- Germany Imposes Fine For All Non-Mask Wearers In New National Crackdown
Germany Imposes Fine For All Non-Mask Wearers In New National Crackdown
Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/28/2020 – 02:45It should surprise nobody that this happens first within the EU. While much of the world takes to mask-wearing more out of a social and health consciousness “most people are on board” type attitude, the government of Germany has announced fines as punishment for people not wearing them.
Chancellor Angela Merkel announced during a virtual meeting Thursday with state governors that almost the entire country will be under a 50 euros minimum ($59) fine for breaching the national mask mandate.
Prior anti-lockdown protest in Germany, via Reuters. After the meeting it was announced that all federal states except the east’s Saxony-Anhalt agreed on setting a minimum fine.
In her comments Merkel also urged Germans to stay home “wherever it is possible” and avoid traveling to “hot spots” like the United States.
Berlin also agreed to impose a strict limiting on gatherings. Not only have many major public events been canceled outright, but police are enforcing a ban on private parties of more than 25 persons.
Large public events will not return until 2021. The new stringent measures including the mask fines go into effect by the end of the day Thursday.
BREAKING Germany #Corona response goes (more) national again:
Merkel + State Premiers:– call on Germans NO travel to risk areas
– from Oct no paid leave upon return in quarantine
– no large events till 2021
– €50 min fine – no maskMerkel: “take rise in infections seriously” pic.twitter.com/EGohZGct5s
— Michaela Kuefner (@MKuefner) August 27, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
This also as most German schools are now back in session, though there’s been a handful of closures due to new coronavirus cases.
It’s part of a broader initiative proposed by German health officials to crackdown on people flouting social distancing measures amid the pandemic, even though in recent weeks authorities say coronavirus clusters are due mainly to incoming vacationers.
Germany’s confirmed COVID-19 numbers have been on the whole relatively low compared to other Western nations, at about 240,000 out of a population of 83 million.
- NATO's "Unified Front" At Breaking Point
NATO’s “Unified Front” At Breaking Point
Tyler Durden
Fri, 08/28/2020 – 02:00Authored by Danny Sjursen via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
Last month, a Turkish warship came one step away from firing missiles at a French naval vessel off the coast of Libya. In response, Paris suspended its involvement in Operation Sea Guardian — a multinational maritime effort to provide security in the Mediterranean Sea and halt the arms trafficking fueling Libya’s ongoing civil war. Initially, only eight member states — notably excluding both the U.S. and U.K. — supported France’s official complaint. This was only the latest incident in the increasingly frequent — and exceedingly awkward — tensions between several of Washington’s core North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies.
Indeed, from South America to East Asia, NATO members stand divided over many critical foreign policy issues of the moment.
On the subject of NATO — as with much else — President Trump is obtuse and ill-informed. Only here he isn’t exactly wrong. In fact, recent events raise serious questions about the 70-year old alliance’s lingering relevance and utility — as in what, so to speak, NATO is for?
Sure, The Donald is hardly a bridge-builder, but the media’s temptation to blame him alone for NATO’s growing fissures ultimately misses the mark — and the backstory. While his foreign policy fiascos have widened its divisions, the alliance’s inherent contractions and hypocrisies preceded Mr. Trump.
Indeed, some of the current fracture traces back to NATO’s complicated genesis; the rest, mainly, to the problematic pivot after the collapse of its justification-boogeyman – the Soviet Union – and its leading American member’s hyper-imperial post-9/11 turn.
NATO’s original sins
NATO’s contemporary tensions have rather old roots, beginning with the original sins of its founding. Perennially and self-consciously justified as a defensive alliance, the oft-forgotten reality is that NATO was actually formed (in 1949) six years before the ostensibly expansionist Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. And, while the Red Army undoubtedly occupied and helped stifle real representative democracy in Eastern Europe, Washington’s misdiagnosis of Russian postwar capabilities, intentions, and supposed Soviet-led communist monolith counted as the alliance’s first foundational sin. The other was to expediently, but near-fatally, jettison preconditions for Western European members to meaningfully decolonize their anachronistic empires. The first error counterproductively heightened hostility and engendered an apocalyptic arms race; the latter ceded much moral high ground to the Eastern Bloc.
These sins-at-the-founding manifested in early alliance tensions. In the mid-1960s, wary of unnecessary nuclear war, frustrated by U.S. hegemony, and seeking a “Third Way” in the binary Cold War, an ever-sovereignty-conscious France withdrew from NATO’s integrated command structure and booted out American troops (though officially remaining in the alliance). Throughout the era, Paris even tenuously and haltingly courted Moscow, and vice versa. Furthermore, Washington sometimes waged diplomatic battles over its European allies imperial intransigence. The 1956 Suez Crisis — the joint French-British-Israeli invasion of Egypt — and Paris’s obstinate brutality during Algeria’s War of Independence (1954-62), were just two notable examples.
Due to the enduring utility of an exaggerated Soviet threat, NATO weathered these inherent contractions. Yet today, despite — or perhaps because of — the best efforts of Washingtonian hawks’ best efforts to revive the peril of Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” in the form of Putin’s circumscribed Russia, it’s now America’s off-the-rails imperial delusions that risk spiking the alliance. The pivotal shift came after 1991, the very moment NATO’s Soviet raison d’etre officially transformed into its Russian Federation shell. Two climactic decisions conceived in Washington — one of inertia, the other betrayal — then set the stage for today’s farcical Cold War reprise and its related alliance-splintering.
It is all too easy to forget that a crumbled Berlin Wall (1989) and collapsed Soviet Union (1991) very well could — and possibly should — have spelled the end of an inherently anti-Russian NATO. However, misreading internal Soviet collapse as a personal victory, Washington fell prey to triumphalist delusions and opportunistically maintained NATO to abet its unipolar destiny. Then, even after Mikhail Gorbachev stunningly agreed to the reunification (within NATO!) of Germany — a two-time 20th century-invader of his Mother Russia — a succession of U.S. presidents reneged on the Soviet premier’s one requested (if informal) quid pro quo. “Any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable,” Gorbachev had then warned, to which Secretary of State James Baker assured him “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east” — though he and many analysts later quibbled about the promise’s exact meaning and scope.
Instead, it wasn’t three years before President Bill Clinton kicked-off NATO’s eastward expansion that’s now reached into the formal boundaries of the old Soviet Union and to the very borders of the current Russian Federation. The rest, as they say, is history — though it’s a history which undergirds many or most NATO-tensions of the sort that surfaced in the Franco-Turkish naval standoff. For in addition to setting conditions for one past (Georgia, 2008), one present (Ukraine, 2014-), and another potential future war (Baltic States, ?), Washington’s provocations and adventurism have deeply divided the alliance’s member states. Faced with the rise of both China and America’s global unpopularity, and an increasingly multipolar world, NATO countries steadily hedge and diverge on today’s key challenges.
NATO 2020: A survey in global divergence
Which brings us back to the conflict between NATO’s second-largest (Turkey) and third-largest (France) militaries, over the fate of war-torn Libya. France and Turkey accuse each other of violating the arms embargo — which both probably do — as each not-so-secretly back equally-problematic opposing sides in a civil war catalyzed by NATO’s ill-advised 2011 regime change fiasco. Furthermore, in an imbroglio so complex one struggles to keep up, the Libyan debacle reflects — both literally and tangentially — many other cracks in the alliance.
In a direct sense, Paris tacitly supports Moscow’s position since both — along with America’s non-NATO Saudi, Egyptian, and Emirati partners — back the forces of former CIA-asset turned warlord General Khalifa Haftar. Conversely, Turkey (and to some extent Rome) and also non-NATO Qatar — all home to sizable U.S. military bases — actively assist Libya’s vaguely Islamist, but internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA). Bolstering the GNA’s defenses are some 3500 Turkish-paid Syrian mercenary veterans of their native country’s own proxy civil war, many recruited from the ample refugee camps within Turkey. Meanwhile, the Trump administration seemingly has no coherent Libya strategy.
Nevertheless, this Syria connection illustrates the bewildering fluidity of NATO fracture. In Libya, Washington watches from afar as France sides with Russia against Turkey and its Syrian proxies. In Syria’s own bloody civil war, the Obama administration’s long — if halting — fanciful search and support for anti-regime “moderate rebels” initially cohered with the Turkish line. However, in recent years, as it became clear that Bashar al-Assad — with considerable Russian and Iranian assistance — would win the war, Washington’s and Ankara’s positions increasingly and dangerously diverged.
While the Turks never overtly changed sides, they agreed to Tripartite Summit peace talks with the Russians and Iranians that conspicuously excluded Washington. Then, Ankara risked U.S.-sanctions to close a multibillion dollar arms deal with Moscow which included the purchase of sophisticated Russian S400 missile systems. Matters were even messier on the ground. Turkey hoped to carve a physical sphere of influence in Syria before an impending Assad-favorable war denouement. Fearful of both regime resurgence in the area and U.S.-backed Kurdish autonomy — given Ankara’s own conflict with its Kurdish minority — in October 2019 the Turkish military invaded Northeast Syria. Ankara launched threats (but thankfully not missiles) Washington’s way and its troops nearly traded blows with fleeing U.S. forces.
Then, early this year, Russia apparently did draw Turkish blood as the two countries came to the brink of war in Syria. A tenuous March ceasefire seemed to — at least temporarily — avert a regional catastrophe. However, in yet another twist, both Russian and Turkish troops were injured in a July 14 rebel roadside bomb attack on their joint patrol of the agreement’s stipulated deescalation zone. Meanwhile, the U.S. remains openly hostile to Moscow’s (invited) presence. Washington recently tightened callous sanctions that punish civilians unlucky enough to live in Assad’s sphere and complains of Russian encroachments near remaining U.S. troop positions. In Syria, Washington and Ankara hardly present a consistent or united NATO front.
Still, the alliance’s fault lines extend beyond the Arab World. In most cases, these divisions trace back to member states’ unease with U.S. imperial overreach and pugnacious provocations. Early rumblings surfaced during the Afghan War, when many NATO allies proved unenthusiastic about — and attached combat-avoidance “national caveats” to — increased roles in the alliance’s first “out-of-area” expeditionary operation. Member states were quick, and correct, to point out that NATO was never designed for such missions.
More recently, in ruptures that can be blamed on Mr. Trump, some NATO allies have proven lukewarm on Washington’s belligerence towards China, Iran, and Venezuela. For example, while the alliance has seemingly closed ranks against Beijing in the wake of COVID-fallout, it’s less clear that the previously wavering Europeans — on the Chinese telecom giant Huawei’s 5G network and China’s overall “Belt and Road Initiative” — will sign on to Trump’s desired Cold War 2.0 in the longer term.
Furthermore, even the most traditionally supportive NATO allies publicly opposed The Donald’s frankly absurd 2018 decision to withdraw from the eminently workable Obama-era Iranian nuclear deal. Then, despite officially standing with the U.S., NATO leaders called for restraint and carefully distanced themselves from Trump’s actual decision to assassinate Iran’s top general Qasem Soleimani. Lastly, while most NATO members have joined Washington in recognizing Juan Guiado’s unelected Venezuelan shadow government, most are less enthusiastic about recent U.S. escalatory adventurism such as placing bounties on President Nicolas Maduro’s head and the confusing American mercenary coup attempt. In fact, NATO’s perennial frenemy, Turkey, has proved willing to violate U.S. sanctions to continue trading with the Maduro regime.
None of this should come as a surprise. Given the alliance’s problematic origins, inherent contradictions, plus its post-Soviet and post-9/11 American imperial stressors, its remarkable that NATO has endured this long. It’s a safe bet that Donald Trump knows little of this history, and is even more blind to his own role in fracturing an already embattled alliance. If anything, he sees recent internal tensions as only confirming his frequent assertions that NATO is “obsolete.” Yet the disturbing truth is that Trump is right, if even for all the wrong — and partly self-fulfilling — reasons.
- The WEF Clarion Call: A Breakdown Of "The Great Reset"
The WEF Clarion Call: A Breakdown Of “The Great Reset”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 23:45Last month I posted an article that looked at the World Economic Forum as the institution behind ‘The Great Reset‘ agenda that was launched in June. One of the main themes of the article was the WEF’s ‘Strategic Intelligence platform’, which the organisation describe as ‘a dynamic system of contextual intelligence that enables users to trace relationships and interdependencies between issues, supporting more informed decision-making‘.
As I made reference to, Strategic Intelligence is the mechanism which brings all the interests that the WEF focus on together. This includes specific countries and industries, as well as global issues like Covid-19 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
When you look into Strategic Intelligence, one aspect to it that quickly becomes apparent is how each global issue and industry intertwines with one another. For instance, Covid-19 is a strand of ‘The Great Reset‘ and vice versa. What this does is create the impression that only a collectivised approach incorporating all ‘stakeholders‘ has the capacity to deal with crises on a global scale. The WEF is built upon the belief that nations and corporations must be interdependent and seek to remedy the world’s problems through the medium of global institutions.
So it is little surprise then that the WEF have devised through their Strategic Intelligence platform ‘The Great Reset‘. What this entails can be catagorised into two parts. First are the seven leading objectives for achieving the reset. In no particular order these are:
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Shaping the Economic Recovery
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Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution
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Strengthening Regional Development
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Revitalizing Global Cooperation
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Developing Sustainable Business Models
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Restoring the Health of the Environment
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Redesigning Social Contracts, Skills and Jobs
Next comes a mix of global issues and industries woven into ‘The Great Reset‘ agenda. At last count there were over fifty areas that make up the reset. These include:
Blockchain; Digital Identity; Internet Governance; Development Finance; Sustainable Development; Future of Health and Healthcare; Global Governance; Financial and Monetary Systems; Public Finance and Social Protection; Climate Change; Drones; 5G; The Ocean; Banking and Capital Markets; Aviation, Travel and Tourism; International Trade and Investment; Covid-19; Biodiversity; Cities and Urbanization; Leadership in the 4IR; Geo-economics; Global Health; International Security; Geopolitics; Future of Food; Air Pollution; 3D Printing; Batteries; Circular Economy; Future of Mobility; Human Rights; Gender Parity; Taxation; Future of Media, Entertainment and Culture; Digital Economy and New Value Creation; Fourth Industrial Revolution; Future of Economic Progress; Workforce and Employment; Agile Governance; Global Risks; Advanced Manufacturing and Production; Environment and Natural Resource Security; Plastics and the Environment; Corporate Governance; Forests; Justice and Law; Civic Participation; LGBTI Inclusion; Inclusive Design; Future of Computing; Artificial Intelligence and Robotics; Systemic Racism
As mentioned, all these subjects intermix throughout Strategic Intelligence. The distinction comes in the fact that the World Economic Forum have identified ‘The Great Reset‘ as the one issue that can bind all these other areas of concern together to try and bring about an economic and societal ‘new world order‘. So much so that when announcing the initiative in June, the WEF confirmed that the reset will be the theme of its annual Davos meeting in Switzerland come January 2021. In previous years the WEF have only published details of an upcoming theme a few weeks before the meeting takes place. This time, however, they have given over six months notice, which suggests the level of significance that the WEF have placed on ‘The Great Reset‘.
Having ascertained the seven main objectives and the plethora of industries and issues tied to them, let’s now get a sense of the motivations behind the reset from those who are calling for it.
The Founder and Executive Chairman of the institution, Klaus Schwab, and the IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, are two of the most prominent voices.
Beginning with Schwab, in articles posted on the WEF website (Now is the time for a ‘great reset’ and COVID-19’s legacy: This is how to get the Great Reset right) and during several interviews that can be found on the WEF’s Youtube channel, Schwab summarises why he considers an economic, societal, geopolitical, environmental and technological reset to be essential.
From Schwab’s perspective, there are numerous reasons why a Great Reset should be pursued, but Covid-19 is the most urgent of them all. Not only has the virus demonstrated that existing systems are no longer fit for purpose, it has also ‘accelerated our transition into the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution‘. For those unfamiliar with the Fourth Industrial Revolution, this was a concept that the World Economic Forum led with for their 2016 Davos meeting. Back in 2018 I published a brief overview of 4IR which can be found here.
With systems not suited to the 21st century, Schwab spoke of the urgency to ‘restore a functioning system of smart global cooperation structured to address the challenges of the next 50 years.’ To achieve this, all stakeholders of global society will have to be integrated into a ‘community of common interest, purpose and action‘. No one, it seems, is permitted to be left behind. We go as one, as a collective, whether an individual likes it or not. Every country will need to take part. Every industry must be transformed. This, according to Schwab, will signify a Great Reset of capitalism and a new era of prosperity.
But what if all stakeholders don’t band together behind the initiative? In Schwab’s view, to be dis-united ‘will lead to more polarisation, nationalism, racism, increased social unrest and conflicts‘. In short, a greater level of chaos and degradation of systems, leaving the world more fragile and less sustainable.
Schwab has insisted that to avoid this scenario, minor changes will not suffice. Instead, ‘entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems‘ must be built. Covid-19, therefore, is an ‘historical moment to shape the system for a post Corona era.’ It is an opportunity that Schwab says must not be missed.
Schwab went further a few weeks after the Great Reset was launched. As many are aware, using crisis as an opportunity to bring about major economic and societal change is a notorious strategy of global planners. And every so often some of those planners suggest as much. According to Schwab, ‘acute crises favour introspection and foster the potential for transformation‘. The Prince of Wales, who fully endorses the Great Reset, said something similar in that ‘unprecedented shockwaves of crisis may make people more receptive to bigger visions of change‘.
This begs the question – does the same level of potential for change exist without the onset of crises? To a small extent, perhaps, but more likely is that until a population is faced with a threat or danger that they believe risks being detrimental to them personally, the motivation to act and call for reform is not as urgent. Minds need to be concentrated on the seeming disaster at hand before sufficient support can be gained for the policies that global planners seek.
And if minds can be concentrated, then as Schwab points out, ‘a new world could emerge, the contours of which it is incumbent on us to re-imagine and to re-draw‘.
Many of the policies that global figureheads desire are within the purview of the the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which Schwab and his ilk have been promoting as essential since the back end of 2015. Now a global crisis of sufficient magnitude has presented an opening to further the goals of the global elite. Did this happen by coincidence or by design? Truthfully, no one can say for sure. Whilst the World Economic Forum were part of a pandemic simulation exercise a few months before the world entered into a live pandemic, this is not incontrovertible evidence of what some are now referring to as a ‘plandemic‘.
When the Great Reset agenda was unveiled, one of the other leading proponents was IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. She declared it of ‘paramount importance‘ that a future return to economic growth must encompass a ‘greener, smarter and fairer world‘. There is no need to wait, said Georgieva. The world must act now.
One of the most important takeaways from Georgieva’s intervention was her admission that ‘the digital economy is the big winner of this crisis‘. We have seen this already through the exponential growth in central banks discussing the issuance of their own digital currencies and using Covid-19 as a reason to reinforce calls for a new global economic ‘architecture‘.
In a speech to Italy’s National Consultation in June (Italy, Europe and the Global Recovery in 2021), Georgieva said that Covid-19 ‘may have accelerated the digital transformation by two or three years‘. The unproven fear of cash being a transmitter of the virus, along with people relying on contactless payments and online transactions, have no doubt contributed to her outlook.
Georgieva’s focus is on ‘the economy of tomorrow‘, which is reason enough for her that the ‘economy of yesterday‘ should be consigned to history. Entirely new foundations are required, not a rework of the failed systems of old. If it sounds like Georgieva and Schwab are reading from the same script, I would suggest that they are.
Georgieva believes that 2021 is a make or break year for the Great Reset. Either the world chooses more cooperation or more fragmentation. According to her, ‘this is the moment to decide that history will look back on this as the Great Reset, not the Great Reversal‘.
As you might have guessed, ‘the most important anchor of recovery‘ is for a Covid-19 vaccination, which Georgieva hopes will be available at scale by 2021.
The implication is that without a vaccine the world will be unable to return to any sense of normality, particularly in terms of open interaction with your fellow man. Only with a vaccine and supplementary treatments can there be a ‘fully fledged recovery‘.
To support the drive for a Great Reset, in July Klaus Schwab co-wrote a book with Thierry Malleret (who founded the Global Risk Network at the World Economic Forum) called ‘Covid-19: The Great Reset‘. In a follow up article I will be looking at some aspects to the book, and also will make an argument for why the idea of a ‘Great Reversal‘ might not be as detrimental to global planners as the likes of Kristalina Georgieva make out.
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- Fitness Watches Do More Harm Than Good For Heart Patients
Fitness Watches Do More Harm Than Good For Heart Patients
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 23:25Health apps and fitness watches provide incredible insight into one’s health but can also give rise to excessive anxiety, according to a new study.
Tariq Osman Andersen, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Computer Science, said fitness watches that measure sleep, heart rates, and physical activity could have drawbacks for the wearer.
Andersen’s research team conducted a six-month study with 27 heart patients who used ‘Fitbit’ fitness watches. The team said some wearers experienced increased anxiety over misinterpret heart data:
“Our study shows that, overall, self-measurements are more problematic than beneficial when it comes to the patient experience. Patients begin to use the information from their Fitbits just as they would use a doctor. However, they don’t get help interpreting their watch data. This makes them unnecessarily anxious, or they may learn something that is far from reality,” he said.
Published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the study determined the “pros and cons of using Fitbit watches:”
-More information calms, but also awakens doubt
Patients have a sense that they are becoming more in tune with their overall health, but they link the information to their heart disease, for which there is no safe basis. For example, if they see that they aren’t sleeping as much as they should be, they become uncomfortable and fear that this may exacerbate their illness. Similarly, they often link fast hearts rate with an increased risk of a heart attack.
“Conversely, the Fitbit watch can be calming, if data shows that you are sleeping well and have a low heart rate. The problem is that you cannot use data directly related to heart disease because the watch is designed for sports and wellness, as opposed to managing the disease,” explains Tariq Osman Andersen.
-Patients gain the courage to exercise, while simultaneously experiencing feelings of guilt
Another aspect of the Fitbit watch with both positive and negative aspects is exercise. On the one hand, patients were motivated to be active, but at the same time, the app revealed when patients did not attain the recommended 10,000 daily steps, which made many of them feel guilty.
As for heart patients using smartwatches, the data is prone to misinterpretation by the wearer as a medical professional is not examining it and could produce unwanted anxiety.
Sometimes, maybe too much technology is bad…
- Escobar: Definitive Eurasian Alliance Is Closer Than You Think
Escobar: Definitive Eurasian Alliance Is Closer Than You Think
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 23:05Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog (originally posted at The Asia Times),
Beijing-Moscow is already on; Berlin-Beijing is a work in progress; the missing but not distant link is Berlin-Moscow..
We have seen how China is meticulously planning all its crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic moves all the way to 2030 and beyond.
What you are about to read next comes from a series of private, multilateral discussions among intel analysts, and may helpfully design the contours of the Big Picture.
In China, it’s clear the path ahead points to boosting internal demand, and shifting monetary policy towards the creation of credit to consolidate the building of world-class domestic industries.
In parallel, there’s a serious debate in Moscow that Russia should proceed along the same path. As an analyst puts it, “Russia should not import anything but technologies it needs until it can create them themselves and export only the oil and gas that is required to pay for imports that should be severely restricted. China still needs natural resources, which makes Russia and China unique allies. A nation should be as self-sufficient as possible.”
That happens to mirror the exact CCP strategy, as delineated by President Xi in his July 31 Central Committee meeting.
And that also goes right against a hefty neoliberal wing in the CCP – collaborationists? – who would dream of a party conversion into Western-style social democracy, on top of it subservient to the interests of Western capital.
Comparing China’s economic velocity now with the US is like comparing a Maserati Gran Turismo Sport (with a V8 Ferrari engine) with a Toyota Camry. China, proportionately, holds a larger reservoir of very well educated young generations; an accelerated rural-urban migration; increased poverty eradication; more savings; a cultural sense of deferred gratification; more – Confucianist – social discipline; and infinitely more respect for the rationally educated mind. The process of China increasingly trading with itself will be more than enough to keep the necessary sustainable development momentum going.
The hypersonic factor
Meanwhile, on the geopolitical front, the consensus in Moscow – from the Kremlin to the Foreign Ministry – is that the Trump administration is not “agreement-capable”, a diplomatic euphemism that refers to a de facto bunch of liars; and it’s also not “legal-capable”, an euphemism applied, for instance, to lobbying for snapback sanctions when Trump has already ditched the JCPOA.
President Putin has already said in the recent past that negotiating with Team Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon: the demented bird walks all over the chessboard, shits indiscriminately, knocks over pieces, declares victory, then runs away.
In contrast, serious lobbying at the highest levels of the Russian government is invested in consolidating the definitive Eurasian alliance, uniting Germany, Russia and China.
But that would only apply to Germany after Merkel. According to a US analyst, “the only thing holding back Germany is that they can expect to lose their car exports to the US and more, but I tell them that can happen right away because of the dollar-euro exchange rate, with the euro becoming more expensive.”
On the nuclear front, and reaching way beyond the current Belarus drama – as in there will be no Maidan in Minsk – Moscow has made it very clear, in no uncertain terms, that any missile attack from NATO will be interpreted as a nuclear attack.
The Russian defensive missile system – including the already tested S-500s, and soon the already designed S-600s – arguably may be 99% effective. That means Russia would still have to absorb some punishment. And this is why Russia has built an extensive network of nuclear bomb shelters in big cities to protect at least 40 million people.
Russian analysts interpret China’s defensive approach along the same lines. Beijing will want to develop – if they have not already done so – a defensive shield, and still retain the ability to strike back against a US attack with nuclear missiles.
The best Russian analysts, such as Andrei Martyanov, know that the three top weapons of a putative next war will be offensive and defensive missiles and submarines combined with cyber warfare capabilities.
The key weapon today – and the Chinese understand it very clearly – is nuclear submarines. Russians are observing how China is building their submarine fleet – carrying hypersonic missiles – faster than the US. Surface fleets are obsolete. A wolf pack of Chinese submarines can easily knock out a carrier task force. Those 11 US carrier task forces are in fact worthless.
So in the – horrifying – event of the seas becoming un-sailable in a war, with the US, Russia and China blocking all commercial traffic, that’s the key strategic reason pushing China to obtain as much of its natural resources overland from Russia.
Even if pipelines are bombed they can be fixed in no time. Thus the supreme importance for China of Power of Siberia – as well as the dizzying array of Gazprom projects.
The Hormuz factor
A closely guarded secret in Moscow is that right after German sanctions imposed in relation to Ukraine, a major global energy operator approached Russia with an offer to divert to China no less than 7 million barrels a day of oil plus natural gas. Whatever happens, the stunning proposal is still sitting on the table of Shmal Gannadiy, a top oil/gas advisor to President Putin.
In the event that would ever happen, it would secure for China all the natural resources they need from Russia. Under this hypothesis, the Russian rationale would be to bypass German sanctions by switching its oil exports to China, which from a Russian point of view is more advanced in consumer technology than Germany.
Of course this all changed with the imminent conclusion of Nord Stream 2 – despite Team Trump taking no prisoners to sanction everyone in sight.
Backdoor intel discussions made it very clear to German industrialists that if Germany would ever lose its Russian source of oil and natural gas, coupled with the Strait of Hormuz shut down by Iran in the event of an American attack, the German economy might simply collapse.
There have been serious cross-country intel discussions about the possibility of a US-sponsored October Surprise involving a false flag to be blamed on Iran. Team Trump’s “maximum pressure” on Iran has absolutely nothing to do with the JCPOA. What matters is that even indirectly, the Russia-China strategic partnership has made it very clear that Tehran will be protected as a strategic asset – and as a key node of Eurasia integration.
Cross-intel considerations center on a scenario assuming a – quite unlikely – collapse of the government in Tehran. The first thing Washington would do in this case is to pull the switch of the SWIFT clearing system. The target would be to crush the Russian economy. That’s why Russia and China are actively increasing the merger of the Russian Mir and the Chinese CHIPS payment systems, as well as bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trade.
It has already been gamed in Beijing that were that scenario ever to take place, China might lose its two key allies in one move, and then have to face Washington alone, still on a stage of not being able to assure for itself all the necessary natural resources. That would be a real existential threat. And that explains the rationale behind the increasing interconnection of the Russia-China strategic partnership plus the $400 billion, 25-year-long China-Iran deal.
Bismarck is back
Another possible secret deal already discussed at the highest intel levels is the possibility of a Bismarckian Reinsurance Treaty to be established between Germany and Russia. The inevitable consequence would be a de facto Berlin-Moscow-Beijing alliance spanning the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), alongside the creation of a new – digital? – Eurasian currency for the whole Eurasian alliance, including important yet peripheral actors such as France and Italy.
Well, Beijing-Moscow is already on. Berlin-Beijing is a work in progress. The missing link is Berlin-Moscow.
That would represent not only the ultimate nightmare for Mackinder-drenched Anglo-American elites, but in fact the definitive passing of the geopolitical torch from maritime empires back to the Eurasian heartland.
It’s not a fiction anymore. It’s on the table.
Adding to it, let’s do some little time traveling and go back to the year 1348.
The Mongols of the Golden Horde are in Crimea, laying siege to Kaffa – a trading port in the Black Sea controlled by the Genoese.
Suddenly, the Mongol army is consumed by bubonic plague.
They start catapulting contaminated corpses over the walls of the Crimean city.
So imagine what happened when ships started sailing again from Kaffa to Genoa.
They transported the plague to Italy.
By 1360, the Black Death was literally all over the place – from Lisbon to Novgorod, from Sicily to Norway. As much as 60% of Europe’s population may have been killed – over 100 million people.
A case can be made that the Renaissance, because of the plague, was delayed by a whole century.
Covid-19 is of course far from a medieval plague. But it’s fair to ask.
What Renaissance could it be possibly delaying?
Well, it might well be actually advancing the Renaissance of Eurasia. It’s happening just as the Hegemon, the former “end of history”, is internally imploding, “distracted from distraction by distraction”, to quote T.S. Eliot. Behind the fog, in prime shadowplay pastures, the vital moves to reorganize the Eurasian land mass are already on.
- China Military Claims It Expelled US Destroyer From Its Territorial Waters, US Military Counters This Is Fake News
China Military Claims It Expelled US Destroyer From Its Territorial Waters, US Military Counters This Is Fake News
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 23:00In a bizarre exchange of what may or may not be fake news, today China’s Global Times claimed that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army “expelled a US warship that trespassed into China’s territorial waters in the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea on Thursday, near an ongoing Chinese military exercise zone that reportedly featured live-fire anti-ship ballistic missile launches.”
The USS Mustin, a US Navy guided missile destroyer, trespassed into the China’s territorial waters in the Xisha Islands on Thursday, and the PLA Southern Theater Command dispatched naval and air forces to track, identify and warn it leave, said Senior Colonel Li Huamin, a spokesperson for the PLA Southern Theater Command on early Friday.
The report went on to say that “the US ignored the rules of the international law, repeatedly stirred up troubles in the South China Sea, exercised navigational hegemony in the name of “freedom of navigation,” seriously undermined China’s sovereignty and security interests, and severely sabotaged the international navigation order in the South China Sea.”
The allegation sparked an immediate response from the US military which said that the Global Times claimed was “without evidence” or basically fake news. According to American Military News, the 7th Fleet confirmed the destroyer performed a freedom of navigation operation despite Chinese territorial claims to the island chain.
The press release comes after China’s Global Times state media outlet reported Chinese People’s Liberation Army claims, without evidence, that they expelled the U.S. warship.
The 7th Fleet stated, “On Aug. 27 (local date), USS Mustin (DDG 89) asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the vicinity of the Paracel Islands, consistent with international law. This freedom of navigation operation (“FONOP”) upheld the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea recognized in international law by challenging the unlawful restrictions on innocent passage imposed by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam and also by challenging China’s claim to straight baselines enclosing the Paracel Islands.
The 7th Fleet statement makes no references to challenges by Chinese forces in the area in which the FONOP occurred. Still, the Global Times quoted PLA Senior Colonel Li Huamin, who said the PLA Southern Theater Command dispatched naval and air forces to track, identify and warn the ship to leave but Li provided no evidence the U.S. warship acted in any way outside of its planned operations.
The US military also accused Li of making similar false comments in past U.S. FONOPs around the Paracel Islands.
In his statements Thursday, Li said, “The U.S. ignored the rules of the international law, repeatedly stirred up troubles in the South China Sea, exercised navigational hegemony in the name of ‘freedom of navigation,’ seriously undermined China’s sovereignty and security interests, and severely sabotaged the international navigation order in the South China Sea.” He added that “we urge the US to stop this kind of provocative action, to strictly manage maritime and aerial military operations and strictly restrain its frontline troops, so as to avoid accidents.”
Separately, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a statement Thursday, criticizing Chinese ballistic missile launches near the Paracel Islands.
“U.S. forces operate in the South China Sea on a daily basis, as they have for more than a century,” the 7th Fleet states. “They routinely operate in close coordination with like-minded allies and partners who share our commitment to uphold a free and open international order that promotes security and prosperity. All of our operations are designed to be conducted in accordance with international law and demonstrate that the United States will fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows – regardless of the location of excessive maritime claims and regardless of current events.”
- 'Empty Highways' – About 61 Million Americans Have Stopped Commuting In Post-Covid World
‘Empty Highways’ – About 61 Million Americans Have Stopped Commuting In Post-Covid World
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 22:45A new survey from ValuePenguin.com, commissioned by LendingTree, found 61 million Americans have stopped commuting to work due to the virus-induced recession. The reduction of motor vehicles on highways will result in deep economic scarring across the entire economy.
The coronavirus has upended nearly every aspect of life in the United States, and Americans’ driving behavior and commutes are no exception. ValuePenguin surveyed drivers to see how their habits have changed. We found a large number of drivers are no longer commuting to the office, whether because they are working from home or have lost employment due to COVID-19. -ValuePenguin
The survey found three in 10 respondents with motor vehicles are no longer making the daily commute to work in a post-COVID-19 world:
About three in 10 consumers with a motor vehicle said they no longer have a commute due to COVID-19, either because they’re working from home (19%) or they temporarily or permanently lost their jobs (10%).
On the other hand, 26% are back to their daily commute as of August, including essential workers (17%) and those whose employers reopened their offices (9%). (The remainder don’t have commutes either because they worked from home prior to the pandemic, or they were not working prior to the pandemic.) -ValuePenguin
Millions of motor vehicles are missing from America’s highways since March. About 38% of respondents said traffic in their respective metro areas remains subdued, and 36% said traffic was reduced but trending back to pre-pandemic levels.
For more color on empty streets and highways, TomTom high-frequency traffic congestion data of New York City shows traffic levels remain subdued.
The decline in travel has resulted in respondents making fewer trips to the gas pump. Almost a third said they’re driving every day, compared to 50% of drivers pre-pandemic. The number of respondents who fill up their tanks every week dropped by 26% in August versus before the pandemic.
While declining fuel consumption and oversupplied markets have subdued gasoline and diesel prices, a reduction in travel has resulted in a quarter of respondents to make cost-cutting changes to their auto insurance.
About 14% switched to another provider that was offering better deals, 12% reduced the amount of coverage since they are driving less and 3% took one of their household’s vehicles off the policy because their family is using fewer cars. –ValuePenguin
The survey’s results of a reduction in commuting were echoed in a recent KPMG International report:
The effects of COVID-19 will be felt for years. The response to the virus has accelerated powerful behavioral changes that will continue to shape how Americans use automobiles. We believe the changes in commuting and e-commerce are here to stay and that the combined effect of reduced commuting and shopping journeys could be as much as 270 billion fewer vehicle miles traveled (VMT) each year in the US. -KPMG
The permanent loss of vehicles on highways will have a tremendous impact across the entire economy and is suggestive that a “V-shaped” recovery is not in the cards for this year or next.
- America's Metastasizing Class Wars
America’s Metastasizing Class Wars
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 22:25Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Class wars are the inevitable result of an economic system in which ‘anything goes if you’re rich enough and winners take most’.
The traditional class war has been waged between wage-earners (who sell their labor) and their employers (owners of capital and the means of production). These classes have been assigned various names (proletariat, bourgeoisie, capitalists, etc.) but these broad class definitions don’t describe all the class conflicts emerging in the modern U.S. economy.
Before we dig deeper, let’s stipulate that ownership of various forms of capital still defines class: the wealthy live off unearned income skimmed from capital and everyone else lives off earned income from selling their labor. (Those without either source of income become dependents of the State).
What you own or don’t own defines your class interests, but these have been fragmented into a multitude of sub-classes. Six years ago I took a stab at defining America’s Nine Classes: The New Class Hierarchy (April 29, 2014), to which I would now add a tenth class, gig economy precariat, who paradoxically may own one of the means of production such as the car needed to become an Uber driver, but the precariat doesn’t own the controlling means of production, which is the Uber platform.
As a consequence, all the profits flow to the owners of the platform. Since the gig economy is not traditional hourly employment, there is no employer-provided security at all.
My taxonomy of class in America:
1. The Deep State.
2. The Oligarchs.
3. New Nobility.
4. Upper Caste.
5. State Nomenklatura.
6. The Middle Class.
7. The Working Poor.
8. State Dependents.
9. Mobile Creatives.
To which we add a new category of the working poor who lack even the minimal security of the conventional Working Poor (such as Amazon fulfillment center workers):
10. Gig economy precariat.
For the purposes of today’s discussion, let’s focus on the conflicts between four classes:
1. The Central State, which includes the elected government, the permanent Deep State, the Federal Reserve and and the managers/technocrats who run the State Nomenklatura.
2. The owners of Capital and political influence (The Oligarchs and New Nobility).
3. The Upper Caste, the top 10% of the private sector.
4. The lower classes of wage-earners and state dependents.
It comes as no surprise that there is no class conflict between the State and the Oligarchs / New Nobility since ours is a state-corporate system in which the state enforces the privileges of the super-wealthy /corporations, as the political class depends on the owners of capital for campaign contributions. In return, the super-wealthy and corporations are awarded tax breaks and subsidies which lower their tax burdens below the rates paid by wage-earners.
The conflicts between the Central State and the Upper Caste which pays the majority of income taxes is sharpening. While Social Security taxes weigh heavily on lower-income workers, the bottom 50% pay almost no federal income taxes and those between 51% and 89% pay a modest percent of all income taxes.
Unlike the managers/technocrats of the State Nomenklatura who are guaranteed benefit and pensions (since the state can always print the money to pay them), the private-sector Upper Caste must rely on 401Ks and their own private wealth–all of which is exposed to the hazards of state actions (raising taxes, firing up inflation, etc.) and whatever market forces are still outside the control of the Federal Reserve.
The Upper Caste resents the heavy taxes they pay as the state fails to provide even the basics of security and infrastructure. From the point of view of the Upper Caste, the state provides substandard education for their children, potholed roadways, modest Social Security and no healthcare until retirement (Medicare).
Upper Caste entrepreneurs resent the heavy regulatory burdens and the privileges lavished on corporations and the super-wealthy.
The Upper Caste also resents the Oligarchs and New Nobility who pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes. The Financial Aristocracy can work the tax system to report income as capital gains (a much lower rate than earned income) and use a vast cornucopia of tax breaks and subsidies to reduce their tax burden.
The wage-earning lower classes resent the Upper Caste and the Oligarchs for obvious reasons, but they also resent the State dependents, many of whom live better than those working one of America’s tens of millions of low-paid, few-benefits jobs.
You might expect State dependents to love their servitude, but they have reasons to resent the State as well. Dependency breeds resentment, and this is exacerbated by loads of paperwork (imposed to weed out fraud and scammers) and the general inadequacy of many state benefits.
Meanwhile, the state managers/technocrats and politicos live in the same bubbles as the New Nobility. (The Oligarchs live in a much more rarified bubble, of course.) For these Protected Few, the system works great for me so it must work great for everyone else. Alas, it only works for the top slice of American society which vigorously maintains the bubble separating it from the coarse realities of the bottom 80%.
In summary, class wars are the inevitable result of an economic system in which anything goes if you’re rich enough and winners take most. While the working poor are recruited to fight and die in the Imperial Project, the super-wealthy focus on philanthro-capitalist foundations which are simply non-profit extensions of their for-profit power.
Social Mobility between classes has decayed, and people grasp this. Go ahead and do all the right things–borrow a fortune to get a college degree, build your resume with low-paying jobs working ridiculous hours, and so on, and eventually conclude you’re a precariat just like everyone else. Maybe a better paid precariat, or maybe a poorly paid precariat, but that narrow band is all the Financial Mobility you’re ever going to get.
The winners in this system are protected by the State, while the losers are stripmined by crushing taxes or humiliated by their abject dependence on the state. Even if they don’t understand the exact mechanisms of financial control–the Federal Reserve’s bag of tricks, for example–they understand the rich get richer and the state protects them from the lower classes.
The danger to the state is not who rebels but who opts out. Outright rebellion suits the state, as it can turn its monopoly on force on the citizenry. But when those keeping everything glued together have had enough and find a way to quit, the entire system starts unraveling in ways the state is powerless to stop.
If the Upper Caste starts opting out, the private sector loses its tax donkeys and managerial expertise. If what remains of the middle class opts out, what’s left of America’s civic glue disappears.
If the working poor opt out, the scut work required to provide the upper classes with their comforts will not get done. (Hey, Mr. State Bureaucrat and Mr. Financier, here’s a saw and a knife. Butcher your own meat.)
Those trapped in the lower reaches of America’s class system might decide to follow Johnny Paycheck and Take This Job And Shove It (2:31). Becoming a dependent of the State is looking better all the time.
State Nomenklatura managers/technocrats also have reasons to opt out. Their efforts to keep the whole thing glued together are not appreciated, for as I’ve noted here before, governing in an era of unraveling discord is no longer fun.
Conflicts within the upper reaches of the Deep State are also deepening as those seeking to extend the status quo regardless of cost are meeting resistance from camps who recognize the impossibility of maintaining the current trajectory of soaring inequality and the infinite demands of the Imperial Project.
There’s only so much inequality and unfairness an over-promised populace can bear, and America is well past that point.
To those who claim “people can’t afford to quit,” just watch. Those who’ve had enough will find a way to opt out. There’s plenty of woodwork to disappear into.
Here’s a chart of the Oligarchy and New Nobility’s skim of virtually all gains in the economy.
Anything goes if you’re rich enough and winners take most.
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My recent books:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer?: Profit, Power, and AI in a Traumatized World ($13)
(Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).
The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
* * *
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- Capital One Cuts Credit Card Borrowing Limits As US Reduces Support For Unemployed Americans
Capital One Cuts Credit Card Borrowing Limits As US Reduces Support For Unemployed Americans
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 22:05One month after credit card giant Capital One Financial disappointed investors after reporting losses more than $1 billion for the second consecutive quarter (with 80% of revenue coming from net interest income, of which 60% comes from the card business, the top line was hit really hard), there was more bad news. According to Bloomberg, Capital One – which is perhaps most exposed to the financial state of the US middle class of all US financial companies – is cutting borrowing limits on credit cards, and reining in its exposure as the U.S. reduces support for millions of unemployed Americans.
“Capital One periodically reviews accounts based on a variety of factors and may make changes to existing credit lines,” the company told Bloomberg.
Capital One, which is third-largest US credit card lender after JPMorgan and Citigroup, has been at the forefront of offering cards to people with riskier profiles, which while boosting the company’s value during expansions, has made it especially sensitive to economic downturns. Its management of credit is watched closely as a harbinger of what’s to come at other major banks according to Bloomberg, and sure enough the latest numbers were woeful: shortly after it slashed its dividend from 40 cents to just 10 cents, the company added reserves of $2.7BN in Q2, on top of the $3.6BN it added in the first quarter, making reserves 6.7% of total loans outstanding (in theory,t This should be enough to weather net charge-offs around 350bps per year in the next two years).
And while the company’s 2008-2010 average was higher at around 450bps, peaking at over 500bps in 2010, the company has benefited from forbearance programs as customers are deferring auto payments but continue to pay down their credit cards, which also means less net interest income. Indeed, net interest income fell 9% QoQ (-5% YoY) as margins narrowed, making the company’s NIM contraction was the worst among large peers. Margins nosedived 100bps QoQ to 5.78% – the lowest in the past decade.
All of that prompted the company to take aggressive measures ahead of what appears to be an almost certain double dip should fiscal stimulus not be extended in the immediate future. As Bloomberg notes, suspense has been mounting in the credit card industry in recent weeks, as Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration deadlocked on extending $600 in additional weekly unemployment benefits. That assistance has helped millions of households keep up with debts as the pandemic sent unemployment soaring above 10%. As we showed recently, spending by unemployed people who claim ongoing unemployment assistance from regular state programs – which amounts to some 14.5 million people – has tumbled since the July 31 fiscal cliff.
That sharp drop in benefits raises the risk for banks that some cardholders won’t be able to make ends meet through the pandemic, maxing out credit limits as they spiral into bankruptcy.
To an extent, Capital One’s move was expected: card lenders have been warning for months that rapidly shifting outbreaks and shutdowns have left them in the dark on which customers have lost work or their jobs, making it difficult for executives to assess risks. “I don’t think we have a rigorous measure of how many of our current borrowers are unemployed,” Capital One Chief Executive Officer Richard Fairbank said last month.
“There are a lot of people that are in different degrees of unemployment right now.”
To protect itself from the coming crunch, Capital One is doing the opposite of what corporations did in the immediate aftermath of the covid shutdowns, when countless companies drew down on their available revolvers to maximize liquidity. Unfortunately, for millions of ordinary Americans who rely on their credit cards to make ends meet, their borrowing base just got slashed.
The reduction in borrowing capacity set off a swift outcry on social media. Some customers have complained in recent days their limits have been slashed by a third to two-thirds, eroding their ability to borrow in an emergency during a pandemic or potentially hurting their credit scores. A spokesman declined to specify how many people are affected.
In recent days, Capital One’s customers have flocked to platforms such as Twitter to complain after receiving emails with an “important update” on their account that turned out to slash their ability to borrow. Some were told their limits are being aligned with past spending patterns. Messages from Capital One explained users could still borrow “significantly above your highest balance over the last two years,” essentially allowing them to continue using cards as they have.
Capital One is hardly unique: card issuers, learning from past downturns, often trim or close inactive credit lines to avoid becoming a borrower’s lender of last resort. This year, they have also been offering lower limits on new accounts.
“We have been tightening credit at the margin as we have felt for some time that we are in late credit cycle,” Discover Financial Services Chief Executive Officer Roger Hochschild said in April. “But given the present environment, we are adopting a significantly more cautious view.”
But what is most paradoxical about this situation is that even as the Fed cut rates to all time lows, a boon to companies which have borrowed a record $1.4 trillion in the investment grade bond market, if hurting savers who once again receive no income on their savings accounts, credit card interest rates remain at all time highs, just around 17%.
Bizarrely, the fact that credit card rates remain stratospheric for millions of Americans even as corporate borrowing rates have never been lower, has not been address by either the Fed – which allegedly is so worried about inequality – nor US politicians. Meanwhile, the Fed continues to directly purchase bonds of some of the biggest companies in the world including Apple, Berkshire, cutting their cost of capital even lower.
Some have suggested that instead of the Fed buying AAA-rated corporate bonds from companies which can sell massively oversubscribed debt in the open market, a simple solution is to simply backstop Capital One’s credit card receivables. That way Capital One would not have to cut its limits, and it would also be able to cut rates assuring more people can end up affording to pay down their interest. Unfortunately, since the tens of millions of subprime Capital One credit card holders can’t afford to lobby Congress or have a direct line to the Marriner Eccles building, this will never happen.
- Robot Generals: Will They Make Better Decisions Than Humans Or Worse?
Robot Generals: Will They Make Better Decisions Than Humans Or Worse?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 21:45Authored by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,
With Covid-19 incapacitating startling numbers of U.S. service members and modern weapons proving increasingly lethal, the American military is relying ever more frequently on intelligent robots to conduct hazardous combat operations. Such devices, known in the military as “autonomous weapons systems,” include robotic sentries, battlefield-surveillance drones, and autonomous submarines. So far, in other words, robotic devices are merely replacing standard weaponry on conventional battlefields.
Now, however, in a giant leap of faith, the Pentagon is seeking to take this process to an entirely new level — by replacing not just ordinary soldiers and their weapons, but potentially admirals and generals with robotic systems.
Admittedly, those systems are still in the development stage, but the Pentagon is now rushing their future deployment as a matter of national urgency. Every component of a modern general staff — including battle planning, intelligence-gathering, logistics, communications, and decision-making — is, according to the Pentagon’s latest plans, to be turned over to complex arrangements of sensors, computers, and software. All these will then be integrated into a “system of systems,” now dubbed the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control, or JADC2 (since acronyms remain the essence of military life). Eventually, that amalgam of systems may indeed assume most of the functions currently performed by American generals and their senior staff officers.
The notion of using machines to make command-level decisions is not, of course, an entirely new one. It has, in truth, been a long time coming. During the Cold War, following the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with extremely short flight times, both military strategists and science-fiction writers began to imagine mechanical systems that would control such nuclear weaponry in the event of human incapacity.
In Stanley Kubrick’s satiric 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, for example, the fictional Russian leader Dimitri Kissov reveals that the Soviet Union has installed a “doomsday machine” capable of obliterating all human life that would detonate automatically should the country come under attack by American nuclear forces. Efforts by crazed anti-Soviet U.S. Air Force officers to provoke a war with Moscow then succeed in triggering that machine and so bring about human annihilation. In reality, fearing that they might experience a surprise attack of just this sort, the Soviets later did install a semi-automatic retaliatory system they dubbed “Perimeter,” designed to launch Soviet ICBMs in the event that sensors detected nuclear explosions and all communications from Moscow had been silenced. Some analysts believe that an upgraded version of Perimeter is still in operation, leaving us in an all-too-real version of a Strangelovian world.
In yet another sci-fi version of such automated command systems, the 1983 film War Games, starring Matthew Broderick as a teenage hacker, portrayed a supercomputer called the War Operations Plan Response, or WOPR (pronounced “whopper”) installed at the North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) headquarters in Colorado. When the Broderick character hacks into it and starts playing what he believes is a game called “World War III,” the computer concludes an actual Soviet attack is underway and launches a nuclear retaliatory response. Although fictitious, the movie accurately depicts many aspects of the U.S. nuclear command-control-and-communications (NC3) system, which was then and still remains highly automated.
Such devices, both real and imagined, were relatively primitive by today’s standards, being capable solely of determining that a nuclear attack was under way and ordering a catastrophic response. Now, as a result of vast improvements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, machines can collect and assess massive amounts of sensor data, swiftly detect key trends and patterns, and potentially issue orders to combat units as to where to attack and when.
Time Compression and Human Fallibility
The substitution of intelligent machines for humans at senior command levels is becoming essential, U.S. strategists argue, because an exponential growth in sensor information combined with the increasing speed of warfare is making it nearly impossible for humans to keep track of crucial battlefield developments. If future scenarios prove accurate, battles that once unfolded over days or weeks could transpire in the space of hours, or even minutes, while battlefield information will be pouring in as multitudinous data points, overwhelming staff officers. Only advanced computers, it is claimed, could process so much information and make informed combat decisions within the necessary timeframe.
Such time compression and the expansion of sensor data may apply to any form of combat, but especially to the most terrifying of them all, nuclear war. When ICBMs were the principal means of such combat, decisionmakers had up to 30 minutes between the time a missile was launched and the moment of detonation in which to determine whether a potential attack was real or merely a false satellite reading (as did sometimes occur during the Cold War). Now, that may not sound like much time, but with the recent introduction of hypersonic missiles, such assessment times could shrink to as little as five minutes. Under such circumstances, it’s a lot to expect even the most alert decision-makers to reach an informed judgment on the nature of a potential attack. Hence the appeal (to some) of automated decision-making systems.
“Attack-time compression has placed America’s senior leadership in a situation where the existing NC3 system may not act rapidly enough,” military analysts Adam Lowther and Curtis McGiffin argued at War on the Rocks, a security-oriented website.
“Thus, it may be necessary to develop a system based on artificial intelligence, with predetermined response decisions, that detects, decides, and directs strategic forces with such speed that the attack-time compression challenge does not place the United States in an impossible position.”
This notion, that an artificial intelligence-powered device — in essence, a more intelligent version of the doomsday machine or the WOPR — should be empowered to assess enemy behavior and then, on the basis of “predetermined response options,” decide humanity’s fate, has naturally produced some unease in the community of military analysts (as it should for the rest of us as well). Nevertheless, American strategists continue to argue that battlefield assessment and decision-making — for both conventional and nuclear warfare — should increasingly be delegated to machines.
“AI-powered intelligence systems may provide the ability to integrate and sort through large troves of data from different sources and geographic locations to identify patterns and highlight useful information,” the Congressional Research Service noted in a November 2019 summary of Pentagon thinking.
“As the complexity of AI systems matures,” it added, “AI algorithms may also be capable of providing commanders with a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace, in turn enabling faster adaptation to complex events.”
The key wording there is “a menu of viable courses of action based on real-time analysis of the battlespace.” This might leave the impression that human generals and admirals (not to speak of their commander-in-chief) will still be making the ultimate life-and-death decisions for both their own forces and the planet. Given such anticipated attack-time compression in future high-intensity combat with China and/or Russia, however, humans may no longer have the time or ability to analyze the battlespace themselves and so will come to rely on AI algorithms for such assessments. As a result, human commanders may simply find themselves endorsing decisions made by machines — and so, in the end, become superfluous.
Creating Robot Generals
Despite whatever misgivings they may have about their future job security, America’s top generals are moving swiftly to develop and deploy that JADC2 automated command mechanism. Overseen by the Air Force, it’s proving to be a computer-driven amalgam of devices for collecting real-time intelligence on enemy forces from vast numbers of sensor devices (satellites, ground radars, electronic listening posts, and so on), processing that data into actionable combat information, and providing precise attack instructions to every combat unit and weapons system engaged in a conflict — whether belonging to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, or the newly formed Space Force and Cyber Command.
What, exactly, the JADC2 will consist of is not widely known, partly because many of its component systems are still shrouded in secrecy and partly because much of the essential technology is still in the development stage. Delegated with responsibility for overseeing the project, the Air Force is working with Lockheed Martin and other large defense contractors to design and develop key elements of the system.
One such building block is its Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), a data-collection and distribution system intended to provide fighter pilots with up-to-the-minute data on enemy positions and help guide their combat moves. Another key component is the Army’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System (IBCS), designed to connect radar systems to anti-aircraft and missile-defense launchers and provide them with precise firing instructions. Over time, the Air Force and its multiple contractors will seek to integrate ABMS and IBCS into a giant network of systems connecting every sensor, shooter, and commander in the country’s armed forces — a military “internet of things,” as some have put it.
To test this concept and provide an example of how it might operate in the future, the Army conducted a live-fire artillery exercise this August in Germany using components (or facsimiles) of the future JADC2 system. In the first stage of the test, satellite images of (presumed) Russian troop positions were sent to an Army ground terminal, where an AI software program called Prometheus combed through the data to select enemy targets. Next, another AI program called SHOT computed the optimal match of available Army weaponry to those intended targets and sent this information, along with precise firing coordinates, to the Army’s Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) for immediate action, where human commanders could choose to implement it or not. In the exercise, those human commanders had the mental space to give the matter a moment’s thought; in a shooting war, they might just leave everything to the machines, as the system’s designers clearly intend them to do.
In the future, the Army is planning even more ambitious tests of this evolving technology under an initiative called Project Convergence. From what’s been said publicly about it, Convergence will undertake ever more complex exercises involving satellites, Air Force fighters equipped with the ABMS system, Army helicopters, drones, artillery pieces, and tactical vehicles. Eventually, all of this will form the underlying “architecture” of the JADC2, linking every military sensor system to every combat unit and weapons system — leaving the generals with little to do but sit by and watch.
Why Robot Generals Could Get It Wrong
Given the complexity of modern warfare and the challenge of time compression in future combat, the urge of American strategists to replace human commanders with robotic ones is certainly understandable. Robot generals and admirals might theoretically be able to process staggering amounts of information in brief periods of time, while keeping track of both friendly and enemy forces and devising optimal ways to counter enemy moves on a future battlefield. But there are many good reasons to doubt the reliability of robot decision-makers and the wisdom of using them in place of human officers.
To begin with, many of these technologies are still in their infancy, and almost all are prone to malfunctions that can neither be easily anticipated nor understood. And don’t forget that even advanced algorithms can be fooled, or “spoofed,” by skilled professionals.
In addition, unlike humans, AI-enabled decision-making systems will lack an ability to assess intent or context. Does a sudden enemy troop deployment, for example, indicate an imminent attack, a bluff, or just a normal rotation of forces? Human analysts can use their understanding of the current political moment and the actors involved to help guide their assessment of the situation. Machines lack that ability and may assume the worst, initiating military action that could have been avoided.
Such a problem will only be compounded by the “training” such decision-making algorithms will undergo as they are adapted to military situations. Just as facial recognition software has proved to be tainted by an over-reliance on images of white males in the training process — making them less adept at recognizing, say, African-American women — military decision-making algorithms are likely to be distorted by an over-reliance on the combat-oriented scenarios selected by American military professionals for training purposes. “Worst-case thinking” is a natural inclination of such officers — after all, who wants to be caught unprepared for a possible enemy surprise attack? — and such biases will undoubtedly become part of the “menus of viable courses of action” provided by decision-making robots.
Once integrated into decision-making algorithms, such biases could, in turn, prove exceedingly dangerous in any future encounters between U.S. and Russian troops in Europe or American and Chinese forces in Asia. A clash of this sort might, after all, arise at any time, thanks to some misunderstanding or local incident that rapidly gains momentum — a sudden clash between U.S. and Chinese warships off Taiwan, for example, or between American and Russian patrols in one of the Baltic states. Neither side may have intended to ignite a full-scale conflict and leaders on both sides might normally move to negotiate a cease-fire. But remember, these will no longer simply be human conflicts. In the wake of such an incident, the JADC2 could detect some enemy move that it determines poses an imminent risk to allied forces and so immediately launch an all-out attack by American planes, missiles, and artillery, escalating the conflict and foreclosing any chance of an early negotiated settlement.
Such prospects become truly frightening when what’s at stake is the onset of nuclear war. It’s hard to imagine any conflict among the major powers starting out as a nuclear war, but it’s far easier to envision a scenario in which the great powers — after having become embroiled in a conventional conflict — reach a point where one side or the other considers the use of atomic arms to stave off defeat. American military doctrine, in fact, has always held out the possibility of using so-called tactical nuclear weapons in response to a massive Soviet (now Russian) assault in Europe. Russian military doctrine, it is widely assumed, incorporates similar options. Under such circumstances, a future JADC2 could misinterpret enemy moves as signaling preparation for a nuclear launch and order a pre-emptive strike by U.S. nuclear forces, thereby igniting World War III.
War is a nasty, brutal activity and, given almost two decades of failed conflicts that have gone under the label of “the war on terror,” causing thousands of American casualties (both physical and mental), it’s easy to understand why robot enthusiasts are so eager to see another kind of mentality take over American war-making. As a start, they contend, especially in a pandemic world, that it’s only humane to replace human soldiers on the battlefield with robots and so diminish human casualties (at least among combatants). This claim does not, of course, address the argument that robot soldiers and drone aircraft lack the ability to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants on the battlefield and so cannot be trusted to comply with the laws of war or international humanitarian law — which, at least theoretically, protect civilians from unnecessary harm — and so should be banned.
Fraught as all of that may be on future battlefields, replacing generals and admirals with robots is another matter altogether. Not only do legal and moral arguments arise with a vengeance, as the survival of major civilian populations could be put at risk by computer-derived combat decisions, but there’s no guarantee that American GIs would suffer fewer casualties in the battles that ensued. Maybe it’s time, then, for Congress to ask some tough questions about the advisability of automating combat decision-making before this country pours billions of additional taxpayer dollars into an enterprise that could, in fact, lead to the end of the world as we know it.
Maybe it’s time as well for the leaders of China, Russia, and this country to limit or ban the deployment of hypersonic missiles and other weaponry that will compress life-and-death decisions for humanity into just a few minutes, thereby justifying the automation of such fateful judgments.
- One Bank Finally Tells The Truth: "The Fed Policies Have Become Part Of The Problem"
One Bank Finally Tells The Truth: “The Fed Policies Have Become Part Of The Problem”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 21:25In the aftermath of today’s announcement by the Fed of 2% Average Inflation Targeting there were numerous hot takes (such as this one from Goldman) simplifying what the Fed just did: namely a “new” stance of allowing inflation to run high and the unemployment rate to run lower for longer, which according to BMO meant that the “Fed’s dovishness appears to be in perpetuity.” The reason: avoid any market tremors for the next five years arising out of fear that the Fed may unexpectedly tighten financial conditions if inflation suddenly gets hot.
What was not discussed is what the Fed did not say, namely that it is now compounding failure upon failure, and after 10 years of failed policies that were unable to spark higher wages (i.e., good inflation) while promoting a giant asset bubble, it will crush the living standard of the middle class further by running inflation hot even as asset prices scream to new all time highs. What was also not discussed is the Fed’s role in the catastrophic economic situation the world finds itself in.
However, one banker did have to courage to address the elephant in the room, and that would be Rabobank’s Philip Marey who in his Fed post-mortem “The Wrong Kind of Symmetry”, writes that it took the Fed six years to describe symmetry of the inflation target in the Statement on Longer-Run Goals, noting that “while not completely irrelevant, it is the wrong kind of symmetry to focus on.”
In one of the most overt criticism of the Fed we have read to date, Marey writes that “while the Fed’s step to make the inflation target “more” symmetric may benefit the wages of the average American somewhere beyond 2022, it does not really address the deeper problem with the role the Fed is playing in the US economy. It could be argued that the Fed’s policies have become part of the problem, instead of the solution.” And, as the Rabobank strategist suggests, “at least this should be a topic for debate in the FOMC, instead of talking a whole year about whether to use an average or not.”
To this all we would add is that the Fed should take a long, hard look at its prefered metric of core PCE: as we have repeatedly explained in recent years, the Fed continues to purposefully undercount inflation, and on top of that, it now has openly said it will disregard the politically palatable core PCE/CPI number just so it can continue blowing an asset bubble of epic proportions.
It was Marey’s conclusion however that was the piece de resistance:
The much deeper problem for the US economy is the asymmetric impact of Fed policies on households and businesses. The Fed’s monetary and regulatory policies have contributed to a form of capitalism where the rewards are going to the 1% and the risks are borne by the 99%. The current crisis response has made it painfully clear again that the Fed’s policies benefit high income individuals and large corporations, while small businesses and low income individuals bear the burden. While the Fed likes to see itself as part of the solution to America’s economic problems, it should ask itself whether it is also part of these problems.
Alas, as we explained yesterday, this won’t happen until the crowds of angry rioters are finally at their rightful place: in front of the Marriner Eccles building. Until then, it is just more smoke and mirrors.
We republish Marey’s full must read note below:
The Wrong Kind Of Symmetry
- It has taken the FOMC six years to make the symmetry of its inflation target explicit in its Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy.
- The Fed’s framework review will lead to a more dovish reaction function in the long run, but hardly seems relevant in the next few years.
- What’s more, higher tolerance for inflation in itself does not cause inflation if slack is high or can’t be leveraged when it is low.
- Unfortunately, the Fed is not taking a critical look at the asymmetric impact of its policies on households and businesses. This is the kind of symmetry that may be more important
Symmetric means on average
Nowadays everything is breaking news, even when it is old news. The Chairman of the Fed is giving a speech at Jackson Hole, so it must be important. “Symmetry means on average” that was about all he had to say.
Let’s take a step back in history. The FOMC formally announced its 2% inflation target on January 25, 2012, in its Longer-Run Goals and Policy Strategy: “The Committee judges that inflation at the rate of 2 percent as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, is most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate.” While this statement implicitly indicates that the Fed’s inflation target is symmetric, this was explicitly confirmed in the FOMC minutes of the October 2014 meeting: “there was widespread agreement that inflation moderately above the Committee’s 2 percent goal and inflation the same amount below that level were equally costly.” However, the doves were pointing out that inflation had spent more time below target than above target. In particular, Narayana Kocherlakota (Minneapolis Fed) pressed for an explicit recognition of the symmetry of the target. So he finally gets what he asked for. In other words, it took the FOMC 6 (!) years to get an explicit recognition of the symmetry of the inflation target from the minutes to the Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy. During the Q&A at the Kansas City Fed event Powell said the Fed intends to do this kind of monetary policy review every 5 years. Does this mean that we have to wait 5 more years for the next negligible progress?
Anyway, the Fed released a revised Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy with the main change reflected in the following sentence: “In order to anchor longer-term inflation expectations at this level, the Committee seeks to achieve inflation that averages 2 percent over time, and therefore judges that, following periods when inflation has been running persistently below 2 percent, appropriate monetary policy will likely aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time.” However, Powell stressed that no exact formula will be used, so it will be ‘a flexible form of average inflation targeting.’
Does it matter?
One look at Figure 1 shows that the Fed certainly has not been able to steer PCE inflation symmetrically around the 2% target. In reality, inflation has been mostly below target.
So does the explicit recognition of the symmetry of the inflation target really make a difference? In the short and medium run, definitely not. If we look at the FOMC’s own projections, they do not expect PCE inflation to get near the 2.0% target before 2023. And it may not occur soon after that with unemployment at 5.5% by the final quarter of 2022 well above the NAIRU of 4.1%. So even by their own projections this framework revision will not be relevant before 2023. Or do they expect inflation expectations to rise and cause inflation? This is very unlikely, with unemployment well above the NAIRU. Higher tolerance for inflation in itself does not cause inflation if slack is high or can’t be leveraged when it is low. While a higher inflation tolerance would allow for more wage growth, it will not create it.
In the long run it will allow the FOMC to take more time to start hiking when unemployment gets low and threatens to push up inflation. After all, the undershoot of recent years may be compensated by a moderate overshoot. This will spread employment to low-skilled people. This stands in sharp contrast to the Fed’s mistaken belief in the Phillips curve in recent years, when they accelerated the hiking cycle in 2017 and 2018 despite any evidence of low unemployment leading to wage pressures causing a wage-price spiral. So perhaps the Fed has finally learned something. The Fed’s framework review will lead to a more dovish reaction function in the long run. However, Powell already mentioned this after the June meeting of the FOMC. So nothing new here either
What really matters
It took the Fed six years to describe symmetry of the inflation target in the Statement on Longer-Run Goals. While not completely irrelevant, it is the wrong kind of symmetry to focus on. While the Fed’s step to make the inflation target ‘more’ symmetric may benefit the wages of the average American somewhere beyond 2022, it does not really address the deeper problem with the role the Fed is playing in the US economy. It could be argued that the Fed’s policies have become part of the problem, instead of the solution. At least this should be a topic for debate in the FOMC, instead of talking a whole year about whether to use an average or not.
The much deeper problem for the US economy is the asymmetric impact of Fed policies on households and businesses. The Fed’s monetary and regulatory policies have contributed to a form of capitalism where the rewards are going to the 1% and the risks are borne by the 99%. The current crisis response has made it painfully clear again that the Fed’s policies benefit high income individuals and large corporations, while small businesses and low income individuals bear the burden. While the Fed likes to see itself as part of the solution to America’s economic problems, it should ask itself whether it is also part of these problems.
- Science Is Not About Consensus
Science Is Not About Consensus
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 21:05Authored by Jeff Harris via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
Newsflash; real science is based on facts not “consensus”.
I’m sick and tired of idiots beating me over the head with pseudoscience instead of sticking to the cold, hard facts.
Show me the hard data that standing six feet from someone is necessary.
Show me the hard data that wearing any old rag on my face is going to materially stop the spread of a virus.
Show me the hard data that enjoying fresh air and sunshine outdoors could be an invitation to an early death.
Please, stick to the facts and don’t dare lecture me about the “consensus” and here’s why.
Maybe you’ve heard of Ignaz Semmelweis, an Austrian-Hungarian obstetrician with a prickly personality. If not, you will quickly recognize his contribution to the medical profession with the three words he made famous:
“Wash your hands.”
This was way back in 1847.
Dr. Semmelweis provided hard data clearly demonstrating that once he and his staff began washing their hands and disinfecting equipment between patients the number of infections and deaths dropped dramatically.
Unfortunately, the scientific “consensus” at the time held that there was no benefit to these measures and his advice was almost completely ignored by the learned medical community. In fact, many of his medical peers were incensed with his suggestion that they could be responsible for transmitting illness and disease!
At the time doctors took pride in their soiled gowns as a mark of their industrious work! It was commonplace for doctors who had just completed an autopsy to go to the maternity ward and deliver babies without ever washing up! After all it was the “consensus” and with so many doctors in agreement how could they be wrong?
Dr. Semmelweis died in an insane asylum in 1865 knowing that untold numbers of patients had needlessly suffered and died because the medical community refused to accept his findings and instead chose to follow the “consensus”. Ironically, the same year Dr. Semmelweis died Dr. Joseph Lister, a British surgeon, began building on the work of French microbiologist Louis Pasteur regarding germ theory.
Dr. Lister began experimenting with various means of disinfecting wounds. He instructed surgeons under his responsibility to not only wash their hands with a 5 percent solution of carbolic acid but also wear clean gloves. His work validated Dr. Semmelweis discoveries regarding the value of hygiene and cleanliness in medicine.
Today we all benefit from Dr. Semmelweis groundbreaking work even though he was never recognized for his contribution during his lifetime. The moral to this story is that scientific “consensus” is often wrong. In no way can it justify the hysteria, lockdowns and wealth destruction that is being manufactured by the elites.
The COVID hysteria is emotion based, not fact based. Instead of cold, hard facts backing up the “science” we’re told to shut up and accept the “consensus”. As Dr. Semmelweis discovered the consensus is often wrong.
- South Korea Extends Short-Selling Ban To 2021 As Volatility 'Explosion' Could Be Nearing
South Korea Extends Short-Selling Ban To 2021 As Volatility ‘Explosion’ Could Be Nearing
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 20:45South Korea’s financial regulator on Thursday extended a ban on short-selling of listed shares for another six months, as COVID-19 cases jump to the highest level since the pandemic.
The current ban on short-selling Korea Composite Stock Price Index, or KOSPI, shares will be extended through March 15, 2021, as “widening of market volatility due to concern over the resurgence of the Covid-19” is expected, the Financial Services Commission (FSC) said in a statement, reported Reuters.
The initial ban was first imposed on March 13 following an extreme surge in equity volatility due to the virus pandemic crashing the global economy.
“Considering the rising volatility in markets with the fresh waves of Covid-19, we decided to extend the six-month short-selling ban imposed since March,” FSC said.
“During the extended ban, we will seek to improve rules to offer retail investors’ better access to short-selling and tighten punishment for illegal practices for short sales on equities.”
The KOSPI Volatility Index rose 7% to 27.22 on Thursday following a new report from the government of 441 new coronavirus cases, the highest since March.
In relation to KOSPI price, here’s where FSC has imposed the short-selling ban and extension this year.
The extension of the ban suggests as global equities power to new highs (as measured by the MSCI World Index), effectively clawing back all losses from the February-March crash, that a renewed period of volatility could be ahead.
Morgan Stanley’s Michael Wilson explained this week why a growth scare could produce another round of volatility (see: “Morgan Stanley Warns “The First Tradable Correction Could Begin Imminently“”).
- Watch Live: RNC Day 4 "Land Of Greatness" – Dana White, Giuliani, & President Trump
Watch Live: RNC Day 4 “Land Of Greatness” – Dana White, Giuliani, & President Trump
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 20:30From “darker tones” to “drug-driven” enthusiasm and daring to suggest “patriotism” is good, the last three nights of the Republic National Convention have led to this… the big kahuna with President Trump headlining a star-studded field, with the theme “Land of Greatness“:
The Vision for American Greatness
This has been a momentous week as we honored the great American story and formally re-nominated President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael R. Pence. We have heard from some of our nation’s greatest trailblazers, leaders and patriots; we have applauded American workers, families, law enforcement officers, veterans and heroes; we have showcased our conservative principles and policies; and we have celebrated the historic success President Trump has achieved for all Americans.
As they say, we have saved the best for last. Tonight, we will hear directly from America’s fiercest advocate, President Donald J. Trump.
He has a lot to be proud of, and I can’t wait to hear his inspiring vision for American greatness. In his first four years, he has done more for our country than any president before him. He achieved the biggest tax cuts in history, dismantled ISIS, renewed the faith of our allies, stood up for the American worker and against the threat of socialism at every turn, and has supported our veterans, troops and police officers unlike those before him.
While President Trump and the Republican Party continue to champion an America first vision, Joe Biden and the Democrats promise a return to the Obama-Biden Administration’s doctrine: leading from behind. Democrats want to chip away at the foundation of our great country and reverse the return to American values we have seen under President Trump’s leadership. The right choice in this election could not be clearer. President Trump has restored hope, rebuilt opportunity and returned American strength. He has reminded us of what makes America great — our people.
This week, that greatness has been at the forefront. We have witnessed patriots and plans; heard stories and dreams; and shared our hope for an even greater future together. We are one nation under God and one melting pot of greatness. Our enduring love of country is the thread that binds us all together. As Americans, we look to the future and join President Trump in championing the renewed American dream and our shared values of liberty and justice for all. As we embark on the road to November, we remember with renewed hope and optimism that this land of greatness unites us, and together we will continue to write the great American story for four more years.
The fall campaign season officially kicks off when President Donald Trump formally accepts the GOP nomination for a second term as president in a speech he will deliver from the White House West Lawn, and the polls and bookies’ odds are coming back Trump’s way…
Senior adviser Ivanka Trump will introduce her father with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and the president’s personal attorney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also expected to speak.
Additional speakers include:
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Ja’Ron Smith, White House assistant
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Ann Dorn, widow of former police officer killed in St. Louis
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Debbie Flood
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Representative Jeff Van Drew
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Franklin Graham, evangelical leader
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Alice Johnson, ex-inmate pardoned by Mr. Trump
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Wade Mayfield
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Carl and Marsha Mueller, parents of U.S. aid worker killed by ISIS
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Dana White, president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship
A fireworks display is expected to light up the sky above the Washington Monument at the conclusion of Trump’s remarks.
Watch Live:
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- Is California Over?
Is California Over?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 20:25Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,
By now it’s painfully obvious that we humans tend to ruin our favorite places by overrunning them. And no place makes this point better than California. An absolute paradise 25 million people ago, parts of it are now a hellscape of Mad Maxian proportions.
Consider:
Rolling blackouts due in part to bad planning and in part to overpopulation are disrupting businesses and making homes unbearable in 100-degree summer heat.
Wildfires, due in part to excess people being shunted into “suburbs” surrounded by brushland, are burning thousands of houses and roasting the unlucky wildlife that used to call those canyons and hillsides home. See Sanctuary for endangered condors burns in California wildfire.
As for California’s cities, well, here’s podcaster Joe Rogan’s brutal discussion of LA’s homeless situation:
And the above is just the physical manifestation of an unsustainable development model.
The financial side of things is even uglier. Public-sector unions now control state politics and have engineered pension plans that are both wildly overgenerous and catastrophically unfunded.
So even in the absence of fires, blackouts and rising homelessness, the state would be careening towards bankruptcy.
What is California’s solution? Retroactive wealth taxes that reach out and pick the pockets of people who have already left.
Now even the New York Times, which generally sympathizes with California’s political model, acknowledges that the left coast is sliding into the abyss. A snippet from NYT columnist Farhad Manjoo:
California, We Can’t Go On Like This
Across much of California in the last two weeks, many of my friends and neighbors have faced a dead-end choice: Is it safer to conduct your life outdoors and avoid the coronavirus, or should you rush inside, the better to escape the choking heat, toxic smoke and raining ash?
Such has been the gagging unwinnability of life in the nation’s most populous state in the sweltering summer of 2020, in what I have been assured is the greatest country ever to have existed. The virus begs you to open a window; the inferno forces you to keep it shut.
When the coronavirus first landed in America, California’s lawmakers responded quickly and effectively, becoming a model for the rest of the nation. But as the early wins faded and the cases spiked, each day this summer has felt like another slide down an inevitable spiral of failure. The virus keeps crashing into California’s many other longstanding dysfunctions, from housing to energy to climate change to disaster planning, and the compounding ruin is piling up like BMWs on the 405.
Consider: To keep the pestilence at bay, many of California’s children began attending school online last week. But to satisfy surging energy demand linked to record-shattering heat (and a host of other mysterious reasons), state utilities had to impose rolling blackouts, forcing schools to come up with energy contingency plans to add to their virus contingency plans, now that millions of students face the threat of intermittent electricity.
For decades, California has relied on conscripted prisoners as a cheap way to fight its raging fires. But to stave off coronavirus outbreaks in our long-overcrowded prisons, authorities released thousands of inmates earlier this year. Now, as climate change has ushered in a new era of “megafires” that includes some of the largest blazes the state has ever faced, the early release of inmates has left the state dangerously short of prisoners to exploit in battling the flames.
What is California’s fundamental trouble? Neither socialism nor Trumpian neglect and incompetence, but something more elemental to life in the Golden State: A refusal by many Californians to live sustainably and inclusively, to give up a little bit of their own convenience for the collective good.
Californian suburbia, the ideal of much of American suburbia, was built and sold on the promise of endless excess — everyone gets a car, a job, a single-family home and enough water and gasoline and electricity to light up the party.
But it is long past obvious that infinitude was a false promise. Traffic, sprawl, homelessness and ballooning housing costs are all consequences of our profligacy with the land and our other resources. In addition to a hotter, drier climate, the fires, too, are fanned by an unsustainable way of life. Many blazes were worsened by Californians moving into areas near forests known as the “urban-wildland interface.” Once people move near forested land, fires tend to follow — either because they deliberately or inadvertently ignite them, or because they need electricity, delivered by electrical wires that can cause sparks that turn into conflagrations.
As the fires blazed around us this time last year, I warned of the “end of California as we know it” — that if we didn’t begin to radically alter how we live, the climate and the high cost of living would make the state uninhabitable for large numbers of people.
The take-away?
Beyond a certain point even a place like California, blessed as it is with both Hollywood and Silicon Valley, can’t support the unsupportable. So either the state, along with most of its nearly-as-badly-managed peers, gets a bailout of historic proportions with all the currency crisis/moral hazard implications that that implies. Or California and its iconic car-centric/suburban lifestyle devolve into chaos.
Here’s hoping for the latter, which will at least provide a cautionary tale for other places now traveling the same road.
- Are The Tables Starting To Turn?
Are The Tables Starting To Turn?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 20:10Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
A Pew Research Center poll that’s already a month old (and a lot happened since) concluded that violent crime is a major issue according to 59% of voters (almost as much as coronavirus): 74% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats. But during the DNC, held after the poll was already out, the issue wasn’t addressed at all. Democrats talked about police violence, but not riot violence.
At this week’s RNC, this situation is -of course- very different. The DNC pushes the GOP into the role of the party of law and order, and they’re all too willing to take up that role. But I was wondering about something else, or “bigger”, this morning. That is, Joe Biden et al are very light on policies, because in their view their most important issue is to get people to vote *against* Donald Trump, rather than *for* Biden.
And I’m thinking maybe that’s starting to boomerang, to blow up in their faces, whether perhaps people are beginning to lean towards NOT voting for Joe Biden, instead of NOT voting for Donald Trump, “at any cost”. In that context, it appears telling that according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll, Biden saw no “convention poll bounce” in his numbers after the DNC, while ironically, Trump did.
Whereas according to a Zogby Analytics poll, Trump’s job approval numbers are now at record high levels. And I know polls -and pollsters- can be biased, and so can the press quoting them, but to see three in a row, Reuters/Ipsos, Rasmussen, Zogby, all reporting similar movement, may still be significant.
Trump Job Approval Rating Hits Record At 52%
Buoyed by blacks and independent voters, as well as urban dwellers shocked by the Black Lives Matter protest violence raging in some cities, President Trump’s approval rating has hit a new high, according to a survey heavy with minority voters. The latest Zogby Analytics poll just shared with Secrets had Trump’s approval at 52%. “The president has recorded his best job approval rating on record,” said pollster Jonathan Zogby.
What’s more, his approval rating among minorities was solid and, in the case of African Americans, shockingly high. Zogby said 36% of blacks approve of the president, as do 37% of Hispanics and 35% of Asians. Approval among independent voters is also up, to 44%. And “intriguingly,” said Zogby, 23% of Democrats approve of Trump.
It was the latest to show that Trump’s approval went up during the Democratic National Convention. Rasmussen Reports had it at 51% at the end of the convention. In a shock from past election years, Joe Biden got no convention poll bounce, according to a newly released Reuters/Ipsos poll. [..] Zogby, in his analysis, took a stab at the reasoning. First, he said, his and other polls are confirming that the nation is nearly evenly divided politically and that despite some showing a big Biden lead, the race is extremely close.
He suggested that the battle is for the “10%-20%” who haven’t made their minds up on whom to vote for and who likely won’t make up their minds until Election Day, just like in 2016. “We are as polarized a nation, on a level not seen since the Civil War,” said Zogby. He also said that the violence playing out in cities such as Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Portland, Oregon, are pushing urban voters to Trump.
A fresh Rasmussen poll about Biden’s lead in the polls (which reached double digits not long ago), indicates that there’s not much left of that lead. That, but the way, is similar to a CNN poll a number of weeks ago. Significantly, Rasmussen suggests that: Even if Biden’s now-slim lead in the polls were to remain frozen as of today, Trump would still have a clear path to an electoral college victory.
Biden’s Polling Lead Has Collapsed
Just a month and a half ago, Rasmussen Reports had Joe Biden 10-points ahead of President Donald Trump in the polls. Now he’s only ahead by one point, within the margin of error. Even if Biden’s now-slim lead in the polls were to remain frozen as of today, Trump would still have a clear path to an electoral college victory, as Hillary Clinton lead Trump in the popular vote by just over two points in the 2016 election. While it is impossible to know the exact reason (or reasons) for Biden’s polling collapse, it comes as the economy continues to rebound from the coronavirus, riots continue to ravage liberal run cities longer than anyone expected (to no condemnation from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris)..
[..] Rasmussen was among the closest mainstream pollster in approximating the popular vote in the 2016 election. Rasmussen had Hillary Clinton up 1.7 points over Trump on election day 2016, while she ended up winning the popular vote by 2.1 points above him (48.2% vs. 46.1%). The Real Clear Politics average of polls had Hillary up for six points. Unlike the other polls, Rasmussen correctly saw Trump had a path to victory in the electoral college.
Last night @donlemon called for the rioting to end, “because it’s showing up in the polling.”
What polling? The media polling after the DNC Convention that was never released over the weekend.
Yes, folks, it exists. You’re just not allowed to see it. https://t.co/yjm1UUdfmf
— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) August 26, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
And of course Don Lemon warned yesterday on CNN that Biden has to start addressing the riots, because by remaining silent he’s letting Trump run away with the issue. But it’s not entirely clear how Biden would do that: the Democrats have supported BLM and protesters -as well as rioters- in general for most of the year, and now they would have to turn against them?
The sports boycotts that yesterday came seemingly out of nowhere all at the same time, look like they’re well intentioned but too late. There is too much news, and there are too many videos, out there to keep portraying what’s happening in the streets of Kenosha and Minneapolis and many other cities, as a one-sided problem. There is violence on both, or even many, sides.
Tonight, Thursday August 27, it’s Donald Trump’s turn to address the RNC, and the entire press, the entire nation, will pay attention. Nobody feels they can afford not to. Almost half the country will already have their minds made up about what a terrible person he is, while the other almost half will think he’s doing great. It’s the “10%-20%” who haven’t made their minds up that he must reach, and given how the country feels about violence in the streets, he may well succeed in reaching quite a few.
For which he can thank the DNC. “Orange Man Bad” may have once looked to be a winning strategy, but by now it feels mostly a limiting one.
* * *
- Kenosha Shooter Hit With 6 Charges, Including First-Degree Murder
Kenosha Shooter Hit With 6 Charges, Including First-Degree Murder
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 20:02Now that 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse has been taken into custody in Illinois after he “fled across state lines” (drove 20 minutes back to his house in Antioch, Illinois), local prosecutors have unveiled the full boat of charges that the 17-year-old is facing, including first degree reckless homicide.
Kenosha County prosecutors charged the teenager with one count each of first-degree intentional homicide, first-degree reckless homicide and one count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide. He was also charged with two counts of reckless endangerment, and with possessing a dangerous weapon as a minor.
Earlier, the names of Rittenhouse’s victims have been released to the media. They are: Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber.
The Daily News and other MSM outlets are already trying to portray them as “sweet, loving” innocent victims who were “peaceful protesters” not “rioters”.
Here’s more on the charges from Reuters:
Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was arrested in connection with shootings in Wisconsin that led to the death of two people and injury of another, has been charged with six criminal counts, according to the criminal complaint disclosed on Thursday.
The charges against Rittenhouse in Kenosha County include first degree reckless homicide in the death of Joseph Rosenbaum and first degree intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, according to the complaint.
Fortunately for Rittenhouse and his family, powerhouse Attorney Lin Wood, who also represented Covington Catholic high schools student Nick Sandmann in his battle against the MSM media outlets that slandered him, has agreed to take on his case.
As some may know, Wood shot to fame after the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing when he represented Richard Jewel, who was falsely accused, and then slandered, by the mainstream press.
Wood made the following statement on his Twitter account.
(1) Thanks to ALL Freedom Loving Americans who responded to requests for contact information on Kyle Rittenhouse. We have connected with Kyle’s family & help is on the way. Kyle will have excellent legal representation. We owe him a legal defense.
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) August 27, 2020
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(2) Many others will need your help in coming days. Stay strong. Continue to speak truth. Continue to demand justice under our Constitution. Continue to be fearless.
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) August 27, 2020
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(3) Most important of all, continue to pray for your fellow citizens. Pray for our President. Pray for our country. And always, always, always #FightBack.
We will not go quietly in the night. We are Americans. 🇺🇸
– Lin
— Lin Wood (@LLinWood) August 27, 2020
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The shooting victim who survived, Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, is a volunteer medic for Black Lives Matter protests in Milwaukee over the summer. Rittenhouse is being held at a Lake County juvenile detention facility. He will appear in court Friday morning, where he’ll face extradition to Kenosha.
The violence took place in Kenosha on Tuesday night as the town was racked by a third night of violence following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a black criminal suspect.
- The Fed's Policy Mistake: "Buying" More Inflation Will Lead To Financial Instability
The Fed’s Policy Mistake: “Buying” More Inflation Will Lead To Financial Instability
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 19:45Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist at AllianceBernstein
The Federal Reserve’s new policy of inflation “averaging “ is a mistake. The trade-off nowadays is between inflation and financial stability. Buying more inflation will eventually create, if it has not already, financial imbalances that will trigger an economic crash.
The parallel to this is the misguided policies of the 1970s. Back then policymakers found buying more employment with a little more inflation did not work.
Facts Don’t Support Policy Change
Federal Reserve policymaker’s argument for the policy change is that consumer inflation has been consistently running below its 2% target. Also, sustained low inflation readings can over time depress inflation expectations, which can create “ever lower inflation and inflation expectations”. The evidence does not support these arguments.
The Federal Government statistical branches publish two measures of consumer price inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the consumer price index (CPI) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) publishes the personal consumption deflator (PCE).
CPI is the basic measure of consumer price inflation. The PCE measure gets 70% of its price data from the CPI. But the PCE also includes items or services provided to consumers by businesses and government. BEA uses a lot of imputations (non-market prices) to value these items and services since these items are not “sold” to the consumer.
In the 4 of the past 5 years, core CPI has been running above the Fed’s 2% target. The only year of the past 5 when core CPI ran below 2% was 2017 when it ran 1.8%. That small shortfall is not statistically significant and surely does not warrant a fundamental change in policy.
Also, the argument the low reported inflation is undermining consumer inflation expectations are not supported by the facts. Consumer’s one-year inflation expectations from the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey shows that people’s inflation expectations have consistently run above-reported inflation and the 2% target.
In the past two decades, the only times consumer inflation expectations dropped below 2% was during 9/11 and the Great Financial Crisis. And each drop in expectations was short-lived. Consumer inflation expectations currently stand at 3%.
The Federal Reserve has three mandates, maximum employment, price stability, and financial stability. Financial stability is often overlooked or ignored. The last two recessions were triggered not by inflation running too high or too low, but by real and financial asset prices running too hot. Current macro valuations asset valuations now exceed the high thresholds of the last two asset bubbles.
Changes in monetary policy often have unintended consequences. Trying to buy more inflation is a mistake. It’s a policy mistake because actual inflation has been running above target. But the bigger problem is that the new policy will trigger more speculation and risks in finance at a time when asset values are already at nosebleed levels.
The misguided policies of the 1970s eventually ended with an economic crash. Will this time play out differently? I have my doubts. That’s because over exuberance in finance or in the economy creates imbalances that naturally correct. The big difference today versus the 1970s is that the US does not have the policy defenses —with official rates at zero and budget deficits in the trillions— to cushion the fall.
- Putin Says Worst Of Russia's Virus-Induced Recession Over As Recovery Nears
Putin Says Worst Of Russia’s Virus-Induced Recession Over As Recovery Nears
Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/27/2020 – 19:25President Vladimir Putin spoke with Rossiya 24 TV channel, transcribed by RT News, on Thursday, indicating the worst of the virus-indued recession is over for the Russian economy.
“We believe the peak of our problems has passed, and I hope we will gradually begin to recover,” Putin said. “We are not much different from other countries in the world – I think our recovery will be secured next year.”
Putin said the country’s macroeconomic backdrop is stable following a deep plunge in economic activity earlier this year due to coronavirus lockdowns. He said low inflation levels and increasing gold reserves had put the national economy on a pathway towards recovery.
Putin reiterated, as he did in June (see: “Putin Says US Social Unrest Show “Deep-Seated Internal Crises”), his government’s quick response effort to contain the virus has been much better than the US. He noted then, that President Trump’s poor handling of the pandemic and social unrest signaled “deep-seated internal crises” in the West.
Just weeks ago, Putin unveiled the world’s first approved COVID-19 vaccine. However, safety and efficacy data of the drug has yet to be released. A vaccine widely available in the country could accelerate recovery in 2021.
Putin pointed out Russia continues to boost precious metals purchases and increase FX reserves to $590 billion.
“This creates an additional safety cushion … It’s not a panacea for all ills, but it is important,” he said, adding that the holdings allow the government to fund budgets and fulfill social obligations.
The Russian economy is expected to contract eight percent this year. Putin said the plunge won’t be as bad at that, expected to fall around five and six percent range.
Recovery hopes in Russia were seen in a recent Reuters poll, with respondents revealing the MOEX stock index could hit new highs in 2021.
As for the US, facing a double-recession with continued depressionary unemployment, along with no end to the virus pandemic insight, a recovery could be several years away.
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