- Russian Econ Minister Warns, Prepare For Economic Downturn By 2021
With the Russian stock market fading from all-time highs, the Russian economic minister has warned about a severe economic downturn that could start by 2021 amid current declines in personal lending, reported The Moscow Times.
Consumer debt loads have exploded due to plunging real disposable incomes, an issue that President Vladimir Putin said could produce economic bubbles.
The Russian economy is expected to cycle down through 2H19, partly due to a plunge in retail spending.
Economic Development Minister Maxim Oreshkin told the Ekho Moskvy radio station Sunday that GDP is expected to drop by 3% in the next year and a half. Demand for consumer loans is also expected to decline, ushering in a default cycle that will de-lever heavily indebted consumers that can’t get new financing.
According to Oreshkin, many Russians are trapped in insurmountable debts. In the next crisis, he said, massive defaults on these loans will shock the economy.
Oreshkin noted that it would be difficult to get out of the next recession painlessly.
The economic minister said the government is developing mechanisms to cushion citizens if the economy crashes.
Natalia Orlova, a chief economist at Moscow-based Alfa Bank, told the Vedomosti business daily, that Oreshkin’s comments were a sign by consumers to take out new loans.
Moscow-based United Credit Bureau (OKB) reported that personal loans jumped by 46% compared to 2017, totaling $130 billion.
The Russia economy stalled in the last 4.5 years. From 2014 to 2018, GDP grew by an annual rate of 1.50%. During the same period, real disposable incomes fell by 10.7%, leaving 13% of all citizens living in poverty. In 2018, 600,000 Russian companies closed their doors.
Western countries could’ve sparked Russia’s demise through economic sanctions after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014. The sanctions contributed to capital flight, in excess of $317 billion from 2014 to 2018. Foreign direct investments also plunged. In the first three quarters of 2018, the volume of foreign direct investment was 11 times lower than during the same period in 2017.
The Russian ruble has fallen 45.5% against the US dollar since 2014, a trend that should have strengthened Russia’s export market, but it didn’t.
Residential construction, wholesale and retail trade, banking and insurance, personal services, lodging and restaurants, mobile telecoms, and web-based services are likely to come under pressure as an economic crisis in Russia is expected by 2021.
- French Military Flocking To Le Pen's RN Party
A French study on the electoral behavior of soldiers and gendarmes which examined the votes in several municipalities where their presence is significant, found that the National Rally is growing on Republicans party voters.
Done by Ifop for the Jean Jaurès Foundation, the researchers focused on the electoral results in the garrison towns and polling stations where the mobile gendarmes barracks are situated, in an attempt to identify electoral behavior that is difficult to perceive through polls.
With this technique, Ifop revealed the growing interest of soldiers and gendarmes in the National Rally (RN), observing communes “where the weight of the military and their family counts significantly, that is to say, places where the numbers are relatively large but where the communal population is relatively limited”.
Therefore, among the municipalities where the army is established, the RN has collected 50,4 percent of the votes in the last European elections in Mailly-le-Camp, 17 points more than on the whole of the department of the Aube. In Suippes too, the RN convinced 45,5 percent of voters, about 15 points above the average recorded in the Marne.
In the few communes selected, the vote for the RN has also largely progressed between the first round of the presidential election of 2002 and the last European elections. At the same time, the votes favorable to the Republicans (LR) decreased between the first round of the 2017 presidential elections and the European elections: less 15,5 points in Mailly-le-Camp, less 10,9 points in Sissonne, less 10,1 points in Mourmelon-le-Grand.
The study shows that these trends are also noticeable in some municipalities where air bases are situated, according to a report from Le Figaro.
In Ventiseri, for example, the RN obtained 43,6 percent of the votes in the European elections against 26,5 percent on average in the rest of Upper Corsica.
Even abroad, the military bases had an influence on the electoral results: in Abu Dhabi, where one of these establishments is implanted, Marine Le Pen has collected 12,6 percent of the votes in the first round of the presidential election in 2017, compared to an average of 4,9 percent at Dubai’s polling stations.
Another part of the study carried out by Ifop focused on “polling stations housing in their perimeter a barracks of the mobile gendarmerie”, in urban areas. Here again, the areas selected at the time, “showed a vote for Marine Le Pen in the presidential election well above the average of their city (or district for Paris and Lyon)”.
In Hyères in southern France, the difference between the gendarme vote for the National Rally and the city average was above 20 percent. In Toulouse and Dijon, the difference was 17,4 and 12,5 percent in Rennes.
This assumption was also confirmed by looking at the lowest scores achieved by the president of the former National Front in polling stations adjacent to those that include a gendarmerie barracks.
Versailles – which includes only gendarmes and their families – recorded 46,1 percent of the vote in favor of Marine Le Pen, in the first round, and the polling station of Nanterre where only the Republican guards and their families are represented, the RN won 37,5 percent of the vote in the 2012 presidential election, compared with an average of 10,7 percent for the rest of the city.
In the department of Aube, for example, the list of Jordan Bardella obtained 50,7 percent of the vote in Ville-sous-la-Ferte, where the Clairvaux prison is located, against a departmental average of 33,4 percent, which is similar in urban areas.
France’s law enforcement has strongly supported Le Pen for a while already. A 2017 Ifop study carried out ahead of the first round of presidential elections, estimated that about 51 percent of gendarmes were likely to vote for Le Pen.
In 2017 the police union Alliance urged police officers not to back Le Pen for president, but many officers ignored the directive, saying they would vote for Le Pen and the RN anyway.
Jerome Fourquet , director of the public opinion department at Ifop, said:
“This is why we have not been able to study the vote of sailors, who live in cities that are too big, or that of police officers, who are never grouped in the same place in sufficient number to be decisive in the local electorate.”
Fourquet said the numbers were very high. If the inclination of the RN voters “varies depending on the news, the average is still very high,” he told the French daily.
These differences of vote between the military and the rest of the population can be explained in particular by their “daily life being far removed from that of a ‘average’ voter”. Moreover, President Macron’s LREM party has not managed to impose itself as being the “party of the order”.
“In the process of political recomposition at work, where we observe the rallying of the right around Macron, the barracks are still impervious,” the head of Ifop explained.
- China Armed Forces Prepare For Massive International War Exercise
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is preparing for a massive war exercise, called International Army Games (IAG), expected to kick-off next week, reported China Military.
The military exercise will be held in ten countries: Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan. More than 6,000 troops are expected to participate from August 3 to 17.
In total, there will be 31 exercises spread across ten countries.
A PLA Naval Aviation brigade will be participating in the Aviadarts drill, which involves 11 aircraft performing en-route flight aerial surveillance and aerial attacks of ground-based targets.
China Central Television (CCTV) reported Sunday that a recent war exercise involved Xi’an JH-7 fighter bombers flew 62 miles and launched an attack on a target zone.
“This will be the first time the Naval Aviation troops step out of the country’s border for the IAG, and we value this opportunity,” naval officer Feng Xianzheng told CCTV.
Overnight, we reported that three Russian military planes (two Tu-95 bombers and one A-50 airborne early warning and control aircraft) entered South Korea’s air defense identification zone off the country’s east coast. South Korean fighter jets scrambled in response, and fired 80 rounds of machine-gun fire and 10 flares – what they described as “warning shots.” Two Chinese bombers joined with the Russian planes on Tuesday and even violated South Korea’s airspace from the Southwest. It’s not uncommon for Chinese jets to wander into South Korean airspace, and there’s no indication so far that connects the incident to IAG.
Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military analyst, told the Global Times on Monday that the increased number of PLA units participating in IAG is more evidence that the Navy is becoming increasingly confident that it can conduct exercises with other countries.
Chinese and Russian fighter bombers will conduct bombing raids during IAG, will allow Chinese Navy pilots to gain more experience since Russian pilots have already been combat tested, Wei said.
The Xinhua News Agency said the PLA would send marines to the Seaborne Assault drill in Russia and, for the first time, divers to the Deep Sea exercise in Iran.
The PLA Daily said the Chinese military has participated in IAG for six years and hosted exercises in China for three consecutive years.
The risk of armed conflict has never been higher, as Washington wages economic wars on allies and foes. The first shots of the current war have already been fired, that is the US and China trade war, these tit-for-tat economic sanctions could eventually spill over into a shooting war. The upcoming IAG exercise gives excellent insight into who Washington could be fighting in World War III.
- The US-NATO Military Alliance Continues Confrontation Along Russia's Borders
Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The Pentagon and its sub-office in Brussels, HQ NATO, in its new billion dollar building, are intent on maintaining military pressure around the globe. The US itself is much more widely spread, having bases tentacled from continent to continent, with the Pentagon admitting to 514 but omitting mention of many countries, including Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia.
Independent researchers came up with the more realistic total of 883 bases, and examination of the current US defence budget shows that the Pentagon’s spending priorities are far from modest in regard to spreading its wings, hulls and boots-on-the-ground to maintain military domination by what Trump calls “the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth.” To this end its vast military spending programme includes:
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increasing the strength of the Army, Navy, and Air Force by almost 26,000;
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building another ten combat ships for $18.4 billion;
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increasing production of the most expensive aircraft in world history, the F-35, costing over eleven billion; and
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upgrading and expanding the triad of nuclear weapons deliverable from air, land and sea.
The US military budget for 2020 is officially $750 billion. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, total US-NATO military expenditure in 2018 was “$963 billion, which represents 53 per cent of world spending.” In striking (no humour intended) contrast, Russia’s entire defence budget was $61.4 billion, its annual outlay having “decreased by 3.5 per cent,” which even the most brainwashed western war-drummer would have to agree does not reflect the policy of a nation preparing to invade anybody.
Yet the US-NATO alliance is increasing the number and scope of military manoeuvres along Russia’s borders, and announced that “in 2019, a total of 102 NATO exercises are planned; 39 of them are open to partner participation.” The exercises include 25 land, 27 air and 12 maritime-centred groups of manoeuvres.
“Partner participation” is a disguised way of saying that non-NATO countries around Russia’s borders have been encouraged to join in all the expensive military jamborees aimed at convincing their citizens they should follow “the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth” in its never-ending conquests.
HQ NATO announced that from 8-22 June military forces of 18 nations took part in the BALTOPS naval manoeuvres which involved “maritime, air and ground forces with about 50 ships and submarines and 40 aircraft” in and around the Baltic. The NATO spokesperson said, presumably with a straight face and no hint of the wry amusement felt by independent observers, that “BALTOPS is now in its 47th year and is not directed against anyone.” Sure. And the Easter Bunny just landed on Mars.
In the most recent example of US-NATO confrontation, according to US European Command, “the US Air Force deployed F-35 Lightning and F-15E Strike Eagles to Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, as part of Operation Rapid Forge under the Department of Defense’s Dynamic Force Employment Concept. Rapid Forge will involve forward deployments to bases in the territory of NATO allies in order to enhance readiness… and are conducted in coordination with US allies and partners in Europe. Rapid Forge aircraft are forward deploying to the territory of NATO allies… The goal of the operation is to increase the readiness and responsiveness of US forces in Europe…”
Then on July 16 Stars and Stripes (a remarkably objective commentator, incidentally) reported that the Rapid Forge strike aircraft had been sent to Poland, Lithuania and Estonia “in a test of the service’s ability to quickly deploy air power overseas” These aircraft were specifically deployed to operate as closely as possible to Russian airspace.
The manoeuvres are part of ongoing refinement of the Pentagon’s new Dynamic Force Employment strategy “which is focused on using more unpredictable deployments to demonstrate military agility to possible adversaries.” This concept involves “a shift away from traditional six-month naval deployments to a flexible system that can involve shorter but more frequent stints at sea. And in March, the Army dispatched 1,500 soldiers from Fort Bliss, Texas, to Germany and onward to Poland in one of the service’s largest snap mobilizations to Europe in years.”
It was intriguing that the surge in US-NATO military deployment confrontation occurred at the same time it was revealed that the US has been storing nuclear weapons all over Europe for years. Most analysts knew this, although nothing had been admitted, but, as noted in the brilliant BBC TV satire Yes, Minister by the lead character: “First rule in politics: never believe anything until it’s officially denied.”
As the Washington Post reported, “A recently released — and subsequently deleted — document published by a NATO-affiliated body has sparked headlines in Europe with an apparent confirmation of a long-held open secret: some 150 US nuclear weapons are being stored in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.” The moment a “NATO official” announced that “we do not comment on the details of NATO’s nuclear posture… this is not an official NATO document,” it was obvious that the deleted details given in the document must be accurate. And now many questions must be answered. For example : under whose guard are these weapons held? Are officials, politicians and military personnel of host countries permitted access to US nuclear storage facilities? What are the nuclear readiness states, and are the host nations informed of these? And it would be very interesting to know if US practice deployments involve nuclear bombs and missiles.
One of the most important aspects of the nuclear bases saga is the likely connection between these US weapons and this year’s US-NATO military manoeuvres. The ‘Rapid Forge’ deployments to Russia’s borders involve F-35A and F15E strike aircraft, and Lockheed Martin tells us that “once air dominance is established, the F-35 converts to beast mode, carrying up to 22,000 pounds of combined internal and external weapons.” Similarly, the F-15E is now capable of delivering B61-12 nuclear bombs.
As reported by the Belgian daily De Morgen (in English in the Brussels Times on 16 July), the document stated that “In the context of NATO, the United States [has deployed] around 150 nuclear weapons in Europe, in particular B61 free-bombs, which can be [delivered] by both US and Allied planes.” But we can be certain that the citizens of the countries concerned, or of any of the other NATO nations, will never be told on what terms the United States is storing nuclear weapons in their countries and what international developments might govern their use.
Presumably it is the President of the United States who will give approval for release of the nuclear bombs being stored in six of the US bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy (2), the Netherlands and Turkey — but is he going to seek agreement from the governments of these countries to use these weapons? It is far from certain that there would be concurrence on the part of Turkey, for example, whose relations with Trump Washington are extremely precarious.
What would happen if President Erdoğan objected to an obviously indicated US intention to convert the USAF’s F-35s to “beast mode”, loading B61 nuclear bombs at Incirlik airbase?
Nobody knows.
And nobody know if all these US-NATO martial fandangos in the skies around Russia’s borders involve test deployment of strike aircraft in “beast mode”, as nuclear attack preparedness is so aptly described by Lockheed Martin, that prominent member of Washington’s Military-Industrial Complex.
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland seem to be delighted that US-NATO is continuing to confront Russia by flying nuclear strike aircraft in their airspace. But have they really thought all this through?
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- Millennials Are Moving To These US Cities
Haven Life Insurance Agency LLC (Haven Life), an online life insurance agency, conducted a new study that reveals from 2012 to 2017, millennials moved to large metropolitan areas that already had large concentrations of them.
The survey noted that millennials are living a life of luxury in expensive neighbors with high wages, rising home prices, and an overall increase in the cost of living. In these areas, the experiences are abundant, and some districts even cater to the lifestyle of these youngsters.
Millennials flocked to large metro areas that have a high concentration of their fellow comrades despite higher home prices and cost of living. The data showed these folks aren’t moving to rural America nor the suburbs.
The reason for an extended stay in the city could be due to the delay in marriage and starting families — thanks to insurmountable student loan debts, high-interest credit card payments, and 72/84 month auto loans — has made their financial mobility limited.
Millennials are less price-conscious than any other generation, despite the fact that the 2008 financial crash was a little over a decade ago.
Haven Life examined data from the Census Bureau to compile a list of the top 50 cities. The life insurance agency also examined data from Zillow to determine its median home prices and data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Regional Price Parity dataset for the cost of living figures.
Portland, Seattle, Denver, San Francisco, and Austin metropolitan areas were some of the hottest regions where millennials were moving to over the period.
Portland had the most significant percentage change in millennials of any large metro from 2012 to 2017. The cost of living is some of the highest in the country but not as expensive as San Francisco and Seattle. The main selling point for millennials is the city’s breweries, restaurants, bike lanes, hipster districts, parks, beaches, mountains, and the overall ease of living on the West Coast.
Seattle was the second most popular city for millennials, who were lured in by higher-paying jobs in the tech sector. Downtown Seattle is home to a number of Fortune 500 companies, including Amazon, Starbucks, and Microsoft.
Some of the cities that were on the bottom list were Rochester, N.Y., which saw a drop in millennials. Virginia Beach-Norfolk-Newport News, Va.-N.C also saw a sizeable drop in the younger population. Tucson, Ariz., came in last with a mass exodus of millennials over the period.
- MH17 Evidence-Tampering Exposed: Cover-Ups, Hiding Records, Witness Misreporting, & FBI Seizures
A new documentary from Max van der Werff, the leading independent investigator of the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 disaster, has revealed breakthrough evidence of tampering and forging of prosecution materials; suppression of Ukrainian Air Force radar tapes; and lying by the Dutch, Ukrainian, US and Australian governments. An attempt by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to take possession of the black boxes of the downed aircraft is also revealed by a Malaysian National Security Council official for the first time.
The sources of the breakthrough are Malaysian – Prime Minister of Malaysia Mohamad Mahathir; Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the officer in charge of the MH17 investigation for the Prime Minister’s Department and Malaysia’s National Security Council following the crash on July 17, 2014; and a forensic analysis by Malaysia’s OG IT Forensic Services of Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) telephone tapes which Dutch prosecutors have announced as genuine.
The 298 casualties of MH17 included 192 Dutch; 44 Malaysians; 27 Australians; 15 Indonesians. The nationality counts vary because the airline manifest does not identify dual nationals of Australia, the UK, and the US.
The new film throws the full weight of the Malaysian Government, one of the five members of the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), against the published findings and the recent indictment of Russian suspects reported by the Dutch officials in charge of the JIT; in addition to Malaysia and The Netherlands, the members of the JIT are Australia, Ukraine and Belgium. Malaysia’s exclusion from the JIT at the outset, and Belgium’s inclusion (4 Belgian nationals were listed on the MH17 passenger manifest), have never been explained.
The film reveals the Malaysian Government’s evidence for judging the JIT’s witness testimony, photographs, video clips, and telephone tapes to have been manipulated by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), and to be inadmissible in a criminal prosecution in a Malaysian or other national or international court.
For the first time also, the Malaysian Government reveals how it got in the way of attempts the US was organizing during the first week after the crash to launch a NATO military attack on eastern Ukraine. The cover story for that was to rescue the plane, passenger bodies, and evidence of what had caused the crash. In fact, the operation was aimed at defeating the separatist movements in the Donbass, and to move against Russian-held Crimea.
The new film reveals that a secret Malaysian military operation took custody of the MH17 black boxes on July 22, preventing the US and Ukraine from seizing them. The Malaysian operation, revealed in the film by the Malaysian Army colonel who led it, eliminated the evidence for the camouflage story, reinforcing the German Government’s opposition to the armed attack, and forcing the Dutch to call off the invasion on July 27.
The 28-minute documentary by Max van der Werff and Yana Yerlashova has just been released. Yerlashova was the film director and co-producer with van der Werff and Ahmed Rifazal. Vitaly Biryaukov directed the photography. Watch it in full here.
The full interview with Prime Minister Mahathir was released in advance; it can be viewed and read here.
Mahathir reveals why the US, Dutch and Australian governments attempted to exclude Malaysia from membership of the JIT in the first months of the investigation. During that period, US, Dutch, Australian and NATO officials initiated a plan for 9,000 troops to enter eastern Ukraine, ostensibly to secure the crash scene, the aircraft and passenger remains, and in response to the alleged Russian role in the destruction of MH17 on July 17; for details of that scheme, read this.
Although German opposition to military intervention forced its cancellation, the Australians sent a 200-man special forces unit to The Netherlands and then Kiev. The European Union and the US followed with economic sanctions against Russia on July 29.
Malaysian resistance to the US attempts to blame Moscow for the aircraft shoot-down was made clear in the first hours after the incident to then-President Barack Obama by Malaysia’s Prime Minister at the time, Najib Razak. That story can be followed here and here.
In an unusual decision to speak in the new documentary, Najib’s successor Prime Minister Mahathir announced:
“They never allowed us to be involved from the very beginning. This is unfair and unusual. So we can see they are not really looking at the causes of the crash and who was responsible. But already they have decided it must be Russia. So we cannot accept that kind of attitude. We are interested in the rule of law, in justice for everyone irrespective of who is involved. We have to know who actually fired the missile, and only then can we accept the report as the complete truth.”
On July 18, in the first Malaysian Government press conference after the shoot-down, Najib (right) announced agreements he had already reached by telephone with Obama and Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President.
“ ‘Obama and I agreed that the investigation will not be hidden and the international teams have to be given access to the crash scene.’ [Najib] said the Ukrainian president has pledged that there would be a full, thorough and independent investigation and Malaysian officials would be invited to take part. ‘He also confirmed that his government will negotiate with rebels in the east of the country in order to establish a humanitarian corridor to the crash site,’ said Najib. He also said that no one should remove any debris or the black box from the scene. The Government of Malaysia is dispatching a special flight to Kiev, carrying a Special Malaysia Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team, as well as a medical team. But we must – and we will – find out precisely what happened to this flight. No stone can be left unturned.”
The new film reveals in an interview with Colonel Mohamad Sakri, the head of the Malaysian team, what happened next. Sakri’s evidence, filmed in his office at Putrajaya, is the first to be reported by the press outside Malaysia in five years. A year ago, Sakri gave a partial account of his mission to a Malaysian newspaper.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/“I talked to my prime minister [Najib],” Colonel Sakri says. “He directed me to go to the crash site immediately.” At the time Sakri was a senior security official at the Disaster Management Division of the Prime Minister’s Department. Sakri says that after arriving in Kiev, Poroshenko’s officials blocked the Malaysians. “We were not allowed to go there…so I took a small team to leave Kiev going to Donetsk secretly.” There Sakri toured the crash site, and met with officials of the Donetsk separatist administration headed by Alexander Borodai.
With eleven men, including two medical specialists, a signalman, and Malaysian Army commandos, Sakri had raced to the site ahead of an armed convoy of Australian, Dutch and Ukrainian government men. The latter were blocked by Donetsk separatist units. The Australian state press agency ABC reported their military convoy, prodded from Kiev by the appearance of Australian and Dutch foreign ministers Julie Bishop and Frans Timmermans, had been forced to abandon their mission. That was after Colonel Sakri had taken custody of the MH17 black boxes in a handover ceremony filmed at Borodai’s office in Donetsk on July 22.
US sources told the Wall Street Journal at the time “the [Sakri] mission’s success delivered a political victory for Mr. Najib’s government… it also handed a gift to the rebels in the form of an accord, signed by the top Malaysian official present in Donetsk, calling the crash site ‘the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic.’…That recognition could antagonize Kiev and Washington, which have striven not to give any credibility to the rebels, whose main leaders are Russian citizens with few ties to the area. State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a briefing Monday that the negotiation ‘in no way legitimizes’ separatists.”
The Australian state radio then reported the Ukrainian government as claiming the black box evidence showed “the reason for the destruction and crash of the plane was massive explosive decompression arising from multiple shrapnel perforations from a rocket explosion.” This was a fabrication – the evidence of the black boxes, the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, first reported six weeks later in September by the Dutch Safety Board, showed nothing of the kind; read what their evidence revealed.
Foreign Minister Bishop, in Kiev on July 24, claimed she was negotiating with the Ukrainians for the Australian team in the country to carry arms. “I don’t envisage that we will ever resort to [arms],” she told her state news agency, “but it is a contingency planning, and you would be reckless not to include it in this kind of agreement. But I stress our mission is unarmed because it is [a] humanitarian mission.”
In Kiev on July 24, 2014, left to right: Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop; Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin. Source: https://www.alamy.com/ The NATO intervention plan was still under discussion, but the black boxes were already under Malaysian control.By the time she spoke to her state radio, Bishop was concealing that the plan for armed intervention, including 3,000 Australian troops, had been called off. She was also concealing that the black boxes were already in Colonel Sakri’s possession.
The document signed by Sakri for the handover of the black boxes is visible in the new documentary. Sakri signed himself and added the stamp of the National Security Council of Malaysia.
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Col. Sakri says on film the Donetsk leaders expressed surprise at the delay of the Malaysians in arriving at the crash site to recover the black boxes. “Why are you so late”, [Borodai] said…I think [that was] very funny.”Source: https://www.youtube.com/Min. 05:47.Sakri goes on to say he was asked by the OSCE’s special monitoring mission for Ukraine to hand over the black boxes; he refused. He was then met by agents of the FBI (Min 6:56). “They approached me to show them the black box. I said no.” He also reports that in Kiev the Ukrainian Government tried “forcing me to leave the black boxes with them. We said no. We cannot. We cannot allow.”
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The handover ceremony in Donetsk, July 22, 2014: on far left, the two black boxes from MH17; in the centre, shaking hands, Alexander Borodai and Mohamad Sakri.Permission for Colonel Sakri to speak to the press has been authorized by his superiors at the prime ministry in Putrajaya, and his disclosures agreed with them in advance.
Subsequent releases from the Kiev government to substantiate the allegation of Russian involvement in the shoot-down have included telephone tape recordings. These were presented last month by the JIT as their evidence for indictment of four Russians; for details, read this.
Van der Werff and Yerlashova contracted with OG IT Forensic Services, a Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, to examine the telephone tapes. The Kuala Lumpur firm has been endorsed by the Malaysian Bar. The full 143-page technical report can be read here.
The findings reported by Akash Rosen and illustrated on camera are that the telephone recordings have been cut, edited and fabricated. The source of the tapes, according to the JIT press conference on June 19 by Dutch police officer Paulissen, head of the National Criminal Investigation Service of The Netherlands, was the Ukrainian SBU. Similar findings of tape fabrication and evidence tampering are reported on camera in the van der Werff film by a German analyst, Norman Ritter.
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Left: Dutch police chief Paulissen grins as he acknowledged during the June 19, 2019, press conference of JIT that the telephone tape evidence on which the charges against the four accused Russians came from the Ukrainian SBU. Minute 16:02 Right: Norman Ritter presented his analysis to interviewer Billy Sixt to show the telephone tape evidence has been forged in nine separate “manipulations”. One of the four accused by the JIT last month, Sergei Dubinsky, testifies from Min. 17 of the documentary. He says his men recovered the black boxes from the crash site and delivered them to Borodai at 2300 hours on July 17; the destruction of the aircraft occurred at 1320. Dubinsky testifies that he had no orders for and took no part in the shoot-down. As for the telephone tape-recording evidence against him, Dubinsky says the calls were made days before July 17, and edited by the SBU. “I dare them to publish the uncut conversations, and then you will get a real picture of what was discussed.” (Min. 17:59).Van der Werff and Yerlashova filmed at the crash site in eastern Ukraine. Several local witnesses were interviewed, including a man named Alexander from Torez town, and Valentina Kovalenko, a woman from the farming village of Red October. The man said the missile equipment alleged by the JIT to have been transported from across the Russian border on July 17 was in Torez at least one, possibly two days before the shoot-down on July 17; he did not confirm details the JIT has identified as a Buk system.
Kovalenko, first portrayed in a BBC documentary three years ago (starting at Min.26:50) as a “unique” eye-witness to the missile launch, clarifies more precisely than the BBC reported where the missile she saw had been fired from.
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BBC documentary, “The Conspiracy Files. Who Shot Down MH17” -- Min. 27:00. The BBC broadcast its claims over three episodes in April-May 2016. For a published summary, read this.This was not the location identified in press statements by JIT. Van der Werff explains: “we specifically asked [Kovalenko] to point exactly in the direction the missile came from. I then asked twice if maybe it was from the direction of the JIT launch site. She did not see a launch nor a plume from there. Notice the JIT ‘launch site’ is less than two kilometres from her house and garden. The BBC omitted this crucial part of her testimony.”
According to Kovalenko in the new documentary, at the firing location she has now identified precisely, “at that moment the Ukrainian Army were there.”
Kovalenko also remembers that on the days preceding the July 17 missile firing she witnessed, there had been Ukrainian military aircraft operating in the sky above her village. She says they used evasion techniques including flying in the shadow of civilian aircraft she also saw at the same time.
On July 17, three other villagers told van der Werff they had seen a Ukrainian military jet in the vicinity and at the time of the MH17 crash.
Concluding the documentary, van der Werff and Yerlashova present an earlier interview filmed in Donetsk by independent Dutch journalist Stefan Beck, whom JIT officials had tried to warn off visiting the area. Beck interviewed Yevgeny Volkov, who was an air controller for the Ukrainian Air Force in July 2014. Volkov was asked to comment on Ukrainian Government statements, endorsed by the Dutch Safety Board report into the crash and in subsequent reports by the JIT, that there were no radar records of the airspace at the time of the shoot-down because Ukrainian military radars were not operational.
Volkov explained that on July 17 there were three radar units at Chuguev on “full alert” because “fighter jets were taking off from there;” Chuguev is 200 kilometres northwest of the crash site. He disputed that the repairs to one unit meant none of the three was operating. Ukrainian radar records of the location and time of the MH17 attack were made and kept, Volkov said. “There [they] have it. In Ukraine they have it.”
Last month, at the JIT press conference in The Netherlands on June 19, the Malaysian representative present, Mohammed Hanafiah Bin Al Zakaria, one of three Solicitors-General of the Malaysian Attorney General’s ministry, refused to endorse for the Malaysian Governnment the JIT evidence or its charges against Russia. “Malaysia would like to reiterate our commitment to the JIT seeking justice for the victims,” Zakaria said. “The objective of the JIT is to complete the investigations and gathering of evidence of all witnesses for the purpose of prosecuting the wrongdoers and Malaysia stands by the rule of law and the due process.” [Question: do you support the conclusions?] “Part of the conclusions [inaudible] – do not change our positions.”
- Australia Designates Animal Rights Activists 'Domestic Terrorists' After Vigilante Farm Invasions
Australia’s south-eastern state government has declared Animal rights activists ‘domestic terrorists’ after several trespassing incidents, according to the Independent.
The New South Wales (NSW) government has introduced on-the-spot trespassing charges of $1,000 (£565) for each “vigilante” caught illegally entering private farmland.
The new rules, which come into force on 1 August, could also see individuals charged up to $220,000 (£124,000) and corporations up to $440,000 (£248,000) for any major violations of the Biosecurity Act. –Independent
“Vigilantes who are entering our farmers’ property illegally are nothing short of domestic terrorists,” said NSW deputy premier John Barilaro.
“Our farmers have had a gutful. They don’t deserve, nor have time, to be dealing with illegal trespass and vile harassment from a bunch of virtue-signalling thugs.”
According to the report, “Earlier this year clashes between farm owners and protesters forced the police to step in Western Australia, and the owners of a small goat farm in Victoria blamed closure on continual harassment by abusive “vegan activists”.”
Jail time is also under consideration as additional punishment.
“Today the government is putting these vigilantes and thugs on notice,” NWS agriculture minister Adam Marshall told Australia’s ABC News.
“This is just the first part of a broader package of reforms the government is working on, and jail time will be included in further legislation we are looking at.”
Marshall added that the new rules are “the toughest laws anywhere in Australia for people that illegally trespass onto farmers’ properties.”
Meanwhile, activist group Aussie Farms says that the new rules under the “smokescreen” of biosecurity go too far.
Per executive director Chris Delforce, “Once again, the issue of biosecurity is being used as an excuse to attempt to limit consumer awareness of the systemic cruelty occurring in farms and slaughterhouses across the country.”
- Pennsylvania School Warns "Your Child May Be Taken From Your Home" Over Unpaid Lunch Debt
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
A school in Pennsylvania is warning parents that their children can be taken from their homes and placed in foster care if the child has unpaid school lunch debt. In a letter sent out to about 1,000 parents from the Wyoming Valley West School District, the warning stated that dependency hearings could occur if parents won’t pay their kids’ lunch bills.
The letter’s ominous warning that failure to pay for their children’s school lunches could lead to dependency hearings and the removal of their children from their home came as the school district has multiple unpaid lunch bills. The bills reportedly range from $75 to $450 and total over $20,000, reported RT.
Obvious fallout continues over the school district’s threats.
Foster Care fallout! More reaction today to a letter sent to parents in the Wyoming Valley West School District threatening to send their kids to Foster Care unless they make good on delinquent lunch bills. A State lawmaker weighs in. Eyewitness News. https://t.co/DgMV2OFWhb pic.twitter.com/Xo64JxEzCh
— Andy Mehalshick (@AndyMehalshick) July 19, 2019
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Luzerne County child welfare authorities said the alarming threat was false and harmed those most vulnerable – such as those unable to make good on those bills.
Responding to the outrage, the school district said the stern letter was simply a desperate attempt at collecting fees they are owed. Wyoming Valley West’s lawyer, Charles Coslett, said he did not consider the letters threatening and told WYOU-TV that it’s “shameful” some parents don’t want to contribute towards feeding their own kids.
Regardless of the reason the letter was sent out, parents were terrified – especially those without the money to immediately pay off their bills. School officials have now said that they will send out a less severe follow-up letter to parents next week. But this letter tells us all we need to know about those who are “educating” our children with our tax dollars: Comply, or we will make you comply.
You call this a fucking “lunch”? @BarackObama @MichelleObama pic.twitter.com/jsKW70A1xw
— Tanner 🚒 (@Twiillss) March 31, 2014
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This is not the first time parents have been threatened either.
Back in 2013, parents were threatened with armed raids unless they complied with the demands of the school for children to undergo forced medical exams.
The US government seems more and more convinced that THEY own YOUR kids. Just this week, a Tennessee dad was arrested for picking up his young children after school instead of allowing them to cross into traffic as the school’s policy demanded. Some schools won’t allow lunches to be sent from home, and if they are, the school insists on supplementing those lunches at extortionist rates in order to control the situation regardless of parental wishes. This doesn’t even take into account the dumbed-down Common Core curriculum, the absurd attempts to be politically correct, and the zero-tolerance insanity that causes kids to be charged with felonies for having loaded fishing tackle boxes in their vehicles or cutlery in their lunch boxes.
If you’ve ever wondered why the homeschooling rates are so high, you should no longer have to. Parents are being threatened into compliance with government-run schools and most have become sick of it. Unfortunately, most families live paycheck to paycheck and homeschooling children has become a massive financial hardship for too many in the land of the “free.”
The book IndocriNation by Colin Gunn andJoaquin Fernandez (is about why a growing number of parents choose not to send their children to public school. The [American] classroom anti-Christian ideologies from humanism, marxism, utopianism, educational psychology, and more confronting students in public schools today
Look behind the comfortable myths of an educational system actively at work to alter your child’s moral values, worldview, and religious beliefs. Learn the history and philosophy of public school education – and discover it is based on neither Christian nor American values.
- Why A 100bps ECB Rate Cut Would Crush European Banks
Last week, when observing the ongoing drop in both Wells Fargo’s Net Interest Margin…
… as well as the broad decline in Net Interest Income across all US banks as rates continue to drop…
… we warned that this is an early warning of just how the upcoming Fed rate cuts will cripple US banks.
But if US banks are about to get hit, then European banks, which are already in purgatory courtesy of five years of negative rates coupled with both public and private QE, may enter the 9th circle of hell as soon as Thursday, when the ECB previews what may be a 20bps rate cut in September with or without more QE.
While the disastrous performance of European bank stocks since the financial crisis has been extensively discussed, with the European banking sector trading on the edge of support, beyond which nothing good awaits…
… it would be ironic if it is none other than the ECB which tips European bank stocks to new all time lows.
The reason for that is that, as Goldman recently calculated, further rate cuts are “a very uncomfortable prospect” for the
sector, and an indicative -20bps rate cut could lead to an aggregate €5.6bn (-6%) profit cut for the 32 Euro banks under Goldman coverage, with 12 banks facing an >10% EPS cut, and 5 banks >20%. Worse, if Draghi were “forced” to cut rates further still, by say -100bp, one quarter of European banks would turn loss making or break-even, and 75% would not meet their cost of capital, according to Goldman calculations.First, we lay out a quick, 6-chart summary of what Goldman’s economists will take place in the coming months in Europe:
Next, below are the details from Goldman’s analysis on rate cut-associated hits to income and capital:
A decline in €-rates by -20bps across the yield curve, all else equal, has scope to lower NII and earnings of Euro area banks under our coverage by -3% and -6%, respectively. A profit hit of €5.6 bn would reduce ROTE for the 32 banks under our coverage by 0.6ppt to 8.2%. This said, for 12 banks the EPS impact, measured on a fully loaded pro-forma basis, could be >10%, and for 5 banks >20%. These are meaningful impacts.
Bank-by-bank rankings for banks under Goldman’s coverage are laid our below:
And the next chart shows the aggregate impact of a -20bps rate cut on European banks.
Furthermore, as noted above, incrementally larger cuts have scope to stress sector profitability further:
A -100bps cut would reduce sector’s aggregate ROTE by c. 3pp and, importantly, push ¼ of banks into loss making (4 banks) or break-even (4) territory. Returns for ¾ of all Euro area banks would fall 10% over 2014-16, at the time when both short-term policy (deposit rate: -40bps) and long-term market rates (5 year swap: -110bps) fell sharply.
Empirical evidence – or just one look at Deutsche Bank’s stock price – confirms that the ECB’s negative rates have been revenue and profit negative, to wit from Goldman:
Sharp declines in both short- and long-term rates over 2014-16 corresponded to a substantial (>10%) NII estimate cut, a magnitude which put the sector’s profitability under pressure. However, there are key differences between the current outlook and historical experience, in particular during 2014-16 when rates first turned negative. With diminishing scope to lower deposit rates further and little evidence of easing pressure on lending margins (in particular given the extension of TLTRO, APS), an introduction of reserve tiering by the ECB screens as a key measure to stabilise the Euro area banks’ sector profitability.
There is just one potential loophole for the ECB to avoid destroying Europe’s banks by cutting rates further. As Goldman notes, deposit rate tiering is therefore critical.
Unlike Japan or Switzerland, the ECB does not offer deposit rate tiering, and thus its introduction would be critical for moderating the impact of an incremental rate cut. According to Goldman, the ECB adopting the Swiss model of tiering has scope to reduce the negative effect by ~⅓.
Without tiering, an extremely challenging operating environment becomes worse, and may push an increased number of banks towards break-even, or even loss making territory. However, not all tiering is the same, and the schemes in use vary greatly in the extent of the offset they provide. In our mind, key questions centre around the following two issues:
- could ECB’s tiering efficiency resemble the Swiss or Japanese approach? Swiss approach to tiering is our base-line scenario. And
- will it be applied to the incremental cut (-20bp) only, or the full -60bp? In our view, an offset for the entire -60bp is important.
Implementation aside, we see a strong fundamental case for tiering. Euro area banks paid c. €21bn to the ECB since negative deposit rates were first applied in 2014, with the current €7.5bn annual charge set to increase if an incremental rate cut materialises. The skew of ECB’s deposit charge is high, and incurred almost entirely (>80%) by German, French and Benelux banks. Finally, ECB’s absence of tiering is unlike the approach pursued by the Swiss or Japanese central bank
Finally below we lay out Goldman’s 4-step approach to gauging the impact of the ECB’s prospective rate cut on bank profits (overview in Exhibits 1-5):
- Step 1: “Gross effect” (Columns 1 in Exhibit 1): Estimating effect of a -20bp rate cut, without a tiering offset;
- Step 2: “Tiering shield” (Columns 2 in Exhibit 1): Goldman estimates the revenue uplift from tiering introduction (Swiss approach, Tiered reserve rate offered at 0);
- Step 3: “Net effect” (Columns 3 in Exhibit 1): Is the combined effect of an incremental rate cut, alongside the positive effect of tiering. This assumes the end effect, when the assets and liabilities fully reprice.
- Step 4 “Timing impact” (Columns 4 in Exhibit 1): This takes into account the timing mismatch of effects of tiering on one side, and the full repricing of balance sheets on the other. Due to the front-loaded effects of tiering, tiering would result in a neutral near term effect on banks (and even positive effect for some banks).
In other words, unless the ECB follows the BOJ and SNB into tiering, its rate cut could – ironically – end up being the straw that finally breaks the European’ banking system camel’s back.
In summary, a reduction in interest rates coupled with tiering impact would differ in magnitude as well as timing. While a negative impact of lower rates would exceed the positive revenue uplift associated with reserve tiering, the latter would likely be front-loaded, in our view. All in all, Goldman concludes that the near-term impact on Euro area banks may prove relatively modest given the upfront benefit of tiering could offset initial pressure from lower reinvestment yields.
On the other hand, it is unclear if even tiering would much, if anything to stop the melting of Europe’s €45 trillion melting financial icecube, Deutsche Bank.
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