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The last time European Union officials were being spied on – and questioned it publicly (after Edward Snowden exposed the reality) – it was the Obama administration in 2013.

Now five years later, The Telegraph reports that the EU’s Brexit negotiators fear that they are being bugged by the British secret service after the UK obtained sensitive documents “within hours” of them being presented to a meeting of EU officials last month.

The EU bugging fears were raised at a meeting in the European Council on July 13 by a top member of Michel Barnier’s Brexit negotiating team, according to a highly placed EU source.

Sabine Weyand told EU officials attending the meeting of the European Council’s Article 50 Working Party that “it could not be excluded” that British intelligence had penetrated their meetings, the source said.

The EU fears were spawned after British negotiators obtained the contents of a politically explosive slide presentation almost immediately after they were shared on July 5 – just a day before Theresa May’s crunch Chequers summit .

The slides, the contents of which have been communicated to The Telegraph, contained highly negative European Commission economic assessments of British plans to remain in the EU’s “single market for goods”.

Within hours, the source said, the UK had lobbied at the “highest level” to block EU Commission plans to publish the slides which would have been widely regarded as a pre-emptive EU strike against the Chequers plan.

The UK efforts to suppress publication of the slides were successful – they have not since been published – but the Telegraph claims  that their contents raise serious questions about the political viability of Mrs May’s Brexit plans.

The slides warned that leaving the UK free to diverge on services, while promising to remain closely aligned on goods regulations, would give the UK a damaging competitive advantage over time.

Speaking privately to The Telegraph, UK officials dismiss the European bugging concerns as “too imaginative,”…

“We don’t need to resort to secret methods,” said one very senior UK official involved in the talks, “there are plenty of friends who will share what is going on anyway.”

And a senior EU diplomat involved in the Brexit talks made light of Ms Weyand’s fears of British eavesdropping.

“To be honest, we have never thought anything different,” he said, noting that the Obama administration bugging the phone of Mrs Merkel destroyed any illusions that allies would not bug each other.

The allegations come as British negotiators are set to return to Brussels today to resume Brexit talks with the two sides remaining far apart on the key issues of customs arrangements and Ireland, and Latvia’s foreign minister warning on Wednesday that the risk of a ‘no deal’ outcome was now “50-50”.

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Authored by Jim O’Neill, originally on Project Syndicate

As the Turkish lira continues to depreciate against the dollar, fears of a classic emerging-market crisis have come to the fore. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s populist economic policies have finally caught up to him, and sooner or later, he will have to make nice with his country’s traditional Western allies.

Turkey’s falling currency and deteriorating financial conditions lend credence, at least for some people, to the notion that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” I suspect that many Western policymakers, in particular, are not entirely unhappy about Turkey’s plight.

To veteran economic observers, Turkey’s troubles are almost a textbook case of an emerging-market flop. It is August, after all, and back in the 1990s, one could barely go a single year without some kind of financial crisis striking in the dog days of summer.

But more to the point, Turkey has a large, persistent current-account deficit, and a belligerent leader who does not realize – or refuses to acknowledge – that his populist economic policies are unsustainable. Moreover, Turkey has become increasingly dependent on overseas investors (and probably some wealthy domestic investors, too).

Given these slowly gestating factors, markets have long assumed that Turkey was headed for a currency crisis. In fact, such worries were widespread as far back as the fall of 2013, when I was in Istanbul interviewing business and financial leaders for a BBC Radio series on emerging economies. At that time, markets were beginning to fear that monetary-policy normalization and an end to quantitative easing in the United States would have dire consequences globally. The Turkish lira has been flirting with disaster ever since.

Now that the crisis has finally come to pass, it is Turkey’s population that will bear the brunt of it. The country must drastically tighten its domestic monetary policy, curtail foreign borrowing, and prepare for the likelihood of a full-blown economic recession, during which time domestic saving will slowly have to be rebuilt.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s leadership will both complicate matters and give Turkey some leverage. Erdoğan has steadily been seizing constitutional powers, reducing those of the parliament, and undercutting the independence of monetary and fiscal policymaking. And to top it off, he seems to be reveling in an escalating feud with US President Donald Trump’s administration over Turkey’s imprisonment of an American pastor and purchase of a Russian S-400 missile-defense system.

This is a dangerous brew for the leader of an emerging economy to imbibe, particularly when the United States itself has embarked on a Ronald Reagan-style fiscal expansion that has pushed the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates faster than it would have otherwise. Given the unlikelihood of some external source of funding emerging, Erdoğan will eventually have to back down on some of his unorthodox policies. My guess is that we’ll see a return to a more conventional monetary policy, and possibly a new fiscal-policy framework.

As for Turkey’s leverage in the current crisis, it is worth remembering that the country has a large and youthful population, and thus the potential to grow into a much larger economy in the future. It also enjoys a privileged geographic position at the crossroads of Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia, which means that many major players have a stake in ensuring its stability. Indeed, many Europeans still hold out hope that Turkey will embrace Western-style capitalism, despite the damage that Erdoğan has done to the country’s European Union accession bid.

Among the regional powers, Russia is sometimes mentioned as a potential savior for Turkey. There is no doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin would love to use Turkey’s crisis to pull it even further away from its NATO allies. But Erdoğan and his advisers would be deeply mistaken to think that Russia can fill Turkey’s financial void. A Kremlin intervention would do little for Turkey, and would likely exacerbate Russia’s own financial and economic challenges.

The other two potential patrons are Qatar and, of course, China. But while Qatar, one of Turkey’s closest Gulf allies, could provide financial aid, it does not ultimately have the wherewithal to pull Turkey out of its crisis singlehandedly.

As for China, though it will not want to waste the opportunity to increase its influence vis-à-vis Turkey, it is not the country’s style to step into such a volatile situation, much less assume responsibility for solving the problem. The more likely outcome – as we are seeing in Greece – is that China will unleash its companies to pursue investment opportunities after the dust settles.

That means that Turkey’s economic salvation lies with its conventional Western allies: the US and the EU (particularly France and Germany). On August 13, a White House spokesperson confirmed that the Trump administration is watching the financial-market response to Turkey’s crisis “very closely.” The last thing that Trump wants is a crumbling world economy and a massive dollar rally, which could derail his domestic economic ambitions. So a classic Trump “trade” is probably there for Erdoğan, if he is willing to come to the negotiating table.

Likewise, some of Europe’s biggest and most fragile banks have significant exposure to Turkey. Combine that with the ongoing political crisis over migration, and you have a recipe for deeper destabilization within the EU. I, for one, cannot imagine that European leaders will sit by and do nothing while Turkey implodes on their border.

Despite his escalating rhetoric, Erdoğan may soon find that he has little choice but to abandon his isolationist and antagonistic policies of the last few years. If he does, many investors may look back next year and wish that they had snapped up a few lira when they had the chance.

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“Trains and hospitals don’t work, but immigration continues,” Roger Mathson, a retired vegetable oil factory worker in Sweden, told Bloomberg on the same day as the violent, coordinated rampage by masked gangs of youths across five Swedish cities.

We noted earlier that Swedish politicians were quick to react with anti-immigrant party ‘Sweden Democrats’ seeing a surge in the polls ahead of the September 9th election.

“I’m not a racist, but I’m a nationalist,” Mathson said. “I don’t like seeing the town square full of Niqab-clad ladies and people fighting with each other.”

Is Sweden set to have its own political earthquake in September, where general elections could end a century of Social Democratic dominance and bring to power a little known (on the world stage), but the now hugely popular nationalist party often dubbed far-right and right-wing populist, called Sweden Democrats? 

Sweden, a historically largely homogeneous population of 10 million, took in an astounding 600,000 refugees over the past five years, and after Swedes across various cities looked out their windows Tuesday to see cars exploding, smoke filling the skies, and possibly armed masked men hurling explosives around busy parking lots, it appears they’ve had enough.

Riots in #Sweden. 6 or 7 black dressed masked youths , Around 60 cars have been put on fire several places in #Gothenburg on Monday night. Vehicle fires are also reported in Helsingborg, Trollhättan and Malmö. #EU #Trump pic.twitter.com/JxuBfuoxxe

— Alexander Hansen (@AlexanderXV) August 13, 2018

Over the past years of their rise as a political force in Swedish politics, the country’s media have routinely labelled the Sweden Democrats as “racists” and “Nazis” due to their seemingly single issue focus of anti-immigration and strong Euroscepticism.

A poll at the start of this week indicated the Sweden Democrats slid back to third place after topping three previous polls as the September election nears; however, Tuesday’s national crisis and what could legitimately be dubbed a serious domestic terror threat is likely to boost their popularity. 

Dozens of vehicles have been set on fire in western Sweden in what appears to be a series of coordinated arson attacks; people dressed in all black fled the scenes pic.twitter.com/jkpB0Otzd7

— BNO News (@BNONews) August 13, 2018

Bloomberg’s profile of their leader, Jimmie Akesson, echoes the tone of establishment Swedish media in the way they commonly cast the movement, beginning as follows:

Viking rock music and whole pigs roasting on spits drew thousands of Swedes to a festival hosted by nationalists poised to deliver their country’s biggest political upheaval in a century.

The Sweden Democrats have been led since 2005 by a clean-cut and bespectacled man, Jimmie Akesson. He’s gentrified a party that traces its roots back to the country’s neo-Nazi, white supremacist fringe. Some polls now show the group may become the biggest in Sweden’s parliament after general elections on Sept. 9. Such an outcome would end 100 years of Social Democratic dominance.

The group’s popularity began surging after the 2015 immigration crisis began, which first hit Europe’s southern Mediterranean shores and quickly moved northward as shocking wave after wave of migrants came.

Akesson emphasizes something akin to a “Sweden-first” platform which European media often compares to Trump’s “America First”; and the party has long been accused of preaching forced assimilation into Swedish culture to be become a citizen. 

Bloomberg’s report surveys opinions at a large political rally held in Akkeson’s hometown of Solvesborg, and some of the statements are sure to be increasingly common sentiment after this week’s coordinated multi-city attack:

At his party’s festival, Akesson revved up the crowd by slamming the establishment’s failures, calling the last two governments the worst in Swedish history. T-shirts calling for a Swexit, or an exit from the EU, were exchanged as bands played nationalist tunes.

Ted Lorentsson, a retiree from the island of Tjorn, said he’s an enthusiastic backer of the Sweden Democrats. “I think they want to improve elderly care, health care, child care,” he said. “Bring back the old Sweden.” But he also acknowledges his view has led to disagreement within his family as his daughter recoils at what she feels is the “Hitler”-like rhetoric.

No doubt, the media and Eurocrats in Brussels will take simple, innocent statements from elderly retirees like “bring back the old Sweden” as nothing short of declaration of a race war, but such views will only solidify after this week.

Another Sweden Democrat supporter, a 60-year old woman who works at a distillery, told Bloomberg, “I think you need to start seeing the whole picture in Sweden and save the original Swedish population,” she said. “I’m not racist, because I’m a realist.”

Sweden’s two biggest parties, the Social Democrats and Moderates, are now feeling the pressure as Swedes increasingly worry about key issues preached by Akesson like immigration, law and order, and health care – seen as under threat by a mass influx of immigrants that the system can’t handle. 

Bloomberg explains further:

But even young voters are turning their backs on the establishment. One potential SD supporter is law student Oscar Persson. Though he hasn’t yet decided how he’ll vote, he says it’s time for the mainstream parties to stop treating the Sweden Democrats like a pariah. “This game they are playing now, where the other parties don’t want to talk to them but still want their support, is something I don’t really understand,” he said.

Akesson has managed to entice voters from both sides of the political spectrum with a message of more welfare, lower taxes and savings based on immigration cuts.

With many Swedes now saying immigration has “gone too far” and as this week’s events have once again thrust the issue before both a national and global audience, the next round of polling will mostly like put Sweden’s conservative-right movements on top. 

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Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

On August 15, Greeks celebrate the “Dormition (or the Assumption) of the Virgin Mary (in Greek: Koimisis tis Theotokou). The holiday commemorates the “falling asleep” or death of the Theotokos (Mary, translated as “God-bearer”). August 15, one of the most important holidays in the Orthodox calendar, is celebrated across the country, and is a date when many Greeks leave the towns and cities where they live and work to return to their home villages.”

Stole that bit from the local Kathimerini paper. And I would add: while most Athenians leave for the islands, so do about 2 billion tourists. Thought I’d bring up the national holiday because in Turkey, they celebrate the same. The orthodox church is still going strong in both countries. Even if Turkey is leaning increasingly towards Islam. And even then: the House of the Virgin Mary shrine in Turkey, which the Apostle John is supposed to have built for her, on a mountain overlooking the Aegean, the place where Mary is said to have spent her last years, sees both Christian and Muslim pilgrims.

All this can’t be seen apart from some recent developments between the two countries. Turkey had been holding two Greek servicemen in jail after they crossed a border in bad weather early March. And then yesterday evening, this happened according to Kathimerini:

Greek Soldiers Released From Turkish Jail Pending Trial

Two Greek servicemen who had been detained in Turkey since early March for accidentally crossing the border in bad weather have been released from jail pending trial, Anadolu agency reported on Tuesday evening. According to Anadolu, a court examined the request for their release and ruled there are no reasons to keep them behind bars. The ruling does not mention any measures restricting their movement which means the soldiers can return to Greece.

Lieutenant Angelos Mitretodis and Sergeant Dimitris Kouklatzis had been held in a high security prison in Edirne for 167 days. It is not clear what charges they are facing. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said in a tweet the release of the servicemen “is an act of justice which will contribute in boosting friendship, good neighborly relations and stability in the region.” “I would like to congratulate and thank our two officers and their families for their courage, patience and confidence in our efforts, which were ultimately vindicated,” he added.

On Monday, Greece’s top military announced it was suspending some confidence-building activities with Turkey for the remainder of the year, as a response to the prolonged detention. The measures under suspension extend to the the exchange of military academy graduates as well as sporting and cultural activities, which have already been scaled down over the detention of the two soldiers, who were arrested after accidentally crossing a borderline between the two countries.

And mere hours later there was this:

Two Greek Soldiers Released From Turkish Jail Return Home

Two Greek soldiers freed after months in a Turkish prison returned to Greece by government jet early Wednesday after their unexpected release by a provincial court. Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said he phoned his Turkish counterpart to express his satisfaction with the soldiers’ release and invite him to visit Greece. “This is a great day for our motherland, the day of Our Lady, the day of Tinos in 1940,” Kammenos told reporters, referring to the Feast of the Dormation, which falls on August 15 and to the Italian torpedoing on a Greek warship on this day in 1940. “I hope that their release … will herald a new day in Greek-Turkish relations. We can live together peacefully, for the benefit of both our peoples.”

The soldiers [..] were met by Kammenos, the army chief of staff and an honor guard after their arrival at 3 a.m. at the airport in the northern city of Thessaloniki. “All I want to say is thank you,” Mitretodis told reporters. The men were arrested on March 1 for illegally entering Turkey after crossing the heavily militarized land border. Greece strongly protested their long detention in the western town of Edirne, arguing that they had strayed across during a patrol of a trail of suspected illegal immigration amid poor visibility due to bad weather.

[..] The men’s arrest had considerably strained Greek-Turkish relations. Kammenos had claimed that they were being held “hostage” by Turkey, which is trying to secure the extradition of eight Turkish servicemen who fled to Greece after the 2016 failed military coup in Turkey. Ankara accuses its servicemen of involvement in the coup, but Greek courts have refused to extradite them, arguing they would not get a fair trial in Turkey and their lives would be in danger there.

Athens got a phone call from Ankara, probably to Kammenos, not Tsipras, that said: you come get them. Whether that call was before or after the court decision we’ll probably never know. A bit of a shame, because it could tell us a lot of where the decisions are made in Turkey. Then again, we do have an idea. A mere provincial court that could make decisions that go completely against what Erdogan desires? What are the odds? But stick around.

Here’s what’s interesting about this: the two soldiers, who had been in detention for almost half a year, were released by a provincial court, and got back home on a joint Turkish/Greek national holiday. What’s not to like?

But then this: a few hours after they arrive home on PM Tsipras’ own government jet at 3pm, another Turkish court decides that an appeal for American pastor Brunson to be released, is denied. Brunson is the guy Trump wants freed. John Bolton has said there’ll be no more talks until that is done. But if one court takes a decision that at least on the face of it goes against supreme ruler Erdogan’s demands, and another decides differently, Erdogan can claim the pastor’s fate is out of his hands: it’s the court system that decides.

That victory over Trump, concerning not freeing the pastor, is apparently worth more to him than the defeat of not exchanging the soldiers for the 8 Turkish servicemen who have gotten asylum in Greece. Something Erdogan is allegedly very angry about, because he accuses them of being party to the 2016 ‘coup’. He’s trying to play chess with Trump. We can discuss how good of an idea that is. Here’s AFP:

Turkey Court Rejects New Appeal To Free Detained US Pastor

A Turkish court on Wednesday rejected a new appeal to free US pastor Andrew Brunson, whose detention has sparked a major row between Turkey and the United States, local media reported. The court in the western city of Izmir ruled that Brunson, who faces 35 years in jail over terror and espionage charges, will remain under house arrest, the state television TRT reported. Brunson’s jail term had been converted to house detention for health reasons.

His detention has soured relations with Washington, with US President Donald Trump doubling aluminium and steel tariffs for Turkey in punitive actions against Ankara’s refusal to release Brunson. The crisis has sent the Turkish currency into free fall since Friday. “The president has a great deal of frustration (about) the pastor not being released,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Tuesday. The statement came after US embassy charge d’affaires Jeffrey Hovenier visited Brunson in Izmir.

Brunson’s lawyer Cem Halavurt told AFP that a higher court would also discuss his appeal for Brunson’s release. Turkey’s ambassador to Washington Serdar Kilic on Monday held private talks with US National Security Advisor John Bolton in a meeting to discuss the pastor’s status.

And then Reuters has this just now:

Erdogan Spokesman Says Problems With US Will Be Resolved

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Wednesday he expected problems with the United States, which helped drive the lira to record lows, to be resolved but Washington must stop trying to influence Turkey’s judiciary. Ibrahim Kalin also told a news conference that Turkey would exercise its rights if the U.S. does not deliver F-35 jets to Ankara. The lira, which has rallied after hitting a record low of 7.24 to the dollar, would continue to recover, he said.

A masterstroke? Did Erdogan just succeed in making everyone, including Trump, believe the Turkish judiciary system is impartial, and he’s not the one keeping Brunson from leaving the country?

Sure looks like he tried. “Sorry, Mr. Trump, it’s out of my hands… A judge let the Greek soldiers go, and I didn’t want that either..”

Problem is, everyone knows Erdogan fired half the judiciary system and 90% or so of the press, accusing them of being part of the same coup plot as Gülen and the pastor Brunson. It’s almost amusing. Almost, because innocent people’s lives are being played out on some primitive chess board and sacrificed against dreams of ever more power. Only a pawn in their game.

The lira is recovering a little this week. Got to wonder how long that will last, and what it’s cost Turkey. To be continued…

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After a motorway bridge collapsed in Genoa on Tuesday killing 35 people, Italy is still in shock and mourning. While rescuers searched the rubble and twisted steel for survivors, investigators were already examining possible reasons for such a catastrophic collapse. The country’s transport minister called on senior managers at the company managing the bridge to resign while a criminal inquiry into the disaster has also been announced.

As Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, The Morandi bridge was built in 1967 and measures 1.2km long. Generally, bridges like that are designed to stand for at least 100 years with periodic maintenance work required. Work was being carried out at the time of the disaster, though it isn’t yet clear if that had any role in what happened. There have also been suggestions that a design flaw could have been responsible, particularly due to erroneous calculations about how concrete ages.

Concern has also been raised about the increasing volume of traffic on the A10 motorway and whether that caused faster than expected degradation of the structure. What is certainly indisputable, however, is that Italy’s investment in its road network has declined alarmingly. 

You will find more infographics at Statista

OECD data published by the BBC shows that while Germany, France and the UK have all poured money into their roads in recent years, Italian investment fell from €13.66 billion in 2007 to just €3.39 billion in 2010.

The figure only climbed to just over €5 billion by 2015, far behind Germany (€11.69 billion), France (€10.01 billion) and the UK (€9.07 billion).

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Authored by Arkady Savitsky via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Russia, Iran, China, and now Turkey are in the same boat, as all have become the target of US sanctions. But none of those nations has bowed under the pressure.

Russia had foreseen the developments in advance and took timely measures to protect itself.

The Turkish national currency, the lira, is plummeting now that Washington has introduced sanctions as well as tariffs on steel and aluminum, in an attempt to compel Ankara to turn over a detained American pastor. Turkish President Erdogan said it was time for Turkey to seek “new friends,” and Turkey is planning to issue yuan-denominated bonds to diversify its foreign borrowing instruments. On Aug. 11, President Erdogan said Turkey was ready to begin using local currencies in its trade with Russia, China, Iran, Ukraine, and the EU nations of the eurozone.

The recent BRICS summit reaffirmed Ankara’s commitment to the Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) that is geared toward de-dollarizing its member states’ economies, and the agreement to quickly launch a Local Currency Bond Fund gives that policy teeth. Turkey has also expressed its desire to join BRICS.

Ankara is gradually moving toward membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). It has been accepted as a dialog partner of that organization. Last year Turkey became a dialog partner with ASEAN. On Aug. 1, the first ASEAN-Turkey Trilateral Ministerial Meeting was held in Singapore, bringing together Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, ASEAN Secretary General Dato Lim Jock Hoi, and Singaporean Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan, who is serving as the 2018 ASEAN term chairman. The event took place under the auspices of the 51st ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting that attracted foreign ministers and top diplomats from 30 countries.

Ankara is mulling over a free-trade area (FTA) agreement with the Eurasian Union. This cooperation between Ankara and the EAEU has a promising future.

Meanwhile, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has provided a $3.6-billion loan package for the Turkish energy and transportation sector. Turkey and China have recently announced an expansion of their military ties. As one can see, Turkey is inexorably pivoting from the West to the East.

Russia has a special role to play in this process. The US Congress has prohibited the sale of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey because of the risk associated with Ankara’s purchase of the S-400 air-defense system. In response, Turkey is contemplating a purchase of Russian warplanes. Ankara prefers Russian weapons over the ones offered by NATO states. As President Erdogan put it, “Before it is too late, Washington must give up the misguided notion that our relationship can be asymmetrical and come to terms with the fact that Turkey has alternatives.”

On Aug. 10, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan discussed the prospects for boosting economic cooperation. Both nations are parties to the ambitious Turkish Stream natural-gas pipeline project. Ideas for ways to join forces in response to the US offensive were also on the agenda during the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to Turkey, Aug. 13-14, although Syria was in the spotlight of the talks. One mustn’t forget that Russia was the first country to be visited by the Turkish president after the failed 2016 coup.

As a result of some tough times resulting from US sanctions, Iran is redoubling its efforts at building foreign relationships. Under US pressure, European companies are leaving Iran, with China gradually filling the void. Now that US and European airspace companies are moving their business ventures out of Iran, this presents a good opportunity for Russian aircraft, such as the MS-21 or IL-96-400M. The Russian automaker GAZ Group is ready to supply Iran with commercial vehicles and light trucks powered by 5th generation engines.

Tehran is an observer state in the SCO, and it is to become an essential hub for the Chinese Belt Road Initiative (BRI). On June 25, a freight train arrived in the Iranian city of Bandar-e Anzali, a port on the Caspian Sea, having passed through the China-Kazakhstan-Iran transportation corridor and entering the Anzali Free Zone that connects China to both the Kazakh port of Aktau and to Iran, thus creating a new trade link to the outside world. This gives a boost to the BRI. On Aug. 12, the five littoral states (the Caspian Five) signed the Caspian Sea Convention — the fruit of 22 years of difficult negotiations. This opens up new opportunities for Iran and other countries of the region as well as the BRI. The idea to form a new economic forum was floated at the Caspian Five summit.

China and Russia back the idea of Iran’s full-fledged SCO membership. In May Tehran signed an interim FTA agreement with the EAEU. Greater EAEU-BRI integration under the stewardship of the SCO is also on the horizon.

According to the Daily Express, Iran could band together with Russia and China in an anti-US alliance. Iran may also get an observer status in the CSTO. Iran-Turkey trade has recently revived, and that bilateral relationship includes burgeoning military cooperation.

Nothing can be viewed in just black and white, and every coin has two sides. The US sanctions do negatively affect the economies and finances of the targeted countries, but in the long run, they will also push the nations hit by them to move closer to each other, thus encouraging the emergence of the multipolar world the US is trying so hard to resist.

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An Australian MP is already under fire just after giving his maiden speech in parliament on Tuesday where he used the words “final solution” in reference to Muslim immigration. 

Senator Fraser Anning of the right-wing Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) raised a firestorm of controversy with the speech that attempted to give voice to Australia’s rising anti-immigration sentiment, telling lawmakers that Muslim Australians do not integrate well while bringing the threat of terrorism and further that they “do not work and live on welfare”. 

Multiple fellow MPs as well as national television pundits have focused on what could be Anning’s either unintended poor word choice or, as his accusers suggest, an purposeful attempt to evoke holocaust imagery. 

Egyptian-born Anne Aly (above) is the first Muslim woman to be a member of the Australian House of Representatives. She reacted to MP Anning’s speech by tearfully saying she was tired of having to fight bigots and racists. (screengrab)

After claiming Muslim communities foster “sympathizing with Islamic State,” the key offending line came in Anning’s speech with the following: 

The final solution to the immigration problem is, of course, a popular vote. We don’t need a plebiscite to cut immigration numbers; we just need a government that is willing to institute a sustainable population policy.

The speech was immediately condemned as anti-semitic and Islamophobic, with One Nation party MP Pauline Hanson, slamming it as reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, among other lawmakers.

Hanson said, “The speech was written by a Richard Howard, straight from [Joseph] Goebbels’ handbook from Nazi Germany.” 

“The Senator’s use of the term ‘final solution’…is a phrase torn from the darkest pages of human history.”

Australian Senator, Fraser Anning, is heavily criticised after calling for an end to Muslim immigration in his maiden speech. pic.twitter.com/YQgPswD9n0

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) August 15, 2018

Later in the day Tuesday, WA Labor MP Anne Aly got emotional during her response to Anning’s immigration comments, telling parliament, “I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of having to stand up against hate, against vilification, time and time again,” while wiping tears from her eyes. 

Aly, herself Egyptian-born and the first Muslim woman to be a member of the Australian House of Representatives, has in the past been targeted by Anning’s political speeches.

During his Tuesday maiden speech Sen. Anning specifically called for a complete ban on Muslim immigration, and outlined a plan for Australians to hold a popular vote on which nationalities and immigrant demographics should be allowed into the country. 

MP Aly charged Senator Anning with deliberately using “neo-Nazi, white supremacist terminology,” to advance racial segregationist policies and explained, “That was a deliberate use of a heinous, heinous word that brings back so many painful memories and sets a precedent for the future of our country that we need to stand up and stop it.”

Australia’s first female Muslim MP Anne Aly is moved to tears as both sides of politics join to condemn Fraser Anning’s maiden speech. https://t.co/hcUffs4yyj pic.twitter.com/zbjzDMP0i1

— SBS News (@SBSNews) August 15, 2018

Australian media praised Aly’s speech, saying a united parliament stood behind her, while generally casting Anning’s speech as a throwback to the ‘White Australia policy’ — a set of historical laws that effectively barred people of non-European descent from settling in the country — which ended through a bi-partisan law passed in the early 1970s.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also reacted, stating on Twitter, “Australia is the most successful multicultural society in the world built on a foundation of mutual respect. We reject and condemn racism in any form.” 

Other government officials issued formal statements before parliament. Senator Hanson told lawmakers on Wednesday: “I am appalled by Fraser Anning’s speech. We are a multiracial society and I’ve always advocated you do not have to be white to be Australian.” 

Anning for his part, denied that his phrasing was a reference to the Holocaust and refused to apology even amidst an avalanche of criticism. “I don’t regret anything. I am not going to apologize or regret anything that I say,” he said. His office denied that “final solution” had any deeper sinister meaning, saying the senator could as easily have said “last” or “ultimate”.

Here’s the footage of all the Senators who shook hands / hugged / kissed Fraser Anning after his “final solution” speech. pic.twitter.com/rAF2xToimz

— Alice Workman (@workmanalice) August 15, 2018

Katter’s Australian Party’s leadership has stood behind Anning: “Absolutely, 1000 per cent I support everything he said,” party boss Bob Katter told reporters in a contentious press conference on Wednesday.

The explosive press conference where Bob Katter defends Fraser Anning’s ‘Final Solution’ speech. https://t.co/LOgjyqt51q pic.twitter.com/4GGGz3yhC0

— SBS News (@SBSNews) August 15, 2018

The issue is sure to grow even more explosive both nationally and internationally after party leader Katter’s press conference, where he in a fiery and confident tone further said of Anning’s “magnificent speech, solid gold” speech that “90 per cent of Australia have been waiting for someone to say it and believe it.”

According to official government statistics, Muslims represent a small minority in Australia at just 2.6% of the population. 

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Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

US sanctions on Iran should be interpreted as a piece in a much larger chessboard…

Life carries on in Tehran despite the threat of US sanctions. 

Hysteria reigned supreme after the first round of US sanctions were reinstated against Iran over the past week. War scenarios abound, and yet the key aspect of the economic war unleashed by the Trump administration has been overlooked: Iran is a major piece in a much larger chessboard.

The US sanctions offensive, launched after Washington’s unilateral pullout from the Iran nuclear deal, should be interpreted as an advance gambit in the New Great Game at whose center lies China’s New Silk Road – arguably the most important infrastructure project of the 21st century — and overall Eurasia integration.

The Trump administration’s maneuvers are a testament to how China’s New Silk Road, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), threaten the US establishment.

Eurasian integration on the rise

Eurasian integration is on display in Astana, where Russia, Iran and Turkey are deciding the fate of Syria, in coordination with Damascus.

Iran’s strategic depth in post-war Syria simply won’t vanish. The challenge of Syrian reconstruction will be met largely by Bashar al-Assad’s allies: China, Russia and Iran.

Echoing the Ancient Silk Road, Syria will be configured as an important BRI node, key to Eurasia integration.

In parallel, the Russia-China strategic partnership – from the intersection between the BRI and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) to the expansion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the solidifying of BRICS Plus — has immense economic stakes in the stability of Iran.

The complex interconnection of Iran with both Russia (via the EAEU and the International North-South Transportation Corridor) and China (via BRI and oil/gas supplies) is even tighter than in the case of Syria in the past seven years of civil war.

Iran is absolutely essential for Russia-China for the partnership to allow any “surgical strike” — as floated in Syria — or worse, hot war initiated by Washington.

A case could be made that with his recent overture to President Putin, President Trump is trying to negotiate some sort of freeze in the current configuration — a remixed Sykes-Picot for the 21st century.

But that assumes Trump’s decision-making is not being dictated or co-opted by the US neocon cabal that pressed for the 2003 war in Iraq.

North Korea two?

If the situation turns volcanic when the US oil sanctions on Iran kick in by early November, an actual remix of the recent North Korea scenario would be in the cards. Washington simultaneously sent three carrier battle groups to terrify North Korea. That failed – and Trump ended up having to chat with Kim Jong-un.

Despite the US record around the world — endless threats of a Venezuela invasion with the only tangible result an amateurish, failed drone attack; 17 years of endless war in Afghanistan, with the Taliban still as immovable as the Hindu Kush peaks;  the “4+1” – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – winning the vicious proxy war in Syria — US neocons scream and shout about striking Iran.

As with North Korea, Russia and China will send unmistakable signs that Iran is in their closely coordinated Eurasian sphere of influence, and any attack on Iran will be considered an attack on the whole Eurasian sphere.

Stranger things have happened, but it’s hard to see any rational actors in Washington, Tel Aviv and Riyadh wishing to have Beijing and Moscow — simultaneously — as lethal enemies.

All across Southwest Asia, there are no doubts the official Trump administration – and in fact, the whole Beltway – policy on Iran is regime change. So from now on, short of hot war, the new rules of the game spell out stepped-up cyber-warfare.

From Washington’s point of view, in terms of return on investment that’s a relative bargain; cyber-warfare keeps the Russia-China partnership away from direct involvement while in theory digging deeper into the economic collapse of Iran, heavily advertised as imminent by Trump administration officials.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry could not be more explicit on the US effort to reimpose global sanctions on Iran. “China’s commercial cooperation with Iran is open and transparent, reasonable, fair and lawful, not violating any United Nations Security Council resolutions,” it said.

That echoes the Russian Foreign Ministry on the US sanctions: “This is a graphic example of Washington’s continued violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231 and trampling upon the norms of international law.”

President Trump for his part has also been explicit: any nation that violates the sanctions against Iran will not do business with the US.

Good luck with having support from Turkey or Qatar – completely dependent on Iran for food, use of civilian airspace and sharing gas exploration in South Pars. Not to mention Russia-China assuring Tehran’s back on all fronts.

How not to do business with China?

The die is cast. China not only will continue but also will increase its purchase of Iranian oil and gas.

The Chinese auto industry – currently with 10% of the Iranian market – will simply take over as the French leave. Chinese companies are already responsible for 50% of auto parts imported into Iran.

Russia for its part has pledged to invest as much as $50 billion in Iranian oil and natural gas. Moscow is very much aware of the Trump administration’s next possible step; imposing sanctions on Russian companies investing in Iran.

Washington simply can’t “not do business” with China. The entire US defense industry is dependent on China for rare earth materials. Since the 1980s, US multinationals set up their export supply chains in China with direct encouragement of the US government.

The EU for its part has enforced a Blocking Statute – never used before, although in existence for already two decades — to protect European companies, even coming to the point of imposing fines on businesses that pull out of Iran because of plain fear.

In theory, that shows some balls. And yet, as EU diplomats in Brussels told Asia Times, there’s a major conditional: US satrapies/vassals abound across the EU, so quite a few EU-based companies, as in the case of Total and Renault, in the end, will simply roll over.

Meanwhile, what Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said about US unilateralism – the world “is sick and tired”
of it – keeps echoing all across the Global South.

The Mother of All Financial Hurricanes

Those clamoring for war with Iran cannot possibly understand that the nightmare scenario of a Strait of Hormuz/Persian Gulf energy transit closure – the choke point for 22 million barrels of oil a day – would represent, ultimately, the death of the petrodollar.

The Strait of Hormuz can be configured as the Achilles heel of the entire West/US economic power; a closure would detonate the mother of all hurricanes in the quadrillion-dollar derivatives market.

Unless China does not buy Iranian energy, US sanctions — as a geo-economic tool — are essentially meaningless.

Certainly not, of course, for the “Iranian people” so dear to the Beltway, as more day-to-day financial grief is already setting in, side by side with a sense of national cohesiveness in the face, once again, of an external threat.

China and Russia have already pledged to continue to implement the JCPOA, alongside the EU-3; after all, this is an UN-endorsed multilateral treaty.

Beijing has already informed Washington in no uncertain terms that it will continue to do business with Iran. So the ball is now in Washington’s court. It will be up to the Trump administration to decide whether to sanction China for its unwillingness to stop trading with Iran.

It’s not exactly a wise move to threaten China – especially with Beijing on an irresistible historical ascendancy. Nehru threatened China and lost a big chunk of Arunachal Pradesh to Chairman Mao. Brezhnev threatened China and faced the wrath of the PLA on the banks of the Ussuri River.

China is able to cut the US off in a minute from its rare earth exports, creating a US national security catastrophe. Now that’s when a trade war will enter real incandescent territory.

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At the start of the week when we covered The Boston Globe’s ‘call to action’ for the nation’s newspapers to collude to fight back against what they called Trump’s “dirty war against the free press” the number of publications involved was at around 100, as the Globe’s deputy editorial page editor, said at the time, “we have more than 100 publications signed up, and I expect that number to grow in the coming days.”

That figure has indeed grown, more than tripling as of Wednesday to 350, according to statements from Boston Globe staff leading the project, and will potentially be even greater by Thursday morning, when the coordinated editorials are set to run nationwide. 

The Globe explains the initiative’s purpose as: 

The Globe initiative comes amid the president’s repeated verbal attacks on journalists, calling mainstream press organizations “fake news” and “the enemy of the American people.” Tensions came to a boil in early August when CNN reporter Jim Acosta walked out of a press briefing after White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders refused to refute Trump’s “enemy of the people” comments.

Meanwhile, Al Tompkins at The Poynter Institute – a five decade award-winning journalist and producer – has some interesting analysis considering he is a commentator who is opposed to Trump and wishes the president would knock it off with the fake news is the “enemy of the people” nonsense.

Despite saying this right off the top, Tompkins then proceeds to shred the initiative as completely futile while simultaneously a bit hypocritical given an elite press that’s perpetually walled itself off from ever having to admit its wrong (for the easiest and most obvious example in most people’s recent memory let’s simply start with the Iraq war). 

He brings a surprising admission for which he’s likely already received the ire of his many journalism students and fellow professionals, saying, “I really do not believe that President Trump believes the press is the enemy of the people. I believe he is softening the target the way battleships blast away before a boots-on-the-ground invasion.”

Tompkins acknowledges the reality that:

We will protest again that we are really good for democracy, that we are vital to the nation… and the people who agree with the president won’t give a damn what 200-plus newspaper editorials or a thousand editorials have to say.

Tompkins brings a common-sense perspective, likely echoing what most average Americans might be thinking right now, ultimately concluding of the breathless headlines now promising 350 “pro-journalism editorials” that it’ll be little more than the usual self-congratulatory and meaningless noise that many Americans have come to expect from the mainstream press.

He rains on their parade and predicts:

So the editorials Thursday will create a lot of chatter. Trump backers will call journalists whiners and journalists will counter-attack. Twitter and cable news will have a ball with it all.

And Friday morning we will be right where we were this morning. 

And crucially Tompkins, himself a prominent longtime educator of journalists across the nation, says that journalists as a collective profession have gotten so much disastrously wrong yet remain intransigent, and the American people understand this well.

He says:

Lots of journalists were surprised after the 2016 election. We vowed to listen to the public more, to find out why we were so surprised to hear that the public didn’t love journalists and a growing number didn’t believe us.

If that point didn’t win the relatively establishment commentator Tompkins any more friends among the liberal outrage-fueled mainstream, the following is the money shot:

Before you publish your editorials extolling the virtues of journalism, ask yourself: How are you doing with that listening tour? How have you changed because of what you learned? How willing are you to be changed by discourse?

Whatever you write in your editorials, are you willing to listen, too?

Shockingly common-sense and truthful words coming from the heart of establishment journalism… We find ourselves surprised to say on these points, we couldn’t agree more.

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