- A Terrorist Attack Against Eurasian Integration?
A Terrorist Attack Against Eurasian Integration?
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The murder of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, in the early hours of January 3 by US forces, only highlights the extent to which US strategy in the Middle East has failed. It is likely to provoke reactions that do not benefit US interests in the region.
To understand the significance of this event, it is necessary to quickly reconstruct the developments in Iraq. The US has occupied Iraq for 17 years, following its invasion of the country in 2003. During this time, Baghdad and Tehran have re-established ties by sustaining an important dialogue on post-war reconstruction as well as by acknowledging the importance of the Shia population in Iraq.
Within two decades, Iraq and Iran have gone from declaring war with each other to cooperating on the so-called Shia Crescent, favoring cooperation and the commercial and military development of the quartet composed of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Such ties, following recent victories over international terrorism, have been further consolidated, leading to current and planned overland connections between this quartet.
Local movements and organizations have been calling for US troops to leave Iraqi territory with increasing vigor and force in recent months. Washington has accused Tehran of inciting associated protests.
At the same time, groups of dubious origin, that have sought to equate the Iranian presence with the American one, have been calling for the withdrawal of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) that are linked to Iran from Iraq. The protests from such groups appear to be sponsored and funded by Saudi Arabia.
With mutual accusations flying around, the US hit a pro-Iranian faction known as Kataib Hezbollah on December 29. This episode sparked a series of reactions in Iraq that ended up enveloping the US embassy in Baghdad, which was besieged for days by demonstrators angry about ongoing airstrikes by US forces.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, blamed this volatile situation on Iran, warning that Tehran would be held responsible for any escalation of the situation involving the embassy.
In the early hours of January 3, 2020, another tangle was added to the Gordian Knot that is the Middle East. Qasem Soleimani was assassinated when his convoy was attacked by a drone near Baghdad International Airport. The most effective opponents of ISIS and Wahabi jihadism in general was thus eliminated by the US in a terrorist act carried out in foreign country in a civilian area (near Baghdad International Airport). The champagne would have no doubt been flowing immediately upon receiving this news in the US Congress, the Israeli Knesset, Riyadh royal palace and in Idlib among al Nusra and al Qaeda militants.
It remains to be seen what the reasons were behind Trump’s decision to okay the assasination of such an influential and important leader. Certainly the need to to demonstrate to his base (and his Israeli and Saudi financiers) plays into his anti-Iranian crusade. But there are other reasons that better explain Trump’s actions that are more related to the influence of the US in the region; the geopolitical chess game in the Middle East transcends any single leader or any drone attack.
In Syria, for example, the situation is extremely favorable to the government in Damascus, with it only being a matter of time before the country is again under the control of the central government. General Soleimani and Iran have played a central role in ridding the country of the scourge of terrorism, a scourge directed and financed by the US and her regional allies.
In Iraq, the political situation is less favorable to the US now than it was back in 2006. Whatever progress in relations between Baghdad and Tehran has also been due to General Soleimani, who, together with the PMUs and the Iraqi army, freed the country from ISIS (which was created and nurtured by Western and Saudi intelligence, as revealed by Wikileaks).
It would seem that the US sanctions against Iran have not really had the intended effect, instead only serving to consolidate the country’s stance against imperialism. The US, as a result, is experiencing a crisis in the region, effectively being driven out of the Middle East, rather than leaving intentionally.
In this extraordinary and unprecedented situation, the Russians and Chinese are offering themselves variously as military, political and economic guarantors of the emerging Eurasian mega-project (the recent naval exercises between Beijing, Moscow and Tehran serving as a tangible example of this commitment). Naturally, it is in their interests to avoid any extended regional conflict that may only serve to throw a monkey wrench into their vast Eurasian mega-project.
Putin and Xi Jinping face tough days ahead, trying to council Iran in avoiding an excessive response that would give Washington the perfect excuse for a war against Iran.
The prospects of a region without terrorism, with a reinvigorated Shia Crescent, led by Iran at the regional level and accompanied by China and Russia at the economic (Belt and Road Initiative) and military level, offer little hope to Riyadh, Tel Aviv and Washington of being able to influence events in the region and this is likely going to be the top argument that Putin and Xi Jinping will use to try to deter any Iranian overt response.
Deciding to kill the leader of the Quds Force in Iraq proves only one thing: that the options available to Trump and his regional allies are rapidly shrinking, and that the regional trends over the next decade appear irreversible. Their only hope is for Tehran and her allies to lash out at the latest provocation, thereby justifying the regional war that would only serve to benefit Washington by slowing down regional unification under Iranian leadership.
We must remember that whenever the US finds itself in a situation where it cannot control a country or a region, its tendency is to create chaos and ultimately destroy it.
By killing General Soleimani, the US hopes to wreak havoc in the region so as to slow down or altogether scupper any prospect of integration. Fortunately, China, Russia and Iran are well aware that any conflict would not be in any of their own interests.
No drone-launched missiles will be enough to save the US from decades of foreign-policy errors and their associated horrors; nor will they be enough to extinguish the memory of a hero’s tireless struggle against imperialism and terrorism.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/07/2020 – 00:05 - Where U.S. Troops Are Based In The Middle East
Where U.S. Troops Are Based In The Middle East
After the death of top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani by a U.S. missile on Friday in Baghdad, the Iraqi government has voted in a non-binding resolution Sunday to expel U.S. troops from the country. Prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi could now take back the invitation that allows 6,000 troops to currently stay in Iraq.
But, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, while the U.S. presence in Iraq is sizable, other Middle Eastern countries host many more U.S. troops. The largest U.S. base in the Middle East is in Qatar. The country hosts around 13,000 U.S. troops, according to numbers compiled by the Washington Post. Located southwest of Doha, Al Udeid Air Base has proven crucial in the fight against ISIS. Qatar invested $1 billion in constructing the base and it’s also home to the the U.S. Combined Air Operations Center, responsible for coordinating U.S. and allied air power across the Middle East, particularly in airspace over Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.
The following infographic highlights just how important Qatar, along with Kuwait, is to the U.S. presence in the Middle East. Both countries hosts an estimated 13,000 U.S. troops.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Neighboring Bahrain is also vital to American interests in the region, home to the Naval Support Activity Bahrain, the U.S. Fifth Fleet and a substantial military presence at Isa Air Base. 7,000 troops are based there.
U.S. troops have been withdrawing from Syria after the Trump administration’s decision in October, which has decimated their numbers from an estimated 2,000 in September to currently around 800.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 23:45 - The Three Main Reasons Trump Can't Lose 2020 – Dispelling Nonsense-Polls & Wishful-Thinking
The Three Main Reasons Trump Can't Lose 2020 – Dispelling Nonsense-Polls & Wishful-Thinking
Authored by Joaquin Flores via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Cutting through the media noise and outright nonsense in assessing the upcoming election is going to be a necessity for anyone who wants to know what’s truly afoot.
Back in October, Moody’s Analytics assessed their confidence that Trump will win in 2020. While yet another impeachment fiasco has been advanced by Democrats, this time going as far as a vote in the lower house, Moody’s has not issued any change in their assessment. That’s probably because this impeachment charade is being seen for what it is.
Many of the figures being discussed otherwise in the news cycle are quite irrelevant. This is because they are national polls, when only the opinions of certain cross-sections within swing states can reasonably said to be of any significance. Republicans still back Trump, Democrats still oppose him.
Here are the three real reasons why Trump will win…
With no buzz, there’s no victory.
This is the most important, and deserves the most attention. The Democrat-controlled media establishment from the NYT, MSNBC to CNN, is abusing their push-poll powers to promote boring and centrist candidates. But it’s the genuine energy and enthusiasm of precinct walkers and phone bankers that matters more than most numbers. Enthusiasm is contagious, and a lack of enthusiasm creates a vicious cycle.
DNC strategists and pollsters make the same error that almost every single top-down managed company makes in their own sales-team policies. They wrongly imagine that no matter the product they are selling, what makes a product sell is a direct consequence of the advertising dollars and deals with media. They believe that creating energy around a product is entirely a hyper-reality based simulacrum with little-to-no basis in the real world.
To the contrary, for most products it’s the word-of-mouth enthusiasm of consumers and potentials, along with the enthusiasm of the sales team that actually pushes sales. If the enthusiasm isn’t genuine, then it isn’t there. If there’s no buzz, there can be no victory.
So when it comes to a combination of union and NGO staffers, who have to mobilize dues paying members and volunteers to get out the vote, people cannot fake enthusiasm.
Obama won despite the country trending conservative across a number of matrixes since the victory of Bush I in 2000. This was because of the tremendous energy and excitement around his campaign based in the themes of hope and change. Obama posed as a very left-wing candidate who would not only be the first African-American president of the country, but moreover bring in socialized health-care and end the war in Iraq, and reverse decades old legislation that had hampered labor’s ability to organize.
Without Obama-level energy, it’s only natural that a conservative would beat someone who appeared liberal across social and ‘pc’ matters but was flat on labor and real economic justice matters. That’s because without an invigorated candidate running an economically ‘radical’ platform, the blue collar left and idealistic leftist students who form the backbone of a genuine grass-roots campaign can’t get excited.
In the present paradigm, Democrats can only win the White House when new voters come out to vote.
Democrats will probably lose no matter what, given the immutable facts around this election and the incumbent, but the way they are running their strategy so far will guarantee it is a Trump electoral college landslide bigger than 2016. Right now Democrats might only succeed in getting more Democrats to turn out in states they were already going to win.
And so strangely, in 2020 we might expect Democrats to win even bigger on the popular vote, simply because Hillary is not going to be candidate, and given how populous states like New York and California are, but lose harder on the Electoral College.
The any given Sunday rule still applies to elections, and so taken all together, the only chance Democrats do have to win is some combination of Sanders, Yang, and Gabbard.
The Impeachment is Galvanizing Trump’s base and Independents didn’t appreciate Pelosi’s moves
This is something like the opposite of the Democrat’s lack of an exciting candidate, and really explains why no candidate but Gabbard (who played the right card with her ‘present’ vote on impeachment’), can come out of this unscathed. Many polls seem to indicate that Trump’s numbers across numerous key matrixes improved surrounding the impeachment gambit.
In reality, this election will rest on a) independents who are in b) swing states. Independents are prone to the galvanizing excitement of partisans. Since Trump’s people are galvanized, and Democrats are not exciting their base, independents will go for Trump. That was also reflected in polling over impeachment itself.
Independents are not some 5 or 10% of the voting base that might just ‘push one candidate or other’ over a notch to victory. Independents make up a whole 38% of the electorate.
Only 41% of independents supported impeachment.
Looking at Pelosi’s statements and methods, it would appear that the process left Democrats looking extremely partisan to the detriment of getting the business of the country done. That business included the USMCA, the Mexico-Canada Agreement that redefines a host of matters previously mishandled by Bill Clinton’s tremendously unpopular NAFTA. Why this seems to be the case – Trump was in the process of getting his USMCA through congress, and with high support from organized labor. As we consistently explain, Democrats rely on organized labor not only for votes, but more critically for their entire ground campaigns, especially making phone calls to other voters, and precinct walking during the campaign and on Election Day. That labor always opposed NAFTA and generally supports the USMCA is critical. The key line in Pelosi’s post impeachment charade statement, regarding why they were not actually going to send the articles to the Senate and therefore complete the process of impeaching the president, was that she said specifically that they needed instead to prioritize passing the USMCA.
Imagine that for a moment. Because of the relationship between labor and the Democrat Party, it was necessary for Democrats to appear as its champion, even that it was their idea in the first place. This means that Democrats had the practical wisdom to understand that their impeachment charade did not appeal to blue collar Democrat voters, but in fact would work against them. What they needed in part in the impeachment, apart from implementing their strategy of a thousand cuts, was to energize college educated upper middle-class boomers, which form the bulk of the Rachel Maddow, and Democrat leaning mainstream media consumer demographic. While these people control work-place politics and effectively police water-cooler talk, this back-fires. Voting in the US is secret ballot – and so with this class in control of people’s ability to remain employed, unenthusiastic, rehearsed, regurgitated, manufactured ‘orange man bad’ utterances are more commonly heard than they are truly believed. People say one thing at work to keep their job, and then vote another way on Election Day.
But the USMCA fiasco surrounding the impeachment tells us a lot. Eight years of Bill Clinton and decades of his NAFTA has been symptomatic of the Democrat’s anti-labor politics. Democrats from that time onward invested their political capital into developing socialism. However, they didn’t develop this in the US, but in China – while in the US a crony class grew up and lined their own pockets from it all. This is something which is perhaps, in a strange turn of events, quite good for China and many other developing parts of the world including Africa. But that has come at the expense not of America’s wealthy ‘bourgeoisie’, but rather its own ‘working class’. Bill Clinton was supposed to work to reverse 12 years of Reagan-Bush, whose anti-labor policies amounted to one of the single greatest austerity campaigns in US history. And yet this was only to be outdone by Clinton’s outsourcing and off-shoring of jobs, and deregulation of the financial sector.
What has shown to matter least of all, and especially where Trump is concerned, are polls. And even here too, polls – when read correctly – point to a Trump victory.
There are also reasons why left-wing Democrats like documentary film maker Michael Moore also understand that Trump is likely to win. Needless to say, his fixation therefore on an impeachment succeeding, and his blanket support for Nancy Pelosi’s absurd and failing strategy, is also why even progressive Democrats like Sanders fail to understand why Trump is unbeatable. Their placing hopes in impeachment isn’t so much that impeachment is viable or likely, but from a sober and scientific approach, it’s only more likely than an electoral defeat of Trump at the polls given that the party stubbornly insists on promoting Biden and Buttigieg.
“It’s the economy, stupid”
Sure, it will always be argued that the improved economy under Trump was in fact either related to impersonal forces of the global economy unrelated to Trump; sun spots, the invisible hand, or Obama policies whose fruits we are now only reaping. But voters never go for this reasoning. Partisans do, but voters don’t.
Democrats at best are going to point out that while employment numbers have improved, ‘never before have so many earned so little’. And while that’s true, we are dealing with a badly bruised and insecure American working class. Things right now appear to be going in the right direction, and so being able to find work even if it’s a lower salary than they had before their several-year unemployed stint, they are literally thanking the heavens, the stars, and even Trump, that today they have any job at all. And even here, Trump’s tax cuts put a few thousand dollars back in the pockets of households where the average combined income is about $70k. His even larger, but targeted, tax cuts for the rich in certain areas, due to the economic growth these cuts in part inspired, resulted in more tax revenues overall.
And yes, we get it – old black people like Biden. At least mainstream media reports on certain polls, whose methodologies we can’t see, report as much. What did that question actually look like? We think the push-poll went something like: “In the coming election, would you support Obama’s good friend and Vice President, a gay mayor, a neurotic Jew, a Hindu veteran who may have PTSD, Pocahontas, or a Chinaman good at math? Obama’s VP was Biden. Will you vote for Biden? Y/N”.
But still this figure is misleading, and doesn’t relate to Biden’s electability, but is supposed to get past this trope that he’s a racist – a meme trending surrounding the first few debates. Older black voters won’t turn swing-states, and older black voters aren’t part of an energized or energizing electorate for new voters. This means that the media’s reportage cycle on this ‘factoid’ is about virtue signaling to the above mentioned Rachel Maddow demographic that Biden is ‘progressive since black people like him’. Oh, you don’t like Biden? Well black people like Biden. Don’t you like black people?
And our jokingly hypothetical poll question aside, the reality isn’t far off. This targeted poll of black voters relates almost entirely back to labor union activism. The DNC controls organized labor, and Biden is the DNC’s choice. Black workers are extraordinarily over-represented in the public sector, and the public sector is extraordinarily over-represented in union membership. Older people are more likely to be involved in activism in their labor union, and as a consequence, older black people trend towards Biden more than other candidates. This factoid may trend well right now in media, but will have nothing to do with the outcome of the election except that it will guarantee Trump’s victory if Biden is the Democrat nominee.
And so we have it, our three primary reasons Trump will win: the lack of enthusiasm for the DNC’s picks, the increasing enthusiasm among Trump supporters which will be contagious (again), and the economic growth which, while favoring the rich, in fact did in this case ‘trickle down’.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 23:25 - 66 Dead After Rapidly-Sinking Jakarta Pummeled By Worst Monsoons This Century
66 Dead After Rapidly-Sinking Jakarta Pummeled By Worst Monsoons This Century
Indonesia better hurry up and find a new capital city before its current one sinks into the swampwater and soil.
The death toll from some of the most devastating flooding that has rocked Indonesia’s capital city of Jakarta has risen to 66, with two people still missing, according to local authorities cited by CNN.
Flooding that began when Indonesia was hit by some of the most powerful monsoons the country has seen in years. Thanks to its position along the “Ring of Fire”, Indonesia is regularly rocked by devastating tsunamis, earthquakes, eruptions and floods. But the flooding that kicked off the new decade forced thousands to flee their homes, or risk being trapped by landslides.
More than 173,000 residents were seeking refuge on Friday, and it’s very likely that things are going to get worse before they get better. Heavy rain and thunderstorms are forecast to continue for the coming days.
As CNN pointed out, the rainfall is some of the worst Jakarta has seen this century:
The current inundation is some of the worst the Indonesian capital has seen this century. Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysical Agency measured 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain at an East Jakarta airport on January 1, the highest flood reading since 1996, Reuters reported.
Jakarta and the surrounding area of central Java, Indonesia’s largest island by population, are expected to be pummeled by up to 4 inches of rain in the next few days.
As search and rescue operations continue, the Red Cross has started spraying Jakarta with disinfectant to stop the spread of dangerous waterborne diseases. Photos from Jakarta and the surrounding area (which, with about 30 million people, is one of the world’s largest cities) show people wading through chest-high water, and using inflatable rafts to navigate city streets.
Around Jakarta, rescue workers and men in orange vests clearing trash and debris could be seen.
Unfortunately, Jakarta’s latest problems are just par for the course. As we pointed out last year, Jakarta is rapidly sinking into the swamp upon which it was built (the already saturated land makes it difficult for the soil to absorb rainwater, contributing to the flooding), and Indonesia is rapidly searching for a suitable location to build a new capital city.
This latest round of deadly flooding will no doubt spur the country to speed up that search.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 23:05 - Escobar On The Soleimani Psyop & The Financial WMDs
Escobar On The Soleimani Psyop & The Financial WMDs
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,
On foreign soil, as a guest nation, US has assassinated a diplomatic envoy whose mission the US had requested
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (3rd L), Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (2nd L) and Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani (L) attend the Jan. 6 funeral ceremony in Tehran of Qasem Soleimani, commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Forces, who was killed in a US drone airstrike in Iraq. Photo: AFP / Iranian Presidency handout / Anadolu Agency
The bombshell facts were delivered by caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, during an extraordinary, historic parliamentary session in Baghdad on Sunday.
Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani had flown into Baghdad on a normal carrier flight, carrying a diplomatic passport. He had been sent by Tehran to deliver, in person, a reply to a message from Riyadh on de-escalation across the Middle East. Those negotiations had been requested by the Trump administration.
So Baghdad was officially mediating between Tehran and Riyadh, at the behest of Trump. And Soleimani was a messenger. Adil Abdul-Mahdi was supposed to meet Soleimani at 8:30 am, Baghdad time, last Friday. But a few hours before the appointed time, Soleimani died as the object of a targeted assassination at Baghdad airport.
Let that sink in – for the annals of 21st century diplomacy. Once again: it does not matter whether the assassination order was issued by President Trump, the US Deep State or the usual suspects – or when. After all, the Pentagon had Soleimani on its sights for a long time, but always refused to go for the final hit, fearing devastating consequences.
Now, the fact is that the United States government – on foreign soil, as a guest nation – has assassinated a diplomatic envoy who was on an official mission that had been requested by the United States government itself.
Baghdad will formally denounce this behavior to the United Nations. However, it would be idle to expect UN outrage about the US killing of a diplomatic envoy. International law was dead even before 2003’s Shock and Awe.
Mahdi Army is back
Under these circumstances, it’s no wonder the Iraqi Parliament approved a non-binding resolution asking the Iraqi government to expel foreign troops by cancelling a request for military assistance from the US.
Translation: Yankee go home.
Predictably, Yankee will refuse the demand. Trump: “If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever. It’ll make Iranian sanctions look somewhat tame.”
US troops already are set to remain in Syria illegally – to “take care of the oil.” Iraq, with its extraordinary energy reserves, is an even more serious case. Leaving Iraq means Trump, US neocons and the Deep State lose control, directly and indirectly, of the oil for good. And, most of all, lose the possibility of endless interfering against the Axis of Resistance – Iran-Iraq-Syria-Hezbollah.
Apart from the Kurds – bought and paid for – Iraqis all across the political spectrum are tuned in to public opinion: this occupation is over. That includes Muqtada al-Sadr, who reactivated the Mahdi Army and wants the US embassy shut down for good.
As I saw it live at the time, the Mahdi Army was the Pentagon’s nemesis, especially around 2003-04. The only reason the Mahdi Army were appeased was because Washington offered Sadr Saddam Hussein, the man who killed his father, for summary execution without trial. For all his political inconsistencies, Sadr is immensely popular in Iraq.
Soleimani pysop
Hezbollah’s secretary-general Sayyed Nasrallah, in a very detailed speech, goes to the jugular on the meaning of Soleimani’s assassination.
Nasrallah tells how the US identified the strategic role of Soleimani in every battlefield – Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iran. He tells how Israel saw Soleimani as an “existential threat” but “dared not to kill him. They could have killed him in Syria, where his movements were public.”
So the decision to assassinate Soleimani in public, as Nasrallah reads it, was a psyop. And the “fair retribution” is “ending the American military presence in our region.” All US military personnel will be kept on their toes, watching their backs, full time. This has nothing to do with American citizens: “I’m not talking about picking on them, and picking on them is forbidden to us.”
With a single stroke, the assassination of Soleimani has managed to unite not only Iraqis but Iranians, and in fact the whole Axis of Resistance. On myriad levels, Soleimani could be described as the 21st century Persian Che Guevara: the Americans have made sure he’s metastasizing into the Muslim Resistance Che.
Oil war
No tsunami of pedestrian US mainstream media PR will be able to disguise a massive strategic blunder – not to mention yet another blatantly illegal targeted assassination.
Yet this might as well have been a purposeful blunder. Killing Soleimani does prove that Trump, the Deep State and the usual suspects all agree on the essentials: there can be no entente cordiale between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Divide and rule remains the norm.
Michael Hudson sheds light on what is in effect a protracted “democratic” oil war: “The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control of the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi troops (Isis, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress of the US dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.”
Neither Trump nor the Deep State could not fail to notice that Soleimani was the key strategic asset for Iraq to eventually assert control of its oil wealth, while progressively defeating the Wahhabi/Salafist/jihadi galaxy. So he had to go.
‘Nuclear option’
For all the rumble surrounding Iraqi commitment to expel US troops and the Iranian pledge to react to the Soleimani assassination at a time of its choosing, there’s no way to make the imperial masters listen without a financial hit.
Enter the world derivatives market, which every major player knows is a financial WMD.
The derivatives are used to drain a trillion dollars a year out of the market in manipulated profits. These profits, of course, are protected under the “too big to prosecute” doctrine.
It’s all obviously parasitic and illegal. The beauty is it can be turned into a nuclear option against the imperial masters.
I’ve written extensively about it. New York connections told me the columns all landed on Trump’s desk. Obviously he does not read anything – but the message was there, and also delivered in person.
This past Friday, two American, mid-range, traditional funds bit the dust because they were leveraging in derivatives linked to oil prices.
If Tehran ever decided to shut down the Strait of Hormuz – call it the nuclear option – that would trigger a world depression as trillions of dollars of derivatives imploded.
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) counts about $600 billion in total derivatives. Not really. Swiss sources say there are at least 1.2 quadrillion with some placing it at 2.5 quadrillion. That would imply a derivatives market 28 times the world’s GDP.
On Hormuz, the shortage of 22% of the world oil supply simply could not be papered over. It would detonate a collapse and cause a market crash infinitely worse than 1933 Weimar Germany.
The Pentagon gamed every possible scenario of a war on Iran – and the results are grim. Sound generals – yes, there are some – know the US Navy would not be able to keep the Strait of Hormuz open: it would have to leave immediately or, as sitting ducks, face total annihilation.
So Trump threatening to destroy 52 Iranian sites – including priceless cultural heritage – is a bluff. Worse: this is the stuff of bragging by an ISIS-worthy barbarian. The Taliban destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas. ISIS nearly destroyed Palmyra. Trump Bakr al-Mar-a-Lago wants to join in as the destroyer of Persian culture.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 22:45 - Soy-Boys & Unions Sink America's Biggest Milk Producer
Soy-Boys & Unions Sink America's Biggest Milk Producer
Borden Dairy Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday amid rising milk prices and what court filings described as an “unsustainable” debt pile, reported Bloomberg.
Borden was founded in 1857, one of America’s oldest and largest dairy producers is the second major dairy company to fold in months.
Court filings said the company would use Chapter 11 bankruptcy to “pursue a financial restructuring designed to reduce its current debt load, maximize value and position the company for long-term success.”
Dean Foods, the nation’s largest milk producer, filed for voluntary Chapter 11 in November, citing unsustainable business practices, changing consumer trends, and rising competition.
Filings showed Borden had assets and liabilities of around $100 million to $500 million. The company plans to conduct routine operations through the restructuring period.
The filing noted that its debt load and pension obligations were a significant factor that made operations unsustainable.
The company has approximately 3,330 employees, with 22% of them covered by a collective bargaining agreement. The filing doesn’t say if layoffs or a complete liquidation is imminent
Net sales of $1.2 billion were recorded in 2018 but resulted in a net loss of $14.6 million. The company reported a net loss of $42.4 million in 2019, the filing said.
Besides too much debt, the company blamed shifting consumer trends, one where American refrigerators are being stockpiled with almond, soy, rice and nut milk, instead of traditional dairy products.
“While milk remains a household item in the United States, people are simply drinking less of it,” CFO Jason Monaco said in court papers.
“In parallel, since the turn of the century, the number of U.S. dairy farms has rapidly declined.”
The filing also outlined an abundance of milk supply despite spot prices rising 27% in 2019, even as retail prices and margins are plunging. The mechanics behind the demise of Borden is also how Dean Foods failed.
At the moment, Borden needs a cash infusion of $26.6 million to operate through bankruptcy – if it cannot obtain a source of liquidity – then the company might collapse under its weight of debt.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 22:25 - Why Pirates Are Giving Up On Oil
Why Pirates Are Giving Up On Oil
Authored by Julianne Geiger via OilPrice.com,
Piracy in some of the world’s most critical oil chokepoints is on the rise – but now, pirates are resorting back to another method of income generation better suited to times of lower oil prices: taking human captives.
Sometimes, black market oil prices just aren’t lucrative enough. In the days of $100 oil, oil theft was a hot commodity. Today, pirates are supplementing their stolen oil income with ransomed sailors, creating a whole new set of problems for the oil industry to tackle.
Where Piracy is Hot, and Where It’s Not
Piracy is being dealt with fairly successfully in certain regions of the world. In others, efforts to shore up maritime security have failed. But the threat of pirates taking human captives is alive and well in all regions.
East Africa – Once a piracy hotspot, piracy off Somalia’s coast has fallen in recent years as the international community–including Iran–stepped up to tackle this pressing problem that disrupted the flow of goods, including oil, through the critical oil route. Somalia, too, has stepped up its ability to prosecute pirates. The East Africa area includes the Bab-el-Mandeb between Yemen and Djibouti, as well as the Gulf of Aden. Piracy incidents here hit a high of 54 in 2017, before falling back to just 9 in 2018, according to One Earth Future’s annual report The State of Maritime Piracy 2018.
But while piracy off Somalia has toned down in recent years, the problem of using captive humans as an additional income stream has not gone away. One Iranian seafarer, for example, who was held captive by Somalia pirates was finally released after four years due to poor health. Three of his shipmates, however, are still being held to this day.
West Africa – While things appear to be cooling off in the pirate world off Africa’s east coast, the west side is seeing a disturbing rise in piracy. And not just any piracy–piracy with a human captive component. The area most subject to piracy here is off the coast of Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea in general. So much so has this alarming shift risen from oil to persons over the course of the last year in West Africa, that India–the most prolific source of maritime sailors in the region–has banned all Indian seafarers from working on vessels in Nigerian waters and in the Gulf of Guinea. On the line here for Nigeria is $10 billion annually in crude oil sales to India, who purchases more than one-third of all Nigerian oil.
Just last month, pirates in the Gulf of Guinea hijacked two Indian oil tankers in two separate instances. But they didn’t stop with the crude oil. They also took the Indian crewmembers hostage both times. While one set of hostages have since been released, the second batch is still being held in captivity, adding to the growing unrest in the region as shippers and sailors fear for their own safety and for the safety of their crew.
Overall in 2019, there were a total of 89 crew hijacked for ransom in the Gulf of Guinea, and there is now even a special rider offered by one insurer, Beazley, called the “Gulf of Guinea Piracy Plus” that compensates vessels up to a certain maximum should they fall prey to pirates.
This area is where 82% of all kidnappings on the world seas take place, as crime syndicates in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria look to capitalize not only on the country’s sizable crude oil trade but on the ransom for the many kidnapped sailors that traverse nearby waters as well.
The rise of this oil-piracy-with-a-side-of-people has been attributed, quite lazily, on poverty in the area, but the extracurricular kidnappings and ransoms come with a special brand of gratuitous brutality that speaks less of poverty-induced desperation and more of wanton criminality and woefully insufficient prosecutorial infrastructure and corrupt governments.
Southeast Asia – There is also a rise in piracy off the Singapore Strait, Strait of Malacca, and in the Sulu and Celebes Seas. In the last month of 2019, there were six attempted piracy attacks over a string of just six days. All together for 2019, there were 30 recorded piracy incidents just in the Strait of Singapore alone. The area is another critical path for oil traveling from the Persian Gulf to the booming East Asian market.
There has not only been an overall increased risk of piracy in this area, but an increased risk of kidnapping for ransom as well. In the Sulu Sea, most of the ransom incidents were claimed by Islamist terrorist organization Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), based out of the southern Phillippines. Its latest ransom demand for a kidnapped Indonesian national was $567,000. The group is known for beheading hostages when ransoms aren’t paid.
The Cost of Piracy
Piracy has a cost, but it’s more than just stolen oil. All of the costs associated with stolen oil, including the lost oil itself, the ransom money, insurance risk premiums, and so on will invariably be added into the cost of every barrel of oil the world over. Ransom payments, per person, can range anywhere from $18,000 to $570,000. And those ransoms are mostly being paid.
“Pirates are predominantly taking crew because that is where the money is. People are paying it,” Phil Diacon, Dryan Global chief executive told Maritime Intelligence.
War risk premiums for ships traveling through the Gulf of Guinea, for example, incurred $18 million in extra charges in 2017. And over a third of all ships traversing the Gulf carried an additional kidnap and ransom rider at a total cost of $20 million–just for the Gulf of Guinea.
Contracted maritime security is another expense.
All together, piracy in West Africa alone cost more than $800 million in 2017.
Then there is the human cost. Some captives are held as little as a few days while payments are arranged. Others are held for years. Case in point: The captives are often subjected to beatings, starvation, threats, and uninhabitable conditions.
The most recent incident of oil piracy came over the last days of 2019, as eight sailors were abducted from a Greek oil tanker near a port in Cameroon.
Persistent weak maritime security in pirate-stricken oil chokepoints across the globe will continue to weigh heavily on the oil industry and chip away at oil profits.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 22:05 - China Embassy Issues US Travel Warning Amid Threats Of Terrorism By Iran
China Embassy Issues US Travel Warning Amid Threats Of Terrorism By Iran
The Chinese embassy in Washington issued a travel warning to its citizens living or on holiday in the U.S. of increasing security threats following President Trump’s airstrike that killed Iran’s top military commander major general Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on Friday.
“The Chinese embassy suggests and reminds Chinese citizens in the U.S. to closely watch the security situation, stay alert and take safety precautions, be cautious before going to public places,” the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the U.S. said in a Sunday statement, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, warned in a statement that the “criminals” responsible for Soleimani’s assassination will face “severe revenge,” and that his work fighting on behalf of the Iranian people “won’t be stopped by his martyrdom,” according to a statement published on Twitter.
China is worried that Iran-backed Hezbollah sleeper cells embedded in major US metropolitan areas could be activated in the coming days, weeks, and or months could attack soft targets that are not heavily defended, such as restaurants, sporting events, and shopping malls.
Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf published a special bulletin Saturday via the National Terrorism Advisory System, indicating that there is no credible terrorist threat but warns of lone-wolf terrorists and cyber-attacks.
The new @DHSgov NTAS Bulletin on the threat landscape was issued to inform & reassure the American public, state/local governments & private partners that DHS is actively monitoring & preparing for any specific, credible threat, should one arise. pic.twitter.com/iNnHU1TI9A
— Acting Secretary Chad Wolf (@DHS_Wolf) January 4, 2020
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China’s travel warning to the U.S. was read more than 130 million times on Weibo, as it appears this could result in lower tourism to the U.S.
“Our fellow compatriots in the U.S., please be careful and stay safe!” one Weibo user said.
Since the airstrike, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing was “highly concerned” about the threat of conflict in the Middle East.
“China advocates that all parties should earnestly abide by the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter and the basic norms of international relations,” Shuang said Friday.
“We urge all parties concerned, especially the United States, to keep calm and exercise restraint and avoid a further escalation of tensions,” he added.
The threat of a terrorist attack could lead to lower tourism figures in the months ahead as other embassies will likely warn their citizens about the travel risks associated with the US.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 21:45 - Want A Do-Over? Astrophysicist Says He Knows How To Build A Time Machine
Want A Do-Over? Astrophysicist Says He Knows How To Build A Time Machine
Authored by Manuel Garcia Aguilar via TheMindUnleashed.com,
Would you like to travel back in time and change things from your past? Well, maybe you can. Ronald Mallet, an astrophysicist and tenured University of Connecticut physics professor, thinks it is theoretically possible.
Time-traveling has been in our imaginations since we discovered what time is and how we move in it. Our comprehension so far is that we move in that one dimension constantly, always forward, and that we don’t really have a choice—unlike in the other three dimensions in which we live our lives.
Einstein’s theory of special relativity always plays a crucial role when new theories of time traveling appear, and this is not an exception. This theory explains how time is not absolute, as we have believed, but rather, it depends on the speed at which an object is moving, and time can accelerate or decelerate depending on that.
The Twin Paradox explains how if there are two identical twins and one of them makes a journey into space in a really high-speed rocket, after he returns to Earth he will have aged less than the one that stayed on Earth. This is well accepted in the science community as a possible scenario if we ever get to reproduce this experiment. However, time travel is not possible, at least not so far.
While Mallet acknowledges that his theories and designs are unlikely to allow time travel in his lifetime, that’s not stopping him from pursuing his dream and to meet his beloved father again; therefore, he has developed some scientific equations and principles upon which he says a time machine could be created.
Mallet was age 10 when his father suddenly died from a heart attack, that event changed the track of his life forever.
“For me, the sun rose and set on him, he was just the center of things,” he told CNN Travel. “Even today, after all of these years, there’s still an unreality about it for me.”
Ron Mallett and his family at Bronx Park in the 1950s.
Mallet has spent his career investigating black holes as well as general relativity. On his professional journey, he has also been theorizing about time travel and a complex mission to build a machine capable of visiting the past. Some of his peers would argue he’ll never get there.
“If you can bend space, there’s a possibility of you twisting space,” Mallett told CNN. “In Einstein’s theory, what we call space also involves time—that’s why it’s called space-time, whatever it is you do to space also happens to time.”
Mallet believes that it is theoretically possible to twist time into a loop that would allow for time travel into the past. He has even built a prototype showing how lasers might help him achieve this goal.
“By studying the type of gravitational field that was produced by a ring laser,” Mallett told CNN, “this could lead to a new way of looking at the possibility of a time machine based on a circulating beam of light.”
Mallet is conscious that his idea is wholly theoretical at this point and that some restrictions may apply.
“You can send information back,” he told CNN, “but you can only send it back to the point at which you turn the machine on.”
Physics is beautiful and complicated. Some of the greatest minds across history doubted themselves when they became aware of the size of the discovery they had made and Einstein was one of them, creating the “cosmological constant” to maintain a “static universe” just after he discovered that the universe and everything inside it was expanding.
Hopefully, if Ron Mallet gets to build that machine in his lifetime, he doesn’t get too scared to actually use it.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 21:25 - How Iran Is Bankrolling Regional Instability
How Iran Is Bankrolling Regional Instability
After top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was killed by a U.S. missile on Friday in Baghdad, Washington is awaiting retaliation from Iran. The Trump administration has said repeatedly that Soleimani’s assassination was in connection with his role in Iran’s strategy to back different militia other destabilizing armed groups throughout the Middle East. As Statista’s Niall McCarthy shows in the graphic below, data from a report from The Soufan Center sheds light on Iran’s grand strategy and “playbook” in the Middle East.
You will find more infographics at Statista
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran had already started rising in May of 2019 after several tankers were “sabotaged” off the UAE coast. The New York Times reported then that National Security Advisor John Bolton ordered a military contingency plan to be presented to senior White House security officials which involves the deployment of 120,000 U.S. troops to the Middle East. That came after Bolton announced that a U.S. carrier strike group centered around the USS Abraham Lincoln would be deployed to the region along with B-52 heavy bombers.
Iran has not developed its capabilities and regional strength in order to prevail in a conventional 21st century conflict. It has rather focused on pumping money and military hardware into regional allies, proxies and militias with the aim of spreading political prosperity and enabling them to project power in the region and beyond.
Along with training and arms shipments, soft power (financial, political, diplomatic, public relationship and other non-military mechanisms) is an important cog in Tehran’s strategy. This allows it to portray itself as strong economically as well as enabling it to build political support overseas and insulate it proxies and allies. Examples of this include its investments in a major port project in Oman as well as its substantial gas exports to neighboring Iraq. Iran has also taken advantage of the rift between Saudi Arabia, the GCC and Qatar. It has moved to increase food exports to Doha and granted Qatar Airways the use of its airspace.
Given the extent of its regional activities, how much money is it actually pumping into its neighbors? The Soufan Center’s research shows where Iranian money is flowing in the Middle East and where Iranian-backed proxies and militant groups are active. Syria receives an estimated $6 billion annually of economic aid, subsidized oil, commodity transfers and military aid. Iraq receives up to $1 billion, some of which ends up in the hands of militia organizations. Lebanon, which is of course home to Hezbollah, sees around $700 million of financial support, practically all of which goes to the militant group.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 21:05 - Fragmentation In 'The Axis Of Resistance' Led To Soleimani's Death
Fragmentation In 'The Axis Of Resistance' Led To Soleimani's Death
Authored by Elijah Magnier via EJMagnier.com,
It was not the US decision to fire missiles against the IRGC commander Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani that killed the Iranian officer and his companions in Baghdad. Yes, of course, the order that was given to launch missiles from the two drones (which destroyed the two cars carrying Sardar Soleimani and his companion the Iraqi commander in al-Hashd al-Shaabi Jamal Jaafar Al-Tamimi aka Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes and burned their bodies in the vehicle) came from US command and control.
However, the reason President Donald Trump made this decision derives from the weakness of the “axis of resistance”, which has completely retreated from the level of performance that Iran believed it was capable of after decades of work to strengthen this “axis”.
A close companion of Major General Qassim Soleimani, to whom he spoke hours before boarding the plane that took him from Damascus to Baghdad, told me:
“The nobleman died. Palestine above all has lost Hajj Qassem (Soleimani). He was the “King” of the Axis of the Resistance and its leader. He was assassinated and this is exactly what he was hoping to reach in this life (Martyrdom). However, this axis will live and will not die. No doubt, the Axis of the Resistance needs to review its policy and regenerate itself to correct its path. This was what Hajj Qassim was complaining about and planning to work on and strategizing about in his last hours.”
The US struck Iran at the heart of its pride by killing Major General Soleimani. But the “axis of the Resistance” killed him before that. This is how:
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assassinated the deputy head of the Military Council (the highest authority in the Lebanese Hezbollah, which is headed by its Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah), Hajj Imad Mughniyah in Damascus, Syria, Hezbollah could not avenge him until today.
When Trump gave Netanyahu Jerusalem as the “capital of Israel”, the “Axis of the Resistance” did not move except by holding television symposia and conferences verbally rejecting the decision.
When President Trump offered the occupied Syrian Golan Heights to Israel and the “Axis of Resistance” did not react, the US President Donald Trump and his team understood that they were opposed by no effective deterrent. The inaction of the Resistance axis emboldened Trump to do what he wants.
And when Israel bombed hundreds of Syrian and Iranian targets in Syria, the “Axis of the Resistance” justified its lack of retaliation by the typical sentence: “We do not want to be dragged along by the timing of the engagement imposed by the enemy,” as a senior official in this axis told me.
In Iraq shortly before his death, Major General Soleimani was complaining about the weakening of the Iraqi ranks within this “Axis of the Resistance”, represented by the Al-Bina’ (Construction) Alliance and other groups close to this alliance like Al-Hikma of Ammar al-Hakim and Haidar al-Abadi, formerly close to Iran, that have gone over to the US side.
In Iraq, Major General Soleimani was very patient and never lost his temper. He was trying to reconcile the Iraqis, both his allies and those who had chosen the US camp and disagreed with him. He used to hug those who shouted at him to lower tensions and continue dialogue to avoid spoiling the meeting. Anyone who raised his voice during discussions soon found that it was Soleimani who calmed everyone down.
Hajj Qassem Soleimani was unable to reach a consensus on the new Prime Minister’s name among those he deemed to be allies in the same coalition. He asked Iraqi leaders to select the names and went through all of these asking questions about the acceptability of these names to the political groups, to the Marjaiya, to protestors in the street and whether the suggested names were not provocative or challenging to the US. Notwithstanding the animosity between Iran and the US, Soleimani encouraged the selection of a personality that would not be boycotted by the US. Soleimani believed the US capable of damaging Iraq and understood the importance of maintaining a good relationship with the US for the stability of the country.
Soleimani was shocked by the dissension among Iraqi Shia and believed that the “axis of resistance” needed a new vision as it was faltering. In the final hours before his death, Major General Soleimani was ruminating on the profound antagonisms between Iraqis of the same camp.
When the Iraqi street began to move against the government, the line rejecting American hegemony was fragmented because it was part of the authority that ruled and governed Iraq. To make matters worse, Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr directed his arrows against his partners in government, as though the street demonstrations did not target him, the politician controlling the largest number of Iraqi deputies, ministers and state officials, who had participated in the government for more than ten years.
Major General Soleimani admonished Moqtada Al-Sadr for his stances, which contributed to undermining the Iraqi ranks because the Sadrist leader did not offer an alternative solution or practical project other than the chaos. Moqtada has his own men, the feared Saraya al-Salam, present in the street.
When US Defense Secretary Mark Esper called Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi on December 28 and informed him of America’s intentions of hitting Iraqi security targets inside Iraq, including the PMU, Soleimani was very disappointed by Abdul-Mahdi’s failure to effectively oppose Esper. Abdul-Mahdi merely told Esper that the proposed US action was dangerous. Soleimani knew that the US would not have hit Iraqi targets had Abdul-Mahdi dared to oppose the US decision. The targeted areas were a common Iranian-Iraqi operational stage to monitor and control ISIS movements on the borders with Syria and Iraq. The US would have reversed its decision had the Iraqi Prime Minister threatened the US with retaliation in the event that Iraqi forces were bombed and killed. After all, the US had no legal right to attack any objective in Iraq without the agreement of the Iraqi government. This decision was the moment when Iraq has lost its sovereignty and the US took control of the country.
This effective US control is another reason why President Trump gave the green light to kill Major General Soleimani. The Iraqi front had demonstrated its weakness and also, it was necessary to select a strong Iraqi leader with the guts to stand to the US arrogance and unlawful actions.
Iran has never controlled Iraq, as most analysts mistakenly believe and speculate. For years, the US has worked hard in the corridors of the Iraqi political leadership lobby for its own interests. The most energetic of its agents was US Presidential envoy Brett McGurk, who clearly realised the difficulties of navigating inside Iraqi leaders’ corridors during the search for a prime minister of Iraq before the appointment of Adel Abdel Mahdi, the selection of President Barham Saleh and other governments in the past. Major General Soleimani and McGurk shared an understanding of these difficulties. Both understood the nature of the Iraqi political quagmire.
Soleimani did not give orders to fire missiles at US bases or attack the US Embassy. If it was in his hands to destroy them with accurate missiles and to remove the entire embassy from its place without repercussions, he would not have hesitated. But the Iraqis have their own opinions, methods, modus operandi and selection of targets and missile calibres; they never relied on Soleimani for such decisions.
Iranian involvement in Iraqi affairs was never welcomed by the Marjaiya in Najaf, even if it agreed to receive Soleimani on a few occasions. They clashed over the reelection of Nuri al-Maliki, Soleimani’s preferred candidate, to the point that the Marjaiya wrote a letter making its refusal of al-Maliki explicit. This led to the selection of Abadi as prime minister.
Soleimani’s views contradicted the perception of the Marjaiya, that had to write a clear message, firstly, to reject the re-election of Nori al-Maliki to a third session, despite Soleimani’s insistence.
All of the above is related to the stage that followed the 2011 departure of US forces from Iraq under President Obama. Prior to that, Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis was the link between the Iraqis and Iran: he had the decision-making power, the vision, the support of various groups, and effectively served as the representative of Soleimani, who did not interfere in the details. These Iraqi groups met with Soleimani often in Iran; Soleimani rarely travelled to Iraq during the period of heavy US military presence.
Soleimani, although he was the leader of the “Axis of the Resistance”, was sometimes called “the king” in some circles because his name evokes Solomon. According to sources within the “Axis of the Resistance”, he “never dictated his own policy but left a margin of movement and decision to all leaders of the axis without exception. Therefore, he was considered the link between this axis and the supreme leader Sayyed Ali Khamenei. Soleimani was able to contact Sayyed Khamenei at any time and directly without mediation. The Leader of the revolution considered Soleimani as his son.
According to sources, in Syria, Soleimani “never hesitated to jump inside a truck, ride an ordinary car, take the first helicopter, or travel on a transport or cargo plane as needed. He did not take any security precautions but used his phone (which he called a companion spy) freely because he believed that when the decision came to assassinate him, he would follow his destiny. He looked forward to becoming a martyr because he had already lived long.”
Was the leader of the “resistance axis” managing and running it?
Sayyed Ali Khamenei told Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: “You are an Arab and the Arabs accept you more than they accept Iran”. Sayyed Nasrallah directed and managed the axis of Lebanon, Syria and Yemen and had an important role in Iraq. Hajj Soleimani was the liaison between the axis of the resistance and Iran and he was the financial and logistical officer. According to my source, “He was a friend of all leaders and officials of all ranks. He was humble and looked after everyone he had to deal with”.
The “Axis of Resistance” indirectly allowed the killing of Qassem Soleimani. If Israel and the US could know Sayyed Nasrallah’s whereabouts, they would not hesitate a moment to assassinate him. They may be aware: the reaction may be limited to burning flags and holding conferences and manifesting in front of an embassy. Of course, this kind of reaction does not deter President Trump who wants to be re-elected with the support of Israel and US public opinion. He wants to present himself as a warrior and determined leader who loves battle and killing.
Iran invested 40 years building the “Axis of the Resistance”. It cannot remain idle, faced with the assassination of the Leader of this axis. Would a suitable price be the US exit from Iraq and condemnation in the Security Council? Would that, together with withdrawal from the nuclear deal, be enough for Iran to avenge its General? Will the ensuing battle be confined to the Iraqi stage? Will it be used for the victory of certain Iraqi political players?
The assassination of its leader represents the supreme test for the Axis of Resistance. All sides, friend and foe, are awaiting its response.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 20:45 - 52 Stealth Fighter Jets Elephant Walk In Show Of Force Amid Threats Of War
52 Stealth Fighter Jets Elephant Walk In Show Of Force Amid Threats Of War
With another 3,000 US troops preparing to deploy to the Middle East and six Boeing B-52 Stratofortress nuclear-capable bombers headed to a major US military base at Deigo Garcia, 52 stealth fighter jets conducted a Combat Power Exercise Monday amid escalating tensions between the US and Iran.
Also known as the Elephant Walk exercise, 52 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters carrying missiles and bombs were taxiing down a runway at Hill Air Force base in Utah on Monday.
Elephant walks are generally conducted right before a minimum interval takeoff (MITO), a technique used by the US Air Force (USAF) to scramble all jets to take off at twelve- and fifteen-second intervals.
The objective of the exercise is to get all fighters and bombers in the air within fifteen minutes of an alert of an incoming missile attack.
“The exercise, which was planned for months, demonstrated their ability to employ a large force of F-35As – testing readiness in the areas of personnel accountability, aircraft generation, ground operations, flight operations, and combat capability against air and ground targets. A little more than four years after receiving their first combat-coded F-35A Lightning II aircraft, Hill’s fighter wings have achieved full warfighting capability,” said the 388th Fighter Wing in a Facebook post.
From troop deployments to a show of force with B-52 bombers and stealth fighters, the Trump administration is sending a clear message to Iran.
Meanwhile, Iranian state media channels on Monday began “answering” US threats, broadcasting military “shows of force” against the United States to its population:
عاجل : التلفزيون الإيراني بث قبل قليل نشيد الحرب الإيرانية – العراقية في إشارة إلى حالة الحرب التي قد تشهدها المنطقة بعد مقتل سليماني . هذا النشيد ومترجم إلى اللغة العربية. pic.twitter.com/2NnNxYDOKW
— محمد مجيد الأحوازي (@MohamadAhwaze) January 6, 2020
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President Trump has already threatened an all-out attack on 52 sites inside Iran. The threat of war has never been greater, the world has dove into uncharted waters in the last week. All eyes on possible retaliation strike by Iran.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 20:25 - Devin Nunes: "Republicans Are Actively Investigating (IG Michael) Atkinson"
Devin Nunes: "Republicans Are Actively Investigating (IG Michael) Atkinson"
Ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes told The Sara Carter Show that Republicans have an active investigation into Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who alerted lawmakers to the so-called whistleblower complaint that has led to President Donald Trump’s partisan impeachment in the House.
Nunes, R-CA, spoke to this reporter for Monday’s podcast.
He revealed that transcripts of Atkinson’s secret testimony will expose that the Inspector General either lied or he needs to make corrections to his statements to lawmakers. The transcripts has been kept from the public by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-CA, because it is damaging to their “impeachment scam,” Nunes said.
The whistleblower, who has not been formally named by lawmakers, met with Schiff’s staff members prior to submitting their complaint to Atkinson. Schiff was chided by Republican lawmakers and many members of the media for falsely claiming that his committee had no contact with the whistleblower.
The Schiff Factor
Schiff stated publicly “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower.” In fact, the whistleblower had reached out to a committee aide before filing a complaint, a story that was first reported by the New York Times.
“We really do need to hear from the whistleblower,” Nunes told The Sara Carter Show.
“That needs to happen and the fact that the Democrats won’t release the transcript of us interviewing the Inspector General Atkinson that brought this scam forward. Everyone needs to see that testimony and the reason that it’s not being released is because it’s very damaging, not only to the whistleblower, but also to Atkinson himself.”
Nunes could not disclose the content of the whistleblower testimony but said “this testimony is really bad and…the Republicans have an active investigation into Atkinson.”
Nunes noted that he, along with Reps. Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Atkinson stating that the anti-Trump whistleblower did not offer any direct, first-hand evidence of alleged wrongdoing against Trump. They questioned Atkinson’s reasoning for accepting the complaint that is filled with hearsay and rumor.
Atkinson Doesn’t Want To Answer Questions
The Republican lawmakers asked Atkinson to explain who revised the complaint and for what reason.
“We’ve mentioned it, but I think people have just kind of ignored it because, of course, we don’t have the subpoena power, so we can’t bring Atkinson back in but he’s got serious questions to answer for because I believe that he either lied to Congress or he really needs to correct his statements and he’s refused to respond,” said Nunes, who could not elaborate on Atkinson’s testimony.
He said that Atkinson’s response to their letter was not sufficient.
Atkinson “gave us a very typical IC response, which is to not answer the question,” said Nunes.
“Three years ago, that might’ve worked,” he said.
“It doesn’t work with us anymore. He is under active investigation. I’m not gonna go any farther than that because you know obviously he has a chance to come in and prove his innocence, but my guess is Schiff, Atkinson they don’t want that transcript out because it’s very damaging.”
“Being that it hasn’t been made public yet, why would it not be,” Nunes questioned.
“And nobody in the media is calling for it,” he told The Sara Carter Show.
“You’d think they would be, but you know I’ve talked about it on television, John Ratcliffe’s talked about it on television. There’s very few of us that actually know what’s in the transcript, but, yeah, it’s a major problem.”
Well, this reporter is asking for it and it should be made public. American’s have a right to know exactly how the whistleblower complaint was brought to Congress and how this alleged complaint led to the partisan House impeachment of President Trump.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 20:05 - Ghosn's 'Great Escape' Masterminded By Ex-Green Beret, Involved 300-Mile High-Speed Rail Sprint
Ghosn's 'Great Escape' Masterminded By Ex-Green Beret, Involved 300-Mile High-Speed Rail Sprint
Writers for the inevitable HBO miniseries about former Nissan Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn’s “Great Escape” from house arrest in Tokyo will have no shortage of material to draw from when they try to reconstruct what has become one of the most audacious and daring corporate capers in recent memory.
A slew of reports published over the weekend continued the drip-drip of salacious details from Ghosn’s high-wire clandestine flight across Japan and then across most of Asia via plane, all while stowed away in a hefty case meant to store audio equipment.
First, reports identified the team responsible for planning and executing Ghosn’s “extrication.” Both WSJ and Bloomberg pointed to Michael Taylor, an ex-Green Beret whose private security company has done work for the federal government, and private entities including the New York Times, ABC, Delta Air Lines and Disney on Ice.
Taylor has a somewhat checkered past. He spent a total of 19 months in prison (on a sentence of 24 months) after being indicted back in 2012 in two criminal cases stemming from a federal bid-rigging investigation involving a 24-year FBI veteran. Taylor and his firm were eventually indicted for contract fraud and money laundering after a grand jury investigation in Utah. Details are vague, but the Feds charged Taylor with bribing the agent. “Giving federal agents money is nothing new to Mr. Taylor,” said US prosecutor Maria Lerner at Taylor’s sentencing in 2015.
He vigorously disputed the case while imprisoned in a local Utah jail awaiting trial. He eventually pleaded guilty to both counts, even as some of his former clients wrote heart-wrenching letters to the judge overseeing the case, attesting to Taylor’s character.
One mother praised Taylor in writing to his sentencing judge for helping secure her abducted daughter’s release in Lebanon in 1997.
“I know that my connection with Michael was more than just a job,” the mother wrote. “His heart and soul guided him step by step to always do the right thing.”
In a separate, earlier incident, Taylor was indicted in Massachusetts on charges including illegal wiretapping. He eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.
Taylor’s firm was contracted for the job about three months ago, after Ghosn made the final decision to go ahead with the job. It’s unclear how, exactly, Taylor is connected to Ghosn, but both men share longstanding ties to Lebanon, along with a third man who was allegedly involved in the plot, and who allegedly traveled on the charter flight that ferried Ghosn out of Japan.
According to WSJ, that individual was George Zayek, a Lebanese-born American citizen who has worked with Taylor’s security company in the past. Zayek is the brother of Elias Zayek, one of the founders of the Lebanese Forces, a Christian militia in Lebanon. Elias was assassinated in 1990 just months before the end of the brutal, long-running Lebanese civil war. His brother George walks with a limp from an injury sustained during fighting in Lebanon during the 1970s.
The case that Ghosn was allegedly smuggled out of Japan inside.
Taylor also as a connection to Lebanon’s Christian community. He served in Lebanon back in the early 1980s as a Green Beret paratrooper. Taylor met his wife in Lebanon, and speaks fluent Arabic. Later, working as a private contractor, he helped train Lebanon’s Christian militias.
Back in 2012, Taylor traveled to Lebanon to work on a classified DEA operation that insiders have described as “one of the most important DEA Operations in history.” Taylor was described as a “key player” in the operation.
Taylor
In 2009, Taylor’s former company (as it existed before his legal troubles) was approached by the New York Times about helping to rescue reporter David Rohde from Taliban captivity in Afghanistan. Taylor planned a “snatch and grab” operation to help rescue Rohde, but before he could pull it off, Rohde escaped on his own.
Rescuing kidnapping victims overseas has become something of a specialty for Taylor, and he has been contracted by the FBI and the State Department to rescue victims over the years.
Taylor managed to rebuild his business following his legal troubles after winning back $2 million of $5 million in company assets that were seized by federal authorities.
WSJ published a lengthy piece detailing the operation, while Bloomberg aggregate reports revealing small details of the operation that originally surfaced in the Lebanese press, like the fact that Ghosn’s 15-man extraction team used public transport to make the 300-mile sprint from Tokyo to Osaka before boarding the private jet that eventually carried Ghosn from Japan to Istanbul, then on to Beirut, where he finally landed at the Rafic Hariri International Airport.
WSJ revealed that during a trip to Osaka’s Kansai Airport a few months, Taylor noticed a critical security flaw in the airport terminal for chartered flights: The security equipment used to scan luggage was too small to X-Ray oversize luggage. This proved to be critical: The box that carried Ghosn (which had holes drilled in the bottom allowing him to breath during the trip) was not closely scrutinized by airport officials.
Ghosn surrendered his passport when he was arrested more than 13 months ago by Japanese police after landing in Tokyo. But he is a Lebanese citizen (he also carries Brazilian citizenship), and Lebanon doesn’t extradite its citizens.
Prior to his escape, Ghosn had said he intended to stay in Japan and fight the charges against him, though he did complain that he felt Japan’s justice system was rigged, and stacked unfairly against him.
For his supporters, the charges against Ghosn were never clear, and included failing to report income that actually wouldn’t be paid out in the form of a post-retirement bonus. Many suspect that his ouster was part of an internal vendetta organized by other senior executives, who had grown weary of Ghosn’s leadership. Before his arrest, Ghosn was revered in Japan and around the world for turning around Nissan, and was often seen as one of the world’s few rockstar CEOs.
Taylor reportedly told friends that he sympathized with Ghosn thanks to his own legal troubles, and even referred to the executive as a “hostage” of the Japanese government.
Japan, for what it’s worth, has defended its legal system. However, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that Japan’s justice system has a 99% conviction rate, which some human-rights experts have criticized. In a statement released by Ghosn after his escape, he insisted that his family played no part in the operation, and accused Japan of “inhumane” treatment.
As we reported over the weekend, the private charter service that Ghosn’s extraction team hired for the mission is MNG Jet Havacilik AS, the mysterious global aircraft charter company that gained notoriety when it was implicated in media reports for helping to smuggle gold looted from Venezuela’s central bank out of the country, so that it could be illegally sold by the Maduro government for desperately needed cash.
In a statement, the company said its planes were illegally deployed by Taylor and his team, and that it wasn’t aware that Ghosn would be a passenger on the flight. It claimed that paperwork for the flight was deliberately falsified to mislead the company.
What happens next for Ghosn will remain is uncertain: Japan has extradition treaties with many countries, including the US, making it difficult for Ghosn to leave Lebanon. And while Ghosn is, for now, out of the reach of Japanese authorities, it’s possible that Tokyo could turn its sights on Taylor, and the rest of the team used to facilitate his escape. Turkey has already arrested the pilots of the plane used to transport Ghosn, and Japan requested an international arrest warrant for Ghosn via INTERPOL.
Ghosn is expected to speak publicly for the first time since his arrest later this week. Whatever happens next, we imagine it will be good.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 19:45 - Some Thoughts On The Current State Of The U.S. Military
Some Thoughts On The Current State Of The U.S. Military
Authored by Paul Gilbert via TheMostImportantNews.com,
The Heritage Foundation publishes an annual Index of U.S. Military Strength, which assesses capacity, capability and readiness of each of the services, and rates them “very strong,” “strong,” “marginal,” “weak” or “very weak”.
Based on a broad range of personnel issues; degradation of our forces and equipment from long-term involvement in the Middle East; our inability to adequately maintain and upgrade our current inventory of aircraft and warships … with reliability; and, in some instances, the strategic superiority of our adversaries, our military’s overall rating was “marginal”.
A GAO study released in early 2019 detailed ongoing, critical problems in recruiting, training and sustaining front-line and support personnel across all services and at all levels and, purportedly, the Pentagon has no comprehensive strategy to address them. Given millennials’ attitudes toward the military, this situation will likely worsen.
Even if these issues are adequately addressed, ensuring that our military has state-of-the-art aircraft, warships, equipment and armaments is a must… and requires the application of cutting-edge, but reliable, technologies.
There are troubling signs here!
For example, as the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Gerald Ford nears delivery, most of its elevators are not operational, so aircraft and armaments cannot reach the flight deck. Hydraulic systems were replaced with electro-magnetic technology, and the “bugs” have not yet been worked out. Similarly, the dependable steam-operated aircraft catapult and arresting systems have also given way to electro-magnetic ones because they are, theoretically, upgrades … except that they don’t yet work.
Also, the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Harry Truman was taken out of service in August due to the “nagging” failure of its electrical system and no timeline was set for solving the problem … with certainty. This caused the Truman’s escort surface ships to be subsequently deployed without the Truman! The electrical problem was allegedly solved, and the Truman joined its own strike group in late November. Unfortunately, our “carrier problems” come at a time when both the RAND Corporation and the Center for a New American Security acknowledge that China is building surface ships, including carriers, and their numbers will likely surpass the U.S. within a decade.
In the air, the USAF Mobility Command repeatedly halted delivery of KC-46’s due to construction debris found left in the aircraft. After that inexcusable problem was remedied, the planes were restricted from carrying cargo and personnel indefinitely due to cargo restraint devices continuing to come unlocked and posing a potential danger to personnel, cargo … and even the pilots’ ability to control the aircraft. Even worse, the reliable re-fueling technique involving visual cues gave way to a camera system that is flawed, and the boom needs to be re-designed since it scrapes against the airframe of numerous receiving aircraft and, in particular, does not allow the A-10 to properly connect to it … presenting hardware and software troubles that could take 3-4 years to correct. The manufacturer of the KC-46’s is the beleaguered Boeing!
On top of all these “internal” concerns, Russia claims to have put into operation inter-continental and air-to-ground hypersonic missiles that can fly at up to 27 times the speed of sound and reach the continental U.S. within 30 minutes.
Our “real” adversary… China… is testing similar generation of missiles that can fly at 5 times the speed of sound.
Sadly, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper acknowledges that the U.S. is “a couple of years” from having one. In the meantime, we have placed sensors in space that can quickly detect the launch of these missiles, but we have no dependable defense against them.
The above, as well as many other issues involving our military, need to be viewed within the context of an emerging geo-political and military alliance comprised of Russia, China and Iran.
Iran’s role is to continue to stoke U.S. involvement in the Middle East … being the “bright shiny object” that keeps our eye off the proverbial ball, which is the combined military gains by Russia and China. Why is it that our military brain trust cannot see this? Additionally, the arrogance and ignorance of the American “left”, which effectively dismisses external (“existential”) military threats and, instead, concerns itself with undoing the results of the 2016 election and promoting domestic policies that are completely counter to the traditional values held by most Americans. Fast forward: If things remain unchanged, at some point in the not-too-distant future, the advanced weapons and technological capabilities of our adversaries will potentially be such a devastating threat that we might just capitulate … without ever returning fire!
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 19:25 - 3 People Critical In Salt Lake City After Tesla Runs Red Light, Smashes Into Car At "High Rate Of Speed"
3 People Critical In Salt Lake City After Tesla Runs Red Light, Smashes Into Car At "High Rate Of Speed"
Three people were critically injured after a Tesla ran a red light in Salt Lake City on Sunday morning, smashing into another car.
According to the Deseret News, the Tesla hit another car while “traveling at a high rate of speed” through a red light, according to Salt Lake Police Lt. Brett Olsen.
Two men in the Tesla and one woman in the car that was struck were all taken to the hospital in critical condition.
Meanwhile – stop us if you’ve heard this one before – the Tesla’s battery then began “exploding on scene”, prompting a hazardous materials team to show up. Photographs show the front end of the Tesla completely destroyed and ravaged by flames.
Impairment was “not immediately suspected”, according to Olsen, but an investigation is ongoing. There is no word on whether or not Autopilot played a role in the accident.
We will keep our eyes open for further developments of this story and update this post accordingly…
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 19:05 - Hudson: De-Dollarization & America's Escalating "Democratic" Oil War In The Near-East
Hudson: De-Dollarization & America's Escalating "Democratic" Oil War In The Near-East
Authored by Michael Hudson via Counterpunch.org,
The mainstream media are carefully sidestepping the method behind America’s seeming madness in assassinating Islamic Revolutionary Guard general Qassim Suleimani to start the New Year. The logic behind the assassination this was a long-standing application of U.S. global policy, not just a personality quirk of Donald Trump’s impulsive action. His assassination of Iranian military leader Suleimani was indeed a unilateral act of war in violation of international law, but it was a logical step in a long-standing U.S. strategy. It was explicitly authorized by the Senate in the funding bill for the Pentagon that it passed last year.
The assassination was intended to escalate America’s presence in Iraq to keep control the region’s oil reserves, and to back Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi troops (Isis, Al Quaeda in Iraq, Al Nusra and other divisions of what are actually America’s foreign legion) to support U.S. control of Near Eastern oil as a buttress to the U.S. dollar. That remains the key to understanding this policy, and why it is in the process of escalating, not dying down.
I sat in on discussions of this policy as it was formulated nearly fifty years ago when I worked at the Hudson Institute and attended meetings at the White House, met with generals at various armed forces think tanks and with diplomats at the United Nations. My role was as a balance-of-payments economist having specialized for a decade at Chase Manhattan, Arthur Andersen and oil companies in the oil industry and military spending. These were two of the three main dynamic of American foreign policy and diplomacy. (The third concern was how to wage war in a democracy where voters rejected the draft in the wake of the Vietnam War.)
The media and public discussion have diverted attention from this strategy by floundering speculation that President Trump did it, except to counter the (non-)threat of impeachment with a wag-the-dog attack, or to back Israeli lebensraum drives, or simply to surrender the White House to neocon hate-Iran syndrome.
The actual context for the neocon’s action was the balance of payments, and the role of oil and energy as a long-term lever of American diplomacy.
The balance of payments dimension
The major deficit in the U.S. balance of payments has long been military spending abroad. The entire payments deficit, beginning with the Korean War in 1950-51 and extending through the Vietnam War of the 1960s, was responsible for forcing the dollar off gold in 1971. The problem facing America’s military strategists was how to continue supporting the 800 U.S. military bases around the world and allied troop support without losing America’s financial leverage.
The solution turned out to be to replace gold with U.S. Treasury securities (IOUs) as the basis of foreign central bank reserves. After 1971, foreign central banks had little option for what to do with their continuing dollar inflows except to recycle them to the U.S. economy by buying U.S. Treasury securities. The effect of U.S. foreign military spending thus did not undercut the dollar’s exchange rate, and did not even force the Treasury and Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to attract foreign exchange to offset the dollar outflows on military account. In fact, U.S. foreign military spending helped finance the domestic U.S. federal budget deficit.
Saudi Arabia and other Near Eastern OPEC countries quickly became a buttress of the dollar. After these countries quadrupled the price of oil (in retaliation for the United States quadrupling the price of its grain exports, a mainstay of the U.S. trade balance), U.S. banks were swamped with an inflow of much foreign deposits – which were lent out to Third World countries in an explosion of bad loans that blew up in 1972 with Mexico’s insolvency, and destroyed Third World government credit for a decade, forcing it into dependence on the United States via the IMF and World Bank).
To top matters, of course, what Saudi Arabia does not save in dollarized assets with its oil-export earnings is spent on buying hundreds of billion of dollars of U.S. arms exports. This locks them into dependence on U.S. supply o replacement parts and repairs, and enables the United States to turn off Saudi military hardware at any point of time, in the event that the Saudis may try to act independently of U.S. foreign policy.
So maintaining the dollar as the world’s reserve currency became a mainstay of U.S. military spending. Foreign countries to not have to pay the Pentagon directly for this spending. They simply finance the U.S. Treasury and U.S. banking system.
Fear of this development was a major reason why the United States moved against Libya, whose foreign reserves were held in gold, not dollars, an which was urging other African countries to follow suit in order to free themselves from “Dollar Diplomacy.” Hillary and Obama invaded, grabbed their gold supplies (we still have no idea who ended up with these billions of dollars worth of gold) and destroyed Libya’s government, its public education system, its public infrastructure and other non-neoliberal policies.
The great threat to this is dedollarization as China, Russia and other countries seek to avoid recycling dollars. Without the dollar’s function as the vehicle for world saving – in effect, without the Pentagon’s role in creating the Treasury debt that is the vehicle for world central bank reserves – the U.S. would find itself constrained militarily and hence diplomatically constrained, as it was under the gold exchange standard.
That is the same strategy that the U.S. has followed in Syria and Iraq. Iran was threatening this dollarization strategy and its buttress in U.S. oil diplomacy.
The oil industry as buttress of the U.S. balance of payments and foreign diplomacy
The trade balance is buttressed by oil and farm surpluses. Oil is the key, because it is imported by U.S. companies at almost no balance-of-payments cost (the payments end up in the oil industry’s head offices here as profits and payments to management), while profits on U.S. oil company sales to other countries are remitted to the United States (via offshore tax-avoidance centers, mainly Liberia and Panama for many years). And as noted above, OPEC countries have been told to keep their official reserves in the form of U.S. securities (stocks and bonds as well as Treasury IOUs, but not direct purchase of U.S. companies being deemed economically important). Financially, OPEC countries are client slates of the Dollar Area.
America’s attempt to maintain this buttress explains U.S. opposition to any foreign government steps to reverse global warming and the extreme weather caused by the world’s U.S.-sponsored dependence on oil. Any such moves by Europe and other countries would reduce dependence on U.S. oil sales, and hence on U.S. ability to control the global oil spigot as a means of control and coercion, are viewed as hostile acts.
Oil also explains U.S. opposition to Russian oil exports via Nordstream. U.S. strategists want to treat energy as a U.S. national monopoly. Other countries can benefit in the way that Saudi Arabia has done – by sending their surpluses to the U.S. economy – but not to support their own economic growth and diplomacy. Control of oil thus implies support for continued global warming as an inherent part of U.S. strategy.
How a “democratic” nation can wage international war and terrorism
The Vietnam War showed that modern democracies cannot field armies for any major military conflict, because this would require a draft of its citizens. That would lead any government attempting such a draft to be voted out of power. And without troops, it is not possible to invade a country to take it over.
The corollary of this perception is that democracies have only two choices when it comes to military strategy: They can only wage airpower, bombing opponents; or they can create a foreign legion, that is, hire mercenaries or back foreign governments that provide this military service.
Here once again Saudi Arabia plays a critical role, through its control of Wahabi Sunnis turned into terrorist jihadis willing to sabotage, bomb, assassinate, blow up and otherwise fight any target designated as an enemy of “Islam,” the euphemism for Saudi Arabia acting as U.S. client state. (Religion really is not the key; I know of no ISIS or similar Wahabi attack on Israeli targets.) The United States needs the Saudis to supply or finance Wahabi crazies. So in addition to playing a key role in the U.S. balance of payments by recycling its oil-export earnings are into U.S. stocks, bonds and other investments, Saudi Arabia provides manpower by supporting the Wahabi members of America’s foreign legion, ISIS and Al-Nusra/Al-Qaeda. Terrorism has become the “democratic” mode of today U.S. military policy.
What makes America’s oil war in the Near East “democratic” is that this is the only kind of war a democracy can fight – an air war, followed by a vicious terrorist army that makes up for the fact that no democracy can field its own army in today’s world. The corollary is that, terrorism has become the “democratic” mode of warfare.
From the U.S. vantage point, what is a “democracy”? In today’s Orwellian vocabulary, it means any country supporting U.S. foreign policy. Bolivia and Honduras have become “democracies” since their coups, along with Brazil. Chile under Pinochet was a Chicago-style free market democracy. So was Iran under the Shah, and Russia under Yeltsin – but not since it elected Vladimir Putin president, any more than is China under President Xi.
The antonym to “democracy” is “terrorist.” That simply means a nation willing to fight to become independent from U.S. neoliberal democracy. It does not include America’s proxy armies.
Iran’s role as U.S. nemesis
What stands in the way of U.S. dollarization, oil and military strategy? Obviously, Russia and China have been targeted as long-term strategic enemies for seeking their own independent economic policies and diplomacy. But next to them, Iran has been in America’s gun sights for nearly seventy years.
America’s hatred of Iran is starts with its attempt to control its own oil production, exports and earnings. It goes back to 1953, when Mossadegh was overthrown because he wanted domestic sovereignty over Anglo-Persian oil. The CIA-MI6 coup replaced him with the pliant Shah, who imposed a police state to prevent Iranian independence from U.S. policy. The only physical places free from the police were the mosques. That made the Islamic Republic the path of least resistance to overthrowing the Shah and re-asserting Iranian sovereignty.
The United States came to terms with OPEC oil independence by 1974, but the antagonism toward Iran extends to demographic and religious considerations. Iranian support its Shi’ite population an those of Iraq and other countries – emphasizing support for the poor and for quasi-socialist policies instead of neoliberalism – has made it the main religious rival to Saudi Arabia’s Sunni sectarianism and its role as America’s Wahabi foreign legion.
America opposed General Suleimani above all because he was fighting against ISIS and other U.S.-backed terrorists in their attempt to break up Syria and replace Assad’s regime with a set of U.S.-compliant local leaders – the old British “divide and conquer” ploy. On occasion, Suleimani had cooperated with U.S. troops in fighting ISIS groups that got “out of line” meaning the U.S. party line. But every indication is that he was in Iraq to work with that government seeking to regain control of the oil fields that President Trump has bragged so loudly about grabbing.
Already in early 2018, President Trump asked Iraq to reimburse America for the cost of “saving its democracy” by bombing the remainder of Saddam’s economy. The reimbursement was to take the form of Iraqi Oil. More recently, in 2019, President Trump asked, why not simply grab Iraqi oil. The giant oil field has become the prize of the Bush-Cheney post 9-11 Oil War. “‘It was a very run-of-the-mill, low-key, meeting in general,” a source who was in the room told Axios.’ And then right at the end, Trump says something to the effect of, he gets a little smirk on his face and he says, ‘So what are we going to do about the oil?’”
Trump’s idea that America should “get something” out of its military expenditure in destroying the Iraqi and Syrian economies simply reflects U.S. policy.
In late October, 2019, The New York Times reported that: “In recent days, Mr. Trump has settled on Syria’s oil reserves as a new rationale for appearing to reverse course and deploy hundreds of additional troops to the war-ravaged country. He has declared that the United States has “secured” oil fields in the country’s chaotic northeast and suggested that the seizure of the country’s main natural resource justifies America further extending its military presence there. ‘We have taken it and secured it,’ Mr. Trump said of Syria’s oil during remarks at the White House on Sunday, after announcing the killing of the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.” A CIA official reminded the journalist that taking Iraq’s oil was a Trump campaign pledge.
That explains the invasion of Iraq for oil in 2003, and again this year, as President Trump has said: “Why don’t we simply take their oil?” It also explains the Obama-Hillary attack on Libya – not only for its oil, but for its investing its foreign reserves in gold instead of recycling its oil surplus revenue to the U.S. Treasury – and of course, for promoting a secular socialist state.
It explains why U.S. neocons feared Suleimani’s plan to help Iraq assert control of its oil and withstand the terrorist attacks supported by U.S. and Saudi’s on Iraq. That is what made his assassination an immediate drive.
American politicians have discredited themselves by starting off their condemnation of Trump by saying, as Elizabeth Warren did, how “bad” a person Suleimani was, how he had killed U.S. troops by masterminding the Iraqi defense of roadside bombing and other policies trying to repel the U.S. invasion to grab its oil. She was simply parroting the U.S. media’s depiction of Suleimani as a monster, diverting attention from the policy issue that explains why he was assassinated now.
The counter-strategy to U.S. oil, and dollar and global-warming diplomacy
This strategy will continue, until foreign countries reject it. If Europe and other regions fail to do so, they will suffer the consequences of this U.S. strategy in the form of a rising U.S.-sponsored war via terrorism, the flow of refugees, and accelerated global warming and extreme weather.
Russia, China and its allies already have been leading the way to dedollarization as a means to contain the balance-of-payments buttress of U.S. global military policy. But everyone now is speculating over what Iran’s response should be.
The pretense – or more accurately, the diversion – by the U.S. news media over the weekend has been to depict the United States as being under imminent attack. Mayor de Blasio has positioned policemen at conspicuous key intersections to let us know how imminent Iranian terrorism is – as if it were Iran, not Saudi Arabia that mounted 9/11, and as if Iran in fact has taken any forceful action against the United States. The media and talking heads on television have saturated the air waves with warnings of Islamic terrorism. Television anchors are suggesting just where the attacks are most likely to occur.
The message is that the assassination of General Soleimani was to protect us. As Donald Trump and various military spokesmen have said, he had killed Americans – and now they must be planning an enormous attack that will injure and kill many more innocent Americans. That stance has become America’s posture in the world: weak and threatened, requiring a strong defense – in the form of a strong offense.
But what is Iran’s actual interest? If it is indeed to undercut U.S. dollar and oil strategy, the first policy must be to get U.S. military forces out of the Near East, including U.S. occupation of its oil fields. It turns out that President Trump’s rash act has acted as a catalyst, bringing about just the opposite of what he wanted. On January 5 the Iraqi parliament met to insist that the United States leave. General Suleimani was an invited guest, not an Iranian invader. It is U.S. troops that are in Iraq in violation of international law. If they leave, Trump and the neocons lose control of oil – and also of their ability to interfere with Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian-Lebanese mutual defense.
Beyond Iraq looms Saudi Arabia. It has become the Great Satan, the supporter of Wahabi extremism, the terrorist legion of U.S. mercenary armies fighting to maintain control of Near Eastern oil and foreign exchange reserves, the cause of the great exodus of refugees to Turkey, Europe and wherever else it can flee from the arms and money provided by the U.S. backers of Isis, Al Qaeda in Iraq and their allied Saudi Wahabi legions.
The logical ideal, in principle, would be to destroy Saudi power. That power lies in its oil fields. They already have fallen under attack by modest Yemeni bombs. If U.S. neocons seriously threaten Iran, its response would be the wholesale bombing and destruction of Saudi oil fields, along with those of Kuwait and allied Near Eastern oil sheikhdoms. It would end the Saudi support for Wahabi terrorists, as well as for the U.S. dollar.
Such an act no doubt would be coordinated with a call for the Palestinian and other foreign workers in Saudi Arabia to rise up and drive out the monarchy and its thousands of family retainers.
Beyond Saudi Arabia, Iran and other advocates of a multilateral diplomatic break with U.S. neoliberal and neocon unilateralism should bring pressure on Europe to withdraw from NATO, inasmuch as that organization functions mainly as a U.S.-centric military tool of American dollar and oil diplomacy and hence opposing the climate change and military confrontation policies that threaten to make Europe part of the U.S. maelstrom.
Finally, what can U.S. anti-war opponents do to resist the neocon attempt to destroy any part of the world that resists U.S. neoliberal autocracy? This has been the most disappointing response over the weekend. They are flailing. It has not been helpful for Warren, Buttigieg and others to accuse Trump of acting rashly without thinking through the consequences of his actions. That approach shies away from recognizing that his action did indeed have a rationale—do draw a line in the sand, to say that yes, America WILL go to war, will fight Iran, will do anything at all to defend its control of Near Eastern oil and to dictate OPEC central bank policy, to defend its ISIS legions as if any opposition to this policy is an attack on the United States itself.
I can understand the emotional response or yet new calls for impeachment of Donald Trump. But that is an obvious non-starter, partly because it has been so obviously a partisan move by the Democratic Party. More important is the false and self-serving accusation that President Trump has overstepped his constitutional limit by committing an act of war against Iran by assassinating Soleimani.
Congress endorsed Trump’s assassination and is fully as guilty as he is for having approved the Pentagon’s budget with the Senate’s removal of the amendment to the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that Bernie Sanders, Tom Udall and Ro Khanna inserted an amendment in the House of Representatives version, explicitly not authorizing the Pentagon to wage war against Iran or assassinate its officials. When this budget was sent to the Senate, the White House and Pentagon (a.k.a. the military-industrial complex and neoconservatives) removed that constraint. That was a red flag announcing that the Pentagon and White House did indeed intend to wage war against Iran and/or assassinate its officials. Congress lacked the courage to argue this point at the forefront of public discussion.
Behind all this is the Saudi-inspired 9/11 act taking away Congress’s sole power to wage war – its 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, pulled out of the drawer ostensibly against Al Qaeda but actually the first step in America’s long support of the very group that was responsible for 9/11, the Saudi airplane hijackers.
The question is, how to get the world’s politicians – U.S., European and Asians – to see how America’s all-or-nothing policy is threatening new waves of war, refugees, disruption of the oil trade in the Strait of Hormuz, and ultimately global warming and neoliberal dollarization imposed on all countries. It is a sign of how little power exists in the United Nations that no countries are calling for a new Nurenberg-style war crimes trial, no threat to withdraw from NATO or even to avoid holding reserves in the form of money lent to the U.S. Treasury to fund America’s military budget.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 18:45 - Almost $300 Million Stolen From Crypto-Exchanges In 2019
Almost $300 Million Stolen From Crypto-Exchanges In 2019
Authored by Patrick Thompson via CoinTelegraph.com,
Twelve major cryptocurrency exchange hacks occurred in 2019. Of these, 11 hacks resulted in the theft of cryptocurrency while one only involved stolen customer data. In total, $292,665,886 worth of cryptocurrency and 510,000 user logins were stolen from crypto exchanges in 2019. Cryptocurrency exchanges experienced more hacks last year than in 2018, when only nine cryptocurrency exchanges fell victim to security breaches.
image courtesy of CoinTelegraph
As time goes on, you might think that cryptocurrency exchanges would become more secure. The reality, however, is that more hacks on cryptocurrency exchange are taking place year after year. In general, crypto exchanges remain unregulated, and it’s still unclear which regulatory agency has jurisdiction over the crypto markets.
Although there are no established rules regarding how cryptocurrency exchanges should safeguard customer funds, there are crypto-friendly countries and states. Canada, Malta and the American state of Wyoming have created crypto-friendly legislation that makes it easier for businesses to operate and gives them guidelines regarding security practices.
Sadly, not all countries have created guidelines or laws that help crypto businesses operate and reduce the risk for consumers. The way cryptocurrency exchanges store and protect their customer’s wealth differs from exchange to exchange; unfortunately, this makes cryptocurrency exchanges a hotbed for hacks that result in the theft of cryptocurrency or customer data. Let’s take a closer look at the cryptocurrency exchange hacks of 2019 and how much cryptocurrency, fiat and customer data was stolen in each incident.
1. Cryptopia
Date: Jan. 14, 2019
Headquarters: New Zealand
Amount stolen: $16,002,108
Just two weeks into the year, the first hack on a cryptocurrency exchange took place. New Zealand-based Cryptopia was hacked for over $16 million worth of cryptocurrency at the time. Social media users started their own investigation, according to which, over 20 different cryptocurrencies were taken from the exchange’s hot wallet.
2. LocalBitcoins
Date: Jan. 26, 2019
Headquarters: Finland
Amount stolen: $27,000
A few weeks later, the popular over-the-counter Bitcoin exchange LocalBitcoins was the victim of a security breach. Attackers were able to replace the official link to the exchange’s forum with a fraudulent link that led users to a fake page that resembled the discussion board but collected the information of the users who attempted to log in.
The attackers used the information they obtained to steal 7.9 Bitcoin — worth $27,000 at the time — from at least six user accounts.
3. Coinmama
Date: Feb. 15, 2019
Headquarters: Israel
Amount stolen: 450,000 account usernames and passwords
In just the second month of the year, Israel-based cryptocurrency broker Coinmama learned that its database had been breached. As a result, an estimated 450,000 user account logins and passwords had been compromised and posted on a darknet registry.
4. DragonEx
Date: March 24, 2019
Headquarters: Singapore
Amount stolen: $7.09 million
On March 24, Singapore-based exchange DragonEx posted in its official Telegram group that it had experienced a hacking attack, and as a result, a portion of the users’ and the platform’s crypto assets had been stolen. Days later, DragonEx released an announcement on its website, saying: “On March 24th, DragonEx suffered APT attack, which is the greatest challenge since DragonEx was first launched in the year of 2017. 7.09 million USDT assets are stolen.”
5. CoinBene
Date: March 25, 2019
Headquarters: Singapore
Amount stolen: $105 million
Just two days after the DragonEx hack, another cryptocurrency exchange in Singapore, CoinBene, was hacked. Many CoinBene users became suspicious of a hack when the CoinBene site unexpectedly went down for maintenance. Individuals who were tracking the CoinBene hot wallet noticed that a whopping $105 million worth of crypto assets had been removed. Even though all of the evidence is on the blockchain, CoinBene continues to deny that it was ever hacked.
6. Bithumb
Date: March 30, 2019
Headquarters: South Korea
Amount stolen: $18.7 million
March was a bad month for cryptocurrency exchanges. Just a few days after the CoinBene hack, Bithumb was hacked for an estimated $18.7 million — $12.5 million in EOS tokens and $6.2 million in XRP. Unlike other exchange hacks, Bithumb believed that the theft was an inside job committed by a former Bithumb employee who had access to its hot wallets.
7. Binance
Date: May 7, 2019
Headquarters: Malta
Amount stolen: $40 million
On May 7, Binance — the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange — experienced a security breach. As a result, 7,000 BTC, equivalent to $40 million at the time, was stolen. In addition, Binance said that hackers were able to obtain user API keys, two-factor authentication codes and possibly more user information.
Later, on Aug. 7, it was revealed that hackers were in possession of over 60,000 pieces of Know Your Customer data from the Binance exchange. An individual going by the name “Bnatov Platon” said he or she hacked the individuals that hacked Binance back in May and discovered that the original hackers had also gained access to 60,000 pieces of customer KYC data, including the photo IDs of 10,000 Binance users.
8. GateHub
Date: June 1, 2019
Headquarters: United Kingdom
Amount stolen: $10 million
In June, GateHub made an announcement, saying 100 of its users’ XRP wallets had been compromised. A GateHub community member took a deep dive into the hack and discovered that by June 5, 23,200,000 XRP had been stolen from 80–90 of these wallets — the equivalent to about $10 million at the time.
9. Bitrue
Date: June 26, 2019
Headquarters: Singapore
Amount stolen: $4.23 million
At the end of June, Bitrue was hacked, and roughly $4.23 million was stolen. Hackers learned of a vulnerability in Bitrue’s security that gave them access to about 90 user accounts. Afterward, hackers used what they learned from their 90-account takeover to successful compromise Bitrue’s hot wallet. As a result, 9.3 million XRP and 2.5 million ADA were stolen.
10. BITPoint
Date: July 11, 2019
Headquarters: Japan
Amount stolen: $32 million
On July 11, Japan-based cryptocurrency exchange BITPoint was alerted of an irregular outflow of XRP from its hot wallet. Several hours later, BITPoint became aware that Bitcoin, XRP, Ether, Bitcoin Cash and Litcoin had been moved from the exchange’s hot wallet without authorization. In total, $32 million worth of cryptocurrency was moved out of BITPoint’s hot wallet — $23 million of which belonged to BITPoint users.
11. VinDAX
Date: Nov. 5, 2019
Headquarters: Vietnam
Amount stolen: $500,000
For the most part, the VinDAX hack is a mystery. VinDAX is a small cryptocurrency exchange based in Vietnam that primarily hosts token offerings for unheard of companies. Information regarding this security breach is scarce. However, The Block took a deep dive into this mysterious hack and learned from the VinDAX support staff that roughly 23 cryptocurrencies — worth $500,000 in total — had been removed from its hot wallet without authorization.
12. Upbit
Date: Nov. 27, 2019
Headquarters: South Korea
Amount stolen: $49,116,778.00
And finally, the last hack of the decade: Upbit. Upbit is a South Korea based cryptocurrency exchange that was hacked for 342,000 ETH — equivalent to $49,116,778 at the time — on Nov. 27. All that is really known is that hackers were able to gain access to Upbit’s hot wallet and move Ether without authorization. However, Upbit released a statement shortly afterward telling users that it would be covering all of the losses with the exchange’s assets.
* * *
The damage
In total, $292,665,886 worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from 11 cryptocurrency exchanges and 510,000 pieces of user information were taken from the database of one exchange — a total of 12 cryptocurrency exchanges experienced security breaches.
So, what does this all mean? It means that cryptocurrency exchanges have to do better in terms of industry standards and security practices. Sadly, we did not see enough legislation and security improvement in 2019, and we experienced even more cryptocurrency exchange hacks than in any previous year. But hopefully, these things will change in 2020 and the cryptocurrency markets will be safer for every party involved in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 18:25 - Soleimani Was In Baghdad On Peace Mission To De-Escalate With Saudis: Report
Soleimani Was In Baghdad On Peace Mission To De-Escalate With Saudis: Report
In the post-2003 Iraq invasion world based on fake WMD claims, any US official claims based on unspecified “intelligence assessments” should be treated with deep skepticism if not outright rejection. For this reason, many rightly immediately questioned the official Trump administration narrative that Qasem Soleimani was in Baghdad on the night of his death by US drone strike in order to organize more attacks on Americans and US interests. This key claim served as the White House’s post hoc justification for killing the top Iranian general.
And now it has emerged that the slain IRGC Quds Force chief had arrived at Baghdad airport last Thursday night as part of ongoing diplomatic efforts to mediate peace and an easing of tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran. This according to no less than Iraqi (caretaker) Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
Saudi King Salman, left, speaks with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, via AP/Times of Israel. Iraq had been reportedly serving as intermediary for crucial Saudi attempts at diplomacy which saw tensions soaring between Tehran and Riyadh after a summer of “tanker wars” and the Sept.14 Aramco attacks, widely blamed on Iran and its proxies in the region.
Adel Abdul Mahdi told parliament in a speech on Sunday the Soleimani’s killing was a “political assassination” by the US, according to The Daily Mail, which reports further:
Abdul Mahdi suggested that the Iranian military leader was in Baghdad as part of Iraqi-mediated negotiations with Iran’s main regional rival, Saudi Arabia.
He said that Soleimani was going to meet him on the same day that he was killed.
‘He came to deliver me a message from Iran, responding to the message we delivered from Saudi Arabia to Iran,’ Abdul Mahdi told The Washington Post.
The Iraqi leader did not provide any further details.
This would mean the high level assassination further served to disrupt peace efforts on a huge scale — something which Iran hawks, including Israeli government officials, likely saw as an additional benefit to the strike.
Iraq has further identified that Soleimani had been traveling in the capacity of a “formal” and “high profile” guest of the Iraqi government, and had been delivering Tehran’s reply to a Saudi de-escalation letter at the moment he was killed.
Journalists and western sources have also separately confirmed Iraqi PM Mahdi’s claim the IRGC general had been engaged as a diplomatic intermediary at the time of his death:
1. I’ve had a chance to check in with sources, including two US officials who had intelligence briefings after the strike on Suleimani. Here is what I’ve learned. According to them, the evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is “razor thin”.
— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) January 4, 2020
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Multiple journalists with sources in the administration have since referred to the US justification for the assassination as “razor thin”.
This further helps explain why Soleimani and his entourage, which included Iraqi paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes — killed in the same attack — were traveling so “out in the open” through Baghdad’s main international hub.
Image source: West Asia News Agency via Reuters Given that a fundamental rationale for a continued muscular US presence in the Middle East is to “thwart Iranian ambitions,” it remains crucial for the hawks to be able to point to the ‘necessity’ of protecting Saudi Arabia.
Hence also the recent thousands-strong troop deployment in the kingdom since September.
Sources in the Administration as well as in Congress say a classified briefing for members of Congress will happen this Wednesday. The briefing will cover the drone strike on Qasem Soleimani. The briefing will be done by the Dept of Defense as well as State Dept. #Iran #Congress
— Edward Lawrence (@EdwardLawrence) January 6, 2020
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At this point it remains dubious that any back-channel peace efforts between Riyadh and Tehran remain open, especially now that Iranian leaders have vowed that a “severe retaliation” is coming.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/06/2020 – 18:05
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