Today’s News 13th October 2016

French Prime Minister Argues For United States Of Europe, With Its Own Military
Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, wants to transform the EU into the United States of Europe, complete with its own European defense force.

Curiously, Valls specifically says “We cannot build a United States of Europe”, but that is precisely what he wants to do.

“Member states have a choice: give up on the EU or transform it,” writes Manuel Valls.

Redefining Europe

Please consider Brexit Vote Pushes Europe to Redefine Itself, by Manuel Valls.

Let us face facts: the European project is in trouble. With the growing threat of terrorism, the refugee crisis, lacklustre economic growth and unemployment, the turmoil in Europe is unprecedented. Added to these, the Brexit vote deeply questioned the very meaning of Europe.

The other 27 member states of the EU have two options (this was the subject of my debate with Jean-Claude Juncker at the Jacques Delors Institute last week): either we give up and leave the European project to a slow but certain death, or we transform the EU.

Reasserting our European identity also means coming to terms with the fact that there are borders — that Europe starts and stops somewhere.

Too often the EU has appeared to be preoccupied with unnecessary regulation. Transforming Europe also means that member states must henceforth focus on the essentials, primarily defence and security — in Europe, of course, but also in the neighbouring region of the Middle East. The French army is already doing more than its fair share: it cannot remain the de facto European army forever. France expects Europe to implement a common security strategy, with fully operational border guards and an electronic system for travel authorisation of the kind already operated by the US.

Finally, transforming Europe means making a clear choice to foster growth that does not only depend on the European Central Bank’s monetary policy. Europe must finance new projects and invest in digital and environmental innovation more than it does already.

These sectors must be enabled to grow and to face competition from countries that have no scruples about protecting their own industries. The time for naivety is over.

For this reason, the negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) cannot carry on as they have been. If the EU is to grant market access to American companies, there has to be reciprocity.

The European market must not be a social jungle, where people are set against one another. Nor can it be a tax jungle. It is unacceptable for multinational companies to do everything in their power to avoid paying tax in the countries in which they make profits. The recent ruling of the European Commission on Apple’s tax affairs was courageous and welcome, therefore. At the same time, member states must progress towards common European tax rates.

We cannot build a “United States of Europe”— each country has its own history, language and culture. But we can construct a sovereign Europe, a federation of nation states, strong and unashamed. We will not be the generation that buries the European project. We owe it to our young, who, for the most part, remain deeply attached to the European project. So are we.

Valls Wish List
1. Higher taxes
2. Unified tax rates (striking at Ireland and Brexit)
3. More tariff protections
4. More government spending, especially on environmental projects
5. A Sovereign Europe
6. A Federation of Nation states (all having to do the same thing at the same time)
7. Common defense system and an European army
8. Fully operational border guards
Hey, let’s just do all that and not call it the United States of Europe.

The main thing Valls got correct was “Too often the EU has appeared to be preoccupied with unnecessary regulation.”

Ironically, Valls proposed regulation in at least a half-dozen areas. and it won’t stop there.

What about agricultural tariffs to preserve the French way of Life? Valls wants to keep those for the sole benefit of French farmers at the expense of everyone else.

Great Nannycrat Transformation

Brexit happened precisely because the EU has been progressing along the lines Valls wants. Citizens are fed up in the UK, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Austria, Greece, Portugal and France, over various things.

Politicians like Beppe Grillo and the five-star movement in Italy, Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, and Victor Orban in Hungary feed off nonsense like Valls presented.

In Austria, anti-immigration presidential candidate Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) is ahead in polls. The election, scheduled for October 2 was rescheduled to December 4 due to problems with glue.

Problems with Glue

There are problems with glue all right.

Ireland is upset over taxes, the UK, Hungary, France, and Austria over immigration, Greece and Portugal over austerity, and Italy questions the Euro itself.

Valls did not address inane work rules in France, Greece, and Italy. Will those go away with more glue?

Instead of addressing obvious productivity issues, Valls concludes the EU needs an army.

The entire EU project is at risk of becoming unglued precisely because politicians like Valls, EC President Jean-Claude Juncker, and German chancellor Angela Merkel want to force more glue and more regulations into the system when the eurozone cannot remotely agree on a banking union, bailouts, a currency union, or a fiscal union.
Is A Short Squeeze Coming From This?
By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

Market dislocations occur when financial markets, operating under stressful conditions, experience large widespread asset mispricing.

Welcome to this week’s edition of “World Out Of Whack” where every Wednesday we take time out of our day to laugh, poke fun at and present to you absurdity in global financial markets in all it’s glorious insanity.

While we enjoy a good laugh, the truth is that the first step to protecting ourselves from losses is to protect ourselves from ignorance. Think of the “World Out Of Whack” as your double thick armour plated side impact protection system in a financial world littered with drunk drivers.

Selfishly we also know that the biggest (and often the fastest) returns come from asymmetric market moves. But, in order to identify these moves we must first identify where they live.

Occasionally we find opportunities where we can buy (or sell) assets for mere cents on the dollar – because, after all, we are capitalists.

In this week’s edition of the WOW we’re covering volatility ETPs (Exchange Traded Products)

Before we get into what exactly is Out Of Whack with volatility linked ETPs let’s cover what the heck a volatility ETP actually is.

What are Volatility ETPs?

Since it’s probably the most commonly known animal in the zoo we’ll turn to the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures ETN (VXX) for an explanation:

The iPath® S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures™ ETN is designed to provide investors with exposure to the S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures™ Index Total Return. The S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures™ Index Total Return (the “Index”) is designed to provide access to equity market volatility through CBOE Volatility Index® futures. The Index offers exposure to a daily rolling long position in the first and second month VIX futures contracts and reflects the implied volatility of the S&P 500® at various points along the volatility forward curve.

In English now:

Any ETP including VXX is a derivative of some underlying asset so let’s take a look at the underlying “asset”. In this case it’s the VIX futures. The VIX itself is actually a calculation based on the implied volatility of a basket of options on the S&P 500. Included in the calculations are options which are about to expire and those with 30 days to expiry. The net result is what amounts to a best guess as to what the market believes is in store for the next 30 days trading.

Attentive readers will realise that the VIX is therefore not the actual volatility of the S&P 500, but rather a forward looking best guess of what it is. For example it’s possible for actual volatility of the S&P to be low while traders are freaking out about something they see in a months time which would send VIX higher.

You can buy futures contracts on the price of VIX and they’re actively traded but like any futures contract you’re betting on a where a price lands on a future date, in this case 30 days out.

Volatility ETFs are particularly strange animals since you’re buying a derivative (ETF) on a derivative (the futures contract) which itself is based on a derivative (the implied volatility of options) and those options themselves of course are derivatives which themselves are based on the S&P 500.

So what’s going on with Volatility ETPs?

Volatility ETPs can provide investors the ability to be bullish or bearish. In other words those expecting low volatility can buy something like the ProShares S&P 500 Low Volatility Portfolio (SPLV) and those expecting high volatility can buy something like the VXX mentioned above.

It’s one thing that investors are expecting continued complacency and thus buying the low volatility ETPs but there is a perverse craziness that makes it all the more dangerous (more on that in a moment).

To explain why there has been such a rise in the popularity of low volatility ETPs just imagine driving the Eyre highway which takes you across the Nullarbor plain in Australia. For those unfamiliar with what this is, it’s a 1,675km stretch of road that is pretty much dead straight and has nothing to see – nada. It is I assure you, more boring than watching grass grow and takes 2 days at high speed.

The thing is you land up clocking speeds that would get you arrested anyplace else, in large part because it doesn’t feel like you’re going that fast and certainly doesn’t feel like you’re getting anywhere at all. It’s why when accidents happen on the Eyre highway they’re more often than not fatal.

Every 50km or so the road kinks a little and so one minute you’re hurtling along and the next thing you know, the roads not there anymore and you’ve got to control a ton of metal and rubber screaming through the outback at 180km/h. The rental car guy I spoke to told me that about 10% of all his cars are never resold, they’re rolled.

What does this have to do with volatility ETF’s?

Everything.

Long periods of complacency are often interspersed with brief but frightening jolts of “holy sh** where did that come from?“

Betting on increased volatility has been a losing bet. Below is the VXX in blue (long Volatility) vs SPLV in red (Short Volatility).

VXX in Blue and SPLV in green/red

Now there are structural reasons why VXX is such a pig of a long term ETF to buy, and I’ll cover why that is in a future article but the point I want to make is that going short volatility has been a winning trade.

I’ve written about this so much that my fingers are going to bleed, more recently when discussing how bonds no longer trade based on yield but based on a future price but the hunt for yield has created some truly amazing set of circumstances and this brings us squarely to low volatility ETF’s.

Enter the beast – When the Cure Becomes the Poison

As reported recently by Market Watch:

“More than $50 billion has poured into low-volatility indexed exchange-traded funds over the past five years or so, in the wake of the 2008-09 market meltdown. There are now 14 “lo-vol” ETFs with assets exceeding $100 million each, and many more with less. Whenever the market hits a pothole, these ETFs enjoy a bump-up in assets.”

Now this is where the perverse part comes in. Bear with me on this – it’s important.

Every time you sell volatility you get paid by the counter-party who is typically hedging the volatility (going long) of a particular position and paying you for the privilege. This is not unlike paying a home insurance premium where the insurer takes the ultimate risk of your house burning down and you pay them for the privelage. The difference however between selling volatility in order to protect against an underlying position and selling volatility in order to receive the yield created is enormous. And yet this is the game being played.

The central banks have managed to create a sense of calm in the markets exhibited by record lows in volatility and for their part Joe Sixpack investor has used linear thinking extrapolated well into the future assuming ever greater risk ignoring market cycles and extremes at their peril.

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Two things are happening here:
1. When the proverbial house burns down the insurance company (ETF) can’t cover. It’s all in and was never designed to protect holders for the inevitable reversal.
2. Investors have been selling volatility in order to achieve yield and thus treating these structured products like bonds, when they are in fact similar to bonds in the same way that the iPhone is similar to a water buffalo.
Traders are aggressively hunting for yield and finding it in selling volatility. This works wonderfully… until it doesn’t.

Remember equities are something like 7x more volatile than bonds (depending on what you’re looking at) and these ETPs are inherently more volatile than the underlying equities upon which they’re ultimately priced. Treating them like bonds and buying them for yield is quite simply INSANE.

What’s interesting is that the VIX is trading near all time lows at the same time that short interest on low volatility ETFs is at record highs.

While I’m not predicting it though we are due a recession purely based on the business cycle, a market crash would almost certainly wipe out the entire low volatility ETP complex, and a market correction (overdue) will see a scramble amongst those who’ve been treating an ETP as a bond. It could be more entertaining to watch than the current ~~clown show~~ US presidential race.

The question is:

Cast your vote here and also see what others think

Know anyone that might enjoy this? Please share this with them.

Investing and protecting our capital in a world which is enjoying the most severe distortions of any period in mans recorded history means that a different approach is required. And traditional portfolio management fails miserably to accomplish this.

And so our goal here is simple: protecting the majority of our wealth from the inevitable consequences of absurdity, while finding the most asymmetric investment opportunities for our capital. Ironically, such opportunities are a result of the actions which have landed the world in such trouble to begin with.

– Chris

“To buy when others are despondently selling and sell when others are greedily buying requires the greatest fortitude and pays the greatest reward.” — Sir John Templeton

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Liked this article? Don’t miss our future missives and podcasts, and

get access to free subscriber-only content here.

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German Foreign Minister and Former MI6 Boss: US-Russia Tensions Now More Dangerous than During the Cold War

Preface: I will add quotes from U.S. intelligence officials and Russia experts as I receive them.

Germany’s Foreign Minister – Frank-Walter Steinmeier – wrote earlier this month that tension between the US and Russia is worse than during the Cold War:

It’s a fallacy to think that this is like the Cold War. The current times are different and more dangerous.

The head of Britain’s intelligence service, MI6 – Sir John Sawyers – agreed yesterday:

We are moving into an era that is as dangerous, if not more dangerous, as the cold war because we do not have that focus on a strategic relationship between Moscow and Washington.

This is even more dramatic when you realize that the U.S. and Soviets came within seconds of all-out nuclear war on numerous occasions during the Cold War. And only the courage of U.S. and Soviet individuals to say no when their superiors told them to fire nuclear weapons – in the face of mistaken readings – saved the planet from nuclear war.

And many experts warn that we’re drifting towards nuclear war today. Indeed, former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry said in February:

The likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War.

Postscript: The American government and mainstream media cast all of the blame on Russia. But many top U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials disagree (and see this).
Stocks, USDJPY Plunge After Dismal China Trade Data
Following an unexpected plunge in China's trade balance (to 6 month lows), US equity futures and USDJPY are tumbling as Yuan turmoil ripples through markets once again.

Misses across the board in China trade data…
- China Yuan Exports -5.6% YoY (exp. +2.5%)
- China Yuan Imports +2.2% YoY (exp. +5.5%)
- China Trade Balance 278.35bn (exp. 364.5bn)
- China USD Exports -10.0% (exp. -3.3%)
- China USD Imports -1.9% (exp. +0.6%)
- China USD Trade balance 41.99bn (exp. 53.00bn)
*CHINA TRADE STILL FACES GREAT UNCERTAINTIES: CUSTOMS' HUANG

Sparked chaotic trading in Yuan as offshore selling pressure accelerated post Golden Week…

And spread to USDJPY and implicity US equity futures…

USDJPY dropped a whole big figure erasing the gains of the day…
Thinking About Voting? Read This First

Submitted by Dan Sanchez via TheAntiMedia.org,

Colin Kaepernick has been abstaining from standing for the national anthem. Self-styled patriots have been losing their minds over it. That is because they are true believers in a cult. The cult is the State.

All states are cults: religions. And like all religions, states have sacraments, including holy rituals. The national anthem is one of the holy ritual sacraments of the cult of the American State. Those fully initiated and indoctrinated in that cult have been programmed to go into attack mode when divergent cult members (heretics) fail to observe such sacraments, like the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance to the holy pole cloth. Such peer pressure is how cults maintain their numbers.

Voting is another one of those sacramental rituals. As with the national anthem and pledge of allegiance, true believers are aghast when you advocate abstention from voting. School, which is our chief initiation into the State cult, thoroughly and universally indoctrinates its initiates into the sacrament of voting and democracy. We’ve all been brainwashed from the time we were tiny children into the holy myth of democracy: that democracy is what makes us special, what makes America exceptional; that patriots suffered and died for democracy, from the Suffragettes to the Civil Rights movement, from the Revolution to the Civil War to World War II to the War on Terror; that through voting we are empowered to fight for what’s right, to make our country, our very lives, better. You can see how important this sacrament is to the State cult from all of the voting propaganda pushed by the government and the establishment media.

But here’s the thing. Like all mystic rituals, the ritual of voting is based on superstition. Like an incantation or a rain dance, it is based on the superstition that great good can come of a mere gesture. Just as the rain dancer thinks he can summon rain that will save his crops, the voter thinks he can summon reform that will save his country.

But again, it’s a superstition. The individual act of voting is futile. Elections are virtually never decided by a single vote. You’re more likely to die on the way to the polling place than affect the outcome of an election. You know it’s futile. You know that in previous elections the outcome wouldn’t have been any different had you not voted. You know the same will be true for future elections.

Yes, in aggregate voting makes a difference. But that’s a different question. When you’re deciding whether to vote, you’re making an individual decision, not an aggregate one.

Perhaps you think that by voting at least you’re doing your small part, making your small contribution. But contributing toward what?

Imagine a giant siege engine that takes millions of people to push. Imagine if millions of people together purposefully pushed the engine to run over a group of innocent people tied up on the ground. Did those people die accidentally or were they murdered? If they were murdered, they were murdered by somebody. So by whom? The millions who pushed, of course. Even though any given individual’s decision whether to push or not didn’t make a difference one way or the other, every individual who pushed bears as much guilt as anybody else who pushed. Such an action is non-decisive, yet culpable at the same time.

Now imagine if there were two groups of tied-up victims. Millions are pushing the siege engine to the left, trying to steer it away from Group A and toward Group B. Millions of others are pushing to the right, away from Group B and toward Group A. One side prevails, and Group B is crushed to death. These helpless victims were murdered, just as much as the victims in the previous scenario were. By whom? By the millions who pushed the engine in their direction. This is true, even if their primary goal for pushing in that direction was to save the lives of Group A.

That’s effectively what you’re doing when you throw your weight behind a candidate or behind most forms of legislation. Candidates are package deals. Any candidate will violate the rights of some, even if they respect or defend the rights of others.

Objectors say it’s about going in the general right direction, making choices out of which the good outweighs the bad, that do a net amount of good, that is good “on balance.” But that is collectivist speak. There is no “good on balance” for the people whose lives are run over by the candidate you empowered: for the child who is bombed by Hillary’s foreign policy, for the man who shot is by Trump’s police state, or the people Gary Johnson and Bill Weld kept in cages when they were governors.

Objectors call it self-defense. But anti-war people should know better than anybody that collateral damage is never justified by self-defense. Objectors also say they are not responsible for the crimes committed by the office holders they voted for. But you can’t have it both ways. Either your vote doesn’t matter and it’s futile, or your vote matters and you’re culpable. (Although, again, I argue that you’re also culpable even though your vote is futile.)

Don’t fall for the lie that you’re limited to choosing the lesser of multiple evils. You’re not limited to pushing the engine in the direction of one group of victims or another, or even toward a third smaller group of victims. You can abstain from pushing at all. You can refuse to lend your weight to the State. It’s true that a single act of abstention alone won’t make a difference as to whether people get run over, or regarding who gets run over. But neither will pushing in one direction or another: neither will voting. So you may as well choose the option that doesn’t even negligibly contribute to injustice.

Not only do you have the option of merely abstaining from pushing, you can actually work to obstruct the siege engine, or to even dismantle it. Even the mere act of abstaining from voting contributes to the grand project of obstructing and dismantling the State. That is because voting is not just a ritual. It’s a power ritual.

In a sense, all cult rituals are power rituals. They are about building and maintaining the power of the cult’s leadership, or the religion’s priesthood, over the lives of the cult’s rank and file members. Rituals do this by solidifying the adherents’ faith in the cult’s god. The cult’s priesthood poses as representatives and agents for this god. In the case of modern, secular political religions, the cult god is the State itself, which is an incoherent notion of the “general will” made manifest: a mythical abstraction that somehow acts for the good of the people. The government poses as the priesthood of this deity.

Sacraments like the anthem, the pledge, and voting are so important to the government because they are what continually reinforce our faith in the State. Voting is particularly similar to holy communion. Voters line up at the polling booth to partake of divinity, believing that by participating in their own rule, they become one with the saving State they so adore.

This participation is a form of buy-in. It causes the voter to identify with the government — the captives to identify with their captors. The State is the Stockholm Syndrome institutionalized. And the higher the turnout, the greater the perceived legitimacy granted to the government priesthood.

Objectors say they are voting merely out of pragmatism and don’t intend to convey legitimacy to the government. But your intention is not the issue. The issue is the actual effect. It’s a simple fact that the government is able to use high turnout to convince its subjects that it represents the popular will — even to the subjects who voted for a losing candidate. It doesn’t matter that only individuals have wills, and so “the popular will” is an incoherent concept. What matters is that many people believe in it, and believe that high turnout signifies that the voice of the popular will has spoken.

Just think: how convincing would be a democratic government’s claim to legitimacy with a 1% turnout vs. a 99% turnout, even if that 99% turnout was split down the middle? And what’s true of the extremes is also true of the gradations.

Again, by voting you lend your weight to the State. You lend your weight to directing it toward certain victims. You also lend your weight to its sheer power and mass. By abstaining from voting, you dwindle the plausibility of the government’s claim to legitimacy and thus dwindle its power.

Obstructing and dismantling such a huge thing as the State is also an effort that takes millions. So your contribution toward even that is negligible in the grand scheme of things. But at least you would be making a negligible contribution, to a noble effort, a moral project, and not to an immoral, pernicious system.
As China Pops Its Housing Bubble, Car Sales Soar 29%

Late in September, we showed a viral surveillance video from inside new construction in east Hangzhou, which captured the sheer buying frenzy and panic, prompted by the new purchasing restrictions set to be unveiled just days later which would prevent people born outside Hangzhou from buying more than one property.

The crackdown on China’s latest housing bubble takes place as local home prices rose 9.2% in August from a year earlier, while in places like Shenzhen, prices soared almost 37%, in Beijing more than 23% and in Shanghai topped 30%. Such hefty price rises have been common all year in these so-called Tier 1 cities.

Now that the widely telegraphed restrictions have kicked, as expected China’s housing market now appears set for a sharp pullback after several months of record pricing gains. As Reuters reports, a wave of restrictions imposed on housing markets in major Chinese cities last week have cut the area of new homes sold in places such as Beijing and Shenzhen by more than half. More than 20 cities have imposed measures, including higher mortgage downpayments, to cool hot property markets that have raised official alarm in Beijing and fresh concerns about China’s ballooning debt.

Last week was a public holiday to mark National Day, traditionally a high season for property sales. Property agents said prices of new homes sold in the southern city of Shenzhen and in Beijing dropped 20 percent last week to entice buyers, compared with the previous week.

Beijing and Wuxi, a city near Shanghai, had no new launches last week, a survey of 10 major cities by property researcher CREIS showed. But the area of residential space sold, based on developments launched previously, plunged 86 percent and 72 percent, respectively, compared to the previous week. CREIS said cities including Shanghai, Hangzhou and Wuhan, launched new developments but the area put on the market declined more than 50 percent and the area sold dropped 35 percent to 60 percent.

“The new tightening measures are quite stringent,” said Alan Cheng, general manager of realtor Centaline Shenzhen. “It’s a blow to confidence and people are worried that prices will drop, so they are observing from the sidelines now.” The latest restrictions varied from city to city, but included higher mortgage downpayments for second and third-time home buyers, in a bid to stem the flow of cash into the red-hot property market.

* * *

However, since this is China, where one zombie asset bubble dies (briefly) only for another bubble to be (re)born, at the same time as the housing bubble is set to pop, the local population has turned its attention to cars.

According to Bloomberg, Chinese passenger-vehicle sales surged a gargantuan 29% last month, led by small-car makers Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. and Mazda Motor Corp., as consumers seeking to beat an expiring tax cut helped clear inventory on dealer lots. Deliveries of sedans, minivans, sport utility and multipurpose vehicles to dealerships rose to 2.27 million units in September, the state-backed China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said Wednesday.

Just like with the rush to buy housing ahead of purchasing restrictions, in the case of autos, consumers rushed to buy to take advantage of potentially expiring preferential tax terms. The government has so far stayed silent on whether it will extend a tax cut on purchases of vehicles with smaller engines beyond Dec. 31. As a result, sales could plunge next year if levies are allowed to double to 10 percent, said Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the China Passenger Car Association, a separate industry group. A slump in demand would worsen a capacity glut and dent profit margins, according to Steve Man, an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.

“The expiration of the current purchase tax cut is encouraging consumers to catch the last bus and bring forward their car purchases,” said Huang Xiaowei, an analyst with Shenzhen-based WAYS Consulting Co. “Dealers are preparing stocks for the surging demand at the year-end.”

The scramble to buy cars has left many carmakers with little to no inventory. A gauge of vehicle inventory fell for a third straight month in September to the lowest level in two years, according to the China Automobile Dealer Association. Dealers of Japanese brands in August saw profits increase by 27% from a month earlier to 1,851 yuan per vehicle after scaling back discounts due to strong demand, according to WAYS Consulting.

Mazda said its sales in China jumped 49 percent in September from a year earlier, led by models including the Axela compact, which qualifies for the tax cut. Geely raised its full-year sales target after September deliveries surged 82 percent from a year earlier.

Even General Motors’ car sales, which had recently slowed in China, surged 16% to 343,773 units, with deliveries of Cadillac sedans increasing 63%. Great Wall Motor Co.’s sales rose 49 percent to 97,685 units, with SUV deliveries reaching 87,627 units.

What happens should both the housing and car bubbles pop? Well, buy stocks (again) or (even more) bitcoin, because in China, where the total amount of bank deposit is in the mid-$20 trillion range, the bubbles never actually die, they just get recycled.
Meet The "Real" Deplorables

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Below are some excerpts from Michael Tracey’s latest article: The Real Deplorables.

Enjoy.

The real “deplorables” generally aren’t the people whom Hillary denounced as wholly “irredeemable,” or at whom economically secure commentators fulminate on a regular basis. More obviously “deplorable” are Hillary’s fellow financial, political, economic, and military elites who wrecked the economy, got us mired in endless unwinnable foreign wars, and erected a virtually impenetrable cultural barrier between everyday Americans trying to live fruitful lives and their pretentious, well-heeled superiors ensconced in select coastal enclaves. It is thanks to the actions of this “basket of deplorables” that we’re in the situation we’re in, where an oaf like Trump is perilously close to seizing the presidency.

At a recent Trump rally in Lancaster County, Pa., I was bemused to encounter a coterie of local Amish people who’d traveled there together by bus. Asked why they backed Trump, the overwhelming response was that Amish folks just wanted to preserve their traditional way of life (which they saw as under siege) and perceived Trump as enabling them to carry on with it. Some told me they supported Trump not because of some overweening disdain for their nation’s fellowmen, or immigrants, or even coastal liberals, but because they felt that the federal government was intruding on their ability to properly run their small farms.

One Amish gentleman, remarking on Trump’s apparent lack of strident religious belief, added of Trump: “He’s not a Christian, but he’ll protect the Christian cause.” Veteran religion reporter Bob Smietana later remarked that he could not recall a previous instance of Amish people showing up en masse to a presidential campaign event.

Naturally, upon tweeting photos from the rally, I was inundated with indignant cries from ostensible liberals claiming that the people in question weren’t real Amish, or were desperately deluded, or similar snark. True: the Amish lifestyle isn’t for everybody. Nor do the Amish foist it on anyone else. One virtue of the United States is that it’s a huge, pluralistic democratic republic with lots of land and lots of room for people to practice their beliefs as they see fit.

You don’t necessarily have to love these peculiar belief systems to tolerate their existence. Indeed, some of them undoubtedly contain facets that are bigoted and/or vulgar, and you are free to vociferously criticize them. Some even might be cut off from popular culture, as is the case with the Amish, who certainly are not attuned to the daily outrage avalanche dished out by mainstream-media organs—but this doesn’t mean that the people who practice old-fashioned lifestyles are somehow morally sullied or “deplorable.” It means they have different life trajectories.

This also holds true in Lewiston, Maine, where Trump is favored to win the 2nd Congressional District and therefore at least one (potentially crucial) electoral vote. (Maine and Nebraska allocate their electoral votes by congressional district.) Lots of Franco-Americans populate this area, and many old-timers still speak French with a distinctive Central Mainer dialect. (Often it comes out when folks get inebriated at the bars in town.) When I visited recently, everyone basically had the same story: mills use to be the lifeblood of the local economy and by extension its civic institutions. Once the mills inexplicably shuttered, these workers lost their sense of location and community. Social-club memberships dwindled; parades and marches down the main thoroughfare became less of an attraction. There’s just not a hell of a lot going on nowadays, except Patriots games on TV, drinking, and drugs. Anybody with the means usually either bolts for relatively more prosperous Bangor to the north, or south to Boston and beyond.

Are the people who live in Lewiston really “deplorables”? Most of them like Trump, but they’re not the ones who crashed the economy or agitated to invade Iraq, as Hillary did.

Again: perhaps the true deplorables are the unaccountable elites whose decisions directly worsened life for millions of Americans. Oddly, you never hear Hillary running around to high-roller fundraisers condemning Goldman Sachs for their deplorable conduct; maybe that’s because they’ve directly given her and Bill hundreds of thousands of dollars for “speeches,” excerpts of which finally came out last Friday and are just as degenerate as you’d expect.

(Goldman banned partners from giving money to Trump’s campaign, but handing over cash to Hillary is still perfectly fine.)

Maybe the Amish of southeast Pennsylvania or the Franco-Americans of central Maine don’t use the correct Twitter hashtags or subscribe to Lena Dunham’s newsletter, but they’re still good people with normal ambitions for a happy, secure life. Screeching “deplorable!” at them is itself deplorable, especially because it lets the elites who bungled the country’s affairs off the hook.

Read the entire piece here: The Real Deplorables.
State Department Asked What Is Difference Between Yemen And Syria Bombings, Awkward Moment Follows

As we asked rhetorically yesterday, how Kerry can accuse Russia of committing war crimes in Syria with a straight face is unclear, as reports of atrocious crimes committed in Yemen continue to surface.

It seems AP's Tom Lee questioned this hypocrisy also.

As The Independent reports, a US government spokesperson has struggled to answer questions put to him on why the US condemns Russian bombing in Syria, and supports Saudi-led bombing in Yemen, both of which have killed thousands of civilians.

During a media briefing in Washington DC on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson John Kirby was asked repeatedly about whether Saudi coalition bombing of Houthi rebels in Sanaa – facilitated by US arms sales to the Gulf state – deliberately targets civilian infrastructure.

“Over the weekend there was this air strike on a funeral by the Saudi-led coalition,” Matt Lee of the Associated Press asked. “I was just wondering: does the administration see any difference between this kind of thing, and what you accuse the Russians, Syrians and the Iranians of doing in Syria, and particularly Aleppo?”

Mr Kirby struggled to answer the question, pointing out that the Kingdom has launched an investigation into how the funeral hall was hit, whereas nothing of the sort has been carried out by the Syrian or Russian governments, which he accused of deliberately causing harm to civilians.

Russia did call for an investigation into the bombing of an aid convoy near Aleppo on September 19th, which contributed to the suspension of talks on Syria between Washington and Moscow.

Mr Lee, the AP’s diplomatic correspondent, continued to hold Mr Kirby’s feet to the fire on the Yemeni issue, pressing him for an answer on how “an increasing number of Yemeni civilians are at risk and being killed by weapons that the United States has furnished to the Saudis and their coalition partners.”

“You don’t find any kind of issue with this? Because a lot of people do, including on [Capitol] Hill,” he added.

Mr Kirby said that the situation was very different in Syria and Yemen, pointing out that Iranian-supplied Houthi rockets have killed Saudi citizens in recent months.

“The Saudi-led coalition were invited in by the Yemeni government – now I know what you’re going to say, the Russians were invited by [Syrian President] Assad… but [the Saudis] are under real threat on their side of the border in that war,” he said.

But as TheAntiMedia's Darius Shahtahmasebi details, it's not just some of the better-informed US press corps that is angry at this utter hypocrisy… Russia’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, lost her cool in response to a Western journalist who asked her the question: “Why is Russia supporting Assad, who is killing civilians?”

Apparently, one should remind themselves that American bombs, which have been launched in at least ten Muslim countries since 1980, do not kill civilians. Ever.

If they do, these are mere accidents – always.

And more often than not, the civilians were probably doing something bad, anyway, or they wouldn’t have been on the receiving end of American missiles.

Despite these glaring contradictions in the journalist’s question, Zakharova focused more on the failures of the parties involved to bring peace to Syria. Her response provides us with some valuable insight into why the Syrian peace process continues to fail. It also raises some very critical questions and points for consideration.

Zakharova said:

“This is the crux of the issue – let’s sit down and agree which groups are terrorists, and which ones are not. Let’s begin to work together. What other way is there? Tell me. You want us to just exit Syria? Pack up and leave the terrorists there? That is not a way out. I am not going to repeat just how many UN Security Council documents and resolutions there are that call to fight against terrorism. And Al-Nusra is a terrorist group! [as per the UN list].”

Washington and its allies would undoubtedly welcome a scenario in which Russia would be forced to abandon the Syrian regime. This could explain John Kerry’s recent statements that Russia should be investigated for war crimes, something the U.S. would never inflict upon itself despite its military ventures in an overwhelming number of sovereign nations.

Zakharova added:

“Leaving is not an option for us because everyone now understands that something has to be done in order to curb this terror threat. This is the crux of the issue. And of course we understand that armed conflict is taking place and we see that the civilian population is suffering, there is no question about that. But this is why we created the center for cooperation with the U.S., so that we could work and decide together.”

Zakharova then proceeded to tell the journalist the real reasons behind the failing of the peace process in Syria — from Russia’s point of view:

“There are parties that continually stop the US and Russia from working together on this matter. Despite arrangements in place for this to happen, they still got their way to ensure this did not happen. This does not mean that positions can’t change tomorrow – but today it is advantageous for these parties to have interrupted this dialogue between US and Russia.”

“This is the crux of the issue. And one more thing – the main message that [Western] mainstream media is delivering is that ‘the Russian air force is killing Syrian civilians.’ Or the Syrian army is doing that with the help of the Russian air force.”

Zakharova apparently took issue with the fact the U.S. coalition has been in Syria longer than Russia has yet only Russia gets lambasted regularly by the corporate media.

“One more question – 2 years ago, what on earth did the American coalition proceed to do there?

“You know, if the civilians were not in danger, what were you doing there? Well, they were in danger, and the Americans went there, in their words, to help them. Do you understand that you can’t be selective and look at things in isolation? We have to agree that the civilian population is suffering, the blockade, the hostages and they are surrounded by al-Nusra. So let’s sit down and agree together, where are the civilians and where are the terror groups? And work together.”

However — and this is where Zakharova’s response becomes incredibly insightful — the Minister actually designates two parties that have blocked the Syrian peace process from moving forward. Zakharova does not name them directly, but there are only a handful of countries she could be referencing, making this an issue worthy of investigation:

“This is the work that we are being stopped from doing. The talks on Syria are about to begin again – but everyone understands that the two rotating member countries (from the UN Security Council) have a decisive capability and they are blocking our progress. This is because we have finally approached the crux of the problem – al-Nusra.” (emphasis added)

“Al-Nusra are the new mujahideen. Do you understand this concept? Go and read some history – research how al-Qaeda came to be. It’s exactly the same thing. Point by point, it is exactly the same. The financing; the moral and ideological support. And what did your relationship with the mujahideen cause? It created al-Qaeda. And al-Qaeda – you all know what that is.”

“So you can’t simplify [isolated events] like this, you have to understand what caused it. You can’t logically follow mainstream [garbage] ‘Russia is killing everyone and everyone is trying to stop Russia.’ This is rubbish.”

Zakharova doesn’t let the journalist off lightly – nor Western media in general. Zakharova’s frustration, felt by many of us who are trying to follow the Syrian conflict as accurately as possible, is that the simplification of these issues, taken out of their historical context, presents a threat to the advancement of the human race. Without understanding why events are unfolding the way they are, the American people and the people of the world could be led down a dangerous path and would be none the wiser.

“I’m very sorry for my expression but – such simplification means that [Western] stupidity is more dangerous than the threat itself. And when simplification of this scale happens in [Western] mainstream media, I think this is more scary than terrorism itself. Simplify everything to the extreme, and only show it from one angle it might work in.”

No one can morally justify potential Russian war crimes. However, the evidence continues to demonstrate that one side of the conflict has refused to cooperate pragmatically in Syria and has instead continued a number of policies that have merely exacerbated the conflict.

If the U.S. were truly committed to fighting terrorism, they would work with Russia to determine which groups should be designated terror groups and which ones should be off-limits. So far they have not. Apparently, striking Syrian soldiers who are battling ISIS militants is a much more worthwhile venture – so worthwhile it seems that the U.S. wants to do it again.

* * *

We are reminded of Glenn Greenwald's clear tweet on the matter…

3 rules of US Exceptionalism: 1) Our killing is better than theirs; 2) Nothing we do can be "terrorism"; 3) Only enemies are "war criminals"

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 6, 2016

This is not to say Russia and Syria should not be investigated for war crimes – but maybe, just maybe, we could live in a world where everyone responsible for committing these gross acts could be held accountable, instead of just those who pose an economic threat to the West.
CLiNToN DeLiVeRaNCe…