- BullionStar attends LBMA Conference in Singapore, October 2016
Introduction
This year, the well-known annual conference of the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) was held in Singapore between Sunday 16 October and Tuesday 18 October at the impressive Shangri-La Hotel. The conference attracts delegates and speakers from across the world of bullion, with representatives from precious metals refiners, mints, bullion banks, brokers, trading and technology providers, bullion dealers and bullion wholesalers. This year over 700 delegates attended.
The main speaker sessions, presentation and panel sessions of industry representatives ran over two days, between Monday 17 October and Tuesday 18 October. Topics covered in the speaker sessions were numerous and varied and included the bullion market in China, developments in the Indian gold market, responsible gold guidance, LBMA updates and developments, a dedicated session on platinum group metals, and a session on the financing of refineries.
As interesting as the speaker sessions and presentations are, many of the conference attendees use at least some of their time at the LBMA conference to engage in meetings with each other on the sidelines. This explains the constant stream of small breakout meetings that took place in the hotel lobby's seating areas, as well as in dedicated meeting rooms around the hotel. BullionStar also used the occasion to meet with existing suppliers from the refining, minting and wholesaling world, as well as to discuss potential business opportunities with new suppliers.
There were also approximately 20 exhibitor stands at the conference, including stands hosted by CME Group, Brinks, the World Gold Council, IE Singapore (Singapore's trade development authority), Istanbul Gold Refinery (IGR), Metals Focus consultancy, Cinnober, and Nadir Refinery.
Singapore – Central Business District, Skyline
Hong Kong – Shenzhen Gold Connect
On the Sunday prior to the conference, the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange (CGSE) and the Singapore Bullion Market Association (SBMA) co-hosted a pre-conference presentation titled “Building a physical gold corridor in Asia: Shanghai – Hong Kong / Qianhai – Singapore”, at the hotel, which featured a series of discussions about the CGSE’s new gold trading and vaulting project located in the Shenzhen free trade zone at Qianhai, just across the border from Hong Kong.
Haywood Cheung, Permanent President of CGSE, gave an introductory overview of the Qianhai project, showcasing it as part of China’s “One Belt, One Road” plan, after which Dong Feng, Ping An Commodities Trading in Shenzhen presented a detailed explanation of how the linkages between the CGSE’s trading platform in Hong Kong and Qianhai’s clearing and settlement will for the first time enable the trading of both onshore and offshore Renminbi and the trading of onshore and offshore gold. The Qianhai project integrates trading, clearing, settlement and vaulting, with a 1500 tonne capacity vault, and a trading hall. ICBC will provide settlement of both onshore (Shenzhen) and offshore (Macau) Renminbi as well as providing use of its Shenzhen gold vault (onshore gold settlement) until the CGSE Qianhai vault is completed.
This onshore and offshore trading and settlement of Yuan and physical gold will facilitate arbitrage trading, and is another step in China’s liberalisation of its currency and its gold market as it links the Chinese currency to physical settlement of gold inside and outside of China. This initiative is one to watch and will demonstrate the Chinese government’s gradual easing of cross-border restrictions on currency and gold flow. Next phase gold trading in Qianhai by CGSE member companies will commence on 7 December.
With the CGSE having already established a gold trading link with the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) though its Shanghai-Hong Kong Connect, and with the Shenzhen (Qianhai) – Hong Kong Connect now coming on stream, the CGSE is also planning a Singapore – Hong Kong Connect, and a Dubai – Hong Kong Connect, which, if they materialise, will extend physical gold corridor (trading and vaulting connections) across the Asian region and beyond.
Albert Cheng, CEO of the SBMA, wrapped up the afternoon with an overview presentation of SBMA’s aspirations to evolve Singapore into a bullion market hub for the entire ASEAN region, including countries such as Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar. However, details of how this plan will be implemented were not addressed. Cheng also showcased the SGX gold contract which is backed by the SBMA, but which has yet to take off despite being launched over 2 years ago.
LMEprecious gold Futures
The first event we attended on Monday was an early morning presentation by the London Metal Exchange (LME) about LMEprecious, its new suite of spot, daily, and monthly gold and silver futures contracts to be launched in the first half of 2017, that will trade on LME’s trading platform, with market-making offered by 5 investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and ICBC Standard Bank. These futures are for delivery of unallocated metal in the London market and the contracts will still clear through the London bullion market's LPMCL unallocated bullion clearing system. In time, the LME plans to launch platinum and palladium futures contracts on LMEprecious, as well as options contracts on all 4 metals. The LMEprecious platform will also link into LBMA’s planned trade reporting system.
ICE gold Futures
On Monday morning, ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA), a direct competitor to LME in the precious metals trading and clearing space, used the LBMA conference to make a very well-timed announcement that it too will be launching a new gold futures contract for delivery of unallocated gold in London (loco London). The ICE contract will trade on the ICE US futures platform and will begin trading in February 2017, in advance of the LME contracts. This contract is being designed to be compatible for settlement within the LBMA Gold Price auction which IBA administers in London, and it will, according to IBA, allow the introduction of central clearing into the auctions, and thus facilitate wider auction participation. Currently,the direct auction is exclusively open to a handful of large banks that have large bi-lateral credit lines with each other. At this stage it’s unclear how the connections between the futures contract and the LBMA Gold Price auction will work, but BullionStar plans to examine this development in future coverage.
Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore
Unallocated Gold, Gold Lending and Central Banks
Given that the LBMA Conference is attended by dozens and dozens of precious metals refineries and mints, it was notable that the subject of "unallocated gold" cropped up in the discussion of LMEprecious and ICE futures contracts, but that there was no discussion in the actual LBMA conference programme schedule of 'unallocated gold' as the term is used by the LBMA. An unallocated gold position in an account in the London gold market is merely a contractual claim for gold against the bank that the account is held with. As such, it is a synthetic gold position.
It was also odd in our view that there was no seminar or discussion about the London gold lending market within the conference programme. As gold lending is an important and influential area of the London gold market, it affects marginal gold supply, and it has an impact on gold price formation. Notably, the topic of central bank activities in the gold market was completely ommitted from the conference schedule this year, which was odd given that in previous years there was usually such a session. Have the central bankers involved in the gold market become shy all of a sudden?
Gold price benchmark for Singapore revisited
In another announcement on Monday morning at the conference, the Singapore minister for trade and industry announced that the SBMA in conjunction with the LBMA and ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA), there begin a feasibility study on launching a “pre-AM gold price” auction, which would serve as a benchmark for the Asian region and which would be held at 2pm Singapore time, in advance of the European trading day. This Singapore benchmark was already discussed and announced over 3 years ago, but has put on hold in 2014 due to European regulatory investigations at that time into manipulation of the London Gold Fix.
LBMA Trade Reporting
The conference speaker programme opened on Monday morning with introductory remarks from Lim Hng Kiang, Singapore Minister for Trade and Industry, outgoing LBMA chairman Grant Angwin, incoming newly appointed ChairmanPaul Fisher who recently arrived from the Bank of England, Tim Pearce, the chairman of the London Platinum and Palladium Market (LPPM), and LBMA CEO Ruth Crowell.
The LBMA CEO’s introductory speech touch on the planned launch of trade reporting services for the London Gold Market. This trade reporting contract has been awarded to financial technology providers Cinnober – BOAT Services – Autilla, after those partners won the LBMA’s recent RfP tender which had been launched in October 2015. Ruth Crowell referred to trade reporting as ‘Phase 1’ of a new suite of technology services. Trade reporting will be launched in Q1 2017, and will, according to the LBMA “demonstrate of the size and liquidity of the market for clients, investors and regulators”. Phase 2 of this project refers to services such as central clearing in the London bullion market.
Further background to the chosen trade reporting solution was provided by Jamie Khurshid, the CEO of BOAT Services. Surprisingly, even though this RfP took the LBMA over 1 year to complete, it will still now require a 'design phase' where BOAT/Cinnober needs to meet with LBMA member firms to discuss the scope of reporting, followed by a period of customisation and configuration of the implementation. Details on what exactly will be reported (the scope) remain sketchy, and since full London gold and silver trade reporting by all participants (including central banks) is not mandatory in a regulatory sense, it remains to be seen to what extent transparency will be improved. Because if you don't have full mandatory reporting, you don't have transparency. In another related presentation, Sakhila Mirza, LBMA General Counsel stated that trade reporting will apply to loco London spot trades, forwards and options, but that "LBMA and its members retain control over the scope of reporting", which highlights the self-regulatory nature of the reporting, and again may suggest that the trade reporting may not be as granular or have as much informational value as some may think, especially given that central banks will be exempt from trade reporting.
The Shanghai Gold Exchange and Chinese Gold Market
Monday's schedule also included an informative series of presentations titled "The Bullion Market in China" from an impressive list of experts. Jiao Jinpu, chairman of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), provided an overview of the latest developments from the SGE, which has a network of 61 vaults across 35 cities in China, and where physical trading volume reached 34,100 tonnes of gold in 2015. Jinpu revealed that the International Board of the SGE (known as SGEI) has, since launch in September 2014, traded 7,838 tonnes of gold, while the daily Shanghai Gold Price auction, only launched in April 2016, has already traded 384 tonnes, worth RMB 105.5 billion, giving it an average daily trading volume of 3.4 tonnes. Jinpu also vindicated BullionStar's estimates of 2015 SGE gold withdrawals, because, in the words of Jinpu, he sits on the SGE tap, and knows exactly how much gold has been withdrawn from the Exchange vaults.
In his speech, Jinpu announced that in the near future, the SGE and other exchanges will begin using the SGE Gold Price benchmark to develop gold price derivative products.
Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) Chairman JiaoJinpu
In another notable confirmation, Yang Qing, from the Bank of China, one of China's largest commercial banks involved in the global gold market, responding to a question posed by BullionStar, said that he thinks that in future, the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, should have an element of gold backing.
In what was probably one of the most interesting and revealing presentations from BullionStar's perspective, and which vindicates the extensive research and analysis that BullionStar's precious metals analyst Koos Jansen has done on the Chinese gold market, Matthew Turner from Macquarie Commodities Research in London gave a presentation about how to accurately capture and estimate the total trade flows of gold into China given that China does not publish this data itself.
One of Turner's approaches is to use the trade data of all other countries which do report gold exports to China. This approach reveals that China imported 1626 tonnes of gold in 2015 from a number of countries, primarily Hong Kong, Switzerland, the UK and Australia. Another more elegant Turner approach is to take China's total import figure which it does publish, as well as the summated figures of all of China's other import categories of data, which China also does publish, and then derive the gold import quantities as the delta.
This approach yields a net gold import figure of 1693 tonnes in 2015. Both of these figures are very close to BullionStar's previously published Chinese gold import data estimates, as calculated by Koos Jansen. Adding 2015 Chinese gold mining production to imports gives total new supply coming into the Chinese market in 2015 in excess of 2000 tonnes, which is over 1000 tonnes higher than consumer gold demand as estimated by consultancies such as GFMS and the World Gold Council.
LBMA and SGE familiar with BullionStar's research
On the Monday evening we attended a dinner hosted by Australia and New Zealand Bank (ANZ) at Singapore’s famous Raffles Hotel. Just after arriving we had the privilege of chatting for a few minutes to Jiao Jinpu, chairman of the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) via his colleague and interpreter Jess Yang, and we highlighted to him BullionStar’s extensive research from Koos Jansen on the China gold market and the SGE, which we were impressed that he was already familiar with. Dinner conservation was interesting and varied as we were seated at a table with representatives of the London Metal Exchange, ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA), the CME Group, GFMS, Metalor Singapore, and the Royal Canadian Mint.
During the conference, we also learned that the LBMA is familiar with BullionStar's research into the London gold market, another confirmation that the analysis that we publish is read widely within the bullion industry.
As the conference wrapped up on the Tuesday afternoon, delegates were asked to forecast what the US Dollar gold price will be this time next year. Audience members submitted their forecasts via a special handheld device in the auditorium, which resulted in an average forecast of US$ 1347.
BullionStar Seminar during LBMA Week
To coincide with the fact that the LBMA conference was located in Singapore this year, BullionStar hosted a number of events at its shop and showroom premises on New Bridge Road, Singapore. On the Saturday prior to the conference, 15 October, BullionStar held a 'meet and greet' morning, where customers and anyone in town for the conference could pop in and chat with BullionStar staff. On Wednesday 19 October, BullionStar held a precious metals seminar in its showroom premises at which BullionStar CEO Torgny Persson and Precious Metals Analyst Ronan Manly presented to an audience on the topics of Bullion Banking, and Transparency vs Secrecy in the gold market. The presentations and transcripts of these speeches will be published on the BullionStar website in the near future.
- October Comex Gold "Deliveries"
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October Comex Gold “Deliveries”
As we’ve been monitoring all year, the total amount of gold allegedly “delivered” through the Comex has soared in 2016. This is simply another anecdotal datapoint of gold demand but the trend is certainly noteworthy, particularly when you see the numbers thus far in October.
We’ve already written about this trend several times this year. Our most recent article is linked below and I strongly encourage you to read this post as a refresher before you continue.
As noted in the post above, 2016 has seen a very unusual “delivery” pattern for gold on the Comex. Consistent with surging open interest and surging demand for gold in all its forms around the world, “deliveries” of gold through the Comex have increased as well. However, when you compare “deliveries” for 2016 versus 2015, you’ll notice that the divergence and increase didn’t really begin in earnest until June if this year. See below:
As you can see, for the first six months of 2015, the amount of Comex gold “deliveries” totaled 4,149 for 414,900 ounces or about 13 metric tonnes. Through May of 2016, total Comex gold “deliveries” were 9,683 for 968,300 or about 30 metric tonnes. As you can quickly do the math, this is over a 2X increase and certainly noteworthy on its own merit.
However, beginning with the “delivery month” of June, Comex gold “deliveries” began to explode at a startling pace. Check the charts above again and note the totals over the past four months. For the period June-September 2015, total Comex gold “deliveries” were 8,832 for 883,200 ounces or about 27.5 metric tonnes. For the same period this year, total Comex gold “deliveries” totaled 39,646 for 3,964,600 ounces or about 123.5 mts. This is about 4.5X times the 2015 amount.
And now look at what has happened during October…a month which is historically the lightest “delivery month” on the Comex calendar. Again, referring to the charts above, you can see that the total number of Oct 15 “deliveries” was 950 for 95,000 ounces or slightly less than 3 metric tonnes. Through yesterday, October 21, the Oct 16 “delivery” total is a whopping 9,163 for 916,300 ounces or about 28.5 metric tonnes. This is over a 9X increase versus the same month last year!
And this gets even more interesting when you drill down into the day-by-day “deliveries” and open interest…
The Oct16 Comex gold contract went “off the board” back on September 29. That evening, there will still 7,393 Oct 16 contracts still open and, with First Notice Day pending the next day, all of these remaining contracts had to be fully funded with 100% margin, indicating a willingness and financial ability to take or make delivery. The October deliveries began on September 30 and total Oct 16 open interest fell to 4,458 as 2,470 contracts were “delivered” and 465 contracts were liquidated by speculators unwilling or unable to make the 100% margin requirement.
A normal “delivery” pattern would then show a declining amount of open interest in the active “delivery” month as gold is “delivered” and contracts are closed. However, as you can see below, it has been a very busy month. You should also be sure to note the current total:
So, contributing to the total “delivery” number that exceeds last October by a factor of 9.5, there has been a surge of new open interest that has entered the Oct16 contract with the intention of either making or taking immediate “delivery” of gold…electing not to wait for November or the huge “delivery month” of December. The additions of open interest so far total 1,523 contracts for 152,300 ounces or nearly 5 metric tonnes.
Of course, the Comex and CME Group deliberately make it nearly impossible to discern if this is a rush to buy or sell “gold” in October. This new open interest could be a party looking to immediately unload $200,000,000 worth of gold. However, it could also be someone or something looking to buy and take immediate “delivery” of $200,000,000 worth of gold. It could also be some combination of the two…no one can say with certainty. And much of this is the usual Comex Bullion Bank Circle Jerk where one Bank issues out the warehouse receipts while another Bank stops and takes “delivery”.
Total Stops: Goldman 2,936, JPM 2,095 and Scotia 819
Total Issuance: Scotia 3,100, Goldman 1,409 and HSBC 532
You can see the entire report here: http://www.cmegroup.com/delivery_reports/MetalsIssuesAndStopsYTDReport.pdf
And this is also interesting. Note the sudden involvement of two firms which had, heretofore, had very little if any activity:
More information on those two firms here:
- Macquarie Futures: http://www.macquarie.com/mgl/com/futures/about-us/about-futures
- SG Americas, a division of Societe Generale: http://ww2.sgcib.com/usa/SG_Americas_Securities_Disclosures.rha
For example, just yesterday, 608 “deliveries” were issued out of the House Account of Macquarie with 533 being stopped into the House Account at Scotia:
But I don’t want to get bogged down in the minutiae as this post is not about attempting to unravel the riddle wrapped in mystery inside of an enigma that is The Comex. Instead, we simply wanted to draw your attention to the astonishing increase in the pace of Comex “deliveries”.Again, this DOES NOT signal that some sort of Comex delivery failure is imminent or eventual. However, in an anecdotal indicator similar to surging ETF inventories, this massive expansion in the amount of gold allegedly “delivered” through Comex is clearly a sign of a significant increase in demand for gold and synthetic, gold-related investments in 2016. If this trend continues, you can be certain that the new bull market for price, which began early this year, will continue into 2017 and beyond.
Please email with any questions about this article or precious metals HERE
October Comex Gold “Deliveries”
- A Realist's View Of The US Presidential Contest
Submitted by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,
Because the viewpoint expressed here will be a controversial one not frequently expressed or encountered, links are provided in order to enable the reader quickly to access the documentation wherever a particular allegation might seem to be dubious on the basis of false assertions that any particular reader might have read elsewhere; but, otherwise, the links that are provided here are intended to be simply ignored, especially because so many of the allegations here are highly contentious and therefore require providing ready access to the documentation (and because no reader should waste his time to read documentation at a linked item that the reader already believes to be true):
The rape-allegations that have been raised recently against Donald Trump, turned the US Presidential contest so drastically, that a Hillary Clinton victory now appears to be all but certain. Morning Consult headlined on October 18th, “Donald Trump Has a Growing Problem With Men”, and reported: “Before the first debate, Trump led his Democratic counterpart, Hillary Clinton, by 8 points among men in a Morning Consult survey of likely voters. After the second debate and nine women making sexual assault allegations against Trump, those numbers have nearly flipped: Clinton now leads Trump among men by 6 points.”
That’s a 14% swing away from Trump, among half of the electorate, during a time-interval extending from 24 September to 15 October — 21 days — with only 22 days left until voting ends (hardly enough time to reverse that plunge and then to rise into the lead). Rape allegations couldn’t get Bill Clinton forced out of office, but they likely will force Hillary Clinton into office. Future historians might say that the biggest issue in the 2016 US Presidential contest was rape — more important to voters than the economy, the wars, the income-stagnation of the bottom 99%, trade-policy, criminal-justice reform, or any other public-policy issue. But, if this turns out to be so, then is America at all a functioning democracy? Might it instead be a sick society, whose values are so out-of-kilter, so plainly stupid, that it fits more the stereotype of a backward culture, than of a successful and forward-looking one?
Some of the issues that are actually at stake in this election — especially nuclear war — could quickly end all civilization as we know it; but the voters’ main issue seems instead to be rape. Does this reflect democracy, or rather a lack of democracy, or a manipulation of democracy? Should a personal crime, which isn’t a crime of government, actually be an issue in elective politics? Should it be an issue even if there has been no court-ruling and conviction in the case? And, if it should, then should it dominate an election, such as it is in 2016 America? If it should be an issue at all, then, given the enormous stakes in the current US election, it should be an extremely minor one, notwithstanding how repulsive any rapist is, but especially because there hasn’t even been legal process about any of the allegations, and because even a Presidential candidate who is publicly accused of a personal crime is supposed to be innocent until a court rules “guilty.”
Joachim Hagopian is correct to report, at Global Research, on October 18th, that, “The current threat level to every human life on this planet even surpasses the October Cuban Missile Crisis of 54 years ago as the earth today is in more peril by manmade [nuclear] destruction than any previous time in human history.” However, even if that outcome will fortunately be avoided, the sheer war-stakes in this Presidential election are enormous, and they appear to have little impact upon the voters, other than for them perhaps to fear placing a possible rapist (such as Bill Clinton also was) in charge of US (if not also of other nations’) national security.
Micah Zenko, of the overwhelmingly pro-Hillary-Clinton, neoconservative (pro-invasion), Council on Foreign Relations, headlined, on 29 July 2016, in the neoconservative Foreign Policy magazine (which denies that it’s neoconservative but cannot cite even a single article that it has published attacking neoconservatism), “Hillary the Hawk: A History”, and he documented that, “She has consistently endorsed starting new wars and expanding others.” He closed by saying: “Those who vote for her should know that she will approach such crises with a long track record of being generally supportive of initiating US military interventions and expanding them.”
I have independently reviewed her performance as the US Secretary of State, and have found nothing in her record that would contradict Zenko’s statement (other than his single false word there, ‘generally’), though I wrote clearly as a warning, and not merely (like Zenko did), to describe what her policies have been; I have (on many and diverse occasions) explicitly condemned those invasions as violations not only against the victim-nations but against the American public, whom the US Secretary of State is supposed to represent. International aggression does not represent the interests of the American public. If she becomes America’s President, then clearly there will be war, lots of it.
Hillary Clinton not only ardently championed George W. Bush’s kicking the U.N.’s weapons inspectors out of Iraq in 2003 so that we could invade, but as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration led in every aggressive policy, and her protégés in the State Department after she left, such as Victoria Nuland, oversaw the carrying-out of those acts of aggression, and her former boss President Obama even sometimes overrode his new Secretary of State John Kerry (as Obama never did to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) and approved the aggressive policies of Hillary’s (now Kerry’s) underlings (which humiliated Kerry). Whereas Obama is a quiet neoconservative, Hillary is a loud and proud one. Her support of invading Iraq in 2003 was no ‘mistake’ or ‘aberration’ on her part; it reflected her fundamental orientation toward foreign policy. That’s what her voters will be voting for, if they are intelligent and accurately informed (as opposed to “voting for the first woman President” or other irrelevancies); because that’s what America and the world will importantly get if she becomes the next US President. (After all: Margaret Thatcher was also a woman; gender is irrelevant.) This is clear.
Donald Trump has no record in public office; and, up against Hillary Clinton’s demonstrated catastrophic record in public office, that lack of governmental experience alone constitutes a major reason to prefer him over her in this Presidential election. Whether he would start wars is unknown, but he has spoken forcefully of the need for the US to improve its relations with Russia. Hillary Clinton (like all other neoconservatives) criticizes him for that. (And the US ‘Defense’ industry has poured money into Hillary’s campaign but given almost nothing to Trump’s.)
Perhaps the main reason why the main criticisms of Trump have concerned his private life, not his policy-record in public office, is because he has no policy-making record at all. The issues that have been raised in support of Hillary (since her positive achievements in public office have been virtually nil) have mainly focused on Trump’s personal affairs, and on his alleged acts of bigotry and even rape, because these are matters that distract voters from the real and urgent issues, which weigh so heavily and so substantially against her candidacy.
Rape has become the chief focus during the campaign’s closing days, because polls have indicated clearly that voters are more concerned about whether their President is a rapist than about whether he or she is a warmonger. Though they weren’t so concerned about such allegations when Bill Clinton was President, Trump’s often-crude speech makes such accusations against him far more credible than in Bill Clinton’s case — even though that ought not to be so.
No one except the women who have accused Bill Clinton and Donald Trump of rape can know, or can even think they know, whether a court would have convicted the alleged rapist if a court had been enabled to issue such a decision; but there can be no doubt whatsoever, that Hillary Clinton has been actively supporting the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US invasion of Libya in 2011, and is now supporting a far more aggressive US invasion of Syria (which would mean war against Russia) — supporting it consistently. She also has actively supported the 2009 coup in Honduras (which replaced the progressive democratically elected President there by a string of fascist tyrants and the world’s highest murder-rate), and the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government in 2014 (which was immediately followed by a break-up of the country and a plunge into depression and soaring debt).
Each one of these invasions and coups produced even worse conditions in the invaded or overthrown country afterward; but, only in the single case, of the invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush, which subsequently became overwhelmingly condemned by the Democratic Party itself, did Hillary Clinton (with whatever sincerity an intelligent person can attribute to her, which is whatever the person thinks it to be) admit that she had made a ‘mistake’ on that one occasion. She doesn’t apologize for any of the other cases, because there is no such political requirement for her to do so.
How many times does a high public official need to repeat essentially the same ‘mistake’ (actively as a public official pushing for horrific invasions), before the voters in that person’s political party (in this case, Democrats) come to recognize that they’ve been consistently lied-to by that person, and that they’ve been that politician’s suckers by voting for that catastrophically war-mongering person? After all, no sane voter wants America to go to war against Russia. But that’s the direction in which we’re currently heading. And Hillary Clinton wants to go farther there.
America’s Presidential choice will be either Hillary Clinton, a proven and repeated warmonger who has left a lengthy trail of death and destruction behind her as her blood-soaked clear and consistent record in public office (and Zenko made special note that “She also has developed close relations with retired military officers like Gen. Jack Keane, who has rarely seen a country that cannot be improved with US ground troops and airstrikes. As Bob Woodward wrote of a 2009 meeting between the two to discuss the Afghan surge: ‘Clinton greeted Keane with a bear hug, astonishing [US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard] Holbrooke because — and he should know — Hillary rarely bear-hugged anyone.” (Here is Jack Keane being praised by the prominent super-neocon Republican Paul Wolfowitz, who will vote for Hillary Clinton, against Donald Trump.)
Or else it will be a possible rapist, like her husband also was, who served two terms in the White House, but this time it would be a man of the opposite political party: Donald Trump. No matter how gross Mr. Trump is: he, unlike Hillary Clinton, cannot be intelligently evaluated by an abysmal record in public office, because he simply has no record at all in public office, nothing whatsoever; but he has only strings of public statements, most of which contradict each other. (As Zenko said: “Unlike Donald Trump, who has wildly shifting positions and alleged ‘secret’ plans to defeat the Islamic State, Clinton has an extensive track record upon which one can evaluate her likely positions.”) What Hillary Clinton’s public statements contradict is her actual record in public office, which is as far right-wing (pro-international-corporate), especially in foreign affairs and US trade policy (including NAFTA, TTIP, etc.) (and the common term for this in the military sphere is “neoconservative”), as any of her many financial backers on Wall Street could realistically hope for from any potential future US President — which is why she’s backed by almost all of America’s billionaires.
One of those two persons will be the next US President. Anyone else who alleges that he or she wants to be, and whose name will also appear on the Presidential ballot, is just a fake there, because, for example, Ralph Nader never ever won even so much as a single one of the 50 states in the Electoral College in any of his contests for the Presidency (not to mention a majority of all the EC votes, such as each of these spoilers lies, or lied, to claim to be his or her goal, but really just being a bad joke on that person’s voters). Nor will any of the current aspiring Presidential spoilers win even a single state.
It’s going to be either the possible rapist, or else the definite and serial warmonger. The next US President will be one of those two people. On the one side is, maybe, a rapist. On the other side is certainly a warmonger.
Each voter must make his/her own choice: either drink possibly cyanide, or drink definitely arsenic. Those are the only two choices left in America’s ‘democracy’, and neither of them was the top choice of the most Americans during the primaries-season: the top choice was Bernie Sanders, and the second choice was John Kasich. In a truly democratic system, those two would be the final contestants.
Each and every American voter in this existing contest will either select and drink his/her cup, or else simply allow all the other US voters in this contest collectively to select the cup that he/she and all other Americans will then be drinking during the next four years.
That’s a realistic view of this contest. But this is only one person’s analysis. Anyone who finds fault in it, is welcomed to provide and document a counter-argument below, as a reader-comment, or anywhere else this commentary is published.
Meanwhile, here is my answer to a person who, in a prior reader-comment, said that I am trying to ‘herd’ America’s voters into one or the other of America’s rotten political parties: I voted for Bernie Sanders, but I’m no such fool as to think that anyone like that still has a chance to win the US Presidency in 2016. I didn’t do the ‘herd’ing here; the US political system does it, when the political primary season ends and the general-election contest starts. If Jill Stein had wanted to reform the Democratic Party, she missed her chance to do that when she failed even to enter the Democratic primaries.
And, unlike the Whig Party, which had already become so widely rejected by the electorate by the time of 1860, so that a former Whig, Abraham Lincoln, was able virtually to start its successor, the Republican Party in 1860 (which got shot dead and taken over by the aristocracy when he was shot dead, in 1865), America’s voters haven’t yet reached the point where they’re willing to replace the Democratic Party with the Green Party or any other (much less to protect it if yet another assassination kills the progressive replacement-party like Lincoln’s Republican Party was). No matter what any third-party proponent might say, there’s no chance that 2016 is going to be some repeat of 1860. America is, and (like any nation that has a Presidential system) can only be, a two-party political system. The Founders didn’t know that, but we’ve now got hundreds of years all proving it to be so.
I mention that particular objection because it’s the one I most commonly have gotten in the past.
One final observation here: The reality of politics and governmental policymaking is incredibly ugly, and anyone who makes voting decisions on the basis of a politician’s mere private and personal life is a fool, because public policy really is, in the deepest sense, a very different and vastly more consequential and important moral sphere, having shockingly little to do with the person’s private behavior. The only intelligent way to judge any candidate is by that person’s past record of actual policy-decisions in public office, not at all by either the person’s mere words, or his private life (such as described in this example).
Even for Abraham Lincoln, who (along with FDR) is considered by historians to have been the greatest President, only his actions on policy made him that, and even his greatness as a rhetorician possesses relevance for historians only insofar as it was a part of that policy-record. Furthermore: both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned and ordered slaves, but neither man was a lesser President for having done that (even if historians do debate whether such Presidents were lesser persons for having done it).
To evaluate a politician by either his personal life or his mere rhetoric is not only foolish but petty. History proves this on thousands, if not millions, of occasions. Policy-actions are the only factor that’s important when evaluating a politician. It has been true throughout human history. A politician who has no record of policy-actions is thus a zero (like a mere coin-flip: presuming one side to be positive, the other negative); a politician who has a bad policy-record is thus a negative, and a politician who (like Bernie Sanders) has a positive policy-record is thus a positive. No intelligent estimation of America’s immediate political future can be positive; it’s either zero (like Trump) or else negative (like Hillary). That’s where we are (somewhere between zero and negative), and that’s the real choice we’ve been presented: either it’s Trump (zero), or else it’s Hillary (negative). I, a Sanders-voter, am choosing Trump, in preference to Clinton.
* * *
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
- Over 60% Of Americans Fear "Corruption Of Government Officials" Above Anything Else
“Global warming”? “Obamacare”? “Terrorism”? all rank in the Top 10 fears for Americans. While ‘creepy clowns’ are all the rage, according to the Chapman University Survey of American Fears, corruption of government officials is the top fear among U.S. adults this year.
This chart shows the % of Americans who reported being “afraid” or “very afraid” of the following…
You will find more statistics at StatistaJust don’t tell the mainstream media.. because that would be threatening the very core of America’s democracy… or some such bullshit.
- The United States Of Refugees
Submitted by Ben Christopher via Priceonomics.com,
Consider the state of Nebraska. What comes to mind?
Common associations with the Cornhusker state include: row crops, silos, college football, Warren Buffet, and wholesome, earnest Americana.
Now try this one: Refugee Capital of the United States.
So far this year, the City of Omaha has settled over 900 people fleeing war, persecution, and disaster around the world. That may be a small figure relative to the estimated 21.3 million refugees worldwide (or relative to the population of Omaha, for that matter, which is roughly 434,000). But it’s still higher than the number of refugees resettled in Los Angeles and New York City combined.
That disproportionate hospitality extends across the entire state, where over 1,300 refugees have found new homes this year. That may not be much compared to the resettlement statistics in larger states, like California, Texas, and New York. But given Nebraska’s population of fewer than 2 million, on a per person basis, this makes the state the most welcoming of refugees in the nation. For every 100,000 residents, Nebraska resettled roughly 71 refugees in 2016. By the same measure, California welcomed fewer than 18.
If these figures don’t jibe with your understanding of where refugees live in the United States, that might be because you’ve been following this year’s presidential election. When Donald Trump claims that we “have no documentation” about the “Trojan horse” refugees who live in this country, and when Republican governors across the country insist that they will not abide Syrian refugees resettling within their borders, they not only raise suspicions about some of the world’s most vulnerable people, they fundamentally mischaracterize what may be the most complex human relocation system on the planet.
This is a system in which international, federal, and charitable organizations all work together to bring more refugees to the United States than any other country—and which places more of them in Boise, Idaho; Des Moines, Iowa; and Bowling Green, Kentucky; than in New York City.
How does this system work and how did we get to this point?
Somalis in the Buckeye State
If you’re looking to answer these questions, a good starting point might be Columbus, Ohio.
Over the last two decades, the city has become one of the most popular resettlement locations for those fleeing war, persecution, and deprivation in Somalia.
To be clear, this population represents a small trickle of all Somalis hoping to leave the country or the refugee camps in adjacent Kenya. The refugee application process is notoriously complex and time-intensive. An aspiring refugee must first get a referral from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees or from a local embassy before they even have permission to apply for refugee status. This application process requires extensive pre-screenings, background checks, health examinations, and on-site interviews. From start to finish, the process can, and generally does, take years—and of those who make it to the screening phase, only half are ultimately resettled.
Still, many are. Over the last ten years, the United States has resettled over 70,000 Somali refugees. Many have come to Ohio. Today, Columbus has the second largest Somali population in the United States after Minneapolis.
Why Columbus, of all places?
Data: Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System, U.S. State Department.
“The short answer to your question is: it’s complicated.”
That’s the response from Tamar Forrest, the Director of Development at the Economic and Community Development Institute in Columbus, Ohio. The ECDI was founded by a refugee from the Soviet Union in 2004 and provides various social and economic development services to Columbus’ sizable Somali refugee community.
“For one, we’re a bit of a victim of our own success,” she says. “Our resettlement agencies are really, really good.”
When a refugee is finally approved for resettlement in the United States, the State Department matches the applicant with one of nine resettlement organizations. These are non-profits, many of them religiously-affiliated, and they—not federal or state governments—are the organizations that decide where a refugee will be resettled.
That decision often comes down to logistics, says Forrest. Does a city have enough affordable housing? Does the resettlement organization have a local network of ESL teachers and caseworkers to refer to? Are there organizations like ECDI on the ground ready to help with job training and financial literacy courses?
But once a refugee community is established in a specific town or city, it begins to exert its own gravitational force. Resettlement agencies will often try to place refugees from a particular country into a community in which they have family or community ties to draw upon. And so Somalis are resettled in Columbus because Somali refugees have been placed in Columbus in the past.
This process takes place with or without the resettlement agencies, says Forrest.
“There were people in Columbus, like Bantu Somalis and Somalis, calling their family and friends in the refugee camp in Kakuma [in Kenya],” she says. “And they were saying, no matter where you go—if it's Atlanta, if it's Chicago, if it's New York—you have to make it to Columbus.”
Of course, it’s common for refugees to move from the town or city in which they are initially placed. These “secondary migrations,” as scholars call them, mean that official refugee resettlement statistics (like the data used to make the map at the top of this article) offer an incomplete picture at best. In a paper that Forrest co-authored with Ohio State University professor Lawrence Brown in 2014, she estimated that between 2000 and 2005, over 2,500 refugees left California for other states, while over 1,000 resettled in the Golden State.
This national reshuffling also serves to reinforce the placement decisions of resettlement agencies. As the local Somali community grows in Columbus, more Somali refugees from around the country move there, which encourages resettlement agencies to resettle more Somalis in Columbus, which causes the local Somali community to grow, and so on.
Data: Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System, U.S. State Department.
Thus, what is effectively a choice of convenience by one of nine non-profits across the country can establish an American city as the go-to locale for a specific refugee community.
It’s a common story. This is the reason that so many refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo have recently been resettled in Atlanta (1,198 in the last three years), why so many Syrians now live in San Diego (871), and why you can now find so many Iraqi refugees in Houston (1,783).
Iraqis in Houston
Ali Al Sudani is one of those Iraqi refugees.
When Sudani arrived in Houston in 2009, he knew close to nothing about the city. Having spent the previous three years working for an NGO in Jordan and applying for refugee status, his understanding of life in Texas was derived solely from television.
In three words: “Cowboys, guns, and the oil industry,” he says.
Still, his boss had family in Houston and had spoken highly of the economic opportunities there. And so after a year of referrals, applications, background checks, health inspections, and cultural orientation courses, he boarded a plane for George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
Sudani was not alone. As the United States military began to slowly withdraw from Iraq at the end of 2007, Iraqis like Sudani, who had spent the years of the U.S. occupation working with coalition troops or foreign NGOs, were being targeted for retaliation in ever growing numbers. For both humanitarian and political reasons, the U.S. State Department began ramping up the number of refugee applications that it processed from Iraq and the camps in Jordan.
But when Sudani’s plane landed in in Houston in 2009, there were still relatively few Iraqis in the city. A local charity, Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, helped him secure an apartment in the southwest corner of Houston, but they had few Arabic-speaking caseworkers and most of Sudani’s refugee neighbors were Cuban.
Though Sudani had learned to speak English while working with American and British troops in Iraq, he still enrolled in the ESL and cultural orientation courses offered out of his apartment building. This gave him a chance to meet his neighbors and to learn how to navigate some of America’s more mysterious institutions: how to open a bank account, how to find a doctor, how to traverse Houston’s infamous five-level stack highway interchanges without crashing his car.
Two months after he arrived, Interfaith Ministries, the same charity that had helped Sudani get situated, offered him a job. Every day, more Iraqis were arriving in Houston and the organization desperately needed someone who could connect with the burgeoning Iraqi community.
Data: Worldwide Refugee Admissions Processing System, U.S. State Department.
That community was growing every day. Sudani could see that firsthand from where he lived.
“In the apartment complex that I used to live in, I was the only Iraqi,” he recalls. “And then there was another guy. And then another family…But later on, over the last two or three years, I think it was a large community of Iraqis living in that apartment complex and across that neighborhood.”
Six years later, Sudani is now Program Director or Refugee Services for Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston. These days, that’s a very busy job. In the last ten years, Houston has resettled more refugees than any other city in the country. (Though that rank is arguably shared with San Diego, if you include nearby El Cajon).
Why is it that Houston, of all places, has been the most welcoming city for the tired, poor, huddled masses of the word? Is it the local network of resettlement services? The large international community? The proximity to a large airport?
That may be be part of it, says Sudani. But he also offers a more straightforward explanation: “Houston has a strong economy and the cost of living is affordable.”
“Refugee are normal people,” he says. “They’re just in abnormal circumstances.”
- Former Haitian Senate President Calls Clintons "Common Thieves Who Should Be In Jail"
Despite repeatedly bragging about all the good work the Clinton Foundation did to help Haiti recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake, at least one Haitian, former Senate President Bernard Sansaricq, thinks it was the Clintons, not the Hiatian people, who benefitted most from the Foundation’s “charitable work” in Haiti. Appearing on a radio show last week, Sansaricq offered a scathing assessment of the Clinton’s track record in Haiti saying they are “nothing but common thieves…and they should be in jail.” Per PJ Media:
Sandy Rios of American Family Radio interviewed former Haitian Senate President Bernard Sansaricq on Thursday, and the enraged Haitian had nothing good to say about the Clintons. He angrily claimed that they brought their “pay to play” politics to Haiti at the expense of the Haitian people.
Sansaricq said that the Clinton Foundation received 14.3 billion dollars in donation money to help with the relief effort. President Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon put the Clinton Foundation in charge of the reconstruction, but Haiti has seen no help. The money all went to friends of Bill Clinton.
“They are nothing but common thieves,” the enraged Sansaricq told Rios. “And they should be in jail.”
As also highlighted in the movie “Clinton Cash,” Sansaricq argued that the Clinton’s did nothing more than bring their pay-to-play tactics to Haiti resulting in the enrichment of Clinton cronies, including Hillary’s brother Anthony Rodham, whose company was awarded a lucrative gold mining contract.
Sansaricq said although Bill Clinton was put in charge of the reconstruction, he did absolutely nothing but give contracts to his cronies and built a sweatshop next to a goldmine that was given to Hillary Clinton’s brother, Anthony Rodham, in violation of the Haitian constitution.
He said he could go on for hours about the Clinton Foundation’s destruction of the rice production in Haiti because they were importing rice from Clinton’s cronies in Arkansas. And rice is something Haiti could really use right now.
The Clintons also awarded the country’s only cell phone company to another crony, Denis O’Brien, using taxpayer dollars. O’Brien has made 265 million dollars, and a substantial portion of that has gone back to the Clinton Foundation.
Of course, these claims are hard to deny given that recently released emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit by the Republican National Committee, and subsequently shared with ABC News, reveal very open special treatment of “Friends of Bill” (“FOB” for short) by the State Department in granting access to recovery efforts in Haiti, in which $10 billion in emergency aid was spent after the 2010 earthquake.
The emails showed very close coordination between Caitlin Klevorick, a senior State Department official, and Amitabh Desai, the director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, as they exchanged emails from Foundation donors looking to participate in the Haiti recovery efforts. While many donors likely were just looking to make charitable contributions, others, as evidenced below, were simply looking to capture their “fair share” of $10 billion in emergency aid contracts doled out by the U.S. government.
The following exchange between Klevorick and Dasai, with the subject line “Haiti Assistance,” shows the State Department very clearly asking for “Friends of Bill” to be flagged for special consideration.
“Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” wrote Caitlin Klevorick, then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton Foundation. “Most I can probably ID but not all.”
Of course, this directly contradicts comments that Bill Clinton previously made to CBS’ Charlie Rose just last month when he assured voters that “nothing was ever done for anybody because they were contributors to the foundation, nothing.”
In another Klevorick and Dasai exchange, the State Department official asks “Is this a FOB!” saying that “If not, she should go to cidi.org” (a general government website).
As also mentioned by Sansaricq, another series of messages uncovered the efforts of billionaire Denis O’Brien, a longtime donor to the Clinton Foundation and the CEO of the Jamaica-based telecom firm Digicel, to fly relief supplies into Port-au-Prince and get employees of his company out. But when O’Brien couldn’t get access to land in Port-au-Prince “through conventional channels” he turns to long-time Clinton aide Doug Band for help. Shortly thereafter, the request was elevated to the State Department in an email with the subject line “Close friend of the Clintons.”
“This WJC VIP just called again from Jamaica to say Digicel is being pushed by US Army to get comms back up but is not being cleared by [the U.S. government] to deploy into Haiti to do so,” Desai wrote in an email with the subject line “Close friend of Clintons.”
Later, O’Brien writes to longtime Clinton aide Doug Band to express frustration. “We’re finding it impossible to get landing slots,” he says. “I’m sorry to bother you but I am not making any progress through conventional channels.”
Band tasks Desai to “pls get on this,” telling O’Brien, “Never a bother.”
Desai then turns to Klevorick to help “a friend of President Clinton,” and the request is pushed up the chain of command to USAID officials organizing the relief effort.
Of course, we have no doubt that these scandalous revelations, like many others circling the Clinton campaign at the moment, will quickly be brushed under the carpet so the mainstream media can go back to focusing on Trump’s “accusers”.
- 'Philanthropist' George Soros Set To Make A Killing From Europe's 'Forced Migration'
Authored by Sam Gerrans, originally posted op-ed via RT.com,
The philanthropist George Soros recently published a letter in the Wall Street Journal entitled, 'Why I’m Investing 500 million USD in Migrants'. In this article, I will be looking at that letter and separating what it means from what it appears to say.Soros' letter begins: “The world has been unsettled by a surge in forced migration. Tens of millions of people are on the move, fleeing their home countries in search of a better life abroad. Some are escaping civil war or an oppressive regime; others are forced out by extreme poverty, lured by the possibility of economic advancement for themselves and their families.”
This is quite true. And Soros should know since his think tank is fully on board with that “forced migration”. He has either initiated it or facilitated it and, according to Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary (which is presently holding a referendum on whether to accept migrant quotas as demanded by the EU), as quoted by Bloomberg: “His name is perhaps the strongest example of those who support anything that weakens nation states, they support everything that changes the traditional European lifestyle […] These activists who support immigrants inadvertently become part of this international human-smuggling network.”
Soros-backed activists are at the center of that network.
Soros continues: “Our collective failure to develop and implement effective policies to handle the increased flow has contributed greatly to human misery and political instability—both in countries people are fleeing and in the countries that host them, willingly or not. Migrants are often forced into lives of idle despair, while host countries fail to reap the proven benefit that greater integration could bring.”
I have touched on Soros’ psychological peculiarities elsewhere; his narcissistic traits notwithstanding, I shall assume he is not using the royal “we”. That granted, about whom is he speaking when he talks of “Our collective failure to develop and implement effective policies”? If about governments, we should remember that he is elected to no nation’s government, nor has he ever been.
That does not prevent him, however, from meddling in their internal affairs and supporting insurrections such as so-called Color Revolutions, including in Georgia and Ukraine, and whipping up chaos via BLM in the US.
He also famously attacked the British pound, making himself a billion dollars.
He wishes the reader to assume inclusion by his use of “our”. But we are not included; we are simply being told what is to happen.
He then writes of “the proven benefit that greater integration could bring”. This is almost a rhetorical conundrum; he and his lawyers expect – not without reason – that most people will provide their own color to what the words on the page say. He claims proof but provides none – and that is a major omission given that we are expected to entrust our entire cultural and economic future to his assertions.
Many countries, including Japan, China, UAE, Israel and Singapore, are extremely careful to whom they grant citizenship. If the benefits Soros claims were proven, surely they would be on board, too.
EU has 900 ‘no-go’ areas because of migrants – Hungary https://t.co/qyCJ5lzUeT pic.twitter.com/CXjYw3cbRp
— RT (@RT_com) April 2, 2016
To continue: “Governments must play the leading role in addressing this crisis by creating and sustaining adequate physical and social infrastructure for migrants and refugees. But harnessing the power of the private sector is also critical.
Recognizing this, the Obama administration recently launched a “Call to Action” asking U.S. companies to play a bigger role in meeting the challenges posed by forced migration. Today, private-sector leaders are assembling at the United Nations to make concrete commitments to help solve the problem.”
Soros, naturally, does not blush at telling us what our governments “must” do.
The term "forced migration" is clever mind hook. You may be sure that it was worked on for hours and many alternatives discarded. Its power lies in the fact that it implies both helplessness in the face of an unstoppable external force and inevitability of result – while at the same time disregarding causes.
If anyone still cares, the causes include: attacks by the US and Nato on countries which have done them no harm; Angela Merkel’s open invitation to the third world to move to Europe; material and informational support from Soros-funded organizations.
Soros continues: “In response, I have decided to earmark $500 million for investments that specifically address the needs of migrants, refugees and host communities. I will invest in startups, established companies, social-impact initiatives and businesses founded by migrants and refugees themselves. Although my main concern is to help migrants and refugees arriving in Europe, I will be looking for good investment ideas that will benefit migrants all over the world.”
I will translate: “Now that the inflow of immigrants has been set up, I am going to invest $500 million to make the process unstoppable, endless and self-funding, and make a lot of money for myself at the same time. And since this is dressed in the language of compassion, there is nothing you can say against it.”
Back to Soros’ letter: “This commitment of investment equity will complement the philanthropic contributions my foundations have made to address forced migration, a problem we have been working on globally for decades and to which we have dedicated significant financial resources.”
Just remove the words 'philanthropic' (which does not mean at the elite level what you think it means) and realize that 'address' means 'facilitate' to Soros, and you will understand this sentence correctly; this is a carefully crafted statement of policy.
He continues: “We will seek investments in a variety of sectors, among them emerging digital technology, which seems especially promising as a way to provide solutions to the particular problems that dislocated people often face. Advances in this sector can help people gain access more efficiently to government, legal, financial and health services. Private businesses are already investing billions of dollars to develop such services for non-migrant communities.
This is why money now moves instantaneously from one mobile wallet to another, drivers find customers by using only a cellphone, and how a doctor in North America can see a patient in Africa in real time. Customizing and extending these innovations to serve migrants will help improve the quality of life for millions around the world.
All of the investments we make will be owned by my nonprofit organization. They are intended to be successful—because I want to show how private capital can play a constructive role helping migrants—and any profits will go to fund programs at the Open Society Foundations, including programs that benefit migrants and refugees.”
Thus, anyone who wishes to will be able to plug into the system you and your families have been paying into all your lives and access its main arteries with nothing more than a mobile phone. Soros, meanwhile, makes a load more money which he can then plough into the very organizations which will make sure the inflow of migrants never stops.
Soros goes on to claim: “As longtime champions of civil society, we will be focused on ensuring that our investments lead to products and services that truly benefit migrants and host communities.”
Leaving what Soros may mean by 'civil society', I turn to his use of 'benefit'; benefit according to whom? According to George Soros – a man who destabilizes sovereign states as part of his modus operandi.
Soros concludes: “We will also work closely with organizations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Rescue Committee to establish principles to guide our investments. Our goal is to harness, for public good, the innovations that only the private sector can provide.
I hope my commitment will inspire other investors to pursue the same mission.”
What this means in English is: “The fix is in, and now all you smaller fish further down the food chain can make a nice buck off the gravy train of selling your countries out because if this weren’t a sure thing, I wouldn’t be in it.”
This is cultural- and ethnic-cleansing in a business suit; it is the de facto usurpation of the nation state as a social construct for the peoples of Europe as part of a multi-purpose war – one designed to destroy oil-rich states and any state with no central bank, while simultaneously collapsing sovereign states.
However, my point here is not the mass immigration – although with the inevitable, eventual annihilation of the middle class in Soros’ “host countries” there will be nowhere for genuine refugees to go; it is that we have taxation without even the fig leaf of representation so long as men like Soros can openly create and dictate policy.
- New Reuters Poll Shows That 70% Of Republicans Think The Election Is Rigged
This morning, Julian Assange offered a chilling and succinct assessment of the 2016 U.S. election, namely, that there is, in fact, no election but rather just an illusion of democracy that has been usurped by a corrupt political ruling class.
There is no US election. There is power consolidation. Rigged primary, rigged media and rigged ‘pied piper’ candidate drive consolidation.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) October 21, 2016
Certainly, new polling data from Reuters/Ipsos would seem to support that thesis. A new poll of 1,192 Americans, conducted by Reuters, found that if Hillary wins only 50% of republicans would accept her presidency as legitimate while 70% would attribute her victory to voter fraud and/or vote rigging of some type. Moreover, only 20% of republicans surveyed felt that the final vote tallies would be accurate.
Only half of Republicans would accept Clinton, the Democratic nominee, as their president. And if she wins, nearly 70 percent said it would be because of illegal voting or vote rigging, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday.
Conversely, seven out of 10 Democrats said they would accept a Trump victory and less than 50 percent would attribute it to illegal voting or vote rigging, the poll showed.
For example, nearly eight out of 10 Republicans are concerned about the accuracy of the final vote count. And though generally they believe they will be able to cast their ballot, only six out of 10 are confident their vote will be counted accurately.
Obviously, this data is fairly alarming, to say the least, but not terribly surprising in light of the staggering, systemic corruption recently exposed through WikiLeaks and the ongoing Congressional review of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary’s private email server…not mention DNC operatives openly talking about committing massive election fraud on undercover Project Veritas videos and working behind the scenes to incite violence at Republican rallies. For those of you who still haven’t seen the videos, they’re worth a look.
The following video takes a look behind the scenes of the DNC’s efforts to incite violence at Trump rallies:
And this one provides an excellent tutorial on how to commit voter fraud on a massive scale:
Given the exposure of mass corruption it should hardly be surprising that the “level of concern and mistrust in the system, especially among Republicans, is unprecedented,” as a professor at the University of New Mexico told Reuters, but apparently it is.
“Republicans are just more worried about everything than Democrats,” said Lonna Atkeson, a professor at the University of New Mexico and head of the Center for the Study of Voting, Elections, and Democracy.
Atkeson said the level of concern and mistrust in the system, especially among Republicans, is unprecedented.
“I’ve never seen an election like this. Not in my lifetime. Certainly not in modern history.” The difference, she said, is Trump. “It has to be the candidate effect.”
She worries that the lack of trust is dangerous. It is one thing to not trust government, but quite another to doubt the election process. “Then the entire premise of democracy comes into question,” she said.
What we find far more shocking is that somehow the American electorate’s acceptance of mass corruption is split along party lines rather than being universally unacceptable.
- "Make A Wish List" Russia Tells Duterte, As New Asian Axis Forms
Yesterday, when Philippine president Duterte finally took the plunge to announce his “separation” from the US (even if his government has backtracked somewhat today), he said that not only would he “realign” himself in China’s ideological flow but, in a nuance that was missed by many, said that “I will also go to Russia to talk to (President Vladimir) Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world – China, Philippines and Russia. It’s the only way.”
To be sure, an offical axis between China, Russia and a nation that until recently was a core US ally in the Pacific Rim – whose loss would be a huge slap in the face of Obama and whoever replaced him as president – would be music to Putin’s ears, which is why just minutes after Philippine president announced his stunning separation from the US, Russia’s ambassador to the country promptly said Moscow is ready to provide assistance to and fully cooperate with Manila.
“Formulate your wish list. What kind of assistance do you expect from Russia and we will be ready to sit down with you and discuss what can and should be done,” Russian Ambassador Igor Khovaev told GMA News on Friday. He then went on to state that Russia is open to working with the Philippines in “any area, any field of possible cooperation.”
The ambassador assured the news outlet that Moscow would not “interfere with the domestic affairs of a sovereign state,” and that the “true Russia” is much different than the one portrayed in Hollywood films. Khovaev added that the Philippines and Russia “deserve to know each other much, much better.”
The aggresive, if diplomatic brownnosing continued, when the ambassador also said that Duterte impressed Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev during a meeting in Laos last month, and that Moscow supports the leader’s fight against illegal drugs and criminality. In short, he said everything that Durterte wanted to hear just to make sure the Chinese-Russian-Philippino axis takes hold.
For its part, the Philippines’ budget minister announced that his country is open to all forms of assistance, but will choose what is in the “best interest of the country,” Reuters reported. This could also include yet another U-turn, and prompt return to the safety of being a US puppet. Which is why on Friday, the Philippines’ trade minister, Ramon Lopez, told CNN that the leader “wasn’t talking about separation” from the United States. Although Duterte explicitly stated that the Philippines would be separating from the US economically, Lopez said that “in terms of economic [ties], we are not stopping trade, investment with America. The president specifically mentioned his desire to strengthen further the ties with China and the ASEAN region, which we have been trading with for centuries.”
He explained that the Philippines was just “breaking being too much dependent on one side…but we definitely won’t stop the trade and investment activities with the West, specifically the US.”
The US embassy in the Philippines called Duterte’s remarks “troubling rhetoric” prior to Lopez’s conciliating remarks. “We’ve seen a lot of this sort of troubling rhetoric recently, which is inexplicably at odds with the warm relationship that exists between the Filipino and American people and the record of important cooperation between our two governments,” the US embassy press attaché in Manila, Molly Koscina, told Reuters on Friday.
“We have yet to hear from the Philippine government what Duterte’s remarks on ‘separation’ might mean, but it is creating unnecessary uncertainty,” she added.
If Russia is successful in closing the loop on the latest, and most novel regional power axis yet, Koscina will be waiting for a long time.
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On Hillary Clinton’s campaign website, her racial-justice plan is almost twice as long as her economic plan. You will also find racial notes dotted throughout all her various proposals: “African Americans hold only 1.1 percent of energy jobs and receive only 0.01 percent of energy sector profits,” in case you were wondering.
Saving...