Puppet MastersS


Dollars

Why US won't 'decouple' from China in finance

Wang Jinbin
China Daily
Mon, 21 Sep 2020 09:07 UTC
dollar notes
© SipaA teller counts and arranges dollar notes at a bank in Huaibei, Anhui province.
Does the United States really want to decouple from China in the financial industry? Presumably, the answer is "No".

The US administration's recent actions against short video-sharing app TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, the tightening regulatory scrutiny of Chinese companies listed in the US, and some news of individual companies delisting from the US stock market, have all boosted discussions on the reported US initiative to decouple from China in the financial services sector.

The reason is, it is not difficult to think of financial decoupling in the context of escalated China-US frictions. Financial decoupling is much more complicated than technological decoupling. It involves the securities market, cross-border payments and capital flows, as well as the performance of the international monetary system.

If we first look at the US dollar-denominated international monetary system, the cost and boundaries of the financial capital and the physical capital (especially for technology), and the trend of integration in the Chinese and US financial markets, one conclusion is inescapable: the US side still needs China to maintain the existing international monetary system, and has better business opportunities in China's financial market.

Any action like decoupling will hurt the two sides; instead, cooperation will achieve a win-win situation.
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Red Pill

SOTT Focus: The End of Reality

Edward Curtin
OffGuardian
Sun, 20 Sep 2020 04:02 UTC
prison planet
In 1888, the year before he went insane, Friedrich Nietzsche wrote the following in Twilight of the Idols:
We have got rid of the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? ... But no! Along with the real world we've done away with the apparent world as well.
So, if you feel you also may be going insane in the present climate of digital screen life, where real is unreal but realer than real, the apparent is cryptic, and up is down, true is false, and what you see you don't, it has a history.

One hundred and thirty-two years ago, Nietzsche added that "something extraordinarily nasty and evil is about to make its debut." We know it did, and the bloody butcher's bench known as the twentieth century was the result. Nihilism stepped onto center stage and has been the star of the show ever since, straight through to 2020.
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Bad Guys

SOTT Focus: The War on Populism: The Final Act

CJ Hopkins
The Consent Factory
Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
Independence Day still
© Independence Day, 20th Century Studios, et al.
So, it appears the War on Populism is building toward an exciting climax. All the proper pieces are in place for a Class-A GloboCap color revolution, and maybe even civil war. You got your unauthorized Putin-Nazi president, your imaginary apocalyptic pandemic, your violent identitarian civil unrest, your heavily-armed politically-polarized populace, your ominous rumblings from military quarters ... you couldn't really ask for much more.

OK, the plot is pretty obvious by now (as it is in all big-budget action spectacles, which is essentially what color revolutions are), but that won't spoil our viewing experience. The fun isn't in guessing what is going to happen. Everybody knows what's going to happen. The fun is in watching Bruce, or Sigourney, or "the moderate rebels," or the GloboCap "Resistance," take down the monster, or the terrorists, or Hitler, and save the world, or democracy, or whatever.

The show-runners at GloboCap understand this, and they are sticking to the classic Act III formula (i.e., the one they teach in all those scriptwriting seminars, which, full disclosure, I teach a few of those). They've been running the War on Populism by the numbers since the very beginning. I'm going to break that down in just a moment, act by act, plot point by plot point, but first let's quickly cover the basics.

Comment: Sit back and enjoy the show is right!

This is a good 'script'.

However, we disagree with the characterization of Trump as "a narcissistic ass clown who is playing president to feed his ego."

Born into the rarefied atmosphere of 'the American elite', he's certainly not 'one of the little people', but he has put himself and his family 'on the line' to salvage what's left of the American Republic or 'American way of life'. He could have pulled an Obama - made two dozen populist promises to get elected then broken every single one of them, but he didn't... to the best of his ability, and up to the limits set by the batsh*t crazy Washington environment in which he has to operate.

Finally, is it so certain that he will lose in Act III? We're not so sure. He has survived thus far, and is probably more popular than ever...

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Footprints

In reelection bid, Trump pushes Afghan troop withdrawal to meet campaign promise

Todd Prince
RFE/RL
Mon, 21 Sep 2020 13:20 UTC
TrumpGhaniTroops
© Alex Brandon/APPresident Donald Trump with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani while addressing members of the military at Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan.
As negotiators for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the Taliban militants hold historic peace talks in Qatar, few are expecting a deal to be easy or even successful.

The two sides -- who have been at war for nearly two decades and continue to kill each other even during the Doha negotiations -- are far apart on key issues like women's rights and the implementation of Shari'a law as they seek to reach a power-sharing agreement and permanent cease-fire.

But those difficulties are not preventing President Donald Trump from pushing for the removal of more U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the November 3 election as he seeks to end the United States' longest war.

With just weeks to go in a tight reelection bid against Democratic candidate Joe Biden, Trump is seeking to score points by fulfilling -- though not entirely -- a campaign promise to bring U.S. troops home from the "endless wars" in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some military officials, members of Congress, and analysts have expressed concern that a quick withdrawal of U.S. soldiers could lead to the collapse of the Afghan government and hand control of the South Asian country back to the Taliban that U.S.-led forces overthrew in 2001.

"We're going down to 4,000 [troops], we're negotiating right now," Trump said in an interview with Axios on July 28 that was aired on August 3. He added that the total number of troops would be between 4,000 and 5,000 by Election Day.
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Nuke

US envoy: Russia agree to arms control deal with no NATO scaleback or US will 'modernize nukes without START'


RT
Sun, 20 Sep 2020 21:28 UTC
hypersonic launches
© YouTube/RT/Russia Defense Ministry/US Department of DefenseTest launch of Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle • Test launch of common hypersonic glide body (C-HGB)
The US has made Russia an offer it hopes she won't refuse: accept a new arms control deal including no limits on NATO weapons in Europe, or deal with a modernized American nuclear arsenal on its doorstep.

Following the US' unilateral withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty last year, the 2011 New START treaty remains the only arms control deal in force between Moscow and Washington. However, it's due to expire in February, and negotiations to replace it remain deadlocked.

Now the US says it wants to extend new START by less than five years, and only by a memorandum of intent, rather than a binding treaty, according to Marshall Billingslea, US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, who spoke with the Russian daily Kommersant on Sunday.

However, when it comes to hammering out a new deal, Washington has some demands. The first of these demands is that China be made a party to the deal. Russia has no opposition to this in theory, but insists that if China be rolled in, so too should Britain and France.
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Dollars

FinCEN leak: Shows indiscriminate money laundering with help of world's largest banks as govt turns blind eye


RT
Sun, 20 Sep 2020 23:07 UTC
Bank names
© 1 Reuters/Brendan McDermid /Chris Helgren/KhamBanks hit by leak of suspicious financial transactions
A massive leak of internal bank documents has supposedly revealed that the world's biggest financial institutions moved more than $2 trillion in suspected dirty money for mobsters, drug cartels, and ponzi schemers.

According to a trove of internal documents obtained by Buzzfeed, some of the world's largest financial institutions allowed criminals to launder money, and profited for doing so. The documents in question are known as Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), sent to US authorities when bank employees notice suspicious dollar transactions, like large wire transfers from shell companies with no previous relationship.

Once sent to the US Financial Crimes Investigation Network (FinCEN), these reports should trigger investigations. However, according to Buzzfeed, regulators often don't follow them up, and banks sometimes continue to move illicit cash, even after the reports are sent.

Comment: The moving of trillions in 'dirty money' benefit the oligarchs and criminal networks, says the ICIJ report:
Bank of New York Mellon, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered Bank also continued to 'wave through' suspect payments despite similar promises to government authorities. In the last decade, the banks paid billions of dollars in fines and agreed to deferred prosecution agreements over failures in their anti-money-laundering programs.

Shares of the banks fell sharply in Hong Kong on Monday after the report came out, with HSBC's stock at one point trading at its lowest level since 1995.

JPMorgan told the ICIJ that while the bank was legally prohibited from discussing clients or transactions, it has taken a "leadership role" in pursuing "proactive intelligence-led investigations" and developing "innovative techniques to help combat financial crime."


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Rocket

Trump's claims of Russia stealing US tech rebuffed: 'Obama was a schoolboy when we started hypersonic experiments'


RT
Mon, 21 Sep 2020 00:10 UTC
Avangard vehicle/Obama
© Sputnik/Russia Defense Ministry/Getty Images/Laura S.L. KongGraphic image Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle • Barack Obama, May 1979, Hawaii
The creator of Russia's Avangard hypersonic glider ridiculed Donald Trump for claiming Russia stole the technology from the Obama administration, saying that hypersonic experiments in the country began long before his presidency.

Gerbert Yefremov, 87-year-old renowned engineer, who played a key role in designing Russia's newest missile systems, including Avangard glide vehicle, told Rossiyskaya Gazeta:
"Barack Obama became US President in 2009. Our experiments with these types of things began in the Soviet times, when Obama was still a teenager. He was still a schoolboy when we were already experimenting with hypersonic tech."
The conclusion, which can be drawn from Yefremov's words, is that Russian scientists began developing hypersonic technologies sometime between 1974 and 1981 - when ex-President Obama used to be a teenager.

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Up

House Democrats, ramping up effort to thwart Durham probe, call for 'emergency investigation'

Chuck Ross
Daily Caller
Fri, 18 Sep 2020 01:45 UTC
DurhamSchiff
© Gulf News/Baseball Watcher/Tennessee Star/CC BY-SA 3.0/KJNUS Attorney John Durham • Adam Schiff
The Democratic chairs of four House committees asked the Justice Department's internal watchdog on Friday to open an "emergency investigation" into U.S. Attorney John Durham's probe of the Obama administration's Trump-related intelligence activities.

Democrats wrote to Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general:
"We write to ask that you open an emergency investigation into whether U.S. Attorney General William Barr, U.S. Attorney John Durham, and other Department of Justice political appointees are following DOJ's longstanding policy to avoid taking official actions or other steps that could improperly influence the upcoming presidential election."
The letter was signed by Reps. Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Zoe Lofgren and Carolyn Maloney, who lead the House Judiciary, Intelligence, House Administration and Oversight Committees, respectively.

Comment: See also:

'Absolutely terrified" Democrats demand emergency investigation into Durham probe

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Santa

Demented: Joe Biden claims 200 million Americans have died from coronavirus

Kyle Olson
RT
Sun, 20 Sep 2020 00:00 UTC
Biden
© Adam Schultz/Biden for PresidentFormer US VP Joe Biden
Joe Biden claimed on Sunday that, by the time he would be done speaking, 200 million Americans will have died from the coronavirus.
As Biden demanded inaction from the U.S. Senate on providing advice and consent on a potential Supreme Court nominee, he said, "It's estimated 200 million people have died probably by the time I finish this talk."

That would be roughly two-thirds of the country.

Comment: Biden's number is 'up'. Very, very soon there will be no one left in the US to vote, except...
hands up
© telegraph co.uk"We vote for Joe!"
Conservative commentators saw his flub as further evidence that the former vice president isn't all there mentally:
See also:

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Eagle

Best of the Web: That Senate 'collusion' report? It's got no smoking gun, but it does have a fog machine

Aaron Maté
Real Clear Investigations
Mon, 21 Sep 2020 18:30 UTC
warner burr
Above, the Senate intelligence panel's Democratic vice chair, Mark Warner, left, and its since departed GOP chairman, Richard Burr.
Part 1

The declaration that Donald Trump's onetime campaign manager employed a Russian intelligence officer was the headline-grabbing finding of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's fifth and final Russian interference report, released Aug. 18 at the time of the Democratic National Convention.

According to the report, Paul Manafort's 2016 interactions with his longtime associate, Ukraine-born Russian national Konstantin Kilimnik, "represent the single most direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services," and amounted to "a grave counterintelligence threat" to the United States.

To hear Trump-Russia conspiracy advocates tell it, Kilimnik was the elusive missing link that proved the Trump campaign's complicity in Russian electoral interference. "Manafort, while he was chairman of the Trump campaign, was secretly communicating with a Russian intelligence officer with whom he discussed campaign strategy and repeatedly shared internal campaign polling data," five of the committee's Democratic members wrote in a pointed addendum. "This is what collusion looks like."


Comment: If you're grandfather looks like Winston Churchill, that doesn't make him Winston Churchill.


But the plain text of the Senate report contains no concrete evidence to support its conclusions. Instead, with a heavy dose of caveats and innuendo, reminiscent of much of the torrent of investigative verbiage in the Russiagate affair, the report goes to great lengths to cast a pall of suspicion around Kilimnik, much of which is either unsupported or contradicted by publicly available information.
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