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Authored by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, op-ed via USAToday.com,

What’s happening in America is an echo of what’s happening in democracies around the world, and it’s not happening because of Trump.

To understand events around the world today, one must think in terms of the class struggle.

This sentence sounds like something that could be written by a doctrinaire Marxist. But it is nonetheless true. Much of the current tension in America and in many other democracies is in fact a product of a class struggle. It’s not the kind of class struggle that Karl Marx wrote about, with workers and peasants facing off against rapacious capitalists, but it is a case of today’s ruling class facing disaffection from its working class.

In the old Soviet Union, the Marxists assured us that once true communism was established under a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” the state would wither away and everyone would be free. In fact, however, the dictatorship of the proletariat turned into a dictatorship of the party hacks, who had no interest whatsoever in seeing their positions or power wither.

“Yellow Vest” protesters near the Champs Elysees in Paris on Nov. 24, 2018. (Photo: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images)

Yugoslav dissident Milovan Djilas called these party hacks the “New Class,” noting that instead of workers and peasants against capitalists, it was now a case of workers and peasants being ruled by a managerial new class of technocrats who, while purporting to act for the benefit of the workers and peasants, somehow wound up with the lion’s share of the goodies. Workers and peasants stood in long lines for bread and shoddy household goods, while party leaders and government managers bought imported delicacies in special, secret stores. (In a famous Soviet joke, then-leader Leonid Brezhnev shows his mother his luxury apartment, his limousine, his fancy country house and his helicopter only to have her object: “But what if the communists come back?”)

Djilas’ work was explosive — he was jailed — because it made clear that the workers and peasants had simply replaced one class of exploiters with another. It set the stage for the Soviet Union’s implosion, and for the discrediting of communism among everyone with any sense.

Elites of postwar institutions don’t want change

But the New Class isn’t limited to communist countries, really. Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements.  

And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change.

The postwar era saw the creation of international institutions ranging from NATO to the United Nations to the World Bank, along with a proliferation of think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to accompany them. It saw the vast expansion of higher education in the United States, and the transformation of academic degrees into something close to must-haves for the upper-middle class. It saw a great expansion of power on the part of media organizations, and on the part of government bureaucrats and lobbyists, both of whose numbers increased enormously.

But after the turn of the millennium, other Americans, much like the workers and peasants in the old Soviet Union, started to notice that while the New Class was doing quite well (America’s richest counties now surround Washington, D.C.), things weren’t going so well for them. And what made it more upsetting was that — while the Soviet Union’s apparatchiks at least pretended to like the workers and peasants — members of America’s ruling class seemed to view ordinary Americans with something like contempt, using terms such as “bitter clingers,” “deplorables” and flyover people.

Class wars in America disguised as culture wars

Suddenly, to a lot of voters, those postwar institutional arrangements stopped looking so good. But, of course, the beneficiaries showed no sign of giving them up. This has led to a lot of political discord, and a lot of culture war, since in America class warfare is usually disguised as cultural warfare. But underneath the surface, talk is a battle between the New Class and what used to be the middle class.

If you look at the “yellow jacket” protests in France, the election of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and events in places like Italy and Hungary — or, for that matter, the Brexit movement in Britain — you find a similar unhappiness with institutional arrangements and the sleek and self-satisfied elites who benefit from them.  People who, in President Bill Clinton’s famous phrase, worked hard and played by the rules now suspect that the rules were rigged, and that they were treated as chumps.

Talking about the yellow-vest movement, French geographer Christophe Guilluy observes: “Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist, but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.”

That’s right. It’s class war masquerading as something else, but people have seen through the mask.

Understanding this won’t make the conflict less intense, but it might make it clearer what’s really at stake. What’s happening in America is an echo of what’s happening in democracies around the world, and it’s not happening because of Trump. Trump is the symptom of a ruling class that many of the ruled no longer see as serving their interest, and the anti-Trump response is mostly the angry backlash of that class as it sees its position, its perquisites and — perhaps especially — its self-importance threatened.

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Controversial founder and ex-CEO of the private security firm Blackwater, Erik Prince told Fox Business this week that private military contractors could replace the U.S. troops that are withdrawing from Syria.

Following a similar failed proposal Prince reportedly made through White House channels in 2017 to privatize the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan — which some contractor industry analysts have suggested Trump was “sympathetic” to — it appeared Prince was attempting to pitch both Washington and the American public in the Fox interview on the “alternate” plan. “The United States doesn’t have a long-term strategic obligation to stay in Syria. But, I also think it’s not a good idea to abandon our allies,” he told Fox Business.

Prince offered the plan as a solution to the administration’s current stated dilemma of withdrawing troops in such a way that both protects the US-backed Kurdish SDF and prevents Iran from becoming more entrenched in the region. This way, according to Prince, private contractors could fill the void while allowing Trump to stand behind his repeat promises to end “forever wars”. 

“American history is filled with public and private partnerships, of places that the private sector can fill those gaps, where a very expensive military probably shouldn’t be,” Prince said. “If there is not some kind of robust capability to defend from a ground invasions from the very conventional power that the Iranians and the Syrians have, our allies will be smashed,” he continued.

Prince — the brother of billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — has over the past years since selling his mired-in-controversy Blackwater group (now Academi) begun a new mercenary empire in China called Frontier Services Group (FSG), in a market where Western firms of necessity find themselves working closely with Chinese state authorities. He’s reportedly had success in securing security and logistics contracts in Africa and China, and has since at least 2017 lobbied both top US generals and Congressional leaders to consider massive privatization of the now fast approaching two decade long quagmire in Afghanistan, from which Trump has recently vowed to extricate the United States. 

Prince’s prior headline grabbing Afghan plan involved some 6,000+ mercenaries overseen by a “viceroy” reporting directly to the White House, and with a private air force to boot. An extensive report in The Atlantic at the time the plan went public, in August 2017, noted that the generals hated the plan and thought it unrealistic, with some officials calling it “absurd”, and further doubting that Prince had US interests at heart. 

Similar to his lobbying capitol hill with the Afghan privatization plan before, Prince has already long been shopping his Syria privatization plan around D.C. and even Arab Gulf capitals before taking it public; but the fact that he’s now appearing on Fox to pitch it across the air waves means no doubt many doors have already been slammed in his face. 

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Authored by Robert Wenzel via TargetLiberty.com,

Think things are bad in the US and Europe when it comes to social media speech suppression?

Check out, Africa.

Will this be our future?

Aware of the threat that social media poses to their power, repressive regimes in Africa have employed various methods to stifle internet-based mobilization.

These include internet shutdowns, targeted social media applications shutdowns, website takedowns, extensive surveillance of digital communications, online propaganda, and the detention of online critics, writes Babatunde Okunoye for Foreign Affairs.

According to Okunoye, in 2018, repressive governments adopted yet another tactic: taxes on social media usage.

In countries such as Uganda, Benin, Tanzania and Zambia, there are now laws in place which impose daily taxes on social media and other over-the-top services.

In Uganda, for instance, citizens have to pay 200 Ugandan Shillings (US $ 0.05) per day to access Facebook, Twitter, or WhatsApp as a law adopted last year.

Citizens of Benin have had to pay 5 CFA francs ($0.008) per megabyte consumed through social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter as stipulated by Decree No. 2018 – 341 of July 25 2018. The decree also introduces a 5 percent fee, on top of taxes, on texting and calls.

These laws also make the cost of maintaining personal websites by citizens prohibitively expensive.

As a result of the Electronic and Postal Communications Regulations 2018, citizens in Tanzania now must pay a $920 fee to receive the government’s permission to maintain a website…

Most citizens believe that these measures were drawn up to restrict the space for freedom of expression in worsening human rights contexts in countries like Uganda and Tanzania. While some of these social media taxes have been couched as measures to raise government revenue, given the poor economic situation prevalent in much of Africa, virtually everyone sees them for what they really are – attempts to stifle the right to freedom of expression and association of the millions of Africans demanding more from their governments.

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Barely a day after the Associated Press reported that New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand would likely announce her candidacy ahead of a weekend trip to Iowa, the junior senator and former Clinton confidante – who was appointed to fill Clinton’s seat when she became Secretary of State – has reportedly given the scoop about her campaign announcement to the Washington Post, which reported Tuesday night that Gillibrand will be seeking the nomination.

The New York Democrat, 52, easily sailed to reelection during the midterms, is jumping in to what’s expected to be a crowded Democratic primary field. Gillibrand will officially announce her campaign Tuesday night during an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (the episode has already been taped and will air during its usual time slot of 11:35 pm ET).

“The first thing I would do is restore what’s been lost: the integrity and the compassion in this country,” she said. “I would bring people together to start getting things done.”

Since Trump’s election, Gillibrand has tried to position herself as a paragon of the anti-Trump “Resistance”…

The senator has latched on to the burst of activism prompted by President Trump’s election and his policies, a movement that’s largely driven by women. She called the 2017 Women’s March on Washington “truly the most inspiring moment of my entire life” and joined the protesters who challenged Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court last fall. She also stood up to fellow Democrats as the #MeToo era dawned, criticizing then-Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota and former president Bill Clinton for their alleged inappropriate behavior toward women.

Gillibrand is also a vocal critic of Trump, and she has voted against his political appointees and positions at a higher rate than most Democrats. The president responded in December 2017 by attacking her in a tweet that she called “a sexist smear.”

…Which is ironic because back when she was an up-and-coming Congresswoman representing a conservative district in Upstate New York, she embraced mostly “centrist” policies and even received a 100% rating from the NRA.

Some of her policy positions rapidly changed. The night before her appointment was announced, she called a gay rights group to profess her full support for same-sex marriage. As she voted for gun-control measures, her NRA rating fell to an F.

Gillibrand said in a CBS News interview last year that as she expanded her views beyond “the lens of Upstate New York,” she realized that her gun rights and immigration positions were “wrong.”

“I just didn’t take the time to understand why these issues mattered because it wasn’t right in front of me. And that was my fault,” Gillibrand said in the interview. “It was something that I’m embarrassed about and I’m ashamed of.”

She won a special election in 2010 with 63 percent of the vote and followed with 72 percent of the vote in 2012, when she earned her first full term, and 67 percent in November. The last campaign came as Gillibrand navigated intraparty divisions over how to handle the #MeToo movement.

Gillibrand is the second purported front-runner to enter the race after Elizabeth Warren formed an exploratory committee earlier this month, widely seen as a first step toward announcing a campaign.

But with Gillibrand in the race, one can only wonder how she might react if her former mentor, Hillary Clinton, decides to give her life-long dream of being president one more shot.

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Yesterday’s Gillette ad has triggered more than a few hairy-chested lumberjack types across America… raising the question – Should we be teaching young boys to reject traditional masculinity?

Well, as Michael Snyder reports, via The End of The American Dream blog, according to the American Psychological Association, that is precisely what we should be doing. 

In this day and age, “traditional masculinity” has been renamed “toxic masculinity”, and an all-out attempt is being made to eradicate traditional forms of male behavior from our society.  We see this happening in our classrooms, we see this happening in popular culture, and lately this new agenda is being constantly pushed by the mainstream media.  For example, the New York Times just published a piece about the new guidelines for men that the American Psychological Association recently issued.  Their article was entitled “Traditional Masculinity Can Hurt Boys, Say New A.P.A. Guidelines”, and it suggests that we need to totally redefine what it means “to be a man”…

The guidelines, 10 in all, posit that males who are socialized to conform to “traditional masculinity ideology” are often negatively affected in terms of mental and physical health.

They acknowledge that ideas about masculinity vary across cultures, age groups and ethnicities. But they point to common themes like “anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.”

In other words, they want men to become weak, feminine under-achievers that never take risks and never go on adventures.

And to a significant degree, the elite have already made quite a bit of progress in removing traditional masculinity from our society.  Today, millions upon millions of American men feel lost, defeated and beaten down.  And even the APA’s official article about these new guidelines acknowledges  that we have a very real crisis on our hands…

But something is amiss for men as well. Men commit 90 percent of homicides in the United States and represent 77 percent of homicide victims. They’re the demographic group most at risk of being victimized by violent crime. They are 3.5 times more likely than women to die by suicide, and their life expectancy is 4.9 years shorter than women’s. Boys are far more likely to be diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder than girls, and they face harsher punishments in school—especially boys of color.

But instead of embracing masculinity, the solution that the American Psychological Association is pushing is to try to eradicate it altogether.

They openly admit that they are trying to “change” the culture, and they argue that traditional masculinity had been hindering our society “by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles”…

First, clinicians must be aware of dominant masculine ideals, and cognizant of their own potential biases. Second, they must recognize the integrated nature of masculinity, and how factors ranging from spirituality to ability status to age and ethnicity interact. Mental health professionals must also understand how power, privilege and sexism work both by conferring benefits to men and by trapping them in narrow roles.

The underlying message is that if you wish to embrace traditional masculinity you are a bad person, and we see this message reinforced in popular culture all the time.

For instance, in literally hundreds of television shows and movies, fathers are portrayed as bumbling dolts that are always getting into some sort of trouble.  Meanwhile, their wives are portrayed as the smart, capable, responsible ones.

Or if there is a “bad guy” in a television show or movie, there is a more than 95 percent chance that it is going to be a man.  At the same time, there is a concerted effort by Hollywood to portray women as executives, leaders and achievers.

They say that art imitates life, but in this case life is imitating art.  At this point, females are greatly outperforming males at every level of education…

“Girls outperform boys in elementary school, middle school, high school, and college, and graduate school,” says Dr. Michael Thompson, a school psychologist who writes about the academic problems of boys in his book, “Raising Cain.” He says that after decades of special attention, girls are soaring, while boys are stagnating.

“Girls are being told, ‘Go for it, you can do it. Go for it, you can do it.’ They are getting an immense amount of support,” he says. “Boys hear that the way to shine is athletically. And boys get a lot of mixed messages about what it means to be masculine and what it means to be a student. Does being a good student make you a real man? I don’t think so… It is not cool.”

And women have earned at least 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in this country for 18 years in a row…

Women earned approximately 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded by U.S. institutions of higher education in the 2016-2017 academic year, according to data released this week by the National Center for Education Statistics, which is part of the U.S. Department of Education.

That, according to NCES data, makes 2016-2017 the eighteenth straight academic year in which women have earned approximately 57 percent of the bachelor’s degrees awarded by U.S. colleges and universities.

Clearly we have a huge problem.  But according to the American Psychological Association, it is a bad thing for young boys to put an emphasis on “achievement”.

Of course the truth is that masculinity is not “toxic” at all.  Just like femininity, masculinity should be embraced and celebrated.

But instead, the elite are spreading very toxic ideas that are deeply dividing the American people.  I really like how author Heather MacDonald made this point…

America is in crisis, from the university to the workplace. Toxic ideas first spread by higher education have undermined humanistic values, fueled intolerance, and widened divisions in our larger culture. Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton? Oppressive. American history? Tyranny. Professors correcting grammar and spelling, or employers hiring by merit? Racist and sexist. Students emerge into the working world believing that human beings are defined by their skin color, gender, and sexual preference, and that oppression based on these characteristics is the American experience. Speech that challenges these campus orthodoxies is silenced with brute force.

The American people are more deeply divided than ever before, and it is difficult to imagine such a deeply divided nation having any sort of a positive future.

We have got to learn how to love one another, and it would greatly help if we could rediscover the shared values that once made this country so great.

Unfortunately, the politically-correct crowd is becoming more dominant with each passing year, and they are absolutely obsessed with permanently altering our culture.

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On Tuesday, United States authorities charged numerous mostly Ukrainian hackers for a scheme to trade on press releases that had not yet been released. The Ukrainians breached the SEC’s EDGAR database to receive access to the nonpublic information.

The scheme netted over $4 million for fraudsters from the U.S., Russia and Ukraine. Using 157 corporate earnings announcements, the group was able to execute trades on material nonpublic information. Most of those filings were “test filings,” which corporations upload to the SEC’s website.

The charges were announced Tuesday by Craig Carpenito, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, alongside the SEC, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates financial crimes. In a Tuesday press conference, Carpenito said the thefts included thousands of valuable, private business documents. “After hacking into the EDGAR system they stole drafts of [these] reports before the information was disseminated to the general public,” he said.

The elaborate scheme involved seven individuals and operated from May to at least October 2016. Prosecutors said the traders were part of the same group that previously hacked into newswire services, according to CNBC.

Similar to the way John Podesta’s email account was hacked, the hackers used malicious software sent via email to SEC employees. Then, after planting the software on the SEC computers, they sent the information they were able to gather from the EDGAR system to servers in Lithuania, where they either used it or distributed the data to other criminals, Carpenito said. The EDGAR service operates in New Jersey, which is why the Justice Department office in Newark was involved in the case.

Those documents included quarterly earnings, mergers and acquisitions plans and other sensitive news, and the criminals were able to view it before it was released as a public filing, thus affecting the individual companies’ stock prices. The alleged hackers executed trades on the reports and also sold them to other illicit traders. One inside trader made $270,000 in a single day, according to Carpenito.

Stephanie Avakian, co-head of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said the same criminals also stole advance press releases sent to three newswire services, though she didn’t name the newswires. The hackers used multiple broker accounts to collect the illicit gains, she said.

The defendants then kicked back a portion of their trading profits to Oleksandr Ieremenko, a Ukrainian (oddly not Russian) hacker that is said to have infiltrated the database at some point between May 2016 in October 2016. There, he obtained thousands of “test filings” which included, among other things, earnings results.

Two Ukrainians were charged by the Justice Department with hacking the database — Oleksandr Ieremenko and Artem Radchenko. Seven further individuals and entities were also named in a civil suit by the SEC for trading on the illicit information: Sungjin Cho, David Kwon, Igor Sabodakha, Victoria Vorochek, Ivan Olefir, Andrey Sarafanov, Capyield Systems, Ltd. (owned by Olefir) and Spirit Trade Ltd.

Ieremenko had previously been charged in 2015 for a similar plot involving hacking into the databases of distribution companies who are responsible for putting out corporate press releases. Ieremenko and Artem Radchenko face a criminal indictment for conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Radchenko allegedly “recruited traders to join the conspiracy” and kept notes on what the SEC does and how to hack it, the Justice Department said.

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Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi, op-ed via RT.com,

In an effort to circumvent US-imposed sanctions, India and Iran have reportedly ditched the US dollar and are trading oil in rupees. The reason becomes clear after considering the dynamics at play in the region.

In mid-February last year, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited India, and the two countries signed nine agreements signalling a strengthening of ties. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared to celebrate the growing relationship, stating that it was “a matter of great pleasure” for India that an Iranian president came to India “after a gap of 10 years.”

Fast-forward a few months later, and then-UN ambassador Nikki Haley was bluntly telling India that they should rethink their relationship with Tehran.

Donald Trump’s decision to rip up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) last year, also known as the Iranian nuclear accord, was a particularly significant blow to Iran-India relations. At the time the JCPOA was formulated, Indian officials believed the deal to be the “best deal available.” After the JCPOA’s implementation in 2016, exports of Iranian oil to India increased by more than 110 percent.

Maybe the issue isn’t always that Washington wants to contain its rivals in the Middle East and Asia, but perhaps there is a chance that it also wants to keep a lid on its so-called allies as well. Right now, India is the third largest oil consumer in the world, and is expected to become the largest by the year 2040. As its domestic reserves are not meeting the needs of its rapidly expanding economy, India has been importing 80 percent of its oil supply from overseas, including and especially Iran.

Prior to Washington’s Iran-sanctions regime, Iran was India’s third largest supplier of crude oil (it is now about sixth place). It is no surprise therefore, that India’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson responded by saying that Haley had “her views, and our views on Iran are very clear.”He also warned that India would “take all necessary steps, including engagement with relevant stakeholders to ensure our energy security.”

It does seem like the days of foreign states being bullied into adopting a dangerous foreign policy are over. If Washington has any doubt about this, they need only turn to this exclusive Reuters report which revealed that India had begun paying Iran for its oil in rupees, according to a senior bank official, under the guise of a six-month waiver which was given to seven other countries (including China). According to the report, in a previous round of US-imposed sanctions, India settled approximately half of oil payments in rupees and the remainder in euros. However, this time around, all payments are to be made in rupees.

Furthermore, the agreement, worth $1.5 billion, reportedly hands Iran a tax break of $637 million. For its part, Iran will use its rupee supply to fund its imports of pharmaceuticals and other items from India, invest in Indian businesses and pay for Iranian missions and students in India.

Prior to this arrangement, US-led sanctions continued to decimate Iran’s ability to trade freely with its partner. Oilprice explains that in December, Indian oil imports from Iran plunged by 41 percent to just over 300,000 barrels per day (bpd). This is effectively the amount allowed under Washington’s waiver.

Insurance companies are becoming increasingly unwilling to engage in transactions involving Iran, due to the risk that sanctions attract. However, according to a separate Reuters report, Russian and Chinese shipping companies had been pitching to facilitate India-Iran trade.

It seems to me that if enough countries continue to pull together to override Washington’s sanctions, they will at some point be rendered completely ineffective. It also seems as though Washington is pushing these countries to work more closely together, whereas these countries may have been freer to explore their differences and their disagreements had they been left to their own devices.

The blunt truth is that India and Iran have too much in common for India to submit fully to Washington’s strategy of global bullying. There is also a lot of things that Iran can give India which the United States cannot, and not just free shipping, insurance and extended credit. As the Diplomat explains, India and Iran both share an interest in combating Sunni-backed extremism, especially in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They both have an interest in doing what they can to outmanoeuvre China in certain aspects.

In February last year, the two nations came to an agreement involving a lease between Iran’s Port and Maritime Organization and India Ports Global Limited, which allowed India to run part of Chabahar Port for 18 months.

The two countries released a joint statement at the time, describing the port as a “golden gateway” that will help the two countries in reaching out to Afghanistan and Central Asia. This gateway is so golden, it seems, that India has already committed over $500 million to the project, with indications that it could become a multi-billion dollar project.

The idea of the project is to improve “energy, security and regional connectivity” to reach Afghanistan. In reality, it allowsIndia to ship supplies to Afghanistan while bypassing Pakistan. Chabahar Port in southeastern Iran is approximately 90km (56 miles) west of the Pakistani port of Gwadar, the epicentre of an enormous Chinese infrastructure program in Pakistan. This is the same location where it was rumored that China was establishing a military base.

In other words, if India is forced to join the US effort to completely isolate Iran on the world stage, it may risk losing out on a significant chunk of the regional fruits to Pakistan and China. This is not conjecture; Iran has already reached out to Pakistan and China to participate in the Chabahar project. As the all-knowing Atlantic Council summarised, if India bows to the US, it risks losing Iran to China.

India also needs Iran’s ports to complete the so-called International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which would ideally connect India to the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, Russia and even Europe, and would allegedly increase India’s $1 billion trade with Central Asia to a whopping $170 billion.

China already has a direct connection to Central Asia, placing India at a disadvantage by default, and its trade with Central Asian nations is already at $30 billion; well above India’s. In 2000, India, Iran and Russia signed an agreement for the purpose of developing the North-South transport corridor.

India, Iran and Afghanistan held a tripartite meeting in September last year in which they discussed the Afghanistan peace process, cooperation against terrorism, as well as Chabahar Port. It is noticeable, to say the least, that Pakistan and China were not involved in this discussion. Just last week, Iran and India held a similar meeting.

India is also currently developing two gas fields, Farzad-B in Tehran and the South Pars field located between Iran and Qatar (which is the largest gas field in the world). Trump may soon begin to realise how difficult it is to isolate these states from one another after the simple examination of a world atlas.

Even the effect of US sanctions on ordinary people that the United States consider allies appear to not have been taken into account. Most reports allege that the absence of Iranian oil makes oil market prices shoot through the roof, affecting common Indian residents who had been enjoying cheaper oil prices under the JCPOA. Does the US want the people of India to hate Iran, or to hate the enforcer of these sanctions?

Reportedly, a “preferential trade”agreement between Iran and India is also in the works which will come into force in the not-so-distant future. The two nations have also already signed an agreement worth $2 billion on cooperation in the railway sector. At the start of this year, Iran also announced it would invest Rs 1,500 crore to expand a refinery run by Chennai Petroleum Corp, in a move that sees Iran attempting to counter US-imposed sanctions and cement its position in India.

You won’t see this in the mainstream media, but India also quietly allowed an Iranian bank to open a branch in Mumbai just last week.

Despite undue pressure from Washington, at the end of the day India still has indicated it will abide by its sanctions and the waiver that it has been given (as far as possible).

It is therefore unclear what the US is hoping to achieve through this strategy. Yes, sanctions greatly weaken Iran’s economy and threaten the collapse of its currency, but they also push these adversarial states to consider agreements which circumvent the use of the US dollar, even with Washington’s more traditional allies. If enough countries drop the use of the dollar in bilateral trade, the dollar will no longer have the international use it once had. As of right now, Venezuela, Qatar, China, Russia, India and Iran – just to name a few – are all nations who have considered the use of alternative currencies to counter Washington’s sanctions regime.

If the ultimate aim of the US is to weaken the dollar’s status on the global markets, then it can be my guest.

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A storm developing in southern California could make its way to the Mid-Atlantic and the rest of the Northeast this weekend.

A large-scale atmospheric pattern supports another storm, yet the type of participation is still a mystery. That being said, the potential for Snowmageddon is something meteorologists will be monitoring this week because cold air will be abundant, should it form and follow a track that would affect the Northeast.

Vallee Weather Consulting meteorologist Ed Valle warned Sunday that a “very favorable pattern for snow and cold could potentially arrive next weekend and beyond.”

In short, Valle is convinced another winter storm is dead ahead.

“The pattern across the eastern United States is in flux. We continue to see signs that as we head toward this weekend and beyond, the theoretical atmospheric stars may align to promote a colder and possibly snowier outcome for many in the East. While there remains some uncertainty as to how cold the air mass will be, an infusion of moisture from the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico should provide no shortage of moisture. The amount of cold available will ultimately dictate what precipitation type any one location sees, and is something that will be ironed out as systems get closer in time. At this juncture, all areas from the Midwest to Northeast, including the major cities, are in play for wintry mischief as we close out January,” Valle said in a weather update on Monday.

The European model shows much uncertainty to where the storm is exactly headed. However, 51 different forecast models all point to the possibility of wicked winter weather from now until the end of January for the Mid-Atlantic and North East regions.

Ignore the specific numbers, but my goodness ensembles are suggesting quite the active period coming up. All 51 EPS members are shown below through 1/28… pic.twitter.com/rovzGOSKy1

— Ed Vallee | Vallee Wx Consulting (@EdValleeWx) January 13, 2019

Vallee indicates that “interior snow chances this coming weekend – coastal areas (i.e. 95 corridors) will be track dependent.”

Feel pretty confident about interior snow chances this coming weekend – coastal areas (i.e. 95 corridor) will be track dependent. Stay tuned! https://t.co/CWkzbt87mJ

— Ed Vallee | Vallee Wx Consulting (@EdValleeWx) January 14, 2019

New York Metro Weather said they are “monitoring the atmospheric evolution, and the potential for snow does exist.” They provide a weather model that shows the formation of the storm and how it is expected to slam in the East this weekend.

You may have heard about the potential for winter weather this coming weekend. We’re closely monitoring the atmospheric evolution, and the potential for snow does exist. Here are the features we’ll be watching closely, as a disturbance approaches the East Coast later this week: pic.twitter.com/Z0SdRqh32B

— New York Metro Weather (@nymetrowx) January 14, 2019

Vallee correctly pointed out on Sunday, “natgas could be the greatest beneficiary of a significant cold pattern change coming to the East Coast in the second half of January into Feburary.”

Heating degree day (HDD), a measurement designed to quantify the demand for energy needed to heat a building, has signaled that natgas demand is likely to increase in the lower 48 over the coming week.

After a near -41% collapse in natgas from November’s 4.92 high, the current shift in cold and snowy weather closed natgas up +16% on Monday. 

Nat Gas settles 16% higher ahead of NE winter storm. pic.twitter.com/0PPu7ibQgb

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 14, 2019

Vallee shows in the next 6 to 10 days – temperatures across the country are expected to plunge.

Winter. Is. Coming. 6-10 day temperature anomaly illustrates colder risks infiltrating the central U.S. #natgas pic.twitter.com/yq572ke46t

— Ed Vallee | Vallee Wx Consulting (@EdValleeWx) January 14, 2019

Vallee also shows the GFS model points to a very active next two weeks across the Midwest and East.

Stepping back and examining the pattern for a moment. Just glancing at the midday GFS model, specifics aside, it is hard to envision one of these many systems not producing on the wintry side over the next 2 weeks across the Midwest and East. pic.twitter.com/n6c5QLJSvk

— Ed Vallee | Vallee Wx Consulting (@EdValleeWx) January 14, 2019

New York has not had a significant snowstorm since Nov. 15, according to the National Weather Service. Boston had less than an inch so far. That may be about to change if the models are correct.

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