called Steele Dossier is the centerpiece of 'Russiagate,' the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump "colluded" with Moscow in the 2016 US presidential election. The dossier's most bombastic claim was that Russia had "kompromat" on him in the form of sex tapes from a Moscow hotel involving urinating prostitutes.

Steele compiled the dossier for Fusion GPS, a DC-based firm paid by Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign through the DNC. The FBI then used it to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page in October 2016, and extended it three times well into 2017.

Comment: Was WaPo hack David Ignatius dreaming of a Pulitzer when he took delivery of Steele's steaming pile of bar room talk?

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Eagle

RAND corporation's policy recommendations and the malevolent encirclement of Russia

F. William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
Moscow
Over recent weeks a series of events in the states surrounding the Russian Federation has erupted that certainly are not being greeted with joy in the Kremlin. Each crisis center of itself is not a definitive game-changer for future Russian security. Taken together they suggest something far more ominous is unfolding against Moscow. A recent RAND study prepared for the US Army suggests with remarkable accuracy who might be behind what will undoubtedly become a major threat to Russian security in coming months.

The Turkish-backed attacks by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh, igniting a territory after almost three decades of relative stalemate and ceasefire, the ongoing destabilization of Lukashenko in Belarus, the bizarre EU and UK behavior surrounding the alleged poisoning of Russian dissident Navalny and most recently, the mass protests in Kyrgyzstan, a former part of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, bear the fingerprints of the MI6 of Britain, the CIA and an array of regime-change private NGOs.

Nagorno-Karabakh

On September 27 military forces from Azerbaijan broke the 1994 ceasefire with Armenia over the conflict in predominantly ethnic- Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh. The heaviest fighting in years ensued on both sides as confrontation escalated. Turkey's Erdogan came out openly in support of Baku against Armenia and Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh, leading Nikol Pashinyan, the Prime Minister of Armenia, to accuse Turkey of "continuing a genocidal policy as a pragmatic task." It was a clear reference to the 1915-23 Armenian charge of genocide of more than a million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey to this day refuses to acknowledge responsibility.
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Rocket

The Pentagon's game of nuclear chicken with Russia and China

Michael T. Klare
TomDispatch.com
Sun, 11 Oct 2020 16:08 UTC
B-52H Stratofortress bombers
The MQ-9 Reaper, a drone armed with Hellfire missiles, has been a workhorse in Washington's forever wars across the Greater Middle East and Africa, but its days could be numbered. According to Air Force Magazine, that service "has grown skeptical that the Reaper could hold its own against advanced nations like Russia and China, which could shoot the non-stealthy aircraft down or jam its transmissions." While more advanced drones may be coming, however, the Reaper's still where it's at. Not so surprisingly, then, that plane is now being repurposed to use not just against Afghans or Iranians or Iraqis or Somalis, but the Chinese.

That fits with the Pentagon's urge to leave those forever wars behind (as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change, has been writing at this site for a surprisingly long time). Its top strategists would prefer instead to focus on recreating a nostalgia-filled twenty-first-century version of the Cold War. One sign of this: in recent naval exercises off the California coast in which three Reapers "performed airstrikes during [a] simulated amphibious assault on San Clemente Island," the military unit responsible for those planes sported a dramatic new shoulder patch. It displayed a Reaper over a silhouetted all-red map of... well, yes, I guess it must still be "Red China."

And if you don't consider that ominous, then check out Klare's piece today on the nuclearization -- such a term should exist, if it doesn't already -- of American "diplomacy." Tom

****
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Health

Former White House doctor says Biden 'not up to the job' mentally

Dave Boyer
The Washington Times
Tue, 13 Oct 2020 00:01 UTC
joe biden
© AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden smiles during the first presidential debate Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio.
Former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson said Tuesday that Democratic nominee Joseph R. Biden "does not have the mental capacity" to handle the rigors of the presidency.

"He is not up to the job," Dr. Jackson told reporters in a conference call organized by President Trump's reelection campaign. "I've watched Joe Biden on the campaign trail and I'm concerned that he does not have the mental capacity, the cognitive ability, to serve as our commander-in-chief. He routinely gets lost in the middle of a thought and can't recalibrate."

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates dismissed the claims, saying, "I refer you to the first debate."
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Attention

Antifa mayoral candidate praises Joe Biden for saying Antifa is just an idea

Mia Cathell
The Post Millennial
Fri, 09 Oct 2020 18:54 UTC
Biden Sarah Iannarone antifa mayor
The Antifa challenger running for Portland mayor regurgitated the Biden-coined phrase: "Antifa is not anything more than an idea."


Comment: See also:

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Info

Democrats don't dare say why they oppose Judge Barrett, so they lie instead


New York Post
Mon, 12 Oct 2020 20:06 UTC
Amy Coney Barrett
© Patrick Semansky - Pool via CNP
The Senate held its first hearing on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee devoted their opening statements on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to repeating a shameless lie. Why can't they share their real reasons for opposing her?

The Democrats, one after another, claimed that confirming Barrett would result in ObamaCare being overturned when the court takes it up Nov. 10, with Americans dying as a result.

It's plainly false: Several conservative justices clearly don't buy the arguments made for striking down the law in this case. And Barrett, based on her overall philosophy, is likely to agree with them.

Comment: See also:

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