- Mapping The Price Of A Pint Around The World
Whether you’re sipping a pint of kölsch in Germany or drinking a Heineken at a hotel bar in Hong Kong, there are a number of factors that can influence how much your beverage will cost. As Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley notes, cost of living is certainly a primary factor, but taxes, availability, type of establishment, type of beer (craft beer vs macro brew), and local tastes will also affect the price of your pint.
Analysts at Deutsche Bank recently gathered critical data on how much a pint of beer costs in various major cities around the world.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
STICKER SHOCK
Many of the cities that topped the price list have a higher cost of living, and it’s no surprise to see Singapore and Oslo rank near the top.
The city of Dubai, however, is a unique case.
Technically, drinking is only permissible for expats and non-Muslim residents in Dubai, and being drunk in public can come with serious consequences. That said, the city’s establishments serve beer with prices that reflect its high-end look and feel. Considering the scarcity and heavy regulations, those craving a pint might be happy to overlook the price tag of $12.
CHEAP THRILLS
The thirsty citizens of the Czech Republic consume the most beer by a long shot – a full 36% more than neighbors Austria and Germany. This is partially because demand is so high that companies are willing to compete on cost. As a result, beer is often cheaper than water in restaurants and pubs in Prague.
Manila’s low cost of living and steady supply of domestic beer earned it the lowest price per pint on the Beer Price List. San Miguel, the Philippines’ largest brewery, dominates with a market share of over 90%, and beer consumption is also on the rise in the country.
THE 48 PACK
The median price of beer in the 48 cities analyzed was $5.70, and below is the full list of cities ordered from most to least expensive pint.
It’s worth noting that the data collection focuses on expat (read: touristy) areas of the city. While that’s not a perfect picture of prices in a city, it does allow for a more consistent comparison of wildly differing markets.
And so, summing it all up – If you like beer, move to Manila…(and whatever you do, don’t move to Dubai).
- Crisis In Armenia & The Balance Of Power In South Caucasus
The changing geopolitical situation around the world, especially the Middle East; and the intensified cultural-ideological and class struggle both within individual countries and globally, continue to provoke reactive political processes. Recently, a new crisis has erupted in Armenia, a state in the South Caucasus.
The balance of power, self-perception of local ethnic groups, and the influence of socio-economic and cultural ideological groups on public policy have significantly changed in the country. These changes are multidirectional, increasing the risk of a new armed conflict.
On April 12, an acute internal crisis started in Armenia, a post-USSR nation and a traditional ally of Russia in the South Caucuses since the 1990s. The Armenian opposition triggered this crisis and used it to pursue a regime change, using various, among which unconstitutional, measures. Following a series of street riots from April 15 – May 2, Nikol Pashinyan, an opposition leader and a leader of the neoliberal, formally pro-US political party “Way Out Alliance”, became prime minister. Armenia is a parliamentary republic. Pashinyan gained his post on May 8 using a mobilized pro-opposition minority and pressuring the parliament with riots. The change in power occurred without bloodshed and without the direct actions of external actors.
Despite the formally pro-western position of his party, Pashinyan changed his public foreign policy rhetoric after the situation had entered into a revolutionary phase of the race for power. These changes are based on the need to act in line with the internal political situation and geopolitical reality. The bulk of the Armenian population does not consider themselves as the so-called “liberal thinking part of the middle class” neither economically nor culturally. In addition, there is an acute regional issue – an unresolved territorial dispute over the Nagorno Karabakh region and some nearby areas between Armenia and its Turkic neighbor Azerbaijan, also a post-USSR state. Pro-Armenian forces captured Nagorno Karabakh in the early 90s triggering an armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Further development of this conflict and the expected offensive by pro-Azerbajian forces was stopped by a Russian intervention in May 1994. By mid 2018, Nagorno Karabakh and the nearby areas are still under the control of Armenian forces, de-facto making it an unrecognized Armenian state – Arts’akhi Hanrapetut’yun (Arts’akh).
The 2018 political crisis and further developments did not strengthen Armenian positions over the Nagorno Karabakh issue. At the same time, the political situation in Azerbaijan remains stable. Azerbaijan, despite all existing problems, continues to develop, has a population over 3 times higher than Armenia and the economy is almost 4 times higher than Armenia’s GDP. At the same time, Azerbaijan maintains good working relations with Russia in almost all issues of the bilateral relations. Additionally, Azerbaijan is a natural historical ally of Turkey.
Turkey has recently overcome some of its differences, restored and strengthened its partnership relations with Russia. Additionally, Ankara has reached a tactical compromise with Iran. This along with successful actions in Syria allowed Turkey to significantly increase its influence in the region. Iran has also strengthened its positions through participation in ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. Teheran moved its positions closer to those of Russia and Turkey. In turn, Russia has expanded its activity far beyond the South Caucasus and is now employing an active policy in the Greater Middle East. The activity of these leading regional states has obviously come into conflict with the interests of the establishment in Washington. Each of these three countries, has its own format of relations with the US, which in each chase is characterized as uneasy.
From all the aforementioned regional players, Russia is the only power, which has been a strategic ally and a military defender of Armenia and its interests. Armenia is a member state of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU). It’s interesting to note that reading Wikipedia articles in different languages, it’s not easy to find info about Armenia’s participation in the CSTO and the ECU, which are crucial for this state. It’s also hard to find out the real role of Russia, Turkey and Iran in the modern history of the Southern Caucasus.
Meanwhile, the importance of the Armenian foothold in the South Caucasus for Russia has decreased. The importance of the Russian military base in Armenia has decreased because of the expansion of Russian military infrastructure in the Middle East, including naval and air bases in Syria. The political importance of Armenia has also decreased because of improved Russian-Turkish relations, which are strengthened by major joint economic projects, including the TurkStream gas pipeline and the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant. At the same time, Armenian has little economic value for the Russian state or private companies. Its only value is found in the nostalgic memories of a part of the Armenian diaspora with Russian citizenship. Additionally to the aforementioned factors, the Russian political leadership seems to be more cautious in forecasting and assessing the course of Armenian foreign policy, analyzing in depth actions and rhetoric of representatives of the Armenian elites. This shift was expected. For a long time, Armenia has pursued a foreign policy that was significantly at odds with the foreign policy position of its formal strategic ally. Furthermore, while enjoying Russian military protection, Armenia has declined to support Russia over key issues on the international agenda. A number of representatives of the Armenian elites, including the diplomatic corps, have claimed in unofficial conversations and remarks that Armenia should move to the pro-US camp.
The current situation is the result of a number of factors, including the social stratification in Armenia and the cultural-ideological influence on Armenia’s youth and elites. For example, the integration of rich Armenian families into the inner circle of the Washington establishment through a large Armenian diaspora in California; constant propaganda aimed at rewriting history and changing its focus; direct financial support of nationalist movements and neoliberal globalists etc.
Besides these, another factor is the cultural-ideological dominance of implanted postmodern consumerist values in the post-USSR states.
However, there are objective factors, limiting the maneuverability of the relatively pro-Washington establishment in Armenia:
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Armenian elites understand that without Russian’s participation region it will be virtually impossible to ensure the presence of Nagorno Karabakh in the zone of influence of Armenia; and possibly, the independence of Armenia itself. An analogy with Israel and its patron, the US, can be useful here. Without direct US support, the existence of an independent Jewish state would be impossible in the current situation;
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Armenia receives a notable cash flow from Russia through transfers from the multi-million Armenian diaspora, which includes employees as well as small and medium business owners. These people, in general, are still committed to conservative ideology or, by virtue of their age, retain the physical memory of events that took place 20-30 years ago;
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A number of ethnic Armenians keep large amounts of capital in Russia.
These restrictions do not allow Armenian elites to change foreign policy sharply without incurring painful consequences.
Despite the existing inconsistencies, Russia has taken an active position on the Armenian issue. All the necessary measures were taken to preserve Armenia in the orbit of Moscow’s influence.
However, this situation changed during the recent political crisis in Armenia. Surprisingly, Moscow distanced itself from the developing events. This Russian attitude has quietly contributed to the regime change carried out by the pro-Western minority. This was done despite repeated remarks by Pashinyan in favor of the Euro-Atlantic integration as the main priority of Armenian foreign policy. Later, during the power seizure, understanding the problems of Armenia and the region, Pashinyan changed his public rhetoric supporting the strategic partnership with Russia. However, his personal position as well as the position of his neoliberal party are well known and are unlikely to have changed.
The question arises, why did Russia choose a course for complete self-elimination and non-interference in the current crisis in Armenia?
Some believe that this may be linked to the possibility that the Russian leadership has drawn a lesson from mistakes made during previous actions in post-USSR states, for example from their failure in Ukraine or their partial failure in Georgia. So, the Russian nonintervention could well be linked to concern for its public image.Another point of view is that Russian strategy is based on the realpolitik approach. In the current regional situation, Russia will gain revenue from any developments of events in Armenia. The following scenarios or their hybrids are possible:
1) If the new Armenian leadership changes the country’s foreign policy course, or even breaks the military base agreement with Russia or withdraws from Russia-controlled international organization, Azerbaijan would, earlier or later exploit the new conditions to take back what it sees as its own lost territories – the Nagorno Karabakh region and nearby areas. The restoration of territorial integrity is one of the key foreign policy and military tasks of Azerbaijan and the ruling family of Aliyev. Turkey, still a NATO member state and a formal US ally, supports Azerbaijan in this intention.
If Armenia loses Russian support and an armed conflict over the Nagorno Karabakh region resumes, Azerbaijan’s forces are likely to take control of this area within 1-2 weeks. Certainly, the US would voice protests against the Azerbaijani actions and present an ultimatum to Azerbaijan but only if its forces enter into the territory of Armenia. In this scenario, Russia would act similarly and then, after the expected new internal crisis in the country triggered by military defeat, Russia would restore its influence in the region.
By then, the Nagorno Karabakh issue would be resolved because it would be in the hands of Azerbaijan, which is supported by Turkey, a NATO member state and a Russian partner in the region.
2) If the new Armenian leadership implements a double standard policy, de-facto conducting anti-Russian actions but keeping a pro-Russian public rhetoric and standing on ceremony, Moscow would get a formal pretext to reshape its presence, first of all military, in the region. Strategically, the military infrastructure in Syria is much more important for Russia. Additionally, Moscow would get grounds for shifting its diplomatic rhetoric over the Nagorno Karabakh issue, thus achieving closer cooperation with Turkey and Azerbaijan. If in this situation, Azerbaijan triggers the resumption of armed conflict over Nagorno Karabakh, Russia would remain a formal Armenian ally and a guarantor of its territorial integrity. Moscow would intervene into the conflict both politically and militarily, but only as far as necessary to prevent violation of Amrenia’s borders. Russia would not contribute military efforts to restore Armenian control over Nagorno Karabakh should the region be captured by Azerbaijan. In this scenario, Russia would keep and maybe even strengthen its position in the region once again acting as a defender of the Armenian nation.
3) If the new Armenian leadership shows political awareness and becomes engaged in not just a formal, but a real strategic alliance with Russia, the development of economic and cultural relations with the West would not detract from this alliance. Then, the Nagorno Karabakh conflict would remain frozen until the next major shift in the regional balance of power or until a political settlement of the conflict becomes possible. Russia would at least maintain its current influence and would maybe further improve its public image. While Armenia keeps a strong military political partnership with Russia, it is unlikely that Azerbaijan would make an open attempt to resume full-scale military hostilities.
4) The most unlikely scenario is that Armenia would fully shift its foreign policy course towards the US and enlist full support from its new “strategic” ally. The Russian military base would be replaced by a US one and the US would become a guarantor of the independence of Nagorno Karabakh or at least a military guarantor of its current undefined status in the case of a new round of military escalation with Azerbaijan. This scenario is extremely unlikely. Yerevan has little to offer Washington in exchange for the inevitable decline of US relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey. US forces are already deployed in the region, in Georgia. A new US military base in Armenia would not change the balance of power in the South Caucasus and the Middle East. Economically, Armenia also has nothing to offer the US. So, the only possible Armenian offer would be blatant anti-Russian propaganda in the Ukrainian or British scenario. In this case, Russia would turn to Azerbaijan, strengthen its alliance with Turkey, actively destabilizing the situation in Armenia itself, creating additional problems for the US in the region.
At this stage, it looks like the Armenian leadership is balancing between the scenario 2 and 3. In the future, the situation will develop depending on the level of strategic thinking of the new Armenian leadership and the inertia of the crisis situation created by Pashinyan, his supporters and sponsors for coming to power.
Analyzing the situation in the South Caucasus, one should remember that “the great game might never end”. A possible shift of Armenian foreign policy would certainly trigger a change in the local balance of power. Following unavoidable fluctuations, the system would return to find a temporary balance at a particular point. The big game will continue.
Some Turkish and Russian analysts believe that if Nagorno Karabakh returns to Azerbaijan’s control, a more stable system would be established in the region. This system would meet the needs of all three major regional actors. This position is based on the premise that Armenia is able to hold the system in its current quality and actually control the disputed territory only thanks to the balance between the formal traditional alliance with Russia and the unspoken patron-client relations between the Armenian elites and the Washington establishment.
Taken as a whole, the political crisis in Armenia is just the continuation of the events of “the Arab Spring” and “velvet revolutions”. It has once again confirmed the growth of global economic, demographic, cultural and civilizational issues paradigmatic to the development of civilization over the past 30 years.
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- German Officials Admit "Still No Evidence" From UK That Russia Poisoned Skripals
It seems notably fortuitous that the world is now distracted with the ongoing actions surrounding President Trump – whether in Quebec tweet-slamming PM Trudeau, or in Singapore ahead of his historic summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
We say ‘fortuitous’ since it offers UK PM Theresa May some breathing room as her dramatic, quickly determined, and globally propagandized claims that Russia was the culprit for the poisoning of the Russian ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter; remain entirely unsubstantiated by any proof.
However, just as May was hoping the world had forgot dozens of nations expelled hundreds of Russian diplomats on nothing more than her word and the constant Russophobic narrative pumped thru the eyeballs and earholes of the rest of the world; the Germans just threw a rather loud wrench in the slient-running PR campaign that has taken the Skripal-murdering Putin off the frontpage.
German media reports that the German government has zero evidence from the British authorities that could back London’s claims that Moscow was behind the poisoning of the Skripals
More than three months since the start of the probe into the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, RT reports that the UK is still conspicuously tight-lipped when it comes to any real evidence that could prove its accusations against Russia.
This week, the German government informed a parliamentary oversight committee during a closed hearing that it still has not received any evidence suggesting that Russia might well be behind the incident that took place in early March, German TV station RBB reports.
“It is [still] only known that the poison used in the attack was a nerve agent called Novichok, which was once produced in the Soviet Union,” Michael Goetschenberg, a correspondent of German ARD and an expert on security services, told RBB, commenting on the results of the hearing, which he is familiar with.
Apart from this information, which was released by the British authorities soon after the incident, no new data on Russia’s alleged implication in this case was provided to Germany so far, he added.
German intelligence has also found no Russian trace in this case so far, Goetschenberg said.
“The BND, Germany’s foreign intelligence… has also contacted its own sources and tried to verify the information [about Russia’s potential involvement] in some way,” he told RBB, adding that it eventually failed to find any evidence pointing to Moscow as well.
Russia has categorically denied any involvement, and has complained that the victims were not allowed visits by Russian lawyers and diplomats, and the results of the investigation were kept secret. The Russian envoy to the UK has on several occasions alleged that London was even trying to “destroy” evidence in the probe.
Just days ago, Scotland Yard said it was still following multiple leads in the investigation, adding that it still “cannot discuss the results at this stage.” The probe has already cost £7.5 million ($10 million) to British taxpayers, according to the region’s police and crime commissioner.
Meanwhile, both Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been released from the hospital, seemingly no worse for the attampted assassination using the world’s most deadly nerve agent.
Are we still supposed to believe that Vladimir Putin – the man who western media and politicians blame for meddling with US elections to get Trump elected, manipulating French elections (unsuccessfully), murdering reporters (that actually came back to life), causing Brexit, killing millions in Syria (and anywhere else that US hegemony is bring back democracy), enabling an entire nation’s athletes to take steroids, and probably causing LeBron and the Cavs to get swept – managed to mess up the delivery of a deadly military grade nerve agent to kill an old man and a young woman?
- Soros Slams "Schoolmarm" Clinton, Says "Ultimate Narcissist" Trump Will "Destroy The World"
Fresh off a series of losing California DA races that “ran into a brick wall,” Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros sat down for an interview with the Washington Post to discuss his view on the future and the current state of the world. And during the interview, he delivered the following assessment: “Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.”
Soros appears to be building on his previously presented view that Trump is adding to Europe’s existential crisis:
“The EU is in an existential crisis. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong,” he said.
To escape the crisis, “it needs to reinvent itself.”
“The United States, for its part, has exacerbated the EU’s problems. By unilaterally withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, President Donald Trump has effectively destroyed the transatlantic alliance. This has put additional pressure on an already beleaguered Europe. It is no longer a figure of speech to say that Europe is in existential danger; it is the harsh reality.”
He’s now arguing that President Donald Trump is “the ultimate narcissist” who would be “willing to destroy the world” to preserve his own narcissism.
Soros said he would support impeachment proceedings against Trump if Democrats win in a landslide in November, as long as their is some Republican support.
Soros, who has championed liberal causes like the European Union, has seen the world turn against his center-left ideology and embrace a more populist, nationalist strain of politics that has seen his foundations booted out of Russia and his home country of Hungary. Unfortunately, his recent failures – and even the stigma that’s attached to candidates who take his money – have only convinced him to redouble his efforts, instead of embracing an early retirement.
“The bigger the danger, the bigger the threat, the more I feel engaged to confront it,” Soros said Thursday.
“So in that sense, yes, I redouble my efforts.”
After spending “months” studying what went wrong in the 2016 election, Soros told WaPo that he had concluded that while Clinton would have made a “very good president,” she was not a good campaigner and “was too much like a schoolmarm,” Soros said.
“Talking down to people . . . instead of listening to them.” Soros-linked organizations gave Clinton some $15 million.
Soros also said he learned another lesson in 2016: The ease with which people’s opinions can be manipulated. “It’s so much easier to destroy trust than build it up.”
While Soros wouldn’t say which 2020 contender he’s supporting, he did single out one potential 2020 contender whom he hopes doesn’t get it – New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Soros blames her for forcing the resignation of Minnesota Sen. Al Franken – “whom I admire” – over images that surfaced showing Franken groping the breasts of a sleeping female journalist.
As WaPo reminds us, Soros gave money to Republicans in the 1980s and 1990s who opposed Communist dictators that Soros also opposed. But he turned against the Republican party in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq. Since then, he has become one of the Democratic Party’s most reliable and generous donors.
As we previously argued, the Deep State appears to be focused still on playing “The Delegitimization Card” (as opposed to “The Herbert Hoover Card” or “The John F. Kennedy Card”) for now and as ever Soros is the ring-leader.
There’s a joke that goes something like this…
Question: Why can there be no “color revolution” in the US?
Answer: Because there are no US embassies in the US.
To get the joke you have to understand the role the US played—through CIA officers based out of US embassies – in orchestrating various color-coded revolutions, really coups d’état, over the past 17 years:
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The Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia (2000)
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The Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003)
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The Orange and Euromaidan Revolutions in Ukraine (2004 and 2014)
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The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005)
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The Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005)
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The Jeans Revolution in Belarus (2006)
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The Saffron Revolution in Myanmar (2007)
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The Green Revolution in Iran (2009)… though that one didn’t work.
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The Grape Revolution in Moldova (2009)
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The Colorful Revolution in Macedonia (2016)
All of these AstroTurf revolutions have one thing in common. In each case, George Soros’ NGOs helped delegitimize the targeted government.
Of course, there were valid grievances against these governments. But the US Deep State manipulated these situations to advance its geopolitical agenda.
Here’s how it worked: Soros’ NGOs would help fund and organize “professional protestors.” Then they’d use color-specific branding to help rally others to their cause.
Soros has turned colored revolutions into a science. The pattern is predictable.
Now it’s playing out in the US.
It smells to me like the CIA and George Soros’ NGOs are trying to start a “color revolution” in the US, just like they’ve done in numerous foreign countries.
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And today’s WaPo interview is merely building on that effort…
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- The Geostrategy That Guides Trump's Foreign Policies
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
According to Alastair Crooke, writing at Strategic Culture, on June 5th:
“Trump’s US aims for ‘domination’, not through the globalists’ permanent infrastructure of the US defence umbrella, but through the smart leveraging of the US dollar and financial clearing monopoly, by ring-fencing, and holding tight, US technology, and by dominating the energy market, which in turn represents the on/off valve to economic growth for US rivals. In this way, Trump can ‘bring the troops home’, and yet America keeps its hegemony [America’s control of the world, global empire]. Military conflict becomes a last resort.”
He bases that crucially upon a landmark 6 November 2017 article by Chris Cook, at Seeking Alpha, which laid out, and to a significant extent documented, a formidable and complex geostrategy driving U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policies. Cook headlined there “Energy Dominance And America First”, and noted that,
“Towards the tail end of the Clinton administration and the Dot Com boom in 2000, [Trump’s U.S. Treasury Secretary until April 2018] Gary Cohn of Goldman Sachs had dinner with his counterpart at Morgan Stanley, John Shapiro. From this dinner was hatched an audacious plan to take control of the global oil market through a new electronic global market platform.”
This “global market platform,” which had been started months earlier in 2000 by Jeffrey Sprecher, is “ICE,” or InterContinental Exchange, and it uses financial derivatives in order to provide to Wall Street banks control over the future direction of commodites prices (so that the insiders can game the markets), by means of the financial-futures markets, locking in future purchase-and-sale agreements. It also entails Wall Street’s buying enormous commodities-storage warehouses and stashing them with such commodities — such as, in that case, aluminum), and so it influences also the real estate markets, and doesn’t only manipulate the commodities markets. Those vast storehouses (and the operation of the U.S. Government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to carry out a similar price-manipulation function in the oil business) are crucial in order for the entire scheme to be able to function, because without control over the storehousing of physical commodities, such futures-price manipulations aren’t possible. Consequently, ICE couldn’t get off the ground without major Wall Street partners, which are willing to do that. Cohn and Shapiro (Goldman, and Morgan Stanley) backed Sprecher’s operation; and Wikipedia states that,
“Wall Street bankers, particularly Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, backed him and he launched ICE in 2000 (giving 80 percent control to the two banks who, in turn, spread out the control among Shell, Total, and British Petroleum).”
This is today’s financial world – a world in which billionaires control the future directions of commodities-prices, and thus manipulate markets, and even determine the economic fates of nations. It’s not the myth of capitalism; it is the reality of capitalism. It functions by means of corruption, as it always has, but the corrupt methods constantly evolve.
However, Trump’s geostrategy goes beyond merely this, especially by bringing into the entire operation the world’s wealthiest person, the trillionaire King Saud, who, as the sole owner of the Saudi Government, which in turns owns the world’s largest corporation Aramco, which in turn dominates the oil market and which is also #6 in the natural-gas market (far behind the three giants, which King Saud is trying to destroy — Russia, Iran, and Qatar — so that the Sauds will become able to dominate even there). Trump’s geostrategy ties King Saud even more tightly than before, into America’s aristocracy.
King Saud, as Cook noted, is trying to disinvest in petroleum and reposition increasingly into natural gas, because outside the United States and around the world, people are seriously concerned to minimize global warming so as to postpone global burnout from uncontrollably soaring atmospheric carbon. Petroleum has an even worse carbon footprint than does natural gas; and therefore natural gas is the world’s “transition fuel” to a ‘survivable’ future, while solar and other alternatives take hold (even if too late). Despite all of the carbon-fuels industries’ propaganda, people outside the United States are determined to delay global burnout, and the insiders know this. King Saud knows that his petroleum-laden portfolio will have to diversify fast, because the long-term future for petroleum-prices is decline. And he won’t be able to control prices at all in the natural-gas business unless he’s got America’s aristocracy on his side, in the effort to keep those prices up (at least while the Sauds will be increasing their profits from natural gas). Unlike his dominance over OPEC, Saudi Arabia has no such position to control natural gas-prices. He thus needs Wall Street’s cooperation.
Cook said:
“The second objective was a switch from oil to natural gas, and when the U.S. [military] was obliged to leave Saudi Arabia, they [the U.S.] thereupon established their biggest regional base in Qatar, who co-own with Iran the greatest single natural gas reserve on the planet – South Pars.
Energy Dominance
In the four months since President Trump’s announcement, the market strategy developed by Gary Cohn is now being implemented and its elements are emerging into view.
Firstly, there has been a massive inflow of Managed Money into the oil market, particularly the Brent contract, which has seen the Brent oil price increase by 35% since the starting point, which I believe can be dated to the August Brent/BFOE Crude Oil option expiry on June 27th 2017. …
The dominant market narrative is that the backwardation in Brent is evidence of surging global oil demand which has emptied inventories and is leading the price to new sunlit uplands. However, I see the market rather differently.
Firstly, whether the Brent spot month is supported by financial, rather than physical demand, the result will still be a backwardation, and because few oil producers expect a price over $60 to be sustainable they therefore hedge and depress the forward price. In support of this view, I am far from the only market observer who believes that Aramco, and Rosneft would not be selling equity if either Saudi Arabia or Russia believed the oil price trajectory will be positive even in the medium term. …
This still leaves open the $64 billion question of which market participant is motivated and able to support the ICE Brent term structure for years into the future by swapping dollar risk (T-Bills) for long term oil risk (oil reserves leased via prepay purchase/resale contracts).
My conclusion by a process of elimination is that this Big Long can only be Saudi Arabia and regional allies, with Saudi Arabia now under the management of the thrusting young Mohammad bin Salman.”
However, I do not agree with Alastair Crooke’s “In this way, Trump can ‘bring the troops home’, and yet America keeps its hegemony [America’s control of the world, global empire]. Military conflict becomes a last resort.” I explained at Strategic Culture on March 25th “How the Military Controls America” and noted there that “on 21 May 2017, US President Donald Trump sold to the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia, an all-time-record $350 billion of US arms-makers’ products.” This means that not only Wall Street — the main institutional agency for America’s aristocracy — and not only American Big Oil likewise, are committed to the royal Saud family, but U.S. corporations such as Lockheed Martin also are. Vast profits are to be made, by insiders, in invasions and occupations, just as in gas and oil, and in brokerage.
Although Trump routinely talks about withdrawing U.S. troops, he does the exact opposite. And even if this trend reverses and America’s troop-numbers head down, while the U.S. economy becomes increasingly dependent upon Big Oil and Big Minerals and Big Money and Big Military, America’s military budget is, under Trump, the only portion of the entire U.S. federal Government that’s increasing; so, “Military conflict becomes a last resort” does not seem likely, in such a context. Rather, the reverse would seem to be the far likelier case.
War against King Saud’s chosen enemies (Iran, Qatar, Syria) and possibly even against the U.S. aristocracy’s chosen enemy, Russia (and against Russia’s allies: China, Iran, and Syria) — seems more likely, not less likely, with Trump’s geostrategy.
In fact, on 29 June 2017, when President Trump first announced his “Unleashing American Energy Event,” the President spoke his usual platitudes about the supposed necessity to increase coal-production, and what he said was telecast and publicized; but his U.S. Energy Secretary, the barely literate former Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, also delivered a speech, which was never telecast nor published, except that a few days later, on July 3rd, an excerpt from it was somehow published on the website of Liquified Natural Gas Global, and it was this:
“I want to address what Mr. Cohn was talking about from a standpoint of how important American energy is as an option, not as the only option, but as an option to our allies and to count[r]ies around the world.
At the G7 it was really kind of interesting. The first thing they beat on the table talking about the Paris accord, you can’t get out of it, and I was kind of like OK. Then we would go into our bilats and they’d go, how about some of that LNG you’ve got? How do we buy your LNG, how do we buy your coal? And it was really interesting, it was a political issue for them. This whole Paris thing is a public relation[s], political issue for them. We made the right decision, the President made the right decision on this. I think it was one of the most powerful messages that early on in this administration that was sent.
We are in a position to be able to clearly create a hell of a lot more friends by being able to deliver to them energy and not being held hostage by some countries, Russia in particular. Whether it is Poland, Ukraine, the entirety of the EU. Totally get it, if we can lay in American LNG, if we can be able to have an alternative to Russian anthracite coal that they control in the Ukraine. That singularly will have more to do with keeping our allies free and building their confidence in us than practically anything else that I have seen out there. It is a positive message around the world right now.”
If that was more the reality of Trump’s “Unleashing American Energy” policy than just the pro-global-burnout cheerleading of Trump’s mere words, then it seems to be — in the policy’s actual intent and implementation — more like “send more troops in” than “bring the troops home,” to and from anywhere. It is more like energy policy in support of the military policy, than military policy in support of the energy policy.
This sounds even better for the stockholders of Lockheed Martin and other weapons-firms than for the stockholders of ExxonMobil and other extractive firms. On 6 March 2018, Xinhua News Agency reported that, “U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn has summoned executives from U.S. companies that depend on aluminum and steel to meet with Trump this Thursday, in a bid to persuade the president to drop his tariff plan, media reported Tuesday.”
After all: Goldman has warehouses full of aluminum, and has the futures-contracts which already commit the Wall Street firm to particular manipulations in the aluminum (and other) markets. Controlling the Government so that it does only what you want it to do, and only when you want the Government to do it, is difficult. In any aristocracy, some members need to make compromises with other members, no matter how united they all are against the publics’ interests. This is the way it’s done – by compromises with each other.
- Dead Wrong: Visualizing How Perceived Causes Of Death Differ From Reality
The saying goes that nothing in this world is certain except for death and taxes.
And rightfully so, the inevitability of death is a prominent fear for many humans around the world. After all, death is universal, mysterious, immutable, and sometimes sudden – and it can shake up life in ways that no other event can.
But, as Visual Capitalist’s Jefff Desjardins asks: is how we perceive death, along with its common portrayal in media, something that is accurate?
PERCEPTIONS VS. REALITY
Like anything that is shrouded in mystery, death has accumulated its fair share of myths and half-truths that get baked into our stories, perceptions, and societies.
Even further, high-profile and tragic events like terrorist attacks, murders, and suicides dominate many aspects of the news cycle. As a result, the causes of death that media outlets are the most fixated on couldn’t be further from actual causes of human death as shown through statistics.
The following animation, which comes from Aaron Penne, compares three data sets to show that our worries and media coverage have become quite disproportionate from the actual data. The animation looks at the following:
- Which causes do we worry the most about? (Google Search data)
- Which causes are talked about in the media? (NYT and Guardian headlines)
- What are actual causes of death in the U.S.? (CDC data)
And as you’ll see, the data is quite different for each source.
We worry about cancer 10x more than we worry about heart disease, but in reality both diseases kill roughly the same amount of people. Meanwhile, the media is fixated on terrorism, homicides, and cancer, but heart disease – which kills more than all put together – receives almost no coverage.
MORE DATA ON DEATH
Actual causes of death are quite different from personal and media perceptions, but this data is not absolute either. After all, how someone may die depends greatly upon other factors like age.
Here are causes of human death in the U.S. graphed by age group:
The data shows that accidents are the leading cause of death for most ages up until 45 years old, at which case cancer and heart disease take over.
While the topic of death is grim, the above data and statistics can arguably help provide a more realistic outlook regarding one of life’s certainties. It also shows that humans and media are not necessarily rational about this topic, so it’s important to think about it independently if at all possible.
- Bitnation, Liberland, And Other Micronations Are Gaining Independence Via Crypto, But Crypto Alone May Not Be Enough
Authored by Simon Chandler via CoinTelegraph.com,
Ever since the “decentralised borderless voluntary nation” Bitnation was founded in July 2014, a slowly growing raft of startups and organisations have been attempting to seize cryptocurrencies as an opportunity to build entirely new nations from the ground up.
image courtesy of CoinTelegraph
Whether it be the landlocked Liberland or the seaborne Floating Island Project, they’ve taken cryptocurrencies and blockchains as the basis for a new way of organising how people live, interact and work. And even if they’ve approached the same fundamental task from varying angles, they all regard the decentralisation of crypto as a potential liberator from the top-down control of central governments, and from their inefficiencies and corruptions.
However, despite the evangelical fervour with which many of these projects have pursued their missions, almost all of them have encountered similar obstacles. Not only have the limitations of blockchain technology held them back, but they’ve also suffered from the unsurprising resistance of national governments, which are perhaps less-than keen on being usurped by crypto-states.
Funding, products and services
The Floating Island Project is the most recent would-be crypto-state to have garnered press attention. Initially announced in 2013 by the Seasteading Institute (itself launched in 2008 and boasting Peter Thiel as an early investor), it aims to found an indefinite number of floating cities in and around French Polynesia, with the target-year for the establishment of its first city being 2022.
In May, further details on the project were revealed, with the Seasteading Institute (SI) revealing that its inaugural island would accommodate 300 houses and be making use of its very own cryptocurrency, named Varyon (VAR).
Nicolas Germineau, the co-founder and MD at Blue Frontiers (a Seasteading Institute offshoot which oversees the token) told Cointelegraph:
“Varyon is a payment token which will initially generate revenues to fund the last steps of the pilot project and kickstart the ecosystem of Seasteads in French Polynesia. It will also be used widely afterwards as we build seasteads in more locations and establish relevant partnerships.”
While Blue Frontiers’ planned attempts “to establish Varyon as a useful currency in and around the Seasteads” might imply that VAR will form the essential bedrock of the Project’s financial system and economy, Germineau affirms that VAR won’t in fact be the only accepted currency on the island and its eventual siblings.
“It should be noted that we will not be forcing third parties to transact in Varyon among themselves, even within our SeaZone,” he says. “It is important to us to establish Varyon on its own merits and the onus is on Blue Frontiers to make it widely accepted, easy to use, and generally compelling enough to become a premier medium of exchange.”
Cryptocurrencies, interference, and taxation
In other words, cryptocurrency isn’t actually of indispensable importance to the day-to-day workings of the Floating Island Project, which could still theoretically operate without VAR. Instead, it’s using the digital currency in order to kickstart and boost its funding in a way that wouldn’t be possible via traditional investment, something which is common to certain other ‘crypto-state’ projects.
For example, Liberland is a crypto-state lying on a 7km2 patch of land situated between Serbia and Croatia. It’s because of a territorial dispute between the two Balkan countries (stemming from the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s) that the micronation’s founder, Vit Jedlicka, was able to lay claim to its small slither of territory in April 2015. But ever since, Croatian authorities have hounded the former Czech politician and the citizens of his new nation, with ‘President Jedlicka’ himself being arrested and fined in May 2015 for attempting to enter the newborn country.
Given the Croatian establishment’s persecution of Liberland (which is recognised by no other nation), it’s unlikely that receiving taxation (which is voluntary) and other funds in a fiat currency such as the Croatian kuna would be a good idea, with the harder-to-seize nature of cryptocurrencies being considerably more preferable.
Something broadly similar applies to Sol, also known as Puertopia. This is a (somewhat informal) ‘crypto-utopia’ settlement founded at some point in late 2017 in San Juan, Puerto Rico by child actor-cum-crypto entrepreneur Brock Pierce and a number of his fellow crypto-tycoons. According to a highly cited profile of Sol published in The New York Times, much of the attraction of “Sol” (or rather Puerto Rico) is its extremely lenient tax regime, with the US territory imposing no capital gains tax and no federal income tax.
As such, hugely wealthy investors such as Pierce can reside in Sol without having to hand much (or any) money to a central government, something which indicates that their plans to establish a self-enclosed economy revolving around Bitcoin is perhaps an extension of this principle.
As Reeve Collins, a resident of Sol and the founder of ‘blockchain app store’ BLOCKv, said in February’s profile:
“No, I don’t want to pay taxes […] This is the first time in human history anyone other than kings or governments or gods can create their own money.”
Libertarianism
Of course, the desire to avoid paying tax or to evade the jurisdiction of an existing, larger nation can point to a deeper principle than simply wanting to hold onto money and/or achieve fiscal independence. For most of the projects mentioned above, libertarian political values play a guiding role, and while the merits of such values are open to debate, they regard a minimal state, fiscal sovereignty and free trade as the greatest goods a nation can attain.
Starting with the Floating Island Project, aside from receiving early funds from libertarian Peter Thiel and being founded by fellow traveller Patri Friedman (grandson of economist Milton Friedman), the Seasteading Institute’s managing director Randolph Hencken has gone on record as saying:
“The underlying philosophy is rooted in a belief that we can do better with technology and innovation rather than ideology, politics and argumentation.”
Comparable views have been expressed by Liberland’s Vit Jedlicka, who said in February:
“For many years, I worked for lowering taxes and regulations in the Czech Republic, but I suddenly realised that it would be easier to start a new country than to fix an existing one.”
And much the same goes for the Free Society Foundation, announced in September 2017 by libertarians/crypto investors Roger Ver and Olivier Janssens. Its openly avowed aim is to “establish a rule of law based on libertarian principles and free markets,” and while it hasn’t outlined how it might harness the power of cryptocurrencies in order to realise this aim, Ver had hinted that an ICO was in the offing. He said in an interview given at the time:
“Thanks to cryptocurrencies, now there is a way to fundraise for people all over the world who are interested in this.”
Government resistance
However, mention of the Free Society Foundation’s potential ICO leads to the obstacles such projects have faced, since Ver admitted in the same interview:
“We were planning to have an ICO, but the regulators have kind of gotten in the way of that at the moment.”
Regulators – or rather governments – may have also gotten in the way of the Foundation’s primary aim, which was to pay a sovereign government for the piece of land on which it would establish the “world’s first libertarian country.” Despite stating in September that “[government] interest was much higher than initially anticipated,” there has so far been no update on whether it’s actually made any progress in purchasing land, with our requests for comment from the Foundation being ignored.
Aside from the persecuted Liberland, government hostility or indifference (call it what you will) may end up impeding the progress of the Floating Island Project. Despite signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with French Polynesia in January 2017, the French dependency distanced itself from the project this February, when it noted in a Facebook post that the validity of the MoU expired at the end of last year. As a result, it will no longer be collaborating with the Seasteading Institute on the development of a “special governing framework” for any floating islands, and may end up resisting plans to launch such islands altogether.
Another issue crypto-states will encounter is a familiar one for any blockchain project: scalability. However, they’re optimistic that this challenge can be met, even if some of them – e.g. the Floating Island Project – operate on such blockchains as Ethereum’s, which was infamously backlogged by a video game last year, for instance. Nicolas Germineau tells Cointelegraph:
“Scalability is a challenge faced by the entire Ethereum community. Many initiatives, from proof of stake to off-chain settlement mechanisms, are going to make this less challenging moving forward. We have a lot of faith in the Ethereum development community and their ability to innovate, and we are confident they will solve these challenges.”
Peaceful transition?
Scalability aside, one crypto-nation that may not suffer so much resistance from vested governmental interests is one that doesn’t lay claim to any particular territory: Bitnation. Launched in July 2014 as the “world’s first Decentralised Borderless Voluntary Nation” (DBVN), it provides a range of blockchain-based governance services (e.g. public notaries, IDs, marriages), and ultimately aims to create a competitive global marketplace for such services that would make central governments redundant.
While its COO James Fennell Tempelhof warned Cointelegraph last year that the “nation state will not give up [its power] easily” to blockchain-based alternatives, it’s interesting to note that Bitnation won the Grand Prix at UNESCO’s Netexplo Forum in May 2017 for its Refugee Emergency Response project, which began registering refugee IDs on the Bitcoin blockchain in September 2015.
If nothing else, this glowing award from a UN agency reveals that the world’s governments do see at least some place for blockchain-based platforms to assume certain functions of theirs. And if they permit enough wriggle room to such crypto-state projects as Bitnation, these projects may end up claiming even more, with (Bitnation CEO and spouse of James) Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof affirming in 2016, “we need to outcompete national governments at their original core function: security and jurisdiction.”
For sure, such a transition is no doubt a long way away if it’s even possible, but with rumours that a certain crypto-exchange is planning its own micronation, the future of experimental blockchain-based states could end up being very interesting. These will have to compete with the enduring power of nationalism and patriotism, and they’ll also have to face up to questions concerning the real-world scalability of blockchains, but the variety of forms they’ve taken in recent years would indicate that they may throw up plenty of ideas and innovation along the way.
- Morgan Stanley Is Wrong: Goldman Warns China's Credit Impulse Collapse Will "Drag On Growth" This Year
Just over a month ago – in what seemed to be an effort to keep the dream of a global synchronous recovery narrative alive – Morgan Stanley attempted to show that the link between China’s (declining) credit impulse and the global economy (which we are constantly told is ebullient) has now been severed and all is well in the world.
Their Chief Asia Economist Chetan Ahya began by confirming that “if you had been able to reliably pick the key global macro variable over 2012-16, China’s credit impulse would have been your choice” and explains why (this should be obvious to regular readers):
The incredibly tight link between the credit impulse and China’s growth cycle, emerging markets (EMs) exports, global growth and commodity prices meant that it would have accurately predicted the direction of almost all other global macro variables that mattered, with about six months’ lead time.
He further explains the “simple” – in retrospect of course – reason behind this observation:
China’s credit impulse – or its leverage cycle – was the only game in town back then. With global aggregate demand weak as developed markets (DMs) were deleveraging and EMs were adjusting, the change in China’s credit impulse was the most significant driver of the global economy
However, in a striking claim which breaks with precedent and which, if correct suggests a historic change in the relationship between China’s credit creation and its impact on global markets and economies, the Morgan Stanley economist then writes that the link between China’s credit impulse and the global economy “has now been broken” and justifies his answer as follows:
China’s tightening has not had a material impact on the growth cycle either in China or globally, even though its credit impulse began to weaken about 24 months ago. As deleveraging and adjustment headwinds recede, the recoveries in domestic demand in both DMs and EMs have emerged as additional global growth engines.
Ahya used the following chart to prove his thesis…
However, Goldman Sachs disagrees, warning that things are aboutto get a lot more problematic for that global synchronous recovery narrative as China’s collapsing credit impulse wriggles its way thru the economy…
Since 2008, there have been two and half distinct cycles in China credit. We see these cycles more clearly in the chart below, which plots net credit flows from lenders to borrowers against nominal IP growth in China.
Lower net credit flows from lenders to borrowers weigh on future activity growth
We can visually see how peaks/troughs in net credit flows from lenders to borrowers tend to systematically predict growth outperformance/ underperformance over a short period of time, but then growth underperformance/ outperformance over a longer horizon. For example, the peak in net credit flows from lenders to borrowers in late 2009, early 2013 and mid-2016 was systematically followed by peaks in nominal activity 2-3 quarters after, and then – in the case of peaks in 2009 and 2013 – a trough in nominal activity growth 2.5-3 years after. In our empirical estimations, we attempt to measure this predictable lag between peaks in net credit flow from lenders to borrowers and nominal activity growth.
Credit boost to China activity peaked in mid-2017 and has declined since. With the results of our modeling exercise in hand, we can simulate the net impact of changes in the net credit flow on past and future activity growth. Armed with the stylized impact of shocks to credit flow on activity growth, we can sum up the effects from the historical path of changes in the net credit flow to generate an “aggregate growth impact of net credit flow” for every period. The results of this exercise for nominal growth are shown in the chart below.
Net credit impulse to activity growth likely to decelerate over the coming year…
This suggests that net credit flows were a substantial drag on growth in late 2014 and 2015, as new borrowings decelerated and debt service costs rose. Thereafter, as net credit flows rose in mid-2015 as new borrowings accelerated and debt service costs fell (maturity extensions and falling interest rates), this provided a meaningful boost to activity growth. The positive credit impulse on nominal activity peaked in mid-2017 , about a year after the peak in net credit flows and has declined since. Results for real activity growth are very similar.
The credit impulse should continue to push activity growth modestly weaker in our base case of a stabilization in new borrowings at current levels. What can we expect for activity growth going forward? While the pre-specified path of debt service already bakes some impacts in the cake, we evaluate some scenarios on the future path of new borrowings in the economy, to estimate the net activity impact going forward (chart below).
In our base case, where new borrowings stabilize at current levels, net credit flows would gradually decline as debt service costs rise, dragging nominal growth lower by 70bp (from +30bp above trend to -40bp below trend) and real growth lower by 20bp (from +5bp above trend to -15bp below trend) over the next 12 months. In practice, this scenario is in line with our expectation on the policy stance – i.e. that the government will continue to tighten policies in targeted areas (such as on shadow banking products, local government irregular borrowings etc) while keeping the broad monetary policy accommodative and lowering interest rates to offset some of the targeted tightening effect. The growth impacts in our base case are broadly in line with our current forecasts of modestly slower nominal and real GDP growth over the next year.
… with more negative impacts on activity should new borrowings continue to decelerate at the same pace since mid-2016. In a bearish case, new borrowings continue to decelerate at the same pace they have done since mid-2016, and net credit flows decline more sharply than in our base case. In practice, this case could emerge if the government overtightens on shadow banking products or local governments’ irregular borrowings and does not sufficiently substitute these borrowings with other standard credit. In this base case, we would expect the drag on nominal growth to increase to 140bp and real growth to 40bp, over the next 12 months. Even in a more optimistic case in which new borrowings gradually increase to offset rising debt service costs over the next year, stabilizing net credit flows at current levels vs. GDP , real and nominal activity growth should decelerate although more modestly than our base case.
The key takeaway from this exercise is that, barring meaningful increases in new borrowings over the next year, activity growth in China is likely to decelerate, as the credit impulse to activity growth fades and debt service costs rise.
- Mattis: Withdrawing US Troops From Syria Would Be A "Strategic Blunder"
Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,
Speaking at NATO headquarters of Friday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis reiterated his opposition to the idea of withdrawing US troops from Syria. He said any withdrawal before progress was made would be a “strategic blunder.”
“In Syria, leaving the field before the special envoy Staffan de Mistura achieves success in advancing the Geneva political process we all signed for under the UN security council resolution would be a strategic blunder, undercutting our diplomats and giving the terrorists the opportunity to recover…”
James Mattis
Mattis’ position reflects those of a lot of top US cabinet officials, who have resisted President Trump’s talk of a quick withdrawal. He argues that the UN peace plan necessitates an ongoing US military presence.
On the one hand, Mattis suggests leaving too soon could give “the terrorists the opportunity to recover.”
On the other hand, he also says that leaving would be exploited by the Assad government and its supporters.
This again sets out the US position that the UN plan necessitates regime change in Syria, something other supporters say is not the caase. It also suggests a more or less permanent US presence in Syria, since there is virtually no chance the US will impose a favorable outcome.
Instead, Syria looks to be going the way of other major US wars, an open-ended situation short of success in which officials simultaneously are unable to come up with a plan to “win,” but will resist any pullout so they never completely lose.
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