Today’s News 31st July 2018

• Spain's "Fragile Tolerance" At Risk As Socialist PM Sees "Obligation To Help" Migrants

  With the migrant crisis continuing to peak for Europe’s Mediterranean nations, and as it has lately become politically disastrous for others like Germany, resulting in a half-baked quick fix offered by the European Union to pay out 6,000 euros ($7,000) for each migrant a country takes in, statements coming Spain’s political leaders suggest its reputed “tolerance” as a country open to migrants is increasingly fragile with resources and infrastructure stretched to the limit. 

  What The Guardian observed earlier this summer now seems to be playing out: though there are happy scenes when migrants finally disembark on Spanish soil, such scenes inevitably “have been followed by the relentless task of coping with new arrivals.”

  

  “Right now we’re seeing double the numbers arriving compared to the same period last year and last year the number was double that of the previous year,” David Ortiz, the Red Cross migrant and refugee department head in the southern coastal port city of Málaga, told Politico. “Can we manage the arrival of 300 people? Yes. But if those 300 people arrive on the same day, it gets difficult,” he added. 

  While others like Italy and Malta have recently turned away large boats full of hundreds, sparking a feud with EU administration and other countries over closing their ports, Spain’s newly in office Socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has signaled an open-door “welcoming” policy of being ready to accept the EU’s call to accept migrants; however a recent surge in seaborne entries could test Spain’s “fragile tolerance” past breaking point.  

  “It is our obligation to help avoid a humanitarian disaster by offering a safe harbor to these people,” Sánchez said after controversially agreeing to accept the Aquarius in June, an emergency rescue vessel carrying over 600 migrants who had been picked up off the Libyan coast, but which had been rejected by both Italy and Malta, sparking a bitter stand-off within the EU.

  As other Mediterranean countries close their ports to unauthorized migrant traffic, western Mediterranean routes have increased, making Spain top the chart in terms of migrant and refugee destination numbers.

  According to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration as of mid-July about 18,600 migrants had reached Spain by sea from Morocco since the beginning of 2018, which is double the number for the same period in 2017.

  

  Like the EU in its recent roll out of the plan to pay governments for accepting migrants while also funding emergency “transit points” from an EU common budget, it appears Spain is getting ready to merely throw a lot of money at the problem, as Reuters reports Monday: 

  Spain aims to invest 30 million euros ($35.1 million) in an emergency plan to manage its new status as the main destination for seaborne migration from Africa, the government said.

  The funds, Reuters explains based on a statement from the Prime Minister’s office, “will go toward covering the initial costs of managing arrivals on the beaches, from staff to hand out blankets and food to managing the process of identification and determining whether people qualify for asylum.”

  A new report in Politico on migrant patterns into Spain notes that so far there’s been “relatively little political fallout,” but that “the country’s reputation for moderation on the issue of immigration could soon be tested.” For example, Francisco Camas García, head of the Spanish polling firm Metroscopia, said based on the pollster’s observations, “Spanish society is, overall, a tolerant one, but it’s a fragile tolerance.”

  The Politico report observes that Spain has managed to escape the domestic turmoil facing other European nations with the recent years’ massive uptick in unauthorized or illegal immigration.

  Politico explains:

  Even when the economy hit a slump, between 2008 and 2012, immigration rarely featured on the political agenda. While other EU countries have seen the arrival of anti-immigrant parties, the main new political force in Spain most frequently described as “populist” is the leftist Podemos, which advocates a liberal policy on immigration.

  But while [sociologist Kiko] Llaneras doesn’t forecast a sudden backlash, he does believe that there is a chance the political mood could shift.

  “If you look closely at the data, there is a certain movement regarding people’s attitudes to immigration,” he said. “But it’s something which is latent and no [main] party has yet made an issue of it.”

  Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the only significant early push-back against Sanchez’s liberalizing immigration policy is the conservative People’s Party (PP), which has warned “against creating a ‘pull factor’ for migrants seeking a better life in Europe.”

  

  There’s also the far-right Vox Party, founded only in 2013 and with no seats and parliament, whose general secretary Javier Ortega recently lashed out, saying “We can’t send out the message: ‘All of Africa, all of Asia, all of Latin America, all of the planet where there are economic problems or security problems, or where there’s a war or a totalitarian regime — come to Spain, we’ll take you in.’”

  Various reports have have of late noticed a trend of generally greater acceptance of certain types of migration, notably for example, immigrants from Latin American countries integrate with greater ease. But Moroccans and other North Africans tend not to, as Politico observes, citing Vox Party’s Ortega, “With Moroccans currently representing the biggest single nationality arriving in Spain — 40,000 came last year, according to the National Statistics Institute — Ortega is predicting (some would say hoping for) integration problems.”

  Sanchez’s office responded to the conservative criticism in its statement: “Rather than a pull factor, we could talk about a lack of foresight in the last years of the previous government, which did nothing about increasing arrivals, and obliged this government to take urgent steps,” according to Politico.

  The shift toward erecting a migrant transit response infrastructure which could fuel even more seaborne migration, combined with migration routes recently going westward away from Greece and Italy, means Spain is already finding itself as the next epicenter of Europe’s migration crisis. 

  * * *

  And meanwhile, near the southern Spanish town of Zahora just last Saturday…

  

• NATO Is A Goldmine For US Weapons' Industries

  Authored by Brian Cloughley via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Countries of the NATO military alliance have been ordered by President Trump to increase their spending on weapons, and the reasons for his insistence they do so are becoming clearer.

  

  It’s got nothing to do with any defence rationale, because, after all, the Secretary General of the US-NATO military alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that “we don’t see any imminent threat against any NATO ally” and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute recorded in its 2018 World Report that “at $66.3 billion, Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than in 2016.”

  Even Radio Free Europe, the US government’s anti-Russia broadcaster, records that Russia has reduced its defence spending.

  

  There is demonstrably no threat whatever to any NATO country by Russia, but this is considered irrelevant in the context of US arms’ sales, which are flourishing and being encouraged to increase and multiply.

  On July 12, the second and final day of the recent US-NATO meeting, Reuters reported Trump as saying that “the United States makes by far the best military equipment in the world: the best jets, the best missiles, the best guns, the best everything.”  He went on “to list the top US arms makers, Lockheed Martin Corp, Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp by name.”

  On July 11 the Nasdaq Stock Exchange listed the stock price of Lockheed Martin at $305.68.  The day after Trump’s speech, it increased to $318.37.

  On July 11 the Nasdaq Stock Exchange listed the stock price of Boeing at $340.50.  The day after Trump’s speech, it increased to $350.79.

  On July 11 the New York Stock Exchange listed the stock price of Northrop Grumman (it doesn’t appear on Nasdaq) at $311.71.  The day after Trump’s speech, it increased to $321.73.

  General Dynamics, another major US weapons producer, might not be too pleased, however, because its stock price rose only slightly, from $191.51 to $192.74.  Nor might Raytheon, the maker of the Patriot missile system which Washington is selling all over the world, because its stock went up by a modest five dollars, from $194.03 to $199.75.  Perhaps they will be named by Trump the next time he makes a speech telling his country’s bemused allies to buy US weapons.

  Trump also declared that “We have many wealthy countries with us today [July 12 at the NATO Conference] but we have some that aren’t so wealthy and they did ask me if they could buy the military equipment, and could I help them out, and we will help them out a little bit,” which made it clear that poorer countries that want to buy American weapons will probably not have to put cash down for their purchases. So it wasn’t altogether surprising that the stock prices of the three arms manufacturers named by Trump all rose by over ten dollars. 

  To further boost this bonanza, the State Department did its best to make US arms sales even easier by enabling weapons manufacturers to avoid the well-constructed checks and balances that had been in place to ensure that at least a few legal, moral and economic constraints would be observed when various disreputable regimes queued up to buy American weapons.

  But these regulations no longer apply, because on July 13 the State Department announced new measures to “fast-track government approval of proposals from defense and aerospace companies” which action was warmly welcomed by the President of the US Chamber of Commerce Defence and Aerospace Export Council, Keith Webster, who is “looking forward to continued collaboration with the White House on initiatives that further expand international opportunities for the defense and aerospace industries.” 

  There was yet more boosting by Lt-General Charles Hooper, Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, who declared at the Farnborough International Air Show on July 18 that “Defense exports are good for our national security, they’re good for our foreign policy. And they’re good for our economic security.”  He then proposed that his agency cut the transportation fee charged to foreign military sales clients, which would be a major stimulant for sales of “the best jets, the best missiles, the best guns” so valued by Mr Trump. Obviously a devoted follower of his President, the General followed the Trump line with dedication by reminding the media that “as the administration and our leadership has said, economic security is national security.”  This man just might go places in Trump World.

  But he won’t go as far as the arms manufacturers, whose future growth and profits are assured under Trump and the Washington Deep State, which is defined as “military, intelligence and government officials who try to secretly manipulate government policy.”  US weapons producers have realised, as said so presciently two thousand years ago by the Roman statesman, Cicero, that “the sinews of war are infinite money,” and their contentment will continue to grow in synchrony with their financial dividends.

  Voice of America joined the chorus of reportage on July 12 and observed that “with Thursday’s renewed pledge by NATO countries to meet defense spending goals, some of the biggest beneficiaries could be US weapons manufacturers, which annually already export billions of dollars worth of arms across the globe.”

  Within European NATO, the biggest spenders on US arms, thus far, are Poland, Romania, Britain and Greece, and the amounts involved are colossal.  Poland, whose economy is booming, has signed an agreement to buy Patriot missile systems for $4.75 billion, adding to the purchase of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles for $200 million, Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles, costing $250 million, and High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems for the same amount. Delivery of its 48 F-16 multi-role strike aircraft ($4.7 billion) began in 2006, and Warsaw has proved a loyal customer ever since.  Who knows what exotic new piece of US hardware will be ordered as a result of Mr Trump’s encouragement? 

  Romania, a country with only 750 kilometres of motorway (tiny Belgium has 1,700 km), has been seeking World Bank assistance for its road projects but is unlikely to benefit because it is so gravely corrupt. This has not stopped it purchasing US artillery rocket systems for $1.25 billion and Patriot missiles for a colossal $3.9 billion, following-on from construction in May 2016 of a US Aegis missile station, at Washington’s expense.  It forms part of the US-NATO encirclement of Russia, and its missiles are to be operational this year. 

  The message for European NATO is that the US is pulling out all stops to sell weapons, and that although, for example, “about 84% of the UK’s total arms imports come from the United States”, there is room for improvement.  Slovakia is buying $150 millions’ worth of helicopters and paying a satisfying $2.91 billion for F-16 fighters, but other NATO countries appear to have been less disposed to purchase more of “the best jets, the best missiles, the best guns” that Mr Trump has on offer.

  The mine of NATO gold is there for exploitation, and following Trump’s enthusiastic encouragement of his arms’ manufacturers it seems that extraction will be effective.

  

  The US Military-Industrial Complex stands to gain handsomely from its President’s campaign to boost the quantities of weapons in the world.

  

• BRICTS: Turkey Is Getting Off The US Reservation

  Authored by Tom Luongo,

  This year’s BRICS Summit was a big show.  No question.  The main event was provided by Turkish President cum Dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

  Erdogan wants to a a “T” to the acronym, making them the BRICTS.

  

  Erdogan also made it very clear Turkey’s shift away from the West will proceed faster if the bullying and marginalization continue.  For months now, Turkey has struggled with a crashing Lira and sovereign bond market.

  The poster child for the unfolding sovereign debt crisis.

  The Trump Administration knows that Turkey is slipping from its grasp.  Do you ever wonder why certain countries’ currencies get trashed when others with worse balance sheets or balance of trade don’t?

  You should.  Because asking that simple question will lead you to asking “Why X?  Why Now?”

  And in Turkey’s case it is for many reasons:

  1. Turkey was key in assisting Iran resist pre-JCPOA sanctions by laundering Iranian oil sales in physical gold through Turkish banks.

  2. Turkey is highly dependent on foreign energy imports and is one of Iran’s largest customers.

  3. To alleviate this foreign-energy dependence Turkey, through Russia, are building nuclear power plants and the Turkish Stream pipeline.

     • Turkish Stream will provide Russian Gas from Gazprom at an effective discount since most of its capacity is targeted for European destinations and Turkey will likely get transit fees for that gas offsetting some of the costs of the gas they buy from Gazprom.

  4. Turkey refuses to comply with Trump’s edict to not buy Iranian oil in November.

  5. Turkey is buying S-400 missile defense systems from Russia

  6. The U.S. blocked the sale of F-35s to Turkey as a retaliatory measure.  Given the F-35’s cost/benefit ratio, I’d say Turkey wins on that front as well.

  7. Turkey’s occupation of Northern Syria was a blocking move to keep the U.S. from moving West to Afrin and uniting the Kurdish cantons.

  I could go on, you get the point.

  BRICTS of Trade

  In the bigger picture, Turkey is still most important because of its geography.  It’s really the only reason anyone puts up with Erdogan’s shiftiness in the first place.

  But, Erdogan’s pushing for admittance into the BRICS is about far more than symbolism.  it’s about access to development capital through their parallel institutions to the ones controlled by the U.S. — The IMF, The World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Ex-Im banks, etc.

  To assist Turkey in its fight to stand firm on U.S. hybrid war tactics, accession into the BRICS gives them access to more sources of Chinese capital.  China and Russia were, to no one’s surprise, receptive to the idea.

  As I pointed out in an earlier post, China and Russia account for nearly 20% of Turkish imports, with Iran and India making up another 6.4%, larger than the U.S.’s contribution.

  

  Turkish Imports by Country

  Increasing Turkey’s exports to the other BRICS countries should be the priority.  But, since net capital inflow into Turkey is and will remain positive, thanks to a much weaker Lira, the slow removal of dollar dependency can commence, thanks to its currency swap arrangements with Russia and China.

  Also, don’t discount the large trade turnover between Turkey and Germany, another source of foreign currency and capital.

  Watch the Currency

  The Bank of Turkey’s response to the lira crisis has been the right one, to buy up dollar-denominated corporate paper and remove liquidity bottlenecks from the banking system.  Those liabilities can then be retired over time while freeing the companies to realign their businesses away from the U.S. dollar.

  This is Turkey’s Achilles’ heel, it’s large dollar-based corporates liabilities.  And those liabilities could explode if Trump escalates the financial and diplomatic war against Turkey.

  That’s what the market has been responding to.

  Since Turkey has currency swap agreements in place with China any excess buildup of local currency can be mitigated.  The next steps here would be for Turkey to sign one with Russia and/or India.

  I’m not saying things won’t be difficult for Turkey.  They are now.

  I’m saying there’s a path out of this problem, just like there was for Russia in late 2014/15.  And in some ways just like there is for China’s huge corporate debt problem.

  

  Will the Lira Break Through this Resistance?

  The headlines keep pushing for a further collapse of the Lira and its weakening may not be over.  But, Triple Tops like we see here are usually reversal signals, because it says that the sellers (in this case) are lacking conviction to overwhelm the mix of market intervention by the central bank and speculative bulls.

  The point of Trump’s full-court pressure campaign is to keep everyone, especially China, fighting more little fires than it can safely put out.  That’s the key to understanding his Art of the Deal foreign policy.

  The problem with this approach is that if you don’t get capitulation, you get nothing in the end.  Because leverage is essentially a bluff.  Turkey has friends, just like Iran does and just like Russia did.

  *  *  *

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• US Treasuries, JGBs Rally As Bank Of Japan Shifts To "More Flexible" Bond-Buying Plan

  After a few years of relative apathy, today’s Bank of Japan statement is greeted with considerable anticipation as it may well have some significant impacts on global markets, judging by the last two weeks’ action after hints at BoJ policy shifts.

  Background:

  Japan’s economy is shrinking once again…

  

  Industrial Production is plunging…

  

  As a reminder, The BoJ cut its inflation forecast at the last meeting…

  

  But the most-watched item in today’s statement will be with regard Yield Curve Control (YCC) as recent source articles have suggested that the BoJ will discuss potential policy changes to its YCC framework on the basis of sustainability, not tightening, of monetary policy which could lead to an adjustment of the yield curve target – where the 10Y JGB trades – to allow a long-term natural rise. This is said to be the cause due to the central bank’s admission that it may take even longer to hit the 2% price target, and therefore would need to ensure its policy measures can be sustained, while a policy tweak could also help alleviate some of the side-effects from its prolonged ultra-loose policy which has squeezed banks’ profits.

  

  And yet, few expect that the BOJ will make an explicit YCC determination today, as an increase in the JGB yield target appears unlikely at a time when it is expected to revise downward its inflation forecast; instead in consideration of the adverse side effects of its policy, the BoJ will likely declare at the end of its statement that, based on its analysis in its quarterly Outlook Report, that it will maintain its easing policy for an extended period but will conduct financial market operations and asset purchasing operations to address the mounting cumulative side effects.

  And in case there is a negative reaction to this apparent ‘tightening’, one likely easing measure to deal with such side effects will include an overhaul of its JPY6 billion ETF purchasing operations, a shift from Nikkei 225-linked ETF to Topix-linked ETF, which would likely spur investors to follow suit in rebalancing their portfolios should this materialize.

  And finally, while ‘officially’ The Bank of Japan has not shifted its bond-buying program’s scope, in practice it has been tapering dramatically… forced by liquidity constraints in the market.

  

  And it is this forced tapering that confirms the lack of sustainability of its bond-buying program that The BoJ has expressed concern about.

  “Market players have come to realize that the bond-purchase operations aren’t directly linked to monetary policy,” said Mari Iwashita, chief market economist at Daiwa Securities Co. in Tokyo. “Their action is dependent on conditions and does not indicate anything special in store.”

  

  As a reminder, introduction of yield-curve control: 1:18pm (0018ET) on Sept. 21, 2016,  meaning today’s announcement is the latest since then.

  

  h/t @apacvsindopac

  Having kept investors waiting for the longest time since Sept 2016’s yield curve control announcement, The Bank of Japan – desperate to avoid a repeat of 2013’s Fed-driven taper-tantrum – kept policy the same aside from a nuanced shift in language around the bond operations.

  • BOJ Maintains Policy Balance Rate at -0.100%

  • BOJ Maintains 10-Year JGB Yield Target at About 0.000%

  But here’s the twist:

  • BOJ to Allow More Flexibility in Bond Operations – allowing upward and downward movement in yields

  • BOJ to Act Promptly in Case of Rapid Increase in Yield

  And as we suspected:

  • BOJ Shifts ETF Allocation Further to Topix From Nikkei

  • BOJ: ETF Puchases Amount May Change on Market Conditions

  Additionally, BoJ cut its inflation outlook for FY18, 19, and 20.

  The BOJ repeats that it remains committed to QQE with YCC (ensuring a dovish perspective).

  Finally BoJ confirmed it intends to keep very low rates for “extended period of time.”

  And the reaction in USDJPY and JGBs was very clear… (USDJPY has been glued to 111 the figure for the last 48 hours or so). Bonds are bid (unwinding the yield spike from last week’s rumors, but Yen is weaker)…

  

  And Treasuries are bid too on modest relief that The BoJ did not go full taper tantrum…

  

  Kuroda triued to use powerful language but the BOJ statement itself underscores that this isn’t a policy change – “Strengthening the Framework for Continuous Powerful Monetary Easing.”

  The bottom line is this allows The BoJ to continue its stealth tapering  and be flexible enough to act if yields suddenly spike (or back away when there’s no liquidity and not make it a spectacle).

  

• Debunking The Putin Panic With Stephen Cohen

  Via TheRealNews.com,

  Part 1

  President Trump’s warm words for Vladimir Putin and his failure to endorse U.S. intelligence community claims about alleged Russian meddling have been called “treasonous” and the cause of a “national security crisis.” There is a crisis, says Prof. Stephen F. Cohen, but one of our own making…

  AARON MATE: It’s The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate.

  The White House is walking back another statement from President Trump about Russia and U.S. intelligence. It began in Helsinki on Monday, when at his press conference with Vladimir Putin, Trump did not endorse the claim that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. After an outcry that played out mostly on cable news, Trump appeared to retract that view one day later. But then on Wednesday, Trump was asked if he believes Russia is now targeting the U.S. ahead of the midterms.

  DONALD TRUMP: [Thank] you all very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.

  REPORTER: Is Russia still targeting the U.S. [inaudible]. No, you don’t believe that to be the case?

  DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much, everyone. We’re doing very well. We are doing very well, and we’re doing very well, probably as well as anybody has ever done with Russia. And there’s been no president ever as tough as I have been on Russia. All you have to do is look at the numbers, look at what we’ve done, look at sanctions, look at ambassadors. Not there. Look, unfortunately, at what happened in Syria recently. I think President Putin knows that better than anybody. Certainly a lot better than the media.

  AARON MATE: The White House later claimed that when Trump said ‘no,’ he meant no to answering questions. But Trump’s contradiction of U.S. intelligence claims has brought the Russiagate story, one that has engulfed his presidency, to a fever pitch. Prominent U.S. figures have called Trump’s comments in Helsinki treasonous, and compared alleged Russian e-mail hacking and social media activity to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. Those who also question intelligence claims or warmongering with Russia have been dubbed traitors, or Kremlin agents.

  Speaking to MSNBC, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul declared that with Trump’s comments, the U.S. is in the midst of a national security crisis.

  MICHAEL MCFAUL: Republicans need to step up. They need to speak out, not just the familiar voices, because this is a national security crisis, and the president of the United States flew all the way to Finland, met with Vladimir Putin, and basically capitulated. It felt like appeasement.

  AARON MATE: Well, joining me to address this so-called national security crisis is Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University. His books include “Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.” Professor Cohen, welcome. I imagine that you might agree with the view that we are in the midst of a national security crisis when it comes to Russia, but for far different reasons than those expounded on by Ambassador McFaul.

  STEPHEN COHEN: There is a national security crisis, and there is a Russian threat. And we, we ourselves here in the United States, have created both of them. This has been true for years, and now it’s reached crisis proportion. Notice what’s going on. A mainstream TV reporter shouts to President Trump, “Are the Russians still targeting our elections?” This is in the category “Are you still beating your wife?” There is no proof that the Russians have targeted or attacked our elections. But it’s become axiomatic. What kind of media is that, are the Russians still, still attacking our elections.

  And what Michael McFaul, whom I’ve known for years, formerly Ambassador McFaul, purportedly a scholar and sometimes a scholar said, it is simply the kind of thing, to be as kind as I can, that I heard from the John Birch Society about President Eisenhower when he went to meet Khrushchev when I was a kid growing up in Kentucky. This is fringe discourse that never came anywhere near the mainstream before, at least after Joseph McCarthy, that the president went, committed treason, and betrayed the country. Trump may have not done the right thing at the summit, because agreements were reached. Nobody discusses the agreements. But to stage a kangaroo trial of the president of the United States in the mainstream media, and have plenty of once-dignified people come on and deliver the indictment, is without precedent in this country. And it has created a national crisis in our relations with Russia. So yes, there’s a national crisis.

  AARON MATE: Let me play for you a clip from Trump’s news conference with Putin that also drew outrage back in the U.S. When he was asked about the state of U.S.-Russia relations, he said both sides had responsibility.

  DONALD TRUMP: Yes, I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago. A long time, frankly, before I got to office. And I think we’re all to blame. I think that the United States now has stepped forward, along with Russia, and we’re getting together, and we have a chance to do some great things. Whether it’s nuclear proliferation, in terms of stopping, because we have to do it. Ultimately that’s probably the most important thing that we can be working on.

  AARON MATE: That’s President Trump in Helsinki. Professor Cohen, I imagine that this comment probably was part of the reason why there was so much outrage, not Just of what Trump said about the claims of Russian meddling in the election. Can you talk about the significance of what he said here, and how it contradicts the, the entire consensus of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment?

  STEPHEN COHEN: I did not vote for President Trump. But for that I salute him, what he just said. So far as I can remember, no wiser words or more important words have been spoken by the American president about Russia and the Soviet Union since Ronald Reagan did his great detente with Mikhail Gorbachev in the late 1980s. What Trump just did, and I don’t- we never know, Aaron, how aware he is of the ramifications of what he says. But in this case, whether he fully understood it or not, he just broke with, and the first time any major political figure in the United States has broken with the orthodoxy, ever since at least 2000. And even going back to the ’90s. That all the conflicts we’ve had with post-Soviet Russia, after communism went away in Russia, all those conflicts, which I call a new and more dangerous Cold War, are solely, completely, the fault of Putin or Putin’s Russia. That nothing in American policy since Bill Clinton in the 1990s did anything to contribute seriously to the very dangerous conflict, confrontation we have with Russia today. It was all Russia’s fault.

  What that has meant, and you know this, Aaron, because you live in this world as well, it has meant no media or public dialogue about the merits of American policy toward post-Soviet Russia from Clinton, certainly through Obama. It may be changing now under President Trump. Not sure. It means if we don’t have a debate, we’re not permitted to ask, did we do something wrong, or so unwise that it led to this even more dangerous Cold War? And if the debate leads to a conclusion that we did do something unwise, and that we’re still doing it, then arises the pressure and the imperative for any new policy toward Russia. None of that has been permitted, because the orthodoxy, the dogma, the axiom, is Putin alone has solely been responsible.

  So you know, you know as well as I do what is excluded. It doesn’t matter that we moved NATO to Russia’s borders, that’s not significant. Or that we bombed Serbia, Russia’s traditional ally. Or that George Bush left the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which was the bedrock of Russian nuclear security and, I would argue, our own. Or that we did regime change by military might in Iraq and Libya, and many other things. Or that we provoked the Ukrainian crisis in 2004, and supported the coup that overthrew a legitimate, elected, constitutional president there. None of that matters. Oh, it was kind of footnotes to the real narrative. And the narrative is, is that a Russian leader Vladimir Putin in power was a horrible aggressor. Killed everybody, somehow, with secret poisons or thieves in the night who opposed him. And began this new cold or even worse war with the United States.

  No historian of any merit will ever write the story that way. It’s factually, analytically, simply untrue. Now Trump has said something radically different. We got here in these dire circumstances because both sides acted unwisely, and we should have had this discussion a long time ago. So for that, two cheers for President Trump. But whether he can inspire the discussion that he may wish to, considering the fact that he’s now being indicted as a criminal for having met Putin, is a big question.

  AARON MATE: So a few questions. You mentioned that some agreements were made, but details on that have been vague. So do you have any sense of what concretely came out of this summit? There was talk about cooperation on nuclear weapons, possibly renewing the New START Treaty. We know that Putin offered that to Trump when he first came into office, but Trump rejected it. There was talk about cooperating in Syria. And, well, yeah, if I can put that question to you first, and then I have a follow-up about what might be motivating Trump here. But first, what do you think concretely came out of this?

  STEPHEN COHEN: Well, look, I know a lot, both as a historian, and I’ve actually participated in some about the history of American-Russian, previously Soviet, summits. Which, by the way, this is the 75th anniversary of the very first one, when Franklin Roosevelt traveled to Tehran to meet Stalin. And every president, and this is important to emphasize, every president since Roosevelt has met with the Kremlin leader. Some many times, or several times. So there’s a long tradition. And therefore there are customs. And one custom, this goes to your question, is that never, except maybe very rarely, but almost never do we learn the full extent and nature of what agreements were made. That usually comes in a week or two or three later, because there’s still the teams of both are hammering out the details.

  So that’s exactly what happened at this summit. There was no conspiracy. No, you know, appeasement behind closed doors. The two leaders announced in general terms what they agreed upon. Now, the most important, and this is traditional, too, by meeting they intended to revive the diplomatic process between the United States and Russia which has been badly tattered by events including the exclusion of diplomats, and sanctions, and the rest. So to get active, vigorous diplomacy about many issues going. They may not achieve that goal, because the American media and the political mainstream is trying to stop that. Remember that anything approaching diplomatic negotiations with Russia still less detente, is now being criminalized in the United States. Criminalized. What was once an honorable tradition, the pursuit of detente, is now a capital crime, if we believe these charges against Trump.

  So they tried to revive that process, and we’ll see if it’s going to be possible. I think at least behind the scenes it will be. Obviously what you mentioned, both sides now have new, more elusive, more lethal, faster, more precise nuclear weapons. We’ve been developing them for a long time in conjunction with missile defense. We’ve essentially been saying to Russia, you may have equality in nuclear weapons with us, but we have missile defense. Therefore, we could use missile defense to take out your retaliatory capacity. That is, we could stage the first strike on you and you would not be able to retaliate.

  Now, everybody who’s lived through the nuclear era knows that’s an invitation to disaster. Because like it or not, we’ve lived with a doctrine called MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, that one side dare not attack the other with a nuclear weapon because it would be destroyed as well. We were saying we now have this primacy. Putin, then, on March 1 of this year, announced that they have developed weapons that can elude missile defense. And it seems to be true. In the air and at sea, their dodgy, darty, quick thing- but they could avoid our missile defense. So where we are at now is on the cusp of a new nuclear arms race involving more dangerous nuclear weapons. And the current START, New START Treaty will expire, I think, in three or four years. But its expiration date is less important that the process of talking and negotiating and worrying officially about these new weapons had ended.

  So essentially what Trump and Putin agreed is that process of concern about new and more dangerous nuclear weapons must now resume immediately. And if there’s anybody living in the United States who think that that is a bad idea they need to reconsider their life, because they may be looking into the darkness of death. So that was excellent. Briefly. What I hope they did- they didn’t announce it, but I’m pretty sure they did- that there had been very close calls between American and Russian combat forces and their proxies in Syria. We’re doing a proxy war, but there are plenty of native Russians and Americans in Syria in a relatively small combat cell. And there have been casualties. The Russians have said at the highest level the next time a Russian is killed in Syria by an American-based weapon, we will strike the American launcher. If Russia strikes our launching pads or areas, whether on land or sea, which means Americans will be there and are killed, call it war. Call it war.

  So we need to agree in Syria to do more than, what do they call it, deconfliction, where we have all these warnings. It’s still too much space for mishap. And what I hope it think Trump and Putin did was to try to get a grip on this.

  AARON MATE: Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus at at Princeton University and New York University, thank you. And stay tuned for part two. I’m Aaron Mate for The Real News.

  *  *  *

  Part 2

  Via TheRealNews.com,

  There is much to criticize the Russian president for, says Professor Stephen F. Cohen of Princeton and NYU, but many US political and media claims about Putin are false – and reckless…

  AARON MATE: It’s The Real News. I’m Aaron Mate. This is part two with Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton. In part one we talked about the uproar over the Trump-Putin summit, and Trump’s comments about the U.S. intelligence community and about cooperation with Russia. Now in part two we’re going to get to some of the main talking points that have been pervasive throughout corporate media, talking about the stated reasons for why pundits and politicians say they are opposed to Trump sitting down with Putin.

  So let me start with Jon Meacham. He is a historian. And speaking to CNN, he worried that Trump, with his comments about NATO calling on the alliance to pay more, and calling into question, he worried about the possibility that Trump won’t come to the aid of Baltic states in the event that Russia invades.

  JON MEACHAM: And what worries me most is the known unknown, as Donald Rumsfeld might put it, of what happens next. Let’s say Putin- just look at this whole week of the last five, six days in total. What happens if Putin launches military action against, say, the Baltics? What, what is it that President Trump, what about his comments that NATO suggest thar he would follow an invocation of Article 5 and actually project American force in defense of the values that not only do we have an intellectual and moral assent to, but a contractual one, a treaty one. I think that’s the great question going forward.

  AARON MATE: OK. So that’s Jon Meacham speaking to CNN. So, Professor Cohen, putting aside what he said there about our intellectual values and strong tradition, just on the issue of Trump, of Putin posing a potential threat and possibly invading the Baltics, is that a realistic possibility?

  STEPHEN COHEN: So, I’m not sure what you’re asking me about. The folly of NATO expansion? The fact that every president in my memory has asked the Europeans to pay more? But can we be real? Can we be real? The only country that’s attacked that region of Europe militarily since the end of the Soviet Union was the United States of America. As I recall, we bombed Serbia, a, I say this so people understand, a traditional Christian country, under Bill Clinton, bombed Serbia for about 80 days. There is no evidence that Russia has ever bombed a European country.

  You tell me, Aaron. You must be a smart guy, because you got your own television show. Why would Putin want to launch a military attack and occupy the Baltics? So he has to pay the pensions there? Which he’s having a hard time already paying in Russia, and therefore has had to raise the pension age, and thereby lost 10 percentage points of popularity in two weeks? Why in the world can we, can we simply become rational people. Why in the world would Russia want to attack and occupy Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia? The only reason I can think of is that many, many of my friends love to take their summer vacations there. And maybe some crazy person thinks that if we occupy it, vacations will be cheaper. It’s crazy. It’s beyond crazy. It’s a kind-.

  AARON MATE: Professor Cohen, if you were on CNN right now I imagine that the anchor would say to you, well, okay, but one could say the same thing about Georgia in 2008. Why did Russia attack Georgia then?

  STEPHEN COHEN: I’m not aware that Russia attacked Georgia. The European Commission, if you’re talking about the 2008 war, the European Commission, investigating what happened, found that Georgia, which was backed by the United States, fighting with an American-built army under the control of the, shall we say, slightly unpredictable Georgian president then, Saakashvili, that he began the war by firing on Russian enclaves. And the Kremlin, which by the way was not occupied by Putin, but by Michael McFaul and Obama’s best friend and reset partner then-president Dmitry Medvedev, did what any Kremlin leader, what any leader in any country would have had to do: it reacted. It sent troops across the border through the tunnel, and drove the Georgian forces out of what essentially were kind of Russian protectorate areas of Georgia.

  So that- Russia didn’t begin that war. And it didn’t begin the one in Ukraine, either. We did that by [continents], the overthrow of the Ukrainian president in [20]14 after President Obama told Putin that he would not permit that to happen. And I think it happened within 36 hours. The Russians, like them or not, feel that they have been lied to and betrayed. They use this word, predatl’stvo, betrayal, about American policy toward Russia ever since 1991, when it wasn’t just President George Bush, all the documents have been published by the National Security Archive in Washington, all the leaders of the main Western powers promised the Soviet Union that under Gorbachev, if Gorbachev would allow a reunited Germany to be NATO, NATO would not, in the famous expression, move two inches to the east.

  Now NATO is sitting on Russia’s borders from the Baltic to Ukraine. So Russians aren’t fools, and they’re good-hearted, but they become resentful. They’re worried about being attacked by the United States. In fact, you read and hear in the Russian media daily, we are under attack by the United States. And this is a lot more real and meaningful than this crap that is being put out that Russia somehow attacked us in 2016. I must have been sleeping. I didn’t see Pearl Harbor or 9/11 and 2016. This is reckless, dangerous, warmongering talk. It needs to stop. Russia has a better case for saying they’ve been attacked by us since 1991. We put our military alliance on the front door. Maybe it’s not an attack, but it looks like one, feels like one. Could be one.

  AARON MATE: OK. And in a moment I want to speak to you more about Ukraine, because we’ve heard Crimea invoked a lot in the criticism of Putin of late. But first I want to actually to ask you about a domestic issue. This one is it’s widely held that Putin is responsible for the killing of journalists and opposition activists who oppose him. And on this front I want to play for you a clip of Joe Cirincione. He is the head of the Ploughshares Fund. And this is what he said this week in an appearance on Democracy Now!.

  JOE CIRINCIONE: Both of these men are dangerous. Both of these men oppress basic human rights, basic freedoms. Both of them think the press are the enemy of the people. Putin goes further. He kills journalists. He has them assassinated on the streets of Moscow.

  Donald Trump does not go that far yet. But I think what Putin is doing is using the president of the United States to project his rule, to increase his power, to carry out his agenda in Syria, with Europe, et cetera, and that Trump is acquiescing to that for reasons that are not yet clear.

  AARON MATE: That’s Joe Cirincione.

  STEPHEN COHEN: I know him well. It’s worse than that. It’s worse than that.

  AARON MATE: Well Yes. There’s two issues here, Professor Cohen. One is the state of the crackdown on press freedoms in Russia, which I’m sure you would say is very much alive, and is a strong part of the Russian system. But let’s first address this widely-held view that Putin is responsible for killing journalists who are critical of him.

  STEPHEN COHEN: I know I’m supposed to follow your lead, but I think you’re skipping over a major point. How is it that Joe, who was once one of our most eminent and influential, eloquent opponents of nuclear arms race, who was prepared to have the president of the United States negotiate with every Soviet communist leader, including those who had a lot of blood on their hands, now decide that Putin kills everybody and he’s not a worthy partner? What happened to Joe?

  I’ll tell you what happened to him. Trump. Trump has driven once-sensible people completely crazy. Moreover, Joe knows absolutely nothing about internal Russian politics, and he ought to follow my rule. When I don’t know something about something, I say I don’t know. But what he just said is ludicrous. And the sad part is-.

  AARON MATE: But it’s widely held. If it’s ludicrous-. But widely held, yeah.

  STEPHEN COHEN: Well, the point is that once distinguished and important spokespeople for rightful causes, like ending a nuclear arms race, have been degraded, or degraded themselves by saying things like he said to the point that they’re of utility today only to the proponents of a new nuclear arms race. And he’s not alone. Somebody called it Trump derangement syndrome. I’m not a psychiatrist, but it’s a widespread mania across our land. And when good people succumb to it, we are all endangered.

  AARON MATE: But many people would be surprised to hear that, because again, the stories that we get, and there are human rights reports, and it’s just sort of taken as a given fact that Putin is responsible for killing journalists. So if that’s ludicrous, if you can explain why you think that is.

  STEPHEN COHEN: Well, I got this big problem which seems to afflict very few people in public life anymore. I live by facts. I’m like my doctor, who told me not long ago I had to have minor surgery for a problem I didn’t even know I had. And I said, I’m not going to do it. Show me the facts. And he did. I had the minor surgery. Journalists no longer seem to care about facts. They repeat tabloid rumors. Putin kills everybody.

  All I can tell you is this. I have never seen any evidence whatsoever, and I’ve been- I knew some of the people who were killed. Anna Politkovskaya, the famous journalist for Novaya Gazeta was the first, I think, who was- Putin was accused of killing. I knew her well. She was right here, in this apartment. Look behind me, right here. She was here with my wife, Katrina vanden Huevel. I wouldn’t say we were close friends, but we were associates in Moscow, and we were social friends. And I mourn her assassination today. But I will tell you this, that neither her editors at that newspaper, nor her family, her surviving sons, think Putin had anything to do with the killing. No evidence has ever been presented. Only media kangaroo courts that Putin was involved in these high-profile assassinations, two of the most famous being this guy Litvinenko by polonium in London, about the time Anna was killed, and more recently Boris Netsov, whom, it’s always said, was walking within view of the Kremlin when he was shot. Well, you could see the Kremlin from miles away. I don’t know what within the view- unless they think Putin was, you know, watching it through binoculars. There is no evidence that Putin ever ordered the killing of anybody outside his capacity as commander in chief. No evidence.

  Now, did he? But we live, Aaron, and I hope the folks who watch us remember this. Every professional person, every decent person lives or malpractices based on verified facts. You go down the wrong way on a one-way street, you might get killed. You take some medication that’s not prescribed for you, you might die. You pursue foreign policies based on fiction, you’re likely to get in war. And all these journalists, from the New York Times to the Washington Post, from MSNBC to CNN who churn out daily these allegations that Putin kills people are disgracing themselves. I will give you one fact. Wait. One fact, and you could look it up, as Casey Stengel used to say. He was a baseball manager, in case you don’t know.

  There’s an organization called the Committee to Protect American Journalists. It’s kind of iconic. It does good things, it says unwise things. Go on its website and look at the number of Russian journalists killed since 1991, since the end of the Soviet Union, under two leaders. Boris Yeltsin, whom we dearly loved and still mourn, and Putin, whom we hate. Last time I looked, the numbers may have changed, more were killed under Yeltsin than under Putin. Did Putin kill those in the 1990s?

  So you should ask me, why did they die, then? And I can tell you the main reason. Corrupt business. Mafia-like business in Russia. Just like happened in the United States during our primitive accumulation days. Profit seekers killed rivals. Killed them dead in the streets. Killed them as demonstrations, as demonstrative acts. The only thing you could say about Putin is that he might have created an atmosphere that abets that sort of thing. To which I would say, maybe, but originally it was created with the oligarchical class under Boris Yeltsin, who remains for us the most beloved Russian leader in history. So that’s the long and the short of it. Go look at the listing on the Committee to Protect Journalists.

  AARON MATE: OK. So, following up on that, to what extent- and this gets a bit into history, which you’ve covered extensively in your writings. To what extent are we here in the West responsible for the creation of that Russian oligarchal class that you mentioned? But also, what is Putin’s relationship to it now, today? Does he abet it? Is he entrenched in it? We hear, often, talk of Putin possibly being the richest person in the world as a result of his entanglement with the very corruption of Russia you’re speaking about. So both our role in creating that problem in Russia, but then also Putin’s role now in terms of his relationship to it.

  STEPHEN COHEN: I’m going to give you a quick, truncated, scholarly, historical perspective on this. But this is what people should begin with when they think about Vladimir Putin and his 18 years in power. Putin came to power almost accidentally in 2000. He inherited a country whose state had collapsed twice in the 20th century. You’ve got to think about that. How many states have collapsed that you know of once? But the Russian state, Russian statehood, had collapsed once in 1917 during the revolution, and again in 1991 when the Soviet Union ended. The country was in ruination; 75 percent of the people were in poverty.

  Putin said- and this obsesses him. If you want to know what obsesses Putin, it’s the word ‘sovereignty.’ Russia lost its sovereignty- political, foreign policy, security, financial- in the 1990s. Putin saw his mission, as I read him, and I try to read him as a biographer. He says a lot, to regain Russia’s sovereignty, which meant to make the country whole again at home, to rescue its people, and to protect its defenses. That’s been his mission. Has it been more than that? Maybe. But everything he’s done, as I see it, has followed that concept of his role in history. And he’s done pretty well.

  Now, I can give you all Putin’s minuses very easily. I would not care for him to be my president. But let me tell you one other thing that’s important. You evaluate nations within their own history, not within ours. If you asked me if Putin is a democrat, and I will answer you two ways. He thinks he has. And compared to what? Compared to the leader of Egypt? Yeah, he is a democrat. Compared to the rulers of our pals in the Gulf states, he is a democrat. Compared to Bill Clinton? No, he’s not a Democrat. I mean, Russia-. Countries are on their own historical clock. And you have to judge Putin in terms of his predecessors. So people think Putin is a horrible leader. Did you prefer Brezhnev? Did you prefer Stalin? Did you prefer Andropov? Compared to what? Please tell me, compared to what.

  And by the way, that’s how that’s how Russians-. You want to know why he’s so popular in Russia? Because Russians judge him in the context of their own what they call zhivaya istoriya, living history; what we call autobiography. In terms of their own lives, he looks pretty darn good. They complain out him. We sit in the kitchen and they bitch about Putin all the time. But they don’t want him to go away.

  AARON MATE: All right. Well, on that front, we’re going to wrap this up there. Stephen Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies at New York University and Princeton. His books include “Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Soviet Russia,” and “Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.” Professor Cohen, thank you.

  STEPHEN COHEN: You forgot one book.

  AARON MATE: I did not say I was reading your, your complete bibliography.

  STEPHEN COHEN: It’s called-. It’s called “Confessions of a Holy Fool.”

  AARON MATE: Is that true? Or are you making a joke.

  STEPHEN COHEN: Somewhere in between. [Thank you, Aaron.]

  AARON MATE: Professor Cohen, thank you. And thank you for joining us on The Real News.

  

• "I Go Days Without Eating": Some Amazon Workers Left Homeless After Workplace Injuries

  Workplace safety incidents have been a major topic of discussion at certain high-flying companies over the last couple of months, but one of the names that hasn’t recently been mentioned has been Amazon. With the release of a new report by The Guardian early this week, that may very well change.

  Amazon employees who suffer workplace safety incidents may be forgotten and left behind – with one report of a woman who was literally left “homeless”, living in her car in a fulfillment warehouse parking lot and going “days without eating”. Other employees claim that Amazon has failed to accept their workman’s compensation filings and that the company has tried to “settle” with them for a pittance in a manner that absolves Amazon of all liability.

  The new expose published  over the weekend came just days after it was widely reported that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ net worth had eclipsed $150 billion after Amazon stock rallied to all time highs after its most recent earnings report.

  

  The article goes into depth on several workplace safety incidents that left warehouse and fulfillment center employees unable to perform their duties at work and also reportedly neglected by the company when they sought medical care, paid time off, workman’s compensation or other reasonable accommodations for their injuries.

  The article highlights Amazon warehouse worker Vickie Allen. Her story begins in October of last year. Her station at the Amazon warehouse where she worked was missing a key piece of safety equipment known as a brush guard, according to The Guardian’s report, which prevented packages from falling onto the floor.

  Reportedly, Amazon didn’t replace this piece of safety equipment and therefore Vicky was forced to improvise and create her own solution, using a tote bin to substitute for the guard. After counting in an awkward position, due to the lack of the brush guard, she ultimately wound up hurting her back. Amazon reportedly provided her with nothing more than a heating pad, as a solution. From there, she wound up driving 60 miles back-and-forth to work only to be sent home each day without pay until she reportedly tried to get worker’s compensation.

  The article notes that it took the company until June 2018 to fix the station and that they offered her a week’s paid leave for nine months of issues:

  “By June 2018, they finally had that station fixed. It took them eight months to put one little brush guard on this station,” Allen said. On 2 July, she met with management at the Amazon fulfillment center, who offered her a week of paid leave for the issues she had to deal with over the past nine months.

  An MRI that she had in April of 2018 ultimately confirmed her back issues – just days prior to the company’s workman’s compensation insurer reportedly having the company’s doctor “drop her as a patient”. 

  Once on workers compensation, Allen started going to physical therapy. In January 2018, she returned to work and injured herself again on the same workstation that still was not fixed.

  Allen went back on medical leave and took an additional two weeks of unpaid leave because she didn’t have the money to drive to work. In April 2018, an MRI scan showed her back was still injured, but just five days after her diagnosis, she claims Amazon’s workers compensation insurer, Sedgwick, had the company doctor drop her as a patient.

  The final end result from the nearly $1 trillion company? Amazon offered her $3500 to buy her silence. She declined and instead took her story to the media. She also posted this video of her story on YouTube:

  The Guardian article also highlights another worker who ultimately had to file a lawsuit against Amazon after he claimed that he was told he was “too young to have back problems” and then was fired for hurting his back on the job:

  In April 2018, 43-year-old Bryan Hill of Seffner, Florida filed a lawsuit against Amazon, alleging managers fired him for hurting his back on the job and failed to file a workers compensation claim once his injury was reported. “It’s been scheduled for mediation in September, and we’re in a holding pattern until then,” said Miguel Bouzas, the attorney representing Hill in the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, Hill was told by a manager he was too young to have back problems, and he was fired before Amazon Human Resources would authorize a doctor visit.

  That case is echoed with another example: a woman who fell off of a ladder that was hit from below claims she was denied workman’s comp paperwork, before having her short term disability cut short and then, ultimately, being fired. The article notes that she lost her home after being fired from Amazon:

  At an Amazon Fulfillment Center in Pennsylvania, one former employee was fired five weeks after getting injured on the job. “I was on a ladder and someone came flying into the area I was in, hit the ladder causing me to fall and I landed on my back and left leg,” said Christina Miano-Wilburn. Her back is permanently injured from the incident. “They refused to give me the paperwork for workmen’s comp. They cut my short term disability after five weeks. I was supposed to get it for 26 weeks.”

  Miano-Wilburn was notified of her job termination through a letter in the mail in May 2017 after working at Amazon for two years. She lost her home shortly after being fired from Amazon.

  Employees claim that they have also been accused of faking fatigue and exhaustion while working at fulfillment centers. The article quotes one employee stating that people do not even report injuries anymore because they’re scared to lose their job:

  Other Amazon employees succumb to the fatigue and exhaustion of the fulfillment center work environment and quit before getting injured. “I felt they thought I was faking. I was dehydrated and dizzy,” said Lindsai Florence Johnson, who was taken away in an ambulance in April during a hot day while working at an Amazon fulfillment center in San Bernardino, California. She quit in May 2018 over mistreatment after starting in June 2017. “Not all people report injuries because they are scared to get taken off their job or told they can’t work over there anymore. I have many times come home with bruises from work at Amazon and I experienced my first hernia there.”

  Another story is told of one employee who was coerced to try and sign a document to make him stipulate that his injuries occurred prior to working at Amazon, despite an MRI showing a torn meniscus in his left knee. He claims that Amazon would not accept his workman’s compensation filing, nor would they pay his medical fees:

  “I was squatting full speed and going up the step ladder as many times as I could an hour to try to hit the rates. All that squatting hurt my left knee, so I favored the other one and hurt that one,” said Yevtuck, who hurt his knees in November 2015.

  An Amazon company doctor recommended he return to work on light duty and gave him braces for each knee. Yevtuck provided documents corroborating his medical diagnoses from Amazon company doctors and private doctors. “As soon as I came back, the supervisor returned me back to a job that was full duty and I reinjured both knees.”

  He added Amazon told him to return to work, or work a light duty job if he signed a form stating his injuries occurred prior to working at Amazon. An MRI he received in April 2016 from a private doctor noted he tore the meniscus in his left knee, but Amazon would not pay his medical fees or accept his workers compensation filing. 

  Amazon, of course, defended itself for the article claiming that ensuring the safety of its workers is a priority for the company and that it is proud of its safety record.

  But it’s not just the employees that are speaking out about these workplace safety issues. The National Council for Occupation Safety and Health shares many of its employees views, concluding that “Amazon’s warehouses were listed on the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health’s “dirty dozen” list of most dangerous places to work in the United States in April, 2018. The company made the list due to its pattern of unsafe working conditions and its focus on productivity and efficiency over the safety and livelihood of its employees. Amazon’s emphasis on fulfilling a high demand of orders has resulted in unsafe working conditions for its warehouse employees.”

  

• China's Oil Futures Contract Is Beginning To Show Its Teeth

  Authored by Rory Hall via The Daily Coin,

  So far so good. Petrodollar will be showing signs of wear-and-tear in the very near future.

  

  We have been documenting the demise of the dollar hegemony for the past several years and the past two years the pace of the demise seems to be moving like a rocket.

  All the little details being handled since the global financial meltdown in 2008 are now converging and one of the biggest pieces is now showing its teeth – the Chinese oil futures contract priced in yuan is growing in such a way that by the years end, at the current pace of growth, this contract will present a real challenge to the petrodollar.

  “China’s newly-launched crude oil futures on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange saw its trading volume surge to a record high in early June, a positive sign that a wide variety of financial market players have been keen to contribute liquidity into the new derivative market.

  The trading volume for the front-month September delivery crude futures contract was recorded at 275,006 lots last Friday, the highest since it was launched on March 26, and nearly seven times the 40,656 lots seen on the first trading day, data from INE’s website showed.

  This normalizes to 137,503 lots based on international practice, as INE counts each side of a trade – the buy and the sell — as two lots. One lot is equivalent to 1,000 barrels. That means around 137.5 million barrels of crude oil changed hands on paper last Friday, S&P Global Platts calculations showed.

  INE crude oil futures’ trading volume has been rising steadily since the launch on March 26, with the average daily volume seen at 69,055 lots in April and 170,554 lots in May — a rise of 147% month on month.” Source – Platts

  I don’t know much but a 147% growth month-on-month sounds like a serious jump and on top of that June is already showing signs this pace is not a fluke and will continue into the future.

  

  While this market is still in the earliest of stages of development the pace of growth seems to be significant and catching a lot of people by surprise. It appears the first major hurdle to catching the Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) contracts will be to surpass the Dubai Mercantile’s contact that averages more than 54,000 daily daily contacts. With the current pace of the Chinese contract that hurdle will be in the rearview mirror by the end of June and certainly by the end of July it will be confirmed.

  The two major contracts, Brent and WTI, have a combined daily total of 2.6 million contracts so the Chinese contract has some ways to go before it poses any kind of real threat but it is well on its on way to establishing itself as a global force.

  “Although the new INE crude futures market has been widely considered a success so far, it is still very small compared with mature international crude benchmarks in terms of trading volume and open interest, market participants noted.

  Currently, ICE Brent and NYMEX light sweet crude futures are the two leading global benchmarks.

  The Brent futures’ trading volume averaged 1 million lots/day on ICE in May, with open interest seen at an average of 2.6 million lots in the month, according to data on ICE website.” Source – Platts

  We should have better data and a better view after the July numbers print. My guess is, the new China contract is going to continue growing and petrodollars are going to continue waning.

  

  

• Bank of America Freezes Kansas Family's Bank Account After Demanding Citizenship

  An American-born Kansas family had their bank account frozen after Bank of America demanded to know their citizenship status, reports the Kansas City Star. 

  Josh Collins of Roeland Park, Kansas ignored a letter from the bank asking a variety of personal questions, including whether he was an American citizen or holds dual citizenship with another country. 

  

  Josh was born in Wichita, Kansas, while his wife Jessica Salazar Collins was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri and is a second generation American citizen whose great-grandfather immigrated from Mexico.

  Jessica said she tossed the letter out because she and Josh “thought it was a scam,” since Josh had been banking with BofA for the past 20 years. On July 24, however, Bank of America froze the Collins’ account – preventing them from accessing cash.

  

  When Josh called the bank, they confirmed that his account had been frozen:

  “The first question is, ‘Oh, we sent you something in the mail a few weeks ago,’” he recalled to KCTV5. “I said, ‘Yeah, I remember getting something that didn’t look real.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we need to know if you’re a citizen.’ You know, I was born and raised in Kansas like Superman. I said, ‘How much more American can you get?’”

  The family says they’re lucky they put off a family vacation to Minnesota, as they would have been left high and dry: 

  “We would’ve found ourselves up there without money,” said Jessica, who says they’ll be changing banks. “No money for gas. No money to feed our kids. For a hotel. No money!”

  

  BofA said that it’s standard practice to ask about citizenship status when opening a new account or updating customer information.

  “Like all financial institutions, we’re required by law to maintain complete and accurate records for all of our customers and may periodically request information, such as country of citizenship and proof of U.S. residency. This type of outreach is nothing new,” Bank of America said in a statement Friday. “This information must be up to date and therefore we periodically reach out to customers, which is what we did in this case.” –Kansas City Star

  Except citizenship questions are not federally required according to the California Banker’s Association – the largest state affiliate of the national group. “Not to our knowledge,” said spokeswoman Beth Mills, who added that federal law requires banks must collect and verify just four things about account holders; name, date of birth, address and Social Security number. 

  Other federally chartered banks, including Wells Fargo, ask citizenship questions when some new deposit accounts are opened. The U.S. Department of the Treasury increasingly is urging financial institutions to collect as much information on customers as possible, including citizenship status, and to update often in part to ward against the laundering of money that may flow through foreign countries. –Kansas City Star

  Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner blamed the Collins family for failing to return the questionnaire. 

  “If we don’t hear from a customer in response to our outreach,” she said, “as a last resort, we may restrict the account until we can confirm it is in compliance with regulatory requirements.” Collins wasn’t chosen for any specific reason, according to Wagner. 

  

• "Better Bring Our Own Guns" – Portland Antifa Plotting "Direct Confrontation" At Pro-Trump Rally"

  A violent Antifa cell based in Portland, Oregon is planning a “direct confrontation” with participants in a pro-Trump rally next Saturday, according to a call to action on the leftist website “It’s Going Down.“

  “Rose City Antifa has continued their great work of doxxing the Portland area Proud Boys involved in this violence, and is also calling for militant antifascist resistance against Patriot Prayer,” reads the posting first reported by Cassandra Fairbanks of the Gateway Pundit. 

  The Rose City Antifa group notably clashed with members of Patriot Prayer and the pro-Trump “Proud Boys” in early June, which resulted in a viral video of a member of Antifa being knocked out during a melee started by the violent “resistance” group. 

  A spokesperson for Rose City Antifa told It’s Going Down said that the group plans to “show that the community will not allow violent nationalist opportunists to threaten our city and target our people. We will overwhelm them both by force of numbers and commitment to defending our community. Whatever it takes.“

  As Fairbanks notes, the call to action urges members to engage in “direct confrontation” to “eliminate” the conservative groups’ ability to hold rallies. 

  “Without direct confrontation, PP and other white nationalist groups will feel entitled to threaten people where ever and whenever they like. First they target Anti-Fascists and Anti-ICE activists, then they target Pride, marginalized community spaces, minorities, and migrants. They believe ‘might makes right’ and unless the community steps in to stop them, there is no telling who they will attack next for political gain,” the call to action continues. 

  “Better bring our own guns too”

  Journalist Tim Pool noted a Reddit discussion in the “Anarchism” subreddit in which Antifa members discuss arming themselves ahead of the event. 

  “Only thing I’m worried about is some nut with a gun and a bunch of bullets,” says one user, to which another replied “Better bring our own guns too just to be safe.”

  

  August 4th in Portland is already sounding like it is going to get really bad.

  Activists call for bringing guns in preparation for escalation. pic.twitter.com/f0IZO387Bi

  — Tim Pool (@Timcast) July 28, 2018

  During the June “Battle of Portland,” police recovered knives and other weapons, as well as bear mace.  

  Last April, 21 people were arrested after violence broke out between Trump supporters and members of Antifa in downtown Berkeley – leading to several injuries and the recovery of weapons from Antifa which included knives and spiked poles.

  Here are some of the prohibited items that have already removed from the park today. https://t.co/3qx3smYwgk pic.twitter.com/A70VCxFYEu

  — Berkeley Police (@berkeleypolice) April 15, 2017

  

  

  

  

  Let’s hope we don’t see more of the same this Saturday in Portland – especially gunshot victims.

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