MbS: War With Iran Would Send Oil To Highs “That We Haven’t Seen In Our Lifetimes”
In an interview that aired just days before the one-year anniversary of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance and presumed murder, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman sat for an interview with 60 Minutes – reportedly the most extensive interview he has ever given to a Western media outlet.
During the nearly 15-minute discussion with ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Norah O’Donnell (in an interview that, fittingly, was aired during ’60 Minutes’ 52nd season premier), MbS addressed every controversy afflicting his regime: tensions with Iran and the recent attacks on Abqaiq, the murder of Khashoggi, MbS’s hopes for peace in Yemen and the arrest of female activists despite MbS’s landmark gender reforms like granting women the right to drive.
The two issues from the interview that garnered the most attention were MbS’s insistence that he wasn’t aware of the plot to kill Khashoggi (but that he ‘accepts responsibility’, as a leader should), and the disruption in global oil supplies – triggering a spike in global prices – that could result from a war with Iran (just look at how global benchmarks responded to the attack on Abqaiq, with the largest one-day spike since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait).
Asked point-blank whether he ordered Khashoggi’s murder, MbS replied “absolutely not” and described the attack as a “heinous crime” (all via a translator).
“Absolutely not. This was a heinous crime. But I take full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia, especially since it was committed by individuals working for the Saudi government.”
When pressed about how he could’ve been unaware of a mission in which some of his closest associates participated, MbS insisted that it would be ‘impossible’ for him to monitor what KSA’s 3 million government employees do on a daily basis.
“Some think that I should know what three million people working for the Saudi government do daily? It’s impossible that the three million would send their daily reports to the leader or the second highest person in the Saudi government.”
Moving on, O’Donnell had a few questions about the attack on Abqaiq, which briefly took 5.5% of global oil production offline. She asked MbS about Iran’s motives, as well as what a conflict would be like.
Asked what ‘strategic’ reason Iran would have for orchestrating the attack on Abqaiq (a question that many skeptical analysts have also raised), MbS responded that the only sensible motive was “stupidity.”
“I believe it’s stupidity. There is no strategic goal. Only a fool would attack 5% of global supplies. The only strategic goal is to prove that they are stupid and that is what they did.”
’60 Minutes’ also aired what it described as the first footage of the attack on Abqaiq, which showed the barrage of cruise missiles slamming into various infrastructure inside the plant:
Echoing comments from Mike Pompeo, MbS said he would describe the attack on Abqaiq as an ‘act of war’, before the discussion turned to the global oil market.
Given Saudi Arabia’s importance to global energy supplies, a war with Iran could bring about the “total collapse” of the global economy, not just the Middle East region.
“The region represents about 30% of the world’s energy supplies, about 20% of global trade passages, about 4% of the world GDP. Imagine all of these three things stop. This means a total collapse of the global economy, and not just Saudi Arabia or the Middle East countries. Iran appears willing to risk war to improve its position.”
Oil prices would likely soar to “unimaginable” highs that we “haven’t seen in our lifetimes” as global supplies are disrupted.
“If the world does not take a strong and firm action to deter Iran, we will see further escalations that will threaten world interests. Oil supplies will be disrupted and oil prices will jump to unimaginably high numbers that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.”
Finally, touching on the issue of a ceasefire in Yemen, MbS said Saudi Arabia is working diligently toward peace. He added that he considers the Houthi-backed ceasefire a “positive step.”
Not long after, O’Donnell wrapped up the interview with a final question: “What lessons have you learned? And have you made mistakes?
“Of course I’ve made mistakes,” MbS insisted. “Even prophets make mistakes, so how come we, as humans, expect not to make mistakes?”
The Labour MP Jess Phillips says she has received more threats after an incident outside her constituency office on Thursday when a man allegedly tried to smash her windows. She showed Sky News a message that said: “Unless you change your attitude, be afraid, be very afraid.”
The Labour MP David Lammy has criticised the columnist Brendan O’Neill after he said on BBC Politics Live that the delay to Brexit should have sparked riots. It came after the Times quoted an unnamed senior cabinet minister today who warned the country risked a “violent, popular uprising” if a second referendum overturned the result of the first.
Why Violence Picked Up
Violence has picked up, but “surrender” has little to do with it.
Rather, it’s the very nature of this heated campaign, fueled mostly by Remainers, commentators, and even official Labour Party policy that had led to violence.
Jeremy Corbyn will scrap controls on immigration and hand foreign nationals the right to vote in future elections and referendums if Labour wins power.
The Labour leader will head into the next election promising to extend freedom of movement to migrants around the world, along with abolishing detention centres, under plans approved on Wednesday.
Despite Mr Corbyn’s team being privately opposed to the plan, delegates at Labour’s annual conference in Brighton unanimously backed a motion which commits the party to “free movement, equality and rights for migrants”. The motion commits Labour to oppose any future immigration system which includes caps on numbers or targets, and which assesses a migrant’s suitability based on their income or usefulness to businesses.
And it requires Labour to commit to the proposals in its next election manifesto – meaning a complete reversal of its 2017 pledge to end free movement after Brexit.
No Immigration Controls and Voting Rights for Foreigners!
Might not that idea lead to violence?
Which Party Incites Violence?
Jess Phillips once said she would knife Jeremy Corbyn ‘in the front’. Ed Davey said Remainers should unite to ‘decapitate’ Boris Johnson. John McDonnell still won’t apologise for repeating a joke about ‘lynching’ a Tory MP. These people are hypocrites: https://t.co/f23ozt8EHk
Boris saying “surrender act” encourages violence towards MPs, apparently. Lib-Dems don’t have a problem with an MP wanting to decapitate our Prime Minister, though. pic.twitter.com/oj8qhGcQGP
Which side, if you had to pick one, is inciting violence?
This isn’t close. Let’s move on to Eurointelligence, emphasis mine.
Eurointelligence Comments
Boris Johnson’s aggression and his use of the term surrender act are deliberate strategic choices, based on intensive polls;
The latest polls show him widening the lead over Labour and managing to fend off the Brexit Party;
We argue that the strategy is ugly, but it is working;
What is widely underestimated is the sheer unpopularity of the Brexit extensions. We recalled a Tory MP telling us in June that they had underestimated the electoral effect of the April extension, which resulted in the victory of the Brexit Party at the European elections.
Experience has taught not to predict elections, and certainly not elections that have not even been scheduled. But one micro prediction we are happy to make is that the person who extends will not be elected in a general election. That person might well be Jeremy Corbyn. If there ever were a government of national unity, it would be under his leadership. We don’t want to discount that possibility completely, but we don’t think that Labour would do itself any favours by forcing a Brexit extension followed immediately by an election. Just as we don’t think the Tories would do themselves any favours with a no-deal Brexit followed immediately by an election.
Boris Johnson’s bulldozing strategy is not pretty, but it is working. His repeated use of the term surrender bill strikes a cord not only with core Tory voters, but with many people in the country. Steven Swinford of the Times tells us that the Tories have done a lot of polling on this specific term, and they have come to the conclusion that it damages the Labour Party. We are reminded of the late 1980s, when it was Labour Party that used the damaging term of a poll tax to describe what was officially known as the community charge. It was the poll tax that sank Margaret Thatcher’s government – not her position on Europe.
The YouGov poll, with polling done on Sep 25, shows the Conservatives at 33% and LibDems and Labour both at 22%. This would translate into 348 seats for the Tories which is an absolute majority of 30, 163 for Labour and 77 for the LibDems. The Brexit Party scores 14% but does not get a single seat.
What one needs to understand about this and other polls is the interplay of two conflicting dynamics. On the pro-Brexit side the Tories are competing with the Brexit Party. The pro-Remain vote is split between Labour and the LibDems. Johnson is managing to squeeze out the Brexit Party more than Labour is managing to squeeze out the LibDems.
It is best to understand the relation between percentage votes and seats in the UK in terms of thresholds. For the LibDems to get more seats than Labour, they would need to poll a lot more than 22%. At 14%, the Brexit Party’s potential to deprive the Tories of seats is limited only to a few marginals. But, once they get above 20%, they would become as dangerous to the Tories as the LibDems are to Labour.
Next week, the Tories will hold their party conference in Manchester despite the vote in the Commons against a customary recess. We expect another rabble-rousing performance by Johnson. Since he became leader, the party’s fundraising has skyrocketed. September was their best month ever. There is a lot of support for him from business.
Part of the fury among MPs about Boris Johnson’s inflammatory rhetoric is that it appears to be a deliberate, election-driven strategy.
But the situation is made worse by the suspicion that it is neither careless nor casual – but rather a concerted effort to whip up anger in the country against MPs in order to motivate pro-Brexit voters to back him at the polls.
Johnson’s language about a “surrender bill” is calculated to cast his opponents as people colluding with foreign powers to block Brexit. It was not a flippant, one-off comment, as the prime minister has used the words at least eight times in the House of Commons. He also told Conservative MPs that he was determined to continue using those words.
This is the hallmark of Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave architect who is now Johnson’s most senior adviser. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has also highlighted its similarities with the language of rightwing populist demagogues such as Donald Trump. “He is whipping up division with language that’s indistinguishable from the far right,” the Labour leader said in his conference speech this week.
Accurate Assessment
Indeed the language is neither careless, nor casual.
Rather, the language is an accurate assessment of the matter.
If you remove the strongest negotiation tactic someone has, the other side is less likely to negotiate.
Period.
There is no rebuttal. Surrender is the correct word.
Which is of course why the Remainers at the Guardian do not like it.
Order of the Privy Council
Sir John Major says he believes he knows how Johnson circumvent the Benn legislation.
There is a difference between “Orders in Council” and “Orders of Council”. It’s not worth the time it would take to understand the difference.
The key point is Orders of the Privy Council are normally unimportant procedural things about which there is no genuine debate.
I do not believe Johnson would ever attempt to use such a process as it would immediately be challenged and reversed in court.
Even sillier is the process Major proposes to circumvent an Order of the Privy council, send a letter to the EU from UK civil servants.
With background information out of the way, let’s return to Eurointelligence.
BBC Newsnight last night reported that the European Council was plotting to accept a Brexit extension letter from a civil servant formally before the summit Oct 17. The idea is to avoid a situation where it is confronted by conflicting information at the council meeting itself – for example if Johnson were to distance himself from the [Benn] letter in the meeting itself.
We think this information is probably correct in the sense that it reflects either the position of Donald Tusk or that of some other pro-Remain politicians. We do not believe that the European Council as a whole has formed a view on this issue. It would be a big deal for the European Council to act in this manner. We don’t exclude the possibility, but this is not to be done lightly.
We think it is quite plausible that this strategy [an Order of the Privy Council] may have been discussed at some point, but we doubt this is the main strategy. We noted one official denial describing the idea as too-clever-by-half, an expression we would agree with. It is likely to fail for the same reason that prorogation did. If the Supreme Court were to decide that this order was given for political reasons – to frustrate another bill – it too might be judged to be null and void. But we cannot rule out that it might be attempted, if only to demonstrate to the public that Johnson is really trying everything in his power to deliver Brexit. Each court case strengthens the people-vs-establishment narrative.
And Johnson may also prorogue parliament again, for a period of five to six days only to make way for a Queen’s speech. We don’t think that any combination of these various ruses would get him over the line to deliver a no-deal Brexit. But as we wrote before, we should be focusing on the politics more than on procedure. It would be a grave misjudgement for the European Council to be seen as part of a plot with Remainers in the UK parliament. Such a plot would drive a lot of moderate Remainers and fence-sitters into the Brexit camp. If Johnson were elected with an absolute majority, he would no doubt come back with a do-or-die commitment for January 31.
Winning Ugly
Johnson would likely appeal any letter by civil servants to the EU as being illegal. He would also appeal to the UK supreme court.
He only needs to win one of them. I believe he would easily win both.
This is yet another amusing sidelight in which we get to discuss arcane rules and procedures of UK law.
The key overall point is whether or not the “Surrender” campaign is working. I believe it is.
Let’s return to a key idea that was easy to miss: “Tory fundraising has skyrocketed. September was their best month ever. There is a lot of support for him from business.”
Brexit may be ugly, but Corbyn is even uglier.
One of Corbyn’s proposals is to require businesses to give 10% of their shares to workers. Corbyn also wants to renationalize rail, water, energy and Royal Mail, increase corporation tax and the minimum wage, and extend workers’ rights.
“Like Something From A Sci-Fi Movie”: Russia Shows Off Secretive Next Generation Aircraft
Russia’s Defense Ministry has released rare footage showing its futuristic and newest heavy drone Okhotnik (or ‘Hunter’) conducting its first ever tactical aerial movements next to a fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jet.
The footage was part of a 30-minute flight test, and comes after its maiden brief take-off and landing test in early August, when it was unveiled to the world as a stealth heavy unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) being developed by Sukhoi as a sixth-generation aircraft.
The Russian military claims it possesses “special material and coating” in order to avoid radar detection. The wedge-shaped drone is considered among Russia’s most advanced aircraft to date, and looks like something straight out of Star Wars.
Russian media has further described the Okhotnik as capable of traveling up to 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), despite it’s significant weight of about 20 tons.
“Okhotnik has a flying-wing body type, which makes it looks like something from a sci-fi movie,” one Russian media report noted.
The next generation Su-57s, one of which was filmed flying just meters apart from the still in testing phase ‘Hunter’ drone, are set to be active by the end of the year.
Much less is known about the experimental drone, however. First photos of the advanced stealth drone initially surfaced in January 2019, and were published by the aircraft analysis site The Aviationist.
Via The Aviationist
Earlier this year the secretive aircraft was first spotted by land-based cameras at an airfield in Novosibirsk in southern Russia, and then picked up by commercial satellite imagery in May at the Chkalov State Flight-Test Center.
The Aviationist previously described the secretive UAV as possessing “low-observable capabilities, providing it with the ability to penetrate heavily defended airspaces without detection to conduct covert precision strikes.”
The utter futility of European attempts to keep faith with the flawed Iranian nuclear deal has been brutally exposed in the wake of the uncompromising approach adopted by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during the United Nations General Assembly.
In the build-up to the UN’s annual jamboree of global networkers, there had been much speculation that, against a background of mounting tensions in the Gulf over Tehran’s aggressive conduct, the forum might provide an opportunity to re-establish a dialogue with the ayatollahs.
To this end French President Emmanuel Macron has, in particular, been actively trying to broker a diplomatic rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, to the extent it was even suggested that a bilateral meeting might be possible between US President Donald Trump and Mr Rouhani.
The reality of the delusional approach adopted by Mr Macron and other European leaders was, though, brutally exposed the moment Mr Rouhani arrived in New York.
Instead of showing any sign of seeking to repair Tehran’s strained relationship with the West and its allies, he instead indulged in an orgy of self-justification in which he sought to portray his country as an innocent victim of Western aggression rather than accepting, as is really the case, that Iran was the primary instigator of the latest escalation in tensions.
Not even the charm offensive applied by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose presence in New York was no doubt a welcome distraction from his domestic political woes, was able to make much impression on Mr Rouhani’s demeanour. Mr Johnson briefly raised a laugh from the Iranian leader when he suggested he make a return visit to Glasgow — a city Mr Rouhani knows well from the time he studied there in the 1990s — while remarking, “As you know, Glasgow is lovely in November” — a reference to the city’s notoriously cold and wet climate at that time of year.
The atmospherics — to use the diplomatic jargon — might have appeared promising during Mr Johnson’s one-to-one with the Iranian leader, but reality soon set in the moment Mr Rouhani took to the UN podium and embarked upon an extraordinary exercise in self-justification, one in which the US and its allies were the villains and Iran was portrayed as a nation wronged.
The prime target of his attack was, unsurprisingly, the US, which he accused of engaging in “merciless economic terrorism” following the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and impose a new round of economic sanctions against Tehran.
Washington’s policies, Mr Rouhani contended, were designed to “deprive Iran from participating in the global economy” by resorting to tactics that amounted to “international piracy.”
He also made it clear that, despite the concerted efforts of European leaders to persuade Tehran to renew negotiations with Washington, there was no possibility of talks taking place until the sanctions had been lifted — a policy no one in the Trump administration is prepared to support.
Nor was Mr Rouhani’s outburst confined to the sanctions. In his view, the US was responsible for the recent escalation in tensions in the Gulf after Washington increased American military deployments in the region following a series of aggressive acts undertaken by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. “The security of our region shall be provided when American troops pull out,”he said.
Perhaps the most eye-catching claim the Iranian leader made came during his appearance on Fox News, when he sought to defend Iran’s support for terror groups such as Hamas and Hizbollah. Mr Rouhani insisted that these groups were freedom fighters, not terrorists, and went on to make the laughable claim that “Iran during the last four decades fought against terrorism unequivocally” — a claim that will no doubt provoke few wry smiles in Jerusalem.
In short, the tone of Mr Rouhani’s address to the UN was that of a politician who wants to maintain his confrontational stance against the West, rather than of a man who genuinely seeks peace.
This will have made for uncomfortable listening for all those European leaders who still believe that the best way to resolve the global crisis with Iran is by trying to save the nuclear deal.
The reality is that, so long as Tehran remains committed to its hostile stance towards the West, there is little prospect of having a constructive relationship with Iran.
Saudis Open The Ultra-Conservative Kingdom To Tourists For First Time
It’s 2019, and a mere couple months after lifting travel restrictions on their own women within the country, Saudi Arabia announced Friday it will offer tourist visas for the first time.
It’s part of broader efforts to diversity its economy away from oil, and interestingly comes at a time when tourism in the strict Wahhabi Islamic kingdom is no doubt the last thing on holidaymakers’ minds, given the Sept. 14 attack on Aramco facilities, and given there’s still a war raging across the southern border in Yemen.
Amid what’s been hailed as a gradual liberalization of Saudi Arabia’s repressive laws and social mores, Riyadh officials also announced an easing of its strict dress code for foreign women, which until now required the body-shrouding abaya robe, still demanded of its own female citizens however (with the more extreme Niqab covering the face). Tourists will still be required to be in “modest” attire, a definition not likely to include bikinis at the beach.
“We make history” today, tourism chief Ahmed al-Khateeb said in a statement.
“For the first time, we are opening our country to tourists from all over the world.”
Citizens from 49 countries are eligible for online e-visas or visas on arrival, including the United States, Australia and several European nations, the statement said.
Currently westerners are primarily to be found in heavily protected Saudi Aramco planned communities, and have heavy restrictions placed on their movements outside compound walls.
Though part of crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 reform program to take the Saudi economy in a post-oil direction, we doubt there will be an influx of tourism anytime soon.
Though not required to wear a Burqa, foreign women will still be required to dress “modestly”. Image source: EPA
Aside from the more obvious issues of the war in Yemen and ongoing proxy conflict and gulf standoff with Iran which would keep carefree travelers far away, it remains that the tourism ministry has insisted its blanket ban on alcohol will remain in effect.
The first instance of random Aussie or German backpackers being hauled off to jail after being caught with a little smuggled whiskey will sure to bring a chilling effect as well.
Via Arab Weekly
The kingdom hopes to showcase its medieval Islamic sites (with Mecca and Medina continuing to be off-limits to all non-Muslims of course) and historic Bedouin culture.
Ad proposal: “Saudi tourism – come see what we saw.”
But we doubt that Chop Chop Square in Riyadh — where beheadings and even the occasional crucifixion continue at record pace — will be high on visitors’ list of must see attractions.
Hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen and Michael Bloomberg are among those ruing the day they bought the crushed shares of the UK bank touted as a “bargain”…
Even by its own recent standards, Metro Bank has had a torrid week. On Monday, shares of the British retail bank tumbled 5%, on Tuesday, 25%, on Wednesday, 5%, and on Thursday, 4.5%, before staging a brief comeback in the final hours of trading on Friday, to end the week 35% lower. By Friday morning, it was the second most-shorted stock on the FTSE all shares index, behind the collapsed travel & vacation-giant Thomas Cook.
The main trigger for this week’s rout was the bank’s failure on Monday to raise a much-needed £250 million by issuing non-preferred bonds that deeply skeptical investors spurned. Despite trying to lure buyers with an interest rate of 7.5%, double the rate of similar offerings, Metro only attracted £175 million worth of orders, prompting the embattled lender to pull the plug on the bond sale.
“Failure to get enough support for a product that is yielding 7.5% is quite remarkable when you consider how investors are struggling to find generous levels of income in the current market,” said Russ Mould, the investment director of AJ Bell.
“It suggests that investors don’t trust the bank or they believe the 7.5% yield is simply not high enough to compensate for the risks of owning such a product.”
Metro Bank opened for business in 2010, becoming Britain’s first new high street bank in over 100 years. One of a handful of so-called “Challenger Banks” — new retail lenders created after the crisis to provide a little more banking competition in a country where the five biggest banks control a staggering 85% of the market — Metro Bank proved particularly adept at luring disillusioned clients from the big banks.
A large part of its attraction was its focus on physical branches while the big boys were frantically closing theirs. It grew faster than any other high street bank while picking up accolades for its customer satisfaction along the way.
But that was before a misreporting scandal in January this year decimated investor confidence in the bank. Investors — led perhaps by well-connected insiders — had already been smelling a rat since March 2018. From March 2018 until just before the initial disclosure on January 22, 2019, shares got whacked down in bits and pieces by 45%. Upon the disclosure, shares plunged. And they have gotten crushed every step along the way since then. As of today, they’re down 95% from March 2018, and the sell-off over the past few days reduced the shares from nearly nothing to almost nothing, from 288 pence to 192 pence, giving it market capitalization of just £332 million:
Metro blamed this week’s failed bond sale on tough market conditions. To a certain extent, it has a point: selling unsecured bank bonds just a month before another Brexit deadline is hardly ideal. Bank of Ireland was already forced to cancel a £300 million bond in early September due to the low level of demand; and luxury automaker Aston Martin — which S&P downgraded to deep-junk CCC+ over concerns about its ability to service its big pile of debts debts — had to offer interest rates as high as 12% to convince investors to buy $150 million of bonds due in 2022.
Most of Metro’s problems have been self-inflicted. By assigning a lower risk weight to its mortgage lending portfolio, whether by accident or intentionally, Metro left investors thinking it was safer than it actually is. Once trust is broken, it’s hard to win it back. Flagged up by regulators in January, the “error” left a gaping £900 million hole on its balance sheet, prompting managers to announce plans for a £350 million rights issue. The cash call was successful at 500 pence a share.
But the sell-off continued, leaving some very rich investors, including hedge fund manager Steven Cohen and Bloomberg-founder Michael Bloomberg, nursing heavy losses after they bagged shares at 500 pence during the cash call in May, which had been touted as a “bargain.” And now they’re at 192 pence.
In May, Metro Bank suffered a mini-bank run at some of its London branches. Big business clients withdrew some £2 billion of deposits in the first half, though last week’s bond prospectus showed it recovered much of that over the summer. In July, the lender reported an 80% drop in pre-tax profits for the first half of 2019. Then, last week it disclosed that a Financial Conduct Authority investigation into the bank’s mis-categorization of risk-weighted assets had been widened to include “certain senior members of management”.
Now, it has a new problem on its hands: How to raise fresh capital by the end of the year without having to pay interest rates it can’t afford, just as markets are, by its own admission, getting tougher. It needs the money for two main reasons: First, to comply with the first stage of the so-called MREL (minimum requirement for own funds and eligible liabilities) directive; and second, to roll over the £3.8 billion it drew from the Bank of England’s Term Lending Scheme in 2016. The scheme was ostensibly intended to boost affordable loans to families and businesses.
The interest rate on those extra-cheap loans is around 0.25%. Given that Metro this week failed to raise more than £175 million of four-year senior non-preferred bonds, despite offering 7.5% interest, it’s evidently going to have its work cut out rolling over the loans it took out from the Bank of England. At the very least, it needs more time to get its finances in order. To do that, it will probably need to sell some of its more valuable assets, including part of its mortgage book, which will hit its profitability.
According to the Financial Times, speculation is already growing that Metro could end up being bought by one of its more established rivals. In the ultimate irony, the first British high street bank to be handed a license in over 100 years in the hope it would provide a little extra competition to the big five banks that dominate the sector, may end up being bought out by one of those big banks.
* * *
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Take off the revolutionary’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the terrorist’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the news man’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the filmmaker’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the professor’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the billionaire’s mask, and it’s the CIA.
Take off the whistleblower’s mask, and it’s the motherfucking CIA.
These monsters are raping our sense-making faculties.
Never call anyone from the CIA a “whistleblower” unless they are actually whistleblowing on the CIA, without the CIA’s permission, in a way that inconveniences the CIA.
The deployment of a bomb or missile doesn’t begin when a pilot pushes a button, it begins when propaganda narratives used to promote those operations start circulating in public attention. If you help circulate war propaganda, you’re as complicit as the one who pushes the button.
Many believe that the mass media just tell whole-cloth, outright lies all the time, but that’s not usually how it works. What they do is selectively omit inconvenient facts, disproportionately amplify convenient facts, and uncritically report on dubious government assertions. Basically they only tell the truth when it’s convenient for them, and when it’s inconvenient they are silent. Only telling the truth when it’s convenient for you is effectively the same as lying all the time, only you can get away with it a lot easier.
How to solve the climate crisis:
— End the economic system which requires infinite growth on a finite planet.
— Let people get more relaxed and less busy.
— End corporate influence in politics.
— End militarism.
— End patents.
— Kill the capitalist propaganda engine known as the mainstream media.
Any environmentalism which adamantly ignores the need for a complete overhaul of the economic system which created this mess is just feel-good PR for capitalism.
Trying to solve the climate crisis with plutocrat-driven tech consumption is like trying to put out a house fire with a flamethrower.
Perhaps the greatest advantage the ruling class has over us is that they’ve got a crystal clear idea of exactly what they want and exactly what they’re pushing for, and we, on average, do not. It’s easy for us to be manipulated in unwholesome directions when we don’t know where we’re going.
When it comes to our future, the ruling elites have compelling narratives worked up by teams of talented creatives to sell us the products they want us to buy. They know exactly where they want to herd us. We just have a notion of “No, not that!” and some very vague, amorphous ideas about what we do want. Without a clear, positive vision of what we want, we cannot succeed. With a clear, positive vision of what we want, we can’t be stopped.
The fun thing about revolution in the US-centralized empire is that everything everyone has tried has failed, so your guess as to what we should be doing is literally as good as anyone else’s.
Whenever anyone tells you that a vastly better, saner world is impossible, they’re fulla shit. This is the only world any of us have ever lived in; nobody’s going around observing a bunch of other worlds and seeing that they’re all insane like this one. They have no authority to make such a proclamation. As far as any of us know, anything is possible.
One mark of an adept conspiracy analyst is comfort with the unknown in a world where information is greatly obscured by secrecy. By this I don’t mean they’re okay with government opacity, I just mean that they’re comfortable acknowledging what is unknown and unknowable instead of pretending to know. I point this out because it seems like a lot of people self-censor and remain silent on their ideas about what’s going on in the world due to some embarrassment that they don’t understand it all. It’s okay: no one does. Many pretend to, but no one actually does.
The dynamics of this world are extremely complex, too complex for any individual to fully make sense of. One way to ease the burden on your sensemaking tools is to reduce your own inner complications by getting very clear on how your own perception and cognition are happening. Dedicated inner work will reveal that your conscious experience is actually happening in a much simpler way than the mind imagines: a field of consciousness appearing before an imperceptible witness. This eliminates needless cognitive twists and roadblocks in your sensemaking. Our mental narratives add mountains of needless layers of complexity.
Once you see that none of those narratives apply to your true identity, you’re able to bypass all those distortions in the way you process information and simply use thought as a tool; otherwise you’re just ingesting highly manipulated narratives about an already complex world through your own distorted perceptual filters which are based on unconscious believed assumptions about what you are, what the world is, etc. Inner clarity eliminates those distortions. There are many approaches to the inner work one can do to find this inner clarity, but here’s one way.
Anyone who claims to oppose Trump and support the free press, yet doesn’t aggressively fight the Trump administration’s agenda to imprison a journalist for exposing US war crimes, is a lying hypocrite.
The US government and its lackey allies are torturing a journalist for telling the truth. This amounts to a full confession on their part that you are living in a totalitarian empire. They are telling you exactly what kind of world you live in, and exactly what role they play in it. A society is only as free as its most inconvenient political dissident. Free Assange to free yourself.
It’s really weird how getting money out of politics isn’t a bigger agenda than it is. It should be bigger than healthcare or any other issue, and everyone across the political spectrum agrees it’s important except the rich and their puppets. That’s something tangible to push for.
If a tree falls in the woods, and no one’s around to hear it, is it still Susan Sarandon’s fault?
~ Old liberal koan
I will not be authoring any essays about impeachment because it’s an impotent political side show and much too boring to write about.
All Democrats know these impeachment shenanigans will never result in his removal from office, regardless of what they pretend. Trump’s “opposition” only ever attacks him in ways they know won’t actually hurt him. It’s like pro wrestling.
May 2019: Progressives get to choose between Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard and Marianne Williamson.
September 2019: Progressives get to choose between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
May 2020: Progressives get to choose between Elizabeth Warren and fuck you.
The Democratic presidential primary will be rigged by the DNC and the mass media; in fact this is happening already. I talk about the candidates and the race a lot not because I believe the DNC has real primaries, but because the dance the narrative managers need to do to ensure an establishment nominee keeps exposing them.
Ninety-nine percent of political arguments and activism are happening inside lines that have been set by the narrative-dominating, Overton window-shrinking plutocratic class and their underlings. If you want to fight a real fight, you need to color outside those lines.
The US Department of State was originally intended to be a peace/diplomacy-focused counterpart to the Department of War (later falsely renamed the “Department of Defense”), but what actually ended up happening was the creation of two war departments.
Putting someone on a pedestal is just guaranteeing that you’ll have to knock them off it one day. It’s actually a rather violent thing to do to somebody, if you think about it. Best to skip it entirely.
Don’t take life advice from people who are miserable. Don’t take career advice from people whose careers aren’t where you want to be. Don’t take creative advice from people who don’t create things. Don’t take foreign policy advice from people who supported the Iraq invasion.
San Francisco Neighbors Install ‘Anti-Homeless Boulders’ Along Sidewalk
The San Francisco poop patrol may have one less street to clean.
Neighbors in the Mission Dolores neighborhood raised approximately $2,000 to place two-dozen boulders along the sidewalk to deter homeless people from camping out and shooting up drugs along their block.
Photo: Julian Mark
“They’ll shoot up and stay overnight,” resident David Smith-Tan told KTVU, adding “A bunch of my neighbors, we all chipped in a few hundred dollars and I guess this is what they came up with.”
A man named Hugh — who like many on the street wanted to be identified only by his first name for fear of retaliation — said that in the six years he’s lived in the neighborhood, he has seen people dealing methamphetamine there. Other times, he said, he’s witnessed drug dealers carrying knives.
Hugh said he could empathize with residents who see the rocks as a way to curb criminal activity. He said drug dealing has “definitely gotten worse” in the past couple of years. –SF Chronicle
Meanwhile, attempts to have the boulders removed have been thwarted after Craigslist removed several ads by SF-based artist Danielle Baskin offering them for free.
Some neighbors pooled together $2000 to dump 24 boulders into the sidewalk as a form of “anti-homeless decoration”.
The city won’t remove them, so I put their rocks on the Craigslist free section. pic.twitter.com/yv5fsfodJ4
Not everyone thinks the boulders are such a hot idea.
“I don’t think this is totally going to work — it’s going to backfire a little bit,” resident Audrey Soule told Mission Local, adding “It’s going to be this great camping hangout because there are awesome rocks to sit on.”
“What I had noticed is the campers are still squeezing it in here … Then it forces people to walk all the way around the sidewalk.”
Standing near the new boulders, Phillip Bulicek, who is homeless, agreed with Soules. These rocks are inconvenient — but not a real deterrent. “They take up space the tent can take,” he said, explaining that tents will be pitched anyway. “It actually taking up space a person might be able to use.”
“I would like to see [San Francisco Public Works] take these boulders away like they take people’s tents away,” he added. –Mission Local
On Saturday, public works employees hoisted several boulders back onto the sidewalk after people had pushed them into the street.
City workers return boulders to the sidewalk after they were rolled into the street. Neighbors installed the rocks to deter homeless encampments.Photo: Nick Otto / Special to The Chronicle
Because their strategy to remove Trump from office by getting a Special Counsel appointed to find evidence to use for impeachment so utterly failed, Democrats frantically searched for the past several months trying to find something that could replace it.
It now seems Democrats think they have at last found a real scandal they can use to move forward with impeachment hearings in the House.
The new fake Trump scandal rolled out last weekend by the Democrats involves a phone call held on July 25 between President Trump and the newly installed President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
An anonymous government official, described inaccurately as a ‘whistleblower,’ made an official complaint to the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General’s Office about some of the things Trump supposedly said during this call.
According to the complaint that was filed, Trump tried to strong-arm Zelensky into agreeing to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Biden is currently the frontrunner and favorite to win the Democratic nomination to run against Trump next year.
To pressure Zelensky into agreeing to investigate the Bidens, the anonymous leaker claimed Trump threatened to withhold military aid that had already been approved to Ukraine.
So if true, this would indeed be a huge scandal, if a sitting President tried to coerce a foreign government into investigating or manufacturing a criminal probe of his political opposition.
Of course, as with a multitude of other fake attacks on Trump and his administration, this manufactured scandal started falling apart almost immediately.
Trump moved to quickly declassify both the transcript of the phone call and the “whistleblower” complaint, catching his enemies flat-footed with their pants down.
It is already becoming apparent, now that both documents are public and everyone can read them, that the fake whistleblower complaint is replete with errors, mischaracterizations, and outright falsehoods.
The same players in the Russiagate hoax were trying to launch a Ukrainian hoax using the exact same strategy: vague leaks based on anonymous sources so story after story could be rolled out in the fake news media alleging Trump crimes.
Only this strategy was instantly blown up this time, and in quite a savage fashion by this president.
Trump now has his people in place and all the evidence has been collected. He didn’t need to wait to completely blow up this new Ukrainian narrative.
This tells me Trump had his own counter-narrative all ready and waiting to launch whenever the Democrats and their DNC Media Complex allies tried this futile Ukrainian gambit.
And unlike the fake Trump-Ukrainian Corruption narrative, the Biden-Ukrainian Corruption narrative isn’t based on anonymous leaks from shadowy government officials speaking off the record while filing complaints full of 2nd and 3rd hand hearsay. It’s based on solid evidence found in documents as well as video and audio recordings.
These People Are Stupid
The launch of Spygate was successful back in 2016 because the plotters were in key positions within the federal government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies, lying in wait as the Trump administration came into office. They held back the Steele Dossier and used their media allies to leak selective allegations.
This time? The new Trump-Ukrainian strategy counted on the Trump administration “hiding” the phone call transcript and the filed complaint, giving the plotters and the media room and license to lie about what the documents said.
Somehow these morons were led to believe the documents wouldn’t be instantly declassified and placed in the public square.
You are getting a preview right now of how the rollout of the Horowitz report and the results of U.S. Attorneys John Durham and John Huber’s investigations are going to go.
One side will be desperately leaking bombshell stories based on anonymous sources making all kinds of allegations while the other side will be holding press conferences in which DOJ officials will speak publicly on the record and proffering newly declassified documents for the public to read.
Guess who’s going to win that fight?
Trump had to wait and hold fire for more than two years because he needed to give Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo, William Barr, Michael Horowitz, John Huber, and John Durham time to do their important work and collect and catalog all of the evidence.
But we’re past that stage now.
You’re about to see a presidential campaign unfold over the next year like nothing you have ever seen before.
The DNC Media will try to spin or bury Spygate news as it breaks over the next year that is damaging to itself and the Democrats, but here’s how Trump is going to thwart this: the over 100 rallies he’s going to hold between now and Nov. 3, 2020.
Trump knows exactly what buttons to push with these media people. He’s been carefully and diligently studying them for over fifty years, the entire time they thought he was just being a swaggering macho blowhard.
They are all going to wish they’d never tried this.
Earlier this week, Canberra – or the Australian Capital Territory, which functions as a state – legalized the recreational use of marijuana for inhabitants 18 years and older. The new law is supposed to come into effect at the end of January. Adult Canberrans will be able to possess 50 grams of cannabis and will be allowed to grow two marijuana plants for personal consumption.
Much like in the U.S., Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, the possession of cannabis and cannabis plants will remain a federal offense, but that is not expected to make a difference “in practice”, according to ACT attorney-general Gordon Ramsay. ACT shadow attorney-general Jeremy Hanson from the Liberals said the bill would lead to “perverse outcomes”.
Looking at an international survey comparing attitudes towards marijuana legalization in different countries, Australia ranks quite high.
In the U.S. and Canada, where marijuana was legal at least in part of the countries when the survey was carried out in late 2018, 80 percent of the population were in favor of some type of legalization (medical or recreational). In Australia, this number was at approximately 70 percent even though a larger proportion of respondents favored medical marijuana legislation over legalization for recreational use.
