Jul 29

Today’s News 29th July 2019

  • "Unprecedented" Arctic Wildfires Visible From Space As 'Global Cooling' Looms

    Numerous wildfires have been ravaging the Arctic for weeks following the hottest June ever recorded on Earth. Now, the fires are so huge and intense, the smoke can literally be seen from space.

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    As RT reports, satellite images show more than 100 long-lived wildfires with huge plumes of swirling black smoke covering most of the Arctic Circle including parts of Russia, Siberia, Greenland and Alaska. 

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    The wildfires have now reached “unprecedented levels,” according to Mark Parrington of the EU’s Copernicus Emergency Management Service, who said the smoke vortex is covering a “mind boggling” two million square kilometers.

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    Wildfires are burning across 11 regions in Russia with the largest covering Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Buryatia. Likely caused by lightning strikes.

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    “It is unusual to see fires of this scale and duration at such high latitudes in June,” Parrington said.

    “But temperatures in the Arctic have been increasing at a much faster rate than the global average, and warmer conditions encourage fires to grow and persist once they have been ignited.”

    However, for those terrified by this event as a climactic climate change indicator, Armstrong Economics’ Martin Armstrong has something potentially more worrisome…

    One of the serious correlations we see is that the next solar cycle of 11 years may be the lowest in at least 200 years on our model, which calls for the low in a wave of 224 years to be precise.

    Our forecast for this next solar cycle of activity, which rises and falls in an 11-year cycle, is indeed in a bearish trend but it correlates with the ECM – which is rare. If our computer is correct, then the next solar cycle should be at least one-third less solar activity and it could rise to a panic type of decline of 50% as measured in terms of sunspots.

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    This analysis warns that the next cycle will start in 2020 and reach its maximum in 2025. This further warns not of global warming, but highly volatile weather and crop failures as we hit both extremes.

    The next two solar cycles will be the risk of violent weather and global cooling.

    Will we need a green new deal 2.0 to deal with global cooling? Cue Outrage mob..

  • The EU's Other Periphery

    Authored by Frank Lee via Off-Guradian.org,

    We’ll start with the 10 per-capita poorest-countries in the whole of Europe. In rank order:

    1. Moldova – US$2560

    2. Ukraine – US$3560

    3. Kosovo – US$3990

    4. Albania – US$4450

    5. Bosnia and Herzegovina – US$4769

    6. Republic of Macedonia – US$5150

    7. Serbia – US$5820

    8. Montenegro – US$7320

    9. Bulgaria – US$7620

    10. Romania – US$9420

    Average per capita income in Europe as a whole is US$37,317 (2018 figures).

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    What is noticeable is that most of these states are situated in either the Balkans or South-Eastern Europe. But that is not the end of the story.

    Portugal, the poorest country in western Europe with GDP standing at US$238billion, is just pipped by the Czech Republic (now Czechia which is actually in the centre of Europe) as the star performer of the East whose national income stands at US$ 240,105 million.

    Thus, in terms of per capita income the Czech Republic is the sole representative of the ex-Soviet states in Europe. This geopolitical and economic cleavage could hardly be starker. These two Euro-zones replicate the division of North and South between the US/Canada and central and Latin America.

    Much of the attention to European development – or the lack of it – has been preoccupied with the gap between the West and South of Europe. This present schism is attributable to tried, tested, and failed economic strategies promulgated by the various institutions of globalization: the IMF, WB, WTO and so forth.

    The single currency, the euro, became legal tender on 1 January 1999 and was adopted by most of the countries in the Euro area. But this proved to be the undoing of the political economy of the South.

    When different sovereign states are responsible for their own economic policies and are able to print and issue their own currencies on world markets, any distortions and maladjustments which occur in trade balances is alleviated by changes in exchange rate values – in short, devaluation. This will hopefully restore such imbalances and return to a trade equilibrium.

    However, this policy is, now, no longer available to the Southern European states since they no longer have their own currencies and, in addition, are under the tutelage the European Central Bank (ECB). The Southern periphery are now are using the same currency as the Northern European bloc, the euro, and required by the ECB to take on a one-size fits all monetary policy.

    Devaluations are therefore ruled out.

    Given the higher productivity levels and lower costs of Germany, Holland, Sweden, France and so forth, the Southern peripheral states have begun to run chronic balance of payments deficits. The only avenue left open to them is what is termed ‘internal devaluation’ – i.e., austerity.

    This results in low growth, high unemployment, high migration, depopulation, cuts in public spending and the rest of the IMF’s Structural Adjustment Policies – policies which have failed just about everywhere. So much for the southern periphery.

    Focus on Eastern Europe sheds light on a different set of problems. Most Eastern European countries, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland kept their own currencies; apart that is from basket cases like Latvia whose government, unlike the people, went where angels feared to tread – into the Eurozone and the euro.

    (N.B. Some Western European countries, e.g., the UK, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway did – wisely – keep their own currencies.)

    Excluding Russia, of course, these Eastern European states – termed ‘transitional economies’ – have become stalled in economic stagnation which so far has been difficult if not impossible to overcome. These obstacles have been specific to the Eastern periphery.

    The European Union now consists of 28 states. No fewer than 10 of these are former states of the Eastern Bloc, and this proportion is set to grow with the impending accession with some minor Balkan nations. Although Georgia and Ukraine are in line for membership of the EU, they are also expected to join NATO as has become customary for aspirant EU states.

    Whether they obtain either is a matter of conjecture, however, as this would be almost certain to cross Russia’s red lines and result in a major geopolitical flareup. Europe’s centre of gravity is shifting. And while the process of joining the European Union is driving change within these countries, it is also changing the nature of Europe itself.

    WHERE’S MY PORSCHE?

    Those Eastern European states which emerged from the break-up of the Soviet Union had been led to believe that a bright new world of West European living standards, enhanced pay levels, high rates of social mobility and consumption were on offer.

    Unfortunately, they were sold an illusion: the result of the transition so far seems to have been the creation of a low-wage hinterland, a border economy on the fringes of the highly developed European core; a Euro version of NAFTA and the maquiladora, i.e., low tech, low wage, low skills production units on the Mexican side of the US’s southern borders.

    This has had wider political and social ramifications for the entire European project. The Brave New World envisaged did not have any basic guiding principles or planning other than the usual neoliberal prescriptions of privatisation-deregulation-liberalisation, the well-thumbed policy triad of the neoliberal playbook.

    Central to this policy implementation was a controversial prescription called ‘shock-therapy’. The fact that this policy had already been tried in Russia and failed spectacularly, didn’t seem to worry the PTB. Such is always the case with religious beliefs.

    The doctrine itself had become popular among the ingenues and opportunists of the old ‘workers states’. Shock-therapy was designed to wipe-away all the old fuddy-duddy notions about state interventionism, welfarism, social and national protection; measures included the sudden removal of subsidies, fire sales of state assets (privatisation), and the abrupt removal of the controls and subsidies that had formerly applied to wages and prices.

    But the neoliberal militants insisted upon a policy of ‘freeing up’ the markets which, according to them, would maximise growth and development. Predictably of course, these policies also opened these countries to maximum – and often predatory – western penetration and influence.

    The shock was timed to occur before the establishment of financial markets within the region and, in the absence of investment capital, restructuring efforts became focused on labour – on reducing the unit cost of labour in order to become “competitive”. It should be understood that in neo-liberal, supply-side, economics the road to wealth and prosperity entailed policies that actually make their populations poorer. There seems to be a slightly Orwellian flavour here. ‘Poverty is Wealth.’

    The wave of mass unemployment that this generated in the early 1990s goes well beyond the experiences of British recessions of the 1980s, with unemployment in some regions reaching 80 per cent. Shock therapy deliberately engineered a slump in the economies of the region, by shattering the region’s economic links, and then creating a massive domestic recession.

    SHOCK-THERAPY – ALL SHOCK NO THERAPY

    Regardless, the show must go on. The neoliberal religion taken up in many of these states, often by former members of the Communist nomenklatura, which resulted in high levels of structural unemployment were actually meant to do that, at least in the short-term. Painful as it was bound to be, this was the necessary shakeout of an inefficient and cosseted workforce and therefore the absolute precondition which would catapult these formerly backward economies into lean and mean competitors on Europe’s markets and the prelude of an entry into the developed economies on the Western European and US model. Yeah, right.

    In the real-world Michael Hudson analysed just how this process panned out in Latvia.

    Like other post-Soviet economies, Latvians wanted to achieve the prosperity they saw in Western Europe. If Latvia had followed the policies that built up the industrial nations, the state would have taxed wealth and income progressively to invest in public infrastructure.

    Instead, Latvia’s Baltic miracle assumed largely predatory forms of rent-seeking and insider privatisation. Accepting the US and Swedish advice to accept the world’s most lopsided set of neoliberal tax and financial policies. Latvia levied the heaviest taxes on labour. Employers had to pay a 25% tax on wages plus a 24% of social service tax, whilst wage-earners pay another 11% tax. These three taxes making up to a 60% flat tax before personal deductions.

    Additionally, in order to make labour high-cost and uncompetitive, consumers must pay a high value-added sales tax of 21% (raised sharply from 7%) after the 2008 blowout. No Western economy taxes wages and consumption at that level.

    Latvia’s heavy taxation of labour finds its counterpart in a mere 10% on dividends, interest and other returns to wealth and the lowest property tax rate of any other economy. Thus, Latvian fiscal policy retarded growth and employment whilst concurrently subsidising a real estate bubble that is the chief feature of Latvia’s “Baltic Miracle”.

    Now Latvia was to open up its economy to foreign capital inflows – hot money – from foreign bank affiliates, mainly Scandinavian, whose chief interest was to finance the property boom. Of course, these cash inflows needed to be serviced and in doing so became a financial tax on the nation’s labour and industry. Other sources in overseas monies came in the form of privatisation of Latvia’s public sector stock. Sweden became a major source of these rent-seeking inflows.

    Yet with all of this money flowing into Latvia absolutely no effort was made to restructure industry and agriculture to generate foreign exchange to import capital and consumer goods not produced at home. Having lost export potentialities during the COMECON period the existing production linkages were uprooted, industrial plants were dismantled for their land value scrapped or transformed into real estate gentrification.

    The Baltic miracle had been nothing more than a property debt-bubble financed by foreign capital inflows. When the flows reversed the extent of debt deflation, deindustrialisation and depopulation (see below) became apparent.

    The Austerity programme … Latvia was suffering was the world’s steepest one-year plunge in house prices which had peaked in 2007. Despite having emerged debt-free in 1991, Latvia had become Europe’s most debt-strapped country, without using some of its borrowed credit to modernize its industry or agriculture.”

    What was true of Latvia was also generally the case in the rest of Eastern Europe’ Thus by 2008 it had become apparent that the post-Soviet economies had not really grown as much as they had been financialized and indebted.

    Forbes economist Adomanis calculated in 2014 that convergence of these economies with those of the West…

    …continues at its 2008-13 pace (about 0.37% per annum) it would take the new EU members over 100 years to match up to the core countries average level of income …to the extent that Central Europe’s most rapid and sustained burst of convergence coincided with a credit bubble that is highly unlikely to be repeated, it seems more likely than not that the regions convergence will be slower in the future than it was in the past.”

    BUDDY CAN YOU SPARE A EURO

    With the decimation of indigenous industry, the role of financialization and debt became crucial, as the new capitalist economies required a financial services industry that could support the growing tendencies towards property speculation and asset manipulation.

    Different vulnerabilities arose from the actions of different institutions, but the overall effect was to create state dependency upon foreign direct investment (FDI), and support from the World Bank, IMF and the specially created European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

    The general financialization of the region led to huge increases in debt, both personal and institutional. Western banks in a number of smaller states, most notably Austria and Sweden, sought to boost their profits through increasing their market share in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region, by aggressive lending to households.

    Drawing on the general expectation of CEE countries’ membership of the EU to borrow on the wholesale money markets and taking advantage of financial deregulation and poor consumer protection standards in the region, they lent money denominated in Euros, Swiss Francs and Japanese Yen. This allowed them to offer consumers lower interest rates than those available for borrowing in domestic currencies. And this borrowing has driven eye-watering increases in levels of personal household debt – especially in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic States.

    Another consequence of shock-therapy was the pressure that it would generate on the European Union to open up western European markets to the CEE countries. The model that peripheral states adopted – of being low-wage export-based economies – depended on access to EU markets.

    However, in order to sell on EU markets, it is necessary to have something to export. But these states simply did not and do not have the industrial and/or financial capacity to compete with Western European states and are not likely to have in the foreseeable future. Being subordinated to a set of rules empowered by global institutions, the IMF, WB, WTO – neoliberalism – makes such development impossible.

    Of course, there has been some Western investment in CEE but without wishing to be cynical – moi? Never! – not all of this investment has been for CEEs benefit, most of it was purely predatory.

    For example, the US Transnational Conglomerate, General Electric, after sniffing out worthwhile opportunities for a quick buck decided upon buying a lighting company, Tungsram, in Hungary. They swiftly closed profitable product lines and were thus able to remove a source of domestic competition from the market.

    Similarly, the Hungarian cement industry was bought by foreign owners, who then prevented their Hungarian affiliates from exporting; and an Austrian steel producer bought a major Hungarian steel plant only in order to close it down and capture its ex-Soviet market for the Austrian parent company. For a voracious appetite try Volkswagen.

    VW acquired a controlling stake in SEAT in 1986, making it the first non-German marque of the company, and acquired control of Škoda (see below) in 1994, of Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti in 1998, Scania in 2008 and of Ducati, MAN and Porsche in 2012.

    But VW’s cherry-picking didn’t stop there.

    Case Study: VWs takeover of Skoda

    Five months after the fall of Communism and before of any kind shock-therapy had been launched Citreon, GM, Renault, and Volvo were clamouring for Skoda. VW won the bid promising DM7.1 billion, promising to raise production to 450,000 cars per year by 2000. Engine parts were to be manufactured in Bohemia and a promise was made to use Czech suppliers. The Czech workforce was to be retained. The Czech government was favourably disposed to this sort of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and gave VW a protected position in the home market in addition to a two-year tax holiday writing off Skoda’s debts.

    Things turned sour, however, when VW reneged on its debts and promises. The original investment of Deutschmark(DM)7.1 billion was reduced to DM3.8 billion, there would be no Czech engine plant, and no commitment to produce 405,000 cars by year 2000. The labour force would be cut to 15,000 followed by more redundancies, and VW would increasingly to German parts suppliers rather than Czech subsidiaries, bringing in 15 such firms to replace their Czech competitors.

    These are examples of the ways in which the “peripheral economy” status of the CEE region was imposed. An exploitative relationship between East and West. The Skoda experience of the negative outcome from opening up of the leading sectors of a target’s country’s (the Czech Republic) production apparatus into the global strategy of a Western TNC is not unique and is a common feature of FDI flows.

    After only a couple of years of “shock-therapy”, much of the core industrial infrastructure of the peripheral states had fallen into the hands of multinational companies – from chains of shops, to power generating plant and steelworks. Two political/social phenomena resulted from the asset-stripping (whoops, I mean productive investment).

    POLITICAL

    Since the advent of the shock therapy, it would have been expected that East European voters would have voted en masse for parties of the left for the usual reasons. Namely to mitigate the worst social and economic effects of the capitalist transition.

    But these parties themselves had become Blairised, i.e., heavily committed to the pseudo-reformist ‘third-way’ along with the orthodoxies of neoliberal economics, as this was seen as part of their commitment to European accession. Into the ideological vacuum and emerging across the region came populist and right-wing movements, in Poland and Hungary in particular as well the semi-fascist Baltics where they have always had a presence.

    These groups have attempted to harness people’s discontent. Political forces that flourished in the time of the Austro-Hungarian empire have re-emerged – such as anti-Semitic “Christian socialism” and patriotic “national liberalism”. and perhaps more important came mass migration and depopulation in the whole area…

    DEPOPULATION

    Depopulation of Eastern Europe is connected not only with the outflow of labour resources: after 1989, the era of wild capitalism began in the former “socialist countries”, accompanied by the collapse of social and medical systems, a sharp increase in mortality, especially among men, with a simultaneous fall in the birth rate…”

    The French newspaper Le Monde diplomatique wrote about the unprecedented demographic catastrophe that hit the countries of Eastern Europe after the collapse of the communist system in its June issue.

    The process began in late 1989, immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There followed a massive exodus of the population from East Germany, Poland, and Hungary to the countries of Western Europe in search of higher earnings, which continues to this day, covering practically all former countries of the socialist camp.

    As a result of the new “resettlement of peoples”, the human losses of Eastern Europe were much greater than those of both world wars. Over the past 30 years, Romania lost 14% of the population, Moldova – 16.9%, Ukraine – 18%, Bosnia – 19.9%, Bulgaria and Lithuania – 20.8%, Latvia – 25.3% of the population. Depopulation also affected the parts of Germany (the former DDR), which in the literal sense of the word were emptied.

    A kind of exception was made by the Czech Republic, where it was possible to preserve the main “gains of socialism” in the form of social support for the population, a free medical system, assistance.

    Depopulation of Eastern Europe is connected not only to the outflow of labour resources: after 1989, the era of wild capitalism began in the former “socialist countries”, accompanied by the collapse of social and medical systems, a sharp increase in mortality, especially among men, with a simultaneous fall in the birth rate.

    However, the main blow to demography caused the outcome of the population, especially the youngest, active, qualified group. In the historical homeland remained children, pensioners and persons incapable of actively seeking work abroad. And this despite the fact that for 40 post-war years in the countries of Eastern Europe there was a slow but steady growth of the population.

    According to the UN, all ten of the world’s most “endangered” countries are in Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, the Baltic republics and the former Yugoslavia, as well as Moldova and Ukraine. According to the forecasts of demographers, by 2050 the population of these countries will decrease by another 15-23%.

    This means, in particular, that the population of Bulgaria will drop from 7 to 5 million people, Latvia – from 2 to 1.5 million. According to experts of the Wittgenstein International Demographic Centre in Vienna, “it is unprecedented for peacetime depopulation.”

    Among the main reasons called the killer combination of three factors – low birth rate, high mortality and mass emigration. But if in the countries of Western Europe, the fall in the birth rate is compensated by the new migration waves, the countries of Eastern Europe categorically refuse to accept the “fresh blood” in the person of migrants, and this issue has acquired an extraordinary political poignancy.

    At the height of the migration crisis of 2015, Slovakia and the Czech Republic took 16 and 12 refugees respectively, Hungary and Poland did not accept anyone.

    Meanwhile, Eastern Europe continues to lose its “golden cadres” – the best specialists and young people. In Hungary alone, since joining the EU in 2004, 5,000 doctors have left the country, mostly under the age of 40. There is a shortage of technicians and mechanics who also left for Austria, Germany and other countries of Western Europe.

    This is perfectly understandable since in Hungary they receive 500 euros a month for heavy manual work, and in Austria for the same work – 1 thousand euros per week.

    In other countries, the outflow of specialists of medium qualification is felt even more: hundreds of thousands of nurses, carpenters, locksmiths and skilled workers moved from Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia to the West. In Romania, the outcome of the population is called a “national catastrophe”. The population of this country declined for the post-communist period from 23 to 20 million people.

    The transfer of labour from the East was not only spontaneous but also systematically predatory. Numerous German and British firms of “head-hunters” in large numbers began to entice Eastern specialists immediately after the accession of Eastern European countries to the EU. As the German Die Welt writes, qualification, youth and money flow from Eastern European countries, while the old people and children remain deeply disappointed in “freedom” and “democracy.”

    Since the early 1990s, Bosnia lost 150 thousand people, Serbia – about half a million. However, the most significant outflow was observed in Lithuania: over 300,000 people out of 3 million left the country.

    But the most tragic consequences of the “post-communist breakdown” have been experienced by Ukraine – once one of the most developed republics of the USSR. If in the early 1990s there were 52 million people in the republic, now the population does not exceed 42 million. According to the forecasts of the Kiev Institute of Demography, by 2050 the population of the republic will be 32 million.

    This means that Ukraine is the fastest dying state in Europe, and possibly, in the world. According to Ukrainian sources, the country was abandoned by 8 million people (experts believe that number is from 2 to 4 million people – ed.), who went to work in the countries of the European Union and neighbouring Russia. According to recent polls, 35% of Ukrainians declared their readiness to emigrate. The process accelerated after Ukraine received a visa-free regime with the EU: about 100,000 people leave the country every month

    It was in Ukraine in the most extreme form three factors coincided: a fall in the birth rate, an increase in mortality (the death rate was twice the birth rate) and mass emigration of the population. Compare the corresponding dynamics in France and Ukraine. If before 1989 the growth rates of the population in these two countries were comparable, then in the subsequent period the population of France increased by 9 million people, and Ukraine lost the same number of people.

    Experts believe that the demographic crisis in Eastern Europe cannot continue indefinitely. The systems of social support and healthcare cannot physically work in conditions when the majority of the population is pensioners and children, at some point, inevitably there will be a collapse of statehood.

    But you should not flatter yourself about Western Europe, where the birth rate is also extremely low. While the developed part of the continent temporarily benefited from human resources from Eastern Europe, a much more rapid influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa will inevitably change the sociocultural image of Western European countries, where religious and ethnic conflicts already arise.

    If the fertility rate for native French women is 1.6 children per woman, then for adults from the countries of the Middle East and Africa this figure is 3.4 children or more. Today’s kindergartens in France are already three-quarters composed of representatives of ethnic minorities, and in the future, great socio-cultural changes await the country. This has already been written in his best-selling Soumission by the French writer Michelle Houellebecq.

    Is there a solution? Is it possible to stimulate the birth rate mechanism among Europeans? Demographers believe that this is impossible either in Western or Eastern Europe. In the west of the continent, the consumption standard is so high that the appearance of a new child will automatically mean a decrease in the standard of living. In Eastern Europe, another mechanism operates: poverty, lack of prospects and the breakdown of family relations make the birth of children undesirable. Meanwhile, the proportion of Europeans in the world’s total population is decreasing. If in 1900 Europe accounted for 25% of the world’s inhabitants, now it is about 10%

    CONCLUSIONS

    As with other earlier examples of catch-up modernization the development policies, Eastern Europe presents a textbook example of the development of under-development.

    The general liberal theory of gradual evolution was penned by W.W.Rostow, an American economist, professor and political theorist who served as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to US President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1969.

    His theory of 5 Stages of Growth held that all societies progress through similar stages of development, and that today’s underdeveloped areas are thus in a similar situation to that of today’s developed areas at some time in the past, and that therefore the task in helping the underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along this supposed common path of development, by various means such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the world market.

    This view, however, was a source of a major counter-critique. Dependency theory (see Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder-Frank, Samir Amin and Paul Baran) is essentially a body of social science theories predicated on the notion that resources flow from a “periphery” of poor and underdeveloped states to a “core” of wealthy states, enriching the latter at the expense of the former.

    It is a central contention of dependency theory that poor states are impoverished, and rich ones enriched by the way poor states are integrated into the “world system”. Dependency theorists, argued that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive versions of developed countries, but have unique features and structures of their own; and, importantly, are in the situation of being the weaker members in a world market economy, whereas the developed nations were never in an analogous position; they never had to exist in relation to a bloc of more powerful countries than themselves.

    In opposition to free-market economists (vide supra) the dependency school argued that underdeveloped countries needed to reduce their connectedness with the world market so that they could pursue a path more in keeping with their own needs, less dictated by external pressures.

    About right.

    Peripheral and semi-peripheral states being integrated into the world system are ‘ruled’ if that is the right word, by comprador elites who are part of a cosmopolitan overclass in a global financialised world system. Capital leakages and flight from periphery to core – a common feature of the world system, as are raw material and other energy products from the ‘developing’ world. Eastern Europe and its elites fit entirely into this comprador category supplying raw materials, labour and tourism as well as East to West capital flows/flight.

    As we have seen the notion that FDI brings about growth and development is the wrong way around. No developed economy got that way by opening up its economy to competition and inward (invariably predatory) investment from more highly developed countries and economies. Policies of State-capitalist mercantilism and nation-building have always been the road to development. The UK being the first, followed in short order by the United States and Germany, in the 19th century, and in the 20th century by a number of East Asian states in historical order, Japan, South Korea and China, and a number of others.

    In the case of Russia, this state has a semi-peripheral global position, in both political and economic terms. Too big and to small in economic terms with a small GDP, although very low debt-to-GDP ratio (15%). It is both semi-sovereign and semi-peripheral and a somewhat less than submerged struggle is going on between the Eurasian sovereigntists and the Atlantic integrationists with Putin balanced between the two factions.

    [Russia] is not exactly classical peripheral capitalism but rather a semi-periphery.

    Its phenomenon is characterised, on the one hand, by its dependency on the core, but on the other hand by its ability to challenge the domination of the latter in some particular areas. This semi-dependent position of Russia is conditioned by its shift to capitalism, whilst its semi-independent position is due to the Soviet legacy.

    In particular, this legacy found its manifestation in a significant nuclear arsenal still comparable with that of the United States. If it had not existed, Russia would have been subjugated to Western interests a long time ago, just as Ukraine was.”

    Russia and the world’s future are yet to be played out.

    As for Eastern Europe, it would not be stretching credulity too far to say that it has been had, falling straight into the trap of under-development where it will probably remain for the foreseeable future.

  • CNN: Thou Shalt Have No Other Media Before Ours, Chinamen!

    Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Donald Trump’s magical term “Fake News” absolutely hit the nail on the head in regards to the dismal behavior of the current Mainstream Media when they fabricate their product. But below Fake News there needs to be another subcategory of “Fake Outrage”. Meaning the news is presented factually and could be of value to the public, however the reaction within said news is hysterical and/or vastly overblown.

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    Take for example CNN’s rather detailed breakdown of how China is moving into the African media sphere. The information provided looks to be true but it is written to fill the Western reader with some sort of looming dread. The article ends on a perfect doomsday quote by a PhD candidate that they interviewed…

    “In the trade off between letting go of some sovereignty and building a state-of-the-art telecommunications network, most African countries have chosen the latter,”

    Apparently you can be horribly naive and biased while working towards a PhD and/or getting your next paycheck from CNN. The idea that modern Africa is completely independent and free as long as the Chinese stop sending phones and cable TV dishes to the continent is mental.

    “Post colonial” France has 3,000 troops spread over 5 African nations covering from the very west of the continent to the Horn of Africa according to Business Insider. The Washington Post says that during the middle of Obama’s presidency the US had troops in at least 13 Sub-Saharan African nations. Obviously not all bases are pubic knowledge thus there are “at least” 13 bases. Free and independent nations are not smothered by foreign troops.

    Sub-Saharan Africa is also plagued by massive government debts with roughly half the nations being in the red up to half of their national GDP according the Economist. This raises the question of whom are they indebted to? Of course it is lovely white faces at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank not their neighbors. The African Development bank is a player, but behind their local looks they have many foreign (Western) partners. The West still has a financial stranglehold on Africa. Is this Africa’s own fault for having corrupt leaders that took out IMF loans they could never possibly repay? Yes it probably is, but it doesn’t matter how the debt was created, African is beholden to it, thus not very pure and independent.

    CNN in their breakdown of Chinese expansion into the African info space also forgot to mention that media the world over is by default – American. It is false to portray poor Africa (which isn’t that poor anymore if you take a virtual trip through their cities via Google Maps) as this totally free media space filled only with some hapless local content that will be Crushed by Xi’s evil 10,000 Villages plan. If you travel the world and see a movie theatre it will have Hollywood movies guaranteed and translated American shows/movies will be on TV in hotel room guaranteed. The entire campy genre of Ugandan action movies (the only African-made movie you will probably ever see) is founded on imitating Hollywood.

    To say that Africa is empty of media is mad, the author from CNN needs to be less dishonest or more self-reflective. Their real problem with China putting up TV-dishes in 10,000 villages and selling smartphones built for African realities (cheap, good battery life to survive long power outages, gearing phones to local languages) is that it is a threat to US/Western dominance of the continent. The Chinese Communists are doing Capitalism better than the West in Africa and at least subconsciously some people at CNN are spooked.

    There is nothing wrong with an American news outlet saying that they want to keep the world’s eyes seeing history and events through a primarily American filter. There is nothing wrong with wanting America to step up its game in Africa to make sure hearts and minds are won over on a continent that has lots of lovely natural resources. It would be a normal healthy attitude to say something like “If the Chinese want to take Africa, then they’re going to have fight for it, right boys!?”. But somehow trying to make the Chinese look evil for attempting to make money selling products and services and gain soft power influence is Fake Outrage.

    China is just trying to do the rational things that America was doing very well for decades after WWII – bringing their media technology to as many markets as possible to make sweet cash and get those all so important soft power victories. If you have a problem with the Chinese answering certain market demands in Africa then you should honestly advocate for giving them an economic fight for the territory. Many of the biggest tech companies in the world are from the West. If you want your info-colonies back so much then go out and win them over with good tech and great content. Don’t lie to the English-speaking speaking public implying Beijing is somehow that vastly inherently different from Washington and by its very nature doing evil.

    CNN’s view is both racist and a perfect example of “Fake Outrage”.

  • 16 Shot, 3 Dead At California Garlic Festival; Shooter Still At Large

    “Who shoots up a garlic festival?” exclaimed one terrified attendee at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California as she fled from an active shooter situation tonight.

    NBC Bay Area News is reporting sources say 16 shot and 3 dead.

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    Santa Clara Valley Medical Center spokeswoman Joy Alexiou told ABC News that the hospital has received two victims from the shooting and expects three more. She had no information on their conditions.

    The shooter is reportedly a white man in his 30s using an automatic weapon.

    Festival-goer Evenny Reyes of Gilroy, 13, told the San Jose Mercury News she thought the gunshots were fireworks at first, but then she saw a man with a bandana wrapped around his leg because he got shot.

    “And there were people on the ground, crying. There was a little kid hurt on the ground. People were throwing tables and cutting fences to get out.”

    The Gilroy Garlic Festival started in 1979 and Sunday was the final day of event, according to the festival website.

    Live Feed from NBC Bay Area:

    President Trump has tweeted that he is aware of the situation:

    Developing…

     

  • Russia And China Display Strategic Coordination In Asia-Pacific

    Authored by M.K.Bhadrakumar via The Indian Punchline blog,

    An exciting new template has appeared in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific last week when Russia’s Aerospace Force and China’s Air Force carried out their first-ever joint air patrol in the region.

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    Steadily and imperceptibly but profoundly, the regional alignments are transforming. Russia and China routinely claim that their entente is neither a military alliance nor is directed against any third country. Yet, the alchemy of that relationship is undergoing a huge transformation, stemming out of a conscious decision by their top leaderships. 

    The so-called joint patrol last Tuesday involved Russia’s Tu-95MS strategic bombers and the H-6K aircraft on China’s part. The Tupolov Tu-95MS (which NATO calls the ‘Bear’) is a is a large, four-engine turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform to carry the new Russian Kh-101/102 stealth cruise missile, which uses use radio-radar equipment and target-acquiring/navigation system based on GLONASS. The ‘Bear’ used to be a veritable icon of the Cold War as it performed a maritime surveillance and targeting mission for other aircraft, surface ships and submarines and a versatile bomber that would deliver the thermonuclear bomb.

    China’s H-6K is a heavily redesigned version of the ‘Bear’, capable of carrying air launched cruise missiles. According to the Pentagon, the bomber gives China a “long-range standoff offensive air capability” with precision-guided munitions. Russia and China deployed two each of the Tu-95MS and H-6K strategic bombers in the air patrol on Tuesday. 

    According to a Russian Defence Ministry statement, the air patrol was undertaken on the “planned route over the Sea of Japan and the East China Sea.” The statement added that the joint air patrol was intended to strengthen Russian-Chinese relations and raise the level of interaction between the armed forces of both countries, in particular, to expand their capabilities for joint operations. 

    Significantly, the Russian statement  said that another goal of the joint patrol is “strengthening global strategic stability.” 

    The South Korean defence ministry, however, insisted that following the Russian-Chinese air patrol by the strategic bombers, a Russian A-50 command and control military aircraft also entered the country’s Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) twice. South Korea claimed that it deployed fighter jets and fired 360 warning shots ahead of the Russian A-50, which  is an unarmed AWACS plane, designed for tracking and observation.

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    Russian A-50 aircraft. File photo

    Why Russia and China jointly undertook an unprecedented joint air patrol over the disputed islands in the East China Sea (known to the Koreans as Dokdo and to the Japanese as Takeshima) remains unclear. But, quite obviously, it is an affront to the US, which has alliance treaties with both Japan and South Korea. The incident comes barely two months after the release of the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific Strategy Report, which spelt out the US’ dual containment strategy against China (“a Revisionist Power”) and Russia (“a Revitalised Malign Actor”.) 

    The Chinese Defense Ministry’s official spokesman Col. Wu Qian saidon Wednesday, “I would like to reiterate that China and Russia are engaged in all-encompassing strategic coordination. This patrol mission was among the areas of cooperation and was carried out within the framework of the annual plan of cooperation between the defence agencies of the two states. It was not directed against any other “third state.” 

    “As far as the practice of joint strategic patrols is concerned, both sides will make a decision on the matter on the basis of bilateral consultations. Under the strategic command of the heads of states, the armed forces of the two nations will continue developing their relations. The sides will support each other, respect mutual interests and develop corresponding mechanisms of cooperation.” 

    Clearly, the Chinese statement has been far more assertive than the Russian statement, describing the joint patrol as part of an “all-encompassing strategic coordination” between the two countries and may continue in future as they “support for each other, respect mutual interests and develop corresponding mechanisms of cooperation.” 

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    Map of the route of Russian-Chinese joint patrol mission on July 23, 2019

    Moscow also says that the first-ever joint patrol of the long-range aviation in the Pacific was the beginning of a wider program, which aims to boost the Russian and Chinese militaries’ ability to work together and the planned program stretches at least for the remainder of the year.

    Neither Russia nor China is party to the maritime dispute in the East China Sea and when the undertook a joint patrol nonetheless, it bore an uncanny resemblance to the US exercising its ‘freedom of navigation’ in the South China Sea. The US has a big military presence in the region but was rendered an ineffectual observer, unable to go the aid of either of its allies — Japan and South Korea which too could protest and lament from the sidelines. 

    The symbolism is striking. The US National Security Advisor John Bolton who was on a visit to Seoul a day after the flyover of the islands by the Russian and Chinese strategic bombers exhorted South Korea and Japan to work together amid growing security concerns. 

    On the other hand, the incident last Tuesday only served to highlight the conflicting claims over the islands. Eighteen South Korean jets and about 10 from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces were deployed to the area during the incident. Japan, which considers the South Korean-controlled islands as its own, maintains that the South should not have responded to the Russian plane. Meanwhile, a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesperson said Wednesday that Japan’s views are completely irrelevant. 

    In fact, one viewpoint is that China and Russia took advantage of this rift to put their security partnership to the test. The CNN speculated that the Russian-Chinese mission may have been designed to draw out South Korean and Japanese aircraft for intelligence gathering purposes. 

    Either way, Russia and China may have underscored that carrying forward their convergence on the Asia-Pacific region, their two militaries intend to undertake active “strategic coordination” in the Far East where the US has begun deploying advanced missile defence capabilities. For China, the timing is particularly significant in view of the proposed US arms sales to Taiwan. 

    For both Russia and China, the Far East will be of increased importance in the period ahead as forming a gateway to the Northern Sea Route, the shipping lane which the two countries are jointly developing to connect the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean along the Russian coast of Siberia and the Far East. 

  • Democrat Baltimore Mayor Confirms Trump's Comments: "Oh My God, You Can Smell The Rats, Dead Animals"

    Update: As the day progressed and the progressives pontificated as to just how racist the President’s remarks about Baltimore are, a viral video from September 2018 has awkwardly surfaced showing Democratic Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh decrying the state of parts of her city, specifically the smell of “rats” and “dead animals.”

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    As DailyWire.com’s Ryan Saavedra reports, Pugh made the remarks during a Fox 45 segment while touring a Baltimore neighborhood that was supposed to highlight her “violence-reduction initiative.”

    “What the hell? We should just take all this sh*t down. … Whoa, you can smell the rats. … Whew, Jesus. … Oh, my God, you can smell the dead animals.”

    So is Pugh racist too? (And we wonder how long before this clearly racist video is removed from Twitter).

    *  *  *

    The left, the mainstream media, and every virtue-signaling celebrity has quickly jumped on the bandwagon to support Rep. Elijah Cummings following President Trump’s “racist” tweets yesterday about the desperately terrible state of the congressman’s district.

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    However, despite tears and furore, none on the left is actually denying Trump’s facts – merely distracting with rage that #OrangeManBad. But Trump would not let it go, doubling down this morning:

    And, some have come to Trump’s defense.

    As expected, White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney argued on “Fox News Sunday” that President Trump’s use of “infested” to attack Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) has “nothing to do with race.”

    MULVANEY: “Does anyone watching this program dispute the fact or the possibility that if Adam Schiff said the same thing about the border, that the president would be attacking Adam Schiff the exact same way today?”

    WALLACE: “I don’t think he would be talking about his crime-investor, rodent-infested district.”

    MULVANEY: “He very well could. It has zero to do with the fact that Adam’s Jewish and everything to do with the fact that Adam would just be wrong for saying that. This is what the president does. He fights — “

    WALLACE: “You’re completely comfortable with him saying that this is a rodent-infested district and no human being would want to live there? You’re comfortable with that personally?”

    MULVANEY: “Have you seen some of the pictures on the Internet? Just this morning from the conditions in Baltimore?”

    WALLACE: “You can do that in any inner city in America. And you could argue why doesn’t the president or something to stop it?”

    MULVANEY: “The richest estate in the nation has abject poverty like that. A state, by the way, dominated for generations by Democrats. I think it’s fair to have that conversation.

    But, Baltimore resident (and awkwardly African American) Michelle speaks out…

    “Trump is not racist.. I’m glad he put [Cummings] on blast. The rats just didn’t come. These houses just didn’t get torn down, they’ve been like this”

    “What he said was definitely true. [Cummings] hasn’t done anything for us”

    “[Cummings is] worried more about [caring for illegal aliens at the border] than his own people”

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    Sounds racist to us! Don’t believe Michelle?

    So here are some awkward – probably racist – facts about Baltimore…

    Wealth Inequality, Vacant Homes, And Homicides Plague Baltimore

    Baltimore has more than 30,000 abandoned homes according to the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. These vacancies are primarily located in neighborhoods with low incomes and high proportions of households of color.

    Baltimore’s vacant buildings stand as a reminder, the city is rapidly shrinking. As illustrated in the map below, the areas with the highest concentration of homicides correspond precisely with the city’s vacancies.

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    Out Of Control: Baltimore On The Verge Of Hitting Homicides Record

    Baltimore is on the verge of implosion. The city is an opioid hell-hole that has the most extensive wealth inequality in the country. Its millennial base is fleeing the city, headed to the suburbs to escape the out of control murders.

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    Baltimore struggles to curb violent crime as the city’s total homicides are expected to breach 300 in the coming days.

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    “We’ve got to teach folks that life is valuable. These folks don’t get up off the ground and get to live another day or to have another conversation with their daughter their father their mother their sister their cousin – they don’t get to do that,” Pugh said.

    Baltimore Dubbed ‘Most Robbed’ City In America 

    New evidence from ADT security study that examined FBI statistics shows the town is now the “most robbed” city in America.

    Baltimore had the most significant number of robberies per capita – 95.87 for every 10,000 people.

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    ADT’s analytic analysts “looked at the FBI’s annual crime data [for 2017] for robbery rates to discover which city in each state experienced the most robberies.”

    While robberies worsened in Baltimore, they declined nationwide, dropping by 28% between 2008 and 2017.

    ‘Neighborhoods Are Crying Out’: Baltimore Is Nation’s Deadliest Big City, Says FBI

    According to The Baltimore Sun, the city has sustained a vicious upcycle in violent crime since 2015, when the per annum number of homicides soared well above 300 for three consecutive years after civil unrest that followed Freddie Gray’s death from injuries suffered in police custody.

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    And finally, if everything’s so awesome, why are ‘human beings’ leaving Baltimore in droves?

    Exodus: Baltimore Sees Biggest Population Drop Since 2001

    New data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual population that has confirmed our thoughts: Baltimore is descending into chaos as a mass exodus of its residents is currently underway.

    Government data showed the city lost 7,346 people, or 1.2% of its population, during the 12 months that ended July 1, 2018, reported The Baltimore Sun.

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    The exodus, which puts Baltimore’s population at 602,495 as of July 1, 2018, is one of the biggest losses the city has seen since 2001.

    The overall trend for Baltimore is down. In the mid-1950s, Baltimore was America’s sixth most populous city, with more than 900,000 residents.

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    The city was one of the beating industrial hearts of America for decades, but since de-industrialization started in the 1970s to the present date, the city teeters on the edge of collapse.

    *  *  *

    So, you decide, is President Trump right about Elijah Cummings’ district? Or is its just “racist” to write about the facts in the Democratic stronghold?

    Of, course, Cummings is not alone..

    Do you see a pattern here?

  • India Launches First-Ever Space War Drill To Defend Satellites

    In the event of war with Pakistan or China, India has determined that the first domain of warfare to defend is low Earth orbit.

    Indian news reported last week that the country’s first space war drill on Thursday [July 25] was focused on defending space assets in the event of a shooting conflict with China.

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    The two-day war exercise, called IndSpaceEx, was conducted by Indian Armed Forces “in the backdrop of China’s rapidly expanding space and counter-space capabilities,” The Times of India (TOI) said.

    “There is a need to explore effective tactical, operational, and strategic exploitation on the final frontier of warfare. We cannot keep twiddling our thumbs while China zooms ahead. We cannot match China but must have capabilities to protect our space assets,” the TOI said while quoting an unnamed Indian official.

    The Diplomat magazine called the military exercise a “table-top war game,” will allow Indian war planners to design a doctrine that dictates procedures for space battle.

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    The latest exercise comes after an anti-satellite missile test in March, India emphasized it had developed a level of “deterrence” capabilities on par to the US, Russia, and China.

    “We are working on several technologies like directed-energy weapons (DEWs), lasers, electromagnetic pulses (EMP) and co-orbital weapons,” Dr. Satheesh Reddy, chairman of the state-funded the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) said in a press briefing after the anti-satellite missile test.

    Earlier last week [Monday], India launched its lunar probe Chandrayaan-2 had successfully performed a second earth-bound orbit-raising maneuver on Friday morning.

    “India has paranoia” amid China’s rapid rise across many domains of warfare, including space, Wei Dongxu, a Beijing-based military analyst, told the Global Times Thursday.

    Wei said China continued to hold a peaceful attitude towards India’s space ambitions and opposed its militarization in low Earth orbit.

    The Pentagon established its Space Force, the sixth branch of the armed forces, on August 2018.

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    Vice President Pence said after the creation of the new force, “Russia and China to North Korea and Iran have pursued weapons to jam, blind and disable our navigation and communications satellites via electronic attacks from the ground,” adding that, “our adversaries have been working to bring new weapons of war into space itself.”

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    As evident by many of the world superpowers, a race to defend military assets in low Earth orbit is underway, an ominous sign of war preparation as protectionism and nationalism is spreading across the world — straining relations that could ultimately lead to war in the next decade.

  • No Accountability In Washington. The CIA Wants To Hide All Its 'Assets'

    Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    Government that actually serves the interests of the people who are governed has two essential characteristics: first, it must be transparent in terms of how it debates and develops policies and second, it has to be accountable when it fails in its mandate and ceases to be responsive to the needs of the electorate.

    Over the past twenty years one might reasonably argue that Washington has become less a “of the people, by the people and for the people” and increasingly a model of how special interests can use money to corrupt government. The recent story about how serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein avoided any serious punishment by virtue of his wealth and his political connections, including to both ex-president Bill Clinton and to current chief executive Donald Trump, demonstrates how even the most despicable criminals can avoid being brought to justice.

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    This erosion of what one might describe as republican virtue has been exacerbated by a simultaneous weakening of the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights, which was intended to serve as a guarantee of individual liberties while also serving as a bulwark against government overreach. In recent cases in the United States, a young man had his admission to Harvard revoked over comments posted online when he was fifteen that were considered racist, while a young woman was stripped of a beauty contest title because she refused to don a hijab at a college event and then wrote online about her experience. In both cases, freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment was ruled to be inadmissible by the relevant authorities.

    Be that as it may, governmental lack of transparency and accountability is a more serious matter when the government itself becomes a serial manipulator of the truth as it seeks to protect itself from criticism. Reports that the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) is seeking legislation that will expand government ability to declare it a crime to reveal the identities of undercover intelligence agents will inevitably lead to major abuse when some clever bureaucrat realizes that the new rule can also be used to hide people and cover up malfeasance.

    A law to protect intelligence officers already exists. It was passed in 1982 and is referred to as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (I.I.P.A.). It criminalizes the naming of any C.I.A. officer under cover who has served overseas in the past five years. The new legislation would make the ban on exposure perpetual and would also include Agency sources or agents whose work is classified as well as actual C.I.A. staff employees who exclusively or predominantly work in the United States rather than overseas.

    The revised legislation is attached to defense and intelligence bills currently being considered by Congress. If it is passed into law, its expanded range of criminal penalties could be employed to silence whistle blowers inside the Agency who become aware of illegal activity and it might also be directed against journalists that the whistleblowers might contact to tell their story.

    The Agency has justified the legislation by claiming in a document obtained by The New York Times that “hundreds of covert officers [serving in the United States] have had their identity and covert affiliation disclosed without authorization… C.I.A. officers place themselves in harm’s way in order to carry out C.I.A.’s mission regardless of where they are based. Protecting officers’ identities from foreign adversaries is critical.”

    Some Congressmen are disturbed by the perpetual nature of the identification ban, while also believing that the proposed legislation is too broad in general. Senator Ron Wyden expressed had reservations over how the C.I.A. provision would apply indefinitely. “I am not yet convinced this expansion is necessary and am concerned that it will be employed to avoid accountability,” he wrote.

    Agency insiders have suggested that the new law is in part a response to increasing leaks of classified information by government employees. It is also a warning shot fired at journalists in the wake of the impending prosecution of Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the seldom used Espionage Act of 1918. Covert identities legislation is less broad that the Espionage Act, which is precisely why it is attractive. It permits prosecution and punishment solely because someone either has revealed a “covert” name or is suspected of having done so.

    But up until now, government prosecutors have only used the 1982 identities law twice. The first time was a 1985 case involving a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana and the second time was the 2012 case of John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who pleaded guilty to providing a reporter with the name of an under-cover case officer who participated in the agency’s illegal overseas interrogations. Kiriakou has always claimed that he had not in fact named anyone, in spite of his plea, which was agreed to as a plea bargain. The covert officer in question had already been identified in the media.

    John Kiriakou also observes how the I.I.P.A. has been inevitably applied selectively. He describes how “These two minor prosecutions aside, very few revelations of C.I.A. identities have ever led to court cases. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage famously leaked Valerie Plame’s name to two syndicated columnists. He was never charged with a crime. Former C.I.A. Director David Petraeus leaked the names of 10 covert C.I.A. operatives to his adulterous girlfriend, apparently in an attempt to impress her, and was never charged. Former C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta revealed the name of the covert SEAL Team member who killed Osama bin Laden. He apologized and was not prosecuted.”

    Kiriakou also explains how the “…implementation of this law is a joke. The C.I.A. doesn’t care when an operative’s identity is revealed — unless they don’t like the politics of the person making the revelation. If they cared, half of the C.I.A. leadership would be in prison. What they do care about, though, is protecting those employees who commit crimes at the behest of the White House or the C.I.A. leadership.” He goes on to describe how some of those involved in the Agency torture program were placed under cover precisely for that reason, to protect them from prosecution for war crimes.

    Even team player Joe Biden, when a Senator, voted against the I.I.P.A., explaining in an op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor in 1982 that, “The language (the I.I.P.A.) employs is so broadly drawn that it would subject to prosecution not only the malicious publicizing of agents’ names, but also the efforts of legitimate journalists to expose any corruption, malfeasance, or ineptitude occurring in American intelligence agencies.” And that was with the much weaker 1982 version of the bill.

    The new legislation is an intelligence agency dream, a get out of jail card that has no expiry date. And if one wants to know how dangerous it is, consider for a moment that if it turns out that serial pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was indeed a C.I.A. covert source, which is quite possible, he would be covered and would be able to walk away free on procedural grounds.

  • Israel & US Conduct High Altitude 'Arrow-3' Missile Defense Tests In Alaska

    Following Iran’s provocative test firing last week of its medium-range ballistic missile the Shahab-3, which is capable of hitting Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Sunday the successful test firing of Israel’s own Arrow-3 ballistic missile shield over Alaska, tests previously considered secretive.

    “The performance was perfect – every hit a bull’s eye,” Netanyahu, who doubles as defense minister, said in a statement  following the three secret “live interception” tests held in coordination with the United States and the missile system’s maker, Boeing Co. The Arrow-3 is touted as being able to shoot down incoming missiles in space, or while a hostile missile is still outside the earth’s atmosphere, and is the “bottom tier” and longest range integration on top of the the short-range Iron Dome interceptor.

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    Specifically the Arrow-3 is designed to take out advanced ballistic missiles in Iran and Syria’s arsenal. The tests were held in Alaska due to Israel not being considered a capable hosting site given the system’s specifications, as well as likely the current soaring regional tensions with Iran.

    “Today Israel has the capabilities to act against ballistic missiles launched at us from Iran and from anywhere else,” Netanyahu said on Sunday. “All our foes should know that we can best them, both defensively and offensively.”

    “They were successful beyond any imagination. The Arrow 3 – with complete success – intercepted ballistic missiles beyond the atmosphere at unprecedented altitudes and speeds,” the Israeli PM added. However, no details regarding what altitudes were reached during the testing were given.

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    During the Alaska tests the Israeli Arrow-3 missiles were also integrated with the US’ long-range, very high-altitude active electronically scanned array surveillance radar which globally assists in early detection of hostile projectiles with a range up to 2,900 miles. As Reuters summarized:

    Israel’s Ministry of Defense said that, as part of the Alaska tests, Arrow-3 was successfully synched up with the AN-TPY2 radar – also known as X-band – which provides the United States with extensive global coverage. Israel hosts an X-band battery.

    “We are committed to assisting the government of Israel in upgrading its national missile defence capability to defend the state of Israel and deployed U.S. forces from emerging threats,” Vice Admiral John Hill, director of the Pentagon’s Missile Defence Agency, said in a statement.

    The Arrow-3 system, once fully integrated with the Iron Dome and the medium-range ‘David’s Sling,’ will mark the highest level in Israel’s multi-tiered missile defense network.

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    No doubt, the publication of the weekend tests doubly serves as a strong message of warning to Iran amid soaring tensions and a US military build-up in the Persian Gulf after tit-for-tat drone shoot downs over the past month and ongoing “tanker war”. 

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