Sep 21

Today’s News 21st September 2018

  • Italy Is Suffering The Worst 'Brain-Drain' In Europe

    Figures released today by Eurostat have revealed a concentration of the European Union’s scientists and engineers in the UK and Germany.

    As Statista’s Martin Armstrong points out, combined, the two countries are home to 38 percent while at the same time only accounting for 29 percent of the EU’s total population.

    Infographic: Brain Drain Within the EU? | Statista

    You will find more infographics at Statista

    Conversely, France and Italy have 25 percent of the total population but only 16 percent of the scientists and engineers, but Italy stands out among the larger populations with just a 6% share of the EU’s scientists and engineers, while representing 12% of the EU’s total population – a serious brain drain.

  • The International Criminal Court: A Failed Experiment

    Authored by Ahmed Charai via The Gatestone Institute,

    • Ambassador John Bolton was prescient in his 1998 warning, when the formation of body was first being debated in Rome, that it would be ineffective, unaccountable and overly political.

    • The reconciliation commissions of South Africa and Morocco aimed to rehabilitate victims, and pay compensation for state outrages against them. That method would be a better model for Africa than a court funded and run from Europe.

    • The International Criminal Court is a noble ideal but a flawed institution. Far better to encourage nations to develop courts that are accountable to the victims and free from charges of selective enforcement or foreign intervention.

    The International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands. (Image source: United Nations/Flickr)

    The International Criminal Court (ICC) is “already dead to us” National Security Adviser John Bolton told the Federalist Society recently. The U.S. will, he said, resist the court “by any means necessary.”

    Why would the Trump Administration take such a hard line against “the world’s court of last resort”? Founded in 2002, in the wake of the Rwandan and Yugoslavian genocides and mass rapes, the international body was supposed to try evildoers who would otherwise escape justice due to broken legal systems in failed states.

    Opposing the court is not a new position for the U.S. or Ambassador Bolton. The Bush Administration refused to sign the court’s implementing treaty in 2003, contending that it would lead to trials of U.S. soldiers and spies by a politically turbo-charged body located in Europe. At the time, many European leaders opposed President Bush’s war in Iraq and questioned its actions in the war on terror, including rendition and holding prisoners indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay. Ambassador Bolton was even more prescient. He warned, in 1998, when the formation of body was first being debated in Rome, that it would be ineffective, unaccountable and overly political.

    Now, U.S. soldiers may face charges for activities in Afghanistan. While the U.S. is not a signatory of the treaty, Afghanistan is, and the court claims jurisdiction over any actions taken there. If the ICC begins prosecuting American “war crimes” abroad, commanders will temper their battle plans, soldiers will become gun-shy and civilians will refuse to serve. America’s sovereign right to defend itself will be weakened. Israel is also expected to be another target, as the Palestinian Authority has agreed to the court’s jurisdiction and has already requested a probe.

    In practice, the International Criminal Court is a failed experiment.

    Its trials appear selective and political. While the court has received more than 10,000 written complaints referring to 139 countries, according to the London-based Africa Research Centre, it has focused its prosecutions exclusively on sub-Saharan Africans. Of the 10 investigations in progress, nine relate to African leaders or rebel leaders. (The only non-African case was against Serbian extremists.) This leads to the all-too-easy accusation that the court is racist, neo-colonialist or, in the words of one African writer, “white justice for black Africans.” Following a 2013 African Union summit, Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn denounced the court as a “racial hunt”. While these charges are hyperbolic, the court’s selective prosecutions have undermined its credibility among Africans.

    The ICC has also not been successful in Africa. The court’s first chief prosecutor, Luis Ocampo, pledged to indict and try the leaders of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan terror group linked to slaughter, rape and kidnapping, by the end of 2005. The LRA’s leaders have yet to face justice. Almost a decade ago, the court indicted Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir. No trial has occurred and Bashir continues to travel freely to Arab and African states that have signed the ICC’s implementing treaty. The court has not delivered on its promise to bring justice to people who have none.

    As a result, African nations are pulling out. South Africa, Burundi, Gambia have voted to withdraw from the ICC and other African states are joining the stampede for the exit.

    The ICC likes to refer to itself as the world’s court, but it represents fewer and fewer of world’s nations. The U.S., Israel, China and Russia have refused to ratify the court’s implementing Treaty of Rome. The African Union itself has openly criticized the ICC and debated leaving the court’s jurisdiction en masse.

    The court’s leaders have, in addition, not held themselves to particularly high standards. Chief prosecutor Ocampo, defended his use of offshore bank accounts by saying that his salary was insufficient. Such a remark hardly inspires confidence.

    Even worse for the court’s credibility are the allegations brought by David Nyekorach Matsanga, president of the Pan-African Forum, that Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, the ICC’s president, allegedly received illegal sums totaling some $17 million between 2004 and 2015. These payments, Matsanga said, were to bribe prosecution witness against Sudan’s president. A court spokesman dismissed Matsanga’s evidence as a falsified invoice and unverified bank records. (Matsanga is no angel. He was spokesman for the infamous Lord’s Resistance Army in the 1990s.) Still, the evidence deserves an impartial review.

    The International Criminal Court is a noble ideal but a flawed institution. Far better to encourage nations to develop courts that are accountable to the victims and free from charges of selective enforcement or foreign intervention. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the Moroccan’s Equity and Reconciliation Commission — a government body subject to oversight by the people’s representatives — have heard hard cases and delivered judgements respected across the political spectrum. The two institutions aimed to rehabilitate victims, and pay compensation for state outrages against them.

    That method would be a better model for Africa than a court funded and run from Europe.

  • The Next Big Geomagnetic Storm Poses An Astronomical Risk To Modern Man

    Scientists are concerned about the next significant “space weather” event, which begins at the sun in the center of the solar system. Severe space weather occurs less frequently than traditional weather on Earth but can be more destructive in nature.

    The sun is now headed towards a solar minimum, forecasted to arrive in 2019 as the Sun changes over from Solar Cycle 24 to Solar Cycle 25. The Sun goes through 11-year cycles, during which solar activity increases and decreases.

    Tracking sunspot activity dates back to the start of the first solar cycle in 1755. Today, simple sketching and counting of sunspot numbers have given way to land-based and space-based technologies that continuously monitor the Sun.

    Scientists have discovered that intense activity such as sunspots and solar flares generally subside during a solar minimum. Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said during a solar minimum, that does not mean the sun becomes dull.

    He said solar activity simply changes.

    For instance, Pesnell warned, “during a solar minimum, we can see the development of long-lived coronal holes.”

    Coronal holes are large regions in the sun’s atmosphere where the sun’s magnetic field opens up and allows streams of solar particles known as coronal mass ejection (CME) to escape the sun as fast solar wind.

    If the coronal hole is Earth-facing, then electrically charged particles from the Sun slam into Earth’s magnetic field and cause intense electromagnetic storms around the planet. The impact of these particles on the electronic infrastructure underlying modern industrial civilization can be devastating, said the Financial Times.

    CMEs disrupt GPS, satellites, and astronauts currently in space. Even airline crew and passengers get a markedly higher dose of radiation during solar storms, especially during polar-crossing, trans-oceanic flights.

    And a repeat of the most significant solar storm on record, the 1859 Carrington Super-flare, would cost trillions of dollars in damage as power grids, communication networks, and electronic equipment worldwide would be knocked out.

    Some scientists believe that Earth is due for a severe space weather event that could send civilization temporarily into reverse.

    Another incident occurred in 1989, when an Earth-facing CME rocked the planet, producing a surge in voltage that caused Hydro-Québec power grid in Canada to collapse, leaving millions of people without electricity.

    “During a big geomagnetic storm in 2003, a Japanese scientific satellite was lost and 10 percent of the world’s satellite fleet suffered malfunctions,” said Professor Richard Horne of the British Antarctic Survey.

    “Today we have around 1,500 satellites in orbit, with thousands more due to be launched in the next few years,” Prof Horne adds. “People are trying to use more commercial off-the-shelf components, rather than components made to operate in space, and many systems have not been tested in a major storm, so there is a lot of uncertainty about what might happen.”

    A recent space weather event in late April 2017, allegedly knocked out power grids across the entire country in one simultaneous fashion. San Fransisco, New York, and Los Angeles were the three main areas affected. Each region experienced challenges or shutdowns in basic infrastructure such as communication networks and mass transportation.

    An unfortunate coincidence of adverse space and Earth weather came in September 2017, when space storms disrupted shortwave radios for hours — preventing emergency response to hurricanes tearing apart the Caribbean.

    “The Sun’s been very quiet for the last 10 years. It reminds people not to be complacent,” said Mike Hapgood, head of space weather at the UK Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

    Scientists tell the Financial Times that satellites can monitor potentially troublesome activity on the sun days ahead of a possible eruption, forecasting the path and effects of an actual CME, well, that is very difficult. If the CME is Earth-facing it takes about 24-hours to arrive, so when the next big solar flare comes racing towards Earth, government officials do not have enough time to prepare the nation or even the world for impact — it would be devastating.

    According to Prof Horne, the most notable satellite for short-term space weather forecasting today is the US Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, launched into low-Earth Orbit (LEO) in 2015. From this tactical position about 1m miles from Earth, DSCOVR provides an early warning of about one hour before impact.

    In late 2016, the Obama administration quietly passed an executive order titled “Coordinating Efforts to Prepare the Nation for Space Weather Events,” which prepares the fragile nation for economic collapse from a space weather event. The mainstream media, for a good reason, were not allowed to cover the passage of this executive order because it would cause too much panic among the American people. When the next significant solar event strikes, most will not be prepared — not even government.

  • Escobar: 'The West Against The Rest' Or 'The West Against Itself'?

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via ConsortiumNews.com,

    What is the bigger story? The West Against the Rest or The West Against Itself?

    The Illiberal Quartet of Xi, Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan is in the line of fire of haughty homilies about Western “values.”

    Illiberalism is arrogantly and provocatively depicted in the West repeatedly as a Tartar Invasion 2.0. But closer to home Illiberalism is responsible for the social, civil war in the U.S. as Trump’s America has long ago forgotten what the European Enlightenment was all about.

    The Western view is a maelstrom of a Judaeo-Greco-Roman, pseudo-philosophy steeped in Hegel, Toynbee, Spengler and obscure biblical references decrying an Asian attack on the “enlightened” West’s mission civilisatrice.

    The maelstrom stunts critical thinking to evaluate Xi’s Confucianism, Putin’s Eurasianism, Rouhani’s realpolitik and “non-Westoxified” Shi’ite Islam, as well as Erdogan’s quest to guide the global Muslim Brotherhood.

    Targets of the West.

    Instead the West give us phony “analyses” of how NATO should be praised for not allowing Libya to become a Syria, which it indeed has.

    Meanwhile a golden rule prevails about one Asian power: never criticize the House of Saud, which happens to be the ultimate manifestation of Illiberalism.

    They get a free pass because after all they are “our bastards.”

    What the illiberal-bashing frenzy does accomplish is to reduce what should be a crucial debate about a fearful West Against the Rest, to the more pressing issue of The West Against Itself.

    This intra-West battle is being manifested in several ways: Viktor Orban in Hungary, eurosceptic coalitions in Austria and Italy, the advance of the ultra right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and the Sweden Democrats. In short it’s The Revenge of the European Deplorables.

    Bannon’s ‘Paradise’ Regained

    Into this European fray steps Steve Bannon, the master strategist who elected Donald Trump and is now taking the continent by storm. He is about to launch his own think tank, The Movement, in Brussels, to foment no less than a right-wing populist revolution.

    It comes replete with Bannon spooking assorted EU lands by paraphrasing Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost: “I prefer to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

    Bannon’s growing influence in Europe has reached the Venice Biennale, where director Errol Morris presented a documentary on Bannon, American Dharma, based on 18 hours of interviews with Trump’s Svengali himself.

    Bannon held court two weeks ago in Rome supported by Mischaël Modrikamen, the president of the Popular Party in Belgium, who is slated to lead The Movement. In Rome Bannon again met Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini – whom he had previously advised “for hours” to finally break a political coalition with fading star Silvio “Bunga Bunga” Berlusconi. Salvini and Berlusconi though are now horse-trading again.

    Bannon has correctly identified Italy as the vortex of post-politics, spearheading the crusade to defeat the EU. The game-changer should be the May 2019 European Parliament elections, which Bannon reads as a certified victory for Right populism and nationalist movements.

    In this do-or-die battle between populism and the Davos Party, Bannon wants to play The Undertaker against a puny George Soros.

    Bannon in Rome (CNBC)

    Bannon is even seducing cynics in France by designating self-described “Jupiter” Emmanuel Macron, now in public opinion free fall, as public enemy number one. A faded U.S. newsweekly declared Macron to be The Last Man Standing between “European values” and, well, fascism. Bannon is more realistic: Macron is “a Rothschild banker who never made money – the definition of a loser…He imagines himself to be a new Napoleon.”

    Bannon is connecting across Europe because he has identified how the West peddles “socialism for the very rich and the very poor” and “a brutal form of Darwinian capitalism for everybody else.” Quite a few Europeans easily grasp his simplistic concept of Right populism, according to which citizens must be able to get jobs, something impossible when illegal immigration is used as a scam to depress workers’ salaries.

    The political strategy underlining The Movement is to unite all European nationalist vectors – a currently fragmented mess featuring sovereignists, neoliberals, radicalized nationalists, racists, conservatives and extremists on a quest for respectability.

    To his credit, Bannon viscerally understood how the EU is a vast, de facto “un-sovereignty” space held hostage to economic austerity. The EU bureaucracy can easily be construed as Illiberalism Central: It was never a democracy.

    There’s no question Bannon impressed on Salvini the need to keep hammering over and over again how the Germany-France leadership of the EU is anti-democratic. But there’s a huge problem: The Movement, and the Right populism galaxy, center almost exclusively on the role of illegal migrants – leading non-ideological cynics to suspect this might be little else than State xenophobia posing as a revolt of the masses.

    Meanwhile, in Plato’s Cave…

    Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, teaching at the University of Westminster and a darling of the multicultural café society, could easily be depicted as the anti-Bannon. She does identify the “crisis of neoliberal hegemony” and is capable of outlining how post-politics is all about Right and Left wallowing together in a conceptual swamp.

    The political impasse of the whole West once again revolves around TINA: There Is No Alternative, in this case to neoliberal globalization. The Goddess of the Market is Athena and Venus rolled into one. The question is how to organize a politically strong reaction against the all-out marketization of life.

    Mouffe at least understands that just demonizing Right populism as irrational – while despising the “deplorables” – is not good enough.

    Yet she places too much hope in the fuzzy political strategy of Podemos in Spain, La France Insoumise in France, or Bernie Sanders in the U.S. Arguably the only progressive politician in Europe who has a clear shot at government is Jeremy Corbyn – who’s consuming all his energy fighting a nasty demonization campaign.

    Mouffe: The anti-Bannon. (Stephan Röhl-Wikimedia Commons.)

    Sanders has just launched a manifesto calling for a Progressive International – capable of outlining a New Deal 2.0 and a new Bretton Woods.

    For his part, Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister and co-founder of theDiEM25 democratic movement, laments the triumph of a Nationalist International – at least stressing that they “sprang out of the cesspool of financialized capitalism”.

    Yet he resorts to the same old players when it comes to pushing for a Progressive International: Sanders, Corbyn and his own DiEM25.

    Mouffe’s conceptual solution is to bet on what she describes as Left populism, which can be construed as anything from “democratic socialism” to “participatory democracy”, depending “on the different national context.”

    This implies that populism – relentlessly demonized by the neoliberal elites – is far from a toxic perversion of democracy, and can be authentically progressive.

    Slavoj Zizek, in The Courage of Hopelessness, couldn’t agree more, when he stresses that when the masses “not convinced by ‘rational’ capitalist discourse” prefer a “populist anti-elitist stance,”this has nothing to do with “lower-class primitivism”.

    In fact Noam Chomsky, way back in 1991, in Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, had brilliantly shown how Western “democracy” really works: “It is only when the threat of popular participation is overcome that democratic forms can be safely contemplated.”

    “So what does Europe want?” Zizek asks. He holds the merit of identifying the “principal contradiction” of what he qualifies as “The New World Order” (actually we’re still under the slow burn of the Old Word Disorder). Zizek succinctly depicts the contradiction as “the structural impossibility of finding a global political order that could correspond to the global capitalist economy.”

    And that’s why the “change” spectrum is so limited, and for the moment totally captured by Right populism. Nothing substantial can happen without a real socio-economic transformation, a new world-system replacing casino capitalism.

    Taking the shadowplay in their Platonic – Russophobic – cave for reality, while mourning “the end of Atlanticism,” the champions of “Western values” prefer to adopt a diversionist tactic.

    They keep on summoning fear of “illiberal” Putin and his “malign behavior” undermining the EU, coupled with “debt trap” neo-colonialism inflicted on unsuspecting customers by those devious Chinese.

    These elites could not possibly understand they face a plight of their own making, courtesy of free market populism, which happens to be the apex of Western Illiberalism.

  • Ex-PBOC Head Warns China's Exporters Could Soon Ditch The US

    Former Chinese central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan suggested on Wednesday that the direct impact on China of the trade war with the US “appears limited,” though it could quickly prompt China’s top exporters to pivot away from US markets. Xiaochuan, who left the bank in March after 15 years at the helm, told Reuters that China’s economy would be stable in 2018, with an expected growth rate of 6.5%, but needed to shift away from an economic model based on “urbanization,” or constructing ghost cities.

    However, the main risk to the global economy is protectionism according to the ex-PBOC head. The costs of protectionism could hit the US the hardest, as Chinese firms are expected to withdraw from US markets and expand into other global economies:“I think it will force China to look at many other markets. So it’s not necessarily a good thing for the United States,” he said.

    “I think the speed of (geographical) diversification can be relatively fast and beyond many people’s expectations.”

    Reuters said Xiaochuan downplayed the idea that protectionism will severely affect economic growth in China, which he said had been estimated at 0.2-0.8% of GDP, but added that trade wars are creating uncertainties and could hurt business confidence.

    Xiaochuan is right, in the latest US Economic Outlook via Barclays, US Economist Michael Gapen revealed that global growth momentum is already slowing.

    Gapen also showed that global trade volume as a share of world GDP has likely reached a turning point into a protectionist era.

    As a result of the peak in “hyper-globalization”, China is being forced to change its growth strategy after many decades. The economic driver of supplying Western markets with cheap goods and constructing ghost cities in China are over. “Whether this is reaching the peak or has peaked and maybe going down, we need to find some new economic growth driver,” said Xiaochuan.

    That new “driver” could be the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s ambitious effort to promote regional cooperation and connectivity on a trans-continental scale via infrastructure-building projects covering Eurasia, various oceans, and parts of Africa (while saddling up neighboring nations with massive debt due to China).

    The BRI will allow China to pivot away from the US markets and the dollar system by enabling the internationalization of the yuan (also known as the renminbi (RMB)) with countries along this new economic system.

    Xiaochuan added that more global market participants might start using the yuan as China improves the exchange rate regime and the currency becomes more usable and convertible. “So if the other currencies have some problem, the global market may decide to use more RMB.”

    As China exporters begin to pivot away from the US and focus on BRI countries, has Trump protectionist bluff backfired and alienated one of the country’s biggest trading partners?

  • The Reason The Solar Observatory Was Closed Is Revealed, And It's As Disturbing As It Is Unbelievable

    As we noted earlier in the week, The National Solar Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico reopened on Monday after it was shut down September 6 following a mysterious FBI raid, according to the group which manages the facility. 

    And despite federal agents swooping in on a Blackhawk helicopter, and a “bunch of people around antennas and work crews on towers” before the site was completely evacuated – the official explanation has left people scratching their heads; According to officials, they had been cooperating with an existing law enforcement investigation, when “a suspect in the investigation potentially posed a threat to the safety of local staff and residents,” so “moving the small number of on-site staff and residents off the mountain was the most prudent and effective action to ensure their safety.”

    AURA has been cooperating with an on-going law enforcement investigation of criminal activity that occurred at Sacramento Peak. During this time, we became concerned that a suspect in the investigation potentially posed a threat to the safety of local staff and residents. For this reason, AURA temporarily vacated the facility and ceased science activities at this location. 

    The decision to vacate was based on the logistical challenges associated with protecting personnel at such a remote location, and the need for expeditious response to the potential threat. AURA determined that moving the small number of on-site staff and residents off the mountain was the most prudent and effective action to ensure their safety. –AURA

    No word on why the FBI was involved, or urgently needed to fly in on a loud, suspect-spooking helicopter instead of simply driving to the facility, or why they couldn’t just arrest the guy and keep the place open. Also no explanation for the work crew climbing all over the towers, or why they shut down the post office.

    But it gets even more mysterious, as SHTFplan.com’s Mac Slavo notes, the “official” reason for the closure is far more sinister, as KTSM.com reports:

    A federal search warrant reveals that Sunspot Solar Observatory was shut down as FBI agents conducted computer forensic searches for child pornography.

    The source of child pornography was traced to an IP address used at the observatory and a source within the building observed a computer with “not good” images on it, the warrant states.

    The warrant also states that the suspect used the observatory’s WiFi and a personal laptop to download the images.

    According to the FBI, a janitor is the main suspect. He was one of the few people who had access to the observatory from dusk until dawn. His name is listed on the warrant, but he has yet to be charged with a crime.

    The observatory reopened on September 17.

    Some are skeptical about this explanation, given that all employees were evacuated from the site. About a dozen residents who live around the site were also evacuated. The U.S. Postal Service decided to evacuate employees, too, according to a report by the Alamogordo Daily News.

    Evacuating employees, local residents, and post office employees seems a little extreme, doesn’t it? How would a computer containing child pornography (as terrible as it is) be dangerous to employees and people who were not even in the building?

    Why were the people working on the radio towers?

    When was the last time a pedophile was taken down with a Blackhawk? It appears to us that the “official” reason for this debacle is even more unreasonable than the official “facts” behind the Skripal murders in England (though we are sure it will not be long before the Russians are blamed for the solar minimum and the need to shut down the observatory (either them or Trump).

  • "Rush Game With The Tariff": The Race Is On To Get Chinese Goods Into U.S.

    As the US-imposed 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth Chinese goods is set to take effect Monday, the race is now on to get Chinese goods into the U.S.

    By plane, train, and sea, a frenzy has begun, resulting in surging cargo traffic at US ports, booming air freight to the US, and urgent dispatch of goods from Chinese companies earlier than planned. Getting in under the wire before Trump’s tariffs bite could mean hundreds of thousands saved on single shipments. 

    Bloomberg describes this week that cargo rates for Pacific transport are at a four-year high as manufacturers rush to get everything from toys to car parts to bikes into American stores.

    This rush, which comes on top of a typically already busy pre-holiday season, is expected to continue well after next week as the tariff will leap from 10 to 25 percent after the new year. 

    US importers are expected to stockpile Chinese products before the 2019 25% mark. There’s currently widespread reports of companies scrambling to pay expedited air freight fees to dodge the new tariffs, as well as move up their orders. 

    Bloomberg relates the following on both sides of the Pacific: 

    • In Jiangsu province on China’s east coast, E.D. Opto Electrical Lighting Co. dispatched a batch of car lights by sea to Los Angeles in late August, earlier than planned.
    • In the industrial hub of Dongguan in southern China, toy maker Lung Cheong Group: “More clients in the last two months are asking if we can deliver goods ahead of the scheduled time to avoid the upcoming tariffs,” said Chairman Lun Leung. For small high-tech toys that have higher retail selling prices, some clients are willing to upgrade from sea freight to air, he said.
    • Imports to northern California’s Port of Oakland surged 9.2 percent in August. That was the busiest August in the port’s 91-year history.
    • At the Port of Long Beach, imports of containers rose 9.4 percent this year through August. That comes after a record 2017.
    • Concerns about the trade dispute is also spurring last-minute shipments across the Pacific for Ocean Network Express Pte., a combination of the container operations of Japan’s three biggest shipping firms, it said.
    • Ralph Bradley, chief executive officer of a small automotive lighting manufacturer in Fort Worth, Texas, has more than $300,000 of products coming to the U.S. on a boat from China. There’s not much he can do about paying the 10 percent duty, or $30,000, on those vehicle-lighting parts.

    Describing the tariff-induced rush, Rahul Kapoor, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence in Singapore, said “We have a rush game with the tariff,” and noted instances of cargo actually left behind at Chinese docks because ships were packed so full ahead embarking for the US. 

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    If there’s one bright spot for Americans, it’s that initially the trade war — which has this week seen China with its own tariffs on $60 billion worth of US goods — is not expected to hit consumer check books right away. 

    With accelerated shipments from China in the short term in order to beat the tariff deadlines, the anticipated price hikes at retailer giants like Walmart and Target will likely be delayed due to the surplus of items coming in. 

    Meanwhile China, for its part has had its trade surplus with the US pushed to record levels in August due to the front-loading of exports. 

  • Kavanaugh Accuser Now Willing To Testify Sans FBI Probe, With Conditions

    Faced with the possibility of GOP legislators calling Dianne Feinstein’s bluff, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford has dramatically flipped, telling legislators in an email somehow obtained by the New York Times that she “would be prepared to testify next week,” so long as senators offer “terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.” 

    Blasey claims to have received a multitude of death threats, for which zero arrests have been made in an age of easily-traceable IP addresses. 

    In the email, obtained by The New York Times, the lawyer for Christine Blasey Ford said that testifying Monday — the timetable Republicans have set for a hearing — “is not possible and the Committee’s insistence that it occur then is arbitrary in any event.” The lawyer reiterated that it is Dr. Blasey’s “strong preference” that “a full investigation” occur before her testimony — wording that stopped short of demanding an F.B.I. probe and suggested she is open to testifying without one. –NYTimes

    “As you are aware, she has been receiving death threats, which have been reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and she and her family have been forced out of their home,” the email reads. “She wishes to testify, provided that we can agree on terms that are fair and which ensure her safety.”

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    Blasey has accused Kavanaugh of attempted rape during a high school party in Montgomery County, MD. She can’t recall the date, location, or much more about the event – just that Kavanaugh allegedly held her down and groped her while another guy watched (who categorically denies it), and she was able to escape. 

    On Thursday, committee GOP agreed to hire an outside counsel to handle questioning of Blasey, rather than have the committee members themselves question her, according to a Republican Senate official familiar with the decision – as opposed to 11 male senators questioning Blasey on her account of the alleged incident.

    Meanwhile, former clerk to the late USSC Justice Antonin Scalia, Ed Whelan, insists that evidence will emerge next week exonerating Kavanaugh, and that Dianne Feinstein will “soon be apologizing” to Kav. 

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  • Land Reform & Farm Murders In South Africa: The Untold Story Of The Boers And The ANC

    Via Ammo.com,

    South African farm murders have long been a niche cause on the Internet, and the country has made headlines again due to a South African government plan to seize the land of white farmers under the guise of “South African land reform.”

    News of these farm murders and land seizures have gained steam with the release of Lauren Southern’s documentary Farmlands. And United States President Donald Trump has brought even more attention to the plight of Afrikaners with his tweet that he would be looking into the South African land and farm seizure.

    Most people don’t know much about the history of South Africa beyond the simplistic propaganda of the 1980s – white South Africans bad, ANC good. The history and current situation of South Africa, however, is much more complex.

    Defining Terms: Who Are the Key Players?

    Before going any further, terms should be defined and the key players identified:

    • ANC: The African National Congress, the leading party in South Africa since the end of apartheid.

    • Afrikaners: Dutch-, German- and French Huguenot-descended white South Africans who primarily speak a language called Afrikaans.

    • Bantu: A group of black South Africans including the Xhosa (of which Nelson Mandela was a member) who originally lived in the northeast of the country.

    • Boers: A subset of Afrikaners who still lead a rural and agricultural existence.

    • Democratic Alliance: Currently the second-largest party in the South African parliament, the Democratic Alliance is a broad-based centrist party that is comparatively economically liberal for South Africa. It enjoys broad, multiracial support, though it is most popular among all racial minorities – white, Coloured and Indian. Its black supporters are often derided as “clever blacks” by ANC supporters.

    • EFF: The Economic Freedom Fighters, a far-left political party in South Africa that has pushed the South African government to seize land from white farmers. Sometimes derisively called “Everything for Free,” the EFF is the third-largest party in South Africa, but is poised to become the second.

    • Khoisan: A popular name for the original inhabitants of most of the territory now known as South Africa. This is not an ethnic designation, but a linguistic one. These are who the Dutch settlers first encountered.

    A Brief History of South Africa: From Early Settlement to the Boer War

    To understand the current situation in South Africa, it is important to first understand the country before, during and after apartheid.

    South Africa’s modern history begins with the Dutch East India Company, which established trading posts for sailors along the coast. Dutchmen soon started settling the area, with little, if any, conflict with the native Khoisan population. Dutch settlers, however, quickly came into conflict with the Dutch East India Company’s authoritarian rule.

    Freedom-seeking Dutch settlers moved north starting in the 17th Century. In 1852, Boers founded the South African Republic (known as the “Transvaal Republic”) and then the Orange Free State in 1854. These are called “Boer Republics” and they, in turn, came into conflict with both southward-expanding Bantu tribes (most notably the Zulu, who were in the process of conquering other nearby Bantu tribes) and the British Empire.

    “White South Africans” are typically treated as a monolith, but there are two main, distinct groups: The Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaners and the English-speaking British. Indeed, there were intense hostilities between these two groups, especially after the Second Boer War when the Boer Republics were reforged as British colonies.

    Telling the Afrikaners to “go home” is a nonsensical statement. They are not Dutch. They do not hold Dutch passports, nor would they at any point have been welcomed back by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In many regions of South Africa, the Afrikaners have been around longer than the Bantus and have a stronger claim on the land, having purchased it from Khoisans. On the other hand, traditionally Bantu land was conquered from other Bantu tribes or taken by the Bantus from the Khoisans.

    A Brief History of South Africa: The Boer Wars

    “The Boer Wars” refers to two wars between the Boer Republics and the British Empire, but mostly the second one. The first was a rout for the Boers and left the British Empire with egg on their face. They would not be embarrassed a second time.

    The first concentration camps were built for Boers. Not just any Boers, but primarily the wives and children of Boer Commandos (irregular guerilla troops) fighting the British Empire. The strategy was simple: Lock up their women and children, and they will lose their will to fight.

    It worked. Adding insult to injury, the most publicized photo of the concentration camps, a picture of seven-year-old Lizzie van Zyl nearly starved to death, was touted in the British press as evidence of parental neglect by the Boers. There was great international outcry against the British during the Boer War, but it never amounted to much.

    Boer Republics were reconstituted as British colonies. In 1910, three British colonies were unified as the Union of South Africa. After World War I, South West Africa, today known as Namibia, was administered effectively as a fifth province of South Africa, but for obscure reasons never integrated. South Rhodesia voted on membership, nearly joining, but the argument that it would become “the Ulster of Africa” proved too powerful. The history of South Africa is largely that of a rebellious and unhappy British Dominion until 1948.

    A Brief History of South Africa: Enter Apartheid

    “Apartheid” is an Afrikaans word meaning “separateness.” It was a series of laws drafted beginning in 1948, after the success of the Afrikaner-heavy National Party in the national elections. There was a split in the party between those who favored apartheid as it happened versus those who favored complete separation, including parallel governance. The former won out in no small part due to a thirst for cheap black labor.

    Most people know the basics of apartheid, but they are worth going over briefly here: South Africans were classified into one of four racial categories: white, black, Coloured (a non-pejorative term in South Africa, meaning roughly “mixed race”) and Asian or Indian. In 1949, mixed marriages were outlawed with cross-racial intercourse outlawed the following year. In 1953, amenities were segregated by law. Increasingly, the blacks of South Africa were segregated into townships and Bantustans, the latter being nominally independent “homelands” for Africans. This meant that as foreign nationals, in the eyes of the Union of South Africa, they were required to carry documentation to work in South Africa and needed to leave after they were done.

    Coloureds, who had the vote, were slowly disenfranchised. Indians and other Asians were never allowed to vote.

    Between the end of World War II and the declaration of a republic in 1961, internal politics were dominated by the division between conservative republican Afrikaners and liberal monarchist British whites. Apartheid enjoyed greater support among Afrikaners and less among British South Africans. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s “Wind of Change” speech increased support for apartheid among British South Africans because of a sense of abandonment by the homeland. Many were upset at being forced by the British government to choose between South African and British citizenship and passports.

    Still, none of this amounted to what the National Party hoped to achieve – a cohesive and united white South African identity. Support for apartheid was always tepid among British South Africans.

    It is certainly true that notions of racial superiority were a prime motivator for apartheid, but there was another factor in play: Communism. The Suppression of Communism Act was passed by the first apartheid government, banning any Communist organization. The Act took a broad view of what constituted “Communism.” However, given the infiltration of mass movements, particularly in the developing world at the beginning of the Cold War, this is perhaps less cynical than it is commonly made out to be. The Act was used to suppress the African National Congress, something we will talk about in detail later.

    Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Afrikaner society is fundamentally and deeply conservative. Pornography and gambling were illegal in apartheid-era South Africa. Most businesses could not open on Sundays. Abortion, homosexuality and reproductive education were tightly regulated. There was no television until 1976, as this was believed to be immoral and a vehicle of Communism. English-language programming was seen as a threat to Afrikaans culture.

    A Brief History of South Africa: The Rise of the ANC and Nelson Mandela

    The Suppression of Communism Act was the instrument used to outlaw the African National Congress. While the ANC is typically thought of as a democratic-liberal organization, this is simply not true.

    The ANC’s closest ally was the South African Communist Party. Indeed, Nelson Mandela, the face of anti-apartheid resistance, was not only a member of the SACP, he served on its Central Committee, something he denied for decades. The SACP has never to this day contested its own candidates in South Africa, instead fielding their people on ANC slates.

    What’s more, the SACP partnered with the ANC in forming Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), the paramilitary wing of the anti-apartheid movement.

    The average person on the street likely thinks that Nelson Mandela was imprisoned simply for being black or opposing apartheid. In fact, he was imprisoned for a bombing campaign carried out by Umkhonto we Sizwe, of which he was the head. In fact, Nelson Mandela was convicted of 193 acts of terrorism. He was offered his freedom multiple times on the simple condition that he condemn terrorist attacks against the apartheid regime. He refused every time.

    The ANC was not the only organization in South Africa opposed to apartheid. Many white South Africans saw the system as unsustainable. However, outside of South Africa, the situation was largely posed by the media as a question of “apartheid forever or the ANC.”

    The ANC and its allies in the Communist Party and the trade union congress COSATU (known as the tripartite alliance) were not the only alternative to the ruling National Party and thus apartheid. The Progressive Federal Party was the main parliamentary opposition to apartheid, which, as the name implies, was in favor of a federated South Africa. The New Republic Party was likewise in favor of power sharing and oriented toward reconciliation with the Commonwealth.

    The New Republic Party and the Progressive Federal Party were also bitter enemies. The New Republic Party was a conservative party denounced as racists by the Progressive Federal Party. The Progressive Federal Party was a liberal party derided by the NRP with the nickname “Packing for Perth,” due to the impression that their members were all emigrating to Australia. Two-thirds of South African whites supported some sort of federalism or power sharing, but moderate elements never received any international support.

    Nor was the ANC the sole representative of South African blacks. Zulu nationalists, currently represented by the Inkatha Freedom Party, were often bitter enemies of the ANC by the 1980s. Many black South Africans served in the police force and other aspects of the government, leading to the rise of a barbaric form of retribution known as “necklacing.” This is filling a tire with gasoline, hanging it around the neck of a suspected collaborator or political opponent, and lighting the tire on fire. Death can take several hours.

    Winnie Mandela, then-wife of Nelson Mandela, declared that “With our boxes of matches, and our necklaces, we shall liberate this country.” This caused the ANC to create some distance between itself and her, but ultimately she was given further positions in the movement and the ANC government.

    A Brief History of South Africa: The ANC in the Saddle

    In 1994, the African National Congress took power in South Africa. At this time, its paramilitary organization was integrated into the country’s regular defense forces. Convicted bomber Robert McBride, praised by no less than IRA terrorist Martin McGuinness, is the Executive Director of the Independent Police Investigative Directorate. Touted as the “Rainbow Nation,” the fall of apartheid in South Africa was part of an overall feeling of optimism throughout the world surrounding the Fall of Communism.

    However, not everything was roses in the new Republic of South Africa. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was an attempt to lay bare the crimes of the apartheid regime. The tribunal, which did not dispense with sentences, but merely sought to find the truth, has been criticized for not dispensing any justice. Neither former National Party government members nor ANC partisans were punished by the Commission.

    The elephant in the room at all times was an overwhelming increase in the crime rate. The term “rape gate” entered popular parlance as South Africans installed panic room doors on their bedrooms. Crime is the main reason for emigration from South Africa. The 2013 murder rate was seven times that of the United States, the 11th highest in the world. Between 2005 and 2015, over 200,000 South Africans were murdered – this in a country of about 50 million. There were over 17,000 murders in 2013 alone. Compare this to just over 14,000 in the United States during the same year, despite the fact that South Africa’s population is approximately equivalent to two states – California and Texas.

    This is only the official murder rate. Many suspect that the rate is higher, due to a disengagement from formal policing and a reliance upon private security firms. Quality of public services has likewise deteriorated, with rolling blackouts being the norm in South Africa.

    The ANC presides over what is potentially the largest welfare state in the world, according to economist Mike Schussler in 2010. Six percent (3.3 million South Africans) of the population pays 99 percent of the taxes, while 31 percent (16.4 million) receive social grants. This means there are five South Africans receiving welfare for every one paying taxes. 71 percent of South African children live in houses where no adult is employed.

    South Africa has a sweeping affirmative action quota program. Employee demographics must, under the South African Employment Equity Act, represent the racial demographics of South Africa as a whole. This means that, for example, the national power company was pressured to fire a number of skilled white engineers, while the country was going through rolling blackouts. The country currently has a labor shortage of approximately 800,000 skilled workers.

    The affirmative action program has not lead to a significant increase in the number of skilled black technical workers. In 1994, 15 percent of black South Africans held skilled technical positions. In 2014, this percentage had increased to 18. Meanwhile, between 1992 and 1997, the number of skilled technical degrees dropped by 13 percent while the number of degrees in public administration and social services skyrocketed by 199 percent.

    Finally, the specter of corruption has hung over the ANC regime. Scandals surrounding the ANC government have included bribery in arms deals, the abolition of a task force dedicated to organized crime and corruption, sexual misconduct including criminal charges, and using government and civil organizations to fight its political opponents, particularly those in the Democratic Alliance.

    What Are the South African Farm Murders?

    It is currently twice as dangerous to be a South African farmer than a South African police officer. The murder rate among South African farmers is three times that of the standard murder rate in South Africa, which is already one of the highest in the world.

    The government claims the motives for the farm attacks are robbery. However, this does not pass muster. Farm attacks frequently include raping the female members of the household – including young children – while forcing the male members of the household to watch. The victims are often then tortured to death in front of each other. Farmers claim police response to these attacks is sluggish at best and nonexistent at worse. The government stopped collecting statistics about farm murders in 2008.

    What’s more, the attacks on white farmers in South Africa tend to have pitched levels of brutality about them. Without getting too lost in the weeds of the grizzly details, it’s worth mentioning some of the more grotesque attacks on farmers at least in passing:

    • In 2012, a 12-year-old boy was drowned in boiling water after watching both his parents murdered and his mother raped.

    • A 56-year-old grandmother was gang raped during a robbery netting approximately $2,000.

    • Five men sexually assaulted a woman in front of her 5-year-old son over the course of an hour and a half.

    • Over the course of six hours, a woman was tortured by having her skin cut off, raped and had her feet power drilled.

    • A 66-year-old man was beaten to death in front of his wife. She escaped being gang raped by saying that she had HIV.

    • Bedridden Alice Lotter, 76, and her daughter Helen, 57 were tortured to death over several hours, including by being stabbed in the genitals with a broken glass bottle. One had one of her breasts removed while still alive. “Kill the Boer” was painted on the wall in their blood.

    • Knowledge Mandlazi went on a killing spree in 2014, murdering five whites and stating that “My hate for white people made me rob and kill.” He held up his middle finger to surviving victims in the courtroom.

    Another common form of attack is the land invasion. In one example, 100 men began squatting land. The farmer did the sensible thing and left. Who could blame him in the kind of environment described above?

    Far from being a “white nationalist conspiracy theory,” farm attacks have been reported on and denounced by Human Rights Watch and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot. Afriforum, a wing of Christian trade union Solidarity, likewise reports on farm attacks regularly.

    What Is Behind the South African Farm Attacks?

    Anti-white racism is a popular current in mainstream South African politics. The song “Kill the Farmer, Kill the Boer” is still publicly sung, despite this being declared a hate crime. The traditional means of protecting rural South Africans, the commando units, were disbanded in 2003, leaving many South African farmers with no protection.

    Anti-white rhetoric in South Africa is very real and very mainstream. Here are a few examples:

    Compare this with the woman sentenced to three years in prison for calling someone a “kaffir.” It’s not surprising that some South Africans have begun getting trained by Israeli commandos to protect themselves and their property.

    What Are the Farm Seizures?

    The South African Constitution has recently been amended to allow for Soviet-style expropriations of farms without compensation. Zulu lands are specifically exempted.

    This is a bit nonsensical for two reasons. Many white South Africans have been in South Africa longer than most Americans have been in America. Second, the dominant black ethnic group, the Bantus, doesn’t have a strong claim to most of the land in South Africa – the Khoisans would, but they sold it to the Boers or had it conquered by the British. This is as if the U.S. government started seizing land from white families in upstate New York traditionally belonging to the Iroquois and giving it out to the Cherokee.

    Still, despite the fact that farm seizures are precisely the means by which Zimbabwe ended up in such a failed state, there seems to be no stopping farm seizures in South Africa. Perhaps worst of all, there are rumors that South Africa’s banks intend to collect mortgage payments even after properties have been confiscated.

    In the final analysis, the farm seizures in South Africa aren’t just about dispossessing an unpopular, market dominant racial minority – though that would be disturbing enough. It’s also a threat to South Africa’s incredibly fragile democracy. The ANC is a dominant party with little chance of losing elections and thus, little reason to behave accountably. Add to this the lack of a broad-based middle class with a vested interest in strong property rights, and you have a recipe for kleptocracy and starvation.

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    Bibliography

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