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Trump: 'I have not conceded' 2020 loss; might have 'different president' now if not for Pence choice

Alex Nitzberg
Just the News
Mon, 21 Jun 2021 06:02 UTC
Trump
© Getty Images
Former US President Donald Trump
Former President Donald Trump said Monday that he has not conceded the 2020 presidential race, that if the election is proven fraudulent it will be up to the public and "perhaps politicians" to decide how to respond, and that if Mike Pence had sent disputed election results back to state legislatures for review the country "might very well have a different president right now."

Trump told Just the News' Water Cooler in an exclusive interview on Real America's Voice.
"No, I never admitted defeat. We have a lot of things happening right now ... all you have to do is read the newspapers and see what's coming out now."
Last week during an interview with conservative commentator Sean Hannity, Trump had remarked about the 2020 contest that
"shockingly, we were supposed to win easily at 64 million votes and we got 75 million votes and we didn't win, but let's see what happens on that."
On the possibility of being reinstated as president if the 2020 contest is verified as fraudulent, Trump said such a decision would be "up to public" or "perhaps politicians."
"If the election was fraudulent, people are gonna have to make up their own minds. It's not gonna be up to me. It's gonna be up to the public. It's gonna be up to, perhaps, politicians. I don't think there's ever been a case like this where hundreds of thousands of votes will be found. So we'll have to see what happens."
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Dollars

Offering millions in support, taking it away on a whim, Washington acts 'immorally' with Kiev, says Russian Foreign Ministry

Jonny Tickle
RT
Tue, 22 Jun 2021 13:23 UTC
Ukraine defense forces
© Reuters/Valentyn Ogirenko
Ukraine Territorial Defense Forces in exercise near Kyiv Ukraine
Following the decision to freeze $100-million-worth of military aid due to be sent to Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the US of acting immorally in its policy towards Kiev, and playing games for its own benefit.

According to spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Washington's decision to keep the money, despite once pledging it, shows how the US is manipulating both the citizens and leadership of Ukraine. When the support was initially proposed, it benefited Washington. A few months later, the situation has changed, and the US immediately changed its mind. Zakharova said:
"This is a classic game with Ukraine on the part of the US. It is maneuvering and flirting. This [has been] a constant deception of the citizens of Ukraine for many years."
The spokeswoman's statement comes after the White House denied temporarily freezing an aid package to Kiev worth up to $100 million. According to the publication Politico, Washington pledged the money earlier this spring, following a military build-up on both sides of the Ukraine-Russia border. The package was due to include "short-range air defense systems, small arms, and more anti-tank weapons," it was reported. However, shortly before the landmark summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart, Joe Biden, last week, the White House allegedly put the package on hold.

Comment: Whether this is bait and switch or timing choice, the message from the US is quite clear: 'We are in control - period.'

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Key

Spanish government set to pardon nine Catalan independence leaders

Sam Jones
The Guardian
Tue, 22 Jun 2021 00:00 UTC
Pedro Sanchez
© Albert Gea/Reuters
Pedro Sánchez: ‘When it comes to weighing up political decisions, the future has to matter more than the past.’
Spain's socialist-led government will on Tuesday approve the deeply controversial pardons of the nine Catalan independence leaders who were jailed over their roles in the illegal, failed attempt to secede from the rest of the country in October 2017.

The prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has acknowledged that the decision will anger many Spaniards, but insists the act of clemency is the best way to bring the country back together and to help find a political solution to the enduring territorial crisis.

Sánchez finally confirmed the long-anticipated move during a speech in Barcelona on Monday in which he stressed the need for coexistence, magnanimity and a fresh start. The pardons will be formally approved during Tuesday's cabinet meeting.

The nine - among them six members of Catalonia's former government who had not fled Spain, plus the speaker of the regional parliament and two influential activists - were convicted of offences including sedition by the supreme court in 2019.

Comment: See also:

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X

Former Brazil President Lula da Silva acquitted in yet another corruption case


MercoPress
Tue, 22 Jun 2021 09:49 UTC
Lula da Silva
© AFP
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was acquitted due to lack of evidence Monday in one of the corruption cases for which he was being tried, it was announced. Together with Lula, six other officials who had also been charged with favouring auto companies in exchange for bribes were found not guilty.

Judge Frederico Botelho de Barros Viana maintained the prosecution did not "convincingly demonstrate" how the former president and his chief of staff "had participated in the supposedly criminal context."

The magistrate also specified that "there are elements that demonstrate the performance of Mauro Marcondes' company - Marcondes and Mautoni - in terms of the extension of tax benefits to CAOA and MMC companies, there is no adequate evidence and not even minimally capable of demonstrating the existence of an illicit adjustment between the accused to transfer amounts in favour of Lula and Carvalho," about former Cabinet Chief Gilberto Carvalho, who was also secretary of the Presidency under Dilma Rousseff.

The Prosecutor's Office had accused the former president in 2017 of modifying, in exchange for alleged bribes, a legislative measure to favour companies in the automotive sector through an extension of tax benefits for five years, but the accusation was later dismissed and in the closing arguments in May it had requested Lula's acquittal.

Comment: See also:

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Footprints

Taliban perceives 'hasty withdrawal' of American troops from Afghanistan as 'victory'

Tim Korso
Sputnik
Mon, 21 Jun 2021 14:04 UTC
Taliban warning sign
© Reuters/Jim Hollander
Taliban warning sign
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was installed following the expulsion of the Taliban* from Kabul, has harshly criticised the US and NATO for failing to eradicate terrorists in the country over the last two decades. He argued that western nations are leaving Afghanistan "in total disgrace and disaster".

The view of American troops packing their things as they prepare to leave Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of war is apparently a sight for sore Taliban eyes. The group, which has been fighting against NATO forces for the last two decades, is treating this moment as their victory in the lengthy fight,

The Daily Beast has reported citing a Taliban media official: "We strongly believe the US military was terribly defeated in Afghanistan. And they're running away from Afghanistan in a hurry", Taliban representative Khalid Zadran said.

According to media reports, the Taliban is already making use of the situation. While the US hands over its military bases to Kabul's forces, the group's troops are reportedly taking over some of the now-unguarded districts and provinces. Apparently, the Afghan security forces have so far been unable to stop their progression.

Comment: Perhaps the 'military' was not the 'change agent' needed to turn Afghanistan into a subordinate Western neighborhood. Given the outcome, change was never the goal. It was profit not progress.

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Attention

The Empire strikes: US government SEIZES website of Iran's Press TV, two other media outlets


RT
Tue, 22 Jun 2021 18:33 UTC
US seize IRan website presstv
© https://www.presstv.com/
The Press TV website has been disappeared.
US authorities have seized the web domains of Iran's international media outlets Press TV and Al-Alam, along with the Yemeni TV channel Al Masirah, run by the Houthi faction.

Visitors to the three domains were greeted on Tuesday with a notice that they were seized under US laws that allow civil and criminal forfeiture of property involved in "trafficking in nuclear, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons technology or material, or the manufacture, importation, sale, or distribution of a controlled substance."

The seizure notice by the US Department of Justice also invokes a law governing presidential authority in dealing with "unusual and extraordinary threat; declaration of national emergency," which includes the Iran Nonproliferation Amendments Act of 2005 and the ironically named Iran Freedom Support Act of 2006.
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MIB

FBI monitoring of social media posts pre-Jan 6 raises even more questions of what it REALLY knew prior to Capitol Hill riot

Kit Klarenberg
RT
Tue, 22 Jun 2021 18:07 UTC
protesters enter capitol building january 6
© AFP / Saul Loeb
Supporters of US President Donald Trump walk around in the Rotunda after breaching the US Capitol in Washington, DC.
Publicly, US authorities have rigidly stuck to the story that no one saw the January 6 Capitol ruckus coming. But the publication of internal documents is casting further doubt on the established version of events.

On June 21, NBC News reported on a recent court filing that raises further questions about whether the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) foresaw what happened in Washington DC on January 6 and, if so, why the agency failed to sound the alarm in good time.

The document in question is an FBI investigative report on social media activity prior to that fateful day, produced in February, showing that enraged Donald Trump supporters were openly talking about bringing firearms to the Capitol in order to instigate a "revolution." The offending posts were used as justification to launch a probe into protest attendee Thomas Webster, a former New York Police Department officer, who was indicted the following month for attacking a Capitol Police officer.

Comment: More and more information is coming out that not only did the FBI have plants in the different groups attending the Jan 6 protests, they were the ones egging on the violence. Couple that with the various "light-touch" and confusing stand-down orders and you have the perfect dragnet for unsuspecting patriots who are now cast as enemies of the state. Tucker nails it:



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2 + 2 = 4

Professor Giordano Joins Tucker Carlson on Fox News

Nicholas Giordano
The P.A.S. Report
Sat, 19 Jun 2021 17:50 UTC
Domestic terrorism conspiracy theory
Nicholas Giordano joins Tucker Carlson on Fox News to discuss how the Biden Manual on Fighting Domestic Terrorism can easily be abused. This is an extremely important segment that exposes the vagueness of the document, and how it can be manipulated and used against political opponents. The Department of Justice's National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism should concern every American regardless of political affiliation, and the text of the document proves that even the most casual critic of the government could be ensnared, and therefore be labeled as a domestic terrorist.

This four-minute clip just scratches the surface. On June 23, Professor Giordano will break down the document, going page-by-page, showing just how dangerous it is, how it can easily be manipulated and exploited, what will happen if it is fully implemented, and why it shouldn't matter what your political affiliation is.

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X

80 years after Nazi invasion of USSR, Ukraine's main opposition party asks Kiev to finally clamp down on neo-Nazi organizations


RT
Tue, 22 Jun 2021 17:46 UTC
ukraine neonazies
© RIA
Participants of the "March of embroidery" in Kiev. The action is carried out by nationalists and is timed to the anniversary of the creation of the SS division "Galicia" during the Second World War, Ukraine.
On the 80th anniversary of the start of Operation Barbarossa, the German-led WW2 military invasion of the Soviet Union, Ukraine's leading opposition party has demanded that authorities in Kiev finally ban neo-Nazi organizations.

In a statement published on its website on Tuesday, the Opposition Platform - For Life party also asked the Ukrainian government to stop "rewriting history."

Back in April, Ukrainian nationalists held a march in the center of Kiev to mark the anniversary of the creation of the SS Galicia during World War II. The SS division was made up predominantly of Ukrainian volunteers who took up arms for Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union, and who mainly fought against local partisans. The unit was almost wiped out in the 1944 Battle of Lvov-Sandomierz, and later saw action in Slovakia and Austria. In 1945, it rebranded as the Ukrainian National Army and lasted until the end of the war in May that year.

The march in Kiev was condemned by officials from Russia, Germany, and Israel, amongst others.

At the time, Opposition Platform asked the government for a "tough reaction," noting that the traditional WWII Victory Day parade was banned, due to Covid-19 restrictions, but the SS Galicia parade wasn't.

"On this Day of Mourning and Remembrance of Victims of War, we do not expect fake lamentations from the authorities," the Opposition Platform statement explains. "We demand prohibition and persecution for all neo-Nazi organizations, an end to the glorification of Nazi collaborators and an end to the rewriting of history. An end to the policy of ethnic and cultural discrimination."
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Penis Pump

Duterte still going full Duterte: 'You choose, Covid vaccine or I will have you jailed'


The Guardian
Mon, 21 Jun 2021 17:41 UTC
duterte
© AFP/Presidential Photo Division (PPD) King Rodrigues
President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to jail people who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Philippines battles one of Asia's worst outbreaks, with a cumulative total of more than 1.3 million cases and 23,000 deaths.

"You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed," Duterte said in a televised address on Monday following reports of low turnouts at several vaccination sites in the capital Manila.

Duterte's remarks contradict those of his health officials, who have said that while people are being urged to receive the Covid-19 vaccine, it was voluntary.

"Don't get me wrong, there is a crisis in this country," Duterte said. "I'm just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government."

As of Sunday, Philippine authorities had fully vaccinated 2.1 million people, making slow progress towards the government's target of up to 70 million of the country's 110 million people.

Duterte, who has been criticised for his tough approach to containing the virus, also stood by his decision not to let schools reopen.

Comment: He didn't leave it there. He made it personal:
"If you don't want to get vaccinated, leave the Philippines," he said, as quoted by the PNA news agency. "Go to India if you want, or somewhere to America. But for as long as you are here and you are a human being and can carry the virus, you should get vaccinated."
...
Duterte, who is known for using straightforward and crass language in public, was quoted by the Rappler news website as saying, "If you don't want to get vaccinated, I'll have you arrested [and] then I'll inject a vaccine into your buttocks."


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