Alleged Chinese Spy Linked to Prince Andrew ‘Tip of the Iceberg’

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A suspected Chinese spy who became a confidant of disgraced royal Prince Andrew is only the “tip of the iceberg” of Beijing’s espionage activities in the UK, former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith claimed Monday.

Judges on Thursday upheld a ban on the businessman, identified only as H6, from entering the country, saying that the government had been “entitled to conclude that his exclusion was justified and proportionate”.

In the ruling, judges assessed H6 was in a position to “generate relationships between senior Chinese officials and prominent UK figures which could be leveraged for political interference purposes by the Chinese State”.

“The fact is, there are many more like him in the UK,” Duncan Smith, one of the UK’s leading China-sceptic voices, told BBC radio on Monday.

“We’re dealing with the tip of the iceberg,” he added.

(Read more from “Alleged Chinese Spy Linked to Prince Andrew ‘Tip of the Iceberg’” HERE)

NATO Chief Warns Alliance Not Ready for Future Threats From Russia, China

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NATO countries need to ramp up their defense spending and “shift to a wartime mindset” because the alliance is not ready to meet future military threats from adversaries like Russia and China, newly installed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Thursday.

In his first public appearance in Brussels since becoming chief of the U.S.-led security alliance, Mr. Rutte noted that NATO members earmarked upwards of 3% of their GDP to defense during the Cold War.

“We are not ready for what is coming our way in four to five years. Danger is moving toward us at full speed,” Mr. Rutte said during a speech hosted by the Carnegie Europe think tank. “We must not look the other way. We must face it.”

He said Russian arms factories are churning out war equipment around the clock while China’s military-industrial base also is growing. Beijing is heavily investing in munitions, accelerating its space capabilities and expanding its nuclear arsenal.

“Our defense industry here in Europe has been hollowed out by decades of underinvestment and narrow national industrial interests. Our industry is too small, too fragmented, and too slow,” Mr. Rutte said. “According to some sources, China is acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the U.S.” (Read more from “NATO Chief Warns Alliance Not Ready for Future Threats From Russia, China” HERE)

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Mayor’s Bank Account Reportedly Seized After Refusing to Celebrate Pride Month

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A mayor of a township in Ontario, Canada, reportedly had his personal bank account garnished after he refused to pay a $5,000 fine after a tribunal ruled he had discriminated against an LGBTQ group.

On November 20, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled that the township of Emo and its mayor, Harold McQuaker, 77, had discriminated against an LGBTQ group, under the Ontario Human Rights Code, by denying its request to proclaim June as Pride Month. Borderland Pride had requested Emo make the Pride Month declaration and requested the township fly a “LGBTQ2” flag, despite Emo not having an official flag pole.

McQuaker was further found to have violated the human rights code by making a “discriminatory remark” during the town’s council meeting about the flag request, saying that there was no flag for the “other side of the coin… for straight people.”

Tribunal vice-chair Karen Dawson ordered the township to pay a fine of $10,000, while McQuaker was ordered to take a “Human Rights 101” course and pay a $5,000 fine to Borderland Pride.

However, McQuaker publicly said that he wouldn’t pay the fine, calling it “extortion.” (Read more from “Mayor’s Bank Account Reportedly Seized After Refusing to Celebrate Pride Month” HERE)

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Canada’s ‘Doctor Death’ Has Killed Hundreds of Patients and Counting

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Dr. Ellen Wiebe does not heal her patients. Instead, she kills them.

The doctor operates an abortion mill in Vancouver, called the Willow Clinic, where she also performs assisted suicides. In Canada, this practice of doctors killing their patients is called “medical assistance in dying,” or MAID.

“She does abortions during the day, and then she goes out and provides euthanasia to sick old people,” Angelina Ireland, executive director of the Canadian nonprofit Delta Hospice Society, told The Federalist. “Some might consider her to be a massive serial killer.”

Wiebe once operated a family practice but “now restricts her practice to women’s health and assisted death.” She is the research director of the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers (CAMAP) — an organization supporting doctors who deliberately kill their patients — and sits on the clinicians advisory council for the powerful pro-euthanasia lobby Dying With Dignity Canada.

Canada legalized MAID in 2016, revising criminal code to let doctors kill their patients. Officials updated the law in 2021, removing the requirement that a patient’s death be foreseeable. Groups like Dying With Dignity Canada have since been pushing to expand the euthanasia program to “mature minors,” and parliament has been debating the issue. (Read more from “Canada’s ‘Doctor Death’ Has Killed Hundreds of Patients and Counting” HERE)

European Nation Becomes First Country to Overturn Election Over Foreign Interference

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In a globally unprecedented move, Romania’s Constitutional Court overturned the presidential election results after Romania’s intelligence agency alleged foreign interference through social media.

The episode makes Romania the first country to overturn election results due to allegations of foreign meddling through social media, a key flashpoint since allegations began prominently emerging globally after the 2016 U.S. election. In Romania’s case, the court overturned the results after a declassified report from its intelligence agency alleged foreign interference via TikTok.

The report came as Romania’s political establishment tried to figure out how Călin Georgescu, 62, running without a party, came in first in the first round of elections with 22.9% of the vote. His rise blindsided the entire Romanian political scene, especially as he hadn’t participated in any debates, didn’t register significantly in opinion polls, and didn’t belong to a party, something almost unheard of in Romanian politics.

Instead, Georgescu ran an almost exclusively online campaign, centering on TikTok edits of himself. The edits were usually clips of his speeches interwoven with him riding on horseback, swimming in icy mountain waters, or fighting in judo sessions, among other activities. His account quickly went viral, garnering 3.8 million likes and 298,000 followers, while his videos routinely receive millions of views, Politico reported.

Romania has the largest share of per capita TikTok users in Europe, with roughly half of its 19 million population being users of the app, according to data from the World Population Review. (Read more from “European Nation Becomes First Country to Overturn Election Over Foreign Interference” HERE)

French Government Collapses as Le Pen Joins Leftist Bloc to Oust Globalist PM Over ‘Technocratic’ Budget

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The government of France has fallen for the second time this year, as a vote of no confidence in Prime Minister Michel Barnier was passed by the National Assembly on Wednesday, giving the former Eurocrat the ignominious distinction of being the shortest tenured prime minister in modern French history.

Just 91 days after being installed in the Hôtel Matignon by President Macron, Michel Barnier saw his government collapse on Wednesday, as Marine Le Pen’s populist National Rally (RN) party joined onto a censure motion to dethrone the government launched by the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) bloc, Le Figaro reports.

While Le Pen and her faction gave Barnier’s government benefit of the doubt support following July’s snap legislative elections, in which the National Assembly was left in a three-way split between the leftist NFP, the National Rally, and neo-liberal Macronists, Prime Minister Barnier’s move on Monday to invoke a constitutional loophole in an attempt to push through effective cuts to social security payments to seniors without a vote in the parliament, saw Le Pen revoke her support from the government and announce her support for the NFP’s no confidence vote.

The motion passed the National Assembly on Wednesday as 331 MPs voted in favour of collapsing the government, far surpassing the 289 needed to pass. It marks the first time since 1962 that a government in Paris was ousted by parliamentary vote. Having only served 91 days in the post, former Eurocrat and top Brexit villain Barnier now owns the title for the least time spent as prime minister, behind Pierre Bérégovoy at 362 days, Maurice Couve de Murville at 345 days, Edith Cresson at 322 days, former Macron PM Gabriel Attal whose reign ended at 240 days earlier this year, and Bernard Cazeneuve at 161 days. (Read more from “French Government Collapses as Le Pen Joins Leftist Bloc to Oust Globalist PM Over ‘Technocratic’ Budget” HERE)

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China Escalates Trade War With US By Slapping Ban On Minerals Used In Ammunition, Semiconductors

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China announced Tuesday that it is banning exports to the U.S. of some metals and rare minerals which can be used in the production of semiconductors and ammunition, according to the Financial Times.

China’s Ministry of Commerce announced that it is banning exports of “dual-use” items related to germanium, gallium, antimony and superhard materials to the US in retaliation against the US government’s latest trade restrictions, according to the Financial Times. The ministry also announced that it is placing more rigid controls on exports of graphite-related items, the Financial Times reported.

The key minerals and metals are used in the production of a variety of items, including batteries, military hardware and semiconductors, according to the Financial Times. Beijing has largely dominated the global supply of various crucial resources, the Financial Times reported. Researchers estimated there could be a $3.4 billion decrease in US gross domestic product if China implements a total ban on exports of germanium and gallium, minerals used in some semiconductors and other high-tech manufacturing, according to a November report from the U.S. Geological Survey.

China’s decision comes after the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced on Monday new restrictions designed to curb the People’s Republic of China’s capacity to produce advanced semiconductors that can be used in advanced weapon systems, artificial intelligence and advanced computing, according to a Monday press release. The BIS also added 140 unnamed Chinese companies to a restricted trade list. (Read more from “China Escalates Trade War With US By Slapping Ban On Minerals Used In Ammunition, Semiconductors” HERE)

Putin Issues Chilling Warning to Trump Over His Safety

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Vladimir Putin praised Donald Trump on Thursday as an experienced and intelligent politician – and said he does not believe the U.S. president-elect is safe after two assassination attempts.

The Russian president signaled he was open to talks with the incoming commander-in-chief as he threatened to use ‘all means of destruction’ available if the West gives nuclear weapons to Ukraine.

The Kremlin strongman also tore into how Trump and his family had been treated by his critics and called attacks on him ‘revolting’. . .

Putin cited ‘the absolutely uncivilized methods used to battle against Trump, up to and including an assassination attempt – and more than once’.

‘By the way, in my opinion, he is not safe now,’ said Putin.

He called such behavior ‘revolting’ and said in Russia not even ‘bandits’ would resort to such methods. (Read more from “Putin Issues Chilling Warning to Trump Over His Safety” HERE)

Report: U.S. and European Officials Discussed Giving Ukraine Nuclear Weapons

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By Anti War. According to the New York Times, US and European officials have discussed a range of options they believe will deter Russia from taking more Ukrainian territory, including providing Kiev with nuclear weapons. The outlet reports that Western officials believe the Kremlin will not significantly escalate the war before Donald Trump is sworn in as President in January.

Following the election of Trump earlier this month, the US and its NATO allies began taking steps to rush weapons to Ukraine and give Kiev the ability to strike targets inside Russian territory with long-range weapons.

American officials who were briefed on the intelligence community’s assessments told the Times that weapons will not alter the challenging situation that Kiev is currently facing. “US spy agencies have assessed that speeding up the provisions of weapons, ammunition and matériel for Ukraine will do little to change the course of the war in the short term,” the Times reports.

Desperate to bolster Ukraine’s standing in the war before the transition of power on January 20, the Biden administration is looking at a range of serious escalations. “US and European officials are discussing deterrence as a possible security guarantee for Ukraine, such as stockpiling a conventional arsenal sufficient to strike a punishing blow if Russia violates a cease-fire.” The article continues, “Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union.” (Read more from “Report: U.S. and European Officials Discussed Giving Ukraine Nuclear Weapons” HERE)

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NATO Considers Preemptive Strikes Amid Rising Tensions With Russia

By MSN News. NATO Military Committee Chairman Admiral Rob Bauer stated during a conference in Brussels that NATO leadership is contemplating the possibility of conducting precise preemptive strikes on Russian territory in the event of an armed conflict between Moscow and the Alliance.

He added that the North Atlantic Alliance must replenish its weapons stockpiles, modernise air defence systems, and precision strike systems.

Earlier, Bauer stated that the management of major Western companies should be prepared for wartime conditions and adjust their production and distribution lines accordingly to become less vulnerable to blackmail from Russia and China.

At present, the Russians do not pose the same threat as they did in February 2022, so we have some time to prepare, said Rob Bauer in Brussels, referring to the state of military equipment and the level of soldier training. He added that for the West, this means the necessity of increasing investments in the arms industry.

In his opinion, deterring the opponent involves not only military capabilities, but also the use of all available tools in wartime conditions. (Read more from “NATO Considers Preemptive Strikes Amid Rising Tensions With Russia” HERE)

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Britain’s Risky Move In Ukraine That May Make Nuclear War With Russia Scarily More Likely

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Deploying British troops to Ukraine could be like a “declaration of war against Russia” and cause a “nuclear exchange”, an expert has told the Daily Express.

French newspaper Le Monde claimed that talks between the UK and France over sending soldiers to Ukraine have been reignited and that the move is not being ruled out.

A British military source said: “Discussions are under way between the UK and France regarding defence cooperation, particularly with the aim of creating a core of allies in Europe, focused on Ukraine and broader European security.”

Security and defence expert Nicholas Drummond told the Daily Express such a plan would be disastrous and could lead to an all-out war.

He added that the British Army is not even ready for conflict with Russia and warned that Vladimir Putin’s “dangerous” mindset could result in “disastrous” consequences. (Read more from “Britain’s Risky Move In Ukraine That May Make Nuclear War With Russia Scarily More Likely” HERE)

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