- Meet The Obscure Russian Bank Helping Venezuela Defy U.S. Sanctions
A new Bloomberg report has exposed deepening Russian-Venezuelan ties as the Nicolas Maduro government attempts to thwart aggressive U.S. sanctions amidst continued economic collapse while cut off from the global economy. Bloomberg names a little known Moscow-based state-run bank called Evrofinance Mosnarbank as a “key player” based on high level sources with direct knowledge of the bank’s role in giving Venezuelan companies access to the outside world, confirmed by recent statements of Caracas officials themselves.
It’s not the first time the obscure bank has made headlines as last May it was revealed to be the world’s only financial institution to sponsor Venezuela’s experimental and now already in trouble before official launch state-backed cryptocurrency – called the petro – allowing investors to buy the petro by wiring a minimum of 1,000 euros to a Venezuelan government account at Evrofinance.
The bank is increasingly involved in Venezuelan markets, with its unique capital structure set up to delicately evade punitive oversight mechanisms while tapping into alternative markets — something said to be the brainchild of Vladimir Putin and the late Hugo Chavez — especially useful now as Maduro is forced to depend on the likes of Turkey, China, Russia and Iran.
The Evrofinance Mosnarbank building in Moscow, via VOA News And now Bloomberg reveals the following:
Evrofinance Mosnarbank, which is jointly owned by Russia and Venezuela but not subject to sanctions itself, has been tapped by the Maduro government as an alternative to handle payments to its suppliers. What’s more, officials in Caracas are urging local banks and companies to channel international transactions through Evrofinance, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Without Evrofinance’s financial pipeline, transactions as simple as importing and exporting goods or wiring money to international companies or individuals are becoming increasingly impossible. According to the report, the tighter US sanctions have become the more emboldened Evrofinance’s activities in the pariah state become.
For a prime example of how the Moscow-based bank has remained “unmoved by these concerns” Bloomberg details the following:
In at least two meetings in the past month, central bank officials have told local private banks that they need to open Evrofinance accounts in order to take part in currency auctions, according to two people who participated in the discussions. Those auctions are now swapping bolivars for euros, yuan and other currencies instead of U.S. dollars, Economy Vice President Tareck El Aissami said last week.
And the report further cites unnamed sources with direct knowledge of the situation to say authorities are increasingly directing the oil sector toward the Russian bank. Bloomberg cites: “state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela SA’s contractors are also being told to open accounts with Evrofinance to receive payments abroad, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation.”
The only official statement that Bloomberg received on the matter after contacting Venezuela’s central bank and PDVSA, as well as the bank itself was from Evrofinance. The bank said in an email statement that its recent observable growth was “mainly due to shocks to the banking sector such as the rehabilitation of lenders and revoking of licenses from large players on the market,” but didn’t comment directly on Venezuela when asked. The statement continued: “An influx of clients from troubled banks due to these circumstances, as well as favorable fees, settlement speed and attractive interest rates for deposits, has had a positive impact on the bank’s performance.”
Essentially Russia and Venezuela perceive themselves as fighting a common bully in the form of American-led sanctions, so likely more Western pressure will push them further into a united front. Russia has already provided Caracas with billions in debt relief while being a lead investor the the state oil industry.
For its part Venezuela’s government purchased a 49 percent stake in Evrofinance in 2011, transforming it into a vehicle for binational trade and investment projects with almost $800 million in assets, according to Reuters. Russian state-controlled VTB and Gazprombank hold the rest of the shares – though these are under sanction by the US and Europe after the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Likely, the more visible Evrofinance becomes as a prime international financial vehicle in Venezuelan markets, and the more that local officials go on record directing contractors and Venezuelan companies its way, the more likely it is that the resulting headlines make it target #1 for the US Treasury Dept. and European regulators.
- Britain's Grooming Gangs: Part 3
Authored by Denis MacEoin via The Gatestone Institute,
Not all Muslims remained silent about the grooming gang problem. We have already seen how the new Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, a Muslim of Pakistani origin, took rapid action to open an enquiry into the crimes. A number of Muslim organizations and individuals have spoken out against the gangs, and condemned them for bringing their faith into disrepute. The integrative Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), for one, has spoken out strongly about grooming culture.
In May 2013, Julie Siddiqi, chief executive of the ISB, coordinated a Muslim-led coalition to campaign against offenders, known as The Community Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, which, in turn, was launched in Bradford with the backing of the Bradford Council of Mosques. The following month, a Muslim group called Together Against Grooming (TAG) declared that a Friday prayer sermon (khutba) would be read out in around 500 mosques across the country to draw attention to the grooming issue. The sermon was written by Alyas Karmani, an imam who has a background in psychology and serves at several mosques around Bradford. Karmani specializes in sexual counselling from a non-fundamentalist perspective and has worked on a PhD entitled, “The Crises of Masculinity and Urban Male Violence”. His detailed understanding of the grooming gangs and their various motivations are perhaps the most sophisticated yet advanced by a Muslim expert and should be taken into account by any present or future investigation.
Some other Muslim organizations such as the progressive Islamic Society of Britain have sent out sermons on the same issue. There can be no question that there is an important and growing range of Muslim reaction to the shame brought on the communities by the grooming gangs and the reluctance in many places even to talk about sexual matters. This reformist activity in the migrant community needs to be encouraged and backed by government resources.
There are, however, other, sometimes deeper aspects to the problem that still remain to be explored. Not all mosques agreed to read Karmani’s sermon, and some claimed — quite incorrectly, as it happened — that the grooming issue was a thing of the past. Many of those deeper aspects are directly related to the persistence of religious fundamentalism and a wide refusal among many to integrate within British society. Despite the efforts of moderate Muslims, mosques and institutions to stop young men and women travelling abroad to take part in jihad or bring back wives from abroad, many have done so. Sermonizing, even with good intentions, may not address the underlying reasons for seemingly anti-social behaviour.
Also in 2013, Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, and a controversial reformist, spoke out following the trial and conviction of six members of a child sex ring from Oxford. He contended that some imams were indirectly inspiring the grooming gangs through their contempt for non-Muslim women:
On one level, most imams in the UK are simply using their puritanical sermons to promote the wearing of the hijab and even the burka among their female adherents. But the dire result can be the brutish misogyny we see in the Oxford sex ring.
He wrote at length about the ways in which fundamentalist attitudes influenced some men:
True Islam preaches respect for women but in mosques across the country a different doctrine is preached – “one that denigrates all women, but treats whites with particular contempt”….
The men are taught that women are “second-class citizens, little more than chattels or possessions over whom they have absolute authority”…
The view of some Islamic preachers towards white women can be appalling. They encourage their followers to believe that these women are habitually promiscuous, decadent, and sleazy — sins which are made all the worse by the fact that they are kaffurs [sic for kuffar, pl. of kafir] or non-believers.
Their dress code, from miniskirts to sleeveless tops, is deemed to reflect their impure and immoral outlook. According to this mentality, these white women deserve to be punished for their behaviour by being exploited and degraded.
The largest and most influential of all UK mosques are those of the Deobandis, a highly conservative majority denomination in Pakistani Islam that also dominates the seminaries within the UK and in which future imams are trained.
According to the author and Investigations editor at BBCNewsnight, Innes Bowen:
What most Deobandi scholars have in common is a conservative interpretation of Islamic law: television and music for the purposes of entertainment, for example, are frowned upon if not banned; attitudes towards women are deeply conservative, with, for example, some scholars advising Muslim women that their religion does not permit them to travel any distance unless accompanied by a close male relative. That this description of such an austere brand of Islam sounds similar to that propagated by the Taliban in Afghanistan should not be surprising – the Taliban movement grew out of the Deobandi madrasas of Pakistan.
Many Deobandi and other fundamentalist preachers and online fatwa sitespromulgate the doctrine of al-Wala’ wa’l-Bara’, which may be roughly translated as “loyalty [to Islam] and avoidance [of unbelievers]”. This belief reinforces the need to stay away from, and even to have enmity towards, the inferior non-Muslim world. It is not far-fetched to see how, through this doctrine, a sense of total difference from, and contempt for, non-Muslims in general — and non-Muslim girls and women in particular — may have given many of the grooming gangs a debased level of justification, even self-righteousness in the members of the grooming gangs.
Hargey’s link between the grooming gangs and hard-line religious leaders is borne out by an article published in 2018 by the serious liberal newspaper, The Independent. The author is Ella Hill, one of the girls abused in Rotherham and now part of the largest child sexual abuse investigation. She begins:
As a teenager, I was taken to various houses and flats above takeaways in the north of England, to be beaten, tortured and raped over 100 times. I was called a “white slag” and “white c***” as they beat me.
They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn’t dress “modestly”, that they believed I deserved to be “punished”. They said I had to “obey” or be beaten.
Later, she refers to a Swedish government meeting in 2017, when it was stated that:
Sexual and gender-based violence is used as a tactic of terrorism by a range of today’s violent extremist groups. This makes it essential to address violence against women and girls as an integrated part in countering and preventing violent extremism.
She then argues that:
Religious indoctrination is a big part of the process of getting young men involved in grooming gang crime. Religious ideas about purity, virginity, modesty and obedience are taken to the extreme until horrific abuse becomes the norm. It was taught to me as a concept of “othering”.
“Muslim girls are good and pure because they dress modestly, covering down to their ankles and wrists, and covering their crotch area. They stay virgins until marriage. They are our girls.”
[Author’s note: Italicized in the original, but should probably have been in quotation marks. The passage is evidently meant to be words spoken by gang members who used her.]
She also emphasizes this religious background to her treatment, stating that “My main perpetrator quoted scriptures from the Quran to me as he beat me.” Nevertheless, she goes on to say that “Most grooming gang survivors I know absolutely condemn anti-Islamic hate, and we’re uncomfortable with English Defence League protests. We certainly don’t want random attacks on ‘all Muslims’. You can’t cure harm with more harm.”
The connection between fundamentalist religiosity, terrorism and gender crime is not as fanciful as it might have seemed at first. There are decent Muslims everywhere who work hard to counter all the anti-social and criminal activities in which so many of their co-religionists engage and the theological positions through which they try to justify what they do. But terrorist attacks, anti-Semitic hate speech, and sexual harassment of young white women are real crimes committed by a different kind of Muslim and must be addressed as such.
In a report published on December 12, 2017, the important Muslim counter-extremism think tank, the Quilliam Foundation, addressed at length the problem of the grooming gangs. Written by Quilliam’s CEO, Haras Rafiq with media strategist and researcher Muna Adil, the report, “Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation: Dissecting Grooming Gangs”, consists of a comprehensive data analysis of grooming gang cases identified in the UK since 2005. Ten case studies from 2010-2017 are also analysed in depth to help determine any similarities and identify any patterns that exist across the cases.
At the root of the problem seems to lie the fact that many Muslim men have failed to integrate into British society. According to Muna Adil:
There are elements from within the British Pakistani community that still subscribe to outdated and sexist views of women embedded within their jaded interpretations of Islam. These backward views are passed down from generation to generation until the lines between faith and culture dissolve, making it increasingly difficult to criticise one without being seen as a critic of the other.
Quilliam’s findings echo a number of earlier reviews and surveys of the British Muslim community as a whole. In her 2016 government-commissioned review into integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities, Dame Louise Casey found evidence that the hardest group to integrate was the Muslim community. In her Executive Summary, she notes (paragraph 30) that:
People of Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnicity tend to live in more residentially segregated communities than other ethnic minority groups. South Asian communities (people of Pakistani, Indian and Bangladeshi ethnicity) live in higher concentrations at ward level than any other ethnic minority group. These concentrations at ward level are growing in many areas.
She adds that that, “Compared to other minority faith groups, Muslims tend to live in higher residential concentrations at ward level”. She continues:
[Paragraph] 32. The school age population is even more segregated when compared to residential patterns of living. A Demos study found that, in 2013, more than 50% of ethnic minority students were in schools where ethnic minorities were the majority, and that school segregation was highest among students from Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic backgrounds relative to other ethnic groups.
Again:
[Paragraph] 44. Polling in 2015 also showed that more than 55% of the general public agreed that there was a fundamental clash between Islam and the values of British society, while 46% of British Muslims felt that being a Muslim in Britain was difficult due to prejudice against Islam. We found a growing sense of grievance among sections of the Muslim population, and a stronger sense of identification with the plight of the ‘Ummah’, or global Muslim community.
She also highlights problems with the national language:
[Paragraph] 52. English language is a common denominator and a strong enabler of integration. But Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups have the lowest levels of English language proficiency of any Black or Minority Ethnic group and women in those communities are twice as likely as men to have poor English.
Finally, we should note her statement on gender equality, which is clearly linked to the Muslim communities:
[Paragraph] 57. … in many areas of Britain the drive towards equality and opportunity across gender might never have taken place. Women in some communities are facing a double onslaught of gender inequality, combined with religious, cultural and social barriers preventing them from accessing even their basic rights as British residents. And violence against women remains all too prevalent in domestic abuse but also in other criminal practices such as female genital mutilation, forced marriage and so-called “honour” based crime.
Casey was not the first to draw attention to most of these issues. In 2007, the British think tank Policy Exchange, published a detailed report titled “Living apart together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism”, written by three young Asian researchers. Their most striking finding, drawn from a survey, was that the youngest generation (16-24 year olds) were more radical in their beliefs than their grandparents (55+ year olds). Thus, 37% of the youngest would prefer to live under shari’a law than British law, compared to only 17% of their elders; 36% of the youngest believe that if a Muslim converts to another religion they must be punished by death, compared to only 19% of the oldest; a high 74% of 16-24 year olds prefer Muslim women to wear the veil, compared to a mere 28% of 55+ year olds — an astonishing reversal. Most immigrant communities — notably Jews, Italians, Irish, Poles and others in the United States’ “melting pot” — come to identify with their host country within the second and third generation, and that has been largely true of the United Kingdom.
One particular feature that distinguishes Muslims from the rest of the increasingly secular UK population is the extent to which religion plays a major role in people’s lives. Figure 2 of the report shows that 66% agree strongly and another 20% of Muslims tend to agree that “My religion is the most important thing in my life”. In Figure 1, 49% say they pray the full 5 times a day, and 22% 1-3 times a day, with a tiny 5% replying “never”. It is important to read the report in full. for it has many supportive things to say about British Muslims:
However, there is also considerable diversity amongst Muslims, with many adopting a more secular approach to their religion. The majority of Muslims feel they have as much, if not more, in common with non-Muslims in Britain as with Muslims abroad. There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not. For these reasons, we should be wary of treating the entire Muslim population as a monolith with special needs that are different to the rest of the population.
An extensive poll of Muslim opinion conducted in 2016 by ICM showed that things were much the same or worse than in 2007. It was reported on by Trevor Phillips, a son of Caribbean immigrants and former chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission. In an article for the Sunday Times, he expressed his deep frustration with the Muslim failure to integrate:
…for a long time, I too thought that Europe’s Muslims would become like previous waves of migrants, gradually abandoning their ancestral ways, wearing their religious and cultural baggage lightly, and gradually blending into Britain’s diverse identity landscape. I should have known better.
Another 2016 survey, carried out by a Czech think tank, European Values, found that some 44% of Muslims held views corresponding to radical Islamic fundamentalism.
“The survey discovered 57 percent of Muslims reject homosexuals as friends, 45 percent said they don’t trust the Jews and 54 percent think of the West as an enemy of Islam. Among fundamentalist Muslims, 72 percent of respondents said they would use violence to defend Islam. Among regular Muslims, that number amounted to 35 percent.
“An incredibly large number of Muslims want Islamic Sharia law to dominate over local laws. For instance, 72 percent of Muslims in France want to see Sharia as the main or only source of law in the country. That figure remains astonishingly high in the United Kingdom at 69 percent.”
- Will Ireland Decriminalise Blasphemy?
Today, Ireland will hold a referendum to decide whether blasphemy should be decriminalised.
As of today, the Irish Constitution states that:
“The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.”
Although there has been no actual prosecution for blasphemy since 1855, Statista’s Martin Armstrong points out that its opponents say that its inclusion in the Constitution amounts to a restriction on the freedom of expression. Liam Herrick, director of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties issued a statement on Monday in which he said:
“Criminalising blasphemy has no place in a modern democracy such as ours. Irish people don’t want criminal prosecution for those who call into question the authority of religious teachings“.
The Irish Catholic Church has also admitted that the reference to blasphemy in the Constitution is “largely obsolete”, adding that it “may give rise to concern because of the way such measures have been used to justify violence and oppression against minorities in other parts of the world”.
Qualifying this however, it was also noted that the right of people to practise their faith without being subjected to attack or ridicule “needs to be acknowledged and respected”.
The law was brought most recently into the spotlight when Stephen Fry, speaking on Irish television, described God as “mean-minded” and an “utter maniac”. While the investigation was eventually dropped due to an apparent lack of people that had been outraged, the case has arguably led to tomorrow’s referendum to some degree.
The vote is to be combined with the presidential election and, according to a new poll by The Irish Times, a majority of voters are likely to vote in favour of decriminalisation.
You will find more infographics at Statista
- Two Stories From The Propaganda War
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Two recent stories about Russians have demonstrated how the news is selected and manipulated in the United States.
The first is about Maria Butina, who apparently sought to overthrow American democracy, such as it is, by obtaining a life membership in the National Rifle Association. Maria, a graduate student at American University, is now in detention in a federal prison, having been charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She has been in prison since July, for most of the time in solitary confinement, and has not been granted bail because, as a Russian citizen, she is considered to be a “flight risk.”
Maria, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, is now seeking donations to help pay for her legal defense as the Russian government renews demands that she be released from jail or be tried on whatever charges the Justice Department can come up with, but her release is unlikely as she is really a political prisoner.
The media has been silent about Maria Butina because the case against her is falling apart. In early September prosecutors admitted that they had misunderstood text messages used to support claims that she had offered to trade sex for access to information. Demands that she consequently be released from prison were, however, rejected. Her lawyer observed that “The impact of this inflammatory allegation, which painted Ms. Butina as some type of Kremlin-trained seductress, or spy-novel honeypot character, trading sex for access and power, cannot be overstated.”
In an attempt to make the Butina embarrassment disappear from the news, the Justice Department has proposed an unprecedented gag order to prevent her attorney from appearing in the media in a way that could prejudice a jury should her case eventually come to trial.
Currently there is no court date and Maria remains in jail indefinitely, but the press could care less – she is just one more Russiagate casualty in an ongoing saga that has long since passed her by.
Given the Maria Butina story and the hysteria over all things Russian it was perhaps inevitable that the tale of Kremlin interference in American elections would be resurrected and repeated.
Federal prosecutors are now reporting that another Russian woman has illegally conspired with others to “defraud the United States” and interfere with the U.S. political system, to include plans for conducting “information warfare” to subvert the upcoming 2018 midterm elections.
The complaint was filed on October 19th at a federal court in Virginia which handles most national security cases. According to the court documents, Elena Alekseevna Khusyainova, a 44-year-old resident of St. Petersburg in Russia, has worked as the head accountant for “Project Lakhta,” a Russian influence operation backed by an oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. According to the Justice Department, the operation “spread misinformation about US political issues including immigration, gun control, the Confederate flag, and protests by NFL players. It also used events including the Las Vegas mass shooting, and the far-Right rally in Charlottesville, to spread discord.”
Khusyainova, who is not likely to be extradited to the United States for trial, allegedly purchased advertising in social networks and also supported dissident groups. The accusation of the American authorities emphasizes the connection between Khusyainova and St. Petersburg businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was previously identified by the media as the owner of a ‘Troll Factory’ in St. Petersburg. In the U.S., several charges have already been brought against him and his staff, including interfering in the presidential elections in 2016.
The Maria Butina story reveals how there is a fundamental flaw in the justice system in the United States. When someone is found guilty by the media there is no way to right the wrong when the story shifts and starts to break down. The New York Times or Washington Post is unlikely to leap to the defense of the accused. Maria Butina has been raked over the coals in stories that were partly true but mostly false in terms of any criminal intent. She is still waiting for justice and will likely be doing so for some time.
The case of Elena Khusyainova is Maria Butina redux, only even more idiotic. No actual evidence is presented in the indictment and since Elena is in Russia and not likely to visit the United States, the entire affair is a bit of theater intended to heighten hysteria about the U.S. midterm elections. Is the U.S. electoral system really so fragile and what did Elena actually seek to do? The Justice Department is silent on the issue beyond vague accusations about trolling on the internet by Russians. One wonders who in the federal government ordered the investigation and signed off on the indictment.
Both Maria and Elena are victims of a politicized miscarriage of justice. Maria Butina should be released from prison now and allowed to pay her fine for being an unregistered agent before leaving the country. There is no justification for holding her in prison. And the indictment of Elena Khusyainova is not worth the paper it is written on. It should be torn up and thrown away.
- Top Communist Party Official Threatens Military Intervention Over Pence's Support For Taiwan
With the on-again-off-again trade war detente back in “off again” mode as China is once again refusing to bow to the US’s demands for concessions, and with military tensions simmering in the background as the US seriously considers withdrawing from the INF, the Communist Party’s top defense official demanded that the US end its aggressive policy toward China during a speech at the Xiangshan security forum in Beijing in front of a crowd of 500 foreign delegates from 74 countries (including the US).
According to the South China Morning Post, Wei Fenghe, the Chinese defense minister, criticized Washington for “seriously damaging the Sino-US relationship and mutual trust” by accusing China of interfering in the midterm elections and by characterizing China’s “debt diplomacy” as a neo-colonialist tool for acquiring foreign resources for its “One Belt, One Road” initiative.
Without referencing Pence by name (the Vice President delivered one of the most sweeping condemnations of China’s foreign and economic policies during a speech earlier this month), Wei articulated China’s “anger and resolute opposition” and demanded that the Trump Administration drop its aggressive posture toward China. “We strongly call on the US to remedy the mistakes, stop damaging China’s interests and the Sino-US relationship.”
The remarks followed similarly hostile remarks directed at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who became embroiled in a dramatic confrontation with China’s foreign minister during a recent trip to Beijing.
In the latest sign that the Trump Administration’s friendly stance toward Taiwan has rattled China, Wei, reiterating a threat made by numerous senior Chinese officials, warned that the mainland wouldn’t hesitate to bring the full brunt of is military to bear against Taiwan – and any country aiding the Taiwanese – if its rogue province tries to formally break away from the mainland.
Another senior CCP official, Li Zhanshu, a trusted ally of President Xi Jinping, issued a similar warning during the conference’s opening remarks on Wednesday. Li, chairman of the National People’s Congress and the third-highest-ranking official on the Politburo Standing Committee, denounced “confrontational thinking” – a veiled attack on the Trump administration’s policy.
He condemned what he implied were recent efforts by world powers to push other nations to form an alliance against China.
“The alignment is a small group that engages in exclusivity, and aimed at third parties,” Li told the dinner without naming the US.
“This confrontational thinking is an important reason for global unrest, and the main source of all international hotspot issues.”
A “Beijing-based source” (code for a senior Communist Party official) told the SCMP that Li’s aggressive speech represented Xi’s thoughts on the US-China trade war.
“Xi wants the trade row with US to stop as soon as possible, which he believes is also the common hope of some American politicians and entrepreneurs,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity．
Li said China’s adherence to the principle of formal non-alignment with or against any major power bloc was the way to go in international relations.
Dealing only with “the concept of reciprocity and win-win”, China advocated partnerships that sought “common ground” and “not aimed at third parties”, he said.
China “respects the choices of people all over the world for their independent social system and development approaches”, he said.
In the era of the global village, “no country can independently deal with all the challenges that humankind is facing, and no country can return to a self-enclosed system”, Li said.
Li added that cooperation was “the only choice” for the US if it hopes to have cordial relations with China, and that the two sides should try to resolve their issues with “dialogue and consultation.”
“Cooperation is the only correct choice for Sino-US relations: both sides will be hurt if they fight each other,” he said.
“The two sides should properly resolve problems through dialogue and consultation to ensure that Sino-US relations move along the right track.”
On top of the trade war, China-US relations have been hurt by US accusations that Beijing is trying to interfere in the upcoming US midterm elections.
“Some countries have adopted a series of wrong practices on the Taiwan issue, damaging the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait and threatening the region and peace,” Li said.
“[Beijing] firmly opposes [those independent moves] and will keep sticking to the principle of ‘peaceful reunification, one country, two systems’.”
It would also continue to “strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification with the utmost sincerity and best efforts,” he said.
The Xiangshan Forum has become a platform for China to try and persuade foreigner officials that its claims on the South China Sea should be respected – and that the US should seriously consider removing its weapons from the South Korean peninsula. Two issues that the US will likely never give up on.
- Twitter Bans Former Asst. Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts
Twitter has suspended noted anti-war commentator, economist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts.
The suspension came without warning and was noted by journalist Caitlin Johnstone and others Thursday evening:
Twitter appears to have suspended Paul Craig Roberts @PaulCraigRobert, a vocal antiwar conservative. Can’t find any info about it yet.
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 26, 2018
Paul Craig Roberts has apparently had his Twitter account suspended.
The censorship grows and worsens.
(I recognize that I’m now probably next since I’m tweeting this.) pic.twitter.com/yPaqpsSSzm— TF Metals Report (@TFMetals) October 26, 2018
Definitely suspended. Google links to @PaulCraigRoberts come up with this suspended notice. pic.twitter.com/AwAgnhK0qf
— Chris Lonsdale (@kungfu_mandarin) October 26, 2018
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Roberts, 79, served in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1982. He was formerly a distinguished fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, and has written for the Wall Street Journal and Businessweek. Roberts maintains an active blog.
He’s also vehemently against interventionary wars around the world, and spoke with Russia’s state-owned Sputnik news in a Tuesday article – in which Roberts said that President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty was a handout to the military-security complex.
The former Reagan administration official clarified that he does not think “that the military-security complex itself wants a war with Russia, but it does want an enemy that can be used to justify more spending.” He explained that the withdrawing from the INF Treaty “gives the military-security complex a justification for a larger budget and new money to spend: manufacturing the formerly banned missiles.”
…
The economist highlighted that “enormous sums spent on ‘defense’ enabled the armaments corporations to control election outcomes with campaign contributions,” adding that in addition, “the military has bases and the armaments corporations have factories in almost every state so that the population, dependent on the jobs, support high amounts of ‘defense’ spending.”
“That was 57 years ago,” he underscored. “You can imagine how much stronger the military-security complex is today.” –Sputnik
Roberts also suggested that “The Zionist Neoconservatives are responsible for Washington’s unilateral abandonment of the INF treaty, just as they were responsible for Washington’s unilateral abandonment of the ABM Treaty [in 2002], the Iran nuclear agreement, and the promise not to move NATO one inch to the East.”
Is this what got him suspended?
Roberts goes on to say that the ideology of US neoconservatives is “akin to the German Nazy Party last century” in their ideology of American supremacy and exceptionalism.
“Their over-confidence about their ability to quickly defeat Israel’s enemies and open the Middle East to Israeli expansion got the US bogged down in wars in the Middle East for 17 years … During this time, both Russia and China rose much more quickly than the neoconservatives thought possible.”
Dr. Roberts opined that US policy makers are seeking to weaponize the Russian opposition and “pro-Western elements” to exert pressure on Moscow into “accommodating Washington in order to have the sanctions removed.” On the other hand, the Trump administration’s new arms race could force Russia into spending more on defense, according to the author. –Sputnik
While we don’t know if Roberts’ Sputnik interview resulted in his Twitter ban 48 hours later, it’s entirely possible.
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- Military Plane Accidentally Drops Humvee On North Carolina Neighborhood
A Boeing C-17 Globemaster military transport plane accidentally dropped a Humvee onto a community in Harnett County, North Carolina, Wednesday afternoon, Fort Bragg officials confirmed.
The incident occurred around 1 pm in the small town of Cameron, which CNN said the Humvee landed approximately seven miles north of the intended Fort Bragg drop zone.
Tom McCollum, Fort Bragg spokesperson, said the plane was several miles from the military installation, flying at an altitude of 1,500 feet when the Humvee prematurely dropped.
“We don’t know what happened, but the platform went out early and landed in a rural area. There was no one hurt. No property was damaged,” McCollum said.
He said all three parachutes opened, and the vehicle landed between two homes on Walter Lane, off Gilchrist Road, which is between Jacksonville and Spout Springs.
James Gran, 78, lives on Walter Lane where the Humvee touched down. He said his wife was outside, saw the parachutes opening and screamed for him.
Moments later, Grant heard a loud bang as the Humvee and skid that it was secured to, weighing more than 3 tons, hit the ground with massive force.
“It sounded like a car crashing,” Grant said.
“When it happened, my wife and I went to see. We saw a parachute laying on the road.”
Grant called 911 because he thought a soldier(s) might have had a bad jump.
“That’s when everybody came,” Grant said, referring to firefighters, law enforcement, and the military.
Crews now working to get Humvee out of the woods. They say they are VERY lucky there was no damage to nearby structures, including homes @SpecNewsRDU pic.twitter.com/ET3nVKoNen
— Ian Dembling (@iandembling) October 24, 2018
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“A few moments later, they [first responders] told us there might be explosives and had us all move back.”
Bobby Brown and his wife live down the street from the incident.
The Browns saw parachutes coming down behind family member’s home. The Humvee ended about 300 feet behind the house.
The C-17 Globemaster was conducting a heavy drop from the 437th airlift wing based at Joint Base Charleston, McCollum said. The unit specializes in testing new equipment and procedures to support the aerial transportation unit of the military.
It is evident that either new equipment or human error was at play. The incident is still under investigation with the National Transportation Safety Board currently heading to the scene to get to the bottom of this massive failure that could have had civilian casualties.
- TSA Confirms Biometrics, Facial Recognition To Be Condition For All Air Travelers
Authored by Edward Hasbrouck via Papers, Please! blog,
Today the US Transportation Security Administration released a detailed TSA Biometric Roadmap for Aviation Security & the Passenger Experience, making explicit the goal of requiring mug shots (to be used for automated facial recognition and image-based surveillance and control) as a condition of all domestic or international air travel.
This makes explicit the goal that has been apparent, but only implicit, in the activities and statements of both government agencies and airline and airport trade associations.
It’s a terrifyingly totalitarian vision of pervasive surveillance of air travelers at, quite literally and deliberately, every step of their journey, enabled by automated facial recognition and by the seamless collaboration of airlines and airport operators that will help the government surveil their customers in exchange for free use of facial images for their own business purposes and profits.
The closest contemporary counterpart to what the TSA envisions for the USA is the pervasive surveillance and control of travelers in China through automated facial recognition by the Public Security Bureau.
Automated surveillance of air travelers by the TSA will begin with people who have “voluntarily” provided photos for other purposes such as background checks:
In the near term, TSA will deploy Credential Authentication Technology (CAT) to authenticate the security features of passengers’ ID credentials and allow Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) to retrieve passenger pre-screening status in near-real time…. In the future, TSA will be able to use TSA Pre✓® enrolled facial images for matching…. Moving forward, TSA Pre✓® will increase its access to and utilization of voluntarily-provided biometric data, including facial images, to modernize the trusted traveler experience for TSA Pre✓® travelers.
In a press release announcing its roadmap, the TSA says that:
TSA has already begun testing biometrics for TSA Pre✓® travelers…. As of September 2018, passengers who enroll in TSA Pre✓® or renew their membership in person are required to provide their photograph. Using applicants’ photographs, TSA will test facial biometric technology in TSA Pre✓® lanes at select airports once enrollment numbers support this testing.
The roadmap released today is dated September 2018. We’ve already begun to receive reports suggesting that the TSA may already be using automated facial recognition — without explicit notice or any obvious way to opt out — in “TSA Pre-Check” lanes at checkpoints at some airports. If you see something, say something: Ask whether facial images are being collected, by whom, for what purposes, and subject to what if any option to opt out.
In its next stage, the TSA Biometrics Roadmap envisions expanding automated facial image surveillance to include photos from drivers licenses and state ID cards:
Additionally, TSA will work with DHS and other stakeholders to ensure mobile drivers’ licenses (mDL) are REAL ID compliant and explore their acceptance at aviation security touchpoints across the passenger experience. Several state issuance authorities have started to securely provision mDL onto driver’s mobile devices in addition to issuing a physical license. These solutions may include biometric data that TSA could leverage for identity verification…. TSA will explore opportunities to more effectively use existing information within DHS systems including DHS databases (e.g., IDENT/HART), State Department passport photos, and solutions that may broker verification touchpoints between federal and state systems.
The obvious “touchpoint” between federal and state ID databases would be DHS access to the SPEXS database of information from drivers licenses and state IDs. SPEXS is operated by a contractor of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA), and already includes personal information about more than 50 millionUS residents.
Participation in SPEXS is a de facto condition of state compliance with the Federal REAL-ID Act. SPEXS records sourced from drivers license and state ID databases don’t yet include facial images. But if AAMVA decides to add facial images to the SPEXS dataset, states won’t be able to say no without immediately becoming noncompliant with the REAL-ID Act.
AAMVA is listed among the “stakeholders” collaborating with the TSA. But AAMVA is identified as a “government” stakeholder, even though AAMVA itself claims to be a nongovernmental organization and is not subject to any of the transparency or accountability rules that would apply to a government agency.
“Various” technology vendors were consulted by the TAA and are, presumably, building this infrastructure of enhanced surveillance and control of travel, but are unnamed.
The TSA claims that:
TSA will adopt a “privacy by design” mindset that incorporates privacy considerations into each phase of biometric solution development (design, build, implement). Privacy protections will include restrictions to prevent the use of biometrics for purposes other than transportation security unless individuals have opted into other uses.
But that claim is belied by the fact that none of the stakeholders consulted by the TSA in designing its roadmap for automated facial recognition of travelers were travelers or privacy, civil liberties, or human rights experts or advocates. Other than the conclusionary claim quoted above, there is no actual consideration in the TSA roadmap of its privacy, civil liberties, or human rights implications.
Two other issues beside privacy are are also notably absent from the TSA roadmap:
First, there is no mention of the procedural due process required by the Constitution and the Administrative Procedure Act. The DHS has been sitting on a formal petition for rulemaking regarding its secret non-rules for biometric identification of travelers. But that petition is not mentioned in the TSA Biometric Roadmap. As usual, the TSA and DHS appear to be substituting administrative fiat for public notice and comment.
Second, there is no mention of the substantive legal basis, if any, for TSA authority to conduct this surveillance or of its compatibility with the First Amendment, the Privacy Act (which prohibits the collection of information about how individuals exercise rights protected by the First Amendment, such as the right to assemble, without explicit statutory authority), or the obligations of common carriers. What — if any — personal information an airline can demand of a passenger as a condition of travel, consistent with its obligations as a common carrier, under US law recognizing a public right of tranit by air, and under international aviation and human rights treaties, is likely to be a key issue in future litigation.
Travel is a right, not a privilege subject to arbitrarily imposed government conditions. Travelers should continue to “Just Say No” to demands for mug shots or ID papers.
- This Little Piggy Went Missing: Hog Prices Surge After Mysterious Shortfall Makes Traders Squeal
A funny thing happened on the way to hog slaughter this year; after much talk of the domestic herd swelling in size – and a setback after Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina which should have normalized by now, analysts expecting a a spike in slaughter rates have been left scratching their heads over a puzzling shortfall, according to Bloomberg.
Further compounding supply woes is a highly contagious pig virus, African Swine Fever, which is spreading rapidly through China – the world’s #1 consumer of pork. Several new outbreaks of the disease were reported his week.
The spread of swine fever in China is increasing the chances the Asian nation will need to import more of the meat, according to Cobank. China would likely buy from the European Union and Canada, but American producers could still capitalize on the reduced global competition in pork, the U.S. agricultural lender said in a report Tuesday.
The pig-virus outbreak has caused increased volatility for hog futures. A measure of 60-day volatility peaked last month, but could surge anew if the disease continues to spread. –Bloomberg
The combined factors sent hog futures up by the exchange limit of 3 cents on Wednesday, settling at 57.525 cents a pound – a spike of 11% this week.
“We don’t have this backup in market hogs like we expected,” said Rich Nelson, chief strategist at Allendale Inc. in McHenry, Illinois – who suggested that perhaps USDA estimates of rising animal inventories may have been improperly calculated.
Nelson says that the industry had anticipated a prolonged slaughter this year, topping 2.6 million animals per week – yet the actual figures have been consistently lower than expected, and are unlikely to breach the expected figures until just before Thanksgiving at this point.
“Where are all of the hogs?,” asked Archer Financial Services senior account exec, Dennis Smith last week. “We’re missing 4 percent to 5 percent” of the expected supplies, he said.
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