- Boston Judge Unblocks Trump Travel Ban, Asks "Where Does It Say Muslim Countries?"
Update: It appears President Trump is pleased with the judge's decision…
We must keep "evil" out of our country!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 3, 2017
* * *
As we detailed earlier, in a blow to every mainstream media news outlet (and likely hurting a lot of feelings), President Donald Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries will take effect in Boston on Sunday after a federal judge refused to extend a temporary ruling blocking its enforcement.
As Bloomberg reports, the decision by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton on Friday dealt a setback to rights advocates who argued that blocking people from seven nations in the Middle East was unconstitutional. Gorton was weighing whether to extend a seven-day order blocking parts of Trump’s Executive Order.
The case, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of several affected immigrants, is one of several that followed Trump’s Jan 27 order, which roiled global travel by barring entry to the U.S. of citizens of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Individuals, organizations, politicians and some states called it unconstitutional religious discrimination against Muslims.
As GMA News Onine reports, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton on Friday asked Matthew Segal, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) representing the plaintiffs in the Boston case.
"Where does it say Muslim countries?"
Segal replied…
"If your honor's question is, 'Does the word 'Muslim' make a profound presence in this executive order?,' my answer is that it doesn't,… But the president described what he was going to do as a Muslim ban and then he proceeded to carry it out."
Gorton shot back,
"Am I to take the words of an executive at any point before or after election as a part of that executive order?"
Judge Gorton on Friday asked U.S. Justice Department lawyer Joshua Press how the seven countries had been selected.
Press responded that the list had come from a law passed in 2015 and amended early last year requiring that citizens of the seven countries apply for visas to enter the United States, "out of concern about the refugees that were coming, mainly from Syria at that time and terrorist events that were occurring in Europe."
As we noted previously, only 12.5% of the world's Muslims live in the seven countries on Trump's immigration ban list…
Which left the judge to decide (as the full docket explains here),
“The language in Section 5 of the EO is neutral with respect to religion,
"The provisions of Section 5, however, could be invoked to give preferred refugee status to a Muslim individual in a country that is predominately Christian. Nothing in Section 5 compels a finding that Christians are preferred to any other group.”
Gorton wrote there is a rational reason for the Trump administration’s policies. The federal Immigration and Naturalization Act gives the president broad power over immigration.
“The order provides a reasonably conceivable state of facts (which concerns national security and) that could provide a rational basis for the classification,” he wrote. “Accordingly, this Court declines to encroach upon the “delicate policy judgment” inherent in immigration decisions.”
ORDER
For the forgoing reasons, the Court declines to impose any injunctive relief and will not renew the temporary restraining order that was entered on January 29, 2017 (Docket No. 6).
Full Order below:
- Exposing The Left's War Against Ordinary Americans
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
The Saker is a level-headed person. I take it seriously when he spells out the threat to Trump’s presidency presented by the paradoxical alliance of the ruling oligarchs with what purports to be the “liberal/progressive/left.”
It is amazing that the “liberal/progressive/left” are aligned with war and not with peace and are aligned with the OnePercent against the working class, whom they despise as “Trump deplorables.”
The Saker believes that Trump is under serious threat of being overthrown and that he must strike first or go down.
As my readers are highly intelligent, I am not surprised that some of them have arrived at the same conclusion as The Saker. Here is what one had to say:
I am totally astounded by the madness – even at formerly reasonable left – liberal websites. Alternet is one big hysteria factory. Although Counterpunch has had good articles by Mike Whitney, you (I presume, since I read your articles on your website), Diana Johnstone and a few others, I can’t believe how they’ve jumped in, too. I’ve been reading CP since the beginning of the newsletter in the 90s. Until this year, they were (after yours) my go-to website when I turned the computer on. I can’t believe they have a new article titled “Beyond Resistance – Defeating Trump’s Burgeoning Dictatorship”. And another: “Democracy in Exile and the Curse of Totalitarianism”. And another: “Muslim Bans, White Supremacy and Fascism in Our Time”. Patrick Cockburn has an article titled: “Trump’s Muslim Ban Will Only Spark More Terrorist Attacks”. Even the World Socialist Website has gone bananas.
Almost all of the German left-mainstream sites have gone insane. On the one hand, it seems like almost every protest group, in the end, has a source of money from Soros. On the other, it seems like 40% of the population must have been put through an MK-Ultra program. How could such mass hysteria otherwise be produced?
This is the level of argument with which protesters oppose Trump’s presidency:
Readers share my amazement that there are large numbers of people so stupid as to think that a ban on Muslim immigrants is far worse than murdering Muslims in seven countries for fifteen years. Bush and Obama conducted genocide against Muslims over the course of four presidential terms, and no protesters sought their impeachment for what are most certainly war crimes and crimes against humanity. But Trump’s perfectly legal immigration action is alleged to be grounds for impeachment!
The protesters are completely nonsensical, so much so that it must be an orchestration. As the protesting websites, if not all of the protesters in the streets, accept the 9/11 storyline and the hoax “war on terror” that the storyline justifies, it follows logically that Muslims, already “terrorists” by definition (just ask the neoconservatives and Israel), fleeing their death and destruction by Washington might harbor thoughts of harm to Americans. Considering the ruling storyline, to let them in would be irresponsible.
But not to the protesters. It wasn’t the killing of their families and destruction of their homes and countries that might make Muslims into terrorists. It is banning them from entry as refugees that turns them into terrorists!
Try to imagine the absurdity of political leadership in the US and Europe during the 21st century. Western governments inflicted so much death and destruction that they created millions of Muslim refugees in order to accept as immigrants peoples who might harbor thoughts of revenge.
Are we to conclude that there is no such thing in the US and Europe as a liberal/progressive/left, only Soros-funded protesters for hire, as in the orchestrated Maiden protests in Kiev and today in Macedonia and Hungary?
Correct or not, this is the conclusion of many.
Illegitimate protests discredit all protests.
Could we be witnessing the ruling oligarchy using its pawns to discredit in advance valid protests at the time when they move to reassert their control?
An astute citizen of Hungary sees similarity between the protests against Trump in the US and the Soros-orchestrated protests against the government of Hungary:
Dear Dr. Roberts,
Being the citizen of Hungary, a country heavily infested by Soros-financed NGO’s, and with a government that is openly anti-Soros, it breaks my heart to see the USA in a situation very much like what we have had to put up with since 2010, the year when Viktor Orban won a two-thirds majority, which he won again in 2014. Today, there is one piece of experience that is, I think, crucial for us, Hungarians, to share with the USA. It is this: nothing is sacred or too dear for Soros, his NGO’s and associates of all stripes in their fight for power. This has been a concept quite hard to come to terms with for many of us in Hungary. They will sacrifice the country, the future, the people, they will sacrifice anything, just to (re-)gain power. As I follow news from the USA, I see photos of crowds that appear to be filled with hatred. They are like the (fortunately quite diminished) crowds paraded around by the Hungarian opposition parties, who like to call themselves “democratic” as opposed to the government elected to office by the people, which they refer to as “fascist, nazi, anti-democratic, anti-semitic” etc.
These crowds are the embodiment of hypocrisy. Chanting slogans of “love”, they act out of pure hatred, for power, and refuse to be reasoned with. They refuse to consider facts. They call themselves liberals, but act against liberty through exercising total intolerance. I assume that the people who voted for President Trump are patriotic. If my assumption is correct, this also means that it will take quite some time, until the reality sinks in that Soros, his NGO’s and allies will trample down, unhesitatingly, the nation and the empire that they seek to rule unchallenged. This is because they do not rule for the people. They need the power to be in the position to exploit the nation and the empire, for their own benefit. This is not an easy thought to come to terms with for a patriot. The sooner the US electorate understands this, the more resistant it can become against the propaganda campaign and high visibility demonstrations so happily covered by the mainstream media. It is important to keep in mind that the room to maneuver President Trump has is directly proportionate to the popular supporthe enjoys, at any given time.
Dr. Roberts, thank you for all your valuable work invested into making the world a better – and safer – place, for the benefit of all Mankind.
Kind regards, Anita
- Berkeley Antifa Attacker Unmasked As UC Employee? CNN and Young Turks Lookin’ So Dumb
Today, propagandists on the left attempted to change the narrative over the violent “Antifa” riots, suggesting that Trump supporters were secretly behind the group’s spate of violent terrorist acts since the election:
Of course, the ultra-liberal, Armenian Holocaust denying, TalcumX hiring, “better than you” elitists – also known as “The Young Turks,” started furiously parroting these Alisnsky tactics to cast doubt on just who keeps co-opting student protests and turning them violent…
And Thursday night, The Young Turks Ana Kasparian – a horrible human being, introduced the question of just who IS this Antifa?
Don’t worry Ana – Twitter user Pave Darker (@PaveDarker) has your back, hack.
In a nutshell: A violent Antifa attacker bragged about beating up a Trump supporter over Twitter. In that user’s profile, @PaveDarker found a link to the attacker’s Facebook account with his real name [Note: This man is a suspect – name withheld from this post pending official investigation]:
Witness journalism in action Ana:
Mmmm hmm:
Deeper we go:
And this $69,824K/year Antifa rebel appears to be a “Digital Comm Spec 4” at Berkeley:
The authorities have been notified, and the UC Employee is thought to be in New York right now. Developing…
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com * Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow
- World Leaders "Stunned" By Trump's Bluntness
As President Trump drops tape (and tweet) bombs left, right, and center; often saying exactly what he is thinking, it appears the world’s leaders (and establishmentarians) are “shocked” at his inconvenient truthiness. As Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said, reflecting on Brexit concerns,
“…our reliance on the United States, in normal times, wouldn’t worry too many people… But Donald Trump doesn’t seem to be a normal president.”
Which seemed to sum things up nicely.
From Australia to Iran, and from Germany to Russia, no one is safe from President Donald Trump’s blunt, win-the-deal approach to diplomacy. As The Wall Street Journal reports, his style has U.S. adversaries and some allies struggling to assess its impact for their countries and puzzling over how to react if they land in the new American leader’s crosshairs next.
“The troubling thing for allies is this kind of hard-edged, transactional approach, where longstanding relationships and all that shared history and shared military sacrifices going back to World War I just doesn’t seem to count for anything,” said Andrew Shearer, who served as national-security adviser to two Australian prime ministers.
“Every deal is a struggle between a winner and a loser,” he said of Mr. Trump’s style. “That approach might work in business, but as someone who’s been around foreign policy for a long time, I just don’t see how it’s going to work internationally.”
…
“In the short run everyone is trying to get a handle on the new administration,” Mr. Haass said. “But in the medium and long run, whether governments like or loathe what they’re seeing, I believe what every government will do is essentially rethink its relationship with the United States.”
…
“Worrying declarations by the new American administration all make our future highly unpredictable,” European Council President Donald Tusk, who represents the governments of the EU’s 28 member states, wrote in a letter to EU leaders this week. He stressed the need to maintain a united Europe “whether we are talking to Russia, China, the U.S., or Turkey.”
“We had hoped for a more nuanced, sophisticated version of Trump after inauguration,” said a senior European diplomat. “Alas, that was not to be.”
Trump has often remarked he prefers to be unpredictable and it seems that is exactly his approach, and Richard Haass, the chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Mr. Trump has introduced uncertainty into the role the U.S. plays in the world.
Furthermore, Mr. Haass said, the new president has shown an openness to upending the foreign policy status quo. “He doesn’t feel confined by what he inherited,” he said.
- "The Center Didn't Hold"
Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,
The Purpose of Decadence and the Pleasures of Coercion
I guess you’ve noticed by now that the center didn’t hold. Instead of a secure platform for political premises like tradition, precedent, rationality, and cultural norms, you see a fiery maw of sheer emotion between the camps of the so-called Left and the so-called Right.
I say so-called because the campus Left and the Trump Right have escaped the categorical corrals they formerly occupied. And they may have left their customary official parties stranded and dying too. It may be fatuous to say whether that is a good or bad thing; it just is, for the moment. They are two halves of a polity so broken and so far apart that it is also hard to see how they might ever come back together into a consensus about how a society might operate successfully.
Not having a consensus — some substantial overlap between circles of perspective — it’s not surprising that America can’t construct a coherent view of what is happening, or make a plan for what to do about it. Mainly what’s happening is the running down of fossil fuel based techno-industrial economies, and the main symptom is falling standards of living, with fading prospects for future happiness and security.
As I’ve said before, our economic picture is basically untenable due to the falling energy-return-on-investment of the crucial oil supply (shout-out to Steve St. Angelo). At the high point of 1920s oil production the ratio was around 100-1. The shale oil “miracle” is good for about 5-1. The aggregate of all oil these days is under 30-1. Below that number, you’ve got to shed some activities in our complex economy (or they just get too expensive to support) — things like high-paying labor jobs, medical care, tourism, college, commuting, heating 2500 square foot homes…). Oddly the way it’s actually working out is that America is simply shedding its whole middle class and all its accustomed habits and luxuries. At least that’s how it adds up in effect. Naturally, that produces a lot of bad feeling.
President Trump is unlikely to be able to fix that essential problem, unless he can pilot the whole political-economy into a glide-path leading toward neo-medievalism — what I call the World Made By Hand. Trump’s call for restoring the factory economy of 1962 is a low-percentage prospect. Instead, he’ll be saddled with the collateral damage caused by the dishonest effort of his recent predecessors to borrow from the future to pay for the way we live now — that is, racking up debt. This mighty debt-load, never before seen in history, and the accounting fraud that enables it, has helped produce all kinds of distortions, perversities, and fragilities in our money system (finance and banking) which can easily slip into collapse if a crucial prop fails here or there, and that is exactly what I think will happen under Trump. It will not be his fault, but he’ll get blamed for it. And when it happens, he won’t be able to give his attention to anything but that.
In the meantime, society shows all the symptoms of this literal economic disease in the political and cultural fissures of the day. The political Right failed in its role as prudent conservator of values, resources, and practical custom; the political Left has taken refuge in sentimental fantasy, using the semantic ploys of the graduate school seminars to pretend that reality is whatever they wish it to be. Uncomfortable with the age-old tensions of sexuality? Then pretend that you can opt out of the dynamics of biology by declaring yourself “non-binary,” a term with a pleasing science-y flavor. Tensions gone? Not really. You’ve only made them worse as, for instance, expressed in “non-binary” suicide rates. The perversities of transsexual triumphalism are related directly to the falsehoods of Federal Reserve trans-monetarist triumphalism, and all parties are subject to the matrix of racketeering that has taken the place of plain dealing in goods, money, and ideas in this society — especially ideas grounded in reality.
Societies may not exactly be organisms with intentions, but they move in a particular direction because they are emergent phenomena. That is, they are self-organizing according to the circumstances and forces they are subject to at a certain time and place in history. Decadence is specifically the decay of social and cultural boundaries, a process that is manifestly accelerating now. Both sides of the political spectrum are acting out this dynamic, with the vacuum in the middle sucking vitality out of each side. The Left has become a kind of pagan religion of sacred victims and victimhood, collecting sacred injuries and martyrs. Its dark secret, though, is that these sacred things are only straw-dogs and wicker-men. The real animating motive for the Left these days is simply the pleasure of coercion, of exercising the power to punish their adversaries and watch them suffer.
The Trump Right also enjoys the writhings and sufferings of its adversaries, squashed bug style, as it goes forth in the quixotic battle to bring back 1962 at all costs. Both the Left and the right show not a little sadism in their methods. In the background of these histrionics, the great groaning machine of Modernity lurches toward collapse — not the end-of-the-world as many foolishly imagine, but the end of a phase of history when things that used to work, don’t. At a certain point, we’ll have to try other ways of being with each other on this planet, and then for a while things will come together again.
- 400,000 Fewer Americans Enrolled In Obamacare For 2017
Despite The Democrats decrying the Trump administration for its efforts to repeal and replace President Obama's Affordable Care Act, it seems around 400,000 fewer Americans decided for themselves that Obamacare wasn't for them in 2017.
As Axios reports, Obamacare enrollment for this year appears to have ended slightly down from last year, according to enrollment numbers released this afternoon by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency said about 9.2 million people signed up in the 39 states that use the federal HealthCare.gov website by Jan. 31.
While that's not a total enrollment figure, 9.6 million people signed up through that website at the end of last year's open enrollment.
It's the first indication that the Trump administration's opposition to the law, and its decision to pull TV advertising, may have had an impact, since the pace of enrollment had been ahead of last year's until mid-January.
For context:
- New customers in 2017: 3 million
- New customers in 2016: 4 million
Just before the numbers were released, an HHS spokesman from the Trump team released a statement declaring that "Obamacare has failed the American people, with one broken promise after another."
“As noted in the report today from [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services], premiums in the ACA marketplace have increased 25 percent while the number of insurers has declined 28 percent over the past year,” he added.
“We look forward to providing relief to those who are being harmed by the status quo and pursuing patient-centered solutions that will work for the American people.”
As The Hill adds, The Trump administration did not release enrollment numbers for all 50 states, so it is not clear how the nationwide signup numbers compare to the Obama administration’s target of 13.8 million signups across all 50 states. The administration said it would release more information on nationwide enrollment in March.
Democrats pointed to a drop-off in signups at the end of the enrollment period as evidence that the Trump administration's cancelation of ads hurt sign-ups.
- Federal marketplace signups, Jan. 15-31, 2017: 376,260
- Federal marketplace signups, Jan. 24-31, 2016: 686,708
So what the Democrats are saying is that without spending millions to advertize the benefits of Obamacare – after years of discussion and explanation – notably fewer people are interested in it, or believe they need it (or are willing to spend money on it).
- Judge Blocks Trump Travel Ban Nationwide; White House Vows To Challenge "Outrageous Order"
Update: Moments ago, the White House issued a statement saying the DOJ would, as expected, challenge the federal court’s ruling that halted travel ban “at the earliest possible time” and will file an emergency stay of Robart’s “outrageous order.”
Expect angry Trump tweets to follow.
* * *
Following a brief moment of ‘success’ for the Trump administration as a Boston judge ruled Trump’s immigration policy was not a Muslim ban, a Bush-appointed federal judge in Seattle, who said the states of Washington and Minnesota can sue claiming their residents were harmed by the ban, granted a nationwide temporary restraining order blocking Trump’s immigration ban.
District Judge James Robart ruled the executive order would be stopped nationwide effective immediately: his ruling was the most comprehensive legal rebuke of Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order prohibiting immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Syria and four other nations from entering the U.S. for 90 days. Judges in Brooklyn, New York, Los Angeles and Alexandria, Virginia, had previouslyissued orders that are less sweeping.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson was delighted with the decision: “The Constitution prevailed today,” Ferguson said in a statement after the ruling.
“It is not the loudest voice that prevails on the Constitution,” Ferguson continued speaking outside the courthouse. “We are a nation of laws, not even the president can violate the Constitution. It’s our president’s duty to honor this ruling and I’ll make sure he does,” Ferguson added hopefully.
Good luck with that.
In his ruling, Robart said that “the state has met its burden in demonstrating immediate and irreparable injury” while Fergsuon added that “Judge Robart’s decision, effective immediately, effective now, puts a halt to President Trump’s unconstitutional and unlawful executive order. It puts a stop to it immediately, nationwide.” The court order, effective immediately, will remain in place until the judge considers a motion – probably within a month – to permanently invalidate the president’s order, Ferguson said.
Ferguson, a Democrat, filed the lawsuit three days after Trump signed the executive order. The suit argued that the travel ban targets Muslims and violates constitutional rights of immigrants and their families.
In his request for the order, according to Bloomberg, Ferguson had said the effects on the state included economic consequences for employers based there, including Microsoft Corp., Starbucks Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. Expedia Inc., based in Bellevue, Washington, had about 1,000 customers with flight reservations in or out of the U.S. from the seven countries, he said. Minnesota, like Washington, cited the effect of the ban on students at its colleges and universities, as well as health care centers including the Mayo Clinic. The state’s 5.4 million residents included 30,000 immigrants from the affected countries, it said in the lawsuit.
According to The Hill, in a phone interview with CNN Friday evening, Ferguson said he “expected win, lose or draw” that the case would move “fairly quickly through, up to the Ninth Circuit” Court of Appeals — “just because of the magnitude of the executive order.”
And hinting that the Supreme Court showdown we suggested previously now appears inevitable, Ferguson added that he is “prepared for this case to go all the way to the Supreme Court whichever way the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals goes,” he said, anticipating a challenge to Robart’s ruling. “It’s a case of that magnitude, it’s a case that frankly I think will ultimately end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, so that would not surprise me one way or the other.”
Ferguson’s ruling was on the basis that states had already suffered harm from the travel ban. He also said the lawsuit challenging the legality of the order has a good chance of succeeding. Lawyers for the government had argued the states lacked standing to sue, according to the Seattle Times, and that the order was within Trump’s executive powers.
That said, it is likely that like last Saturday’s Brooklyn decision, that this ruling oo is being blown out of proportion: to wit, a Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News that “the judge’s order will have no immediate practical effect” adding that “all previously issued visas from the seven affected countries were canceled by last week’s executive order” meaning all travelers would have to reapply.
Furthermore, the Trump administration could seek a stay of the Seattle judge’s order.
The decision came on a day that attorneys from four states were in courts challenging Trump’s executive order. Trump’s administration justified the action on national security grounds, but opponents labeled it an unconstitutional order targeting people based on religious beliefs – which the Boston judge has since ruled invalid.
Also on Friday, Hawaii’s Doug Chin became the sixth state attorney general to sue or support lawsuits seeking to block Trump’s order.
At this rate, it now appears almost certain that the Trump executive order showdown will conclude in the Supreme Court… where the tie breaking Justice will be the just appointed by Trump, Neil Gorsuch. Which is why one can see why Trump may feel confident about the outcome of the case.
* * *
The case is State of Washington v. Trump, 17-cv-00141, U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington (Seattle). The Boston case is Loughghalam v. Trump, 17-cv-10154, U.S. District Court, Massachusetts (Boston). The text of the full Temporary Restraining Order is below.
- This Is How Russia & The United States Are Cooperating In Syria
Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Since Donald Trump became President of the United States, we have been witnessing some interesting developments in Syria. We have only fragmentary and seemingly unconnected information at this time, but, as one puts the pieces of the puzzle together, it appears likely that some kind of deeper level of coordination between the US and Russia exists. While it cannot be said with certainty, Trump and Putin have probably agreed to cooperate in the fight against Daesh in Syria without making it publicly known. These represent only intentions, especially after the misunderstanding in recent days about joint strikes between Moscow and Washington against Daesh in Syria.
The following list is intended to facilitate an understanding of a tentative hypothesis that posits secret coordination between the US and Russia.
Let us start with some points concerning recent months.
1. Russia has fought terrorism in Syria for nearly two years, repeatedly requesting the US to cooperate in this effort, at least in terms of sharing sensitive information on intelligence.
2. Trump, during the election campaign, always said he would be willing to work with Moscow to fight terrorism in Syria, focusing on Daesh as the number one priority.
3. Once becoming president, Trump reiterated this position without backtracking, as many had anticipated.
4. Over the past ten days (21st, 23rd and 31st January 2017) the Russian Federation has conducted at least two aviation missions involving as many as six Tu-22M3 strategic bombers over the village of Deir ez-Zor, representing an important display of firepower.
5. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD) reported that they targeted structures and facilities used for making weapons in addition to the command centers and arms depots of Daesh.
6. The areas around Deir ez-Zor have been under Daesh control for a very long time.
Now let us look at some recent but rather obscure events that have never been fully clarified.
7. The most cryptic news coming out of Syria usually involves areas around Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra, which has included the cowardly bombing by the international coalition of the Syrian Army on September 17, 2016, and also in recent weeks, as well as the extraordinary crossing of hundreds of Daesh members from Mosul to Deir ez-Zor that did not provoke any air intervention from the international coalition.
8. Given the above, it is likely that the American deep state (CIA and State Department) is in contact with Daesh, coordinating the repeated attacks on the Syrian state.
Some considerations on the Russian operations in Syria, in addition to the earlier observations.
9. From experience, thanks to the story of the heroic sacrifice of Alexander Prokhorenko, we know that Russian aviation relies on Russian special forces (acting as spotters) for bombings in such locations as Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor, relying on such soldiers to identify and confirm targets on the ground that are often disguised as civilian structures (e.g., weapons-manufacturing plants and arms depots). But we also know how dangerous and difficult it is for spotters to infiltrate such areas.
10. Russian strategic bombers have employed «dumb» bombs that do not require laser-guided targeting systems. Evidently Russians have been confident in their ordnance hitting their targets.
11. Given points (1), (6), (9), (10) and the repeated attacks in recent days of strategic bombers, it is evident that the Russian ministry of defence has acquired new, previously unknown intelligence information regarding ground targets in the area of ??Deir ez-Zor that was. Moscow has been requesting from Washington the sharing of intelligence information for years now. The Obama administration has consistently refused to cooperate. Trump has always offered the opposite.
In addition, a note on recent news of joint efforts between the American and the Russian air forces in Syria.
12. The episode involving the joint bombing conducted by the Russians and Americans (but denied by sources in the international coalition) has taken on a particular significance when Trump's spokesman, Sean Spicer, declined to comment on the story, perhaps indicating possible differences of opinion between the Trump administration and members of the US-led international coalition.
Finally, two logical deductions, consistent with those reported previously.
13. It is very likely that Moscow received from American sources, thanks to the points (7) and (8), the coordinates of Daesh in Deir ez-Zor. This would also explain the issues covered (4), (9) and (10).
14. The Russian MOD has not released information on how they acquired the information that led to the bombing of the past days.
Conclusions.
In summary, we can draw a picture of events in recent days in Syria, assuming a hidden coordination between Moscow and Washington.
We know, for example, that Trump does not intend to overthrow the Assad government. With no need for ground troops (AKA terrorists), the newly established administration does not intend to finance or arm «moderate rebels», as was repeatedly stated by the new president in the election campaign.
Equally likely is that as a result of the US-Russian joint mission in Syria against Daesh, confirmed by the Russian Ministry of Defence and repeated by RT and not denied by Spicer (12), the US deep state (especially the Republican Party, the mainstream media and intelligence communities at high levels) has strongly protested against this, maintaining the traditional hostility towards Moscow.
It is therefore likely that the Trump administration has gone from active support (joint missions) to hidden coordination with Moscow to avoid further friction with some of the components of the so-called ‘deep state'.
To confirm this hypothesis, strategic bombers have struck with unguided bombs targets that were previously unknown, probably thanks to newly acquired intelligence (otherwise it is not clear why these targets would have not been previously engaged in such missions given the critical situation in Deir ez-Zor for the Syrian Arab Army).
Regarding paragraphs (6), (7) and (8), it is easy to understand why it is likely that this kind of information is in the possession of Washington. This is also one of the reasons why the previous administration has consistently refused to cooperate with Moscow. The American deep state has deep, hidden links with terrorism in Syria, and the US intelligence community has every intention of maintaining these secrets.
In conclusion, the call scheduled between Trump and Putin on Saturday, January 28 is another indication of an agreement that is currently developing without much publicity to combat terrorism in Syria. Keeping an eye on the situation in Syria and the talks between the US and Russia over the coming days, it will become easier to evaluate the accuracy of this tentative hypothesis.
- Meet The New, "Safe" Synthetic CDO's That Could Spell Disaster For The European Banking System
So what do you do if you’re a European banking regulator faced with the task of maintaining a safe, sustainable financial system amid a concerning growth in bank leverage. Well, if you said sell down risk assets then you’re just being silly or completely ignoring your implicit obligation to engineer higher banking profitability at all costs.
If we can get serious for a moment, like in the early 2000’s, when all else fails you turn to synthetic CDO’s which, courtesy of some magical, if completely incomprehensible, math, slashes the risk of bank balance sheets while having a negligible impact on profitability. It’s called the Synthetic Collateralized Loan Obligation and it’s all the rage in Europe.
In a synthetic securitisation a bank buys credit protection on a portfolio of loans from an investor. This means that when a loan in the portfolio defaults, the investor reimburses the bank for the losses incurred on loans in that portfolio up to a maximum, which is the amount invested. This amount therefore provides credit protection for a slice of the portfolio, which is often called the ‘first loss tranche’. The size of this tranche is typically chosen in a way to cover at least the expected losses on the portfolio as well as a share of unexpected losses. The bank usually retains the rest of the risk, which is called the ‘senior tranche’.
Before closing, the bank and the investor agree on the terms of the transaction, such as the amount the investor is at risk for, the duration of the contract and the loans that are eligible for inclusion in the portfolio. Choosing which loans are eligible can be on a disclosed basis, where the investor knows the exact names of the borrowers of these loans, or on a blind pool basis, where the investor does not know the identities of the borrowers. In the latter case the loans are chosen based on criteria, such as the type of loans, sector, geography, credit risk, et cetera.
The term ‘synthetic’ comes from the fact that, unlike in a true sale transaction, the loans being securitised are not sold by the bank but are referenced, which means they remain on the bank’s balance sheet. This way, the bank reduces the credit risk on the securitised loans and remains in charge of managing the loans and the lending relationship with their client itself. Synthetic securitisations are often used for hedging the credit risk on loans that cannot easily be sold.
As Bloomberg points out, from the regulator’s perspective the logic is that these deals are usually fully funded, with investors posting the full amount that they’re on the hook to cover should a lot of a bank’s loans go bust. They’re not highly leveraged wagers similar to the pre-crisis synthetic collateralized debt obligations, which were backed by who knows what and sold to whomever.
Of course, the problem with that perspective is that it views the risk profile of the synthetic CLO in a bubble and completely ignores all other possible second derivative implications.
One such second derivative implication can by linked back to the primary demand for these structures, hedge funds.
Per the graphic above, hedge funds are all too willing to post the collateral required to backstop losses on a bank’s loan portfolio but only if they can juice their returns somehow. So how do they do that? Well, they borrow money from banks, of course. Yes, you read that correctly, banks are lending money to hedge funds which use that leverage to backstop losses on the bank’s loan portfolio…effectively the bank is issuing loans to backstop loans.
We vaguely remember similar shenanigans occurring roughly 10 years ago when most of wall street’s modern day titans were still watching Power Rangers in their PJs…as we recall, in the end, it didn’t work out well.
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