Month: November 2018

An unnamed UK defense company has been granted a license to supply an unlimited quantity of goods to China’s military, “including airborne radar technology likely to be used by the PLA Air Force,” reports Stephen Chen of SCMP. 

The contract governed by an “open individual export license (OIEL)” has been active since April, two months after Prime Minister Theresa May visited Beijing, as made public by Britain’s Department for International Trade. 

Unlike previous deals involving British arms sales to China, which were capped by amount and value, under the new agreement the supplier can “export an unlimited quantity of goods”, including equipment, components, software and technology for military radar systems, the department said.

Its strategic export control database described the equipment covered by the licence as “target acquisition, weapon control and countermeasure systems” for “aircraft, helicopters and drones”. –SCMP

“It’s potentially a big license, and it does say the end user is the air force,” said London-based NGO Campaign Against Arms Trade spokesman, Andrew Smith, who added that while the open individual export licenses are typically valid for between five and ten years, “the values are never published, so the figure could be very high.” 

Smith also notes that it’s not just the UK selling military equipment to China – and that “almost all the other big arms exporters do exactly the same.” 

As SCMP‘s Chen suggests, Britain’s deal with China implies that London and Beijing will continue to forge ahead economically despite the ongoing trade and geopolitical tensions between the United States and China. 

Inspired by Brexit?

With the UK’s pending departure from the European Union, many have pointed to the economic and trade challenges Britain will face. At the same time, China last year “doubled its direct investment in Britain to more than $20 billion,” according to SCMP. 

Li Bin, a senior fellow working jointly in the Nuclear Policy Programme and Asia Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at Tsinghua University in Beijing, said Britain was facing many challenges at home and abroad due to its pending departure from the European Union.

While many companies, including financial firms in London, are considering reallocating to mainland Europe, China last year doubled its direct investment in Britain to more than US$20 billion. –SCMP

As such, Li expects the UK to do more business with China – much to Washington’s chagrin. 

In October, one of Britain’s top radar scientists and chairman of the Defense Science Expert Committee at the UK’s Ministry of Defence, Professor Hugh Griffiths, was recognized by China for his contribution to the advancement of Chinese radar technology. He was presented the “Outstanding Award for Chinese Radar International Development” at a Nanjing ceremony in front of more than 700 Chinese scientists. 

Another British communications expert, David Stupples of the University of London – “whose research focuses on electronic intelligence and warfare,” said he had been invited to lecture at a Chinese government intelligence-linked technical institute in China. 

“China has made tremendous progress in radar design over the past 10 years and must be considered in the [world’s] top 10,” said Stupples. 

In space-based radar systems, for instance, China has shown “expertise and ingenuity”, but for maritime and airborne applications, “the UK is marginally ahead”, Stupples said.

Britain was also ahead on designing complete intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, although the Chinese military’s “individual components are first rate”, he said. –SCMP

Nothing “too deep”

According to Xidian University’s Wang Tong – the UK’s technology sales to China would not go “too deep” because Britain shares such a massive amount of sensitive information with the US – and because of this, the level of technology allowed into China would be limited, and UK radar experts would not become directly involved in China’s radar programs. 

“Sharing information about models and specifications is strictly prohibited. I believe both sides are fully aware of the consequences,” said Wang. “Most of the time people are just talking about physics, mathematical models and new theories.” 

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

Wired has just published what might be the single most brazenly dishonest and manipulative piece of down-punching empire smut that I have ever read. An article by Virginia Heffernan titled “The Real Houseguest of the Ecuadorian Embassy” revolves around the outright lie that Julian Assange is suing the Ecuadorian government because he doesn’t feel like cleaning up after his cat and maintaining basic hygiene in the embassy he’s been confined to since 2012. In reality, the legal case arose from the fact that despite being granted political asylum for his journalism, Assange has for months been cut off from the world and forbidden to practice journalism by the new government of Ecuador, and would remain unable to practice journalism under the new conditions Quito recently imposed upon him.

The article reads as though its author is attempting to force snarky humor through a thick fog of hatred and personal misery while seeing how many lies she can pack into each paragraph. Heffernan claims falsely that Assange is “wanted on various criminal charges”; Assange has not been charged with anything. Heffernan claims falsely that Assange “has been closely linked to the Kremlin and Russian president Vladimir Putin”; this is just objectively false with no evidence backing it up whatsoever. Heffernan claims falsely that “the distinct possibility has surfaced that during his embassy tenure Assange communicated with Roger Stone, Donald Trump’s consigliere, via magic decoder rings or the internet”; there’s no evidence that Stone had any “back channel” with WikiLeaks, and the information he notoriously amplified was already public. Heffernan claims falsely that WikiLeaks is “Russia-aligned”; another assertion for which there is zero evidence and much evidence to the contrary.

You get the picture. I’m not going to spend an entire article beating up on some writer for Wired just for authoring an amazingly horrible article about Julian Assange, especially when there are so very, very many other ambitious presstitutes falling all over themselves in a mad scramble to do the exact same thing right now.

#Unity4J PRESS RELEASE
Fri. Nov. 2, 2018
Emergency Meeting Called Over Fears For The Physical Safety of Julian Assange

Full Text: https://t.co/64B9xXuDHg

Don’t miss the Emergency Meeting:
Sat. Nov. 3, 2018 @ 3PM EDT

Link: https://t.co/Ro1JzZA0E3#FreeAssange #WikiLeaks pic.twitter.com/RILlT9WIP8

— #Unity4J (@Unity4J) November 2, 2018

Just as new information begins surfacing that Assange’s safety and security may be in immediate jeopardy, the brave, dauntless journalists of the establishment press have been working around the clock to bring their audiences as many versions as possible of the crucial bombshell news story that the WikiLeaks founder is a stinky, stinky man. Like it would even matter if that were true. Like the barely disguised plot to extradite a journalist for the crime of publishing facts to the same nation which tortured Chelsea Manning would be any less Orwellian if that journalist didn’t change his sheets often enough.

But that, of course, is not the point. The point is to create public revulsion for Julian Assange, thereby killing sympathy for his unconscionable persecution and dampening the impact of any future WikiLeaks releases. The point is to marry Assange’s name with the idea of bad smells, so that the public will begin to find themselves increasingly disgusted by him and everything he stands for without quite remembering exactly why they feel such disdain for him.

And there are more than enough aspiring pundits out there trying to do exactly that. Every story you see about Assange’s plight in mainstream medianow goes out of its way to drag the focus away from the fact that a political prisoner has had his important voice silenced, and suck it into some vapid narrative about personal hygiene and kitty litter. Every few minutes there’s some blue-checkmarked goon making a juvenile tweet about how weird and gross Julian Assange is like a high school bully. There is no shortage of empire loyalists looking to prove themselves worthy lackeys before the watchful eyes of current and future employers.

It isn’t just governments that kill journalists, it is other journalists. The world’s biggest media outlets ignore multiple UN rulings to scream about cat food & hygiene, while the most significant publisher of our generation remains arbitrarily detained in London #EndImpunity

— Suzie Dawson (@Suzi3D) November 2, 2018

And make no mistake, that is all it is ever about. The reason almost every journalist below a certain age has a Twitter account these days is because they are taught in no uncertain terms that building a social media profile is an essential part of the job. They know that their social media presence can be just as much a determining factor in whether or not they keep climbing the ladder of prestige and influence as their resume is. Reporters in western corporate media aren’t usually explicitly told to protect establishment interests, but the ones who consistently do are the ones who get hired to the choice jobs. Making a big show about what a good empire lackey you are by smearing Julian Assange at a key juncture in his fight is a great way to show your peers and superiors that you’re someone who plays along with the beltway groupthink, and the fact that Assange cannot defend himself from those smears makes it extremely risk-free.

So when you see some political writer yukking it up about Julian Assange and kitty litter, what they are really saying is, “Hey! Look at me! You can count on me to advance whatever narratives get passed down from on high! I’ll cheer on all the wars! I’ll play up the misdeeds of our great nation’s rivals and ignore the misdeeds of our allies! I’ll literally spit on Assange if you’ll give my career a boost!”

They are saying, “I support everything the media-controlling oligarchs support, and I hate everything they hate. I will be a reliable mouthpiece of the ruling class regardless of who is elected in our fake elections to our fake official government. I will say all the right things. I will protect what you need protected. I will hide what you want hidden. I understand what you want me to do without your explicitly telling me to do it. I’ve got what you need. I have no principles. Look, I’m even joining in the dog pile against a political prisoner who can’t defend himself.”

Reporters who bash Julian Assange while he is silenced instead of using their platforms to draw attention to the many, many wicked deeds that are being perpetrated by the powerful in their own country are the lowest of the low. They are scum. They are the scum that scum scrapes off its shoes. There is no more despicable, sniveling waste of space on this earth than someone who attacks the powerless on behalf of the powerful while calling themselves a journalist.

*  *  *

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Several European airports will deploy an AI-powered lie detector at border checkpoints in a trial run of the new technology, reports CNN. 

When a passenger approaches customs, they will be asked a series of questions by a “virtual border guard avatar,” which will use an Artificial Intelligence to monitor their faces to quickly determine whether they are lying in an effort to reduce congestion. 

The avatar will become “more skeptical” and change its tone of voice if it believes a person has lied, before referring suspect passengers to a human guard and allowing those believed to be honest to pass through, said Keeley Crockett of Manchester Metropolitan University in England, who was involved in the project.

…

“It will ask the person to confirm their name, age and date of birth, (and) it will ask them things like what the purpose of their trip is and who is funding the trip,” said Crockett.  –CNN

The project comes at an initial cost of $5.1 million (€4.5 million), and will begin its trial run at airports in Grece, Latvia and Hungary for passengers traveling outside the EU.

The technology has only been tested on a scant 32 individuals thus far, however the scientists behind the AI hope to achieve an 85% success rate. Prior facial recognition algorithms have been shown to have higher error rates with women and darker-skinned people after an MIT study earlier this year found bias in similar technology developed by Microsoft and IBM. 

“I don’t believe that you can have a 100% accurate system,” said Crockett, who added that the system should become more accurate as more passengers are run through the algorithm. 

The system will be overseen by human guards, who can see the results of the AI tests on each passenger.

Only passengers who give their consent will come face-to-face with the technology in its initial trial, with consent forms available at the airports when they arrive.

The system “will collect data that will move beyond biometrics and on to biomarkers of deceit,” said project coordinator George Boultadakis, of information technology service company European Dynamics in Luxembourg.

Surely the 15% of people subject to false positives won’t be treated with any bias by airport personnel in secondary questioning, especially if they are darker-skinned. 

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Authored by Patrick Lawrence via ConsortiumNews.com,

The U.S. is going for the jugular with new Iran sanctions intended to punish those who trade with Teheran. But the U.S. may have a fight on its hands in a possible post- WWII turning-point…

The next step in the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran has begun, with the most severe sanctions being re-imposed on the Islamic Republic. Crucially, they apply not only to Iran but to anyone who continues to do business with it.

It’s not yet clear how disruptive this move will be. While the U.S. intention is to isolate Iran, it is the U.S. that could wind up being more isolated. It depends on the rest of the world’s reaction, and especially Europe’s.

The issue is so fraught that disputes over how to apply the new sanctions have even divided Trump administration officials.

The administration is going for the jugular this time. It wants to force Iranian exports of oil and petrochemical products down to as close to zero as possible. As the measures are now written, they also exclude Iran from the global interbank system known as SWIFT.

It is hard to say which of these sanctions is more severe. Iran’s oil exports have already started falling. They peaked at 2.7 million barrels a day last May—just before Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the six-nation accord governing Iran’s nuclear programs. By early September oil exports were averaging a million barrels a day less.

In August the U.S. barred Iran’s purchases of U.S.-dollar denominated American and foreign company aircraft and auto parts. Since then the Iranian rial has crashed to record lows and inflation has risen above 30 percent.

Revoking Iran’s SWIFT privileges will effectively cut the nation out of the dollar-denominated global economy. But there are moves afoot, especially by China and Russia, to move away from a dollar-based economy.

The SWIFT issue has caused infighting in the administration between Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and John Bolton, Trump’s national security adviser who is among the most vigorous Iran hawks in the White House. Mnuchin might win a temporary delay or exclusions for a few Iranian financial institutions, but probably not much more.

On Sunday, the second round of sanctions kicked in since Trump withdrew the U.S. from the 2015 Obama administration-backed, nuclear agreement, which lifted sanctions on Iran in exchange for stringent controls on its nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly certified that the deal is working and the other signatories—Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia have not pulled out and have resumed trading with Iran. China and Russia have already said they will ignore American threats to sanction it for continuing economic relations with Iran. The key question is what will America’s European allies do?

Europeans React

Europe has been unsettled since Trump withdrew in May from the nuclear accord. The European Union is developing a trading mechanism to get around U.S. sanctions. Known as a Special Purpose Vehicle, it would allow European companies to use a barter system similar to how Western Europe traded with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Juncker: Wants Euro-denominated trading

EU officials have also been lobbying to preserve Iran’s access to global interbank operations by excluding the revocation of SWIFT privileges from Trump’s list of sanctions. They count Mnuchin,who is eager to preserve U.S. influence in the global trading system, among their allies. Some European officials, including Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, propose making the euro a global trading currency to compete with the dollar.

Except for Charles de Gaulle briefly pulling France out of NATO in 1967 and Germany and France voting on the UN Security Council against the U.S. invading Iraq in 2003, European nations have been subordinate to the U.S. since the end of the Second World War.

The big European oil companies, unwilling to risk the threat of U.S. sanctions, have already signaled they intend to ignore the EU’s new trade mechanism. Total SA, the French petroleum company and one of Europe’s biggest, pulled out of its Iran operations several months ago.

Earlier this month a U.S. official confidently predicted there would be little demand among European corporations for the proposed barter mechanism.

Whether Europe succeeds in efforts to defy the U.S. on Iran is nearly beside the point from a long-term perspective. Trans-Atlantic damage has already been done. A rift that began to widen during the Obama administration seems about to get wider still.

Asia Reacts

Asian nations are also exhibiting resistance to the impending U.S. sanctions. It is unlikely they could absorb all the exports Iran will lose after Nov. 4, but they could make a significant difference. China, India, and South Korea are the first, second, and third-largest importers of Iranian crude; Japan is sixth. Asian nations may also try to work around the U.S. sanctions regime after Nov. 4.

India is considering purchases of Iranian crude via a barter system or denominating transactions in rupees. China, having already said it would ignore the U.S. threat, would like nothing better than to expand yuan-denominated oil trading, and this is not a hard call: It is in a protracted trade war with the U.S., and an oil-futures market launched in Shanghai last spring already claims roughly 14 percent of the global market for “front-month” futures—contracts covering shipments closest to delivery.

Trump: Unwittingly playing with U.S. long-term future

As with most of the Trump administration’s foreign policies, we won’t know how the new sanctions will work until they are introduced. There could be waivers for nations such as India; Japan is on record asking for one. The E.U.’s Special Purpose Vehicle could prove at least a modest success at best, but this remains uncertain. Nobody is sure who will win the administration’s internal argument over SWIFT.

Long-term Consequences for the U.S.

The de-dollarization of the global economy is gradually gathering momentum. The orthodox wisdom in the markets has long been that competition with the dollar from other currencies will eventually prove a reality, but it will not be one to arrive in our lifetimes. But with European and Asian reactions to the imminent sanctions against Iran it could come sooner than previously thought.

The coalescing of emerging powers into a non-Western alliance —most significantly China, Russia, India, and Iran—starts to look like another medium-term reality. This is driven by practical rather than ideological considerations, and the U.S. could not do more to encourage this if it tried. When Washington withdrew from the Iran accord, Moscow and Beijing immediately pledged to support Tehran by staying with its terms.If the U.S. meets significant resistance, especially from its allies, it could be a turning-point in post-Word War II U.S. dominance.

Supposedly Intended for New Talks

All this is intended to force Iran back to the negotiating table for a rewrite of what Trump often calls “the worst deal ever.” Tehran has made it clear countless times it has no intention of reopening the pact, given that it has consistently adhered to its terms and that the other signatories to the deal are still abiding by it.

The U.S. may be drastically overplaying its hand and could pay the price with additional international isolation that has worsened since Trump took office.

Washington has been on a sanctions binge for years. Those about to take effect seem recklessly broad. This time, the U.S. risks lasting alienation even from those allies that have traditionally been its closest.

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Russia is flexing its muscle or is at least engaged in some serious trolling just as Trident Juncture 18 is underway in Norway — NATO’s largest drills in decades with some 50,000 troops, 10,000 combat vehicles, 65 ships, and 250 aircraft.

On Friday a Russian Tupolev Tu-142 bomber unexpectedly flew close to the USS Mount Whitney at the very moment Marines on board were gathered for a group photo during the NATO military games. 

Russian media confirmed the incident, describing the U.S. Sixth fleet’s flagship (the command and control ship for the fleet) as being “blindsided” while the military and aircraft analysis site The Aviationist described the provocative flyover as “more or less overhead”.

According an account of the incident reported by The Aviationist:

Sailors aboard the Blue Ridge-class command ship of the U.S. Navy USS Mount Whitney had gathered for a group photo on deck, when a Tupolev TU-142, RF-34063 / 56 RED based on AFP photographs, flying in international airspace, soared more or less overhead, on Nov. 2, 2018.

The large long-range bomber appeared during the moments a formal group picture was being staged aboard the USS Whitney, Military.com confirmed. 

The stunt comes after in previous weeks Moscow made clear its displeasure over what are by far NATO’s largest military exercises since the end of the Cold War, saying that the two-week long games would not go unanswered. 

According to Military.com the Russians were sending a clear message: 

The Tupolev’s passage appeared to be part of Russia’s response. But Colonel Garth Manger, a British Royal Marine in charge of operational duties on board the U.S. Navy warship, took it in his stride. “They’re watching us and we’re watching them.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry (MoD), for its part, confirmed that two TU-142 bombers were flying over neutral waters in the area of the Norwegian Sea during the time the flyover occurred. The MoD said that aircraft spent 12 hours in the air before returning to a base in the Russian northern-central Vologda Region.

The MoD statement said: “All flights of the naval aircraft of the Russian Navy are carried out in strict accordance with the international rules for the use of airspace without violating the borders of other countries.”

Meanwhile the Russian MoD also announced on Saturday that the heavy nuclear missile cruiser “Peter the Great” of Russia’s Northern Fleet entered the Barents Sea on Saturday to “perform combat training missions,” according to a press release. 

Russia’s nuclear missile cruiser “Peter the Great” enters Barents Sea as NATO holds largest drills in Norway https://t.co/Ua0btIXvX3 pic.twitter.com/3g2ir3JW6q

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) November 3, 2018

The ship’s crew will conduct a series of exercises on anti-submarine and air defense and perform combat training exercises with the use of tactical weapons, the MoD statement said further.

With NATO’s Trident Juncture set to go until Nov. 7, it will be interesting to see if Russian aircraft or vessels conduct another close passage near NATO assets operating in the Scandinavian and Arctic regions. 

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Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,

The actions that are taken are a three-pronged attack in order to foster in global governance, and they are as such:

1. Create ubiquitous electronic surveillance with unlimited police power

2. Throw the entire earth into an economic tailspin

3. Destroy all nationalism, national borders, and create chaos among all nations prior to an “incendiary event” or series of actions that leads to a world war.

The world war is the most important part of it all, in the eyes of the globalists. The Great Depression culminated in a world war, and periods of economic upheaval are always followed by wars. The war is most needed by the globalists because they need to rid the world of about 7 billion people. This is why such experimentation as you see progresses: infecting vectors such as mosquitoes with viruses that are almost immune to antibiotics, the unearthing of ancient viruses in the permafrost and frozen areas of the Arctic, and the insect-sized drones and smaller nanobots touted to bring a cure but in reality capable of delivering disease.

You are seeing the destruction of the nationalism that exists in Europe: globalists such as Merkel are destroying their own countries from within by introducing hostile and ethnically (as well as religiously) diverse elements. The countries are submitting to the “World Court” based in The Hague: a court that (similar to the U.S. Supreme Court) is using its powers to circumvent the nations…the laws of the French, the Italians, the British, the Germans…all of Europe…and inculcate doctrines both globalist and Malthusian in nature.

The oligarchs of all of these nations will have a “seat at the table” to carve up what remains of the earth after they finish with a war that decimates the population, leaves a compliant few remaining who are dependent upon the oligarch-politicos’ whims for life itself, and places the wealth, power, and resources in their hands.

Sound as if it’s science fiction? It is not. You want some evidence of this, look no further than China: the testing ground for the electronic surveillance state that will soon be pervasive all over the globe. In an article from 10/26/18, by France24 entitled Armed drones, iris scanners: China’s high-tech security gadgets, an exhibition in Beijing exposed these measures and more. Facial recognition to the maximum was demonstrated on the conference attendees. Smart sunglasses that sound an alarm when an enemy of the state is spotted. Iris recognition scanners, and drones that are able to respond with guns.

“Smart” homes…with every imaginable device from refrigerators to smart locks…all interacting with one another…. and of course, with Chinese “law enforcement,” the State Security agencies.

China is the “testing” ground, and their “methods” are being incorporated in the U.S.

On 10/26/18, Papers, Please! reported something huge; an article entitled TSA Confirms Biometrics, Facial Recognition To Be Condition For All Air Travelers.

I wrote a piece recently a few weeks ago in which the TSA complained about the delays and inabilities to take biometric information because of the “pesky airlines” and their schedules for passengers, and I wrote that soon the biometrics will be ubiquitous and unavoidable.

Here it is, in our faces.

Soon will come the issuance of internal passports. As it stands, if you want to fly from New York to Los Angeles, biometric ID will be mandatory. Or just short commuter flights, say from Miami to D.C.

The internal passports are coming.

It won’t be enough to tell where you’re going. Why are you going there? For what, and by whose authority? If you think travel papers are not coming along, think again. Yes, we’re behind what the President is doing about the approaching caravan of illegals and criminals.

Just remember: every fence that keeps something out can also keep something in.

The invasion of the United States from a physical perspective would be very difficult. Yes, behind every blade of grass a rifle, we know. The main thing they wish is to take most of it intact because of the resources. The population is a “nominal” consideration, as long as they can preserve about a half million to a million to serve as laborers and perhaps a breeding stock/organ donors. Sound bleak? It should…it is meant to serve as a warning. They want it all in one lightning-fast action, and the best way…the easiest is to start a war…one that takes the United States out in one fell swoop.

All of us have watched and seen our country descend into a moral morass from which only the citizens at grass roots level, following faith in one another…being decent to one another…and holding on to faith in God can extricate us, along with the desire to survive…and survive “smart,” to make it through what is coming. It can only be prepared for incrementally and in areas of the country that most think it worthless or impossible to live in. So many have challenged writers to “propose a plan,” and what they mean is “resistance” or “open revolt.” It would be laughably stupid if not for the fact that many ask for a proposition in writing for a definitive reason, and a definitive strategy:

They want it in writing because they are shills for the government, and want a writer to place such a thing in writing…fomenting dissent…justification to take the writer (and possibly the blog) down…while they continue in their “writing position” in the comments sections.

Every word here is recorded by XKeyscore…mine and yours… and stored in the NSA database in Utah, under a file for “dissenters,” “agitators,” and every other descriptive label that can be thought of for those who champion critical thought and independent thinking. Every conservative-minded journalist or writer who dares to espouse these views and theories is being recorded and kept under some kind of watch. You can be certain of it. Many are either shutting down or “knuckling under” and complying.

The globalists are getting what they wish: consolidating the resources while they “tank” the fiat economies and currencies of the nations. They are destroying cultures who just a mere two centuries ago would have armed their entire male populaces with swords and sent invaders either packing or in pieces.

They are destroying cultures by making them question themselves! The greatest tactic imaginable!

I submit this last for your perusal. Do you know who you are? The question is not just as simple as it seems. Let’s delve deeply. Do you really know who you are, where your family originates? Your heritage, and its strengths and weaknesses? Is that heritage yours, along with your heritage as an American citizen? It is not important that I, or others should know of these strengths…not at this moment in time. The world war is yet to come. As Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true.” This is important for you…to know it and hold fast to it. We are in the decline of the American nation-now-empire.

When the dust settles, you’ll know who will run with the ball even with three blockers against them and will manage to slip the tackles or forearm shiver them in the face, outside of the ref’s eye, to run that ball in. The Marquis of Queensbury is dead, and those rules will go out the window. When the dust settles, those who had the foresight and acted on it will be the ones who will be given a gift: a chance to participate in what is to come. Stay in that good fight, and fight it to win…each day.

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At the end of the same week that the Trump administration announced a 30-day deadline to reach a ceasefire in Yemen, it was revealed the United Kingdom is planning to introduce a United Nations Security Council resolution that seeks to end of the war. 

According to a Friday ABC News report, citing diplomatic sources, the British could introduce the resolution as early as this coming week. ABC reports that “one source said it would call for a humanitarian ceasefire and the safe passage of food and other aid, for support for the cratering Yemeni economy, and on both sides to fully engage with the U.N. Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths.”

Last week’s ceasefire proposal by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been widely seen as the result of heightened media pressure and international outrage over the October 2nd killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi likely upon the direct orders of Saudi crown prince MbS. 

But from the start it appeared a feeble attempt on the part of the U.S. to claim it’s “on the side of peace” at a time that the U.N. has dubbed the situation in Yemen the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis” — and at a time that Saudi war crimes in Yemen are increasingly being spotlighted. 

However the fact remains that the Pentagon is an integral part of military operations in Yemen, and a number of analysts have pointed out that the White House could end the war with one phone call to Riyadh. 

But it doesn’t appear likely given the U.S. is simultaneously waging a regional proxy war against pro-Iran and Shia forces, which includes severe sanctions against Iran itself set to snap back on Monday. Significantly, Mike Pompeo told Fox News Sunday:

“The Iranians are responsible for the starvation’ of Yemeni civilians.”

Washington has long accused Iran of giving direct support to Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who overran the capital of Sana’a in 2015, precipitating the widespread Saudi-UAE-US bombing campaign that will soon reach four years in running, and which has resulted in tens of thousands of Yemeni casualties. 

Pompeo also addressed the new round of November 5th Iran sanctions: 

“I’ve been at this a long time. No one’s going to argue that Secretary Pompeo isn’t tough on Iran, and no one’s going to argue that President Trump isn’t doing the same,” Pompeo said on Fox News Sunday.

He also accused Iran of being the “world’s largest state sponsor of terror” and repeated recent headlines that Iranian intelligence carried out an assassination campaign across Europe.

.@SecPompeo: “The sanctions that will be re-imposed tomorrow are the toughest sanctions ever put in place on the Islamic Republic of Iran,” #FNS pic.twitter.com/WBYynDqVFt

— FoxNewsSunday (@FoxNewsSunday) November 4, 2018

Concerning Yemen, should the UK introduce a security council resolution which aims to end the war and create lasting conditions for peace, it will be interesting to see if it actually has any teeth, or if it’s simply a repeat of a prior April 2015 resolution that demands “all parties in the embattled country, in particular the Houthis, immediately and unconditionally end violence.”

Should a new resolution simply double down on this language of identifying Houthis as the aggressors, without calling out Saudi war crimes and its scorched earth bombing campaign, it most certainly going to fail. For now it appears that Washington is seeking to broaden the regional proxy war targeting Iran and pro-Tehran forces — even while claiming to desire peace and a lasting resolution in places like Yemen. 

And with Pompeo now placing the blame on Iran for the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, we are only likely to get more of the same stalling while civilians continue to die in the thousands each month. After all, over the past few days the Saudi response to the ceasefire proposed by Pompeo and Mattis has been to actually ramp up airstrikes across Sana’a governate. 

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Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

While Khan plays on a complex geopolitical chessboard, Chinese aid could be a financial lifeline as Islamabad faces off against deadly religious extremism…

It has been a breathless week, huddled in the shadow of the simmering, bubbling, politico-religious volcano that is Imran Khan’s Pakistan.

And this week’s multi-faceted developments may just signal seismic shifts in Pakistan’s internal and external relations for the foreseeable future.

Before  moving on to bloodier matters, let’s start with the “Mr. Khan Goes to China” episode – essential for reviewing all aspects of what is enthusiastically described by both sides as the “all-weather strategic cooperative partnership”.

Xi’s financial lifeline for Khan?

Prime Minister Khan, leading a fresh government elected in July and facing a range colossal challenges, set the tone from the start. He did not mince words.

“Countries go in cycles, they have their high points, they have their low points,” he said.

“Unfortunately, our country is going through a low point at the moment with two very big deficits, a fiscal deficit and a current account deficit. And so we, as I’ve said, have come to learn.”

Arguably few teachers beat Chinese President Xi Jinping, praised by Khan as a role model.

“China’s phenomenal achievements are worth emulating,” Khan said.

“No other country has tackled poverty and corruption the way China has tackled it.”

The lynchpin of the strategic partnership is inevitably the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), the flagship project of the New Silk Road, or Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI). Before his stint as guest of honor of the First China International Import Expo in Shanghai, Khan met a crucial player in Beijing for CPEC financing: Jin Liquan, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Right from the start, Pakistan’s new Planning Minister Makhdoom Bukhtiar was confident that Islamabad would not need to reschedule around $2.7 billion in Chinese loans due for repayment in 2018. Instead, what’s in the cards is an improved economic package centered on taking CPEC to the next level.

A financially stable Pakistan is absolutely crucial for the success of BRI. A Pakistani audit of projects approved by the previous Nawaz Sharif administration called for streamlining CPEC, not curtailing it. Now, Team Khan does not subscribe to the notion of CPEC as a debt trap.

With Saudi Arabia and China stepping in with cash, Islamabad may avoid becoming further indebted to the IMF and its trademark “strategic adjustments”– widely dreaded across the Global South for producing a toxic mix of austerity and inflation.

Pakistan juggles China, Iran, Saudi, Turkey

Pakistan is all about its prime geopolitical location, the crossroads of South Asia, Central Asia and West Asia.

For Beijing, Pakistan as a key BRI node mirrors its new role as a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). As Khan has clearly identified, this interconnection can only turbo-charge Pakistan’s geo-economic position – under the institutional framework of SCO. The Xi-Khan partnership may actually center around an economic win-win for Pakistan and the SCO.

Of course, myriad challenges lie ahead.

Take for instance Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesman Lu Kang having to clarify that “all the cooperation between China and Pakistan has nothing to do with territorial disputes.”

Kang was referring to the hoopla surrounding the fact that a Pakistani company launched a bus service from Lahore to Kashgar via Islamabad; essentially the northern CPEC route via the Karakoram Highway, which skirts Kashmir. China does not want any interference whatsoever in the ultra-volatile Kashmir dossier.

Saudi Arabia is also making some not-too-subtle moves. Islamabad’s official position is that Riyadh’s recent financial offer came with no strings attached. That’s unlikely to be the case; Saudi traditionally casts a long shadow over all matters Pakistani. “No strings” means Islamabad should keep closer to Riyadh, not Tehran.

The House of Saud – paralyzed by the fallout of the bloody Istanbul fiasco – will go no-holds-barred to prevent Islamabad from getting closer to Tehran. (Or Ankara, for that matter). A possibly emergent, long-term, game-changing Turkey-Iran-Pakistan alliance was the talk of the town – at least during the first part of this week of weeks.

That brings us to the crucial visitor Khan received in Islamabad before his trip to China: Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. Last month, 14 Iranian border guards were kidnapped by the Pakistan-based Jaish al-Adl Salafi-jihadi fanatics. Pakistan security forces have been helpless so far.

Khan and Zarif talked about that – but also talked about Khan’s offer to mediate between Iran and Saudi Arabia in trying to find a solution for the tragedy in Yemen. The fact is, a Tehran-Islamabad rapprochement is already a work in progress.

That is the sophisticated geo-political game Khan must play. Meanwhile at home, he has to get down and dirty as he gets to grips with violent domestic religious turmoil.

‘Go legal – or else…’

I’ve been in Islamabad since Monday – right on the lip of the volcano, and enjoying the privilege of being part of one of the most extraordinary geopolitical conferences in recent times, something that in the current polarizing dynamic could only happen in Asia, not the West. But that’s another story.

While I was parsing elaborate analyses of this geopolitical chessboard, reality intervened.

Or – perhaps – it was a graphic intimation that Pakistan may just be changing for the better.

Street blockades paralyzed key nodes of the nation because Aasia Bibi, a Christian woman laborer, in jail for nine years, was finally acquitted by the Supreme Court of spurious charges of blasphemy. There are less than 4 million Christians in Pakistan out of a total population of 197 million.

I was with a small group on the motorway to Peshawar, prior to taking a detour to Taxila – Alexander-the-Great land, where I planned further research on ancient Silk Roads – when suddenly we were halted.

A mullah was blaring his hate through a loudspeaker. A couple of his minions blocked all circulation.

Why the police would not dislodge this small group is the matter of all matters in Khan’s arguably new Pakistan. The highway standoff embodies the high-stakes grapple underway between the state and religion.

Back in Islamabad, as he led me around the campus of the National Defense University, Timoor Shah, a bright young man at the Center for Policy Studies, gave me a crash course on the nuances.

What a global audience should understand is this.

On one side stand the state, the military and the judiciary. (Accusations continue to be hurled that Khan was privileged in the July elections by the military – the top institution in Pakistan – and an activist judiciary.)

On the other side, stand fringe religious nuts and an opportunistic, discredited opposition.

The Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLP), a minor extremist political party whose only platform is to punish blasphemy, has issued death threats against the three Supreme Court judges. Pakistan could do worse than import a strangle/bone-saw/dissolve-in-acid Saudi execution squad to deal with such groups.

It’s instructive to consider what the director general of the PR arm of the powerful intelligence service, ISI, Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor had to say: This is a legal matter and the Pakistan Army should not be dragged into it. Ghafoor also stressed,

“We are close to winning the war against terrorism and our attention should not be diverted.”

Ghafoor told politico-religious parties protesting against the Supreme Court judgment – quite a few of which were firmly on the lunatic fringe – to go legal or else. Amid this, TLP chief Khadim Hussain Rizvi swears that that the Army has threatened to “destroy” his party.

The military sent a delegation, including ISI officials, to talk to the religious protesters. Ghafoor was careful to stress that the ISI is an intelligence department that reports to the prime minister.

In the end, the government caved in. Despite knowing that Aasia Bibi faces fundamentalist wrath and her only path to safety would be a one-way ticket out, they agreed to put her on something called the “Exit Control List.” Even that did not prevent TLP fanatics from threatening “a war if they sent Aasia Bibi out of the country.”

‘Taliban Godfather’ killed

As if all this were not toxic enough, on Friday evening Maulana Samiul Haq – the fabled “Godfather of the Taliban” – was stabbed to death in his house in Rawalpindi, Islamabad’s twin city.

Haq led the sprawling Darul Uloom Haqqania, a madrassa, or religious school, in Akhora Khattak, near Peshawar, founded in 1988. The madrassa graduated none other than Mullah Omar, as well as other Taliban notables.

Haq embodies a torrent of turbulence in modern Pakistani history – including his stints as senator during the  Zia ul Haq and Nawaz Sharif administrations. He also tabled a notorious Sharia bill during Sharif’s last term.

But for me, the story was personal. In a tortuous way, Samiul Haq saved my life – courtesy of a letter of introduction he had signed after I visited his madrassa to follow a Talibanesque indoctrination in progress.

When, along with my photographer Jason Florio, we were arrested by the Taliban at a military base in Ghazni in the summer of 2000, we were only released from waiting six months to be tried as “spies” because of Samiul Haq’s letter.

This obviously pales when compared to the high-profile, principled move by the Pakistani Supreme Court to save Aasia Bibi from a death sentence.

But it could be the first salvo in a Khan-era Pakistani war against religious fundamentalism.

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Last week, the DOJ filed the first round of criminal charges related to the massive international fraud that was the 1MDB scandal. US prosecutors allege that more than $4.5 billion was embezzled from the sovereign wealth fund, which was set up by the government of disgraced former Prime Minister Najib Razak, eventually leading the ransacked government fund to a default on nearly $2 billion of local currency bonds, briefly denting the value of the Malaysian ringgit. Holders of those bonds are still working on a restructuring deal with the fund. Meanwhile, former Goldman Sachs Southeast Asia Chief Tim Leissner has pleaded guilty to fraud charges and is expected to cooperate with authorities against other more-senior officials at the bank. One of his fellow bankers, Roger Ng, was arrested by Malaysian police and is expected to be extradited to the US.

There’s little doubt that the scandal, which Goldman has, in typical Goldman fashion, tried to pin on a “few rogue employees,” will lead to massive fines and possibly other penalties. The bank admitted as much in a regulatory filing on Friday, even suggesting that “other sanctions” – code for a guilty plea for the bank or even more severe penalties levied by the Treasury – could be forthcoming, per Reuters.

Leissner has already admitted that he accepted more than $200 million in stolen funds in an illegal kickback tied to the deal, as well as bribery charges related to his pursuit of the 1MDB deals. And as more details trickle out, the blithe disregard for US securities laws – and even the bank’s own compliance department – attributed to Leissner and his team is looking even more galling.

Tim Leissner

All of this is happening at a terrible time for Goldman. It recently underwent a leadership transition, with longtime former CEO Lloyd Blankfein handing the reins to John Solomon, who is best known for moonlighting as an EDM DJ. Blankfein’s former second-in-command, Gary Cohn, left the bank nearly two years ago to join the Trump Administration. And as the breadth of the scandal – and the likelihood that the bank’s most senior employees may have looked the other way (though, to be sure, Blankfein has repeatedly denied having any knowledge of Goldman’s role) – becomes increasingly apparent, the timing of Blankfein’s exit is looking more and more suspect.

Public perception polling shows that Goldman has never quite managed to shake the “Vampire Squid” moniker that it earned during the financial crisis, according to Bloomberg.

In a story published Sunday, Bloomberg released the most detailed account yet about the lengths that Leissner went to circumvent Goldman’s compliance department in order to close on three successive bond issues underwritten by Goldman. The issues, totaling $6 billion, netted $600 million in fees for Goldman. To ensure that the deal would close, Leissner concealed the involvement of Jho Low, a Malaysian financier who was among the individuals charged by the DOJ on Thursday. In an effort to leverage Low’s connections to Razak, Leissner tried to set Low up with an account at Goldman’s vaunted private wealth division, but was again rebuffed by compliance officers in Switzerland and Singapore. Eventually, Goldman compliance teams from Europe to Africa, as well as the bank’s global intelligence group, issued warnings about Low and cautioned that the bank should avoid taking him on as a client.

But that didn’t stop Leissner from inviting Low to a 2013 meeting at New York City’s Time Warner Center, a meeting that also included Razak and an unidentified “senior Goldman official” – ignoring the bank’s warnings about Low. Back in 2009, Leissner had leveraged his connections with Low to arrange his first meeting with Razak, a meeting that eventually helped him close on the 1MDB bond deal. At the time, Goldman and other US banks were digging out of the hole created by the financial crisis, and were desperate for business. 

Leissner tried everything to try and polish Low’s reputation by finding a company for 1MDB to buy. Leissner also tried to convince Goldman to hire Razak’s children for coveted Goldman internships in direct violation of a US law prohibiting banks from hiring relatives of senior foreign officials (JPM paid out a nine-figure penalty for violating this law back in 2016 during the so-called “princelings” scandal, where the bank hired the children of Chinese Communist Party officials).

The type of plea agreement signed by Leissner, known as a “criminal information” suggests that he will likely cooperate with authorities.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, who are running the probe, likely have a broader view. Leissner’s admission of bribery and laundering conspiracy came in a document called a criminal information, which often suggests a cooperation deal with authorities. If that’s the case, Leissner could be a crucial guide for global investigations into how a majority of the $6.5 billion raised by Goldman Sachs, ostensibly to promote development in Malaysia, was allegedly diverted in one of the largest plunderings of public funds in history.

And Goldman, which has said that it believed the money raised in the 1MDB bond offerings would be spent on development projects, last week put its former co-head of investment banking, Andrea Vella, on leave.

The latest documents may mean Goldman Sachs’s reckoning over the 1MDB affair is far from over. On Thursday, the bank placed Andrea Vella, its former co-head of investment banking, on leave. Court documents unsealed earlier in the day said an unidentified Goldman official in Asia conspired with Leissner, Low and another then-Goldman banker, Roger Ng, and had knowledge that bribes were being paid. Prosecutors’ description of the official lines up with that of Vella, who couldn’t be reached for comment.

But it’s very possible that Vella might not be the final link in the chain. The sheer magnitude and complexity of the 1MDB fraud is staggering.While the Wall Street Journal helped break the story, perhaps the most detailed description of how the money was raised and diverted was published earlier this year by MalaysiaKini. In a multi-part story, its reporters explain how the money was fanned out across multiple shell companies and investments in other wealth funds. Ultimately, $700 million is believed to have been diverted into a personal slush fund accessible to Razak. The money trail illustrated in the charts below was gleaned from a DOJ lawsuit, as the DOJ has seized and sought to seize many of the assets that purchased by Low and others with money siphoned off the fund, including yachts, luxury homes and even box-office profits from the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

To be sure, Goldman isn’t the only bank to be tainted by 1MDB. Already, Singaporean authorities have frozen bank accounts, and shut down a tiny bank called Falcon Bank that helped shelter some of the money. They also arrested and charged the Swiss chief executive of Falcon, while fining Credit Suisse and UBS, among others.

But in the US, at least, the focus lies squarely on Goldman. Expect more news, and possibly more indictments, to follow in the coming days and weeks.

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