Tag: finance

Authored by Tom Luongo,

If there’s one thing that makes this job difficult it is the endless smokescreens. Filtering out the noise is draining. From the double-speak of politicians to the endless manipulations of financial markets by central bankers the world is awash in fake news, fake prices and fake geniuses.

So, when a series of events occur that bring clarity to the circus that is world politics, my first reaction is to distrust them. It’s that weird moment when the evil-doers rip off their masks and just start telling you what their intentions are. This creates cognitive dissonance in those of us conditioned to reading between the thinnest of lines.

But, sometimes things are exactly what they appear to be.

And what is clear to me now is that the Deep State is done whipping the progressive Left into a frenzy over Donald Trump. They are now openly handing them pitchforks and mustering for a hostile takeover of the Oval Office.

The anonymous op-ed published by the New York Times timed perfectly with the leaked quotes from moldy old Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear – Trump in the White House” are clarion calls for a challenge of Trump’s competency via the 25th amendment.

We are in the last 60 days before the mid-term elections. The fear of loss by the Deep State is palpable. If Trump survives this election with his base and any form of congressional majority intact he will finally be able to go to town on these people who are a threat not just to the country but to humanity itself.

This narrative about Trump being unstable and insane began during the campaign and those that need to believe in this were always willing to keep this fire stoked. After that it’s simply a matter of repeating the lie over and over until, hopefully, they’ve manufactured a bonfire big enough to roast Trump on the altar of their agenda.

Trump, at times, doesn’t help himself with some of his antics. It’s no secret that Trump has little respect for the ‘proper way to do things in Washington.’ And I’m sure stories about him making fun of H.R. McMaster’s suits have more truth to them than fiction.

When I read that quote from Woodward’s book I laughed out loud.

This certainly rubs his staff the wrong way. They want the status quo maintained.

But, what these careerists refuse to understand is this is exactly what we elected him for. Their way is over. The hardcore progressives are crushing incumbents in their primaries.

Populism is now bi-partisan.

So, Woodward’s stories and Trump not toeing the neocon party line are only going to endear him to us that much more.

Bob Mueller is openly threatening anyone on Trump’s side to turn on him either by staying quiet or lie.

Trump is surrounded by neocons and globalists. They hate his skepticism about U.S. foreign and trade policy. They are only there because that’s what’s available from the pool of candidates for many of these jobs.

It is an unfortunate reality.

But, from a procedural level, these are the people who make the D.C. political trains run on time.

It makes you wonder if the Coen Brothers’ brilliant movie about the D.C. cocktail party circuit, Burn After Reading, is more documentary than farce.

And that creates a foundation to build a case against him in the court of public opinion, the only court he can be tried in since Bob Mueller’s investigation has failed completely to find any evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians.

In fact, all Mueller has done is expose the lengths to which members of the FBI, CIA, MI-6, the DNC and John McCain (or do I repeat myself) went to spy on him with the intent to frame him.

This is the real civil war that has been brewing for two years now.

What the New York Times article did was to try and shift the blame for staffer disobedience onto Trump. This is the essence of the Deep State, the unelected bureaucracy that acts independently of the wishes of the President and other elected officials.

In the same way that last week the same New York Times tried to spin the FBI’s purchasing of the Steele Dossier about Trump as a way to ‘flip’ Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

All of these stories are ludicrous. And Trump is right to call the Times out to reveal its ‘source’ within the White House on “National Security” grounds.

The real danger for Trump is passivity. I’ve said many times that spooks start civil wars but militaries end them. And it’s no shock then that the juiciest of the leaked quotes from Woodward’s book revolve around the two generals on Trump’s staff, James Mattis and John Kelly.

It’s also no shock that both men, who respect the chain of command, vehemently denied the quotes.

Trump needs to go on the offensive here. He needs to give his base who are in the trenches everyday burning Nike shoes, eating In-and-Out Burgers and canceling their NFL Sunday Ticket Packages something to fight for.

They’ll go through the wall for him.

Because now is the time to strike. Trump’s enemies have over-extended themselves. Their arrogance and, frankly, desperation have placed them firmly at odds with a clear majority of Americans.

They have revealed themselves as agent provocateurs and traitors. The sad spectacle that is the Brett Kavanaugh hearings will do nothing but alienate more of the center.

The Left is cannibalizing itself as the Democrats move hard left. Blacks and Hispanics are walking away from them. The Uniparty is in retreat with retirements and primary upsets on both sides of the political party.

These mid-terms are shaping up to be an extension of the 2016 Presidential election, a clear choice between America’s future by dismantling its insane kleptocracy or returning to the past and enshrining it into stone is on the ballot.

*  *  *

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As the global Muslim population continues to expand, conditions during the Hajj, the holy pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim must make at least once in their life are growing more crowded raising the likelihood that a serious infectious disease could easily spread. This tendency was on full display last week as serious health scares at airports in New York and Philadelphia were traced back to pilgrims who were returning from the Hajj.

Passengers who were traveling from Dubai to New York City (a group that amusingly included rapper Vanilla Ice) were quarantined for hours at JFK airport on Wednesday amid reports that more than 100 people aboard the plane reported feeling ill. In the end, 11 people were sent to an area hospital for testing. Of those, two tested positive for a particularly infectious type of influenza A virus, and one of the two was gravely ill with pneumonia. A third person tested positive for a cold virus, according to Channel News Asia.

On Thursday, two flights arriving in Philadelphia from Europe were screened by medical teams after 12 passengers reported flu-like symptoms. One of them had visited Mecca for the Hajj.

The CDC was not alerted in advance about the two flights that landed in Philadelphia from Paris and Munich, but several travelers had complained of illness, triggering a “medical review” of 250 passengers from those flights, a spokesman said.

Twelve passengers were found to have sore throats and coughs, and one also tested positive for the flu, a CDC spokesman confirmed.

Roughly 2 million Muslims traveled to the Holy City of Mecca last month to take part in the Hajj. While the pilgrimage was largely free of catastrophes like the deadly stampede that killed 800 pilgrims in 2015, the sheer number of travelers prompted the New York Times to calculate roughly how long it would take for every living Muslim to complete the Hajj once in their life. The answer, the Times found, is roughly 581 years.

Per NYT, the number of pilgrims voyaging to Mecca peaked in 2012 at more than 3 million. Since then, the Saudi government has tightened quotas for other countries that send pilgrims based on the size of their Muslim populations.

And while the vast majority of pilgrims have probably returned home by now after completing the five-day journey two weeks ago, health officials should already be preparing for next year’s Hajj, which could present a serious public-health threat given how pilgrims spend long hours walking in packed crowds until they arrive at the Kaaba in what one reporter once described as an “overwhelming mass of humanity.”

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Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

You’d think the previous decade’s housing bust would still be fresh in the minds of mortgage lenders, if no one else. But apparently not.

One of the drivers of that bubble was the emergence of private label mortgage “originators” who, as the name implies, simply created mortgages and then sold them off to securitizers, who bundled them into the toxic bonds that nearly brought down the global financial system.

The originators weren’t banks in the commonly understood sense. That is, they didn’t build long-term relationships with customers and so didn’t need to care whether a borrower could actually pay back a loan. With zero skin in the game, they were willing to write mortgages for anyone with a paycheck and a heartbeat. And frequently the paycheck was optional.

In retrospect, that was both stupid and reckless. But here we are a scant decade later, and the industry is headed back towards those same practices. Today’s Wall Street Journal, for instance, profiles a formerly-miniscule private label mortgage originator that now has a bigger market share than Bank of America or Citigroup:

The New Mortgage Kings: They’re Not Banks

One afternoon this spring, a dozen or so employees lined up in front of Freedom Mortgage’s office in Mount Laurel, N.J., to get their picture taken. Clutching helium balloons shaped like dollar signs, they were being honored for the number of mortgages they had sold.

Freedom is nowhere near the size of behemoths like Citigroup or Bank of America; yet last year it originated more mortgages than either of them, some $51.1 billion, according to industry research group Inside Mortgage Finance. It is now the 11th-largest mortgage lender in the U.S., up from No. 78 in 2012.

Its rise points to a bigger shift in the home-lending business to specialized mortgage lenders that fall outside the banking sector. Such nonbanks, critically wounded in the housing crisis, have re-emerged to become the market’s dominant players, with 52% of U.S. mortgage originations, up from 9% in 2009. Six of the 10 biggest U.S. mortgage lenders today are nonbanks, according to the research group.

They symbolize both the healthy reinvention of a mortgage market brought to its knees a decade ago—and how the growth in that market almost exclusively has been in its less-regulated corner.

Postcrisis regulations curb bank and nonbank lenders alike from making the “liar loans” that wiped out many lenders and forced a wave of foreclosures during the crisis. What worries some industry participants is that little has changed about nonbank lenders’ structure.

Their capital levels aren’t as heavily regulated as banks, and they don’t have deposits or other substantive business lines. Instead they usually take short-term loans from banks to fund their lending. If the housing market sours, banks could cut off their funding—which doomed some nonbanks in the last crisis. In that scenario, first-time buyers or borrowers with little savings would be the first to get locked out of the mortgage market.

“As long as the good times roll on, it’s fine,” said Ed Pinto, co-director of the Center on Housing Markets and Finance at the American Enterprise Institute. “But all I can say is, we’re in a boom, and you cannot keep going up like this forever.”

Freedom was just a small lender in the last crisis. When it became hard to borrow money, Freedom Chief Executive Stan Middleman embraced government-backed loans on the theory they would offer more stability.

As Quicken Loans Inc., the biggest and best-known nonbank, grew with the help of flashy technology and advertising campaigns, Freedom stayed under the radar, buying smaller lenders and scooping up other companies’ huge portfolios of loans, often made to relatively risky borrowers.

Mr. Middleman is fond of saying that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. “I always believed that, if somebody is applying for a loan, we should try to make it for them,” says Mr. Middleman.

What does this mean? Several things, depending on the resolution of the lens you’re using.

In the mortgage market it means that emerging private sector lenders are taking market share – presumably by being more aggressive – which puts pressure on the relatively stodgy brand-name banks to lower their own standards to keep up. To grasp the truth of this, just re-read the last sentence in the above article: “I always believed that, if somebody is applying for a loan, we should try to make it for them.” That is fundamentally not how banks work. Their job is to write profitable loans by weeding out the applicants who probably won’t make their payments.

Now, faced with competitors from the “No Credit, No Problem!” part of the business spectrum, the big guys will once again have to choose between adopting that attitude or leaving the business. See Bad Bankers Drive Out Good Bankers: Wells Fargo, Wall Street, And Gresham’s Law. Since the biggest mortgage lender is currently Wells Fargo, for which cutting corners is standard practice, it presumably won’t be long before variants of liar loans and interest only mortgages will be back on the menu.

From a broader societal perspective, this is par for the late-cycle course. After a long expansion, most banks have already lent money to their high-quality customers. But Wall Street continues to demand that those banks maintain double-digit earnings growth, and will punish their market caps if they fall short.

This leaves formerly-good banks with no choice but to loosen standards to keep the fee income flowing. So they start working their way towards the bottom of the customer barrel, while instructing their prop trading desks and/or investment bankers to explore riskier bets. Misallocation of capital becomes ever-more-common until the system blows up.

The signs that we’re back there (2007 in some cases, 2008 in others) are spreading, which means the reckoning is moving from “inevitable” to “imminent”.

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It increasingly looks like the Trump White House is in the driver’s seat when it comes to stalled negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear weapons program. 

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un has in the past days and week seemed somewhat desperate to telegraph to Trump that he is fully committed to denuclearization.

The latest such signalling is reported via Reuters early Sunday:

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un told an envoy of Chinese president Xi Jinping that North Korea is upholding the denuclearisation agreement it reached with the United States this year, China’s state broadcaster said.

Chinese parliament chief Li Zhanshu, who is in Pyongyang for celebrations marking 70 years since the founding of North Korea, was told by Kim that North Korea hopes the United States keeps to its side of the agreement, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The Chinese envoy was present in Pyongyang to mark the 70th anniversary of North Korea’s founding, which included the standard sprawling military parade; however conspicuously absent from the parade were North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), thought to be capable of hitting the United States — a clear sign that Kim is taking ongoing diplomatic efforts with the US and South Korea seriously.  

CNN described the parade as “considerably understated compared to previous years” which analysts say is “to avoid antagonizing US President Donald Trump”.

Li Zhanshu, Beijing’s third-ranking Communist Party official, headed the Chinese delegation on behalf of President Xi Jinping and delivered a message that there’s a pressing need for North Korea and the US “to thoroughly implement the consensus … to reach the common goal of denuclearisation”, state broadcaster China Central Television reported.

Kim stressed that his country had already taken the early agreed upon steps toward denuclearisation, and wants “the US side to take reciprocal measures to solve the Korean peninsula issues diplomatically”.

“I [also] wish to learn from the Chinese experience of economic development,” Kim was quoted as saying.

This comes after last Wednesday North Korea announced it would pursue denuclearization by the end of President Trump’s first term, or by early 2021. The announcement came via South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his national security advisor Chung Eui-yong, who met with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un the day prior.

Kim reportedly set down a timeline for denuclearization, the first step of which is a meeting summit between himself and the South Korean president in Pyongyang on Sept. 18-20, during which the two have pledged to discuss “practical measures” toward denuclearization.

Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump.” Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 6, 2018

This included a personal “good faith” message reportedly sent from Kim to President Trump via the South Korean envoy.

Trump responded to news of the message early Thursday morning via Twitter: Kim Jong Un of North Korea proclaims “unwavering faith in President Trump.” Thank you to Chairman Kim. We will get it done together! – Trump stated. 

During the historic Singapore summit in June the two leaders agreed to “work toward the complete denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula”, but negotiations have stalled since then; however, this past week showed significant signs that progress may resume. 

Kim is reported to have reaffirmed this past week in talks with the South Korean envoy “his strong will to carry out more proactive measures toward denuclearization if action is taken in response to the North’s preemptive steps.” 

It appears that Sunday’s ICBM-absent military parade is a first symbolic step that North Korea is indeed serious about restarting talks at the same table with the Trump White House. 

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Responding to an anonymous Op-Ed in the New York Times detailing an active resistance within the Trump White House, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told Reuters that President Trump is facing a “coup” the likes of which haven’t been seen since the American Civil War. 

“What you saw the other day was as serious as it can get. This is a direct attack on the institutions,” Bannon said while flying to Italy. “This is a coup, okay”.

The Wednesday column in the New York Times slams Trump’s “amorality” and claims that “Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

Bannon told Reuters that the last time a sitting US president had been challenged like this was during the American Civil War when Democratic General George B. McClellan went after Republican President Abraham Lincoln. 

“This is a crisis. The country has only ever had such a crisis in the summer of 1862 when General McClellan and the senior generals, all Democrats in the Union Army, deemed that Abraham Lincoln was not fit and not competent to be commander in chief,” said Bannon – whose departure from the White House was in large part over a fallout with Trump’s “establishment” advisers. Bannon said at the time that the “Republican establishment” sought to nullify the results of the 2016 election and effectively neuter Trump. 

“There is a cabal of Republic establishment figures who believe Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. This is a crisis,” Bannon said in Rome.

“I am not a conspiracy guy … I have said there is no deep state. It is an in-your-face state.” -Steve Bannon

On Friday, President Trump called on the Department of Justice to investigate who wrote the piece, citing national security. On Thursday night, Trump told a crowd in Billings, Montana that the Times should publish the name of the author at once. 

But for the sake of our national security, the New York Times should publish his name at once. I think their reporters should go and investigate who it is. That would actually be a good scoop. 

(APPLAUSE)

That would be a good scoop. Unelected deep state operatives who defy the voters to push their own secret agendas are truly a threat to democracy itself. And I was so heartened when I looked

Bannon warned liberal progressives within the Democratic Party that they would suffer the same fate as Trump. For an example, look no further at how establishment Democrats shunned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arer after her upset primary victory over the 4th most powerful Democrat in the House, Joe Crowley. 

“Don’t think it will be any different if you take power,” Bannon warned outsider liberal candidates like Bernie Sanders. “Because this is the established order dictating that they know better than the people.”

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Today Swedish voters take to the polls to elect members of the domestic legislature (Riksdag) which will in turn, appoint the Prime Minister, in what has been tipped as “Sweden’s most important election in decades.” Surveys show the center-left bloc with a slim lead but the far-right Sweden Democrats may still emerge as the largest single party.

As the turbulent Swedish election campaign comes to a close with little sign of compromise ahead as the establishment parties pleaded with voters to beat back an ascendant nationalist movement, there is the potential for a blockbuster surprise as yet another European state is rocked by growing populist, anti-immigrant sentiment.

The reason: record immigration in recent years and lingering economic hardship from the financial crisis have stoked populism even in a country as rich and egalitarian Sweden. The threat to the political establishment comes on the heels of a wave of election surprises around the world, such as the U.K. Brexit vote, and the rise of populist leaders in countries such as Italy and Hungary and – of course – the U.S. As Deutsche Bank recently noted, “the Liberal world order is in jeopardy” as global populism has risen to levels not seen since World War II.

Today, it may be Sweden’s turn.

First, a quick recap of today’s process, courtesy of RanSquawk

MPs are elected to Sweden’s single-chamber system using proportional representation with candidates either appointed on a regional basis or a proportional balancing mechanism. A party must receive at least 4% of the national vote or 12% of a constituency vote to enter the Riksdag.

With regards to appointing a PM, the leader of any party that wins over 50% is appointed as PM. However, this is unlikely to be the case given polling data and historical performance. As such, the appointment of a PM will most likely be as the result of a  coalition-building process.

As shown in the chart below, the center-right and center-left blocs were in a virtual tie with voting starting on Sunday as the conservative-led opposition gained ground in recent days. But the blocs will be far from securing a majority since the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats look poised to win almost 20 percent.

Parties and Potential Coalition Options

Neither government nor opposition looks likely to gain a majority

While the center left and right have minimal policy differences, the disruptive force in Swedish politics has been the meteoric rise of the Sweden Democrats. They hold stances that include Euroscepticism, saying that Sweden “pay an enormous amount of money and get overwhelmingly little back” alongside repeatedly calling for a referendum on EU membership. All Swedish parties have ostracized them in parliament due to this, alongside their harsh immigration policies.

Polls by party

The success in polling for the Sweden Democrats, allied with the Social Democrats and Moderates polling at record lows,  leaves a high possibility for a messy election season due to government formation concerns and the lack of cross-party cooperation in parliament.

As a note of caution with regards to polling, Nordea highlight that “pollsters are divided on the anticipated support for SD, but two pollsters (Sentio and YouGov) stand out with much bigger anticipated support for SD than the rest of the field”. Nordea explains that “If Sentio and YouGov are ‘on to something’ and SD gets close to 25% of the votes, the election result could have a big impact on markets”

However, the true consequences of the election may take a while to filter through to markets (Italy is a good comparison from recent history!) as ING expect the formation of a new government and budget for 2018 “easily taking up the rest of the year”. The possibility of a second election also cannot be discounted, as was almost the case in 2014, and would extend this period of uncertainty into 2019.

That said, ultimately, Swedish fiscal legislature limits major changes, regardless of governmental composition as there is a legal requirement to run a surplus of 0.33% of GDP over the economic cycle and keep debt anchored around 35% of GDP.  This, allied with a lack of support in the Swedish populace for leaving the EU (below 25%), the likelihood of a weak minority government, and opposition to joining the EUR (less than 20%) leaves analysts expecting a maintenance of the status-quo in relation to fiscal and policy status.

Market views of the election outcome

ING: Hold a bearish view on SEK post-election, citing the possibility of a hung parliament, a dovish Riksbank, a slowing Swedish economy and the looming trade war threat on the open Swedish economy. As such they see EURSEK hitting 11.00 at some point this year, with a recovery seen in 2019.

Credit Agricole: Expect only short-term volatility in EURSEK and see it trading nearer 10.10 by year-end, as well as saying that at best it may trigger a small delay to the Riksbank’s outlook.

Danske Bank: Hold a bearish view on the SEK, based on the election, Riksbank and inflation. Danske holds a 1-month target (as of Aug 24th) of 10.50 and a 3-month target of 10.60; both of the levels were breached last month.

Goldman Sachs: GS believe that the market response to the election is likely to be contained, adding that any possible spikes in market prices are unlikely to be persistent. GS suggests that if polling is correct, the largest bloc from the main two blocs will form a government and repeat the political dynamics over the past four years.

Nordea: Have recently closed their long EUR/SEK position and have instead decided to go short. The call was largely based on the potential for a hawkish read to the upcoming Riksbank meeting. However, Nordea adds that they believe the upcoming general election is overstated as a macro driver and look for a potential unwind of ‘SD hedges’ after the results are released.

Election Day

• Polls in Sweden opened at 8 a.m. local time (0600 UTC). Voters will be casting their votes Sunday in three separate ballots: The general election, regional elections and local elections. As many as 3 million Swedes are estimated to have already cast their ballot last month, when pre-voting opened on August 22. A handful of leading candidates used the opportunity to skip the queues, including incumbent Prime Minister Stefan Lofven of the Social Democrats (SAP).
• All eyes will be on whether the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) can emerge as the largest single party in a country known for its high quality of life and developed welfare state. Surveys suggest the SD could take around 20 percent of the vote, well above the 13 percent it scored in the previous election in 2014.
• Overall, the polls predict political gridlock. The left-wing bloc, made up of the Social Democrats and Left Party, was backed by almost 40 percent of the vote, while the four-party center-right Alliance trailed narrowly behind on 38.5 percent. That means some form of “grand coalition” between the center-left and the Alliance may be necessary to break the deadlock, unless one of the groups agrees to govern with the Sweden Democrats.

* * *

As Bloomberg notes, establishment party leaders took the last moments of the campaign to warn voters that the political turbulence will be far from over come election day, and that they can expect hard talks in the days or weeks ahead on forming a viable government. All parties have vowed not to seek the support of the Sweden Democrats. The tension has showed no signs of subsiding, with an eruption of vitriol between the smaller pro-immigration Center Party and the nationalists in Friday’s last big debate of the campaign.

Center Party leader Annie Loof voiced loud protests as Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Akesson said that immigrants find it hard to get jobs because they’re not Swedish and “don’t belong.” Asked again about the controversy on Saturday, Loof said that Akesson showed “his true face yesterday.”

But Loof also said that Prime Minister Stefan Lofven should step down immediately if it becomes clear his Social Democrats have lost power, in order not to slow down the process of forming a new government. “If he steps down tonight that process could start tomorrow morning,” she told newspaper Expressen. “If he doesn’t resign, we will vote him down in a couple of weeks.”

Ulf Kristersson, head of the conservative Moderate Party and front-runner to become the next prime minister, said integrating refugees is key for Sweden to maintain its extensive welfare state. “This is something that erodes Sweden’s social contract,” he said. “So many people could do so much good in our country, if we just had a well-functioning integration.”

On the other hand, the angry response to Sweden’s immigration problem is precisely why the country’s nationalist movement is ascendent, as the labor market has had a tough time absorbing the inflow of about 600,000 people over the past five years. Unemployment among the foreign-born is about 20 percent, compared with just above 6 percent overall. This has led to a surge in violence in the past few years, much of it at the hands of recent immigrants.

Saying he had slept well, Prime Minister Lofven – whose political career may end as soon as today – early on Sunday left the prime minister’s residence in central Stockholm to go vote with his wife, Ulla. After casting his ballot, he reiterated that the election amounted to a referendum on the welfare system. It’s also a vote “about decency” with the Social Democrats as a guarantor of not allowing an “extremist racist” party to gain influence, he said to reporters.

We now await the results.

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Lawyers involved in a California lawsuit against Monsanto claim to have “explosive” documents concerning the Bayer-owned agrochemical giant’s activities in Europe, according to Euronews. 

“What we have is the tip of the iceberg. And in fact we have documents now in our possession, several hundreds documents, that have not been declassified and some of those are explosive,” said US lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr, adding

“And many of them are pertinent to what Monsanto did here in Europe. And that’s just the beginning.”

Monsanto – bought by Germany’s Bayer AG in June for $66 billion, was ordered in August to pay a historic $289 million to a former school groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, who said Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller gave him terminal cancer. Monsanto says it will appeal the verdict.

Environmental lawyers have been in Brussels in order to address a European Parliament special committee on the issue.  

“They are fighting a fight for more democracy and for transparency and to get a better insight in how big corporation such as Monsanto act and try to manipulate the facts,” said Belgium MEP Bart Staes.

Last November EU approved the use of glyphosate – a key chemical in Roundup, following five years of heated debate over whether it causes cancer. While it was approved for just five years until 2022 vs. the usual 15 years, there are now rumors that they will withdraw Roundup’s license this year altogether. 

Labeled a carcinogen by the EPA in 1985, the agency reversed its stance on glyphosate in 1991. The World Health Organization’s cancer research agency, however, classified the compound as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015. California, meanwhile, has the chemical listed in its Proposition 65 registry of chemicals known to cause cancer. 

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Authored by Peter Korzun via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The military-political landscape in Europe and the Mediterranean is changing.

NATO is not as unified as it once was, and Turkey’s membership has become more of a formality than a real thing. A pro-US group consisting of Great Britain, Poland, and the Baltic States has emerged as part of a North Atlantic Alliance that is divided by differences and the open rift over the 2% financial contribution, a decree that is largely ignored, along with the other divisions that are weakening the bloc. Other groups are arising that also have common security interests. A new pact, an Arab NATO allied with the United States, will soon materialize in the Middle East.  Changes are coming, but they are hard to predict as everything is currently in a state of flux.

“The United States is interested in increasing its use of military bases and ports in Greece,” said General Joseph Dunford, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), on Sept. 4 during his visit to Athens.  

“If you look at geography, and you look at current operations in Libya, and you look at current operations in Syria, you look at potential other operations in the eastern Mediterranean, the geography of Greece and the opportunities here are pretty significant,” he added. 

According to the Military Times, “[N]o specific bases have been identified, but that Supreme Allied Commander Europe Army Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti is evaluating several options for increased US flight training, port calls to do forward-based ship repairs and additional multilateral exercises.” US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross came to Greece right after the CJCS’s visit to take part in the annual Thessaloniki International Trade Fair.

Washington’s relations with Ankara continue to deteriorate. The idea of expelling Turkey from NATO is being discussed in the most prestigious American media outlets. The view that Ankara is more of an adversary than an ally is commonly held among American pundits.  General Dunford pointedly did not include Turkey on his itinerary, as top US military officials would normally do in order to maintain balance in their relationship with Athens and Ankara. This is a clear message to Turkey.

It was reported in May that the US military had started to operate MQ-9 aerial vehicles out of Greece’s Larissa military base.  That same month, the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier was one of the American ships making a port call. Greece’s Souda Bay naval base is being used to support US operations in Syria. US Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt has often cited the strategic significance of the ports of Alexandroupolis and Thessaloniki. 

Washington is interested in helping the Greek military conduct more effective operations in the Aegean and the Mediterranean. Greece is a crucial element in dealing with the challenges of the Eastern Med, the Maghreb, the Balkans, and the Black Sea region. 

There can be no doubt that Ankara’s dispute with Cyprus and Israel over drilling rights in the Mediterranean was also on the agenda of the talks during Gen. Dunford’s visit, although no comments were made to the media in regard to this issue. Greece wants to transform Alexandroupoli into a hub for the gas being exported from Israel and Cyprus to Europe. The pipeline’s approximate length is between 1,300 to 2,000 kilometers, and it will begin in Israel and cross through the territories of Cyprus, Crete and Greece to eventually end in Italy. The hub will also have a rail link to Bulgaria. A floating LNG reception, storage, and regasification unit will be part of this project, to make it possible to bring in US LNG supplies.

The planned route of the EastMed pipeline, a project supported by the EU, will bypass Turkey, despite the increased cost. Ankara will hardly sit idly by and watch this turn of events. Turkey claims that part of the exclusive economic zone of Cyprus is under Turkish jurisdiction.  According to Turkey’s President Erdogan, the “Eastern Mediterranean faces a security threat should Cyprus continue its unilateral operations of offshore oil and gas exploration in the region.” The countries involved in the project may need US protection and help in order for this to come to fruition.  

For the US, strengthening its relations with Greece means expanding support for the emerging Greece-Israel-Cyprus Eastern Mediterranean Alliance (EMA) that has been driven by the discovery of hydrocarbons in Israeli and Cypriot waters and by opposition to Turkey. As Ambassador Pyatt put it, “Americans are back in a really big way.” 

A year ago the US opened its first permanent military base in Israel run by the US military’s European Command (EUCOM). Officially, the primary mission of the air-defense facility located inside the Israeli Air Force’s Mashabim air base, west of the towns of Dimona and Yerucham, is to detect and warn of a possible ballistic missile attack from Iran. This is part of a broader process as a new military alliance with its own infrastructure emerges.  

In 2015, Greece and Israel signed a military cooperation agreement. Bilateral and trilateral military drills, such as Nobel Dina, a multinational joint air and sea exercise conducted under the partnership of Greece, Israel, and the United States, have become routine. In March 2014, Israel opened a new military attaché office in Greece to signify this ever-closer relationship. 

Israel has a strong defense and military relationship with Cyprus. The three nations are pledging deeper military ties, in keeping with the declaration they issued at the first-ever trilateral defense summit last year.  Both Greece and Cyprus are EU members and Israel needs allies within the bloc. Greece opposed the EU’s decision to label products from Israel’s settlements. In May, the leaders of the three allied Eastern Mediterranean nations paid a joint visit to Washington.

Albania, Greece’s neighbor, has recently offered to establish a US military base on its soil. Albania‘s defense minister, Olta Xhacka, made the proposal in April during her visit to Washington.

Of all the members of the emerging alliance, only Israel is not a NATO member, but it’s an enhanced partner and a member of the Mediterranean Dialogue. What we actually have is a new alliance within the alliance, which was unofficially established to counter Turkey, a full-fledged NATO member.  Under the circumstances, it would only be natural for Ankara to distance itself from NATO to move toward Russia, Iran, China, the SCO, and, perhaps, the Eurasian Union. 

The alliance of the US and the three Eastern Mediterranean states has emerged as a political and military “petite entente,” a force to be reckoned with at a time when NATO is facing serious challenges to its unity and the EU’s future is in question.

The two large entities that bring together nations sharing the same “values,” or the desire to counter China or Russia, are giving way to smaller groups of countries pursuing shared regional interests, thus undermining the very concept of what is known as the United West. 

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A series of African Swine Fever outbreaks in China is “here to stay,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said on Friday, adding that it could spread to neighboring countries in Asia.

On Wednesday, the FAO assembled an emergency meeting in Bangkok consisting of health experts, government officials, and industry participants from China and surrounding countries to develop a regional response to east Asia’s first outbreak of the disease.

While the virus is not a direct threat to humans, it is extremely contagious and has a high mortality rate among pigs, and can have a devastating economic impact on meat producers.

Apparently this is how they ‘cull’ pigs in #xuancheng city. #ASF #AfricanSwineFever pic.twitter.com/kq7BKXy50V

— Björn Ooms (@Bjornooms) September 3, 2018

“It’s critical that this region be ready for the very real possibility that African Swine Fever could jump the border into other countries,” said Wantanee Kalpravidh, regional manager in Asia for the FAO’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases. “That’s why this emergency meeting has been convened.”

Reuters said the virus was first detected in China last month and has been found in 18 farms with many cases more than 600 miles apart, the FAO said in a statement.

With an abundance of pork farms across China, the FAO indicated the spread of the virus to neighboring countries is almost inevitable.

“The geographical spread, of which African Swine Fever has been repeated in such a short period of time, means that transboundary emergence of the virus, likely through movements of products containing infected pork, will almost certainly occur,” said Juan Lubroth, chief veterinary officer at FAO.

The response to the disease is “extremely challenging” because the virus can survive for months in meat products and animal feed, said the FAO. Since August 03, there have been more than a dozen outbreaks of the virus across the country. This forced the government to enact new transport restrictions of live hogs in provinces where infections have been reported.

The epidemic is now taking an economic toll on the annual $1 trillion industry. Pork spot prices in the country’s southern region have jumped ahead of a week-long holiday in October and highlight the need for increased imports.

The FAO said officials in China, which produces about half the world’s pigs annually, had slaughtered as many as 40,000 swine in an attempt to control the disease. Slaughtering pigs and transportation limits of animals around China have pushed spot prices up more than 5% since August, according to government figures, adding to inflationary pressures as a trade war with the US also drives up soft agricultural prices.

In a separate statement late last month, the FAO said the rapid “diverse geographical spread” of the virus in China had induced fears that the disease could move to other Asian countries.

Dirk Pfeiffer, an animal health expert at the City University of Hong Kong, said a “much larger” number of pigs will probably have to be slaughtered in China over the next few weeks, further affecting pork prices.

“We need to closely monitor the situation on the mainland, and in particular any imports of live pigs and pork products. We need to aim to get assurance that any live pigs are from areas demonstrated to be free from infection,” he added.

Average meat consumption by country:

The world’s top ten pork producers:

Experts are perplexed by how the disease, which was previously in the European Union, reached China. Theories include globalized markets with exported meats to the Eastern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, American traders are concerned about the price dynamics of the virus spreading across China.

US lean hog futures advanced more than 12% since late August.

However, they remain in a bear market since China slapped US producers with a retaliatory tariff.

“The African swine fever in China has everybody abuzz… We’re building in a premium for that,” said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities in West Des Moines, Iowa.

With the virus dangerously sweeping across various provinces in China and officials slaughtering tens of thousands of pigs, at what point will China demand more US pigs despite the tariffs?

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Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

The murder of a German citizen by two failed asylum seekers in Chemnitz, and the attempted cover-up by German police, has contributed to a surge in support for the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which, according to a new poll, has overtaken the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to become the second-strongest political force in Germany.

Support for the AfD has increased to 17%, while backing for the SPD has fallen to 16%. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) alliance is at 28.5%, according to an Insa Institute poll published by the newspaper Bild on September 3.

The rise of the AfD — which has been fueled by widespread anger over Merkel’s decision to allow into the country more than a million mostly Muslim migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and the subsequent increase in violent crime — reflects an ongoing realignment in German politics, in which voters increasingly are rejecting the multicultural orthodoxy of the mainstream parties.

When federal elections were held on September 24, 2017, the CDU/CSU won32.9% of the vote, its worst electoral result in nearly 70 years. The SPD won 20.5%, its worst-ever showing. The AfD won 12.6%, to become the country’s third-largest party in the German parliament.

The election results showed that more than a million traditional CDU/CSU voters defected to the AfD. In a sign that concerns over mass migration are not limited to conservative voters, the center-left SPD lost 500,000 voters to the AfD while the far-left Left Party lost 400,000 voters. In addition, nearly 1.5 million first-time voters cast their ballots for the AfD. This trend has continued, as consistently corroborated by opinion polls since the 2017 election.

The mainstream parties are fighting back with what some observers say are underhanded measures, aimed at delegitimizing — and possibly criminalizing — the AfD, including by calling for the party to be placed under state surveillance.

The AfD’s opponents, who often brand the party as “far right” or “extremist,” claim  that the party’s alleged ties to neo-Nazi groups pose an existential threat to Germany’s constitutional order. The AfD’s supporters counter that Germany’s politically correct establishment, afraid of losing its power and influence, is attempting to outlaw a legitimate party that has pledged to put the interests of German citizens first.

Calls for the AfD to be monitored by German intelligence have intensified in recent days, after members of the AfD participated in mass protests in Chemnitz against spiraling migrant criminality — protests in which approximately 50 hooligans and neo-Nazis were also present.

The protests erupted after a 35-year-old German-Cuban man named Daniel Hillig was stabbed to death on August 26 by two migrants during the city’s annual festival.

Police initially refused to reveal the identities of the perpetrators, but on August 27 a police report was leaked on social media — the document has since been scrubbed from German websites but it remains on a Russian site — which showed that the killers were illegal migrants from Iraq and Syria. Both had extensive criminal histories but were allowed by German authorities to roam free on German streets. Police later confirmed that the leaked document was authentic and said that they had opened an investigation into suspected “violation of official secrets.”

Thousands of people took to the streets for several days to protest the killing and the inaction by German authorities over the issue of spiraling migrant crime. The protests (and counter-protests) brought together a broad spectrum of German society, including supporters of the AfD, as well as members of the so-called “far-right scene.” Near the end of one of the marches, some of the protesters turned violent and began insulting some migrant passersby. That incident then shaped the media narrative from one of Germans protesting migrant crime to one of far-right attacks on innocent migrants.

Pictured: A march of silence, organized by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, in memory of victims of violent crimes perpetrated by migrants, on September 1, 2018 in Chemnitz, Germany. (Photo by Jens Schlueter/Getty Images)

Few if any of Germany’s mainstream politicians condemned the murder of Hillig, but they were quick to denounce attacks on migrants.

On August 27, government spokesman Steffen Seibert, in a national press conference, condemned the “hunting of humans of a different appearance, of different origins” on the streets of Chemnitz.

Chancellor Merkel echoed: “We have video footage about the fact that there were hunts, that there were riots, that there was hatred on the street, and that is unacceptable in our constitutional state.”

It later emerged that all of the government’s allegations were based on a single 19-second video — titled “Hunting for Humans in Chemnitz” — which was posted on YouTube and later broadcast by the public television channel ARD. The video shows one individual chasing another in what appears to be an isolated incident.

Moreover, a protester who grabbed national headlines by making a Nazi salute at the Chemnitz protest was discovered to be a left-wing extremist who infiltrated the march in order to discredit it. But the media narrative had been set in motion.

The chairman of the German Parliament’s Internal Affairs Committee, Burkhard Lischka (SPD), warned of the danger of a civil war:

“There is a small right-wing mob in our country that will take its violent fantasies of civil war to our streets. That in the Bundestag [German parliament] a party applauds these excesses against foreign fellow citizens as legitimate self-justice, shows that the majority of our country must become even louder when it comes to rule of law, democracy and cohesion in our society.”

Bundestag Vice President Thomas Oppermann demanded that the AfD be monitored by Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV): “The refugee question divides society and the AfD rides ever more radically on this wave.”

German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) countered that he sees no basis for monitoring the AfD. On the sidelines of a closed-door meeting of the CSU in Brandenburg, Seehofer defended the Chemnitz protesters: “Just because people protest, that does not make them a Nazi.” He added: “Migration is the mother of all problems.”

Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) later contradicted the government’s claims: “There was no mob, there was no hunting down of people, there was no pogrom in this city.”

Saxon Attorney General Spokesman Wolfgang Klein added: “After examining all of the material available to us, there was no hunt in Chemnitz.”

When asked to rectify his claims, Seibert doubled down:

“I will not have a semantic debate here over a word. Of course, if the Attorney General’s office says so, I take note. However, it remains that a video shows how people of foreign origin were chased and how they were threatened. It remains true that there were statements that were threatening, close to the call for vigilante justice. So, in my opinion, there is nothing to talk about.”

Like Seibert, Merkel refused to back down:

“We saw pictures that very clearly revealed hate and the persecution of innocent people. One must distance oneself from that. That is all there is to say.”

Writing for Tichys Einblick, a prominent German blog, commentator Oswald Metzger summed it up:

“‘There was no mob, there was no hunting down of people, there was no pogrom in this city.’ Saxon Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) clearly corrected the almost hysterical and false reporting of countless leading media outlets on the events in Chemnitz after the deadly stabbing. Even the chancellor and her government spokesman had, as we all know, conveyed these false reports to the public, and thereby giving them publicity.

“For long enough, many citizens from all walks of life have noticed that the problems of integrating even third- and fourth-generation immigrants have grown bigger, not smaller — especially among Turks. The mass immigration of the past three years, under the banner of ‘the right to asylum,’ has significantly increased the fear of parallel societies, of crime, and of cultural alienation.

“When I consider the often undifferentiated, blanket accusations against ‘brown Chemnitz’ [brown is the color of Nazism], then the established parties will not have to wonder why, almost without exception, they continue to lose to the colorful AfD.

“When concerned citizens increasingly are stigmatized as being Nazis — accusations which, incidentally, in their excessive use amount to a shameless trivialization of Nazi crimes — they often respond with the indifferent remark: ‘Well, then I’m just a Nazi!’

“Extremism cannot be combated with exclusion, but with looking at the facts. Those who want to reach concerned citizens must themselves get out of the ideological trenches.”

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