REPORT: Another Clothing Line Releases Betsy Ross Flag Sneakers [PHOTO]

July 4, 2019

As the most reliable and balanced news aggregation service on the internet, DML News App offers the following information published by DAILYCALLER.COM:

Another company has released Betsy Ross flag-era sneakers after Nike recalled its flag-themed kicks when former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick said the design was reminiscent of the slave era.

The company Out of Line released the “Boss Like Ross” sneaker Tuesday, just after Nike recalled a shoe with Betsy Ross’s design of the American flag on the heel. Kaepernick, who started a protest in 2016 where athletes took a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racism, reportedly told Nike that the Betsy Ross flag was offensive and reminiscent of slavery. (RELATED: Dan Lipinski Stands Against Nike After It Pulls Patriotic Sneakers)

The article goes on to state the following:

“She [Betsy] did it and thats my point to Nike,” Out of Line founder Carly Reed told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Their [motto] is just do it, but Betsy did it. She did it all on her own. In a time where it wasn’t easy, as well.”

ROSS LIKE A BOSS pic.twitter.com/681CyF8Wl0

— outoflineactive (@outoflineactive) July 3, 2019

The company said they respect Kaepernick, but disagree with him on this issue. They tweeted, “We all have the right to stand up for what we believe in. We have SO MUCH respect for Collin Kaepernick. He uses his voice and his platform. We see this flag differently, and that is okay! It is okay for people to see things differently. We are all different.”

We all have the right to stand up for what we believe in. We have SO MUCH respect for Collin Kaepernick. He uses his voice and his platform. We see this flag differently, and that is okay! It is okay for people to see things differently. We are all different.

— outoflineactive (@outoflineactive) July 3, 2019

Out Of Line said in another tweet, “We are donating a portion of every profit to the Washington Area Women’s Foundation.”

We are donating a portion of every profit to the Washington Area Women’s Foundation.

— outoflineactive (@outoflineactive) July 3, 2019

Made a twitter today to answer any questions about the BOSS LIKE ROSS shoes because our main channels Instagram and Facebook are glitching.

— outoflineactive (@outoflineactive) July 3, 2019

The website is extremely busy and there is only one person working today! Trying my best to answer all questions!

— outoflineactive (@outoflineactive) July 4, 2019

My friend’s company just started selling these awesome shoes in honor of Betsy Ross after @Nike pulled their American flag-themed sneakers. You can buy them here: https://t.co/ctFg2noE8C pic.twitter.com/TTz8fRVmlA

— Henry Rodgers (@henryrodgersdc) July 3, 2019

Hey @Nike we don’t need your sneakers anyway! This girl just released some sweet AMERICAN inspired kicks:

“She [Betsy] did it and thats my point to Nike. Their [motto] is just do it, but Betsy did it. She did it all on her own.” #BetsyRossFlag https://t.co/BCUdSv67iA

— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) July 4, 2019

To get more information about this article, please visit DAILYCALLER.COM. To weigh in, leave a comment below.

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Escobar Exposes America's Existential Battle To Stop Eurasian Integration

18 January 2020

Escobar Exposes America's Existential Battle To Stop Eurasian Integration

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,

Coming decade could see the US take on Russia, China and Iran over the New Silk Road connection

Iranian seamen salute the Russian Navy frigate Yaroslav Mudry while moored at Chabahar on the Gulf of Oman during Iran-Russia-China joint naval drills. The photo was provided by the Iranian Army office on December 27, 2019. Photo: AFP / HO / Iranian Army office

The Raging Twenties started with a bang with the targeted assassination of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani.

Yet a bigger bang awaits us throughout the decade: the myriad declinations of the New Great Game in Eurasia, which pits the US against Russia, China and Iran, the three major nodes of Eurasia integration.

Every game-changing act in geopolitics and geoeconomics in the coming decade will have to be analyzed in connection to this epic clash.

The Deep State and crucial sectors of the US ruling class are absolutely terrified that China is already outpacing the “indispensable nation” economically and that Russia has outpaced it militarily. The Pentagon officially designates the three Eurasian nodes as “threats.”

Hybrid War techniques – carrying inbuilt 24/7 demonization – will proliferate with the aim of containing China’s “threat,” Russian “aggression” and Iran’s “sponsorship of terrorism.” The myth of the “free market” will continue to drown under the imposition of a barrage of illegal sanctions, euphemistically defined as new trade “rules.”

Yet that will be hardly enough to derail the Russia-China strategic partnership. To unlock the deeper meaning of this partnership, we need to understand that Beijing defines it as rolling towards a “new era.” That implies strategic long-term planning – with the key date being 2049, the centennial of New China.

The horizon for the multiple projects of the Belt and Road Initiative – as in the China-driven New Silk Roads – is indeed the 2040s, when Beijing expects to have fully woven a new, multipolar paradigm of sovereign nations/partners across Eurasia and beyond, all connected by an interlocking maze of belts and roads.

The Russian project – Greater Eurasia – somewhat mirrors Belt & Road and will be integrated with it. Belt & Road, the Eurasia Economic Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank are all converging towards the same vision.

Realpolitik

So this “new era”, as defined by the Chinese, relies heavily on close Russia-China coordination, in every sector. Made in China 2025 is encompassing a series of techno/scientific breakthroughs. At the same time, Russia has established itself as an unparalleled technological resource for weapons and systems that the Chinese still cannot match.

At the latest BRICS summit in Brasilia, President Xi Jinping told Vladimir Putin that “the current international situation with rising instability and uncertainty urge China and Russia to establish closer strategic coordination.” Putin’s response: “Under the current situation, the two sides should continue to maintain close strategic communication.”

Russia is showing China how the West respects realpolitik power in any form, and Beijing is finally starting to use theirs. The result is that after five centuries of Western domination – which, incidentally, led to the decline of the Ancient Silk Roads – the Heartland is back, with a bang, asserting its preeminence.

On a personal note, my travels these past two years, from West Asia to Central Asia, and my conversations these past two months with analysts in Nur-Sultan, Moscow and Italy, have allowed me to get deeper into the intricacies of what sharp minds define as the Double Helix. We are all aware of the immense challenges ahead – while barely managing to track the stunning re-emergence of the Heartland in real-time.

In soft power terms, the sterling role of Russian diplomacy will become even more paramount – backed up by a Ministry of Defense led by Sergei Shoigu, a Tuvan from Siberia, and an intel arm that is capable of constructive dialogue with everybody: India/Pakistan, North/South Korea, Iran/Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan.

This apparatus does smooth (complex) geopolitical issues over in a manner that still eludes Beijing.

In parallel, virtually the whole Asia-Pacific – from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean – now takes into full consideration Russia-China as a counter-force to US naval and financial overreach.

Stakes in Southwest Asia

The targeted assassination of Soleimani, for all its long-term fallout, is just one move in the Southwest Asia chessboard. What’s ultimately at stake is a macro geoeconomic prize: a land bridge from the Persian Gulf to the Eastern Mediterranean.

Last summer, an Iran-Iraq-Syria trilateral established that “the goal of negotiations is to activate the Iranian-Iraqi-Syria load and transport corridor as part of a wider plan for reviving the Silk Road.”

There could not be a more strategic connectivity corridor, capable of simultaneously interlinking with the International North-South Transportation Corridor; the Iran-Central Asia-China connection all the way to the Pacific; and projecting Latakia towards the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

What’s on the horizon is, in fact, a sub-sect of Belt & Road in Southwest Asia. Iran is a key node of Belt & Road; China will be heavily involved in the rebuilding of Syria; and Beijing-Baghdad signed multiple deals and set up an Iraqi-Chinese Reconstruction Fund (income from 300,000 barrels of oil a day in exchange for Chinese credit for Chinese companies rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure).

A quick look at the map reveals the “secret” of the US refusing to pack up and leave Iraq, as demanded by the Iraqi Parliament and Prime Minister: to prevent the emergence of this corridor by any means necessary. Especially when we see that all the roads that China is building across Central Asia – I navigated many of them in November and December – ultimately link China with Iran.

The final objective: to unite Shanghai to the Eastern Mediterranean – overland, across the Heartland.

As much as Gwadar port in the Arabian Sea is an essential node of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and part of China’s multi-pronged “escape from Malacca” strategy, India also courted Iran to match Gwadar via the port of Chabahar in the Gulf of Oman.

So as much as Beijing wants to connect the Arabian Sea with Xinjiang, via the economic corridor, India wants to connect with Afghanistan and Central Asia via Iran.

Yet India’s investments in Chabahar may come to nothing, with New Delhi still mulling whether to become an active part of the US “Indo-Pacific” strategy, which would imply dropping Tehran.

The Russia-China-Iran joint naval exercise in late December, starting exactly from Chabahar, was a timely wake-up for New Delhi. India simply cannot afford to ignore Iran and end up losing its key connectivity node, Chabahar.

The immutable fact: everyone needs and wants Iran connectivity. For obvious reasons, since the Persian empire, this is the privileged hub for all Central Asian trade routes.

On top of it, Iran for China is a matter of national security. China is heavily invested in Iran’s energy industry. All bilateral trade will be settled in yuan or in a basket of currencies bypassing the US dollar.

US neocons, meanwhile, still dream of what the Cheney regime was aiming at in the past decade: regime change in Iran leading to the US dominating the Caspian Sea as a springboard to Central Asia, only one step away from Xinjiang and weaponization of anti-China sentiment. It could be seen as a New Silk Road in reverse to disrupt the Chinese vision.

Battle of the Ages

A new book, The Impact of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, by Jeremy Garlick of the University of Economics in Prague, carries the merit of admitting that, “making sense” of Belt & Road “is extremely difficult.”

This is an extremely serious attempt to theorize Belt & Road’s immense complexity – especially considering China’s flexible, syncretic approach to policymaking, quite bewildering for Westerners. To reach his goal, Garlick gets into Tang Shiping’s social evolution paradigm, delves into neo-Gramscian hegemony, and dissects the concept of “offensive mercantilism” – all that as part of an effort in “complex eclecticism.”

The contrast with the pedestrian Belt & Road demonization narrative emanating from US “analysts” is glaring. The book tackles in detail the multifaceted nature of Belt & Road’s trans-regionalism as an evolving, organic process.

Imperial policymakers won’t bother to understand how and why Belt & Road is setting a new global paradigm. The NATO summit in London last month offered a few pointers. NATO uncritically adopted three US priorities: even more aggressive policy towards Russia; containment of China (including military surveillance); and militarization of space – a spin-off from the 2002 Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine.

So NATO will be drawn into the “Indo-Pacific” strategy – which means containment of China. And as NATO is the EU’s weaponized arm, that implies the US interfering on how Europe does business with China – at every level.

Retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff from 2001 to 2005, cuts to the chase: “America exists today to make war. How else do we interpret 19 straight years of war and no end in sight? It’s part of who we are. It’s part of what the American Empire is. We are going to lie, cheat and steal, as Pompeo is doing right now, as Trump is doing right now, as Esper is doing right now … and a host of other members of my political party, the Republicans, are doing right now. We are going to lie, cheat and steal to do whatever it is we have to do to continue this war complex. That’s the truth of it. And that’s the agony of it.”

Moscow, Beijing and Tehran are fully aware of the stakes. Diplomats and analysts are working on the trend, for the trio, to evolve a concerted effort to protect one another from all forms of hybrid war – sanctions included – launched against each of them.

For the US, this is indeed an existential battle – against the whole Eurasia integration process, the New Silk Roads, the Russia-China strategic partnership, those Russian hypersonic weapons mixed with supple diplomacy, the profound disgust and revolt against US policies all across the Global South, the nearly inevitable collapse of the US dollar. What’s certain is that the Empire won’t go quietly into the night. We should all be ready for the battle of the ages.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/17/2020 - 23:45 Tags Politics

All The World's Wealth In One Visualization

18 January 2020

All The World's Wealth In One Visualization

The financial concept of wealth is broad, and it can take many forms.

While your wealth is most likely driven by the dollars in your bank account and the value of your stock portfolio and house, Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes that wealth also includes a number of smaller things as well, such as the old furniture in your garage or a painting on the wall.

From the macro perspective of a country, wealth is even more all-encompassing — it’s not just about the assets held by private households or businesses, but also those owned by the public. What is the value of a new toll bridge, or an aging nuclear power plant?

Today’s visualization comes to us from HowMuch.net, and it shows all of the world’s wealth in one place, sorted by country.

Total Wealth by Region

In 2019, total world wealth grew by $9.1 trillion to $360.6 trillion, which amounts to a 2.6% increase over the previous year.

Here’s how that divvies up between major global regions:

Last year, growth in global wealth exceeded that of the population, incrementally increasing wealth per adult to $70,850, a 1.2% bump and an all-time high.

That said, it’s worth mentioning that Credit Suisse, the authors of the Global Wealth Report 2019 and the source of all this data, notes that the 1.2% increase has not been adjusted for inflation.

Ranking Countries by Total Wealth

Which countries are the richest?

Let’s take a look at the 15 countries that hold the most wealth, according to Credit Suisse:

The 15 wealthiest nations combine for 84.3% of global wealth.

Leading the pack is the United States, which holds $106.0 trillion of the world’s wealth — equal to a 29.4% share of the global total. Interestingly, the United States economy makes up 23.9% of the size of the world economy in comparison.

Behind the U.S. is China, the only other country with a double-digit share of global wealth, equal to 17.7% of wealth or $63.8 trillion. As the country continues to build out its middle class, one estimate sees Chinese private wealth increasing by 119.5% over the next decade.

Impressively, the combined wealth of the U.S. and China is more than the next 13 countries in aggregate — and almost equal to half of the global wealth total.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/17/2020 - 23:25

The Machines Have Us Trained For Obedience, Paul Craig Roberts

18 January 2020

The Machines Have Us Trained For Obedience, Paul Craig Roberts

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

Many decades ago there was an issue of Mad comics that portrayed a future time when everything was done by robots and humans had no function. One day the system failed. As it had been eons since humans had to do anything, no one knew how to fix the system. It was Mad comics version of Armageddon.

I think that is where the digital revolution is taking us.

I remember when appliances and cars responded to humans, and now humans respond to them. When I grew up cars and home appliances did not go “beep-beep” to remind you of the things you were supposed to do, such as turn off the car lights and take the keys out of the ignition, or turn off the oven and shut the fridge.

Cars, except for British sports cars, didn’t have seat belts. Today a car doesn’t stop beeping until you fasten your seat belts. I hear that soon the cars won’t start until the seat belts are fastened.

When the electric company’s outsourced crew failed to connect the neutral line to my house and blew out all appliances, sprinkler system, and garage openers, the electric company replaced everything on a prorated depreciated basis that cost me thousands of dollars. The worst part of it is that the new appliances boss me around.

The old microwave would gently beep three times and stop. The new one beeps in the most insistent way—open the door you dumb human right this second, immediately—and keeps on insisting until I obey. The fridge refuses to let me leave it open for cleaning. The oven insists that I open it immediately, despite my habit of cutting the on time short and leaving whatever it is to cook awhile longer in the hot oven.

Here is an explanation of how our electric meters spy on us and pass on the information to interested parties.

We are being told that the Internet of Things is supposed to be our future, everything is connected, everything is a data source. We are told this will make things more convenient somehow, maybe, but your convenience is not what the Internet of Things is being created for. The Internet of Things is being created in a way that things will be associated with your name. So by looking at what the things are doing, people can watch what you are doing. The Internet of Things will be a living, digital organism where you can be found any time of day, watched, identified, and treated like a voluntary member of this new massive database in the sky. Of course, the Internet of Things is a way for government to assure itself that your behavior is not in any way a threat to anyone in government or, if it is, to enable them to quickly pay you a visit in a forceful way.

The Internet of Things will produce more data about you than has ever been collected, and the more data they have on you, the more they can take your stuff from you, the more they can do to you.

read more here...

Self-driving cars seem to be our future, and robots are taking our jobs away even faster than global corporations offshored them to Asia.

What exactly is it that humans are going to be good for? Nothing it seems.

Why will we need a driving license when cars drive themselves? If there is an accident, who is to blame? The company that made the car? The company responsible for the software? What is the point of car insurance when drivers have no responsibility?

Perhaps it is true that aliens are living among us. Their language is “beep-beep” and they are using our machines and cars to train us, like Pavlov’s dogs, to respond to their command.

I can remember when telephones were a convenience before they became a nuisance. When my land line rings, 95% of the time it is a scam or a telemarketing call, usually robotic. Now, a man will listen to a sexy female voice, for a time, and a woman will listen to a courtly gentleman’s voice, but until sex doll robots catch on, no one wants to listen to a machine’s voice. So why the calls? Why do the telephone companies permit their customers to be scammed and their privacy to be constantly invaded? How do the phone companies benefit from permitting unethical people to destroy the value of phone service?

The same thing, I am told, happens to cell phone users. Recently I finally had to acquire a smart phone, because two people I need to reach only respond to text messages. They refuse to answer any phone, and email is so invaded by scammers, malware, and marketeers that they do not use email. They do not even set up the message system on their cell phones. If you try to call them, you get instead of an answer the message that the person you are attempting to call has not set up their message box.

So there you have it. Except for texting, which can’t (yet) be done with a land line, telephones are a nuisance.

Growing up in Atlanta during the 1940s and into the early 1950s, you could not yourself place a call from your telephone. When you picked up the receiver, an AT&T operator answered and asked: “number please.” You gave her the number, and she rang it and connected you if there was an answer. If you did not know the number, you asked her for information. If you knew the complete name and perhaps the street address, you were provided with the telephone number.

In those halcyon days even in a city such as Atlanta, Georgia, there were party lines. That meant that you shared a telephone line with a neighbor. If you picked up the receiver to make a call through the operator and heard voices speaking, you knew the line was in use and decency required that you hang up immediately. As the talking parties heard the click when you picked up the line, if they didn’t hear the click when you hung up they asked you to get off their call.

In that system, there was no anonymity. Anonymity appeared with dial phones, which allowed you to make your own calls. From a public telephone, the call was not traceable to you. This technology was the beginning of our downfall.

Dial phones, something youths have seen only in antique shops or old movies are still with us in everyday language. We still say “dial the number” when we are punching buttons.

Today thanks to technological “progress,” it is much easier to invade privacy.

Technology is destroying us and the planet. The pollution from technology is phenomenal. 5G itself may do us in. The destruction of privacy, identity, and freedom by the digital revolution is far beyond George Orwell’s imagination. Insouciant humans delight in the gadgets that are turning themselves into unfree people who are under control but who themselves control nothing.

This outcome is easily seen in China where the government uses universal spying to construct for each person a social credit score. If that person is a dissident, has bad habits, etc., that person gets a score too low to qualify for a loan, university admission, employment, etc., and becomes a non-being. Here is Soren Korsgaard’s explanation of our future.

Dystopian classics are back into the spotlight, like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s 1984. They have roared back onto bestseller lists due to whistleblowers’ exposés of government imperialism and totalitarian surveillance of their citizens and foreigners. While the kakistocracy and dystopian surveillance state depicted in 1984 undoubtedly reflected, to some extent, contemporary sociopolitical realities, Orwell extrapolated worst-case scenarios set as warnings for future generations. Nonetheless, his book and implicit warnings seem to have been ignored as an authoritarian surveillance state is now a reality for most people in first and second world countries. In lieu of accountability for criminal mass-surveillance or these revelations deterring or limiting the prying eyes of government-sponsored spy programs, the establishment in conjunction with their media platforms has used it to their full advantage, almost as if they, themselves, masterminded the leaks.

Rather than being dismantled, the establishment has openly added advanced surveillance technology to their arsenal in their cataclysmic War on Truth. The mainstream media now parallels Orwell’s Ministry of Truth that broadcasts official explanations, while it effectively neutralizes those who venture outside the parameters of government-approved thinking, which so often equates to threatening their interests.

While the current Western population control via advanced surveillance technology and social engineering is unparalleled in history, China has nevertheless rolled out a system that sets new standards for government control, the so-called social credit system. In a few decades from now, if the Chinese government succeeds, those who are imprisoned by the social crediting system will have no reference point or conception of freedom; digital tyranny will have become the norm.

To some extent, Western policymakers have been apprehensive of the Chinese program, but as we shall see, it is nevertheless evident that they themselves are working diligently behind the scenes to implement the same technology that makes the Chinese digital prison possible.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/17/2020 - 23:05 Tags Technology Internet

OK Boomer: Ex-Citi Banker Wins Ageism Case After Boss Calls Him "Old... Set In His Ways"

18 January 2020

OK Boomer: Ex-Citi Banker Wins Ageism Case After Boss Calls Him "Old... Set In His Ways"

Today in "anytime you fire someone it's always a case of discrimination" news...

A former investment banker for Citigroup has won an age discrimination case against the bank after one of his bosses called him "old" and "set in his ways" when he was laid off at age 55.

A London Tribunal ruled in the ex-banker's favor this week, finding that Niels Kirk was dismissed unfairly. Kirk had previously been a managing director for energy banking, according to Bloomberg. He had previously been employed at Citigroup for 26 years and wasn't given any warning about a proposed restructuring.

Citi says it will appeal the decision.

One of his bosses, 54 year old Manolo Falco, denied making the statement but did concede that Kirk “had some very difficult relationships with other senior bankers.” But the judge ruled that Falco's evidence was "less than convincing", while Kirk had taken notes in the meeting.

The judge presiding said: “The remark appeared to the tribunal to be the kind of throwaway remark Mr. Falco could make.”

The size of any award will be determined at a later hearing. Once an employee proves they are a victim of discrimination, a tribunal can order damages that are higher than the cap of about $109,000.

Kirk's performance ranking had fallen from a 1 (best) to 3 (good) between 2014 and 2016. His overall compensation also fell from $1.24 million in 2014 to about $600,000 in 2016.

Citi claims its “position as set out in the litigation is that Mr. Falco did not make that comment.” Citi also says it's upset with the decision "particularly given the small age gap between Mr. Kirk and the employee who was ultimately appointed to the role."

Kirk's hired successor wasn't much younger, at just 51 years old.

Citi has 51 managing directors in the company's EMEA Corporate Banking Department and, as of 2016, three were over the age of 55 and fifteen were 50 and older.

“Gray hair is very important in this industry,” Falco told the court last year.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/17/2020 - 22:45 Tags Law Crime

Could ISIS Take Control Over Iraq's Largest Oil Field?

18 January 2020

Could ISIS Take Control Over Iraq's Largest Oil Field?

Via OilPrice.com,

As always, it’s the fear of sanctions that provides the leverage Trump seeks in this cat-and-mouse game with Iran. And this time, the leverage is over Iraq, which would like to see both American and Iranian forces out of the country, for obvious reasons.

There is nothing ISIS would love more than this.

It would also devastate Iraq because the sanctions threatened would include blocking access to Iraq’s U.S.-based account where all the oil revenues are kept. That threat stands if Iraq moves to kick U.S. forces out of the country.

That would mean victory for Iran (temporarily). Kicking out Iranian forces is not nearly as simple because the line between state and non-state actors is blurred, at best.

A few weeks ago, a U.S. drawdown of military forces in Iraq was already expected, but that now seems unlikely because of the implications.

The very military base that Iran attacked following the assassination of General Soleimani was already preparing for a drawdown.

In addition to the threat of sanctions on oil money, a U.S. withdrawal would likely open the door for an ISIS return.

What Iraqis Want

There is no consensus on this question, other than the fact that no one wants Iraq to be the proxy battleground between the United States and Iran.

It’s a fair point, and Iraqis have had a very difficult time enjoying anything close to sovereignty since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

While the Iraqi parliament has voted for U.S. troops to leave, they do not represent a unified voice. The Sunni elements of parliament did not participate in the vote. Neither did the Iraqi Kurds.

Shia factions in Iraq are, of course, pushing for a U.S. withdrawal, but the Sunnis and Kurds see this as a dangerous opportunity for pro-Iranian Shia factions to take even more control of the central government in Baghdad.

They don’t necessarily want a huge U.S. troop presence, but they are more fearful of a complete withdrawal that would leave them over-exposed to pro-Iranian forces. They also aren’t interested in being very loud about this fear.

In this atmosphere, there is already talk in certain Sunni circles of carving Iraq up to create yet another autonomous region such as that governed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the north of Iraq.

A Sunni-dominated region would include Anbar, Saladin, Nineveh and Diyala provinces, and would leave all of Basra’s oil to pro-Iranian factions.

Already, Sunni leaders are mentioning this as an option, pointing to what they call the “successful” example of the Kurdistan region.

The disintegration of Iraq was already progressing prior to the latest showdown between Iran and the United States. The country has been teetering over the edge of anarchy since 2003, when a single party (the Baath Party) was destroyed and Iraq became “governed” by multiple parties with even more fractious factions and a weak military that pro-Iranian Shia militias found easy to influence.

But this is far from just a sectarian conflict.

The mass protests that were already threatening Iraq’s fragile stability were Shi’ite-versus-Shi’ite. The Sunnis were not involved, nor the Kurds. They were just watching things unfold, warily.

One of the biggest mistakes the casual Western news reader makes is accepting a black-and-white narrative when it comes to Iraq. There is a very distinct group of Shi’ites that has a nationalist bent and is militantly against Iranian influence in an independent Iraq. This was a genuine uprising against highly corrupt and ineffective state institutions.

Then there is a second group of pro-Iranian Shi’ites who have been brutally putting down the popular uprising. This group exists in order to maintain Iran’s influence.

The problem now, for the U.S., is that the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran on Iraqi soil is more likely to bring these two groups together than it is to pull them further apart, which would have been a real threat to Iranian influence in Iraq.

Indeed, both Shia groups are calling for a U.S. withdrawal.

In this territory, you have to pick your evil, and for some time it’s been pro-Iranian forces and pro-U.S. forces against ISIS.

That’s not going to happen anymore, to the great delight of the Islamic State.

In 2011, a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq sent an open invitation to ISIS. In 2020, it will do the same.

The Biggest Threat to Iraqi Oil

For oil prices, the only real benefit to the Iran-Iraq conflict at this point is that Iraq is at a bit of a standstill when it comes to developing new projects, though its existing production will not be affected by any evacuation of U.S. oil workers, which has been minimal so far.

Since Iraq is already OPEC’s biggest over-producer, this is a bit of a balm on compliance.

But the biggest threat to Iraqi oil in recent months has been Shia protesters fed up with a corrupt government. No one else is willing to touch the oil.

The biggest immediate threat is not Basra oil--it’s Kirkuk oil.

A U.S. troop withdrawal could easily relaunch a sectarian civil war in Iraq, and Kirkuk would be the first to fall.

Kirkuk is in northern Iraq, but outside the official territory of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

It’s also one of ISIS’ key stomping grounds, and the only reason they have been kept from taking over this region entirely is the effort of a U.S.-led international anti-ISIS coalition, in which Kurdish Peshmerga forces played an integral role since 2014.

A withdrawal of U.S. troops at this point will ensure a return of ISIS, and a sectarian conflict is exactly what the Islamic State is hoping for.

At an attack on the K-1 base just in northwest Kirkuk in December launched the latest round in the Iran-U.S. proxy war in Iraq.

Prior to that, ISIS had already started escalating attacks on this base, with ISIS seeing a window of opportunity in an American shift to defense against Iran and Hezbollah in Iraq. We’re already seeing the uptick in ISIS attacks--and the focus is definitively Kirkuk.

Coalition forces may have won the Battle of Kirkuk in 2016, but ISIS is still there.

Basra oil is safe, for now. The biggest threat is to Kirkuk’s 9 billion barrels. This is where the next round of this conflict starts, and it will be ISIS that ultimately wins any ‘proxy’ war.

Tyler Durden Fri, 01/17/2020 - 22:25 Tags Politics War Conflict

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