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A state election is taking place in Bavaria today which should be a key test for Chancellor Merkel’s political future, and could result in a political landslide in the state that holds 16% of the total German population and is responsible for more than 18% of German GDP.

Polls indicate that both the CSU (the sister party to Merkel’s CDU) and the center-left SPD will both lose votes, though most analysts expect the CSU to be able to form a government with other smaller parties (either the FDP and the Free Voters, or the Greens), which should give Merkel more breathing room in Berlin. She might be able to oust the more combative elements within her government, and could therefore gain leeway over asylum and European policy.

That said, as ING warns (full preview below), regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s elections, be prepared for a political landslide with a long-term impact on German national politics: a dramatic defeat of the CSU would first lead to an earthquake in Bavaria, foreshadowing future political developments and structural shifts at the national level; an unexpected comeback of the CSU would probably prompt a political landslide in Berlin.

Below we publish a complete preview of what to expect, courtesy of ING Economics’ Carsten Brzeski, who notes that Sunday’s regional elections in Bavaria could become an important milestone, either imminently or in the future, and that the result will be a “political landslide – one way or the other.”

Germany: Warning – political landslide in Bavaria ahead

Since the start of the new government in March this year, German politics have been hijacked by the forthcoming regional elections in Bavaria. In a bid to defend its absolute majority in Bavaria, the CSU (the sister party and coalition partner of Angela Merkel’s CDU) has been openly criticizing Merkel, starting several inner-coalition conflicts which almost led to a collapse of the government. In June, the CSU and CDU clashed bitterly over the issue of whether or not German police should be allowed to turn back refugees at the German-Austrian border, even forcing Chancellor Merkel to convene a special European Summit. For much of September, both parties were in an almost permanent fight over the fate of the head of the domestic intelligence service.

When Bavarians go to the polls this Sunday, many observers hope that political tensions in Berlin will ease. They could be wrong.

National politics are often hijacked by regional elections

Regional elections in Germany often leave a mark on national and international politics. Just think of the election in North-Rhine Westphalia back in 2010, which led to a rule-changing delay of the very first Greek bailout package or the series of SPD defeats at the start of last year, which turned Merkel contender Martin Schulz from party savior to disappointing failure within only a couple of weeks. Regional elections can always be a kind of confidence vote on national politics, a vote on pure regional issues, parties and the main actors or a combination of both. Very often the interpretation of what drove the election results only comes after Election Day.

CSU tried to score by being trouble-maker at federal level

In the case of the coming elections in Bavaria, however, the question of what drove the election result seems to have been answered already. While the CSU tried to make the election a kind of referendum on Merkel’s stance on refugees, the continuous nagging and trouble-seeking in Berlin, initiated by the CSU, has completely turned this around. According to the trend of latest opinion polls, the CSU’s strategy to distance itself from Merkel in order to prevent a rise of the AfD in Bavaria seems to have been a double failure. With less than 40% of the votes, the CSU is on track to come in with the worst result since 1954. The AfD is currently polling at 10%, as are the Free Voters, an EU-sceptical group that wants to return political power to local authorities. The Greens could come in a surprisingly strong second, currently polling at 18%, while the SPD stands at 12% and the liberal FDP at 5%.

Impact on national politics

Bavaria matters. The Bavarian elections are not only important due to the sheer size of the state, with some 16% of the total German population and more than 18% of German GDP. They also matter because the CSU’s dominance – 12 absolute majorities in the last 13 elections – has been an integral part of the success of the CDU/CSU bloc in federal elections. Currently, some 20% of the CDU/CSU seats on German parliament come from Bavaria.

Looking ahead, the most important aspect for national politics will be the CSU’s performance in Sunday’s elections. In this regard, two scenarios look plausible: current polls are right and the CSU suffers a historic defeat, garnering less than 40% of the votes, or it sees an unexpected comeback, with the party coming close to or even above the absolute majority of seats in Bavarian parliament.

• Historic defeat: The CSU would probably still lead the next Bavarian government with one or two coalition partners. There would be no significant shift in the federal upper house. Instead, Chancellor Merkel would emerge as the real winner of the election. The CSU would need some time to digest such an election defeat, focusing on inner-party issues and wasting less energy on conflicts with Merkel. As a result, the coalition in Berlin could again focus on implementing the substance of its coalition agreement. At the same time, however, a historic CSU defeat could be a worrying sign for Merkel, marking a new chapter in the deterioration of the conservative bloc. A significant loss would simultaneously fuel the AfD’s position as a strong opposition party, illustrating the increasing frustration of some voters with established parties, a trend which would definitely complicate coalition-building at the next federal election.
• Unexpected comeback: In this scenario, expect many CSU politicians to experience a testosterone boost. The CSU would be emboldened in its criticism of Merkel, continuing to be a permanent thorn in her side and pushing the federal government coalition closer to the edge of the cliff. As the SPD is also in a kind of existential crisis, the chances of the federal government coalition collapsing before the 2021 elections would clearly increase. In this scenario, any bigger and far-reaching European or international projects will probably be further hampered by German national politics.

Political landslide – one way or the other

Regardless of the outcome of Sunday’s elections in Bavaria, be prepared for a political landslide with a long-term impact on German national politics. A dramatic defeat of the CSU would first lead to an earthquake in Bavaria, foreshadowing future political developments and structural shifts at the national level. An unexpected comeback of the CSU would probably prompt a political landslide in Berlin. German politics continue to be anything but boring.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Emfqfs Tyler Durden

Attorney Michael Avenatti has come under fire over a now-deleted tweet encouraging people to “chip in for Beto now,” linking to what appeared to be a fundraising page for Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke.

In the fine print of the now-deleted campaign, however, O’Rourke supporters discovered that half the proceeds went to Avenatti’s Fight PAC, formed a little over seven weeks ago. 

Users were able to manually allocate funds entirely to O’Rourke, however the default sent half of all money collected to Avenatti’s Political Action Committee. 

“It is pretty skeezy,” said Brendan Fischer, the director of federal and FEC reform programs at the Campaign Legal Center, of the fundraising tactic. “If Avenatti wanted to raise funds for Beto O’Rourke’s campaign, he could just share a link to the Beto for Senate donation page. But he didn’t. Avenatti’s tweet gave viewers the impression their donation would support Beto for Senate, and given how easy it is to make a one-click donation through ActBlue, some viewers could miss the fine print disclosing that their donation would be split with Avenatti’s PAC.”-Daily Beast

Avenatti called the criticism “complete nonsense,” noting that Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris “do the same thing.” Perhaps sensing he’d made a huge mistake, Avenatti deleted the page – telling the Daily Beast in a text message: “It wasn’t worth the nonsense that resulted from people that don’t understand how common this is.” 

Avenatti, 47, came under fire earlier this month after his introduction of the phrase “gang rape” into the national dialogue may have gotten Brett Kavanaugh confirmed to the Supreme Court, according to angry Democrats. His client, Julie Swetnick, claimed without evidence that Kavanaugh facilitated gang rape orgies at house parties in the early 80’s. Many say the accusation dragged credible allegations into absurd territory, while GOP Senator Susan Collins of Maine – an undecided swing vote – called Swetnick’s claim “outlandish,” and a “stark reminder about why the presumption of innocence is so ingrained in our American consciousness.” 

The left was not pleased: 

The spotlight-stealing lawyer, who also represented Stormy Daniels, is responsible for drawing the media’s attention to Julie Swetnick, an alleged victim of Kavanaugh who told an inconsistent and unpersuasive story. Swetnick’s wild accusation provided cover for fence-sitting senators to overlook the more plausible allegation leveled by psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, and to declare that Kavanaugh was being subjected to false smears.

Sen. John Kennedy (R–La.) echoed Collins, telling MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, “I think this process changed dramatically when Mr. Avenatti entered the picture. I think a lot of people, including many of my Democratic colleagues, felt like we had gotten into the foothills of preposterous.” –Reason.com

Collins called the Swetnick allegation “outlandish” and Kennedy said “this process changed dramatically when Mr. Avenatti entered the picture.” Michael Avenatti provided cover for Republicans to confirm Kavanaugh. Nice work, dude. https://t.co/yOMHyrOqPF

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) October 5, 2018

Beto O’Rourke, meanwhile, announced that his campaign raised $38 million in the third quarter – $16 million more than the previous quarterly funding record of $22 million by 2000 Hillary Clinton challenger Rick Lazio. 

Seems like there’s big money in Beto, although that was before he was seen dabbing in public…

Here is a video of Beto O’Rourke dabbing. You’re welcome pic.twitter.com/TqiiCcfS97

— Chris Strider (@stridinstrider) October 8, 2018

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Saudi Arabia warned on Sunday it would respond to any “threats” against it as its stock market crashed the most since 2016 after President Trump’s warning of “severe punishment” over the disappearance of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi.

On Saturday, Trump said the U.S. could take “very, very powerful, very strong, strong measures” against the country if its leaders are found responsible for the Saudi citizen’s fate. The kingdom, which denies its involvement in Khashoggi’s disappearance, announced it would retaliate against any punitive measures with an even “stronger” response, the Saudi Press Agency reported, citing an official it didn’t identify.

“The kingdom affirms its total rejection of any threats and attempts to undermine it, whether through economic sanctions, political pressure or repeating false accusations,” the kingdom’s statement said. “The kingdom also affirms that if it is (targeted by) any action, it will respond with greater action.”

Saudi Arabia has traditionally been one of Trump’s closest foreign allies, the US president made a point of visiting the kingdom on his first overseas trip as president and has touted arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But both the White House and the kingdom are under mounting pressure as concern grows over the fate of the veteran journalist, who hasn’t been seen since he entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.

The Saudi response came after Saudi Arabian stocks slumped the most since 2016 amid a broad selloff over collapsing relations with the US, with the Tadawul All Share Index, or TASI, plunging by 7% at one point during the week’s first day of trading, the most since December 2014, with all but seven of the gauge’s 186 members fell, led by Saudi Telecom, which declined 6.2%, Jabal Omar lost 6% and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. retreated 1.9%. Selling volume soared, with the number of shares traded more than double the 30-day average.

At one point, the index fell more than 10% in four days and was virtually unchanged on the year at the close of trading.

The market clawed back some of the losses, closing down just over 4% later on. The Saudi benchmark fell 3.9% on Oct. 11, when the MSCI Emerging Markets Index plunged 3.2% following last week’s S&P rout. While the MSCI EM index recovered part of that loss on Friday, when it gained 2.7%, the Saudi selloff accelerated as a result of the latest threat from Trump.

The escalation in tension between the two allies, and growing calls for Saudi Arabia to explain what happened to the missing writer, have raised concerns whether the kingdom can attract foreign investors needed to overhaul its economy according to Bloomberg. The diplomatic spat comes as the nation has been reforming its financial markets and has won inclusion in FTSE Russell and MSCI Inc. indexes for emerging markets.

“You are talking about a geopolitical situation becoming even worse and Saudi Arabia is going to show its stubborn attitude again,” said Naeem Aslam, chief market analyst at Think Markets UK. “This is not going to sit well with foreign investors. From where we sit, we don’t see any demand for Saudi equities at all.”

Neighboring markets were not spared either, with stock markets in Kuwait and Dubai dropping 1.9% and 1.5%, respectively; the Abu Dhabi’s ADX General Index dropped 0.7%. In Kuwait, all but one of the 16 members of the Boursa Kuwait Premier Market Price Return Index fall, dragging the measure down the most in almost a year. In Dubai, Emaar Properties and Dubai Islamic Bank are the biggest drag on the index, which closes at the lowest level since January 2016.

* * *

Foreign capital is key to Saudi Arabia’s plans to diversify its economy beyond oil and cut a 12.9% jobless rate among its citizens.

But in response to Khashoggi’s disappearance, media firms and some technology executives have pulled out of a major Riyadh investment conference scheduled for next week. As we reported yesterday, numerous company leaders backed away from the “Davos in the Desert” event later this month intended to showcase Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s modernization plan for his nation. Still, Trump said the U.S. would be “foolish” to cancel large arms deals with the Gulf state.

“This is happening at a time when Saudi Arabia is preparing for a big investment event and they don’t need people suspending or pulling out investments,” said Nadi Barghouti, head of asset management at Emirates Investment Bank in Dubai.

“Saudi is one of the world’s top oil producers, so one can’t sanction Saudi in the same way that one could sanction Iran,” Richard Sneller, the head of emerging-market equities at Baillie Gifford & Co. in Edinburgh, said last week. “Having said that, there are aspects of the Saudi regime that some people find less palatable and there are competing interests within Saudi as well. This is a very complicated country.”

* * *

While Trump has not described what punishment Saudi Arabia might face, he did indicate that Washington does not want to harm close defence ties, saying the United States would be punishing itself if it halted sales of military equipment to Riyadh.

But U.S. senators have triggered a provision of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act requiring the president to determine whether a foreign person is responsible for a gross human rights violation. The act has in the past imposed visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials.

Also, anti-Saudi sentiment in the U.S. Congress could conceivably raise pressure to pass the so-called No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, which would end sovereign immunity shielding OPEC members from U.S. legal action. Past U.S. presidents have opposed the bill but the chances of it being passed may have increased because of Trump’s frequent criticism of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which he accuses of driving up oil prices.

Meanwhile, as Reuters notes, there is concern Khashoggi’s disappearance could add to a sense that Saudi policy has become more unpredictable under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is pushing social reforms to modernize the kingdom but has also presided over a rise in tensions between Riyadh and several other countries.

A Gulf banker said the Khashoggi case, combined with other events, had become a significant factor for some potential investors in Saudi Arabia and that her bank was receiving many queries from foreign clients on how to interpret it.

“It’s cumulative – the Yemen war, the dispute with Qatar, the tensions with Canada and Germany, the arrests of women activists. They add up to an impression of impulsive policy-making, and that worries investors,” the banker said.

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The Pentagon has heavily invested in 2.75-inch precision laser-guided rockets that are usually fired from attack helicopters. 

But now, BAE Systems’ Advanced precision kill weapon system (APKWS) transforms an unguided 2.75-inch rocket into a precision-guided missile, gives warfighters a low-cost surgical strike capability, can be fired from ground-based vehicles or static remote outposts for base defense, said Defense News.

The Fletcher laser-guided rocket launcher system was spotted earlier this year on top of an Oshkosh Special Purpose All Terrain Vehicle, at a defense conference with a BAE APKWS, positioned in the launcher. 

Here are other vehicles with the Fletcher laser-guided rocket launcher system –

St. Louis, Missouri-based Arnold Defense is the primary manufacturer of the launchers for the US military’s 2.75-inch rockets mounted on fixed and rotary wing aircraft, said Scott Amos, a program manager for BAE. 

“They’ve [Arnold Defense] redesigned that technology into a ground-based launcher system,” Amos said.

Instead of launching dumb rockets at the enemy in area-suppression missions, the Fletcher system with APKWS provides pinpoint accuracy of about 3.1 miles from a ground-based vehicle, according to Amos. 

He said multiple services had expressed interest in the new ground launcher. 

Earlier this year, the Fletcher launcher went through a proof of concept demonstration where the system was tested from a stationary platform, Amos added.

Jim Hager, the company’s CEO, recently told Defense News that his company is the only manufacturer of 2.75-inch rocket launchers since the 1980s.

He said the defense industry ignored the rocket launchers for years because of accuracy issues, but when APKWS came around, all that changed. 

Now in hot demand, it is a boom time for 2.75-inch rocket launchers. The launchers have already shown combat worthiness on the modern battlefield. Hager explained: 

“A European special forces outfit was the first to understand the value of such a system, he said. The company along with its partners, have spent a year working closely with the outfit to create the concept that has culminated in the creation of Fletcher, he added. 

A special forces unit told Arnold Defense about a situation where it was pinned down by enemy fire from a mountain and only had a 60mm mortar system on hand. The unit couldn’t get enough elevation to destroy the target so it could move on, and the team was pinned down until darkness when its members were able to exfiltrate undercover. 

With the Fletcher launcher, the degree of elevation is much higher, which gives it utility in an urban environment, too, Hager said, allowing it to point at tall buildings from close in,” Defense News said. 

Before APKWS, operators of the rocket launcher had limited accuracy, “but now we have pinpoint accuracy, now we have a max effective range of about 4.97 miles,” Hager said, adding that a new rocket is in development that could boost range to 7.5 to 9.3 miles. 

The company mounted the Fletcher launcher on an even smaller vehicle than the Oshkosh, dubbed the Polaris Dagor, it is known as the ultimate dune buggy by special operation forces. 

As the Pentagon continues to fight its hybrid wars across Africa and the Middle East, it does not surprise us that special operation forces have been using lightly militarized all-terrain-vehicles. What is astonishing, is that these dune buggies can now fire laser-guided missiles that are generally found on attack helicopters.

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Authored by James George Jatras via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom is often assumed to be one where the once-great, sophisticated Brits are subordinate to the upstart, uncouth Yanks.

Iconic of this assumption is the mocking of former prime minister Tony Blair as George W. Bush’s “poodle” for his riding shotgun on the ill-advised American stagecoach blundering into Iraq in 2003. Blair was in good practice, having served as Bill Clinton’s dogsbody in the no less criminal NATO aggression against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999.

On the surface, the UK may seem just one more vassal state on par with Germany, Japan, South Korea, and so many other useless so-called allies. We control their intelligence services, their military commands, their think tanks, and much of their media. We can sink their financial systems and economies at will. Emblematic is German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s impotent ire at discovering the Obama administration had listened in on her cell phone, about which she – did precisely nothing. Global hegemony means never having to say you’re sorry.

These countries know on which end of the leash they are: the one attached to the collar around their necks. The hand unmistakably is in Washington. These semi-sovereign countries answer to the US with the same servility as member states of the Warsaw Pact once heeded the USSR’s Politburo. (Sometimes more. Communist Romania, though then a member of the Warsaw Pact refused to participate in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia or even allow Soviet or other Pact forces to cross its territory. By contrast, during NATO’s 1999 assault on Serbia, Bucharest allowed NATO military aircraft access to its airspace, even though not yet a member of that alliance and despite most Romanians’ opposition to the campaign.)

But the widespread perception of Britain as just another satellite may be misleading.

To start with, there are some relationships where it seems the US is the vassal dancing to the tune of the foreign capital, not the other way around. Israel is the unchallenged champion in this weight class, with Saudi Arabia a runner up. The alliance between Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) – the ultimate Washington “power couple” – to get the Trump administration to destroy Iran for them has American politicos listening for instructions with all the rapt attention of the terrier Nipper on the RCA Victor logo. (Or did, until the recent disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Whether this portends a real shift in American attitudes toward Riyadh remains questionable. Saudi cash still speaks loudly and will continue to do so whether or not MbS stays in charge.)

Specifics of the peculiar US-UK relationship stem from the period of flux at the end of World War II. The United States emerged from the war in a commanding position economically and financially, eclipsing Britannia’s declining empire that simply no longer had the resources to play the leading role. That didn’t mean, however, that London trusted the Americans’ ability to manage things without their astute guidance. As Tony Judt describes in Postwar, the British attitude of “superiority towards the country that had displaced them at the imperial apex” was “nicely captured” in a scribble during negotiations regarding the UK’s postwar loan:

In Washington Lord Halifax

Once whispered to Lord Keynes:

“It’s true they have the moneybags

But we have all the brains.”

Even in its diminished condition London found it could punch well above its weight by exerting its influence on its stronger but (it was confident) dumber cousins across the Pond. It helped that as the Cold War unfolded following former Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s 1946 Iron Curtain speech there were very close ties between sister agencies like MI6 (founded 1909) and the newer wartime OSS (1942), then the CIA (1947); likewise the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, 1919) and the National Security Administration (NSA, 1952). Comparable sister agencies – perhaps more properly termed daughters of their UK mothers – were set up in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This became the so-called “Five Eyes” of the tight Anglosphere spook community,infamous for spying on each others’ citizens to avoid pesky legal prohibitions on domestic surveillance.

Despite not having two farthings to rub together, impoverished Britain – where wartime rationing wasn’t fully ended until 1954 – had a prime seat at the table fashioning the world’s postwar financial structure. The 1944 Bretton Woods conference was largely an Anglo-American affair, of which the aforementioned Lord John Maynard Keynes was a prominent architect along with Harry Dexter White, Special Assistant to the US Secretary of the Treasury and Soviet agent.

American and British agendas also dovetailed in the Middle East. While the US didn’t have much of a presence in the region before the 1945 meeting between US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Saudi King ibn Saud, founder of the third and current (and hopefully last) Saudi state – and didn’t assume a dominant role until the humiliation inflicted on Britain, France, and Israel by President Dwight Eisenhower during the 1956 Suez Crisis – London has long considered much of the region within its sphere of influence. After World War I under the Sykes-Picot agreement with France, the UK had expanded her holdings on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, including taking a decisive role in consolidating Saudi Arabia under ibn Saud. While in the 1950s the US largely stepped into Britain’s role managing the “East of Suez,” the former suzerain was by no means dealt out. The UK was a founding member with the US of the now-defunct Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955.

CENTO – like NATO and their one-time eastern counterpart, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) – was designed as a counter to the USSR. But in the case of Britain, the history of hostility to Russia under tsar or commissar alike has much deeper and longer roots, going back at least to the Crimean War in the 1850s. The reasons for the longstanding British vendetta against Russia are not entirely clear and seem to have disparate roots: the desire to ensure that no one power is dominant on the European mainland (directed first against France, then Russia, then Germany, then the USSR and again Russia); maintaining supremacy on the seas by denying Russia warm-waters ports, above all the Dardanelles; and making sure territories of a dissolving Ottoman empire would be taken under the wing of London, not Saint Petersburg. As described by Andrew Lambert, professor of naval history at King’s College London, the Crimean War still echoes today:

“In the 1840s, 1850s, Britain and America are not the chief rivals; it’s Britain and Russia. Britain and Russia are rivals for world power, and Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, which is much larger than modern Turkey — it includes modern Romania, Bulgaria, parts of Serbia, and also Egypt and Arabia — is a declining empire. But it’s the bulwark between Russia, which is advancing south and west, and Britain, which is advancing east and is looking to open its connections up through the Mediterranean into its empire in India and the Pacific. And it’s really about who is running Turkey. Is it going to be a Russian satellite, a bit like the Eastern Bloc was in the Cold War, or is it going to be a British satellite, really run by British capital, a market for British goods? And the Crimean War is going to be the fulcrum for this cold war to actually go hot for a couple of years, and Sevastopol is going to be the fulcrum for that fighting.”

Control of the Middle East – and opposing the Russians – became a British obsession, first to sustain the lifeline to India, the Jewel in the Crown of the empire, then for control of petroleum, the life’s blood of modern economies. In the context of the 19th and early 20th century Great Game of empire, that was understandable. Much later, similar considerations might even support Jimmy Carter’s taking up much the same position, declaring in 1980 that “outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” The USSR was then a superpower and we were dependent on energy from the Gulf region.

But what’s our reason for maintaining that posture almost four decades later when the Soviet Union is gone and the US doesn’t need Middle Eastern oil? There are no reasonable national interests, only corporate interests and those of the Arab monarchies we laughably claim as allies. Add to that the bureaucracies and habits of mind that link the US and UK establishments, including their intelligence and financial components.

In view of all the foregoing, what then would policymakers in the United Kingdom think about an aspirant to the American presidency who not only disparages the value of existing alliances – without which Britain is a bit player – but openly pledges to improve relations with Moscow? To what lengths would they go to stop him?

Say ‘hello’ to Russiagate!

One can argue whether or not the phony claim of the Trump campaign’s “collusion” with Moscow was hatched in London or whether the British just lent some “hands across the water” to an effort concocted by the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, the Clinton Foundation, and their collaborators at Fusion GPS and inside the Obama administration. Either way, it’s clear that while evidence of Russian connection is nonexistent that of British agencies is unmistakable, as is the UK’s hand in a sustained campaign of demonization and isolation to sink any possible rapprochement between the US and Russia.

As for Russiagate itself, just try to find anyone involved who’s actually Russian. The only basis for the widespread assumption that any material in the Dirty Dossier that underlies the whole operationoriginated with Russia is the claim of Christopher Steele, the British “ex” spy who wrote it, evidently in collaboration with people at the US State Department and Fusion GPS. (The notion that Steele, who hadn’t been in Russia for years, would have Kremlin personal contacts is absurd. How chummy are the heads of the American section of Chinese or Russian intelligence with White House staff?)

While there are no obvious Russians in Russiagate there’s no shortage of Brits. These include (details at the link):

• Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Russia

• Stefan Halper, a dual US-UK citizen.

• Ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove.

• Robert Hannigan, former director of GCHQ; there is reason to think surveillance of Trump was conducted by GCHQ as well as by US agencies under FISA warrants. Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ soon after the British government denied the agency had engaged in such spying.

• Alexander Downer, Australian diplomat (well, not British but remember the Five Eyes!).

• Joseph Mifsud, Maltese academic and suspected British agent.

At present, the full role played by those listed above is not known. Release of unredacted FISA warrant requests by the Justice Department, which President Trump ordered weeks ago, would shed light on a number of details. Implementation of that order was derailed after a request by – no surprise – British Prime Minister Theresa May. Was she seeking to conceal Russian perfidy, or her own underlings’?

It would be bad enough if Russiagate were the sum of British meddling in American affairs with the aim of torpedoing relations with Moscow. (And to be fair, it wasn’t just the UK and Australia. Also implicated are Estonia, Israel, and Ukraine.) But there is also reason to suspect the same motive in false accusations against Russia with respect to the supposed Novichok poisonings in England has a connection to Russiagate via a business associate of Steele’s, one Pablo Miller, Sergei Skripal’s MI6 recruiter. (So if it turns out there is any Russian connection to the dossier, it could be from Skripal or another dubious expat source, not from the Russian government.) Skripal and his daughter Yulia have disappeared in British custody. Moscow flatly accuses MI6 of poisoning them as a false flag to blame it on Russia.

A similar pattern can be seen with claims of chemical weapons use in Syria: “We have irrefutable evidence that the special services of a state which is in the forefront of the Russophobic campaign had a hand in the staging” of a faked chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018. Ambassador Aleksandr Yakovenko pointed to the so-called White Helmets, which is closely associated with al-Qaeda elements and considered by some their PR arm: “I am naming them because they have done things like this before. They are famous for staging attacks in Syria and they receive UK money.” Moscow warned for weeks before the now-postponed Syrian government offensive in Idlib that the same ruse was being prepared again with direct British intelligence involvement, even having prepared in advance a video showing victims of an attack that had not yet occurred.

The campaign to demonize Russia shifted into high gear recently with the UK, together with the US and the Netherlands, accusing Russian military intelligence of a smorgasbord of cyberattacks against the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and other sports organizations, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Dutch investigation into the downing of MH-17 over Ukraine, and a Swiss lab involved with the Skripal case, plus assorted election interference. In case anyone didn’t get the point, British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson declared: “This is not the actions of a great power. This is the actions of a pariah state, and we will continue working with allies to isolate them.”

To the extent that the goal of Williamson and his ilk is to ensure isolation and further threats against Russia, it’s been a smashing success. More sanctions are on the way. The UK is sending additional troops to the Arctic to counter Russian “aggression.” The US threatens to use naval power to block Russian energy exports and to strike Russian weapons disputed under a treaty governing intermediate range nuclear forces. What could possibly go wrong?

In sum, we are seeing a massive, coordinated hybrid campaign of psy-ops and political warfare conducted not by Russia but against Russia, concocted by the UK and its Deep State collaborators in the United States. But it’s not only aimed at Russia, it’s an attack on the United States by the government of a foreign country that’s supposed to be one of our closest allies, a country with which we share many venerable traditions of language, law, and culture.

But for far too long, largely for reasons of historical inertia and elite corruption, we’ve allowed that government to exercise undue influence on our global policies in a manner not conducive to our own national interests. Now that government, employing every foul deception that earned it the moniker Perfidious Albion, seeks to embroil us in a quarrel with the only country on the planet that can destroy us if things get out of control.

This must stop. A thorough reappraisal of our “special relationship” with the United Kingdom and exposure of its activities to the detriment of the US is imperative.

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Authored by Thierry Meyssan via The Voltaire Network,

All international problems are currently suspended, awaiting the results of the US mid-term elections. The partisans of the old international order are gambling on a change of majority in Congress and a rapid destitution of President Trump. If the man in the White House holds fast, the protagonists of the war against Syria will have to admit defeat and move on to other battle fields. On the other hand, if Donald Trump should lose the elections, the war on Syria will immediately be revived by the United Kingdom.

The current situation – extending from the Russian response to the destruction of its Ilyuchin-20 to the US mid-term elections on 6 November – is uncertain. All the protagonists of the war in Syria are waiting to see whether the White House will be able to pursue its policy of breaking away from the current international order, or if Congress will become the opposition and immediately trigger the process for the destitution of President Trump.

The origins of the war

It has become clear that the initial project by the United States, the United Kingdom, Israël, Saudi Arabia and Qatar will not be realised. The same goes for France and Turkey, two powers that entered the war against Syria somewhat later.

What we need to remember is not the way in which we were informed about the start of the events, but what we have discovered about them since. The demonstrations in Deraa were presented as a « spontaneous revolt » against « dictatorial repression », but we now know that they had been in preparation for a long time.

Syrian anti-government protesters demostrate in Daraa

We also need to free ourselves of the illusion that all the members of a Coalition, united in order to achieve the same goal, share the same strategy. Whatever the influence of one or the other, each State conserves its own history, its own interests and its own war objectives.

The United States pursued the strategy of Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, which was the destruction of the State structures in the Greater Middle East. For this they relied upon the United Kingdom, which implemented Tony Blair’s strategy aimed at placing the Muslim Brotherhood in power throughout the region. And also on Israël, which rebooted the strategy of Oded Yinon and David Wurmser for regional domination. The necessary weapons were stored in advance by Saudi Arabia in the Omar mosque. Qatar stepped in by inventing the story about the children whose nails were torn out.

At that time, Saudi Arabia was not seeking to impose a new form of politics on Syria, nor even to overthrow its government. Riyadh’s intention was exclusively to prevent a non-Sunni from becoming President. By some strange historical evolution, the Wahhabites, who, two centuries ago, considered both Sunnis and Chiites as heretics and called for their extermination if they failed to repent, are today presenting themselves as the defenders of the Sunnis and the killers of the Chiites.

As for the tiny emirate of Qatar, it was exacting its revenge after the interruption of its gas pipeline in Syria.

France, which should have taken part in the conspiracy by virtue of the Lancaster House agreements, was sidelined because of its unexpected initiatives in Libya. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alain Juppé, attempted to push France into rejoining the conspirators, but the ambassador in Damascus, Eric Chevallier, who could see the distortion of facts on the ground, resisted as far as humanly possible.

When France was once again admitted to the group conspiracy, it continued its 1915 objective of the colonisation of Syria, pursuing the Sykes-Picot-Sazonov agreements. Just as the French mandate over Syria was considered to be transitory compared with the lasting colonisation of Algeria, it is considered, in the 21st century, as secondary to control of the Sahel. Besides which, while attempting to realise its old engagement, Paris pushed for the creation of a national home for the Kurds, on the model used by the British in 1917 for the Jews in Palestine. In order to do so, it allied itself with Turkey which, in the name of Atatürk’s « national oath », invaded the North of Syria in order to create a State to which the Turkish Kurds could be expelled.

While the war objectives of these first four aggressors are mutually compatible, those of the latter two are not compatible with the others.

Besides which, France, the United Kingdom and Turkey are three old colonial powers. All three are now trying to impose their power over the same throne. The war against Syria has thus reactivated their old rivalries.

The Daesh episode within the war against Syria and Iraq

At the end of 2013, the Pentagon revised its plans within the framework of the Cebrowski strategy. It modified its initial plans, as revealed by Ralph Peters, and substituted the plan by Robin Wright for the creation of a « Sunnistan » straddling Syria and Iraq.

However, in September 2015, the deployment of the Russian army in Syria, as an obstacle to the creation of « Sunnistan » by Daesh, ruined the projects of the six principal partners in the war.

Free Syrian Army, Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham flags in Syria

The three years of war that followed had other objectives – on the one hand, to create a new state straddling Iraq and Syria within the framework of the Cebrowski strategy, and, on the other, to use Daesh to cut the Silk Road that Xi Jinping’s China were seeking to reactivate – thus maintaining continental domination over the « Western » part.

The Syrian / Russian victory and the reversal of the United States

The affair of the destruction of the Ilyuchin-20 on 17 September 2018 handed Russia the occasion to terminate this extended war and come to an agreement with the White House to stand against other aggressors. This is a rerun, on a smaller scale, of the Russian / US reaction to the Suez crisis of 1956.

Moscow has not only given the Syrian Arab Army anti-aircraft missiles (S-300’s), but has also deployed an entire integrated surveillance system. As soon as this system is operational, and Syrian officers have been trained to use it, which will take three months at the most, it will be impossible for Western armies to over-fly the country without permission from Damascus.

President Trump announced in advance that he intends to withdraw US troops from Syria. He went back on this decision under pressure from the Pentagon, then agreed with his general officers to maintain pressure on Damascus as long as the United States were excluded from the peace negotiations in Sotchi. The deployment of the Russian armies – for which the White House had probably given its agreement – provided President Trump with the occasion of forcing the Pentagon to back off. It would have to withdraw its troops, but it could maintain the presence of its mercenaries (as it happens, these would be the Kurds and Arabs from the Democratic Forces).

The Syrian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Walid el-Mouallem, speaking before the General Assembly of the UNO, demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the foreign forces of occupation, US, French and Turkish.

If the United States leave, then the French and Turkish troops will be unable to stay. The Israëlis would no longer be able to overfly and bomb the country. The British have already left.

However, Tel-Aviv, Paris and Ankara still hope that President Trump will lose the elections of 6 November and will be fired. They are therefore awaiting the results of this fateful election before they decide.

If it happens that Donald Trump should win the mid-term elections in Congress, another question will arise. If the Western powers give up on the battle in Syria, where will they go to continue their endless war? This is indeed a reality on which all experts agree – the Western ruling class has become so swamped in bad blood and hubris that it is unable to accept the idea of being geared back behind the new Asian powers.

Wisdom would dictate that once the war is lost, the aggressors should withdraw. But the intellectual disposition of the West prevents them from doing so. The war here will cease only when they find a new bone to gnaw on.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu watch the troops marching at the Hemeimeem air base in Syria, on Monday, Dec. 11, 2017

Only the United Kingdom has given its response any thought. It is clear by now that although London maintains its diplomatic pressure on Syria via the Small Group, its attention is already focused on the revival of the « Grand Game » which saw the Crown confront the Tsar throughout all of the 19th century. After having invented the Skripal affair, and on the model of the « Zinoviev Letter », London has just ’caught’ the Russian Exterior Intelligence Services red-handed in their attempt to discover what is being plotted against them by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPWC).

This geopolitical doctrine is independent of the events which serve as its pretext. The « Grand Game » was the strategy of the British Empire. Its resumption by the current United Kingdom is the consequence of Brexit and the policy of « Global Britain ». Just as in the 19th century, this anti-Russian configuration will lead in time to an exacerbated rivalry between London and Paris. On the contrary, should Theresa May fail, along with the questions concerning Brexit and the maintenance of the United Kingdom in the European Union, all these projections will be cancelled.

If France is now studying the possibility of leaving the Middle East in order to concentrate on the Sahel, the position of the United States is a lot more problematic. Since 9/11, the Pentagon has enjoyed a certain autonomy. The ten combat Commanders of the armed forces no longer receive orders from the president of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, but only from the Secretary of Defense.

With time, they have become the veritable « viceroys » of the « American Empire » – a function which they do not wish to see reduced by President Trump. Some of them, like the Commander for South America (SouthCom), intend to continue with the Cebrowski strategy, despite the admonitions of the White House.

So there remains much uncertainty. The only positive step taken concerns Daesh – for three years, the Western powers pretended to be fighting this terrorist organisation, while at the same time supplying them with weapons. Today, Donald Trump has ordered the cessation of this experience of an explicitly terrorist state, the Caliphate, and the Syrian and Russian armies have pushed the jihadists back. The Westerners have no desire to see their friends, the « moderate rebels », now qualified as « terrorists », turn up in their countries en masse. Consequently, whether they admit it or not, they hope they will all be killed in Syria.

It is the US mid-term elections which will decide whether the war continues in Syria or move on to another battle field.

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Boeing Co. was awarded a large contract to supply the US Air Force with new helicopters to guard intercontinental ballistic missile bases across the US, the Pentagon said. 

The contract calls for 84 Boeing MH-139, a 15-seat medium-sized twin-engined helicopter developed and produced by AgustaWestland in Northeast Philadelphia, will replace the service’s aging Bell UH-1 Iroquois fleet, currently guarding nuclear bases in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota.

The Pentagon announced the contract on Sept. 24, is worth more than $375 million and covers the first four MH-139 helicopters, which the Air Force expects to take delivery by 2021. If all goes well, the full value of the contract would unlock, an estimated $2.4 billion, and supply the Air Force with 84 new helicopters and other maintenance services through 2031. 

“Strong competition drove down costs for the program, resulting in $1.7 billion in savings to the taxpayers,” Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson said in a separate statement. 

“A safe, secure and effective nuclear enterprise is job one,” Air Force Chief of Staff General David Goldfein, said. “It is imperative that we field a capable and effective helicopter to replace UH-1Ns providing security for our ICBMs [interconniental ballistic missiles] and nuclear deterrence operations.” 

According to The Drive, the MH-139 for the Air Force will have high-tech sensors and machine guns on either side of the craft, among other weapons that are classified. 

 

Depending on the MH-139’s mission, there are sub-variants of the helicopter for different tasks, such as search and rescue, transport, surveillance, and even an attack version. 

However, its most visible mission will be conducting surveillance operations at ICBM silos and responding to any threats to those sites with machine guns and laser-guided missiles. There are also reports that some of these helicopters will be transporting nuclear warheads around the country.

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In what has become a depressingly persistent undercurrent to the ongoing Brexit negotiation trainwreck, it appears that UK Prime Minister Theresa May and her European counterparts, led by chief negotiator Michel Barnier, have once again set themselves up for failure. As both sides scramble to produce the framework for a “backstop” transition agreement, a process that has been fraught with seemingly intractable conflict despite the fact that it would be explicitly nonbinding, it’s looking increasingly likely that the UK and EU will miss another self-imposed deadline on Monday, as Bloomberg reports.

Investors had hoped that the backstop agreement, or at least a rough outline of a backstop agreement, would be finalized by Monday, allowing both sides more time to figure out what the economic relationship between the EU and UK will actually look like after the transition has begun.

The sticking point for May is the fact that the absence of a clear Parliamentary majority for the conservatives has put her in the uncomfortable position of trying to cater to a plurality of groups with different, sometimes opposing, demands, both in her own government and among the EU. In a piece published on its ‘Brexit Blog’ late last week, ING explained that the two most controversial aspects of any potential transition agreement involve what has been called the Irish border issue, and exactly how vague the wording on future trade should be.

We start with the Irish border issue:

Firstly, there’s the so-called Irish backstop, where discussions are beginning to get very technical. We dived into this in more detail last week, but ITV’s Robert Peston reports that the EU could be prepared to accept British demands for an all-UK customs union to be built into the Irish backstop solution. In exchange, the UK would need to accept that regulatory checks could arise between Northern Ireland and the British mainland if they leave the single market in future.

Some reports indicate this could be settled in time for the EU Council meeting next week, but as ever the challenge is ‘wording’ it in such a way that will convince MPs to vote in favour of the agreement. That’s where the second part of the agreement comes in – the political declaration on future trade – and this is where there seems to be more disagreement on the way forward.

Then there is the ‘wording’ on future trade that would include a “temporary customs arrangement.”

The idea is that this declaration will set out a vision for what the future trading relationship might look like.

Bear in mind; this is simply a political statement of intent – the nitty gritty details will be negotiated during the transition period after March 2019. And being a political statement, none of it will be legally binding. In other words, it’s going to be vague – but deciding exactly how vague seems to be proving a bit of a dilemma.

Plan A – at least from the EU’s perspective – is to make this as vague as possible, with reports suggesting a draft version originally due for release this week could contain as few as four pages and will be little more than a series of “annotated headlines”. The recent optimistic tone struck by the EU – including in the run-up to the recent Salzburg summit gives us a flavour of the sort of language the document is likely to contain. It’s likely to be heavy on words like ‘ambitious’ and ‘unprecedented’, but short on details on exactly what this means in practice.

Reports also indicate the EU is open to an ‘evolution clause’ that would leave Brussels open to an improved offer if the UK changes its mind on what it wants. The hope is that all of this will be enough to convince MPs from across the Brexit divide that whatever the declaration ends up saying is not set in stone, and that their own aspirations for the future agreement are still alive.

However, the UK government appears concerned that this vague approach will not be enough to win over lawmakers from the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). DUP leaders are concerned about reports that the government now accepts the backstop would lead to regulatory barriers between Northern Ireland and the British mainland, and the party is reportedly considering voting against the forthcoming budget if the Prime Minister doesn’t change course.

With that in mind, a government spokesman said on Monday that the UK is looking for more “precise” wording on future trade in the declaration, presumably in a bid to reassure DUP MPs that the Irish backstop will never be needed.

Still, EU leaders bluntly informed May during last months’ Salzburg summit that her Chequers plan wouldn’t work. Yet, the EU’s push for a more vague ‘political statement’ might be accepted by hardline Brexit MPs, who also objected to Chequers…the whole situation is effectively one giant gordian knot of a problem.

What’s worse for May, early Sunday in London, the Brexiteer hardliners published an open letter signed by 63 Conservative MPs, including David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group of Eurosceptic backbenchers and former Brexit minister Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister. At the same time, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, a pro-leave MP, published an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph demanding that any possibility that the UK could remain in a “temporary customs arrangement” after the Brexit transition period ends in December 2020 be stricken from the final agreement – because leaving open the possibility would be tantamount to ignoring the political will of the 17.4 million Britons who voted for Brexit.

Meanwhile, Davis demanded in an editorial in the Sunday Times that Cabinet ministers should “exert their collective authority” and rebel against Theresa May’s proposed Brexit deal. All of this is happening amid even more conflicting reports, citing sources from the EU and sources from No. 10 Downing Street, affirming and denying that a deal had been reached.

Underscoring the hostility to a deal, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party said Sunday that she would prefer a “no deal” Brexit to a “backstop” transition agreement that would require any borders between Northern Ireland and the UK, arguing that this would amount to the “annexation” of Northern Ireland by the EU, per CNBC.

While much work clearly remains ahead – and the eventuality that Parliament could at the last minute sink whatever backstop deal is “finalized” between May and the EU remains a very real possibility – analysts from ING still believe the backstop agreement will be reached. While that likely won’t happen this week, ING said, an agreement could be reached by an upcoming summit in November, with a Parliamentary vote taking place in December.

As a reminder, here’s a timeline of important Brexit-related events, and an outline of four possible post-Brexit Day scenarios.

Still, after pricing in the backstop deal’s success in recent weeks, traders might not feel comfortable with the two sides blowing a deadline set for this coming week, as it could cause some to question whether Barnier was being unrealistically optimistic in September when he predicted that a deal would be reached by the end of this month because so far, negotiators have failed to prove to the market that they can square the circle and create an agreement that is palatable both to the EU and to the many opposing factions in the UK’s Parliament.

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The CEO of Canadian marijuana producer Canopy Growth says that marijuana is set to disrupt $500 billion in global markets.

Bruce Linton – whose company recently shipped cannabis from Canada to the United States using a yet-undisclosed “DEA-approved partner,” told CNBC‘s Jim Cramer that the “back-of-the-envelope math” pencils out – between therapeutic cannabinoid treatments to a cultural shift from alcohol and tobacco to recreational pot use. 

“We disrupt alcohol potentially, cigarettes potentially, in terms of smoking cessation,” he told Cramer. “We really disrupt pharmaceutical, because whether or not you’re geriatric care, you’re dealing with arthritic conditions, you’re someone who can’t sleep, you’re going through an oncology treatment, I think you’re going to find cannabinoid therapies really hit there.”

“And so you add all that together, plus the existing $200 billion illicit market, that pretty quickly gets you up around $500 billion,” Linton continued. “It sounds like a ‘How could it be?’ but just do a bit of the back-of-the-envelope math. It’s not crazy.“

Canopy made headlines last week after announcing several-billion-dollar investments from Corona parent company, Constellation Brands, as well as legal shipment of marijuana, a Schedule 1 drug, into the United States. 

“Under [Drug Enforcement Administration] approval, we shipped, for the first time, legally — and I highlight ‘legally’ — cannabis from Canada to the U.S,” Bruce Linton, the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Canopy Growth, told CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

“The DEA-approved partner, which we haven’t announced yet, can actually begin to do medical research, clinical trials if necessary, [and] create the data set that enables people to know when, what, where, and maybe it can become federally regulated in the U.S. with some input that way,” Linton said in an interview on “Mad Money.” –CNBC

The positive news for Canopy comes on the heels of competitor Tilray announcing DEA approval to import cannabis into the United States for medical research at the University of California San Diego’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. As CNBC notes, California is one of eight states to fully legalize medical and recreational marijuana use, while thirty states currently legalize some form of medical marijuana. 

Canada will fully legalize adult marijuana use next Wednesday, October 17, which is expected to result in a massive windfall for producers such as Canopy. 

Linton says that Canada’s legalization has forced governments worldwide to consider how they can get in on the action. 

“Last week I was in the EU, the U.K. They know about Oct. 17 intimately and they’re trying to figure out, ‘Hm, if we’re a government or businesses, how do we quit ignoring cannabis and govern it, regulate it, tax it and turn it into something that might be medicinal and for sure a much better formatted product for a party?'” he said.

“And so what’s going to be the big bump isn’t just Canada,” he said. “If we do it right, Canopy leads. That gives us the position globally that then, all of a sudden, you add a zero or two to the number of people we’re trying to serve.”

Watch: 

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