Deplorables: Trump, Brexit and the Demonised Masses

Trump Targets UK, Australia And Ukraine Over 'Greatest Hoax In The History Of Our Country'

Zero Hedge

President Trump on Friday said that he wants Attorney General William Barr to investigate the UK, Australia and Ukraine for their roles in the 'greatest hoax in the history of our country.'

Speaking with reporters at the White House on Friday before his trip to Japan, Trump discussed his decision this week to issue a sweeping declassification order - leaving it in the hands of Barr to determine exactly what happened to Trump and his campaign before and after the 2016 US election. 

"For over a year, people have asked me to declassify. What I've done is declassified everything," said Trump, adding "He can look and I hope he looks at the UK and I hope he looks at Australia and I hope he looks at Ukraine." 

"It's the greatest hoax probably in the history of our country and somebody has to get to the bottom of it. We'll see. For a long period of time, they wanted me to declassify and I did."

"This is about finding out what happened," said Trump. "What happened and when did it happen, because this was an attempted takedown of the president of the United States, and we have to find out why."

"We're exposing everything. We're being a word that you like, transparent. We're being, ultimately we're being transparent. That's what it's about. Again, this should never ever happen in our country again."

After the Mueller report made clear that Trump and his campaign had in no way conspired with Russia during hte 2016 election, Democrats immediately pivoted to whether Trump obstructed the investigation. Trump and his supporters, however, immediately pivoted to the conduct of the US intelligence community, including the involvement of foreign actors and possibly their governments. 

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Shipyard Evacuated After Bomb Reportedly Discovered Aboard Nuclear Submarine

Zero Hedge

Staff at Barrow's shipyard in Devonshire have been evacuated following reports that a bomb has been found aboard a nuclear submarine, according to local press reports.

An employee said staff in the Devonshire Dock Hall complex had been told about an anonymous tip that there was a bomb aboard one of the Astute class vessels at the shipyard.

A spokesman for BAE systems, the British defense firm that runs the yard, confirmed that there is an "ongoing incident" at the yard.

"We can confirm there is an ongoing incident at our Barrow site and we are liaising with Cumbria Police who are carrying out an investigation. As a precaution the Devonshire Dock Complex has been closed. Staff, contractors and local residents are being kept informed."

Police said they have arrived to assist BAE staff, and although an ambulance was called to the scene, there have been no reports of injuries.

Theresa May says Russia 'highly likely' behind poison attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter

Comment: Oh the shock! We all knew that this was going to be the outcome. And to think they were poisoned just down the road from Porton Down the infamous military base that has a lamentable history of chemical weapons experimentation and warfare. 

See: Secret UK army base analyzing nerve agent used on Sergei Skripal has long been Britain's most controversial military facility

What are the odds that an MI6/MI5 spy was used as a pawn in the propaganda war against Putin and Russia? Extremely high since this is part and parcel of black operations and state-sponsor terror. Putin is in a different league to these clowns and would never attempt something so obviously stupid, knowing it would illicit precisely the kind of BS that has nevertheless come his way.

Apparently they think all of the public will buy all this crap. And it seems they might be right on that. At least, if you're an Independent reader.

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The Independent

Theresa May has said it is "highly likely that Russia was responsible" for the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

The Prime Minister has been been updating MPs on the poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, following warnings from a senior Tory MP that the incident amounted to "state-sponsored attempted murder".

Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat said he would be surprised if the Prime Minister - who chaired high-level talks on the Salisbury nerve agent attack today - did not blame the Kremlin.

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Bank Of England Warns The UK: ‘Economic Collapse’ If UK Keeps Borrowing Money

Mac Slavo
SHTFplan.com

The Bank of England is putting the United Kingdom on alert.  Should the UK keep borrowing money, there will be a “Venezuela-style” economic collapse that will devastate normal citizens.

A senior Bank official has warned that the UK’s economy would be unlikely to survive borrowing any more cash. Richard Sharp, a member of the Bank’s Financial Stability Committee, claimed an extra £1trillion had already been borrowed since the 2008 financial crisis, and any more could see the economy collapse in the same quick manner that Venezuela’s did.

The Times reported on the stark warning mere days after Philip Hammond announced a £25 billion spending spree in the budget. It’s likely to dissuade the Chancellor from loosening the purse strings too far though, since the Bank rarely comments on government finances. It could also come as a wake-up call for Labour (a communist party), which is advocating borrowing an extra £250 billion.

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UK child poverty hits highest level since 2008 financial crisis

The Independent

The number of child in poverty has risen by 100,000 over the past year, new Government figures reveal. 

The numbers, released a week after a Budget in which the issue was not mentioned once, show 30 per cent of children are now classed as being in relative poverty.

A total of four million children are now in families struggling to make ends meet, the worst figures since the financial crisis.

And the overall number of people in poverty in Britain has risen to 10.4 million, the highest level this decade.

The news comes amid Tory cuts to working-age benefits, which the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) warns will affect millions more children by 2022. 

In 2015 the Government moved to scrap its legally binding child poverty target. It no longer officially recognises household income statistics as a measurement of child poverty.

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SAS chief in Iraq angry at UK running ‘Latin American-style death squads’

RT

 

Details have emerged of how US and UK Special Forces clashed and drifted apart over the conduct of the Iraq occupation, with one British officer complaining about the use of tactics more akin to “Latin American-style” death squads than a modern military.

The details of the Balad special forces base and its operations, which came to shape the war, are not recounted in last week’s long-awaited report by Sir John Chilcot.

 However, kill or capture operations in and around Baghdad, launched from the Balad base 50 miles (80km) north of the city, were a key if little known chapter in Britain’s shadow war, the Independent reports.

 Despite killing or taking as prisoner up to 3,500 insurgents, the mission against the Sunni insurgency caused deep rifts to the point where a senior commander, himself ex-SAS, demanded to know why the UK Special Forces were “helping to run Latin American-style death squads?”

 The mission, under now-famed US General Stanley McChrystal, involved a shift from searching for apparently non-existent weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to man-hunting.

Antagonism over the tactics led to UK troops being banned from some operations and a UK SAS commander lodging a complaint with US authorities for talking about British involvement in operations. Another SAS colonel was also ostracized from his regiment after serving under McCrystal.

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Drone ‘kill list’ could leave MPs, military & spies ‘facing murder charges’

Comment: Good luck with bringing those guys to court...

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RT 

Britain’s drone ‘kill list’ could leave politicians, pilots and intelligence personnel facing murder charges unless rules of engagement are quickly clarified, a parliamentary report has warned.

The joint committee on human rights warned on Tuesday that killing with drones outside warzones could lead to “criminal prosecution for murder or complicity in murder.”

The report also warned that the widely-used term “targeted killing” sounded “uncomfortably close to assassination“ and took the view that the UK pursues an active policy “to use lethal force abroad outside armed conflict” under the banner of “counter-terrorism.”

The committee acknowledged the likelihood of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) pursuing a case is slim, but said authorities in other countries may if their citizens are killed.

Chaired by Labour‘s Harriet Harman, the committee also said the UK owed it “to all those involved in the chain of command for such uses of lethal force to provide them with absolute clarity about the circumstances in which they will have a defense against any possible future criminal prosecution.”

The investigation began in August 2014 after it was announced a UK targeted drone strike had killed British Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) fighter Reyaad Khan in Syria.

The killing took place prior to December’s parliamentary vote on military action in the country. The US had developed a pattern of carrying out drone strikes in regions which are not official warzones such as Yemen and Pakistan, a trend which critics find worrying.

Harman’s panel said it is “vital that the legal line between counter-terrorism law enforcement and the waging of war by military means does not become blurred, leading to the use of lethal force in circumstances not permitted by law.”

Human rights NGO Reprieve warned on Tuesday the report highlighted some of the risks involved in an assassination policy.

Reprieve staff attorney Jennifer Gibson said “this is a wakeup call.”

She warned there is a “very real danger that the UK is following the US down the slippery slope of kill lists and targeted killings.”

“This is alarming, given the CIA’s secret drone war has killed hundreds of civilians and been described as a ‘failed strategy’ by [US President Barack] Obama’s own former head of defense intelligence,” she added.

While UK Prime Minister David Cameron acknowledged at the time that the Khan killing was a “new departure,” the government maintains it only uses such methods in cases where there is an “immediate” or “imminent” threat to the UK.

New British Army unit 'Brigade 77' to use Facebook and Twitter in psychological warfare

The Independent 

The British military is setting up a specialist force modelled on the Chindits, the commandos who gained renown through their daring missions behind enemy lines in Burma during the Second World War. 

They will specialise in "non-lethal" forms of psychological warfare, using social media including Facebook and Twitter to "fight in the information age".

The Chief of the Army, General Sir Nick Carter, believes that the radical new plan is essential to face the “asymmetric” battlefields of the 21st century, where tactics and strategies differ significantly between enemies, such as with Isis. Key lessons, he says, can be learned from the campaign carried out against the Japanese by Allied troops using unconventional tactics seven decades ago.

The 2,000-strong brigade will have the same number, 77, and the same emblem – of a Chindit, a mythical Burmese beast – as the one under Brigadier Orde Wingate. But, as well as being ready for combat, the troops will be armed with modern skill sets including being adept in social media and new technology.

One of the key reasons behind the successful operations of the Chindits was the support they received from the local population against the Japanese forces. General Carter holds believes the winning of “hearts and minds” has never been more important.

Senior officers hold that a range of current conflicts, from Iraq to Ukraine, have shown how the information war is as vital as the ones fought with weapons. The brigade, which will be formally unveiled in April with headquarters at Hermitage, near Newbury in Berkshire, will be responsible for all “non-lethal deployment” of the UK military abroad. 

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How officials spent £100m on taxis, first class rail travel and business class flights

The Telegraph 

Whitehall officials have spent more than £100million on taxis, business class flights and first class rail travel over the past four years, according to official figures.

Government departments have spent £60million on business class flights, £26million on taxis and £13million on first class rail travel.

In 2011 George Osborne barred civil servants from using first class rail travel unless there were exceptional circumstances.

David Cameron subsequently said that all ministers and civil servants should take economy class flights in an attempt to enhance his Green credentials.

However, despite the bans several government departments are still spending tens of millions of pounds on luxury travel. 

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UK banks won’t survive another recession

RT

Former Bank of England governor Mervyn King has warned that British banks are too weak to weather another financial crisis, adding that government officials haven’t “got to the heart” of what went wrong in 2008.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4 on Monday, King criticised current measures being taken by the BoE to stabilise the economy, including keeping interest rates at a record low – currently at 0.5 percent – for more than five years.

“I don’t think we’re yet at the point where we can be confident that the banking system would be entirely safe,” he told the programme.

“The idea that we can go on indefinitely with very low interest rates doesn’t make much sense,” he added.

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Millions of Britons facing malnutrition and relying on food banks

The Independent

Millions of the poorest people in Britain are struggling to get enough food to maintain their body weight, according to official figures published this month.

The Government's Family Food report reveals that the poorest 10 per cent of the population - some 6.4 million people - ate an average of 1,997 calories a day last year, compared with the average guideline figure of about 2,080 calories. This data covers all age groups.

One expert said the figures were a "powerful marker" that there is a problem with food poverty in Britain and it was clear there were "substantial numbers of people who are going hungry and eating a pretty miserable diet".

The use of food banks in the UK has surged in recent years. The Trussell Trust, a charity which runs more than 400 food banks, said it had given three days worth of food, and support, to more than 492,600 people between April and September this year, up 38 per cent on the same period in 2013.

Based on an annual survey of 6,000 UK households, the Family Food report said the population as a whole was consuming 5 per cent more calories than required. Tables of figures attached to the report reveal the average calorie consumption for the poorest 10 per cent, but the report itself did not highlight this.

Chris Goodall, an award-winning author who writes about energy, discovered the figures while investigating human use of food resources. "The data absolutely shocked me. What it shows is for the first time since the Second World War, if you are poor you cannot afford to eat sufficient calories," he said.

He also highlights a widening consumption gap between rich and poor. In 2012, there was little difference, with the richest 10th consuming a total of 2,420 calories daily, about 4 per cent more than the poorest. But in 2013, the richest group consumed 2,294 calories, about 15 per cent more than the poorest.

The report, published by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, also found that the poorest people spent 22 per cent more on food in 2013 than in 2007 but received 6.7 per cent less.  

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The Bank of England is preparing the next crash

Richard Murphy
Tax Research UK

The FT worries me this morning. First it said this:

The UK can have a growing banking sector without condemning itself to more frequent and costly financial crises, the Bank of England has said.

The sector is on course to double from its current size to more than 950 per cent of UK gross domestic product by 2050, far outstripping projected increases in other Group of 20 nations, the BoE said in a report published on Monday.

Then there was this:

The Bank of England says the vast majority of mortgage borrowers could handle interest rate rises of up to 2 percentage points, marking a significant shift in its stance on how higher borrowing costs will hit household finances.

The shift signals that the BoE is getting closer to changing policy and wants to reassure the public and financial markets that Britain’s borrowers can cope.

Both of which have to be read in the context of the FT noting last week that:

The new [Office for Budget Responsibility] forecasts show UK household debt rising even faster than previously thought in the next parliament (2015-20) to a record high of more than 180 per cent of gross domestic product.

And this has to also be noted in the light of the Resolution Foundation’s quite reasonable warning that maybe one million UK households would be plunged into debt crisis by the mortgage rate rises the Bank of England is now envisioning.

So, what is happening here? I suggest there are three things.

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Revealed: How the world gets rich – from privatising British public services

The Independent

Foreign governments are making hundreds of millions of pounds a year running British public services, according to an Independent investigation highlighting how privatisation is benefiting overseas – rather than UK – taxpayers. 

Swathes of Britain’s energy, transport and utility networks are run by companies owned by other European governments – meaning foreign exchequers reap the dividends while UK customers struggle with increasing fares and bills. 

In the past two years alone, overseas taxpayers have taken dividends totalling nearly £1bn from companies which make their profits from UK households and passengers.

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The killer on the (Saudi) king's highway

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the king's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
The Doors, The End

The killer awoke before dawn. He put his American desert boots on. He took a knife from the ancient gallery. And he walked on down the hall - bathed in desert sunlight.

The killer spoke with a British accent (London's East End?) Father (Saud), I want to kill you. Mother (Langley?) I want to...

yeeeaaahh, c'mon!

Then the sartorially composed Man in Black beheaded American photojournalist James Foley.

This is not the end, beautiful friend. It's just a new beginning in the never-ending Global War on Terror. Now starring Papa Saud's brand new bag - The Caliph and his goons. This is the way Shock and Awe morphs into "Assad must go" morphs into Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, morphs into The Caliph's Black Britannia goon responding to "humanitarian" bombing. I'm my own baby now. Watch me work. Bring it on.

Choice scenery. Good sound and vision production values. Careful editing. No unnecessary gore. No blood splattering. No Allahu Akbar shrieks. "A Message to America", indeed - but most of all a message to the Ummah. As in we're the Men in Black badasses. We run The Caliphate. We're no mere death cult; we're winners. And we take no prisoners.

And why did Islamic State, formerly ISIS, become winners? Because the "West" regimented, schooled, trained, logistically helped and weaponized most of IS's Takfiri goons with a mission at hand: to destroy Syria. The "West" lauded them as "Syrian rebels". Freedom fighters.

Washington even promoted Jabhat al-Nusra (the official al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, and a "terrorist organization", according to the State Department) as "good" jihadis, as well as the preferred Saudi combo, the Islamic Front.

No wonder after photojournalist James Foley was kidnapped in November 2012 the Washington-sanctioned version was that he was being kept by "Assad must go" forces in a prison near Damascus. 

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The shocking statistics that lay bare Britain's poverty problem

i100

New figures from the Office for National Statistics have highlighted the shocking health inequalities between the wealthiest and poorest people in Britain.

British Government Accused Of ‘Cover-up’ Over Rendition Files

RINF

A director at legal charity Reprieve, which is representing Libyan Abdel Hakim Belhadj who claims he was on a rendition flight through Diego Garcia, has slammed the Foreign Office’s excuse for losing rendition flight records, labelling it a cover-up.

Cori Crider, a director at the charity, said:

”It’s looking worse and worse for the UK government on Diego Garcia.
”First we learn the Senate’s forthcoming torture report says detainees were held on the island, and now – conveniently – a pile of key documents turn up missing with ‘water damage’?
”The Government might as well have said the dog ate their homework. This smacks of a cover-up. They now need to come clean about how, when, and where this evidence was lost.”

The records, if compete, would cast new light on the UK’s complicity in the CIA’s extraordinary rendition programme, Foreign Office are claiming that documents have been lost due to “water damage”.

 

£22bn threat to banks in latest mis-selling ‘scandal’ that could rival PPI payouts

The Independent

The Government’s aim of returning the entire Lloyds Banking Group to private ownership before the general election could be blown off-course by another mis-selling scandal.

 
An investigation by The Independent of the potential liabilities of British banks incurred from the mis-selling of interest rate protection products, known as swaps, has revealed that payouts could match the PPI scandal, which has so far cost them £22bn. Lloyds’ exposure has been estimated for The Independent to be a potential £5bn – and other UK banks could be similarly hit.

Until now estimates of the scale of the scandal have been limited to interest-rate hedging products (IRHPs) sold mostly to small and medium-sized businesses. But claims from so-called “sophisticated” clients – those with swaps valued above £10m or who employ 50 people or more – could push the total far higher.

The Independent, in conjunction with derivative analysts in the City who cannot be identified for legal reasons, examined high-value claims excluded from the Financial Conduct Authority’s recent review of mis-selling.

One analyst said: “This is potentially a bigger problem for UK banks than PPI. Profits from PPI sales somewhat offset the £22bn the banks were forced to pay out in compensation. But profits on swap derivatives could be dwarfed by high settlement costs.”

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Deprivation Britain: Poverty is getting worse - even among working families, according to major new study

The Independent

The number of impoverished households has more than doubled in the 30 years since Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, the largest study of deprivation ever conducted in the UK has concluded. 

The research found that rises in the cost of living mean a full-time job is no longer enough to prevent some people from falling into poverty. One in every six adults in paid work is now defined as "poor".

Last night the Government’s poverty tsar Frank Field said the study’s stark findings proved the Coalition’s approach to the problem “isn’t working” and called for the leaders of all political parties to make manifesto pledges to reverse the rise.

The Poverty and Social Exclusion project, based on interviews with more than 14,500 people in Britain and Northern Ireland carried out by eight universities and two research agencies, reported:

• More than 500,000 children live in families who cannot afford to feed them properly
• 18 million people cannot afford adequate housing conditions
• 12 million people are too poor to engage in common social activities
• About 5.5 million adults go without essential clothing

The survey showed that the percentage of UK households which lacked “three or more of the basic necessities of life” has increased from 14 per cent in 1983, the year that Margaret Thatcher was re-elected (around 3 million), to 33 per cent (around 8.7 million) in 2012, despite the size of the economy doubling in that period. Researchers used the “three or more” formula as it is directly comparable with methods used to study poverty and deprivation in 1983.

Academics said the findings dispelled the myth that poverty is caused by a lack of work or by people shirking work. Almost half the “employed poor” were clocking up 40 hours a week in work or more.
According to separate research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), around half of the UK’s 13 million people in poverty are in a household where someone works. Between 2008 and 2014 the cost of essentials such as childcare, rent, food and energy have driven up the amount needed by almost a third, it said.

Professor David Gordon of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research at the University of Bristol, which led the project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, said the Government’s strategy of tackling the root causes of poverty had “clearly failed”.

Mr Field, the Labour MP who was tasked by David Cameron to examine poverty in 2010, said the study “sadly emphasises that working doesn’t now eliminate a family’s poverty”.

He added: “Tackling the causes of poverty is clearly the right strategy. This report shows that it isn’t working. Here, then, is a most major challenge to all the political parties – what is your manifesto going to say to reverse the horrendous rise in the numbers of poor?”

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesman said: “There is strong evidence that incomes have improved over the last 30 years, despite the misleading picture painted by this report. The independent statistics are clear, there are 1.4 million fewer people in poverty since 1998, and under this Government we have successfully protected the poorest from falling behind.”

Lavrov: Iraq developments show total failure of American-British 'adventure'

RT

The events in Iraq are a result of the actions carried out by the US and the UK, and the situation has spiraled out of control, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told journalists. "It has been reported that the UK foreign minister declared that the events in Iraq are, according to him, an illustration that terrorism is rampant in the region due to the absence of reconciliation in Syria," Lavrov said. "We've known that our English colleagues have a unique ability to twist everything. But I didn't expect such cynicism, because the events that are taking place in Iraq are an illustration of a complete failure of the venture started by the US and the UK that allowed it to spiral out of control completely." "We express our solidarity with the Iraqi authorities, the Iraqi people who should restore peace and security in their country, but the actions of our Western partners raise a lot of questions," Lavrov marked. 

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