- Heevy Gunfire, Injuries Reported In Northern Paris Amid Alleged "Police Raid" Seeking 9th Assailant
Reports of heavy gunfire, substantiated by several videos appearing on Twitter and a local reporter, has woken residents in the northern Paris region of Saint-Denis. Beginning at around 430am local time, lasting around 15 minutes, Le Parisien reporter Jean Gabriel Bontinck assumed the shooting was part of an ongoing police raid. Police are telling residents to stay indoors.
Fusillade à Saint-Denis, au nord de Paris, lors d'une opération policière #AFP
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) November 18, 2015
French police earlier said that video footage of the Paris attacks reveals the presence of a ninth, previously unnoticed, jihadi, who could still be at large.
The video shows the new suspect in a black Seat car with two other attackers, opening fire with assault rifles through its window at customers at a bar in central Paris. The car was later found abandoned in Paris suburb of Montreuil, with three AK-47 rifles in it.
There are multiple reports of heavy gunfire and possible explosions in the Saint-Denis area of Paris, CNN affiliate BFMTV is reporting.
Swarms of police have an area of Saint-Denis blocked off and residents are being told to stay inside.
French journalists are reporting this may be connected to a police raid in search of wanted fugitive in connection to the Paris attacks.
CNN and AFP are reporting officers have been shot.
The gunfire erupted around 4:30 a.m.
The Guardian adds, What we know so far…
“Heavy gunfire” has been reported in St Denis, a northern Paris suburb. St Denis is where the Stade de France, one of the targets of Friday’s attacks, is located.
Shooting took place during a police operation reported to be linked to the search for the so-called “ninth attacker” – believed to be on the run.
Some local media reports that a number of police officers have been injured in the operation; this has not been confirmed.
Roads have been closed off and the police operation appears to be ongoing, with large numbers of police officers and police vehicles in the area.
* * *
French #RAID commandos in a huge firefight with terrorists in Saint Denis suburb of Paris. pic.twitter.com/N4mmPAkf11
— Jeff Gauvin (@JeffersonObama) November 18, 2015
Bon c'est sur c'est une intervention de la police… rue barrée, officiers etc.. #SaintDenis pic.twitter.com/JSARgbaM9w
— Female Khal (@Chelmih) November 18, 2015
Ça reprend! pic.twitter.com/S6vlFICu2z
— STOPdaech (@STOPdaech) November 18, 2015
- Caught On Tape: Russian Cruise Missile Flies Above Syria As Moscow Deploys Strategic Bombers
Putin wasted no time to expand Russian military presence over both Syria and the middle east, when as reported earlier today, the Russian president expanded the military campaign against ISIS bombing targets in conjunction with the French air force.
That was not the surprise.
What was, is that for the first time since the launch of the Russian air campaign Russia used strategic, long-range bombers, the kind that can deliver not only cruise missiles but tactical nuclear weapons. The Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu confirmed as much when he said that Tupolev Tu-160, Tu-95MS strategic bombers are used in the strikes on ISIL targets in Syria.
According to Interfax, “Tu-160, Tu-95MS, Tu-22 long-range aviation warplanes are used in the destruction of the gangs in addition to operational tactical aviation from the Russian territory,” Shoigu said at a meeting in the Defense Ministry chaired by Russian President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.
The Russian strategic bombers are using the Hmeimim airbase in Syria as their primary base.
The commander of the Russian Long-Range Aviation Lt. Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev reported to Putin that all types of attack planes, which the Long-Range Aviation is armed with, are used, namely Tu-160 and Tu-95MS strategic missile carriers and Tu-22M3 long-range bombers to perform combat tasks in Syria.
“The crews of strategic and long-range bombers are accomplishing the tasks to strike the sites in strict compliance with the plan of delivering the first massive air strike. Tu-160 and Tu-95MS strategic missile carriers have landed on their airfields upon accomplishing the combat mission. The maintenance and preparations of aircraft for future sorties are being conducted, the objective control materials are being analyzed,” Zhikharev said.
The Aviationist blog adds that according to one of its sources “the long-range bombers the Russian Air Force has used against ground targets in Syria early in the morning on Nov. 17 were Tu-22M Backfire strategic bombers.” It adds that “the aircraft were allegedly launched from Mozdok airbase, in Ossetia, where as many as 6 Tu-22 Backfires were spotted on a recent deployment.”
Curiously, Russia appears to have left a calling card that it has deployed strategic bombers: earlier today, social networks were abuzz showing images which were the alleged remains of a KH-555 missile found in Syria, the type of air-launched missile which, according to the Aviationist, “is mainly carried by Tu-95 Bear and Tu-160 Blackjack bombers (Tu-22s have been tested with the KH-555 but full integration is not completed or at least unknown), the long-range bombers that launched the attack on ground targets using those missiles may have been the Tu-95s or Tu-160s flying alongside the Backfires.”
@Azematt ???? ???? ??? ?? ???? ?? ??? ???? ????? ???? ??? ??? ?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ? ???? ????? pic.twitter.com/bSYfJ9qWLf
— Azim (@Azematt) November 17, 2015
And here a clip of what is a Russian cruise missile (it may or may not have been the one whose remains are shown above) launched by one of the Russian strategic bombers currently operating above Syria.
- Benjamin Netanyahu Will Be Arrested If He Ever Sets Foot In Spain Again
Submitted by Claire Bernish via TheAntiMedia.org,
Should Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ever set foot inside Spain, he – and six other current and former Israeli government officials – would be subject to arrest, thanks to a Spanish judge who effectively issued an arrest warrant for the group late last week.
As to be expected, the Israeli Foreign Ministry was less than thrilled, as spokesperson Emmanuel Nachshon responded, according to The Jerusalem Post, “We consider [the judge’s order] to be a provocation. We are working with the Spanish authorities to get it canceled. We hope it will be over soon.”
At the heart of the matter for Spanish National Court Judge José de la Mata — and humanitarians worldwide — lies the 2010 attack by Israeli commandos on the civilian humanitarian ship, the Mavi Marmara, one of six vessels, carrying around 500 passengers total, in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
The fleet was attempting to break through the Israeli blockade of Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid and construction materials on a small yet necessary scale, when the Mavi Marmara was attacked by Israeli security forces — commandos — who boarded and then shot and killed nine activists. A tenth activist died from injuries sustained during the raid — which occurred in international waters — after spending four years in a coma.
In July, the International Criminal Court harshly criticized Gambian-born prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for failure to re-open the Mavi Marmara case despite a “reasonable basis” to believe war crimes had been committed. As the ICC judges stated,
“The prosecutor should have accepted that live fire may have been used prior to the boarding of the Mavi Marmara, and drawn the appropriate inferences. This fact . . . may reasonably suggest that there was, on the part of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] who carried out the identified crimes, a prior intention to attack and possibly kill passengers on board.”
A UN Human Rights Council investigation into the raid found “clear evidence to support prosecutions” of war crimes under the Geneva Conventions based on willful killing, torture, or inhuman treatment, and willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health. Youngest of the victims, 18-year-old Furkan Dogan, had been shot five times, including one shot to his face as he lay on his back, the UNHCR report concluded.
According to The Latin American Herald Tribune, besides Netanyahu, de la Mata ordered police and civil guard to notify him should former Defense Minister Ehud Barak, former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, former Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon, former Interior Minister Eli Yishai, former Minister without Portfolio Benny Begin, and Vice Admiral Maron Eliezer (who headed the operation) ever step foot on Spanish soil.
Though Netanyahu claimed at the time IDF forces had been attacked by the activists and thus acted in self-defense, the investigation found no medical evidence to substantiate that story. In fact, the UNHCR went a step further — echoing human rights organizations and activists worldwide — calling Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip “totally intolerable and unacceptable in the 21st century.”
- To France From A Post-9/11 America: Lessons We Learned Too Late
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” ? Benjamin Franklin
“Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”—Hermann Goering, German military commander and Hitler’s designated successor
For those who remember when the first towers fell on 9/11, there is an unnerving feeling of déjà vu about the Paris attacks.
Once again, there is that same sense of shock. The same shocking images of carnage and grief dominating the news. The same disbelief that anyone could be so hateful, so monstrous, so evil as to do this to another human being. The same outpourings of support and unity from around the world. The same shared fear that this could easily have happened to us or our loved ones.
Now the drums of war are sounding. French fighter jets have carried out a series of “symbolic” air strikes on Syrian targets. France’s borders have been closed, Paris has been locked down and military personnel are patrolling its streets.
What remains to be seen is whether France, standing where the United States did 14 years ago, will follow in America’s footsteps as she grapples with the best way to shore up her defenses, where to draw the delicate line in balancing security with liberty, and what it means to secure justice for those whose lives were taken.
Here are some of the lessons we in the United States learned too late about allowing our freedoms to be eviscerated in exchange for the phantom promise of security.
Beware of mammoth legislation that expands the government’s powers at the citizenry’s expense. Rushed through Congress a mere 45 days after the 9/11 attacks, the USA Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, undermined civil liberties, expanded the government’s powers and opened the door to far-reaching surveillance by the government on American citizens.
Pre-emptive strikes will only lead to further blowback. Not content to wage war against Afghanistan, which served as the base for Osama bin Laden, the U.S. embarked on a pre-emptive war against Iraq in order to “stop any adversary challenging America’s military superiority and adopt a strike-first policy against terrorist threats ‘before they're fully formed.’” We are still suffering the consequences of this failed policy, which has resulted in lives lost, taxpayer dollars wasted, the fomenting of hatred against the U.S. and the further radicalization of terrorist cells.
War is costly. There are many reasons to go to war, but those who have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that have profited most from these endless military occupations and exercises. Thus far, the U.S. taxpayer has been made to shell out more than $1.6 trillion on “military operations, the training of security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, weapons maintenance, base support, reconstruction, embassy maintenance, foreign aid, and veterans’ medical care, as well as war-related intelligence operations not tracked by the Pentagon” since 2001. Other estimates that account for war-related spending, veterans’ benefits and various promissory notes place that figure closer to $4.4 trillion. That also does not include the more than 210,000 civilians killed so far, or the 7.6 million refugees displaced from their homes as a result of the endless drone strikes and violence.
Advocating torture makes you no better than terrorists. The horrors that took place at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Iraq, continue to shock those with any decency. Photographs leaked to the media depicted “US military personnel humiliating, hurting and abusing Iraqi prisoners in a myriad of perverse ways. While American servicemen and women smiled and gave thumbs up, naked men were threatened by dogs, or were hooded, forced into sexual positions, placed standing with wires attached to their bodies, or left bleeding on prison floors.” Adding to the descent into moral depravity, the United States government legalized the use of torture, including waterboarding, in violation of international law and continues to sanction human rights violations in the pursuit of national security. The ramifications have been far-reaching, with local police now employing similar torture tactics at secret locations such as Homan Square in Chicago.
Allowing the government to spy on the citizenry will not reduce acts of terrorism, but it will result in a watched, submissive, surveillance society. A byproduct of this post 9/11-age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers such as Google that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere. We are all becoming data collected in government files. The chilling effect of this endless surveillance is a more anxious and submissive citizenry.
Don’t become so distracted by the news cycle that you lose sight of what the government is doing. The average American has a hard time keeping up with and remembering all of the “events,” manufactured or otherwise, which occur like clockwork and keep us distracted, deluded, amused, and insulated from the reality of the American police state. Whether these events are critical or unimportant, when we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall news coverage and news cycles that change every few days, it’s difficult to stay focused on one thing—namely, holding the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law—and the powers-that-be understand this. In this way, regularly scheduled trivia and/or distractions that keep the citizenry tuned into the various breaking news headlines and entertainment spectacles also keep them tuned out to the government’s steady encroachments on their freedoms.
If you stop holding the government accountable to the rule of law, the only laws it abides by will be the ones used to clamp down on the citizenry. Having failed to hold government officials accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the American people have found themselves saddled with a government that skirts, flouts and violates the Constitution with little consequence. Overcriminalization, asset forfeiture schemes, police brutality, profit-driven prisons, warrantless surveillance, SWAT team raids, indefinite detentions, covert agencies, and secret courts are just a few of the egregious practices carried out by a government that operates beyond the reach of the law.
Do not turn your country into a battlefield, your citizens into enemy combatants, and your law enforcement officers into extensions of the military. A standing army—something that propelled the early colonists into revolution—strips the citizenry of any vestige of freedom. How can there be any semblance of freedom when there are tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, Blackhawk helicopters and armed drones patrolling overhead? It was for this reason that those who established America vested control of the military in a civilian government, with a civilian commander-in-chief. They did not want a military government, ruled by force. Rather, they opted for a republic bound by the rule of law: the U.S. Constitution. Unfortunately, we in America now find ourselves struggling to retain some semblance of freedom in the face of police and law enforcement agencies that look and act like the military and have just as little regard for the Fourth Amendment, laws such as the NDAA that allow the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens, and military drills that acclimate the American people to the sight of armored tanks in the streets, military encampments in cities, and combat aircraft patrolling overhead.
As long as you remain fearful and distrustful of each other, you will be incapable of standing united against any threats posed by a power-hungry government. Early on, U.S. officials solved the problem of how to implement their authoritarian policies without incurring a citizen uprising: fear. The powers-that-be want us to feel threatened by forces beyond our control (terrorists, shooters, bombers). They want us afraid and dependent on the government and its militarized armies for our safety and well-being. Most of all, they want us distrustful of each other, divided by our prejudices, and at each other’s throats.
If you trade your freedom for security, the terrorists win. We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state. And in so doing, we have proven Osama Bin Laden right. He warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”
To sum things up, the destruction that began with the 9/11 terror attacks has expanded into an all-out campaign of terror, trauma, acclimation and indoctrination aimed at getting Americans used to life in the American Police State. The bogeyman’s names and faces change over time, but the end result remains the same: our unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has transitioned us to life in a society where government agents routinely practice violence on the citizens while, in conjunction with the Corporate State, spying on the most intimate details of our personal lives.
The lesson learned, as I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, is simply this: once you start down the road towards a police state, it will be very difficult to turn back.
- From Iraqi Jails To Paris Carnage – The Complete ISIS Timeline
As it seems The West is losing its 'war on terror', with jihadi recruitment accelerating dramatically in the last few years, we thought the following timeline of how ISIS got here may be a useful reminder for when Washington once again reinserts itself 'on the ground' in the Middle-East…
As BloombergBriefs notes, groups such as al-Qaeda and Islamic State call their violent campaigns jihad — holy war waged on behalf of Islam. Mainstream Muslims argue that jihad is mostly a spiritual obligation involving internal struggle. In this view, violent jihad is permissible only in extreme cases when sanctioned by legitimate authorities. Nevertheless, the militant jihadists are winning recruits.
The number of groups engaged in violent jihad with the goal of creating their idea of purified Islamic societies grew to 49 in 2013 from three in 1988, a Rand Corp. study says. Their stated aim is to emulate Islam as practiced by the Prophet Muhammad’s early followers, known as the Salaf.
The biggest jump in recruitment started in 2010 and corresponds with the Arab uprisings, which weakened government control in parts of North Africa and the Mideast. That gave jihadist groups opportunities to expand that trumped the power of any theological position.
But ISIS had been growing long before that…
- Every Position On The Spectrum Supports The Government's Propaganda
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
This excellent article by Glenn Greenwald…
Given all this, is there any mystery why “U.S. officials” and the military-intelligence regime, let alone Iraq War-advocating hacks like Jim Woolsey and Dana Perino, are desperate to shift blame away from themselves for ISIS and terror attacks and onto Edward Snowden, journalism about surveillance, or encryption-providing tech companies? Wouldn’t you if you were them? Imagine simultaneously devoting all your efforts to depicting ISIS as the Greatest and Most Evil Threat Ever, while knowing the vital role you played in its genesis and growth.
The clear, overwhelming evidence — compiled HERE — demonstrates how much deceit their blame-shifting accusations require. But the more important point of inquiry is to ask why they are so eager to ensure that everyone but themselves receives scrutiny for what is happening. The answer to that question is equally clear, and disturbing in the extreme.
…reminded me that I have meant to write about how every sort of interest attaches to the government’s propaganda in order to make its point.
Greenwald shows how the Snowden haters in the US media seized on the Paris attack in order to blame Snowden. The American, indeed Western, media consists of the scum of the earth, and they all together are no match for Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald shows that they are so dimwitted that they cannot remember their previous stories long enough to save them from making laughing stocks of themselves when they gang up on Snowden.
The presstitutes that constitute the Western media had a great incentive to buy in to the false story of the Paris attack, because they saw an opportunity to blame the attack on Snowden, who showed them up for what they are — whores who lie for the government for money.
Likewise, anti-immigration web sites and political parties have a great stake in the false story of the Paris attack, because they can use it to emphasize the perils of allowing into a country people who don’t belong there.
The leftwing buys into the government’s lies, because it proves their point that Western imperialism and neo-colonialism brings blowback. The oppressed colonies rise up and send death and destruction to the imperialist’s homelands. This is emotionally satisfying to the left even though it hands over to the government control over the population.
As for the fearful, if the blacks are not going to murder them in their beds, surely the terrorists will. Only the government can make them safe by repealing all civil liberties. TV program after TV program — even RT — presents citizens testifying how they welcome being searched by the police, because it makes them safe. As Benjamin Franklin once said, those who give up liberty for safety will have neither. But this is over the heads of the fearful and the presstitutes.
By now, my readers should be able to finish this story on their own.
The Nazis and others have made it very simple and clear: fear is a control mechanism. Terrorism creates fear, and fear drives fools into the hands of the government that created the terrorism that created the fear.
Go watch the movie, V For Vendetta. The British government unleashes a disease outbreak and uses the resulting fear to turn Britain into a police state. Movie producers, such as those who made V for Vendetta and The Matrix understand what is going on, but what percentage of the audience gets it?
We have had by my last count 150 false FBI “sting operations,” that is, FBI orchestrated “terror plots” in which the FBI recruits half-wits to do such things as blow up the Sears Tower with fake bombs handed to them by the FBI.
We have had the false flag 9/11 operation, the false flag Boston Marathon Bombing, the false flag Charlie Hebdo, the false flag Paris attack. All of these false flag operations were scripted long ago by Operation Gladio, by the Northwoods Project (use google and read about them), and so on.
The Western world consists of a tyranny in which brainwashed nonentities live in a constructed reality.
Can enough of these people be rescued to make a difference? That is the question.
- The Fed's Failed Communication Strategy – More Than Half Of FedSpeak Is "Not Useful"
Having recently shown The Fed to go 6 for 6 in a day of FedSpeak failures to spark animal spirits, it appears this is actually not so unusual for some members of The Fed. As WSJ found, when it comes to watching the Federal Reserve, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on Atlanta and San Francisco but for 9 of the policy-makers, economists rank their 'FedSpeak' as less than useful… with soon-to-be-replaced Kockerlakota the least useful Fed speaker of all…
But, as The Wall Street Journal reports,
Public statements by the 17 policy makers who participate in Federal Open Market Committee discussions are closely watched for clues to the likely course of central-bank policy. But not all speeches are equally helpful for Fed prognostication. Some officials speak from places near the consensus-driven committee’s center, while others air personal views that are at odds with the Fed’s likely course of policy.
Even sophisticated Wall Street traders often are tripped up—making trades that briefly move markets on the basis of remarks from officials with little influence or little indicative value.
To help cut through the cacophony of voices, the Journal surveyed 42 private forecasters on how useful they found individual officials’ public remarks as they gauged the course of Fed policy.
The red shaded region is Fed members who are less than useful
Toward the bottom were two freshly minted Fed presidents, Robert Steven Kaplan of Dallas and Patrick Harker of Philadelphia. Both officials took office this year and neither has yet staked out public positions on monetary policy.
Ranked last was the Minneapolis Fed’s Narayana Kocherlakota. He is set to retire at the end of the year after a tenure that saw his monetary-policy views undergo dramatic evolution; he went from dissenting against Fed stimulus efforts to becoming the Fed’s most vocal advocate for even more stimulus.
He speaks frequently on monetary policy, but that hasn’t translated into influence. “I wish I had done a better job,” he told the Journal earlier this year. “I think we’d be better positioned policy-wise if I had done a better job of being persuasive.”
Mr. Kocherlakota will be succeeded Jan. 1 by Neel Kashkari, the Minneapolis Fed announced Tuesday.
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We suspect the red shading will drift further and further to the left as fed credibilty disappears as December looms.
- Blowback – The Washington War Party’s Folly Comes Home To Roost
Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
Exactly 26 years ago last week, peace was breaking out in a manner that the world had not experienced since June 1914. The Berlin Wall – the symbol of a century of state tyranny, grotesque mass warfare and the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over the planet – had come tumbling down on November 9, 1989.
It was only a matter of time before the economically decrepit Soviet regime would be no more, and that the world’s vast arsenal of weapons and nuclear bombs could be dismantled.
Indeed, shortly thereafter according to Gorbachev, President George H.W. Bush and Secretary Baker promised that NATO would not be expanded by “as much as a thumb’s width further to the East” in return for acquiescing to the reunification of Germany.
So with its “mission accomplished” there was no logical reason why NATO should not have been disbanded in parallel with the Warsaw Pact’s demise, and for an obvious and overpowering reason: On November 9, 1989 there were no material military threats to US security anywhere on the planet outside of the suddenly vanishing front line of the Cold War.
As it turned out, however, there was a virulent threat to peace still lurking on the Potomac. The great general and president, Dwight Eisenhower, had called it the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address, but that memorable phrase had been abbreviated by his speechwriters, who deleted the word “congressional” in a gesture of comity to the legislative branch.
So restore Ike’s deleted reference to the pork barrels and Sunday afternoon warriors of Capitol Hill and toss in the legions of beltway busybodies that constituted the civilian branches of the cold war armada (CIA, State, AID etc.) and the circle would have been complete. It constituted the most awesome machine of warfare and imperial hegemony since the Roman legions bestrode most of the civilized world.
In a word, the real threat to peace circa 1990 was that Pax Americana would not go away quietly in the night.
Ronald Reagan had called the dying Soviet Union an Evil Empire, but it was actually a passing freak of history. It had arisen by a fluke 72 years earlier—–almost to the day of the Berlin Wall’s fall—–only because Imperial Russia had been reduced to anarchy by the carnage of the Great War, enabling Lenin to storm the Winter Palace and install his own special Bolshevik brand of hell on earth.
So the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 meant the world could have reverted to the status quo ante. That is, to a normalcy of peace, liberal commerce and a minimum of armaments that had prevailed in the late 19th century. The 20th century curse of militarism, totalitarianism and global warfare was over.
Needless to say, the sudden end to 20th century history posed an existential threat to Imperial Washington. A trillion dollar complex of weapons suppliers, warfare state bureaucracies, intelligence and security contractors, arms exporters, foreign aid vendors, military bases, grand poobahs and porkers of the Congressional defense committes, think tanks, research grants and much more——were all suddenly without an enemy and raison d’etre.
As it has happened, Imperial Washington did find its necessary enemy in the rise of so-called “global terrorism”.
But the everlasting truth is that the relative handful of suicidal jihadi who have perpetrated murderous episodes of terror like 9/11 and this weekend’s carnage in Paris did not exist in November 1989; and they would not be marauding the West today save for the unrelenting arrogance, stupidity, duplicity and mendacity of Imperial Washington.
That is, the gates of hell have been opened by Washington’s senseless destruction of regimes in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere that refused to do its bidding. Yet not one of these backwaters of tyranny and economic and military insignificance posed any threat whatsoever to the safety and security of American citizens in Lincoln NE or Manchester NH.
That the middle east and the Arab/Islamic world in particular is now a burned out zone of failed states and an incubator of barbaric religious and sectarian fanaticism is because Imperial Washington made it that way.
So what has metastasized from the ruins left by American intervention is not an organized military threat or a tide of state sponsored attacks on the civilian life of the West; it is random blowback of the suicidal flotsam and jetsam that have been puked from the very same jaws of hell which Washington so foolishly opened.
It did so under the banner of two stunningly false predicates. One of these was the long-standing Washington error that America’s security and economic well-being depends upon keeping an armada in the Persian Gulf in order to protect the surrounding oilfields and the flow of tankers through the straits of Hormuz.
That doctrine has been wrong from the day it was officially enunciated by one of America’s great economic ignoramuses, Henry Kissinger, at the time of the original oil crisis in 1973. The 42 years since then have proven in spades that its doesn’t matter who controls the oilfields, and that the only effective cure for high oil prices is the free market, not the Fifth Fleet.
Every tin pot dictatorship from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Saddam Hussein, to the bloody-minded chieftains of Nigeria, to the purportedly medieval Mullahs and fanatical Republican Guards of Iran has produced oil—-and all they could because they desperately needed the revenue.
For crying out loud, even the barbaric thugs of ISIS milk every possible drop of petroleum from the tiny, wheezing oilfields scattered around their backwater domain. So there is no economic case whatsoever for Imperial Washington’s massive military presence in the middle east, and most especially for its long-time alliance with the despicable regime of Saudi Arabia.
The truth is, there is no such thing as an OPEC cartel——virtually every member produces all they can and cheats whenever possible. The only thing that resembles production control in the global oil market is the fact that the Saudi princes treat their oil reserves not much differently than Exxon.
That is, they attempt to maximize the present value of their 270 billion barrels of reserves, but ultimately are no more clairvoyant at calibrating the best oil price to accomplish that than are the economists at Exxon or the IEA.
The Saudis over-estimated the staying power of China’s temporarily surging call on global supply; and under-estimated how rapidly and extensively the $100 per barrel marker reached in early 2008 would trigger a flow of investment, technology and cheap debt into the US shale patch, the Canadian tar sands, the tired petroleum provinces of Russia, the deep offshore of Brazil etc. And that’s to say nothing of solar, wind and all the other government subsidized alternative source of BTUs.
Way back when Jimmy Carter was telling us to turn down the thermostats and put on our cardigan sweaters, those of us on the free market side of the so-called energy shortage debate said the best cure for high oil prices is high prices. Now we know.
So the Fifth Fleet and its overt and covert auxiliaries should never have been there—–going all the way back to the CIA’s coup against Iranian democracy in 1953. It was in the name of protecting the oil fields that the Washington war machine installed the monstrous Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on the Peacock Throne and thereby inaugurated 25 years of plunder and Savak terror.
Likewise, it was the Washington war machine that decided upon the “tilt to Saddam” in his 1980s war on the Islamic Republic, and which provided him with satellite based tracking and targeting services when he rained chemical weapons on barely armed Iranian forces.
The truth is, there never were any Iranian “terrorists” at time the Berlin Wall fell. What existed was the smoldering hostility and nationalism that had arisen among the Iranian people after four decades of Washington intervention in their internal affairs, and a theocratic Shiite regime that had come to power owing to Washington’s foolish embrace of a brutal megalomaniacal tyrant.
Even then, the rulers of Tehran had been ratified twice in honest elections. And they were far more civilized, constitutionally-minded and economically egalitarian than the absolute monarchs of the House of Saud, whose gluttonous opulence was unspeakable and whose medievalist Wahhabi regime of social repression and religious intolerance was (and is) deeply offensive to every value America represents.
But having turned Iran into an enemy, Imperial Washington was just getting started when 1990 rolled around. Once again in the name of “oil security” it plunged the American war machine into the politics and religious fissures of the Persian Gulf; and did so on account of a local small potatoes conflict that had no bearing whatsoever on the safety and security of American citizens.
As US ambassador Glaspie rightly told Saddam Hussein on the eve of his Kuwait invasion, America had no dog in that hunt.
Kuwait wasn’t even a country; it was a bank account sitting on a swath of oilfields surrounding an ancient trading city that had been abandoned by Ibn Saud in the early 20th century. That’s because he didn’t know what oil was or that it was there; and, in any event, it had been made a separate protectorate by the British in 1913 for reasons that are lost in the fog of diplomatic history.
Likewise, Iraq’s contentious dispute with Kuwait had been over its claim that the Emir of Kuwait was “slant drilling” across his border into Iraq’s Rumaila field. Yet it was a wholly elastic boundary of no significance whatsoever.
In fact, the dispute over the Rumaila field started in 1960 when an Arab League declaration arbitrarily marked the Iraq–Kuwait border two miles north of the southernmost tip of the Rumaila field.
And that newly defined boundary, in turn, had come only 44 years after a pair of English and French diplomats had carved up their winnings from the Ottoman Empire’s demise by laying a straight edged ruler on the map. So doing, they thereby confected the artificial country of Iraq from the historically independent and hostile Mesopotamian provinces of the Shiite in the south, the Sunni in the west and the Kurds in the north.
In short, it did not matter who controlled the southern tip of the Rumaila field—–the brutal dictator of Baghdad or the opulent Emir of Kuwait. Not the price of oil, nor the peace of America nor the security of Europe nor the future of Asia depended upon it.
But Bush the Elder got persuaded by Henry Kissinger’s economically illiterate protégés at the national security council and his Texas oilman Secretary of State that the will-o-wisp of “oil security” was at stake, and that 500,000 American troops needed to be planted in the sands of Arabia.
That was a catastrophic error, and not only because the presence of crusader boots on the purportedly sacred soil of Arabia offended the CIA-trained Mujahedeen of Afghanistan, who had become unemployed when the Soviet Union collapsed.
The 1991 CNN glorified war games in the Gulf also revived another group of unemployed crusaders. Namely, the neocon national security fanatics who had mislead Ronald Reagan into a massive military build-up to thwart what they claimed to be an ascendant Soviet Union bent on nuclear war winning capabilities and global conquest.
All things being equal, the sight of Boris Yeltsin, Vodka flask in hand, facing down the Red Army a few months later should have sent them into the permanent repudiation and obscurity they so richly deserved. But Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz managed to extract from Washington’s pyric victory in Kuwait a whole new lease on life for Imperial Washington.
Right then and there came the second erroneous predicate. To wit, that “regime change” among the assorted tyrannies of the middle east was in America’s national interest, and that the Gulf War proved it could be achieved through a sweeping interventionist menu of coalition diplomacy, security assistance, arms shipments, covert action and open military attack and occupation.
What the neocon doctrine of regime change actually did, of course, was to foster the Frankenstein that became ISIS. In fact, the only real terrorists in the world which threaten normal civilian life in the West are the rogue offspring of Imperial Washington’s post-1990 machinations in the middle east.
The CIA trained and armed Mujahedeen mutated into al-Qaeda not because Bin Laden suddenly had a religious epiphany that his Washington benefactors were actually the Great Satan owing to America’s freedom and liberty.
His murderous crusade was inspired by the Wahhabi fundamentalism loose in Saudi Arabia. This benighted religious fanaticism became agitated to a fever pitch by Imperial Washington’s violent plunge into Persian Gulf political and religious quarrels, the stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia, and the decade long barrage of sanctions, embargoes, no fly zones, covert actions and open hostility against the Sunni regime in Bagdad after 1991.
Yes, Bin Laden would have amputated Saddam’s secularist head if Washington hadn’t done it first, but that’s just the point. The attempt at regime change in March 2003 was one of the most foolish acts of state in American history.
The younger Bush’s neocon advisers had no clue about the sectarian animosities and historical grievances that Hussein had bottled-up by parsing the oil loot and wielding the sword under the banner of Baathist nationalism. But Shock and Awe blew the lid and the de-baathification campaign unleashed the furies.
Indeed, no sooner had George Bush pranced around on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln declaring “mission accomplished” than Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a CIA recruit to the Afghan war a decade earlier and small-time specialist in hostage-taking and poisons, fled his no count redoubt in Kurdistan to emerge as a flamboyant agitator in the now disposed Sunni heartland.
The founder of ISIS succeeded in Fallujah and Anbar province just like the long list of other terrorist leaders Washington claims to have exterminated. That is, Zarqawi gained his following and notoriety among the region’s population of deprived, brutalized and humiliated young men by dint of being more brutal than their occupiers.
Indeed, even as Washington was crowing about the demise of Zarqawi, the remnants of the Baathist regime and the hundreds of thousands of demobilized Republican Guards were coalescing into al-Qaeda in Iraq, and their future leaders were being incubated in a monstrous nearby detention center called Camp Bucca that contained more than 26,000 prisoners.
As one former US Army officer, Mitchell Gray, later described it,
You never see hatred like you saw on the faces of these detainees,” Gray remembers of his 2008 tour. “When I say they hated us, I mean they looked like they would have killed us in a heartbeat if given the chance. I turned to the warrant officer I was with and I said, ‘If they could, they would rip our heads off and drink our blood.’ ”
What Gray didn’t know — but might have expected — was that he was not merely looking at the United States’ former enemies, but its future ones as well. According to intelligence experts and Department of Defense records, the vast majority of the leadership of what is today known as ISIS, including its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, did time at Camp Bucca.
And not only did the US feed, clothe and house these jihadists, it also played a vital, if unwitting, role in facilitating their transformation into the most formidable terrorist force in modern history.
Early in Bucca’s existence, the most extreme inmates were congregated in Compound 6. There were not enough Americans guards to safely enter the compound — and, in any event, the guards didn’t speak Arabic. So the detainees were left alone to preach to one another and share deadly vocational advice.
…….Bucca also housed Haji Bakr, a former colonel in Saddam Hussein’s air-defense force. Bakr was no religious zealot. He was just a guy who lost his job when the Coalition Provisional Authority disbanded the Iraqi military and instituted de-Baathification, a policy of banning Saddam’s past supporters from government work.
According to documents recently obtained by German newspaper Der Spiegel, Bakr was the real mastermind behind ISIS’s organizational structure and also mapped out the strategies that fueled its early successes. Bakr, who died in fighting in 2014, was incarcerated at Bucca from 2006-’08, along with a dozen or more of ISIS’s top lieutenants.
The point is, regime change and nation building can never be accomplished by the lethal violence of 21st century armed forces; and they were an especially preposterous assignment in the context of a land rent with 13 century-old religious fissures and animosities.
In fact, the wobbly, synthetic state of Iraq was doomed the minute Cheney and his bloody gang decided to liberate it from the brutal, but serviceable and secular tyranny of Saddam’s Baathist regime. That’s because the process of elections and majority rule necessarily imposed by Washington was guaranteed to elect a government beholden to the Shiite majority.
After decades of mistreatment and Saddam’s brutal suppression of their 1991 uprising, did the latter have revenge on their minds and in their communal DNA? Did the Kurds have dreams of an independent Kurdistan that had been denied their 30 million strong tribe way back at Versailles and ever since?
Yes, they did. So the $25 billion spent on training and equipping the putative armed forces of post-liberation Iraq was bound to end up in the hands of sectarian militias, not a national army.
In fact, when the Shiite commanders fled Sunni-dominated Mosul in June 2014 they transformed the ISIS uprising against the government in Baghdad into a vicious fledgling state in one fell swoop. It wasn’t by beheadings and fiery jihadist sermons that it quickly enslaved dozens of towns and several million people in western Iraq and the Euphrates Valley of Syria.
Its instruments of terror and occupation were the best weapons that the American taxpayers could buy. That included 2,300 Humvees and tens of thousands of automatic weapons, as well as vast stores of ammunition, trucks, rockets, artillery pieces and even tanks and helicopters.
And that wasn’t the half of it. The newly proclaimed Islamic State also filled the power vacuum in Syria created by its so-called civil war. But in truth that was another exercise in Washington inspired and financed regime change undertaken in connivance with Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The latter were surely not interested in expelling the tyranny next door; they are the living embodiment of it. Instead, the rebellion was about removing Iran’s Alawite/Shiite ally from power in Damascus and laying gas pipelines to Europe across the upper Euphrates Valley.
In any event, ISIS soon had troves of additional American weapons. Some of them were supplied to Sunni radicals by way of Qatar and Saudi Arabia. More came up the so-called “ratline” from Gaddafi’s former arsenals in Benghazi through Turkey. And still more came through Jordan from the “moderate” opposition trained there by the CIA, which more often than not sold them or defected to the other side.
So that the Islamic State was Washington’s Frankenstein monster became evident from the moment it rushed upon the scene 18 months ago. But even then the Washington war party could not resist adding fuel to the fire, whooping up another round of Islamophobia among the American public and forcing the Obama White House into a futile bombing campaign for the third time in a quarter century.
But if bombing really worked, the Islamic State would be sand and gravel by now. Indeed, as shown by the map below, it is really not much more than that anyway.
The dusty, broken, impoverished towns and villages along the margins of the Euphrates River and in the bombed out precincts of Anbar province do not attract thousands of wannabe jihadists from the failed states of the middle east and the alienated Muslim townships of Europe because the caliphate offers prosperity, salvation or any future at all.
What recruits them is outrage at the bombs and drones being dropped on Sunni communities by the US air force; and by the cruise missiles launched from the bowels of the Mediterranean which rip apart homes, shops, offices and mosques containing as many innocent civilians as ISIS terrorists.
The truth is, the Islamic State was destined for a short half-life anyway. It was contained by the Kurds in the north and east and by Turkey with NATO’s second largest army and air force in the northwest. And it was surrounded by the Shiite crescent in the populated, economically viable regions of lower Syria and Iraq.
So absent Washington’s misbegotten campaign to unseat Assad in Damascus and demonize his confession-based Iranian ally, there would have been nowhere for the murderous fanatics who pitched a makeshift capital in Raqqa to go. They would have run out of money, recruits, momentum and public acquiesce in their horrific rule in due course.
But with the US Air Force functioning as their recruiting arm and France’s anti-Assad foreign policy helping to foment a final spasm of anarchy in Syria, the gates of hell have been opened wide. What has been puked out is not an organized war on Western civilization as Hollande so hysterically proclaimed in response to the mayhem of last weekend.
It was just blowback carried out by that infinitesimally small salient of mentally deformed young men who can be persuaded to strap on a suicide belt.
Needless to say, bombing wont stop them; it will just make more of them.
Ironically, what can stop them is the Assad government and the ground forces of its Hezbollah and the Iranian Republican Guard allies. Its time to let them settle an ancient quarrel that has never been any of America’s business anyway.
But Imperial Washington is so caught up in its myths, lies and hegemonic stupidity that it can not see the obvious.
And that is why a quarter century after the cold war ended peace still hasn’t been given a chance and the reason that horrific events like last week’s barbarism in Paris still keep happening.
- How The Turks Really Feel – A Moment Of (Un)-Silence
Observing a moment of silence for the victims of last Friday’s massacre in the streets of Paris has become something of a global phenomenon at everything from sporting events to stock exchanges and generally speaking, everyone has been outwardly happy to oblige.
Well, not Turkish soccer fans.
As Reuters reports (and as you’ll see below), the moment of silence for France was booed on Tuesday before what ended up being a disappointing match between Turkey and Greece.
Turkish fans booed during the minute’s silence for the victims of the Paris attacks before their national team drew 0-0 with Greece in a friendly international soccer game on Tuesday.
The mark of respect was observed at matches across Europe, including at Wembley where France faced England, after Islamic State militants struck Paris on Friday killing 129 people.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Greek counterpart Alexis Tsipras watched the game together, in a sign of reconciliation between the two neighbours, whose relationship has suffered from hostilities in the past.
It was the first time the two teams had met for eight years and the Turkish Football Federation had announced a string of additional security measures before the match at the Istanbul Basaksehir stadium, which was a 17,000 sell out.
However, the occasion was a disappointment with both teams trying out new players in a game of few chances with former European champions Greece, who failed to qualify for the Euros, having just one goal attempt against Turkey’s 12.
Perhaps the Turks are angry that there was no worldwide moment of silence observed after bombings in Ankara killed 102 and injured more than 400 just last month.
- The World According To Trump
With The Donald once again standing alone at the top of the polls (as Carson drifts lower)…
Perhaps it is time to refresh one’s opinion on Trump’s view of the world…
- In Baltimore, Race Is The Deciding Factor In Mortgage Lending
In many ways, the riots that left parts of Baltimore smoldering in late April were the culmination of 9 months of worsening race relations in the US.
The death of Eric Garner, the unrest in Ferguson, and the shooting of Walter Scott all served to create a palpable sense of distrust between African Americans and white police officers and when Freddie Gray died, the stage was set for a night of anarchy in the streets. A “purge” as it were.
In the wake of the riots, some were quick to point out that while much of what took place on the night of April 27 is inexcusable regardless of any mitigating socioeconomic factors, the anger and frustration in some predominantly African American communities emanates from a lack of opportunity. Put simply, social mobility for some minorities is severely constrained by myriad hurdles that in many cases prove to be all but insurmountable. That’s not an attempt to excuse antisocial behavior, and it’s certainly not to say that those who possess an iron will and uncanny resolve can’t succeed despite all odds, it’s simply to say that “equality of opportunity” doesn’t exist in America. Plain and simple.
Recall that back in May, The New York Times (drawing on research from Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren) took a look at income mobility and, by extension, the best and worst places to live in America.
Here’s how we described the study at the time: The goal of the study (and its predecessors) is to determine the most effective way to imporove economic outcomes for low-income children. Here, the researchers “focus on families who moved across areas to study how neighborhoods affect upward mobility.” Unsurprisingly, Chetty and Hendren “find that every year of exposure to a better environment improves a child’s chances of success.”
Here are some screenshots from the interactive map presented by The Times which should tell you all you need to know about social/ income mobility and Baltimore:
In this context, we present a few excerpts from a New York Times piece out Monday which takes a look at a new study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition who looked at mortgage lending in Baltimore.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Coalition found that the most important determinate for loans was the racial composition of the neighborhood. Not income. Not credt. But race.
Here’s more:
The black population of Baltimore is double that of the white population. Yet in 2013, banks made more than twice as many mortgage loans to whites in the city as they did to blacks.
The stark difference in mortgage lending, derived from the most recent government mortgage data, is the focus of a new study that will be released on Tuesday by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a consumer advocacy group.
Still, the coalition says its analysis shows that the racial makeup of a neighborhood — and not income, for instance — is the most significant predictor of whether a loan gets made in Baltimore.
“If lenders are not making loans in a community, the opportunities for people to work their way out of poverty is pretty slim,” said John Taylor, the coalition’s president. “In Baltimore, the prevailing factor behind who gets a mortgage is the racial composition of the neighborhood.”
As The Times notes, “it has long been the case that the rate at which blacks get denied a mortgage is higher than that for whites” and indeed, there appear to be legitimate reasons for this. “According to the Fed’s analysis of the government mortgage data from 2013, banks said credit history was the reason behind 30 percent of their denials of black borrowers. For whites, banks said it was the cause in 22.5 percent of the cases,” NYT adds.
But that’s not what’s going on in Baltimore.
First, here are the raw numbers (which should themselves give you pause even if you’re skeptical about the study itself):
In 2013, 797 loans were made to blacks in the city, a seemingly tiny number considering that Baltimore’s black population totals almost 400,000. Some 2,000 loans were made to the city’s 175,000 whites.
Here’s where it gets bad:
In lower-income areas of Baltimore where minorities made up 10 to 19 percent of the population, 72 percent of mortgage applications were approved. But in lower-income areas where minorities made up more than 80 percent of the population, only 59 percent of applicants were approved.
So we’re talking about low-income borrowers in both cases. In other words, t’s not about the borrowers’ ability to service the debt. Banks simply don’t want you buying houses in black neighborhoods. It looks to be as simple as that.
Incredibly, the numbers are even worse for high-income borrowers:
Higher-income borrowers in Baltimore were approved for 64 percent of the loans they applied for in areas where the minority population exceeded 80 percent. But the approval rate was 82 percent for higher-income borrowers in areas where minorities made up less than 10 percent of the population.
In other words, even if you make a lot of money, the bank is far less likely to give you a loan for a house in a black neighborhood in Baltimore.
Now admittedly, banks are likely just protecting their interests. That is, you don’t want to end up sitting on a book full of loans you made for homes that you think are likely to fall in value.
But bear in mind that you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, “ok take some initiative, work, build credit, buy a home, and do your part to lift your community out of the proverbial gutter“, and then at the same time say “well, then again, we can’t give you a loan because your neighborhood is mostly black.” That won’t work and will only serve to perpetuate the status quo. Here’s The Times again:
One of the chief concerns among consumer advocates is that banks have effectively written off certain neighborhoods. Lenders, for instance, may shun creditworthy borrowers in neighborhoods where blacks are the majority because they may not believe that house prices will rise by much in such areas. But if banks avoid economically challenged areas for that reason, it could make it more unlikely that house prices will rise.
As always, we’re not taking one side or the other, but what the above does underscore is the fact that changing the circumstances which contribute (note we did not say “cause” we said “contribute“) to the types of social unrest we witnessed last April can be exceptionally difficult when the deck is stacked.
- And Then There Were 13… Bobby Jindal 'Suspends' Presidential Campaign As Trump Tops Post-Paris Polls
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Tuesday said he was ending his presidential bid, saying “this is not my time.”
Jindal had struggled to gain traction in the race, often failing to poll at even 1 percent in some surveys. He also underwhelmed in the money race, and had just $261,000 in the bank heading into October.
As Politico reports, Jindal is the third Republican to suspend his campaign, after former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker dropped out earlier this year.
And as most of America says "Bobby who?", The Donald takes a commanding lead in post-Paris polls… (as The Hill reports)
Donald Trump’s voter support is rising nationwide after last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris, a new poll says.
Trump commands a 19-point lead over his competition for the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination, according to the Morning Consult survey.
The New York business mogul earns 38 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, it said Tuesday.
“Pundits have gotten rich declaring the impending decline of Donald Trump — and they’ve been consistently wrong,” said James Wyatt, Morning Consult’s director polling.
“Morning Consult isn’t the only poll that shows Trump still has life, and that the rest of the field needs to work overtime to catch him,” he added Tuesday.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson trails the outspoken billionaire with 19 percent of that demographic.
Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are next, tying for third with 7 percent apiece.
Former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) rounds out the field’s top five, garnering 6 percent among respondents.
Morning Consult said Tuesday that Trump’s poll numbers are surging from a dip last month.
As RealClearPolitics noted,
- World Gold Council Continues To Hide Insatiable Chinese Gold Demand
Submitted by Koos Jansen via BullionStar.com,
The amount of gold withdrawn from the vaults of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), which equals Chinese wholesale gold demand, accounted for 45 tonnes in the trading week that ended on 6 November. Year to date SGE withdrawals have reached an astonishing 2,210 tonnes, which is more than the full year record set in 2013 at 2,197 tonnes. With nearly two months of trading left in the Chinese gold market, SGE withdrawals are estimated to reach more than 2,600 tonnes.
Please read The Mechanics Of The Chinese Domestic Gold Market for a comprehensive explanation of the relationship between SGE withdrawals and Chinese wholesale gold demand.
If Chinese gold import will be higher than in 2013 remains to be seen. Two years ago China imported 1,507 tonnes in standard gold bars. According to my estimates China is on track to import 1,400 tonnes in 2015. This year’s SGE withdrawals can have been supplied by more recycled gold than in 2013 that in part replaces gold import.
SGE withdrawals = mine + import + recycled gold supply.
SGE withdrawals can only be supplied by domestically mined gold, imported gold or recycled gold (ie scrap). Because China is one of the few countries that doesn’t disclose its gold trade data we must estimate Chinese gold import from data provided by gold exporters such as the UK, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Australia. Their foreign trade statistics show China has net imported more than 1,032 tonnes of gold in the first three quarters of 2015. In addition, Chinese domestic mining output has been 357 tonnes, according to the China Gold Association, which is prohibited from being exported. Without counting scrap supply apparent physical gold supply in China was 1,389 tonnes in the first nine months of 2015, yet, the World Gold Council disclose Q1-Q3 Chinese gold demand at 736 tonnes. Again, for years in a row now, there is more than twice as much physical gold being supplied to China than what is presented as demand to the average gold investor by the authority on gold (the World Gold Council).
How can so much gold be supplied to China without someone buying it and thus being genuine demand? It cannot. Chinese gold demand as disclosed by the World Gold Council (WGC) is fallacious.
Western consultancy firms have presented numerous arguments to explain the difference between SGE withdrawals and Chinese consumer gold demand, but none of them have proven to be complete. First it was industrial demand that should have caused the difference (WGC 2013), then it was stock movement change (GFMS 2013), then it was round tripping (WGC 2014), then it was gold leasing (WGC 2014), then it was official purchases (WGC 2013), then it was recycled gold (CPM Group 2014, GFMS 2015), even gold export from China has been tested to fool gold investors (PMI 2015). Although some of these arguments are partially true (read this post for an overview) they cannot fully explain the difference, which is at least 2,500 tonnes.
Does the mainstream media ever investigate this odd discrepancy? Of course not, according to them gold is just a pet rock. Nobody cares about 2,500 tonnes of gold that have vanished into a black hole somewhere in China. Whilst, coincidentally, China is the second largest economy in the world that has stated the US dollar should be replaced as the world reserve currency. At the same time the global economy is still struggling to recover from the biggest financial crisis in recent history by printing money, which seems to do nothing more than buy time. But Western media refuse to connect the dots.
Also note, none of the arguments listed above have been carefully described by the consultancy firms that presented them. A few sentences in a report from the World Gold Council were enough to convince the Financial Times to copy-paste the conclusion, although being factually incorrect. Never do the firms thoroughly describe the process of gold leasing or round tripping. Please, show me how gold leasing has inflated SGE withdrawals by 2,500 tonnes and I would be happy to further investigate the flows of gold through the SGE. The most recent sign from mainstream analysts with respect to this topic was communicated through a tweet. 140 characters achieved to set in motion a renewed wave of believe Chinese gold demand numbers make perfect sense.
Numbers complex, but huge gap between SGE withdrawals and demand data is simple – leasing + round tripping #LBMA
— BullionVault (@bullionvault) October 20, 2015
Doesn’t this subject deserve a little more debate? By the way, isn’t there a contradiction in “numbers complex” and “huge gap between SGE withdrawals and demand data is simple”?
And there is more. Some analysts speculate the PBOC is the secretive buyer of the ‘surplus’ imported gold in China. I would not agree (click here, here and here for my posts on this subject) and I suppose the WGC agrees with me. From the WGC in 2014 [brackets added by me]:
China’s authorities have a range of options when purchasing gold. They may acquire some of the gold which flows into China [required to be sold through the SGE]…. but there are reasons why they may prefer to buy gold on international markets: gold sold on the SGE is priced in yuan and prospective buyers – for example, the PBoC with large multi-currency reserves – may rather use US dollars than purchasing domestically-priced gold. The international market would have a lot more liquidity too.
The WGC suggests the PBOC does not buy gold through the SGE, which implies official Chinese gold demand complements SGE withdrawals and thus the difference of 2,500 tonnes. But then the supply and demand balance from the WGC is still missing 2,500 tonnes. Or is it…?
After six year of silence China’s central bank, the PBOC, announced in July 2015 it had accumulated 604 tonnes in official gold reserves (that jumped from 1,054 to 1,658 tonnes). In the books from the PBOC the 604 tonnes were added to their reserves in the month of June. Subsequently, in July, August and September the PBOC increased its reserves by 50.5 tonnes in total.
The World Gold Council includes all official gold purchases in their Gold Demand Trends (GDT) reports. Below is the total supply and demand table from the WGC released in the GDT report released for Q3 2015.
As we can see central bank purchases are included, though if we look at total official gold demand for Q2 2015 it states 127.9 tonnes (Q3 2015 is 175 tonnes). Apparently, the World Gold Council did not include the 604 tonnes increment from the PBOC in their total supply and demand balance – and likely will not in any forthcoming balance. But the PBOC must have bought it from somewhere right? 604 tonnes couldn’t have fallen from the sky, it must have been supplied by disinvestment, mining output or scraps. Shouldn’t this demand by the PBOC have been disclosed somewhere in a supply and demand overview? We were already missing 2,500 tonnes from the WGC numbers and now we have to add another 604 tonnes.
From the GDT Q3 report we can read:
The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) confirmed in July that its gold reserves had expanded by over 50% since its last announcement in 2009. At 1,658t, that put China at number six in the global rankings. Subsequently, the PBoC has begun regularly to report changes to its gold holdings and has confirmed an additional 50.1t of purchases between July and September.
Did you notice the WGC refrains from mentioning the PBOC bought 604 tonnes, but conveniently writes the PBOC had “its gold reserves … expanded by over 50 %”? This way another 604 tonnes are hidden from the World Gold Council’s total supply and demand balance, which in my opinion is nothing more than a vague mirage of true global gold supply and demand.
- Mollycoddled
From the Slope of Hope: I’ve been puzzling over the peculiar reaction the market had on Monday to the savage attacks that took place in Paris. Never would I have dared imagine that assets across the board would excitedly zoom upward following this brutal mass killing in one of the most beloved cities in the world. It just made no sense.
This morning, as I was doing my usual 5:30 a.m. walk of my big dogs, it dawned on me: the market rallied because it knew it was going to get pampered. Over the past several decades – – and the last seven years in particular – – the market as a whole has been trained by the central banks and national governments of the world that Big Daddy Is Going To Make Things Better, and that if bad things happen (like Long Term Capital Management, or the Internet bubble bursting, or AIG going up in flames, or the twin towers falling, or civilians in Paris being mowed down by automatic rifles) then the paternal overseers that are ostensibly our leaders will give us a kiss, put a band-aid on our boo-boo, and make it all go away.
Let me digress by introducing you to this gentleman:
A chubby old dude shaking hands with a Marine, right? Well, this is Mr. Jack Lucas. Let me tell you a bit about him.
In the summer of 1942, World War II was heating up, and young Jack wanted to join the fight. The problem was that he was a 14 year old kid. He was a tough-looking hombre, though, so without even asking his mother, he went off to the Marine recruit depot, lied about his age, and was shipped off to Parris Island.
Although he did superbly well in training, he grew weary of not getting involved in any actual fighting, so he went AWOL in early 1945 (a reward was posted for his capture). He sneaked aboard a boat and told an officer who he was. Instead of arresting him, the commander allowed him to stay, and Jack turned 17 years old (the age he claimed to be when he originally signed up) while at sea.
A few days later, the craft landed off the coast of Iwo Jima. He and three other guys got on to the island and, hunkered down in a trench, they were attacked by Japanese. A grenade fell near them, and Jack Lucas threw his body over it. Observing a second grenade nearby, he grabbed it and shoved that under his body as well. (I think most of us would admit doing this would not be our first instinct). He quickly pushed the grenades into the volcanic ash beneath him, and they exploded.
His buddies were certain he was dead, and they got the hell out of there, but, incredibly, Jack survived the blasts. He was evacuated to a hospital ship and was sent back to the United States. He underwent 21 different rounds of surgery, and the doctors deliberately left over 200 pieces of metal in his body (meaning, among other things, Mr. Lucas could never pass through an airport’s metal detector without some serious explaining).
He was, at the age of 17, award the Medal of Honor by Harry Truman………..and then he went back to finish freakin’ high school. He went on the other military adventures later in life, including an instance in which neither of his parachutes deployed (he survived, naturally). So the old fellow you see above was a complete badass.
Contrast that with today’s college students who are whining and screaming about “micro-aggression” and are all worked up that the victims in Paris are getting all the limelight while their bitch-fest has been shunted aside as uninteresting.
Indeed, I had never heard the term “safe space” until just a few days ago, but apparently it’s a big deal these days. From what a gather, it’s a zone in which free speech is completely forbidden, for fear of hurting the feelings of some special snowflake. For instance:
Two-spirited? I feel out of step with the times, I must say. And then there’s this:
I could look up cisgender, but I’m not going to bother. Considering me “questioning”, which apparently entitles me to visit the aforementioned safe space.
And let me be clear about something: I am anti-bullying, pro-civil-rights all the way. But, sweet Jesus on a cornbread muffin, people, don’t you think this is all a bit much?
The way college students are demanding to be mollycoddled aligns perfectly with the attitudes
of investors as well. They simply will not tolerate any meaningful down-move in the market, and the central bankers have pandered for so many years to this kind of thinking, they simply keep doing the same things month after month, year after year. The equity markets have become the ultimate “Safe Space” for adults.Thus, after the Paris attacks, the knee-jerk reaction (which lasted only moments, and was actually quite sensible in a normal world) was to sell everything except gold, which itself got bid up nicely. The collective mind, however, knew that the succubus Janet Yellen and her kind would swoop in and let equity investors suckle at the dangling teats of fiscal accommodation, thus eradicating any true price discovery and any risk for the soft-as-downy-fur traders out there.
There is no free lunch, however, although it’s easy to understand after all this years why one might think otherwise. But if parents protect their kids too much, never letting them stand on their own two feet, you wind up with a guy in his mid-30s still living with his parents and trying to find himself. Such a man will, in fact, ultimately fail, because he was never allowed to grow up (and I daresay would have had his ass kicked all over the yard by 14-year-old Jack Lucas).
So, too, will equity markets. They have been mollycoddled into a state of moral flabbiness. If in 2008 all support was taken away and the market was forced to cleanse itself as God intended, we would on this very day be enjoying true prosperity and be many trillions less in debt. As it is now, though, we have to simply wait it out, anticipating the day when equity “investors” finally realize that the safe space around them has disappeared, and there’s no brave soul around them who is going to throw their body on the grenades tumbling down around them.
- Following Paris Terror Attacks, Only Three Things Are Guaranteed
Submitted by Nick Bernabe via TheAntiMedia.org,
France was victimized by a bloody terror attack on the evening of November 13th, 2015. ISIS, the self-proclaimed “Islamic caliphate,” has taken credit for the Paris terror attacks, which claimed the lives of at least 129 people and wounded another 415.
The world is grieving, with millions on social media declaring their solidarity with France. Millions more are asking why so many are outraged now, when thousands of people are killed daily in conflicts the world over.
In the aftermath of the attack, several realities have become clear. Taking history into account, three things will undoubtedly occur in response to the terror attacks in Paris.
Yet More War
The world is plagued by war, and following the Paris attacks, there is about to be a lot more of it. French President Francois Hollande quickly declared Friday’s terror attacks acts of war, making it clear through his actions over the weekend what the answer to those acts will be: bombs — and a lot of them.
France carried out over 100 airstrikes in Syria on Sunday, with many more sure to come in Hollande’s “pitiless war” against those responsible for the attacks. France has already been involved with the civil war in Syria, fighting alongside the U.S. At the same time, it has stuck to the West’s talking point that Assad must be deposed for there to be a political solution to the conflict.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the U.S. is gearing up to exploit the attacks in Paris by calling for more military intervention in Syria. First it was politicians, then the establishment media who called for a more direct response from the United States — up to and including a full-scale invasion of Syria.
President Obama has already stymied such calls for a full-scale military operation in Syria, ruling out a ground invasion. “It’s best that we don’t shoot first and aim later,” he said. The president continued:
“We play into the ISIL narrative when we act as if they are a state and we use routine military tactics that are designed to fight a state that is attacking another state. That’s not what’s going on here.”
While this rhetoric is rather rational, it’s hard to believe the president will stick to his words, especially considering he proclaimed the U.S. would not deploy boots on the ground in Syria at least 16 times — only to do just that months later.
As Anti-Media noted earlier today, Sunday’s entire Democratic presidential debate was intentionally shifted to focus on foreign policy and anti-terror measures — and the candidates responded with forcefully hawkish rhetoric (with the exception of Bernie Sanders).
The information that seems to be missing from the entire conversation is that it was forceful foreign policy, accelerated by George W. Bush and continued by President Obama, that is directly responsible for the rise of ISIS in the first place. The short-sighted rhetoric political figures and media pundits are now spouting is highly reminiscent of post-9/11 fervor — and could lead to more of the same foreign policy blunders made in the years following 2001.
Islamophobia, Xenophobia, and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment
When an Islamic terrorist group attacks, the masses are quick to indict the entire religion — and the right-wing media is always there to fuel the flames of distrust and fear. The fact of the matter is that only a tiny minority of people who identify as Muslim commit terrorist acts. The likelihood of white Europeans and Americans alike committing an act of terror is exponentially greater than that of Islamic extremists (cops in the U.S. kill exponentially more than both of these groups combined).
Distrust of Muslims has been growing in France for several years, and the Paris attacks have only served to amplify this xenophobia. Rallies for peace and solidarity in Paris over the weekend were interrupted by anti-Muslim protesters shouting, “throw out Islamists!”
The “Jungle” refugee camp in Calais, France, which largely houses Muslims fleeing the war-torn Middle East, caught fire on Friday night. While the cause of the fire is still unknown, anti-immigrant groups in France took to social media to applaud the fire’s destruction.
In the United States, many media outlets are fear mongering with anti-immigrant propaganda, and right-wing politicians are feeding right into it. At least half a dozen Republican governors have already announced plans to resist the settlement of Syrian refugees in their states in the wake of the Paris terror attacks. However, many people on social media are countering the fear mongering:
To people blaming refugees for attacks in Paris tonight. Do you not realise these are the people the refugees are trying to run away from..?
— Dan Holloway (@RFCdan) November 13, 2015
Loss of Liberties in France and at Home
The immediate response to the terror attacks in France was one of blatant militarism. As Anti-Media reported earlier today, the French government has deployed 10,000 troops to patrol the streets of France. President Francois Hollande announced his intention to extend the state of emergency for another three months, and a curfew has been enacted in Paris for the first time since WWII. These actions make a state of near-martial law a reality for Parisians. The French government also ordered 150 raids across the country against suspected terrorists, placing 104 people under house arrest.
In the long-term, the French can expect to see their liberties eroded as their government continues to replace freedom with security, much like the U.S. did following 9/11 (see: Patriot Act). Prior to Friday’s attacks, the French government had already banned some forms of free speech and established an extensive surveillance apparatus, but further amplifications of these intrusions are likely to follow. Militarized police, “stop and frisk”-style tactics, and loss of privacy are all on the menu as the French government capitalizes on this tragedy to increase its control over the public.
In the U.S., calls to increase already intrusive surveillance of the public have already begun. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, said, “I think we need to restore the metadata program, which was part of the Patriot Act.” Though the bulk collection of the metadata of U.S. citizens was ruled unconstitutional last week by District Court Judge Richard Leon, CIA director John Brennan echoed Bush-era sentiments: speaking to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Brennan claimed that in the wake of the Paris attacks, the U.S. should roll back recent reforms made to protect the privacy of Americans from the NSA’s surveillance dragnet.
While the world mourns the deaths of the innocent people who fell victim to the terror attacks in France, Western governments are busy making plans to wage further war and to reduce the freedoms of the very people victimized by the attacks in the first place. Meanwhile, misled patriots everywhere are clamoring to express their nationalistic fervor, bashing and attacking the very refugees their own governments created through foreign policy riddled with hubris.
- Anonymous Kills 5,500 ISIS Social Media Accounts After Paris Terror Attack
The "hacker collective" known as Anonymous is waging an all-out war against ISIS.
So far, they've taken down more 5,500 ISIS-associated Twitter accounts since the Paris terror attacks.
This is crucial, since ISIS does a lot of its recruiting through social media.
It seems like Anonymous is doing a lot more to unplug ISIS than the NSA and other Western intelligence services.
Indeed, the top NSA official who created the NSA's global surveillance program told Washington's Blog that we should fire the U.S. intelligence agencies .. and hire Anonymous to protect us, instead.
- Baltic Dry Index Crashes Near Record Low
The Baltic Dry Index staged a recovery mid-year, hopefully rising amid promises of stability in China and an 'escape' velocity USA. All that centrally-planned hope and hype faith has been eviscerated on the altar of economic reality. With no ability to directly manipulate the Baltic Dry Index to 'pretend' everything is awesome, it remains among the best 'real' indicators of the state of the global economy… and it's in the toilet…
From hope to nope…
The Batlc Dry nears all-time record lows once again…
In fact, for this time of year, it has never been lower…
But apart from that, buy stocks because terrorism rocks and The Fed would not be raising rates unless everything was awesome, right?
Charts: Bloomberg
Bonus Chart: It's not just The Baltic Dry (or the China Containerized Feight Index), HARPEX has also collapsed to 2008 levels…Harpex for the 6,500 and 8,500 TEU ships are at the exact same level as their 2009 lows and trending lower
But don't worry as talking heads will tell you it is all a supply problem… and nothing to do with demand… MAYBE they'll forget to mention the 'why' there is over-supply – because the freaking manipulations of market-based signals of demand create a massive mal-investment boom in shipbuilding!!!! </rant>
- Crude Jumps After API Reports Modest Inventory Draw (First In 8 Weeks) Despite Another Big Build At Cushing
After seven straight weeks of significant inventory builds, API reported a modest 482k draw. That was all the algos needed and WTI immediately ramped back above $41.00. However, what they likely missed was the 2nd weekly (huge) build in Cushing (1.5mm barrels) as we warned earlier on land storage starting to really fill…
Cushing saw another big build…
And crude reacted…
In short: "The US is the last place with significant onshore crude storage space left."
Which leads directly to Citi's conclusion: "'Sell the rally' near-term as fundamentals remain very sloppy and inventory constraints are becoming increasingly more binding."
Charts: Bloomberg
- Ted Cruz Prepares Refugee-Rejection Bill, Slams Obama's Plan As "Nothing Short Of Lunacy"
Earlier today in “Refugee Blowback: More Than Half Of America’s Governors Oppose Entry Of Syrians,” we brought you a look at just how much effort the nation’s Republican governors are putting into fighting a losing battle against the Obama administration’s plan to settle some 10,000 Syrian asylum seekers.
As a refresher, here’s a look at which states oppose the plan:
As we noted, this is all for political points, because in the final analysis, it’s not up to state and local officials as they “cannot”, to quote WaPo, “physically prevent refugees from being resettled in their areas.” And even if they could, why would they really want to? After all, these refugees were properly “vetted,” much like the “moderate” Syrian rebels the Pentagon sought to train earlier this year.
Of course the Paris attacks virtually ensure that no matter what federal law says, there’s going to be a fight over this and now, GOP Presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz is set to introduce a bill that would prevent Syrian refugees from coming into the US. Here’s WaPo:
Cruz (R-Tex.) said after a campaign event here that the legislation is still being drafted and wouldn’t offer details of exactly what it would say. According to reports, Cruz told CNN that it would bar Syrian Muslim refugees from entering the United States.
Cruz has said numerous times in the past few days that Muslim refugees from Syria should be resettled in majority Muslim countries in the Middle East.
Cruz has said it is “nothing short of lunacy” to allow Syrian Muslim refugees into the country, particularly after Friday’s Paris attacks.
But while Muslims aren’t welcome under the Cruz plan, Christians apparently are:
“There is no meaningful risk of Christians committing acts of terror. If there were a group of radical Christians pledging to murder anyone who had a different religious view than they, we would have a different national security situation,” Cruz said Sunday in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
And here’s an incredulous Obama:
“That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” Obama said.
Maybe “we” don’t, but Ted Cruz does:
“I’ll tell you what’s shameful is that the president after seven years still refuses to utter the words radical Islamic terrorism [and] claims that somehow [it’s] a religious test. [It’s] not that at all. It is understanding the nature of the evil we face.”
But it’s not just Ted Cruz (whose religious based test isn’t likely to win the day even among the GOP). New House Speaker Paul Ryan is also out calling for a review of the refugee plan. Here’s The New York Times:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan called Tuesday for the suspension of a program to accept Syrian refugees into the United States, and two influential senators announced a renewed push for a formal authorization of military force against the Islamic State as Congress moved to respond to the terrorist attacks in Paris.
The developments on Tuesday suggested that the attacks in Paris had shifted the calculations on Capitol Hill, with potentially greater support for authorizing military force against the Islamic State. But there was also a fast-rising backlash, particularly among Republicans, against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States.
Led by Mr. Ryan, the Republicans said there were grave reasons to fear that terrorists would be permitted to enter the country posing as refugees.
“Our nation has always been welcoming,” Mr. Ryan said at a news conference. “But we cannot allow terrorists to take advantage of our compassion. This is a moment where it is better to be safe than to be sorry. So we think the prudent, the responsible thing is to take a pause in this particular aspect of this refugee program in order to verify that terrorists are not trying to infiltrate the refugee population.”
You can see how that comes across as a bit more measured and (importantly) much more feasible than “maybe we should only let in the Christians”, because after all, what’s to keep a terrorist from simply lying and checking the “Christian” box on the entry form right along with the “Not A Suicide Bomber” box?
Not to be outdone, GOP frontrunner Ben Carson is out with a new anti-refugee ad in which the former neurosurgeon hilariously threatens to “defund Obama’s breakfast”:
And then finally there’s poor Jeb Bush, who is desperately seeking to come across as an island of sanity in a political arena gone batshit crazy on both sides of the aisle (via Bloomberg):
“The answer to this is not to ban people from coming,” Bush said Tuesday in an interview with Mark Halperin and John Heilemann for Bloomberg Politics’ With All Due Respect. “The answer is to lead, to resolve the problem in Syria.”
Bush stressed the United States shouldn’t allow in refugees “if there’s any kind of concern.”
“But I don’t think we should eliminate our support for refugees,” Bush added. “It’s been a noble tradition in our country for many years.”
So yes folks, this has become a circus inside the Beltway and the sad thing about it is that at the end of the day, nearly (and we only say “nearly” because we would certainly hope that at least someone, either Republican or Democrat has actually taken the time to rationally weigh the importance of both national security and alleviating human suffering) everyone involved is simply jockeying for political points among their various constituents.
And this will go on and on and will invariably end up being inextricably linked to Obama’s executive action on immigration and, by extension, to the man who knows better than anyone that you can never let a good crisis go to waste, The Donald.
Finally, we leave you with some food for thought, which we’ll let readers assess in the context of the current situation and interpret as they see fit:
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