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China suspends visits by US warships, sanctions NGOs in response to US signing Hong Kong bill


RT
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:00 UTC
protesters US flags
© Reuters/Thomas Peter
Masked protesters hold placards during the “March of Gratitude to the US” event in Central, Hong Kong, China December 1, 2019.
Beijing has stopped allowing US Navy vessels to visit Hong Kong and "sanctioned" foreign NGOs after President Donald Trump signed a bill, which targets China over its response to anti-government protests and riots in the city.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said on Monday that China will no longer review requests by the American warships to dock in Hong Kong. The nation has already barred several US Navy ships from visiting Hong Kong in recent months.

Hua also announced that the country has sanctioned NGOs, such as Human Rights Watch (HRW), Freedom House and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), for inciting protesters to commit "violent crimes" and promoting "separatism" in Hong Kong. These groups are "responsible for the current chaos" in the city, she told reporters.

The spokesperson stressed that the measures are a direct response to the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act 2019, which was signed into law by Trump last week. The legislation allows the US to impose sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials over human rights abuses in Hong Kong.

Comment: RT, 1/12/2019: The real reasons and instigators behind anti-Beijing riots
Having personally witnessed brutal clashes and spoken to key figures on both sides of the barricades, RT America's Michele Greenstein paints a comprehensive picture of the protest's origins and handlers.



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Star of David

Creeping annexation: Israel announces plan to double Jewish settler population in Hebron

Jeremy Sharon, Khaled Abu Toameh
The Jerusalem Post
Sun, 01 Dec 2019 21:56 UTC
Hebron site
© Tzipi Shlisel/TPS
The site of new Jewish construction in Hebron.
Palestinians, left-wing groups denounces plans for new neighborhood for "perpetuating" Israeli military control over Palestinians.

Defense Minister Naftali Bennett announced the approval of a new Jewish neighborhood in Hebron on Sunday, generating strong praise from the settlement community and condemnation from Palestinian rights organizations.

The neighborhood will be constructed at the site of what is known as the wholesale market, which was purchased by the old Hebron Jewish community at the beginning of the 19th century, but which became a center for Palestinian commerce when the city came under Jordanian rule.

Under the new construction plan, the old market stalls building will be destroyed and several apartment blocks built, which will include as many as 70 units in total, a spokesman for the Jewish community said.

Due to legal requirements, the ground floor of the apartment buildings will be reserved for market stalls, so as to uphold demands of the Supreme Court, although it is unlikely that Palestinian tradesmen will gain access to the old market area due to security considerations.

Comment: Aljazeera, 1/12/2019: Illegal settlement to be built in flashpoint city of Hebron
The market area is on Hebron's once-bustling Shuhada Street, the Old City's main commercial artery. It has been shut down by the Israeli army since 1994, forcing many businesses to close.

Hebron Mayor Taysir Abu Sneineh warned that the "dangerous" decision by the defence ministry would lead to escalations in the "entire region", Wafa news agency said.

Hebron, the largest city in the West Bank, was divided into two areas and forms of control in 1997 - H1 and H2.

With some 200,000 Palestinians living in the area, H1 is under the control of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. Some 33,000 Palestinians reside in H2, alongside several hundred Jewish settlers who live under Israeli civil law.

In the H2 area, Palestinians live under Israeli military control, with their freedom of movement heavily restricted due to the presence of checkpoints and the imposition of curfews.

The Bennett plan, he wrote on Twitter, "is the first tangible result of the US decision to legitimise colonisation".


Sunday's statement said the planned new building project would "double the number of Jewish residents in the city".


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Attention

Trump's trade war with China may drag on past the 2020 election

Lia Eustachewich
New York Post
Tue, 03 Dec 2019 07:35 UTC
Xi/Trump
© Getty Images
Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump
President Trump on Tuesday warned that the trade war with China could drag on beyond the 2020 election, saying there's "no deadline" to strike a deal.

Trump told reporters in London, where he was due to attend a NATO summit:
"In some ways, I think it's better to wait until after the election with China. In some ways, I like the idea of waiting until after the election for the China deal. But they want to make a deal now, and we'll see whether or not the deal's going to be right. It's got to be right."
Last month, the US and China announced they reached a "substantial" interim trade deal, staving off a tariff increase on Chinese goods and raising hopes of a de-escalation.

Trump, who in September said he didn't need a deal before the 2020 election, put the pressure on China on Tuesday.
"The China trade deal is dependent on one thing — do I want to make it, because we are doing very well with China right now, and we can do even better with a flick of a pen. And China is paying for it, and China is having by far the worst year that they have had in 57 years. So we'll see what happens."
China reported its slowest economic growth in 27 years in October.
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Fire

Lunacy: Bolsonaro claims actor DiCaprio funded Amazon forest fires

Drago Bosnic
Fort Russ
Sat, 30 Nov 2019 17:16 UTC
deCaprio amazon forest fires
© (L) AFP / Nelson Almeida; (R) YouTube / Sony Pictures Entertainment
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused, without providing evidence, Hollywood actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio of financing nonprofit groups that he claimed are partly responsible for fires in the Amazon rainforest this year.

The far-right leader appeared to be commenting on social media postings claiming that the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) environmental organization had paid for images taken by volunteer firefighters that it then used to solicit donations, including a $500,000 contribution from DiCaprio, Al-Jazeera reported. The WWF has denied receiving a donation from DiCaprio or obtaining photos from the firefighters.

Comment: RT reports the reactions to Bolsanaro's ludicrous statement:
DiCaprio came under fire from Bolsonaro over the weekend, with the Brazilian president accusing him of funding NGOs that supposedly set the Amazon rainforest ablaze in order to attract more donations, without providing any evidence.

The bizarre spat, meanwhile, prompted a flurry of jokes on Twitter, mostly parodying iconic scenes from DiCaprio's movies with reference to him trying to burn the Amazon. A handful of memes came straight from this year's Quentin Tarantino flick Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, in which Leo's character wields a flamethrower.


Others brought up his role in The Revenant, which earned DiCaprio an Oscar for Best Actor.


Earlier this year, Bolsonaro had a high-profile Twitter fight with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who sent an alarmist "our house is burning" tweet about the Amazon fires during a G7 event in France. Bolsonaro responded by accusing him of using an outdated photo of the Amazon and exhibiting a colonialist attitude towards Brazil.
The Amazon and its native peoples are under far more threat from oil and mining companies:

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Chess

NATO expansion towards Russian borders 'one of the potential threats' to us but Moscow remains ready to partner on 'actual challenges' - Putin


RT
Tue, 03 Dec 2019 17:24 UTC
U.S. M1 Abrams tanks
© REUTERS / Inquam Photos / Adel Al-Haddad
U.S. M1 Abrams tanks advance while taking part in Justice Eagle 17 joint military exercise at Smardan shooting range
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that NATO getting closer to the nation's borders poses a threat to the country, as the alliance keeps beefing up military might and citing Moscow as a perceived threat.

Speaking at a defense-themed event on Tuesday, Putin said that NATO's outdated "bloc-focused" way of thinking cannot serve as a "good instrument for making effective decisions" in the present-day world.

The president was commenting on the NATO summit, currently under way in London, where the bloc's members gathered to celebrate its 70 anniversary.
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Propaganda

Russian Defense Ministry lobs truth bomb at NYT propaganda mill over 'bombing of Syrian refugee camp'


Sputnik
Tue, 03 Dec 2019 16:48 UTC
Syria refugee camp
© AP Photo / Maya Alleruzzo
The NYT wrote 1 December that "eyewitness photos and videos, flight logs and cockpit tapes obtained by The Times enabled reporters to trace an airstrike on a Syrian camp for displaced families to a Russian pilot."

The Russian Defence Ministry dismissed a report by The New York Times (NYT) about Russia's Aerospace Forces' alleged bombing of a Syrian refugee camp in August.

"Like a month and a half ago, the ridiculous accusations by the authors of the fake are based on a video of unknown origin with swindlers from the White Helmets against the backdrop of buildings of the 'refugee camp'; pictures of the blue sky in which a Russian plane was supposed to be and fragments of Russian phrases, allegedly belonging to the Russian Aerospace Forces pilots", ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
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Control Panel

Macron tells NATO Russia must come in from the Cold War

Michael Luongo
Guns, Gold 'N Goats
Sat, 30 Nov 2019 00:00 UTC
Macron Putin
Last week I went through just some of the highlights as to why Russia is becoming a destination for global capital.

For years it's been a little lonely out here banging on about how well the Russian state headed by Vladimir Putin has navigated an immense campaign by the West to marginalize and/or isolate Russia from the world economy.

But that is changing rapidly. And 2020 will likely be the year the New Cold War begins to end. And it starts with Europe. In recent weeks there have been a number of moves made on both sides to end the economic isolation of Russia by Europe.

As always, however, it begins politically. French President Emmanuel Macron speaking at a press conference before 70th Anniversary NATO Summit in London no less, made it clear that he no longer wants the EU positioning itself as an adversary of Russia or China.

Standing next to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg Macron put a further down payment that he is looking to replace German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the person setting the tone for European Foreign Policy.

Comment: See also:

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Star of David

Britain's Chief Rabbi is helping to stoke antisemitism

Jonathan Cook
Mondoweiss
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 10:47 UTC
Rabbi Efraim Mirvis
© Still from ChiefRabbi.org
Chief Rabbi Efraim Mirvis
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has not only misrepresented the known facts about Labour and its supposed antisemitism crisis. He has not only interfered in an overtly, politically partisan manner in the December 12 election campaign by suggesting that Jeremy Corbyn - against all evidence - is an antisemite.

By speaking out as the voice of British Jews - a false claim he has allowed the UK media to promote - his unprecedented meddling in the election of Britain's next leader has actually made the wider Jewish community in the UK much less safe. Mirvis is contributing to the very antisemitism he says he wants to eradicate.

Mirvis' intervention in the election campaign makes sense only if he believes in one of two highly improbable scenarios.

Comment: The evidence of Israel and its acolytes meddling in UK (and international) affairs abounds: And check out SOTT radio's:

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Snakes in Suits

NATO at 70: The sclerotic & bureaucratic zombie should be pensioned off

John Laughland
RT
Tue, 03 Dec 2019 08:55 UTC
nato brussels
Seventy is normally considered a ripe old age at which people should be enjoying retirement. The NATO alliance, which meets to celebrate its anniversary in London, should have been pensioned off long ago.

The French president, who told the Economist in early November that NATO was "brain dead", seems determined to jolt the alliance and its members out of their collective coma. In a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Paris on November 28, Macron tried to inject a large dose of realism and clarity into a body which years ago haemorrhaged into a sclerotic and bureaucratic zombie.

Macron's shock therapy consists of asking the one question which, according to the German political theorist Carl Schmitt (although Macron did not quote him), constitutes the very essence of politics itself: "Who is the enemy?" Without an answer to this question, a military alliance has no purpose whatever. The fact that Emmanuel Macron had to ask it at all shows how badly NATO has lost the plot; in the theatre of the absurd, the Atlantic alliance is a character in search of an author.

NATO lists so many threats in its official Strategic Concepts of 1999 and 2010 that it sounds like Piglet in Winnie the Pooh, frightened of everything... terrorism; piracy; ethnic violence; inadequate economic reform; threats to energy supplies; arms proliferation; drug trafficking; cyber attacks; laser weapons; electronic warfare; health risks; climate change; even undefined "instability." Yet, the word "enemy" is nowhere in the mountain of challenges NATO says it faces.

Comment: After the end of Cold War NATO contributed generously to the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and that of Libya, offered a hand in the illegal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and assured its expansion up to the borders of Russia, just to name a few of its activities. Despite its munificent nature however, the entire world will breathe a sigh of relief once it is gone for good!

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Cheese

White House threatens to sanction $2.4bn worth of French imports in retaliation for digital tax targeting US tech giants


RT
Mon, 02 Dec 2019 22:47 UTC

Comment: The US is pretending this is all a 'response' to 'EU protectionism', 'forgetting' that it started this trade war...


Roquefort
© REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer
FILE PHOTO: Pieces of French Roquefort blue cheese are displayed in a shop in Paris
The US has proposed new tariffs on over two billion dollars in French goods, retaliating to a "digital tax" which it says "discriminates" against American products. Some of the products could be penalized by 100 percent.

The new levies could target trade in handbags, sparkling wines, cheeses, makeup products and other household goods, valued at $2.4 billion in total, the office of the US trade representative said on Monday.

"France's Digital Services Tax is unreasonable or discriminatory and burdens or restricts U.S. commerce," the statement read, proposing "additional duties of up to 100 percent on products of France."

Comment: See also:

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