Does this rejection of the GOP in 2018 portend the defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, assuming he is still in office then?

Not necessarily.

For consider. Nancy Pelosi may want to close out her career as speaker with solid achievements, but she could face a rebellion in her party, which is looking to confront and not compromise with Trump.

The national debt may be surging, but Capitol Hill progressives will be demanding “Medicare-for-all” and free college tuition. Trump-haters will be issuing reams of subpoenas and clamoring for impeachment.

Other Democrats, seeing the indulgent attention their colleagues are getting from the media, will join in. Chairman Jerrold Nadler’s House Judiciary Committee may have to accommodate the sans-culottes.

Is this what America voted for?

'We build a Wall or close the Southern Border entirely': Trump demands a wall AND an overhaul of 'ridiculous immigration laws' in the U.S. in latest tirade against Democrats.

President Donald Trump returned Friday to a threat to close the nation's southern border if he doesn't get his wall money from Congress.

Trump warned as the weekend began that he'll close every port of entry, if he doesn't see progress not only on his wall, but on a total immigration overhaul.

'We build a Wall or close the Southern Border,' he declared.

He claimed in tweets in the last day that Democratic opposition to his wall is totally political in nature and is untethered from their assertions that his desired border barrier would be impractical. The president said they should work harder to end the current shutdown, because it mainly affects their voters.

Wells Fargo will pay $575 million in a settlement with attorneys general from all 50 states and the District of Columbia that are investigating fake accounts opened without the knowledge of customers and a string of other dodgy practices.

Under the agreement announced Friday, the bank will also create teams to review and respond to customer complaints about its banking and sales practices.

Russia as The Enemy.

The Democrats have an interest in the vilification of Russia as “Russiagate” explains Hillary’s loss of the 2016 Presidential election and gives Democrats hope of removing President Trump from office. The media lacks independence, knowledge, and integrity and is the tool used by the military/security complex to control explanations, a prostitution of the media that has made the term “presstitutes” an accurate description. As strategic and Russian studies are largely funded by the military/security complex, the universities are also complicit in the march toward nuclear war. Republicans are as dependent as Democrats on funding from the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby.

A former Israeli armed forces chief who opinion polls show poses the toughest challenge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bid for reelection next year formally established a political party on Thursday.

Details about Benny Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party, leaked to local media after it was registered, gave little indication of its ideological tilt.

Along with preserving Israel as “a Jewish and democratic country”, the party pledged unspecified changes to priorities in national security and the economy.

Persistent media reports that President Trump has ordered a drawdown from Afghanistan, with either 5,000 or 7,000 troops returning home, seemed more or less confirmed. Despite this, some of the highest ranking Pentagon officials claim to know nothing about it.

Visiting Camp Dahlke West, Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, shrugged off the reports when talking to troops, saying “there’s all kinds of rumors swirling around,” but that the mission was unchanged.

This comes after the commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Scott Miller, said he’d received no orders on any drawdown yet. Miller has followed that up by saying the fighting will continue until there is a political settlement.

Russia has finished building a high-tech security fence along annexed Crimea's border with mainland Ukraine.

The fence, more than 60km (37 miles) long, is topped with barbed wire and has hundreds of sensors.

Russian forces annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in March 2014 - a move condemned internationally. Crimea has a Russian-speaking majority.

Russia's FSB security agency says the fence is necessary to prevent "infiltration attempts by saboteurs".

An FSB statement, quoted by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency, said the fence would also thwart smugglers trading in illegal weapons, drugs, alcohol and other contraband.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid more than $800 million in taxpayer money to 19 private detention centers to hold migrants and asylum seekers this year, a new report has found.

An investigation by The Daily Beast found the 19 private prisons were being paid to house around 18,000 migrants, or about 41 percent of the 44,000 total migrants being held by ICE.

While ICE would not reveal the names of the detention centers they did business with, large private prison groups like CoreCivic and GEO Group have been known to work with the organization. Together, the two prison companies brought in revenue of more than $4 billion in fiscal year 2017. The companies also spend millions each year on campaign contributions and lobbying towards legislation that profits their business.

California has long protected police officers from accountability. Most police misconduct records are impossible to obtain via public records requests. The restrictions covering these personnel files even prevent defense attorneys and prosecutors from accessing them, allowing cops with lousy track records for telling the truth present testimony as if they've never committed a misdeed or told a lie.

Faced with impending accountability, police departments are readying themselves for mass releases of previously withheld data. Oh, wait. The opposite of that.

Back in September, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unshockingly decided that it's illegal to arrest schoolchildren just to "prove a point." The Fourth Amendment demands probable cause for an arrest, even an arrest of students who have (slightly) diminished Constitutional rights.

This was Deputy Luis Ortiz's solution to a problem he shouldn't even have been attempting to solve. Ortiz decided the students he was speaking to about alleged bullying weren't taking him seriously enough, so he tossed a few in squad cars and took them to the Sheriff's office. Nothing about this was legal, but the county decided to defend this all the way to the appellate level. The Ninth Circuit's assessment of Ortiz's actions was harsh but far more fair than Ortiz deserved.

The government of India wants tech platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Google to remove content it deems "unlawful" within 24 hours of official notice, and develop "automated tools" which would "proactively identify and remove such material," reports BuzzFeed, citing the publication of the proposed rules by India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
The rules would also require companies to break end-to-end encryption to allow the government to snoop on communications.

India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) published the proposed rules on its website following a report on Monday by the Indian Express revealing the government’s proposal to modify the country’s primary IT law to work them in. The report comes days after India’s government seemingly authorized 10 federal agencies to snoop into every computer in the country last week.

In The Imperial Presidency, the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. warned that the habit of “indiscriminate global intervention, far from strengthening American security, seemed rather to weaken it by involving the United States in remote, costly and mysterious wars, fought in ways that shamed the nation before the world and, even when thus fought, demonstrating only the inability of the most powerful nation on earth to subdue bands of guerrillas in black pajamas. When the grandiose policy did not promote national security and could not succeed in its own terms, would it not be better to pursue policies that did not deform and disable the Constitution?”

These many years later, America is complicit in a mysterious war in Yemen that is waged by Saudi Arabia in ways that shame both of our allied nations. These famine-ravaged youngsters are what that war looks like. As Nicholas Kristof aptly put it, “Your tax dollars help starve children.”

The national security adviser expanded U.S. goals in Syria to challenge Iran. But Trump wasn’t on board, senior officials say, and Turkey took an opportunity to push the U.S. out.

The national security adviser expanded U.S. goals in Syria to challenge Iran. But Trump wasn’t on board, senior officials say, and Turkey took an opportunity to push the U.S. out.

Some leading Pentagon officials were uncomfortable with Bolton’s anti-Iran goals in Syria. Days after Bolton’s statement, senior Pentagon officials signaled to Congress that they weren’t on board. “In Syria, our role is to defeat ISIS. That’s it,” Brig. Gen. Scott Benedict, an officer on the Joint Staff, testified to the House Armed Services Committee.

The US withdrawal from Syria includes the withdrawal from the remote US military base at al-Tanf, and that’s got some of the rebel factions in the southeastern area around the base wondering what comes next.

Reporters say that many of the rebels are openly saying that they intend to lay down their arms and surrender as soon as the US leaves al-Tanf, and try to join into one of the Syrian government’s reconciliation offer.

On the other hand, commanders from the US-backed Mahavir al-Saura brigade are looking for life after the US by issuing a demand for Syria to grant them safe passage for 6,000 fighters into the rebel-held northern Syria area around Idlib.

Moscow called on Ukraine and its Western partners to abandon the new attempt to send naval ships through the Kerch Strait.

At a press briefing, the spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, called the possible passage of Ukrainian ships through the Kerch Strait "a reckless initiative", RIA Novosti reports.

Zakharova also noted that the "Western supervisors" of Kyiv should come up with a way of "reasoning with the ruling regime" in Ukraine in order to make them abandon the steps that could lead to escalation in the region.

According to Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry believes that Ukraine’s plans to make a new attempt to send warships through the Kerch Strait are nothing more than a "provocation" in which Kyiv plans to involve NATO and the OSCE.

"Apparently, the recent incident with Ukrainian sailors, who became hostages of the aggressive policy of Kyiv authorities, did not teach anyone anything," Zakharova added.

If you liked skipping classes or sneaking out of school, this would be your worst nightmare.

Chinese schools are adopting “intelligent school uniforms” to keep closer watch on their students, according to the state-run Global Times. The uniforms, made by a local tech firm named Guanyu, have two chips embedded in the shoulders with identification and GPS.

The uniform chips can supposedly alert teachers and parents through an app if students leave the campus during school hours -- and then locate them. One of the schools using the uniforms claimed to Global Times that they won’t track students outside of school hours.

Human rights groups have claimed a major victory after HSBC, one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world, confirmed that it fully divested from Israeli drone manufacturer Elbit Systems, which sells weapons to the Israeli military used in attacks on Palestinians.

As part of the campaign, over 24,000 people emailed HSBC with concern over its investments in Elbit Systems and other companies selling weapons to Israel’s military. Forty HSBC branches across the UK were picketed monthly to call on HSBC to stop aiding Israel’s brutal occupation and human rights abuse of millions of Palestinians.

Turkey-backed rebel fighters in Syria are gearing up for a major deployment into northeastern Syria, with an eye on replacing the US ground troops in the area. Turkey is planning to invade in the course of this replacement, and is coordinating with the US and the pullout and deployment.

President Trump has said the withdrawal will be “slow,” and there has been no public timetable on troop movements. The rebels in question, however, are moving closer to the city of Manbij, which Turkey has indicated will be the first target.

Turkish FM Mevlut Cavusoglu addressed the situation in comments to reporters on Tuesday, saying that while the timeline of deployment may be related to coordination with the US, Turkey remains “determined” to expel the Kurds from Syria’s northeast.

We’ve recently told you about civil forfeiture.

Incredibly, it gets worse.

Police have gotten greedy.

They actually have wish lists of items – referred to as “little goodies” – they want.

Items that belong to you.

This hideous practice extends to your car – and your home.

There is incentive for them to take what’s yours.

The American public should not be playing Santa Claus to the cops whose salaries we already pay!

he NSA and CIA have given up working against true evildoers and are focused instead of invading the privacy of American citizens, building personal bureaucratic empires, and enriching their friends in private industry.

And covering their asses when they fail, fail, and fail again in the tasks they are charged with.

Why are they failing?

They’re tracking 4 billion people instead of the tens of thousands of known bad players.

Islamic State-trained militants are fighting alongside a state army in a European country, the Times reports – but that detail is buried in an article talking about how Putin is a common enemy of Ukrainians and Chechens.
Framed as an inside look at what’s driving Chechens to join Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation” against the breakaway republics in the east of Ukraine, the Times article has a few juicy quotes from one Mansur, a member of a voluntary battalion made up of Chechens.

Putin is our common enemy… He brings only evil.

Author and veteran anti-Putin writer Marc Bennetts echoes the official message of Kiev and its Western allies, calling the eastern Ukrainian rebels “Kremlin-backed” and claiming Moscow is “preparing a full-scale invasion.”

US President Donald Trump said he's not planning to take American troops out of Iraq as he made his first visit to an active combat zone. His surprise trip also sparked online frenzy after his plane had been noticed over Europe.
Speaking at Al Asad Air Base west of Baghdad, Trump defended his decision to withdraw troops from Syria last week.

"I think a lot of people are going to come around to my way of thinking. It's time for us to start using our head," the president said. “In fact we could use this as the base if we wanted to do something in Syria," he added.

Authorities in Israel have advanced plans to have nearly 2,200 settlement homes illegally constructed in the occupied West Bank.

A committee within Israel's Defense Ministry charged with handling such projects approved the plans on Tuesday and Wednesday.

A total of 2,191 settlement homes were advanced this week, with 1,038 clearing their final hurdle in the approval process before construction can begin. The remaining homes are still being processed.

Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement seek to pressure international governments and companies into dropping business with entities that profit off of illegal Israeli settlements.

Last week, the Israeli government aided a law firm linked to Israel's Mossad intelligence agency to pressure a US-based fundraising platform to ban BDS from using its services, Sputnik News reported.

The Defense Ministry committee responsible for authorizing settlement construction on Tuesday advanced plans for over 1,300 homes in the West Bank, with some 800 more slated for approval in an additional session scheduled for Wednesday.

Of the 1,352 homes green-lighted by the Civil Administration’s High Planning Subcommittee in 23 different projects, 807 gained final approval for construction while 545 homes had their plans cleared ahead of being considered for a final okay.

On Wednesday, 839 homes are slated to be okayed by the High Planning Subcommittee, with 352 gaining final approval for construction and 487 clearing the earlier planning stage.

We’re discussing particulars and what is in place now, as we speak. In Northeastern Syria, Special Forces teams as well as CIA and other clandestine service operatives have been deeply embedded since the Obama years. Now the plug has been pulled, and all of the intricate networks that have been obtained in the area are to be curtailed. Whether a shadow-presence will be left there is likely, although conjecture at this point, but Mattis’ reaction and resignation is, most likely at a minimum, twofold:

In consideration of what I just wrote, no Commander-in-Chief is privy to every motion that transpires within a given theater…and tactically, Mattis probably does not agree with the rapidity of the curtailment, from both an operational perspective.

Washington's decision to drop out of the INF has fueled speculation about the return of a full-blown, Cold-War style nuclear arms race, as Russia has reflexively threatened to build up its tactical defenses along Europe's periphery in the face of what's expected to be a buildup of American intermediate-range arms.

But whatever happens between the two nuclear superpowers, Germany wants no part of it.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned this week that the US better not be thinking about stationing its intermediate-range missiles in Germany - or anywhere in Europe, for that matter. For the last 30 years, the treaty has prohibited stationing intermediate-range arms in Europe. Any push to change that would almost certainly be met with "widespread resistance" in Germany, Maas said, so as to avoid a scenario where Europe is put in the middle of a tug-of-war between Russia and the US.

Those seeking an economic indicator of an imminent recession just got one courtesy of the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index, which tumbled from 14 in November to -8, crushing expectations of a modest rebound to 15, weighed down by drops in the indexes for new orders and shipments.

Russia’s Nezavisimaya Gazeta said that Israel is preparing for a comprehensive war on Syria following the US’ withdrawal from the country.

The newspaper said that the decision of US President Donald Trump to withdraw American troops from Syria has left Israel forced to face the Iranian presence in Syria with its troops alone.

The newspaper quoted Israel’s former defence minister Avigdor Lieberman as saying that:

“the United States’ withdrawal from Syria greatly increases the likelihood of a large-scale conflict in the north, whether in Lebanon or Syria”.

Lieberman added that “the Americans’ departure will raise the morale of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and his allies, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah.”

The Russian daily quoted Russian military expert Yuri Liamin as saying that “Iran cannot interpret this decision as a blank cheque”.

The Americans wager that they can exercise veto power over African political alignments by force of arms, through AFRICOM’s massive military infiltration of the region.

“The ‘West’s’ political economies are spent forces, incapable of either keeping up with China’s phenomenal domestic growth or of competing with China in what used to be called the Third World.”

Donald Trump last week trotted out his war dog, National Security Advisor John Bolton, to growl and snarl over China’s attempts to “gain a competitive advantage” in Africa through “predatory” practices that supposed include “bribes, opaque agreements, and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive” to Beijing’s global schemes.

In August, 2010, six months before Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution was launched by the Washington NGOs including the NED, the Soros Foundations, Freedom House and others, President Obama signed Presidential Study Directive-11 (PDS-11), ordering Washington government agencies to prepare for “change.” The change was to be a radical policy calling for Washington’s backing for the secret fundamentalist Islamic Muslim Brotherhood sect across the Middle East Muslim world, and with it, the unleashing of a reign of terror that would change the entire world.

According to US Congressional testimony of Peter Hoekstra, former Chairman of the US House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the Obama Administration PSD-11 directive–as of March 2017 still classified Top Secret–“ordered a government-wide reassessment of prospects for political reform in the Middle East and of the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in the process. “

A Grandiose Task Force

North and South Korea have held a ceremony for an ambitious project to modernise and reconnect rail and road links, although construction cannot begin without progress in nuclear negotiations.

A nine-car special train carrying some 100 South Korean officials, politicians and five people born in the North, left the Seoul railway station early on Wednesday morning for a two-hour journey to the North's border city of Kaesong.

There, they were joined by a 100-strong North Korean delegation, as well as officials from the United Nations, China, Russia and Mongolia, according to South Korea's unification ministry.

The United States gave their support for the ceremony, South Korean officials said, but work cannot begin while sanctions block the shipment of energy and metal products, as well as other supplies.

By tapping former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan to temporarily replace famed former Marine Gen. James Mattis as secretary of defense, President Trump may have found a like-minded advocate for the U.S. weapons industry.

Shanahan is a controversial choice. During Shanahan's two-year stint as Mattis's deputy defense secretary, Boeing has landed a series of lucrative military contracts worth $20 billion, on top of the Chicago company's previous deal to build aerial-refueling tankers and naval fighters for the Pentagon.

Mattis' resignation on Thursday came one day after Trump announced, via Twitter, that the terror group known as Islamic State is no longer a threat and the United States will withdraw all 2,000 of its troops from Syria.

Palestinian Christians in Gaza are feeling a damper on the Christmas spirit this year as Israeli authorities have blocked many from receiving exit permits to celebrate the Christmas holidays in Bethlehem in the West Bank.

While Western Christians celebrate, following the Gregorian calendar, Dec. 25 of every year, Eastern churches — to which the majority of Palestinian Christians belong — follow the Eastern calendar and celebrate on Jan. 7.

The international organization Middle East Concern, which advocates for the rights of Christians in the Middle East and North Africa, said in a Dec. 10 statement that most of the applications by Christian Palestinians in the Gaza Strip for permits to participate in Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem had been rejected by Israeli authorities. It noted that "nearly all" of the requests were rejected, "with only Christians over the age of fifty-five being allowed to travel."

On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Privacy International and Civil Liberties and Transparency Clinic at the University of Buffalo filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against seven federal criminal and immigration enforcement agencies, including the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

According to a press release by the ACLU, the lawsuit demands that the agencies reveal "which hacking tools and methods they [these agencies] use, how often they use them, the legal basis for employing these methods and any internal rules that govern them." It also calls for internal audits or investigations of the agencies.

Turkey has sent massive reinforcements to areas in its south, in preparations for a push into Syria’s northeast. As troops roll to the border, the country’s top officials have made bellicose remarks, vowing to fight “terrorism.”
A large Turkish military unit has been filmed in the town of Karkamis at the Turkey-Syria border. Right across it lies the Syrian town of Jarablus, controlled by the Turkey-backed Syrian anti-government militants since mid-2016, when Turkey left the territory during operation Euphrates Shield.

Blackwater, the controversial US private security firm, has flagged its intent to resume business, taking out a full-page commercial in the latest edition of Recoil magazine with a chilling message declaring “We are coming.”
The resurrection within the military contractors’ market of notorious Blackwater, which, after numerous scandals and several rebrandings, is now known as Academi, has analysts looking deeper into US intent to withdraw from the wars in the Middle East. The advertisement in Recoil, made public after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation, prompted concerns that president Donald Trump might be seeking to privatize ongoing American engagements in Afghanistan and Syria, following the declared troops' withdrawal from the region.

A few months ago I called 2018 the "Rise of Spying Transit Police" but after looking through my archives, I noticed a more disturbing pattern emerge. Time and again, month after month, most of the stories I wrote revolved around one thing, watchlists.

In January, I wrote two stories about facial recognition and police camshares that centered around corporate and law enforcement watchlists. From then on things got progressively worse, watchlists, blacklists and whitelists are expanding at a frightening pace.

Below is a list of twenty-seven stories that show how public watchlists have become commonplace.

Democrats are increasingly lining up to support a “Green New Deal,” which, while vague on details, could end up being the largest expansion of government in decades.

As it stands, the “Green New Deal” is more aspirational than actual policy. Indeed, it takes its name from the New Deal of the 1930s, and its main backer, incoming Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, compared it to the Great Society of the 1960s.

More than 40 Democratic lawmakers support the “Green New Deal” as part of a broad plan to fight global warming and bring about what they see as “economic, social and racial justice.” A poll found most Americans supported the deal, but knew little about it

Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war ...

So we’re withdrawing troops from the Middle East.

GOOD!

What’s the War on Terror death count by now, a half-million? How much have we spent, $5 trillion? Five-and-a-half?

For that cost, we’ve destabilized the region to the point of abject chaos, inspired millions of Muslims to hate us, and torn up the Geneva Convention and half the Constitution in pursuit of policies like torture, kidnapping, assassination-by-robot and warrantless detention.

It will be difficult for each of us to even begin to part with our share of honor in those achievements. This must be why all those talking heads on TV are going crazy.

Unless Donald Trump decides to reverse his decision to begin withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, cable news for the next few weeks is going to be one long Scanners marathon of exploding heads.

Heading into December, a majority of traders still quietly hoped that the volatility observed in October and November would finally fade, and give way to the traditional Santa rally allowing them to escape what in just two months had mutated into a devastating year for most, unscathed: after all, in the past century, December has not only been the month with the highest average stock market return, but the month which has closed in the green on 74% of instances, the most of all other months of the year.

It was not meant to be.

Facebook suspended five accounts linked to Democratic operatives who engaged in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” in a bid to steer votes away from Alabama Republican Roy Moore during last year’s special Senate election.

The announcement comes following a New York Times report last week that exposed the scheme, in which the users created a Facebook page and imitated conservative Alabamians who weren’t satisfied with the Republican candidate while encouraging others to write in another candidate. Moore, whose campaign ultimately was clouded by allegations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls while he was in his 30s, ended up losing the race to Democrat Doug Jones.

It has become increasingly apparent throughout the past decade that the nation state, and the traditional notion that it represents a culturally cohesive citizen’s platform, is no longer a valid supposition.

An increasingly significant number of citizens now feel that there is no trust-worthy party to turn to at election time; whereas those who continue to place their faith in one or other party, allow themselves to be swayed by the ubiquitous nature of state propaganda – and not by their better instincts. This propaganda is corporation infused and is tied-into the deliberate promotion of an increasingly “me, me” agenda. Materialistically inclined consumers and many of those reacting to the dog eat dog political agenda of the day, appear to believe that any sort of resistance to the dominant trend is pointless, preferring to think only about their own needs and wishes and how to get the best out of a bad situation.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), one of the world’s biggest conservation organizations, is breaking the law in its backing of a conservation zone in the Congo Basin, according to letters released today.

The letters demonstrate that the new protected area, known as Messok Dja, is being created without the free, prior and informed consent of the people who rely on that land for survival, members of the Baka and Bakwele tribes.

The letters also document human rights abuses committed by ecoguards funded and supported by WWF.

According to national and international law, indigenous people must give consent for any project affecting their lands, territories, and resources. Without the consent of the people who rely on the land for survival, the establishment of Messok Dja park is illegal.

Over a hundred people from six villages in Republic of Congo have signed the letters, which also describe horrific violence and abuse by ecoguards funded and supported by WWF.

As we approach 2019 the global economy teeters on the brink of yet another recession which will plunge geo-political relations into a period of great upheaval and rapid change. In 2019 global stock markets will continue to face unprecedented volatility and gigantic losses as the Ponzi scheme pumped up by the cartel of central banks comes crashing down.

The central bank cartel of the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England together with the Bank of China have flooded their national economies with astronomical sums of money since 2008 in an attempt to stave off collapse of the global financial system.

Their money printing experiment has driven global debt from $177 trillion to over $277 trillion today while interest rates have been artificially suppressed enabling a wealth transfer to the 1% of historic proportions. This massive expansion of central bank balance sheets is illustrated below.

Two of my section came dashing into the billet during the morning and said, ‘What do you know, the Jerries are out on the top; they’re walking about, they’re dishing out drinks and cigarettes – there’s no fighting going on!

At Christmas 1914, an event occurred that was not repeated again during the First World War. An unofficial, spontaneous truce took place along some parts of the Western Front. It often started with a ceasefire as Christmas Day approached. German Army officer Walther Stennes recalled how, initially, this caused some concern.

On Christmas Eve at noon, fire ceased completely – on both fronts. Of course it was unusual that the opposite side also ceased fire. Then my officer controlling the sentries came in and said ‘Do you expect a surprise attack? Because it’s very unusual the situation.’ I said, ‘No I don’t think so. But anyhow everyone is awake, no one is sleeping and the sentries are still on duty. So I think it’s alright.’

Unfortunately, as we’ve discussed in previous articles, the current state of government accounting is far from ideal–often bordering on useless to the public.

As we approach 2019 the global economy teeters on the brink of yet another recession which will plunge geo-political relations into a period of great upheaval and rapid change. In 2019 global stock markets will continue to face unprecedented volatility and gigantic losses as the Ponzi scheme pumped up by the cartel of central banks comes crashing down.

The central bank cartel of the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and Bank of England together with the Bank of China have flooded their national economies with astronomical sums of money since 2008 in an attempt to stave off collapse of the global financial system.

Their money printing experiment has driven global debt from $177 trillion to over $277 trillion today while interest rates have been artificially suppressed enabling a wealth transfer to the 1% of historic proportions. This massive expansion of central bank balance sheets is illustrated below.

With the holiday retail season coming to a close, last-minute shoppers can expect to score some amazing deals.

Retailers will be trying to get rid of their old merchandise and replace it with new merchandise for the new year, which means deep discounts for customers.

Stores like Eddie Bauer and Gap are putting their entire collection on sale while other retailers like Target are offering up to 50 percent off big-tech items.

China has shown off its latest drone bomber as it releases footage of the unmanned aircraft completing its first flight.

Wing Loong I-D, a type of combat and spy drone, can carry more than 10 different types of weapons and fly up to 35 hours without refuelling.

It is also able to scout information from as high as 7,000 metres (22,965 feet), according to Chinese news site Sina Military.

US President Donald Trump said in a statement on Monday that Saudi Arabia has agreed to pay for the reconstruction of Syria rather than the United States financing the reconstruction of that country.

"Saudi Arabia has now agreed to spend the necessary money needed to help rebuild Syria, instead of the United States," Trump said via Twitter.

US President Donald Trump said in a statement on Monday that Saudi Arabia has agreed to pay for the reconstruction of Syria rather than the United States financing the reconstruction of that country.

"Saudi Arabia has now agreed to spend the necessary money needed to help rebuild Syria, instead of the United States," Trump said via Twitter.

Trump has welcomed Riyadh's decision, adding that it is "nice when immensely wealthy countries help rebuild their neighbors rather than a Great Country, the US, that is 5000 miles away."

The resignation of Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the withdrawal of his party from the governing coalition in mid-November left Netanyahu with just a one-seat majority in the Knesset.

Israel will hold a general election on 9 April, a representative of Likud party told Sputnik, adding that the current Knesset convocation would be dissolved by that time. According to Prime Minister Netanyahu, the decision to disband the government was "unanimous".

The announcement came after a meeting of members of the country's Likud-led ruling coalition. According to Haaretz, the coalition failed to agree on the new law on conscripting yeshiva students. Earlier in the day, the Yesh Atid party refused to vote for the bill.

New details from a secretive UK aid program reveal controversial Pakistani death sentence courts have been funded by the UK government for the past few years, even while Christians languished on death row as a result of the country's notorious "blasphemy laws". And while the program began as a "counter terrorism" initiative with a British ally, it's come under increased scrutiny after a Pakistani Christian woman was recently acquitted following 8 years on death row for "blasphemy charges". The Guardian reports:

British taxpayers are funding prosecutions in Pakistan that have led to dozens of death sentences, according to newly disclosed details of a secretive UK aid programme.

The documents reveal that the Foreign Office is supporting specialist civilian courts that prosecute terrorist suspects in what the UK government’s global security strategy calls a “rule of law” programme in Pakistan.

Authored by Finian Cunningham via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Oh what a lovely big stocking-filler for the Kiev regime this week from Washington. Just in time for Christmas too, and only weeks after President Petro Poroshenko tried to incite a war with Russia from a naval provocation in the Kerch Strait.

First we had US government envoy Kurt Volker announcing this week that an additional $250 million in military weapons were being packaged in Congress for Ukraine. Then the DC-based international lending institutions, the IMF and World Bank, signed off on multi-billion-dollar loans for Poroshenko’s regime.

The Indian government has authorized 10 central agencies to intercept, monitor, and decrypt data on any computer, sending a shock wave through citizens and privacy watchdogs.

Narendra Modi’s government late Thursday broadened the scope of Section 69 of the nation’s IT Act, 2000 to require a subscriber, service provider, or any person in charge of a computer to “extend all facilities and technical assistance to the agencies.” Failure to comply with the agencies could result in seven years of imprisonment and an unspecified fine.

In a clarification posted today, the Ministry of Home Affairs said each case of interception, monitoring, and decryption is to be approved by the competent authority, which is the Union Home Secretary.

Executions in Saudi Arabia rose significantly in the first eight months after Mohammed bin Salman became deputy crown prince, a London-based human rights organization said.

According to Reprieve, 133 people were executed between June 2017 and March 2018, nearly twice as many as the 67 recorded during the eight months before his rise to power.

Saudi Arabia has executed 147 people in 2018 and around 700 people since 2014. Almost half of those who received capital punishment were foreign nationals, according to Reprieve’s report.

They included Indonesian housekeeper Tuti Tursilawati, who was executed after being sentenced to death for the murder of her boss, despite her claim that she had acted in self-defence after he tried to rape her. The report criticized Saudi Arabia for ignoring international conventions as it had refused to notify Tursilawati’s family and Indonesian officials before her execution.

In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the “Russian threat,” Wohlstetter’s accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA’s assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the “Russian threat,” Wohlstetter’s accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA’s assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

Brazil is going weapons-free.

Up to 120 sharpshooters will accompany Rio de Janeiro police into the city's slums to eradicate violent gun-toting criminals, according to Flavio Pacca - a longtime associate and security adviser to Governor-elect Wilson Witzel.

The marksmen will work in pairs; one shooter and one spotter who will monitor conditions and videotape the executions, according to Bloomberg, with the two officers alternating roles.

"The protocol will be to immediately neutralize, slaughter anyone who has a rifle," said Witzel - a former Brazilian marine and federal judge, on December 12. "Whoever has a rifle isn't worried about other people's lives, they're ready to eliminate anyone who crosses their path. This is a grave problem, not just in Rio de Janeiro, but in other states."

Facebook has suspended the account of Jonathon Morgan, the researcher behind a disinformation campaign against an Alabama Republican candidate who ended up losing the race for a Senate seat. Morgan claimed it was “research.”
Morgan, the CEO of New Knowledge, a social media research firm that published a major report on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections, has confirmed to The Washington Post that his Facebook account was suspended.

In a statement, Facebook said it had yanked "five accounts run by multiple individuals for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior" and was investigating them.

"We've removed thousands of Pages, Groups and accounts for this kind of behavior, as well as accounts that were violating our policies on spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior during the Alabama special election last year,"Facebook said.

Hillary Clinton gave a full-throated defense of the war machine Friday on Twitter while attacking President Trump for moving to pull out of Syria.

The Resistance icon said: "Actions have consequences, and whether we’re in Syria or not, the people who want to harm us are there & at war. Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous. Playing into Russia & Iran’s hands is foolish. This President is putting our national security at grave risk."

I see here something which is much more dangerous than the fear of communism.

It is how people react to news or new laws about any weapon limitation. It’s how they talk about what the majority of them are planning to do.

HERE’S HOW CONFISCATION MIGHT ACTUALLY GO DOWN.
Here is how it might actually go down. This is one possible scenario:

First, you’ll be labeled as a terrorist, some weird guy who wants to overthrow the government. Maybe your photo will be posted somewhere stating that you are very sick, and that you pose a danger to society.

If you are a member of some group, let’s say a prepper group, you all will be labeled as terrorists first, and through the media, you can be portrayed as a domestic terror cell, to the point that your next door neighbor will help police to get you.

British MP Andrew Bridger has called on Prime Minister Theresa May to condemn South African authorities, who have approved land expropriation from white farmers. Addressing Theresa May Wednesday, Bridger slammed the decision, saying: “This is not only wrong, it is also risking putting another African country from a bread basket into a basket case”.

Several weeks ago, South Africa's National Assembly endorsed a proposed amendment to the Constitution that will allow for mainly white-owned farmland to be taken without compensation. Sputnik has discussed this with Jack Miller — Cape party leader, a political party in the Republic of South Africa.

Sputnik: What is your take on the British MP's statement?

The deployment of a hydrographic survey ship, the HMS Echo, which docked in Odessa on 19 December, to Ukraine was announced by UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson last month.

The Russian Embassy in London has blasted UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson’s trip to Ukraine, stating that he is “instigating” Kiev to new provocations.

"Having failed to effectively neutralise drones over Gatwick Airport, Williamson seems to be engaged in a more important matter – instigating Ukraine to new military provocations. Russia has indeed accepted the signal: it implies that the British conservative government will provide the Kiev regime with political and military support no matter how irresponsible its steps are. This is how London tries to ‘assist’ in the settlement of the internal Ukrainian conflict”, the embassy’s statement read.

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps holds the main and final stage of massive exercises in the Persian Gulf, launching an “offensive” component in Iran's defensive strategy for the first time.

The Great Prophet 12 drill entered its final chapter in the general area on Saturday, with IRGC chief General Mohammad Ali Jafari saying "we hope the enemies have more than ever grasped the power of our response."

"This was a response to allegations made by the enemies who should know that the defense capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran are deterrent, and as the Eminent Leader [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei] has said, 'if they try to hit us once, they will definitely be hit 10 times more'," Jafari told reporters.

The IRGC Ground Force’s chief Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour said the drills take place on a strategic and defensive level proportionate.

Little by little, the partisans of the Cebrowski doctrine are advancing their pawns. If they must cease creating wars in the Greater Middle East, they’ll just turn around and inflame the Caribbean Basin. Above all, the Pentagon is planning to assassinate an elected head of state, ruin his country, and undermine the unity of Latin-America.

When he arrived at the White House, President Donald Trump opposed the Cebrowski plan. However, two years later, he has so far only been able to prevent the Pentagon and NATO from handing over States to the terrorist groups they employ (the « Caliphate »), but not to stop manipulating terrorism. Concerning the Greater Middle East, he has managed to diminish the tension, but the wars still continue there at lower intensity. Concerning the Caribbean Basin, he restrained the Pentagon, forbidding them to launch direct military operations.

Authored by Patrick Armstrong via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

In previous essays I argued that NATO tries to distract our attention from its crimes by accusing Russia of those crimes: this is "projection". NATO manipulates its audience into thinking the unreal is real: this is "gaslighting". NATO sees what it expects to see – Moscow's statements that they will respond to medium range missiles emplaced next door are re-jigged as the "threats" which justify NATO's earlier act: this is "confirmation bias". And, finally, NATO thinks Russia is so weak it's doomed and so strong that it is destroying the tranquility of NATO Land: this is a sort of geopolitical "schizophrenia". (I must acknowledge Bryan MacDonald's marvelous neologism of Russophrenia - a condition where the sufferer believes Russia is both about to collapse, and take over the world.)

One week ago we noted that ominously the junk bond market appeared to have frozen without a single high yield bond pricing in the month of December, the first such occurrence since 2008. Yet while the bond market was on the verge of locking up especially in the lower rating tiers, we observed that the leveraged loan market was still functioning because even as prices had slumped over the past two months, banks that committed to finance highly leveraged buyouts offered loans at substantial discounts to entice investors. And, as the chart below shows, the average new issue yield by month had risen to the highest in years, with CCC-rated issuers forced to pay the most in 7 years to round up investor demand.

Military contractor Kellogg, Brown, and Root has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to throw out multiple lawsuits filed by veterans who say they were made sick by burn pits the company used for waste disposal on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a brief filed last week, officials for KBR and its former parent company Halliburton urged the court not to restore dozens of the lawsuits filed against the companies, who handled daily operations for many of the bases starting in 2001. They claim that the lawsuits were already dismissed properly because the courts have no jurisdiction over military strategy.

The US will provide $10 million extra in military aid to help Ukraine beef up its naval capabilities, the State Department has announced, days after a Senate resolution called for such aid in response to the Kerch Strait incident.
Russia was ordered to "immediately return to Ukraine the seized vessels and detained Ukrainian crews" involved in last month's naval provocation and to allow Ukrainian ships to freely navigate the Kerch Strait and the Sea of Azov in Friday's statement from deputy State Department spokesperson Robert Palladino. The financial decision was made "in solidarity with" Lithuania and the UK, which also plan to step up their funding of the Ukrainian military, he added.

A public records lawsuit has unearthed new details on the efforts government agents made to keep secret a spying tool that accessed decades of phone records.

To settle a lawsuit with civil liberties watchdog the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Justice Department surrendered hundreds of files on its Hemisphere spying project, which pairs AT&T employees with law enforcement agents to track trillions of phone records dating back to 1987.

After settling the lawsuit last month, EFF released a massive trove of files Wednesday.

“The government has worked with AT&T to create this database where there are almost no barriers to law enforcement’s ability to access the information,” EFF attorney Aaron Mackey said in a phone interview Wednesday. “Retention is forever.”

The files show that AT&T urged the government in 2007 not to include the use of Hemisphere information in court filings so the program would stay hidden from the public.

Defense Secretary James "Mad Dog" Mattis resigned from his position effective February 28. He disagreed with the president's decision. It was the second time in five years that an elected commander in chief had a serious conflict with Mattis' hawkishness. President Obama fired him as Central Command chief for urging a more aggressive Iran policy. Mattis is also extremely hawkish towards Russia and China.

President Trump campaigned on lessening U.S. involvement in wars abroad. He wants to get reelected. He does not need a Secretary of Defense that involves him in more wars that have little to none defined purpose.

Mattis is an ingrained imperialist. He always asked for more money for the military and for more meddling abroad. One of Mattis' little notice acts as Defense Secretary was a unannounced change in the mission of the Pentagon:

When the International Olympic Committee announced that Atlanta would host the 1996 Summer Olympics, security for such a massive event was an immediate concern.

As part of their preparation, local police traveled to Israel to learn about its security and counterterrorism strategies. In May alone, Israel saw a total of 684 “terrorist events,” according to an Israeli government website. By contrast, since 1980, there have been 11 notable terrorist attacks with fatalities on American soil.

Georgia State University criminologist Robert Friedmann — who was raised in Israel and launched the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) to help police secure the Atlanta Games — says these exchange programs provide an opportunity for U.S. police to learn counterterrorism prevention and response from a country with significantly more experience.

Stocks plunged again on Friday, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its worst week since the financial crisis in 2008, down nearly 7 percent. The Nasdaq Composite Index closed in a bear market and the S&P 500 was on the brink of one itself, down nearly 18 percent from its record earlier this year.

The Federal Reserve's rate hike on Wednesday drove the losses this week and fears of an extended government shutdown only added to the pain on Friday.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 414.23 points to finish at 22,445.37 in turbulent trading that sent the blue-chip index up as much as 300 points earlier in the day, only to trade back in negative territory less than one hour later. The initial rally upward on Friday came as Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams told CNBC that the central bank could reassess its interest rate policy and balance sheet reduction in the new year if the economy slows.