Tag: news

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

A court in Germany has ruled that the recent deportation to Tunisia of a failed asylum seeker – an Islamist suspected of being a bodyguard for the former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden – was unlawful and that, at taxpayer expense, he must be immediately returned to Germany.

The ruling has cast yet another spotlight on the dysfunctional nature of Germany’s deportation system, as well as on Germany’s politicized judicial system, one in which activist judges are now engaged in a power struggle with elected officials who want to speed up deportations.

On August 15, the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court (Oberverwaltungsgericht, OVG) in Münster said that immigration authorities in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany’s most populous state, deliberately deceived the courts in the run-up to the deportation of Sami Aidoudi, who had been illegally living in Germany for more than a decade.

The court ordered federal authorities to issue a visa for Aidoudi — referred to in Germany as Sami A. for privacy reasons — to facilitate his return to Germany. The court also ordered Bochum, a city in NRW where Aidoudi lived until his deportation, to pay for his flight back to Germany.

It remains unclear how officials in Bochum can comply with the order, as Tunisian officials have repeatedly said that they have no intention of returning him to Germany.

Aidoudi was deported on July 13, after years of legal maneuvering which allowed him to stay in Germany — on the grounds that in Tunisia he might face torture. Between 2006 and June 2018, Aidoudi’s case was heard 14 times in NRW courts, according to NRW’s Ministry of Justice.

Aidoudi, a Salafist Islamist, first arrived in Germany in 1997, and is believed by German authorities to have spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan before the al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Since then, he has been under surveillance by German intelligence for propagating Islamist teachings and attempting to radicalize young Muslims. He had “far reaching” relationships with Salafist and jihadist networks, according to an official report leaked to the German newsmagazine, Focus.

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden. Aidoudi denied the charges and claimed to have been studying during that time in Karachi, Pakistan.

Despite rejecting Aidoudi’s asylum application, German courts repeatedly blocked his deportation out of fear that he could be tortured or mistreated in his homeland:

• In April 2017, a court in Münster ruled that Aidoudi faced “the considerable likelihood” of “torture and inhumane or degrading treatment” if he returned to Tunisia.

• In April 2018, Aidoudi’s continued presence in Germany sparked public outrage when the NRW government confirmed that for more than a decade Aidoudi had been receiving €1,168 ($1,400) each month in welfare and child-support payments, even though German intelligence agencies had classified him as a security threat.

• On May 1, Tunisian Minister for Human Rights Mehdi Ben Gharbia provideda verbal guarantee that Aidoudi would not be tortured upon his return to Tunisia:

  “I can assure you and I can guarantee: There is no torture here! We are a democratic state and our courts act according to the law. Those who return to us are treated democratically. It is absurd that a German court claims that a Tunisian citizen could face torture here.”

• On May 9, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) ruled that another Tunisian jihadi — identified only as 37-year-old Heikel S., accused of involvement in the March 2015 jihadi attack on the Bardo museum in Tunis — could be deported to his homeland. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer seized on this ruling and pledged to make Aidoudi’s deportation a top priority.

• On June 25, Aidoudi was detained in Bochum after Seehofer ordered immigration authorities to expedite deportation proceedings.

• On July 13, before dawn, Aidoudi, escorted by four federal police officers and a doctor, was placed on a specially chartered Learjet and flown from Düsseldorf to Tunisia. Aidoudi’s deportation cost German taxpayers nearly €80,000 ($95,000), according to Focus magazine.

  Although the Gelsenkirchen Administrative Court had blocked Aidoudi’s deportation the night before, the decision was not passed on to immigration authorities until the next morning — after the plane was already airborne.

  When the court learned of Aidoudi’s deportation, the judges accused German immigration authorities of “deliberately withholding” information about the timing of Aidoudi’s flight in order to ensure that the deportation would be carried out.

  The court said that Aidoudi’s deportation had infringed upon “fundamental principles of the rule of law” and ordered the City of Bochum to return him to Germany by July 31, 2018.

• On August 3, the Gelsenkirchen court fined the City of Bochum €10,000 ($11,500) for failing to retrieve Aidoudi by the July 31 deadline.

• On August 13, the NRW Criminal Police Office banned Aidoudi’s reentry to Germany after he was placed on an EU blacklist known as the Schengen Information System (SIS).

• On August 15, the Münster court overturned the reentry ban and ordered Bochum officials to immediately retrieve Aidoudi. The ruling can only be appealed at the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht), Germany’s highest court.

Tunisian authorities reacted to the ruling by saying that they had confiscated Aidoudi’s passport to prevent him from returning to Germany. Sofiane Sliti, the spokesman for the Tunisian terrorism prosecutor, in an interview with the newspaper Bild, insisted that the matter was an issue of Tunisian sovereignty:

“This ruling has no consequences for us. I have said it several times: In Tunisia, Tunisian law is valid and nothing else! That there are problems between ministries and courts in Germany is not our problem. The process here in Tunisia is not yet completed, so he [Aidoudi] has no ID card with which he could travel.”

Sami Aidoudi (bottom right) lived in Germany since 1997, until he was deported to his homeland of Tunisia on July 13, 2018. He is alleged to have undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. He had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden during his training. (Image sources: Aidoudi – SpiegelTV video screenshot; Learjet – Ruido/Flickr; Tunisia – Faris knight/Wikimedia Commons)

NRW Integration Minister Joachim Stamp (FDP), who has accepted personal responsibility for the decision to deport Aidoudi, said that the ruling left him between a proverbial rock and a hard place:

“The court leaves us at a loss, because it itself acknowledges current obstacles that prevent a retrieval, but still demands that Sami A. be promptly returned.”

Other members of North Rhine-Westphalia’s conservative state government also criticized the verdict. NRW Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU), in an interview with Rheinische Post, said that the ruling was out of touch with the public’s demand for security:

“Judicial independence is a highly valuable good, but judges should always bear in mind that their decisions should correspond to the public’s sense of justice. I doubt if that is the case with this ruling. If the citizens no longer understand judicial decisions, that is pouring water over the mills of extremists.”

Judge Ricarda Brandts of the Westphalian Higher Administrative Court shot back:

“The case of Sami A. raises questions about democracy and the rule of law, especially about the separation of powers and effective legal protection. In this case, the limits of the rule of law were tested….

“The courts have to judge independently of the majority opinion. And everyone should be aware that a constitutional state is working to protect the rights of minorities, even the rights of those who do not respect the rule of law.

“The case of Sami A. is about determining the fine line between ensuring the security of the population and the rights of those who jeopardize or even violate security. The rule of law must assert itself to the extent that even perpetrators, offenders and terrorists are entitled to effective legal protection and respect for their human dignity.”

Writing for Tichys Einblick, a leading classical-liberal and conservative German blog, Tomas Spahn captured the essence of the issue:

“The case of the Tunisian Sami A., whose real name Wikipedia does not even dare to write, will enter the lecture halls of future lawyers as one of the absurdities of German legal history. Because no ‘case’ like this farce reveals the insurmountable discrepancy between jurisprudence (Rechtsprechung) and sense of justice (Rechtsempfinden), between law and politics….

“I would have liked to have these worries about the separation of powers when a federal minister of justice shifted the finding of a crime such as incitement to hate from the courts to legally unqualified employees of any Internet corporation.

“However, when [former Justice Minister] Heiko Maas had his censorship law passed, with the name of ‘Network Enforcement Act,’ that shift of original judicial tasks to private individuals even had the approval of the judiciary. As a result, this increases the suspicion that in the case of Sami A., in the end it is not about the law but about power….

“What we are currently experiencing is not a struggle for the rule of law, but a power struggle between an obviously ideologically oriented judiciary and unpopular political representatives.”

Commentator Henryk Broder, in a column — “Sami A.: Even the Rule of Law Can Sometimes be Wrong” — for Die Welt, concluded:

“That Bin Laden bodyguard Sami A. of Tunisia could be brought back to Germany is considered by many to be evidence of the functioning of the rule of law. That is wrong. The real scandal here is another one….

“The scandal begins when an administrative court declares the deportation of a ‘perjurer’ is inadmissible because he could face torture in the country to which he was deported.

“I do not share the view of colleagues that the verdict in the case of Sami A. is ‘a sign that our constitutional state is working.’

“Even in a constitutional state, there can be wrong judgments. A judgment, right or wrong, does not allow conclusions to be drawn as to the rule of law, whether it works or does not work. Not even judges consider themselves infallible.

“That is why there is a system of instances [trial and appellate courts], that is why judges overturn the judgments of other judges, so the law is adapted to the changed circumstances of life and not vice versa….

“Confidence in the rule of law is not undermined by a ruling such as that of the Gelsenkirchen Administrative Court, but by the fact that it took almost twelve years for Osama bin Laden’s ‘alleged’ bodyguard finally to be deported.”

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In a series of reports from the Russian News Agency TASS, Russia’s fifth-generation Su-57 stealth fighter jet could be entering service sometime in 2019. The aircraft has huge potential to modernize the Russian military for at least “fifty years,” exclaimeda senior Russian lawmaker, as it has proven its worth during the combat missions in Syria.

It is possible that Moscow will deploy these stealth fighters in the Eurasia region to ensure a geopolitical power shift away from Washington to defend the economic development projects currently underway.

Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) President Yuri Slyusar told Deistvuyushchiye Litsa (Political Actors) program on the Rossiya-1 television channel that a major contract with the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation would be finalized by the end of summer for the first batch of Su-57 fighters.

“By the end of the summer, I think probably at the Patriot Park (in Moscow’s region, the venue for the 2018 Army forum on August 21-26 – TASS), we will sign contracts for the first batch with the defense ministry. Regular supplies will start next year”.

In a separate interview, Viktor Bondarev, chairman of the defense and security committee of Russia’s Federation Council upper parliament house, explained to TASS Sunday that the stealth jets had performed exceptionally well during its combat deployment in Syria.

Video: Russia Deploys Two Brand New Su-57 Stealth Fighters To Syria

Unverified footage claims to show #Russia deployment of two T-50 #PAKFA prototype aircraft to #Syria pic.twitter.com/cvDHwui5ut

— Joseph Dempsey (@JosephHDempsey) February 21, 2018

“The Su-57 has successfully accomplished the first stage of state trials and proved all of its designated flight characteristics. It proved its worth not only on testing grounds but also in real combat operations,” Bondarev told TASS.

He said that Su-57 pilot prototypes were delivered to Russia’s Hmeymim airbase in Syria in the first half of the year for live fire testing.

The jet “has a huge potential for modernization that will be enough for fifty years,” he said, adding that the plane’s onboard radionics is built on the principles of open architecture.

“As a matter of fact, this fighter jet has everything necessary to be later developed into a fully automatic unmanned warplane,” Bondarev said.

“The Russian fifth-generation Su-57 fighter jet features stealth technology with the broad use of composite materials, is capable of maintaining supersonic cruising speed and is furnished with the most advanced onboard radio-electronic equipment, including a powerful onboard computer (the so-called electronic second pilot), the radar system spread across its body and some other innovations, in particular, armament placed inside its fuselage. The plane’s onboard control system is capable of following up to 60 targets and opening fire at 16 of them concurrently. These planes are expected to arrive for the troops in 2019. The pilot batch will comprise 12 Su-57 planes,” said TASS.

In the decades ahead, the reports did not mention what Russia wanted to defend with these advanced jets. However, it is becoming quite evident that they will be used as a new deterrence system against Washington’s advanced aircraft to protect and keep peace in the Eurasian region as the Belt and Road Initiative comes online and challenges America’s dollar system.

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Authored by Craig Murray,

Max Weber defined a key attribute of a state as holding the monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence within a given territory. For anybody other than the state to use substantive physical force against you or to imprison you is regarded as an extremely serious crime. The state itself may however constrain you, beat you, imprison you and even kill you. That link is on deaths in police custody. I might also quote the state murder of 12 year old British child Jojo Jones, deliberately executed by drone strike by the USA with prior approval from the British government.

That is but one example of the British state’s decreasing reticence over the use of extreme violence. The shameless promotion of Cressida Dick to head the Metropolitan Police as reward for orchestrating the cold-blooded murder of an innocent and unresisting Jean Charles de Menezes is another example. So is Savid Javid’s positive encouragement of the US to employ the death penalty against British men stripped of citizenship.

There are a class of states where the central government does not have sufficient control over its territories to preserve its monopoly of violence. That may include violence in opposition to the state. But one further aspect of that is state sanctioned violence in pursuit of state aims by non state actors, done with a nod and a wink from the government – death squads and private militias, often CIA supplied, in South America have often acted this way, and so occasionally does the British state, for example in the murder of Pat Finucane. In some instances, a state might properly be described as a gangster state, where violent groups acting for personal gain act in concert with state authorities, with motives of personal financial profit involved on both sides.

It appears to me in this sense it is fair to call Britain a gangster state. It has contracted out the exercise of state violence, including in some instances to the point of death, against prisoners and immigration detainees to companies including G4S, who exercise that violence purely for the making of profit from it. It is a great moral abomination that violence should be exercised against humans for profit – and it should be clear that in even in most “humane” conditions the deprivation of physical liberty of any person is an extreme and chronic exercise of violence against them. I do not deny the necessity of such action on occasion to protect others, but that the state shares out its monopoly of violence, so that business interests with which the political class are closely associated can turn a profit, is a matter of extreme moral repugnance.

Rory Stewart appeared on Sky News this morning and the very first point he saw fit to make was a piece of impassioned shilling on behalf of G4S. That this was the first reaction of the Prisons Minister to a question on the collapse of order at Birmingham Prison due to G4S’ abject performance, shows both the Tories’ ideological commitment to privatisation in all circumstances, especially where it has demonstrably failed, and shows also the extent to which they are in the pockets of financial interests – and not in the least concerned about the public interest.

I should add to this that Tories here includes Blairites. Blair and Brown were gung-ho for prison privatisation, and even keen to extend the contracting out of state violence for profit to the military sector by the deployment of mercenary soldiers, which New Labour itself consciously rebranded as “private military companies”. Iraq was a major exercise in this with British government contracted mercenaries often outnumbering actual British troops.

The reason for the state to have the monopoly of violence in any society is supposed to be in order to ensure that violence is only ever exercised with caution, with regret and in proportion, solely in unavoidable circumstances. It is the most profound duty of a state to ensure that this is so. The contracting out of state violence for private profit ought to be unthinkable to any decent person.

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Billions of people around the world grew up during the age of social media, and mankind is slowly marching toward a future where nearly everyone will be a digital native.

And as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routlery points out, for the one-third of humanity that now uses a smartphone, messaging and status updates are often more natural than having a live conversation. In a world where social interactions are peppered with emojis and funneled through a front-facing camera, the platforms we use become more than mere service providers; they are the connective tissue of our society.

What services are people using to communicate?

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

Monthly active users (MAUs) is a metric commonly used to evaluate how many people are using a service regularly. Here are the world’s top social and messaging platforms by MAUs:

Let’s take a closer look at these massive platforms.

THE FACEBOOK EMPIRE

On its own, Facebook is a behemoth, but adding in the other platforms run by Mark Zuckerberg paints a clear picture of who controls the social media in 2018.

During its growth spurt in the late aughts, Facebook emerged as the first truly global social networks, hitting one billion monthly active users and essentially popularizing the idea of social media. These days, Facebook appears to be hitting engagement and growth plateaus, but acquisitions such as Instagram and WhatsApp are fueling growth for the company, with the former accounting for over a third of revenue.

WECHAT

In China, WeChat isn’t just a typical messenger app.

This “super app” – which facilitates everything from point-of-sale purchases to accessing public services – is likely the template that other social platforms around the world will emulate as they strive for more thorough integration with their users’ lives.

Because WeChat is typically also used for work, the average user spends about an hour in-app each day. That is a level of engagement most platforms can only dream of.

REDDIT

The “Front Page of the Internet” has grown up.

The oft controversial message board – created in 2005 – is now worth an estimated $1.8 billion, and is contemplating an IPO in the near future. While the company does make money from advertising, a unique membership feature called Reddit Gold is helping bring in funding directly from the community.

TWITTER

When people have something to say publicly or look to debate big issues in the news cycle, more often than not, they use Twitter. Tweets from world leaders and CEOs can have far-reaching consequences, and hashtagged social movements have united more people than ever to affect change. For better or worse, Twitter fills an important role in modern society.

Unfortunately for Twitter, great responsibility has translated into greater scrutiny rather than strong revenue growth. The company has faced high profile controversies over harassment, bots, and fake news, and has struggled to match the sky-high growth expectations set when the “microblogging” platform went public in 2013. Twitter is still experimenting with new ways to monetize its 300+ million active user base.

SNAPCHAT

In 2015, Snapchat, having already thoroughly conquered the under-18 market, looked set to disrupt the social media landscape. What came next was a tragedy in two acts.

First, Instagram released its Story feature that same year, effectively cloning Snapchat’s features and layout within their app. Many users, who had only recently began using novel new platform, flocked back to Instagram where they already had a developed following.

Secondly, a redesign of the Snapchat interface was widely criticized by high profile users, speeding up an exodus to Instagram.

Snapchat, which has since gone public, still has a quarter of billion MAUs, but questions remain about whether the platform can recapture the magic of their earlier years.

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Authored by Gregory Shupak via ‘Fariness & Accuracy In Reporting’,

In the aftermath of the assassination attempt against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an article in the Miami Herald (8/5/18) reported that “a clandestine group formed by Venezuelan military members opposed to the regime of Nicolás Maduro claimed responsibility.” A New York Times op-ed (8/10/18) mused, “No one knows whether the Maduro regime will last decades or days.” AFP(8/12/18) reported that “Trump has harshly criticized Maduro’s leftist regime.”

The word “regime” implies that the government to which the label is applied is undemocratic, even tyrannical, so it’s peculiar that the term is used in Venezuela’s case, since the country’s leftist government has repeatedly won free and fair elections (London Review of Books, 6/29/17).

One could argue that, strictly speaking, “regime” can simply mean a system, and in some specific, infrequent contexts, that may be how it’s used. But broadly the word “regime” suggests a government that is unrepresentative, repressive,  corrupt, aggressive—without the need to offer any evidence of these traits.

Interestingly, the US itself meets many of the criteria for being a “regime”: It can be seen as an oligarchy rather than a democracy, imprisons people at a higher rate than any other country, has grotesque levels of inequality and bombs another country every 12 minutes. Yet there’s no widespread tendency for the corporate media to describe the US state as a “regime.”

The function of “regime” is to construct the ideological scaffolding for the United States and its partners to attack whatever country has a government described in this manner.

According to the mainstream media, the democratically elected government of Nicaragua is a “regime” (Washington Post, 7/11/18). Cuba also has a “regime” (Washington Post, 7/25/18). Iraq and Libya used to have “regimes”—before the United States implemented “regime change.” North Korea most definitely has one (New York Times, 7/26/18), as do China (Washington Post, 8/3/18) and Russia (Wall Street Journal, 7/15/18).

When, for the media, does a government become a “regime”? The answer, broadly speaking: A country’s political leaders are likely to be called a “regime” when they do not follow US dictates, and are less likely to be categorized as such if they cooperate with the empire.

‘Regimes’ in Latin America

A search run with the media aggregator Factiva finds that in the nearly 20 years since Venezuela first elected a Chavista government, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have used the phrase “Venezuelan regime” 74 times, “regime in Venezuela” 30 times, “Chávez regime” 68 times, “Maduro regime” 168 times and “regime in Caracas” five times. All of these governments have been democratically elected, but have sinned by trying to carve out a path independent of US control.

Consider, by contrast, coverage of Honduras. The country is hardly lacking in characteristics associated with a “regime.” On June 28, 2009, a US-backed military coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Manuel Zelaya, replacing it with a US-friendly administration. Since then, Honduras has become the most dangerous place for journalists in the Americas; labor leadersand environmental activists have also been regularly targeted for assassination.

According to a Factiva search, the phrase “Honduran regime” has never appeared in the Times, Journal and Post in the years following the coup, and collectively they used the phrase “regime in Honduras” once: It appeared in a Washington Post article (3/31/16) about the assassinations of Honduran indigenous leader Berta Cáceres and other environmentalists in the region, in a quote by a professor critical of US support for Latin American dictatorships.

While Honduras’s three post-coup presidents have governed a country where “impunity for human rights abuses remains the norm,” according to Human Rights Watch, these leaders have almost never been described as running a “regime.” A Post editorial (9/5/09) included the only appearance of “Micheletti regime” in any of the three papers. “Lobo regime” returns zero search results. The New York Times (2/16/16) has used “Hernández regime” once, but Factiva indicates that the Post and Journal never have. Searches for “regime in Tegucigalpa” or “Tegucigalpa regime” produced zero results.

Middle Eastern ‘Regimes’

(Wall Street Journal, 7/12/18)

Since the war in Syria ignited on March 15, 2011, “Syrian regime” has been used 5,355 times, “Assad regime” 7,853 times, “regime in Syria” 836 times, and “regime in Damascus” 282 times in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

Washington’s economic and military partner Saudi Arabia is described as having a “regime” far less often than is Syria, despite its rather “regime”-like qualities: Its unelected government represses dissidents, including advocates for women and its Shia minority, and carries out executions at an extraordinary clip, including of people accused of adultery, apostasy and witchcraft. Saudi Arabia crushed an uprising in neighboring Bahrain in 2011, and with its US and UK partners, is carrying out an almost apocalyptic war in Yemen.

In the same period examined in the Syrian case, the phrase “Saudi regime” was used 145 times by the same papers, while “regime in Saudi Arabia” registers four hits and “regime in Riyadh” can be found once, in the Post (11/29/17).

Saudi leaders can rest assured that their names are unlikely to be associated with running a “regime”: Factiva indicates that the three publications never used the phrase “Abdullah regime” in the relevant period, while “Salman regime” pops up only once, in a Post editorial (5/3/15).

The Iranian Revolution culminated on February 11, 1979, and the US ruling class has seen Iran’s government as an arch-enemy ever since. Factiva searches of the intervening years turn  up 3,201 references to “Iranian regime,” in the Times, Journal and Post, as well as 326 to “regime in Iran,” 502 to “regime in Tehran,” 258 to “Khomeini regime,” 31 to “Ahmadinejad regime” and five to “Rouhani regime.”

The case of stalwart US ally Israel offers an illuminating counterpoint. Even though Israel violently rules over 2.5 Palestinians in the West Bank and keeps 2 million under siege in Gaza, and even though Palestinians living as citizens of Israel face institutional discrimination, the Israeli government is almost never described as a “regime” in a way that carries the negative connotations discussed above.

(New York Times, 9/24/16)

A New York Times article (8/2/91) on the Gulf War used the phrase “the obdurate Israeli regime” to describe Israeli conduct in regional negotiations. In 1992, a Washington Post op-ed (3/11/92) called for America to accept Jewish people from the just-collapsed Soviet Union in part because “elements in the Israeli regime are quite ready to place the [Jewish people who moved to Israel from the USSR] in harm’s way,” a reference to the idea that Palestinians are a threat to them. A Wall Street Journal article (7/12/99) employed the term “Israeli regime” in 1999 to describe Ehud Barak’s administration as taking over from “the previous Israeli regime” of Benjamin Netanyahu, and a piece in the Washington Post (10/1/96) used the phrase in the same way.

Otherwise, “Israeli regime” appears in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post when the phrase is attributed to critics of Israel (e.g., Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying, “Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken”—New York Times, 5/12/08), or is part of a compound referring to a country other than Israel, as when Egypt is described as having a “pro-Israeli regime,” or Syria is called an “anti-Israeli regime.”

“Sharon regime” yields four results. There are no results for “Olmert regime.” Since Netanyahu returned to power in 2009, Factiva shows, the only use of “Netanyahu regime” in any of these papers was a Washington Postarticle (3/1/15);  there are three instances of the phrase in these papers from his first go-round (1996–99). The New York Times referred to Israel as the “regime in Jerusalem” once in 1981 (3/2/81) and again in 1994 (1/6/94). “Regime in Tel Aviv” only appears when it’s part of a quote from someone criticizing Israel.

Calling a government a “regime” suggests a lack of legitimacy, with the implication that its ousting (by whatever means) would serve humanitarian and democratic ends; it’s no accident that the phrase is “regime change,” not “government change” or “administration change.” The obverse is also true: The authority of a “government” is more apt to be seen as legitimate,  with resistance to it or defense against it frequently depicted as criminal or terroristic. Thus corporate media help instruct the population that the enemies of the US ruling class need to be eliminated, while its friends deserve protection.

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Russia has unveiled a menacing 4.5 ton bulletproof robot suit with giant claws that can walk and hold weapons. No word on how long it gives you to comply, but we assume the standard 20-second rule applies. 

Uh oh, looks like Putin’s gone full mech warrior: 

And in a galaxy far, far away: 

Paging Robocop? 

Of course, Russia’s also got this nightmare-inducing piece of hardware as well – a humanoid robot developed by the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Proijects which can use tools, drive a car and murder you.

Maybe Bezos can save us?

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Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Sometimes, a strongly-worded denial is the most damning evidence of all that something is seriously wrong. 

And when things start to really get crazy, “the spin” is often the exact opposite of the truth.  In recent days we have seen a lot of troubling headlines and a lot of chaos in the global financial marketplace, but authorities continue to assure us that everything is going to be just fine. 

Of course we witnessed precisely the same thing just prior to the great financial crisis of 2008.  Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke insisted that a recession was not coming, and we proceeded to plunge into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.  Is our society experiencing a similar state of denial about what is ahead of us here in 2018?

Let me give you a few examples of some recent things that global economic leaders have said, and what they really meant…

–Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk: “We are definitely not going bankrupt.”

Translation: “We are definitely going bankrupt.”

Tesla is a company that is supposedly worth 51 billion dollars, but the reality is that they are going to zero.  They have been bleeding massive amounts of cash for years, and now a day of reckoning has finally arrived.  A severe liquidity crunch has forced the company to delay payments or to ask for enormous discounts from suppliers, and many of those suppliers are now concerned that Tesla is on the verge of collapse…

Specifically, a recent survey sent privately by a well-regarded automotive supplier association to top executives, and seen by the WS , found that 18 of 22 respondents believe that Tesla is now a financial risk to their companies.

Meanwhile, confirming last month’s report that Tesla is increasingly relying on net working capital, and specifically accounts payable to window dress its liquidity, several suppliers said Tesla has tried to stretch out payments or asked for significant cash back. And in some cases, public records show, small suppliers over the past several months have claimed they failed to get paid for services supplied to Tesla.

–Shark Tank billionaire Mark Cuban: “I’ve got a whole lot of cash on the sidelines.”

Translation: “I believe that the stock market is about to crash.”

Mark Cuban is not stupid.  Like Warren Buffett, he is sitting on giant piles of cash as he waits for stock valuations to return to their long-term averages.  And when “something happens”, Cuban insists that he is “ready, willing and able” to make some bold moves…

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban told CNBC on Monday that he’s holding much more cash than he normally does because he’s concerned about the stock market and U.S debt levels.

“I’m down to maybe four dividend-owning stocks, two shorts, and Amazon and Netflix. I’ve got a whole lot of cash on the sidelines,” Cuban said on “Fast Money Halftime Report.” “[I’m] ready, willing and able if something happens” to invest.

–Deutsche Bank: We need our employees to “take every opportunity to restrict non-essential travel” in order to cut costs.

Translation: We are on the verge of collapse, and we have got to save every single penny that we can right now.

If you follow my work on a regular basis, you already know that I have been extremely hard on Deutsche Bank.  The biggest bank in Europe is teetering on the brink, and this latest move is more evidence that their days are numbered…

Forget the days of traveling first class to meet clients: Deutsche Bank, which following major management upheaval in the past year, is telling its employees to take the bus whenever possible.

In the latest indignity to befall the bank’s employees, in a memo sent by Deutsche Bank CFO James von Moltke, the biggest European bank – if certainly not by market cap – urged employees to “take every opportunity to restrict non-essential travel” until the end of the year adding that “with your help, we will meet our cost-reduction targets.”

–Italian Cabinet Undersecretary Giancarlo Giorgetti: “I hope that the quantitative easing program will go forward.”

Translation: If the ECB does not buy our bonds, the Italian financial system is toast.

Italy will almost certainly be the fulcrum of the next European financial crisis, and the truth is that the EU will not have enough money to bail Italy out once it collapses.

So the Italians desperately need the ECB to continue buying their bonds, and the new Italian government seems to understand this very well…

Italian Cabinet Undersecretary Giancarlo Giorgetti said he hopes the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing program will be extended to help protect the country from financial speculators.

Italy also needs to be credible to help shield itself, Giorgetti said in an interview with newspaper Il Messaggero. After the Genoa bridge disaster, the country may boost its extra spending request to the European Union, he said.

Signs of trouble continue to erupt in the United States as well.  The trade war is taking a huge toll on businesses of all sizes, and sometimes it is rural America that is being hurt the most.

For instance, the looming closure of the Element Electronics factory in Winnsboro, South Carolina would be absolutely crippling for that community…

TVs at the plant are made out of components that are imported from China, and the tariffs make assembling the TVs here a losing proposition, the company has said. The company is fighting for a waiver but is bracing for shutdown.

Winnsboro is the seat of Fairfield County, where a third of the population lives in poverty. Unemployment among its nearly 23,000 residents is second highest in the state, and, despite periodic rebounds, the population has fallen steadily over the past century.

“This is going to be a ghost town,” Winnsboro resident Herbert Workman said.

In this day and age, we are trained to be optimistic, and that can be a good thing.

But there comes a point when blind optimism causes us to lose touch with reality, and many believe that we have already crossed that threshold.

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A bombshell CNBC report says that Russia is seeking to recover an advanced nuclear-powered missile that was “lost at sea” after a failed flight test which occurred in late 2017. 

Unnamed US officials made the astounding claim while citing a classified intelligence report detailing the Russian operation. 

CNBC explains based on its intelligence sources: 

Crews will attempt to recover a missile that was test launched in November and landed in the Barents Sea, which is located north of Norway and Russia. The operation will include three vessels, one of which is equipped to handle radioactive material from the weapon’s nuclear core. There is no timeline for the mission, according to the people with knowledge of the report.

The U.S. intelligence report did not mention any potential health or environmental risks posed by possible damage to the missile’s nuclear reactor.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously boasted of the missile’s capabilities, claiming during a March 2018 speech, “The low-flying, stealth cruise missile with a nuclear warhead with a practically unlimited range, unpredictable flight path and the ability to bypass interception lines is invulnerable to all existing and future missile defense and air defense systems.” He added that, “No one in the world has anything like it.”

However US officials say the missile has thus far been a failure after multiple tests, which Putin was apparently fully aware of when he boasted of the weapon’s capabilities in March. CNBC previously cited unnamed anonymous sources privy to the intelligence that said the missile’s nuclear-powered system which would allow for unheard of flight range while carrying a nuclear warhead had failed to initiate. 

In four tests between November 2017 and February 2018, the intercontinental ballistic missile crashed, according to US sources, which further said the longest test flight lasted just over two minutes at a mere 22 miles in range before it crashed. 

Putin’s March speech was the first time Russia officially recognized the nuclear-powered cruise missile program, which garnered global media attention as Putin bragged the system had “unlimited range”. 

* * *

Recent Russian-produced video featuring brief test footage spliced with imagined computer generated sequence of the missile’s projected capabilities…

Official Russian footage of the nuclear cruise missile’s assembly location released through Russia’s Defense Ministry last month:

One nuclear weapons systems engineer, Hans Kristensen, who serves as director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, told CNBC  there remains the potential for unknown levels of nuclear radiation pollution: “It goes without saying that if you fire a missile with a nuclear engine or energy source, that nuclear material will end up wherever that missile ends up,” he said.

“If this missile was lost at sea and recovered in full, then you might hypothetically be able to do it without pollution, I would have my doubts about that because it’s a very forceful impact when the missile crashes. I would suspect you would have leaks from it,” Kristensen added.

The weapon has reportedly been under development by Russia since the early 2000s and is thought to initiate take-off through a conventionally fueled engine, after which it is designed to switch to nuclear-power for “unlimited” range.

The missile was one of six ‘hypersonic weapons’ which Russia first announced last March, and released military video profiles of in mid-July, touting their capabilities.

CNBC notes further of the recovery efforts, which have an undisclosed timeline:

If the Russians are able to regain possession of the missile, U.S. intelligence analysts expect Moscow will use the procedure as a blueprint for future recovery operations. It is unclear whether the other missiles are missing at sea, too.

Previously, the online military magazine Defense Blog noted of the system that “Russia’s next-generation nuclear-powered cruise missiles are capable of hitting targets throughout the United States” and cited Russia’s Defense Ministry as boasting that the missiles have “unlimited range and unlimited ability to maneuver”.

Defense Blog said of the high range for the developing missile system, which is purported to have nuclear warhead delivery capability:

The main purpose of the new cruise missiles is the suppression of the operational bases of the probable enemy and the destruction of interceptor-based missile defenсe systems or group of ships with Aegis Ballistic Missile Defenсe System.

The missile has an intercontinental range in excess of 10,000+ kilometers (probably close to 20,000 kilometers) and may be equipped with a nuclear warhead.

After the new Russian weapons were first made public, the commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), Gen. Lori Robinson, expressed growing “concern” before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Russia has prioritized the development of advanced cruise missiles capable of holding targets within North America at risk from distances not previously seen. These systems present an increasing threat to North America due to their long range, low radar cross section, and the limited indications and warnings likely to be seen prior to a combat launch,” Gen. Robinson said.

The general stated further while arguing for more investment in advanced sensors and missile defense systems to protect the US mainland: “I have confidence in the layered approach provided by US overlapping air defense systems. However, I am concerned about the potential for those advanced cruise missiles, which can be launched from bombers or submarines at much greater ranges than the previous systems“. 

However, if current reports of the advanced nuclear-powered Russian missile being “lost at sea” are true, it appears that United States military planners have much less to worry about than what they previously thought. 

At the very least, the US may now have much more time to erect similarly advanced systems to defend against Russian hypersonic weapons. 

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Authored by James Dorsey via MidEast Soccer blog,

Financial injections by Qatar and possibly China may resolve Turkey’s immediate economic crisis, aggravated by a politics-driven trade war with the United States, but are unlikely to resolve the country’s structural problems, fuelled by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s counterintuitive interest rate theories.

The latest crisis in Turkey’s boom-bust economy raises questions about a development model in which countries like China and Turkey witness moves towards populist rule of one man who encourages massive borrowing to drive economic growth.

It’s a model minus the one-man rule that could be repeated in Pakistan as newly sworn-in prime minister Imran Khan, confronted with a financial crisis, decides whether to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or rely on China and Saudi Arabia for relief.

Pakistan, like Turkey, has over the years frequently knocked on the IMF’s doors, failing to have turned crisis into an opportunity for sustained restructuring and reform of the economy. Pakistan could in the next weeks be turning to the IMF for the 13th time, Turkey, another serial returnee, has been there 18 times.

In Turkey and China, the debt-driven approach sparked remarkable economic growth with living standards being significantly boosted and huge numbers of people being lifted out of poverty. Yet, both countries with Turkey more exposed, given its greater vulnerability to the swings and sensitivities of international financial markets, are witnessing the limitations of the approach.

So are, countries along China’s Belt and Road, including Pakistan, that leaped head over shoulder into the funding opportunities made available to them and now see themselves locked into debt traps that in the case of Sri Lanka and Djibouti have forced them to effectively turn over to China control of critical national infrastructure or like Laos that have become almost wholly dependent on China because it owns the bulk of their unsustainable debt.

The fact that China may be more prepared to deal with the downside of debt-driven development does little to make its model sustainable or for that matter one that other countries would want to emulate unabridged and has sent some like Malaysia and Myanmar scrambling to resolve or avert an economic crisis.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad is in China after suspending US$20 billion worth of Beijing-linked infrastructure contracts, including a high-speed rail line to Singapore, concluded by his predecessor, Najib Razak, who is fighting corruption charges.

Mr. Mahathir won elections in May on a campaign that asserted that Mr. Razak had ceded sovereignty to China by agreeing to Chinese investments that failed to benefit the country and threaten to drown it in debt.

Myanmar is negotiating a significant scaling back of a Chinese-funded port project on the Bay of Bengal from one that would cost US$ 7.3 billion to a more modest development that would cost US$1.3 billion in a bid to avoid shouldering an unsustainable debt.

Debt-driven growth could also prove to be a double-edged sword for China itself even if it is far less dependent than others on imports, does not run a chronic trade deficit, and doesn’t have to borrow heavily in dollars.

With more than half the increase in global debt over the past decade having been issued as domestic loans in China, China’s risk, said Ruchir Sharma, Morgan Stanley’s Chief Global Strategist and head of Emerging Markets Equity, is capital fleeing to benefit from higher interest rates abroad.

“Right now Chinese can earn the same interest rates in the United States for a lot less risk, so the motivation to flee is high, and will grow more intense as the Fed raises rates further,” Mr. Sharma said referring to the US Federal Reserve.

Mr. Erdogan has charged that the United States abetted by traitors and foreigners are waging economic warfare against Turkey, using a strong dollar as ”the bullets, cannonballs and missiles.”

Rejecting economic theory and wisdom, Mr. Erdogan has sought for years to fight an alleged ‘interest rate lobby’ that includes an ever-expanding number of financiers and foreign powers seeking to drive Turkish interest rates artificially high to damage the economy by insisting that low interest rates and borrowing costs would contain price hikes.

In doing so, he is harking back to an approach that was popular in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s that may not be wholly wrong but similarly may also not be universally applicable.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) warned late last year that Turkey’s “gross external financing needs to cover the current account deficit and external debt repayments due within a year are estimated at around 25 per cent of GDP in 2017, leaving the country exposed to global liquidity conditions.”

With two international credit rating agencies reducing Turkish debt to junk status in the wake of Turkey’s economically fought disputes with the United States, the government risks its access to foreign credits being curtailed, which could force it to extract more money from ordinary Turks through increased taxes. That in turn would raise the spectre of recession.

“Turkey’s troubles are homegrown, and the economic war against it is a figment of Mr. Erdogan’s conspiratorial imagination. But he does have a point about the impact of a surging dollar, which has a long history of inflicting damage on developing nations,” Mr. Sharma said.

Nevertheless, as The Wall Street Journal concluded, the vulnerability of Turkey’s debt-driven growth  was such that it only took two tweets by US President Donald J. Trump announcing sanctions against two Turkish ministers and the doubling of some tariffs to accelerate the Turkish lira’s tailspin.

Mr. Erdogan may not immediately draw the same conclusion, but it is certainly one that is likely to serve as a cautionary note for countries that see debt, whether domestic or associated with China’s infrastructure-driven Belt and Road initiative, as a main driver of growth.

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One could be forgiven for thinking this sudden ‘coming to the table’ could be related to today’s Trump-related tumult, but away from that cynicism, Politico reports that the Trump administration is planning to announce Thursday that it has reached a breakthrough in NAFTA talks with Mexico.

The Mexican Peso popped to two-week highs on the news…

Citing three unidentified people close to the talks, Politico notes that this “handshake” deal announcement on Thursday, would clear the way for Canada to rejoin negotiations to revise the free trade pact.

And the Loonie jumped…

Away from the positive news-cycle distraction this may be for President Trump, Mexico has for weeks been pressing to wrap up at least a preliminary deal by Aug. 25 in order for current President Enrique Peña Nieto to have time to sign it before he leaves office Dec. 1.

However, even if Pena Nieto signs the Nafta deal, it will be up to a Mexican Senate controlled by AMLO’s allies to pass it, and to AMLO to implement it. That requires a deal that both can accept.

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