Aug 28

Today’s News 28th August 2019

  • After Trump Leaves France, Macron Warns World "Is Living The End Of Western Hegemony"

    Having skulked off stage following his joint press conference with President Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron took the opportunity to bash Trump and embrace Putin (presumably after getting permission from Angela Merkel).

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    “We are living the end of Western hegemony,” Macron told diplomats on Tuesday, pointing to the rise of Beijing and Moscow as signs of a shift on the world scene.

    “The world order is being shaken like never before…”

    “It’s being shaken because of errors made by the West in certain crises, but also by the choices made by the United States in the past few years – and not just by the current administration.”

    So a shot clearly aimed at Trump but we wonder if Macron realizes he is part of the “West” he describes as making errors?

    Macron then doubled down, warning that it would be a “strategic mistake” for Western nations not to change their attitude toward Moscow.

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    As RT notes, Macron’s rhetoric towards Moscow has somewhat softened in recent months…

    “Pushing Russia away from Europe is a profound strategic mistake.”

    “We’re either pushing Russia into isolation, which increases tensions, or to ally itself with other major powers like China, which would not be in our interest,” Macron said, calling for the “rethinking” of relations with Moscow.

    Otherwise, Europe will be stuck with “frozen conflicts” and will remain “a theater for strategic struggle between the US and Russia,” he stressed.

    These “choices” are impacting “the conflicts in the Middle and elsewhere, making it necessary to rethink military and diplomatic strategies,” Macron noted.

    Ironically, Macron’s Putin-pandering comments came after US President Trump was bashed by most of western media for daring to suggest inviting Putin to attend the G7 event next year, (which Trump will be hosting).

    Which is odd because journalists claimed one key G7 dinner was “ruined” over Trump’s insistence that Russia would be vital to discussions:

    During the seaside meal, French president Emmanuel Macron and European Council president Donald Tusk opposed Trump’s demands. A diplomat present told the publication that the evening was tense: “Most of the other leaders insisted on this being a family, a club, a community of liberal democracies and for that reason they said you cannot allow president Putin — who does not represent that — back in.”

    Apparently Italian prime minister Giuseppe Conte, who formally announced his resignation early this week, was the only G7 leader present to back Trump’s proposal. 

    More ‘fake news’?

  • Turkey: "Death To Jews" Indictrination At Summer Camp

    Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,

    Turkey’s Jewish community is still reeling from the content of a video that went viral at the end of July. The video shows what appears to be a summer camp at which young children, with a group of burqa-clad women behind them, are being led in an anti-Semitic cheer in Turkish by a young girl or woman counselor.

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    In the 39-second clip, when the girl says, “The Jews,” the women and children reply, “Death!”

    When she says, “Palestine,” they reply, “It will be saved.”

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    When she calls out, “Hagia Sophia” — referring to the Byzantine cathedral-museum in Istanbul that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has announced will be turned into a mosque — they chant, “It will be opened.”

    A few days after the footage began to circulate, Garo Paylan, a Member of Parliament from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party, tweeted his outrage. He announced his intention to file a criminal complaint against the camp counselor and the organization behind her. Two days after posting the tweet, Paylan submitted the following parliamentary questions to Family, Labor and Social Services Minister Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu and Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül:

    • Where and under whose care were the children in the film?

    • Were their parents or other family members present during the event?

    • Did the children who were instructed to shout “Death to the Jews” come together at that event as part of an organization?

    • Did the event take place with the knowledge of your ministry?

    • Will you launch an investigation into the organizers and the families of those children who abuse and encourage them to commit hate crimes?

    • Will you launch administrative investigations into the authorities that neglected to expose the event?

    • Will you put these children under the protection of your ministry?

    • What kind of precautions will your ministry take so that our children are not exposed to such abuses again?

    Paylan also asked the justice minister whether “those engaging in hate speech and hate crimes are punished effectively, or whether there is a climate of impunity concerning such crimes.”

    The ministers have yet to issue a response.

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    Pictured: The Neve Shalom Synagogue in Istanbul, Turkey. (Image source: Tatiana Matlina/Wikimedia Commons)

    Meanwhile, Mois Gabay, a Jewish columnist based in Istanbul, told Gatestone that the anti-Semitism revealed in the video is the kind of incident that makes Turkey’s already dwindling Jewish community extremely worried about the future. Gabay, in his July 31 column in Turkey’s Jewish weekly, Şalom, wrote:

    “It is possible to give many more examples [of anti-Semitism in Turkey]… It appears that as long as penalties are not imposed… and the Holocaust and anti-Semitism are not included in school curricula, some people will continue playing ostrich, no matter how much we write about these issues. I do hope that the hatred and exclusion [of Jews] that is growing by the day, with new emerging groups, will come to an end here one day.”

    Şalom‘s editor-in-chief, İvo Molinas, in an interview with the Bianet News Agency on August 5, also bemoaned the anti-Semitic incitement exposed in the video:

    “There is a very intense anti-Semitism in the visual media and printed press, as well as on social media, in Turkey. But this video is the most major and most severe form of anti-Semitism. Very young children are indoctrinated in Jew-hatred and human-hatred without even knowing who Jews are. These children will grow up to be potential Jew-haters and this is the biggest danger. Penalties should be imposed for racism and hate crimes. Lawsuits should absolutely be filed against those who engage in racism and hate crimes and who direct children to these things. This is the short-term solution; but the long-term solution is education. We live in a country where an ethnic group is placed in the brains of very little children as enemies. And the saddest thing is that we are not able to do anything about it. As a society, we only complain, but cannot do anything else. It is so sad that neither political nor judicial attempts are being made to stop these things.”

  • China's New Hypersonic Missile Threatens Regional Stability, Analyst Warns

    Earlier this summer we reported how China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) published a video showing the Dong Feng hypersonic missile (“East Wind”), DF-17 for short, simulating an attack on enemy forces.

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    The DF-17 is designed to fly at hypersonic speeds and evade existing missile defense systems, such as America’s anti-ballistic missile defense system called: Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD).

    A source from CASIC told the South China Morning Post that “the DF-17 will be capable of delivering both nuclear and conventional payloads.” He refused to release his name due to the sensitivity of the topic.

    “There are now two institutions under CASIC that are competing to develop these advanced features,” the source added.

    The US intelligence community has warned about the regional instabilities that could develop when the DF-17 is deployed next year, or sometime in the early 2020s.

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    Adam Ni, a military researcher at Macquarie University in Sydney, said China’s nuclear deterrence in the Eastern Hemisphere could dramatically increase with the deployment of hypersonic missiles. It would allow the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to defend militarized islands in the South China Sea effectively.

    “But the race to develop hypersonic missiles such as DF-17 risks destabilizing the region since hypersonic weapons reduce the time of decision-making before landing to just a few minutes, forcing leaders to make consequential decisions within a very short period,” Ni said.

    The DF-17 is China’s first medium-range ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) as its payload.

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    QQ.com speculated the HGV could be an aircraft carrier killer with a range of 1,533 miles, enough distance for Mainland China to guard its militarized islands in the South China Sea from American naval forces.

    Following half-dozen development tests between 2014-2016, the most recent test was at Jiuquan Space Launcher Center in Inner Mongolia in 2017.

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    The Pentagon has recently sounded the alarm on the proliferation of hypersonic technological advances that are being made around the world [mainly in China and Russia]. 

    “Although hypersonic glide vehicles and missiles flying non-ballistic trajectories were first proposed as far back as World War II, technological advances are only now making these systems practicable,” Vice Admiral James Syring, director of the US Missile Defense Agency, said in June, during testimony before the US House Armed Services Committee.

    The DF-17 with an HGV payload (nuclear or conventional) could create a significant imbalance of power in the early 2020s that shifts Eastern Hemisphere power away from the US and towards China. 

  • Long Before Epstein: Sex Traffickers & Spy Agencies

    Authored by Elizabeth Vos via ConsortiumNews.com,

    The alleged use of sexual blackmail by spy agencies is hardly unique to the case of Jeffrey Epstein. Although the agencies involved as well as their alleged motivations and methods differ with each case, the crime of child trafficking with ties to intelligence agencies or those protected by them has been around for decades.

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    Jeffrey Epstein’s compound in the Virgin Islands.

    Some cases include the 1950s -1970s Kincora scandal and the 1981 Peter Hayman affair, both in the U.K.; and the Finders’ cult and the Franklin scandal in the U.S. in the late 1980s. Just as these cases did not end in convictions, the pedophile and accused child-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein remained at arms’ length for years.

    “For almost two decades, for some nebulous reason, whether to do with ties to foreign intelligence, his billions of dollars, or his social connections, Epstein, whose alleged sexual sickness and horrific assaults on women without means or ability to protect themselves… remained untouchable,” journalist Vicky Ward wrote in The Daily Beast in July.

    The protection of sex traffickers by intelligence agencies is especially interesting in the wake of  Epstein’sdeath. Like others, Epstein had long been purported to have links with spy agencies. Such allegations documented by Whitney Webb in her multi-part series were recently published in Mintpress News.

    Webb states that Epstein was the current face of an extensive system of abuse with ties to both organized crime and intelligence interests. She told CNLive! that: “According to Nigel Rosser, a British journalist who wrote in the Evening Standard in 2001, Epstein apparently for much of the 1990s claimed that he used to work for the CIA.”

    Vicky Ward, who wrote on Epstein for Vanity Fair before his first arrest, and claimed the magazine killed one of her pieces after Epstein intervened with editor Graydon Carter, said in a Tweet that one of Epstein’s clients was Adnan Khashoggi, an arms dealer who was pivotal in the Iran Contra scandal and was on the Mossad (the Israeli intelligence agency) payroll. This was also noted in a book “By Way of Deception” by former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky.

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    The Times of Israel reported that Epstein was an “active business partner with former prime minister Ehud Barak” until 2015, adding: “Barak formed a limited partnership company in Israel in 2015, called Sum (E.B.) to invest in a high-tech startup…. A large part of the money used by Sum to buy the start-up stock was supplied by Epstein.” 

    Webb wrote he “was a long-time friend of Barak, who has long-standing and deep ties to Israel’s intelligence community.” On the board of their company sat Pinchas Bukhris, a former commander of the IDF cyber unit 8200.

    Epstein’s allegedly protected status was revealed by Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who gave Epstein an infamously lenient plea deal in 2007. Acosta, who was forced to resign as President Donald Trump’s labor secretary because of that deal,  reportedly said of the case: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

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    Alexander Acosta: “Told to leave it alone.” (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

    Kincora Boy’s Home

    Several cases in the unsavory history linking intelligence agencies and sex scandals put the allegations against Epstein in context. Among these was the U.K. Kincora Boy’s Home, where at least 29 boys were reported to have been targeted at the Belfast, Northern Ireland, facility from the mid-1950s until the late 1970s, until it was shut in 1980. It also involved the alleged protection of child sexual abusers at the home and among their clients.

    The Irish Times wrote that “destitute boys were systematically sodomised by members of Kincora staff and were supplied for abuse to prominent figures in unionist politics. The abusers – among them MPs, councillors, leading Orangemen and other influential individuals – became potentially important intelligence assets.”

    The Belfast Telegraph also quoted former Labour Party MP Ken Livingstone, who said: “MI5 weren’t just aware of child abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home – they were monitoring it. They were getting pictures of a judge in one case, politicians, a lot of the establishment of Northern Ireland going in and abusing these boys.”

    Three staff were eventually convicted of sexually abusing minors, which included the housemaster William McGrath, a loyalist “Orangeman” and allegedly an MI5 agent, according to the Belfast Telegraph in July 2014.

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    Kincora Boy’s Home. (YouTube)

    Although the U.K.’s Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry ultimately found  “no credible evidence” to support the allegations, two former U.K. intelligence officers maintained their claim of MI5’s involvement: Brian Gemmell says he alerted MI5 to the abuse at Kincora and was told to stop his investigation; and a former army intelligence officer, Colin Wallace, “consistently claimed that MI5, RUC special branch and military intelligence knew about the abuse at Kincora and used it to blackmail the pedophile ring to spy on hardline loyalists,” according to The Guardian.

    The Irish outlet, An Phoblacht, wrote: “The systematic abuse of young boys in the Home and the part played by the British intelligence organisations to keep the scandal under wraps ensured that one side of the murky world of Unionist paramilitarism and its links to the crown forces was kept out of the public domain for years.”

    In the U.S., the New York State Select Committee On Crime in 1982  investigated nationwide networks of trafficking underage sex workers and producing child pornography. Dale Smith, a committee investigator, noted that call services using minors also profited from “sidelines,” besides the income from peddling prostitution.  Smith said they sold information “on the sexual proclivities of the clients to agents of foreign intelligence.” Presumably, this information could be used to blackmail those in positions of power. Smith added that one call service sold information to “British and Israeli intelligence.”

    The Hayman Affair

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    Ken Livingstone “MI5 monitored abuse at Kincora Boys’ Home. (World Economic Forum)

    Another U.K. scandal included allegations that Sir Peter Hayman,  a British diplomat and deputy director of MI6, was a member of the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE).

    Police discovered that two of the roughly dozen pedophiles in his circle had been writing to each other about their interest in “the extreme sexual torture and murder of children,” according to the The Daily Mail.

    In 2015, The Guardian reported that former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had been “adamant that officials should not publicly name” Hayman, “even after she had been fully briefed on his activities….formerly secret papers released to the National Archives shows.”

    Still, Hayman was unmasked as a subscriber to PIE in 1981 by M.P. Geoffrey Dickens, who also reportedly raised the national security risk of Hayman’s proclivities, implying they were a potential source of blackmail sought by intelligence agencies.

    The British tabloid The Mirror reported that intelligence agencies, including the KGB and CIA, kept their own dossiers on U.K. establishment figures involved with PIE and the abuse of minors, to blackmail the targets in exchange for information.

    Hayman was never charged for his association with PIE: The U.K. attorney general at the time, Sir Michael Havers, defended the decision and denied claims that Heyman was given special treatment.

    Labour Party MP Barbara Castle allegedly gave a dossier she compiled on pedophiles in positions of power to U.K. journalist Don Hale in 1984 when he was editor of the Brury Messenger. Hale alleged that soon afterward, police from the “Special Branch, the division responsible for matters of national security,” raided his office and removed the Castle dossier. They then threatened him with a “D-notice,” which prevented him from publishing the story on the threat of up to 10 years in prison. 

    The Finders Cult

    Another group accused of trafficking children, which had links to intelligence agencies, was the “Finders” cult. In 1987, The Washington Post reported that two members were arrested in connection with the alleged abuse of six children. Investigators found materials in Madison County, Virginia, which they said linked to a “commune called the Finders.”

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    Vauxhall Cross, London, headquarters of British Secret Intelligence Service. (Laurie Nevay, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

    Besides nude photographs of children, a Customs Service memo written by special agent Ramon Martinez refers to files “relating to the activities of the organization in different parts of the world, including “London, Germany, the Bahamas, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Africa, Costa Rica, and Europe.”

    Martinez’s memo notes that a Finders’ telex ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong. Another expressed interest in “bank secrecy situations.” The memo also documents high-tech transfers to the U.K., numerous properties under the Finders’ control, the group’s interest in terrorism, explosives, and the evasion of law enforcement.

    Martinez describes the swift end to his investigation. He wrote that on April 2, 1987, he arrived at the Metropolitan Police Department and was told that all the data was turned over to the State Department which, in turn, advised MPD that “all travel and use of passports by the holders was within the law and no action would be taken. Then he was told that the investigation into the Finders had become a CIA internal matter. The MPD report was classified, not available for review” and “No further action will be taken.”

    Martinez was not the only person with unanswered questions. The U.S.News & World Report wrote that N. Carolina Rep. Charlie Rose (Dem.), chair of the House Administration Committee, and Florida’s Rep. Tom Lewis (Rep.) asked “Could our own government have something to do with this Finders organization and turned their backs on these children? That’s what the evidence points to,” says Lewis, adding that “I can tell you that we’ve got a lot of people scrambling, and that wouldn’t be happening if there was nothing here.”

    The leniency shown by the State Department and the fact that the CIA would designate the investigation of the Finders group as “an internal matter” raises serious questions. What motive might have driven the CIA to associate with or protect a child abuse ring?

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    Harry S. Truman State Department building. (Paco8191, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

    The Franklin Scandal

    The Franklin Scandal erupted in 1988, centering on a child-trafficking ring operating in Omaha, Nebraska, by Lawrence E. King Jr., a former vice chairman of the National Black Republican Council: It was alleged that children were provided to politicians in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, among other illegal activities.

    The late former state Sen. John Decamp alleged in his book “The Franklin Coverup” that a special committee of the Nebraska Legislature launched a probe to investigate the affair, which involved King being indicted for embezzling money from the Franklin Credit Union. The committee hired former Lincoln, Nebraska, police officer Jerry Lowe, whose reports  suggested that King was involved in “guns and money transfers to Nicaragua,” and was linked with the CIA.

    James Flanery, an investigative reporter at The World Herald who reported on the scandal,  told associates that King was “running guns and money into Nicaragua,” and that the CIA was heavily involved.”

    Like many scandals before and since, the Franklin case ended with no prosecution of the perpetrators. However, Paul Bonacci, one of the alleged victims, was indicted for perjury. He had alleged that he was sexually abused as a minor in Nebraska and around the country where he was flown by Lawrence King.

    In 1999, the Omaha World Herald reported Bonacci was awarded $1 million in damages due to his lawsuit against King and other alleged perpetrators. Decamp, who was Bonacci’s attorney, told the newspaper “Obviously, you don’t award $1 million if you don’t think he (Bonacci) was telling the truth.”

    Given the history of child trafficking rings that were allegedly connected with or enjoyed the protection of intelligence services, it is possible that similar claims about Jeffrey Epstein are something the authorities, though unlikely, should investigate.  

  • Israeli Drones Targeted 'Iranian Guided-Missile Technology' In Beirut: Report

    Perhaps entirely to be expected, there are some bizarre developments and claims coming out related to the weekend’s twin drone bombing of Hezbollah offices in south Beirut.

    First, a dubious Reuters story cites “two sources close to Hezbollah” to report the Shia paramilitary group is preparing a “calculated strike” against Israel in response to the drone attack. The claimed sources said a reaction “is being arranged in a way which wouldn’t lead to a war that neither Hezbollah nor Israel wants,” and added, “the direction now is for a calculated strike, but how matters develop, that’s another thing.”

    However, Hezbollah is notoriously very secretive and has had few, if any, legitimate leaks of its intentions in the entire history of the organization. Hezbollah members and operatives almost never even talk to journalists outside of the group’s official media wing, the recent claims of some western journalists to have “access” notwithstanding. And then there’s the extreme unlikelihood that the group would announce exactly a strategy of a “calculated” reprisal yet that doesn’t lead to war.

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    A new UK Times report alleges Israeli drone strike targeted Hezbollah missile components. 

    Another interesting development involves an explosive UK Times report alleging the Israelis were looking to destroy a vital Hezbollah missile component in the operation. According to the Tuesday report:

    A suspected Israeli drone attack on a Hezbollah site in southern Beirut targeted crates believed to contain machinery to mix high-grade propellant for precision guided missiles, The Times has learnt.

    The report of course relies on unnamed “Western intelligence sources” to say the targeted facility actually stored a high-end “industrial planetary mixer” — considered an essential component in high-grade precision missiles’ propellant.

    Some analysts online have pointed to photographs of one of the drone blasts which hit near a Hezbollah media building that appear to show crates catching fire, though it’s also highly dubious that such vital and secretive technology would be stored so brazenly out in the open in the center of a neighborhood. 

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    There are reports suggesting the valuable crates could have been in the process of transport to a nearby airport, however.

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    Israel has a history of justifying any and all of its missile strikes whether in Lebanon or Syria — even when the target is clearly a Syrian government building (as has been the case many times over the past few years) — by saying it was halting Iranian or Hezbollah rockets.

    With potential war on the horizon, and as Israel makes threats hearkening back to the lead-up of the 2006 war to retaliate for any Hezbollah counter-attack on “the whole Lebanese state,” every fresh claim should first be scrutinized as war propaganda meant to signal threats to “the enemy”.

  • LatAm Shockwaves Bring New Silk Road Into The Americas As Neo-Liberal Order Crumbles

    Authored by Matthew Ehret via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Over the past several years Latin America has become a strategic battleground which involves much more than merely “geopolitical power plays” between the USA vs China as many commentators are asserting. Of course this is not to say that there are no geopolitical battles occurring. The entire western sponsored regime change operation in Venezuela couldn’t be understood unless one realized that China and Russia see Venezuela as a strategic ally in the Americas and a future zone for Belt and Road projects which are sweeping across the world… but something more is happening.

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    Over the past three years, over 17 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations have signed onto the new operating framework of the Belt and Road Initiative which extends far beyond the limited China-to-Europe corridor which many presumed it to be when it was announced in 2013. With its focus on long term planning and interconnectivity, China is already number one in vital infrastructure investments globally and while not number one in overall trade in the Americas, has now produced over six times more investment into Latin American energy infrastructure than the World Bank.

    This new paradigm has been a breath of fresh air for many nations of the south that have been gripped by Western drug money laundering, poverty, debt slavery and organized crime which has been kept in place by over four decades of IMF-World Bank dictates enforced by London/Harvard trained economists positioned as local governors over the bodies of nationalist leaders.

    In spite of the 17 nations on board the BRI, the big four powers (Mexico, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia) have not yet joined, which has been a frustrating obstacle for the greater vision of integrated infrastructure to blossom. However, in the past few weeks, even this has begun to change.

    Colombia and the BRI

    At a July 29-31 state visit to Beijing, Colombia’s President Iván Duque embraced a long term perspective with China (though not fully joining the BRI) when he spoke to 200 Chinese businessmen saying that China could help “transform Colombia into a food basket for the world” and that Colombia should be China’s “golden gate” into South America. He invited China to help with projects to develop infrastructure, education and science calling for “a Colombia-China initiative for the next 40 years”.

    The specific program to transform Colombia was outlined by Duque as a “productive corridor” connecting the Eastern High Plains with the Pacific Port of Buenaventura through transportation corridors across the Andes, and a Sea Motorway 2 connecting the Gulf of Uraba in the Caribbean and several oil fields. While only 8 million hectares of agricultural land are currently used, Colombia’s full potential of 24 hectares will become developed once this initiative is built.

    On the BRI itself, Duque said that it should be “the conceptual umbrella for this project to materialize”.

    As the infamous 1999 photograph of the President of the NYSC embracing Raul Reyes (FARC narco-terrorist leader) demonstrates, Wall Street and London financiers have literally kept Colombia under the clutches of narco-traffickers for decades, resulting in a culture of organized crime, terrorism, and impoverishment that only the BRI can solve. In the 21st century over two million Colombians have no access to electricity. With Colombia’s involvement in the BRI, every Andean nation in South America would be on board.

    A Sea Change for Argentina

    Since Mauricio Macri’s December 2015 victory, Argentina took a slide into insanity. At one time representing a powerful force of opposition to the international financiers and vulture funds under the Peronist government of the late Nestor Kirchner and his wife Christina, Argentina under Macri has once again become a bankers’ fiefdom which brought the nation slavishly back under the whip of the financial oligarchy. Under Macri, austerity became the new norm and payment of debts the new priority for Argentina, while the vast majority of large scale infrastructure projects begun by President Kirchner were cancelled or postponed.

    Somehow Macri was surprised that his monetarist strategies failed to win him the love of the people as unemployment continued to rise, and inflation topped 55% with no hope in sight.

    The effects of the population’s suffering under the IMF’s monetarist diktats resulted in a surprise August 12 pre-election vote which gave Macri’s opponent Alberto Fernandez 47% of the votes (compared to a mere 33% for sitting President). Although this was only a pre-election vote, Fernandez demonstrated that he will likely become the President in the November elections. What is also notable is that Fernandez (a former Chief of Staff to Nestor Kirchner) is partnered on the Front for All ticket with his Vice-Presidential running mate Christina Fernandez de Kirchner herself. Fernandez and Kirchner promise to re-organize the unpayable IMF debts and end the age of austerity. Of course, speculators showed their disapproval of this return to a national power by collapsing the Argentina peso by 15% on August 13 and threatening more punishment if the “populist Peronists” are elected.

    With Kirchner’s imminent return to power, many presume that the burgeoning golden age of China-Russian relations will blossom once more. Under Kirchner’s leadership a powerful “Argentina-China Integral Strategic Alliance” was formed along with 20 major treaties between the nations.

    Some of the projects begun under Kirchner which Macri wasn’t able to kill involve the $4.1 billion Patagonia Hydroelectric project where two dams are being built on the Santa Cruz River, and also the $8 billion plan to build two nuclear power plants (one Canadian CANDU and one Chinese design). The dam represents the first hydro project built in over a quarter century and even thought Argentina was the first Latin American country to go nuclear with the Atucha I plant in 1974, very little was permitted since then.

    Neo-Liberal Fractures in Brazil

    While the current right wing regime under Jair Bolsonaro has turned away from a friendly relationship with China on orders from Washington, Chinese-sponsored projects begun under Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff were not so easy to kill with Brazil still receiving the second highest investment of Chinese capital amounting to $54 billion. Some BRI-related projects underway currently involve the Ultra High Voltage electricity transport system under construction since 2011 by China’s State Grid subsidiary in Brazil. This incredible project also known as the Electricity Superhighway carries high voltage electricity with very little loss of power over 2000 km from the northern Belo Monte Dam to the impoverished and populated southeast providing cheap electricity to 22 million people.

    In agriculture, China imported 50 million tons of soybeans (80% of Brazil’s soy exports) and 560 tons of beef (40% of total) in 2018, and this is only expected to rise.

    The New Development Ban is also setting up operations in Brazil and will begin emitting funds outside of the control of the IMF/World Bank shortly and Brazil’s hosting of the 11th BRICS Summit on November 13 is sure to dovetail with Chinese and Russian investment strategies in the South. Under a re-organized financial system, such new institutions as the New Development Bank, the Silk Road Investment Fund, Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank would take on leading roles in providing long term productive credit for projects globally.

    When responding to Bolsonaro’s attacks on Kirchner and Fernandez of Argentina, Fernandez responded saying “with Brazil, we are going to get on splendidly. Brazil will always be our main partner. Bolsonaro is a passing phase in the life of Brazil- just as Macri is a passing phase in the life of Argentina”.

    A Word on Mexico

    Mexico gained a huge victory with the election of nationalist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in 2017 who has fought for a Mexico/Central America Development Plan since his election as an alternative to the current IMF/World Bank paradigm. This plan which is very much in harmony with the Belt and Road model involves southern Mexico and the “northern triangle” of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras which would see the construction of a cross Isthmus and North-South railroad system and ports along with a new electricity grid and agro industrial developments for all four nations.

    Although AMLO’s impulses favor joining the BRI, immense pressure has withheld this leap from occurring to this point.

    Green Depopulation or a New Growth Paradigm

    After Panama became the first Latin American nation to join the BRI in 2017, Uruguay followed suit, and was quickly joined by Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Chile, and Costa Rica. Caribbean nations on board involve Barbados, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, the Dominican Republic and Antigua-Barbuda.

    Western assets embedded in the LAC political structures are not only easy to identify due to their rejection of the BRI and embrace of Wall Street, but also for their blatant support of “green” energy strategies which seek to shut down carbon emitting oil, coal and even nuclear power.  An example of this hive was made evident by coalition of former energy secretaries of Argentina that wrote a memo calling for a scrapping of nuclear in preference to a total wind/solar strategy in obedience to the oligarchs that wrote COP21 and the Green New Deal. For any thinking citizen, this is merely another name for depopulation.

    Accurately capturing the principle of what is happening across South America and the world as a whole, Costa Rica’s ambassador to China recently said that China is “creating a new paradigm for development which may be as important perhaps as the Bretton Woods was after World War II” and that China is “calling upon the whole world to design together what the New Paradigm is going to be”.

  • Australia Warns Of 'Unprecedented' Threat Of Espionage From Migrant Spies

    Australia’s domestic intelligence agency has warned that foreign espionage has hit an all-time high in the country, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). 

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    According to the report, intel officials say the public has no clue how large the threat is, or how easily migrants and refugees can be recruited as spies. 

    An Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) spokesperson said foreign interference and espionage was happening at an “unprecedented scale” but refused to detail tactics used to recruit refugees and migrants.

    “The security threat comes from the actions and intent of the small number of individuals who seek to do Australia harm,” the spokesperson said.

    The ASIO warning comes after the ABC uncovered a secret recording of an alleged Rwandan spy, filmed in a Gold Coast car park late last year.

     

    The man can be heard explaining how the Rwandan Government runs espionage operations out of its embassies and high commissions. 

    “When there is an embassy, the Ambassador is in charge of the secret agents,” he said on the tape. –ABC

    According to Australian National University professor John Blaxland, a whole host of nations have a track record of using their nationals as spies in Australia in order to influence government decisions, corporations and education institutions. They do so by planting spies in diplomatic missions, however the schemes could also involve blackmailing or coercing migrants and refugees into becoming informers. 

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    “There are broad principles that apply not just to Rwanda, but a range of countries, including China,” said Blaxland, adding “Refugees who flee often have family connections remaining with [their] home country.”

    According to the report, citing senior Australian intelligence officials, “China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Malaysia were known to monitor their diaspora living in Australia, while also seeking to silence those who might speak out against their former governments.”

    One source told ABC that in one case, the Australian government used diplomatic channels to voice their concerns in the hopes of stopping the intimidation by so-called “co-optees” or “agents,” who are recruited by “fully trained foreign spies.” 

    According to another international intelligence expert, there are hundreds of “co-optees” operating in Australia, and many have been blackmailed, threatened or coerced into joining.

    Some, the source said, were shown photos of a family member in their home country sitting between two intelligence officers, as a warning.

    The expert said some agents would seek to gain political gossip from the press clubs, parliaments and diplomatic functions, but their main job was to recruit agents and get recruit agents to get valuable information.

    This can happen through a front group, or so-called “false flag” operation, where they purport to be something they’re not — like a charity or community group, he said.

    While acknowledging the threat posed, the ASIO spokesperson went to lengths to insist the “actions of few” shouldn’t impugn the reputation of the bulk of law-abiding refugees. –ABC

    “It is critical that we avoid commentary that will instil fear and taint communities which make such a positive contribution to Australian life, economy and culture,” said the ASIO spokesperson. 

    Blaxland added that refugees may be easily blackmailed over the wellbeing of their family members, job losses, or even death. Once recruited, this network of informants are often tasked with “gathering information to pass back to the home country,” and “conducting illegal acts that are not in the interest of the company they are working for or Australia more broadly — effectively hostile acts.” 

    “Everyone in the national security committee knows that that’s what’s going on, and it’s one of the reasons agencies in that domain have been agitating for greater resources and legal flexibility,” added Blaxland. 

    According to Australian Institute of International Affairs president Ian Lincoln – a diplomat for more than three decades, “Sometimes the methods involved in getting secret intelligence can be a little bit unsavoury, putting pressure on people, one way or another.” 

  • Defecation Nation

    Via The Washington Times,

    America is getting pooped, thanks to trend-setting California. There is no getting around the fact that the Golden State is at the forefront of a defecation crisis which is already overflowing into neighboring states. The Left Coast has become the home of the homeless, the nation’s lost souls who apparently have settled for simply existing rather than really living. Sleeping out in the open spaces and pooping in public places are jarring signs that a segment of society has given up. The demoralizing, downward spiral is likely to accelerate unless Americans resolve to clean up their act.

    Sidewalk cities of makeshift shelters occupied by 36,000 vagabonds have beset residents of Los Angeles, and the homeless count in San Francisco has surpassed 8,000. Neighboring Seattle and Portland have their own dismal warrens of homeless numbering in the thousands. Living rough means doing without the fundamentals of sanitation, like toilets. Picking up after pooches is obligatory practically everywhere, but on the West Coast, the homeless have warmed to the habit of leaving mushy gifts on streets, in parks and other places where walkers risk an unwelcome surprise.

    Explanations are many for the growing phenomenon of dispossessed masses – the balmy weather, generous social services, tolerant treatment from city officials, expensive housing conditions and easy access to drugs made easier by legalization of recreational pot.

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    California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who witnessed persistent homelessness in San Francisco while mayor, has come up with a new rationale: Texans. The liberal Democrat recently appeared on HBO, claiming:

    “The vast majority [of San Francisco’s homeless people] also come in from — and we know this — from Texas. Just [an] interesting fact.”

    If indeed a fact, it’s a false one, according to fact-checkers at Politifact. They found city records indicating that 70 percent had lived in San Francisco before becoming homeless, 22 percent had lived elsewhere in California and only 8 percent had come from out of state.

    Charles Kesler, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, points out in a Aug. 16 Wall Street Journal opinion piece that poverty has long been a part of the American story, but a dearth of basic dignity is something new:

    “The majority of the nation’s homeless people now live in California. There are myriad causes at work, no doubt. But there was no ‘defecation crisis,’ a term usually associated with rural India — in the 1930s, even with unemployment at 25 percent, vagabonds roaming the country, and shantytowns and ‘Hoovervilles’ springing up everywhere.”

    California’s sanitation problem cannot be separated from its “progressive” roots. The sooner society can disentangle itself from its superstitious, misogynist, sexist, racist and capitalist past, so goes the theory, the quicker true freedom — life beneath blue skies and beyond hoary rules — can emerge. Counter-culture hipsters are always ready to dash forward toward the coming transformation, but they still need to watch where they step. As “The Eagles” reminded in their ‘70s-era “Lyin’ Eyes”: “Every form of refuge has its price.”

    Drug culture aficionados would rebuff any attempt to associate the swelling potty problem with pot legalization. Researchers are finding strong links, though, between marijuana and psychosis. A study conducted by King’s College London between 2010 and 2015 found that individuals who smoked high-potency marijuana were five times more likely to develop mental illness than non-smokers. A second study published in JAMA Pediatrics in December found the proportion of teens surveyed who had smoked pot in the preceding year and had experienced psychosis reached 40 percent.

    Drug use — legal and illegal — and the draw of life beyond cultural bounds are surely not the only explanations for the rise of outdoor-dwelling desperados. There are the mentally and physically disabled who wind up helpless, hopeless and homeless. They need all the assistance a compassionate society can offer.

    The proliferation of family breakdown is also a factor that cannot be discounted. With 50 percent of American children thrust out into the world without the emotional support of a two-parent family, psychological dysfunction is becoming more the rule than the exception. It’s not hard to conceive of a broken home as a natural precursor to homelessness.

    Rather than reinvent society based on unproven “progressive” notions, better to simply recall what works: Finish high school, get a full-time job, delay marriage and having children until age 21, and stay married.

    It’s a formula that built a nation — without the proliferation of pot and poop.

  • Bangladesh's Central Bank Offers Amnesty To Delinquent Borrowers, Prompting Mass Default

    Bangladesh’s Central Bank in May introduced an amnesty program that allowed delinquent borrowers to make a small upfront payment and then pay off the rest of their debt over 10 years at favorable interest rates, according to Bloomberg.

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    However, the plan also triggered a rush by healthy companies to reschedule debt on the same terms which, in turn, now threatens to overwhelm the country’s banks.

    The program is also seen as encouraging those with debt to default. Big surprise, right?

    Anis A. Khan, managing director of Dhaka-based Mutual Trust Bank Ltd. said: 

    “I’m traumatized by non-performing loans. Borrowers have been using every excuse they can find — from a death in the family to political uncertainty — to try to get onto the central bank program.”

    The initiative is available to borrowers until September 7 and created a “perverse incentive” to default. Now, the country is expecting that nonperforming loans may rise significantly from 11.9% in March as a result of the program.

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    The upfront payment was lowered to 2% from 10% for those who are defaulting for the first time. The maximum interest rate over the next 10 years was set at 9%, even if borrowers were paying as high as 15% previously.

    And like all other great “Band-Aid” fixes to debt problems, the initiative has backfired: it has created a sense among Bangladeshi companies that people can get away without paying back their loans. That, in turn, poses a threat to the wider economy and a banking system that is already overwhelmed with defaults.

    The central bank, meanwhile, says that the policy will help revive lending growth in an economy that is dependent on attracting investment to sustain growth. Asian Development Bank predicts that the country’s economy will expand 8% over the next two years.

    Shitangshu Kumar Sur Chowdhury, banking reforms adviser at Bangladesh Bank said:

     “It was necessary to take some remedial measures to bail out the defaulters. It’s not flawless, just like any other policy, but it has more merits than demerits.”

    But Chowdhury also acknowledges that the policy creates moral hazard: 

    “That’s why we kept it open only for a short period to minimize it.”

    At places like Mutual Trust Bank, gross bad loans climbed to more than 6% in June from 4.3% two years ago and are slated to rise further.

    Mattias Martinsson, chief investment officer at Stockholm-based Tundra Fonder AB concluded:

     “One of our concerns in Bangladesh over the last five years has been poor transparency in the banking sector. The changes will obviously not stimulate further investments.”

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