Monday, December 3, 2018

NEWS SUMMARY-INTELLIGENCE REPORT MONDAY 12/3/2018


(UPDATES, ADDITIONS, EDITING ETC. IS POSSIBLE UNTIL 8AM EASTERN)

Good morning, its time for solid news instead of political Kool Aid.

The US military has attacked Syrian army positions in Eastern Syria with 14 missiles, that's the word from Syria's defense ministry.

The attack occurred around 8pm Sunday night local time, 1pm Eastern time in the US.  The rockets were launched using the M142 HIMARS system from the al-Tanf base inside Syrian territory.

Syria says there were no casualties, just material damage.

The US announced that a drone strike in Syria Sunday killed a senior ISIS leader.

To the rising tensions over Brexit in the UK.

The opposition Labor Party says the country faces a constitutional crisis if the Prime Minister does not reveal the legal advice she has been given by the Attorney General about Brexit.

It is widely believed that the advice states that the UK could be tied to the European Union's customs rules indefinitely.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox is set to speak about the matter today and publish a limited version of his legal opinion.

Leading Conservative Party opponent of the Prime Minister Theresa May, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also wants a full publication of the AG's opinion.

LABOR INTENDS TO INITIATE 'CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT' PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT WITH THE SUPPORT OF NORTHERN IRELAND'S DEMOCRATIC UNIONISTS, WHO PROVIDE PART OF THE PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY FOR THE GOVERNMENT.

On Sunday, the Labor Party threatened to bring down the Conservative Party Theresa May government if her Brexit plan goes down to defeat in the House of Commons on December 11th.  Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary, said Labor would table a no-confidence motion if May's Brexit plan is voted down.

One of Mrs. May's close supporters Conservative Environment Minister Michael Gove is threatening the notion of a new referendum on Brexit if Mrs. May's plan is rejected.    The Tories are tying to whip dozens of MP's who oppose May's plan into submission.   Opponents consider her plan everything from a "sellout" to the EU to "treason".

Nigel Farage went on his radio show Sunday and he took time out from opposing Mrs. May's Brexit plan to trash the political party of Brexit he used to lead.

Farage leveled a broadside attack on United Kingdom Independence Party leader Gerard Batten and activist Tommy Robinson who's now helping UKIP on prison and child rape gang issues plus helping to organize a mass rally next Sunday in London where he and others will speak in opposition to the Theresa May Brexit deal.

Farage, who led UKIP up through the 2016 Brexit referendum, openly considered whether he should leave the party on air.

Robinson responded back on "Facebook" in part:

"Farage is a sell out......he's actually become part of the establishment, he has complete contempt for the working class..."


This morning Mr. Batten tweeted in part regarding allegations of "anti-Semitism" and a "far-right" path being broadcast by Mr. Farage and an academic guest on a London radio station:

"The establishment gloves are now off.  Join us now.  Fight back"


The French President Emmanuel Macron has held emergency meetings as he considers the next move following the mass protests for a third Saturday in a row that resulted in injuries to more than 100 people, nearly 300 arrests and damage to buildings that were vandalized and or burned.

The "yellow vests" protests are against his policy of  increasing gas taxes each year in the name of combating climate change but appear to have morphed into a protest movement against his pro-business policies in general that have left his popularity rating below 30 percent.

Macron has instructed his Prime Minister Edouard Philippe to hold talks with the leaders of France's political parties and those talks are underway today continuing into the evening.

The headline in Israel's left of center "Haaretz" says:  

"To survive three bribery cases, Netanyahu may push Israel's democracy to the brink"


Police in Israel have recommended the indictment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara for bribery in what is called "Case 4000".     When Netanyahu held the post of Minister of Communication alongside Prime Minister its alleged he eased the regulatory burden for the owner of a media company in Israel in exchange for favorable news coverage.   

Sara Netanyahu is accused in another case of being involved in working on the slanting of the news coverage in her husband's favor.  In that case and another police have already recommended indictment of Mr. Netanyahu.

When Defense Minster Avigdor Lieberman resigned a few weeks ago and his party left Netanyahu's government over the lack of a forceful response to rocket attacks from Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked a security threat to reject calls from the conservative Jewish Home party for the defense ministry portfolio.     Jewish Home was threatening to leave the government and force new elections if their leader, Naftali Bennett, was not made the Defense Minister.

Another wrinkle in recent days was an attempt by the Netanyahu government to install a new police chief in Israel.  An independent board narrowly rejected the person appointed by the government because of alleged improprieties.

Speaking at a rally Sunday night Prime Minister Netanyahu denounced the police recommendation to charge him with bribery as a "fixed game".

Today Israel's Attorney General Avechai Mandelbit responded saying among other things:

"We have to support the police......I fully support the Israel police"


President Trump tweeted late Sunday evening that China will reduce and remove tariffs on cars imported from the United States.

Word Saturday night was that the US and China had agreed not to impose any new tariffs on January 1st.  This was after Saturday night's meeting between President Trump and China's President Xi Jinping.  Negotiations over trade differences will continue between the two countries.

At the G20 summit Saturday Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated his country's demand that Saudi nationals involved in the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul October 2nd be extradited to Turkey.

Erdogan said the only world leader who brought up the Khashoggi matter at the G20 was Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It is widely believed that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was behind the murder while the Saudi government claims it was a rogue operation by an intelligence officer.

Erdogan said he does want to hurt the Saudi royal family, but it would be in their best interests to solve the murder of Khashoggi.

The "Wall Street Journal" has received information leaked from the Central Intelligence Agency that indicated Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman sent 11 text messages to a top aide who was in Istanbul at the murder scene.

The commander of the 5th Fleet and the Navy's Central Command, Vice-Admiral Scott Stearney, was found dead  Saturday in his home in the Gulf Arab nation of Bahrain.    No foul play is suspected with the Naval Criminal Investigation Service involved in the case along with Bahrain's Interior Ministry.   CBS News says his death is an "apparent suicide".

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine's government is dividing the country up into parts it trusts and parts it doesn't trust by imposing martial law in just ten regions of the country,

Putin said:

"They declared martial law in ten regions, those where the current president does not have a lot of support"


Incumbent President Petro Poroshenko will face re-election in March with a strong challenge coming his way from former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Putin says the current government is a government that wants war as exemplified by the Ukrainian warships provocative move to enter Russian controlled waters through the Kerch Strait eight days ago leading to their seizure by Russian authorities.

Two leaders of the the Catalonian independence movement in Spain started a hunger strike over the weekend to protest their treatment in Spanish courts.

Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Turull are protesting the failure of Spanish courts to hear their appeals.   They said the court system is deliberately ignoring their appeals when they would not in other cases.

Mr. Sanchez said that when he goes on trial for being part of a movement that declared independence last year, he expects a rigged trial with a predetermined guilty verdict.   He expects better treatment on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

A Uighur Muslim women who was imprisoned in a Chinese detention camp in the western part of the country says she was subjected to concentration camp treatment there.   Mihrigul Tursun said her head was shaved and that she was given given drugs and electric shock treatments that sickened her.

Tursun spoke at the National Press Club in Washington Friday.   She said that she was in a mass prison cell with 60 others and that nine died while she was there.

China is combating separatism in the region that includes Islamic militancy and reports of mass detentions in Chinese government camps have drawn an increasing tempo of protests from Western nations.    It is being estimated that some 1.5 million people are in the detention camps.

The Chinese government denies their existence and speaks instead of "vocational camps" instead.

The number of missing in the "Camp Fire" in northern California has been reduced sharply as many of the missing have been found to have escaped the raging deadly wildfire.    Only 25 are now listed as missing.    At one point that number had been over 1,000.

There are 88 confirmed dead in the blaze as workers continue to search through the debris of 18-thousand homes destroyed by the fire.

The headline in the Sunday edition of the "Sun-Sentinel" newspaper in Broward County, Florida reads:

"HIDE, DENY, SPIN, THREATEN"


Below the headline is the story of how the Broward County School District worked to keep secret information about what went wrong when 17 were killed in a mass murder incident at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

Today the body of former President George H.W. Bush will be flown from Texas to Washington DC  accompanied by former members of his staff.   His body will lie in state from 730pm this evening until Wednesday morning at 845am in the Rotunda of the Capitol.

Qatar has decided to leave the 15 nation Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, effective at the beginning of next year.

And in Kazakhstan today a successful blastoff after October's aborted mission for three astronauts headed to the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian David Saint Jacques and Russian Oleg Kononenko were launched successfully from the Baikonour station in Kazakhstan at 531pm local time (631am Eastern time in the US).

And that's the way it really is, Monday morning December 3rd, 2018.

No comments:

Post a Comment