- Iran Defends Eurasia Integration By Unveiling New Fighter Jet
Iran served as a critical bridge in the ancient Silk Road, connecting the East and the West. It also has enormous potential to play a significant role in the new Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
With the threat of hot war almost a monthly occurrence, the Trump administration has unleashed economic warfare on Iran, as it has become clear: Iran is a significant piece of the BRI.
The assault of sanctions, 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 in China’s New Silk Road–arguably the most important infrastructure project of the 21st century—and overall Eurasia integration,” said Pepe Escobar, a Brazilian journalist with focus on Central Asia and the Middle East.
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs: China, Iran, & One Belt, One Road
The Trump administration’s economic warfare on Iran is evidence of how China’s New Silk Road, or BRI, threatens the American global hegemony.
As the Eurasian Integration is expanding, Iran has considerably boosted economic cooperation with China.
On Saturday, “China is ready to develop further cooperation with Iran and condemns the use of unilateral sanctions in international relations,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said during a phone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif.
“China attaches a great importance to Chinese-Iranian relations and is ready to continue developing mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Iran,” Wang said, as quoted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, adding that Beijing had opposed the use of unilateral sanctions in international relations.
In response to Washington’s precision-guided economic warfare and constant threats from the Trump administration, Iran’s defense minister just announced plans to unveil a new fighter jet this week and continue enhancing missile capabilities.
In other words, Iran is boosting its defense capabilities to protect the BRI from future American intervention in the region.
Brigadier General Amir Hatami said in a live TV program over the weekend that the fighter jet would fly on Wednesday, which marks Iran’s Defense Industry Day. “Our focus has been on priorities, with the top priority being the missile issue,” he said. “We are in a good position in this field, but we need to develop it.”
Hatami also elaborated on the recent unveiling of precision-guided ‘Fateh Mobin’ missile, stressing that new Iranian missiles will add to the country’s defenses.
“We have never sought and will never seek weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons due to our religious beliefs and as stated by Leader of the Islamic Revolution [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei], but we will not allow a violation of our interests and are looking for peace,” he said.
“We operate within the framework of Iran’s strategy based on active deterrence. Iran has never invaded a country, but anyone attempting to threaten our security will receive a decisive response,” he added.
Hatami said, “A plane, which has passed several stages, will be presented on the Defense Industry Day and people will see the fighter jet flying from a close distance as well as the equipment used for its manufacture.”
According to Press Tv, Iran recently made breakthroughs in its defense sector and achieved self-sufficiency in producing military equipment and hardware domestically, which has ultimately bypassed US sanctions and economic pressure on the country.
Hatami did not mention any detail about the new aircraft, but we have a hunch it could either one of these planes below:
As for the demolition of US global power, well, China and the BRI have made sure the collapse of American global hegemony has been accelerated. In the meantime, the chart below explains how the Trump admin has unleashed economic warfare on critical countries of the BRI, e.g., China, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Russia. Notice how the countries are all along the BRI?
So, it all makes sense now, Make America Great Again really means destroying the countries underneath the BRI. Just look at what the US is doing to Turkey this month.
- Spain Is A New Window For African Immigrants
Only a year ago, most African “refugees” came to Italy from Libya. Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini in cooperation with the Libyan authorities and the Libyan coastguard took action to curb this procedure, and so Italy ceased to be the main migration route. Now Spain has become a new window for African immigrants wanting to get to Europe.
The number of immigrants reaching the Old Continent through the Iberian Peninsula is growing with every year. From the beginning of January to August 5, a total of over 59 thousand traveled to Europe by sea, of whom fewer than 19,000 went to Italy, over 16,000 to Greece, and almost 24,000 to Spain, which is more than 40% of all the so-called refugees arriving in the Old Continent.
Since the beginning of the year, nearly as many immigrants have passed through Spain as during the whole of the last year, and the number is rising. Thus, the transit route through Libya and Tunisia has lost its significance in favor of the road through Algeria and Morocco, where already 50 000 Africans are eager to cross the Strait of Gibraltar. This phenomenon is favored by the following circumstances:
1. Spain’s leftist government of Pedro Sanchez has a completely different approach to immigration than its Italian counterpart headed by Giuseppe Conte. While the Italians are closing ports to non-governmental vessels transporting Africans and assure to return the undocumented immigrants to their countries of origin, Sanchez announced an open door policy in June. The Spanish government also pledged to remove the barbed wire fence in Ceuta and Melilla, the Spanish enclaves on the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar, and promised newcomers free health care.
2. When the Italian government began to take increasingly determined actions to block the influx of people from Africa, George Soros, who supported and financed the flooding of Europe with re-settlers, met the Spanish prime minister at the end of June.
The billionaire, who financed the independence activities of Catalonia, proposed withdrawal of support for separatist sentiments in Barcelona, in exchange for Madrid’s acceptance of African immigrants.
3. When Germany and France became stretched to the limit coping with the wave of “refugees”, the government of Pedro Sanchez decided to open the country’s door to them, turning Spain into the European leader of migration policy. Soon after having been sworn into office, the new prime minister said that the EU should perceive migration as a problem of all member states and consequently, he said, the evasion of solidarity in this respect should be met with putting pressure on uncooperative governments through to their marginalization. The fact that Brussels pays for accepting Africans arouses a suspicion that by letting them in Madrid is looking for financial means to balance the state budget.
4. Spain’s fertility rate is extremely low and amounts to 1.32. The new government – including Minister of Foreign Affairs Josep Borrel – claims that “new blood” is needed so that Europe “does not turn into an aging continent” but can grow economically. The same scenario, to which the Gefira Foundation has already alerted the readers, is to be implemented in other countries. Such an action, however, brings about an effect opposite to the desired one, which can be seen after the incidents in France, about which we wrote in June.
5. The distance from Morocco and Algeria to the southern coast of Spain is definitely smaller than that from Libya to Italy.
The distance between the Moroccan coast and the Spanish resort is less than 50 km.
This allows international organizations to easily and quickly ferry immigrants, and even encourages the latter to take the sea crossing on their own, as shown in a film from the end of July this year with shots of newcomers landing on the beach in Zahora, Andalusia.
- Satellite Shows Sprawling 'Re-education Camps' For Chinese Muslims In Xinjiang Region
More proof has emerged confirming that China has erected expansive ‘re-education centers’ for up to a million or more ethnic Uighurs in what a recent United Nations statement said resembles a “massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy”.
The minority Turkic speaking ethno-religious group concentrated in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang has found itself under increased persecution and oversight by Chinese authorities of late as their mostly Sunni Islamic identity and separatist politics have resulted in historic tensions with the Communist government.
A U.N. panel examining human rights inside China wrapped up last week and included a Chinese delegation of about 50 officials which formally denied that prisons have been set up for the Uighur population.
Side of a re-education camp in Turpan’s New District. Image source: Wall Street Journal However, a senior Chinese official, Hu Lianhe of the United Front Work Department, for the first time acknowledged the existence of Uighur-focused facilities in response to the U.N. panel, claiming according to the WSJ that they were actually “vocational training centers” and that no “arbitrary detention” was taking place.
But the WSJ has gathered satellite imagery showing guard towers and other security measures, as well as testimony that contradicts the claim of mere “vocational” programs — evidence which goes so far as to demonstrate that China was constructing camps even as the U.N. rights panel was preparing to convene.
The Wall Street Journal presents the images as follows:
Satellite images reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and a specialist in photo analysis show that camps have been growing. Construction work has been carried out on some within the past two weeks, including at one near the western city of Kashgar that has doubled in size since Journal reporters visited in November.
The full extent of the internment program was long obscured because many Uighurs feared speaking out. Now more are recounting experiences, including six former inmates interviewed by the Journal who described how they or other detainees had been bound to chairs and deprived of adequate food.
Top above shows a camp near Kashgar, China on April 17, 2017 according to the WSJ.
Below shows same camp on August 15, 2018, which appears to have doubled in size. Image source: Wall Street Journal
The Uyghur American Association via Buzzfeed: “A satellite photo of a Chinese reeducation camp near Korla city in central Xinjiang. GPS coordinates were provided by a Uighur exile who had visited the camp.”
Satellite image of a re-education camp in Makit, Xinjiang (above). Source: Shawn Zhang via Medium.
A satellite image of a re-education camp in Payzawat, Xinjiang (above). Source: Shawn Zhang via Medium.
Another view of the Shule camp near Kashgar, China which the WSJ profiled as part of its investigation. Image source: Shawn Zhang, Mediu.
Historically throughout parts of the 20th century, the strict Islamic strand of Wahhabi thought and practice has made deep inroads among the Uighurs, with a number of recent historical analysis papers documenting an uptick in Saudi money and influence in Xinjiang province in the 1990s — something which flies in the face of China’s official Communist party and ideology.
A prior South China Morning Post article highlighted Chinese officials’ silence concerning the growing accusations and mass evidence revealing the fast expanding Uighur internment camps:
Chinese delegation leader Yu Jianhua highlighted economic progress and rising living standards, among other things, but did not directly address the report on the Uygurs.
Monitoring groups say the Uygurs have been targeted in a surveillance and security campaign that has sent thousands into detention and indoctrination centers.
Meanwhile, the WSJ interviewed a number of former inmates at the camps, for example, a 22-year old Uigher only identified as Ablikim: “They would also tell us about religion, saying there is no such thing as religion, why do you believe in religion, there is no God,” he said.
According to Ablikim’s testimony, who described the process of eventually being held in a camp which he said was for political indoctrination, he was interrogated for days because of his Uighur identity:
Ablikim said he was questioned there for days, spending up to nine hours at a time bound to a chair by his ankles and hands, which were handcuffed behind his back. Interrogators wanted to know whether he was involved with religious groups abroad. He said he wasn’t.
He was eventually permitted to join other inmates. The prisoners were awakened at 5 a.m. each morning and after a 45-minute run, shouting “The Communist Party is good!” were fed thin soup and steamed bread, he said.
And another former detainee told the WSJ: “It’s like a black hole. People go in, but they don’t come out,” and said of further of his experience which he lived to tall about, “I’m afraid of the worst now.”
Beijing has in recent years been accused of practicing collective punishment and broad crackdowns on the Uighur population in Xinjiang, which is numbered in total at 11 million (with some estimates of up to 15 million; China’s total Muslim population is at about 21 million).
The minority ethnic group is also found in sizable numbers in neighboring Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. China considers the foreign association and roots of the sizable ethnic group to pose a threat for the importation of terrorist ideology.
For example, the most notable separatist movement in Western China is the ethnic Uighur-founded and led East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM, also commonly called the Turkestan Islamic Party, or TIP), a Muslim separatist group based Xinjiang known to have conducted dozens of terror attacks in Chinese cities like Shanghai and Yunnan, but also in places like Afghanistan, and as far as Syria, where it’s believed up to 5,000 Uighurs fight alongside al-Qaeda.
- What If Russiagate Is The New WMDs?
Authored by Jack Hunter via The American Conservative,
Democrats, certain in their accusations of guilt, sound a lot like Republicans in 2002…
“The evidence against Trump and Russia is huge and mounting every day,” declared liberal celebrity activist Rosie O’Donnell at a protest in front of the White House last week.
“We see it, he can’t lie about it,” she added. “He is going down and so will all of his administration.”
“The charge is treason,” O’Donnell declared. Protesters held held large letters that spelled it out: “T-R-E-A-S-O-N.”
O’Donnell is by no means alone in her sentiments. Trump’s guilt in “Russiagate” is now assumed by much of the American left, and reaches greater levels of fervor with every passing day.
This kind of partisan religiosity is not new.
In the wake of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, conservative pundit Ann Coulter accused war opponents of “treason” and insisted of Saddam Hussein, “We know he had weapons of mass destruction.”
Coulter was confident and she wasn’t alone. Virtually the entire mainstream American right—from pundits like Coulter and Sean Hannity to President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress—was deeply invested in the notion that Hussein possessed WMDs and that the Iraq war was justified based on that unshakeable premise. This belief was so ingrained for so long that many excitedly rushed to pretend that chemical weapons discovered in Iraq as reported by the New York Times in 2014 were somehow the same thing as the “mushroom cloud” the Bush administration said Saddam was capable of.
Unfortunately for the right (and America, and the world), that premise turned out to be false. There were no WMDs. Today, only a minority of delusional, face-saving hawks and unreconstructed neoconservatives still parrot that lie.
And far from being “traitors,” Iraq war opponents today are considered to have been on the right side of history.
Now, “Russian collusion” could be becoming the new WMDs.
The post-2016 left’s most dominant narrative is arguably their deeply held belief—with all the ferocity and piety of yesterday’s pro-war conservatives—that Russia colluded with Trump’s campaign to undermine the presidential election. Many believe that the president and anyone who supports his diplomatic efforts like Senator Rand Paul are in the pocket of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I will meet not just with our friends, but with our enemies,” said Barack Obama in 2008, and he did just that with Putin, as has every other president in recent times.
But Trump-Russia relations have been spun into far-fetched conspiracy theories on the left. New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait recently went so far as to speculate that Trump has been a Russian agent since 1987, a cockamamie idea on par with the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes’ discredited conspiracy theory that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in cahoots.
It really was plausible that Iraq had WMDs in 2003 based on what our intelligence agencies knew, or purported to know. Today, it is feasible that American democracy really has Putin’s fingerprints on it based on things revealed by U.S. intelligence.
But isn’t it also possible that the left is reading far too much into Russiagate?
The Nation’s Aaron Maté believes liberals are overreaching, and that’s putting it mildly:
From the outset, Russiagate proponents have exhibited a blind faith in the unverified claims of US government officials and other sources, most of them unnamed. The reaction to special counsel Robert Mueller’s recent indictment of 12 Russian military-intelligence officers for hacking of Democratic party servers and voter databases is no exception. Mueller’s indictment is certainly detailed. Most significantly, it marks the first time anyone has been charged for offenses related to Russiagate’s underlying crime.
But while it is a major step forward in the investigation, we have yet to see the basis for the allegations that Mueller has lodged. As with any criminal case, from a petty offense to a cybercrime charge against a foreign government, a verdict cannot be formed in the absence of this evidence.
Then the irony kicks in. Maté continues, “The record of US intelligence, replete with lies and errors, underscores the need for caution. Mueller was a player in one of this century’s most disastrous follies when, in congressional testimony, he endorsed claims about Iraqi WMDs and warned that Saddam Hussein ‘may supply’ chemical and biological material to ‘terrorists.’”
Noting Mueller’s 2003 WMD testimony is not an attempt to undermine him or his investigation, something Maté also makes clear. But it does serve as an important reminder that “intelligence” can be flat-out wrong. It reminds us how these scenarios, which so much of Washington and the elite class fully endorse, can be looked back on as lapses of reason years later.
Mass psychology is real. Political classes and parties are not immune.
“Suppose, however, that all of the claims about Russian meddling turn out to be true,” Maté asks. “Hacking e-mails and voter databases is certainly a crime, and seeking to influence another country’s election can never be justified.”
He continues, “But the procession of elite voices falling over themselves to declare that stealing e-mails and running juvenile social-media ads amount to an ‘attack,’ even an ‘act of war,’ are escalating a panic when a sober assessment is what is most needed.”
The U.S. could have certainly used less hyperbole and more sobriety in 2002 and 2003.
And there’s good chance that when the history books are written about American politics circa 2018, much of Russiagate will be dismissed as more Red Scare than Red Dawn.
With Russia, as with WMDs, left and right have elevated slivers of legitimate security concerns to the level of existential threat based mostly on their own partisanship. That kind of thinking has already proven to be dangerous.
We don’t know what evidence of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia might yet come forth, but it’s easy to see how, even if this narrative eventually falls flat, 15 years from now some liberals will still be clinging to Russiagate not as a matter of fact, but political identity. Russia-obsessed liberals, too, could end up on the wrong side of history.
No one can know the future. Republicans would be wise to prepare for new, potentially damaging information about Trump and Russia that may yet emerge.
Democrats should consider that Russiagate may be just as imaginary as Republicans’ Iraq fantasy.
- China Unleashes Economic War On LA Coffee Shop…For Serving Taiwan President
China unleashed economic warfare against a bakery-and-coffee chain that served the President of Taiwan coffee during her trip to the United States.
Gourmet Master Co Ltd., a Taiwan-based coffee shop mainly involved in the provision of western-style desserts with stores in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the United States, and Australia, saw their stock collapse last week as the company was caught in the middle of tensions with China over Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit to a store in Los Angeles, California.
On August 12, during her layover in Los Angeles, the Taiwan President visited an 85C Cafe location, where social media pictures reportedly show her receiving gifts and coffee.
“The light of Taiwan. Taiwanese chain coffee shop opened a branch in Los Angeles at 85 °C, and the visiting team stopped. President Xiaoying and the legislators ordered a few cups of coffee, thank you # 萧美琴 , this cup is her request,” said Keelung Cai, a Taiwanese Democratic Progressive Party official, who posted a series of images of the visit on Facebook.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen receives gifts from the shop.
And here it is. The one cup of coffee that led to the company’s stock collapsing.
Surprisingly, Tsai’s visit went viral in mainland China which triggered a severe backlash.
According to Bloomberg, shares tumbled in the Taipei trading session, wiping out over $310 million from its market capitalization, after several Chinese nationalistic media outlets published articles calling for a boycott of the company. Some even said Tsai’s stop at the chain, makes 85C Cafe a “supporter of Tsai Ing-wen and Taiwan’s independence.”
One delicious cup of coffee collapsed the stock down 20 percent in a few trading sessions. The company has declined more than 42 percent since the top in December 2017.
The Global Times, a state-run newspaper that has been known to distort information to incite nationalism, was the most active agitators this time, said The Diplomat. The Communist newspaper published a series of articles claiming that 85C Cafe – “such a Taiwanese company which is making big money in mainland China” – supports Tsai’s policy of pro-independence of Taiwan. It was even mentioned that 85C Cafe’s official website categorized its China branch under its “overseas operations,” a mistake that could cost the business of many Chinese nationalists.
Mainland China accounted for 64 percent of Gourmet Master’s revenue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In comparison, Taiwan, the company’s home base, and the United States each generated only 17 percent of the total revenue. As it seems a boycott in mainland China could be devastating for the company.
The market has become a big “uncertainty,” where the government could punish it with measures including hygiene inspections, Reliance Securities Investment Consultant Co. Vice President Richard Lin said by phone to Bloomberg.
On Wednesday, the company issued a press release, emphasizing that the company “has never changed its position of upholding the 1992 Consensus (or One China Consensus).”
The company also said: “keep contributing to the peaceful development of cross-strait relations and opposing any behavior and words that split cross-strait compatriots,” the announcement said.
However, the Global Times intensified its attacks on 85C Cafe after the press release, claiming that the company’s slow response is just a mean to ease criticism, because the announcement was not published on social media.
“To make matters worse, several of China’s most popular platforms that offer online food delivery service, including ELEME Inc., Meituan, and Dianping, have deleted 85C Cafe from their apps. This collective move — against the logic of the market — implied that authorities in Beijing are likely standing behind the anti-85C Cafe campaign, although Beijing so far hasn’t publicly expressed its attitude on the incident,” said The Diplomat.
Tsai’s spokesman Alex Huang condemned the need for the coffee operator to issue a “humiliating” statement. “It shouldn’t have happened in a civilized society,” Huang said in a text message to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg also noted the company’s Taiwan website was hacked last week, per a report via Taipei-based Central News Agency. The website earlier had “many photos” of Tsai, CNA reported. Bloomberg failed to get a response from the company spokesman Chris Lee.
While this is not the first time that overseas brands have suffered in China due to strong political action, the risks of more incidents like this are almost inevitable amid a worsening trade war environment between China and the United States. Which company is next?
- New Study Finds Explosion In Concealed Carry Permits, Especially Among Women
New research from economist and author John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center reveals that Americans have been applying for permits to carry concealed weapons (CCW) in record numbers, especially among women.
According to Lott, there were 890,000 CCW permits issued in 2017, while 4.6 million have been issued between 2007 and 2018, according to official state records – meaning 2017 saw a jump of nearly 24% in one year.
“We have seen an increase from 4.6 million permits in 2007 to 17.25 million now, with the number increasing every year,” Lott – the author of the highly cited book More Guns, Less Crime told Fox News.
There were 2.7 million concealed handgun permit holders in 1999, 4.6 million in 2007, 8 million in 2011, 11.1 million in 2014, and now 17.25 million in 2017. The growth in permits has been continuous. –Crime Prevention Research Center
“The states that we have seen a slowing of permits have primarily been these Constitutional Carry states where a permit is no longer required, indeed some of those states have even seen a drop in the number of permits even though the number of people carrying in those places has undoubtedly gone up,” added Lott.
The report also notes that despite the common assumption that CCW applications would drop off after the 2016 election, quite the opposite has happened.
“Conventional wisdom held that the sharp rise in gun sales during Obama’s presidency was driven, at least in part, by the threat of guns control,” the study says. “That’s why everyone expected gun sales to decline after Trump’s victory.”
Other highlights:
The number of women and minorities with CCW permits has continued to rise, with Black and Asian women leading the pack.
Interest in CCW permits has corresponded to various mass shootings, as Lott illustrates on page 40.
After 2014, the murder rate began to climb with the rate of CCW holders, however an increase in violent crimes was comparatively muted:
Read the full report below:
- Paul Craig Roberts: The CIA Owns The US & European Media
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
William Blum shares with us his correspondence with Washington Post presstitute Michael Birnbaum. As you can tell from Birnbaum’s replies, he comes across as either very stupid or as a CIA asset.
When I received my briefing as staff associate, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, which required top secret clearance, I was told by senior members of the staff that the Washington Post was a CIA asset. Watching the Washington Post’s takedown of President Richard Nixon with the orchestrated Watergate story, that became obvious. President Nixon had made too many overtures to the Soviets and too many arms limitations agreements, and he opened to China. Watching President Nixon’s peace initiatives water down the threat level from the Soviet Union and Maoist China, the military/security complex saw a threat to its budget and power and decided that Nixon had to go. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy had resulted in far too much skepticism about the Warren Commission Report, so the CIA decided to use the Washington Post to get rid of Nixon. To keep the clueless American left hating Nixon, the CIA used its assets in the leftwing to keep Nixon blamed for the Vietnam war, a war that Nixon inherited and did not want.
The CIA knew that Nixon’s problem was that he could not exit the war without losing his conservative base, which was convinced of the nonsensical “Domino Theory.” I have always wondered if the CIA concocted the “Domino Theory,” as it so well served them. Unable to get rid of the war “with honor,” Nixon was driven to brutal methods to force the North Vietnamese to accept a situation that he could depart without defeat and soiling America’s “honor” and losing his conservative support base. The North Vietnamese wouldn’t bend, but the US Congress did, and so the CIA succeeded in discrediting among both the leftwing and righwing Nixon’s war management. With no one to defend him, Nixon was an easy target for the CIA.
Here is Blum’s exchange with Birnbaum. It is possible that Birnbaum is neither stupid nor a CIA asset, but just a person wanting to hold on to a job. The last thing he can afford to do is to disabuse readers of the “Russian Threat” when Bezos’ Amazon and Washington Post properties are dependent on the CIA’s annual subsidy of $600 million disquised as a “contract.”
The Anti-Empire Report # 159
Willian BlumThe mind of the mass media: Email exchange between myself and a leading Washington Post foreign policy reporter:
July 18, 2018Dear Mr. Birnbaum,
You write Trump “made no mention of Russia’s adventures in Ukraine”. Well, neither he nor Putin nor you made any mention of America’s adventures in the Ukraine, which resulted in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014, which led to the justified Russian adventure. Therefore …?
If Russia overthrew the Mexican government would you blame the US for taking some action in Mexico?
William BlumDear Mr. Blum,
Thanks for your note. “America’s adventures in the Ukraine”: what are you talking about? Last time I checked, it was Ukrainians in the streets of Kiev who caused Yanukovych to turn tail and run. Whether or not that was a good thing, we can leave aside, but it wasn’t the Americans who did it.
It is, however, Russian special forces who fanned out across Crimea in February and March 2014, according to Putin, and Russians who came down from Moscow who stoked conflict in eastern Ukraine in the months after, according to their own accounts.
Best, Michael BirnbaumTo MB,
I can scarcely believe your reply. Do you read nothing but the Post? Do you not know of high State Dept official Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador in Ukraine in Maidan Square to encourage the protesters? She spoke of 5 billion (sic) dollars given to aid the protesters who were soon to overthrow the govt. She and the US Amb. spoke openly of who to choose as the next president. And he’s the one who became president. This is all on tape. I guess you never watch Russia Today (RT). God forbid! I read the Post every day. You should watch RT once in a while.
William BlumTo WB,
I was the Moscow bureau chief of the newspaper; I reported extensively in Ukraine in the months and years following the protests. My observations are not based on reading. RT is not a credible news outlet, but I certainly do read far beyond our own pages, and of course I talk to the actual actors on the ground myself – that’s my job.
And: yes, of course Nuland was in the Maidan – but encouraging the protests, as she clearly did, is not the same as sparking them or directing them, nor is playing favorites with potential successors, as she clearly did, the same as being directly responsible for overthrowing the government. I’m not saying the United States wasn’t involved in trying to shape events. So were Russia and the European Union. But Ukrainians were in the driver’s seat the whole way through. I know the guy who posted the first Facebook call to protest Yanukovych in November 2013; he’s not an American agent. RT, meanwhile, reports fabrications and terrible falsehoods all the time. By all means consume a healthy and varied media diet – don’t stop at the US mainstream media. But ask yourself how often RT reports critically on the Russian government, and consider how that lacuna shapes the rest of their reporting. You will find plenty of reporting in the Washington Post that is critical of the US government and US foreign policy in general, and decisions in Ukraine and the Ukrainian government in specific. Our aim is to be fair, without picking sides.
Best, Michael Birnbaum* * *
Right, the United States doesn’t play indispensable roles in changes of foreign governments; never has, never will; even when they offer billions of dollars; even when they pick the new president, which, apparently, is not the same as picking sides. It should be noticed that Mr Birnbaum offers not a single example to back up his extremist claim that RT “reports fabrications and terrible falsehoods all the time.” “All the time”, no less! That should make it easy to give some examples.
For the record, I think RT is much less biased than the Post on international affairs. And, yes, it’s bias, not “fake news” that’s the main problem – Cold-War/anti-Communist/anti-Russian bias that Americans have been raised with for a full century. RT defends Russia against the countless mindless attacks from the West. Who else is there to do that? Should not the Western media be held accountable for what they broadcast? Americans are so unaccustomed to hearing the Russian side defended, or hearing it at all, that when they do it can seem rather weird.
To the casual observer, THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA indictments of July 14 of Russian intelligence agents (GRU) reinforced the argument that the Soviet government interfered in the US 2016 presidential election. Regard these indictments in proper perspective and we find that election interference is only listed as a supposed objective, with charges actually being for unlawful cyber operations, identity theft, and conspiracy to launder money by American individuals unconnected to the Russian government. So … we’re still waiting for some evidence of actual Russian interference in the election aimed at determining the winner.
The Russians did it (cont.)
Each day I spend about three hours reading the Washington Post. Amongst other things I’m looking for evidence – real, legal, courtroom-quality evidence, or at least something logical and rational – to pin down those awful Russkis for their many recent crimes, from influencing the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election to use of a nerve agent in the UK. But I do not find such evidence.
Each day brings headlines like these:
“U.S. to add economic sanctions on Russia: Attack with nerve agent on former spy in England forces White House to act”
“Is Russia exploiting new Facebook goal?”
“Experts: Trump team lacks urgency on Russian threat”
These are all from the same day, August 9, which led me to thinking of doing this article, but similar stories can be found any day in the Post and in major newspapers anywhere in America. None of the articles begins to explain how Russia did these things, or even WHY. Motivation appears to have become a lost pursuit in the American mass media. The one thing sometimes mentioned, which I think may have some credibility, is Russia’s preference of Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. But this doesn’t begin to explain how Russia could pull off any of the electoral magic it’s accused of, which would be feasible only if the United States were a backward, Third World, Banana Republic.
There’s the Facebook ads, as well as all the other ads … The people who are influenced by this story – have they read many of the actual ads? Many are pro-Clinton or anti-Trump; many are both; many are neither. It’s one big mess, the only rational explanation of this which I’ve read is that they come from money-making websites, “click-bait” sites as they’re known, which earn money simply by attracting visitors.
As to the nerve agents, it makes more sense if the UK or the CIA did it to make the Russians look bad, because the anti-Russian scandal which followed was totally predictable. Why would Russia choose the time of the World Cup in Moscow – of which all of Russia was immensely proud – to bring such notoriety down upon their head? But that would have been an ideal time for their enemies to want to embarrass them.
However, I have no doubt that the great majority of Americans who follow the news each day believe the official stories about the Russians. They’re particularly impressed with the fact that every US intelligence agency supports the official stories. They would not be impressed at all if told that a dozen Russian intelligence agencies all disputed the charges. Group-think is alive and well all over the world. As is Cold War II.
But we’re the Good Guys, ain’t we?
For a defender of US foreign policy there’s very little that causes extreme heartburn more than someone implying a “moral equivalence” between American behavior and that of Russia. That was the case during Cold War I and it’s the same now in Cold War II. It just drives them up the wall.
After the United States passed a law last year requiring TV station RT (Russia Today) to register as a “foreign agent”, the Russians passed their own law allowing authorities to require foreign media to register as a “foreign agent”. Senator John McCain denounced the new Russian law, saying there is “no equivalence” between RT and networks such as Voice of America, CNN and the BBC, whose journalists “seek the truth, debunk lies, and hold governments accountable.” By contrast, he said, “RT’s propagandists debunk the truth, spread lies, and seek to undermine democratic governments in order to further Vladimir Putin’s agenda.”
And here is Tom Malinowski, former Assistant Secretary of State for democracy, human rights and labor (2014-2017) – last year he reported that Putin had “charged that the U.S. government had interfered ‘aggressively’ in Russia’s 2012 presidential vote,” claiming that Washington had “gathered opposition forces and financed them.” Putin, wrote Malinowski, “apparently got President Trump to agree to a mutual commitment that neither country would interfere in the other’s elections.”
“Is this moral equivalence fair?” Malinowski asked and answered: “In short, no. Russia’s interference in the United States’ 2016 election could not have been more different from what the United States does to promote democracy in other countries.”
How do you satirize such officials and such high-school beliefs?
We also have the case of the US government agency, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has interfered in more elections than the CIA or God. Indeed, the man who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, Allen Weinstein, declared in 1991:
“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” On April 12, 2018 the presidents of two of NED’s wings wrote: “A specious narrative has come back into circulation: that Moscow’s campaign of political warfare is no different from U.S.-supported democracy assistance.”
“Democracy assistance”, you see, is what they call NED’s election-interferences and government-overthrows. The authors continue:
“This narrative is churned out by propaganda outlets such as RT and Sputnik [radio station]. … it is deployed by isolationists who propound a U.S. retreat from global leadership.”
“Isolationists” is what conservatives call critics of US foreign policy whose arguments they can’t easily dismiss, so they imply that such people just don’t want the US to be involved in anything abroad.
And “global leadership” is what they call being first in election-interferences and government-overthrows.
- Tesla Shorts Up $1.2 Billion Since Musk "Going Private" Tweet As Saudis Plan Investment In Competitor
It was less than three weeks ago when we posted “Tesla Shorts Refuse To Cover Despite Suffering Massive Losses” in which we wrote that “Tesla shares rocketed higher on August 2, by almost $50, the day after the company reported its second-quarter results” and added that “despite the stock rising more than 15% immediately after the report, WSJ analytics showed that short sellers are standing their ground in the name despite an estimated $1.7 billion paper loss resulting from the violent move higher.“
At the start of the month, and heading into Tesla earnings, there was about $10.5 billion in short interest according to S3 Partners. And as the below chart shows, Tesla has remained the most heavily shorted stock in the U.S. both before and after its report.
Of course, the pain for the shorts only spiked on August 7 when first the Saudi Sov. Wealth Fund announced a 5% stake, promptly followed by Musk tweeting his intention to take the company private at $420, which sent the stock just shy of its all time highs.
Still, the shorts refused to cover, because as the FT reported on Sunday, while the buyout plan pitched by Musk may have been nothing more than a way to “burn the shorts“, something the SEC is now allegedly investigating, less than 4 per cent of the short positions have been closed since his tweet.
And in retrospect, good thing they did not because as the bizarre events in the subsequent days demonstrated, Musk’s market manipulative tweet – it has since emerged that funding was not secured – may have been the catalyst to not only an SEC investigation, but the last nail of what has been one long, at times surreal emotional collapse for the Tesla CEO.
Following every twist and turn in the grotesque Elon Musk saga, Tesla stock reversed course and less than two weeks after Musk’s tweet at the close on Friday, it traded 19% below their level before the tweet. Which, according to S3 Partners calculations, means that the mark-to-market value of the short positions is up $1.2bn over that period.
As S3 also adds, the Tesla short interest has risen to $11.2bn, which not only means that more than a quarter of the company’s free float is short, but that the short interest is even greater than when it was before Tesla’s impressive earnings, the Saudi news and the Musk’s going private announcement.
Making matters worse for the company’s narrative, S3 said several short sellers have increased their bets on a Tesla share price decline, “suggesting they remain unconvinced by Mr Musk’s ambition to buy out some existing shareholders at a mooted price of $420 per share” according to the FT.
One could also say that they are betting that the stock will collapse even more now that the SEC is finally poking holes in the Musk story.
One of the persistent shorts is Crispin Odey, a world-renowned market bear, who has bet against Tesla, and who as we reported on Friday in a letter to investors last week said that while “shorts like Tesla have been difficult to hold on t… Tesla feels like it is entering the final stage of its life.” He also compared Musk’s recent behavior to that of Donald Crowhurst, “the amateur sailor who set off in the 1960s on a solo voyage around the world and never came back.”
Meanwhile, as investors and analysts continue to encourage Musk to shut up and spend less time on Twitter and focus on his company, Musk tweeted out (at 2:30am Pacific Time) that changing the way he works is not an option in response to an open letter by Arianna Huffington imploring the Tesla CEO to change his ways.
Ford & Tesla are the only 2 American car companies to avoid bankruptcy. I just got home from the factory. You think this is an option. It is not.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 19, 2018
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The tweets followed an emotional interview with the New York Times in which Musk acknowledged between “laughter and tears” that he was overworked and exhausted, saying his intense involvement at Tesla’s factory had taken a steep toll on his personal life and health. Yet even then, Musk did not fail to attack the shorts once again:
“They’re not dumb guys, but they’re not supersmart. They’re OK. They’re smartish.”
Meanwhile, late on Sunday, another “smartish” player in the drama re-emerged, when Reuters reported that the Saudi PIF, or Sovereign Wealth Fund, which previously had taken a 5% stake in Tesla and was allegedly helping Musk to “secure funding”, was in talks to invest in aspiring Tesla rival Lucid Motors.
PIF and Lucid Motors have drawn up a term sheet under which PIF could invest more than $1 billion in Lucid Motors and obtain majority ownership, the sources said. PIF’s first investment in Lucid Motors, however, would be for $500 million, and subsequent cash injections would come in two stages that are contingent on Lucid Motors hitting certain production milestones, one of the sources added.
According to Reuters, “a deal with Lucid Motors would also be more in line with PIF’s limited resources, given that, despite its $250 billion in assets, PIF has already made substantial commitments to other technology companies or investments, including a $45-billion agreement to invest in a giant technology fund led by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp.”
It would also be a confirmation that the fund, which as we reported previously is scrambling to raise capital in an add, roundabout way that involves Aramco (which recently scrapped its plans to go public) and the state run petrochemical giant Sabic, will not invest in a Tesla deal but will instead spread out its funds across similarly themed investment ideas.
As a reminder, after Musk said that the funding for his going private deal was “secured,” he later elaborated last Monday that he believed Saudi Arabia’s PIF could provide the necessary funding, although sources close to the sovereign wealth fund have since played down that prospect; today’s new effectively kills any hope that PIF would participate in a Tesla buyout.
As for Lucid, not only is it a company that is far earlier in its development, thus allowing investors a far greater piece of the pie at this moment, but ironically, it was founded in 2007 by Bernard Tse, a former Tesla vice president and board member, and Sam Weng, a former exec at Oracle Corp and Redback Networks. It received backing from Chinese investors, including tech entrepreneur Jia Yueting and state-owned automaker BAIC. Other venture capital backers have included Venrock, Mitsui & Co and Tsing Capital.
Lucid Motors is not yet selling any cars. In 2016, it unveiled a prototype of its Lucid Air model, a $100,000 luxury sedan it had hoped to begin building in Arizona in late 2018. It is not clear when this car will become available, though the company – just like Tesla – is accepting refundable deposits of $2,500 from consumers on its website.
And back to Tesla, while it is far more advanced in its production process, it remains unclear when, if ever, it will become profitable. UBS analysts last week calculated that Tesla would lose $6,000 on every base Model 3 model. As a reminder, it is the baseline Model 3 that is seen as the company’s entry into the mass market as opposed to the ultra-high end, where far more exciting and new offerings from the likes of Porsche and Jaguar are set to come to market soon, and grab market share from the increasingly troubled Tesla.
- Ongoing Purge Of Dissenting Voices Almost Claims Another Victim
Authored by Elizabeth Lea Vos via Disobedient Media.
Since Julian Assange was gagged earlier this year, state-sponsored censorship has attempted to snuff out the light of independent and alternative media voices from across the political spectrum. In the first half of August, this process appeared to escalate drastically. As Disobedient Media reported earlier this week, outlets from Infowars to Telesur have faced the wrath of technocratic social media giants.
The escalation of establishment censorship has been stunning. Just last week, former State Department official and whistleblower Peter Van Buren’s Twitter account was suspended under dubious circumstances. Consortium News wrote of his suspension:
“This week Van Buren had his Twitter account permanently shut down and seven years of his Tweets wiped from the record. Why? Because he challenged mainstream journalists who contested a Tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald that mainstream reporters support America’s wars and help bring them about. One corporate journalist decided to silence Van Buren by complaining to Twitter, which, within two days, and with no due process, obliged.”
Yesterday, independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone’s Twitter account was suspended before being reinstated within hours after a massive public backlash.
As Caitlin wrote after her suspension was lifted, a wave of lesser-known accounts, both conservative and left-leaning, have also been suspended in what has become a massive social media purge of dissenting thought. Johnstone commented on Twitter’s decision to reactivate her account, characterizing it as a tacit admission of a wrongful decision. This comment, in turn, appears to have led to a twelve-hour lockout.
In her article discussing the incident, Johnstone noted that the tweets and articles at issue were consistent with previous articles and sentiments which, though controversial, had not resulted in the termination of her account. She wrote:
“Interestingly, I’ve been saying this exact same thing repeatedly for over a year. An article I wrote about McCain in July of last year titled “Please Just Fucking Die Already” received a far more widespread backlash than this one, with articles published about it by outlets like CNN, USA Today and the Washington Post. Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar talked about me on The View. I was never once suspended or warned by any social media outlet or blogging platform at that time; it was treated as the political speech about a public figure that it clearly and undeniably is. The only thing that has changed since that time is the climate of internet censorship.“
Disobedient Media spoke with Caitlin Johnstone, asking her what she believes motivated the marked escalation in censorship over the last few weeks. She told us:
“The Silicon Valley billionaires which coordinate extensively with the US government are plainly a part of the ruling alliance between plutocrats and secretive government agencies. That alliance, which some refer to as the deep state, depends on its ability to propagandize us effectively to manufacture support for the plutocratic agendas of war, exploitation, ecocide and domestic espionage. It needs to control the media in order to manufacture consent for those agendas (which no ordinary person would otherwise support), and the internet has given rise to media platforms which are much harder to control than the mainstream media.
So they’ve been working to quickly manufacture consent for internet censorship, beginning with widely reviled soft targets like Alex Jones and manipulating the conversation to a debate about who should be censored instead of a debate about whether a handful of plutocrats should be permitted to censor the dominant platforms that society uses to communicate at all. From there, their goal is plainly to squeaze all dissenting voices as far away from large audiences as possible, one by one.
But they work to manufacture consent because they need that consent. If they don’t have it, the mask of freedom and democracy falls away, people lose trust in the propaganda machine, and the media psyops upon which the ruling power establishment is built become impossible. People refused to give their consent to my banning, speaking out with one voice across all political factions, I was reinstated, and someone at Twitter was probably reprimanded. Even people who don’t like me much spoke up, because they know they’re next in line. They found a huge collective “NO” to this, and they used it, and it worked. And I find that very encouraging.”
Accounts that rapidly challenged Johnstone’s suspension included but were not limited to Matt Taibbi, Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald, Julian Assange, (whose account is currently run by his campaign) and many others, including this writer.
To provide additional context on Caitlin’s suspension, we return to the infamous Shareblue and events earlier this month, when Disobedient Media and others who have reported on the fallacies surrounding Guccifer 2.0 became the subjects of a disingenuous smear piece penned by journalist Duncan Campbell.
That attack was rapidly amplified by none other than Caroline Orr, a writer and Editor of Shareblue, who spread the hit piece to her hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers, many of whom appear to be part of a massive botnet.
Similarly, Orr posted twitter threads lambasting Johnstone for her stance on John McCain, after which Johnstone documented a flood of attacks from obviously bot-net accounts. Orr’s direct involvement in instigating Johnstone’s suspension and in amplifying the doxx of Adam Carter was separated by fewer than two weeks.
In dispensing with the use of proxies, Orr provided a direct link between the attacks on Adam Carter, Caitlin Johnstone, and Shareblue. This raises a core question: why did a Shareblue Editor get her hands dirty in not one, but two occasions in such a brief span of time?
In the wake of the publication of Campbell’s smear, Disobedient Media reminded readers that Shareblue is closely tied to Hillary Clinton, with The New York Times affectionately dubbing it ‘Hillary Clinton’s Outrage Machine’ in 2016. The organization is owned by Clintonite David Brock, who was reported to have run a multi-million dollar troll army in favor of Clinton in the lead-up to the 2016 US Presidential election. The New York Times explained:
“The Brock network includes his Media Matters for America watchdog website; two pro-Clinton “super PACs,” the opposition research outfit American Bridge and the pro-Clinton fact-checking and reporter-spamming operation Correct the Record; and Shareblue, which filled the need, Mr. Brock said, for a progressive outlet that spoke directly to the grass roots and which “was avidly and unabashedly pro-Hillary.”
“… Beyond creating a boisterous echo chamber, the real metric of success for Shareblue, which Mr. Brock said has a budget of $2 million supplied by his political donors, is getting Mrs. Clinton elected. Mr. Daou’s role is deploying a band of committed, outraged followers to harangue Mrs. Clinton’s opponents.”
The Los Angeles Times described David Brock’s other pro-Clinton Super PAC, Correct the Record:
“In effect, the effort aims to spend a large sum of money to increase the amount of trolling that already exists online… a paid army of “former reporters, bloggers, public affairs specialists, designers” and others to produce online counterattacks.”
The above descriptions of Correct The Record’s paid troll armies and Shareblue’s attempts at narrative control fit the description of the botnet that Johnstone described mass-reporting her at the instigation of Caroline Orr, who Tweeted:
“What does an Assad apologist look like? It looks like someone who would say John McCain deserves to die for his role in promoting US wars… but that Assad is just a family man who definitely hasn’t slaughtered civilians.”
Some of the botnet Tweets that followed Orr’s attack, cited by Johnstone in her article on her suspension, are included here to visually illustrate the reality that this was a coordinated bot army at work.
The fact that the multitude of accounts attacking Caitlin not only lacked even ten followers, while also using an identical, copy-pasted message is a textbook example of botnet activity. In other words, these were not human beings reporting Johnstone: this was a mindless hive literally repeating the establishment line.
Such an occurrence is stunning, because it shows us in very plain terms that a botnet was deployed to silence an anti-war voice. These were not human beings used to mass-report and suspend Caitlin – it was a soulless digital faux-human army wielded by a the Editor of a Clintonite superPAC, the existence of which has been documented by numerous establishment media outlets and independent researchers.
In real time, we witnessed the establishment desperate attempt retake narrative control on social media, an aim which Caitlin often reminds us is at the core of the plutocratic control over public discourse and therefore control over policy and society.
It is also worth reiterating that, just as Russian election meddling allegations were a stale projecting of the DNC’s very real rigging of the 2016 Democratic Primary race, the use of botnets to wield political influence has been projected onto Russia and conservatives to deflect from their use by Clinton sponsors. In fact, just prior to her suspension, Johnstone wroteregarding this manipulative tactic, stating:
“Manipulators particularly use projection as a tactic to hide what they’re doing to you in plain sight. A manipulator can have you chasing your tail by simply suggesting that you or others are doing what you are seeing them doing with your own eyes. DNC caught rigging the election? Oh no, it was actually Russia who rigged the election by catching the DNC rigging the election. See what I did there? It’s so dumb, but it works.”
This author previously wrote that the plutocrat’s intense abhorrence of Twitter botnets could be read in Jungian terms as the subconscious projection of the establishment’s shadow. That is, the more the elite protest about the use of bots on social media, the more they are likely to use such technologies and similar tools to attack the very human public that they continuously misidentify as inhuman bots.
One explanation for recent events is that, now that the unelected power structures has gagged Assange, his supporters and dissent in general are next in line to bear the brunt of the weight Assange carried singularly on his back for all these years, while trapped in a tiny embassy with a broken tooth and a frozen shoulder.
The truth is, we cannot shed light at this time on the specific motivations behind the steep escalation of censorship we’ve seen in the first half of August. However, we can very much theorize that it represents the next falling domino after the silencing of Julian Assange.
What we can state with certainty is that it represents a real example of information warfare. Whether we – writers and readers alike – recognize that we are on one side of a war is irrelevant. The establishment has not just taken up arms, it is deploying them against all of us.
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