Weekend Update 11/11/17 War Coming.

"You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun, than you can with a kind word alone."

Al Capone.

A new Middle East war is coming, possibly as early as Christmas. The American War Party is now conditioning the public flat out, for the acceptance of a new Middle East war as inevitable and justified, and “anti-war” President Trump seems to have fully enlisted in the new  war, and authorised the Saudis to get the ball rolling, Can a false flag, “Gulf of Tonkin” Pentagon cover-event be far away?

Be prepared. Stay long fully paid up physical gold and silver held outside of the US-UK financial system. If/when this goes wrong it will usher in a momentous change in the world financial order, similar to when the age of Empires collapsed after the First World War.

Below, Bloomberg and Reuters condition the public for a new Middle East war. US Secretary of State Tillerson dissembles.

'What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

Sir Walter Scott.

Trump’s Secret Weapon: The Hidden Ties That Bind Israel, Saudis

By Jonathan Ferziger, David Wainer, Margaret Talev, and Donna Abu-Nasr

November 10, 2017, 5:00 AM GMT Updated on November 10, 2017, 3:13 PM GMT

Israelis talk about when, not if, they’ll fight Hezbollah again. Since the last war in 2006, they’ve repeatedly reinforced the border with Lebanon. Snaking through the pine forests that separate the countries are 50 miles of sensor-laden fences, patrol roads and dirt berms.

They’ll make little difference if war comes. Both sides are geared for an airborne conflict. Israel’s leaders say they’re ready to bomb Lebanon back to the Stone Age. Hezbollah is said to have increased its missile stocks tenfold. In Kfar Vradim, an Israeli town just south of the frontier, David Deshe expects the worst. “Last time we had a couple of dozen rockets,” said the army reservist and business-owner (who counts a Warren Buffett-owned factory among his neighbors). “This time, they tell us, it’s going to be like rain.”

But there’s been a crucial change since 2006, one that may far outweigh any new fortifications. As the war against Islamic State winds down, older fault-lines are resurfacing -- along with some new alliances. Many signs point to a deepening understanding, encouraged by the U.S., between Israel and an Islamic kingdom it doesn’t even have diplomatic relations with: Saudi Arabia.

The two countries share a common enemy in Iran. They’re both urging action against the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah -- and increasingly taking action themselves, fueling the regional turbulence that has rocked oil markets. And they’re both central to the new American strategy for the Middle East outlined, if not yet detailed, by Donald Trump.

‘Hands of Iran’

Determination to roll back Iranian power unites the unlikely triumvirate: Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s veteran premier; Mohammed Bin Salman, the ambitious young prince who’s seized the reins in Saudi Arabia and is casting aside its traditional caution; and the U.S. president.

They all express dismay at the victory of Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the growing clout across the region that the Islamic Republic enjoys as a result. For years, “Assad must go” has been American and Saudi policy; instead he’s largely defeated the rebels they supported. Looking for another arena to push back, the triumvirate is zeroing in on Lebanon and its dominant party, which all three consider a terrorist group, Hezbollah.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Saudi protégé, had been governing in coalition with Hezbollah. Last weekend he flew to Riyadh -- then unexpectedly quit, saying his life was in danger. “The hands of Iran in the region will be cut off,” Hariri said on Saudi TV, announcing a resignation widely seen as a Saudi-orchestrated move.

Israel followed up within hours. Netanyahu issued a statement urging the world to wake up to Iranian aggression. The next day, Channel 10 in Tel Aviv reported that Israeli diplomats around the world had been ordered to portray Hariri’s departure as an example of Iran’s menacing influence.

‘Capability to Strike’

Neither country acknowledges any direct contact -- which would be especially damaging for the Saudis. As guardians of Islam’s holiest sites, they claim leadership in a Muslim world where Israel is deeply unpopular.

The Saudi government’s media office didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. A Netanyahu aide, who asked not to be identified discussing a sensitive issue, said Iran now threatens so many countries that it’s natural for Israel’s alarm to be shared by others, while declining to comment on whether there’s Saudi-Israel coordination.

“It’s very possible that Saudi Arabia and Israel are forming a joint strategy toward Hezbollah and Iran,” said Alireza Nader, a policy analyst at Rand Corp. “While Saudi Arabia may have some diplomatic and economic sway over Lebanon, it cannot fight Hezbollah militarily. But Israel has the capability to strike.”
 
----It’s not clear what role Washington is playing in the convergence between two of its oldest and closest Mideast allies.

Two people familiar with U.S. policy in the region said that it’s an American objective to encourage coordination between regional countries that oppose Iran and are aligned with the U.S. That’s starting to happen, the people said, though they said there was no American involvement in Hariri’s resignation.

Days before that bombshell, Jared Kushner -- Trump’s son-in-law, who’s also a confidant of Israeli leaders -- was in Saudi Arabia. He reportedly spent late nights talking with Prince Mohammed. Trump has said a peace deal with the Palestinians would involve bringing Israel and Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia together. His envoy on that issue, Jason Greenblatt, has also been in Riyadh and Jerusalem lately.

Kushner’s conversations in Saudi Arabia and the region briefly included addressing the broad threat posed by Iran-Hezbollah in the context of Israeli-Palestinian peace, if not the specific actions recently taken against the Shiite militia, according to the people familiar with American diplomacy. Further steps could involve a clampdown on Hezbollah cash flow, as the militia faces the growing cost of treating fighters injured in Syria and paying pensions to the families of those who died.

Congress last month approved new sanctions against Hezbollah, and lawmakers are already drafting another round. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was in Saudi Arabia and Israel last month, stressing the need to disrupt Hezbollah’s “financiers.”
More
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/trump-s-secret-weapon-the-hidden-ties-that-bind-israel-saudis

November 10, 2017 / 7:22 AM / Updated 8 hours ago

Hezbollah says Saudi declares Lebanon war with Hariri detention

BEIRUT/PARIS (Reuters) - Hezbollah’s leader said on Friday that Saudi Arabia had declared war on Lebanon and his Iran-backed group, accusing Riyadh of detaining Saad al-Hariri and forcing him to resign as Lebanon’s prime minister to destabilise the country.

France became the first Western country to indicate that Saudi Arabia was holding Hariri against his will, saying it wished for him to have “all his freedom of movement and be fully able to play the essential role that is his in Lebanon”.

Hariri’s resignation has plunged Lebanon into crisis, thrusting the small Arab country back to the forefront of regional rivalry between the Sunni Muslim monarchy Saudi Arabia and Shi‘ite revolutionary Iran.

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader, said Saudi Arabia’s detention of Hariri, a long-time Saudi ally who declared his resignation while in Riyadh last Saturday, was an insult to all Lebanese and he must return to Lebanon.

“Let us say things as they are: the man is detained in Saudi Arabia and forbidden until this moment from returning to Lebanon,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech.

“It is clear that Saudi Arabia and Saudi officials have declared war on Lebanon and on Hezbollah in Lebanon,” he said.

His comments mirror an accusation by Riyadh on Monday that Lebanon and Hezbollah had declared war on the conservative Gulf Arab kingdom.

Riyadh says Hariri is a free man and he decided to resign because Hezbollah was calling the shots in his government. Saudi Arabia considers Hezbollah to be its enemy in conflicts across the Middle East, including Syria and Yemen.

Western countries have looked on with alarm at the rising regional tension.

----U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned other countries and groups against using Lebanon as vehicle for a larger proxy fight in the Middle East, saying Washington strongly backed Lebanon’s independence and respected Hariri as a strong partner of the United States, still referring to him as prime minister.

“There is no legitimate place or role in Lebanon for any foreign forces, militias or armed elements other than the legitimate security forces of the Lebanese state,” Tillerson said in a statement released by the U.S. State Department.

Tillerson told reporters on Friday there was no indication that Hariri was being held in Saudi Arabia against his will but that the United States was monitoring the situation.

----Two top Lebanese government officials, a senior politician close to Hariri and a fourth source told Reuters on Thursday that the Lebanese authorities believe Hariri is being held in Saudi Arabia.

Nasrallah said Saudi Arabia was encouraging Israel to attack Lebanon. While an Israeli attack could not be ruled out entirely, he said, it was unlikely partly because Israel knew it would pay a very high price. “I warn them against any miscalculation or any step to exploit the situation,” he said.

“Saudi will fail in Lebanon as it has failed on all fronts,” Nasrallah said.

Riyadh has advised Saudi citizens not to travel to Lebanon, or if already there to leave as soon as possible. Other Gulf states have also issued travel warnings. Those steps have raised concern that Riyadh could take measures against the tiny Arab state, which hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees.

More
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lebanon-politics-jumblatt/hezbollah-says-saudi-declares-lebanon-war-with-hariri-detention-idUKKBN1DA0P3

Gulf of Tonkin incident

The Gulf of Tonkin incident (Vietnamese: Sự kiện Vịnh Bắc Bộ), also known as the USS Maddox incident, was an international confrontation that led to the United States engaging more directly in the Vietnam War. It involved either one or two separate confrontations involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The original American report blamed North Vietnam for both incidents, but eventually became very controversial with widespread claims that either one or both incidents were false, and possibly deliberately so.
More
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

In other news, in APEC life goes on without Uncle Sam. We are living through an era of enormous accelerated global change. Global markets wobble.

"There is nothing in the business situation to justify any nervousness."

Eugene M. Stevens, President Continental Illinois Bank, October 1929.

November 10, 2017 / 7:13 PM

TPP trade deal advances without United States

DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Countries in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal have agreed on the core elements to move ahead without the United States, officials said on Saturday, after last minute resistance from Canada raised new doubts about its survival.

Taking the agreement forward is a boost for the principle of multilateral trade pacts after U.S. President Donald Trump ditched the TPP this year in favour of an “America First” policy he believes would save U.S. jobs.

Talks - often heated - have been held on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in the Vietnamese resort of Danang, where Trump and other leaders held their main meeting on Saturday.

“We have overcome the hardest part,” Vietnam’s trade minister, Tran Tuan Anh, told a news conference.

The agreement, which still needs to be finalised, would now be called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), he said.

Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said he hoped that moving ahead with the trade deal would be a step towards bringing back the United States.

Partly to counter China’s growing dominance in Asia, Japan had been lobbying hard for the TPP pact, which aims to eliminate tariffs on industrial and farm products across the 11-nation bloc whose trade totalled $356 billion last year.

To reach agreement on pushing ahead with the deal, 20 provisions of the original agreement will be suspended, Motegi said. The agreement will take effect after ratification by six of the 11 members.

Any kind of deal looked doubtful on Friday, when a summit of TPP leaders was called off after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not attend. Canada’s trade minister later blamed Trudeau’s absence on “a misunderstanding about the schedule”.

Canada, which has the second biggest economy among remaining TPP countries after Japan, had said it wanted to ensure an agreement that would protect jobs.

Besides the tariff cuts, the TPP agreement has provisions for protecting the environment, workers’ rights and intellectual property - one of the major sticking points after the departure of the United States.

Canada’s position has been further complicated by the fact that it is simultaneously renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement with the Trump administration.

At a speech in Danang, Trump set out a strong message making clear he was only interested in bilateral deals in Asia that would never put the United States at a disadvantage.

China’s President Xi Jinping used the same forum to stress multilateralism and said globalisation was an irreversible trend.

More
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-apec-summit/tpp-trade-deal-advances-without-united-states-idUKKBN1DA2MW

November 10, 2017 / 12:47 AM

Global stocks dip on U.S. tax reform doubt; no respite in havens

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Global stock indexes and the U.S. dollar cooled off Friday as signs that U.S. tax reform could be delayed impeded the market’s momentum.

MSCI’s global stock index .MIWD00000PUS, which tracks shares in 47 countries, declined 0.15 percent, slipping further from a record level. On Thursday, the global index fell 0.4 percent following 10 straight days of gains. The dollar index .DXY, too, fell 0.06 percent.

The MSCI world index surged more than 20 percent so far this year, and some investors believe a pullback is due.

“The pause that the market is currently in is directly related to what’s going on from a tax standpoint,” said Jim McDonald, chief investment strategist for Northern Trust Corp.

Adding insult to injury, the pullback in stocks as well as softness in high-yield “junk” bonds this week did little to support traditional safe havens.

----Citigroup Inc equity trading strategist Alex Altmann said it is rare for government bonds and equities to be hit at the same time.

“It’s a classic hallmark of momentum strategies unwinding,” he said, referring to a investment strategy that favors buying recent winners and selling losers.

”We may not get that calm ride into the end of the year.”

Coal producer Canyon Consolidated Resources became the second junk-rated company to pull a bond sale this week, on Friday, capping a bout of volatility in credit markets.

U.S. Republican senators said they wanted to slash the corporate tax rate in 2019, later than the House’s proposed schedule of 2018, complicating a push for the biggest overhaul of U.S. tax law since the 1980s.

The House was set to vote on its measure next week. But the Senate’s timetable was less clear.

----Wall Street retreated a bit on concern over delays in corporate tax cuts, which would hike profits, though a rise in some media and industrial stocks limited the slide. [.N]

The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 39.73 points, or 0.17 percent, to 23,422.21, the S&P 500 .SPX lost 2.32 points, or 0.09 percent, to 2,582.3 and the Nasdaq Composite .IXIC added 0.89 point, or 0.01 percent, to 6,750.94.

The pan-European STOXX 600 index suffered its worst week in three months, down 0.4 percent on Friday and falling for a fourth day in row. [.EU]

“There’s a feeling out there that there’s a long-awaited correction, and no one wants to be caught by surprise,” said Emmanuel Cau, global equity strategist at JPMorgan Chase & Co.

More
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/global-stocks-dip-on-u-s-tax-reform-doubt-no-respite-in-havens-idUKKBN1DA021

"Anytime you don't want anything, you get it."

Calvin Coolidge, 30th United States President.