Tag: finance

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The “wait and see” economy is about to face its moment of truth, and one truth is the $1.9 trillion being passed out like candy is already spent.

The defining phrase of the U.S. economy for the past year is “wait and see”: every enterprise impacted by the pandemic that didn’t close immediately has been in “wait and see” mode, clinging on to the hope that once the pandemic ends then everything will roar back to life, bigger and better than before.

With the promise of herd immunity fast approaching, the moment of truth for “wait and see” is also fast approaching. The conventional view is that the trillions of dollars in stimulus kept business as usual alive and ready to soar back to the good old days. The almost $2 trillion injection of financial smack currently in progress will ignite the afterburners and the economy will rocket higher than anyone can imagine.

The problem with this rosy view is the economy was on fumes before the pandemic, as Gordon Long and I highlighted in our 53-minute presentation, The Coming Deflationary Tsunami. Interest rates had been falling for 40 years and there was little leeway for more of the magic of falling rates. The spending of the upper middle class had already rolled over as the awareness that the longest expansion in U.S. history was faltering seeped into financial decisions–and no wonder, since every trick in the book had been required to keep it alive: zero interest rates, quantitative easing galore, tax cuts, massive deficit spending and speculative bubbles in every asset class.

Then there was the spot of bother in the repo markets. Something had broken in the financial plumbing (a massive break in the sewers?) and the Federal Reserve rushed freshly printed billions to stop the sewage from seeping into the precarious economy.

Though nobody dared discuss it, the economy was creaking under the burden of overcapacity in just about everything: too many cafes, too many channels of this and that, too many office towers built for get-rich-quick techies planning to sell out to Big Tech and retire at 25, too many resorts, and so on.

One driver of the overcapacity was the rise of Zombie Corporations–companies that only remain among the living if they can borrow ever more money at lower rates to fill the holes in their balance sheets and cash flow. The Fed’s implicit goal was to never let a single Zombie die because that might send the wrong signal, i.e. that creative destruction was allowed. Creative destruction is no longer allowed by the Fed, never ever ever. So the economic landscape is cluttered with Fed zombies.

Also ignored was the inconvenient fact that wages for the bottom 95% have stagnated for decades and so where was all this money being blown coming from? From debt, of course, and the phantom wealth generated by speculative bubbles.

Then there are the demographic headwinds illuminated by Chris Hamilton, most recently in The Narrative Of Inflation Amid Depopulation. The working-age population has leveled off, along with the expansion of employment, while the number of those with claims on future earnings– the elderly and those “permanently out of the workforce”–are rising.

As Chris points out, speculative asset bubbles are just peachy for those who already own the assets–the top 10% who own close to 90% of financial assets–but of little value to the bottom 90% who get a pathetic 3% of all capital income.

Those greatly enriched by the Fed’s bubble-blowing are mostly older, those who can’t afford homes and other inflated assets are mostly younger, burdened with stagnant wages, student loan debts and an economy that’s rigged to favor the few at the expense of the many.

A great many young people are delaying or foregoing marriage and having children because they don’t have the means and security do so. So who’s going to be paying all the taxes needed to fund the enormous retirement and healthcare costs of 70 million retirees? No problem, we’ll just borrow another couple trillion a year forever. (Free fish for everyone forever!)

Nice, but the rest of the world has opted out of buying into our funny-money fantasies. So the Fed will have to buy all the trillions in bonds being issued, and that unleashes second-order effects that have the potential to go non-linear, i.e. actually have negative consequences in the real world.

Then there’s the private changes in behaviors and risk assessment that add up to tidal changes in the economy. People are reassessing their exposure to risk, and letting go of activities and expenses they once took for granted. Maybe the $300 trips to the ballpark are no longer worth it; maybe the costs of eating out are recognized as unaffordable.

The majority of residents in over-touristed locales no longer want tourism at the same scale. Residents discovered that once the tourists were gone, life was good, even if the tourist-dependent businesses closed and unemployment rose.

Everyone is holding their breath waiting to surface, but many of the enterprises that have clung on in “wait and see” mode will find that things have changed, and time cannot be reversed to summer 2019. All those holding defaulted loans based on a full return to summer 2019 are also holding their breath, hoping that the back rent will be paid in full, the overdue mortgages paid in full, and so on.

The reality is overcapacity, over-indebtedness and stagnant earnings are all deflationary. The “wait and see” economy is about to face its moment of truth, and one truth is the $1.9 trillion being passed out like candy is already spent–as is the economy and the Fed’s bag of tricks.

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The controversy over 2020 bonuses across the banking sector is almost over. We’re almost through Q1 2021 and soon the focus will start turning to the upcoming year. But it wouldn’t be the very end of 2020 bonus season without one more piece of delectable drama in the investment banking sector.

And that drama comes out of Deutsche, where apparently the company is “facing criticism” for boosting bonuses to traders. Recall, traders also saw special attention from other banks, like Goldman and JP Morgan, while retail workers and even some C-suite executives saw moratoriums on bonus amounts due to the “optics” of Covid – all despite banks posting yet another record year. 

Stephan Szukalski, head of the DBV trade union, told Bloomberg: “It’s bitter to see what kind of bonus pots are possible for investment bankers when there’s supposed to be no money for the company’s low-paid staff.”

The bank expanded its bonus pool last year to over $2.1 billion with a large portion of it going to fixed income trading – a division that had a “standout performance” that was responsible for the bank turning its first annual profit in 6 years. At the same time, Deutsche’s employees at its call center subsidiary, DB Direkt, have been on strike for 5 weeks to protest for a raise in pay. Some employees barely make above minimum wage, according to the report. 

“There’s enough money for investment bankers but not for us,” one DB Direkt employee said, calling it “unfair”. DB Direkt employees made an average of 34,100 euros in 2019, which compares to a 230,500 euro average at the investment bank. Last year, investment bankers got “almost a third” of the bonus pool. 

Chief Executive Officer Christian Sewing says the bank needs to offer bonuses competitively to keep its key talent. More information on bonuses is expected on Friday, when the bank releases its annual report. 

Recall, the last controversy we noted came out of Bank of America where “internal drama” developed over exceptions made for some bonuses. The bonuses in question were shares that were granted to executives who earn $1 million or more. Instead of shares vesting in equal parts over a timeframe, they vested only at the end of four years. 

The new rules were supposed to be applied broadly, but it was revealed that many top investment banking and trading veterans spoke out against having to wait 4 years for their bonuses. As a result, management agreed to exempt them. CEO Brian Moynihan said on January 27 that the new policy “didn’t work the way some people wanted it to, so we fixed it.”

 

Authored by Joanathan Turley,

I have previously admitted to being one of the few people apparently on planet Earth with little interest in the Royal family or the continuing travails of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  (No, I did not even tune into the wedding).  However, the coverage is now pulling some of us into this vortex with legal and media developments. One such issue arose this week after Piers Morgan, the co-host of ITV’s “Good Morning Britain who has now resigned from the show,” committed the apparently unpardonable sin of declaring on air that he didn’t “believe a word” of what Markle told Oprah in her recent interview. Markle herself filed a complaint with ITV.

For that transgression, Morgan is now reportedly under investigation by United Kingdom’s “Ofcom,” or Office of Communications, for violation of its “harm and offense rules.” 

It is another example of how both rights of the free press and free speech are under assault in the United Kingdom.

Morgan has long been a critic of Markle and received international attention this week by abruptly walking off the show’s set in a sharp exchange with a co-host Alex Beresford  who criticized his remark: “I understand that you don’t like Meghan Markle, you’ve made it so clear a number of times on this program, a number of times. And I understand that you’ve got a personal relationship with Meghan Markle, or you had one. And she cut you off. She’s entitled to cut you off, if she wants to.”

Err did you not listen?? This is nothing about “Alex trying to get a addition”…. whatever that means??! pic.twitter.com/LNhxOuDzlT

— Yves (@Yves68) March 10, 2021

That set off Morgan who interrupted and walked off after saying “OK, I’m done with this.”

Since Markle described psychiatric (and potentially suicidal) problems during her time at the palace, Morgan’s remarks were taken by some as dismissive of such crises. Morgan seemed to recognize that when he returned to the set and state:

“Let me just state for the record on my position on mental illness and on suicide. These are clearly extremely serious things and should be taken extremely seriously and if someone is feeling that way they should get the treatment and the help they need every time. And if they belong to an institution like the royal family and they go and seek that help they should absolutely be given it. It’s not for me to question if she felt suicidal, I am not in her mind and that is for her to say. My real concern was a disbelief frankly … that she went to a senior member of the royal household and told them she was suicidal and was told she could not have any help because it would be a bad look for the family. If that is true a) that person should be fired and b) the royal family have serious questions that need to be answered.”

After the show, Morgan was effectively fired. ITV issued a statement that “Following discussions with ITV, Piers Morgan has decided now is the time to leave Good Morning Britain. ITV has accepted this decision and has nothing further to add.” This followed a complaint from Markle. Consider that complaint for a second. She filed a complaint because a media personality said that he did not believe her. ITV then later showed Morgan the door.

One can clearly disagree with that take but one would think that the matter would be left to broader debate.  However, people immediately reached out to Ofcom to demand punitive action against Morgan for expressing his views. By that I mean, over 41,000 people.  Ofcom then announced a formal investigation “into Monday’s episode of ‘Good Morning Britain’ under our harm and offence rules.”

The Ofcom Section 2 rule is undefined and subjective:

Principle

To ensure that generally accepted standards are applied to the content of television and radio services so as to provide adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion in such services of harmful and/or offensive material.

Rules

Generally Accepted Standards

2.1: Generally accepted standards must be applied to the contents of television and radio services and BBC ODPS so as to provide adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion in such services of harmful and/or offensive material.

2.2: Factual programmes or items or portrayals of factual matters must not materially mislead the audience.

(Note to Rule 2.2: News is regulated under Section Five of the Code.)

2.3: In applying generally accepted standards broadcasters must ensure that material which may cause offence is justified by the context (see meaning of “context” below). Such material may include, but is not limited to, offensive language, violence, sex, sexual violence, humiliation, distress, violation of human dignity, discriminatory treatment or language (for example on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation, and marriage and civil partnership), and treatment of people who appear to be put at risk of significant harm as a result of their taking part in a programme. Appropriate information should also be broadcast where it would assist in avoiding or minimising offence.

Morgan was not the only person expressing disbelief after the interview. For example, Markle claimed to have been married a few days before the official wedding — a claim that has been contested by the Church vicar.

Morgan clearly does not believe Markle despite his followup distinguishing his comments from the issue of her emotional or mental crises. He follow up later with a tweet reaffirmed his disbelief: “On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah interview,” he posted. “I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t. If you did, OK. Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on. Thanks for all the love, and hate. I’m off to spend more times with my opinions.”

On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah interview. I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t. If you did, OK. Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on. Thanks for all the love, and hate. I’m off to spend more time with my opinions. pic.twitter.com/bv6zpz4Roe

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 10, 2021

Morgan also attached to a picture of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill with his famous quote, “Some people’s idea of [free speech] is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone says anything back, that is an outrage.”

I have written for years on the crackdown on free speech in France, Germany, and England though hate speech laws and speech regulations. As many on this blog know, I am unabashedly against limits on free speech and have opposed most public and private forms of censorship for decades.

My problem is with the investigation which is based on the same type of sweeping, generalized language used to curtail free speech in the United Kingdom ( here and here and here and here and here and hereand here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws.In the United Kingdom, free speech continues to be eroded, including speech directed at political and social issues like the death of George Floyd or “misgendering” during interviews We have also seen this type for ill-defined language used to regulate advertising.

Rather than speak out against Morgan’s comments, tens of thousands of people demanded that the government punish him — and silence him. It is working. He was effectively fired and he is now going to be subject to an investigation.  People have developed a taste for censorship and we have seen how that taste becomes an insatiable appetite. That is why this is not Markle or Morgan. It is about free speech and the free press.

Over the years, we have periodically reported the occasional gold bar discovered as counterfeit in Manhattan’s Diamond District. It was only until 2020 when a massive 83 tons of Chinese gold bars used as loan collateral turned out to be nothing but gilded copper. Thieves are becoming more brazen over the years as yet another commodity scam has hit a major Swiss trading firm, according to Bloomberg. 

The story unfolded last summer when commodities firm Mercuria Energy Group Ltd bought $36 million of copper from a Turkish supplier. But when the 6,000 tons of copper in more than 300 containers arrived in the Chinese port of Lianyungang in the late summer of 2020, there were only jagged paving stones spray painted to resemble the base metal. 

Mercuria has been subjected to fraud before. In 2014 and 2015, the Swiss commodity trading firm took covered losses via insurance claims on the metal stored in a Chinese warehouse when authorities seized it. 

The latest fraud has forced Mercuria to seek damages in Turkish courts and a U.K. arbitration case against the copper supplier, Bietsa. So far, 13 people have been arrested in connection with the scam. 

“Suspects have been taken under custody who are thought to be involved in the various parts of this organized crime against Mercuria,” Mercuria wrote in a statement. It also acknowledged the Istanbul Financial Crimes Department for its hard work in leading to the arrests. 

However, unlike past frauds, where Mercuria could claim a cargo’s insurance policy – this scam has a twist. Only one of the seven contracts used by the Turkish company to insure the cargo was genuine. The rest were fake – which means there’s no way for Mercuria to collect an insurance policy on the other contracts. 

Legal documents pieced together from Bloomberg outlined how the thieves swapped out the real copper while sealed in containers with shiny paving stones. 

Last June, Mercuria agreed to buy copper from Bietsan, a Turkish supplier it had done business with before, according to Sinan Borovali, the Turkey trading house’s lawyer. It appears that copper was initially loaded into the first shipment of containers, before being surveyed by an inspection company. Seals used to prevent fraud were then affixed to the containers.

But under the cover of darkness, it is alleged the containers were opened and the copper replaced with paving stones, Borovali of Istanbul law firm KYB said in an interview. The fraudsters switched between fake and real container seals in an effort to avoid detection.

As ships left Marport terminal in the port of Ambarli every few days, the same thing happened: the copper was secretly unloaded at night and replaced with painted rocks. “This was how they did it,” Borovali said.

With the vessels at sea, Mercuria paid $36 million in five installments, with the last payment made on Aug. 20, 2020, according to documents provided by the commodity trader to Turkish investigators. The fraud wasn’t discovered until the ships began arriving in the Chinese port of Lianyungang later that month. By then, all eight vessels were en route to China.

“There has been a criminal investigation petition by the buyer against the seller and two intermediaries,” Turkish police said in a statement. “It’s been determined that the incident is the outcome of fraud perpetrated in an organized manner.”

Normally, in such cases of non-delivery a trading house could make a claim against a cargo’s insurance policy. But Mercuria found that just one out of seven contracts used by the Turkish company to insure the cargo was real. The rest had been forged.

It appears someone at Mercuria may have not done proper due diligence into the Bietsa, or at least followed up on the legitimacy of the insurance contracts on the cargo. 

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

Swiss voters have narrowly approved a proposal to ban face coverings in public spaces.

The measure comes just over a decade after citizens voted to ban the construction of minarets, the tower-like structures on mosques that are often used to call Muslims to prayer.

The referenda reflect the determination of a majority of Swiss voters to preserve Swiss traditions and values in the face of runaway multiculturalism and the encroachment of political Islam.

Switzerland now joins Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands and Sweden, all of which currently have full or partial bans on religious and non-religious face coverings.

The binding referendum, approved on March 7 by 51.2% of voters, is popularly known as the “burqa initiative,” although the proposal does not specifically mention burqas or niqabs, the face-coving garments worn by some Muslim women. The ban encompasses most face coverings, including the bandanas and masks sometimes used by violent street protesters, and applies to all public spaces, including parks, restaurants, shops, and public transport.

The measure allows for some exceptions: health (anti-Covid masks); weather (scarves), safety (motorcycle helmets) and local customs (carnival costumes). Face coverings may also be worn inside houses of worship.

In line with the Swiss system of direct democracy, the country’s constitution will now be amended to incorporate the ban. The government has two years to draw up the necessary legislation.

The initiative was sponsored by the so-called Egerking Committee, a political group linked to the conservative Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP), the biggest political party in Switzerland.

Referendum committee chairman and SVP member Walter Wobmann described Muslim face coverings as “a symbol for this extreme, political Islam which has become increasingly prominent in Europe and which has no place in Switzerland.” He added:

“In Switzerland our tradition is that you show your face. That is a sign of our basic freedoms.”

Fellow SVP member Jean-Luc Addor attributed the success in the referendum to the party’s ability to promote its ideas outside of its core electorate, including among feminists and progressive Muslims.

“Some Muslims also understood that the niqab is a clear symbol of radical Islam,” he said.

Elham Manea, a Yemeni-Swiss political scientist who has long warned of the dangers of Sharia law, told Swiss Radio that the niqab is clearly a “symbol of a religious fundamentalist ideology.” She added: “In a free society, women must be respected, and their rights and dignity protected.”

Mohamed Hamdaoui, an Algerian-Swiss counselor in the canton of Bern, described the outcome of the vote as “a great relief.” He said that the vote was “an opportunity to put a stop to Islamism” and not “the Muslims who obviously have their rightful place in this country.”

Saïda Keller-Messahli, founder and president of the Forum for a Progressive Islam, agreed that the approval of the referendum was a positive development. A native of Tunisia who for years has warned of the dangers of an Islamist subculture in Switzerland, said that “saying yes to the ban on veiling is saying no to a totalitarian ideology that has no place in a democracy.”

Swiss feminists are divided on the issue, with some saying that burqas and niqabs are oppressive, and others arguing that women should be free to choose what they want to wear.

Swiss writer and playwright Gisela Widmer criticized some feminist groups for opposing the ban:

“The full veil, which turns the woman into a faceless being without an identity, is a symbol of misogynistic political Islam. It is the most visible symbol of an overall fascist ideology, which includes gender apartheid, but also anti-Semitism and gay hatred….

“[Some feminists say that] the fact that the initiative comes from the SVP is a mockery. Correct! Because the initiative should not come from the SVP, but from committed feminist circles. Even more unforgivable than this failure on the part of the left is that they are now also fighting the ‘Burqa Initiative.’ A little less naivety and a little more international women’s solidarity would suit the SP [Socialist Party] women. If we approve the ‘Burqa Initiative,’ we cannot change the reality of women in the Sharia states, but we can set an example and say that we are very serious about a woman’s right to self-determination.”

Maya Graf, a co-president of the feminist group Alliance F, countered:

“Feminists stand up for the rights and freedoms of women. This also includes the free choice of clothing.”

Emrah Erken, a lawyer and member of the Forum for Progressive Islam, tweeted:

“Sharia and feminism are opposites. You cannot wear the hijab and claim that you are a feminist. Such a claim is simply not true.”

The Swiss government opposed the measure. Justice Minister Karin Keller-Sutter argued that full-face coverings are a “marginal phenomenon” (Randphänomen) and that a ban could harm tourism because, according to the government, most Muslim women who cover their faces in Switzerland are visitors from wealthy Persian Gulf states.

The Swiss tourism sector also opposed the proposal. “The burqa ban would damage our image as an open and tolerant tourist destination,” said Nicole Brändle Schlegel of HotellerieSuisse, a coalition of hoteliers and tourism groups from Bern.

The Director of the Swiss Tourism Association, Barbara Gisi, added: “We want to show the countries from which many fully veiled tourists come to Switzerland that we are still a hospitable country.” She said she hopes that the Swiss government will launch an “explanatory and charm offensive” in the relevant countries.

The Federation of Islamic Umbrella Organizations in Switzerland (Föderation islamischer Dachorganisationen Schweiz, FIDS) stated:

“We are very disappointed with the result of the vote. The disappointment is mixed with great indignation. It would have been expected that the Swiss people would not allow symbolic politics to be carried out on the backs of some Muslim women. This symbolic policy is directed against Muslims…. Anchoring dress codes in the constitution is not a struggle for freedom of women, but a retreat into the past.”

Ferah Ulucay, general secretary of the Central Council of Muslims in Switzerland (Islamischer Zentralrat der Schweiz, IZRS) said that approval of the referendum was “a dark day for Switzerland” because it “succeeded in anchoring the prevailing Islamophobia in the constitution.” She vowed to challenge to the ban in court and to pay the fines for women who are prosecuted for violating it.

The referendum was approved by majorities in 20 out of Switzerland’s 26 cantons; it was rejected in six cantons, including those that include the country’s three biggest cities, Basel, Geneva and Zurich, and the capital, Bern.

Two Swiss cantons — Ticino and St. Gallen — already have local bans on face coverings. Face coverings at protests and sports events are currently banned in 15 of 26 cantons.

Minaret Ban: A Decade On, Mixed Results

The Egerking Committee was also the driving force behind the 2009 referendum on banning the construction of minarets. The ban was aimed at slowing the growth of political Islam in Switzerland by curbing the influence of Turkey and other Muslim countries in the affairs of Swiss Muslims.

A decade later, the referendum’s impact has been mixed. No new minarets have been built in Switzerland since the ban entered into effect, but the foreign influence on Swiss Islamic communities appears to be greater than ever.

The minaret referendum, held on November 29, 2009, was approved by 57.5% of Swiss voters and resulted in an amendment to Article 72 of the Swiss Constitution, which now states: “The construction of minarets is prohibited.”

The SVP argued that minarets are “beacons of jihad” and a “symbol of a religious-political claim to power and dominance which threatens — in the name of alleged freedom of religion — the constitutional rights of others.”

The SVP backed its claim by citing a remark by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who once implied that the construction of mosques and minarets is part of a strategy to Islamize Europe. Reciting a poem by the Turkish nationalist writer Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924), Erdoğan said: “The minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks and the faithful our soldiers.”

The minaret controversy was sparked in September 2005, when the Turkish cultural association in Wangen bei Olten, a small town in northern Switzerland, applied for a permit to erect a minaret on the roof of the local mosque. The project to build the minaret, opposed by a majority of local residents, was rejected by the town’s building and planning commission in September 2006.

The Turkish cultural association — possibly with encouragement from the Turkish government — subsequently filed an appeal; it claimed that the local building authorities were motivated by religious bias. The case eventually made its way to the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland (Bundesgericht), which in July 2007 ruled that construction of the minaret could proceed. The six-meter (20-foot) tower was erected in January 2009. This chain of events led to the formation of the Egerking Committee and prompted campaigners to gather the 100,000 signatures needed to launch the popular initiative against minarets.

Since then, the influence of Islam in Switzerland has steadily increased. The Muslim population of Switzerland has grown by more than 30% during the past decade and now exceeds half a million people, or approximately six percent of the total population, according to the Pew Research Center. If current migration trends continue, the Muslim population of Switzerland is set to more than double by 2050, to more than one million, according to Pew forecasts; with a high migration scenario, it is set to triple to more than 1.5 million.

The number of mosques in Switzerland has also increased since the 2009 referendum. The country is now home to at least 240 mosques, according to the University of Luzern. Some of the larger mosques are believed to be financed by foreign governments, including those of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some Gulf Arab states:

• June 2020. Saïda Keller-Messahli, one of the most prominent Islam experts in Switzerland, revealed that an Albanian-Islamic mega-mosque being built in Reinach, a small town in northern canton of Aargau, was being financed by Turkey and Kuwait. She said that dozens of Albanian mosques were springing up across Switzerland and being used by Turkey and other Muslim countries to spread an “arch-conservative Islam.”

• January 2020. A Swiss-Muslim board of directors assumed management of the Geneva Mosque, the largest mosque in Switzerland, after Swiss and French authorities determined that four imams employed there were Islamic extremists. The mosque was built by Saudi Arabia and financed by the Muslim World League. Henceforth, the mosque is to be financed by exclusively by Muslims from Switzerland.

• November 2019. Research by the Swiss Center for Islam and Society (Schweizerischen Zentrum für Islam und Gesellschaft, SZIG) at the University of Fribourg found that 130 foreign imams are active in Switzerland. Almost all are Sunni Muslims, and nearly half are of Turkish origin. The Albanian-speaking community — mainly from Kosovo and northern Macedonia — are catered to by 40 imams, 30 of whom work full-time. There are also 13 imams of Bosnian origin, and 15 to 20 from the Arab world.

• April 2019. French journalists Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, in their book “Qatar Papers,” reported that between 2011 and 2014, Qatar Charity, an NGO funded by the Qatari royal family, provided more than 4 million Swiss Francs ($4 million) to finance five Islamic megaprojects in Switzerland. The projects include the 22-million-franc Museum of Islamic Civilizations in La Chaux-de-Fonds (Neuchâtel canton), the Lausanne Islamic Cultural Center (Vaud canton) and the Islamic Center of Biel (Bern canton).

  After the scope of Qatari involvement in Swiss Muslim affairs became public, Qatar reportedly stopped funding Islamic projects in Switzerland. Mohamed Karmous, founder of the Swiss Muslim Cultural Institute, the organization through which the Qatari funds were apparently being channeled, said that such financing had ended.

• September 2018. Swiss Radio and Television (SRF) reported that the Islamic Community of Zurich (Stiftung Islamische Gemeinschaft Zürich, SIGZ) was receiving 200,000 Swiss Francs ($200,000) annually from the United Arab Emirates. The mosque is owned by Abu Dhabi, which also chooses the mosque’s imam.

  SRF also reported that the Turkish government is paying the salaries of 35 full-time imams in Switzerland. The imams are coordinated by the Turkish Embassy in Bern and the Zurich-based Turkish-Islamic Foundation for Switzerland (Türkisch-Islamischen Stiftung für die Schweiz, TISS), which is controlled by the Turkish government’s Directorate for Religious Affairs, known in Turkish as Diyanet.

• May 2018. The lower house of the Swiss parliament narrowly rejected (96 to 90 and seven abstentions) a motion to outlaw the direct or indirect financing of mosques, Islamic prayer rooms and other Islamic centers in Switzerland by states that are alleged to support terrorist groups or violate human rights. The Federal Council, the seven-member executive council that constitutes the federal government of Switzerland, argued that such a ban would place all Muslims in the country under a general suspicion and that Muslim communities “must be able to exercise their right to freedom of religion and association under the same conditions as the other religious communities.”

Foreign imams in Switzerland have also been under increased scrutiny:

• December 4, 2019. The public prosecutor in Bern opened a criminal investigation into a 66-year-old Libyan imam, Abu Ramadan, for allegedly committing welfare fraud. He was sued by the municipality of Nidau after receiving more than 590,000 Swiss Francs ($590,000) in social welfare assistance between 2003 and 2017. He is accused of concealing income worth tens of thousands of francs that would have led to a lower allocation of welfare benefits.

• October 15, 2019. The Federal Supreme Court upheld a decision by a court in St. Gallen to not renew the residence permit of an imam from Kosovo who was found guilty of physically and sexually abusing his wife and prohibiting her from venturing out of the home without his consent. The court judged that the imam had not assimilated Switzerland’s social and legal values and did not respect them.

• October 8, 2019. The Office of the Attorney General of Lucerne launched an investigation into a 38-year-old Iraqi imam at the Dar Assalam mosque in Kriens. He is alleged to have advised his followers to beat disobedient wives. The investigation was launched after the newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported that the man allegedly suggested disciplining women with physical violence if non-violent methods fail. He also reportedly called for respect for Sharia law. The investigation was later dropped due to a lack of evidence.

In the wake of the incident, the Dar Assalam organization, which represents the Islamic community in central Switzerland, recommended that all sermons and prayers be recorded and stored for 12 months.

Airlines in the US are already in the process of leveraging apps and smartphones to allow travelers to offer proof that they have been vaccinated, or recently tested negative for COVID-19, and they’re not alone: Across Europe, a growing number of airlines and countries are adopting, or leaning toward adopting, so-called “vaccine passports”.

France24 reports Wednesday that countries increasingly see these vaccine passports as the best chance to bolster hard-hit tourism industries in places like Spain and Greece. However, since vaccines are still relatively hard to come by in Europe (supplies in the developing world are also scarce) there are concerns that vaccine passports won’t work – while also raising thorny privacy issues.

Most programmes under development are geared towards facilitating travel and come in the form of smartphone apps with varying criteria for a clean bill of health.

Vaccine passports, for example, are a popular way to approach proof of immunity with jab rollouts underway across the globe.

While UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently told Britons that they won’t need a vaccine passport to visit the local pub, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron is considering creating a digital vaccine passport without which French citizens might be barred from visiting restaurants and other public places.

French President Emmanuel Macron recently suggested yet another, more localised form of Covid-free permission slip: the so-called “health pass.”

This certification would only be valid within France’s borders but would allow a fully vaccinated person to, for example, eat in restaurants and attend certain events.

Fortunately, vaccine passports aren’t the only option available to airlines hoping to fight the spread of COVID.

There are also apps that accept positive antibody tests as proof of immunity for those who have had the virus and recovered.

But the World Health Organization has warned that there is no evidence to show that recovered Covid sufferers with antibodies are protected from a second infection.

Even as pressure to implement passports grows, the report notes that vaccine passports do raise some thorny legal issues, while also potentially exacerbating economic inequality as the poor are effectively barred from traveling, while their movements in public are limited.

Making health passports stricter or requiring them for travel could invite legal challenges.

A major worry is that banning unvaccinated people from travelling would exacerbate inequality since access to jabs is far from universal.

There are also concerns over how applications would access users’ personal data.

In France, there is already an official database of citizens who have been vaccinated against Covid-19, approved by the country’s privacy watchdog.

However, the body has warned it will re-examine the issue should the database be put to use in the context of a health passport.

Earlier this week China launched a digital “health certificate” for its 1.3 billion citizens which will record their vaccination status and COVID test status.

In tourism-dependent Greece and Cyprus, vaccination passports are being launched specifically for travel to and from Israel, which has fully vaccinated 44% of its population, and, being situated on the east coast of the Mediterranean, is also located nearby. Denmark and Sweden are also looking to launch health passports soon, while the EU is promising to propose a “green pass” to ease movement within the bloc.

Authored by Manlio Dinucci via Global Research,

The NATO Dynamic Manta anti-submarine warfare exercise took place in the Ionian Sea from February 22 to March 5. Ships, submarines, and planes from the United States, Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Belgium, and Turkey participated in it. The two main units involved in this exercise were a US Los Angeles class nuclear attack submarine and the French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle together with its battle group, and a nuclear attack submarine was also included.

Soon after the exercise, the Charles de Gaulle carrier went to the Persian Gulf. Italy, which participated in the Dynamic Manta with ships and submarines, was the entire exercise “host nation”: Italy made the port of Catania (Sicily) and the Navy helicopter station (also in Catania) available to the participating forces, the Sigonella air station (the largest US / NATO base in the Mediterranean) and Augusta (both in Sicily) the logistics base for supplies. The purpose of the exercise was the hunt for Russian submarines in the Mediterranean that, according to NATO, would threaten Europe.

At the same time, the Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its battle group are carrying out operations in the Atlantic to “demonstrate continued US military support for allies and a commitment to keep the seas free and open.” These operations – conducted by the Sixth Fleet, whose command is in Naples and base is in Gaeta – fall within the strategy set out in particular by Admiral Foggo, formerly head of the NATO Command in Naples: accusing Russia of wanting to sink with its submarines the ships connecting the two sides of the Atlantic, so as to isolate Europe from the USA. He argued that NATO must prepare for the “Fourth Battle of the Atlantic,” after those of the two World Wars and the cold war. While naval exercises are underway, strategic B-1 bombers, transferred from Texas to Norway, are carrying out “missions” close to Russian territory, together with Norwegian F-35 fighters, to “demonstrate the readiness and capability of the United States in supporting the allies.

Military operations in Europe and adjacent seas take place under the command of US Air Force General Tod Wolters, who heads the US European Command and at the same time NATO, with the position of Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, this position is always covered by a US General.

All these military operations are officially motivated as “Europe defense from Russian aggression,” overturning the reality: NATO expanded into Europe with its forces and even nuclear bases close to Russia. At the European Council on February 26, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg declared that “the threats we faced before the pandemic are still there,” placing first “Russia’s aggressive actions” and, in the background, a threatening “rise of China.” He then stressed the need to strengthen the transatlantic link between the United States and Europe, as the new Biden administration strongly wants, taking cooperation between the EU and NATO to a higher level. Over 90% of the European Union’s inhabitants, he recalled, now live in NATO countries (including 21 of the 27 EU countries). The European Council reaffirmed “the commitment to cooperate closely with NATO and the new Biden administration for security and defense, “making the EU militarily stronger. As Prime Minister Mario Draghi pointed out in his speech, this strengthening must take place within a complementarity framework with NATO and in coordination with the USA.

Therefore, the military strengthening of the EU must be complementary to that of NATO, in turn, complementary to the US strategy. This strategy actually consists in provoking growing tensions with Russia in Europe, so as to increase US influence in the European Union itself. An increasingly dangerous and expensive game, because it pushes Russia to militarily strengthen itself. This is confirmed by the fact that in 2020, in full crisis, Italian military spending stepped from 13th to the 12th worldwide place, overtaking the place of Australia.

Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”— George Washington

It’s a given that the government is corrupt, unaccountable, and has exceeded its authority.

So what can we do about it?

The first remedy involves speech (protest, assembly, speech, prayer, and publicity), and lots of it, in order to speak truth to power.

The First Amendment, which is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights, affirms the right of “we the people” to pray freely about our grievances regarding the government. We can gather together peacefully to protest those grievances. We can publicize those grievances. And we can express our displeasure (peacefully) in word and deed.

Unfortunately, tyrants don’t like people who speak truth to power.

The American Police State has shown itself to be particularly intolerant of free speech activities that challenge its authority, stand up to its power grabs, and force it to operate according to the rules of the Constitution.

Cue the rise of protest laws, the police state’s go-to methods for muzzling discontent.

These protest laws, some of which appear to encourage violence against peaceful protesters by providing immunity to individuals who drive their car into protesters impeding traffic and use preemptive deadly force against protesters who might be involved in a riot, take intolerance for speech with which one might disagree to a whole new level.

Ever since the Capitol protests on Jan. 6, 2021, state legislatures have introduced a broad array of these laws aimed at criminalizing protest activities. Yet while the growing numbers of protest laws cropping up across the country are being marketed as necessary to protect private property, public roads or national security, they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a thinly disguised plot to discourage anyone from challenging government authority at the expense of our First Amendment rights.

It doesn’t matter what the source of that discontent might be (police brutality, election outcomes, COVID-19 mandates, the environment, etc.): protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws, etc., aim to muzzle every last one of us.

However, as Human Rights Watch points out, these assaults on free speech are nothing new. “Various states have long-tried to curtail the right to protest. They do so by legislating wide definitions of what constitutes an ‘unlawful assembly’ or a ‘riot’ as well as increasing punishments. They also allow police to use catch-all public offenses, such as trespassing, obstructing traffic, or disrupting the peace, as a pretext for ordering dispersals, using force, and making arrests. Finally, they make it easier for corporations and others to bring lawsuits against protest organizers.”

Make no mistake: while many of these laws claim to be in the interest of “public safety and limiting economic damage,” these legislative attempts to redefine and criminalize speech are a backdoor attempt to rewrite the Constitution and render the First Amendment’s robust safeguards null and void.

For instance, there are at least 205 proposed laws being considered in 45 states that would curtail the right to peacefully assemble and protest by expanding the definition of rioting, heightening penalties for existing offenses, or creating new crimes associated with assembly.

No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

In Alabama, lawmakers are pushing to allow individuals to use deadly force near a riot. Kentucky, Missouri and New Hampshire are also considering similar stand your ground laws to justify the use of lethal force in relation to riots.

In Arizona, legislators want to classify protests involving seven or more people as felonies punishable by up to two years in jail. Under such a law, traditional, nonviolent forms of civil disobedience—sit-ins, boycotts and marches—would be illegal.

In Arkansas, peaceful protesters who engage in civil disobedience by occupying any government property after being told to leave could face six months in jail and a $1000 fine.

In Minnesota, where activists continue to protest the death of George Floyd, who was killed after police knelt on his neck for eight minutes, individuals who are found guilty of any kind of offense in connection with a peaceful protest could be denied a range of benefits, including food assistance, education loans and grants, and unemployment assistance.

Oregon lawmakers wanted to “require public community colleges and universities to expel any student convicted of participating in a violent riot.” In Illinois, students who twice infringe the rights of others to engage in expressive activities could be suspended for at least a year.

Proposed laws in at least 25 states, including Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Florida, would give drivers the green light to “accidentally” run over protesters who are preventing them from fleeing a riot. Washington wants to levy steeper penalties against protesters who “swarm” a vehicle, punishing them for a repeat offense with up to 40 years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

Responding to protests over the Keystone Pipeline, South Dakota enabled its governor and sheriffs to prohibit gatherings of 20 or more people on public land if the gathering might damage the land. At least 15 other states have also adopted or are considering legislation that would levy harsher penalties for environmental protests near oil and gas pipelines.

In Iowa, all it takes is for one person in a group of three of more people to use force or cause property damage, and the whole group can be punished with up to 5 years in prison and a $7,500 fine.

Obstruct access to critical infrastructure in Mississippi and you could be facing a $10,000 fine and a seven-year prison sentence.

A North Carolina law would have made it a crime to heckle state officials. Under this law, shouting at a former governor would constitute a crime.

In Connecticut, you could be sentenced to five years behind bars and a $5,000 fine for disrupting the state legislature by making noise or using disturbing language.

Indiana lawmakers wanted to authorize police to use “any means necessary” to breakup mass gatherings that block traffic. Lawmakers have since focused their efforts on expanding the definition of a “riot” and punishing anyone who wears a mask to a peaceful protest, even a medical mask, with 2.5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Georgia wants to ban all spontaneous, First Amendment-protected assemblies and deny anyone convicted of violating the ban from receiving state or local employment benefits.

Virginia wants to subject protesters who engage in an “unlawful assembly” after “having been lawfully warned to disperse” with up to a year of jail time and a fine of up to $2,500.

Missouri made it illegal for public employees to take part in strikes and picketing, only to have the law ruled unconstitutional in its entirety.

Oklahoma created a sliding scale for protesters whose actions impact or impede critical infrastructure (including a telephone pole). The penalties range from $1,000 and six months in a county jail to $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. And if you’re part of an organization, that fine goes as high as $1,000,000.

Talk about intimidation tactics.

Ask yourself: if there are already laws on the books in all of the states that address criminal or illegal behavior such as blocking public roadways, trespassing on private property or vandalizing property—because such laws are already on the books—then why does the government need to pass laws criminalizing activities that are already outlawed?

What’s really going on here?

No matter what the politicians might say, the government doesn’t care about our rights, our welfare or our safety.

Every despotic measure used to control us and make us cower and comply with the government’s dictates has been packaged as being for our benefit, while in truth benefiting only those who stand to profit, financially or otherwise, from the government’s transformation of the citizenry into a criminal class.

In this way, the government conspires to corrode our core freedoms purportedly for our own good but really for its own benefit.

Remember, the USA Patriot Act didn’t make us safer. It simply turned American citizens into suspects and, in the process, gave rise to an entire industry—private and governmental—whose profit depends on its ability to undermine our Fourth Amendment rights.

In much the same way that the Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect, the government’s anti-extremism program criminalizes otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities such as peaceful protesting.

Clearly, freedom no longer means what it once did.

This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from soldiers invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

Yet the unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

In other words, if we no longer have the right to voice concerns about COVID-19 mandates, if we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to protest unjust laws or government policies by voicing our opinions in public or on social media or before a legislative body—no matter how politically incorrect or socially unacceptable those views might be—then we do not have free speech.

What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s what those who founded America called tyranny.

On paper, we may be technically free.

In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

As the great George Carlin rightly observed: “Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.”

In other words, we only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

Remember: if the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador says US President Joe Biden’s immigration policy is encouraging illegal immigration, and brings revenue to drug cartels through human trafficking operations at the US border.

According to the Reuters, Mexico has asked the Biden administration to assist by providing developmental help to Central America, where tens of thousands of migrants embark on a journey through Mexico in the hopes of reaching the United States and gaining asylum.

“They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” said AMLO (via Reuters) following a March 1 virtual meeting with Biden. “We need to work together to regulate the flow, because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”

Some of Biden’s policies that worry the Mexican government include a fast track to citizenship for migrants living in the US and support for gang violence victims.

Internal assessments reviewed by Reuters — based on testimony and intelligence gathering — state that Mexican gangs have been growing their clientele and keeping tabs on US measures that would encourage migration. Additionally they have developed a new tracking system to move migrants across the US-Mexico border.

One anonymous Mexican official told Reuters that cartels have been using sophisticated smuggling techniques “from the day Biden took office,” such as using technology to thwart authorities, making smuggling operations appear as travel agencies, and keeping migrants up to date on the latest immigration rules.

“Migrants have become a commodity,” the official told Reuters. “But if a packet of drugs is lost in the sea, it’s gone. If migrants are lost, it’s human beings we’re talking about.”

Authored by Max Blumenthal via TheGrayZone.com,

The Joseph Biden administration has named Richard Nephew as its Deputy Iran Envoy. As the former Principal Deputy Coordinator of Sanctions Policy for Barack Obama’s State Department, Nephew took personal credit for depriving Iranians of food, sabotaging their automobile industry and driving up unemployment rates. He has described the destruction of Iran’s economy as “a tremendous success,” and lamented during a visit to Russia that food was still plentiful in the country’s capital despite mounting US sanctions.

Nephew’s appointment to a senior diplomatic post suggests that rather than immediately returning to the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal, the Biden administration will finesse sanctions illegally imposed by Trump to pressure Iran into an onerous, reworked agreement that Tehran is unlikely to join.

After coordinating Obama’s sanctions regime against Iran, Nephew left the administration for a position at the energy industry-funded Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. There, he published a book outlining in blunt terms how he honed the craft of economic warfare and applied it against Iran.

Entitled “The Art of Sanctions: A View From The Field,” the book’s cover image features two Caucasian hands drawing a rope for a noose, presumably to strangle some insufficiently pliant Global South government. Its contents read like a list of criminal confessions, detailing in chillingly clinical terms how the sanctions Nephew conceived from inside an air conditioned office in Washington immiserated average Iranians.

With his candor, Nephew has shattered the official US rhetoric about “targeted sanctions” that exclusively punish “bad actors” and their business cronies while leaving civilian populations unharmed.

The application of pain to a country’s civilian population is central to Nephew’s sanctions strategy. As he explains in “The Art of Sanctions,” for the unilateral coercive measures to succeed, they must impose significant pain to a state’s most vulnerable sectors, shatter the state’s political and social resolve, and ultimately force the state to cry uncle in the face of Washington’s demands.

Nephew detailed how, as JCPOA negotiations got underway in January 2012, he led a process to reduce Iran’s oil revenue and starve its economy. After the administration successfully pushed for a wholesale reduction in oil exports and other unilateral coercive measures, Iran’s economy went from a period of growth to sudden and staggering contraction while the value of its currency tumbled. Nephew pronounced the economic assault he engineered to be “a tremendous success.”

While discussing his book, “The Art of Sanctions,” @richardmnephew boasted with a wide grin that the economic warfare tactics he devised drove up unemployment rates in Iran.

Nephew was just appointed as Biden’s deputy Iran envoy.

My full story here: https://t.co/FWTYO7Ab4G pic.twitter.com/m5431czF8i

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 8, 2021

Nephew also patted himself on the the back for tripling the price of chicken “during important Iranian holiday periods,” thereby “contribut[ing] to more popular frustration in one bank shot than years of financial restrictions.”

Next, he boasted of more sanctions targeting civilians to prevent Iranians from obtaining the assistance they needed to repair their cars. “Iran’s manufacturing jobs and export revenue were the targets of this sanction,” Nephew wrote.

There were some goods that Nephew wanted Iran to import, however. In hopes of fomenting social unrest, he said Washington “expanded the ability of US and foreign companies to sell Iranians technology used for personal communications” so they could “learn more about the dire straits of their country’s economy…”

During a December 6, 2017 panel discussion about his book at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, Nephew detailed with a chilling smile how he not only sabotaged Iran’s automotive industry, but targeted “things like unemployment, to try to drive that up and make things a little more sticky.”

In response to online criticism, Nephew has claimed that “the main target” of the sanctions regime he designed was “the oligarchs.” But his book on “The Art of Sanctions” tells another story.

Nephew fondly recalls how he structured sanctions to sabotage Iranian economic reforms that would have improved the purchasing power of average people. The Obama administration destroyed the economic prospects of Iran’s working class majority while ensuring that “only the wealthy or those in positions of power could take advantage of Iran’s continued connectedness,” he wrote. As “stories began to emerge from Iran of intensified income inequality and inflation,” Nephew pronounced another success.

Vatan-e Emrooz highlights Richard Nephew’s appointment as deputy special envoy for Iran.
The outlet highlights the fact that he was one of the designers of the Iran sanctions regime pic.twitter.com/vZHJlJIqU4

— Omer Carmi (@CarmiOmer) March 2, 2021

As he made clear, the rising inequality “was a choice” that Washington “made on the basis of helping to drive up the pressure on the Iranian economy from internal sources.” Nephew went on to claim credit for October 2012 protests brought on by the devaluation of Iran’s currency.

In a fairly stunning admission, Nephew admits at one point that despite providing Iran with supposed humanitarian exceptions on US sanctions, the economic war he helped design caused a catastrophic shortage of medicine and medical devices, largely because average Iranians could not afford them.

Despite acknowledging the heavy toll of human suffering brought on by the sanctions he personally conceived, suggesting they could have prompted high numbers of excess deaths, Nephew appears to be devoid of contrition. During a December 2016 trip to Moscow, he complained that despite the sanctions imposed on Russia by the US, food was still widely available at local restaurants – “hardly a level of pain” that was necessary to bring the Kremlin to heel.

He called to “develop a strategy to carefully, methodically, and efficiently increase pain on those areas [of the Russian economy] that are vulnerabilities and avoid those that are not.”

So who is Richard Nephew? Does he lurk in the shadow world of intelligence intrigues and spook wars, keeping a low profile while he waits to strike the enemy? Or is he a fire-breathing hardliner bellowing threats against America’s adversaries from Beltway think tank panels? The reality is much more banal.

When he is not snatching chicken from Iranian kids during their winter holiday, Nephew is spending quality time with his own, amusing them with his tattered dad rock t-shirts and flashing arms adorned with tribal tattoos.

In an administration filled with fun-loving, ethnically diverse characters who moonlight as rock guitarists, decorate the walls of their homes with Haitian art, bob their heads to Tupac and even enjoy an occasional toke, all while keeping the gears of a ferociously violent empire grinding along, the tattooed sanctions artist seems like a perfect fit.

In Iran, where a leading daily recently portrayed Nephew as Keanu Reeves in The Devil’s Advocate, his elevation to a senior diplomatic role is seen as a sign of more pain to come.