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Brazil's Bolsonaro says he won't hand over presidency if there is vote fraud


Reuters
Fri, 02 Jul 2021 11:44 UTC
Bolsonaro
© REUTERS/Adriano Machado
Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro gets in a vehicle after attending Mass at a Catholic church in Brasilia, Brazil July 1, 2021.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday he would hand over power to whoever wins next year's presidential election cleanly - but not if there is any fraud.

His comments will do little to dispel the concerns of his critics, who fear that the far-right former army captain will not accept any election loss in next year's vote. Bolsonaro is almost certain to face his political nemesis, former leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Polls show Lula ahead.

"I'll hand over the presidential sash to whoever wins the election cleanly," Bolsonaro said in a weekly address via social media. "Not with fraud."

Comment: The same Bolsonaro who, not long ago, was exposing, at least in part, the manufactured coronavirus crisis is now thinking of extending the state of emergency? Is that because there's some benefit in him doing so? Either way, it's clear that corrupt forces have a significant influence in Brazil: Also check out SOTT radio's: Newsreal #33: Strange Days in DC - Military Checkpoints as US Capital Awaits 'Virtual Inauguration'

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Blue Planet

Viktor Orbán hits back at European leaders over controversial LGBT law


Euronews
Fri, 02 Jul 2021 20:00 UTC
orban
© Olivier Matthys/Associated Press
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban leaving an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels last week.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has accused European leaders of acting like "colonialists" in their criticism of a controversial law on homosexuality.

EU leaders challenged Orbán at a summit in Brussels last week over the law, which is seen as limiting the rights of LGBT people in that Hungary.

The new bill prohibits the "display or promotion" of homosexuality or gender reassignment in television programmes, films, and sexual education programs in schools.


Comment: So it's actually a law against pedophilia.


Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte suggested that the Hungarian leader should either uphold EU values or leave the 27-member bloc.


Comment: The tyranny of the majority. Comply or get out.


But speaking on public radio on Friday, Orbán defied calls to repeal the law and hit back at his fellow European Council members.

"They behave like colonialists. They want to dictate what laws should take effect in another country, they want to tell us how to live our lives and how to behave," he said.

Comment: This is basically the same law the Russian government passed almost 10 years ago.

Yes, it has taken that long for another country in the 'western orbit' to risk the ire of the gender-bender agenda by doing what is obviously the right thing to do.

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Attention

'Not a healthy environment': Kamala Harris' office rife with dissent

Christopher Cadelago, Daniel Lippman
Politico
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 05:05 UTC
K Harris
© Alex Brandon/AP
VP Kamala Harris speaking June 30, 2021 in Washington
When Vice President Kamala Harris finally made the decision to visit the Mexico border last week, people inside her own office were blindsided by the news.

For days, aides and outside allies had been calling and texting with each other about the political fallout that a potential trip would entail. But when it became known that she was going to El Paso, it left many scrambling, including officials who were responsible for making travel arrangements and others outside the VP's office charged with crafting the messaging across the administration.

The handling of the border visit was the latest chaotic moment for a staff that's quickly become mired in them. Harris' team is experiencing low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials. Much of the frustration internally is directed at Tina Flournoy, Harris' chief of staff, a veteran of Democratic politics who began working for her earlier this year.
Flournoy/Sanders
© ca-times.brightspotcdn/SXSW/KJN
Tina Flournoy Chief of Staff • Symone Sanders Chief Spokeswoman
In interviews, 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of Harris and Biden described a tense and at times dour office atmosphere. Aides and allies said Flournoy, in an apparent effort to protect Harris, has instead created an insular environment where ideas are ignored or met with harsh dismissals and decisions are dragged out. Often, they said, she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for the negative results that ensue.

Comment: No qualifiers nor personnel replacements will neutralize what is intrinsically the dysfunction, disjointedness and disrespect directly emanating from VP Kamala Harris.

See also:

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Handcuffs

The system isn't there to protect us from criminals, it's to protect criminals from us

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00 UTC
Rumsfeld
© The Telegraph/KJN
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, recently deceased
Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld has died. Not in a prison cell in The Hague, not murdered by bombs or bullets, but peacefully in his home, surrounded by loved ones, a week and a half shy of his 89th birthday.

The imperial media are giving their fallen master a king's tribute, with headlines describing the psychopathic war criminal as "a cunning leader", "a man of honor and conviction", or simply as "Former defense secretary at helm of Iraq, Afghanistan wars".

The cancerous Washington Post, who just the other day mocked the life of the late antiwar hero Mike Gravel with an obituary branding him the "gadfly senator from Alaska with flair for the theatrical," describes the child killer Rumsfeld as the "influential but controversial Bush defense secretary" in its headline about his death.
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Magnify

McCarthy demands investigation into Biden Admin's alleged spying on Fox News host Tucker Carlson


The Daily Wire
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00 UTC
McCarthy/McConnell
© Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) • Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) demanded on Wednesday that an investigation be launched into explosive allegations that President Joe Biden's administration has spied on Fox News host Tucker Carlson. On Monday Carlson said:
"Yesterday we heard from a whistleblower within the U.S. government who reached out to warn us that the NSA, the National Security Agency, is monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air. The whistleblower, who is in a position to know, repeated back to us information about a story that we are working on that could have only come directly from my texts and emails. There's no other possible source for that information, period. ... The NSA captured that information without our knowledge, and did it for political reasons. The Biden administration is spying on us."
McCarthy responded to the allegations by saying that he has noticed a "disturbing trend" unfolding at the National Security Agency (NSA) under the Biden administration:
"Earlier this year, I sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Austin expressing concern over the politicization of the Agency through the sidelining of Michael Ellis as NSA General Counsel. I asked that Mr. Ellis be reinstated and expressed my concern regarding undue political influence in NSA placing Mr. Ellis on administrative leave. Separately, it has recently come to my attention that NSA has refused to deliver information requested by the Republican Members on the House Intelligence Committee who are trying to fulfill their oversight responsibilities."

"Now, there is a public report that NSA read the emails of Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Although NSA publicly denied targeting Carlson, I have serious questions regarding this matter that must be answered. Given this disturbing trend, I've asked HPSCI Ranking Member Devin Nunes to investigate and find answers on behalf of the American people. The NSA cannot be used as a political instrument, and House Republicans will ensure accountability and transparency."

Comment: Kowtow or be eliminated. Tucker has been duly warned.

See also:

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Laptop

Meeting at Joe's, emails from Air Force 2 and favors for Miguel: Hunter Biden's laptop reveals more about First Son's shady deals


RT
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 20:36 UTC
Hunter Biden
© Reuters/Jim Bourg
Hunter Biden at his father's post-election rally in Wilmington, Delaware
Hunter Biden's laptop shows he brought his Mexican business partners to a meeting with his then-VP father in Washington, while his emails list favors he did for them - including one sent from Air Force Two with Joe Biden on board.

Now president, Biden has steadfastly denied involvement in his son Hunter's business schemes, most of which appear to involve trading on the family name to score lucrative deals abroad. Yet the newest batch of information from his laptop, published by the New York Post, shows him posing with Hunter, his US business partner, and three Mexican magnates at the official vice-presidential residence after a breakfast meeting in 2015.

Comment: If Americans can elect the nearly braindead on face value, it will accept any laundered scheme no matter the evidence.

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Headphones

RT's soon to be launched German-language broadcasts from Moscow 'already subject to info warfare' - Russian Foreign Ministry


RT
Thu, 01 Jul 2021 19:07 UTC
Zakharova
© Reuters/Maxim Shemetov
Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova
The Russian Foreign Ministry has said it's awaiting explanations from Berlin following a reported top-secret meeting with officials from Luxembourg over a broadcasting license for RT's planned German-language TV channel.

The media outlet is attempting to secure a license in the small central European country for a station under the provisional name RT auf Deutsch. The signal would come from a studio in Moscow, with existing sister company RT DE Productions GmbH, which is based in the German capital, providing talk shows, exclusive interviews, and news reports.

Meanwhile, the plan to expand news coverage is facing a pushback from German media. For instance, newspaper Der Tagesspiegel alleged in June that RT was waging a smear campaign against Annalena Baerbock, the candidate for the German chancellorship from the Green party. Tagesspiegel claimed Baerbock's critical views on the policies of Russia had angered President Vladimir Putin.

While not singling out this particular report, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, on Thursday lambasted media attacks against the outlet, saying the German media is essentially behaving "beyond any professional ethic line." She recalled RT being labelled ''Kremlin's mouthpiece" as well as a "weapon of propaganda."
"It's not even negative [coverage]... It's an outright information war that has been declared on the Russian channel by the German media."
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Eagle

Neocons never quit: 'Turkish Democracy Project' launched in Washington as Ankara's favor wanes

Morgan Artyukhina
Sputnik
Fri, 02 Jul 2021 19:34 UTC
JBolton

Former national security advisor John Bolton
A new think tank founded by a group of US neoconservative figures aims to turn Turkey back into a "democracy" and a "reliably ally" of the United States once more. Although the Turkish Democracy Project" stops short of calling for regime change, its staff is littered with men whose careers have been built on it.

"For the better part of the last century, Turkey was a reliable ally and a model in the region of liberal ideals and cultural freedom," the Turkish Democracy Project (TDP) says on its website. "But in recent years, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dramatically altered Turkey's position in the international community and its status as a free and liberal democracy."


Comment: Maybe liberalism isn't all it's cracked up to be, and the enchantment with its alleged virtues is wearing off? One look at the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe should be enough to turn anyone off the notion.


The group, whose website went active on June 23, describes itself as "a nonprofit, non-partisan, international policy organization" which "opposes its destabilizing behavior, supports genuine democratic reform, and holds the forces of corruption and oppression within Turkey to account."

Why this is the task of a bunch of American former diplomats and academics is never stated.

US-Turkish Relations Slowly Implode

Turkey joined the NATO alliance in 1952, meaning the US is pledged to defend the country if it comes under attack, and Turkey has long been a key partner for the US in the region, including housing a large air force base at Incirlik that held nuclear weapons. However, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has butted heads with US policymakers several times in recent years, helping to create a rift between the allies.
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Eagle

NATO practices sinking Russian submarines in the Arctic

Rick Rozoff
Anti-Bellum
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 00:00 UTC
NATO in Arctic
NATO began its annual Dynamnic Mongoose anti-submarine warfare exercise on June 28 off the coast of Norway in what the military bloc deems the High North: the Arctic region, which it has identified as its domain since 2009. (As it has the Mediterranean Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea.)

The code name for the war games may seem puzzling; there's a noticeable incongruity with the name of an animal primarily associated with South Asia and Africa used for maneuvers on the top of the world. It's less baffling when one recalls the mongoose is used to kill snakes. Russian submarines are the snakes.

This year's iteration includes warships, warplanes and submarines from NATO member states Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Iceland, Norway and the U.S. Five of those states - Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Norway and the U.S. - are Arctic coastal nations. The others are Finland and Sweden, both NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partners, and Russia. Isolated Russia. Targeted Russia.

Two submarines, six military vessels and eight aircraft are involved.

The Russian submarine fleet is that part of its nuclear triad of delivery systems least vulnerable to a first-strike attack. Missile silos and aircraft on the ground could be destroyed within hours of such an attack. Submarines, then, are Russia's last line of defense, the only retaliatory force left and as such its main deterrent force.

Comment: NATO has been involved in on-going and numerous military exercises and belligerent rhetoric largely to intimidate and cow Russia into geopolitical submission. But nothing, so far, has helped to achieve their goal for global hegemony; Russia arguably being THE biggest and smartest force to stand in its way:

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Brick Wall

Trump: Border crisis could have been averted if Biden did 'nothing'

Caroline Downey
National Review
Wed, 30 Jun 2021 18:40 UTC
donald trump
© Brandon Bell/Pool via Reuters
Former president Donald Trump addresses a member of the news media after attending a border security briefing with Texas Governor Greg Abbott in Weslaco, Texas, June 30, 2021.
At a joint press conference with Texas governor Greg Abbott at the U.S. border with Mexico, former president Donald Trump suggested that the border crisis could have been averted if Biden simply did "nothing."

"All Biden had to do was go to the beach," he commented. "If he would have just done nothing, we would have had the strongest border we ever had."

After Vice President Kamala Harris failed to make an appearance at the border site for weeks, despite being appointed to manage the migrant crisis, Abbott invited Trump to accompany him on a tour of the border to witness the deteriorating situation there, marked by overcrowded detention facilities, overwhelmed border-patrol personnel, and high rates of immigrant apprehensions. Harris eventually did take a trip last week to El Paso, Texas, a town technically in proximity to the border but many miles away from the location where the real fiasco is unfolding.

Comment: See also:

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