May 02

Today’s News 2nd May 2018

  • German Foreign Minister Demands IAEA Analyze Israel's Evidence Against Iran

    Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to review Israeli accusations against Iran “as soon as possible,” in order to “clarify whether it actually provides evidence of a violation,” reports Bild.

    After the Israeli revelations about a secret continuation of the Iranian nuclear agreement, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) has now spoken up.

    Maas said to BILD: “Israel’s security is at the center of German politics. That is why we will analyze the Israeli information carefully. “

    He now called for a thorough review – and a check on the Iranian plants: “The Vienna nuclear agreement with Iran is not based on good faith, but on complete control. Now, as soon as possible, the International Atomic Energy Agency must get access to the Israeli information and clarify whether it actually provides evidence of a violation of the agreement. ” –Bild.de (translated)

    Maas spoke against ditching the nuclear deal with Iran, “Precisely because we can not tolerate an Iranian grip on nuclear weapons, the control mechanisms of the Vienna Agreement must be grasped and maintained,” he told Bild. Bloomberg adds that the French Foreign Ministry would like the IAEA to access the documents as well. 

    On Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iran of secretly developing and building nuclear weapons – unveiling a cache of 55,000 pages of documents and 183 CDs containing evidence of Iran’s alleged “atomic archive” of documents on its nuclear program. Israel claims that the files prove that Tehran ran a secret program, called Project Amad, to “test and build nuclear weapons.”

    While Iranian leaders have long said their nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes, Netanyahu claimed this was not the case according to tens of thousands of pages of documents, which he said were copied from a “highly secret location” in Iran.

    “These files conclusively prove that Iran is brazenly lying when it says it never had a nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said. “The files prove that.”

    He says the US has vouched for the authenticity of the secret archive obtained by Israel, and that it would make the documents available to the UN atomic agency and other countries.

    A senior Israeli official said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had informed Trump on March 5 about alleged evidence seized by Israel in what Netanyahu on Monday presented as a “great intelligence achievement”.

    Trump agreed at the meeting that Israel would publish the information before May 12, the date by which he is due to decide whether the United States should quit the nuclear deal with Iran, an arch foe of both countries, the Israeli official said. –Reuters

    Others, however, have suggested Netanyahu is once again “crying wolf” – hence the skeptcism by some.

    Shortly after Netanyahu’s speech, President Trump addressed reporters at the White House with the following comments on the Iran revelations and nuclear deal, from Bloomberg:

    • *TRUMP SAYS HE SAW PARTS OF NETANYAHU’S SPEECH ON IRAN
    • *TRUMP DECLINES TO SAY WHAT HE’LL DO ON IRAN NUCLEAR DEAL
    • *TRUMP LEAVES OPEN POSSIBILITY OF NEGOTIATING NEW IRAN DEAL
    • *TRUMP SAYS HE HAS BEEN `100% RIGHT’ ON IRAN SO FAR

    Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says allegations made by the Israel prime minister are lies aiming to deceive people and some governments, state-run FARS reports.

    “The speech of Netanyahu and some American circles behind him are mere false claims that don’t matter”

    Meanwhile, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said Israeli presentation accusing Iran of hiding a secret nuclear arms project shows how far it is willing to go to end the nuclear deal: “We are prepared for all scenarios. But this really shows how much the Americans, the Zionist regime and the Saudis are worried about the opportunities that the nuclear deal provides Iran and the lengths they’ll go to stop it,” he said in comments aired on state TV.

    Araghchi called the presentation “laughable” and says Israel has used an “old, worn-out scenario.”

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  • Look Where They Tell You Not To Look

    Authored by Craig Murray,

    At the very beginning of the of the Skripal incident, the security services blocked by D(SMA) notice any media mention of Pablo Miller and told the media not to look at Orbis and the Steele dossier on Trump, acting immediately to get out their message via trusties in the BBC and Guardian.

    Gordon Corera, “BBC Security Correspondent”, did not name the source who told him to say this, but helpfully illustrated his tweet with a nice picture of MI6 Headquarters.

    MI6’s most important media conduit (after Frank Gardner) is Luke Harding of the Guardian.

    A number of people replied to Harding’s tweet to point out that this was demonstrably untrue, and Pablo Miller had listed his employment by Orbis Business Intelligence on his Linkedin profile. That profile had just been deleted, but a google search for “Pablo Miller” plus “Orbis Business Intelligence”, without Linkedin as a search term, brought up Miller’s Linkedin profile as the first result (although there are twelve other Pablo Millers on Linkedin and the search brought up none of them). Plus a 2017 forum discussed Pablo Miller’s Orbis connection and it both cited and linked to his Linkedin entry.

    You might think that any journalist worth his salt would want to consider this interesting counter-evidence. But Harding merely tweeted again the blank denials of the security services, without question.

    This is an important trait of Harding. Last year we both appeared, separately, at the Jaipur Literature Festival. Harding was promoting a book and putting the boot into Wikileaks and Snowden. After his talk, I approached him in an entirely friendly manner, and told him there were a couple of factual errors in his presentation on matters to which I was an eye-witness, and I should be very happy to brief him, off the record, but we could discuss which bits he might use. He said he would talk later, and dashed off. Later I saw him in the author’s lounge, and as I walked towards him he hurriedly got up and left, looking at me.

    Of course, nobody is obliged to talk to me. But at that period I had journalists from every major news agency contacting me daily wishing to interview me about Wikileaks, all of whom I was turning down, and there was no doubt of my inside knowledge and direct involvement with a number of the matters of which Harding was writing and speaking. A journalist who positively avoids knowledge of his subject is an interesting phenomenon.

    But then Harding is that. From a wealthy family background, privately educated at Atlantic College and then Oxford, Harding became the editor of Oxford University’s Cherwell magazine without showing any leftwing or rebel characteristics. It was not a surprise to those who knew him as a student when he was employed at the very right wing “Daily Mail”. From there he moved to the Guardian. In 2003 Harding was embedded with US forces in Iraq and filing breathless reports of US special forces operations.

    Moving to Moscow in 2007 as the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent, others in the Moscow press corps and in the British expatriate community found him to be a man of strongly hawkish neo-con views, extremely pro-British establishment, and much closer to the British Embassy and to MI6 than anybody else in the press corps. It was for this reason Harding was the only resident British journalist, to my knowledge, whose visa the Russians under Putin have refused to renew. They suspected he is actually an MI6 officer, although he is not.

    With this background, people who knew Harding were dumbfounded when Harding appeared to be the supporter and insider of first Assange and then Snowden. The reason for this dichotomy is that Harding was not – he wrote books on Wikileaks and on Snowden that claimed to be insider accounts, but in fact just carried on Harding’s long history of plagiarism, as Julian Assange makes clear. Harding’s books were just careful hatchet jobs pretending to be inside accounts. The Guardian’s historical reputation for radicalism was already a sham under the editorship of Rusbridger, and has completely vanished under Viner, in favour of hardcore Clinton identity politics failing to disguise unbending neo-conservatism. The Guardian smashed the hard drives containing the Snowden files under GCHQ supervision, having already undertaken “not to even look at” the information on Iraq and Afghanistan. The fact the hard drives were not the only copies in the world does not excuse their cravenness.

    We know, of course, what MI6 have fed to Harding, because it is reflected every day in his output. What we do not know, but may surmise, is what Harding fed back to the security services that he gleaned from the Guardian’s association with Wikileaks and Snowden.

    Harding has since made his living from peddling a stream of anti-Assange, anti-Snowden and above all, anti-Russian books, with great commercial success, puffed by the entire mainstream media. But when challenged by the non-mainstream media about the numerous fact free assertions on behalf of the security services to be found in his books, Harding is not altogether convincing. You can watch this video, in which Harding outlines how emoticons convinced him someone was a Russian agent, together with this fascinating analysis which really is a must-read study of anti-Russian paranoia. There is a similar analysis here.

    Perhaps still more revealing is this 2014 interview with his old student newspaper Cherwell, where he obviously felt comfortable enough to let the full extent of his monstrous boggle-eyed Russophobia become plain:

    His analogies span the bulk of the 20th century and his predictions for the future are equally far-reaching. “This is the biggest crisis in Europe since the Cold War. It’s not the break-up of Yugoslavia, but the strategic consensus since 1945 has been ripped up. We now have an authoritarian state, with armies on the march.” What next?

    “It’s clear to me that Putin intends to dismember Ukraine and join it up with Transnistria, then perhaps he’ll go as far as Moldova in one way or another,” Harding says. This is part of what he deems Putin’s over-arching project: an expansionist attempt to gather Russo-phones together under one yoke, which he terms ‘scary and Eurasian-ist’, and which he notes is darkly reminiscent of “another dictator of short stature” who concocted “a similarly irredentist project in the 1930s”.

    But actually I think you can garner everything you want to know about Harding from looking at his twitter feed over the last two months. He has obsessively retweeted scores of stories churning out the government’s increasingly strained propaganda line on what occurred in Salisbury. Not one time had Harding ever questioned, even in the mildest way, a single one of the multiple inconsistencies in the government account or referred to anybody who does. He has acted, purely and simply, as a conduit for government propaganda, while abandoning all notion of a journalistic duty to investigate.

    We still have no idea of who attacked Sergei Skripal and why. But the fact that, right from the start, the government blocked the media from mentioning Pablo Miller, and put out denials that this has anything to do with Christopher Steele and Orbis, including lying that Miller had never been connected to Orbis, convinces me that this is the most promising direction in which to look.

    It never seemed likely to me that the Russians had decided to assassinate an inactive spy who they let out of prison many years ago, over something that happened in Moscow over a decade ago. It seemed even less likely when Boris Johnson claimed intelligence showed this was the result of a decade long novichok programme involving training in secret assassination techniques. Why would they blow all that effort on old Skripal?

    That the motive is the connection to the hottest issue in US politics today, and not something in Moscow a decade ago, always seemed to me much more probable. Having now reviewed matters and seen that the government actively tried to shut down this line of inquiry, makes it still more probable this is right.

    This does not tell us who did it. Possibly the Russians did, annoyed that Skripal was feeding information to the Steele dossier, against the terms of his release.

    Given that the Steele dossier is demonstrably in large degree nonsense, it seems to me more probable the idea was to silence Skripal to close the danger that he would reveal his part in the concoction of this fraud. Remember he had sold out Russian agents to the British for cash and was a man of elastic loyalties. It is also worth noting that Luke Harding has a bestselling book currently on sale, in large part predicated on the truth of the Steele Dossier.

    Steele, MI6 and the elements of the CIA which are out to get Trump, all would have a powerful motive to have the Skripal loose-end tied.

    Rule number one of real investigative journalism: look where they tell you not to look.

  • Taiwan "Won't Bow Down To China Pressure"; Plans To Purchase 108 US Abrams Tanks

    Taiwan “will not bow down to pressure from Beijing” Foreign Minister Joseph Wu says, but “will work with friendly nations to uphold regional peace and stability and ensure our rightful place in the international community.”

    His exclamation came after news that the Dominican Republic had broken ties with Taipei and established formal relations with Beijing, expressing “deep regret” that the Dominican Republic had “set aside 77 years of partnership” in order “to accept deceptive promises of investment and aid from China.”

    Taiwan’s presidential office also issued a statement criticizing the Chinese government for “exacerbating tension in the Taiwan Strait” just as international society was working to promote reconciliation and dialogue, “including in the Korean Peninsula.”

    Which prompted questioning by a panel of legislators on Monday, with Tsai Shih-Ying of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, asking the National Defence Minister Yen Teh-fa for details surrounding Taiwan’s military program to procure a new modern main battle tank.

    Yen told Tsai that Taiwan’s military would soon make a bid to purchase M1A2 tanks, an American third-generation main battle tank — the most modern armored tank in the world, from the Pentagon in the second half of 2018.

    Yen also stated that the American tanks could help transfer technology to the island’s defense industry, Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported, as quoted by South China Morning Post.

    “The Taiwan Strait is very likely to replace the Korean peninsula as the hottest flashpoint in the region,” he warned.

    “In response to the changing situation, Taiwan’s military has also increased its combat readiness.”

    “In one or two months, China will hold more long-range military training and increase combined forces operations when engaged in such activities in waters near Taiwan,” Yen said when responding to another lawmaker Chiang Chi-chen about Beijing’s increased military exercises in the Taiwan Strait and the East China Sea.

    Relations between Beijing and Taipei have collapsed since President Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, was elected to office last year. As a result, Beijing has flexed its military muscles by sending warships through the Taiwan Strait and bombers to circumnavigate the island.

    To make matters worse, President Trump signed the “Taiwanese Travel Act,” which promotes official visits to Taiwan by government officials at all levels with an emphasis on “national security officials.”

    The new law infuriated Chinese President Xi Jinping, who lashed out at the Trump administration during a speech last month and warned, “any actions and tricks to split China are doomed to failure and will meet with the people’s condemnation and the punishment of history.”

    Since the start of this year, the Liaoning, the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) only operational aircraft carrier, conducted numerous military exercises around Taiwan on January 04, March 20 and April 19.

    In President Tsai’s first national defense review report in December, the Taiwanese government expanded its war preparations around coastal areas for fears of a Chinese invasion.

    As quoted by South China Morning Post, Taiwan’s United Daily News reported that the islands defense ministry could be ordering “two battalions, or 108, M1A2 tanks, but the army hoped Taipei could buy more.”

    In 2016, the M1A2 Abrams was given an estimated quote of about $8.92 million per tank, adjusted for inflation from the FY’99. Simple math shows, Taiwan could be spending around $1 billion on American main battle tanks in the second half of this year.

    South China Morning Post explains how Taipei has been searching for “surplus U.S. Army M1 tanks to replace its M60s,” but has been hesitant about the upgrades because of the island’s mountainous interior and coastal wetlands. Further, there are concerns that the island’s infrastructure, such as bridges and roadways could have difficulty supporting the 65-ton tank.

    While Taiwan could be the flashpoint for the next global war, it seems as the Armed Forces of Taiwan are now preparing for a Chinese invasion by ordering a billion dollars worth of American main battle tanks. War could be coming to Taiwan; North Korea was just one giant distraction.

    * * *

    If a Chinese invasion of Taiwan did occur, here is an excellent video of the American M1 Abrams versus the Chinese Type 99 tank:

  • A Timelapse Video Of Dubai's Astonishing Growth

    Dubai’s transformation from a fishing village to a global real estate hub has been nothing short of remarkable. From having the world’s tallest building to man-made islands in the shape of a world map, the U.A.E.’s most populous city has never shied away from ambitious construction projects.

    Today’s motion graphic video, from Knight Frank, is a unique overview of Dubai’s half-century long growth spurt.

    AMBITION INTO ACTION

    Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, summed up the ambition of his people in a quote:

    Dubai will never settle for anything less than first place.

    Indeed, the city’s economic growth has been nearly unparalleled over the past two decades. Unlike neighboring emirates, Dubai had a modest supply of oil and knew that diversifying their economy would be vital for future success.

    As oil production leveled off in the early 1990s, the tourism industry ramped up. In 2002, reforms allowed foreigners to own real estate and that industry boomed overnight. Today, oil accounts for a minuscule 1% of Dubai’s GDP.

    As the Middle East begins looking toward a post-oil economy, Dubai’s success provides an obvious example for other cities in the region to mimic.

    SKY HIGH AMBITION

    In addition to quirky attractions like the 250,000 sqft indoor ski hill, the desert city boasts a number of record-setting projects:

    • World’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa

    • World’s tallest hotel – JW Marriott Marquis Hotel

    • World’s largest shopping center – Dubai Mall

    • World’s largest indoor theme park – IMG Worlds of Adventure

    • World’s Busiest Airport (International Travelers) – Dubai International Airport

    • World’s longest fully automated metro network – Dubai Metro

    Though Dubai is full of blockbuster development projects, the city’s urban form is perhaps best known for one specific attribute: height. For a city of only 3.0 million people, Dubai has a remarkable number of skyscrapers. In fact, the city trails only New York and Shanghai for the number of buildings taller than 150m (492ft).

    For context, during the period of 2007–2014 Dubai essentially kept pace with high-rise development in the United States as a whole. (Dubai’s population is 0.9% the size of the United States.)

    THE B WORD

    Just as Dubai was hitting its stride, the global financial crisis blew in and choked the pipeline of money flowing into the growing city. In 2009, headlines around the world proclaimed that Dubai’s real estate bubble had finally burst.

    Though the financial crisis was a setback, the city’s development industry has recovered admirably. Going into 2017, there were 11,600 active projects worth over $800 billion. As well, Expo 2020 is expected to add fuel to the twin engines of Dubai’s economy: real estate development and tourism.

    With the U.A.E. set to further relax foreign ownership roles, the city’s economic prospects remain as sunny as its weather forecast.

  • "The Biggest Player In The History Of The World…"

    Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    John Mauldin gives us a highly pertinent anecdote about China:

    “Back in the 1990s, Robert Rubin, a Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton, was negotiating the terms under which China would be allowed into the World Trade Organization. My sources say he was basically asking for many of the exact same things Trump wants now … But in 1998, in the middle of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton wanted a “win” (Not unlike the current president.) And Rubin wasn’t delivering, holding firm on his demands for market access and guarantees on intellectual property, etc. Clinton then took the Chinese negotiations away from Rubin and gave it to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright with the instructions to get it done.

    Not being a trade expert, Albright didn’t understand the underlying issues. The Chinese recognized she was playing a weak hand and held firm. To make a long story short, my sources say she effectively caved. Clinton got his “win” and we got stuck with a lousy trade deal. When Trump alleges that we got snookered in a bad trade deal, he is correct—although I wonder if he understands the history. Maybe somebody gave him the background, but it never came out in any of his speeches. That WTO access, which finally happened in 2001, let China begin capturing markets through legal means, and access US intellectual property without paying for it …

    Does this make a difference now? Probably not … But it gets to the rivalry we discussed above. Is it possible for both the US and China to stay in an organization like WTO? Trump seems to doubt it, as he’s threatened to withdraw from WTO. We may someday look back at this period of a single body governing international trade as an aberration — a nice dream that was never realistic. If so, prepare for some big changes.”

    This goes to the crux of one of the biggest geo-political issues facing Europe and America. Mauldin then gives us what very much the consensus view that, “despite some of his rhetoric, I don’t believe [Trump] is ideologically against trade. I think he just wants a US “win” and is flexible on what that means”. Yes, Trump quite possibly will end up doing ‘a Clinton’, but does America have a realistic alternative but to accommodate a rising China?  The world has changed since the Clinton era:  this no longer is just a matter of tussling over the terms of trade.

    Xi Jinping lies at the apex of the Chinese political system. His influence now permeates at every level. He is the most powerful leader since Chairman Mao.

    Kevin Rudd (former PM of Australia and longtime student of China) notes, “none of this is for the faint-hearted … Xi has grown up in Chinese party politics as conducted at the highest levels. Through his father, Xi Zhongxun … he has been through a “masterclass” of not only how to survive it, but also on how to prevail within it. For these reasons, he has proven himself to be the most formidable politician of his age. He has succeeded in pre-empting, outflanking, outmanoeuvring, and then removing each of his political adversaries. The polite term for this is power consolidation. In that, he has certainly succeeded”. 

    And here is the rub: the world which Xi envisions is wholly incompatible with Washington’s priorities. Xi is not only more powerful than any predecessor other than Mao, he knows it, and intends to make his mark on world history. One that equates, or even surpasses, that of Mao.

    Lee Kuan Yew, who before his death in 2015, was the world’s premier China-watcher, had a pointed answer about China’s stunning trajectory over the past 40 years:

    “The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world must find a new balance. It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.” 

    The year 2021, marks the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, and Xi clearly intends that in 2021 China will showcase the achievements of its first centenary goals.  By then, China expects to be the most powerful economy in the world (it is already there – on a purchasing power parity basis), and an emerging world class power – both in political and military terms. According to Richard Haas, the President of the US Council for Foreign Relations, “[China’s] long-term ambition is to dismantle the U.S. alliance system in Asia, replacing it with a more benign (from Beijing’s perspective) regional security order in which it enjoys pride of place, and ideally a sphere of influence commensurate with its power”. (If anything, Haas may be understating things).

    To achieve the first of the two centenary goals (the second concludes in 2049), China has one major economic, one economic/political strand, and one political/military strand of policy to the achievement of its goals.

    Made in China 2025 is a broad industrial policy that is receiving massive state R & D funding ($232 billion in 2016), including an explicit potential dual-use integration into military innovation. Its main aim, besides improving productivity, is to make China the world’s ‘tech leader’, and for China to become 70% self-sufficient in key materials and components. This may be well-known in theory, but perhaps the move towards self-sufficiency by both China and Russia suggests something more stark. These states are moving away from the classic liberal trade model to an economic model based on autonomy, and a state-led economy (such as advocated by economists like Friedrich List, before becoming eclipsed by the prevalence of Adam Smith-ian thinking).

    The second prong to policy is the famous ‘Belt and Road’ initiative linking China to Europe. The economic element however, is often deprecated in the West as ‘mere infrastructure’ – albeit on a grand scale. Its conception, rather, represents a direct swipe at the western, hyper-financialised economic model.  In a famous critical remark directed at China’s heavy reliance on western-style, debt-led growth – an anonymous author (thought to be Xi or close colleague), noted (sarcastically) the notion that big trees could be grown ‘in the air’.  Which is to say: that trees need to have roots, and to grow in the ground. Instead of the ‘virtual’, financialised ‘activity’ of the West, real economic activity stems from the real economy, with roots planted in the earth.  The ‘Belt and Road’ is just this: intended as a major catalyst to real economics.

    Its political aspect, of course, is evident: It will create an immense (Remimbi) trading and influence block, and being land-based, will shift strategic power away from the western domination over sea-power to land routes over which western conventional military power is limited – just as, in the same way, it will transfer financial power away from the reserve dollar system, to the Remimbi and other currencies.

    The other aspect, which has received much less notice, is how Xi has been able to mesh his objectives with those of Russia. Initially cautious towards the ‘Belt and Road’ project when Xi launched it in 2013, the Kremlin, warmed to the notion in the wake of the western coup against its interests in Ukraine, and with America’s joint project with Saudi Arabia to crash the price of oil (Saudi wanted to put pressure on Russia to abandon Assad, and the US to weaken President Putin, by weakening the rouble and government finances). 

    Thus, by 2015, President Putin had pledged a linkup between Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union and China’s Silk Road Economic Belt, and two years later, Putin was the main guest of honor at the ‘One Belt, One Road’ summit, held in Beijing.

    What is interesting is how Russia has integrated Xi’s vision into its own ‘Greater Eurasia’ thinking, conceived as the core antithesis to an American-led, financialised, world order. The Kremlin, of course, well understands that in the trade and finance realm, Russia’s position in Eurasia is much weaker than that of China. (China’s economy being eight to ten times the size of that of Russia).

    Russia’s crucial strengths traditionally lie in the political-military and diplomatic domains. Hence, leaving economic initiatives to China, Moscow strives for the role of the chief architect of a Eurasian political and security architecture, a concert of major Asian powers, and energy producers.

    President Putin has, in a sense, found the Russian symmetry and complementarity to Xi’s ‘road and corridor’ politics (an asymmetrical Russian balance, if you like, to Xi’s raw economic strength) in its ‘One Map; Three Regions’ politics. Bruno Maçães has written:

    In October 2017, Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin took the unusual step of presenting a geopolitical report on the “ideals of Eurasian integration” to an audience in Verona, Italy. One of the maps projected on the screen during the presentation showed the supercontinent—what Russian circles call “Greater Eurasia”—as divided between three main regions. For Sechin, the crucial division is not between Europe and Asia, but between regions of energy consumption and regions of energy production. The former are organized on the western and eastern edges of the supercontinent: Europe, including Turkey, and the Asia Pacific, including India.

    Between them we find three regions of energy production: Russia and the Arctic, the Caspian, and the Middle East. Interestingly, the map does not break these three regions apart, preferring to draw a delimitation line around all three. They are contiguous, thus forming a single bloc, at least from a purely geographic perspective.

    The map, Maçães notes, “illustrates an important point about Russia’s new self-image. From the point of view of energy geopolitics, Europe and the Asia Pacific are perfectly equivalent, providing alternative sources of demand for energy resources … And, as you consider the three areas [which the map] delimits, it becomes apparent that two of them are already led and organized by a leading actor: Germany in the case of Europe; and China for the Asia Pacific”.

    It is from this perspective, that Russia’s renewed interest and intervention in the Middle East must be understood. By consolidating all three energy-producing regions under its leadership, Russia can be a true equal to China in shaping the new Eurasian system. Its interests lie now more decisively in organizing a common political will for the core energy production region, than in recovering ‘old yearnings’ about being a part of Europe.

    And ‘political will’ is Xi’s project too: Whereas once Mao’s Cultural Revolution tried to wipe out China’s ancient past and replace it with communism’s “new socialist man”, Xi has increasingly portrayed the party as the inheritor and successor to a 5,000-year-old Chinese empire brought low only by the marauding West, writes Graham Allison, author of Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?  Thus the Party has evoked past humiliations at the hands of Japan and the West “to create a sense of unity that had been fracturing, and to define a Chinese identity fundamentally at odds with American modernity”.

    Finally, Xi has pledged to make China strong again. He believes that a military that is “able to fight and win wars” is essential to realizing every other component of China’s “rejuvenation”.  America has more military ‘structure’ than China, but Moscow has technologically better weapons – but China too is catching up in this respect with the West fast. The direct strategic military co-operation between China and Russia (China stood behind Russia militarily as well as politically) was evident in the recent US and UK infowar thrust – Skripal and chemical weapons in Syria – against Russia.  It acts as a deterrent against US military action undertaken against either state.

    In Washington there are – in contrast to Beijing – multiple voices attempting to define how America should interact with China.  Trump has been the loudest, but ideologues are there too, calling for a fundamental re-set of the terms of trade, and of intellectual property rights. But the US military also are adamant that the US must remain the military hegemon in the Asia-Pacific region and that China cannot be allowed to push America out.  There is, though, rare unity in Washington – amongst ‘think-tankers’ and between the two main political parties – on one point, and one point alone: that China constitutes the ‘Number One’ threat to the American-led ‘rules-based’ global order … and should be cut down to size.

    But what – amongst China’s objectives outlined above – is it that that the US thinks it can somehow ‘roll back’ and more substantially cut China ‘down to size’ – without going to war? 

    Realistically, Xi may grant Trump enough minor concessions (i.e. on ownership and intellectual property issues) to enable Trump to claim a ‘win’ (i.e. to do ‘a Clinton’ again), and buy a few years of chilly economic peace, whilst the US continues to rack up trade and budget deficits. But ultimately, America will have to decide to accommodate to reality, or risk recession at best, or war at worst.

    It will be fraught both economically and geo-politically, especially since those who claim to know Xi, seem to be convinced that aside from wanting to return China to being the ‘biggest player in the history of the world’, that Xi also aspires to the one who, finally, reunites China: including not just Xinjiang and Tibet on the mainland, but also Hong Kong and Taiwan. Can America culturally absorb the thought of ‘democratic’ Taiwan being militarily unified into China? Could it trade that for a North Korean solution?  It seems improbable.

  • End Of "Major Combat": US Deactivates Anti-ISIS HQ In Iraq

    In a significant milestone, the headquarters responsible for coordinating US-led military operations in Iraq closed on Monday, “signifying the end of major combat operations against ISIS [the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria],” the Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command (CJFLCC) said in a statement.

    According to the statement, the U.S.-led coalition “was deactivated today [Monday] at a ceremony in Baghdad” that included a casing of the colors. The command’s authorities have been transferred to the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve’s (CJTF-OIR) headquarters based in Kuwait that oversees the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Eastern Mediterranean region.

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    “Casing the CJFLCC colors is a symbolic gesture, honoring the perseverance and sacrifice of our coalition partners. Thanks to our partnered success, we are able to continue our support to the government of Iraq under the unified command of CJTF-OIR,” Army Maj. Gen. Walter Piatt, the former commander of CJFLCC, said in the statement.

    Moving the CJFLCC’S responsibilities to CJTF-OIR’s headquarters in Kuwait is “acknowledging the changing composition and responsibilities of the coalition,” the statement read.

    In other words, it shows the coalition’s commitment to consolidate command structure as its position “evolves from supporting and enabling combat operations to the training and development of self-sufficient Iraqi security-related capabilities,” the statement added.

    Iraqi Security Force spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Rasool Abdullah, said CJFLCC had been an extraordinary part of Iraq’s recent success to eradicate ISIS from the country.

    “The commitment and professionalism of all the men and women from all the coalition nations has been of the highest order, and Iraq is immensely grateful for their sacrifice and dedication in this task,” he said. “We look forward to taking the partnership forward with the Combined Joint Task Force, and a friendship that will endure for years to come.”

    The US invaded Iraq in 2003, alleging that Saddam Hussein possessed an illegal stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Years later, no such weapons were ever discovered. The U.S.-led coalition decimated the country’s military but soon realized that Iraq was a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. The Pentagon began withdrawing troops in the second half of 2011, just as the next war was flaring up in Syria. While US troops were exiting Iraq, ISIS claimed control of large territories inside the country by 2014, including the major city of Mosul in the northern region.

    After more than three years of combat operations, Iraq announced in December that the fight against ISIS was officially over after Iraqi Armed Forces liberated most of the country. Iraqi and CJFLCC officials warned, however, that many obstacles could remain for an extended period despite the military victory.

    While March marked the 15th anniversary of the US war in Iraq, the likelihood of US troops exiting the Middle East as a whole is nil. The closing of the CJFLCC only consolidates responsibilities to a centralized command in Kuwait, dubbed CJTF-OIR. As America’s military seems to be pivoting towards the next conflict, recent developments surrounding Israel and Iran could undoubtedly lead to the next flashpoint.

  • James Comey's Forgotten Rescue Of Bush-Era Torture

    Authored by James Bovard via The Mises Institute,

    “Here I stand, I can do no other,” James Comey told President George W. Bush in 2004 when Bush pressured Comey – who was then Deputy Attorney General – to approve an unlawful antiterrorist policy.

     Comey, who was FBI chief from 2013 to 2017, was quoting a line reputedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521, when he told Holy Roman Emperor Charles V that he would not recant his sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church. Comey’s quotation of himself quoting the father of the Reformation is par for the self-reverence of his new memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

    MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently declared, “James Comey made his bones by standing up against torture. He was a made man before Trump came along.” Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, in a column declaring that Americans should be “deeply grateful” to lawyers like Comey, declared, “The Bush administration wanted to claim that its ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were lawful. Comey believed they were not… So Comey pushed back as much as he could.”

    Martin Luther risked death to fight against what he considered the heresies of his time. Comey, a top Bush administration policymaker, found a safer way to oppose the worldwide secret U.S. torture regime widely considered a heresy against American values. Comey approved brutal practices and then wrote some memos and emails fretting about the optics. 

    Comey became Deputy Attorney General in late 2003 and “had oversight of the legal justification used to authorize” key Bush programs in the war on terror. At that time, the Bush White House was pushing the Justice Department to again sign off on an array of extreme practices that had begun shortly after the 9/11 attacks. A 2002 Justice Department memo had leaked out that declared that the president was entitled to ignore federal law in approving extreme interrogation techniques. Photos had also leaked from Abu Ghraib prison showing the stacking of naked prisoners with bags over their heads, mock electrocution via a wire connected to a man’s penis, guard dogs on the verge of ripping into naked men, and grinning U.S. male and female soldiers celebrating the bloody degradation. A confidential CIA Inspector General report had just warned that post-9/11 CIA interrogation methods may violate the international Convention Against Torture.

    Rather than ending the abuses, Comey repudiated the memo. Speaking to the media in a not-for-attribution session on June 22, 2004, Comey declared that the 2002 memo was “overbroad,” “abstract academic theory,” and “legally unnecessary.” Comey helped oversee crafting a new memo with different legal footing to justify the same interrogation methods.

    Comey twice gave explicit approval for waterboarding, which sought to break detainees with near-drowning.

    This practice had been recognized as a war crime by the U.S. government since the Spanish American War.

    Comey wrote in his memoir that he was losing sleep over concern about Bush administration torture polices. But losing sleep was not an option for detainees because Comey approved sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique. Detainees could be forcibly kept awake for up to 180 hours until they confessed their sins. How did this work? At Abu Ghraib, the notorious Iraqi prison, one FBI agent reported seeing a detainee “handcuffed to a railing with a nylon sack on his head and a shower curtain draped around him, being slapped by a soldier to keep him awake.” 

    Comey also approved “wall slamming” – which, as law professor David Cole wrote, meant that detainees could be thrown against a wall up to 30 times. Comey also signed off on the CIA using “interrogation” methods such as facial slaps, locking detainees in small boxes for 18 hours, and forced nudity. When the secret Comey memo approving those methods finally became public in 2009, many Americans were aghast – and relieved that the Obama administration had repudiated Bush policies.

    When it came to opposing torture, Comey’s version of “Here I stand” had more loopholes than a reverse mortgage contract. Though Comey in 2005 approved each of 13 controversial extreme interrogation methods, he objected to combining multiple methods on one detainee. It was as if Martin Luther grudgingly approved of the Catholic Church selling indulgences to individually expunge sins for adultery, robbery, lying, and gluttony but vehemently objected if all the sins were expunged in one lump sum payment.

    In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a massive report, Americans learned grisly details of the CIA torture regime that Comey helped legally sanctify – including death via hypothermia, rape-like rectal feeding of detainees, compelling detainees to stand long periods on broken legs, and dozens of cases of innocent people pointlessly brutalized. Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of prisoners. The only CIA official to go to prison for the torture scandal was courageous whistleblower John Kiriakou.

    If Comey had resigned in 2004 or 2005 to protest the torture techniques he now claims to abhor, he would deserve some of the praise he is now receiving. Instead, he remained in the Bush administration but wrote an email summarizing his objections, declaring that “it was my job to protect the department and the A.G. [Attorney General] and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong.” A 2009 New York Times analysis noted that Comey and two colleagues “have largely escaped criticism [for approving torture] because they raised questions about interrogation and the law.” In Washington, writing emails is “close enough for government work” to convey sainthood.

    When Comey finally exited the Justice Department in August 2005 to become a lavishly-paid senior vice president for Lockheed Martin, he proclaimed in a farewell speech that protecting the Justice Department’s “reservoir” of “trust and credibility” requires “vigilance” and “an unerring commitment to truth.” But Comey perpetuated policies that shattered the moral credibility of both the Justice Department and the U.S. government.

    Comey failed to heed another Martin Luther admonition: “You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.”

  • McCain Unloads On "Reality Show" Trump In New Book

    Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) writes in his new book that his battle with brain cancer and his departure from Congress has liberated him, and he can now speak his mind.

    “This is my last term,” writes the 81-year-old Senator in his upcoming book The Restless Wave, co-authored by former adviser Mark Salter. Portions of the book were posted Monday by Apple News. 

    “If I hadn’t admitted that to myself before this summer, a stage 4 cancer diagnosis acts as ungentle persuasion,” McCain continues. “I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry. I don’t think I’m free to disregard my constituents’ wishes, far from it. I don’t feel excused from keeping pledges I made. Nor do I wish to harm my party’s prospects. But I do feel a pressing responsibility to give Americans my best judgment.”

    McCain goes on to excoriate Trump – writing that the President “has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones,” and that to Trump “The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values.” 

    The AZ Senator notes that despite the “decline in civility and cooperation, and increased obstructionism” that there remain lawmakers and officials in the federal government “committed to meeting the challenges of the hour.”

    “They might not be the most colorful politicians in town, but they’re usually the ones who get the most done,” McCain writes.

    “Before I leave I’d like to see our politics begin to return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history from the history of other nations. I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different,” McCain writes – pushing Americans to seek presidential candidates whose “humility and honesty commend them for the job.” 

    In McCain’s ideal world, Hillary Clinton would have won the 2016 election and all of those Syrian Al-Qaeda affiliated “rebels” he loves so much (and flew out to meet in a clandestine face-to-face weeks after Trump took office) would have regime changed Assad months ago.

    Perhaps despite all the trash talking in McCain’s book, Trump will gift the Arizona Senator with the most explosive item on his bucket list based on that totally not fabricated, totally verified evidence of Iran’s nuclear program that Germany’s foreign minister wants independently inspected. 

  • Scientists: Earth's Magnetic Field Is Acting "Weird", We Could Experience A "Shudder"

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    Scientists are saying that the Earth’s magnetic field is acting strangely, and at some point, we could all experience a shudder.  Although we are being told we won’t experience a magnetic pole reversal in the near future, something incredibly strange is going on.

    The Earth is showing signs that the poles will flip, yet scientists are denying it will happen soon.

    The Earth has a fierce molten core that generates a magnetic field capable of defending our planet against devastating solar winds.  This magnetic field is vital to life on Earth and has weakened by 15 percent over the last 200 years. This protective field acts as a shield against harmful solar radiation and extends thousands of miles into space and its magnetism affects everything from global communication to power grids.

    Historically, Earth’s North and South magnetic poles have flipped every 200,000 or 300,000 years. However, the last flip was about 780,000 years ago, meaning our planet is well overdue.  The latest satellite data, from the European Space Agency’s Swarm trio which monitors the Earth’s magnetic field, suggest a pole flip may be imminent.  The satellites allow researchers to study changes building at the Earth’s core, where the magnetic field is generated. Their observations suggest molten iron and nickel are draining the energy out of the Earth’s core near where the magnetic field is generated. While scientists aren’t sure why exactly this happens, they describe it as a “restless activity” that suggests the magnetic field is preparing to flip. –SHTFPlan

    An international team of scientific experts compared the current state of Earth’s magnetic field with conditions during the Laschamp event (about 41,400 years ago) and the Mono Lake event (about 34,000 years ago). On both those previous occasions, the Earth’s magnetic field “recovered” without a flip, and the scientists think the same will happen now.

    “There has been speculation that we are about to experience a magnetic polar reversal or excursion,” says one of the team, Richard Holme from the University of Liverpool in the UK. 

    “However, by studying the two most recent excursion events, we show that neither bear resemblance to current changes in the geomagnetic field and therefore it is probably unlikely that such an event is about to happen. Our research suggests instead that the current weakened field will recover without such an extreme event, and therefore is unlikely to reverse.”

    In a new report,  Daniel Baker, who is the director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder, claims if a magnetic pole reversal happens, it is likely to render some areas of the planet “uninhabitable” by knocking out power grids. Baker’s comments were made in an in-depth Undark report written by Alanna Mitchell, who has a new book about the topic titled “The Spinning Magnet: The Electromagnetic Force that Created the Modern World and Could Destroy It.”

    Human beings would survive a pole reversal, but it could cause serious problems with satellite, communications, and power systems. There’s also the possibility it might interfere with the planet’s temperature and climate, but scientists just aren’t sure at the moment what the effects will be because the last full flip was 780,000 years ago, after all.  But trust them when they say we won’t experience the grid failures of a pole reversal any time soon…

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