Watching Waves,
My hypothesis, which time and tide are now testing, is that the world is transitioning off a petrodollar standard and back onto a gold standard for international trade and finance.
It looks to me like the skirmishes are currently being fought around the line of 8200 Chinese Yuan/Renminbi per Troy oz of gold.
The People's Bank of China can certainly defend this peg, and the more it is contested, the more established it becomes in global consciousness. Western banking/governments can drive gold lower, which they do from time to time to make people feel gold is unreliable, but they will also drive the CNY/Renminbi lower, and just emphasize the peg to gold, by so doing. It looks like letting things settle close to where they are now is where the truce should be called. 1 Troy oz. Gold = 8200 CNY = $US 1200.
Historically finance can rule in good times, but politic/military rules in bad times. We have become ruled by transnational financial elites in recent decades. There is a novel proposal to strip transnational corporations of assets, to pay for the rebuilding of Syria. The war upon Syria was in the service of transnational elites, after all... Thanks Eleni;
The United States, which had been planning the war against Syria since 2004, does not want to part with a penny. According to the Trump administration, this war was created by the Bush Jr. administration and led by the Obama administration. However, these two administrations were not serving the interests of the US people, but those of a transnational financial class. Not only did they destroy Syria, but also the US economy. Thus it is not for Washington to pay, but these people and the transnational corporations directly implicated in the war. For example, the United States investment fund and rival of the Carlyle Group, Henry Kravis’ KKR (market value 150 billion dollars). It employs General David Petraeus and transferred funds and weapons to Al-Qaeda and Daesh... Making the multinationals pay does not exclude obtaining damages from certain states like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar or Turkey, which financed, or certain of whose citizens publicly financed the jihadists... If the Syrian Arab Republic can gather the proof of their role during the war, it will be legally entitled to demand seizure before the tribunals of the country accommodating their headquarters. In the light of President Trump’s arguments, it should be possible for them to count on the support of the new US administration... Àt the end of all wars which called for the payment of damages, national companies were seized. The novelty this time will be drawing the conclusions of economic globalisation and seizing the transnationals.
Russell Napier: The Solid Ground has long forecast a major debt default in Turkey. More specifically, the forecast remains that the country will impose capital controls enforcing a near total loss of US$500bn of credit assets held by the global financial system. That is a large financial hole in a still highly leveraged system. That scale of loss will surpass the scale of loss suffered by the creditors of Bear Stearns and while Lehman’s did have liabilities of US$619bn, it has paid more than US$100bn to its unsecured creditors alone since its bankruptcy.
Who can Turkey rely upon for financial help, among the Arab neighbors? Qatar, maybe, within narrow limits, since Turkey protected them (somewhat) from Saudi invasion a couple of years ago. (That's not a game changer. What if the House of Saud falls? Turkey, Syria, Qatar and Iran could do pipeline business over the Pars gas field pipeline to Europe.)
Qatar "pledges" $15 billion in Turkish investment.
The Turkish Lira, which has been rising all day after an earlier attempt to crush shorts by reducing the amount of swap transactions to just 25% of bank capital, down from 50%, got another boost moments ago when Anadolu news agency reported that Qatar has pledged $15 billion in direct investment in Turkey.
Turkey extends an olive branch to Greece, releasing 2 Greek soldiers, held prisoner since March, for straying into Turkey in bad weather.
This is more symbolically strong, happening on a Greek Orthodox Holy Day.
Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said he phoned his Turkish counterpart to express his satisfaction with the soldiers’ release and invite him to visit Greece. “This is a great day for our motherland, the day of Our Lady, the day of Tinos in 1940,” Kammenos told reporters, referring to the Feast of the Dormation, which falls on August 15 and to the Italian torpedoing on a Greek warship on this day in 1940. “I hope that their release … will herald a new day in Greek-Turkish relations. We can live together peacefully, for the benefit of both our peoples.”
Pastor Brunson is still in the klink...
But... Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s spokesman said on Wednesday he expected problems with the United States, which helped drive the lira to record lows, to be resolved but Washington must stop trying to influence Turkey’s judiciary.
Since November 2017 the U.S. largely stopped the fight against ISIS in north-east Syria. It gave ISIS the chance to regain power. A new report to the UN Security Council now confirms that ISIS in north-east Syria recuperated. It again profits from oil extraction under the nose of U.S. forces.
(Who's yer Daddy?)
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/08/un-sanction-monitor-us-watches-as-isis-in-syria-recuperates-pumps-and-sells-more-oil.html#more
R
ussia is stabilizing the (again) UN monitored DMZ between the Israeli-occupied Golan heights and the rest of Syria. This means that Israel accepts that status quo and will no longer support ISIS in that area to destabilize the Syrian government and society. It also means that Syria/Hezbollah/Iran will not soon take back the Golan into Syria.
"The Russian military police will create eight outposts near the demilitarized zone at the Golan Heights on the Syrian-Israeli border, a deputy commander of the Russian forces in Syria in charge of of military police, Viktor Zaytsev, said.
“I would like to stress that there will be no Russian military police posts in the demilitarized zone,” he said."
Eleni also sends this about the Caspian Sea agreement. Russia's protected pond, with mutual benefit of gas and pipelines for all. Iran gives up some military buffer from Russia, but Russia is not the current threat. No NATO in this lake...
After more than 20 years of fraught diplomatic efforts, the five littoral Caspian nations agreed upon a legal framework for sharing the world’s largest inland body of water.
More Caspian Agreement details here. European gas pipeline implications are included. Not all details are finalized.
Censorship Is What Happens When Powerful People Get Scared (and after that comes...)
Taibbi: Censorship Does Not End Well (How America Learned to Stop Worrying and Put Mark Zuckerberg In Charge of Everything)
Sister Caitlin on the political wars being fought upon the battlefield of censorship:
“The world’s dumbest and/or most deceitful people have always been those who equate ‘I defend X’s right to speak’ with ‘I defend X and their ideas,’” wrote Greenwald. “It’s the scummiest tactic there is. They did it to Chomsky when he opposed prosecuting a Holocaust denier.”
These few principled leftists brave enough to take a strong stand on the issue have been attacked and smeared with amazing viciousness by leftists who are blinded by their hatred of Jones, and by Democrats who know that censorship will never hurt their power-enabling faction. The position that the left is always the real target of censorship was ignored and replaced with the absurd straw man argument that anyone objecting to the coordinated de-platforming is defending Alex Jones because they love him and think Infowars is awesome.
The western obesity epidemic began after 1976. Westerners ate more calories in 1976, but not much at all in sweet drinks. that has changed. Our bodies don't see" the calories in sweet drinks. There is a lot of psychological research into marketing, and what taste combinations are most prone to addicting us.
"We" are to blame, of course. Nobody is making us eat potato chips and Cokes. George Monbiot has the story.
Confused Hypothalamus
