Today’s News 3rd December 2019

• Islamic State Alive And Well In Europe
  Islamic State Alive And Well In Europe

  Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

  The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the November 29 jihadi attack at London Bridge, where a Pakistani Islamist stabbed two people to death and injured three others. The suspect, 28-year-old Usman Khan, a convicted terrorist, was subsequently shot dead by police.

  Khan, from Stoke-on-Trent, was convicted in February 2012 of plotting — on behalf of al-Qaeda — jihadi attacks against the London Stock Exchange and pubs in Stoke, in addition to setting up a jihadi training camp in Pakistan. He was sentenced to an “indeterminate sentence,” meaning that he could have been kept in prison beyond his original minimum term of eight years due to the danger he posed to national security.

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  In April 2013, however, the Court of Appeal revised that sentence with a fixed term of eight years. Khan, a student of the Islamist extremist Anjem Choudary, who co-founded the now banned Al-Muhajiroun group, was released from prison in December 2018, before the end of his sentence, after agreeing to wear an electronic tag.

  Khan’s early release and subsequent attack prompted a row between the Conservatives and Labour over the practice of reducing prison terms for violent offenders. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that people convicted of terrorism offenses should not be allowed out of prison early:

  “I think that the practice of automatic, early release where you cut a sentence in half and let really serious, violent offenders out early simply isn’t working, and you’ve some very good evidence of how that isn’t working, I am afraid, with this case.”

  Meanwhile, German authorities have arrested three suspected members of the Islamic State who were allegedly planning an attack with explosives and firearms in the Frankfurt Rhine-Main area. Prosecutors said that the men had wanted to kill as many “infidels” as possible.

  This plot — and others like it that have been foiled in recent months — comes as the Turkish government has started repatriating European jihadis who fought with Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq.

  Observers warn that while the Islamic State may have been “defeated” in the Middle East, it remains a potent danger to Europe.

  On November 12, more than 150 German police officers raided three apartments in Offenbach and arrested a 24-year-old Macedonian-German and two Turkish citizens aged 21 and 22. Frankfurt Prosecutor Nadja Niesen said that the 24-year-old was the main suspect:

  “The men are accused of plotting to commit a religiously-motivated crime in the Rhine-Main area by means of explosives or firearms to kill as many so-called infidels as possible.

  “We have evidence that the 24-year-old has already procured chemicals to make explosives and that he continued to try over the internet to obtain firearms. We have secured various materials and equipment for making explosives.”

  A week later, on November 19, German police arrested a 26-year-old Syrian jihadi at his apartment in the Schöneberg district of Berlin. The man, who had been in Germany since 2014, was employed at a Berlin primary school as a cleaner. He had been under surveillance for at least three months after German authorities received a tipoff from a “friendly foreign intelligence service.” Police said that the man had acquired chemicals to produce explosives to “kill as many people as possible.”

  The plots in Frankfurt and Berlin are, respectively, the eighth and ninth jihadi attacks that German police have foiled in the country since a rejected asylum seeker from Tunisia murdered 12 people by ramming a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016.

  Germany’s security challenge is about to increase yet further. On November 4, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced that Turkey would begin repatriating captured Islamic State fighters back to their countries of origin — even if their European citizenship has been revoked:

  “We will send back those in our hands, but the world has come up with a new method now: revoking their citizenships. They are saying they should be tried where they have been caught. This is a new form of international law, I guess. It is not possible to accept this. We will send back Daesh (Islamic State) members in our hands to their own countries whether their citizenships are revoked or not.”

  At least 1,200 Islamic State fighters, including many from Western countries, are being held in Turkish prisons. Another 287 jihadis from at least 20 different countries have been captured by Turkish forces since the start of an offensive that began on October 9 against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northeastern Syria.

  Approximately 100 German Islamic State supporters are believed to be in custody in Turkey, according to the German news agency, Deutsche Presse-Agentur. The German Interior Ministry said that although the identity of the jihadis being held by Turkey was not known, they could not be denied entry to Germany if they indeed were German citizens.

  A German government spokesman, Armin Schuster, insisted that the German returnees were not “serious cases” and warned against “media-fueled hysteria.” He explained: “They did not take part in the fighting. They won’t be sent to prison, but they must be kept under surveillance.”

  On November 11, Turkey officially began repatriating Islamic State detainees to the West by deporting a German, an American and a Dane.

  On November 14, Turkey repatriated another eight Islamic State fighters: seven Germans and one Briton. One man, a German-Iraqi father of a family of seven named Kanan B., was accused by Turkey of being a member of the Islamic State. German authorities allowed the man and his family to return to their home in Lower Saxony. They said that although he is a member of the Islamist Salafist movement, they do not believe that he ever joined the Islamic State.

  On November 15, two female jihadis arrived in Frankfurt on a flight from Istanbul. German authorities arrested a 21-year-old Nasim A., whose origins are Somali. She moved from Germany to Syria as a minor in 2014 and, according to German investigators, married a jihadi fighter in late 2015. German authorities reportedly want to charge her with the offense of supporting the Islamic State. The other woman, 27-year-old Heida R. from Lower Hesse, had her fingerprints taken, but was released because she reportedly attended a deradicalization program.

  Meanwhile, on November 7, Germany’s Higher Administrative Court (OVG) in Berlin-Brandenburg ruled that Germany must repatriate three children and their Islamic State-affiliated mother. The German Foreign Ministry had said that it was prepared to repatriate the children, but, citing risks to national security, it refused to bring back the mother. The woman entered an Islamic State-controlled part of Syria in 2014 with the two older children; the third child was born there. In its ruling, the OVG said the children — now aged 8, 7 and 2 — were traumatized and would need their mother after being repatriated from the Kurdish-run Al-Hawl detention camp in northern Syria.

  German opposition parties have been critical of the government’s failure to face the problem of jihadi repatriations sooner. The deputy leader of the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Stephan Thomae, said that Berlin had little choice but to accept German citizens deported by another country:

  “The government kept its head in the sand for a long time and didn’t want to have anything to do with these cases. That is coming back to bite them now. It would have been better if the government had contacted Turkey much earlier to discuss such processes.”

  The Secretary General of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol), Jürgen Stock, warned that Europe faces a new wave of Islamic terrorism as radicalized individuals return to the continent:

  “We could soon be facing a second wave of other Islamic State linked or radicalized individuals that you might call Isis 2.0.

  “A lot of these are suspected terrorists or those who are linked to terrorist groups as supporters who are facing maybe two to five years in jail. Because they were not convicted of a concrete terrorist attack but only support for terrorist activities, their sentences are perhaps not so heavy.

  “In many parts of the world, in Europe but also Asia, this generation of early supporters will be released in the next couple of years, and they may again be part of a terrorist group or those supporting terrorist activities.”

  Austria

  Approximately 320 people from Austria are known to have traveled to the war zones of Syria and Iraq, according to the Austrian Interior Ministry. Of those, 93 have returned to Austria; 58 were most likely killed. More than 100 so-called foreign fighters from Austria are believed still to be in the Middle East.

  On October 18, a court in Graz sentenced four Turkish jihadis to prison terms ranging from five months to seven years for recruiting for the Islamic State. The men were all members of a mosque in Linz. Prosecutors explained how mosques across Austria are working together in their support for the Islamic State. “We must stop with false tolerance,” said the Graz prosecutor. “Islamism supplants the rule of law if we are not careful. Do not be afraid to impose severe punishments.”

  Denmark

  Danish authorities estimate that at least 158 people from Denmark have joined jihadi groups in Syria or Iraq; about 27 remain in the conflict zone. On October 14, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced fast-tracking legislation that would strip Danish nationality from people with dual citizenship who have gone abroad to fight for jihadi groups such as the Islamic State:

  “These are people who have turned their backs on Denmark and fought with violence against our democracy and freedom. They pose a threat to our security. They are unwanted in Denmark.”

  On November 17, Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said that Denmark would withhold consular assistance to citizens who travelled abroad to fight for extremist groups:

  “We owe absolutely nothing to foreign fighters who went to Syria and Iraq to fight for the Islamic State. This is why we are now taking measures against foreign fighters accessing consular assistance by the foreign ministry and Danish representations abroad.”

  France

  France has approximately 200 adult nationals and 300 children currently in Kurdish-controlled camps and prisons in northern Syria. The French government has said that Islamic State fighters should be judged as close as possible to where they committed their crimes. Only a handful of them, mostly orphans, have been repatriated.

  On October 17, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian travelled to Iraq to convince the government in Baghdad to prosecute French jihadis after their transfer from Syria. The Iraqi government rejected that request.

  On October 19, a French anti-terrorism judge, David De Pas, urged the French government to repatriate French jihadis or “risk creating an infernal cycle.” In an interview with the AFP, he explained:

  “The geopolitical instability of the region and the porosity of what is left of the Kurdish camps leave two problems: on the one hand, the uncontrolled migration of jihadis towards Europe with the risk of attacks by highly ideologized people; and on the other hand, the reconstitution of particularly seasoned and determined combatant terrorist groups in the region.

  “From my point of view, it is better to know that these people are prosecuted in France rather than leaving them in the wilderness. How can we protect ourselves if we do not have them in custody? The best method is to judge and control them.

  “If in 15, 20, 30 years, these people still pose a threat when leaving prison, they will remain under the control of the intelligence and justice services. If they are tried in Iraq, we will not be able to monitor them when they leave prison. I would feel responsible for not saying it.”

  Other recent Islamist-related cases in France include:

  • October 3. Mickaël Harpon, a 45-year-old convert to Islam and IT specialist at Paris police headquarters, killed four of his colleagues during a 30-minute stabbing spree before he was shot dead by another officer. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that Harpon, who held a top-level security clearance, had “never shown any warning sign.” It was later revealed that Harpon had caused alarm among his colleagues as far back as 2015, when he defended the jihadi attack on the newspaper Charlie Hebdo. Anti-terror prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard subsequently revealed that Harpon adhered to “a radical vision of Islam” and that he had been in contact with adherents of Salafism, an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam.

  • October 10. French journalist Clément Weill-Raynal was threatened with disciplinary action by his superiors at France Télévisions for “prematurely reporting” that the October 3 jihadi attack at Paris police headquarters could have been “an act motivated by radical Islam.” Weill-Raynal, one of the first journalists to arrive at the scene of the search of the killer’s home in Gonesse, was the first to reveal on air that the killer had “converted to Islam.” His managers criticized his “lack of control” and threatened punish him. Weill-Raynal said: “I mentioned a hypothesis and today I am told about professional misconduct. It is Kafkaesque.”

  • October 14. Five members of an all-female Islamic State jihadi cell were sentenced to between five and 30 years in prison over a failed attempt to detonate a car bomb outside the Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in November 2016.

  • October 17. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner revealed that French intelligence services had arrested a man for planning a jihadi attack inspired by airplane attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in September 2001. He added that there had been 60 attempted jihadi attacks in France since 2013.

  • October 28. In Paris, a man shouted “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is the greatest!”) at the Grand Re, the largest movie theater in Europe, during a screening of the American film “Joker.” A witness said that the man “put his hands on his chest and began shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!'” The witness continued: “Some people panicked and ran to the exits, but the doors were blocked. Some were crying. A mother was looking for her daughter.” Another witness said, “The guy, who was sitting in the 10th row, started screaming and muttering in Arabic. Someone said that he had a weapon. There was total panic. These are images that I will not forget. People climbed over their seats. There were women on the floor and others were stepping over them.”

  • October 30. Paris Police Prefect Didier Lallement revealed that seven police officers suspected of Islamic radicalization have had their weapons confiscated since the October 3 jihadi attack at Paris police headquarters. He said that a total of 33 police officers were being investigated for Islamic radicalization.

  Italy

  Approximately 140 Italian citizens or residents have travelled to fight in war zones in the Middle East, according to official estimates, and 26 have returned to Italy. Although the numbers are low in comparison to France and other European countries, Italy’s geographic location makes it vulnerable to jihadis who cross the Mediterranean Sea and enter Europe posing as refugees.

  In April 2019, the Italian Interior Ministry issued a directive aimed at dealing with jihadis arriving from Libya. The measures included increased border controls. The move came after Libyan Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Maiteeq warned that 400 Islamic State fighters held in Tripoli and Misrata were poised to flee to Italy.

  In September, Interpol revealed that during a six-week operation, it had detected more than a dozen suspected “foreign terrorist fighters” crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

  Other recent Islamist-related cases in Italy include:

  • November 20. The Genoa Assize Court of Appeal confirmed a reduced prison sentence for Nabil Benamir, a 31-year-old Moroccan would-be Islamic State suicide bomber. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of eight years and eight months; the appeals court confirmed a reduced sentence of five years and ten months handed down in November 2018. Benamir, a so-called lone wolf living in Italy illegally, was arrested in Genoa in December 2017 on charges of terrorism after he was heard, on an intercepted cellphone call, vowing to carry out a suicide attack. He is being held at a the high-security prison on the Italian island of Sardinia.

  • November 7. An 11-year-old boy who was taken to Syria by his jihadi mother when he was six was returned to Italy after being found at the Al-Hawl detention camp in northern Syria. In December 2014, the mother, an Albanian, left behind her husband and her two other children at the family home in Barzago to join the Islamic State. She is believed to have died in Syria.

  • August 21. Salma Bencharki, the wife of Abderrahim Moutaharrik, a Moroccan professional kickboxer who was jailed in 2017 over alleged links to the Islamic State, was deported from Italy to Morocco. An Italian court had sentenced the man and his wife to six and five years in prison, respectively. They were arrested in April 2016 for planning to leave for Syria with their children to join the Islamic State. The court suspended the couple’s custody of their two children. Moutaharrik, who was heard in wiretapped conversations that he would attack the Vatican, had his Italian citizenship revoked.

  • June 28. Samir Bougana, a 25-year-old Italian jihadi with Moroccan roots was brought back to Italy after being arrested in Syria. He allegedly first fought with militias close to al-Qaeda and then with the Islamic State. Bougana, who was born near Brescia and lived in Italy until he was 16 before moving to Germany with his family, surrendered to Kurdish-Syrian forces in August 2018.

  Netherlands

  At least 55 Islamic State jihadis from the Netherlands and another 90 children with Dutch parents are in northern Syria, according to the Dutch intelligence agency AVID.

  In 2017, the Netherlands enacted a law that allowed the state to revoke Dutch citizenship for people who joined the Islamic State. Since then, the Netherlands has revoked the Dutch nationality of 11 jihadis and is considering the same for 100 others, according to the Reuters news agency.

  Application of the Dutch law has been inconsistent. On September 23, for instance, the Council of State (Raad van State) restored Dutch nationality to five Moroccan jihadis who had lost it after joining the Islamic State.

  On September 16, however, a court in The Hague upheld the revocation of Dutch nationality of a Moroccan man who was convicted of committing terrorist crimes in Syria. He was prohibited from re-entering the Netherlands for ten years.

  • October 25. Dutch police arrested a 29-year-old Syrian alleged former commander of the Ahrar al-Sham jihadi group on suspicion of having committed war crimes. The unnamed man was arrested in a center for asylum seekers in Ter Apel, a village in the northern Netherlands. He had registered as an asylum seeker in Germany in late 2015 but was thought to have returned to Syria. He is said to have recorded videos of himself armed with a machine gun and posing with and kicking the dead bodies of enemy fighters. Some of those videos were posted to YouTube. The Ahrar al-Sham, a former al-Qaeda affiliate, has fought both with and against the Islamic State.

  • November 11. A court in The Hague ruled that the Netherlands must actively help repatriate the young children of women who joined Islamic State in Syria. The mothers themselves, however, do not need to be accepted back in the Netherlands, the court said. Lawyers for 23 women from the Netherlands who joined the Islamic State had asked a judge to order the state to repatriate them and their 56 children from camps in Syria.

    Judge Hans Vetter said that while the women were not required to be repatriated, the state must make “all possible efforts” to return the children, who have Dutch nationality and are under 12 years old. “The children cannot be held responsible for the actions of their parents,” the court said in a statement. “The children are victims of the actions of their parents.”

  Norway

  About 100 Norwegian citizens or residents are believed to have traveled to Syria and Iraq to join extremist Islamist groups, according to the Norwegian Interior Ministry. Approximately 20 are still in the Middle East.

  In May 2019, the Norwegian Justice Ministry issued a directive preventing foreign nationals with Norwegian residency and who are associated with the Islamic State from returning to Norway. “These are people who pose a serious security threat to our lives and our values,” Justice Minister Jøran Kallmyr said. “They will not return with Norwegian help.”

  Kallmyr said that while orphaned Norwegian children of Islamic State fighters would be allowed to return, the government will withdraw the residence permits of those who have traveled from Norway to join the Islamic State.

  On September 13, Kallmyr said that 15 Islamic State jihadis with Norwegian residency permits have been permanently expelled from Norway:

  “These are mainly Islamic State fighters and mothers who have traveled out of our country to participate in the Islamic State. They have been abroad for more than two years after leaving Norway. There is an opening in the asylum rules so that the residence permit can be withdrawn. If they enter the Schengen area, they will be arrested for violating the Immigration Act.”

  Spain

  Of the approximately 235 Spanish jihadis who traveled to Syria, around 50 have returned, according to Spain’s leading terrorism analyst, Fernando Reinares. At least 57 are imprisoned in Syria, according to Iraqi security forces quoted by El Confidencial.

  Recent Islamist-related cases in Spain include:

  • November 26. Police in Tenerife arrested a 26-year-old jihadi from Mauritania who was attempting to acquire homemade explosives, including TATP, an explosive known as the “Mother of Satan.”

  • November 22. A Spanish-Moroccan businessman named Nourdine Ch. was arrested in Majorca for supporting the Islamic State.

  • November 6. A 71-year-old Iraqi was arrested in Madrid for channeling “large amounts of money” to the Islamic State.

  • October 5. A 23-year-old Spanish-born Moroccan was arrested in Madrid for publishing Spanish-language jihadi videos and also for procuring chemicals to build explosives devices.

  • September 21. A 51-year-old Moroccan man was arrested in Algeciras for allegedly belonging to the Islamic State.

  • August 30. A 25-year-old Moroccan man was arrested in Alicante for allegedly belonging to the Islamic State.

  • August 2. A 35-year-old Spanish convert to Islam was arrested in Gran Canaria for allegedly photographing the headquarters of an LGTBI association on the island. The detainee had maintained contact with other converts who were arrested in Colombia and Argentina in 2018 based on information provided by Spanish police.

  • June 18. Ten jihadis were arrested in Madrid for allegedly financing the Islamic State.

  • April 17. Zouhair el Bouhdidi, a 23-year-old student at the University of Seville, was arrested in Morocco on charges of plotting a massacre in Seville on behalf of the Islamic State. The man, who was found to possess a large amount of explosives, was allegedly planning to attack Holy Week festivities in Seville.

  Switzerland

  At least 93 jihadis have travelled from Switzerland to conflict zones, according to the Swiss Federal Intelligence Service. Of these, 31 have a Swiss passport and 18 are dual nationals.

  Recent Islamist-related cases in Switzerland include:

  • September 11. The State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) revoked the Swiss citizenship from a dual national who had been sentenced to several years in prison for recruiting fighters for the Islamic State. Swiss authorities did not release the other nationality of the man. SEM said that this was the first time that it has stripped the nationality of a Swiss jihadi.

  • October 29. More than 100 police officers in the cantons of Bern, Schaffhausen and Zurich raided the homes of 11 jihadis suspected of being members of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Six of the individuals were adults, including one returning jihadi already been tried for ties to the Islamic State, according to the Office of the Attorney General. The other five are youths.

  • October 21. The Federal Criminal Court extended the pre-trial detention of a man accused of attempted murder and supporting the Islamic State. The man, a citizen of the Canton of Vaud, was arrested in June 2017 police, who raided his home in Lausanne, found a handbook for urban guerrilla warfare, a knife, a bottle containing petrol and a Koran. While in detention, the defendant attacked a prison employee and shouted “Allahu Akbar” while threatening to kill him.

  United Kingdom

  An estimated 850 British jihadis have travelled to Iraq and Syria to fight for the Islamic State, according to an estimate by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) at King’s College London. Approximately 400 British jihadis have returned to Britain, and around 250 to 300 are still in Syria. The others are presumed to have died on the battlefields.

  The British government has resisted the repatriation of its jihadis. It said that they should face justice in the countries where their crimes were committed, not be returned home to face trial in the UK. In a written statement, a spokesperson for the British Foreign Office said:

  “Our priority is the safety and security of the UK and the people who live here.

  “Those who have fought for or supported Daesh [Islamic State] should wherever possible face justice for their crimes in the most appropriate jurisdiction, which will often be in the region where their offences have been committed.

  “We are working closely with international partners to address issues associated with foreign terrorist fighters, including the pursuit of justice against participants in terrorism overseas.”

  Several jihadis have been stripped of their British citizenship, including Jack Letts, who was raised in Oxfordshire by British and Canadian parents. He left home to join the Islamic State five years ago but has been held a prisoner in Syria since 2017. Canada, where Letts qualifies for a passport through his father, accused the British government of “offloading its responsibilities.”

  International law forbids people from being rendered stateless, but British law allows the UK to strip terror suspects abroad of their citizenship if they are a dual national or able to obtain citizenship of another country.

  Other recent Islamist-related cases in Britain include:

  • November 17. Mamun Rashid, a 26-year-old man from East London, was arrested after arriving in London on a flight from Turkey. He was charged with preparation of terrorist acts and will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court. Turkish authorities said that Rashid was a member of the Islamic State.

  • October 22. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick revealed that police in London have foiled 16 jihadi plots during the past two years.

  • October 16. Safiyya Amira Shaikh, a 36-year-old female jihadi from Hayes, Middlesex, was charged with terrorism offenses for attempting to bomb a London hotel as well as St. Paul’s Cathedral. She was arrested on October 10 after reconnoitering the hotel and church and preparing the words of a pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State.

  • October 1. Aseel Muthana, a 22-year-old who worked as an ice cream seller in Cardiff before he joined the Islamic State, said that he wants to return to the UK. ITV television found Muthana, who was presumed dead, at a secret prison in northern Syria. “Back then when I first came to ISIS, you have to understand I came way before the caliphate was pronounced,” he said. “Before all of these beheading videos, before all of the burnings happened, before any of that stuff. We came when ISIS propaganda and ISIS media was all about helping the poor, helping the Syrian people.” Muthana’s mother urged the British government to allow him back into the UK: “My little boy went seduced and brainwashed with ideas that were not his. Have compassion for our situation.”

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Tue, 12/03/2019 – 02:00

  Tags

  Politics

  

• Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalist's Favorite Online Tactic
  Attacking The Source: The Establishment Loyalist’s Favorite Online Tactic

  Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via CaitlinJohnstone.com,

  If you’re skeptical of western power structures and you’ve ever engaged in online political debate for any length of time, the following has definitely happened to you.

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  You find yourself going back and forth with one of those high-confidence, low-information establishment types who’s promulgating a dubious mainstream narrative, whether that be about politics, war, Julian Assange, or whatever. At some point they make an assertion which you know to be false–publicly available information invalidates the claim they’re making.

  “I’ve got them now!” you think to yourself, if you’re new to this sort of thing. Then you share a link to an article or video which makes a well-sourced, independently verifiable case for the point you are trying to make.

  Then, the inevitable happens.

  “LMAO! That outlet!” they scoff in response.

  “That outlet is propaganda/fake news/conspiracy theory trash!”

  Or something to that effect. You’ll encounter this tactic over and over and over again if you continually engage in online political discourse with people who don’t agree with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re literally just linking to an interview featuring some public figure saying a thing you’d claimed they said. It doesn’t matter if you’re linking to a WikiLeaks publication of a verified authentic document. Unless you’re linking to CNN/Fox News (whichever fits the preferred ideology of the establishment loyalist you’re debating), they’ll bleat “fake news!” or “propaganda!” or “Russia!” as though that in and of itself magically invalidates the point you’re trying to make.

  And of course it doesn’t. What they are doing is called attacking the source, also known as an ad hominem, and it’s a very basic logical fallacy.

  Most people are familiar with the term “ad hominem”, but they usually think about it in terms of merely hurling verbal insults at people. What it actually means is attacking the source of the argument rather than attacking the argument itself in a way that avoids dealing with the question of whether or not the argument itself is true. It’s a logical fallacy because it’s used to deliberately obfuscate the goal of a logical conclusion to the debate.

  “An ad hominem is more than just an insult,” explains David Ferrer for The Quad.

  “It’s an insult used as if it were an argument or evidence in support of a conclusion. Verbally attacking people proves nothing about the truth or falsity of their claims.”

  This can take the form of saying “Claim X is false because the person making it is an idiot.” But it can also take the form of “Claim X is false because the person making it is a propagandist,” or “Claim X is false because the person making it is a conspiracy theorist.”

  I don’t think @bellingcat knows what’s about to hit them now that @caitoz is on their case. Settle in for a few fun months as their entire bullshit narrative on #Syria chemical weapons comes tumbling down. Here’s her opening jab: https://t.co/jvYfIBkDM2

  — Sharmine Narwani (@snarwani) November 27, 2019

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  Someone being an idiot, a propagandist or a conspiracy theorist is irrelevant to the question of whether or not what they’re saying is true. In my last article debunking a spin job on the OPCW scandal by the narrative management firm Bellingcat, I pointed out that Bellingcat is funded by imperialist regime change operations like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was worth highlighting because it shows the readers where that organization is coming from. But if I’d left my argument there it would still be an ad hominem attack, because it wouldn’t address whether or not what Bellingcat wrote about the OPCW scandal is true. It would be a logical fallacy; proving that they are propagandists doesn’t prove that what they are saying in this particular instance is false.

  What I had to do in order to actually refute Bellingcat’s spin job was show that they were making a bad argument using bad logic, which I did by highlighting the way they used pedantic wordplay to make it seem as though the explosive leaks which have been emerging from the OPCW’s investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria were insignificant. I had to show how Bellingcat actually never came anywhere close to addressing the actual concerns about a leaked internal OPCW email, such as extremely low chlorinated organic chemical levels on the scene and patients’ symptoms not matching up with chlorine gas poisoning, as well as the fact that the OPCW investigators plainly don’t feel as though their concerns were met since they’re blowing the whistle on the organisation now.

  And, for the record, Bellingcat’s lead trainer/researcher guy responded to my arguments by saying I’m a conspiracy theorist. I personally count that as a win.

  The correct response to someone who attacks the outlet or individual you’re citing instead of attacking the actual argument being made is, “You’re attacking the source instead of the argument. That’s a logical fallacy, and it’s only ever employed by people who can’t attack the argument.”

  The demand that you only ever use mainstream establishment media when arguing against establishment narratives is itself an inherently contradictory position, because establishment media by their very nature do not report facts against the establishment. It’s saying “You’re only allowed to criticise establishment power using outlets which never criticize establishment power.”

  2/2 No principle is worth nuclear war. This honest reporter, @caitoz, beholden to no ideology or special interest, calls it as it is, not as the #MSM wants to see — https://t.co/miDXqmZAG7

  — Oliver Stone (@TheOliverStone) November 26, 2019

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  Good luck finding a compilation of Trump’s dangerous escalations against Moscow like the one I wrote the other day anywhere in the mainstream media, for example. Neither mainstream liberals nor mainstream conservatives are interested in promoting that narrative, so it simply doesn’t exist in the mainstream information bubble. Every item I listed in that article is independently verifiable and sourced from separate mainstream media reports, yet if you share that article in a debate with an establishment loyalist and they know who I am, nine times out of ten they’ll say something like “LOL Caitlin Johnstone?? She’s nuts!” With “nuts” of course meaning “Says things my TV doesn’t say”.

  It’s possible to just click on all the hyperlinks in my article and share them separately to make your point, but you can also simply point out that they are committing a logical fallacy, and that they are doing so because they can’t actually attack the argument.

  This will make them very upset, because for the last few years establishment loyalists have been told that it is perfectly normal and acceptable to attack the source instead of the argument. The mass hysteria about “fake news” and “Russian propaganda” has left consumers of mainstream media with the unquestioned assumption that if they ever so much as glance at an RT article their faces will begin to melt like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. They’ve been trained to believe that it’s perfectly logical and acceptable to simply shriek “propaganda!” at a rational argument or well-sourced article which invalidates their position, or even to proactively go around calling people Russian agents who dissent from mainstream western power-serving narratives.

  But it isn’t logical, and it isn’t acceptable. The best way to oppose their favorite logically fallacious tactic is to call it like it is, and let them deal with the cognitive dissonance that that brings up for them.

  Me: This link proves my claim.
  Empire loyalist: Eww, THAT outlet? They publish criticisms of western imperialism!
  Me: Yeah. That’s why I’m linking to them.
  Empire loyalist: No. You can only criticize western imperialism linking to outlets that never criticize western imperialism.

  — Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) November 27, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Of course some nuance is needed here. Remember that alternative media is just like anything else: there’s good and bad, even within the same outlet, so make sure what you’re sharing is solid and not just some schmuck making a baseless claim. You can’t just post a link to some Youtuber making an unsubstantiated assertion and then accuse the person you’re debating of attacking the source when they dismiss it. That which has been presented without evidence may be dismissed without evidence, and if the link you’re citing consists of nothing other than unproven assertions by someone they’ve got no reason to take at their word, they can rightly dismiss it.

  If however the claims in the link you’re citing are logically coherent arguments or well-documented facts presented in a way that people can independently fact-check, it doesn’t matter if you’re citing CNN or Sputnik. The only advantage to using CNN when possible would be that it allows you to skip the part where they perform the online equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and humming.

  Don’t allow those who are still sleeping bully those who are not into silence. Insist on facts, evidence, and intellectually honest arguments, and if they refuse to provide them call it what it is: an admission that they have lost the debate.

  *  *  *

  Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

  Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 23:45

• BNP Trader Fired For Losing $19 Million Wins $1.4 Million In Wrongful Dismissal Lawsuit
  BNP Trader Fired For Losing $19 Million Wins $1.4 Million In Wrongful Dismissal Lawsuit

  To us, there doesn’t seem to be many better reasons to fire someone than if they lose your firm $19 million in one day.

  But the Paris court of appeals apparently disagrees. They awarded a former trader at BNP Paribas about 1.3 million Euros ($1.4 million USD) in an unfair dismissal lawsuit over an incident where the trader did just that, according to Bloomberg. 

  The court ruled that Lionel Crassier, who was formerly the bank’s head of equities was “unduly punished twice” by BNP. Judges ruled that he was unfairly fired after the bank had already sanctioned him for the incident by recalling him from New York. 

  In the most recent case, the trader reportedly had built up a position of 65,000 mini futures that exceeded his 100 million Euro overnight limit and generated the loss at market close. 

  Crassier didn’t react on the day the BNP contacted him, “surprised by the volume” he was trading. Crassier only explained the incident after his boss reached out to him. 

  BNP said to Crassier in a letter: “You acknowledged having focused on volume, rather than the total value of your positions and without monitoring your P&L in real time, which is proof of your poor analysis and a flagrant lack of vigilance. Your behavior is unacceptable.”

  The Paris court of appeals had already overturned a 2017 ruling from lower judges that had dismissed Crassier’s claims and ordered him to pay 500,000 Euros to cover BNP’s legal fees.

  The appellate judges awarded him severance pay, unpaid bonuses and damages of 1.3 million Euros after Crassier returned to court and sought 3.5 million Euros for “career harm”, claiming his firing from BNP made it a “impossibility for him to work in a field he was passionate about”. 

  BNP lost a similar case last year in Paris after it demoted its former global head of foreign exchange arbitrage over a 2.7 million Euro that he incurred during his first month on the job. 

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 23:25

  Tags

  Law Crime

  

• Krieger: "This Entire Century Has Been An Unmitigated March In The Direction Of Stupidity"
  Krieger: “This Entire Century Has Been An Unmitigated March In The Direction Of Stupidity”

  Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  Two Paths Forward with China – The Good and The Bad

  Since a few things became clear to me last year, I’ve consistently forecasted a significant worsening in U.S.-China relations and remained adamant that all the happy talk of trade deals and breakthroughs is just a lot of hot air.

  What first appeared to be a unique quirk of Donald Trump has morphed into bipartisan consensus in Congress, and clear signs have emerged that the general public has likewise become alarmed at China’s growing global clout.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Due to this, as well as a litany of other factors outlined in prior posts, it’s highly unlikely the current trajectory will reverse course and result in a return to what had been business as usual. Instead, we’re probably headed toward a serious and historically meaningful escalation of tensions between the U.S. and China, with what we’ve seen thus far simply a prelude to the main drama. If I’m correct and the ship has already sailed, we should focus our attention on how we respond to what could quickly become a very dicey scenario filled with heightened emotions and nefarious agendas. There’s a good way to respond and a bad way.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  In our individual lives we face various daily challenges, but every now and again something really big hits us, a personal crisis of sorts, and how we respond to these major events determines much of our future. The same thing happens to nation-states, particularly in the current world where virtually all human governance is structured in a highly centralized and statist manner. When such an event hits nation-states the public tends to be easily manipulated into a state of terror and coerced into granting more centralized power to the state, an unfortunate state of affairs that accurately summarizes the reality of 21st century America. With each crisis, the empire has grown stronger, the public weaker, and two decades later we find ourselves in a neo-feudal oligarchy where one half of the public is at the other half’s throat for no good reason. This is what happens when you respond poorly.

  Three major crisis events have rocked the U.S. this century, and much of the public has embraced, or at least accepted, the worst possible response in all cases.

  • The first was the attacks of 9/11, which officially ushered in the modern national security surveillance state and all but obliterated the 4th amendment.

  • The second was the financial crisis, where the response from Bush/Obama was to bail-out the criminals, destroy any semblance of the rule of law by jailing zero Wall Street executives, and to ensure the Federal Reserve (and mega-banking institutions in general) became stronger and more powerful than ever.

  • Finally, there was the shock election of Donald Trump. Rather than take his ascendance as a warning about centralized power, the faux “resistance” has been obsessed with removing him, celebrating intelligence agencies/military aggression, bemoaning free speech, and rehabilitating George W. Bush.

  Three crises, three horribly destructive responses. This entire century has been an unmitigated march in the direction of stupidity.

  What needs to be done is the exact opposite of this. We need to admit a country of 330 million people cannot, and should not, be governed like a gigantic uniform blob.
  We need more decentralization/localism and less centralized state power/empire. https://t.co/7UV6Wcl2oA

  — Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) December 2, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  I’ve become convinced the next major event that will be used to further centralize power and escalate domestic authoritarianism will center around U.S.-China tensions. We haven’t witnessed this “event” yet, but there’s a good chance it’ll occur within the next year or two. Currently, the front runner appears to be a major aggressive move by China into Hong Kong, but it could be anything really. Taiwan, the South China Sea, currency, economic or cyber warfare; the flash points are numerous and growing by the day. Something is going to snap and when it does we better be prepared to not act like mindless imbeciles for the fourth time this century.

  When that day arrives, and it’s likely not too far off, certain factions will try to sell you on the monstrous idea that we must become more like China to defeat China. We’ll be told we need more centralization, more authoritarianism, and less freedom and civil liberties or China will win. Such talk is total nonsense and the wise way to respond is to reject the worst aspects of the Chinese system and head the other way.

  If you’re horrified by China’s human rights abuses, then push for an end to murderous U.S. wars abroad based on lies. If the Chinese surveillance panopticon concerns you, we should move in the exact opposite direction with less corporate and state surveillance, not more. If China launches a state-sanctioned digital currency system designed to monitor, and if desired, restrict transactions, we should reject this approach and embrace open, decentralized and permissionless systems like Bitcoin. We should fight lack of freedom with more freedom.

  We’ve become a country of people obsessed with bossing around other people and telling them how to live by using the force of the state. We need to take a step back, chill out and let different internal cultures be different. Localism is strength, empire is weakness.

  — Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) December 2, 2019

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Given our track record this century, I’m skeptical Americans will respond in a positive and productive way to increased tensions with China, although perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised. I hope we can finally face a challenge without cowering in fear and surrendering more freedom in order to feel safe and powerful. I hope we can recognize that empire is not an asset, but a liability. That empire strengthens the state and weakens the public. I hope we can be wise enough not to embrace further authoritarianism to defeat authoritarianism. For once this century, I hope we can respond in a thoughtful and intelligent manner.

  *  *  *

  Liberty Blitzkrieg is an ad-free website. If you enjoyed this post and my work in general, visit the Support Page where you can donate and contribute to my efforts.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 23:05

• Mystery Trader Makes $10 Million In Hours Betting S&P Will Drop 4.5% In One Month
  Mystery Trader Makes $10 Million In Hours Betting S&P Will Drop 4.5% In One Month

  The recent market melt-up is coming to a quick end.

  At least that’s the opinion of one investor who spent millions to hedge a multi-billion position against a 5% drop in the next 6 weeks.

  A mystery trader bought 16,000 January 2,980 S&P puts, spending $32 million to protect against a 4.5% drop in the index at 9:44am on Monday morning, just before the Markit manufacturing PMI printed, and about 15 minutes before the latest dismal Manufacturing ISM sent stocks tumbling.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The appears to be hedging roughly $4.8 billion in assets, according to Henry Schwartz, president of Trade Alert in New York.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The price of the put rose by $8.30 or 47% from Friday, closing at $25.80.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  This means that while the market is nowhere near the 2,980 Jan 17 strike, the mystery trader has already made just under $10 million in just under 7 hours on Monday. Of course, if this is indeed a hedge, it is just as likely that his $4.8 billion basket suffered similar if not greater losses over the same time period.

  Not surprisingly, in this incredibly illiquid market which has seen both dealer delta and gamma rise sharply in recent weeks…

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  … it was not immediately clear if the trade was put in response to the early morning market selloff which culminated in 0.9% drop in the S&P – its biggest one-day drop since October – or actually caused it.

  Speaking to Bloomberg, Matthew Brill, head of derivatives trading at Tourmaline Partners, said that an options trade of that magnitude “quickly pressured stocks” when it crossed, in the process accelerating the stock selloff.

  “The index quickly shed almost 0.5% as it needed to absorb almost $1 billion of stock for sale,” Brill said, adding that the move reflects a recent trend of traders buying 5% out-of-the-money puts for one- to three-month durations on broader market indexes rather than individual securities.

  The trade comes just a few days after a different (or perhaps the same) investor bought deep out of the money calls for $1.75 million in a bet that gold would soar to $4,000 by June 2021.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 22:45

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• Welcome To The Potemkin Village Of Washington Power
  Welcome To The Potemkin Village Of Washington Power

  Authored by William Smith via TheAmericanConservative.com,

  What American constitutional government most urgently needs at present is for our Madisonian institutions – the presidency, the Congress, and the courts – to wrest back control of national security policy from an unelected and increasingly rogue national security establishment. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  That ominous challenge to constitutionalism was on full display with the recent op-ed piece in the New York Times by retired Admiral William McRaven, in which he brashly warned that unless Trump jumped aboard the Forever War bandwagon, he must be removed, and “the sooner the better.” The U.S. must have a policy, McRaven said, that protects “the Kurds, the Iraqis, the Afghans, the Syrians, the Rohingyas, the South Sudanese and the millions of people under the boot of tyranny.” 

  How did we get to the point where a former senior military officer calls for the removal of a duly elected president because he doesn’t stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Rohingyas? McRaven’s op-ed represents something new in American politics: the assertion that an elected president is illegitimate unless he works to spread our “ideals of universal freedom and equality” through military action and alliances. McRaven also argued that it is “the American military…the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press,” all unelected institutions, that now embody the true American civic religion and protect its “ideals.” 

  Even though President Trump’s promises to end wars and question expensive alliances were quite popular with the electorate, in the view of many in the national security establishment, elections do not bestow constitutional legitimacy. They assume instead that their “ideals” and belligerent foreign policy represent the true animating principles and governing force of the nation. To question them is tantamount to an “attack” on America “from within.” 

  While the rank-and-file military are among the most patriotic of Americans and show unwavering support for the Constitution, there is a huge class of elite national security bureaucrats who, whatever they may say on ceremonial occasions, believe they are above the Constitution. 

  Wait a minute, you say, this is hyperbole. The Constitution provides for civilian control of the military and other national security institutions. The problem is that in practice the Constitution does no such thing. As Samuel Huntington pointed out, the constitutional oversight of the military establishment by elected civilians is fractured, non-linear, and tenuous. The president is commander-in-chief, a title more than a function, and Congress controls the purse strings, the power to declare war, and the confirmation of senior national security nominees. The National Guard reports to presidents and governors. Anyone watching a general, admiral, or CIA director testify before Congress is aware that the national security establishment has more than one boss. Who in the civilian government is ultimately in control? Everyone and no one.

  Huntington points out that, when the Constitution was framed, there was no real concern about controlling the military, and the intelligence community did not even exist. The military arts were not highly specialized and militia officers were typically members of the political establishment who were elected or appointed by local legislatures. Military leaders like George Washington were part and parcel of the political culture of the ruling class. There simply wasn’t a danger of a rogue national security establishment in 1789, and for all their sagacity, the Framers of the Constitution did not foresee the emergence of one.

  In the mid-19th century, all this changed. Militaries became highly specialized and officers became professional soldiers. A martial culture was developed that was distinct from politics. Military “academies” were founded to inculcate this new culture and to teach the new specialties within the military arts. As a result, Huntington argued, presidents needed more “objective” control of national security institutions. When Generals McClellan and McArthur famously questioned the national security decisions of their presidents, Lincoln and Truman fired them respectively. But the tradition that the national security establishment must take orders from the president is a political, not a constitutional, precedent, and it is breaking down. 

  Tufts law professor Michael Glennon points out in a recent essay in Humanitas that the Cold War brought something new and ominous in military-civilian relations. The national security bureaucracy became so large and omnipotent that the Madisonian branches of government became something like the British House of Lords, symbolically important but in reality without much power. The executive, legislature, and judiciary became a kind of Potemkin village, with real national security power lodged in, as Glennon describes it, “a largely concealed managerial directorate, consisting of the several hundred leaders of the military, law enforcement and intelligence departments.” As this bureaucracy grew, Glennon argues, “those managers…operated at an increasing remove from constitutional limits and restraints, moving the nation slowly toward autocracy.”

  Glennon also points out that, prior to Trump, there was an unwritten pact between the bureaucracy and the Madisonian government: never publicly disagree. While national security policies have long been crafted and maintained by deep state bureaucracies, everyone played along and told the public these were the result of “intense deliberations.” Yet a few people noticed that, whether under Republican or Democrat administrations, national security policies never really changed, intelligence operations were never disrupted, and even peacenik-seeming presidential candidates became warlike presidents. For decades, neither elected officials nor bureaucratic leaders publicly acknowledged that American national security policy was being run by what Glennon describes as a “double government,” with elected officials largely impotent. 

  However, with the staggering intelligence failure that was 9/11 and two protracted and losing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some have begun to question whether the “grown-ups” in the national security bureaucracy are even competent. Trump gave voice to those concerns in the 2016 campaign, and the result has been a breakdown in the Cold War truce between the two components of the double government. Leaders of the national security establishment, who know they have real power, took precautions in the unlikely event of a Trump victory and then proceeded to try to overturn Trump’s election. When they failed, they partnered with Congress to have Trump removed through impeachment, taking full advantage of the fractured nature of civilian control of national security institutions. Impeachment witnesses, such as Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, have been unanimous in their implicit belief that the foreign policy of the United States should be managed by a professional class of bureaucrats, not by the elected president.

  The American constitutional order is thus in great peril. Those obsessed with getting rid of the president should consider that, were Trump to be removed, it could be the constitutional equivalent of Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon.

  Call Donald Trump cartoonish and erratic, but he also happens to be the duly elected president of the United States. And while we must admire the selfless service of so many in the national security establishment, as citizens, we also have the right to ask people like William McRaven: who elected you?

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 22:25

  Tags

  Politics

  War Conflict

  

• Hong Kong Retail Sales Suffer "Very Enormous" Crash As Tourism Collapses 
  Hong Kong Retail Sales Suffer “Very Enormous” Crash As Tourism Collapses 

  Hong Kong’s retail industry crashed again in October, as the city spirals lower into a recession that could lead to a collapse of the economy, reported Reuters.

  Retail sales in October plunged 24.3% YoY, according to government data published on Monday. This was by far the worst print on record as the tourism industry in the last six months has evaporated. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Retail sales fell to $3.85 billion in October, a ninth consecutive month of declines, following violent clashes between pro-democracy protesters and police around shopping districts, malls, and eateries. Many Mainlanders now view Hong Kong as far too dangerous for travel, one of the main reasons why the retail industry has tanked.

  “The local social incidents with increasing violence depressed consumption sentiment and severely disrupted tourism- and consumption-related activities,” a government spokesman said.

  Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po said retail sales decline will continue to be “very enormous” heading into the new year. 

  Last month, it was confirmed that Hong Kong stumbled into a recession for the first time in a decade in 3Q.

  More than six months of protests and nearly 17 months of a trade war between the US and China dampened economic activity in the city.  

  With no end in sight to neither the protests and trade war, Hong Kong’s economy is expected to continue decelerating through 1Q20, will likely face a deeper slump than what was seen in the 2008 financial crisis. 

  “Domestic demand worsened significantly in the third quarter, as the local social incidents took a heavy toll on consumption-related activities and subdued economic prospects weighed on consumption and investment sentiment,” the government said last month. 

  GDP data was revised lower for full-year growth to -1.3%. That marked the first annual decline since 2009. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  Chinese Mainlanders and tourists from across the world have canceled bookings, as retailers have been severely damaged from crashing sales, and the stock market continues to trend lower, which has been compounded by the ongoing trade war between the US and China. 

  Tourism numbers for October arrivals plunged 43.7% YoY to 3.31 million, according to the Hong Kong Tourism Board. September figures showed a 34.2% drop. 

  We’ve noted that luxury retailers have been hit the hardest, also putting pressure on the global diamond industry. 

  The Hong Kong Retail Management Association has told landlords to halve rents for retailers as the city’s economy is expected to plunge through 2020. 

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  The government has deployed stimulus measures since August, but monetary policy is widely ineffective when social-economic chaos continues to gain momentum. 

  The outlook for 2020 could be absolutely disastrous for retailers in the city, there’s the chance that if the retail industry remains depressed, then a massive wave of store closures could nearing. This would also trigger enormous job losses and feed through the system, likely tilting the economy into a depression. 

  Imagine that, and it only took six months of violent protests in Hong Kong to trigger economic disaster. Now the real question remains, what are the global implications to the financial system of an imploding Hong Kong?

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 22:05

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• The Superpowers Battling Over Iraq's Giant Oil Field
  The Superpowers Battling Over Iraq’s Giant Oil Field

  Authored by Simon Watkins via OilPrice.com,

  Ever since the U.S. signalled through its effective withdrawal from Syria that it now has little interest in becoming involved in military actions in the Middle East, the door has been fully opened to China and Russia to advance their ambitions in the region.

  <!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>

  • For Russia, the Middle East offers a key military pivot from which it can project influence West and East and that it can use to capture and control massive oil and gas flows in both directions as well.

  • For China, the Middle East – and, absolutely vitally, Iran and Iraq – are irreplaceable stepping stones towards Europe for its era-defining ‘One Belt, One Road’ project.

  Earlier this week an announcement was made by Iraq’s Oil Ministry that highlights each of these factors at play, through a relatively innocuous-sounding contract award to a relatively unknown Chinese firm.

  Specifically, it was announced that China Petroleum Engineering & Construction Corp (CPECC) has been awarded a US$121 million engineering contract to upgrade the facilities that are used to extract gas during crude oil production at the supergiant West Qurna-1 oilfield in Iraq, 50 kilometres northwest of the principal oil hub of Basra. The project is due to be completed within 27 months and aims to increase the capture of gas currently being flared across the site. Two factors that were not highlighted in the general announcement were firstly that CPECC is a subsidiary of China’s principal political proxy in the oil and gas sector, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), and secondly that the gas capture project will also include the development of the oil reserves at West Qurna 1. The current level of oil reserves at West Qurna 1 is just under nine billion barrels but, crucially, the site is part of the overall massive West Qurna reservoir that comprises at least 43 billion barrels of crude oil reserves.

  “For China, it’s always all about positioning itself so that it is perfectly placed to expand its foothold,” a senior oil and gas industry source who works closely with Iraq’s Oil Ministry told OilPrice.com earlier this week.

  Certainly it makes sense for Iraq to finally begin to monetise its associated gas that it has been burnt off for decades as a product of its burgeoning oil production. Aside from the negative environmental impact of this practice, there is the bizarre practical result that Iraq – which holds some of the biggest oil and gas reserves in the world – has to go to its neighbour Iran every year and beg for electricity imports to plug the huge power deficits that afflict it, particularly during the summer months. As it stands, Iraq has been steadily importing around one third of its total energy supplies from Iran, which equates to around 28 million cubic feet (mcf) of gas to feed its power stations. Even with these extra supplies, frequent daily power outages across Iraq occur and have been a prime catalyst for widespread protests in the past, including last year. The situation is also likely to become worse if change does not occur as, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Iraq’s population is growing at a rate of over one million per year, with electricity demand set to double by 2030, reaching about 17.5 gigawatts average.

  Apart from this, burning gas associated with the production of crude oil is costing Iraq billions of dollars in lost revenues. It loses money in the first place because in order to try to minimise power shortages, Iraq is forced to burn crude oil directly at power plants that it could sell in the open market for currently well over US$55 per barrel (and the lifting cost per barrel in Iraq is just US$2 on average). In this context, the average volume of crude oil used for power generation has fallen in the past two years from a peak of 223,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2015 but it still averages around 110,000 bpd, or around US$2.25 billion per year in value. It costs Iraq money in the second place because this associated gas that is flared could itself either be sold off directly or in LNG form or used as high-quality feedstock to finally truly kick-start the country’s long-stalled petrochemicals industry that itself could generate massive added-value product revenue streams. According to the IEA, Iraq has around 3.5 trillion cubic metres (tcm) of proven reserves of gas – mainly associated – which would be enough to supply nearly 200 years of Iraq’s current consumption of gas, as long as flaring is minimised. It added, though, that proven reserves do not provide an accurate picture of Iraq’s long-term production potential and that the underlying resource base – ultimately recoverable resources – is significantly larger, at 8 tcm or more.

  China knows all of this and has come to the correct conclusion that it cannot lose by expanding its imprint in Iraq in such a way. “However, China is now very wary of being seen in Iran or Iraq as looking to make them into client states, although that’s what it plans for both, so it’s recalibrated its approach to being more of the stealth variety – that is, small, incremental steps but lots of them – until at one point in the future the governments [of Iran and Iraq] look around and wonder how China is calling all the shots all of a sudden,” said the Iraq source. Such is the case in West Qurna 1 in which, although the contract announced principally involves CPECC just building the infrastructure to capture gas rather than flare it, in reality also involves being allowed to take and use or sell the gas at an advantageous rate.

  “China is looking at taking the gas with a discount of at least 30 per cent to the lowest mean one-year average market price at the hubs [principal gas hub pricing in Europe], and this then allows China to get more involved in the oil as well,” he added.

  China certainly has the expertise for this – and the appetite – as it has put on hold for a while at least its plans to take over the development of Phase 11 of Iran’s supergiant South Pars gas field.

  This large foothold in West Qurna 1 will very neatly fit in with China’s near-identical move just a couple of months ago in Iraq’s massive Majnoon oil field. It is this field that was the focus of the extremely similar announcement that two major new drilling contracts had been signed: one with China’s Hilong Oil Service & Engineering Company to drill 80 wells at a cost of US$54 million and the other with the Iraq Drilling Company to drill 43 wells at a cost of US$255 million. In reality, it will be China that is in charge of both, having given the funds required to the Iraq Drilling Company as a ‘fee’ for its own participation, according to the Iraq source. Also located very close to Basra – around 60 kilometres to the north-east – the supergiant Majnoon oilfield is one of the world’s largest, holding an estimated 38 billion barrels of oil in place. It is currently producing around 240,000 bpd. Longer term, though, the original production tar­get figures for the Shell-led consortium still stand: the first production target of 175,000 bpd (already reached), and the plateau production for the site of 1.8 million bpd at some point in the 2030s.  West Qurna 1, in the meantime, is producing around 465,000 bpd, with an original plateau target of 2.825 million bpd having been re-negotiated down, to 1.6 million bpd again by some point in the 2030s.

  The deal for the oil that China ends up extracting from West Qurna 1 will be: “Absolutely in line with the deal it has for Majnoon,” the Iraq source told OilPrice.com earlier this week. Specifically, this will involve a 25-year contract but – critically – one that would only officially start two years after the signing date (yet to be determined), so allowing CNPC to recoup more profits on average per year and less upfront investment. The per barrel payments to China will be the higher of either the mean average of the 18 month spot price for crude oil produced, or the past six months’ mean average price. It will also involve at least a 10 per cent discount to China for at least five years on the value of the oil it recovers, in addition to the aforementioned 30 per cent discount for the gas it captures.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 21:45

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• Barr Disputes Major Horowitz Finding Based On Durham, CIA Evidence
  Barr Disputes Major Horowitz Finding Based On Durham, CIA Evidence

  Attorney General William Barr will dispute a fundamental finding in the upcoming Inspector General report – namely that the FBI was justified in launching an operation Crossfire Hurricane, the agency’s official covert counterintelligence investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, according to the Washington Post.

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  While IG Michael Horowitz is said to have concluded that the agency had enough information to launch the probe on July 31, 2016 after Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos repeated a rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, Barr has reportedly told associates that Horowitz does not know about – or did not include – potentially exculpatory evidence held by other US agencies such as the CIA, which could alter his report’s conclusion.

  In July, Fox News reported that exculpatory evidence existed which the FBI failed to include in surveillance warrant applications in which Papadopoulos denies having any contact with the Russians, when he was in fact told about the ‘Clinton dirt’ byJoseph Mifsud, a mysterious Maltese professor (and self-professed member of the Clinton foundation) who has ties to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.

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  Many believe Papadopoulos was the victim of an entrapment scheme, by which Mifsud would seed him with information that Australian diplomat would later extract from him in a London bar, which made its way to the FBI – officially leading to the launch of Operation Crossfire Hurricane.

  And the exculpatory evidence? Downer – a Clinton ally – likely recorded Papadopoulos saying he had no Russian contacts.

  Have been contacted by about a dozen Australian journalists for comment on Clinton errand boy, Alexander Downer, and him being idiotic enough to spy on me with his phone. The transcript of my meeting with him will show Australia was willfully trying to sabotage Donald Trump.

  — George Papadopoulos (@GeorgePapa19) June 15, 2019

  Barr’s information also comes from a concurrent, ongoing investigation into the Obama DOJ conducted by Connecticut US Attorney John Durham.

  Part of Barr’s reluctance to accept that finding is related to another investigation, one being conducted by Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, into how intelligence agencies pursued allegations of Russian election tampering in 2016. Barr has traveled abroad to personally ask foreign officials to assist Durham in that work. Even as the inspector general’s review is ending, Durham’s investigation continues. –Washington Post

  Barr, through Durham, has been investigating Mifsud – who told Italian media “I never got any money from the Russians: my conscience is clear,” adding “I am not a secret agent.” The Maltese professor is currently MIA.

  As the Post‘s Devlin Barrett (who spoke with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page) notes, Barr’s disagreement with Horowitz not only sets the stage for a showdown within the DOJ, it will spark partisan outrage among Democrats who have already accused the AG of being Trump’s personal lawyer.

  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) charged in September that Barr had “gone rogue.”

  In recent weeks, Democrats have charged that Barr’s Justice Department was too quick to decide not to investigate Trump over his efforts to convince Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to announce an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. The Ukraine controversy has led to an impeachment inquiry. –Washington Post

  Barr, meanwhile, has slammed Democrats for abusing legal procedures and Congressional standards in their pursuit of Donald Trump, saying earlier this month “In waging a scorched-earth, no-holds-barred war against this administration, it is the left that is engaged in shredding norms and undermining the rule of law.”

  In April, Barr used the term “spying” to describe what the Obama DOJ did to the Trump campaign.

  “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” he told lawmakers. “I think spying did occur, but the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.“

  PapaD is the key

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 3, 2019

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  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 21:25

  Tags

  Politics

  

• Asset Forfeiture And The Destruction Of American Liberty
  Asset Forfeiture And The Destruction Of American Liberty

  Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

  For centuries, it has been an established tenet of Western jurisprudence that a person cannot be punished for a crime unless the government first convicts him of the crime in a court of law. After the Constitution called the federal government into existence, our American ancestors demanded that this principle be enshrined in the Bill of Rights because they were convinced that federal officials would end up violating it.

  The Fifth Amendment states in part:

  “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury…. nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

  What is “due process of law”? It is a phrase whose origin stretches all the way to Magna Carta in the year 1215. It means “notice and hearing.” In a criminal case, that means the federal government is prohibited from depriving a person of life, liberty, and property without a formally issued grand-jury indictment and a formal trial, where the government must prove a person’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. In a civil case, it means that the government must provide advance notice and a formal hearing or trial before it can deprive a person of his property.

  The centuries-old judicial principle of due process of law was destroyed when Congress enacted what are called asset-forfeiture laws, which are part of the decades-long federal effort to win the war on drugs, which is arguably the most failed, deadly, destructive, and racially bigoted government program in our nation’s history.

  Realizing that all of their previous efforts to “win” the war on drugs had failed, the feds came up with what they considered was a brilliant idea, but one that actually has turned out to be one great big crooked and corrupt racket that forcibly takes money out of the pockets of law-abiding citizens and puts it in the coffers of state cops and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, in direct contravention of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

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  Here is how the system works.

  The state police decide to stop a late-model car traveling down the highway that is being driven, say, by an African-American. The cop might come up with some excuse for the stop, such as a defective tail light. After asking for a driver’s license and car registration, the cop will ask the driver if it’s okay if he searches the vehicle. The driver, who has nothing to hide, says yes. The cop finds a case containing $10,000 in cash. The driver explains that he is on his way to buy a used car for his son.

  What happens then? Under traditional rules of jurisprudence, nothing should happen except to let driver proceed on his way, with, at most, a citation for a defective tail light. The driver has not committed any other offenses. Under our system of justice, he should be free to be on his way.

  But that’s not what happens under the asset-forfeiture law. The law permits the cops to assume that the cash must be “drug money.” Thus, the law now permits the cop to just take the driver’s money and transport it back to the police station, where the loot is divided up between the police department and the DEA.

  Notice something important about this process: There are no criminal charges filed against the driver. There is no advance notice of the seizure. There is no hearing or trial before the seizure. People, especially poorer people, are having their money seized and taken from them by the cops in direct violation of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment (as well as the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment).

  The cops say to their victim: If you don’t like what we are doing to you, you can sue us. And they can. But as a practical  matter, most don’t. They just resign themselves to the theft of their money. After all, most of them don’t have the money to hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit in the hope of getting their money back. Even if they do, they know that they’ll have to pay the lawyer $300-$500 an hour, with no assurance that they will prevail in the litigation. It’s just not worth it to most people, especially most poorer people.

  It’s a classic case of highway robbery at the hands of the state. It’s also a classic example of how Americans have had their liberty destroyed by their own government, which was precisely what our ancestors were trying to prevent when they enacted the Bill of Rights.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 21:05

  Tags

  Law Crime

  

• "Grab Some Red Bull & Code": Israel's Bizarre Appeal For A 'Worldwide Hackathon' To Free Iran
  “Grab Some Red Bull & Code”: Israel’s Bizarre Appeal For A ‘Worldwide Hackathon’ To Free Iran

  “This is going to sound insane,” Israeli Defense Minister Naftali Bennett introduces during a social media message on Iran published Saturday. He explains that Iran blocked internet access after mass anti-government and economic grievance-driven protests spread to some 100 cities over the past weeks.

  “Most social media sites in Iran are still banned as we speak,” he notes, while also describing a typical young Iranian’s frustration at being prevented from logging in. He then calls for a all programmers and techies to unite for a “worldwide hackathon” to free the Iranians from their regime-imposed internet ban.

  “So, here is a crazy idea. How about every techie in the world — Israelis, Arabs, Iranians, Americans, Europeans and everyone else unite for one purpose: to help the long-suffering Iranian people gain open access to all social media. A worldwide hackathon for freedom,” Bennet says.

  #Israeli Defense Minister Bennett on #IranProtests: « Grab some Red Bull and code through the night to do the impossible » pic.twitter.com/h0LJWIUKZz

  — Anna Ahronheim (@AAhronheim) November 30, 2019

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  It’s among the more bizarre tactics over the years involving Israeli attempts to make a ‘hip’ appeal to the Iranian public to rise up against their government, which has also lately included the Israeli Embassy in the US using “Frozen 2” movie images to “remind people that the Iranian regime has frozen 80 million Iranians from the internet for a whole week.”

  “Elsa has a message for the regime in Teheran – Let It Go!” the unusual appeal posted to Titter reads.

  Thus it appears Tel Aviv is hoping some kind of home-grown revolution can topple the power of the Ayatollahs using crude Disney movie themed propaganda.

  With #Frozen2 coming out today it is a good time to remind people that the #Iranian regime has frozen 80 million Iranians from the #internet for a whole week. #Elsa has a message for the regime in #Teheran – Let It Go! pic.twitter.com/nVclkxvJop

  — Embassy of Israel (@IsraelinUSA) November 22, 2019

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  Defense Minister Bennett’s social media video also has a youthful and progressive sounding ‘rise up for regime change’ vibe to it. Making a global appeal, he says everyone  “has a role to play” whether a senior IT engineer at an AI startup or merely someone “tinkering” in their own garage.

  “Call up your most brilliant friends, grab some Red Bull and code through the night to do the impossible,” he urges, with his words also appearing in Farsi on the screen.

  So far the social media reaction appears to be one of widespread mockery at the comic appearance and strangeness of the appeals. Likely few if any actual young Iranians believe that Tehran’s arch-enemy Israel is on the side of ‘the people’ and cares about their fate and future prospects for democracy. 

  The Jerusalem Post in a new report has also noted that inside Iran, Israel’s new Defense Minister Naftali Bennett is openly mocked on TV and social media as the “Zionist minister of war”.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 20:45

  Tags

  Politics

  

• "Where Are They Lisa?": Trump Blasts Former FBI 'Lovebird' Over Scrubbed Texts After Puff-Piece Interview
  “Where Are They Lisa?”: Trump Blasts Former FBI ‘Lovebird’ Over Scrubbed Texts After Puff-Piece Interview

  Update: President Trump has responded to the article, tweeting “When Lisa Page, the lover of Peter Strzok, talks about being “crushed”, and how innocent she is, ask her to read Peter’s “Insurance Policy” text, to her, just in case Hillary loses,” adding “Also, why were the lovers text messages scrubbed after he left Mueller. Where are they Lisa?”

  When Lisa Page, the lover of Peter Strzok, talks about being “crushed”, and how innocent she is, ask her to read Peter’s “Insurance Policy” text, to her, just in case Hillary loses. Also, why were the lovers text messages scrubbed after he left Mueller. Where are they Lisa?

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 2, 2019

  ***

  With a week to go before the long-awaited DOJ Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s conduct surrounding the 2016 election, former agency lawyer Lisa Page would like everyone to know that she’s the real victim.

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  Speaking with the Daily Beast‘s Molly Jong-Fast, who challenged her on exactly nothing (such as whether she altered Mike Flynn’s 302 form, or what the ‘insurance policy‘ was, or if she coordinated with the Washington Post on a “media leak strategy”), Page insists that her hatred of Trump never influenced her work investigating him, and that while she prefers to live in obscurity – she was compelled to tell her side of the story after President Trump mocked her with a fake orgasm routine at a rally last month – and not because of IG Michael Horowitz’s FISA report due on December 9th.

  Lisa Page is a “survivor” now.

  Pay no attention to the IG report that said her corruption caused irreparable harm that “goes to the heart of the FBI’s reputation for neutral fact finding and political independence.” https://t.co/32cF4Fg2XX

  — Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) December 2, 2019

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  Horowitz has circulated the report to key figures for legal review, and is rumored to clear to clear Page and other FBI officials of letting their raging hatred of Trump (and love of Clinton) color their work – hence the ‘Teen Vogue’ – tier puff piece. We’re sure she’ll go into greater detail when she writes a book on the whole ‘matter.’

  Highlights

  • Trump’s Oct. 11 impression of her sleeping with Strzok pushed her over the edge. “Honestly, his demeaning fake orgasm was really the straw that broke the camel’s back.“

  • Her extramarital affair with FBI agent Peter Strzok while they were both investigating Trump and Clinton was “the most wrong thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  “And that’s when I become the source of the president’s personal mockery and insults. Because before this moment in time, there’s not a person outside of my small legal community who knows who I am or what I do. I’m a normal public servant, just a G-15, standard-level lawyer, like every other lawyer at the Justice Department.”

  • Page is”slightly crumbly around the edges the way the president’s other victims are,” and is experiencing something beyond PTSD.

  Does it feel like a trauma? “It is. I wouldn’t even call it PTSD because it’s not over. It’s ongoing. It’s not a historical event that is being relived. It just keeps happening.”

  …

  “It’s almost impossible to describe” what it’s like, she told me. “It’s like being punched in the gut. My heart drops to my stomach when I realize he has tweeted about me again. The president of the United States is calling me names to the entire world. He’s demeaning me and my career. It’s sickening.” 

  • Page is always on edge – avoiding people in MAGA hats as she lives in daily anguish.

  “I’m someone who’s always in my head anyway—so now otherwise normal interactions take on a different meaning. Like, when somebody makes eye contact with me on the Metro, I kind of wince, wondering if it’s because they recognize me, or are they just scanning the train like people do? It’s immediately a question of friend or foe? Or if I’m walking down the street or shopping and there’s somebody wearing Trump gear or a MAGA hat, I’ll walk the other way or try to put some distance between us because I’m not looking for conflict. Really, what I wanted most in this world is my life back.”

  • In response to Trump suggesting she committed treason, Page insists “[T]here’s no fathomable way that I have committed any crime at all, let alone treason…“

  • Page insists that Trump wasn’t the target of the 2016 investigation into his campaign, and that the FBI learned of “the possibility that there’s someone on the Trump campaign coordinating with the Russian government in the release of emails, which will damage the Clinton campaign.”

  “We were very deliberate and conservative about who we first opened on because we recognized how sensitive a situation it was,” Page says. “So the prospect that we were spying on the campaign or even investigating candidate Trump himself is just false. That’s not what we were doing.” 

  • Her text messages with Strzok were ‘cherry picked’ and ‘out of context.’

  Page felt abandoned by the FBI and Justice because of the release of the messages and because the bureau issued no statement defending her and Strzok. “So things get worse,” she continues. “And of course, you know, those texts were selected for their political impact. They lack a lot of context. Many of them aren’t even about him or me. We’re not given an opportunity to provide any context. In a lot of those texts we were talking about other people like our family members or articles we had sent each other.”

  At the end of the day, Page wants us to know that she’s the real victim here. Perhaps she can provide those missing 19,000 text messages for some even better context?

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  “I’m completely nonpartisan you Walmart-smelling Trump supporters” – Lisa Page

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) December 2, 2019

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  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 20:44

• 47% Of GDP – This Is Definitely The Scariest Corporate Debt Bubble In U.S. History
  47% Of GDP – This Is Definitely The Scariest Corporate Debt Bubble In U.S. History

  Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

  We are facing a corporate debt bomb that is far, far greater than what we faced in 2008, and we are being warned that this “unexploded bomb” will “amplify everything” once the financial system starts melting down.

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  Thanks to exceedingly low interest rates, over the last decade U.S. corporations have been able to go on the greatest corporate debt binge in history. It has been a tremendous “boom”, but it has also set the stage for a tremendous “bust”. Large corporations all over the country are now really struggling to deal with their colossal debt burdens, and defaults on the riskiest class of corporate debt are on pace to hit their highest level since 2008. Everyone can see that a major corporate debt disaster is looming, but nobody seems to know how to stop it.

  At this point, companies listed on our stock exchanges have accumulated a total of almost 10 trillion dollars of debt. That is equivalent to approximately 47 percent of U.S. GDP…

  A decade of historically low interest rates has allowed companies to sell record amounts of bonds to investors, sending total U.S. corporate debt to nearly $10 trillion, or a record 47% of the overall economy.

  In recent weeks, the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund and major institutional investors such as BlackRock and American Funds all have sounded the alarm about the mounting corporate obligations.

  We have never witnessed a corporate debt crisis of this magnitude.

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  Corporate debt is up a whopping 52 percent since 2008, and this bubble is continually growing.

  And actually the 10 trillion dollar figure is the most conservative number out there. Because if you add in all other forms of corporate debt, the grand total comes to 15.5 trillion dollars. The following comes from Forbes…

  Total corporate debt is actually much higher. Adding the debt of small medium sized enterprises, family businesses, and other business which are not listed in stock exchanges ads another $5.5 trillion. In other words, total US corporate debt is $15.5 trillion, 74% of US GDP.

  Needless to say, this mountain of corporate debt is definitely not sustainable, and I have already noted that defaults are rising. One expert recently explained that all of this debt is “an exploded bomb” and that at some point something will come along to “trigger the explosion”…

  “We are sitting on the top of an unexploded bomb, and we really don’t know what will trigger the explosion,” said Emre Tiftik, a debt specialist at the Institute of International Finance, an industry association.

  Right now a lot of large corporations are so maxed out that they can barely service their debts. So when things start getting really bad for the economy, we could be facing a wave of defaults unlike anything we have ever seen before.

  When asked about what this will mean during the next recession, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania warned that it will “make everything happen faster, larger, worse”…

  “It’s going to amplify everything,” said Krista Schwarz, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “It’s going to make everything happen faster, larger, worse. The recession would just be that much deeper.”

  It sounds like she could be a writer for The Economic Collapse Blog.

  Of course I am being a bit silly, but the truth is that there is nothing silly about the giant mountain of debt that our society is facing.

  In addition to our looming corporate debt crisis, U.S. consumers are 14 trillion dollars in debt, state and local government debt levels are at record highs, and the U.S. national debt just hit the 23 trillion dollar mark.

  If you can believe it, we have actually added another 1.3 trillion dollars to the national debt just since last Thanksgiving…

  The federal debt has increased by $1,303,466.578.471.45 since last Thanksgiving, according to data released by the U.S. Treasury.

  That is the largest Thanksgiving-to-Thanksgiving increase in the debt in nine years. The last time the debt increased more from Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving was in 2010, when it increased by $1,785,995,360,978.10.

  It also equals approximately $10,137.48 per household in the United States.

  Adding 1.3 trillion dollars to the national debt in 12 months while things are still relatively stable is utter insanity, and what we are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.

  And we aren’t even spending the money well. In fact, Senator Rand Paul continues to document how we are wasting money in some of the most ridiculous ways imaginable…

  Sen. Rand Paul is continuing to expose the rampant waste of tax dollars by our government agencies. In a special Fall edition of his Waste Report, the Kentucky senator highlights some of the most wasteful expenditures of our federal government, including a half-a-million-dollar toilet nobody could use and a $22 million project to bring Serbian cheeses up to international standards.

  “Once again, The Waste Report takes a closer look at just some of what the federal government is doing with the American people’s hard-earned money, this time including stories of it continuing to turn over so many taxpayer dollars to the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, funding research that involves hooking Zebrafish on nicotine, buying textbooks for Afghan students that are subpar or sitting in warehouses, and more in a list that totals over $230 million,” states a press release from Sen. Paul’s office.

  Of course it isn’t just the United States that is drowning under an ocean of red ink. As Bloomberg has detailed, when you total up all forms of debt in the world it comes to a grand total of 250 trillion dollars…

  Zombie companies in China. Crippling student bills in America. Sky-high mortgages in Australia. Another default scare in Argentina.

  A decade of easy money has left the world with a record $250 trillion of government, corporate and household debt. That’s almost three times global economic output and equates to about $32,500 for every man, woman and child on earth.

  So if you have a household of four, your share comes to $130,000.

  Are you ready to pay up?

  In the end, all of this debt will never be paid off. Instead, the bubble will just keep ballooning until it inevitably bursts.

  And when it finally bursts, many are warning of a complete and total meltdown. In fact, Rick Ackerman believes that “a Mad Max scenario” is likely…

  Ackerman contends, “I am a little more bearish than that. I see a Mad Max scenario as inevitable. . . . I try not to think about it because we’ve all got lives to live and kids to raise. . . . When you go back to the calculous of deflation and that every penny of every debt must be paid, if not by the borrower then by the lender, we have already put ourselves into a condition where Social Security is going to fail. Medicare is going to fail. All the ‘just-in-time’ deliveries are going to be in jeopardy. Food from the grocery stores, one day shipping from Amazon, I don’t see how all these things can continue to operate in a condition other than in the false prosperity that we have now. We are at the pinnacle of affluence.”

  I haven’t been able to find anyone that can logically argue that the road that we are currently on has a positive ending.

  The truth is that we are headed for complete and total disaster, and the only real debate is about how long it will take for us to get there.

  So enjoy these moments of relative stability while you still can, because it is only a matter of time before we go over the precipice.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 20:25

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• PA County Election Turned Into "Nightmare" After Voting Machines Malfunctioned
  PA County Election Turned Into “Nightmare” After Voting Machines Malfunctioned

  A couple of minutes after polls closed in Easton, Pennsylvania on Election Day, the chairwoman of the county Republicans, Lee Snover, realized something had gone horribly wrong. 

  When vote totals began to come in for the Northampton County judge’s race, it was obvious there was a problem. The Democratic candidate, Abe Kassis, only had 164 votes out of 55,000 ballots across 100 precincts. In an area where you can vote for a straight party ticket, it was near a “statistical impossibility”, according to the New York Times. 

  When paper backup ballots were recounted, they showed Kassis winning narrowly, 26,142 to 25,137, over his opponent, the Republican Victor Scomillio. Snover said at about 9:30PM on November 5, her “anxiety began to pick up”. 

  “I’m coming down there and you better let me in,” she told someone at the election office after eventually getting through to them on the phone.

  Matthew Munsey, the chairman of the Northampton County Democrats who helped with the paper ballot recount said: “People were questioning, and even I questioned, that if some of the numbers are wrong, how do we know that there aren’t mistakes with anything else?”

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  The issue in Northampton County continues to highlight fears and mistrust over election security that the nation is feeling on a broader scale heading into 2020. The machines used in Northampton County were also used in Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs, crucial areas for next year’s Presidential election. 

  Calibration of the voting ecosystem is often invoked by those who lose by a small margin. 

  Snover echoed voter concerns: “There are concerns for 2020. Nothing went right on Election Day. Everything went wrong. That’s a problem.”

  Voters around the country say that machines exacerbate an already grueling voting process that is replete with long lines and frustrated poll workers. 

  Michelle Broadhecke of Easton, like many others who watched their Democratic candidate go down in flames in 2016, said her anxiety about elections began after Trump won. 

  She said: “It made me sad because with everything that’s going on, you kind of worry about: Was something tampered with, or was it just a mistake. There’s just too much going on that you worry about those things. And you don’t want the wrong people in the wrong places.”

  No study has been conducted to determine why the machines malfunctioned in Northampton County. The machines stay locked away for 20 days after the election, per state law. The prevailing theory has been a bug in the software and there have been no visible signs of outside meddling, according to a senior intelligence official. 

  Or as Democrats call it, “Russian interference”. 

  County officials say the machines worked as they should have, with the paper ballot backup process working as advertised. 

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  Katina Granger, a spokeswoman for Election Systems & Software, the manufacturer of the machines said: “We also need to focus on the outcome, which is that voter-verified paper ballots provided fair, accurate and legal election results, as indicated by the county’s official results reporting and successful postelection risk-limiting audit. The election was legal and fair.”

  The automatic tests in Northampton proved to be problematic in that they didn’t even cast votes for every candidate.

  The machines were rolled out and used anyway. 

   

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 20:05

  Tags

  Politics

  

• Mauldin: America's "Full Employment" Hides A Dirty Secret
  Mauldin: America’s “Full Employment” Hides A Dirty Secret

  Authored by John Mauldin via MauldinEconomics.com,

  Should just being “employed” make people/workers happy?

  On one level, any job is better than no job. But we also derive much of our identities and self-esteem from our work.

  If you aren’t happy with it, you’re probably not happy generally.

  Unhappy people can still vote and are often easy marks for shameless politicians to manipulate. Their spending patterns change, too.

  So it ends up affecting everyone and everything.

  Unhappy Employment

  There’s this plight of people who, while not necessarily poor, aren’t where they think they should be—and perhaps once were.

  This disappointment isn’t just in their minds; the economy really has changed. Yes, you can probably get a job if you are physically able, but the odds it will support you and a family, if you have one, are lower than they once were.

  The US Private Sector Job Quality Index aims to give data on this… distinguishing between low-wage, often part-time service jobs and higher-wage career positions.

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  What they have found so far isn’t encouraging.

  Looking at “Production & Non-Supervisory” positions (essentially middle-class jobs), the inflation-adjusted wage gap between low-wage/low-hours jobs and high-wage/high-hours jobs widened almost fourfold between 1990 and 2018.

  Worse, the good jobs are shrinking in number. In 1990, almost half (47%) were in the “high-wage” category. In 2018, it was only 37%.

  Work More, Earn Less

  Much of the wage gap came not from the hourly rates, but from the number of hours worked.

  The labor market has basically split in two categories with little in between.

  There are low-wage service jobs in which you get paid only when the employer really needs you, and higher-wage jobs that pay steady wages.

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  The number of young people working in the so-called gig economy, working multiple part-time jobs, is growing. And part-time jobs generally are not high-paying jobs.

  This also helps explain why so many relatively well-off people feel like they are always working and have no free time. They aren’t imagining it. Their employers really do keep them busy.

  So we really have two generally unhappy groups: people who want to work more and raise their income, and people who want to work less but keep their income.

  What’s the answer? We need to find one, and to do so we must talk about it. And that is possibly an even bigger problem.

  Broken Politics

  The national anxiety level got where it is for many different reasons. Some are largely outside our control, like the technological advances that have replaced some human jobs.

  Hence political decisions need to be made.

  The problem is that the ideological gap between the median Democrat and the median Republican has widened into a huge chasm in this century.

  What as recently as 2004 was a mountain-shaped distribution with a small dip in between now looks more like a volcanic crater.

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  The simple fact is that the “center” is shrinking. It is hard to consider compromises when positions are so hardened that no compromise is allowable.

  Whatever the reason for this (which is another debate), it prevents our political system from addressing important issues. This leaves an anxious population to feel either completely abandoned, or thinking it must align with one side or the other just to survive.

  *  *  *

  I predict an unprecedented crisis that will lead to the biggest wipeout of wealth in history. And most investors are completely unaware of the pressure building right now. Learn more here.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 19:45

  Tags

  Labor

  

• 460 Billion Reasons Why Bond Yields May Jump Next Year
  460 Billion Reasons Why Bond Yields May Jump Next Year

  One week ago, we discussed  the ongoing conundrum which has stumped Wall Street strategists, namely the record outflows from equity funds, surpassing even the year of the global financial crisis…

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  … as stocks hit all time highs, not on earnings growth but entirely due to PE multiple expansion…

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  … which Goldman summarized by saying that “with S&P 500 earnings on track for  roughly zero growth from this time last year, solid returns likely would not have been possible without central bank support.”

  We also discussed what JPMorgan thought would finally resolve this conundrum: in his weekly Flows and Liquidity report, JPMorgan quant Nikolas Panigirtzoglou wrote that as a result of the tremendous market performance in 2019 which would finally sucker retail investors in, he expects a “Great Rotation II” as investors finally flee bonds funds and rush to allocate money to equities:

  If this view proves correct and the overall cyclical picture looks better over the coming months and quarters, retail investors are more likely to shift from a risk-off mode to a risk-on mode next year, by reversing this year’s equity fund selling and by reducing drastically this year’s extreme bond fund buying. Such a dramatic flow shift would be equivalent to another Great Rotation, i.e. a repeat of the abrupt shift away from retail investors accumulating bond funds to buying equity funds seen previously in 2013. In other words, 2020 would be the year of Great Rotation II, in a repeat of 2013 the year of Great Rotation I. – JPMorgan

  Whether or not JPM’s thesis for a great flow of funds from bonds to stocks will finally come true – recall, this is the base case assumption at the start of every year, and so far it has proven wrong for 6 years in a row – remains to be seen, it led to an interesting tangent: if investors dump bonds in a year when the US budget deficit is expected to be well over $1 trillion and when foreign buyers have been increasingly shrinking their purchases of US bonds…

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  … just who will buy all those Treasurys the US plans to sell in 2020 if retail says no?

  That just also happens to be the topic of Panigirtzoglou’s latest note, in which he looks at the consequences of his prior Great Rotation call, and concludes that if he is right, that would be particularly bad news for US Treasurys, which could find themselves with a supply/demand shortfall as high as $460 billion in 2020, a sharp reversal to this year’s $400 billion improvement.

  Starting with the supply picture, JPM observes that on bond supply, 2019 saw the fourth consecutive year of increases in bond supply, rising to $3.13tr, the highest level since 2009.

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  Some more details: over the past four years, annual global bond supply has gone up by almost $1tr driven by both government bond and spread product supply. This $1tr increase over the past four years reflects both an increase in  government deficits led by the US, but also an increase in corporate bond supply as companies took advantage of lower bond yields globally to pre-finance their needs and increase their leverage.

  The good news here is that JPMorgan forecasts that 2020 will see a significant reversal in recent years’ bond supply trend with a $375bn decrease, bringing the global annual bond supply to $2.76tr in 2020, its lowest level since 2016. This forecast of a $375bn decline in global bond supply next year is driven by an expected reduction in both government  (-$211bn) and spread product (-$164bn) supply.

  The expected  reduction in government bond supply reflects a decline in net supply in the US as the Fed is no longer contracting its balance sheet and as maturing MBS are re-invested into USTs (up to a monthly cap of $20bn), which is only partially offset by a higher government deficit in the UK and Eurozone. The expected reduction in spread bond supply next year is driven by lower corporate bond issuance across the US, Europe and EM, as corporates globally appear to have pre-financed some of their needs in previous years and as they try to rein in their leverage globally. The decline in corporate bond supply globally is only partially offset by higher supply in US mortgages (MBS) next year as the Fed reinvests a portion of MBS prepayments and maturities into Treasuries and the US economy improves, and by higher supply in US Munis, leaving our total spread product supply estimate for 2020 lower by $164bn relative to 2019.

  What about notable demand changes?

  Here, the two biggest surprises of this year have been in bond fund demand by retail investors and in bond purchases by G4 (US, Eurozone, Japan, UK) commercial banks. The former saw close to a record high annualized pace of $850bn this year, while the latter at $640bn saw its highest level since 2009 (this surge in bond purchases may also be behind the September repo market fireworks as banks found themselves holding on to too much TSYs at the expense of cash).

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  For JPM both of these levels are unsustainable and the bank expects some normalization in 2020. In terms of the arguments for an expected normalization in the bond fund flow next year, JPM reminds us of the three reasons listed in last week’s  publication, based on the historical pattern following extreme bond fund flows in a calendar year, based on the response of bond fund flows to previous year’s returns and based on our expectation that retail investors will adopt more of a risk-on behavior next year in response to an improvement in the cyclical picture. As a result, the biggest US bank pencils in a deterioration in bond demand of around $600bn next year.

  In listing its arguments for a “normalization” in bond purchases by G4 commercial banks in 2020, Panigirtzoglou sees three reasons:

  1) Bond purchases by G4 commercial banks in 2019 were around $300bn higher than the level that would be justified by the reduction in the QE impulse between 2018 and 2019. This QE impulse was reduced by close to $760bn between 2018 and 2019, and applying a historical beta of around -0.5 would justify an increase in bond purchases by around $380bn, i.e. from -$30bn in 2018 to $350bn in 2019. Instead, we got $640bn for 2019 which is almost $300bn higher.

  2) One reason for this $300bn of “excess “ bond purchases has been a bigger than in previous years expansion of G4 commercial bank balance sheets, by $4tr this year i.e. from a total size of $85tr in 2018 to $89tr to 2019. This $4tr balance sheet expansion is more than double the average pace of the previous five years. A potential normalization in commercial bank balance sheet expansion pace from $4tr this year to $1.5tr-$2tr next year should be accompanied by a normalization in bond purchases also. This implies that much of this $300bn of “excess” bond purchases should be unwound next year.

  3) Commercial banks were also caught up with short duration stance at the end of last year relative to historical averages, and since then they have been struggling to move back to average by raising their bond purchases. This short duration stance is indicated by Figure 3, which measures the sensitivity of US banks’ weekly changes in net unrealized gains in their available-for-sale portfolios to changes in UST yields.

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  When this metric is very negative or below average it implies a long duration stance by US commercial banks and when this metric is above its historical average it implies a short duration stance. As can be seen in Figure 3 US banks appear to have shifted to short duration stance during 2018 and as a result they were caught wrong-footed this year. This short duration stance has yet to normalize according to Figure 3, something that creates upside risk to commercial bank bond purchases in 2020.

  So what does this all mean for next year?

  If one excludes the Fed’s T-bill purchases which – for now – do not entail duration (although they will in 2020), the increase in the QE impulse between 2019 and 2020 is $460bn. Applying a historical beta of around -0.5 would justify a decrease in G4 commercial bank bond purchases by around $230bn, i.e. from $640bn in 2019 to $410bn in 2020. Point 2) suggests that $300bn of “excess” bond purchases by commercial banks should be largely unwound next year as the pace of commercial bank balance sheet expansion normalizes. But the point on current short duration stance provides an offset as it creates upside risk to commercial bank bond purchases into 2020. As a result, JPM assumes that half of this $300bn of “excess” bond purchases by commercial banks should be unwound next year. In turn this implies a forecast of G4 commercial bank bond purchases for 2020 of $410-$150bn=$260bn, or a deterioration in bond demand of around $380bn.

  Then there are the G4 central banks which saw a second year of significant downshifting in bond demand in 2019, with the 2018 reduction in bond demand of $1.1tr relative to 2017 followed by a further $750bn reduction in 2019, largely on the back of the BOJ slowdown in QE. This year’s negative impulse came as a result of the Fed continuing its balance sheet contraction up to 1 August, which saw around a $300bn decline in Treasury and MBS holdings, as well as the BoJ continuing its stealth taper and the ECB having ended its net purchases in end-2018 before re-starting purchases in November. A year ago JPM had expected around a $550bn reduction, and the majority of this year’s negative surprise came from the BoJ’s more aggressive slowing of net purchases. Moreover, when the Fed shifted back to balance sheet expansion to accommodate for the greater demand for its liabilities, it chose to do so via T-bills which is excluded for now from JPM’s supply and demand analysis.

  For next year, the Fed is set to continue reinvesting maturing MBS securities up to a monthly cap of $20bn into Treasuries, which represents a re-allocation rather than a net change in aggregate bond demand. And while T-bills are excluded from a net coupon analysis, the fact that JPM’s rates researchers expect T-bill supply to be negative next year means we see a portion of the Fed’s balance sheet expansion next year likely to be conducted via Treasury purchases. For the ECB, we expect it to continue buying bonds at a €20bn/m pace for the course of 2020. Finally, the BoJ’s stealth taper process is expected to continue, with the net purchase amounts likely approaching zero. With the BoE on hold in terms of balance sheet policy, overall for the G4 central banks JPMorgan expect an improvement in bond demand of around $460bn.

  Other sources of demand include official demand, such as EM reserve managers, whose net bond purchases in 2019 amount to only $20bn, which is weaker than JPM’s projection from a year ago of $130bn. For next year, JPM see essentially flat bond demand from reserve managers, as the modestly positive current account balances for EM economies have offsets from depreciation pressures on EM currencies over the balance of the year and the prospect of weaker oil price.

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  Then there are pension funds and insurance companies. For these buyers of bonds, JPM estimates that net bond demand for 2020 will remain at an above average pace consistent with this year’s pace of around $620bn.

  Putting it all together, the combination of a $840bn deterioration in bond demand and a $375bn decrease in bond supply results in a net deterioration in the bond supply/demand balance of around $460bn in 2020, reversing this year’s $400bn improvement

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  In turn this implies potentially substantial upward pressure on bond yields next year particularly if JPM’s bond fund and G4 commercial bank bond purchases estimates for 2020 prove correct; this is because of all the different  components of demand or supply, these two are the ones that have exhibited the highest correlation with annual bond yield changes.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 19:25

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• Man Arrested After Car Plows Into Children Outside English School, Killing 12-Year-Old Boy
  Man Arrested After Car Plows Into Children Outside English School, Killing 12-Year-Old Boy

  Three days after the latest terrorist attack in England on the capital’s London Bridge, a man, 51, was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder after a car he allegedly drove plowed into pedestrians outside Debden Park High School in Essex, killing a 12-year-old boy and injuring five others before the driver fled the scene.

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  The police said two 15-year-old boys, a 13-year-old boy, a girl of 16 and a 53-year-old woman were either treated at the scene or rushed to hospital following the ordeal.

  The incident happened at about 3:20 p.m. on Monday when police were called to reports that a number of pedestrians had been struck by a silver Ford KA near Debden Park High School in Loughton, a town about 21 kilometers (13 miles) northeast of London.

  #BREAKING: major story developing:
  A car drove in a number of children killing 1 and injuring many others outside a school in #Essex England.
  Driver drove off, police are searching for the vehicle. pic.twitter.com/hWv6syxUfA

  — News flash (@BRNewsFlash) December 2, 2019

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  “A 12-year-old local boy was taken to hospital, where he sadly died,” Essex Police said in a statement. Five others suffered non-life threatening injuries: two 15-year-old boys, one 13-year-old boy, one 16-year-old girl, and a 53-year-old woman.

  “We believe that the collision was deliberate and as such we have launched a murder investigation,” Police Chief Superintendent Tracey Harman said on late Monday night.

  “We are investigating whether or not this incident may be connected to another incident nearby.”

  Police also revealed checks are being made to see if there is a connection to a similar incident, reported to be at Roding Valley High School, earlier in the day.

  Before the arrest, Harman said police had launched a search for a local man, 51-year-old Terry Glover, in connection with the attack. “We’ve searched a number of addresses this evening in an attempt to find him and the searches for him [and the vehicle] are continuing,” she said. A possible motive was not immediately known.

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  Helen Gascoyne, the school’s head, said the community is ‘devastated’ by the death of one of its students.

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 19:15

  Tags

  Law Crime

  

• Tesla Sells More Products It Doesn't (Yet) Make, Than Products It Does
  Tesla Sells More Products It Doesn’t (Yet) Make, Than Products It Does

  Submitted by Gordon Johnson of GLJ Research

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  A few things we think are worth considering when it comes to TSLA – out of the 9 products they’ve announced and sell, they only actively make 3 of them (and demand for those three products appear to have peaked) while the other 6 products they sell are vaporware, i.e., products that do not exist – yes, you heard that right:

  TSLA’s current cars in production include:

  • Model 3 (ASPs and units are in severe decline, and sales were down -49% y/y in Oct. in its biggest market, the USA)
  • Model X (sales have collapsed in both the US and globally)
  • Model S (same as Model X)

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  Meanwhile, here are TSLA’s current cars/products not in production:

  • Roadster (unveil was 2yrs ago)
  • Semi (unveil was 2yrs ago)
  • Model Y (TSLA refuses to mention how many pre-orders they’ve received here)
  • Cybertruck ($100 fully-refundable deposits on a car that will likely cost $60K, or  0.167%, is the equivalent of someone putting $1.67 toward an $1,000 i-Phone & apple calling it an order)
  • ATV
  • FSD (to be FSD, TSLA would have had to achieve level 5 autonomy… they’re at level 2)

  So… TSLA has more vaporware products (i.e., stuff that doesn’t exist) than real products for sale; and, it’s real products are seeing large negative y/y growth currently.

  Oh… and what about E. Musk’s promise that:

  • TSLA would have flying cars (he made this claim 322 days ago),
  • TSLA would create break pads that never need to be replaced (he made this claim 336 days ago),
  • TSLA would have a base on Mars in 2028 (he made this claim 432 days ago),
  • TSLA would have a one hour body shop (this claim happened 437 days ago),
  • he would fix the water in all Flint houses above FDA levels (he made this claim 504 days ago),
  • there would be no more mass layoffs (533 days, and multiple layoffs, ago), etc.?

  The point is… each claim he makes is picked up by every media site and taken as “gospel”; so, maybe the media should go to this website (link) and start holding him to some of these claims?

   

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 19:05

  Tags

  Business Finance

  

• China Bans US Military Visits To Hong Kong, Sanctions US NGOs Over Support For Protests 
  China Bans US Military Visits To Hong Kong, Sanctions US NGOs Over Support For Protests 

  China’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that it had suspended all US warships and military aircraft from visiting Hong Kong, and also declared sanctions against several US non-government organizations (NGOs) for their support of pro-democracy protesters, reported Bloomberg.

  “In response to the unreasonable behaviors of the US side, the Chinese government decides to suspend the review of requests by US military ships and aircraft to visit Hong Kong as of today,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said.

  Beijing has suspended requests by US military ships and aircraft to visit #HongKong. MOFA Spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that a number of US-based non-governmental organizations, including NED, will be subjected to sanctions from China, in today’s press briefing. pic.twitter.com/LvknrixIrD

  — China Daily (@ChinaDaily) December 2, 2019

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  China last week announced that it would make firm countermeasures to President Trump’s signed Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act that went into law.

  The new law permits Washington to impose new sanctions or revoke Hong Kong’s special trading status over China’s human rights violations.

  The Foreign Ministry’s response to the signing of the bill last week accused Washington of “bullying behavior,” “disregarding the facts,” and “publicly supporting violent criminals.”

  Chunying said that “we urge the US to correct the mistakes and stop interfering in our internal affairs. China will take further steps if necessary to uphold Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity and China’s sovereignty.”

  About a year ago, on positive signs that a deal was likely at the 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit, China allowed the USS Ronald Reagan and other ships in its strike group to dock in Hong kong. Now it seems that China will force Hong Kong to deny port calls attempted by the US.

  Chunying also said the sanctioned NGOs include the National Endowment for Democracy, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, Human Rights Watch, and Freedom House.

  “They shoulder some responsibility for the chaos in Hong Kong, and they should be sanctioned and pay the price,” said added.

  China’s yuan weakened to 7.04 per dollar, the lowest level in at least a week, following the statement from the Foreign Ministry on Monday morning.

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  China Central Television reported that Beijing could take further actions on the US if there’s more interference.

  Global Times editor noted that Beijing would come up with additional sanctions against the US if the Trump administration continues to interfere in Hong Kong.

  These measures will have actual impact on related organizations and departments of the US side. It shows China will not allow the US to wantonly make waves on Hong Kong issue. If the US side continues to provoke over Hong Kong, China will come up with follow-up action. pic.twitter.com/e8H946fVL9

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) December 2, 2019

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  And as we noted last week, China spares trade in the first and second retaliations to the Hong Kong bill. Though that might not be the case in upcoming retaliations as the trade war is likely to deepen. 

  
  Tyler Durden
  
  Mon, 12/02/2019 – 18:45

  Tags

  Politics

  

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