Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,
China's Belt and Road Initiative - the New Silk Road - will spark the country's development and turn the dream into reality...
It all starts with Hong Kong as a major BRI financing hub.
Two years after the European Commission carried out the bidding of German Chancellor Angela Merkel by approving a plan to distribute migrants entering the Schengen area through Greece and Italy evenly across the European Union, the people of Europe have made their displeasure with Merkel’s “open door” policy abundantly clear.
Authored by Jeremiah Johnson (nom de plume of a retired Green Beret of the United States Army Special Forces) via SHTFplan.com,
Update (1510ET): Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont addressed Catalans, Spaniards, and the rest of Europe on TV saying that the Spanish states' imposition of Article 155 means "liquidation of our self-government and cancellation of the democratic will of Catalans".
Puigdemont said Mr Rajoy had set out to "humiliate" Catalonia in an "attack on democracy" and said removing powers from Catalonia was the "worst attack against the institutions and the people of Catalonia since the military dictatorship of Francisco Franco".
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy asked lawmakers to grant him unprecedented powers to force leaders of the Catalonia region to cease their independence push, a dramatic escalation in the confrontation between Spain and the separatist region, which the WSJ - and virtually everyone else - has said will be a major test for Spanish democracy. According to The Spain Report, this
is the first time in the modern democratic period that a central
government has suspended home rule in one of Spain's 17 regions.