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Authored by Steven Guinness,

An argument I come across often within the independent media is how over the past few years in the UK, the establishment have served up alternative parties and candidates to counter increasing scepticism towards globalisation and elitism. The premise goes that to quell those who have become disaffected with the status quo, the political system has allowed for alternative voices to gain a footing but at the same time kept the disenfranchised within its purview of control.

The popularity of UKIP leading up to the original EU referendum was one example, as was Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour party leader in 2015.

Then there is the newly formed Brexit Party led by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. The rise of this party came about in between the original Article 50 deadline of March 29th 2019 and the second cut off point of April the 12th.

When it was announced on March 21st that Article 50 had been extended until April the 12th, the next day Farage was pronounced the new leader of the Brexit party. When on April the 11th a further six month extension was implemented, twenty fours later Farage officially launched the Brexit party – on the same day Britain had been due to leave the EU.

I highly doubt this was all a coincidence. The movements of this party coincided perfectly with the enforced delays to Brexit. They were positioned to soak up the ire of those who support the UK leaving the EU, as well as those who demanded that the democratic will of the electorate be respected.

Leading into the recent EU elections, the leave side of the Brexit paradigm boasted a single coherent voice. The same cannot be said for those who wish to remain in the EU. As the recent elections demonstrated, up to five participating parties all publicly want to overturn the original referendum, as do elements of both the Conservatives and Labour. But what the system did not offer was a unified response to the Brexit party. There was no ‘Remain Party‘ option for EU advocates to coalesce around. As a result, the remain vote was split, allowing the Brexit party an clear path to victory.

My perspective on that is clear. I believe that if the objective of the establishment was to malign Brexit to the point of its demise, then a counter option to the Brexit party would have been forged. All throughout this process globalists have had ample opportunities to put a permanent halt to Brexit. But when it came down to crucial bits of legislation like invoking Article 50, it has not happened.

Some will cite the two extensions to Article 50 as evidence that the powers that be do not want the UK to leave the EU, especially under a no deal scenario. Whilst the exit day’s of March the 29th and April the 12th did not hold, I think it would be premature to look upon this as deliberate sabotage.

Over the past year I have detailed on numerous occasions why I believe a no deal Brexit is the desired outcome for the central banking fraternity. Their goal of creating a global currency framework is entirely compatible with Brexit given the exposure of sterling to a ‘disorderly‘ exit.

In the weeks leading up to the EU elections, central bank reserve managers indicated that the pound’s role as a global reserve currency would be in danger following a ‘hard‘ Brexit. I posted a two part series back in March 2019 that examined this very topic.

Since then, the threat of a no deal departure has grown rather then receded. And as things stand at present, British politics has been consumed by a new party whose leading objective is for the UK to leave the EU on World Trade Organisation Terms.

For an establishment that allegedly will do anything to stop a no deal Brexit, they are doing an extremely poor job of diverting public support away from that outcome. If their plan was to stoke up the possibility of no deal as some sort of fear tactic to pull people back to supporting EU membership, then it has failed. I would contend, though, that this was never the original intent.

How far the Brexit party advance from here will be key. Next week they have the opportunity of winning a by-election in Peterborough and with it representation in parliament. A few weeks later the Conservatives are due to select their next party leader and Prime Minister. And once that matter is settled we begin edging nearer to the Article 50 deadline of October the 31st.

The evidence suggests that any further delay to Britain leaving the EU will embolden the Brexit Party. A second referendum or general election continue to be spoken about in the media as potential causes for another extension. Let’s quickly look at each of those options in turn:

A Second Referendum

Along with the economic side of Brexit, a second vote is something I have written about since June 2018. With Theresa May stepping down as Prime Minister in two weeks, it is likely that the withdrawal agreement negotiated with the EU under her leadership will depart with her. The next Tory party leader is tipped to be a ‘Brexiteer‘, and with the EU insisting that the agreement already rejected by parliament three times is ‘the only deal possible‘, the chances of an alternative deal materialising are slim to none when you consider that the next Prime Minister would have just weeks to negotiate something new.

In terms of a second referendum, that would leave just two options. Leave the EU under WTO terms or remain part of the bloc. I have long since predicted that in the event of a referendum a ‘no deal‘ option would be on the ballot. The rise of the Brexit party only increases that likelihood.

The resultant delay to Brexit to accommodate a referendum would represent a breeding ground for discontent amongst the British public. The more that politicians are seen to prevaricate over Brexit, the higher the chances of them being punished for it.

A General Election

The opposition Labour party have said that as soon as the next Conservative Prime Minister is announced, they will immediately call a vote of no confidence to try and force a general election. Whilst it is doubtful this would succeed, if an election was to take place then it would probably require Article 50 to be extended once more. The Brexit Party would field candidates throughout the UK, and again would be perfectly placed to capitalise on the rising level of animosity towards politicians over Brexit.

It is not inconceivable that a general election which caused a third delay to the process would return dozens of seats to Nigel Farage’s party, and place them in a position to form a coalition with the Conservatives and make leaving the EU under WTO terms ever more likely.

In the end it does not matter which is the chosen route towards a no deal outcome. It is the economic ramifications from it which are relevant. The resultant drop in the pound and disruption to supply chains would ultimately feed through to inflation. And as we saw after the first referendum, the Bank of England responded to rising inflation by raising interest rates.

Outgoing BOE governor Mark Carney has since spelled out on several occasions that the inflationary effects of a no deal Brexit would see rates rise rather than fall. I do not believe this to be an empty threat. Central banks have reverted over the past couple of years to reaffirming importance of their mandate for 2% inflation. Communications from both the the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements continue to endorse the position that interest rates should rise when inflation is consistently above target.

Whilst a decade ago central banks abandoned their inflation mandates, slashed rates to zero and commenced with trillion dollar quantitative easing programmes, these policies were initiated under the pretext of preserving the global financial system. The ‘Great Financial Crisis‘ as it became known was to a large extent a product of the system. Thus central banks implemented accommodative measures.

This time, however, economic instability is being perceived as stemming from the political sphere. The actions of governments, rather than the intent of central banks, is where attention is being focused.

The Bank of England, along with their counterparts the ECB and the Federal Reserve, have all been engaged in gradually removing monetary accommodation. Given that it is this accommodation that is almost exclusively responsible for maintaining the illusion of economic recovery, it is no coincidence that its removal has coincided with a significant increase in geopolitical conflict.

As I keep pointing out, globalists cannot advance their agenda without the onset of crisis scenarios. Crisis breeds opportunity. A no deal Brexit falls directly into that category.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Mgps5V Tyler Durden

A Russian Soyuz rocket was struck by a bolt of lightning during a launch on Monday, but the strike didn’t hinder the rocket’s course and the launch was completed successfully. The rocket reached orbit without issue, according to Russian space officials. The strike, did, however, result in stunning video, captured from numerous angles and posted to YouTube. 

The strike occurred during the launch from Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome, about 500 miles north of Moscow.

Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin wrote on Twitter while celebrating the launch: “Lightning is not an obstacle for you!”

Roscosmos used a Soyuz 2.1b booster equipped with a Fregat upper stage to launch Glonass-M, the latest in a series of navigation satellites to support Russia’s military and civilian customers, according to Space.com. 

Поздравляем командование Космических войск, боевой расчёт космодрома Плесецк, коллективы РКЦ “Прогресс” (Самара), НПО имени С.А.Лавочкина (Химки) и ИСС имени академика М.Ф.Решетнёва (Железногорск) с успешным запуском КА ГЛОНАСС!
Молния вам не помеха pic.twitter.com/1cmlZ4hD1g

— Дмитрий Рогозин (@Rogozin) May 27, 2019

Russia’s Ministry of Defense wrote in an update: “A stable telemetric connection is established and maintained with the spacecraft. The on-board systems of the Glonass-M spacecraft are functioning normally.”

While rare, it isn’t the first time such a strike has occurred. In 1969, lightning struck a Saturn V rocket twice during the launch of NASA’s Apollo 12 mission to the moon. 

Analysis of the Apollo 12 strike showed that “lightning can be triggered by the presence of the long electrical length created by the space vehicle and its exhaust plume in an electric field which would not otherwise have produced natural lightning,” according to a NASA report.

Russia’s General Major Nikolai Nesterchuk told RT, “The weather is not a hindrance, we are an all-weather troop.”

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wr7Mtu Tyler Durden

Authored by Phillip Magness via The American Institute for Economic Research,

The best-known recent scholarship on economic inequality focuses heavily on the United States, positing an upward trend in top income and wealth concentrations that started around 1980. There are numerous reasons to doubt the accuracy of the data purporting to illustrate this trend. The timing of this claimed rebound nonetheless remains the central feature of most policy prescriptions to address inequality itself.

The basic story asserts that tax cuts by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s spawned the alleged rebound, and therefore steeply progressive tax increases are needed to reverse the course. While this story is U.S.-specific, the same causal mechanism should theoretically hold in other developed economies — if indeed it is true.

As a point of comparison, we just so happen to have another parallel example in the United Kingdom. Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher took office in 1979 at a time when the top marginal income tax rate sat at a historical maximum that exceeded 90 percent. Between 1979 and 1988, Thatcher shepherded through a series of tax reforms that eventually reduced the top marginal rate to just 40 percent.

While the two countries diverge in other areas of tax policy, the timing and direction made Thatcher’s income tax reforms nearly contemporaneous to the Reagan tax cuts in the United States. So how did these tax cuts affect inequality in the United Kingdom?

Picking Up From Piketty

As with the U.S., the current debate around inequality in the U.K. owes a debt to French economist Thomas Piketty.

Piketty’s book Capital in the 21st Century first drew widespread attention to the theory that tax cuts spawned an inequality boom in the United States. Unsurprisingly given their parallel income tax rate evolutions, his examination of the United Kingdom reached an almost-identical conclusion. Inequality in the U.K., he claimed, was on the rebound since 1980, and Thatcher’s tax policies were to blame.

Furthermore, he contends, the 1980s cuts to the top income tax rates reversed a century-long pattern towards greater equality. As he writes in Capital,

In Britain, the upper decile’s [wealth] share fell from more than 90 percent on the eve of World War I to 60-65 percent in the 1970s; it is currently around 70 percent. The top centile’s share collapsed in the wake of the twentieth century’s shocks, falling from nearly 70 percent in 1910-1920 to barely more than 20 percent in 1970-1980, then rising to 25-30 percent today.

The decline then rise of inequality found in the U.K., Piketty further contended, was part of a “general phenomenon” that illustrated the responsiveness of wealth concentration to steeply progressive tax policies of the same type that he personally favors. In short, the British experience confirmed his theory about the United States and indeed most developed economies around the world. The progressive Left’s favored prescription of a global wealth tax accordingly became a primary tool to reverse the trend.

U.K. Inequality Reassessed

Piketty presented an array of data purporting to prove this pattern, including a visually appealing chart that showed the visible dip and rebound in top wealth concentrations. The applicable portions of that chart may be seen below, with a U-shaped pattern appearing in the 1980s.

After the publication of Piketty’s book in 2014, several of his charts and statistical claims began to attract closer scrutiny. The Financial Times published a lengthy criticism of Piketty’s data (which he partially rebutted in an online rejoinder). I also published a replication study of Piketty’s U.S. statistics with Bob Murphy, showing that Piketty’s data construction tended to accentuate the American U-curve by pivoting between disparate data sources. Subsequent works by other scholars have confirmed as much, prompting additional scrutiny around his narrative for the United States.

Aside from the initial Financial Times study, Piketty’s U.K. data received very little additional discussion, and his narrative — pinning a claimed inequality rebound on Thatcherism — has since been widely embraced.

There’s a problem with Piketty’s U.K. data, however. His graph, as depicted above, looks almost nothing like the source statistics he used to construct it. To see what was going on I conducted another replication analysis, the results of which were recently published in Social Science Quarterly.

My chart comparing Piketty’s estimates against his source statistics may be seen below.

Several suspect features are readily visible. First, Piketty’s graphs for both the top 1 percent and top 10 percent wealth shares show an inequality decline that takes place circa 1970, slightly ahead of the actual trough in the raw statistics. Second, the inequality rebound that appears on Piketty’s chart is not at all apparent in its raw data sources. His top 10 percent share in particular appears to severely overstate the raw data after 1980.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to accurately reconstruct Piketty’s charts from the tables he provided, but a common theme appears when they are compared to the actual statistics. Piketty appears to have adjusted his series upward at the exact moment the Thatcher tax reforms took effect.

Additional work has been done on the U.K.’s wealth concentration since Piketty’s book came out, including a 2018 study (Alvaredo et al. 2018) by a group of authors who are politically sympathetic to Piketty’s larger project. Their results also diverge from his narrative, as may be seen in the chart below, where they are overlaid with the same raw statistics that Piketty claims to have used.

As can be seen in this comparison as well, the inequality rebound from Piketty’s chart is not at all apparent in any of the source data. Rather, it flattens out around the start of Thatcher’s term and, subject to a few small fluctuations in between that mostly post-date her government, remains on par with its 1980 level today.

Recall that Piketty specifically attributed an inequality spike of about 5 to 10 percentage points for the top wealth decile and centile between 1980 and the present. His charts depict as much, yet the actual measures I considered in my analysis show something very different. Wealth concentration in the U.K. barely moved over this period.

From 1980 to 2012 (the most recent available year), the top 1 percent wealth share only added 1.13 percentage points, not the 5.3 that Piketty claimed. The top 10 percent in 2012 sat almost exactly at its 1980 level, even though Piketty’s chart claimed a 7.9 point rise.

The cause of the sharp divergence between the Piketty numbers and reality may never be fully known as he did not publish his original calculations. They do clearly skew in the direction of increasing inequality though, and in a way that is very convenient to his political narrative about the effects of the Thatcher tax reforms.

Inequality will likely continue to dominate political discussions for many years to come, particularly as progressive causes and candidates on both sides of the Atlantic point to it as a social ill. Yet as the U.K. example illustrates, a popular narrative about evolution of income concentration in the last three decades is actually built upon deeply flawed empirical work that seems to prop up a favored tax-hike prescription.

The zeal for a higher and more progressive tax structure is strong in many corners of the inequality literature. Allowing that zeal to distort our statistical measures of wealth concentration is not only poor social science, but a political corruption of empirical analysis to the service of a prescriptive end.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2QtzZcm Tyler Durden

Hundreds of British Muslims of Somali descent are sending their teenage children back to East Africa in order to avoid injury or death via stabbing, according to the BBC. 

London has experienced 51 stabbing deaths in 2019, while the UK overall has seen 100. According to the report, 8% of victims have been of Somali heritage. 

The Somali teens, meanwhile, say that they feel much safer in Africa despite the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth office advising citizens against traveling to Somalia, as well as threats of terrorism across Kenya (It probably helps if one is a practicing Muslim). Somalia was named the 13th most dangerous country in the world last year by the Foreign Office. 

The BBC‘s Victoria Derbyshire interviewed one Somali mother, Amina, who told the network how her 15-year-old son was stabbed four times, just 17 days after his year-long stay in Somalia. 

“They damaged his bladder, his kidneys, his liver. He’s got permanent damage,” she said, adding “He was safer there [in Somaliland] than he was here, 100 per cent more safe than in London.”

According to Islington mayor Rakhia Ismail – a Somali immigrant to London and mother of four – some areas of the city are not safe for young people. She estimates that 40% of UK Somali families are taking their children back home. 

Dr Fatumo Abdi – a mother of Somali origin – said parents were struggling to know how to react to knife crime.

“This is not something they’ve encountered before. But we know living here in Britain, the context is Britain. This is a British problem and it’s a problem that we’ve fallen into.

“It’s not the answer but these are desperate parents.”

She believes poverty, inequality and exposure to violence are big factors as to why young people fall into criminality.

“Our communities are living in very poor disadvantaged areas with poor educational attainment. All these things affect how our children move through the world.” –BBC

And as the Daily Mail points out, there have been an average of two murders per day in the UK – the highest level in a decade. 

Somali mentor Jamal Hassan explained to BBC that parents will do anything to protect their children. 

“If it means that child doesn’t finish school, college, university or he will not have a good job by the time you come for them the future is not really important. What is important is that child’s life.”

21-year-old ‘Yusuf’, who grew up in London, told Hassan that he moved to Nairobi because he was seeing people getting stabbed “every other day,” adding “There are people in my neighbourhood, someone who I really knew, who lost his life.”

One mother who sent her child to Africa in a bid to avoid London’s knife crime said she can now sleep at night knowing that the police sirens she hears have nothing to do with her son. 

London’s latest stabbing comes just two days after a 23-year-old was knifed multiple times in Tower Hamlets at 4.30pm in the afternoon.

He was the 50th victim so far this year – and it was the eighth murder in the capital this month as Britain struggles to get to grips with a knife epidemic. –Daily Mail

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2wn9YCi Tyler Durden

Authored by Jon Nylander via The Mises Institute,

Swedes do not toil under a Communist yoke. We are thankfully a market oriented society, and particularly in rural areas, Swedes are ruggedly individualistic and responsible citizens. But we do have an enormous welfare state with which to contend — and it poisons our nation much in the same manner that full blown communism would; if perhaps not to the same degree. Doubtlessly; it sets the stage for some rather dystopian developments, both in terms of its steady consumption of productive capabilities — but also in its toxic effects on our culture. On top of this, Sweden has accepted a considerable amount of immigrants (to put it mildly) from cultures that differ wildly from the Swedish. In this text I will take a look at the welfare state through the prism of Sweden’s current multicultural challenge.

First and foremost, is multiculturalism a good thing? When multiculturalism emerges through voluntary interactions it is apparently valuable — otherwise it would not occur in a free society as it so often does. Again: in the marketplace there is, over time, the beautiful possibility that the identity of the tribe expands by including, assimilating and adapting to previously unknown things. Adaptation and cultural appropriation by means of voluntary associations cannot be a bad thing! But in such a situation; isn’t multiculturalism a misnomer? I would rather call it an emergent convergence towards a shared culture, in a pace that participants set. All in all: a desirable thing, especially compared to the alternatives.

Forced multiculturalism, on the other hand, increases polarisation and tribalism along the most basic, and most easily recognised dividing lines. In times of flux; easily distinguishable traits tend to become elevated and adored, uplifted to a place of high honour. They become a substitute for truly shared cultural values and norms, which under healthy circumstances are necessary for cooperation. In times of rapid and involuntary change; they become a superficial false bulwark against the unknown. Instead of engaging in market opportunities across divides, we tend to spend time fortifying our positions. Craving security, we start leaning towards the totalitarianism of simplistic purism.

Forced associations, such as outright invasion and conquest, will fuel embitterment and conflicts along cultural/ethnic lines and maybe even usher in the rebirth of old conflicts. The welfare state is another type of attack vector in the a matrix of forced associations — it merely has different particular properties. The end result is the same: people that do not wish to tango are forced to jot each other down for the next dance.

Spontaneously emergent cultural change through win-win situations on the one hand, and forced associations on the other, are two radically different ways in which societies evolve. These mechanics often overlap in history. In any given situation it may be hard to untangle which has primacy.

When a welfare state offers upkeep and support to large quantities of people from cultures that differ enormously from the predominant culture, despite the wishes of the current residents — we have a clear cut case of forced association — a powderkeg that inevitably will get packed with resentment. People who would like nothing better than for the whole thing to blow up will inevitably start to congregate, with torches at the ready. Cultural homogeneity to some degree smooths over and props up the inherent fault lines that ripple underneath any redistributive scheme, while cultural heterogeneity rapidly exposes fissures. Why is this exactly?

E Pluribus Unum

In his 2007 study “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century,” liberal Harvard sociologist Robert D. Putnam showed that there is an inescapable correlation between diversity and social distrust. He also concludes that racism seems to have very little to do with it. He shows that people living in multi-facetted communities tend to distrust their neighbors, regardless of their skin colour, and that they tend to pull back from even close friends. They expect the worst from society and its leaders. They volunteer less, give less to charity, vote less and agitate more for social reforms – but have less faith in any positive outcomes from those reforms. People living in ethnically or culturally diverse areas appear to retract, like turtles into their shells..

Putnam himself appears to be no great fan of his own findings, and his study is replete with well-tempered and stringent attempts to poke holes in his own conclusions. But no, multiculturalism seems to have an unbending negative impact on civil society.

That a Harvard Professor needs to spend years to reach such an obvious conclusion is baffling. In homogenous communities, there is more trust and more social capital. People who share language, tradition, religion, institutions and history can cooperate more easily and work through disputes without resorting to violence or furtively eyeing the categorical abilities of the state.

People who do not share language, tradition, religion, institutions and history have a harder time cooperating and finding trust. Is this not self-evident? One would have to marinate for a very long time in some potent reality denying ideological soup in order to be able to reach any other conclusion. There is no need to invoke racism as an explanation whatsoever.

In his study, Putnam also speaks warmly for the end-game: that multicultural communities can bridge fragmentation by embracing new social norms and broader identities. I can only agree. Humans have to do this, because we live in this world together. And when we do expand the notion of “us” voluntarily, over time, we tend to be relatively successful at it.

Putnam uses the examples of the early migrations into the United States. Irish-Americans and Italian-Americans for example, are no longer at each other’s throats. These groups suffered friction between themselves, and towards the ruling WASP-culture despite sharing skin colour and most religious sentiments. Putnam puts forward the notion that if groups can bridge their differences, the self evident good of diversity will start to shine. I am unconvinced. Again yes; humanity has bridged cultural and ethnic divides many times in history, and this is certainly better than outright conflict — but is “diversity” really a self evident good in of itself? How so?

The progressive penchant for the inherent strength of diversity is entirely unconvincing. What does a slogan such as “diversity is strength” mean exactly? Is it any truer than “unity is strength”? These two statements look roughly the same to me in some fundamental way: they are equally scary. Neither “diversity” nor “unity” can be strengths in any universally true way, any such conclusion would have to depend on the component parts of any given situation. It would also depend on how you define strength, and diversity, and unity. Clear definitions are paramount when trying to reach truth.

Would it not be preferable to aim for a culture which is capable of discriminating against bad ideas, and open to adapting to good ideas — as negotiated through free speech and voluntary association? Would not such a culture be desirable to build and maintain? A culture which is capable of change towards the better, sometimes due to contact with other cultures, would indeed be strong.

Diversity zealots however seem to believe that all it takes in order to reach the utopia of good intentions is to cram all manner of people together on a rainbow road of love and (severely bounded) tolerance. Together (and with implicit bias training) we shall prevail against the hate! This is nuts.

In contemporary discourse, the US and especially New York are put forward as successful cultural and ethnic melting pots. There is a lot to that sentiment which is perfectly true. But to the degree that New York has been successful, it has not been thanks to simply mashing people together willy-nilly and then forcing them to like each other. People who came to the US had no choice but to bite the bullet and attempt to contribute with something of value. Even this did not take place without friction and conflict (often via labour unions and political shenanigans) but in the end cultural appropriation occurred and above all: assimilation to the predominant culture — not the other way around.

There were still cultural clashes, and these were solved, or at least mitigated over time, because people were not explicitly forced to interact or to contribute to each other’s upkeeps. There was definitely enclavisation and segregation, many times voluntarily so, but always coupled with ample opportunity for people to willingly and voluntarily approach one another, given time and for reasons of self-interest. At least in the long run people became adherents to one overarching American culture. Voila: peace.

With a welfare state as a punching bag between groups however, cultural divides become much harder to bridge. Large scale immigration will always be culturally demanding, even when there is access to market mechanism to bridge cultural differences. But the welfare state largely nullifies such avenues.

1. The attractive welfare state lures non-productive economical migration, deters labour-market entry for migrants who do want to contribute, and cements welfare dependency. Beyond cultural effects, we therefore must add resentment fueled by the predominant culture having no choice but to fund absolute strangers.

2. While not specifically related to the welfare state; minimum wage requirements and other protectionistic union regulations exacerbate this mechanic. In Sweden, hardly a day goes by without some enterprising tax-paying immigrant getting a deportation notice because of having “taken too few vacation days,” or having “accepted too low a salary.” Yes, migration authorities actively enforce union edicts! In the face of this, who can blame a migrant who simply decides to play it safe and remain on welfare?

3. In Sweden, the welfare state is enormous and encompasses everything; from a plethora of transfer payments, to schools (including university), and health care. There is literally no way of escaping its grasp if you wish a lead a semblance of a normal life.

When a welfare state subsidies migration we get a direct burden on existing net taxpayers, who tend to be ethnically and culturally Swedish, above and beyond the burden already imposed by native welfare-recipients and rent-seekers. The added demand for already strained welfare services from new — perceivably alien groups who perhaps have never “contributed to the system” — makes it obvious that any welfare withdrawals for people who may have tilled the soil for generations, are severely discounted. People are inclined to have an opinion in this matter, and do not necessarily deserve to be labeled racist for daring to utter it.

Sweden’s rampant welfare state is sick to the core. And it must therefore be questioned to its core, perhaps even allowed to perish. It isn’t immigrants on welfare that should be crushed; although certainly a lot of welfare recipients and rent-seekers, among them immigrants, would have a hard time during a transition before they can find productive roles in civil society, and will have to leave on their own accord. This is a crying shame – but Swedes have chosen the welfare state for everyone and therefore ultimately: no-one. Combined with euphoric virtue signalling it has been shown to have a profoundly detrimental effect to the fabric of civil society. And now we must pay the price, one way or the other.

These dynamics are playing out with full force in Sweden today — and it is heartbreaking to watch.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VXdFJ0 Tyler Durden

Authored by Brett Redmayne-Titley via Off-Guardian.org,

No other country in the Middle East is as important in countering America’s rush to provide Israel with another war than Iraq. Fortunately for Iran, the winds of change in Iraq and the many other local countries under similar threat, thus, make up an unbroken chain of border to border support. This support is only in part due to sympathy for Iran and its plight against the latest bluster by the Zio-American bully.

In the politics of the Middle East, however, money is at the heart of all matters. As such, this ring of defensive nations is collectively and quickly shifting towards the new Russo/ Sino sphere of economic influence. These countries now form a geo-political defensive perimeter that, with Iraq entering the fold, make a US ground war virtually impossible and an air war very restricted in opportunity.

If Iraq holds, there will be no war in Iran.

In the last two months, Iraq parliamentarians have been exceptionally vocal in their calls for all foreign military forces- particularly US forces- to leave immediately. Politicians from both blocs of Iraq’s divided parliament called for a vote to expel US troops and promised to schedule an extraordinary session to debate the matter. “Parliament must clearly and urgently express its view about the ongoing American violations of Iraqi sovereignty,” said Salam al-Shimiri, a lawmaker loyal to the populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Iraq’s ambassador to Moscow, Haidar Mansour Hadi, went further saying that Iraq “does not want a new devastating war in the region.” He told a press conference in Moscow this past week, “Iraq is a sovereign nation. We will not let [the US] use our territory,” he said. Other comments by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi agreed. Other MPs called for a timetable for complete US troop withdrawal.

Then a motion was introduced demanding war reparations from the US and Israel for using internationally banned weapons while destroying Iraq for seventeen years and somehow failing to find those “weapons of mass destruction.”

As Iraq/ Iran economic ties continue to strengthen, with Iraq recently signing on for billions of cubic meters of Iranian natural gas, the shift towards Russian influence– an influence that prefers peace- was certified as Iraq sent a delegation to Moscow to negotiate the purchase of the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system.

To this massive show of pending democracy and rapidly rising Iraqi nationalism, US Army spokesman, Colonel Ryan Dillon, provided the kind of delusion only the Zio-American military is known for, saying,

Our continued presence in Iraq will be conditions-based, proportional to need, in coordination with and by the approval of the Iraqi government.”

Good luck with that.

US influence in Iraq came to a possible conclusion this past Saturday, May 18, 2019, when it was reported that the Iraqi parliament would vote on a bill compelling the invaders to leave. Speaking about the vote on the draft bill, Karim Alivi, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s national security and defense committee, said on Thursday that the country’s two biggest parliamentary factions — the Sairoon bloc, led by Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Fatah alliance, headed by secretary general of the Badr Organization, Hadi al-Ameri — supported the bill.

Strangely, Saturday’s result has not made it to the media as yet, and American meddling would be a safe guess as to the delay, but the fact that this bill would certainly have passed strongly shows that Iraq well understands the weakness of the American bully: Iraq’s own US militarily imposed democracy.

Iraq shares a common border with Iran that the US must have for any ground war. Both countries also share a similar religious demographic where Shia is predominant and the plurality of cultures substantially similar and previously living in harmony. Both also share a very deep seeded and deserved hatred of Zio- America. Muqtada al-Sadr, who, after coming out first in the 2018 Iraqi elections, is similar to Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his religious and military influence within the well trained and various Shia militias. He is firmly aligned with Iran as is Fattah Alliance. Both detest Zio- America.

A ground invasion needs a common and safe border. Without Iraq, this strategic problem for US forces becomes complete. The other countries also with borders with Iran are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan. All have several good reasons that they will not, or cannot, be used for ground forces.

With former Armenian President Robert Kocharian under arrest in the aftermath of the massive anti-government 2018 protests, Bolton can check that one off the list first. Azerbaijan is mere months behind the example next door in Armenia, with protests increasing and indicating a change towards eastern winds. Regardless, Azerbaijan, like Turkmenistan, is an oil producing nation and as such is firmly aligned economically with Russia. Political allegiance seems obvious since US influence is limited in all three countries to blindly ignoring the massive additional corruption and human rights violations by Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow.

However, Russian economic influence pays in cash. Oil under Russian control is the lifeblood of both of these countries. Recent developments and new international contracts with Russia clearly show whom these leaders are actually listening to.

Turkey would appear to be firmly shifting into Russian influence. A NATO member in name only. Ever since he shot down his first- and last- Russian fighter jet, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has thumbed his nose at the Americans. Recently he refused to succumb to pressure and will receive Iranian oil and, in July, the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft/missile system. This is important since there is zero chance Putin will relinquish command and control or see them missiles used against Russian armaments. Now, Erdogan is considering replacing his purchase of thirty US F-35s with the far superior Russian SU- 57 and a few S-500s for good measure.

Economically, America did all it could to stop the Turk Stream gas pipeline installed by Russia’s Gazprom, that runs through Turkey to eastern Europe and will provide $billions to Erdogan and Turkey. It will commence operation this year. Erdogan continues to purchase Iranian oil and to call for Arab nations to come together against US invasion in Iran. This week, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar renewed Turkey’s resolve, saying his country is preparing for potential American sanctions as a deadline reportedly set by the US for Ankara to cancel the S-400 arms deal with Russia or face penalties draws near.

So, Turkey is out for both a ground war and an air war since the effectiveness of all those S-400’s might be put to good use if America was to launch from naval positions in the Mediterranean. Attacking from the Black Sea is out since it is ringed by countries under Russo/ Sino influence and any attack on Iran will have to illegally cross national airspace aligned with countries preferring the Russo/ Sino alliance that favours peace. An unprovoked attack would leave the US fleet surrounded with the only safe harbours in Romania and Ukraine. Ships move much slower than missiles.

Afghanistan is out, as the Taliban are winning. Considering recent peace talks from which they walked out and next slaughtered a police station near the western border with Iran, they have already won. Add the difficult terrain near the Iranian border and a ground invasion is very unlikely

Although new Pakistani President Imran Khan has all the power and authority of a primary school crossing guard, the real power within the Pakistani military, the ISI, is more than tired of American influence. ISI has propagated the Taliban for years and often gave refuge to Afghan anti-US forces allowing them to use their common border for cover. Although in the past ISI has been utterly mercenary in its very duplicitous- at least- foreign allegiances, after a decade of US drone strikes on innocent Pakistanis, the chance of ground-based forces being allowed is very doubtful. Like Afghanistan terrain also increases this unlikelihood.

Considerations as to terrain and location for a ground war and the resulting failure of not doing so was shown to Israel previously when, in 2006 Hizbullah virtually obliterated its ground attack, heavy armour and battle tanks in the hills of southern Lebanon. In further cautionary detail, this failure cost PM Ehud Olmert his job.

For the Russo/Sino pact nations, or those leaning in their direction, the definition of national foreign interest is no longer military, it is economic. Those with resources and therefore bright futures within the expanding philosophy and economic offerings of the Russo/ Sino pact have little use any longer for the “Sorrows of Empire.” These nation’s leaders, if nothing more than to line their own pockets, have had a very natural epiphany: War…is not, for them, profitable.

For Iran, the geographic, economic and therefore geo-political ring of defensive nations is made complete by Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Syria, like Iraq, has every reason to despise the Americans and similar reasons to embrace Iran, Russia, China and border neighbour Lebanon. Syria now has its own Russian S-300 system which is already bringing down Israeli missiles. It is surprising that Lebanon has not requested a few S-300s of their own.

No one knows what Hizbullah has up its sleeve, but it has been enough to keep the Israelis at bay. Combined with a currently more prepared Lebanese army, Lebanon under the direction of Nasrallah is a formidable nation for its size. Ask Israel.

Lebanon and Syria also take away the chance of a ground-based attack, leaving the US Marines and Army to stare longingly across the Persian Gulf open waters from Saudi Arabia or one of its too few and militarily insignificant allies in the southern Gulf region.

Friendly airspace will also be vastly limited, so also gone will be the tactical element of surprise of any incoming attack. The reality of this defensive ring of nations means that US military options will be severely limited. The lack of a ground invasion threat and the element of surprise will allow Iranian defences to prioritize and therefore be dramatically more effective. As shown in a previous article, The Return of the Madness of M.A.D, Iran like Russia and China, after forty years of US/ Israeli threats, has developed new weapons and military capabilities, that combined with tactics will make any direct aggression towards it by American forces a fair fight.

If the US launches a war it will go it alone except for the few remaining US lapdogs like the UK, France, Germany and Australia, but with anti-US emotions running as wild across the EU as in the southern Caspian nations, the support of these Zionist influenced EU leaders is not necessarily guaranteed.

Regardless, a lengthy public ramp-up to stage military assets for an attack by the US will be seen by the vast majority of the world- and Iran- as an unprovoked act of war. Certainly at absolute minimum Iran will close the Straits of Hormuz, throwing the price of oil skyrocketing and world economies into very shaky waters. World capitalist leaders will not be happy. Without a friendly landing point for ground troops, the US will either have to abandon this strategy in favour of an air war or see piles of body bags of US servicemen sacrificed to Israeli inspired hegemony come home by the thousands just months before the ’20 primary season. If this is not military and economic suicide, it is certainly political.

Air war will likely see a similar disaster. With avenues of attack severely restricted, obvious targets such as Iran’s non-military nuclear program and major infrastructure will be thus more easily defended and the likelihood of the deaths of US airmen similarly increased.

In terms of Naval power, Bolton would have only the Mediterranean as a launch pad, since using the Black Sea to initiate war will see the US fleet virtually surrounded by nations aligned with the Russo/ Sino pact. Naval forces, it should be recalled, are, due to modern anti-ship technologies and weapons, now the sitting ducks of blusterous diplomacy. A hot naval war in the Persian Gulf, like a ground war, will leave a US death toll far worse than the American public has witnessed in their lifetimes and the US navy in tatters.

Trump is already reportedly seething that his machismo has been tarnished by Bolton and Pompeo’s false assurances of an easy overthrow of Maduro in Venezuela. With too many top generals getting jumpy about him initiating a hot war with Iraq, Bolton’s stock in trade-war is waning. Trump basks in being the American bully personified, but he and his ego will not stand for being exposed as weak. Remaining as president is necessary to stoke his shallow character. When Trump’s limited political intelligence wakes up to the facts that his Zio masters want a war with Iran more than they want him as president, and that these forces can easily replace him with a Biden, Harris, Bernie or Warren political prostitute instead, even America’s marmalade Messiah, will lose the flavor of his master’s blood lust for war.

In two excellent articles in Asia times by Pepe Escobar, he details the plethora of projects, agreements, and cooperation that are taking place from Asia to the Mid-East to the Baltics. Lead by Russia and China this very quickly developing Russo/ Sino pact of economic opportunity and its intentions of “soft power” collectively spell doom for Zio-America’s only remaining tactics of influence: military intervention. States, Escobar:

We should know by now that the heart of the 21stCentury Great Game is the myriad layers of the battle between the United States and the partnership of Russia and China. The long game indicates Russia and China will break down language and cultural barriers to lead Eurasian integration against American economic hegemony backed by military might.”

The remaining civilized world, that which understands the expanding world threat of Zio-America, can rest easy. Under the direction of this new Russo/ Sino influence, without Iraq, the US will not launch a war on Iran.

This growing Axis of Sanity surrounds Iran geographically and empathetically, but more importantly, economically. This economy, as clearly stated by both Putin and Xi, does not benefit from any further wars of American aggression. In this new allegiance to future riches, it is Russian and China that will call the shots and a shooting war involving their new client nations will not be sanctioned from the top.

However, to Putin, Xi and this Axis of Sanity: If American wishes to continue to bankrupt itself by ineffective military adventures of Israel’s making, rather than fix its own nation that is in societal decline and desiccated after decades of increasing Zionist control, well…

That’s just good for business!

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HHEmOc Tyler Durden