Anonymous ID: 70cb38 Jan. 9, 2019, 10:05 p.m. No.4690792   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>0829 >>0830 >>0847 >>0879

‘Officials' worst nightmare’: Yellow Vests hope to trigger bank run with financial protest

 

Yellow Vest protesters are hoping to trigger a bank run with a nationwide coordinated cash withdrawal. By threatening the French financial system, protesters say, they want to peacefully force the government to pass their reforms.

 

“If the banks weaken, the state weakens immediately,” said Yellow Vest “sympathizer” Tahz San on Facebook. “It’s elected officials' worst nightmare.”

 

Protesters plan to empty their bank accounts on Saturday, withdrawing as much money as possible in a bid to undermine the French banks – if not the euro itself. The plan is to “scare the state legally and without violence,” forcing the government to adopt the movement’s Citizens’ Referendum Initiative, which would allow citizens to propose and vote on new laws.  

 

“We are going to get our bread back…you’re making money with our dough, and we’re fed up,” said protester Maxime Nicolle in a video message shared on YouTube. 

 

A well-coordinated financial action has the potential to bring the French banking system – and by extension the euro – to its knees, as banks always hold only a fraction of the funds the country’s citizens have in their accounts. However, most banks limit ATM withdrawals to a relatively low amount, meaning protesters would have to line up inside the banks to withdraw the rest of their money, giving the state plenty of time to place restrictions on withdrawals – though this would, no doubt, spark further protest.

 

The financial demonstration is a novel means of circumventing Prime Minister Edouard Philippe’s proposed crackdown on “unauthorized protests,” announced earlier this week after a particularly violent weekend of clashes with armed riot police – including an unexpected appearance by boxer Christophe Dettinger. Philippe has promised 80,000 security forces will be deployed for the next protest.

 

Meanwhile, there is tension within the movement itself, as some former protest leaders call for a political solution.

The government has urged the protesters to make their voices heard in a national debate instead of demonstrating in the streets as they have done for the last two months. The debate, scheduled for next week, will cover climate change, “democratic issues,” taxes and public services.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/448426-yellow-vests-financial-bank-protest/

Anonymous ID: 70cb38 Jan. 9, 2019, 10:21 p.m. No.4690890   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1013 >>1207 >>1416 >>1508

Collusion with… Ukraine? NY Times corrects its bombshell ‘Russiagate’ report

 

It was supposed to be a slam-dunk proof of “collusion” with Russia: President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort shared polling data with a “Kremlin-linked oligarch,” the NY Times reported. Except he hadn’t.

 

Documents submitted by Manafort’s lawyers in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “Russiagate” probe, unsealed Tuesday, were redacted improperly and showed that Manafort was in communication with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian-Ukrainian whom the FBI has “assessed”has “connections” with Russian intelligence based on where he went to college in the 1980s.

 

That was old news, however, so the Times needed something even more bombastic: citing an anonymous source described as “a person knowledgeable about the situation,” the paper reported that Kilimnik passed the data on to Oleg Deripaska, “a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin.”

 

“This is the closest thing we have seen to collusion,” the Times quoted Clint Watts, one of the professional Russiagate alarmists. And then… oops.

 

On Wednesday, the Times corrected the story: Manafort wanted the information sent not to Deripaska, but to “two Ukrainian oligarchs, Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov.” In the edited article, the two are described as people who had “financed Russian-aligned Ukrainian political parties that had hired Mr. Manafort as a political consultant.”

 

The very same anonymous person quoted about Deripaska is also the source for the claim that some of the polling data shared with – well, whoever – was “developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign.”

 

By pure coincidence, news outlets across the West also breathlessly reported on Tuesday about the unsealed indictment against Natalia Veselnitskaya – making sure they mention “Trump Tower” even though the charges against the Russian attorney had nothing to do with that 2016 meeting, but with a case involving notorious tax dodge Bill Browder. It all seemed like a perfect storm of “Russiagate” stories, on the eve of Trump’s address to the nation amid the ongoing government shutdown.

 

Even as the Times was trying to correct its own record, Trump’s critics in the media-political sphere were picking up the original story and running with it. Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), ranking member on the Intelligence Committee and one of the driving forces of Russiagate on Capitol Hill, echoed the quote Watts gave to the Times almost verbatim on CNN, declaring that “This appears as the closest we've seen yet to real, live, actual collusion.”

 

That is actually a shocking admission by Warner, since he’s claimed for years that the so-called Russian collusion is a proven fact, rather than a figment of conspiracy theorists’ rich imagination, driven by projection and profits to be made from “securing our democracy” in the wake of the 2016 presidential election.

 

If a semi-retracted New York Times story, relying on an unreliable anonymous source and mistaking Ukrainians for Russians, is the “closest”thing to proof of collusion, perhaps there is no ‘there’ there after all.

 

https://www.rt.com/usa/448427-manafort-russia-collusion-polling/

Anonymous ID: 70cb38 Jan. 9, 2019, 10:42 p.m. No.4691052   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>1207 >>1320 >>1416 >>1508

Trump threatens to end FEMA aid for California fires, says state needs to ‘get its act together’

 

US President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) aid to California in the wake of devastating wildfires there, saying that the state first needs to “get their act together.”

 

In a Wednesday morning tweet, Trump complained that “billions of dollars”are sent to California to combat forest fires, but claimed that with “proper Forest Management (sic)” the fires would “never happen.”

 

“Unless they get their act together, which is unlikely, I have ordered FEMA to send no more money,” Trump said, adding that it was a “disgraceful situation.” Wildfires ravaged California in November, leaving at least 89 dead and thousands of people displaced.

 

California Governor Gavin Newsom, who was sworn in this week, was quick to fire back at Trump, tweeting that disaster and recovery periods are“no time for politics” and claiming he was “already taking action to modernize and manage our forests and emergency responses.” A Democratic strategist who previously worked for Newsom also weighed in, quipping to Politico that Trump should be more concerned about the“dumpster fire that is his administration.”

 

Trump has made similar threats about FEMA funds before, saying in November that he might pull money for disaster relief because of what he called the state’s “gross mismanagement of the forests” – although Trump’s critics have pointed out that the federal government controls 60 percent of the forest land in California.

 

State officials have also dismissed Trump’s accusations, saying that forest management is only one element of the problem and claiming also that symptoms of climate change like stronger winds and dryer weather could also contribute to the fires.

 

Trump’s threats don’t seem to match up with his actions, however. In November, he declared a state of emergency in California and tweeted that he was eager to “alleviate some of the incredible suffering going on.”He even visited the state to see the destruction firsthand and toured what was left of one destroyed town, which had formerly been home to 27,000 people.

 

The president found himself the subject of mockery on social media during the visit, however, after claiming that Finnish President Sauli Niinisto had told him that frequently raking the forest floor would help avoid fires – a forest management strategy that Niinisto later denied suggesting.

 

https://www.rt.com/usa/448413-trump-fema-california-fires/