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All News Pipeline

Big Tech's China BETA Test For America: We're Caught In An Electronic Prison Of Our Own Making

- And Our Freedoms Were Betrayed Over To Lucifer For His Soul Taking!

By Stefan Stanford

January 17, 2019
Big Tech's China BETA Test For America: We're Caught In An Electronic Prison Of Our Own Making

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BREITBART

P&G Urges Men to Lose Their ‘Toxic Masculinity’ in Gillette Razor Ad

By Tom Ciccotta

January 14, 2019

Proctor & Gamble is urging men to shave their “toxic masculinity” in a new ad for Gillette razors. The ad shows men fighting, cooking barbecue, and verbally harassing women, interspersed with news reports about the #MeToo movement.

A new ad from P&G razor brand Gillette encourages men to reexamine themselves and the way that they raise young boys. The ad, which is called “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be,” is essentially a two-minute broad generalization about the way that men act and think.

The ad depicts men getting into fights, standing in front of barbecue grills, and verbally harassing women. The ad also heavily features news clips discussing the recent #MeToo movement.

In a comment to the Wall Street Journal, Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette’s brand director, said that the advertisement is a meditation on the changes that men must make in America. “This is an important conversation happening, and as a company that encourages men to be their best, we feel compelled to both address it and take action of our own,” Bhalla said. “We are taking a realistic look at what’s happening today, and aiming to inspire change by acknowledging that the old saying ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is not an excuse. We want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and hope all the men we serve will come along on that journey to find our ‘best’ together.”

The ad immediately turned off customers, many of which said that they are done buying Gillette products.

“I am taking action,” one Twitter user said in response to Gillette’s call for action. “I’m researching every product made by Proctor & Gamble, throwing any I have in the trash, and never buying any of them again until everyone involved in this ad from top to bottom is fired and the company issues a public apology.”

“Oh FFS,” another user wrote. “Let me know more toxic masculinity when it saves you from a burning building, goes to war to protect you and your freedoms, or rescues puppies, kittens, and horses from flood waters after a hurricane.”

(It seems that this has become the most disliked item to ever appear on the internet. Ed)

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WND

Feds admit they can't protect electrical grid from terror

January n13, 2019

A new federal report, “Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage,” warns that the United States’ response plans and resources would be hugely “outmatched” by a catastrophic power outage, which could leave society in disarray and many people dead.

“We found that existing national plans, response resources, and coordination strategies would be outmatched by a catastrophic power outage,” said the report, which was released days ago.

“Significant public and private action is needed to prepare for and recover from a catastrophic outage that could leave the large parts of the nation without power for weeks or months, and cause service failures in other sections – including water and wastewater, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services – that are critical.”

WND has reported for years on the threat of an electromagnetic pulse attack, or EMP, from a solar flare or a nuclear explosion above the nation.

The President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council was set up right after 9/11 to advise on practical strategies for industry and government to reduce the many risks from such an event.

But the study looked at not just EMP but at any major power-system failure. And it comes just as the threats of terrorist attacks on the electric grid are rising.

PJMedia reported the newest terror threat on the power grid.

“The image shows a faceless figure in a black hoodie with the Islamic State flag holding a bomb with a lit fuse with transmission towers and lines in the background. Along the power lines is the phrase ‘Just Terror’ – the ISIS slogan for lone jihadist operations – and blood-spattered ground,” the report said. “The poster directs jihadists to ‘make a surprise for the Crusaders.’

“The infrastructure threat is uncommon in ISIS propaganda, which has focused more on knife, vehicle or gun attacks in crowded areas such as festivals or music venues. Suggested targets have ranged from well-fortified locations, such as the U.S. Capitol or UN Security Council, to soft targets with little symbolic significance,” PJMedia reported.

“At the end of last month, another ISIS-allied media group encouraged jihadists to ‘kill the infidels in ways which no one else ever used’ including ‘electricity’ among methods such as snakes, poison gas, poisoned arrows, and wild animals.”

The new NIAC report was based on interviews with dozens of senior leaders and experts, as well as an extensive review of studies and statutes.

The team recommends that the nation “design a national approach to prepare for, respond to, and recover from catastrophic power outages that provides the federal guidance, resources, and incentives needed to take action across all levels of government and industry and down to communities and individuals.”

Then, the report says, leaders need to improve understanding of “how cascading failures across critical infrastructure will affect restoration and survival.”

A number of initiatives already are under way, and they should be continued.

But they’re not enough.

“The solutions we identified will require strong public-private collaboration – as the NIAC has recommended previously – to address the scale and significance of catastrophic power outages,” the report says.

The report advises assigning responsibilities ahead of such an event and ensuring resources are available to minimize the impact and hasten recovery.

It also calls for guidance for locating resources where populations need them for sheltering in a catastrophe.

Fourth would be to design incentives and remove barriers to implementation of precautionary measures.

Region-wide tests are then needed along with standards for transmission lines, wires and pipes.

Finally, a flexible communications system would be needed to connect infrastructure owners-operators, emergency responders and government leaders.

“These actions require a whole-of-nation approach and strong public-private collaboration. Given the importance of this issue and the number of ongoing efforts, we request the National Security Council – working with the lead agencies identified – provide a status update to the NIAC within nine months of the report’s approval on how our recommendations are being implemented, progress being made … or any significant barriers.”

A power outage, the report notes, “is not simply a bigger, strong storm. It is something that could paralyze entire regions, with grave implications for the nation’s economic and social well-being.”

The issue is that when power goes out, so do systems providing water and food, communications, financial services, transportation, fuel, health care and more.

Governments are not the only ones missing the mark.

The report says: “People no longer keep enough essentials within their homes, reducing their ability to sustain themselves during an extended, prolonged outage. … Most preparedness campaigns call for citizens to be prepared for 72 hours in an emergency, but the new emerging standard is 14 days.”

The solution is going to take the efforts of the government, business, industry, society and individuals together, the report says.

The report urges the federal government take the lead on the issue, but “strong and effective public-private collaboration will be crucial.”

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RT

Over 770 million email addresses shared online in largest data breach in history

January 17, 2019

File photo: © Global Look Press / DPA / Sebastian Gollnow

A security researcher has blown the lid off the largest data breach in history as over 770 million emails and 21 million unique passwords have been exposed, eclipsing the Equifax and Yahoo hacks by a significant margin.

The breach is being dubbed ‘Collection #1’ and contains a raw data set of email addresses and passwords totalling 2,692,818,238 rows from potentially thousands of different sources, according to digital security expert Troy Hunt.

In total, there are 1,160,253,228 unique combinations of email addresses and passwords contained within over 12,000 separate files, constituting a truly staggering 87GB of data (for context, this is raw text, not 4K video).

In terms of sheer volume, it is being considered the largest data breach in history, second only to Yahoo's high profile cyber security gaffes which affected billions of users, though it is an aggregate of potentially hundreds if not thousands of breaches.

“It just looks like a completely random collection of sites purely to maximize the number of credentials available to hackers,” Hunt told WIRED. “There’s no obvious patterns, just maximum exposure.”

The breach contains previously encrypted passwords that have been “dehashed” or cracked and converted back to plain text and includes files allegedly from as early as 2008. The information wasn't even for sale but was merely dumped on MEGA and subsequently on a popular hacking forum, free for anyone with scroll and click capabilities to review.

As a result, there is a greatly increased risk of so-called credential-stuffing attacks in which hackers spam websites with various combinations of emails and passwords, including – but not limited to – services like Netflix, Facebook or other social media accounts, and online services. The breach doesn't appear to contain social security or credit card data.

Hunt recommends checking your email addresses on the free service provided by Have I Been Pwned.

If you are included in the breach, which is extremely likely, he recommends using a password manager or even going old school and employing gasp a pen and paper to store your passwords offline. Hack that!

“It might be contrary to traditional thinking, but writing unique passwords down in a book and keeping them inside your physically locked house is a damn sight better than reusing the same one all over the web,” Hunt wrote in his blog post on the breach.

A lucky few are claiming to have escaped the breach, but the odds are not in your favor.

STRANGE SOUNDS

Eruptions of Kuchinoerabujima volcano (Japan), Peteroa (Chile-Argentina), Merapi (Indonesia) and formation of new mud volcano in Guatemala – Seismic unrest in Mayotte: gas bubbles, sulfur smell and deep-sea fish kill

January 17, 2019

Here a compilation of the latest eruptions and seismic unrests around the world.

Article

The Big Wobble

Record temperatures of almost 50 deg C (122 deg F): Drought: Millions of dead fish: Wildfires: Crop failure: Bats and birds dying: Australia summer 2019

Thursday, 17 January 2019

<

p>Australians have been warned to stay indoors as the country's heat wave hits a record highs.
In the South Australian town of Port Augusta, temperatures hit 48.5C on Tuesday, the highest since records began in 1962.
According to the country's meteorological bureau, the past four days are among Australia's top ten warmest days on records.
Temperatures were set to soar to more than 45C on Wednesday in parts of New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria.
"Avoid physical activity, stay well hydrated - it's vital at this time," said Richard Broome, director of environmental health for the New South Wales state government.
He also urged people to stay indoors during the heat of the day.
For the four-fifths of Australia's 25 million people who live on the coast, the summer typically means lazing on the beach and watching cricket.
But the unusually high temperatures add to a sense of exhaustion for a farm economy already reeling from a year of drought.

Photo news-mail.com.au Hundreds of thousands of fish have died in far western NSW as drought conditions continue to grip the state.
"The weather is not good news for summer grain crops such as sorghum," said Phin Ziebell, agribusiness economist, National Australia Bank.
"Many east coast farmers are still reeling from the winter wheat crops, which suffered from recent drought."
Australia, the world's fourth-largest wheat exporter, saw the production of the grain fall to a 10-year low this year when dry weather wilted crops.
With unusually dry pasture, the danger of bushfires looms.
Emergency workers were forced to battle more than 100 fires across the northeast coast late last year when unprecedented hot weather triggered a wave of blazes.
Meanwhile, in New South Wales, the local government announced plans to mechanically pump oxygen into lakes and rivers after hundreds of thousands of fish have died in heatwave conditions.
Up to a million dead fish were found floating last week in the Darling River in western New South Wales state and the state government announced that 1,800 more rotting fish had since been found in Lake Hume in the state's south.

For the third straight year, extreme heat in Australia is causing bats to fall out of trees dead in alarming numbers.
According to The Cairns Post, temperatures higher than 40 deg C, 104+ deg F, have killed hundreds of flying foxes, who just fall to the floor dead or dying from the extreme heat.
The extreme weather has been taking a toll on the Far North’s flying foxes, who are dropping by the dozen from trees — and causing a potential public health risk.
Wildlife carers say they are struggling with the overwhelming numbers of bats becoming affected by heat stress in colonies in Cairns, Edmonton, Gordonvale, and Townsville.

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RT

Theresa May’s Brexit plan rejected by British parliament

Jan 16, 2019

The Brexit deal, painstakingly agreed upon with the EU by PM Theresa May last year, has ultimately flopped, as MPs said a firm no. The failure brings even more uncertainty to the fate of May’s cabinet and the whole Brexit process.

UK parliament voted down May’s Brexit plan on Tuesday by 432 votes to 202 – a margin of 230 – following lengthy debates on the matter. The vote was originally set to be held in mid-December, but was postponed amid fears that MPs would reject the unpopular deal between May and Brussels.

The delay failed to prompt any meaningful changes to aid the PM's cause, as it was ultimately rejected by parliament. The development comes just 10 weeks before the UK is set to leave the EU, bringing even more uncertainty to the already turbulent Brexit process.

Responding to the resounding defeat, May promised that her government "respects the will of the House" but said that it was her "duty to deliver" Brexit for British citizens who voted to leave the EU in 2016.

Every day that passes without a deal, May said, means "more uncertainty, more bitterness and more rancour." She said it was not her government's strategy to "run down the clock" to March 29, when the UK is scheduled to leave the EU, adding that she believes the best way to move forward is in an "orderly way."

May had earlier warned that a no-deal scenario made the prospect of a united Ireland, independent Scotland and ultimate breakup of the UK more likely. She called a no-deal scenario "the real threat to our union."

May admitted that it was now necessary to confirm if the House still has confidence in the government and said that if a motion of no confidence was tabled, it would be debated in parliament on Wednesday.

Standing to speak directly after May, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister had suffered a “catastrophic defeat” and immediately tabled that motion of no confidence in her leadership.

Shortly after the vote, a spokesman for May said the government would be in contact with Brussels officials over the coming days and confirmed Downing Street had not ruled out a 'no deal' Brexit.

The Irish government said it regretted the outcome of the vote in the British parliament and urged London to set out how it proposes to move forward with Brexit. Referring to the backstop, Dublin said it recalled the "clear position" of the EU that May's withdrawal agreement was not open for renegotiation.

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RT

Theresa May: An extinct prime minister and her dead-man-walking government. By George Galloway

George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.

January 16, 2019

© REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

Even after her historic Commons defeat over the Brexit deal, PM Theresa May is unlikely to be toppled in the upcoming no-confidence vote. That won't help alleviate the chaos her previous bad decisions have started.

There will now be a special glass case in the political museum for May, who has just suffered – by some distance – the worst defeat for any British prime minister in the history of the country. Like the glass case in London's Natural History Museum marked "Dodo" it will contain an extinct entity, an ex-parrot, an ex-prime minister.

May's defeat by 230 votes is worse by some margin than the next largest, that suffered by the first Labour PM Ramsay MacDonald – by 166 votes – before being brought down by the MI6 forgery known as the Zinoviev Letter in 1924. It is in the memorable words of a commentator at "the upper-end of bad." No political adjectives exist to fully describe the stratospheric scale of the defeat.

In any normal polity, I would now be writing the political obituary of a prime minister who had already delivered her seals of office back to Her Majesty the Queen, who would now be testing the claims to office of a successor to Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, Harold MacMillan, Alec Douglas-Home, Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May – all PMs during Elizabeth II's long reign.

But there is nothing normal about the polity Britain has now.

On paper, the Conservative Party can do nothing to winkle the limpet Prime Minister May out of office. But as Bill Shankly, the famous manager of Liverpool Football Club, once opined when told that on paper he was sure of a victory one Saturday afternoon, "football isn't played on paper, it's played on grass."

Whilst the failed vote of no confidence in the prime minister, tabled within her own party last December, on paper leaves her invulnerable to internal challenge for the rest of this year, my sense is that this part of the story isn't over yet.

In the earlier part of Queen Elizabeth's reign, there were nothing as vulgar as votes as leadership elections inside the Tory party. Instead there was what was known as "the magic circle" – like the camel, difficult to define but easy to recognize – of the great and the good in the Conservative Party who would take "soundings" of course, but would essentially act as a sounding board which then visited the palace and informed the Queen of the name of the candidate they regarded as a "sound chap" worthy of Her Majesty's confidence. They were known (in those old-fashioned days) as "the men in grey suits."

Whilst both the gender-balance and the wardrobes may have changed since, I believe that the same kind of Tory grandees will be whispering sedition even as I write.

It's not necessary to hate the British Prime Minister to conclude that she cannot possibly be the right team captain to continue to lead the batting for Britain in these circumstances, not least that those circumstances are very largely of her own making.

On the morning after the historic referendum victory to leave the EU, I said in a broadcast that the government should reach out to the leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn to form a joint negotiating team to maximise the advantage to Britain of leaving the European Union.

Not only was this approach refused, Theresa May and her party spent the next two years describing the leader of the opposition as various forms of the "enemy within," from an agent of the Kremlin to a friend of terrorism and extremism of all kinds. To say the least, it is difficult to row back from that now.

Secondly, it was Theresa May herself who willfully threw away the parliamentary majority she had in the hope – having believed her own propaganda that Corbyn was an unpopular Russian stooge – of eviscerating the opposition Labour Party and winning a landslide. She called a snap election, lost her majority and had to watch the falsely labelled "Kremlin stooge" increase the Labour vote by more than any leader since 1945 whilst building the largest left-of-centre party in the western world.

Mrs. May's necessary subsequent reliance on the pro-British northern Irish bloc of ten religious fundamentalists was always bound to founder on the rocks of Brexit, because the Republic of Ireland would henceforth become the border between the EU and British state. The irreconcilable demands of no "hard border" between Ireland north and south (mandatory under the Good Friday Agreement which brought about the end of Britain's War in Ireland) whilst drawing a necessary border between the EU 27 and the British state turned out to be just that – irreconcilable.

But the division in the Conservative party goes much deeper than the Irish Question. In truth, they are two parties (as are, in fact, the Labour Party – but that's for another time). The Conservatives are divided right down the middle between what ontologically can be described as a"national-patriotic" capitalist wing and a "globalist" transnational wing, for whom their own country means little beyond being one of many profit-centres. They have moved beyond national boundaries. The problem for them is that their voters have not moved with them.

Whilst the pro-EU Conservatives may be many (including Mrs. May herself) in Parliament, amongst Conservative Party members and voters they are an all but eclipsed minority.

This evening Mrs. May will face a full-dress no confidence motion in the House of Commons, in which the DUP and the 115 Conservative MPs who abandoned her to humiliation last night will be expected to express their full confidence in her 24 hours later. It is unconscionable, wrong, and electorally devastating.

Whilst it's unlikely that the government will be toppled today, the government will remain a dead man walking. It's equally unlikely that the EU can possibly concede anything like the negotiating territory required to close such a massive credibility gap as demonstrated in this historic parliamentary defeat, but in that case the clock will keep on ticking towards a No-Deal Brexit on March 29th.

It's unlikely the government will table the necessary legislation required to delay that deadline, and still more unlikely that the government will legislate for a second referendum on the deal – for both steps would formally, organically, divide their party into two as last happened 150 years ago.

And so a state of chaos exists this day in the once-United Kingdom. The old Queen has never seen anything like it.

***

Zero Hedge

The Decline And Fall Of The European Union

By Tyler Durden

January 15, 2019

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

This exhaustion of the neocolonial-neofeudal model was inevitable, and as a result, so too is the decline and fall of the European integration/exploitation project.

That a single currency, the euro, would fracture rather than unite Europe was understood long before the euro's introduction as legal tender on January 1, 2002. The euro, the currency of 19 of the 28 member states of the European Union, is only one of the various institutions tying the member nations of the European union together, but it is the linchpin of the financial integration touted as one of the primary benefits of EU membership.

Skepticism of the benefits of EU membership is rising, as citizens of the member nations are questioning the surrender of national sovereignty with renewed intensity.

The technocrat elite that holds power in the EU is attempting to marginalize critics as populists, nationalists or fascists, overlooking the untidy reality that the actual source of tyranny is arguably the unelected bureaucrats of the EU who have taken on extraordinary powers to strip the citizenry of member states of civil liberties (i.e. the right to dissent) and of meaningful political enfranchisement.

As I have patiently explained since 2012, the underlying structure of the EU is neocolonialism, specifically, neocolonial-financialization. Stripped of artifice, the financial institutions of the EU core have colonized the EU periphery via the euro and the EU and imposed a modernized system of extractive serfdom on the citizenry of the core and periphery alike.

To understand the neocolonial-financialization model, we must revisit the classic model of colonialism. In the old model of Colonialism, the colonizing power conquered or co-opted the Power Elites of the region, and proceeded to exploit the new colony's resources and labor to enrich the core or center, i.e. the Imperial nation and its ruling elites.

This traditional model of colonialism was forcibly dismantled in the 1940s-1960s. Former colonies established their political independence, a process that diminished the wealth and control of former colonial powers.

In response, global financial powers sought financial control rather than political control. This is the key dynamic of the Neocolonial-Financialization Model(May 24, 2012), which substitutes the economic power of financialization (debt, leverage and speculation) for the raw power of conquest and political control.

The main strategy of financialization is: extend cheap credit to those with limited access to capital. Those with limited access to capital will swallow the bait and willingly agree to onerous conditions.

Then, when the credit expansion reaches levels that cannot be supported, the lenders demand collateral and/or favorable trade and financial concessions.

These tactics have been well-documented in books such as The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism and Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.

But the economic pillaging of former colonies has limits, and as a consequence the global financial powers developed the Neocolonial Model, which turns these same techniques on one's home region.

Thus Greece and other capital-poor European nations were recognized as the periphery that could be exploited by the core, and the euro was the ideal tool to exploit the economies of nations which could never have generated credit/housing bubbles without the wide-open spigots of cheap credit flooding their economies.

In Neocolonialism, the forces of financialization are used to indenture the local Elites and populace to the financial core: the peripheral "colonials" borrow money to buy the finished goods manufactured in the core economies, enriching the Imperial Elites with A) the profits made selling goods to the debtors B) interest on credit extended to the peripheral colonies to buy the core economies' goods and "live large", and C) the transactional skim of financializing peripheral assets such as real estate and State debt.

In essence, the French and German banks colonized Europe's periphery nations via the financializing euro, which enabled a massive expansion of debt and consumption in the periphery. The banks and exporters of the core extracted enormous profits from the periphery via this expansion of debt and consumption.

The assets and income of the periphery are flowing to the core as interest on the private and sovereign debts that are owed to the core's money-center private banks.

Note how little of the Greek "bailout" actually went to the citizenry of Greece and how much was interest paid to the financial powers. The core has stripped Greece of collateral and political independence, just as the colonial powers of the 19th century stripped the African and Indo-Asian regions of income, assets and political independence.

This is not just the perfection of neocolonialism but of neofeudalism as well.The peripheral nations of the EU are effectively neocolonial debtors of the core, and the taxpayers of the core nations are now feudal serfs whose labor is devoted to making good on any financialization schemes that go bad.

Neocolonialism benefits both the core's financial Aristocracy and the periphery's oligarchies. This is ably demonstrated in the essay Misrule of the Few: How the Oligarchs Ruined Greece.

The EU has finally reached the endgame of the Neocolonial-Financialization Model. There are no more markets to exploit with financialization, no more assets to strip, and the serfs (a.k.a. yellow vests) of the core are tiring of being stripmined in service of the EU kleptocracy.

At this point, the financial Aristocracy has an unsolvable dilemma: writing off defaulted debt also writes off assets and income streams, for every debt is the core's asset and income stream. When all those phantom assets are recognized as worthless, the system implodes.

This exhaustion of the neocolonial-neofeudal model was inevitable and as a result, so too is the decline and fall of the European integration/exploitation project.

***

RT

Trump threatens to ‘devastate Turkey economically’ if it attacks Kurds amid US withdrawal from Syria

January 14, 2019

Donald Trump has warned its NATO ally to beware of the devastative wrath of US economic pressure if Turkey dares to attack the Kurdish allies America is leaving behind in its “long overdue” pull-out of troops from Syria.

The US military, Trump promised, will still use an “existing nearby base,” apparently in Iraq, to attack the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants if the terrorist organization re-emerges in Syria. Using his typical mode of communication to reaffirm the withdrawal of American troops from the ground, the US president warned Ankara against seeing this as an opportunity to stage any military campaign against Syrian Kurds.

“Will devastate Turkey economically if they hit Kurds,” Trump tweeted, urging Ankara to create a “20-mile safe zone.”

At the same time, Trump urged the Kurd-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which the US trained and armed for years, not to “provoke” Turkey.

In an apparent gesture to save face, following a questionable outcome of four years of uninvited American presence in Syria and an abrupt withdrawal, Trump has once-again credited the US military for destroying IS, disregarding the fact that most of the country was liberated from terrorists by the Syrian army, with the help of the Russian military.

“Russia, Iran and Syria have been the biggest beneficiaries of the long term US policy of destroying ISIS in Syria – natural enemies. We also benefit but it is now time to bring our troops back home. Stop the ENDLESS WARS!” Trump tweeted.

Trump made the decision to withdraw some 2,000 American troops from Syria last month, amid consultations with the Turkish military over their planned operations in Syria. National Security Advisor John Bolton even said that US forces will not leave Syria until Turkey guarantees the safety of the US-backed Kurdish militias.

Turkey, however, remains firmly committed to removing what they call a Kurdish “terrorist” threat coming from the Euphrates River valley, and is actively preparing for a possible cross-border operation. “Our preparation continues intensely,” the Turkish defense minister said Friday.

“We have no problems with our Kurdish brothers, Arab brothers in Syria, Turkmens and other ethnic and religious groups. Our only targets are terrorists Daesh and PKK/YPG,” Hulusi Akar added. Ankara sees the YPG Kurdish fighting units of the SDF as an extension of the outlawed Kurdish PKK movement that for decades has waged an insurgency inside Turkey.

American-Turkish relations are far from tranquil and have frayed in the years following the July 2016 coup attempt against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which Ankara believes was masterminded by Fethullah Gulen, who is living in exile in Pennsylvania. Washington and Ankara also sparred over the fate of American Presbyterian minister Andrew Brunson, who was convicted in Turkey of aiding terrorism, and who Ankara was forced to extradite after Trump exerted unprecedented economic pressure.

The bilateral relations have been further aggravated by US threats to halt the transfer of military tech to its NATO ally, including the fifth generation F-35 stealth fighter jets, and even to impose sanctions over Turkey’s commitment to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems, a diversification of weapons suppliers that enhances its national security.

***

RT

India to outpace US as world’s 2nd most powerful economy — report

January 12, 2019

© Getty Images

By 2030, seven of the world’s top 10 economies will be current emerging markets, according to the latest report by London-based multinational banking and financial service company Standard Chartered.

The long-term projection shows that India is likely to become larger than the US, while neighboring China will reportedly steal the crown of world’s most powerful economy (currently held by the US) as soon as 2020. At the same time, Indonesia may break into the top five economies.

India will likely be the main mover, with its trend growth accelerating to 7.8 percent by the 2020s partly due to ongoing reforms, including the introduction of a national goods and services tax (GST) and the Indian Bankruptcy Code (IBC),” says the report, as quoted by Quartz.

The GST, one of the largest tax reforms to be implemented by Delhi, was rolled out in 2017. The measure is aimed at simplifying the country’s cumbersome tax regime. The IBC, launched in 2016, consolidates the bankruptcy and insolvency laws in India.

The UK firm noted that the aging population is set to have a significant impact on global growth, but India, which is currently ranked as the world’s sixth biggest economy, will remain unfazed, as the country has the world’s largest group of young people. Nearly half of the Indian population is under the age of 25.

“The rising aspirations of a young population will continue to support consumerism in India’s economy,” according to the report.

Standard Chartered also said that the country would need to create 100 million new jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors by 2030 to cope with demand for massive employment.

“India needs to train circa 10 million people annually, but currently has the capacity to train just 4.5 million,” the report reads.

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STRANGE SOUNDS

These ‘bloody’ lenticular clouds over Catalonia, Spain make that sunset even more epic

January 14, 2019

Article

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Until next week...keep on believing.
Almondtree Productions

“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring.”
(Luke 21:25)