The first time I ever spoke to Boris Johnson, almost certainly Britain’s next prime minister, was when my phone rang in London’s Soho back in 2002 and a now familiar voice boomed “I want to interview Saddam Hussein.”
At the time I was the only British politician still traveling to sanctions-stricken Iraq and the only one who met regularly with the Iraqi leadership in the run-up to the war. As a sweetener, Boris, for it was he, threw in that he didn’t “believe all that stuff” about weapons of mass destruction. Not that such disbelief was ever enunciated publicly of course. I passed on his request but the Iraqis, never having heard of him, turned down the request.
His call and its follow-up pressure taught me several things about the future foreign secretary and soon-to-be prime minister.
The first and most banal was his extraordinary presumptuousness. I was then a more senior parliamentarian than he – I had been elected in 1987 he only in 2001 – we had never been introduced (still a ‘thing’ in parliamentary terms) and he didn’t bother even introducing himself, merely an announcement followed by a request for access which sounded awfully like a demand.
The second was, like the young Churchill – his idol – his thirst to be where the action was even at personal (not inconsiderable) and definitely political damage. I wasn’t known then by my enemies as the MP for Baghdad Central for nothing!
And thirdly, his willingness to effect any political position which suited his purpose at any particular time.
This would come back, rather more significantly, when the referendum on Brexit was announced and the question of where Boris (then a considerable figure and twice-elected Mayor of London) would make his stand – Leave or Remain?
His answer was both, or either, in that he penned two lengthy (and well-remunerated) pieces for the Daily Telegraph (which pays him £275,000 per year for a weekly column) one arguing the case for Leave and the other for Remain.
It is said that it was only at that point he plumped for Brexit, which from my point of view was a mixed-blessing. Because between my first encounter and 2016, Boris Johnson had insulted half the planet and rumbled from one race-row to another, one piece of crass classism to another.
As the editor of the right-wing Spectator he had traduced the entire city of Liverpool (his then leader Michael Howard dispatched him to the city to apologize), spoken about black “piccaninnies” with their “water-melon smiles,”traduced Turkish people and generally boorishly displayed all the prejudices of the English upper-class. This was all an act of projection of course as no British parliamentarian has a more exotic lineage than Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.
His great grandfather, the Circassian Ali Kemal was a political asylum seeker from, er, Turkey. Boris was born in New York City (and was a dual citizen until the US tax authorities tried to get their hands on half the profits he made from a house-sale). His great-grandmother was a Russian-Jewish immigrant to the United States. Indeed the name Boris came from a Russian émigré his parents had befriended. A “one man melting-pot” with Jewish, Muslim and Christian great-grandparents. Yet still he felt the need to play the English public-schoolboy straight out of Tom Brown’s Schooldays (crossed with Billy Bunter) – right up to and including his brief tenure as Britain’s senior diplomat – the foreign secretary.
His Turkishness was repaid by an obscene poem he wrote insulting the Turkish President Erdogan and by extension his people.
His Russianness – by a Cold War Iron Curtain hawkishness to make John Bolton blush.
His Muslimness – by his description of Muslim women in traditional dress as “looking like letter boxes.” And so on, and on.
But it is all an act. Boris can be anything you want him to be. Like Groucho Marx he has principles, but if you don’t like them, he has others. He is an ideological Indian rubber-man, “bend me, shape me anyway you want me.”
Thus the man who wasn’t sure whether we should Leave or Remain in the European Union, became Mr Brexit, inseparably linked forever with empty Brexit slogans on the side of a bus. The man who once called for an alliance with Russia against ISIS, was just as capable of demanding “Assad must go” at the point of western bayonets – thus leaving ISIS in charge of Damascus (whilst also describing his sublime happiness at the Syrian recapture of Palmyra from the terrorists the rest of his politics was supporting). He might reset relations with Russia or go to the brink of war with her. It all depends…
Boris Johnson will become the new Tory PM because though the odds remain against him (the Tory Party is currently fourth in the national opinion polls)he is the only card the party has with any possibility of clawing their way back into public affections. He is the ultimate wild-card. It might all go wrong but on the other hand it might go right. His rivals are sure-fire losers, that’s for sure.
Boris Johnson might not thrive – or even survive – in any other polity in the world, but he has what he would call in perfect French, a certain “Je ne sais Quoi.” A certain something. Intangible, difficult to define, but like the camel easy to recognise. Boris can stop the traffic. If he entered a shopping mall you were in, you’d certainly know he was there. Though you would be wise to lock up your daughters – and your wife – if he did.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KupyVQ Tyler Durden
China claims that former Interpol President Meng Hongwei admitted to accepting over $2 million in bribes, and has expressed regret according to a Chinese court in the northeastern port city of Tianjin.
On Thursday, the No. 1 Intermediate Court read Hongwei’s confession aloud, assuring a conviction according to the Associated Press.
Admitting guilt and expressing regret can result in slightly lighter punishment, although China has been quick to hand out life sentences as it cracks down on corruption and political disloyalty under a campaign run directly by the president and head of the ruling Communist Party, Xi Jinping.
Meng, who was elected president of the international police organization in 2016, disappeared into custody while visiting China from France at the end of September. Interpol was not informed of Meng’s detention and was forced to ask China about his whereabouts. –Associated Press
According to the Tianjin court, Meng curried favor in exchange for bribes throughout his positions – including as a vice minister of public security as well as maritime police chief. The 65-year-old was shown on television dressed in a plain brown windbreaker, and appeared older and more grey than in previous photographs. His wife, Grace, continues to reside in France where Meng was stationed while working at the Lyon-based Interpol. She has accused Chinese authorities of cooking up a “fake case” against her husband for political reasons, and questions whether he is even still alive – suggesting she isn’t certain the person who appeared on TV was actually her husband.
“I love him, trust him, respect him and am proud of him,” Grace Meng told AP. “No matter how they insult him or frame him, they can’t change the facts: He is worthy of his motherland, worthy of police honor, and worthy of the people who love him,” adding “The international community will know the truth.”
Shortly before Meng’s disappearance, Grace says that her husband sent her an emoji of a knife.
Grace Meng said she believes that sending the image was her husband’s way of trying to tell her that he was in danger.
She added that she has had no further contact with him since the message was sent on 25 September.
Ms Meng also said that four minutes before Mr Meng shared the image, he sent a message saying “wait for my call”. –Independent
Some suspect that Meng fell out of political favor with Chinese president Xi Jinping, who has been on a ‘corruption hunt’ that some say has been a calculated effort to get rid of those who might challenge his authority.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2FqLAoi Tyler Durden
On May 19, 2019, Swiss voters approved a new set of gun control restrictions. This newly-approved gun control measure would put Switzerland’s gun control laws in line with European Union standards. Under this new law, military-style, semi-automatic weapons would be heavily restricted, while also tightening up gun registration standards. A few exemptions were made forparticipants in shooting sports who will still be able to nominally exercise their right to own arms without going through many more hurdles.
Those in the international gun community expressed concern after this vote, where Swiss voters resoundinglycast their ballots in favor of these new regulations by a 64-36 percent margin. Switzerland is commonly viewed as having relatively pro-gun laws similar to countries like the United States, so it’s generally used as an international example for the feasibility of civilian firearms ownership. Proponents of the right to self-defense have every reason to be worried, but this vote has implications that go beyond gun rights.
The European Firearms Directive
According to Claudio Grass, a frequent contributor at Mises based in Switzerland, and Dimitrios Papadopoulos, an officer in the Swiss militia, 80 percent of shooters in Switzerland use semi-automatic weapons, which will effectively be prohibited under this new directive. The only way people can acquire the newly prohibited weapons is through an exemption where the prospective gun owner declares himself to be a sports marksman. The only proof that he needs to provide is that he was shooting at least five times within a five-year timespan. Whether this exception will be maintained in the future is unknown, as the EU announced further restrictions and the Swiss law will have to adopt these, too, according to the Schengen treaty.
The Militia Origins of Switzerland’s Gun Culture
Switzerland has a militia tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. Unlike other European countries during the period, Swiss cantons did not have nobility systems. Thus, defense and security were provided by villages and citizens themselves. One caveat to note is that military service is compulsory in Switzerland for healthy Swiss male citizens.
Servicemen in Switzerland receive a SIG550 assault rifle or a SIG P220 pistol and are required to keep their firearms at home as long as they are enlisted. After serving, veterans can keep these weapons, however, the automatic and burst-fire functions of the SIG550 must be disabled. Military service in Switzerland is inextricably tied to marksmanship, with servicemen having to go to the shooting range once a year to demonstrate their shooting chops. The SIG550 and SIG510 are the preferred rifles of choice for shooting sports and also for civilians in Switzerland. However, under the new EU Directive, the SIG550 and SIG510 have been reclassified as “prohibited” weapons even though the Swiss government issues about 20,000 of these weapons to recruits every year.
The Decentralized Approach to Gun Control in Switzerland
Cantons still handle all weapons permitting in Switzerland, and in fact, there is no centralized bureaucracy for guns in Switzerland. Even though the firearms law is federal, certain cantons have stricter permitting requirements than others. (Although not libertarian, this system does show the benefits of decentralization, where people can choose between competing jurisdictions.)
In the past, to attain a weapons license in a Swiss canton, one did not have to give local authorities a special reason for why they’re acquiring a firearm. It was only a matter of asking the police of the canton an individual is residing in for a permit — a “Waffenerwerbsschein.” Authorities are obliged to grant a permit unless the person applying has a glaring criminal record, mental health issues, or other pertinent indicators of being dangerous. Once obtained, the firearm cannot be confiscated except for extreme circumstances in which the person presents an immediate threat to others.
However, this new EU directive now requires that all military-style, semi-automatic weapons used by Swiss marksmen and serviceman be re-classified as “prohibited weapons.” In other words, these semi-automatic firearms fall under the same category as machine guns and fully automatic weapons which require an “Ausnahmebewilligung” (exception permit) to attain. In these cases, authorities have more discretion in rejecting potential applicants. A prospective gun owner would have to justify his reasons for owning a gun and fully document that they are not criminals.
This New Gun Control Scheme Threatens Swiss Sovereignty
Grass and Papadopoulos highlight that the EU directive could lead to potential gun control micromanagement by the EU, as it now will be confident in knowing that Swiss voters will comply with any of its threats when it decides to pressure the country into accepting its pet policies.
Papadopoulos makes a candid assertion that strikes at the heart of this debate:
What is particularly scary is that the whole argument for the new law was not really about saving lives or reducing gun violence, but rather focused on Brussels ordering Switzerland to modify gun laws to comply with EU gun control standards. Failure to do so could lead to a potential expulsion from the Schengen Agreement. We did not vote on a subject but on avoiding potential punishment by Brussels.
The Swiss value neutrality as evidenced by their decision to stay out of the EU. However, Switzerland is a member of the Schengen Area which was established by the Schengen Agreement in 1985. Countries within the Schengen Area have abolished all passport and border controls at their mutual borders. Given their membership in the Schengen Area, non-EU members such as Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein must comply with certain EU Laws. In 2017, when the EU expanded firearms restrictions in light of mass shootings in Paris, it became clear that this standard was about to be extended to the non-EU members of the Schengen Area.
Switzerland was originally given an August 2018 deadline to implement these changes, which the Swiss parliament decided to implement. This decision generated backlash among gun and other right-wing groups such as the Swiss People’s Party. In response, they immediately wanted to take this issue to the ballot. One of the most outspoken figures in right-wing politics in Switzerland, Christoph Blocher, went on record saying that Switzerland should consider leaving the Schengen system of passport-free travel if Swiss voters reject this gun control proposal at the polls.
The European Union was clever in dangling the carrot of the Schengen Agreement while also wielding the gun control stick, which was enough to get Swiss voters to comply with EU gun regulations. Had voters not approved this ordinance, the EU may have taken more punitive alternatives to break Swiss sovereignty.
Switzerland Should Resist the Temptation of Centralization
What has made Switzerland truly exceptional among countries, is its decentralized approach to governance, which has effectively depoliticized it, unlike other traditional states in the EU and North America, which are mired in identity politics, welfarism, or militarism of some sort. Switzerland offers a pragmatic alternative that many of Europe’s budding separatist movements can look at as an example.
More than just Switzerland capitulating to gun control, this referendum demonstrates the EU’s universalistic vision for the European continent. There’s a good reason to believe that this won’t be the last time that the EU will coax Switzerland into accepting other top-down schemes. If Switzerland wants to remain Europe’s most decentralized state, it will have to stand up against Brussels in future battles. Not doing so, will put it on the path of being another lifeless political appendage of the EU superstate.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Y1EsWx Tyler Durden
A top American general has given an assessment which downgrades North Korean nuclear warhead delivery capability, saying Pyongyang has only made minimal advances, but doesn’t yet possess capability of hitting the American mainland, contrary to recent North Korean claims.
General Paul Selva, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the US’s number 2 military official, said in an interview that, “Probably the only thing they’ve advanced is their understanding of mixing and fabrication of solid-rocket fuel,” which helps with more rapid reloading of mobile missiles.
A 2016 North Korean intermediate range ballistic missile test launch. Image source: KCNA via Reuters.
Gen. Selva’s comments were in reference to North Korea’s controversial tests of short-range systems in May and and were made just ahead of China’s President Xi Jinping’s visit to Pyongyang to discussed the stalled nuclear issue with Kim Jong Un.
Short-range missile tests aren’t subjected to “the dynamic forces that are put on” a reentry vehicle that carries a warhead “over a longer distance.” He explained, “they’re going to have to launch one at some distance to actually get that kind of the heat and the twisting forces.”
He concluded that, “I have seen no indication that they’ve done that kind of work”— throwing cold water on Kim’s prior 2018 New Year speech claim that his rockets could strike “anywhere in the US”.
Despite no reported intercontinental ballistic missile test since November 2017, something the White House has cited as a success in its engagement efforts, a May 2018 report delivered to Congress by Pentagon leaders found that “North Korea is committed to developing a nuclear-armed ICBM that is capable of posing a direct threat to the United States.”
Via Bloomberg
Meanwhile, President Xi and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un are meeting in Pyongyang Thursday after Xi became the first Chinese leader in 14 years to visit North Korea. And although nobody could say for sure what the two would be discussing, most believed that their mutual difficulties with Washington would likely be on the agenda.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Zzenys Tyler Durden
The Intercept‘s bombshell about Brazilian corruption is being ludicrously spun by the country’s media and military as a “Russian conspiracy”…
It was a leak, not a hack. Yes: Brazilgate, unleashed by a series of game-changing bombshells published by The Intercept, may be turning into a tropical Russiagate.
The Intercept’s Deep Throat – an anonymous source — has finally revealed in detail what anyone with half a brain in Brazil already knew: that the judicial/lawfare machinery of the one-sided Car Wash anti-corruption investigation was in fact a massive farce and criminal racket bent on accomplishing four objectives.
Create the conditions for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the subsequent ascension of her VP, elite-manipulated puppet, Michel Temer.
Justify the imprisonment of former president Lula in 2018 – just as he was set to win the latest presidential election in a landslide.
Facilitate the ascension of the Brazilian extreme-right via Steve Bannon asset (he calls him “Captain”) Jair Bolsonaro.
Install former judge Sergio Moro as a justice minister on steroids capable of enacting a sort of Brazilian Patriot Act – heavy on espionage and light on civil liberties.
Moro, side by side with prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol, who was leading the Public Ministry’s 13-strong task force, are the vigilante stars of the lawfare racket. Over the past four years, hyper-concentrated Brazilian mainstream media, floundering in a swamp of fake news, duly glorified these two as Captain Marvel-worthy national heroes. Hubris finally caught up with the swamp.
The Brazilian Goodfellas
The Intercept has promised to release all the files in its possession; chats, audio, videos and pics, a treasure trove allegedly larger than Snowden’s. What has been published so far reveals Moro/Dallagnol as a strategic duo in synch, with Moro as a capo di tutti i capi, judge, jury and executioner rolled into one – replete with serial fabrications of evidence. This, in itself, is enough to nullify all the Car Wash cases in which he was involved – including Lula’s prosecution and successive convictions based on “evidence” that would never hold up in a serious court.
Moro: Installed as justice minister.
(Wikipedia/Marcos Oliveira/Agência Senado.)
In conjunction with a wealth of gory details, the Twin Peaks principle — the owls are not what they seem — fully applies to Brazilgate. Because the genesis of Car Wash involves none other than the United States government (USG). And not only the Department of Justice (DoJ) – as Lula has been stressing for years in every one of his interviews. The op was Deep State at its lowest.
WikiLeaks had already revealed itfrom the start, when the NSA started spying on energy giant Petrobras and even Rousseff’s smart phone. In parallel, countless nations and individuals have learned how the DoJ’s self-attributed extraterritoriality allows it to go after anyone, anyhow, anywhere.
It has never been about anti-corruption. Instead this is American “justice” interfering in the full geopolitical and geo-economic spheres. The most glaring, recent case, is Huawei’s.
Yet Mafiosi Moro/Dallagnol’s “malign behavior” (to invoke Pentagonese) reached a perverse new level in destroying the national economy of a powerful emerging nation, a BRICS member and acknowledged leader across the Global South.
Car Wash ravaged the chain of energy production in Brazil, which in turn generated the sale – below market prizes – of plenty of valuable pre-salt oil reserves, the biggest oil discovery of the 21stcentury.
Car Wash destroyed Brazilian national champions in engineering and civil construction as well as aeronautics (as in Boeing buying Embraer). And Car Wash fatally compromised important national security projects such as the construction of nuclear submarines,
essential for the protection of the “Blue Amazon”.
For the Council of Americas – which Bolsonaro visited back in 2017 – as well as the Council on Foreign Relations—not to mention the “foreign investors”–to have neoliberal Chicago boy Paulo Guedes installed as finance minister was a wet dream. Guedes promised on the record to virtually put all of Brazil for sale. So far, his stint has been an unmitigated failure.
How to Wag the Dog
Mafiosi Moro/Dallagnol were “only a pawn in their game,” to quote Bob Dylan– a game both were oblivious to.
Lula has repeatedly stressed that the key question – for Brazil and the Global South – is sovereignty. Under Bolsonaro, Brazil has been reduced to the status of a banana neo-colony – with plenty of bananas. Leonardo Attuch, editor of the leading portal Brasil247, says “the plan was to destroy Lula, but what was destroyed was the nation.”
As it stands, the BRICS – a very dirty word in the Beltway – have lost their “B”. As much as they may treasure Brazil in Beijing and Moscow, what is delivering for the moment is the “RC” strategic partnership, although Putin and Xi are also doing their best to revive “RIC”, trying to show India’s Modi that Eurasian integration is the way to go, not playing a supporting role in Washington’s fuzzy Indo-Pacific strategy.
Dallagnol: Serial fabricator. (Wikimedia Commons/José Cruz/Agência Brasil)
And that brings us to the heart of the Brazilgate matter: how Brazil is the coveted prize in the master strategic narrative that conditions everything happening in the geopolitical chessboard for the foreseeable future—the no-holds-barred confrontation between the U.S. and Russia-China.
Already in the Obama era, the U.S. Deep State had identified that to cripple BRICS from the inside, the “weak” strategic node was Brazil. And yes; once again it’s the oil, stupid.
Brazil’s pre-salt oil reserves may be worth as much as a staggering $30 trillion. The point is not only that the USG wants a piece of the action; the point is how controlling most of Brazil’s oil ties up with interfering with powerful agribusiness interests. For the Deep State, control of Brazil’s oil flow to agribusiness equals containment/leverage against China.
The U.S., Brazil and Argentina, together, produce 82 percent of the world’s soybeans – and counting. China craves soybeans. These won’t come from Russia or Iran – which on the other hand may supply China with enough oil and natural gas (see, for instance, Power of Siberia I and II). Iran, after all, is one of the pillars of Eurasian integration. Russia may eventually become a soybean export power, but that may take as long as ten years.
The Brazilian military knows that close relations with China – their top trade partner, ahead of the U.S. — are essential, whatever Steve Bannon may rant about. But Russia is a completely different story. Vice-President Hamilton Mourao, in his recent visit to Beijing, where he met with Xi Jinping, sounded like he was reading from a Pentagon press release, telling Brazilian media that Russia is a “malign actor” deploying “hybrid war around the world.”
So the U.S. Deep State may be accomplishing at least part of the ultimate goal: to use Brazil in its Divide et Impera strategy of splitting the Russia-China strategic partnership.
It gets much spicier. Car Wash reconditioned as Leak Wash could also be decoded as a massive shadow play; a wag the dog, with the tail composed of two American assets.
Moro was a certified FBI, CIA, DoJ, Deep State asset. His uber-boss would ultimately be Robert Mueller (thus Russiagate). Yet for Team Trump, he would be easily expendable – even if he’s Captain Justice working under the real asset, Bannon boy Bolsonaro. If he falls, Moro would be assured the requisite golden parachute – complete with U.S. residency and talks in American universities.
The Intercept’s Greenwald is now celebrated by all strands of the Left as a sort of American/Brazilian Simon Bolivar on steroids – with and in may cases without any irony. Yet there’s a huge problem. The Intercept is owned by hardcore information-war practitioner Pierre Omidyar.
It revolves around the all-powerful Cabinet of Institutional Security, known in Brazil by its acronym GSI. GSI stalwarts are all Washington consensus. After the “communist” Lula/Dilma years, these guys are now consolidating a Brazilian Deep State overseeing full spectrum political control, just like in the U.S..
GSI already controls the whole intel apparatus, as well as Foreign Policy and Defense, via a decree surreptitiously released in early June, only a few days before The Intercept’s bombshell. Even Captain Marvel Moro is subjected to the GSI; they must approve, for instance, everything Moro discusses with the DoJ and the U.S. Deep State.
As I’ve discussed with some of my top informed Brazilian interlocutors, crack anthropologist Piero Leirner, who knows in detail how the military think, and Swiss-based international lawyer and UN adviser Romulus Maya, the U.S. Deep Stateseems to be positioning itself as the spawning mechanism for the direct ascension of the Brazilian military to power, as well as their guarantors. As in, if you don’t follow our script to the letter – basic trade relations only with China; and isolation of Russia – we can swing the pendulum anytime.
After all, the only practical role the USG would see for the Brazilian military – in fact for all Latin America military – is as “war on drugs” shock troops.
Intercept Exclusive: Brazilian Judge in Car Wash Corruption Case Mocked Lula’s Defense and Secretly Directed Prosecutors’ Media Strategy During Trial.
There is no smoking gun – yet. But the scenario of Leak Wash as part of an extremely sophisticated, full spectrum dominance psyops, an advanced stage of Hybrid War, must be seriously considered.
For instance, the extreme-right, as well as powerful military sectors and the Globo media empire suddenly started spinning that The Intercept bombshell is a “Russian conspiracy.”
When one follows the premier military think tank website– featuring loads of stuff virtually copy and pasted straight from the U.S. Naval War College – it’s easy to be startled at how they fervently believe in a Russia-China Hybrid War against Brazil, where the beachhead is provided by “anti-national elements” such as the Left as a whole, Venezuelan Bolivarians, FARC, Hezbollah, LGBT, indigenous peoples, you name it.
After Leak Wash, a concerted fake news blitzkrieg blamed the Telegram app (“they are evil Russians!”) for hacking Moro and Dallagnol’s phones. Telegram officially debunked it in no time.
Then it surfaced that former president Dilma Rousseff and the current Workers’ Party president Gleisi Hoffmann paid a “secret” visit to Moscow only five days before the Leak Wash bombshell. I confirmed the visit with the Duma, as well as the fact that for the Kremlin, Brazil, at least for the moment, is not a priority. Eurasian integration is. That in itself debunks what the extreme-right in Brazil would spin as Dilma asking for Putin’s help, who then released his evil hackers.
Leak Wash – Car Wash’s season two – may be following the Netflix and HBO pattern. Remember that season three of True Detective was an absolute smash. We need Mahershala Ali-worthy trackers to sniff out patches of evidence suggesting the Brazilian military – with the full support of the U.S. Deep State – might be instrumentalizing a mix of Leak Wash and “the Russians” Hybrid War to criminalize the Left for good and orchestrate a silent coup to get rid of the Bolsonaro clan and their sub-zoology collective IQ. They want total control – no clownish intermediaries. Will they be biting more bananas than they can chew?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IXQeep Tyler Durden
Even with access to deep pockets and an innovative product,as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, it can take decades of grit to scrape your way into the mainstream consciousness of consumers.
On the path to becoming established as a globally significant brand, companies must fight through fierce competition, publicity scandals, changing regulations, and rapidly-evolving consumer tastes – all to take a bite from the same piece of pie.
Cream of the Crop
Today’s visualization comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it showcases the 100 most valuable brands in the world, according to Forbes.
Here are the powerful brands that sit at the very top of the list:
It should be noted that the list is ordered by brand value, a measure that tries to calculate each brand’s ultimate contribution in financial terms to the parent company. You can see that full methodology here.
Finally, it’s also worth mentioning that brands with only a token representation in the United States have been excluded from the rankings. This means companies like Alibaba or Vodafone are not represented in this particular visualization.
Tech Rules Again in 2019
For another straight year, technology dominates the list of the 100 most valuable brands in 2019 – this time, with six of the top seven entries.
Most of these brands saw double-digit growth in value from the previous year, including Apple (12%), Google (27%), Amazon (37%), Microsoft (20%), and Samsung (11%). The one notable exception here is Facebook, which experienced a 6% drop in value attributed to various strugglesaround the company’s reputation.
Here’s a look at how industries break down more generally on the list:
As you can see, technology brands make up 20% of the list in terms of the number of entries – and a whopping 43% of the list’s cumulative valuation.
In total, technologies brands combined for $957.6 billion in value. Even when including Facebook’s recent drop, this is an impressive 9.7% increase on last year’s numbers.
Will the double-digit increases for the world’s largest tech giants continue into 2020, or are brands such as Amazon and Google going to start seeing the same type of pushback that Facebook has grappled with among consumers and regulators?
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WVfIha Tyler Durden
Is plunging Russia into darkness really a good idea?
Occasionally, a revelatory, and profoundly alarming, article passes almost unnoticed, even when published on the front page of The New York Times. Such was the case with reporting by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, bearing the Strangelovian title “U.S. Buries Digital Land Mines to Menace Russia’s Power Grid,” which appeared in the print edition on June 16. The article contained two revelations.
First, according to Sanger and Perlroth, with my ellipses duly noted, “The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid . . . . Advocates of the more aggressive strategy said it was long overdue . . . ” The operation “carries significant risk of escalating the daily digital Cold War between Washington and Moscow.” Though under way at least since 2012, “now the American strategy has shifted more toward offense . . . with the placement of potentially crippling malware inside the Russian system at a depth and with an aggressiveness that had never been tried before.” At this point, the Times reporters add an Orwellian touch. The head of the U.S. Cyber Command characterizes the assault on Russia’s grid, which affects everything from the country’s water supply, medical services, and transportation to control over its nuclear weapons, as “the need to ‘defend forward,’” because “they don’t fear us.”
Nowhere do Sanger and Perlroth seem alarmed by the implicit risks of this “defend forward” attack on the infrastructure of the other nuclear superpower. Indeed, they wonder, “Whether it would be possible to plunge Russia into darkness . . . ” And toward the end, they quote an American lawyer and former Obama official, whose expertise on the matter is unclear, to assure readers sanguinely, “We might have to risk taking some broken bones of our own from a counter response . . . . Sometimes you have to take a bloody nose to not take a bullet in the head down the road.” The “broken bones,” “bloody nose,” and “bullet” are, of course, metaphorical references to the potential consequences of nuclear war.
The second revelation comes midway in the Times story: “[President] Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place ‘implants’ . . . inside the Russian grid” because “he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials.” (Indeed, Trump issued an angry tweet when he saw the Times report, though leaving unclear which part of it most aroused his anger.)
What is the significance of this story, apart from what it tells us about the graver dangers of the new US-Russian Cold War, which now includes, we are informed, a uniquely fraught “digital Cold War”? Not so long ago, mainstream liberal Democrats, and the Times itself, would have been outraged by revelations that defense and intelligence officials were making such existential policy behind the back of a president. No longer, it seems. There have been no liberal, Democratic, or for the most part any other, mainstream protests, but instead a lawyerly apologia justifying the intelligence-defense operation without the president’s knowledge.
The political significance, however, seems clear enough. The leak to the Times and the paper’s publication of the article come in the run-up to a scheduled meeting between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 meeting in Japan on June 28–29. Both leaders had recently expressed hope for improved US-Russian relations. On May 4, Trump again tweeted his longstanding aspiration for a “good/great relationship with Russia”; and this month Putin lamented that relations “are getting worse and worse” but hoped that he and Trump could move their countries beyond “the games played by intelligence services.”
As I have often emphasized, the long historical struggle for American-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) détente, or broad cooperation, has featured many acts of attempted sabotage on both sides, though most often by US intelligence and defense agencies. Readers may recall the Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit meeting that was to take place in Paris in 1960, but which was aborted by the Soviet shoot-down of a US spy plane over the Soviet Union, an intrusive flight apparently not authorized by President Eisenhower. And more recently, the 2016 plan by then President Obama and Putin for US-Russian cooperation in Syria, which was aborted by a Department of Defense attack on Russian-backed Syrian troops.
Now the sabotaging of détente appears be happening again. As the Times article makes clear, Washington’s war party, or perhaps zealous Cold War party, referred to euphemistically by Sanger and Perlroth as “advocates of the more aggressive strategy,” is on the move. Certainly, Trump has been repeatedly thwarted in his previous détente attempts, primarily by discredited Russiagate allegations that continue to be promoted by the war party even though they still lack any evidential basis. (It may also be recalled that his previous summit meeting with Putin was widely and shamefully assailed as “treason” by influential segments of the US political-media establishment.)
Détente with Russia has always been a fiercely opposed, crisis-ridden policy pursuit, but one manifestly in the interests of the United States and the world. No American president can achieve it without substantial bipartisan support at home, which Trump manifestly lacks. What kind of catastrophe will it take—in Ukraine, the Baltic region, Syria, or somewhere on Russia’s electric grid—to shock US Democrats and others out of what has been called, not unreasonably, their Trump Derangement Syndrome, particularly in the realm of American national security? Meanwhile, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has recently reset its Doomsday Clock to two minutes before midnight.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Xqh6Nc Tyler Durden
A new report from LendingTree analyzed thousands of MyLendingTree users’ anonymized credit reports in 165 metropolitan cities across California reveals the most debt-ridden places in the state.
LendingTree found the highest median non-mortgage debt was located in Southern California (SoCal). About 60% of the top 25 cities with the highest non-mortgage debt were located in SoCal cities.
Temecula, a city in SoCal, is the most debt-ridden city in the sate. Its residents had approximately $30,100 in debt, with 41% of their debt linked to auto loans.
Residents of SoCal have some of the highest non-mortgage debt in the state. In Hanford, residents typically had 50% of the non-mortgage debt in auto loans.
La Mesa, a city in SoCal, located 9 miles east of Downtown San Diego in San Diego County, was found to have the most amount of student loan debt than any other city in the state, at 28%, totaling $10,504 per resident.
Student loan debt was the largest share of non-mortgage debt in 19 California cities. Berkeley was one of the least indebted California cities (No.156); nearly half of the non-mortgage debt carried by a resident was student loan related.
Non-revolving credit, i.e., credit card, was a top source of debt in only eight of the cities.
Across all cities, credit card and student debt was about 50% of the consumers’ debt portfolio. About 86% of Californians carried a credit card balance, while 19% had student debt.
Santa Cruz, a city on central California’s coast, had the least amount of non-mortgage debt among residents on average was $8,563.
Los Angeles, the largest California city, ranked no. 135 for median non-mortgage debt amount. San Jose was at no. 137, San Francisco ranked no. 157, and San Diego ranked no. 77.
Besides Santa Cruz and San Jose, residents in Palo Alto, Cupertino, and Sunnyvale, also carried some of lightest non-mortgage debt.
And with the US economy cycling down through the summer, the probabilities for a recession in 1H20 have been surging. Californians are in no way shape or form prepared for the next downturn.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2RqUVkI Tyler Durden
In the present era of 24/7 “breaking news”, the journalistic information intermediated by the internet and the cable networks has largely been reduced to noise, devoid of signal. Or at least any historical context beyond the here and now.
The currently threatened escalation of Washington’s economic war on Iran into an actual shooting war is a fraught case in point. Based on the news coverage since the two oil tankers were damaged yesterday you’d think that a crew of bloody-minded aggressors in Tehran had up and decided out of the blue to attack the whole world via disrupting its 18 million barrel per day oil lifeline through the Straits of Hormuz.
The truth of the matter, however, is just the opposite. The blatant aggressor is Washington and the dangerous confrontation now unfolding is utterly unnecessary.
That’s the foundational reality, and it’s far more important to understand than the momentary disputation about whether the Japanese oil tanker got hit by an Iranian mine or incoming projectile of uncertain origin.
Indeed, the Bombzie Twins, Pompeo and Bolton, have been in such heavy war heat for years that you can virtually bet when the dust settles the following false flags and manufactured pretexts for war per Max Blumenthal will have a Gulf of Oman coda:
Remember the Maine, Operation Northwoods, Gulf of Tonkin, Kuwaiti incubator babies, Saddam’s WMD’s, Qaddafi soldiers’ Viagra spree, Last Messages From Aleppo, Douma, burning aid on Colombia-Venezuela bridge…. and now today’s attacks in the Gulf of Oman.
So whatever deliberate or accidental incident may next materialize on the Persian Gulf waters, the truth is that it will happen because:
the US 5th Fleet naval and air war machine is all over the Gulf and it shouldn’t even be there; and,
Washington has blatantly attacked Iran via crushing economic sanctions designed to close the entire global market to its oil exports and suffocate its domestic economy to the point of collapse – yet Iran is zero threat to the security of the American homeland, and, for that matter, Europe and Asia as well.
That’s right. Iran has no blue water Navy that could even get to the Atlantic and only 18,000 sailors including everyone from admirals to medics; an aging, decrepit fleet of war planes with no long range flight or refueling capabilities; ballistic missiles that mainly have a range of under 800 miles; a very limited air defense based on a Russian supplied S-300 system (not the far more capable S-400); and a land Army of less than 350,000 or approximately the size of that of Myanmar.
Indeed, Iran’s defense budget of less than $15 billion amounts to just 7 days of spending compared to the Pentagon’s $750 billion; and it is actually far less even in nominal terms than Iran’s military budget under the Shah way back in the late 1970’s.
In inflation-adjusted dollars, Iran’s military expenditure today is less than 25% of the level prior to the Revolution. Whatever the foibles of today’s Iranian theocratic state, a thriving military power it is not.
Iran’s Military Budget In US Dollars (millions)
In fact, that’s the real irony. Mostly what comprises the core of Iran air force is left over 40-50 year-old planes that had been purchased from the US under the Shah, and which have been Jerry-rigged with bailing wire and bubble gum to stay aloft and to accommodate some modest avionics and armaments modernizations.
As one analyst further noted, some of its planes were actually gifts from Saddam Hussein!
Much of the IRIAF’s equipment dates back to the Shah era, or is left over from Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi air force, which flew many of its planes to Iran during the 1991 Persian Gulf War to avoid destruction. American-made F-4, F-5 and F-14 fighters dating from the 1970s remain the backbone of the Iranian air force.
So military threat has absolutely nothing to do with it. Washington is knee deep in harms’ way and on the verge of starting a war with Iran solely on account of a misguided notion that the Persian Gulf is an American Lake that needs to be policed by the US Navy; and, more crucially, that Washington has the right to control Iran’s foreign policy and determine what alliances it may and may not have in the region – including whether or not they pass muster with Bibi Netanyahu.
Stated differently, the missions of protecting the oil supply lines and regulating the foreign policy of what amounts to a two-bit economic power is straight out of the playbook of Empire First. As such, it amounts to a foolish policy of putting America’s actual security last.
The fact is, Iran doesn’t even matter in the context of an $80 trillion global economy.
Its GDP of $450 billion (and shrinking fast under Washington’s oil embargo) amounts to just 0.6% of world output. Moreover, that’s well smaller than Argentina ($650 billion), Sweden ($535 billion), Belgium ($500 billion) and Thailand ($455 billion); and really it is not much larger than Austria ($420 billion), Norway ($400 billion) or even Nigeria ($375 billion).
None of these countries can threaten America’s homeland security or even world peace – regardless of whatever mischief might be attributable to their foreign policies. That is, the world doesn’t need an Empire to keep the small fry of the likes of Iran and its economic peers in line.
In the current instance that admonition includes whether Iran chooses to ally with and provide aid to its Shiite confessional brethren in Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah-Lebanon or the Houthis government of northern Yemen.
Every one of these entities are either sovereign governments or major political forces based on popular support, as we detail below, and have every right to invite the assistance of Tehran. To therefore describe them as terrorist proxies for the Iranians is the height of Imperial arrogance.
As to the American Lake rationale, Washington obviously has that upside down. In a world unencumbered by Washington’s pretensions to Empire, Iran would be a beneficent helpmate to the global oil market and economy and the number# 1 source of production stability among the producers in the region.
That’s because unlike Saudi Arabia and the lesser gulf oil kingdoms which can afford to hoard their reserves, Iran is inherently motivated to produce every barrel of oil it can economically extract – given that its 80 million population desperately needs the income.
As is evident in the chart below, during recent times it has produced about 4 million barrels per day – a figure that was sharply reduced during the Obama sanctions period of 2013-2015. But the recovery back to 4 million barrels per day after Iran implemented all of its commitments under the nuke deal has again been reversed owing to the brutal sanctions imposed when Trump withdrew from that agreement entirely on the basis of regional politics, not violations of its terms.
Moreover, it is now about to get worse because most of the temporary exemptions from the oil embargo expired last month when Iran exported roughly 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) and produced a total of 2.4 million bpd, with the balance going into domestic use.
It is now anticipated that exports will be forced down to less than 600,000 barrels per day owing to Washington relentless pressure campaign on every port in the world that dares to accept Iranian tankers, and that total production will drop below 2 million bpd.
It also happens that Iran has about 160 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, which puts it right behind Canada (170 billion barrels), Saudi Arabia (266 billion barrels) and Venezuela (300 billion barrels of mostly heavy oil) in the global league tables.
That’s relevant because in a world free of Washington hegemonic impositions, global capital would flow to Iran’s oilfields massively. It therefore has the potential to take production from its ample and drastically underdeveloped reserves to 6 million bpd or even 8 million bpd with sufficient investment and world-class technology.
So even if you accept protection and stabilization of oil production in the Persian Gulf as a legitimate aim of policy, which it is not as explained below, Washington’s economic war on Iran has it ass-backwards. In the great geo-political/economic scheme of things, Iran is the natural force for maximum production owing to the aspirations of its very large and reasonably well-educated population.
To wit, the GDP per capita of Iran is about $5,500 compared to $21,500 per capita in Saudi Arabia. Were Iran to achieve per capita income parity, it would need a GDP of $1.7 trillion, not $450 billion, and that would take a pretty hefty oil and energy investment boom and full throttle production to bring about.
What we are saying is that there is not really need for a policeman in the Persian Gulf in the first place. If Iran were not threatened by Washington it would produce all it could and would have no reason whatsoever to interfere with commerce and shipping through the straits of Hormuz.
But none of the gulf kingdoms can afford to disrupt production for political or military purposes, either. That is to say, without abundant oil revenues to placate their powerless but large populations (50 million people in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait are ruled and plundered by a few thousand princes and their armies of retainers), the princes and royals would all be living in Switzerland, anyway.
At the end of the day, the whole misbegotten notion that oil security in the Persian Gulf requires the presence of the 5th Fleet is a left over canard from the Cold War, which ended 29 years ago. The 1970s theory of Kissinger and his team of hegemonists was that the dying Soviet Union was on the verge of pushing into the Persian Gulf from the north.
Needless to say, it never had the military capacity or economic resources to accomplish that feat, and the now open Soviet archives show that there wasn’t even a paper plan to do so.
Iran Oil Production (000 barrels per day)
So at the root of today’s total unnecessary military clash in the Persian Gulf is the long-standing Washington error that America’s security and economic well-being depends upon keeping an armada there in order to protect the surrounding oilfields and the flow of tankers through the straits of Hormuz.
That doctrine has been wrong from the day it was officially enunciated by one of America’s great economic ignoramuses, Henry Kissinger, at the time of the original oil crisis in 1973. The 46 years since then have proven in spades that it doesn’t matter who controls the oilfields, and that the only effective cure for high oil prices is the free market.
Every tin pot dictatorship – from Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Saddam Hussein, to the bloody-minded chieftains of Nigeria, to the purportedly medieval Mullahs and especially the Revolutionary Guards of Iran – has produced oil. And usually all the oil they could because almost always they desperately needed the revenue.
For crying out loud, even the barbaric thugs of ISIS milked every possible drop of petroleum from the tiny, wheezing oilfields scattered around their backwater domain before they were finally driven out. So there is no economic case whatsoever for Imperial Washington’s massive military presence in the middle east or for talking sides among the local powers.
The truth is, there is no such thing as an OPEC cartel – virtually every member produces all they can and cheats whenever possible. The only thing that resembles production control in the global oil market is the fact that the Saudi princes treat their oil reserves not much differently than Exxon.
That is, they attempt to maximize the present value of their 270 billion barrels of reserves. Yet ultimately they are no more clairvoyant at calibrating the best oil price to accomplish that objective at any given time than are the economists employed by Exxon, the DOE or the International Energy Agency.
For instance, during the run-up to the late 2014 collapse of the world oil price, the Saudis overestimated the staying power of China’s temporarily surging call on global supply.
At the same time, they badly underestimated how rapidly and extensively the $100 per barrel marker reached in early 2008 would trigger a flow of investment, technology and cheap debt into alternative sources of supply. That is, the US shale patch, the Canadian tar sands, the tired petroleum provinces of Russia, the deep offshore of Brazil etc. – to say nothing of solar, wind and all the other government subsidized alternative source of BTUs.
Way back when Jimmy Carter was telling us to turn down the thermostats and put on our cardigan sweaters, those of us on the free market side of the so-called energy shortage debate said high oil prices are their own best cure. Now we know for sure.
To wit, the Fifth Fleet and its overt and covert auxiliaries should never have been in the Persian Gulf and it environs. And we mean from the very beginning – going all the way back to the CIA’s coup against Iranian democracy in 1953 that was aimed at protecting the oilfields from nationalization.
But having turned Iran into an enemy, Imperial Washington was just getting started, When 1990 rolled around the American Lake theory got a new lease on life – one that carries down to the stupidity of Washington’s military presence there to this very day.
Once again in the name of “oil security” it plunged the American war machine into the politics and religious fissures of the Persian Gulf; and did so on account of a local small beans conflict between Iraq and Kuwait that had no bearing whatsoever on the safety and security of American citizens.
As US ambassador Glaspie rightly told Saddam Hussein on the eve of his Kuwait invasion, America had no dog in that hunt. After all, Kuwait wasn’t even a proper country: It was merely a bank account sitting on a swath of oilfields surrounding an ancient trading city that had been abandoned by Ibn Saud in the early 20th century.
That’s because the illiterate Bedouin founder of the House of Saud didn’t know what oil was or that it was there; and, in any event, Kuwait had been made a separate protectorate by the British in 1913 for reasons that are lost in the fog of British diplomatic history.
The Folly of the Bush Clan’s Persian Gulf Wars
As it happened, Iraq’s contentious dispute with Kuwait was over its claim that the Emir of Kuwait was “slant drilling” across his own border and into Iraq’s Rumaila field. Yet it was a wholly elastic boundary of no significance whatsoever.
In fact, the dispute over the Rumaila field started in 1960 when an Arab League declaration arbitrarily marked the Iraq–Kuwait border two miles north of the southernmost tip of the Rumaila field.
Yet there was nothing sacred about that demarcation line. Both of the combatants in the 1990 Iraq/Kuwait war were recently minted artifacts of late-stage European imperialism. That Bush the Elder choose to throw American treasure and blood into the breach is, accordingly, one of the stupidest crimes every committed from the Oval Office.
The truth is, it didn’t matter who controlled the southern tip of the Rumaila field – the brutal dictator of Baghdad or the opulent Emir of Kuwait. Not the price of oil, nor the peace of America nor the security of Europe nor the peace of the world depended upon it.
But once again Bush the Elder got persuaded to take the path of war. This time it was by Henry Kissinger’s economically illiterate protégés at the national security council and his Texas oilman Secretary of State. They falsely claimed that the will-o-wisp of “oil security” was at stake, and that 500,000 American troops needed to be planted in the sands of Arabia.
That was a catastrophic error, and not only because the presence of crusader boots on the purportedly sacred soil of Arabia offended the CIA-trained Mujahedeen of Afghanistan, who had become unemployed when the Soviet Union collapsed. It is the factor that lead Washington into the folly of the Iraq war, the drastic intensification of the historic Sunni/Shiite divide that metastasized in Iraq and then spread to the region via ISIS, and the perpetuation of Washington’s massive military presence in the gulf and its environs.
Indeed, when you look at the map above you understand why the whole neocon spiel about the so-called Shiite Crescent is to ludicrous. The right spatial metaphor is encirclement, and Iran is the victim, not the aggressor.
The fact is, the claim that Iran is the expansionist leader of the Shiite Crescent is based on nothing more than the fact that Tehran has an independent foreign policy based on its own interests and confessional affiliations – legitimate relationships that are demonized by virtue of not being approved by Washington.
Likewise, the official charge that Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism is not remotely warranted by the facts: The listing is essentially a State Department favor to the Netanyahu branch of the War Party.
We can start with Iran’s long-standing support of Bashir Assad’s government in Syria. That alliance that goes back to his father’s era and is rooted in the historic confessional politics of the Islamic world.
The Assad regime is Alawite, a branch of the Shiite, and despite the regime’s brutality, it has been a bulwark of protection for all of Syria’s minority sects, including Christians, against a majority-Sunni ethnic cleansing. The latter would surely have occurred if the Saudi (and Washington) supported rebels, led by the Nusra Front and ISIS, had succeeded in taking power.
Likewise, the fact that the Baghdad government of the broken state of Iraq – that is, the artificial 1916 concoction of two stripped pants European diplomats (Messrs. Sykes and Picot of the British and French foreign offices, respectively) – -is now aligned with Iran is also a result of confessional politics and geo-economic propinquity.
For all practical purposes the old Iraq is no more. The Kurds of the northeast have declared their independence and seized their own oil. At the same time, the Sunni lands of the Upper Euphrates, which were temporarily lost to the short-lived ISIS caliphate, are now a no man’s land of rubble and broken communities.
Accordingly, what is left of the rump of the Iraqi state is a population that is overwhelmingly Shiite, and which nurses bitter resentments after two decades of violent conflict with the Sunni forces. Why in the world, therefore, would they not ally with their Shiite neighbor?
Likewise, the claim that Iran is now trying to annex Yemen is pure claptrap. The ancient territory of Yemen has been racked by civil war off and on since the early 1970s. And a major driving force of that conflict has been confessional differences between the Sunni south and the Shiite north.
The Houthi tribes – who profess a variant of Shiite Islam – have dominated much of northern and western Yemen for centuries. They generally ruled North Yemen during the long expanse after it was established in 1918 until the two Yemen’s were reunified in 1990.
So when a Washington installed government in Sana’a was overthrown and Yemen disintegrated into warring religious factions, the Houthi took power in northern Yemen, while Sunni tribes aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda held sway in the south.
Needless to say, the Houthis have no Navy, Air Force or regular Army. So they are no threat whatsoever to Saudi Arabia, bristling with $250 billion of advanced weapon bought from America over recent decades.
In fact, the entire GDP of the war-torn and impoverished nation of Yemen is just $27 billion, and much of that lies outside of areas controlled by the Houthis government in Sana’a.
By contrast, Saudi Arabia has the third largest defense budget in the world at $69 billion or 2.5X the entire economy of Yemen, and it is a lethal modern military force trained and equipped with the Pentagon’s best.
In a word, the Houthis are being brutally bombed and droned by Saudi Arabia in what amounts to a genocidal proxy attack on its Iranian rival across the Persian Gulf. So it is the Houthis who are the victims of a vicious aggression that has left more than 10,000 civilians dead and the land plagued with famine, cholera, rubble and economic collapse.
There is no telling which faction in Yemen’s fratricidal civil war is the more barbaric, but the modest aid provided by Iran to its Shiite kinsman in northern Yemen is absolutely not a case of state sponsored terrorism.
Finally, there is the fourth element of the purported Iranian axis – the Hezbollah controlled Shiite communities of southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Like everything else in the Middle East, Hezbollah is a product of historical European imperialism, Islamic confessional politics and the chronically misguided and counterproductive security policies of Israel.
In the first place, Lebanon was not any more a real country than Iraq was when Sykes and Picot laid their straight-edged rulers on a map. The result was a stew of religious and ethnic divisions – Maronite Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Copts, Druse, Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Kurds, Armenians, Jews and countless more – that made the fashioning of a viable state virtually impossible.
At length, an alliance of Christians and Sunnis gained control of the country, leaving the 40% Shiite population disenfranchised and economically disadvantaged. But it was the inflow of Palestinian refugees in the 1960s and 1970s that eventually upset the balance of sectarian forces and triggered a civil war that essentially lasted from 1975 until 1990.
It also triggered a catastrophically wrong-headed Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982, and a subsequent brutal occupation of mostly Shiite territories for the next eighteen years. The alleged purpose of this invasion was to chase the PLO and Yassir Arafat out of the enclave in southern Lebanon that they had established after being driven out of Jordan in 1970.
Eventually Israel succeeded in sending Arafat packing to north Africa, but in the process created a militant, Shiite-based resistance movement that did not even exist in 1982, and which in due course became the strongest single force in Lebanon’s fractured domestic political arrangements.
After Israel withdrew from Lebanon in 2000, the then Christian President of the county made abundantly clear that Hezbollah had become a legitimate and respected force within the Lebanese polity, not merely some subversive agent of Tehran:
“For us Lebanese, and I can tell you the majority of Lebanese, Hezbollah is a national resistance movement. If it wasn’t for them, we couldn’t have liberated our land. And because of that, we have big esteem for the Hezbollah movement.”
So, yes, Hezbollah is an integral component of the so-called Shiite Crescent and its confessional and political alignment with Tehran is entirely plausible. But that arrangement – -however uncomfortable for Israel – does not represent unprovoked Iranian aggression on Israel’s northern border.
Instead, it’s actually the blowback from the stubborn refusal of Israeli governments – especially the rightwing Likud governments of modern times – to deal constructively with the Palestinian question.
In lieu of a two-state solution in the territory of Palestine, therefore, Israeli policy has produced a chronic state of war with the large majority of the population of southern Lebanon represented by Hezbollah.
The latter is surely no agency of peaceful governance and has committed its share of atrocities. But the point at hand is that given the last 35 years of history and Israeli policy, Hezbollah would exist as a menacing force on its northern border even if the theocracy didn’t exist and the Shah or his heir was still on the Peacock Throne.
In short, there is no alliance of terrorism in the Shiite Crescent that threatens American security. That proposition is simply one of the Big Lies that was promulgated by the War Party after 1991; and which has been happily embraced by Imperial Washington since then in order to keep the military/industrial/security complex alive, and to justify its self-appointed role as policeman of the world.
So at the end of the day,the claim that Iran is the expansionist leader of the Shiite Crescent is based on nothing more than the fact that Tehran has an independent foreign policy based on its own interests and confessional affiliations – legitimate relationships that are demonized by virtue of not being approved by the Washington War Party and especially its Bibi Netanyahu branch.
And for this, the Donald shit-canned the only decent thing Obama did in foreign policy arena – the Iranian nuke deal – and has unleashed the beef below to actually bring us to the point of military conflict.
If it happens, the trio of aggressors behind it have already posed for their official portrait.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WZeNBx Tyler Durden
Late last year, Gallup found that U.S. public support for legalizing marijuana surged to 66 percent. The poll’s results were particularly noteworthy because, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, a newfound majority of Republicans and Americans over 55 supported legalization for the first time.
The increasing popularity about giving marijuana the green light raises a pretty obvious question which has been rarely asked: why do supporters want it legalized and why do opponents want it to remain out of reach? Gallup polled Americans once again about marijuana last week, this time focusing on the arguments for and against legalization.
They found that 86 percent of supporters think medical benefits are a very important reason to legalize the drug. 70 percent cited freeing up legal resources to tackle other crime as important while 60 percent said its very important for people to have freedom and personal choice. How did supporters feel about the economic benefits of pot given that Colorado surged passed $1 billion in state revenue from the green stuff last week? Just over half of supporters think tax revenue for local and state governments is an important reason for legalization.
Around a third of Americans oppose giving recreational marijuana the thumbs up but what are their most important reasons for wanting it to stay out of circulation? Driver safety was at the top of list with 79 percent of opponents polled saying it was the most important factor in their opposition. There is also a fear that marijuana could become a gateway drug and 69 percent of those opposed said “leading people to use stronger drugs” is a very important reason in being against legalization.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Ivjb2c Tyler Durden
