Friday, 1 March 2019

Headlines - 1 March, 2019

## Global Ponzi meltdown/House of Cards/global cooling/deflationary collapse ##
Global stocks fall on China weakness, tempered trade hopes
Bubble Warning: Property Prices In Dubai Continue To Plummet
As with places like Singapore, Dubai offers hardly any way for people to survive post-SHTF. -- RF
Recession Signal Getting Louder: 5-Year Yield Inverts With 3-Month Yield (US)
Survival of the Richest
Nomi Prins tracks the acute worsening of inequality since the 2008 financial crisis.

## War on cash/cashless society/cryptocurrencies ##
The Demise of Physical Money: A Retail Worker’s Perspective
Even the three- and four-hour limits are inordinately long, and show that the skies are already overcrowded. -- RF

## Fault lines/flashpoints/powder kegs/military/war drums ##
U.S. Army estimates Russian capability will peak in 2028, China's in 2030
The U.S. Army estimates the Russian army’s military capabilities will peak in 2028, closely followed by the Chinese around 2030, giving the United States almost a decade to prepare for those threats, a senior Pentagon official said in an interview on Monday.
All countries are affected by net energy decline, including the US, which therefore cannot expect to have an edge. Expect the further development of the multi-polar world. -- RF
China, Russia and the United States have urged both sides to stand down and to deescalate the situation.
These three powers largely control the world. But it's highly unlikely they will take any substantive action toward nuclear disarmament, despite the extreme danger of this situation. Add to that the eventual explosions of nuclear power plants around the world due to inevitable grid failure. Nuclear technology: the gift that keeps on giving. -- RF
With Oil, Water and Iran as Targets, US on Brink of Recognizing Israeli Sovereignty Over Golan Heights
Israel is now pushing for the U.S. to recognize its sovereignty over the Golan for fear of losing it completely, even though such recognition could result in an all-out war between Israel and Syria, as well as with Syrian allies such as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

## War on Venezuela ##
Debunking the Lies About the Venezuela Humanitarian Aid Showdown
By provoking a series of violent confrontations along the Colombian and Brazilian borders, the Trump-backed opposition has managed to manufacture a false narrative designed to delegitimize the Maduro government and justify further foreign military intervention.
Australia’s Green Power Profit May Be Under Threat
The profitability of Australia’s first wave of renewable power projects may be threatened as lenders will likely push for some deleveraging when they come up for refinancing, according to the former chief risk assessor at the nation’s green bank.
Banks around the world opt to offload coal
One-hundred global financial institutions have introduced policies restricting coal funding, according to a new report. Coal companies are finding it harder to access capital markets for expansion, but China still lags.
Thus, we are essentially limited to existing technologies if we want to reverse climate change by 2050. This is an important reality check for those who subscribe to technocentric energy transition scenarios.
The military emphasizes safety and trouble-free operation, but also acknowledges that such a reactor is “not expected to survive a direct kinetic attack.”

## Environment/health ##
Plastic found in deepest ocean animals
Animals living in the deepest ocean trenches have been found with plastic fragments in their gut, according to new research published Wednesday showing how manmade pollution reaches into the bowels of the planet.

Police in Canada Are Tracking People’s ‘Negative’ Behavior In a ‘Risk' Database
The database includes detailed, but "de-identified," information about people's lives culled from conversations between police, social services, health workers, and more.

## Propaganda/censorship/fake news/alternative facts ##
The Holes in Jorge Ramos’ Story About His Clash with Nicolas Maduro
Univision’s Ramos claims that his belongings were confiscated and his phone was wiped. Miraculously enough, and conveniently for Ramos’ story, the footage that allegedly enraged Maduro survived.
Council of Europe says keep Russia in bloc to fight fake news
White House bars four reporters from Trump-Kim dinner
The White House barred reporters from Reuters, the Associated Press, Bloomberg and the Los Angeles Times from covering a dinner between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Wednesday after two of them asked Trump questions during his initial interactions with Kim.

## Systemic breakdown/collapse/unsustainability ##
The Doomsday Scenario for the Stock and Housing Bubbles
It was always folly to believe that inflating asset bubbles could solve the structural problems of a post-industrial economy.

## UK ##
The International Court of Justice in The Hague has handed down a momentous judgement that says Britain's colonial authority over the Chagos Islands is no longer legal.
GDP Rose by $1.0 Trillion in 2018, US Gov. Debt by $1.3 Trillion
Where would GDP growth be without federal borrow-and-spend?
Yellen warns of corporate distress, economic fallout
Former Federal Reserve (Fed) Chair Janet Yellen warned on Tuesday that America’s corporate debt binge could end up sparking a deeper recession when the next downturn hits.
Non-Military Federal Agencies Under Trump Expand Already Enormous Arsenals
Given that during the height of the Iraq War the Army used around 6 million rounds per month, with its planned purchase of 1.6 billion rounds, DHS would have ammo left over after matching the Army’s peak daily outpouring of hot lead for two solid decades.
Expecting unrest, are we? It's a tacit admission that the government expects things to get very ugly. -- RF
America’s Cities Are Running on Software From the ’80s
Even San Francisco’s tech chops can’t save it from relying on computers that belong in a museum.
Massive cuts to Social Security: This is the ‘wall’ Americans should worry about
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Robert Fisk on India, Kashmir and Pakistan


Robert Fisk does not take prisoners; he has been very vocal over the years about the dangers of Pakistan.



Now he gives his take on the latest conflict – especially the danger of Israel's involvement.

Being coy doesn’t change the reality of modern Pakistan — a a corrupt,politically savage, and physically broken society
Pakistan wilfully became an Islamic Republic and allowed religious bigotry to overwhelm its population



Israel is playing a big role in India’s escalating conflict with Pakistan
Signing up to the ‘war on terror’ – especially ‘Islamist terror’ – may seem natural for two states built on colonial partition whose security is threatened by Muslim neighbours


Robert Fisk


28 February, 2019

When I heard the first news report, I assumed it was an Israeli air raid on Gaza. Or Syria. Airstrikes on a “terrorist camp” were the first words. A “command and control centre” destroyed, many “terrorists” killed. The military was retaliating for a “terrorist attack” on its troops, we were told.

An Islamist “jihadi” base had been eliminated. Then I heard the name Balakot and realised that it was neither in Gaza, nor in Syria – not even in Lebanon – but in Pakistan. Strange thing, that. How could anyone mix up Israel and India?

Well, don’t let the idea fade away. Two thousand five hundred miles separate the Israeli ministry of defence in Tel Aviv from the Indian ministry of defence in New Delhi, but there’s a reason why the usual cliche-stricken agency dispatches sound so similar.


For months, Israel has been assiduously lining itself up alongside India’s nationalist BJP government in an unspoken – and politically dangerous – “anti-Islamist” coalition, an unofficial, unacknowledged alliance, while India itself has now become the largest weapons market for the Israeli arms trade.
Not by chance, therefore, has the Indian press just trumpeted the fact that Israeli-made Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” were used by the Indian air force in its strike against Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) “terrorists” inside Pakistan.

Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The “300-400 terrorists” supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.

But there was nothing unreal about the savage ambush of Indian troops in Kashmir on 14 February which the JeM claimed, and which left 40 Indian soldiers dead. Nor the shooting down of at least one Indian jet this week.
India was Israel’s largest arms client in 2017, paying £530m for Israeli air defence, radar systems and ammunition, including air-to-ground missiles – most of them tested during Israel’s military offensives against Palestinians and targets in Syria.
Israel itself is trying to explain away its continued sales of tanks, weapons and boats to the Myanmar military dictatorship – while western nations impose sanctions on the government which has attempted to destroy its minority and largely Muslim Rohingya people. But Israel’s arms trade with India is legal, above-board and much advertised by both sides.

The Israelis have filmed joint exercises between their own “special commando” units and those sent by India to be trained in the Negev desert, again with all the expertise supposedly learned by Israel in Gaza and other civilian-thronged battlefronts.

At least 16 Indian “Garud” commandos – part of a 45-strong Indian military delegation – were for a time based at the Nevatim and Palmachim air bases in Israel. In his first visit to India last year – preceded by a trip to Israel by nationalist Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu recalled the 2008 Islamist attacks on Mumbai in which almost 170 civilians were killed. “Indians and Israelis know too well the pain of terrorist attacks,” he told Modi. “We remember the horrific savagery of Mumbai. We grit our teeth, we fight back, we never give in.” This was also BJP-speak.

Several Indian commentators, however, have warned that right-wing Zionism and right-wing nationalism under Modi should not become the foundation stone of the relationship between the two countries, both of which – in rather different ways – fought the British empire.


Brussels researcher Shairee Malhotra, whose work has appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has pointed out that India has the world’s third largest Muslim population after Indonesia and Pakistan – upward of 180 million people. “The India-Israel relationship is also commonly being framed in terms of a natural convergence of ideas between their ruling BJP and Likud parties,” she wrote last year.

Hindu nationalists had constructed “a narrative of Hindus as historically victims at the hands of Muslims”, an attractive idea to those Hindus who recall partition and the continuing turbulent relationship with Pakistan.

In fact, as Malhotra pointed out in Haaretz, “Israel’s biggest fans in India appear to be the ‘internet Hindus’ who primarily love Israel for how it deals with Palestine and fights Muslims.
Malhotra has condemned Carleton University professor Vivek Dehejia for demanding a “tripartite” alliance between India, Israel and the US – since they have all suffered “from the scourge of Islamic terrorism”.

In fact, by the end of 2016, only 23 men from India had left to fight for Isis in the Arab world, although Belgium, with a population of only half a million Muslims, produced nearly 500 fighters.

Malhotra’s argument is that the Indian-Israeli relationship should be pragmatic rather than ideological.

But it is difficult to see how Zionist nationalism will not leach into Hindu nationalism when Israel is supplying so many weapons to India – the latest of which India, which has enjoyed diplomatic relations with Israel since 1992, has already used against Islamists inside Pakistan.

Signing up to the “war on terror” – especially “Islamist terror” – may seem natural for two states built on colonial partition whose security is threatened by Muslim neighbours.

In both cases, their struggle is over the right to own or occupy territory. Israel, India and Pakistan all possess nuclear weapons. Another good reason not to let Palestine and Kashmir get tangled up together. And to leave India’s 180 million Muslims alone.

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Reports from Indian and Pakistani media


‘Over in 90 seconds’: Officers detail India, Pakistan air duel along border

The dogfight between Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman and a Pakistan Air Force over the skies of the Nowshera in Rajouri district of Jammu Province lasted just 90 seconds.


1 March, 2019

The dogfight between Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, flying a Russian made MiG-21 and a Pakistan Air Force US made F-16 over the skies of the Nowshera in Rajouri District of Jammu Province on Wednesday lasted just 90 seconds, a senior Indian Air Force (IAF) officer said on condition of anonymity.

 The 90 seconds will perhaps go down in the history of aircraft encounters.
In the 90 seconds, the Pakistani fighter fired two US AMRAAM missiles and an aging MiG-21 shot down a fourth generation F-16 fighter — a feat that will go into the history books considering the asymmetry between the two fighters. Soon after, the MiG, piloted by Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was shot down.

The AMRAAM missiles are beyond visual range missiles, which means they can be fired from a stand-off distance. They are also all- weather and day and night capable missiles. Parts of the AMRAAM missile were recovered by India and made public in a press conference in New Delhi.
“Only F -16 aircraft can fire AMRAAM missiles. These have been used in violation of conditions imposed on Pakistan by the United States when these were sold,” a second senior IAF official who did not want to named said.
Those conditions state that the fighters can’t be used in offensive actions but only defensive ones.
On Wednesday, the incoming pack of 12 Pakistani fighters, comprising US-made F-16, French-made Mirages and JF-17 fighters made in Pakistan were detected by an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWAC) hovering inside India. Pakistan was responding to air strikes on a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Immediately, fighters from Avantipora, Srinagar and other airfields were scrambled. The MiG-21 being the closest, approached the PAF fighters, a senior official in the security establishment who did not want to be named said. From a distance, the entire dogfight was picked up the AWAC and also other Indian fighters.
The MiG-21 locked on to the F-16 when it was flying at about 15000ft and the F-16 at about 9000 ft. The MiG-21 started diving to get a better shot at the F-16. The F-16 took evasive measures. It went into a steep climb,” a second senior official in the security establishment said and added that “the F-16 climbed to about 26000 ft.”
By this time the MiG-21’s pilot had skillfully manoeuvred his aircraft behind the PAF fighter, positioning itself at a sixty-degree angle for maximum impact. It fired a Russian made Vympel R-73 (NATO name AA-11 Archer) missile hitting the F-16. Even as R-73 missile was closing into its target, the wingman of the F-16 now in the crosshairs moved in. He fired his weapon and hit the MiG-21. “No radio call from the MiG -21 was received,” the official said.
Rarely, if ever, has a MIG-21, designed and developed in the 1960s at the height of the cold war, shot down an F-16. The MiG-21 which shot down the F-16 on Wednesday joined the Indian Air Force in 1980s. “The MiG-21’s were upgraded, but the design is the same. It takes immense skill to out-manoeuver a fourth generation fighter. It is similar to taking on a BMW automobile in a race , with a Maruti-800,” a test pilot with the IAF who did not want to be named said.






This is what is coming out of Pakistan:

Not from Indian media but reflects what was reported last night. Rhetoric vs reality?

Pakistan Moves T.E.L.'s From Storage - Nuclear-Tipped "Shaheen-III" Missiles




HalTurner,
28 February, 2019

At about 8:25 PM eastern US time last night, word got out that spy satellites had picked-up Transporter-Erector-Launcher (TEL) vehicles inside Pakistan, being removed from their storage facilities with missiles on them.



Further analysis REQUIRED visual verification and that verification came about an hour later from resources on the ground inside Pakistan: the missiles are the Shaheen-III medium Range Ballistic Missile, armed with NUCLEAR WARHEAD.



These particular TEL's were in storage Depots assigned to Pakistan's National Command Authority and that is the NUCLEAR arm of their government.



This information was revealed LIVE on the air during the Hal Turner Radio Show on WBCQ, WRMI, and KYAH radio.



What was NOT known (at that time) was whether these TEL's were being moved out to USE, or to protect from being destroyed by possible Indian attack? Or was it just a "message" because Pakistan knew the missiles would be seen by spy satellites?



At 3:50 AM ET today (Thursday) intel sources confirmed directly that analysts see the TEL's have been moved to what would be considered LAUNCH locations. As such, the Intel Community believes Pakistan intends to USE Medium-Range-Ballistic-Missiles with nuclear warheads.



If fired from southeastern Pakistan the Shaheen III can hit India's Nicobar and Andaman Islands which are west of Thailand. India is believed to have placed nuclear assets there.



At present, it is not known if Pakistan intends a first strike, or if Pakistan fears a ground invasion which they know they are incapable of countering due to vastly superior India armed forces numbers. The chart below shows that India is FAR superior to Pakistan in all the ways that matter:
It is believed Pakistan fears a ground invasion because yesterday, India turned over to military control, their National Highway 1-A; the major east-west corridor in the far north of India. There is only one reason to do that: create a Logistics chain to support a ground invasion to take back all of Jammu and Kashmir from Pakistan control.


Overnight, Pakistan took what are seen as unusual and decisive actions against camps that India regards as TERRORISTS. Pakistan attacked certain camps, and made arrests of people allegedly tied to the terror group Jaish e-Muhammed.


Just hours ago, Pakistan Prime Minister Khan told a joint sitting of Parliament that Pakistan wants the situation to de-escalate and would be RELEASING the captured India fighter jet pilot whose plane was shot down by Pakistan.


For its part, India does not seem interested at all in these developments. India says their air strike against Jaish e-Muhammad terror camps was targeted retaliation for a terror attack against India on February 14 which killed forty (40) India Police Officers. India also says that Pakistan's response to those air strikes was to target India military sites and military gear. In other words, an act of war.


Indian Defense Ministry: "We believe that the Pakistan air intrusion was an attack on military installations. We believe that the Indian Air Force Pilot was ill-treated by the Pakistan Army in violation of the Geneva convention."


"India did not target any civilians or military installations, but Pakistan escalated by targeting Indian military installations. India did not deliberately cross LoC, very strong demarches have been given. India has foiled Pak attempts at creating a war psychosis."


As this story publishes at 10:33 AM ET, there remains constant shelling between Pakistani and Indian positions along the LoC.


Said one military intel source "Every time I try to think rationally about this situation, I remember that the Pakistanis protected Osama Bin Laden for years in the middle of a neighborhood surrounded by military staffers."

This is from the Times of Islamabad which seems to be far more tightly controlled than the Indian media. There is also no English-language television to draw on

ISLAMABAD - Prime Minister Imran Khan has urged the Indian leadership not to push for escalation as war is not solution to any problem.




Times of Islamabad,
28 February, 2019


Pakistan PM Imran Khan announces to release IAF captured pilot as a goodwill gesture
Making a policy statement at the joint sitting of the parliament in Islamabad today, he warned if India moved ahead with the aggression, Pakistan will be forced to retaliate.


He said Pakistan is a peace loving country and desires peace and stability in the region. He said that as a peace gesture, the Indian pilot captured yesterday will be released tomorrow.




The Prime Minister said Pakistan is making efforts to deescalate the current tension. He said that he also tried to contact the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday. He said that he will also talk to the Turkish President later today to ask him to play his role in the reduction of tension He said the foreign minister also contacted with other world leaders on the current situation.


The Prime Minister urged the international community to play its role in de-escalation for peace and stability in the region.

The Prime Minister however made it clear that our desire for de-escalation should not be misconstrued as our weakness. He pointed out that our armed forces are battle hardened and they are fully prepared to respond to any aggression.

 They are not reporting on this




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