The British pound tumbled Wednesday morning on reports British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his government would ask Queen Elizabeth II to suspend Parliament when it returns from its summer break next month, the BBC reports.
The pound has reacted negatively as discontinuing the parliamentary session – or “proroguing”, as the official terminology labels it – would leave lawmakers with less time to debate any Brexit-related bills, including a potential revised withdrawal agreement.
However, the pound pared its drop after Johnson insisted on Wednesday that he’s not preparing for a general election, and that there would be “ample time” for MPs to debate any new Brexit-related legislation. GBP/USD was off 0.7% at $1.2203.
Johnson said the Queen’s speech would take place after the suspension ends on Oct. 14.
Dominic Grieve, a critical Tory backbencher, said the decision was “an outrageous act.” Meanwhile, Speaker John Bercow denounced Johnson’s plan as a “constitutional outrage.”
“I have had no contact from the Government, but if the reports that it is seeking to prorogue Parliament are confirmed, the move represents a constitutional outrage,” Bercow said in a statement.
Johnson said he would prefer to leave the EU on Oct. 31 with a deal, but that it is “do or die,” that he would be willing to leave without a deal so long as it means leaving on Oct. 31. This has prompted several opposition MPs to come together to try to block a possible ‘no deal’, and on Tuesday a group of lawmakers said they said they would try to use Parliamentary procedure to block a ‘no deal’ exit.
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In the latest sign of rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, a Navy warship has been denied a port visit in the Eastern Chinese city of Quingdao on Sunday, the US 7th Fleet revealed.
The denial is the latest from China, which has denied several such requests stretching back to late last year as the trade war has escalated.
“The PRC [People’s Republic of China] denied the US Navy’s request to visit the Qingdao Port,” Commander Reann Mommsen, public affairs officer for the US Seventh Fleet, said in a statement to the press Wednesday that was picked up by the SCMP.
Mommsen didn’t specify which warship had been denied entry, or say exactly when the request had been refused, referring all further questions to Beijing.
News of the blocked visit, first reported by Reuters, comes not long after the latest ‘freeop’ in the Taiwan Strait. The US has increased the number of such missions, intended to show its insistence that the Pacific remains an open waterway, as Beijing has sought to crack down on all of its ‘wayward’ provinces under the ‘one country, two systems’ mantra. Earlier this year, President Xi hinted in a speech that Beijing would reunify Taiwan with the rest of China, even if it meant doing so by force. And as pro-democracy protests continue in Hong Kong, Beijing is putting pressure on employers to stop their employees from participating.
A source close to the Chinese navy confirmed the rejection, blaming the state of the current US-China relationship for the refusal.
“Hasn’t the [US’s] application to visit Hong Kong just been rejected?” the source asked, speaking rhetorically.
Beijing has blamed the US and the West for funding some of the unrest in Hong Kong, which has dragged on for three full months now, a claim the US has denounced as “ludicrous.”
Zhou Chenming, a Beijing-based military analyst, said the refusal should be expected given the worsening bilateral ties.
“Many bilateral exchanges are bound to deteriorate when countries’ ties worsen, such as during the China-US trade war. And now coupled with the Hong Kong unrest, many exchanges [between China and the US] have been downgraded,” Zhou said.
Liu Weidong, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, echoed a similar view and said a visit from a US warship would be ‘meaningless at present.’
“Now the US is very provocative…so China doesn’t want to welcome its warship,” Liu said.
In recent years, small UAVs (both mini and micro) have become a popular surveillance tool in the field of defense and security, and the constantly evolving technological progress is likely to provide a bright future for this technology.
Particular attention is paid to the further improvement of these systems for military operations in urban conditions, in many countries of the world continuous research and development work is being carried out in this direction.
However, in the modern operational space, these technologies are also spreading among terrorist and rebel groups seeking to use UAVs to deliver dirty bombs, which forces the authorities to increase the security of their own systems, as well as radically change the tactics and methods of combating UAVs.
One of the most important advantages of using mini- and micro-UAVs is that they are able to carry out reconnaissance missions, while remaining undetected, they cannot be detected by air defense radars and ground-based radars programmed to capture larger airborne vehicles.
However, after the use of small-sized UAVs by fighters of various kinds during military operations in Israel and Libya, the military and industry have now taken up this threat and have begun to develop special technology that will identify, track and neutralize mini- and micro-UAVs.
The Executive Director of Enterprise Control Systems noted the following: “Nearly every day, UAV incidents and drone safety perimeter breaks occur. In turn, the AUDS system is able to remove the increased fears in the military, government and commercial structures associated with small UAVs. ”
“While UAVs have many positive uses, it is expected that they will increasingly be used for villainous purposes. They can carry cameras, weapons, toxic chemicals and explosives and will increasingly be used for terror, espionage and smuggling.”
At first glance, the use of a swarm can completely block the fairly high-tech S-500. The developers somehow do not take into account the multilevel nature of the Russian air defense systems. Until the swarm reaches the main air defense forces, it will be attacked by 2 or even 3 simpler air defense systems, but which are aimed at destroying drones, which are often quite vulnerable to various radio suppression and physical destruction systems. I will not speak about various systems using a radiomagnetic pulse, which burns out all the electronic stuffing of hundreds of aircraft at once in a limited space. As we say: “For every tricky nut there is always a bolt with a special thread …“
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Police in Ipswich, England, arrested Lindsey Webb for putting her recycling out in the wrong color bags. Prosecutors say the change from black to orange and clear bags had been clearly publicized. But Webb says she was never given any of the new bags by the local council, even after asking for them. A judge gave her a six-month conditional release and ordered her to pay the Ipswich council £50 (about $61).
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Showing just how unconcerned he apparently is over threatened US sanctions and the recent cancellation of Turkey’s participation in the US F-35 program, Turkish President Erdogan is in Moscow on a “shopping trip” of sortsat a moment Russia is delivering the second round of S-400 components to Ankara.
Sukhoi Su-57 fifth-generation fighter jet is inspected by Erdogan during the MAKS-2019 International Aviation and Space Show in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019. Image source: AP
A revealing photo op captured President Putin showing Erdogan the cockpit of a Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter jet as Turkey is rumored to be eyeing the Russian advanced fighter as an “alternative” to the F-35 should the blocked transfer of the Lockheed-made fighters become permanent.
Erdogan was in attendance at the MAKS-2019 show in Zhukovsky near Moscow at Putin’s invitation to view the next generation fighter in action, the export version of which made its debut Tuesday in the form of the Su-57E.
United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) executives — which designed and produced the Russian stealth jet — had previously offered to start talks with Turkey in the wake of Washington’s objections to its S-400 purchase and as the fate of the F-35 looks ever uncertain.
Turkey’s foreign ministry had previously called the overture “premature” but said it would weigh all options.
Image source: AP
Erdogan’s comments at the airshow were limited to pledging “deepening defense ties” with Moscow and stopped short of commenting on the SU-57 directly.
The Turkish president’s visit to Russia is said to be brief, and he was Putin’s “guest of honor” at the airshow. Certainly the picture alone of the two leaders at the jet’s cockpit is worth a thousand words, no doubt a strong signal to Washington.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2PjKyBJ Tyler Durden
Police in Ipswich, England, arrested Lindsey Webb for putting her recycling out in the wrong color bags. Prosecutors say the change from black to orange and clear bags had been clearly publicized. But Webb says she was never given any of the new bags by the local council, even after asking for them. A judge gave her a six-month conditional release and ordered her to pay the Ipswich council £50 (about $61).
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Since the US withdrawal from the INF Treaty, the Atlantic Alliance has redeployed its launchers and intermediate-range nuclear missiles. It has thus transformed Central and Western Europe – as well as the Pacific – into a battlefield…
The NATO missile site at Deveselu in Romania (photo), which is part of the US Aegis « defence missiles » system, has finished its « update », begun last April. NATO’s communique assures that it has added « no offensive capacity to the system », which remains « purely defensive, centred on potential threats from outside of the sur Euro-Atlantic region ».
The Deveselu is equipped (according to the official description) with 24 missiles, installed in vertical underground launchers, for the interception of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. Another site, which is to become operational in 2020 at the Polish base in Redzikowo, will also be equipped with this system. Launchers of the same type are installed aboard four cruisers of the US Navy, which, deployed at the Spanish base of Rota, cruise in the Mediterranean, the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea. The very deployment of these launchers shows that the system is not directed against the « Iranian threat » (as the US and NATO claim), but mainly against Russia.
The fact that this so-called « shield » is not « purely defensive », is demonstrated by the very war industry which built it – Lockheed Martin. They document that the system is « designed to be installed for any missile in any launcher », and therefore adapted to « any mission of war », including « attacks on land-based targets ». Lockheed Martin specifies that the larger ramps are capable of launching « the largest missiles, like those intended for defence against ballistic missiles as well as those intended for long-distance attacks ». They therefore admit that the installations in Romania and Poland and the four warships of the Aegis system can be equipped not only with anti-missile missiles, but also with Tomahawk cruise missiles with nuclear warheads, capable of hitting objectives thousands of kilometres away.
As documented by the Congressional Research Service (24 July 2019), the four US warships which « operate in European waters to defend Europe from potential ballistic missile attacks », are part of a flotilla of 38 Aegis ships which, in 2024, will rise to 59.
In the fiscal year of 2020, 1.8 billion dollars were allocated to the enhancement of this system, including the sites in Romania and Poland. Other land-based and sea-based installations of the Aegis system will be deployed not only in Europe against Russia, but also in Asia and the Pacific against China. According to the plans, Japan will install, on its own territory, two missile sites furnished by the USA, and South Korea and Australia will also buy warships of the same system from the USA.
Furthermore, during the three months in which the Deveselu equipment was taken to the USA in order to be « updated », a battery of mobile Thaad missiles from the US land army was deployed in the Romanian site, with the capacity to « shoot down an extra-atmospheric ballistic missile », but also to launch long-range nuclear missiles.
Since the Aegis system was recalibrated – according to NATO communications – the Thaad system was « redeployed ». NATO did not specify where, but we do know that the US army has settled missile batteries from Israël to the island of Guam in the Pacific.
In the light of these facts, at the moment when the USA tore up the INF Treaty in order to install intermediate-range nuclear missiles at the borders of Russia and China, we will not surprised by the announcement – delivered in Moscow by Senator Viktor Bondarev, President of the Defence Commission – that Russia has based Tu-22M3 nuclear attack bombers in Crimea.
But almost no-one is looking into this, since, in the EU, all this information is hidden by the politico-mediatic apparatus.
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Having skulked off stage following his joint press conference with President Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron took the opportunity to bash Trump and embrace Putin (presumably after getting permission from Angela Merkel).
“We are living the end of Western hegemony,”Macron told diplomats on Tuesday, pointing to the rise of Beijing and Moscow as signs of a shift on the world scene.
“The world order is being shaken like never before…”
“It’s being shaken because of errors made by the West in certain crises, but also by the choices made by the United States in the past few years – and not just by the current administration.”
So a shot clearly aimed at Trump but we wonder if Macron realizes he is part of the “West” he describes as making errors?
Macron then doubled down, warning that it would be a “strategic mistake” for Western nations not to change their attitude toward Moscow.
As RT notes, Macron’s rhetoric towards Moscow has somewhat softened in recent months…
“Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic mistake.”
“We’re either pushing Russia into isolation, which increases tensions, or to ally itself with other major powers like China, which would not be in our interest,” Macron said, calling for the “rethinking” of relations with Moscow.
Otherwise, Europe will be stuck with “frozen conflicts” and will remain “a theater for strategic struggle between the US and Russia,” he stressed.
These “choices” are impacting “the conflicts in the Middle and elsewhere, making it necessary to rethink military and diplomatic strategies,” Macron noted.
Which is odd because journalists claimed one key G7 dinner was “ruined” over Trump’s insistence that Russia would be vital to discussions:
During the seaside meal, French president Emmanuel Macron and European Council president Donald Tusk opposed Trump’s demands. A diplomat present told the publication that the evening was tense: “Most of the other leaders insisted on this being a family, a club, a community of liberal democracies and for that reason they said you cannot allow president Putin — who does not represent that — back in.”
Apparently Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, who formally announced his resignation early this week, was the only G7 leader present to back Trump’s proposal.
More ‘fake news’?
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Turkey’s Jewish community is still reeling from the content of a video that went viral at the end of July. The video shows what appears to be a summer camp at which young children, with a group of burqa-clad women behind them, are being led in an anti-Semitic cheer in Turkish by a young girl or woman counselor.
In the 39-second clip, when the girl says, “The Jews,” the women and children reply, “Death!”
When she says, “Palestine,” they reply, “It will be saved.”
When she calls out, “Hagia Sophia” — referring to the Byzantine cathedral-museum in Istanbul that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced will be turned into a mosque — they chant, “It will be opened.”
A few days after the footage began to circulate, Garo Paylan, a Member of Parliament from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party, tweeted his outrage. He announced his intention to file a criminal complaint against the camp counselor and the organization behind her. Two days after posting the tweet, Paylan submitted the following parliamentary questions to Family, Labor and Social Services Minister Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül:
Where and under whose care were the children in the film?
Were their parents or other family members present during the event?
Did the children who were instructed to shout “Death to the Jews” come together at that event as part of an organization?
Did the event take place with the knowledge of your ministry?
Will you launch an investigation into the organizers and the families of those children who abuse and encourage them to commit hate crimes?
Will you launch administrative investigations into the authorities that neglected to expose the event?
Will you put these children under the protection of your ministry?
What kind of precautions will your ministry take so that our children are not exposed to such abuses again?
Paylan also asked the justice minister whether “those engaging in hate speech and hate crimes are punished effectively, or whether there is a climate of impunity concerning such crimes.”
The ministers have yet to issue a response.
Pictured: The Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey. (Image source: Tatiana Matlina/Wikimedia Commons)
Meanwhile, Mois Gabay, a Jewish columnist based in Istanbul, told Gatestone that the anti-Semitism revealed in the video is the kind of incident that makes Turkey’s already dwindling Jewish community extremely worried about the future. Gabay, in his July 31 column in Turkey’s Jewish weekly, Şalom, wrote:
“It is possible to give many more examples [of anti-Semitism in Turkey]… It appears that as long as penalties are not imposed… and the Holocaust and anti-Semitism are not included in school curricula, some people will continue playing ostrich, no matter how much we write about these issues. I do hope that the hatred and exclusion [of Jews] that is growing by the day, with new emerging groups, will come to an end here one day.”
Şalom‘s editor-in-chief, İvo Molinas, in an interview with the Bianet News Agency on August 5, also bemoaned the anti-Semitic incitement exposed in the video:
“There is a very intense anti-Semitism in the visual media and printed press, as well as on social media, in Turkey. But this video is the most major and most severe form of anti-Semitism. Very young children are indoctrinated in Jew-hatred and human-hatred without even knowing who Jews are. These children will grow up to be potential Jew-haters and this is the biggest danger. Penalties should be imposed for racism and hate crimes. Lawsuits should absolutely be filed against those who engage in racism and hate crimes and who direct children to these things. This is the short-term solution; but the long-term solution is education. We live in a country where an ethnic group is placed in the brains of very little children as enemies. And the saddest thing is that we are not able to do anything about it. As a society, we only complain, but cannot do anything else. It is so sad that neither political nor judicial attempts are being made to stop these things.”
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Earlier this summer we reported how China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) published a video showing the Dong Feng hypersonic missile (“East Wind”), DF-17 for short, simulating an attack on enemy forces.
The DF-17 is designed to fly at hypersonic speeds and evade existing missile defense systems, such as America’s anti-ballistic missile defense system called: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).
A source from CASIC told the South China Morning Post that “the DF-17 will be capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional payloads.” He refused to release his name due to the sensitivity of the topic.
“There are now two institutions under CASIC that are competing to develop these advanced features,” the source added.
The US intelligence community has warned about the regional instabilities that could develop when the DF-17 is deployed next year, or sometime in the early 2020s.
Adam Ni, a military researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, said China’s nuclear deterrence in the Eastern Hemisphere could dramatically increase with the deployment of hypersonic missiles. It would allow the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to defend militarized islands in the South China Sea effectively.
“But the race to develop hypersonic missiles such as DF-17 risks destabilizing the region since hypersonic weapons reduce the time of decision-making before landing to just a few minutes, forcing leaders to make consequential decisions within a very short period,” Ni said.
The DF-17 is China’s first medium-range ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) as its payload.
QQ.com speculated the HGV could be an aircraft carrier killer with a range of 1,533 miles, enough distance for Mainland China to guard its militarized islands in the South China Sea from American naval forces.
Following half-dozen development tests between 2014-2016, the most recent test was at Jiuquan Space Launcher Center in Inner Mongolia in 2017.
China just showed its hypersonic-BGV in a vid on 08 Oct. Probably a test design model, but AFAIK this is first pics of an actual object 1/ pic.twitter.com/EXIMHkXTEA
The Pentagon has recently sounded the alarm on the proliferation of hypersonic technological advances that are being made around the world [mainly in China and Russia].
“Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the US Missile Defense Agency, said in June, during testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee.
The DF-17 with an HGV payload (nuclear or conventional) could create a significant imbalance of power in the early 2020s that shifts Eastern Hemisphere power away from the US and towards China.
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