- The Future Of Remote Work, According To Startups
The Future Of Remote Work, According To Startups
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/15/2020 – 02:45No matter where in the world you log in from—Silicon Valley, London, and beyond—COVID-19 has triggered a mass exodus from traditional office life. Now that the lucky among us have settled into remote work, many are left wondering if this massive, inadvertent work-from-home experiment will change work for good.
In the following charts, Visual Capitalist’s Theresa A.G. Wood features data from a comprehensive survey conducted by UK-based startup network Founders Forum, in which hundreds of founders and their teams revealed their experiences of remote work and their plans for a post-pandemic future.
While the future remains a blank page, it’s clear that hundreds of startups have no plans to hit backspace on remote work.
Who’s Talking
Based primarily in the UK, almost half of the survey participants were founders, and nearly a quarter were managers below the C-suite.
Prior to pandemic-related lockdowns, 94% of those surveyed had worked from an external office. Despite their brick-and-mortar setup, more than 90% were able to accomplish the majority of their work remotely.
Gen X and Millennials made up most of the survey contingent, with nearly 80% of respondents with ages between 26-50, and 40% in the 31-40 age bracket.
From improved work-life balance and productivity levels to reduced formal teamwork, these entrepreneurs flagged some bold truths about what’s working and what’s not.
Founders With A Remote Vision
If history has taught us anything, it’s that world events have the potential to cause permanent mass change, like 9/11’s lasting impact on airport security.
Although most survey respondents had plans to be back in the office within six months, those startups are rethinking their remote work policies as a direct result of COVID-19.
How might that play out in a post-pandemic world?
Based on the startup responses, a realistic post-pandemic work scenario could involve 3 to 5 days of remote work a week, with a couple dedicated in-office days for the entire team.
Upwards of 92% of respondents said they wanted the option to work from home in some capacity.
It’s important to stay open to learning and experimenting with new ways of working. The current pandemic has only accelerated this process. We’ll see the other side of this crisis, and I’m confident it will be brighter.
– Evgeny Shadchnev, CEO, Makers Academy
Productivity Scales at Home
Working from home hasn’t slowed down these startups—in fact, it may have improved overall productivity in many cases.
More than half of the respondents were more productive from home, and 55% also reported working longer hours.
Blurred lines, however, raised some concerns.
From chores and rowdy children to extended hours, working from home often makes it difficult to compartmentalize. As a result, employers and employees may have to draw firmer lines between work and home in their remote policies, especially in the long term.
Although the benefits appear to outweigh the concerns, these issues pose important questions about our increasingly remote future.
Teams Reveal Some Intel
To uncover some work-from-home easter eggs (“Better for exercise. MUCH more pleasant environment”), we grouped nearly 400 open-ended questions according to sentiment and revealed some interesting patterns.
From serendipitous encounters and beers with colleagues to more formal teamwork, an overwhelming number of the respondents missed the camaraderie of team interactions.
It was clear startups did not miss the hours spent commuting every day. During the pandemic, those hours have been replaced by family time, work, or other activities like cooking healthy meals and working out.
Remote working has been great for getting us through lockdown—but truly creative work needs the magic of face to face interaction, not endless Zoom calls. Without the serendipity and chemistry of real-world encounters, the world will be a far less creative place.
– Rohan Silva, CEO, Second Home
The Future Looks Remote
This pandemic has delivered a new normal that’s simultaneously challenging and revealing. For now, it looks like a new way of working is being coded into our collective software.
What becomes of the beloved open-office plan in a pandemic-prepped world remains to be seen, but if these startups are any indication, work-life may have changed for good.
- Hagia Sophia And Turkey's Supremacism
Hagia Sophia And Turkey’s Supremacism
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/15/2020 – 02:00Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,
According to his fans and political allies, Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, conquered Istanbul for the second time when he signed a decree to convert the monumental Hagia Sophia cathedral in Istanbul, built in 537, into a mosque. With that logic, he became the first statesman who conquered a city that already belongs to his country.
“First, you should fill Sultanahmet (Blue Mosque, Istanbul) … This is a plot, this is sheer provocation,” Erdoğan told a crowd as recently as in March 2019 when party fans demanded the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque. He was right. Most of Istanbul’s nearly 3,000 mosques (one mosque per 5,000 population) do not attract crowds. Sixteen months later, Erdoğan changed his mind.
In this theater-like play, he said the supreme court would decide on the fate of Hagia Sophia. Under a constitutional amendment in 2010, Erdoğan won the authority to appoint all members of that court, the Council of State. Erdoğan said he would respect the court’s verdict in “whichever direction it comes.”
And, unsurprisingly, the verdict came in the direction Erdoğan wanted: On July 9, the Council of State decided to void a cabinet decision, signed in 1934 by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, designating Hagia Sophia as a museum, in a show of respect for Christianity. Only an hour after the verdict was announced, Erdoğan signed a decree for the conversion into a mosque of the monument on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
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537: Byzantine Emperor Justinian I builds Hagia Sophia as a cathedral in then Constantinople.
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1453: Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II (Mehmet the Conqueror) converts Hagia Sophia into a mosque after taking Constantinople from the Byzantines.
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1453-1934: Hagia Sophia remains a mosque.
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June 7, 1931: The cabinet of the infant Turkish Republic signs a decree for the restoration of priceless mosaic frescoes at Hagia Sophia. The decree gave the job to Thomas Whittemore, an American Byzantine specialist.
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Aug. 25, 1934: Turkish Education Minister Abidin Özmen writes a letter to Prime Minister İsmet İnönü to inform him that he had received a verbal order from Atatürk for the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a museum.
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Nov. 24, 1934: The Turkish cabinet signs a decree that “un-mosques” Hagia Sophia.
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1980: Turkish Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel allows Muslim prayers at an annex of Hagia Sophia.
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1981: The military junta bans Muslim prayers at Hagia Sophia.
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1991: Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel re-opens the annex to Muslim prayers.
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2005-2020: The Council of State rejects three applications for the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.
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July 9, 2020: The Council of State rules in favor of the fourth application to make Hagia Sophia a mosque.
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July 24, 2020: Hagia Sophia will open as a mosque, with a Greek name and Orthodox frescoes on its walls.
Erdoğan comes from the ranks of political Islam, which made its debut in Turkey in the late 1960s – and was not then on the global radar. In the 1970s, Islamists of all flavors, including Erdoğan’s mentor, Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, made the “Hagia Sophia Mosque” a symbol of the completion of Istanbul’s conquest. The iconic church also became a symbol in the Islamists’ fight against Atatürk’s secularism.
Why now? Erdoğan possibly thought the move could reverse the ongoing erosion of his popularity due, among others, to a looming economic crisis. All the same, it appears to be wrongly timed, as presidential and parliamentary elections are three years from now and Turks are notorious for not having a good memory. Praying at the Hagia Sophia Mosque will not turn a hungry man into a happy man.
The conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque has once again underlined the insane racism of the majority in Turkey against the sanity of a dwindling minority.
One Muslim theologian, Cemil Kılıç, argued against the decision: “This is against the Quranic commandments,” he said. “Prophet Mohammed never converted a Jewish or Christian house of prayer into a mosque.”
His voice came against an abundance of racist comments on social media:
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“Jewish and Christian bastards will now understand who we are.”
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“Erdoğan is correcting what Jewish, Shabbetaist (Jews who converted to Islam), atheist crowds have done in the past century.”
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“You Jews, are you having fun?”
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“Day of mourning for Crusaders and Jewish converts.”
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“Cry, you Greeks! And wait for your turn, you Jews!”
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“Sad day for Zionists.”
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“A Shabbetaist Jew from Thessaloniki [Ataturk, born in Thessaloniki] closed it [to Muslim prayers] and man from Black Sea (Erdogan) opened it.”
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“You Jewish dogs, it will come to Al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem] too.”
This much of national sentiment reflects sheer ignorance, a hatred for “the religious other,” a self-isolationist thinking and a century-long desire to challenge all things non-Turkish, with an emphasis on “the Jew.” An Islamist leader decides to convert a monumental cathedral into a mosque, and his fans, are spilling out hatred against Jews. This is Turkey’s new normal.
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- Don't Look Now, But This Airline Just Cancelled All International Flights Until March 2021 Due To COVID
Don’t Look Now, But This Airline Just Cancelled All International Flights Until March 2021 Due To COVID
Tyler Durden
Wed, 07/15/2020 – 01:00The prospects for a V-shaped recovery in airlines are looking dim. The latest indication of how slow things are getting back to normal in the industry is Australian-based Qantas Airlines pulling all of its international flights off its website this week.
The airline is cancelling routes to New Zealand until September 1 and flights to other international destinations have been cancelled until March 28, 2021 – nearly another year away – according to the Daily Mail.
“All international and sale flights have been removed from the website until further notice due to the coronavirus pandemic,” a spokesperson for the airline said. “There are some international flights in the system but they are not currently operating.”
Flights are still available through the airline’s partner airlines like Emirates, British Airways and Cathay Pacific. But Qantas wants to prevent new bookings from being made on its own airline. Flights that have already been booked will proceed as planned.
The move comes weeks after the airline cut 6,000 jobs, representing 20% of its workforce. The company’s CEO has also predicted that international flights wouldn’t resume until July 2021.
“We have never experienced anything like this before – no-one has. All airlines are in the biggest crisis our industry has ever faced,” he said last month. “Revenues have collapsed, entire fleets are grounded and the world biggest carriers are taking extreme action just to survive.”
The decision to halt international flights comes after the airline’s decision to also ground its double decker A380 planes for at least three years and to retire six Boeing 747s.
Trade Minister Simon Birmingham said in June that Australia’s borders would probably remain closed for another 4 months.
- America, You've Been Blacklisted: McCarthyism Refashioned For A New Age
America, You’ve Been Blacklisted: McCarthyism Refashioned For A New Age
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 23:50Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty—if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox—if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”
– Edward R. Murrow
For those old enough to have lived through the McCarthy era, there is a whiff of something in the air that reeks of the heightened paranoia, finger-pointing, fear-mongering, totalitarian tactics that were hallmarks of the 1950s.
Back then, it was the government – spearheaded by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee – working in tandem with private corporations and individuals to blacklist Americans suspected of being communist sympathizers.
By the time the witch hunts carried out by federal and state investigative agencies drew to a close, thousands of individuals (the vast majority of them innocent any crime whatsoever) had been accused of communist ties, investigated, subpoenaed and blacklisted. Regarded as bad risks, the accused were blacklisted, and struggled to secure employment. The witch hunt ruined careers, resulting in suicides, and tightened immigration to exclude alleged subversives.
Seventy years later, the vitriol, fear-mongering and knee-jerk intolerance associated with McCarthy’s tactics are once again being deployed in a free-for-all attack by those on both the political Left and Right against anyone who, in daring to think for themselves, subscribes to ideas or beliefs that run counter to the government’s or mainstream thought.
It doesn’t even seem to matter what the issue is anymore (racism, Confederate monuments, Donald Trump, COVID-19, etc.): modern-day activists are busily tearing down monuments, demonizing historic figures, boycotting corporations for perceived political transgressions, and using their bully pulpit to terrorize the rest of the country into kowtowing to their demands.
All the while, the American police state continues to march inexorably forward.
This is how fascism, which silences all dissenting views, prevails.
The silence is becoming deafening.
After years of fighting in and out of the courts to keep their 87-year-old name, the NFL’s Washington Redskins have bowed to public pressure and will change their name and team logo to avoid causing offense. The new name, not yet announced, aims to honor both the military and Native Americans.
Eleanor Holmes Norton, a delegate to the House of Representatives who supports the name change, believes the team’s move “reflects the present climate of intolerance to names, statues, figments of our past that are racist in nature or otherwise imply racism [and] are no longer tolerated.”
Present climate of intolerance, indeed.
Yet it wasn’t a heightened racial conscience that caused the Redskins to change their brand. It was the money. The team caved after its corporate sponsors including FedEx, PepsiCo, Nike and Bank of America threatened to pull their funding.
So much for that U.S. Supreme Court victory preventing the government from censoring trademarked names it considers distasteful or scandalous.
Who needs a government censor when the American people are already doing such a great job at censoring themselves and each other, right?
Now there’s a push underway to boycott Goya Foods after its CEO, Robert Unanue, praised President Trump during a press conference to announce Goya’s donation of a million cans of Goya chickpeas and a million other food products to American food banks as part of the president’s Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.
Mind you, Unanue—whose grandfather emigrated to the U.S. from Spain—also praised the Obamas when they were in office, but that kind of equanimity doesn’t carry much weight in this climate of intolerance.
Not to be outdone, the censors are also taking aim at To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about Atticus Finch, a white lawyer in the Jim Crow South who defends a black man falsely accused of rape. Sixty years after its debut, the book remains a powerful testament to moral courage in the face of racial bigotry and systemic injustice, told from the point of view of a child growing up in the South, but that’s not enough for the censors. They want to axe the book—along with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—from school reading curriculums because of the presence of racial slurs that could make students feel “humiliated or marginalized.”
Never mind that the N-word makes a regular appearance in hip-hop songs. The prevailing attitude seems to be that it’s okay to use the N-word as long as the person saying the word is not white. Rapper Kendrick Lamar “would like white America to let black people exclusively have the word.”
Talk about a double standard.
This is also the overlooked part of how oppression becomes systemic: it comes about as a result of a combined effort between the populace, the corporations and the government.
McCarthyism worked the same way.
What started with Joseph McCarthy’s headline-grabbing scare tactics in the 1950s about Communist infiltrators of American society snowballed into a devastating witch hunt once corporations and the American people caught the fever.
McCarthyism was a contagion, like the plague, spreading like wildfire among people too fearful or weak or gullible or paranoid or greedy or ambitious to denounce it for what it was: an opportunistic scare tactic engineered to make the government more powerful.
McCarthy, a young Republican senator, grasped the opportunity to make a name for himself by capitalizing on the Cold War paranoia of the time. In a speech in February 1950, McCarthy claimed to have a list of over 200 members of the Communist Party “working and shaping the policy of the U.S. State Department.” The speech was picked up by the Associated Press, without substantiating the facts, and within a few days the hysteria began.
McCarthy specialized in sensational and unsubstantiated accusations about Communist infiltration of the American government, particularly the State Department. He also targeted well-known Hollywood actors and directors, trade unionists and teachers. Many others were brought before the inquisitional House Committee on Un-American Activities for questioning.
“McCarthyism” eventually smeared all the accused with the same broad brush, whether the evidence was good, bad or nonexistent.
The parallels to the present movement cannot be understated.
Even now, with modern-day McCarthyism sweeping the nation and America’s own history being blacklisted, I have to wonder what this sudden outrage and crisis of conscience is really all about.
Certainly, anyone who believes that the injustices, cruelties and vicious callousness of the U.S. government are unique to the Trump Administration has not been paying attention.
No matter what the team colors might be at any given moment, the playbook remains the same. The leopard has not changed its spots.
Scrape off the surface layers and you will find that the American police state that is continuing to wreak havoc on the rights of the people under the Trump Administration is the same police state that wreaked havoc on the rights of the people under every previous administration.
So please spare me the media hysterics and the outrage and the hypocritical double standards of those whose moral conscience appears to be largely dictated by their political loyalties.
While we squabble over which side is winning this losing battle, a tsunami approaches.
While the populace wages war over past injustices, injustice in the here and now continues to trample innocent lives underfoot. Certainly, little of significance is being done to stem the tide of institutional racism that has resulted in disproportionate numbers of black Americans who continue to be stopped, frisked, shot at, arrested and jailed.
I’ve had enough of the short- and long-term amnesia that allows political sycophants to conveniently forget the duplicity, complicity and mendacity of their own party while casting blame on everyone else.
When you drill right down to the core of things, the policies of a Trump Administration have been no different from an Obama Administration or a Bush Administration, at least not where it really counts.
In other words, Democrats by any other name have been Republicans, and vice versa.
War has continued. Surveillance has continued. Drone killings have continued. Police shootings have continued. Highway robbery meted out by government officials has continued. Corrupt government has continued. Profit-driven prisons have continued. Censorship and persecution of anyone who criticizes the government have continued. The militarization of the police has continued. The devastating SWAT team raids have continued. The government’s efforts to label dissidents as extremists and terrorists has continued.
The more things change, the more they have stayed the same.
We’ve been stuck in this political Groundhog’s Day for so long that minor deviations appear to be major developments while obscuring the fact that we’re stuck on repeat, unable to see the forest for the trees.
This is what is referred to as creeping normality, or a death by a thousand cuts.
It’s a concept invoked by Pulitzer Prize-winning scientist Jared Diamond to describe how major changes, if implemented slowly in small stages over time, can be accepted as normal without the shock and resistance that might greet a sudden upheaval.
Diamond’s concerns related to Easter Island’s now-vanished civilization and the societal decline and environmental degradation that contributed to it, but it’s a powerful analogy for the steady erosion of our freedoms and decline of our country right under our noses.
As Diamond explains, “In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism… Why didn’t they look around, realize what they were doing, and stop before it was too late? What were they thinking when they cut down the last palm tree?”
His answer: “I suspect that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper.”
Much like America’s own colonists, Easter Island’s early colonists discovered a new world—“a pristine paradise”—teeming with life. Yet almost 2000 years after its first settlers arrived, Easter Island was reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they failed to preserve paradise for future generations.
The same could be said of the America today: it, too, is being reduced to a barren graveyard by a populace so focused on their immediate needs that they are failing to preserve freedom for future generations.
In Easter Island’s case, as Diamond speculates:
The forest…vanished slowly, over decades. Perhaps war interrupted the moving teams; perhaps by the time the carvers had finished their work, the last rope snapped. In the meantime, any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation… The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect… Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference. Gradually trees became fewer, smaller, and less important. By the time the last fruit-bearing adult palm tree was cut, palms had long since ceased to be of economic significance. That left only smaller and smaller palm saplings to clear each year, along with other bushes and treelets. No one would have noticed the felling of the last small palm.”
Sound painfully familiar yet?
We’ve already torn down the rich forest of liberties established by our founders. It has vanished slowly, over the decades. Those who warned against the dangers posed by too many laws, invasive surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids and the like have been silenced and ignored. They stopped teaching about freedom in the schools. Few Americans know their history. And even fewer seem to care that their fellow Americans are being jailed, muzzled, shot, tasered, and treated as if they have no rights at all.
The erosion of our freedoms happened so incrementally, no one seemed to notice. Only the older generations, remembering what true freedom was like, recognized the difference. Gradually, the freedoms enjoyed by the citizenry became fewer, smaller and less important. By the time the last freedom falls, no one will know the difference.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls: with a thousand cuts, each one justified or ignored or shrugged over as inconsequential enough by itself to bother, but they add up.
Each cut, each attempt to undermine our freedoms, each loss of some critical right—to think freely, to assemble, to speak without fear of being shamed or censored, to raise our children as we see fit, to worship or not worship as our conscience dictates, to eat what we want and love who we want, to live as we want—they add up to an immeasurable failure on the part of each and every one of us to stop the descent down that slippery slope.
We are on that downward slope now.
The contagion of fear that McCarthy helped spread with the help of government agencies, corporations and the power elite is still poisoning the well, whitewashing our history, turning citizen against citizen, and stripping us of our rights.
What we desperately need is the kind of resolve embodied by Edward R. Murrow, the most-respected newsman of his day.
On March 9, 1954, Murrow dared to speak truth to power about the damage McCarthy was inflicting on the American people. His message remains a timely warning for our age.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular. This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it—and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ”The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
America is approaching another reckoning right now, one that will pit our commitment to freedom principles against a level of fear-mongering that is being used to wreak havoc on everything in its path.
The outcome rests, as always, with “we the people.” As Murrow said to his staff before the historic March 9 broadcast: “No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”
Take heed, America.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this may be your last warning.
- China-Iran "Strategic Accord" To Give Tehran $400 Billion Boost Over Next 25 Years
China-Iran “Strategic Accord” To Give Tehran $400 Billion Boost Over Next 25 Years
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 23:30China has remained Iran’s top trading partner in what’s become a crucial lifeline for the Islamic Republic, which is even turning into military and weapons supply assistance.
Early this week The New York Times reported that Iran and China have concluded lengthy negotiations for a long term trade and military partnership which is expected to see some $400 billion worth of Chinese investments pour into the Islamic Republic over the next 25 years.
Based upon a previous 2016 agreement which deepened ties and saw presidents Xi and Rouhani exchange visits, the deal has been described as ‘secretive’ – though Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif and others has batted down the idea that there’s anything secretive to it at all, also given they’ve been very public in admitting a deal is pending, eager to defiantly show Washington that Iran has powerful international backers.
Prior talks between Xi Jinping and Hassan Rouhani of Iran, file image via China Foreign Ministry. But no doubt Iranian officials have to be concerned over either US or Israeli potential attempts to diplomatically sabotage the deepening Iran-China ties and cooperation. For starters, over the past year Chinese shipping companies have come under sanctions for helping Iran evade US sanctions on exports.
Nonetheless the Times framed it as having been “quietly” negotiated, also as it’s faced controversy in Iranian parliament:
Iran and China have quietly drafted a sweeping economic and security partnership that would clear the way for billions of dollars of Chinese investments in energy and other sectors, undercutting the Trump administration’s efforts to isolate the Iranian government because of its nuclear and military ambitions.
The partnership, detailed in an 18-page proposed agreement obtained by The New York Times, would vastly expand Chinese presence in banking, telecommunications, ports, railways and dozens of other projects. In exchange, China would receive a regular — and, according to an Iranian official and an oil trader, heavily discounted — supply of Iranian oil over the next 25 years.
And what’s sure to have the Pentagon and US intelligence worried, is this clearly extends China’s influence and military footprint in the Middle East, where it’s already long well-known to be quietly supporting Assad and the Syrian Army.
Like Russia, China has for the most part been on the opposite side of US proxy wars in the region. And more immediately, such an oil for trade and investment partnerships deal would help Iran more effectively survive US sanctions, and further sever it from any reliance on Europe.
Below are are further fields of cooperation expected under the massive and ambitious deal, which reports say could be inked as early as March of next year:
- Chinese assistance to Iran in rolling out its 5G network.
- Military cooperation, including joint training exercises and defense tech development.
- Chinese access to strategic Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf, such as at Jask – a huge strategic boost for Beijing.
- And in turn Iranian access to China’s growing string of ports lining South Asia.
- Possible rollout of Chinese and Russian electronic warfare capabilities, including anti-missile defense shields, crucial in defending against possible Israeli or US attacks.
Despite all these advantages of sanctions-racked Iran, critics both within and outside the country have argued it essentially constitutes “selling off” the country to China at a moment it’s greatly weakened by sanctions and finds itself in an essential ‘state of war’ posture with Washington.
But in desperation, it appears this is all a risk Iran’s leaders are willing to take, given that while facing down US and Israeli military superiority, they see it as past time to do a deal with “the devil you know”.
- Australia Needs To Decouple From China As "Second Cold War" Looms: Expert
Australia Needs To Decouple From China As “Second Cold War” Looms: Expert
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 23:10Authored by Daniel Teng via The Epoch Times,
An international strategist has told a parliamentary inquiry that Australia will need to build stronger “resilience” and less “dependence” on China, as in the near future, the world will likely fracture into two major geopolitical blocs akin to the Cold War – one bloc centered around Washington and the other Beijing.
Speaking to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade on July 2, Alan Dupont, CEO of the Cognoscenti Group, said increased economic and political tensions between Washington and Beijing (particularly related to the trade war, Taiwan, and the South China Sea) would accelerate a “decoupling” of the world’s economies and see the formation of two geopolitical blocs.
Dupont, who is an expert in international affairs, said Beijing would likely lead an “authoritarian” bloc, which would include countries such as Russia, Iran, North Korea, and countries from Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) shakes hands with his Iran counterpart Hassan Rouhani during their bilateral meeting in Shanghai on May 21, 2014. (Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images)
The other bloc would include democracies from North America, Europe, and parts of Latin America and Africa. He noted that Australia would “certainly” side with the United States.
Dupont acknowledged that trading relations would be “fluid” in what he called “the second Cold War, the one we’re going into now.” There will be “a lot of movement across the divisions” compared to the original Cold War (1947–1991), which saw trade limited to within each political bloc.
However, in the event that a split does occur, Dupont noted that it was unlikely countries could “straddle” both factions; and aligning with one side was inevitable.
“The more entrenched and rigid these divisions become, the more difficult it will be for countries to have choices and to remain in both camps.
“You will get to a point at some stage where you do have to make a strategic decision about which one you are going with.
“I think most countries do not want to be in that position, and I think that would include Australia too. We don’t want to go down that track, but the risk is that we will.”
The parliamentary committee is examining the implications of COVID-19 for Australia’s foreign affairs, defense, and trade, and is looking into issues related to supply chain vulnerabilities and international trade relations.
Australia Needs to Rectify ‘Vulnerabilities’ Amid Beijing Decoupling
Dupont called on Australia to examine vulnerabilities in its supply chains, saying: “In my view, our dependence on China for a range of critical technologies and goods has become a major security liability and must be reversed.”
Since April, Australia has been locked into a Beijing-instigated trade dispute, which has seen the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) impose 80 percent tariffs on Australian barley imports, ban beef imports from four abattoirs, and advise local Chinese power plants not to buy Australian coal.
Australian politicians have also called for greater decoupling and less reliance on the China market.
According to Dupont’s submission (pdf) to the inquiry, Beijing has already been implementing a form of decoupling.
The submission noted:
“China has practised a form of decoupling for many years, by carefully avoiding dependencies, creating protective trade barriers, and positioning itself to control strategic areas of the economy—from rare earths and pharmaceuticals to advanced manufacturing.”
Employees work on a micro motor production line at a factory in Huaibei on June 23, 2018. (AFP/Getty Images)
Further, Dupont told the committee the CCP hasn’t received “enough pushback” in response to its actions, effectively allowing it to continue unabated.
He called for Australia, in the meantime, to look seriously at its own vulnerabilities and examine how they can be rectified quickly in the short and long term.
“It’s going to require significant investment. It means that we will lose certain efficiencies, and we’re going to have to trade off loss of efficiency for the resilience that we’re going to get,” Dupont said.
According to the submission: “Some degree of economic separation is unavoidable and, indeed, necessary to preserve the integrity of a robust, open trading system and democratic values, freedoms, and institutions.
“This is not a rejection of trade but a rethinking of its architecture and norms as well as interdependence.
“It must be done with a surgeon’s scalpel, not a blacksmith’s hammer.”
- Navy Abandons Physical Fitness Test For 2020 "To Minimize COVID Risk"
Navy Abandons Physical Fitness Test For 2020 “To Minimize COVID Risk”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 22:50The US has become the worst-affected country by the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 3.257 million infections and at least 132,000 deaths. President Trump finally wore a mask on Saturday while visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The latest surge in cases is happening across the Sun Belt region – home to major military installations.
We learned last week, due to an explosion in virus cases in Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, California, Texas, and Florida, with some of these states home to America’s largest military bases, the Navy has axed physical fitness tests for the remainder of the year to mitigate virus spreading.
“The COVID-19 situation requires that we continue to minimize risk to personnel, therefore all personnel will be ‘EXCUSED’ from participation in Navy PFA (Physical Fitness Assessment) Cycle 2, 2020,” according to a naval administrative message (NAVADMIN) released Tuesday.
“Suspension includes both the official Body Composition Assessment and Physical Readiness Test components of the PFA,” the NAVADMIN said.
“All Navy commands are to continue the suspension of all organized or group physical training (PT) (i.e., Command, Department or Division PT and the Fitness Enhancement Program (FEP)), until further notice,” the memo added.
Here’s a partial view of the memo:
Additionally, the memo said sailors are permitted to conduct mock PFAs when conditions permit, following local virus guidelines. Mock PFAs will be restricted to no more than ten people and temperature checks.
The Navy canceled PFA requirements in another memo in March, around the time the first lockdowns began.
Last week, Major General William F. Mullen III told reporters that Marine PFAs would resume next year.
No fitness assessments for sailors for the remainder of the year could be a national security threat as the health of men and women serving in uniform is one that is deteriorating. We noted several years back, men and women serving are getting fatter at an alarming rate.
Overweight servicemen and women have prompted military officials to contemplate changing diets that would eventually mean banning pizza and beer for salads.
It’s not just the military that has an obesity problem, but 1 in 5 recruits are “too fat to fight.”
The virus pandemic has not just crashed the economy and unleashed a nuclear bomb on financial assets but has also forced people to stay cooped up in their homes for an extended period of time, resulting in a decline of physical fitness and weakened immune system. Couple that with a military that is “too fat to fight” with no more physical fitness assessments – was this all done by design so when the next military conflict breaks out, America will be unprepared?
- The Surveillance State: How To Disappear
The Surveillance State: How To Disappear
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 22:30With each passing day, supposedly ‘free and democratic’ western governments are working overtime to emulate the type of surveillance states we see in countries like China and North Korea. The goal is 24/7 digital tracking of every citizen, and this authoritarian agenda is being accelerated during the current manufactured COVID-19 ‘crisis.’ Besides going off-grid to a remote rural area, is it still possible to opt-out?
To answer this question, you will first need to audit which lines of tracking are currently in use.
Is it possible for a person to successfully evade this rapidly emerging Orwellian grid of surveillance and social control?
Even when wearing a mask in public, the State and its corporate enablers still have multiple lines of tracking honed on members of the public.
To create effective privacy shields, it is first necessary to deconstruct your current web of digital networks. In addition, there are also a number a new tools at your disposal.
City Lab’s Jessica Leigh Hester reports…
If extricating yourself from the electrical grid is, to some degree, a test of moxie and patience, extracting yourself from the web of urban surveillance technology strains the limits of both. If you live in a dense urban environment, you are being watched, in all kinds of ways. A graphic released by the Future of Privacy Forum highlights just how many sensors, CCTCV cameras, RFID readers, and other nodes of observation might be eying you as you maneuver around a city’s blocks. As cities race to fit themselves with smart technologies, it’s nearly impossible to know precisely how much data they’re accumulating, how it’s being stored, or what they’ll do with it.
“By and large, right now, it’s the Wild West, and the sheriff is also the bad guy, or could be,” says Albert Gidari, the director of privacy at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society.
The various nodes where sensors and other tech could detect your movements through the city (Image Source: Future of Privacy Forum)
Smart technologies can ease traffic, carve out safer pedestrian passages, and analyze environmental factors such as water quality and air pollution. But, as my colleague Linda Poon points out, their adoption is also stirring up a legal maelstrom. Surveillance fears have been aroused in Oakland, California, Seattle, and Chicago, and the applications of laws protecting citizen privacy are murky. For instance: data that’s stored on a server indefinitely could potentially infringe on the “right to be forgotten” that’s protected in some European countries. But accountability and recourse can be slippery, because civilians can’t necessarily sue cities for violating privacy torts, explains Gidari.
What would it look like to leapfrog that murkiness by opting out entirely? Can a contemporary urbanite successfully skirt surveillance? I asked Gidari and Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to teach me how to disappear.
During the course of our conversations, Tien and Gidari each remind me, again and again, that this was a fool’s errand: You can’t truly hide from urban surveillance. In an email before our phone call, Tien points out that we’re not even aware of all the traces of ourselves that are out in the world. He likens our data trail—from parking meters, streetlight cameras, automatic license plate readers, and more—to a kind of binary DNA that we’re constantly sloughing. Trying to scrub these streams of data would be impossible.
Moreover, as the tools of surveillance have become more sophisticated, detecting them has become a harder task. “There was a time when you could spot cameras,” Tien says. Maybe a bodega would hang up a metal sign warning passersby that they were being recorded by a clunky, conspicuous device. “But now, they’re smaller, recessed, and don’t look like what you expect them to look like.”
Other cameras are in the sky. As Buzzfeed has reported, some federal surveillance technologies are mounted in sound-dampened planes and helicopters that cruise over cities, using augmented reality to overlay a grid that identifies targets at a granular level. “There are sensors everywhere,” Gidari says. “The public has no ability to even see where they are.”
The surest way to dodge surveillance is to not encounter it in the first place—but that’s not a simple ask. While various groups have tried to plot out routes that allow pedestrians to literally sidestep nodes of surveillance, they haven’t been especially successful. In 2013, two software developers released a beta version of an app called Surv, which aspired to be a crowdsourced guide to cameras mounted in cities around the world. The app would detect cameras within a 100-meter radius of the user’s phone, but it failed to meet its crowdfunding threshold on Kickstarter.
The most effective solutions are also the least practical ones. To defeat facial recognition software, “you would have to wear a mask or disguises,” Tien says. “That doesn’t really scale up for people.” Other strategies include makeup that screws with a camera’s ability to recognize the contours of a human face, or thwarting cameras by blinding them with infrared LED lights fastened to a hat or glasses, as researchers at Japan’s National Institute of Informatics attempted in 2012. Those techniques are hardly subtle, though—in trying to trick the technology, you would stick out to the naked eye. And as biometrics continue to advance, cameras will likely be less dupable, too. There are also legal hiccups to consider: Drivers who don’t want city officials to know where they parked or when, Gidari says, would have to outwit license plate recognition tools by obscuring their license plate, such as with the noPhoto camera jammer, a new $399 device that fires a flash at red light cameras in an attempt to scramble a readable image. Obscuring license plates is already illegal in many cities and states, and others are chewing on new procedures.
LED glasses might not trick biometric cameras—but they will definitely attract the attention of folks on the street (Image Source: National institute of Informatics)
In their book Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest, Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum, both professors at New York University, champion a strategy of “throwing some sand in the gears, kicking up dust and making some noise,” essentially relying on the melee of data jamming to “hide in a cloud of signals.” A number of apps, websites, and browser extensions attempt to aid users in this type of misdirection—say, for instance, by running in the background of your regular web activities, trying to cover your digital tracks by throwing surveillance off your scent.
For example: A site called Internet Noise searches for randomized phrases and opens five fresh tabs every ten seconds. (I left it running as I wrote this, and now my browser history includes pictures of badgers, an online mattress store, an NPR article about the Supreme Court, and a research paper about gene mutation in hamsters.) As a cloaking technique, it’s not a perfect veil, writes Emily Dreyfess in Wired: “It’s actually too random. It doesn’t linger on sites very long, nor does it revisit them. In other words, it doesn’t really look human, and smart-enough tracking algorithms likely know that.” The site is more of a protest over Congress rolling back a not-yet-implemented FCC regulation that would have stymied ISPs from selling users’ browsing history.
Still, Tien advocates a certain degree of self-protection. He views these measures as a kind of digital hygiene—the “equivalent of washing your hands when you go to the bathroom,” or getting a flu shot. But he stresses that they’re only a partial prophylactic: “Nothing that will make you immune from the problem.”
Other techniques include employing Tor—a network that tries to anonymize the source and destination of your web searches by routing traffic along a convoluted path—and Signal, which offers encrypted messaging and phone calls. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense toolkit also suggests particular tools and behaviors for specific scenarios. People participating in protests, the guide suggests, might consider stripping meta-data from photos, to make it harder to match them with identities and locations. But this isn’t a perfect solution, either, Tien says, because you can only control what you post. “If I take a picture and scrub the metadata, that’s one thing,” Tien says. “If my friend takes a picture of me, I can’t do anything about that.” The Intercept produced a video illustrating step-by-step instructions for phone security at a protest, from adding an access passcode to turning on encryption settings.
On a daily basis, Tien tells me, “I don’t think you or I can exercise much meaningful self-help against the kind of tracking we’ll be seeing in real-world physical space.” That’s fodder for a point he makes about a fundamental asymmetry in the information that’s available to the bodies that install the cameras and those who are surveilled by them. There are relatively few laws relating to the expectation of privacy in a public space. The officials and organizations that install sensors, cameras, and ever-more-sensitive devices, he says, “have much more money than you do, much more technology than you do, and they don’t have to tell you what they’re doing.”
Ultimately, Tien and Gidari both take a long view, arguing that the most payoff will come from pushing for more transparency about just what this technology is up to. Part and parcel of that, Tien says, is resisting the idea that data is inherently neutral. The whole messy, jumbled mass of it contains information that could have tangible consequences on people’s lives. Tien says citizens need to remind their elected officials what’s at stake with data—and in the process, maybe “dampen their enthusiasm” for the collection of it.
He points out that sanctuary cities could be a prime example. There, he says, some advocates of immigrant rights are realizing that data collected via municipal surveillance “might not be such a good thing when we’re interested in protecting immigrants and the federal government is interested in deporting them.”
The practical strategies for opting out—of becoming invisible to some of these modes of surveillance—are imperfect, to say the least. That’s not to say that data collection is inherently nefarious, Gidari says—as he wrote in a blog post for the CIS, “no one wants to live in a ‘dumb’ city.” But he says that opting out shouldn’t need to be the default: “I don’t think you should have been opted in in the first place.”
- "There Are No Free Lunches" – Former Reserve Bank Of India Chief Explains Why MMT Will Never Work
“There Are No Free Lunches” – Former Reserve Bank Of India Chief Explains Why MMT Will Never Work
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 22:10As Joe Biden tries to split the difference between the midwestern swing-state voters and the Sanders faithful, he’s released an economic plan – a plan that bears the imprimatur of his one-time foe Bernie Sanders – that, in its attempt to be everything to every one, effectively promises everything to every one.
Buy American. Green New Deal. Corporate tax hikes. Trillions of dollars spent on infrastructure to install the latest eco-nonsense with money that should be going to roads, bridges, rails and airports. Docks and highways. Things people actually need and use. And who knows? Depending on his running mate, maybe we’ll get a massive student-debt jubilee, too. All on the federal government’s tab.
Now that MMT has gone from fringe idea to mainstream, making Stephanie Kelton, a cryptomarxist who believes that the link between value and money can be completely severed, so long as we tax the wealthiest among us enough to keep inflation low. It doesn’t take a genius to suspect that an ‘economic theory’ grounded in the idea that governments can take on unlimited amounts of debt and never stick anybody with the tab sounds absurd – even dangerous.
We say dangerous because Kelton’s greatest sin is offering pandering politicians more cover to encourage their spendthrift ways. During a recent interview with Macro Hive, former Central Bank of India Governor and University of Chicago Professor Raghuram Rajan delivered a succinct and insightful explanation of why MMT is so dangerous.
“We talked about sustainability and one of the big topics in markets at least is this whole idea of QE MMT infinity, the ability of sovereigns to borrow. Now in developed countries, they have historical capital they’ve built up and credibility,” Rajan’s interviewer began. “But you’re starting to also see this idea…you’re starting to see more emerging market countries experiment with it, including Indonesia and several others.”
But at the same time “yields are very low, and if you look at emerging market spreads, they’re very low…so markets are telling you that they aren’t worried. Yet we know debt levels are high, and there’s more talk in debt markets of QE and MMT.”
Does the fact that markets seem content with the status quo (at least for now) validate Kelton’s argument?
Of course not, Rajan explained. Because while the complexities of the global financial system, and the dollar’s role within it, have allowed the Fed to spearhead this great monetary, as the veteran central banker explained, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
“We know that markets can be complacent until a certain point and then they turn on a time. We are at this point in a benign phase supported by an enormous amount of central bank liquidity emanating from the primary reserve currencies, the euro area, the US Fed and to some extent the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England.”
“But we must also recognize is that there are no free lunches. If there’s one statement you want to keep to pound into the head of every policy maker, it’s that there are no free lunches. If you borrow today, there is a presumption that it will be repaired at some point, so you are in a sense taking away resources from somebody else in the future.”
“Now it may be a generation or two down the line will be on the hook for this…whether they can pass it on to their children is an open question…but you’re definitely taking away their ability to borrow by borrowing today.”
.While burdening future generations doesn’t seem to come up much in cryptomarxist essays about the moral imperative of expansive fiscal spending – some have gone so far as to argue that the federal government has a moral obligation to forgive student debt – Rajan acknowledges that the idea is “seductive” for all the wrong reasons.
“So the idea that there are free lunches…which certainly is what the lay person takes away from MMT…is very sort of attractive, seductive – but it’s absolute nonsense.”
If that’s the message that’s going to be communicated, then that’s wrong.
Asked to elaborate, he continued…
“There are times when you can spend a little bit more, but you are still making a trade off and evaluating this trade off well…I think that’s the right thing to do. If that’s the message from MMT, then I’m fine with that. There are periods where you have more leeway.”
“The message can’t be ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ it has to be ‘yes take advantage of periods when you have a little more spending capacity but use it wisely, because there’s no such thing as a free lunch and you will have to repay it at some point…that’s what any sensible economic theory will tell you, and I think that’s what we understand now.”
“When banks aren’t lending, when inflation is low, it is possible for the central bank to expand its balance sheet somewhat…and finance more activities that the government wants to undertake. That doesn’t mean it’s free debt…it’s equivalent to debt issued by the government – think of the central bank issuing debt as the same as the government issuing debt: it’s the consolidated balance sheet you’re looking at.”
“Somebody is responsible for payment, it’s either the central bank or the government.”
“At low interest rates it doesn’t really matter who it is, but as inflation picks ups it does matter a little more who it is because the central bank often is financing itself with effectively forced loans from the banking sector, and there’s a limit to how much the banking sector is willing to do that, especially as economic activity picks up.”
“So my sense is yes there is some room now but it doesn’t mean the debt level doesn’t matter and it doesn’t mean that we should just keep spending without thought of who’s going to repay. And I think the big philosophical issues are how much are you going to bail out companies…why should Joe Schmoe…why should his taxes go to bail out a capital owner? After all, neither of them saw the pandemic coming…neither is responsible for the pandemic…so why should one bail out the property rights of another?”
“It strikes me these guys who want to open up the government wallet and spend to protect everybody from the consequences of the pandemic don’t realize that there’s one person who’s bearing the hit: it may not be you, but it might be your children.”
“And the question is: Why do they have to pay when they have no part in this?”
Remember: As Rajan explains, we must recognize that our resources are limited and use them wisely. Keep that in mind when Democratic politicians are trying to spend trillions of dollars of public money to outfit private buildings with solar panels or whatever ‘Green New Deal’ infrastructure travesty AOC & Co come up with.
* * *
Source: Macro Hive
- "Long Tech Stocks" Is The Most Crowded Trade Ever
“Long Tech Stocks” Is The Most Crowded Trade Ever
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 21:50The monthly Fund Manager Survey from Bank of America is best known for two things: the recurring, apparent schizophrenia of the financial professionals polled, and the monthly chart showing what everyone on Wall Street thinks is the most crowded trade, i.e., what they think others have as their top trade.
This month did not disappoint: not only did it confirm that the one trade – which everyone already knows – is the most popular on Wall Street, is indeed seen as such but it is in fact more so by the biggest margin on record. We are of course talking about “Long US tech stocks” which is what 74% of BofA survey respondents said they thought was the most crowded trade on Wall Street. (Long Gold and long cash were “most crowded trades” #2 and #3, respectively).
So convinced are finance professionals that everyone is “all in” tech, that the percentage of agreement behind tech being the most crowded trade is the highest of any monthly response in polling history, surpassing even the “Long US Dollar” responses attained during the dollar explosion in 2014/2015 when the ECB disintegrated the Euro.
Of course, having learned from our previous observations that there is a flawed reflexivity in the BofA Fund Manager Survey, some – such as Bloomberg’s Ye Xie – were skeptical that there is a convergence between perception and reality, and that it wasn’t actually the case that everyone is “all in” tech stocks; to justify their skepticism, they pointed out another chart from the same BofA poll which showed that tech stocks were only modestly above historical average z-scores in terms of positioning.
Only this time being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian appears a losing position, because one look at the latest Hedge Fund Tracker from Goldman confirms that – at the institutional and hedge fund level – everyone is indeed long tech stocks. A quick look at the hedge fund top 50 stocks (HF VIP list) shows that tech names account for 8 of the top 10 most popular stocks.
Of course, BofA observing that everyone is long tech is hardly a shock. After all, as BofA points out in another research report published today, without tech, S&P gains over the past five years would be 50% lower.
So yes, whatever works will continue to work, until there is a reason for it not to work. And since the Fed is now effectively punishing growth stocks (which is just another name for bank and energy stocks, by keeping rates at record lows), the growth to value outperformance will continue until there are no more value investors left.
Which is not to say that since it has worked so far, it will always work. Indeed, as BofA CIO Michael Hartnett notes, if one wants to be a true contrarian, “the best short is tech stocks given positioning and stretched performance.”
Just make sure to have a massive balance sheet if putting this short on as the likelihood of repeat margin calls before it finally does work is directly proportional to the likelihood that the Fed’s balance sheet will continue to grow by about one trillion dollars every month or so, just to avoid a complete collapse of the entire financial system.
- The Worst Is Over For Arizona's COVID Breakout, Goldman Finds
The Worst Is Over For Arizona’s COVID Breakout, Goldman Finds
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 21:30Several months ago, the coronavirus pandemic mutated from a purely epidemiological phenomenon and became a full-blown political issue, with clear ideological divisions forming along the lines of whether or not to pursue strict shutdowns (and in some cases, whether to engage in another round of economic closures) all the way down to whether masks should be worn. The drivers here were self-evident: opponents of Trump and the current administration demanded even more caution, in some cases arguably in pursuit self-serving hopes of further economic pain (and more stimulus payments) that would make a Trump re-election difficult; in light of this it is understandable why the president hoped to put the pandemic in the rearview mirror and to accelerate the reopening of the economy which has cost tens of millions in jobs and trillions in new debt.
In recent weeks, a similar divide has also emerged on Wall Street, where pessimists such as Goldman have been emphasizing the recent surge in new cases across sunbelt states, warning that these would result in another spike in deaths, as well as reduction in mobility and overall cosumption and thus a fresh hit to the economy, as a new round of shutdowns – either mandatory or voluntary – were enacted. Optimists, meanwhile, would note that higher cases are merely a function of widespread testing…
… and pointed to the continued decline in covid-linked deaths which despite the jump in new cases, had failed to inflect higher, underscoring that the mortality rate appears to be much lower for younger covid patients. That said, the latest data appears to show that even the number of deaths now appears to be rising while total cases may have finally plateaued.
Last week, in a note that was clearly in the “optimistic” camp, BofA’s Hans Mikkelsen wrote that sharply elevated new daily Covid-19 case numbers highlight first and foremost more successful testing strategies (more tests, contact tracing, etc.), according to the University of Washington IHME model.
The strategist also said that “to gauge the spread of Covid-19 we prefer to look at number of hospitalized people that, although a bit lagged (in March/April the peak in number of hospitalized came 17 days after the peak in newly infected, according to the IHME model), is less dependent on testing strategy.”
While hospitalizations were clearly up in the U.S., BofA pointed out that if one excludes the four states “we find they are more accurately described as flat lining.” Moreover, BofA calculates that in the new outbreak the daily number of infected people peaked on June 21st at 75,179, up from 71,112 on June 1st, and sharply above yesterday’s 69,987 estimate, again according to the IHME model.
The optimistic conclusion: “Should hospitalizations again be lagged 17 days that would imply (local) peak hospitalizations on July 8.“
Fast forward to today, when following several weeks of downbeat comments, Goldman may have also turned somewhat optimistic on US chances, with chief economist Jan Hatzius (we are all epidemiologists now) writing that “today, confirmed new cases (7-day moving average) are now lower compared to one week ago” and noting that “it is possible that case growth could be at the beginning of a sustained downward trajectory” even though as he concedes, the positive test rate remains very high, and virus spread is weighing significantly on the state’s available hospital resources. A sustained decline in new cases would take several days to translate to lower hospitalizations and more available hospital capacity.
As Goldman notes, the decline in new confirmed cases follows a drop in restaurant and retail activity in the state, which many have previously linked to rising cases. Over the past few weeks, even before the Governor of Arizona ordered targeted restrictions on bar, restaurant, and other activity, individuals began to voluntarily scale back their mobility, consistent with our analysis last week that the level of new cases significantly predicts lower levels of activity.
It’s not just Arizona that is sending out hopeful signs with the number of confirmed new cases declining in the state (and now the 7-day moving average of new cases lower than it was a week ago). To track which states may be beginning a downward trajectory, Goldman now includes a column in its state heatmap for the change in new cases vs 7 days ago, in addition to the change vs 14 days ago. Yet while Arizona may be exiting the woods, the US as a whole (and ex- the tristate area), is still seeing an overall increase, with 35 new cases per million as of July 14.
- Why Are US Taxpayers Providing Public Pensions To Millionaire Members Of Congress
Why Are US Taxpayers Providing Public Pensions To Millionaire Members Of Congress
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 21:10Authored by Adam Andrzejewski, first published in Forbes
Membership in the U.S. Congress is an exclusive club that comes with lucrative, taxpayer-funded privileges. Retirement perks include a lifetime pension and a taxpayer-matched savings plan with taxpayer-paid contributions of up to five percent of salary.
As the longest-serving member of Congress, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) would qualify for a yearly pension of $167,040 if he retired today. Former speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) was eligible to draw a $84,930 pension when he turned 50 in January after serving for twenty years and retiring at age 48.
Critics question the necessity of such a system. Why are U.S. taxpayers providing public pensions to millionaire members of Congress on top of a 401(k)-style plan? (The median net worth for a member recently exceeded $1.1 million.)
Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com broke down benefits received by leaders from both parties: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (left) and speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (net worth est. $50 million to $72 million): She’ll reap $153,967 a year in public pension and social security benefits at retirement. In addition, Pelosi could cash out an estimated $1 million lump sum through her federal saving account – and that’s just the portion of the account that was taxpayer-funded.
Our auditors calculated that Speaker Nancy Pelosi earned $5.7 million in salary to date during her 34-year congressional career. Pelosi’s salary ranged from $77,400 (1987) to today’s $223,500, as the most highly compensated member of Congress.
Taxpayers also invested $282,965 into Pelosi’s federal Thrift Savings Plans – an amount that equals five percent of salary as long as members also contribute five percent of earnings. We estimate that those taxpayer dollars grew to $1.03 million if invested in an S&P 500 index fund, as of 12/31/2019.
On top of all this, if Pelosi retired after the November elections, we pegged her pension and annuity package at $153,967 annually. According to formulas, Pelosi (age 80) qualifies for $106,363 pension, and she’s also eligible for social security. Assuming a maximum benefit, she’ll receive an additional $47,604 each year.
Our estimates are in good faith based on the published rules. Complicating matters, Pelosi doesn’t disclose her congressional benefits on her financial disclosures, nor did she respond to our request for comment.
Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (net worth est. $22 million): During his 36 years of public service in Congress, our auditors calculated that McConnell earned $5.5 million in salary. McConnell’s salary ranged from $75,100 (1985) to today’s $193,400 – as the second highest paid member of Congress.
Taxpayers also invested $273,700 into Mitch McConnell’s federal Thrift Savings Plans. We estimate that the taxpayer dollars alone grew to $1.1 million if invested in an S&P 500 index fund (as of 12/31/19).
In retirement, McConnell can cash out the estimated $1.1 million – as a one-time lump sum or as he wishes.
Then, there is his lifetime pension payout. The researchers at the National Taxpayers Union pegged McConnell’s pension and annuity package at $142,902 annually, if he retired after the November election. McConnell (age 78) qualifies for a $96,738 pension, and he’s also eligible for social security amounting to an additional $46,164 each year.
Critics say members of Congress shouldn’t be able to double-dip in taxpayer-funded retirement plans. Since representatives can already take advantage of the lucrative 401(k)-style plan with the five percent match, why can’t members have the option to opt-out of the public pension plan?
In 1994, then-elected representative Dr. Tom Coburn (R-OK) was able to opt-out of his federal pension by using a little-known loophole. But Congress eliminated that option by changing the law in the 2004 Appropriations Act.
Today, U.S. Senator Mike Braun (R-IN) feels it is imperative that members have the choice to forego the generous public pension. His bill (S. 439) makes it possible for members to opt-out.
Braun responded to our request for comment:
“It’s time we make Washington WRE +0.5% more like the private sector and the best place to start is to end taxpayer-funded pensions – like Nancy Pelosi’s six-figure annual pension – that Senators and Congressmen are entitled to in retirement.
If we remove the luxurious perks from Congress, we’ll get better leaders: that’s why I’ll never accept my Senate pension and, if forced to, I pledge to donate every penny to Hoosier charities.”
Braun’s bill passed the Senate in December 2019 – to Leader McConnell’s credit. However, the legislation is stuck in Speaker Pelosi’s House awaiting a markup in the Committee on House Administration led by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).
- The Dollar "Has Us By The Throat": Chinese Official Urges Gradual Decoupling Of Yuan Ahead Of "Full-Blown Escalation"
The Dollar “Has Us By The Throat”: Chinese Official Urges Gradual Decoupling Of Yuan Ahead Of “Full-Blown Escalation”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 20:50With all eyes on Trump’s Tuesday evening Rose Garden speech which unveiled that he’ll sign new and punitive measures indirectly targeting China — namely the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, a bipartisan measure to penalize banks that work with Chinese officials found to be interfering in Hong Kong affairs — it remains that arguably the most important recent statements out of China came not from current government officials, but from Zhou Li, the 65-year-old former deputy head of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department. He’s considered an important voice who echoes the outside the box thinking and general “talk” of the communist party’s diplomatic establishment.
Amid the soaring US-China tension which could give way to a military stand-off in the South China Sea, given the presence and military exercises of two US supercarriers there, Zhou Li earlier this month issued what many see as the more radical ‘extreme thinking’ out of the communist party: an eventual decoupling of the Chinese yuan from the US dollar.
This would be a “full-blown escalation” with no off ramp scenario. But given the tit-for-tat with Washington is likely to lead precisely to further extreme responses on both sides, Zhou’s position could in the end be the final weapon Beijing ultimately and no doubt reluctantly pulls out of its arsenal. Now is the time for Beijing to begin insulating itself from “dollar hegemony and gradually achieve the decoupling of the renminbi from the US currency,” Zhou argued. “The US dollar could become a major risk issue that ‘has us by the throat’.”
He penned an article widely reported on in regional media which “predicts industrial supply chains being torn up, a China-U.S. decoupling and a world split into dollar and yuan economic blocs.” This would take China, contrary to President Xi’s ambitious plans for his country as an expanding global economic power, into a ‘forced’ unprecedented level of isolation.
“By taking advantage of the dollar’s global monopoly position in the financial sector, the US will pose an increasingly severe threat to China’s further development,” Zhou wrote in the article originally published by the Beijing-based think tank Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University.
Framing what’s at issue behind the former high ranking diplomat’s rationale, The South China Morning Post summarized:
The US had been able to leverage the dollar-dominated SWIFT international payments messaging system to extend “long-arm jurisdiction” for its policies outside America, including sanctioning Russia and Iran, Zhou noted. Sanctions against energy suppliers could jeopardise China’s energy security, he warned.
And further: “China must accelerate the internationalization of the yuan, speed up the increase in cross-border payments and clearing arrangements for the yuan, establish local currency settlement mechanisms with more countries, and create conditions to maximise the use of the Chinese currency in global industrial supply chains, Zhou said.”
Broadly, in this most dire scenario spelled out by Zhou, decoupling would only be possible should a ripple effect of ‘walling off’ in other Chinese sectors also be aggressively pursued and in progress.
Via Reuters: Chinese Vice Premier Liu He and U.S. President Donald Trump shake hands after signing their “phase one” trade agreement at the White House in Washington on Jan. 15, 2020. “Beijing should seize the opportunity to build China-centric regional industrial chains, given the continued devastation to overseas demand and the disruption of global supply chains caused by the coronavirus,” SCMP wrote of his words.
“In addition, Zhou warned, China should brace for a worldwide food crisis and the return of international terrorism during the pandemic,” the report also noted.
* * *
In a brief outline presented separately by Nikkei, Zhou’s position is that the Chinese must prepare:
1. For the deterioration of Sino-U.S. relations and the full escalation of the struggle.
2. To cope with shrinking external demand and a disruption of supply chains.
3. For a new normal of coexisting with the novel coronavirus pandemic over the long term.
4. To leave the dollar hegemony and gradually realize the decoupling of the yuan from the dollar.
5. For the outbreak of a global food crisis.
6. For a resurgence of international terrorism.
Again, such a grim position forecasting isolation is nowhere near the official Chinese Communist Party line, but represents a predicted necessary future reaction to full-blown long lasting conflict with the US.
- Are Americans "Mad As Hell"?
Are Americans “Mad As Hell”?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 20:30Authored by Michael Walsh via The Epoch Times,
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
That’s the famous phrase that instantly entered the American lexicon, courtesy of Paddy Chayefsky, the writer of the 1976 Oscar-winning movie, “Network.”
The film, which starred Faye Dunaway, William Holden, and the late Peter Finch as the enraged newscaster, Howard Beale, won four Oscars, including a best actor prize for Finch, whose Beale character was the forerunner of every fuming cable TV pundit from Bill O’Reilly to Keith Olbermann to Glenn Beck to Rachel Maddow to, latterly, Tucker Carlson, expatiating on behalf of the American public.
Here’s the speech, which might have been written yesterday by a conservative, but 44 years ago was the authentic voice of a Hollywood liberal:
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere that seems to know what to do with us. There’s no end to it.
“We know the air is unfit to breathe, our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in a house as slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms…
“Well I’m not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crying in the streets. All I know is first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a human being. God dammit, my life has value.’
“I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’”
Fantasy World
Welcome to 2020, the year in which what was once fanciful is now practically reality.
In the movie, things end badly for Beale, the “mad prophet of the airwaves,” who has become a quasi-religious leader hosting a segment called “Vox Populi” – he is assassinated on camera at the cynical direction of the network executives by members of Ecumenical Liberation Army, as a kickoff to their new show, “The Mao Tse-Tung Hour” of revolutionary chic.
It’s a win-win all around for the network, which has experienced a ratings bonanza with Beale, but with his usefulness at an end, needed a way to literally kill off his character to make way for something even more outrageous—even if it sends the exact opposite political message.
If the media was driving America crazy in 1976, in the direct aftermath of the Arab oil embargo, Watergate, and the surprising accession of an unelected vice president to the Oval Office in the hapless Gerald Ford, how much nuttier are we now?
We are currently living in a fantasy world in which Howard Beale really is the voice of sanity.
Consider what we are being asked to believe:
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Some lives matter more than other lives, despite our common shared humanity.
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The mainstream media is an impartial, objective reporter of facts, unaligned with party or ideology.
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Men can be women, and women can be men, at will.
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Speech equals violence, but silence equals violence as well.
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Infection by the CCP virus equals death – even though the death toll in the United States at this writing is about .04 percent of the total population. It is also race-selective in its lethality.
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The United States was built on a foundation of sub-Saharan African slavery in 1619, and is therefore illegitimate.
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A “national conversation” means agreeing with the Left in every particular no matter what the subject.
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The office of the Executive – Article II of the Constitution – is subject to the Supreme Court – Article III – thanks to an 1803 Court decision, Marbury v. Madison.
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The United States has benefited from outsourcing its crucial bio-medical infrastructure to the Chinese Communist Party, along with a substantial portion of its manufacturing capability, because lower prices are what Adam Smith would have wanted.
-
There is an epidemic of white policemen shooting black street criminals.
-
The Leftist/Fascist gang of street paramilitary thugs called “Antifa” are the equivalent of the American boys who landed at Omaha Beach in 1944, when in fact their “flag” is simply the inversion of the Antifaschiste Aktion of the Weimar Republic Communists.
-
Western civilization, which includes Homer, Cicero, Charlemagne, Mozart, Dickens, Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and Mount Rushmore equals “white supremacy.”
-
The highest form of “patriotism” is not simply “dissent” anymore, it’s overt treason.
Time to Rise Up
So perhaps now it’s time for real, patriotic Americans to assert themselves – for if not now, when?
The goal of the Herbert Marcuse-Saul Alinsky–Howard Zinn left has always been the destruction of the country-as-founded and its replacement by a (temporary) nation-state that acknowledges the illegitimacy of its founding – Marcuse’s doctrine of “Repressive Tolerance,” which posits tolerance for Leftist ideas until the Left seizes power, after which “tolerance” is no longer a virtue. (See also Alinsky’s “Rule No. 4,” which posits: “‘Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules’… You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules.”)
In the old Soviet Union, in which I spent many unhappy hours between the years 1986-1991, the United States was always referred to as the “principal enemy.” To today’s Communists, whether Chinese or home-grown, this remains true. As I like to say on Twitter—from which I have been temporarily “suspended” for who-knows-what imagined transgression of the “Twitter safety” rules—“they never stop, they never sleep, they never quit.”
Nevertheless, it’s time for all patriotic Americans to rise up and say, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.” As Beale says in his final speech, just before his assassination:
“At the bottom of all of our terrified souls, we know, that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick, dying, decaying political concept, riling in its final pain. I don’t mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, the most powerful, the most advanced country in the world, light years ahead of any other country… What is finished… is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it.”
Was he right? Or is it up to us to prove him wrong? The choice in November is ours.
-
- Border Patrol Captures Meth Plane's Drug Cargo In California
Border Patrol Captures Meth Plane’s Drug Cargo In California
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 20:10Perhaps drug smugglers are adjusting to President Trump’s new border wall and increased patrols via US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. So far, about 200 miles of the latest high-tech fence has been erected, and stricter border enforcement overall has led to a decline in crossings this year.
Traversing the international border has become more challenging for drug smugglers and could be the reason why some have resorted to using ultralight aircraft flying at low altitudes.
KXAN-TV in Austin, Texas, reports Monday CBP spotted an ultralight aircraft in US airspace moments before finding a duffle bag filled with meth.
CBP agents in the El Centro Sector’s Calexico Station followed the aircraft late Saturday night about three and a half miles north of the US-Mexico border.
When agents responded to the dropoff zone – they found a 145.5-pound bag of methamphetamine in 26 clear plastic containers. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) determined the drugs were meth and said it has a street value of $327,375.
Several images via CBP:
Meth plane’s cargo
Here’s an example of drug cartels using an ultralight aircraft to fly meth across the international border (note this is not the aircraft from Saturday’s incident).
Here’s an instance where the border wall is ineffective against ultralight aircraft flying at low altitudes. Is it time to install MIM-104 Patriots along the border?
- Trump Signs Sanctions Bill Ending Preferential Treatment For Hong Kong
Trump Signs Sanctions Bill Ending Preferential Treatment For Hong Kong
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 19:52Update (1736ET): Trump just confirmed that he will indeed be signing the sanctions bill in retaliation for Hong Kong, slapping sanctions on officials who help enforce the CCP’s new national security law that flouts the city’s independence accorded by the Basic Law, and stripping Hong Kong of its preferential treatment, according to Trump.
The bill passed through Congress with unanimous consent, highlighting how Trump’s more aggressive posture toward China has become a point of bipartisan favor – even Joe Biden has suffered a political toll for his friendly rhetoric. A chorus of western countries has criticized China’s move to curtail political freedoms, including speech and assembly, labeling it “terrorism” and “secessionist”.
* * *
Update (1715ET): As we wait for Trump to take the podium, media reports are claiming that Trump is planning to announce that he’s signing the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, a bipartisan measure to penalize banks that work with Chinese officials found to be interfering in Hong Kong affairs.
It’s essentially sanctions-lite for CCP officials involved with enforcing the new Hong Kong national security law that prompted Sec Pompeo to declare that Hong Kong is no longer sufficiently autonomous.
* * *
One day after the State Department announced that the US would no longer recognize the South China Sea as Chinese territory, President Trump is holding his first press briefing in weeks, purportedly to discuss these latest actions against China.
Though we suspect most of the questions will focus on the administration’s coronavirus response and President Trump’s latest efforts to pressure states to commit to holding in-person classes when the new school year begins, Trump has much to discuss, including Magnitsky Act sanctions on Chinese officials tied to Xinjiang and the administration’s continued pressure campaign against Huawei, which received a boost earlier today when the UK’s decision to exclude Huawei from its 5G network also
The briefing begins at 1700ET, though we suspect Trump will be late. It will take place in the Rose Garden, Trump’s favorite venue, despite the heat in Washington.
- Former New Mexico Governor Meets With Maduro, Seeking To Free Detained US Mercenaries
Former New Mexico Governor Meets With Maduro, Seeking To Free Detained US Mercenaries
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 19:50Authored by Anya Parampil via TheGrayZone.com,
The Grayzone has confirmed that former US ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson traveled to Venezuela on Monday, July 13, following conversations with the families of former Green Beret soldiers Luke Denman and Airan Berry. Venezuelan authorities detained Berry and Denman on May 4, after they participated in a failed mercenary invasion of Venezuela with the stated goal of kidnapping the country’s elected president, Nicolas Maduro.
Mark Denman, the younger brother of the detained mercenary Luke Denman, told The Grayzone that Richardson had agreed to help his family after the US Department of State failed to offer assistance. Denman said the FBI had contacted his family, but only to advance its apparent criminal investigation into the ringleader of the botched mercenary invasion, Silvercorp CEO Jordan Goudreau.
Among eight mercenaries arrested during a failed beach raid were two Americans, via Venezuelan media. “Richardson is not a government official, he’s a private individual right now and so I’m glad he agreed to help us out,” Mark Denman told The Grayzone.
According to Denman, Luke’s girlfriend “reached out to [The Richardson Center] and got them involved and they agreed to help. We formally asked them to help out and they said that they would love to.”
It is unclear whether the families of other US citizens charged with crimes in Venezuela, such as the Citgo 6, have also reached out to Richardson.
Denman said his older brother’s girlfriend had learned about The Richardson Center after reading about Governor Richardson’s successful effort to free a US Navy Veteran held in Iran this past June. Richardson has previously led successful missions to free US prisoners in North Korea and Iran, including in the high-profile cases of college student Otto Warmbier and journalist Laura Ling. His efforts earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
“I was glad to see this tweet today, everyone was sending it to me, to see that they are traveling and all,” Denman said, referring to The Richardson Center’s announcement of its latest mission on Twitter. Richardson’s effort came as the US government has failed to offer any official support to the Denman and Berry families.
Governor Richardson, at the request of several American prisoners’ families, is traveling to Caracas on a private humanitarian mission to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to discuss the status of the American prisoners and other COVID-19 humanitarian issues.
— Richardson Center (@RichardsonCNTR) July 13, 2020
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“As of yet we have not had any contact with the State Department,” Denman explained to The Grayzone. He described a frustrating “Catch-22” situation in dealing with US diplomats.
“We’ve spoken with employees at the US embassy in Bogotá, who have asked us to get Luke to fill out a ‘privacy release form’ so that they can speak to us more about his situation. And I asked them how they propose I do that since technically I don’t even know where these guys [Luke and Airan] are,” Denman said.
“The employee then advised we hire an attorney in Venezuela, and I asked how they propose I do that since as far as I know there are massive efforts to shut off any method of sending money to Venezuela and attorneys want to get paid,” he stated, referencing the impact of unilateral US economic sanctions which have restricted the ability of US citizens to transfer funds to Venezuela.
“I don’t know what information they’d be able to get out anyway since they’re in Colombia and we don’t have any diplomatic ties with Venezuela right now,” Denman added.
Beyond those conversations with US officials in Bogotá, Denman said the only contact his family has had with the US government arrived through the FBI as part of what “sounded like” a criminal investigation into Jordan Goudreau, the former US Green-Beret who directed the bungled invasion of Venezuela, dubbed “Operation Gideon.”
Ex-green beret Jordan Goudreau, center. Image source: Silvercorpusa/Instagram “We’ve been talked to by the FBI a little bit. The questions they asked are revolving around Jordan and any contact we’ve had with him,” Denman said. “They’ve been very basic questions like, ‘Did we know Jordan before this? When have we talked to him? What numbers do we have for him? And if we have record of any communication between Luke and Jordan.’”
Denman told The Grayzone he was “happy to cooperate with the FBI” because “based on my communication with Luke from the beginning, what it looks like is that Luke genuinely believed this to be a US-backed operation and was acting [based] on that… I think any investigation is going to show that whatever Jordan actually knew and had actually going on, or whether the US was actually involved or not, Luke and Airan certainly believed that was the case.”
Denman explained that Luke and Airan trusted Goodreau because he was a “guy they had been in a lot of combat with, [who had] superior rank and all that stuff, so they did this thing they thought was meaningful.”
Bill Richardson, via AP Denman expressed caution in dealing with US politicians, or either Presidential candidate, to assist his family in bringing Luke and Airan home, saying he would rather leave the task to “private individuals and members of society who actually honor soldier services as opposed to politicians who [are only concerned with] their own re-elections.”
“I’d like them involved if they’re helpful but if they’re not helpful I’d rather they just stay out of it,” he added, suggesting President Donald Trump or Democratic Nominee Joe Biden would only involved “if some campaign advisors advised them [putting together] a photo-op with these guys would be good, but it’s a little unpredictable.”
When asked what he would like the US and Venezuelan public to know about his brother and his friend Airan Berry, Denman remarked, “they believed the Venezuelan people to be suffering and they thought they were working in their government’s interest and with the backing of their government.”
“People work with limited information,” he added.
- NYT 'Chief Threat To Democracy': Eric Weinstein Takes Flamethrower To Paper Of Record After Bari Weiss Quits
NYT ‘Chief Threat To Democracy’: Eric Weinstein Takes Flamethrower To Paper Of Record After Bari Weiss Quits
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 19:45Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital and host of The Portal podcast, has gone scorched earth on the New York Times following the Tuesday resignation of journalist Bari Weiss.
Illustration via DanielMiessler.com Weinstein describes how The Times has morphed into an activist rag – refusing to cover “news” unpaletable to their narrative, while ignoring key questions such as whether Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring was “intelligence related.”
Jump into Weinstein’s Twitter thread by clicking on the below tweet, or scroll down for your convenience.
* * *
On 6/1/17 Ms Weiss was the only journalist covering “The News”.
Only she was doing it from the opinion section because the NYT refused to find interesting that there was a racist Maoist insurrection at a public college where police would be stood down:https://t.co/0sq70VCP2g— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) July 14, 2020
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(continued)
At that moment Bari Weiss became all that was left of the “Paper of Record.” Why? Because the existence of Black Racists with the power to hunt professors with Baseball Bats and even redefine the word ‘racism’ to make their story impossible to cover ran totally counter-narrative.
At some point after 2011, the NYT gradually stopped covering the News and became the News instead. And Bari has been fighting internally from the opinion section to re-establish Journalism inside tbe the NYT. A total reversal of the Chinese Wall that separates news from opinion.
This is the paper in 2016 that couldnt be interested in the story that millions of Americans were likely lying to pollsters about Donald Trump.
The paper refusing to ask the CIA/FBI if Epstein was Intelligence related.
The paper that can’t report that it seeks race rioting:
I have had the honor of trying to support both @bariweiss at the New York Times and @BretWeinstein in their battles simply to stand alone against the internal mob mentality. It is THE story all over the country. Our courageous individuals are being hunted at work for dissenting.
Before Bari resigned, I did a podcast with her. It was chilling. I‘d make an innocuous statement of simple fact and ask her about it. She‘d reply “That is obviously true but I’m sorry we can’t say that here. It will get me strung up.” That‘s when I stopped telling her to hang on.
So what just happened? Let me put it bluntly: What was left of the New York Times just resigned from the New York Times. The Times canceled itself. As a separate Hong Kong exists in name only, the New New York Times and affiliated “news” is now the chief threat to our democracy.
This is the moment when the passengers who have been becoming increasingly alarmed, start to entertain a new idea: what if the people now in the cockpit are not airline pilots? Well the Twitter Activists at the @nytimes and elsewhere are not journalists.
What if those calling for empathy have a specific deadness of empathy?
Those calling for justice *are* the unjust?
Those calling “Privilege” are the privileged?
Those calling for equality seek to oppress us?
Those anti-racists are open racists?
The progressives seek regress?
The journalists are covering up the news?
Try the following exercise: put a minus sign in front of nearly every banner claim made by “the progressives”.
Q: Doesn’t that make more sense?
Those aren’t the pilots you imagine. And we are far closer to revolution than you think.
Bari and I agree on a lot but also disagree fiercely. And so I have learned that she is tougher than tough. But these university and journalistic workplaces are now unworkable. They are the antithesis off what they were built to stand for. It is astounding how long she held out.
Read her letter. I have asked her to do a make-up podcast & she has agreed. Stay tuned If you don’t want to be surprised again by what‘s coming understand this: just as there has been no functioning president, there‘s now no journalism. We‘re moving towards a 🌎 of pure activism.
Prepare to lose your ability to call the police & for more autonomous zones where kids die so that Govenors & Mayors can LARP as Kayfabe revolutionaries. Disagree with Ms Weiss all you want as she isn’t perfect. But Bari is a true patriot who tried to stand alone. Glad she’s out.
We are not finished by a long shot. What the Intellectual Dark Web tried to do MUST now be given an institutional home.
Podcast with Bari on The Portal to come as soon as she is ready.
Stay tuned. And thanks for reading this. It is of the utmost importance.
Thank you all. 🙏
P.S. Please retweet the lead tweet from this thread if you understand where we are. Appreciated.
- Squirrel Tests Positive For Bubonic Plague In Small Colorado Town
Squirrel Tests Positive For Bubonic Plague In Small Colorado Town
Tyler Durden
Tue, 07/14/2020 – 19:30After a new case of the bubonic plague rattled the part of Mongolia near the Russian border, it appears the infamous plague strain responsible for killing between 50 million and 100 million Europeans during the 14th Century has now been discovered in Colorado, where a squirrel recently tested positive, according to local news reports.
The squirrel was discovered in the Town of Morrison in Colorado, according to Jefferson County Public Health officials, who made the announcement in a statement released over the weekend. The squirrel, discovered on Saturday, is the first case of plague in Jefferson County in modern history.
Tests were run after a concerned townsperson saw at least 15 dead squirrels lying around town. When one of the bodies was tested, it came back positive for plague.
Officials expect the other dozen or so dead squirrels were also infected.
Though it can now be treated with antibiotics, the plague can spread among pets. Cats and dogs who play outside are particularly susceptible.
Cats are highly susceptible to the plague and can catch it from flea bites or a rodent scratch or bite, or by ingesting a rodent. Cats may also die if not properly treated with antibiotics, officials said.
For those who aren’t familiar with the history of the Black Death, here’s some background courtesy of NatGeo:
“Arguably the most infamous plague outbreak was the so-called Black Death, a multi-century pandemic that swept through Asia and Europe,” according to National Geographic. “It was believed to start in China in 1334, spreading along trade routes and reaching Europe via Sicilian ports in the late 1340s. The plague killed an estimated 25 million people, almost a third of the continent’s population. The Black Death lingered on for centuries, particularly in cities. Outbreaks included the Great Plague of London (1665-66), in which 70,000 residents died.”
Though of course that doesn’t answer the most important question: How did it get to Colorado?
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