- Assange Case Exposes UK's Solitary Confinement 'Torture' Loophole
Assange Case Exposes UK’s Solitary Confinement ‘Torture’ Loophole
Up until last week, Julian Assange had been held in unofficial solitary confinement inside of the Belmarsh prison healthcare unit – a loophole which the UK government began using in May, according to 21st Century Wire‘s Nina Cross.
Thanks to outcry by fellow inmates and Assange’s legal team, Assange was moved out of the Belmarsh healthcare unit – which has been “weaponized to arbitrarily isolate and punish a prisoner.”
Prisoners’ revolt and pressure from legal team and campaigners forces Belmarsh to move Assange out of solitary. WikiLeaks statement: pic.twitter.com/9Af9y3zC93
— Don’t Extradite Assange (@DEAcampaign) January 24, 2020
Of note, more than 100 Yellow Vest protesters traveled from France on Saturday to join a demonstration outside of Belmarsh in support of Assange.
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsUp until now, UK authorities had denied Assange has been held in solitary confinement – or that it’s even practiced in British prisons at all.
Until now, Assange has been locked in a cell alone for over 22 hours a day and deprived of association with other prisoners for several months. This is in breach of both the European Prison Rules and the British government’s own prison inspectorate human rights standards …
…
In an attempt to mitigate growing public outrage, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has been sending out letters in response to the influx of complaints it has been receiving regarding the abuse of Assange. In its response it refuses to address his case and produces a list of standards and laws written for the protection of prisoners as evidence he is in ‘safe hands.’ However, anyone who has followed the continued arbitrary detention of Assange in Belmarsh will know he has been placed effectively outside the reach of laws and standards; even access to his lawyers and legal documents, normally preserved by statutory prisoner rights – has been harshly restricted, all of which has had a crippling effect on preparation for his defence in a case of historical significance. –21st Century Wire
I asked the Prison and Probation Service why Julian #Assange doesn’t have enough access to documents and lawyers despite that being a fundamental right and received an answer pic.twitter.com/vbzygEzz9R
— Amelia Wittbeck (@Hanissee) January 10, 2020
Meanwhile, the Brits are completely dismissing statements by UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, when they claim that “prisoners are not detained in solitary confinement.”
UN Standard Minimum Rules 43&44:
“Solitary confinement”: 22 or more hrs/day without meaningful human contact.
If “prolonged” (15+ consecutive days) it amounts to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment & is always prohibited!https://t.co/dxe5z9A2bY— Nils Melzer (@NilsMelzer) December 31, 2019
Moreover, Cross notes that the UK’s laughable statement that they care for all prisoners clearly ignores the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which says that Assange is being arbitrarily detained in violation of international law.
“What’s more, the British state’s dismissing out of hand any accusations of ‘solitary confinement’ as a falsehood or public misconception – must surely undermine the work of prison charities and scholarship in law and prison systems which exists to shed light on the consequences of solitary confinement including ill-health and suicide,” writes Cross.
Hence, the HMPPS letter can be viewed as a public relations exercise designed to promote the image of good governance, a facade designed to mask the institution’s deployment of the very same strategy practised by the government when called upon to answer for its abuse of Assange: denial and silence.
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(5/7) @foreignoffice: “The UK has a close working relationship with UN bodies & supports the important work of the #SRTorture” (https://t.co/ybkgrmeOhS)
Yet: Throughout 2019 the UKGovt has consistently ignored ALL allegations, concerns & recommendations submitted by #SRTorture.
— Nils Melzer (@NilsMelzer) January 13, 2020
Solitary confinement, technically speaking, is described by the prison charity Penal Reform as “… when a prisoner is confined to a cell for 22 hours or more, that constitutes solitary confinement, regardless of the reason for this confinement or its name,” while the prison ombusdman confirms that the definition has nothing to do with where it is.
“Segregated conditions are also sometimes applied outside of segregation units. Prisoners can be kept on the wing, but locked in their cells for the most of the day, and taken to shower and exercise separately from other prisoners on the wing.”
So what was Belmarsh doing? While official prisoner segregation is allowed under rule 45, holding Assange in the medical wing allowed them to ignore several associated laws. https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
“45.—(1) Where it appears desirable, for the maintenance of good order or discipline or in his own interests, that a prisoner should not associate with other prisoners, either generally or for particular purposes, the governor may arrange for the prisoner’s removal from association accordingly.
(2) A prisoner shall not be removed under this rule for a period of more than 3 days without the authority of a member of the board of visitors or of the Secretary of State. An authority given under this paragraph shall be for a period not exceeding one month, but may be renewed from month to month”
By holding Assange in unofficial segregation, he was excluded from ‘the rules’ and therefore may have been worse off than if he had been officially segregated:
“The regime for segregated prisoners (under Prison Rule 45 (YOI 49)) should be as full as possible and only those activities that involve associating with mainstream prisoners should be curtailed.” – SEG PSO
Read the rest of the report here.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 01/28/2020 – 01:00 - Dead President Walking?
Dead President Walking?
Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins via Off-Guardian.org,
I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I’m a little worried about Donald Trump. I’m worried he may be on the verge of a sudden, major heart attack, or a stroke, or a fatal golfing accident.
Food poisoning is another possibility.
Or he could overdose on prescription medication.
A tanning bed mishap is not out of the question.
He could accidentally hang himself during autoerotic asphyxiation, or get shot by a lone-wolf white supremacist terrorist trying to start the RaHoWa.
The Russians could spray him with that Novichok perfume.
There are any number of ways he could snuff it.
I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but the Resistance is running out of non-lethal options for removing Donald Trump from office.
Here they are, in no particular order…
RESISTANCE NON-LETHAL OPTION NO. 1
Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 1 is winning the 2020 election, which isn’t looking very promising. The Democratic Party is in shambles. According to the polls, their current front-runner is a senile, hair-sniffing, finger-sucking freak who never met a credit card company or a healthcare lobbyist he didn’t like, and who rivals even Donald Trump when it comes to incoherent babbling.
Yes, that’s right, folks, it’s “Smilin’ Joe” Biden, vanquisher of the razor-wielding, swimming-pool-gangster “Corn Pop” to the rescue!
As far as I’ve been able to gather, the plan is for Joe to out-“crazy” Trump (and thus win back the “bull goose loony” demographic) by going completely off his medication and having a series of scary-looking petit mal seizures on national television.
That is, unless the impossible happens, and Biden is vanquished by Bernie Sanders (a/k/a “The Magic Socialist”), who Democratic Party bigwigs would sooner publicly immolate themselves than nominate, and who the corporate media are already accusing of being a lying, sexist. communist, crypto-Trump-loving, Jew-hating Jew.
Sanders, it seems, has gone totally “native.”
He’s out there, in the heart of the American darkness, like a geriatric Colonel Kurz, operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.
According to the latest reconnaissance, he is building another “revolutionary” army of fanatical, doped-up, hacky-sacking “socialists” that he will lead into the convention in July and deliver to Biden, or Elizabeth Warren, or whichever soulless corporate puppet the party honchos eventually nominate, and then obsequiously stump for them for the next five months. (Or, who knows, maybe Michael Bloomberg will put the Democrats out of their misery and just buy the party and nominate himself.)
The “Crush Bernie” movement is just getting started, but you can tell the Resistance isn’t screwing around. Hillary Clinton just officially launched her national “Nobody Likes Bernie” campaign at the star-studded 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Influential Jewish journalists like Bari Weiss and Jeffrey Goldberg, and Ronald Lauder’s newly-founded Anti-Semitism Accountability Project, have been Hitlerizing him, or, rather, Corbynizing him.
Obama has promised to “stop him,” if necessary.
MSNBC anchor Joy Reid brought on a professional “body language expert” to phrenologize Sanders “live” on the air … and, as I said, they’re just getting started.
In any event, no matter who they nominate, they have no chance of winning in November.
How could they, given the total stranglehold the Russians now have on American democracy?
As Adam Schiff just reminded everyone, unless Donald Trump is removed from office, “we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won,” because at any moment Putin could order Trump to pressure the Ukrainian president into investigating Biden’s son’s corruption by refusing to fund the Ukrainian military’s resistance to Putin’s secret plot to occupy the entire Ukraine and use it as a covert base from which to launch an all-out thermonuclear war against the United States (which Putin already controls through his puppet, Trump, and his network of nefarious Facebook bots, which, according to this expert on NPR, are already brainwashing gullible Black people into voting for Bernie Sanders this time, or at least refusing to vote for Biden, like they refused to vote for Hillary last time … which, OK, I know, that sounds kind of racist, but we’re talking NPR here, folks. These people aren’t racists. They’re liberals!)
OK, I got a little lost there… the point is, if the election goes ahead, and Trump doesn’t have an embolism or something, odds are, we’re looking at four more years of Putin-Nazi occupation. Which brings us to…
NON-LETHAL OPTION NO. 2
Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 2 is, of course, the current impeachment circus. I don’t even know where to start with this one.
After three and a half years of corporate-media-manufactured mass hysteria and Intelligence Community propaganda designed to convince the American public that Donald Trump is a “Russian asset” (and possibly Putin’s homosexual lover) and also literally the Resurrection of Hitler, the Democrats are trying to impeach the man for something that most Americans either (a) believe is common practice among members of the political class, (b) don’t entirely understand, or (c) do, but don’t give a shit about.
Seriously, it’s like they held a contest to see if anyone could think of something that would out-anticlimax the Mueller report, and this is what the winner came up with … an over-acted, sanctimonious snooze-fest, the stakes of which could not possibly be lower.
Sure, the corporate media are doing their best to cover every twist and turn of the “drama” as if the fate of democracy were hanging in the balance, but everybody knows it’s a joke … or, all right, almost everybody.
So we’re down to…
NON-LETHAL OPTION NO. 3
Resistance Non-Lethal Option No. 3 is to whip up so much mass hysteria over “white supremacist terrorism,” “the sudden resurgence of anti-Semitism,” “the imminent Putin-Nazi Apocalypse” (which has been imminent since the summer of 2016), and other iterations of Hitler hysteria, that people can’t really even think anymore, and will join the Resistance and pour into the streets in their millions and demand Trump resign.
The Resistance has been at this for over three years now, i.e., casting the neo-Nazi subculture that has always been part of the political landscape as a powerful, worldwide fascist movement that is going to rise up any minute and Hitlerize the entire Western world.
It isn’t working. People aren’t buying it. OK, sure, some liberals are still buying it. But most people aren’t, not anymore.
For example, the hysteria leading up to the recent gun rights rally in Richmond, which according to the corporate media had been infiltrated by “Nazi terrorists” who were plotting to publicly mass murder each other in a desperate attempt to finally launch the “Boogaloo,” or the “RaHoWa” … or whatever.
Apparently, a few days before the rally, the FBI got some neo-Nazis to agree to conspire to murder some people and then violently overthrow the U.S. government with their arsenal of homemade machine guns.
These neo-Nazi masterminds were allegedly members of “the Base,” i.e., one of these little neo-Nazi clubs that we’re all supposed to live in mortal fear of now … this one, as it turns out, run by a former (and possibly current) “security contractor.”
The governor declared a state of emergency. Anti-Terror forces were put on alert. A “no-fly zone” was implemented, presumably to prevent the Russians from dropping a division of Putin-Nazi paratroopers onto the lawn of the Capitol. The corporate media warned that it was probably going to be a bloodbath.
Well, the day came and went, and no Boogaloo. No bloodbath. No Putin-Nazi Apocalypse. Just a lot of gun owners and militia types parading around with their guns and gear. Antifa didn’t even show up this time … or, rather, the few “anti-fascists” that did were also armed and supporting the rally.
And that’s the problem with Non-Lethal Option No. 3… there are only so many times you can have the corporate media scream, “THE NAZIS ARE COMING!” and then not produce any actual Nazis. The Resistance has exceeded that allotment.
Which brings me back to where I started, and my concerns about Donald Trump, and his health, and the assorted tragic accidents that could befall him before we get to November. Because, unless you believe that the Intelligence Community (and the transnational empire it is part and parcel of) is prepared to sit by and allow Donald Trump to serve another four years as president … well, I wouldn’t be sharing any Diet Cokes or riding in any motorcades with him.
I don’t know, maybe I’ve been reading too much of that “conspiracy theory” stuff on the Internet, but Senator Schumer’s warning to Trump back in 2017 keeps playing in my head:
Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
Relax, folks. I’m just kidding, of course. The Intelligence Community would never dream of doing anything … you know, illegal.
The Community doesn’t assassinate people, and commit all sorts of other atrocities.
That’s just a thing they do in the movies.
In reality, they would never assassinate a president, especially not one they had been telling everyone is a “Russian asset,” and “literally Hitler,” and a “traitor,” and a “dictator,” for over three years.
OK, those are pretty harsh words, but they probably don’t really mean all that stuff. Odds are, they’re just horsing around.
They’re a notorious bunch of jokesters, those CIA guys.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 23:45 - U.K. To Decide On Huawei 5G Equipment On Tuesday
U.K. To Decide On Huawei 5G Equipment On Tuesday
The U.K. government is expected to decide on Tuesday whether to ban Huawei 5G equipment from the country’s telecommunication networks, reported BBC News.
Digital Minister Matt Warman said Monday that “security and resilience” of Britain’s “telecom networks are of paramount importance” in tomorrow’s decision.
“We welcome open trade and inward investment, however, our economy can only prosper and unleash Britain’s potential when we and our international partners are assured that our critical national infrastructure remains safe and secure,” Warman said.
We noted earlier this month how the Trump administration was pressuring U.K. officials to outlaw Huawei 5G equipment.
There’s speculation Monday that Prime Minister Boris Johnson could allow “core” Huawei parts in the backbone of networks.
Johnson told reporters that he needed a communication network that benefits the economy without jeopardizing national security.
“We are going to come up with a solution that enables us to achieve both those objectives, and that is the way forward,” he said.
Former Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt told BBC on Monday that he “wondered whether it was wise” for the U.K. to become entirely reliant on China for communication equipment.
“I would say if the decision goes the other way this week, as some of the signs seem to indicate it might, I hope there will also be some reflection in the U.S. because we have never needed the Western alliance to be stronger than now,” Hunt said.
If Huawei 5G equipment is banned from U.K. communication networks on Tuesday, it would mean that E.E., Three, and Vodafone, would have to replace Chinese equipment already installed in the country’s networks.
In all of the reporting of the Huawei story a couple of things are often ignored. There’s not one single UK 5G network but 4, and three of them are already rolling out with Huawei – here right at the heart of the city of London pic.twitter.com/sC4dDJ39LU
— Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) January 27, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Tuesday’s Huawei decision will be important for Johnson. He will either side with the Trump administration and ban the Chinese telecom from communication networks. If he allows Huawei equipment to expand in the network, then it would likely draw intense anger from Washington.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 23:25 - Escobar: Why The New Silk Roads Are A "Threat" To US Bloc
Escobar: Why The New Silk Roads Are A “Threat” To US Bloc
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog,
Under the cascading roar of the 24/7 news cycle cum Twitter eruptions, it’s easy for most of the West, especially the US, to forget the basics about the interaction of Eurasia with its western peninsula, Europe.
Asia and Europe have been trading goods and ideas since at least 3,500 BC. Historically, the flux may have suffered some occasional bumps – for instance, with the irruption of 5th-century nomad horsemen in the Eurasian plains. But it was essentially steady up to the end of the 15th century. We can essentially describe it as a millennium-old axis – from Greece to Persia, from the Roman empire to China.
A land route with myriad ramifications, through Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, linking India and China to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, ended up coalescing into what we came to know as the Ancient Silk Roads.
By the 7th century, land routes and sea trade routes were in direct competition. And the Iranian plateau always played a key role in this process.
The Iranian plateau historically includes Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia linking it to Xinjiang to the east, and to the west all the way to Anatolia. The Persian empire was all about land trade – the key node between India and China and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The Persians engaged the Phoenicians in the Syrian coastline as their partners to manage sea trade in the Mediterranean. Enterprising people in Tyre established Carthage as a node between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Because of the partnership with the Phoenicians, the Persians would inevitably be antagonized by the Greeks – a sea trading power.
When the Chinese, promoting the New Silk Roads, emphasize “people to people exchange” as one of its main traits, they mean the millenary Euro-Asia dialogue. History may even have aborted two massive, direct encounters.
The first was after Alexander The Great defeated Darius III of Persia. But then Alexander’s Seleucid successors had to fight the rising power in Central Asia: the Parthians – who ended up taking over Persia and Mesopotamia and made the Euphrates the limes between them and the Seleucids.
The second encounter was when emperor Trajan, in 116 AD, after defeating the Parthians, reached the Persian Gulf. But Hadrian backed off – so history did not register what would have been a direct encounter between Rome, via Persia, with India and China, or the Mediterranean meeting with the Pacific.
Mongol globalization
The last western stretch of the Ancient Silk Roads was, in fact, a Maritime Silk Road. From the Black Sea to the Nile delta, we had a string of pearls in the form of Italian city/emporia, a mix of end journey for caravans and naval bases, which then moved Asian products to Italian ports.
Commercial centers between Constantinople and Crimea configured another Silk Road branch through Russia all the way to Novgorod, which was very close culturally to the Byzantine world. From Novgorod, merchants from Hamburg and other cities of the Hanseatic League distributed Asian products to markets in the Baltics, northern Europe and all the way to England – in parallel to the southern routes followed by the maritime Italian republics.
Between the Mediterranean and China, the Ancient Silk Roads were of course mostly overland. But there were a few maritime routes as well. The major civilization poles involved were peasant and artisanal, not maritime. Up to the 15th century, no one was really thinking about turbulent, interminable oceanic navigation.
The main players were China and India in Asia, and Italy and Germany in Europe. Germany was the prime consumer of goods imported by the Italians. That explains, in a nutshell, the structural marriage of the Holy Roman Empire.
At the geographic heart of the Ancient Silk Roads, we had deserts and the vast steppes, trespassed by sparse tribes of shepherds and nomad hunters. All across those vast lands north of the Himalayas, the Silk Road network served mostly the four main players. One can imagine how the emergence of a huge political power uniting all those nomads would be in fact the main beneficiary of Silk Road trade.
Well, that actually happened. Things started to change when the nomad shepherds of Central-South Asia started to have their tribes regimented as horseback archers by politico-military leaders such as Genghis Khan.
Welcome to the Mongol globalization. That was actually the fourth globalization in history, after the Syrian, the Persian and the Arab. Under the Mongolian Ilkhanate, the Iranian plateau – once again playing a major role – linked China to the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia in the Mediterranean.
The Mongols didn’t go for a Silk Road monopoly. On the contrary: during Kublai Khan – and Marco Polo’s travels – the Silk Road was free and open. The Mongols only wanted caravans to pay a toll.
With the Turks, it was a completely different story. They consolidated Turkestan, from Central Asia to northwest China. The only reason Tamerlan did not annex India is that he died beforehand. But even the Turks did not want to shut down the Silk Road. They wanted to control it.
Venice lost its last direct Silk Road access in 1461, with the fall of Trebizond, which was still clinging to the Byzantine empire. With the Silk Road closed to the Europeans, the Turks – with an empire ranging from Central-South Asia to the Mediterranean – were convinced they now controlled trade between Europe and Asia.
Not so fast. Because that was when European kingdoms facing the Atlantic came up with the ultimate Plan B: a new maritime road to India.
And the rest – North Atlantic hegemony – is history.
Enlightened arrogance
The Enlightenment could not possibly box Asia inside its own rigid geometries. Europe ceased to understand Asia, proclaimed it was some sort of proteiform historical detritus and turned its undivided attention to “virgin,” or “promised” lands elsewhere on the planet.
We all know how England, from the 18th century onwards, took control of the entire trans-oceanic routes and turned North Atlantic supremacy into a lone superpower game – till the mantle was usurped by the US.
Yet all the time there has been counter-pressure from the Eurasian Heartland powers. That’s the stuff of international relations for the past two centuries – peaking in the young 21st century into what could be simplified as The Revenge of the Heartland against Sea Power. But still, that does not tell the whole story.
Rationalist hegemony in Europe progressively led to an incapacity to understand diversity – or The Other, as in Asia. Real Euro-Asia dialogue – the de facto true engine of history – had been dwindling for most of the past two centuries.
Europe owes its DNA not only to much-hailed Athens and Rome – but to Byzantium as well. But for too long not only the East but also the European East, heir to Byzantium, became incomprehensible, quasi incommunicado with Western Europe, or submerged by pathetic clichés.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as in the Chinese-led New Silk Roads, are a historical game-changer in infinite ways. Slowly and surely, we are evolving towards the configuration of an economically interlinked group of top Eurasian land powers, from Shanghai to the Ruhr valley, profiting in a coordinated manner from the huge technological know-how of Germany and China and the enormous energy resources of Russia.
The Raging 2020s may signify the historical juncture when this bloc surpasses the current, hegemonic Atlanticist bloc.
Now compare it with the prime US strategic objective at all times, for decades: to establish, via myriad forms of divide and rule, that relations between Germany, Russia and China must be the worst possible.
No wonder strategic fear was glaringly visible at the NATO summit in London last month, which called for ratcheting up pressure on Russia-China. Call it the late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s ultimate, recurrent nightmare.
Germany soon will have a larger than life decision to make. It’s like this was a renewal – in way more dramatic terms – of the Atlanticist vs Ostpolitik debate. German business knows that the only way for a sovereign Germany to consolidate its role as a global export powerhouse is to become a close business partner of Eurasia.
In parallel, Moscow and Beijing have come to the conclusion that the US trans-oceanic strategic ring can only be broken through the actions of a concerted block: BRI, Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS+ and the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB), the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
Middle East pacifier
The Ancient Silk Road was not a single camel caravan route but an inter-communicating maze. Since the mid-1990s I’ve had the privilege to travel almost every important stretch – and then, one day, you see the complete puzzle. The New Silk Roads, if they fulfill their potential, pledge to do the same.
Maritime trade may be eventually imposed – or controlled – by a global naval superpower. But overland trade can only prosper in peace. Thus the New Silk Roads potential as The Great Pacifier in Southwest Asia – what the Western-centric view calls the Middle East.
The Middle East (remember Palmyra) was always a key hub of the Ancient Silk Roads, the great overland axis of Euro-Asia trade going all the way to the Mediterranean.
For centuries, a quartet of regional powers – Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Persia (now Iran) – have been fighting for hegemony over the whole area from the Nile delta to the Persian Gulf. More recently, it has been a case of external hegemony: Ottoman Turk, British and American.
So delicate, so fragile, so immensely rich in culture, no other region in the world has been, continually, since the dawn of history, an absolutely key zone. Of course, the Middle East was also a crisis zone even before oil was found (the Babylonians, by the way, already knew about it).
The Middle East is a key stop in the 21st century, trans-oceanic supply chain routes – thus its geopolitical importance for the current superpower, among other geoeconomic, energy-related reasons. But its best and brightest know the Middle East does not need to remain a center of war, or intimations of war, which, incidentally, affect three of those historical, regional powers of the quartet (Syria, Iraq and Iran).
What the New Silk Roads are proposing is wide-ranging, economic, interlinked integration from East Asia, through Central Asia, to Iran, Iraq and Syria all the way to the Eastern Mediterranean. Just like the Ancient Silk Roads. No wonder vested War Party interests are so uncomfortable with this real peace “threat.”
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 23:05 - Emergency Evacuation Of Americans Begins From Epidemic-Stricken Chinese City
Emergency Evacuation Of Americans Begins From Epidemic-Stricken Chinese City
Update (Jan. 27): The Wall Street Journal has provided an update on the emergency charter flight to evacuate Americans from the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan.
The Boeing 767, with about 230 seats, is preparing to depart from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Tuesday for California, amid new fears that coronavirus has uncontrollably spread across the country.
The U.S. State Department’s rapid response operation to evacuate Americans from the region is due to the expected increase in the number of cases in the days ahead.
There are at least 1,000 Americans in Wuhan, and only 230 will get seats on the chartered flight.
We noted on Sunday that U.S. diplomats and their families were likely first on the list to receive seats.
People with tickets told the Journal that the chartered flight is expected to land in Ontario, California.
Vermont native Priscilla Dickie, 35, told the Journal that she and her daughter, 8, have seats on the plane but might not be able to get to the airport since transportation has come to a standstill. She said she’s 20 miles from the airport without a means of transportation.
Benjamin Wilson told the Journal he’s preparing for the worse and hunkering down with his Wuhan native wife and 7-year-old daughter.
“I would consider sending my daughter, if that were an option,” Wilson said.
“But I wouldn’t leave my wife. But if my wife and daughter could travel together, then absolutely yes.”
A U.S. official told the Journal over the weekend that additional emergency evacuation operations would be conducted this week, which would include the bussing of Americans from the outbreak zone to other cities for outbound flights to the U.S.
Besides the U.S., Reuters reports the following countries have already announced evacuation plans for their citizens trapped in Wuhan:
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France expects to repatriate up to a few hundred of its 800 citizens living in the Wuhan area. Evacuees will have to spend 14 days in quarantine to avoid spreading the virus in France.
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The German air force repatriating 90 Germans living in the area, Der Spiegel magazine reported on Monday.
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Japan is expected to arrange charter flights as early as Tuesday for any of its citizens who wish to return from Wuhan, two sources familiar with the matter said. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said about 430 Japanese nationals have been confirmed to be in Hubei province.
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Spain’s government is working with China and the European Union to repatriate Spanish nationals from the Wuhan area, Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya said.
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Britain is talking to international partners to find solutions to help British and other foreign nationals leave Wuhan, a spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said.
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Canada has about 167 nationals in the Wuhan area, Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said on Monday, and eight people have sought consular assistance, which is being provided. While the minister did not rule out possible evacuations, he did not indicate there were any planned at the moment, adding that each consular request would be evaluated on a “case by case basis”.
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Russia has been in talks with China about evacuating its nationals from Wuhan and Hubei province, Russia’s embassy in China said.
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The Dutch government is assessing ways to evacuate 20 Dutch citizens from Wuhan, press agency ANP reported.
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Authorities in Myanmar said they had canceled a planned evacuation of 60 students from Mandalay who were studying in Wuhan. Kyaw Yin Myint, a spokesman for the Mandalay municipal government, told Reuters that a “final decision” had been made to send them back after 14 days, once the virus’ incubation period had passed.
The total number of confirmed cases has climbed to 2882, though the actual number of cases out there is likely much higher, as experts have warned.
* * *
Update (1154ET): Yesterday it was the U.S. and Russia arranging charter flights to evacuate their citizens from the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan.
Now Thailand has four Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport planes on standby to airlift its citizens from the city as the coronavirus outbreak spreads uncontrollably, reported the Bangkok Post.
Royal Thai Air Force Chief Maanat Wongwat told the Post that four C-130s, carrying medical teams, students, and medical professionals, are ready to take off from the Chinese city.
“The air force is ready” to evacuate its citizens, Wongwat said.
Evacuations from the city are already underway for the U.S., France, and Japan, as confirmed cases in China could exceed over 3,000 by the end of the weekend.
Thailand’s evacuation plan also comes as a quarter-million people across China could be infected with the deadly disease in the next several weeks.
At the moment, four countries have initiated evacuation plans for their citizens trapped in Wuhan.
* * *
A new report from The Wall Street Journal indicates the U.S. government is preparing an emergency charter flight to evacuate Americans from the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan.
The operation comes after the death toll jumped 60% on Friday night to 41, with more than 1,400 confirmed infections.
China has restricted travel for 46 million people across 16 cities as the death toll surges, and the spread becomes uncontrollable.
New cases were also reported in Europe and Australia on Friday night.
In the U.S., there are 63 suspected cases, with at least three confirmed, with two reported so far in Illinois and California, and two suspected in Minnesota.
The Journal said about 1,000 Americans reside in Wuhan, but the official number has yet to be confirmed.
U.S. officials have contacted known Americans in the region with an offer for a seat on a Boeing 767 jet that holds approximately 230 people.
Confirmed passengers already include diplomats from the U.S. Consulate Wuhan as well as their families.
The Journal noted that medical personnel would be on the plane to examine passengers for potential cases of the deadly virus.
The emergency evacuation is planned for Sunday, but limited details were given on where the plane would land in the U.S.
A U.S. official told The Journal that additional emergency evacuation operations would be conducted in the coming days, which would include the bussing of Americans from the outbreak zone to other cities for outbound flights to the U.S.
Russia is also planning emergency evacuations of its citizens from Wuhan and Hubei province, reported RIA news agency on Saturday.
Emergency evacuations are coming at a time when upwards of 250,000 Chinese could contract the deadly virus in the next ten days, said Jonathan Read, a U.K. expert on the transmission and evolutionary dynamics of infectious diseases.
Evacuations by the U.S. are likely in response to Read’s warning that suggests the outbreak could exponentially increase in the next several weeks.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 22:45 -
- California Sued After Concealing $320 Billion In Annual State Payments
California Sued After Concealing $320 Billion In Annual State Payments
Authored by Adam Andrzjewski, op-ed via RealClearPolitics.com,
Just a few of the serious financial problems facing California include unfunded public employee pension promises, a potential state credit downgrade, an unprecedented homeless crisis, and a net out-migration of 912,000 residents since 2010.
One easy step California can take is to join every other state in the union and open up its state checkbook for review. Allowing citizens, journalists, watchdogs, academics, and public policy experts to review state spending would help the state get its fiscal house in order.
Unfortunately, last fall, California State Controller Betty Yee (pictured) rejected our sunshine request for the state checkbook. Oddly, the rejection didn’t argue the law, but instead claimed that the controller couldn’t locate a single one of the 49 million bills she paid last year.
This admission provides a troubling clue to California taxpayers who are wondering how and where their money is being spent. The answer is the people spending it literally don’t know. Or they at least say that don’t.
It is of course unimaginable, and laughable, that the state that is home to Silicon Valley can’t put basic transparency tech in place. That state’s feigned tech illiteracy begs the question: What are they trying to hide?
Taxpayers in California certainly want to know what’s happening to state funds. It shouldn’t take subpoenas and litigation to “find” up to $320 billion in annual state payments and show taxpayers how their money was spent.
So, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com, alongside our attorneys at Cause of Action Institute, a government oversight organization, filed an open records lawsuit in Sacramento state court. Our lawsuit begins the process of forcing open the state’s line-by-line expenditures.
We’ve never lost a state checkbook transparency fight. In 2012, we successfully sued Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka (R), and, in 2018, we sued Wyoming State Auditor Cynthia Cloud (R).
We believe the open government movement is revolutionizing U.S. public policy and politics. Just like the microscope transformed medicine, big data is modernizing government.
The purpose of transparency isn’t to scold state officials but to encourage accountability, trust, and better public policy. Here are just three of many critical issues facing the Golden State that could be improved by transparency:
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State credit rating: The state auditor just issued a report saying the state’s $1.1 billion accounting system (FisCal) is so flawed that it could lead to a state credit downgrade.
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Corruption: Controller Yee claims that 99.7 percent of all state payments were properly paid even though she told us she can’t find her receipts. Betty Yee is probably the only one of 40 million Californians who believes state government is that efficient, effective, and honest. Yee estimates the state only loses a mere 0.3 percent (less than one-third of one percent) of state dollars every year through waste, abuse, and fiscal mismanagement. The state’s myriad problems suggest this is a fantasy.
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Homeless populations: a 2014 state proposition taxed millionaires to provide funds for mental health services. How did San Francisco — home to 7,500 homeless people — manage its funds? Last summer, we published an interactive poop map featuring 130,000 instances of human waste in the public way, which is in part connected to the state’s homeless problem
California, a state whose $3 trillion GDP ranks it ahead of the United Kingdom, spends an enormous sum of money. The state spends more than $320 billion per year with federal taxpayers funding $106 billion of it. If taxpayers can’t follow the money, it will be hard for the state to address its mounting fiscal challenges.
Every state across America can produce a complete checkbook of public expenditures. Are we just dreamin’ to believe that California can produce a full record too?
* * *
Adam Andrzejewski is the CEO/founder of OpenTheBooks.com, dedicated to posting all government spending online.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 22:25 -
- Furious Chinese Defy Censors To Mock Local Leaders Over Bungled Virus Response
Furious Chinese Defy Censors To Mock Local Leaders Over Bungled Virus Response
A few hours ago, the New York Times published an interesting story about how China’s population, known for assiduously self-censoring their speech online, is refusing to be silent in the face of the rapidly accelerating novel coronavirus. The deluge of critical posts, along with clever tricks to dodge censors, are making it nearly impossible for Beijing to control the narrative on the mainland.
Earlier, we mentioned how doctors, nurses and residents in Wuhan have demanded that their “useless” mayor follow through on an offer to resign for sluggishness in confronting the outbreak. But that’s not all: though reports claimed Beijing made an effort to remove horrifying videos of the situation on the ground in Wuhan (videos that showed what appeared to be dead bodies lying in hospital hallways), according to NYT, the censors have now been completely overwhelmed.
Some posters evade censors by referred to President Xi as “Trump”, or by comparing the outbreak to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
137 medical personnel head for Hubei from north China’s Shanxi pic.twitter.com/nxSe01dyEO
— CGTN (@CGTNOfficial) January 27, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Public anger over the handling of the outbreak has been compounded by the cancellation of the LNY holiday. Internet critics posted scathing criticisms of public officials over often minor slights, like when officials in Wuhan wore their face masks incorrectly during a press conference.
After Wuhan Mayor Zhou Xianwang offered to resign over his handling of the outbreak, a commenter replied: “If the virus is fair, then please don’t spare this useless person,” according to the NYT.
After the Hubei Gov. Wang Xiaodong delivered a news briefing on Sunday, he was brutally mocked for twice misstating the number of face masks that the province would produce to help fight the epidemic. A photo of the press conference that circulated online showed one of Wang’s partners didn’t cover his nose properly with the mask, inviting another torrent of derision.
However, experts cited by NYT said this torrent of criticism won’t go on forever. The Communist Party doesn’t tolerate any criticism or challenge to its rule, and government censors are still scrambling to delete any articles, comments or posts that are too critical.
“Chinese social media are full of anger, not because there was no censorship on this topic, but despite strong censorship,” said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and the founder of China Digital Times, a website that monitors Chinese internet controls. “It is still possible that the censorship will suddenly increase again, as part of an effort to control the narrative.”
Over the weekend, President Xi and the Politburo resolved to “strengthen the guidance of public opinion,” which sounds like a signal that a crackdown will go beyond deleting quack remedies and dangerous, false rumors.
It’s also possible that this is a Politburo strategy to focus domestic anger at local officials, scapegoating them ‘for the good of the country, and the party.’
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 22:05 - The Four Pillars Of Economic Understanding
The Four Pillars Of Economic Understanding
Authored by Peter Boettke via The American Institute for Economic Research,
It is no exaggeration to say that learning economics changed my life. In fact, I would go as far as saying the two most pivotal moments of my young adulthood was meeting my future wife at 17 and being exposed to economics at 19. Not only pivotal, but responsible for the good fortune and happiness I have had in the intervening years.
Earlier this month I turned 60. I became an economics major 40 years ago after the powerful messages I learned from my teacher Dr. Hans Sennholz and the economists and ideas he alerted me to. It was simply the way he taught that excited my imagination, and my journey since that time has only fueled my curiosity and imagination since.
I find everything about economics fascinating — its history, its sociology, its underlying philosophical debates, and most of all its ability in the hands of a real master to render the world in all its complexity intelligible. As James Buchanan taught us, economic theory is able to lift an ordinary individual to the heights of observational genius, while a genius unarmed with economic theory will often be reduced to very ordinary if not worse in their observations of how the world works.
Earlier this fall, I was part of a panel at the Southern Economic Association on Paul Rubin’s The Capitalism Paradox, along with Steve Horwitz and Sanford Ikeda. I have known of Ikeda since I was 19 because he was the star graduating economic student when I was first learning economics from Dr. Sennholz back at Grove City College. So, it was not surprising to me when Sandy in his comments summed up what he thought were the key ideas for teachers of economics to stress to excite the imaginations of subsequent generations of students. It was these ideas that changed my life.
Rubin’s book is highly recommended because he offers a useful corrective by stressing the importance of social cooperation among distant and disparate people, rather than the ruthless competitive nature of market society. Yes, market competition is unrelenting and valuable. But the by-product isn’t just the delivery of goods and services at least cost, but also the network of social relationships and bonds of cooperation that are formed even among strangers. Steve Horwitz recently gave a great talk on this in Greece, and was discussed at Coordination Problem. So our panel was united in its praise for Rubin’s work.
But, when Ikeda had his chance to summarize he placed the teaching of economics into 4 categories: Truth and Light; Beauty and Awe; Hope; and Compassion. My mind rushed back over the years to all the great teachers I have had in economics from Sennholz to Don Lavoie and Karen Vaughn, from Kenneth Boulding to James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, and from colleagues such as Israel Kirzner and Mario Rizzo at NYU to Don Boudreaux, Tyler Cowen, Chris Coyne, Peter Leeson, Russ Roberts, Vernon Smith and Virgil Storr. They all hit these different categories in their teaching and writing with different levels of emphasis and all with great effect. A few hit all four constantly and they stand out above the crowd.
Truth and Light
Economics begins with the recognition of scarcity. There is certain shock value when you first are taught this idea and the notion that in our world we are constantly confronted with trade-offs, and as such notions of optimality are a function of the skill with which we as human decision-makers negotiate these trade-offs.
Learning economics to a considerable extent is learning about all the implications of scarcity, and thus the persistent and consistent application of opportunity cost reasoning to all human affairs. Tullock (along with Richard McKenzie) achieve this with their The New World of Economics, which was originally published during the 1970s and which I read as an undergraduate economics student at Grove City College.
Economics brings truth and the light to the darkness, and pierces through the fog to make sense of all human endeavors, whether in pursuit of the highest ideals or the basis of crass motives. If you are being taught economics by Gordon Tullock, or for that matter Pete Leeson (The Invisible Hook and more recently WTF), be prepared to be shocked out of your comfortable complacency and instead learn about the logic and underlying governing dynamics of the world around you.
Beauty and Awe
Adam Smith sought to excite the imagination of his readers of The Wealth of Nations with two striking examples early on in the first book. We are asked to contemplate our situation in the world. We depend for our very survival on the cooperation of a great multitude of individuals, yet in our lifetime we have the occasion to make only a few close friends. Smith informs us, therefore, that we cannot rely on their benevolence to help us in our daily struggle for existence. We must appeal to their own self-love. It is not, as he says, from the benevolence of the butcher, the baker and the brewer that we can procure our dinner, but with regard to their self-love.
Let that sink in; we require institutions that will enable us to engage in productive specialization, realize mutual gains from exchange, and achieve peaceful social cooperation among distant and disparate people. Smith hammers this point home with his example of the common woolen coat that exists on the back of the day laborer. He traces out the great multitude of individuals involved in this complex division of labor that must coordinate their activity with one another in order to produce even this simple product. Leonard Read and Milton Friedman would later use the story of a pencil to similar effect.
And how is that achieved? Friedrich Hayek’s great contribution was to show how the price system through the knowledge generating, utilization and communication functions can produce this complex web of interdependent relationships among economic actors near and far. Hayek even used the phrase “marvel” to shake his professional colleagues out of their complacency about the beauty and awe of the complex coordination of a free market economy.
The scientific imagination is piqued either through a sense of awe or a sense of urgency. Economics is capable of both, and we do a disservice to our students when we don’t expose them to both. My colleague Chris Coyne’s work in the field of post-war reconstruction (After War) as well as humanitarian aid (Doing Bad By Doing Good) demonstrates to his readers that getting the economics right is really a matter of life and death in the real-world. But this understanding of the urgency is based on a sense of awe at the power of the price system.
This is reflected in important ways in Russ Roberts’ trilogy, The Choice, The Invisible Heart and The Price of Everything. Recently I made a post about the beautiful patterns of nature and the analogy to the market that Alfred Marshall draws in his Principles of Economics, and I think watching the rhythmic movement of the pendulum and the pattern produced is helpful to economics students to think about the complex pattern of economic relationships formed through the guidance of the price system.
Prices guide us, profits lure us, and losses discipline us in our decisions, and property rights provide the institutional infrastructure required for all of this to take place. James Buchanan taught us that the number one job of the economics teacher was to develop an appreciation in their students of the spontaneous order of the market so that our students could become informed participants in the democratic process of collective decision-making. In developing that appreciation, it helps to teach them about the mystery of the mundane.
Hope
But, learning economics and economic history teaches us even more; it teaches us about the “Great Escape” as Angus Deaton has dubbed it, as through the expansion of trade, refinements in the division of labor, technological innovations, and adoption of rules of the economic game that cultivate these developments rather than hinder them, humanity was able to get beyond the Malthusian struggle and the oppression of crushing poverty. Economics teaches us hope in the betterment of the human condition.
Entrepreneurs in the private sector act on price signals to constantly seek out deals by buying low and selling high, and in doing so bring mutual gains from trade. But these entrepreneurs are also constantly on the lookout for cost saving technologies in production or improvements in the delivery mechanism to consumers of their goods and services. And, don’t ever forget the innovations they introduce and the discovery of new products and new services that better satisfy the demands of consumers. Hope in the form of improved living conditions is born out of individuals being able to bet on ideas and bring those bets to life.
Hope is also a function of finding changes in the rules that will ease the costs of transacting and encourage the discovery of new opportunities for mutual gains from trade. Thus, public entrepreneurs can, and have, made tremendous improvements in the lives of millions (billions) by introducing changes in policy and more importantly in the legal and political structure that unleashes the creative powers of a free civilization as Hayek talks about in The Constitution of Liberty.
In recent years, perhaps nobody has documented this message of hope from economics better than Deirdre McCloskey in her Bourgeois trilogy. These are advanced texts, but the basic message is accessible to everyone. And, I would argue that as economic teachers, it is imperative that you communicate. Tyler Cowen in his recent Arrow Lecture asks whether Economic Growth is a Moral Imperative; he answers in the affirmative. It would be valuable to have your students watch this discussion.
Compassion
And, finally, economic teaching should stress how economic progress doesn’t result in gains only for the wealthy, but lifts the least advantaged from their previous precarious situation through material betterment. As Milton Friedman used to say, all ships rise in a rising tide. But it goes deeper than this empirical observation.
Economics as a tool of social criticism — perhaps its second most important role — is a rational method for assessing alternative policies and even economic systems. The strict adherence to value freedom in the analysis means that the economist takes the ends of the advocate as given, and limits their critical analysis to the effectiveness of the chosen means by the advocate to the achievement of the stated ends of the advocate for the policy or system.
If the goal is to help the least advantaged get affordable housing, and the means chosen is rent control, then the economists examines the logic of choice, and the situational logic of that means/ends relationship. We study the structure of incentives and the flow of information embodied in those structures and the ability of the system to produce the desired results. This has been the economist’s way from the classical political economists to the modern textbook economics.
The much maligned Econ 101 is actually couched in these terms for anyone who wants to read closely, rather than assume that economists are engaged in normative theorizing parading as positive analysis.
The great economists from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith were all passionately concerned with the status of the least advantaged among us. Economics teaches with great compassion about the less fortunate, and focuses energy on the institutional remedies that will open up opportunities and eradicate barriers.
As Lionel Robbins persuasively argued to my mind in The Theory of Economic Policy, the great British Classical Political Economists developed their theories in a manner that co-evolved with the development of British institutions of liberalism — private property, freedom of contract, rule of law. What must not be forgotten in all of this is that these liberal political economists, again reflected strongly in Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty as well as in various writings of James Buchanan, sought a system of government that exhibited neither discrimination nor domination. It is a system designed to eliminate privileges, and to recognize the rights of all as dignified equals before the law.
I honestly think that this message of economics — truth and light; beauty and awe; hope; and compassion — can excite the imagination of every generation to explore the intricacies of economic theory, and study in detail both the history of this fascinating discipline and the practical history of economies throughout the world.
We have to bring our students the truth and the light, but we also must instill in them a sense of beauty and awe at the complex coordination of the market, communicate the message of hope in our quest to improve the human condition, and speak to concerns and express our compassion for the least advantaged in our common cause of living in a society that grants freedom and dignity to all. As my colleague Virgil Storr (and Ginny Choi) establish in their recent book, Does the Market Corrupt Our Morals?, the answer is NO, it doesn’t. In fact, commercial society provides the foundation for our moral learning and improvement in our social relationships with one another.
With the increasing attacks on Econ 101, it is time for a renewed commitment by teachers to communicating to this generation the best of what is to be learned from economics.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 21:45 - Vermont Introduces Bill To Add Emojis To License Plates
Vermont Introduces Bill To Add Emojis To License Plates
The fine folks in Vermont, responsible for bringing us bright ideas like maple syrup chugging, Bernie Sanders and occasionally the baggie of low quality Canadian marijuana, could be adding another national trend to their resume: license plates with emojis.
The state’s distinctive green license plates could wind up being even more noticeable thanks to new legislation being introduced in the state that could allow emojis on license plates, according to the NY Post.
State Rep. Rebecca White has introduced the bill, which would allow drivers to add one of six emojis to their plate when registering a vehicle in Vermont. The symbols would be added to the plate’s registration number and would not replace any letters or numbers assigned by the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles.
“As long as they’re appropriate, I’m all for it,” said Mary-Jo Roldan to NBC News.
There were over 3000 common emojis at the time the bill was introduced and the bill doesn’t say which ones drivers would be able to choose from.
Local residents seem to be ecstatic over the idea. Vermont resident Pam Buck, of Weathersfield, said: “I guess it’s an OK idea. I wouldn’t say it’s good. I wouldn’t say it’s bad. It’s not hurting anybody.”
Queensland, Australia passed similar legislation in 2019, allowing emoticons on state registered plates. The plates cost drivers $336 each. Drivers in Australia have the option to select from the laughing, smiling, wink, “love” or sunglasses emojis to put on their plates.
Vermont has not yet put a price on the proposed vanity plates.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 21:25 - Congress Now Funding "Controversial" Geoengineering 'Plan B' To Spray Particles In The Sky To Cool Earth
Congress Now Funding “Controversial” Geoengineering ‘Plan B’ To Spray Particles In The Sky To Cool Earth
Authored by Matt Agorist via TheFreeThoughtProject.com,
It was reported this month that the top climate change scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has received $4 million in funding from Congress along with permission to study two highly controversial geoengineering methods in an attempt to cool the Earth.
According to Science Magazine, David Fahey, director of the Chemical Sciences Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, told his staff last week that the federal government is ready to examine the science behind “geoengineering” – or what he dubbed a “Plan B” for climate change.
What could possibly go wrong?
Before we go any further, it is important to point out to new readers that we are not a satire site. We are not a conspiracy theory site. The information you are about to read is factually accurate and 100% real despite the ostensible ‘skeptics’ who claim otherwise.
Over the past several years, the “conspiracy theory” of spraying particles into the sky to cool the Earth has become more mainstream. It came to a head last year when CNBC put out a video titled How Bill Gates-Funded Solar Geoengineering Could Help End Climate Change.
The video is nothing short of an infomercial for chemtrails. It is truly bizarre how this subject has moved from the fringes of conspiracy circles and into the mainstream and no one is even batting an eye. Now that Bill Gates has endorsed and funded it, the world is suddenly open to the idea of attempting to modify the planet’s weather by spraying chemicals into the atmosphere to block out the sun.
Now, the government is throwing their hat into the mix as well. This “Plan B” approach is two pronged, according to NOAA.
One is to inject sulfur dioxide or a similar aerosol into the stratosphere to help shade the Earth from more intense sunlight. It is patterned after a natural solution: volcanic eruptions, which have been found to cool the Earth by emitting huge clouds of sulfur dioxide.
The second approach would use an aerosol of sea salt particles to improve the ability of low-lying clouds over the ocean to act as shade.
The Free Thought Project has reported on the first method before when Harvard scientists began talking about doing it. Harvard scientists announced that they will attempt to replicate the climate-cooling effect of volcanic eruptions with a world-first solar geoengineering experiment, last year. The university announced in July of 2019 that it has created an external advisory panel to examine the potential ethical, environmental and geopolitical impacts of this geoengineering project, which has been developed by the university’s researchers.
Known as the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), the experiment will spray calcium carbonate particles high above the earth to mimic the effects of volcanic ash blocking out the sun to produce a cooling effect. This appears to be the same as NOAA’s “Plan B.”
Naturally, there are many critics of geoengineering.
The idea of geoengineering the planet has become so controversial that the government will soon be referring to it by a different name in a likely attempt to distract. Fahey recommended changing the nomenclature from geoengineering to “climate intervention,” which he described as a “more neutral word.”
This is exactly like renaming the U.S. Department of War to the Department of Defense.
As not to be too controversial, however, Fahey emphasized that this is not an approval to begin geoengineering. Rather, it is a move by the US to prepare for the possibility that it may do this one day.
“Geoengineering is this tangled ball of issues and science is only one of them,” he said.
“One of the things I’m interested in doing is let’s separate the science out,” he added. The idea is to give policymakers a clear view of how a hurry-up bid to save the planet would work.
This type of talk is concerning to many people, including environmental groups, who say such efforts are a dangerous distraction from addressing the only permanent solution to climate change: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
The idea of injecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the earth also seems outright futile considering what scientists are trying to mimic – volcanic eruptions. If we look at the second largest eruption of the 20th century, Mount Pinatubo, which erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere. Scientists from the USGS estimated that this 20 million tons only lowered the temperature of the planet by about 1°F (0.5°C) and this only lasted a year because the particles eventually fell to back to Earth.
While this talk of geoengineering may sound like something out of a dystopian science fiction movie, the reality is that it has long been on the table of governments and think tanks from around the world. In fact, just last November, a study published in Environmental Research Letters, talked about doing the exact same thing—geoengineering and planes spraying particulates into the atmosphere to curb global warming.
What’s more, that study echoed the sentiments of then-CIA director John Brennan when he addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in 2016, detailing a similar process of spraying chemical particulates in the atmosphere to cool the planet.
At the meeting, Brennan addressed instability and transnational threats to global security at a meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his long-winded talk of threats to US interests and how the largely CIA-created ISIL threat is impacting the world, Brennan brought up the topic of geoengineering.
Another example is the array of technologies—often referred to collectively as geoengineering—that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat, in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.
Brennan went on to echo the calls from some scientists who have called for aerial spraying.
An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels. The process is also relatively inexpensive—the National Research Council estimates that a fully deployed SAI program would cost about $10 billion yearly.
Again, this is not some conspiracy theory. Watch him say all of this in the video below starting at the 12:05 marker.
The extent to which Brennan talked about stratospheric aerosol injection shows that he and the CIA have likely been considering this for some time.
Although we are hearing more and more talk about geoengineering, it has been around for a very long time and not just in the realm of conspiracy theories. In fact, scientists have already suggested that it could be going on right now, unintentionally.
Researchers with NOAA previously suggested that contrails from airplanes may be inadvertently geoengineering the skies.
Chuck Long is a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. At the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in 2015, Long and his team released their paper, “Evidence of Clear-Sky Daylight Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering?” The analysis found that vapor from airplanes may be altering the climate through accidental geoengineering.
To be clear, no one here is claiming to be an expert on climate change or the effects of geoengineering. But one thing is clear and it’s the fact that there is still much to be debated and learned before humans deliberately begin altering Earth’s climate. Aside from doing nothing to curb carbon emissions, if we are so quick to jump on this method, it could set off a chain reaction that could prove to be catastrophic.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 21:05 - "Prices Start To Sink At Record Paces" – Manhattan Luxury Home Prices Plunge To 2013 Levels
“Prices Start To Sink At Record Paces” – Manhattan Luxury Home Prices Plunge To 2013 Levels
Luxury home prices in Manhattan continue to decline, pressured by Bill de Blasio’s “Mansion Tax” and the capping of SALT deductions included in President Trump’s tax deal. Prices of these luxury homes, which constitute the top 20% of the market, fell to their lowest levels since 2013, according to a new report via StreetEasy.
Luxury homes, priced at or above $3,816,835, dropped 6.1% in the fourth quarter over the previous year. Sellers are beginning to accept a declining market that has shifted to buyers — where prices are being negotiated to the low end – in return, this has created downward momentum in prices.
StreetEasy said inventory soared last quarter by 12.2% over the previous year, with at least 4,354 luxury homes sitting on the market.
“With so much new construction saturating the Manhattan real estate market, we were bound to see prices start to sink at record paces,” said StreetEasy Economist Nancy Wu.
“This is happening across all price points and boroughs, as prospective buyers wait out the market from the comfort of their rentals. Market dynamics in 2020 will continue to favor the buyer across all price tiers, and many sellers will have to face the fact that if they want to sell, it may very well be for less than their initial asking price,” Wu said.
For all homes in the borough, the StreetEasy Manhattan Price Index fell 3.7% last quarter over the prior year, to $1,086,217. Inventory for homes in the district rose 3%, with homes staying on the market for at least 96 days, ten more than the prior year. The report notes that it’s a buyer’s market as inventory continues to build.
The Median Asking Price Per Square Footage (PPSF) for Manhattan homes jumped 80% from $1,000 in 2010 to $1,800 in 2015 – has since declined 14% to $1,550.
Total Sales Inventory for Manhattan homes has been surging in the last five years.
With a decade-long economic boom starting to wane as the Federal Reserve cuts rates three times and injects hundreds of billions of dollars in emergency funds into REPO markets, sparking potential blow-off tops in stocks– everybody’s anxieties about a persistent slowdown could continue to weigh on luxury real estate in New York and elsewhere.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:45 - Fed Policy And The Wuhan Coronavirus
Fed Policy And The Wuhan Coronavirus
Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek,
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Abe Maslow, the same fellow who developed the “hierarchy of needs” paradigm in human psychology, popularized that phrase to warn scientific researchers about the perils of using tools inappropriate to the task at hand.
It is an especially relevant observation when it comes to Federal Reserve monetary policy, since the hammer of interest rates is the central bank’s chief tool. Balance sheet expansion, such as that used to combat recent repo market tensions, also rattle around in their toolbox, of course. But rate policy is their go-to implement to achieve the goals of stable prices and economic expansion.
With this week’s FOMC meeting and Chair press conference, the Fed’s hammer will see a fresh test, and one for which it is hardly suitable: addressing the growing global economic uncertainty around the Wuhan coronavirus. As we outlined last week in our review of a Davos panel on the subject, any vaccine is at best months away. In the interim, China is aggressively moving to quarantine entire cities and limiting mass gatherings. Cases are cropping up around the world, and while the illness seems to be less deadly than SARS it is spreading more quickly at present.
Capital markets are beginning to discount the possibility that the Fed will use their interest rate hammer to offset growing economic uncertainty caused by the outbreak:
#1: 2-year Treasury yields broke to below 1.5% on Thursday to 1.486% and closed Friday at 1.495%, which we interpret as a response to concerns about near term global growth. Why that’s an important development.
- 2-years are keenly sensitive to market opinion about future rate policy.
- This is the first time they are below 1.5% since September/October’s global bond rally related to fears over US-China trade talks and recession worries.
- Yields here are now just below the current 1.50% – 1.75% benchmark for Fed Funds, implying that the central bank will cut interest rates.
#2: Fed Funds Futures have moved noticeably in the last week, with increasing odds for a 2H 2020 rate cut (or two):
- Futures discount stable Fed Funds through Q1. The odds that rates remain unchanged through the March meeting have not budged in the last week and run 84% – 86%.
- The story changes when you look at the odds around the June 2020 FOMC meeting. A week ago the probability of a rate cut by then was 14%; now it is 25%.
- Last week’s trend to higher expectations for a 2020 rate cut increase as you look at September’s contracts. A week ago, the odds that rates would be lower than today were 37%; now they are 50%.
- Fast forward to the December 2020 meeting (chart below, courtesy of the CME FedWatch Tool), and the odds that the Fed cuts rates this year rose last week to 68% from 54%. Moreover, the probability that the Fed cuts by 50 basis points or more rose from 17% to 30% last week.
In summary: it is far too early to tell what effect the coronavirus may have on the global/US economy, but markets are increasingly assuming the economic effects of this public health crisis will inform US central bank policy. While the Fed’s rate tool obviously plays no role in finding a treatment or vaccine for the coronavirus, investors expect the FOMC will do its best to inoculate the US economy against its effects. It is, however, still a hammer…
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:25 - China Virus Cases Almost Double Overnight, Deaths Top 100 As North Korea Closes Border
China Virus Cases Almost Double Overnight, Deaths Top 100 As North Korea Closes Border
Summary
4,2954,515 Cases confirmed worldwide- 106 Dead worldwide
- 2714 Cases in Hubei (up 1291 overnight – a stunning 91% surge)
- 100 Dead in Hubei (up 24 overnight – a 24% surge)
- North Korea closes Chinese border.
- German reports first case
- US raises travel alert for China to Level 3 (2nd highest).
Global cases:
An exponential increase:
* * *
Update (2000ET): According to the Health Commission of Hubei Province, there was a massive jump in cases and deaths overnight in China. The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in China has soared to 106 while nearly 1,300 new cases have been confirmed, authorities said Tuesday.
The health commission in central Hubei province, the epicentre of the epidemic, said 24 more people had died from the virus and 1,291 more people were infected, raising the total number of confirmed cases to more than 4,000 nationwide.
Additionally, KCNA reports that North Korea has officially closed its border crossing with China to prevent Coronavirus from entering the country.
* * *
Update (1830ET): While China currently has about 3,000 total cases as reported earlier, according to the latest report from China’s Center for Disease Control, the real number of infections may be substantially higher, because as of Jan 26 (the update for Jan 27 is due shortly) some 30,453 people are currently under observation for the coronavirus. Needless to say, it is very likely that a substantial number of these people will end up positive for the disease, even as the total of people under observation grows by thousands every single day.
Earlier in the day, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, China’s Hubei Province, is opening up 100,000 hospital beds in an effort to contain the disease, the province’s vice governor announced on Jan. 27. In a press conference on Jan. 27 evening, Hubei vice governor Yang Yunyan said authorities have designated 112 medical institutions to treat patients with the deadly novel coronavirus, according to Chinese state media. They have freed up around 100,000 hospital beds in the province, with 3,000 of them in Wuhan city alone, where the disease first broke out. As the Epoch Times observes, “The urgency and scale of the authorities’ orders have raised fears that the outbreak has spread far more widely than authorities admit.”
Meanwhile, in the latest news on the coronavirus global spread, Germany’ DPA news agency reported that the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Germany. According to the infectious diseases task force of the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority, the male patient from the district of Starnberg is clinically in “good condition” and is being monitored while in isolation. Those who have been in close contact with him have been informed and infection control measures have been implemented. Naturally, the Task Force and the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) have said they consider the infection risk to the Bavarian population to be low.
Finally, looking at the US where so far 5 cases have been confirmed, late on Monday the Maryland Department of Health confirmed a state resident was being tested for possibly having the coronavirus. They say the person is in “good condition” as they await results from the CDC laboratory. Similarly, the San Diego County Health Department also said it was investigating a possible case of the coronavirus. Test samples from the patient have been sent to the Centers for Disease Control for confirmation.
* * *
Update (1415): The novel coronavirus has arrived in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, according to local health officials cited by Reuters and the Bangkok Post.The virus has now been detected in a total of 17 countries/autonomous regions…
Fears that the outbreak will take a sizable chunk out of global GDP have festered amid reports that China’s “manufacturing nerve center” is shutting down as Beijing “extends” the Lunar New Year holiday, according to the Nikkei Asian Review.
During the CDC press conference on Monday (which we covered in full below) the State Department announced an updated travel warning advising US citizens to avoid all non-essential travel to Hubei province, where the virus is believed to have originated, and to take necessary precautions when traveling in China. While the warning maintained a Level 3 for China as a whole, the State Department raised the advisory to Level 4 for Hubei, the most severe warning possible.
Though it doesn’t exactly take a genius-level intellect to ascertain that now isn’t a great time to travel to virus-plagued Hubei.
* * *
Update (1150ET): Dr. Nancy Messonnier, the Director of the Center for the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), spoke on behalf of the CDC. During the press conference, she said that the US had identified 110 people who are under observation and being tested for the virus. While 5 cases have already been identified in the US, another 32 have definitively tested negative.
Though a vaccine remains elusive, the Messonnier said the CDC had developed a diagnostic test that can quickly confirm cases of the virus. So far, CDC researchers have seen no signs of “mutation” in the virus. If the virus does mutate, as Chinese scientists suggested it might, that could create problems for those trying to develop the exam. On Friday, a “blueprint” for the test was uploaded and shared with the world. All governments can now follow this blueprint to develop their own tests..
Right now, the CDC is focused on providing tests to “priority” states (presumably, Cali, Washington, Arizona and Illinois, the states where cases have been confirmed). But soon they will expand the program to supply governments in need.
The CDC has also uploaded the entire genome of the virus from the first two cases. From what the CDC can tell so far, the virus doesn’t appear to be “mutating”, as some Chinese officials had suggested.
Messonnier stressed that this is a “rapidly changing situation” both here and abroad, adding that the virus has spread to 16 countries from China.
“Our thoughts are with the people on the front lines of this emerging health threat in China,” she said.
US airports are now screening passengers from Wuhan. The purpose of this is not just preventative: It’s intended to educate passengers about symptoms of the virus, and how to mitigate risk of infection while traveling abroad. The CDC recommends that travelers avoid all non-essential travel to Hubei province, and that anybody traveling to China should take certain precautions.
Returning travelers with symptoms may be asked to take precautionary measures.
Battered US stocks briefly spiked when Messonnier said that although a handful of cases have been identified in the US, the overall general health risk to the community remains “low at this time.” Still, she caveated this by insisting that the situation remains very much in flux.
Meanwhile, in China, more indications of the economic fallout from the outbreak have emerged: Zheijang, the country’s fourth-largest province by GDP, won’t allow companies to return to work until Feb. 8. Shanghai, an independent municipality within the province, announced similar measures earlier. The potential costs here in terms of lost productivity could measure in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
* * *
Update (1030ET): Chinese state media have just confirmed that Beijing has suffered its first confirmed death from the novel coronavirus. They also confirmed 8 new confirmed cases.
#Updates: Beijing reported eight new confirmed #coronavirus cases on Monday, one death. pic.twitter.com/DIdVnInrqY
— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) January 27, 2020
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Macau has just confirmed its seventh case.
The total number of confirmed cases has climbed to 2882, though the true number of cases out there is likely much higher, as experts have warned.
* * *
Update(1000ET): US stocks are deep in the red Monday morning, on track for their worst day in four months, thanks to the fact that the market and the world realized over the weekend that the extremely infectious novel coronavirus has overwhelmed China’s capacity to contain it.
And right on time, here comes President Trump, with a weak attempt to pump the market.
Minutes ago, the president tweeted that the US had offered China “any help that is necessary”, while advising that the US is “strongly on watch” for signs that the virus is spreading.
We are in very close communication with China concerning the virus. Very few cases reported in USA, but strongly on watch. We have offered China and President Xi any help that is necessary. Our experts are extraordinary!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 27, 2020
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Unfortunately, the reaction in the market was muted, and stocks remain slightly above their session lows.
* * *
Update (0700ET): Chinese health officials have confirmed an additional fatality tied to the virus.
Here’s the latest roundup from Chinese state media:
#LATEST on #WuhanPneumonia:
– 2,835 cases confirmed in China, including 81 deaths, while 55 people recovered
Overseas cases:
– Thailand: 8
– Japan: 4
– South Korea: 4
– US: 5
– Vietnam: 2
– Singapore: 4
– Malaysia: 4
– Nepal: 1
– France: 3
– Australia: 5
– Canada: 1 pic.twitter.com/yOg9cktB0j— People’s Daily, China (@PDChina) January 27, 2020
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Meanwhile, the FT reports that OPEC and its allies are weighing deeper production cuts in response to the fallout from the virus, which has hammered oil prices. The Brent international benchmark tumbled below $60 a barrel on Monday. The cartel’s next meeting is set for early March in Vienna.
As the world enters panic mode, a team of analysts at JP Morgan assured their clients that the epidemic – which will likely soon qualify as a pandemic assuming the WHO changes course – is merely an “interruption to the narrative” and that the fallout would be confined to China and the broader region – not the entire planet.
Meanwhile, Australia has confirmed its fifth case of the virus: a 21-year-old woman who arrived in Australia on the last flight out of Wuhan to Sydney. In the UK, 52 people have been tested for the virus, but no cases have been confirmed, per ITV.
Earlier, we mentioned that Chinese scientists had reversed their earlier findings and determined that the Hunan Fish Market in Wuhan was, in fact, the epicenter of the outbreak (it’s believed that the market’s trade in wild animals, like bats and snakes, is to blame). Bloomberg has offered a clarification, reporting that the market is one of several sources being investigated.
With US stocks still on track for a brutal open, investors around the world are turning to Jay Powell and the FOMC, which will meet later this week.
* * *
Investors who dismissed the threat to their P&Ls posed by China’s coronavirus outbreak are suddenly realizing that they’ve made a grave miscalculation. What few Asian markets were open on Monday (most were closed for the LNY holiday) saw equities tank, and in the US, futures are pointing to a steep drop at the open – a sign that the market has found the excuse it needed to give back some of its torrid January gains.
With so much going on – the Bolton revelations, the deaths of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, the busiest week of earnings season, and the upcoming Fed meeting – the virus remains the most dominant theme – and with good reason.
As we reported late last night, the number of confirmed cases in China has tripled over the weekend. Health officials have confirmed 2,804 cases in China, where the deal toll has climbed to 80 – giving the virus a roughly 5% mortality rate. Over the weekend, we joked that the scapegoating was already beginning, citing a rash of public outrage directed at health officials and Wuhan, as well as the city’s mayor, Zhou Xianwang.
In typically communist fashion, Zhou accepted responsibility for botching the initial response to the virus, and said he and the local party chief, Ma Guoqiang, would be willing to step down to quiet the public outrage. The government is scrambling to build not one, but two new hospitals in under two weeks to house coronavirus patients in Wuhan, yet doctors and nurses claim that they are still struggling with a shortage of supplies, even after local officials implored neighboring provinces to send assistance. Shortages of everything from beds to facemasks to personnel are still hurting the city’s ability to treat new cases. That lockdown has obviously interfered with shipments of new supplies.
Zhou also conceded that information about the virus was not disclosed in a “timely manner”. In reality, Chinese officials waited a whole month to inform the world about the outbreak after the first cases were discovered in early December. According to the FT, this was a “rare instance of self-criticism” by a senior local party official.
During a press conference on Sunday, Wang Xiaodong said in a press conference that the government was reinforcing medical supplies, but he triggered even more public anger as he Wang corrected himself twice about the number of face masks being made available in the province, initially putting the number at 10.8 billion, then changed it to 1.8 billion before correcting himself again to say that the real number was 1.8 million masks. Public anger was also directed at Wang because he neglected to wear a face mask during the presser, while Mayor Zhou appeared to wear his mask upside down.
After appointing Premier Li Keqiang to head the party’s committee to oversee the crisis response over the weekend, Li arrived in Wuhan on Monday, the SCMP reports. In a PR coup for the government, reporters followed Li as he visited patients and medical personnel fighting on the front lines of the outbreak and delivered some inspired speeches.
“You are trying every means to save lives,” Li told medical staff at Jinyintan hospital, one of the designated institutions in Wuhan for treating infected patients. “When you are putting your efforts to save lives, you have to protect yourselves too.”
Li will apparently remain on the ground in the province, where he will direct the effort to combat the virus’s spread.
But the Chinese premier wasn’t the only major figure to travel to Wuhan on Monday: The WHO director-general is traveling to the city to try and assess the situation on the ground in Wuhan after meeting with senior officials in Beijing.
Wuhan Mayor Zhou’s announcement over the weekend that roughly 5 million people had already left Wuhan before the lockdown began made it seem like combating the virus’s spread at this point would be virtually impossible. In Beijing on Monday, He Qinghua, the first-degree inspector of the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, confirmed what many – including on CNBC reporter – suspected. In addition to the 11 million ‘official’ residents of Wuhan, the city is also host to millions of migrant workers from the countryside. Almost all of those workers have already returned home, threatening to spread the virus across China’s impoverished rural areas where awareness of prevention strategies is minimal.
To fight this, China must mobilize a “grass roots” campaign of party officials.
“The awareness [of prevention and control] is relatively low in the countryside. We will need to fill the gap of this weak link,” He said. “The most important thing now is mobilizing our cadres at the grass-roots level so we can do better in our prevention and control work at the community level.”
Here’s the latest roundup of cases, courtesy of the SCMP, which has consistently maintained the most accurate figures.
Even though researchers reportedly cast doubt on the virus’s connection to the Wuhan food market illegally trading in wild animals, scientists on Monday said they had, in fact, found evidence of the virus at the market. A strain of the virus was isolated from samples taken at the market. The strain was isolated from environmental samples taken from the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan. A phot of the virus, known as 2019-nCoV, can be found below.
Per the SCMP, the virus was detected in 35 of the 585 environmental samples collected on Jan. 1 and Jan. 12, with 33 of the positive samples taken from the market’s western zone, where the wildlife trading business was concentrated.
Outside of the mainland, Taiwan reported its fifth case on Monday.
Several neighboring countries announced precautions to prevent the virus from crossing over from China: Mongolia has closed all educational institutions until at least March 2, and has closed its border with China to all pedestrian and vehicle crossings. Kazakhstan has suspended its 72-hour visa-free program for holders of Chinese passports. In Myanmar, the United Wa State Army, a political group for the Wa people, said it would shut down all entertainment in the autonomous territory, while imposing strict border checks on all outsiders. The group has also barred all large public gatherings and instructed the population to cease eating wild animals.
In Seoul, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Monday that his administration was preparing a “complete enumeration” of people entering the country from Wuhan. And any travelers entering the country from China will need to fill out a ‘health questionnaire’. Even Iran is taking precautions, prohibiting Chinese and people from Southeast Asia from bringing food into the country. Russian tour operators have stopped selling tours in China, and are only bringing Russian citizens back from the country.
According to Feng Luzhao, a researcher with the Chinese CDC, insisted that the most effective way to stop the spread of the disease would be to reduce travel.
“[We have decided] to extend the Lunar New Year holidays because [we want] to encourage people to stay home and avoid going to areas where infection may be prevalent and places with large crowds of people,” Feng said. “[We believe] this can help curb the spread of the disease.”
To try and stop the spread, China has ordered an ‘extension’ of the Lunar New Year Holiday, with several manufacturing hubs and other centers of industry deciding to stay closed into February.
Meanwhile, more health researchers in China are warning that the state is woefully undercounting the number of cases. A researcher at HKU med school announced that his new estimate for active cases in China is closer to 25,000.
HKU Med School head Gabriel Leung is meeting press with a mask on. He is going to announce new estimation of #nCoV2019 . pic.twitter.com/tZk2qlZegH
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 27, 2020
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HKU Med School head Gabriel Leung apologised again for his inappropriate comment made on Friday that he and officials couldn’t speak with mask on . pic.twitter.com/qRDsr3O2h3
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 27, 2020
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Key takeaway so far
1, Wuhan is estimated to have over 25,000 confirmed cases and over 43,000 infections
2, Wuhan lockdown doesn’t really help to stop spreading in other major cities in China
3, Chongqing can be the most affected,followed by Beijing Shanghai Guangzhou Shenzhen— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 27, 2020
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4, April and May can see major outbreaks in the aforementioned four major cities. It may come one to two weeks earlier in Chongqing.
5, HK and Macau should not only look at directly traffic links with Wuhan (!)— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 27, 2020
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“the Hong Kong government should…not really sort of go and answer the question should we do more about more Chinese major metropolises … but rather how can we sustain Hong Kong food supply, Hong Kong’s ability and capacity to deal with a major epidemic.“ – Prof Gabriel Leung.
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 27, 2020
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“The lockdown measure adopted by various cities in mainland China is absolutely correct” – Prof Gabriel Leung
— Xinqi Su 蘇昕琪 (@XinqiSu) January 27, 2020
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Over in the US, a fifth case of coronavirus was confirmed in Arizona. With the trajectory of the virus confirming the worst fears of epidemiologists, we suspect this won’t be the last case in the US.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:22 - Impeachment: Trump Team Nails Bidens, Burisma, And Obama's Hot-Mic Moment With Russia
Impeachment: Trump Team Nails Bidens, Burisma, And Obama’s Hot-Mic Moment With Russia
President Trump’s defense team cut straight to the heart of the impeachment on Monday, insisting that Democrats have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Bidens didn’t engage in textbook corruption in Ukraine – and that President Trump’s request to investigate it was out of line.
Former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, a recent addition to the White House communications team, walked the Senate through the entire malarkey for 30 minutes, including Hunter Biden’s ‘nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst’ board seat at Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.
“All we are saying is that there was a basis to talk about this, to raise this issue, and that is enough,” said Bondi, who noted that Hunter Biden was paid over $83,000 per month to sit on Burisma’s board even though he had zero experience in natural gas or Ukrainian relations while his father was Vice President and in charge of Ukraine policy for the United States.
Pam Bondi explains the Bidens’ connection to the corrupt Ukrainian gas company Burisma https://t.co/SpmArCYbb7 pic.twitter.com/aKNqQKo8cl
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 27, 2020
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Why should the American people care about Hunter Biden & #Burisma?
The answer is simple: there is significant evidence of corruption.
WATCH Pam Bondi break down #BurismaBiden. ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/wokNp2vpXl
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) January 28, 2020
Even CNN had to give it to the Trump team…
CNN’s Toobin: Bondi showed Hunter Biden’s “sleazy” hiring by Burismahttps://t.co/PgZePnlVHE pic.twitter.com/d2N6cXki46
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 27, 2020
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Trump attorney Eric Herschmann said that Democrats have been “circling the wagons” to protect the Bidens – and are refusing to investigate the Bidens, claiming without conducting an investigation that all allegations against them are ‘debunked.’
Herschmann: Democrats “circling the wagons” to protect Joe Biden during impeachment proceedingshttps://t.co/HUUzQN4MX4 pic.twitter.com/qzmsVbetDO
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 27, 2020
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Herschmann then laid into former President Obama, who was caught on a hot mic asking Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” until after his election.
One can only imagine what would happen if the Left & the media applied their manufactured outrage to Obama’s actions & statements.
Remember when Obama was caught asking Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” until after his election?
Democrats hope you don’t remember. pic.twitter.com/dWy24Qc7TD
— Rep Andy Biggs (@RepAndyBiggsAZ) January 27, 2020
Attorney Jay Sekulow argued that Democrats have been trying to “interfere with the President’s capability to govern” since he was elected.
.@JaySekulow is spot on.
Democrats have been trying to “interfere with the President’s capability to govern” since the day @realDonaldTrump was elected. #StopTheMadnesspic.twitter.com/ft7hkk6EsE
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) January 27, 2020
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Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 20:05 - "Ground Zero" For China's Virus – Hubei Province Prepares 100,000 Hospital Beds
“Ground Zero” For China’s Virus – Hubei Province Prepares 100,000 Hospital Beds
Authored by Eva Fu via The Epoch Times,
The epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, China’s Hubei Province, is opening up 100,000 hospital beds in an effort to contain the disease, the province’s vice governor announced on Jan. 27.
At least 17 cities in the province have been placed under a lockdown, stranding tens of millions of people amid the Chinese New Year holiday, the country’s peak migration season.
Thousands have been infected with the deadly virus.
In a press conference on Jan. 27 evening, Hubei vice governor Yang Yunyan said authorities have designated 112 medical institutions to treat patients with the deadly novel coronavirus, according to Chinese state media. They have freed up around 100,000 hospital beds in the province, with 3,000 of them in Wuhan city alone, where the disease first broke out.
The urgency and scale of the authorities’ orders have raised fears that the outbreak has spread far more widely than authorities admit.
Another 24 medical centers will be mobilized to assist with patients who exhibit symptoms and are suspected to have the virus. More doctors and health workers have arrived in Hubei in order to relieve the exhaustion of frontline medical staff, Yang said.
Authorities have extended the national New Year holiday by another three days to Feb. 2, in order to prevent large crowds from gathering, which could lead to more infections, according to a statement by the cabinet-like State Council. All schools in China, from kindergarten to college level, will have their spring terms pushed back indefinitely until further notice.
So far, all provinces and regions except Tibet has reported infections.
The country’s vice premier Li Keqiang arrived in Wuhan on Monday to coordinate efforts to contain the disease, as the Chinese regime came under growing pressure. The event, marking the first visit from senior Chinese Communist Party officials to the city since the outbreak began, came two days after Chinese leader Xi Jinping set up a “central leading team” to handle the situation. Li had been named head of the group.
Xi has called the outbreak a “grave situation.”
According to Wang Jiangping, vice director of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, hospitals in Hubei need 100,000 protective suits daily, but there are only about 40 such suppliers nationwide, with a total production capacity of 30,000.
“There’s a very acute conflict between supply and demand,” he said, adding that medical workers are also in urgent need for other supplies such as surgical masks.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 19:45 - California Couple Charged With $910 Million Alternative Energy Tax Credit Ponzi Scheme
California Couple Charged With $910 Million Alternative Energy Tax Credit Ponzi Scheme
The Securities and Exchange Commission has brought charges against a couple for orchestrating a $1 billion ponzi scheme involving alternative energy tax credits.
Unfortunately, that couple isn’t Elon Musk and Grimes.
Instead, it’s California based Jeffrey and Paulette Carpoff. The SEC alleges that the couple raised about $910 million from 17 investors between 2011 and 2018 by offering securities in the form of investment contracts through their two solar generator companies, C Solar Solutions and DC Solar Distribution.
The couple is also being charged in a parallel criminal case by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern District of California.
Jeffrey Paulette The SEC complaint states that “The Carpoffs allegedly promised investors tax credits, lease payments, and profits from the operation of mobile solar generators. In reality, the complaint alleges, most of the generators were never manufactured, and the vast majority of the purported lease revenue paid to investors in fact came from new investor funds.”
It is also alleged that the Carpoffs “arranged for investors to receive false documents, including financial statements, lease arrangements, and generator certifications” and that “throughout the scheme, the Carpoffs siphoned off investor funds and used at least $140 million of investor money to fund their lavish lifestyle, which included 150 luxury and sports cars, dozens of properties, and a share in a private jet service.”
Daniel Michael, Chief of the Enforcement Division’s Complex Financial Instruments Unit said: “While the Carpoffs’ pitch to investors seemed new and innovative, their alleged fraud was old and simple. This case is a reminder that fraudsters often try to lure investors by associating themselves with trendy technologies.”
Like electric powered cars?
Regardless, the SEC charges the couple with violating the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws and seeks injunctive relief, disgorgement, and civil penalties
We highlighted this couple back in summer of 2019, noting that among those ripped off was Warren Buffett, who was taken for a cool $300 million. In 2016, new investor money accounted for $50 million of the company’s claim of $55 million in revenue, according to a former employee.
“Within a short time, we were doing over $60 million in sales,” Jeff had told Inc. magazine in a December 2018 interview.
It’s also worth noting that in addition to interviewing Carpoff, Inc. magazine has also recently featured both Elon Musk and Elizabeth Holmes on its cover.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 19:25 - "Surveillance Capitalism": A Summary Of Critics
“Surveillance Capitalism”: A Summary Of Critics
Authored by Darren Brady Nelson via The Mises Institute,
The size and activities of Google, and other Big Tech companies, has increasingly grabbed the attention of many on the ideological left, center, and right. (This is putting to one side the shortcomings of these particular categories.)
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On the Right, this has meant allegations of Google’s bias against conservatives.
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In the center, it has included allegations of Google’s power against competition.
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On the Left, it has meant allegations of Google’s exploitation of just about everybody.
The latter came to the fore again last year in the wake of Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff’s book entitled The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (January 2019). The Amazon entry for this book in part reads:
“[T]he first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior.”
As a starting point, one ought to be skeptical of any explicit or implied claims of “game changers” and “new economics.” One ought also to be suspicious of any explicit or implied assertion that “out-of-control” capitalism is, once again, the problem and that the solution, yet again, is government “in greater control.” Finally, one’s BS detector ought to be on high alert when reading such doublespeak as ascribes to capitalism the hallmarks of statism—i.e., “powerful,” “control,” and, of course, “surveillance.”
What the Left Is Saying
Sam Biddle quickly gives away the anticapitalist agenda of those on the Left in his article for The Intercept (February 2019) by favorably “drawing comparisons to seminal socioeconomic investigations like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Karl Marx’s Capital.” He also interviewed Zuboff, who explained that Google and others are “just secretly scraping your private experience as raw material, and [selling] predictions of what you’re gonna do.” And Zuboff alarmingly concluded: “These are bald-faced interventions in the exercise of human autonomy,…the ‘right to the future tense’,…[and] the very material essence of the idea of free will.”
In another interview, this time by John Laidler of the Harvard Gazette (March 2019), Zuboff expanded on this:
I define surveillance capitalism as the unilateral claiming of private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. These data are then computed and packaged as prediction products and sold into behavioral futures markets.
She also boldly asserted that: “this [is] actually a new variant of capitalism,” which supposedly “has now spread beyond the tech companies to new surveillance-based ecosystems in virtually every economic sector” and purportedly “arose in the era of a neoliberal consensus around the superiority of self-regulating companies and markets.”
Katie Fitzpatrick starts her review of Zuboff’s book for The Nation (April 2019) with more subtle anticapitalism than Biddle did:
By resisting Go365 [a health monitoring app], the West Virginia teachers waged two battles at once: They fought in the trenches of state austerity and on the front lines of private digital surveillance.
Although Fitzpatrick doesn’t mention Marx as Biddle did, she uses Marxist language throughout to describe “earlier capitalism” and “surveillance capitalism,” such as “exploitation,” “surplus,” and “extraction,” not to mention postmodern statist concepts such as “free will illusion,” “individual freedom chaos,” and “conditioned social engineering.” She revealingly concluded, and lamented that Zuboff did not, that:
The problem with surveillance capitalism is as much the capitalism as it is the surveillance.
Two new attempts to regulate “the problem” of “surveillance capitalism,” and thus “capitalism” as well, come from Europe and California. Regarding the former, the Financial Times (FT) reported on December 2019 that “the EU’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR], [was] six years in the making before coming into force in May 2018.” They also, as the mainstream media (MSM) almost always does, inappropriately mixed in plenty of subjective prostatism opinions, such as: “There is no doubt that GDPR has already done a lot of good” and “But GDPR is deficient in several respects.…It should be looking to reshape data markets, rather than just regulate them as they are.”
Slate reported on similar regulations that recently passed in California, and they wasted no time with subtleties, putting their opinion right in the subtitle: “Thanks, California!” (December 2019). They then described how
The California Consumer Privacy Act [CCPA] essentially empowers consumers [starting on New Year’s Day 2020] to access the personal data that companies have collected on them, to demand that it be deleted, and to prevent it from being sold to third parties.
They also optimistically opine:
Since it’s a lot more work to create a separate infrastructure just for California residents to opt out of…, these requirements will transform the internet for everyone.
As if that were not enough, they start, as the FT did for GDPR, the process of lobbying for more market intervention: “The law is vague on how much power and transparency companies must offer to consumers in this process.”
What the Center Is Saying
In an article for Truth on the Market, Alec Stapp states his thesis in the title itself: “Any Way You Measure It, Warren Is Wrong to Claim “Facebook and Google Account for 70% of All Internet Traffic” (October 2019). In countering Senator Elizabeth Warren’s statistic about Facebook and Google’s combined 70 percent market share of traffic, Stapp provides the following alternative stats: 20 percent of volume; 21 percent of time; 38 percent of connections; 33 percent of referrals; 32 percent of all advertising; and 59 percent of online advertising. And he, very importantly, notes that online advertising prices have fallen 42 percent over the past decade as volume has increased.
Adam Candeub and Mark Epstein address a key legal question about Google, and others, such as Facebook and Twitter, in an article for City Journal asking the question, “Platform or Publisher?” (May 2018). They write: “Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content…but the law was not intended to facilitate political censorship.” They also importantly note that Section 230 was a response to a judicial decision, under the common law, that concluded that
utilizing technology and the manpower to delete objectionable content made [one] more like publisher[s] than…newsstands, bookstores, and libraries.
Michael Dougherty provides some further background to Section 230 in the National Review (June 2019). He writes that it was passed: “in part to allow Internet services…to block pornography…[and not be] treated in the law as publishers…[which are] liable for whatever libels and slanders users posted on them.” Section 230: “allows proprietors of websites and forums to set standards—to edit and moderate their content without becoming a publisher of them.” But also, Section 230: “is now the legal remit under which social-media giants shadow-ban, block, and censor conservative speech.”
What the Right Is Saying
In his article entitled “Google Marxism” (December 2019), Michael Rectenwald asserted that there is nowadays a “Google Archipelago,” which “is guided by a left authoritarianism.” He described this as: “the most developed set of technological apparatuses for disciplinary and governmental power and control in the world,” including “The principals of what I call Big Digital—the purveyors of mega-data services, media, cable, and internet services, social media platforms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, apps, and the developing Internet of Things.” He thus warned that “Socialism has always had global pretensions. Only Google Marxism is capable of creating it, albeit in corporate socialist form.”
William Anderson has also written about Google for the Mises Institute on a number of occasions over the years, including in the context of woke capitalism (July 2019), economy bureaucratization (July 2018) and antitrust law (December 2005). Regarding the latter, he wrote: “Google’s search policies are decidedly left-wing,” but “[n]o one is forced to use the Internet at all and, thus, can avoid Google altogether if that is their choice.” Nevertheless, Anderson warned, “The vagueness of Antitrust Law makes it easy for government to heap abuse upon those firms that are out of favor at any given time, as no real legal proof is needed for the courts to act against the alleged monopolist.” And he added: “despite the millions of dollars that the company’s leaders and employees have raised for the Democrats, it is doubtful that many Democrats would be willing to stand up for a firm that is accused of being a monopolist.”
Writing for Antiwar.com (August 2018), Justin Raimondo reminded that: “The Communications Decency Act immunizes these companies against any [common law] torts,” and that “[t]his two-tiered system is responsible for the cartel-like conditions enjoyed by Facebook, Google, Twitter, and the rest of the Silicon Valley crowd.” He added that, this plus “[t]he vast wealth poured into this new technology by investors buoyed by historically low interest rates, has resulted in the enrichment of Big Data beyond the dreams of Croesus.” The result is that “In recognition of [these] government-granted privileges…the Lords of the Internet have agreed to become the regime’s enforcers.”
Conclusion
These organizations that allegedly practice “surveillance capitalism” have become seemingly inescapable in our modern economy. This has led to a host of critics attempting to identify and explain the many ways that organizations like Facebook and Google have become damaging to our everyday lives and freedoms.
Many of these critics get it wrong, though.
On the Left, the reports and commentary about Google’s so-called surveillance capitalism were more about the capitalism than the surveillance. As they’ve done many times in the past (such as during the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) of the late 2000s, the Dot-com collapse of the early 2000s, and the Microsoft dominance of the 1990s), they call for failed and selfish markets to be heavily regulated or even replaced by successful and selfless government. And emotion-laden stories, from the edges of the bell curve, are once again trotted out to bolster their case.
In the center, there is largely an acceptance of the mixed economy (of markets and government) as it currently stands, and, in at least two cases, some pushback on further government intervention. Although these two do not seem to grasp the significance, they imply that government may be the source of a “market structure,” resulting in “market power,” and that regardless of that, “market conduct” includes “market performance” resulting in falling prices. (For more on structure-conduct-performance, see Regulated Monopolies are not “Natural,” April 2018.)
Some conservatives get closer to the mark in their concern for free speech and the potential for abuse of government power through crony capitalism.
Yet, only the free market critics cut through to the most important problem—namely that the state’s antitrust legislation has provided legal advantages against competitors while providing legal immunity to these firms. The size and power of the “surveillance capitalists” has allowed the industry to escape the brunt of antitrust legislation. Many of their competitors have not been so lucky, and this an unfair advantage, to say the least. Meanwhile, as Raimondo notes, federal law protects these firms from being called to account in the civil courts.
The result is a legal landscape that favors some at the expense of others. But as Anderson concludes, no one is forced to use the services of these firms, so claims of “monopoly” are questionable. Ultimately, it is this lack of true monopoly that illustrates the weakness of many claims that government action is necessary to rein in firms that are powerful precisely because so many voluntarily use their services.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 19:05 -
- San Francisco Activates Emergency Operations Center To Prepare For Coronavirus
San Francisco Activates Emergency Operations Center To Prepare For Coronavirus
Increasing fears of coronavirus spreading across the U.S. have resulted in San Francisco Mayor London Breed to activate the city’s emergency operations center, reported the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It’s, so we have a centralized location and process to prepare for what we need to do, to share public information, and to take any action if necessary,” said Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Breed.
So far, there have been no confirmed cases in the Bay Area, but there are new reports that at least ten people have been tested for the deadly virus in Alameda County.
On Monday, the CDC said 110 people are under observation and being tested for the virus across the U.S. While 5 cases have already been confirmed, another 32 have tested negative.
The emergency center is also coming online one day before a Boeing 767, filled with 230 Americans, is expected to depart from Wuhan Tianhe International Airport on Tuesday for California.
There are more than 1,000 Americans trapped in the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan, in which the U.S. State Department launched an emergency evacuation operation over the weekend.
The plane is expected to land in Ontario, California, which is about 400-miles south of the Bay Area.
The CDC has stepped up screening for air travelers for the deadly virus arriving from Asia at West Coast airports.
San Francisco activating its emergency center comes at a time when the University of Hong Kong’s med school revealed during a Monday presser that the deadly virus has likely infected more than 44,000 people in China. Meanwhile, Professor Neil Ferguson, at least the second UK academic to publicly share his projections, said over the weekend that 100,000 people could already be infected with the virus around the world, according to the Guardian.
If the coronavirus continues to spread across the world at its current rate, then it could become a global epidemic in the weeks or months ahead. It seems Bay Area officials are taking no chances with immediate preparations for the worst possible outcome.
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 18:45 - The Three Countries Vying For Ultimate Power In The Middle East
The Three Countries Vying For Ultimate Power In The Middle East
Authored by Yossef Bodansky via OilPrice.com,
Two notable deaths in early January 2020 pushed the greater Middle East to increased tension and instability.
There emerges a growing risk, as a result, of a sudden discrete action — by design or by accident — which could spark a major confrontation nobody really wants yet everybody dreads.
First came the target killing by the US of Lt. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the revered commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC’s) Quds Force (who was promoted posthumously from major general), and several Iranian, Iraqi, and Lebanese seniors at the Baghdad airport.
Then came the death from cancer of Oman’s Sultan Qaboos bin Sa’id al Said, who for five decades was the highly respected “responsible adult” and “voice of reason” of the greater Middle East.
Tehran interprets Soleimani’s target killing to be a major milestone in the US determination to resist and block, by force if necessary, the Iranian surge in the region. Hence, Tehran itself resolved to accelerate the implementation of the decision, made months beforehand, to banish the US from the region even at the risk of escalation and war.
Immediately after Soleimani’s death, a shaken Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamene‘i, Iran’s “Supreme Leader”, instructed the Iranian High Command to minimize direct and largely symbolic retaliation and revenge. Instead, Iran would now focus on an accelerated and intensified implementation of the anti US campaign.
The crux of the campaign was to make the US presence untenable through the aggregate impact of a multitude of proxy strikes on US facilities and interests, terrorism against US targets, and the destabilizing of local authorities to the point they would no longer be able or willing to host US facilities and personnel. Unfortunately for the Supreme Leader, this surge would take place without Soleimani’s intimate knowledge of the regional dynamics and the tight control he exercised over Iran’s proxies.
Hence, several players would try to exploit the uncertain times in order to push their own respective and explosive agendas, thus adding to the confusion.
The main engine of escalation and exacerbation of tension would be the determination of “the Middle Eastern Entente” of Iran, Turkey, and Qatar, originally consolidated in March 2019, to capitalize on the current situation and circumstances in order to maximize their gains against both the Arab world and the great powers involved in the region.
In early 2020, the leaders of the Middle Eastern Entente asserted their new policies. In his January 17, 2020, sermon, Ayatollah Ali Khamene‘i noted that God was guiding Iran’s ascent against the US.
“That a nation has the power and spirit to slap an arrogant, aggressive global power is a sign of God’s power. Therefore, that day too is a Day of Allah.”
Rather than avenge Soleimani’s death, he reiterated, “the main punishment (for the US) will be expulsion from the region”. On the same day, Turkish Pres. Reçep Tayyip Erdo?an’s soulmate, ?brahim Karagül, declared the arrival of a new era for Turkey. “The era of ‘defensive politics’ is over for Turkey! This is the rise of a superpower. … Turkey confined to its borders cannot survive.” During a recent visit to Tehran, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani concurred that unless the US demonstrated restraint in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East as a whole, drastic measures would have to be taken in order to guarantee security and stability for the entire region.
The overall situation had become fraught with danger because of the concurrent passing of Sultan Qaboos. For decades, Qaboos relied on his own wisdom and knowledge, as well as Oman’s unique Ibadite school of Islam (neither Sunni nor Shi’ite, but dates to soon after the death of Prophet Mohammed), in order to become a most trusted mediator and messenger. His discreet intervention helped prevent and contain many conflicts and crises from escalating out of control because he and his judgement were trusted by all.
Sultan Qaboos’ successor, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq, is an experienced diplomat, and well respected. But it may take a long time before he can fill his cousin’s huge shoes regionally. In the meantime, the absence of channels of communication engenders mutual mistrust and expedites inclination to act on worst case scenarios.
And all the while, the unfolding megatrends in the greater Middle East, especially in the Arab world, continue and intensify.
Most important, the demise of the modern Arab nation-state now appears to have become irreversible. While governments remain in place and leaders make decisions and implement policies, the “modern Arab nation-state” is, in fact, no more. Ultimately, even the Arab leaders themselves are cognizant of the development as reflected in the tepid and confused reaction to the popular riots in Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan.
The internal stability and working of even the most important of states are unraveling. The crux is not the riots which attract media attention. The key is the transformation of society and the economy.
There is a growing disengagement of the grassroots from central governance. Instead, there emerges a growing reliance on regional, popular, and blood related frameworks: minorities, tribes, and urban extended families. Significantly, these sub state frameworks have saved the grassroots from the state level fratricidal carnage and foreign interventions of the recent decades.
There is no way the grassroots could accept the dismantling of their own lifesaving socioeconomic frameworks and agree to return to dependence on, and trust in, the state level frameworks which have failed them so badly. Consequently, the quest for localized self-sufficiency — both social and economic — severely undermines the legitimacy and power of the modern state.
Since in most areas the traditional tribal and minority habitats cross modern borders, the awakened localized entities ignore borders. The genie of secessionism and localized identities is out of the lantern, never to return back in.
The most important Arab states — Saudi Arabia and Egypt — show major internal cracks emanating from profound perceived delegitimization and mistrust of the ruling élites by the grassroots.
In Saudi Arabia, the erratic reign of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin ‘Abd al’Aziz al Sa’ud has united many in the region against the House of al Sa’ud. The radicalized northwest of Saudi Arabia (as well as southern Jordan) gravitates around the leadership of Islamist clerics. The economic powerhouse of the Hijaz is wrestling Islamic leadership from the House of al Saud; the oil rich Shi’ite east has regional identity (jointly with the Shi’ite majorities in the other Gulf states) which is pronouncedly pro-Iranian; and, most important, the bedouin tribes of Nejd, long the bedrock of support of the House of al Sa’ud, now reject their oath of allegiance and gravitate to the regional north south axis led by the Shamari Nation.
While some of these entities are hostile to each other, their common quest to rid themselves of the al Sa’ud reign is significantly stronger.
In Egypt, the intensifying struggles of the rapidly growing population (which is expected to cross the 100 million mark in 2020) over scarce and dwindling vital resources — basic food, Nile water, electricity, etc. — have morphed into the emergence of regional powercenters defined by ethnicity (mainly in rural areas), and narrow, localized interests (mainly in urban centers).
The Nubian, Beja, and Dom rural people of southern Egypt fight the encroachment of Arab farmers and reallocation of Nile water; and the Arab rural communities of the Delta fight the communities of central Egypt over the use of Nile water.
There are intensifying bitter disputes between the urban clusters of Asyut, Cairo, and Alexandria over scarce electricity; disputes which stifle the economy, diminishing food supplies for the sprawling poor, who lack of housing and infrastructure, and, overall, diminishes their hopes for having families and normal life. Again, the friction and traditional mistrust of key groupings are put aside in pursuit of a common goal: namely, to undermine the power and influence of the Cairo élites.
The potential collapse of Saudi Arabia and possibly Egypt removes the sole balancing element they represented for the catastrophic condition of most other Arab states: Yemen, Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and increasingly Jordan. All these states are consumed by fratricidal multielement carnage which has fractured and alienated their key population groupings to a point that reconciliation and coexistence may no longer be possible.
The attempts at governance and democratic reforms, formulating constitutions and running elections, are all exercises in futility because the grassroots are adamantly against the return to the state level frameworks which have so recently betrayed them and wrought so much suffering and losses.
The undermining and unraveling of the modern states are made worse by foreign interventions of the United States, which is making strenuous efforts through military and economic pressure to impose central rule over the distraught populace; and by a multitude of competing proxies, mainly Iran led, but also Turkey and Qatar led, undertaken to further their own regional interests and to take sides in the spreading fratricidal strife and carnage.
Also of paramount significance are the recent demonstrations and riots in non Arab Iran.
Unlike the demonstrations of the past decade, which were largely driven by economic hardships and ensuing government crackdowns, the current wave of demonstrations adds to the socioeconomic despair a distinct awakening of Iran’s minorities who rebel against the powers of the Persian dominated central Government. Concurrently, genuine and widespread nationalistic patriotism burst into the open in the massive funeral processions of Soleimani. As has happened throughout history, Iranians put their differences aside and rallied behind the banner to defend their motherland against external threats.
This demonstration of spontaneous grassroots patriotism is not lost on the chauvinistic elements in Tehran and convinces them to focus on furthering nationalistic external initiatives in order to not only further Iran’s historic interests and aspirations, but to also reduce the internal discontent over the socioeconomic near collapse of Iran.
For the “Middle Eastern Entente” of Iran, Turkey, and Qatar, these regional dynamics constitute both opportunities and threats. On the one hand, other weakened states in the region have thus far proven incapable of resisting the surge of the trio into regional preeminence. On the other hand, there rises from the ashes of the states and the plight of the fractured populace a vindictive radicalism which is a combination of militant Sunni Islamism and lust for blood revenge for all the torment of the past decade or so.
Hence, the Middle Eastern Entente escalates and intensifies the drive for regional power and dominance, both together and separately.
The three powers are pushing hard to transform the region irreversibly in their favor before there emerges a new Arab Sunni force to be reckoned with. A great priority of the three powers is suppressing the Fertile Crescent of Minorities (which includes Israel), because once it becomes viable, it will constitute anew the regional buffer separating between the aspirant foreign powers of Turkey and Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab heartlands.
The Middle Eastern Entente fears the ascent of the minorities as a key outcome of the prevailing collapse of the modern Arab states.
Hence, the trio has resolved to move fast, push hard, and take major risks.
Most important is the close cooperation with radical Islamist forces — including Sunni entities — on account of common foes and despite contradictory objectives. Turkey is supporting jihadist forces from Syria, Iraq, all the way to Libya, Somalia, and Yemen; Iran sponsors a multitude of Sunni jihadists in Iraq Syria, Libya, Yemen and the HAMAS Islamic Jihad; and Qatar helps with funding and equipping all of them. Indeed, during the formal introduction of the new commander of the Quds Force, Brig. Gen. Ismail Qaani, he spoke in front of a row of flags of the IRGC and their predominantly Shi’ite formal allies and proxies. For the first time, the HAMAS flag was prominently displayed, a testimony of HAMAS’s formal joining of the Iranian army of proxies under the command of the Quds Force.
There is a formal division of labor between the members of the Middle Eastern Entente.
Iran focuses on the on land corridor to the shores of the Mediterranean by controlling the entire territory between western Iran and the Mediterranean; on controlling both shores of the Persian Gulf by empowering the Shi’ite populated oil rich areas; and on dominating the key choke points of the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el Mandeb (the latter from Yemen).
Turkey focuses on establishing a security zone in northern Syria and Iraq by suppressing the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq (while Iran suppresses its own Kurds); on exploiting the plight and ambitions of Jordan’s Hashemites in order to dominate the Hijaz and the Red Sea (also through Turkish presence in Somalia and Sudan); on increasing presence in the Persian Gulf by building bases in Qatar; and, through the recent agreement with the Western supported jihadist propped up “government” in Libya, on carving the eastern Mediterranean and separating Israel, Egypt and Cyprus from the Balkans and Europe.
Meanwhile, in the absence of Sultan Qaboos, there are no open channels of communications between the warring sides, no attempts to reconcile and/or mediate are made, and there are no viable efforts to calm things down.
Into this explosive mix enters the Israel factor.
Both Turkey and Iran have declared their commitment to liberating Jerusalem and destroying Israel as an important objective in their ascent to regional and all Islamic prominence. In recent months, both Turkey and Iran made concrete contingency planning to capitalize on the growing tension between Israel and HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, HizbAllah, and the Islamist forces in Jordan and the West Bank in order to intervene directly in the fighting with the declared objective to destroy Israel. The scope of the Iranian military preparations for such a confrontation is profound. Meanwhile, Qatar keeps a door open and coordinates with Israel the support for the HAMAS controlled Gaza Strip.
However, rhetoric notwithstanding, there is great apprehension about a major war with Israel.
Consequently, Iran and its proxies and allies remain grudgingly inclined to absorb the damage and casualties inflicted by Israel’s “Campaign Between Wars”: the ceaseless bombings of and raids on Iranian and Iran proxy strategic facilities and storage sites in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon.
That said, there is strong resolve in both Tehran and Ankara to not give up on, or even alter, their ultimate strategic regional push, irrespective of the costs. There is growing willingness to intervene directly in regional conflagrations, to employ ever larger proxy forces, and, should the need arise, even national military forces. Such higher profile interventions, and thus also risk taking, are visible from Libya to Yemen, to the Persian Gulf, and particularly in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.
Both Iran and Turkey continue to push hard, cognizant that they might spark an escalation of significant magnitude. The contingency plans of both countries include concrete preparations for the total destruction of the region’s energy resources and infrastructure in case of a major conflict. Both countries also threaten Israeli vital interests (including Islamist takeovers of Jordan and the Sinai Peninsula) and increase the threat to the Israeli civilian rear (mainly by proxies like HizbAllah and HAMAS), cognizant that Israel is extremely sensitive to civilian casualties.
Meanwhile, there is a major realignment of the great powers in the region.
The US — largely irrelevant, if powerful — is grudgingly leaving the greater Middle East. The exit process started long before the Iranian decision to banish the US in cooperation with Turkey. The US no longer needs the region’s hydrocarbons because the US is self-sufficient and exporting. The tension with Europe and East Asia reduces the US interest in guaranteeing their energy supplies.
Moreover, control of the region’s oil market is not sufficient to guarantee US dominance over the global energy economy on account of the Russia led camp. With lavish US military and technological supplies and aid, Israel is strong enough to defend itself and its vital interests, but not enough to start a major regional war which could ensnare the US if something went wrong. Under such conditions, the imperative for the US to remain entangled in such a volatile region has diminished.
Enter the coalition of Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) which has revived the historic Silk Road system of alliances and interests throughout the Eastern Hemisphere.
Their anti US strategy bolsters the standing of the Middle Eastern Entente. While both Russia and the PRC exercise strong support for vanquished state governments (mainly Syria and Iraq), theirs is a very pragmatic regional approach which accepts the collapse of the modern state system and focuses instead on reliance on the Fertile Crescent of Minorities (that includes Israel) for regional stabilization.
There is a division of labor in the Middle East between the PRC and Russia with the former responsible for economic and development issues, and the latter for security matters. The PRC and its protégés do need the region’s oil and gas badly, and are thus committed to preventing a conflict which would set the region literally aflame. Russia’s bitter historic enmity toward Iran and Turkey affects the Russian readiness to tolerate their reckless excesses. At the same time, Russia benefits from the relentless anti US drive of both Iran and Turkey.
Hence, both the PRC and Russia maintain very delicate balancing with the Middle Eastern Entente.
The PRC and Russia are determined to neither have a confrontation over the trio’s respective vital interests, nor tolerate their strategic ascent to preeminence over the entire region because this would eclipse or challenge the great power dominance by both the PRC and Russia. As well, both Russia and the PRC have excellent relations with Israel, and thus emerge as the sole viable channels between Iran and Turkey, and their pursuit of regional interests, and Israel in the hope of passing messages, defusing faceoffs and crises: thus preventing a major eruption from happening.
Ultimately, the profound, if latent, conflict between Russia and the PRC on the one hand and the Middle Eastern Entente on the other over which will be the real master of the greater Middle East is bound to dominate all long term relations and add to the regional friction and instability.
Thus, there is growing possibility that a miscalculated move, an operational accident, or an unintended infliction of excessive civilian casualties could spark an immediate regionwide eruption and a major explosion nobody would be able to contain.
The indigenous grassroots’ hatreds, tensions, frustration, and despair which have been building and intensifying for close to a decade, and especially since 2016, would then burst into the open. Then, nobody would be able to do anything but wait until the carnage and flames have exhausted themselves.
And so we wait …
Tyler Durden
Mon, 01/27/2020 – 18:25
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