- "Everything Is Under Scrutiny": 38,000 Layoffs Across Auto Industry May Only Be The Beginning
Automakers can’t help but acknowledge the global recession in their industry after a decade of growth. As a result, they are slashing payroll across the board, according to Bloomberg. Countries like China, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and the United States have all seen at least 38,000 job cuts over the last six months in the automotive sector. And this could just be the beginning of larger cuts to come.
Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche said Wednesday that “sweeping cost reductions” are ahead to prepare for what he is calling “unprecedented” industry disruption.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst John Murphy said: “The industry is right now staring down the barrel of what we think is going to be a significant downturn. The pace of decline in China is a real surprise.”
Automakers are cutting shifts and closing factories across the world but the cost cutting goes beyond that. Salaried workers are also being cut, a surefire sign that slowing sales in both China and the US are taking their toll. Additionally, the slow down is coming at a time when automakers have deployed significant capital to invest in electric vehicles.
We reported about Ford’s plans on Monday to cut another 7000 jobs, representing 10% of its workforce worldwide. And the recession, which was likely due to happen regardless of market conditions, comes at the worst possible time. It could be exacerbated by the ongoing trade war, which foreign carmakers have warned could put 700,000 American jobs at risk.
This chart shows all of the job reductions announced and reported over the last six months.
Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said Tuesday: “Auto companies globally are contemplating life where global production has greater downside risk than upside. The chopping may not be over for Ford,” he continued, estimating a 5% decline in revenue could result in 23,000 more layoffs in the future.
Meanwhile, global light vehicle sales were down 0.5% in 2018 to 94.8 million, which was the first annual drop in global sales since 2009. Zetsche concluded: “Everything is under scrutiny.”
- The World: What Is Really Going On
If you want to understand what is really happening in the world today, a mid-ranking official named Ian Henderson is vastly more important to you than Theresa May. You will not, however, find anything about Henderson in the vast majority of corporate and state media outlets.
You may recall that, one month after the Skripal incident, there was allegedly a “chemical weapons attack” in the jihadist enclave of Douma, which led to air strikes against the Syrian government in support of the jihadist forces by US, British and French bombers and missiles. At the time, I argued that the Douma jihadist enclave was on the brink of falling (as indeed it proved) and there was no military advantage – and a massive international downside – for the Syrian Army in using chemical weapons. Such evidence for the attack that existed came from the jihadist allied and NATO funded White Helmets and related sources; and the veteran and extremely respected journalist Robert Fisk, first westerner to arrive on the scene, reported that no chemical attack had taken place.
The “Douma chemical weapon attack” was linked to the “Skripal chemical weapon attack” by the western media as evidence of Russian evil. Robert Fisk was subjected to massive media abuse and I was demonised by countless mainstream media journalists on social media, of which this is just one example of a great many.
In both the Skripal and the Douma case, it fell to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to provide the technical analysis. The OPCW is a multilateral body established by treaty, and has 193 member states. The only major chemical weapons owning powers which are not members and refuse the inspections regime are the pariah rogue states Israel and North Korea.
An OPCW fact finding mission visited Douma on April 21 and 25 2018 and was able to visit the sites, collect samples and interview witnesses. No weaponised chemicals were detected but traces of chlorine were found. Chlorine is not an uncommon chemical, so molecular traces of chlorine at a bombing site are not improbable. The interim report of the OPCW following the Fact Finding Mission was markedly sober and non-committal:
The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody.
The fact-finding mission then returned to OPCW HQ, at which time the heavily politicised process took over within the secretariat and influenced by national delegations. 9 months later the final report was expressed in language of greater certainty, yet backed by no better objective evidence:
Regarding the alleged use of toxic chemicals as a weapon on 7 April 2018 in Douma, the Syrian Arab Republic, the evaluation and analysis of all the information gathered by the FFM—witnesses’ testimonies, environmental and biomedical samples analysis results, toxicological and ballistic analyses from experts, additional digital information from witnesses—provide reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.
However the report noted it was unable to determine who had used the chlorine as a weapon. Attempts to spin this as a consequence of OPCW’s remit are nonsense – the OPCW exists precisely to police chemical weapons violations, and has never operated on the basis of violator anonymity.
Needless to say, NATO funded propaganda site Bellingcat had been from the start in the lead in proclaiming to the world the “evidence” that this was a chemical weapons attack by the Assad government, dropping simple chlorine cylinders as bombs.
The original longer video footage of one of the videos on the Bellingcat site gives a fuller idea of the remarkable lack of damage to one gas cylinder which had smashed through the reinforced concrete roof and landed gently on the bed.
#شاهد صاروخ يحمل مواد كيماوية لم ينفجر لكنه يطلق الغازات الكيماوية حتى اللحظة.
الصاروخ سقط داخل أحد منازل المدنيين في مدينة #دوما يوم امس حيث وقع حتى اللحظة أكثر من 50 ضحية مدنية بالكيماوي كما سقط العشرات من الشهداء جراء قصف المدينة بشتى أنواع الاسلحة#الاسد_يقصف_دوما_بالكيماوي pic.twitter.com/OgXDA6z2eL— بلال أبو صلاح (@1BilalAbuSalah) April 8, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Now we come to the essential Mr Ian Henderson. Mr Henderson was in charge of the engineering sub-group of the OPCW Fact Finding Mission. The engineers assessed that the story of the cylinders being dropped from the sky was improbable, and it was much more probable that they had simply been placed there manually. There are two major reasons they came to this conclusion.
At least one of the crater holes showed damage that indicated it had been caused by an explosive, not by the alleged blunt impact. The cylinders simply did not show enough damage to have come through the reinforced concrete slabs and particularly the damage which would have been caused by the rebar. Rebar is actually thicker steel than a gas cylinder and would have caused major deformation.
Yet – and this is why Ian Henderson is more important to your understanding of the world than Theresa May – the OPCW Fact Finding Mission reflected in their final report none of the findings of their own sub-group of university based engineers from two European universities, but instead produced something that is very close to the amateur propaganda “analysis” put out by Bellingcat. The implications of this fraud are mind-blowing.
The genuine experts’ findings were completely suppressed until they were leaked last week. And still then, this leak – which has the most profound ramifications – has in itself been almost completely suppressed by the mainstream media, except for those marginalised outliers who still manage to get a platform, Robert Fisk and Peter Hitchens (a tiny platform in the case of Fisk).
Consider what this tells us. A fake chemical attack incident was used to justify military aggression against Syria by the USA, UK and France. The entire western mainstream media promoted the anti-Syrian and anti-Russian narrative to justify that attack. The supposedly neutral international watchdog, the OPCW, was manipulated by the NATO powers to produce a highly biased report that omits the findings of its own engineers. Which can only call into doubt the neutrality and reliability of the OPCW in its findings on the Skripals too.
There has been virtually no media reporting of the scandalous cover-up. This really does tell you a very great deal more about how the Western world works than the vicissitudes of the ludicrously over-promoted Theresa May and her tears of self pity.
Still more revealing is the reaction from the OPCW – which rather than acknowledge there is a major problem with the conclusions of its Douma report, has started a witch hunt for the whistleblower who leaked the Henderson report.
The Russian government claimed to have intelligence that indicated it was MI6 behind the faking of the Douma chemical attack. I have no means of knowing the truth of that, and am always sceptical of claims by all governments on intelligence matters, after a career observing government disinformation techniques from the inside. But the MI6 claim is consistent with the involvement of the MI6 originated White Helmets in this scam. and MI6 can always depend on their house journal The Guardian to push their narrative, as Guardian Middle East editor Brian Whitaker does here in an article “justifying” the omission of the Henderson report by the OPCW. Whitaker argues that Henderson’s engineers had a minority view. Interestingly Whitaker’s article is not from the Guardian itself, which prefers to keep all news of the Henderson report from the public.
But Whitaker’s thesis cannot stand. On one level, of course we know that Henderson’s expert opinion did not prevail at the OPCW. Henderson and the truth lost out in the politicking. But at the very least, it would be essential for the OPCW report to reflect and note the strong contrary view among its experts, and the suppression of this essential information cannot possibly be justified. Whitaker’s attempt to do so is a disgrace.
Which leads me on to the Skripals.
I have noted before the news management technique of the security services, leaking out key facts in a managed way over long periods so as not to shock what public belief there is in the official Skripal story. Thus nine months passed before it was admitted that the first person who “coincidentally” came across the ill Skripals on the park bench, just happened to be the Chief Nurse of the British Army.
The inquest into the unfortunate Dawn Sturgess has now been postponed four times. The security services have now admitted – once again through the Guardian – that even if “Boshirov and Petrov” poisoned the Skripals, they cannot have been also responsible for the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess. This because the charity bin in which the perfume bottle was allegedly found is emptied regularly so the bottle could not have lain there for 16 weeks undiscovered, and because the package was sealed so could not have been used on the Skripals’ doorknob.
This Guardian article is bylined by the security services’ pet outlet, Luke Harding, and one other. The admissions are packaged in a bombastic sandwich about Russian GRU agents.
Every single one of these points – that “Boshirov and Petrov” have never been charged with the manslaughter of Sturgess, that the bottle was sealed so could not have been used at the Skripals’ house, and that it cannot have been in the charity bin that long – are points that I have repeatedly made, and for which I have suffered massive abuse, including – indeed primarily – from dozens of mainstream media journalists. Making precisely these points has seen me labelled as a mentally ill conspiracy theorist or paid Russian agent. Just like the Douma fabrication, it turns out there was indeed every reason to doubt, and now, beneath a veneer of anti-Russian nonsense, these facts are quietly admitted by anonymous “sources” to Harding. No wonder poor Dawn Sturgess keeps not getting an inquest.
Which brings us back full circle to the OPCW. In neither its report on the Salisbury poisoning nor its report on the Amesbury poisoning did the OPCW ever use the word Novichok. As an FCO source explained to me, the expert scientists in OPCW were desperate to signal that the Salisbury sample had not been for days on a doorknob collecting atmospheric dust, rain and material from hands and gloves, but all the politics of the OPCW leadership would allow them to slip in was the phrase “almost complete absence of impurities” as a clue – which the British government then spun as meaning “military grade” when it actually meant “not from a doorknob”.
Now we have seen irrefutable evidence of poor Ian Henderson in exactly the same position with the OPCW of having the actual scientific analysis blocked out of the official findings. That is extremely strong added evidence that my source was indeed telling the truth about the earlier suppression of the scientific evidence in the Skripal case.
Even the biased OPCW could not give any evidence of the Amesbury and Salisbury poisons being linked, concluding:
“Due to the unknown storage conditions of the small bottle found in the house of Mr Rowley and the fact that the environmental samples analysed in relation to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Mr Nicholas Bailey were exposed to the environment and moisture, the impurity profiles of the samples available to the OPCW do not make it possible to draw conclusions as to whether the samples are from the same synthesis batch”
Which is strange, as the first sample had an “almost complete absence of impurities” and the second was straight out of the bottle. In fact beneath the doublespeak the OPCW are saying there is no evidence the two attacks were from the same source. Full stop.
I suppose I should now have reached the stage where nothing will shock me, but as a textbook example of the big lie technique, this BBC article is the BBC’s take on the report I just quoted – which remember does not even use the word Novichok.
When it comes to government narrative and the mainstream media, mass purveyor of fake news, scepticism is your friend. Remembering that is much more important to your life than the question of which Tory frontman is in No. 10.
For an analysis of the Henderson Report fiasco written to the highest academic standards, where you can find all the important links to original source material, read this superb work by the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media.
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Subscriptions to keep Craig’s blog going are gratefully received.
- How Washington Has Become A Warmonger's Paradise
Authored by Paul Pillar via NationalInterest.org,
Donald Trump needs to reclaim control over his policy toward Iran…
The current crisis atmosphere in U.S.-Iranian relations, in which the risk of open warfare appears greater than it has been in years, is solely, unequivocally due to the policies and actions of the Trump administration. To point this out does not mean that actions of the Iranian regime have not come to be part of the crisis atmosphere as well. It instead means that such an atmosphere would never have existed in the first place if the administration had not turned its obsession with Iran into the relentless campaign of stoking hostility and tension that has become one of the single most prominent threads of the administration’s foreign policy.
Without that campaign, and without the administration’s assault on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – the agreement that restricts Iran’s nuclear program – Iran would continue to comply with its obligations under the JCPOA and all possible paths to an Iranian nuclear weapon would remain closed. The channels of communication established during negotiation of the JCPOA would continue to be available to address other issues and to defuse any incidents that threatened to escalate into war (as was done during the previous U.S. administration). Whatever Iran has been doing for years in the Middle East, such as assisting Iraq in defeating the Islamic State and assisting its longtime ally in Syria, it would continue to do. In short, there would be no new threat and no crisis.
Some of the current discourse about Iran nonetheless makes it sound not only as if there is something new and threatening but that the Iranian regime is the initiator of the threat.
At least seven reasons account for this misconception.
One is the demonization of Iran that is rooted in genuinely nefarious things the Iranian regime did in the past and dates back to when Ted Koppel was talking to Americans every weeknight about U.S. diplomats held hostage in Tehran. Over the years other factors have contributed to the demonization, including domestic American political pressures connected to certain regional rivals of Iran that want to keep it weak and isolated. The result is lasting and pervasive suspicion that colors American perceptions of everything involving Iran, regardless of the facts of whatever is the issue at hand.
Second, and related to the demonization, is sloppiness in the discourse that, as Ben Armbruster has analyzed, infects even the mainstream press. The tendencies include playing back the administration’s formulations without questioning them, and habitual use of such tropes as “Iran’s nuclear weapons program” when the internationally verified reality is that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program years ago.
Third is the gap in time between the Trump administration’s provocations and Iran’s responses. The administration renounced the JCPOA a year ago, when it began waging economic warfare not only against Iran but against anyone else doing normal business with Iran. If Tehran had announced back then that it was no longer bound by the agreement’s restrictions, then the connection between provocation and response, and the true source of whatever crisis ensued, would have been more obvious. But the Iranian regime—deeply committed to the JCPOA and hoping to outlast Trump—abided by its obligations for a year, during which the topic fell out of the consciousness of most of the public and most members of Congress. Now, with Iranian leaders saying their patience is exhausted and talking about exceeding the limits of the JCPOA if the agreed-upon economic benefits do not materialize, it sounds to some inattentive ears as if the Iranians are instigating a nuclear crisis. In short, the patience of the Iranians has worked against them as far as image and messaging are concerned.
Fourth and probably most influential have been the Trump administration’s hints about supposed new threat information, accompanied by deployments of military resources and other U.S. saber-rattling. Details about any immediate new threats have been slow in coming, and the British general who is deputy commander of the anti-ISIS coalitiondebunked to reporters the idea that whatever Iran and its militia allies are doing represents a new and elevated threat. The Trump administration quickly tried to play down the general’s comments, and its talk about supposed new threats will continue to shape the discourse.
Persuasive details about new threats may never come, but they aren’t necessary for the administration to have the desired effect on public attitudes about Iran. That gets to the fifth reason, which is that the rhetorical drumbeat about Iran as a threat—even bereft of any threat information—shapes attitudes. It is worth remembering that the George W. Bush administration got a large proportion of the American public to believe that Saddam Hussein’s regime had been directly involved in 9/11. The administration induced that belief not so much through specific lies as through a rhetorical drumbeat in which “Iraq,” “9/11,” and “WMD” were constantly spoken in the same breath. Something similar is happening today.
The sixth reason gets to real, not just imagined, Iranian actions. The Iranians currently face an unmistakable threat of military attack by the United States. They hear a heavy stream of hostile rhetoric from Washington, see the U.S. military deployments in their backyard, and realize that people in positions of power in the Trump administration would welcome war with Iran. It is unsurprising and prudent for the Iranians to brace for a U.S. attack and to prepare to respond to it. Indeed, it would be irresponsible, from the standpoint of Iranian security, not to prepare for it. Such preparations may include “targeting” U.S. assets in the sense of planning what to try to hit in response to any U.S. attack. The preparations do not indicate any Iranian intention to initiate hostilities, but information gathered about them gets fed into the U.S. discourse as supposed “threat information.”
The seventh reason is less certain than the rest and involves the possibility of Iran initiating some minor actions, if only to send a message that it cannot be kicked around forever amid the U.S. hostility and pressure. A variation on this possibility, which Trita Parsi raises, is that Iran may practice some of its own brinksmanship to play upon Donald Trump’s desire not to get immersed in a new Middle East war. Tehran’s plan may be “to accelerate matters toward the point at which Trump will have to decide whether he is truly willing to go to war with Iran or if the strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ will not cross that threshold.” Some reporting from Washington suggests the Iranians have material to work with in the form of Trump being frustrated with the war-seeking John Bolton.
For Trump to reclaim control over policy toward Iran may right now be the best, however unreliable, hope for keeping the current mess from escalating into war.
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Paul Pillar is the author of Why America Misunderstands the World.
- Which U.S. States Have The Worst Roads?
Nonpartisan group Transportation for America has released a report detailing the deteriorating condition of the U.S. road network.
As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, it found that states are continuing to push ahead with the expansion of their roads while neglecting to repair and carry out regular maintenance on existing infrastructure, which is creating new financial liabilities. The share of roads in poor condition nationwide increased from 14 to 20 percent between 2009 and 2017. This is particularly concerning given that Congress has provided addtional federal funding for transportation infrastructure twice during that timeframe.
As of 2017, the U.S. would have to spend $231.4 billion annually to keep its existing road network in a decent state and restore the backlog of roads in a poor condition over a six-year period. Between 2004 and 2008, states collectively spent $21 billion per year on road expansion and $16 billion per year on maintenance and preservation. Between 2009 and 2014, spending on new projects came to $21.3 billion while while the collective outlay for maintenance totaled $21.4 billion. Despite that increase, the still considerable financial outlay on new roads will require considerable and possibly unsustainable investment in the years ahead.
When it comes to managing the balance between new roads and the maintenance of existing ones, some states are performing better than others. For example, South Dakota allocated 69 percent of its highway capital budget to road repair between 2009 and 2014. During the same period, Mississippi dedicated 4 percent to repair and 77 percent to expansion. Given how mismanaged funding is, which states had the worst roads in 2017?
You will find more infographics at Statista
According to the report, 53 percent of roads in Rhode Island are deemed to be in poor condition, along with 45 percent in California and 42 percent in Hawaii. Idaho and Tennessee were at the opposite end of the table with only 5 percent of roads in both states deemed to be in poor condition.
- Trust Is On Trial In Europe (And The World)
“It seems that if there was any truth to our language, ‘trust’ would be a four-letter word.”
Joel – “Risky Business”
Trust is the most important aspect of human endeavor.
Without trust there can be no interaction. No communication.
No friendship. No love.
No Commerce.
The key to understanding economics is understanding people. The basis for all human interaction is the basic trust that a trade once completed will be honored.
The global economy runs solely on trust. Without the trust that contracts signed today can be fulfilled tomorrow and disputes settled with a reasonable degree of amity, there can be no iPhones.
No Amazon.
No oil.
When politics become toxic, when the sides refuse to cooperate on the very basic functions of government, uncertainty reigns. And uncertainty filters down to the people getting up everyday, going to work and providing a home for themselves and their families.
It’s like that great scene in the classic movie “Trading Places” where Eddie Murphy talks about the guy who’s worried he won’t be able to buy his kid that “G.I. Joe with the Kung Fu Grip” for Christmas.
That guy was the barometer for the market. That guy knew something about trust.
I had one of those G.I. Joe’s as a kid. My dad rarely let me down in supplying the most important things on my Christmas list.
It’s part of the reason why I loved him and trusted him completely. He was very human, but he kept his promises and I always knew where the boundaries were.
He and mom did what they could without making promises they couldn’t keep.
That example, despite the heartbreaks and the setbacks, shaped my approach to being a husband and a father. I don’t make promises to my daughter or my wife I can’t keep.
The global economy works on the same basic principles as the trust between you and anyone close to you. Trust takes a lifetime to build and a minute to lose.
This is why I watch in horror as company after company betray the basic trust between them and their consumers. From Facebook to Google, Twitter to Mastercard they all now believe it is in their best interest to dictate terms to their customers.
They’ve moved from offering their services to people to judging them as worthy of using their product. They’ve broken the basic trust providing a place to communicate or do business free from bias that was sold to us when they needed us.
Now our opinions are inconvenient to their political and social goals.
But we know it doesn’t come solely from them. We know this pressure comes from powerful political forces intent on holding onto stolen power gained through years of inflation, legislation and media manipulation.
And they will, in the end, empower the competition that will destroy them. Because once you lose someone’s trust. No amount of convenience or enticements will bring them back.
The same holds true, if not more so, for political institutions. Brexit is proving that Britons who wanted out of the European Union were right that the political classes and monied oligarchy I like to call The Davos Crowd view the people as inconveniences to their consolidating power for their own betterment.
Brexit has destroyed the careers of two British Prime Ministers and will likely destroy both the Conservatives (Tories) and Labour before it’s finally done.
Theresa May’s resignation was met with cheers by the working class in the U.K. like England had just won the World Cup.
The media punditry, namely Ryan Heath of Politico, in love with the EU are already writing eulogies for it in anticipation of poor turnout giving voice to Euroskeptics who don’t represent the ideals of a united Europe.
Among Heath’s 12 people who have ruined the EU elections are Helmut Kohl, Angela Merkel and Mark Zuckerberg the very people who weaponized the Deutschemark (euro), immigration and censorship respectively.
Trust in the money, your community and your ability to express yourself are all under basic attack.
Donald Trump is single-handedly attacking the foundations of a global economy at a time when it is in no position to handle the shock of his bipolar personality disorders.
I wrote earlier in the week tariffs won’t fix what ails the U.S. because:
“We have diverted so much money and capital to education that we have cheapened its value in the labor market while encouraging two generations of kids to go heavily into debt to chase some dream of fame or fortune that had an ever-shrinking probability of ever coming true.
$100,000 for a Women’s Studies degree will not train you to run a production line. It won’t get your air-conditioner fixed. And it won’t prepare you to take responsibility for your wasted time and energy.
But what this will do is further destroy trust in our leadership as the premier place to do business in the world.
The gap between the U.S.’s legal infrastructure and the rest of the world’s is shrinking. Trust is breaking down. Countries like Russia are rising in trust while the U.S. falters.
In 2012 the U.S. ranked 4th in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business. We’ve since fallen to 8th. In 2012 Russia ranked #111 while today they rank 31st, which is better than that of China at #46.
And that rank rose sharply in 2018 along with India, who still has a long way to go.
Commerce seeds ideas and humans are very good at figuring out what is worth copying and what isn’t. The difference between a Frontier/Emerging Market and a Developed one is trust. Putting money into them is easy. Getting that money back out is the barrier to commerce and growth.
Every day Donald Trump wakes up and sanctions another company. Another CEO. And every day the world looks on in horror as the rules of trade change.
Every day is another day where trust frays a little more.
When it’s lost chaos follows. That is what we’re witnessing today and what will shape our investment decisions tomorrow.
What Price Chaos?
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- Israel "Shocked" After Germany Warns Jews Not To Wear Skullcaps
Germany’s top official on anti-Semitism has caused a stir by saying that he would not advise Jews wear skullcaps in certain parts of the country, according to AP.
Felix Klein said in an interview published Saturday that his “opinion has unfortunately changed compared with what it used to be” and that he couldn’t “recommend to Jews that they wear the skullcap at all times everywhere in Germany.”
He also said German police were not familiar with how to deal with anti-Semitic crimes:
“Many of them don’t know what’s allowed and what’s not. There is a clear definition of anti-Semitism and cops should be taught it during their training.”
He didn’t elaborate further on details of what he meant, including what times and places he was referring to. Germany is home to about 100,000 Jewish citizens, according to Haaretz.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin said on Sunday that he was “shocked” by the comment:
“The statement of the German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner that it would be preferable for Jews not wear a kippa in Germany out of fear for their safety, shocked me deeply.”
He continued:
“We will never submit, will never lower our gaze and will never react to anti-Semitism with defeatism — and expect and demand our allies act in the same way.”
The country’s main Jewish leader, Josef Schuster, also said last year that he “would advise people visiting big cities against wearing Jewish skullcaps”. He continued:
“It has long been a fact that Jews are potentially exposed to danger in some big cities if they can be recognized as Jews.” He added that he pointed that out two years ago, “so it is to be welcomed if this situation gets more attention at the highest political level.”
Three years before that, he also cautioned against wearing one in areas with large Muslim populations. His comments in years prior have been met with criticism from religious leaders in Israel. The country’s chief rabbi, David Lau, said that “skullcaps are a Jewish symbol they should continue to bear proudly.”
Last April, Germans wore skullcaps in protest of an anti-Semitic attack in Berlin. Meanwhile, statistics from the German government show that the number of anti-Semitic incidents grew in Germany last year, despite an overall drop in politically motivated crimes.
The German Federal Ministry of the Interior says there has been growth of 20% in anti-Semitic crimes in the country. Extreme right-wing activists were responsible for 90% of the 1,800 incidents in 2018.
Michel Friedman, former vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said: “When an official government representative tells the Jewish community they can’t be protected from violence, it’s a show of poverty for Germany’s legal and political reality.”
- China Hails Modi Victory – This Is Why
Authored by M.K.Bhadrakumar via The Indian Punchline blog,
The first Chinese commentaries have appeared on the outcome of the general elections in India. The timing is important, since the counting of votes is yet to take place in India. Yet, Chinese commentaries have presumed that the result cannot be contrary to the trend that the exit polls have indicated – that PM Modi is securing a renewed mandate to head another government.
This presumption is broadly in line with the estimations by Chinese commentators in the recent weeks and months. The Chinese commentators have not hidden their acclamation of the Modi government. Contrary to the common opinion among Indians that the Modi government showed a pro-US tilt in foreign policies, the Chinese (and Russian) opinion has been generally positive about Indian policies through the past 5 years.
China was not particularly perturbed that India has a deepening engagement with the US or that India’s non-alignment is in any great danger. This opinion was reinforced following Modi’s informal summit with the Chinese President Xi Jinping last year in April in Wuhan and with Russian President Vladimir Putin a month later in Sochi. It stands to reason that both Xi and Putin have sized up Modi from very close, intimate quarters and decided that they could do business with him even in new Cold War conditions.
In fact, in an extraordinary gesture of camaraderie, the Kremlin announced the decision to confer Russia’s most prestigious national award to Modi after the Indian election got under way.
A commentary by the “Observer” in the Chinese communist party newspaper Global Times on May 20 is self-revealing in its display of a sense of relief that Modi will be at the helm of affairs in Delhi at a critical juncture in the geopolitics of the region. The following excerpts will be of interest:
1. “Modi’s reelection will further stabilise and improve China-India relations. During Modi’s term of office, India’s relations with China show the trend of steady development. The meeting between President Xi Jinping and Modi in 2018 opened a new chapter for the two countries’ bilateral ties and laid the foundation for future relations.”
2. Admittedly, Modi’s actions have also triggered controversy in China — such as his initial bonhomie with the Tibetan leadership based in Dharamsala, his three visits to Arunachal Pradesh or the rising trend of Hindu nationalism (which “somewhat contained Modi’s policies towards China.) But these were actions with an eye of India’s domestic politics with the aim to “drum up support” for the Bharatiya Janata Party, while “generally speaking, Modi’s policies have been sound.”
3. “Modi separated political conflicts from economic cooperation, a wise move that brings reciprocal results to both countries (India and China). Modi knows that tense relations with China are not in line with India’s interests.”
4. “India joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank although the US and Japan strongly opposed… India has stuck to its policy of non-alignment and did not adjust its policies toward China according to Washington’s strategy for Beijing. These are all positive diplomatic achievements of the Modi administration.”
5. Looking ahead, “these policies will continue if Modi is successfully re-elected… Modi’s reelection benefits the continuity of his policies toward China and the two countries’ mutual trust.”
6. “India’s dispute with Pakistan is an important factor that influences China-India relations. China always encourages the two countries to build mutual trust through cooperation in trade, economies, anti-terrorism and other areas. As Pakistan and India are both members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, they will have more cooperation within the framework.”
The commentary draws satisfaction with the recent trend that India’s deficit in bilateral trade trade is steadily narrowing. And it envisages that the US-China trade war “provides more chances… (as) China will turn to India when it is looking for a substitute for imports.” Pharmaceuticals and computer software are particularly promising areas. Equally, the commentary is cautiously optimistic that India may take a fresh look at the Belt and Road projects in South Asia.
The Chinese commentators have consistently hailed Modi as a “reformer” who is taking India on a path of modernisation and rapid growth. In their judgment, Modi is far from dogmatic in foreign policies and has an open mind to expand cooperation with China, mindful of the advantages that such cooperation can bring to advance his development agenda.
In strategic terms, China is not overtly anxious that under Modi’s stewardship, India continued to expand its so-called “defining partnership” with the US. But the “red line” will be India’s strategic autonomy, which, in the Indo-Pacific context, narrows down to Modi hitching the Indians wagons to Trump’s regional strategies. In the Chinese assessment, Washington is eager to lure India into its bandwagon, but Modi has been doing a smart trapeze act by getting all good things from the big powers without really giving away anything that might erode India’s freedom of thinking and action.
Curiously, Russia also shares the Chinese view. To what extent Indian policies have figured in the Sino-Russian discourses we do not know — and we may never get to know. But India being a “swing state” in the contemporary world situation, its policies impact the Eurasian integration processes, which are at the core of the Russian and Chinese strategies. It is entirely conceivable, therefore, that Moscow played a significant role behind the scenes in getting the Chinese block removed on the Masood Azhar denouement.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the informal summit in Wuhan, China, April 2019
Without doubt, the delisting of the Azhar controversy from the litany of India-China discords is a defining moment in the trajectory of relations between the two countries. Conceivably, a period of creative diplomacy lies ahead as China takes over the chair of the Financial Action Task Force for the coming one-year period starting in July. (Xiangmin Liu, who currently serves as director-general of the legal department at the People’s Bank of China (China’s central bank) and concurrently as the vice-president of the FATF, picks up the baton of presidency for an one-year term from the US’ Marshall Billingslea at the meeting of the grouping at Orlando, Florida on June 16-21.)
Between the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the FATF, there is scope for dialectical thinking to arrive at a reasonable reconciliation of the seemingly contradictory and intractable issue of terrorism in India-Pakistan relations. This is where China’s unique position to promote reconciliation comes into play. The FATF plenary is of vital importance for Pakistan, as a decision will be taken whether the country should be moved out of the “grey list” or kept there due to any residual shortcomings. Of course, this would have significant bearing on Pakistan’s standing with multilateral lenders like the IMF, World Bank, ADB, etc. and in risk rating by agencies such as Moody’s, S&P and Fitch. Islamabad is attaching high importance to the FATF designation.
Significantly, EAM Sushma Swaraj is attending the SCO foreign ministers meeting in Bishkek on May 20. Swaraj will certainly run into her Chinese and Pakistani counterparts in Bishkek. The SCO summit meeting is due to be held on June 13-14. Suffice to say, if China is successful in cutting the Gordian knot of terrorism in India-Pakistan relations, a new vista opens up in the Sino-Indian relationship and we may see a new dawn in the politics of the region.
Quite obviously, China is conscious that the China-Pakistan-India triangle is at an inflection point. An influential “India hand” in Beijing’s strategic community, Ma Jiali, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, has been quoted in a Global Times report yesterday as saying that “the growing US presence would have limited influence on overall China-India relations” and in regional security, he underscored that China will continue playing a mediating role in India-Pakistan relations. Ma added China highly values its relations with both India and Pakistan. China will keep furthering its relations with Pakistan, and also attach great importance to India’s concerns.
The two Global Times reports are here — Modi reelection will further enhance China-India trust and China-India ties to stay healthy: US presence won’t influence good relations: expert.
- Manhattan Home Prices Tumble Most Since 2010… And Buyers Reappear
Proving that higher prices aren’t always better news, housing in Manhattan may finally be catching a bid after a nearly yearlong slump in prices has plunged far enough to finally attract buyers. Additionally, inventory growth finally looks to be slowing down.
Manhattan home prices were thrashed again in April, falling the most since 2010 – but this time, there may be somewhat of a silver lining. The falling prices caused buyers to “pounce”, resulting in 1,193 homes under contract during the month – more than any month since April of 2015, according to data provided by Bloomberg and StreetEasy. Perhaps deflation is not so evil after all.
StreetEasy’s price index fell 5.2% from a year ago to $1.11 million. The index measures change in resale prices for the same properties over time. It was the largest decline in the index since April 2010, when the index dropped 6.1%.
The newfound bid for homes could be a sign that Manhattan’s market may be emerging from a drought of buyers, who had been previously been sitting on the sidelines, scared of overpaying for properties. As prices move toward more realistic buyer expectations, capital has been put to work.
Grant Long, senior economist at StreetEasy said: “Sellers are finally getting that many of their price expectations were not realistic. They’re lowering their prices to a point that’s attractive to buyers.”
Here are some of StreetEasy’s additional findings:
- The most homes went into contract since 2015. The number of pending sales in Manhattan increased 26.6% from last year, up by more than 250. The number of homes entering contract in Upper Manhattan doubled year over year, from 66 to 132.
- Inventory growth slowed. While sales inventory growth remained in the double digits at 10.8%, it still moved at the slowest pace in 13 months. The volume of new inventory hitting the market shrank by 9.6% over last year.
- As sellers priced homes more strategically from the start, fewer made price cuts. The share of homes with a price cut fell slightly for the first time in 13 months. Some 14.1% of Manhattan homes saw a price decrease in April — down 0.6 percentage points from last year. The share of price cuts fell the most in the Upper West Side — down 2.1 percentage points to 14.2%.
- Luxury home inventory dropped slightly. The number of homes for sale priced within the top 20% of the market fell by 0.3%, the first year-over-year decrease in inventory since February 2018.
Recall, in early May, we wrote that inflated and overpriced retail real estate in Manhattan was turning the city into a “wasteland”. Later, the Post wrote an article confirming our writeup from late March which pointed out that high prices were driving businesses out of town:
If you want to see the future of storefront retailing, walk nine blocks along Broadway from 57th to 48th Street and count the stores.
The total number comes to precisely one — a tiny shop to buy drones.
That’s right: On a nine-block stretch of what’s arguably the world’s most famous avenue, steps south of the bustling Time Warner Center and the planned new Nordstrom department store, lies a shopping wasteland.
It appears that, despite what central bankers think, the only logical, and natural, response to high prices is, gasp, low prices. Unfortunately, while the Federal Reserve may be willing to ease back on US home prices, it has so far refused to do the same to the stock market. And just like unsustainably high prices resulted in the bursting of the housing bubble in 2007, so the inability of the market to deflate to a fair value will be the reason behind the next great bubble burst.
- Trump Is Making The Same Mistakes In The Middle East The US Always Makes
Authored by Patrick Cockburn via The Unz Review,
In its escalating confrontation with Iran, the US is making the same mistake it has made again and again since the fall of the Shah 40 years ago: it is ignoring the danger of plugging into what is in large part a religious conflict between Sunni and ShiaMuslims.
I have spent much of my career as a correspondent in the Middle East, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, reporting crises and wars in which the US and its allies fatally underestimated the religious motivation of their adversaries. This has meant they have come out the loser, or simply failed to win, in conflicts in which the balance of forces appeared to them to be very much in their favour.
It has happened at least four times. It occurred in Lebanon after the Israeli invasion of 1982, when the turning point was the blowing up of the US Marine barracks in Beirut the following year, in which 241 US military personnel were killed. In the eight-year Iran-Iraq war during 1980-88, the west and the Sunni states of the region backed Saddam Hussein, but it ended in a stalemate. After 2003, the US-British attempt to turn post-Saddam Iraq into an anti-Iranian bastion spectacularly foundered. Similarly, after 2011, the west and states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey tried in vain to get rid of Bashar al-Assad and his regime in Syria – the one Arab state firmly in the Iranian camp.
Now the same process is under way yet again, and likely to fail for the same reasons as before: the US, along with its local allies, will be fighting not only Iran but whole Shia communities in different countries, mostly in the northern tier of the Middle East between Afghanistan and the Mediterranean.
Donald Trump looks to sanctions to squeeze Iran while national security adviser John Bolton and secretary of state Mike Pompeo promote war as a desirable option. But all three denounce Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Popular Mobilisation Units in Iraq as Iranian proxies, though they are primarily the military and political arm of the indigenous Shia, which are a plurality in Lebanon, a majority in Iraq and a controlling minority in Syria. The Iranians may be able to strongly influence these groups, but they are not Iranian puppets which would wither and disappear once Iranian backing is removed.
Allegiance to nation states in the Middle East is generally weaker than loyalty to communities defined by religion, such the Alawites, the two-million-strong ruling Shia sect in Syria to which Bashar al-Assad and his closest lieutenants belong. People will fight and die to defend their religious identity but not necessarily for the nationality printed on their passports.
When the militarised Islamist cult Isis defeated the Iraqi national army by capturing Mosul in 2014, it was a fatwa from the Shia Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that sent tens of thousands of volunteers rushing to defend Baghdad. Earlier in the fighting in Homs and Damascus in Syria, it was the non-Sunni districts that were the strongpoints of the regime. For example, the opposition were eager to take the strategically important airport road in the capital, but were held back by a district defended by Druze and Christian militiamen.
This is not what Trump’s allies in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel want Washington to believe; for them, the Shia are all Iranian stooges. For the Saudis, every rocket fired by the Houthis in Yemen into Saudi Arabia – though minimal in destructive power compared to the four-year Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen –can only have happened because of a direct instruction from Tehran.
On Thursday, for instance, Prince Khalid Bin Salman, the vice minister for defence and the brother of Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, claimed on Twitter that drone attacks on Saudi oil pumping stations, were “ordered” by Iran. He said that “the terrorist acts, ordered by the regime in Tehran, and carried out by the Houthis, are tightening the noose around the ongoing political efforts”. He added: “These militias are merely a tool that Iran’s regime uses to implement its expansionist agenda in the region.”
There is nothing new in this paranoid reaction by Sunni rulers to actions by distinct Shia communities (in this case the Houthis) attributing everything without exception to the guiding hand of Iran. I was in Bahrain in 2011 where the minority Sunni monarchy had just brutally crushed protests by the Shia majority with Saudi military support. Among those tortured were Shia doctors in a hospital who had treated injured demonstrators. Part of the evidence against them was a piece of technologically advanced medical equipment – I cannot remember if it was used for monitoring the heart or the brain or some other condition – which the doctors were accused of using to receive instructions from Iran about how to promote a revolution.
This type of absurd conspiracy theory used not to get much of hearing in Washington, but Trump and his acolytes are on record on as saying that nearly all acts of “terrorism” can be traced to Iran. This conviction risks sparking a war between the US and Iran because there are plenty of angry Shia in the Middle East who might well attack some US facility on their own accord.
It might also lead to somebody in one of those states eager for a US-Iran armed conflict – Saudi Arabia, UAE and Israel come to mind – that staging a provocative incident that could be blamed on Iran might be in their interests.
But what would such a war achieve? The military invasion of Iran is not militarily or politically feasible so there would be no decisive victory. An air campaign and a close naval blockade of Iran might be possible, but there are plenty of pressure points through which Iran could retaliate, from mines in the Strait of Hormuz to rockets fired at the Saudi oil facilities on the western side of Gulf.
A little-noticed feature of the US denunciations of Iranian interference using local proxies in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is not just that they are exaggerated but, even if they were true, they come far too late. Iran is already on the winning side in all three countries.
If war does come it will be hard fought. Shia communities throughout the region will feel under threat. As for the US, the first day is usually the best for whoever starts a war in the Middle East and after that their plans unravel as they become entangled in a spider’s web of dangers they failed to foresee.
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