US Imposes New Sanctions on Iran

DOJ seizes $7 million in Iranian funds

On Tuesday, the Trump administration slapped new sanctions on Iran, continuing to ramp up the “maximum pressure campaign” in its final days. The new measures target Iran’s metal and steel sectors.

The Treasury Department blacklisted 12 Iranian producers of steel and other metals, as well as a Chinese firm the US accused of facilitating the Iranian production of metals.

Also on Tuesday, the US Justice Department announced that it seized $7 million of Iranian funds that will be “allocated to provide compensation to American victims of international state-sponsored terrorism.”

While Iran is listed as a state sponsor of terror by the US, no terror attacks on US citizens in recent history could be tied to Tehran. The only example the DOJ used was the 1979 hostage crisis. The DOJ said the funds were seized from individuals who transferred Iranian assets and subverted US sanctions.

The increase in sanctions on Iran could be an effort by the Trump administration to sabotage Joe Biden’s efforts to restore the 2015 nuclear deal. In November, President Trump’s envoy to Iran, Elliot Abrams, said the US will impose new sanctions on Iran “until the end” of the Trump administration.

https://news.antiwar.com/2021/01/05/us-imposes-new-sanctions-on-iran-2/

LIVE: Joint session of Congress counts Electoral College votes (Jan. 6) | NTD

Doing split screen showing inside and out

You deserve to hang cocaine Mitch

DEMs & RINOs happy with Georgia election results

DEMs & RINOs happy with Georgia election results

“Buckle Up!”: Schumer Drunk With Power After Ossoff Declares Victory

https://theduran.com/dems-rinos-happy-with-georgia-election-results/

Sitrep : China

This represents but a fraction of what is included in the Here Comes China newsletter. If you want to learn about the Chinese world, get Godfree’s newsletter here

Cover Photograph : Zhou Chengyu, a 24-year-old from Guizhou province (above) is China’s youngest ever space commander. She’s in charge of the rocket connector system, a “pivotal role.” The Chang’e 5 mission marked China’s third successful Moon-landing in seven years.

https://thesaker.is/sitrep-china/

Dems Close In On Full Control of Government

Democrats are closing in not just on control of the United States Senate but on full control of government, an eventuality that would ensure confirmation for President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet nominees and ease the enactment of a Democratic legislative agenda.

Raphael Warnock defeated Republican Kelly Loeffler in a close race called early Wednesday morning, and Democrat Jon Ossoff leads Republican David Perdue by just over 16,000 votes.

An Ossoff win would give Democrats 50 votes in the Senate, with incoming vice president Kamala Harris poised to break a tie; a Perdue victory would preserve the Republican Party's control of the upper chamber.

While Republicans have historically dominated runoff elections in Georgia, President-elect Joe Biden’s narrow victory in November along with a vocal campaign led by failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams fueled Democratic hopes that the party could prevail.

The results of the races will have enormous implications for both President Donald Trump and his successor. Among Republicans, the impact of Trump’s voter fraud allegations and his relentless attacks on the state’s top Republican leaders, will be hotly debated. Perdue led Ossoff by two points in the November election that forced Tuesday's run-off, and Trump is likely to shoulder the blame for Perdue's comparatively weaker performance.

Before results were even tallied on Tuesday evening, one top GOP operative voiced concerns that the president's allegations of voter fraud would undermine the party. "Given everything that has been going on down here, a half-billion dollars on TV, that field operation, … it’s hard to come to any other conclusion that when you’re underperforming in Trump-y or Republican areas, that the impact is all the extracurricular stuff that’s going on," the operative said.

For Biden, by contrast, Democratic victories would assure Senate confirmation for a slate of cabinet nominees that might otherwise face resistance from a Republican Senate and grease the skids for the passage of ambitious legislation.

Over the past two months, both parties flooded the state with historic sums: Spending in the races neared $900 million and is expected to exceed the total spent last year in the three most expensive Senate races in history combined, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The Senate races were also a referendum on Abrams’s leadership in the Peach State. The failed gubernatorial candidate has made it her mission to turn Georgia blue. Abrams on Wednesday is set to go with a statewide ad campaign urging Georgia voters to "check the status of your ballot" and referring them to a voter-fraud hotline.

https://freebeacon.com/2020-election/nail-biters-in-georgia-to-determine-senate-control/

Lt. General Michael Flynn: "The American People Will Not Be Fooled Again" by Deep State

https://www.judicialwatch.org/videos/flynn-deep-state-2/

Lin Wood

@LLinWood

·

5m

Mitch “Cocaine CCP” McConnell @senatemajldr

is a TRAITOR & Communist sympathizer. Lock him up.

https://twitter.com/LLinWood/status/1346888072177344512

Can't watch these criminals lie with impunity

Videos: Trump Supporters Breach Security at Capitol Building, Clash With Riot Police

Protesters merely doing what BLM has done for months.

Trump supporters have violated several layers of security fencing at the Capitol building in Washington, DC, prompting clashes with riot police.

Some claim that the demonstrators are attempting to occupy the Capitol building.

“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Thousands, police can’t stop them,” tweeted Elijah Schaffer.

0 Comments

Trump supporters have violated several layers of security fencing at the Capitol building in Washington, DC, prompting clashes with riot police.

Some claim that the demonstrators are attempting to occupy the Capitol building.

“This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Thousands, police can’t stop them,” tweeted Elijah Schaffer.

Hundreds of Trump supporters have stormed the barricades at the back of the Capitol and are marching toward the building. pic.twitter.com/68nB7QyiP9

— Rebecca Tan (@rebtanhs) January 6, 2021

Trump supporters are storming the grounds of the Capitol Building and tearing down fencing. pic.twitter.com/rEBIC9IUJq

— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) January 6, 2021

I don't know how police can contain this much longer.

Capitol Building – Washington, DC#StopTheSteal #DCProtests pic.twitter.com/V05Oc30Mhf

— Kitty Boomhauer (@KBoomhauer) January 6, 2021

The Capitol Hill buildings have been evacuated in response to the incident.

The confrontation happened after President Trump gave a speech to thousands at the March For Trump rally, which has brought together people from all over the country.

The scenes are no different from months of unruly protests by Black Lives Matter agitators, which the media described as “peaceful,” so presumably they’ll have no issue whatsoever with this.

In reality, the media has been hyping the threat of right-wing groups attending the march for weeks and will likely hyperventilate over the scenes, despite having supported similar behavior by BLM and Antifa activists for months.

https://summit.news/2021/01/06/videos-trump-supporters-breach-security-at-capitol-building-clash-with-riot-police/

PENCE = JUDAS

NOTABLE

UK judge justifies CIA spying on Assange citing debunked CNN report based on… CIA spying

The British judge ruling in the US government’s extradition against journalist Julian Assange justified a CIA spying operation targeting both the WikiLeaks publisher and the Ecuadorian government by pointing to debunked accusations published by CNN. Yet in a self-referential loop, the American media outlet’s dubious claims about Assange themselves ironically originated with a security firm that was spying on Assange for the CIA – and which is now facing prosecution in Spain for illegal activity.

While the UK judge ultimately decided not to extradite Assange, citing his deteriorating mental health and the likelihood of suicide in the draconian US prison system, her judgement nevertheless echoed and reinforced the US government’s unsubstantiated and politically motivated charges against the journalist. Thus she preserved the severe threat to freedom of the press and free speech that Assange’s persecution represented.

In one of the most brazenly political sections in her December 4 legal judgment, Westminster district judge Vanessa Baraitser cited a suspect report by CNN that accused Assange of conspiring with Russians to turn Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he was trapped in refuge for years, “into a command post for election meddling.”

Baraitser twice pointed to this dubious CNN article in order to justify a 24/7 CIA spying operation that targeted not only Assange, but Ecuador’s embassy and its sovereign operations and internal affairs as well.

What the British judge failed to mention is that the CNN report she relied on was itself based entirely on untrustworthy intelligence reports obtained from a Spanish security firm called UC Global, which secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the WikiLeaks publisher and Ecuadorian embassy staff. The director of that company, former Spanish military officer David Morales, was arrested by Spanish police in 2019, and is currently under investigation by Spain’s top court for illegal practices.

In an exclusive report that exposed CIA spying targeting journalists reporting on Assange, Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal revealed the co-author of this deeply flawed CNN article, Arturo Torres Ramirez, as a right-wing Ecuadorian activist opposed to both WikiLeaks and Ecuador’s leftist former President Rafael Correa, who gave Assange asylum. Further, Blumenthal reported that Torres’ work has been supported by an NGO funded by the US State Department and UK government.

As I reported, that CNN article was authored by a right-wing Ecuadorian who worked for a NGO sponsored by the State Department & UK govt, and it relied on disinfo fed by UC Global, the CIA contractor that illegally spied on Assange https://t.co/hZAiIeor5M https://t.co/K0CywDFaPj

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 4, 2021

But that’s not the only issue with CNN’s reporting. A former top Ecuadorian diplomat who helped operate the London embassy when Assange was sheltered inside dismantled the CNN story point by point. In a detailed article for The Grayzone, titled “40 rebuttals to the media’s smears of Julian Assange – by someone who was actually there,” ex-consul Fidel Narváez documented dozens of misleading claims and outright falsehoods contained in the exclusive CNN report.

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/78950/uk-judge-justifies-cia-spying-on-assange-citing-debunked-cnn-report-based-on-cia.html

Lin Wood

@LLinWood

·

7m

Chuck “Jeffrey Epstein Buddy” Schumer @SenSchumer

is a TRAITOR, a Communist sympathizer & a sexual deviant. Lock him up.

https://twitter.com/LLinWood/status/1346889990173847555

Buildings Near Capitol Being Evacuated Due to Suspected Pipe Bomb

As Congress meets in a joint session to certify the Electoral College votes for president at 1 p.m. Wednesday, chaos has broken out on Capitol Hill with Trump supporters storming the grounds. Now reports are coming in of buildings, including the Madison building belonging to the Library of Congress, on the House side are being evacuated due to a suspected pipe bomb. The cannon House Office Building was also ordered evacuated.

Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard, “Hearing the Capitol Police evacuating buildings around the GOP Capitol Hill Club, including parts of the LOC Madison bldg, apartments, and House Cannon bldg…rumors of pipe bomb in back of the club…”

Roll Call reporter Chris Marquette, “Capitol Police alert: EVACUATE: Madison due to Police Activity. * Remain calm and move in a safe manner to the exits. * If nearby, take annunciators on the way out. * Close doors behind you but do not lock. * Proceed immediately to your designated assembly area"

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/reports-buildings-near-capitol-evacuated-due-suspected-pipe-bomb/

Democrats On Brink Of Controlling House, Senate And Presidency

When Donald Trump won against all odds in 2016, the GOP controlled the House, Senate and the presidency.

All they did with that power was give giant tax cuts to billionaires and globalist megacorporations, who in turn spent all their new money on deposing Trump.

The GOP failed to repeal Obamacare, blocked the entire legislative agenda Trump ran on and did nothing about Big Tech censorship (other than to demand more of it).

After losing the House in 2018, the GOP twiddled their thumbs until the last four weeks – at which point they went all out trying to f**k their voters over in every way possible with a 5,600 page, $2.3 trillion corona bailout/foreign aid/copyright-trolling extortion package and a $740 billion "America Last" NDAA which gave $38 billion to Israel (in addition to another $500 million in the corona package), blocked the president from bringing troops home from the Middle East and erased our nation's history.

Mitch McConnell insisted on blocking $2,000 checks for every American by calling it "socialism for the rich."

Sen. Mitch McConnell: "A huge chunk would be socialism for rich people, money going to households well into six figures who did not lose any jobs or income last year. The House Democrat bill is just simply not right approach." pic.twitter.com/mRjsCLR8XZ

— The Hill (@thehill) January 2, 2021

He had no similar problem with giving multi-trillion dollar bailouts to Wall Street in the previous corona package in April.

He also had no issue with giving over $38 billion to Israel (which currently holds $53.3 billion in US treasuries which they purchased with our money and now lend back to us with interest), which is rapidly becoming one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

McConnell's decision to block $2,000 checks is likely what will cost Republicans the Senate.

Not passing $2,000 stimulus checks may have discouraged Election Day turnout in Republican counties. #GeorgiaRunoffs

This was something Trump and 80% of Georgia voters supported. (Although the President was more focused on other talking points over the past couple months.) https://t.co/GKuI745xEa

— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) January 6, 2021

If Democrats secure two Senate seats in Georgia which they currently appear favored to do the Democrats come January 20th will control all three branches of the government, just as the Republicans did in 2016.

What are they going to do with that power?

If you believe Joe Biden, $2,000 stimulus checks are going to "go out the door immediately."

Biden says $2,000 checks to ‘go out the door immediately’ if Democrats win in Georgia https://t.co/W7ab9we1AU

— The Kansas City Star (@KCStar) January 5, 2021

If you believe the GOP establishment, we're going to get socialism and lose our access to hamburgers and plastic straws.

I don't believe either.

Pelosi has been dangling single payer healthcare as a carrot for Democrats for around 30 years.

"I will join with my colleagues here in working to see that the plan that the Congress passes contains as many of the provisions of single payer as possible, that it does not foreclose on an eventual single payer" - Pelosi, standing next to Bernie, at a press conf in 1993 pic.twitter.com/P4KZFzPWSC

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) December 23, 2020

When Democrats finally chose to pass healthcare reform, they gave us Obamacare, which was just a giant handout to the insurance industry.

Odds are we're just going to get more of the same agenda, representing the same moneyed interests, that we've been getting for decades.

What we're going to get is "wokeism" on steroids.

Rather than fulfill the wishes of their base and give the American people medicare for all, they're going to ban the use of "gendered terms" like "father, daughter, mother and son."

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61983

America’s Richest 1% Owned 5% in 1990, Own 36% Today

According to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s table that’s headlined, “Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989”, the percentage of U.S. privately owned wealth which is held by the richest 1% has risen from 5% in 1990 to 36% today, more than a seven-fold increase. If it had instead been a twenty-fold increase, then the richest 1% would already own the entire country, but they instead seem to be heading to reach that 100% by around the year 2035. They’ve been roughly doubling their percentage of America’s privately owned wealth every decade since 1990; and, at that rate, they’d reach 72% by around the year 2030. Once they own everything, everybody else would be either working for them or in debt to them. The poor 99% would no longer be able to buy what the companies that the richest 1% own would be offering for sale. Obviously, an enormous economic crash is coming, but no one can say how soon before around the year 2035 that mega-crash will occur.

That table starts in 1989, so doesn’t show the prior figures, but other studies place the start of the post-WWII increase in America’s wealth-concentration at around the year 1981. Prior to that, it had been pretty unchanged, for decades. Maybe Ronald Reagan was largely responsible for the change, but none of the subsequent U.S. Presidents did anything to reverse his “Greed is good!” policies.

Here is from Reagan’s interview, in the libertarian Reason magazine, on 1 July 1975, headlining “Inside Ronald Reagan”:

REASON: Are there any particular books or authors or economists that have been influential in terms of your intellectual development?

REAGAN: Oh, it would be hard for me to pinpoint anything in that category. I’m an inveterate reader. Bastiat and von Mises, and Hayek and Hazlitt – I’m one for the classical economists.

They had been the formulators of the “Greed is good!” philosophy, now called libertarianism (which in continental Europe is instead called “neoliberalism”). Prior to President Reagan, no U.S. President had been a libertarian. But the losing Presidential candidate in 1964, Republican Barry Goldwater, had been a libertarian. So, the “Greed is good!” philosophy had been respectable in the Republican Party for at least 16 years before a libertarian became elected President in 1980. Then, after Reagan, America has been in the Reagan Era, ever since. The Democratic Party merely adds hypocrisy to it, by condemning libertarianism. That stance (libertarianism while condemning libertarianism) is nowadays called “liberalism.” Such ideological hypocrisy has become a secular religion, which is believed especially by many religious people in America — “Let God do it!” (Otherwise called: adherence to natural law.) Among some, it is called “Prosperity Theology”. Since it effectively inducts the super-rich into a new type of sainthood, America’s billionaires — especially Republican ones — would never object to it. After all: it’s just another form of libertarianism, which already deifies the rich and despises the poor.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/06/americas-richest-1-owned-5-in-1990-own-36-today/

China Refusing Entry to WHO Team Investigating Origins of Coronavirus

China, which pledged full cooperation with the World Health Organization’s efforts to discover the origins of the coronavirus, is denying entry to the WHO team charged with looking into the matter.

The 10-person WHO team of experts was supposed to be on the ground in China soon after the new year. But, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, “Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permissions for the team’s arrival in China.” Or maybe it’s that they haven’t finished scrubbing their records.

Reuters:

The mission was due to be led by Peter Ben Embarek, WHO’s top expert on animal diseases that cross the species barrier, who went to China on a preliminary mission last July.

Two members of the international team had already set out on their journey to China. One has now turned back and the other is in transit in a third country, emergencies chief Mike Ryan said.

However, he added: “We trust and hope that is just a logistic and bureaucratic issue that can be resolved very quickly.”

The team of experts was named in November, so it’s not like China didn’t get a heads up that they were coming. In fact, Beijing solemnly pledged that the WHO team could work “without supervision.”

Not even a Communist bureaucracy works this slowly.

Ahead of the trip, Beijing has been seeking to shape the narrative about when and where the pandemic began, with senior diplomat Wang Yi saying “more and more studies” showed that it emerged in multiple regions. Ryan has previously called this “highly speculative”.

China has dismissed criticism of its handling of early cases that emerged in late 2019, although some including U.S. President Donald Trump have questioned Beijing’s actions during the outbreak.

Washington, which has announced plans to leave the WHO, has called for a “transparent” investigation and criticised its terms under which Chinese experts conducted the first phase of research.

China is claiming complete innocence of any effort to delay or impede the investigation.

CNN:

In a press briefing Wednesday, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying, said China had “always held an open, transparent and responsible attitude” on tracing the origin of the virus.

Hua said that China had previously welcomed WHO experts into the country and said that the UN investigation team and Chinese experts have “maintained frequent interactions” including four video meetings between October and December.

“In order to ensure that the international expert group that comes to China can work smoothly, it is needed to fulfill the necessary procedures and make relevant specific arrangements. The two sides are still negotiating about this,” said Hua. Spoken like a true Communist bureaucratic flunkie.

China doesn’t want anyone looking into the origins of the coronavirus. I’m not even sure the WHO is thrilled with the idea. China would simply prefer that the world accept the official propaganda explanation and go back to buying trillions of dollars in Chinese products. They don’t care if discovering the origin of the virus could prevent another pandemic or teach us anything about coronaviruses. They just want the issue to go away.

The WHO is probably not the best body to conduct an “independent investigation” into the origins of the virus, but at the moment, it’s all the world has to work with. China’s attitude makes it more than likely that they will talk a lot about cooperation with the investigation, but because they will have plenty of spies at the WHO giving them updates about the team’s progress, if someone starts getting close to an uncomfortable truth, they will shut it down.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/01/06/china-refusing-entry-to-who-team-investigating-origins-of-coronavirus-n1309678