Month: September 2018

Today Swedish voters take to the polls to elect members of the domestic legislature (Riksdag) which will in turn, appoint the Prime Minister, in what has been tipped as “Sweden’s most important election in decades.” Surveys show the center-left bloc with a slim lead but the far-right Sweden Democrats may still emerge as the largest single party.

As the turbulent Swedish election campaign comes to a close with little sign of compromise ahead as the establishment parties pleaded with voters to beat back an ascendant nationalist movement, there is the potential for a blockbuster surprise as yet another European state is rocked by growing populist, anti-immigrant sentiment.

The reason: record immigration in recent years and lingering economic hardship from the financial crisis have stoked populism even in a country as rich and egalitarian Sweden. The threat to the political establishment comes on the heels of a wave of election surprises around the world, such as the U.K. Brexit vote, and the rise of populist leaders in countries such as Italy and Hungary and – of course – the U.S. As Deutsche Bank recently noted, “the Liberal world order is in jeopardy” as global populism has risen to levels not seen since World War II.

Today, it may be Sweden’s turn.

First, a quick recap of today’s process, courtesy of RanSquawk

MPs are elected to Sweden’s single-chamber system using proportional representation with candidates either appointed on a regional basis or a proportional balancing mechanism. A party must receive at least 4% of the national vote or 12% of a constituency vote to enter the Riksdag.

With regards to appointing a PM, the leader of any party that wins over 50% is appointed as PM. However, this is unlikely to be the case given polling data and historical performance. As such, the appointment of a PM will most likely be as the result of a  coalition-building process.

As shown in the chart below, the center-right and center-left blocs were in a virtual tie with voting starting on Sunday as the conservative-led opposition gained ground in recent days. But the blocs will be far from securing a majority since the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats look poised to win almost 20 percent.

Parties and Potential Coalition Options

Neither government nor opposition looks likely to gain a majority

While the center left and right have minimal policy differences, the disruptive force in Swedish politics has been the meteoric rise of the Sweden Democrats. They hold stances that include Euroscepticism, saying that Sweden “pay an enormous amount of money and get overwhelmingly little back” alongside repeatedly calling for a referendum on EU membership. All Swedish parties have ostracized them in parliament due to this, alongside their harsh immigration policies.

Polls by party

The success in polling for the Sweden Democrats, allied with the Social Democrats and Moderates polling at record lows,  leaves a high possibility for a messy election season due to government formation concerns and the lack of cross-party cooperation in parliament.

As a note of caution with regards to polling, Nordea highlight that “pollsters are divided on the anticipated support for SD, but two pollsters (Sentio and YouGov) stand out with much bigger anticipated support for SD than the rest of the field”. Nordea explains that “If Sentio and YouGov are ‘on to something’ and SD gets close to 25% of the votes, the election result could have a big impact on markets”

However, the true consequences of the election may take a while to filter through to markets (Italy is a good comparison from recent history!) as ING expect the formation of a new government and budget for 2018 “easily taking up the rest of the year”. The possibility of a second election also cannot be discounted, as was almost the case in 2014, and would extend this period of uncertainty into 2019.

That said, ultimately, Swedish fiscal legislature limits major changes, regardless of governmental composition as there is a legal requirement to run a surplus of 0.33% of GDP over the economic cycle and keep debt anchored around 35% of GDP.  This, allied with a lack of support in the Swedish populace for leaving the EU (below 25%), the likelihood of a weak minority government, and opposition to joining the EUR (less than 20%) leaves analysts expecting a maintenance of the status-quo in relation to fiscal and policy status.

Market views of the election outcome

ING: Hold a bearish view on SEK post-election, citing the possibility of a hung parliament, a dovish Riksbank, a slowing Swedish economy and the looming trade war threat on the open Swedish economy. As such they see EURSEK hitting 11.00 at some point this year, with a recovery seen in 2019.

Credit Agricole: Expect only short-term volatility in EURSEK and see it trading nearer 10.10 by year-end, as well as saying that at best it may trigger a small delay to the Riksbank’s outlook.

Danske Bank: Hold a bearish view on the SEK, based on the election, Riksbank and inflation. Danske holds a 1-month target (as of Aug 24th) of 10.50 and a 3-month target of 10.60; both of the levels were breached last month.

Goldman Sachs: GS believe that the market response to the election is likely to be contained, adding that any possible spikes in market prices are unlikely to be persistent. GS suggests that if polling is correct, the largest bloc from the main two blocs will form a government and repeat the political dynamics over the past four years.

Nordea: Have recently closed their long EUR/SEK position and have instead decided to go short. The call was largely based on the potential for a hawkish read to the upcoming Riksbank meeting. However, Nordea adds that they believe the upcoming general election is overstated as a macro driver and look for a potential unwind of ‘SD hedges’ after the results are released.

Election Day

• Polls in Sweden opened at 8 a.m. local time (0600 UTC). Voters will be casting their votes Sunday in three separate ballots: The general election, regional elections and local elections. As many as 3 million Swedes are estimated to have already cast their ballot last month, when pre-voting opened on August 22. A handful of leading candidates used the opportunity to skip the queues, including incumbent Prime Minister Stefan Lofven of the Social Democrats (SAP).
• All eyes will be on whether the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) can emerge as the largest single party in a country known for its high quality of life and developed welfare state. Surveys suggest the SD could take around 20 percent of the vote, well above the 13 percent it scored in the previous election in 2014.
• Overall, the polls predict political gridlock. The left-wing bloc, made up of the Social Democrats and Left Party, was backed by almost 40 percent of the vote, while the four-party center-right Alliance trailed narrowly behind on 38.5 percent. That means some form of “grand coalition” between the center-left and the Alliance may be necessary to break the deadlock, unless one of the groups agrees to govern with the Sweden Democrats.

* * *

As Bloomberg notes, establishment party leaders took the last moments of the campaign to warn voters that the political turbulence will be far from over come election day, and that they can expect hard talks in the days or weeks ahead on forming a viable government. All parties have vowed not to seek the support of the Sweden Democrats. The tension has showed no signs of subsiding, with an eruption of vitriol between the smaller pro-immigration Center Party and the nationalists in Friday’s last big debate of the campaign.

Center Party leader Annie Loof voiced loud protests as Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson said that immigrants find it hard to get jobs because they’re not Swedish and “don’t belong.” Asked again about the controversy on Saturday, Loof said that Akesson showed “his true face yesterday.”

But Loof also said that Prime Minister Stefan Lofven should step down immediately if it becomes clear his Social Democrats have lost power, in order not to slow down the process of forming a new government. “If he steps down tonight that process could start tomorrow morning,” she told newspaper Expressen. “If he doesn’t resign, we will vote him down in a couple of weeks.”

Ulf Kristersson, head of the conservative Moderate Party and front-runner to become the next prime minister, said integrating refugees is key for Sweden to maintain its extensive welfare state. “This is something that erodes Sweden’s social contract,” he said. “So many people could do so much good in our country, if we just had a well-functioning integration.”

On the other hand, the angry response to Sweden’s immigration problem is precisely why the country’s nationalist movement is ascendent, as the labor market has had a tough time absorbing the inflow of about 600,000 people over the past five years. Unemployment among the foreign-born is about 20 percent, compared with just above 6 percent overall. This has led to a surge in violence in the past few years, much of it at the hands of recent immigrants.

Saying he had slept well, Prime Minister Lofven – whose political career may end as soon as today – early on Sunday left the prime minister’s residence in central Stockholm to go vote with his wife, Ulla. After casting his ballot, he reiterated that the election amounted to a referendum on the welfare system. It’s also a vote “about decency” with the Social Democrats as a guarantor of not allowing an “extremist racist” party to gain influence, he said to reporters.

We now await the results.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2oRSZ7p Tyler Durden

Lawyers involved in a California lawsuit against Monsanto claim to have “explosive” documents concerning the Bayer-owned agrochemical giant’s activities in Europe, according to Euronews. 

“What we have is the tip of the iceberg. And in fact we have documents now in our possession, several hundreds documents, that have not been declassified and some of those are explosive,” said US lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr, adding

“And many of them are pertinent to what Monsanto did here in Europe. And that’s just the beginning.”

Monsanto – bought by Germany’s Bayer AG in June for $66 billion, was ordered in August to pay a historic $289 million to a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, who said Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller gave him terminal cancer. Monsanto says it will appeal the verdict.

Environmental lawyers have been in Brussels in order to address a European Parliament special committee on the issue.  

“They are fighting a fight for more democracy and for transparency and to get a better insight in how big corporation such as Monsanto act and try to manipulate the facts,” said Belgium MEP Bart Staes.

Last November EU approved the use of glyphosate – a key chemical in Roundup, following five years of heated debate over whether it causes cancer. While it was approved for just five years until 2022 vs. the usual 15 years, there are now rumors that they will withdraw Roundup’s license this year altogether. 

Labeled a carcinogen by the EPA in 1985, the agency reversed its stance on glyphosate in 1991. The World Health Organization’s cancer research agency, however, classified the compound as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. California, meanwhile, has the chemical listed in its Proposition 65 registry of chemicals known to cause cancer. 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2QgMdV2 Tyler Durden

Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The military-political landscape in Europe and the Mediterranean is changing.

NATO is not as unified as it once was, and Turkey’s membership has become more of a formality than a real thing. A pro-US group consisting of Great Britain, Poland, and the Baltic States has emerged as part of a North Atlantic Alliance that is divided by differences and the open rift over the 2% financial contribution, a decree that is largely ignored, along with the other divisions that are weakening the bloc. Other groups are arising that also have common security interests. A new pact, an Arab NATO allied with the United States, will soon materialize in the Middle East.  Changes are coming, but they are hard to predict as everything is currently in a state of flux.

“The United States is interested in increasing its use of military bases and ports in Greece,” said General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), on Sept. 4 during his visit to Athens.  

“If you look at geography, and you look at current operations in Libya, and you look at current operations in Syria, you look at potential other operations in the eastern Mediterranean, the geography of Greece and the opportunities here are pretty significant,” he added. 

According to the Military Times, “[N]o specific bases have been identified, but that Supreme Allied Commander Europe Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti is evaluating several options for increased US flight training, port calls to do forward-based ship repairs and additional multilateral exercises.” US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross came to Greece right after the CJCS’s visit to take part in the annual Thessaloniki International Trade Fair.

Washington’s relations with Ankara continue to deteriorate. The idea of expelling Turkey from NATO is being discussed in the most prestigious American media outlets. The view that Ankara is more of an adversary than an ally is commonly held among American pundits.  General Dunford pointedly did not include Turkey on his itinerary, as top US military officials would normally do in order to maintain balance in their relationship with Athens and Ankara. This is a clear message to Turkey.

It was reported in May that the US military had started to operate MQ-9 aerial vehicles out of Greece’s Larissa military base.  That same month, the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier was one of the American ships making a port call. Greece’s Souda Bay naval base is being used to support US operations in Syria. US Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt has often cited the strategic significance of the ports of Alexandroupolis and Thessaloniki. 

Washington is interested in helping the Greek military conduct more effective operations in the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Greece is a crucial element in dealing with the challenges of the Eastern Med, the Maghreb, the Balkans, and the Black Sea region. 

There can be no doubt that Ankara’s dispute with Cyprus and Israel over drilling rights in the Mediterranean was also on the agenda of the talks during Gen. Dunford’s visit, although no comments were made to the media in regard to this issue. Greece wants to transform Alexandroupoli into a hub for the gas being exported from Israel and Cyprus to Europe. The pipeline’s approximate length is between 1,300 to 2,000 kilometers, and it will begin in Israel and cross through the territories of Cyprus, Crete and Greece to eventually end in Italy. The hub will also have a rail link to Bulgaria. A floating LNG reception, storage, and regasification unit will be part of this project, to make it possible to bring in US LNG supplies.

The planned route of the EastMed pipeline, a project supported by the EU, will bypass Turkey, despite the increased cost. Ankara will hardly sit idly by and watch this turn of events. Turkey claims that part of the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus is under Turkish jurisdiction.  According to Turkey’s President Erdogan, the “Eastern Mediterranean faces a security threat should Cyprus continue its unilateral operations of offshore oil and gas exploration in the region.” The countries involved in the project may need US protection and help in order for this to come to fruition.  

For the US, strengthening its relations with Greece means expanding support for the emerging Greece-Israel-Cyprus Eastern Mediterranean Alliance (EMA) that has been driven by the discovery of hydrocarbons in Israeli and Cypriot waters and by opposition to Turkey. As Ambassador Pyatt put it, “Americans are back in a really big way.” 

A year ago the US opened its first permanent military base in Israel run by the US military’s European Command (EUCOM). Officially, the primary mission of the air-defense facility located inside the Israeli Air Force’s Mashabim air base, west of the towns of Dimona and Yerucham, is to detect and warn of a possible ballistic missile attack from Iran. This is part of a broader process as a new military alliance with its own infrastructure emerges.  

In 2015, Greece and Israel signed a military cooperation agreement. Bilateral and trilateral military drills, such as Nobel Dina, a multinational joint air and sea exercise conducted under the partnership of Greece, Israel, and the United States, have become routine. In March 2014, Israel opened a new military attaché office in Greece to signify this ever-closer relationship. 

Israel has a strong defense and military relationship with Cyprus. The three nations are pledging deeper military ties, in keeping with the declaration they issued at the first-ever trilateral defense summit last year.  Both Greece and Cyprus are EU members and Israel needs allies within the bloc. Greece opposed the EU’s decision to label products from Israel’s settlements. In May, the leaders of the three allied Eastern Mediterranean nations paid a joint visit to Washington.

Albania, Greece’s neighbor, has recently offered to establish a US military base on its soil. Albania‘s defense minister, Olta Xhacka, made the proposal in April during her visit to Washington.

Of all the members of the emerging alliance, only Israel is not a NATO member, but it’s an enhanced partner and a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue. What we actually have is a new alliance within the alliance, which was unofficially established to counter Turkey, a full-fledged NATO member.  Under the circumstances, it would only be natural for Ankara to distance itself from NATO to move toward Russia, Iran, China, the SCO, and, perhaps, the Eurasian Union. 

The alliance of the US and the three Eastern Mediterranean states has emerged as a political and military “petite entente,” a force to be reckoned with at a time when NATO is facing serious challenges to its unity and the EU’s future is in question.

The two large entities that bring together nations sharing the same “values,” or the desire to counter China or Russia, are giving way to smaller groups of countries pursuing shared regional interests, thus undermining the very concept of what is known as the United West. 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2QgWIaX Tyler Durden

A series of African Swine Fever outbreaks in China is “here to stay,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Friday, adding that it could spread to neighboring countries in Asia.

On Wednesday, the FAO assembled an emergency meeting in Bangkok consisting of health experts, government officials, and industry participants from China and surrounding countries to develop a regional response to east Asia’s first outbreak of the disease.

While the virus is not a direct threat to humans, it is extremely contagious and has a high mortality rate among pigs, and can have a devastating economic impact on meat producers.

Apparently this is how they ‘cull’ pigs in #xuancheng city. #ASF #AfricanSwineFever pic.twitter.com/kq7BKXy50V

— Björn Ooms (@Bjornooms) September 3, 2018

“It’s critical that this region be ready for the very real possibility that African Swine Fever could jump the border into other countries,” said Wantanee Kalpravidh, regional manager in Asia for the FAO’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases. “That’s why this emergency meeting has been convened.”

Reuters said the virus was first detected in China last month and has been found in 18 farms with many cases more than 600 miles apart, the FAO said in a statement.

With an abundance of pork farms across China, the FAO indicated the spread of the virus to neighboring countries is almost inevitable.

“The geographical spread, of which African Swine Fever has been repeated in such a short period of time, means that transboundary emergence of the virus, likely through movements of products containing infected pork, will almost certainly occur,” said Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer at FAO.

The response to the disease is “extremely challenging” because the virus can survive for months in meat products and animal feed, said the FAO. Since August 03, there have been more than a dozen outbreaks of the virus across the country. This forced the government to enact new transport restrictions of live hogs in provinces where infections have been reported.

The epidemic is now taking an economic toll on the annual $1 trillion industry. Pork spot prices in the country’s southern region have jumped ahead of a week-long holiday in October and highlight the need for increased imports.

The FAO said officials in China, which produces about half the world’s pigs annually, had slaughtered as many as 40,000 swine in an attempt to control the disease. Slaughtering pigs and transportation limits of animals around China have pushed spot prices up more than 5% since August, according to government figures, adding to inflationary pressures as a trade war with the US also drives up soft agricultural prices.

In a separate statement late last month, the FAO said the rapid “diverse geographical spread” of the virus in China had induced fears that the disease could move to other Asian countries.

Dirk Pfeiffer, an animal health expert at the City University of Hong Kong, said a “much larger” number of pigs will probably have to be slaughtered in China over the next few weeks, further affecting pork prices.

“We need to closely monitor the situation on the mainland, and in particular any imports of live pigs and pork products. We need to aim to get assurance that any live pigs are from areas demonstrated to be free from infection,” he added.

Average meat consumption by country:

The world’s top ten pork producers:

Experts are perplexed by how the disease, which was previously in the European Union, reached China. Theories include globalized markets with exported meats to the Eastern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, American traders are concerned about the price dynamics of the virus spreading across China.

US lean hog futures advanced more than 12% since late August.

However, they remain in a bear market since China slapped US producers with a retaliatory tariff.

“The African swine fever in China has everybody abuzz… We’re building in a premium for that,” said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities in West Des Moines, Iowa.

With the virus dangerously sweeping across various provinces in China and officials slaughtering tens of thousands of pigs, at what point will China demand more US pigs despite the tariffs?

via RSS https://ift.tt/2oRl9iP Tyler Durden

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

The murder of a German citizen by two failed asylum seekers in Chemnitz, and the attempted cover-up by German police, has contributed to a surge in support for the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which, according to a new poll, has overtaken the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to become the second-strongest political force in Germany.

Support for the AfD has increased to 17%, while backing for the SPD has fallen to 16%. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) alliance is at 28.5%, according to an Insa Institute poll published by the newspaper Bild on September 3.

The rise of the AfD — which has been fueled by widespread anger over Merkel’s decision to allow into the country more than a million mostly Muslim migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the subsequent increase in violent crime — reflects an ongoing realignment in German politics, in which voters increasingly are rejecting the multicultural orthodoxy of the mainstream parties.

When federal elections were held on September 24, 2017, the CDU/CSU won32.9% of the vote, its worst electoral result in nearly 70 years. The SPD won 20.5%, its worst-ever showing. The AfD won 12.6%, to become the country’s third-largest party in the German parliament.

The election results showed that more than a million traditional CDU/CSU voters defected to the AfD. In a sign that concerns over mass migration are not limited to conservative voters, the center-left SPD lost 500,000 voters to the AfD while the far-left Left Party lost 400,000 voters. In addition, nearly 1.5 million first-time voters cast their ballots for the AfD. This trend has continued, as consistently corroborated by opinion polls since the 2017 election.

The mainstream parties are fighting back with what some observers say are underhanded measures, aimed at delegitimizing — and possibly criminalizing — the AfD, including by calling for the party to be placed under state surveillance.

The AfD’s opponents, who often brand the party as “far right” or “extremist,” claim  that the party’s alleged ties to neo-Nazi groups pose an existential threat to Germany’s constitutional order. The AfD’s supporters counter that Germany’s politically correct establishment, afraid of losing its power and influence, is attempting to outlaw a legitimate party that has pledged to put the interests of German citizens first.

Calls for the AfD to be monitored by German intelligence have intensified in recent days, after members of the AfD participated in mass protests in Chemnitz against spiraling migrant criminality — protests in which approximately 50 hooligans and neo-Nazis were also present.

The protests erupted after a 35-year-old German-Cuban man named Daniel Hillig was stabbed to death on August 26 by two migrants during the city’s annual festival.

Police initially refused to reveal the identities of the perpetrators, but on August 27 a police report was leaked on social media — the document has since been scrubbed from German websites but it remains on a Russian site — which showed that the killers were illegal migrants from Iraq and Syria. Both had extensive criminal histories but were allowed by German authorities to roam free on German streets. Police later confirmed that the leaked document was authentic and said that they had opened an investigation into suspected “violation of official secrets.”

Thousands of people took to the streets for several days to protest the killing and the inaction by German authorities over the issue of spiraling migrant crime. The protests (and counter-protests) brought together a broad spectrum of German society, including supporters of the AfD, as well as members of the so-called “far-right scene.” Near the end of one of the marches, some of the protesters turned violent and began insulting some migrant passersby. That incident then shaped the media narrative from one of Germans protesting migrant crime to one of far-right attacks on innocent migrants.

Pictured: A march of silence, organized by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, in memory of victims of violent crimes perpetrated by migrants, on September 1, 2018 in Chemnitz, Germany. (Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images)

Few if any of Germany’s mainstream politicians condemned the murder of Hillig, but they were quick to denounce attacks on migrants.

On August 27, government spokesman Steffen Seibert, in a national press conference, condemned the “hunting of humans of a different appearance, of different origins” on the streets of Chemnitz.

Chancellor Merkel echoed: “We have video footage about the fact that there were hunts, that there were riots, that there was hatred on the street, and that is unacceptable in our constitutional state.”

It later emerged that all of the government’s allegations were based on a single 19-second video — titled “Hunting for Humans in Chemnitz” — which was posted on YouTube and later broadcast by the public television channel ARD. The video shows one individual chasing another in what appears to be an isolated incident.

Moreover, a protester who grabbed national headlines by making a Nazi salute at the Chemnitz protest was discovered to be a left-wing extremist who infiltrated the march in order to discredit it. But the media narrative had been set in motion.

The chairman of the German Parliament’s Internal Affairs Committee, Burkhard Lischka (SPD), warned of the danger of a civil war:

“There is a small right-wing mob in our country that will take its violent fantasies of civil war to our streets. That in the Bundestag [German parliament] a party applauds these excesses against foreign fellow citizens as legitimate self-justice, shows that the majority of our country must become even louder when it comes to rule of law, democracy and cohesion in our society.”

Bundestag Vice President Thomas Oppermann demanded that the AfD be monitored by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV): “The refugee question divides society and the AfD rides ever more radically on this wave.”

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) countered that he sees no basis for monitoring the AfD. On the sidelines of a closed-door meeting of the CSU in Brandenburg, Seehofer defended the Chemnitz protesters: “Just because people protest, that does not make them a Nazi.” He added: “Migration is the mother of all problems.”

Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) later contradicted the government’s claims: “There was no mob, there was no hunting down of people, there was no pogrom in this city.”

Saxon Attorney General Spokesman Wolfgang Klein added: “After examining all of the material available to us, there was no hunt in Chemnitz.”

When asked to rectify his claims, Seibert doubled down:

“I will not have a semantic debate here over a word. Of course, if the Attorney General’s office says so, I take note. However, it remains that a video shows how people of foreign origin were chased and how they were threatened. It remains true that there were statements that were threatening, close to the call for vigilante justice. So, in my opinion, there is nothing to talk about.”

Like Seibert, Merkel refused to back down:

“We saw pictures that very clearly revealed hate and the persecution of innocent people. One must distance oneself from that. That is all there is to say.”

Writing for Tichys Einblick, a prominent German blog, commentator Oswald Metzger summed it up:

“‘There was no mob, there was no hunting down of people, there was no pogrom in this city.’ Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) clearly corrected the almost hysterical and false reporting of countless leading media outlets on the events in Chemnitz after the deadly stabbing. Even the chancellor and her government spokesman had, as we all know, conveyed these false reports to the public, and thereby giving them publicity.

“For long enough, many citizens from all walks of life have noticed that the problems of integrating even third- and fourth-generation immigrants have grown bigger, not smaller — especially among Turks. The mass immigration of the past three years, under the banner of ‘the right to asylum,’ has significantly increased the fear of parallel societies, of crime, and of cultural alienation.

“When I consider the often undifferentiated, blanket accusations against ‘brown Chemnitz’ [brown is the color of Nazism], then the established parties will not have to wonder why, almost without exception, they continue to lose to the colorful AfD.

“When concerned citizens increasingly are stigmatized as being Nazis — accusations which, incidentally, in their excessive use amount to a shameless trivialization of Nazi crimes — they often respond with the indifferent remark: ‘Well, then I’m just a Nazi!’

“Extremism cannot be combated with exclusion, but with looking at the facts. Those who want to reach concerned citizens must themselves get out of the ideological trenches.”

via RSS https://ift.tt/2QjPrr9 Tyler Durden

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. From metal detectors to drug tests, from increased policing to all-seeing electronic surveillance, the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society that has become fixated on crime, security and violence.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes

It used to be that if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school. 

Of course, that was before school shootings became a part of our national lexicon.

Nowadays, as a result of the government’s profit-driven campaign to keep the nation “safe” from drugs, weapons and terrorism, students are not only punished for minor transgressions such as playing cops and robbers on the playground, bringing LEGOs to school, or having a food fight, but they are being punished with suspension, expulsion, and even arrest.

Welcome to Compliance 101: the police state’s primer in how to churn out compliant citizens and transform the nation’s school’s into quasi-prisons through the use of surveillance cameras, metal detectors, police patrols, zero tolerance policies, lock downs, drug sniffing dogs, strip searches and active shooter drills.

If you were wondering, these police state tactics have not made the schools any safer.

Rather, they’ve turned the schools into authoritarian microcosms of the police state, containing almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”

If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools, you should count yourself fortunate.

Most students are not so lucky.

From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment he or she graduates, they will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

By the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested.

More than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from schools every year, often for minor misbehavior, such as “disruptive behavior” or “insubordination.”

Black students are three times more likely than white students to face suspension and expulsion.

Zero tolerance policies that were intended to make schools safer by discouraging the use of actual drugs and weapons by students have turned students into suspects to be treated as criminals by school officials and law enforcement alike, while criminalizing childish behavior.

For instance, 9-year-old Patrick Timoney was sent to the principal’s office and threatened with suspension after school officials discovered that one of his LEGOs was holding a 2-inch toy gun. 

David Morales, an 8-year-old Rhode Island student, ran afoul of his school’s zero tolerance policies after he wore a hat to school decorated with an American flag and tiny plastic Army figures in honor of American troops. School officials declared the hat out of bounds because the toy soldiers were carrying miniature guns.

A 7-year-old New Jersey boy, described by school officials as “a nice kid” and “a good student,” was reported to the police and charged with possessing an imitation firearm after he brought a toy Nerf-style gun to school. The gun shoots soft ping pong-type balls.

Things have gotten so bad that it doesn’t even take a toy gun to raise the ire of school officials.

A high school sophomore was suspended for violating the school’s no-cell-phone policy after he took a call from his father, a master sergeant in the U.S. Army who was serving in Iraq at the time. 

A 12-year-old New York student was hauled out of school in handcuffs for doodling on her desk with an erasable marker.

In Houston, an 8th grader was suspended for wearing rosary beads to school in memory of her grandmother (the school has a zero tolerance policy against the rosary, which the school insists can be interpreted as a sign of gang involvement). 

Six-year-old Cub Scout Zachary Christie was sentenced to 45 days in reform school after bringing a camping utensil to school that can serve as a fork, knife or spoon.

Even imaginary weapons (hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention.

Equally outrageous was the case in New Jersey where several kindergartners were suspended from school for three days for playing a make-believe game of “cops and robbers” during recess and using their fingers as guns.

With the distinctions between student offenses erased, and all offenses expellable, we now find ourselves in the midst of what Time magazine described as a “national crackdown on Alka-Seltzer.” Students have actually been suspended from school for possession of the fizzy tablets in violation of zero tolerance drug policies.

Students have also been penalized for such inane “crimes” as bringing nail clippers to school, using Listerine or Scope, and carrying fold-out combs that resemble switchblades.

A 13-year-old boy in Manassas, Virginia, who accepted a Certs breath mint from a classmate, was actually suspended and required to attend drug-awareness classes, while a 12-year-old boy who said he brought powdered sugar to school for a science project was charged with a felony for possessing a look-alike drug.

Acts of kindness, concern, basic manners or just engaging in childish behavior can also result in suspensions.

One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.

In South Carolina, where it’s against the law to disturb a school, more than a thousand students a year—some as young as 7 years old—“face criminal charges for not following directions, loitering, cursing, or the vague allegation of acting ‘obnoxiously.’ If charged as adults, they can be held in jail for up to 90 days.”

Another 12-year-old was handcuffed and jailed after he stomped in a puddle, splashing classmates.

Things get even worse when you add police to the mix.

Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers (a.k.a. school resource officers) to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting (nearly 20,000 by 2003).

What this means, notes Mother Jones, is greater police “involvement in routine discipline mattersthat principals and parents used to address without involvement from law enforcement officers.”

Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force.

As a result, students are not only being ticketed, fined and sent to court for behavior perceived as defiant, disruptive or disorderly such as spraying perfume and writing on a desk, but they are also finding themselves subjected to police tactics such as handcuffs, leg shackles, tasers and excessive force for “acting up.”

In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking: sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”

The horror stories are legion.

One SRO is accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting in the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury. 

In Pennsylvania, a student was tased after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.

On any given day when school is in session, kids who “act up” in class are pinned facedown on the floor, locked in dark closets, tied up with straps, bungee cords and duct tape, handcuffed, leg shackled, tasered or otherwise restrained, immobilized or placed in solitary confinement in order to bring them under “control.”

Roughly 1500 kids are tied up or locked down every day by school officials in the United States.

At least 500 students are locked up in some form of solitary confinement every day, whether it be a padded room, a closet or a duffel bag. In many cases, parents are rarely notified when such methods are used.

In almost every case, these undeniably harsh methods are used to punish kids for simply failing to follow directions or throwing tantrums.

Very rarely do the kids pose any credible danger to themselves or others.

For example, a 4-year-old Virginia preschooler was handcuffed, leg shackled and transported to the sheriff’s office after reportedly throwing blocks and climbing on top of the furniture. School officials claim the restraints were necessary to protect the adults from injury.

A 6-year-old kindergarten student in a Georgia public school was handcuffed, transported to the police station, and charged with simple battery of a schoolteacher and criminal damage to property for throwing a temper tantrum at school.

Unbelievably, these tactics are all legal, at least when employed by school officials or school resource officers in the nation’s public schools.

According to a ProPublica investigative report, such harsh punishments are part of a widespread phenomenon plaguing school districts across the country.

Indeed, as investigative reporter Heather Vogell points out, this is a local story everywhere.

It’s happening in my town.

It’s happening in your town.

It’s happening in every school district in America.

This is the end product of all those so-called school “safety” policies, which run the gamut from zero tolerance policies that punish all infractions harshly to surveillance cameras, metal detectors, random searches, drug-sniffing dogs, school-wide lockdowns, active-shooter drills and militarized police officers.

Mind you, this is all part of the government’s plan to “harden” the schools.

What exactly does hardening the schools entail?

More strident zero tolerance policies, greater numbers of school cops, and all the trappings of a prison complex (unsurmountable fences, entrapment areas, no windows or trees, etc.).

Schools acting like prisons.

School officials acting like wardens.

Students treated like inmates and punished like hardened criminals.

Even in the face of parental outrage, lawsuits, legislative reforms, investigative reports and endless cases showing that these tactics are not working and “should never be used for punishment or discipline,” full-grown adults—police officers and teachers alike—insist that the reason they continue to handcuff, lock up and restrain little kids is because they fear for their safety and the safety of others.

“Fear for one’s safety” has become such a hackneyed and threadbare excuse for behavior that is inexcusable.

Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that explanation covers a multitude of sins, whether it’s poorly trained police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, or school officials who are ill-equipped to deal with children who act like children, meaning they don’t always listen, they sometimes throw tantrums, and they have a hard time sitting still.

Unfortunately, advocates for such harsh police tactics and weaponry like to trot out the line that school safety should be our first priority lest we find ourselves with another Sandy Hook. What they will not tell you is that such shootings are rare. As one congressional report found, the schools are, generally speaking, safe places for children.

In their zeal to crack down on guns and lock down the schools, these cheerleaders for police state tactics in the schools might also fail to mention the lucrative, multi-million dollar deals being cut with military contractors such as Taser International to equip these school cops with tasers, tanks, rifles and $100,000 shooting detection systems.

Indeed, the transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team.

According to one law review article on the school-to-prison pipeline, “Many school districts have formed their own police departments, some so large they rival the forces of major United States cities in size. For example, the safety division in New York City’s public schools is so large that if it were a local police department, it would be the fifth-largest police force in the country.”

The ramifications are far-reaching.

The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail.

As if it weren’t bad enough that the nation’s schools have come to resemble prisons, the government is also contracting with private prisons to lock up our young people for behavior that once would have merited a stern lecture. Nearly 40 percent of those young people who are arrested will serve time in a private prison, where the emphasis is on making profits for large megacorporations above all else.

This profit-driven system of incarceration has also given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people.

Indeed, young people have become easy targets for the private prison industry, which profits from criminalizing childish behavior and jailing young people. For instance, two Pennsylvania judges made headlines when it was revealed that they had been conspiring with two businessmen in a $2.6 million “kids for cash” scandal that resulted in more than 2500 children being found guilty and jailed in for-profit private prisons.

So what’s the answer, not only for the here-and-now—the children growing up in these quasi-prisons—but for the future of this country?

Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College, believes that school is a prison that is damaging our kids, and it’s hard to disagree, especially with the numbers of police officers being assigned to schools on the rise.

Clearly, the pathology that characterizes the American police state has passed down to the schools. Now in addition to the government and its agents viewing the citizenry as suspects to be probed, poked, pinched, tasered, searched, seized, stripped and generally manhandled, all with the general blessing of the court, our children in the public schools are also fair game.

Instead of raising up a generation of freedom fighters, however, we seem to be busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who are being taught the hard way what it means to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.

After all, how do you convince a child who has been routinely handcuffed, shackled, tied down, locked up, and immobilized by government officials—all before he reaches the age of adulthood—that he has any rights at all, let alone the right to challenge wrongdoing, resist oppression and defend himself against injustice?

Most of all, how do you persuade a fellow American that the government works for him when for most of his young life, he has been incarcerated in an institution that teaches young people to be obedient and compliant citizens who don’t talk back, don’t question and don’t challenge authority?

What can be done?

Without a doubt, change is needed, but that will mean taking on the teachers’ unions, the school unions, the educators’ associations, and the police unions, not to mention the politicians dependent on their votes and all of the corporations that profit mightily from an industrial school complex.

As we’ve seen with other issues, any significant reforms will have to start locally and trickle upwards.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, with every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police.

If we do not rein in the police state’s influence in the schools, the future to which we are sending our children will be characterized by a brutal, totalitarian regime.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2wV9WSK Tyler Durden

In what will almost certainly be remembered as an important milestone in Asia’s march to global domination, a recent study revealed that the population of ultra-wealthy individuals in Hong Kong has for the first time surpassed that of New York City. According to Wealth-X, Hong Kong now has the largest population of individuals worth at least $30 million thanks to a 31% increase over the last year that has pushed its total to about 10,000. By comparison, New York has 9,000. Tokyo took third place, while Paris beat out London (largely thanks to the Brexit-related concerns). 

At a time when the richest 1% of the population own half the world’s wealth (according to the Credit Suisse annual global wealth report), the number of ultra-wealthy individuals worldwide climbed 13% last year to 256,000 who own an aggregate $31 trillion. Asia’s share of this total climbed from 18% a decade ago to roughly a quarter today. Analysts from Wealth-X project that the number of ultra-wealthy will rise by 8.3% compounded in the coming years.

“Asia-Pacific is forecast to close the ultra-wealth gap with other regions over the next five years, but is expected to remain behind Europe, the Middle East and Africa in absolute terms,” the report’s authors wrote. The number of ultra-wealthy in Asia-Pacific is expected to rise at a compound rate of 8.3 percent a year, they said.

In a development that will no doubt thrill the neo-liberal social-justice warriors who constantly gripe about the lack of female representation among corporate CEOs, women accounted for about 35,000 of the ultra-rich last year – a record-high share of nearly 14%.

Unsurprisingly, China and Hong Kong propelled most of Asia’s gains, according to the survey. However, no city in mainland China cracked the top ten, even as China ranked third overall in the list of nations with the most ultra-wealthy residents. Wealth-X attributed this to the fact that China’s wealthy are dispersed across the country, exhibited by the fact that China was home to 26 of the 30 fastest-growing cities for the ultra-rich.

Just as China’s rise has benefited its neighbors (something that has made them beholden to the vicissitudes of Chinese growth and trade, as Goldman explained earlier), the ultra-wealthy in Hong Kong owe their success to the debt-fueled economic boom happening on the mainland.

“The dynamism of wealth creation across China’s vast landscape is nevertheless staggering,” the authors wrote.

Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, relatively placid markets in 2017 caused the ranks of the ultra-wealthy expand in every region. Still-low oil prices left the Middle East in last place, with 4.4% growth. Interestingly, the richest people still held most of their wealth in liquid assets like cash.

Still, the ultra-rich held more of their wealth — 35 percent — in liquid assets such as cash than anything else, the study found. Private holdings accounted for about 32 percent, while public holdings were 26 percent. Alternative investments such as real estate, art and yachts made up 6.6 percent of total assets.

But with the S&P 500 continuing its rapid divergence from the MSCI, we imagine these gains won’t be so evenly distributed in 2018.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2CBp64U Tyler Durden

With the US military announcing that it is preparing for “options” in Syria ahead of what appears to be an imminent battle for Syria’s last rebel stronghold of Idlib – which may or may not include another false flag chemical attack  – and which could involve such proxy foreign powers as Russia, the US, Turkey and Iran, Russia announced today that it has staged large-scale military exercises in the Mediterranean Sea near Syria, involving both its Navy and Air Force.

Footage released by Russia’s Defense Ministry showed marine special forces equipped with the latest Russian gear landing on the shores of the Syrian Latakia province. As part of the staged invasion, the marines used helicopters, fast attack craft and armored vehicles while landing from major amphibious ships under cover of dozens of Russian combat aircraft.

The purposefully dramatic display was part of a week-long exercise, which is said to be the “first of its kind” in this part of the Mediterranean. Apart from the naval infantry training, in which the marines also practiced protecting Russian Navy ships from sabotage activities, the war games also involved maritime live fire drills.

Held between September 1 and September 8, the drills also involved establishing a foothold on the territory controlled by a “simulated” enemy. In total, 26 vessels from all Russian fleets, including two submarines, as well as 34 aircraft took part in the war games.

In the full-blown combat simulation, more than two dozen battleships, including the ‘Marshal Ustinov’ cruiser and three of Russia’s newest frigates, launched anti-ship missiles and fired high-caliber guns. The drills also saw Russian strategic Tu-160 Blackjack bombers and long-range Tu-142 Bear submarine hunters train simulated missile launches.

Spoiling the suspense, on Saturday a Kremlin spokesman explained that the drills were partly linked to the situation in Syria’s Idlib province. Idlib is “a hotbed of terrorism and nothing good may come from it, unless action is taken,” Dmitry Peskov said in late August ahead of the drills, adding that some “additional safety measures” are “justified.”

The drill comes amid heightened tensions in the region (read “Everything you need to know about the looming battle for Idlib“) as Moscow warns that the US is deploying additional military assets towards Syria for a potential missile attack against Syrian government forces. As previously reported, the missile destroyer USS Ross was deployed to the Mediterranean, carrying 28 Tomahawk cruise missiles; at roughly the same time the USS The Sullivans was deployed to the Persian Gulf and a B-1B Lancer strategic bomber was relocated to an air base in Qatar.

The Russian ministry said the preparations are “the latest evidence of the US intention” to strike after what it says will be a false flag chemical attack in Syria.

The Pentagon also announced that it has already compiled a list of preliminary targets in Syria, which the US military are planning to hit in case of a “chemical weapons attack.” And, It has also “routinely” briefed the White House on “military options” in case of such incident.

The Russian Defense Ministry has repeatedly warned that the militants in Idlib have been preparing a false flag attack using chemical weapons to justify the US strike against the forces loyal to the Syrian government. On Saturday, the ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said that these preparations entered their “final stage.”

Local sources have speculated that a “chemical attack” could take place as soon as the next few hours, after which events will accelerate rapidly, as both US and Russian military forces are likely to engage in what has the potential to be a conflict that quickly spirals out of control.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2O25nN8 Tyler Durden