Aug 16

Today’s News 16th August 2018

  • "I'm Not A Racist, But I'm A Nationalist": Why Sweden Faces A Historic Election Upset

    “Trains and hospitals don’t work, but immigration continues,” Roger Mathson, a retired vegetable oil factory worker in Sweden, told Bloomberg on the same day as the violent, coordinated rampage by masked gangs of youths across five Swedish cities.

    We noted earlier that Swedish politicians were quick to react with anti-immigrant party ‘Sweden Democrats’ seeing a surge in the polls ahead of the September 9th election.

    “I’m not a racist, but I’m a nationalist,” Mathson said. “I don’t like seeing the town square full of Niqab-clad ladies and people fighting with each other.”

    Is Sweden set to have its own political earthquake in September, where general elections could end a century of Social Democratic dominance and bring to power a little known (on the world stage), but the now hugely popular nationalist party often dubbed far-right and right-wing populist, called Sweden Democrats? 

    Sweden, a historically largely homogeneous population of 10 million, took in an astounding 600,000 refugees over the past five years, and after Swedes across various cities looked out their windows Tuesday to see cars exploding, smoke filling the skies, and possibly armed masked men hurling explosives around busy parking lots, it appears they’ve had enough.

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    Over the past years of their rise as a political force in Swedish politics, the country’s media have routinely labelled the Sweden Democrats as “racists” and “Nazis” due to their seemingly single issue focus of anti-immigration and strong Euroscepticism.

    A poll at the start of this week indicated the Sweden Democrats slid back to third place after topping three previous polls as the September election nears; however, Tuesday’s national crisis and what could legitimately be dubbed a serious domestic terror threat is likely to boost their popularity. 

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    Bloomberg’s profile of their leader, Jimmie Akesson, echoes the tone of establishment Swedish media in the way they commonly cast the movement, beginning as follows:

    Viking rock music and whole pigs roasting on spits drew thousands of Swedes to a festival hosted by nationalists poised to deliver their country’s biggest political upheaval in a century.

    The Sweden Democrats have been led since 2005 by a clean-cut and bespectacled man, Jimmie Akesson. He’s gentrified a party that traces its roots back to the country’s neo-Nazi, white supremacist fringe. Some polls now show the group may become the biggest in Sweden’s parliament after general elections on Sept. 9. Such an outcome would end 100 years of Social Democratic dominance.

    The group’s popularity began surging after the 2015 immigration crisis began, which first hit Europe’s southern Mediterranean shores and quickly moved northward as shocking wave after wave of migrants came.

    Jimmie Akesson (right). Image source: Getty via Daily Express

    Akesson emphasizes something akin to a “Sweden-first” platform which European media often compares to Trump’s “America First”; and the party has long been accused of preaching forced assimilation into Swedish culture to be become a citizen. 

    Bloomberg’s report surveys opinions at a large political rally held in Akkeson’s hometown of Solvesborg, and some of the statements are sure to be increasingly common sentiment after this week’s coordinated multi-city attack:

    At his party’s festival, Akesson revved up the crowd by slamming the establishment’s failures, calling the last two governments the worst in Swedish history. T-shirts calling for a Swexit, or an exit from the EU, were exchanged as bands played nationalist tunes.

    Ted Lorentsson, a retiree from the island of Tjorn, said he’s an enthusiastic backer of the Sweden Democrats. “I think they want to improve elderly care, health care, child care,” he said. “Bring back the old Sweden.” But he also acknowledges his view has led to disagreement within his family as his daughter recoils at what she feels is the “Hitler”-like rhetoric.

    No doubt, the media and Eurocrats in Brussels will take simple, innocent statements from elderly retirees like “bring back the old Sweden” as nothing short of declaration of a race war, but such views will only solidify after this week.

    Another Sweden Democrat supporter, a 60-year old woman who works at a distillery, told Bloomberg, “I think you need to start seeing the whole picture in Sweden and save the original Swedish population,” she said. “I’m not racist, because I’m a realist.”

    Sweden’s two biggest parties, the Social Democrats and Moderates, are now feeling the pressure as Swedes increasingly worry about key issues preached by Akesson like immigration, law and order, and health care – seen as under threat by a mass influx of immigrants that the system can’t handle. 

    Bloomberg explains further:

    But even young voters are turning their backs on the establishment. One potential SD supporter is law student Oscar Persson. Though he hasn’t yet decided how he’ll vote, he says it’s time for the mainstream parties to stop treating the Sweden Democrats like a pariah. “This game they are playing now, where the other parties don’t want to talk to them but still want their support, is something I don’t really understand,” he said.

    Akesson has managed to entice voters from both sides of the political spectrum with a message of more welfare, lower taxes and savings based on immigration cuts.

    With many Swedes now saying immigration has “gone too far” and as this week’s events have once again thrust the issue before both a national and global audience, the next round of polling will mostly like put Sweden’s conservative-right movements on top. 

  • A Virgin, A Pastor and Two Soldiers

    Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

    On August 15, Greeks celebrate the “Dormition (or the Assumption) of the Virgin Mary (in Greek: Koimisis tis Theotokou). The holiday commemorates the “falling asleep” or death of the Theotokos (Mary, translated as “God-bearer”). August 15, one of the most important holidays in the Orthodox calendar, is celebrated across the country, and is a date when many Greeks leave the towns and cities where they live and work to return to their home villages.”

    Stole that bit from the local Kathimerini paper. And I would add: while most Athenians leave for the islands, so do about 2 billion tourists. Thought I’d bring up the national holiday because in Turkey, they celebrate the same. The orthodox church is still going strong in both countries. Even if Turkey is leaning increasingly towards Islam. And even then: the House of the Virgin Mary shrine in Turkey, which the Apostle John is supposed to have built for her, on a mountain overlooking the Aegean, the place where Mary is said to have spent her last years, sees both Christian and Muslim pilgrims.

    All this can’t be seen apart from some recent developments between the two countries. Turkey had been holding two Greek servicemen in jail after they crossed a border in bad weather early March. And then yesterday evening, this happened according to Kathimerini:

    Greek Soldiers Released From Turkish Jail Pending Trial

    Two Greek servicemen who had been detained in Turkey since early March for accidentally crossing the border in bad weather have been released from jail pending trial, Anadolu agency reported on Tuesday evening. According to Anadolu, a court examined the request for their release and ruled there are no reasons to keep them behind bars. The ruling does not mention any measures restricting their movement which means the soldiers can return to Greece.

    Lieutenant Angelos Mitretodis and Sergeant Dimitris Kouklatzis had been held in a high security prison in Edirne for 167 days. It is not clear what charges they are facing. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a tweet the release of the servicemen “is an act of justice which will contribute in boosting friendship, good neighborly relations and stability in the region.” “I would like to congratulate and thank our two officers and their families for their courage, patience and confidence in our efforts, which were ultimately vindicated,” he added.

    On Monday, Greece’s top military announced it was suspending some confidence-building activities with Turkey for the remainder of the year, as a response to the prolonged detention. The measures under suspension extend to the the exchange of military academy graduates as well as sporting and cultural activities, which have already been scaled down over the detention of the two soldiers, who were arrested after accidentally crossing a borderline between the two countries.

    And mere hours later there was this:

    Two Greek Soldiers Released From Turkish Jail Return Home

    Two Greek soldiers freed after months in a Turkish prison returned to Greece by government jet early Wednesday after their unexpected release by a provincial court. Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said he phoned his Turkish counterpart to express his satisfaction with the soldiers’ release and invite him to visit Greece. “This is a great day for our motherland, the day of Our Lady, the day of Tinos in 1940,” Kammenos told reporters, referring to the Feast of the Dormation, which falls on August 15 and to the Italian torpedoing on a Greek warship on this day in 1940. “I hope that their release … will herald a new day in Greek-Turkish relations. We can live together peacefully, for the benefit of both our peoples.”

    The soldiers [..] were met by Kammenos, the army chief of staff and an honor guard after their arrival at 3 a.m. at the airport in the northern city of Thessaloniki. “All I want to say is thank you,” Mitretodis told reporters. The men were arrested on March 1 for illegally entering Turkey after crossing the heavily militarized land border. Greece strongly protested their long detention in the western town of Edirne, arguing that they had strayed across during a patrol of a trail of suspected illegal immigration amid poor visibility due to bad weather.

    [..] The men’s arrest had considerably strained Greek-Turkish relations. Kammenos had claimed that they were being held “hostage” by Turkey, which is trying to secure the extradition of eight Turkish servicemen who fled to Greece after the 2016 failed military coup in Turkey. Ankara accuses its servicemen of involvement in the coup, but Greek courts have refused to extradite them, arguing they would not get a fair trial in Turkey and their lives would be in danger there.

    Athens got a phone call from Ankara, probably to Kammenos, not Tsipras, that said: you come get them. Whether that call was before or after the court decision we’ll probably never know. A bit of a shame, because it could tell us a lot of where the decisions are made in Turkey. Then again, we do have an idea. A mere provincial court that could make decisions that go completely against what Erdogan desires? What are the odds? But stick around.

    Here’s what’s interesting about this: the two soldiers, who had been in detention for almost half a year, were released by a provincial court, and got back home on a joint Turkish/Greek national holiday. What’s not to like?

    But then this: a few hours after they arrive home on PM Tsipras’ own government jet at 3pm, another Turkish court decides that an appeal for American pastor Brunson to be released, is denied. Brunson is the guy Trump wants freed. John Bolton has said there’ll be no more talks until that is done. But if one court takes a decision that at least on the face of it goes against supreme ruler Erdogan’s demands, and another decides differently, Erdogan can claim the pastor’s fate is out of his hands: it’s the court system that decides.

    That victory over Trump, concerning not freeing the pastor, is apparently worth more to him than the defeat of not exchanging the soldiers for the 8 Turkish servicemen who have gotten asylum in Greece. Something Erdogan is allegedly very angry about, because he accuses them of being party to the 2016 ‘coup’. He’s trying to play chess with Trump. We can discuss how good of an idea that is. Here’s AFP:

    Turkey Court Rejects New Appeal To Free Detained US Pastor

    A Turkish court on Wednesday rejected a new appeal to free US pastor Andrew Brunson, whose detention has sparked a major row between Turkey and the United States, local media reported. The court in the western city of Izmir ruled that Brunson, who faces 35 years in jail over terror and espionage charges, will remain under house arrest, the state television TRT reported. Brunson’s jail term had been converted to house detention for health reasons.

    His detention has soured relations with Washington, with US President Donald Trump doubling aluminium and steel tariffs for Turkey in punitive actions against Ankara’s refusal to release Brunson. The crisis has sent the Turkish currency into free fall since Friday. “The president has a great deal of frustration (about) the pastor not being released,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday. The statement came after US embassy charge d’affaires Jeffrey Hovenier visited Brunson in Izmir.

    Brunson’s lawyer Cem Halavurt told AFP that a higher court would also discuss his appeal for Brunson’s release. Turkey’s ambassador to Washington Serdar Kilic on Monday held private talks with US National Security Advisor John Bolton in a meeting to discuss the pastor’s status.

    And then Reuters has this just now:

    Erdogan Spokesman Says Problems With US Will Be Resolved

    Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Wednesday he expected problems with the United States, which helped drive the lira to record lows, to be resolved but Washington must stop trying to influence Turkey’s judiciary. Ibrahim Kalin also told a news conference that Turkey would exercise its rights if the U.S. does not deliver F-35 jets to Ankara. The lira, which has rallied after hitting a record low of 7.24 to the dollar, would continue to recover, he said.

    A masterstroke? Did Erdogan just succeed in making everyone, including Trump, believe the Turkish judiciary system is impartial, and he’s not the one keeping Brunson from leaving the country?

    Sure looks like he tried. “Sorry, Mr. Trump, it’s out of my hands… A judge let the Greek soldiers go, and I didn’t want that either..”

    Problem is, everyone knows Erdogan fired half the judiciary system and 90% or so of the press, accusing them of being part of the same coup plot as Gülen and the pastor Brunson. It’s almost amusing. Almost, because innocent people’s lives are being played out on some primitive chess board and sacrificed against dreams of ever more power. Only a pawn in their game.

    The lira is recovering a little this week. Got to wonder how long that will last, and what it’s cost Turkey. To be continued…

  • Visualizing Italy's Plunging Investment In Infrastructure

    After a motorway bridge collapsed in Genoa on Tuesday killing 35 people, Italy is still in shock and mourning. While rescuers searched the rubble and twisted steel for survivors, investigators were already examining possible reasons for such a catastrophic collapse. The country’s transport minister called on senior managers at the company managing the bridge to resign while a criminal inquiry into the disaster has also been announced.

    As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, The Morandi bridge was built in 1967 and measures 1.2km long. Generally, bridges like that are designed to stand for at least 100 years with periodic maintenance work required. Work was being carried out at the time of the disaster, though it isn’t yet clear if that had any role in what happened. There have also been suggestions that a design flaw could have been responsible, particularly due to erroneous calculations about how concrete ages.

    Concern has also been raised about the increasing volume of traffic on the A10 motorway and whether that caused faster than expected degradation of the structure. What is certainly indisputable, however, is that Italy’s investment in its road network has declined alarmingly. 

    Infographic: Italy Has Notably Cut Investment In Infrastructure | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    OECD data published by the BBC shows that while Germany, France and the UK have all poured money into their roads in recent years, Italian investment fell from €13.66 billion in 2007 to just €3.39 billion in 2010.

    The figure only climbed to just over €5 billion by 2015, far behind Germany (€11.69 billion), France (€10.01 billion) and the UK (€9.07 billion).

  • US Sanctions Foster Emergence of Multipolar World

    Authored by Arkady Savitsky via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Russia, Iran, China, and now Turkey are in the same boat, as all have become the target of US sanctions. But none of those nations has bowed under the pressure.

    Russia had foreseen the developments in advance and took timely measures to protect itself.

    The Turkish national currency, the lira, is plummeting now that Washington has introduced sanctions as well as tariffs on steel and aluminum, in an attempt to compel Ankara to turn over a detained American pastor. Turkish President Erdogan said it was time for Turkey to seek “new friends,” and Turkey is planning to issue yuan-denominated bonds to diversify its foreign borrowing instruments. On Aug. 11, President Erdogan said Turkey was ready to begin using local currencies in its trade with Russia, China, Iran, Ukraine, and the EU nations of the eurozone.

    The recent BRICS summit reaffirmed Ankara’s commitment to the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) that is geared toward de-dollarizing its member states’ economies, and the agreement to quickly launch a Local Currency Bond Fund gives that policy teeth. Turkey has also expressed its desire to join BRICS.

    Ankara is gradually moving toward membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It has been accepted as a dialog partner of that organization. Last year Turkey became a dialog partner with ASEAN. On Aug. 1, the first ASEAN-Turkey Trilateral Ministerial Meeting was held in Singapore, bringing together Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, ASEAN Secretary General Dato Lim Jock Hoi, and Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, who is serving as the 2018 ASEAN term chairman. The event took place under the auspices of the 51st ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting that attracted foreign ministers and top diplomats from 30 countries.

    Ankara is mulling over a free-trade area (FTA) agreement with the Eurasian Union. This cooperation between Ankara and the EAEU has a promising future.

    Meanwhile, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has provided a $3.6-billion loan package for the Turkish energy and transportation sector. Turkey and China have recently announced an expansion of their military ties. As one can see, Turkey is inexorably pivoting from the West to the East.

    Russia has a special role to play in this process. The US Congress has prohibited the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey because of the risk associated with Ankara’s purchase of the S-400 air-defense system. In response, Turkey is contemplating a purchase of Russian warplanes. Ankara prefers Russian weapons over the ones offered by NATO states. As President Erdogan put it, “Before it is too late, Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives.”

    On Aug. 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan discussed the prospects for boosting economic cooperation. Both nations are parties to the ambitious Turkish Stream natural-gas pipeline project. Ideas for ways to join forces in response to the US offensive were also on the agenda during the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Turkey, Aug. 13-14, although Syria was in the spotlight of the talks. One mustn’t forget that Russia was the first country to be visited by the Turkish president after the failed 2016 coup.

    As a result of some tough times resulting from US sanctions, Iran is redoubling its efforts at building foreign relationships. Under US pressure, European companies are leaving Iran, with China gradually filling the void. Now that US and European airspace companies are moving their business ventures out of Iran, this presents a good opportunity for Russian aircraft, such as the MS-21 or IL-96-400M. The Russian automaker GAZ Group is ready to supply Iran with commercial vehicles and light trucks powered by 5th generation engines.

    Tehran is an observer state in the SCO, and it is to become an essential hub for the Chinese Belt Road Initiative (BRI). On June 25, a freight train arrived in the Iranian city of Bandar-e Anzali, a port on the Caspian Sea, having passed through the China-Kazakhstan-Iran transportation corridor and entering the Anzali Free Zone that connects China to both the Kazakh port of Aktau and to Iran, thus creating a new trade link to the outside world. This gives a boost to the BRI. On Aug. 12, the five littoral states (the Caspian Five) signed the Caspian Sea Convention — the fruit of 22 years of difficult negotiations. This opens up new opportunities for Iran and other countries of the region as well as the BRI. The idea to form a new economic forum was floated at the Caspian Five summit.

    China and Russia back the idea of Iran’s full-fledged SCO membership. In May Tehran signed an interim FTA agreement with the EAEU. Greater EAEU-BRI integration under the stewardship of the SCO is also on the horizon.

    According to the Daily Express, Iran could band together with Russia and China in an anti-US alliance. Iran may also get an observer status in the CSTO. Iran-Turkey trade has recently revived, and that bilateral relationship includes burgeoning military cooperation.

    Nothing can be viewed in just black and white, and every coin has two sides. The US sanctions do negatively affect the economies and finances of the targeted countries, but in the long run, they will also push the nations hit by them to move closer to each other, thus encouraging the emergence of the multipolar world the US is trying so hard to resist.

  • Australian MP Under Fire After Suggesting ‘Final Solution’ To Muslim Immigration

    An Australian MP is already under fire just after giving his maiden speech in parliament on Tuesday where he used the words “final solution” in reference to Muslim immigration. 

    Senator Fraser Anning of the right-wing Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) raised a firestorm of controversy with the speech that attempted to give voice to Australia’s rising anti-immigration sentiment, telling lawmakers that Muslim Australians do not integrate well while bringing the threat of terrorism and further that they “do not work and live on welfare”. 

    Multiple fellow MPs as well as national television pundits have focused on what could be Anning’s either unintended poor word choice or, as his accusers suggest, an purposeful attempt to evoke holocaust imagery. 

    Egyptian-born Anne Aly (above) is the first Muslim woman to be a member of the Australian House of Representatives. She reacted to MP Anning’s speech by tearfully saying she was tired of having to fight bigots and racists. (screengrab)

    After claiming Muslim communities foster “sympathizing with Islamic State,” the key offending line came in Anning’s speech with the following: 

    The final solution to the immigration problem is, of course, a popular vote. We don’t need a plebiscite to cut immigration numbers; we just need a government that is willing to institute a sustainable population policy.

    The speech was immediately condemned as anti-semitic and Islamophobic, with One Nation party MP Pauline Hanson, slamming it as reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, among other lawmakers.

    Hanson said, “The speech was written by a Richard Howard, straight from [Joseph] Goebbels’ handbook from Nazi Germany.” 

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    Later in the day Tuesday, WA Labor MP Anne Aly got emotional during her response to Anning’s immigration comments, telling parliament, “I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of having to stand up against hate, against vilification, time and time again,” while wiping tears from her eyes. 

    Aly, herself Egyptian-born and the first Muslim woman to be a member of the Australian House of Representatives, has in the past been targeted by Anning’s political speeches.

    During his Tuesday maiden speech Sen. Anning specifically called for a complete ban on Muslim immigration, and outlined a plan for Australians to hold a popular vote on which nationalities and immigrant demographics should be allowed into the country. 

    MP Aly charged Senator Anning with deliberately using “neo-Nazi, white supremacist terminology,” to advance racial segregationist policies and explained, “That was a deliberate use of a heinous, heinous word that brings back so many painful memories and sets a precedent for the future of our country that we need to stand up and stop it.”

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    Australian media praised Aly’s speech, saying a united parliament stood behind her, while generally casting Anning’s speech as a throwback to the ‘White Australia policy’ — a set of historical laws that effectively barred people of non-European descent from settling in the country — which ended through a bi-partisan law passed in the early 1970s.

    Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also reacted, stating on Twitter, “Australia is the most successful multicultural society in the world built on a foundation of mutual respect. We reject and condemn racism in any form.” 

    Other government officials issued formal statements before parliament. Senator Hanson told lawmakers on Wednesday: “I am appalled by Fraser Anning’s speech. We are a multiracial society and I’ve always advocated you do not have to be white to be Australian.” 

    Anning for his part, denied that his phrasing was a reference to the Holocaust and refused to apology even amidst an avalanche of criticism. “I don’t regret anything. I am not going to apologize or regret anything that I say,” he said. His office denied that “final solution” had any deeper sinister meaning, saying the senator could as easily have said “last” or “ultimate”.

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    Katter’s Australian Party’s leadership has stood behind Anning: “Absolutely, 1000 per cent I support everything he said,” party boss Bob Katter told reporters in a contentious press conference on Wednesday.

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    The issue is sure to grow even more explosive both nationally and internationally after party leader Katter’s press conference, where he in a fiery and confident tone further said of Anning’s “magnificent speech, solid gold” speech that “90 per cent of Australia have been waiting for someone to say it and believe it.”

    According to official government statistics, Muslims represent a small minority in Australia at just 2.6% of the population. 

  • Pepe Escobar: Economic War On Iran Is War On Eurasian Integration

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

    US sanctions on Iran should be interpreted as a piece in a much larger chessboard…

    Life carries on in Tehran despite the threat of US sanctions. 

    Hysteria reigned supreme after the first round of US sanctions were reinstated against Iran over the past week. War scenarios abound, and yet the key aspect of the economic war unleashed by the Trump administration has been overlooked: Iran is a major piece in a much larger chessboard.

    The US sanctions offensive, launched after Washington’s unilateral pullout from the Iran nuclear deal, should be interpreted as an advance gambit in the New Great Game at whose center lies China’s New Silk Road – arguably the most important infrastructure project of the 21st century — and overall Eurasia integration.

    The Trump administration’s maneuvers are a testament to how China’s New Silk Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), threaten the US establishment.

    Eurasian integration on the rise

    Eurasian integration is on display in Astana, where Russia, Iran and Turkey are deciding the fate of Syria, in coordination with Damascus.

    Iran’s strategic depth in post-war Syria simply won’t vanish. The challenge of Syrian reconstruction will be met largely by Bashar al-Assad’s allies: China, Russia and Iran.

    Echoing the Ancient Silk Road, Syria will be configured as an important BRI node, key to Eurasia integration.

    In parallel, the Russia-China strategic partnership – from the intersection between the BRI and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) to the expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the solidifying of BRICS Plus — has immense economic stakes in the stability of Iran.

    The complex interconnection of Iran with both Russia (via the EAEU and the International North-South Transportation Corridor) and China (via BRI and oil/gas supplies) is even tighter than in the case of Syria in the past seven years of civil war.

    Iran is absolutely essential for Russia-China for the partnership to allow any “surgical strike” — as floated in Syria — or worse, hot war initiated by Washington.

    A case could be made that with his recent overture to President Putin, President Trump is trying to negotiate some sort of freeze in the current configuration — a remixed Sykes-Picot for the 21st century.

    But that assumes Trump’s decision-making is not being dictated or co-opted by the US neocon cabal that pressed for the 2003 war in Iraq.

    North Korea two?

    If the situation turns volcanic when the US oil sanctions on Iran kick in by early November, an actual remix of the recent North Korea scenario would be in the cards. Washington simultaneously sent three carrier battle groups to terrify North Korea. That failed – and Trump ended up having to chat with Kim Jong-un.

    Despite the US record around the world — endless threats of a Venezuela invasion with the only tangible result an amateurish, failed drone attack; 17 years of endless war in Afghanistan, with the Taliban still as immovable as the Hindu Kush peaks;  the “4+1” – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – winning the vicious proxy war in Syria — US neocons scream and shout about striking Iran.

    As with North Korea, Russia and China will send unmistakable signs that Iran is in their closely coordinated Eurasian sphere of influence, and any attack on Iran will be considered an attack on the whole Eurasian sphere.

    Stranger things have happened, but it’s hard to see any rational actors in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh wishing to have Beijing and Moscow — simultaneously — as lethal enemies.

    All across Southwest Asia, there are no doubts the official Trump administration – and in fact, the whole Beltway – policy on Iran is regime change. So from now on, short of hot war, the new rules of the game spell out stepped-up cyber-warfare.

    From Washington’s point of view, in terms of return on investment that’s a relative bargain; cyber-warfare keeps the Russia-China partnership away from direct involvement while in theory digging deeper into the economic collapse of Iran, heavily advertised as imminent by Trump administration officials.

    The Chinese Foreign Ministry could not be more explicit on the US effort to reimpose global sanctions on Iran. “China’s commercial cooperation with Iran is open and transparent, reasonable, fair and lawful, not violating any United Nations Security Council resolutions,” it said.

    That echoes the Russian Foreign Ministry on the US sanctions: “This is a graphic example of Washington’s continued violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and trampling upon the norms of international law.”

    President Trump for his part has also been explicit: any nation that violates the sanctions against Iran will not do business with the US.

    Good luck with having support from Turkey or Qatar – completely dependent on Iran for food, use of civilian airspace and sharing gas exploration in South Pars. Not to mention Russia-China assuring Tehran’s back on all fronts.

    How not to do business with China?

    The die is cast. China not only will continue but also will increase its purchase of Iranian oil and gas.

    The Chinese auto industry – currently with 10% of the Iranian market – will simply take over as the French leave. Chinese companies are already responsible for 50% of auto parts imported into Iran.

    Russia for its part has pledged to invest as much as $50 billion in Iranian oil and natural gas. Moscow is very much aware of the Trump administration’s next possible step; imposing sanctions on Russian companies investing in Iran.

    Washington simply can’t “not do business” with China. The entire US defense industry is dependent on China for rare earth materials. Since the 1980s, US multinationals set up their export supply chains in China with direct encouragement of the US government.

    The EU for its part has enforced a Blocking Statute – never used before, although in existence for already two decades — to protect European companies, even coming to the point of imposing fines on businesses that pull out of Iran because of plain fear.

    In theory, that shows some balls. And yet, as EU diplomats in Brussels told Asia Times, there’s a major conditional: US satrapies/vassals abound across the EU, so quite a few EU-based companies, as in the case of Total and Renault, in the end, will simply roll over.

    Meanwhile, what Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said about US unilateralism – the world “is sick and tired”
    of it – keeps echoing all across the Global South.

    The Mother of All Financial Hurricanes

    Those clamoring for war with Iran cannot possibly understand that the nightmare scenario of a Strait of Hormuz/Persian Gulf energy transit closure – the choke point for 22 million barrels of oil a day – would represent, ultimately, the death of the petrodollar.

    The Strait of Hormuz can be configured as the Achilles heel of the entire West/US economic power; a closure would detonate the mother of all hurricanes in the quadrillion-dollar derivatives market.

    Unless China does not buy Iranian energy, US sanctions — as a geo-economic tool — are essentially meaningless.

    Certainly not, of course, for the “Iranian people” so dear to the Beltway, as more day-to-day financial grief is already setting in, side by side with a sense of national cohesiveness in the face, once again, of an external threat.

    China and Russia have already pledged to continue to implement the JCPOA, alongside the EU-3; after all, this is an UN-endorsed multilateral treaty.

    Beijing has already informed Washington in no uncertain terms that it will continue to do business with Iran. So the ball is now in Washington’s court. It will be up to the Trump administration to decide whether to sanction China for its unwillingness to stop trading with Iran.

    It’s not exactly a wise move to threaten China – especially with Beijing on an irresistible historical ascendancy. Nehru threatened China and lost a big chunk of Arunachal Pradesh to Chairman Mao. Brezhnev threatened China and faced the wrath of the PLA on the banks of the Ussuri River.

    China is able to cut the US off in a minute from its rare earth exports, creating a US national security catastrophe. Now that’s when a trade war will enter real incandescent territory.

  • Tompkins: Nationwide Anti-Trump Editorial Blitz Just More Proof Journalists Don't Listen

    At the start of the week when we covered The Boston Globe’s ‘call to action’ for the nation’s newspapers to collude to fight back against what they called Trump’s “dirty war against the free press” the number of publications involved was at around 100, as the Globe’s deputy editorial page editor, said at the time, “we have more than 100 publications signed up, and I expect that number to grow in the coming days.”

    That figure has indeed grown, more than tripling as of Wednesday to 350, according to statements from Boston Globe staff leading the project, and will potentially be even greater by Thursday morning, when the coordinated editorials are set to run nationwide. 

    Image via Reuters

    The Globe explains the initiative’s purpose as: 

    The Globe initiative comes amid the president’s repeated verbal attacks on journalists, calling mainstream press organizations “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” Tensions came to a boil in early August when CNN reporter Jim Acosta walked out of a press briefing after White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders refused to refute Trump’s “enemy of the people” comments.

    Meanwhile, Al Tompkins at The Poynter Institute – a five decade award-winning journalist and producer – has some interesting analysis considering he is a commentator who is opposed to Trump and wishes the president would knock it off with the fake news is the “enemy of the people” nonsense.

    Despite saying this right off the top, Tompkins then proceeds to shred the initiative as completely futile while simultaneously a bit hypocritical given an elite press that’s perpetually walled itself off from ever having to admit its wrong (for the easiest and most obvious example in most people’s recent memory let’s simply start with the Iraq war). 

    Al Tompkins via TV News Storytellers

    He brings a surprising admission for which he’s likely already received the ire of his many journalism students and fellow professionals, saying, “I really do not believe that President Trump believes the press is the enemy of the people. I believe he is softening the target the way battleships blast away before a boots-on-the-ground invasion.”

    Tompkins acknowledges the reality that:

    We will protest again that we are really good for democracy, that we are vital to the nation… and the people who agree with the president won’t give a damn what 200-plus newspaper editorials or a thousand editorials have to say.

    Tompkins brings a common-sense perspective, likely echoing what most average Americans might be thinking right now, ultimately concluding of the breathless headlines now promising 350 “pro-journalism editorials” that it’ll be little more than the usual self-congratulatory and meaningless noise that many Americans have come to expect from the mainstream press.

    He rains on their parade and predicts:

    So the editorials Thursday will create a lot of chatter. Trump backers will call journalists whiners and journalists will counter-attack. Twitter and cable news will have a ball with it all.

    And Friday morning we will be right where we were this morning. 

    And crucially Tompkins, himself a prominent longtime educator of journalists across the nation, says that journalists as a collective profession have gotten so much disastrously wrong yet remain intransigent, and the American people understand this well.

    He says:

    Lots of journalists were surprised after the 2016 election. We vowed to listen to the public more, to find out why we were so surprised to hear that the public didn’t love journalists and a growing number didn’t believe us.

    If that point didn’t win the relatively establishment commentator Tompkins any more friends among the liberal outrage-fueled mainstream, the following is the money shot:

    Before you publish your editorials extolling the virtues of journalism, ask yourself: How are you doing with that listening tour? How have you changed because of what you learned? How willing are you to be changed by discourse?

    Whatever you write in your editorials, are you willing to listen, too?

    Shockingly common-sense and truthful words coming from the heart of establishment journalism… We find ourselves surprised to say on these points, we couldn’t agree more.

  • Economic Contagion? Central Banks Are The Real Culprit

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

    The mainstream news has been awash lately in talk over the danger of economic “contagion,” primarily due to lack of dollar liquidity in emerging markets. This lack of liquidity is being pegged as a trigger for instability in stocks, bonds and forex markets around the world, and this time around it is the nation of Turkey that is being called a potential trigger for a fiscal domino effect spreading through multiple countries.

    We have heard talk of “contagion” before. Not long ago, Italy’s political shift toward a supposedly populist government led to fears of debt contagion within the European Union; this is still a valid concern, just not for the reasons the mainstream financial media usually presents.

    The issue of contagion must be examined through a different set of parameters besides those shoved in our faces by the financial media.

    In their world, everything is a matter of unpredictable cause and effect; everything is random and coincidental. Everything is chaos waiting to happen, and when crisis does strike, all can be blamed on a set of unrelated but interconnected scapegoats.

    They will claim it was the “populists,” conservatives, conservative philosophy or the notion of national sovereignty. Or they will blame it on even more abstract concepts of “human greed” and “individual selfishness.”

    These excuses for unstable systems and disasters stem from a propaganda ploy developed by DARPA called “Linchpin Theory.” It is the widely promoted idea that human systems collapse “naturally” when they become “too complex,” and all it takes to start this collapse in motion is a single well placed “linchpin” pulled at the right moment. In other words, DARPA wants you to believe that there is no such thing as organized conspiracy and that all disasters are caused by chance.

    I wrote extensively about this subject in my article “The Linchpin Lie: How Global Collapse Will Be Sold To The Masses,” published in 2013.

    Of course, the linchpin idea and the notion that over-complexity is to blame for all the world’s ills helps globalists greatly. For if human systems need to be streamlined or “simplified”, what better way to do this than to get rid of sovereign nation states, governments and economies and centralize everything down into a one world economy, a one world government, a new world order?

    What linchpin theory ignores is the careful strategic planning required to position all the geopolitical dominoes in a perfect chain so that they can be knocked over by that one person, country or event.

    Human systems actually tend to lean toward redundancy when we are left to build these systems ourselves – meaning, humans prefer to decentralize to a point. We do not like having ALL decisions bottlenecked through a single dictatorship. We do not like having all our resources controlled by a single source. We do not like having all trade and commerce and communication dominated by monopolies. We do not like our safety determined by a single watchman. We often end up rebelling against centralization because it is actually centralization that breeds weakness in systems, not complexity, which gives us checks and balances.

    The protection of complexity is created through decentralization.

    When we look at the true causes of numerous economic and political crises around the world, we usually find globalists and their agent institutions right at the center. Foremost of these institutions are central banks.

    In my article “All The Old World Systems Are being Deliberately Torn Down,” published in November of last year, I warned of several trends which would likely lead to economic instability. One of these trends was the possible breakup of NATO starting with Turkey. Turkey’s leadership under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been increasingly erratic and violent, most notably after the highly suspicious and likely fake military coup attempt in 2016. The coup gave Erdogan a perfect rationale for his consolidation of power, all while his political opponents could be systematically rounded up and imprisoned.

    The “thwarted coup” narrative has been popular lately. First in Turkey and then in Saudi Arabia under Mohammad Bin Salman — two nations that are quickly plunging into even more aggressive dictatorship and that are vital to the United States strategically and economically. Over the past two years, both countries have become more distant as allies. Saudi Arabia has consistently discussed moving away from its arrangements to continue holding U.S. treasury debt and using the dollar as the petro-currency. Turkey has consistently discussed breaking from NATO and ending its arrangement to allow U.S. military assets to stage within its borders.

    Another narrative that has been popular lately has been the idea that the global trade war will be the cause of all our economic displacement for years to come. The trade war is a perfect distraction, providing the chaos fuel necessary to allow central banks to pull the plug on economic support and then blame the resulting crisis on various random “linchpins.” This is exactly what they have been doing.

    In terms of stock markets, I think it has now been clearly established that the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet cuts and interest rate hikes are the main cause (if not the only cause) of stock rallies and declines. Almost every major decline in equities takes place within 7-10 days after the Fed dumps assets from its balance sheet. One can study the Fed’s progressive cuts over the year on their own website and compare them to the moves in the Dow or S&P.

    In July, for example, I told my readers to expect a recovery in stocks due to the Fed freezing balance sheet cuts during that month. The Fed held the balance sheet steady for most of July, only cutting a mere $12 billion at the end of the month.  As a result stocks rallied.  In August, the Fed has already cut over $20 billion and will probably cut more in the next two weeks, which would indicate an aggressive fall in stocks this month into September. The Fed controls when and how stock markets crash… at least for now.

    This correlation and obvious causation are rarely if ever mentioned in the mainstream. Instead, we get talk of “contagion” caused by Turkey and the trade war.

    The Fed’s balance sheet cuts do not only cause havoc in stock markets. Emerging market economies have grown increasingly dependent on the flow of cheap dollars and financial assets precipitated by the Fed’s stimulus measures over the past decade. If you were wondering where most of that bailout money and quantitative easing money were going over the years and you did not study the audit of TARP, then you might be surprised to find out that trillions in no interest overnight loans were going to foreign banks and corporations rather than U.S. banks. This included emerging market nations.

    Countries like China, India, Brazil and even Turkey all used easy cash flow from central banks like the Fed to prop up their bond markets, and manipulate their currencies as well as their equities. India, for example, openly complained about the Fed’s move to raise interest rates and cut the balance sheet, warning that it would cause instability in global markets dependent on dollar circulation.

    The Fed’s unwind of QE is hitting emerging markets first and mostly in terms of currency values.  The stronger dollar (relative to forex trading) is causing extensive havoc in forex trading and other sectors as investors pull funds from emerging markets due to a less favorable exchange rate.  But this does not necessarily mean that US based assets will benefit.

    The U.S. economy is next on the chopping block as corporate debt now sits near historic highs. The only other safety net for U.S. stocks the past few years has been corporate stock buybacks, which corporations have been funding with no-interest loans from the Fed and other banks. As the Fed continues to raise interest rates, corporate debt costs will skyrocket and these stock buybacks will shrivel. After this happens, each new cut of the Fed’s balance sheet will result in an even more dramatic fall in the Dow.

    Ultimately, emerging markets are going to look for alternatives to the dollar as the world reserve if they don’t get a supply of the fiscal stimulus drug they have become so addicted to. This is already happening in China and Russia as they dump U.S. Treasurys and de-dollarize in favor of other assets like gold.

    So, we have international markets suffering from liquidity withdrawals due to the Federal Reserve, we have U.S. stock markets under threat of reversal due to Fed interest rate hikes and balance sheet dumps, and we have the dollar’s world reserve currency status under threat as multiple nations seek out alternatives after feeling jilted by the Fed taking away the punch bowl.  Multiple tentacles are wrapped around the global economy and all of them attached to the same source.

    It would appear that the only “contagion” is that of central banks; most of all the Federal Reserve. Yet, all we hear about in the mainstream is talk on the trade war and linchpins like Turkey.

    The public is being regaled with lies, conditioned to accept false explanations about the true cause of a crisis that is about to occur; a crisis which central bankers are deliberately engineering so that they can later promote the philosophy of “simplification” and one-world centralization as a cure-all.

    *  *  *

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  • Trump Slams NY Gov Cuomo's "Total Meltdown" After "America Was Never That Great" Comment

    Update: President Trump has been made aware of Cuomo’s “total meltdown”…

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    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    In an enormous political gaffe, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told an audience “America was never that great.”

    Kiss the 2020 Democratic presidential campaign of NY governor Andrew Cuomo goodbye.

    His comment America ‘Was Never That Great’ drew laughs and gasps from the crowd today.

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    Cuomo, a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2020, was speaking at a bill-signing event in New York City, when he turned his attention to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” mantra.

    “We not going to Make America Great Again. It was never that great,” Cuomo said, prompting some in the audience to laugh and others to gasp.

    “We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged,” he said.

    “We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping against women, 51 percent of the population, is gone, and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed.”

    Following the blowback, Cuomo’s office defended his original remarks and criticized Trump’s slogan.

    Politically Stupid

    Cuomo could have said he made an error, misspoke, or something similar. It may have blown over. Instead, like Hillary with Iraq, he could not admit a mistake.

    I firmly believe that Hillary, not Obama would have been the Presidential nominee in 2008 if she had only admitted she made a mistake on Iraq.

    Flash forward to today: How anyone can be so politically stupid is a mystery.

    On second thought, we are talking about Democratic politicians.

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