Month: June 2018

Brandon Smith: “Trade War Provides Perfect Cover For The Elitist Engineered Global Reset”

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

Over the past several months, I have been examining the underlying or hidden motivations behind the currently expanding global trade war, including the impressive level of cognitive dissonance surrounding the issue.

The political left doesn’t seem to have an intelligent grasp of economic issues in the slightest.  I’m not seeing any critical discussion from leftist media outlets or pundits on fiscal uncertainties, and the only reaction that is common from them is that they hope that the trade war results in the financial downfall of the US so that Trump can be voted out in 2020.  They may very well get their wish, but they seem to imagine themselves celebrating at the end of the disaster, and I predict they’ll be so concerned with their own financial survival that they won’t have time to celebrate…

The initial reaction in conservative circles to the trade war was unfortunately overconfident denial, with many refusing to call the situation a “trade war” at all and some predicting an end to the conflict before it began. Obviously those assumptions are proving incorrect.

Now that acceptance of the trade war as a reality is setting in, the Trump bandwagon is doubling down and embracing blind enthusiasm for what they assume will be a victorious outcome, no matter how long it takes. Though the team-geopolitics mentality is enticing in some ways, I don’t find much in the facts and evidence department to support the notion of America winning a global trade war. As I outlined in my article America’s Debt Dependence Makes It An Easy Economic Target, as long as the U.S. retains historic levels of debt on a government, corporate and consumer level, and as long as we remain addicted to foreign investment in that debt, trade war opponents have all the ammunition they need.

The argument I now see regurgitated over and over is that this trade war has actually been “going on for decades”, and only now do we “have a president with the guts to do something about it.” I’m not sure where this nonsense meme was started, but it’s everywhere.

The U.S. has NOT been engaged in a trade war “for decades,” not with China or any other nation. It has been involved in a subversive trade arrangement which benefits the elitists on both sides of the world while the common people suffer. Only in the past year have we seen a “trade war” develop, but even now, it is a staged war that will once again empower international banks and global elites.

It is hard to argue the longstanding trade war meme when considering the facts. While China has indeed enjoyed a trade surplus with the U.S. for many years, this was strictly maintained in exchange for Chinese investment in U.S. Treasury debt and the U.S. dollar. In fact, it’s absurd to claim that the U.S. has been “disadvantaged” in global trade when it is the dollar that is used to facilitate nearly ALL international trade as the world reserve currency. Dollar denominated assets have been the go-to safe haven investment for decades for this exact reason.

Back in 2008 during the initial stock market collapse, mainstream media economists and some alternative economists alike argued incessantly that emerging market investors and foreign central banks would “never” pull back from American markets because “King Dollar” was the premier safety net during fiscal crisis. Clearly, the U.S. has enjoyed a special advantage in global trade; namely the dollar, and it is this advantage alone that has fueled the American economy for years.

The argument that foreign markets have swallowed up American manufacturing is also a bit of a misdirection. As I have mentioned time and time again, U.S. corporations are the true culprits behind the bloodletting in American manufacturing jobs as they relocated all industry into cheaper labor markets. Trump could have stipulated that these same corporations would be required to bring some or most of this manufacturing back into the U.S. before they enjoy tax cut incentives. He didn’t. Instead, he gave them a massive tax cut for nothing, and the majority of the capital gained through that tax cut has already been spent – not on more American jobs or innovation, but on corporate stock buybacks to keep equities propped up just a little bit longer.

Tariffs on U.S. goods implemented by other countries are almost always tied to the U.S. dollar’s world reserve advantage. The outsourcing of manufacturing jobs as well as tech jobs has always been tied to the U.S. corporate desire for cheap labor. No, we have not been in a trade war for decades, quite the opposite.

So what has changed? Why are the old arrangements being abandoned? Is Trump really upsetting the old world order and battling the globalists, or, is he simply helping them to stage the foundation of their “new world order”?

I would suggest that readers look into the International Monetary Fund’s concept of the “global economic reset” for more insight into why this is happening. I would also suggest that people pay close attention to the “predictions” of George Soros back in 2009 on the future of the U.S. economy.

The plan for this global reset seems to revolve around the diminishing of the U.S. as a major economic power. This does not necessarily mean the U.S. will be replaced directly. Instead, as Soros suggests, nations like China will fill the void as “smaller economic engines”. This is often referred to as “harmonization,” but what it really means is that the standard of living for ALL but a highly select minority will be deliberately reduced to a common denominator, and what is more common today than poverty?

For many nations, a lower standard of living is the norm.  For Americans, harmonization means we have a long way to fall yet.  For the reset to take hold effectively in the US, globalists will have to misdirect various groups within the population in different ways in order to avoid revolt.

The Trump fandom is being enticed with notions of a return to a golden era with The Don on his white steed leading the charge.  However, NO president has the power to reverse the economic damage already done in the US; the only solution is a long process of rebuilding the economy from the ground up after the ashes settle.  Any honest president not under the control of the banking cabal would have to be forthright about this fact.  Even under the best possible conditions of reformation, a depression and currency crisis is assured.  You cannot fight against math, and the math of US debt versus US inflation spells stagflationary instability for many years, far beyond the one or possibly two terms of Donald Trump.  When this reality finally hits the Trump Administration devout square in the face, they will be enraged, and the first scapegoat that will be held up to them will be foreign governments like China.

For the liberty movement subset not necessarily enamored with Donald Trump, the lie of the “multipolar world” has been concocted. In essence, we are being told that the death of the dollar will mean the death of globalist centralization, so we should cheer for such an outcome. In truth, there is no “multipolar world.” The IMF and the Bank for International Settlements continue to hold sway over the central banks of the world, in the East as much as the West.

With Russia and China’s calls for the IMF to become the defacto overseer of global monetary trade policy, and even calling for a new global currency system under the control of the IMF, I hardly see any indication that we are moving away from centralization if the U.S. currency falters.  In fact, we will see even more centralization if the globalists get their way.

The key to the reset is undoubtedly the end of the dollar as the world reserve currency.  Without this status, the U.S. loses all economic trade advantage as well as the advantage of perpetual debt monetization. As the dollar’s influence is reduced globally inflation becomes a more pronounced threat at home. The trade war makes the shift away from the dollar possible for international banking elites while they avoid blame for the suffering it will cause the public.

“De-dollarization” is already gaining steam as Russia and China make deals to decouple from the currency while increasing financial cooperation using their own. What trade war cheerleaders don’t understand is that a trade war with China is not a trade war with China alone. As the No. 1 exporter/importer in the world, if China decides to dump the dollar as world reserve its trading partners may very well do the same in order to secure their own import/export relationships.

As a domino effect ensues, I believe it will be the IMF that steps in as a “mediator” to provide the framework for a new system, probably under the Special Drawing Rights basket, and probably leading to a global cryptocurrency system, which the IMF has been praising recently as the next stage of evolution for money and monetary policy.

I have mentioned consistently over the past half year that a trend has developed in terms of the Trump administration’s behavior in the trade war. Specifically, whenever the Federal Reserve raises interest rates or expands cuts to its balance sheet, Trump conveniently expands his rhetoric on tariffs.

When the Fed increases balance sheet cuts, stocks take a hit of 1,000 points or more like clockwork. And, like clockwork, the mainstream media blames the drop in stocks on the trade war and Trump rather than the Fed. I think that this trend will accelerate into the end of 2018, and that stocks will hit critical downward velocity if the Fed does not reverse course.  In my view, the Fed has no intention of reversing course because they prefer to see a major market crisis at this time.

But more than simply providing cover for the Fed’s controlled demolition of equities, the trade war may also provide cover for the controlled demolition of the dollar as multiple foreign creditors and trading partners turn America’s greatest strength into its greatest weakness.

The dollar itself is nothing more than an imagined symbol; it is a tool for international bankers. And, like any tool, it can be replaced. The trade war provides the perfect historical narrative for the end of the dollar. The story told to future generations will be that the U.S., emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric and nationalism, fueled by the dangerous ideas of “conservative populists”, bumbled into self-destruction and harmed the rest of the world in the process. The IMF and other globalist institutions will step in, stating that no single country should ever be allowed to wield the power of the world’s reserve currency again. They will then offer their pre-planned solution to the very problem they originally created.

Whether or not this plan for the global reset works will rely on the awareness of conservatives specifically. Getting caught up in the fervor of trade war rhetoric will cripple our ability to prepare and to fight back against the true culprits behind U.S. decline. Our fury will be wrongly directed at foreign economies instead of the banking elites, where it belongs.

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Milo Banned From Paypal After Shooting, Says He Made “Private” Joke About Murdering Journalists

Conservative pundit Milo Yiannopoulos on Thursday defended himself against accusations that “private” comments he made to journalists were responsible for the Annapolis newsroom shooting earlier in the day which left five dead and several others injured.

Yiannapolous was asked by the Observer and Daily Beast to comment on two unrelated articles published Tuesday, Yiannopoulos – who is known as a provocateur – texted the Observer’s Davis Richardson “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight,” while emailing the Beast’s Will Sommer the same response.

When asked to elaborate, Milo told the Observer that his statement was his “standard response to a request for comment,” which he also sent to the Daily Beast‘s Will Sommer, who published it as well.

In the aftermath of Thursday’s newsroom shooting roughly 48 hours later, people began pointing fingers at Yiannopoulos – suggesting that his comments to the journalists inspired the shooting.

Additionally, both PayPal and Venmo payment platforms reportedly banned Milo in response.

In response, Milo took to Facebook to defend himself hours after the incident – saying that he was trolling the journalists in private responses. “Basically as a way of saying, ‘F—k off,’ he said. 

“You’re about to see a raft of news stories claiming that I am responsible for inspiring the deaths of journalists,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “The truth, as always, is the opposite of what the media tells you.”

“I sent a troll about ‘vigilante death squads’ as a *private* response to a few hostile journalists who were asking me for comment, basically as a way of saying, ‘F—k off.’ They then published it,” he continued. “Amazed they were pretending to take my joke as a ‘threat,’ I reposted these stories on Instagram to mock them – and to make it clear that I wasn’t being serious.”

Some have suggested that the decision by The Beast and Observer to publish Milo’s “standard response to a request for comment” may have been irresponsible.

As we reported earlier, a 39-year-old Maryland man is the prime suspect in Thursday’s shooting incident at the Capital Gazette. 

He was identified using facial recognition technology, and local authorities are executing a search warrant on his home, NBC News reported, citing multiple senior law enforcement officials. And in a report that echoed the last assault on an American journalist – where a disgruntled former employee murdered one of his former colleagues on camera at a CBS affiliate in Virginia – CNN said the shooter had “previous interactions” with the newspaper.

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Is The Media Deliberately Trying To Spawn Civil War 2.0?

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Everyone is talking about a looming civil war on American soil, but they’re all blaming the “other” side. The media is deliberately trying to stir things up with breathless headlines about how awful the “other” side is. And it’s working so well it could lead us right to Civil War 2.0.

The fact is, both the Left and the Right are to blame, threatening those who don’t have the same worldview. What it’s essential for us to keep in mind is that these are the opinions of the extremes of both sides. We in America have had conservative and liberal points of view along with everything in between for decades without the constant, looming threat of violence.

Here are some examples.

For example, Wendy Wolfe Herd, CEO of the dating app Bumble and a member of Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30, was the victim of a cyber attack launched by a “neo-Nazi organization” that posted Herd’s personal details online, as well as the contact information of her staff.

The cyber attack occurred a couple of weeks after the Charlottesville rally last August, in which a man was with charged with a federal hate crime after driving into the crowd of counter-protesters. Herd released a statement saying that her company was “joining forces to ban all forms of hate from Bumble including racism, hate speech, and bigotry.” She believes this is why she and her employees were targeted. Herd now travels with bodyguards.

At the same time, the Far Left is also stirring the pot and threatening dissenters with violence. Some guy named Hamilton Nolan recently posted an article on the “progressive” website Splinter that seemed to have referenced the politically-motivated bombings that took place during Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford’s administrations in response to the Vietnam War.  While some of his points about the warmongers in Congress are legitimate, he goes way, wayyyy off into the ether in his calls to action. Here are some excerpts from his essay, entitled “This Is Just the Beginning.”

This is all going to get more extreme. And it should. We are living in extreme times. The harm that is being done to all of us by the people in the American government is extreme.

… I do not believe that Trump administration officials should be able to live their lives in peace and affluence while they inflict serious harms on large portions of the American population. Not being able to go to restaurants and attend parties and be celebrated is just the minimum baseline here. These people, who are pushing America merrily down the road to fascism and white nationalism, are delusional if they do not think that the backlash is going to get much worse.

…Read a fucking history book. Read a recent history book. The U.S. had thousands of domestic bombings per year in the early 1970s. This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive. The people out of power have only just begun to flex their dissatisfaction. The day will come, sooner that you all think, when Trump administration officials will look back fondly on the time when all they had to worry about was getting hollered at at a Mexican restaurant. When you aggressively fuck with people’s lives, you should not be surprised when they decide to fuck with yours. (source)

Who even is this guy and why does he have such a platform? Literally, nobody I know has ever heard of him before this essay that is getting so much press, although apparently, he used to work for Gawker. He even got to post a follow-up essay with some of the familiar hatred from people who were outraged by his first essay. (And while I wholeheartedly disagree with Nolan, I can completely relate to the hate mail – the internet breeds some craziness and people think nothing of threatening your life and the lives of your loved ones.)

There was also an NYU professor who was proclaimed a “hero” by AntiFa for doxxing employees of ICE. I don’t like ICE anymore than these folks but posting their personal information and addresses online is nothing but a call for violence.

And after the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia asked Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, some guy from West Virginia vandalized the place, allegedly throwing animal poop at the establishment.

Politicians are getting in on the hate-mongering too.

Politicians are getting media attention from the hullabaloo as well.

Most notably, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who I swear is only famous for her sh*t-disturbing ways, has said that anyone who disagrees with her should be treated horribly, particularly those who work for the current administration.

If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” (source)

Threats against Republican politicians have skyrocketed, leading to speculation that this is the impetusbehind quite a number of sudden early retirements.

I’m not really a fan of Democrat OR Republican politics, but the pattern here seems to lean toward the threatening behavior coming from the Left side of the aisle. If anyone has some credible links about Republican members of Congress recently making calls for incivility against the Democrats, please post them in the comments and I’ll update the article.

And big surprise, the media is pushing this narrative.

It’s essential to note that the threats and anger have been going on for quite some time now. But it seems like there is a whole lot more of it because it’s the topic du jour in the mainstream of late. Just like Selco warned us in his recent article, the media has an agenda and they are playing us like a violin. If there is a Civil War, you can be sure that those in the MSM are every bit as responsible for stirring up the hatred and division as the people who hacked Herd’s website and the dude who wrote the essay I cited.

Look how neatly they are making us hate and fear one another.

I guess my question is, are you going to let yourself be manipulated?

  • Are the other parents of kids on your son’s baseball team actually the enemy because they voted for someone different, or are they just the folks who select the really good, name-brand popsicles when it’s their turn to bring the treats?

  • Is your next door neighbor who had the campaign sign for the candidate you detested in her front yard during the last presidential race actually the antiChrist or is she just the one with the best tomatoes on the block?

  • What about the guy at the dog park with the two sweet-natured Golden Retrievers? Did you think he was pretty cool before you saw the unfortunate bumper sticker on his SUV?

If we are directly threatened, we absolutely must defend ourselves. It’s our natural human right to do so. But politics? Bumper stickers? Don’t be a snowflake. You don’t have to engage in the hate.

We need to look at the individual people and we need to ignore the media that tells us they’re the enemy. Maybe they want to drum up a war, but we can be the majority who stops it. We can refuse to participate and take the bait.

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Euro Spikes After EU Leaders Agree “Vaguely Worded” Deal On Migrants

Just hours after Day 1 of the EU Summit ended in acrimony with Italian threats of veto and a cancelled press conference, AP reports that European Union leaders got a breakthrough deal on how to deal with migration after all-night talks to overcome Italian demands for more help.

The immediate reaction was a kneejerk higher in EURUSD…

Details are very sparse but EU Council President Donald Tusk tweeted that the leaders have “agreed conclusions including migration”

EU diplomats said that the leaders finally found agreement on a vaguely worded concept centering on reception centers to deal with migrants and asylum seekers in EU nations which would volunteer to have them.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been under intense pressure to find a breakthrough to stave off a government crisis at home, and said after the deal was announced that “the EU will face migration presssure for along time” and confirmed that the EU Council “has agreed a coherent approach on immigration.”

Quite frankly we are shocked and cannot wait to hear what Austria and Italy and Hungary got in return for acquiescence… or whether this ‘deal’ is really no deal at all.

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Massive Data Leak Could Affect 300 Million Americans

A new data leak could affect almost every single American, perhaps more than Equifax’s massive 2017 data breach of nearly 150 million individuals.

Earlier this month, the renowned security researcher Vinny Troia announced that he discovered an unsecured database containing around 340 million individual records. According to Troia, the database included profiles of a few hundred million Americans belonging to Exactis, a Florida-based marketing and data-aggregation firm.

Troia told Wired that the catch contains about two terabytes of data that includes personal information of almost every American adult, along with millions of businesses.

While the database does not include credit-card numbers or Social Security information, it does include phone numbers, home addresses, email addresses and personal characteristics for every name, such as interests and personal habits, plus the number, age, and gender of the person’s children. Other types of information found: religion, whether a person smokes, kind of pet. Even though the millions of individual profiles did not include financial information, it was more than enough data to help scammers steal identities.

“It seems like this is a database with pretty much every US citizen in it,” said Troia, who is the founder of his own New York-based cyber security company, Night Lion Security.

Troia searched the database for about 40 or 50 names and “everybody he searched for came up. I searched for celebrities; I searched for people I know.”

WIRED then asked him to search for ten people, which he only found six of them. “I don’t know where the data is coming from, but it’s one of the most comprehensive collections I’ve ever seen,” he stated.

Troia explained to Wired that he was able to access the database on the internet, and he warned that plenty of other people could have as well. Once the unsecured database was discovered, he contacted Exactis and the FBI about the vulnerability, and since, the database has disappeared from the public domain.

If Troia’s numbers are remotely accurate, this leak could be one of the most significant data security breaches in several years, surpassing last year’s Equifax breach and the Facebook debacle with Cambridge Analytica.

On the ‘About Us’ section on Exactis’ website, the company said it managed 3.5 billion consumer, business, and digital records including “demographic, geographic, firmographic, lifestyle, interests, CPG, automotive, and behavioral data.”

“When I looked myself up, I found the name of my mortgage lender, the value class of my home and whether or not I had certain kind of credit card,” Troia added.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, told Wired that corporations are routinely data mining Americans, which the leak could be used to impersonate others.

“If you have a profile on someone, that person should be able to see their profile and limit its use,” Rotenberg said.

“It’s one thing to subscribe to a magazine. It’s another for a single company to have such a detailed profile of your entire life.”

Exactis refused to speak with Wired or any other media outlets, and it is still unclear whether hackers made off with the terabytes of raw data of almost every single American.

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“WWSD?”

Submitted by Nick Colas via DataTrekResearch.com,

“You’re making this harder than it has to be.” 

In my time at SAC, I rarely heard Steve Cohen give his traders advice about their portfolios, but that’s exactly what he told one PM who was having a particularly hard day. It was easy enough to see what had gone wrong. Too much capital in all the wrong places, not enough intraday hedging. All textbook stuff, even if this particular (very experienced) trader couldn’t see it through his stress.

Over the years I have come to appreciate the real meaning of Steve’s advice. He wasn’t saying that outperforming the market is easy. Rather, his message was to structure your process so you don’t make it even harder. His on-staff psychologist, Ari Kiev, drilled that into us every week during mandatory sessions to discuss our trading. Keep things simple. Routinize your entire process, from data collection to risk management. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I always return to Steve’s dictum on volatile days like today because it helps cut through the noise and frame authentic market narratives.

Three examples, all based on “Not making things harder than they have to be”:

#1. Be very careful about extrapolating moves that happen at the end of a quarter. Today’s outsized sector losers were Technology and Financials, the performance bookends of the last 3 months.

  • Financials are so bad (-3.1% three month returns) than even long suffering Consumer Staples (-1.4% over the same period) look good in comparison.
  • Tech (+7.0% three month returns) is fully half the S&P’s 3.6% return for the last 90 days.

The underperformance of small caps today (Russell -1.6%, S&P -0.86%) fits the same pattern. This asset class is +8.7%/+9.5% (Russell/S&P Small Caps) over the last 90 days, more than double the return of US large caps.

One last point about today’s wonky action: the open was fine. We’ve run enough analysis over the years to believe the old maxim that “Retail opens the market and institutions close it” still applies. Today’s selloff wasn’t driven by an adverse event (retail is the lightning rod for those). Rather, it felt like institutions reweighting winners and losers.

#2. Price leads fundamentals, not the other way around. The painful case study here: Financials and the shape of the yield curve. Ask any good bank analyst and they will caution that the difference between short term and long term rates is only one factor in the sector’s fundamentals. Credit quality, loan growth, and regulatory issues matter too.

But the ever-flattening Treasury yield curve (32 bp today, a new +10 year low) is hurting Financials for a macro – not micro – reason: it signals the real possibility of a recession in the next 12-24 months. That, along with some quarter end pressure, pushed the S&P Regional Bank Index lower by 1.9%. Even large cap Financials were “better” than that in today’s session, down 1.2%.

#3. Sell when you can, not when you have to. We’ve been picking up on an “Everything old is new again” market narrative in recent weeks that bears a mention, especially because we have not raised it with you before.

The issue is market liquidity, and May’s Italian bond market rout put it back on traders’ radar screens. Elections there spooked sovereign debt investors, but since the ECB wasn’t in the market at the time real “natural” bids were few and far between. Two-year yields went from 27 basis points to 2.4% in 3 days. That simply should never happen.

The growing fear now: US equity market structure has changed dramatically in the last decade and remains untested in stress situations that last more than a few days. It has certainly not lived through a recession, for example. Layer on what the Treasury yield curve is saying on that point, and we understand why equity market structure concerns are bubbling up to the surface in earnest for the first time since the “Flash Boys” book came out.

The bottom line from all this: simple thoughts don’t always drive stock prices, but respecting their power is basic intellectual risk management.Today’s market action means little, but against the backdrop of rising recession fears it illuminates an important macro worry. That skittishness then becomes fertile ground for other concerns, like the proverbial butterfly of Italian bond markets causing a hurricane in US equities. Yes, we still believe US equities will produce 5-8% returns this year. But we respect the simplest arguments against that optimism.

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“This Has Become An Issue” – Beijing Denies US Request For Talks Over Airline Dispute

President Trump’s trade spat with China isn’t the only source of tension between the world’s two largest economies. Since even before Trump’s inauguration, the US’s relationship with Taiwan has become an increasingly sensitive issue in Beijing – particularly after Trump publicly mused about abandoning the US’s long-standing “One China” policy. Beijing has retaliated by holding a massive live-fire exercise in the Strait of Taiwan (showing off China’s expanding military might). And in what looks like a test of corporate allegiance, Beijing has also instigated a mini-diplomatic crisis over its demands that foreign airlines refer to Taiwan on their websites as “Taiwan, China” – a request the White House has dismissed as “Orwellian nonsense.”

China

But Beijing isn’t about to let this go: Already, Air Canada, Lufthansa, British Airways and other foreign airlines have acquiesced to China’s demands, which also included making changes to references for Hong Kong and Macau. But Delta, United and other US carriers have requested an extension beyond Beijing’s May 25 deadline for the changes to be instated. Their final deadline is July 25.

China

And in a sign that the request has metastasized into a fully fledged policy dispute, China has reportedly rejected the US State Department’s request for talks on the matter, Reuters reported.

In late May, the U.S. State Department presented China’s Foreign Ministry with a diplomatic note requesting consultations on the matter, but the ministry has since refused it, two sources briefed on the situation told Reuters.

“This has definitely become a foreign policy issue,” one of the sources said on condition of anonymity, noting that the U.S. government did not view it as a technical matter for bilateral aviation cooperation.

The spat had become “another grain of sand in the wound” amid escalating trade tensions, a second source said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese imports to punish Beijing for intellectual property abuses.

While the State Department weighs its next move, US airlines are now caught in a difficult position. Beijing could deny them access to lucrative routes within China by revoking their operating permits – but making the requested changes without the White House’s blessing could put them at odds with the US government. The CEO of Delta has said that the airline is working with the US government on the issue, but nobody has given any indication about where the talks are heading.

Delta’s chief executive, Ed Bastian, said at a forum in Washington on Wednesday that the airline was working with the U.S. government but would not say whether it would comply.

“We’re working with the U.S. authorities on the topic and we’ll stay close to our U.S. government,” Bastian said, calling it a “good plan of action.”

The chief executive of United Airlines, Oscar Munoz, told Reuters in Washington on June 7 that the website issue was a “government-to-government diplomatic issue and again we’ll see what comes out of that and we’ll react accordingly.”

Asked if he would defer to the White House, Munoz said that “I fly to both places and I am deferential to our customers, and again this is not something I am going to solve”.

American Airlines said in early June that it had not made changes on its website, and that it was following the direction of the U.S. government.

While US airlines insist the issue should be ironed out “between governments”, by refusing to engage, China could be trying to make an important point: US companies can be bent to Beijing’s will if their profits are threatened.

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More Countries Start Exploring Alternatives To The US World Order

Authored by Federico via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There are two countries that more than others show how the Western world order is undergoing a profound change. Japan and Turkey occupy two distinct and diverse geographical areas, yet they share many of the same strategic choices about their future. Their geopolitical trajectory is increasingly drifting away from Washington and moving closer to China, Russia, India and Iran.

Both Japan and Turkey are two important states in the US’s strategy for controlling the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. Both countries have economies that are competitive in comparison to their neighbors, and both often conveniently find themselves allied to countries within Washington’s orbit. Japan has a good relationship with South Korea, and Turkey (until a few years ago) had a privileged relationship with Saudi Arabia and Israel. Keeping in mind that the US aims to prolong and consolidate its regional dominance, Washington has always tried to have excellent relations with these two countries as a way of ensuring its constant presence in regional affairs.

Japan and Turkey have perfectly fulfilled America’s role for them in military, financial and economic terms. Ankara, for example, is a key part of NATO and offers military bases like the Incirlik Air Base, allowing for US military influence in the Middle East. Qatar, for example, is a satellite of Turkey, thanks to the shared religious bonds of the Muslim Brotherhood. Not by coincidence, one of the most important US air bases is located in Qatar, helping further lock in America’s regional presence. The goal, of course, is geopolitical, highlighting America’s ongoing confrontation with Iran, Russia and China. The United States tends to control certain geographical areas because of its military and economic power that is expressed directly or indirectly through compliant allies like Turkey and Japan.

Japan, for example, appears to be in a historically favorable position to be able counter the Sino-Russian influence in the Pacific. Japan, a key ally of the United States, has been subject to Washington’s military diktats ever since the conclusion of the Second World War, always being viewed as a chain of islands ideal for containing the military expansion of Russia and China.

Originally, in the minds of policy makers like Brzezinski, countries like Japan and Turkey held vital importance because of the dual role they played. They offered not only an obvious contrast to China and Iran respectively but also to Russia, given their privileged strategic position. In a different way, and with different degrees of success, Turkey and Japan have had some acute differences with Iran, Russia and China over the last few decades. Russia and Japan have never signed a peace treaty since the end of the Second World War. Japan and China have for years had very heated differences over the events of the Second World War as well as over their rivalry in the Pacific. In the Middle East, Russia and Turkey almost came to blows only a few years ago; and on the Crimean affair, Ankara took an anti-Moscow stance. Most importantly, Turkey is one of the advocates of the war against Syria, which is a great ally of Iran.

Trump’s victory, the decline of the unipolar world order, and a series of sensible strategic choices by Iran, Russia and China, have served to usher in a process of transformation in these two regions. The manner in which this transformation is occurring differs significantly. In the Middle East, the forces supporting Damascus are ending the conflict and moving Turkey away from the aggressor camp. Ankara has chosen to keep one foot in each camp, and even though Moscow is perfectly aware of this, it is still better than Turkey being one step away from declaring war with Russia. In the same way, the failed coup in Turkey, which Ankara attributes to Gulen and the CIA (mistakenly, in my view, about which I wrote at the time), has had as an immediate effect of moving Tehran and Ankara closer together, in spite of their differences over the situation in Syria and Iraq. Other factors that have served to bring Turkey closer to the Sino-Russo-Iranian axis concern the rift within the Gulf Cooperation Council, with the commercial and industrial blockade against Qatar, an ally of Turkey, conducted by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and enjoying Trump’s blessing.

To this extent we can also add the understanding between Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey on the Kurds and the territorial integrity of Syria. Contrary to what Erdogan would have expected, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are Washington’s tool for illegally occupying Syria and influencing events in the country. And, lastly, another consideration to take into account is the increasingly strong tensions between European Union countries and Turkey, especially between Berlin and Ankara, with Erdogan and Merkel increasingly driven apart by humanitarian and strategic positions occasioned by the migrant crisis since 2014.

Even though Japan enjoys relatively good relations with Washington, trade tariffs have given Abe further incentive to pursue a much more independent policy than in the past. Trump’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirmed the fears of Abe and the Japanese establishment. Tokyo seems to have fully embraced multi-stakeholder relations and is assigning strong economic priority to this end. The creation of an economic zone between ASEAN, Japan and South Korea has been suggested as a replacement of the TPP. There has even been an attempt by Japan to diversify important sources of energy (80% currently comes from the Middle East), with Russia being an easily accessible source.

The Kuril Islands dispute with Russia will first need to be resolved. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that economic and energy relations could be established while setting aside highly divisive matters for now. Another important aspect in Japan’s strategic opening concerns participation in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which would greatly enhance the synergies between the two countries.

What can clearly be seen in analyzing Turkey and Japan’s situation is that they find themselves in very different situations, but both have a wide range of options at their disposal. These two countries are in a transitional phase that cannot last forever. Both are currently enjoying the benefits of a fruitful dialogue with both contending groups, the US and Europe on the one hand, and Russia, China and Iran on the other. The strategy of Abe and Erdogan seems to be aimed at avoiding to have to choose in the future what side to be on.

For Turkey, an important member of NATO, it is almost impossible to leave the NATO, given the country’s strategic importance. Having said that, Turkey’s pursuit of third-party weapon systems like the Russian S-400 already seems to be setting a course for a showdown with Washington.

Japan still seems more hesitant in diversifying its relations than Turkey, preferring to continue a fruitful dialogue with Washington and its main allies in the region. One element that could severely curb Abe’s support for Trump concerns the negotiations with North Korea. Abe has no reason to cheer at the prospect of a union of the two Koreas. Japan would find itself with a strong competitor in the region that would inevitably end up integrating completely with China, strengthening the triad of China, Russia and Korea to the detriment of Japan, which would be left isolated from the continental block.

This change is already happening in the Middle East, with Turkey, Iran and Russia in Astana trying to pacify Syria without the involvement of the United States. It would represent a major loss of US influence in the region were Tokyo to begin an important trade cooperation with ASEAN, an energetic one with Russia, and participate in an infrastructure project like the BRI with Beijing.

These processes require significant changes that will not happen overnight. An economic indicator that suggests Japan and Turkey could be moving away from the US dollar system is the entering into bilateral agreements that are not denominated in the dollars. This is precisely what Turkey is doing with Iran, as reported by Press TV. A general moving away from a dependence on the US dollar as the world reserve currency is explained by the Strategic Culture Foundation:

“The US Treasury Department report for April published on June 15 revealed that Russia sold $47.4 billion out of the $96.1 it had held in Treasury bonds (T-bonds). In March, Moscow cut its Treasury holdings by $1.6 billion. In February, Russia reduced its bond portfolio by $9.3 billion. Other holders did it too. Japan sold off about $12 billion, China liquidated roughly $7 billion. Ireland ditched over $17 billion.”

Moscow, Beijing and Teheran will have to offer to Japan and Turkey peace, development and mutual gain in order to accelerate the replacement of the United States as a central player in the international relations of these two countries. It will not be easy, given the nature of Abe and Erdogan, but Xi Jinping and Putin have shown themselves to be masters of cleverly combining the commercial, economic, military and diplomatic skills of China, Russia and Iran.

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Feds Dismantle “Occupy ICE” Blockade After Playing “Mind Games” Involving Metallica And An Eagle Mask

Federal officers wearing tactical gear dismantled a makeshift tent camp in Portland on Thursday which was blocking the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters during a second week of protests over President Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration enforcement policy. 

Protest coordinator Lillith Sinclair told local news station KGW8 that Homeland Security officers “have been playing mind games” for several days – placing cardboard cutouts of officers in the ICE building to make it appear as though their presence was larger, blaring Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” to keep protesters awake, while one officer walked around the encampment with an eagle mask on his head.

“At approximately 5:30 a.m. today, federal law enforcement officers initiated a law enforcement action to reopen the federal facility at 4310 SW Macadam Avenue in Portland,” Federal Protective Service spokesman Robert Sperling said in a statement.

At least nine protesters affiliated with the group “Abolish I.C.E PDX” were arrested, however authorities took no action against those who set up tents along the side of the building outside of ICE property. “We don’t want to impede their freedom of speech,” said Sperling. 

On June 20, Occupy I.C.E PDX issued a notice “calling on all of our comrades across the nation” to occupy local ICE buildings. 

Following the arrests, ICE protesters told KGW reporter Tim Gordon that “more protesters are on the way.” 

Perhaps if only for the musical stylings of Metallica? 

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Doug Casey On Trump’s Space Force

Authored by Justin Spittler via CaseyResearch.com,

Last Monday, Donald Trump announced that he’s establishing a new, sixth branch of the military known as the “Space Force.”

It sounds like a joke. But Trump’s dead serious about this. Here’s what he said:

Our destiny beyond the Earth is not only a matter of national identity, but a matter of national security…

When it comes to defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space.

It’s one of the strangest stories I’ve ever come across. So, I called up Doug Casey as soon as I heard it, to get his take…

Justin: Doug, what do you think about the creation of a Space Force?

Doug: I thought there was an understanding amongst governments that they weren’t going to militarize space, as much as there’s an understanding that Antarctica won’t be militarized. Nice ideas. Ideally you want the smallest militaries possible, in the fewest places possible – instead of large militaries absolutely everywhere. In fact, my ideal would be to limit the size of the military to the head of state and his cabinet, and their area of operations to an octagon, or a small arena someplace.

But that’s unrealistic. Weak old men prefer to have foolish young men fight for them, at taxpayer expense.

That said, anything that can be militarized will be militarized in today’s world. So an American Space Force was inevitable. And there’s no point in kvetching about the inevitable. But it takes risks and expenses up to the next level.

Once space is militarized, the Space Force could – is intended to – destroy any or all of the thousands of satellites in space for communications, science, and all sorts of worthwhile things. Causing trillions of dollars of direct and indirect damage. But that’s far from the only thing that Space Force would do. Like any military organization, the purpose is to kill people and destroy property.

This news reminds me of the conversation we had a few weeks ago about the so-called “Rod from God.” That, again, is basically a tungsten rod, a foot in diameter and 20 feet long, that can be dropped from orbit. It would use only kinetic energy, so there’s no radioactive fallout. But it would be ultra-accurate, ultra-fast, ultra-stealthy, and as devastating as a small nuclear explosion.

Ever since the days of the cavemen, warriors have striven to control the high ground—and space is the ultimate high ground.

So this is ramping up the arms race in a big way. And I don’t see how you can stop it. Governments get in wars with each other for a living; it’s their raison d’etre. It’s been that way for thousands of years. No different from Game of Thrones, to use an analogy that’s more meaningful to the average sports fan.

So, the fact that they said they wouldn’t militarize space long ago meant nothing. It sounded good because nobody was in a position to do it. The cat’s out of the bag now.

Justin: How might other countries respond to this? Do you think they’ll announce plans for their own Space Forces?

Doug: Unquestionably – if they can get hold of the technology. You’ve got to look at who’s space-capable. The Russians are very space-capable. Now that the US has acted, they’re almost forced to do it as a simple matter of self-defense. The Chinese are also space-capable. So, they’ll do it as well. The Indians are becoming space-capable. And, of course, the Europeans. Soon we’re going to have two, three, many different forces in space.

It reminds me of the excellent Stanley Kubrick movie Doctor Strangelove, which is totally brilliant and one of my top ten favorites. It’s about the start of World War III.

You may recall that in the early ’60s, when it’s set, there was said to be a “missile gap” between the Soviets and the Americans. In the War Room, the Americans are discussing a gigantic megabomb the Russians have set off, and that there’s no way to survive but to hide in mine shafts. One general reflexively says, based on nothing, “Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!” So the Americans shift their efforts from building nuclear missiles, which are now worthless, to digging mineshafts—in order to ensure the survival of high government officials.

This is just the way these things happen. Somebody does A and somebody else has to do B to counter A. Then somebody else does C to counter B.

It’s part of the human condition. One group of chimpanzees around the watering hole discover that they can use sticks to brain their opponents. Then, chimpanzees on the other side of the watering hole figure how to put a rock at the end of the stick to make it more effective. Another group, watching them, decides sharpening the rock will give them a further edge. It becomes a question of who will strike first, while they’ve still got the edge.

Whenever we’re talking about governments and their militaries, the Golden Rule is “Do unto others—but do it first!”

That’s exactly what’s going to happen in space, now that Donald has decided to act as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, in a vain hope to MAGA. The situation will only escalate, the way the nuclear arms race did. Fortunately, we seem to have dodged that bullet… maybe. This race could be much more deadly.

But, as I said, it’s completely inevitable. At least until we change the basic human psyche, and clear it of its numerous aberrations. Or perhaps purge humanity of psychopaths, narcissists, and criminals. Or defang the institution of government, which naturally attracts those types. You have to remember that history is mainly a catalog of wars between governments.

So, there’s nothing to be done about this. Even if Trump doesn’t create a Space Force first, because the US Government is already bankrupt, the Chinese, Russians, Indians, or Europeans will do it. There’s no way out.

Justin: I can’t imagine that a Space Force will come cheap, either.

Doug: Of course not. This will evolve into another bloated military bureaucracy, that’s for sure. The Space Force is going take up lots more office space, full of cubicle dwellers. They’re going to hire scientists and engineers that would otherwise be creating useful things, not destructive weapons. The Space Force generals will lobby against the other five services, and the 17 or so Praetorian Agencies like the FBI and the CIA, for hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of new resources. This won’t be good from an economic point of view.

Frankly, I’m not sure the government’s even equipped to handle this. After all, it’s not like they have much in the way of launch facilities anymore. They’re no longer in a position to launch—they had to subcontract to the Russians not long ago.

American capability has largely been passed over to the private sector—which is a good thing. NASA, which is supposedly a civilian agency anyway, is not what it used to be in the ’60s. It’s just another bureaucracy—it’s like the Post Office with rockets and telescopes. So, I imagine that they’re going to have to outsource a lot of this to the two US space exploration companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin—who will then become as corrupt and cost-plus as any other military contractor.

I’m very concerned by Trump’s wanting to spend more money on the military—which already almost equals that of all the world’s other militaries combined—when he should be cutting military spending by 50% to 90%. It’s very provocative. And will help bankrupt the US.

But it frankly won’t matter how much money Trump spends on any of this. That’s because the Chinese economy is going to be three times bigger than the US economy in 20 years. Wars are won or lost based on economic strength.

How do you fight an adversary that’s triple your size? You can’t, unless you’re writing a fairy tale. Or, at least, you’re an idiot to try. It would be very much like the Japanese trying to compete against the US in WW2. Not likely a winning proposition.

Recognize I’m not being defeatist in saying these things. The US could be fine 20 years from now—if it does the right things. But it’s not imitating itself from 100 years ago. Or Singapore today. It’s imitating Argentina under Perón and the Kirchners.

Justin: What might the introduction of a Space Force mean for international cooperation in space? Will the International Space Station and other joint efforts like this fall apart?

Doug: That’s a problem, isn’t it? Countries will probably stop cooperating on projects like the International Space Station once they start to view each other as military adversaries in space.

It’s not like you’d expect the Americans and the Chinese to do joint military exercises together today, or even scientific cooperation. The Americans and the Russians cooperated in space a few years ago. But once you militarize space, the odds are about as good as their doing joint military operations together in the Ukraine. They’re antagonists. And that atmosphere will transfer itself to space when we have Space Forces.

It’s not a good trend. It’s not going to win the US any friends, or stem its decline.

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