History was made Sunday when Trump became the first US president in history to step onto North Korean soil; however, on the sidelines of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un some serious jostling among the press corps present resulted in an “all out brawl” involving the new White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.
Trump and Kim had reportedly been talking privately at the time in a meeting room in the demilitarized zone complex. As American and North Korean reporters then hustled in to get the best view of the summit, that’s when the chaos unfolded, involving the US press secretary scuffling with North Korean officials, part of which was captured by a local Korean news crew:
According to CNN, Grisham was “bruised” in the scuffle, the details of which were reported as follows:
The new White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, got into a brawl with North Korean officials on Sunday outside a meeting room where US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were talking privately in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea on Sunday.
CNN reported citing a source at the scene saying, Grisham got in “an all-out brawl” with North Korean officials.
Grisham was bruised a bit in the scuffle, the source added.
Tensions among the press pull were on full display prior to this when Trump and Kim first greeted each other along the DMZ.
As various reporters scrambled to get close, secret service personnel and other officials forcefully pushed some of the journalists back.
Wow the Press are some kind of people “vultures” when it comes at special events! Here is the White House press secretary pushing and pulling every camera and video crew out of the way, and security of Kim Jong Un pushing these same people also away. #DMZ#NorthKorea#SouthKoreapic.twitter.com/VduMEDakyE
During the melee involving Grisham, reporters had been attempting to enter the ‘Freedom House’ on the southern side of Panmunjom where the Trump-Kim meeting was in progress.
Upon being prevented entry by what were reported to be North Korean guards, Grisham can be seen pushing her way past the guards with the press corps in tow.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RKJOTC Tyler Durden
On Thursday and Friday, the markets mustered a “Pre-G20 rally” in anticipation of a positive outcome from the meeting between President Trump and Xi. I will discuss the outcome of this meeting in just a moment.
The good news is that June was one of the best performing months for the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the past 80-years.
That certainly was an impressive rally if you bought into the markets on June 1st.
Unfortunately, what the headlines don’t tell you is that the “strongest June rally in the last 80 years” failed to recover the losses from one of the worst May months on record as well.
In other words, most investors simply recovered previous losses.
However, as noted, the rally was something we had expected and discussed repeatedly in this weekly missive.
“In the very short-term, the markets are oversold on many different measures. This is an ideal setup for a reflexive rally back to overhead resistance.”
The question now is “how much more rally is there to go?”
“Steve Deppe also made an important observation Twitter that when the S&P 500 has gained at least 2% in a week and finished at a new weekly high — the case on Friday — the S&P was lower six weeks later 70% of the time.”
Much like an engine, markets operate on “fuel.” In other words, when there is a lot of “pent up” demand for equities, prices rise as demand is filled, and buyers are willing to pay higher prices to “get in.” The opposite is also true.
Also, prices are also confined by long-term moving averages. These moving averages, act like gravity, so when prices deviate by more than 5% from the long-term averages, reversions tend to occur.
As shown in the chart below, the market is currently very overbought, little pent-up demand, and is more than 6% above its 200-dma.
““From a portfolio management standpoint, the reality is that markets are very extended currently and a decline over the next couple of months is highly likely. While it is quite likely the year will end on a positive, particularly after last year’s loss, taking some profits now, rebalancing risks, and using the coming correction to add exposure as needed will yield a better result than chasing markets now.”
Since May:
The economic backdrop has weakened materially.
Earnings expectations continue to fall. .
While asset prices are near record highs, corporate profits are the same level as in 2014.
The Fed has NOT cut rates yet and is still reducing their balance sheet.
Global economic growth continues to weaken.
Existing tariffs are continuing to work their way through the system
Recession risks have risen markedly in recent months.
In other words, the supportive backdrop for equity investors is hinged on the “hope” of the Fed cutting rates and a resolution to the “trade war.”
Monday is that start of Q3 for money managers so a rally is expected that could well push markets to new highs temporarily.
This is why we remain long equities currently, we are hedged with an overweight position in cash, are maintaining our fixed income exposure and have recently added plays to participate with a “steepening”yield curve.
However, there are bigger risks still at play and worth watching.
Art Of The Deal Versus The Art Of War
This weekend, all eyes are focused on the meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping. If this were a pay-per-view event, it might well rival the “Silva vs. Franklin” matchup at UFC 147 for total viewership. (That’s a joke, it was one of the lowest viewed PPV ever for the UFC)
Kidding aside, there was a tremendous amount of “hope” currently built into the market for a “trade war truce” this weekend. However, as we suggested previously, the most likely outcome was a truce…but no deal.
“Both sides confirmed in separate comments that they did not plan to levy any new tariffs against each other’s products at the present time. For one, Chinese state-run press agency Xinhua described the meeting result as the presidents agreeing ‘to restart trade consultations between their countries on the basis of equality and mutual respect.’
Speaking after the bilateral, Trump said it had gone as well as it could have, and that negotiations with China would continue. ‘We are right back on track,’ the president said.”
While the markets will likely react positively next week to the news that “talks will continue,” the impact of existing tariffs from both the U.S. and China continue to weigh on domestic firms and consumers.
More importantly, while the continued “jawboning” may keep “hope alive” for investors temporarily, these two countries have been “talking” for over a year with little real progress to show for it outside of superficial agreements.
Importantly, we have noted that Trump would eventually “cave” into the pressure from the impact of the “trade war” he started.
This was evident in this weekend’s agreement:
By agreeing to continue talks without imposing more tariffs on China, China gains ample running room to continue to adjust for current tariffs to lessen their impact. More importantly, Trump gave up a major bargaining chip – Huawei.
“One of the things I will allow, however, is — a lot of people are surprised we send and we sell to Huawei a tremendous amount of product that goes into a lot of the various things that they make— and I said that that’s OK, that we will keep selling that product.”
No, a lot of people weren’t surprised, just Trump as there has been pressure applied by U.S. technology firms to lift the ban on Huawei. While he may have appeased his corporate campaign donors for now, Trump gave up one of the more important “pain points” on China’s economy.
This gives China much needed room to run.
Let’s review what we said a couple of months ago as to why their will ultimately be no deal.
“The problem, is that China knows time is short for the President and subsequently there is ‘no rush’ to conclude a ‘trade deal’ for several reasons:
China is playing a very long game. Short-term economic pain can be met with ever-increasing levels of government stimulus. The U.S. has no such mechanism currently, but explains why both Trump and Vice-President Pence have been suggesting the Fed restarts QE and cuts rates by 1%. (Update: Trump says the U.S. should have Mario Draghi at the helm of U.S. monetary policy.)
The pressure is on the Trump Administration to conclude a “deal,” not on China. Trump needs a deal done before the 2020 election cycle AND he needs the markets and economy to be strong. If the markets and economy weaken because of tariffs, which are a tax on domestic consumers and corporate profits, as they did in 2018, the risk off electoral losses rise. China knows this and are willing to ‘wait it out’ to get a better deal.
As I have stated before, China is not going to jeopardize its 50 to 100-year economic growth plan on a current President who will be out of office within the next 5-years at most. It is unlikely, the next President will take the same hard line approach on China that President Trump has, so agreeing to something that is unlikely to be supported in the future is unlikely. It is also why many parts of the trade deal already negotiated don’t take effect until after Trump is out of office when those agreements are unlikely to be enforced.
In the meantime, as noted in #3 above, corporate profits continued to come under pressure. As noted previously, corporate profits have declined over the last two quarters and are at the same level as in 2014 with the stock market higher by almost 60%.
But, if you think China is going to acquiesce any time soon to Trump’s demands, you haven’t been paying attention. China has launched a national call in their press to unify support behind China’s refusal to give into Trump’s demands. To wit:
“Lying behind the trade feud is America’s intention to stifle China’s development. The U.S. wants to be a permanent leader in the world, and there is no way for China to avoid the ‘storm’ through compromise.
History proves that compromise only leads to further dilemmas. During previous trade tensions between the U.S. and Japan, Japan made concessions. As a result, its political stability and economic development were adversely affected, with structural reform being suspended and hi-tech companies being severely damaged.
China, with a population of 1.4 billion, is the world’s largest manufacturing base. Industrial upgrading and hi-tech innovation are crucial to China’s economic development. China needs to leave more resources to its descendants by protecting the environment, and reaping the dividends of further opening-up. These are the core interests of China, and it will never give them up.
The only way for a country to win a war is through development, not compromise. To achieve development, China will open its door wider to the world and fight to the end.”
These are Xi Jinping’s mandates, dictated directly from his party, for the meeting with the United States president in Osaka.
The only possible outcome for Trump was exactly what happened. Nothing. Just an agreement to talk more.
“If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him.Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.“
China has been attacking the “rust-belt” states, which are crucial to Trump’s 2020 re-election, states with specifically targeted tariffs. As noted by MarketWatch:
“China has lashed back with tariffs on $110 billion in American goods, focusing on agricultural products in a direct and painful shot at Trump supporters in the U.S. farm belt.”
While Trump is operating from a view that was a ghost-written, former best-seller, in the U.S. popular press, Xi is operating from a centuries-old blueprint for victory in battle.
China clearly won this round, and the pressure is now squarely on Trump to get a deal done before the 2020 election.
That isn’t likely going to happen.
Warning Signs
While markets remain solely focused on the outcome of the G-20 meeting and expectations the Fed will cut rates at the July meeting (which is not assured by any means) warning signs of potential risk continue to mount.
One of the more important indicators we have discussed previously is the reversal of yield curve inversions. My colleague Albert Edwards confirmed that analysis this past week:
“However, while the inversion was certainly a memorable event, the question on everyone’s lips is how do risk assets perform once the curve flattens and/or inverts. According to backtests from Goldman, since the mid-1980s, significant stock drawdowns (i.e. market crashes) began only when term slope started steepening after being inverted.
Fast forward to today, when in his latest bearish missive, SocGen’s permabear Albert Edwards picks up where we left off, and in a note titled “the final recession shoe has now fallen”, he notes that while inversion of the US yield curve is seen as a reliable precursor to US recessions, “it has a long and variable lead time”, and instead “a far more immediate and present danger of recession occurs when after inversion, a rapid steepening occurs.”
Sound familiar?
In any case, as we first commented in early 2019, Edwards notes that this subsequent steepening “usually informs investors the cycle is over and it is time to flee for the hills.“
Well, for those who haven’t figured out the punchline yet, rapid curve steepening is now occurring, and as Edwards gleefully concludes, this ‘suggests recession may indeed either be imminent or else it has already arrived.’”
Another concern we have also discussed previously is the issue with margin debt.
While the consolidation of the market over the last 18-months has led to a slight reduction in the amount of outstanding margin debt, there has been very little overall deleveraging of the market.
The chart below analyzes margin debt in the larger context that includes free cash accounts and credit balances in margin accounts. The chart below is based on nominal data, not adjusted for inflation and has retained the NYSE data through November 2017 and switched to the FINRA data moving forward.
It is important to understand that leverage is a “double-edged sword.”
When markets are rising, the leverage adds to the “buying power” of investors lifting asset prices higher. However, it also works in reverse, but more like an explosion rather than a slow burn.
However, as Jesse Felder noted this past week:
“The latest margin debt figures were released last week and they show leveraged investors continue to delever. In fact, margin debt is now falling at an annual rate of 15%, a level of derisking that has always been accompanied by a minimum 20% decline in the S&P 500 over the past half century.
This makes this latest episode of derisking fairly unique. There have only been a couple of other precedents in which stocks rose or were flat year-over-year while margin debt fell at at least a 15% rate: May of 1969 (margin debt down 15%/stocks up 10%) and June of 1973 (margin debt down 18%/stocks flat). January of 2001 (margin debt down 20%/stocks down 1%) also comes very close.”
It is worth noting that those three previous periods on slightly preceded much more meaningful declines.
The 1969 event gave way to a near 40% decline in 1970-1971
1973 preceded the 1974 “black bear” market which eclipsed a 50% decline in total.
Of course, January 2001 was the precursor to the “dot.com” crash which also entailed a 50% decline.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
While the current contraction in margin debt is somewhat unique, it may only be the case temporarily. As shown in the chart below (I have inverted margin debt to the S&P 500) the amount of contraction needed to reverse the leverage in the market will require a similar 50% decline in asset prices as seen previously.
Yes, this time could absolutely be different.
But from a portfolio management perspective, it probably isn’t the best “bet” to make.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZV5dfZ Tyler Durden
ATTOM Data Solutions published its 2Q19 US Home Affordability Report, which reveals median home prices last quarter weren’t affordable for the average American in 74% (353 of 480 counties) of the counties analyzed.
The most unaffordable counties, the reported noted, were in Los Angeles County, California; Cook County (Chicago), Illinois; Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona; San Diego County, California; and Orange County, California.
“Despite falling mortgage rates and rising wages, the cost of owning the typical home remains out of reach or a significant financial stretch for the nation’s average wage earners,” said Todd Teta, chief product office with ATTOM.
House price appreciation outpaced weekly wage growth in 40%, or 192 of the 480 counties, including Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona; Riverside County, California; San Bernardino County (Riverside), California; Tarrant County (Dallas-Fort Worth), Texas; and Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan.
For Americans who feel financially overwhelmed with unaffordable housing, the report does show 26%, or 127 counties examined, had affordable housing in Harris County (Houston), Texas; Wayne County (Detroit), Michigan; Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania; Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), Ohio; and Franklin County (Columbus), Ohio.
ATTOM calculated the affordability of each county by examining the amount of income needed to make monthly house payments (assume a 3% down payment and a 28% maximum “front-end” debt-to-income ratio) — including mortgage, property taxes, and insurance.
We noted in a recent report that most American renters now believe that purchasing a home is “financially out of reach.”
The most significant obstacle preventing renters from buying was “difficulty in saving for down payments and closing costs.”
So rising prices and the inability to save are the problems that have made housing unaffordable in many places across the country.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZX7c3k Tyler Durden
Here is the moral decay of America’s ruling elites boiled down to a single word.
There are many reasons why Imperial Rome declined, but two primary causes that get relatively little attention are moral decay and soaring wealth inequality. The two are of course intimately connected: once the morals of the ruling Elites degrade, what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, too.
I’ve previously covered two other key characteristics of an empire in terminal decline: complacency and intellectual sclerosis, what I have termed a failure of imagination.
Michael Grant described these causes of decline in his excellent account The Fall of the Roman Empire, a short book I have been recommending since 2009:
There was no room at all, in these ways of thinking, for the novel, apocalyptic situation which had now arisen, a situation which needed solutions as radical as itself. (The Status Quo) attitude is a complacent acceptance of things as they are, without a single new idea.
This acceptance was accompanied by greatly excessive optimism about the present and future. Even when the end was only sixty years away, and the Empire was already crumbling fast, Rutilius continued to address the spirit of Rome with the same supreme assurance.
This blind adherence to the ideas of the past ranks high among the principal causes of the downfall of Rome. If you were sufficiently lulled by these traditional fictions, there was no call to take any practical first-aid measures at all.
Glenn Stehle, commenting on a thread in the excellent website peakoilbarrel.com (operated by the estimable Ron Patterson) made a number of excellent points that I am taking the liberty of excerpting: (with thanks to correspondent Paul S.)
The set of values developed by the early Romans called mos maiorum, Peter Turchin explains in War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, was gradually replaced by one of personal greed and pursuit of self-interest.
“Probably the most important value was virtus (virtue), which derived from the word vir (man) and embodied all the qualities of a true man as a member of society,” explains Turchin.
“Virtus included the ability to distinguish between good and evil and to act in ways that promoted good, and especially the common good. Unlike Greeks, Romans did not stress individual prowess, as exhibited by Homeric heroes or Olympic champions. The ideal of hero was one whose courage, wisdom, and self-sacrifice saved his country in time of peril,” Turchin adds.
And as Turchin goes on to explain:
“Unlike the selfish elites of the later periods, the aristocracy of the early Republic did not spare its blood or treasure in the service of the common interest. When 50,000 Romans, a staggering one fifth of Rome’s total manpower, perished in the battle of Cannae, as mentioned previously, the senate lost almost one third of its membership.This suggests that the senatorial aristocracy was more likely to be killed in wars than the average citizen…
The wealthy classes were also the first to volunteer extra taxes when they were needed… A graduated scale was used in which the senators paid the most, followed by the knights, and then other citizens. In addition, officers and centurions (but not common soldiers!) served without pay, saving the state 20 percent of the legion’s payroll…
The richest 1 percent of the Romans during the early Republic was only 10 to 20 times as wealthy as an average Roman citizen.”
Now compare that to the situation in Late Antiquity when
“an average Roman noble of senatorial class had property valued in the neighborhood of 20,000 Roman pounds of gold. There was no ‘middle class’ comparable to the small landholders of the third century B.C.; the huge majority of the population was made up of landless peasants working land that belonged to nobles. These peasants had hardly any property at all, but if we estimate it (very generously) at one tenth of a pound of gold, the wealth differential would be 200,000! Inequality grew both as a result of the rich getting richer (late imperial senators were 100 times wealthier than their Republican predecessors) and those of the middling wealth becoming poor.”
Do you see any similarities with the present-day realities depicted in these charts?
And how many congresspeople served in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan? How many presidential candidates had boots on the ground in combat theaters? The answer is one. Here is the moral decay of America’s ruling elites boiled down to a single word.
A Dutch railway announced that it will pay reparations to survivors and families of Holocaust victims who were transported on Dutch trains to Nazi death camps, according to Deutsche Welle.
The multimillion-dollar proposal to benefit several thousand survivors was unveiled by Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) CEO Roger van Boxtel while speaking at an event in the Utrecht Railway Museum.
Under the proposal, Holocaust survivors are to receive €15,000 ($17,080). They include about 500 Jews, Roma and Sinti survivors who were transported to the extermination camps but survived.
Relatives and widows of those who died can expect to be paid between €5,000 and €7,500.
In a statement, NS said it had reserved “several tens of millions of euros” for the payments. –DW
In January, former Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen supervised a committee established to determine compensation levels, a task he said was difficult to undertake. “An amount of money to compensate for suffering cannot be stated,” he said. Cohen had organized an information and contact service for those who are eligible to receive funds.
The committee said it saw the payments as “a moral gesture by which NS wishes to express the recognition of its share in the individual suffering inflicted by the occupying forces on those involved and their direct surviving relatives.”
The move was prompted by an activist and Holocaust survivor, Salo Muller, whose parents died in the camps. Mr. Muller has campaigned for years for NS to recognize the role played by its transports and the suffering they caused. –NYT
The money will be used to “acknowledge what had happened and the role NS had played,” according to DW.
An estimated 100,000 Dutch Jews — or 70% of the total number of Jewish people living in the Netherlands before World War II — were deported on the trains to Westerbork, in the north of the country. From there the Nazis transported them east across the border into Germany and to the death camps.
With the payments scheme, NS follows similar measures taken in France which made payments in 2014 to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. –DW
In 2011, France’s state railway company SNCF apologized to Holocaust victims after US lawmakers attempted to block it from winning contracts if the firm did not acknowledge its role transporting victims to concentration camps. France set up a $60 million fund in 2014 to compensate victims.
German railroad, not so much
Germany’s national railroad, Deutsche Bahn (DB) railroad, admitted in 2008 that it played a central role in the Nazi’s plans during WWII, earning the rail company the modern equivalent of €445 million ($506 million US). That said, DB has resisted both class action and individual lawsuits for compensation over the years – and hired a New York law firm and PR agency to monitor political developments in the United States which might be later used as the basis for future lawsuits.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XkCGUj Tyler Durden
Ireland-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitsane has apparently vanished, taking as many as 246,000 users’ crypto deposits with it. The news was reported by Forbes on June 27.
Launched in 2016, Dublin-registered Bitsane LP was formerly listed as one of Ripple’s approved exchanges — a January 2018 CNBC article had also pitched the exchange as an option for investors seeking to trade XRP ahead of its listing on major platforms such as Coinbase.
According to Forbes, user withdrawals on Bitsane began faltering in May of this year, with allegedly technical reasons cited as the reason for their temporary disabling. By June 17, both the Bitsane site and its social media accounts had been deleted, with emails to Bitsane accounts bouncing back as undeliverable.
Moreover, neither the exchange’s CEO — Aidas Rupsys — nor its chief technology officer, Dmitry Prudnikov, could be reached by Forbes during the magazine’s investigation into the case. At press time, Prudnikov’s LinkedIn profile appears to have been deleted.
As of May 30 2019, Bitsane counted 246,000 registered users, with a daily traded volume of just over $7 million on March 31, per CoinMarketCap.
User groups on messaging platform Telegram and Facebook reveal users claiming to have typically lost up to $5,000, with Forbes citing an anonymous U.S. resident who says he had $150,000 in XRP and bitcoin (BTC) on the exchange prior to the company’s disappearance.
Forbes further reports on a separate firm, incorporated in the United Kingdom as Bitsane Limited by Maksim Zmitrovich in August 2017, which apparently attempted to purchase the intellectual rights to Bistane’s code and use it as the basis for its own platform, dubbed Azbit.
According to Zmitrovich, the firm has assumed the Bitsane name to fulfil a condition set by Bistane’s developers, yet the desired partnership between the two firms failed to materialize.
In a blog post published earlier this month, Zmitrovich has vehemently denied any substantive link between Azbit and the apparent exit-scam, noting that the Bitsane team has failed to respond to any of his correspondence since April of this year.
While Forbes notes that multiple Bistane users based in the U.S. have reportedly filed complaints with the F.B.I., solutions for those affected by the platform’s disappearance currently remain unclear.
Earlier this month, reports surfaced that Polish crypto exchange Coinroom reportedly shut down its operations and disappeared with customer funds, having notified users they had just one day to withdraw funds before their contracts would be terminated.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FHBFLd Tyler Durden
US Marines are field testing a new laser weapon system designed to blast enemy drones out of the sky, reported The Sun.
Silent, invisible and precise — the new Compact Laser Weapons System (CLaWS) is a directed energy weapon approved by the Pentagon for use by combat personnel.
The CLaWS is a Boeing built directed energy gun that tracks and destroys mortar rounds and drones. The laser is powered by a vehicle’s or vessel’s diesel engine or separate on-board power generation system.
“Getting the Marines trained, and getting the systems ready to deploy took about one year,” said Lt. Col. Ho Lee, a product manager at Program Executive Office Land Systems.
The Pentagon believes directed energy weapons are much more effective and have tremendous costs savings per round than a conventional missile. The Marines could spend tens of thousands of dollars per missile to eliminate a civilian drone, that might cost less than five hundred dollars. Top military brass believes directed energy weapons could cost several dollars per shot.
The laser weapons are being mounted on the new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle.
CLaWS is a fiber laser that uses special optical fibers as a transmission medium. These lasers are known for high beam quality and can handle vibrations from rough movements during transport.
CLaWS is available in 2, 5, and 10-kilowatt packages from Boeing. It’s not clear which version the Marines are testing.
Earlier this year, we mentioned how the Navy is expected to integrate a directed energy weapon system into a guided missile destroyer.
“We are going to burn the boats if you will and move forward with this technology,” Rear Adm. Ron Boxall said during the Booz, Allen, Hamilton, and CSBA Directed Energy Summit 2019.
The HELIOS is between 150 kilowatts per shot to 300 kilowatts, much greater in power than Boeing’s.
The Air Force mentioned earlier this year that it completed a series of ground-tests of a new directed energy laser weapon system intended for fifth-generation jets.
“The successful test is a big step ahead for directed energy systems and protection against adversarial threats,” said Maj. Gen. William Cooley, AFRL commander. “The ability to shoot down missiles with speed of light technology will enable air operation in denied environments. I am proud of the AFRL team advancing our Air Force’s directed energy capability.”
The development and possible deployment of directed energy weapons in multiple services come at a time when tensions between the US and Iran in the Strait of Hormuz almost transpired into war last week. Nevertheless, tensions continue to increase in the South China Sea, where the US uses freedom of navigation to sail its destroyers near China’s militarized islands. On top of all of this, the US has entered into an economic war across the world, increasing tensions on almost every continent.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FJsee3 Tyler Durden
A special report in the Observer newspaper in the UK on 23 June 2019 asked the question: Why is life expectancy faltering? The piece noted that for the first time in 100 years, Britons are dying earlier. The UK now has the worst health trends in Western Europe.
Aside from the figures for the elderly and the deprived, there has also been a worrying change in infant mortality rates. Since 2014, the rate has increased every year: the figure for 2017 is significantly higher than the one in 2014. To explain this increase in infant mortality, certain experts blame it on ‘austerity’, fewer midwives, an overstrained ambulance service, general deterioration of hospitals, greater poverty among pregnant women and cuts that mean there are fewer health visitors for patients in need.
While all these explanations may be valid, according to environmental campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason, there is something the mainstream narrative is avoiding. She says:
“We are being poisoned by weedkiller and other pesticides in our food and weedkiller sprayed indiscriminately on our communities. The media remain silent.”
What follows are edited highlights of the text in which she cites many official sources and reports as well as numerous peer-reviewed studies in support of her arguments. Readers can access the report here.
Toxic history of Monsanto in the UK
Mason begins by offering a brief history of Monsanto in the UK. In 1949, that company set up a chemical factory in Newport, Wales, where it manufactured PCBs until 1977 and a number of other dangerous chemicals. Monsanto was eventually found to be dumping toxic waste in the River Severn, public waterways and sewerage. It then paid a contractor which illegally dumped thousands of tons of cancer-causing chemicals, including PCBs, dioxins and Agent Orange derivatives, at two quarries in Wales – Brofiscin (80,000 tonnes) and Maendy (42,000 tonnes) – between 1965 and 1972.
Monsanto stopped making PCBs in Anniston US in 1971 because of various scandals. However, the British government agreed to ramp up production at the Monsanto plant in Newport. In 2003, when toxic effluent from the quarry started leaking into people’s streams in Grosfaen, just outside Cardiff, the Environment Agency – a government agency concerned with flooding and pollution – was hired to clean up the site in 2005.
Mason notes that the agency repeatedly failed to hold Monsanto accountable for its role in the pollution (a role that Monsanto denied from the outset) and consistently downplayed the dangers of the chemicals themselves.
In a report prepared for the agency and the local authority in 2005 but never made public, the sites contain at least 67 toxic chemicals. Seven PCBs have been identified, along with vinyl chlorides and naphthalene. The unlined quarry is still leaking, the report says:
“Pollution of water has been occurring since the 1970s, the waste and groundwater has been shown to contain significant quantities of poisonous, noxious and polluting material, pollution of… waters will continue to occur.”
The duplicity continues
Apart from these events in Wales, Mason outlines the overall toxic nature of Monsanto in the UK. For instance, she discusses the shockingly high levels of weedkiller in packaged cereals. Samples of four oat-based breakfast cereals marketed for children in the UK were recently sent to the Health Research Institute, Fairfield, Iowa, an accredited laboratory for glyphosate testing. Dr Fagan, the director of the centre, says of the results:
“These results are consistently concerning. The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).”
According to Mason, the European Food Safety Authority and the European Commission colluded with the European Glyphosate Task Force and allowed it to write the re-assessment of glyphosate. She lists key peer-reviewed studies, which the Glyphosate Task Force conveniently omitted from its review, from South America where GM crops are grown. In fact, many papers come from Latin American countries where they grow almost exclusively GM Roundup Ready Crops.
Mason cites one study that references many papers from around the world that confirm glyphosate-based herbicides like Monsanto’s Roundup are damaging to the development of the foetal brain and that repeated exposure is toxic to the adult human brain and may result in alterations in locomotor activity, feelings of anxiety and memory impairment.
Another study notes neurotransmitter changes in rat brain regions following glyphosate exposure. The highlights from that study indicate that glyphosate oral exposure caused neurotoxicity in rats; that brain regions were susceptible to changes in CNS monoamine levels; that glyphosate reduced 5-HT, DA, NE levels in a brain regional- and dose-related manner; and that glyphosate altered the serotoninergic, dopaminergic and noradrenergic systems.
Little wonder, Mason concludes, that we see various degenerative conditions on the rise. She turns her attention to children, the most vulnerable section of the population, and refers to the UN expert on toxicity Baskut Tuncak. He wrote a scathing piece in the Guardian on 06/11/2017 on the effects of agrotoxins on children’s health:
“Our children are growing up exposed to a toxic cocktail of weedkillers, insecticides, and fungicides. It’s on their food and in their water, and it’s even doused over their parks and playgrounds. Many governments insist that our standards of protection from these pesticides are strong enough. But as a scientist and a lawyer who specialises in chemicals and their potential impact on people’s fundamental rights, I beg to differ. Last month it was revealed that in recommending that glyphosate – the world’s most widely-used pesticide – was safe, the EU’s food safety watchdog copied and pasted pages of a report directly from Monsanto, the pesticie’s manufacturer. Revelations like these are simply shocking.
“… Exposure in pregnancy and childhood is linked to birth defects, diabetes, and cancer. Because a child’s developing body is more sensitive to exposure than adults and takes in more of everything – relative to their size, children eat, breathe, and drink much more than adults – they are particularly vulnerable to these toxic chemicals. Increasing evidence shows that even at “low” doses of childhood exposure, irreversible health impacts can result.
“… In light of revelations such as the copy-and-paste scandal, a careful re-examination of the performance of states is required. The overwhelming reliance of regulators on industry-funded studies, the exclusion of independent science from assessments, and the confidentiality of studies relied upon by authorities must change.”
Warnings ignored
It is a travesty that Theo Colborn’s crucial research in the early 1990s into the chemicals that were changing humans and the environment was ignored. Mason discusses his work into endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), man-made chemicals that became widespread in the environment after WW II.
In a book published in 1996, ‘The Pesticide Conspiracy’, Colborn, Dumanoski and Peters revealed the full horror of what was happening to the world as a result of contamination with EDCs.
At the time, there was emerging scientific research about how a wide range of man-made chemicals disrupt delicate hormone systems in humans. These systems play a critical role in processes ranging from human sexual development to behaviour, intelligence, and the functioning of the immune system.
At that stage, PCBs, DDT, chlordane, lindane, aldrin, dieldrin, endrin, toxaphene, heptachlor, dioxin, atrazine+ and dacthal were shown to be EDCs. Many of these residues are found in humans in the UK.
Colborn illustrated the problem by constructing a diagram of the journey of a PCB molecule from a factory in Alabama into a polar bear in the Arctic. He stated:
“The concentration of persistent chemicals can be magnified millions of times as they travel to the ends of the earth… Many chemicals that threaten the next generation have found their way into our bodies. There is no safe, uncontaminated place.”
Mason describes how EDCs interfere with delicate hormone systems in sexual development. Glyphosate is an endocrine disruptor and a nervous system disruptor. She ponders whether Colborn foresaw the outcome whereby humans become confused about their gender or sex.
She then discusses the widespread contamination of people in the UK. One study conducted at the start of this century concluded that every person tested was contaminated by a cocktail of known highly toxic chemicals that were banned from use in the UK during the 1970s and which continue to pose unknown health risks: the highest number of chemicals found in any one person was 49 – nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of the chemicals looked for.
Corruption exposed
Mason discusses corporate duplicity and the institutionalised corruption that allows agrochemicals to get to the commercial market. She notes the catastrophic impacts of these substances on health and the NHS and the environment.
Of course, the chickens are now coming home to roost for Bayer, which bought Monsanto. Mason refers to attorneys revealing Monsanto’s criminal strategy for keeping Roundup on the market and the company being hit with $2 billion verdict in the third ‘Roundup trial’.
Attorney Brent Wisner has argued that Monsanto spent decades suppressing science linking its glyphosate-based weedkiller product to cancer by ghost-writing academic articles and feeding the EPA “bad science”. He asked the jury to ‘punish’ Monsanto with a $1 billion punitive damages award. On Monday 13 May, the jury found Monsanto liable for failure to warn claims, design defect claims, negligence claims and negligent failure to warn claims.
Robert F Kennedy Jr., another attorney fighting Bayer in the courts, says Roundup causes a constellation of other injuries apart from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma:
“Perhaps more ominously for Bayer, Monsanto also faces cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of other injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney disease, and inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts. Strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.
In finishing, Mason notes the disturbing willingness of the current UK government to usher in GM Roundup Ready crops in the wake of Brexit. Where pesticides are concerned, the EU’s precautionary principle could be ditched in favour of a US-style risk-based approach, allowing faster authorisation.
Rosemary Mason shows that the health of the UK populations already lags behind other countries in Western Europe. She links this to the increasing amounts of agrochemicals being applied to crops. If the UK does a post-Brexit deal with the US, we can only expect a gutting of environmental standards at the behest of the US and its corporations and much worse to follow for the environment and public health.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2IWX0SS Tyler Durden
President Trump made history on Sunday by taking an unprecedented step – literally – onto North Korean soil, after which he held an extraordinary last-minute meeting with Kim Jong Un in which he announced that Washington and Pyongyang will relaunch stalled nuclear talks.
The moment President Trump meets Chairman Kim at the DMZ and becomes the first sitting President to enter North Korea: pic.twitter.com/VwqGAEmmxz
Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross the 1953 armistice line separating North and South Korea, then joined Kim side-by-side for a roughly 50-minute meeting in the heavily-fortified demilitarized zone. It was their third since Trump took office, but none have yet yielded a nuclear deal.
Trump and Kim shook hands across a concrete slab forming the line between to the two nations at the DMZ, according to a reporter traveling with the president.
“Good to see again,” Kim said, according to a translator. He added he would have “never expected” Trump “at this place.”
Shortly after, Trump said “Good progress, good progress,” as he and Kim crossed back into South Korea. “Stepping across that line was a great honor,” Trump said, adding that he would invite Kim to visit the White House.
“I think it’s historic, it’s a great day for the world.”
Trump said the meeting was a victory, announcing that nuclear talks would resume “within weeks” and that the two countries were designating teams of officials to take the lead. He even invited Kim, who rarely leaves the country, to visit him at the White House.
Trump and Kim then met for less than 50 minutes at the Freedom House on the South Korean side of the DMZ, where the North Korean leader said he was “willing to put an end to the unfortunate past.” Kim credited the “excellent relations between the two of us” for the development.
“You hear the power of that voice” Trump said, adding that the North Korean leader “doesn’t do news conferences.” “Thus is a historic moment, the fact that we’re meeting,” he added.
Trump later told U.S. troops at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, South Korea that he noticed that “many people … from Korea were literally in tears” when he crossed the DMZ. He also said sanctions against Pyongyang remain in place “but at some point during the negotiations things can happen” during brief remarks to reporters.
Sunday’s meeting with Kim came after bad weather blocked Trump’s attempt to make a surprise visit to the DMZ in November 2017. Trump considered meeting Kim there in 2018 before deciding to hold the first summit between the two leaders in Singapore.
Trump in a tweet before leaving South Korea described his meeting with Kim as “wonderful,” adding that standing on North Korean soil was “an important statement for all.”
Leaving South Korea after a wonderful meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Un. Stood on the soil of North Korea, an important statement for all, and a great honor!
Trump recently said he received what he called a “beautiful letter” from Kim containing birthday greetings. In return, the president sent Kim a thank you note and letter.
* * *
Yet despite the fanfare, there were no signs that the U.S. and the North had made any concrete progress on denuclearization, the issue that has led to North Korea’s estrangement from the world.
Veteran nuclear negotiators and North Korea experts questioned whether Trump, by staging a high-profile photo-op absent nuclear concessions, was bestowing legitimacy on Kim and undermining global pressure to force the North to accept a denuclearization deal.
“We can only call it historic if it leads to something,” said Victor Cha, a former Asia director at the White House and an NBC News contributor.
* * *
The last minute meeting capped an unpredictable three days of diplomacy in which Trump, while in nearby Japan for the G-20 summit of world leaders, issued an invitation to Kim on Twitter to meet him in the DMZ. North Korea reacted positively, calling the proposal “interesting,” but did not confirm that Kim would accept until the last minute.
Even after Trump traveled by helicopter to the DMZ accompanied by a massive security contingent, U.S. officials had told NBC News they were unsure whether Kim would really show up.
President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in visit an observation post in the Joint Security Area (JSA) at Panmunjom in the DMZ.
And when he did, his handshake with Trump and their ensuing talks unfolded in chaotic fashion under overcast skies. Journalists jostled to capture the historic encounter and even White House officials accompanying the president seemed unsure what would happen next.
“This means that we can feel at ease,” Kim said of the meeting through a translator. “I believe that this will have a positive force on all of our discussions in the future.” In a nod to the unforeseen nature of their rendezvous in the DMZ, Kim told Trump that he “never expected” to see the president “at this place.”
Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in landed mid-afternoon in the DMZ and rushed to a vista overlooking North Korea. Sean Morrow, commander of the U.N. Security Battalion, briefed Trump about the security situation, gesturing toward North Korean territory.
Minutes later, Trump and Kim were side by side posing for photos and taking a step together over the line into North Korea. They then spoke briefly to reporters inside a nearby room before holding talks that Trump had predicted would last just a few minutes but went on for close to an hour. Both leaders predicted it would lead to better things to become between their two countries.
Of striking a nuclear deal, Trump said: “We’re not looking for speed, we’re looking to get it right.”
Trump had already made history previously, when he became the first U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader while in office, having met with Kim twice before. This marks the first meeting in the no-man’s-land between North and South since the end of the Korean War.
Trump’s last summit with Kim — in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February — collapsed abruptly, with a planned signing ceremony scrapped and Trump explaining to reporters that “sometimes you have to walk.” Back then, U.S. officials blamed the failure of negotiations on Kim’s insistence that all nuclear sanctions be lifted in exchange for only some concessions sought by the U.S. from Pyongyang related to its nuclear program.
But a senior Trump administration official told NBC News ahead of the meeting Sunday that the administration was hoping that even a handshake might jump-start negotiations at a lower level led by Stephen Biegun, the U.S. special representative for North Korea.
Those talks could then focus on making more substantive progress on the nuclear issues.
Indeed, Trump said after the meeting that Biegun and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would be handling the relaunched nuclear talks between the countries.
And while Trump said that sanctions on the North would remain in place for now, he seemed to leave open the possibility that some could be removed during the talks, a shift from the longstanding U.S. position that all sanctions remain in place until a denuclearization deal is struck.
“At some point during the negotiation, things can happen,” Trump said.
Naturally, Trump critics, neocons, deepstaters and warhawks in Trump’s circle of trust sneered on the meeting, warning that such meetings plays into Kim’s hands, boosting him domestically and providing room for Pyongyang to continue to stall while it moves ahead with its nuclear program.
North Korea is believed to have dozens of nuclear warheads and the ability to mount them on missiles, but has yet to prove it can deliver those nuclear-tipped missiles successfully to distances as remote as the U.S. mainland. Yet Trump projected no sense of urgency on Sunday as he argued there was plenty of time to reach a deal with North Korea, echoing an argument he’d made about resolving the Iran nuclear issue the day before.
“I’m never in a rush,” Trump said. “If you’re in a rush, you get yourself in trouble.”
Both Trump and Kim offered invitations to the other to visit their capitals, with Trump saying, “I’ll invite him to the White House right now.” Kim said it would be a “great honor” if Trump visited Pyongyang.
Neither of those are likely to occur in the short term given the immense logistical and security challenges of arranging such a visit between countries that do not have diplomatic relations.
“We’ve had peace for two and a half years,” Trump said Sunday.
The president glossed over reports that Kim had ordered some of his negotiators executed following the failed Hanoi summit. Asked whether they were still alive, Trump said “I think they are,” adding that the main person the U.S. was familiar with was still living. “I would hope the rest are too,” Trump said. “I would really hope the rest are too. “
Earlier, standing with Moon at the Blue House, South Korea’s equivalent of the White House, Trump said that he and Kim “understand each other, I do believe.” He said that both he and Kim wanted to hold the meeting “from the beginning.”
“He understands me, and I believe I maybe understand him,” Trump said. “Sometimes that can lead to very good things.”
Moon, a liberal in South Korea’s political world who has pushed hard for more engagement with the North, had said ahead of the Trump-Kim meeting that he planned to let the two leaders meet privately, saying that “as for an inter-Korean dialogue, this will happen a later time.”
North Korea, after all, had publicly admonished South Korea for trying to mediate between it and the U.S. But in the end, Moon did join the U.S. and North Korean leaders for part of their meeting.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman, who has played an unusual role in U.S.-North Korea diplomacy, wrote on Twitter that he was wishing “my friends” Trump and Kim “a very good meeting.” “Much love to you both and keep up the wonderful progress!” Rodman wrote, appending the hashtag: “#PEACEANDLOVE.”
Wishing my friends, @realDonaldTrump and Marshal Kim Jong Un a very good meeting… Much love to you both and keep up the wonderful progress! #PEACEANDLOVE
For the second time in a row, Turkish voters have rebuked President Recep Tayyir Erdogan’s handpicked candidate for the mayoralty of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest and wealthiest city. The secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, swamped Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate Binali Yildirim in an election that many see as a report card on the President’s 17 years of power.
So what does the outcome of the election mean for the future of Turkey, and in particular, its powerful president? For starters, an internal political realignment, but also maybe a dangerous foreign policy adventure.
Erdogan and his Party have been weakened politically and financially by the loss of Istanbul, even though the President did his best to steer clear of the campaign over the past several weeks. Since it was Erdogan that pressured the Supreme Election Council into annulling the results of the March 31 vote, whether he likes it or not, he owns the outcome.
His opponents in the AKP are already smelling blood. Former Prime Minister Ahmet Dovutoglu, who Erdogan sidelined in 2016, has begun criticizing the President’s inner circle, including Berat Albayrak, his son-in-law and current Finance Minister. There are rumors that Dovutoglu and former deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan are considering forming a new party on the right.
Up until the March election that saw the AKP and its extreme nationalist alliance partner, the National Movement Party (MHP), lose control of most the major cities in the country, Erdogan had shown an almost instinctive grasp of what the majority of Turks wanted. But this time out the AKP seemed tone deaf. While Erdogan campaigned on the issue of terrorism, polls showed most Turks were more concerned with the disastrous state of the economy, rising inflation and growing joblessness.
The “terrorist threat” strategy—short hand for Turkey’s Kurdish minority—not only alienated conservative Kurds who reliably voted for the AKP, but forced the opposition into a united front. Parties ranging from the leftist Kurdish People’s Democratic Party and the Communist Party, to more conservative parties like the Good Party, withdrew their candidates from the Istanbul’s mayor’s race and lined up behind the CHP’s Imamoglu.
The AKP—long an electoral steamroller—ran a clumsy and ill-coordinated campaign. While the Yildirim tried to move to the center, Erdogan’s inner circle opted for a hard right program, even accusing Imamoglu of being a Greek (and closet Christian) because he hails from the Black Sea area of Trabzon that was a Greek center centuries ago. The charge backfired badly, and an area that in the past was overwhelming supportive of the AKP shifted to backing a native son. Some 2.5 million former residents of the Black Sea live in Istanbul, and it was clear which way they voted.
So what does the election outcome mean for Turkish politics? Well, for one, when the center and left unite they can beat Erdogan. But it also looks like there is going to be re-alignment on the right. In the March election, the extreme right MHP picked up some disgruntled AKP voters, and many AKP voters apparently stayed home, upset at the corruption and the anti-terrorist strategy of their party. It feels a lot like 2002, when the AKP came out of the political margins and vaulted over the rightwing Motherland and True Path parties to begin its 17 years of domination. How far all this goes and what the final outcome will be is not clear, but Erdogan has been weakened, and his opponents in the AKP are already sharpening their knives.
An Erdogan at bay, however, can be dangerous. When the AKP lost its majority in the 2015 general election, Erdogan reversed his attempt to peacefully resolve tensions with the Kurds and, instead, launched a war on Kurdish cities in the country’s southeast. While the war helped him to win back his majority in an election six months later, it alienated the Kurds and laid the groundwork for the AKP’s losses in the March 2019 election and the Istambul’s mayor’s race.
The fear is that Erdogan will look for a crisis that will resonate with Turkish nationalism, a strategy he has used in the past.
He tried to rally Turks behind overthrowing the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, but the war was never popular. Most Turks are not happy with the 3.7 million Syrian refugees currently camped in their country, nor with what increasingly appears to be a quagmire for the Turkish Army in Northern and Eastern Syria.
In general, Turkey’s foreign policy is a shambles.
Erdogan is trying to repair fences with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, because he desperately needs the investment that Gulf monarchs can bring to Turkey. But the price for that is a break with Iran and ending his support for the Muslim Brotherhood. While the Turkish President might be willing to dump the Brotherhood, Erdogan feels he needs Iran in his ongoing confrontation with the Kurds in Syria, and, at least at this point, he is unwilling to join Saudi Arabia’s jihad on Tehran.
In spite of the Turkish President’s efforts to normalize ties with Riyadh, Saudi Arabia recently issued a formal warning to Saudi real estate investors and tourists that Turkey is” inhospitable.” Saudi tourism is down 30 percent, and Turkish exports to Saudi Arabia are also off.
Erdogan is also wrangling with the US and NATO over Ankara’s purchase of the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft system, a disagreement that threatens further damage to the Turkish economy through US-imposed sanctions. There is even a demand by some Americans to expel Turkey from NATO, echoed by similar calls from the Turkish extreme right.
Talk of leaving NATO, however, is mostly Sturm und Drang. There is no Alliance procedure to expel a member, and current tensions with Moscow means NATO needs Turkey’s southern border with Russia, especially its control of the Black Sea’s outlet to the Mediterranean.
But a confrontation over Cyprus—and therefore with Greece—is by no means out of the question. This past May, Turkey announced that it was sending a ship to explore for natural gas in the sea off Cyprus, waters that are clearly within the island’s economic exploitation zone.
“History suggests that leaders who are losing their grip on power have incentives to organize a show of strength and unite their base behind an imminent foreign threat,” writes Greek investigative reporter Yiannis Baboulias in Foreign Policy.
“Erdogan has every reason to create hostilities with Greece—Turkey’s traditional adversary and Cyprus’s ally—to distract from his problems at home.”
Turkey has just finished large-scale naval exercises—code name “Sea Wolf”— in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean and, according to Baboulias, Turkish warplanes have been violating Greek airspace.
Cyprus, along with Israel and Egypt, has been trying to develop Cypriote offshore gas resources for almost a decade, but Turkey has routinely stymied their efforts. The European Union (EU) supports the right of Cyprus to develop the fields, and the EU’s foreign policy head, Federica Mogherini, called on Turkey to “respect the sovereign rights of Cyprus to its exclusive economic zone and refrain from such illegal actions.” While Mogherini pledged “full solidarity” with Cyprus, it is hard to see what the big trade organization could do in the event of a crisis.
Any friction with Cyprus is friction with Greece, and there is a distinct possibility that two NATO members could find themselves in a face off. Erdogan likes to create tensions and then negotiate from strength, a penchant he shares with US President Donald Trump. While it seems unlikely that it will come to that, in this case Turkish domestic considerations could play a role.
A dustup with Ankara’s traditional enemy, Greece, would put Erdogan’s opponents in the AKP on the defensive and divert Turks attention from the deepening economic crisis at home. It might also allow Erdogan to use the excuse of a foreign policy crisis to strengthen his already considerable executive powers and to divert to the military budget monies from cities the AKP no longer control.
Budget cuts could stymie efforts by the CHP and left parties to improve conditions in the cities and to pump badly needed funds into education. The AKP used Istanbul’s budget as a piggy bank for programs that benefited members of Erdogan’s family or generated kickbacks for the Party from construction firms and private contractors. Erdogan has already warned his opponents that they “won’t even be able to pay the salaries of their employees.” The man may be down but he is hardly beaten. There are turbulent times ahead for Turkey.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RMh7Wt Tyler Durden
