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House Dems' stimulus bill includes checks for illegal immigrants and protections from deportations and UPDATE

Adam Shaw
Fox News
Wed, 30 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
US Capitol
© wpvi
A stimulus package proposed by Democrats in the House of Representatives includes a number of items that will benefit illegal immigrants -- including an expansion of stimulus checks and protections from deportations for illegal immigrants in certain "essential" jobs.

The $2.2 trillion bill includes language that allows some illegal immigrants -- who are "engaged in essential critical infrastructure labor or services in the United States" -- to be placed into "a period of deferred action" and authorized to work if they meet certain conditions.

It also grants protections to those employers who hire those undocumented immigrants, ordering that "the hiring, employment or continued employment" of the defined group is not in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act. That lasts until 90 days after the public health emergency is ended.


Comment: The dickering goes on. Perhaps the following will 'stimulate' an agreement:

UPDATE 9/10/2020: Mnuchin to Pelosi: White House new offer of $1.8T coronavirus relief package
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been the chief White House and Republican negotiator with Pelosi. They are expected to talk Friday about the new proposal, which is significantly more than the roughly $1 trillion previously offered.

The effort by Congress to pass another bipartisan relief bill that Trump will sign has essentially stalled since May when House Democrats passed their version, worth about $3 trillion. Last week, they passed a $2.2 trillion version.

The president has offered his approval on the new deal, tweeting Friday morning, "Covid Relief Negotiations are moving along. Go Big!"
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Brain

'Imagine': Ex-CIA director Brennan dreams of Navalny becoming president of Russia and befriending Joe Biden


RT
Fri, 09 Oct 2020 20:19 UTC
BrennanNavalny
© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque/YouTube - vDud/screenshot
Former CIA Director John Brennan • Activist Alexey Navalny
Apparently ditching all tradecraft, former CIA chief and godfather of Russiagate John Brennan "imagined" Joe Biden in the White House and Alexey Navalny in the Kremlin as part of a (partisan) birthday tribute to John Lennon.

"Imagine prospects for world peace, prosperity, and security if Joe Biden were president of the United States and Alexei Navalny the president of Russia," Brennan tweeted on Friday, above the lyrics to the cult song 'Imagine,' on the occasion of Lennon's 80th birthday.

"We'll soon be halfway there," he added.
Brennan tweet

Comment: "Imagine" if Brennan were to fess up...now that would be 'a dreamer come true'!

See also:

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Star of David

No big surprise: Israel to massively expand settlements after UAE normalization

Tamara Nassar
The Electronic Intifada
Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
Efrat
© Mosab ShawerAPA images
Efrat settlement
Israel is moving ahead with thousands of new settlement units in the occupied West Bank. This represents a dramatic expansion of Israel's settler-colonial efforts: "isolated" settlements outside the large blocs already eyed for Israeli annexation under President Donald Trump's so-called "Peace to Prosperity" plan.
About 350 units will be added to each of the Beit El settlement, north of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, the Geva Binyamin settlement, northeast of occupied East Jerusalem, and the Nili settlement, in the central West Bank. Almost 1,000 new housing units are set to be approved in the so-called Har Gilo settlement, sandwiched between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Israel is also advancing plans for almost 700 new housing units in Eli settlement in the central West Bank. Construction has already started and some units are being approved retroactively. Another 140 housing units will added in Shiloh, a settlement between the Palestinian villages of Jalud and Quryut, which have filed legal challenges to the construction.
The Civil Administration - the bureaucratic arm of Israel's military occupation - is expected to give the final green light for 2,500 units on Monday and initial approvals for thousands more. All of Israel's settlements are illegal under international law and settlement construction in occupied territory is a war crime. However, Israel's expansion of settlements beyond the so-called blocs signals a new confidence that it will face no consequences whatsoever for its actions.
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Russian Flag

Russia's strategic intervention in Syria five years on - An 'unpardonable blow' to the US empire


Strategic Culture Foundation
Fri, 09 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
Putin war room
Five years ago this month, Russia began conducting fateful military operations in Syria at the request of the government in Damascus. It was a momentous "turning point," as noted by Syria's President Assad this week, whose nation is slowly rising from the ashes of war.

More than salvaging Syria from a nearly decade-long war - vitally important though that was - Russia's pivotal intervention also marked the strategic setback for a Western-backed campaign of regime change and wanton illegal war-making across the Middle East and North Africa.

That decisive blow against the presumed hegemony of the United States and its NATO allies is no doubt a factor in the seeming relentless efforts by the West to isolate and smear Russia with sanctions and other provocations, efforts that continue unabated to the present day.

Russia's intervention was a principled response to aid an historic ally, the Syrian Arab Republic. The Levantine nation was at the time already assailed for four years by an array of illegally armed militant groups which were threatening to over-run the country. These groups comprised hundreds of thousands of mercenaries from dozens of countries and were lionized in Western media as "rebels" in a deceptive propaganda cover for the fact that they were in reality hardcore terrorists slaughtering their way to Damascus. These "rebels" beloved by Western governments and media carried out beheadings and other unspeakable atrocities against civilians.

Comment: See: Defence Minister Shoigu: Russian servicemen killed over 133,000 militants in Syria

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Attention

Richard Grenell's Twitter account suspended after he posts photos of mail-in ballots sent to dead people

Libby Emmons
The Post Millennial
Sat, 10 Oct 2020 16:45 UTC
Tom Thompson Richard Grenell

Richard Grenell (L) Tom Thompson (R)
As of Friday, he is still suspended for the infraction of posting pictures of mail-in ballots that were delivered to people who are deceased.

Richard Grenell, who currently serves as the Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations, has been suspended from Twitter for posting mail-in ballots that were sent to dead people.

The ballots, posted by Grenell, were shared with the American diplomat by Tom Thompson, who said that he is the son of John and Gertrude Thompson, both of who passed over ten years ago, and both of whom received ballots to vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Thompson gave the photos of the ballots to Grenell, who shared them via his Twitter feed.

Comment: Blatant anti-Trump platform has the gall to claim they are concerned for the 2020 election's integrity? Pull the other one Jack.

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Attention

'War is imminent': Iraq's Kadhimi moves to fend off US threat to target pro-Iran groups

Suadad al-Salhy
Middle East Eye
Thu, 08 Oct 2020 06:15 UTC
US emabssy in Iraq
© AFP
Iraqi security forces stand guard in front of the US embassy in Baghdad in January 2020
Iraqi government scrambling to head off threatened closure of US embassy in Baghdad amid fears move could lead to political and economic collapse

The United States has drawn up a list of 80 sites in Iraq linked to Iranian-backed groups that it plans to target if it follows through with a threat to close its embassy in Baghdad, Middle East Eye has learned.

The sites include secret headquarters and shelters used by Hadi al-Amiri and Qais Khazali, the respective leaders of the Badr Organisation and Asaib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), as well as sites associated with Kataeb Hezbollah (KH).

All three are Shia armed groups supported by Tehran which are also part of the Popular Mobilisation Forces under the nominal control of the Iraqi government.

Political leaders and armed group commanders told MEE that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shared hundreds of satellite images of the 80 sites with Iraqi President Barham Salih during a phone call on 20 September.
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Bullseye

If the Democrats have the election in the bag, why are they acting so desperate?

Charles Hurt
Breitbart
Fri, 09 Oct 2020 16:14 UTC
harris biden masks
© Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in their virtue-signalling masks
Current polls show Joseph R. Biden anywhere from 10 to 20 points ahead of President Trump — a double-digit blowout.

The whole election will come down to Mr. Trump's handling of the global pandemic, which extensive polling shows is where Mr. Trump is most vulnerable.

In 2016, Mr. Trump barely won the election — and only because so many voters assumed he had no chance of winning and stayed home. Also: Russia!

This year, Americans are exhausted. They might not particularly like Mr. Biden, but they desperately want a break from the current occupant of the White House.
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No Entry

The limits of Chinese power: US-China relations hinge upon the 2020 presidential election

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times
Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:00 UTC
Academic Lanxin Xiang
© : AFP via Anadolu Agency/Mustafa Ciftci
Academic Lanxin Xiang attends a "Russia and China session in the Middle East" within the joint meeting of the 99th Rose-Roth Seminar and Mediterranean and Middle East special group of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Antalya, Turkey, April 13, 2019.
Academic Lanxin Xiang is no fan of Trump's China policies but also sees where Beijing has miscalculated and overreached

Trump 2.0 essentially would turbo-charge its bet on decoupling, aiming to squeeze "malign" China on a multiple Hybrid War front, undermine the Chinese trade surplus, co-opt large swathes of Asia, while always insisting on characterizing China as evil incarnate.

Team Biden, even as it professes no desire to fall into the trap of a new Cold War, according to the Dem official platform, would be only slightly less confrontational, ostensibly "saving" the "rules-based order" while keeping Trump-enacted sanctions.

Very few Chinese analysts are better positioned to survey the geopolitical and geoeconomic chessboard than Lanxin Xiang: expert on relations between China, US and Europe, professor of History and International Relations at the IHEID in Geneva and director of the Center for One Belt, One Road Studies in Shanghai.

Xiang got his PhD at SAIS at Johns Hopkins, and is as well respected in the US as in China. During a recent webinar he laid out the lineaments of an analysis the West ignores at its own peril.

Xiang has been focusing on the Trump administration's push to "redefine an external target": a process he brands, "risky, dangerous, and highly ideological". Not because of Trump - who is "not interested in ideological issues" - but due to the fact that the "China policy was hijacked by the real Cold Warriors". The objective: "regime change. But that was not Trump's original plan."
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USA

Trump eyes return to rallies Saturday after doctor says COVID-19 therapy completed

Jeff Mason and Steve Holland
Reuters
Sat, 10 Oct 2020 15:54 UTC
trump release hospital press conference
© The White House/Handout via REUTERS
U.S. President Donald Trump makes an announcement about his treatment for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Washington, U.S., in this still image taken from video, October 7, 2020.
President Donald Trump said on Thursday he may return to the campaign trail with a rally on Saturday after the White House physician said he had completed his course of therapy for the novel coronavirus and could resume public events.

In an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump said he was likely to take a test for the coronavirus on Friday after testing positive for it a week ago. The White House has declined to say when the president last tested negative for COVID-19.

The president, who sounded hoarse, said he was looking at further campaign events in the coming days, including a rally in Florida on Saturday and in Pennsylvania on Sunday.

Comment: According to the Hill, Trump is planning to return to his rally schedule on October 10.
But the president said he had not been tested again since being diagnosed with COVID-19 a week ago, meaning it's unclear whether he is still positive for the highly contagious virus. He said he expected to take another test on Friday.

During his interview with Hannity, Trump paused multiple times to clear his throat. The president has not been seen in person since departing the hospital on Monday.


White House physician Sean Conley said in a memo released earlier Thursday evening that he believed it would be safe for Trump to resume public activities on Saturday. That timeline is a shift from earlier in the week, when Conley said doctors would not breathe a sigh of relief for Trump's health until he made it to next Monday without complications.
While RT reports:
On Friday evening, Trump tweeted the announcement of a "very BIG RALLY" in Sanford - meaning the Orlando Sanford International Airport - in central Florida. The Monday evening event will be the first since the president tested positive for Covid-19 last week.

The White House has reportedly sent out invitations for a Saturday morning event already, featuring a gathering on the South Lawn with Trump delivering "remarks to peaceful protesters for law and order" from the balcony, a safe distance away.

The remarks will be in addition to a previously scheduled event organized by activist Candace Owens and her group Blexit. As part of their safety rules, anyone who shows up will have to bring a mask and wear it, a Bloomberg News White House correspondent reported. They will also have to undergo a temperature check and a questionnaire, but no tests.


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Network

Armenia & Azerbaijan agree to ceasefire following talks in Moscow


RT
Thu, 08 Oct 2020 23:21 UTC
Azerbaijan Armenia Russia
© Sputnik / Russian Foreign Ministry's press service
Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers are seen during talks in Moscow, on October 9, 2020.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says the top diplomats of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been invited to take part in peace talks in Moscow on Friday so that a "humanitarian" ceasefire may be agreed in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.

Putin called on all sides of the conflict to suspend hostilities "for humanitarian reasons" to allow for a prisoner swap and an exchange of bodies of those killed in the skirmishes, the Kremlin said on Thursday. The Russian president previously described the ongoing military face-off in the contested region as a "tragedy."

The foreign ministers of both Armenia and Azerbaijan were invited to participate in "consultations" to further an armistice on Friday, October 9, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will act as a mediator.

Comment: See also:

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