Putin Archives - Page 2 of 18 - The Automatic Earth

Syrian government troops have reportedly entered Tell Tamer, a town in the middle of Kurdish-controlled part of the country, amid a continued Turkish offensive against Kurdish militias. Troops of the Syrian Arab Army have entered the town on Monday, according to the news agency SANA. Tell Tamer is a relatively small town, but it’s located on an intersection of several major roads and has strategic importance. Earlier the government troops were reported entering Al-Thawrah, a city in the Raqqa governorate located on the Euphrates River and famous for its proximity to a major dam. The relocation of Syrian troops comes as Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria face an incursion from neighboring Turkey.

See? He’s Putin’s lapdog.

• Putin Says Trump Not To Blame For Lack Of Improvement In Russia-US Ties (R.)

Moscow is not blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for failing to improve U.S.-Russian relations, a pledge he had made during his election campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an interview with Arab broadcasters. “We know that, including during his previous election campaign, he spoke in favor of a normalization (of U.S.-Russia relations), but unfortunately it has not happened yet,” Putin told Al Arabiya, Sky News Arabia and RT Arabic. “But we have no claims because we see what’s going on in U.S. domestic politics,” he said, according to a transcript published on the Kremlin’s website on Sunday.

Putin said the “internal political agenda” was not allowing Trump to take steps aimed at a drastic improvement of bilateral relations, adding Moscow would in any case work with any U.S. administration to the extent that Washington itself wants. Putin also said Russia had weapons that neutralize any threat from NATO’s missile deployments in Poland and Romania. “This obviously poses a threat to us because it’s an attempt to level out our strategic nuclear potential. It’s bound to fail, this attempt, it’s already obvious,” he said.

A: There’s only one central bank in Europe. B: A lot of Dutch gold is in London and the US.

• “If The Entire System Collapses, Gold Will Be Needed To Start Over” (ZH)

An article published by the De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), or Dutch Central Bank, has shocked many with its claim that “if the system collapses, the gold stock can serve as a basis to build it up again. Gold bolsters confidence in the stability of the central bank’s balance sheet and creates a sense of security.” [..] The article, titled “DNB’s Gold Stock” states: “A bar of gold retains its value, even in times of crisis. This makes it the opposite of “shares, bonds and other securities” all of which have inherent risk and prices can go down. According to the IMF’s latest data, the DNB holds 615 tons (15,000 bars) of gold mainly in Amsterdam, with other stores in the U.K. and North America; the value of this gold reserve is over €6 billion ($6.62 billion).

Calling gold the “trust anchor,” the article details briefly why the hard asset is so important to wealth building and the global economy, claiming: “Gold is… the trust anchor for the financial system. If the whole system collapses, the gold stock provides a collateral to start over. Gold gives confidence in the power of the central bank’s balance sheet.” Why this sudden admission of what goldbugs have been saying for years? Perhaps it has to do with the fact that on October 7, the bank announced it would soon be moving a large part of its gold reserves to “the new DNB Cash Center at military premises in Zeist.” Almost as if the Netherlands is preparing for the grand reset, and is moving its most valuable asset to a “military” installation just for that purpose.

These people really thought they were running the country.

• Lisa Page’s ‘Quid Pro Quo’ With State Department Over Hillary Email (DM)

An FBI employee who texted with her in-house lover about blocking Donald Trump’s presidential ambitions wrote in 2016 of a ‘quid pro quo’ with the State Department to hide the fact that an email found on Hillary Clinton’s home-brew email server was considered classified. Lisa Page fretted in the closing days of the presidential campaign about a pending Freedom of Information Act disclosure of a discussion between top State and Justice Department officials about the potential trade. Under the arrangement, the State Department would have given the FBI more legal attachés for its overseas division in exchange for altering the basis for keeping one of the Clinton emails from the public.

At the time, the email in question was exempt from FOIA requests because it was classified – a fact that was ultimately made public. The FBI had asked the State Department to ‘change the basis of the FOIA withhold [decision] … from classified to something else.’ The plot was never consummated. But Page, an FBI lawyer, was worried enough about it at the time to alert her colleagues that other employees had told investigators about it. One of those colleagues was Peter Strzok, the married FBI agent she was having an affair with.

The email came to light on Monday as part of a raft of material released by Judicial Watch, a conservative government transparency group whose standard practice is to sue government agencies that slow-walk the disclosure of public records. Page and Strzok became poster children in 2017 for conservatives’ claims that the Burean was biased against Trump and took actions to tilt the election in Clinton’s favor despite the national security threats posed by classified material found on her unsecured private email server.

“What we’ve got in effect is a party political broadcast from the steps of the throne.”

• Johnson To Set Out Post-Brexit Law And Order Drive In Queen’s Speech (R.)

Queen Elizabeth will on Monday announce several new pieces of legislation to reform Britain’s justice system, in a ceremonial speech setting out Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit plans. The so-called Queen’s Speech is the highlight of a day of elaborate pageantry in Westminster and is used to detail all the bills the government wants to enact in the coming year. It is written for the 93-year old monarch by the government. But, with Brexit unresolved, and any plans beyond even the next seven days likely subject to an unpredictable election, rival parties said Johnson was misusing the politically-neutral Queen for political gain.

The speech will lay out 22 new bills – pieces of proposed legislation – including several covering tougher treatment for foreign criminals and sex offenders, and new protection for victims of domestic abuse. “Keeping people safe is the most important role of any government, and as the party of law and order it is the Conservatives who are cracking down on crime and better protecting society,” a statement from Johnson’s office setting out some details of the speech said. It will almost certainly include a section on a law to enact a Brexit deal. But, while any deal is still in the balance, new details are unlikely. The speech will also touch on election campaign issues like the health service and living standards.

“Having the Queen’s Speech and the State Opening of Parliament tomorrow is ludicrous, utterly ludicrous,” Corbyn said in a Sky News interview broadcast on Sunday. “What we’ve got in effect is a party political broadcast from the steps of the throne.”

Think it’s all the trade war?

• China 9-Month Exports To US Down 10.7%, Imports Fall 26.4% (R.)

China’s exports to the United States fell 10.7% from a year earlier in dollar terms in January-September, while U.S. imports dropped 26.4% during that period, a Chinese customs spokesman said on Monday. Trade frictions with the United States have led to some pressure on Chinese trade, although the latest Sino-U.S. trade talks have yielded favorable outcomes in some areas, customs spokesman Li Kuiwen told reporters.

Boeing has a lot of problems.

• Emirates President Does Not Expect To Take Any Boeing 777x In 2020 (R.)

Emirates doubts it will receive any of the 115 Boeing 777-9s it has ordered next year, its president said on Monday, as the U.S. planemaker grapples with challenges in building the jet. Emirates, a launch customer of the world’s biggest twin engined jet, was to receive its first 777-9 in 2020 but the manufacturer has suspended load testing of the plane. “… By the end of next year we were to have eight of them. Now it doesn’t look like we will have any,” Tim Clark said at a conference in Dubai. Boeing suspended load testing of the new widebody in September when media reports said a cargo door failed a ground stress test.

There have also been issues with General Electric’s new GE9X turbine engine that will power the jet. Boeing has said it expects to hold the initial flight test in 2020 and is aiming for the 777X to enter commercial service in the same year. Clark said he had told Boeing he insists on a 13 to 16 month test period for the new jet. Emirates ordered 150 777X jets, including 777-8 variants, in 2013. It later placed a preliminary order for 40 Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets in 2017, which Clark said he still saw a place for in the airline’s fleet plans. Boeing has also been unable to deliver any of its 737 MAX aircraft since the single-aisle plane was grounded worldwide in March…

Are they going to let Moreno stay in power?

• Ecuador Repeals Law Ending Fuel Subsidies In Deal To Stop Protests (BBC)

Ecuador’s government has agreed to restore fuel subsidies in a deal with indigenous leaders to end mass protests that have brought the capital, Quito, to a standstill, the UN says. It came after the two sides held talks brokered by the UN and the Roman Catholic Church. The talks, which were broadcast live on state television, came after nearly two weeks of violent demonstrations. President Lenín Moreno had imposed a curfew enforced by the military. The announcement after Sunday’s meeting sparked late night celebrations in Quito. Fireworks were set off and car drivers honked their horns. A joint statement said the government had withdrawn an order removing the fuel subsidies. “With this agreement, the mobilisations… across Ecuador are terminated and we commit ourselves to restoring peace in the country,” it said.

Europe, 2019.

• Catalonia Leaders Jailed For Between 9 And 13 Years By Spanish Court (BBC)

Spain’s Supreme Court has sentenced nine Catalan separatist leaders to between nine and 13 years in prison for sedition over their role in an independence referendum in 2017. Three other defendants were found guilty of disobedience but will not serve prison sentences. The 12 politicians and activists had all denied the charges. Separatists in Catalonia were planning mass civil disobedience ahead of the verdict. The prosecution had sought up to 25 years in prison for Oriol Junqueras, the former vice-president of Catalonia and the highest-ranking pro-independence leader on trial.

It’s time for much larger crowds.

Debt Rattle October 13 2019

Oct 132019

October 13, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: Brexit, Ecuador, Fed, Kurds, Putin, Syria, Turkey, Versailles, violence 5 Responses »

Paul Gauguin Huts under trees 1887

• All Foreign Forces Should Leave Syria, Including Russia – Putin (RT)

• Domestic Politics, Idlib Sway Timing Of Turkey’s Syrian Operation (AlM)

• Army Deployed In Ecuador As Protests Descend Into Violence (G.)

• Ecuador Indigenous Group Says Will Continue Protests After Curfew Imposed (R.)

• Johnson Will Speak To EU Leaders On Brexit Deal By End Of Monday (R>)

• Labour Will Stop No-Deal Brexit ‘Whatever It Takes’ – Starmer (G.)

• The Beginning of the End (Sven Henrich)

• White House Accidentally Sends Ukraine Talking Points To Democrats Again (Hill)

Number of things on Turkey’s attack on Syria. First, Putin is right. Let Syrians return and let them be safe at home. Would solve many problems in one go.

• All Foreign Forces Should Leave Syria, Including Russia – Putin (RT)

The territorial integrity of Syria must be fully restored and all foreign forces should withdraw, including Russia if Damascus decides it doesn’t need Moscow’s help anymore, according to President Vladimir Putin. “All the forces deployed illegitimately inside any sovereign state – in this case Syria – must leave,” Putin said in a joint interview with RT Arabic, UAE-based Sky News Arabia, and Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya broadcasters. This is true for everyone. If Syria’s new legitimate government chooses to say that they have no more need for Russia’s military presence, this will be just as true for Russia. Meanwhile, Moscow’s stance on the settlement in Syria remains unchanged and was already relayed to its partners Iran, Turkey and the US, the president noted.

“Syria must be free from other states’ military presence. And the territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic must be completely restored.” Earlier this month, US President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of US troops from border areas in northeastern Syria, saying it was time to “get out of ridiculous endless wars.” Unlike the Russian military, which arrived in the country at an invitation of the government in Damascus, US forces have been in Syria illegally since 2016. The Syrian government has repeatedly blasted the American military presence as a violation of its sovereignty. Putin was also asked about Moscow’s attitude towards NATO’s eastward expansion and buildup near Russian borders. “We are not happy about it… and voiced our concerns,” he replied.

Then some background from Al Monitor on 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. The west doesn’t do anything to solve the situation, apart from some money now and then. But it was the west that caused the problems with its attacks on Syria, Lybia etc.

• Domestic Politics, Idlib Sway Timing Of Turkey’s Syrian Operation (AlM)

Ankara is greatly concerned over the prospect of a new refugee influx from Idlib that would further entangle Turkey’s Syrian refugee problem. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had warned in September that Turkey cannot tolerate another refugee wave atop the 3.6 million Syrians it is already hosting. Besides putting strains on Turkey’s financial resources and social stamina, the Syrian refugee problem has proved increasingly costly for the AKP in terms of domestic politics. It is no coincidence that since the party’s rout in the June 23 rerun in Istanbul, government spokesmen have constantly touted the safe zone plan inside Syria as a way to expedite the return of Syrian refugees.

Across Turkey and in big cities in particular, most of the Syrian refugees live in close proximity to AKP voters, either in the same neighborhoods or adjoining ones. Under the impact of the economic crisis, tensions between locals and refugees have grown, contributing to a gradual disenchantment with the government among AKP voters. In Istanbul — the heartbeat, the spirit and the mirror of the country — 73% of some 479,000 registered Syrians live in districts where local administrations are controlled by the AKP. Out of the 10 districts with the largest refugee numbers, seven are held by the AKP. Similarly, eight of the 10 districts with the biggest refugee populations in proportion to the locals are run by the AKP.

While announcing the launch of Operation Peace Spring, Erdogan said the campaign would “lead to the establishment of a safe zone, facilitating the return of Syrian refugees to their homes.” The political motive underlying this pledge rests on the fact that the Syrian refugee problem is becoming unbearable for the government. If the campaign progresses as planned, leading the Turkish military and its Syrian allies to take control of a border stretch running 30 kilometers (19 miles) deep to the east of the Euphrates, the Syrians who could be forced to flee Idlib in the near future could perhaps be placed in tent cities in this “security belt” without being let into Turkey at all and instead transferred via Afrin and al-Bab, which are already under Turkish control.

However, when it comes to Ecuador, the Guardian has an entirely different point of view. Not surprising, since they sided with Moreno against Assange. But my Twitter feed is full of videos of extreme Ecuador police and army violence against their own people, snipers on rooftops, the works. Looks just like the Turkish-led assault on Kurds. The Guardian, though, suggests in this case the protesters are violent.

• Army Deployed In Ecuador As Protests Descend Into Violence (G.)

President Lenín Moreno ordered the army on to the streets of Ecuador’s capital Quito after a week and a half of protests over fuel prices devolved into violent incidents, with masked protesters attacking a television station, newspaper and the national auditor’s office. Moreno said the military enforced curfew would begin at 3pm local time in response to violence in areas previously untouched by the protests. Masked protesters broke into the national auditor’s office and set it ablaze, sending black smoke billowing across the central Quito park and cultural complex that have been the epicentre of the protests.

Later, several dozen masked men swarmed the offices of the private Teleamazonas television station, set fires on the grounds and tried to break into the building where about 20 employees were trapped. “They’re trying to enter the station, trying to break down the doors, we’re asking for help but the police aren’t coming,” one employee told the Associated Press. A journalist with the newspaper El Comercio told the AP that the paper’s offices were also under attack. The building’s security guards were seized and tied up and attackers were trying to break into offices where journalists were hiding.

Moreno appeared on national television alongside his vice-president and defence minister to announce that he was ordering people indoors and sending the army on to the streets. He blamed the violence on drug traffickers, organised crime and followers of former president Rafael Correa, who has denied allegations that he is trying to topple Moreno’s government.

Moreno has turned into a right-wing US backed dictator, that much is clear. Guess we’ll never know what they have on him that made him turn 180º.

• Ecuador Indigenous Group Says Will Continue Protests After Curfew Imposed (R.)

Ecuadorean indigenous group Conaie said late on Saturday that it would continue anti-austerity protests after President Lenin Moreno imposed a military-enforced curfew in the capital Quito and the armed forces said they would restrict movement across the country. The group suggested that its decision earlier in the day to hold direct talks with Moreno about a decree that cut fuel subsidies might be at risk by the military crackdown. Conaie has led protests against the law but has rejected vandalism that swept Quito on Saturday. “There’s no real dialogue without guarantees for the safety of indigenous leaders,” Conaie said in a statement on Twitter.

“We’ll carry out approaches to try to repeal the decree,” it added, “but we will hold protest actions nationally..exhorting the government to provide necessary guarantees.” It did not specify when it would hold protests or if it would do so in defiance of the curfew. Moreno did not say when the curfew in Quito would end.

Was Boris only now advised about violence?

• Johnson Will Speak To EU Leaders On Brexit Deal By End Of Monday (R>)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will speak to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker by the end of Monday to urge the leaders to support his Brexit deal, the Sunday Times reported. Johnson will offer the three leaders the option to either help him deliver a new deal this week, or to agree on a friendly version of a no-deal Brexit by Oct. 31, the newspaper said, citing a source familiar with the conversations. “He’ll be talking to Merkel, Macron and Juncker by the end of Monday to see if there’s agreement on a ‘landing zone’ for Northern Ireland and customs,” the source was quoted as telling the newspaper.

“The alternative is to agree a friendly version of no deal and finish it that way.” Security chiefs have convinced Johnson that a no-deal Brexit will heighten the danger of extremist attacks in Northern Ireland and on the mainland, along with sectarian violence in cities such as Glasgow, according to the report. As a result, the British prime minister desperately wants a Brexit deal, the Sunday Times reported. “Any one of these risks we could cope with, but taken collectively they would be a massive challenge to the UK state and no one would choose to go down that route,” Johnson told a senior Conservative in a private conversation, according to the newspaper.

is it election time already?

• Labour Will Stop No-Deal Brexit ‘Whatever It Takes’ – Starmer (G.)

Labour will take action in the courts to prevent Boris Johnson from pushing through a no-deal Brexit against the will of parliament, Keir Starmer has pledged. The shadow Brexit secretary said that if the prime minister is unable to reach an agreement with Brussels by 31 October, he must comply with the Benn act and seek a further delay. In a speech at the Co-operative party conference in Glasgow, Starmer said: “If he can’t – or I should say won’t – get a deal we will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent our country crashing out of the EU without a deal. “If no deal is secured by this time next week, Boris Johnson must seek and accept an extension. That’s the law. No ifs, no buts. And if he doesn’t, we’ll enforce the law – in the courts and in parliament. Whatever it takes, we will prevent a no-deal Brexit.”

Starmer dismissed suggestions that the prime minister could circumvent the law by accompanying a request for an extension with a second letter to the EU saying he did not want one. “That’s the equivalent of attaching a Post-it note to divorce papers saying ‘only kidding’ – It’s a ridiculous idea,” he said. Officials are continuing talks in Brussels over the weekend after the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, gave the go-ahead on Friday for intensive negotiations to start. Starmer said that if the prime minister succeeded in getting an agreement, Labour would demand it was put to the public in a referendum.

“And really Fed? You are throwing this $60B a month announcement out on a Friday with the $DJIA already up 350 points?”

• The Beginning of the End (Sven Henrich)

They sure are trying their best. To do what? To goose markets higher. It’s been quite the spectacle all year, but this Friday sure took the cake. The entire week had been a giant jerk fest of sudden rips and dips as headline chasing algos were ripping through support and resistance levels unleashed like fat kids at the candy shop. But this Friday was something else, almost designed to have markets overdose on an insulin spike. Ever more hyped up on an impending China deal, every meeting, and movement of negotiators caused market spikes, a Trump tweet about “warm feelings”, a $82.7B repo operation by the Fed to keep things tidy, a sudden out of the blue $60B/month Treasury buying operation announced by the Fed, multiple Fed speakers to boot, what a scene.

And really Fed? You are throwing this $60B a month announcement out on a Friday with the $DJIA already up 350 points? What are you thinking here? The Fed knows this kind of announcement juices up markets. The Fed sheepishly claims it’s not QE. Oh piss off already. Expanding the balance sheet by $60B a month is a massive intervention any way you cut it or slice it. How big? Do the math. $60B per month is a run rate of $720B a year. And while they claim they’ll stop it in Q2 next year who really believe anything they say? Did you believe QT was on autopilot last year? Lol. Fool me once.

You know what else is $720B a year or $60B a month? The ENTIRE US MILITARY BUDGET. The largest military budget on the planet. Millions under arms, submarines, aircraft carriers, nuclear arsenal, bombers, fighter jets, military bases across the globe, satellites, drones, laser guided missiles, you name it. All of it runs at $60B per month. So lest everyone is blind to numbers these days as everything is so monstrous our eyes glaze over I trust this comparison highlights how massive the Fed’s announcement was on Friday. But not QE. Right. Believe it if you so choose.

Accidental? You sure?

• White House Accidentally Sends Ukraine Talking Points To Democrats Again (Hill)

The White House accidentally sent Democrats a list of talking points related to ex-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s Friday House deposition, two sources with knowledge of the email told The Hill, the second time in a month the administration has sent its Ukraine talking points to Democrats. The email included guidance for Republicans seeking to defend the president from potentially damaging witness testimony from an ambassador who was removed from her post in May under controversial circumstances. In copies of the guidance shared with The Hill, the White House encouraged Republicans to adopt a series of messages designed to turn the tables back on Democrats, including attacks on House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D-Calif.) handling of the investigation.

Yovanovitch told House lawmakers that she was removed after “a concerted campaign” against her from President Trump and his allies. She also said in her opening statement that the State Department had “been under pressure from the president to remove me since the summer of 2018.” Yovanovitch’s ouster came two months before Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president — now at the center of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry — in which Trump asked Kiev to open an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 presidential candidate. “We are not concerned with any information Yovanovitch might share, because the President did nothing wrong,” the White House email meant for Republicans said.

“But we are concerned that Schiff is putting her in a precarious position by having her testify in secret without State Department lawyers be present.” “It raises serious questions about why Schiff is willing to put career officials in such risky situations while bullying them with legally unfounded threats of obstruction charges,” the email continued. It added that Schiff “is willing to ride roughshod over fair process and to use career officials to further a baseless political objective.” The email marks the second time the White House has unintentionally sent talking points to Democrats in recent weeks, after an administration official inadvertently emailed them suggested rhetoric defending the July 25 phone call.

Debt Rattle October 3 2019

Oct 032019

October 3, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:37 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Boris, Brexit, Epstein, Houthis, Mossad, Putin, Schiff, tariffs, Trump, whistleblower 13 Responses »

Rembrandt van Rijn Self portrait 1642

• US Hits Scotch Whisky, Italian Cheese, French Wine With 25% Tariffs (R.)

• NYT: ‘Whistleblower’ Spoke To ‘Shifty Schiff’ Before Filing Complaint (RT)

• Trump Attacks Democrats, Whistleblower Over Impeachment (R.)

• Lindsey Graham Urges Foreign Leaders To Assist Barr With Investigation (Pol.)

• We’ll “Definitely” Interfere In 2020, Just “Don’t Tell Anybody” – Putin (ZH)

• Putin Shames Greta Thunberg And Her Handlers Over Environmental Agenda (ZH)

• Dismay In Brussels As Boris Johnson Finally Reveals Brexit Plan (G.)

• 3 Saudi Brigades Annihilated in Houthi Offensive in Saudi Arabia (Pieraccini)

• Ex-Israeli Intel Exec Says Epstein, Ghislaine Worked for Israeli Intel (Webb)

• Julian Assange, Britain’s Unconvicted Prisoner (Cross)

And it still can’t help Boeing. Boeing has other problems.

This is based on a recent WTO ruling on Airbus and Boeing subsidies. The EU can only strike back in 2020.

Also: “..a 10% levy that could hurt U.S. airlines such as Delta that have billions of dollars of Airbus orders waiting to be filled.”

• US Hits Scotch Whisky, Italian Cheese, French Wine With 25% Tariffs (R.)

The Trump administration slapped 25% tariffs on French wine, Italian cheese and single-malt Scotch whisky — but spared Italian wine, pasta and olive oil — in retaliation for European Union subsidies on large aircraft. The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office released a list of hundreds of European products that will get new tariffs, including cookies, salami, butter and yogurt – but in many cases applied to only some EU countries, including German camera parts and blankets produced in the United Kingdom. The list includes UK-made sweaters, pullovers, cashmere items and wool clothing, as well as olives from France and Spain, EU-produced pork sausage and other pork products other than ham, and German coffee. The new tariffs are to take effect as early as Oct. 18.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s Office said it would “continually re-evaluate these tariffs based on our discussions with the EU” and expects to enter talks in a bid to resolve the dispute. Still some Italian foods — Parmesan Reggiano, Romano and provolone cheese — were hit with tariffs as were Italian fruits, clams and yogurt. Also getting new tariffs are German and British camera parts, industrial microwave ovens, printed books, sweet biscuits and waffles. The main target of the U.S. tariffs is Airbus aircraft made in the EU, which face a 10% levy that could hurt U.S. airlines such as Delta that have billions of dollars of Airbus orders waiting to be filled. EU products winning reprieves include chocolate, Greek, French and Portuguese olive oil, helicopters, frozen fish, lobster, sparkling wine, stemware and tiles.

“I’d go a step further – I think he probably helped write” the complaint..”

• NYT: ‘Whistleblower’ Spoke To ‘Shifty Schiff’ Before Filing Complaint (RT)

The CIA agent accusing President Donald Trump of a quid pro quo with Ukraine spoke to House intel chief Adam Schiff’s staff before filing his whistleblower complaint, sources say – and Trump believes the collusion goes deeper. The “whistleblower” spoke to a House Intelligence Committee staffer about his concerns, gleaned from secondhand knowledge of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, that the president was abusing his power – and that staffer shared the information with Schiff – before the still-anonymous CIA officer filed his complaint, according to the New York Times, which cited Schiff’s spokesman and “current and former American officials” in a report published Wednesday.

The Times’ report “shows that Schiff is a fraud,” the president told reporters during a White House press conference with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto Wednesday afternoon when he was asked about the story, calling the fact that the congressman, whom he dubbed “shifty Schiff,” knew about the complaint before it was even filed “a scandal.” “I’d go a step further – I think he probably helped write” the complaint, Trump said. “He knew long before, and he helped write it too,” he continued more confidently. The president – who elsewhere in his remarks tried out his new “corrupt news” moniker for the mainstream media – nevertheless congratulated the Times on the scoop. “Maybe they’re getting better,” he mused.

“They should look at him for treason because he is making up the words of the president of the United States – not only the words but the meaning..”

• Trump Attacks Democrats, Whistleblower Over Impeachment (R.)

U.S. President Donald Trump kept up his assaults on the Democratic lawmakers leading impeachment proceedings on Wednesday, accusing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff of treason, as well as attacking the unidentified whistleblower who reported concerns about his behavior. The Republican president has lashed out repeatedly at the impeachment inquiry, which was prompted by his phone call with the Ukrainian president that sought an investigation that would be damaging to a Democratic political opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. Trump repeatedly says he did nothing wrong in his July 25 telephone call in which he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to investigate a domestic political rival Joe Biden, the former U.S. vice president.

He has repeatedly attacked the Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, who is leading the impeachment inquiry. “They should look at him for treason because he is making up the words of the president of the United States – not only the words but the meaning,” Trump said. He accused the Democrats’ impeachment efforts of being groundless and politically motivated. “They’ve been trying to impeach me from the day I got elected,” Trump said.

Both sides are now timing for the 2020 elections.

• Lindsey Graham Urges Foreign Leaders To Assist Barr With Investigation (Pol.)

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on Wednesday asked several foreign leaders to continue to assist Attorney General William Barr with his investigation into the 2016 election. In a letter to the prime ministers of Australia, Italy and Britain, the South Carolina Republican requested their “continued cooperation with Attorney General Barr as the Department of Justice continues to investigate the origins and extent of foreign influence in the 2016 election.” At President Donald Trump’s urging, Barr is examining how the FBI investigation into connections between Russia and the Trump campaign began. Graham stated in the letter that during the 2016 election, the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities used a “deeply flawed dossier filled with hearsay and written by a biased, former United Kingdom intelligence officer” — a reference to the so-called Steele dossier — as part of its investigation.

He also added that law enforcement had received “intelligence from an Italian ‘professor’” — referring to Joseph Mifsud, whose interactions with a former Trump campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, prompted the FBI to open its counterintelligence investigation — and accepted information from an Australian diplomat. That was a reference to a reported tip from an Australian official, Alexander Downer, to the FBI about possible collusion between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. [..] “That the Attorney General is holding meetings with your countries to aid in the Justice Department’s investigation of what happened is well within the bounds of his normal activities,” Graham wrote. “He is simply doing his job.”

Exposing the sheer stupidity that controls America.

• We’ll “Definitely” Interfere In 2020, Just “Don’t Tell Anybody” – Putin (ZH)

Absolutely no laughing matter for the likes of Rachel Maddow and others who have now spent years locked deep in their ‘Russiagate’ navel-gazing, but at least Putin still hasn’t lost his sense of humor about it. While speaking on a panel of industry and political leaders at the Russian Energy Week conference, Putin mocked reports already alleging Moscow plans to interfere in the 2020 US presidential election. When pressed by NBC News correspondent Keir Simmons over whether former Special Counsel Robert Mueller was accurate in predicting Russia would “attempt to interfere” in the 2020 election, Putin leaned forward in a gesture to act like he was whispering a ‘secret’: “I’m going to tell you a secret,” Putin said, leaning forward. “Yes, we will definitely intervene, don’t tell anybody” he continued to an applauding crowd.

“You know, we have enough of our own problems,” Putin continued. “We are engaged in resolving internal problems and are primarily focused on this.” His characteristic public sarcasm was a hit with the crowd, at an event which included OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo and others. He followed on a more serious note by calling it “ridiculous” that Russia would interfere in the 2020 election. He also talked down his relationship and interactions with President Trump, describing that the two leaders have never been close. “In my opinion, we have good, businesslike relations, and a relatively stable level of trust,” he said during the conference’s plenary session. “We’ve never been close, and aren’t now.” However, Putin did come to the US president’s defense when asked about the Ukraine call transcript.

“From what we know, I don’t see anything compromising at all,” Putin told the audience. “I didn’t see that during this phone call Trump demanded compromising material from Zelenskiy at any cost and threatened him that he wouldn’t help Ukraine.” The Kremlin last week said its consent must be required before any calls between the US and Russian leader are published. Putin said there’s no compromising material at all in those transcripts, and added he that “any conversation can be published — I always proceed from that.” Putin also addressed last year’s controversy over his closed door summit with President Trump, saying he requested that Washington publish details of the talks. “We don’t mind,” Putin said confidently. “I assure you that there’s nothing there that would compromise President Trump.”

I wouldn’t have said he shames her. He simply understands that Greta IS her PR handlers. She should go home and be a child, not get dragged around the planet by spin doctors.

• Putin Shames Greta Thunberg And Her Handlers Over Environmental Agenda (ZH)

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday chided Swedish environmentalist Greta Thunberg and her adult handlers, after the 16-year-old gave an emotional speech at the UN late last month. “Sure, Greta is kind, but emotions should not control this issue,” said Putin. “Go and explain to developing countries why they should continue living in poverty and not be like Sweden,” he added, before saying that it was deplorable how some groups are using Thunberg to achieve their own goals. In her speech last week, Thunberg lashed out at the United Nations – saying “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” Thunberg also filed a legal complaint accusing five countries of inaction on global warming – drawing the ire of French President Emmanuel Macron, and many others who noted that she’s left China out of her diatribes and lawsuit, despite being the world’s worst polluter by total volume.

There are actually Labour MPs who support Johnson’s nothingness.

• Dismay In Brussels As Boris Johnson Finally Reveals Brexit Plan (G.)

Boris Johnson appears to be fighting a losing battle to avoid Britain staying in the European Union beyond 31 October after Michel Barnier privately gave a scathing analysis of the prime minister’s new plan for the Irish border, describing it as a trap. The European commission also refused to go into the secretive and intensive “tunnel” talks with the UK’s negotiators before a crunch summit on 17 October from which the UK had hoped to deliver a breakthrough deal. Despite concerted attempts to avoid publicly trashing the UK proposals, there was dismay behind the scenes in Brussels after Johnson tabled his first concrete proposal for replacing the Irish backstop.

The prime minister had set out the outline of the government’s offer in a speech to Tory party faithful in Manchester that also laid down the battle lines for a general election. On Wednesday night, he was hopeful a parliamentary majority could be assembled to back it. Johnson’s plan involves Northern Ireland leaving the EU’s customs union at the end of transition along with the rest of the UK, necessitating checks and controls on the island of Ireland. Northern Ireland would also stay aligned with EU standards on goods if Stormont agreed by December 2020, the end of the transition period, and then in a vote every four years.

But the UK has also requested that both sides commit at treaty level “never to conduct checks at the border” even if Stormont vetoes the arrangements laid out in the new 44-page Irish protocol. Barnier said that this commitment would prevent Brussels from protecting its internal market if the Northern Ireland assembly blocked the arrangement in 2020 or at a later date. “The EU would then be trapped with no backstop to preserve the single market after Brexit,” he warned, according to someone present in the room.

Federico Pieraccini on an attack that proves it wasn’t Iran, ever. Where’s the coverage of this in the western press? Too inconvenient?

“Let us salute the resourceful Houthis, today’s unconquerable underdogs, for giving the world’s most repugnant bullies a bloody nose, and a huge blow to their bloated egos.”

• 3 Saudi Brigades Annihilated in Houthi Offensive in Saudi Arabia (Pieraccini)

Many may have hitherto been led to believe that the Houthis were a ragtag armed force lacking in sophistication. Many, seeing the drone and missile attacks on Saudi oil plants, may have declared it to be a false-flag attack carried out by Riyadh to boost Aramco’s market value; either that or it was an operation carried out by Iran or even Israel. On Saturday September 28, the Houthis put paid to such speculation by confirming what many, like myself, have been writing for months; that is, that the asymmetrical tactics of the Houthis, combined with the conventional capabilities of the Yemeni army, are capable of bringing the Saudi kingdom of Mohammed Bin Salman to its knees.

The Yemeni army’s missile forces are able to carry out highly complex attacks, no doubt as a result of reconnaissance provided by the local Shia population within the Kingdom that is against the House of Saud’s dictatorship. These Houthi sympathisers within Saudi Arabia helped in target identification, carried out reconnaissance within the plants, found the most vulnerable and impactful points, and passed this intelligence on to the Houthis and Yemeni army. These Yemeni forces employed locally produced means to severely degrade Saudi Arabia’s crude-oil-extraction and processing plants. The deadly strikes halved oil production and threatened to continue with other targets if the Saudi-conducted genocide in Yemen did not stop.

On Saturday 29 the Houthis and the Yemeni army conducted an incredible conventional attack lasting three days that began from within Yemen’s borders. The operation would have involved months of intelligence gathering and operational planning. It was a far more complex attack than that conducted against Aramco’s oil facilities. Initial reports indicate that the forces of the Saudi-led coalition were lured into vulnerable positions and then, through a pincer movement conducted quickly within Saudi territory, the Houthis surrounded the town of Najran and its outskirts and got the better of three Saudi brigades numbering in the thousands and including dozens of senior officers as well as numerous combat vehicles. This event is a game changer, leaving the US, Mike Pompeo and the Israelis and Saudis unable to lay the blame on Iran as all this took place a long way from Iran.

Whitney Webb strikes again.

• Ex-Israeli Intel Exec Says Epstein, Ghislaine Worked for Israeli Intel (Webb)

In an interview with Zev Shalev, former CBS News executive producer and award-winning investigative journalist for Narativ, the former senior executive for Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, Ari Ben-Menashe, claimed not only to have met Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, back in the 1980s, but that both Epstein and Maxwell were already working with Israeli intelligence during that time period. In an interview last week with the independent outlet Narativ, Ben-Menashe, who himself was involved in Iran-Contra arms deals, told his interviewer Zev Shalev that he had been introduced to Jeffrey Epstein by Robert Maxwell in the mid-1980s while Maxwell’s and Ben-Menashe’s involvement with Iran-Contra was ongoing. Ben-Menashe did not specify the year he met Epstein.

Ben-Menashe told Shalev that “he [Maxwell] wanted us to accept him [Epstein] as part of our group …. I’m not denying that we were at the time a group that it was Nick Davies [Foreign Editor of the Maxwell-Owned Daily Mirror], it was Maxwell, it was myself and our team from Israel, we were doing what we were doing.” Past reporting by Seymour Hersh and others revealed that Maxwell, Davies and Ben-Menashe were involved in the transfer and sale of military equipment and weapons from Israel to Iran on behalf of Israeli intelligence during this time period. He then added that Maxwell had stated during the introduction that “your Israeli bosses have already approved” of Epstein. Shalev later noted that Maxwell “had an extensive network in Israel at the time, which included the then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, according to Ben-Menashe.”

Ben-Menashe went on to say that he had “met him [Epstein] a few times in Maxwell’s office, that was it.” He also said he was not aware of Epstein being involved in arms deals for anyone else he knew at the time, but that Maxwell wanted to involve Epstein in the arms transfer in which he, Davies and Ben-Menashe were engaged on Israel’s behalf.

“These inconsistencies should raise serious doubts as to whether the British justice system is operating objectively and according to domestic and international legal norms.”

We had no such doubts any more.

• Julian Assange, Britain’s Unconvicted Prisoner (Cross)

This article is a second piece focusing on Belmarsh prison, where the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, continues to be arbitrarily detained by the British government. The first part showed how Belmarsh prison has been systematically denying Assange access to justice by restricting all the means through which he could prepare his defence; access to and possession of legal documents, talking to his US lawyers, restricted meetings with his UK lawyers, and access to a laptop as a basic means to prepare his defence. These restrictions have been imposed in contradiction to all legislation and standards regarding the rights of the prisoner. This piece looks at the weaponizing of Category A prison security and the use of prison healthcare isolation as part of a program of the state-sponsored abuse of a journalist imprisoned for releasing prima facie evidence of US war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The decision on 13th September by Judge Vanessa Baraitser in a ‘technical hearing‘ at Westminster Magistrate’s Court, means that although Assange has been given parole half way through what experts believe was a disproportionate 50 week sentence for skipping police bail in 2012, he will still be kept in prison while he is fighting extradition to the US – a process which could take many years. Baraitser justified her decision as follows: “In my view I have substantial ground for believing if I release you, you will abscond again” She described his status now as: “…from a serving prisoner to a person facing extradition”

According to the British judiciary, Assange was initially apprehended and sentenced to prison because he had ‘skipped bail’ by seeking refuge for political asylum in London’s Ecuadorian embassy. Despite the fact the original investigation in which he was wanted for questioning (and complied) by Swedish authorities had been dropped, the British courts still treated Assange as a serious criminal and sentenced him as such. The narratives in Baraitser’s statement, the injustices arising from them and the proceedings around this hearing have all been highlighted and roundly condemned. What’s more, despite the change to Assange’s prisoner status, he has so far been kept in Belmarsh. These inconsistencies should raise serious doubts as to whether the British justice system is operating objectively and according to domestic and international legal norms.

Debt Rattle September 15 2019

Sep 152019

September 15, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:26 am Finance Tagged with: Airbus, Assange, Boris, deforestation, drones, Houthis, Iran, Israel, oil, Pompeo, Putin, Repubblica, Saudi, tariffs, Trump 9 Responses »

Marcel Duchamp About young sister 1911

• Israeli Attacks On Syria Halted After Russian Threat To Shoot Down Jets (ZH)

• US, Israel Talk About Mutual Defense Treaty – Trump (RT)

• Netanyahu’s Plan to Escape Trial (Haaretz)

• US Blames Saudi Oil Strikes On Iran, Not Houthis (BBC)

• Global Spare Oil Capacity In US Hands After Saudi Outage (R.)

• US Stands Ready To Tap Emergency Oil Reserve After Saudi Attacks (R.)

• London Upper Tribunal Rejects La Repubblica’s Assange Docs Appeal (Maurizi)

• Johnson Is A Liar Who Only Backed Leave To Help His Career – Cameron (G.)

• US To Hit EU With Billions In Tariffs After Victory In Airbus Case (Pol.eu)

• Italy’s New Government Lets Charity Ship Head To Italian Port (R.)

• World ‘Losing Battle Against Deforestation’ (BBC)

• The Spy Who Failed (Ritter)

What Putin tells Netanyahu, he also tells Trump at the same moment. A red line in the sand. This is the new world order.

• Israeli Attacks On Syria Halted After Russian Threat To Shoot Down Jets (ZH)

According to reports in both Israeli and Arabic regional media, Israel this past week was preparing to expand major airstrikes against “Iran-backed” targets in Syria, but Moscow imposed its red line. The Independent has published a story describing that Russia’s military in Syria threatened to shoot down any invading Israeli warplanes using fighter jets or their S-400 system. The Jerusalem Post, citing sources in the UK Independent (Arabia), writes just after the latest meeting in Sochi between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin: “According to the report, Moscow has prevented three Israeli airstrikes on three Syrian outposts recently, and even threatened that any jets attempting such a thing would be shot down, either by Russian jets or by the S400 Anti-aircraft missiles.

The source cited in the report claims a similar situation has happened twice, and that during August, Moscow stopped an airstrike on a Syrian outpost in Qasioun, where a S300 missile battery is placed.” Netanyahu’s hasty trip to meet with Putin on Thursday – even in the final days before Tuesday’s key election – was reportedly with a goal to press the Russian president on essentially ignoring Israel’s attacks in Syria. Citing further sources in the British-Arabic Independent Arabia, The Jerusalem Post continues: According to the Russian source, Putin let Netanyahu know that his country will not allow any damage to be done to the Syrian regime’s army, or any of the weapons being given to it… Israel sources cited by the Arabic newspaper described Netanyahu’s attempts to persuade Putin as “a failure”. This in spite of Netanyahu telling reporters after the meeting that his relations with Moscow were stronger than ever.

Israel is going to defend the US?

• US, Israel Talk About Mutual Defense Treaty – Trump (RT)

The US and Israel are discussing a mutual defense treaty that would further cement the already “tremendous” alliance between the two countries, President Donald Trump has revealed. “I had a call today with Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss the possibility of moving forward with a Mutual Defense Treaty, between the United States and Israel, that would further anchor the tremendous alliance between our two countries,” Trump tweeted. Trump voiced not-that-veiled support for Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections in Israel. “I look forward to continuing those discussions after the Israeli Elections when we meet at the United Nations later this month!” Trump wrote.

The support surely comes in handy, as Netanyahu’s backing appears to be quite shaky. The September 17 polls are the second snap legislative elections this year after Netanyahu failed to form the government back in April. The outcome of the upcoming vote is hard to predict, as Netanyahu’s party, Likud, has almost equal support as their main opponent the Blue and White led by Benny Gantz, opinion polls show. Netanyahu was quick to respond to Trump’s announcement, lauding the prospects of the alliance and managing to call the US president a “friend” twice in a single tweet.

Netanyahu wanted to bomb Syria to support himself in the Sep 17 Knesset elections. Putin said we’ll shoot down your jets.

Netanyahu needs victory in the election to keep himself out of jail. He may be indicted by mid-October. Trump might want to reconsider who he’s friends with.

• Netanyahu’s Plan to Escape Trial (Haaretz)

Immediately after the last election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined to members of his inner circle a plan to extract him from facing trial. The plan was based on obtaining immunity from the Knesset and passing legislation to prevent the High Court of Justice from removing that immunity. If his bloc wins 61 Knesset seats next week, Netanyahu will presumably resort to this rescue plan. For him it will be the Day of Judgment. “Stop being frightened. It’s time for them to be frightened,” Netanyahu told his confidants, referring to justice officials, headed by Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit and State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan, who have decided to indict him in three cases, subject to a hearing.

Netanyahu told his confidants why he insisted on his destructive plan, telling them he had lost all confidence in the legal system on all levels – the attorney general’s office, the state prosecutor and the court system. “They want me in prison,” he told one of his cronies, noting that if he were indicted that would indeed be the result – not because he had crossed a red line, but merely due to the jurists’ collective hostility toward him and his ideology. Netanyahu appears to wholeheartedly believe himself to be a victim, framed by prosecutors and that Mendelblit, who is weak, doesn’t believe in them at all, but couldn’t withstand the pressure.

In his interviews with the police Netanyahu acted like a hunted man. “It’s a wacky conception,” he told national fraud squad chief Koresh Bar-Nur in January 2017. Bar-Nur came to Netanyahu’s residence with a team of investigators to question him under caution on Case 2000, involving a bribery deal Netanyahu allegedly negotiated with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon “Noni” Mozes.

Trump was talking about lifting sanctions on Iran and then this happens?! That smells like Assad attacking his own people with chlorine just as things were getting better.

• US Blames Saudi Oil Strikes On Iran, Not Houthis (BBC)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Iran for Saturday’s drone attacks on Saudi oil facilities. He dismissed a claim by Yemeni Houthi rebels that they had attacked the two facilities, run by state-owned company Aramco. Saudi Arabia’s energy minister said the strikes had reduced crude oil production by 5.7 million barrels a day – about half the kingdom’s output. Correspondents say they could have a significant impact on world oil prices. TV footage showed a huge blaze at Abqaiq, site of Aramco’s largest oil processing plant, while a second drone attack started fires in the Khurais oilfield. The Saudis lead a Western-backed military coalition supporting Yemen’s government, while Iran backs the Houthi rebels.

If the rebels were responsible for the attacks, their drones would have had to fly hundreds of miles from Yemen into central Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile experts are investigating whether the attacks could have been carried out from the north – either by Iran or its Shia allies in Iraq – using cruise missiles rather than drones, the Wall Street Journal reports. Tensions between the US and Iran have escalated in recent months. since US President Donald Trump abandoned a deal limiting Iran’s nuclear activities last year and reinstated sanctions. In a tweet, Mr Pompeo said there was “no evidence” the drones came from Yemen. He described the attack as “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply”.

The US and Saudi Aramco (its IPO is near) stand to gain most if oil prices shoot up.

• Global Spare Oil Capacity In US Hands After Saudi Outage (R.)

An attack on Saudi oil facilities on Saturday is believed to have disrupted half the country’s production capacity, making the United States the only real holder of the global supply cushion via its ability to raise own output or to soften sanctions against other major oil producers. Saudi Arabia has yet to comment on the extent of damage on its oil production but industry sources have said some 5-6 million barrels per day (bpd) or 5-6% of global supply have been affected. Saudi Arabia, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ de-facto leader and largest producer, has been long seen as the custodian of the world’s spare oil capacity.

Spare capacity is the extra oil a producing country can bring onstream and sustain at short notice, providing global markets with a cushion in the event of natural disaster, conflict or any other cause of an unplanned supply outage. Industry sources have said Saudi Arabia will be able to restore supply within days. A prolonged supply outage will have a major bullish impact on oil prices, which in turn will spur further gains in U.S. shale production. The United States has briefly overtaken Saudi Arabia as the world largest crude exporter this year, only a few years after removing a ban on oil exports because of large needs at home as the world’s largest oil consumer.

Analysts have repeatedly underestimated U.S. output growth gains with the country now producing around 15% of global supply. Besides the United States, the only countries which have significant spare capacity are Iran and Venezuela.

Only to replace it with much more expensive oil?

• US Stands Ready To Tap Emergency Oil Reserve After Saudi Attacks (R.)

The Trump administration is prepared to tap U.S. emergency oil reserves if necessary after drone attacks shut oil output in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude exporter, a Department of Energy spokeswoman said. Energy Secretary Rick Perry “stands ready to deploy resources from the Strategic Petroleum Oil Reserves if necessary to offset any disruptions to oil markets as a result of this act of aggression,” spokeswoman Shaylyn Hynes said. Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi group claimed credit for Saturday’s attacks on two plants at the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, including the world’s biggest petroleum processing facility Abqaiq.

Perry directed department leaders to work with the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) “on potential available options for collective global action if needed,” Hynes said. The IEA said on Twitter earlier in the day that it was in contact with Saudi authorities and other major oil-producing nations, and that markets for now are well-supplied. The United States has occasionally coordinated with the IEA on collective draw downs of oil from international reserves. The SPR, held in heavily-guarded underground storage caverns on the Texas and Louisiana coasts, currently holds nearly 645 million barrels, or about the amount the United States consumes in a month.

Where are the British people protesting this?

• London Upper Tribunal Rejects La Repubblica’s Assange Docs Appeal (Maurizi)

The press does not have the right to access the full set of documents on the Julian Assange case. That is what judge Edward Mitchell finally ruled in an appeal taken to the London Upper Tribunal by la Repubblica, after we have spent the last four years trying to access the full documentation to investigate the Assange case and factually reconstruct it.

In an extremely technical judgement just made public and which the judge himself characterises as “unusually long”, Mitchell rejects our legal arguments and states that he believed public knowledge of Mr Assange’s case would not have increased if it was known that the CPS held information from the US State Department or Department of Justice. A rather incredible argument considering that the entire Assange case revolves around the role of the United States authorities, who want to get their hands on the WikiLeaks founder, extradite him to the US and jail him for life: establishing whether the British and US authorities discussed this possibility from the very beginning is crucial.

[..]Our attempt to access the documents has been hindered and hugely delayed in every jurisdiction. However, the very few documents we have obtained so far have allowed us to unearth crucial information. They provide indisputable evidence of the UK’s role in helping to create the legal and diplomatic quagmire which kept Julian Assange arbitrarily detained since 2010, as established by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD). In fact, it was the UK Crown Prosecution Service which advised the Swedish prosecutors against the only judicial strategy that could have brought the Swedish rape investigation to a quick closure: questioning Assange in London, rather than trying to extradite him to Stockholm. It was the Crown Prosecution Service which tried to dissuade the Swedish prosecutors from dropping the case in 2013. Finally, it was the Crown Prosecution Service that wrote to its Swedish counterpart: “Please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request” and destroyed crucial documents, even though the case is still ongoing and very controversial.

When we tried to shed light on these facts, to understand why the British authorities acted this way and why the Assange case was not “just another extradition request”, we ran up against a true rubber wall, so much so that we were forced to sue the Crown Prosecution Service. Our first appeal to the London First-tier Tribunal was rejected: the judge established that the press has no right to access the documentation, because the need for the British authorities to protect the confidentiality of the extradition process outweighs the public interest of the press to know. Today, Judge Edward Mitchell has rejected our appeal to the Upper Tribunal. At this point it is not clear who will be able to introduce some transparency and oversight in the Assange case, considering that the press is not allowed to do so.

Selling a book.

• Johnson Is A Liar Who Only Backed Leave To Help His Career – Cameron (G.)

Boris Johnson is a liar who only backed the Leave campaign to help his career and Michael Gove was a “foam-flecked Faragist” whose “one quality” was disloyalty, David Cameron writes in his memoirs. The former prime minister poured vituperation on both his former colleagues Priti Patel, the current home secretary, and Dominic Cummings, the No 10 adviser, in extracts from the book published on Sunday. In what may be Cameron’s most explosive allegation yet, he effectively accused Boris Johnson of mounting a racist election campaign by focusing on Turkey and its possible accession to the EU. “It didn’t take long to figure out Leave’s obsession,” he writes. “Why focus on a country that wasn’t an EU member?

“The answer was that it was a Muslim country, which piqued fears about Islamism, mass migration and the transformation of communities. It was blatant.” Then Cameron echoes the explicitly racist Conservative campaign slogan used in Smethwick in 1964: “They might as well have said: ‘If you want a Muslim for a neighbour, vote “remain”.’” In Smethwick, Peter Griffiths had been elected as Conservative MP on the slogan “If you want a n**** for a neighbour, vote Labour.” Cameron writes that Johnson’s claims of concerns about British sovereignty were “secondary to another concern for Boris: what was the best outcome for him?”

Get ready for more fun.

• US To Hit EU With Billions In Tariffs After Victory In Airbus Case (Pol.eu)

The United States has gotten the green light to impose billions of euros in punitive tariffs on EU products in retaliation for illegal subsidies granted to European aerospace giant Airbus. Four EU officials told POLITICO that the World Trade Organization ruled in favor of the U.S. in the long-running transatlantic dispute and sent its confidential decision to Brussels and Washington on Friday. The decision means that U.S. President Donald Trump will almost certainly soon announce tariffs on European products ranging from cheeses to Airbus planes. One official said Trump had won the right to collect a total of between €5 billion and €8 billion. Another said the maximum sum was close to $10 billion.

The decision sets the stage for a showdown between Europe and Washington just as the EU is transitioning to new leadership under incoming Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Trade Commissioner-designate Phil Hogan. In unveiling her team on Tuesday, von der Leyen signaled a robust approach to transatlantic disputes on trade and other issues with the Trump administration. aWashington has previously announced it would follow through with tariffs if it won the case in Geneva and has prepared a list of EU exports worth a total of $21 billion. The U.S. can choose products from that list and then tax them at different rates in order to claw back the total amount of damage resulting from the EU subsidies.

After EU nations agreed to take the refugees.

• Italy’s New Government Lets Charity Ship Head To Italian Port (R.)

Italy’s new government allowed a French charity ship to bring ashore 82 migrants on Saturday in an apparent reversal of the uncompromising, closed-door policy of the previous administration. However, Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, who heads the 5-Star Movement in the governing coalition, said the Ocean Viking was only being given access to the southern island of Lampedusa because other European states had agreed to take in many of those on board. The government formally took office on Tuesday, promising a fresh approach to migration following the hardline clampdown on rescue ships introduced by former interior minister Matteo Salvini, who heads the far-right League.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Thursday that “several EU countries” had agreed to take in the Africans aboard the Ocean Viking but did not give further details. The ship is run by French charities SOS Mediterranee and Doctors Without Borders. It picked up the migrants off Libya earlier this week and had asked both Italy and Malta for permission to dock. Recent such requests from other boats had been rejected, leaving migrants stranded at sea for prolonged periods. The center-left Democratic Party (PD), which has replaced the League in the ruling coalition, applauded the announcement that the vessel had been given access to Lampedusa.

As long as it pays more to cut and burn trees than to grow them or just leave them alone, this is inevitable.

• World ‘Losing Battle Against Deforestation’ (BBC)

A historic global agreement aimed at halting deforestation has failed, according to a report. An assessment of the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF) says it has failed to deliver on key pledges. Launched at the 2014 UN climate summit, it aimed to half deforestation by 2020, and halt it by 2030. Yet deforestation continues at an alarming rate and threatens to prevent the world from preventing dangerous climate change, experts have said. The critique, compiled by the NYDF Assessment Partners (a coalition of 25 organisations), painted a bleak picture of how the world’s forests continue to be felled.

“Since the NYDF was launched five years ago, deforestation has not only continued – it has actually accelerated,” observed Charlotte Streck, co-founder and director of Climate Focus, which co-ordinated the publication of the report. The report says the amount of annual carbon emissions resulting from deforestation around the globe are equivalent to the greenhouse gases produced by the European Union. On average, an area of tree cover the size of the United Kingdom was lost every year between 2014 and 2018. Tropical forest loss accounts for more than 90% of global deforestation, with the hotspot being located in Amazon Basin nations of Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Peru.

Your must read for the Sunday. Excellent. You’ll know a lot more about the CIA in Moscow, and in the US elections.

• The Spy Who Failed (Scott Ritter)

Oleg Smolenkov was a controlled asset of the CIA. While he was given certain latitude on what information he could collect, generally speaking Smolenkov worked from an operations order sent to him by his CIA controllers which established priorities for intelligence collection based upon information provided by Smolenkov about what he could reasonably access. Before tasking Smolenkov, his CIA handlers would screen the request from an operational and counterintelligence perspective, conducting a risk-reward analysis that weighed the value of the intelligence being sought with the possibility of compromise. Only then would Smolenkov be cleared to collect the requested information.

It is not publicly known what prompted the report from Smolenkov which Brennan found so alarming. Was it received out of the blue, a target of opportunity which Smolenkov exploited? Was it based upon a specific tasking submitted by Smolenkov’s CIA handlers in response to a tasking from above? Or was it a result of the intervention of the CIA director, who tasked Smolenkov outside normal channels? In any event, once Brennan created his special analytical unit, Smolenkov became his dedicated source. If Smolenko was in this for the money, as appears to be the case, he would have been motivated to come up with the “correct” answer to Brennan’s tasking for information on Putin’s role. By late 2016, Western media had made quite clear what kind of answer Brennan wanted.

Every intelligence report produced by a controlled asset is subjected to a counterintelligence review where it is examined for any evidence of red flags that could be indicative of compromise. One red flag is the issue of abnormal access. Smolenkov did not normally have direct contact with Putin, if ever. His intelligence reports would have been written from the perspective of the distant observer. His report about Putin’s role in interfering in the 2016 election, however, represented a whole new level of access and trust. Under normal circumstances, a report exhibiting such tendency would be pulled aside for additional scrutiny; if the report was alarming enough, the CIA might order the agent to be subjected to a polygraph to ensure he had not been compromised.

Pulp Fiction Media

Sep 102019

September 10, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:43 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: BBC, Brennan, CIA, Clapper, exfiltration, extraction, Pulp Fiction, Putin, RT, spy, Trump, Virginia 11 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Composition “Peasants” 1906

It’s undoubtedly better to leave some stories alone, and this may be one of them. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov perhaps put it best when he called it “pulp fiction” (and what’s more American than that?). But this one is so exemplary of how the news is cooked up for you these days, let’s have a go anyway.

What makes this story so ideal for its purpose is that it involves intelligence and state secrets, so the news outlet that runs it doesn’t have to prove a thing; it can simply say it’s not authorized to divulge what it doesn’t write, while hinting it does know. Plus, it can use any number of covert sources.

But in the process, a damning picture can still be painted. And if that picture involves Donald Trump, and it’s CNN that’s painting it, well, we know what it’s going to look like. Here’s how it started at CNN yesterday (with some additions from today):

US Extracted Top Spy From Inside Russia In 2017

In a previously undisclosed secret mission in 2017, the United States successfully extracted from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government, multiple Trump administration officials with direct knowledge told CNN. A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy.

The decision to carry out the extraction occurred soon after a May 2017 meeting in the Oval Office in which Trump discussed highly classified intelligence with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and then-Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. The intelligence, concerning ISIS in Syria, had been provided by Israel. The disclosure to the Russians by the President, though not about the Russian spy specifically, prompted intelligence officials to renew earlier discussions about the potential risk of exposure, according to the source directly involved in the matter.

At the time, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo told other senior Trump administration officials that too much information was coming out regarding the covert source, known as an asset.[..]

Asked for comment, Brittany Bramell, the CIA director of public affairs, told CNN: “CNN’s narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false. Misguided speculation that the President’s handling of our nation’s most sensitive intelligence—which he has access to each and every day—drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate.”

[..] White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said, “CNN’s reporting is not only incorrect, it has the potential to put lives in danger.”

The removal happened at a time of wide concern in the intelligence community about mishandling of intelligence by Trump and his administration. Those concerns were described to CNN by five sources who served in the Trump administration, intelligence agencies and Congress. Those concerns continued to grow in the period after Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov. Weeks after the decision to extract the spy, in July 2017, Trump met privately with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G20 summit in Hamburg and took the unusual step of confiscating the interpreter’s notes.

Afterward, intelligence officials again expressed concern that the President may have improperly discussed classified intelligence with Russia, according to an intelligence source with knowledge of the intelligence community’s response to the Trump-Putin meeting. Knowledge of the Russian covert source’s existence was highly restricted within the US government and intelligence agencies. According to one source, there was “no equal alternative” inside the Russian government, providing both insight and information on Putin.

Pretty bad, right? Well, we’re not done just yet. Here’s the BBC adding its two cents:

US Extracted High-Level Spy From Inside Russia In 2017, Reports Say

Russian media named the spy as former presidential administration official Oleg Smolenkov. The Kommersant newspaper said Mr Smolenkov went on holiday with his family to Montenegro in 2017 and disappeared, before a man with the same name and a woman with the same name as Mr Smolenkov’s wife purchased a house in the US state of Virginia, near Washington DC. Russian reports said Mr Smolenkov had worked for Yury Ushakov, a senior aide to President Putin.

Asked by the BBC on Tuesday about the reports, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Mr Smolenkov had worked for the presidential administration but denied that he had held a high-level position, adding that he had been sacked. Mr Peskov described the US media coverage of the reported extraction as “pulp fiction”.

There was no suggestion on Tuesday that President Trump directly compromised the source in Russia, and reports said that widespread media speculation about US intelligence conclusions had contributed to the decision to extract the source. Last year, Russian operatives travelled to England and used a nerve agent in an assassination attempt against a former Russian military intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, who had spied for the British.

Isn’t it just lovely how they manage to throw in Skripal there at the end? Took a bit of stretching, but the BBC is plenty flexible.

Okay, so this alleged spy is extracted (or “exfiltrated”) by US intelligence, and then buys a home in Virginia. But not only that, he buys it under his own name. Presumably so that if Putin wants to find the man who divulged all those secrets for 10 years+, he can just Google him. Here’s NBC:

Possible Russian Spy For CIA Now Living In Washington Area

A former senior Russian official is living in the Washington area under U.S. government protection, current and former government officials tell NBC News. NBC News is withholding the man’s name and other key details at the request of U.S. officials, who say reporting the information could endanger his life. Yet the former Russian government official, who had a job with access to secrets, was living openly under his true name.

An NBC News correspondent went to the man’s house in the Washington area and rang the doorbell. Five minutes later, two young men in an SUV came racing up the street and parked immediately adjacent to the correspondent’s car. The men, who identified themselves only as friends of the Russian, asked the correspondent what he was doing there.

[..] The [New York] Times said the source was “the American government’s best insight into the thinking of and orders” from Putin, and was key to the CIA’s assessment that Putin favored Donald Trump’s candidacy and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.

The Times previously reported that the source was considered so sensitive that then-CIA Director John Brennan had declined to refer to the person in the top secret Presidential Daily Brief during the final months of the Obama administration. Brennan sent reports from the source to the president and a small group of top national security aides in a separate, white envelope to assure its security, the Times reported.

[..] NBC News has not confirmed that the Russian living near the nation’s capital fed the CIA information about Russian election interference. But for reasons that NBC News is withholding, he fits the profile of someone who may have had access to information about Putin’s activities and who would have been recruitable by American intelligence officials.

Two former FBI officials told NBC News they believe he is the source referred to in the CNN and New York Times report. The Russian will likely be moved from the place he is currently living in the interest of keeping him safe, current and former officials said.

He will be moved in the interest of keeping him safe. That is just brilliant. What, you think Putin will be upset at no longer being able to Google his whereabouts?

To remain fair, let’s give RT some space, too, shall we?

Was Key CIA Spy ‘Extracted’ From Moscow Over #Russiagate Fears?

Media outlets in Russia immediately began speculating as to the identity of the alleged mole, quickly settling on Oleg Smolenkov, state advisor of the third class who had worked at the Russian embassy in Washington before 2010. Smolenkov took his wife and three children on vacation to Montenegro on July 14, 2017, whereupon they vanished without a trace. The police have been investigating their disappearance as possible murder.

[..] Russian Senator Franz Klintsevich, deputy head of the Defense and Security Committee, dismissed CNN’s story as “fake” and “carrying out orders for another attempt to discredit Trump,” according to TASS. Most of the US mainstream media outlets spent the past three years promoting the notorious ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory on behalf of the Democrats, and have refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing even though special counsel Robert Mueller failed to find anything to incriminate the president after a two-year investigation.

Moreover, CNN and MSNBC have hired a number of former intelligence officials, whose fingerprints have been all over ‘Russiagate,’ as anti-Trump pundits.

John Brennan, James Clapper, here’s looking at you. There was no need today to read much further in order to find out that the secret info Trump is accused of divulging to “the Russians” had already been published first by no other than…CNN on March 31 2017. There was no secret. Other than perhaps, says Aaron Maté, that Israel was the source. But trust us, Putin would have known that.

After the Mueller report fiasco, one would think the media who don’t like Trump would be more careful with their reporting, and before reporting it. But they just keep at it.

In the process, as quoted above, through their false reporting and false claims, it’s they who are endangering lives, not Donald Trump:

Brittany Bramell, the CIA director of public affairs, told CNN: “CNN’s narrative that the Central Intelligence Agency makes life-or-death decisions based on anything other than objective analysis and sound collection is simply false. Misguided speculation that the President’s handling of our nation’s most sensitive intelligence—which he has access to each and every day—drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate.” [..]

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said, “CNN’s reporting is not only incorrect, it has the potential to put lives in danger.”

It’s not just the White House, the CIA itself says it too.

Asking for a friend: You think the country’s still capable of having a normal conversation?

Debt Rattle August 7 2019

Aug 072019

August 7, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: Brexit, China, Cummings, Epstein, Erdogan, EU, liquidity, Mifsud, PNG, Putin, Salisbury, Skripal, Svengali, USD, yuan 11 Responses »

Pablo Picasso Portrait of Dora with bun 1937

• The Future Of Britain Is In The Hands Of Unelected Svengali Cummings (Oborne)

• No-Deal Brexiteers Are Winning Because They Want It More (Sky)

• UK Too Desperate To Secure US Trade Deal – Larry Summers (G.)

• Brexit: Michael Gove Accuses ‘Wrong And Sad’ EU Of Intransigence (G.)

• Met Police Examine Vladimir Putin’s Role In Salisbury Attack (G.)

• China State Banks Seen Supporting Yuan In Forwards Market (R.)

• Forget China, The Fed Has A Much Bigger Problem On Its Hands (ZH)

• Papua New Guinea Asks China To Refinance Its National Debt (G.)

• Chinese Port Plans Put Pacific Back In Play (R.)

• Pentagon Set to Prevent “Unacceptable” Turkish Invasion Of Northern Syria (ZH)

• The Mainstream Media Wants the Mifsud Story to Just Go Away (ET)

• Epstein’s Mysterious Manhattan Apartment Building On East 66th Street (BI)

Conservative journalist/editor Peter Oborne says the exact same thing I said a few days ago in A Tale of Two Cummings. Boris Johnson is just a figurehead.

Nigel Farage is complaining that the Tories want him and his Brexit party to step aside, but that’s Cummings and his polls that show Farage is too unpopular.

• The Future Of Britain Is In The Hands Of Unelected Svengali Cummings (Oborne)

Cummings is no longer in the shadows, operating behind the scenes — this Svengali is out in the open. Indeed, he seems to relish being seen in public, striding ostentatiously into Downing Street every morning. Now, we are all familiar with his shaven head, scruffy T-shirts, crumpled appearance and contemptuous and appraising eyes, his newspapers and bundles of documents carried in a Vote Leave bag. According to some papers, and many ministers and civil servants I have spoken to recently, this is the man who is truly running Britain. It’s Cummings who oversees the No 10 grid which controls the timing of announcements and public events. It’s in this capacity that he dispatches the PM up and down Britain, photographed in hospitals, sharing selfies with nurses, and on construction sites wearing a hard hat.

It is also Cummings, not Johnson, who determines political strategy — hence the huge public spending announcements on health, extra police and other issues. Indeed, it looks very much as if Johnson has become the public face of Cummings. And this, I am afraid, is profoundly disturbing. No one ever voted for Cummings, he has little experience of life outside politicking yet he has been given unprecedented power at a moment of immense crisis in the national fortunes. Within hours of Johnson becoming Tory leader two weeks ago, newly anointed special adviser Cummings called ‘his’ staff together in the magnificent Downing Street first-floor state room. He told them that he plans to deliver Brexit ‘by any means necessary’.

Quoting Michael Jordan: “Some people want it to happen. Some wish it to happen. Others make it happen.”

• No-Deal Brexiteers Are Winning Because They Want It More (Sky)

Consider this: we now have a prime minister and a government, buttressed by a not inconsiderable rump of the Conservative party, who have made it clear that there is not a convention they are not willing to break, an institution they are not willing to smash, a precedent they are not willing to burn, in the pursuit of their goal. The PM and his coterie have said that they would prorogue parliament because it might stand in their way; that they are willing to schedule an election far in excess of the usual time limits because it would ensure our exit on the 31 October. In so doing they would therefore go against yet more precedent in pursuing a highly tendentious policy during an election period (where normally a caretaker administration would do little of controversy).

And now, we have news that the prime minister would squat in Number 10 after he loses a confidence vote in the House of Commons. He is even willing to do so, apparently, if the Commons coalesces around an alternative prime minister, despite the fact the Cabinet Manual (the closest we have to a constitution) makes it clear that this is quite unacceptable and that it would risk the neutrality of the Queen. All of this would be constitutional vandalism. Brexit then, “whatever the cost”, as Dominic Cummings has said. It is a nihilistic vision of politics and indeed, a most unusual one for self-described “Conservatives” but it is, relentless and clear-sighted. Indeed, its recklessness has imbued this administration with a strange purpose and energy.

Larry craves attention.

• UK Too Desperate To Secure US Trade Deal – Larry Summers (G.)

The former US treasury secretary Larry Summers has said he does not believe that a “desperate” UK would manage to secure a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington, as Dominic Raab, the new foreign secretary, heads to the US to scope out the potential for such an agreement. Summers, who was a senior official under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, said the UK was in a weak position when it came to negotiating with trade partners. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday: “Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate … it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that’s when you strike the hardest bargain.”

Despite warm words from Donald Trump about a trade deal, Summers said: “We have economic conflict with China and, even on top of that, the deterioration of the pound is going to further complicate the negotiating picture. “We will see it as giving Britain an artificial comparative advantage and make us think about the need to retaliate against Britain, not to welcome Britain with new trade agreements.” Even if the two countries could come to an agreement, Summers said, the UK was in a weak negotiating position. “Britain has much less to give than Europe as a whole did, therefore less reason for the United States to make concessions,” he said. “You make more concessions dealing with a wealthy man than you do dealing with a poor man.”

The UK says the EU doesn’t want to talk, and vice versa. The demand to take the backstop out is a perfect dealbreaker. It can only lead to a no-deal Brexit. Re: Cummings.

• Brexit: Michael Gove Accuses ‘Wrong And Sad’ EU Of Intransigence (G.)

Michael Gove has accused the European Union of intransigence over Brexit talks, calling it “wrong and sad”, as divisions between the UK and Brussels became further entrenched with the government seemingly intent on a no-deal departure. Gove, who is in charge of no-deal preparations, reiterated Boris Johnson’s position that the only route to progress would be the EU starting again with withdrawal negotiations, something Brussels has repeatedly and consistently ruled out. Adding to the impression of Johnson’s hardening position, newly released government read-outs of the prime minister’s phone calls with a series of EU leaders over recent days showed he delivered the same uncompromising message to them.

While the Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, insisted on Tuesday that a no-deal departure was not inevitable, both he and the country’s finance minister, Paschal Donohoe, warned of a significant and long-term change to relations between the countries if it did happen. Downing Street has increasingly pushed the message that Brexit will happen on 31 October under any circumstances – even intimating that No 10 believes the mandate of the 2016 Brexit referendum would overrule even a blocking vote in parliament.

There is increasing worry among some MPs that Johnson could try to force through a no-deal Brexit against the will of the Commons, with his de facto chief of staff, Dominic Cummings, reportedly threatening No 10 staff with the sack if they dissent. The government’s official position is still that it is seeking a formalised departure, albeit only if Brussels ditches the Irish backstop border insurance policy and reopens the withdrawal agreement.

And of course Britain is anxious to keep the Skripal narrative going. In reality, all it would take is to present the man.

• Met Police Examine Vladimir Putin’s Role In Salisbury Attack (G.)

Scotland Yard has examined the role of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury, it has been revealed. Putin is assessed by UK intelligence agencies as having been “likely” to have approved of the attack in March 2018 on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer, and his daughter, both of whom were left seriously ill but survived. Dawn Sturgess later died after coming across a discarded perfume bottle used by two Russian intelligence agents to carry the military grade nerve agent. Two Russian agents have been charged over the attack, and Britain wants them extradited and has issued a European arrest warrant (EAW) and Interpol red notice for their detention.

The Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, the head of UK counter-terrorism policing, said the investigation into the attack was continuing. Basu said the issues involved in bringing charges over the attack were complex. “You’d have to prove he [Putin] was directly involved,” he said. “In order to get an EAW, you have to have a case capable of being charged in this country. We haven’t got a case capable of being charged. “We’re police officers, so we have to go for evidence. There has been a huge amount of speculation about who is responsible, who gave the orders, all based on people’s expert knowledge of Russia. I have to go with evidence.”

“The movement in forward points may reflect a tightening in USD (dollar) liquidity..”

• China State Banks Seen Supporting Yuan In Forwards Market (R.)

China’s state banks have been active in the onshore yuan forwards market this week, using swaps to tighten dollar supply and support the Chinese currency, four sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. The spot value of the yuan has fallen sharply this week against the dollar as tensions between China and the United States escalated and prompted fears that their trade war could shift into a currency war. The sources said banks had conducted significant amounts of buy-sell swaps in the onshore market on Tuesday. Buy-sell swaps help to reduce the supply of dollars that the market can access to short-sell the yuan. “Yesterday big banks were all selling one-year onshore forward swaps, then in the afternoon the spot dollar-yuan fell,” said a trader at a foreign bank in Shanghai.

One state bank also was seen active in offshore forward swaps, two traders at foreign banks with knowledge of the matter said. On Wednesday, one-year onshore dollar-yuan forwards were at 175 points, down from 321 points on Monday, according to Refinitiv data. One-year offshore dollar-yuan forwards were at 459 points, down from 640 points on Monday. “The movement in forward points may reflect a tightening in USD (dollar) liquidity when some market participants need to buy spot dollars and sell them back in forwards. Meanwhile, the spot and outright moves were also partly due to a stabilization in RMB (yuan) sentiment on Tuesday,” said Frances Cheung, head of macro strategy for Asia at Westpac in Singapore.

Liquidity.

• Forget China, The Fed Has A Much Bigger Problem On Its Hands (ZH)

The Fed may have launched its first easing cycle since 2007 and liquidity-sapping quantitative tightening may finally be over, but Powell may have a much bigger problem on his hands – one which has nothing to do with China, and everything to do with a dramatic drain of liquidity in the market over the next two months.

We first hinted at this last week when we noted that as part of the recently completed debt ceiling deal, instead of taking its time in replenishing the cash balance (green line in the chart below), the US Treasury will scramble to rebuild its cash balance up to $350 billion, from today’s level of $133 billion (gray line), a process which as we said last Wednesday will “significantly tighten up liquidity in the banking system and potentially result in turmoil in funding and money markets as the world is flooded with an issuance of T-Bills” as the Treasury seeks to fill the $217 billion cash hole, which will lead to a substantial liquidity withdrawal from the broader financial system as shown in the following Nordea chart.

The problem, in a nutshell, is that traditionally such a rapid liquidity withdrawal leads to weaker risk appetite, a far stronger USD and lower treasury yields, while widening the LIBOR/OIS spread and further depressing the already negative EURUSD cross-currency basis. While we cautioned about all this last week (even before the FOMC announcement), it appears that our appreciation of just how severe this problem may be for the Fed and capital markets was overly optimistic, because according to a new analysis by Bank of America’s Mark Cabana, the Fed may have no choice but to resume Quantitative Easing and start expanding its balance sheet again – potentially as early as 4Q – in order to ease funding pressures expected during the coming wave of Treasury supply.

Debt denominated in dollars by any chance?

• Papua New Guinea Asks China To Refinance Its National Debt (G.)

Papua New Guinea has asked China to refinance its entire government debt in a blow to Australia’s attempts to counter China’s influence in the region. The request marks a “significant shift” in regional politics and PNG’s allegiances, according to Pacific experts. Australia has traditionally been the largest aid donor and most important ally of PNG, but in recent years ties between China and PNG have strengthened. PNG’s prime minister, James Marape, visited Australia two weeks ago at the invitation of his counterpart, Scott Morrison, in his first international visit since becoming the Pacific nation’s leader at the end of May.

In a speech during his visit, Marape said he wanted PNG to move away from an “aid-donor” relationship with Australia within 10 years, and step up alongside its neighbour as a leader in the Pacific region. However, on Tuesday, after a meeting with Xue Bing, the Chinese ambassador in Port Moresby, Marape requested that China refinance its debts of A$11.8bn (27bn kina, or US$7.95bn). PNG’s debt sits at around 32.8% of its GDP. “[The prime minister] requested the ambassador to inform Beijing on a bid to assist the government of PNG refinance its existing country’s K27bn debt,” said Marape’s office in a statement seen by the Guardian.

“He suggested that both the Bank of PNG and [China’s] People’s Bank will take the lead with the department of treasury in ensuring that consultations are under way,” the statement continued. “It suggest a significant shift in the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea and Papua New Guinea and China,” says Matthew Clarke, professor of international development at Deakin University. “In the past Australia would have been the natural country to turn to for this sort of refinancing, but now we see China’s place in the region shift and it becomes potentially a much more dominant player in the donor relationship.”

“The United States, and allies including Japan, Australia and New Zealand, are actively expanding their diplomatic postings in the Pacific to counter China’s influence..”

• Chinese Port Plans Put Pacific Back In Play (R.)

Early in the morning, before sunrise, low tide on the Samoan island of Savai’i reveals the remnants of an old American airstrip, washed away by decades of erosion, cyclones and tsunamis. The World War II site in Asau, which also hosts a 1960s-era concrete wharf in its well-protected natural harbor, is being considered for a new port to be developed by China, according to the Samoan government and the area’s highest ranking chief, Masoe Serota Tufaga. The proposed construction of a facility that could be turned into a military asset in hostile times has worried the United States and its regional allies, which have dominated international influence in the vast waters of the South Pacific since 1945.

Sitting at his coconut and cocoa plantation on the hills above the port site, Tufaga told Reuters he would abide by any government deal for a Chinese-developed port even though he was concerned about Beijing’s growing influence. “The government and China came here to look at it – they offered it,” said 71-year-old Tufaga, who has the final say over land-use agreements affecting Asau. “If China wants to operate this, it’s too hard for us to say to the government, no, we can not allow China here. The people are looking for some jobs. “That’s right – it’s money. It’s money.”

The United States, and allies including Japan, Australia and New Zealand, are actively expanding their diplomatic postings in the Pacific to counter China’s influence, and warning island nations that Beijing-funded projects needed to make financial sense. China is using “predatory economics” to destabilize the Indo-Pacific and the United States is working with its partners to address the region’s pressing security needs, U.S. Defence Secretary Mark Esper said in Sydney on Sunday.

Erdogan bluff. I hope.

• Pentagon Set to Prevent “Unacceptable” Turkish Invasion Of Northern Syria (ZH)

Turkey has for days been poised to unilaterally invade northern Syria over US objections, which Ankara officials say is to establish a 32 kilometer (20 mile) zone inside the war torn country, giving Turkey complete control of a region where the Syrian Kurdish YPG operates (People’s Protection Units). Turkey has long considered the US-backed group, which forms the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to be a terrorist extension of the outlawed PKK. The Pentagon has condemned the impending Turkish unilateral move, with US Defense Secretary Mark Esper telling reporters early Tuesday that it would be unacceptable and thwarted by Washington, though it’s unclear how far the Pentagon would be willing to go.

“What we’re going to do is prevent unilateral incursions that would upset, again, these mutual interests that the United States, Turkey and the SDF share with regard to northern Syria,” Esper said. Crucially, according to ABC News, US officials “have made clear that an invasion is an extremely risky venture that could threaten the safety of U.S. forces working with the SDF…”. On Sunday Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that his forces would launch an operation in Syria east of the Euphrates River at an unspecified start date, and noted that the US and Russia had been notified. In ongoing negotiations this summer the US and Turkey have clashed over just such a “safe zone,” given Turkey wants the area completely clear of Kurdish armed groups, which the Pentagon simultaneously backs.

Turkish defense officials have lately threatened their “patience is limited” as the army builds up its forces along the border. The Foreign Ministry on Friday warned, “We won’t let this process be dragged out. If our expectations aren’t met, we are fully capable of taking whatever measures [are needed] to ensure our national security.”

If Mifsud is an FBI asset, there are zero Russians left in the story.

• The Mainstream Media Wants the Mifsud Story to Just Go Away (ET)

John Solomon of The Hill is reporting that an audiotape containing professor Joseph Mifsud’s deposition has been given to both U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigators and to the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I can report absolutely that the Durham investigators have now obtained an audiotape deposition of Joseph Mifsud, where he describes his work, why he targeted George Papadopoulos, who directed him to do that, what directions he was given, and why he set that entire process of introducing Papadopoulos to Russia in motion in March of 2016, which is really the flashpoint the starting point of this whole Russia collusion narrative,” Solomon told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

“I can also confirm that the Senate Judiciary Committee has also obtained the same deposition,” he said. Mifsud, who I have written about extensively in previous columns, is the key that turns the lock to the lid of this Pandora’s box that we refer to as “Spygate.” So I’m wondering why Solomon appears to be the only mainstream reporter pursuing this Mifsud story. I suspect it’s because many DNC Media outlets, after having fallen deeply and passionately in love with the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, are reluctant to call attention to something that would be the final nail in its coffin. The last thing the mainstream media wants right now would be for Mifsud to go on the record with both Durham’s investigative team and with Congress to say he was working for the FBI and was only pretending to be a Russian agent.

If Mifsud was an FBI asset sent to entrap Papadopoulos, then there are no real Russian agents anywhere in this entire Trump-Russia collusion story. Ponder what that means for a minute. You can’t save the Russian collusion narrative, if you can’t find any real Russians anywhere in the story. The FBI under James Comey will then be seen as having engaged in an operation to entrap people, and “Russian agents” turn out to be fakes working for the FBI and who were making fake offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign.

But nobody knew a thing.

• Epstein’s Mysterious Manhattan Apartment Building On East 66th Street (BI)

Before his extended stay in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center began in July, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein dwelled in some of the city’s most exclusive real estate, laying his head in a palatial Upper East Side townhouse and conducting his mysterious business out of a landmarked mansion on Madison Avenue. But it hasn’t been all private islands and 7,000-acre ranches for the half-billionaire. For decades Epstein has run some of his operations quietly out of a squat Second Avenue residential building owned by his brother, Mark Epstein, and frequently visited by the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. According to property records and court filings, Jeffrey Epstein has long housed girlfriends, associates, employees, and businesses in a handful of units at 301 East 66th St.

There are 200 units at the address, and the majority of them are owned on paper by his brother’s development firm, Ossa Properties. While Ossa nominally owns the units connected to Jeffrey Epstein, the aforementioned records and filings show that Epstein effectively controls them. The postwar white-brick high-rise sits atop a nail salon, a coffee shop, and an Italian restaurant along a traffic-choked stretch of Second Avenue. Topped by a green canopy, the front door opens to a doorman guarding a hallway that leads to a light-filled lobby decorated with two couches and an armchair. Though the building shares a ZIP code with Epstein’s townhouse, its share of the neighborhood east of Park Avenue is less upscale, catering more to families and young professionals than foreign heads of state.

Putin, the African Queen

Jun 112019

June 11, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 7:51 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: Africa, Assange, babies, Congo, France, Guardian, human zoo, Khodorkovsky, Luke Harding, Putin, Russia, Trump 4 Responses »

While filming “The African Queen” everyone fell sick from drinking the water except for Humphrey Bogart and John Huston, who drank whiskey

Luke Harding is a former journalist for the Guardian. I say former because while he is still writing for the paper, he lost his one remaining shred of credibility last November with an article about Paul Manafort visiting Julian Assange multiple times in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which soon was discredited as badly as an article can be, but has still not been retracted or corrected by the paper.

If you get caught in that kind of nonsense, you’re surely not a journalist. Of course that was just one in an endless list of blubber that Harding produced about the likes of Assange and Trump. And Putin of course. And now he’s back with more. About Putin.

Somewhere in this new article by Luke Harding and Jason Burke for the venerable publication, they say that Russia only became interested in Africa in 2014. And obviously you know you can stop reading right there. Russia’s been interested in Africa for decades. Because it’s laden with resources. Because everybody else is there to get to those resources.

But Harding manages to write up a piece that makes Russia’s interest terribly suspicious and menacing. Because, you know, Skripal. The Russians did it. He’s basing this on docs he claims to have seen, but doesn’t provide, given to him by an “investigative unit” based in London and funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Putin’s worst domestic enemy.

Leaked Documents Reveal Russian Effort To Exert Influence In Africa

Russia is seeking to bolster its presence in at least 13 countries across Africa by building relations with existing rulers, striking military deals, and grooming a new generation of “leaders” and undercover “agents”, leaked documents reveal.

There are 54 countries in Africa today. Russia SEEKS to bolster its presence in 13. Scary! At the same time, how many countries do you think France has a presence in? Or UK, Italy, US? How about China? And now that we’re on the subject, what do you think they’re all taking out of Africa, leaving the people behind with nothing?

And Russia is supposed to be the threat? You ever heard about Belgian King Leopold and the Congo, and the millions of deaths he caused? 60 years ago there were still African children paraded out in ”human zoos” in Belgium. But Russia is the threat?! How about a history lesson or two?

The mission to increase Russian influence on the continent is being led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman based in St Petersburg who is a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. One aim is to “strong-arm” the US and the former colonial powers the UK and France out of the region. Another is to see off “pro-western” uprisings, the documents say.

In 2018 the US special counsel Robert Mueller indicted Prigozhin, who is known as “Putin’s chef” because of his Kremlin catering contracts. According to Mueller, his troll factory ran an extensive social media campaign in 2016 to help elect Donald Trump.

Prigozhin is a caterer who runs a troll factory. Not saying this is impossible, but it’s certainly poorly written.

The Wagner group – a private military contractor linked to Prigozhin – has supplied mercenaries to fight in Ukraine and Syria. The documents show the scale of Prigozhin-linked recent operations in Africa, and Moscow’s ambition to turn the region into a strategic hub.

What operations? Catering operations?

Multiple firms linked to the oligarch, including Wagner, are known by employees as the “Company”. Its activities are coordinated with senior officials inside Russia’s foreign and defence ministries, the documents suggest.

And we have a picture of the beast. Not scary enough? We’ll get one where he eats babies.

Yevgeny Prigozhin in Vladivostok in 2016. Photograph: Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

Putin showed little interest in Africa in the 2000s. But western sanctions imposed in 2014 over the annexation of Crimea have driven Moscow to seek new geopolitical friends and business opportunities.

Oh yeah, sure, Russia only started looking at Africa in 2014. See, stop reading right there…

Russia has a military presence and peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic. CAR is described as “strategically important” and a “buffer zone between the Muslim north and Christian south”. It allows Moscow to expand “across the continent”, and Russian companies to strike lucrative mineral deals, the documents say.

On 24 May the Kremlin announced it was dispatching a team of army specialists to the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press spokesman, they will service Russian-made military equipment. So far Moscow has signed military cooperation deals with about 20 African states.

The west, France, UK, US, has literally raped the Congo, richer than any other place on earth in resources, for many many decades. And now that Russia starts looking, the west gets a dumb fcuk like Harding to write up a scare story about it.

Five days later the Kremlin said it would host the first ever Russia-Africa summit in October in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Putin and Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, will chair the event. About 50 African leaders are due to attend. The aim is to foster political, economic and cultural cooperation.

The leaked documents were obtained by the Dossier Center, an investigative unit based in London. The centre is funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian businessman and exiled Kremlin critic.

Prigozhin has been approached for comment. He has previously denied any links to the troll factory and has said of Wagner that it does not exist. Putin has previously said that entities linked to Prigozhin do not constitute the Russian state.

A map from December 2018 seen by the Guardian shows the level of cooperation between the “Company” and African governments, country by country. Symbols indicate military, political and economic ties, police training, media and humanitarian projects, and “rivalry with France”. Five is the highest level; one is the lowest.

The closest relations are with CAR, Sudan and Madagascar – all put at five. Libya, Zimbabwe and South Africa are listed as four, according to the map, with South Sudan at three, and DRC, Chad and Zambia at two.

Other documents cite Uganda, Equatorial Guinea and Mali as “countries where we plan to work”. Libya and Ethiopia are flagged as nations “where cooperation is possible”. The Kremlin has recently stepped up its ground operation in Libya. Last November the Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar travelled to Moscow and met the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. Prigozhin was spotted at the talks. Egypt is described as “traditionally supportive”.

We don’t get to hear where Khodorkovsky got the docs from or how reliable they are, and we don’t get to see any of them. We have to believe Luke Harding on his blue eyes. But even then, is there anything shocking here for the non-Skripal crowd? Or is Harding just once more doing the MI6’s job for them?

The graphic gives an overview of “Company” activities and achievements. It claims credit in CAR for getting of rid of politicians who are “orientated to France”, including national assembly representatives and the foreign minister. This appears to be Charles-Armel Doubane, sacked in December. It has “strengthened” the army and set up newspapers and a radio station. Russia is an “83% friend”, it says.

In Madagascar the new president, Andry Rajoelina, won election with “the Company’s support”, the map says. Russia “produced and distributed the island’s biggest newspaper, with 2 million copies a month”, it adds. Rajoelina denies receiving assistance.

Another key territory is Sudan. Last year Russian specialists drew up a programme of political and economic reform, designed to keep President Omar al-Bashir in power. It included a plan to smear anti-government protesters, apparently copy-pasted from tactics used at home against the anti-Putin opposition. (One memo mistakenly says “Russia” instead of “Sudan”.)

One ploy was to use fake news and videos to portray demonstrators in Khartoum and other Sudanese cities as “anti-Islam”, “pro-Israel” and “pro-LGBT”. The government was told to increase the price of newsprint – to make it harder for critics to get their message out – and to discover “foreigners” at anti-government rallies.

I love it when people like Harding use the term “fake news”. Because he’s the very person who’s been caught producing just that, in the Manafort-visits-Assange article mentioned above. That was 100% fake.

Now, don’t get me wrong please. Of course Russia tries to play out factions and parties and countries against one another. Like all others do. They may do it in Sudan, in Comoros, examples Harding makes claims about, and elsewhere:

[..] Other suggestions in the documents include trans-African road and rail-building schemes. A railway could be built linking Dakar in Senegal with Port Sudan in Sudan, along the “old hajj [pilgrimage] route”. A separate 2,300-mile (3,700km) toll road was proposed connecting Port Sudan with Douala in Cameroon. Neither has so far happened.

A plan to revive “pan-African consciousness” appears closely modelled on the idea of Russkiy Mir, or Russian world. The concept has become fashionable under Putin and signifies Russian power and culture extended beyond current borders.

Have you ever seen purer baloney? Russia trying to get Africa to unite because that would look like some ancient idea of turning the whole world Russian? Maybe Stalin has such ideas, but he was Soviet, not Russian, and Putin, who is Russian, doesn’t have it, as you can grasp from his military expenditures. All Putin wants is to keep Russia safe from American and NATO invasions.

One working paper is titled “African world”. It calls for a developing “African self-identity”. It recommends collecting a database of Africans living in the US and Europe, which might be used to groom “future leaders” and “agents of influence”. The eventual goal is a “loyal chain of representatives across African territory”, the March 2018 paper says.

That little paragraph says it all. There’s not one little letter in there that poses any threat to anyone.

More immediate practical measures include setting up Russian-controlled non-governmental organisations in African states and organising local meetings. It is unclear how many Prigozhin initiatives have actually gone forward. There is evidence that media projects mentioned in the documents are now up and running – albeit with marginal impact. They include a website, Africa Daily Voice, with its HQ in Morocco, and a French-language news service, Afrique Panorama, based in Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo. Russian operatives also offer thoughts on global politics. One policy paper, titled “Russian influence in Africa”, says Moscow needs to find “reliable partners among African states” and should establish military bases.

And there the whole story has fizzled out into emptiness. Yeah, it says with some vague thing about military bases, but do you know how many western military bases there are in Africa? Tons. So there’s nothing left, zero, from the original threatening tone Harding started off with, but it doesn’t matter, because who’s going to read the whole thing anyway?

Main thing is, the tone, the narrative, have been established once more. Putin is a big threat, re: Skripal and eating babies, and so are Trump and Assange. And they all work together to bring down your safety and quality of life. No, your own government doesn’t do that!

Joe Biden Works for Donald Trump

Apr 272019

April 27, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:23 pm Finance, Primers Tagged with: Assange, Butina, collusion, Democrats, DNC, Joe Biden, Mueller, Pelosi, punching bag, Putin, Teflon, Trump, white old men 17 Responses »

Egon Schiele Death and the maiden 1915-16

Joe Biden is working for Donald Trump, right? I haven’t heard either of them say it outright, but it’s the only reason I can see that would explain why Biden is running for president. And if Biden works for Trump, that means he works for Putin, because Trump is Putin’s puppet, no matter how often Robert Mueller denies it.

Then again, if we would suggest, purely hypothetically and for entertainment purposes only, that Biden is neither Putin’s nor Trump’s puppet, what on earth drives him to declare his candidacy as the oldest ever presidential candidate in US history? Biden will be Trump’s punching bag. There is so much wrong with and about the man, Trump’s not even laughing, just saying: “oh yes, please, bring it.”

Biden has the Anita Hill boondoggle to his name, there’s a huge nascent story concerning Ukraine, where he interfered, while vice-president, to benefit his son, and there are tons of women who will come with groping tales. This will be a very long list, as long as his career in Washington. Biden bumbles and stumbles for a living. Someone’s going to write a book about that someday.

And perhaps most of all, Biden is the product and candidate of the DNC, which may think they got away with what they did in 2016, but will find out that it just ain’t so. They may all think that if Trump is made of Teflon, Joe can be as well, but Teflon is a rare material for politicians to be made of.

The Democrats’ hard-to-grasp decision to put everything on the red of collusion for 3 years, and their subsequent colossal loss, will play an outsize role in the 2020 campaign, and of course much more so if an old hand like Joe Biden is put out front to catch the worst of the blows. A lot will come out of the upcoming “counter-Mueller” investigations, starting with DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s in May, and Trump will only have to say: “You were there all along, Joe, all the way”.

Despite the DNC’s illegal actions and shenanigans, they are still the organization that in the end picks the candidate. Will it be Joe Biden, or will he be knock-out by this time next year? It all depends on who the DNC is going to ~~nominate~~ support, and the DNC is still very much Hillary and the Debbie Wasserman-Schultz cabal.

Bernie Sanders is polling second at this point in time, but Bernie would have to explain away why he surrendered his spot to Hillary after the DNC took it away from him in a clearly fraudulent manner (as we know though WikiLeaks files). What all those people whose millions in campaign donations he squandered away by doing that, even endorsing Hillary, should want to know is: will you do it again this time, Bernie, turn your back on us? You know, once bitten, twice shy?

CNN made up another story out of nothing to make us believe Trump is scared of Biden: “Biden Is Trump’s Most Anticipated – And Feared – Rival”. The gist of it is that they have a source in the White House who says Trump has mentioned Biden in a meeting, and that must mean he fears him.

What is Trump supposedly afraid of? Of Biden taking up print- and airspace and luring away “lower-income white voters who propelled Trump to the White House.” Sure. And if you’re interested, I still own that bridge. To balance things out they also include a line that makes their entire article look useless and ridiculous in two seconds flat. They quote David Urban, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania, saying. “If voters wanted a third Obama term, they would have voted for Hillary (Clinton) over Donald Trump.”. And:

[Trump] has denied to reporters that he views the former vice president as a danger, telling CBS News in an interview last year he “dreamed” of running against Biden. Earlier this month he insisted Biden was saddled with a long and ignominious record – including during the Obama administration, which Trump has blamed with increased frequency for foreign and economic policy blunders. “I don’t see Joe Biden as a threat. No, I don’t see him as a threat. I think he is only a threat to himself,” Trump said. “He’s been there a long time. His record’s not good. He’d have to run on the Obama failed record.”

Makes you wonder why CNN wrote that piece, doesn’t it? Are they also on Putin’s payroll? It’s something I’ve often suspected as the mainstream media bungled their way through Mueller Time. Kim Dotcom also had a nice one on Twitter:

Barack Obama didn’t endorse Joe Biden and advised him not to run because now everyone will be looking for dirt on Biden. There’s a lot of dirt and Obama is right there with him in the mud of corruption and unlawfulness. Exciting times.

The DNC, and the Democratic Party as a whole, have a massive legacy problem. Their entire leadership look like a Monday Bingo night in a pensioners home, with botox overdoses for the winners. The entire culture is based on “it’s her/his turn”, and it’s exceedingly rare for anyone to volunteer to step down before they have attained full dementia.

They appear to have a number of younger people who could fill in those roles, but those will have to wait until Pelosi et al have had their fill at the power trough. This is extremely damaging to the party, and ultimately for the whole country, which badly needs a strong party to balance out Trump and his ilk.

But there’s no such balance, and Biden doesn’t have a chance in hell against Trump. The Democrats don’t see this, because that would mean their leaders have to remove themselves from their positions. Fat -old- chance.

The Democrats have promising -though not flawless- young candidates lining up, and they are being pushed to the sidelines. I like the idea that they are letting 20 or more of them in the race just so in the end the DNC will have to decide, and they already have Kamala Harris lined up, but Kamala would only be another DNC candidate. Same problem as Biden.

The ‘leadership’ still clings to the collusion narrative, and that is playing right into Trump’s hands. Collusion, Julian Assange, Maria Butina, these are all made-up stories the Democrats think will be profitable for them. But they only think it because it’s the only way to explain Hillary’s loss that doesn’t expose their gross incompetence.

The Democrat-ruled Congress should make sure the Trump administration frees Butina, drops the extradition request for Assange, and apologizes to Russia for all the empty and hostile allegations. Not going to happen. Pelosi, Hillary and Schumer need the collusion narrative Mueller just entirely discredited. Yes, that is desperate as it sounds.

The Democrat old guard have given up on having a vision for the nation, and instead focus all their energy on scheming and plotting and hanging on to their power. And on trying to get old white men elected. But America is no longer a country for white old men. That ends with Trump. Like a lot ends with Trump. But for now he’s still there.

Crossfire Boomerang

Apr 252019

April 25, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 12:43 pm Primers Tagged with: Assange, Bill Barr, Binney, CIA, Comey, FBI, fiction, GRU, Mueller, Pompeo, Putin, Russia, Steele dossier, Trump, truth, VIPS, Warner 2 Responses »

M. C. Escher Relativity Lattice 1953

From Twitter:

Remember Spying on Trump was called “Crossfire Hurricane”? Well now it’s renamed to “Crossfire Boomerang”. BOOM. Karma!

From the moment the Special Counsel investigation into Trump-Russia collusion began, we’ve been presented with a portrait of Robert Swan Mueller III as a man of unassailable character, a straight shooter, as impartial as can be. But Mueller was director of the FBI for 12 years (2001-2013), he was the king of the spies.

Does anyone really have the idea that the people who work in US intelligence are the country’s straightest shooters? Not everybody does. For instance, not Mike Pompeo, who bluntly stated: We lied, we cheated, we stole; It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”

So why should we believe Mueller is a man of such unassailable character when he rose to one of the very top ranks in intelligence? It doesn’t make much sense, except of course it’s what politics and media – and intelligence- want us to believe. It may not make sense, but boy, does it work.

And then at some point obviously you have to wonder why Mueller got the Special Counsel job on May 27 2017. Because of that unassailable character, we were told at the time. But if that doesn’t apply to Pompeo, why would it be true of Mueller? And why Mueller while there were strong links to US intelligence that would obviously have to be probed by the counsel (but were not).

That brings us straight to the next question: The main issue, post-report, is not whether Trump tried to stop the Mueller probe. The main issue instead is why it was instigated to begin with. Yes, US intelligence. CIA. And then there’s yet another question: When did Mueller know there was no collusion? Not just 1 or 2 weeks before presenting his report, that’s for sure.

So when? 6 months ago? A year? Did he ever really think there was collusion? If so, based on what? The almost entrirely discredited Steele dossier? Did he have faith in that? The Mifsud-Papadoloulos-Downer connection ‘engineered’ by CIA asset Stephen Halper? Did he have faith in that? Or was the whole thing goal-seeeked from the start?

It appears very silly to assume that Mueller did not start his job with an agenda, because of the heavy involvement of his former employees and colleagues and his best friend James Comey, whose firing by Trump was one of the main reasons to start the investigation. Sounds like a very hard one to sell, but the media did a great job. Everybody bought into it.

And then the whole thing collapsed. Yes, collapsed. Because this was never about finding the truth, it was always about digging for dirt. On Trump. Think Mueller wasn’t aware of that? I own a bridge….

Mueller was forced to find Trump and his team not guilty on conspiracy or collusion -and obstruction. This is because he would have had to prove this, and couldn’t. But he’s left the accusations against the Russian government and Julian Assange stand. Not because he has evidence for that, but because he doesn’t have to prove them.

Nobody believes a word any Russian says anymore, thanks to the MSM and US intelligence campaign against them. As for Assange, it’s obvious what Robert Mueller has done. He’s completely ignored the one person who could have helped him find the truth -just not the dirt-. and let him rot in hell. Here’s wishing for that same hell to befall Mueller and all of his family.

There is zero chance that Mueller didn’t know his buddy and successor James Comey prevented Assange from talking with the DOJ in 2017. Neither wanted Assange’s evidence to become public, because that would have killed the Russia narrative as well as the WikiLeaks one. And then what?

Let’s make one thing clear. All that proof of Russian hacking and Russian Facebook ads? It doesn’t exist. The entire story is fictional. How do we know? Because the only source that says it is true is US intelligence. And they can not be believed. As Mueller’s investigation once again shows.

Mueller and Barr, like all of Washington -it’s a bipartisan effort-, want the narrative to remain alive that the Russians hacked and meddled in the US elections in favor of Trump, and that Julian Assange was in cahoots with them. None of which Mueller has any evidence for. And Mueller at all have no problem sacrificing Assange and Chelsea Manning while they’re at it.

Assange is not the only expert source who is silenced. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity -VIPS- also can’t get their voice heard. People who ran US intelligence for decades are being silenced by those who succeeded them. As if they don’t exist. As if their expertise is worthless.

The evidence they offer simply doesn’t rhyme with the official narrative promoted by their successors and the CIA and FBI. Remember: Mueller only dropped in his report what he would have had to provide evidence for. The rest is still there, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

One VIPS member is Larry Johnson, “former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official, (ret.)”. Trump referenced him the other day on Twitter:

“Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson accuses United Kingdom Intelligence of helping Obama Administration Spy on the 2016 Trump Presidential Campaign.” @OANN WOW! It is now just a question of time before the truth comes out, and when it does, it will be a beauty!

And sure enough, the Guardian today described Johnson as a “conservative conspiracy theorist”. This stuff is predictable. But at least we know that while Mueller et al ignore the VIPS, Trump knows at least something about them. A few excerpts of a letter they sent to Trump last week (which he hasn’t seen, undoubtedly):

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President. SUBJECT: The Fly in the Mueller Ointment

[..] the Mueller report left unscathed the central-but-unproven allegation that the Russian government hacked into the DNC and Podesta emails, gave them to WikiLeaks to publish, and helped you win the election. The thrust will be the same; namely, even if there is a lack of evidence that you colluded with Russian President Vladimir Putin, you have him to thank for becoming president.

Mueller has accepted that central-but-unproven allegation as gospel truth [..] Following the odd example of his erstwhile colleague, former FBI Director James Comey, Mueller apparently has relied for forensics on a discredited, DNC-hired firm named CrowdStrike, whose credibility is on a par with “pee-tape dossier” compiler Christopher Steele. Like Steele, CrowdStrike was hired and paid by the DNC.

[..] In Barr’s words: “The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks.

Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election.” We are eager to see if Mueller’s report contains more persuasive forensic evidence than that which VIPS has already debunked.

“But They Were Indicted! “Circular reasoning is not likely to work for very long, even with a U.S. populace used to being brainwashed by the media. Many Americans had mistakenly assumed that Mueller’s indictment of Russians — whether they be posting on FaceBook or acting like intelligence officers — was proof of guilt. But, as lawyers regularly point out, “one can easily indict a ham sandwich” — easier still these days, if it comes with Russian dressing.

The VIPS mention a few times they can’t get heard. They sent Barr a letter 5 weeks ago, and never got an answer. Here they say: “.. specialists will have a field day, IF — and it is a capital “IF” — by some miracle, word of VIPS’ forensic findings gets into the media this time around.”

The evidence-impoverished, misleadingly labeled “Intelligence Community Assessment” of January 6, 2017 had one saving grace. The authors noted: “The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation — malicious or not — leaves a trail.” Forensic investigators can follow a trail of metadata and other technical properties. VIPS has done that.

If, as we strongly suspect, Mueller is relying for forensics solely on CrowdStrike, the discredited firm hired by the DNC in the spring of 2016, he is acting more in the mold of Inspector Clouseau than the crackerjack investigator he is reputed to be. It simply does not suffice for Mueller’s former colleague James Comey to tell Congress that CrowdStrike is a “high-class entity.” It is nothing of the sort [..] Comey needs to explain why he kept the FBI away from the DNC computers after they were said to have been “hacked.”

And former National Intelligence Director James Clapper needs to explain his claim last November that “the forensic evidence was overwhelming about what the Russians had done.” What forensic evidence? From CrowdStrike? We at VIPS, in contrast, are finding more and more forensic evidence that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked by the Russians or anyone else — and that “Guccifer 2.0” is an out-and-out fraud. Yes, we can prove that from forensics too.

No Russian hacking. No Guccifer 2.0. But Mueller mentions both a lot.

Again, if Mueller’s incomplete investigation is allowed to assume the status of Holy Writ, most Americans will continue to believe that — whether you colluded the Russians or not — Putin came through for you big time. In short, absent President Putin’s help, you would not be president.

Far too many Americans will still believe this because of the mainstream-media fodder — half-cooked by intelligence leaks — that they have been fed for two and a half years. The media have been playing the central role in the effort of the MICIMATT (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex to stymie any improvement in relations with Russia.

We in VIPS have repeatedly demonstrated that the core charges of Russian interference in the 2016 election are built on a house of cards. But, despite our record of accuracy on this issue — not to mention our pre-Iraq-war warnings about the fraudulent intelligence served up by our former colleagues — we have gotten no play in mainstream media.

Most of us have chalked up decades in the intelligence business and many have extensive academic and government experience focusing on Russia. We consider the issue of “Russian interference” of overriding significance not only because the allegation is mischievously bogus and easily disproven. More important, it has brought tension with nuclear-armed Russia to the kind of dangerous fever pitch not seen since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the Russian provocation was real — authentic, not synthetic.

[..] We recall that you were apprised of that Memorandum’s key findings because you ordered then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo to talk to William Binney, one of our two former NSA Technical Directors and one of the principal authors of that Memorandum. On October 24, 2017, Pompeo began an hour-long meeting with Binney by explaining the genesis of the odd invitation to CIA Headquarters: “You are here because the president told me that if I really wanted to know about Russian hacking I needed to talk to you.”

[..] Binney, a plain-spoken, widely respected scientist, began by telling Pompeo that his (CIA) people were lying to him about Russian hacking and that he (Binney) could prove it. [..] As we told Attorney General Barr five weeks ago, we consider Mueller’s findings fundamentally flawed on the forensics side and ipso facto incomplete. We also criticized Mueller for failing to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.

You may be unaware that in March 2017 lawyers for Assange and the Justice Department (acting on behalf of the CIA) reportedly were very close to an agreement under which Assange would agree to discuss “technical evidence ruling out certain parties” in the leak of the DNC emails and agree to redact some classified CIA information, in exchange for limited immunity. According to the investigative reporter John Solomon of The Hill, Sen. Mark Warner, (D-VA) vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, learned of the incipient deal and told then-FBI Director Comey, who ordered an abrupt “stand down” and an end to the discussions with Assange.

Why did Comey and Warner put the kibosh on receiving “technical evidence ruling out certain parties” [read Russia]? We won’t insult you with the obvious answer.

Assange is now in prison, to the delight of so many — including Mrs. Clinton who has said Assange must now “answer for what he has done.” But is it too late to follow up somehow on Assange’s offer? Might he or his associates be still willing to provide “technical evidence” showing, at least, who was not the culprit?

VIPS can’t get their voices heard. Everyone ignores them. These are highly experienced veterans of US intelligence, whose successors, and politics, and media, simply act as if they don’t exist. And while it’s curious to see how they go out of their way NOT to create the impression that Mueller makes his “mistakes” on purpose, the gist is just that.

What this adds up to is not just that Mueller has come up with nothing in his $20-30-50 million investigation, but that he has purposely left things in his report that he has no evidence for but also doesn’t have to prove, because those he accuses cannot defend themselves. Note also that Mueller has never indicted Assange, he has only smeared him.

Mueller doesn’t just have nothing, he has less than nothing. What is left of his “findings” once the collusion and obstruction elements are gone, are things that either he himself (his team) or US intelligence has concocted out of thin air. And have you seen even one ‘journalist’ who has questioned these fantasies?

I see only ‘reporters’ more than willing to heap their own fiction on top of the report’s. They’ll grudgingly accept there’s no collusion only to run away with what can still be construed as obstruction, but not a single one questions the Russian hacking or emails or Facebook ads anymore or Assange’s involvement, though Mueller offers zero proof for any of these things. Ditto for Guccifer 2.0.

The GRU (Main Directorate of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces, formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate) is a very advanced operation. When they hack something they leave no traces. US intelligence is just as capable of leaving GRU “traces” as the GRU itself is of NOT leaving them. The CIA is not smarter than the GRU. That’s what we’re looking at here.

How many Americans do you think there are who think this is the way to conduct investigations ostensibly aimed at truth-finding? You know, if only they knew?!

The only thing perceived as reality in America today is a bunch of fantasies designed to hide the truth. What truth there is, is left to rot in hell. What a place -and time- to live.

I Am Still Julian Assange

Apr 112019

April 11, 2019 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:35 am Primers Tagged with: Chelsea Manning, DNC, Edward Snowden, Guardian, Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom, Moreno, Podesta, Putin, Russia, Sweden, Wikileaks 4 Responses »

Carl Spitzweg The raven 1845

In light of the horrible news that Julian Assange was arrested by British police inside the Ecuadorian embassy this morning, what is there to say that we haven’t already said?

We originally published this essay on May 16 2018.

Julian Assange appears to be painfully close to being unceremoniously thrown out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. If that happens, the consequences for journalism, for freedom of speech, and for press freedom, will resound around the world for a very long time. It is very unwise for anyone who values truth and freedom to underestimate the repercussions of this.

In essence, Assange is not different from any journalist working for a major paper or news channel. The difference is he published what they will not because they want to stay in power. The Washington Post today would never do an investigation such as Watergate, and that’s where WikiLeaks came in.

It filled a void left by the media that betrayed their own history and their own field. Betrayed the countless journalists throughout history, and today, who risked their lives and limbs, and far too often lost them, to tell the truth about what powers that be do when they think nobody’s looking or listening.

Julian is not wanted because he’s a spy, or even because he published a number of documents whose publication was inconvenient for certain people. He is wanted because he is so damn smart, which makes him very good and terribly effective at what he does. He’s on a most wanted list not for what he’s already published, but for what he might yet publish in the future.

He built up WikiLeaks into an organization that acquired the ultimate trust of many people who had access to documents they felt should be made public. They knew he would never betray their trust. WikiLeaks has to date never published any documents that were later found out to be false. It never gave up a source. No documents were ever changed or manipulated for purposes other than protecting sources and other individuals.

Julian Assange built an ’empire’ based on trust. To do that he knew he could never lie. Even the smallest lie would break what he had spent so much time and effort to construct. He was a highly accomplished hacker from a very young age, which enabled him to build computer networks that nobody managed to hack. He knew how to make everything safe. And keep it that way.

Since authorities were never able to get their hands on WikiLeaks, its sources, or its leader, a giant smear campaign was started around rape charges in Sweden (the country and all its citizens carry a heavy blame for what happened) and connections to America’s favorite enemy, Russia. The rape charges were never substantiated, Julian was never even interrogated by any Swedish law enforcement personnel, but that is no surprise.

It was clear from the get-go what was happening. First of all, for Assange himself. And if there’s one thing you could say he’s done wrong, it’s that he didn’t see the full impact from the campaign against him, sooner. But if you have the world’s largest and most powerful intelligence services against you, and they manage to find both individuals and media organizations willing to spread blatant lies about you, chances are you will not last forever.

If and when you have such forces running against you, you need protection. From politicians and from -fellow- media. Assange didn’t get that, or not nearly enough. Ecuador offered him protection, but as soon as another president was elected, they turned against him. So have news organizations who were once all too eager to profit from material Assange managed to obtain from his sources.

That the Guardian today published not just one, not two, but three what can only be labeled as hit pieces on Julian Assange, should perhaps not surprise us; they fell out a long time ago. Still, the sheer amount of hollow innuendo and outright lies in the articles is astonishing. How dare you? Have you no shame, do you not care at all about your credibility? At least the Guardian makes painfully clear why WikiLeaks was needed.

No, Sweden didn’t “drop its investigation into alleged sexual offences because it was unable to question Assange”. The Swedes simply refused to interview him in the Ecuador embassy in London, the only place where he knew he was safe. They refused this for years. And when the rape charges had lost all credibility, Britain asked Sweden to not drop the charges, but keep the pressure on.

No, there is no proof of links from Assange to Russian hackers and/or to the Russian government. No, there is no proof that DNC computers were hacked by Russians to get to John Podesta’s emails. In fact there is no proof they were hacked at all. No, Ecuador didn’t get tired of Julian; their new president, Moreno, decided to sell him out “at the first pressure from the United States”. Just as his predecessor, Correa, said he would.

Julian Assange has been condemned by Sweden, Britain, the US and now Ecuador to solitary confinement with no access to daylight or to medical care. Without a trial, without a sentence, and on the basis of mere allegations, most of which have already turned out to be trumped up and false. This violates so many national and international laws it’s futile to try and count or name them.

It also condemns any and all subsequent truth tellers to the prospect of being treated in the same way that Julian is. Forget about courts, forget about justice. You’ll be on a wanted list. I still have a bit of hope left that Vladimir Putin will step in and save Assange from the gross injustice he’s been exposed to for far too many years. Putin gets 100 times the lies and innuendo Assange gets, but he has a powerful nation behind him. Assange, in the end, only has us.

What’s perhaps the saddest part of all this is that people like Chelsea Manning, Kim Dotcom, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange are among the smartest people our world has to offer. We should be cherishing the combination of intelligence, courage and integrity they display at their own risk and peril, but instead we let them be harassed by our governments because they unveil inconvenient truths about them.

And pretty soon there will be nobody left to tell these truths, or tell any truth at all. Dark days. By allowing the smartest and bravest amongst us, who are experts in new technologies, to be silenced, we are allowing these technologies to be used against us.

We’re not far removed from being extras in our own lives, with all significant decisions taken not by us, but for us. America’s Founding Fathers are turning in their graves as we speak. They would have understood the importance of protecting Julian Assange.

To say that we are all Julian Assange is not just a slogan.

Older Entries Newer Entries

Challenge and Choices Download