South Africans trapped ‘like frogs in boiling water’ as racial violence escalates

Protesters from Ennerdale, a suburb in the south of Johannesburg, burn tyres and barricade streets around the suburb during a violent protest over a lack of service delivery in the area on May 9, 2017. Picture: Tadeu Andre/AFP

 

HELESTI Daye-Fourie never leaves her house after dark. The risk of being carjacked and shot standing in her own driveway is too high.

Every day after picking up her eight-year-old son from school, the Johannesburg mum-of-two takes a different route home, eyes on the rear-view mirror. Her 20-month-old toddler sits in his car seat behind her, where he can easily be grabbed at a moment’s notice.

That’s because Ms Day-Fourie doesn’t want her son, in the event of an attack, to be trapped by his seatbelt, dragged along outside of the car and killed — as happened to a four-year-old boy whose parents and sister were forced out of their car by three armed men in nearby Boksburg, just 30 minutes away.

In Centurion, an hour’s drive away, a two-year-old was shot in the head during an attempted carjacking earlier this year.

The New Age of Economic Totalitarianism & the London Meeting to End Currency

I have been warning that the governments of the West are in severe trouble. We face the worst economic crisis perhaps in modern history with the distinct risk of moving into a state of Economic Totalitarianism. The governments are well aware of the Economic Confidence Model (ECM). Many people have asked the question why have they not killed me since it appears that most others central to events covered in the movie, the FORECASTER, are dead. I believe the answer is rather simple, for even when I was released and appeared on Capitol Hill, I was introduced as this is the guy with the model they are trying to suppress.

Government is not a single entity. The forces I stood up against were restricted to the corruption in New York City. The New Yorker Magazine was able to get in to interview me only by going to Washington. And when I was thrown in the hole, it was a letter from Congress asking who ordered that treatment resulted in my instant release. And as for my release from contempt, that only took place when the Supreme Court ordered the government to respond to my petition for then the Solicitor General is the only one who can argue before the Supreme Court, not the corrupt prosecutors from New York City. So it is never just a single entity we call government. There are always internal forces that fight over the crumbs of power like pigeons on the ground under the tables at a sidewalk cafe.

I have advised many governments in my life so there are those on the economic side of power who are well aware of what I stand for, not merely the prosecutors who salivate over the opportunity to take down someone famous to further their personal careers. I was perhaps the first and only analyst or Forecaster to be invited by the Bank of China to fly to Beijing during the Asian Currency Crisis back in 1997. I may even be the only analyst who has ever had such experience on a truly global scale. I have been just about everywhere and at times it has appeared that if there was a crisis, somehow I seemed to be dragged in by some government somewhere. There is scarcely a major nation who is not aware of the ECM.

“Colossal Defeat” For Obama As Australia Joins China’s Regional Bank

Having attacked its “closest ally” UK for “constant accomodation” with China, we suspect President Obama will be greatly displeased at yet another close-ally’s decision to partner up with the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). As The Australian reports, “make no mistake,” the decision by Australia’s Abbott government to sign on for negotiations to join China’s regional bank, foreshadowed by Tony Abbott at the weekend,  “represents a colossal defeat for the Obama administration’s incompetent, distracted, ham-fisted dip­lomacy in Asia.”

Vladimir Putin vows that United States ‘will never subjugate Russia’

Russian president echoes Al Capone as he says ‘weapons and politeness’ are better than ‘politeness alone’

Vladimir Putin issued a defiant message to the West on Tuesday, accusing the United States of trying to “subjugate” Russia while promising it would never succeed.

The Russian president also appeared to channel Al Capone, the Chicago mobster, when he joked that “weapons and politeness” were more effective than “politeness alone”.

Meeting supporters at a forum in Moscow, Mr Putin corrected another speaker who said that the United States wanted to humiliate Russia.

David Cameron warns that second global crash is looming

PM says ‘red warning lights are flashing’ against a backdrop of instability and uncertainty, as G20 summit draws to a close

David Cameron has issued a stark message that “red warning lights are flashing on the dashboard of the global economy” in the same way as when the financial crash brought the world to its knees six years ago.

Writing in the Guardian at the close of the G20 summit in Brisbane, Cameron says there is now “a dangerous backdrop of instability and uncertainty” that presents a real risk to the UK recovery, adding that the eurozone slowdown is already having an impact on British exports and manufacturing.

G20: Russia say warships heading towards Brisbane are taking part in routine exercise

A fleet of Russian warships continued to steam south closer to the G20 host city of Brisbane on Thursday as experts stressed the show of force was aimed at the world as a whole, not just Australia.

Reports indicate that Australia is sending two additional warships to its surveillance mission, with supply ship the HMAS Sirius joining the HMAS Parramatta and HMAS Stuart, and the HMAS Sydney preparing to also potentially join them.

Defence sources said the four ships, which include the Pacific flagship missile cruiser Varyag, were on a course that would put them in international waters off Brisbane by the time the international gathering gets under way on the weekend.

Russian military provided MH17 missile launcher, says report

London: There is strong evidence that the missile launcher that shot down flight MH17 was provided by the Russian military, a long, crowd-sourced investigation into the tragedy has concluded.

However the investigators could not say who ‘pushed the button’ to launch the missile: whether it was Ukrainian separatists, or Russian soldiers working with them.

The new analysis comes as Prime Minister Tony Abbott prepares for his long-anticipated face-to-face encounter with Russian president Vladimir Putin over MH17: either at an APEC conference in Beijing on Monday and Tuesday, or at this weekend’s G20 meeting in Brisbane.

Mr Abbott promised last month to ‘shirtfront’ Mr Putin, saying “Australians were murdered… by Russian-backed rebels using Russian-supplied equipment”.

Mr Abbott has since toned down his language, saying last week he would tell Mr Putin that “Australia expects full Russian cooperation with the investigation” into the crash.

MH17 was shot down over separatist-held eastern Ukraine on July 17, killing 298 people including 38 Australians.