- China Gives Japan, Korea Ultimatum On Hosting US Missiles After INF Collapse
China Gives Japan, Korea Ultimatum On Hosting US Missiles After INF Collapse
The major Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun revealed this week that Chinese officials issued a stern to warning to Japan and South Korea against any move to host intermediate-range missiles on their soil.
Citing both Japanese and US sources, the newspaper said Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi issued the message to his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in August — an action apparently triggered by President Trump’s announced official withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russia.
A Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptor, via Wiki Commons Given a key administration criticism of the INF is that it doesn’t account for developing technology and advanced missiles of major powers like China, Beijing is said to be worried over the fallout of a potential new US-Russia arms race for southeast Asia.
According to the report:
With the INF now invalidated, Beijing is concerned that Washington plans to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Japan and South Korea where they would be capable of reaching China.
Foreign Minister Wang reportedly told then Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Kono: “If the United States deploys intermediate-range missiles in Japan, that would have a major effect on Japan-China relations” — a message also relayed in a separate bilateral meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.
Japan’s Kono reportedly responded firmly with “Chinese missiles are capable of hitting Japan, so China must first work toward reducing its arsenal.”
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (left) meeting Japanese counterpart Taro Kono in Tokyo on April 15, 2018. Via Reuters And further: “Kang told Wang that China should first end its retaliatory measures against South Korea for the deployment of the U.S. military’s Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, the sources said.”
The revelation comes at an interesting moment, given US-South Korea relations reached a low-point this month after the Trump administration in negotiations with Seoul demanded a $4.7 billion annual price tag to keep 28,000+ US troops in South Korea.
Simultaneously, China has signed a defense agreement with South Korea promising to develop greater security ties. The agreement lays out a near-term plan to “foster bilateral exchanges and cooperation in defense”.
Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/22/2019 – 01:00 - Trump Vs. Warren, & The Fake Battle Against The Elites
Trump Vs. Warren, & The Fake Battle Against The Elites
Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
It seems like a simple and easy to identify pattern, but for some reason the public keeps falling for the same old globalist tricks. A well-worn tactic the money elites use to endear certain puppet political candidates to Americans is to encourage those candidates to use anti-elitist rhetoric, only to then flood their cabinets with those same elites once they get into office. The rule of politics seems to be, “Say whatever you want to get the people on your side, but once you’re in office, you do as we tell you…”
These candidates will aggressively attack the banks, corporations and wall street, lamenting the rapid decline of the middle class or “working class”. They will point out that a mere handful of ultra-rich, the top 1%, control more wealth than nearly half of the population combined. They will seize upon the travesties of the poor and argue for “change” to bring balance back to the system. They will pretend to expose the crimes of the banking cabal and the upper echelons of Wall Street. They will put on a grand show; and then, they will do the bidding of their masters and play the role they were groomed for…
Americans are suckers for fake “people’s candidates” and always have been.
But perhaps I should expand on this with some real world examples. How about Jimmy Carter, who started out his presidential campaign with a dismal 4% in the Democratic polls. Carter would go on to explode in popularity after attacking what he referred to as the “Washington insiders”, the elites that ran the show from behind the curtain. A widely distributed paperback book that promoted Carter during his campaign called “I’ll Never Lie To You: Jimmy Carter In His Own Words” quoted the candidate as saying at a Boston rally:
“The people of this country know from bitter experience that we are not going to get … changes merely by shifting around the same group of insiders.”
His own top aide, Hamilton Jordan, promised:
“If, after the inauguration, you find a Cy Vance as Secretary of State and Zbigniew Brzezinski as head of National Security, then I would say we failed. And I’d quit.”
Carter was portrayed as a statesman free from connections to the globalists; a religious man and veritable white knight pure in his associations. This was viewed as an important image to maintain at the time. After the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the presidential candidacy of true anti-globalist Barry Goldwater and the highly questionable role of Henry Kissinger in Richard Nixon’s administration, the public was growing increasingly suspicious of the nature of government and who was really in charge. Carter was initially seen as a cure for the public’s distrust.
Of course, as soon as Carter entered office he injected no less than ten members of the globalist Trilateral Commission and numerous other elites into key positions in his administration, including Cy Vance and Zbigniew Brzezinski. And of course, his top aide never quit. The elites knew exactly what the public wanted at that moment in history, and so they gave it to them in the form of Jimmy Carter. Carter’s administration would go on to serve numerous globalist interests, but this attracted the ire of the American public, who felt betrayed.
How about another example of fake anti-globalists and anti-elites?
Enter Ronald Reagan, the anti-Carter. The conservative (and former democrat) who wasn’t afraid to point out that Carter was surrounded by Trilateral Commission ghouls and question his honesty. Reagan attacked Carter while maintaining a distance from more “conspiratorial” language. Reagan stated in 1980 during his campaign:
“I don’t believe that the Trilateral Commission is a conspiratorial group, but I do think its interests are devoted to international banking, multinational corporations, and so forth. I don’t think that any Administration of the U.S. Government should have the top nineteen positions filled by people from any one group or organization representing one viewpoint. No, I would go in a different direction…”
Reagan, like Carter, was touted as having no affiliations with the elites. He was pure and unsullied by the globalists. But alas, Reagan also quickly picked at least 10 Trilateral Commission members for his transition team once he was elected, and he served the interests of the elites throughout his two terms in the White House (for the most part) under the watchful eye of George H.W. Bush.
If this is starting to sound familiar then you are probably more awake and aware than most. The elites use the same strategies over and over and over again, usually with minor variances to keep things fresh. As many of my readers are well aware, I have been consistently pointing out the fraudulent anti-globalist image of Donald Trump the past few years, and his administration has followed a very similar path to those described above with a few important differences.
Trump ran his campaign as a populist and opponent of the elites. His image was that of a person untouched by the influence of the establishment. In fact, the primary argument among his supporters was that Trump was “so rich” that he “could not be bought”. He criticized Hillary Clinton and her deep state connections with banks like Goldman Sachs and announced that once in office he would “drain the swamp” of special interests in Washington.
He also made bold accusations against the Federal Reserve, pointing out that the supposed “economic recovery” and the stock market rally was a fraud; a bubble created through stimulus and near zero interest rates that he didn’t want to inherit. Trump was yet another pure white knight ready to expose and do battle with the globalist dragon.
As many liberty activists are well aware by now, Trump is the furthest thing from an anti-globalist. Like Carter and Reagan, Trump swiftly loaded his cabinet with elites from the Council on Foreign Relations, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, etc. His background was also not so pure; Trump had in fact been bought a couple decades in advance by the Rothschild banking family. Rothschild agent Wilber Ross was the man who brokered the deal to bail Trump out of his massive debts in multiple properties in Atlantic City, saving Trumps fortune and his image. Today, Wilber Ross is Trump’s commerce secretary.
Trump also completely shifted his position on the economy, taking full credit for the stock market bubble as well as the fake GDP numbers and fake unemployment numbers he had attacked during his campaign. Trump has now completely tied his administration to the Everything Bubble – a bubble that has been popped and is now deflating into a hard recession.
Trump’s theatrical character is different from Carter and Reagan in a couple of ways.
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First, in the Carter era, the public had a wider trust of the mainstream media, and so, Carter was presented as a media darling. Today, the majority of the public has a severe distaste of the media, and so, Trump was presented as their enemy; a thorn in their side. The media attacks on Trump only garnered him MORE attention and favor with conservatives and independents.
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Second, Trump’s acting role as an anti-globlist in the new world order screenplay is far more important to the elites than Carter or Reagan. Trump is meant to become a symbol of ALL anti-globalism, a nexus point and representative of sovereignty activism. He is meant to co-opt the entire liberty movement, and then sink it into oblivion. In other words, as the economy crumbles around Trump, conservatives and liberty proponents are made guilty by association.
Trump serves the elites by pretending to be starkly anti-establishment while at the same time taking credit for their economic works, not to mention the blame for the collapse of the bubble the establishment created.
But what happens after Trump? Who is next in line to take the lead role in the globalist theater for the American masses? Again, it’s important to remember that the elites are not very imaginative, but they do have a lot of practice with tried and true tactics. They will present us with a candidate that is decidedly anti-Trump, but who also continues certain projects that Trump started.
Enter Elizabeth Warren…
Warren is yet another candidate that is being groomed as “unaffiliated” with the elites. Her image as the “daughter of a janitor” from the American midwest who went on to succeed as a woman in a “man’s world” is heavily pushed in the media. But here is why I think Warren is the most likely political anti-thesis to Trump and the most likely Democratic candidate; the screenplay essentially writes itself…
Consider this – Warren grows up in a lower middle class family in Oklahoma, the daughter of a lowly service worker. Trump grows up rich, the son of a real estate tycoon who inherits a fortune.
Trump is a billionaire businessman and member of the 1% whose economic policies and tax cuts have consistently favored corporations and stock markets over the middle class. Warren claims she is a “capitalist”, but wants restrictions on stock market buybacks and Wall Street in general, accusing it of being nothing more than a money generator for the super wealthy.
Trump has faced bankruptcy on numerous occasions and his administration sits at the doorstep of the highest national, consumer and corporate debt levels in American history. Warren’s background is in bankruptcy and bankruptcy law.
Trump has taken full credit for the economic bubble and boasts about his influence over markets regularly while completely ignoring the crash in fundamentals as well as his own warnings in 2016. Warren is the ONLY democratic candidate so far to predict an economic crash in the near term.
The differences in image are important here, but there are also some similarities between Trump and Warren in terms of policy.
Trump’s economic policies demand ever lower interest rates and higher levels of central bank stimulus in order to work. He won’t get exactly what he wants, but he is demanding endless central bank intervention all the same. Elizabeth Warren is a proponent of Neoclassical Economics, which is closely tied to Keynesian economics. Warren was also on the oversight committee for the TARP bailout, and can claim that she’s intimately familiar with monetary stimulus measures. Real QE4 and near zero interest rates (not just repo purchases) would be more likely under Warren, after the “Trump collapse”. In fact, it is likely that Warren would demand and get MMT (modern monetary theory) policies passed.
Trump has instituted aggressive tariff measures against China and the trade war continues unabated so far. Warren also wants to continue hard-line policies against China, while at the same time blaming Trump for starting the conflict in the first place.
Finally, like Trump, Warren has long been a hawk in support of Israel and it is likely that US troops will be staying in the Middle East for many years to come if she is elected. She will criticize certain aspects of Israel’s Palestinian policy to appeal to the Democratic base. But, like Trump, her actions will not match her rhetoric.
The setup of this story is almost too perfect. Midwestern middle class girl and self made professional takes on a boastful arrogant billionaire and the 1%. Democrat voters love this kind of garbage. But it doesn’t stop there…
Warren’s attacks on billionaires are gaining extreme media attention, and the media loves it. Her latest ad campaign criticized four rich guys by name, including Leon Cooperman, the former Ameritrade CEO Joe Ricketts, the former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and the investor Peter Thiel. Some of these men have responded publicly and angrily, and so another great farce of a wrestling match begins and propels another supposedly anti-establishment candidate into stardom.
But here’s the thing – Warren’s wealth tax is not so anti-establishment. Elites like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have been openly calling for higher taxes on the super-rich. In tandem with the wealth tax, her climate change position is seen as a shot across the bow of oil companies and the financial power structure. Yet, her policies are almost exactly in line with the Green New Deal and the UN’s Agenda 2030, which the globalists greatly desire.
Warren’s image as anti-establishment? It’s as fake as Trump’s image.
Warren has been featured multiple times in the magazine Foreign Affairs, the official magazine of the Council On Foreign Relations. On top of that they published her article “A Foreign Policy for All: Strengthening Democracy – at Home and Abroad”. For those that are unaware, the CFR is the premier globalist organization and its membership roster is saturated with many of the billionaire elites Warren claims to stand against. Yet, she has courted Foreign Affairs many times and they have written about her favorably.
Another interesting little fact is that the CFR does not publish articles by presidential candidates often. In fact, candidates that do get their articles published by Foreign Affairs tend to become president, or get a massive boost in their polling numbers and cash support. An example of this would be Richard Nixon, who suffered a stream of campaign failures until his article “Asia After Vietnam” was published in Foreign Affairs in October 1967. A little over a year later he entered the White House. Another example would be Barack Obama, who published articles in Foreign Affairs in the early stages of his 2008 campaign. Getting an article accepted by the CFR seems to be a signal that the candidate in question is ready to be useful to the establishment.
Warren’s explosion in the polls relative to candidates like Joe Biden started a few months after her article was published in the CFR magazine. So far she is the only candidate graced with an article in Foreign Affairs.
Does this mean that the elites want Warren over Donald Trump in 2020? Not necessarily. It is still too early to identify the trend and the signals for the next election. I believe next spring will bring clarity on the matter. However, the point remains that almost every candidate that is given serious consideration within the system is controlled or is seeking favor with the elites. The election process is highly moderated. Good people are not allowed to get though the net. Those that get close are ridiculed and then ignored until their campaigns fade into obscurity.
The candidates that serve the purposes of the elites get endless attention in the media, sometimes positive and sometimes negative, but they are never ignored. And, above all, the candidates that are most likely to be chosen as president are those that pretend to be anti-establishment. This is what sells with the American public, and the globalists know it. Warren is following this pattern, just as Trump did.
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Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 23:45 -
- Watch: Russian Testing Facility Simulates Nuclear Blasts To Test Its Robots And Military Vehicles
Watch: Russian Testing Facility Simulates Nuclear Blasts To Test Its Robots And Military Vehicles
Ever wonder exactly what would happen to your everyday items in the event of a nuclear blast?
Well, so does Russia. In fact, because Russian military vehicles may need to withstand such a blast, they are actually tested for durability in the face of the type of damage that could occur from a nuclear-style explosion, according to RT.
While Russia doesn’t actually conduct nuclear explosions for testing purposes, there are testing facilities that are set up to produce “near-perfect” models of the effects of a nuclear explosion: an avalanching blast wave, thermal radiation and a devastating electromagnetic pulse.
And in addition to nuclear blasts, the testing facility also makes sure that Russian military equipment can withstand occurrences like lightning strikes.
The facility – known as the Russian Defense Ministry’s 12th Central Research Institute – recently tested a “family” of military unmanned ground vehicles that includes five models ranging from a small recon robot to a 13 ton armed personnel carrier, which can be manned or under remote control.
In addition to the robots, the facility also tested the command posts that would hold the robot’s operators.
One test has a blast wave simulated by using a special blast tube that is over 110 meters long. An explosion at one end of the tunnel is used to create a shockwave that is similar to what happens in a nuclear blast. The blast is enough to “send a seven-ton Soviet BMD-1 infantry fighting vehicle tumbling like a papier-maché model,” according to the report.
Includes some interesting archive footage of a BMD-1 test from another site pic.twitter.com/I8eV1VepV2
— Joseph Dempsey (@JosephHDempsey) November 10, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Civilian vehicles didn’t hold up well, either, during the tests. Shockwaves were strong enough to crush a civilian car flat. But the command post mounted on a truck, shown here…
…can withstand the force, however.
Other tests involved checking if remotely controlled vehicles could endure electromagnetic pulses and other disturbances. Many of these pulses can knock out electronics, which can be fatal to robots controlled from a distance.
You can watch the setup and full tests in this 30 minute Russian TV program that tracked the process closely:
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 23:25 - Rethinking National Security: CIA & FBI Are Corrupt, But What About Congress?
Rethinking National Security: CIA & FBI Are Corrupt, But What About Congress?
Authored by Philip Giraldi via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The developing story about how the US intelligence and national security agencies may have conspired to influence and possibly even reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election is compelling, even if one is disinclined to believe that such a plot would be possible to execute. Not surprisingly perhaps there have been considerable introspection among former and current officials who have worked in those and related government positions, many of whom would agree that there is urgent need for a considerable restructuring and reining in of the 17 government agencies that have some intelligence or law enforcement function. Most would also agree that much of the real damage that has been done has been the result of the unending global war on terror launched by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, which has showered the agencies with resources and money while also politicizing their leadership and freeing them from restraints on their behavior.
If the tens of billions of dollars lavished on the intelligence community together with a “gloves off” approach towards oversight that allowed them to run wild had produced good results, it might be possible to argue that it was all worth it. But the fact is that intelligence gathering has always been a bad investment even if it is demonstrably worse at the present. One might argue that the CIA’s notorious Soviet Estimate prolonged the Cold War and that the failure to connect dots and pay attention to what junior officers were observing allowed 9/11 to happen. And then there was the empowerment of al-Qaeda during the Soviet-Afghan war followed by failure to penetrate the group once it began to carry out operations.
More recently there have been Guantanamo, torture in black prisons, renditions of terror suspects to be tortured elsewhere, killing of US citizens by drone, turning Libya into a failed state and terrorist haven, arming militants in Syria, and, of course, the Iraqi alleged WMDs, the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. And the bad stuff happened in bipartisan fashion, under Democrats and Republicans, with both neocons and liberal interventionists all playing leading roles. The only one punished for the war crimes was former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed some of what was going on.
Colonel Pat Lang, a colleague and friend who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency HUMINT (human intelligence) program after years spent on the ground in special ops and foreign liaison, thinks that strong medicine is needed and has initiated a discussion based on the premise that the FBI and CIA are dysfunctional relics that should be dismantled, as he puts it “burned to the ground,” so that the federal government can start over again and come up with something better.
Lang cites numerous examples of “incompetence and malfeasance in the leadership of the 17 agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” to include the examples cited above plus the failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the domestic front, he cites his personal observation of efforts by the Department of Justice and the FBI to corruptly “frame” people tried in federal courts on national security issues as well as the intelligence/law enforcement community conspiracy to “get Trump.”
Colonel Lang asks “Tell me, pilgrims, why should we put up with such nonsense? Why should we pay the leaders of these agencies for the privilege of having them abuse us? We are free men and women. Let us send these swine to their just deserts in a world where they have to work hard for whatever money they earn.” He then recommends stripping CIA of its responsibility for being the lead agency in spying as well as in covert action, which is a legacy of the Cold War and the area in which it has demonstrated a particular incompetence. As for the FBI, it was created by J. Edgar Hoover to maintain dossiers on politicians and it is time that it be replaced by a body that operates in a fashion “more reflective of our collective nation[al] values.”
Others in the intelligence community understandably have different views. Many believe that the FBI and CIA have grown too large and have been asked to do too many things unrelated to national security, so there should be a major reduction-in-force (RIF) followed by the compulsory retirement of senior officers who have become too cozy with and obligated to politicians. The new-CIA should collect information, period, what it was founded to do in 1947, and not meddle in foreign elections or engage in regime change. The FBI should provide only police services that are national in nature and that are not covered by the state and local jurisdictions. And it should operate in as transparent a fashion as possible, not as a national secret police force.
But the fundamental problem may not be with the police and intelligence services themselves. There are a lot of idiots running around loose in Washington.
Witness for example the impeachment hearings ludicrous fact free opening statement by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (with my emphasis):
“In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire.”
And the press is no better, note the following excerpt from The New York Times lead editorial on the hearings, including remarks of the two State Department officers who testified, on the following day:
“They came across not as angry Democrats or Deep State conspirators, but as men who have devoted their lives to serving their country, and for whom defending Ukraine against Russian aggression is more important to the national interest than any partisan jockeying…
“At another point, Mr. Taylor said he had been critical of the Obama administration’s reluctance to supply Ukraine with anti-tank missiles and other lethal defensive weapons in its fight with Russia, and that he was pleased when the Trump administration agreed to do so…
“What clearly concerned both witnesses wasn’t simply the abuse of power by the president, but the harm it inflicted on Ukraine, a critical ally under constant assault by Russian forces. ‘Even as we sit here today, the Russians are attacking Ukrainian soldiers in their own country and have been for the last four years…’ Mr. Taylor said.”
Schiff and the Times should get their facts straight.
And so should the two American foreign service officers who were clearly seeing the situation only from the Ukrainian perspective, a malady prevalent among US diplomats often described as “going native.” They were pushing a particular agenda, i.e. possible war with Russia on behalf of Ukraine, in furtherance of a US national interest that they fail to define. One of them, George Kent, eulogized the Ukrainian militiamen fighting the Russians as the modern day equivalent of the Massachusetts Minutemen in 1776, not exactly a neutral assessment, and also euphemized Washington-provided lethal offensive weapons as “security assistance.”
Another former intelligence community friend Ray McGovern has constructed a time line of developments in Ukraine which demolishes the establishment view on display in Congress relating to the alleged Russian threat. First of all, Ukraine was no American ally in 2014 and is no “critical ally” today. Also, the Russian reaction to western supported rioting in Kiev, a vital interest, only came about after the United States spent $5 billion destabilizing and then replacing the pro-Kremlin government. Since that time Moscow has resumed control of the Crimea, which is historically part of Russia, and is active in the Donbas region which has a largely Russian population.
It should really be quite simple. The national security state should actually be engaged in national security. Its size and budget should be commensurate with what it actually does, nothing more. It should not be roaming the world looking for trouble and should instead only respond to actual threats. And it should operate with oversight. If Congress is afraid to do it, set up a separate body that is non-partisan and actually has the teeth to do the job. If the United States of America comes out of the process as something like a normal nation the entire world will be a much happier place.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 23:05 - OECD Sees Global Growth At Decade-Low As WTO Warns Of "Doomsday Scenario"
OECD Sees Global Growth At Decade-Low As WTO Warns Of “Doomsday Scenario”
Global growth is quickly plunging to levels not seen since the financial crisis as the risk of long-term stagnation has developed, according to the OECD’s latest Economic Outlook.
The world economy is expected to grow at a decade-low of 2.9% this year and remain in a subdued range of 2.9% to 3% through 2021. Global GDP has quickly decelerated from peaking at 3.5% in 2018.
The Paris-based policy forum warned that several years of escalating trade disputes between the US and China have resulted in a synchronized global downturn that has pushed down global growth to alarming levels, not seen since the last financial crisis.
The fragility of the world has led to a cycle of vulnerability where a global trade recession could be imminent or has already arrived.
“The alarm bells are ringing loud and clear. Unless governments take decisive action to help boost investment, adapt their economies to the challenges of our time and build an open, fair and rules-based trading system, we are heading for a long-term future of low growth and declining living standards, “OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría recently said.
OECD warns that China, the driver of global growth the bailed everyone out during the last financial crisis, might not be able to stimulate the global economy this time around as trade tensions soar and a rebalancing of the Chinese economy continues.
China will accept sub 6% GDP in 2020, as it’s likely Beijing will not turn on its massive credit spigots anytime soon.
China’s credit growth slowed more than expected in October to the weakest pace since at least 2017 as a continued collapse in shadow banking, weak corporate demand for credit, and seasonal effects all suggest that a rebound in the domestic and global economy aren’t likely in the near term.
To make things even more complicated for the global economy, the Trump administration has created a perfect storm that will likely paralyze the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) appeals body in December that could lead to further escalations in the trade war and damage the global economy into a depression.
Without WTO’s working appeals system, international trade disputes will go unresolved and could escalate into tit-for-tat tariff wars that spiral out of control.
“At that stage, the whole thing gets out of hand,” said Stuart Harbinson, Hong Kong’s former representative at the WTO, now a trade consultant at Hume Broph. “I think that will be the doomsday scenario.”
And with global growth at decade lows, China not able to jump-start the global economy, and the risk that trade tensions could continue escalating — it seems that global equities have priced in a recovery that was only fantasy — what happens next could be a repricing event for risk assets.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 22:45 - Martin Armstrong Warns Of The Coming "Big Freeze"
Martin Armstrong Warns Of The Coming “Big Freeze”
Authored by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,
The BIG FREEZE is upon us.
The volatility in weather that our computer has been forecasting on a long-term basis should result in this winter being colder than the last. In Britain, the snow has hit an already flood-ravaged country as temperatures plunged to -7C. This is part of the problem we face. The ground freezes down and this prevents winter crops.
During the late 1700s, the ground froze to a depth of 2 feet according to John Adams. When John Adams set out to travel to Philadelphia, it was bitterly cold and there was a foot or more of snow that covered the landscape that had blanketed Massachusetts from one end of the province to the other. Beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet. Packed ice in the road made the journey very hazardous.
In a letter to his wife, John Adams wrote:
“Indeed I feel not a little out of Humour, from Indisposition of Body. You know, I cannot pass a Spring, or fall, without an ill Turn — and I have had one these four or five Weeks — a Cold, as usual. Warm Weather, and a little Exercise, with a little Medicine, I suppose will cure me as usual. … Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”
On September 8, 1816, Jefferson described the weather in a letter to Albert Gallatin:
“We have had the most extraordinary year of drought and cold ever known in the history of America. In June, instead of 3¾ inches, our average of rain for that month, we had only 1/3 of an inch; in August, instead of 9 1/6 inches our average, we had only 8/10 of an inch; and it still continues. The summer too has been as cold as a moderate winter. In every state North of this there has been frost in every month of the year; in this state we had none in June and July but those of August killed much corn over the mountains. The crop of corn through the Atlantic states will probably be less than 1/3 of an ordinary one, that of tobacco still less, and of mean quality.”
It is global cooling, not global warming, that we should fear the most. Climate change people may get their wish to reduce the population. That is usually the result of global cooling, which creates famine as we are witnessing already in North Korea. The past winter 2018/2019 experienced record breaking cold temperatures. We should beat that this winter 2019/2020… and here’s why…
Professor Valentina Zharkova gave a presentation of her Climate and the Solar Magnetic Field hypothesis at the Global Warming Policy Foundation in October, 2018. The information she unveiled should shake/wake you up.
Zharkova was one of only two scientists to correctly predict solar cycle 24 would be weaker than cycle 23 — in fact, only 2 out of 150 models predicted this.
Zharkova’s models have run at a 97% accuracy and now suggest a Super Grand Solar Minimum is on the cards beginning 2020.
Grand Solar Minimums are prolonged periods of reduced solar activity, and in the past have gone hand-in-hand with times of global cooling.
The last time we had a GSM (the Maunder Minimum) only two magnetic fields of the sun went out of phase.
This time, all four magnetic fields are going out of phase.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 22:25 - SoftBank To Cut Offer For WeWork, Slash Neumann's Payout After Unprecedented Humiliation By Its Key Banks
SoftBank To Cut Offer For WeWork, Slash Neumann’s Payout After Unprecedented Humiliation By Its Key Banks
Two days ago, the Nikkei reported that the millennium’s most iconic juggernaut of epic malinvestment, Japan’s SoftBank – which may well be this bubble era’s “short of the century” – was in talks to receive about 300 billion yen ($2.76 billion) in financing from Japan’s leading banks, as the company scrambled to fund a turnaround at its co-working startup, the scandal plagued and terribly misnamed WeWork… which earlier today fired 20% of its workforce.
Why did Softbank need the money? Because as part of its bailout of arguably the most disastrous investment of this century, SoftBank had to fund a $3 billion tender offer to raise its stake in WeWork, and provide an additional $3.3 billion through loans and other methods.
At this point SoftBank ran into a problem: while the bank/telecom/venture capital arm of Japan’s richest man, Masayoshi Son, had more than 2 trillion yen on hand, or about $19 billion, it was hoping to borrow additional funds so it can maintain a certain level of cash reserves. For banks – such as SoftBank’s main lender, Mizuho Financial – this presented a rare moneymaking opportunity amid Japan’s ultralow interest rates.
Here, Softbank ran into another, bigger problem: many of Japan’s top banks had already lent large amounts of money to SoftBank and were cautious about taking on further risk. Adding insult to injury, these banks were also investors in the SoftBank Vision Fund which suffered a massive loss over WeWork’s aborted initial public offering, not to mention the dismal investment in Uber, and were said to be nixing an investment in a second fund proposed by SoftBank.
And then there was the biggest problem: Mitsubishi UFJ, Japan’s biggest bank, was said to withhold additional loans to finance SoftBank’s $9.5 billion rescue package for WeWork, the FT reported overnight. While WeWork had gotten a tacit approval from the bank consortium consisting of Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui, the third member of SoftBank’s lending group, MUFG said it would turn down the request, if the loans are to be used to save WeWork.
And just like that the radioactivity of Adam Neumann’s former company turned gamma.
According to the FT, Sumitomo also did not want to lend to the WeWork bailout, but acknowledged that it had no real control over how SoftBank used any corporate loans once they had been extended (which is odd because clearly MUFJ had no such qualms).
According to analysts, the unprecedented cautious stance – in which SoftBank’s closest circle of lenders effectively issued a vote of no confidence in Son’s investment capabilities – could signal a turning point in the close relationship between Japanese banks and SoftBank’s deal-driven founder Masayoshi Son. It would also mean that what we predicted before, is now virtually assured – the next time SoftBank needs money, it will go to the BOJ directly.
When is the BOJ’s bailout of Softbank?
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 5, 2019
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
To be sure, such a snub of a core client is unheard of, especially in always polite Japan. However, after SoftBank’s recent massive $6.4 billion quarterly loss, and since the “valuation issues” at WeWork which brought down the value of the office subletting company from $47 billion to essentially zero, there has been “a definite change in mood” among the Japanese banks and doubts have emerged over some parts of SoftBank’s investment strategy, said a banker close to SoftBank.
So what is SoftBank to do?
Well, as Bloomberg reported late on Thursday, SoftBank execs – finding themselves in a liquidity crunch – have been forced to admit they overpaid for WeWork again, this time when they bailed it out of bankruptcy, and are now looking for a way to reduce the size of a $3 billion offer for WeWork stock as part of its rescue package.
The discussions at SoftBank center around shrinking a $3 billion tender offer for WeWork shares owned by founders, employees and investors, according to people with knowledge of the talks. Such a move would be designed, first and foremost, to limit the amount paid to the company’s megalomaniacal co-founder Adam Neumann, said Bloomberg’s sources.
Yet while there would be a collective cheer if Neuman were to see his platinum parachute reduced to flaming plastic bag, it’s unclear how SoftBank could renege on its agreement with WeWork investors and most of all, with Neumann. Any effort to re-draw terms could result in an unprecedented, and even more humiliating, legal battle as SoftBank takes on the company that until recently was at the forefront of its historic investment spree and, no joke, “AI Revolution” as SoftBank calls its crazy rollup of dozens of startups.
As part of the deal, Neumann would sell almost a billion dollars, or $970 million worth of largely worthless WeWork stock to SoftBank. Some more details from Bloomberg:
In recent internal discussions at SoftBank, some executives have said the payout to Neumann is too generous, the people with knowledge of the talks said. It may be a case of buyer’s remorse after WeWork employees expressed outrage over the favorable deal given to Neumann while the business was in turmoil. Representatives for Neumann, SoftBank and WeWork declined to comment.
Neumann, who just days before the now infamously imploded WeWork IPO was treated as a god by the bank’s underwriters including JPMorgan and Goldman, departed the company’s board as part of the rescue package and was replaced by SoftBank executive and newly appointed Chairman Marcelo Claure. Meanwhile, the size of Neumann’s payout, which also included millions in consulting fees, has incensed some WeWork employees, which dropped by 17% today after the latest mass layoff by the company.
To be sure, as Bloomberg notes, no decision has been made yet and SoftBank may choose to fulfill the $3 billion tender offer in its entirety without haircuts, however that may prevent the bank from getting the money it hopes to receive from its banks; indeed, as noted above, it now appears that Mitsubishi UFJ will only grant Masa Son the money if Adam Neumann ends up with nothing (at least metaphorically speaking).
Big the biggest joke of all here is that at a recent briefing in Tokyo, SoftBank’s billionaire founder Masayoshi Son acknowledged that this month’s financial results were “a mess” and that overvaluing WeWork was a judgment error. Well, isn’t it ironic that after he massively overvalued WeWork when it was solvent, he also overvalued the office rental company (which.is.not.a.tech.company) when it was about to file for bankruptcy.
Son said that he had consulted with lawyers to see if he could back out of a $1.5 billion warrant SoftBank had pledged to WeWork, but they said he couldn’t. Instead, Son decided to buy even more shares at a discounted price, lowering the average cost of SoftBank’s equity in the business.
Because somehow throwing good money after an idiotic investment is supposed to be… good? smart?
We don’t know the answer, but one thing we are sure of is what we said earlier this week: “Japan is without doubt the dumbest money this bubble cycle.”
Japan is without doubt the dumbest money this bubble cycle https://t.co/uCduPdM461
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 18, 2019
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 22:05 - Fake Growth? China "Adjusts" 2018 GDP 2.1% Higher Due To Census
Fake Growth? China “Adjusts” 2018 GDP 2.1% Higher Due To Census
In 2016, China admitted its economic data was fake, pointing out that “some local statistics are falsified, and fraud and deception happen from time to time.”
In 2017, China (again) admitted its economic data was fake, saying that a nationwide audit found some local governments inflated revenue levels and raised debt illegally, with some local GDP data as much as 20% “over-cooked.”
In 2018, we exposed China’s “cooked” numbers in China’s industrial profits growth data.
And early in 2019, a team of researchers from the Brookings Institute published a carefully researched paper detailing the exact mechanism by which authorities in Beijing inflate the country’s GDP figures, while estimating that China’s economy is roughly 12% smaller than the official figures would suggest.
And so here we are, nearing the end of 2019 and China’s economic growth is lagging badly – at or near the lowest since record began over 30 years ago (and expected to grow at less than 6.0% next year for the first time) – we get new from China’s National Nureau of Statistics that 2018’s GDP data is to be adjusted…
Can you guess which way the adjustment went?
Based on China’s gross domestic product (GDP) accounting system and the results of the fourth national economic census, the National Bureau of Statistics revised the preliminary accounting figures for 2018. The main results are as follows:
In 2018, the gross domestic product was 91.93 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.8972 trillion yuan over the initial accounting, an increase of 2.1%.
The revisions were almost entirely focused in the tertiary sector of the economy, whose growth was “adjusted” 4.29% higher while the primary sector barely moved and the output of the secondary sector was actually adjusted 0.32% lower.
We look forward to 2019’s goal-seeked adjustments… to ensure China’s growth remains above the ‘mandated’ 6%.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 21:44 - One Bank Was Just Accused Of Violating Money Laundering Laws…23 Million Times
One Bank Was Just Accused Of Violating Money Laundering Laws…23 Million Times
Australia’s once squeaky clean banking industry has lost its good reputation, and now the country’s second largest bank, Westpac, has broken anti-terror and AML laws requiring the bank to closely screen transactions with an international component. All told, the bank said it has documented no fewer than 23 million transactions that didn’t receive an adequate level of scrutiny. This includes failing to report $7.5 billion in international transfers.
But here’s the kicker: According to Australian banking laws, each individual breach could warrant a fine of up to A$21 million ($14 million). That means AUSTRAC, the country’s financial watchdog, could legally choose to pursue hundreds of trillions of dollars in fines, though that likely far outpaces the bank’s ability to pay, WSJ reports.
Though it’s not clear exactly what the bank’s oversight failures mean, in the case it brought against the bank on Wednesday, AUSTRAC accused Westpac of enabling payments from “high risk” countries, and counterparties with specific histories of sex trafficking.
According to Reuters, the lawsuit dwarfs a case AUSTRAC brought against the larger Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which agreed last year to pay a record A$700 million ($476 million) penalty after admitting that it didn’t properly screen 53,750 payments that violated similar protocols.
Court filings from AUSTRAC said the transactions that Westpac failed to monitor took place between 2013 and 2018.
The filing said Westpac maintained relationships with offshore banks without assessing their risks, products, customers or payments, even when those banks disclosed relationships with counterparties in “high risk or sanctioned countries including Iraq, Lebanon, Ukraine, Zimbabwe, and Democratic Republic of Congo.”
“The risk posed to Westpac was that these high risk or sanctioned countries may have been able to access the Australian payment system,” AUSTRAC said.
The Sydney-based bank has known about some of these risks since 2013, when it became aware of “heightened child exploitation risks associated with frequent low value payments to the Philippines and South East Asia” but it didn’t set up an automated detection system until 2019.
One customer who had served a prison sentence for child exploitation set up several of the Westpac accounts in question. Westpac detected suspicious activity in one account, but failed to review the other accounts and “this customer continued to send frequent low value payments to the Philippines through channels that were not being monitored appropriately”, AUSTRAC said.
The breaches were “the result of systemic failures in its control environment, indifference by senior management and inadequate oversight by the board,” Austrac said in court documents. “They have occurred because Westpac adopted an ad-hoc approach to money laundering and terrorism financing risk management and compliance.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 21:25 - Snyder: The Total Breakdown Of Relations With China Could Throw Our Planet Into Utter Turmoil
Snyder: The Total Breakdown Of Relations With China Could Throw Our Planet Into Utter Turmoil
Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
We just witnessed one of the most monumental events of the entire decade, and yet most Americans still don’t understand what has happened.
In recent months, the global economy and stock markets around the world have been buoyed by the hope that the U.S. and China would soon sign a new trade agreement. Unfortunately, there is no way that is going to happen now. On Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019”, and the House of Representatives passed the same bill by a 417 to 1 vote on Wednesday.
Needless to say, the Chinese are beyond angry that Congress has done this. In part one of this article, I showed that China is warning the U.S. to “rein in the horse at the edge of the precipice” and that there will be “revenge” if this bill is allowed to become law. And it looks like this bill will actually become law, because Bloomberg is reporting that President Trump is fully expected to sign it…
President Donald Trump is expected to sign legislation passed by Congress supporting Hong Kong protesters, setting up a confrontation with China that could imperil a long-awaited trade deal between the world’s two largest economies.
Before I go any further, there is something that I want to address. Earlier today, one of my readers emailed me and accused me of siding with China because I am warning about what will happen if trade negotiations fail. Of course that is not true at all. I have been writing about the horrific human rights abuses in China for many years, and they are one of the most tyrannical regimes on the entire planet today. But our two economies have become deeply intertwined over the past two decades, and there are going to be very serious consequences now that we are rapidly becoming bitter enemies. Anyone that doesn’t see this is simply not being rational.
As I have detailed repeatedly in recent months, the global economy has already entered a very serious slowdown. One of the only things that could reverse our economic momentum in the short-term would be a comprehensive trade agreement between the United States and China. But now that our relationship with China has been destroyed, there isn’t going to be a deal.
Some mainstream news sources are reporting that all of this rancor about Hong Kong could delay a trade deal, but that is just more wishful thinking.
Over in China, they are being much more realistic. In fact, the editor of the Global Times, Hu Xijin, just said that the Chinese are “prepared for the worst-case scenario“…
Few Chinese believe that China and the US can reach a deal soon. Given current poor China policy of the US, people tend to believe the significance of a trade deal, if reached, will be limited. China wants a deal but is prepared for the worst-case scenario, a prolonged trade war.
And he followed that up with another tweet that openly taunted U.S. farmers…
So a friendly reminder to American farmers: Don’t rush to buy more land or get bigger tractors. Wait until a China-US trade deal is truly signed and still valid six months after. It’s safer by then.
As the two largest economies on the entire planet decouple from one another, it is going to cause global economic activity as a whole to dramatically slow down. Corporate revenues will fall, credit markets will start to tighten, and fear will increasingly creep into global financial markets.
I have repeatedly warned that conditions are ideal for our first major crisis since 2008, and this conflict with China could be more than enough to push us over the edge.
And already we are getting more bad economic news day after day. For example, we just learned that U.S. rail traffic this month is way down compared to last year…
Nowhere is the slowdown in the U.S. economy more obvious than in places like Class 8 Heavy Duty Truck orders and rail traffic. We already wrote about how Class 8 orders continued to fall in October and new data the American Association of Railroads (AAR) now shows that last week’s rail traffic and intermodal container usage both plunged.
The AAR reported total carloads for the week ended Nov. 9 came in at 248,905, down 5.1% compared with the same week in 2018. U.S. weekly intermodal volume was 266,364 containers and trailers, down 6.7% compared to 2018, according to Railway Age.
Unless a miracle happens with China, the economic numbers are going to continue to get worse.
Sadly, a miracle seems exceedingly unlikely now. As I pointed out in part one, the only way that our relationship with China can be fixed is if Congress repeals the bill that it just passed, and there is no way that is going to happen.
And we better hope that our trade war with China doesn’t escalate into a real war at some point.
According to a report that was released earlier this year, we are very ill-prepared to fight any sort of a conventional war with China in the Western Pacific…
The University of Sydney’s United States Studies Centre’s new report Averting Crisis, said: ‘China’s growing arsenal of accurate long-range missiles poses a major threat to almost all American, allied and partner bases, airstrips, ports and military installations in the Western Pacific.
‘As these facilities could be rendered useless by precision strikes in the opening hours of a conflict, the PLA missile threat challenges America’s ability to freely operate its forces from forward locations throughout the region.’
In addition, U.S. military officials are deeply concerned by how rapidly China has been upgrading their strategic nuclear arsenal. For example, they now possess a “submarine-launched missile capable of obliterating San Francisco”…
China has tested a new submarine-launched missile capable of obliterating San Francisco, an insider has revealed, in a massive boost to the country’s ‘deterrent’.
The Chinese navy tested its state-of-the-art JL-3 missile in Bohai Bay in the Yellow Sea last month, sources said.
The nuclear-capable missile has a 5,600 mile range, significantly longer than its predecessor the JL-2, which could strike targets 4,350 miles away.
We certainly aren’t at that point yet, but without a doubt the Chinese now consider us to be their primary global enemy.
For the moment, it is just a “cold war” that we are facing, and the Chinese are quite adept at playing global chess. They have lots of ways that they can hurt us, and most Americans don’t realize this.
But in the end nobody is going to “win” this conflict, and the entire planet is going to suffer.
Collectively, the economies of the United States and China account for approximately 40 percent of the GDP of the entire world.
As we cause chaos for one another, everyone else is going to experience tremendous pain as well.
The stage is set for a global nightmare, and at this point it doesn’t appear that there is a way that we will be able to escape it.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 21:05 - Former Baltimore Mayor Pleads Guilty To Fraud, Tax Evasion, Faces Decades In Prison
Former Baltimore Mayor Pleads Guilty To Fraud, Tax Evasion, Faces Decades In Prison
Former Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh pleaded guilty Thursday afternoon to federal charges in the “Healthy Holly” book scandal, reported WJZ Baltimore.
Pugh pleaded guilty to four of the 11 charges, including wire fraud, conspiracy to defraud the US, and two counts of tax evasion. The disgraced mayor faces up to 35 years in federal prison, sentencing is expected in late February 2020.
Maryland US Attorney Robert K. Hur told reporters on the steps of the US District Court in Baltimore that “the city of Baltimore faces many pressing issues. We need dedication and professionalism from our leaders, not fraud and corruption, if we have any hope of fixing these problems.”
Pugh’s attorney Steven D. Silverman said her client “sincerely apologizes to all of those that she let down, most especially the citizens of Baltimore whom she had the honor to serve in multiple capacities for decades.”
Former Mayor Catherine Pugh left federal court in Baltimore without comment. She has pleaded guilty to 4 cts in fraud/tax evasion case against her.
It is unusual for a defendant to get dropped off and picked up at the curb of the courthouse in a private vehicle pic.twitter.com/MDsz5ZhExo— Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) November 21, 2019
The indictment alleges Pugh used her position of power to defraud the customers of “Healthy Holly” children’s book series for personal use and also to fund her mayoral campaign.
“The indictment alleges that from November 2011 until March 2019, Ms. Pugh conspired with Gary Brown to defraud purchasers of ‘Healthy Holly’ books to enrich themselves, promote Ms. Pugh’s political career and fund her campaign for mayor,” Hur said. “Mr. Brown helped Ms. Pugh solicit nonprofit organizations and foundations to buy the ‘Healthy Holly’ books.”
The indictment said for years Pugh evaded paying taxes on the sales of the book.
“For the tax year 2016, Ms. Pugh claimed her taxable income was a little over $31,000 and the tax due was a little over $4,000, when in fact her taxable income was over $322,000 with an income tax due of approximately over $100,000. In other words, her taxable income was more than 10 times what she reported to the IRS for that year and she owed more than 20 times more in taxes than she actually paid for that year,” Hur said.
Pugh resigned in May after the FBI and IRS raided her home amid speculation, she was involved in large book sales to disguise hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from the University of Maryland Medical System and managed-care consortium KaiserPermanente.
Fraud runs deep in Baltimore…
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 20:45 - The Origins Of Thought Police… And Why They Should Scare Us
The Origins Of Thought Police… And Why They Should Scare Us
Authored by Jon Miltimore via The Foundation for Economic Education,
There are a lot of unpleasant things in George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984. Spying screens. Torture and propaganda. Victory Gin and Victory Coffee always sounded particularly dreadful. And there is Winston Smith’s varicose ulcer, apparently a symbol of his humanity (or something), which always seems to be “throbbing.” Gross.
None of this sounds very enjoyable, but it’s not the worst thing in 1984. To me, the most terrifying part was that you couldn’t keep Big Brother out of your head.
Unlike other 20th-century totalitarians, the authoritarians in 1984 aren’t that interested in controlling behavior or speech. They do, of course, but it’s only as a means to an end. Their real goal is to control the gray matter between the ears.
“When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will,” O’Brien (the bad guy) tells the protagonist Winston Smith near the end of the book.
We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.
Big Brother’s tool for doing this is the Thought Police, aka the ThinkPol, who are assigned to root out and punish unapproved thoughts. We see how this works when Winston’s neighbor Parsons, an obnoxious Party sycophant, is reported to the Thought Police by his own child, who heard him commit a thought crime while talking in his sleep.
“It was my little daughter,” Parsons tells Winston when asked who it was who denounced him.
“She listened at the keyhole. Heard what I was saying, and nipped off to the patrols the very next day. Pretty smart for a nipper of seven, eh?”
Who Are These Thought Police?
We don’t know a lot about the Thought Police, and some of what we think we know may actually not be true since some of what Winston learns comes from the Inner Party, and they lie.
What we know is this: The Thought Police are secret police of Oceania—the fictional land of 1984 that probably consists of the UK, the Americas, and parts of Africa—who use surveillance and informants to monitor the thoughts of citizens. The Thought Police also use psychological warfare and false-flag operations to entrap free thinkers or nonconformists.
Those who stray from Party orthodoxy are punished but not killed. The Thought Police don’t want to kill nonconformists so much as break them. This happens in Room 101 of the Ministry of Love, where prisoners are re-educated through degradation and torture. (Funny sidebar: the name Room 101 apparently was inspired by a conference room at the BBC in which Orwell was forced to endure tediously long meetings.)
The Origins of the Thought Police
Orwell didn’t create the Thought Police out of thin air. They were inspired to at least some degree by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a complicated and confusing affair. What you really need to know is that there were no good guys, and it ended with left-leaning anarchists and Republicans in Spain crushed by their Communist overlords, which helped the fascists win.
Orwell, an idealistic 33-year-old socialist when the conflict started, supported the anarchists and loyalists fighting for the left-leaning Second Spanish Republic, which received most of its support from the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin. (That might sound bad, but keep in mind that the Nazis were on the other side.) Orwell described the atmosphere in Barcelona in December 1936 when everything seemed to be going well for his side.
The anarchists were still in virtual control of Catalonia and the revolution was still in full swing … It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle,
he wrote in Homage to Catalonia.
[E]very wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle … every shop and café had an inscription saying that it had been collectivized.
That all changed pretty fast. Stalin, a rather paranoid fellow, was bent on making Republican Spain loyal to him. Factions and leaders perceived as loyal to his exiled Communist rival, Leon Trotsky, were liquidated. Loyal Communists found themselves denounced as fascists. Nonconformists and “uncontrollables” were disappeared.
Orwell never forgot the purges or the steady stream of lies and propaganda churned out from Communist papers during the conflict. (To be fair, their Nationalist opponents also used propaganda and lies.) Stalin’s NKVD was not exactly like the Thought Police—the NKVD showed less patience with its victims—but they certainly helped inspire Orwell’s secret police.
The Thought Police were not all propaganda and torture, though. They also stem from Orwell’s ideas on truth. During his time in Spain, he saw how power could corrupt truth, and he shared these reflections in his work George Orwell: My Country Right or Left, 1940-1943.
…I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as the heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that had never happened.
In short, Orwell’s brush with totalitarianism left him worried that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.”
This scared him. A lot. He actually wrote, “This kind of thing is frightening to me.”
Finally, the Thought Police were also inspired by the human struggle for self-honesty and the pressure to conform. “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe,” Rudyard Kipling once observed.
The struggle to remain true to one’s self was also felt by Orwell, who wrote about “the smelly little orthodoxies” that contend for the human soul. Orwell prided himself with a “power of facing unpleasant facts”—something of a rarity in humans—even though it often hurt him in British society.
In a sense, 1984 is largely a book about the human capacity to maintain a grip on the truth in the face of propaganda and power.
More Prophetic Than He Knew?
It might be tempting to dismiss Orwell’s book as a figment of dystopian literature. Unfortunately, that’s not as easy as it sounds. Modern history shows he was onto something.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, had a full-time staff of 91,000.
When the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989, it was revealed that the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police, had a full-time staff of 91,000. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but what’s frightening is that the organization had almost double that in informants, including children. And it wasn’t just children reporting on parents; sometimes it was the other way around.
Nor did the use of state spies to prosecute thoughtcrimes end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Believe it or not, it’s still happening today. The New York Times recently ran a report featuring one Peng Wei, a 21-year-old Chinese chemistry major. He is one of the thousands of “student information officers” China uses to root out professors who show signs of disloyalty to President Xi Jinping or the Communist Party.
The New Thought Police?
The First Amendment of the US Constitution, fortunately, largely protects Americans from the creepy authoritarian systems found in 1984, East Germany, and China; but the rise of “cancel culture” shows the pressure to conform to all sorts of orthodoxies (smelly or not) remains strong.
The new Thought Police may be less sinister than the ThinkPol in 1984, but the next generation will have to decide if seeking conformity of thought or language through public shaming is healthy or suffocating. FEE’s Dan Sanchez recently observed that many people today feel like they’re “walking on eggshells” and live in fear of making a verbal mistake that could draw condemnation.
That’s a lot of pressure, especially for people still learning the acceptable boundaries of a new moral code that is constantly evolving. Most people, if the pressure is sufficient, will eventually say “2+2=5” just to escape punishment. That’s exactly what Winston Smith does at the end of 1984, after all. Yet Orwell also leaves readers with a glimmer of hope.
“Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad,” Orwell wrote.
“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
In other words, the world may be mad, but that doesn’t mean you have to be.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 20:25 - Jussie Smollett Demands Nigerian Bros And Cops Pay Him For Concocting Hate Crime Hoax
Jussie Smollett Demands Nigerian Bros And Cops Pay Him For Concocting Hate Crime Hoax
Jussie Smollett, whose ham-handed hate crime hoax led to the cancellation of Empire, thinks we’re all morons.
The unemployed actor who paid his drug dealing Nigerian friends to buy MAGA hats, bleach and a rope before staging a 2am attack in “MAGA country” – also known as downtown Chicago, has demanded that the city of Chicago, the Nigerian brothers, and former police superintendent Eddie Johnson pay him for conspiring to frame him for concocting the hate crime, according to the Cook County Record.
Smollett’s case case was mysteriously quashed after Michelle Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Tina Tchen, leaned on Cook County top prosecutor Kim Foxx after a grand jury slapped Smollett with a 16 count indictment for lying to the police.
According to a counterclaim to a lawsuit brought by the city of Chicago, however, Smollett is the victim of a conspiracy.
On Nov. 19, Smollett, through his lawyer, William J. Quinlan, of the Quinlan Law Firm, filed a counterclaim in Chicago federal court against the city, former police superintendent Eddie Johnson, the Nigerian brothers alleged to have helped Smollett and others. The counterclaim came as the centerpiece of Smollett’s formal answers to the lawsuit brought earlier this year by the city of Chicago, which demands Smollett be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to compensate the city and taxpayers for the costs of the large police investigation into Smollett’s attack claims.
In the counterclaim, Smollett asserts the hoax allegations emerged as a result of a 48-hour “interrogation” conducted by Chicago Police of brothers Abimbola “Abel” and Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo, and was then seized on by Chicago Police to advance the story Smollett had orchestrated the attack to gain publicity and public sympathy after he allegedly became unhappy with the lack of response from television executives and others to a threatening racist and homophobic letter he claims to have received weeks earlier. –Cook County Record
Smollett claims that Chicago PD deliberately ignored exonerating evidence from the alleged attack in the very liberal, very upscale Streeterville neighborhood. According to Smollett, his attackers shouted “This is MAGA country,” before physically assaulting him while he was innocently walking home at 2am from getting a Subway sandwich.
After evidence suggested it was staged, the two “attackers” – the Osundario brothers – admitted that Smollett paid them $3,500 to carry out the hoax, and that the three of them had practiced beforehand.
They also said that Smollett was involved in creating a racist letter containing a white substance that was sent to the actor on the Chicago set of Empire. When the letter failed to achieve the desired level of national outrage, the Osundario brothers say Smollett concocted the hate-crime.
Or – bear with Jussie – the Osundarios and Chicago PD conspired to frame him for the hate crime hoax.
(h/t Condor_0000)
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 20:05 - California Can't Force Trump To Release Tax Returns, State Supreme Court Rules
California Can’t Force Trump To Release Tax Returns, State Supreme Court Rules
Authored by Allen Zhong via The Epoch Times,
California’s Supreme Court ruled unanimously Nov. 21 that a law requiring presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the primary ballot there violates the state’s constitution.
Senate Bill 27, which was sponsored by Democrats and became chapter 121 of the California Elections Code after being signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on July 30, requires presidential candidates to file their income tax returns for the five most recent taxable years with the secretary of state in order to have their names listed on a primary election ballot. The secretary of state’s office would make redacted versions of the returns available to the public on its website within five days.
The bill lays out the same requirements for the candidates for governor but applies to primary elections, not general elections.
California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye delivers her State of the Judiciary address before a joint session of the Legislature at the Capitol in Sacramento, Calif., on March 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
The court said the law – the first of its kind in the nation and widely believed to be aimed squarely at President Donald Trump, who has refused to release his tax returns, but recently said he would do so before the 2020 election – was unconstitutional because its requirement for disclosure of tax returns to qualify for the ballot added exclusivity.
“This additional requirement … is in conflict with the Constitution’s specification of an inclusive open presidential primary ballot,” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote in the 7–0 decision.
“Ultimately, it is the voters who must decide whether the refusal of a ‘recognized candidate throughout the nation or throughout California for the office of President of the United States’ to make such information available to the public will have consequences at the ballot box.”
A U.S. judge had temporarily blocked the bill from becoming state law, in response to a different lawsuit; the high court ruled quickly because the deadline to file tax returns for getting on the primary ballot is next week.
The state’s Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson challenged the bill, saying it singled out Trump.
“Today’s ruling is a victory for every California voter,” Patterson said in a statement.
“We are pleased that the courts saw through the Democrats’ petty partisan maneuvers and saw this law for what it is—an unconstitutional attempt to suppress Republican voter turnout.”
California Republican Party chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson listens as lawyers present their arguments for and against a recently approved state law requiring presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns in order to be on the state’s primary ballot, before the California Supreme Court in Sacramento on Nov. 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
The state defended the law, saying the release of tax returns is a simple way for voters to weigh candidates’ financial status.
California Democrats are one of several groups who are pushing for Trump’s tax returns to be made public. On Nov. 18, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily stopped a lower court order requiring Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, to turn over his tax returns to House Democrats amid their impeachment inquiry.
In a separate case, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled in favor of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office requiring Trump’s accountants to turn over tax returns.
Trump’s attorneys have submitted a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn that ruling. The justices haven’t said whether they would consider the appeal.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 19:45 - Former FBI Attorney Under Criminal Investigation For Fabricating Evidence In Russiagate Probe
Former FBI Attorney Under Criminal Investigation For Fabricating Evidence In Russiagate Probe
Update 2: The Washington Post claims that “Horowitz found that the employee erroneously indicated he had documentation to back up a claim he had made in discussions with the Justice Department about the factual basis for the application. He then altered an email to back up that erroneous claim, they said.”
The attorney forced out of the agency after the incident was discovered.
The Post says the conduct “did not alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had a proper legal and factual basis.”
The Justice Department inspector general has found evidence that an FBI employee may have altered a document connected to court-approved surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser, but has concluded that the conduct did not affect the overall validity of the surveillance application, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The person under scrutiny has not been identified but is a low-level FBI lawyer who has since been forced out of the FBI…. –Washington Post
Update: CNN has updated their story to include that the individual under investigation is a former FBI line attorney.
Moyer:
The FBI line attorney did not believe it was a close call.
The FBI line attorney believed there was probable cause to support the Page FISA app.
May also have worked on the Hillary Mid Year Exam investigation. pic.twitter.com/GQye617Np7
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) November 22, 2019
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Over the next few weeks, those who didn’t go to law school will start learning about the “fruit of the poisoned tree” doctrine. https://t.co/JEE6TUrZmS
— Mark R. Weaver (@MarkRWeaver) November 22, 2019
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More thoughts:
— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) November 22, 2019
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***
An FBI official is under criminal investigation for fabricating evidence related to the agency’s surveillance of Trump campaign aide Carter Page, according to CNN.
According to the report, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s review of the FBI’s warrant applications under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) revealed an altered document which – we assume – was used to bolster the application to obtain the warrant and/or subsequent renewals.
Evidence of the fabricated document was turned over to John Durham, the federal prosecutor tasked earlier this year by Attorney General William Barr with launching a broad investigation into the FBI’s activities surrounding the 2016 US election.
As CNN notes, however, “it’s unknown how significant a role the altered document played in the FBI’s investigation of Page and whether the FISA warrant would have been approved without the document.” What we do know, however, is that it was significant enough to warrant a criminal investigation.
Some witnesses who have been interviewed in Horowitz’s investigation have said they expect the inspector general to find mistakes in the FBI’s handling of the FISA process, but that those mistakes do not undermine the premise for the FBI’s investigation.
…
Horowitz’s investigators conducted more than 100 witness interviews in their review. During one of interviews this year, they confronted the witness about the document. The witness admitted to the change, the sources said.
The identity or rank of the FBI employee under investigation isn’t yet known, and it’s not clear whether the employee still works in the federal government. No charges that could reflect the situation have been filed publicly in court. –CNN
On Thursday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced that Horowitz would release his report on December 9, and would testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee two days later.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 19:26 - Restoring Sound Money To America
Restoring Sound Money To America
Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
The U.S. Constitution states:
Article 1, Section 8
1. The Congress shall have Power …
5. To coin Money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin….
6. To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting … current coin of the United States.
Article 1, Section 10
- No state shall … emit Bills of Credit and make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.
The intent of the Framers could not have been clearer. The Constitution clearly and unequivocally brought into existence a monetary system based on gold coins and silver coins being the official money of the United States.
Notice that the states are prohibited from issuing “bills of credit.” What are “bills of credit.” That was the term used during that time for paper money. The Constitution expressly prohibited the states from publishing paper money and making anything but gold and silver coins official legal money.
What about the federal government? The Constitution didn’t expressly prohibit it from emitting “bills of credit” like it did with the states. Does that mean that the federal government was empowered to make paper money the official money of the United States?
No, it does not mean that. In the case of the federal government, its powers are limited to those enumerated in the Constitution. If a power isn’t enumerated, then the federal government is automatically prohibited from exercising it.
Therefore, it was unnecessary for the Framers to provide for an express prohibition on the federal government to make paper money the official legal tender of the nation. All that was necessary was to ensure that the Constitution did not empower the federal government to issue paper money.
The powers relating to money that are delegated to the federal government, which are stated above, expressly make it clear that gold coins and silver coins, not paper, were to be the official money of the country. That is reflected by the power given the federal government to “coin money.” At the risk of belaboring the obvious, one does not “coin” paper. Paper is published or “emitted.” It is not coined. Coins are coined.
The provision on counterfeiting also expressly confirms that the official money of the United States was to be gold coins and silver coins. The Framers didn’t provide for punishment for counterfeiting paper money because there was no paper money. They provided for punishment for counterfeiting “current coin of the United States.”
Add up all of these provision and there is but one conclusion that anyone can logically and reasonably draw: The Constitution established a monetary system in which gold and silver coins were to be the official money of the United States.
The power to borrow
That’s not to say, of course, that federal officials could not borrow money. The Constitution did give them that power:
Article1, Section 8
1. The Congress shall have Power …
2. To borrow money on the credit of the United States.
When the federal government borrows money, it issues debt instruments to lenders, consisting of bills, notes, or bonds. But everyone understood that federal debt instruments were not money but instead simply promises to pay money. The money that they promised to pay was the gold and silver coins, which were the official money of the country.
And in fact, that was the monetary system of the United States for more than a century, one in which gold coins and silver coins were the official money of the American people.
It is often said that the “gold standard” was a system in which paper money was “backed by gold.” Nothing could be further from the truth. There was no paper money. The “gold standard” was a system where gold coins, along with silver coins, were the official money of the country.
Monetary debauchery and destruction
It all came to an end in the 1930s, when the Franklin Roosevelt regime ordered all Americans to deliver their gold coins to the federal government. Anyone who failed to do so would be prosecuted for a federal felony offense and severely punished through incarceration and fine if convicted.
In return, people were give federal debt instruments, ones that promised to pay money. But since the money was now illegal, the debt instruments were promises to pay nothing. That’s reflected by the Federal Reserve Notes that people now use to pay for things.
Roosevelt’s actions were among the most abhorrent in the history of the United States. In one fell swoop, he and his regime destroyed what had been the finest and soundest monetary system in the history of the world, one that contributed mightily to the tremendous increase in prosperity and standards of living in the 19th century.
What is also amazing is that Roosevelt did it without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. To change a system that the Constitution established requires a constitutional amendment. That is an arduous and difficult process, which is what the Framers wanted. Roosevelt circumvented that process by simply getting Congress to nationalize people’s gold.
The result of Roosevelt’s illegal and immoral actions regarding money and the Constitution? Moral, economic, and monetary debauchery, which has entailed almost 90 years of plundering and looting people through monetary debasement and devaluation to finance the ever-burgeoning expenses of America’s welfare-warfare state way of life.
The solution
The solution to all this monetary mayhem is go further than the Framers did: Separate money and the state entirely, in the same way that our ancestors separated church and state. Terminate all government involvement in money, including by ending the federal government’s central bank, also known as the Federal Reserve. Establish a free-market monetary system, one in which people are free to choose their own media of exchange. That would go a long way toward restoring liberty, peace, and prosperity to our land.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 19:05 - Putin: Scientists Killed In "Mystery" Radiological Blast Were Developing "Unparalleled" Weapon
Putin: Scientists Killed In “Mystery” Radiological Blast Were Developing “Unparalleled” Weapon
Three months after a major and still somewhat mysterious rocket explosion in Russia’s far north which caused radiation levels to spike at least sixteen times above normal, President Putin confirmed in statements Thursday that his military is developing a weapon that has “no equal in the world,” according to Interfax news agency.
“The very fact of possessing such unique technologies is today the most important reliable guarantee of peace on the planet,” Putin is reported to have said while meeting with the families of those killed, Interfax reports further. It’s believed that the blast was the result of a failed experimental test of a hypersonic cruise missile powered by a nuclear core.
Prior statements of top Russian officials indicated that the Aug. 8 radiological accident at the northern port city of Severodvinsk had involved a “small-scale nuclear reactor” and had further confirmed an explosion that centered on an “isotope power source for a liquid-fuelled rocket engine”.
This information was revealed despite an initial attempt at covering up the radioactive nature of the accident in the days after the explosion:
Russia covered up the deadly nuclear reactor explosion in August during the salvage at sea of one of Vladimir Putin’s new superweapons, a nuclear-powered cruise missile called Skyfall, a senior State Department official disclosed.
There had been an alarming run on iodine pills after area residents were warned by emergency alerts that a major event had taken place.
“They led a complex, responsible and critical mission,” Putin said of the five scientists that died in the blast while offering condolences. At least three others had been injured in the explosion.
“We are talking about the most advanced and unparalleled technical ideas and solutions, weapons that are designed to ensure sovereignty and security for Russia for decades to come,” Putin said.
Via the AP/RFERL: A screen shot from Russian TV allegedly showing a MiG-31 fighter jet releasing the new Kinzhal hypersonic missile during a test. At the time Reuters cited dangerously high levels of radiation emitted from the military test facility: “Greenpeace has cited data from the Emergencies Ministry that it said showed radiation levels had risen 20 times above the normal level in Severodvinsk around 30 kilometers (18 miles) from Nyonoksa.”
Enough official descriptions of the experimental weapon had been pieced together for analysts to speculate at the time that it had been a prototype nuclear-powered cruise missile known in Russia as the 9M730 Burevestnik and by Nato as the SSC-X-9 Skyfall.
Putin had first unveiled the experimental technology during a 2018 speech showcasing Russian defense technology developments. The chief stunning claim behind the hypersonic missile is that it can traverse the globe indefinitely at “faster than Mach 5” based on its nuclear powered core.
These latest statements reported in Interfax provide further confirmation that Russia continues to pursue its futuristic hypersonic weapons program even after the latest major setbacks.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 18:45 - Amid Impeachment Circus, Dems Sneak PATRIOT Act Renewal Past The American People
Amid Impeachment Circus, Dems Sneak PATRIOT Act Renewal Past The American People
Authored by Mark Angelides via LibertyNation.com,
House Democrats have voted to keep funding the PATRIOT Act in a flurry of partisan hypocrisy. The surveillance legislation that should have every person fearing for their rights and privacy was recently shoehorned through the House, folded into a resolution to keep the federal government funded for three more months. The spending bill was pushed through with not a single Republican vote.
The PATRIOT Act passed in 2001 during the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, but it was originally conceived by former Vice President Joe Biden as the 1995 Omnibus Counterterrorism Act; the law has long been regarded as a major infringement on civil liberties and a reactionary piece of legislation which has passed its time in the sun.
Hypocrisy
The re-authorization was introduced late and offered lawmakers only 72 hours to read the entire continuing resolution. High-profile members of the progressive “Squad,” Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who had previously spoken out against the act, were among those who voted to renew it. On her website, Ocasio-Cortez bemoans the creation of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency as part and parcel of the PATRIOT Act and its associated legislation. She opines:
“The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was created in 2003, in the same suite of post-9/11 legislation as the Patriot Act and the Iraq War. Its founding was part of an unchecked expansion of executive powers that led to the widespread erosion of Americans’ civil rights.”
Why, then, would she now choose to cast a vote extending said powers?
A Whiff Of 2020?
Every Democrat in the House of Representatives voted for the resolution bar two, who abstained. The fact that those few who demurred were not brave enough to vote against the extension tells us something of interest: This was a party whip. It appears the upper echelons determined that the spending would go through come hell or high water, and woe betide those who go against the party leadership. Is there perhaps an element of self-interest at play here? Each decision made and vote taken in Congress sets a permanent record for individual members; is it beyond the party machine to lay traps for primary candidates who the management team does not view as “suitable”? Or perhaps the whole exercise was designed to test loyalty to the party line?
For a group that touts itself as being the defender of civil rights, it was a bold decision for Democrats to publically place themselves in the firing line of those who see the PATRIOT Act as an invasive, right-wing Trojan Horse.
An Opportunity For Trump?
If the partisan vote in the Senate matches that in the House, Republicans will decline to pass this resolution. The GOP will get the blame if a budget is not passed by midnight Thursday, in time for President Trump’s signature – but perhaps this could be a vote winner in 2020.
If the president rallies Republican senators to shoot the bill down, he can lay claim to a position in defence of civil liberties and drag along with him the Fourth Estate, which would have a hard time advocating a Bush-era policy that it has argued against for almost two decades. Add in a smattering of social media, and Trump could become the Civil Rights President … at least until the next storm in a teacup is served.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 18:25 - Demands Grow For FBI To Interview Prince Andrew Over Friendship With Jeffrey Epstein
Demands Grow For FBI To Interview Prince Andrew Over Friendship With Jeffrey Epstein
Attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein accusers have called on the FBI to speak with disgraced British royal Prince Andrew over his years-long association with Jeffrey Epstein, which would demonstrate “justice and accountability for the victims.”
Attorney Lisa Bloom told The Telegraph that while it’s “great” that Prince Andrew is stepping away from his royal duties, he needs to cooperate with US investigators.
“It’s great that he’s stepping away from his royal duties, but it’s really not about that — it’s about justice and accountability for the victims, so it’s important that he says he’s going to cooperate with law enforcement,” said Bloom.
Bloom said Prince Andrew should answer questions from all the accusers’ attorneys — in particular the attorney of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges she was coerced into having sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions when she was 17.
Giuffre has offered a detailed account of a March 10, 2001, encounter in which she said she danced with the prince at Tramp nightclub in London before he had sex with her.
Guiffre publicly released a photograph of her and Prince Andrew in which he has his arm around her waist, which she says was taken at the house of Ghislaine Maxwell, who an ex-girlfriend of Epstein’s who has been accused of acting as his “fixer” at the time. –Business Insider
Meanwhile, attorney Gloria Allred who also represents Epstein accusers, urged the prince to provide any evidence that might help victims seek justice “without conditions and without delay,” including emails, texts and calendars – adding that the prince’s staff should also provide relevant information, according to the BBC.
Allred added that if the prince didn’t offer information voluntarily, he might be asked to speak under oath in a criminal investigation into potential Epstein co-conspirators, along with civil lawsuits brought by Epstein’s accusers.
“I haven’t made a determination yet as to … whether we will need to take Prince Andrew’s deposition,” said Allred, adding “But I’m saying he should provide it in any civil case as well, where his testimony might be relevant.“
“It’s totally extraordinary,” veteran royal watcher and Majesty magazine editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward told CBS on Thursday. “You don’t expect a member of the royal family to be caught up in the life of a seedy pedophile. You just don’t.“
Really Ingrid?
Prince Charles and notorious pedophile Jimmy Saville
Tyler Durden
Thu, 11/21/2019 – 18:05
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