For years, reformers have been pushing for changes to the Italian government structure that would, among other changes, reduce the number of seats held by lawmakers. Back in October, Giuseppe Conte's coalition government voted in favor of a plan to reduce the number of lower house members from 630 to 400, and the number of senators from 315 to 200.

Throughout modern political history, examples of legislative bodies voluntarily accepting reforms that would knowingly curtail the powers and privileges of its members are few and far between, and Italy is no exception. Not long after the vote, a group of mostly opposition members tried to crash the government and hold a new snap election to save their seats. I mean, what other choice did they have? They're politicians...do you really expect them to go out and get a real job?

Of course not.

The Rossiya Segodnya International News Agency said that employees of Sputnik Estonia received letters from the Baltic country’s Police and Border Guard Board with a warning of possible criminal prosecution unless they stopped working for the news agency by 1 January 2020.

Sputnik and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (OSCE) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) should be dismantled if the employees of Sputnik Estonia were jailed.

“Estonia officially threatens to jail our journalists unless they resign. If the authorities of this country were not stopped, the OSCE, the ECHR and any other European organization responsible for [protecting] the freedom of expression should dissolve themselves”, Simonyan wrote in her Telegram channel.

A pro-NATO Czech think tank has another piece of unsolicited advice for Western governments. Now they should refuse to give access or interviews to Russian media, who are ”not real journalists”, according to the ”wise censor”.
At first blush, the ‘Kremlin Watch Strategy’ paper published last week by the Prague-based ‘European Values Center for Security Policy’ sounds like another self-serving attempt to cash in on the anti-Russian hysteria that has gripped many a Western capital for the past several years.

There are some two dozen mentions of “funding,” mostly in the context of urging the European Union to spend more money on “independent” NGOs – such as themselves, obviously – to battle “hostile Russian interference” the authors see under every bed.

Thousands of pro-Catalan independence protesters gathered at Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium for a heated demonstration amid the highly anticipated El Clasico match of La Liga. It ended in clashes and a tough police response.
The crowd of demonstrators filled the streets around the stadium on Wednesday, blocking a major avenue and disrupting traffic as they shouted pro-independence slogans and waved banners, despite a heavy police presence in the area.

The Balts with their typical sluggish thinking have started figuring out the consequences of losing the Russian transit. The horror of the realization forced the head of Latvia’s State Railway Administration to announce that the situation is close to critical.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage celebrated the results of the UK election in the European Parliament, saying they were proof faceless EU bureaucrats are being rejected and that the revolt is spreading.

The Kremlin has said that it trusts the opinion of a senior Russian general, who has said that NATO's intensified drills this year are an indication that the military bloc is preparing for a major conflict.

Valery Gerasimov, the chair of the Russian General Staff, shared the wary view that the Russian military have about NATO's maneuvers on Tuesday as he gave a year-end briefing to foreign military attaches in Moscow.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the opinion was based on analyses of data collected by the Russian military and should not be dismissed.

"In this case the professional opinion may be the only correct one, so the presidential administration is in no position to put forward its own military assessment," he said.

Gerasimov said the increased number and scale of military exercises conducted by NATO members this year indicates that the alliance "is purposefully training its troops to be engaged in a major military conflict."

Chancellor Angela Merkel has insisted that Berlin will not give into pressure from Washington after the US Senate approved a bill sanctioning German companies working on a pipeline that will deliver natural gas from Russia.
During Wednesday’s Q&A session in parliament, lawmakers asked Merkel about the possibility of the US slapping sanctions on German companies building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The chancellor said that she firmly opposes such sanctions because they have an extraterritorial effect. They will not push Berlin to abandon the project, however, she said.

The US Senate on 17 December passed a $738 billion defence bill for the 2020 fiscal year that, in particular, includes sanctions against Nord Stream 2, TurkStream, and bars military-to-military cooperation with Russia.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has slammed US sanctions on Nord Stream 2 as “a perfect example of unfair competition", saying that Washington is imposing more expensive gas on Europe. He continued on by saying that both "Moscow and Europe dislike US sanctions on Nord Stream 2, as these measures violate international law".

"We assume that this project will be completed", Peskov told reporters, when asked whether the construction of the pipeline could be halted due to the sanctions.

Poland may be forced to part ways with the EU if a controversial judicial reform championed by the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) comes to fruition, despite vocal opposition from Brussels, Poland’s Supreme Court warned on Tuesday.

“Contradictions between Polish law and EU law... will in all likelihood lead to an intervention by the EU institutions regarding an infringement of the EU treaties, and in the longer perspective [will lead to] the need to leave the European Union,” said the court, which has been at odds with the right-wing government since 2015, when PiS rose to power.

The British government plans for its new relationship with the European Union to be ready to be implemented in January 2021, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman said on Tuesday.

The government also plans to outlaw any extension of the Brexit transition period beyond December 2020, Reuters reports.

The spokesman added that Johnson had spoken to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the pair had agreed to work with “great energy” to agree a future relationship by the end of next year.

The Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) has published a new list of additional European products that it’s reviewing in the Section 301 investigation involving the enforcement of US WTO rights.

The notice contains a list of products, initially published in April 2019 and July 2019. The extended list is weighing the idea that 100% tariffs could be seen on products from almost every country in Europe. Some of these products include whiskeys, virgin olive oil, yogurt, cheese, knives, tools, liqueurs, and dozens of other products.

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel has issued a stark warning to Boris Johnson as EU negotiations revealed details of an “uncompromising” bullying approach to the trade talks next year.

The years-long war for post-Gaddafi Libya now threatens to spill over into the Mediterranean as Turkey and Greece line up on either side of the conflict. Each side is now threatening the others' allied ships in southern waters after a controversial maritime deal expanded Turkish claims off Libya's coast.

On Thursday Benghazi-based General Kalifa Haftar declared his Libyan National Army has begun its "final decisive battle" to wrest control of the capital of Tripoli from the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

"Zero hour has come for the broad and total assault expected by every free and honest Libyan," Haftar said in a televised address, reports Al Jazeera. "Today, we announce the decisive battle and the advancement towards the heart of the capital to set it free... advance now our heroes." Beginning eight months ago Haftar launched a siege of Tripoli, which has been stalled in recent months.

Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

On December 3rd, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO must address the “security implications” of China’s rise as a “military power”, and in true Orwellian doublespeak, insisted that he did not want to make an adversary out of Beijing but rather was interested in analysing how best to respond to the challenges China poses in a balanced way…by announcing it a ‘security threat’.

But we know this is not the whole story.

Of course no bully likes it when their victim suddenly learns the art of self-defense, and who would be more paranoid of aggression than those who have been practising it for years on others only to increasingly find the tables turned.

This western paranoia of the communist boogeyman has its roots in Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech which ushered in the Cold War.

29,000 American and 8,000 other NATO troops to take part in a "force projection" stretching over 10 countries

Israel and the Czech Republic has signed a $125 million government-to-government contract for advanced radar systems from Israel Aerospace Industries subsidiary Elta Systems.

The deal, signed by Israeli Ministry of Defense officials and their Czech counterparts during a ceremony Thursday, is for eight ELM-2084 multimission radars, a technology used for Israel’s Iron Dome and David’s Sling air defense systems as well as the Barak missile system.

The radars are for the Czech Mobile Air Defense Radar program. The program includes Czech businesses, whose work will make up for about 30 percent of the contract’s value.

We are cruising on a pristine, 380 km-long four-lane superhighway from Almaty to Khorgos – finished in 2016 for $1.25 billion, 85% of the cost covered by a World Bank loan. And then, suddenly, riding parallel to us, there’s the real superstar of New Silk Road connectivity.

Meet Yuxinou, the container cargo train plying back and forth along the 11,000 km-long railway corridor connecting Chongqin in Sichuan province via Xinjiang and Kazakhstan to Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally Duisburg in the Ruhr valley. And all that in a mere 13 days.

Along the way, the Yuxinou stops in, among other places, Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Rotterdam: a who’s who of Eurasian cities. It carries laptops, BMWs, spare parts, clothes, machinery, international post packages, chemical products, medicine and medical instruments – all manner of goods, made in China and made in Europe. And all that for only 20% of air freight cost.

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Dozens of elderly residents were forced to leave their apartments in an area of Stockholm after the block was closed, only to be re-opened again for migrants to replace them.

Residents at Dianagården were told they would have to leave because the toilets in the facility were 5cm too small to comply with regulations.

However, soon after the 48 apartments were emptied, they were filled with newly arrived migrants.

“It was later revealed that politicians planned that immigrants would instead move into the premises,” reports Fria Tider.

In 2015, Sweden accepted more refugees per capita than any other country, and despite worsening problems with sexual assaults, grenade attacks and violent crime, the inflow shows no sign of being seriously restricted.

Section 3 of Act 447, the provision for heirless property, is the part that reveals the law's intent. Under existing laws, heirless property becomes the property of the state. After WW2 there was a lot of property without owners (whether owned by Poles or Jews), and it has been sold ever since. This law has the potential to cause national havoc, as the vast majority of Poles own their own homes. Even in the relatively cosmopolitan capital of Warsaw, 79% of city-dwellers own their homes and apartments.

Under S447, any Polish-Jew or descendent of said Polish Jew can lay claim to property to property deemed heirless and sold after the war, thus all land that can be claimed to have been owned by Jews before 1939 will be transferred to the global Jewish diaspora. If this law is put into practice, approximately 30% of Warsaw homeowners will be forced to pay "rent" to random Jews claiming to be Holocaust survivors or their descendants in New York City and Tel Aviv.

Authored by M.K.Bhadrakumar via The Indian Punchline blog,

The December 3-4 summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in London resembles a family reunion after the acrimony over the issue of military spending by America’s European allies.

The trend is up for defence spending across European Allies and Canada. Over $100 billion is expected to be added to the member states’ defence budgets by end-2020.

More importantly, the trend at the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting at Brussels on November 19-20, in the run-up to the London summit, showed that despite growing differences within the alliance, member states closed ranks around three priority items in the US global agenda — escalation of the aggressive policy toward Russia, militarisation of space and countering China’s rise.

The NATO will follow Washington’s lead to establish a space command by officially regarding space as “a new operational domain”.

On Friday six European countries issued a bombshell joint statement declaring their intent to join INSTEX, or the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, a European special-purpose vehicle serving as a 'SWIFT alternative' to bypass US sanctions on Iran.

Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden released a joint statement asserting it's of "the utmost importance to the preservation and full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPoA) on Iran’s nuclear program by all parties involved."

"In light of the continuous European support for the agreement and the ongoing efforts to implement the economic part of it and to facilitate legitimate trade between Europe and Iran, we are now in the process of becoming shareholders of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (Instex) subject to completion of national procedures," the statement reads.

Three people were wounded Friday night during a stabbing attack in a shopping district crowded with bargain hunters in The Hague, Dutch police said.

Police spokeswoman Marije Kuiper told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that it was still too early to say whether a terror motive was to blame for the attack.

All three victims are minors, officials said. They were treated and released from the hospital Friday night, police said.

First responders from the city's emergency services unit rushed to the scene in the Grote Markt district of the historic city, said police, who first reported the incident about 8:20 p.m.

The attacker appeared to be a man wearing a gray jogging suit, between the ages of 45 and 50, police said. The neighborhood was busy with Black Friday shoppers

Authored by Steven Guinness,

With the UK still engaged in the process of leaving the European Union, you might consider it a strange paradox that Brexit could eventually lead to Britain integrating deeper into the EU project. On the face of it the country looks as far away now as it ever has from taking the next step on assimilating fully into the union – that being the abandonment of sterling and adoption of the Euro.

In 2015 when David Cameron’s Conservatives secured a majority in the general election, it was on a promise that the Tories would deliver the referendum to the British people. Just thirteen months later the vote was held and the UK opted to leave. Ever since then the conversation has been geared towards the ‘future relationship‘ between Britain and the EU. Not factored into this conversation is how the Euro could potentially play a part.

The biggest cities in Europe ground to a halt this week after furious farmers fed up with the EU meddling in their industry launched a mass protest. Thousands of farmers caused widespread chaos in the French capital Paris, as well as the German capital Berlin over the past two days. The fury also spread to cities in the Netherlands and Ireland.

OURCE: PEPE ESCOBAR VIA THE SAKER BLOG
Kazakhstan’s first president has road map for 21st century: global alliance of leaders for nuclear-free world...

Photo: Asia Times

The Astana Club is one of the most crucial annual meetings in Eurasia, alongside the Boao forum in China and the Valdai discussions in Russia. China, Russia and Kazakhstan are all at the forefront of Eurasia integration. No wonder, then, that the 5th meeting of the Astana Club had to focus on Greater Eurasia – synonymous, it may be hoped, with a “new architecture of global cooperation.”

Astana Club congregates a fascinating mix of Eurasia-wide notables with Europeans and Americans. Virtually all relevant shades of the geopolitical spectrum are represented. Panels are very well structured (I moderated two of them). Discussions are frank and non-denial denials are heavily discouraged. Here is just a taste of what was discussed in Nur-Sultan, under the spectacular shallow dome designed by Norman Foster.

SOURCE: MIDDLE EAST MONITOR
The Israeli government is aiming to increase the volume of Israel’s defence exports, reported Globes, which has revealed the main points of the plan for the first time.

The project, being overseen by the Defence Ministry’s International Defence Cooperation Directorate (SIBAT) led by Brigadier General (Res.) Yair Kulas, will begin to be rolled out in early 2020.

According to Globes, the plan is based on “focused seminars for senior commanders in foreign armies”, Israeli military “assistance for promoting sales of Israeli weapons”, and “subsidising small and medium-sized defence companies seeking to sell arms around the world”.

Speaking this week, Kulas said that SIBAT favours a major expansion of agreements between countries, resulting in significant deals for the large defence companies, especially Elbit Systems, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.

Islamabad expressed “deep concern” and launched a diplomatic action over the burning of the Koran in Norway, while the man who tried to save the book earned high praise on Pakistani social media.

Last week, a young Muslim counter-protester tackled Lars Thorsen, the head of the Stop Islamization of Norway (SIAN), after he set a copy of the Koran on fire at an anti-Muslim rally in the city of Kristiansand. The video of the incident caused a strong reaction in Pakistan, where the man reportedly named Ilyas Umer was hailed as hero on social media for trying to “save” the most-revered book in Islam.

SOURCE: ZERO HEDGE
So much for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization... though we might note that when it previously bombed Belgrade, assisted in the occupation of Afghanistan, and toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, any sense or concern for overstepping its mandate or 'mission creep’ was clearly lost altogether.

As if seeking expansion into Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and potentially the Caucuses were not enough, now the Cold War military alliance is eyeing expansion into space. This is the focus of the following new report — not in The Onion but in Bloomberg — entitled, 'NATO Is Poised to Expand Its Remit to Include Outer Space’ which introduces:

NATO intends to make space an “operational domain” along with air, land, sea and cyber, according to Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

Europe is currently home to somewhere between 3.9 and 4.8 million illegal immigrants, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center.
“Europe has experienced a high level of immigration in recent years, driving debate about how countries should deal with immigrants when it comes to social services, security issues, deportation policies and integration efforts,” Pew notes in its latest study of the question.

“Among these recently arrived immigrants are many who live in Europe without authorization,” the article adds. “Coupled with unauthorized immigrants who were already in Europe, their numbers reach into the millions, though together they make up a small share of Europe’s total population.”

Federica Mogherini is closing her term as the European Union’s foreign policy chief in much the same way that she kicked it off: by pandering to Israel.

Shortly after taking up her post in 2014, Mogherini paid a visit to Benjamin Netanyahu. She assured the Israeli prime minister that he could “count on the European Union” to build a “new start.”

Mogherini was vague about what the “new start” would entail. Nonetheless, she has brought some degree of innovation – though not in a positive sense – to international relations.

Under her leadership, the EU uses far weaker language than previously when alluding to grave breaches of human rights.