Category: zerohedge

For the 10th day in a row, China's bond yield curve remains inverted (the longest in history).

With yields at 3-year highs, corporate bond issuance is evaporating, and has now emerged as the latest major, and most imminent, threat facing China's financial sector and $10 trillion corporate debt market.

However, it appears Chinese authorities have reached their max pain point.

 

In a very symbolic move overnight, China's Ministry of Finance bought 1.26 billion yuan of 1-year bonds for the first time in history via the secondary market. As Bloomberg reports,

The operation is part of a broader initiative to generate a reliable yield curve for risk-free government debt that can serve as a benchmark for borrowing costs across the economy.

 

While China has more than 22.9 trillion yuan ($3.4 trillion) of government securities outstanding — one of the world’s largest — it has less liquidity than many developed nations.

 

Under a system unveiled last November, China’s Ministry of Finance confers with market participants and, after any agreement that government bonds have insufficient or excess demand, issues additional securities or purchases existing ones from the secondary market.

While yields tumbled on the rescue attempt, the curve remains inverted…

As Christophe Barraud, Chief Economist & Strategist at Market Securities, explains, while the amount is not huge, it's much more about the signal.

They really want to show that they are ready to buy bonds to contain short term yields, in line with recent injections of liquidity via OMOs.

 

Once again, in a year of political transition, they will do what is necessary to avoid any tensions.

 

So, despite the need to curb credit growth and the housing bubble, they should remain active on the money market.

 

In the meantime, public spending more precisely infrastructure spending will be a key tool to avoid a hard landing.

Finally, the reason why all of the above matters for not only the Chinese, but global, economy is because as we showed last week, China's credit impulse is already crashing and has suffered its biggest drop since the financial crisis. As UBS calculated, "from peak to trough the deceleration in global credit growth is now approaching that during the global financial crisis (-6% of global GDP), even if the dispersion of the decline is much narrower."

If one adds tens, if not hundreds of billions in Chinese corporate bond defaults to the China, and thus global credit drain next, the global credit impulse, and global deflationary tsunami, may surpass that observed during the financial crisis. And ironically, this "credit crunch" will come at a time when the Fed, unlike back in 2009 when Bernanke had just launched QE1, is hiking rates and preparing to do what it has never done before: reduce its balance sheet without crashing the market. 

via http://ift.tt/2syP3cs Tyler Durden

In what looks like vindication for Elon Musk and Tesla’s autopilot software, the National Transportation Safety Board has ruled that a fatal crash involving a Tesla Model S sedan that occurred in Florida last year was the result of human error.

Here’s a summary of the NTSB report’s findings, via Reuters.

• “During a 37-minute period of the trip when Brown was required to have his hands on the wheel, he apparently did so for just 25 seconds, the NTSB said in the report."
• "The report said the Autopilot mode remained on during most of his trip and that it gave him to a visual warning seven separate times that said "Hands Required Not Detected."
• "In six cases, the system then sounded a chime before it returned to "Hands Required Detected" for one to three second periods."
• "NHTSA said Brown did not apply the brakes and his last action was to set the cruise control at 74 miles (119 km) per hour less than two minutes before the crash — above the 65 mph speed limit."
• "The agency said the truck should have been visible to Brown for at least seven seconds before impact. Brown "took no braking, steering or other actions to avoid the collision," the report said."
• "A Florida Highway Patrol spokesman said the truck driver was charged with a right of way traffic violation. He is due for a court hearing on Wednesday.”

And a photo of the aftermath of the crash…

A summary of the incident, which took place on May 7, 2016, was included in a cache of documents released by the NTSB:

“About 4:40 p.m. eastern daylight time…a 2015 Tesla Model S, traveling eastbound on US Highway 27A (US-27A), west of Williston, Florida, struck and passed beneath a 2014 Freightliner Cascadia truck-tractor in combination with a 53-foot semitrailer. At the time of the collision, the combination vehicle was making a left turn from westbound US-27A across the two eastbound travel lanes onto NE 140th Court, a local paved road. As a result of the initial impact, the battery disengaged from the electric motors powering the car. After exiting from underneath the semitrailer, the car coasted at a shallow angle off the right side of the roadway, traveled approximately 297 feet, and then collided with a utility pole. The car broke the pole and traveled an additional 50 feet, during which it rotated counterclockwise and came to rest perpendicular to the highway in the front yard of a private residence. The 40-year-old male driver and sole occupant of the Tesla died as a result of the crash.”

Back in April, Tesla recalled 53,000 Tesla Model S hatchback and the Model crossover vehicles after the company discovered a faulty electric parking brakes that help secure the vehicles when placed in park. The parking brakes contained a small gear that was prone to fracture, which would prevent the parking brake from releasing. Thus, once a car enters park, it may not be able to move again.

The crash, which took place near Williston, Fla., resulted in the death of Joshua Brown, a former Navy SEAL.

Though the NTSB cleared the Tesla involved of defects back in January, the crash sparked a debate about how Tesla has marketed its autopilot system, which is designed to offload many, but not all, human driving responsibilities. Back in April, Tesla owners filed a class action lawsuit against the company for allegedly mischaracterizing autopilot’s capabilities. The lawyer who filed the suit claims that autopilot is dangerous, and that in releasing it to the public, Tesla treated customers like “beta testers.”

“The lawsuit, filed by law firm Hagens Berman on Wednesday in California’s Northern district court, said Tesla’s partial autopilot technology was advertised as safe and “stress-free,” but instead “is essentially unusable and demonstrably dangerous.”

“Unwittingly, buyers of the affected vehicles have become beta testers of half-baked software that renders Tesla vehicles dangerous if engaged,” the lawsuit says.”

One unhappy driver taking to Reddit to allege that autopilot failed to detect a barrier.

“So, I was driving in the left lane of a two-lane highway. The car is AP1 and I've never had any problems until today. Autopilot was on didn't give me a warning. It misread the road and hit the barrier. After the airbags deployed there was a bunch of smoke and my car rolled to a grinding stop. Thankfully no one was hurt and I walked away with only bruises.”
The road was curving right and it stayed straight. By that I mean my best guess is that the AP sensors didn't catch the curve.”

In September, Tesla unveiled what it said were improvements to its autopilot software, adding new limits on hands-off driving and other features that its chief executive officer said likely would have prevented the crash death, according to Reuters. The updated system temporarily prevents drivers from using the system if they do not respond to audible warnings to take back control of the car.

While Elon Musk has been all too eager to take credit for when autopilot works properly, he has repeatedly warned that it is the driver's responsibility – even though regulators have cleared the autopilot system – to ensure the self-driving car does not do stupid things.

In what's shaping up to be a great news day for Musk, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Tesla is nearing a deal to produce cars in China for the first time. The company believes that  building cars in the world's second-largest economy – which is itself the world’s largest market for automobiles – is essential to developing more affordable models that would have broader appeal to drivers of all income brackets.

“The agreement with the city of Shanghai would allow Tesla to build facilities in its Lingang development zone and could come as soon as this week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations are private. Details are being finalized and the timing of the announcement could change. Tesla would need to set up a joint venture with at least one local partner under existing rules and it isn’t immediately clear who that would be.”

Tesla’s revenue in China tripled to more than $1 billion last year, and thanks to the intervention of the Chinese government, sales are almost guaranteed to rise. As Bloomberg reports, “China has identified new-energy vehicles as a strategic emerging industry and aims to boost annual sales of plug-in hybrids and fully electric cars 10-fold in the next decade.”

Sales of electric vehicles and hybrids in China are far outpacing the US. In 2015, China surpassed the US to become the world’s biggest market for non-emission vehicles.

Tesla shares spiked on the news before moving back toward the lows of the day.

 

via http://ift.tt/2soaVsV Tyler Durden

 

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

Ever since the election season began, the left has been going ‘literally’ apeshit over Trump’s usage of Twitter. In recent month’s they’ve been autistically screeching over it — demanding that Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, ban him. They’ve trotted out GOP deep state shills, neocons, professors, think tankfags — all trying to dissuade the President from using a platform that communicates directly to the people.

The main stream media, feeling threatened by the President cutting them out from the middle man position, have been pursuing a scorched earth strategy — attempting to remove him from the White House, while also reminding him that ‘voters’ hate his fucking twitter account.

Today, Mika Brzezinski called out the men inside the White House for failing to stop the President from using his Twitter account.

Main stream media has been constant with their opeds, some even trying to accuse the President’s use of the social media platform as ‘unconstitutional.’ Here are just as handle of titles by those livid with the President.

If Trump is such a dunce for tweeting and is hurting himself politically, why the fuck do the leftards care? If anything, they should be elated by it — since it only serves to hurt him, as they so readily like to say. Another theory is they’re control freaks who chimp out at the idea that Trump crushed Hillary Clinton, whilst spending 1/3rd of her campaign budget on traditional media, catching waves and having fun —  memeing all day like a boss on Twitter — shitposting his way into the oval office.

via http://ift.tt/2sRbxIU The_Real_Fly

Authored by Daniel Lang via SHTFplan.com,

For most of the past 30 years, violent extremism has been most closely associated with the far-right in America. The media, the government, and watchdog groups like the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation league have railed against the far-right for a generation, and used scaremongering to convince the masses that conservative rhetoric was becoming more violent, and that right-wing groups pose a serious and growing threat to our society.

Of course, they often neglected to mention that the far-left has a long history of violence, especially when you consider the wave of domestic terror attacks that occurred throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. Perhaps these institutions should have been paying more attention to the Left, because while they were screaming about right-wing groups all these years, far-left radical groups like BAMN and ANTIFA have been riding under the radar.

However, “extremism experts” are finally starting to take note. Vice News recently interviewed Brian Levin, a former member of the NYPD who studies domestic extremism. He started focusing his efforts on the Left when he attended a public KKK rally last year to study the group, but found himself protecting one of the Klansman from a violent member of ANTIFA. “At that point,” he revealed “I said we have something coalescing on the hard left.”

The evidence is so far largely anecdotal. Levin says that since December 2015, he’s documented nearly two-dozen episodes in California where political events turned violent because of agitation on both sides, something he says he hardly ever saw before.

 

Now, there are violent clashes on college campuses involving groups like Antifa, the anti-fascist group, taking on the alt-right; and aggressive anti-Trump rallies attended by members of the Redneck Revolt, a new pro-minority, anti-supremacist group that encourages its members to train with rifles.

 

Online, hard leftists increasingly discuss politics in dire terms, and rationalize violence as a necessity –  even the true inheritor of traditional progressive activism. (Or, in the case of the “Punch a Nazi” meme, a fun game.)

And Levin isn’t alone. Other watchdog groups that typically focused their attention on the Right, are now taking a second look at far-left radicals.

“I think we’re in a time when we can’t ignore the extremism from the Left,” said Oren Segal, the director of the Center on Extremism, an arm of the Anti-Defamation League.

 

Over the past few months, the ADL, which hosts regular seminars on homegrown extremism for law enforcement officials, has begun warning of the rising threat posed by far-left groups, most recently at a seminar just this past Sunday.

 

“When we have anti-fascist counterprotests – not that they are the same as white supremacists – that can ratchet up the violence at these events, and it means we can see people who are violent on their own be attracted to that,” Segal said. “I hate to say it, but it feels inevitable.”

The fact that Vice, a very liberal media outlet, is wincing at the sight of violence among liberals, is very telling. The fact that these organizations are taking a look at the Left speaks volumes. Liberals can’t ignore or encourage this behavior any longer, because even the groups that are typically hyperventilating about conservatives, are beginning to admit that there’s a problem on the Left.

And that problem has wider implications. As leftist rhetoric and actions become more violent, and as the police in urban areas fail to rein in leftist counter-protesters time and time again, it won’t be long before right-wing protesters begin to retaliate. You can’t expect anyone, regardless of their political beliefs, to keep taking it on the nose indefinitely, without fighting back. When that retaliation becomes commonplace, the results will be unbelievably ugly.

via http://ift.tt/2rOqbkb Tyler Durden

Last fall, we spent a fair amount of time reading through John Podesta’s emails, courtesy of Wikileaks, and grew increasingly astonished with each passing day at the number of apparent conflicts of interest created by the Clinton Foundation which seemed to be nothing more than a front created for the Clintons to peddle their influence around the world in return for staggering “charitable” donations.

Take, for example, our posts which questioned whether the CEO of Dow Chemical, Andrew Liveris, made very sizable contributions to the Clinton Foundation just so he could get an audience with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to discuss his failed $9 billion joint venture with Kuwait.  Here are a couple of posts which provide some background:

• New Hillary Emails Expose Bill Pushing Meetings With Foundation Donors, Requests For “Diplomatic Passports”
• Did Foundation Donor Dow Chemical Seek Hillary “Favor” To Settle $9 Billion Lawsuit With Kuwait?

Or, there was that time that Hillary was offered $12 million from Moroccan King Mohammed VI just to host her annual “Clinton Global Initiative” meeting in his country.

And don’t even get us started on Doug Band who spent years with the Clintons before starting his own “consulting” practice called Teneo (see:  Doug Band Exposes Foundation’s “For-Profit Activity Of President Clinton (i.e., Bill Clinton, Inc.)“)

Now, an exclusive report on the “McCain Institute” published earlier today from the Daily Caller (DC) has us wondering who else in Congress might just be running miniature Clinton Foundation-ish organizations and enriching their personal families in the process. 

As the DC points out, the McCain Institute’s donor list looks eerily similar to that of the Clinton Foundation. 

In addition to the ‘who’s who’ of massive corporate donors (Chevron, Cisco, FedEx, Wal-Mart…), many of which were also large contributors to the Clinton Foundation, the McCain Institute counts many other more ‘questionable’ donors, including Saudi Arabia, Teneo (Doug Band’s firm) and George Soros, among its largest. 

As the DC points out, one such ‘questionable’ donor that took interest in the McCain Institute was OCP, S.A., a Moroccan state-owned phosphate company.  Ironically, OCP just happened to also be a “major sponsor” of the Clinton Global Initiative where Bill was a featured speaker.

It accepted more than $100,000 from OCP, S.A., a Moroccan state-owned phosphate company operating in the Western Sahara, territory which Morocco seized in 1975. The North African country has since occupied the region by force in defiance of U.N. resolutions and legal declarations by other international bodies.

 

Morocco has come under criticism from human rights groups that the government violates basic human rights and that its state-owned companies subject its workforce to gruesome conditions while exploiting the disputed territory’s natural resources.

 

The Western Sahara holds half of the world’s phosphate reserves. Used to make fertilizer, phosphate is called Morocco’s “white gold.”

 

OCP also was a major sponsor of the CGI meeting, and Bill Clinton was the featured speaker.

 

And then there is the Pivotal Foundation…

The McCain group has also accepted at least $100,000 from the Pivotal Foundation, which was created by Francis Najafi who owns the Pivotal Group, a private equity and real estate firm.

 

The Pivotal Foundation has in the last three years given $205,000 to the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), which has been a vocal advocate for the Iranian nuclear deal the Obama administration negotiated.

 

The NIAC web site claims the group “is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the voice of Iranian Americans and promoting greater understanding between the American and Iranian people.”

 

But NIAC President Trita Parsi has long been an advocate for Iran, including demanding in May 2017 that President Donald Trump and officials in his administration “cease questioning the integrity of a (nuclear) deal.”

 

The NIAC is “Iran’s lobbyists in Washington,” charged Aresh Salih, the Washington representative of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan. “People inside of Iran know them as their lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,” Salih told TheDCNF.

 

The NIAC does not file as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, nor does it register as a lobbyist with Congress.

…not to mention Soros and Teneo who apparently gave all their money to the Clintons and could only afford a $25,000-$99,999 donation to McCain.

 

Not surprisingly, pretty much everyone who understands these ‘charitable fronts’ think they’re a bad idea…afterall, we sincerely doubt that random Moroccan fertilizer companies suddenly performed random searches for charities of interest and just happened to settle upon both the Clinton Foundation and the McCain Institute.  No, we suspect they are looking for more from these organizations than just a tax deduction and a “warm and fuzzy” feeling in their hearts.

“This is a very real conflict of interest,” Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist at Public Citizen, told TheDCNF. “This is the similar type of pattern we received with the Clinton Foundation in which foreign governments and foreign interests were throwing a lot of money in the hopes of trying to buy influence.”

 

Lawrence Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, told the DCNF that accepting contributions in the name of a sitting senator like McCain raises troubling issues.

 

“In terms of the ethics of it, it does raise a broad question of people trying to get good will with the elected official,” he said. “From a personal standpoint, I’d rather not see these entities exist.”

Of course, the real question is just how many congressional representatives have managed to setup similar organizations that we’re not even aware of yet.

via http://ift.tt/2sNDnVA Tyler Durden

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Sunday, a Navy F-18 Hornet shot down a Syrian air force jet, an act of war against a nation with which Congress has never declared or authorized a war.

Washington says the Syrian plane was bombing U.S.-backed rebels. Damascus says its plane was attacking ISIS.

Vladimir Putin’s defense ministry was direct and blunt:

“Repeated combat actions by U.S. aviation under the cover of counterterrorism against lawful armed forces of a country that is a member of the U.N. are a massive violation of international law and de facto a military aggression against the Syrian Arab Republic.”

An ABC report appears to back up Moscow’s claims:

“Over the last four weeks, the U.S. has conducted three air strikes on pro-regime forces backed by Iran that have moved into a deconfliction zone around the town of Tanf in southwestern Syria, where there is a coalition training base for local forces fighting ISIS.”

Russia has now declared an end to cooperation to prevent air clashes over Syria and asserted an intent to track and target aerial intruders in its area of operations west of the Euphrates.

Such targets would be U.S. planes and surveillance drones.

If Moscow is not bluffing, we could be headed for U.S.-Russian collision in Syria.

Sunday’s shoot-down of a hostile aircraft was the first by U.S. planes in this conflict. It follows President Trump’s launch of scores of cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield in April. The U.S. said the airfield was the base of Syrian planes that used chemical weapons on civilians.

We are getting ever deeper into this six-year sectarian and civil war. And what we may be witnessing now are the opening shots of its next phase — the battle for control of the territory and population liberated by the fall of Raqqa and the death of the ISIS “caliphate.”

The army of President Bashar Assad seeks to recapture as much lost territory as possible and they have the backing of Russia, Iranian troops, Shiite militia from Iraq and Afghanistan, and Hezbollah.

Assad’s and his allied forces opposing ISIS are now colliding with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces opposing ISIS, which consist of Arab rebels and the Syrian Kurds of the PYD.

But if America has decided to use its air power to shoot down Syrian planes attacking rebels we support, this could lead to a confrontation with Russia and a broader, more dangerous, and deadly war for the United States.

How would we win such a war, without massive intervention?

Is this where we are headed? Is this where we want to go?

For, again, Congress has never authorized such a war, and there seems to be no vital U.S. interest involved in who controls Raqqa and neighboring lands, as long as ISIS is expelled. During the campaign, Trump even spoke of U.S.-Russian cooperation to kill ISIS.

While in Saudi Arabia, however, he seemed to sign on to what is being hyped as an “Arab NATO,” where the U.S. accepts Riyadh as the principal ally and leader of the Gulf Arabs in the regional struggle for hegemony with Shiite Iran.

Following that Trump trip, the Saudis — backed by Egypt, the UAE and Bahrain — sealed their border with Qatar, which maintains ties to Iran. And though Qatar is also host to the largest U.S. air base in the region, al-Udeid, Trump gave the impression its isolation was his idea.

President Trump and his country seem to be at a decision point.

If, after the fall of ISIS in Raqqa, we are going to use U.S. power and leverage to solidify the position of Syrian rebels and Kurds, at the expense of Damascus, we could find ourselves in a collision with Syria, Russia, Hezbollah, Iran and even Turkey.

For Turkish President Erdogan looks on our Kurdish allies in Syria as Kurdish allies of the terrorist PKK inside his own country.

During the campaign, candidate Trump won support by pledging to work with Russia to defeat our common enemy. But if, after ISIS is gone from Syria, we decide it is in our interests to confront Assad, we are going to find ourselves in a regional confrontation.

In Iraq, the U.S. and Iran have a common foe, ISIS, and a common ally, the government in Baghdad. In Syria, we have a common foe, ISIS. But our allies are opposed by Assad, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah.

The question before us: After Raqqa and Mosul fall and the caliphate disappears, who inherits the ISIS estate?

The U.S. needs now to delineate the lines of advance for Syria’s Kurds, and to talk to the Russians, Syrians and Iranians.

We cannot allow our friends in the Middle East and Persian Gulf to play our hand for us, for it is all too often in their interests to have us come fight their wars, which are not necessarily our wars.

via http://ift.tt/2solMTB Tyler Durden

A couple of weeks ago we expressed some level of ‘amazement’ at just how sophisticated, efficient and pervasive the ‘Russian hacking’ community had become after CNN reported that they had managed to hack into a Qatari News Agency and post a ‘fake’ news story all in an apparent attempt to drive a wedge between the U.S., Qatar and some of it’s Gulf Arab neighbors.

Think about that for a minute.  Set aside, if you will, the hacking event itself for just a moment and imagine how good the Russians had to be to know exactly what news story needed to be planted inside the Qatari news agency to provoke an immediate severing of diplomatic ties by numerous Arab neighboring states…it truly is mind boggling how it all played out exactly the way the Russians planned…these ‘Russian hackers’ are certainly not a bunch of amateurs.

And while that may sound like a joke, it is, quite unfortunately, not…at least it wasn’t at CNN anyway.  Here are the details, as they were previously reported by CNN:

The FBI recently sent a team of investigators to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate the alleged hacking incident, Qatari and US government officials say.

 

Intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago, US officials say. Qatar hosts one of the largest US military bases in the region.

 

The alleged involvement of Russian hackers intensifies concerns by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Russia continues to try some of the same cyber-hacking measures on US allies that intelligence agencies believe it used to meddle in the 2016 elections.

 

The Russian goal appears to be to cause rifts among the US and its allies. In recent months, suspected Russian cyber activities, including the use of fake news stories, have turned up amid elections in France, Germany and other countries.

As it turns out, it’s somewhat ironic that CNN accused Russia of spreading “fake news stories” that “have turned up amid elections in France, Germany and other countries” because, as Reuters reports today, their entire Qatari hacking narrative was all fake news.

According to reports from Qatar’s attorney general, it was an Arab neighbor state that severed ties with Doha (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and/or the United Arab Emirates) that was responsible for the hacking of Qatar’s state news agency and not the Russians. 

Qatar’s attorney general said on Tuesday his country has evidence that the hacking of Qatar’s state news agency was linked to countries that have severed ties with Doha.

 

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates cut their ties with Doha earlier this month over comments alleged to have been made by the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani and posted briefly on the Qatar News Agency’s website on May 23 which Doha said had been hacked.

 

“Qatar has evidence that certain iPhones originating from countries laying siege to Qatar were used in the hack,” the Qatari Attorney General Ali Bin Fetais al-Marri told reporters in Doha.

Of course, just like the last time CNN got caught faking news, we are quite confident they will promptly retract their erroneous reporting and offer yet another apology to their readers for the unfortunate mistake created by their increasingly misinformed anonymous sources.

 

* * *

For those who missed it, below is our original post detailing the events leading up to the hacking of Qatar’s state news agency.

In an opportune coincidence, when discussing the Qatar crisis earlier today, we laid out the “official narrative” behind the dramatic fallout in diplomacy between Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

According to the official narrative, the reason for the latest Gulf crisis in which a coalition of Saudi-led states cut off diplomatic and economic ties with Qatar, is because – to everyone’s “stunned amazement” – Qatar was funding terrorists, and after Trump’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia in which he urged a crackdown on financial support of terrorism, and also following the FT’s report that Qatar has directly provided $1 billion in funding to Iran and al-Qaeda spinoffs, Saudi Arabia finally had had enough of its “rogue” neighbor, which in recent years had made ideologically unacceptable overtures toward both Shia Iran and Russia.

There was another detail that we should have mentioned: on May 23, a news report from the Qatari News Agency attributed to the the country’s ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, criticized US foreign policy in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia, questioned whether the US President would last in office, and also appeared friendly to Iran.  Following the publication of the report which infuriated Qatar’s anti-Iranian friends and GCC members, Qatar said its state news agency had been hacked, although the report continued to be carried by media in some other Gulf Arab states, which as Reuters said at the time “suggested renewed strains between Qatar and some of its Gulf Arab neighbors.”

“The Qatar News Agency (QNA) website has been hacked by an unknown entity. A false statement attributed to His Highness has been published,” the Gulf Arab state’s government communications office said. “An ongoing investigation will be put in place to look into this matter. The statement published has no basis whatsoever, and the competent authorities in the State of Qatar will hold all those (involved) accountable.” The incident took place four days after Qatar complained publicly that it was the target of “an orchestrated barrage” of criticism by unknown parties in the run-up to Trump’s visit alleging the Gulf state supported terrorist groups in the Middle East.

That said, the hacking did not figure anywhere in the “official narrative” because it was not part of the list of grievances voiced by Saudi Arabia and various nation states when they cut ties with Qatar on Tuesday, which they did not for the allegedly hacked statement, but because the small nation was supposedly funding terrorists. In fact, as we reported earlier today, in an ultimatum issued by Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Kingdom demanded that Qatar cut all ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, organizations which Saudi Arabia, its Arab allies and the current Egyptian regime, consider terrorist groups.

However, the reason we bring it up, is because it now appears that not only did Russians hack the US election, they also precipitated the Qatar crisis.

At least according to CNN, which citing “briefed US officials” says that US investigators believe it was Russian hackers who breached Qatar’s state news agency and planted the abovementioned fake news report that “contributed to a crisis among the US’ closest Gulf allies.” Which is ironic because, again going back to the “official narrative”, it was Qatar’s support for terrorism, not a “hacked statement”, that precipitated the crisis, but whatever: there was an alleged hacking, and who better to fill the void of hacker than, guess who, the Russians.

Here are the details, according to CNN:

The FBI recently sent a team of investigators to Doha to help the Qatari government investigate the alleged hacking incident, Qatari and US government officials say.

 

Intelligence gathered by the US security agencies indicates that Russian hackers were behind the intrusion first reported by the Qatari government two weeks ago, US officials say. Qatar hosts one of the largest US military bases in the region.

 

The alleged involvement of Russian hackers intensifies concerns by US intelligence and law enforcement agencies that Russia continues to try some of the same cyber-hacking measures on US allies that intelligence agencies believe it used to meddle in the 2016 elections.

Why would Russia hack Qatar? Because according to the US officials CNN spoke to “the Russian goal appears to be to cause rifts among the US and its allies. In recent months, suspected Russian cyber activities, including the use of fake news stories, have turned up amid elections in France, Germany and other countries”

Let’s ignore for now that France already confirmed that there were no traces of Russian hackers in the French election (it would have been a different story if Macron had lost).

Let’s algo ignore that just yesterday the FT reported that the trigger behind the crisis was a “hunting party of 26 Qataris in southern Iraq” who were ambushed and captured by the Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militia Kata’eb Hizbollah, a hostage situation which Qatar eventually used as a pretext to give Iran $700 million in cash and another $200m-$300m to Islamist groups in Syria, mostly to Tahrir al-Sham, also known as al-Qaeda.

Let’s certainly ignore that none other than Bloomberg mused this morning that the long-running conflict between Qatar and the Saudis is the result of the true reason for the tension between the two nations: natural gas, and specifically Qatar’s dominance in the production and export of LNG, which affords the small nation political independence from Saudi Arabia. Because upon reflection, and after “intelligence gathered by US security agencies” somewhere in Qatar, it was a Russian-hacked press statement in the Qatar media that was the reason for the crisis.

So please ignore all you have read so far about the reasons behind the Qatar crisis: about Qatar funding terrorists, about Doha having ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, about Qatari hunting parties in Iraq, and about natural gas.

It was the Russians.

For those who need to take a deep breath after all that, now is a good time because it only get more farcical. Back to CNN:

It’s not yet clear whether the US has tracked the hackers in the Qatar incident to Russian criminal organizations or to the Russian security services blamed for the US election hacks. One official noted that based on past intelligence, “not much happens in that country without the blessing of the government.”

That’s the old “if anything happens in Russia, Putin knows all about it” gambit, which was used early on during the Russian election hacking scandal, and which appears to have faded somewhat, so now is a great time to bring it back to the surface.

Speaking to CNN, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani said the FBI has confirmed the hack and the planting of fake news.

“Whatever has been thrown as an accusation is all based on misinformation and we think that the entire crisis being based on misinformation,” the foreign minister told CNN’s Becky Anderson. “Because it was started based on fabricated news, being wedged and being inserted in our national news agency which was hacked and proved by the FBI.”

 

Sheikh Saif Bin Ahmed Al-Thani, director of the Qatari Government Communications Office, confirmed that Qatar’s Ministry of Interior is working with the FBI and the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency on the ongoing hacking investigation of the Qatar News Agency.

 

“The Ministry of Interior will reveal the findings of the investigation when completed,” he told CNN.

The above was already known, the only missing link was the identity of the alleged hackers. And that’s where the FBI and the CIA stepped in, because just days after the Qatari hacking, US intel services, who are supposed to be tracking down Russian hacking leads in the US election hacking scandal, had some free time, flew to Doha and were quick to uncover the missing Russian trace.

Ironically, the latest “Russian connection” emerged just hours after Trump – supposedly the recipient of Russian hacking generosity himself – slammed Qatar for financing terrorism. He did not address the false news report.

“So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off,” Trump said in a series of tweets. “They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”

Well, no, because according to CNN it wasn’t terrorism that sparked this whole thing. It was… Russian hackers. Meanwhile, the real sponsors of terrorism in the region, Saudi Arabia which recently signed US weapons deals amounting to over a hundred billion dollars got a clean pass, now that Qatar emerged as the Middle eastern bogeyman. incidentally, 15 of 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens and last year, Congress passed a bill allowing US citizens to sue Saudi Arabia for its involvement in Sept 11.

CNN said that neither the FBI nor the CIA would comment. A spokeswoman for the Qatari embassy in Washington said the investigation is ongoing and its results would be released publicly soon, but not soon enough, and certainly not before CNN managed to break yet another geopolitical crisis being blamed on Russia.

* * *

Sarcasm aside, if indeed this is the story Qatar is going with, it should provide the country with an “out” from the 24 hour ultimatum that Saudi Arabia gave to Qatar as reported earlier, even if Saudi demands had nothing to do with a “hacked statement”, and instead the two main demands by Saudi Arabia are that Qatar end all ties Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

Even more amusing, moments ago the Muslim country of Mauritania located in the African Maghreb joined the Saudi alliance, and also cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, saying that Qatar propagated “extremist ideas and spread anarchy and tensions in many Arab countries causing big humanitarian disasters in these countries, in Europe and in the world.” 

Wait for it… it was the Russians. 

* * *

The silver lining to all of the above is that the Comey hearing, which earlier today lost some of its pay-per-view appeal after it was reported that the former FBI director would not accuse Trump of obstructing justice, just got interesting again.

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Updates:

With polls closing any minute, tonight’s special election for Georgia’s 6th district is being described as a “coin toss.”  That said, CNN and Democrats already seem to be hedging their bets by pointing out that the heavily Democrat-leaning Dekalb County has been hit by severe flood warnings throughout the day which they say has suppressed voter turnout.

Of course, we’re almost certain that the Russians must have figured out a way to make it rain just in the heavily Democratic areas of the 6th District…this is just too ‘convenient’.

When nature throws a flood warning into your get out the vote efforts. Classic ATL summer storm #GA06 @BBCNorthAmerica http://pic.twitter.com/KOWyTGrjA4

— Suzanne Kianpour (@KianpourWorld) June 20, 2017

 

The key to following tonight’s results will be watching how the candidates
fare in the three counties that make up the 6th District: DeKalb, Cobb
and Fulton.

Ossoff is expected to do well in DeKalb, but he will
likely need big turnout there to overcome Handel’s advantage in
Republican-leaning Cobb and Fulton counties.

Remember: to win #GA06, Jon Ossoff (D) needs about 61% in DeKalb, 50% in Fulton & 43% in Cobb.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) June 20, 2017

 

* * *

Below is our preview of Georgia’s special election from earlier this morning:

Democrats have gone “all-in” on the 30-year-old documentary film-maker and former congressional aide, Jon Ossoff, to win Georgia’s 6th Congressional district.   Over the past several months, they have repeatedly portrayed the runoff as a referendum on the Trump administration and a preview of the 2018 mid-terms .  Now, as voters head to the polls today, the question is whether their gamble will payoff…certainly, given the amount of money they’ve spent, anything less than a victory will be yet another stinging defeat for Democrats.

The contest for Georgia’s 6th district pits Democrat Jon Ossoff against Republican Karen Handel in a race that has drawn national attention and historic levels of spending.  As The Mercury News has pointed out, this race has been the costliest in the history of Congressional races with Ossoff raising over $23 million.  Ironically, he received nearly 9x more donations from California than from Georgia, a testament to how this special election has morphed into a national contest for Democrats.

Between March 29 and May 31, Ossoff reported receiving 7,218 donations from California, dwarfing the 808 donations he received from Georgia. In the nine Bay Area counties alone, he received 3,063 donations in the same time period.

 

Those are only a fraction of Ossoff’s total donations, as he doesn’t have to report contributions from people who give less than $200 in total. In addition, many of the individual donations include the same people giving to his campaign multiple times.

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Handel’s support has surged in recent days making the race a dead heat heading into election day. That said, just like last November, we would be shocked if there weren’t some “oversamples” in the polling data. 

 

For those not familiar with the district, Georgia’s 6th is located just north of Atlanta and has been controlled by Republicans since 1979.  In fact, it is the same seat that was held by former Speaker Newt Gingrich from 1979 – 1999.  And while the district had been a stronghold for Republican presidential candidates, Trump just narrowly bested Clinton in 2016.

 

Of course, with Republicans holding a substantial majority in the House, today’s election will have minimal practical ramifications in the near term.  Moreover, while the winning party will undoubtedly cast the results as a perfect predictor of how the 2018 mid-terms will play out, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight notes that anything short of a blowout will provide minimal insight into the next election cycle.

“If either Democrat Jon Ossoff or Republican Karen Handel wins narrowly, it will be portrayed as a more important predictive signal than it really is. If either Handel or Ossoff wins by more than about 5 percentage points — which is entirely possible given the historic (in)accuracy of special election polls — you can dispense with some of the subtlety in interpreting the results, especially if the South Carolina outcome tells a similar story. Otherwise, Tuesday’s results probably ought to be interpreted with a fair amount of caution — and they probably won’t be.”

For those not familiar with Georgia’s 6th District, here are some helpful maps to explains who is expected to perform best and where.

Understanding the Georgia special election, in maps https://t.co/9XQH0RpIy1 http://pic.twitter.com/o48nTQCBHj

— POLITICO (@politico) June 19, 2017

 

With that intro, here are The Hill’s “things to watch” as voting gets underway:

1.  Will the huge turnout trend continue?

While special elections typically convince few voters to head to the polls, the outsized attention on the Georgia special election has led to booming turnout.

 

During April’s primary election, 194,000 voters cast their ballot, with 57,000 of those votes coming early.

 

More than 143,000 voters have already voted early for Tuesday’s matchup between Ossoff and Handel, a figure that means the runoff turnout will likely eclipse that of the April primary. Some observers say Tuesday’s figures could even surpass the number of people who voted in the district for the 2014 midterm election.

 

Strategists in the state expect Handel to do significantly better with the early vote compared to April’s primary, when she was competing against nearly a dozen Republicans.

 

Ossoff will also need to have strong early-vote numbers, especially since Republicans historically do better with Election Day turnout.

 

Will GOP strongholds and white women save Handel?

 

2.  Can Ossoff flip Republican moderates and turn out black voters?

 While Ossoff won easily in April’s first round of voting with 17 other candidates, more voters backed a Republican than a Democrat. So with turnout already looking high, experts believe Ossoff needs to increase his margin by about 6,000 or more votes to be in good shape.

 

Ossoff also has to turn out black voters, whose enthusiasm flagged in 2016 after being a reliable voting bloc during Obama’s two elections. The Democratic hopeful went to several events on Saturday with Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a civil rights icon, to celebrate Juneteenth, which commemorates the abolition of slavery.

 

3.  Can Democrats keep outperforming Clinton?

 While Democrats have failed to flip any Republican seats in special elections this year, they have seen one promising trend — candidates keep outperforming Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s 2016 margins.

 

4.  What does the vote mean for Trump’s agenda?

 The record-setting spending, the furious jockeying between national parties and the occasional cameos from Hollywood celebrities are all happening for one reason: Trump.

 

With few electoral opportunities between Trump’s election and the 2018 midterms, the suburban Atlanta congressional seat has become the closest thing to a referendum on Trump’s agenda.

 

Democrats want to frame their excitement and fundraising as a result of anti-Trump frustration, so a win for them will be seen as a victory over Trump.

 

If Ossoff wins, look for Democrats to seize on that message as a warning shot for 2018. An Ossoff victory could dampen the spirits of GOP donors, convince more politicians to break from their president and trigger retirements by Republican lawmakers fearing a tough reelection fight.

So how will it all turn out?  Will Democrats hand Trump his first big loss and a taste of what is to come in 2018 or, just like in November, did the Dems just spend an obscene amount of money for absolutely nothing?

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Almost exactly one month after Brazil’s stock market crashed, and the Real plunged after the country’s never-ending political drama made a triumphal return following accusations that president Michel Temer had encouraged a “hush money” bribe to former House Speaker Eduardo Cunha in return for not getting dragged into the Carwash scandal, on Tuesday afternoon, Brazil’s federal police force said it has found evidence that the embattled president received bribes to help businesses, Brazil’s O Globo reported.

Investigators said in a preliminary report published Tuesday by Brazil’s top court that Temer deserves to be investigated for passive corruption, a process that would likely culminate with his impeachment. Temer has denied any wrongdoing and has already pledged not to resign.

The news comes hours after a defiant Senate committee voted down a key anchor of Temer’s proposed reform platform, the landmark labor reform bill, whose passage in the lower house in April prompted widespread protests by labor unions who are against the proposed legislation which would abolish mandatory payment of union dues by Brazilian workers. The vote was seen as a blow to the government, amid other political noise embroiling President Temer.

Even before today’s police announcement, Brazil’s Attorney General Rodrigo Janot said last month there were enough preliminary indications of wrongdoing for Temer to be investigated for corruption and obstruction of justice. And if Brazil’s top prosecutor agrees with the federal police recommendation, Congress will decide whether Temer should be investigated by the country’s Supreme Court. The court is the only body that can formally investigate the president.

If two-thirds of Congress votes to allow the investigation, Temer would be suspended from office pending trial, suffering the same fate as his predecessor Dilma Rouseff whose vice-president Temer was originally, and eventually managed to overthrow with an elaborate plot “exposing” her corrupt activities. Karma, it turns out, is a bitch in all jurisdications, including Latin America.

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Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Automatic Earth blog,

David Stockman routinely refers to President Trump as the ‘Great Disrupter’. But this is not a bad quality, he insists. Rather, it is a necessary one: Stockman argues (my paraphrasing) that Trump represents the outside force, the externality, that tips a ‘world system’ over the brink: It has to tip over the brink, because systems become too ossified, too far out on their ‘branch’ to be able to reform themselves. It does not really matter so much, whether the agency of this tipping process (President Trump in this instance), fully comprehends his pivotal role, or plays it out in an intelligent and subtle way, or in a heavy-handed, and unsubtle manner. Either serve the purpose. And that purpose is to disrupt.

Why should disruption be somehow a ‘quality’? It is because, during a period when ‘a system’ is coming apart, (history tells us), one can reach a point at which there is no possibility of revival within the old, but still prevailing, system. An externality of some sort – maybe war, or some other calamity or a Trump – is necessary to tip the congealed system ‘over’: thus, the external intrusion can be the catalyst for (often traumatic) transformational change.

Stockman puts it starkly: “the single most important thing to know about the present risk environment [he is pointing here to both the political risk as well as financial risk environment], is that it is extreme, and unprecedented. In essence, the ruling elites and their mainstream media megaphones have arrogantly decided that the 2016 [US Presidential] election was a correctible error”.

But complacency simply is endemic: “The utter fragility of the latest and greatest Fed bubble could not be better proxied than in this astounding fact. To wit, during the last 5,000 trading days (20 years), the VIX (a measure of market volatility) has closed below 10 on just 11 occasions. And 7 of those have been during the last month! … That’s complacency begging to be monkey-hammered”, Stockman says.

Former Presidential candidate, Pat Buchanan concurs:

“President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down.

 

We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign, and [to achieve] its own restoration. Thus far, it is a nonviolent struggle, though street clashes between pro- and anti-Trump forces are increasingly marked by fistfights and brawls. Police are having difficulty keeping people apart. A few have been arrested carrying concealed weapons.

 

That the objective of this city is to bring Trump down, via a deep state-media coup, is no secret. Few deny it.”

The extraordinary successful ‘manufacture’ and ‘parachuting-in’ of Macron into the French Presidential election by the French élite, precisely has given to the globalised Deep State (including their US counterparts), renewed confidence that Europe and America’s slide towards ‘populism’, is indeed a ‘correctable error’. European élites now can barely contain their revived schadenfreude at the Brexiters’ and at the Populists’ presumed discomfort (see here).

 

Thomas Cole Consummation of Empire 1836

 

But despite the palpable danger to the integrity of the political system itself, Stockman notes, “it is no inconsiderable understatement to suggest that the S&P 500 at 2440 is about as fragile as the ‘market’ has ever been.

Any untoward pinprick could send it into a tailspin … Doug Kass said it best in his recent commentary: “Over history, as we have learned, a Minksy Moment develops when investor sentiment becomes complacent after long periods of prosperity and the data is ignored, and doesn’t seem to matter anymore, as I wrote in “It’s a ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ Market: Nothing Really Matters … to investors.” In short, the market has become ‘zombie’ (in the sense of residing within a psychological defence mechanism – as, when to contemplate the alternative – simply is too threatening to the psyche) [emphasis added].

Daniel Henninger, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, writes:

“Donald Trump’s election has caused psychological unhingement in much of the population. But the Trump phenomenon only accelerated forces that were plummeting in this direction before the 2016 election…

 

“Impossible to miss, though, is how jacked up emotional intensity has become in American politics. The campaign rallies of both Mr. Trump and Bernie Sanders often sat on the edge of violence. Reporters describe political town hall meetings as full of “angry” voters. Shouting down the opposition in these forums or on campus has been virtually internalized as standard behavior. Refusal to reason is the new normal. And then, the unreason is euphemized as free speech.

 

Explaining away these impulses as a routine turn of the populist political cycle is insufficient. Something more permanent is happening.”

It is not, of course just the markets which are threatened by unperceived risk. Trump shall not be forgiven for challenging the sacrosant meme of a world divided between (good) ‘liberal’ democracies (led by the US and its European allies) and (bad) illiberal autocracies (led today, by President Putin’s Russia): by snubbing Nato and withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, Professor Michael Klare writes, “we’ve been told, President Trump is dismantling the liberal world order created by Franklin D Roosevelt at the end of World War II”.

 

Thomas Cole Destruction of Empire 1836

An offence, it seems, against something somehow sacral: recently, US comedienne Kathy Griffin posted a video of herself holding the bloody, severed head of Donald Trump. “But that wasn’t the end of it” Henninger notes. “We may assume that as Ms. Griffin was creating her video, the artists at New York’s Public Theatre, were rehearsing their production of Julius Caesar, the one in which Central Park audiences watch ‘Caesar’ as a blond-haired Donald Trump, who is pulled down from a podium by men in suits, and assassinated with plunging knives … Whatever once fastened the doors of people’s minds to something secure and stable has become unhinged.”

Mike Vlahos (Professor at the US Naval War college and John Hopkins) tells us that, as a military historian and global strategist, he became curious to know just why it is that ‘world systems’ do ‘come apart’. His first, intuitive sense was that their collapse generally was brought about by some massive external force such as war, pestilence or famine, and by the concomitant mass migrations of peoples.

But when he and his students completed their research, he concluded that though these factors had often played an important part, they were not the prime cause of the system coming apart. Rather, he identified a number of key triggers:

· The élites became stratified, and politics frozen
· The peoples’ allegiance became taken for granted, at the same time that the élites chose to ignore threats to the peoples’ way of life
· Social mobility declined, and change is fiercely resisted
· Rather, élites work to maximize their wealth and status.
· Elite authority becomes excessively militarized – and justified as ‘saving civilization’.

He concludes from this study,

“the situation that we inhabit today […] here in the imperial city in Washington DC, is that it is absolutely hollowed out … it is incapable of offering anything to its own people, the American people … I think we have reached a point where there is no possibility of revival within the current system that exists. The current system is set upon … is determined to eat itself out in a kind of civil war that is coming, and at the end of that, it will be done, will be finished”.

 

“The Methoni, one of the great nations of the late Bronze Age, had this same problem with the élites and the 1% that we have today, and they were overthrown. That’s 3300 years ago, and it keeps happening again and again. And the very structure of the decadent relationships in late periods where élites refuse to accommodate, refuse to adapt, refuse to be sensitive to needs of the larger whole of society, means this has to happen. There has to be an overthrow … for things eventually to get better, to be renewed. In other words, you can’t renew from within”.

Is this the situation today? The pre-conditions that Professor Vlahos relates, in terms of élite hubris, self-regard, and disdain for the real concerns of people are there (the polarization of US society at the US election provides the empirical evidence for this). And Stockman, in calling Trump the ‘Great Disrupter’ plainly implies that he might be precisely the ‘externality’ (coming from outside the élite) – that might tip things ‘over’. This surely is what Stockman means when he warns about ‘the present risk environment’ being extreme.

Of course, the usual retort is that Trump offers no coherent alternative conceptual vision for the future, but only seized successfully upon a number of key insights: the power of cultural nationalism, the pain felt by the casualties of globalism, the impact of a hollowed-out US economy, and the need to put America first. This is true. These insights do not constitute a vision for the future, but why should one expect that, from the ‘Disrupter’? His ‘agency’ is that of catalyst, not that of final ‘constructor’. That comes later.

 

Thomas Cole Desolation of Empire 1836

 

So, from whence does ultimate societal renewal come? The classic answer is that after ‘disruption’ nothing much is left standing amidst the (metaphoric) ruins of whatever stood as the reigning ‘modernity’. Historically, renewal was effected through a communal ‘reaching back’- beyond the roots of whatever represented the contemporary crisis – to delve back, deep into the archetypal cultural history of a people. The rummaging in collective memory, allows a narrative to shape, about why the present ‘hurt’ befell its people, and to bring forward, transformed into contemporary meaning, some ‘solution’: a new meta-historical understanding.

Plainly, this (a type of spiritual renewal) is not President Trump’s ‘bag’. (Steve Bannon’s the more so, perhaps?)

What does all this mean in practical terms?

First, it suggests that most of us still prefer not to address the stark reality that “the objective of this city (DC), is to bring Trump down, via a deep state-media coup” and the bitter political trench warfare, which this portends. We prefer to rest in complacency, (as zombies for now), until a crisis squarely hits us – in a personal way.

 

Secondly, thoughts of an easy return to the status quo ante (such as via Vice-President Pence standing-in), is problematic (Macron’s election in France notwithstanding). Since the élites (all of them), have, in their ‘war’ against ‘populists’ and deplorables, totally lost legitimacy and authority for a substantive part of their populations. And they will not – cannot – adapt. For, that is their nature. This is the moment, Professor Vlahos notes, when a system – i.e. US operational governance – begins to ‘come apart’. Individuals, cabals within government, whole departments of state, look to their own self-awarded ‘authority’, rather than to that of the government as mandated by the electorate.

 

Thus we have this past week, the Senate voting 97-2 to impose further sanctions on Russia. Another wrench jammed into Trump’s foreign policy wheels – and explicitly conceived to paralyse and impede the President.

 

Thirdly, the intent is – like some Amazonian reptile venom – to ‘bite’ him with so much innuendo and assorted investigations and further allegations, that Trump, like the reptile’s victim, remains awake – but incapable of moving a muscle: A true zombie, in fact, as the reptile feeds on its living corpse.

 

Fourth, this zombified US President, will shortly face the requirement to negotiate with Congress an exit from a bubbling financial sphere soaring upwards, whilst a moribund real economy trails downwards – under pressure from the fast-approaching debt-ceiling deadline. The Senate’s slap at the President’s face with the Russia sanctions vote suggests it is more likely that he will be tossed another spanner: this time aimed at the wheels of the ‘Trump reflation’ programme.

What other insights might history offer? Two, perhaps:

Professor Vlahos, during his discussion with John Batchelor, the latter points out that, even at the very moment that the hub of the Roman Empire already had fallen apart, the collapsing Empire was celebrated the most, when it was imitated at the furthest edges of Empire: by the peoples of Gaul and Germany, for example.

 

Are we not seeing the same today, in Europe, as Merkel and Macron vow to keep the liberal, globalist values of the American Empire alive — at the edges of the American Empire — in Europe?

 

And lastly, the constituency that historically led renewal? Professor Vlahos: “The Roman legions, the Czarist armies, the German Imperial armies and the Ottoman armies”.

The Pentagon élites should note well.

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