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Ukraine “Truce”? Tanks Are Rolling In Poland As NATO Plans Permanent Eastern European Bases
Ukraine “Truce”? Tanks Are Rolling In Poland As NATO Plans Permanent Eastern European Bases
With Ukraine, Germany, and France all expressing their concern this morning about “conflict escalation” between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukraine military, the so-called “truce” appears to be hanging by a thread of semanticism (despite OSCE’s please for respect of the cease-fire and the demarcation line). Today’s triple whammy of ‘escalation’ appears more focused on the non-Russian side as first, France begins sending tanks into Poland; second, Ukraine shifts its tanks to the front-line; and third – and potentially most inflammatory for Putin – NATO has confirmed plans to create permanent command centers in Eastern Europe. Putin has not responded yet but reports of ‘nuclear bombers’ flying above the English Channel “with transponders turned off,” suggests the sabre rattling continues.
Ukrainian civilians are being evacuated:
- *UKRAINE EVACUATED 1,000 PEOPLE FROM DEBALTSEVE YDAY
- *7 CIVILIANS DEAD, 4 WOUNDED IN DONETSK REGION IN 24 HRS: POLICE
- *11 SERVICEMEN ALSO INJURED IN MILITARY CAMP BLAZE, IFX SAYS
The OSCE is calling for the truce to stand…
- *OSCE’S DACIC SAYS MAXIMUM EFFORTS MADE TO END UKRAINE VIOLENCE
- *OSCE CALLS FOR CEASE-FIRE, RESPECT FOR DEMARCATION LINE: DACIC
- *OSCE’S DACIC SAYS NO ONE CONSIDERING NEW UKRAINE PLAN FOR NOW
Everyone is “concerned”
- *POROSHENKO, MERKEL, HOLLANDE DISAPPOINTED BY MINSK TALKS
- *POROSHENKO CALLS FOR RUSSIAN REACTION TO UKRAINE TALKS FAILURE
- *UKRAINE, GERMANY, FRANCE CONCERNED ABOUT CONFLICT ESCALATION
Leaders call for immediate “cease-fire” to fighting in east Ukraine after speaking on the phone today, AFP says, citing the French president’s staff.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
French authorities accused of double standards over hate speech crackdown
French authorities accused of double standards over hate speech crackdown
The arrest of a famous comedian and 54 more people for hate speech and pro-terror comments in the wake of the Charlie Hedbo attacks have sparked a fierce debate in France over whether the authorities are guilty of double standards on freedom of speech.
At the center of the debate is controversial comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala, known by his stage name Dieudonne, who was arrested after posting “I feel like Charlie Coulibaly” on Facebook, putting together the name of the attacked satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and the terrorist who is accused of killing four people at a Jewish supermarket in Paris.
“Racism, anti-Semitism, historical revisionism, and condoning terrorism are not opinions, they are crimes,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said, condemning Dieudonne’s remark and vowing a crackdown on “speech that kills.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Al-Qaeda in Yemen claims Charlie Hebdo attack
Al-Qaeda in Yemen claims Charlie Hebdo attack |
Top leader of al-Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula says it ordered last week’s deadly attack on French satirical magazine. |
A top leader of Yemen’s al-Qaeda branch has claimed responsibility for last week’s attack on Paris satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo when two masked gunmen killed 12 people, including much of the weekly’s editorial staff and two police officers.
Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP as the branch is known, appeared in an 11-minute video posted online on Wednesday, saying that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo was in “vengeance for the prophet”.
Al-Ansi said that France belongs to the “party of Satan” and warned of more “tragedies and terror”. He said that Yemen’s al-Qaida branch “chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation”.
The paper had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which is considered an insult to Islam.
“We, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the messenger of Allah,” Ansi said in the video entitled “A message regarding the blessed battle of Paris.”
AQAP was formed in January 2009 as a merger of the Yemeni and Saudi branches of Al-Qaeda. Washington regards it as the network’s most dangerous branch and has carried out a sustained drone war against its leaders.
“The leadership of (AQAP) was the party that chose the target and plotted and financed the plan… It was following orders by our general chief Ayman al-Zawahiri,” Ansi said.
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Turkish President’s Stunning Outburst: The French Are Behind The Charlie Hebdo Massacre; Mossad Blamed
Turkish President’s Stunning Outburst: The French Are Behind The Charlie Hebdo Massacre; Mossad Blamed
It was less than 48 hours ago when Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, joined millions marching in Paris to pay tribute to the 17 people killed by ISIS-supporting extremists. Then, almost the moment he got back, things changed, and as the FT politely paraphrases what transpired, the “country’s president struck a much more confrontational tone.” That’s one way of putting it. Another is that the former PM and current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of NATO-memberTurkey did the unthinkable: accused the west, and French citizens in particular, of staging the Charlie Hebdo murder in order to blame Muslims, even as the mayor of Ankara said “Mossad is definitely behind such incidents . . . it is boosting enmity towards Islam.”
“The duplicity of the west is obvious,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a press conference on Monday evening. “As Muslims we have never sided with terror or massacres: racism, hate speech, Islamophobia are behind these massacres.”
His punchline: “The culprits are clear: French citizens undertook this massacre and Muslims were blamed for it,” he added.
The FT is confused: “Although political leaders in Turkey have repeatedly condemned the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, a Jewish supermarket and a policewoman, a parallel narrative has emerged in the country, with conspiracy theorists blaming the murders on foreign intelligence agencies rather than radical Islamists.”
It’s not just the French who were said to be behind the attack: so is Mossad:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Lessons from Paris
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The Clash of Civilizations
The Clash of Civilizations
The big turnout in Paris was bracing but it also might reveal a sad fallacy of Western idealism: that good intentions will safeguard soft targets. The world war underway is not anything like the last two. Against neo-medieval barbarism, the West looks pretty squishy. All of the West is one big fat soft target.
Recriminations are flying — as if this was something like a Dancing with the Stars contest — to the effect that the Charlie Hebdo massacre should not be labeled as “France’s 9/11.” It’s a matter of proportion, they say: only 12 dead versus 2977 dead, plus, don’t forget, the shock of two skyscrapers pancaking into the morning bustle of lower Manhattan. Interesting to see how the West tortures itself psychologically into a state of neurasthenic fecklessness.
The automatic cries for “unity,” only beg the question: for or against what? The same cries went up in the USA after the Ferguson, Missouri, riots and the Eric Garner grand jury commotion, pretty much disconnected from the reality of ghetto estrangement, as if unity meant brunch together. The demonstrators quickly reminded everybody that Homey don’t play brunch. If French politicians think that some magical overnight state of fraternité will congeal between the alienated Islamic masses and the rest of the citizenry, they’re liable to be disappointed. If anything, mutual distrust is only hardening on each side, and, anyway, I think that is not the kind of unity they have in mind. Over in Germany, they don’t have to travel very far psychologically to recall the awful efficiency of Hitler in purifying the social scene according to some dark cthonic principle that remains essentially unexplained even after all these years and ten thousand books on the subject. It happened that he picked on a group that wasn’t disturbing the peace in any way; if anything, the Jews were busier than anyone contributing to Western culture, knowledge, and science.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Price Discovery and Emerging Markets
Price Discovery and Emerging Markets
I got to admit, Paris and Charlie have thrown me off a bit. Can’t be just me who noticed how well the French CAC 40 was doing since Charlie Hebdo got shot, can it? Up some 2%, I don’t quite recall, Wednesday, the day of the attack, and 3.59% yesterday. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? It did me. It’s maybe the perfect example of how alienated the financial world has become from the real world, from you and me. And it doesn’t even surprise us anymore, it doesn’t hardly seem worth mentioning anymore. But I thought I’d do just that: mention it. The CAC 40 lost 1.9% today, but still.
“Fed bullish” said yesterday’s headlines. Of course they did. But France? What have traders in Paris seen in the killings and blood stains that made them so jubilant they got all the way to +3.59%? And where are the ethics hiding in that number? I see no ethics. Should we accept that the financial part of our world has none? That it’s a kind of a parallel universe? That it doesn’t reflect anything that happens to us, and ours?
Today the equally jubilant US jobs report has the Dow down almost a full 1%. Maybe nobody believes anything anymore, any more than the financial world reflects the real one. And maybe nobody cares anymore either. We just go about our days knowing that jobs reports are nonsense, that price discovery has been put six feet under, and that if we’re really smart, we can still make money off of other people’s misery. And isn’t that what Darwin said the purpose of life is? Or was that Ayn Rand? I’m sorry, Charlie threw me off a bit.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ron Paul Decries “Obscene” Paris Attack: Blames Bad Foreign Policy
Ron Paul Decries “Obscene” Paris Attack: Blames Bad Foreign Policy
“This is pretty obscene,” exclaims Ron Paul with regard the massacre in Paris, “libertarians are pretty annoyed by anybody who initiates violence.” But, he adds, “I put blame on bad policy that we don’t fully understand,” pointing out Western inability to see foreign policy from the attackers’ perspective, as “they see us killing innocent people… that doesn’t justify it… but it does explain it.”
As Breitbart notes, on Wednesday’s “The Steve Malzberg Show” on NewsMax TV, former Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) tied the Paris shooting, along with other Western domestic terrorist attacks to the bad foreign policies of those countries.
“Partially what the Secretary of State said is true,” Paul said. “This is pretty obscene, when it comes to violence, and libertarians are pretty annoyed by anybody who initiates violence.
“The context of things, France has been a target for many, many years, because they’ve been involved in foreign affairs in Libya, and they really prodded us along in — recently in Libya, but they’ve been involved in Algeria, so they’ve had attacks like this, you know, not infrequently,” he added.…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russia sanctions ‘must be lifted now’ – Hollande
Russia sanctions ‘must be lifted now’ – Hollande
French President Francois Hollande is wary of the impact economic crisis in Russia might have on Europe. He has called for sanctions imposed against Moscow to be lifted as soon as there’s progress in peace talks over Ukraine.
“If Russia has a crisis, it is not necessarily good for Europe,” Hollande said during a two-hour interview with radio station France Inter. “I’m not for the policy of attaining goals by making things worse, I think that sanctions must stop now.”
READ MORE: More Russia sanctions to provoke ‘dangerous situation’ in Europe – German vice-chancellor
Hollande said he wanted to make sure there’s progress in peace talks over the situation in Ukraine, before putting an end to sanctions.
He said he hopes to see signs of mutual understanding at the January 15 talks in Astana, Kazakhstan. The meeting is being organized by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, and Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are expected to be among the participants.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
French Alps hit by massive snowfall, thousands of cars stranded (PHOTOS) — RT News
French Alps hit by massive snowfall, thousands of cars stranded (PHOTOS) — RT News.
Massive snowfall, aggravated by strong winds and ice in the French Alps, has trapped thousands of holidaymakers, with up to 15,000 people forced to spend Saturday night in emergency accommodation centers in the Savoie region in southeastern France.
Conditions remained difficult on Sunday, a spokesman for the Savoie prefecture said. Authorities set up shelters in a dozen towns for stranded tourists in the area.
The chaos on Saturday left nearly 2,000 passengers stranded at Chambery airport in southeastern France. A spokesman for the Savoy region, which comprises roughly the territory of the Western Alps between Lake Geneva in the north and Dauphiné in the south, said: “We have not estimated the number of people who spent the [Saturday] night in their cars.”
According to the prefecture, a number of travelers were taken care of in emergency shelters that became almost 100 percent full. “There were 83 shelters open,” Transport Minister Alain Vidal said on Sunday on Europe 1.
Putin, Poroshenko, Merkel, Hollande affirm urgent need for dialogue, ceasefine in Ukraine — RT News
Putin, Poroshenko, Merkel, Hollande affirm urgent need for dialogue, ceasefine in Ukraine — RT News.
The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France agree that a meeting of a contact group is urgently needed to kick-start dialogue between Kiev and the country’s East and achieve a lasting ceasefire, the Kremlin announced after a four-side phone call.
President Vladimir Putin has held a teleconference with the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and his Ukrainian and French counterparts, Petro Poroshenko and Francois Hollande, the Kremlin said in a statement on Tuesday night.
The Russian President stressed “the importance of a swift meeting of the Contact Group with the aim of implementing the Minsk agreements and facilitating dialogue between Kiev and [Ukraine’s] southeast,”Kremlin press release reads.
The exchange of prisoners and the removal of heavy weapons from the demarcation line are some of the“priorities now”, the Kremlin noted. The need to provide economic and humanitarian assistance to the affected regions in eastern Ukraine was also stressed.
Cold comfort as France, Germany eke out growth | Reuters
Cold comfort as France, Germany eke out growth | Reuters.
(Reuters) – European stocks were flat on Friday after gross domestic product numbers showed both France and Germany grew marginally in the third quarter, while the dollar rose further against the yen on expectations of a snap election in Japan.
The European data confirmed that the outlook for much of the world economy still looks much shakier than for the United States, although France beat expectations. Asian stocks fell following the latest signs that growth in China is slowing.
Energy stocks were depressed as crude oil hovered near a four-year low in an oversupplied market and the Russian ruble, hammered in recent weeks as world oil prices fell, was again testing record lows around 48 rubles per dollar.
Germany’s economy eked out growth of 0.1 percent on the quarter, while France – generally seen as in deeper trouble than its neighbor – grew by 0.3 percent. Overall euro zone data was due later.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Meanwhile, The French Are Revolting… | Zero Hedge
Meanwhile, The French Are Revolting… | Zero Hedge.
Amid record unemployment, even recorder youth unemployment, and politicians willingly breaking EU treaties (with apparently no consequences), it appears – just as in the US – police brutality in France was the straw that broke ‘Le Camel’s back. As RT reports, another anti-police brutality protest turned violent in the French city of Rennes, with masked youths and police engaging in running street battles. The unrest follows the death of a young environmental activist earlier this week. Overnight Thursday, protesters in the northwestern city lobbed flairs at police and flipped over cars, some of which they set ablaze. Police responded by firing tear gas. We hear guillotines are still cheap on ebay.
,,,click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
