‘Joker’ Cinematographer Lawrence Sher Wins at Camerimage Film Festival

November 16, 2019

“Joker” cinematographer Lawrence Sher’s bid, along with director Todd Phillips, to try something “perhaps even a bit artful” won big Saturday in Torun, Poland as he took the top prize at the EnergaCamerimage Intl. Film Festival. The Golden Frog for cinematography, along with the audience prize, went to his work filming Joaquin Phoenix in the […]

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German Industrial Production Crashes By Most In A Decade

6 December 2019

German Industrial Production Crashes By Most In A Decade

Just when you thought - based on all the talking heads and administration officials constant jawboning - that it was safe to buy stocks because global growth was troughing, Germany's auto sector has to spoil the party.

Thanks to a 5.4% MoM plunge in auto production in October, German Industrial output fell 1.7% in October, that’s the steepest since April and compared with estimates for a 0.1% gain. This unexpected drop sent industrial output down 5.3% YoY - the biggest drop since November 2009.

Source: Bloomberg

Additionally, a new source of weakness has also emerged, with production of capital goods excluding cars now down 5.9% on its August level.

As Bloomberg notes, this means the sector is starting the fourth quarter on a very weak footing and could again place a heavy burden on the economy in 4Q. The weakness also adds downside risk to forecasts for manufacturing to stabilize this quarter (weighing down on GDP growth in 4Q by 0.59ppt).

It would appear that the damage U.S.-China trade tensions and Brexit uncertainty have done to the economy that once was Europe’s powerhouse remains high, as German factory orders also unexpectedly slipped in October amid weak demand for investment goods within the country and outside the 19-nation euro area, and business confidence - while stabilizing - remains subdued.

The Economy Ministry acknowledged on Friday that industrial momentum is weak, but also offered a more optimistic take on the outlook. “Recent developments in orders and business expectations signal that a stabilization trend could take hold in the coming months,” it said.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/06/2019 - 05:53 Tags Business Finance

Blame Others, Not Trump, For NATO's Divisions

6 December 2019

Blame Others, Not Trump, For NATO's Divisions

Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

If there is one clear lesson to be drawn from the NATO summit just held in London to mark the alliance's 70th anniversary, it is that the Europeans, and not Donald Trump, are to blame for many of the divisions that exist between NATO's 29-member states.

Prior to the summit, during which leaders of the alliance attended glitzy receptions at Buckingham Palace and Downing Street, much of the focus centred on the American president and persistent fears that he might carry out his threat to withdraw the US from the alliance.

Mr Trump's unhappiness with NATO is well-documented, and dates back to the NATO summit in Brussels in July 2018 when, during a testy exchange over the failure of most European member states to pay their fair share towards NATO's running costs, Mr Trump made a direct threat to withdraw the US from the organisation.

It still remains the case that, despite Mr Trump's hectoring on the subject, a significant number of European powers -- most notably Germany, Italy and Spain -- fail miserably to meet the defence spending target of 2% of GDP, which is the minimum requirement for NATO membership. In all three cases, their contributions are just above 1%, which lends credence to Mr Trump's accusation that American taxpayers are footing the bill to ensure the security of feckless Europeans.

Mr Trump's campaign to shame the Europeans into paying more does, though, appear to have had some impact, to the extent that Jens Stoltenberg, NATO's Secretary General, was able to announce in London that recent increases in defence expenditure by Canada and some European states, such as Britain, had so far added an extra $130 billion to NATO's defence budget, with the figure set to rise by $400 billion by 2024, a significant increase by anyone's standard.

As Mr Stoltenberg remarked when announcing the increases, Mr Trump deserved credit for "showing leadership on defence spending" that was having a real impact.

That is not to say Mr Trump has relaxed his attitude on the continuing failure of other European members of the alliance to meet their spending obligations. At a press conference held prior to the commencement of the summit, Mr Trump accused countries that failed to meet their spending obligations as being "delinquent", and complained: "It's not right to be taken advantage of on NATO and also then to be taken advantage of on trade, and that's what happens. We can't let that happen."

While getting NATO's finances in order clearly remains a pressing priority for the Trump administration, the real divisions at the summit have been caused by the conduct of the Europeans, most notably France and Turkey.

Mr Trump was particularly incensed by French President Emmanuel Macron's recent comment, made in an interview with the Economist magazine, that NATO was "strategically brain dead", a remark made in reference to Mr Trump's decision in October to withdraw US forces from northern Syria without first informing his other NATO allies. The American withdrawal allowed Turkish forces to launch a military offensive against Syrian Kurds who had formerly been key allies in the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS.

Turkey's recent decision to purchase Russia's S-400 anti-aircraft missile system, which was designed specifically to shoot down NATO warplanes, has been another serious bone of contention at the summit.

Turkey's important geographical location means that NATO leaders have previously been reluctant to sanction Ankara for its increasingly pro-Russian outlook, which is very much at odds with NATO's position that Russia poses the most significant threat to the alliance's security.

Many NATO countries, however, believe that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to buy sophisticated military hardware from Moscow is a step too far, that NATO should respond by imposing measures against the Turks.

The deepening divisions within the alliance have certainly taken the gloss off of the 70th anniversary celebrations in London, to the extent that countries like Russia, that actively desire NATO's demise, will be rubbing their hands with glee.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/06/2019 - 05:00 Tags Politics War Conflict

Massive Leak Confirms Turkey's "Gold-For-Gas" Scheme To Evade US Sanctions On Iran

6 December 2019

Massive Leak Confirms Turkey's "Gold-For-Gas" Scheme To Evade US Sanctions On Iran

We first started noticing major 'odd' exports of gold from Turkey to Iran in May 2012. Turkey’s trade balance fluctuated wildly as gold stocks flowed out of the country in bursts.

“Turkey’s going to continue it,” the Turkish economy minister said. “If those casting aspersions on the gold trade are searching for immorality, they should take a look in the mirror.”

Then, in 2014, we discussed Turkey's "200 tons of secret gold" trade with Iran detailing how a complex network that spanned Turkey, China, Dubai and Iran was used to skirt US sanctions on energy exports from Iran.

The operation featured an Iranian-born businessman who liked fast horses, faster cars and the fastest planes. His unique skill: Getting gold into sanctions-encircled Iran.

Enough gold that for a time he became the government’s key instrument in improving Turkey’s irksome economic imbalance.

At the time, the plot revealed what one observer called, "one of the most complex illicit finance schemes [prosecutors] have seen."

In 2017, the man at the center of the scheme, Reza Zarrab, was arrested (and briefly disappeared) and was tied to Turkey's president.

“Zarrab is thought to have been close to the Erdogan family and, indeed, he was given Turkish citizenship, alongside Iranian. This is a real stress point."

Zarrab pleaded guilty in October 2017 and turned against Mehmet Hakan Atila - a director at Turkey’s Halkbank - who was convicted on Jan. 3, 2018, and after serving a total 32 months behind bars was returned to Turkey and has since become the head of the Istanbul stock exchange.

And since then "one of the biggest money-laundering schemes ever" has disappeared from the headlines... until now.

Thanks to a massive leak of more than a million documents from a British offshore shell company provider, think Panama Papers 2.0, we now learn exactly how Iran’s national oil company and its subsidiaries hopscotch the globe, with the help of intermediaries, in search of tax havens that help it try to wriggle free from the grip of crippling U.S.-led sanctions.

As McClatchy reports, the massive data set of communications, incorporation certificates and other documents was leaked to journalists, and after months of collaboration, news organizations across the globe are collectively publishing stories starting this week under the title #29Leaks.

Included in the voluminous Formations House documents is a register of shareholders in an offshore company called Naftiran Intertrade Company Ltd, or NICO. This list of shareholders was attached to an email from December 2014, declaring the state-owned National Iranian Oil Company as the overarching shareholder and having complete control over NICO.

Also attached was a register of NICO directors listing five Iranian nationals.

NICO, the gasoline import arm of the state oil company, came to renewed international attention in March 2016 after the arrest at Miami International Airport of Reza Zarrab.

He flew to Florida to visit Disney World and on that trip was charged with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions through an elaborate gold-for-gas scheme between Turkey and Iran, and using global banks to process transactions on behalf of Iran.

Prosecutors contend that Zarrab and a co-defendant, Mehmet Hakan Atila, who was a director at Turkey’s Halkbank, schemed to help Iran skirt U.S. sanctions by trading Turkish gold for oil and natural gas. Using companies across the globe, they facilitated $20 billion worth of transactions.

“High-ranking government officials in Iran and Turkey participated in and protected this scheme,” the Justice Department in Oct. 15, 2019. statement announcing charges against Halkbank, which incriminated Zarrab.

“Some officials received bribes worth tens of millions of dollars paid from the proceeds of the scheme ... and to help shield the scheme from the scrutiny of U.S. regulators.”

Shortly after his arrest, Zarrab, who is married to a Turkish pop star and has citizenship in Iran as well as Turkey, implicated Turkish President Recep Erdogan as having approved the operation.

Zarrab was represented briefly by Rudolph Giuliani, who has since become President Trump’s personal attorney. Zarrab was also a focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller III’s prosecution of Trump adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for lying under oath the FBI. Mueller looked at Flynn’s lobbying for Turkey.

Additionally, the leaked documents tie the mid-October, six-count indictment against Halkbank for fraud, money laundering and sanctions-evasion was tied to NICO and the state oil company.

Prosecutors said that bank has been the “sole repository of proceeds from the sale of Iranian oil” to Turkey and also cited Zarrab transactions involving NICO.

The leaked new documents expose this chain of communications between a Dutch offshore services provider, Dennis Vermeulen of INCO Business Group, Formations House employees Oliver Hartmann (aka Syed Rizwan Ahmed) and Charlotte Pawar, and Farhad Dizadji, owner and senior partner of London-based accounting firm Roberts & Partners.

“Just like we’ve seen in the Halkbank scandal, entities are eager to exploit the secrecy afforded by anonymous shell companies to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran, undermining our national security,” the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Oregon’s Ron Wyden, said in a statement on the Formations House leak.

“Ending anonymous shell companies would make it easier for law enforcement to ‘follow the money’ when investigating complex financial crimes like sanctions evasion.”

By constantly switching domiciles, NICO may have sought to ease political pressures, according to a former senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department. The official previously worked on Iran sanctions and international money-laundering investigations and requested anonymity in order to discuss non-public matters.

So, in conclusion, we now have two facts confirmed - trust no one and nothing; and gold is money. Given the level of grift here, we wonder just how long before more incriminating evidence is leaked about how Democrats have benefited greatly from Ukraine deals.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/06/2019 - 04:15 Tags Politics Business Finance

Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Flock To The Hong Kong Protest Movement

6 December 2019

Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Flock To The Hong Kong Protest Movement

Authored by Ben Norton via TheGrayZone.com,

Ukrainian fascists who previously fought in a US-backed neo-Nazi militia joined the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, sharing their tactics and showing off their tattoos.

Neo-Nazis from Ukraine have flown to Hong Kong to participate in the anti-Chinese insurgency, which has been widely praised by Western corporate media and portrayed as a peaceful pro-democracy movement.

Since March 2019, Hong Kong has been the site of often-violent protests and riots that have run the city’s economy into the ground. The US government has funded many of the groups leading the pro-Western and anti-Beijing movement, and opposition leaders have coordinated closely with conservative political figures in Washington like Marco Rubio and Steve Bannon, lobbying for sanctions and other punitive measures against China.

Numerous delegations of far-right groups from across the world have traveled to Hong Kong to join the violent insurgency against Beijing, in which secessionists have attacked police with bows and arrows, shot gasoline bombs out of catapults, and burned numerous people alive.

With their flamboyant waving of US and British colonial flags and tendency to belt out the American national anthem on megaphones, anti-China separatists in Hong Kong have made themselves a magnet for the US far-right. Staff of the website InfoWars, right-wing social media personality Paul Joseph Watson, and the ultra-conservative group Patriot Prayer are among those who have made pilgrimages to the protests.

The latest collection of extreme-right activists to reinforce the ranks of the Hong Kong separatists are from Ukraine. They call themselves Gonor and have tattoos on their upper torsos with undeniable symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism.

These extremists previously fought in a notoriously brutal neo-Nazi militia called the Azov Battalion, in Ukraine’s war against pro-Russian militants.

The Azov Battalion is an explicitly fascist paramilitary group that organizes around neo-Nazi ideology. After a Western-backed 2014 coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected government, Azov was incorporated into the Ukrainian national guard. It has received support from the US government, which has armed and advised the neo-Nazis in their fight against Moscow.

Azov has also helped train American white supremacists, who have plotted terrorist attacks back at home in the United States.

While Western governments and corporate media outlets portray China as an authoritarian regime that treats Hong Kong like a colony, these violent Ukrainian fascists took advantage of the region’s autonomy to gain entry through its borders. It is unlikely they would have been admitted to mainland China, or to the Western European countries that routinely refuse visas to political extremists.

The presence of Ukrainian regime-change activists in the Hong Kong protests is further evidence of the alliances that anti-Chinese activists in Hong Kong are building with other right-wing, US-backed movements around the world, sharing tactics to weaken and destabilize countries targeted by NATO.

Ukrainian fascists join Hong Kong insurgency

On December 1, the far-right activist Serhii Filimonov posted photos on Facebook showing himself and three Ukrainian friends upon their arrival in Hong Kong. The images were accompanied by the anti-Beijing’s unofficial slogan: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong!!”

Stand With Hong Kong is also the name of a Western-backed organization that has been lobbying the governments of the US, Britain, Germany, Canada, and Australia to impose sanctions and take punitive action against China.

In a video they posted on social media, the Ukrainian white supremacists revealed that they had obtained a press pass, misleadingly portraying themselves as journalists.

Joining Filimonov on the trip to Hong Kong was a notorious extreme-right Ukrainian activist who goes by the name Maliar. Maliar is popular on Instagram, under the name xgadzillax, where he has more than 23,000 followers. (Maliar has a distinctive scar on the left side of the neck, which makes him easy to recognize in photos.)

Besides the swastikas inked into his skull, Maliar had the Nazi symbols tattooed on his right leg, next to an algiz rune, another common white supremacist emblem.

Several photos show that at least two of the Ukrainian fascists in Hong Kong have tattoos reading “Victory or Valhalla,” the title of a compilation of writings by the notorious American white supremacist David Lane, whose neo-fascist terrorist group The Order murdered a liberal Jewish radio host and planned more assassinations of left-wing Jews.

Lane, who was convicted to 190 years in a US prison for numerous crimes, created the most famous white supremacist slogan, known as the 14 Words — which inspired the name of another Ukrainian neo-Nazi group called C14.

Filimonov, who also has a large following on Instagram, where he uses the name Sunperuna, published a photo showing the phrase “Victory or Valahalla” emblazoned on his chest.

The book “Victory or Valhalla” is dedicated to “Aryankind.” In its pages, its author says he is committed to preventing the “imminent extinction facing the White Race” and the “Judeo-American/Judeo-Christian murder of the White race.” The screed is replete with homages to Nazis, and the back cover shows a photo of Lane’s body in his coffin, wrapped in a Confederate flag.

These Ukrainian fascists were such fans of the book that they permanently tattooed its title on their bodies.

Maliar, the other member of Gonor who joined the Hong Kong protests, has “Victory or Valhalla” inscribed conspicuously on his neck.

Journalist Morgan Artyukhina identified another member of the far-right Ukrainian contingent in Hong Kong as Serhii Sternenko. Artyukhina noted that Sternenko is a former leader of the Ukrainian fascist group Right Sector, which burned down a trade union building in Odessa during the 2014 coup, killing 42 people.

Neo-Nazis take campus

On December 2, the Ukrainian fascist visitors posted photos of themselves on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), a site of violent protests.

PolyU has been a crucial base of operation for the separatist uprising. A total of 3,989 petrol bombs, 1,339 pieces of explosives, and 601 bottles of corrosive liquid were recovered at the school, as of December 2, according to reports.

Serhii Filimonov (the first on the left in the photo above) has faced legal troubles in the past, appearing in court for allegedly brawling with police.

The photos Filimonov posts on social media make two things abundantly clear: He is a Nazi and wants as many people as possible to see him shirtless while bearing heavy weapons.

Other members of Gonor have published photos on Instagram holding guns.

A video posted on Instagram in 2015 shows Maliar and a friend in a “White Rebel” Confederate flag t-shirt surrounded by guns and tasers.

Gonor’s symbol draws on many of the same far-right ultra-nationalist themes, with three white knives centered on a black flag.

Gonor’s Telegram channel offers members a front row seat to an orgy of violence. It has published dozens of videos of Hong Kong insurgents, heroizing them for shooting arrows and carrying out brutal attacks on state security forces.

https://telegram.org/js/telegram-widget.js?7

Both Filimonov and Maliar previously fought in the US-backed neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Maliar has posted photos on Instagram showing the two armed and in military uniform, wearing Azov patches.

And Filimonov has published several photos showing him and his friends wearing Azov t-shirts.

Ukrainian regime-changers build networks with Hong Kong secessionists

Despite all of this publicly available evidence demonstrating the open fascism of the Ukrainian hooligans in Hong Kong, the Kiev-based Free Hong Kong Center published a statement on Facebook defending and whitewashing Gonor.

The organization confirmed that the extremists did indeed fight with Azov “during the first period of the war” against pro-Russian separatists, but claimed that they have been unaffiliated since 2015.

The Free Hong Kong Center described the neo-fascists as “activists of the Revolution of Dignity and as well as veterans of the defending war with Russia.” Absurdly, the center declared that they “assured us they are really against nazism and another kind of alt-right ideology.”

“A lot of people were disappointed by the tattoos of these guys,” the Free Hong Kong Center conceded. But they insisted “that all symbols are from Slavic paganism.”

The Free Hong Kong Center is a project of an NGO called the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine. In addition to building links with anti-Beijing forces in Hong Kong, the project says its mission is to “counter Chinese threats to Ukraine.”

The Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine is a pro-European Union advocacy organization which is a member of the European Liberal Youth and the International Federation of Liberal Youth, both of which are funded by the EU.

The main coordinator of the Free Hong Kong Center is a Ukrainian activist named Arthur Kharytonov, who is also the president of the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine. Kharytonov was deeply involved in the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, which led to the 2014 US-backed coup. He then set up the league in 2015.

Kharytonov and his organization have been frequently amplified in US government-funded Ukrainian media outlets such as Hromadske. In these softball interviews with a highly sympathetic press, Kharytonov likens the anti-Russia protests in Ukraine to the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, and calls for closer bonds between them.

On 6th year anniversary of #Euromaidan revolution, Ukrainians showed solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong. We invited main coordinator of Kyiv-based Free Hong Kong Center, Arthur Kharytonov to draw parallels between the events in #Ukraine & #HongKong.https://t.co/MMJkPLmeQC

— Hromadske Int. (@Hromadske) November 25, 2019 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Kharytonov and these Western government-backed organizations are part of a growing network of Ukrainian regime-change activists who are organizing with secessionists in Hong Kong, holding and sharing insurgency tactics.

As the US and NATO-led unipolar hegemonic order that has dominated the world since the end of the Cold War begins to crumble, and as a rising China and Russia seek to restore a multipolar global system, Washington and European nations are constructing a latticework of movements to undermine their adversaries on their frontiers.

This global network is marketed as the advance guard of global liberalism, but as events from Ukraine to Hong Kong have revealed, fascism is festering at its base.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/06/2019 - 03:30 Tags War Conflict Politics

UAE Private Sector Tanks To 10-Year Low Amid Recession Fears

6 December 2019

UAE Private Sector Tanks To 10-Year Low Amid Recession Fears

The second-largest economy in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has just recorded business activity at a decade low, reported Reuters.

IHS Markit UAE Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) printed at 50.3 in Nov. from 51.1 in Oct., hitting the lowest level since Aug. 2009 and on the threshold of declaring a contraction in growth.

Last year, the manufacturing and services sectors (pretty much covering UAE's non-oil sector) recorded growth of 55.8 but had slid to almost contraction territory by late 2019.

New orders plunged into contraction (48.9) in Nov. from 51 in Oct., which has resulted in companies discounting prices to attract new business as the economic slump continued to intensify.

"Anecdotal evidence commonly linked the decline to subdued market conditions and weaker customer demand," said David Owen, an economist at IHS Markit.

An employment downturn was also initiated in 2019. Job levels dropped in Nov., indicating that last month was one of the fastest decline in the workforce for non-oil companies in nearly a year.

Despite UAE's four years of economic deceleration since oil collapsed in 2014, the country is finally experiencing weakness spreading from its oil sector into the broader economy.

The country's deteriorating property sector risks the quality of assets held by domestic banks could create banking difficulties in the early 2020s.

"Weaker asset quality will also put pressure on profitability," said Redmond Ramsdale, Fitch's head of Middle East bank ratings, who reently spoke with the Financial Times.

With the UAE economy and domestic banks still not fully recovered from the 2008 crisis, the economy is once again rapidly decelerating with financial turbulence likely seen in the next 12 to 18 months.

And just a reminder, UAE banks hold tens of billions of dollars in loans to Dubai government-related entities, with a maturity wall in 2021.

Dubai is currently going through a housing market downturn that has the risk of spreading contagion fears across the continent.

Tyler Durden Fri, 12/06/2019 - 02:45 Tags Business Finance

The number of migrants arriving on the Canary Islands by sea has hit 'crisis levels'

6 December 2019

Politicians claim boats crammed with men, women and children have been arriving in the Canary Islands on a daily basis, putting enormous strain on resources and accommodation.

Man, 51, appears in court charged with murdering Harley Watson, 12

6 December 2019

Terry Glover, 51, is charged with killing Harley Watson after his silver Ford allegedly ploughed into the youngster and ten other people outside Debden Park High School in Loughton, Essex.

Angela Merkel visits Auschwitz for first time ahead of 75th anniversary of death camp's liberation

6 December 2019

Angela Merkel became only the third German chancellor to visit Poland to see Auschwitz, with her symbolic trip coming ahead of the 75th anniversary of its liberation by the Soviet in 1945.

LED lights attached to fishing nets could save tens of thousands of dolphins and sea turtles

6 December 2019

Researchers at the University of Exeter believe they may have found a simple solution to end the tens of thousands of animals caught by net fisheries as 'bycatch' after a trial in Peruvian waters.

France prepares for a second day of strike chaos and violent protests

6 December 2019

Some 90 per cent of high-speed train services were cancelled across France again today, with most of the Paris Metro system also shut down and hundreds of flights set to be axed.