- The UK & The EU Should Prevent Mutual Assured Damage
The UK & The EU Should Prevent Mutual Assured Damage
Authored by Jean Pisani-Ferry via Project Syndicate,
Nothing can be taken for granted in the United Kingdom these days, but it is now very likely that 2020 will be the year when Brexit finally happens. A majority of UK citizens will probably be relieved to bring this seemingly endless agony to a close, while most European leaders will likely be glad not to have to argue over another postponement. But questions will remain.
To the question of “Who lost Britain?”, the answer must be, first and foremost, Britain itself. Whatever mistakes the European Union’s other 27 members may have made, they cannot be held responsible for the extraordinary behavior of the UK’s three equally amateurish governments of the last five years.
Yet, there are deeper lessons to be drawn from what happened in Britain. The first, as Wolfgang Münchau pointed out in the Financial Times, is that the battle in the UK over EU membership was lost long before it was fought. Since the 1990s, leading pundits and media outlets have routinely portrayed the EU as a stifling bureaucracy obsessed with expanding its own power; few senior politicians have dared to confront such prejudices.
Unfortunately, similar trends are currently visible in other core EU countries. In France, 56% of citizens – as many as in the UK – tend “not to trust” the EU. Working-class voters are especially negative. Confidence in the EU is stronger in Germany, but the European Central Bank’s policies are under attack. For years, horror stories circulated about hidden transfers to the South. Germany’s best-selling tabloid Bild now claims that German savers lost €120 billion ($132 billion) during the tenure of former ECB President Mario Draghi (or “Count Draghila,” as the editors called him). Many politicians, like their British counterparts before them, find it easier to pander to such perceptions than to oppose them. This is paving the way for future backlashes.
At the same time, the EU should not exempt itself from a bit of soul-searching. When the UK’s then-prime minister, David Cameron, sought a temporary limit on immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, it might have been advisable to work out a solution with him. And after the EU started Brexit negotiations with Cameron’s successor, Theresa May, it might have been wise to respond to her calls for a “bespoke” arrangement for the UK. Since the June 2016 Brexit referendum, the EU27 have been surprisingly united, remarkably consistent, and astoundingly bereft of a strategy. Their stance has been motivated not so much by a desire to limit mutual damage, but rather by the fear that any softening in negotiations with the UK could lead to further fragmentation. Their apparent strength concealed internal weakness.
Bygones are bygones. The EU’s priorities now should be to keep mutually beneficial cooperation alive and to avert the danger of the UK pursuing an aggressive regulatory competition strategy.
Joint defense initiatives involving the UK and continental partners will most likely survive, cooperation within the multilateral system will almost certainly continue, and ad hoc projects will probably flourish. But the big casualty of Brexit risks being economic integration with the European single market.
A screw is a screw, and a bolt is a bolt. But the UK no longer produces screws and bolts. It is a major exporter of banking, insurance, accounting, communication, and professional services, half of which go to the EU. Moreover, most of these services are regulated.
If the Brexiteers’ “take back control” slogan means anything, it implies substituting UK laws for EU legislation. On the day after Brexit, Britain’s regulatory regime will be identical to that of its EU trading partners, because the UK’s 2018 Repeal Bill copy-pasted all EU laws into domestic legislation. But as the UK Parliament gradually amends these laws, and the EU introduces new laws of its own, the two legal systems will start diverging. The question is: how far can they diverge without endangering economic linkages and destroying prosperity?
There are two possibilities.
One is that the UK adopts laws that differ from those in the EU but are based on the same core principles. For example, there can be different ways to guarantee that insurance contracts offer the same degree of consumer protection, or to uphold bioethics standards. In that case, UK national laws would embody different approaches to regulation, and yet create only limited obstacles to trade in services.
The second possibility, however, is that the UK attempts to undercut EU legislation. In this scenario – often dubbed “Singapore-upon-Thames” – Britain would impose less stringent standards for financial stability, be softer on data protection and, or perhaps relax its labor laws, in the hope of attracting more investors and selling cheaper services. Such a move would rightly be regarded as uncooperative by the UK’s European partners, and would result in the EU cutting off market access for British services exporters (most of which currently supply their continental clients directly from their UK base).
Which route will Britain follow?
Ideally, it would agree with the EU on common principles and credibly commit to sticking to them. But because some of the most adamant Brexit supporters openly dream of completing the Thatcher revolution and turning the UK into a low-regulation paradise, the EU is understandably wary. There is a serious risk of a negative spiral of aggressive British deregulation and forceful EU tightening, with damaging consequences for services trade.
The EU should not ask the UK to copy slavishly its legislation. But it should make clear that aggressive regulatory competition is unacceptable and present the UK government with a black-and-white choice: either it agrees to commit to common principles and exercise regulatory self-restraint in order to maintain good access to the European market, or it refuses – and exposes British firms to a severe, across-the-board curb on their ability to export to Europe.
Assuming Brexit happens, future historians will probably remember 2020 as the year when an enfeebled and vulnerable Europe chose to make itself feebler and more vulnerable. The task for its leaders now is to avoid making matters even worse.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/04/2019 – 02:00 - Russian Gas Mega-Pipeline To China Goes Online As Putin & Xi Hail Closer Ties
Russian Gas Mega-Pipeline To China Goes Online As Putin & Xi Hail Closer Ties
Late Monday Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin jointly launched the major unprecedented cooperative project that had been years in the making called the ‘Power of Siberia’ gas pipeline.
The China-Russia east-route pipeline is now providing China with Russian natural gas, which according to Chinese state media is expected to reach 5 billion cubic meters in 2020 and increase to 38 billion cubic meters annually from 2024.
Crucially, S&P Global Platts estimates that total sales through the pipeline is projected to meet nearly 10% of China’s entire gas supply by 2022, ensuring vital energy security as Beijing continues to feel the pressure and uncertainty of the trade war with Washington.
A Chinese section of the China-Russia East Route natural gas pipeline in Heihe, China. Image source: CNN/Getty Images The ceremony to officially bring the pipeline online was held as a video call between Xi and Putin was underway. Xi told Putin: “The East-route natural gas pipeline is a landmark project of China-Russia energy cooperation and a paradigm of deep convergence of both countries’ interests and win-win cooperation.”
The deal had been cemented in May 2014 when Russian gas giant Gazprom signed a 30-year contract with China National Petroleum Corp, after which the pipeline agreements were signed with both leaders present in Shanghai in later 2014.
Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced to both leaders that the pipeline had been opened via video link. “Gas is flowing to the gas transmission system of the People’s Republic of China,” he said.
A 30-year deal was signed by Putin and Xi in 2014, and while a final figure has not been announced, it is believed to be worth more than $400 billion. — CNN
Gazprom will oversee operation of the mammoth pipeline which runs more than 8,100 kilometers (5,000 miles) across the two countries.
President #Putin and Chinese President #Xi Jinping launch “Power of Siberia” gas pipeline.
This is a breakthrough in the energy market that will have major geopolitical repercussions. pic.twitter.com/ZKBXpe9RF4— Enrico Ivanov (@Russ_Warrior) December 2, 2019
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Xi hailed the pipeline’s inauguration as signaling a new start in future China-Russian cooperation and partnerships. And as Putin noted in his comments, the pipeline’s launch date coincided with the 70th anniversary of Russia-China diplomatic ties.
Putin also projected that 1 trillion cubic meters of natural gas will flow through the pipeline from Russia over the next 30 years.
The pipeline crosses over to China from Russia’s Blagoveshchensk, also site of the first major road bridge between the two.
Via Gazprom “That step brings the Russian-Chinese strategic partnership in the energy sector to a whole new level,” Putin stated to TASS news agency.
In a worrisome sign for Washington as Moscow further cements its energy dominance in the east, the ‘Power of Siberia’ is but the first of a planned for three total major pipeline projects. It will later be joined by ‘TurkStream’ and ‘Nordstream2’, according to official statements.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/04/2019 – 01:00 - Operation Condor 2.0: After Bolivia Coup, Trump Dubs Nicaragua "National Security Threat" And Targets Mexico
Operation Condor 2.0: After Bolivia Coup, Trump Dubs Nicaragua “National Security Threat” And Targets Mexico
Authored by Ben Norton via TheGrayZone.com,
After presiding over a far-right coup in Bolivia, the US dubbed Nicaragua a “national security threat” and announced new sanctions, while Trump designated drug cartels in Mexico as “terrorists” and refused to rule out military intervention.
One successful coup against a democratically elected socialist president is not enough, it seems.
Immediately after overseeing a far-right military coup in Bolivia on November 10, the Trump administration set its sights once again on Nicaragua, whose democratically elected Sandinista government defeated a violent right-wing coup attempt in 2018.
Washington dubbed Nicaragua a threat to US national security, and announced that it will be expanding its suffocating sanctions on the tiny Central American nation.
Trump is also turning up the heat on Mexico, baselessly linking the country to terrorism and even hinting at potential military intervention. The moves come as the country’s left-leaning President Andrés Manuel López Obrador warns of right-wing attempts at a coup.
As Washington’s rightist allies in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador are desperately beating back massive grassroots uprisings against neoliberal austerity policies and yawning inequality gaps, the United States is ramping up its aggression against the region’s few remaining progressive governments.
These moves have led left-wing forces in Latin America to warn of a 21st-century revival of Operation Condor, the Cold War era campaign of violent subterfuge and US support for right-wing dictatorships across the region.
Trump admin declares Nicaragua a ‘national security threat’
A day after the US-backed far-right coup in Bolivia, the White House released a statement applauding the military putsch and making it clear that two countries were next on Washington’s target list: “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” Trump declared.
On November 25, the Trump White House then quietly issued a statement characterizing Nicaragua as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
This prolonged for an additional year an executive order Trump had signed in 2018 declaring a state of “national emergency” on the Central American country.
Trump’s 2018 declaration came after a failed violent right-wing coup attempt in Nicaragua. The US government has funded and supported many of the opposition groups that sought to topple elected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and cheered them on as they sought to overthrow him.
The 2018 national security threat designation was quickly followed by economic warfare. In December the US Congress approved the NICA Act without any opposition. This legislation gave Trump the authority to impose sanctions on Nicaragua, and prevents international financial institutions from doing business with Managua.
Trump’s new 2019 statement spewed outlandish propaganda against Nicaragua, referring to its democratically elected government — which for decades has been targeted for overthrow by Washington — as a supposedly violent and corrupt “regime.”
This executive order is similar to one made by President Barack Obama in 2015, which designated Venezuela as a threat to US national security.
Both orders were used to justify the unilateral imposition of suffocating economic sanctions. And Trump’s renewal of the order paves the way for an escalated economic attack on Nicaragua.
The extension received negligible coverage in mainstream English-language corporate media, but right-wing Spanish-language outlets in Latin America heavily amplified it.
And opposition activists are gleefully cheering on the intensification of Washington’s hybrid warfare against Managua.
More aggressive US sanctions against Nicaragua
Voice of America (VOA), the US government’s main foreign broadcasting service, noted that the extension of the executive order will be followed with more economic attacks.
Washington’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Carlos Trujillo, told VOA, “The pressure against Nicaragua is going to continue.”
The OAS representative added that Trump will be announcing new sanctions against the Nicaraguan government in the coming weeks.
VOA stated clearly that “Nicaragua, along with Cuba and Venezuela, is one of the Latin American countries whose government Trump has made a priority to put diplomatic and economic pressure on to bring about regime change.”
This is not just rhetoric. The US Department of the Treasury updated the Nicaragua-related sanctions section of its website as recently as November 8.
And in September, the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a “more comprehensive set of regulations,” strengthening the existing sanctions on Nicaragua.
Voice of America’s report quoted several right-wing Nicaraguans who openly called for more US pressure against their country.
Bianca Jagger, a celebrity opposition activist formerly married to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, called on the US to impose sanctions on Nicaragua’s military in particular.
“The Nicaraguan military has not been touched because they [US officials] are hoping that the military will like act the military in Bolivia,” Jagger said, referring to the military officials who violently overthrew Bolivia’s democratically elected president.
Many of these military leaders had been trained at the US government’s School of the Americas, a notorious base of subversion dating back to Operation Condor. Latin American media has been filled in recent days with reports that Bolivian soldiers were paid $50,000 and generals were paid up to $1 million to carry out the putsch.
🇳🇮No se ha sancionado el ejército de #Nicaragua “porque tal vez tienen esperanza de que el ejército se va a conducir como el de Bolivia”, @BiancaJagger. https://t.co/43BPEjmEEp pic.twitter.com/6KaT7NVjko
— Voz de América (@VOANoticias) November 26, 2019
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VOA added that “in the case of the Central American government [of Nicaragua], the effect that sanctions can have can be greater because it is a more economically vulnerable country.”
VOA quoted Roberto Courtney, a prominent exiled right-wing activist and executive director of the opposition group Ethics and Transparency, which monitors elections in Nicaragua and is supported by the US government’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Courtney, who claims to be a human rights activist, salivated over the prospects of US economic war on his country, telling VOA, “There is a bit of a difference [between Nicaragua and Bolivia] … the economic vulnerability makes it more likely that the sanctions will have an effect.”
Courtney, who was described by VOA as an “expert on the electoral process,” added, “If there is a stick, there must also be a carrot.” He said the OAS could help apply diplomatic and political pressure against Nicaragua’s government.
These unilateral American sanctions are illegal under international law, and considered an act of war. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has characterized US economic warfare “financial terrorism,” explaining that it disproportionately targets civilians in order to turn them against their government.
Top right-wing Nicaraguan opposition groups applauded Trump for extending the executive order and for pledging new sanctions against their country.
Estados Unidos amplió por un año más la vigencia de la Declaración de Emergencia Nacional con respecto a la Situación en Nicaragua. https://t.co/Xq8m8UWVfr
— Alianza Cívica Nicaragua (@AlianzaCivicaNi) November 25, 2019
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The Nicaraguan Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, an opposition front group that brings together numerous opposition groups, several of which are also funded by the US government’s NED, welcomed the order.
Trump dubs drug cartels in Mexico “terrorists,” refuses to rule out drone strikes
While the US targeting of Nicaragua and Venezuela’s governments is nothing new, Donald Trump is setting his sights on a longtime US ally in Mexico.
In 2018, Mexican voters made history when they elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president in a landslide. López Obrador, who is often referred to by his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in more than five decades. He ran on a progressive campaign pledging to boost social spending, cut poverty, combat corruption, and even decriminalize drugs.
AMLO is wildly popular in Mexico. In February, he had a record-breaking 86 percent approval rating. And he has earned this widespread support by pledging to combat neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy.
“The neoliberal economic model has been a disaster, a calamity for the public life of the country,” AMLO has declared. “The child of neoliberalism is corruption.”
When he unveiled his multibillion-dollar National Development Plan, López Obrador announced the end to “the long night of neoliberalism.”
AMLO’s left-wing policies have caused shockwaves in Washington, which has long relied on neoliberal Mexican leaders ensuring a steady cheap exploitable labor base and maintaining a reliable market for US goods and open borders for US capital and corporations.
On November 27 — a day after declaring Nicaragua a “national security threat” — Trump announced that the US government will be designating Mexican drug cartels as “terrorist organizations.”
Such a designation could pave the way for direct US military intervention in Mexico.
Trump revealed this new policy in an interview with right-wing Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. “Are you going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror groups and start hitting them with drones and things like that?” O’Reilly asked.
The US president refused to rule out drone strikes or other military action against drug cartels in Mexico.
President @realDonaldTrump tells me he is 90 days into the process of designating Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations – which would give US forces more leverage in taking them out. pic.twitter.com/ewSJMkt6rr
— Bill O’Reilly (@BillOReilly) November 27, 2019
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Trump’s announcement seemed to surprise the Mexican government, which immediately called for a meeting with the US State Department.
The designation was particularly ironic considering some top drug cartel leaders in Mexico have long-standing ties to the US government. The leaders of the notoriously brutal cartel the Zetas, for instance, were originally trained in counter-insurgency tactics by the US military.
Throughout the Cold War, the US government armed, trained, and funded right-wing death squads throughout Latin America, many of which were involved in drug trafficking. The CIA also used drug money to fund far-right counter-insurgency paramilitary groups in Central America.
These tactics were also employed in the Middle East and South Asia. The United States armed, trained, and funded far-right Islamist extremists in Afghanistan in the 1980s in order to fight the Soviet Union. These same US-backed Salafi-jihadists then founded al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This strategy was later repeated in the US wars on Libya and Syria. ISIS commander Omar al-Shishani, to take one example, had been trained by the US military and enjoyed direct support from Washington when he was fighting against Russia.
The Barack Obama administration also oversaw a campaign called Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, in which the US government helped send thousands of guns to cartels in Mexico.
Mexican journalist Alina Duarte explained that, with the Trump administration’s designation of cartels as terrorists, “They are creating the idea that Mexico represents a threat to their national security.”
“Should we start talking about the possibility of a coup against Lopez Obrador in Mexico?” Duarte asked.
She noted that the US corporate media has embarked on an increasingly ferocious campaign to demonize AMLO, portraying the democratically elected president as a power-hungry aspiring dictator who is supposedly wrecking Mexico’s economy.
Duarte discussed the issue of US interference in Mexican politics in an interview with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, on their podcast Moderate Rebels:
Now, a whisper campaign over fears that the right-wing opposition may try to overthrow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is spreading across Mexico.
AMLO himself has publicly addressed the rumors, making it clear that he will not tolerate any discussion of coups.
“How wrong the conservatives and their hawks are,” López Obrador tweeted on November 2. Referencing the 1913 assassination of progressive President Francisco Madero, who had been a leader of the Mexican Revolution, AMLO wrote, “Now is different.”
“Another coup d’état will now be allowed,” he declared.
Ahora es distinto. Aunque son otras realidades y no debe caerse en la simplicidad de las comparaciones, la transformación que encabezo cuenta con el respaldo de una mayoría libre y consciente, justa y amante de la legalidad y de la paz, que no permitiría otro golpe de Estado.
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) November 2, 2019
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In recent months, as fears of a coup intensify, López Obrador has swung even further to the left, directly challenging the US government and asserting an independent foreign policy that contrasts starkly to the subservience of his predecessors.
AMLO’s government has rejected US efforts to delegitimize Venezuela’s leftist government, throwing a wrench in Washington’s efforts to impose right-wing activist Juan Guaidó as coup leader.
AMLO has welcomed Ecuador’s ousted socialist leader Rafael Correa and hosted Argentina’s left-leaning Alberto Fernández for his first foreign trip after winning the presidency.
In October, López Obrador even welcomed Cuban President Díaz-Canel to Mexico for a historic visit.
Trump’s Operation Condor 2.0
For Washington, an independent and left-wing Mexico is intolerable.
In a speech for right-wing, MAGA hat-wearing Venezuelans in Miami, Florida in February, Trump ranted against socialism for nearly an hour, threatened the remaining leftist countries in Latin America with regime change.
“The days of socialism and communism are numbered not only in Venezuela, but in Nicaragua and in Cuba as well,” he declared, adding that socialism would never be allowed to take root in heart of capitalism in the United States.
While Trump has claimed he seeks to withdraw from wars in the Middle East (when he is not occupying its oil fields), he has ramped up aggressive US intervention in Latin America.
Though the neoconservative war hawk John Bolton is no longer overseeing US foreign policy, Elliott Abrams remains firmly embedded in the State Department, dusting off his Iran-Contra playbook to decimate socialism in Latin America all over again.
During the height of the Cold War, Operation Condor thousands of dissidents were murdered, and hundreds of thousands more were disappeared, tortured, or imprisoned with the assistance of the US intelligence apparatus.
Today, as Latin America is increasingly viewed through the lens of a new Cold War, Operation Condor is being reignited with new mechanisms of sabotage and subversion in play. The mayhem has only begun.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 23:50 - Drug Cartels Invade Quiet Mexican Town Packed With Americans
Drug Cartels Invade Quiet Mexican Town Packed With Americans
The failures of the nationalist Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) are starting to be realized in a huge way.
First, the economy is decelerating, second, murders across the country are hitting record highs, and third, there are small towns filled with Americans that cartels are now invading.
Mexico’s economy entered a recession in 1H19, AMLO promised to “Make Mexico Great Again,” though an economic downturn has unfolded and has derailed his beautiful plans of revitalization.
An imploding economy comes at a time of worsening cartel wars and record homicides, a story we’ve been documenting for the past five years. So far this year, 28,741 people have been killed as the socio-economic crisis deepens.
President Trump is ready to designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist groups, and this will one day allow the US military to fight drug cartels on Mexican soil.
And as Bloomberg reports Tuesday, drug cartels have poured into San Miguel de Allende, a colonial-era city in Mexico’s central state, home to 160,000 folks, and approximately 10,000 Americans and Canadians.
What’s currently happening are violent drug gangs are now a demanding property tax on small businesses and have flooded the town with cocaine, resulting in turf wars and a jump in homicides.
The chaos began several months ago, but before that, the small town was peaceful. Now people are dying in a hail of gunfire every week.
Cartel members are killing non-compliant business owners who refuse to pay the property tax.
Manuel, a local restaurant manager, told Bloomberg that this kind of crime was unimaginable over the summer. “It’s still hard to believe” that there’s so much chaos across the city.
San Miguel has joined the list of popular destinations, such as Cabo San Lucas, Cancun, and Mexico City, where drug wars have erupted over the last several years.
ALMO’s laissez-faire approach in crime-fighting has widely been viewed as a failure.
“Security is a nation-wide problem now, and unfortunately no one can escape it,” said Javier Quiroga, head of the bar and cantina association in Guanajuato, the state where San Miguel is located. “It’s getting harder for people to go about their regular activities.”
Local reports said cartels had not attacked the resort part of town, popular with tourists and ex-pats. Large multinationals, such as Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co., who have manufacturing facilities in the area, have also reported that cartels aren’t disturbing them.
At the moment, cartels are only targeting small business owners, but that can certainly change.
The surge in cartel violence has led to hotel occupancy rates declining in August, down 15% over the year, according to government data.
Some shop keepers have fled the city after failing to pay cartel property taxes. Others have been murdered.
Cartel members have dropped off sacks of cocaine to shop owners, demanding them pay for the drugs.
Bloomberg notes that one reason for the surge in violence is due to “the government crackdown on fuel thefts in the region spurred cartels to look for alternative income sources to finance their operations and turf wars.”
Cartels “are looking to make a name for themselves and to get some money quick,” said Gladys McCormick, a professor of Mexico-U.S. relations at Syracuse University in New York. “Extortion is the easiest way to do that.”
McCormick said the violence in San Miguel “is a dark cloud on the horizon because it heralds that nowhere is safe anymore. The fact there is such an international presence in San Miguel de Allende guarantees that the fear felt inside the city will echo beyond Mexico.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 23:30 - History Was Supposed To End. What Happened?
History Was Supposed To End. What Happened?
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,
Anyone paying close attention at the turn of the 21st century could foresee the impending failure of the social-democratic consensus throughout the developed world.
The exalted experts who rose to power in the postwar period built gigantic state-based systems of social management and control and took over vast swaths of private society, imposing planning schemes across many sectors of economic life. They imagined themselves to be permanent fixtures of the socio-economic system. After all, this approach won the war (so they said), so why couldn’t it win the peace?
But there was a problem: over time nothing worked as it was supposed to. There were massive internal contradictions within the model, as Amity Shlaes shows in her new book on the Great Society. The new systems relied on bureaucratic command, not market signals. There was another problem: they were hugely imposing on people’s lives and property, and people don’t like that. Or rather: they will put up with it so long as they perceive that the benefits exceed or at least match the costs.
Building that apparatus – the efforts really began about a century ago, extended through the New Deal, but became a full model of social control in the postwar period – depended fundamentally on its successful sales pitch: these were programs built by workers for the sake of social justice, for the poor, for the marginalized, against plutocratic elites.
But as F.A. Hayek had long demonstrated about socialism, the movement was in fact nothing of the sort. It was originated by elites and largely served elites: intellectuals, the people who knew better than the masses, the people in power or wanting power, the winners in the game of political manipulation.
These systems reached their breaking point by the late 1970s. For the following three decades we observed piecemeal reform efforts such as those that would re-incentivize investment and work, privatize labor relations, control rates of money printing, deregulate, bring back market forces, cut taxes, and re-empower society.
By the time socialism in China, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe were abruptly swept off the map – a devastating blow to the whole model of top-down control – there arose an inconvenient problem. Many institutions constructed in developed capitalist societies were of the same mode: centralized, managed by elites, vastly more expensive than the benefit, ill-managed, and ultimately unworkable.
The dramatic events abroad further humbled the left in the developed world. In the 1990s, the socialist left mostly went into hiding, as even the Democrats in the U.S. and the Labour Party in the U.K. pursued real reforms to welfare systems. It seemed like everyone had made his or her peace with markets and free enterprise as the only system that truly provides the goods.
As always with politics, the reform efforts were too little too late. Public anger at the status quo built until the end of the century even as private enterprise effectively constructed a completely new system based on information and decentralized control. Ten years later, we had the app economy, the ubiquitous cell phone, and globalized commerce to the point that more than 60% of the GNP of the world was attributable to imports and exports. It seemed like there was no going back.
Looking at this sweep of events led liberals like me to conclude that history was on the right path. The state was failing in every area and less popular than ever. There were too many anomalies to be sustained. Social consensus was breaking down for a simple reason: the ethos of social democracy presumes that society should operate like a large clan, an impossibility in the context of a modernized globalized economy with mass migration. Politicians came to be loathed alongside the bureaucrats that managed the systems that political forces created. In the course of a half century, public confidence in government had slipped from two-thirds to one-tenth of the public.
The experts we put in charge of the state apparatus to rule us through compulsion and coercion had proven to be an enormous flop. Their wars on everything from poverty to drugs to illiteracy to terrorism had made each of the targetted areas actually worse, while market forces themselves – mercifully neglected by the state – were creating vast new technologies in the newly dawned digital age and creating glorious new opportunities for everyone. It was markets, not welfare, that lifted billions out of poverty, opened up information economies, created dazzling new modes of communicating and living, and blasted open the possibilities for progress like we’ve never seen in human history.
But we liberals proved naive in our belief that history would march along a linear path toward the light. We had presumed some or another version of the “end of history” thesis that the next stage of history was moving us toward human liberty and that the state would realize its obsolescence and die a merciful death.
Looking back, we can see that the very same naive confidence in the capacity of human beings to learn from experience also afflicted the liberals of the late 19th century. Surrounded by the products of liberty, innovations that were dramatically changing the world and leading humanity to a new level of prosperity and peace – flight, internal combustion, the commercialization of steel – they rested on their laurels with a sense that their victory was somehow baked into the narrative story of human evolution. Then came World War I. They had clearly grown overconfident.
The equivalent happened to us in the last half decade. My own opinions had previously trended in the direction of believing that everyone would see the obvious failures of the state as an institution and thus would the progress toward liberty continue in the right direction. Instead, something remarkable and unexpected happened (though it is all perfectly obvious in retrospect): the reaction to the failure of leftist-style social democracy was not to embrace liberty but rather to rally around the emergence of a new form of authoritarianism that sought to govern with rightist-style rhetoric.
Which is to say: the state reinvented itself to live another day, forestalling the hoped-for push to emancipate humanity from the constructed oppressions of the last one hundred years.
The new movements came to power under a global surge of populist agitation. Trump in the US is the most obvious case but a deeper look shows that he was only one player among many in countries all over the world. Rightist movements that were against the old order but for a new form of state-imposed order rose up in Europe, Russia, and Latin America too.
I’ve called this new form of populism (which is a method of rhetoric and a means of retaining power) “right-wing collectivism.” It feeds off public resentment of the previous type of elite management of the social order. It rejects the universalism (globalism) of the social-democratic way and embraces instead a new form of nationalism that bleeds into every application of reactionary statism: racism, religious bigotry, misogyny, intolerance. It is invariably restrictionist on immigration and protectionist on trade. It celebrates all the things the left puts down such as faith and family but demands that these institutions serve the common national project under a Carlyle-style great leader. It brings back the leadership principle and executive rule. It is as ill-liberal as that which it replaces but not obviously so since this style of governance is more tolerant toward finance capital and nominally capitalistic production, though also celebratory of industrial planning.
Its champions called the model the “politics of human nature” without noting that there are both lower and higher angels of nature: the rightist brand of collectivism was all about tapping into the lowest instincts.
The problem was not only the right. What happens on the right somehow always finds its mirror image on the left. The rise of this new form of rightist extremism further fed the resurgence of the same on the left, which similarly tried an experiment with the populist style. Down with the rich. Pillage the millionaires and billionaires. Impose new global plans of economic management. A green new deal. Punitive taxation. The return of socialism itself!
The whole thing has been incredible to watch, but this is what happens: one form of extremist paradigm shift creates an appetite for another form, which is precisely why several astute observers have noted the strange overlap in the proposed policies of Trump/Warren/Sanders: statism becomes a kind of echo chamber of voices that seeks control by seizing the machinery of power for their own purposes.
In the end, every form of state planning uses the same methods with the same collectivist goal even if the details change depending on the constituency being served.
The question that has been on my mind constantly for these last five years has been: when does this all end? At what point does the populist model die the death too?
I must give credit to David Brooks for drawing my attention to a trend this year that I had missed. His column came and went in the flurry of minute-by-minute information flows but, to my mind, this is one of the most important writings I’ve seen on politics in years. His prescience here could define the look of the next half decade.
Have you noticed that the world is on fire?…
The populist/authoritarian regimes are losing legitimacy. The members of the urban middle class in places like Hong Kong and Indonesia are rising up to protect the political and social freedoms.
These days, it doesn’t take much to set off a giant wave of anger. In Lebanon it was a proposed tax on WhatsApp. In Saudi Arabia the government raised taxes on hookah restaurants. In France, Zimbabwe, Ecuador and Iran it was rising fuel prices. In Chile it was a proposed 4 percent rise in subway fares.
The world is unsteady and ready to blow. The overall message is that the flaws of liberal globalization are real, but the populist alternative is not working.
Bingo! Here’s the problem. The populist must rely on exactly the same means of control as their managerial elite predecessors from the social-democratic project. The state is the state and there is no other kind. Control is control and force is force, and they breed as much popular resentment as the other managerial type from which populism emerged as a reaction.
State control does not work. It never has. It can’t because, as it turns out, the people who manage state programs are no smarter than the people they manage; in fact, it is worse because the managers lack access to reliable signals of market forces. Also, a revolution on this scale is bigger than another person who purports to lead it. Rise to power in a revolt and prepare to be the next scapegoat.
That is precisely what is happening right now. The new movements of protest are only nominally about left and right, despite the media attempt to make them fit those categories. As Brooks says, “the protests in all these places are leaderless, so it’s unrealistic to expect them to have policy agendas. But the big question is, what’s next? What comes after the failure of populism?”
He doesn’t dare point to the actual answer because he can’t come around to facing it, because doing so would amount to admitting that a century-long intellectual project is an enormous failure. There is an answer to the question of which paradigm best suits the needs of a modern, progressing, global, diverse world order powered by technological innovation that enshrines human choice as a first principle. The answer is now what it has always been: a free society protected from the wiles of political machines through extreme restraints on the state, any state of any flavor, whether managerial or populist.
The next paradigm of history – once we stop experimenting with mad ideologies, populist reactions, fake paths to manufactured progress, and top-down means of enforcement – needs to be human liberty itself.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 23:10 - Warren: I'll Be The "Last American President Elected By Electoral College"
Warren: I’ll Be The “Last American President Elected By Electoral College”
Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren tweeted a short clip of her speaking at a townhall event over the weekend, indicating that she would eliminate the Electoral College and allow the popular vote to choose the president in 2024, basically implying a massive overhaul of the US Consitution would be coming if she became president, reported The Daily Caller. “My goal is to get elected—but I plan to be the last American president to be elected by the Electoral College. I want my second term to be elected by direct vote,” she tweeted.
My goal is to get elected—but I plan to be the last American president to be elected by the Electoral College. I want my second term to be elected by direct vote. pic.twitter.com/a2Lj2a9F0F
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) December 2, 2019
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Warren told dozens of people at an Iowa town hall event that she is ready to “get rid of” the Electoral College and replace it with a popular vote.
“I just think this is how a democracy should work,” she told the townhall. “Call me old-fashioned, but I think the person who gets the most votes should win.”
Warren has mentioned before that she would abolish the Electoral College if she became president. There’s even a section on her website that says, “Presidential candidates should have to ask every American in every part of the country for their vote. Add your name if you agree: It’s time to abolish the Electoral College and to have a national popular vote.”
“Everyone’s vote should count equally — in every election — no matter where they live.
But right now, presidential candidates don’t even go to places like Mississippi, where I was last night, because it’s a deep red state. They also don’t go to deep blue states like California or Massachusetts because they’re not presidential battlegrounds.
I believe presidential candidates should have to ask every American in every part of the country for their vote, not just a few random states that happen to be close,” Warren’s website said further.
Her critics were quick to respond and bashed the unfair election system that has elected Democrats for decades:
My goal is to get elected and then abolish the unfair corrupt system that elected me. https://t.co/d57PGgElX9
— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) December 2, 2019
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Making absurd, completely unrealistic promises is rapidly becoming her specialty. https://t.co/py1s6D84aS
— David French (@DavidAFrench) December 2, 2019
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There are two reasons her “plan” is doomed. The first is that she has no chance of getting elected. …The second would be even harder to overcome. #2020election #ElectoralCollege #ElizabethWarren https://t.co/QKrVUVRDfL
— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) December 2, 2019
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 22:50 - L.A.'s Head Of Homelessness Resigns After 33% Increase in People Sleeping On Streets
L.A.’s Head Of Homelessness Resigns After 33% Increase in People Sleeping On Streets
Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,
Los Angeles’ head of homelessness is resigning after presiding over a 33% increase in homelessness over the course of just five years.
Peter Lynn, head of the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority, announced that he would leave at the end of the year, with the LAHSA having splashed out a total of more than $780 million to no avail.
The city’s homeless population jumped a further 12% from 2018 to 2019 but despite Lynn’s total failure, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti claimed he did an excellent job and oversaw “historic action.”
One wonders how badly Lynn would have had to perform for officials to consider his tenure a failure.
Lynn’s $242,000-a-year role appears to have had little success in addressing not just homelessness, but also the directly related problems of leprosy, typhoid fever and even bubonic plague.
Earlier this year, Dr. Drew Pinsky said the public health situation in America’s second largest city was in utter turmoil.
“We have a complete breakdown of the basic needs of civilization in Los Angeles right now,” said Pinsky.
1.5 per cent of rats in L.A. now carry bubonic plague. If that figure hits 2 per cent, the medieval disease will start jumping to humans.
In other words, if LA doesn’t sort out its trash problem and its homeless problem, the return of bubonic plague is virtually guaranteed.
And don’t even get me started on San Francisco.
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Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 22:30 - "Chill Out About The Candidates": Obama "Does Not Care" If You Like The Nominee, Just Vote Democrat
“Chill Out About The Candidates”: Obama “Does Not Care” If You Like The Nominee, Just Vote Democrat
When it comes to the 2020 elections, the Democrats’ most powerful if ineligible candidate, former president Obama, just can’t quite put his finger on who he wants to be the next democratic president. Two weeks ago, Trump’s predecessor cautioned 2020 Democratic candidates not to move too far to the left – a clear warning not to vote for Warren or Sanders – as messages of sweeping societal and government transformations risk turning off the party’s moderate base, the New York Times reported.
“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision, we also have to be rooted in reality,” said Obama – who told a room of wealthy liberal donors: “Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality.”
“The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”
Even odder has been Obama’s failure of explicitly endorse his own vice president and the on again, off again frontrunner in the democratic primary, Joe Biden.
So as many Democrats look to Obama for inspiration on who to pick amid a field of candidates where nobody sticks out, last week, the former president gave some additional insight into his thought process regarding the coming elections, and last Thusday Obama simply said that he doesn’t care if his fellow Democrats like the 2020 candidate, he just wants them to pull the lever for whoever wins the nomination.
“Everybody needs to chill out about the candidates, but gin up about the prospect of rallying behind whoever emerges from this process,” Obama told tech leaders during a fundraiser in Silicon Valley last Thursday, the Daily Wire reported.
Barack Obama And though he stressed that he was calling for unity, Obama reiterated some of his latent criticism.
“When you listen to the average voter — even ones who are stalwart Democrats, are more independent or low-information voters — they don’t feel that things are working well but they’re also nervous about changes that might take away what little they have,” he said. “So there’s always a balance in politics between hope and fear.”
The event — which featured a top-ticket price of $355,000 — was expected to raise over $3 million for the Democratic National Committee. The fundraiser was hosted at the home of Karla Jurvetson, an ascendant Democratic megadonor in Silicon Valley politics. Other key fundraisers for the event included former Twitter executive Katie Jacobs Stanton and former Obama ambassador Denise Bauer. Stephen Curry, the star point guard of the Golden State Warriors, also attended alongside his wife Ayesha, who spoke at the event.
While there are still 15 candidates running for the Democratic nomination (after the withdrawal of Kamala Harris earlier today), only four are polling in double digits, with most either at 1% or 0%. But Obama said whoever gets the nod should get the vote.
“There will be differences” between the candidates, Obama said, “but I want us to make sure that we keep in mind that, relative to the ultimate goal, which is to defeat a president and a party that has … taken a sharp turn away from a lot of the core traditions and values and institutional commitments that built this country,” those differences are “relatively minor.”
“The field will narrow and there’s going to be one person, and if that is not your perfect candidate and there are certain aspects of what they say that you don’t agree with and you don’t find them completely inspiring the way you’d like, I don’t care,” he said. “Because the choice is so stark and the stakes are so high that you cannot afford to be ambivalent in this race.”
Obama was directly addressing Silicon Valley’s wealthiest Democratic donors, telling them to “chill” in their debate over the party’s candidates, and seeking to ease the tensions among tech billionaires who have broken into separate camps backing Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, and — most surprisingly — Elizabeth Warren, according to recode.
Obama may have his job cut out for him: with many Democratic voters confused or merely bored silly by the current roster of candidates, two newcomers, Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, entered the race adding further to the confusion. Last month, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, drew fewer than 100 people to a South Carolina “Environmental Justice” forum. And she’s a frontrunner!
Meanwhile, Gallup released a poll last week that had some troubling news for Democrats, as only 66% of the party faithful said they’re enthusiastic about the upcoming election. And while for Republicans the number is 65%, “this differed from the typical pattern Gallup has seen over the years, whereby those who identify with the political party of the incumbent president have been less enthusiastic about voting than members of the opposing party,” Gallup wrote.
Ironically, Obama isn’t alone in saying Democrats need to hold their nose when they vote for the eventual nominee. Joe Biden’s wife, Jill, said in August that her husband might not be the best candidate, but told voters “maybe you have to swallow a little bit” and vote for him anyway.
“Your candidate might be better on, I don’t know, health care, than Joe is,” Jill Biden said on MSNBC, “but you’ve got to look at who’s going to win this election, and maybe you have to swallow a little bit and say, ‘OK, I personally like so-and-so better,’ but your bottom line has to be that we have to beat Trump.”
During a campaign stop in New Hampshire, she repeated the point. “I know that not all of you are committed to my husband, and I respect that. But I want you to think about your candidate, his or her electability, and who’s going to win this race. So I think if your goal — I know my goal — is to beat Donald Trump, we have to have someone who can beat him,” she said.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 22:10 - Will Drones Push The Middle East Past The Point Of No Return?
Will Drones Push The Middle East Past The Point Of No Return?
Authored by Jonathan Burden via GlobalRiskInsights.com,
Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) or drones, both armed and unarmed, have altered how states and insurgents conduct warfare in the Middle East. The widespread proliferation of these weapons, combined with the range of capabilities they confer and their potential to alter the logic of escalation between states, may cause significant inter-state conflict to occur.
An increase in proliferation
Since the Cold War, the US has attempted to stop the spread of unmanned systems by pursuing a limited export policy. However, states in the Middle East have responded by either producing their own (Israel, Turkey and Iran) or by importing them (Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the UAE). Perhaps the most troubling development is yet to come; in November the US Defense Secretary, Mark Esper warned that China was beginning to export drones with fully autonomous offensive capabilities. Although China’s policy has been described as ‘ask no questions’, it is constrained by its desire to avoid arming non-state actors and therefore legitimising separatist movements.
Further, declining costs of commercial drones, combined with some DIY ingenuity has meant that groups such as ISIS and the Houthis rebels have been able to field aerial support, a capability that insurgent-type groups have lacked in the past. ISIS allegedly use UASs as light bombers and as reconnaissance aircraft to help coordinate devastating suicide attacks, whilst the Houthis (with Iranian assistance) have used drones as aerial improvised explosive devices (IEDs) for targeted assassination missions.
Evolving capacity, multiplying impact
One emerging capability of drone operators is ‘swarming’, where multiple systems are used to achieve a shared objective. A crude version of this, in conjunction with cruise missiles, was utilised during the attack on Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities on September 14 (crude because true swarming requires that the individual systems alter their behaviour based on communication with one another and there is little evidence that this occurred). As a result of the attack, production of 5% of the global oil supply was temporarily halted and, the global price rose by 15%. Although Houthi rebels initially claimed credit, a consensus that Iran was responsible has emerged. The attack was successful, despite the Saudi Aramco sites enjoying protection from the Kingdom’s US ally, in the form of Patriot PAC-2 surface-to-air missile batteries but which proved entirely ineffective.
The Centre for the Study of the Drone recently found that the number of systems and products claiming to protect against UASs had risen from just 10 in 2015 to 235 by 2018. Perhaps not surprisingly, the counter-drone industry (at least in the civilian world) has been described as “peddling snake oil.” Given that very few sites are of such strategic importance in the Middle East (recall the impact on the global oil supply), this swarm technology may prove extremely effective in crippling key national infrastructure and military installations across the region, especially in lieu of a “silver bullet” solution to countering drones.
Likelihood of conflict escalation
In the immediate aftermath of the Aramco attack, Jens Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, expressed his deep concern that tensions would increase and accused Iran of “destabilising the whole region.” Nevertheless, the attack, perhaps surprisingly, did not lead to a military response.
In 2015, a wargame entitled ‘Game of Drones’ held in Washington DC concluded that that the presence of UASs in contested space had the effect of “lowering the threshold for military action in some circumstances because the perceived risk was lower.” However, this relies on the belief that your adversary will not treat the engagement of a manned system in the same way they would a drone in the same scenario. Even as advances in surveillance technology means UASs can reveal more of the battlefield, a new “fog of war” is introduced. This ambiguity, reflected in President Trump’s initial decision to launch counter-strikes against an Iranian attack, and then quickly to cancel, could lead to an escalation via two mechanisms.
First, a state could be baited into engaging a UAS, which is then used as a legitimising pretext to launch further strikes. Indeed, it has been suggested that “baiting” has been a significant facet of the Trump administration’s policy towards Tehran. The second mechanism is via miscalculation. Given the right set of conditions (perhaps a hawkish domestic base), repeated attacks on unmanned systems may compel one side to escalate, despite reluctance on both sides.
The emergence of autonomous and swarm drone technology across a range of actors, combined with an unclear logic of how targeting unmanned systems affect inter-state relations could, therefore, trigger conflict. The primary risk is that heightened short term tensions over drones lead to a conflict before longer-term issues can be solved. As these systems develop technologically and operationally – the emergence of autonomous systems will complicate the matter – close attention to the mechanisms involved in precipitating conflict in the Middle East must be made.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 21:50 - Clintons Vacationed Extensively At Epstein's New Mexico 'Baby-Making Ranch': Report
Clintons Vacationed Extensively At Epstein’s New Mexico ‘Baby-Making Ranch’: Report
The Clintons regularly stayed at Jeffrey Epstein’s weird New Mexico ranch where the deceased pedophile had grand plans to seed the human race with his DNA, according to his estate manager.
Bill, Hillary and even Chelsea visited the 10,000-acre estate “almost every year after they left the White House,” according to the Daily Mail. The former first family didn’t stay at the property’s main compound, however – they spent their time in a custom cowboy-themed village Epstein built a mile south of his mountaintop villa.
the Clinton family bunked down in a special cowboy-themed village created by Epstein, which is a mile south of his own luxury mountaintop villa. They’d use one of the two guest houses, which look like they’re straight out of the 19th century.
Seen in exclusive DailyMailTV images, the guest homes are next to other traditional Wild West-style buildings such as an old schoolhouse and saloon bar. An American flag is raised high above the village, which is next door to Epstein’s private airstrip, where he arrived on his private planes, including his infamous ‘Lolita Express’.
This is all according to security expert Jared Kellogg, who was brought in by long-standing ranch manager Brice Gordon to improve security and set up a camera system at the main house and ‘cowboy village’. –Daily Mail
The Clintons maintain that they had minimal contact with Epstein, despite records proving he flew on the disgraced financier’s ‘Lolita Express’ Boeing 727-200 no fewer than 27 times (which Epstein sold one week before his July arrest on suspicion of sex-trafficking minors).
According to Kellogg, ranch manager Brice Gordon kept bragging about the Clintons staying at the ranch – one of several of Epstein’s homes were underage girls were reportedly trafficked from all over the world.
Pictures from inside Epstein’s main house in New Mexico show a ‘party shower’ for up to eight people with four shelves full of toiletries and oils “My contact was Brice, their main concern was that there was no video surveillance on the property at all. I thought this was a simple request, as they wanted surveillance to protect their investment. It’s a huge site,” said Kellogg. “But what was weird was that the whole time I was on site, Brice would be bragging about how the Clintons would visit, the whole family. Not just Bill, but Bill, his wife, their kid, and they would stay on the ranch itself. He had built this Western replica village with a saloon, barn houses, old school house and when you’re walking through it, it feels like you’re walking through the 1800s.”
“His biggest concern was monitoring and covering that area, so my main focus was mounting cameras on poles to cover the driveways, walkways, the ins and outs of each house and facilities,” the Mail cites Kellogg as adding. “It was like Westworld, it’s like they built a functioning movie set, they put a lot of thought and detail into it, the flooring and facilities in there.”
‘I was saying how cool the replica houses were, they’re pretty neat like the 1800s. He said: ”Yeah, they’re built for guests, we get a lot of visitors. It’s really cool the Clintons come out and hang out [with Epstein].”
‘It sounded like a normal summer vacation.’ -Jared Kellogg
As the Mail notes, Epstein had a picture of Bill Clinton in a blue dress hanging in his Upper East Side townhouse – a strange parody of former the infamous cum-stained dress Monica Lewinsky wore (and kept), as revealed by the Drudge Report.
Kellogg says he was stopped from going into certain areas of Epstein’s New Mexico estate, but briefly explored its underground sections.
In November, a former contractor told the Mail that Epstein had built a secret basement ‘strip club.’
“My access was very controlled. During the site walk, it was dictated where I could and couldn’t go. There were certain facilities I wasn’t allowed to go in, which was odd, as they were boarded up, and they looked like they could have big parties in them, but I didn’t think much of it.
The large indoor bathing area has a over-sized pool, hot tub and a framed shower behind it “They wanted to put very, very limited camera coverage on the main house itself. I was going to put up a couple of cameras on the exterior of the main entrance.
“At the main entrance, there’s a downward slope at the back that goes into the basement. I was able to briefly go in. There was a long hallway to a big foyer and there was a door and that was about it. The two guest houses I was not permitted to go into,” Kellogg said.
‘Due to security reasons, I wasn’t permitted to even put a camera location on the drawing that we would then have on our records.
‘What is odd is that as a security professional, for me to give the best protection I can give a customer, I need the full layout of the land. I need to see the nooks and crannies, all the blind spots. They were limiting that access.
‘The staff only lived in one house, as far as I was aware, which is the the one nearest to the main gate. The saloon bar is in the center [of the village], there’s a bar area and looks like where they’d throw parties from my own observations. There’s also a barn/hay storage, and they’d put tractors and other vehicles in it.’
Considering Epstein was a multi-millionaire, Kellogg said Gordon wanted to do the security on the cheap.
Instead of using an expensive, robust camera system, which used underground cables, he wanted a ‘point-to-point wireless fluid mesh design’, which means cameras are operating via antenna, and is considerably cheaper. –Daily Mail
“What was odd to me was that I wasn’t able to interact with Epstein. If it’s your house, you have your concerns, the task had been delegated to Brice, he seemed to be in charge of everything.”
Maybe it would have been different if Bryce was a 14-year-old girl?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 21:30 - Why The Future Needs Us Humans
Why The Future Needs Us Humans
Authored by Daniel Taylor via OldThinkerNews.com,
AI tyranny to be “built into the software that runs our society”.
The future needs real humans with a conscience and the ability to question authority.
In 2000, Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems wrote an articled titled Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us that detailed the anti-human worldview of the elite.
If we are to believe Elon Musk, Ray kurzweil and other top Transhumanists, we will need to merge with the machines in order to survive.
In reality the exact opposite is true. Humanity’s survival depends on remaining human and defying the post human agenda.
Two recent stories vividly demonstrate the anti-human future that we all face.
A bombshell story from Austin, Texas revealed that the homeless population is being microchipped as a price of entry into shelter.
In the video clip, a homeless man describes the program, saying:
“It’s some kind of chip, I guess. Some kind of device you put on your body and then all you do is scan and then you don’t have to pay for anything anymore, you just scan.”
Another story from China shows the tyranny of social credit scores as a man is held captive and questioned for criticizing police on social media.
China spies on social media conversations. Then they bring dissidents in for a real-life chat. I’d say we’re AT LEAST five years away from that over here, so no worries. pic.twitter.com/HjXzqsgr8S
— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) December 1, 2019
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The elite are pushing the world into an AI driven nightmare.
Medical decisions, law practices, education, news and entire cities will be driven by artificial intelligence.
We are gradually shifting from constitutional law to algorithm driven tyranny.
Tyranny “built into the software that runs our society”
Computer scientist and pioneer of virtual reality Jaron Lanier, named in Time Magazine’s top 100 most influential people for 2010, says that “Cybernetic totalists” could “…cause suffering for millions of people.” Lanier writes in the year 2000 in his “One Half A Manifesto” that,
“There is a real chance that evolutionary psychology, artificial intelligence, Moore’s Law fetishizing, and the rest of the package, will catch on in a big way, as big as Freud or Marx did in their times. Or bigger, since these ideas might end up essentially built into the software that runs our society and our lives. If that happens, the ideology of cybernetic totalist intellectuals will be amplified from novelty into a force that could cause suffering for millions of people.”
The elite want a final revolution against the human race.
Ultimately, the human capacity to defy authority and exercise God-given conscience is to be snuffed out and rendered ineffective.
It has already begun with big tech censorship (driven by AI) of conservative voices, those who question vaccine safety, and many other prescient issues.
Simultaneously, a cultural purge of Judeo Christian values is taking place. Historically, these basic principles have held western society together in a system of true tolerance, and a regard for natural law for all mankind under God reigned us in when we went astray. The AI final revolution cannot succeed with these values widely held and practiced.
In reality, the future does need us. If we robotically sleepwalk into this post-human future we are finished.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 21:10 - Asian Economic Avalanche: The Good (China), The Bad (Japan), & The Really Really Ugly (Hong Kong)
Asian Economic Avalanche: The Good (China), The Bad (Japan), & The Really Really Ugly (Hong Kong)
A smorgasbord of data from AsiaPac tonight poured a big bucket of cold water on the hopes for a trough in global growth.
Japan was first out of the gate with its Services PMI (slightly better than expected) but the Composite PMI remains below 50 (in contraction)
Source: Bloomberg
A typhoon and bad weather in October have also made it hard to discern the economy’s underlying strength. Economists have long forecast a contraction in the last three months of this year as the sales tax increase hits domestic consumption.
Commenting on the latest survey results, Joe Hayes, Economist at IHS Markit, said:
“November data is highly discouraging for the Japanese economy. October was difficult to interpret as a consequence of the consumption tax hike and powerful typhoon. A rebound was to be expected in November, but disappointingly, the strength of the recovery was limited, with activity growing only marginally.
“No notable acceleration in new business growth was also seen, suggesting that underlying demand conditions in Japan’s service sector have weakened so far in the fourth quarter.
“Japan’s service sector has been robust in 2019 so far, doing a good job at offsetting the strong drag from manufacturing.
However, based on survey data so far in the fourth quarter, a contraction in economic output seems highly plausible as we head into year-end.”
Additionally, rubbing salt in the already sore wounds of the Japanese economy, Japanese car sales in South Korea collapsed 56.4% YoY as tensions between the two nations spark backlash.
But, all will be fixed soon as Japan is preparing an economic stimulus package worth 13 trillion yen (S$163 billion) to support fragile economic growth, two government officials with direct knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg yesterday, complicating government efforts to fix public finances.
Next up was Australia, where GDP grew at only 0.4% QoQ, weaker than the expected 0.5% with consumption remaining very weak (+0.1%). As a reminder, Australia has gone 28 years without a (formal) recession.
This follows a drop in Australian services business activity in the middle of the fourth quarter, accompanied by subdued sales growth, which remained constrained by a further fall in export demand. Job creation was marginal.
November data indicated that the decline in business activity occurred amid subdued demand conditions.
Then came the real fun as Hong Kong’s Composite PMI crashed to a record low of 38.5 in November, with the sharpest drop in new business since the trough of the crisis in Nov 2008…
The average PMI reading (38.9) for October and November combined indicates the economy is on course for its weakest quarter since the survey’s inception over 21 years ago.
Commenting on the latest survey results, Bernard Aw, Principal Economist at IHS Markit, said:
“November PMI data indicated that Hong Kong’s private sector suffered its worst downturn since the 2003 SARS crisis, with the latest survey indicators painting a picture of gloom for the Special Administrative Region.
“The survey showed that the escalating political unrest saw business activity shrinking at the steepest rate since the survey started in July 1998. This occurred concurrently with the sharpest decline in new sales since the depths of the global financial crisis.
“The business outlook unsurprisingly remained gloomy, with confidence still stuck among the lowest levels seen in the survey history. In a further sign of pessimism, firms continued to make deep cuts to purchasing activity and inventories, reducing both at a survey record pace.”
And finally, Aw notes, “The average PMI reading for October and November combined showed the economy on track to see GDP fall by over 5% in the fourth quarter, unless December brings a dramatic recovery.”
And then came the big kahuna – China Services (and Composite) PMI. After China’s government-provided PMI surged magnificently out of nowhere (despite a record collapse in industrial profits), all eyes are on the Caixin data tonight, which also surged dramatically from 51.1 to 53.5 (smashing expectations of 51.2)
Source: Bloomberg
But, oddly, employment fell to 51.0 – the weakest since July 2019.
Commenting on the China General Services PMI™ data, Dr. Zhengsheng Zhong, Director of Macroeconomic Analysis at CEBM Group said:
“The Caixin China General Services Business Activity Index edged up to 53.5 in November, a marked increase from 51.1 in the previous month, marking the highest growth rate since April this year. The reading indicates a recovery in activity across the services sector.
1) The gauge for new business picked up from a recent low in October with a solid rebound in the measure for new export business, indicating domestic and foreign demand both improved.
2) The measure of outstanding business fell back into contractionary territory after two straight months of expansion, suggesting a strengthening capability on the supply side in the services sector. The employment gauge fell marginally in November from the previous month, which marked the most modest expansion since July.
3) The gauge for prices charged by service providers rose marginally, but the reading for input costs edged down, indicating greater company profitability. In the meantime, the measure for business expectations picked up strongly, but was still lower than the long-term average, reflecting depressed business confidence.
This surprising surge in Services sent the China Composite PMI to its highest since Feb 2018…
Source: Bloomberg
“The Caixin China Composite Output Index rose to 53.2 in November from 52 in the previous month, the highest since February 2018. The employment gauge bounced back into positive territory, reflecting easing pressure on the labor market. The measures for new orders and new export orders remained at relatively high levels, reflecting a continuous improvement in demand. The gauge for input prices edged down, pointing to easing pressure on the costs of companies. But business confidence was still weak, with the measure for future output expectations down from October.
“China’s economy continued to recover in November, as domestic and foreign demand both improved. But business confidence remained subdued, reflecting the impact from uncertainties generated by the China-U.S. trade conflicts. That will restrain a recovery in economic growth. The trade dispute is the major reason behind the slowing economic growth this year, and will become a key factor affecting the stabilization and recovery of China’s economy next year.”
PBOC fixed the Yuan notably weaker tonight as the plunge in offshore yuan accelerated after Washington voted on the China Human Rights bill.
Source: Bloomberg
This summed things up rather perfectly…
Their numbers are getting better even during a trade war, a global slowdown, and HK falling into the abyss #ChineseMagic https://t.co/WFbR9otGCE
— Jin SEO (@JTSEO9) December 4, 2019
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Do you believe in miracles?
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 20:56 - Former Counter-Intel Officer: Durham Needs To Bring Indictments
Former Counter-Intel Officer: Durham Needs To Bring Indictments
Authored by Chris Farrell via The Gatestone Institute,
There is new evidence that U.S. Attorney John Durham is getting to the root of criminal abuses by senior U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials in their conspiracy to undermine the Trump campaign, transition and presidency. Mr. Durham’s mandate from Attorney General William Barr — to uncover the seditious plot behind the Trump-Russia hoax, if pursued vigorously, will uncover the single greatest threat to the Constitution since the nation’s founding.
Mr. Durham’s apparent interest in FBI source Stefan Halper and the contract vehicles available to the Pentagon think tank, the Office of Net Assessments, for whom Halper worked, is an important clue.
Likewise, Mr. Durham’s travel to Italy for talks with the Italian government and their intelligence service points to another possible clue concerning the mysterious Maltese academic, Joseph Mifsud.
For the purposes of the manufactured Trump-Russia hoax, one need only remember the associations of Halper with Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page — and Joseph Mifsud with George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy junior advisor — to the Trump campaign.
The intelligence agencies of the federal government are prohibited from targeting American organizations in the United States. Executive Order 12333, Section 2.9 states:
Undisclosed Participation in Organizations Within the United States. No one acting on behalf of agencies within the Intelligence Community may join or otherwise participate in any organization in the United States on behalf of any agency within the Intelligence Community without disclosing his intelligence affiliation to appropriate officials of the organization, except in accordance with procedures established by the head of the agency concerned and approved by the Attorney General. Such participation shall be authorized only if it is essential to achieving lawful purposes as determined by the agency head or designee. No such participation may be undertaken for the purpose of influencing the activity of the organization or its members except in cases where:
(a) The participation is undertaken on behalf of the FBI in the course of a lawful investigation; or
(b) The organization concerned is composed primarily of individuals who are not United States persons and is reasonably believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign power.This prohibition on running penetration operations against domestic political organizations is a legal and political “hangover” from the 1960s civil disturbances that saw (among a host of other covert action programs) US Army Counterintelligence agents working undercover against the militant Leftists organizations such as Students for a Democratic Society. The U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, better known as the “Church Committee,” was empaneled in 1975 under the leadership of Sen. Frank Church (D-ID) to review and make recommendations on intelligence operations. The Church Committee was controversial. Critics claimed the committee exposed the “crown jewels” of U.S. intelligence and hobbled our ability to conduct legitimate collection activities. Today’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Court were inspired by the final reports of the Church Committee.
The seditious coup plotters working against Trump knew the legal prohibitions on what they planned to do. How to target Trump & Co. in a “legal” manner? Was it possible, or more importantly, desirable, to have a legal finding from Attorney General Loretta Lynch justifying their plan to frame-up Trump & Co.? That would authorize their operation — but would Lynch support it? Could Lynch be counted on? Did they want a piece of paper like that floating around Washington D.C.? No, there had to be a better way to pull off the coup.
The alternative to a purely domestic intelligence operation targeting a major political party’s candidate for the presidency (and later, president) was to manufacture a foreign counterintelligence (FCI) “threat” that could then be “imported” back into the United States. Plausible deniability, the Holy Grail of covert activities, was in reach for the plotters if they could develop an FCI operation outside the continental United States (OCONUS) involving FBI confidential human sources (Halper, Mifsud, others?) that would act as “lures” (intelligence jargon associated with double agent operations) to ensnare Trump associates.
We have evidence of these machinations from December 2015 when FBI lawyer Lisa Page texts to her boyfriend, the now infamous FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok, “You get all our oconus lures approved? ;).”
To inoculate themselves from further charges of misconduct and criminality, the FBI’s mutually agreed upon lie is that their investigation of Trump/Russia began on July 31, 2016 with the improbable name “Crossfire Hurricane.” That coincides nicely with their manufactured FCI “event,” allowing the full-bore sabotage of all things and persons “Trump.” The coup plotters used a July 2016 event at the University of Cambridge as the opportunity for Carter Page to meet and develop a friendship with Stefan Halper. This is roughly the same time period that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer reported the supposedly drunken ramblings of George Papadopoulos concerning the Russians having Hillary’s emails to the FBI. Papadopoulos had already serendipitously met the mysterious Joseph Mifsud in Rome during the second week of March 2016. Learning that Papadopoulos would be joining the Trump campaign, Mifsud let Papadopoulos know that he had many important connections with Russian government officials.
In July 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was questioned closely by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) concerning the persons and sequence of events detailed above.
The summation of Mueller’s testimony was, “Well, I can’t get into it.”
The coup plot failed, but the chief coup conspirators are free, crisscrossing the country on book tours and appearing as paid contributors to CNN and MSNBC. A bright note in the so far grim saga is that one of the collateral casualties has filed a civil lawsuit in the Eastern District of Virginia against Stefan Halper and MSNBC for defamation, conspiracy and tortious interference. It’s the closest thing we’ve seen to justice to date. The complaint makes remarkable and insightful reading.
It is now time for Mr. Durham to “get into it,” in a manner Mr. Mueller was either unwilling or unable to do. Time is of the utmost importance. The American public needs to see action. Indictments and trials are the only antidote for the poison of treasonous sedition.
* * *
Chris Farrell is a former counterintelligence case officer.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 20:30 - How To Discuss "Climate Change" With A 'Woke' Teenager
How To Discuss “Climate Change” With A ‘Woke’ Teenager
After our daughter of fifteen years of age was moved to tears by the speech of Greta Thunberg at the UN the other day, she became angry with our generation “who had been doing nothing for thirty years.”
So, we decided to help her prevent what the girl on TV announced of “massive eradication and the disappearance of entire ecosystems.”
We are now committed to give our daughter a future again, by doing our part to help cool the planet four degrees.
From now on she will go to school on a bicycle, because driving her by car costs fuel, and fuel puts emissions into the atmosphere. Of course it will be winter soon and then she will want to go by bus, but cycling through the freezing builds resilience.
Of course, she is now asking for an electric bicycle, but we have shown her the devastation caused to the areas of the planet as a result of mining for the extraction of Lithium and other minerals used to make batteries for electric bicycles, so she will be pedaling, or walking.
Which will not harm her, or the planet. We used to cycle and walk to school too.
Since the girl on TV demanded “we need to get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels” and our daughter agreed with her, we have disconnected the heat vent in her room. The temperature is now dropping to twelve degrees in the evening, and will drop below freezing in the winter, we have promised to buy her an extra sweater, hat, tights, gloves and a blanket.
For the same reason we have decided that from now on she only takes a cold shower. She will wash her clothes by hand, with a wooden washboard, because the washing machine is simply a power consumer and since the dryer uses natural gas, she will hang her clothes on the clothes line to dry, just like my parents and grandparents used to do.
Speaking of clothes, the ones that she currently has are all synthetic, so made from petroleum. Therefore on Monday, we will bring all her designer clothing to the secondhand shop.
We have found an eco store where the only clothing they sell is made from undyed and unbleached linen and jute. Also can’t have clothes made on wool, because the emissions from farting sheep are supposedly causing bad weather.
It shouldn’t matter that it looks good on her, or that she is going to be laughed at, dressing in colorless, bland clothes and without a wireless bra, but that is the price she has to pay for the benefit of The Climate.
Cotton is out of the question, as it comes from distant lands and pesticides are used for it. Very bad for the environment.
We just saw on her Instagram that she’s pretty angry with us. This was not our intention.From now on, at 7 p.m. we will turn off the WiFi and we will only switch it on again the next day after dinner for two hours. In this way we will save on electricity, so she is not bothered by electro-stress and will be totally isolated from the outside world. This way, she can concentrate solely on her homework. At eleven o’clock in the evening we will pull the breaker to shut the power off to her room, so she knows that dark is really dark. That will save a lot of CO2.
She will no longer be participating in winter sports to ski lodges and resorts, nor will she be going on anymore vacations with us, because our vacation destinations are practically inaccessible by bicycle.
Since our daughter fully agrees with the girl on TV that the CO2 emissions and footprints of her great-grandparents are to blame for ‘killing our planet’, what all this simply means, is that she also has to live like her great-grandparents and they never had a holiday, a car or even a bicycle.
We haven’t talked about the carbon footprint of food yet.
Zero CO2 footprint means no meat, no fish and no poultry, but also no meat substitutes that are based on soy (after all, that grows in farmers fields, that use machinery to harvest the beans, trucks to transport to the processing plants, where more energy is used, then trucked to the packaging/canning plants, and trucked once again to the stores) and also no imported food, because that has a negative ecological effect. And absolutely no chocolate from Africa, no coffee from South America and no tea from Asia.
Only homegrown potatoes, vegetables and fruit that have been grown in local cold soil, because greenhouses run on boilers, piped in CO2 and artificial light. Apparently, these things are also bad for The Climate. We will teach her how to grow her own food.
Bread is still possible, but butter, milk, cheese and yogurt, cottage cheese and cream come from cows and they emit CO2. No more margarine and no oils will be used for the frying pan, because that fat is palm oil from plantations in Borneo where rain forests first grew.
No ice cream in the summer. No soft drinks and no energy drinks, as the bubbles are CO2.
We will also ban all plastic, because it comes from chemical factories. Everything made of steel and aluminum must also be removed. Have you ever seen the amount of energy a blast furnace consumes or an aluminum smelter? All bad for the climate!
We will replace her memory foam pillow top mattress, with a jute bag filled with straw, with a horse hair pillow.
And finally, she will no longer be using makeup, soap, shampoo, cream, lotion, conditioner, toothpaste and medication. Facewashers will all be linen, that she can wash by hand, with her wooden washboard, just like her female ancestors did before climate change made her angry at us for destroying her future.
In this way we will help her to do her part to prevent mass extinction, water levels rising and the disappearance of entire ecosystems.
If she truly believes she wants to walk the talk of the girl on TV, she will gladly accept and happily embrace her new way of life.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 20:25 - World's Biggest Pension Fund Stops Lending Shares To Short-Sellers Amid Threat Of Market Crash
World’s Biggest Pension Fund Stops Lending Shares To Short-Sellers Amid Threat Of Market Crash
Ahead of the next market crash, Japan’s public pension fund, one of the largest pension funds in the world, has developed a new market tool where it will no longer allow shares of its $733 billion global equity portfolio to be loaned out for short selling, reported the Financial Times.
The announcement by Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), comes at a time when the global economy is quickly decelerating into year-end, could see a significant repricing event where global equities correct into 1H20.
To get ahead of the downturn, about $370 billion of its $733 billion global equity portfolio will no longer be loaned out. It could be used as a weapon to combat evil short-sellers when the market plunges. If other pension funds follow GPIF’s lead, which they likely will, this could be a highly disruptive market tool to stem downside and also create the mother of all short squeezes.
The reasoning behind GPIF’s move to discontinue lending of at least half of its global equity book isn’t because it’s “concerned that lending stocks out stopped it exercising proper stewardship over the underlying investments. This included a lack of transparency over the final borrower and how it was using GPIF shares,” as FT notes, but rather it’s an unorthodox market tool that was similarly used by the Chinese government to stem further downside in a 2015 stock market crash.
GPIF will lose nearly $300 million in fees per year from discontinuing its lending of shares from the foreign segment of its portfolio, FT noted.
Traders in Tokyo told FT that other pension funds will likely follow suit. Though they said, the move to stop lending shares to short-sellers wouldn’t have an immediate impact on market fundamentals, though it could prove useful to limit the downside during the next market crash.
And it already seems like Elon Musk is already a big fan of GPIF’s market tool:
Bravo, right thing to do! Short selling should be illegal.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 3, 2019
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Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 20:10 - Epstein Accuser Hits Out Against Prince Andrew, Dershowitz In Wake Of Potential New Evidence
Epstein Accuser Hits Out Against Prince Andrew, Dershowitz In Wake Of Potential New Evidence
A woman who claims she was forced to have sex with Jeffrey Epstein and several associates has appealed to Britons for support, after Prince Andrew vehemently denied having inappropriate contact with her.
Virginia Giuffre says Epstein trafficked her to the British prince, bringing her to London in 2001 when she was 17-years-old. In an interview broadcast Monday, she says she was forced to have sex with him three times.
“He knows what happened. I know what happened, and there’s only one of us telling the truth, and I know that’s me,” Giuffre told BBC Panorama.
“I implore the citizens in the UK to stand up beside me, to help me fight this fight, to not accept this as being ok. This is not some sordid sex story. This is a story of being trafficked, this is a story of abuse and this is a story of your guys’ royalty.”
In her interview, which was recorded before the prince spoke to the BBC, Giuffre said she was taken to the Tramp nightclub in London by Epstein and his former associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Andrew asked her to dance, she said.
“He is the most hideous dancer I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean it was horrible and this guy was sweating all over me, like his sweat was like it was raining basically everywhere,” she said.
Andrew, the eighth-in-line to the throne, said he could not have had sex with Giuffre at Maxwell’s home on the night she alleges because he had been to a pizza restaurant in the commuter town of Woking for a children’s party. –Reuters
The 59-year-old Andrew insists he has no recollection of meeting Giuffre.
In response to Giuffre’s interview, Buckingham Palace said in a statement: “It is emphatically denied that The Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts. Any claim to the contrary is false and without foundation.”
Andrew, meanwhile, was kicked out of Buckingham Palace and had his 60th birthday canceled by the Queen. Seems extreme for a royal they claim is innocent, no?
Andrew, meanwhile, gave a disastrous interview to the BBC last month in which he said he regretted his “ill-judged” relationship with Epstein.
Dershowitz
On the other side of the pond, Giuffre may add a sex-abuse claim to a defamation lawsuit against famous Harvard attorney and former Epstein pal Alan Dershowitz, who she says she was forced to have sex with.
Giuffre sued Dershowitz in April after he repeatedly denied her claims and called her a liar, according to Bloomberg. Dershowitz counter-sued for defamation and emotional distress.
Charles Cooper, Giuffre’s lawyer, said in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska that his client may take advantage of New York’s new Child Victims Act, which in August opened a one-year window for people to sue over sex abuse they suffered as children even if the claims would otherwise be too old. New York previously required most childhood sex abuse victims to sue by the time they they turned 23.
Dershowitz’s lawyer, Howard Cooper, said the act would not apply to Giuffre, whose claims date from the early 2000s, because she wasn’t a minor at the time. –Bloomberg
Giuffre’s lawyers also brought up a Sunday story in the New York Times regarding a mysterious hacker claiming to have a vast trove of Epstein’s covertly recorded video footage and financial records, which he says he has stored on encrypted overseas servers.
The man, who called himself “Patrick Kessler,” said he has videos of powerful men in “compromising sexual positions, including rape.”
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 19:58 - Mt. Rainier And The New Madrid Fault Zone Were Both Just Hit By Significant Earthquakes
Mt. Rainier And The New Madrid Fault Zone Were Both Just Hit By Significant Earthquakes
Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,
Mt. Rainier and the New Madrid fault zone are both shaking, and a catastrophic seismic event at either location would cause death and destruction on an unimaginable scale.
Mt. Rainier has been called “one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world”, and scientists tell us that it is just a matter of time before a major eruption occurs. When that day finally arrives, Mt. Rainier has the potential to bury hundreds of square miles with a colossal tsunami of super-heated mud that is literally several hundred feet deep. And since Mt. Rainier is very close to major population centers, we are talking about the potential for the worst disaster that we have seen in modern American history.
But a massive earthquake along the New Madrid fault zone actually has the potential to be far worse. A very deep scar under the ground that was created when North America was originally formed has made that part of the country very mechanically weak, and many experts believe that a big enough earthquake along that fault zone could literally rip the United States in half.
But before we discuss the New Madrid fault zone, let’s talk about what just happened at Mt. Rainier first.
According to the USGS, Mt. Rainier was hit by a magnitude 3.6 earthquake on Sunday afternoon…
After a spurt of seismic activity this weekend, Mount Rainier National Park was shaken by a 3.6 magnitude earthquake Sunday afternoon.
The quake hit at 12:31 p.m. and was felt as far as Kent, nearly 80 miles away, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The relatively shallow quake was centered roughly a mile beneath the earth’s surface.
In addition to that quake, there have been quite a few others in recent days.
In fact, it is being reported that Mt. Rainier has been hit by “more than a dozen” earthquakes since Thanksgiving day.
The Seattle Times is assuring us that this is perfectly normal, but they are also warning their readers that they “should prepare for what might happen in the event of an eruption” just in case…
Regardless, people living near Mount Rainier should prepare for what might happen in the event of an eruption, said Wes Thelen, a research seismologist at the Cascade Volcano Observatory. Specifically, an eruption could cause lahars — large volcanic mudflows — to rip down the side of the mountain.
Many of my readers clearly remember the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, but a catastrophic eruption of Mt. Rainier would be so much worse that the two events would not even be worth comparing. The following comes from Wikipedia…
If Mt. Rainier were to erupt as powerfully as Mount St. Helens did in its May 18, 1980 eruption, the effect would be cumulatively greater, because of the far more massive amounts of glacial ice locked on the volcano compared to Mount St. Helens,[40] the vastly more heavily populated areas surrounding Rainier, and the simple fact that Mt Rainier is a much bigger volcano, almost twice the size of St. Helens.[49] Lahars from Rainier pose the most risk to life and property,[50] as many communities lie atop older lahar deposits. According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), about 150,000 people live on top of old lahar deposits of Rainier.[9] Not only is there much ice atop the volcano, the volcano is also slowly being weakened by hydrothermal activity. According to Geoff Clayton, a geologist with a Washington State Geology firm, RH2 Engineering, a repeat of the 5000-year-old Osceola Mudflow would destroy Enumclaw, Orting, Kent, Auburn, Puyallup, Sumner and all of Renton.[39] Such a mudflow might also reach down the Duwamish estuary and destroy parts of downtown Seattle, and cause tsunami in Puget Sound and Lake Washington.[51] Rainier is also capable of producing pyroclastic flows and expelling lava.[51]
A lahar is essentially a giant tsunami of super-heated mud, and they can be hundreds of feet high. If you live in that region, you might be thinking that you will just outrun any lahar that is headed your way, but the truth is that the highways will instantly be jammed once an eruption happens and a lahar can travel at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour. The following is how one author described the danger that those living in the area could potentially be facing…
The numerous towns and cities that occupy the surrounding valley would all be at risk for not only severe destruction, but complete annihilation. Residents of cities like Orting, Sumner, Buckley, and Enumclaw are estimated to have no more than 30 minutes before the lahar, speeding down from the many rivers that flow from Mount Rainier, buries their homes and businesses beneath as much as 30 feet of mud and debris. Even the larger cities like Auburn, Puyallup, and Tacoma itself are not safe. Auburn and Puyallup, with nearly 80,000 residents between them, would be covered in 20 feet of mud in less than an hour, and Tacoma, at almost 200,000, is estimated to be hit with nearly 10 feet from the lahar.
As you can see, the death and destruction would be off the charts, and let us hope that such a disaster does not arrive any time soon.
And as I mentioned earlier, a major earthquake along the New Madrid fault zone has the potential to create even greater death and destruction.
According to scientists, the New Madrid fault zone sits directly above a very deep geological scar that was created when North America was formed. According to Wikipedia, this immense scar makes “the Earth’s crust in the New Madrid area mechanically weaker than much of the rest of North America”.
Today, the New Madrid fault zone is approximately six times bigger than the San Andreas fault zone in California. It covers portions of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi, and the largest earthquakes in the lower 48 states have happened in this region.
Scientists assure us that it is just a matter of time before more catastrophic earthquakes hit this fault zone, and that is why what has been happening near the town of Ridgely, Tennessee in recent days is so concerning…
A swarm of at least 15 earthquakes reaching up to 2.1 magnitude rattled Ridgely, Tennessee — a small town near the Mississippi River — over a two-day period, the U.S. Geological Survey reports.
The other quakes in the swarm ranged from 1.1 to 1.5 magnitude, according to the USGS.
Most Americans have never heard of Ridgely, and it is definitely a very small town, but what makes this so important is that Ridgely sits directly inside the New Madrid fault zone…
Ridgely is home to just 1,657 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and sits less than four miles from the banks of the Mississippi River.
It’s also part of the New Madrid Seismic Zone — which the Missouri Department of Natural Resources refers to as “the most active seismic area in the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains.”
In 1811 and 1812, four absolutely massive earthquakes along the New Madrid fault zone opened up very deep fissures in the ground, they caused the Mississippi River to actually run backwards in certain places, and they were reportedly felt as far away as Washington D.C. and Boston.
Fortunately, very few people populated the region in those days, but if such a quake happened today the death and destruction would be unimaginable. The following description of one of the quakes that happened in 1811 comes from Smithsonian.com, and for a moment I would like for you to imagine what would happen if such an earthquake happened in our time…
The Midwest was sparsely populated, and deaths were few. But 8-year-old Godfrey Lesieur saw the ground “rolling in waves.” Michael Braunm observed the river suddenly rise up “like a great loaf of bread to the height of many feet.” Sections of riverbed below the Mississippi rose so high that part of the river ran backward. Thousands of fissures ripped open fields, and geysers burst from the earth, spewing sand, water, mud and coal high into the air.
The New Madrid fault zone has altered the course of the Mississippi River before, and someday it will happen again.
We live at a time when our planet appears to be getting increasing unstable. In addition to the other earthquakes that I have already mentioned, Alaska was actually hit by a magnitude 6.0 earthquake on Monday.
Unfortunately, most Americans are not going to start caring about the warning signs until a major disaster has already happened.
Most people will simply not wake up without a major amount of shaking, and let us hope that such a day can be put off for as long as possible.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 19:50 - China Vows Response After US House Votes To Sanction Chinese Officials Over Uighur Abuse
China Vows Response After US House Votes To Sanction Chinese Officials Over Uighur Abuse
Update: China wasted no time to issue a harshly worded response to the passage of the Uighur bill, and in a statement published moments ago by the Chinese foreign ministry, said that whereas “the US plan to use the Xinjiang-related issue to sow Chinese ethnic relations, undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and stability, and curb China’s development”, this is “absolutely impossible” and Beijing urges the US to “immediately correct its mistakes, prevent the aforementioned Xinjiang-related bill from becoming law, and stop using the Xinjiang-related issue to interfere in China’s internal affairs.”
The statement ends ominously, saying that “China will respond further according to the development of the situation.”
In other words, even more words, and no actions, suggesting that at this point, Xi may have capitulated and is scared of actually doing something instead of just speaking.
Full statement below from the foreign ministry:
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying’s Remarks on the U.S. House of Representatives Passing the “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Bill 2019”
The U.S. House of Representatives has just passed the so-called “Uyghur Human Rights Policy Bill 2019.” The case deliberately discredited the human rights situation in Xinjiang, arrogantly discredited China’s efforts to radicalize and combat terrorism, maliciously attacked the Chinese government’s territorial policies, seriously violated international law and basic principles of international relations, and seriously interfered in China’s internal affairs. China expresses its strong indignation and resolute opposition.
Xinjiang-related issues are not at all human rights, ethnic, and religious issues, but anti-terrorist and anti-secession issues. Xinjiang has suffered from extremist and violent terrorist activities. Facing the grim situation, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region Government has cracked down on violent terrorist activities in accordance with the law, and at the same time attaches great importance to source governance, including actively promoting depolarization, and continuously promoting economic development, national unity, and social harmony and stability. These measures have ensured that no terrorist attacks have occurred in Xinjiang in the past three years, received universal support from 25 million people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, and made positive contributions to the global cause of counter-terrorism.
The international community has generally positively evaluated the Chinese government’s policy of governing Xinjiang. Since the end of 2018, more than a thousand people from more than 70 national and regional officials, international organizations, news media, religious groups, experts and scholars have visited Xinjiang, and they have praised Xinjiang’s experience in counter-terrorism and depolarization work. In March this year, the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Islamic Cooperation Organization passed a resolution praising China’s efforts in caring for the Muslim masses. In July, the permanent representatives of more than 50 countries in Geneva sent a joint letter to the chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to positively evaluate China’s respect and protection of human rights in its counter-terrorism and depolarization efforts. In October, more than 60 countries spoke enthusiastically during the 74th Session of the Third Committee of the General Assembly, praising China’s huge human rights progress in Xinjiang. All these strongly prove that the US side’s article on Xinjiang-related issues is totally contrary to the facts and completely contrary to the mainstream public opinion in the international community.
We must tell the US side that Xinjiang affairs are purely China’s internal affairs and that no foreign interference is allowed. The above-mentioned bill on the US side deliberately smears China’s counter-terrorism and de-extremization measures, which will only further expose its double standards on counter-terrorism, and will only let the Chinese people further understand its hypocrisy and sinister intentions.
The Chinese government and people are unwavering in their determination to safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests. The US plan to use the Xinjiang-related issue to sow Chinese ethnic relations, undermine Xinjiang’s prosperity and stability, and curb China’s development is absolutely impossible. We urge the US to immediately correct its mistakes, prevent the aforementioned Xinjiang-related bill from becoming law, and stop using the Xinjiang-related issue to interfere in China’s internal affairs. China will respond further according to the development of the situation.
* * *
In the past few days, China’s Global Times twitter troll Hu Xijin has been quite vocal not only about China’s anger over the recent passage of the pro-HK bill that was signed by Trump last Thursday, but also about China’s response to what he said was the imminent passage of a Xinjian-related bill, which would sanction Chinese officials responsible for the repression of over a million Muslim Uighurs in the Xinjiang region.
Overnight, Hu issued his latest not so veiled threat on the matter saying that “since US Congress plans to pass Xinjiang-related bill, China is considering to impose visa restrictions on US officials and lawmakers who’ve had odious performance on Xinjiang issue;it might also ban all US diplomatic passport holders from entering Xinjiang.”
Based on what I know, since US Congress plans to pass Xinjiang-related bill, China is considering to impose visa restrictions on US officials and lawmakers who’ve had odious performance on Xinjiang issue;it might also ban all US diplomatic passport holders from entering Xinjiang.
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) December 3, 2019
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Yesterday, Hu retweeted a post by The Business Source division of the Global Times, which warned that China would release an “unreliable entity list” soon, which includes relevant US entities, in response to the passage of the Xinjiang-related bill “that will harm Chinese firms’ interests, prompting China to speed up the move.”
Source told Global Times that China will release an “unreliable entity list” soon, which includes relevant US entities. US House is expected to pass a Xinjiang-related bill that will harm Chinese firms’ interests, prompting China to speed up the move.
— The Business Source (@GlobalTimesBiz) December 2, 2019
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His comments came just days after one or more Chinese dissidents leaked the troubling secrets of China’s Xinjiang camps to the foreign media, which prompted the following retort from Hu: “China wants real human rights in Xinjiang: people’s rights to have a peaceful life. West’s hypocrisy won’t affect Xinjiang internally, nor will it influence Muslim countries’ attitude. It’s just a few media outlets and politicians pretending to be representing the world.Pathetic.”
China wants real human rights in Xinjiang: people’s rights to have a peaceful life. West’s hypocrisy won’t affect Xinjiang internally, nor will it influence Muslim countries’ attitude. It’s just a few media outlets and politicians pretending to be representing the world.Pathetic. https://t.co/zMKlMVttEz
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) November 25, 2019
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Well, moments ago the U.S. House of Representatives indeed overwhelmingly approved legislation that would impose sanctions on Chinese officials over human rights abuses against Muslim minorities, provoking Beijing to retaliate just as trade deal negotiations between the two sides appear to be on the verge of collapse.
The bill is an amended version of the Senate’s S. 178 to support the Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic group in western China, and it passed Tuesday, on a vote of 407 to 1. Chinese state media warned before the vote that the government could release a list of “unreliable entities” that could lead to sanctions against U.S. companies. The measure follows legislation supporting Hong Kong protesters signed into law last week by President Donald Trump.
And now, with Xi Jinping having already lost serious credibility after he failed to forcefully respond to Trump’s signing of the Hong Kong bill, all eyes will be on China, and whether it will indeed trigger visa restrictions and limit travel for US officials to Xinjiang province (something which will never happen) and, more importantly, if Beijing will finally publish its “unreliable entity”, aka black list, which it has been threatening to do since May and which may include such names as Apple and Micron. Well, now that the House has passed the Uighur bill, Beijing may no longer be able to delay, or else it will be seen as a pushover every time a diplomatic – or other – challenge escalates. Needless to say, for a president for life such as Xi Jinping, that is hardly an option, so stay tuned for China’s response which may be due any moment.
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 19:34 - Gundlach: Stocks 'Will Get Crushed' In The Next Downturn
Gundlach: Stocks ‘Will Get Crushed’ In The Next Downturn
DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach sat down with Yahoo Finance and discussed how US stocks would get absolutely crushed in the next recession.
Gundlach said 2019 was the year when investors could pick “just about anything…Just throw a dart, and you’re up 15-20%, not just the United States, but global stocks as well.” He warns that it could all change in 2020, as a recession is fast approaching.
He shared his “chart of the year,” which divides global equities into four regions (the US, Japan, Europe, and Emerging Markets). What it shows is an alarming market top forming in US stocks, similar to what happened with the Nikkei 225 in the early 1990s or the Euro Stoxx 50 Index in the late 1990s or MSCI Emerging Markets in 2007/2008.
“So, where are we today? Today, we have the S&P 500 is killing everybody else over the last ten years, almost 100% outperformance versus most other stock markets,” he said.
“My belief is that pattern will repeat itself,” said Gundlach, who has spent much of 2019 warning of a downturn ahead of the 2020 elections.
“In other words, when the next recession comes, the United States will get crushed, and it will not make it back to the highs that we’ve seen, that we’re floating around right now, probably for the rest of my career, is what I think is going to happen,” he added — suggesting that a recovery won’t be seen for years.
Last month, Gundlach warned about the levels of government debt, and the US equity markets are not sustainable. He told investors that they should brace for significant disruptions.
“The corporate bond market in the United States is rated higher than it deserves to be. Kind of like securitized mortgages was rated way too high before the global financial crisis. Corporate credit is the thing that should be watched for big trouble in the next recession.”
And maybe a downturn in the economy has already started, considering credit markets usually lead. As shown below, significant cracks in the junk bond space are beginning to appear:
The spreads on CCC US junk bonds have jumped above 1,000bps for the first time in more than three years as a sell-off in energy weighs on the lowest-rated debt.
Blowing the CCC market’s risk out to its widest against single-B since April 2016…
Generic CLO BBB tranche is starting to flash very red…
The broader junk bond market posted negative returns last month… as stocks have soared…
Gundlach’s Sept. presentation titled “The Greatest Economy Ever!” made it clear that the next big move for the dollar is lower, and warned that when the next recession occurs, the US dollar and stocks will be in trouble, recommending investors to diversify into other currencies and markets.
And since his view on the economy is that it is anything but the “Greatest Ever”, pointing out the sharp slump in 2019 global GDP projections…
And as we’ve said on multiple occasions, the next shoe to drop is likely the consumer. Something that Gundlach is waiting for as well explained in the latest interview with Yahoo.
Highlight: A recession probability “is around 40% right now,” @truthgundlach says. “The ISM looks bad… Consumer sentiment, though, remain at a decent level. What we have to watch for is consumer confidence declining, because that’s almost definitional we cause a recession.” pic.twitter.com/cI0JQil68b
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) December 2, 2019
Tyler Durden
Tue, 12/03/2019 – 19:05
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