The Knoxville, Tennessee, City Council has voted 8-1 to ask Mayor Madeline Rogero to ban gun shows on city-owned property. Rogero had already announced she would forbid gun shows on city property. She is leaving office at the end of the year, but both of the candidates running to replace her also support the ban. City-owned Chilhowee Park has hosted gun shows for decades. “What is ironic is for a long time the city was asking me to do more shows at Chilhowee Park because it is a super-popular event with a huge economic impact,” said Rex Kehrli, who has run those gun show for about a dozen years.
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French President Emmanuel Macron is convinced that now is the right time to reset relations with Russia. He has therefore made it a diplomatic priority to restore a climate of trust between Paris and Moscow.
Three compelling reasons underlie this move…
First and foremost, the international strategic context has changed dramatically. China is rising, while the United States, although still the world’s dominant power, is distancing itself from its global responsibilities. And Russia, with an aging, shrinking population and a huge, largely uninhabited landmass, is a natural prey for China’s long-term ambitions.
European leaders should not resign themselves passively to seeing Russia, lacking any other alternative, align with China. Instead, they should try to convince Russians that their future is with Europe, and not as China’s junior partner in a deeply unbalanced relationship. Russia’s destiny lies in the West, not the East.
Moreover, although Russia is no match for China, it has returned as a serious global actor. Many current conflicts, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East, simply cannot be addressed without involving Russia.
This represents a triumph of sorts for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who first came to power nearly 20 years ago pledging to restore his country’s geopolitical clout. In particular, Putin wanted the US to treat Russia not as a mere object of history, as it had done under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin, but as a real interlocutor. And while it might be impossible to restore the bipolar world of the Cold War years, at least the US would be forced to recognize the importance of a modernized and operational Russian army that could intervene in the former Soviet sphere and beyond.
In other words, Russia is back. For Europe to deny this, or simply to try to contain Russia, cannot be a satisfactory basis for a long-term strategic doctrine and realistic diplomacy.
The second reason for France’s new diplomatic initiative toward Russia is to fill a leadership vacuum in Europe. The United Kingdom, which had lately been the most resolute in denouncing Russia’s behavior, has simply put itself out of the game. Obsessed with the Brexit tragicomedy that has led to the country’s worst political crisis since World War II, the UK has faded from the scene as a serious diplomatic actor.
Meanwhile, Germany, the European power with the closest historical and cultural relationship with Russia, is at the end of a political cycle. It is both dangerous and unfair to underestimate German Chancellor Angela Merkel, but she no longer has the clout or the energy to lead Europe in its dealings with the outside world, nor to rally Europeans themselves.
With the UK and Germany currently incapable of playing a major diplomatic role, and Italy, Spain, and Poland in no position to be principal actors, the conclusion is quite simple: partly by default, and partly because of the sheer energy and imagination of its young president, this is France’s moment.
Finally, Macron’s attempt to reset relations with Russia is perfectly in tune with France’s Gaullist tradition. Mediating between different systems, and looking beyond the current incarnation of other countries, was Charles de Gaulle’s natural instinct. Behind the Soviet Union or Mao Zedong’s China, the first president of France’s Fifth Republic saw eternal Russia or eternal China. In dealing with another country, therefore, one should not be paralyzed by the nature of its regime.
Reconnecting with that tradition also may fit with Macron’s domestic calculus. By reaching out to the Kremlin, he can appease the economic sectors that are most affected by Western sanctions against Russia, while challenging the traditionally pro-Russia parties of France’s extreme right and left.
But it is one thing to explain the roots of a policy, or the rationale behind it, and another to justify the decision fully. Central and North European governments in particular are suspicious of France’s new diplomatic initiative. Why a rapprochement with Russia, they ask, and why now?
Coming from secular France, such Christian charity – giving before having received anything in return – seems either naive or Machiavellian. Furthermore, it seems to contradict France’s emphasis on values in a European Union context. Surely, critics of Macron’s Russia initiative say, the dichotomy between the defense of political principles within the EU and the practice of diplomacy outside it should not be so great as to endanger the cohesiveness of both.
Furthermore, they argue, Macron is acting alone without having really consulted his European partners and allies. He can hardly claim to speak in the name of Europe if he keeps operating that way, always presenting the other EU members with some kind of fait accompli.
Although I understand these criticisms (and share some of them), I nonetheless support Macron’s effort. The West’s strict policy of containment has failed. A policy of engagement may therefore be justified, provided it is not pursued naively or with complete disdain for principle.
Moreover, Macron would be the last person to entertain false illusions about Putin’s Russia. During the 2017 French presidential election, Russia actively campaigned for his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, by systematically spreading disinformation and fake news. Nor will Macron want Putin to appear to be having his cake and eating it – not least because Russia is persisting in the behaviors that caused its relations with Europe to deteriorate in the first place.
France has made a bold first move to reset relations with Russia. The ball is now in Putin’s court.
The cost of EU membership has naturally been of particular focus in the UK over the last few years.
While claims of large sums being freed up for the NHS were shown to be false, Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes that there is still a directly measurable net cost. As new figures from the Office for National Statistics show, the UK’s gross contribution in 2018 was £20 billion.
That is before a £4.5 billion rebate is calculated in though, and as this infographic shows, the same amount is channelled back into the country via EU funded public sector credits – examples of which are the £2.2 billion Agricultural Guarantee Fund and the £0.7 billion European Regional Development Fund.
We’ve all read about the escalating migrant violence in Sweden’s “no-go” zones and many have posited that the so-called “multicultural invasion” can all be chalked up to religious beliefs.
In the interview below, a “jihadi” confirms that this is the reason for much of the violent behavior. He himself wants “what is best for” Sweden, and he believes that what is best is “Allah’s rules,” even if they fly in the face of Swedish values.
“I believe that Allah’s rules should prevail over all other laws.”
But that’s not all. Watch the shocking video.
A source in Sweden confirms that this video is accurate but believes that the number of radicalized individuals is likely much higher than 300.
According to the video, Sweden recently changed its laws, making it legal for migrants to travel abroad with the intention of committing acts of terrorism. You read that correctly – legal. Then the migrants are allowed to return to Sweden.
Many countries are saying no to more migrants
Other countries in Europe are beginning to refuse entry to migrants from Islamic countries. In an article, Selco wrote of the difficulties in the Balkans where thousands of migrants are stranded.
There are numerous reports that an influx of migrants is overwhelming the already-fragile system in the Balkans. You may think this is not pertinent if you don’t live in Europe. But just like the collapse of Venezuela, the Balkan War, and the collapse of Greece, there are patterns of behavior to which attention should be paid.
Some have gone so far as to call it a humanitarian crisis, and others have said the number of migrants is increasing rapidly. Although the official number is around 4000 migrants, it’s estimated that the real number may be as many as 30-50,000.
Allowing radicalized individuals to return to Sweden after they commit acts of terror elsewhere is going to backfire. A person who becomes comfortable with violence generally has less and less difficulty committing more violence.
When I asked Selco if they [the migrants] outnumbered Bosnians, he replied, “Not yet. But in some parts, there are more capable immigrants then capable locals.” This crisis has caused havoc across the region, yet many locals are unaware of the depth of the issue. (Boy, does that sound familiar. Cognitive dissonance, it seems, is not an American problem.)
It should go without saying that all people of Muslim faith are not radicalized jihadists who want to kill those who are not Muslim and that all migrants are not intending to violently force sharia law on those in their host countries. But in Sweden, there seem to be plenty of violent people who do not have good intentions. If nothing else, the “invasion” of Sweden should be a cautionary tale to the rest of the world.
Somali Militants Raid American Military Base Near Mogadishu
A US special forces military base that’s also used to launch drone strikes on Al Qaeda and ISIS factions active in North Africa was attacked by a band of Somali insurgents on Monday, who also carried out an attack on a European military convoy, the AFP and Reuters report.
The American base, reportedly located in the town of Baledogle, was hit with an explosive, followed by small arms fire. The base is located about 60 miles west of Mogadishu, the Somali capital. It was unclear whether anybody was seriously injured during the attack.
The militant group Al Shabaab took credit for the string of attacks, and issued a statement about the raid on the American base.
“In the early hours of Monday morning, an elite unit of soldiers from Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen Martyrdom Brigade launched a daring raid on the US military base…After breaching the perimeters of the heavily fortified base, the Mujahideen (holy warriors) stormed the military complex, engaging the crusaders in an intense firefight.”
In a separate attack, a convoy of EU advisers training recruits to the Somali national army were struck by a car bomb in Mogadishu. Italian government officials insisted that nobody was seriously injured, though a Reuters journalist later saw a badly damaged military vehicle bearing an Italian flag.
“There was a car bomb targeting the EU military advisers along the industrial road. A vehicle loaded with explosive was rammed on to one of the convoy vehicles and there are casualties,” said Omar Abikar, a Somali security officer.
According to Reuters, the attacks demonstrated that al-Shabaab maintains a good intelligence network and can mount complex operations, said Hussein Sheikh-Ali, a former national security adviser and founder of the Mogadishu-based security think-tank the Hiraal Institute.
“It implies they have a high intelligence and a degree of capability just to get close to that place,” Sheikh-Ali told Reuters.
Notably, Monday’s attacks follow a dip in US airstrikes in Somalia, with the US Africa Command having carried out only four in the past two months (that’s compared with 28 during the first three months of 2019).
Al Shabaab is a radical Islamic group fighting to overthrow the UN-backed Somali government and enforce its own strict version of Islamic law in a country that has been divided by civil war since the early 1990s.
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Your Twitter account has just been closed. Why?
Daniel McAdams: In August I was watching a segment of the Sean Hannity program while at a friend’s house and noticed that despite an hour of Hannity ranting against the “deep state” in the US, he was wearing a lapel pin bearing the seal of the US Central Intelligence agency, which most would agree is either the center or at least an important hub of the US “deep state” itself. I tweeted about this strange anomaly and as a comment to my own Tweet on it I happened to say that Hannity is “retarded.” Twitter informed me that I had committed “hateful conduct” for “promoting violence against or directly attacking or threatening other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.” It is clear on its face that I did none of these. I used a non-politically correct term to ridicule Hannity for attacking the “deep state” while wearing the symbols of the deep state on his very lapel.
It is clear that Twitter is deeply biased against any voices outside the mainstream, pro-empire perspective. As a leading Tweeter in opposition to interventionist US foreign policy, I had long been targeted by those who enable and enforce Twitter’s political biases. Look at who Twitter partners with and you will understand why I was banned for a transparently false reason: the US government-funded Atlantic Council and other similar organizations are working with Twitter to eliminate any voices challenging US global military empire.
In your opinion, what exactly is the role of the CIA in the regime changes of some countries around the world?
From its creation by the National Security Act of 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency carried the dual role of analyzing intelligence for its customers in the Executive Branch of the US government and conducting covert actions and operations in pursuit of (claimed) US foreign policy goals. The history of CIA action in post-war Europe is extensive and includes founding front organizations to prop up socialist and far-left publications and institutions as a challenge to Soviet communism as well as backing far-right groups and political parties and even violent terror organizations to directly confront communism and overturn elections where communists made gains.
After the Cold War and the defeat of Soviet Communism, where one would expect a reduction if not elimination of such a global secret warfare organization, the CIA only ramped up its operations overseas. Today the CIA is merely one arm in a multi-faceted US “regime change” apparatus that includes the US State Department, USAID, and, very importantly, US government-funded “non-governmental” organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy and its sub-grantees. This “regime change apparatus” uses CIA methods developed during the Cold War (by “experts” like Gene Sharp and others) such as mobilization, training, subterfuge, agitation, and propaganda. We saw this apparatus at work in events like the “Arab Spring” and before it in the overthrow of the Milosevic government in Yugoslavia. We saw it in the Ukraine coup of 2014 and we see it in Venezuela and in Hong Kong today.
The practical value to the United States of such operations is less than zero, the costs to the American taxpayer are enormous, and the immorality of manipulating the globe toward an outcome preferred by Washington’s elites is self-evident.
When we see the generalized NSA surveillance, do you think we live in a democracy or a tenebrous fascist regime?
Americans have been manipulated by the elites in government and its allies in state propaganda (otherwise known as the “mainstream media”) to accept, particularly post-9/11, the deeply anti-American proposition that we must yield our privacy and Constitutionally-guaranteed civil liberties to a government that promises it will not abuse its increased power over us but will only use it to keep us safe. These promises have been over and over again proven to be lies. Government is not targeting terrorism or terrorists: they are targeting average American citizens.
Americans were told that only terrorists’ phone calls would be intercepted, but then Edward Snowden revealed that all of our phone calls are intercepted. Americans were mad for a few weeks but then Washington promised “reform” of the PATRIOT Act in the form of the FREEDOM Act and everybody calmed down. Even though the FREEDOM Act is actually worse than the PATRIOT Act because it legalized all of the illegal activities that were taking place under the PATRIOT Act. “Reform” in Washington means obfuscation and perception manipulation.
Likewise, Americans seeking to travel within their own country have been forced to allow strangers to invade and touch the most private areas of their bodies – and their children’s bodies! American sheep just bow to the authorities and keep watching their freedoms stolen from them, murmuring to themselves as they are raped by the authorities, “well…I have nothing to hide…”
You mentioned one time Operation Mockingbird, where the CIA manipulated journalists in the 1950s. In your opinion, does the CIA continue to use these same practices today?
I have no doubt that the CIA continues to maintain a close relationship with both mainstream and independent journalists. This is critical to establishing and controlling the narrative in each foreign “crisis.” It is no accident that each mainstream media outlet – regardless whether left-wing or right-wing or any wing – has the exact same perspective on events like the Ukraine coup or the Venezuela attempted coup, or Hong Kong protests. Part of this is the US “deep state” or “national security state” and part of it is the increasing integration of US corporate entities into the US government. Major media outlets are owned by US corporations that also own weapons manufacturing companies and cannot be trusted to report on events objectively. Similarly, virtually every US mainstream media outlet employs “former” members of the US intelligence community to “explain” foreign events to their viewers.
When is the last time a credible non-interventionist or pro-peace analyst has been featured in any mainstream media outlet? As in Soviet times, any view at odds with Washington’s “party line” is simply disappeared. When independent media outlets begin gaining traction and challenging the narrative, they are “de-platformed” on social media and even from their Internet service providers under the recommendations of US government-funded NGOs like the Atlantic Council or the German Marshal Fund.
Is not what is currently happening in Hong Kong a CIA manipulation targeting China in the context of the Trump administration’s economic war?
There is plenty of evidence of US government involvement in the Hong Kong protests. That does not mean that every single body out in the street is in the pay of the CIA. That is the red herring argument of those who are determined that we never see the US government hand in unrest overseas. Or to ridicule as “conspiracy theorists” those who point out obvious US government involvement.
It is undeniable that the US government has been involved in grooming, training, and funding the anti-Beijing movement in Hong Kong for years. They don’t even hide it: you can easily find on USAID and National Endowment for Democracy website the level of funding the US government provides these organizations and political parties. And when these party leaders come to Washington, they are received by the US Vice President, Secretary of State, Speaker of the House, and other high-ranking US government officials. Which foreign opposition movements that Washington does not support are given such treatment?
Imagine a movement dedicated to overthrowing the US political order that was funded by the Chinese, whose activists regularly went to Beijing for training in organization and mobilization, and whose leaders met with leading members of the Chinese Communist Party. How would such a movement in the United States be viewed by the US government? How would it be portrayed by the US mainstream media?
You mentioned a US-supported coup when you talked about Venezuela. In your opinion, does the US administration continue the same interventionist policy to destabilize Latin American countries?
Any Latin American government not in Washington’s constellation has been and is targeted for destabilization and overthrow. We saw this with the 2009 coup in Honduras, whose architect was then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. We see it in Cuba. We see it in Venezuela. We saw it with Ecuador, where a government wary of US persecution of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was “changed” in favor of a regime that handed Assange over to the authorities in exchange for a few billion dollars from the IMF. Do what Washington says and get paid; oppose Washington and get overthrown. That is the foreign policy of the US empire. And like the Soviet empire that preceded it, it is a policy doomed to failure.
Why in your opinion does the United States always need an enemy? Is not there a danger of world war when we see the multitude of US imperialist interventions around the world?
The US has ceased being a republic and has become a national security state. The US national security state enriches its elites – be they in the military-industrial complex, the think tanks, or the media – at the expense of middle class and working-class America. It does this by promoting an “enemy scenario” whereby the American people are made to believe that if they ever challenge the US military budget – larger than the next seven military budgets combined – they are not only putting themselves and their families at risk, but they are deeply unpatriotic and anti-American. The US national security state fought an 18-year “war on terror” which only seemed to generate more terrorists! Intervention in Iraq and Libya and Syria to “fight terrorism” resulted in more, not less, al-Qaeda and ISIS. It was not until Russia and Iran stood up in 2015 and began fighting these US-backed groups that there was a reduction in their power.
After the Russian and Iranian success in beating back the jihadist threat in Syria, the 2017 US national security strategy did an Orwellian about-face and abandoned the “war on terror” in favor of a declaration that our new enemies were again our old enemies: China and Russia. It is literally Orwell’s 1984: “we are at war with Eastasia. …We had always been at war with Eastasia.”
What do you think about the North Korean and Iranian case, where the Trump administration lacks a clear vision and where some neoconservatives are pushing for a war?
There are few consistencies in President Trump’s foreign policy. One emerging consistency, however, is that he seems genuinely reluctant to take the country into a bona fide war. He’s happy with sending a few dozen Tomahawk missiles into the Syrian countryside, but when faced with an actual robust response to any US strike, he to this point has chosen de-escalation. This may be a function of his keen eye for politics rather than any philosophical or moral concerns, but it to this point seems thematic. The problem is that by surrounding himself with neoconservatives – and make no mistake his replacement for Bolton is at least as much a neocon as the Mustached One himself – the president is isolating himself from any inputs advising military constraint when facing crises overseas. That is why many of us were so much hoping that Bolton would be replaced with a Realist like Col. Douglas Macgregor. There is a big danger that the president will be cornered by a lack of non-war options to the next crisis simply because he gives no quarter to non-war voices in his administration.
When we consider the plight of activists and whistleblowers, such as Assange, Snowden, etc. can we still talk about freedom of speech and human rights? Shouldn’t we mobilize more to support these activists and others around the world?
The plight of Snowden and Assange and all of the persecuted whistleblowers and truth-tellers is the plight of what is life of our liberty, freedom, and even Western civilization. When all dissent is quashed, imprisoned, tortured, we are left with only the Total State. The Total State, as we know from history, brooks no dissent because it can only maintain power by continuing the illusion that it alone is the source of truth. Thus any voice challenging the Total State, as the embodiment of truth, must on its face be a lie. Why would truth allow lies to undermine it? Why would any sane person oppose “the people” as represented in their Soviet government? Surely such a person would be insane and need of treatment rather than a citizen raising a legitimate question or differing opinion.
This is what we are facing in the US today. A Total State, where opposing views are de-platformed and disappeared. Where truth-tellers are jailed and tortured – pour servir d’avertissement aux autres (to serve as a warning to others).
What is your assessment of the Trump Presidency and what do you think of its foreign policy?
The Trump Presidency thus far has been an enormous disappointment. The president had the opportunity to name a top-notch foreign policy and national security team that would reflect and carry out his stated policies as a candidate – getting along with Russia, NATO skepticism, opposition to endless war, etc – but once in power he has again and again drawn from that same neoconservative cesspool that no matter who is elected always find its way to positions of power and influence. He did not chart a wise course in building a solid administration of professionals who agree with him – and there are plenty to choose from – and instead he actually hired an entire team of people who not only disagree with his stated positions, but they actually publicly ridicule them and work against them. It is unprecedented in my memory to see those who serve the president publicly undermining his stated positions, yet Bolton and Pompeo never hesitated or hesitate to do just that. This is an enormous missed opportunity for President Trump and for the United States.
You have been an advisor to Congressman Ron Paul and you are doing an excellent job as Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Can you explain to our readers what the missions of this institute are?
Our mission as a non-profit educational institution is to make the case for a non-interventionist foreign policy and the restoration of our civil liberties at home. We are the continuation of the Ron Paul liberty movement. To that end, we publish thousands of articles making the case for non-interventionism on our website, we broadcast a daily Ron Paul Liberty Report, and we hold conferences throughout the country bringing together a broad coalition of Americans – and non-Americans – to learn and promote peace and prosperity!
* * *
Daniel McAdams is executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-host of the “Ron Paul Liberty Report,” a daily live broadcast. He served for 12 years on Capitol Hill as foreign affairs and national security advisor to former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.
Aramco Crude Production Restored To Pre-Attack Levels, Official Says
Despite the worst attack on its infrastructure in the oil giant’s 80-year-plus history, Saudi state-owned oil giant Aramco has succeeded in making all of its shipments in the month of September, says Ibrahim Al-Buainain, the CEO of Aramco’s trading arm.
Moreover, the oil giant has also managed to restore its oil-production capacity to pre-attack levels, meeting an accelerated two-week timeline announced by the firm earlier this month.
Saudi oil output was cut in half by an attack on Aramco facilities, an attack that was allegedly orchestrated by Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival Iran (though Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels initially took credit for it).
In the wake of the attack, oil prices soared, as the kingdom warned that the equivalent of 5.5% of global production had been temporarily taken offline.
Initially, Aramco warned that the damage could take months to repair. However, the Saudis adjusted that prediction just days after the attacks as repairs reportedly progressed much more quickly than Aramco had initially anticipated, according to a senior executive.
And oil prices have erased all of the spike gains…
Still, the decline in Saudi output definitely had an impact on broader OPEC production levels, which tumbled to the lowest since 2004 in September.
According to a Reuters report from last week, Aramco opted to buy oil in larger quantities than it typically would from some of its neighbors to meet the Saudi oil giant’s supply obligations to foreign refineries.
To accomplish this, Aramco’s trading arm bought crude from the UAE and Kuwait to ship to refineries in several countries, including neighboring Bahrain, and as a as well as Malaysia and South Korea, Reuters’ sources said.
On Sept. 14, a fusillade of drones and low-flying cruise missiles penetrated Saudi air defenses and destroyed parts of two facilities that mainly processed Saudi light crude at Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais facilities in eastern Saudi Arabia.
The attacks initially knocked out 5.7 million b/d of production, more than half of the output of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter. Production has been restored to 9.9 million b/d, the company said on Monday, bringing it back to pre-attack levels.
Per Reuters, even before the attacks, Aramco would buy and trade third-party crude on the market, sometimes swapping it for other energy products. But the reduced output forced the kingdom to rely more on non-Saudi crude to fulfill its contracts.
Let’s just say that Americans representing the kingdom are making a killing while pushing U.S. jobs overseas.
The old maxim that “the U.S. government exists to buy arms at home and sell arms abroad” was never truer than today. Our defense budget is soaring to previously undreamed-of heights and overseas weapons deals are setting new records.
Indeed, the arms sales industry has become so multi-faceted that while some American corporations push weapons, other U.S. firms are making money by acting on behalf of the buyers. Thus a Lockheed Martin-Raytheon team recently dispatched to Riyadh to negotiate the finer points of the ongoing $15 billion deal for seven Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries jointly manufactured by the two companies, found themselves facing not Saudis across the table, but a team of executives from the Boston Consulting Group. This behemoth, which has $7.5 billion in global revenues, is just one of the firms servicing Mohammed “Bone Saw” Bin Salman’s vicious and spendthrift consolidation of power in the kingdom.
For arms dealers doing business in the kingdom, the most visible overhaul to date has been the consolidation of control over Saudi weapons purchases, and all branches of the armed forces, in the hands of MBS himself.
Previously, control in this area had been distributed among different factions of the ruling family, thus enabling each to enjoy the financial rewards (read: kickbacks) traditionally attendant to such deals. But MBS has made it his business, in every sense of the word, to cut out potentially rival middlemen by centralizing all Saudi defense business under the umbrella of the General Authority of Military Industries, with management in the trustworthy (he hopes) hands of close relatives and henchmen such as Mutlaq bin Hamad Al Murashid, the Princeton-trained nuclear engineer charged with developing the Saudi nuclear program.
The Boston Group has cultivated a market in advising foreign governments on arms buying, promoting the fostering of their own military-industrial complexes, or, as BCG executives demurely expressed the strategy in a 2018 paper:
“Unlike the way business was done in the past, today’s buyers want the defense contractor to invest in their country’s infrastructure, help develop their local defense capabilities, and diversify their economies.”
So-called “offset” agreements have long been a feature of major weapons export deals in which the exporter undertakes to award sub-contracts for the weapon system in the purchasing country, or else offer some other quid quo pro in the form of business or technology transfer. Their massive expansion in recent times, as highlighted in the BCG paper, brings an additional benefit for all parties involved. But it comes at a risk of sending U.S. defense jobs overseas, and opens up security vulnerabilities, since sensitive technology is now being shared with foreign arms manufacturers abroad.
But the promise of a lucrative offset contract to a company in which an influential figure on the buy side has an interest could be a powerful inducement to swing the decision in a favorable direction, an elegant solution to pesky prohibitions against bribery, including the hated 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that was inspired in part by revelations of arms-deals bribes by Lockheed and others.
As the well-informed Paris-based security news service Intelligence Online delicately puts it:
“One of the reasons for [the success of such arrangements] is that they are not totally covered by the transparency criteria governing commission payments [AKA bribes]which were brought into force by OECD convention in 1997.” (Not, of course, to suggest that BCG itself has base motivations in facilitating offset deals today.)
Of course, if the Riyadh based BCG office (“always buzzing with a motivating and inspiring vibe,” according to the corporate website) had the true interests of Saudi Arabia at heart, they would have thrown the THAAD sales force out on their ears. THAAD is a system distinguished not only by its enormous cost ($1 billion plus per six-launcher battery), but also by its total uselessness for the Saudis. Presumably, the Saudis have been sold on the THAAD as a defense against Iranian ballistic missiles like the old Soviet Scud and its various Iranian upgrades.
As its name suggests, the THAAD aims to intercept incoming short range or medium range ballistic missiles arcing down into the top of the atmosphere 25 to 90 miles up and no further away than 125 miles. The THAAD’s radar must therefore “acquire”–spot– the actual missile warhead, distinguishing it from nearby broken up pieces of its spent booster rocket or from decoys deliberately launched with it. The radar must then track and predict the future trajectory of the warhead itself, not confusing it with any of the accompanying bits and pieces. Relying on the radar’s predictions, the THAAD missile interceptor, once launched, must quickly accelerate to MACH 8 speed and guide with absolute precision to hit the target warhead directly, like a bullet. Near misses won’t do.
After a series of early, disastrous failures, the Pentagon is now touting a fifteen out of fifteen string of successful THAAD launchings. Needless to say, not one of these tests has been against a ballistic missile target accompanied by booster debris or decoys, much less against half a dozen of such missiles fired at once.
This alone should be reason enough for the Saudis to toss the deal, but even if the system could perform as advertised, it would have been entirely irrelevant as a defense against the September 14 Houthi attacks on Abqaiq and Kurais. The drones and cruise missiles employed clearly came in at low altitude, while THAAD is designed to operate against high altitude targets. The Patriot and Hawk batteries already in place are of course no better suited to confront low altitude threats, which are inevitably masked by ground clutter.
Even if the attackers had been obliging enough to send in ballistic missiles with a high-altitude trajectory, the THAAD would have offered little succor, since its infra-red seeker, as noted, cannot distinguish between actual warheads and decoys. Nor would the Russian S-400 system cheekily offered by Putin in the aftermath of the attack have fared better, and for many of the same reasons.
Such realities have found little place in the outpouring of commentary on the attacks, with little or no attention paid to easily available evidence. For example, published pictures of the damage at Abqaiq clearly show a number of liquified natural gas storage tanks pierced in the same place on their western sides. As former Pentagon analyst Pierre Sprey pointed out to me, this clearly shows that the attacks came from the west, not the north, as claimed in numerous media reports.
The consistent accuracy demonstrated by these impact holes indicates that the terminal guidance was not GPS, but rather human drone controllers, manually steering the slow flying drones, via the drones’ video cameras, into the target. For control purposes they would have to have been in line of sight to the drones (the only alternative would be an easily detectable satellite link) so they could have been no further than 36 miles away at most, assuming the drones were flying at a likely 300 feet altitude.
Instead of such cogent analysis, we have been presented with unquestioning reports of Saudi “evidence” that the attacks came directly from Iran in the form of pictures of an alleged wrecked Iranian drone discovered somewhere close to the targeted area.
Motivated and inspired, presumably, by the enormous sums of money to be made, the Boston Consultants and others advising the Saudi regime must have little interest in drawing attention to such tiresome details. There are arms to be bought and sold, and that is the whole point, bringing that old maxim, “the U.S. government exists to buy arms at home and sell arms abroad,” into a sharper, and yet more twisted, focus.
Pig Ebola Has Cost China Over $140 Billion As Locals Get Angry At Record High Pork Prices
There is a reason why an increasingly desperate Beijing is willing to suspend tariffs on US pork exports, and it has nothing to do with trade war de-escalation or concessions, and everything to do with preventing an angry and hungry mob from running rampant across China’s streets.
As Caixin reports, the widespread outbreak of African swine fever that has prompted China to slaughter millions of pigs has caused 1 trillion yuan ($140 billion) of direct losses, an industry expert estimates; if correct, the direct damage from the “pig ebola” is far greater than the monetary damages incurred from two years of escalating trade tariffs with the US.
The shocking number was unveiled at a pig industry forum last Tuesday by Li Defa, who heads the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University, and who notes that the upstream and downstream of the pork industry chain, such as pig feed and catering industry, were not included in the calculation, suggesting the full indirect losses from the crippling pork virus could be orders of magnitude greater.
For over a year, China’s pork industry has been crippled by an outbreak of the deadly pig virus since at least August 2018, when the first case was reported in Northeast China’s Liaoning province. It has since spread to all provincial level regions in the country, wiping out between one-third and half of all Chinese hog stocks and sending pork prices to record highs.
That’s contributed to broader food inflation. In August, China’s consumer price index, which measures the prices of a select basket of consumer goods and services, rose 2.8% year-on-year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). The average pork price increased 46.7% year-on-year — the fastest pace in more than eight years — adding 1.08 percentage points to CPI growth.
China pork price inflation jumped from +38% in August to +84% in September – WOW. All meat prices now record high. Shortages reported. Imports rumored. Hang on! pic.twitter.com/ZOUkIoZ9Es
The price of live pigs has surpassed 40 yuan per kilogram in late -September, more than doubling from when the epidemic first became publicly known in August last year.
Even the WaPo recently noted that “the most pressing political problem facing China’s leaders this week may not be the ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Nor the protracted trade war with the United States. No, it is probably a shortage of pork — during the Chinese zodiac year of the pig, no less — that has become so severe that the rulers of the Communist Party declared stabilizing pork supply and prices to be an ‘important political task’.”
Pork, as is widely known, is the main meat consumed in China, accounting for more than 60% of the country’s meat demand. The country is expected to consume 55 million tons of pork in 2020 with an estimated population of 1.4 billion, said Li: the Chinese love to eat pork. Red fried pork. Sweet-and-sour pork ribs. Glazed pork belly. Twice-cooked pork. Pork dumplings. Trotters. Chinese eat an average of 120 pounds of pork a year. Half the world’s pork is consumed here.
But with a slew of holidays on deck, officials are increasingly worried that public discontent will overshadow the celebrations. They are particularly concerned that pork shortages will ruin the “happy and peaceful atmosphere” required during the upcoming commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the biggest event on the Communist Party’s calendar this year.
“We should ensure pork supply by all means,” Vice Premier Hu Chunhua said at the end of last month, adding that China’s pork shortages would be “extremely severe” in the last quarter of this year and the first half of 2020.
“We must strengthen the guidance and management of public opinion,” he continued, according to a state media account of his remarks.
“If China loses more than half of its domestic pork production, it will not be easy to meet the demand gap by relying on foreign supplies,” Li said, failing to mention that if China is truly unable to restore its pork herds and prices continue to soar, the country’s massive lower and middle classes will soon become very angry.
To try to stabilize prices and feed domestic supply, the central government pledged to raise purchases of pork from overseas markets, including the U.S., a move which was seen as an olive branch in the trade war, but which in reality was just Beijing desperate to give the angry population what it wants.
China also released 10,000 tons of pork from state reserves last week to cope with a supply shortfall ahead of the weeklong National Day holiday, although not only did the move fail to put a dent on the soaring price of pork, it was instantly absorbed as it represented less than 2 hours of pork need across China.
China math: pork eaten = 6,200 mt per hour. China’s 10,000 mt release is less than 2 hours needs across China. #ASFhttps://t.co/hTEXGvjAYV
Should China fail to stabilize the country’s collapsing pork population, the following scene from the SCMP, which shows women in China fighting over the last piece of discounted pork at a market, will become increasingly more frequent, and violent.
“Pulled” pork? These women in China were filmed fighting over the last piece of discounted pork at a market pic.twitter.com/WSEq4r9fG6
In the meantime, the authorities are trying to turn consumers away from China’s favorite meat: the Life Times, a newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party, even suggested in a front-page special that eating too much pork was not healthy. “Eat less pork: Both your wallet and your body will thank you,” the publication wrote on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter.
China’s Internet users were not impressed. “This is a modern version of ‘Let them eat cake,’ ” responded Jiang Debin, quoting the line often attributed to Marie Antoinette when French peasants ran out of bread shortly before the revolution. “They are using so-called expert advice to deceive people, but dare not say don’t eat meat unless you have money.”
Rob Strayer, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Cyber and International Communications Policy, told reporters in Brussels on September 26 that the Trump administration is unlikely to grant another 90-day blanket waiver for transactions with China’s Huawei Technologies.
A 90-day waiver from Commerce Department prohibitions, the second granted, will expire November 19.
A refusal to grant a third waiver to the Chinese company, the world’s largest telecom networking equipment manufacturer and second-largest smartphone maker, would be the right move for the United States. After all, why should President Trump allow our companies to help Beijing steal the world’s data and remotely control devices connected to the internet?
In May, the Commerce Department, effective the 16th of that month, added Huawei to its “Entity List.” The designation meant no American company, without prior approval from Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, could sell or license to Huawei products and technology covered by the U.S. Export Administration Regulations.
Beijing has continually demanded the withdrawal of the designation and has made such a climbdown one of its preconditions to a comprehensive trade deal with the U.S.
Since then, the Chinese have, in addition to threats, also tried to get off the Entity List with sugar. This month, in a conversation with Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said he was “open to sharing our 5G technologies and techniques with U.S. companies, so that they can build up their own 5G industry.”
Thursday, the 74-year-old repeated the proposal during a live-streamed conversation with Stanford University academics Jerry Kaplan and Peter Cochrane. “We would like to offer an exclusive license to one company from the West so that it’s able to achieve economies of scale to support a business,” Ren said. “With this one company, I think it should be a U.S. company.” Bloomberg reported the license would cover chip designs, hardware, and source code.
The catch? As Ren told Friedman, “the U.S. side has to accept us at some level for that to happen.”
Acceptance certainly means the dropping of Huawei from the Entity List and, in all probability, the repeal of prohibitions on the installment of Huawei equipment in U.S. networks.
Ren’s generous-sounding offer should, of course, be rejected out of hand. There are many reasons why we should not import a Trojan Horse made in China. Moreover, America has no interest in helping Huawei become the global standard for equipment.
In addition, the thought of licensing tech from Huawei is nothing short of hideous. The Chinese company, founded in 1987, was built on stolen Cisco Systems technology, and from all indications has never stopped stealing. Why should we pay China for technology it criminally took — and is still taking — from us?
More fundamentally, why should we have any contact with Huawei? Trump’s instincts are to cut off all dealings. “We are not going to do business with Huawei,” the president said on August 9, “It’s much simpler not doing any business with Huawei.”
So let’s not do business with Huawei.
Despite the comments from Strayer on Thursday, there is concern the Trump administration is merely engaging in tough talk to get a better trade deal with Beijing. Chinese negotiators are scheduled to arrive in Washington, D.C. next month for the 13th round of discussions. Their goal, in addition to the removal of Trump’s tariffs, imposed to stop intellectual property theft, is to rescue Huawei.
In the run-up to the discussions, the Chinese are buying boatloads of soybeans — ten boatloads to be exact — as a means of creating a favorable atmosphere. So, could there be a bargain in the offing?
Many think so. “For the president, the tariffs and tough talk are part of a maximum pressure campaign on China to force Beijing into trading fairly with the United States,” said tech expert Brandon Weichert to Gatestone.
“For China, trade with the United States is viewed as a bonanza to acquire — steal — American technology and bilk our people out of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Any compromise with Beijing would, in the long-run, be to America’s disadvantage.”
It is hard to know what is on the president’s mind, but Weichert, the publisher of The Weichert Report, is certainly correct when he suggests America should not sign a deal with China, especially now.
On Tuesday, China’s Communist Party will celebrate the 70th anniversary of its coming to power. This is not a happy time for the communists, however, as their economy, the primary basis of their legitimacy, is crumbling.
China, in a sense, did not have an “economic miracle.” It achieved growth by maintenance of a predatory business model. That model, as Trump said during his U.N. General Assembly speech on Tuesday, has been based on, among other things, the taking of intellectual property. Huawei is proof that crime does in fact pay.
Unfortunately, a China ruled by communists will not relent on theft and related criminal behavior. Trump tried to create good will by, among other things, granting exemptions from U.S. tech-transfer prohibitions to Huawei this year and to ZTE Corp., the other large Chinese telecom-equipment maker, a year ago.
Unfortunately, these two companies, despite Trump’s reprieves, have continued to engage in unacceptable behavior. ZTE has almost certainly violated its settlement agreement with the U.S, by installing Dell equipment in Venezuela, and Huawei is currently under investigation for additional instances of intellectual property theft. It is, therefore, time to impose “death sentences” on the pair of Chinese giants, in other words, cut both of them off from U.S. technology.
Friedman, in relaying Ren’s offer to grant a license to a U.S. company, wrote “we’re heading for a two-technology world, with a Chinese zone and an American zone, and a digital Berlin Wall running right down the middle.”
The New York Times columnist is right about what could happen, but such a divide would be a good thing. We did not win the Cold War by enriching the Soviet Union. We should not try to enrich China now.
