Welcome to Sott.net
Wed, 03 Nov 2021
The World for People who Think

Puppet Masters
Map

Footprints

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe given three-day furlough from Iranian jail

Saeed Kamali
The Guardian
Thu, 23 Aug 2018 14:23 UTC
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s release has been initially limited to three days.
Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman sentenced to five years in jail in Iran for spying, has been temporarily released from prison for the first time in more than two years.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe, whose plight has left a shadow hanging over Iran-UK relations, was given a three-day furlough on Thursday morning, taking her and her family by surprise.

She has since been reunited with her four-year-old daughter, Gabriella, who has been in the care of her Iranian family since she was 22 months old.

"It will be just awesome for Gabriella to have mummy home finally," Zaghari-Ratcliffe said, according to her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who remains in the UK.

"We can play with her doll's house and she can show me her toys. The thought of brushing her hair and giving her a bath, of being able to take her to the park and feed her and sleep next to her - it just kills me. It is still so hard to believe."

The Iranian move comes ahead of critical decisions by the European Union on the extent to which it will resist US sanctions designed to curb European investment in Iran, including any purchase of Iranian oil.

Comment: Previously:

      Read More...
Eye 2

Is George Soros reaching the end of his destructive road?

Tom Luongo
Gold, Goats, 'n Guns
Sat, 25 Aug 2018 15:46 UTC
creepy soros
"You either die a Hero, Or you live long enough to see yourself become the Villain. " - The Dark Knight
George Soros has made that transformation into the Villain. Not that he was ever the Hero, but he is in his mind.

He is the embodiment of the idea floated by John Barth that "Man can do no wrong."

This is something that good writers understand, villains never see themselves as villains. In their mind, they can do no wrong, that what they are doing is for the common good or a better world.

I'm binge-watching The Americans with my wife (just finished Season 3, no spoilers please) and the slow-dawning realization on all of the character's faces that what they are doing is destroying their souls has become the dominant narrative drive.

I suspect that the second half of the show's run will focus on extricating themselves from this nightmare.

This is what makes it compelling story-telling, if massively contrived as all TV storytelling needs to be.

Comment:

      Read More...
Arrow Up

China pushes through with opening financial system to foreigners despite rising trade war


Bloomberg
Fri, 24 Aug 2018 15:45 UTC
china us trade war
China removed limits on foreign ownership of its banks and bad-debt managers, pushing ahead with a previously announced plan to open its financial system despite rising trade tensions with the U.S.

Overseas financial institutions will now be treated the same as local companies, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission said in a statement late Thursday, following through on a pledge announced last year. Stakes were previously capped at 20 percent for a single foreign institution and 25 percent for a group.

The move is part of China's longstanding effort to increase its integration with the global financial system, but it may also help President Xi Jinping counter criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump that China has been a one-sided beneficiary of global commerce. Xi's government announced a number of financial opening initiatives in November, before the tit-for-tat trade conflict that saw the world's biggest economies raise tariffs on $50 billion of each other's exports. Most of the Chinese opening measures are expected to take effect by the end of this year.

"China is showing they are keeping their promise and that regulators are interested in opening up, rather than closing down," said Chen Long, a Beijing-based economist at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics. "Given the ongoing trade dispute, from a reputation perspective, this is helpful."

Comment: See also:

      Read More...
Heart - Black

Do NOT let them make a saint of bloodthirsty warmonger John McCain

Caitlin Johnstone
caitlinjohnstone.com
Sat, 25 Aug 2018 15:27 UTC
soros mccain
© Associated Press/Michel Euler
Soros and McCain - elderly psychopaths still at it
"Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe." ~ Arundhati Roy
John McCain's family has announced that the Arizona Senator has opted to end treatment for brain cancer and live out his final few days in peace, presumably under the best hospice care money can buy. And I sincerely hope that it is peaceful. My statements about my desire for John McCain to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner rather than later have been highly publicized, and I stand by all of them, but I don't wish him a painful or agitated end.

And, also, I am going to keep hammering on how very important it is that we refuse to bow to the aggressive demands from establishment loyalists that we be respectful of this warmongering psychopath and his blood-soaked legacy.

Comment: Well said, Ms. Johnstone! Whitewashing the true story of psychopaths only perpetuates their dominance.

      Read More...
Light Sabers

How US-China Trade War is Spreading From Goods to Services

Dan Steinbock
Sott.net
Sat, 25 Aug 2018 14:43 UTC
china us trade war
Trump tariff wars are entering a new, far more dangerous phase. As the White House is expanding its tariff wars, collateral damage is about to spread from goods to services - much of it in the U.S.

After months of trade threats, the Trump administration announced its 25% tariff on $34 billion of Chinese imports effective in early July, while threatening levies on another $16 billion of imports. To defend its sovereign interest, China responded with 25% tariffs on $34 billion of US imports and recently imposed an additional tariff of 25% on $16 billion of US imports effective on August 23.

As Trump is escalating his tariff war, a total of $50 billion of goods on each side will be taxed as of Thursday.
      Read More...
Candle

Trudy Stevenson, Zimbabwe's ambassador to Senegal dies at age 73


African News Agency
Fri, 24 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC
Trudy Stevenson
Zimbabwe's ambassador to Senegal and The Gambia, Trudy Stevenson, has been found dead in Dakar on Friday.

The 73-year-old diplomat was reportedly discovered at her residence by her chauffeur when he reported for duty.

The Zimbabwean foreign affairs and international trade ministry confirmed the death of the diplomat, but could not shed more light, saying government was yet to talk to the family.

"It is true Ms Stevenson has passed, but we are yet to get in contact with all the relatives," an official in the ministry said.

"We will announce officially once we get in touch with them."
      Read More...
USA

New York Times alleges that Betsy DeVos plans to buy guns for teachers


RT
Sat, 25 Aug 2018 12:51 UTC
Betsy DeVos
© Joshua Roberts/Reuters
Betsy DeVos talks to some school children
In a bid to make US schools safer, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is reportedly considering using federal funds reserved for the country's poorest schools to buy guns for teachers instead.

While it has been a long-standing federal government position to not use federal funds to arm schools or staff, DeVos's department are eyeing the Student Support and Academic Enrichment (SSEA) grant, an aspect of federal education law that makes no mention of prohibiting weapons purchases with the funding, according to a New York Times report this week.

In March, a bill funding school safety programs, the Stop School Violence Act, saw Congress explicitly forbid using the funds for purchasing weapons for schools.

Comment: Also see: A quick summary of President Trump's school safety plan

      Read More...
Cards

Juan Cole: 'Trump joke about Israeli one-state solution reveals his ignorance'

Juan Cole
TruthDig
Wed, 22 Aug 2018 12:21 UTC
trump netanyahu
In a conversation earlier this summer with Jordan's King Abdullah II, the king told Donald Trump about the possibility of a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, which Abdullah said younger Palestinians increasingly favor. Trump is said by French and other diplomats present to have replied, "What you say makes sense. [In a one-state scenario,] the prime minister of Israel in a few years will be called Mohammed."

The remark was made in jest, but it is a bad joke and displays complete ignorance of the lengths that Israel's far-right Likud government goes to make sure no such thing happens. It is called apartheid. Trump's expectation is like suggesting that in the Jim Crow South, an African-American could have been elected governor.

Israel effectively rules over 13.3 million people.

8.3 million are Israelis proper. Of these, 75 percent, or 6.2 million, are Jews, and the other quarter, about 2.1 million, are mostly Palestinian-Israelis and predominantly Muslim, though there are Christians and Druze.

Comment: The author's last paragraph is the most interesting: of course a one-state solution delivers Palestinians to Israelis on a totalitarian platter... TODAY.

But just as that 'Jim Crow South' later delivered the US its first black president, so the long-term is the only horizon in which Palestinians stand a chance of transforming their situation.

It's brutal, and it's easy for us to say from a safe distance, but there it is. As long as the Adelsons rule, your only way out is to change facts on the ground, under their noses.

      Read More...
Card - MC

Why China's payment apps give US bankers nightmares

Jennifer Surane & Christopher Cannon
Bloomberg
Wed, 23 May 2018 11:39 UTC
china qr codes payments
Wandering the streets of Shanghai to admire the architecture, the head of one of the largest U.S. consumer banks recently found himself surrounded by a gaggle of teenagers.

Entranced by their phones, they hardly made way for the banker. The teens were messaging, shopping and sending money back and forth, all without cash. Instead, they were using Alipay and WeChat.

The scary thing for the American: Banks never got a cut.

The future of consumer payments may not be designed in New York or London but in China. There, money flows mainly through a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking - all run by two of the world's most valuable companies. That contrasts with the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments. Western bankers and credit-card executives who travel to China keep returning with the same anxiety: Payments can happen cheaply and easily without them.

Comment: When Visa's CEO is wishing for an "even playing field," you know the financiers' fears that the positions they have held at the apex to date are under threat.

Substituting one oligarchy (financial) for another (technological) doesn't of course change the fundamental fact that there is a hierarchy, but if the new one is 'better for the market' in terms of efficiency and reducing leaks into the 'parasitic economy', maybe it heralds progress of a sort.

Again it's interesting to note that China, by forging ahead on its own course of modernization, is compelling 'the developed world' to ape it. It may not be long before Sinofication is now competing with Westernization.

      Read More...
Card - VISA

How China's Mobile Ecosystems Are Making Banks Obsolete

Ellen Brown
TruthDig
Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:28 UTC
alipay advert
© Ged Carroll / Flickr
Alibaba's proprietary payment platform, Alipay, has shown up in advertisements overseas, such as this one in London's Tottenham Court subway station
The U.S. credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard?

It seems China's new mobile payment ecosystems can. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled Why China's Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares:
The future of consumer payments may not be designed in New York or London but in China. There, money flows mainly through a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking-all run by two of the world's most valuable companies. That contrasts with the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments. Western bankers and credit-card executives who travel to China keep returning with the same anxiety: Payments can happen cheaply and easily without them.
The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a major technology company - whether one from China or a U.S. giant such as Amazon or Facebook - might replicate the success of the Chinese mobile payment systems, cutting banks out.

Comment: An interesting trend, that's for sure.

It's the One World digitized credits system 'conspiracy theorists' warned about decades ago.

The trade-off seems to be: the popular dream of cutting out banksters as middlemen is realized... in exchange for super-sized conglomerates that are part-monopolies, part-governments-unto-themselves.

The incredible thing about it is that China, which has yet to complete its transition to a modern economy, is 'forcing' this development in the West by the act of forging ahead with it.

      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts