Poland’s President Unexpectedly Vetoes Bill On Judicial Reform, Zloty Surges

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Polish President Andrzej Duda unexpectedly said on Monday that he would veto two of three bills reforming the country’s judiciary system, easing Brussels’ fears that the ruling Law and Justice party will undermine the division of powers. In a news conference on Monday morning, Duda said that he would veto two of three contentious bills, one that would have forced all members of the Supreme Court to step down, except for those kept on by the president; and a second that would have given parliament control over the National Judicial Council, the body that appoints judges, the FT reports.
“I have decided that I will send back to Sejm (lower house of parliament), which means I will veto the bill, on the Supreme Court, as well as the one about the National Council of the Judiciary,” Duda said after days of mass street protests adding ‘I regret that I, as president of the Republic of Poland, wasn’t consulted over this initiative before it reached the Sejm [the lower house of parliament]. I couldn’t carry out consultations [on this matter] and nor could the other interested entities.”
Duda’s veto puts him at odds with the de facto leader of the country, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is the leader of PiS but has no formal government post, Reuters notes. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party claims that the changes are necessary to overhaul an inefficient system that has not been purged since the collapse of communism almost three decades ago.
However, in recent days the legislation has faced mounting international criticism, and sparked days of protests, with tens of thousands of Poles taking to the streets to rally against the changes which they fear would undermine the independence of the judiciary. The US State Department on Friday urged Poland to ‘ensure that any judicial reform does not violate Poland’s constitution or international legal obligations and respects the principles of judicial independence and separation of powers’.
Duda’s decision was greeted by the opposition: “What we had was not a reform, but appropriation of the courts. I congratulate all Poles, this is a great success, really,” Katarzyna Lubnauer, head of the parliamentary caucus of the opposition party Nowoczesna.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 24, 2017.

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FBI Seized Crushed Hard Drives From Home Of Wasserman-Schultz’ IT Aide

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Over the past few months, the story of the Awan brothers has been largely ignored by mainstream media. However, the Pakistani-born brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan are at the center of a criminal investigation by U. S. Capital Hill Police and the FBI. While official charges have not yet been filed, allegations of wrong doing vary from simply overcharging taxpayers for congressional IT equipment to blackmailing members of Congress with secrets captured from emails.
The Awan brothers were Pakistani IT specialists, whom worked for more than 30 house and senate democrats, as well as Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The substantial scandal has raised questions about who may have been passed data which the Awans had access to, given Pakistan’s history of collaborating with a number of foreign countries who have demonstrated past willingness to influence U. S. politics.
Now, per an exclusive report from the Daily Caller, we learn that the twisted plot surrounding the Awan brothers has grown even more interesting as FBI agents have reportedly seized a number of “smashed hard drives” and other computer equipment from their former residence in Virginia.
FBI agents seized smashed computer hard drives from the home of Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s information technology (IT) administrator, according to an individual who was interviewed by Bureau investigators in the case and a high level congressional source.
Pakistani-born Imran Awan, long-time right-hand IT aide to the former Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairwoman, has since desperately tried to get the hard drives back, the individual told The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 24, 2017.

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Can We Stop With the Silly Now Please?

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The scaremongering is still going on with regard to the Fukushima plant.
But the latest news appears to quash any of the nonsense that people were running for months after the incident — that the cores of the reactors that melted down had breached the containment.
Nope.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. says solidified lava-like rocks heaped up from the bottom inside of a main structure called the pedestal that sits underneath the core inside the primary containment vessel of Fukushima’s Unit 3 reactor. Experts believe the melted fuel fell to the chamber’s bottom and is now submerged by radioactive water.
That would be where you’d expect it to be. The reason for all the screaming harpy stuff is that thus far they hadn’t found it (which means it could have remained inside the pressure vessel itself, and a good part of it probably is.)
This also explains the radiation readings in the containment building and their “lumpiness”; in some places levels in the 100-500 Sievert range have been recorded or estimated (levels at that degree are high enough that accurate measurement is basically impossible — not that it really matters much) in some places, where in others it’s in the 1-10 Sievert range in the same containment. There are many technical reasons why this happens (you can actually get “shine” effects with radiation just like sun will reflect off water, for example, while if your dosimeter is behind a solid metal or concrete object it provides very material shielding, etc.) all of which is consistent with the containment doing exactly what it’s designed to do in a situation like this.

This post was published at Market-Ticker on 2017-07-24.

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In the Footsteps of Rome: Is Renewal Possible?

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Once the shared memories of these values are lost, the Empire ceases to exist; there is nothing left to reform or renew.
Is renewal / recovery from systemic decline possible? The history of the Roman Empire is a potentially insightful place to start looking for answers. As long-time readers know, I’ve been studying both the Western and Eastern (Byzantine) Roman Empires over the past few years. Both Western and Eastern Roman Empires faced existential crises that very nearly dissolved the empires hundreds of years before their terminal declines. The Western Roman Empire, beset by the overlapping crises of invasion, civil war, plague and economic upheaval, nearly collapsed in the third century C. E. (Christian Era, what was previously A. D.) — 235 to 284 C. E., fully two hundred years before its final dissolution in the fifth century (circa 476 C. E.). Meanwhile, the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire) faced similar crises in the seventh and eighth centuries, as its capital of Constantinople was besieged by the Persians in 626 C. E. and the Arab caliphate in 674 C. E. and again in 717 C. E. The invasions which preceded the sieges stripped the empire of wealthy territories and the income those lands produced.

This post was published at Charles Hugh Smith on SUNDAY, JULY 23, 2017.

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Iran Rejects Trump’s Warning; Foreign Minister Slams “Saudis Involvement In 94% Of Terrorist Attacks In The World”

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The US president warned that Iran would face ‘new and serious consequences’ if the detained Americans were not released.
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But now, as MiddleEastEye reports, Iran demanded on Saturday that the United States release Iranians detained there, a day after US President Donald Trump called on the Islamic Republic to release three US citizens.
‘America should quickly release Iranian prisoners in the country,’ foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA).
On Friday, Trump urged Tehran to return Robert Levinson, an American former law enforcement officer who disappeared in Iran more than a decade ago, and to release businessman Siamak Namazi and his father, Baquer, both jailed on espionage charges.
Trump warned that Iran would face ‘new and serious consequences’ if the three men were not released.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 23, 2017.

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TENNESSEE JAILS OFFER INMATES SHORTER SENTENCES IN EXCHANGE FOR STERILIZATION

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In an effort to make sure those deemed ‘unworthy’ of reproduction by the government do not reproduce, one Tennessee county is offering a reduced sentence to inmates who undergo sterilization.
Of course, this isn’t a news headline from 1933 out of East Berlin, Germany either. Tennessee inmates can receive upwards of 30 days cut from their jail sentences if they agree to get a vasectomy or insert a contraceptive device into their body. White County in rural Tennessee decided to start the program and it has faced backlash ever since.
The sterilization of inmates has been called into question by local district attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union alike, not to mention rational Americans who understand human rights, CBS affiliate NewsChannel 5 reported.
‘Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional,’ the ACLU said in a statement. Although it may not be unconstitutional per se, as the government dictates what is or is not constitutional, it is an egregious violation of human rights; and one that would have made Adolf Hitler quite proud.

This post was published at The Daily Sheeple on JULY 24, 2017.

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A Coup In The House Of Saud?

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The secret is out: the ascension of Mohammad bin Salman, displacing CIA favorite Mohammad bin Nayef as Crown Prince, was in fact a white coup…
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What has been an open secret across the Arab world is not a secret anymore even in the US: What happened last month in the deep recesses of the House of Saud with the ascension of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, aka MBS, was in fact a white coup.
Nearly a month ago, as I’ve written elsewhere, a top Middle East source close to the House of Saud told me:
‘The CIA is very displeased with the firing of [former Crown Prince] Mohammad bin Nayef. Mohammad bin Salman is regarded as sponsoring terrorism. In April 2014 the entire royal families of the UAE and Saudi Arabia were to be ousted by the US over terrorism. A compromise was worked out that Nayef would take over running the kingdom to stop it.’
The source also referred to an insistent narrative then pervading selected Middle East geopolitical circles, according to which US intel, ‘indirectly’, had stopped another coup against the young Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim al-Thani, orchestrated by Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, with help from Blackwater/Academi’s Eric Prince’s army of mercenaries in the United Arab Emirates. Zayed, crucially, happens to be MBS’s mentor.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 24, 2017.

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Star Wars Has Arrived – Navy Tests First Laser Weapon

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The Laser Technology is actually using the cyclical frequency spectrum of light. I have stated numerous times, that everything has its frequency. It is all about cycles within everything. Understanding that basic foundation, allows us to hone in on what effect each frequency will produce. Welcome to the world of complexity.

This post was published at Armstrong Economics on Jul 24, 2017.

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Five Weird Conspiracy Theories From CIA Director Mike Pompeo

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Mike Pompeo sounds increasingly unhinged when talking about Russia, Wikileaks and the media.
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In a tirade against Russia based news outlets RT and Sputnik, Donald Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo blasted Russia for interfering not only in the 2016 US Presidential election but ‘the one before that and the one before that’. This would imply that Russia helped install Barack Obama in the White House even after his severely anti-Russian foreign policy became well known.
These statements are blasted by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the following way:
If (Pompeo’s) statements mean that we interfered in the elections in 2008 and 2012 that means that President Obama owes us his victories. I’ll refrain from comment. In my opinion, this crosses the lines of what is reasonable.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 23, 2017.

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Fukushima’s “Swimming Robot” Captures First Images Of ‘Massive Deposits’ Of Melted Nuclear Fuel

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The ‘Little Sunfish,’ the swimming robot that TEPCO is using to capture images of the containment vessel in the Unit 3 reactor of the ruined Fukushima power plant, has brought back the goods.
A trove of new images captured in the past few days show what is likely to be melted nuclear fuel from inside the reactor, what Bloomberg describes as a ‘potential milestone’ in the cleanup of one of the worst atomic disasters in history.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 23, 2017.

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