Feb 04

Today’s News 4th February 2020

  • Boris Johnson Must Decide Between Washington And Beijing
    Boris Johnson Must Decide Between Washington And Beijing

    Authored by Con Coughlin via The Gatestone Institute,

    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s decision to allow the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei access to Britain’s new 5G network has placed unnecessary strain on the transatlantic alliance at a time when it needs to show a united front against Beijing’s global ambitions.

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    Mr Johnson’s decision to allow Huawei to build parts of the 5G network has been taken in the face of fierce opposition from the Trump administration, which regards the Chinese company a security risk because of its historic links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    Donald Trump personally called Mr Johnson to urge the British prime minister not to allow Huawei continued access to Britain’s 5G infrastructure, warning that to do so risked causing a split in transatlantic relations, and might raise questions about Britain’s continued involvement in the elite Five Eyes intelligence-gathering alliance that London has shared with the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand since the end of World War Two.

    Instead, following a meeting of Britain’s National Security Council, Mr Johnson announced that Huawei would be allowed to continue working on the development of the 5G infrastructure, albeit with strict conditions being applied on the company’s ability to access those parts of the network linked to Britain’s military, nuclear and intelligence installations.

    Mr Johnson has sought to reassure Washington by offering to work closely with the US to develop 5G technology that would “break the dominance” of Huawei, with the aim of ultimately squeezing the Chinese giant out of Britain’s infrastructure.

    The depth of Washington’s disappointment with the British decision, however, was reflected in comments made by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who, prior to arriving in London for a two-day visit, said there was still time for Mr Johnson to “relook” at the decision.

    American objections about allowing Huawei access to sensitive communications networks in the West stem from ongoing concerns about the company’s ties to the CCP, as well as China’s People’s Liberation Army.

    Huawei has been accused of developing sophisticated surveillance technology that has been used in China’s Xinjiang province as part of Beijing’s crackdown against the country’s oppressed Uighur Muslim minority.

    Hundreds of thousands of Uighurs are reported to have been detained in makeshift prison camps and subjected to “re-education” programmes by the Chinese government.

    Concerns over Huawei’s activities have already persuaded a number of countries, such as India, New Zealand and Australia, to join the US in banning the Chinese firm from their 5G networks. Indeed, Washington’s concerns over Huawei mean the company’s mobile phones are not even allowed onto American military bases.

    Mr Johnson’s decision, therefore, will be regarded as a victory for Beijing, and a vindication of its claims that Washington’s campaign against Huawei is driven more by commercial rivalry than genuine concerns about any security threat the firm might pose.

    It is for this reason that Mr Johnson would be well-advised to heed Mr Pompeo’s advice and reconsider allowing Huawei access to Britain’s telecoms systems, irrespective of the restrictions the British authorities claim they will impose on the firm’s access to sensitive installations.

    In an age when the foremost challenge of the Western democracies is to defend their interests against Beijing’s long-term goal of achieving global dominance, it is vital that they present a united front against the Chinese threat.

    Mr Johnson needs to understand that Britain’s interests are best served by maintaining strong ties with Washington, rather than by indulging in dubious business deals with Beijing.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 02/04/2020 – 02:00

    Tags
    Politics

  • Controversy Erupts After Buttigieg Declares Victory; Sanders Challenges As Mayor Pete's Links To App Company Emerge
    Controversy Erupts After Buttigieg Declares Victory; Sanders Challenges As Mayor Pete’s Links To App Company Emerge

    Update (1:30 a.m. ET): Controversy has broken out after Pete Buttigieg declared victory in Monday’s Iowa caucus, despite a counting fiasco caused by a new app developed by a company called, literally, Shadow.

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    People have noted that the Buttigieg campaign has also contracted with Shadow, leading some to note the poor optics and imply that the Iowa caucus is once again being stolen from Bernie Sanders.

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    The Sanders campaign, meanwhile, released their own internal figures indicating the Vermont Senator is in the lead.

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    * * *

    Update (12:40 a.m. ET): While the results of the Iowa Caucus are still in limbo, the Biden campaign’s General Counsel, Dana Remus, fired off a terse letter to Iowa DNC officials with a list of demands after “considerable flaws” in the reporting system have led to ‘acute failures statewide.’

    “We believe the campaigns deserve full explanations and relevant information regarding the methods of quality control you are employing, and an opportunity to respond, before any official results are released.“

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    The Iowa Democratic Party, meanwhile, said “We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results. In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report. This is simply a reporting issue, the app did not go down and this is not a hack or an intrusion. The underlying data and paper trail is sound and will simply take time to further report the results.

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    Others weren’t so sure:

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    More on what’s going on:

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    * * *

    Before we start detailing the results of this evening’s Iowa caucuses, we have to get something off our chests…

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    Ok, with that said, heading into the caucus, Bernie was soaring in the bookies odds with Biden, Betty, and Buttigieg crashing…

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    And while Tom Steyer spent more money on ads in Iowa than any other candidate, isn’t even registering a blip…

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    As a reminder, a candidate wins the nomination if they can secure a majority of delegates – 2,376 or more. That includes a combined total of pledged delegates – those awarded based on election results – and unpledged superdelegates – party leaders who can vote for the candidate of their choosing.

    As Bloomberg notes, Superdelegates, also known as “unpledged” or “automatic” delegates, are Democratic delegates who get a ticket to the convention based on their role in the party – 445 national committee members, 280 members of Congress, 24 governors and 22 other party leaders like former presidents and national chairmen. Their role has been controversial because they can vote their own conscience and could conceivably overturn the will of rank-and-file delegates in a contested convention. New rules this year ensure that won’t be the case – but only on the first ballot.

    Here’s how it works:

    • If one candidate has enough delegates to win the convention outright—at least 2,376 delegates—superdelegates can vote because they won’t make a difference.

    • If one candidate has a majority of pledged delegates—at least 1,991—only those pledged delegates can vote on the first ballot and that candidate becomes the nominee.

    • If no candidate has a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot—less than 1,991—the convention moves to a second ballot in which superdelegates can vote.

    Got that? Clear as mud right?

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    The Iowa rules are even more complex, but simply put, Iowa has 41 ‘pledged’ delegates and 8 ‘super-delegates’.

    *  *  *

    The results are notably delayed

    Iowa’s State Democratic Party, seemingly terrified of blowback if something untoward occurs (note that they canceled the Des Moines poll due to irregularities), initially said it is doing “quality control” on results “out of an abundance of caution.”

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    Then they slowly started to admit there were real issues with a brand new app that had been created especially to ease transmission and transparency of the results.

    One precinct chair in Polk County told Bloomberg News he still has not been able to report his results because the phone app was not working and he has been on hold with an alternative hotline for more than 30 minutes.

    “We are experiencing some issues in terms of people being able to load and connect with the app for their precinct reporting,” said Bret Nilles, chairman of the Linn County Democratic Party.

    ABC’s Rick Klein noted:

    “What we can say confidently is there are massive technical issues that are delaying the vote count right now in Iowa and it is 100% better for this to be right rather than to be fast.”

    State party Communications Director Mandy McClure said in a statement.

    “The integrity of the results is paramount. We have experienced a delay in the results due to quality checks and the fact that the IDP is reporting out three data sets for the first time. What we know right now is that around 25% of precincts have reported, and early data indicates turnout is on pace for 2016.”

    “A lot of us are going to be doing it on paper and calling it in,” said Kelcey Brackett, the chairman of the Muscatine County Democratic Party.

    CNN just interviewed Shawn Sebastian, secretary from the Story Country Precinct 1-1, who said:

    “I am the caucus secretary for Story County Precinct 1-1. I’ve been on hold for over an hour to report the results. We have 6 delegates”

    The results.. at time of writing…nothing!

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    One guest on Fox News has already raise the question “…it makes one wonder if the app was hacked… and by whom?”.

    Was there some meddling? Did Rachel Maddow blame the Russians yet?

    The state party has said it has no cybersecurity concerns over the app’s use.

    As one wit noted”

    “…and these are the people who want to run our healthcare system?”

    *  *  *

    Congrats to Cory Booker, who is no longer running for president, but appears to have actually won a state delegate equivalent, thanks to strategic voting from non-viable candidates.

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    Oh and at least one vote was decide by coin toss…

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    Finally, in an attempt at foreseeing the spin-fest that is bound to erupt after these results, we note that a lot has been said about Iowa and New Hampshire’s lack of racial diversity. Make no mistake, their status will be questioned, especially if the IA/NH Democratic winner(s) don’t win the nomination or the White House.

    Oh, and one more thing, Trump won 97% of the vote in Republican caucuses.

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    8 days until New Hampshire…


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 02/04/2020 – 00:41

    Tags
    Politics

  • China To Lower 2020 Economic Growth Expectations On Coronavirus Outbreak 
    China To Lower 2020 Economic Growth Expectations On Coronavirus Outbreak 

    It would be challenging for China to falsify 2020 GDP figures between 6% to 6.5% amid economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.

    The Communist Party of China had come to grips of a decelerating economy, even before the deadly virus broke out. Officials blamed the slowdown on the trade war last year, and now they’re blaming it on the virus. Party leaders appear to scapegoat everyone but themselves for China’s downturn.

    Bloomberg notes that government officials could lower the country’s annual growth target in March from the 6% to 6.5% range, to about 6%.

    China has injected tens of billions of dollars into its financial markets and the real economy to prevent a hard landing. People familiar with increased stimulus measures told Bloomberg that deficit spending and issuance of government bonds would be the support tools to cushion the economy, expected to be announced on March 5, or thereabout.

    We noted even before the virus outbreak, that China’s credit growth rapidly decelerated to the weakest pace since at least 2017, as a continued collapse in shadow banking, weak corporate demand for credit and seasonal effects all signaled that a massive rebound in China’s economy was unlikely in 1Q20.

    Bloomberg Economics said China’s 1Q20 GDP figures could print around 4.5% Y/Y: 

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    “That’s a drop from 6% in the final period of 2019 and the lowest since quarterly data that begins in 1992. Most of China’s provinces said before the virus became widespread, they’re expecting slower economic growth in 2020, with at least 22 out of 31 major cities, provinces and autonomous regions cutting their targets as of January 21, according to their work reports which layout plans for this year.” 

    The coronavirus shock from China has already sent commodities tumbling; for instance, copper futures are on the longest losing streak since 1986. Dr. Copper suggests China’s economy is headed for a hard landing, along with continued deceleration across the world. 

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    What does this all mean?  Well, China was responsible for more than 60% of all new credit created globally in the past decade.

    With a slowdown in the country gaining momentum, creeping economic paralysis unleashed by the coronavirus epidemic, hopes for a rebound in the second-largest economy to rescue the global economy have faded. This could only suggest the world is headed for below-trend growth.

     


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 02/04/2020 – 01:00

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • The Virginia 2A Protest Is The Model For Counter Color Revolution
    The Virginia 2A Protest Is The Model For Counter Color Revolution

    Authored by Tim Kirby via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

    There have been many protests all over the world on a large scale since the beginning of the 24 hour news cycle/prevalence of the Internet and it has become obvious that some quickly gain favored status from the Mainstream Media while others are kept in the dark regardless of size or significance. This selective hyper focus on particular protests is a key component of the Color Revolution strategy. The protestors are positioned as the downtrodden masses yearning for their voices to be heard, and bad country of the month’s leadership is oppressive and needs to go. Sometimes this works (Ukraine twice and Georgia) and other times it fails (Russia and for now at least Venezuela) but the Second Amendment (2A) protest in Virginia presents a new tactic/opportunity that can be used to counteract any Color Revolution outside the West.

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    One thing that is key to understanding Color Revolutions (CR) is that as it stands today they are always orchestrated by the West to make regime change in the Non-West due to their financial and nearly total media domination. No matter how many people label the Mainstream Media as “Dinosaur” or quote their terrible ratings, the 24 hour news cycle still creates the dominant narrative for current events in the public’s mind internationally, and this is why the Color Revolution tactic only works one way.

    The Western Mainstream Media can turn any nobody politician\public figure into the legitimate leader of Country X overnight. No one knew who Guaido was on Monday, but the West was sure he was the only true voice of the Venezuelan people on Tuesday. The same goes for the overwhelming support for anyone opposed to Putin like Alexei Navalny, who if given the chance to run for President would surely get a low end single digit percentage.

    The Mainstream Media can make heroes and villains abroad but this does not work in the opposite direction. When Jill Stein (a figure with the same relative level of popularity as Navalny if not more so) was thrown out of the 2016 debate when she tried to crash the party, no non-Western media could spin this into the catalyst for some sort of Color Revolution. If this would have happened in say Iran then calls for the overthrow of the government would be heard from TV screens and Facebook memes around the world.

    Although the Russians are accused of meddling in the Yellow-Vest protests, there is simply not enough Moscow Media might to convince the French public that the Yellow vesters are the new legitimate power, wag that dog, and get a full scale Color Revolution completed. The French situation is a perfect breeding ground for a Color Revolution if it was in bad guy Country X. The level of protests are massive, police brutality is rampant and documented, and they even have a Color/symbol – their vests. All the ingredients are there but without being able to push the media narrative no CR can or will happen in France.

    What this means is that for the foreseeable future the Multipolar non-Western World (Russia, China, Iran etc.) is always going to be on the defensive from CR tactics. There is however another major disadvantage that the Multipolar World has – the type of people who do go out to street protests are the type who support the Monopolar World.

    The working masses of families with kids, the heartlanders across the globe, who are really the backbone of society are far too tired/busy to engage in Color Revolutions or protests of any kind, and when they do they are one off and utter failures. The actual people who are most likely to protest with ribbons because of vague complaints like a lack of “Democracy” or “freedom” are those emotional types with time on their hands and probably decent resources too.

    Naive bourgeois victimhood-lifestyle teenagers and some hardcore professional activists are generally who you are going to find at CRs. The amount of people who are actual ideologues that push political agendas in their country are generally less than 1% of the population combined with trendy kids who want to feel like they are accomplishing something by chanting do not represent the will of the working-class majority. But as stated before the Mainstream Media can convince even simple folk in Country X that they do. And probably what is most important, the trendy people with free time are always inherently pro-Western. It is exactly the cosmopolitan urbanites in any country who are going to be pro-Western, farmers and factory workers usually won’t. The type of people who come out to a Color Revolution are the types who believe the US/EU hype, and are the willful useful idiots that the media needs to create its narrative.

    And here is where the Virginia 2A protests come in. They, like the Yellow Vest protestors were made up of those toiling masses also known as the Silent Majority. The same Silent Majority which the Multipolar world wants to woo with calls for tradition, populism and national sovereignty. Meaning, that ideologically the Second Amendment crowd’s instincts are anti-Color Revolution even if they don’t know what that term means. They are the kind of folks who cherish America as an idea and as part of their identity. They want their traditions and culture to remain intact, meaning that this is really the forces that the leadership of Country X (that is under threat of Color Revolution) should use. This is a demonstration of just how strong the Silent Majority really is when it awakes from its slumber of fatigue.

    The local government was terrified and declared a state of emergency even before the protest began and obviously, the SJW rats didn’t dare show their faces against hundreds of armed old school Americans. This show of force that didn’t use any particular force is a shining example of how strong the people the Multipolar Order supposedly loves, and we can see how much they could halt some kind of anti-American CR.

    To an extent this is what happened in Venezuela when Maduro was able to successfully rally thousands of supporters to march. If in Caracas the media had footage of massed government troops on the move, beating people with clubs, it would have fed into Maduro’s downfall, but since the actual force that took over the streets were just working class normies in bright T-shirts there was not only to juicy footage to twist, the images proved to support Maduro’s legitimacy. The real winner of this situation was Maduro’s usage of the Silent Majority directly against the Color Revolutionaries. He showed a faith in his people, which is not felt in places like Russia or China. Despite the fact that the Multipolar World stands on the side of tradition on populism, the big two dominant forces in this movement do not let their populaces take action like Maduro was wise enough to allow.

    If hordes of armed commoners like those at the Virginia protests showed up to the Maidan it would have never have succeeded. Instead in Ukraine they stayed home as 40,000 protestors decided the destiny of 40 million people. Although China is accused of sending thugs from the Mainland, if they were to send waves of semi-armed hillbillies into Hong Kong the issue would be resolved in a day. The simple fact is that those who are on the Multipolar side of today’s New Cold War, if given the chance to fight on the streets, will win that fight every time. They are the side with the most to lose, the most anger to vent, the most testosterone, the most love for their own way of life, and who suffer the most from Color Revolutions.

    Maduro demonstrated that organizing the peasantry even with just their fists and improvised weapons, was enough to defeat years of Color Revolution prep, especially since his masses did not look at like soldiers in disguise. He had the legit support of countless thousands of normal people.  The Virginia 2A protest showed that the trendies who are the poster children of CR movements will go absolutely silent the second there is a threat of real violence. Antifa is happy to use their Black Block against one man in a MAGA hat but when it comes to actually dying for their beliefs they sit at home. Word warfare, Twitter terrorism and Media manipulation are the strengths of the Monopolar World, but ultimately the people that this system breeds are not willing to fight (in the direct literal sense) for their values and will lose through preemptive capitulation in the face of actual direct force.

    If those who claim they are fighting for a Multipolar World Order do not have more faith in their populace then they will become Yanokoviches and not Maduros. Footage of government troops fighting protestors can spell doom for any leader, while the same direct action being taken by thousands of uniformless out-of-shape factory workers acting semi-independently feeds the Mainstream Media nothing and in fact strengthens one’s own legitimacy – it shows the people are on your side.

    To be clear this is NOT a call for violence, in fact it is quite the opposite. Some of the most deadly events in human history have been Revolutions. Meaning, that if someone really cares about the lives of commoners they should not advocate for overthrowing governments, but for incremental change.

    If the Maidan had been solved by rednecks smashing up the camps in Kiev, yes some people would have died, perhaps tens or hundreds at the most, but to date thousands have been killed and millions have suffered thanks to the successful Color Revolution of 2014. The war in the Donbass still continues many years on. Even if you loved the ideas the Yeltsin tried to push on Russia the fact is that the shattering of the Soviet Union caused millions of deaths, reform of the Soviet Union would have been far preferable from a humanitarian standpoint. If we think about the great revolutionary periods in human history, in France, Russia, China etc. they were all followed by grand scale violence and counter-revolutionary crackdown. Using the Silent Majority to block upcoming CR tactics is a far more humane solution than it may sound on the surface.

    If the Multipolar World wants to survive it has to activate its Silent Majority to protect itself from Color Revolution tactics. It is ironically the populists who in many ways seem too terrified to allow their heartlanders to have the freedom to take action and fight for the motherland without a uniform and direct orders from on high.


    Tyler Durden

    Tue, 02/04/2020 – 00:05

  • Top US General On Ramped Up Gulf Presence: "We're Preventing Iran From Starting A War"
    Top US General On Ramped Up Gulf Presence: “We’re Preventing Iran From Starting A War”

    The United States has been ramping up its force readiness in the Persian Gulf region following the killing of IRGC Gen. Qassem Soleimani and subsequent Iranian ballistic missile attack on US forces stationed in Iraq in early January. 

    Addressing the crew of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the gulf, the top U.S. commander for the region, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, said while on a brief visit aboard the ship: 

    “You’re here because we are preventing Iran from starting a war.”

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    USS Harry S. Truman, via Wiki Commons.

    The top commander explained that US decisive action against the IRGC Quds force chief as well as the US force build-up which has included an additional thousands of troops in the region as well as a carrier presence and supporting warships, along with American jets roaring overhead, has sent a ‘deterrence’ message which has forced Iran’s own posture to recalibrate. 

    “You’re here because we don’t want a war with Iran and nothing makes a potential adversary think twice about war than the presence of an aircraft carrier and the strike group that comes with it,” Gen. McKenzie told the nearly 5,000 service members aboard the USS. “So, we achieve deterrence, which is preventing Iran from starting a war.”

    The Truman was in the North Arabian Sea when McKenzie and his command staff landed on the carrier Saturday. He said that Iran had clearly received Washington’s “message” and appears to be standing down for the moment. 

    Commanding officer of the Trumpan, Navy Capt. Kavon Hakimzadeh, said additionally: 

    “When an aircraft carrier is in your neighborhood you know it,” according to Military Times. 

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    Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie aboard the Truman carrier in the North Arabian Sea. Image source: AP/Military Times.

    He further indicated the ship was deployed from Norfolk, Virginia, in mid-November and “almost made a beeline for the Suez Canal.”

    This also after a summer of “tanker wars” between Iran in the West, which had included Iranian elite units capturing a British-flagged tanker after Gibraltar and the UK had held an Iranian tanker captive, which sent tensions between Tehran and the US soaring. 

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    Thus far President Trump has essentially claimed “victory” after assassinating the Islamic Republic’s most popular and influential elite general, while also downplaying US troop injuries in the wake of the Jan.8 Iranian ‘retaliatory’ strike. 

    McKenzie’s message over the weekend appeared to underscore the administration’s message that the risky drone strike on the Iranian commander was necessary to prevent further Iranian aggression. 


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 23:45

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • Krieger: "The Bannings Will Continue Until Thought-Crimes Are Extinguished"
    Krieger: “The Bannings Will Continue Until Thought-Crimes Are Extinguished”

    Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    Most of you reading this will be aware that Zerohedge’s prolific and highly popular twitter account with over 670,000 followers was on the receiving end of a lifetime ban by the Twitter politburo. This post won’t focus on the details of this specific ban, but if you want to read more about it, see the following: Zerohedge Suspended On Twitter.

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    It’s imperative not to overly focus on the individual victims of tech giant bans, and instead zero in on the bigger picture. Rather than debating whether or not you like Zerohedge, or whether you think it crossed a line, I want to highlight the dangerous implications of dominant social media companies wielding permanent bans as a weapon against freedom of speech in practice.

    This post will cover three main issues.

    First, the fact that Twitter and other social media companies have essentially created a caste system when it comes to engagement on their platforms.

    Second, the question of whether or not a lifetime ban from social media platforms is an ethical concept.

    Third, the dangers of Twitter essentially throwing the entire timeline of a banished account into the memory hole.

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    As the internet and social media started gaining traction, the idea of the “citizen journalist” grew increasingly popular and the public discovered how all sorts of previously unknown people can bring a great deal of hidden information and interesting perspectives to the table. This led to competing narratives on all sorts of topics, and we all basically agreed it’s best to treat people like adults and let them sort things out for themselves. That is, until Hillary Clinton lost an election.

    At that point, a certain segment of the population went completely mental and started demanding social media companies fight and censor “fake news.” This anti-liberal perspective, largely promoted by self-proclaimed liberals, deeply affected how social media executives think about and treat platform content in the subsequent years. The result has been that Twitter and other tech giants have effectively created a caste system on their platforms. Though they won’t explicitly admit it, the executives at these companies now seem to believe certain people and organizations should be given priority to shape the national narrative, while others should be diminished. While they tolerate the latter group until they become too influential and disruptive, the former class exists at a level entirely above Twitter’s terms of service. Certain people and organizations are permitted to do whatever they like on the platform, while others are subject to increasingly arbitrary and subjective bans. It’s rapidly becoming an intentionally rigged system designed to reallocate narrative control in a certain direction.

    Ask yourself, do you think there’s anything CNN could do to get banned from Twitter for life? I don’t. I genuinely think the news organization CNN can do absolutely anything it wants on or off Twitter and never be considered for a lifetime ban. Why? It’s a protected organization. CNN is above the Twitter law, and as such exists at the very top of the social media caste system. It’s not just CNN of course, there are many individuals and organizations simply not subject to Twitter’s terms of service in the way you or I are. A politician calling for mass government violence abroad (war) is another example. This sort of thing happens regularly without any consequences. Why? Twitter has determined advocating for preemptive government violence is considered reasonable. They’ve determined advocating for one form of violence (war) is fine, but advocating for other kinds of violence is not. Nobody asked for any of this, but here we are.

    The next thing I want to discuss is the entire concept of a lifetime ban from a dominant social media company like Twitter. The more I think about it, the more ethically indefensible this practice appears to be. Just as we shouldn’t jail a person for life except under the most extreme circumstances, we shouldn’t be comfortable flippantly banning people forever on large social media platforms. Such action assumes people can’t and don’t change, but Twitter doesn’t seem to be looking at the enforcement of its terms of service from a fundamentally fair or ethical point of view. Executives are increasingly utilizing this most extreme form of punishment, the lifetime ban, at the drop of a hat for minor or misunderstood violations. There are many other ways Twitter could deal with what it deems to be serious violations. You can have three month, six month or even year long bans, but a lifetime banishment is an extreme and indefensible position in almost all cases I’ve observed in recent months.

    As such, it’s become clear to me Twitter isn’t using this tool in order to enforce its terms of service, but rather its terms of service exist to provide an excuse to eliminate anyone or any account executives or professional bloggers in Brooklyn deem unpalatable.

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    I know, I know “muh private company,” but let’s discuss reality. If I were to be personally banned from Twitter, my voice in the public sphere would be materially diminished.

    This is when you’re supposed to instruct me to start my own Twitter or join an alternative, but the truth is Twitter dominates the very socially and politically important micro-blogging space in the U.S. It’s the preferred communications platform of President Trump for crying out loud. You end my existence there and you extinguish my voice in a very material way for the foreseeable future, yet Twitter can do this at any moment for whatever reason. If a social media company decides they want you gone, they can always come up with an excuse eventually. Is this a major problem? I think so.

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    Finally, I want to end with another disturbing aspect of the lifetime Twitter ban. Even if you accept it as a justifiable concept, and I generally speaking do not, the way they handle it is particularly problematic. When an account like Zerohegde is banned, you lose the ability to easily search historical tweets, which is in this case means hundreds of thousands of comments made over a decade. If you go to the defunct @zerohedge handle this is what you’ll see:

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    This page is completely dead. You can’t go back and look at old tweets, 99% of which didn’t violate any terms of service and collectively make up an important part of post-financial crisis history. It becomes far more challenging for any of us, or future historians who want to research this period, to write about Zerohedge and the role it played over the past decade with this information now much harder to find. This is fundamentally unethical and feels like the modern equivalent of burning books. If the company’s going to ban accounts for life, it should at the very least leave the historical record up and easily searchable.

    But Twitter doesn’t care. It doesn’t care because the lifetime ban functions as an intentionally arbitrary, cruel and vindictive tool of coercion. It’s intended to scare people and ultimately create a rigged playing field where different individuals and organizations play by distinct rules on the platform. That way the overall public narrative can be manipulated in a certain direction that tends to overlap with the dominant consensus opinions of San Francisco, New York and Washington D.C.

    The beatings will continue until thought crimes are extinguished.

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


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 23:25

  • In Latest Sign Of Imminent Market Collapse, Investors Dump Everything 'China'
    In Latest Sign Of Imminent Market Collapse, Investors Dump Everything ‘China’

    Fathom’s China Exposure Index (CEI), which monitors the relative stock market performance of US-listed firms with significant revenue exposure to China, has plunged after the signing of the phase one trade deal and coronavirus outbreak in the country. The downward move suggests a much broader stock market selloff could be ahead.

    Fathom created CEI using the top 25 US-listed corporations that derive at least 15% of their revenues from China, and the weight of these firms is proportional to the share of their revenues that are derived in the country.

    As shown in the chart below, CEI fell after the signing of the phase one trade deal between the US and China. It declined even more, as the coronavirus outbreak in the country led to the creeping economic paralysis that risks a hard landing. At least two-thirds of China’s economy has ground to a halt, many firms have already shuttered manufacturing plants and closed retail stores across the country.

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    And what does this all mean? Investors are now de-risking their portfolios of US-listed firms with the most significant revenue exposure to China. The reason: these companies will likely see depressed business activity in 1Q and lead to terrible earnings ahead. 

    A plunge in the CEI has usually been seen as a leading indicator, suggesting that a much broader stock market correction could be around the corner. 

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 23:05

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Ron Paul: Is The Draft Coming Back?
    Ron Paul: Is The Draft Coming Back?

    Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    During recent increased US-Iran confrontation, so many people viewed the Selective Service website to find out about the draft that the website crashed. People were right to be concerned about a return of the draft.

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    With the ongoing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan unlikely to end any time soon, and the possibly of the US being neoconned into war with Iran and possibly even Russia or China, the demand for troops is likely to rise. At the same time, soldiers return home with lifelong medical problems, including psychological problems, causing a horrifying number of veterans to commit suicide. All this can make it more difficult for the military to attract recruits. And it can leave a Congress unwilling to pursue nonintervention with a choice: increase spending on troops’ pay and benefits or bring back the draft. A Congress facing an over 25 trillion dollars debt may reinstate the draft instead of further increasing spending on the troops.

    Any future draft will probably include women, thanks to judges, politicians, and feminists who think women should have the “opportunity” to be forced to join the military.

    A military draft violates the principle that individuals have inalienable rights that no government should violate. A draft also puts all of our rights at risk. If we accept that the government has the legitimate authority to force individuals to fight, kill, and die in a war, then how can we argue that the government cannot force citizens to pay high taxes, purchase health insurance, or submit to TSA screenings? How can we argue against the government forbidding people from smoking marijuana or owning “assault” weapons? Many traditional conservatives, including Ronald Reagan, opposed the draft, pointing to its threat to individual rights.

    Some antiwar individuals have endorsed the draft on the theory that a draft makes politicians less likely to support war. But the draft did not stop politicians from supporting unnecessary wars like World War One, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. While the draft helped galvanize opposition to the Vietnam War, it took almost a decade of American casualties for opposition to reach critical mass. More importantly, the draft violates the nonaggression principle, which is the moral heart of libertarianism. Advocating use of force to advance even as noble a goal as peace is itself immoral and sets back the cause of liberty.

    Some antiwar progressives oppose a military draft but support forcing young people to participate in a “national service” program. Some conservatives join these progressives to say that national service is a way for young people to “pay back” government for the privilege of living in a free society, as if our rights and liberties are gifts from government. Mandatory national service will likely gain support when the next market meltdown occurs, as it would serve as a jobs programs for young people.

    All those who support liberty must be prepared to fight any attempt to reinstate the military draft or to mandate any other type of national service. We must mobilize as many people as possible to tell the politicians it is unacceptable for the US government to enslave people in the military or otherwise. We must also support those who engage in civil disobedience. As Ronald Regan stated, the draft “rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state…. That assumption isn’t a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.”


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 22:45

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • Discovery Of Coronavirus On Doorknob Of Infected Patient Sparks Transmission Concerns
    Discovery Of Coronavirus On Doorknob Of Infected Patient Sparks Transmission Concerns

    Until now, the prevailing conventional wisdom was that China’s coronavirus epidemic, which has spread to over 20,600 people around the globe as of February 3, did so by air or, according to some recent and unconfirmed speculation, human feces. That may be about to change.

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    Worker disinfects the lobby of Beijing West Railway Station in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 2, 2020

    According to the Global Times, new ways of transmitting the coronavirus have been reported, and virus nucleic acid has been detected outside human bodies, sparking public fears that the virus could be transmitted in unknown and undetected ways. Concerns emerged after scientists found coronavirus nucleic acid on the doorknob of a confirmed Guangzhou-based patient’s house, the first case of novel coronavirus detected outside the human body, Guangzhou Daily reported Monday. The finding was confirmed by China’s Health Commission, which said on Monday that the coronavirus can survive for five days maximum on smooth surfaces under suitable circumstances.

    That would mean that mobile phone screens, computer keyboards, faucets and other household objects may indirectly transmit the virus, experts said.

    A man from Northeast China’s Jilin Province, who was confirmed with coronavirus infection on Monday, shared his experience, saying he had used the same microphone with another confirmed patient during a meeting in January.

    In another case, a 40-year-old man from North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, who lives upstairs of a confirmed patient, was also diagnosed with coronavirus infection on Saturday. Aside from respiratory droplets and contact transmissions, the person has no clear contact histories with people from other cities, patients, or wild animals and has never been to a market, according to the local health authority on Sunday.

    Chinese netizens were concerned the patient from Inner Mongolia might have been infected through toilet plumbing or ventilation devices.

    Over the weekend, some experts warned that the novel coronavirus could be transmitted through the digestive system as they found 2019-nCoV nucleic acids in patients’ stool and rectal swabs, and health authorities had suggested the central air conditioning system be discontinued if coronavirus patients are found. The case drew attention to a case during the SARS outbreak in 2003 – In Amoy Gardens residential complex in Hong Kong, aerosolized feces spread from floor to floor through plumbing, infecting over 300 people with the virus, reports said.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 22:25

    Tags
    Health Medical Pharma

  • Stumbling Into Catastrophe
    Stumbling Into Catastrophe

    Authored by Daniel McAdams via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

    There is a real danger for foreign policy advisors and analysts – and especially those they serve – when they are in a bubble, an echo chamber, and all of their conclusions are based on faulty inputs. Needless to say it’s even worse when they believe they can create their own reality and invent outcomes out of whole cloth.

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    Things seldom go as planned in these circumstances.

    President Trump was sold a bill of goods on the assassination of Iran’s revered military leader, Qassim Soleimani, likely by a cabal around Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the long-discredited neocon David Wurmser. A former Netanyahu advisor and Iraq war propagandist, Wurmser reportedly sent memos to his mentor, John Bolton, while Bolton was Trump’s National Security Advisor (now, of course, he’s the hero of the #resistance for having turned on his former boss) promising that killing Soleimani would be a cost-free operation that would catalyze the Iranian people against their government and bring about the long-awaited regime change in that country. The murder of Soleimani – the architect of the defeat of ISIS – would “rattle the delicate internal balance of forces and the control over them upon which the [Iranian] regime depends for stability and survival,” wrote Wurmser.

    As is most often the case with neocons, he was dead wrong.

    The operation was not cost-free. On the contrary. Assassinating Soleimani on Iraqi soil resulted in the Iraqi parliament – itself the product of our “bringing democracy” to the country – voting to expel US forces even as the vote by the people’s representatives was roundly rejected by the people who brought the people the people’s representatives. In a manner of speaking.

    Trump’s move had an effect opposite to the one promised by neocons. It did not bring Iranians out to the street to overthrow their government –  it catalyzed opposition across Iraq’s various political and religious factions to the continued US military presence and further tightened Iraq’s relationship with Iran. And short of what would be a catastrophic war initiated by the US (with little or no support from allies), there is not a thing Trump can do about it.

    Iran’s retaliatory attack on two US bases in Iraq was initially sold by President Trump as merely a pin-prick. No harm, no foul, no injuries. This despite the fact that he must have known about US personnel injured in the attack. The reason for the lie was that Trump likely understands how devastating it would be to his presidency to escalate with Iran. So the truth began to trickle out slowly – 11 US military members were injured, but it was just “like a headache.” Now we know that 50 US troops were treated for traumatic brain injury after the attack. This may not be the last of it – but don’t count on the mainstream media to do any reporting.

    The Iranian FARS news agency reported at the time of the attack that US personnel had been injured and the response by the US government was to completely take that media outlet off the Internet by order of the US Treasury!

    Last week the US House voted to cancel the 2002 authorization for war on Iraq and to prohibit the use of funds for war on Iran without Congressional authorization. It is a significant, if largely symbolic, move to rein in the oft-used excuse of the Iraq war authorization for blatantly unrelated actions like the assassination of Soleimani and Obama’s thousands of airstrikes on Syria and Iraq.

    President Trump has argued that prohibiting funds for military action against Iran actually makes war more likely, as he would be restricted from the kinds of military-strikes-short-of-war like his attack on Syria after the alleged chemical attack in Douma in 2018 (claims which have recently fallen apart). The logic is faulty and reflects again the danger of believing one’s own propaganda. As we have seen from the Iranian military response to the Soleimani assassination, Trump’s military-strikes-short-of-war are having a ratchet-like effect rather than a pressure-release or deterrent effect.

    As the financial and current events analysis site ZeroHedge put it recently:

    [S]ince last summer’s “tanker wars”, Trump has painted himself into a corner on Iran, jumping from escalation to escalation (to this latest “point of no return big one” in the form of the ordered Soleimani assassination) — yet all the while hoping to avoid a major direct war. The situation reached a climax where there were “no outs” (Trump was left with two ‘bad options’ of either back down or go to war).

    The Iranians have little to lose at this point and America’s European allies are, even if impotent, fed up with the US obsession with Saudi Arabia and Israel as a basis for its Middle East policy.

    So why open this essay with a photo of Trump celebrating his dead-on-arrival “Deal of The Century” for Israel and Palestine? Because this is once again a gullible and weak President Trump being led by the nose into the coming Middle East conflagration. Left without even a semblance of US sympathy for their plight, the Palestinians after the roll-out of this “peace” plan will again see that they have no friends outside Syria, Iran, and Lebanon. As Israel continues to flirt with the idea of simply annexing large parts of the West Bank, it is clear that the brakes are off of any Israeli reticence to push for maximum control over Palestinian territory. So what is there to lose?

    Trump believes he’s advancing peace in the Middle East, while the excellent Mondoweiss website rightly observes that a main architect of the “peace plan,” Trump’s own son-in-law Jared Kushner, “taunts Palestinians because he wants them to reject his ‘peace plan.’” Rejection of the plan is a green light to a war of annihilation on the Palestinians.

    It appears that the center may not hold, that the self-referential echo chamber that passes for Beltway “expert” analysis will again be caught off guard in the consequence-free profession that is neocon foreign policy analysis. “Gosh we didn’t see that coming!” But the next day they are back on the teevee stations as great experts.

    Clouds gathering…


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 22:05

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • Banks Tighten Credit Card, Auto Loan Standards As C&I Loan Demand Continues To Shrink
    Banks Tighten Credit Card, Auto Loan Standards As C&I Loan Demand Continues To Shrink

    The latest senior loan officer survey, released earlier today by the Fed, showed that the benefits from last year’s rate cuts have mostly faded away even as banks tightened standards for several kinds of loans, while demand for all-important commercial and industrial loans, traditionally a leading indicator for any economic rebound, slumped for the sixth consecutive quarter.

    The January SLOOS, which looked at lending standards for commercial and industrial loans in the fourth quarter of 2019, reported that standards for commercial and industrial loans were unchanged and that “demand weakened from firms of all sizes.” And while standards for commercial real estate loans were mostly unchanged, the only source of strength according to loan officers was demand for mortgages, which remained strong following the decline in interest rates in the second half of 2019. However, offsetting this, standards for credit card and auto loans tightened while demand remained unchanged for credit cards and weakened for auto loans.

    Some more details starting with the broadest type of loans, Commercial & Industrial, which as the following Y/Y% growth chart shows, have seen their growth rate grind to a crawl in recent months, after rebounding sharply in late 2018 and early 2019 as the Fed hiked rates prompting urgency among corporations to raise new secured debt. Ironically, it is the renewed easing by the Fed that appears to be the culprit for rapid slowdown in C&I loans.

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    According to the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, lending standards for commercial and industrial (C&I) loans were basically unchanged in Q4 2019. A handful of banks eased some terms for C&I loans, as 21% of banks on net narrowed loan spreads over the cost of funds to large and medium-market firms and 10% on net narrowed loan spreads for small firms.

    While lending standards were largely flat, demand for C&I loans from large- and medium-sized firms weakened for the sixth consecutive quarter, resulting in a sharp slowdown in the overall rate of growth of C&I loans, which have been virtually unchanged for the past year. The good news: after tumbling 20% in Q3 to the lowest level since the financial crisis, C&I loan demand stage a modest comeback in Q4, even if it still remains deep in negative territory.

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    In a concerning development, 11% of banks on net reported weaker demand for C&I loans for large and medium-market firms, compared to 22% in the previous survey, which suggests that any tailwinds for loan demand sparked by the Fed’s 2019 rate cuts are now long gone.

    Shifting to commercial real estate loans, standards were mostly unchanged in the fourth quarter according to the Fed, except for construction and land development loans which tightened modestly (+7pp). Demand for CRE loans was similarly unchanged for CRE loans except for construction and land development loans, which like C&I loans, weakened (-6pp).

    What is curious is that while the Fed’s rate cut appears to have resulted in lower demand for C&I loans, following the drop in interest rates in the second half of 2019, demand for residential mortgage loans remained strong, though a smaller share of banks reported stronger demand for mortgages in Q4 compared to in the previous survey. Banks reportedly left lending standards for most categories basically unchanged, echoing the previous survey.

    Banks’ willingness to make consumer installment loans was again little changed in Q4. However, a moderate share of banks again tightened standards for credit card loans by tightening credit limits and increasing minimum credit scores. A modest share of banks also tightened standards for auto loans. Nonetheless, large banks with larger auto loan portfolios reported stronger demand. Demand for consumer loans was little changed since the previous survey.

    On net, supply remained same or modestly tighter, even as demand for virtually all loan categories slumped or remained negative in Q4 after surging earlier in the year, when the Fed cut rates for the first time since the financial crisis.

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 21:45

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Hong Kong Confirms 2nd Non-Mainland China Coronavirus Death As Hospital Workers Strike, Over 200,000 'Under Observation'
    Hong Kong Confirms 2nd Non-Mainland China Coronavirus Death As Hospital Workers Strike, Over 200,000 ‘Under Observation’

    Summary:

    • Hong Kong reports that a 39-year-old man is the first death from coronavirus (2nd non-mainland China death)
    • Hong Kong closes more land borders with mainland
    • Virus death toll rises to 425 in China (427 if we count two deaths abroad)
    • Total number of confirmed cases tops 20,500, 171,329 cases under observation
    • 2 more cases reported in Germany
    • President Xi threatens to punish local authorities if they fail to contain virus
    • Xi may delay visit to South Korea amid pressure to restrict travel from China

     *  *  *

    Update (0108ET): A woman was reportedly shot dead by police after attempting to breach a quarantine blockade in Wuzu Town approximately 50 miles from Wuhan.

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     *  *  *

    Update (2120ET): According to Hong Kong State TV, officials just confirmed the first death from coronavirus: a 39-year-old patient has become the first to die in Hong Kong from an illness related to the deadly coronavirus. The man, who was being treated in Princess Margaret Hospital in Kwai Chung, died on Tuesday morning due to sudden heart failure, according to three medical sources.

    According to the government, the deceased man had lived in Whampoa Garden with his mother. She was confirmed on February 2 as Hong Kong’s 15th case, but did not have a recent history of travel.

    This is the second death outside of mainland China from the deadly virus.

    To make matters worse, thousands of Hong Kong medical workers went on strike for a second day on Tuesday to demand that leader Carrie Lam immediately close the city’s border with the mainland to prevent the spread of a deadly coronavirus.

    *  *  *

    Update (1850ET): In what is by far the largest dump of coronavirus cases so for, Beijing just announced more than 3,000 new confirmed cases.

    Beijing is now reporting 3235 newly confirmed cases (2345 in Hubei Province) and 492 severe cases (442 in Hubei Province). And that’s not all. China is reporting 171,329 cases under observation, up 18,629 overnight, along with 23,214 suspected cases.

    There are now 20,438 confirmed cases in China, and another 154 outside China, bringing the total global count to 20,592. Meanwhile, 632 have been cured and discharged.

    As a reminder, we don’t know quite yet what the real mortality rate of nCoV-2019 is. It’s still early days and nobody is sure of the numbers out of China. But Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told CNBC on Monday that a quarter of China’s coronavirus cases require intensive treatment.

    “About 25% of them have very serious disease, requiring relatively intensive or really intensive care,” said Fauci, the director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci has participated in some of the CDC’s press conferences.

    Read the full statement from China’s NIH below:

    At 04:00 on February 3, 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps reported 3235 newly confirmed cases (2345 in Hubei Province) and 492 severe cases (442 in Hubei Province). There were 64 death cases (64 cases in Hubei Province), 157 newly cured cases (101 cases in Hubei Province), and 5,072 suspected cases (3182 cases in Hubei Province).

    As of 24:00 on February 3, the National Health and Health Commission has received a cumulative report of 20,438 confirmed cases (2 nuclear reductions in Heilongjiang Province) in 31 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. There are currently 2788 severe cases with cumulative deaths.

    There were 425 cases, 632 cases were cured and discharged, and there were 23214 suspected cases. At present, 221,015 close contacts have been tracked.

    12,755 people were released from medical observation on the same day, and 171,329 people are currently receiving medical observation. A total of 33 confirmed cases were reported in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan: 15 in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 8 in the Macao Special Administrative Region, and 10 in Taiwan.

    So much for ‘contained’…

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    * * *

    Update (1840ET): A Korean newspaper just reported that President Xi may delay a planned visit to South Korea to focus on dealing with the coronavirus outbreak. Xi reportedly said during a Politburo meeting Monday that he would punish local officials for failing to successfully suppress the virus, a process of scapegoating that has already begun, as we noted earlier.

    * * *

    Update (1720ET): It’s early Tuesday morning and China, which means we’re getting another batch of statistics about the coronavirus outbreak – statistics that likely underplay the severity of the outbreak.

    According to Chinese health authorities, 2,345 were confirmed on Monday, while another 64 died (including 48 in Wuhan alone).

    Hubei Province is now reporting 13,522 cases of coronavirus infection (including 6384 in Wuhan), while 58,544 are under observation across China. 46 new deaths were reported overnight, bringing the death toll in China to at least 425.

    For those who are keeping score at home, that’s a 18% rise in deaths overnight.

    Another terrifying video shows a man collapsing in a virus-induced fit.

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    Meanwhile, President Xi is cracking the whip. According to the SCMP, at a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee, President Xi Jinping said local cadres would be punished severely if they failed to heed Beijing’s orders to stop the virus from spreading.

    “[We] must treat the fight of the outbreak as the most important task at hand,” Xi was quoted by state broadcaster CCTV as saying.

    Punishments of local officials has already started; more than 400 have already been ‘penalized’, according to Nikkei. Meanwhile, the party has acknowledged that it shouldn’t have arrested a group of doctors in December for allegedly spreading ‘disinformation’ (they were trying to warn the world of the outbreak – yet the WHO has praised China for being ‘transparent’).

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    Looks like everything is under control.

    * * *

    Update (1545ET): Germany reports 2 new cases of coronavirus, raising country’s total to 12. Nearly all of these cases have been linked to the same company.

    Here’s the latest roundup of cases:

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    Elsewhere, Princeton isolates 108 students as precaution after China trips. Remember, the US has it all under control.

    * * *

    Update (1400ET): Stocks are still in the green, but the administration is taking zero chances. To wit, the USTR’s office reportedly told Fox that China hasn’t requested any changes to the ‘Phase 1’ trade deal struck last year just before the virus emerged as a global threat to the public.

    • USTR SAYS HAS NO CHINA REQUEST ON DEAL CHANGE DUE TO VIRUS: FOX

    This follows reports from earlier claiming that China was seeking ‘flexibility’ regarding its trade deal commitments. Meanwhile, HHS is telling Congress that it might need another $136 million to fight the virus (this after the Pentagon requested quarantine space for 1,000 people).

    A few hours ago, Hong Kong’s leader announced the closure of four more border crossings with mainland China on Monday, leaving just three checkpoints open, but stopped short of demands for the entire border to be closed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

    * * *

    Update (1250ET): The Pentagon confirmed that 198 people have been quarantined at March Air Base in California’s Riverside County. It’s believed that those under quarantine traveled on the evacuation flight out of Wuhan.

    Meanwhile, Fox reports that China has accepted the US’s offer to incorporate a group of American experts into a contingent of WHO researchers focusing on studying and understanding the virus.

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    This comes after Beijing blasted the US for inciting a panic over the virus.

    * * *

    Update (1140AM ET): The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the US is starting to increase at a concerning pace, and moments ago, the CDC confirmed in a telebriefing that there are 11 cases in the US.

    • U.S. CDC CONFIRMS 11 CONFIRMED CORONAVIRUS CASES IN UNITED STATES – TELEBRIEFING

    More ominously, the CDC said that the new Coronavirus case is close contact of other California case, and was spread person-to-person.

    And while traders were not happy with this latest confirmation that the disease is anything but contained, it is what the CDC aid said next that sent stocks and yields both sliding:

    • CDC: PREPARING AS IF CORONAVIRUS WERE THE NEXT PANDEMIC

    Judging by the market reaction, it appears that algos are not fans of that word.

    Finally, the CDC also said at its briefing that it has added four more airports for screening of Coronavirus.

    * * *

    Late last night, we reported that the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak had surpassed 360 as more suspected cases popped up in New York. Though no deaths have been reported overnight, Chinese officials warned yesterday that many more cases and deaths would be confirmed on Sunday/Monday.

    In the meantime, Chinese markets finally faced their inevitable reckoning. Despite the best efforts of the PBOC and the government, the Chinese market bloodbath was about as bad as expected.

    But over in the US, investors ignored the latest news out of China and have seemingly bought into the WHO’s optimistic message and China’s accusations about an ‘alarmist’ Washington.

    This is surprising, since anybody who has been paying close attention to the situation in China should know that this is far from the truth.

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    Late last night, while most of America was watching the Superbowl, the New York Times puablished a scathing story recounting what it’s like on the ground in Wuhan right now. The truth is that all of the warnings of alleged ‘conspiracy theorist’ have more or less turned out to be correct. Supply shortages are still making it impossible for China to diagnose every case of the virus.

    Ms. An, 67, needed an official diagnosis from a hospital to qualify for treatment, but the one she and her son raced to last week had no space, even to test her. The next hospital they were referred to here in Wuhan, the  city of 11 million people at the center of the outbreak, was full, too, they said. They finally got an intravenous drip for Ms. An’s fever, but that was all.

    Since then, Ms. An has quarantined herself at home. She and her son eat separately, wear masks at home and are constantly disinfecting their apartment. Ms. An’s health is declining rapidly, and even keeping water down is a struggle.

    “I can’t let my mom die at home,” said her son, He Jun. “Every day I want to cry, but when I cry there are no tears. There is no hope.”

    Chilling stuff. And once again, doctors and health-care workers are leveraging their newfound immunity to shed a light on the government’s brutality.

    Last month, the government put Wuhan in a virtual lockdown, sealing off the city and banning most public transportation and private cars from its streets in a desperate effort to contain the outbreak. Now, many residents say it is nearly impossible to get the health care they need to treat – or even diagnose – the coronavirus.

    Expressing exasperation, doctors say there is a shortage of testing kits and other medical supplies, and it is not clear why more are not available. The ban on transportation means some residents have to walk for hours to get to hospitals – if they are well enough to make the journey. Layers of bureaucracy stand between residents and help. And the long lines outside hospitals for testing and treatment suggest that the outbreak is spreading far beyond the official count of cases.

    For many sickened residents, their best hope is the new coronavirus hospital that has just been finished (a second hospital is also being built).

    Those who do make it to the hospital say they are squeezed together for hours in waiting rooms, where infections are easily spread. But the shortages have meant that many are ultimately turned away and sent home to self-quarantine, potentially compounding the outbreak by exposing their families.

    Many doctors and residents are putting their hopes on the two new coronavirus hospitals that China has been racing to build in Wuhan in just a matter of days. One of them spans about eight acres, has 1,000 beds and is scheduled to open on Monday. The government says 1,400 military medical workers will be deployed to work there, potentially helping with the shortage of health professionals on hand to combat the outbreak.

    Ironically, the hospital, which was supposed to open on Monday, is still undergoing ‘finishing touches’, and when masses of sick patients showed up at the gates on Monday morning, construction workers were forced to turn them away.

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    More than a week into the quarantine/lockdown, millions of residents fear the virus has spread much further than the government realizes.

    On Sunday, city officials announced plans to set up quarantine stations around Wuhan for people with symptoms of pneumonia and close contacts among coronavirus patients. But just over a week into the lockdown, many residents believe the virus has already spread much further than the official numbers suggest.

    “The situation that we’ve seen is much worse than what has been officially reported,” Long Jian, 32, said outside a hospital where his elderly father was being treated. Mr. Long said his father had to go to six hospitals and wait seven days before he could even be tested for the coronavirus.

    But after Monday’s market shellacking, we suspect Beijing will be diverting more resources away from meeting critical shortages of medical supplies to focus instead on arresting shortsellers and locking up ‘fearmongers’, like the doctors who were arrested by local authorities in December for trying to warn the public about the outbreak.

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    Notice the bars on the hospital-room windows…this hospital is a prison with beds, as we’ve pointed out.

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    Following reports OPEC is weighing another supply cut to ‘rebalance’ the global oil market and warnings from economists that the outbreak could wipe more than a percentage point off Chinese GDP growth, officials in Beijing have reportedly changed their economic growth forecasts for 2020 to below 5%, what would be the lowest rate of growth since the beginning of China’s modern era of state-directed capitalism.

    To help the economy cope, Beijing is reportedly considering more stimulus measures to try and bolster growth.

    Of course, the fallout won’t be limited to China, and in a report published Monday, WSJ explores how the outbreak is already disrupting global supply chains and placing “additional strain” on an increasingly fragile economic expansion.

    As we’ve pointed out, the outbreak has stoked racism against Chinese around the world.

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    If you’re looking for a quick refresher on the outbreak, here’s a short video from SCMP.

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    On a slightly more positive tip, Chinese state media posted this video about an infected woman who gave birth to a healthy baby in the middle of the crisis.

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    And here’s a video of a drone being used to take the temperature of a terrified civilian trapped by decree inside their apartment.

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    Finally, RT points out that the death toll from the coronavirus outbreak has already eclipsed the death toll from SARS, as the virus has spread to nearly two dozen countries and territories. The pandemic will eventually “circle the globe,” according to scientists from the NYT,.

    Given the fear of the virus ravaging densely populated areas, the people of Hong Kong have succeeded in pressing the city’s government to tighten travel restrictions, joining the US, Vietnam, Japan, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia and many others.

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    Hong Kong has shut crossings to the mainland. But even this is likely too little, too late, as the first cases have already been diagnosed in the city.

    Members of the G-7 will hold an emergency call on Monday to discuss strategies for containing the outbreak.

    Get ready for another week of virus-induced craziness as this doesn’t look ready to disappear from the headlines any time soon.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 21:28

  • Tehran's Chinese Dream Can't Replace Its Nightmare
    Tehran’s Chinese Dream Can’t Replace Its Nightmare

    Authored by Amir Taheri via The Gatestone Institute,

    Could General Qassem Soleimani’s dramatic demise provide the shock therapy to persuade those who wield real power in Tehran to admit the failure of a strategy that has led Iran into an impasse? This was the question discussed in a zoom conference with a number of academics from one of Iran’s leading universities.

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    The fact itself that the issue could be debated must be regarded as significant. It indicates the readiness of more and more Iranians to defy the rules of silence imposed by the regime and raise taboo issues more or less openly.

    In the course of the discussion one participant drew a parallel between Soleimani’s death and that of Marshal Lin Biao, the Chinese Communist defense minister whose demise in an air crash in 1971 opened the way for a radical change of course by Maoist China.

    Lin’s elimination enabled Chinese reformists, then led by Prime Minister Chou En-lai, to isolate the so-called “Gang of Four” hardliners, led by Mao’s wife Jian Qing, and bring the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to a close as prelude to a historic change of course designed to transform the People’s Republic from a vehicle for a revolutionary cause into a normal nation-state. Within a few years, the People’s Republic under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership was building a capitalist economy with a totalitarian political frame, discarding dreams of “exporting revolution”.

    Having lost its revolutionary legitimacy, the Chinese Communist regime started building a new source of legitimacy through economic success and the dramatic rise in living standards for hundreds of millions across the country. The Chinese found out that producing and exporting goods that people wanted across the globe was easier and more profitable than trying to export a revolution that no one, perhaps apart from a few students in London and Paris, thirsted for.

    However, the parallel isn’t exact. Lin was accused of having secret ties with “Imperialism” and plotting a coup against Chairman Mao while Soleimani was regarded as “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s most faithful aide. Lin had a glittering biography, having led the People’s Liberation Army in numerous battles to victory with his conquest of Beijing as the final bouquet.

    In contrast, even Soleimani’s most ardent admirers are unable to name a single battle which he fought, let alone won. Even now his adulators only claim political successes for him, including his supposed success in preventing the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and seizing control of the Lebanese state apparatus through surrogates.

    Nevertheless, Soleimani’s demise does provide an opportunity for a serious review of Khamenei’s policy of “exporting revolution” which has cost Iran astronomical sums and countless lives with not a single country adopting the Khomeinist ideology and system of government.

    The idea of imitating the Chinese model isn’t new in Iran. It was first raised in 1990 by then President Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who went as far as asserting, only half-jokingly, that he would even be prepared to discard the clerical garb to adapt to the modern world. The Shah had promised that he would turn Iran into “a second Japan”. Rafsanjani promised a “second China.”

    The Shah could not fulfill his promise because he was hit by the Islamic Revolution on the road and had to go into exile. Rafsanjani’s “second China” also remained a dead dream with the would-be Iranian version of Deng Xiaoping just managing to stay alive and out of jail, barely tolerated by the real “deciders” as an embarrassing uncle.

    Some of Rafsanjani’s close associates now tell me that he was “a bit of a coward” and lost his opportunity to do a Deng Xiaoping by being sucked into corrupt business deals. According to them, Rafsanjani didn’t realize that one starts making money for himself, his family and his entourage after one has done a Deng Xiaoping, and not before. Deng’s family, including his daughter, son-in-law and hangers-on made their millions after China had been de-Maoized. In Rafsanjani’s case, the millions were made without any attempt at de-Khomeinization.

    At the time Rafsanjani played his “China” tune. I argued in several articles that the Deng model was not applicable to the Islamic Republic. In China, Maoism, is quirkiness notwithstanding, was a potent ideology, mixing nationalism, xenophobic resentment, and crude egalitarianism symbolized by the imposition of uniforms and collective production units. In contrast, the Khomeinist ideology was never developed into a coherent narrative while its open hostility to Iranian nationalism gave it an alien aura. Moreover, the Chinese revolution had triumphed after decades of struggle including a huge civil war involving tens of millions on opposite sides.

    In contrast, the Khomeinist revolution succeeded in around four months because the Shah, unwilling to order mass repression, decided to abandon power and leave.

    There are other differences between Iran today and China in the 1980s. The People’s Republic was firmly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party which had at least five million trained and disciplined cadres capable of passing its message to society as a whole and mobilizing support for any change of strategy. The Khomeinist republic has no such structure and its support base, mired in corruption, finds it increasingly hard to communicate with society at large. The mass gatherings that the regime organizes should deceive no one.

    Today, the Tehran “deciders” constitute a small, increasingly isolated minority caught in an imagined past and fearful of the future. Worse still, many “deciders” have already put part of their money abroad, having sent their children to Europe and America. Going through a who-is-who of these “deciders” one is amazed by how many are behaving as carpetbaggers, treating Iran as a land to plunder, sending the proceeds to the West. They cannot produce an Iranian “Deng” because they don’t want to create a productive economy; all they are interested in is to get the money and run. Nor are they able to build the state institutions needed for a modern economy capable of seeking a credible place in the global market.

    The machinery that Deng and his team inherited was certainly repressive and outmoded by the higher international standards. However, within its own paradigms, it worked. In contrast, the Khomeinist republic, though as outmoded and repressive as the Maoist regime, simply doesn’t work. Lacking any mechanism for self-reform it resembles the blindfolded horse in ancient mills going round and round, grinding the seeds of a bitter harvest.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 21:25

    Tags
    Politics

  • UPenn Student Trapped In Wuhan Says Coronavirus Outbreak Is 'Like A Zombie Apocalypse'
    UPenn Student Trapped In Wuhan Says Coronavirus Outbreak Is ‘Like A Zombie Apocalypse’

    The Daily Pennsylvanian interviewed Zhexuan Huang, a college sophomore studying at the University of Pennsylvania, has been trapped in Wuhan, China, for the last several weeks. 

    Huang told the daily student newspaper at the college that he hasn’t left his home in weeks and has been forced to take a semester off. 

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    He said the virus outbreak across the city limited his efforts in renewing his student visa in early January. The US consulate in Guangzhou, China said he would receive a passport next week. 

    With Wuhan on lockdown and all transportation networks at a standstill, Huang has been stranded with no word on when he can return to school. 

    “I still haven’t received my passport back, and Wuhan is still completely blocked – like all the public transportation is closed, including airports, even highways,” he said.

    He described the shutdown as a “zombie apocalypse,” exactly like what you see in the movies. There are no vehicles on the street, everyone is hiding out in their homes, and businesses have all shuttered, in the city of 11 million people. 

    He said, “Some people fly their drones outside the city to see the view of the city right now. There are pretty much no cars on the street, like no people walking. The city is like a ghost city.” 

    Huang emailed all his UPenn professors about his inability to reach the US because of the virus. They all said he wasn’t able to take online classes, though he wouldn’t be charged by the university this semester for missing classes. 

    And to get a sense of what Huang means when he says, “zombie apocalypse,” we turn to Twitter: 

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 21:05

  • US, China Stocks Surge Higher After PBOC Injects Another 400 Billion Yuan
    US, China Stocks Surge Higher After PBOC Injects Another 400 Billion Yuan

    After yesterday’s net CNY150billion liquidity injection didn’t work (in rescuing stocks), PBOC decided to more than double it tonight and the plunge-protectors injected a net CNY400 billion, sending yuan and US and Chinese equity markets soaring…

    The PBOC injected CNY500b with reverse repo (380bn in 7-day repo and 120bn in 14-day repo) and accounting for CNY100bn in maturing repo, that nets to CNY400 billion liquidity injected.

    Yuan soared…

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    The Shanghai Compoiste exploded higher after opened down over 2%…

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    And US equity futures are also soaring… even after GOOGL’s collapse after hours…

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    Plunge… Protected!

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    Still, Shanghai Oil futures are collapsing…

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    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 21:02

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Peak Facebook, Peak Soros, Or Just Peak Globalism?
    Peak Facebook, Peak Soros, Or Just Peak Globalism?

    Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

    In late 2018 I asked the question, “Have we reached peak Soros?” Because back then I realized that Soros was losing.

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    And every issue I touched on in that article has come to pass. For more than ten years Soros and his cohort Tom Steyer, (who is now somehow presidential material?) have worked diligently to end free speech on the internet, to regain control of The Wire and end our ability to out them in real time to stop their Brave New World.

    All around you, if you look closely enough, you will see the spectre of George Soros lurking behind the headlines. The caravan, net neutrality, regulating Facebook, the de-platforming of independent media, color revolutions and election meddling, refugee creation and manipulation, the trolls on Twitter, your blog and YouTube, etc.

    All of these things we see in the headlines today are a product of George Soros’ money and his singular obsession with re-creating the world in his image.

    In 2018 and 2019 Facebook dealt with massive data scandals which revealed just how deeply the company had breached the public trust. CEO Mark Zuckerberg was hauled in front of Congress in a big Kabuki Theatre show to threaten him with removing the Facebook’s immunity as a platform under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act .

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    And we all laughed at Data trying to become a real boy, having to dealing with these pesky human emotions.

    But the threat to Facebook was real and it wasn’t temporary. It’s costs of compliance are rising. Its bureaucracy growing.

    Pressuring Facebook publicly, putting it a no-win situation with the public is just part of Soros’ strategy to regain control over information flow of the internet..

    It has been a decade-long, multi-step process.

    First, create a solution in search of a problem. Net Neutrality was a means to create bandwidth subsidization with the government enforcing access. This appeals to the leftards in the audience, worried about corporate control when it would never happen.

    To Donald Trump’s credit he ended that.

    Second, create another problem by enticing social media platforms to use their power to curtail speech in an unbalanced way, breaching the firewall of Section 230 protection. This fires up the Q-tards, libertarians and conservatives.

    All the while they were undermining the public’s trust in how their data is handled, and personifying the corruption — Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg — forcing them to publicly deal with the issues, well beyond their comfort zone.

    That turns public frustration and anger over the unfairness into a call to action.

    Well, that call to action finally arrived. Soros penned another of his outrageous opinion pieces in the New York Times on Friday (of course, not behind the paywall) to attack Mark Zuckerberg demanding his removal as CEO of Facebook. That’s the headline.

    That’s the click bait.

    But, here’s the real point of Soros’ attack. He builds a conspiracy between Facebook and Donald Trump to get him re-elected as prima facia evidence Facebook no longer deserves Section 230 immunity.

    The responsible approach is self-evident. Facebook is a publisher not just a neutral moderator or “platform.” It should be held accountable for the content that appears on its site.

    Speaking at a cocktail party in Davos on Jan. 22, Facebook’s chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, repeated the worn Silicon Valley cliché that Facebook is trying to make the world a better place. But Facebook should be judged by what it does, not what it says.

    I repeat and reaffirm my accusation against Facebook under the leadership of Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg. They follow only one guiding principle: maximize profits irrespective of the consequences. One way or another, they should not be left in control of Facebook.

    This is truly another crazy moment where Soros, in his desperation, thinks he can make the credible case that Facebook, which has been nothing but hostile to conservatives and libertarians since its inception, is now actively working with Trump preferentially to enable his re-election.

    This depth of this man’s evil is truly breathtaking. Ingenious, but evil.

    I remind you that Soros isn’t a person. He’s not an entrepreneur. He’s a vampire, living off the accumulated wealth of a society grown complacent and lazy. He’s only ever made money by manipulating a zero-sum game — currency trading — which he himself has a hand in setting the stage for.

    And that lack of true service to humanity is why he’s obsessed with his grand project of the Open Society, as he defines it. This is his where his megalomania stems from, that deep understanding that he’s a leech and a fraud.

    It’s why he insists the media calls him a philanthropist and not a devourer of souls and agent of chaos.

    But Soros is edging closer everyday to the villain in Alan Moore’s Watchmen, Adrian Veidt. A man so obsessed with what he saw as humanity’s failures that he took it upon himself to save us from ourselves.

    He just had to kill millions of people in order to do it.

    Soros existed for years like Veidt, a man hiding behind proxies and a philanthropist’s image while quietly pulling the strings to change the direction of the world.

    For more than two years I’ve been saying that Facebook is in trouble. There comes a point where growth simply isn’t possible if you already have 25% market share of the entire human race.

    This quarter’s earnings report saw the stock get crushed into the monthly close as headcount and operations costs are rising quickly while the growth rate cannot sustain a P/E of 40 in a market finally looking to cut out the froth.

    It’s not a deal-breaker. The company is wildly profitable but from here it can only slow down and the more Soros et.al. push for higher-level and more pervasive deplatforming the more high-value Facebook users will bolt.

    It’s what will kill YouTube in the end.

    Soros wants Facebook to be a glorified government Ministry of Information Filtering, because he understands the power of a mass platform. Facebook is The Wire now. He failed to control the ISPs with Net Neutrality.

    And it looks like Facebook’s unwillingness to go full Palpatine vexes him further. That’s why he’s pushing a public feud, trying to appeal to conservatives who rightly don’t like Zuckerberg.

    But, Zuckerberg is a pawn. He’s neither the problem nor the solution. Soros is the problem and we have to remember this at all times. While being banned from Twitter or Facebook for stupid reasons is unfair, so what.

    Life isn’t fair, but it doesn’t mean we hand an already corrupt, incompetent and failing government more power to control the content we have access to.

    There are other networks, other platforms. Good information is found. The truth sells itself.

    Ultimately, Facebook is an intelligence operation for Wall St. and the government (or do I repeat myself) masquerading a social media platform. And the more it is exposed as such the less profitable it will become. I left the platform last year and haven’t looked back.

    So have many others. Soros, in his zeal to control information flow, has weaponized it by pressuring failing governments into into treating criticism against his projects a crime against decency.

    He may believe he’s winning the argument, but his op-ed, which by his standards is stunningly incompetent, betrays a hint of desperation there is a split between him and Wall St.

    Wall St. is amoral. They aren’t ideologues like Soros. They go where the money is. And the money is still in a version of Facebook that allows the illusion of political debate.

    Soros, on the other hand, is openly backing anti-Wall St. candidates like Elizabeth Warren. He’s partnered with Tom Steyer on internet control. Facebook is Wall St.’s darling, feeding them all the data, money and power they could ever want.

    They really aren’t ready to slay the golden goose just because George is dead set against Trump. Given the field and the collapse of the impeachment, Trump is the best candidate Wall St. has in this election unless Hillary pantsuits up and pinch hits for the DNC.

    Hillary is great at hitting softballs. But, as we all know, to make it in the majors you can’t have trouble with the curve. You need to be adaptive and flexible. Hillary is neither of those.

    So, ultimately, Hillary’s quest to win back Wall St. for the globalists will fall short, even if Wall St. hedges their bets with her against Trump one more time.

    Meanwhile, yesterday’s oligarchs like Soros have lost the ability to shape the narrative in their favor. It doesn’t work like it used to. People refused to be cowed into silence simply because they may lose their YouTube channel or Facebook page.

    There is a profound up welling of change occurring all across the world.

    And it comes from the decentralization of information and there’s little people like Soros can do to stop it. They can put up roadblocks. They can slow things down.

    But the costs to do this are rising constantly as technology makes communications cheaper. The days of controlling the on-ramps to information through artificial barriers to entry are over.

    China will find that out the hard way. Soros will too. He doesn’t understand that populism isn’t popular because dumb people get bad information from dishonest advertising.

    Populism is popular because moldy old globalists like him suck the joy out of life and destroy their homes, families and communities. And no one actually wants to live in his brave new world of culture-free, soulless hyper-correctness.

    There is no such thing as a happy police state. There’s just anxiety, neurosis and endless porn.

    Any idea that cannot stand up to criticism, no matter how crude or ignorant, is worthy of our consideration. And that’s what Soros’ lame attempts at control ultimately are, a pathetic attempt to stifle criticism by creating a worldwide network of tattle-tales and gatekeepers.

    In Watchmen, Veidt convinced the State (Dr. Manhattan) to do just that, killing Rorschach who refused to accept the lie and would expose the truth.

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    And that’s exactly what Soros is doing asking for Facebook’s platform immunity to be revoked. Continuing to use Facebook in ways it doesn’t approve of or leaving the platform is how we fight both Zuckerberg and Soros. Forcing them to adapt to our curve balls, remembering that without us they have no power, that’s how we win.

    Not by using the very thing that wants us curtailed, caged, taxed and just mobile enough to think we’re free to protect us from each other, or worse, bad ideas.

    *  *  *

    Join My Patreon if you want help navigating the narrative swamp.

    Install the Brave Browser if you want to support those fighting in the trenches.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 20:45

    Tags
    Technology Internet

  • Head Of Iran's IRGC Operations In Syria Killed Near Aleppo
    Head Of Iran’s IRGC Operations In Syria Killed Near Aleppo

    Iranian state media sources have reported the death of Asghar Bashpour on the front lines of fighting in Aleppo province, which renewed days ago as Turkish-backed Syrian jihadists poured into the countryside around the major northern city. The Syrian Army has also been on a major offensive against al-Qaeda’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to retake neighboring Idlib province.

    Crucially, Bashpour was an elite commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force who is said to have been close to its slain leader Qassem Soleimani. The news was announced by Tehran Radio and then circulated among various Middle East sources, including The Times of Israel on Monday. His death occurred Sunday while reportedly supporting military operations of pro-Assad forces.

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    Blurry photo circulating of Iran’s Quds Force senior commander Asghar Pashapour, far left.​​​​​​, also with slain Gen. Qassem Soliemani (2nd from right), via IRIB/Al Arabiya.

    Israel has long claimed that Iranian entrenchment inside Syria is ultimately aimed at harming Israeli security and interests. Over the past years the Israeli Air Force has conducted hundreds of incursions and strikes inside Syria, against what Tel Aviv describes as Iranian proxies and troops. 

    The Times of Israel describes the newly slain Asghar Bashpour and friend of Soleimani as follows: 

    He is said to have been at the forefront of the Quds Force’s operations against anti-regime rebels in Syria, where Iran has been a key backer of President Bashar Assad since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

    Regional sources say he was senior commander in the Quds Force responsible for overseeing all Iran-backed special operations in Syria. State-run IRIB news agency describes that Pashapour was “one of the first to go to Syria with Qassem Soleimani.”

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    Beirut-based Syrian war monitor al-Masdar News, among few outlets to have sources within the Syrian Army, described that the IRGC elite commander likely died fighting the terrorist group Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP):

    The location of Bashpour’s death in Aleppo was not reported; however, it is likely that he was either killed at the IRGC base in Nayrab (southern Aleppo), which has been targeted by militant missiles, or the Khan Touman front, where the jihadist rebels of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) launched a counter-offensive against the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and Local Defense Forces (LDF).

    As we detailed earlier, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels have in recent days and weeks mounted new insurgent attacks on the outskirts of the provincial capital city of Aleppo at a moment the Syrian Army has made huge gains into neighboring Idlib.

    A key reason Damascus has vowed to retake every inch of Idlib is that for years al-Qaeda has launched terrorist attacks on suburbs of Aleppo from there as civilians and the government attempt to rebuild the largely destroyed urban center. 

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    Asghar Pashapour, left, a top commander in Iran’s Quds Force.

    This latest renewed fighting in Aleppo appears a concerted effort by Turkey to use its proxy forces to repel and distract the brunt of the Syrian Army offensive on Idlib, considering on Friday President Erdogan warned he’s ready to use military force if Assad doesn’t halt Idlib operations.

    On Monday rare direct clashes broke out between the Syrian and Turkish armies which killed an estimated 50 people, including Turkish troops, though the numbers on each side are currently in dispute.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 20:25

    Tags
    Politics
    War Conflict

  • Turley: How The House Lost The Witnesses Along With The Impeachment
    Turley: How The House Lost The Witnesses Along With The Impeachment

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the continued effort to ignore the obvious and catastrophic decision of the House leadership to rush the impeachment vote by Christmas rather than complete the record against President Donald Trump. This denial continues despite the fact that, after saying that they had no time to seek witnesses or favorable court orders, the House leadership then waited a month before released the articles of impeachment. Clearly, the record would have been stronger if the House waited and sought to compel witnesses. It also would have kept control of the record and the case. I encouraged them to vote in March or April, which would have given them plenty of time to secure additional testimony and certainly a number of favorable court orders. However, recognizing this obvious blunder would take away from the narrative that the case failed only because the Republicans were protecting Trump in the Senate.

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    Here is the column:

    NBC host Chuck Todd recently asked guests on his show if supporters of President Trump just want to be lied to. It is a question that many in the media would never ask about Democrats, even in the face of overtly false claims. This week is an example. After the Senate rejected witnesses and effectively ended the impeachment trial on Friday, the media ignored the primary reason for the defeat, which is the insistence of House leaders to impeach Trump by Christmas. Critics of the president simply do not want to hear that the blind rush to impeach guaranteed not only an acquittal but an easy case for acquittal. It is after all important for some members of the media to maintain that fools dwell only in Republican red states.

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    When I appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in November, I opposed four proposed articles of impeachment as legally flawed and explained that two would be legitimate if they were proven. The House Judiciary Committee rejected the challenged articles and accepted the two articles on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. That left one fundamental area of disagreement. I warned the panel that it was rushing to a failed impeachment by insisting on a vote by Christmas. This was the shortest impeachment investigation in American history. It was also the narrowest grounds and thinnest record for trial. I have previously noted that witnesses like former national security adviser John Bolton indicated that they were willing to testify if subpoenaed, and that a couple months would have likely secured more testimony and supportive court orders.

    Indeed, in the impeachment case of President Nixon, it took only a few months to go all the way to the Supreme Court for the final decision. So absent such a delay, the impeachment of Trump was guaranteed to fail, due to an incomplete and insufficient record. Yet the House insisted this was a “crime in progress” and there was no time to delay a submission to the Senate. It then immediately contradicted its rationale by waiting more than a month to submit articles of impeachment to the Senate. The House simply could not have made it easier on the president and his legal team.

    The media ignored the obvious catastrophic blunder by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership. The media instead suggested that it was all some grand and brilliant scheme. They even credited the strategy with Bolton eventually coming forward to say he would testify with a subpoena, even though the same offer was made during the House investigation. The media also ignored the unexplained decision by the House to withdraw a subpoena for top Bolton aide Charles Kupperman, who went to court as a prerequisite for testimony, the same position taken by Bolton. Before the courts could even rule, the House mooted the case by withdrawing the subpoena. That made no sense, and the court dismissed the case after concluding that the House appeared to have no interest in the witness.

    No harm would have come from pursuing testimony by Kupperman. Yet lead House manager Adam Schiff offered a facially dubious explanation that Kupperman had said he would litigate the issue. If Kupperman truly wanted to drag out litigation, he could have refused to appear before the House and waited for it to seek to compel his testimony. Instead, he said he just wanted a court order in favor of testifying for his own protection. Moreover, House Democrats continued to seek to compel the testimony of former White House counsel Donald McGahn, despite his continued litigation. It won that case as the House was voting on impeachment.

    As these blunders by the House became more and more obvious, all the efforts to excuse them became more and more absurd. One main defense heard in the media was that it did not matter, given the Senate Republican majority. Yet if the House was certain to lose on that record, why end the investigation prematurely with a case that would be so easy to defeat? By waiting only a few months, the record would have been stronger. Instead, House Democrats surrendered control of the record to the opposing party and adopted a ridiculous strategy of demanding concessions to end with this trial that Senate Republicans loathed. That strategy failed miserably.

    This is not Monday morning quarterbacking. This very series of events was expressly laid out before the vote, and House Democrats made a decision to choose certain failure over completing their impeachment case. There was no reason to expect Senate Republicans to assist House managers in making their case, particularly in calling witnesses not subpoenaed by the House. Democrats had opposed any witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Clinton and voted as a bloc for a summary acquittal. There was no reason to expect Republicans to adopt an entirely different approach.

    We will never know how this impeachment trial would have unfolded if the House had waited to secure additional testimony and court orders. One thing, however, is certain. The case against the president could only have become stronger. The vote for witnesses failed by one for a tie and by two for a majority. A more complete record could well have tipped the balance and certainly would have made the vote against witnesses more difficult for some senators. Instead, the House submitted an incomplete record and failed to subpoena important witnesses like Bolton, making it quite easy for the Senate to refuse to do what the House had never even tried.

    None of the explanations offered by House Democrats make any logical sense. That, however, does not matter. As Todd said of supporters of the president, people “want to be lied to sometimes” and “do not always love being told hard truths.” The hard truth is that House Democrats lost this case the minute they rushed an impeachment vote, and they knew it. With the approaching Iowa caucuses, they chose a failed impeachment rather than taking a few more months to work on a more complete case against Trump, a case more difficult to summarily dismiss. That is the hard truth.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 20:05

    Tags
    Politics
    Law Crime

  • "That's The Light Of A Missile!" Leaked Audio Proves Iran Knew Immediately Missile Hit Jetliner
    “That’s The Light Of A Missile!” Leaked Audio Proves Iran Knew Immediately Missile Hit Jetliner

    A new leaked recording of an audio log between an Iranian air-traffic controller and an Iranian pilot who witnessed the nearby downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 proves that authorities in Tehran knew immediately after the Jan.8 disaster what had actually happened, despite initially announcing it was an accident based on a likely mechanical failure. It further took days of denials before the Islamic Republic finally admitted the IRGC mistakenly launched missiles which destroyed the civilian aircraft, killing all 176 people aboard.

    “A series of lights like… yes, it is missile, is there something?” the pilot is heard calling out in Farsi to the controller after witnessing bright flashes in the distance. “No, how many miles? Where?” the controller asks, according to the stunning audio transcript.

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    Image source: AFP/Getty

    Ukraine’s 1+1 TV channel published the leaked audio and transcript Monday, which President Volodymyr Zelenskiy subsequently acknowledged as authentic, according to the AP. The head of the Iranian investigation team into the tragedy also said the recording is authentic. 

    Publicly available radar tracking data shows that the pilot of a nearby medium-sized Iranian Aseman Airlines jet was close enough to see the downing unfold. 

    According to the transcript, the pilot insists to a confused controller: “It is the light of a missile.”

    “Don’t you see anything anymore?” the controller asks.

    “Dear engineer, it was an explosion. We saw a very big light there, I don’t really know what it was,” the pilot responds.

    The controller then tries to no avail to establish contact with the Ukrainian Boeing 737.

    Civilian officials within the Iranian government claimed they were initially unaware that an IRGC surface-to-air missile had shot the plane down, given the IRGC is only answerable to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    The doomed aircraft had crashed a mere eight minutes after takeoff from Tehran en route to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

    Zelensky said of the new audio that it “proves that the Iranian side knew from the start that our plane was hit by a missile.”

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    Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, file image, via AFP/Getty

    “Everything is audible there,” Zelensky told the Ukrainian broadcaster. “Everything is recorded.”

    He added: “He says that ‘it seems to me that a missile is flying’, he says it in both Persian and English, everything is fixed there.”

    The Iranian investigative team which had handed the recording over the Ukrainians condemned it’s being published to the world as “unprofessional” — given it was handed over as part of a confidential report, but then was quickly leaked to Ukrainian media.


    Tyler Durden

    Mon, 02/03/2020 – 19:45

    Tags
    Politics

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