- Are Prospects For Syrian Peace Looking Up?
Authored by M K Bhadrakumar via IndianPunchline.com,
After prolonged hibernation, the Astana Process on Syrian peace is kinetic, with the troika of ‘guarantor’ states – Russia, Turkey and Iran – set to hold a round of talks in the Kazakh capital on November 28-29. Delegations of Syrian government and the opposition are also expected to attend. A renewed effort is commencing to create traction for the UN-sponsored negotiations in Geneva.
(Astana-9 meeting on Syria, May 2018)
Much water has flown down the Euphrates since the 9th round of the Astana Process took place in May. Six months is a long time in politics – especially in Middle East politics. But, paradoxically, while Middle Eastern politics is in turmoil, the prospects for peace in Syria may have improved. The setting for tomorrow’s meet – it’s unclear at what level the event will take place – has become largely favorable. At least 10 major reasons can be attributed.
One, Syria is witnessing a period of relative calm. There has been no major fighting for months.
Two, Syrian-Jordanian border had reopened and nothing of a feared flare-up happened in the Golan Heights.
Three, the Russian-Turkish understanding on Idlib is holding.
Four, Israel has been effectively ‘defanged’ (thanks to deployment of Russian S-300 ABM system to Syria).
Five, Russia and Iran intend to retain their military footprints in Syria for a foreseeable future, while on the contrary, the US lacks the political will or the military capability to impact the strategic calculations of Moscow, Tehran, Damascus or Ankara.
Six, importantly, Turkey has become an implicit ally of Russia and Iran and is inching closer and closer to a political deal that leaves President Bashar Al-Assad in power.
Seven, Russia, Turkey, and Iran are in the lead in shaping the Syria policy, with clear strategic goals and, even more so, the means to achieve them.
(Tehran Summit on Syria, September 2018)
Eight, on the other hand, a growing determination on the part of Russia, Iran, and Turkey is discernible to freeze out the United States from any role in shaping Syria’s geo-strategic future. Although the three countries would have tactical differences between them, broadly, Turkey will accommodate Russia and Iran so long as it has a free hand to check the Kurdish forces threatening its security. Significantly, the announcement on the rebooting of the Astana Process comes after the visit by Russian President Vladimir Putin to Turkey on November 19.
Nine, the crisis in Turkish-American relations not only persists but may even deepen in the period ahead.
Finally, the Trump administration’s calculations that its re-imposition of sanctions against Iran will either force Iran out of Syria or, better yet, produce a veritable collapse of the Iranian government are turning out to be a mere pipedream. In fact, the opposite has happened.
Iran is intensifying its coordination with Russia and Turkey, and is creating firewalls to protect its strategic gains in Syria. Again, it is clear by now that the US cannot count on the new government in Baghdad to act against Iranian interests.
On the other hand, the dangerous situation that has arisen on Israel’s border with Gaza (which was precipitated entirely by Israeli hardliners) and the ensuing mayhem in Israel’s domestic politics will seriously delimit Benjamin Netanyahu’s energy and resources to act as ‘spoiler’ in Syria. Moscow has openly snubbed Netanyahu lately by refusing him to schedule his visit.
Similarly, the widening cracks in the US-Saudi alliance in the downstream of the Khashoggi murder all but means an overall Saudi disengagement from the Syrian conflict. The UAE has already begun mending fences with the Syrian government, which would only have been possible with Saudi approval. (See my blog UAE, Saudi sense convergence with Syria.)
Suffice to say, the so-called Syrian opposition is finding itself rudderless. Their erstwhile mentors – US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE – have either reached a dead end or have turned to new priorities in their self-interests accepting the defeat in the Syrian conflict.
Meanwhile, the appointment of Norwegian diplomat Geir Pederson as the UN Secretary-General’s new special envoy for Syria becomes a positive factor. Russia has warmly noted that “we know him as an experienced and unbiased diplomat.” Pederson’s predecessor Staffan de Mistura was widely perceived as a sidekick of the US. Clearly, the Astana Process is not wasting time by kickstarting the work on a Syrian settlement even as Perdersen moves in.
- Australia's Economy Is A House Of Cards, Set For Sharp Downturn In 2019
Damien Boey, a research analyst at Credit Suisse, has warned that economic growth in Australia could slow quite sharply next year, raising the prospect that a slowdown could be immient.
Boey expects the recent growth spurt driven by strong infrastructure investment, could fade in the first half of 2019, and the risks associated with housing construction and household spending from the downturn in real estate could signal that the Reserve Bank of Australia’s rate hike cycle would have to be put on hold.
“Our view is that the economy is overshooting,” Boey said.
“We believe that growth will eventually slow as timely leading indicators [such as PMIs] are suggesting.”
Boey said infrastructure investments had driven the recent surge in economic activity.
“We think that the [economy] is still being supported by infrastructure,” he said.
“The latest Access Economics data for Q3 suggest that growth in the stock of infrastructure spending has re-accelerated. And recently, project spending growth has been remarkably positively correlated with the cycle in domestic demand.”
While actual infrastructure investment has been substantial, Boey did not expect the trend to last due to the lack of new projects in the pipeline.
“In 2018 to date, actual project spending growth has accelerated, even as the project pipeline has thinned out,” he said.
“It is in this sense that we think infrastructure spending growth has been overshooting, contributing to the overshooting we are also seeing in domestic demand growth relative to leading indicators,” Boey added.
“However, the more growth in spending we experience today, the more we also eat into future growth, unless policy makers are able to adequately top up the project pipeline.
“As the saying goes, ‘serenity now, insanity later’.”
The boom in infrastructure investment in 2018 is creating a high benchmark for growth rates in 2019, a significant factor Boey believes will morph into a slowdown next year.
“Our concern is that the economy is very much driven by housing and consumption,” Boey said.
“Indeed, the multiplier effects of housing on the rest of the economy are very large. In this respect, conditions do not look particularly healthy.”
And, if Boey is correct about infrastructure spending cooling next year, this could materialize into a significant issue for households that could further compound the real estate slowdown.
“Infrastructure spending is providing a circuit breaker between falling house prices and the aggregate spending. Employment growth has been remarkably resilient, allowing households to absorb negative wealth and credit effects from housing downturn,” he said.
“But if the infrastructure pipeline is not topped up in a timely fashion, the risk is that the public spending impulse will fade, employment growth will slow, and private sector de-leveraging forces will take over.”
This all comes at a time of declining home prices in many regions of the country, Boey also warns this could see “residential investment fall materially.”
Boey, like many other forecasters, thinks the Sydney-led national housing downturn could result in a crash.
On Thursday, we covered yet another gloomy report, this time from UBS, who warns housing prices in Australia could fall as much as 30% in a deep recession scenario.
UBS analyst Jonathan Mott assembled five different scenarios to predict the direction that Australia’s housing market could go. The worst case includes the first recession in 27 years, a 30% collapse in house prices and widespread litigation against the banks for mortgage mis-selling. The bear case would also include the central bank cutting rates to zero before embarking on its own version of quantitative easing, the suspension of dividends and equity raisings from the big banks.
Mott thinks that current conditions are already reflecting the very real possibility of a housing correction and also warns that risk of a credit crunch “is real and rising.”
Mott stated: “The rapidly deteriorating housing market is a signal of even tougher times ahead. The housing credit squeeze experienced over the last six months is expanding. The outlook for the banks has not been as challenged since at least 2008.”
As a reminder, the Australian household debt to income ratio has ballooned to shocking levels over the past three decades as Sydney is ranked as one of the most overvalued cities in the world. According to the Daily Mail Australia, credit card bills, home mortgages, and personal loans now account for 189% of an average Australian household income, compared with just 60% in 1988:
Australia’s economy is a house of cards. It seems that multiple analysts have realized the party could stop in 2019.
- Giving Thanks – A Collapse Update From Venezuela: Corruption, Hunger, & Crime
Authored by JG Martinez D via Daisy Luther’s Organic Prepper blog,
In this update, Jose talks about the worsening corruption, hunger, and crime in Venezuela. It’s hard to imagine, but things are still getting worse there. As we get together to feast with our families this week, please remember the people of Venezuela, where 80% of the population does not have enough food. ~ Daisy
I have been trying to solve a couple of issues this past week, mainly related to my parents’ health. Dad just had an event with his equilibrium (he is almost 80 so it is perfectly understandable), and he hardly could come back home in his old car. Amazingly, he did not crash or got injured in the way back. In the pictures, I have seen he is alarmingly thinner. I will send him some nutritional additions as soon as I can. I have been going through some personal and familial issues that demanded lots of attention and care and had to leave the city for some days up to work a few days in a place without any kind of coverage, not even landline, in the middle of nowhere. I survived though.
Let’s begin.
Why the collapse is still going on.
Well, it is a known fact that a slow, painful collapse is definitely the worst possible scenario. Its effects are long term, the suffering it inflicts has effects on too many people, and last too much time. It affects other countries’ economies and societies, on time.
In our example, this is exactly what is happening. I read the report of a Venezuelan journalist, much smarter than me, where he explains the exact reason with very clever words, of why the mafia is still in power. His analysis is that the regime is not a vertical structure. Otherwise, it would have been much easier to overcome with conventional methodologies. The reason is that the structure is not like, for example, the Iraq government where Saddam controlled everything.
In Venezuela, the power is exerted by small, powerful because they are armed and have support from traitors as internal sources) gangs that are scattered all over the country. These can be with or without uniforms. It is very likely there are foreigners with them too, not openly but in the torture/imprisonment facilities. This kind of division offers new perspectives to know where exactly the combat should start. I would dare to say that, once we understood how they operate, it should be much easier to remove them.
Local warlords should have local interests…and local thugs to “attend” such interests, too. With some basic surveillance and taking care of the local snitches, enough information could be collected for some groups to start cooking something decent.
Yes, I am a libertarian. This kind of love for freedom is beyond nationality. That is why the communist world fears it that much and wants to eliminate it so badly.
But I would not like to analyze too much the political aspects this time. It is effectively covered, at least in its main aspects, in other articles.
An update from my wife’s family
I hadn’t written some other articles because I was waiting for my wife’s family to arrive, so I could include personal information they collected from their conversations with other travelers.
They made the trip, and the information is outstanding. They confirmed the 18 dead by freezing story in the mountains of Colombia. Being a large family with small children, they received assistance in some of the parts of the trip, even being hosted without charge in a hotel room.
To summarize, this is the general situation: people have to get into a large truck (regular buses are out of the game, there are no tires or spare parts) just to buy some basic staples, at incredible prices that increase every single day. The power grid is working just 4/5 hours a day in most of the country. Sending money is now increasingly difficult. The price of food is such that, even in a foreign currency like dollars, the numbers just don´t match: a dozen eggs is 9$, and one kilo of meat about 13$ depending on the area. Corn flour for our arepas is just found by the 12 kilos package. Rice and pasta, the same. If someone can live with those prices…
Law “enforcement” is completely corrupt.
It is quite interesting to hear what they have to say about the role of the law “enforcement” corps. They kidnapped people, asking for ransoms in foreign currency. The situation in the imprisonment facilities was…apocalyptical. Once they have collected enough money from the ransoms and what not, almost the technical stuff LEOs all of that city flee the country for good, and they are now in some place in Latin America (Colombia, perhaps?)…or even planning how to sneak up to the USA.
Go figure.
One of the most interesting investigators of this kind of stuff I have read these last few days analyzed very thoroughly about how the atomization and redistribution of power schemes are what has allowed the mafia to be in relative control so much time. With many small bands of thugs operating at the same time all over the country, and the LEO corps obeying just their own rules (presidential convoy was stopped recently by an armed group of intelligence corps, with the consequent aggressive attitude of the bodyguards, and this impasse conducted to the removal of their director, Gustavo Gonzalez L. from the chair. (You can google it). There is a lot of stuff happening under the sheets.
It is quite likely that we will see lots of nasty things in the near future, as the power structures diminishes and more and more members are “purged”. Losing control for this structure means that the ruling party in the rest of the country will be those with the uniform, the badge, and the gun or the AK. And without a legal system working, that is bad. VERY bad. As it can be supposed, this will not be a happy ending for those involved. They know that the entire world is against them. They are considered (as it should be) delinquents for good people all over the world. They have stolen our gold and destroyed our capacity to generate wealth via oil production.
Stealth mode is essential to survive in Venezuela right now.
This said, I have suggested to my fellows to activate their stealth mode. Old clothing and shoes, avoid too clean cars, use the vehicles as little as possible…Jeez, even using dark bags in case they found some food is wise. There are plenty of stories about thugs grabbing grocery bags, sometimes even stabbing the holder, if some resistance was found. Parking the car ready to leave the place is a need. A lot of assaults are carried on when people are getting into the vehicle. In my case, with my SUV busted, I had a backpack and perhaps my wife or one of the kids with another smaller backpack, and we got to the bike quickly. (How I miss my old motorbike!).
I have a lot of stuff that I was going to move from our house to my parent´s place, mainly equipment like electrical tools and similar productive, useful devices that a prepper usually has in place. But nowadays, roads are so lonely and LEOs are so…predaceous, that it is not a good idea any longer. A truck loaded with stuff will be a gold mine for those thugs. That is, provided that the gangs roaming in the desert interstate roads can be avoided, which is highly unlikely.
Rules have changed, and the very weak empire of law that once existed (the middle 70s to 90s?) is no longer present. It is not a countrywide situation, though. But now the Southern states, Amazonas and Apure are the kingdoms of the Colombian guerrilla. Thanks, Uncle Hugo!. You f—ed us well.
There have been reports on the roads to the East of the country (Cumana city for example) where 20 or 25 people gangs stop the cars and take whatever they want. LEOs will take whatever food you happen to carry, without bothering in giving you something else than a warning that you are lucky to not be going to jail. This is something to be expected in such a situation, and it can´t be more dangerous. However, it will not develop itself from one day to another; once things start to get bad and dope starts to be scarce…the hunger will make the beast leave out. The predators will go after the easier preys first. Or whatever they believe these preys are.
It is a hard compromise, but you can´t look helpless and unable to defend. There are a lot of psychos here that will shoot innocent people in the head just because they can, and they know that no one is going to come after them. If you could see some of the videos that have been uploaded about what the gangs are able to do…you would understand why I am so freaked out. Hands chopped. Picks used to drill someone´s head while a woman laughs as she is recording the footage. Jeez.
If you carry, and the situation goes the wrong direction, people under such a dangerous situation, should not draw without being ready to use their piece. Once someone knows you are armed, you will become a target: a good piece is a survival tool for the thugs, a very coveted element, and finally, a prestige symbol.
And that is the update.
This is the updating, people. I will write some more articles, as I can interview and gather everything that my family that just arrived a couple of weeks ago is able to transmit everything while it is fresh in their memories.
Thanks for your much-needed assistance, and your moral support! I won’t disappear again.
- Is The Detroit Housing Boom Over?
A newly published September sales report via the Detroit Free Press indicates that residential real estate sales in metro Detroit could be topping.
The number of units sold in southeastern Michigan was down 5.7% in Sept. compared with the same month last year, while the median sale price continued to inch higher by 5.5% to $169,900.
Real Estate Statistics For Detroit
RealComp, a Farmington Hills-based multiple listing service, provided new housing data to Detroit Free Press, which showed the tri-county metro Detroit area could be nearing a peak in the residential real estate market. The report said Oakland County felt the most pain, with residential homes sales down 8.9% to 1,399 last month, compared with 1,529 in September 2017.
The median sale price of homes in Oakland County rose 1.8%, far less than the metro’s average, to $235,000. The number of listings collapsed 13.6% to 5,209.
“The decline in home sales during September is a combination of the seasonality of the market along with buyers taking in rising home prices and watching where interest rates are heading,” said Jeanette Schneider, vice president of RE/MAX of Southeastern Michigan, in a press release. “Even with fewer sales, we still have a tight supply of homes and that keeps pricing rising in a market that favors sellers.”
Schneider noted that national housing trends show year-over-year sales dropped by 11.6%, although the median sales price was up 5.6%.
We reported in late Sept. that Bank of America rang the proverbial bell on the US real estate market, warning that existing home sales have peaked, reflecting declining affordability, greater price reductions and deteriorating housing sentiment. In the Sept. report from chief economist Michelle Meyer, the bank warned that “the housing market is no longer a tailwind for the economy but rather a headwind.”
There were 23,832 homes in 18 counties of southwestern Michigan on the market last month, 15% less than September 2017, according to RealComp.
RealComp warned that real estate professionals “are pointing to 2018 as the final period in a long string of sentences touting several happy years of buyer demand.”
“Although residential real estate should continue along a mostly positive line for the rest of the year, rising prices and interest rates coupled with salary stagnation and a generational trend toward home purchase delay or even disinterest could create an environment of declining sales,” the listing service added.
The bottom line: higher borrowing costs — and higher home values — only make it tougher for millennials to make a deal and buy a home. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate could be at 5.55% in Nov. 2019, according to Robert Dye, chief economist for Dallas-based Comerica. The too-hot-to-handle housing market in metro Detroit has now plateaued.
- Reaping The Fruits Of College Indoctrination
Authored by Walter Williams, op-ed via Townhall.com,
Much of today’s incivility and contempt for personal liberty has its roots on college campuses, and most of the uncivil and contemptuous are people with college backgrounds.
Let’s look at a few highly publicized recent examples of incivility and attacks on free speech.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, were accosted and harassed by a deranged left-wing mob as they were leaving a dinner at Georgetown University. Sen. McConnell was harassed by protesters at Reagan National Airport, as well as at several venues in Kentucky. Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife were harassed at a Washington, D.C., restaurant. Afterward, a group called Smash Racism DC wrote: “No — you can’t eat in peace — your politics are an attack on all of us. You’re (sic) votes are a death wish. Your votes are hate crimes.” Other members of Congress — such as Andy Harris, Susan Collins and Rand Paul — have been physically attacked or harassed by leftists. Most recent is the case of Fox News political commentator Tucker Carlson. A leftist group showed up at his house at night, damaging his front door and chanting, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!” “Racist scumbag, leave town!”
Mayhem against people with different points of view is excused as just deserts for what is seen as hate speech.
Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray discovered this when he was shouted down at Middlebury College and the professor escorting him was sent to the hospital with injuries. Students at the University of California, Berkeley shut down a controversial speaker and caused riot damage estimated at $100,000. Protesters at both UCLA and Claremont McKenna College disrupted scheduled lectures by Manhattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has discovered so-called bias response teams on hundreds of American college campuses. Bias response teams report to campus officials — and sometimes to law enforcement officers — speech that may cause “alarm, anger, or fear” or that might otherwise offend. Drawing pictures or cartoons that belittle people because of their beliefs or political affiliation can be reported as hate speech. Universities expressly set their sights on prohibiting constitutionally protected speech. As FIRE reported in 2017, hundreds of universities nationwide now maintain Orwellian systems that ask students to report — often anonymously — their neighbors, friends and professors for any instances of supposed biased speech and expression.
A recent Brookings Institution poll found that nearly half of college students believe that hate speech is not protected by the First Amendment. That’s nonsense; it is. Fifty-one percent of college students think they have a right to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. Nineteen percent of students think that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking. Over 50 percent agree that colleges should prohibit speech and viewpoints that might offend certain people. One shouldn’t be surprised at all if these visions are taught and held by many of their professors. Colleges once taught and promoted an understanding of Western culture. Today many professors and the college bureaucracy teach students that they’re victims of Western culture and values.
Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.” Much later, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”
From the Nazis to Stalinists to Maoists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, just as American leftists did during the 1960s. Their support for free speech is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control and confiscation. The right to say what they please is their tool for indoctrination, propagandizing and proselytization. Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses. Much of the off-campus incivility we see today is the fruit of what a college education has done to our youth.
- Trump Signs Order Closing Border With Mexico, Authorizing Lethal Force
Yesterday we reported that president Trump had authorized troops stationed at the border to act in a law enforcement capacity to “perform those military protective activities that the Secretary of Defense determines are reasonably necessary” to protect border agents, including “a show or use of force (including lethal force, where necessary), crowd control, temporary detention. and cursory search.”
That wasn’t all: speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the president said on Thursday that he also signed an order to close the U.S. border with Mexico, adding that he’s authorized troops to use lethal force against migrants who attempt to enter the U.S.
“If they have to,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, claiming that at least 500 criminals are among migrants trying to enter the U.S. “So I’m not going to let the military be taken advantage of. I have no choice. Do I want that to happen? Absolutely not. But you’re dealing with rough people.”
Trump also said that he would welcome a partial shutdown of the government over “border security.”
According to Bloomberg, Trump signed the order two days ago and that “I’ve already shutdown parts of the border” warning that the entire border may be closed if conflict with migrants escalates.
“If we find that its uncontrollable,” he said, “if we find that it gets to a level where we are going to lose control or people are going to start getting hurt, we will close entry into the country for a period of time until we can get it under control.”
“The whole border,” he clarified. “I mean the whole border. And Mexico will not be able to sell their cars into the United States where they make so many cars at great benefit to them, not at great benefit to us.”
Still, details were missing as the White House hasn’t released the order and Trump wasn’t clear about his directive.
Before the midterm elections Trump ordered the military to reinforce the southern border, repeatedly warning voters about a so-called “caravan” of migrants making its way from Central America to the U.S. His critics called the deployment a political stunt.
As Bloomberg reminds us, next week Congress returns for its post-election “lame duck” session in which a top priority will be to authorize full fiscal 2019 spending plans for several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the IRS and the National Park Service. Temporary funding for the agencies expires Dec. 7. Congress already approved full-year spending for most of the U.S. government, meaning any shutdown would be limited.
Trump has repeatedly threatened to veto spending bills if Congress continues to refuse to fund the wall, and with Democrats poised to take over the House in January, the president could force the issue in the lame-duck session.
In its analysis of the midterm election consequences, Goldman predicted that under a divided Congress, there will be a substantial risk of shutdown at the next spending deadline in 2019, though whether it happens will depend on the political environment at that point. The debt limit will be reinstated March 1, 2019 Congress will need to raise it by August. As a further reminder, the two most disruptive debt limit debates in recent memory, in 2011 and 2013, both occurred in a divided Congress.
- Tesla Cuts Model S, X Prices In China To Boost Sliding Demand
Always innovating, Tesla has come up with a novel way to lose money faster.
Reuters reports that the electric car maker is going to be cutting the price of its Model X and its Model S Vehicles in China. The purposefully under-the-radar announcement which came on Thanksgiving day, will see Tesla bear the brunt of costs associated with the ongoing trade war between China and the United States that it once said it would pass on to customers. In totally unrelated news, it sounds like demand is just fine.
Just four months after it announced price hikes for its Models S and X, Tesla has reversed and said it’s going to cut the prices on these models by between 12% and 26% in order to make them “affordable” in the world’s biggest automobile market.
The price cut comes at the same time that trade tensions are near an all time high between China and the United States. China has slapped tariffs on US imports which is a substantial detriment to Tesla which – for now – makes all of its cars in the US.
Tesla told Reuters: “We are absorbing a significant part of the tariff to help make our cars more affordable for customers in China.”
The price cuts come at a time when EV sales in China have been the silver lining of the entire auto industry, as we recently documented an article about the shrinking global automobile market. EV sales were the sole sector of growth last month in China, increasing by 51% Y/Y. For the first 10 months of the year, sales were up 76% to 860,000 fueled by government subsidies and favorable policies, as well as still prevailing novelty.
Which is perhaps why Tesla’s sky-high – and not in the smoking-pot-during-a-radio-interview sense – prices stuck out like an electrified thumb.
Furthermore, as noted above, Tesla was one of the first automakers to respond to Chinese tariffs by raising prices for the same two model vehicles by about 20% to offset the higher import duty. Tesla also noted on its most recent conference call that setting up shop in China was going to be more difficult than originally anticipated due to the current trade tensions.
The company noted then that trade tensions with China “have resulted in an import tariff rate of 40% on Tesla vehicles versus 15% for other imported cars in China.” The company said:
Tesla continues to lack access to cash incentives available to locally produced electric vehicles in China that are typically around 15% of MSRP or more. Taking ocean transport costs and import tariffs into account, Tesla is now operating at a 55% to 60% cost disadvantage compared to the exact same car locally produced in China. This makes for a challenging competitive environment, given that China is by far the largest market for electric vehicles.
Given that even China’s auto market has recently began grinding to a halt, and is set to post its first ever annual decline as we documented recently – combined with the fact that many Tesla skeptics are confident that demand has finally peaked – lowering prices while making their “big push” into what is supposed to be the most opportunistic automobile market in the world doesn’t come off as a move of confidence by the automaker. Rather, it comes off as a desperate attempt to grab market share at a loss; that, or just another “creative” way to keep both profits and revenues lower, a “business model” that Tesla shareholders should be all too familiar with already.
- Here We Go Again: US Accuses Iran Of Hiding Chemical Weapons
In a trite refrain straight out of the standard Washington regime change playbook, the United States has lodged a formal complaint alleging Iran is developing nerve agents “for offensive purposes”.
Like Syria before (and Russia), first comes the “outraged!” human rights violations rhetoric, then come crippling sanctions and international “pariah status”, and for the final push comes unfounded chemical attack claims, a charge now being formally prepped and set in motion against Tehran by the West.
After the AP first revealed a week ago that the U.S. is set to accuse Iran of violating international bans on chemical weapons, an American diplomat has told the global chemical weapons agency in The Hague that Tehran has not declared all of its chemical weapons capabilities.
On Thursday Ambassador Kenneth Ward told a meeting of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that Iran was in violation of an international non-proliferation convention.
“The United States has had longstanding concerns that Iran maintains a chemical weapons program that it has failed to declare to the OPCW,” Ward said at an OPCW conference.
“The United States is also concerned that Iran is also pursuing central nervous system-acting chemicals for offensive purposes,” he added. He connected this with the general White House charge and theme that Iran and Russia had “enabled” Syria in attacking civilians with nerve agents, according to claims of officials in the West.
Specifically Amb. Ward claimed Iran has been hiding a production facility for filling aerial bombs while simultaneously maintaining a secret program to procure banned toxic munitions, include nerve agents.
While a number of commentators acknowledged the sheer lack of evidence to back the claims — something that’s never stopped US officials from making the charge whether it was Iraq, Libya, or Syria — Ward merely cited historical information from the 1980s alleging Iran had transferred banned chemical munitions to Gaddafi’s Libya.
Of course, ironically the US had been supplying Saddam Hussein with chemical productions equipment and capability during that very period of the 1980s, according to recently unearthed CIA files.
Meanwhile…
- Hasbro Trolls Millennials With Monopoly Version Replacing Real Estate With Vegan Bistros
Who would’ve guessed that creating a board game that mocks millennials for being triggered so easily would – wait for it – trigger millennials? That’s exactly what happened when Hasbro released its “Millennial Monopoly” game. The shot at the age 22 to 35-year-old demographic hilariously has removed the real estate from the game, stating on the front box ‘Forget real estate. You can’t afford it anyway’.
On the box, the Monopoly man is wearing earbuds, sunglasses and donning a participation medal, taking a direct stab at millennials who believe that “everybody is a winner”. He’s shown holding a coffee cup and standing out in front of a building that looks like a mock-up of a Whole Foods.
And since millennials don’t have any money, why not take it out from the game altogether? That’s exactly what Hasbro did – they replaced it with “experience points” that can be used to instead buy trips to places like meditation retreats and the vegan bistro. The traditional Monopoly pieces like the ship, top hat and car have also been replaced with a pair of sunglasses, a camera and even a hashtag.
The game’s description states: “Money doesn’t always buy a great time. But experiences, whether they’re good — or weird — last forever.”
Of course, this version of the game, made to gently poke fun at a generation of people who desperately deserve it, has wound up inevitably triggering them on Twitter. The responses show a generation that is all too incapable of not taking things seriously and realizing a good-natured joke when it happens.
A real breath of fresh air though has been Hasbro, who has defended the decision to create the game by stating: “We created Monopoly for Millennials to provide fans with a lighthearted game that allows millennials to take a break from real life and laugh at the relatable experiences and labels that can sometimes be placed on them. Whether you are a lifestyle vlogger, emoji lover or you make your ‘side hustle’ selling vegan candles, Monopoly for Millennials is for you!”
Regardless of whether not Hasbro stands by the game or millennials choose to embrace it, it is almost certainly creating a controversy at just the right time – before holiday season. The game will likely be a major hit in the coming months for the holidays and ABC News is already reported that the game has already been sold out.
At least one triggered millennial on Twitter realized the irony:
Score one for capitalism!
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...