“The meeting welcomed Libya’s resumption of production and affirmed that it would continue to be excluded from the reductions at this stage....”#Libya#LibyaReviewhttps://t.co/f193zvfvUb
[IsraelTimes] Jared Kushner has been holding talks in both countries; resolving dispute could restore calm among US allies amid climbing tensions with Iran.
They really aren’t acting like they’re about to leave office.
[AlAhram] The final version of the $740 billion annual U.S. defence spending legislation would oblige the White House to select from a list of sanctions over the S-400s, which Washington says are incompatible with NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... operations
The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire... 's lira briefly slipped on Friday after U.S. politicians included mandatory Ottoman Turkish sanctions in a defence spending bill that moves Washington a step closer to punishing its NATO ally for buying Russian S-400 missile defences last year.
The final version of the $740 billion annual U.S. defence spending legislation would oblige the White House to select from a list of sanctions over the S-400s, which Washington says are incompatible with NATO operations.
U.S. President Donald Trump ...The tack in the backside of the Democratic Party... , who is set to step down next month, has said he will veto the bill over separate provisions. But he may need some support in Congress and it would be the first such veto in nearly 60 years.
Turkey's foreign ministry was not immediately available to comment.
Russia delivered the ground-to-air S-400s last year and Turkey tested them as recently as October. Ankara says they would not be integrated into NATO systems and pose no threat, and has called for a joint working group.
The threat of Western sanctions has weighed on the lira currency, which hit a series of record lows this year and weakened nearly 1% before recovering to 7.76 versus the dollar at 1019 GMT.
Sanctions could harm a Ottoman Turkish economy already struggling with a coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague) ...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men... -induced slowdown, double-digit inflation and badly depleted foreign reserves.
BIDEN TO BE TOUGHER?
Democratic President-elect Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden ...Candidate for president in 2020. I'm not working for you. Don't be such a horse's ass.... is expected to be tougher on Turkey than Trump, who had warm ties with President Tayyip Erdogan despite growing hostility among U.S. politicians towards Turkey's more aggressive foreign policy.
The defence bill includes sanctions under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which are designed in part to deter cooperation with Russia. The U.S. president would select from a list of mild to harsh possible sanctions.
"If Trump chooses from among the lighter sanctions I think given the global risk appetite we still can see a benign performance in the lira," said one Ottoman Turkish trader.
The bill is the result of months of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats. Once the House and Senate vote on it as soon as early next week, Trump, a Republican, has 10 days to veto or it becomes law.
Democratic U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen said in a statement that Congress did what Trump would not: "show President Erdogan that we will not back down when it comes to protecting our security and that of our faithful NATO allies."
Last year, Washington suspended Turkey from its F-35 jet programme over the S-400s.
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[Jpost] The resolutions are part of a package of close to 20 such texts that the UNGA passes annually. No other country has so many resolutions leveled against it.
The United Nations ...an organization conceived in the belief that we're just one big happy world, with the sort of results you'd expect from such nonsense... General Assembly approved five pro-Paleostinian and anti-Israeli resolutions on Wednesday, but all texts passed with less support than in 2019 and Israel interpreted this as a small victory in an otherwise dismal situation.
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[AlAhram] Facing crucial vote next year, Iraq’s Shia political groups are aggressively jockeying for power, targeting pro-reform protesters
With elections in Iraq only months away, the country’s Shia political factions, which have been in control of the government for nearly 18 years, are making preparations for their campaigns, fuelling speculation that the voting will be hotly contested.
Incumbent Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who came to power in May after months of political turmoil, has called early general elections for 6 June 2021, roughly a year earlier than they would normally have been held.
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[IsraelTimes] Report says ex-PM Olmert played top-secret recording of Fakhrizadeh for President Bush in decisive 2008 meeting that boosted US-Israel cooperation against Iran’s nuclear program.
Israel intelligence managed to recruit an Iranian official close to the recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and recorded the nuclear scientist speaking about his efforts to produce "five warheads" on behalf of the Islamic Theocratic Republic, according to a Friday report in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily.
How very clever of them. The Mad Mullahs were clearly right to be concerned about spy squirrels.
This top-secret recording was played in 2008 by former prime minister Ehud Olmert for then-president George W. Bush during a visit by Bush to Israel and was a key element in convincing the Americans to step up efforts to combat Iran’s nuclear program, the report said.
[IsraelTimes] Balad MK calls decision by Ra’am faction leader Mansour Abbas to skip out on vote and break ranks with rest of alliance ’a blow to the platform of the Joint List’
Joint List is a coalition of Arab-Israeli political parties bribed and coached into existence by then-President Barack Obama’s favourite political consultants with the open intention that together with Labour they would defeat Bibi Netabyahu. But it was an unnatural coalition that has done much to damage Israel’s Left, and appears finally to be falling apart. This is a good part of the reason for the nightly anti-Netanyahu protests across Israel, the other part being lockdown boredom.
Tensions rose in the Arab-led Joint List after one of its constituent factions skipped out on Wednesday’s Knesset vote on dissolving Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, deepening an internal rift in the umbrella party.
The decision by the Ra’am faction is being interpreted as a show of potential support for the premier, whose right-wing policies and alleged race-baiting have made him deeply unpopular among much of the Arab public, but whom faction leader Mansour Abbas has expressed an open willingness to work with.
[Jpost] The issue dates back to 1924, when the Supreme Moslem Council accepted Hussein bin Ali (Sharif of Mecca) as custodian of al-Aqsa Mosque.
Jordan is growing increasingly worried about reports suggesting that Israel has offered Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in the Soddy national face... control over the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, including Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, Jordanian and Paleostinian officials said on Thursday.
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[AlAhram] The confidential ineffective International Atomic Energy Agency report said Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... plans to install three more cascades, or clusters, of advanced IR-2m centrifuges in the underground plant at Natanz
Iran plans to install hundreds more advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges at an underground plant in breach of its deal with major powers, a U.N. nuclear watchdog report showed on Friday, a move that will raise pressure on U.S. President-elect Joe Foreign Policy Whiz Kid Biden
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
...Candidate for president in 2020. 
