An unidentified detachment of soldiers wearing NATO uniforms was seen by the People's Militia of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Lugansk (RPL) in Donbass territory controlled by Kiev, the head of the press entity Yakov Osadchy told reporters on Tuesday.
"In the area of responsibility of the 72nd brigade in the village of Svetlodarsk came a detachment of 28 men equipped with NATO uniforms," Osadchy said.
He added that "the situation in the area of responsibility of the People's Militia of RPL has a tendency to aggravate."
Earlier, the head of the press office of the commander of the Donetsk People's Militia, Daniil Bezsonov, denounced the reinforcement of the grouping of Ukrainian forces in Donbass. According to him, on November 30, at the Kostiantynivka railway station, three trains were unloaded with equipment, ammunition and personnel from Ukrainian forces.
Puppet Masters
"This country, and with it most of the Western world, is presently going through a period of inflation and credit expansion. As the quantity of money in circulation and deposits subject to check increases, there prevails a general tendency for the prices of commodities and services to rise. Business is booming. Yet such a boom, artificially engineered by monetary and credit expansion, cannot last forever. It must come to an end sooner or later. For paper money and bank deposits are not a proper substitute for non-existing capital goods. Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too." - Ludwig von Mises - 1952As the von Mises quote proves, economic cycles, artificial booms created by Federal Reserve easy money and delusional human nature are cyclically constant across the decades. Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills realizes the current artificial boom, created by a feckless Fed captured by Wall Street banks and corrupt Washington politicians who took Dick Cheney's "deficits don't matter" mantra to obscene levels, will end in another financial crisis. Our Deep State controllers have "solved" a financial crisis caused by too much debt by tripling down on more debt.
© Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S. Carolina) speaks after briefing by CIA Director Gina Haspel .
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S. Carolina) speaks after briefing by CIA Director Gina Haspel .
Haspel appeared on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to brief a dozen or so senators on intelligence the CIA had about Khashoggi's death at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey two months ago.
"I have zero question in my mind that the Crown Prince MBS ordered the killing, monitored the killing, knew exactly what was happening. Planned it in advance. If he was in front of a jury he would be convicted in 30 minutes. Guilty," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), who currently chairs the Foreign Relations committee, said after the briefing.
"It's not a smoking gun, it's a smoking saw," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), referring to media reports that Khashoggi was dismembered with a bone saw inside the consulate.
© Reuters / Marco Bello
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro
"Venezuela has the right to sell what it produces. We are moving forward with the plan on gold output as the new source of prosperity," Maduro stated, as cited by media, after the meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday.
Comment:
- Venezuela wants to repatriate its gold from Britain, reduce reliance on the dollar - UPDATE: Bank of England REFUSES request
- Following the golden rule: Iran and Venezuela prime examples of intrinsic value of money vs. gold
- Turkish FM Cavusoglu offers support for Venezuela during visit, condemns interventionism
- Maduro's monetary revolution versus the Empire's economic sanctions
- One trick pony: US sanctions on Venezuela are to overthrow the government, not bring democracy
- Venezuela goes crypto, launches oil/gold/diamond-backed "petro" cryptocurrency
- Maduro urges Latin American states to join oil and gold-backed cryptocurrency project
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met in Moscow Wednesday during which Putin condemned the intervention of capitalist hegemonic states in Venezuela to change its current political scenario by force.
"Of course, we condemn any action that is clearly of a terrorist nature, any attempt to change the situation with the help of force," Putin added.
Maduro expressed that he was "very happy" to be in Russia, adding, "we are standing and winning".
© Leon Neal/Getty Images
A new report from the privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo claims that Google still suggests personalized search results to users even when they're logged out of their account and should not be easily identifiable by the search engine, The Verge reports. The study by DuckDuckGo alleges that even when logged out of Google accounts and browsing in the Chrome browser's incognito mode, it is impossible to avoid Google search personalization.
The study was conducted by DuckDuckGo in June 2018 during the U.S midterm election season. This was done in order to determine if the search giant only provides information to people based on their previous search history, further enforcing pre-conceived ideas and ideological thought bubbles. DuckDuckGo is a Google competitor and has a bias against the search engine, but the results of the study are nonetheless quite revealing.
© AFP 2018/OZAN KOSE
Following last week's briefing by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary James Mattis, many US senators requested to hear directly from the CIA chief about the killing. Both secretaries said Washington has no direct evidence proving that Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in Khashoggi's murder.
Last month, a CIA leak to several news outlets revealed the agency concluded with "high confidence" that Khashoggi's murder was ordered by the Saudi crown prince. However, US President Donald Trump has said that the CIA did not have any definitive answer on whether bin Salman had been aware of the Washington Post columnist's murder.
Comment: If Haspel has evidence, will she make a culpability case for MbS or let it slide for future leverage over the Saudi prince?
From USA Today:
Senators from both parties were upset that Haspel was not part of a recent closed-door session with top administration officials about Khashoggi's killing and the U.S. response. The briefing included Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.From Zero Hedge:
Questioned about Haspel's absence from last week's briefing, a CIA spokesman said that the director had already briefed congressional leaders on Khashoggi and that no one was keeping her away. In another explanation, a White House official said Haspel decided not to participate in part because of frustration with lawmakers leaking classified intelligence from such settings. The White House official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Senators, in a rare rebuke of Trump's handling of the situation, moved immediately after the briefing to punish Saudi Arabia by advancing legislation to curtail U.S. backing for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. They overwhelmingly approved the resolution, 63-37, on an unexpectedly wide bipartisan vote. The resolution is pending further action as key senators push for an end to U.S. support for the Saudi war against Houthi rebels. Human rights groups say it is indiscriminately leading to civilian deaths.
Jamal Khashoggi's fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, had messages for President Donald Trump and America in a video shown at his memorial service in Washington.
[Rand] Paul, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, argued that if lawmakers aren't allowed to have access to the intelligence community's conclusions, then they can't provide oversight.
"To my mind this is the very definition of the deep state... The deep state is that the intelligence agencies do things, conclude things, make conclusions but then the elected officials are prevented from knowing about this. If we aren't told about this and I'm not allowed to know about these conclusions, then I can't have oversight. And so then state grows, the intelligence, the deep state grows and has more and more power."
"I've read in the media that the CIA has said with high confidence that the crown prince was involved with killing Khashoggi. I have not seen that intelligence nor have I even seen the conclusions. And today there's yet another briefing and I'm being excluded. So really, this is the deep state at work ... that your representatives don't know what is going on in the intelligence agencies."
Witch-hunt against dissidents continues: Roger Stone pleads the Fifth, snubs Senate document request
© Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Roger Stone is under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. |
Roger Stone is under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election. |
President Donald Trump's longtime political ally Roger Stone invoked the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination as he declined to share documents and testimony with members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to a letter posted Tuesday by the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
"Mr. Stone's invocation of his Fifth Amendment privilege must be understood by all to be the assertion of a Constitutional right by an innocent citizen who denounces secrecy," Stone's attorney, Grant Smith, said in the letter, dated Dec. 3.
Stone is under scrutiny in special counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, in part over allegations that he had foreknowledge of WikiLeaks' dump of Clinton campaign emails the month before the election. Stone has denied any advance knowledge, despite a series of tweets foreshadowing the contents of the emails, which he attributed to educated guesses and indirect information provided through an intermediary with WikiLeaks.
Stone told POLITICO on Monday that he doesn't have a pact with Trump's legal team to share defense strategies, unlike former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is in jail after being convicted of tax and bank fraud. But Stone has largely aligned his public messaging on Mueller with the president's, frequently bashing the special counsel's tactics. Stone's approach earned him a supportive tweet from Trump this week, when the president praised Stone for having the "guts" to refuse to testify against him.
In his letter to Feinstein, Stone's attorney said his client simply wants his information aired in public, and not subject to selective leaks that marked his closed-door testimony to the House Intelligence Committee last year. Stone had asked for that appearance to be public, but the committee declined and interviewed him privately.
Comment: The legal system, like any other, can be manipulated by exposing selective information, testimony and context. Stone's application of the Fifth, if followed by a full public testimony, could provide an undeniable safety net.
© Mikhail Palinchak/Ukrainian Presidential Press Service via Reuters
President Petro Poroshenko meets with soldiers in eastern Ukraine.
President Petro Poroshenko meets with soldiers in eastern Ukraine.
Last week, Kiev imposed martial law in the eastern and southern parts of the country, after Russia blocked its ships which had entered the Kerch Strait, between Crimea and mainland Russia, without authorization. The move to subsequently enforce martial law "aims to camouflage a new provocation in Donbass", which Ukraine would frame as evidence of Russian aggression, according to Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
"Assault and mechanized brigades of the Ukrainian army are being relocated to the conflict zone after completing intensive training courses with support from US, Canadian and British instructors," she warned, while the troops are being spread along the disengagement line in an apparent preparation for an offensive operation.
Comment: Poroshenko is taking a page out of the Western playbook: instigate a self-serving provocation, victimize the innocent, declare martial law, provoke a 'retaliatory' confrontation and assign all blame to the 'adversary'.
See also:
- Kiev beats war drums about nonexistent 'Russian threat' and martial law to distract from abysmal political failures
- While Kiev whips up confusion and panic, Ukraine citizens try to figure what martial law will mean for them
- Pre-election antics? Poroshenko declares martial law in Ukraine after Kerch standoff
- Ukraine security agency blames attempted cyberattack on Russia
© Philip Coburn/Daily Mirror
Nigel Farage
Nigel Farage
Writing his resignation letter in the Telegraph, he blamed the party for trying to bring in "extremists" and warned this would "damage the party beyond repair".
He said: "With a heavy heart, I am leaving Ukip. It is not the Brexit party our nation so badly needs."
The 54-year-old was a founding member of UKIP after quitting the Tories, serving as an MEP since 1999 and having two stints as leader between 2006 and 2016.
He said:
"We are now just a few days away from the most ill-judged political event I have ever been aware of in British politics. The very idea of Tommy Robinson being at the centre of the Brexit debate is too awful to contemplate. And so, with a heavy heart, and after all my years of devotion to the party, I am leaving UKIP today. There is a huge space for a Brexit party in British politics, but it won't be filled by UKIP."
Comment: The 'party's over' for Farage, and it isn't the first time.
Comment: Reminds us of another related article we published recently: Ukrainian General: US is advising Kiev to unleash 'chaos' in Donbass