Washington seems on brink of ‘civil war’
USA - The US establishment is working hard to make it impossible for Donald Trump to ditch the warmongering policies previous administrations pursued, and to deliver on his pledge to mend relations with Russia, former CDU defense spokesman Willy Wimmer told RT.
“When you see the situation in Washington, I think they are not willing, those who lost the election, to accept the new president whose name is Trump… What’s going on in Washington sounds like the beginning of a civil war,” said Wimmer, who is a former MP with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and also served as vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
“There is a network of resistance against the President who will be in office on the 20th of January and I think when you look at the reality in Europe, people of all our European countries – they want to live in good [relations] with [the] Russian Federation,” Wimmer said, adding that the media campaign aimed at vilifying Trump resembles the way the mainstream media used to demonize Russia.
“There is no hostility [between Russia and Europe], the hostility is organized in a very artificial way and it is the same way of organizing hostilities as we see nowadays against Trump,” the former MP said.
Brave New World, Babies Will Be Made Without Mothers
USA - The ultimate methodology of eugenics is to create specifically engineered humans from scratch in the laboratory, making obsolete the real wombs of youthful mothers. This was the exact model of Brave New World. (TN Editor)
Babies made without mothers could come sooner than we think, leading biologists claim. Late last year, a team at the University of Bath discovered that sperm and skin cells – or any other kind of non-egg cell – might be all you need for conception. At the time, they said the scenario of men conceiving with men was ‘speculative and fanciful’.
But in a new report published today, the top embryologists at Harvard and Brown Universities urge nations to begin contemplating the legal minefield that would surround mother-less babies. ‘With science and medicine hurtling forward at breakneck speed, the rapid transformation of reproductive and regenerative medicine may surprise us,’ they write.
‘Before the inevitable, society will be well advised to strike and maintain a vigorous public conversation on the ethical challenges of IVG [in vitro gametogenesis].’
‘Everyone will be Muslim because of our stupidity’
ITALY - A prominent figure in the Catholic church has controversially suggested that everyone will “soon be Muslim” because Italy lives in an increasingly secular society amid rapidly growing migration figures. Monsignor Carlo Liberati, an Italian Archbishop, gave the warning after observing the growing number of detention centres opening up in Europe, suggesting it was a sure fire way to have the Islamic faith become mainstream.
He said: “In 10 years we will all be Muslims because of our stupidity. Italy and Europe live in a pagan and atheist way, they make laws that go against God and they have traditions that are proper of paganism. All of this moral and religious decadence favours Islam.”
He added: “We have a weak Christian faith. The Church nowadays does not work well and seminaries are empty. Parishes are the only thing still standing. We need a true Christian life. All this paves the way to Islam. In addition to this, they have children and we do not. We are in full decline.”
He added: “We help without delay those coming from outside and we forget many poor and old Italians who are eating from the trash. We need policies that take care of Italians first: our young people and the unemployed. I am a protester. If I were not a priest, I’d be out there demonstrating in the squares. What is the point of so many migrants that instead of thanking for the food we give them, they just throw it, spend hours with their cell phones and even organise riots?”
European populist parties block news media from conference in Germany
EUROPE - A gathering of right-wing parties will bring together, for the first time, the heads of many of Europe's leading populist politicians. Members of the AfD and Front National will be there - much of the media won't. German public broadcaster ARD is considering legal action against the country's right-wing, populist party after it was denied access to an upcoming meeting of European nationalist leaders in Koblenz, western Germany.
A faction of right-wing parties in the European Parliament is organizing the January 21 meeting, which will include members of France's Front National, Italy's Northern League, the Party for Freedom of the Netherlands and the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The German anti-immigration party has risen to third place in public opinion polls ahead of the country's general election, which is expected in about nine months.
The meeting will feature National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, as well as AfD co-leader Frauke Petry and the party's European lawmaker Marcus Pretzell. Ludovic de Danne, an advisor to Petry, was quoted by the Paris newspaper "Le Figaro" as describing the meeting as a "European counter-summit." It will mark Petry's first sit-down with National Front head Le Pen, with both women expected to discuss the overlap in their parties' policies, de Danne said.
A host of other highly regarded German news organizations were also being blocked from the event, including the "Handelsblatt" business daily, the weekly "Der Spiegel" and the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" newspaper, according to Pretzell.
Only 'large-scale war' would allow US to block Beijing from South China Sea islands
CHINA - Chinese state media has warned that the US would have to launch a "large-scale war" to prevent Beijing from accessing islands it has built in the South China Sea. It comes after secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson said such access should be restricted. "Unless Washington plans to wage a large-scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish," the state-sanctioned Global Times newspaper wrote on its English-language website. It went on to stress that the US "has no absolute power to dominate the South China Sea," warning that Tillerson "had better bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories."
Trump Team Shunning Davos Meeting
USA - Donald Trump won’t send an official representative to the annual gathering of the world’s economic elite in Davos, taking place next week in the days leading up to his inauguration, although one of the president-elect’s advisers is slated to attend.
Former Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn, a regular attendee in the past, told the group he would skip 2017 after being named in December to head the National Economic Council, said people familiar with the conference. Other top Trump appointees will also pass up the forum.
A senior member of Trump’s transition team said the president-elect thought it would betray his populist-fueled movement to have a presence at the high-powered annual gathering in the Swiss Alps. The gathering of millionaires, billionaires, political leaders and celebrities represents the power structure that fueled the populist anger that helped Trump win the election, said the person, who asked for anonymity to discuss the matter.
While the Trump team stays away, Xi Jinping is set to become the first Chinese president to attend the forum, bringing with him a contingent of China’s wealthiest executives. China is casting itself as an advocate of globalization, in contrast to Trump’s “America First” platform critical of free-trade deals.
LAWLESS SWEDEN: Migrant youths turn shopping centre into 'NO-GO ZONE'
SWEDEN - Migrant youth gangs have turned Sweden’s largest shopping centre into a “no-go zone” as they intimidate police, harass girls and deal drugs openly. Gothenburg police have been forced to implement extraordinary measures to cope with the increased number of incidents, which have left shoppers and business owners terrified of their workplace. Nordstan is Sweden’s largest shopping centre in terms of sales and number of visitors, however once the shops close at 8pm, criminal youth gangs take over despite officers turning out in force. Jonas Bergqvist, one of the team managers of the city police, told Expressen: “We have seen an increase since last autumn, with mostly unaccompanied minors who are staying here in North Town. In the evening they deal drugs and violence between factions sometimes occur. If there are conflicts from their home countries, they bring them here.”
Why Is Obama Provoking A War With Russia Right Before The Inauguration?
USA - January 20th cannot come soon enough. Instead of stepping back and trying to ensure a smooth transition for Donald Trump, Barack Obama has decided to go hog wild and use every ounce of presidential power still available to him. He has been establishing a bunch of new national monuments, he just stabbed Israel in the back at the United Nations, and on Thursday he even took time to give Joe Biden a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
But one of the things that has people the most concerned is his endless provoking of Russia. Every few days it seems like Obama is doing something else to aggravate Russia, and if he wasn’t leaving office in about a week I am sure that the mainstream media would be full of speculation about a possible war.
Lame duck presidents are not supposed to make risky moves like this once a new president has been elected. On Thursday, we learned that US troops have been permanently deployed to Poland for the very first time. Poland was once a key member of the Warsaw Pact alliance, and the Russians are quite alarmed that US troops will now be stationed so close to the Russian heartland.
And it has also been announced that NATO troops will arrive in Lithuania in late January. If you will remember, Lithuania was actually part of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. All of a sudden, Russia has become enemy number one. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton say that Russia is to blame for Clinton’s election loss, and so at the end of December Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the country.
That is the sort of thing that you do before a war starts.
DC National Guard Chief Fired Days Before Trump Inauguration
USA - "It doesn’t make sense to can the general in the middle of an active deployment," rages DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (Democrat) after Major General Errol R Schwartz, who heads the DC National Guard and is an integral part of overseeing the inauguration, has been ordered removed from command effective January 20, 12:01 pm, just as Donald Trump is sworn in as president.
As The Washington Post reports, Major General Errol R Schwartz’s departure will come in the midst of the presidential ceremony, classified as a national special security event — and while thousands of his troops are deployed to help protect the nation’s capital during an inauguration he has spent months helping to plan.
Unlike in states, where the governor appoints the National Guard commander, in the District that duty falls to the president. Schwartz said that he has not been told why he was asked to step down. “I’m a soldier,” he said, noting that he was following orders and has no regrets. “I’m a presidential appointee, therefore the president has the power to remove me.”
Is this just another part of Obama's "smooth" transition? Or is something even more sinister at work here, since we already know that anti-Trump activists are planning "the biggest protest in US history" on the day of the inauguration?
'One China' principle is non-negotiable: Beijing
CHINA - China's foreign ministry said on Saturday that its "One China" principle was the non-negotiable political basis for China-US relations, and urged "relevant parties" in the United States to recognize the sensitivity of the Taiwan issue. The comments, posted on the foreign ministry's website, were a direct response to remarks by US President-elect Donald Trump in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he said the "One China" policy was negotiable. Since 1979, the United States has acknowledged Taiwan as part of "one China", but Trump prompted a diplomatic protest from Beijing by accepting a congratulatory phone call on his election win from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan on December 2.
Trump wants Putin summit in Reykjavik
USA - Donald Trump is planning to hold a summit with Vladimir Putin within weeks of becoming president — emulating Ronald Reagan’s Cold War deal-making in Reykjavik with Mikhail Gorbachev. Trump and his team have told British officials that their first foreign trip will be a meeting with the Russian leader, with the Icelandic capital in pole position to host the superpower talks as it did three decades ago. In a bid to reset western relations with the Kremlin, Trump will begin work on a deal limiting nuclear weapons.
Trump Team’s Queries About Africa Point to Skepticism About Aid
USA - President-elect Donald J Trump’s views of Africa have, until now, been a mystery. But a series of questions from the Trump transition team to the State Department indicate an overall skepticism about the value of foreign aid, and even about American security interests, on the world’s second-largest continent. A four-page list of Africa-related questions from the transition staff has been making the rounds at the State Department and Pentagon, alarming longtime Africa specialists who say the framing and the tone of the questions suggest an American retreat from development and humanitarian goals, while at the same time trying to push forward business opportunities across the continent. “How does US business compete with other nations in Africa? Are we losing out to the Chinese?” asks one of the first questions in the unclassified document provided to The New York Times.
US Demand For Cricket Protein Is Surging
USA - At Tomorrow’s Harvest farm, you won’t find acres of land on which animals graze, or rows of corn, or bales of hay. Just stacks of boxes in a basement and the summery song of thousands of chirping crickets.
“We don’t need everybody to eat insects,” said Robert Nathan Allen, founder and director of Little Herds, an educational nonprofit in Austin, Texas, that promotes the use of insects for human food and animal feed. “The point we really like to highlight with the education is that if only a small percent of people add this to their diet, there’s a huge environmental impact.”
Cricket fans say if only 1 percent of the US population substituted even just 1 percent of their meat consumption with insects, millions of gallons of water in drinking and irrigation would be saved, along with thousands of metric tons of greenhouse-gas emissions from machinery and animals.
At least one study finds the claims overstated that crickets are a viable protein source to supplement or replace meat, but bottom line, it generally takes fewer resources to raise and harvest crickets than, say, cattle.
The Germans: “Now They're Back”?
CommentGERMANY - When Germany was on the cusp of reunifying, not everyone was happy. And I’m not talking merely about Erich Honecker and the rest of the Eastern brass. Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, was very unhappy. “We beat the Germans twice,” she said, “and now they’re back.”
That may seem silly now, and it was definitely a minority view then, but a lot of us understood it. Was a reunited Germany to be feared?
Was there something belligerent and dangerous in the German DNA?
Did they have to be “kept down”?
You know the remark of Lord Ismay — General Hastings “Pug” Ismay, the first secretary-general of NATO: “The purpose of the alliance was to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
It has now been about 65 years since he made that remark. And Germany is being called on to rise, militarily, including by the United States. The German public is not objecting. This is a momentous question, or a potentially momentous one… I quote an expert who says, “There is a general sense that there’s a tsunami heading Europe’s way” — and that Germany will have a heavy responsibility to deal with it.
Germany, Japan & their militaries - after 70 yrs
GERMANY - Germany and Japan have not been known for military forays since 1945. Much of the world has liked it that way. So have many Germans and Japanese. But a new era is upon us. Germany and Japan are venturing out. They are rethinking their military postures. After 70 years, this was perhaps inevitable. In any case, it is so. The Germans are sending a battalion to the Baltic states — specifically, to Lithuania. Japan is sending troops to South Sudan under new, indeed historic, rules of engagement: They may use force, not only to defend themselves but to defend others. More broadly, Germany and Japan are responding to new threats. They are also responding to a new America, which is ready to abandon or lighten the burdens it has long carried.
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The views expressed in this section are not our own, unless specifically stated, but are provided to highlight what may prove to be prophetically relevant material appearing in the media.
