Aug 30

Today’s News 30th August 2019

  • Diamond Crisis: De Beers Sales Crash 44% As Demand Plummets

    The Financial Times states that De Beers’, the world’s largest diamond miner, has seen a collapse in sales this month, as the entire industry is on the brink of a downturn amid weaker consumer demand and the proliferation of lab-grown stones.

    De Beers said Wednesday that it sold just $280 million of diamonds this month, compared with $503 million in the same period a year ago, which represents a 44% drop. The miner’s sales so far this year are down $1 billion from the same time in 2018.

    “The current malaise in the market is due to oversupply,” said Paul Zimnisky, an analyst in New York, who said diamond buyers had too much inventory.

    Declining demand from the world’s two largest diamond-consuming countries, the US and China, has fuelled uncertainties for the overall industry. Along with macroeconomic risks about a structural decline of the global economy and an out of control trade war between the US and China.

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    Diamond buyers have become disappointed with the cost of rough diamonds sold by De Beers this year as spot prices for polished diamonds have fallen on a YoY basis.

    “Clients are waiting for polished demand to pick up and are trying to buy as little as possible,” David Harari, co-founder of diamond trading platform Bluedax, said in a newsletter. “

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    “The secondary market shows no demand for goods, and items traded are being sold without a profit and even at a loss.”

    Shares in Signet, the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewelry, have crashed 60% this year.

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    Zimnisky noted the rapid increase of lab-grown diamonds, which are chemically grown in a lab, are also “taking a very precious piece of the mined industry’s modest growth.”

    As a result of the oversupplied market, De Beers has so far slashed production with a target of 31 million carats this year compared with 35.3 million lin 2018.

    While diamonds maybe forever, diamond demand from consumers isn’t – and that demand tends to collapse ahead of (and during) recessions.

  • Boris Johnson's Deviously Clever Brexit Strategy Unfolds

    Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

    The Remainers are huffing and puffing this morning, but it will be to no avail. Johnston’s strategy is nearly foolproof.

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    Corbyn Vows to ‘Politically Stop’ No Deal

    The Guardian Live Blog reports Jeremy Corbyn Says He Will Try to ‘Politically Stop’ Prorogation with Legislation. He cant buts let’s look at some comments.

    Opposition leaders have demanded that Boris Johnson either reverse his decision to suspend Parliament or put it to a Commons vote. The leaders of Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, Plaid Cymru, the Independent Group for Change and the Greens, “condemn the undemocratic actions of Boris Johnson following his suspension of Parliament until 14 October.”

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    My Reply: So What?

    Lord Young quit as a government whip in the Lords over Boris Johnson’s decision, saying it “risks undermining the fundamental role of parliament” in his resignation letter.

    My Reply: Excellent News

    Johnson will appoint a whip who will obey his wishes. Should the Commons pull any legislative tricks that require the House of Lords, expect a filibuster.

    The Labour leader has said parliament will “legislate rapidly” on Tuesday, when it resumes, to prevent Boris Johnson from suspending parliament and stop a no-deal Brexit.

    My Reply: Not Legally Binding

    A petition calling on the government not to prorogue parliament has already been signed by more than 1.4 million people. The petition is growing even faster than the petition to revoke article 50, which eventually had 6m signatures.

    My Reply: Not Legally Binding

    Accusations

    Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the Commons, has claimed the Speaker, John Bercow, was being unconstitutional by criticising the suspension of parliament. Bercow described Johnson’s move to prorogue parliament as a “constitutional outrage”. But Rees-Mogg claimed it was Bercow who was acting outside the constitution by making such comments.

    Rees-Mogg is correct. There is nothing unconstitutional about the move. Proroguing is frequent. Only the timing is unusual.

    “It was simply wrong and deeply irresponsible of him [Bercow] to say that. The Queen had no discretion over this. There is no precedent for the Queen refusing a request by her prime minister under these circumstances. This is a straightforward decision by the prime minister giving formal advice to the sovereign, which a constitutional monarch is obliged to follow. Lord O’Donnell is saying things that are damaging to the constitution and wrong.”

    Rees-Moog commented: “The law of the land is that we leave the European Union, and parliament voted for that on the back of a referendum where 17.4 million people voted to leave. That’s not railroading. That’s delivering a proper constitutional settlement.”

    Coup

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    Call to Hang Johnson

    The Shadow (opposition) Chancellor, John McDonnell, labeled Johnson a “dictator”.

    Other want to hang him.

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    The Tweet has been deleted.

    Acceptance

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    Both Tweets sounds like acceptance.

    Polls

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    Common Sense from Eurointelligence

    Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings have a strategy – and nobody else does. The prorogation plan is devious – or clever depending on your views. It tells us that this government will stop at nothing to frustrate the Remainers in the parliament, so long as it is legal.

    The decision to prorogue parliament in the way they did dramatically reduces the options for the Remain supporters. There is now no time for legislation to force the government to extend Brexit. There is a little more than a week after the parliament convenes next week, and there will be a couple of weeks after the Queen’s Speech October 14.

    Can this be stopped legally? Not really. It is not the prime minister who has prorogued the parliament. It was the Queen, who has her own legal counsel.

    Perhaps the most interesting news story yesterday – amid a torrent of noisy outrage – was a story in Die Welt according to which Germany and the EU – for the first time – now actually believe that a no-deal Brexit is possible. We have been pointing out for the last three years that Germans in particular did not believe that Brexit would happen. The German media have been obsessed with the second referendum campaign and reported on little else. It also has been the overwhelming experience of the EU that the other side always blinks first. What yesterday’s decision did was to make it absolutely clear to the EU that the UK parliament won’t stop a no-deal Brexit.

    There is no way the House of Commons and the Lords will finalize an anti-Brexit law before parliament breaks up. They would have to re-table the legislation in mid-October. But at that time Johnson and EU leaders would be in last-minute negotiations. If the talks succeed, parliament will get a last-minute take-it-or-leave-it vote.

    There is still one option left for Remainers to pursue, but it is very risky. They could hold a vote of no confidence when they come back next week. If they win, the fixed-term parliaments act sets out a definitive procedure. The House of Commons has two weeks to secure a majority in support of another prime minister – a technical government as the Italians would call it. But this is unlikely as the opposition is hopelessly divided on this point. If that effort fails, the Commons would be suspended for new elections. But, crucially, it is the government that sets the date for them. Number Ten said yesterday that the date for elections would be November 1-5, that is after a no-deal Brexit. In other words, a no-confidence motion could actually trigger a no-deal Brexit, as the Commons would have deprived themselves of the opportunity to ratify a withdrawal agreement.

    This is why the timing of the prorogation is so clever – no doubt the work of Cummings.

    The political reality is that the anti-Brexit campaign has committed one strategic blunder after another, and failed to attract enough support. They lost two general elections, one European election and one referendum. The ferocity of their reaction is best explained as a sudden realisation that they lost. They did not see this coming.

    Eurointelligence supports the opinion I offered yesterday.

    “The only possible way to stop this now is a successful motion of no confidence followed by the agreement of an alternate government.”

    Even then, Cummings noted that Johnson would refuse to resign. The law is unclear on what would happen.

    Brilliant Plan

    I did not understand why Johnson (Cummings) would have picked October 14 for a Queen’s speech. It is clear today.

    • Now that the EU finally understands No Deal is on the table and Parliament cannot stop it, there is a chance for Johnson to actually work out a deal.

    • Should there be a successful motion of no confidence, it would trigger no deal, taking away the arguably small chance the EU might come to its senses and work out a deal.

    • Such a deal might be a trade arrangement in return for the UK paying the Brexit bill and other cooperative efforts, but the backstop has to go.

    • Also, and as I have pointed pointed out before, any Tory who voted against Johnson would immediately be outed from the party and lose their seat in the next election.

    Congrats to Boris Johnson for a brilliant plan.

    Happy Halloween.

  • To Combat China, Pentagon Races To Develop Rare Earth Mineral Plants In Australia 

    A shooting war between the U.S. and China seems far-fetched at the moment, but could be plausible once the Pentagon reduces its rare earth mineral exposure on the Asian country and sets up new processing facilities in Australia.

    Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, told reporters Monday that she held meetings with Australian counterparts about “whether or not we could work with Australia to stand up a facility that would take care of our DoD needs, but a variety of other international needs as well.”

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    Lord’s meeting comes after a series of threats made by the Chinese to block rare earth mineral exports to the U.S., about 17 minerals in total, mostly used in fifth-generation fighter jets, M1 Abrams tank armor, radars, lasers, and engines.

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    What irks Washington and the neocon warmongers in the White House is that China controls 80% of the global processing capacity of rare earth minerals.

    “We’re concerned about any fragility in the supply chain and especially where an adversary controls the supply,” Lord told reporters at a Washington event on Monday.

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    She said the Pentagon is reviewing several options to partner on rare earth projects, adding “one of the highest potential avenues is to work with Australia.”

    An Australian Defence spokeswoman told Reuters that discussions with the U.S. on rare earth minerals started in 2018 were continuing:

    “Continuity and guarantee of supply of rare earths and critical minerals is vital to a range of sectors, including defense. Cooperation with international partners is integral to this effort,” the spokeswoman said.

    To derisk and decrease reliance on China, the Pentagon also held talks with Canada and countries within Africa to develop rare earth reserves.

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    The Pentagon emphasized this threat with the October 2018 review of the defense-industrial base and its complex supply chains around the world:

    “China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials [rare earth minerals] and technologies deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security; a challenge shared by key allies such as Germany and Australia,” the report read.

    Last month, President Trump directed the Pentagon to develop new ways in acquiring magnets made from rare earth minerals, suggesting that reliance on China or other countries could one-day result in declining stockpiles.

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    And when the Pentagon can fully source its rare earth minerals from Australia, which would ultimately reduce its China exposure to zero, that will be the moment when war planners in Washington might feel comfortable in waging a shooting war against China in the South China Sea.

    Securing supply chains of the most critical materials necessary for warfare are the first steps in preparing for conflict. The countdown has begun.

  • Billionaires, Bezos, And The Real Big Brother

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via ConsortiumNews.com,

    Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post, which leads America’s news-media in their almost 100 percent support and promotion of neoconservatism, American imperialism and wars. This includes sanctions, coups, and military invasions against countries that America’s billionaires want to control but don’t yet control — such as Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, Libya, and China.

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    These are aggressive wars against countries which have never aggressed against the United States. They are not, at all, defensive, but the exact opposite. It’s not necessarily endless war (even Hitler hadn’t planned that), but war until the entire planet has come under the control of the U.S. Government, a government that is itself controlled by America’s billionaires, the funders of neoconservatism and imperialism — in both major American political parties, think tanks, newspapers, TV networks, etcetera.

    Bezos has been a crucial part of neoconservatism, ever since, at the June 6-9 2013 Bilderberg meeting, he arranged with Donald Graham, the Washington Post’s owner, to buy that newspaper, for $250 million. Bezos had already negotiated, in March of that same year, with the neoconservative CIA Director, John Brennan, for a  $600 million ten-year cloud computing contract that transformed Amazon corporation, from being a reliable money-loser, into a reliably profitable firm.

    That caused Bezos’s net worth to soar even more (and at a sharper rate of rising) than it had been doing while it had been losing money. He became the most influential salesman not only for books, but for the CIA, and for such mega-corporations as Lockheed Martin. Imperialism has supercharged his wealth, but it didn’t alone cause it. Bezos might be the most ferociously gifted business-person on the planet.

    Some of America’s billionaires don’t care about international conquest as much as he does, but all of them at least accept neoconservatism; none of them, for example, establishes and donates large sums to, anti-imperialistic organizations; none of America’s billionaires is determined to end the reign of neoconservatism, nor even to help the fight to end it, or at least to end its grip over the U.S. government. None. Not even a single one of them does.

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    Plutocrat Bezos at the Pentagon with then Defense Secretary Ash Carter, May 2016. (Wikimedia Commons)

    But many of them establish and donate large sums to neoconservative organizations, or run neocon organs such as The Washington Post.  That’s the way billionaires are, at least in the United States. All of them are imperialists. They sponsor it; they promote it and hire people who do, and demote or get rid of people who don’t. Expanding an empire is extremely profitable for its aristocrats, and always has been, even before the Roman Empire.

    Bezos wants to privatize everything around the world that can become privatized, such as education, highways, health care, and pensions. The more that billionaires control those things, the less that everyone else does; and preventing control by the public helps to protect billionaires against democracy that would increase their taxes and government regulations that would reduce their profits by increasing their corporations’ expenses. So, billionaires control the government in order to increase their takings from the public.

    With the help of the war promotion of  The Washington Post, Bezos is one of the world’s top personal sellers to the U.S. military-industrial complex. He controls and is the biggest investor in Amazon corporation, whose Web Services division supplies all cloud-computing services to the Pentagon, CIA and NSA. (He’s leading the charge in the most advanced facial recognition technology too.)

    In April there was a headline, “CIA Considering Cloud Contract Worth ‘Tens of Billions’,” which contract could soar Bezos’s personal wealth even higher into the stratosphere, especially if he wins all of it (as he previously did).

    He also globally dominates, and is constantly increasing his control over the promotion and sale of books and films, because his Amazon is the world’s largest retailer (and now also one of the largest publishers, producers and distributors.) That, too, can have a huge impact upon politics and government, indirectly, by promoting the most neocon works helping to shape intellectual discourse (and voters’ votes) in the country.

    Bezos is crushing millions of retailers by his unmatched brilliance at controlling one market after another as Amazon or as an essential middleman for — and often even a controller of — Amazon’s retail competitors.

    He is a strong believer in “the free market”, which he has mastered perhaps better than anyone. This means that Bezos supports the unencumbered ability of billionaires, by means of their money, to control and eventually absorb all who are less powerful than they.

    Because he is so enormously gifted himself at amassing wealth, he has thus-far been able to rise to the global top, as being one of the world’s most powerful individuals. The wealthiest of all is King Salman— the owner of Saudi Arabia, whose Aramco (the world’s largest oil company) is, alone, worth over a trillion dollars. (Forbes and Bloomberg exclude monarchs from their wealth-rankings.)

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    President Donald Trump touches lighted globe with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman at the opening of Saudi Arabia’s Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology on May 21, 2017. (Photo from Saudi TV)

    In fact, Bloomberg is even so fraudulent about it as to have headlined on Aug. 10, “The 25 wealthiest dynasties on the planet control $1.4 trillion” and violated their tradition by including on their list one monarch, King Salman, whom they ranked at #4 as owning only $100 million, a ludicrously low ‘estimate’, which brazenly excluded not just Aramco but any of the net worth of Saudi Arabia.

    Bloomberg didn’t even try to justify their wacky methodology, but merely presumed the gullibility of their readers for its acceptance. That King, therefore, is at least seven times as rich as Bezos is. He might possibly be as powerful as Bezos is. The supreme heir is lots wealthier even than the supreme self-made billionaire or “entrepreneur” is.

    Certainly, both men are among the giants who bestride the world in our era. And both men are libertarians — champions of the belief that property rights (of which, billionaires have so much) are the basis of all rights, and so they believe that the wealthiest people possess the most rights of all, and that the poorest people have the least, and that all persons whose net worths are negative (having more debts than assets) possess no rights except what richer people might donate to or otherwise grant to them, out of kindness or otherwise (such as familial connections).

    This — privatization of everything — is what libertarianism is: a person’s worth is his or her “net worth” — nothing else. That belief is pure libertarianism. It’s a belief that many if not most billionaires hold. Billionaires are imperialistic because they seek to maximize the freedom of the super-rich, regardless of whether this means increasing their takings from, or ultimately impoverishing, everyone who isn’t super-rich. They have a coherent ideology. It’s based on wealth. The public instead believes in myths that billionaires enable to be promulgated.

    Like any billionaire, Bezos hires and retains employees and other agents who do what he/she wants them to do. This is their direct power. But billionaires also possess enormous indirect power by means of their interdependencies upon one-another, as each large corporation is contractually involved with other corporations, especially with large ones such as they; and, so, whatever power any particular billionaire possesses is actually a shared power, along with the others. (An example was the deal Bezos made with Graham.)

    Collectively, they network together, even with ones they might never even have met personally, but only through their representatives, and even with their own major economic competitors. This is collective power which billionaires possess in addition to their individual power as hirers of employees and other agents.

    Whereas Winston Smith, in the prophetic allegorical novel 1984, asked his superior and torturer O’Brien, “Does Big Brother exist?”

    “‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.’

    ‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’

    ‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien.”

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    Big Brother poster illustrating George Orwell’s novel about modern propaganda, 1984.

    This collective power is embodied by Bezos as well as any billionaire does.  A few of the others may embody it too, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Charles Koch, Sergey Brin, Michael Bloomberg, George Soros,  and Jack Dorsey.  They compete against each other, and therefore have different priorities for the U.S. government; but, all of them agree much more than they disagree in regards to what the Government “should” do (especially that the U.S. military should be expanded — at taxpayer’s expense, of course, not their own).

    Basically, Big Brother, in the real world is remarkably coherent and unified – far more so than the public is – and this is one of the reasons why they control Government, bypassingthe public.

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    Here is how all of this plays out, in terms of what Bezos’s agents have been doing: 

    • His Amazon pays low to no federal taxes because the Federal Government has written the tax-laws to encourage companies to do the types of things that Bezos has always wanted Amazon to do.

    • The U.S. government consequently encourages mega-corporations through taxes and regulations to crush small firms by making it harder for them to grow. That somewhat locks-in the existing aristocracy to be less self-made (as Bezos himself was, but his children won’t be).

    • Elected politicians overwhelmingly support this because most of their campaign funds were donated by super-rich individuals and their employees and other agents. It’s a self-reinforcing system. Super-wealth controls the government, which (along with the super-wealthy and their corporations) controls the public, which reduces economic opportunity for them. The end-result is institutionally reinforced extreme wealth-inequality, becoming more extreme all the time.

    The billionaires are the real Big Brothers. And Bezos is the biggest of them all.

  • US Lobster Exports To China Crash 80%

    Earlier this month, we reported how several companies in Maine saw a massive drop in lobster exports due to President Trump’s escalating trade war with China. Now data from the US federal government confirms a seafood crisis is developing. 

    China has been the top consumer of American lobster for quite some time, especially ones from Maine. But that all changed last summer when President Trump slapped China with tariffs, which forced Beijing to retaliate with tariffs on agriculture products, including seafood. 

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    And just like that, the American lobster industry was ultimately shutout of China. This led to an enormous boon for Canadian fisherman.

    In the last 8 to 12 months, airfreight volumes have been ticking up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Moncton, and New Brunswick, partly due to Canadain fisherman taking over the US’ market share into China. 

    The loss of business has been devastating for Maine’s mom-and-pop fisherman shops who are now laying off workers. 

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    We reported that Vice President of sales and marketing at Maine Coast, Sheila Adams, said her company saw a 20% plunge in business activity in a matter of days last July after China retaliated against US tariffs on Chinese goods by raising duties on US food and agricultural exports, which included live lobsters.

    “Essentially what’s happened is about 80% of our sales into mainland China have gone away,” she said.

    “And that’s purely because our product is simply just too expensive compared to the Canadian because of the additional 25% tariff that was levied.”

    The Lobster Co., of Arundel, Maine, owned by Stephanie Nadeau, said he laid off half of his workers this year because of the trade war. He said it’s wrong for the Trump administration to pick winners and losers.

    “They picked winners, and they picked losers, and they picked me a loser,” Nadeau said. “There is no market that’s going to replace China.”

    And let’s not forget, when the government picks winners and losers in an economy, it’s called socialism and tends to backfire, as seen in Maine.

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    The trade data on lobster exports is absolutely shocking.

    Federal trade data showed US exports of lobster to China totaled about 2.2 million pounds this year through June. US exports were nearly 12 million pounds for the same period last year, a drop of more than 80% YoY.

    In Canada, lobster exports to China through June were 33 million pounds, which is almost as much as all of 2018. 

    The value of Canada’s lobster exports was $200 million through June and has almost trumped all of last year’s total of $223 million. 

    The value of America’s lobster exports through June was $19 million, more than $70 million behind where they were through June 2018.

    Marianne LaCroix, who directs the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative, said the American lobster industry is looking to open up new domestic and international sales channels to make up for the loss of China.

    “China is so large that you have to look at a number of new markets to replace that business,” LaCroix said.

    ‘Tariffs Hurt the Heartland’, an alliance of trade associations and agriculture commodity groups, said tariffs cost US firms $3.4 billion in June alone.

  • Futurist Predicts Cyborgs Will Rise As "Our Supremacy…Is Rapidly Coming To An End"

    Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

    When British futurist James Lovelock looks to the future, his vision for humanity is grim. He doesn’t foresee humans ruling the Earth.  Instead, he believes cyborgs will rise up and end humanity’s supremacy as “prime understanders of the cosmos.”

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    “Our supremacy as the prime understanders of the cosmos is rapidly coming to end,” Lovelock wrote in his new book Novacene, according to NBC News.

    “The understanders of the future will not be humans but what I choose to call ‘cyborgs’ that will have designed and built themselves.”

    Lovelock believes we are already living in the early stages of what he calls the Novacene, an era in which self-sufficient cyborgs, vastly more intelligent than today’s humans, will dominate the Earth.

    “The crucial step that started the Novacene was, I think, the need to use computers to design and make themselves,” he wrote in the book.

    “It now seems probable that a new form of intelligent life will emerge from an artificially intelligent precursor made by one of us, perhaps from something like AlphaZero.”

    Lovelock told NBC News that the cyborgs could eventually modify the Earth to suit themselves, making humans extinct.  However, Lovelock doesn’t think the cyborgs will actively attempt to destroy the human race. In fact, he believes we’ll be so inferior to Earth’s new dominant species that they’ll view us the same way we currently view plants.

    “I think of cyborgs as another kingdom of life,” he says.

    “They will stand to us in much the same way as we ourselves, as a kingdom of animals, stand to plants.”

    It is an interestingly dystopian view of the future.

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    In the Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence, new beings will emerge from existing artificial intelligence systems. They will think 10,000 times faster than we do and they will regard us as we now regard plants. But this will not be the cruel, violent machine takeover of the planet imagined by science fiction. 

    These hyperintelligent beings will be as dependent on the health of the planet as we are. They will need the planetary cooling system of Gaia to defend them from the increasing heat of the sun as much as we do. And Gaia depends on organic life. We will be partners in this project.

    Initially, many researchers took a dim view of the Gaia hypothesis. But in recent years it’s become respectable.

    “The concept of Gaia is quite key to our growing understanding about life in the universe,” says David Grinspoon, an astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State University in Tempe, calls Gaia “a useful concept in stressing how biological and geological cycles are coupled.”

    The skeptics are back regarding Lovelock’s latest prognostications.

    “Nobody knows how this will unfold, because we don’t know how brains work or what consciousness is,” Grinspoon says.

    “And specific predictions about artificial intelligence and its future impact seem to depend on specific, untested, unverified answers to these big questions.”

    If this strikes you as a grim scenario, you’re not thinking like Lovelock. “I’m now past a hundred and to have an optimistic view is the only one worth having,” he says. Humans have had a great run on Earth, he writes, and before we bow out, we’re engaged in one of the noblest things we could do: “We are now preparing to hand the gift of knowing on to new forms of intelligent beings.”

  • Despite Tourism From China Slowing, New York Is Still On Pace For A Record 67 Million Visitors This Year

    The headwinds that should be keeping tourists out of New York are pronounced, including an ongoing to trade war with China, the economy on the verge of recession in Europe and a relatively strong US dollar that weighs on the buying power of foreign visitors, according to the New York Times.

    But despite these obvious reasons that international tourism should be slowing, just the opposite is happening in New York. In fact, New York City is seeing tourists in record numbers.

    This summer, the city is on pace for its highest annual tally of tourists ever, expecting nearly 67 million of them. This would dwarf 2018’s number by about 2 million visitors and it would be the 10th consecutive year of rising tourism for the city.

    Fred Dixon, the city’s tourism marketing agency chief executive, said: 

    “We’re facing some headwinds economically and geopolitically, but we’re still on track for growth in 2019.”

    And the record numbers come even though the growth of tourism from China has slowed significantly since President Trump started slapping tariffs on Chinese imports. China still remains the number two source of foreign visitors to the city, but has devalued its currency significantly, further driving up the cost of purchases for international tourists.

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    The trend is being seen at places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which says that there has been a decline in groups arriving from China. Of more than 7 million visitors to the Met over the last year, 28% came from outside the country, which is down from 34% the previous year.

    It is expected that 1.16 million visitors from China will arrive this year, which is still an increase of about 50,000 over 2018. And despite turmoil over Brexit and the relative weakness of the British pound, New York is still anticipated to see a similar increase in visitors from the UK, which is the city’s number one source of foreign tourists. Those two increases will mostly offset the drop in visitors from places like South American countries, where economies in countries like Argentina are in turmoil.

    Tourism in New York has also been helped along by large events, including the WorldPride pride celebration. The reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in October will also help draw visitors. However, in 2020, the Summer Olympic games will be held in Tokyo and political conventions in the United States are set for Milwaukee and Charlotte.

    Regardless, Mr. Dixon believes that there will still be a modest rise visitors again next year, as long as the global economy stabilizes: “The big trend in travel today is experiential and people know that they can come and New York offers a wide swath of experiences, whether they lean toward the culinary, cultural, fashion or shopping.”

  • Dramatic Video Captures Epic Firefight On The Streets Of Baltimore City

    A hail of bullets transformed one Baltimore neighborhood into an utter warzone Wednesday night. There was so much gunfire at one point that not even a single rat was spotted on the streets of East Baltimore City.

    Baltimore City Police said in a statement that one suspect is dead, and an officer was injured, following a police-involved shooting late Wednesday night. 

    Police identified the suspect as Tyrone Domingo Banks, 30, of Baltimore. Police believe Banks was responsible for another police-involved shooting and high-speed pursuit Tuesday night. 

    The 11 News I-Team pulled criminal records on Banks’ violent past, including several cases in 2010 where he was accused of assault on a law enforcement officer. Another case in the same year showed he had severe mental health issues that enabled him to claim he was not “not criminally responsible” for the 2010 assault. 

    A friend of Banks told I-Team reporters that he wasn’t targeting police, saying he had schizophrenia and refused to take his medication. The friend went on to say Banks wanted suicide by police. 

    The friend also said Banks was in and out of Spring Grove Hospital because he wasn’t a stable person. The friend also said Banks always heard voices in his head. 

    The friend said Banks was crazy and thought suicide by police with an epic shootout would be the best way to end his life. 

    Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said Banks was spotted around 11 pm Wednesday in a silver car in East Baltimore. All police officers in the area were dispatched to Banks’ location. 

    “We spotted a vehicle believed to the be same vehicle, driven by the same person, who tried to hit one of our officers last night, and then shot at another officer last night,” Harrison said. “The person we encountered tonight, we believe, is in fact the person who was driving the vehicle, who was using the same vehicle last night that we encountered tonight.”

    Harrison said at least ten officers were involved in the shooting. He wasn’t sure how many officers fired their weapons. 

    Judging by the video below, dozens of shots can be heard between police and Banks — still not clear on who fired what. During the firefight, Harrison said one officer was shot in the leg. Police cars and surrounding buildings were riddled with bullets after the gunfire subsided. 

    Harrison said the suspect was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he died of his injuries. 

    None of this should surprise Zerohedge readers, as we have kept our audience well informed about Baltimore’s implosion for years.  

    Homicides in Baltimore are expected to reach 300 by the end of the year, could be the fifth consecutive year of murders over 300. 

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    On a per-capita basis, Baltimore’s homicide rate is the highest in the country and is on par with a war zone. 

    There’s not much anyone can do to fix Baltimore in short to medium term. Yes, possibly, a bunch of Trump supporters can pick up trash in desolated neighborhoods, but that’s only a cosmetic fix. 

    The problem with Baltimore is structural. The city’s population has crashed to 100-year lows; it’s been deindustrialized, ran by Democrats for decades, and has the worst wealth inequality in the country. 

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    Baltimore will continue to implode through the early/mid-2020s. 

    There’s no meaningful policy in place to turn Baltimore around in the next decade. So in the meantime, if you value your life, stay away from Baltimore.   

  • US Military Secretly Hacked Iran's Paramilitary Force In June Cyberstrike

    Hours after Iran shot down a US surveillance drone, American military hackers launched a cyberattack against a database used by the Islamic Republic to target oil tankers and shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf, according to the Washington Post, citing US officials. 

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    The strike was President Trump’s alternative to a recommended military airstrike, the Iranian deaths from which which would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

    Iran claims the drone flew into its airspace, while the US claims it was in international airspace. 

    US Cyber Command did not address the operation, telling the Post “As a matter of policy and for operational security, we do not discuss cyberspace operations, intelligence, or planning.” 

    According to the report, the cyberstrike had been in the works for weeks, “if not months,” after Iran’s suspected attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman in early June. 

    Officials also told the Post that the cyber response shows how the Pentagon is “expanding its repertoire of options to integrate cyber into military plan,” and how Cybercom – which coordinated the strike with US Central Command, ” is able to support regional commanders to achieve strategic aims — in this case to preserve freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.”

    The drone downing and retaliatory computer attack reflect how increasingly hostilities are playing out below the threshold of use of force, in what is often called the “gray zone.”

    The cyberstrike was designed to be debilitating — Iran is still trying to restore data — but proportionate and not so provocative as to result in escalation, officials said. –Washington Post

    “When you’re in this realm there’s always the chance for miscalculation,” said one US official, adding “there were concerns generally about Iranian responses,” particularly against US or Israeli interests. 

    And as the Post notes, the cyberattack “represents a flexing of offensive muscle by Cyber Command, led by Gen. Paul Nakasone.” Cyber Command was elevated to a full combatant command in May 2018.

    “To the extent that Iran is conducting unlawful operations, I think [the cyberstrike] was an appropriate measure to take to preclude their ability to conduct further unlawful operations,” said international law professor at the US Naval War College, Michael Schmitt. “Sometimes cyberspace allows you to take operations that are not as escalatory as other options on the table. And this would strike me as one such operation.”

    The last time the US (almost certainly) hacked Iran was in 2010, when the Stuxnet virus (suspected to have been created by Israel and the United States) was inserted into Iranian computer systems governing their nuclear centrifuges, causing them to wobble and tear themselves apart. The virus reportedly ruined nearly 20% of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. 

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